As might you, I remember exactly where I was, and what I was doing when I heard about the Aurora massacre.
I was driving to work, like many a man who has not suffered an unimaginable tragedy. On the radio there came a brief mention — the true magnitude of how many had died was not yet known — of the massacre.
It was only two sentences. The second sentence was a denial that any “overseas” (that was the euphemism used) terrorists groups were involved.
That immediately tickled my suspicions. I used to work for a newspaper, as a writer and as an editor. It takes time to do policework, to check credit card records, to check if a suspect had been overseas, to get warrants, to read his old mail, to talk to neighbors. There is no way, no possible way, any responsible police agency could have investigated between midnight (when the crime occurred) and morning (when I heard the news) when all the businesses were closed and announced that it had ruled out anything.
The newsman was not reporting an official announcement: he was merely making the literally true but deliberately deceptive statement that no evidence had yet emerged of any link to overseas terror. There was also no evidence to a link to Ethiopia, to Elocutionists, to Eggplants, or to Ecumenism, because six hours is too soon for any confirmed evidence of any kind. So why single out terrorists for exculpation?
Parking my car a few minutes later, I walked into my work. I have a dayjob, working for a military subcontractor. As all military facilities in which I have ever worked, there is a television tuned 24/7 to the mainstream news channels in the break room. Why US Military ordains that Orwellian viewscreens should be tuned constantly to channels that disseminate anti-Military agitprop, I cannot guess. As I walked past the break room door, I heard the massacre being discussed by the news entertainment heads.
I only heard two sentences yet again. The first mentioned the location and time of the shooting. The second sentence was speculation that the shooter was a rightwing extremist or a neo-Nazi.
The next thing I heard about it was not the numbers of the victims, nor the heroism of those who threw themselves in harm’s way to save sisters and girlfriends, and not the little twelve year old girl who tried to give CPR to a six year old who died under her hands.
No. The next thing I heard about was Brian Ross, who had announced on ABC news that the shooter was a member of the Tea Party.
I did not see or hear civilized and sane voices calling for prayer, for silence, or for dignity until much later in the week, or, as we measure time now, much later in the newscycle.
That was not where the emphasis was. We live in a Dark Age, where civility, piety, decency and honesty are not praised nor prized.
No, instead, the headlines of the radio and television news, the first thing I heard before I heard any details, was those two assertions being hammered home: the attacker was not a Muslim terrorist. The Right was to blame.
(As of the time of this writing, Mr Ross has not been fired, or even censured, for this slander presented as news to a trusting and nationwide audience. If he has issued an official apology, I am unaware of it.)
Of my other thoughts, I will be silent. But I will add my voice to the choir of condemnation against the mainstream media:
You are vermin.
I mean this in the literal sense: a vermin is an animal that destroys livestock and must be put down for human life to be successful.
You could have been newsmen and told the truth as you knew it.
You could have been gentlemen and told the truth without a sick and sadistic desire to fatten yourselves on the blood of the slain, and then spew out that blood, mixed with bile, into to faces of your political rivals in the game of power. You could have been polite, and civil, and honest, and sane.
You could have been human.
But no. The most vicious town gossip who seeks ever to destroy the reputation and blacken the character of an enemy never launched so quickly and so immediately a campaign to stir up slander, hate, and malice against an innocent foe.
You were running on autopilot, dear newsmen.
The autopilot of ideology charts only one course: when there is a gun-massacre or an act of terror, you blame your political rivals as long as possible and as often as possible because that is what the simplistic fairy tale of your world view demands. You immediately, long before any evidence is in, exculpate your allies, because this is also what your simplistic fairy tale demands.
George Zimmerman, a registered Democrat, is reported as being a “white Hispanic” because Caucasians shooting Negroes in cold blood fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
When Dr. Amy Bishop shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting, the Left speculated that she was a Tea Partier because that fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale. In fact, she was lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.
