Category: Media

What’s The Matter With The New York Times

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve all but given up talking to my Traditionalist relatives about politics. They are really, really upset about the evils of the “media narrative” and anything that doesn’t fit THEIR media narrative is dismissed as “bogus.” One thing that they often raise is what they feel is the lack of objectivity on the part of the mainstream media.

This really upsets them a whole lot.

And I honestly don’t understand why they’re so upset or what, specifically, they want to change. If you give a lie (MAGA) equal value to reality (everything else) then you’re pretty much lying to the audience. Of course, they like the lie and they get really angry when anyone calls a spade a spade and a lie a lie.

Which brings us to The New York Times. I love The New York Times and all my occasional interactions with them have been pretty cool — other than Maggie Haberman who was really mean to me on Twitter. Anyway, the Times on an institutional level, despite being liberal leaning, always tries to square the circle by going out of its way to give some validity to the MAGA lie.

Given that our democracy is in something of a long term, structural crisis, such behavior does not help anyone — especially not the Old Gray Lady. Conservatives already want to burn the paper to the ground and they totally ignore the fact the paper struggles with being objective, to the point of doing a disservice to its readers.

This is yet another example of how totally fucked the United States is on a macro basis. We’re careening towards a very, very dark future of either autocracy or civil war.

I Wish The MAGA New Right Would Shut The Fuck Up About The ‘Media Narrative’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I rarely watch or listen to The Joe Rogan Experience despite being pressured into doing so by the YouTube algorithms. But I did once see a clip of this big, beefy dude complaining about the evil liberal “media narrative.” Ok, let’s unpack this.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) gestures toward a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory Jan. 6, 2021 at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Some demonstrators later breached security and stormed the Capitol. (Francis Chung/E&E News and Politico via AP Images)

As I’ve written before, something is warping American politics. A group that was once the bedrock of our democracy, conservative straight white men, now feel under attack to the point that they would rather give up their American birthright of democracy than risk the abstract danger of “being canceled.”

Now, the reason why this makes me so aggravated is all of this is “soft power,” while Republicans are accruing hard power…by scaring straight conservative white men with the boogey man of fear of being canceled. I really struggle with the origin of the attack on “CIS straight white men.”

The obvious answer is “wokeism,” yet I believe that some of that is constructed by fucking MAGA New Right cocksuckers who get their fee-fees hurt when they don’t get everything they want. And, as I’ve said, the issue is maybe a combination of technology and a generational vibe shift have combined to make the baseline of the “media narrative” “woke” to the point that your average Joe Rogan guest freaks the fuck out about it.

But the issue is we’re careening towards a very, very dark future. Either we have a “national divorce” with Blues serving the papers, or we slip into autocracy and that will be that. The two sides are just too absolute in their views and the Reds are actively agitating for autocracy. They make it quite clear that they want a white Christian ethno state.

Anyway, we’re fucked. Get ready for the next few years to be very, very bumpy.

Millie Bobby Brown & The Creation of Reality

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I used to read the old Gawker religiously and they were always exposing the true marketing origins of viral moments. So, let’s break down why it’s highly likely that Millie Bobby Brown being photographed in pretty much standard issue bikinis were all part of a plan to transition her into adult roles.

Millie Bobby Brown

Before I begin, I would like to note that another person — Taylor Swift — got snapped in a bikini with her boyfriend but the pictures were taken from far away and grainy. Almost as if…Tay-Tay didn’t want the pictures taken.

Ok, Ms. Brown has just turned 18 in February and she’s in this weird era in her career where to date the audience has seen her as a “kid in danger” on Stranger Things. So, Ms. Brown has two routes to shake things up and remind the audience that she’s not a child anymore — run around with no clothes on in a rather shocking manner — the Miley Cyrus Option, if you will, or do what she did “accidently on purpose” get snapped in “a bikini.”

She’s a public figure — just to go outside in just a standard issue bikini probably involved a “team” meeting unto itself. Or not, she may have just had a brief chat with her folks. Anyway, no way she would go on a boat with her boyfriend so close to shore that it was easy to get clear shots of her without her thinking way in advance that this very thing would happen.

