Twitter sins: Roseanne Barr bites the dust

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’re a blogger, you need to comment on the news du jour.

Well, maybe need is too strong a word. Maybe “are tempted” is better. I am tempted to cover Roseanne Barr’s firing because Roseanne Barr’s firing by ABC is the thing right now. And of course it touches on large themes: free speech, racism, economic boycotts and/or firings, and Twitter.

Is Twitter a large theme? In the psychological sense, it is. People continually write things on Twitter that they know are risky and might come back to haunt them. But they do it anyway.

Why? It’s pretty simple. Twitter rewards the edgy and controversial, and can be accessed day or night, sleepy or wide-awake, under the influence or cold stone sober. It rewards stepping right up to a line and maybe even over that line. But some lines cannot be stepped over without serious repercussions, as Roseanne Barr discovered. One of those lines is racism.

She should have known that already. Why didn’t she? Or, why did she cross that line anyway?

She says her judgement was impaired by Ambien. And maybe it was; it’s a good enough explanation as any:

Roseanne Barr is blaming Ambien for her racist tweets and telling her fans, “I’m not a racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke.”

Sanofi, the maker of Ambien, responded with a statement full of shade: “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”

Seems like Sanofi has a better sense of humor there than Roseanne, who had tweeted: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” (“vj” was a reference to Valerie Jarrett).

Twitter is tempting for celebrities, because it’s a way to have an instant dialogue with the world and gain followers:

[Roseanne] had said on Tuesday that she was leaving Twitter, but she just can’t seem to log off.

She zig-zagged between apologizing for her foul Twitter behavior and retweeting memes that made her apology sound insincere.

ABC can fire Roseanne for any reason or no reason. Racism is certainly a reason. But why was her tweet deemed racist? After all, it seems to be standard practice to compare politicians you don’t like to apes—just ask George W. Bush, aka Chimpy McHitler. And weren’t the apes in those “Planet” movies superior to humans?

It doesn’t matter. There is no racist tradition of comparing white people to apes, and there is such a racist tradition regarding black people. Valerie Jarrett is black. And the defense that the tweet was a joke—which I certainly believe it was meant to be—is somewhat weakened by the fact that it was an unfunny joke, and also that in the current climate “I meant it as a joke” is not considered a defense to a racist remark.

One more thing—ABC was probably somewhat uncomfortable with the show to begin with. It may not have taken much for them to cancel it, despite its popularity. As for Roseanne, why did she sabotage herself? Because that’s what she did. I think it wasn’t just Ambien-head, it was Twitter madness.

Question authority—including the press

The New Neo Posted on by

The press keeps telling us they’re Speaking Truth to Power. But they forgot to consider that they are Power, and that they often don’t Speak the Truth.

So maybe the public would turn on them someday:

Hillary and the back brace

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, I’ve noticed all the talk about HIllary’s odd covered-up garb and whether she’s wearing a back brace underneath. Lately, her sartorial choices feature a lot of heavy garments and drapes and scarves, and there’s a bulge near the top that could easily be a back brace.

I wonder why she’d keep that a secret, though. If she’s wearing one, why not say so? There’s nothing shameful about wearing a back brace. Years ago, when I was in my 40s, a fairly large and rigid one was prescribed for me, but I couldn’t tolerate it and other doctors said it wouldn’t help me anyway.

I Googled the reasons a person would use a back brace and found nothing especially pernicious or frightening. So I just don’t get it.

Nor am I all that concerned with Hillary these days. But an awful lot of people still seem to be, don’t they?

Andrew C. McCarthy on the Obama adminstration’s belated concern about Russia

The New Neo Posted on by

With great clarity, Andrew C. McCarthy just keeps churning out information-packed article after article on what we now are free to call Spygate. I don’t know how he does it, But I’m certainly glad he does. If you have any friends or family you’d like to get up to speed on the subject, just tell them to read McCarthy’s archives and then to keep following all his latest efforts as they come out.

Which brings us to today’s McCarthy piece, which raises a question I’ve often wondered about since this whole Trump-colluded-with-Russia thing began:

…You want to tell me about Paul Manafort’s collaboration with Kremlin-backed Ukrainian thugs? How about George H. W. Bush trying to persuade Kiev not to break away from Moscow, after which Clinton, Bush-43, and Obama enticed Ukraine to give up its means of self-defense on the false promise that we would protect them from Russian aggression ”” a promise premised on the pie-in-the-sky theory that there would be no Russian aggression?

