* So there's a vaccine in the works to stop chlamydia, which is an STD which causes giant clams to try to eat your sex parts. This vaccine comes in a nose spray. A nose spray to stop an STD? I must be doing this whole sex thing wrong. My nose never had any problems.
* Hillary says that Trump is the "most dangerous man" ever to run for the presidency. Could be, but I doubt it. On the other hand, Hillary is by definition the most dangerous woman to run for the presidency... the fattest woman... the oldest woman... the dumbest woman and the woman most likely to need nose spray.
* As the popularity of bullying hits an all time high (one of the dance shows just did a special anti-bully dance which I believe caused five actual bullies to die of acute faked regret (AFR)), it's pretty clear that a vast number of fakers are claiming they were bullied... people like Playboy Bunnies who think it's funny to post pictures of fat women working out. The question is, what do we do after everyone claims they were bullied? Do we eliminate the idea from the lexicon? Do we just pretend that everyone really was bullied... like the French pretend that everyone there was part of the resistance and how half the world is part casino Indian? Or do we force people to admit that most of them were actually the bullies? Ooh, that could ugly! Who bullies the bullies indeed!
BTW, Kat von D was bullied by her transvestite I don't know what... boss? Business partner? Friend? Anyways, using liberal logic, clearly transvestites are bullies and need to be bullied until they learn that bullying never solves anything! Bully for us!
* Like almost every Democrat before her, Melina Trump may have lied about her qualifications to be.... uh, just lied. Don't care. She's hot. And the fact that the Roskanda dress she wore sold out as she spoke tells you that people are excited about her. I doubt Bargain Hag will sell out of Hillary's support pantsuit she'll be wearing when she cackles her way through her acceptance speech.
* Taylor Swift is now firing back at Kim Fatdashian and her loser husband Kanye the Douche. So far it's just low level trolling and lobbed allegations. Kanye called Taylor a "bitch" and she got angry a few days after she heard it. Then Kim claimed Taylor gave Kanye permission, but Taylor did... you don't care do you? Neither do I. I just hope this ends in a double driveby.
* Finally, Hillary is looking to Iowan Tom Vlasic as her likely running mate. That puts the party in a pickle. Actually, thinking about it, Hillary using a pickle is somehow appropriate. It's not like it couldn't be worse though. His name could be Tommy Dil-- uh, whoops.... it turns out his name is actually Vilasek. That seems appropriate too as Vila-sectomy sounds like the painful version of the Vasectomy. Ouch. Fitting, but ouch. Anyways, this is more evidence that Hillary needs help in Iowa and other Midwestern states which she should be winning handily. Snicker snicker. Handily. I'll stop now.
53 comments:
Interesting stuff... I'm not sure I want to know how that nose spray works, though, if some of the gossip around work is true some people around there are glad to know it's out there! I'll just keep away from the clam swamps myself.
I've always found the whole bullying campaigns to be a bit disingenuous myself considering the sort of people who tend to be involved with them and what their definition of bullying usually is. It would hardly surprise me if your thoughts on the people involved were true. And yes a double drive by in the whole Swift/Kardashian feud would solve so many problems...
- Daniel
I thought Hillary was looking at generals to burnish her national security credentials?
According to rumor Bill Cosby is completely blind now. I once had tremendous respect for him (both for his comedic talent and his Pound Cake speech) but given recent revelations, I don't feel any sympathy for the guy.
*Shrugs* Or it could just be a sympathy play by his defense team.
http://pagesix.com/2016/07/18/bill-cosby-is-completely-blind-and-trapped-in-his-home/
The source close to Cosby told us, “His alleged victims may take some solace in the fact that he’s in his own personal hell. He has been suffering from a degenerative eye disease and is completely blind . . . All his Hollywood friends have turned their backs on him.
“He is confined to his house in Pennsylvania, and the only person on his side is his wife, Camille, who is masterminding his defense. His only friends are the small army of lawyers on his payroll.”
Although his top lawyers, Brian McMonagle and Angela C. Agrusa, didn’t respond to questions from Page Six, Cosby’s sight has been slowly fading for some time. In January, Monique Pressley, another of his lawyers, said of his strange appearance in his mug shot, “He’s a 78-year-old blind man who they’ve chosen to charge. That’s not a defense to a charge, that’s just a fact.” It explains why he is led into court by lawyers and reps on both of his arms. (He turned 79 on July 12.) Since then, the condition has become far more severe.
Even as former Iowa Governors and Secretaries of Agriculture go, Tom Vilsack is d-u-u-u-ll. If Hillary goes that route for a VP pick, it fits right in with her general strategy of "don't make any waves and hopefully no one will notice what a terrible candidate I am."
On the continued subject of plagiarism, Gingrich lobbed the "most dangerous president" accusation at Obama. This is a fun game that I could play every day.
Daniel, Drive-by shootings can solve so much!
Good idea on avoiding the need for nose spray.
On bullying, don't get me wrong. I despise kids who bully other kids (if you're an adult and you get bullied, then you're the pathetic one). What makes me roll my eyes is how all these hot little starlets are now claiming to have been bullied because it's like a shield to hide their otherwise obnoxious conduct. "Oh, you say I'm a piece of sh*t? Wait! I was bullied! You can't blame me for anything now!! Let me bask in my victimhood, bitches!"
There is NO chance these women were bullied. In fact, it seems pretty clear that they were the bullies, and I'll bet there are some ex-fat kids, girls with glasses or kids who just weren't perfect in some awkward way who are stunned to hear their mean girl bullies claiming victim status.
Anthony, It's hard to feel sympathy for him. That said, I'm still stunned he did this. There are a lot of sickos out there, but I never expected him to be one of them.
I think Hillary is floating a fleet of trial balloons to see if any of them work. So far, she's floated balloons for: Biden (Obama fans), Bernie (Bernie fans), Warren (progressives), some Hispanic dude (racists), a general (foreign policy), Vilsack (white farmers/battleground Iowa), Hickenlooper (battleground Colorado).
