Select date

October 2024
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

A Selection of Gourmet Nothingburgers from the Media

4-10-2023 < Counter Currents 28 4195 words
 

3,871 words


According to legend, an independent, truthful, and unbiased press is a vital pillar of democracy. There’s a certain mystique about intrepid journalists facing the night and storm in their trench coats and fedoras, out to fight corruption and bring the powerful to heel, armed only with their pens and notepads. Their aim was nothing but the truth: “Just the facts, Ma’am.” Perhaps an indication of the underlying mythic power of this ideal is that Superman and Spider-Man, two of the best-known superheroes, had day jobs as reporters.


Even so, this image was already getting corny by the time those fedoras were going out of style. Today, the legend of the free press is as ridiculous as the tall tale about Our Democracy &trade;. The mainstream media today is monopolized by half-a-dozen gigantic conglomerates, all under heavily Zionist management. Their corporate culture from top to bottom is more Leftist than the Soviet Politburo, other than the neocon conglomerate which effectively serves as a controlled opposition. Together, they’re the keystone of The System’s propaganda arm. They play a vital role in the public’s full-spectrum indoctrination. This is for the benefit of insanely wealthy oligarchs with a God complex. The presstitutes, however, think they’re speaking truth to power.


They’re so obsessed with pushing narratives that it would be comical if their predictably biased coverage weren’t so harmful to society. These scribblers are, for the most part, activists pretending to be journalists. These days, few of them hit the streets and do much actual reporting. To an increasing degree, lazy hacks copy each other and scour social media for things to write about. The result is that many of their stories have no real substance, importance, or point other than to push some Leftist narrative or another. As one might expect, quality suffers, as can be seen in the following nothingburgers.


Fascists and Nazis and boxers, oh my!


First up is a gem from The Independent: “How white supremacist fight clubs are building covert far-right militias.” Oh noes!


At least 46 so-called “active clubs” — which publicly promote “brotherhood” and training in combat sports and fitness while covertly advancing fascist and neo-Nazi agendas and preparing for large-scale violence — have sprouted in 34 states between 2020 and 2023, according to the report from the Counter Extremism Project.


Why, surely this so-called “Counter Extremism Project” — check it out, I can do “scare quotes,” too! — is an “unbiased source” that The Independent’s “intrepid journalists” can rely upon for “objective stories,” right? If they want to write a scary article about large-scale violence, they can do one about non-white organized crime syndicates such as the Bloods, Crips, MS13, and so forth. These days they’re not small-time turf gangs like the Sharks from West Side Story. Some of them have tens of thousands of members, often across several states and sometimes across international borders. Since these are effectively paramilitary organizations assembled for criminal purposes, the government should move to eradicate them without delay. Unfortunately, our extensive domestic security apparatus apparently has other priorities. As for The Independent, I’d like to see some of their reporters pounding the pavement in Los Angeles trying to interview Salvadorans covered in tattoos; that would be cute.


So why obsess about Rightist boxing leagues? They’re not the ones running dope, human trafficking, and carrying out drive-by shootings. My only criticism is that apparently they need to tighten up their opsec. Remember that the first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about Fight Club. So is the second rule, of course.


Wrong holiday — oh, the humanity!


Suppose you confused Mabon and Yule. That might get a chuckle out of your Wiccan friends, but that’s hardly a big deal. If you had no idea what the differences were between Ganesh Chaturthi and Gita Jayanti, the Pajeet running your local gas station would be favorably impressed that you’d even heard of these observances. Now, suppose that you were among a remarkably touchier crowd. Let’s say you were with some Jacobins and got the months of Vendémiaire and Nivôse mixed up. It’s doubtful that they’d even kick you in the sans culottes for such a picayune misunderstanding, much less haul you off to the guillotine for an extreme haircut.


Unfortunately for Georgia’s Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, she bungled a Yom Kippur greeting. This was about a major holiday of a population even touchier than the notoriously tight-assed Jacobins. A gaggle of journalists therefore jumped on the mistake and promptly made a thunderclap out of a fart.


