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Occasionally, a news story breaks while we are recording this show and the hosts must react in real time. This week, two stories broke as we were in the midst of the show: news of Roger Stone’s indictment and the end of the shutdown (at least for now). In between these stories, we talk to the Washington Post’s Megan McCardle about the Covington High School blow up last weekend and the business model for newspapers. Then, the New York Post’s Op-Ed editor Sohrab Amari drops by to talk about his new book From Fire, By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith and his remarkable life story. We also talk about the Catholic Church and the situation in Venezuela. Listen!
Music from this week’s show: Turn To Stone by Electric Light Orchestra
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Another good podcast but Megan didn’t fully answer Rob’s question about whether the majority of the media’s apologies re: the Covington kids weren’t so mealy-mouthed and so qualified that they became self-defeating (e.g. “Yes, granted, we probably did jump the gun on this one, but — BUT! — all those MAGA hats on the heads of all those teens says a lot about the biases and prejudices lurking beneath them.”)
Smirk.
Careful Peter – one more time professing your affection for Roger Stone will get you on Mueller’s radar.
You have a point. Roger Stone? Who’s that?
Megan McCardle is proud of the article she wrote based on the emails from “Never-Trump” conservatives, but she has no way to know that they really were.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, any “conservative” who would have even considered voting for Hillary in 2016, wasn’t really conservative. And I have doubts about those who just didn’t vote at all.
And it’s an interesting name for a guest vs co-host. It sounded like Peter was saying “So, Rob…”
Roger Stone is the G Gordon Liddy of the scandal, and Michael Cohen is the John Dean.
Those exact words have been popping into my head every time I see his name in the headlines.
BTW, I’m getting used to the new short theme intro, especially after hearing Rob explain the death of the TV theme song in another podcast. But if anyone wants to hear Ronald Reagan say, “Mr Gorbachov, tear down this wall,” it can be heard on the 1/15/2019 release of the BBC “Analysis” podcast titled “America’s Friends.” It comes at about 6:25, right after the BBC journalist/host says, “It was John Cornbloom [US State Dept] who drafted the most famous line in Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin in 1987, words forever associated with the Cold War thaw.”
That is a very precise and clear claim, a claim that made me go “Hmmmmm…”
Of course, there’s also those several hundred previous Ricochet Podcasts that have it.
Am I the only one who saves them all?
Peter has discussed that issue in a fairly recent podcast, on the issue of how people end up remembering things wrong.
Earlier this week there was a big story against Trump from a sketchy source. The press pushed the story all over the web without checking. This was the suborning perjury Cohen story. It turned out to be false.
Later in the week, there was a new big story against Trump from a sketchy source. The press pushed the story all over the web without checking. This was the smiling adolescent story. It turned out to be false.
An apology can ring true when it’s the first time someone did the offence. But when it’s a repeated offence, I don’t see the apology as being sincere. There is no effort to correct the behavior.
This is an apology from the UK Telegraph dated 26 January 2019:
Other than those few picky points I am sure it was a solid piece of reporting.
@jameslileks I’d like to remind that there is no such word sovereignity
For people whose money can’t really affect the political process, I wonder if it’s it’s better to support the media and the opinion outfits that match your views.
I wonder where the most prosperous local newspapers are.
Sohrab Amari wants a “healthy left” and doesn’t want them to nominate hard leftists. Here is the problem:
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
Government is a weapon to force the other to give you what you want. The left wants to breakdown all decentralization so we are dependent on the mandarins. Crazy foreign-policy and nutty social policy is simply what sells in-service of that. It’s working, too.
Something like that.
If we didn’t have so much centralized government spitting out so many nonpublic goods I wouldn’t put it that way, I don’t think. Also, we wouldn’t have this problem if Western central banks didn’t have so much discretionary power.
I’ve been thinking more and more about Andrew Klavan’s idea that newsrooms can’t even make a decent attempt to be fair unless they hire conservatives. I hate that kind of affirmative action but I don’t think that journalists can be anything more than partisan hacks without having to deal with people different from them.
What was the book that Ms. McArdle mentioned in the story that she told about being in an elevator and a woman she knew saying, “Good book?”
I replayed it a couple of times, but couldn’t make tell what it is. I probably need hearing aides, but most of the time I don’t care what people are saying, so why bother?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_Choose
Can you see how the newspaper discussion is one with the Nixon discussion? It is all a piece of the Democrat/press collusion , even back then. Did Peter’s parents, shocked at Nixon’s language ,ever find out about LBJ’s and JFK’s language and White House philandering? Of course not, the press covered it up, covering for Democrats is not new.
In addition to his non Ivyness, the press hated Nixon for nailing Alger Hiss as a spy, he was their golden boy and Nixon brought him down, it took 25 years but they finally exacted their vengeance for that.
