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Updated: Vanity Fair demonstrates how to become the most hated publication in America

Vanity Fair decided to do a year-end video dedicated to Hillary Clinton.

It has not gone over well.

I particularly liked pushing the stereotype of women in technology. That was a nice touch.

One of the Hive editors, before she took her Twitter account private, expressed resentment that the video was taken out of context, as it was part of a series. What she and the others don’t seem to realize is that the other targets of a not-especially-funny set of videos are all still public servants. As such, they can expect to be the focus of year-end zingers.

More importantly, it wasn’t all that long ago when Time magazine featured women on its cover, and in a completely different context. How absolutely tone deaf can the Vanity Fair crew be to follow that elegant and profound piece with, at best, a juvenile, snarky piece targeting our country’s first woman Presidential candidate?

Even if you don’t care for Clinton, hell even if you voted for Trump, seeing six smug young people condescendingly telling a former Senator, Secretary of State, and Presidential candidate to take up knitting should piss you off. Not unless you’re the worst misogynist in the nation.

Donald Trump will love it.

Enjoy those magazine cancellations, Vanity Fair. Maybe with all that free time, you can take up crocheting. Or learning humility.

Update:

NYLON’s Sara Beauchamp writes about the backlash to the Vanity Fair video:

So next time you read a headline or watch a video that’s being quote-tweeted like crazy, before you’re quick to react, stop to consider what you’re getting outraged about. Look into the context before you join the pile on, because there are real people on the other end of our internet outrage. And, especially if they’re a woman, it’s important to remember that they’re already going through enough online, so maybe don’t make it worse.

I haven’t seen any tweets reflecting the editor’s weight, which is the backlash NYLON is responding to. If there are, then these need to be deleted.

However, the Vanity Fair people are professionals. They’re also adults. They’re learning about having to accept the consequences of their actions. If they’re feeling hurt about attacks against them, they might want to consider their attack against private citizen Hillary Clinton, particularly after years of Clinton being bashed the the media.

So no, they earned this pile-on. Best they just suck it up.

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Wanting Content, Publications on the Far-Left Easily Duped by Alice Donovan

The Washington Post published an in-depth piece about Putin’s misinformation campaign that impacted on the 2016 Presidential campaign. In it they mentioned a writer going by the name of Alice Donovan. Rather than the ‘beginning freelance writer’ this Donovan claimed to be, the individual was a fake, a contrived persona, and a source of misinformation.

Donovan duped several far-left sites into publishing ‘her’ material. CounterPunch danced all around the issue in its effort to excuse it’s lax vetting. Ultimately, it accepted some blame…after first blaming the FBI.

If the FBI was so worried about the risks posed by Alice Donovan’s false persona, they could have tipped off some of the media outlets she was corresponding with. But in this case they refrained for nearly two years. Perhaps they concluded that Donovan was the hapless and ineffectual persona she appears to be. More likely, they wanted to continue tracking her. But they couldn’t do that without also snooping on American journalists and that represents an icy intrusion on the First Amendment. For a free press to function, journalists need to be free to communicate with whomever they want, without fear that their exchanges are being monitored by federal agencies. A free press needs to be free to make mistakes and learn from them. We did.

No, CounterPunch, you don’t get off that easy. In your effort to continuously publish, you accepted work from a ‘journalist’ whose only qualification seems to be they’ll allow you to publish their work without being paid.

Online writers don’t have to publish under their own name, but if so-called ‘news’ sites want to be treated credibly, they have to know the actual person submitting the work. They have to vet not only the sources of the news they print, but the people writing the stories.

Another far left group, We are Change, also published Donovan’s work. It scrubbed her stories from their site, but you can see them in the Wayback Machine.

By scrubbing Donovan’s stories it would seem as if We Are Change is acknowledging its errors in spreading misinformation. But what’s We Are Change NYC’s lead tweet today? A link to a 2016 piece attacking Hillary Clinton using unproven information that lacked any vetting.

What’s in one of its lead stories? A video claiming that Clinton is in hot water over Uranium One. This, even though this story was debunked. And among the sources for the video is RT, a well known Russian propaganda organization.

For all of our valid criticism of mainstream media—in particular its obsessiveness with ‘both sides’—most of its members flatly acknowledge when they screwed up. And they promise to do better.

Sites like CounterPunch and We Are Change need to do the same.

 

 

 

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A New Sweet Home Alabama

I woke this morning to the fantastic news that Doug Jones won the Senate race in Alabama. It was a comfortable win, too—enough of a margin to preclude a voter recount.

The fact that the Republican candidate Roy Moore was a piece of garbage has less to do with Jones winning than his campaign’s and the NAACP’s outreach program during the election. Al Giordano created a Twitter thread listing all of the actions both took, and they were significant. Democrats coming up for election in 2018: pay attention.

The end result of this effort was outstanding. From the Washington Post exit polls, Jones captured the vast majority of the black vote, and enough of the white vote to win. Among the blacks, he captured over 97% of the black women’s vote—proving once again that black women are the most significant demographic for Democratic voters.

Continue reading “A New Sweet Home Alabama”

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Break the Internet

For the next two days, when you first access this site, the following image will show, with a form you can use to send your concerns to Washington DC. The FCC is about to destroy everything we hold dear about the internet, while pretending to serve the public. Don't let them. Save the Internet form
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In Defense of Al Franken

February 19 update

Several sources have now uncovered a bot net and troll farm attack on Franken.

Way to go, Senate Democrats. You’ve been had.

Update:

Senator Franken resigned. We lost a strong voice in the Senate. I hope the DNC is happy.

Earlier:

I started this web site in the interest of showing just how different Democrats are from Republicans. Different, in a positive way. In the future, I will focus on the positive differences, but not today.

Today I’m going to talk about Al Franken, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota. A man whose colleagues have urged to quit—not because there is proof of egregious behavior, but because it’s politically expedient.

I celebrate the women (and men) coming forward this year, telling their stories. Many did so knowing that their actions could have negative repercussions on their careers. I was less happy with the hashtag of #MeToo, because the stories than lost their individuality. Still, it was good to see people speaking out against sexual harrassment and assault, especially against those more powerful.

I think it’s grand that Time decided to feature those who spoke out in its Person of the Year cover this week. It is fitting, it is proper, and it is right.

So now, let’s talk about Al Franken.

Continue reading “In Defense of Al Franken”