In a series of tweets yesterday, someone calling herself Emerald Robinson announced she had evidence that at least one “conservative” magazine was taking payola from a tech giant. The implication was that the magazine was taking money in exchange for countering the stories about the tech oligarchs censoring dissidents.The woman works for an outfit called One America News, which is a small operation that has made a name for itself during the Trump phenomenon. Here are the tweets in case they vanish.
The most likely candidate, before examining the hints in the tweet, is National Review, which lost its moral compass when Rich Lowry took over the operation. It’s also the one conservative publication with any influence, at least before it hurled itself onto the NeverTrump bonfire three years ago. If you are going to bribe a conservative publication, you may as well bribe the biggest one. It’s not like any of these operations are making so much money that they would say not to a bribe. It’s their reason to exist.
Of course, the clue about the subscriber base evaporating adds to the speculation that the culprit is National Review. When you look at the tax filings for the 501(c)(3) they use to launder contributions, it appears their donations shriveled up during the campaign. Their ugly smear campaign against Trump and his voters turns out to have been a costly blunder. That is if the tax filings tell the whole story. It is possible that the tech giant or some other wealthy patron is paying writers directly or using another vehicle.
I speculated during the campaign that Dan and Farris Wilks were buying support for Ted Cruz and funding the NeverTrump lunacy among so-called conservatives. The two are members in good standing of the donor class and the guys bankrolling people like Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager and Glenn Beck. My suspicion was they were spreading cash around on the side to the various pens for hire at operations like National Review and the Federalist. It would explain some rather obvious patterns we saw in the campaign.
Now, in fairness to National Review, we don’t know if the person tweeting this stuff is legitimate or correct. Her name suggests she should be swinging from a pole, rather than covering the White House, but these days, the differences between the two professions are microscopic. In fact, it would be a relief to learn that the mass media is simply singing for their supper, delivering what a handful of billionaires demand. Otherwise, it suggests a systemic failure that can only be addressed by madame guillotine.
Still, even if the rumor is just that, it raises an important point. The media in America has never been objective or bound by a code of conduct. Into the twentieth century, everyone understood that the newspapers were owned by rich guys with an agenda. There were newspapers for the parties and for the factions within each party. What happened in the Cold War is the bias was concealed in an effort to fool the public into supporting the struggle against the Soviets. Suddenly, reporters became journalists and priests.
When you dig through the tax forms of the various not-for profit operations used by Conservative Inc., you find that their stars are living lifestyles that would make the people who read them faint. Jonah Goldberg is a great example. He’s gets 200 large from the National Review Institute. He gets a similar figure from American Enterprise. Then he has a cable deal from Fox. He writes books that no one reads, but the not-for-profit system buys these books in bulk. Add it all up and he lives like royalty for doing very little.
Of course, this explains why the so-called conservative opposition is unwilling to oppose or conserve anything. They are afraid to bite the hand that feeds them. To wander off the reservation and possibly anger their pay masters, means leaving a life of extreme luxury for, at best, a middle-class life. It’s not as if a Jonah Goldberg could replicate his earnings in the dreaded private sector. The life of a kept man is one of trepidation. They live in fear that the fads will change, they will be deemed heretical and ejected from the hive.
At the human level it is somewhat understandable, but when you look at the whole, it means the whole system is a massive scam design to fool the public. Just as campaign finance laws are designed to obscure who is bribing your politicians, the labyrinth of 501(3)(c) operations that finance the commentariat are designed to conceal who is controlling public opinion. Even if we never get the full story about which publication was taking the bribes, the truth of it is slowly bleeding into public consciousness.
In the meantime, the kept men glance furtively at social media, wondering if it will be their publication that gets outed or if maybe their name will turn up in the story. Maybe some are reaching out to their friends at other media operations, just in case they need to find a new landing spot. It’s the whore’s life they chose, so no one should feel pity for them. In fact, these people deserve nothing but scorn. They choose to play an active role in the decay of our society, by undermining social trust. They deserve what’s coming to them.
I seem to have lost the link, but in an interview (maybe with Molyneux) Lauren Southern mentioned that National Review would take articles that were neutral or positive toward Hillary, or neutral or negative toward Trump. But Hillary-hating and Trump-loving were off-limits. Hmmm.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, PayPal, and all the other left-wing tech companies need to be broken up and regulated until they are worth nothing. Deplatforming free speech is unAmerican in the extreme.
no, Z-Man: the Nat Rev didn’t crumple when little shabbatz goy [[[Rich Lowry]]] came in. That happened back when Big Bill Buckley sold out to the Jewish neo-conz – (((Podhoretz Sr.))) and Co. – in return for his TV show on PBS. Since then it’s been nothing but a Zionist rag pushing the Greater Israel project, while selling out to the Reds on every other issue. Since the 1st generation (((neo-conz))) were all “ex”-Trotskyite communists migrating from Partisan Review to Commentary, and from there to Nat Rev, and the 2nd gen (Podhoretz Sr., Goldberg, and all the rest) share their poisonous values, this should be no surprise.
but you’re right about Conservatism Inc. as a whole. They’re all owned…by the Jewbuck.
