Shot in the Dark

Justifiable

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Mainstream media is alarmed that internet sites provide fake news, leading innocent voters astray from The Truth which they ought to be getting from the mainstream media.  And since nobody is reading their content, the mainstream outlets are going to lay off staff and close offices which will exacerbate the problem as professional journalists are replaced by internet trolls blogging in their pajamas in the basement.

Missing the point.  The reason people read internet sites is because the mainstream media news sites are, themselves, fake news.  They only cover the stories they think are important.  The stories they do deign to cover are consistently slanted.  Millions of Americans know it and are desperate enough for full, honest news that they are willing to risk slogging through the gutter of internet sites to find the few gems.  And the reason they’re justified in doing so is that respectable internet sites have scooped mainstream media on noteworthy stories such as Powerline and Little Green Footballs exposing Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” reporting on President Bush’s National Guard service.  

 If pajamas media has become a more reliable source of truthful news than mainstream media, extinction is what we should expect.  File this in the “Obsolete” file right next to “buggy whips.” 

 Joe Doakes

If the mainstream media doesn’t get its mission, as well as its business model, squared away sooner than later, that train will leave the station very soon.

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34 responses to “Justifiable”

  1. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Being gullible is different from wanting to believe something. Definitely worth reading “Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umbero Eco, a brilliant novel on the subject.

  2. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    I started it several times – couldn’t finish it. Bored to tears by the mysticism. The Name of the Rose was okay, the movie was better. Matter of taste, I suppose. I follow my own, not what somebody else thinks I should like.

  3. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    Being gullible is different from wanting to believe something.

    Huh…you don’t say. Figured that out, did ya?

    So, does that mean you’ve given up on cut and paste philosophy, SSOLS Emery…or are you just going to give attributions to the people that do your talking for you?

  4. DMA Avatar
    DMA

    Powerline spent the last year making asses of themselves. I dis-invited them from my reading table.

  5. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Wait, everything on the internet isn’t true? When did this happen?

  6. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Emery says:
    Being gullible is different from wanting to believe something.
    Wait, everything on the internet isn’t true? When did this happen?

    The MSM is on the Internet. We’re supposed to believe the MSM.

    Rolling Stone and rape. Rather and documents. Duke and rape. Clinton and an intern and lying to a grand jury under oath. Shall I go on?

    The basic point is that the media used to have a monopoly on disseminating information and we never got to peek behind the curtain. The Internet has broken that monopoly and allowed anyone to peek behind the curtain. The proles aren’t very happy with what they’re seeing the levers the man in the booth has been pulling, and are adjusting their level of trust appropriately. They are recognizing that the man in the booth is not the all-knowing great-and-powerful Oz he was claiming, and that if they want the full story they must look elsewhere.

    I got my lesson years ago when interviewed about this hot new thing of Cold Fusion before the Internet existed. The reporter not only butchered my quote, turning around what I said 180 degrees, but he got the entire physics wrong. And when I pointed that out in both a phone call and a letter, neither got any attention. That opened my eyes as how reliable reporters are, the agenda they carry, and certainly colored how I view news. I expect that others have done the same now that the Internet is making allowing us to see how the sausage is made and what goes into it.

  7. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    I remember the cold fusion debacle, nerd. The MSM should have included the caveat the claims had not been replicated; a singular requirement of true science.

  8. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that swiftee links to gateway pundit.

    How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html

  9. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    WTF??
    I may have read the gateway pundit at some point; I can’t be sure. But Ive never linked to it.

    SSOLS Emery has evidently gone from plagarizing his intellectual betters to just making shit up about them, out of thin air.

    Some of the weaker leftists will not survive the Trump years.

  10. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    I suppose you’re going to disavow your flashy little riding pardner too.
    https://memegenerator.net/instance/11580288

  11. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    When I was a young pup, I hung around people that were smarter than me. It served to motivate me to strive to a higher intellectual and educational standard. Thanks to the wonderful mentoring I recieved, I’ve had a financially and intellectually successful career. To this day, I enjoy the company of people that are smarter than me, in the hope that I can continue to improve. That’s why I continue to visit websites like SITD.