The Meidas Touch Network wrote up the story as “Anti-Semitic MTG Ridiculed for Posting Chanukah Menorah on Yom Kippur.” What happened was that she posted a tweet saying:


To all those preparing for the solemn day of Yom Kippur, I wish you a meaningful fast. Gamar Chasima Tova!



This was accompanied by a picture of a menorah. That’s for the wrong holiday, though — sort of like putting a Christmas tree on an Easter card. Perhaps she thought it would be all right since it’s a fairly recognizable symbol of Judaism, but she wasn’t familiar with their customs. The article also states that the correct phrase is g’mar chatima tovah. Even so, as the cunning linguist that I am, I know that transcribing between different alphabets is sometimes an imprecise matter. The phrase does have legitimate alternative spellings, with some variation perhaps due to differences in dialect. It therefore rings hollow to nitpick the spelling. It’s doubtful that Rep. Greene knows Hebrew; she was probably transcribing from someone else phonetically. Say what one will about her, she’s not the spelling Nazi in this story.


You can buy Beau Albrecht’s Space Vixen Trek here.


What’s the fuss about? In brief, a politician tried to suck up to the Red Sea Pedestrians, she got some details wrong because it’s not her religion, and she took heat for it despite her intentions. Is that it? Someone actually took the time to post a story about that? Yep. What a waste of electrons!


Is this simply a trifling event that some obscure media outlet — one of which smells like Buzzfeed, the armpit of the Internet — ran on a slow news day? Similar articles about this faux pas appeared in The Guardian, Yahoo! News, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Hill, Ground News, Mediaite, Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, AOL (contrary to popular opinion, they didn’t go bankrupt from massively overproducing free trial discs during the 1990s), and so many other websites that I won’t even attempt to list all of them. One might even guess from the brouhaha that something newsworthy actually happened!


What are we to make of this? Why, golly, if I didn’t know any better, maybe I’d conclude that Jews have such influence vastly disproportionate to their numbers that they can expect obeisance even from our politicians, yet are so touchy that bungling an attempt at bootlicking is nearly considered lèse majésté.


Gypsies mad they’re banned from gas station that has been frequently robbed by gypsies — and don’t call them gypsies!


When a minority group complains about being oppressed, persecuted, or whatevs, they’re blaming society, but usually their problems getting along are caused by their own chronic misbehavior. It’s not prejudice; it’s knowledge. Of course, not everyone can see the obvious. For instance, the Los Angeles Times gifted us this nothingburger: “L. A. County gas station signs banned Romani women. Community lashes back over racism.” Silly journalists — gypsies are an ethnic group, not a race!


“No Gypsy women in long shoplifting skirts allowed in the store,” the signs read, using a term the Romani community widely regards as a slur. One sign concluded in bright red font: “Nici un tigan” — “Not a single Gypsy” in the Romanian language.


There’s so much to unpack here! About this “slur” business, it’s become politically incorrect to refer to gypsies as gypsies. The easily-offended ones who get huffy about it say they never called themselves that. Oh, really? The first ones to arrive in England claimed to be Egyptians. The name stuck, though the word eventually evolved into “gypsy.” (Actually, this is similar to the consonant shift in which the Hebrew letter “ת” is usually pronounced as “t,” but is sometimes pronounced as “s” in another dialect.) If they wanted to be called something else, their forebears shouldn’t have lied about their origins.


For those who actually care, the politically correct terms for gypsies are Roma, or Rroma — I have no idea, either — and Romani. That’s from their fairly obscure language which nobody else uses. (Perhaps familiar words in continental European languages such as tigan, Zigeuner, gitane, cygan, and so forth will eventually become politically incorrect, too.) The problem with “Roma” and similar substitutes for “gypsy” is that they’ll be confused for Romans or Romanians. Many do come from Romania, but confusing a real Romanian with a gypsy will not go over well. Perhaps the politically correct terminology is about crypsis. Maybe some would prefer that others didn’t know who they really are — such as the ones in the days of old who pretended to be Egyptians. (Why not try being so respectable and upstanding that everyone will start liking gypsies?) But if I don’t get to force other people to call me an Aryan, then gypsies don’t get to force other people to call them Rroma or whatever.