The collapse of Buckley conservatism has led to five varieties of cuckservative: (1) the Quisling conservative, (2) the Pétain conservative, (3) the Talleyrand conservative; (4) the Elmer Gantry conservative; (5) the head-up-his-ass conservative.
Examples: (1) David Brock, Andrew Sullivan; (2) David Brooks, David Frum; (3) Bill Kristol, George Will; (4) Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson; (5) Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck.
That was good man. Of those guys, I’d like to add a 6th category, Creepy Conservative. Glenn Beck and Jordan Peterson. Those dudes are deeply strange. Like, layers and layers of duplicitous weirdness that they can hardly fathom themselves. (David Brock is another story altogether so we’ll leave him out).
While we appreciate your honest attempt to create something like a valid intellectual taxonomy of these vermin, the fact is it’s a wasted effort because they’re all dead to us. They don’t exist, they are the walking dead. “Conservatism” itself no longer exists, because Conservatism was always part of an intramural argument among different factions of White Christian people employing different abstract conceptual models about how best to order White Christian society for the maximal benefit of all the White Christian people.
Guess what, though: Hannibal ad portas.
Once the pirate ships show up, you put down your Burke and your National Review. You hang Bill Kristol and his pals from the highest mast, and then you go man the f!cking cannons.
Hey, Burke was a great writer, but so is G.B. Shaw, and nobody believes him any more. The old conservative intellectual models referred to a world which no longer exist.
We have to draw up new intellectual maps, which refer accurately to the new circumstances. You know who the new Bill Buckley is going to be? It’s gonna have to be you.
A few years ago, I answered an online poll for my Republican state assemblyman. That’s how they got my email address. Now, my inbox is being blown up daily by a slew of pandering or scare-mongering requests for donations to “save” the party. In my 38 years as a registered Republican, I have never given a dime to anyone but my brother, who was running for mayor; and two of my friends, one running for district attorney and the other for judge.
The 2016 election opened my eyes. After the midterms on November 6, I will be re-registering as a “decline to state” voter. Fuck the parties, vote for the man. And I do mean “man,” as in females shouldn’t even have the franchise, let alone hold office. But I have also come to realize that TINVOWOOT; so I also ready myself for the posse comitatus should a righteous man summon it.
I figure that the culprit is The Weekly Standard. Bill Kristol has gone way fuller “Never Trump” retard than the National Review cucks have. (NR’s still publishing Victor Davis Hanson, for example.) Plus TWS has that deal with Facebook to act as one of their “fact checkers,” which fits with the “top tech executive” and “Internet company” hints as well. Finally, her shout out to Kurt Schlicter is a clue as well because he’s always kicking Kristol’s slats in, calling him “Cap’n Bill” and making fun of the TWS “cuck cruises.”
Z from yesterday: “To quote Burke, ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle’.”
I figured this was gonna be another brave-men-must-come-together cliché. Then he hits you with “an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Fuuuuuuu**. Burke is STILL the man.
When bad men commute, the good must associate with them, else they will miss their bus stop.
*snicker*
A thousand years from now, sages will argue over that fragment from the Lost World
The next few days are going to be dicey, so just be careful out there. The haymakers haven’t been thrown yet, but they’re coming. In general, keep a low profile, but if you have some spare time next Tuesday, visit a polling place with your phone camera at the ready. The illegal voters tend to get a little nervous if they think they might be photographed in the act.
I would have bet money it was Kristol’s operation. (Six of one. . . )
Good point. Hard to see anyone thinking NR is worth corrupting….
Don’t leave out the speaking tour. One of the best ways to pass the money is through “sponsored” speaking engagements. Can’t find Jonah’s fee schedule, but will guess he goes in the 5-10k range + expenses. And does cocktail hour with your group.
Listening to Jonah for any length of of time would be (for me) the equivalent to having the Rat Cage strapped to my face. Heaven forfend.
In fairness to Dennis Prager he did tell his listeners to vote Trump. Doing otherwise was in effect supporting Hillary.
Tax Slave: F$%k ‘fairness’ and all (((gatekeepers))) like Prager.
Don’t you really mean: “screw your optics, I’m going in”?
^^^my kind of grandma.
That’s nice, but I heard Jonah Goldberg on Glenn Beck’s program say the same thing, as if he were getting water-boarded. It was like he was being asked to eat a raw snake or a handful of dirt.
