The Weaponization of the Federal Government on Twitter Files (Matt Taibbi)

 

The Weaponization of the Federal Government on Twitter Files (Matt Taibbi)

 Written Statement  Matt Taibbi

“Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on the Twitter Files”
Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government
Committee on the Judiciary
United States House of Representatives
March 9, 2023

Chairman [Jim] Jordan, ranking member [Stacey] Plaskett, members of the Select Committee,
My name is Matt Taibbi. I’ve been a reporter for over 30 years, and a staunch
advocate for the First Amendment. Much of my three decades have been spent
at Rolling Stone magazine. 

Over my career, I have had the good fortune to be recognized for the work I love. I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for independent journalism, and written ten books, including four New York Times bestsellers. I’m now the editor of the online magazine Racket, on the independent platform Substack.

Today, I’m here because of a series of events that began late last year, when I
received a note from a source online.

It read:

"Are you interested in doing a deep dive into what censorship and
manipulation... was going on at Twitter?"

A week later, the first of what became known as the “Twitter Files” reports came
out. To say these attracted intense public interest would be an understatement.
My computer looked like a slot machine as just the first tweet about the blockage
of the Hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million impressions and 30 million
engagements.

But it wasn’t until a week after the first report, after Michael Shellenberger, Bari
Weiss, and other researchers joined the search of the "Files," that we started to
grasp the significance of this story.

The original promise of the Internet was that it might democratize the exchange
of information globally. A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control
information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of
government everywhere.

What we found in the Files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise and use
machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of
censorship and social control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be
playing a lead role.

We saw the first hints in communications between Twitter executives about
tweets before the 2020 election, where we read things like:

Hi team, can we get your opinion on this? This was flagged by DHS

Or: 

Please see attached report from the FBI for potential misinformation. This
would be attached to excel spreadsheet with a long list of names, whose accounts
were often suspended shortly after.

Following the trail of communications between Twitter and the federal
government across tens of thousands of emails led to a series of revelations. Mr.
Chairman, we've summarized these and submitted them to the committee in the
form of a new Twitter Files thread, which is also being released to the public now,
on Twitter at @ShellenbergerMD, and @mtaibbi.

We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal
system for taking in moderation "requests" from every corner of government: the
FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For
every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private
entities doing the same, including Stanford's Election Integrity Project,
Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and others, many taxpayer-funded.

A focus of this growing network is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs,
associations, or sympathies are deemed to be misinformation, disinformation, or
malinformation. The latter term is just a euphemism for "true but inconvenient."

Plain and simple, the making of such lists is a form of digital McCarthyism.

Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for “deamplification”
or de-platforming, but to firms like PayPal, digital advertisers like Xandr, and
crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to
law-abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a faceless,
unaccountable, algorithmic judge.

As someone who grew up a traditional ACLU liberal, this sinister mechanism for
punishment without due process is horrifying.

Another troubling aspect is the role of the press, which should be the people’s
last line of defense in such cases.

But instead of investigating these groups, journalists partnered with them. If
Twitter declined to remove an account right away, government agencies and
NGOs would call reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post, and other
outlets, who in turn would call Twitter demanding to know why action had not
been taken.

Wittingly or not, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought-
policing system.

Some will say, "So what? Why shouldn’t we eliminate disinformation?"

To begin with, you cannot have a state-sponsored system targeting
"disinformation" without striking at the essence of the right to free speech. The
two ideas are in direct conflict.

Many of the fears driving what Michael calls the "Censorship-Industrial Complex"
also inspired the infamous "Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798," which outlawed
"any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against Congress or the president."
Here is something that will sound familiar: supporters of that law were quick to

denounce their critics as sympathizers with a hostile foreign power, at the time
France. Alexander Hamilton said Thomas Jefferson and his supporters were "more
Frenchmen than Americans."

Jefferson in vehemently opposing these laws said democracy cannot survive in a
country where power is given to people "whose suspicions may be the evidence."

He added:

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to
silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the
parent of despotism.

Jefferson was saying something that was true then and still true today. In a free
society we don't mandate truth, we arrive at it through discussion and debate.
Any group that claims the "confidence" to decide fact and fiction, even in the
name of protecting democracy, is always, itself, the real threat to democracy.

This is why "anti-disinformation" just doesn’t work. Any experienced journalist
knows experts are often initially wrong, and sometimes they even lie. In fact,
when elite opinion is too much in sync, this itself can be a red flag.

We just saw this with the Covid lab-leak theory. Many of the institutions we’re
now investigating initially labeled the idea that Covid came from a lab
"disinformation" and conspiracy theory. Now apparently even the FBI takes it
seriously.

It's not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is however becoming technologically
possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I
believe is what we’re looking at.

This is a grave threat to people of all political persuasions.

For hundreds of years, the thing that's distinguished Americans from all other
people around the world is the way we don't let anyone tell us what to think,
certainly not the government.

The First Amendment, and an American population accustomed to the right to
speak, is the best defense left against the Censorship-Industrial Complex. If it can knock over the first and most important constitutional guarantee, it will have no
serious opponent left anywhere.

