INSERT AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF FACE-PALMING PICARDS HERE: Russian foreign minister: So what if Zelensky’s Jewish, so was Hitler.
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
May 1, 2022
NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE: Obama retread Samantha Power tells former Clinton press flak George Stephanopoulos: “‘Fertilizer shortages are real now because Russia is a big exporter of fertilizer. And even though fertilizer is not sanctioned, less fertilizer is coming out of Russia. As a result, we’re working with countries to think about natural solutions like manure and compost. And this may hasten transitions that would have been in the interest of farmers to make eventually anyway.’”
Power telling Stephanopoulos that potential food shortages are a way to nudge farmers in a direction the administration wants them to go is akin to their frequent arguments that high gas prices should be encouraged to nudge drivers into electric cars.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong.
Plus: Sri Lanka facing imminent threat of starvation, senior politician warns.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Harvard’s student newspaper endorses “Boycott, Divest, Sanction and a Free Palestine.” The editorial also defends the newspaper against ‘accusations’ that its stance is antisemitic.
OUT ON A LIMB: Tulsi Gabbard Suggests Obama Devised Biden’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ Disinformation Board. “‘Biden is just a front man,’ Gabbard tweeted Sunday. ‘Obama, April 21: social media censors ‘don’t go far enough,’ so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (aka Disinformation Governance Board).’”
Richard Delgado, an early champion of speech codes and now more famous as a founding scholar in the field of Critical Race Theory, cites the Rwandan genocide (more on this in the next entry), along with Weimar Germany, as cautionary tales against free-speech purism. The problem is that neither historical precedent supports the idea that speech restraints could have prevented a genocide.
As I explained in my review of Eric Berkowitz’s excellent book, “Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News,” Weimar Germany had laws banning hateful speech (particularly hateful speech directed at Jews), and top Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher actually were sentenced to prison time for violating them. The efforts of the Weimar Republic to suppress the speech of the Nazis are so well known in academic circles that one professor has described the idea that speech restrictions would have stopped the Nazis as “the Weimar Fallacy.”
A 1922 law passed in response to violent political agitators such as the Nazis permitted Weimar authorities to censor press criticism of the government and advocacy of violence. This was followed by a number of emergency decrees expanding the power to censor newspapers. The Weimar Republic not only shut down hundreds of Nazi newspapers — in a two-year period, they shut down 99 in Prussia alone — but they accelerated that crackdown on speech as the Nazis ascended to power. Hitler himself was banned from speaking in several German states from 1925 until 1927.
Far from being an impediment to the spread of National Socialist ideology, Hitler and the Nazis used the attempts to suppress their speech as public relations coups. The party waved the ban like a bloody shirt to claim they were being targeted for exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans.
And once in power, “Far from stopping Hitler, they only made his day when he became Chancellor. They enabled Hitler to confront Social Democratic Party chairman Otto Wels, who stood up in the Reichstag to protest Nazi suspension of civil liberties, with a quotation from the poet Friedrich Schiller: ‘Late you come, but still you come,’ Hitler pointed at the hapless deputy. ‘You should have recognized the value of criticism during the years we were in opposition [when] our press was forbidden, our meetings were forbidden, and we were forbidden to speak for years on end.’ The Nazis would have been just as repressive without this excuse, but being able to offer it made Hitler’s task easier.”
Meanwhile, back in 2022:
OUR SCHIZOPHRENIC OVERCLASS:
Shot: As Democrats debate high gas prices, ‘Buy a Tesla’ remains their default policy — even for the poor.
—The Washington Examiner, Friday.
Chaser: Morning Joe Hopes Twitter Buyout ‘Brings Down Musk’s Entire Business Empire.’
—NewsBusters, Friday.
ROGER SIMON: Biden Administration Tops Orwell with ‘Disinformation Governance Board.’
Communism comes in various stripes.
The Soviets had their version, the Chinese have theirs—these days quaintly called “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The North Koreans have “Juche!” The Cambodian Khmer Rouge had theirs (thankfully short-lived) and the Cubans a pretty traditional Marxist-Leninist state with the creepy addition—they have long embedded secret police in the neighborhoods to keep an eye on everybody.
But they all have in common what they most loathe: freedom of speech.