In just the decade before Trump’s 2016 campaign, as the Putin regime menaced former Soviet satellites, the Bush administration negotiated and submitted to Congress the daft U.S.-Russia civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, endorsing the export to Moscow of technology, material, equipment, and components for nuclear research and nuclear power production. Russia’s invasion of Georgia ”” including the still-ongoing occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia ”” made congressional approval of this embarrassing pact politically impossible for a time. Yet it was revived soon enough in the Obama “reset” of relations with Moscow steered by then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Clinton promised an era of cooperation in counterterrorism and non-proliferation while Putin went merrily along backing nuclear-energy development and advanced military capabilities in Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terrorism. Obama, of course, made nary a peep since he needed Moscow’s help to pull off the ludicrous Iran nuclear deal. As the Putin thug-ocracy rattled its saber, Obama ushered its entry into the World Trade Organization and pushed through the wayward “New START” treaty.

In the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney portrayed Russia as our principal geopolitical foe, Obama and Democrats mocked him. In the 2016 campaign, Trump’s Russia rhetoric was an echo ”” in Trumpian bluntness ”” of the Democrats’ position. Alas, they had nominated the candidate most ill-suited to exploit the Putin appeasement flavor of the Trump bid.

Mrs. Clinton, we’ve observed, was neck-deep in the Obama administration’s Uranium One scandal. Recall the $145 million that poured into the Clinton Foundation; the half-million-dollar pay day a Kremlin-connected bank ponied up for a short Bill Clinton speech (about five times more than Russia paid for those 2016 ads on Facebook, and more than ten times what the Kremlin’s propaganda arm, RT, paid for a 2015 speech by eventual Trump campaign adviser Michael Flynn); the Clintons’ meetings in Russia with Putin and Medvedev while the U.S. government was mulling approval of Russia’s acquisition ”” through its energy giant, Rosatom ”” of one-fifth of America’s uranium stock (in addition to more copious uranium reserves in Kazakhstan); the Obama Justice Department’s refusal to bring a prosecutable felony case against Rosatom’s American affiliate (Tenam USA) while the Uranium One deal was under consideration; and the same Department’s quiet resolution of the case on a sweetheart plea years later, after Putin’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine (despite Obama’s plea for flexibility) had left Obama’s “reset” policy in shambles.

We could go on. The point, however, is that after 30 years of embracing and empowering Moscow, it is not credible ”” particularly for an administration that was among the worst offenders ”” to say, “We had to use spies and FISA surveillance against the Trump campaign due to suspicion that Trump might embrace and empower Moscow.”

There’s more, much more. Please read the whole thing.

The Economist chastises the NY Times for its Israel/Palestine coverage

The New Neo Posted on by

Only thing is—they think the Times hasn’t been hard enough on Israel.

Actually, the article in question from the Economist is about language, in particular the “weasel voice” of evasion (it’s part of a continuing “Johnson” series about words/grammar in journalism, named after Samuel Johnson).

Here’s the problem, according to the Economist:

On May 14th, as Palestinians massed at the Gaza Strip’s border, Israeli soldiers fired on them, killing around 60 people. Shortly afterwards, the New York Times tweeted: “Dozens of Palestinians have died in protests as the US prepares to open its Jerusalem embassy.” Social media went ballistic. “From old age?” was one incredulous reply. #HaveDied quickly became a hashtag campaign.

The fault was soon laid not only at the door of the Times, but at a feature of English grammar. As Glenn Greenwald, a left-wing journalist, put it, “Most Western media outlets have become quite skilled””through years of practice””at writing headlines and describing Israeli massacres using the passive tense so as to hide the culprit.” His view was retweeted over 5,000 times and echoed by other critics.

Those of you who follow the news on this blog or any other blog that isn’t part of the left will probably be aware of how ludicrous and offensive this is—and by “this,” I mean the Economist article and the contentions of Greenwald. Now, I have no quarrel with the idea that “have died” is a euphemism and “were killed by Israeli soldiers” would be a better construction to use—I’m all in favor of straight talk. But if we’re into straight talk and actual, unvarnished news rather than propaganda, the Economist critique is a piece of garbage (how’s that for straight talk?)

The truth? They weren’t “protests” and these weren’t just random “Palestinians.” And we have no idea how many of them were killed by Israeli soldiers because the only people reporting an actual number were health officials in Gaza, who have a lousy track record for truth.

Read this article for some background to why the Economist’s piece is so outrageous:

…HAMAS displays a remarkable deftness in defining the March of Return as a peaceful demonstration while surreptitiously waging insurgent warfare. Violating the Geneva Conventions, HAMAS have planted its operatives, armed with explosives and weapons, among the so-called peaceful demonstrators. They have also sent little girls to the frontlines, directly into harm’s way.

By getting the world media, including much of the Israeli media, to define (and thus to perceive) the March as a peaceful demonstration, while using it to wage insurgent warfare, HAMAS have scored a major victory in 4GW [Fourth Generation Warfare]. Anything the IDF does to protect the border or even the lives of its own troops will make the IDF look like they’re using excessive force, never mind the fact that the limited force they’ve applied so far has, in all likelihood, kept the “demonstration” from becoming even bloodier.