In the past, it might have been fair to call Dennis Prager an establishment Republican, but in recent years he has shown signs of being a true dissident. “Prager U.” – his series of You Tube videos that “teach what isn’t taught” at our universities, were deplatformed alongside InfoWars and other edgier material. Prager has spoken repeatedly of the “cold civil war” now happening in the country – which places him in a small group of commentators indeed. Today, on his show, he called out fellow Jews who are attempting to blame President Trump for the synagogue massacre. And not just a little, Prager worked them over for a solid half-hour or more. Really ripped into the secular, America-hating leftist Jews….
The drop off from NR was insane. It actually started during the campaign, and it cratered when they (as you put it) “hurled dissidents into the void” by changing and then I think eliminating their commenting. You have to subscribe now, I think, but not something I think about. It was my first experience of a media outlet going to war with its most loyal readers…the commenters who tracked the site daily. It was stunningly bad taste and even worse business.
I think if it comes out that NR or one of these other rags was “bribed” to write certain content, that it’ll pass with barely a yawn. Nobody relevant really reads them anymore, and it’s not illegal to write an opinion piece simply because somebody paid you for your opinion. In fact, I doubt after 2016 that anybody would even be surprised to learn of it.
No surprise, not news, move along, stop asking so many questions no one cares about and wasting everyone’s time…whoa, squirrel, did you see the news that when Trump speaks of baseball, it is a dog whistle to the white nationalists?
The whole world has gone crazy…
We used to have good fun predicting and then mocking their various Establishment Playbook pages. The tax returns game. The racism game. The sexual harassment/assault game. The “not acceptable/disqualified” game. The “principled Conservative” game. etc. etc. Seen it all a million times. That stuff has worked for them in the past, but it doesn’t work well any more. See also: Brett Kavanaugh. 10-15 years ago, that guy pulls his own nomination. It’s a new day.
“We all come out like it’s Halloween.”
— The Dirty Dozen
Happy Halloween, Z-people! Boooooooooooo!!
NOTE TO GLORIOUS PERSONS OF COLOR:
Hallowe’en is a holiday created by White people, for White people, in accordance with the religious and folk beliefs of White people. It is primarily Irish in origin (a people more historically oppressed than any “marginalized community” you can think of), and is technically the Eve of All Hallows, viz. the celebratory overture or prelude to the Feast of All Saints, a major feast day and a Holy Day of Obligation in the liturgical calendar of the Holy Catholic Church. It is analogous to Mardi Gras in the sense that it serves as a sort of topsy-turvy prelude to a solemn occasion.
Please do not engage in evil Cultural Appropriation by tediously and sanctimoniously lecturing White people on how to celebrate their own holiday. Glorious People of Color should in fact not celebrate Halloween at all, as it was created by and for White people and was never intended for People of Color.
If perchance glorious People of Color choose to celebrate Halloween in spite of not being culturally entitled to do so, please do not lecture White people about which costumes they can or cannot choose to wear in their celebration of a holiday which is theirs, not yours, to celebrate. The purpose of a Halloween costume is to impersonate something which you clearly are not, for example, small children are clearly not vampires, witches, and skeletons in real life.
In accordance with this basic concept of dressing up as something which you are obviously not, African Americans can dress up as computer geniuses, Jews can dress up as patriots, and Muslims, Guptas, Mexicans and East Asians can dress up as somebody who has some sort of legitimate reason for being in America.
Leftists should avoid dressing up as anyone who is not an asshole.
Epic! Thank you.
I’d say the Oirish were less marginalized than the native American tribes who were extirpated by perfidious Merkins. I mean ,to be removed from existence is pretty marginalizing.
Yup, another asshole, quelle surprise.
I read the news today, oh boy….
Here’s the costume: two big butt cheeks with the mouth as the, umm, “pucker”- so when ya talk…
Plus, a certain red cap makes the perfect touch
A recent colleague of mine previously was a National Review writer. He’s center-right and has almost nothing in common with Brimelow, Sailer and other paleocons purged by that magazine. Towards the end of 2016, he said he found it plausible that National Review was controlled opposition, meaning a tool of the establishment/left created to redirect and dissipate right-wing political energy.
Z man says National Review “lost its moral compass when Rich Lowry took over the operation.” Buckley worked to drive talented, serious right-wing thinkers from the public square long before Lowry showed up. I don’t know if my former colleague’s suspicion is correct, but I don’t think it’s implausible.
The Buckley conservatives, so-called, fashioned a modus vivendi with their Leftism, Inc. establishment masters – support our anti-Soviet foreign policy, and we won’t stand in the way of your domestic agenda. The country-club Republicans still haven’t recovered from the fall of the USSR, even though it is now more than a quarter century into the past. This is clearly seen in the establishment fixation upon present-day Russia, by the powers-that-be in the U.S. and the West.
In a nutshell, Georgiaboy!
Corruption of the information stream. White culture happened to result in the cleanest, most honest information stream, and the results are amazing. Even with our numerous human faults.