If there's anything the Twitter Files show, it's that we’re in danger of losing this
most precious right, without which all other democratic rights are impossible.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and I would be happy to answer any questions from the Committee.

This edition's playlist

 

 

1) Diana Ross' SURRENDER.

 

2) Chase Rice's I HATE COWBOYS & ALL DOGS GO TO HELL.

 

3) Sam Smith's GLORIA.

 

4)  Carly Simon's LIVE AT GRAND CENTRAL.

 

4)   The 1975's BEING FUNNY IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE.

5) Robbie Williams' XXV.

 

6) Diana Ross' THANK YOU. 

7)  Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo's BLACKBIRD: LENNON - MCCARTNEY ICONS.

 

8) Harry Style's FINE LINE. 

 

 9) George Ezra's GOLD RUSH KID.

 

10)  Cher's CLOSER TO THE TRUTH.

 

 

 

 

Highlights

 

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends, Ann of Ann's Mega Dub, Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.  

 

"The 20th anniversary looms" -- most requested highlight by readers of this site.

 

"Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Climate change in Iraq," "Glenneth Greenwald's new poster boy is a censorship queen." "DOBBS was only step one," "Seattle doesn't want Susan Benjamin," "Marjorie Taylor Green just gets trashier," "Marjorie Taylor Green is reporting to the other voices in her head," "Mike Pence's homophobia, and the murder of Pablo Neruda," "Stacey Plaskett, the Norman Finkelstein of Congress," "Raging Williamson -- Marianne is bi-polar," "John Stauber gives Scott Ritter a San Diego Thank You," "We will survive," "Idiot of the week," "John Stauber flaunts his ignorance of women in history," "It was never about protecting children," "Old man John Stauber's brain stopped working long ago," "Reading in the 21st century," "Nero married two men," "Pat Schroeder," "raging and nondisclosure agreements," "how much money did john stauber's group take from soros?," "john stauber whores for mother tucker," "glenneth greenwald shows up late again," "Native Americans and the bog buck moth," "Drag," "That awful Jussie," "Biden family corruption," "A third person emerges," "The Secret Service failed and is responsible for the JFK assassination II (compilation)," "Hunter Biden is a pig," "Marjorie Taylor Greene: Loud but Smelly ," "How stained are the back of Marjorie Taylor Greene's panties?," "Marjorie Flatulence Greene" and "THIS JUST IN! MTG GETS A LITTLE WINDED -- WELL A LOT!" -- news coverage in the community.

 

 

"TRUE LIES is a good show and John Stauber is a bad person,"  "James Hong,"  "SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS,"  "Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Cyndi Lauper, Jamie Lee Curtis,"  "Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin,"  "Sassy grandma?,"  "Weekend box office,"  ,"What is Cheynne Jackson's chest" "Talking Oscars,"  "Lance Reddick,"  "Graham Elwood, THE GOLDBERGS,"  "SUPERMAN AND LOIS and John Stauber gets more stupid," "The only word for Wolf Pack is . . . amazing" and  "WOLF PACK, Alice Cooper" -- TV and movie coverage in the community.

"Streisand," "Inflation continues as Carrie Underwood cozies up to Axl Rose,"  "Buy and Sell,"  "Return of the Cat (Stevens)" and "Dashboard Confessional and Counting Crows" -- music coverage in the community. 

 

"Antipasto Bites in the Kitchen" and "Baked Avocado Egg Boats in the Kitchen" -- Trina serves up two recipes.

"the world according to joan"-- Rebecca reviews a book.

 

TV: The Tired and The Disappointing

THE BLACKLIST is currently staggering to its conclusion  on NBC.  Ten seasons after it began, the show is unwatchable.  Why is it still airing?

 

 

It started on shaky ground creatively.  Only Harry Lennix was delivering when the show began airing.  By season two, Megan Boone began delivering and the best scenes were between Lennix' s FBI boss Harry and Boone's FBI agent Elizabeth.    Season two also benefitted from the addition of Mozhan Mamo (Samar) who never hit a wrong note in her time on the series and from Ryan Eggold (Tom) and Diego Klattenhoff (Ressler)  hitting their strides.  Suddenly, the cast was delivering in the way Harry Lennix had been from the start.  As twists and turns piled up, questions were raised and viewers were left with the impression that there was a long running story arc and the show was building to something.

Judging by season nine, all that time had been wasted constructing the television equivalent of California's Bridge To Nowhere.  

Season eight saw Elizabeth killed off in the second to last episode.  A huge mistake.  The series revolved around Elizabeth and her attempts to hold Red (James Spader) accountable while also attempting to navigate whatever the strange relationship between the two was.

The show runners never appreciated how important Liz was to the show.  Red's just a persnickety killer, with the blood of so many on his hands, if you don't have Liz.  Agnes (Liz's daughter) can't stand in her mother's place because she's a child.  Agnes cannot 'vouch' for Red.  Liz could.  

For THE BLACKLIST to work, the audience needs to believe that there must be some good -- even a small amount -- in Red. 

Season nine played out like 'who gives a s**t?' because, at this point, who honestly did.

