Thanks for writing this. Your piece was particularly effective because you let the extremely ugly facts speak for themselves. I'm glad as well that you highlighted the 200 people who will lose their jobs. I wish them the best and I also hope that they know the ugly truth as to why.
I have said this before, but it cannot be said too often: the U.S. mainstream media monopoly is the world's first privately owned, for-profit re-creation of Josef Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the infamous Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This is not hyperbole. A near-lifelong journalist -- I got my first daily newspaper job, as a sports stringer and copyboy, at age 16 in 1956, and I thus experienced the national transition of news media from 90-percent independent ownership to 90 percent ownership by a mere six monopolies. (See https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/) I've also experienced the (invariably negative) consequences of the transition, among them the increasing control of information by ecogenocidally greedy plutocrats whose recognition that their only safeguard against revolutionary justice is zero-tolerance theocratic nazification -- thus the slaying of the Republic, the trashing of its Constitution and its replacement by the Christonazi "Unified Reich," literally Auschwitz Nation with Trump as Führer. That's why I'm actually thankful I'm diagnosed as terminally ill and soon dead; I'll (probably) escape the looming extermination of all dissenters, not just those of us who dare denounce the MAGATs for the wanna-be Reinhard Heydrichs they truly are, but eventually anyone accused of the even smallest indication of being non-Christian. That's what's coming, and Stephen Colbert is obviously already on the regime's target list.
Ten years of submediocre white people screaming about cancel culture and this is the second person to ever actually be canceled. The first was Colin Kaepernick. (And you could make a case for the _____ Chicks.)
Gosh I wonder what they have in common? I’m sure Bari Weiss will get right on it, highly principled defender of free speech that she is.
I really hate Weiss. She cares not for the schoolteachers and librarians who have been fired for being "woke" or some such shit. She only cares abut her rich friends.
And now she’s about to get $200 million from CBS. For never having broken a story, never having had an “insight” I hadn’t already heard in high school in 1979.
If she were smart enough to get performance art, I’d suspect this was one big experimental performance in how much money you can make in America by being white and claiming you’re being silenced.
I would give just about anything (I can say that because I don't have much) to be a fly on the wall listening to what Colbert and Jon Stewart are scheming up for their next moves. What we do know - it will be brilliant. One possible prediction - Colbert goes balls out these next few months, and gets yanked early.
The more I think about my comment above ... I'm thinking Colbert will stick it out. He is a very nice guy, and is very aware of how many people depend on the show for their jobs. He won't blow things up before the cancellation day. But after that - Katie Bar The Door!
So clear. Thanks Parker. This is what happens when wealth gets sucked upwards. The billionaires keep on with their power grabs in their greed for more. Now, there's no longer a pretence to hide the control and oppression behind performative progressivism.
Cobert sucks. He was funny, but went full partisan comedic bully. He fired himself. His small appeal to coastal and big city liberals, people that lack a sense of humor but will snigger with cynicism, snark and invective with a good enough cut at those ugly and stupid working class people... well that is not enough.
Eh, those snooty liberals, makin' fun of a buncha workin' class lawyers drivin' their pickup trucks to the law-makin' fact'ry to hammer out a deal between our workin' class billionaire President and workin' class billionaire Larry Ellison, who just wants to buy hisself a lil' TV network, a thing any workin' class guy might do on a Friday night when he's got his pay envelope burnin' a hole in the pocket of his jeans.
I'm late to the party on this one, but the stock reply guys like Frank typically make is that they are more "working class" than their favorite stereotype of a liberal arts major barista, you quickly understand that class is aesthetics to them, and they really do think having the right aesthetic markers and personality traits defines class more than material wealth. It's very British of them.
And I can't fault them for that when I've seen elements of the hard, hard left - self-described Maoists - also make the same claims! Hand-wringing arguments about how baristas aren't really part of the proletariat because they serve the professional managerial class and declarations that McDonalds as a corporate entity is "culturally Communistic" because it has prole aesthetics despite being a marker of American soft imperialism and the triumph of capital.
All of this to say that when it comes to how the far right and far left treat aesthetics as material analysis, horseshoe theory is correct, and Frank has more in common with his hated enemies than he'd like.
