The Meme Policeman - Posts - "This meme claims that the electoral college was the South’s idea and was implemented to help slave states. This is dubious at best.
-During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, there was significant division over how to elect the president. Initially, some delegates did propose a direct election by the people. This was championed by James Madison, a southerner, and two northerners (James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris).
-However, this proposal was roundly rejected by the convention, and not because of slavery. One of the most outspoken members against direct election was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who feared that demagoguery could result in a monarch in a direct election, a common fear at the time. Most of the delegates, north and south, preferred an indirect election of the president...
-When it first took shape, the Electoral College wouldn’t have helped the South significantly. Under the initial apportionment of the of the House, the slaveholding states would have held 39 out of 92 electoral votes, or about 42%. Based on the 1790 census, about 41% of the nation’s total white population lived in those same states, a tiny difference...
-Once decided, the Electoral College was met with general satisfaction and received little resistance from the state ratifying conventions. Northerners and anti-slavery proponents defended it, like Alexander Hamilton did in Federalist No. 68. It was, perhaps naively, held up by most as a way to ensure virtuous people made the decision instead of the mob. As Hamilton put it, the EC was “most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated negotiations.”
-Ironically, it was the anti-slavery John Quincy Adams who first benefited from the system, when he won despite losing the popular (and electoral) vote to Andrew Jackson in 1824 (the House decided the election since neither had a majority). It was pro-slavery Jackson who became one of history’s most prominent critics of the EC, lambasting it for preventing the people “to express their own will.”
-The EC made no difference in deciding the presidency during the 36 years before the Civil War. Except in 1860, Lincoln had 39.9% of the vote (in a 4 person race) but won a crushing victory in electoral votes. Many in the South ran the numbers and realized the North would be able to continually crush them with the EC and quickly stampeded to secession."
Everything liberals don't like (e.g. punctuality and politeness) is linked to "Racism" and "White Supremacy"
Tom O'Halloran - "Veteran: One Day
Man with dicks stuck on him: A whole month"
"This says so much about what is wrong with our country."
Jacobin on Twitter - "We shouldn’t fetishize mom and pops. They offer lower wages, skimpier benefits, and inferior labor protections."
Since Communists want the government to take over everything, this is consistent
Opinion | ‘Mr. Jones’ and the deadly consequences of shoddy journalism - The Washington Post - "Stalin was undoubtedly the general leading this crime against humanity, but he had lieutenants. And not all were Russian. Foremost among them was Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard), the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Man in Moscow.” Duranty was fond of saying the Soviet experiment required sacrifice — omelets and broken eggs and all that — and spent his decades-long career lying to the people of the United States about the extent of Soviet atrocities in Ukraine and elsewhere... Duranty retains the Pulitzer he won for his dishonest reporting that helped cover up the deaths of millions. Perhaps it’s time that changed"
Washington Post settles Nicholas Sandmann defamation lawsuit in Covington Catholic High School controversy - "The Washington Post is the latest news organization to settle a defamation lawsuit launched by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann over its botched coverage of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder that had portrayed the Kentucky teen as the aggressor... This follows the multi-million dollar settlement CNN made with the teenager back in January. Sandmann offered a not-so-subtle warning to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey... Attorney Todd McMurtry previously told Fox News that lawsuits against “as many as 13 other defendants" would be filed.Among them: ABC, CBS, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, NPR, Slate, The Hill, and Gannett which owns the Cincinnati Enquirer, as well as miscellaneous other small outfits, according to McMurtry. Separate lawsuits against the Washington Post and NBC have already been filed"
Personal news: why I’m now leaving MSNBC - "July 24th was my last day at MSNBC. I don’t know what I’m going to do next exactly but I simply couldn’t stay there anymore. My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions. The problem is the job itself. It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis... It’s possible that I’m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would “rate.” The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices — it’s practically baked in to the editorial process – and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it’s taboo to discuss how the ratings scheme distorts content, or it’s simply taken for granted, because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing.But behind closed doors, industry leaders will admit the damage that’s being done... this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others… all because it pumps up the ratings.This cancer risks human lives, even in the middle of a pandemic. The primary focus quickly became what Donald Trump was doing (poorly) to address the crisis, rather than the science itself. As new details have become available about antibodies, a vaccine, or how COVID actually spreads, producers still want to focus on the politics. Important facts or studies get buried... Context and factual data are often considered too cumbersome for the audience. There may be some truth to that (our education system really should improve the critical thinking skills of Americans) – but another hard truth is that it is the job of journalists to teach and inform, which means they might need to figure out a better way to do that... they use this subjective nature of the news to justify economically beneficial decisions. I’ve even heard producers deny their role as journalists. A very capable senior producer once said: “Our viewers don’t really consider us the news. They come to us for comfort.”