Joining them in this abhorrence of the cornerstone of democracies is now the current U.S. administration that is about to install, through its Department of Homeland Security, a “Disinformation Governance Board.”
How Orwellian can you get!
But to call that Orwellian is both an understatement and an insult to the great George Orwell whose “Ministry of Truth” was a far more clever construction that contained the ironic overtone intended by the author.
There’s nothing ironic about the bureaucratic Biden era locution that seems thought up by the totalitarian dullards of our Deep State as a warning lest we peons get out of line and think for ourselves. It owes more to Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels than to the author of “Animal Farm” and “1984.”
We could also call it—using Chinese rhetoric, since it is their form of communism ours most now resembles—“Socialism with American Characteristics.”
As in China, this allows for an oligarchic class to continue to enrich itself without untoward intrusions from the lowly serfs.
That this comes from Homeland Security and its chief Alejandro Mayorkas is more than slightly ominous. Adding to the threatening intent of the initiative is his choice to lead this assault on the First Amendment, Nina Jankowicz.
Jankowicz was such an “expert” in the field of “disinformation” that she was one of those most loudly calling the Hunter Biden laptop story Russian disinformation, which makes her either an idiot or a liar. I’ll go with the latter.
She was also involved in “strategic communications” (“Deep Statish” for propaganda) in Ukraine during the days all the hanky-panky was going on with Burisma.
But it’s worse still. Via Breitbart, we learn that the “talented” Ms. Jankowicz recorded a song on YouTube with the lyrics “Who do I have to [world’s most well-known expletive deleted] to be rich, famous and powerful?”
Well, we now know the answer: the American people. Second answer: the Bill of Rights.
Evergreen:
Related: What could go wrong? Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on CNN: Ministry of Truth won’t “‘monitor American citizens … the board does not have any operational capability. What it’ll do is gather together best practices … and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing & addressing this threat for years’…Mayorkas then suggested that the board would simply be addressing disinformation from foreign sources — such as Russia, Iran, or China — that would pose a national security threat.”
…is being waged by the left, and it’s on the very word “woman” and “women” and on the concept itself.
The left has supported transgender political and cultural activism to such a great extent that not only are biological men such as Lia Thomas allowed to enter women’s sports and compete there by claiming to be women, but the word “woman” itself has undergone a transformation for health professionals, who are now discouraged from using it.
Certainly it’s good for medical professionals to be aware that a person who looks like a man or a woman may have biological organs that don’t match his or her outward presentation and that it can be medically important to consider that possibility at times. But that’s a far far cry from eliminating the basic concepts of men and women and surrendering to the reduction of people to their genitalia.
DISPATCHES FROM NERD PROM: Joe Biden Laughs at America’s Economic Struggles. “‘I’ll be honest. If you didn’t come I totally would’ve understood,’ [Trevor] Noah told Biden. ‘Because these people have been so hard on you, which I don’t get. I really don’t. You know, I think ever since you’ve come into office, things are really looking up. Gas is up. Rent is up. Food is up. Everything.’ And Joe Biden laughed.”
There’s a powerful campaign commercial here, if GOP video makers are paying attention.
April 30, 2022
SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Elon Musk Trolls AOC on Twitter and It’s the Best Thing Ever.
Related: Spotted: Socialist AOC’s Tesla Parked Illegally Outside Whole Foods in Posh DC Neighborhood.
MISSION CREEP: ACLU helped draft article at heart of Johnny Depp v Amber Heard case for $3.5m donation, court hears. American Civil Liberties Union’s general counsel testifies that at least $500,000 came from fund connected to Elon Musk.
MARK JUDGE: When Editors Were Necessary.
What do editors do to earn their paychecks? These days, not much. In the blog and digital age, most editors sit around reading copy that’s provided for them by writers. They might change a word here or there, or bitch about a couple typos, but that’s it. For this they get paid a lot more than the writers who produce the pieces that drive the traffic that pays their salaries.
Before the digital revolution, being an editor could be sweaty work. The film Genius, based on A. Scott Berg’s book, dramatizes the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins as he helped to craft masterpieces by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins traversed the ocean of paper and ink hoisted onto his desk, spending months and years honing and perfecting. As Berg once told Vanity Fair, “Before Perkins, book editors had largely mechanical jobs: signing the book and preparing the manuscript for the printer. This one person changed the course of great American literature by working closely with authors to shape their manuscripts.”
