“At the request of many, and even though I expect it to be a very boring two hours, I will be covering the Democrat Debate live on twitter!”
That’s how Donald Trump announced that he would be providing his unique insights on the Democratic debate – as it happens. His followers were predictably ecstatic, virtually drooling on their iPhone 3’s as they sped down the access road, nearly spilling their DQ Butterfinger Blizzards. And what did they get? Fifteen moronic tweets in two and a half hours (about one every ten minutes). News Corpse has compiled them here without commentary for posterity. #FeelTheDerp.
We will all have fun and hopefully learn something tonight. I will shoot straight and call it as I see it, both the good and the bad. Enjoy!
Putin is not feeling too nervous or scared. #DemDebate
Get rid of all of these commercials. #DemDebate
The trade deal is a disaster, she was always for it! #DemDebate
Can anyone imagine Chafee as president? No way.
O’Malley, as former Mayor of Baltimore, has very little chance.
Who is winning the debate so far (just last name)? #DemDebate
All are very scripted and rehearsed, two (at least) should not be on the stage.
The hardest thing Clinton has to do is defend her bad decision making including Iraq vote, e-mails etc.
Good move by Bernie S.
Sorry, there is no STAR on the stage tonight!
Sanders said only black lives matter – wow! Hillary did not answer question!
Notice that illegal immigrants will be given ObamaCare and free college tuition but nothing has been mentioned about our VETERANS #DemDebate
Wow, I am giving a speech on OAN. Much more exciting than debate!
Check out OAN and compare to what you are watching now!
Well, he called it as he saw it. And judging by the results, he must have seen it through an OxyContin haze. Apparently he faded out at the end since he quit his Twit-coverage to do an interview on the obscure wingnut-run One America Network. But the saddest part of this whole mess is that his followers on Twitter actually thought this was an awesome display of cerebral brilliance. #LOWBAR
The myth of the “liberal” media has been thoroughly debunked by volumes of evidence, and yet many people continue to believe that news operations owned and operated by giant multinational corporations still harbor a liberal bias for some unexplained, and unexplainable, reason.
The latest proof that Big Media slants their coverage away from true progressive issues comes from last Sunday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes on CBS. The twenty-four minute interview of President Obama was sufficient time to cover a variety of subjects that have a real impact on the lives of real Americans. However, one subject was left on the cutting room floor: The crisis of gun violence (video below).
The fact that CBS found time in an interview of Obama for an extended discussion of Hillary Clinton’s email server, but was unable include a brief segment of the gun dialog, says something about the editorial decision making at the network. If you wanted to know what Obama thought about how guns affect our society, and what can be done about it, you would have had to search for it online. What you would have found was a three minute segment that could easily have been slipped into the CBS broadcast. And it’s fair to say that this issue holds more value for the American people than adding to the tabloid sensationalism that Fox News has been feverishly stirring up about emails that have uncovered no wrongdoing whatsoever.
This sort of bias is not new to CBS or 60 Minutes. In 2013 they ran a story about Benghazi that was so full of holes that they had to retract it and apologize for airing such an embarrassing and obvious hoax. At that time News Corpse published an explanation for how CBS could have been taken in by such a conspicuous fraud. That explanation revolves around the personalities in the network’s executive suites who are still running the newsroom. This is what I wrote in November of 2013:
The President of CBS News is David Rhodes, who assumed the post in February of 2011. His bio on the CBS website tells us something of his professional past:
“Rhodes began his career as a Production Assistant at the newly-launched Fox News Channel in 1996, where he later became Vice President of News. At the network he managed coverage of three presidential elections, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, hurricanes including Katrina, and was the channel’s Assignment Manager on the news desk the morning of September 11, 2001.”
What this tells us is that Rhodes was a top executive at Fox News during the hotly contested 2000 presidential election where Fox mistakenly called the state of Florida (and thus the nation) for George W. Bush. He was there when Fox News was cheerleading for the U.S. to invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and did not pose any threat to America. He was there when Fox was defending Bush’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. He was there during the economic meltdown of 2008 to make sure that it was blamed on poor people buying homes and the Democrats in Congress. He was there when Fox was hyping electoral attacks against candidate Obama that included maligning ACORN, advancing associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, and of course, the everlasting nonsense of birtherism.