The article continues with the usual Leftist cant and humbug about downtrodden minorities, such as this:


“The Romani people have made incredible contributions to our nation’s history, society and culture,” [L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis] added. “I am confident that with our collective perseverance, the goal of eradicating hate can be achieved.”


That so? She has me curious now. Can I have some examples of these incredible gypsy contributions to American history, society, and culture?


More seriously, I observe that America’s gypsies eventually assimilated much better than in Europe. I really don’t have a problem with the ones who are honest and productive and can get along. However, I suspect that after the Iron Curtain came down, we got a batch of them fresh out of Bohunk territory who are still up to their old tricks. A similar pattern occurred in Spain. The gypsy community that arrived centuries ago fits in fairly well; these are the guys who created flamenco. But the ones drifting in from Hungary or Romania are nothing but trouble.


If they won’t handle problems within their community and otherwise adapt to society, then friction is inevitable. Gypsies who are offended by ethnic profiling should blame their brethren who steal. The situation is unfortunate for the ones who are decent citizens, of course, but it’s also unfortunate for store owners getting gypped repeatedly. There’s an easy solution, one which applies to other minority groups whose chronic misbehavior makes them unpopular. The “prejudice” would go away eventually if they’d just stop doing that.


Some of the assimilated ones have learned our ways a little too well, getting hip to political correctness and trying to cash in on their perpetual oppression as per the usual script. (Clearly that racket has far more profit potential than petty theft, third-rate scams, and fortune telling!) The problem is that gypsies haven’t been very effective at remaking themselves into yet another perpetually butthurt minority group with a chip on their collective shoulder. Their small population isn’t an absolute deal-breaker, but it doesn’t help. Then there’s a lack of mutual support from more experienced players in the Victimization Olympics. (That is, there’s little benefit in bringing gypsies on board the liberal-minority coalition.) Finally, the public is unwilling to take seriously the kvetching of people who made themselves notorious for petty theft — such as stuffing merchandise under long skirts. On the intersectionality totem pole, gypsies haven’t risen to the towering heights occupied by Jews, blacks, and 175ers. Instead, they merely rank between spergs and furries in the sociopolitical pecking order. It would be amusing if they weren’t so annoying.


That’s why it’s remarkably silly for the LA Times to waste effort wringing their hands because a gas station posted a “No Gypsies” sign after being repeatedly shoplifted. I’ll add that in 2022, there were 382 homicides in Los Angeles, to say nothing of all the other serious crimes there. Don’t the journalists have enough real problems to write about?


Cultural Marxism just has to ruin everything


Once upon a time, I belonged to the cult of football worship. I wasn’t just a spectator; I played for a couple of years, too. The cheerleaders were a welcome distraction back then. They were beautiful and wholesome ladies who radiated charm, as if a squadron of angels had landed to cheer on the team. So cute — be still my beating heart! Now these ladies can be ladyboys — it’s the Current Year! Cultural Marxism trashed yet another fond memory of my youth.


America Insider published a puff piece on September 23: “First Trans NFL Cheerleader Wants To Inspire Others.” From the picture, one might suppose that a running back grabbed a pair of pompons for shits and giggles. The article doesn’t say if he’s still packing his original equipment under that miniskirt, but I don’t mind not knowing; some things are better left unsaid.


It begins quite predictably:


Justine Lindsay, the NFL’s first cheerleader to identify as transgender, wants to inspire other transgenders to chase their goals.


“I want to change the narrative for my trans sisters and brothers, just to [let them] know that if you have a goal, go for it,” the cheerleader said.


The same type of verbiage follows. It’s all warm and mushy like a used diaper. At the end, it states that this is Justine’s second season in the National Football League.


