Media Elitism Part 873

I thought about commenting on this yesterday when I read the story, but there were other things more important than Christine Amanpour in Egypt.

Though from her body language and attitude, she doesn't seem to think so:


The video is here.

It's interesting to see Christine Amanpour take a very standoffish, very insulting, very condescending tone towards the Egyptians on the street she's talking to. She has one hand on her hip - indicating standoffishness or aggression. The other hand is holding the mic in a lazy, inattentive manner implying that it doesn't really matter what the person has to say.

Amanpour's attitude towards the Egyptians seems to be about the same as Susan Roesgen talking to Tea Partiers. Amanpour goes in with an attitude and leaves with an attitude, and seems extra offended that she gets attitude back the whole time. Her problem doesn't stem from Egyptian hatred of the US. It stems from Egyptian hatred of her as a representative.

Robert Young Pelton in Dangerous Places 4th Edition (back before he spent all kinds of time on TV and got into internet fights with milbloggers) made a very important point about how to deal with people who dislike you for your (assumed) Western ways and their preconceived notions thereof. Talk to and with them. Amanpour talks at them.

Ask them how they feel and why they feel that way - and actually want to know the answer. Ask them what they would do if they were president. Ask them what they would do as a citizen of the US. Don't get snotty like Amanpour. Don't walk away in a huff. Don't be an asshole like Amanpour.

She can show them that she has a camera and is part of a big media outlet that hundreds of thousands of people may see - so whatever they want to say, others may hear - and people want to know. Were she to go in with a different attitude, doubtless she would get different results.

But the hand on the hip, the lazy pointing the microphone, the turning away and the general haughty attitude she projects leads me to see the Egyptian point of view quite clearly - she only gives a crap when there's trouble about for her to report.

She's a terrible representative for the US, and clearly doesn't like talking to the people on the street. Amanpour is an elitist - she has disdain for the US anyway, so she sees no reason why people would ever dislike her. She can understand an ideological hatred for the US espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood, but since she agrees with it, she can't understand why she personally is rejected by its proponents.

Basically, she's in the position of a useful idiot or of a bourgeois socialist who doesn't understand they've outlived their usefulness. She's an elitist who agrees with the hatred being spewed by MB and the general dislike of the US throughout the Middle East, since she also hates the US. She's upset and ideologically unable to understand what's going on because of her elitist status. She feels that since she's an elitist America-hater, she's not an American or related to America, so she should be exempt.

Older stuff on her anti-US bias from DeathBy1000PaperCuts.

She even ranked #8 on BigJournalism's Most Biased Journalists list.

Update: New story today opens with the terrible journey of 8 miles, making the reporter the story to begin with, but not as bad as yesterday. Of course, she's hobnobbing with the president of Egypt, so she's back with the elites. She's uses a lot of leading questions with VP Suleiman.

Also today there have been more incidents of reporters being attacked. The question here is how many of them are making themselves into the story.

ABC reporter threatened with beheading, and numerous other attacks on reporters in the video there (including CNN's Anderson Cooper getting punched). FOX reporter hospitalized... but FOX didn't report the story as a story until they were released, at least. CNN and ABC seem to be the worst at turning cameras on themselves and making their reporters the center of the story. At least it's not as bad as Geraldo Running around in Afghanistan with an ascot and a pistol claiming he'd get in a gunfight with Osama bin Laden.

Leftist Lies and The Arizona Shooting

With luck, Arizona Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords will pull through and make as best a recovery as possible; as will the rest of the wounded. With time, the wounds left by the loss of the dead will heal.

---
But the wounds that are now opened and the lies that are now being spread are getting pretty bad in the realm of the living - the left is taking full advantage of Rahm Emmanuel's "Never let a good crisis go to waste" mentality, while violently erasing their own history.

Hillbuzz has a roundup here.

Michelle Malkin's roundup here.

On January 6th, the leftist blog DailyKos had a post entitled "My CongressWOMAN voted Against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!"

This has since been erased by the DailyKos.

While the left is condemning a map with "targeted districts" made up by Palin's camp that included Giffords' district - indicating it was vulnerable, as Giffords is a Blue Dog Democrat; the left is hiding its own history of such imagery:

Done by democrats.