She doesn't have anyone from Ohio yet, Florida or Virginia. Let me suggest Lebron James. He covers both Ohio and Miami.
tryanmax, His name is Vilsack? Hmm. There are NO sex jokes I think of that use that name. ;-) Are you sure it's Vilsack and not Nilsack?
The plagiarism thing is stupid. They all do it. That is funny though that Hillary just plagiarized Newt. Snicker snicker. Oh wait, that's right... liberals don't care about things their own people do wrong.
Andrew - You left our Cory Booker (Sen/NJ) in the "racist" category.
Other issues:
1. The whole bullying thing is getting out of hand. When did we get to be such wimps. These days everything is a microagression that sends these weak-minded bimbos to the day spa to recover. The irony is that they are getting called out for being bullies. I am tired of irony...
2. I am in the I REALLY DON'T CARE WHO MELANIA GOT HER SPEECH FROM. This is a message that EVERY SINGLE POLITICIAN has made through our entire history - who did Michelle steal them from?
Michelle's speech:
"And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them.
"And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and to pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them."
And Melania's speech:
From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect.
They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
Bev, Calling that plagiarism is ridiculous actually. The first part I've herd in dozens of graduation speeches. It is a cliche. And the idea that liberals think Obama said it first tells us all we need to know about liberals and why their cities are such a mess.
The second part is a paraphrase of a platitude. Big whoop.
Oh, and just for the record, I propose the following amendment to our official Mission Statement:
"Henceforth, no Kardashian or related entity whether real or imagined shall be written about, or mentioned, or alluded to in comments on this blog. Penalty to be decided by The Management."
But Bev, sometimes we need filler and nothing fills space like Kim's butt or Kanye's ego. See what I did there?! :D
Interesting article in the National Review.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/438076/republican-party-campaign-consultants-need-serious-scrutiny
Given how enmeshed many corrupt Republican consultants are within the party’s more centrist ranks, it’s not exactly a surprise that moderate conservative writers haven’t criticized them much. Strangely, however, the more fire-breathing columnists have not been too interested, either. Besides generic condemnations against “the Establishment,” only columnist Ann Coulter has ever really gone after the many consultants who are terrible at doing their jobs but terrific at keeping them.
-----
Besides the fact that many Republican poohbahs and advocacy group heads are double-dipping out of their organizations’ coffers, one of the other significant issues facing the Right is an apparent desire of many conservative leaders to merely preach to the choir about conservative policy ideas instead of actually trying to enact them.
------
That’s why it was deliciously ironic that the only candidate who was able to defeat the consultants was a man who was even better at spinning Republicans than they are. The alleged experts and their lucrative reality distortion powers were taken down by an orange loudmouth who has boasted repeatedly about his skill at lying. The consultant class’ total inability to stop Trump or even take him seriously before it was too late is another proof that until the current crop of top-level GOP advisers is summarily banned from politics, there will be no hope for American conservatism.
Oh Anthony, there you go ruining the mood. One minute it's all Kardashian butts and VD, and now you have go and mention politics. Sigh.
Just kidding.
Seriously though, I have no hope for conservatism at the moment. It's rife with idiocy and infighting. It's dominated by people who are obsessed with being intolerant about one thing or another (gays, Muslims, Mexicans, people who aren't pure), big business lackeys, people who despise conservative ideology... or don't even know what that is, and people who think being anti-democrat is enough.
Even the people who are fighting Trump aren't doing so based on ideology, they are simply adopting liberals smears and thereby validating all they've fought against for decades. What's more, they aren't offering a single bit of policy to help conservatism reach new people.
Sad.
Of course, liberalism is worse. They're fired by hate and stupidity. Given their chance, they would remake the world as an Apartheid where everyone is judged based on their skin color and gender and no one excels or tells a joke lest someone too delicate to survive on this earth take offense.
Is it any wonder no one votes anymore?
Damn that was a downer. How about we post picture of Kim K's buttocks crushing Shriner cars? No? Transvestites in swim suits? No? What a difficult audience.
Ok, how about this. What do you do with an Elephant with three balls? You walk him and pitch to the rhino! :D
Interestingly, the parents of the boy killed at Disney will not sue. I have MEGA respect for that.
I think that is a tremendous testament of what their son meant for them that they aren't trying to turn him into an economic measure.
I feel very sad for them and I do hope Disney tries to make it right in some way. But I am very happy for them that they see his life as unique and priceless and not as something to be bartered in the legal system.
Best wishes to them.
Andrew - The cynical me thinks that Disney paid whatever they had to to make that whole alligator mess go away as quickly as possible.
But then, there really are people in this world with infinite forgiveness who will not sell their grief for the highest bid. We can all learn from these kinds of people.
Milo has been permabanned from Twitter. I've read some of the tweets he and his followers sent. Nothing of value was lost. *Shrugs* There are lots of places on and off the internet he can continue to do what he does.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/milo-yiannopoulos-twitter-waging-systemic-campaign-against-conservative-viewpoints/
Breitbart writer and conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos spoke out about the suspension of his Twitter account on CNBC Wednesday, calling out the company for its hypocritical stance on free speech.
“I’ve been pretty mean through the years on Twitter,” he readily admitted. “But I don’t think that’s a reason to excise somebody from the platform. Actually, plenty of people enjoy what I do. Over 380,000 of them, as you say, enjoy what I do.”
Yiannopoulos denied that he had ever racially or sexually harassed Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones, and denounced some of the “completely disgusting” tweets that came from his fans. “What I did is dislike her movie, and after that teased her on Twitter,” he said. “If a journalist can’t tease a Hollywood blockbuster actress, I don’t know what this platform is about.”
He should have claimed he was working for ISIS. Then Twitter wouldn't have touched him, and if they had, Obama would have decried their rush to judgment.