We’ve been corrupted by an alien religion of hysteria, revenge, and retribution.
The Greatest Fraud In History is the foundation of that new religion, and it’s dishonesty is wrecking the Westphalian world.
Thus my tiresome pedantry. Most of us, really, are at war with evil. Transparency is the only viable solution.
I worry that I will work with a person with a ridiculously extravagant name, like Emerald or Princess, because I simply will not be able to call them by that name. Will I get fired because I refuse to refer to some woman as “Emerald” or “Princess?”
If you are introduced to a person who expects to be referred to as “Emerald,” the only appropriate response is, “Nice to meet you. Please call me ‘Sex God’.”
“Sparkles” would also work, and probably less likely to get you fired.
I’m sure someone here knows the reference (without DDG-ing it).
Line-
There is a talking-head “weatherperson” in the Spokane, WA. area whose name is “Majestic Storm”.Her co-workers deserve accolades for keeping a straight face when they interact with her. I refer to her as “Magnificent Knockers”.
I simply cannot refer to another person as “Majestic,” as her coworkers do. Your nickname for her is accurate. Let’s hope for some chill winds blowing on everyone’s chests.
In San Diego, the weathergal is Dagmar Midcap. She does have herself a pair of Dagmars.
Nice…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5eLuo81p1Q
Here she is…
http://www.khq.com/clip/14572373/khq-welcomes-majestic-storm
Awww, sweet little thing.
This wicked world keeps serving up such delightful surprises.
On a more serious note, when the weather lady on Laredo’s Mexican station turns to the side, half the map disappears.
You could always go through HR to specify “Sex God” (or Sparkles) as your Preferred Pronoun so your co workers would risk trouble if they failed to so address you. That would even top the heroic University of Michigan student who in 2016 mocked his school’s gender diversity crusade by officially selecting “His Majesty” as his Preferred Pronoun……
Yesterday, a conservative I know, part of the Trump is vile crowd, complained about Trump probably having never read the Constitution when he was tweeting about ending a Birthright citizenship. I all of a sudden felt like I was in that scene in Star Wars where the random Imperial guy tells Darth Vader to quit holding onto his ancient religion… and then Darth Vader starts choking that guy with his mind until somebody stops him. I guess that makes me random Empire woman number 482 or something
There might be an interesting subtext going on to this “birthright” thing. Given a literal reading of the 14th, it appears to be precedent more than the constitutional language that allows the birthright thing to go on as it does. If we are going back to actually reading what the Constitution says (or doesn’t say) rather than precedent, where does it leave the abortionistas?
Lots to say about this but no time for a long post today. The short story is that the language “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was intended to limit birthright citizenship to the children of legal residents of the US. This was the law until Brennan’s infamous footnote 48 in Plyler v. Doe (1982). Importantly, this case does NOT explicitly hold that children born in the US to persons not here legally are entitled to US citizenship as a birthright.
Congress clearly has the authority to do away with birthright citizenship for the children of those here illegally. It’s unclear whether the President can do so by Executive Order.
And speaking of kept men, Cuck Ryan wasted no time in coming out against Trump on this. Cretin.
What do you make of National Review’s fundraising drive? For years I thought you were right and they had around 20-30 big donors with a couple hundred suckers sending in small donations every time Fowler went begging. They are presenting this one in a way that makes it look like there are a lot more suckers than I thought. The current donor count is at 2,506 and they have raised almost $260k. This could be mostly fiction and they are breaking up a $150,000 payment from Google into 1,500 anonymous donations of $100 each. I don’t think we should completely discount the idea that they are getting a significant amount of money by grifting middle to upper class senior citizen Republican voters.
The first name I thought of when I read those tweets was Bill Kristol. He stepped down as editor from the Weekly Standard and seems increasingly desperate to stay in the spotlight. It would be surprising if he isn’t getting paid by at least one tech company.
They have been running that beg-a-thon for a couple of months. I would assume ten percent of the donors make up 90% of the donations. Even so, when you have their access to the big platforms and that’s all you can muster, it means you are not appealing to the public. Basically they raised enough money to keep Kevin Williamson in donuts for a year. Jordan Peterson makes twice that off his Patreon channel.
Emerald Robinson is a real person.
She looks like she was an actress & writer before OAN:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2361474/
https://www.emeraldrobinson.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV2gDYt3H2A&t=7s
She wrote an evisceration of the Never Trumpers back in June:
https://spectator.org/the-collapse-of-the-never-trump-conservatives/
To which Jonah “the inaugural holder of the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty” Goldberg bleated:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/emerald-robinson-never-trump-analysis-lazy-and-dishonest/
Would it surprise you to know that JG accused her of [gasp] BIGOTRY.
Robinson’s article was largely rhetorical and it hit Jonah “the inaugural holder of the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty” Goldberg right in the jimmy.