And Red became a common killer who had some frou-frou ideas and notions about how to live life.  Viewers fled the crime scene even as the writers and show runners missed the fact that it wasn't about out doing themselves with violence and depravity, it was about that basic bond between Elizabeth and Red.  We knew, going in, that Red did bad things.  But if FBI profiler Liz thinks there's a possibility of good in Red, the audience was willing to hang around and find out.

The best thing about season ten is that Amir Arison has left after a brief appearance in the season's first episode.  That's not a slam at Arison's acting.  He was wonderful as Aram but, especially after Aram's romance with Samar ended, the writers never really used him for much more than comic relief.  Season nice was dreadful and it was tough watching someone as likeable as Aram in those awful episodes.

Now it's a piece of garbage and only Harry Lennix manages to deliver an actual performance -- the show's back to where it was in the first season.

Who in the world thought viewers wanted a tenth season?

Speaking of not making sense, last week Congress held a hearing.  The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled "The Weaponization Of The Federal Government On The Twitter Files."   The hearing lasted approximately two-and-a-half hours and had two witnesses: Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger.  Both men were scorned by Democrats on the Committee (and those not on the Committee but brought into pose and preen).  

Shellenberger is a complicated and "a real piece of work" as a few Democrats in Congress noted to us in the days since the hearing.  We were appalled by the way the Democrats acted in the hearing, attacking both witnesses, refusing to let them speak, etc.  It was offered by one Senator and three Representatives that if Shellenberger had not been at Matt's side, it might have gone better for Taibbi.

Shellenberger carries his own baggage.  For many, many years, he got applause from Democrats because he was one.  He's also someone who was -- maybe still is? -- a friend of Susan (Medea) Benjamin's -- translation: He's a quack.  Which is why it's no surprise that he's run to the right, that he writes quack 'science' books and that he's now a shill (paid or unpaid?) for the nuclear industry.  

Those are only some of the reasons to avoid Shellenberger (racism was another reason members of Congress gave).  

One of us wrote about the hearing at THE COMMON ILLS last Friday and avoided Shellenberger in part due to comments noted above but also because a hearing on The Twitter Files with Matt Taibbi as a witness should focus on Taibbi since he's been Tweeting about it from the start.

Republican members of the Committee focused on Taibbi's work.  And, the Democratic response to that after the hearing, in comments to us, argued that was due to the fact that Taibbi's work has favored a Republican narrative that Twitter has punished conservatives in the last six or so years prior to Elon Musk's purchase of the company.  

"Lois Learner was a crook," one House member said to us, conceding that there had been hearings the two of us attended that weren't about getting to the truth but about sporting a united front and projecting lies and spin to cover for the party.

Lois was a crook, we agreed.  We attended the hearings.  We knew she was a crook.  She misused the IRS in a manner that should have left her behind bars.  A few Democrats were honest in hearings -- a small number -- but the bulk instead wanted to act as if what she did was no big deal and nothing harmful.

It was very harmful.

And we hadn't brought Lois up.  But as we talked to members of Congress on Thursday and Friday and two on Saturday, we kept noticing that they brought Lois up.

Was there a connection?

Yes, there is.  It's the same thing all over again.

Democrats -- for the most part -- avoided tying in what Lois did to leftists.  (A few Democrats in Congress did raise the issue and call it out -- look at our real time reporting for those names.)  But most were more interested in concealing the truth of what took place.  

What took place with Twitter was that anyone who offended the centrist government officials -- too right, too left -- became a target.  It was a pattern that started under Barack Obama.  That's exactly who Lois was targeting during the IRS scandal.

Are you supposed to be protecting the party or the country -- that's what we asked.

Despite assurances that their goal was to protect the country, their defense of their peers (and, in the case of one who sits on the Committee) and themselves paints them as liars, hypocrites, self-deluded fools or possibly all three.

Twitter targeted Republicans and Democrats, it went after rightists and leftists.  And Matt was happy to talk about that when he was allowed to speak and actually asked about it.  The Committee Chair is a Republican.  As such, it would have been nice if Jim Jordan had spent a large amount of time going over how Twitter censored leftists, but it wasn't all that surprising that he didn't spend his time on the topic.

Democrats could have.  But few bothered.  Instead, they wanted to attack Matt.  To destroy him so they could avoid the reality of what the reporting was.

We're not that clear on the reporting -- especially that via Tweets.  We're not going to waste our time reading your Twitter thread.  Regardless of whether you're Matt or a singer-actress explaining your latest beef with another female entertainer.  "Shhhh, no rumors," as Mama Cass used to say.  

What we do know about The Twitter Files is what's been presented on YOUTUBE programs.  And enough has been presented there for even casual observes like ourselves to grasp that government officials and government agencies were contacting Twitter to censor free speech.

One area that Matt and others appear to have not emphasized is the tax payer issue.

Rightly, they have spoken about free speech and how these moves go directly against The First Amendment.  That is absolutely true, no question.

But it's equally true that if, for example, the FBI has employees monitoring Twitter in an attempt to censor free speech, that's a problem for many other reasons.  Firstly, why are we, the taxpayers, paying government employees to violate the Constitution.  Secondly, why are we paying these people for this when there are actual jobs to be done?

