Deux poids, deux mesures

Some who followed my Twitter _deBeauxOs1_ account may have noticed my prolonged, unsolicited absence from that social media platform.

Yes, kittens. My account was suspended and Twitter has provided no answers to my questions, no grounds for justification to my appeals. It may be restored. But no worry, if you miss my daily injection of bons mots, droll thoughts and vivid excoriation of venal CONjob politicians — do check in here, at DJ!

Sanitary Panels is a political cartoonist who neatly captures the double standard that Facebook and Twitter apply to complaints with regard to content providers who allegedly flout their sacrosanct _Terms of Service_.

Or, as ASaintL and others put it:

Indeed. Why is that?

Infuriating, but I'm not the only person punished according to Zuckerberg's and Jack's pro-Toxic Masculinity and gynophobic, double standards.

"The closing of the conservative mind ..."

Once more, David Frum stands up for the principle of journalistic integrity. Although I don't share most - if any - of his ideological notions, I admire him for being the lone voice in the arid rightwing crackpot media desert.

When people talk of the "closing of the conservative mind" this is what they mean: not that conservatives are more narrow-minded than other people — everybody can be narrow minded — but that conservatives have a unique capacity to ignore unwelcome fact.

When Dan Rather succumbed to the forged Bush war record hoax in 2004, CBS forced him into retirement.

Breitbart is the conservative Dan Rather, but there will be no discredit, no resignation for him. Instead, conservatives are consumed with a new snippets-out-of-context uproar, the latest round of JournoList quotations. Here at last is proof of the cynical machinations of the hated liberal media! As to the cynical machinations of conservative media — well, as the saying goes, the fish never notices the water through which it swims.

The difference between Dan Rather and Andrew Breibart is more complex than the simplistic reduction Frum suggests.

Dan Rather, one of the last old-school journalists, "succumbed" to the pressure of a form of news reporting in the 21st century which has become fast, furious and focused on trash journalism. He was trained to rigorously examine the sources of putative damaging disclosures about public figures; in this case his need to prove himself in a media increasingly staffed with hungry young wolves proved to be his downfall. Although made the scapegoat by his superiors at CBS when the documents pertaining to Bush were alleged to be forgeries, Rather has not gone quietly into that good night.

Andrew Breibart is a toxic fabricator, a con man, and a dumpster-diver. He's a self-styled JackAss reporter; he's a balding, schlumpy and braying male version of Ann Coulter; a wannabe Christopher Hitchens without the creds. Yet his presence amongst the Limbaughs and O'Reillys serves a purpose; he makes them look like serious newsman in comparison with his own disgraceful method of gotcha! reporting.


This time, according to Frum, he has surpassed himself. Breibart sliced and diced a video recording of an USDA black employee so it made it seem that she was an unrepentant anti-white folks racist. The material was manipulated; in reality she was recounting an individual experience of a paradigm shift and how she went on to help the farming families she had prejudged.

Frum is visibly disturbed and outraged by Breitbart's willful deception and malvolence.

There will be no apology or statement of regret for distributing a doctored tape to defame and destroy someone. There will be not even a flutter of interest among conservatives in discussing Breitbart’s role. By the morning of July 21, the Fox & Friends morning show could devote a segment to the Sherrod case without so much as a mention of Breitbart’s role. The central fact of the Sherrod story has been edited out of the conservative narrative, just as it was edited out of the tape itself.

As I said, Frum's voice is a lone rational voice among rightwing media hate-mongers.

Some types of gun violence have "racial" origins, it seems.

Norman Spector, blogging for the Globe & Mail from the ivory tower of his pristine perspective on commerce, diplomacy and politics, opines that the media should have been more diligent in reporting from the outset specific details about the "racial" ancestry of the Polytechnique Massacre shooter.

Dr Dawg deftly cuts through Spector's ponderous blather to the point of his pontification.

Could this line of inquiry regarding race and violence be applied to other explosions of violence for which, some might also argue, "There's never been a satisfactory explanation.” ?

Valery Fabrikant's "racial" ancestry was also disregarded by the media who reported on the Concordia murders and the shooter's trial. And what of Phil Spector, also found guilty of a heinous crime involving guns?

Norman Spector might want to consider his own gynophobic "creds" before producing such malevolent verbiage.

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Grand merci to lagatta whose recollection of the Concordia shooting inspired this post.

Rightwing Investment Info Broker Claims Doctors Are in the Health Biz for the Money.

US physicians work in the health care business for the money? That would seem to be the premise of a *MASSIVE* poll done by Investors' Business Daily.

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found. The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

So this purported 'scientific' sampling of doctors who read IBD and share its views are *MASSIVELY* out of step with their colleagues in the AMA. What a shock.

And the response to this *MASSIVE* poll is predictably rightwingbatshit teabagger frothing-at-the mouth lunatic:

Doctors Threaten to Go Galt if ObamaCare Passes

It would be a miracle of biblical proportions if Big Government's minions could decrease costs while increasing coverage, as Democrats have been promising to do when they seize control of the healthcare industry.

Miracle of "biblical proportions" is the US religious rightwing zealot term for *MASSIVE* I'd guess.

Who are these so-called investors business experts anyway? Oh wait. Gotcha!

Read about the original *MASSIVE* poll here.