In short, Rhodes was one of the principal architects of the Fox News slant toward far-right extremism and brazen conservative partisanship. CBS News must have known what they were getting when they hired him.
So is it any wonder that CBS would focus so sharply on dramatic, but insubstantial controversies? They clearly have an editorial mission to push a conservative agenda and suppress any progressive initiatives for reform. The same sort of problems exist at other networks and news outlets. The current executive vice president of CNN, Ken Jautz, is the man who gave Glenn Beck his first job on television. Even MSNBC is heading toward the right as they remove progressive hosts and plan to expand Morning Joe another hour. Which is why I say “Liberal media my ass.”
If you are looking for further evidence that Donald Trump is a repugnant misogynist who has a deeply rooted disrespect for women, his response to yesterday’s exchange with a woman at the bipartisan No Labels conference should suffice nicely.
After a poorly received presentation, due to Trump’s masturbatory approach to politics, The Donald took a few questions from the audience. Of particular note was Lauren Batchelder, a young woman who prefaced her question by stating that “I don’t think you’re a friend to women.” Trump immediately interrupted her to swear that he “cherishes” women and would “take care of them” because his mother was “maybe the greatest [woman] ever.” That may not be what most women are looking for in the struggle for equality. Being cherished is not the same as being respected; being taken care of is condescending; and his absurd exaltation of his mother is an Oedipal irrelevancy that has anything to with women’s rights.
Batchelder continued to inquire as to whether in a Trump administration “will a woman make the same as a man, and do I get to choose what I do with my body?” Trump answered that women will “make the same if you do as good of a job,” which is inherently sexist because it implies that women’s skills are unproven so they have to be judged by the standard, which is men. Then Trump tacked on that he is pro-life, effectively telling Batchelder, “No, you don’t get to choose what you do with your body.” But it gets worse. Today Trump recalled the exchange in a tweet saying…
“The arrogant young woman who questioned me in such a nasty fashion at No Labels yesterday was a Jeb staffer!”
So now if you have the audacity to confront Trump with a valid question that addresses significant women’s issues, he feels it is appropriate to dismiss you as “arrogant” and “nasty.” It’s reminiscent of the insults that Trump leveled at Fox’s Megyn Kelly after she asked him to explain his derogatory remarks about women.
Trump also brazenly lied in saying that Batchelder is a staffer for Jeb Bush. The readily available truth is that she is an unpaid volunteer who attended the No Labels conference on her own. The Bush campaign confirmed that they had no role or knowledge of her attendance or her question. In fact, the substance of her question doesn’t suggest any alignment with Bush because he has the same positions on those issues as Trump. Why would the Bush campaign plant a question that he would have trouble answering himself?
More to the point, Trump’s demeaning and offensive response affirms his hostility toward women. This is especially evident when you compare it to the response he gave to a male questioner a few weeks ago who said that “We’ve got a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims,” and that President Obama is “not even an American.” To that guy Trump said “We’re gonna be looking at that.” Trump apparently didn’t think that racist question was either arrogant or nasty. Although, some of his wingnut supporters also thought that questioner was a plant, but they were hilariously wrong.
Luckily for Trump, his followers are as repulsively misogynistic as he is, so he shouldn’t suffer any negative repercussions due this noxious behavior. He’ll go forward with the same quarter of the Republican base that he has corralled from the start of his fantasy campaign. And when the GOP field narrows, that minority bloc will leave him at the back of the pack. But his ideas, which are consistent with the Republican mainstream, will follow whoever the eventual GOP nominee is like the stink of skunk.
Just in time for Halloween, President Obama has revealed the costume that Fox News made to heighten the fears of their perpetually skittish viewers. It’s something they have been dressing up the President in for the past seven years, but it doesn’t get much attention from the President himself.
In an interview with author Marilynne Robinson, the discussion turned to the values that are found in the diversity of American life. This led the President to recall his experiences in small-town America when he first began campaigning for the White House.
