Paul Krugman – who worshipped Barack Obama like a ’90s high school girl worshipped the Back Street Boys – twote:

I'm old enough to remember when Presidential Medals of Freedom were given for showing courage and making sacrifices on behalf of the nation and the world. Tiger Woods … hits golf balls for money https://t.co/dYmWPVljL9

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) May 7, 2019

Andrew Stiles notes Barack Obama’s list of PMoF’s:

• Michael Jordan
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Meryl Streep
• Steven Spielberg
• Robert Redford
• Robert De Niro
• Tom Hanks
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Bob Dylan
• Stevie Wonder
• Gloria Estefan
• Barbara Streisand
• James Taylor
• Diana Ross
• Bruce Springsteen
• Warren Buffett
• Tom Brokaw
• Lorne Michaels
• Joe Biden

To which a committed Dem might point out “Hey, no golfers!”.

And to which someone with honesty and integrity would add “And Paul Krugman is a travesty”.

I love languages. I speak three of ’em passably enough not to get made as a Yank, and can order a drink, pay a tab or find a bathroom in a bunch more. If I could learn more full-time, I would. I’m a linguistics geek.

I’m probably an outlier among Americans at large – we’re a big mostly monolingual country, so most Americans don’t need to learn another language.

But the word “hatchet job” means the same thing in an amazing number of languages. That occurred to me while reading this, well, hatchet job from the WaPo, claiming that about half of Republicans get annoyed hearing other languages. According to Pew:

47 percent of such Republicans say it would bother them “some” or “a lot” to “hear people speak a language other than English in a public place.” Eighteen percent of white Democrats said they would be similarly bothered.
Aside from politics, age and education are the major predictors of linguistic discomfort. Eighteen percent of whites younger than 30 said they would be bothered by a foreign language being spoken, compared with 43 percent in the 50-to-64 age group, and 45 percent among those 65 and older.
Among all racial groups, whites (34 percent) are most likely to be bothered hearing foreign languages, followed by blacks (25 percent), Asians (24 percent) and Hispanics (13 percent). Among Americans overall, 70 percent put their level of unease at “not much” or “not at all.”

And this article is kinda hatchet-y. 

For starters, it doesn’t say *why* “half of white Republicans” have that reaction. Oh, the WaPo knows what it *wants* people to think – that’s why they included the utterly unrelated “High profile confrontations”. Racists!

And yet of those Republicans, the vast majority reported being “bothered” only a little bit – which doesn’t seem like it’d be a byproduct of hatred. It doesn’t go into motivations. 

I’m to postulate the vast majority of that isn’t racism, but people in a largely monolingual culture reacting to being excluded. Remember the question – they’re reacting to hearing people “speak a language other than English in a public place.” Language is an excluder; it’s a private club. It’s why my grandma never spoke her native Norwegian unless she was among fellow native speakers; it’s why I don’t talk in German or Norwegian in meetings with mostly Anglo co-workers. It’s kind of rude. 

The reaction is hardly limited to Americans, much less “white Republicans”. Check out how the French react to groups of Americans talking English sometime. 

I’m gonna strongly suspect most of the result comes from social annoyance rather than bigotry or provincialism. 

Men hva vet jeg?

Oops.

An Editors' Note to appear in Monday’s international edition. pic.twitter.com/1rl2vXoTB3

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) April 27, 2019

Before it disappears down the memory hole forever, here’s the cartoon:

I’ll say this – even Steve Sack isn’t this depraved.

(SACK: “Hold my kombucha”).

Since Big Media can’t quite bring itself to utter the “C” word in reference to the victims of Easter’s bombings in Sri Lanka, the Bee has come up with a handy list of alternative names for all the world’s major faiths:

We hope this helps.

Lunatic extremist kills dozens of Muslims in New Zealand (with a semiautomatic ugly black gun): Saturation coverage.

Lunatic extremists kill hundreds of Christians with bombs: Dilatory coverage.

