This may be hard to believe, but the most common meme among conservative media figures is that they serve as an honest corps of fact-checkers against the "liberal media."
Except quite often, their own fact checks are wrong. Here's a story of one.
Having been in their shoes, I can say that many Republican commentators are able to tolerate their jobs because they have distorted pictures of their own side as more rational and tolerant than it really is.
They honestly are pretty ignorant of what the GOP base really thinks.
Accordingly, they are constantly trying to find ways to defend irrational that their readers, viewers, or listeners do.
Everyone knows that the GOP is over-represented among #COVIDIOTS, including conservative writers, so they're constantly trying to flip the script.
Our story begins last Friday when @secupp made a tweet about how not getting vaccinated really is a stupid way of "owning the libs," since it actually means more Republican Covid deaths.
Which of course is a good point. Apparently it hit too close to home though...
RealClear writer @Heminator (husband of the far-right snowflake Mollie Hemingway) decided to prove her "narrative" wrong by finding some Kaiser Family Foundation data.
Unfortunately for him, it was months out of date. Newer KFF data shows a growing partisan vax gap.
The Hemingway tweet was quickly slurped up by Twitchy, a conservative Twitter aggregator.
"Gonna leave a mark! Mark Hemingway DROPS S.E. Cupp with inconvenient stat, the site screamed in a headline." twitchy.com/samj-3930/2021…
The Twitchy piece was promptly recycled by Townhall, another website owned by Salem Media, the Christian fundamentalist radio company which owns almost all the major conservative websites that aren't run by Fox News.
"These people are always wrong. Remind them," huffed @mVespa1
After noticing the series of errors he spawned, I quote tweeted Hemingway and informed him of his mistake. He's left the tweet standing for the past 2 days. I reached out to the author of the Twitchy piece via Twitter DM. No corrections or response.
I should add here that in a media world where dunking on political opponents is often the default behavior, errors like this do happen on all sides of the fence.
Still, everyone knows that Trumpers are the big anti-vaxxers, so you'd think these people would've been more careful.
What's much worse is that the publications and writers have refused to acknowledge their obvious mistake here. These articles need to be pulled. They haven't been. It tells you a lot about their authors' commitment to facts.
"These people are always wrong." Hmm. /end
PS: For a very detailed look at the history and vast wealth of Salem Media, see this excellent piece from @anelsona which is excerpted from her book "Shadow Network." flux.community/anne-nelson/20…
PPS: If you liked this thread, my site Flux has a Patreon you can use to help support what I'm doing.
The establishment left doesn't realize the hold that right-wing media has on tens of millions of people so I'm not getting Soros Bux for this stuff: patreon.com/fluxcommunity
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Jenna, have you ever had an actual debate with a progressive pundit about this topic? I'd wager that you have not. You would get utterly and totally destroyed.
Disagree? Then try to prove me wrong. Let's debate your book!
Fundamentalists like Jenna have such irrational and contradictory ideas that they CANNOT debate them. Why? Because they can't even make sense of them from one day to the next.
This is why billionaire shills like Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder prefer talking to college students.
The other issue is that Jenna's illogical Christianism is very vulnerable to white nationalism.
If you say that America should be built on Biblical ideas, a racist can correctly point to racist stuff in the Bible. Jenna can't debate them either. flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
Brandi Love is going through the struggles I had as a conservative. I thought that they actually believed in liberty. I eventually realized it was all a front for Christian fascism.
Socially tolerant Republicans need to support her and actually fight against the lunatics.
This controversy has been illuminative in getting the Christo-fascists to state their agenda though.
They literally want the majority of Americans who disagree with them to have fewer rights, while dishonestly crying about "censorship."
This TPUSA event honored accused pedophile Matt Gaetz, sexual harasser and racist Madison Cawthorn, Christian supremacist Rob McCoy, alt-right podcaster James Lindsay, deranged lunatic Eric Metaxas, and 1/6 enabler Lauren Boebert but it wouldn't allow a Love as a mere guest.
#FartsAreFascist is the ultimate in far-right non-humor. They really think that progressives are insulted by a half-hearted and halfwit parody hashtag.
Basically, the only thing they seem to think is funny is offending people. They're so desperate to do it that they'll even concoct things that make themselves look like idiots, but they can't perceive it at the time
The Turning Point USA diaper debacle is a great example.
As stupid as this hashtag and the catturd account is, however, it's a great illustration of the utter collapse of conservative intellectualism.
You don't have to think John Oliver is funny, but he doesn't name himself after cat feces.
What a fantastic essay that includes an excerpt from a speech delivered in 1875 by President U.S. Grant on the importance of church-state separation and secular schools. Thom's piece linked below is worth your time.
Here's the entire Grant speech, which for some unfortunate reason, isn't too common on the web.
The context was his desire to promote secular public education as a way of preventing the recurrence of a second civil war. It's prescient.
There's often talk of "Two Americas" as if it's about Republican/Other or Vaccinated/Unvaccinated.
Those divides exist but they spring from a much deeper divide, between people who understand deductive reasoning and those who don't. This divide largely originates from religion.
1/x Conservatives constantly rage about "liberal media bias" but when you see the material they call journalism, it's much, much more biased. Here's a great example from a RedState article covering the doomed CA gubernatorial recall campaign of a state rep with no chance
Recalling Gavin Newsome has never polled more than 40%. The guy who just launched his campaign has no chance of becoming governor. But according to RedState, "Hope Is Calling in the Air." WTF?
The article doesn't mention the Newsom polls at all. But the author does make sure to quote from her colleague claiming that "There’s an air of hopefulness I haven’t seen in a while."
Mini-thread: Mike Lindell and the right-wing plutocrat network
The MeinPillow guy's never-ending spew of lies and delusions about the 2020 elections have damaged the country, but his craziness does provide a great example of how insane your average right-wing donor is.
The fat cats who bankroll the GOP (even pre-Trump) are lunatics, pure and simple.
The biggest right-wing donors out there are Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer. They are outright Christian supremacists who also are in love with the atheist Ayn Rand.
To a normal person, these two worldviews are utterly irreconcilable because they are diametrically opposed. But if you're crazy enough, they blend perfectly!