James Lee, 43, took three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland. The media speculation was that Lee a “climate-change denier” who’d resorted to violence. That fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale. In fact, he was a radical environmentalist who viewed humans as parasites on the Earth
The census-taker Bill Sparkman in rural Kentucky was supposedly hanged by extremist anti-tax Tea Partiers. Such insanely murderous acts by the peaceful protesters (who clean up after themselves when they gather in public areas) fits the fairy tale. In fact, he hanged himself. The facts do not fit the fairy tale
Mayor Bloomberg immediately speculated that the bomber was someone upset about the president’s new health-care law. The media trumpeted the idea that crazed conservatives had turned to violence. In fact, the perpetrator was Faisal Shahzad, jihadist terrorist. The facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Joe Stack who flew his plane into the IRS in Texas was supposedly a Tea Partier, because according to the fairy tale the ordinary Americans in the Tea Party are insane murdering scum. In fact, he quoted from the Communist Manifesto in his suicide note. But the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Amidst the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, Michael Enright stabbed a Muslim cab driver in the neck. It was immediately dubbed an “anti-Muslim stabbing,” with “rising Islamophobia” on the political right to blame. Because the fairy tale is that the Tea Party commit acts of random violence for political ends. In fact, Enright, a left-leaning art student, had worked with a firm that produced a pro-mosque statement.
John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon security officers at close range. The media went wild with speculation that a right-wing extremist had reached the end of his rope. Bedell turned out to be a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther. The facts do not fit the fairy tale.
The Fort Hood shooting is reported as being unrelated to the religious affiliation of the gunman because this fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
When Congresswoman Giffords was shot, even though this was done by a deranged man with (as far as we know) Leftwing political views, the rhetoric of the Right was blamed by Paul Krugman, and Sarah Palin was blamed. By what torturous line of Palin-Derangement-Syndrome suffering stream-of-consciousness style logic the Senator from Alaska can be blamed for a shooting in Arizona, I leave for psychiatrists to explain.
But I know the explanation for the slander, and all these slanders. It fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Friends, who you hear of some enormity or ghastly crime, is your first thought to speculate that your political rivals and the game of seeking popular political power resorted to random atrocities? Do you think everything is politics? Is it the only lens through which you view the world, the only tale that you ever tell, the only tale you ever believe? Then you believe in fairy tales.
I was in the newspaper business not so very long ago. I never saw anything of this magnitude. I never saw such pure malice, such reckless disregard for and hatred of the truth, such pure propaganda. And I was in the muckraking yellow-journalism side of the business.
Can you imagine if someone in your neighborhood did this?
Suppose every crime committed in the neighborhood was blamed by your next door neighbor’s wife on some young black Jew who lives on your street. Each time, there is no evidence. Nor has the young man ever done anything wrong. Each time the accusation is immediate, utterly baseless, and it does not matter what the crime is. Purse snatched? She tells people the Jew did it. Power line down? Car stolen? She speculates that is the Jew. Air conditioner broken? She blames the Jew. Pet cat missing? She blames the Jew. Plague? Arson? Traffic accident? She blames the Jew, the Jew, the Jew.
And when she says the Jew kidnaps and murders children to grind into their passover bread, and poisons wells, and murdered Christ, and stains with mongrel blood the Aryan Race…
Exactly how many baseless accusations would it take before you became convinced that your neighbor’s wife was a lunatic with no ability to control herself, no ability to tell the truth, a nutcase in a delirium? Five times? Ten? I have listed more than that right here, and this list is not exhaustive.
And now suppose your lunatic neighbor’s wife was getting paid for her ability to report the facts honestly and fairly. She is not the town gossip but the town crier. She makes her money by spreading rumors. What then?
And what if you were the dark-skinned Jew. At what point would you become convinced she was your deadly enemy?
I have reached that point. The mainstream media speaks of me and mine exactly as if, precisely as if, they are trying to stir up a lynch mob.
The mainstream media are the enemy. Andrew Breitbart was right about that.
It is not the Democrat party, not the socialists, not the activist Judges or lunatic University academics who poison the minds of millions and slander all that is godly, good, wholesome and sane. These are side effects, mere epiphenomena.
The media are the enemy.
Without the support of the media, the partisans and activists and academics would have no public support, and their power would collapse.