True, although it's also just a thing they're trained to say because it puts liberals on the defensive (although putting liberals on the defensive is just about the easiest thing in the world to do, it makes "take candy from a baby" look hard.)
Naw. My very large circle of friends, neighbors, coworkers and business contacts are a near 50/50 mix of right-leaning and left-leaning people. I am a fine diplomat around the political differences of all those people. The exception are the TDS-aflicted narcissists that have lost the last bit of cognitive control to rage emotionally and turn their politics into a tribal fealty test of which I certainly would never pass... and would never want to pass.
I have many conflicts of politics with the conservative side of my circle and nobody has de-friended me for it. However, I have many liberal acquaintances that "punished" me by ending their relationship.
There is a mass psychosis problem with the political left. There is quite a bit written about it identifying it and attempting to explain it. I have a simplified explanation... the changes to the economy and the fact that we have over-educated too many relative to their productive contribution to society has given liberals, the cohort always less emotionally regulated and more prone to psychological dysfunction, (just note the YUGE increase in psychotherapy services liberals consume) too much money and power. They mistake that situation for feeling superior to the productive class of people that used to dominate the system... with liberals then only contributing emotional appeal for all the objective policies that would otherwise be implemented by the productive class.
We have allowed the inmates to run the asylum and that is why the world has gone mad.
Funny. I am actually attending a Zoom meeting where one of my senior loan underwriters is doing a training class with my sales staff. Just monitoring the event and so I can multitask to help you get educated too.
The wailing from the left over Colbert's cancellation is telling that his program was a political cult resource for our coastal and big city upper class liberals.
Because otherwise it would be considered just another canceled show.
Parker,
Thanks for writing this. Your piece was particularly effective because you let the extremely ugly facts speak for themselves. I'm glad as well that you highlighted the 200 people who will lose their jobs. I wish them the best and I also hope that they know the ugly truth as to why.
Great piece on a disturbing topic
I have said this before, but it cannot be said too often: the U.S. mainstream media monopoly is the world's first privately owned, for-profit re-creation of Josef Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the infamous Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This is not hyperbole. A near-lifelong journalist -- I got my first daily newspaper job, as a sports stringer and copyboy, at age 16 in 1956, and I thus experienced the national transition of news media from 90-percent independent ownership to 90 percent ownership by a mere six monopolies. (See https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/) I've also experienced the (invariably negative) consequences of the transition, among them the increasing control of information by ecogenocidally greedy plutocrats whose recognition that their only safeguard against revolutionary justice is zero-tolerance theocratic nazification -- thus the slaying of the Republic, the trashing of its Constitution and its replacement by the Christonazi "Unified Reich," literally Auschwitz Nation with Trump as Führer. That's why I'm actually thankful I'm diagnosed as terminally ill and soon dead; I'll (probably) escape the looming extermination of all dissenters, not just those of us who dare denounce the MAGATs for the wanna-be Reinhard Heydrichs they truly are, but eventually anyone accused of the even smallest indication of being non-Christian. That's what's coming, and Stephen Colbert is obviously already on the regime's target list.
Evidently, CBS now stands for "Corrupted by Skydance."
Ten years of submediocre white people screaming about cancel culture and this is the second person to ever actually be canceled. The first was Colin Kaepernick. (And you could make a case for the _____ Chicks.)
Gosh I wonder what they have in common? I’m sure Bari Weiss will get right on it, highly principled defender of free speech that she is.
I really hate Weiss. She cares not for the schoolteachers and librarians who have been fired for being "woke" or some such shit. She only cares abut her rich friends.
And now she’s about to get $200 million from CBS. For never having broken a story, never having had an “insight” I hadn’t already heard in high school in 1979.
If she were smart enough to get performance art, I’d suspect this was one big experimental performance in how much money you can make in America by being white and claiming you’re being silenced.
Elise Stefanik was demanding of CUNY's president that a law faculty member be fired simply for working on the defense team of Kilmar Garcia.
I would give just about anything (I can say that because I don't have much) to be a fly on the wall listening to what Colbert and Jon Stewart are scheming up for their next moves. What we do know - it will be brilliant. One possible prediction - Colbert goes balls out these next few months, and gets yanked early.
The more I think about my comment above ... I'm thinking Colbert will stick it out. He is a very nice guy, and is very aware of how many people depend on the show for their jobs. He won't blow things up before the cancellation day. But after that - Katie Bar The Door!