If only the Columbo attackers had used AK47s…

I almost thought this tweet, apparently by a 20 year old Grievance Studies major from Oberlin College, to be the sort of thing that only Snopes would think wasn’t parody:

Does…anyone at that White House understand the significance of that song? https://t.co/IK9h8fOwNj

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 18, 2019

Of course, “Edelweiss” was written by Rogers and Hammerstein, in the late fifties. For a movie about some escaping from Naziism.

Here it is, in all its storm-trooper-y goodness:

Silly millennials

UPDATE: I’m told that Ms. Haberman is not actually a grievance studies major from Oberlin, but in fact NBC’s White House correspondent and one of the “elite” “gatekeepers” that are supposed to keep the public’s news safe and hygienic.

My mistake.

As I try, in my peasant-y way, to navigate the reefs and shoals of all the “fake news” the world throws before us, I’m thankful we’ve got gatekeepers like “Snopes.com” to do our thinking for us.

Q: Did U.S. Rep. @AOC repeatedly guess "free" on the TV show "The Price is Right?"
A: https://t.co/95RRj4nSzs pic.twitter.com/L6KZTfjibR

— snopes.com (@snopes) April 16, 2019

That’s the American “Fact-Check” industry – guarding the ramparts of American intellectual integrity.

Gun violence is schools is a quarter what it was 25 years ago, even with the tragic mass shootings in recent years thrown in.

But Big Left and Big Media have succeeded in convincing a fair number of people that 2+2=5:

Twenty years after the Columbine High School shooting made practicing for armed intruders as routine as fire drills, many parents have only tepid confidence in the ability of schools to stop a gunman, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
And while most Americans consider schools less safe than they were 20 years ago, the poll finds a majority say schools aren’t at fault for shootings. Bullying, the availability of guns, the internet and video games share more of the blame.

If you tell people the sky is falling often and consistently enough, people will start carrying umbrellas.

next time a SITD critic claims the Obama administration was extraordinarily clean, not a single conviction, remind them of this:
joe doakes

Percpetion is reality.

If Obama’s cronies in the media and Democrat party messaging (ptr) say his time in office was “scandal free” enough times, people will perceive it that way.

Put another way – if Trump worked to defame Latinos the way Obama did to defame law-abiding gun owners, the Southern Poverty Law Center would have issued a fatwa.

Alan Dershowitz, in re the faculty at Harvard Law School: “Your idea of diversity is someone with different color skin, or in a skirt, who thinks exactly the same as you do”.

See also “Comedy Central“.

Sharyl Atkisson has a list of 78 “mistakes” the media has made in covering Trump so far.

Yes, I put mistakes in scare quotes.

In late November of 2016, on NPR’s “On The Media” show – as reliable a measure of the daily ebb and flow of the “Elite” media’s inner id as any artifact you’ll find – representatives from the Washington Post and New York Times newsrooms spoke at length with host Bob Garfield about the need to change the rules. Instead of just “telling the story” – the who, what, when, where, why and how of the news – and presuming the consumer an figure things out for themselves, the mission was going to turn to “de-normalizing Trump”.

The “mistakes” – not just in re Trump, but Nick Sandman, “Russiagate” and on, and on, and on – may not all be symptoms of an “elite” media whose mission has changed from informing to driving an agenda. Perhaps.

But if they had changed their mission, I’m at a loss for how they’d be doing anything differently.

SCENE:  A busy office at a major news network.   Ira KATZ and Melyssa HOOPERMAN-BELL, two senior network executives, are discussing an upcoming newscast.

KATZ:   OK.  So we’ve got this piece on the revolving door between Fox News and the Trump White House.

HOOPERMAN-BELL:   Excellent.  I hate Trump.

KATZ:  Everyone hates Trump.

HOOPERMAN-BELL:  And this connection between them and Fox News is a threat to democracy.

KATZ:  Unprecedented.

HOOPERMAN-BELL:  Who should do it?

KATZ:  Stephanopoulos.

HOOPERMAN-BELL:  Definitely Stephanopoulos.