Whew, Vilsack, not Vilasek! One of my Eastern Euro-people potentially gets a heartbeat away from the presidency, would rather it be actually one of my guys.
>>The second part is a paraphrase of a platitude. Big whoop. >>
Exactly. It's a damn shame a Republican poseur/panderer like Trump is the only one even remotely on our side to adopt Andrew Breitbart's "Yeah, so what?" mantra, but we're doomed even more than we already are till more of us dig our heels in with that attitude.
My only point of contention is the automatic assigning of blame to Milo's "followers." Certainly this is a verifiable claim on almost any social media platform, in a specific context, but I've seen nothing to validate the claim. Beyond that, a social media following in terms of group definition is as overreaching as it is nebulous. Furthermore, banning Milo does nothing to remove his followers, to say nothing of their desert to be removed. Finally, of the screen grabs I've been able to locate, it does not seem that Milo did tweet anything racist, nor did he do anything to incite others to do so. As far as I can tell, he was late to the commotion when he chided Jones for playing the victim.
Dammit tryanmax, He's a conservative! What more do you need man?! You know those people.
Eric, This one is going to be ugly no matter what happens.
If you want Eastern Euro, then I suggest we elect Vlad the Impaler and let him get down to business.
Tryanmax
Milo sees it as credit, not blame and he happily accepts it so I'm confused as to why you are denying it. Let's walk through the worst of it.
One of Milo's followers built fake tweets in which Jones spoke in Ebonics and crudely insulted Milo in racist and sexual terms. Milo played along (screencapturing the fakes and reacting as if they were from Jones). Andrew Price was fooled, citing those fake tweets as coming from Jones.
Milo's followers were also fooled and enraged they attracted Jones just as crudely and racially as they thought she had attacked Milo. That is just one of the ways Milo (who has apparently done this sort of thing for years) earned himself a permaban from Twitter.
If it makes you feel better some of his worst followers (including a participant in the aforementioned fraud) have also been banned :) .
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12226070/milo-yiannopoulus-twitter-ban-explained
As a part of the general harassment campaign, Yiannopoulos’s followers created a series of fake tweets, some of which appear to have been made using browser developer tools, others at the fake Twitter creation site Let Me Tweet That for You; a look at the site shows a number of similar fake tweets made recently and also attributed to Jones.
Yiannopoulos "screencapped" and reacted with fake shock to the tweets, leading many Twitter users to believe that the tweets came from Jones’s real account. The tenor of the fake tweets portrayed Jones as speaking in an exaggerated "street" slang and depicted her as dropping anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs. When Jones tweeted that she had blocked @Nero, she was inundated with racist replies in response — an (extremely offensive) representative sample comes from a self-described Gamergater, "shitposter."
I'm not exactly sure how Andrew Price was fooled, citing those fake tweets as coming from Jones.
Jones herself claimed that she was hacked and that what brought Yiannopoulos into this were faked tweets from her account. How that fits in with the story you cited above I have no idea because it doesn't. So either Vox or Jones is lying.
Moreover, how anyone can say that these are Yiannopoulos followers if they went through a randomizer is beyond me. In fact, I could say they came from a bevy of the Sony studio head's mistresses and have the same level of proof that Vox/Twitter does.
In fact, this ==> a look at the site shows a number of similar fake tweets made recently and also attributed to Jones
... is consistent with the idea that this was all one hacker trying to cause this. Moreover, the fact they aren't linking individual attacks to regular posters at Yiannopoulos's site suggests that this was all limited to one person and that Yiannopoulos's followers did not fire back... or "game gate" people, who seem to be tossed into this at random.
It sounds like it was one hacker, and like the far-left Vox site is going with what they always do -- blaming someone on the right.
Shouldn't listen to Vox.
Andrew put it better than I could've. It all comes down to the absurd claim that the trolls can be both anonymous and identified. If you can believe that, then there is no swaying you on anything else. Furthermore, as I said to Scott on the "And Now It Begins..." thread, criticizing bad reporting is not an automatic defense of what was badly reported on. That said, going to Vox for news about conservatives is like going to StormFront for news about Black Lives Matter.
Speaking of bad reporting, the Vox article tries to have it both ways regarding Milo's involvement.
The harassment against Jones didn’t start with Yiannopoulos. It gradually escalated over Sunday and Monday...
then
This tweet* was all he needed to summon hours and hours of harassment against Jones...
In other words, Milo stepped into a days long fray which caused it to continue for hours. The lack of self awareness alone is astounding.
*If at first you don't succeed (because your work is terrible), play the victim. EVERYONE GETS HATE MAIL FFS
tryanmax, Vox is essentially a propaganda site.
That is the key, by the way: they are trying to have it both ways... anonymous and yet known. That yet known part is where their bias comes in.
And you are right. On the one hand, they claim that Yiannopoulos started this after apparently anonymously masterminding a false attack against himself by Jones... but "it didn't start with Yiannopoulos." Can't be both actually.
Andrew,
I misremembered your prior discussions on the subject of Milo. On that point I stand corrected and apologize.
As for the rest...
Nobody has ever stated Milo was drawn in by anyone attacking him. Jones was retweeting some of the uglier (often racist) tweets she had received and Milo jumped in to defend them (not the content specifically, he just stated he though she was playing up the hate to gin up publicity for the failing movie).
Jones reported him (and told him she had done so) and then by every account his fans turned the trickle of insults she had received into a flood.
As for why I went with Vox, they went into greater detail and provided screencaptures of tweets which are no longer available since Milo's account has been deleted and they interviewed Milo himself (see the link below). But fine, let's rule out Vox.
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12236586/milo-yiannopoulos-twitter-ban-leslie-jones
Here's the Washington Times.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/20/milo-yiannopoulos-twitter-ban-reignites-accusation/
One day after his Monday night run-in with comedian Leslie Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos was permanently barred from the social media site. The gay conservative provocateur accused Miss Jones of playing the “victim” for complaining about receiving hate mail and called her role in the “Ghostbusters” reboot “terrible.”
