Online video of right-wing students from Covington, Kentucky appearing to mock a Native American protester went viral, prompting outrage that later turned out to have been at least somewhat unjustified. Social media is a natural conduit for what the Chinese call “human flesh hunting,” Internet vigilantism that goes awry, The solution, of course, is to wait for all the facts to come out. But who has time for that?
Someone Online Says Someone Did Something and You Should Be Pissed
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We used to call them editors. Sour cynical men and women who had their flaws but knew to call bullshit on bullshit.
Then came the internet. I can cut and paste, I can be an editor by stealing the work of others.
And now we have what we have. The dems are running a corrupt DA as their anointed one, and there’s just about no one left to call bullshit.
Look what happened to Gary Webb. Look what’s happening to Ted Rall.
The few survivors will be easy pickings. Jeff Bezos bought the Post; their reporters barely feel their collars now. What’s his name bought the LATimes–an LAPD sloppy seconds–and they’re about three years (my guess) from PennySaver status.
We have arrived at journalism’s terminal phase. Heaven help us all.
“Look what happened to Gary Webb. Look what’s happening to Ted Rall.”
I have been calling the corporate news “fake news” (and Democrats fake Left) for decades.
Some people call attention to a scam and expect law or shame to bring it to a halt. Here in America, when a scam works, everybody hustles to get a piece of the action before all the suckers get wise to it.
A newspaper would once have had to bring SLAPP suits to economically silence its critics.
Now it can profitably have a court economically devastate a critic and then silence him with a corporate state legislated anti-SLAPP suit.
Watch how the corporate media will now explain how democracy can be restored by deposing another elected leader in a foreign country that it understands to be subject to US law.
Yeah, I’ve heard the RW pundits saying, “there are fine people on both sides.”
The thing is, wearing a MAGA hat is not fine. It is a code phrase for “Make America White Again.*” Wearing it *is* an insult to Native Americans and Blacks both. The boys got insulted *back* and it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
Shaming “works” – it’s built into the human psyche. That’s why we feel shame in the first place – it’s a survival instinct. We need to band together to survive, and that means that individuals must conform to the social contract. Shame pushes them in the right direction.
That’s not to say it hasn’t been abused, one should not feel shame unless one has harmed another person. e.g. There’s nothing shameful about expressing your love for another human being, even if that human being is the same gender you are. OTOH, if you’re caught stealing candy from a baby, you absolutely should feel ashamed.
*never mind that it wasn’t ever “white”
“The thing is, wearing a MAGA hat is not fine.”
The MAGA-hat-wearing demonstrators on MLK Day at their annual anti-abortion “March for Life” are openly opposed to civil rights for anyone but themselves.
I am firmly against showing any hint of toleration for the intolerant.
Trump himself bragged that he could openly shoot someone on the street without losing any support of his followers.
I suppose the “freedom loving Americans” who tolerated the August 2017 murder in Charlottesville could also have expected that that murder would be tolerated as an expression of symbolic speech and patriotism.
More thug justice to come.
Smollett’s music manager, Brandon Z. Moore, told Variety today that he was on the phone with Smollett when the actor was attacked. “I heard ‘MAGA country’ clearly,” Moore said. “I heard the scuffle and I heard the racial slur.”
http://www.cwbchicago.com/2019/01/new-images-of-potential-persons-of.html
OK, what have you learned that I have missed?
Perhaps (a)social media users should be required to count to ten backwards before posting about matters of which they have no direct experience ? Might take all the «fun» out of the practice, however….
Henri