“It’s interesting, because we’re talking in Iowa; people always, I think, were surprised about me connecting with folks in small-town Iowa. And the reason I did was, first of all, I had the benefit that at the time nobody expected me to win. And so I wasn’t viewed through this prism of Fox News and conservative media, and making me scary.“
Indeed, Fox News has since toiled feverishly to turn Obama into a fearsome entity bent on the destruction of mankind. They have literally accused him of conspiring with our mortal enemies; of plotting to murder millions of Americans; of surrendering our liberty and land to foreign tyrants; and even taunting God so as to bring about the End Times. It’s a nightmarish vision that was constructed from nothing but their seething hatred for a dark-skinned stranger who they believed had no right to rise to leadership and reside in the White House.
For his part, Obama has been aware of the animosity that consumed his ideological foes. There was, however, little he could do about it. The more he would try, the more they interpreted it as an insidious ploy to enslave them with charm. Witness this hideously secret assault as described by Obama to Robinson:
“And the thing I’ve been struggling with throughout my political career is how do you close the gap. There’s all this goodness and decency and common sense on the ground, and somehow it gets translated into rigid, dogmatic, often mean-spirited politics. And some of it has to do with all the filters that stand between ordinary people who are busy and running around trying to look after their kids and do a good job and do all the things that maintain a community, so they don’t have the chance to follow the details of complicated policy debates.”
What a monster! How dare he try to find common ground in a democratic society while partisans in the press and politics are stirring up irrational dissent. And why does he want to close The Gap? Is he biased in favor of Urban Outfitters? Or is he just fundamentally opposed to the free market?
Later in the interview, Obama pinpoints one of the potential causes of the adversarial nature of our country. He describes it as the natural tendency of Americans to mistrust governments, which he says is “in our DNA.”
“We’re suspicious of government as a tool of oppression. And that skepticism is healthy, but it can also be paralyzing when we’re trying to do big things together.”
That’s true. And it certainly doesn’t help when you have giant media networks deliberately fomenting fear and ignorance and using the naivete of their audience to build opposition based on lies. In fact, all it does is pave the way for cartoonish demagogues like Donald Trump, and leave Grand Old Parties struggling to find anyone who actually wants to lead their parade of clowns.
To begin with, it’s not particularly a revelation that Fox News is a constant and unabashed purveyor of lies and disinformation. However, ordinarily they do at least try to obscure their dishonesty in a stew of distorted details, unsupported assertions, and/or mangled misrepresentations of “facts.” But in today’s headline posting on their Fox Nation website they went further than usual to invent a disparaging allegation against Hillary Clinton.
The Fox Nationalists reposted an article from their sister tabloid, Rupert Murdoch’s vile New York Post, with the headline “Clinton’s Camp Says She ‘Could Have A Serious Meltdown.'” That’s a pretty frightening scenario that would have the political world spinning – if it were true.
Note that the headline is a declarative statement of fact as to what “Clinton’s camp says.” In fact, neither Fox News, nor the NYP, has any evidence of anyone connected to Clinton saying anything remotely similar to that scandalous quotation. What they have is the ravings of a bona fide uber-rightist lunatic with a record of equally deranged utterances. At best the headline could have referred to an allegation by a dubious source.
The dubious source, in this case, is Edward Klein. He is a Fox News regular, and WorldNetDaily columnist, whose reputation for wildly false attacks on Hillary Clinton (and other democrats and liberals) is legendary. Klein is an unrepentant birther who believes that President Obama may have been created to be a Manchurian candidate from Kenya. Klein also believes that Chelsea Clinton was conceived after Bill raped Hillary, who Klein says is a lesbian. This is a “journalist” who Fox News takes seriously?
Among Klein’s prior prognostications for Fox was a piece about how Clinton was teetering on the edge of abandoning her quest for the presidency. The headline blared: “Hillary down in the dumps: Is Clinton about to drop out of 2016 race?” The article provided a surreal transcript of a private conversation between Bill and Hillary that Klein could not possibly have witnessed. That was in June of 2014, so we have the answer to the ridiculous question about whether her withdrawal was imminent. And it must be due to that level of inaccuracy that Fox and the NYP chose to revisit Klein’s reporting for this new article wherein Klein uses anonymous sources to allege that…
“Hillary’s been having screaming, child-like tantrums that have left staff members in tears and unable to work,” says a campaign aide. “She thought the nomination was hers for the asking, but her mounting problems have been getting to her and she’s become shrill and, at times, even violent.”
