This doesn't mean you should just automatically believe that every claim the media declares "debunked" is in every instance 100% true. But you should revise your understanding of what the term "debunked" is intended to convey:
A touching homage to the Media Debunker Squad from Substack commenter Scott
If you go around interpreting the display of American flags in America as some kind of personal/political affront to you, consider that the problem may be your own neuroses
I was just at a Memorial Day parade in a racially mixed area in which everybody was displaying American flags. If you walked up and tried to inform them that the flag actually connoted "whiteness" you would've been greeted by blank stares or laughter
I live in one of the most racially-mixed parts of the entire country and there's an American flag on my building. A house next door (non-white owners) displays an American flag. This whole mentality, as usual, is an ideological projection by cultural elites onto non-white normies
For a trip to the UK, I ended up having to pay a total of $414 for three COVID tests. Also got a free NHS test, but was informed this was not accepted for international travel. Major boondoggle for private COVID test entrepreneurs working in tandem with airlines and governments!
From a policy standpoint, the most confounding aspect of the trip is that my status as fully-vaccinated made no difference to anything. Didn't enable circumvention of any bureaucratic roadblocks. I might as well *not* have been vaccinated! Seems like the wrong incentive
Dude, I was reacting to an LA Times headline that posited some affirmative obligation on the part of the general public to provide “help” to celebrities and other insanely rich people (like you) with their anxiety issues. Please try to improve your reading comprehension abilities
It's so bizarre what a ridiculous firestorm my throwaway tweet on this subject created, lol. Now Serena's husband is even going after me. TARGETED HARASSMENT!!!!
Those two NBA players I was commenting on in 2018 didn't have the media beseeching the public to provide them with "help." That would've been ridiculous. Also, I don't think "stigma" around mental health is as much of a problem anymore. If anything there's been an over-correction
State Dept. spokesperson feels the need to weigh in on this issue for some reason, and of course bizarrely ascribes race-based "anger." I guess everyone's also obliged to provide "empathy and help" to this government official if she ever finds a press conference "stress inducing"
I profusely apologize for “invalidating” the experiences of this “private citizen” who also happens to be a high-profile official in the federal government. I will try to Do Better
This is the first time I've ever watched a movie and felt compelled to track down the director for an interview. I highly recommend "Some Kind of Heaven," a documentary that's ostensibly about The Villages retirement community in Florida -- but not really mtracey.substack.com/p/some-kind-of…
Don’t watch the movie if you’re expecting a cliched polemic about Trump supporters in The Villages. Do watch the movie if like me, you enjoy immersing in these little slices of dreamscape Americana
Though a documentary, the movie is shot like a feature film. There are moments you'd swear the subjects are masterclass professional actors, but they are not. Unlike anything I've ever seen before
Netanyahu comes on American TV this morning and asks what we would do if rockets were being fired on NYC. This fake cliched analogy has been robotically repeated for every Gaza war since 2008 and it gets progressively dumber every time
If the US were besieging and blockading a small adjacent territory and bombing it into smithereens every few years to “mow the lawn,” I’m pretty sure there would be criticism of that policy. But sure, let’s all imagine a militant Islamist group taking over Ontario or something
As noted, this essay was written by me in 2019 but not published. Some of the references are out of date, but the main point holds. (I'm also not denying that some "Free Palestine" activists are also practitioners of "Identity Politics." But they don't have a well-funded Lobby)
There are plenty of ardent pro-Israel advocates I personally like (including some mentioned in this piece) but I've yet to understand how their identity-based fidelity to this foreign state is reconcilable with an overarching critique of "identity politics"
As @ggreenwald has observed, all ideological trends that have otherwise changed mainstream US political debate are just completely shelved when it comes to Israel. Like the subject just exists in some secondary, self-contained universe
Predictable. If there’s one subject certain people can’t tolerate a smidgeon of dissenting views on (even if it’s one post a year) it would definitely be this subject
Some examples of COVID offenses that Newark, NJ police charged people with committing last year:
