ENOUGH WITH THE OUTRAGE

Like pretty much all conservatives, I have consistently criticized riots and other forms of political violence for many years. That includes yesterday’s Washington, D.C. riot. You can’t say the same about liberals, however. Until yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie.

You could write a book in support of that proposition, but for now let’s cite just a few examples. Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more violent and more destructive, than what happened in D.C. yesterday. The liberal rioters destroyed stores, set vehicles on fire and battled with the police. Six police officers were wounded.

I don’t recall a single Democratic office-holder denouncing the Democrats’ Inauguration Day riot, and the Associated Press came perilously close to praising the rioters.

Over the ensuing four years, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted countless times, bringing devastation to cities like Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Minneapolis. Did any Democrats denounce these riots? Not that I remember. Many Democrats endorsed them, or seemed to do so. Kamala Harris, for example, said about the riots in June:

They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.

This was after 12 people had been killed in Democrat-sanctioned rioting, and billions of dollars in destruction committed. Have any Democrats denounced Black Lives Matter for its role in the riots? Not one. Has any Democrat denounced Antifa? Not that I know of, and some, like Keith Ellison, have specifically endorsed Antifa’s political violence.

Nike Publicity Coup with Fake Controversy

A comment and a few questions:

Comment: Nike knows how to market.  Is this entire Betsy Ross flag controversy intended to appeal to the kind of customers who agrees with Colin Kaepernick?  These are the people to buy Nike shoes.

A few questions:

1. Did Nike actually make shoes with the Betsy Ross flag?  Prove it.
2. Did Kaepernick actually object or was this entirely a Nike PR stunt?  Where's his statement.
3.  Is there really an extremist group who uses the Betsy Ross flag?  Name them.

Twitter Isn't Real

Social media only gives itself exactly the power over us that we allow it to have.

What if Twitter isn't real?

By that, I don't just mean Russian bots talking to other Russian bots, liberal satirists fooling gullible conservatives, and cynical opinion-mongers conjuring panics out of nothing. There's clearly a lot of literally fake news on Twitter, and it's a problem.

Notwithstanding these flaws — or perhaps because of them — Twitter is still taken seriously as a medium. It's supposed to be extraordinarily powerful and influential, able to make and break reputations at unprecedented speed.

But what if it isn't? What if Twitter is mostly a closed ecosystem, relevant only to and within itself? What if its ability to shape the real world is, as they say, greatly exaggerated?
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Consider the case of comedian Kevin Hart, who was briefly tapped to host the Academy Awards. As soon as the announcement was made, the denizens of Twitter went to work unearthing bits from his comedy (of which his Twitter feed is surely an extension) that were less than complimentary toward gay men, to say the least. Within two days, Hart had stepped aside, claiming he didn't want to be a distraction from the awards ceremony. But the distraction hasn't abated. Instead, Hart's friends and colleagues are coming to his defense by pointing out that other ostensibly woke comedians engaged in similar sorts of humor and continue to do so.

Did the Academy do the right thing? If the "right thing" is to never give a platform to anyone who's ever said anything like Hart said, then the mistake was to ever have reached out to Hart in the first place. Backing down swiftly just makes it look like they didn't do their homework, and further erodes trust in their judgment; it's not like those homophobic jokes were any kind of secret, after all.

From the Academy's perspective, though, the "right thing" was probably just to avoid negative publicity that would weaken ratings for the event. But by that metric it's quite possible that they made the wrong call. I suspect there are more Kevin Hart fans who normally don't watch the awards who would tune in to see him than there are die-hard Oscar watchers who would tune out in protest of his presence. Moreover, it's easy to imagine folks in the Academy's PR department pulling their hair out now about the problem of how to replace Hart. If the next host isn't black, will Hart fans accuse the Academy of holding him to a racist double standard? But how will another black comedian feel about stepping into the spot over Hart's corpse?

So I have to wonder: What would have happened if the Academy had done nothing — or nearly nothing? What if they followed a PR strategy that presumed that, in the Twitter era, the baseline level of negative publicity is always going to be higher than it used to be — and that the presumption should be that the publicity has few real consequences in monetary terms. Firing off an angry tweet is the second-easiest thing in the world to do, the only thing easier being liking someone else's angry tweet. If that's all that's happening, then what's happening really isn't real.
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How many other respectable institutions and individuals are in the same position? How many are stronger than they think and could weather the outrage cycle simply by saying: Twitter outrage isn't real outrage; Twitter shame isn't real shame. This medium only has power if we choose to believe it does. But we know who and what we are, and we're going to keep being who and what we are, and will trust our own good judgment to prevail not only in the fullness of time, but in time to keep us solvent.

I suspect we're going to find out. Because no institution can remain respectable if it doesn't respect itself. And how much self-respect can anyone have living in constant terror of a fickle and shallow digital mob?

SHE MADE IT UP: NYPD Arrests Muslim Girl Who Claimed Attack by Trump Supporters

If it were not for hoaxes, there would be no "fake news" of anti Muslim attacks.

The 18-year-old Seweid caused quite the media stir with her sensationalized account of Trump supporters attacking her on the subway. She claimed three men attempted to pull off her hijab while calling her a terrorist and yelling Trump’s name. All this happened, she said, while New Yorkers sat idly by and watched her get assaulted.

The many media outlet’s initial reporting of the fake hate crime did not include qualifiers like “alleged” and “claimed.” Instead they reported the hoax crime as a fact like with Buzzfeed’s story, “Drunk Men Yelling “Donald Trump” Attempt To Remove Woman’s Hijab On NYC Subway.”

RUSSIAN “MEDDLING” IN ELECTION: MOST OVERBLOWN STORY EVER?

It is certainly the most overblown story in a long time. The casual reader of newspaper headlines might well believe that the Russian government hacked into voting machines, or something of the sort, to influence the presidential election. But that is not the case. If you read the Washington Post story, they are merely talking about the well-known hacks of Democratic National Committee and John Podesta emails. The only news here is that someone at the CIA thinks the Russian government carried out the operation and did so in order to help Donald Trump win the election.

But the supporting information is very thin. The third-hand account in the Post admits that it wasn’t actually the Russian government that did the hacking:

[I]ntelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were “one step” removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees.

So is there any reason to think that the Russian government had anything to do with it? We don’t know. There are a great many software experts and sophisticated hackers in Russia. While it is possible that the Russian government directed these intrusions, the Post story contains no indication of what evidence supports this claim.

The Post’s sources are some combination of Democratic senators and Obama administration officials, conveying their impressions of what what unnamed representatives of the CIA told a bipartisan group of senators in a recent briefing. Someday, persuasive evidence supporting the Post’s headline may emerge, but it certainly hasn’t so far.

I suppose it is possible that Russia’s government hoped that Trump would win the election, but it is hard to see why. Such a desire would mean a change in Russian policy. The Russians enthusiastically welcomed Barack Obama’s election in 2008, and the then-head of that country’s Communist Party explained why the Russians don’t like Republicans:

All Republican presidents have always defended national interests, ignoring the interests of other countries of the world. The new US president [Obama] cannot but understand that it is impossible to seek and find answers to many global issues without the participation of such a great country as Russia.

The one thing we know for sure about Donald Trump is that he is pro-America–in the Russians’ eyes, a typical Republican.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL:

via Instapundit