    Idiot trolls like Emery prove that unless one is a willing vessel, the inflow of intellect leaks out like piss from a sodden diaper.

  12. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Enough of your puffery Tom. A picture is worth a thousand words.

    “Strive to a higher intellectual and educational standard”
    http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Pugripz/media/Swiftee_Finger.jpg.html

  13. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    Fuck you old man. All that proves is I’m your physical superior as well as mental.

    I can bench press twice your weight in failure, and out argue your best plagiarized hero.

  14. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    I really need to upgrade that photo. I was only benching 1.5 times your weight in failure at that time.

  15. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    BTW, I’d be happy to prove that last boast at your convenience, SSOLS Emery.

  16. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Gets trolled and accuses me of sucking at trolling in the same comment. I am not sure I can function when I am laughing so much.

  17. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    This is what gullibility looks like:
    http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/trump-s-victory-has-fearful-minorities-buying-guns-n686881

    Scott, an African-American, is one of many minorities who have been flocking to gun stores to protect themselves, afraid Trump’s victory will incite more hate crimes.

    “You feel that racists now feel like they can attack us just because the president is doing it,” one gun shop owner told NBC News.
    . . .
    “It’s best that I be proactive,” said Scott, a fiery 49-year-old financial analyst. “I know where I live.”

    She’s from Alpharetta, Georgia. It borders Forsyth County, which in 1912 systematically drove out nearly all its black residents for the next quarter century. After two alleged attacks on white women, a black suspect was lynched and two more were hanged after a short trial. Armed bands of whites began terrorizing blacks, torching homes and churches in night raids, firing through the door, telling them it was time to “get” [out of America] and then seized their homes and land. As recently as 1987 the county saw the marching of 5,000 white supremacists.

    The demographics of Alpharetta, Georgia (according to Wikipedia):

    According to the 2010 census, the racial composition of the city of Alpharetta was as follows:

    White: 72.0%
    Asian: 13.7%
    Black or African American: 11.2%
    Hispanic or Latino : 8.7%
    Other: 2.9%
    Two or more races: 2.8%
    Native American: 0.2%
    Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander: 0.1%

    And no, it is not Tobacco Road:

    The median income for a household in the city was $95,888, and the median income for a family was $111,918. The per capita income for the city was $42,431.[12] Males had a median income of $79,275 versus $59,935 for females. About 2.9% of families and 1.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including .3% of those under age 18 and .6% of those age 65 or over.”

    NBC News: driving the narrative at the expense of honesty and integrity.

  18. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    If you want to see what “manufactured news” looks like, go to google trends and search for the terms “alt right” and “fake news.”

  19. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    I wonder if those fearful negros realize that Hillary Clinton had promised to do everything in her power to disarm them and everyone else to the very extents the constitution would allow. She also promised to nominate anti-American, reprobate leftists to the SCOTUS with the presumption they would expand her opportunities to disarm the public.

    The ignorance the constituency of the Democrat party exhibits is testiment to the success that band of reprobates has had in destroying the public schools.

  20. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    If Democrats want middle class voters back they may want to reconsider their rhetoric about “white privilege” and all the rest of their Identity Politics strategy. One way to do this would be to drop Identity Politics altogether and appeal to class differences. These transcend color and ethnicity. The party’s disdain for nearly three-quarters of the electorate means permanent exile in the wilderness.

  21. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    Class divisions are tough. There are constitutional protections that apply to all Americans that are hard to get an end-around. The lower 51% can not vote themselves the property of the 49%. Well, they can, via income or other taxes, but the rich are called “the rich” because they have more resources than the poor. They, can, and will, defend their wealth and social privilege.
    In the early 20th century two solutions were proposed for the problem of social class in a society where the poor — the workers — are politically powerful: a classless society or fascism. The problem with a classless society (aka Marxism-Leninism) is that social class is organic. Free people tend to form social classes, and the wealthy class ends up on top, and uses the power of the state to oppress and exploit the lower orders. To stop this from happening, the state itself must become an oppressive agent and prevent the formation of social classes. One of the things that Stalin did to implement a classless society was to forbid private property.
    In fascism, as developed by Mussolini, the idea was that social class (and ethnic identity) are too ingrained into humanity to eliminate. Mussolini thought that there could never be a stable, classless society. Instead he made loyalty to the state the highest virtue. All other loyalties were subordinate to loyalty to the state.
    Because the fascist state is built on an existing human institution (the nation), fascism could be stable, while a classless society could not be stable. Communism, as envisioned by Marx and his 20th century followers, can only work if you believe that the passage of time can fundamentally change humanity.

