The Mendacity of American Journalism – Yet Another Flagrant Example

One of the thematic lessons, to be derived from study of Hitler’s Nazis and their all too easy and rapid overcoming of the impediments to autocratic rule normally posed by civic institutions and independent social organizations, was the role played by pre-existing public distrust and contempt towards those entities. In view of a similar present and persisting repugnance in the U.S. for its islands of tyrannical resistance, including its news media, the peril of demagogues and warlords can be sighted on the horizon. One would think that a modicum of prudence might, at least, infect the veteran sages within those social/civic entities. But alas, wisdom has likewise “caught the last train for the coast.”

One of the devices, deployed by Satan in the Temptation of Christ, was to cite scriptural text while omitting key phrases which substantively alter the meaning of that text (Matthew 4:5–6). It seems that our modern Wormwoods understand the lesson, although less subtle practitioners.

James Fellows, veteran national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, excerpted a speech from Trump’s recent Miami political rally (September 16, 2016), and thereafter suggested that the presidential candidate hinted at “bodily harm against his opponent.”

I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Miami. “I think they should disarm. Immediately. What do you think. Yes? Take their guns away. She doesn’t want guns. Take them. Let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away, O.K. It will be very dangerous.

The cadence of that quote suggests that it was originally part of a larger argument. And lo and behold, such intuitions are well founded as these “incriminating” sentiments were preceded by . . .

You know she’s very much against the Second Amendment. She wants to destroy your Second Amendment. Guns, guns, guns, right. I think that what we should do is she goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before.

. . .  highlighting the hypocrisy of such a political stance; or alternatively, another example whereby Hillary Clinton considers herself above the rules that she would exact upon others.

Such rhetoric by Trump is hardly new. In a tweet earlier this year, Trump wailed, “Hillary said that guns don’t keep you safe. If she really believes that she should demand that her heavily armed bodyguards quickly disarm!” The integrated compactness of that tweet might make selective parsing a harder enterprise for our modern day Wormwoods.

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What makes this particular dabble in sophistic deceit by the veteran journalist such a lark is the irony of The Atlantic concurrently publishng “Why Do Americans Distrust the Media?”; or in the piece “Why Americans Hate the Media,” written by this same James Fallows in his prime. But one hardly need thrash the sociological bushes to uncover the reasons. The answer lies spread-eagled like a cheap tart on the pages of the same website; loss of intellectual integrity.

The “members of the punditocracy” are perplexed by the inability for Trump’s lies, blatant in their obviousness and childish in their silliness, to sink his candidacy. Certainly, an outside observer, with little skin in the partisan games, might cite the lack of evenhandedness in this regard by the media; neglecting, dismissing, and excusing the lies of Trump’s opponent, which are more serious in nature in that they have directly involved the public interest. But a simpler answer lies in the conundrum of veteran practitioners of the arts of partisan spin, lies, and sophistic deceit, calling another out for mendacity. The Fifth Estate has so debased their currency of influence that they can no longer credibly act as checks against the ambitions of potential demagogues and warlords.

Corporate Prayer

I do not like corporate prayer; nor do I do it very well. True corporate prayer is as intimate as sexual relations. And the former can and has very much led to the latter. True corporate prayer means vulnerability. And in anyone who has received a steady diet of barbs and rejection by the visible church over the years, such are disinclined to be that exposed. I do not know how to reconcile this.

Most of what I have observed and experienced in corporate prayer is formulaic and at arms-length. I have been to one men’s group in which each man took dutiful turn praying for one of the others in a painfully formalist exercise. I expect that it is all quite ineffectual and worthless.

Wednesday prayer meetings are the worst. Above eighty percent of prayers offered deal with someone’s sickness or some other malady with pleas for recovery. I am seriously tempted to go “full heretic” and pray that someone that I know be killed off.

And then there are those who self-ordain themselves as prayer warriors. These tend to hog the allocated prayer time with largely incoherent mumbles. They might as well as be praying in tongues. Actually, it would be an improvement since we could then demand an interpreter of the tongue.

Some have complained on this count. I have hitherto tended to excuse such prayer warriors; although I have often prayed, during those ordeals, that I was snoring narcoleptic. However, there was a recent incident, in which one self-styled prayer warrior was quick and indeed manifested a readied preparation beforehand to reject a personal request in a somewhat desperate situation.

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (James 2:15–6)

Consequently, my belief is that unless one is willing to be the sacrificial conduit in the fulfillment of those muttered prayers, those mumbles are but one long and tedious liturgical blasphemy. For if the prayer of concern is not matched by a conduct of concern, it emits the stench of disingenuity and hypocrisy. Certainly, this would inherently reduce the length of those warrior’s prayers.

Charlie Hebdo and the Rank but Unconscious Hypocrisy of the Americans

The largest number of unthinking apologists for unlimited free speech and expression emanate from the United States; whose quasi-religious dogmatic devotion to a constitutional creed continues, despite widespread infractions of the principle sanctioned by their courts. For, in the minds of the adherents of these various religions, these Entities are real. But in America, corporations and corporate brands are knowingly fictional entities, constructs and concepts by their very creators and followers.