9/11 could have been predicted and, in fact, was -- the Presidential Daily Briefing,  August 6, 2001, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US."

As government employees and government agencies work overtime monitoring Americans on Twitter and then trying to get Twitter to censor them, what actions are being missed?

It is not the role of government to censor its citizens -- not in a democracy.  

And if there are government agencies that have people on the payroll doing that sort of thing, it's not only unconstitutional, it's also arguing for fault and blame at these agencies should another national tragedy emerge in the immediate future.

For those too young to remember, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, the media did a bit of accountability as they admitted to wasting time on various junk news items (and the gossipification of some serious news) while real issues went unreported on.  The media really didn't improve -- as any nightly news broadcast makes clear -- but with the exception of a few people like Sibel Edmonds, no one in government really addressed what our government was doing wrong in the lead up to 9/11.  (Sibel was a translator for the FBI.)

 

If we see another 9-11 in the immediate future, don't just blame the media and these agencies and officials that wasted our time and our money as they tried to cripple free speech, also blame the members of Congress who had the chance to call out these actions but refused to do so.

 

The FBI, the Dept of Homeland Security and various tax-payer funded Non-Governmental Organizations have been lobbying Twitter to censor free speech.

Democrats at the hearing on Thursday were disgusting.  They attacked, they interrupted, they lectured, they hectored.

And we kept thinking, "Wait, even if they think it's only right-wingers who got censored, do they think The First Amendment only matters for those on the left?  How would that be free speech?"

That's the issue that they should have been confronting, that's what should have had them outraged, not Matt Taibbi.

At one point, the eternally ridiculous Debbie Wasserman Schultz felt the need to tell Matt that he was a Republican witness and that alone made him suspect.  

No, Debs, he was a Congressional witness.  Has all that grease on your oily face clogged up your ears and impaired your hearing and comprehension?  

Debbie, Stephen Lynch, Gerry Connolly and  Stacey Plaskett were the worst offenders.  They were bitchy, they were rude, they were the stereotype of a do-nothing member of Congress who screams and yells to avoid getting anything done.  

Stacey wanted Matt to reveal his sources.  

When he pointed that out, she immediately snarled that wasn't what she was trying to do.

Yet she then went back to demanding information about his sources.

We saw her at the hearing so we know she understands cheap weaves but, having seen her in action at the hearing, we seriously doubt she understands the Constitution.  

Let's explain it slowly to the four bitches, American citizens want to know that if their rights are violated then Congress is going to step up to defend them.  

It's that basic.

And Stephen, Stacey, Gerry and Debbie failed that test.  

They were an embarrassment -- just like too many actors and too many scenes in MEL BROOKS' HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART II.  HULU has served up a meandering, over-long, cross-cutting nightmare of hit-or-largely-miss attempted comedy.  Nick Kroll is the only thing consistently good.  At one point, a gang of Moscow plotters are in yet another dull and pointless scene that bad writing and bad acting can't save no matter how many times the actors involved resorted to using the f-word.  Nick pops into the scene and it immediately -- and finally -- comes to life.  Far too much that makes it onto the small screen in this mini-series feels like filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor.  And, let's be clear, our objection is not the f-word.  Nick uses it throughout.  We use it in real life.  Our problem is we're not five-years-old and not going to chuckle just because someone said a naughty word.

 

Other than Nick, there's nothing to praise.  It's not just the dialogue and the 'comedy' bits that lack humor, it's the performers.  Wanda Sykes can't do anything fresh or funny with "Shirley" -- a 70s 'Black' sitcom, they note, about Shirley Chisholm.  But could anyone?  We doubt it.  It's not 1982 and about all the laughs that could be wrung out of this tired notion had been done by then.  Ike Barinholtz has been doing too many films and single-camera TV shows.  As a result, he's lost whatever timing he had when he last regularly worked before a live audience on MAD TV.  He keeps getting smoothed out and looking more and more generic just as his comedy flair seems to sputter out.

Stephen Lynch's reputation is sputtering out after his performance in the hearing.  It's causing people in Boston to remember that Lynch took part in a hate crime back in 1979 when he attacked six Iranian students at a protest.  He was charged with assault and battery but a back door deal got him whisked out of town and allowed him to avoid a trial.  His snarling and screaming just reminded his constituents of what a nightmare he used to be -- and apparently still is.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn't doing any better.  Her attacks on Taibbi during the hearing made fresh her conniving schemes to fix the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination for Hillary Clinton -- actions, please remember, that saw her resign in disgrace as DNC chair on July 24, 2016.  That was two months after calls for her to resign began in the media.  Her response to that was to go after Mika Brzezinski -- first by whining to Chuck Todd (over the NBC political coverage) and then to MSNBC president Phil Jackson demanding that Mika issue an on-air apology.  With that history, are we really surprised by her raving like a crazy person in the hearing?

 

But, again, we really are surprised that NBC was stupid enough to give THE BLACKLIST a tenth season.  We're more surprised that they're still keeping it on the air after the ratings.  Only 2.32 million tuned in for the first episode.  That dropped to 1.76 for the second episode.  The third is airing tonight (Sunday -- we have no idea when this will be published).  So it's not pulling viewers to NBC?  Worse.

