Flashback: When Liberal Sites Mocked Otto Warmbier For Getting What He Deserved
Posted: June 20, 2017 Filed under: Foreign Policy, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Cincinnati, Huffington Post, media, North Korea, Ohio, Otto Warmbier, Radical Left, Salon, Student, Twitter, United States, University of Cincinnati, University of Virginia, White privilege Leave a comment
Unreal.
Leah Barkoukis reports: After suffering 17 months of brutal captivity in North Korea, Otto Warmbier died Monday, having spent more than a year in a coma before his release last week.
After news of his death, Twitter users were quick to resurface articles from liberal sites Salon, Huffington Post, and Bustle in 2016 mocking the college student for getting what he deserved.
Warmbier was accused of stealing a propaganda poster from the hotel he was staying at in North Korea and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
This Huffington Post blog sure aged well. pic.twitter.com/8DSZ1uL6qe
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) June 19, 2017
Huffington Post: North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal
Source: townhall.com
HQ: Paglia on ‘Snark Atheism’ and How Jon Stewart Has Debased Political Discourse
Posted: July 29, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Mediasphere, Politics, Religion, Think Tank | Tags: Abortion, Authoritarianism, Bernie Sanders, Camille Paglia, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, Jon Stewart, Liberalism, media, New Atheism, news, Planned Parenthood, Reactionary Left, Richard Dawkins, Salon, The Daily Show, United States 2 Comments
“Suppressing information based upon what politics the information might help or hurt — is of course as illiberal and authoritarian an idea as you can have.”
— Ace
[Segments of the Camille Paglia Salon interview via @rdbrewer4, Ace of Spades. Go here for additional commentary at the HQ]
‘All the great world religions contain a complex system of beliefs regarding the nature of the universe and human life that is far more profound than anything that liberalism has produced.’
SALON: You’re an atheist, and yet I don’t ever see you sneer at religion in the way that the very aggressive atheist class right now often will. What do you make of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and the religion critics who seem not to have respect for religions for faith?
PAGLIA: I regard them as adolescents. I say in the introduction to my last book, “Glittering Images”, that “Sneering at religion is juvenile, symptomatic of a stunted imagination.” It exposes a state of perpetual adolescence that has something to do with their parents– they’re still sneering at dad in some way….
“I think Stewart’s show demonstrated the decline and vacuity of contemporary comedy. I cannot stand that smug, snarky, superior tone. I hated the fact that young people were getting their news through that filter of sophomoric snark.“
I’m speaking here as an atheist. I don’t believe there is a God, but I respect every religion deeply. All the great world religions contain a complex system of beliefs regarding the nature of the universe and human life that is far more profound than anything that liberalism has produced.
“Now let me give you a recent example of the persisting insularity of liberal thought in the media…”
We have a whole generation of young people who are clinging to politics and to politicized visions of sexuality for their belief system.
“When the first secret Planned Parenthood video was released in mid-July, anyone who looks only at liberal media was kept totally in the dark about it, even after the second video was released…”
They see nothing but politics, but politics is tiny….But this sneering thing! I despise snark. Snark is a disease that started with David Letterman and jumped to Jon Stewart and has proliferated since.
“It was a huge and disturbing story, but there was total silence in the liberal media. That kind of censorship was shockingly unprofessional.”
I think it’s horrible for young people! And this kind of snark atheism–let’s just invent that term right now–is stupid, and people who act like that are stupid….
“The resistance of liberals in the media to new ideas was enormous. Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true!”
I think Stewart’s show demonstrated the decline and vacuity of contemporary comedy. I cannot stand that smug, snarky, superior tone. I hated the fact that young people were getting their news through that filter of sophomoric snark….
“Liberalism has sadly become a knee-jerk ideology, with people barricaded in their comfortable little cells. They think that their views are the only rational ones, and everyone else is not only evil but financed by the Koch brothers.”
As for his influence, if he helped produce the hackneyed polarization of moral liberals versus evil conservatives, then he’s partly at fault for the political stalemate in the United States….
[Read more at Ace of Spades HQ]
The resistance of liberals in the media to new ideas was enormous. Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true! Liberalism has sadly become a knee-jerk ideology, with people barricaded in their comfortable little cells. They think that their views are the only rational ones, and everyone else is not only evil but financed by the Koch brothers. It’s so simplistic! Read the rest of this entry »
Salon: Having it Both Ways
Posted: June 20, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Bias, Charleston, Christianity, Church Massacre, Demagogue, Hypocrisy, Jihadism, Left Wing Racism, media, news, race, Salon, Salon.com, Tsamaevs, Twitter Leave a comment
At Least There’s That: Buzzenfreude
Posted: July 27, 2014 Filed under: Humor, Mediasphere | Tags: Andrew Kaczynski, Buzzfeed, David Weigel, Plagiarism, Pundit Planet, Rand Paul, Salon, Slate, Twitter, Wikipedia Leave a comment
Not being a regular follower of Buzzfeed (though it’s hard to avoid their media influence, unfortunately) this almost escaped my attention. It was plagiarism week in the news, this but one of the items in circulation.
