Regarding Drudge and The Knockout Game, I told you guys, you're too easily led:

"A column on Slate.com reports that while the game does exist, there is no hard data to support the notion that it is a growing trend that has reached epidemic levels. It also refutes the suggestion by some news organizations that some of the attacks have been racially motivated.

The Slate piece makes reference to another piece on the patheos.com website that says, 'Nobody seems to have any evidence that it's spreading, or that it's new, or that it's racially motivated.'

The piece continues, 'Most sources claim that it is spreading, and a number of sources claim that it is racially motivated. But how do they know? Where are they getting their data from?' 

 Um, a silly (but crafty) fedora-wearing dude, who's into chain-yanking "whitey" waaay more than disseminating news? (Like that word? "Disseminating." Yep, that's a three billion dollar word, right there. "He's so well-spoken,...") Matt Drudge is an instigator. 

The Drudge Report stirs up trouble, at the expense of both blacks and whites, but knowing full-well blacks can least afford it - and, generally, blacks don't read it.

Run by America's current genius of journalism, proving what that's always meant at it's best,... 

Trooper York Guest Posts:

"This was featured at Drudge.

It was all over the news the last couple of days. Of course most liberal news media outlets and bloggers refuse to address it. Because that would be racist you see. Just ask Crack. Or Oprah. Or the Evil Blogger Lady. Or the Instanerd."

Um, Troop, you're right, I didn't mess with The Knockout Game. But not because it's too hot a topic for TMR readers or I to handle, but because: 

A) Being over 10 years old even to the mainstream press (The Knockout Game's much older in the black population - a fact no one's upset about going unreported) as "news" The Knockout Game's shock value is pretty low in my neck of the woods. 

B) I'm more-than-aware of Drudge's desperate search for racial dog whistles.

And C) Dancing to Drudge's tune - or watching others do so - is boring.

If you wish to pretend my actions are really because I'm a hypocrite who "can't handle the truth," so be it.

By now, I know, arguing with you is pointless,....

 

"Thought is long overdue. So is honesty."

Yes, Richard Cohen, a journalist and columnist for nearly half a century, a college-educated, award-winning commentator, thought slavery was not such a bad thing until he saw a movie about it in 2013. Richard Cohen admits, in a major American newspaper, that until this month, he believed an archaic, widely discredited “Lost Cause” white supremacist myth. And in his nearly 70 years of literacy, he has not seen or heard or read anything to challenge that myth until he saw a Hollywood film on the subject. This is ignorance on a staggering scale. That paragraph should only preface a retirement announcement. “I am a deeply ignorant and cloistered old man,” should be the next sentence, “and no one should pay me for my views and opinions, because they are worthless.”

"Want better media commentary? Find better conservatives"

"What you have is a load of information that you may find entertaining if you care about politicians and their teams as celebrities. It is a collection of funny and embarrassing stories about famous people, mainly, except it is a collection of funny and entertaining stories about famous people that is convinced that it’s very important and monumental,…

...There is no excuse, though, for the likes of Morning Joe and The Today Show and the entire rest of the professional political media industry to pretend that this stuff is actual news and not meaningless dish."

I owe a certain 13-year-old an apology.

On Mashable a couple of months ago, teenager Ruby Karp wrote a blog post headlined, "I'm 13 and None of My Friends Use Facebook." When the post went viral and major media outlets began pontificating about "the decline of Facebook," I quickly penned a rather critical response. Karp's anecdotes, I pointed out, were no substitute for real data, and it was silly for journalists to draw sweeping generalizations about Facebook's future on the basis of her post—especially when the best available data at the time showed no significant decline in Facebook usage among teens.

I stand by that criticism of the way in which major media outlets covered Karp's story. To Karp herself, though, I must now humbly apologize. As it turns out, my own headline—Sorry, Mashable's 13-Year-Old Correspondent Is Wrong About Facebook—was the one proven wrong.

-Will Oremus, Slate Magazine, October 30, 2013

I'm Starting To Get Turned Off To Facebook 

- The Crack Emcee, TMR, April 27, 2011

 

Got an email asking if I’d go on tv and say that Julianne Hough in blackface is not a big deal. Embarrassed for @CNN. — jelani cobb (@jelani9) October 29, 2013

Here's the media's current "crazy" black Republican candidate:

  “When one hears the word meditation, it conjures an image of Maharishi Yoga talking about finding a mantra and striving for nirvana. … The purpose of such meditation is to empty oneself. … [Satan] is happy to invade the empty vacuum of your soul and possess it. That is why people serve Satan without ever knowing it or deciding to, but no one can be a child of God without making a decision to surrender to him. Beware of systems of spirituality which tell you to empty yourself. You will end up filled with something you probably do not want.”

But here's the media's knowledgable NewAge Master:

  “One often hears and reads about the dangers of Yoga, particularly of the ill-reputed Kundalini Yoga. The deliberately induced psychotic state, which in certain unstable individuals might easily lead to a real psychosis, is a danger that needs to be taken very seriously indeed. These things really are dangerous and ought not to be meddled with in our typically Western way. It is a meddling with Fate, which strikes at the very roots of human existence and can let loose a flood of sufferings of which no sane person ever dreamed. These sufferings correspond to the hellish torments of the chönyid state…”

And here's the man the media wants you to forget:

  “Those who become bored by conventional “Bible” religions, and seek “enlightenment” by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals.”

So, I guess - when it comes to the media - "crazy" it is,...

 

 ADDED - H/T Althouse:

   

Not good - when the more you talk to your friend, the darker his mind grows:

I think conservative media creates an echo chamber, which allows a lot of these elected officials to believe incorrectly that they have majority support behind them, and that strategies like defunding are going to work.

Because of the media bubble, they didn’t realize it wasn’t true. Some of them still don’t understand.

After the 2012 election, I thought it was going to teach them a lesson: that when you close yourselves out from the outside world, you start distrusting all outside sources, you can get misled. You had a little bit of soul-searching … That seems to have lasted a couple of months. [Recently] you had Ted Cruz on TV saying about the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, “There were too many government employees in the sample, I don’t believe the poll.” So there is still interest in staying in the bubble.

But I think it’s simplistic to blame specific media figures for keeping them within the bubble. And the reason for that is this: There’s always somebody out there who’s going to write whatever stupid shit. And so if you don’t indulge the conservative bubble, you’re going to lose the audience and they’re going to go to somebody else. So it’s structurally inevitable that this happens on the right. The only way that it can stop is if the audience stops demanding it, because they realize they’ve been misleading them. But I don’t know how long it’s going to take to beat that into their heads. Loss of the House in 2014, which I think is a very real possibility now – if that happens, I think that might beat some sense into the party. Maybe. But you know, 2012 losses didn’t do it. So I don’t know how many times they need to get burned before they realize the stove is hot.

"So if you don’t indulge the conservative bubble, you’re going to lose the audience and they’re going to go to somebody else," huh? Story of my blogging life. Which makes the problem easy to dissect:

First, we have to calibrate if anyone really cares,..

 

Nazi Leader Hermann Goering’s Niece is a NewAger, just like her uncle's associates, talking of glorified past lives while "working" as an acupuncturist. And this is after she spent time (with Arianna Huffington?) in the Rajneesh cult of Osho, which famously poisoned an entire Oregon town over (what else?) politics.

The Atlantic's clueless reporter accepts how different she is.

Who are we to judge?