 

It's running viewers off.  The Sunday lead in on NBC is MAGNUM P.I.  The night BLACKLIST got 2.32 million?  MAGNUM had delivered 3.7 million.  The night BLACKLIST only managed 1.76 million?  MAGNUM delivered 3.56 million.  It's not that people won't watch NBC on Sundays, it's that they won't watch THE BLACKLIST.  And if they watch THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 2 or certain member of Congress, they'll wish they hadn't.  We have no idea why some things hang around.

 

 

Truest statement of the week

The targeting of minority segments of the population such as trans athletes, and then trans youth, has nothing to do with maintaining “fairness” in sports or of protecting transgender identifying children’s wellbeing from supposedly dangerous procedures or medications. It forms a pattern which matches previous patterns of demonization of minorities that typically precede more general attacks on the democratic rights of the working class.

This tactic was used by the Nazis in Germany, mobilizing backward segments of the petty bourgeoisie (mostly petty shopkeepers, doctors, professors, white collar laborers) with propaganda scapegoating minorities, including gays, disabled people, gypsies and Jews, with the ultimate goal of destroying the socialist labor movement in Germany.

There was a distinct echo of this at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a national Republican gathering in Maryland, over the weekend. One speaker remarked to applause, “there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. ... Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” A similar note of anti-trans hysteria was sounded by Donald Trump in his keynote speech.

-- Chase Lawrence, "Tennessee governor signs anti-transgender and anti-drag bills" (WSWS).

 

 

A note to our readers

Hey --

Monday night. 


Let's thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with?  

• Truest statement of the week

Chase Lawrence gets a truest.

• They keep hiring the Iraq War cheerleads all these...

This is our Iraq War piece.  It's a repost of C.I.   Sunday night, in "Iraq bans booze," she wrote: 

ROLLING STONE is serving up garbage from Spencer Ackerman -- they really need to look at themselves and what made them publish that garbage -- was it Islamophobia?  Was it their historical long record of sexism?  Do they just not know good writing anymore?

Ackerman's always been a crap writer -- it takes a lot to end up fired by THE NEW REPUBLIC -- ask Stephen Glass.

I didn't understand why she didn't want to go into it.  The next morning, she went into it.  And it was a very lengthy argument.  I get why she wanted to go to sleep first and hope that someone else would tackle it.

• TV: It's not LA CONFIDENTIAL being turned into a w...

Ava and C.I. cover a TV show.

• Books (Kat, Ava and C.I.)

And speak with Kat about Kat's book review.

• Books

Books reviewed in the community so far this year.

• Kat's reviews Robert Sellers' HOLLYWOOD HELLRAISERS.

Kat's book review.

• BLOGGER/BLOGSPOT can't stop censoring

An earlier version of this went up.  And Blogger/Blogspot censored it.  Moments after it was posted.  Appears we're on a censorship watch.

• Tweet of the week

Ajamu Baraka gets another Tweet of the week.

• Flashback of the week

Truth about Seymour Hersh is hard to find.

• Comedy video of the week

Graham Elwood's new comedy special.

• This edition's playlist

What we listened to while writing.

• Highlights

 Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.

Peace.

 

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

 

 

They keep hiring the Iraq War cheerleads all these years later

Repost of C.I.'s piece on how Iraq War cheerleader Spencer Ackerman continues to serve up his bad writing.

 

Iraq snapshot

Monday, March 6, 2023.  A feature magazine hires a writer to weigh in on the Iraq War and he recycles his bad last book while they pretend like giving a pro-Iraq War voice a platform is something new and novel.

From December 30, 2018, it's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Mad Dog And Cher Show."  

 

 

Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Mad Dog and Cher Show."  Cher explains, "I love you, Mad Dog.  In fact, I love bombs."  Wearing a shirt which proclaims "WAR CRIMINAL," James Mattis  replies, "Yes, I know.  I saw FAITHLESS."  Yes, it's FAITHFUL, that's part of the joke.  Then the two begin singing, "And the war goes on . . ."  Isaiah archives his comics at THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS.

Besides Cher, is anyone stupid enough to glorify that idiot -- who, for the record, Barack Obama fired when he was president?  

Yeah, there's always Spency Ackerman.  He thinks throwing the f-word around makes him a real boy but it just shows how neutered he is and that, at 42, Spencer never matured.   So bad a writer that even THE NEW REPUBLIC fired him -- a magazine that required years of complaints to finally fire serial plagiarist Stephen Glass -- Spencer was the boy-who-might-make-it . . . two decades ago.

Never happened.  Never will.

ROLLING STONE gives him a chance, as the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War approaches, to write a major piece and he screws that up as well. 

He opens his article rah-rahing over Mad Dog and his vulgar comment to an Iraqi sheikh, how it blew up on Twitter and trended and, as a side note, notes that threatening to f**k someone's daughter doesn't win over that person.  

