Who believes the MSM anymore?
With the MSM’s differential treatment of the obviously sketchy – and obviously Russian-sourced – Steele dossier versus the much more convincing evidence of the Hunter Biden laptop, the final stake should have been driven through the heart of the MSM.
Take a look at the Hoover Biden laptop thing. We have a computer that the Toast of Medellin gave to a repair man and forgot about because meth-huffing losers forget about stuff. We got his signature on the papers. We got his ambulance chaser demanding it back. We got the testimony of a veteran with a vaguely Slavic name whistleblowing it, and I was told that it’s literally treason to doubt whistleblowing veterans with a vaguely Slavic name (maybe they have to look like a bratwurst in their uniform for this to apply – it’s hard to keep track of the ever-changin’ rules).
CARTOONS | AF Branco
View CartoonAnd yet we have Leslie Stahl, a licensed, approved journalist of journalism, telling the president that the laptop revelations are not verified.
No verified? If some hobo on a corner took a break from nadlering all over the streets of San Francisco to tell a passing NYT reporter, “I like James Bond movies and I’m pretty sure I saw Putin paying for Don Jr.’s latte at a Starbucks on Castro Street” we’d see a headline the next day reading “Anonymous Intelligence Insider Reports Trump Family Receiving Payoffs From Russian Leader.”
And then there’s this from Bernard Goldberg, whose long-time specialty has been MSM mendacity:
It’s not their reasoning, dishonest as it is, that’s so annoying. It’s the sanctimony of these journalists that’s galling. They’re not running the story because they don’t want to be participants in a smear campaign that might affect a presidential election – and they want us to really believe that?
Let’s make sure we understand that these are the same people who ran story after story about a fake dossier that was packed with lies about Donald Trump.
They’re the same people who ran countless stories informing us that Donald Trump was a Russian asset.
These are the same noble journalists who gave Adam Schiff more airtime than their own anchors get – all because he said he had solid proof that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.
So any sentient being ought to recognize that the press is not fulfilling any sort of objective function in our society and in our elections. It is the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Actually, that’s been true for a long time. But it’s so crystal clear at this point that to deny it would seem like madness.
And yet it happens every day. And the people who still believe in the veracity of the MSM are often intelligent in many other ways. The persistent power of propaganda is vast, and a mind is a difficult thing to change.
That’s what the MSM is banking on. It’s not so much that, as Goldberg wonderingly writes, “they want us to really believe” what they write, despite the contradictions and the obviousness of the bias. They want enough people to believe it to sway the election. They’re not pitching their approach to you or me. They know their audience, and they are counting on the faithfulness and susceptibility of that audience.
That’s why they do absurd things like pretending Biden was addressing George Lopez when he said “four more years of George…George…”, as the Orwellian/Soviet “fact-checker”at the once-proud WaPo claims. The fact that you can easily find the video and watch it, and see that of course he meant no such thing – he was very obviously substituting George Bush for Donald Trump, for a moment – doesn’t matter to the WaPo and the rest of the MSM hopping on board, although you might think it should. They believe that their audience either (1) won’t watch the clip; or (2) will watch it already having been primed to believe what the MSM says about it rather than their own lying eyes:.
The clip is unequivocal, and Biden is not referring to George Lopez (who was part of the panel he was addressing at the time):
I strongly believe that Joe Biden is the worst major party candidate ever to run for president in my lifetime. He is cognitively challenged, physically old as well and looking frail, corrupt, a long-time liar, not very bright even in his prime, wrong about almost every stand he’s ever taken in his long long political career, and will be putty in the hands of the left.
And yet the press is so eager to facilitate his election that they willingly and eagerly cover themselves with even greater shame than before. But then again, they have no shame.
When the media fake news talks about science, Earth theories, and the moon landing… plenty of people fall for the fake news.
He meant Trini Lopez.
He was in a reverie – with strains of “Lemon Tree” wafting through his brain.
I don’t know. I’m with LeClerc here. Since it’s Sundown Joe, he could have meant anything. Or – most likely – nothing at all.