The newsmen of this day are vermin, dangerous beasts, parasites and maggots. They must be abolished, hounded by the public square, harassed by the law, scourged by the intolerance of the righteous, driven into the fringes of society, exiled. We trusted them; they betrayed us. They betrayed the truth, and betray the nation, and betray humanity itself.
They must be broken. The media are the enemy.
This is why I feel it pointless to rally at the Capitols or other seats of power unless we rally and protest, deter, shut out, and hamper the efforts of the Media Complex at every turn.
If you feed a thing, it grows. If you starve it, it dies.
These lies need to be starved into oblivion.
“Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.” -Auric Goldfinger
I first heard the trio as “happenstance, circumstance, enemy action”.
I like it better due to the felicitous rhyme.
Jon Stewart had a bit excoriating Brian Ross for accidentally publicly accusing an innocent man of being a mass murderer to discredit his political opponents. Not the first time Stewart has proven that he does not entirely suffer from cranio-rectal inversion.
“cranio-rectal inversion” — I love that phrase. Brilliant.
Part of why so many kids of various ages get their news from him.
Problem being, they think he’s centrist, rather than “not entirely delusionally leftward.”
He’s a comedian willing to take low-hanging fruit from his own side; that this is noteworthy, when most of the republicans I know collect republican jokes, is kinda sad.
This is an excellent entry. I am somewhat surprised, and extremely gratified, at the vehemence of your conclusion. The MSM are not merely the enemy; at this stage they are probably the main enemy.
As I said in your earlier post I encountered the news on the Internet, brief hours after the shooting, in the course of an ongoing argument about how blame could best be assigned and ideological capital banked. It probably should
have not have shocked me, but it did.
The obvious slant given to the first two instances you heard is telling, though fools would dismiss as anecdotal. I take it, BTW, that the discussion you heard from the break room was on the TV rather than among coworkers.
I have had no direct contact with the media since some 25 years ago, when I occasionally socialized with local print and TV reporters and fed them tidbits.
I find it interesting and ominous that your own more recent experience reveals a shocking deterioration in standards and basic integrity.
If you have occasion look up the Steven Hatfill anthrax case, where an innocent scientist was victim of a virtual press witchunt . Hatfill was vindicated eventually; but the most absurd stories were told about his past; in some cases probably due to sheer incompetence rather than malice. He was for example smeared by association with foreign institutes that did not exist and never had; as a few minutes net research or emails abroad eventually revealed.
Brian Ross has, I believe, issued an apology of sorts to the innocent James Holmes, a bemused Tea Partier of recent standing who had done no more than sign up for a few lectures and meetings. Whether the apology was in his official capacity or not, I don’t know.
I must accept that you indeed have a day job. Considering the volume of your output as author and commentator, I am reinforced in my conviction that you possess the powers of teleportation and/or travel in time.
Now, what to do about about the verminous infestations of the MSM?
(to be continued)…
You’ll probably quite enjoy this Jonah Goldberg piece on the matter.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/311235/brian-ross-s-brain-cramp-jonah-goldberg
Though it’s hard to see how these incidents can pile up and yet some people still say: “All this blog post attempts to show is that there is absolutely no evidence of left wing domination over American news media. The idea that the mainstream media has any sort of monolithic political opinion is entirely unsupported by the data that I have been able to gather.”
I asked one of my liberal friends why he thinks the mainstream media is not liberal. His answer was incoherent rubbish about media being owned by big corporations, as if no liberal ever owned a limousine or owned any businesses. I asked him when was the last time he had seen a news article which portrayed the use of a gun in self defense (by any stretch of the imagination, a newsworthy event) in a positive light. His answer was to refer to the Zimmerman shooting. I asked him if the way the Zimmerman shooting was portrayed by the press indicated that the press was in favor of the Second Amendment, neutral toward it, or hostile to it. He answered that the NRA wants to sell bullets, and no one ever has or ever will oppose the Second Amendment, and that gun rights are in absolutely no danger whatsoever and never had been.