Miss Jones reported Mr. Yiannopoulos‘ remarks to Twitter authorities. His fans responded by inundating the comedian with harassing and racially charged tweets.
---------
Here's Twitchy's take.
http://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2016/07/19/report-nero-permanently-banned-by-twitter-over-tweets-to-ghostbusters-actress/
Tweeters had been sending Jones pictures comparing her to a gorilla, which eventually led to a back-and-forth with Yiannopoulos, which then led to more hate.
It seems one of the tweets that set off the outrage was a doctored tweet calling Yiannopoulos an “uncleTom fag” (doctored version on top, Jones’ response on the bottom):
The writing was on the wall when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey got involved:
-----------
Here if Fox New's take.
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/07/20/breitbart-bad-boy-milo-not-silenced-by-twitter-ban.html
Although Yiannopoulos himself didn’t post explicitly racist language, he was blamed when some of his followers directed a storm of racist tweets at “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones following his scathing movie review in which he criticized her character for perpetuating black stereotypes.
Yiannopoulos said he doesn’t take responsibility for the tweets, and said the situation only escalated because Jones responded by “attempting to call her trolls names.”
Insisting he didn’t break Twitter’s terms of service, Yiannopoulos highlighted extreme ideology that has been permitted on the site, pointing to posts that call for the “celebration of the deaths of police” and offensive tweets against whites from Jones herself.
-----------
None of those conservative sites went into nearly the detail Vox did, but they all said essentially the same thing.
Funny how nobody (including Milo, who has spoken extensively about the matter and states the ban was something he hoped and planned for for and would make him bigger than ever) denies the racist tweeters were his followers, he just denies he is to blame for the actions of his followers and points out that lots of other evil/idiocy is permitted on Twitter.
That is true, but that is kind of like arguing with a cop about a speeding ticket (there are other people out there going even faster than me!).
I still contend that no one has offered support for the claim that the harassment came from Milo's followers, let alone argued that such a designation is meaningful on social media.
The only meaning of "followers" that fits the facts of the situation is "ones who move behind someone," which is the loosest definition possible. Milo bid no one to do anything on his behalf except by some form of mass telepathy.
And telling someone to buck up and stop whining is not a defense of whatever they are whining about. I can't believe it even needs said in this forum.
Anthony, Thanks for the apology. :)
You posted a comment, which seems to have vanished and I want to make a couple points on that.
One of the things that bothers me about the modern world is that once something becomes a narrative, everyone adopts it without question. At that point, all the "news" sites left and right run with it without anyone using their brains.
There are constant examples of this. In fact, you see it all the time. Duke rape. The rape culture. The WMD in Iraq. Palin claiming she could see Russia. Dan Quayle not knowing how to spell potato. The military losing the public's support in Vietnam. Clinton winning in a landslide in his second term. Bush would have lost Florida if all the votes were counted. Etc.
Each of those things was proven false, yet was treated as true by everyone because our culture likes to jump on easy narratives and refuses to give them up.
So seeing every news site repeat a story that came from the same source without doing any independent analysis doesn't surprise me, nor does it convince me. In fact, one of the reasons for this blog (and something I'm proud of) is that the people here are generally skeptics in the best sense of the word. They use reasoning and what knowledge they have to ask themselves questions about conventional wisdom and easy narratives.
I'm not saying the narrative is always wrong, but I am saying that the mere fact of a narrative is not conclusive to me. If there is reason to doubt, then I doubt.
(continued)
(continued)
Now, turning to this instance, something bothers me here. It always has. The marketing campaign for Ghostbusters has so cynical wrapped itself in the victim mantle that I automatically doubt any claim it makes to victimhood.
Along comes this Twitter thing and it plays right into that. When I looked at the statements I saw this: Jones claimed she has been under attack by racists. Then she was hacked, by a hacker who only attacked Milo, whose followers retaliated.
Ok. Makes sense.
But then I looked and what I saw was (1) nothing but sycophancy at her page, i.e. no attacks, (2) until she posted about some secret attacks no one had seen. (3) She posted about ten examples, each of which was clearly from the same source -- most likely the hacker. And then she claimed she was leaving Twitter, which seemed incongruous with her character and remarkably convenient given the marketing need.
So I doubted.
The next thing that happened is that this narrative appeared. It says, "Right winger Milo posted Twitter attacks from Jones, which Milo faked, to rile up his followers and get them to attack Jones." This is inconsistent with the first story already because the first story had this starting before Milo was involved and the hacker was the aggressor. Now the hacker is gone and the early attacks vanish. As an aside, there was no evidence of Milo's followers attacking her either.
Then the narrative changed to say that Milo's followers hid their identities to attack her, i.e. they did so anonymously. Suddenly, the narrative is nonsense. How can we not know their identities, but yet know who they are? That's a prejudicial assumption. And note the absence of any journalist, race baiter or Jones rep linking a single Twitter attacker to being one of Milo's followers. Surely, one of Milo's minions must have left footprints and surely one of the thousands of leftist eyes would have found it. But no.
Next, Twitter bans Milo and the narrative becomes "Milo orchestrated an attack by his followers on Jones, so Twitter banned him."
Now, it may be true that Milo did this. Maybe he was the hacker for all anyone knows. But all the evidence needed to support any portion of that new narrative is missing. (1) The contradictory hacker story is omitted without comment. (2) The contradictory prior attacks are omitted without comment. (3) There is no request by Milo for an attack, nor is there any suggestion of orchestration. All he did was post the attacks supposedly made on him, which is what Jones is guilty of as well. (4) The anonymous attacks Jones claims but which can't be verified are attributed to Milo followers without any proof -- they were done through an anonymous comment site, so there is no way to tell their source. (5) More significantly, there is a total absence of leftists pointing at individual Milo followers and linking them to attacks on Jones.