Wasn’t Biden reliving his support for Kerry in 2004?
As you say, most folk who watch the Dem media liars believe most of their lies are actually true.
I’m pretty sure most of the news watching audience is the college educated folk whose own self-identity includes the idea of “intellectual superiority”.
I was talking with an Italian friend, whose parents have moved to the USA, who says that “Trump is an idiot”. Of all the usual insults, “Hitler”, “Racist”, “Creepy”, “Vulgar”, “a Bully”, I think anybody who really thinks Trump is an idiot is not watching the same reality movie I’m watching. In real life.
They’re watching the movie on TV called “the news”, and they think it’s real.
I plan to enjoy lunch with him in a couple days. He’s not happy with Trump and the Chinese virus.
It is perhaps almost as difficult for many normal middle-class Americans (even Democrats) to believe that the MSM are thoroughly corrupt purveyors of propaganda as to believe that the “alphabet agencies” (not to mention the Pentagon) have been completely politicized, that public schools and almost all colleges and universities are little more than incubators of “woke” insanity, that entertainment and professional sports are nothing but panem et circenses performed by brainless millionaires, that Hollywood seldom produces cinema of any significance, and that almost all our largest corporations have been complicit in legitimizing and funding BLM chaos and violence, because to believe this to know that the country in which they grew up is vanished forever, truly gone with the wind.
Tom Grey:
Actually, Biden ran (briefly) for president in 1988, against George Bush I. Might have been that, because Bush was running for re-election (four more years).
Alternatively, when Biden ran for VP in 2008, he ran against Bush II’s record. So it could have been that George, or perhaps both Georges morphed together.
Tom Grey:
When you have lunch, perhaps you could ask him what he thinks of the Bidens being in the pocket of China, or things like this.
Or the surge of COVID cases in Europe, reported in the beloved NY Times.
Might have been that, because Bush was running for re-election (four more years).
No, Bush was the VP in 1988, not the President.
Biden never faced Bush. He was hooted out of the Democratic primary campaign in the fall of 1987, after John Sasso leaked to the media a private videotape he’d been proffered of Biden’s absurd speech appropriating Neil Kinnock’s family history. (Gary Hart was hooted out of the campaign some months earlier when the photos of him on the SS Monkey Business with Donna Rice on his lap surfaced).
We were facing the prospect of ‘four more years of George uh’ in 1992 and in 2004. He wasn’t on the ballot anywhere in either year.
Art Deco:
Yes, of course. It was in 92 that Bush ran for re-election. Brain glitch on my part.
But in 1988 Bush was running, after 2 terms as VP. Biden dropped out as I wrote, but he was preparing and intending to run against Bush had Biden been nominated, which never came close to happening.
Interesting report on another example of a “symbiotic” relationship between the DOJ/FBI and the MSCM:
https://justthenews.com/accountability/lawsuit-filed-against-former-ny-attorney-bharara-and-five-others-lies-and-cover
Conspiracy seems to be their MO.
The orchestration of guilt surrounding Trump, Flynn, Manafort, Carter Page, Papadopoulos, et al. are just part of a disgusting, criminal pattern perpetrated by government LE (and one can add intelligence agencies—and now the Obama administration) in concert with the corrupt media.
What a team!!
That Joe Biden will be putty in the Left’s hands is a feature not a bug. His willingness to lie, an asset. As for shame, once the idea is embraced that the end sought is so important that it justifies whatever means are necessary to achieve it… then shame becomes a meaningless concept.
but he was preparing and intending to run against Bush had Biden been nominated, which never came close to happening.
He may have been preparing against Bush, but at the time he withdrew it was not at all certain Bush would be the nominee. You’ll recall that Alexander Haig entered the race and had great fun sticking a stilletto into GHWB, a man of whom he thought little. Dole was ahead until the first week of March and for a while it looked like he’d take the nomination.
The MsM is trying push the narrative that, because Biden was being interviewed by George Lopez, Biden was referring to Lopez when he said “”What kind of country are we gonna be? Four more years of George uh . . . George . . .”