That’s a great story line if you’re on the writing staff of Days of Our Lives, but anyone who thinks that a Clinton campaign aide is going to divulge spicy rumors to someone like Klein is suffering from acute idiocy. Klein’s M.O. has always been to simply manufacture scurrilous gossip that fits his predetermined soap opera script.
For this sort of fantasy fiction to appear on WorldNetDaily, or the New York Post, is bad enough. But Fox wants to pretend that they are a real news enterprise, and despite all of the evidence to the contrary, they continue to try to convince us that they have true aspirations for journalistic achievement. However, it is reporting like this that always rats them out as the disreputable purveyors of schlock news that they are – and always will be.
Culture Warrior Bill O’Reilly is on the warpath again. As usual, the battle lines are drawn around an ego so big it can be seen from space. He devoted a segment of his Friday night program to the “Villains” at Media Matters who he described as “an outrageous propaganda website, a hate site.” An inattentive observer could be forgiven if he thought that O’Reilly was talking about Fox News, which better fits that description.
O’Reilly and his guest, Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney, lit into Media Matters with a vicious, foaming-at-the-mouth glee. They never actually said what they were so riled up about. Generally such a display of animus is prompted by a critical article or a disparaging public statement. But the furious Foxies didn’t offer a single example of a recent atrocity by Media Matters or any other reason for their drooling disgust. They simply hauled off on a manic rant and demanded that the watchdog group’s tax-exempt status be revoked.
O’Reilly: This is not a group that deserves this tax free status. What can someone do to make the IRS revoke it? Varney: Okay, an individual could file one of these forms with the IRS. It’s form 13909. It’s the tax-exempt organization complaint referral form. Simple form. Fill it out, complain, say what your beef is with Media Matters, and you can complain. That’s how you do it.
See how easy it is? Just say what your beef is. Even though O’Reilly and Stuart weren’t able to, you’ll come up with something. Not that it matters. This is a tactic that Fox News tried four years ago. They made a full court press to enlist their viewers to complain to the IRS about Media Matters. It was promoted for weeks on multiple programs by the network’s biggest names, including Bret Baier, Charles Krauthammer, James Rosen, Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, Bernie Goldberg, Keith Ablow, Jon Scott, and of course, O’Reilly. They posted the IRS complaint forms on Fox Nation with instructions that encouraged filers to lie. They even had one of their own contributors, former Bush lawyer C. Boyden Gray, file his own complaint.
After months of this charade the result they achieved was a big fat nothing. It’s not unlike the current investigations in Congress, hyped feverishly by Fox News, over Benghazi, Planned Parenthood, and Hillary Clinton’s email. Every inquiry into these subjects has produced complete vindication for the political targets of Fox and the right, but that hasn’t stopped the persecutors from persisting. So it’s no surprise that O’Reilly would dust off this hoary contrivance to hammer away again at his old enemy.
So why is O’Reilly dredging up this old story, and why now? The answer sneaked in at the closing of the segment as he teased the next segment saying “The Factor Tip of the Day: Attacking Killing Reagan. Wow. Wait til you hear this.” If you were bored enough to wait you would have heard O’Reilly whine about some criticism of his new book “Killing Reagan.”
O’Reilly: “A published report says a group of Reagan loyalists are organizing to attack the book. We know these people. They threatened me and Martin Dugard [the co-author] even before we put the book out.”
Indeed, there was a published report. It appeared in the Washington Examiner and was later reported by Media Matters, which O’Reilly failed to mention for some reason. The report identified several people close to Reagan who dismissed O’Reilly’s book as “garbage” and “total BS.” So obviously Media Matters should have its tax-exempt status revoked.
Did the story in Media Matters spur O’Reilly to suddenly relaunch this campaign against them? Who knows? Media Matters has been a thorn in his side for a long time. Earlier this year they published the ebook “Killing Truth” that detailed many of the lies O’Reilly told about his alleged combat duty. And they are a constant source of irritation to Fox News due to their annoying habit of exposing Fox’s journalistic failures. But the fact that O’Reilly went after them just a few hours after the negative report on his new book was posted suggests that it had something to do with his decision.