The only reason why I mention any of this again is I got a surprising number of pings from exotic locals (probably entertainment people on vacation) and this whole thing taps into my personal annoyance with how much of what we call “reality” is actually constructed. Or, if not constructed, at least “managed.”

And I’m not suggesting anything too sinister. And I know all about how MAGA New Right people are always flipping out about the “media narrative.” Anyway, the point is — a lot of the modern world is managed by PR people who know that most people don’t have the time to think through where a viral moment may have really come from.

I’m Impressed With Millie Bobby Brown’s Personal Brand Management

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I don’t think I’m being too jaded to point out that all these pictures we’re seeing of Millie Bobby Brown on vacation in rather modest bikinis is part of her soft transition to adult hood. Unlike many young starlets who freaked the fuck out once they were 18, she’s figured out a way to change people’s perception of her while simply wearing bikinis.

Millie Bobby Brown

She must have known the paps would take pictures of her and, as such, she wore the bikinis she wore simply to get adults to think of her as, well, an adult. Now that everyone has seen her in a bikini, casting directors are probably going to be a lot more open to putting her in more mature roles.

Which, of course, makes me think of Taylor Swift and how she HASN’T managed herself as well. While she’s occasionally wore more provocative clothing, Tay-Tay showing some T&A for a movie role would make her fanbase melt down into hysterics. Even though both she and they are no longer children anymore. Hollywood is an industry and, as such, if Tay-Tay wants bigger mainstream roles, she might have to – gasp — show a little bit more skin than her fanbase is accustomed to seeing.

But back to Ms. Brown.

She has excellent management, is all I gotta say. She’s always worn more adult clothing — sometimes to the point that I have found myself cringing — and now she’s very much in the position to become just another big name Hollywood star without going through that weird transitional phase that has haunted other young starlets.

The Trouble With ‘Wokeism’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok, this is something I think about way, way too much. And I think I might have come up with an explanation for what troubled me about both “being woke” and the conservatives who want to burn our Western democracy to the ground because of it.

It seems to me that “being woke” is actually a catch all for a hodge-podge of different things that represent different ideas to different people. Rather than being some sort of set orthodoxy, “being woke” is an amorphous blob of ideas that are used, abused and twisted as needed by both sides to prove their points. (This is coming from someone who absolutely HATES using “both sides” for any reason.)

Or maybe we might look at “being woke” as a spectrum.

On one end of the spectrum is “classical college sophomore wokeism” that hates all “straight CIS white men” because they’re a member of the patriarchy that needs to be “slayed.” This is the wokeism that your typical rabid conservative podcaster rants about in ever growing heated monologues.

I’ve only rarely encounter this Hyper Wokeism outside of my time in college and I have to admit it is pretty fucking annoying. It’s annoying because its corrosive and causes the bedrock of any stable Western democracy — conservative men — to start babbling about how the US isn’t REALLY a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic and fuck you, lib. I suppose the case could be made that this form of Hyper Wokeism leapt out of its natural college campus environment because of social media.

On the OTHER end of the spectrum, there are things that conservatives CALL “being woke” that aren’t all being woke, but rather just normal life in a modern Western democracy — or a constitutional republic that aspires to be a democracy. Things like not being overtly racist or misogynistic are now used by Conservatives as examples of people being “woke.” Throw in the #MeToo movement’s abrupt and long-overdue change in expectations for men in power and the word “woke” is thrown around a whole lot in ways that are meaningless other than to jerk off angry white men who can’t find a job because they don’t have a college degree.

The issue is, even though “being woke” is a blob, conservatives mix and match different types of “being woke.” They actively conflate the different concepts associated with being woke for their own purposes, making everyone angry which is what they want — they want to destroy everything and the best way to do that is make everyone so mad that we don’t have any functioning politics. Conservatives hate government unless it’s doing things they like.

So, taxes for the wealthy can never be too low and taxes for the poor can never be too high. They have no shame and so they want to expand or contract government control depending upon which part of their fascist governing alliance we’re talking about.

Anyway, we’re fucked. Get out the country if you can.