Note that many of these items are being deleted and scrubbed from leftist websites, and in some instances even the google caches have been deleted and scrubbed. This is nothing new to the left.

Uncle Joe was editing history long before DailyKos.

It's something indicative of a group that can't stand up to criticism. The left is rabidly violent, and indeed the demented killer in AZ shares many points with the left - and was identified by those who knew him as being a rabid leftist.

The killer was a left wing pothead, according to those who knew him. But much like the leftist who flew his plane into the Austin, TX, IRS building, or the Jihadist who shot up Fort Hood - the left will simply write a counternarrative of lies and blame their usual targets and violently ignore reality. What doesn't fit with what they want, simply does not exist. Any information to the contrary must be destroyed. Stalin would be proud.

Let's hear it for democrats preaching civility!

Richard Cohen Lies

Richard Cohen wrote a column for the Washington Post today lamenting the lack of blue-blood New Englanders in the military, and how sad it is that the Ruling Class can have the Country Class fight for it, because if there were more blue-blood New Englanders in the military, we wouldn't have gone to war. The blue-blood New Englanders would've protested and stop the war. And isn't that sad.

That's my summary.

Here's the article, decide for yourself:
How Little The US Knows of War

Perhaps most importantly, here's the second sentence of the article:

The U.S. Army that fought the Vietnam War was reviled, not spit upon (that's a myth) but not much admired, either.

It is not a myth. Richard Cohen, you are a liar.

Here's some documentation for you - there are dozens upon dozens of incidents:
http://www.military-money-matters.com/real-facts-about-vietnam-veterans.html
http://www.military-money-matters.com/vietnam-veterans-spit-on-part-2.html
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/01/they_want_it_le.html

Here's one:

Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize winner and former assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, writes in his book, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966 of Captain Tom Carhart's return from Vietnam, pp. 324-5:

"Still in uniform, he was strolling through the O'Hare terminal in search of a telephone when a group of hippie girls darted up and spat on him. The shock and pain could have been no more intense if they had slashed him with knives. Reeling with surprise and uncertain what to do, he did nothing. His assailants scampered off through the airport crush as Tom wiped the saliva from his face, now aflame with humiliation. That night he got into an argument about the war with his friends' daughter, who was home from college. This is great, he told himself sardonically. I'm back less than twenty-four hours, I get spat on, then I get hassled by my countrymen over a cause for which I got myself shot twice. Welcome home, Johnny."

As to the "substance" of your column after the lie - Mr. Cohen, just because you live in a bubble isolated from the military doesn't mean everyone else does. I'd bet you don't know any truck drivers, machinists, or farmers, either; and likely no beat cops or firefighters. What you are writing about is the break between the Ruling Class - of which you are a part - and the Country Class - of which I, JBH, and 95% of the nation are. The culture you represent rejects the military and refuses to join - perhaps if you weren't busy celebrating the denouement and "no great songs", you'd get a clue. Also, there have been some great songs. They just belong to genres you don't listen to. On this you are simply ignorant.

---
These are for people who've earned them.

This one's for all you guys who aren't short yet, but want to be (you'll miss it when you're out and forget about police call and being drunk in morning formation - til then suck it up - time is on your side):

And for those who are staying in, but who aren't super-motivated:

And for genuine motivators like SSgt Hyatt, who had more legitimate motivation in his little finger than most Marines ever have, the kind of sergeant that made Hollywood sergeants:

Yes, it's a bit motarded. But at least it's not Taliban Bodies...

Okay, sure, here's Taliban Bodies, for all you motards*!

Is it a war song? Was Surfin' Bird?

I could do a year's worth of posts on music influenced by OIF & OEF, from Dixie Chicks' release of Travelin' Soldier in 2002 to Bad Religion's Let Them Eat War in 2004 to Toby Keith's Angry American/Courtesy of the Red White & Blue to John Michael Montgomery's Letters From Home in 2004 to... screw it, we got some room for more motivation by 3 Doors Down - Citizen Soldier (Nat Guard extended version):


*Motard: Combination of motivation and retard. Implies an individual who's motivated to a stupid level. Mindless, obnoxious motivation.

Did Obama Fail Driver's Ed?

Obama is one of those elites who must never drive.