To me, this reeks of the work of one hacker, followed by the left/Jones's people quickly building the narrative: "Milo is evil... ignore the contrary evidence."
That's why I don't buy this. I'm not saying there aren't racist trolls or that Milo is a good person. What I am saying is that this strikes me as either a studio frame up or a lone attacker whose work was exploited to further their marketing.
It doesn't surprise me in the least that Jones is back today to do a victory lap.
Andrew,
I don't know what happened to my last post, but I have more or less recreated it (I cut and paste two paragraphs more from the article than I did last time).
Milo is a guy who styles himself a provocateur (meaning he likes to start fires and if they have already started, throw gasoline on them). It is his claim to fame and he has been doing it for years.
He has been warned (and temporarily banned) by Twitter before but he continued to do what he did because that is literally his profession. As he freely admits, a permaban was inevitable and something he has been angling for and planning for (he believes it will make him more famous than ever).
Why assume the innocence of a guy who loudly proclaims his guilt and has a long track record of doing exactly what he was banned for (siccing his followers on random people for laughs)?
http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/milo-yiannopoulos-isnt-a-free-speech-martyr.html
Both sides are wrong — Yiannopoulos is no free-speech martyr, and cheerleaders of the ban are likely fooling themselves if they interpret this as any sort of sign of evolving Twitter policy rather than a specific instance of damage control that’s unlikely to lead to wider reforms.
Twitter has had an eye on Yiannopoulos for a long time. During a period in which the conversation about online harassment and hate speech has ratcheted up, Yiannopoulos has, relative to the size of his following, become one of the most controversial figures on the platform. In January of this year, he lost his “verified” badge for reasons Twitter never revealed, and last month, around the time he was trying to exploit the Orlando shootings at Pulse for self-aggrandizement purposes, he was briefly banned and then reinstated. He regularly posts racist, misogynistic, and abusive content, and, truth be told, has been doing so for years — he has long used his large and ever-growing base of followers and devotees as a cudgel against his perceived enemies and others he hoped to ridicule, many of them with a fraction of the fame and following that Jones has. More recently, as he has grown cozier and cozier with alt-right racists and anti-Semites, he’s exhibited less of an internal censor: He even put George Soros’s name in Jew parentheses.
In other words, Twitter has long had ample reason to permanently ban Milo. So why was this the incident that crossed the line? Since Twitter offers up so little info about why it bans or suspends users, any attempt to interpret one of its decisions involves a bit of tea-leaf reading. In this case, though, the answer is likely the faked screenshots that made it look like Jones was saying highly offensive stuff, including using the word “kike.” Yiannopoulos knew exactly what he was doing in blasting out those screenshots — just as he knew what he was doing other times he directed his rabid followers toward specific targets — and the only conceivable goal was to rile people up about Jones and amplify the hate. So whatever you think about Yiannopoulos calling Jones a man or a caricature or whatever else, it just isn’t hard to imagine Twitter viewing the faked screenshots as a step too far, especially given the author’s past misbehavior and subsequent warnings, and especially given the “inciting” wording of Twitter’s statement to Warzel.
But it’s likely more than just Yiannopoulos violating some specific rule. Twitter also stepped in because Jones, after tweeting about what she was experiencing the other night, gained enough support and publicity that the site felt like it had to step in — hence Dorsey reaching out to Jones directly. Twitter is a corporation, after all, and it is terrible PR for one of the stars of a movie that has already ignited several rounds of gender-and-culture wars to be dealing with a torrent of racist and sexist garbage at the hands of Yiannopoulos and his supporters. It’s not an accident that Yiannopoulos has repeatedly gotten away with equivalent behavior directed at much smaller names.
Here is an interview with Milo in which he admits that he has made a career of being a jerk who caters to people who love to use the N word.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/milo-yiannopoulos-doesnt-have-feelings.html?_r=0
You’re one of the loudest, most provocative voices at Breitbart News, and you’re currently on a speaking tour of college campuses, railing against “P.C. culture.” You once admitted in a profile that your public persona started out as a comedy character that you created because “I didn’t like me very much.” What didn’t you like about yourself? I’ve wrestled with being religious and being conservative and being gay, but the reason I felt like that is because of other gay people. The only real shaming I’ve ever experienced has been from other gay people when I reveal my politics or my religion.
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Why is it any different from anything else? I defend people’s right to use offensive speech, I just don’t personally choose to use the N-word. But I think people who do use those words should not be subjected to censure. That’s already happening in the U.K. — the police are actively trying to regulate “offensive speech.” That is so Orwellian and terrifying and horrendous.
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Here is a link to screenshots of the fake tweets he sent out. Inflammatory stuff that was sure to enrage those n word loving followers of his.
As one skeptic points out, he had to know the tweets were fake even if he didn't create them himself because he 'retweeted' stuff with a delete button which wouldn't be present if he was actually retweeting something he had received from the Jones' account.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160719120934/https:/twitter.com/Nero/status/755256958828089344
Andrew,
When looking at dueling narratives, I try to look at circumstances, known facts and past behavior to see what is reasonable.
I was on the fence about Ferguson based on initial reports(neither a cop murdering a black guy out of hand nor an unarmed black guy randomly attacking a cop made sense to me) until I saw the video of Michael Brown and his buddy robbing the store and assaulting the elderly store clerk in front of a terrified woman and child. Both robbers laughed the whole time, an indicator this wasn't their first rodeo.
Logically that didn't mean that everything happened exactly as the police claimed it did, but it made it much more likely (it gave Brown a motive to attack the cop and established him as a thug).
Like Brown, Milo has a motive and a track record.
As for the narrative, early attacks and Milo jumping in to defend them are part of all of the narratives (including Breitbart's). Whether or not the big problem is hackers or fake tweets differs from article to article, but the differences seem to have more to do with how indepth the articles are than the time of their writing.