This was one of the more coherent responses I have had from PCnoids on the issue of media bias, or, rather media-as-Democrat-PAC. I conclude that the PC dogma simply asserts as a mystery of faith that the media is transubstantially neutral and unbiased, but only in appearance seems to be clearly and strongly and without exception or pause promoting leftwing agitprop and lies.
I’ve placed a comment that’s been languishing in moderation for several days now so here it is in case it gets flushed down the memory hole.
Forgive me, but I don’t think you’ve been trying hard enough, then.
Instead of studies (which can skew the result any way they want depending on how they weigh the data), you should look at things that are actually done. Like… political donations by reporters (after all, how else can you tell what someone really believes but to see where they put their money?)
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/09/media-professionals-and-journalists-donate.html
Just looking at the attached spreadsheet on there and doing a quick “back-of-the-envelope” math… 274/416 donated to “D” 3/416 donated to “I” and 139/416 donated to “R”. Which gives us a media donation rate of 66% D, 33% R, 1% I. 2/3rd of the media is “leftist”.
Or William Tate who found donations going 100-1 L v R.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/big_media_puts_its_money_where.html
And if you want to dismiss the american thinker as “right-win”, here’s MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/#.UA7CIfWQNy0
So, no, there’s not “absolutely no evidence”.
Instead of studies (which can skew the result any way they want depending on how they weigh the data), you should look at things that are actually done. Like… political donations by reporters (after all, how else can you tell what someone really believes but to see where they put their money?)
Is this insight original with you, Mr Winchester? I earlier expressed some reservations on the way the young young gentleman interpreted the studies you quoted, but I really think you have hit one of the reasons why the use of the
social sciences in public policy is so problematic.
I might claim that it is original to me but knowing my mind, it probably isn’t – more likely someone else who’s credit I’ve forgotten as their thought was folded into my worldview.
Of course, I’m also a guy who majored in computers and minored in sociology so… well you can probably guess how those two worlds conspired to give me my current ideas.
I read this far:
Need I interpret this for anyone? This is the voice of Nihilism, the blatant denial that truth exists or that loyalty to truth is commendable. It is a flat-out and naked statement that all communication is sociopathic lies meant only to manipulate the listener like a Pavlovian dog.
At that point, there is no reason to read another word. The witness has impeached himself. He has said everyone lies. If true, then he is a liar because he is one of everyone. If false, then he is a liar because he says what is false.
I did read the entire entry from the young liberal blogger afflicted with conservative parents. I think you are unfair to him, and that there is still considerable hope for him.
He does not deny objective reality as do his more cynical and nihilistic elders; he actually believes in it, and thinks it supports his own liberal and lefty position.
He is in fact correct that all reporting, and most art, exhibits some kind of bias, and can be read as propaganda for some point of view or another. So what? If it didn’t it would not be worth reading.
I sometimes despair of pointing out that there is nothing whatever wrong with bias or propaganda, so long as they are openly avowed and argued honestly.
If so, they can be valuable even if the author is mistaken, so long as he is not malicious. These words have acquired a negative freight which is not warranted by their actual meaning. Personally I greatly value honest propaganda in a good cause.
In short, saying that everyone has bias and engages in propaganda is not the same thing as saying that everyone lies. He is not that far gone yet. (Nonetheless his statement is not strictly true; some people are unbiased because they are simply indifferent. )
The young fellow cites actual research studies to buttress his cause, and has no doubt at all that they do buttress it. I have my doubts, and would have to look at the actual studies more closely to form an opinion.
What criteria do the studies use to establish when a journalist is expressing opinion rather than reporting fact, that they conclude that Fox reporters do so more egregiously than do their colleagues at CNN or MSNBC?
How does he know that the opinions expressed by Fox reporters are ‘unverifiable’, or even ‘unverified’? Does he understand the difference? The first term means that the opinions cannot be verified; the second, merely that they have not been.
I would have to check closer on his challenging the ‘facts’ about the NY mosque, because I flatly don’t trust his sources. I would argue that were every one of the allegations shown to be false, the building of the mosque still constitutes a provocative affront to the people of NYC and America.