For a taste of the insane obsession that Fox News has with trying to politicize the tax-exempt status of Media Matters, watch this 2011 video. And you may also enjoy this one showing the depth of the hatred Fox has for Media Matters.
It’s bad enough seeing Christianist extremists congregating outside of funerals for soldiers with signs declaring that God hates them, but now the disciples of the NRA have taken to using the same tactics employed by Westboro Baptists crackpots to advance their agenda in Roseburg, OR, the site of last week’s tragic massacre at the Umpqua Community College. And these miscreants were eagerly abetted by Fox News.
The occasion for the protest in Roseburg was a visit by President Obama to console the families of the victims. Despite the President’s remarks a few days ago about advocating increased political pressure to get Congress to do something – anything – to address the continuing problem of gun violence, there was nothing political about this visit. The press was not even permitted to attend the family sessions with the President. He made a brief statement afterward that avoided any hint of politics.
Nevertheless, Obama was met as he arrived by a motley band of malcontents with bitter messages aimed at driving the President out of their neighborhood. Signs carried an array of derogatory remarks including “Obama Not Welcome,”“Go Away,”“Go Back To Kenya,” as well as a flurry of confederate flags and the Tea Party’s Gadsden flag. The Westboro freaks would be proud. And yet this is the behavior of people who complain about politicization of the issue. What’s more, had Obama declined to go to Roseburg the same people would have criticized him for not caring.
On Fox News they covered the protesters extensively. As apparent in the graphic above, the protests were overtly political, identifying them as “Gun Rights Advocates” rather than mourners. Fox aired multiple on air interviews with the anti-Obama Roseburg residents. For some reason they were unable to find any residents to interview who were grateful that the President would join them in this time of grief. Other news networks didn’t have that problem. And the disingenuous cries of politicization were abandoned when it was Fox News personal engaging in it.
For instance, on The Five, co-host Eric Bolling waxed political by quoting what he said was a portion of Obama’s statement wherein the President said that “we have to work on these rights,” a reference to the 2nd Amendment. However, Obama never said anything remotely similar to that. Fox viewers, of course, will now be forever certain that he did. Then Greg Gutfeld not only hit the President on guns, but tied it to abortion in a perverse analogy that defies reason. He said that…
“The gun argument and the abortion argument are complete mirrors of themselves. The left thinks that the right is using the Planned Parenthood videos to ultimately ban abortion. The right thinks that the left is using mass shooting in an effort to get rid of the 2nd Amendment. So they’re both the same.”
No, they are not even a little bit the same. If the left thinks that the right is using the Planned Parenthood videos to ultimately ban abortion it’s because the right explicitly tells them that that is what they want to do. The right is not the least bit shy about declaring their intention to ban all abortions. On the other hand, the right has no reason to believe that the left is using mass shootings to get rid of the 2nd Amendment because there has never been any effort by the left to do that. In fact, the left is very clear that they merely want to make it more difficult for particularly dangerous weapons to get into the hands of people that ought not to have them.
For the past seven years of the Obama administration, alarmist nuts at the NRA have been screaming about the imminent threat of Obama’s plot to disarm America. Yet there has never been a single bill passed, or even drafted, that would do any such thing. The whole campaign is designed to stir up irrational fears of imaginary tyranny. And that is precisely what is happening today with Fox’s coverage of the Obama protesters in Roseburg. Because to the NRA-theists, losing 28,000 lives a year to gun violence is just the price we have to pay for having access to any kind of weapon, any time, by anyone.
You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the InfoWars Interview.
On Tuesday’s episode of InfoWars (video below), host and the conspiracy theory’s chief theoretical conspirator, Alex Jones, almost invited yellow pseudo-journalist Matt Drudge to join him in a discussion of the current state of the world of the deranged. I say almost because the interview began with Jones announcing that his teen crush Drudge was in the studio, but that he would not appear on camera (for fear of losing his soul?).
Jones: I did not do this as a stunt. Neither did Matt Drudge. He is here. We got a hot mic over there. He wants to stay literally in the shadows behind the curtain.
