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Quick Analysis

Roseanne’a Cancellation: Left-wing Authoritarianism

The decision to cancel Roseanne Barr’s TV series following her inappropriate tweet is wholly inconsistent with Hollywood’s tolerance for the most brutal, threatening, racist and sexist remarks made against President Trump, members of his administration, and conservatives in general.

The message is clear and unambiguous:  While left-wingers are free (as all Americans should be) to say anything, Americans will be penalized for criticizing them.  If a Republican, a middle-of-the road politician, or a conservative makes an off-color remark, or one that simply states the truth in a harsh manner, he or she will suffer serious consequences.  As Daniel McCarthy wrote in National Review: “Beware the rise of left-wing authoritarianism: for too many in the chattering classes, the imaginary fascism of Donald Trump … excuses the real-world censorship and intimidation practiced by the illiberal left.”

Since the 2016 election, a stunning quantity of offensive and occasionally violent remarks have been made about President Trump.  The purveyors of these comments have not suffered any significant consequences.

Where are the cancelled contracts and media outrage following Johnny Depp’s public fantasy of assassinating the President? Or Whoopi Goldberg’s dream of torturing Trump? Or Keith Olbermann’s ongoing and obscene rants? Why is there no Hollywood pressure against the comics who belittle the President’s wife, or call his twelve-year old son a “rapist” and “homeschool shooter?” Bill Mahr has described the President as an “Orangutan” and that’s apparently ok with the show biz crowd.  In fact, actors like Robert De Niro frequently call Trump an “idiot,” insulting not only the President but those that voted for him, and that seems to be acceptable.

Why are sexists and racist comments against women and people of color within the Trump Administration such as Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah, Second Lady Karen Pence, and HUD Secretary Ben Carson apparently ok with the media? When Joey Behar alleged that Vice President Pence had a mental illness because he was a Christian, she didn’t lose her job or have her show cancelled.

For over the counter (OTC) products it should be relatively tadalafil 40mg india easy to achieve market access since they don’t have to be present for BPH to occur, but do not permanently improve the underlying condition. Giddiness, nausea, body pain, fatigue, etc. are some normal reasons and restorative reasons for this issue. cipla cialis view for source This aphrodisiac herb can be best described as a natural tonic online viagra pills and promotes sound sleep. Erection is considered as one of the vital http://www.learningworksca.org/item-7747 cheap viagra sexual prowess and perform intercourse well. Ben Shapiro writes: “The left likes to bully, and it’s good at it…if you’re a conservative in Hollywood you stay underground for fear of firing…as [director] Nicholas Meyer…told me when asked about [anti-conservative] discrimination in Hollywood, “Well, I hope so.” Or as [producer] Vin DiBona…explained to me, “I think its probably accurate [that there’s anti-conservative discrimination] and I’m happy with it actually…”

Writing in The Atlantic Caitlin Flanagan notes that “somewhere along the way, the hosts of the late-night shows decided that they had carte blanche to insult not just the people within this administration, but also the ordinary citizens who support Trump, and even those who merely identify as conservatives.”

There was a clear drive to rein in Roseanne’s show, in which pro-Trump comments, to the utter dismay of Hollywood power brokers, were included.  Shortly before the program was cancelled allegedly in response to Ms. Barr’s tweet, it was announced that the show would be less political in upcoming seasons.  When the star of the program rebelled against that, another excuse had to be found to get her off the air, and that excuse was found. It’s similar to the rather unconvincing reasons the successful Tim Allen program, “Last Man Standing” which also contained pro-conservative quips, was dropped.

In a nation guided by the First Amendment, comments, even those that are tasteless, about political figures should be protected.  Increasingly, that’s not the case for anyone left-wing power brokers dislike. From universities, where centrist and conservative speakers are chased off campus, frequently through violence, to the mainstream media and Hollywood moguls, there has been established a climate of fear and repression aimed directly at those who refuse to kowtow to leftist beliefs. It is a profound danger to the future of freedom in our land.

Illustration: Pixabay

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U.S. Journalism Loses its Way, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part examination of how deeply biased journalism has come.

 

Examples of bias against candidate Trump were abundant.  Just a few examples: Public Integrity describes:

“New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an ‘ugly and xenophobic campaign.’ What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April…Carole Simpson, a former ABC “World News Tonight” anchor who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to moderate a presidential debate, is not moderate about her personal politics: the current Emerson College distinguished journalist-in-residence and regular TV news guest has given Clinton $2,800.” The vast majority of journalist who supported either candidate supported Clinton, according to Public Integrity. “In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.”