* * * * * * *
Editors like Kate Boo began to disappear with the rise of digital media and the financial collapse of journalism. The job of editor became more simple: gather copy from the horses who were driving traffic, pop it into the slots, collect a check, go home. A lot of these editors are only marginally competent and pathetically risk-averse, making sure their Buzzfeed-chasing hacks stick to short and easy copy. Unlike predecessors mentioned above, they weren’t daring.
And when they do go big, the lack of experience, guts, and wisdom can bring about a disaster. On November 19, 2014, I clicked open the webpage to Rolling Stone. Prominently posted at the top was the story “A Rape on Campus,” about an alleged rape at the University of Virginia. I knew by the third paragraph that the story was fake. It was something that any of my editors in the 1990s would’ve caught instantly. The girl was raped and tossed through a glass table? Are the markings on her back? Did you see the markings? Did you talk to the accused?
Read the whole thing.
THEY CHOSE…POORLY: Disney Just Fired Its Corporate-Affairs Chief.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Space Force Canceled at Netflix. The Steve Carell comedy set a record for talent pay as the actor’s deal for the series topped $1 million per episode.
Related: Netflix Stock Price Drops 35%, Posting Biggest Fall Since 2004.
More: Netflix’s Big Wake-Up Call: The Power Clash Behind the Crash.
DISPATCHES FROM THE ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY AND THE MEMORY HOLE: ‘Woke’ Democrats, including AOC, want to strip former Mayor Koch’s name from 59th Street Bridge.
THERE’S A DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE, AND POLITICO IS “UNEXPECTEDLY” BORED ONCE AGAIN: The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter.
Washington reporters have long considered the role of White House correspondent to be the crown jewel of American political journalism. It has launched high-profile television careers, scored countless reporters book deals and been bestowed on media veterans for years of ink-drenched work.
But during the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.
* * * * * * * *
The Obama press room launched a whole cohort of journalists into media stardom. The Trump press room launched another. The Biden press room?
“I can’t think of any [stars],” said a well-known television news executive. “I don’t really watch the briefings.”
The dulling down of the White House beat is not due to a lack of reportorial talent in the room. Nor has it meant that the work being done hasn’t been important: major stories are being broken regularly on everything from the Covid fight, to the war in Ukraine, to inflation, immigration and legislative battles over the social safety net. Rather, what is happening is the fulfillment of a central Biden promise. Running for office against Donald Trump — the most theatrical, attention-seeking, Beltway-panic-inducing president in living memory — he pledged to make Washington news boring again.
And, well, mission accomplished sir.
“Jen [Psaki] is very good at her job, which is unfortunate,” one reporter who has covered the past two administrations from the room said. “And the work is a lot less rewarding, because you’re no longer saving democracy from Sean Spicer and his Men’s Wearhouse suit. Jawing with Jen just makes you look like an asshole.”
Notice the name of that last “reporter” isn’t given in the article. But let’s review: Russia at war with Ukraine, and our being dragged in; our disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, with Americans still stranded there; an out of control border; out of control gas prices, and the return of Jimmy Carter-style stagflation; a schizophrenic Dr. Fauci; and the tapping of the appropriately named “Misinformation Czar.” Not to mention Biden frequently in full “Trunalimunumaprzure!” mode, leading to his occasional threatening of Putin, and his staffers having to walk said threats back an hour or so later.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the return of their Obama-era boredom makes perfect sense.
Evergreen:
April 29, 2022
RIP: Neal Adams, Comic Book Artist Who Revitalized Batman and Fought for Creators’ Rights, Dies at 80. He influenced multiple generations with his style and co-created such characters as Ra’s al Ghul, the Man-Bat and one of DC’s first Black superheroes, Green Lantern John Stewart.
PATIENT ZERO: Hollywood Consultant Admits Glee Started the Wokeness Epidemic.
In other words, a group of people who numbered, at minimum, in the tens of thousands, and could’ve numbered in the tens of millions, became so obsessed with a TV show, and with characters they related to, that they went and indoctrinated themselves with critical theory just so they could more effectively complain whenever the show did something they didn’t like, and harass anyone who disagreed without consequence. And when this toxicity ruined the show for them, they then spread this behavior to the fandoms of every other art form, and even carried it with them into adult life as participants in America’s cultural institutions.