And SCENE.  Always, forever SCENE. 

Earlier this week, hundreds of students “spontaneously” walked out of Minneapolis’ Patrick Henry High School to demand legislators take away Second Amendment rights currently deemed unfashionable by Big Left.

The Media was waiting, cameras all a-whirl.

OK, I lied.  It was ten kids.

OK.  I only half lied.   The Strib was waiting anyway , there to give the “spontaneous” anti-freedom demonstration all the attention it wanted.

So when President Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people”, let’s just say my condemnation is muted to the point of nonexistence.

Phony “survivors” making up stories about Brett Kavanaugh: heroes.

Survivor of one of the most harrowing rapes – no, read the account, there’s no euphemizing it – who calls BS on Big Media’s growing uselessness to preserving democracy?

Not so much.

So if wrote a piece about a fact-checking site “checking facts” on a satirical story, you’d either think that the “Fact Check” site was the one being satirical, or that the satire site had gone just a tad over the top.

Neither is apparently the case in this story, in which Snopes “fact checks” Babylon Bee – which, in its own way may be America’s finest news source today, if you think about it – and a “story” it did about Jussie Smollett getting a job at CNN. Babylon Bee was (so far) being satirical, and Snopes was not.

Oh, yeah – did I say the Bee was likely America’s most reliable source of news? I’m being a little less satirical than they are:

Jussie Smollett Offered Job At CNN After Fabricating News Story Out Of Thin Airhttps://t.co/RNCG1r6ShA pic.twitter.com/Efsd5WEOMa

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) February 18, 2019

They may do news better than the Big Three, these days.

American public media reports – or, in a sense, “Reports” – on the ironic rising cost of water in several Great Lakes-area cities and, naturally, its disproportionate effect on the poor.

The cities – they focus most especially on Cleveland, Detroit, Duluth, Buffalo and Chicago – have water rates that are rising extremely fast, as the ageing infrastructure starts to give out.

What it doesn’t mention?

Every one of the cities has been run by Democrats, according to Democrat priorities, as long as anyone can remember.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping for a new casserole trivet for his Instant Pot (C) when MyLysa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, rounds the corner.

BERG: Er…Ms. Silberman.

SILBERMAN: [visibly searching for name] . Er – hello, Merg.

BERG: So – any comment about the allegations against Ralph “Satchmo” Northam?

SILBERMAN: In these inflammatory situations and divided times, it’s a journalist’s responsibility to make sure they get the facts straight.

BERG: OK. So – Brent Kavanaugh…

SILBERMAN: [Abruptly screams, face red with rage] WE ALWAYS #BELIEVEWOMEN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!

BERG: Huh. So – Democrat governor Northam…

SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] Get the facts…

BERG: Northam, Ellison, Clinton…

SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] We can’t report a story where we’re not absolutely sure…

BERG: The Covington kids..

SILBERMAN: [Enraged again] . WHITE! MAGA! THE…SMIRK! I JUST WANT TO BURN THAT KID’S FACE OFF!

BERG: Right. So I’ve predicted that the media will declare Northam “rehabilitated” within the year.

SILBERMAN: Rehabilitated from what?

BERG: Er…yeah. Exactly.

And SCENE

A friend of the blog writes:

Have you noticed the Star Tribune is really running a lot of Amy articles lately?

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I have.

Why, it’s almost as if they are “shaping the battlefield” on behalf of their former columnist’s daughter.

NYTimes  reporter tweets:

I'm a New York Times reporter writing about #exposechristianschools. Are you in your 20s or younger who went to a Christian school? I'd like to hear about your experience and its impact on your life. Please DM me.

— Dan Levin (@globaldan) January 24, 2019

Gosh – what do you suppose his angle is going to be?

Caitlin Flanagan at that noted conservative tool The Atlantic notes that h Big Media botched everthing that could be botched about the Covington flap – and gave us the pullquote of the week:

The full video reveals that these kids had wandered into a Tom Wolfe novel and had no idea how to get out of it.