======================
Zma wrote:
“…it would be a relief to learn that the mass media is simply singing for their supper, delivering what a handful of billionaires demand. Otherwise, it suggests a systemic failure that can only be addressed by madame guillotine.”
I think the problem is systemic, with a slathering of grifters on top. AND not OR.
So keep missus G sharp, lubricated, and ready.
One last bit…
https://www.emeraldrobinson.com/about
“Emerald Robinson is a political correspondent based in Washington, D.C., where she covers Congress and the White House for One America News Network. Robinson joined the network in 2017 after heading up media relations for the Institute for Global Economic Growth (IGEG). While at IGEG, Robinson produced an international documentary series in partnership with Sinclair Broadcast Group detailing global economic policy in countries such as Chile, Estonia, and Switzerland. The series, called Improbable Success, garnered more than six million viewers in its initial broadcast and has been shown to audiences worldwide.
Robinson began her career as a journalist as the host of the Daily Orbit, a daily syndicated science news show providing the top science and technology headlines in short order. Robinson’s journalistic experience includes entertainment, cultural, political, and economic beats.
Robinson received a B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of Virginia. She grew up in the mountains of Southwest Virginia in a small coal mining community. She now resides in the D.C. suburbs with her husband and son.”
Sounds like a gutsy chick. If she pissed off NR and the never Trumpers, she’s OK in my book. I had never heard of her, but I’ll certainly be following her from now on.
My personal mantra is “everything is fake”. So far, I have rarely been proven wrong.
The line I use around the office is, “it’s impossible to be too cynical.”
“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up”. Lily Tomlin
And when did she say this? Some time in the late 70s!
Mine is “I’ve lost the capacity to be surprised”
Cynism is mostly just believing anything bad about organizations or your enemies. Funny how we rarely apply it to our cohorts. I heard Zman plays midnight golf with Mona Charen. I doubt any of you are sitting there thinking, “Hell, I believe it. I don’t put nuthin’ past nobody.”
My response to the idea that Z plays midnight golf with Mona Charen is “so what”? That’s the thing. We are gaslighted by the Left to think that every little thing someone on “our” side does or says is meaningfully evil, so my attitude becomes ”blow it out your a*s, sucker”. Meanwhile, the most basic and severe departures from civilized norms (assault, graft, theft) are waved off by the Left as either nonexistent or situationally acceptable. Not buying it. When they say “look at what your side said/did”, I blow it off. When they say “don’t look at what our side might have done” or “don’t believe your own lying eyes”, I blow it off in the other direction. The thing is, in retrospect, these attitudes tend to be the correct ones almost all of the time. When I start frequently getting it wrong by assuming the worst of the other side, I will revise my thinking. Hasn’t come close to happening yet.
“My response to the idea that Z plays midnight golf with Mona Charen is “so what”?” Not so simple. She’s no mere neutral, but an active enemy, and Z’s one of our leaders. I think it’d put everyone at ease if he’d at least deny it.
Please don’t.
The first rule of Fight Club…
Read Sharyl Attkisson’s book “The Smear.” It documents in tax-exempt detail how thoroughly fake *everything* in politics and meda is. Frightening.
I’ve held a warm place in my heart for Robinson ever since she made fun of that gasbag Jonah Goldterd over his phony baloney “Chair” in Applied Assnes at AEI:
https://spectator.org/the-collapse-of-the-never-trump-conservatives/
And to make it even better, Goldterd had to rush to Twitter and call her a nobody and brag about how important he was. Somehow he managed to totally embarrass himself by looking like an even more preening ass than usual if you can believe that.
For some reason, I’m on the AEI mailing list. When I saw the presser for the Asness chair, I thought someone hacked their system and was sending parody pressers. I’m sure Mr. Asness is a peach of a fellow, but you have to be realistic about these things.
From the sound of it, Mr. Asness is quite cheeky. Probably cuz he finds himself to be the butt of so many jokes.
Tax them all. Even the churches.
My own purge in all these publications started in the late eighties and culminated with the neocons and NR attack on Buchanan, Sobran and Francis. Only one I kept was Chronicles. For the last five nothing but last month re-upped on Chronicles (without Thomas Fleming).
Very nostalgic and odd feeling reading an actual magazine. Kind of miss it.
First, I support OAN and have listened to Emerald Robinson’s reports. And while I know nothing about her personal life, I do believe her reports are a bit more grounded in reality than what you hear from say Jim Acosta, Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow, Joe and his husband Mika, Don Lemon and his new boyfriend Cuomo, and all the rest.
The paragraph that ends with, “Otherwise, it suggests a systemic failure that can only be addressed by Madame guillotine.”
Are you sure that first word shouldn’t be “Either way, . . .” ?
Yay OAN. It’s actually a pretty good news channel. Look at it if you are one of the few that gets it.