So in this version of the Wiz, the great and powerful Drudge commands that you do pay attention to the man behind the curtain. In a bizarre bit of Burlesque theater, Jones conducted the whole interview with Drudge allegedly a few feet away, out of camera range. There was never an explanation for why Drudge refused to be seen. He isn’t exactly camera shy as he once hosted his own TV show (on Fox News of course). What could be more perfect for the conspiratorial set than for a reclusive disseminator of rightist propaganda to lurk off-camera and send his disembodied voice across the webosphere in a dialog with a sociopathic skeptic? What self-respecting minion of Alex Jones would believe that Drudge was really there at all? Wake up, sheeple!
As a testimonial to the fabulousness of this chin-flapping, Sarah Palin tweeted that this is “One of the best interviews I’ve heard in a long time!” And why not? The pair spent much of their forty-six minute “bull” session congratulating each other on their bravery for standing up to some unseen oppressor who has shackled them to a dreary existence as mere multimillionaires with legions of glassy-eyed disciples. The horror! Although there were a couple of subjects that were examined in a fair amount of detail that deserve attention.
First of all, Drudge dredged up the obsession that kicked off his career twenty years ago: Hillary Clinton. Apparently he is still enthralled with her terrifying omnipotence and simultaneous impotence. Here is an abridged summary of his rambling and incoherent remarks about his Wicked Witch of the White House:
Drudge: How sick are the American people right now? They could put Hillary Clinton’s brain in a jar in the Oval Office and she’d be elected. People are really sick. […] Before this country is so completely altered and we’re left with Hillary’s brain in the Oval Office in a jar – ‘cuz that’s what we’re getting. She is old and she’s sick. She is not a contender. They’re making her a contender with these propped up Saturday Night Live things. It’s like a head on a stick. […] I’m very pessimistic on this race because I’m just not so sure it’s not gonna end up with the dreaded brain in the jar in the Oval Office, once known as Hillary Clinton – who is hypo-thyroid. Anybody who is seventy years old who’s hypo-thyroid you do not elect president, ladies and gentlemen. You don’t do it. […] Why aren’t we seeing Hillary’s lovers? Excuse me? Why aren’t we seeing Hillary’s lovers? Where’s the cover-up on this?
The only question arising from that schizoid rant is whether Drudge is on too many psychotropic drugs or too few. Either way he needs some serious medical attention. He is particularly disturbed by the thought of a jar of brains, which may be attributable to simple jealousy that Clinton has something that he and his wingnut cohorts can only dream about.
The other subject that received considerable scrutiny was a paranoid diversion into acute crackpottery. Abandoning any pretense of reality, Drudge unveiled a historical account of the legend of ISIS that would make J.K. Rowling blush with embarrassment.
Drudge: We never really heard of ISIS until recently and I remember when that name first started coming up. Do you know that it was designed to be confused with Darrell Issa? Did you know that’s what it was. Because Darrell Issa was the enemy at the time of this administration. […] They came up with the name ISIS to be confused with Darrell Issa. I’m really being hinest with you. I remember the first time Christiane Amanpour sputtered out this word ISIS thinking did she get that one? […] And then the President going it’s not even ISIS, it’s ISIL or IS. This Dr. Seuss. This is madness.
Obviously. How could we have missed it before? Barack “Svengali” Obama invented the acronym ISIS (Islamic State of Syria and Iraq) and somehow got the terrorists to use it to refer to themselves. But in a bit of brilliant strategic jujitsu, Obama himself sidestepped it in favor of ISIL, which doesn’t sound as much like Issa, but still has an “I” and an “S” in it, preserving the theory’s tenuous plausibility.
It is inspired analysis like this that has made Matt Drudge an icon in conservative media. And his reputation among rightists and Teabaggers will only be enhanced by this eccentric display of lunacy. It perfectly reflects Drudge’s own plaintive question: “Where are the flamboyant characters? This is what America needs right now – flamboyant, intellectual characters.” By entering the lair of professional whack-job Alex Jones, and establishing the natural affinity between the two fringe constituencies, Drudge and Jones have not only answered that question, but they have advanced the level of idiocy that will be forthcoming from the right, as well as the level of laughter from the left.
Some things in public discourse ought to be pretty simple and devoid of controversy. For instance, words have definitions that are verifiable and universally agreed upon. Without that it would be impossible to have a conversation. And yet, there are Republican candidates for president who appear to prefer to invent their own definitions in order to advance an otherwise absurd argument.