Articles which go deep into the weeds (including but not limited to posting actual tweets) focus on the fake tweets. Articles which sum up the whole thing in a sentence or three focus on the hacker.
Why assume the innocence of a guy who loudly proclaims his guilt and has a long track record of doing exactly what he was banned for (siccing his followers on random people for laughs)?
There are several things here.
1. He proudly proclaims his guilt as a provocateur and defender of the Voltaire principle of free speech. (And before you correct me, I know the famous quote is misattributed, but it is generally regarded as reflective of his attitude toward the thing.) You may find provocateurs distasteful, but that is a matter unto itself. Milo has not, as you imply, admitted guilt to harassing anyone. I assume innocence only in the area where there is a question of guilt.
2. Does Milo in fact have a record of siccing his followers on people? Obviously, he would not be so foolish as to cry "attack!" on Twitter or anywhere else. Relaxing the standard a bit, can one point to instances where he suggested people direct their comments at an individual? If so, I would expect it to be included in every article today. It's not there. The most Milo can be said to have done is a) be critical of individuals he disagrees with and b) aired his criticism in a public forum. What good is a public forum if those things cannot be done? The predictable response is, "But Milo knows how his followers will react!" which is essentially saying that anyone who has ardent support should remain silent.
3. Twitter has actually been very opaque about why exactly Milo was banned. The Verge has a good article about this: http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/20/12237222/twitter-milo-yiannopoulos-ban-harassment-leslie-jones-transparency The pull-quotes alone are fairly damning of Twitter. Twitter was similarly opaque regarding Milo's prior bans and deverification. It all reads as very cynical.
In writing that last point, I feel like I should make something very clear. I am making no assessment of Jones, her behavior, or treatment. As far as I am concerned, her involvement is incidental. I am being most critical of the reporting on this incident from the vantage of one who has observed Milo's online presence for some time, rather than sifting through media accounts after the fact.
Not that I adhere to this standard, but at root this is an instance of the left-leaning media punching down and justifying the action by claiming they were merely stopping someone else from punching down.
Anthony, I'm not sure what happened to your comment. I got it by email, but it's nowhere at the blog itself -- not junk mail or anything. Sorry. It wasn't deleted intentionally or anything.
When looking at dueling narratives, I try to look at circumstances, known facts and past behavior to see what is reasonable.
While those things are certainly relevant and I do consider them, they are secondary to me to first figuring out what the competing stories are and how they connect to the facts. If they don't fit the facts, then backgrounds don't matter.
In this case, the narrative put forward simply doesn't fit that Milo was anything more than a target who weaseled himself into this afterwards. The facts simply don't show that he started it or that he was the guy who was involved at the time Jones made her supposed decision to "quit."
Milo may have been a jackass after that -- I'm sure he was because it brings him fame -- but that was after Jones already claimed to have been driven out. Hence, it can't be Milo. So the narrative that he caused this cannot be true no matter what his background or how he acted later.
That is my point.
In fact, I would argue that knowing this is the way Milo works, that he was the perfect target for the hacker to choose because (1) people will wrongly make the assumption that it must be his fault because of his background and (2) he's likely to fight back for fame and play into it. That suggests even more strongly that the hacker was Sony and that they basically poked Milo to get him to become the story.
tryanmax, I agree with your points. Let me add this. The assumption is that by posting the fake attacks on him from "Jones" (the hacker), he knew he would inspire his people to go attack her.
I find a real double-standarad here though. Jones did the exact same act. In fact, not only did she post the attacks on her, she went to the AP and gave interviews about it.
To see these things as opposites -- one a brave victim coming forward and the other a villains who wanted to inspire his followers to attack -- is more evidence of bias. It assumes that her followers are good and his are bad.
Tryanmax,
1. Free speech has nothing to do with this. This is about corporate censure for speech.
I don't know how he feels about free speech, but Milo has been a big, big fan of corporate censure for speech in the past.
He condoned Gamergate lobbying Intel to pulling advertisement for sites which published a feminist (also something of a provocateur) named Leigh Alexander and encouraged them to continue the tactic in order to make sure sites didn't publish opinion pieces which had the wrong opinions.
That is fine and good, but it shows that despite his current pose, he has no objection in principle to corporate suppression of speech so long as he disagrees with the speech in question.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2io2hf/i_am_milo_yiannopoulos_im_a_journalist_reporting/
You absolutely have the right to express your displeasure in a reasonable and polite manner to advertisers if you believe a publisher is putting out hateful content. Leigh Alexander's article, for example, was a disgrace and Intel made the right decision. (A decision they have stuck to, despite condemnation from the press.)
Anyone who tells you differently is an idiot or has some motive--like fear their own site will be targeted. That fear is what will keep them fair and honest in future. So keep it up.
2. The link in point one addresses point 2.
3. The 'exculpatory' article you linked to also talks about how Milo posted fake racist tweets in order to enrage his followers into spewing racist insults at a Jones. Doesn't sound that exculpatory to me.
Andrew,
For my money, posting real tweets and publicly pressuring Twitter to do something about it is quite different than posting fake tweets to one's followers in order to get the target attacked by said followers.
The action is different and the intention is different.
Anthony, you're trying to run me in circles, man.
1. Twitter once called itself "the free speech wing of the free speech party" but has since backed away from that stance. Certainly one can support corporate censure while also criticizing a platform for abandoning the principle it was built upon?
Tangentially, I was also responding to the remark that he caters to people who use the N-word. That's where Voltaire fits in. You provided the link and copied the text yourself regarding Milo's stance on the N-word, so the characterization strikes me as pretty bold.
2. I must not be seeing what you're seeing.
3. I said it was damning of Twitter.
Listen, you can be as happy as you want to be about Milo's ban. I can tell you don't like him and that's justification enough. But Twitter enforces it's policies capriciously, so don't expect me to agree that it's being at all fair. I simply can't give you that form of mental solace.