As for Ms. McCardle I’m sort of tired of this ‘pandering to racists’ line without an example of what she considers ‘pandering’ . Does she mean not condemning fast enough , the very thing that brought about last weeks Covington fiasco? Anyone stopping to hear the evidence and not jumping on the condemnation bandwagon quickly enough will be accused of hesitating, dog whistling, pussyfooting and yes, pandering.
I am one of those who didn’t vote on the presidential line. I live in Jersey, and we were going for Hillary no matter what. I would have never voted for Hillary. And I couldn’t stand Trump, even though I was glad he won, considering the alternative. So I just went blank.
But I am not and never was a Never Trumper, and if anybody calls me that, I just never speak to those kind of disrespectful parasites again. And, speaking of not knowing people, I would find a way to get to know them before condemning them.
Megan McArdle is a treasure. May she live long and prosper. I do not believe, however, that she has not fully inculcated the impact of newspaper people having a definite bias. You can tell most of all by what copy desks do not report with any depth, e.g.:
(1) that children have been separated from their parents at the border long before Trump, so if you’re going to disparage the practice (perhaps rightfully so) you should include that with your otherwise salacious copy (FWIW, I’m not a proponent of the wall though understand why others are);
(2) that though Sweden has a substantial welfare system, it considers itself a market economy, that its schools are income-generating by private entities, that parents use vouchers, and that most other government services are privately run (also, that Sweden has only 8 million people and had been, until recently, fairly homogeneous without the historic stain of slavery and–worst, to my mind–lynching);
(3) that the past two years have been characterized by a monotonous form of water torture in which “scoops” are splashed across the web but not so much follow-up reports that there was little, if any, real news in them (with little, if any, acknowledgment); and (though there are many additional examples)
(3) that they provide near constant PR coverage of the new female congresswomen, which can only be chalked up to the fact that (except for Tlaib in Michigan) that they are gorgeous and leftist (so what if they also espouse anti-Semitism as well as death to Israel?).
I also have to say that I was put off by her use of the term “
extremely misguidedgravely mistaken” to describe Trump supporters (I voted Johnson-Weld and take her to mean “morally mistaken”). I don’t know if she meant her peers or regular folks out in the country, but it’s extremely patronizing, and unless success has given her somewhat of a big head, does not characterize her previous philosophical writings (e.g., on her blog years ago she wrote a very lengthy, extremely even-handed discourse about marriage and about the potential problems folks might not be seeing when they glibly demand that the tradition be changed–and now!)So, as she offers advice to her peers on how not to blow it, I offer a bit of my own advice to her: be as wary of those who claim to be good as those who claim to be great.
I wish I could agree with Peter on the commitment of the Republican Party to a rule-of-law based immigration policy. I agree we will have universal support for generalities like “build the wall,” but there is no commitment from folks like Steve Scalise, who was caught advocating more illegal immigration to fill labor shortages last year, or my Senator, Thom Tillis, who eviscerated E-Verify here in North Carolina when he was the state”s Speaker of the House, or when you look at the way the Republican House Appropriations Committee systematically striped immigration enforcement funding that AG Sessions was championing last year. Until we are willing to inconvenience the small businessman Johns as much as we are the illegal alien Hookers with immigration enforcement we will never be fully serious or free from the left’s charges of dog-whistle racism.
I heard her say that the book was Free To Choose. I presume that she was referring to Free to Choose / A Personal Statement by Milton & Rose Friedman, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1979.
[Update: Apologies to @RufusRJones. I had not realized that @RufusRJones had responded (Comment#18) to @GypsyNuke before I posted my own response]
Can I give this 10 likes? My thoughts exactly, on both Nixon and McCardle.
@rightfromthestart I am offended that you wrote that the press took down Nixon.
Everyone knows that according to the “Mark Felt Clause” of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, it is the duty of the number two man at the FBI to leak damaging information to the press about a President who is unfit to hold the office and thus facilitate his removal.
Andrew McCabe will soon cite that clause in his own defense.
Your ignorance of the Constitution is appalling.
I’m curious how old people like Megan are when they say that Trump is the worst president in their lifetimes. We just got through the Obama presidency. So unless one is just learning to talk, Trump is not the worst president of your life. I’m not old enough to include LBJ in my list, but my lifetime has seen Carter, Obama, and Ford as presidents.
But… but… but…. TRUMP IS LOATHSOME! etc.
Just ask Jonah Goldberg!
You are an evil man, @ejhill ! It may only be a PShop, but Peter’s head had to be at least itching mightily at the sight of it.
People like Megan are probably referring to lies per hour (LPH) and general knowledgeability and competence. Barack Obama, for example, represented a certain strain of politician (far Left) that is truly dangerous for the country, but his LPH was much lower than Trump’s.
That, I suspect, is what Megan means by “worst President of my lifetime.”
So, given a choice of a left-wing president who (supposedly) doesn’t lie (“if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” etc) or a (nominally) conservative president who lies a lot, am I supposed to respect Megan for preferring a lefty president who (supposedly) doesn’t lie?
Sorry, but I don’t.