“Her name suggests she should be swinging from a pole”
I just checked out her picture. If she wants to swing around a pole, I’m down with that…
I’ve been a One America News guy for almost a year. The only thing I watch on FOX any more is Tucker Carlson and maybe a bit of Hannity. Emerald is beautiful and so is Liz Wheeler on The Tipping Point. I think OAN is using the tried and true FOX formula of super hot right wing women. I concur.
Tu-Ca’s the best. He has Steyn on a couple of times a week. His divergence from FOX board orthodoxy makes me believe we should enjoy his show while we can.
When grandmama whose age is eighty / In night clubs is getting matey with gigolos / Anything goes… Honestly, I really wish they *were* just gigolos putting out for the highest bidder. Trump’s got the money, and he’s no stranger to a backroom deal – he could simply buy himself a pet publication. Yeah, Goldberg’s in it for the money, but there are plenty of people in the commentariat who are just scratching by. Money *might* cause them to change their tune…. but probably not. I for one will happily shill for Soros for the low low price of $100K per annum (call me, George!), but for most of these folks, the money, such as it is, is just authorization to do what they really want to do anyway. The money is just a pat on the head.
When I was reading the tweets national review was the name that immediately came into my mind. I’ve been exploring their podcasts for want of anything better, some are good in parts, Jamie Weinstein had a good interview with tucker Carlson for example, but the Normie left wing bias is obtrusive. One podcast was making absurd argument to convince us that russel Kirk was in favor of diversity because he once danced with Bedouin tribesmen in North Africa! Uh, I like then in North Africa…
For me it’s about race. I lean conservative bc it’s usually the rational position, but “conservatism” minus the fundamentals is irrelevant.
“the bias was concealed in an effort to fool the public into supporting the struggle against the Soviets”
I can’t agree with this, Z, since most of the “Journalist Community” was in the tank for the Soviets since at least the 1960’s, many earlier. Walter Duranty, anyone? Or am I misunderstanding you?
The CIA was financially supporting journalists worldwide. Gloria Steinem was CIA funded, as were the Trotskyites that became neoconservatives.
The idea of a standing army is repugnant to the republican form of government, and an example of oriental despotism. That such a standing army has existed since 1945 during “peacetime” has only been achieved with massive propaganda.
Yes, the CIA was all about supporting the “Non-Communist Left” which, as James Burnham pointed out back in the 1960’s, wasn’t exactly a winning strategy, since this existed primarily in their overheated imaginations. But most journalists from at least the sixties on were not anti-Soviet by any stretch of the imagination, whether they were cashing a CIA check or not
Yeah, I’m probably over simplifying. I think the very real threat of nuclear war was a big part of curing the managerial state. The Cold War was the kiln in which this system was fired. But, there’s more to what turned the press from a raucous working class mob of hacks, advocates and provocateurs into a priestly order.
Media’s left-wing pro-government hackery started early in the Progressive era, grew with its propaganda role in Wilson’s WWI and congealed into standard practice while whooping for FDR.
wish i could find the quote, but it goes something like:
“a free society requires an outlaw frontier”
ever since newspapers became broadly effective organs of control, they have been misused – i’d say its hard to place a date on the beginnings of subversion to higher order totalitarianism. maybe was not so dire in earlier days when one might go west and escape the confines…
imho, free and open internet is the outlaw frontier – if the organs of control crush it, the frontier will not disappear, only change form. i wonder if they really think burning the map will destroy the territory?
I wonder about age differences and media. The old man subscribed to National Review, The Economist, and WSJ. The first two he cut years ago, and he was bitching about the WSJ to me a few weeks ago. I get my news and, what are in effect, opinion columns from the “web”. About a dozen individual pages, such as this one, and about five along the lines of American Thinker. I have about three that I’ve read for years and the others come and go as they piss me off. I don’t think I’ve ever watched the national news, and I’ve just about stopped reading Conservative Inc. The old man is in his mid-sixties and I’m in my early thirties. Media outlets like National Review aren’t sustainable, and there’s only so many Benzos around that can buy broken down mouthpieces like the Washington Post.
Twenty years ago, the Economist and WSJ were serious, well-written, thoughtful periodicals. Not anymore. Their management decided there aren’t enough serious, thoughtful people to market it to. So now they’re pursuing the drooling goober market.
Same with most other periodicals. If you’re near a library with a long-running magazine collection, compare the current issue of Scientific American with one from 1964 and mourn the death of intellect.
Scientific American articles used to be written by scientists, now they’re written by science journalists. Journalism majors are some of the dimmest college students I’ve met: they have opinions on everything and knowledge of nothing.
Tthe CD compilation of The Amateur Scientist is worth buying. The articles from the 1930s are fun to read.