For example, the phrase “politically correct” has a specific meaning that everyone who speaks English understands. It isn’t some vague concept unto which you can project whatever meaning suits you at the time. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as…
“The avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.”
See? That wasn’t hard. It would, therefore, be politically incorrect to refer to a woman as a “ho” or to an adult African-America man as “boy.” It would also be politically incorrect for a pizza joint to call their barbecued chicken special “The Sambo” or for a bar to make Tuesday’s Dwarf Tossing Night. It usually includes language that has been considered acceptable in some deviant circles. But if the language or activity is insulting or hurtful to people who are already struggling for respect in a social environment that rewards or at least tolerates prejudice, it is politically incorrect. And the part that refers to people who are victims of discrimination is absolutely essential to the definition. It’s the part that makes it political. Otherwise it would be merely incorrect.
However, conservatives are desperately trying to redefine the phrase so that they can use it to escape responsibility for outright repulsiveness. They want an all-purpose excuse for absolution, usually after they have already embarrassed themselves with some crass comments or behavior. Their definition of political correctness would be more like “Any comments or actions that people find offensive.” But that isn’t political correctness, it’s just being an asshole.
Ben Carson has made whining about political correctness a core feature of his campaign. He asserts that he is the victim of it when he takes criticism for saying that Muslims can’t be president, or that ObamaCare is the worst thing since slavery, or implying that the victims of the Oregon shooting cooperated with their killer. But those are not instances of political correctness. They are instances of boorishness and ignorance. And his inability to understand the Constitution or healthcare or crime does not grant him license to say stupid things without taking criticism for it.
Donald Trump is another candidate who needs to twist the meaning of political correctness. It is not politically incorrect to call Mexicans rapists, or to denigrate women as fat pigs, or refer to your rivals or the media as stupid losers. That would be better defined as rude, immature, and hostile. Which pretty well defines Trump.
The concept of political correctness has taken a beating in recent years as Republicans who want to retain it as a shield against criticism that they deserve try to distort it’s meaning. But it is a useful measure of progress in a society that has been far too tolerant of bigotry. There ought to be a price to pay for using language as a cudgel to continue suppressing people. So it is important that we do not allow the bigots and the bastards to redefine it as anything for which they take some heat.
Trying to figure out Donald Trump’s relationship with China is no simple task. He castigates them for taking U.S. jobs, for unfair trade, for manipulating currencies, and generally beating stupid American leaders at every turn. On the other hand, he has his fashion products manufactured there, leases them luxury real estate, and confesses his deep love for them and/or their money.
However, for the purposes of his delusional presidential campaign, China is a bitter enemy that is seeking to destroy America and freedom worldwide. Which makes them a perfect foil with which to bash President Obama. A couple of years ago Trump tweeted that “The Chinese are now hacking White House computers. Why not? They already own the place.”
Ha. What a wit (or at best half). What Trump was referring to was an attempt at “spear phishing,” wherein an email that appears to be legitimate tricks the recipient into clicking on a link that executes malicious software. As usual, Trump got it wrong because there was no successful intrusion into the White House network. The matter was addressed at the time by then-Press Secretary Jay Carney, who said in response to a reporter’s question…
“The attack you’ve mentioned was what’s known as a spear-phishing attack against an unclassified network. Let’s be clear — this is an unclassified network. These types of attacks are not infrequent, and we have mitigation measures in place. In this instance, the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any exfiltration of data took place. Moreover, there was never any impact or attempted breach of any classified system.”
But what makes this interesting now is the report of a massive hack into Trump’s hotel operations nationwide. This was a successful intrusion wherein the hackers accessed the payment systems, potentially stealing customer credit card numbers, expiration dates and security codes. It has been going on for at least a year, only being discovered recently.
So the question for Trump is: If China “owned” the White House following an unsuccessful hacking attempt, then who owns Trump now? Could it be China, who would certainly have a motive stemming from his hostile rhetoric, and opportunity resulting from their business relationships? It could just as well be Russia or fugitive Mexican drug lord, El Chapo. But even if it’s just some larcenous cyber-thieves, Trump has some explaining to do.
