Beyond Pale … Just Very, Very Stupid

5 Comments

1. 

   Marie3 on March 30, 2017 at 10:39 am

   Can only speak for myself, but what I pointed out about the ISIS beheading videos — high quality production values and a staged appearance — needs no retraction.  It was “off” enough that it should have given viewers pause.  I NEVER concluded that the beheadings were fake or asserted that the CIA (or any USG agency) played a role in producing the videos.  Only that someone(s) with a western propaganda eye or sensibility was involved.

   When was the last time a new video like that was released?  And what happened to all those identically clad, marching in formation, jihadi warriors?  Melted away — disappeared — which isn’t the least bit curious to minds focused on distorting beyond recognition whatever I said.  Minds that loathe those not in conformity with fealty to one of the two US political parties, capitalism, and militarism.  Minds that can’t differentiate between birther/Benghazi/truther crazies and those that pose rational and legitimate questions.  Minds that bought into the imaginary WMD and Kuwaiti babies being tossed out of incubators.  And if old enough, the Domino Theory.            

2. 

   Marie3 on March 30, 2017 at 11:02 am

   The Intercept — Why Has Trust in Media Collapsed?  Look at Actions of WSJ, Yahoo, Business Insider, and Slate.

   LAST WEEK we published documents that definitively debunked and disproved a claim which numerous media outlets had circulated and affirmed for years: that Edward Snowden lied about where he was during his first 11 days in Hong Kong. Contrary to the fable these outlets dispensed to their readers – that Snowden did not check into the Mira Hotel on May 21 as he claimed but only did so on June 1: 11 days later – these new documents, obtained from the Mira, prove that Snowden arrived there exactly when he always said, rendering their published stories factually false. Many of these stories had even claimed that anonymous U.S. investigators were unable to find hotel or credit card records for Snowden during these 11 days – exactly the records we just published.
   …
   Even the best and most careful journalists get things wrong sometimes. But the minimal requirement for journalistic credibility and integrity is acknowledging and fixing mistakes. When the debate over Fake News first emerged, advocates of the term insisted that it was this attribute – a willingness to admit and correct errors – that distinguishes credible news outlets that sometimes err from fakes and frauds.
   …

   FAIR – Adam Johnson – Conspiracy Theorists Welcome in Corporate Media-if They Have the Right Targets

   Former British Conservative MP Louise Mensch has become something of a celebrity of late in anti-Trump media. …
   …
   With her rise to prominence as a commentator on the Trump/Russia story, and seemingly dozens of editors and producers giving her their tacit approval, one is compelled to ask: What exactly would Louise Mensch have to say to be discredited?

   Here is an incomplete list of outlandish claims made by Mensch over the past six months, mostly on Twitter, that have thus far not removed her from polite society:
   …

   Democrats new gal is like a mash up of Maggie Thatcher and Joe McCarthy.  Those that recoiled from the originals should be recoiling twice as fast from this loony-tune.  Instead they’re displaying the same feeble mind-set as birthers.

   • 

     Marie3 on March 30, 2017 at 2:00 pm

     Matt Taibbi

     I’m confused, were the Russians behind both the Trump and the Sanders candidacies? I need to get caught up on all this!

     Louise Mensch

     They were involved in both, yes

     Joy Reid and a Congressional Democrat (the list of wackos is not too long to predict which one will pop up on this) will soon confirm the Mensch knows secret stuff (that they can’t reveal) and therefore, listen to her.

3. 

   JoelDanWalls on March 30, 2017 at 4:10 pm

   Player Queen:
    Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
    If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife!

   Player King:
    ‘Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here a while,
    My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
    The tedious day with sleep.

   Player Queen:
    Sleep rock thy brain,
    And never come mischance between us twain!

   Hamlet:
    Madam, how like you this play?

   Queen:
    The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

   Hamlet Act 3, scene 2, 222-230

   One of the more interesting quotes by Shakespeare: it’s almost always misquoted as “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Queen Gertrude’s line is both drier than the misquotation (thanks to the delayed “methinks”) and much more ironic. Prince Hamlet’s question is intended to smoke out his mother, to whom, as he intended, this Player Queen bears some striking resemblances [see THE PLAY’S THE THING]. The queen in the play, like Gertrude, seems too deeply attached to her first husband to ever even consider remarrying; Gertrude, however, after the death of Hamlet’s father, has remarried. We don’t know whether Gertrude ever made the same sorts of promises to Hamlet’s father that the Player Queen makes to the Player King (who will soon be murdered)–but the irony of her response should be clear.

   By “protest,” Gertrude doesn’t mean “object” or “deny”–these meanings postdate Hamlet. The principal meaning of “protest” in Shakespeare’s day was “vow” or “declare solemnly,” a meaning preserved in our use of “protestation.” When we smugly declare that “the lady doth protest too much,” we almost always mean that the lady objects so much as to lose credibility. Gertrude says that Player Queen affirms so much as to lose credibility. Her vows are too elaborate, too artful, too insistent. More cynically, the queen may also imply that such vows are silly in the first place, and thus may indirectly defend her own remarriage.

   LINK

4. 

   Beahmont on April 1, 2017 at 11:48 am

   Didn’t you write a couple of diaries decrying hit-piece diaries? Oh the irony…