As Mollie Hemingway tweeted “Because ‘four more years of George Lopez‘ makes more sense than ‘four more years of George Bush‘ when talking about four more years of a GOP administration that you’re ‘running against.'”
Boom!
then shame becomes a meaningless concept.
Compare Gary Hart’s response to embarassments to Biden’s or Clinton’s.
Ymar,
“moon landing”?
j e,
I think their unwillingness to face the truth is secondary to their unwillingness to face their having been played the fool… and for their entire life. Pride.
If they’re very lucky, the right will win and they’ll never have to face the results of what their willful blindness has enabled. If very unlucky, the left will win and then their useful idiocy will no longer be needed.
It isn’t just those on the right for whom the hard left has plans.
My impression of Sundown Joe’s “George” gaff is that this was a remnant from all of Obama/Biden’s first term and even some of the second term. I watched a few hundred of Obama’s speeches in his first couple years in office, and a couple hundred thereafter.
Obama spent half of his time in office running, or perhaps ranting is a better word, against George W. Bush. The incessant referencing of Bush could have been construed to be a psychological obsession of Obama, though my best guess is that it was just his favorite rhetorical device. (An Alinsky device?)
Geoffrey B correctly observes “That Joe Biden will be putty in the Left’s hands is a feature not a bug. His willingness to lie, an asset. As for shame, once the idea is embraced that the end sought is so important that it justifies whatever means are necessary to achieve it… then shame becomes a meaningless concept.”
It is past time to recognize we are dealing with an evil, truly evil oppressive force in the Democrats. Senator Markey ( D-MA), your Senator, Neo, just said the Constitution is racist, homophobic, sexist and discriminatory. He will easily be re-elected by the highly educated residents of Massachusetts! The Harvards, the MITs, the many colleges and universities, the geeks, and of course the women who are brainlessly titillated by the thought of a colored female as Vice President, soon to ascend to POTUS.
The MSM, the big corporations, and Wall Street all recognize it and are obedient to the coming oppression. Implicitly they all hope for their individual salvation through a resurrection of Fascism.
Hi, Cicero. I think you may have made a mistake with the statement there from Sen. Markey; it seems (I just looked up a couple of quotes from it to see what his point was) that he was referring to the ‘originalist’ interpretation of the Constitution, not the Constitution itself. I think his argument is fallacious and that it should be clear to any sensible reader of his words that it is, but I also think it’s useful to bear in mind that this is his stance, not quite the same as you described it.
I got really worried at first because if it were really the case that he thought of the Constitution as such in that way, then he would be a total hypocrite and indeed a self-perjurer of sorts, since the oath of office (which I also just looked up here) requires him to support and defend said Constitution “without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion”. If in the good Senator’s mind, the document as such were racist, sexist, etc., then it would obviously constitute a huge “mental reservation”. But as it is, I think we should be fair and note that there is a difference between the Constitution per se and any given interpretation thereof, however thin the rationalization of the distinction might be.
The Constitution is written in as plain a manner as is possible. Originalism seeks to interpret the Constitution as written, using common sense as its first metric. Sen. Markey is implicitly stating that interpreting the Constitution as written is “racist, sexist and homophobic”. His use of the term “originalism” is an attempt at obfuscation. In actuality, it is an attack upon the Constitution. Demonstrated by the fact that an amended Constitution that satisfied Sen. Markey would bear little resemblance to the founder’s Constitution and would restrict liberty to such an extent as to be a travesty. The man is a disingenuous demagogue.
Why do people think that MSM is “real news” and “journalism”? Because of decades of conditioning and like the frog in the slow boiling pot don’t realize that it is a narrative of the elite class. I remember starting my journey of not believing the media while I was based in Europe in 1997-2000. What I saw in CNN, NBC, BBC (yes even them) and read in the Post, NYT, WSJ, International Herald Tribune was not what I was experiencing. It continued when I got home.
What David Burge tweeted in 2015 is still apropos.