‘Get Out’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Nothing is going to change. There will be no reforms. Trump isn’t going to be indicted and if he is, he will simply use it as a foil in his 2024 presidential campaign. Or if Trump doesn’t run, the Ron DeSantis will run and we’ll just skip the middle step of him being Trump’s veep. And if DeSantis isn’t Trump’s veep, he could very well pick someone completely bonkers like Gen. Mike Flynn and HE will be America’s Putin starting at some point after 2025.

The point is — get out.

Leave America as soon as you can. Or, if nothing else, figure out some practical contingencies. What do you believe in? What are you willing to suffer for in the real world? There will be no narrative. If you pick wrong, you may die or get tortured at some point down the road.

Or there’s going to be a civil war and if you’re a poor Blue in a Red State, you’re going to become a domestic political refugee with no understanding of what your ultimate endgame will be.

Now, it’s talk like this that got me blocked by Twitter liberal darling “Mueller, She Wrote” for being “terribly negative.” But all those dystopian scenarios are things I really believe may happen, with civil war on one end of the spectrum and autocracy on the other.

The thing that we’re used to, a peaceful transition from one democratically elected Western-style administration to the next, just isn’t going to happen. The worse thing about it all is the MAGA New Right is telling us point blank what their plans are and we’re lulzing it.

But you know that the moment the shit hits the fan that wealthy liberals are going to vote with their feet. They’re going to flee the United States en mass at unpreceded numbers. Even though I’m beginning to think leaving the country is probably my only option, I still think if Twitter liberals weren’t cowards and made it a taboo to leave the country so people would stand and fight then maybe I wouldn’t be so interested in leave the country myself.

Yet, here we are.

The very people who might help us at least slow our slide into autocracy — Twitter liberals — will be the first to bounce. And it will be even worse if we have a civil war instead. But, as I keep saying, if there’s a civil war, it will be Blues NOT Reds who start it and it will happen because of tectonic political and historical forces that will force individuals to bubble up to the surface to be heroes whether they like it or not.

So, get out. If you’re not MAGA and you have the means to get out of the country at some point between now and late 2024, do it.

The Sticky Wicket Of Florence Pugh Wearing a Sheer Pink Top

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, when it comes to seeing Florence Pugh’s nipples in a very sheer, very pink outfit, I’m more concerned with how pink has taken over high fashion. Is that part of the mythical vibe shift we’re supposed to going through?

Florence Pugh

But the crux of her wearing a sheer top comes down to wealthy women ALWAYS want to show their nipples. It’s their thing. It’s a flex. And I could care less. So what. You go, girl.

And it’s not like this is new. Way back when, there was a woman in the French court who loved one of her breasts so much that she fitted her top such that it was always exposed.

So, I’m completely indifferent. But we have to accept that exposed female nipples continue to be controversial because there are men who can’t handle seeing them for any reason and they get way, way too excited.

In a sense, the issue of a sheer top showing a nipple causing us Poors to get all excited is similar to how it seems the vast majority of wealthy women — especially associated with high fashion — are all having same-sex romances to the point that it’s very gouache for anyone to notice it happening at all.

The whole thing is dumb. If a woman feels she can get away with “freeing the nipple” let her do so.

The Ginni Thomas Hot Take Conundrum

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, I was on the Wrong Side of Tik-Tok and saw some angry white dude make it clear that he thought that it HAD to be one of those evil, squirrely liberals who leaked the Dobbs decision because otherwise we would know who did it. His thinking was that because of the globalist cucks and the Deep State all the liberals are in it together and want to protect the liberal leaker.

Meanwhile, in the real world, this hot take makes no sense whatsoever. Why would a court controlled by conservatives protect a liberal leaker when they would have a vested interest to do the exact opposite.

So, no. It was a conservative. And the person with the means, motive and opportunity to leak Dobbs is Ginni Thomas.

But the fact that both sides feel they have iron clad logic for why they believe the other side is responsible for the leak is not great for the future of the the United States. It’s an example of how the two sides have their own echo chambers to the point that there is absolutely no room for compromise or understanding.

Anyway, so this is yet another sign that we’re fucked. Totally and completely fucked. We continue to careen towards a very dark future. Get ready.