Libertarians would blame government regulation for the market leading to the poor quality of media coverage
Liberals will just bash Fox News and other 'conservative' media for being terrible and pretend the liberal media is great
Journalism's Death by a Thousand Tweets e - "Imagine you want to create a digital platform that will both destroy—or, at the very least, seriously enfeeble—the journalism profession, and simultaneously make you a vast amount of money. How should you do it?Well, first you should ensure that the primary goal of your platform has absolutely nothing to do with the stated goals of the journalism profession... Then you should try to get as many journalists to use your platform as much as possible... Perhaps the most necessary feature, however, is also the most subtle: This new platform should offer a veneer of journalistic utility... every conceivable step must be taken to mitigate the possibility of genuine conversation or meaningful, journalistically relevant user interaction taking place. In particular—and to give some possible examples—users should only be exposed to opinions, articles, and facts to which they want to be exposed; the rapid dissemination of “breaking news” should be encouraged, ideally without the requirement (or even the possibility) of context, fact-checking, assessment of genuine newsworthiness, or indeed any kind of editorial curation whatsoever; conversations should be fully surveilled, sometimes censored, and encouraged to take place in full view of everyone, thus limiting the possibility of the private exploration of alternative, non-mainstream viewpoints; empathy, sympathy, and face-to-face engagement should be actively discouraged, if not rendered impossible by the platform’s design interface, while hatred, tribalism, and outrage should be fostered and encouraged (this will have the added benefit of maximising user engagement, thus allowing you to sell your users even more ads); and, perhaps most importantly, the “conversations” themselves should be severely circumscribed, so as to prevent the possibility of genuine nuance and deep reflection taking place (by, for example, limiting the number of characters you’re allowed to type). Such a veneer will allow you to rebut accusations that your platform is perniciously habit-forming and seriously deleterious to the health of the individual, the journalism profession, and wider society. As the reader will undoubtedly already have guessed, such a platform—or at least something very close to it—already exists: It is called Twitter... While Twitter’s global impact and reach is undoubtedly enormous, its impact on the journalism profession has been seismic. At present, almost a quarter (24.6 percent) of Twitter’s authenticated users are journalists or news organisations; journalists are also the platform’s most active users by profession (as measured by follower ratios and number of tweets). More than a quarter (27 percent) of journalists turn to Twitter as their first source of news, and 83 percent regard it as their most valuable social media platform. A staggering 96 percent of journalists use the platform on a weekly basis, and 90 percent claim that they wish to maintain or increase their engagement with Twitter in the near future. Indeed, such has been the outsized influence of journalists on the platform that they were singled out for special mention and thanks in a series of tweets by the company’s billionaire CEO, Jack Dorsey, on Twitter’s ninth birthday... The journalist Jeff Jarvis has made the astonishing claim that refusing to use Twitter (or other social platforms like Facebook) is a reflection of one’s (journalistic) privilege and harmful to historically disenfranchised communities... What is encouraging, however, is that a growing number of journalists are becoming sceptical—even overtly hostile—to the role Twitter plays in the journalism profession... journalism as a profession now largely takes place by virtue of—and is, in fact, almost entirely mediated and governed by—a largely unaccountable corporate advertising and surveillance behemoth, the goals and values of which are antithetical to journalism, traditionally understood. All of which raises an obvious question: Why are journalists so enamoured of Twitter?"
