Legal Insurrection says it better than I can.
Tag: media
Here We Go Again
In September of 2009 the website MomLogic posted a piece: Gun Accidents Kill 500 Kids Each Year. The gunblogosphere found it in May of 2010, courtesy of Damnum Absque Injuria. Apparently a couple of propagandists journalists at the Denver Post recently discovered it, and took it as Gospel. Instapundit links to the blog Free Colorado where – professional journalist – Ari Armstrong did to the Denver Post writers what I did to the MomLogic column, only he went directly to the authors of the piece. (I know I left a detailed comment there, but it’s gone now.)
At least he got a retraction out of the Post. I still haven’t seen Salon retract their much more outrageous “statistic” of 4,000 deaths a year.
And they keep telling us that the professionals have all these layers of editorial oversight, which is what makes them better than bloggers.
Unsafe Gun Handling
Looks like Paul Taylor is going to run with this theme for a bit:
Ouch!
We’re Winning
Read the latest Wapsi Square strip, then read the comments.
This is hardly the first appearance of a firearm in Paul Taylor’s strip, but it’s the first time I’ve seen one fired by a main character. And note that Monica has excellent trigger discipline!
Authorized Journalists
David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh, that is. At least according to my hometown newspaper, the Brevard Times. (I grew up in Brevard Country, Florida.)
In January 2011, journalists David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh picked up the Gunwalker story from CleanUpATF.org. They began to investigate and report their findings as well as precipitate a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry into the matter led by U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA). Codrea and Vanderboegh have zealously attempted to publicize the issue ever since. Their hard work finally paid off – Fox News briefly began to report the story while CBS began a full length investigation which aired last month. Just yesterday, CBS reported that the National Rifle Association used its annual convention to highlight the Gunwalker scandal.
And there’s this:
…President Obama’s claim that 90% of guns recovered from Mexico originated from the U.S. Obama’s 90% statistic drew criticism from media outlets such as Fox News and PolitiFact in April 2009 that his claims were not true and unsubstantiated.
So did the Obama administration hatch a plan to create evidence by using the A.T.F. to enable U.S. gun shipments to Mexico beginning in November 2009 in order to back up his 90% claim made just seven months earlier? It is quite possible that we will find out that answer as the Senate investigation proceeds.
So now we have official acknowledgement from the MSM that bloggers can be journalists.
And it’s interesting to see even a small MSM outlet ask the question, “Was Fast and Furious botched, or was it intentional?”
Codrea and Vanderboegh: The Woodward and Bernstein of the Twenty-first Century!
We’re Winning
Say Uncle links to a story involving a home invasion thwarted by a resident with an AR-15. From the comments:
I love this town. A shooting results in an argument over the proper shot size for perps. – “Southrider”
—
There are actually many Democrats that support gun rights. The NRA grades each Congressional candidate based on their gun rights voting history. There are many Democrats with a B or better. I am surprised, though, that no one from the anti-gun establishment has commented. – “Sphereo”
I’m not. They’ve mostly taken their ball and gone home.
Movie Review: The Killer Elite
Typical action film. Lots of stunts, some explosions, lots of gunplay.
Major film stars: Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro.
Overall, not bad. I’d give it three out of five stars, but I have one teensy little gripe:
Why oh why does Hollywood worship the three-day beard? Especially when it comes to Jason Statham? It’s his signature characteristic. “Now performing, Jason Statham’s beard!” This film takes place over literally weeks, yet his beard never gets longer, nor is he ever clean-shaven, even when the situation he’s in suggests he ought to be (impersonating a doctor, for instance). It’s one of those “suspension of disbelief” things. Beat the hell out of a guy while you’re zip-tied to a chair with your hands behind your back? OK! Wear a three-day beard for weeks on end? Don’t think so. He shaves his head but not his face? WTFF?
That is all. My “profound” gland seems to be all tapped out at the moment.
More Panem et Circenses
I received an email yesterday. Season three of Top Shot (aka: As the Cartridge Turns) will premiere on August 9.
The new season of Sons of Guns has already started.
Look, I’m a gun-nut. I like the fact that television has discovered that guns are fun and the people who like them are not all knuckle-dragging neanderthals with the IQ of a rotting rutabaga. I get the fact that those of us who collect guns and/or shoot a (relatively) lot are a pretty small minority of the total national population. (There very well may be 80+ million gun owners in America, but I’m willing to bet that 70 million of them don’t take their rifle or shotgun out of the closet more than twice a year, if that.) I just wish Top Shot focused more on shooting than on drama-llamas. And I wish Sons of Guns didn’t have a cast of rutabagas.
OK, that’s not fair. They’re not really that bad, but as representatives of the “gun culture” I enthusiastically belong to, I can and do wish they were better than The Discovery Channel portrays them.
So a new season of gun-centric television is starting up. Hooray for the re-normalization of the good “gun culture.”
Discuss.
Oh, and BTW, here’s a link for the new cast for Top Shot.
Unintended Irony
From Politico‘s piece, Long-lost Sarah Palin surfaces in emails:
That’s not to say the picture of Palin is all rosy. She whines constantly about her treatment by the press. She uses subterfuge to manipulate her image, ghostwriting a letter to the editor praising her, for instance, or conducting a phony television interview in which she reads answers from a teleprompter.
She increasingly sees enemies all around, repeatedly demanding to know whether her privacy has been breached. In one case, it turns out her husband Todd, not a hacker, sent an email from one of her accounts. She convinces herself that rumors about her last pregnancy have been deliberately and maliciously spread by an enemy in the state Legislature.
The seeds of the paranoia and belligerence that so prominently mark her current public persona are visible in early form.
This on a piece about the media’s pathetic feeding-frenzy over the publication of nearly 25,000 emails dating back to prior to 2008.
Here’s a hint: It’s not paranoia when they actually are out to get you, and it isn’t “whining” when the press is the instrument of that attack. As JammieWearingFool puts it, linking to the Politico piece:
How badly has this fishing expedition blown up in the faces of the left? Well, for one, the cartoon character portrayal of Palin is now gone forever.
Coming next: The media will launch an exhaustive background check of the current occupant of the White House.
Yeah, right.
She appeared on the media radar in 2008 and they haven’t stopped trying to dig up dirt on her for a minute since.
Obama?
Yeah, right.
See also today’s QotD.
Quote of the Day – Church of the New Media Edition
From Victor Davis Hanson’s latest, Kingdom of Lies:
The media is our ministry of truth of the Oceania brand: one day Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventive detention, Predators, the Patriot Act, and Iraq were bad; then one day in January 2009 I woke up and heard of them not all. I then recognized that they were now either good or at least necessary — or perhaps sinister IEDs of a sort left behind by the nefarious Emmanuel Goldstein administration, now too dangerous to even touch.
I now refer you to my January, 2008 überpost, The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation. Read all of Dr. Hanson’s piece, too.