Thx for this rec. you know, I was reading an article on the integrated circuit by Robert Noyce himself in an issue of scientific American from the 70s and it was a bit above my head, and I have a masters in physical chemistry! Around 2000 I wanted to read it regularly, but every article was some left wing political junk about how there were no gender roles in ancient cities! It has improved since then however. The readership must have cratered.
for me the fall from interest in Sci Am happened when John Rennie became editor, a true cuck for the global warming hysteria. don’t recall reading about the gender role stuff, but i may not have been sensitized to that particular morsel at the time.
i seldom find myself agreeing completely with a Z article, but this one hits the spot. mmmmm, yup, agreed.
The fall really accelerated when they threw Forest Mims out because he did not accept evolution. It mattered not a whit that his portfolio did not include anything like evolution, but he was a heretic in one area and could not be tolerated. I quit reading at that point.
I was reading Scientific American well before 1964. The magazine died for me when they did a book review of the Bell Curve. The reviewer panned the book up and down over some piddling little point, ignoring the book as a whole. In an early red-pill moment, I wondered, “What the hell is going on here?” I was genuinely astonished. I never looked at Sci Am again.
But even before that review, I noticed that the general quality of the magazine had deteriorated by the nineties.
MeToo. I subscribed to SA when I worked in microbioligical research, mostly to keep up with science in general. Worked fine for that purpose for awhile. Dropped it early ’60s when it started going pop. Haven’t seen an issue for well over 50 years, but it might be good for a laugh.
Lorenzo;
During the Carter and Reagan years the Scientific American revealed itself to be stocked with GRU (Russian military intelligence) agents-of-influence. If one wanted to know what the USSR’s position was going to be in any upcoming arms control negotiation, it would first appear there under the by-line of some NE Ivy League ‘scientist’ (usually MIT IIRC) as the only right and reasonable approach to avoid Nuclear Winter, etc. It was uncanny.
Likewise, a ‘scientist’ would spring up to ridicule and refute any allegation of atrocity against the Comintern. The Yellow Rain controversy from SE Asia stands out in my memory.
I had not thought about that, which is a reasonable explanation for what happened to the magazine. It had gone well off the rails by the days of the Nuclear Freeze/Nuclear Winter scares. I remember the “Yellow Rain” flap and, as a Vietnam vet, saw that as obvious bullsh. That crap plus the dumbing down of the content just turned me off from the publication.
Next thing, you guys will be dissing Helen Caldicott.
Yes, Time and Newsweek were so great back when I was old enough to get interested back in the 60’s. I remember dropping Time in the 70’s when they started reviewing Rap music(?) albums.
NR says the median age of the readers is 67. Commentary Magazine says it is 70 for them. TV news and cable chat shows all skew older, into the 60’s. I’m 52 and I have not read a newspaper in over a decade, maybe longer. I cancelled my last magazine, National Review, in 2012, but I was only maintaining the sub as a courtesy. Other than Derb or Steyn, the rest was of no interest, other than when I needed something to mock.
To your point, yes, the old media model will fade with the Boomers. That’s why the oligarchs seized on social media and aree organizing to suppress challenges. They figure they can train the millennials just as the old media trained their parents. I’m skeptical of it, as they can only achieve that goal by eliminating the rule of law. I don’t think they have the stones to be authoritarians.
It’s rather curious that the magazine publishing industry is propped up by medical waiting rooms. Few publications can be profitable, without functioning on clickbait. Otherwise they need tyrants like Mark Benioff to subsidize them.
“…magazine publishing industry is propped up by medical waiting rooms. ”
When I think I may have to wait in one of those places, I always take along my Kindle. Those mags are aimed at people with very low IQs.
Epaminondas – same- always have my kindle – PLUS a pair of foam earplugs to mute the t.v. or foreign-babble phone conversations. Worked great waiting to not be chosen for jury duty.
The Kaiser Permanente medical center that attends to my bodily status — a huge percentage of whose patients are Third World, despite the location in a relatively well-to-do area — doesn’t supply reading material in its waiting areas. It must figure that its customers, largely divided between video gamers and migrants, don’t read anything except signs explaining how to wash your hands.
But of course the TV monitors are going continuously, sometimes with closed captioning, sometimes with the sound on. They are always tuned to HGTV showing the privileged classes buying and upgrading posh houses. Presumably some Kaiser Permanente administrative dweeb has decided that HGTV is noncontroversial enough that nobody from the racial/ethnic grievance population will be offended.
One of these days, I expect, someone will complain that HGTV is for the one-percenters and not enough high-end buyers shown are Negroes. At that point Kaiser will subscribe to a private video feed of all commercials, featuring Negroes and women showing befuddled white men how to do things without frightening the pets.
HGTV is far more palatable than “The View” or any of the dreck from CNN or MSNBC.