‘Wokeism’ Is Extremely Corrosive To Democracy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

At it’s heart, I think it’s possible that what we call “wokeism” is part of a soft Singularity that causes culture to move at such a fast pace that Olds can’t figure out how to adjust to a strange new world. Add to this that something about the second Obama Administration broke the brain of the Right and we’re really careening towards a dark and uncertain future.

Now, before I continue, I’ve made my choice. I’ve picked my side. For all the bullshit that the “woke cancel culture mob” generates, I’d rather side with them than the fucking tyrannical, fascist MAGA New Right. I know this is negative polarization — something I often bemoan with others — but everyone seems to be dipping into the poison well of negative polarization so I can feel only so bad.

But, in my experience as middle aged “CIS white male,” there are, in fact, people who are too “woke” for their own good and that wokeism is extremely corrosive to our democracy. Things have obviously gone too far at this point for us to fix anything, but it’s a shame that that is now the case. If only we had collectively decided that we shouldn’t make conservative men feel bad for being conservative….then we wouldn’t have fucking MAGA to worry about.

Because, from my discussions with my Traditionalists relatives — who I love dearly — they believe that they risk being “canceled” by the “woke cancel culture mob” simply because they don’t follow the “woke media narrative.” Now, obviously, things are far more complicated than this statement might suggest.

There is a whole cottage industry of Far Right podcasts devoted specifically to banging MAGA talking points into the minds of very receptive conservative white men. In fact, I would even go so far as to suggest that conservative podcasts, more so than talk radio or FOX News (or OANN or NewsMax) is where the real damage is being done.

Even though my Traditionalist relatives would not admit to being Good Germans in waiting, that’s what they are — they are willful in their desire to live in a white Christian autocratic fascist state with white minority rule. That’s what they want, damn the consequences.

And it definitely seems that we’re going to turn into an autocratic state starting the moment a Republican is POTUS again. It’s an asymmetrical attack on our democracy — they only have to win once.

I don’t know what to tell you. We’re fucked. And I know that there’s a good chance I’m going to run afoul of ICE once President DeSantis is president and forces through some sort of dystpian “Second Bill of Rights” that will be, in fact, enabling acts that will assure Republican minority rule for at least the rest of my life, if not far beyond.

Good luck.

Judge A Man By Who Blocks Him On Twitter

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

“We have all fallen short of the glory that is God,” is one of my favorite Christian saying, even though I’m no Christian. None of us is perfect and we’ve all screwed up to varying degrees because we’re mortal and human. Before liberal darling “Mueller, She Wrote” blocked me on Twitter for being “terribly negative,” the most notable person to block me was Nick Denton. That hurt because, in a way, I really admired Gawker in its heyday.

But, given how obsessively I was tweeting him at one point, I guess I deserved it.

Yet, let’s go back to Mueller, She wrote. As I understand it, she’s based in Sacramento and, lo and behold, I got a ping to this very obscure, rarely viewed site from…Sacramento. The person seemed very interested in the posts I did laying out my concern about being “canceled” for my bad behavior in South Korea nearly 20 years ago.

I am notorious for taking a little bit of information and running with it to absurd lengths, so I’m mildly curious if maybe Mueller, She Wrote is not only extremely easy to trigger, but also a little vindictive. Did she want to laugh at my concern about potentially being “canceled?” Is that what that was all about?

I have no idea, and, honestly, not only is there little I can do about it, the more I learn about the woman behind Mueller, She Wrote, the less I care that she blocked me. She seems very, very sensitive to the point that she blocks and mutes people for the dumbest of reasons.

And I’m well aware that by me saying that, I’m a CIS white male part of the patriarchy who should be, by definition, “canceled.” If I was still irrated by being blocked by Mueller, She Wrote, this is the point where I would tell her to fuck off.

But, you know, she’s just not worth it. She comes across as one of the stereotypical “woke” people who is always canceling people for their human foibles and wants us all to be robots with no emotions that don’t fit the woke mob’s orthodoxy. Now THAT is something I can say can fuck off.

So, live long an prosper Mueller, She Wrote. The only thing that annoys me now is I keep fucking seeing Twitter liberals using eye emojis on her tweets that I can see because I’m blocked. I, unlike her, am not easily triggered and so that’s something I can live with.