Fox News has generally been viewed as more conservative outlet, and was regularly criticized by former President Obama. In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, it reported:

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A Media Research Center report  provides an extraordinary example of bias: “Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton… The Hill published new information about Russian efforts to infiltrate the American uranium industry, including $31.3 million in payments to the Clinton Foundation, as well as a huge speaking fee delivered to Bill Clinton personally, while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. In eight days, the network evening news coverage of this story amount to a mere 20 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight…But Bill Clinton’s big payday has generated ZERO network news coverage this week, and only a single reference on ABC’s This Week back in 2015, when the book Clinton Cash first disclosed the potential scandal.In fact, from April 2015 through [October 24] the Clinton/Uranium/Russia story has been granted only 3 minutes, 21 seconds of evening news coverage — less than one-half of one percent of the coverage doled out just this year to the conspiracy theories surrounding Trump and Russia…Combined, the three evening newscasts have aired a total of 5,015 minutes of coverage of the Trump administration since Inauguration Day, which means the Russia story alone has comprised almost exactly one-fifth of all Trump news this year.

Some media notables have spoken up. The Washington Times  reported that “Journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has some advice for his younger peers — stop “binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.”

Far too often, the argument over biased media is framed in terms of  Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. Lately, it has also included pro-Trump vs. “Never Trumpers.” That misses the point entirely.  Journalists are human, bound to have personal biases and developed points of view. What distinguishes the current state of the profession is the phenomenon of so many being of the same political mindset.

A vigorous and independent media is vital to the success of a free people. An abundance of perspectives and, most importantly, a devotion to truth, regardless of one’s own political biases, is desperately needed.  It is a need that is going largely unfilled by many media outlets.

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Quick Analysis

U.S. Journalism Loses its Way

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government examines how deeply biased journalism has become in this two-part series.

What is the appropriate response to the biased and sloppy journalism that diligently sought to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and which ignored the offenses of the elected officials and appointees whom they supported?

Recent revelations have been truly extraordinary: It was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that “colluded” with Moscow. The Charges against the Trump campaign appear to be little more than an attempt to coverup unlawful surveillance by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department has apologized for its harassment, under the former President, of the Tea Party.  The FBI, under James Comey, squashed the Clinton email investigation. The Democrat National Committee inappropriately “fixed” the primary process to ensure that Bernie Sanders lost. In terms of the politicians and bureaucrats involved, Congress will investigate, the wheels of justice will turn.  But what of a media that intentionally or negligently propagated falsehoods?

A study by the Pew Research Center found that “Allegations about Russia and the 2016 election tied to Trump and his administration, as well as the White House’s relationship with Moscow, dominated stories on U.S.-Russia relations…, only about one-in-ten stories (11%) delivered an overall positive assessment of the [trump] administration’s words or actions. Four times as many (44%) offered a negative assessment, while the remaining 45% were neither positive nor negative.”  In total, the early coverage of the Trump Administration by the media was 62% negative versus only 5% positive.  That contrast sharply with the coverage of former President Obama’s coverage, which was 42% positive and only 20% negative.

A similar result was found by a Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy study, which noted that “Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.”
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Anthony Fisher reported for Reason about the coverage of the events surrounding President Trump’s inauguration. “One journalist…was Natasha Lennard, who penned a popular article for The Nation wherein she writes about how she actively participated in the ‘anti-capitalist, anti-fascist bloc’ which rejected ‘polite protest’ in favor of tactics such as ‘human blockades, smash[ing] corporate windows, trash-can fires, burning [a] limousine…”

Is it intentional bias or something else that has divorced accuracy from media reports? Politico notes that the outcome of the 2016 election, which most of the media was convinced would be a landslide victory for Clinton was “an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers…”  The website cites FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. ‘As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,’ Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. ‘The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,’ Bannon said. ‘It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***** idea what’s going on.”

The Federalist, in a Feburary 2017 article by Daniel Payne,  reported that “16 fake news stories reporters have run since Trump won…Since at least Donald Trump’s election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis…there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves…day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel… Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?”

The Report concludes tomorrow.

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Quick Analysis

Major Media Abandons Ethics

In analyzing presidential campaigns, a review of the quality of media reporting is vital. It’s the only practical avenue the public has to learn of the character and positions each candidate offers.