1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
#lefties
But it is the greatest generation and the boomers that are deceived. The level of cynicism among the younger generation towards “news” is pronounced. They really do get their news from the net and social media. Now that social media has blatantly fixed their thumb on the scale they will lose credibility. They don’t care because they are all in on maintaining the deep state and their status in it.
So news will be more raw, un-editorialized and subject to misinformation. This is very very dangerous to our republic because people can be mis-lead and over emotional. The example I remember is the Athenian admirals being killed for not being able to rescue sailors after a great victory over the Spartans. Or when the Athenians voted to kill all the citizens of a breakaway city and sent two boats to do so. After an evening of sobering up they realized they made a mistake and sent a fast trireme to countermand the order.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arginusae
So how to rectify the situation. The first step I believe is to revisit the Sullivan doctrine and adopt the British model of libel and slander. If the media had done a smidgen of investigation no way would they chant Russia, Russia Russia. Nor would they be allies to dis information campaigns by government agencies.
The second step is eliminating section 230 for social media. It has outlived it’s purpose. When dollar signs gets involved people change their behavior. In the meantime we just keep speaking the truth to any and all who will listen.
Another example. When the media speak of “suburban” women they mean university educated, international minded, affluent women. That is a sub-set of the suburbs. I notice this when I drive from my home to Birmingham/Bloomfield Hills. Rich suburbs of Detroit. As I drive along my prosperous city with many many Trump signs they slowly give way to Biden signs. This is another false narrative.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/10/polls-show-mr-biden-leading-by-five-to.html
Only a small percentage of the population believes the press. I’d say 25-30% actually believe. Then another 20-30% pretend to believe, fully aware it’s bs but like it because it supports their politics.
j e– I believe you have managed to correctly sum up the situation in just one paragraph, and that situation is one of denial.
People have a suspicion, lurking in the back of their minds, of what has happened, but they just can’t face it, for to face it means the collapse of the comforting, “normal” world they live their lives in and move through, and the cold, cold wind would start to blow.
“…the rationalization of the distinction…”
Can’t say for certain whether Sen. Markey has been reading his “Through the Looking-Glass”, but what he is saying (no doubt with a straight face) is—very simply—“The Constitution means what WE DEMOCRATS say it means.”
You see, by interpreting the Constitution in the way it SHOULD be interpreted (that and NO OTHER), the Democrats, are REDEEMING this DATED document, saving it from being the “racist”, “misogynist”, “LGBT-ETC-ist”, “fat-ist”, etc. document it REALLY is.
And if the Democrats are NOT ALLOWED to interpret it in such a way, then just chuck the damn thing—it isn’t worth the parchment it’s written on…. (It’s just another OWM-created outrage that “strengthens” and “legitimizes” the “1619 Project”, Inc., etc., etc.).
That’s about as subtle as it gets, I guess.
(And no doubt just another reason to vote for the Democratic Party….)
His long political grift doesn’t speak well for the voters of Delaware, nor for the state’s business interests that have been nurturing him for so long.
Were he not an even worse candidate than Hillary, he might have attained Bill’s status as head of a First Family. A family that takes bribes and extortion money from foreign (and domestic) interests with impunity. But Biden is no Slick Willie, and Hunter is no Chelsea.
The electoral college has saved Republican candidates in how many presidential cycles now? There has to be something to the famous quote, “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’m so freakin’ thankful for that Providence.
Amen
Good Greenfield article on the Bidens:
http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2020/10/hunter-biden-chaired-foundation-to-stop.html
Thank you for the link, Zaphod. In light of Greenfield’s revelations, a good question for Delaware “news” outlets is, “What’s up, guys?” Not a bad question for the likes of the WSJ, WaPo, or the NYT, either.
Speaking of “foundations”, I’ve been wondering why Biden didn’t just establish—a la the (illustrious) “Clinton Foundation”—a “Biden Family Foundation…for responsible government, honesty, ethics, education, family support, respect for women, etc., etc.”.
(That is, to peddle influence and launder tons of money.)