I have no particular desire here to defend Fox, which I emphatically include among the MSM outlets I repudiate and largely ignore. I think it represents faux- conservatism, put in place, like most Republican candidates, to give the liberal-left a easy target to attack. It is largely a waste of valuable time and effort for true counterrevolutionaries and traditionalists to leap to its defense.
Still, Fox gives the Left (including some dear friends of mine) running and barking fits, and that fun to watch.
My answer is here: http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/07/against-the-proposition-that-all-propositions-are-propaganda/
Rats breed in silos, maggots in meat, moths and weevils in flour, and propagandists in secure well paid positions. The answers is always the same; starve them out.
I don’t buy newspapers, I use adblock to not only deny Yahoo ad revenue, but to block their Huffpost daily hate “news” feed on my e-mail page. I never ever watch network news. Somehow, the less news I get the more information I’m able to obtain with clarity.
Terrible source, but my philosophy pretty much mirrors Crowley’s in this regard;
“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.”
I see your Crowley and raise you:
“The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
Pretty low of them indeed, and nothing new I should add, you should now expect that in future tragedies such as this, the right will be blamed (at least initially). Their (the msm) track record gives no reason to believe otherwise.
Oh, and I like the new look of your blog, though I will miss the old style (the backround color was easier on the eyes for one).
The Maid of Arrghh tells us to starve the beast; excellent advice! I have some more:
Learn Takuan’s rules (from Takuan Seiyo):
Learn by what means MSM and MSE (that’s Mainstream Entertainment) manipulate one’s perception of Reality. Kill your TV.
Cancel your subscription to all mainstream opinion magazines and daily newspapers. Do not allow news branded AP, Reuters, AFP, BBC, CNN to enter your home, for that is Orwell’s newspeak, not news.
Boycott all products advertised on TV, radio and in glossy magazines. Learn by what means ads manipulate your value system and your behavior. Demand from advertisers information, not mind fornication.
Learn to spot jivin’ and sellin’. Don’t buy what they sell.
Desist from fandom of all commercialized team sports. Avoid particularly the mega-opiate machines of FIFA World Cup, Olympics, NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL.
Teach your children all of the above. More then anything, it’s the K-12 vertical indoctrination and lateral peer pressure that produce either Group A of shallow zombies shimmying to the globocorporate multiculti consumer samba with Xbox sadism at 8 and digitally transmitted hookups at 12, or crazed “social justice” dhimmis who compensate for having been rejected by Group A.
I would qualify Takuan’s 2nd point above. Don’t subscribe to, or pay for, the MSM’s offerings, but do read them on-line, with a critical eye; and comment on them, taking a very adversarial stance. If you do this civilly you can usually avoid banning; if you do get banned your banning with be a teachable moment for those who read your comment before the axe fell.
Don’t vent or rave. You can do that at home, or at your neighborhood bar, where you should tip your bartender extra.
Don’t get drawn into endless exchanges with fellow commenters. Avoid flamewars above all, no matter how annoying or stupid the comments are. You are there to call out the enemy; the reporters, managers, and owners of the publication or station who are putting out biased, slanted propaganda under the guise of news.
Do it by name. The responsible reporter or anchor usually has her by-line on the piece.
Address her, directly, by name, in every single comment you make. Look up her editor or supervisor; this is usually easy to do in the case of a TV or radio station, and not much harder with print media. Say:”anchor Shari Showoff, why does your editor Tom Turmoil let you get away with such biased coverage?” Then detail the bias, if you have not already done so.
Avoid bitching about generalities, line PC, liberals, ‘the left’, etc. Pin names and faces on these people.
Examine the professional credentials of your targets; again, their c. v. is usually easy to find.
In one delicious case I found a particularly egregious offender had a masters’s degree in meteorology. She had switched from weather to local news and her interviews were particularly offensive. I wrote in to suggest that she was a disgrace to the honorable empirical science of forecasting the weather, but found that another commenter had beaten me to the point, so I contented myself with agreeing with him.
