May 8, 2024

HEH. WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING?

Posted at 6:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WARNING: THE PUBLIC-HEALTH ESTABLISHMENT IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH: Medscape Censors Science to Placate Activists. Medscape, which bills itself as “the leading online global destination for physicians and healthcare professionals worldwide,” posted medical-education programs on tobacco-harm reduction that included accurate information about nicotine vaping, the most promising tool yet developed for helping smokers quit. But then, despite an enthusiastic reception from the professionals who watched the programs, Medscape bowed to a campaign by anti-vaping zealots and removed the programs.

The result will be less-informed doctors and, presumably, more people smoking and dying. But to anti-vaping activists desperate to keep their jobs and funding, that smells like victory.

Posted at 6:26 pm by John Tierney

MARK JUDGE: Press Cowards’ Hypocritical Lament Over Media’s Lack of ‘Balls’ and ‘Swagger.’

“Very few owners have balls anymore,” former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown told [Semafor’s Max] Tani. “A very sorry fact for journalism.”

Tani’s piece was amplified by Jack Shafer at Politico. “Wounded and limping, doubting its own future, American journalism seems to be losing a quality that carried it through a century and a half of trials: its swagger,” Shafer wrote. “Swagger is the conformity-killing practice of journalism, often done in defiance of authority and custom, to tell a true story in its completeness, no matter whom it might offend.”

Veteran Washington Post newsman Kevin Merida, quoted by Shafer, says: “It’s harder to be confident, and exude that confidence in newsrooms—given the state of our industry. But leaders should find their inner swagger.” He continued, “I don’t like to generalize, as every newsroom is different. But cautiousness, lack of ambition, being too quick to abandon experiments or being afraid to try them, all are signifiers. To quote the immortal [hip-hop group] A Tribe Called Quest: ‘Scared money don’t make none.’”

Shafer hopes that “surely there is a path back from the milquetoastery of contemporary journalism to something approximating swagger.”

In reality, these would-be Mike Tysons are more like the quivering students in the movie School Ties—the ones who hide in their dorm rooms when they are called out by Brendan Fraser.

Tani, Shafer, and Merida may talk tough about mixing it up, but none of them, and none of their epicene peers in the mainstream media, have come within miles of reviewing, or even mentioning the evidence I produced in my book about 2018’s corrupt Kavanaugh hearings. In The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi, I show the way the left was attempting through extortion and bullying to end Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and, potentially, my life. To ignore it as if none of what I’ve revealed is newsworthy or historically important is insane.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and this bias-by-omission makes perfect sense.

Evergreen:


Posted at 6:25 pm by Ed Driscoll

OUT: PRAY THE GAY AWAY. IN: Transing The Gay Away. “Gareth Roberts isn’t sure that ‘genderism’ will go away. At the end of Gay Shame, he presents two plausible scenarios. One depicts a world where queer theory and all its works and all its ways has gone down the long slide and all seems well. The other shows what things look like in the event of a genderist win. And in that world, the grim joke that emerged among staff at the Tavistock has come true. There are no gay people left.”

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

RIP: Steve Albini has died at 61: “It’s really impossible to sum up just how important Steve Albini has been to the past 40+ years of underground/alternative music, and impossible to say anything that hasn’t been said already. This is a monumental loss and Albini’s impact isn’t going anywhere. Rest in peace, Steve.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll