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Posts Tagged ‘AFP’

Warner Todd Huston

One of the Old Media’s favorite ways of attempting to hide the ideological track of a story is to somehow forget to mention which party someone in the news hails or to whom they owe their fealty. In this case, it is what they don’t report that misleads. This week we find a classic what-they-don’t-say story concerning the judge that blocked sections of South Carolina’s new immigration law. For those unaware, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel temporarily blocked segments of South Carolina’s new immigration laws because he claimed that some of its provisions impinged on federal prerogatives, things over which the state has no jurisdiction. The South Carolina law was opposed in court by Obama’s left-wing, activist Department of Justice headed by Eric “Fast And Furious” Holder and a gaggle of civil rights groups. Judge Gergel agreed with these attackers and issued an injunction to stop implementation of the provisions in question.

The Old Media reported a lot of details in the story, of course. We learned all about who opposed the provisions, who scoffed at the injunction, in what District Judge Gergel hailed, and in some of the reports we even get to hear what Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had to say about it all. But there is one thing few news outlets seemed to report that might help readers understand the decision better. Judge Richard Mark Gergel is an Obama appointee. (more…)

Alexander Marlow

Alternate headline: “Paul Krugman Will Not Read This Article”

Second alternate headline: “Paul Krugman: Lolcats > Conservatives”

Over the weekend a prominent figure in the art world, a liberal, came up to a group of us from Team Breitbart following a conversation that took place both on air and off, and told us we, particularly Big Journalism EIC Dana Loesch, are very respectable spokespeople for our side.  Needless to say, we were flattered, but while I certainly didn’t attempt to sway him off of his position that we’re super cool, I would contend we are merely representative of the quality people in our movement, as opposed to exceptions to the rule that conservatives are racist, bigoted, intolerant, etc.  Clearly the sweet accolade from the sweet man had a very powerful and illustrative subtext to it: he just doesn’t know many conservatives… if any.

One of the reasons for the existence of this very blog is because many of us contend that a substantial portion of the movers and shakers on the left, like the aforementioned gentleman, tend to live in bubbles.  This is a common theme across several of the Bigs.  Hollywood, the mainstream media, and academia, to name a few high profile arenas, are so overwhelming left-of center that it’s rare to find Republicans inhabiting them at all, much less outspoken Tea Partiers like the ones who make up the Bigs team.  On the other hand, those of us on the right are constantly forced to contend with the best thought the left has to offer, or else we’d be forgoing academics in one of the world’s most educated societies, we’d be abstaining from entertainment in the country that redefined it, and as good as the fantasy of doing away with what we call “the mainstream media” sounds, that’s a process that would take decades to complete, if it’s even possible (or beneficial).

So we’re forced to listen, whether we want to or not.  The schools, entertainers, and media outlets have us as a captive audience while these movers and shakers can comfortably build a career in the world of ideas without as much as consulting with those held by (at least) half of us.

Case in point, Nobel Prize-winning Princeton Economics Professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Last week, Krugman was asked which websites he reads frequently, and after providing a list of liberals and leftists like Greg Sargent, Josh Marshall, Digby, and Atrios, he copped to not reading any conservatives online on a regular basis: (more…)

Warner Todd Huston

What is it that the left and the Old Media said about the Tea Party movement? Didn’t they say it was not really filled with regular folks and didn’t they say it was not really a grass roots level effort because some nefarious “top-down” Republican groups were secretly behind the whole thing? That’s what Paul Krugman said in The New York Times. So did Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — after someone taught her what “astroturf” meant, that is. In fact, the whole left-wing Old Media establishment attacked the tea party movement as some fake, manufactured thing and claimed that it wasn’t peopled by regular folks like you and me. All you need do is put “astroturf” and “tea party” in a search engine and you’ll get thousands of hits revealing the left’s unhinged response to the tea parties, whose spirit was so memorably captured in this photograph by Glenn Reynolds (the great Instapundit) at the Quincy, Ill., tea party last year:

quincy4

So, since they seem to want us to believe that they hate astroturf, will the left-wing press get all upset that this “coffee party” effort really is astroturf? Will the Old Media explode with charges of “astroturfing” as it did during the early phases of the tea party movement? Or will they pretend that this coffee party business is real grass roots and report on the effort based on that false assumption? Already it seems as though the coffee party effort is not meeting any real scrutiny and I just got an email that proves the essential “top-down” style upon which this effort is built. (more…)

Ben Shapiro

There’s an interesting piece out from the AFP entitled “Bold new Gaza play skewers Fatah and Hamas.”  Apparently, there’s a play out in the Gaza Strip that rips Hamas and Fatah:

A new play has shocked audiences in the Gaza Strip by shouting out what many in the Hamas-ruled territory mutter behind closed doors — that Palestinian politicians are a bunch of crooks. The biting comedy entitled “Umbilical Cord” goes after the Islamist Hamas and its secular Fatah rivals, accusing them of ignoring the suffering of their people and selling out to Iran and the United States, respectively.

hamas-fatah

The shocking part about the play obviously isn’t the content of the play – it’s that Hamas hasn’t shut it down and shot all the participants.  The question is: why not? (more…)