Pretending to hold “peaceful” demonstrations and deftly tricking the world media into defining the March (marching is a martial metaphor) as a peaceful demonstration by unarmed civilians, HAMAS have created a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t moral predicament in which anything Israel does short of withdrawing from the area will undermine the legitimacy of the Israeli state. By making its defense forces appear “immoral,” HAMAS make Israel itself appear illegitimate.

The article from the Economist about the weasel voice is actually an entire weasel article. But to the vast majority of its readers nothing is amiss, because it conforms to the MSM narrative that they’ve consumed over and over again. It’s really quite a seamless whole.

The case of Tommy Robinson: free speech in the UK

The New Neo Posted on by

Read about it here, as well as here.

From the latter:

On Friday, British free-speech activist and Islam critic Tommy Robinson was acting as a responsible citizen journalist — reporting live on camera from outside a Leeds courtroom where several Muslims were being tried for child rape — when he was set upon by several police officers. In the space of the next few hours, a judge tried, convicted, and sentenced him to 13 months in jail — and also issued a gag order, demanding a total news blackout on the case in the British news media. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was immediately taken to Hull Prison.

From the former:

On Friday, he was standing outside a courthouse where several Muslims were on trial for sex-related crimes, “reporting” on the trial via Facebook live, when he was arrested for breaching the peace…I think what happened is that the judge imposed a 13-month prison term that had been suspended, arising out of a similar incident…

British laws protecting free speech are very different from here; I’ve written about that topic before. In this country the protection is far more robust. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there is no country in the world that protects free speech to the extent that the US does. So what is puzzling to Americans about the Robinson story may not be as puzzling to Brits. However, it’s should be just as frightening, and just as chilling.

It depends what the meaning of “happening now” is

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s see if we can get this straight: it’s okay for people on the left to post old photos of things that happened during the Obama administration and claim they’re current and insinuate that they’re new and particular to the Trump administration, and then get all outraged, ignoring when the photos were taken.

And by the way, what’s so outrageous (“like something out of a horror movie”) about a transport bus with infant safety seats in it? If illegal aliens arrive here with infants and those infants need transporting—the buses are used to take kids and parents on field trips, and to medical and court appointments—what’s the beef? I suppose the left would rather the kids not have the proper safety seats?

The propaganda machine grinds on.

Memorial Day: If you’re reading this…

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve posted this song before, but I think it bears repeating, especially on Memorial Day.

It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving song “If You’re Reading This“:

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home.

If you’re readin’ this
Half way around the world
I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
I hope she looks like you
I hope she fights like me
And stands up for the innocent and the weak
I’m layin’ down my gun,
I’m hanging up my boots
Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes…

The first time I ever heard the song I got the chills as the lyrics unfolded and I realized what it was about, and then again and again as the heartstrings were jerked harder and harder as the song went on.

I say “the heartstrings were jerked,” which sounds as though I’m being critical and the song is manipulative. Well, it’s manipulative in the sense that it means to affect the listener emotionally, and it means to sell songs. But I see nothing wrong with that, if the emotion is sincere and deep. Most of us do, or should, feel a very strong gratitude to the young men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend liberty here and abroad, and a very strong sorrow that it was necessary. On Memorial Day, we thank them.

Memorial Day: on patriotism

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of an older post.]

The story “The Man Without a Country” used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book—as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers—that I was assigned to read in school.

The plot was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad—and unfair, too—that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students.

Patriotism has gotten a bad name during the last few decades.

I think part of this feeling began (at least in this country) with the Vietnam era and the influence of the left. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were seen to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, but it seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.

Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…

A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which unbridled and amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response at the time, one that many decades later helped lead to the formation of the EU. The waning but still relatively strong nationalism of the US is seen by those who agree with him as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.

But the US is not Nazi Germany or anything like it, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. There’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores or tramples on human rights (like that of the Nazis), but one that embraces and strives for and tries to preserve them here and abroad, keeping in mind that—human nature being what it is—no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but it is a very good country nevertheless, always working to be better, with a nationalism that recognizes that sometimes liberty must be fought for, and that the struggle involves some sacrifice.

So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): …this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: …the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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My Philip Roth anecdote

The New Neo Posted on by

Author Philip Roth died last Tuesday. You can read hundreds of tributes to him and many criticisms of him, and I don’t have too much to add to that except to say that I liked his early works (including two that almost no one seems to care much for, Letting Go and When She Was Good) but I stopped reading him long, long ago because his works ceased to interest me, for whatever reason.