No, Spencer, it doesn't.  But if you couldn't use that vulgar opening, you'd have to think of something intelligent to write.  Apparently, ROLLING STONE readers are expected to be too stupid to notice that your grand opening falls apart and dooms your article.  They're supposed to be too busy high-fiving and whooping with joy that you managed to degrade women yet again.

And doing so while ignoring the reality that Mad Dog is a War Criminal and what he oversaw was deeply offensive.  From WIKIPEDIA:

In May 2004, Mattis ordered the 3 a.m. bombing of what his intelligence section had reported was a suspected enemy safe house near the Syrian border, but was later reported to be a wedding party and allegedly resulted in the deaths of 42 civilians, including 11 women and 14 children. Mattis said it had taken him 30 seconds to decide whether to bomb the location. Describing the wedding as implausible, he said, "How many people go to the middle of the desert to hold a wedding 80 miles (130 km) from the nearest civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."^[50] The occurrence of a wedding was disputed by military officials, but the Associated Press obtained video footage showing a wedding party and a video the next day showed musical instruments and party decoration among the remains.^[51] When asked by the press about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men."^[52]

He bombs a wedding, kills 42 people, 14 of which are children and then says it wasn't a wedding.  The ASSOCIATED PRESS investigates and it was a wedding.  "Bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize." 

That's what a real writer would have gone for.

But Spencer's never been a real writer.  His mouth more closely resembles an anus and said mouth has always been infected with diarrhea.  He spews it all out in the toilet bowl and finds it so impressive that he refuses to flush it leaving the rest of us to suffer with the odor drifting down the hall.

He's working off some 'big theory' that the Iraq War was a con game (that's one thing it was, that's not the only thing) and that this led to other con games.  But the problem, pay attention, Spencer,  is that the Iraq War continues, the Iraqi people continue to suffer.  The Iraq War, unlike Bernie Maddoff, didn't just make off with people's savings (though it did do that, this country will be footing the bill for the illegal war for many generations to come), it destroyed lives.  It turned Iraq into a land of widows and orphans, for example.  Don't expect to find that reality in Spencer's word spew.

In the middle of the article, he offers:

  

The Iraqi novelist Mortada Gzar told me that Iraqis are more likely to describe the U.S. presence as an occupation today than they were during the formal occupation of 2003-11. “It will not sound neutral if I don’t use the term ‘occupier’ in my social media, unlike 10 years ago,” explains Gzar. I didn’t initially understand that, having reported from Iraq back then, when it was indisputably a country under foreign occupation. But Amal al-Jubouri, an Iraqi poet, reminded me that I didn’t see Iraq through Iraqi eyes. 

“Many Iraqi writers who were inside Iraq did not dare to name the American invasion as an occupation,” al-Jubouri says. The word was dangerous. “That may lead those who dared to utter it to a tragic fate through the unknown informers of the new Iraqi political process and the occupiers who reacted immediately by arresting and torturing Iraqis if they received any such reports.” The Western press, she continues, “called it ‘the insurgency’ instead of ‘resistance.’ ” I certainly did.    

I'm glad that finally learned something -- decades after the start of the war -- though I think he's really just trying to pimp himself as though he is Dahr Jamail or Christian Parenti when he's none of those things at all.

What he was?  A whore.  And a bad whore.  A bad whore declares he's going to skull f**k his boss -- which, for the record, Spencer did at THE NEW REPUBLIC.  And got fired.  He's been fired from everything including THINK PROGRESS -- there it was for failing to do an assignment.  He was supposed to cover the Democrats running for the presidential nomination in 2008 with regards to foreign policy -- specifically, with regards to Iraq.  There was a huge hearing chaired (badly) by then-Senator John Kerry.  

Where do we start?

With that way hearings work?  With the way the press works?

Congressional hearings are little covered and what is covered is miscovered and that may not be as obvious in the Coronavirus era.  But in the '00s and '10s, attending a hearing meant, 30 or so minutes in, witnessing the great exodus.  That's when the press leaves.  They've got their brief moments of footage -- and text copies of the opening statements -- and with that, they cover the first 30 or so minutes of a two hour hearing.  They call it 'reporting.'

The way a hearing is supposed to work is that the Chair of the Committee speaks, then the Ranking Member, then -- by seniority -- it rotates from one party to the next. 

John Kerry doesn't know much about anything -- which makes his pretense of caring about the environment such a sad farce.  But he does know press and he does know the Senate.  Barack Obama was not in the Senate to vote against the Iraq War -- he ran for the Senate in 2004.  Which meant he was a junior senator.  If he spoke when he was supposed to, he would have not made the news because the reporters would have left.  So John, after the hearing starts, announces that they're going to waive the rules to let Barack speak right away.  The Christ-child always got his way and the press pretended it was normal -- when they weren't cumming in their panties and boxers over the sight of Barack in jeans -- sadly, that video exists to this day.

The other speaker candidate at the hearing had to go in the normal order, even though she was elected in 2000.  Hillary Clinton, that's right.  Spencer did one better than John Kerry, he avoided covering the woman he hated (hated in part because she was a woman) by lying that CSPAN had gone down.  Some threw a fit about that lie and THINK PROGRESS had to take a look and, no, it did not go down and Spencer deliberately lied and deliberately chose not to do his assignment.  

