Censoring the Media

Posted on 12 June 2020 by eehines

The censors have expanded their operation from the Facebooks, Alphabets, Twitters of our nation to our newsroom simulacra. Daniel Henninger noted the latest examples of the invasion:

In the past week, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the editors of Bon Appétit magazine and the young women’s website Refinery 29 have been forced out by the staff and owners of their publications for offenses regarded as at odds with the beliefs of the current protests.

It’s more than mere censorship, though. It’s George Orwell and Franz Kafka in the press room collaborating on the press’ editorials.

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So Much for a Free Press

Posted on 11 June 2020 by eehines

The editors of The Wall Street Journal call it simply a milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture. It’s much worse than that. It marks the beginning of the end of a free press in our nation.

The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer…was pushed out over a headline, Buildings Matter, Too. … Staff members deemed the headline an offense to Black Lives Matter.

And

At the New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennet resigned Sunday after a staff uproar over an op-ed by a US Senator [and his deputy, James Dao, reassigned]. … A staff revolt deemed the piece fascist, unconstitutional, and too offensive for adults to read and decide for themselves.

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Who’s Insulting Whom?

Posted on 8 June 2020 by eehines

As most of you are aware, the government men of Hong Kong, on instruction from their masters in the People’s Republic of China government, has imposed on the people of Hong Kong a law criminalizing “disrespect” for the PRC national anthem.

Holden Chow, Vice-Chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, a staunchly pro-PRC member of Hong Kong’s “legislature,” strongly supports this law.

This is simply about protecting the dignity of the national anthem and deterring people from insulting it[.]

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Censorship

Posted on 30 May 2020 by eehines

Twitter has made itself an open, enthusiastic censor of political speech.

Twitter applied…fact-checking notices late Tuesday to two tweets from the president about the potential for fraud involving mail-in ballots. With a small label—”Get the facts about mail-in ballots”—and a link to more information, Twitter alerted its users that those claims were unsubstantiated.
The tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots,” a Twitter spokesman said.

Never mind that Twitter’s “fact” checking is done by the likes of CNN and The Washington Post.

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A First Amendment Case

Posted on 10 May 2020 by eehines

Oral argument on a 1^st Amendment case was heard by the Supreme Court last Wednesday. The case centers on

whether or not a 1991 law that protects people from receiving unwarranted telemarketer calls is a violation of the First Amendment when applied to political organizations.

This strikes me as a no-brainer that never should have gotten out of any District court. The 1^st Amendment bars the abridgment of political speech in the public square. It does not take away the right of private citizens to decide for themselves what speech they will hear from within their own, private property.

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Making the Case

Posted on 1 April 2020 by eehines

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) decried journalists’ touting America’s Wuhan Virus death rates as being greater than the People’s Republic of China’s. “Grotesque,” he tweeted about it. And he’s being generous, I say.

Naturally, journalists’ feelings were hurt by that, and they bellyached loudly. Michelle Goldberg, for instance:

Journalists are concentrated in cities that are being ravaged by a plague that could have been better contained with a competent president. They’re lonely and scared and reporting while homeschooling their kids. No one feels glee or delight. Some of us feel white hot rage[.]

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Scapegoating

Posted on 23 March 2020 by eehines

…and fake apologies.

Recall that Doctor Li Wenliang, a resident of Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China and an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, gave early warnings about the dangers and contagious nature of the Wuhan virus. Recall further that subsequent to his warnings, the police were sicced on him and that they threatened him if he didn’t shut the hell up. Li subsequently died of that same Wuhan virus.

Now the Communist Party of China is pretending to apologize to his family for that behavior.

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An Illustration

Posted on 17 March 2020 by eehines

A businessman in the People’s Republic of China, Ren Zhiqiang—who also is a member of the Communist Party of China—has been for some time an outspoken critic of PRC President Xi Jinping’s handling of the nation’s COVID-19 epidemic, a mishandling that allowed an early infection to blow out of control within the PRC and to become a global pandemic.

Outspoken critic: among other things, Ren wrote a widely disseminated essay that took issue with a 23 Feb speech by Xi. He wrote of a

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Progressive-Democrats’ Tuesday Debate

Posted on 27 February 2020 by eehines

Some are calling it rowdy; others say raucous. There’s this more concrete description, too, from Tony Katz:

Everyone else is talking to each other, yelling at each other, yelling at the moderators, yelling at the guy in the rafters….

And talking over each other, interrupting each other, trying to drown out each other. Recall the 2015-2016 Republican primary debates—they were rowdy, often rude, as participants occasionally interrupted or tried to talk over each other. Tuesday’s Progressive-Democrat debate was nothing but a constant rolling drumbeat of that.

I have a different take on that debate from “some,” “others,” and Katz.

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This Loss is No Loss

Posted on 18 February 2020 by eehines

Recall the fact of the tweet that the NBA’s Houston Rockets General Manager sent in support of the Hong Kong freedom protesters. Recall further the NBA’s abject cowardice in deeply kowtowing to the People’s Republic of China in response to the latter’s projected upset over the tweet and the NBA’s impudence. The kowtowing was rationalized from the league on down to individual players that they all had money at risk from the GM’s tweet—as if their personal pocketbooks could compare with the sacrifices of life and limb, in addition to economic loss, of those freedom protesters as they struggled for their basic freedoms.

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