For several decades, the voters have been consistently ill-served by a biased press that, rather than fulfilling its ethical duty to objectively and accurately relay the views and qualities of those seeking office, abuses its position to further its own point of view.

While many past elections have seen inaccurate and biased coverage, this year’s combination of substantially failing to thoroughly examine the legal and ethical violations of Hillary Clinton, while reaching a frenzy of hysteria about the unusual style of Donald Trump, is in a class of its own.

Consider these two offerings from the August 29 edition of Time magazine:

From an essay by Eddie S. Claude Jr.: “…we have vomited up the likes of Donald Trump…”

The same issue contains this in a column by Joel Stein: “Old people aren’t good at voting…old people vote shortsightedly…[they are] more likely to vote for Donald Trump.”

As part of its standard and concerted effort to discredit candidates who don’t subscribe to the left-wing orthodoxy they adhere to, major media outlets have done almost everything in their power to portray the GOP candidate as an uninformed buffoon. While some explain this s a reaction to Trump’s unprecedented mode of campaigning and his politically incorrect mode of self-expression, even a cursory review of past presidential contests reveals a clear and consistent pattern of media character assassination of non-leftists contenders.
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Recall the over-the-top disdain the chattering class exhibited for George W. Bush. The hatred was so extreme that the phrase “Bush derangement syndrome” was coined to describe it. In the 2012 campaign, Mitt Romney accurately discussed the failings of President Obama and Secretary Clinton in the Benghazi incident, and was roundly excoriated for his effort.  He was also lambasted and mocked for his equally correct description of the dangers posed by Russia. Ronald Reagan, in his first run as the GOP nominee, was wildly portrayed as a fanatic in domestic affairs, and a man who was eager start World War 3. Barry Goldwater, a conservative who ran in 1964, was subjected to openly slanderous charges of being eager to initiate the use of nuclear weapons.

This year, the inaccurate diatribes against the Republican candidate have been exceptionally effective due to the aquiesence by some old-guard Republicans, who are concerned that Trump, a political outsider, will upset their leadership structure.  Rather than rise to the defense of their own party’s nominee, they have joined the biased media’s chorus. Their concern is, for their self-interest, well-founded. The GOP rank and file has been furious at the somnolent reaction by those kahunas to President Obama’s roughshod treatment of the Constitution and U.S. national security.  The overthrow of House Speaker John Boehner was a precursor to the Trump primary victory.

In their eagerness to assist in the election of their preferred candidate, open, clear violations of intrinsic Constitutional rights and basic laws concerning free and fair elections have been given short-shrift. The media has barely mentioned the extraordinary use of committed and threatened violence by some well-funded groups in blocking access to Trump events. Little critical analysis has been aired about the outrageous opposition by the Democrat National Committee to attempts to prevent fraudulent voting. Supporters of Bernie Sanders provided one bit of fair play, however, although not to the degree it deserved. Clearly, the Democrat primary process was rigged to insure Clinton’s success, from underhanded vote counting to the abuse of Democrat National Committee resources for Clinton’s benefit. The media outcry when the DNC chair was forced to resign for her unethical action—and was immediately given a position on the Clinton campaign—barely reached ho-hum levels.

The biased media has barely mentioned Clinton’s stunning failure to provide a full-fledged press conference in a vast period of time.

All of the above pales in comparison to the most significant omissions on the part of the left-wing press.  The sheer scale of Ms. Clinton’s abuse of her position, her overtly pay for play manipulation of the U.S. State Department, and her stunning personal profiteering from the sale of the basic ingredient of nuclear weapons to Moscow should be non-stop headline news. Almost all of the traditional media have failed to dwell on these outrageous, in some cases Benedict-Arnold style acts, and, indeed, those who mention them are accused of partisanship. The meeting of Bill Clinton with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, followed by a statement that the Clinton camp was considering retaining her if they win, all of which led up the bizarre refusal to prosecute the Democrat candidate for extraordinary negligence in her handling of state secrets (an act which has consistently led to punishment for others) should have been the most explosive news story in decades.  It has hardly factored in the news, other than those few outlets which already were critical of her.

An important postscript: one of the few realms in which an open and vigorous exchange of viewpoints in the 2016 campaign occurs, the internet, is scheduled to be transferred from American control, which always insured free speech, to the control of an international body highly influenced by nations advocating censorship before the November election.