As it happens, ELLE published a very similar piece, “Loud and Proud” on September 18, five days before the aforementioned one. The pictures are at least an improvement; Justine has hair in those. The bald look from the other article just wasn’t doing it, making Justine look like a younger version of Marsellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction. The ELLE story has much of the same kind of verbiage:


At times, her courage comes at a cost. Dealing with social media bullies and intolerant football fans can feel like a challenge to her humanity, but Lindsay believes it is a price worth paying. “Everything that I’m going through now, it’s bigger than me,” she says. “I’m setting things up for the younger generation. No one is going to stop this show.”


You can buy Anthony M. Ludovici’s Confessions of an Anti-Feminist here.


This kind of Leftist hypocrisy is so cloying that it warms my little flinty heart, yet is predictable enough that I could write software to produce boilerplate duckspeak such as this. For all I know, Justine Lindsay could be a really nice person. Still, that’s not what qualifies someone to be a cheerleader. There’s a place for this sort of thing, namely a drag show in a gay bar. Next to a football field, it doesn’t make sense.


Also, I’m not complaining about women with muscles; some of them are quite charming. It’s just that I prefer female women. If the NFL wants a black cheerleader who has the arms to punch a buffalo cross-eyed, they could hire a bodybuilder such as Iris Kyle, who looks much better and — best of all — is actually female. Still, sportsball fans won’t be so epicurean about it. If the NFL really is hell-bent on hiring a ladyboy to “make a statement” or whatever, they could pick someone else. For instance, Bruce Jenner looks better, and he probably could do double duty as a second string wide receiver even at his advanced age. They even could hit up Dylan Mulvaney, if his career as a lecturer doesn’t pan out. That ice-covered heap of mother love is nearly as cute as Mila Kunis, when compared to Justine Lindsay. But that’s not what fans want to see, either, any more than they want politics in their Bud Lite.


What’s up with the NFL? What was the purpose of hiring a ladyboy as a cheerleader? They’re supposed to be beautiful women who do their choreographed routines and inspire the crowd. Since when is the job about breaking down barriers, pushing boundaries, making statements, boldly defying standards, deconstructing the gender binary, and all that bullcorn? It isn’t. It seems whoever is calling the shots wants to rub the noses of the NFL fans in the Current Year’s Leftist ideology. If anyone were needing further evidence that sportsball is pozzed to the max, then this is it. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful this will get the masses to turn off the damn idiot box. Football addicts seem to have nearly as much misplaced loyalty as abused spouses with Stockholm Syndrome. I’m happy that I broke free of the cult long ago.


More to the point, what was the purpose of these puff pieces? It’s quite odd in particular that ELLE, a women’s magazine, is cheerleading for this politically-correct mass hysteria, highlighting this is as if to say that men are better than women at being desirable women. Surely their readers appreciate that! Note also that the timing seems a bit odd, since both articles came out within five days of each other for no reason in particular. This isn’t Justine’s first season, and there’s nothing particularly noteworthy happening in either article, other than the mouthing of Leftist platitudes. Am I just being a big conspiracy nut here, or is there a transmission belt telling journalists what narratives to promote?


Whoever is pushing this, one thing is clear: They just can’t leave well enough alone. They have to corrupt everything normal and beautiful. It is their deep instinct.


Gibsmedat Fever has spread to a new continent



At last are some nothingburger sliders, bite-sized non-issues from the mainstream media. These are all about blacks: the brightest, ablest, wisest, and most talented race in the world. The articles are so remarkably predictable that they hardly need commentary beyond simply mentioning the title: You already know what it’s going to say and what the spin is. Still, I’ll do the commentary anyway.


The first is the story told by ABC News in “At UN, African leaders say enough is enough: They must be partnered with, not sidelined.” (We’ll be right on it, Bub.) As one might suppose, it’s about a few African leaders displaying Afro-dyspepsia. One was Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana. Although I’ve had nice things to say about him earlier, I’m afraid that this time His Excellency laid an egg.


For Ghana’s Akufo-Addo, correcting an “unfair” world order must begin with the payment of reparations from the era during which an approximated 12.5 million people were enslaved, according to the often-referenced Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.


“It is time to acknowledge openly that much of Europe and the United States have been built from the vast wealth harvested from the sweat, tears, blood and horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the centuries of colonial exploitation,” Akufo-Addo said.