Complain vociferously about obvious excessive deletion of comments, or about shutting
down comment threads which are still drawing attention. With today’s technology there is simply no excuse for this. In a sane world news media would be happy that even local topical news was drawing attention months or years after the fact; they would brag that ”our hard-hitting report on the exploding tapioca factory on Butterscotch Street is still drawing online comments six years later. ”
Of course since they are not in facts purveying news but Orwellian propaganda and advertising, the media want us to drop topical stories ASAP and scurry on to the next ephemeral topic.
This kind of relentless pressure on the MSM is cheap, easy, and fun to do. It’s effect cumulative, but then so is their own propaganda, as Takuan pointed out in my quote above.
And it is much cheaper for us than for them; we can win at this, in the long run.
If they smugly tell you that you can send a printed letter to the editor, do so. Scorch their ears off, publish a copy in your blog or journal, and refer or link to it in comments on their other stories.
Other suggestions? I find this a subject gratifyingly close to my heart.
P. S.
I went cold turkey on both film and TV years back, and am much happier. I realize this is difficult or impossible for many to do; but at least consider using netflix, taping shows, seeking out older film or TV shows and the like.
Why attend first run shows like the Cinemax at which the Aurora shooting took place at all?
This is a great place to starve the beast. If you watch many films a decent home entertainment system will save money in the long run.
Want a treat for your kids? Make ‘em wait till first run films come out on CD, the way they have to wait for Christmas. In the interval show them cool cheap movies on your home entertainment system; throw a party and invite their friends. Popcorn and snacks will be a lot cheaper than at Cinemax. Some of my younger married friends with kids do this all the time.
Boggy Man:
Crowley was a dreadful creep, but when he was right he was often very right.
I unplugged my TV when I had kids, and canceled my cable. I did not want the sewer pipe of modern culture to vomit up its filth into my home.
Bravo!
May your example inspire your many readers to follow in your footsteps.
Turner Classic Movies on cable and MeTV on Antenna are where my sets are stuck. Other than that, it’s old MST3K’s on You Tube.
I’m way to much of a movie buff to ever go down the no tv path; just very selective.
Hm!
First I ever heard of MeTV.
My last extended hospitalization -14 days- I was too burned out to read, so I kept the TV on Turners classics and saw a freight trainload of Wallace Beery, Saint, and Thin Man movies. Also for the first time, the magnificent 1946
Best Years of Our Lives.
I did see the complete 1965 Dr. Zhivago on YouTube. I will avow to my dying day that Geraldine is sexier than Julie. Why did the Doc stray off thereservation?
Can you believe it, I have never seen Double Indemnity with McMuuray and Stanwyck. I i was reading a review the other day; I’ll have to make room for that one.
“I will avow to my dying day that Geraldine is sexier than Julie. Why did the Doc stray off the reservation?”
For the same reason a man sometimes gets an unutterable craving for McDonald’s even when he can have filet mignon or lobster every night, or a man with a Ferrari still wants to test-drive a Lamborghini: Variety and novelty can trump even the highest quality, in terms of intensity of experience.
This is why loyalty and fidelity have to be trained responses.
Your last sentence is excellent. The general point is well taken.
It is grossly unfair to compare Julie to McDonald’s, though I remain a Geraldine partisan. Perhaps a better comparison would be of fine aged single malt to a good bar blend.
And both G and J,in the movie, look terrific when pregnant.
“It is grossly unfair to compare Julie to McDonald’s….”
Conceded; that was just the strongest image that came to mind that was still believeable.
The disparity between objective assessment of quality and personal preference of taste, and in how they are shaped, has always fascinated me. I have absolutely no aesthetic sensibility for coffee, for example, because I learned to drink it from a night-shift vending machine in a mail-sorting plant; I can regularly drink brews that make my wife or mother-in-law recoil, as long as they’re hot and sufficiently caffeinated.
So I have some experience in answering the question, “What the heck do you even see in ‘X’?!” All because I learned to like the bad before I learned how to tell it from the good. Which is a profound element of the human tragedy, I sometimes think.
In a recent discussion of taste and aroma, I truthfully avowed,
I can easily separate taste and odor and enjoy the flavor of something that initially smells offensive. And vice versa; frying liver and onions smells heavenly to me, but I can’t actually abide the taste. I don’t like Limburger but love all veiny cheeses and have a real taste for Leiderkranz.