Viral Racist Videos Gone Wild. A disturbing “Karen” clip drives home the dangers of caught-on-camera “everyday racism” exposés - "A Twitter video clip that has been retweeted over 85,000 times shows a woman cowering, whimpering and shrieking in terror while a man taunts and berates her, apparently for cutting him off in traffic and flipping him the bird. And the man, who filmed the video and put it online, is meant to be the good guy. The maker of the video, Karlos Dillard — a self-described entertainer and public speaker who is black—claimed that the woman, whom he mockingly addressed as “Karen,” had also used a racial slur... Dillard seemed to be far more concerned about the woman cutting him off and flipping him off than about the supposed racial slur. There were more red flags, such as several other videos in which Dillard accused white or Asian women of racist verbal abuse but the alleged abuse always happened off-camera. And, most damning, a video in which Dillard and his husband Kris openly discussed “laying traps for racism” by provoking confrontations and falsely accusing people of saying or doing something racist, on the assumption that those who don’t protest their innocence are essentially pleading no contest to racism because, deep down, they know they’ve been caught. (Or something like that.)... ultimately, there are two plausible scenarios. One: the entire thing was a self-promoting setup. (It’s worth noting that as soon as the video went viral, Dillard tried to literally cash in on it by selling T-shirts.) Two: the woman was a bad and rude driver, but Dillard blew up a routine and non-racial traffic spat into a racial incident. Either way, this does not look good for him...
This is far from the first viral racism video to push a false or dubious narrative. Others include:
The “MAGA hat kids” vs. the Native American elder
The “napping while black” scandal at Yale
The Chipotle “racist” who was vindicated
The mobbing of “Crosswalk Cathy”
The infamy of “Barbecue Becky”...
viral racist outrage videos have an ugly side, too. They can be used to target people who are mentally ill and hold them up for public ridicule and cruel entertainment— a modern version, one might say, of the freak shows of times past. They can be used for grift and revenge. They can promote racial polarization more than understanding, encouraging the assumption that every interracial conflict is about race. And they can causes serious harm to their targets."
Of course, to liberals only Andy Ngo counts as a grifter, since he pierces their narrative despite having multiple oppressed group identities
A Few Terms We Aren't Using Anymore (And Why) - "CNN also compiled a list of words and expressions with racist roots. Among them: cakewalk, peanut gallery, blacklist, and grandfathered in. We’re adding these to our banned words list. And a reader pointed out that using the phrase “we discovered the work of so-and-so” is problematic. You won’t hear that sort of colonialist phrasing from us anymore either."
The left, as usual, takes 1984 as an instruction manual
Lucas Lynch - "Obama refusing to endorse Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Paula Jean Swearengin, and the many other community organizers who are from our grassroots Democratic family says all you need to know about @DNC Establishment."
"Yes, it says that neither Obama nor the DNC are anti-Semites nor identitarian leftists, and are interested in winning an election.Good on them for not endorsing these far-left deplorables. "
ROBERT HARDMAN: Now THAT'S a royal example to follow! - "After a week she would rather forget – on the back of twelve months we would all rather forget – the Queen deserves a spot of good news. Yesterday, that walked through the Sovereign's Entrance to Windsor Castle in the form of the Duke of Edinburgh.Having spent four weeks in two hospitals, the duke was finally back in his own bed last night, much to the relief of the entire castle. For this is not just home to the Queen and the duke but to a community of around 300 – clergy, curators, military, musicians and their families. And everyone there is acutely aware of the debt this place owes to the duke.When much of it burned down in 1992, it was the duke who ran the monumental restoration scheme. Beyond the castle walls, the entire estate has been transformed by him. One of the first things the Queen did on acceding to the throne was to appoint the duke as Ranger of the Great Park. His handiwork is everywhere... We have heard a lot in recent days from two former Windsor residents who found the royal existence a burden so intolerable that they felt impelled to emigrate. Yet Prince Philip endured rather more hostility than a spat about who made who cry at a dress fitting.'They were absolutely bloody to him. They patronised him. They treated him as an outsider,' his friend, Lord Brabourne (married to the duke's cousin Patricia Mountbatten) revealed many years later. As the duke himself once acknowledged to his friend Gyles Brandreth: 'I was told 'keep out' and that was that. I tried to find useful things to do.'He got on with his primary duty of supporting his spouse – at state occasions and on royal tours – and, at the same time, threw himself into making a difference. In his case, he did it through actions rather than words. It is true that he was the first member of the family to give a television interview.In his case, though, it was not to dwell on himself. It was a discussion of 'Commonwealth technical training week' with the BBC's Richard Dimbleby. That was in 1961."
Unlike Meghan Markle he can't make unfounded allegations of racism, so too bad
