Posted on 12/09/2016 8:24:47 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There’s no way to watch this clip and not detect the taste of sour grapes, just as there’s no way to watch the recent media/left hand-wringing over “fake news” and not see an attempt to explain away Trump’s shocking upset as some sort of grand scam. It must be a comfort to believe that a key reason you lost 300+ electoral votes to a guy who got caught on tape talking about grabbing women by the p***y was because someone in Macedonia wrote a story on Facebook about you eating babies or whatever. I agree that “fake news” has real-world consequences. You know what else has real-world consequences? Not running ads in Wisconsin. Or not running ads anywhere for six months about what you plan to do for the average blue-collar voter.
To be fair, though, I don’t think she means this as a commentary (or mainly as a commentary) on the election. She’s obviously talking about the guy who gorged himself on “Pizzagate” material then thought it’d be a good idea to grab his rifle and head down to Comet Ping Pong to liberate the many child sex slaves supposedly held captive inside. Imagine his surprise when he found no captives there. (The intel on this wasnt 100 percent.) As with all political and media stories now, reaction to the “fake news” panic splits pretty reliably along partisan lines, with the left overly credulous because it wants to believe Trump could only have won because right-wingers are paranoid dupes and the right overly skeptical because it wants to use “fake news” as a cudgel against big media. (Virtually every conservative reflection on “fake news” has boiled down to the idea that mainstream media is the real fake news.) I think the influence of “fake news” is overstated — if you’re inclined to believe a story that Hillary Clinton eats babies, chances are you weren’t voting for her in the first place — but if you missed this piece a few weeks ago, have a look now. There are in fact people out there who are making things up whole cloth, just like The Onion does except without the laughs, because they can make bank on it. One amazing example:
[T]he most successful post BuzzFeed News found from a Macedonian site is based on a story from a fake news website. The headline on the story from ConservativeState.com was Hillary Clinton In 2013: I Would Like To See People Like Donald Trump Run For Office; Theyre Honest And Cant Be Bought. The post is a week old and has racked up an astounding 480,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook. (To put that into perspective, the New York Times exclusive story that revealed Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns generated a little more than 175,000 Facebook interactions in a month.)
The viral Clinton story was sourced from TheRightists.com, a site that admits it publishes both real and fake content. According to emails released by WikiLeaks, Clinton said in a private speech to Goldman Sachs that she would like to see more successful business people enter politics. But she did not mention Donald Trump in any way. The quote used in the headline is false.
Some fake-news writers have written pieces for mainstream outlets since the election boasting about how easy it was invent a story and have it catch on online, especially on the right. There’s been enough attention to the phenomenon by now that Sheryl Sandberg had to formally deny responsibility for swinging the election to Trump in an interview on the “Today” show this morning because Facebook hasn’t figured out a way to filter out “fake news” yet. I think you can simultaneously believe that (a) the media sucks, by and large, and (b) people should be far more skeptical about what they read online, especially when what they’re reading flatters their political prejudices. Whether or not “fake news” is really a thing, motivated reasoning is definitely a thing.
If you’re looking for a piece on how our terrible media softens up the public for “fake news,” here’s the best one I’ve read. Exit question: Hillary suggests here that Congress should take action against “fake news,” specifically foreign propaganda. What sort of action?
They see the Trumpnami headed their way and in their “normal” lame fashion vomit doublespeak like the true bureaucrats they are.
They see the Trumpnami headed their way and in their “normal” lame fashion vomit doublespeak like the true bureaucrats they are.
They see the Trumpnami headed their way and in their “normal” lame fashion vomit doublespeak like the true bureaucrats they are.
And that’s the way it is...
Bwahahahahaha...!
.
Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, Hillary?
And you milked it for every last drop.
Each piece of DEM legislation is sold with Fake News
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I just hope that four years from now, eight years from now, Hillary is still talking about how “fake news” derailed her presidential candidacy. At that point it will be appropriately pathetic. This woman deserves all the scorn that we can heap on her. And she deserves to remain bitter about how she blew her chance in 2016 for many years to come. This was her chance and she blew it. It must hurt very, very much. I sure hope so.
FAKE NEWS like what Gloria Alred was pushing? THAT kind of fake news?
U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher was murdered in Benghazi because of a riot... FAKE News.
Global Warming/Climate Change... FAKE news.
Jeremiah Wright wasn’t Obama’s spiritual adviser... FAKE news.
Jimmy Carter received a Nobel peace prize because he stopped North Korea from developing nuclear weapons... FAKE news.
Yeah, there’s lots of fake news out there, and if you have half a brain you can recognize it immediately.
Not to pick nits but...
I don’t see it as bureaucrats playing the usual games.
I see it as destructionists so pathological in their devotion to the lies, distortions and abuses upon which their ideology is constructed that they do not, honestly believe that anyone else can legitimately disagree with them.
And, I do, seriously, believe they will push this to a shooting war of a most very uncivil type. They’ll do this because they do not believe it is possible for them to lose.
Actually, the execution of police officers and the whole BLM thing is, imo, the beginning of that shooting war.
She had Steven Colbert deliver fake news for the clinton crime syndicate.
Oh she gave it but the spin from both is fake news.
This “Fake News” campaign is a blatant attack on the First Amendment and the worst such attack I have ever seen.
The Left must be destroyed.
Actually, there is nothing ‘fake’ about your headline.
“they do not, honestly believe that anyone else can legitimately disagree with them.”
I don’t think that’s the core of the problem.
I do not honestly believe that anyone else can legitimately disagree with Hayek or von Mises.
The problem is that they are evil.
All leftist thought, from the limousine liberalism of a George Clooney to the murderous horrors of Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot, is of and from Satan. Leftism is a contaminant in the human cognosphere, not a natural component of it.
It is not a legitimate position that a rational man of good will can espouse. It does not deserve a hearing. It should not be tolerated.
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