Occasionally I will follow a National Review link to a Victor Hanson article, but that’s about it. The problem with controlling social media is not the will, but the ability. TOR, five min email, private I.P., and on and on. They can ban a sub on reddit and a new sub with the exact same material will be up and running in ten. Voat, 4chan, GAB, and others will eat their lunch.
Millennials: you want to print out web pages and throw them in my yard?
LOL
What do you mean? They are already acting like authoritarians.
For what its worth, I’m an old boomer who gave up on Conservative Inc. and movement conservativism a long time ago. I did so because I began noticing that nothing was being moved or conserved.
You have to admit that throughout ’14-’16 it was good sport to go in there and ridicule them. I would wager that you and I had higher readership than the paid staff.
Once they went to Facebook, I dropped out and never returned. The side is moribund now. Alexa still show them with lots of traffic, but they were using a service to good their traffic numbers, so like everything else, those stats were fake.
The reason I started the blog was people would tell me I was the reason they read NR. You’re right. The comment section was a good time and I only visited to read the comments.
Whatever happened to the site built by one of their mods, which served as a comment system for various sites?
I think it’s still out there. I get invites to join it every so often, but I forget the name of it. A pretty large contingent of NR commenters started a Disqus site called Brighter Lights, but they were mainly NeverTrumpers, and it got boring making fun of them for being wrong all the time. The mods gave me a “two strikes” kind of threat, so I just unfollowed them and moved on. Kind of that “above it all” approach but no real core of content…just randomly tracking the news of the day or random nonsense.
I did have fun winding up some of their regulars. I was called loathsome by Williamson, Cooke, Goldberg and French. I take pride in that.
Talk about a Badge of Honor!!!!
They definitely knew the influence we had.
It is qwiket.com
I remember your biting wit, vast knowledge, and barely concealed contempt for those who entertained opinions lacking in fact and practiced wish fulfillment where reality ran counter to their perspectives…
#Metoo
That was enjoyable but certainly not enjoyable enough to sign up for facebook.
One of the little known glories of Enoch and his band of troll raiders was dominating and shutting down NRO comments. Respect!
They didn’t. That’s a total myth. I like those guys, but there are people here who know better.
I watched in real time as NRO went into fetal position due to the TRS troll raids but maybe you know more than me. Can you say more?
The Qwiket site is still up and running and I’d wager most of the posters go there to make fun of NR in particular. I know I check in a few times a day to do just that. At the risk of sounding like Don Lemon, I usually go through the back door to see what they’re posting about:
https://disqus.com/home/forum/usconservative/
The guy who built it out though has all sorts of functionality on his main page that I’m honestly just too old to figure out how to use.
qwiket.com
I’m 59 and get all my news from the web and sites like this, Unz, etc. Scan the Drudge Report occasionally just to see what news he’s filtering. Today it’s some “racists” running for Missouri statehouse opposed by his children. Canceled my regional newspaper, which I’d subscribed to for decades, many years ago. For many years before that it went, unread, straight into the recycling. Perhaps the last thing it was good for was the multi-page Friday Fry’s Electronics ad. Never watch TV News, or even TV in general. Wife watches TV for the dramas and she is too computer phobic to watch shows over the web. She has a hard enough time with the universal remote control. Otherwise I wouldn’t have TV/Cable at all. In-laws in their 80s (both of which just passed in the last few months) would watch 60 Minutes like it was God’s truth. My (uber right-wing, according to my Lefty sisters, they can’t even comprehend me) mom in her 80s loves Fox News and listening to talk radio shows like Mark Levin.
Cloudswrest – I’m 60 in a few weeks and in the reverse situation. I get all my news from the web, but hubby is still wedded to that remote and cable. He knows it’s all BS and recognizes (and mocks) the narrative pushed by all the commercials, but watches it anyway. I am constantly after him to turn the volume down or mute it or change the channel or TURN IT OFF. We did cancel the paper many years ago (I no longer even buy one for the black Friday ads) and haven’t had any magazine subscriptions for years.
Presume my elderly mother watches standard crap, but she lives with one of my siblings (I don’t speak with any of them) many hundreds of miles away, so doesn’t affect me. I’ve always been the ‘black sheep’ – and that was merely after becoming a republican and evangelical Christian. If they had any idea that my daily reading includes ‘hate sites’ (yes, I scroll thru the Daily Stormer) they’d literally crap their depends. ZFG.
Respect to the brave right wing ladies…. I have a sibling who won’t speak to me to punish me for my political outlook as well…
Well to give your sibling her due, there’s no telling what you say at the dinner table. LOL
My mom watches Fox, and I tease her about it. I haven’t watched a network or cable news broadcast since the night Trump won. And years before that. I tell people if you don’t watch it for 6 months or a year, it’s like watching the Hunger Games people in the Capitol. Totally phony.
I’ll see your stupid relatives and raise you twice as many redneck fools on my side of the DNA.