Awesome meltdown here. Regurgitating what spooks and handpicked scientists say is reporting, being skeptical of sensationalist reporting that has yet to provide evidence said entirely undetectable energy weapon exists is bad b/c these skeptics, like Ioffe are “humanities majors”
One my favorite genres of elite journalist defensiveness is the “I do REAL reporting whereas my critics sit in the sidelines” and it’s like “yes, amazing all these CIA and DOD PR flacks come running to you with their self-serving narratives, truly afflicting the comfortable!”
One thing that annoys me to no end is this cheeky bullshit acting like we’re simply debating two equally plausible theories in a vacuum, as if the theory Ioffe is peddling doesn’t have MAJOR GEOPOLITICAL CONSEQUENCES and
isn’t presently fueling calls in congress for more sanctions and further bloating of the CIA and DOD budgets. Let’s all be adults and acknowledge that this stop being simply a scientific question years ago.
The primary driver of the narrative, e.g. most of Ioffe’s sources are spooks and senators not independent scientists. Let’s all be honest about this and can the coy “just asking questions” posture please I beg everyone
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The addition of “liberal” after corporate here is telling. Corporate media is doing just fine, because Fox News is corporate media & is doing great! The common denominator here is “liberal”, not “corporate”—the addition of which is to simply give the critique faux-left trappings
CNN and MSNBCs audience “disappearing” could, in theory, be good but when it’s resulting in people seeking out mean, nasty and racist right wing media—Fox News, Newsmax, or right wingers on YouTube this is not cause for celebration.
Owning the libs is not an ideology and it’s not, of course, a subversive or edgy position. Hating on MNSBC is one my favorite shticks, I’ve done 3 pod episodes on it, countless articles, but I would never, EVER divorce them from Fox News when making critiques of “corporate media”
You’re not allowed to be mad, being mad is a sign of Unseriousness and immaturity and a lack of sophistication. The gap between promises and what actually gets passed—no matter how wide, is simply the product of insuperable forces against which we are wholly helpless
The Serious and Savvy people are never mad. They never break a sweat or seem bothered. Their empathy is calibrated precisely to realistic expectations—not an inch too far or inch to conservative. They know the score. It’s just The Way Of Things
Avenues of change such as the bully pulpit, arm twisting, months of campaigning across the country, are all dead ends. That which ultimately excretes out from the opaque and seemingly sporadic negotiation process, by definition, is the best we can hope.
On Oct 18, @brikeilarcnn mocked progressives' claim CNN hadnt covered the substance of the Reconciliation Bill, showing as proof random out-of-focus screencaps.
"Of the 2 hours and 6 minutes of total coverage analyzed, only 10 minutes was dedicated to discussing what was actually in the bill."
It’s not even just mentioning the human stakes. Imagine if CNN used AT&T’s tremendous resources to actually *report* on the human stakes, to put a face to this nebulous “price tag”. The bar is so low progressives are begging for mere acknowledgement, never mind humanization
the ‘Colin Powell was a public servant who make “mistakes” and was simply lead astray’ obits put in focus a key asymmetry propping up our imperial moral ecosystem: US crimes are the result of discrete, good faith bumbling parties with little broader planning, whereas 1/4
crimes by Official Enemy states are uniform, topdown and existential to the nature of the regime. The Iraq War is generally agreed to be bad but in our popular depiction we are told it was the product of bad intel and a handful of good faith ideologues who simply went too far 2/4
Powell made “mistakes” and was just a soldier doing his part. Bush was pushed by neocons, the neocons were seduced by Chalabi, Again no such hyper compartmentalized, individualized, elaborate psychobabble excuses exist with Official Enemies. They are just a sinister blob 3/4
Zero self awareness. To refute the claim US media has done a bad job covering the substance of the reconciliation bill Keilar shows a handful of decontextualized online articles & CNN screencaps many of which came AFTER Sanders and AOC pointed out the lack of substance weeks ago
CNN has millions of dollars, it could choose to pay its dozens of interns & researchers to analysis their reconciliation bill coverage, compare their horse race vs substance & show the comparative % instead it flashes random headlines on screen and moves on to pissy defensiveness
Sanders et al didn’t say the media NEVER covered the substance, they said they focused far more on horse race which is true EVEN IN THE SEGMENT DETERMINED TO REFUTE THE CLAIM
Except there is a reason, they overextended their real estate liabilities in urban areas & introduced a “Store Optimization Program” in 2017 & have since closed 750+ stores, according to SEC filings. Certainly possible shoplifting played a part but they’ve closed… 100s of stores
Mostly notably in NYC—where no such shoplifting justification was cited—where Walgreens closed 27% of their stores in 2020 vs 24% in SF. Walgreens closes stores all the time, for a host of reasons laid out in their corporate strategy -> s1.q4cdn.com/343380161/file…
No one is arguing Walgreens closed stores for the lolz, what’s being contested is they closed SF stores ONLY or LARGELY due to shoplifting. When asked by reporters and city officials to explain how this is the case and/or show evidence they get hostile and ignore the requests