From Slate‘s David Weigel:
…The added irony, which is upping the schadenfreude quotient, is that BuzzFeed has cornered a market in hitting politicians for plagiarism. In the fall of 2013, BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski made life hell for Sen. Rand Paul, pulling pages from his books and sections from his speeches that were lifted from Wikipedia or other sources. In 2014, Kaczynski expanded the franchise, shaming candidate after candidate for lifting grafs or phrases from other Republicans, usually (funny enough) Paul…
My following (reply to a) tweet was meant to be playfully insulting, but in retrospect, it looks fair, and harmless. Harmless enough that rather than be offended, David Weigel retweeted it:
@emmaroller @daveweigel Slate’s claim to fame: “We’re not as bad as Salon”
— Pundit Planet (@punditfap) July 26, 2014
…Kaczynski’s findings were baffling and pathetic. Who were these people, who cared enough about politics to mortgage their lives and reputations on runs for office, but didn’t care enough to come up with their own thoughts? The cases of plagiarism were much more blatant than what Johnson’s accused of. People have found him lifting sentences that included factoids; the pols were lifting bland political thoughts, word for word. But BuzzFeed was proving that catching plagiarism had become easy, and that lifting a few sentences without a link-back constituted outright fraud.
Salon’s Credibility on Life Support: Marxist Zealot Lee Harvey Oswald Revised and Repackaged as a ‘Right-Winger’
Posted: July 25, 2014 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, Dallas, Edwin Walker, John Birch Society, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Salon 3 Comments
“This entire article is a nonsensical mishmash of broken logical connections, slander, and outright historical ignorance.”
RedState‘s Leon H. Wolf brings this hilarious and utterly predictable propaganda gem:
Via Salon today comes one of the most truly bizarre pieces of revisionist history I have ever seen, even within the context of 
articles appearing at Salon. The basic outline of the piece is as follows:
- Dallas in 1963 was full of crazy right-wingers;
- These people had guns;
- John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963;
- Barack Obama likewise has many right-wingers who oppose him; therefore
- It’s only a matter of time before one of them shoots him.
The baseless appeal to sensationalism and emotionalism is the primary (and usually only) tool in the gun control advocate’s toolbox. To that end, I have to admit that this is well played on Salon’s part; every reasonable person of all political stripes in America is legitimately terrified at the prospect of President Joe Biden. The problem (as always, when dealing with a gun control advocate) is that reason, logic and history demand a completely 
opposite conclusion. Let us grant for just a moment that Dallas in 1963 was full of various fringe right-leaning groups that were well armed. I don’t know; it might or might not be true. I’m not a Dallas historian and it’s not really relevant to the point of this post. The point is that factually, John F. Kennedy was killed by an avowed communist because of that communist’s belief that Kennedy was too tough on commies. These are not facts that are in reasonable dispute. Even if you are one of the grassy knoll people you have to concede Lee Harvey Oswald’s place as at least one of the shooters which means that, without a doubt, Kennedy was killed by left-wing extremists not right-wing extremists. In an especially delicious bit of irony, while trying to somehow pin Kennedy’s death on the anti-communists, they omit mentioning that seven months before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald attempted to assassinate one of the most prominent anti-communists in Dallas, General Edwin Walker. Read the rest of this entry »
In Defense of Boys
Posted: January 16, 2014 Filed under: Education, Health and Social Issues, U.S. News | Tags: James Taranto, New York Times, Occidental College, Patriarchy, Salon, Sex education, Single parent, Sociological Images 1 Comment
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a male
James Taranto writes: The New York Times’s Charles Blow had an interesting column the other day, and we mean that as a backhanded compliment. Blow opens by announcing that his intention is to transcend the “simplistic, black-or-white, conservative vs. progressive discussion around the dissolution of the traditional family and high single-parent birthrates” and instead “focus more on complex areas of causation.”
That’s awfully ambitious, if not impossibly so, for an 800-word column. And Blow ends up spending most of that space decreeing various arguments off-limits.