Freshly brewed strong coffee smells exactly like freshly unleashed skunk effluvia to me. I don’t mean similar; they seem identical. When Starbucks opened up years go I would drive by one and be looking around for the beast. Yet I could order a cup of the brew and drink it with relish.
Remember the best may become the enemy of the good. It it perhaps better to start out with mediocre or even bad tastes, and learn gradually to appreciate the better, than the opposite: to be trained early in refined tastes which make any step down a torment.
The passionate foodie should still be able to appreciate and enjoy a QP w/cheese or a plate of kraut and franks, especially when hungry.
The best champagne I ever drank was a$15 bottle, accompanying cold Swedish meatballs wrapped in foil, on a hiking trip.
(I must admit the leftover meatballs were prepared from scratch, with beef lamb and pork, by a superb cook).
Freshly brewed strong coffee smells exactly like freshly unleashed skunk effluvia to me. I don’t mean similar; they seem identical. When Starbucks opened up years go I would drive by one and be looking around for the beast. Yet I could order a cup of the brew and drink it with relish.
Wow! Now I can tell my beloved Cousin-In-Law that he’s not the only one who can’t stand the smell of fresh coffee. (me, I love it– have since before I could stand it half-and-half with milk and a ton of sugar, and these days drink even bad fresh coffee black as night and bitter as defeat.)
Can I ask what kind of work do you do in your day job? Unless it’s top secret stuff involving a Stargate or something.
I personally do not want to know what unspeakable interdimsional knowledge our host is privy to in his day job.
Trust me friend, it is better that this door remains locked.
I dunno. I’m kinda looking forward to the day 50 years from now, whatever the statute is, when I can read the kind of skiffy that the United States government has demanded of him. I think that idea by itself is worth a novella, or at least a cameo as a sample in another “how to write” post. But then again, I’m also part of the military-industrial complex, so maybe I’m just blasé about such things.
I am a tech writer. I write the help and the user manuals, but, unlike all the manuals you read, mine are clear and logical and ‘splain everything in a step by step fashion.
Unless shown hard evidence, I refuse to believe that there are any such tech manuals.
Nope. You have to be researching interdimemsional plutonian terrorism.
Can’t you just imagine Stepphie saying to Brian Ross, “What if it’s not the guy, then what?” Ross, “Who cares. It might be, and then we can screw the tea party forever. If it’s the wrong guy, we just issue a sorry, oops, we didn’t mean to offend anyone, and if we did, we’re sorry.” “Cave Cave Deus Videt”
Journalism’s top masts are aflame, and may they burn to the waterline.
Now, the Chick-fil-A kerfuffle that isn’t — that’s another good example of silly nonsense editorializing.
To cite just one more example: When that piece of filth in Norway shot and killed a group of innocent people, he was described as a “Christian extremist,” and the media didn’t let go of that description long after it was proven to be untrue, giving the Lefties plenty of time for tongue-clucking about Those Crazy Christians.
There being no vein to mine in whatever beliefs the current piece of filth in Colorado holds, the media has nothing to say about them.
I read this blog post from someone who was a CBS writer and producer for 26 years a few weeks ago: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/06/memo-to-nbc-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you/. I thought it was very well done, and similar in sentiment to your blog post, Mr. Wright.
Pithy and pertinent.
I’m very glad you linked to this.
Indeed, I read it before the most recent editorial outrage of which I now so bitterly complain.
@foxfier, 6:11 pm
It must be a large volume of coffee, like that generated by a commercial vendor, to provoke this olfactory reaction. An ordinary pot brewed in the house would not affect me.
And once inside the Starbuck’s I could drink without distress.
My regards to your cousin-in-law.
Absolutely, the media and their brethren in the government and govt. schools are very bad people.
BTW, is “tragedy” the correct word for a massacre?
Technically, “tragedy” is not the correct word.
In re Hestledon’s link, what we have now is not liberal bias anymore, it’s all just plain lies. We have the old Soviet newspaper Pravda now in America, on every channel.