One good thing to keep in mind in this era of escalating frenzies is to wait some time before reacting to any news story. More and more the first reporting of a seemingly straight news story is either underdone or flat-out wrong. There is no sense in spending the calories whipping up some righteous outrage for something that will need a “correction” in a few hours or in a few days. Far better to sit back and wait for things for things to play out before hopping on Twitter and re-tweeting what will be discovered to be patent falsehoods.
In the old days, before Dan Rather was outed as a deceptive, deceitful fraud, we the people had a degree of faith in the News. Reverence for the news was taught to us by our fathers and grandfathers, who spend evenings with their heads—maps in hand—bent toward the wireless to hear of troop movements. The News, during wartime was a way for the homefront to connect with the troops, their brothers and uncles and fathers, and to root for victory. And the News was disseminated in a fairly measured way—it wasn’t that reporters and editors were lying, but they would embargo a story for the safety of the national interest. It was understood that whatever was reported on the front page was being reported to the so-called enemy. But it was also understood that reporting would be as fair as possible under the circumstances.
Today, while we still have wars—albeit more distant, less personal, and where victory doesn’t amount to very much—the News isn’t very interested in troop movements or shifting alliances. They are interested in Getting Trump. They have spend untold resources and man-hours to frame the man as weak, petty, unbalanced, daft, stupid and utterly impeachable.
Up to now, the News has fed this narrative at such a fever pitch that a strata of voters believe in “Russian collusion”—that somehow, a presidential candidate that had less than 1% chance of winning the general election was able to draw upon the nearly unlimited resources of Vladamir Putin to pull off an astounding victory. The story of the presidential candidate who had a 99% chance of winning, who had a demonstrated relationship with Vladamir Putin, and whose husband was enriched by $500,000 for a speech to a bank in Moscow, is of absolutely no interest. And this doesn’t even begin to raise questions about Uranium One. If you haven’t heard of Uranium One, it is because the reporters of your go-to news sources are particularly and spectacularly lazy.
In the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s office’s unprecedented correction to a Buzzfeed article about what Trump said or didn’t say, some are “waking up,” to use the vernacular, and wondering why they were so susceptible to believing the News as it is breathlessly presented. Yes, the moment when one realizes that one has been duped, and duped big-time, is difficult. The first few swallows of pride are bitter. But with a cleansing quaff of Truth, not only the palate—but the eyes—clear, and the world can looked on anew.
On the heels of the Buzzfeed debacle was the report of the Catholic high school boys from Kentucky showing bad behavior or disrespect to a drum-beating Native American. What is devastating about this episode was how eager the conservative blue-check brigade was to pile on, including the organizers of The March for Life, to defame the teens who traveled a great distance to stand for the unborn. The negative comments reverberated throughout the Twitter-verse until someone had the sense to view the entire video, and then there was a collective belated oopsie. There was no bad behavior or disrespect exhibited by the boys from Covington.
Sorry, but oopsie isn’t going to cut it. For the media that is unabashedly liberal and left, they don’t have to apologize (expect perhaps on the advice of counsel). If they do issue a sincere apology and show honest contrition without coercion, the credit will be theirs. It must be noted that mainstream reporting is perfectly at ease in painting strong, patriotic, Christian, pro-life young men as lowlife weasels.
But for the conservative commentators who eagerly boarded the bandwagon—shame, shame, shame. Why? Why did you throw away disregard for the Truth so easily? Why did you believe the initial reports? What happened to your critical thinking skills? Did you think you were going to warm yourself to the mainstream media? Did you think they would see your tweet, and respond with “Hey, Mr. Blue (conservative) Checkmark, why don’t you come up and see me some time?”
Guess what, Mr. Blue (conservative) Checkmark? The liberal left hates you. They’ve always hated you, and they always will hate you. Even as you contort yourself into the uncomfortable and unnatural shape of a Never Trumper, they will still hate you. Even if you do a full conversion and start calling for the death of white people and buying stock in Proctor & Gamble (parent of Gillette) they will still hate you. It is better that you come to grips with the level of this distaste, and rise above it—and not to bend your opinions to the will of your enemy. As you might have already observed, when you dance to their pipe, it doesn’t end well.
For the rest of us, for the readers and followers of News, the lesson is as it always had been—don’t form an opinion at the first reporting. Wait for the story to play out, and wait for the weaknesses and biases to emerge. Don’t fall for fear porn. Don’t leap for immediate calls to action. Don’t overreact. Everything will all be all right.
Please join me in welcoming Gaudia Certaminis, a keen observer of the times.
Great article. This was not just fake news. It was also a fake narrative.
Even if these boys had shown bad behavior and purposely and actively disrespected the drum-beating man, even taunted him, would that have made it a national story?
Nice post, and I do welcome Ms Certaminis. Nevertheless, the time when a black box warning was needed for Mindrot consumers is probably past. The addicts will never give up the rush, and the rest of us tend to avoid the mental buboes like the Plague.
My personal disappointment with this affair had nothing to do with purveyors of Mindrot. No, my disappointment was caused by the kids’ diocesan Bishop and the Archbishop of Louisville. Have the Bishops not sufficiently soiled the Mystical Body of Christ with their craven sheltering of predatory pedophiles? Apparently, there is still work to be done. Better a millstone.
Conservatism, Inc. is the authorized, controlled opposition. They are the Washington Generals to the Left’s Harlem Globetrotters. The designated losers, purposely created and maintained to bleed off tension and support from the Right.
Gaudia Certaminis is a good nom de plume.
In the early 1970s Edith Efron published her book “The News Twisters” and it created a bit of a stir then. Now it seems largely forgotten. Ms. Efron pointed out that the media manipulate the “news” to support their narrative. What supports the narrative is emphasized and what doesn’t is ignored. Now the media is hopelessly dishonest and corrupt.
This caution against rapid reaction to news is good advice. Patience is a virtue after all. But there comes a point in the narrative that calls for immediate action to save the world or foment justice in the activity du jour or demand justice for the miscreants that the disinformation and lies must be opposed or they take on a life of there own. I still see You-Tube clips demeaning the Covington youth so they will never be “back to normal”.
The best (worst) example of the disinformation taking on a life of it’s own is the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis being passed off as settled science. There are numerous lines of reasoning and data analysis falsifying the hypothesis but citing them,if you can find a venue to do that, brings cries of “deniar” and “profit monger shilling for Big Oil”. I am thankful that the truth beat the lies back in the Covington episode and provided the impetus for this article but I remain cynical about the truth replacing the lies on AGW before the next glaciation.
Oh my. We have an historian among us. Gaudia Certaminis — the joy of battle, eh? Attila to his troops before the Battle of Châlons was it?
Twitter refuses to serve linked pages to my aging ‘racing browser’, which is really handy. With the plethora of shortened url’s these days you never know where you are being sent, and increasingly it seems to be that nasty open sewer – so nasty, in fact, that it actually leaves stains on your computer screen. Because Twitter was at the center of the reporting fiasco on the Covington students, I was blissfully unaware of the initial reporting.
It’s always wise to hover over a link to a news article to check what lies in wait. If it leads to one of the hard-core Mediacrat party outlets, you can steel yourself against the inevitable intelligence assault heading your way. (The Mediacrats are a political party masquerading as legitimate news outlets, in order to skirt all the rules by claiming First Amendment protections; the Mediacrats are the Democrat’s evil puppet masters.)
It is always laughable to see the retard on this blog pump up by the lies that Trump and Fox News keep telling.