You can buy Julie Howard-Hobson’s I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group, here.


So we’re supposed to cut a check to African countries for something that happened two centuries ago? Sorry, dude, the answer is no. There’s so much wrong with the two paragraphs above that it would take an entire article to pick it apart. I’ll just say that he should be well aware that his predecessors, the chieftains in the Bight of Benin, sold their own brethren to slavers. (Even more blacks were sold to Muslim merchants, but nobody’s trying to give Arabs a guilt complex.) So if they want reparations and believe that guilt is inheritable, they can bill the descendants of those tribal kangz who put their fellow blacks into bondage in the first place. As for Americans, can we just return all the obsolete farm equipment as defective merchandise and get our money back under warranty?


The Dean doth protest too much, methinks


The next nothingburger slider is from The Guardian: “Majority of Black Americans say they are depicted unfairly in news — study.” Many bytes of ASCII text were squandered in the production of the article, but the point boils down to this:


Charles Whitaker, dean of the Northwestern University’s Medill school of journalism . . . echoed the lack of nuance in coverage as a longstanding feeling among Black Americans who feel they are often portrayed as either victims of crimes or those who commit them. “We’ve known both anecdotally, and through my personal experience with the Black press, that Blacks have long been dissatisfied with their coverage,” he said.


Given the facts about crime statistics, the true problem with media coverage is reporters downplaying the racial angle. Sometimes journalists go to ridiculous lengths to conceal the race of the perps. If blacks don’t like the bad press — even though it’s covered up to a large degree for ideological reasons — then they can quit committing so many crimes. Deal?


If existence here is a psyche-destroying hell, why haven’t they left?


Next, The Conversation informs us that “Racial trauma has profound mental health consequence — a Black clinical psychologist explains and offers 5 ways to heal.” This sort of thing is a recent narrative that’s bubbled up from the depths of Leftist academia, such as the Princeton Professor teaching that blacks can be considered disabled. It’s not clear what this narrative is aimed at, but it’s probably a lead-in to the “Wooden Leg” game absolving blacks of all responsibility for anything bad they do. Topping off this steaming pile of journalism is the following:


Since European expansion into the Americas, white people have demonized Black [sic] people and portrayed them as undesirable, violent and hypersexual. Originally, the intent of this demonization was to legitimize the conquest and sale of African people.


What clever advertising! Gosh, centuries ago, when the plantation owners were shopping for enslaved People of Capitalization, surely it was a fantastic selling point that Africans were an “undesirable, violent and hypersexual” workforce!


One consequence of this negative portrayal has been the documented psychological impact on Black people themselves. It includes self-hatred, internalized racism and an erosion of Black [sic] consciousness within the Black [sic] community.


Erosion of black consciousness? Did the reporter just get off of a flying saucer from Epsilon Eridani? The media encourages black racial solidarity — particularly with articles such as this — while demonizing white racial solidarity. They’ve been doing that for so long that pointing it out is like saying that water is wet.


Even so, I’ll concur that they do have a point. So they don’t like multiracialism? Well, neither do we! There’s a fix for that. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Stop the hate — separate!


And finally


Given the profundity of this plate of nothingburgers by the mainstream media’s august scribes, it’s fitting that I’ll end this one on a joke. I’m giving their reportage all the gravitas that it deserves.


A teacher asked her young students what their fathers do for a living. When it was Little Johnny’s turn, he proudly announced, “My father plays piano in a brothel!” Miss Mary Jane was scandalized, running off to the Principal in tears, as usual. That evening, the young hellion’s father got a call. The Principal began, “Did you know what your child said in school today? Little Johnny told the class that you play piano in a brothel.” The father answered, “Actually, I’m a journalist, but you just can’t tell a little kid something like that.”


* * *


Like all journals of dissident ideas, Counter-Currents depends on the support of readers like you. Help us compete with the censors of the Left and the violent accelerationists of the Right with a donation today. (The easiest way to help is with an e-check donation. All you need is your checkbook.)





For other ways to donate, click here.







Print