Sure would’ve save them all a lot of trouble, so it seems, at least.
But maybe it wasn’t really possible; because just maybe the BEST part of the grift was “the THRILL of the chase”, along with all those meetings with “important people”, the photo-ops, the sheer pride of being the master of their domain…and who knows what else—or really wants to know? Oh, and the money.
(IOW the thrill of opening up “new horizons”? Starting up new scams? Grooming new “partners” (or victims)? And the SHEER ILLEGALITY of it all—thus proving time and time again their superiority to others, their ability to scoff at those absurd rules, injunctions, social mores, laws—for the little people but not for them, nossir? The indescribable frisson of “being naughty”? The adrenalin rush of “almost but not quite getting caught”?)
“Living life to the full”!!?
And why sacrifice all that for the sake of becoming just another dull, run-of-the-mill (even if mightily corrupt) foundation?
(Or maybe the Bidens, Inc., just did it BECAUSE THEY COULD?…)
(Why shouldn’t they be able to count on an obliging media looking the other way?)
To be fair, there can be certain built-in problems with some types of foundations, which the Bidens no doubt would have preferred not to deal with…:
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/clinton-foundation-donations/
(see the graph mid-way through the link)…
Sparticus
Going along Fourteen Mile from Bingham Farms eastward, then down to someplace toward Thirteen Mile about a month ago. Not many signs at all but those I saw were slightly more toward Trump. 60-40, I’d say. From what little I’ve heard about politics there, Trump’s “icky” and nothing else matters.
A friend told me about some local issues–arrangements for schools–in one place and said everything was in place and looking practical and useful combined with caution. Then some real ignoramuses got hold of the news, hassled the school board and…it was all reversed.
“good and hard”
The MSM is dead… that’s a fact. Unfortunately the MSM, our purveyors of truth, our fact finders – are not aware of this. They can’t even write their own obituary.
This may not be documented immediately, but history will look back and report on their squandering of a precious right that they were given by the Constitution.
Sad day
There’s a simple explanation: TDS is actually a morph of BDS, and Joe’s senile brain just picked up the previous version.
Neo wrote: “And the people who still believe in the veracity of the MSM. . .”
Fewer and fewer do, as several other commenters have noted above. It turns out that Tucker Carlson has just swept away all records for viewership this month, and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are in second and third place. in fact Tucker’s numbers are a record for cable news, according to what I was reading. Americans are doing what Americans do — bending the marketplace to meet their tastes. And the MSM are powerless to stop it as long as they continue to tell their own fairy tale view of the world. All of which is very good news. Will it be enough to drive a Trump victory? Possibly not, but consumers are telling the MSM what they want, and only a foolish industry would continue to give them something else.
We’re still paying for NPR.
A recent poll shows 56% see themselves as better off than they were 4 years ago. Swing states such as Wisconsin no longer have more than 200% tariffs on their dairy products sold to Canada. Pennsylvania is faced with choosing between a candidate who promises to put 10% of them out of work and one leaving them to pray in the dark to the sun and wind gods. The poor no longer have to compete with illegal aliens. 3 Middle Eastern countries have normalized relations with Israel, and Serbia and Kosovo have normalized commercial relations with each other. North Korea hasn’t launched a missile in over a year. Meanwhile we are withdrawing troops from abroad while our influence is growing. China’s hopes rest on November 3 although they may make a desperate move when they see their window of opportunity closing. My 401-K has gained 30% this year. Anti-free-enterprisers are rioting like 1968 turned out so well for them. Mr. T announces he’ll show up at some airport in a few hours, and people jam the streets while Uncle Joe stencils circles on the floor to presage the confinement he intends to impose on the populace once he takes power.
And yet, I worry. What a tribute to the news and social media that they can make you doubt your lying eyes.
Not I, sayeth little Sammy! I haven’t trusted them since (hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) a damned LONG TIME ago.
Liars, they are, and damned BAD at deceiving attempts.
Frank, the other “Mr. T” says “I pity da fools” who vote for Biden.