His career, such as it is, is nothing but one moment like that over and over again and why he can't find a home but it always a journalist traipsing from one outlet to the next.  

The whore's putting out for the US government yet again -- his essay is a tie-in with Carnegie -- the so-called Endowment for Peace.  He'll be presenting his recycled garbage in one of their online forums tomorrow afternoon.  

Recycled?  He's taking the premise of his bad and poor selling 2021 book and applied it to this essay.

You can't talk Spencer Ackerman without talking the reality of woke and cancel culture.

It is a lie to say that woke led to cancel culture.

Cancel culture has always been around but, as we know it today, it really begins in this century and goes full out in 2008.  There it begins with Spencer Ackerman.  As already noted, he was a devout supporter of Barack who would lie for Barack.  Everyone should be aware of how far he went.  As a member of Ezra Klein's Journo-list, he hatched one conspiracy of lies after another. 

A number of people were rightly offended by Jeremiah Wright -- by the way, will Oprah ever be asked about him?  That was Barack's pastor (and Oprah's).  He made statements that the average voter found offensive.  No surprise there.  Barack wouldn't walk away at first.  So it became the job of the Cult of St. Barack to destroy on Barack's behalf.

Spencer shared the plan with other journalists on Journo-List.  What they would do is scream, "Racist."  Whomever raised the issue of Jeremiah Wright would be targeted with the label "racist!"  

As Keach Hagey (POLITICO) explained:

At one point, Ackerman suggested that fellow members of the listserv should fight the way the right is fueling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story by choosing one of Obama’s conservative critics, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

At another point, Ackerman acknowledged that, while he didn’t like having to toe a partisan line, “what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

He continued: “I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a right winger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously, I mean this rhetorically.”

That is cancel culture.  That is cancel someone with lies because you don't like what they said.  That is intimidate them into silence.  And that is Spencer Ackerman.  And he's done it his whole career -- will come back to it, it does apply to this discussion -- and grasp that this was a cabal.

They got together and plotted.  Journalists plotted how they would manipulate coverage to ensure Barack got the nomination and how they would manipulate coverage to ensure Barack won the election.  It was dishonest and undemocratic.  

On that list serve, to cite only one other example, you had the Charlotte Rae of THE NATION -- elderly Katha Pollitt, faux poetess, revealing, after Sarah Palin's first national speech, that she found Palin impressive and formidable.  She was quickly advised by other journalists how important it was that her opinion never went public.  And it never did in 2008.  In 2008, she never wrote what she really thought despite turning in columns for THE NATION.  She just lied.  If you were a subscriber to THE NATION, you had to wait until 2010 to find out what Katha really thought -- in then it wasn't in one of her so-called think pieces but instead in outlets like POLITICO when they were exposing Journo-list.

Jeremiah Wright made a lot of statements that many could find offensive.  It wasn't just that 9/11 was the chickens coming home to roost.  He was homophobic as well -- a reality the mainstream press went out of their way to ignore -- this despite the fact that he appeared on PBS making homophobic statements (Ava and I covered it in real time).  But if anyone raised any issue about the many statements that Jeremiah Wright made, they were to be smeared as a racist and their public destruction made an example of so no one else would dare speak out.

Again, that is cancel culture.  Don't blame it on woke.  Blame it on Spencer Ackerman.

It's the only thing he's ever understood.  Which explains why he gets so many chances by the way.  Has any other journalist flitted so from one outlet to another?  Does any other journalist you can think of appear comfortably on a panel with Francis Fukuyama?  He will -- Spencer and his buddy Francis will be live broadcasting tomorrow afternoon.

Why is that?

It's hard to tell this truth apparently.

I say "apparently" because Ava and I have told it for years at THIRD.  We're the only ones who can do so "apparently."

FAIR tries to argue with us on that fact -- in e-mails, they try to argue with us.

They insist that they call out the media for what I'm talking about here: Employing the Iraq War Hawks.

I'm not talking about employing them back then, back when the war started, I'm talking about who they have hired after the American people turned against the war (2006) and after everyone grasped the Iraq War was built on lies -- since then, they've hired one person who cheered on the illegal war after another.

And FAIR, to their credit, will make a big stink -- at their site and in their e-mails to us --  about how NBC or PBS or THE WASHINGTON POST hires a discredited Iraq War supporter and not someone who got it right -- someone who called the war wrong before it started.

But what FAIR won't do is call out the so-called 'independent' media for doing the exact same thing.  It's two liberals, for example, at MOTHER JONES -- so-called 'feminists' (they're not feminists, all you have to do is look at all the men they have on staff and so few women) -- who hired Kevin Drum.  That's the blogger they wanted.  They could have chosen Mary what's her name Scott or any of the others who got it right about Iraq.  Instead, they went with pro-war Kevin Drum.

It's not just MSM that's hiring these people who pimped the war, it's also the so-called 'independent' media.  THE NATION should really do an article on this topic, they could even just focus on themselves in terms of how many pro-Iraq War writers they hired after 2006 as opposed to how many anti-Iraq War writers they had.  