  22. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Jethrene; regarding that story from Forsyth County, somebody’s got to pick up the slack when the rest of us are no longer nervous about Obama getting the 5th vote against Heller and MacDonald on the Supreme Court, no?

    Yes, they’re gullible, but if conservatives play this right, it’s a great opportunity to invite people to the range and demonstrate for sure that we don’t wear our sheets. No?

  23. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    Bikebubba, I don’t think the Left is interested in finding reasonable responses to problems revealed by reason. Reason is out of the reach of people who believe that you can hate hate, or be intolerant of intolerance, or who believe that it is an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths.
    They don’t care about reducing gun crime. They care about about being seen as being in favor of reducing gun crime, while you are against it. They don’t care about reducing racism, they care about being able to call you a racist.
    You can not reason a person out of an opinion they were not reasoned into.

  24. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    Here is Jon Stewart, a fellow with no more expertise on the state of politics and the nation in 2016 than anyone else, being treated like a serious person by the news media:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUkv_jPgTeg
    This is pathetic. I guess Soupy Sales was unavailable?
    Stewart is the child of a bourgeois family from an East coast enclave. He has an undergrad degree in psychology. He was a stand up comic. Then he got a gig doing fake news on comedy central.
    That’s it.
    Now the man of no accomplishments is being interviewed on CBS like he is something other than a stand up comic.

  25. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    Fucking Emery is dragging Bernie Sanders talking points in here from leftist echo chambers like a full diaper load.

    SSOLS Emery, if we want to read Salon, or TPM or the New Republic, I think we would all prefer the original. We don’t need a brainless twit dragging excerpts in, although I aver, it is amusing to watch how you morons absorb the propaganda like a sponge.

  26. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken


    You can not reason a person out of an opinion they were not reasoned into.

    That might be the most insightful quote I’ve ever read Jethrene. Bravo

  27. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Swiftee: Don’t forget to feed your Sparkle Pony today.

  28. Swiftee Plisken Avatar
    Swiftee Plisken

    Fess up SSOLS Emery.

    Before meme generators and cut and paste plagiarism you spent your time burning ants with a magnifying glass from a box of Cracker Jacks, didn’t you?

  29. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    My suggestion is to stick with writing fake news articles for Breitbart, Newsmax, Drudge, etc.. I understand it can be quite lucrative.

  30. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    “My suggestion is to stick with writing fake news articles for Breitbart, Newsmax, Drudge, etc.”
    You mean the news sites that predicted a Trump win?

  31. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    No, I mean the ad revenue generated by some of these enterprising young “creative writers”.

  32. Jethrene Avatar
    Jethrene

    The “fake news” angle is interesting because it begs the question “is there such a thing as non-fake news?”.
    If Breitbart or Drudge (or Daily Wire) says that the sun rises in the east, is it still a fake news site? How does Zuckerberg ( a man of no talent beyond hucksterism), tell a real news site from a fake news site? Zuckerberg says he will depend, in part, on user reviews. But since the users are the people Zuckerberg believes may be taken in by “fake news” sites, this seems problematic. Zuckerberg also says that he will rely on expert third parties to decide whether a site is “fake news” or its opposite “real news.”
    But who are these experts? People who confidently predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide? How can you separate “real news” from the bien-pensant?
    Who sees “fake news” as a problem? Who will judge that the “fake news” problem has been fixed?

  33. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    “Just remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it”
    — George Costanza

  34. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    And eTASS, you are definitely the prime example of a strict adherent.

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