But read the whole thing anyway.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun use surges in Europe, where guns are rare.  What could be the cause of this? 
The article is a shambles.  It throws women afraid of being raped into the same bag as South American terrorists and Eastern European refugees – they all want guns and guns hurt people so guns are bad. 
The author’s inability to distinguish between citizens who desire guns for lawful self-defense in response to government unwillingness to crack down on refugee violence, versus the Muslims shooting up markets or the narcotics gangs killing judges and policemen, makes an analysis impossible and the proposed solutions worthless.
Is clear thinking really so hard to come by, these days?

On today’s left?

Rhetorical question, right?

Last week, I was listening to NPR.

I know, I know. Worth with me, here.

I can’t find it online – I didn’t try all that hard, but then I suspect it’s not the only piece like this. that’s going to turn up if you look hard enough.

An earnest-sounding SEIU leader – y’know, a non-biased, politically-objective source, solemnly intoned:

“We don’t want to politicize the border and immigration issue . We just want policy to reflect the changing patterns of migration”

In other words: we want “ignore the national boundary so that people can migrate north to join our power base” to become the new normal.

Oddly, the NPR host said nothing about this.

I’ve got friends who still say, with a straight face, that the media does a good job of playing things down the middle. 

Here’s 18 cases where the media displayed naked bias, shimmying around the narrative poll, waiting for Big Left to stuff dollar bills in its G-String.  

One example here:

After the Avenatti carnival turned the Kavanaugh confirmation upside down, NBC attempted to report the bizarre claims his client was leveling. NBC spoke with a supposed corroborating witness Avenatti produced, but that woman instead debunked most of the client’s claims. When confronted, Avenatti told NBC the woman debunking his client’s claims was in fact his corroborating witness, but after being told she didn’t corroborate anything, he shot back: “How about this, on background, it’s not the same woman [as the corroborating witness]. What are you going to do with that?” There was more back and forth and the “corroborating witness” ultimately said Avenatti was lying about everything, yet despite all of this happening before Kavanuagh’s confirmation vote, NBC didn’t actually publish the story until weeks later. The Daily Wire published a helpful overview. 

Seventeen to go.  Get reading. 

German “journalist” Claas Relotius spent many years on the European and world journalistic fast track, until it was realized he’d spent years falsifying stories.

One of those stories was about the xenophobic misanthropic fascist racists in…

…Fergus Falls, MN.

And he didn’t just make up the little stuff. Two local residents combed through the story:

There are so many lies here, that my friend Jake and I had to narrow them down to top 11 most absurd lies (we couldn’t do just 10) for the purpose of this article. We’ve been working on it since the article came out in spring of 2017, but had to set it aside to attend to our lives (raising a family, managing a nonprofit organization, etc.) before coming back to it this fall, and finally wrapped things up a few weeks ago, just in time to hear today that Relotius was fired when he was exposed for fabricating many of his articles.

The following was neither the dumbest nor the most extravagant of Relotius’ lies:

6. The view from the Viking Cafe
“You can see the power plant where he works when you look out the window of the Diner, six tall, gray towers, from which rise white steam clouds.”
The Viking Cafe is Fergus Falls’ most treasured downtown establishment — over 60 years old. One of the reasons we Minnesotans all like it so much is that it has a cozy, underground feeling. Why? Because there are literally NO WINDOWS in the interior of this restaurant. Sure, you can see a little bit out the small front windows, but nothing beyond the shops across the street. The power plant Relotius refers to is almost 2 miles away on the northeast edge of town, blocked from view by a neighborhood on a large hill, and sports a single smokestack. Relotius’ imaginings are dramatic for the movie version of Trump’s America someday, but is it accurate and true? Not in the least.

Further proof that if you read it in the mainstream media, and it’s even a little bit political, distrust first. Then verify.

Then, almost invariably, distrust some more.

Ken Martin’s “investigation” into the domestic violence allegations against Keith Ellison is almost done.

Is the suspense killing you, too?