And yet the courts seem fit there and elsewhere to protect these alleged realities from defamation and libel, which are less scurrilous than those depicted of religious figures by Charlie Hebdo. Walmart does not actually exist as a flesh and blood, material and/or even conscious being. Yet the monkeys on the U.S. Supreme Court saw fit to classify these fictions as legal persons, just a few decades after denying that same designation to flesh and blood blacks (1857); a fairy tale, which continues to be aped  to this very day.

If a mere untruthful and untruthfully held published opinion, which is deemed to cause damage to the reputation of these fictional non-entities, with ensuing loss of customers and revenues, is liable to civic suits; how is untruthful and untruthfully held published opinion about entities, which some hold to be true, and which likewise causes damage to reputation and ensuing loss of congregants and tithes/offerings any different? If the CEOs of the various Churches can be subject to such blatant editorial and pictorial infamies, then only selectivist hypocrisy prevents a similar defamation of corporate CEOs. If Charlie Hebdo can gratuitously display nuns masturbating; rational consistency demands that we can likewise flood the zone with generic depictions of computer code writers in Silicon Valley or Seattle, engaging in various acts of zoophilia.

© Copyright Johnny Hutchinson

The Inevitable Self-Contradiction of Charlie Hadbo

Nothing is sacred. Not even your own mother, not the Jewish martyrs, not even people starving of hunger. Laugh at everything, ferociously, bitterly, to exorcise the old monsters.

One knew that it was going to happen; but not this quickly. This motto of Charlie Hadbo has taken a deliciously ironic if macabre twist.

Patrick Charbonnier, an 80 year old founder of Charlie Hadbo, excoriated its slain editor for jeopardizing the staff of that magazine by excessive forays into

“I really hold it against you…What made him feel the need to drag the team into overdoing it,” he writes in the Left-leaning magazine Nouvel Obs.

Richard Malka, lawyer for the Charlie Hadbo magazine, complains about Patrick Charbonnier criticism of the slain editor:

Charb has not yet even been buried and Obs finds nothing better to do that to publish a polemical and venomous piece on him. My disappointment is immense.

I wonder if they get the irony. If Charlie and its supporters are true believers in the purported principles of that magazine, than the polemical and venomous piece on these corpses of Charlie Hadbo is quite consistent with its principles.

A Boss from Hell

Mr. Glenn Beck brought out the Vice President of Studio Operations to upbraid her publicly about several measures with a tinge of ecological concern to them, that were enacted. He resented the biodegradable “corn” spoons, the fluorescent light bulbs, water cooler and biodegradable cardboard recycling bins. You can see the episode here.1

Many of these ecologically-friendly products, that he speaks of, are of such quality and futility that they ought to be scorned. As for Global Warming (AGW); my biggest bugaboo is the lies and deceits that have been used to push this agenda. There is a politically charged environment within those supposedly scientifically disciplines that requires conformity to the AGW faith, by those who are supposed to be honest and impartial and scientific researchers. I will never give consideration of AGW again until they fire Mann and Jones at the IPCC first, in order to make some demonstration that they are serious about intellectual integrity.

So, I can appreciate Mr. Beck’s sentiments that “Global warming is a pile of crap.”

However, it is in his follow-up comments that turn me completely against such conservatives like Mr. Beck. And I do not understand why a true and self-respecting Evangelical, who actually believes their Bible, should have much to do with this ultra-conservative.

“If anyone does anything in this company because of global warming, they’re fired.”

Although said in all jest and frivolity. There is menace behind all the humour.

As a parent, and as much as it is possible; you do not go out of one’s way to deliberately discipline your child publicly. It is imprudent. All the child sees is the public shame that has been exacted upon him by his supposedly loving parent. The child gratingly resents it and forgets the lesson that is being taught. Even the Scriptures, when it comes to church discipline, first advocates private avenues before a public rebuke. So pulling the same public shaming on an employee such as Beck’s Vice President of Studio Operations is very much of similar bullying character.

As one can see from this blog, I am a theological conservative. I believe my Bible. And it speaks of liberty of conscience on secondary matters – Romans 14.

Mr. Beck makes a living out of castigating statists for amongst other things, violations of civil liberties and conscience. But how is he, in his private capacities any different. It would seem that Glenn Beck represents a faction which believes in merely replacing statist violations of free speech and conscience with corporatist violations. He is thereby just a hypocrite. And contrary to C.S. Lewis’ maxim, the robber barons can be very much as tyrannical as their statist counterpart.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I am totally bamboozled that such a person can appeal to so many of my so-called Evangelical colleagues. True Christianity is not sociopolitical conservatism.

ENDNOTES

1.     Glenn Beck Program, Studio Treason, August 21, 2013, Accessed http://www.video.theblaze.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=29910975 on September 3, 2013.