He's got this metaphor he's been using on his permanent-campaign-mode speeches about a car.

“Somebody pointed out to me that when you're in a car and you want to go forward, you put it in ‘D,’” he said. “You want to go back in the ditch, you put it in ‘R.’ So I just want everybody to think about that.”

That doesn't make sense, does it. Those of us who are part of the country class know what cars are, and know how they work.

Democrat economic policy in one photo.

So there's this metaphor, where the economy and general state of the government is because someone drove it into the ditch. If you weren't aware of the CRA that caused the mortgage crisis or the democrats who resisted regulation of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac or the democratic congress that's been in charge since 2006 and wrote the bailouts (signed by fiscally irresponsible Bush who "abandoned free market principles"), you might just be willing to think that his metaphor makes sense. There are several more examples over at American Thinker, where they noticed the car metaphor sucks as well.

But, see, the people who drove us into the ditch were, in fact, the democrats.

From American Thinker

We're at 9% unemployment, possibly as much as 17% real unemployment (which covers those who are unemployed but no longer looking for work) - we're in no way, shape or form "out of the ditch". Keynesian stimulus, like Japan's Lost Decade, never works - and it isn't working now. More "D" isn't going to help.

It's Uncle Sam charging more deficit spending on the credit card the Chinese gave to us. Democrat are using spending on credit to buy us bread and circuses right up until there's no more credit to spend. In no way, shape or form are we out of the ditch.

But Obama doesn't drive, and probably hasn't in a long time. I shall break it down further.

Pictures make everything better.

See, when you're in the ditch, and D got you there (because it almost always does), you probably want to try some R. More D is not going to get you out of the ditch.

Just in case, take a look at what a car in the ditch always looks like. R rarely gets you in the ditch.

Now, if he wanted a metaphor, he could've said "if you keep turning right, you'll end up in the ditch". It's an absurd metaphor, given democrat policies being the root of our current woes, but it at least is somewhat consistent with how cars work. Of course, the rebuttal, that when you turn left, you get hit by a truck, is also true.

---

To continue the car metaphor, though, the people riding in the car are seeing a lot of warning signs. The guys in D just keep going past them.

Because Obama knows nothing about economics, and neither did Bush and the 2006 Dem Congress, or the Arlen Specter RINOs.

The rest of the country is yelling "STOP THE CAR!!!" Hundreds of thousands to a million plus marched on DC in a Tea Party that the ruling class pres decided to ignore. Another few hundred thousand showed up to the "Restoring Honor 8/28" rally. All these folks are shouting "STOP THE CAR!" And the ruling class isn't listening. And those bought off by the ruling class aren't listening because the guy in "D" is paying them off.

And there's one passenger who's looking between the rest and starting to see that the train never stops, is always on schedule, no matter what the guy in "D" says, and won't make an exception - and is beginning to see that there's no way to miss the train - especially by driving between the cars. The undecided passenger is starting to see that they guy going "slow down" is good, and the guy going "STOP!!!" has the best plan, even if it doesn't sound very... moderate.

Economic reality is always on time. It just doesn't care what time you think it is.

But the ideologue leftists and the leftist ruling class think if you just apply a little more D we'll make it past. Socialism works every time it's tried - just ask Cambodia, Russia, North Korea, China, Ukraine, Belarussia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland...

And just like how socialism always works, more D always works. Just ask Dirty Mary & Crazy Larry.



For those who require refreshers on Economics, try here. Driver's Safety, try here.

Mr. President, please watch them. Please stop the car. Please listen to us.

Please listen to Thomas Sowell:
"For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before."

We've seen Dirty Mary & Crazy Larry. We've watched Last Clear Chance and the Incredible Bread Machine. We know how this ends.

Media vs Black Tea Partiers

Reporters vs black conservatives at a national press club event on 8/4/10.



HT Jawa Report & Breitbart.

The New York Times Lies

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

- Vladimir Lenin

The New York Times has a story from July 17th about how the Tea Party isn't racist because it's just a bunch of racist hatemonger bigots, it's because they're old hatemonger bigot racists.

First off, that's outright bullshit. No matter how many times Alfonzo Rachel or Katrina Pierson show up at Tea Parties and are celebrated as leaders and spokespeople thereof... well, the racist left simply calls them names and ignores them.