There’s no other way to put this: this interview and the Tumblr post that preceded it form a confession. These girls (and it almost certainly was mostly girls) were so incapable of telling the difference between fiction and reality, so desperate to pretend that it was them reflected onscreen in a glorified teenage music revue, that they went to the trouble of intellectualizing their discontent through critical theory, and then took the same mission that animated the wars over Glee on Tumblr into the real world, and into real professions, in real industries, with real consequences. And just like they insisted that the actors on Glee live out their personal wish-fulfillment fantasies, the autonomy of those actors be damned, they are now insisting that all of us play the parts they have written for us in a political fanfic while they transform all of the United States not into a utopia, but into an eternal fantasy high school, where our new woke overlords, like the New Directions, will be constantly validated by everyone around them while still being able to claim oppression.
Read the whole thing.
WHEN REALITY STARTS TO INTRUDE: California promised to close its last nuclear plant. Now Newsom is reconsidering.
Newsom’s change of mind is a result of “California’s Potemkin Environmentalism:” No State Imports More Electricity Than California.
Even during the Schwarzenegger era, Max Schultz of City Journal, who coined the above phrase, noted that California’s “celebrated green economy produces pollution elsewhere, ongoing power shortages, and business-crippling costs.” Look for those trends to continue to get worse, based on the California assembly’s bill mandating 100 percent clean electricity passed in 2018.
Eventually, the New York Times and NPR may even dub the results “An ‘Almost Unimaginable’ Crisis.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Impeach Mayorkas. Alejandro Mayorkas has flouted the nation’s immigration laws and effectively opened America’s borders.
It’s time for him to go.
Related: Biden rule to speed processing of asylum claims challenged by Texas.
THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH IS REAL:
Things got pretty weird, pretty quickly in the wake of Elon Musk’s trial balloon about buying Twitter, a deal that went through Monday, much to the chagrin of the progressive chattering class who were super duper certain the Tesla and SpaceX boy genius was just foolin’ for fun.
Poor NPR, for example, forced to aggregate what Musk might actually do with his new toy (and, to be fair, they pulled from his own public statements), characterizes the sale this way:
“[T]he world’s richest person who has a penchant for theatrics and erratic behavior is about to have the power to reshape discourse on a social network used by more than 200 million people every day.”
They’re not handling it very well.
Hence, the new federally-run truth commission, brought to you courtesy of Homeland Security.
The Biden administration and progressive activists (including former President Obama) sprang into action following Monday’s announcement and — quite literally — began the process of defining disinformation and calling for its regulation to make sure bad speech was addressed and eliminated from the collective safe space.
At the NRO Corner, Jim Geraghty compares the DHS “Disinformation Governance Board” to Obama’s stillborn “Attack Watch” Media Matters clone from 2011. A name that I cannot read without flashing back to the viral video from Misfit Politics mocking it with a sneering “Attaaaaccccckkkkk Waaaaaaaaaaaaaatch:”
UPDATE: “Lock us down:”
Lock us down so we can practice singing!
Meet the Biden DHS national head of censorship, America. Please DO NOT RT this video as it may upset your new internet overlords pic.twitter.com/FoEKlEmziH
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) April 29, 2022
April 28, 2022
RAIDERS OWNER MARK DAVIS OPEN TO SIGNING COLIN KAEPERNICK:
Seemingly under the assumption that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, the Las Vegas Raiders may be willing to gamble on signing Colin Kaepernick.
On Wednesday, team owner Mark Davis offered support to the quarterback who hasn’t taken an NFL snap since 2016. “I believe in Colin Kaepernick,” Davis said via NBC Sports Bay Area.
Despite recently signing starting QB Derek Carr to a three-year contract extension worth more than $120 million dollars, Davis insisted Wednesday that he wouldn’t stand in the way if his front office and coaching staff pushed to sign the quarterback. “He deserves every chance in the world to become a quarterback in the National Football League. I still stand by it,” said Davis.
Or as Ace writes, “Las Vegas Raiders Owner Innovates World’s First Live-Performance Twitter Virtue Signal.”