Tryanmax,
1. If one is a champion of 'free speech' one's position shouldn't change from corporation to corporation. Milo is just a champion of certain speech.
2. So it appears.
3. The article says Twitter is inconsistent, but like many others, it points out Milo dug his grave with his tongue.
Who said anything about fair? Sticking one's hand into hot water and getting burned isn't fair or unfair, it is just a predictable result of a deliberate action.
Anthony, I think I see the problem. It's in the word "fake/faked."
You are reading this to mean that "Milo faked racist attacks and published them at his page." That's a verb and it would follow from that being a verb that Milo was trying to incite his people and he started this whole thing.
But that's not what the word "fake" means in this case.
The first several articles to discuss this were much more clear before the narrative appeared. They said that the hacker hacked into Jone's account and sent faked attacks zinging at Milo. That's an adjective which describes the things Milo posted (attacks that were faked to appear to have come from Jones).
That's what started it. Milo then posted those fake attacks on his page, just as Jones would post samples of the attacks on her on her page. Jones then posts her initial comments claiming she never sent those attacks against Milo and that she was hacked.
That is a crucial difference. The verb use of "faked" basically accuses Milo of staging an attack on him which he then used to set off his followers. But the adjective used (which is consistent with the facts) makes it clear that Milo was brought into this by attacks on him after it all started and by which time Jones was already posting her "I'm quitting" comments.
The first makes it sound like Milo orchestrated it all, which is the flavor of the narrative. The second, which fits with Jones's statements, makes it clear that Milo was not the cause of the attacks on Jones (at least up to the point where she claims to quit Twitter).
That also explains why they can find no tweets where Milo told his people to attack and why they have found no evidence of Milo's people attacking her, because the attacks weren't from them... they were orchestrated by the original hacker.
Andrew,
Starting a fire and throwing dynamite into a fire one comes across are two different things. Accusing Milo of trying to make something worse is very different than accusing him of starting it.
Below is text cut and pasted from a Big Hollywood article which states that Jones had been fighting with often racist twitter trolls for hours, then Milo jumped in and joined in the mockery (though not the racism) and eventually posted some clearly fake (they lacked the verification checkmark) inflammatory tweets.
That is exactly what most sites on the internet (liberal and conservative) have said. Which site did you get your timeline (one which posits that Milo was drawn in by attacks on him) from?
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/07/20/leslie-jones-twitter-trolls-milo-yiannopoulos/
These tech sites also failed to report that Jones directly incited harassment, telling her own followers: “I hope y’all go after them like they going after me” and “get her.”
By contrast, here’s what Milo did:
1. Quote-retweeted Jones and said she was playing the victim with her hate mail.
2. Implied Jones’ outburst was due to Ghostbusters’ box office woes.
3. Mocked a typo and called her “barely literate.”
4. Shared a fake screenshot (made clear with the lack of a verification check mark) someone made to depict Jones tweeting insults like “kikes.”
5. Mocked Jones for blocking him and called her a “black dude.”
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IMPORTANT POINT (which points to my second factual error in this thread).
Big Hollywood's point that Leslie initially called for her followers on twitter to attack the people that were calling her a gorilla and suchlike rather seeking twitter's intervention is a relevant one.
It still doesn't make Milo's treatment surprising. Authorities tend to be more lenient with first time offenders (Jones) than they are with guys who have done (and been warned) about something many times before.
If one is a champion of 'free speech' one's position shouldn't change from corporation to corporation.
That's conflating freedom of speech with freedom of association. Most companies don't start by calling themselves the free speech wing of the free speech party.
You seem to think that putting Milo's activity in a list makes it different than anyone else's. You basically outlined typical interaction on Twitter and stamped it with "bad Milo." You don't strike me as familiar with the platform.
Now, I will grant that Twitter may have Milo on a technicality. But that's just it, Twitter has no pattern of enforcement. Twitter is not a pool of hot water. Twitter is an 80's teen flick pool party where everyone's invited and everybody scoffs at the rules and occasionally @jack kicks someone out for being a dweeb because "no deeebs allowed!" (Fist pump and everybody cheers.)
You can cry, "the rules, the rules" and be right but the appeal is only as strong as the rules' enforcement. The only reason everybody knew Milo would eventually be kicked from Twitter is because Twitter had been targeting him.
P.S. Where is @Lesdoggg's temporary warning suspension? Her rules violations are being ignored by Twitter. Leniency requires at least some censure.
The point is, Twitter only has rules as a screen. You're letting your personal dislike of Milo blind you to that. Which they counted on.
Anthony, I saw two articles at the same time. One was from the Daily Mail and the other was from the Hollywood reporter. Both were essentially descriptions of the interview she gave within minutes of quitting twitter. They contained her own words and some paraphrases.
The key points were...
1. She had been undergoing racial attacks "since the premier of the film."
2. She fought back.
3. At some point later she was hacked and her account sent anti-gay anti-Jewish attacks at Milo in ebonics: "At one point someone posted a tweet under a fake account making it look as if Jones had hurled homophobic abuse at right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulis, who had written a bad review of the film."
4. There was no initial mention of Milo doing anything except giving an interview in which he was asked why Jones had blocked him and tweeting: "If at first you don't succeed (because your work is terrible), play the victim. It's not racist to point out that a movie f***ing sucks."
5. She then quit Twitter because she couldn't take the abuse anymore. I am victim, hear me roar.
These were her own words or paraphrases. I had no reason to doubt them. The articles were entirely favorable to her. Observe the key facts...
1. It had been going on a long time.
2. Milo comes into it at the last minute when she gets hacked and her account attacks Milo to bring him in.
(continued)
(continued)
So I went to her site right after reading the articles. She had posted her comments to Milo saying that it wasn't her -- she was emphatic about that. Then she posted around 10 examples of racist tweets she had gotten that day, all of which were clearly done by the same 1-2 guys.