“We can’t look longingly at the halcyon ideals of yore,” he avers. Good to know. “We must provide thorough and unimpeded sex education.” After all, “abstinence . . . won’t be for everyone.” For the sake of the nonabstainers, “we must provide a full range of reproductive services–prophylactic and contraceptive as well as post-pregnancy.”
In this context, the adjectives “prophylactic” and “contraceptive” are synonyms, but we guess he means to allude, respectively, to male and female methods. “Post-pregnancy,” however, is a new euphemism for abortion, so the bottom line is that female sexual and reproductive choice may not be questioned.
Paul Krugman vs. Paul Krugman
Posted: December 10, 2013 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: Enron, Eurosclerosis, New York Times, Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, Salon, Unemployment benefits, United States 1 Comment
Paul Krugman, Republican
- “Here’s the world as many Republicans see it: Unemployment insurance, which generally pays eligible workers between 40 and 50 percent of their previous pay, reduces the incentive to search for a new job. As a result, the story goes, workers stay unemployed longer.”–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 9
- “Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of ‘Eurosclerosis,’ the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.”–“Macroeconomics” by Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, second edition, 2009
PEA Party: The ‘Punished Enough Already’ Young Middle Class
Posted: November 1, 2013 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, The Butcher's Notebook, U.S. News | Tags: California, Health Insurance, Insurance, Los Angeles Times, Medicare, Middle class, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Salon, Social Security Leave a comment
In 2011 Salon made a weak-tea effort to coin Pea Party, but it vanished. (the lightweight Salon is also fond of the juvenile smear ‘neo-Confederate’ to demonize middle class folks they disagree with, so it’s easy to dismiss ’em as irrelevant) punditfromanotherplanet is adopting the ‘punished-enough-already’ young middle class as the new Pea Party, to introduce Fleischer’s essay. Take it away Matthew.
LA Times guest blogger Matthew Fleischer writes: The Obama administration came out with a report Monday arguing that 1 million single adults between the ages of 18 and 35 will be eligible for an Obamacare insurance plan costing less than $50 a month.
That’s news to me.
I’m a healthy 34-year-old with a taxable income hovering right around the Obamacare subsidy level who, for the last several years, has purchased a relatively inexpensive catastrophic health insurance plan from Blue Shield. I get to see the doctor four times a year for a $30 co-pay, and I won’t have to spend the rest of my life working off the debt if I get hit by a bus.
Billboard War in Times Square: Atheists vs. Christians
Posted: October 13, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Annie Laurie Gaylor, Answers in Genesis, Christmas, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Julia Sweeney, New York City, Salon, Time Square 1 Comment
Sweeney is the author of Letting Go of God, a play about a young women’s loss of faith.
In a statement, the foundation called this a “lighthearted message.”
“A fifth of the U.S. population identifies as nonbelievers,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, one of FFRF’s co-founders. “We don’t thank a nonexistent god, we put faith in each other and human ingenuity. We believe in deeds, not creeds. We believe the only afterlife that ought to concern us is leaving our descendants a secure and pleasant future.”
It’s the organization’s third Times Square billboard. Atheist and evangelical groups have a history of publicly bickering with each other in New York City, especially around Christmas.
[h/t Blaze, NYT] [Image via FFRF, Salon, Blaze] Mediaite
Camille Paglia: “It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton is our party’s best chance”
Posted: August 21, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: BDSM, Camille Paglia, Egypt, Lady Gaga, New York, Paglia, People, Salon Leave a comment
I can vividly remember the first time I read Camille Paglia. I was visiting New York with my mom during college and we happened across “Vamps and Tramps” at a bookstore near our hotel. Lying in neighboring twin beds, I read passages out loud to her. Explosive things like, “Patriarchy, routinely blamed for everything, produced the birth control pill, which did more to free contemporary women than feminism itself.” I didn’t always agree with Paglia, but I enjoyed her as a challenging provocateur.
I still have that copy of the book. There are asterisks in the margins, double-underlined sentences and circled paragraphs. Reading it was a satisfying rebellion against the line-toeing women’s studies classes I was taking at the time — and at a college with an infamously anti-porn professor, no less. Since then, I have moments of genuine outrage and fury over Paglia’s writing and public commentary (see: this, this and this, for examples of why) — but she is still compelling and occasionally brilliant. The truth is that many people still want to hear what she has to say — about everything from BDSM to Lady Gaga.
The paperback release last week of her book “Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art From Egypt to Star Wars” — which Salon interviewed her about last year, and which is an example of Paglia at her intellectual best and an antidote to her birther moments — is a great excuse to check back in with the so-called bete noire of feminism. I spoke with Paglia by email about contemporary feminism, Anthony Weiner and the “end of men.”
pundit from another planet 