An official claimed police primarily targeted violating businesses and large gatherings. But here are some more activities that people were charged for engaging in:
- Failure to wear a mask
- Being outside for nonessential business
- Sitting in front of home listening to music
As New Evidence Emerges For COVID "Lab-Leak" Theory, Journalists Who Screamed “Conspiracy” Humiliate Themselves mtracey.substack.com/p/as-new-evide…
Some minor digging revealed that @R_H_Ebright, who was quoted widely in media reports last year as an expert authority "debunking" the lab-leak theory, is actually a strong *proponent* of the viability of the lab-leak theory! His views were grossly distorted for narrative reasons
It will definitely be up there. And it will have been primarily driven by their naked partisan desire to undermine Trump
Pretty simple: "intersectionality" is a left-wing ideological doctrine which has now achieved such wide circulation that even the CIA is proudly espousing it. But leftists are in bizarre denial about having played any role in this, because admittedly it's pretty embarrassing
The NYC mayoral candidate most in vogue among the Activist Left immediately proclaimed the need to "believe survivors" after this incredibly dubious PR offensive was launched to nuke a rival left-wing candidate. It's all amazingly cynical and exploitative
If this evidence doesn't compel you to treat these accusations with extra suspicion -- especially as a journalist -- then you are a dogmatic zealot who cannot be reasoned with, and should just admit as much
I mean, this really has all the makings of a quintessential campaign-season hit-job. And left-wing journalists/activism just gobble it all up with no skepticism whatsoever
This stuff has completely hobbled left-wing politics. The accuser, a registered lobbyist who has a prior professional relationship with one of Stringer's rivals (
) was reportedly 30 years old at the time she now claims she was preyed upon
The initial PR offensive labeled the accuser merely as an "intern" so as to present her as vulnerable
Stringer claims he had a months-long consensual relationship with this adult woman. But because he's accepted all the premises of left/liberal orthodoxy around this issue, he can't effectively combat the accusations and is thus hobbled
A cop warns that the city is soon going to descend into even more violent anarchy:
Will probably do so: parts of the country appear to be regressing back to an early 90s level of peak violent crime, which few would’ve thought possible not long ago
You don't even have to read the full post if you don't want, just scroll through the extremely long list of public figures reciting the exact same words and phrases. It's honestly hypnotic
I don't know, I guess if I worked in corporate communications I'd say the same thing -- seems pretty good for business if your clientele is anything but explicitly conservative
Spoiler alert: People like @JuddLegum have to pretend that no one objected to the "cancelation" of the Dixie Chicks -- which is demonstrably, glaring false -- because it's his ideological allies who now overwhelmingly wield the cultural/political power to "cancel," unlike in 2003
Good comment proposing a theory for why @JuddLegum and others have chosen to actively mislead their followers/readers into believing there was no concerted backlash to the "cancelation" of the Dixie Chicks
Among the "public officials" so heroically EXPOSED by this bombshell report: "Craig Shepherd, who public records show is a paramedic in Utah... gave $10 to Rittenhouse on 30 August"
Also note that this crowdfunding information was obtained via "data breach" but Twitter isn't appending any scary warnings about "hacked materials" to tweets circulating this article, rather Twitter has decided to editorially promote the article
Make sure you "show your support for high-impact journalism" by handing over money to the Guardian so they can continue EXPOSING paramedics in Utah who gave $10 to a legal defense fund
Truly, imagine how hopelessly myopic you have to be to level these charges against scary-sounding Russian entities -- as though you’ve boldly identified uniquely nefarious Russian traits that couldn’t be applied in two seconds to the entire gamut of US corporate media outlets
It’s almost more pathetic when the media credulously hypes and promotes this stuff now because they don’t even have Trump around anymore to justify their abandonment of journalistic standards
As explained in the post, “objectivity” was always an unattainable standard. It never made sense as an ideal to aspire to. But the emergent class of journalists have adopted an entire new activism-centered epistemology that is totally antithetical to basic precepts of journalism
Activist-journalists generate power/leverage by posturing as renegades challenging the status quo in the industry. They can't admit that their mentality is now the dominant one. It wasn't 10 years ago, but the post-2016 landscape (and especially post-2020) is radically different
47 added to My Authors