FAIR likes to make the point, rightly, that those who got it wrong were never held accountable.  And FAIR is right about that.  But they're wrong to only say that of corporate media because it's true in left 'independent' media as well.

And it's true of Spencer Ackerman who, like Glenn Greenwald, to name another, was pro-war.  He used cancel culture back when the Iraq War was starting to try to silence those of us opposed to the Iraq War.  He smeared and targeted us.  That's why cancel culture is bad -- it stops a public discussion.  That's what its intended purpose is.  And Spencer deployed it all the time.  

He's written yet another tract on accountability but doesn't seem to grasp that he's never been held accountable.  His cheerleading of the Iraq War destroyed a country, left another in debt, produced thousands of dead foreign soldiers (US, UK, etc), many more wounded, left a record number of disabled/challenged people in Iraq (including newborns to this day) and left over a million Iraqis dead.  

But, hey, he wants to write about other people not taking accountability?

ROLLING STONE could have hired any number of writers to spit out a thousand or so words on Iraq.  They went with Spencer because those who ran with the pack, those who were cheerleaders for this war, are never held accountable.  

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TV: It's not LA CONFIDENTIAL being turned into a weekly series

In the eighties, spy was apparently a high demand occupation causing bosses to recruit just about anyone --  homemakers (Kate Jackson's Amanda King of SCARECROW AND MRS. KING), models and fashion photographers (COVER UP), bank computer operators (JUMPIN' JACK FLASH), struggling actors (OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE, THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL),  suburbanites (PACK OF LIES),  songwriting partners (Elaine May's ISHTAR), retired geriatrics (LEONARD PART 6), 11-year-old boys (CLOAK & DAGGER), rock & roll singers (TOP SECRET), US Navel Intelligence (NO WAY OUT -- recruited to be a double-agent), high school students (LITTLE NIKITA), paintball champions (GOTCHA!), insurance agents (REAL MEN), comic book artists (CONDORMAN),  ex-cons (GO FOR IT), rodents (DANGER MOUSE) . . .

 

 

The fascination with liars and tricksters continues today and the latest entrant?  TRUE LIES on CBS.

The 90s James Cameron film was never a great movie.  It's the weakest of all of the Cameron films.  Possibly that's due to the fact that the main female character is the weakest as well.  There is no Ellen Ripley, there is no Sarah Connor, Dr. Lindsey Brigman, no Rose, no Neytiri te Tskaha Mo'at'ite.  It's just Jamie Lee Curtis letting herself be the joke over and over.  It's a smarmy role and one not worthy of a James Cameron film.  As for when the character becomes sexy, that's just flat-out laughable -- and not in a comedic way.  

So we find some criticism especially tired and ignorant -- such as when some so-called critics gripe about the character in the TV show not being kept stupid and mocked for not grasping that her husband is a spy.

We find a lot curious, to be honest.

If we're really being honest, we went into watching this show very eager.  People we trust told us it was awful.  Critics went to town on it in their half-assed way and we were ready to burn it to the ground.

Sadly, we made the mistake of watching and all our thoughts of clever bitchery quickly faded.

TRUE LIES is not a great TV show that's going to sweep the Emmys but it was never intended to be that.  It's a simple weekly adventure based on a weak escapist film.  

For what it is, it succeeds providing an hour of diversion via light comedy and flying bullets.

Steve Howey plays the husband Harry Tasker.  In the 90s film, Ahnuld played the role.  Is anyone really going to pretend that Ahnuld gave a performance?  Of course, Howey's an improvement.  He's a scaled down model and we're not just speaking of muscles, we're also speaking of the fact that he's a character on a weekly TV show.  Ginger Gonzaga takes the role of Helen Tasker -- and does so with a take on Helen that makes her both understandable and intelligent -- way beyond the scared (and pathetic)  little girl who did a lap dance for her husband in the film.

 

Strong support comes via Mike O'Gorman, Erica Hernandez, Deneen Tyler, Omar Miller and Beverly D'Angelo. But a show like this lives or dies on the chemistry between the leads and Howey and Gonzaga nail that. 

It's the chemistry that carried SCARECROW & MRS. KING.  That was Kate Jackson fourth series run in a row.  She started on DARK SHADOWS, moved on to THE ROOKIE and then, of course, CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  She was one of the original Angels along with Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith.  Later, Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack and Tanya Roberts would join the show.  Though five of the six all attempted to follow up the success of CHARLIE'S ANGLES with a starring role in another TV show, only Kate did it.  CUTTER TO HOUSTON, HOT LINE, ONE WEST WAIKIKI, GOOD SPORTS -- none of them made it to episode 21.  (Of the six women, only Jaclyn Smith never attempted to star in her own TV series.)  

SCARECROW & MRS. KING starred Kate Jackson and Bruce Boxleitner and aired on CBS for four seasons (88 episodes).  It ran on charm and, if you doubt that, it streams currently on TUBI.  If TRUE LIES can pull it off, it may be able to pull in viewers on Wednesday nights for similar reasons.  If not?  Steve Howey and others are talking about rebooting the sitcom REBA (others does include Reba McEntire).