But in reading about him the other day I came across this interview of Roth by NPR’s Terry Gross, and it reminded me of something. Here’s the quote, which describes how he prepared his parents for the furor that would undoubtedly ensue when Portnoy’s Complaint came out:

Well, my mother and father were pretty good. I have to tell you, I had to prepare them. I felt I had to prepare them for the publication of this book. That was not something I had done with the previous three books. But before “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I did have to prepare them, I thought, because it became clear as publication came upon us that it was going to be a big book. I didn’t know that for a while, but then I knew it from my publisher, Random House. And I wrote books that they were publishing and so on.

And so I was living in New York City at the time, and I invited them over to have lunch with me. I invited my mother and father to come over from Elizabeth, N.J., where they lived to have lunch with me. And it wasn’t the first time they had come over and had lunch, but this was special. I said I wanted to talk to them about something. And we had lunch. And I said, look, this book is going to come out, and it appears as though it’s going to cause a sensation because it has the following ingredients in it. And I told them what they were. And I said, and you are going to be telephoned by journalists, and you have no experience with that. And I want to prepare you for it.

No. 1 is you don’t have to talk to anybody. You can politely hang up or unpolitely (ph) hang up. They’re just journalists, you know. And they’ll be very nice to you. And they’ll say flattering things to you. And they’ll say they know your – their aunt knows your brother who knows their cousin, try to get you to talk but you don’t have to. I said, if you want to talk, that’s fine with me, too. But I want you to know you don’t have to and that you won’t give offense to anyone if you don’t. And you may be well-advised not to, but it’s finally up to you.

He says his mother reacted by worrying that he’d become too grandiose, thinking the book would be a sensation, and that he’d be bound to be disappointed.

Well, he wasn’t disappointed; it certainly was a sensation.

But I have a personal anecdote that dovetails with that one—I can corroborate Roth’s story. You see, shortly after Portnoy was published, to great acclaim and controversy, my parents went on a cruise and became friendly with—of all people—Roth’s parents. When my parents returned, they reported on some conversations they’d had, in which the Roths mentioned how Philip had prepared them for the furor and onslaught from the press, and how to deal with the notion many people would have that they were like the parents in the book.

My parents said that Roths’ parents were nothing like the parents in the book. They were perfectly fine.

What’s more, my mother added, she observed that when the Roths were approached by people saying how proud they must be of their son the writer, they answered that they had two sons and were very proud of both of them.

Roth left that out of his tale (maybe he wasn’t even aware of it), but I’m here to report it.

RIP, Philip Roth. And your parents. And mine.

Trolls: leftist fantasies of rightist bigotry

The New Neo Posted on by

Trolls come in many shapes and sizes: concern trolls, flamers, and goalpost movers, just to mention a few. But there’s another kind of troll who comes to blogs on the right now and then, and we had a recent visit from this particular type.

I’m not sure what to call this sort of troll, so I’ll call him/her the Pretender. The Pretender comes to a blog masquerading as a sympathizer towards whatever point of view the blogger espouses. The Pretender’s goal is to create a character that supposedly sounds like a person on the right, but far more offensive and extreme.

Since the actual person behind the troll character is almost certainly on the left, however (or at least some group opposed to the right), that person can only create a caricature of a commenter on the right, one that sounds plausible to the troll but actually isn’t believable at all. Because, funny thing, the stereotypes that a person on the left generates (or swallows) about those on the right are just that, stereotypes and caricatures.

One of those stereotypes is about racism, which the left says is rampant and vicious on the right. And I have no doubt that there are people on the right who are in fact racist haters—just as there are on the left. But I’ve seen very few bona fide racists here, and certainly if they are going to flaunt their racism in some crude way they’re not going to last long here as commenters.

But the troll doesn’t know that. The troll thinks that he/she can slip this stuff in and the blogger and the other commenters will either ignore it—in which case the troll can later point to how racist the blog and its commenters are, based on the comments posted by the troll him/herself—or they will applaud it. The latter never happens, because the right (at least, mainstream right blogs like this) isn’t racist. Ignoring the racist comments sometimes does happen on a blog where the comments are too numerous (or the blogger too lazy) to be well-policed.

The goal of the troll is to make sure the right is seen to be hosting racist comments. It resembles those fake racist incidents that sometimes happen, particularly at universities, only to lead to the discovery that the person thought to be the victim of racism was actually the perpetrator trying to stir up a fake but believable claim of racism.

There are various ways to tell that a troll is a troll, but I’m not going to reveal them here. Trade secrets. What interests me about the Pretender type of troll is what the phenomenon reveals about the leftist mind. The Pretenders’ comments are a leftist fantasy of what people on the right think, but that fantasy is something emanating from the mind of leftists. Food for thought.

[NOTE: I am informed that the word I was seeking is “Moby.”]