Didn’t Edward R. Murrow work for these guys?
It’s the name of the high school in my neighborhood.
They should put black crepe around it.
So clear. Thanks Parker. This is what happens when wealth gets sucked upwards. The billionaires keep on with their power grabs in their greed for more. Now, there's no longer a pretence to hide the control and oppression behind performative progressivism.
Excellently put, Parker.
Cobert sucks. He was funny, but went full partisan comedic bully. He fired himself. His small appeal to coastal and big city liberals, people that lack a sense of humor but will snigger with cynicism, snark and invective with a good enough cut at those ugly and stupid working class people... well that is not enough.
Eh, those snooty liberals, makin' fun of a buncha workin' class lawyers drivin' their pickup trucks to the law-makin' fact'ry to hammer out a deal between our workin' class billionaire President and workin' class billionaire Larry Ellison, who just wants to buy hisself a lil' TV network, a thing any workin' class guy might do on a Friday night when he's got his pay envelope burnin' a hole in the pocket of his jeans.
Good comment from one of our resident snooty and vile coastal and big city liberals that hate working class people.
Working-Class CEO Frank Lee
Buyin' Washington Post subscriptions for all his many. many employees, just like any reg'lar workin' class guy might buy a round of beers after work.
I'm late to the party on this one, but the stock reply guys like Frank typically make is that they are more "working class" than their favorite stereotype of a liberal arts major barista, you quickly understand that class is aesthetics to them, and they really do think having the right aesthetic markers and personality traits defines class more than material wealth. It's very British of them.
And I can't fault them for that when I've seen elements of the hard, hard left - self-described Maoists - also make the same claims! Hand-wringing arguments about how baristas aren't really part of the proletariat because they serve the professional managerial class and declarations that McDonalds as a corporate entity is "culturally Communistic" because it has prole aesthetics despite being a marker of American soft imperialism and the triumph of capital.
All of this to say that when it comes to how the far right and far left treat aesthetics as material analysis, horseshoe theory is correct, and Frank has more in common with his hated enemies than he'd like.
True, although it's also just a thing they're trained to say because it puts liberals on the defensive (although putting liberals on the defensive is just about the easiest thing in the world to do, it makes "take candy from a baby" look hard.)
Naw. My very large circle of friends, neighbors, coworkers and business contacts are a near 50/50 mix of right-leaning and left-leaning people. I am a fine diplomat around the political differences of all those people. The exception are the TDS-aflicted narcissists that have lost the last bit of cognitive control to rage emotionally and turn their politics into a tribal fealty test of which I certainly would never pass... and would never want to pass.
I have many conflicts of politics with the conservative side of my circle and nobody has de-friended me for it. However, I have many liberal acquaintances that "punished" me by ending their relationship.
There is a mass psychosis problem with the political left. There is quite a bit written about it identifying it and attempting to explain it. I have a simplified explanation... the changes to the economy and the fact that we have over-educated too many relative to their productive contribution to society has given liberals, the cohort always less emotionally regulated and more prone to psychological dysfunction, (just note the YUGE increase in psychotherapy services liberals consume) too much money and power. They mistake that situation for feeling superior to the productive class of people that used to dominate the system... with liberals then only contributing emotional appeal for all the objective policies that would otherwise be implemented by the productive class.
We have allowed the inmates to run the asylum and that is why the world has gone mad.
That is me. Born in a single-wide to rise to corporate positions where I would fire so many academic liberals for lack of job performance.
Right, not working class, all aesthetics, completely divorced from any alleged working-class roots you may have had. A fraud pretending at kinship.
TWO DAYS to come up with THAT?
I work for a living unlike you.
Right, you're a BUSY MAN, I'm surprised you even have time for these witty retorts. I won't detain you further, because YOUR TIME IS VALUABLE.
Funny. I am actually attending a Zoom meeting where one of my senior loan underwriters is doing a training class with my sales staff. Just monitoring the event and so I can multitask to help you get educated too.
We still have no evidence of this.
On the internet no one knows you're a cat.
The wailing from the left over Colbert's cancellation is telling that his program was a political cult resource for our coastal and big city upper class liberals.
Because otherwise it would be considered just another canceled show.