Those are the "fake" tweets Milo would later repost. That's when the narrative morphs. Milo responded like a racist ass... turns into "hey, those aren't real tweets"... turns into Milo posted fake tweets... turns into Milo faked tweets. If they are fake, then the source is Jones as she posted them first.
Moreover, there was no evidence of any prior attacks before she posted the comments saying she didn't send the racist tweets to Milo. It's possible she deleted them, but there were no sympathetic posts either.
Essentially, we are to believe that for a week, she had been under constant racist attack, yet her sycophantic followers never once posted a single tweet of sympathy or outrage? "Hang in there, girl!" "I can't believe some people." None of it.
This "I didn't send those to Milo!" literally comes out of the blue, followed by "look at what I've been getting" followed by "I quit."
Further, there is no evidence that anyone was upset or defensive at the site before then. In fact, her follower's response to her releasing the racist tweets suggests that this was news to them.
Further, why would anyone re-post racist attacks? Isn't it enough to say, "I received some really nasty shit and I'm leaving" without also posting it? Oddly, her first re-post seems to suggest that people had been refusing to believe the attacks are real (because people never believe victims, right?). But where is that conversation? There's no evidence for it.
None of this is consistent with how people normally act.
Moreover, if she was under constant attack ("received 'evil' comments every few minutes and blocked numerous trolls"), how did she randomly pick out only examples that are clearly all done by one person? She's magic.
And if those are the "fake" tweets Milo posted, then why does not one connect that she is the first to post those tweets -- which I pointed out in my first comments on the matter looked fake to me.
Anyways, once this all began, the narrative developed because people wanted to blame Milo and he liked the fame. The hacker vanished. The prior attacks vanished. The fact that Jones first posts the "fake" tweets gets ignored. We are told that Milo's followers attacked her even at the same time we are told that they did so anonymously and there is a total lack of evidence connecting any of them to this. Indeed, there is no evidence linking a single random follower of Milo's to an attack... because they're all. coordinated geniuses who knew to use the randomizer.
Nonsense.
Tryanmax,
In response to your first response to my last post (this is getting complicated) the list in the post isn't mine it's Big Hollywood's. If you think it unfair to Milo or indicative of ignorance of Twitter, I don't know what to say.
In response to your second response Milo knew he was under scrutiny and on notice for past behaviour. But he didn't let that stop him because he couldn't, it is how he makes a living. Predictable result of deliberate action.
Andrew,
You didn't provide links but I checked both sites and neither offers a timeline which indicates Milo was drawn in by an attack. The Daily Mail never indicates Milo contacted Jones (the evidence indicates and both parties agree there first interaction was Milo ridiculing her complaints about the nastiness of some of the tweets she had gotten ).
But maybe I missed something. Would you mind providing links?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696975/Ghostbusters-star-Leslie-Jones-forced-quit-Twitter-sad-heart-receiving-vile-racist-insults.html
At one point someone posted a tweet under a fake account making it look as if Jones had hurled homophobic abuse at right-wing journalist Milo Yiannopoulis, who had written a bad review of the film.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/twitter-permanently-suspends-breitbart-editor-912674
The conservative journalist was among several Twitter users who directed attacks at Jones in the days following the release of the all-female Ghostbusters remake. In his tweets, which are no long accessible on Twitter because his account has been shut down, he called her work "terrible" and said that she was "barely literate."
While Twitter confirmed that Yiannopoulos has been suspended from the service, the company did not specifically name his tweets against Jones as the reason for the suspension. A Twitter spokesman provided a statement when asked about the suspension that does not refer specifically to Yiannopoulos, but instead notes that it has policies against abuse or harassment and that "over the past 48 hours in particular, we've seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension."
Anthony, I'm going to move on because I'm tired of repeating the same ground and because I think you've made up your mind on this long ago. You keep assuming that the narrative is true because you believe it is and you sidestep all the evidence I've given you to the contrary.
Can you explain how this supposedly happened for a week, but there is no trace anywhere of it until the explosion?
Can you explain the disappearing hacker in the narrative?
Can you explain how this was all happening before Milo was involved, yet it gets attributed to Milo starting it?
Can you explain how Milo's followers are taken as a given as being the bad guys yet none of the hundreds of leftists scouring this story have produced a single tweet from any of them that reached Jones?
Can you explain how the concept of "Milo faked racist tweets" even makes sense? "Faked racist tweets" sounds damning, but how does it actually make sense? Why would he create fake racist tweets? What is the purpose? And if he did invent them, how do you explain them coming from Jones's account according to her own story? Are you really assuming he hacked her account and sent himself nasty tweets just so he could be smug in return? If so, where is your proof?
Unless you can explain those things, I don't think there's any point in continuing. Because each of those materially contradict the narrative.
In terms of the timeline, no one has assembled a timeline I can show you, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. It's within the articles... what was reported when, and her own site.
1. The early stories show that Jones is claiming to be under attack for a week and intense attack that day. July 18. Look at Paul Feig tweets.
http://metro.co.uk/2016/07/19/ghostbusters-leslie-jones-attributed-to-fake-tweets-as-she-suffers-racist-abuse-6015574/
She repeats -- under attack for a week, now quits.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3696975/Ghostbusters-star-Leslie-Jones-forced-quit-Twitter-sad-heart-receiving-vile-racist-insults.html
2. At some point late on the 18th, her account shoots off attacks at Milo, which brought Milo into this. Same articles.
3. She posts her comments repeating this and posting samples of what she claims was said to attack her. I saw this personally at her site on the 19th. I also saw the utter lack of any evidence of prior attack at her site at the same time.
4. The narrative takes shape on the 20th where Milo is now accused of posting "faked tweets" (whatever that means) to start this, where the hacker vanishes because it doesn't fit with the story, and where Milo's followers are presumed guilty even as we're told they used anonymous sites so they couldn't be traced.
I agree, I think we're done here.
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