The second lie is this one from the NYT:
There have been scattered reports around the country of racially charged rhetoric within the movement, most notably just before the vote on the new health care law last March, when Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, the legendary civil rights leader, was showered with hateful epithets outside the Capitol.

It's total bullshit.

Andrew Breitbart even offered $10,000 of his own money if anyone could prove the n-word was said even once.

From Breitbart's challenge to the leftists:

If we let them get away with Saturday’s stunt — using the imagery of the Civil Rights era and hurtful lies to cast aspersions upon the tea party whole — then they really will have won the day.

It’s time for the allegedly pristine character of Rep. John Lewis to put up or shut up. Therefore, I am offering $10,000 of my own money to provide hard evidence that the N- word was hurled at him not 15 times, as his colleague reported, but just once. Surely one of those two cameras wielded by members of his entourage will prove his point.

And surely if those cameras did not capture such abhorrence, then someone from the mainstream media — those who printed and broadcast his assertions without any reasonable questioning or investigation — must themselves surely have it on camera. Of course we already know they don’t. If they did, you’d have seen it by now.

THOUSANDS OF TIMES.

Rep. Lewis, if you can’t do that, I’ll give him a backup plan: a lie detector test. If you provide verifiable video evidence showing that a single racist epithet was hurled as you walked among the tea partiers, or you pass a simple lie detector test, I will provide a $10K check to the United Negro College Fund.

---
There were dozens of camera phones (even my old clamshell phone has a video recorder) and there were dozens of video cameras at the event. Dozens of people were taping and recording it. But the slurs didn't happen. Yet the left continues to repeat the slander against the Tea Parties.

Why? It's their narrative. They hate the Tea Parties, and the worst thing to call them is racist. In a multiculturalist tolerant society, that's the worst thing to be. That's why anyone who's black, brown, red, yellow, or off-white at a Tea Party gets the kind of names hurled at them like Michelle Malkin does every day in her email. Because the left can't write them off as just racist - and when the left's ideological worldview doesn't work, it gets angry.

Just like when leftist liberal union members beat up a black dude named Kenneth Gladney and called him n*gger.

Much as the Tea Parties aren't racist, and as Malkin, Zo and Pierson are denigrated by the left - insulted and more - and Gladney was beaten and called n*gger, the left itself is racist.

And to knock out one more anti-Tea Party slur, much as the left mocks the Tea Parties as astroturf - when they aren't - the left sees only itself - as all they do is astroturf.

The Oathkeepers and The Left

The Oathkeepers are a group of US military, law enforcement, and govt. personnel who refuse to obey unlawful orders. The specific list of orders they'll refuse is here.


You'd think something like this declaration would be pretty well universally acknowledged as a good thing:
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

But you'd be wrong. Archleftist progressives over at Mother Jones take a page from the racist leftist SPLC's playbook and demonize a group of folks perceived as being on "the right". When did standing up for liberty against the government become so unfashionable? Oh, that's right... Jan 20, 2009.

You'd think that if the left wasn't all about rounding people up into camps, but like the socialists in that Union of Socialist Republics and the National Socialist's Worker's Party, this really irritates them. This vocal minority of Oathkeepers reflects a pretty substantial group of the military.

Robin From Berkeley over at American Thinker discusses the strange hatreds from the left here.

For those who think that uniformed services should simply submit to the dictates of a corrupt civilian govt., I submit The Battle of Athens, which I'm sure will be seen again on this blog.

A Study In Contrasts

The Jawa Report has brought up the comparison in motives and apologies made for Islamic terrorist scumbags and those apologies hypothetically being given to the suicidal scumbag who flew into the IRS building in Austin:

The IRS out of the US NOW!!1!1!11!eleventy!!

It's worth noting that while it's heavy sarcasm, the ludicrousness of the arguments are well illustrated by the contrast.

When jihadis in New York or Washington or Mumbai or any number of other places around the globe are killing innocent people, the same idiotic arguments are used. When reapplied, the arguments are seen as flimsy excuses for terrorism that are only given by those who ideologically support terrorism.

---

Michelle Malkin points out the contrast between the Austin nutjob and the University of Alabama killer, and their coverage in the media.

Very telling contrasts all around.