There is little to add to the Weiner fiasco. Sexting is now a very descriptive new word in the digital lexicon.  The winner in this lurid tale is Andrew Breitbart.  His objective was not Anthony Weiner but the Media Complex (his term). Again he proved that the Media Complex (i.e. the MSM) is far more reluctant to report news that reflects poorly on the left.  Rather than research the truth they faulted the truth teller, Breitbart.

Breitbart did the same in his strategy to release the O’Keefe videos that destroyed ACORN.  He offered the story to ABC who rejected it, before offering it to Fox News.  Weiner and his enablers, which are many, have much to answer for.  But the real villain here is a media that is held to no accountability but their own.

Last night in a meeting with a few local business people, we discussed our prospects and it was a bit depressing.  Ridiculous regulations have over ridden any common sense and it is squelching growth.  Wealthy people in this group cannot get a mortgage loan because they do not have the ‘right’ kind of income.  The very people who can readily buy apartments and real estate to absorb the excess capacity are unable to borrow any money to do it.

Businesses do not grow and investors do not invest in order to pay taxes or hire people; they do so to make a return on their investment.  The more burdens you place on realizing that return the less tax revenue and employment you will generate. This bears repeating.

Every regulation, tax increase or even the threat of a tax increase, every mandate and every word supporting class warfare reduces the expected return on investment and thus reduces the tax revenue and employment outlook.

The longer the poor economy drags on the harder it will be to revive it.  Those who have closed businesses are not likely to reopen them.  Without a long term consistent set of rules that we can trust are in place, the remaining businesses will not respond quickly to a pickup in business.

In some parts of the country entire neighborhoods are vacant.  Newly constructed homes are deteriorating.  Why don’t we give these home to returning veterans.  Create a pool to buy them at a steep discount and give them to the vets who can fix them up and just by living in them build their value.  I am sure a lot of private citizens would contribute to the pool.

Does the post office really need to deliver on weekends?  Why is it free for them to bring my mail to my house, yet I must pay for a box to go to the post office to pick it up?

I don’t really know what to think of the Anthony Weiner fiasco.  On one hand it seems like a trivial distraction and on the other hand it seems more important than we realize. This is the kind of behavior we expect from a drunken college age teen at a frat party.  If Weiner had done this when he was twenty under such a circumstance it would be forgivable as a youthful indiscretion.

But a married adult sitting in the Congress of the United States who is unable to display more maturity than this, who cannot control his basic urges better than this- who is willing to mislead or lie about it, is simply unfit to be in such a leadership position.  This applies to either party.

As commonly is the case the cover-up is worse than the act. Beyond the act is not only the lies, but that he intentionally and maliciously attacked the messenger, knowing full well Breitbart was telling the truth.  He owes Breitbart an apology. Any man who would commit such acts, lie about it and disparage those who he knows are telling the truth, even to save his own skin, has no integrity.

Andrew Breitbart

As Breitbart asks, “Where is the accountability of the press who rose to Weiner’s defense?  (sorry about the puns- they are just unavoidable) How do we treat those other journalists who openly trashed those who brought us the truth? “

Do we pardon them because everybody lies about sex?

I  do not pretend to know what goes on in other couple’s relationships and I hesitate to pass judgment.   Weiner’s transgression is juvenile, but we should demand better of our leaders.  We need leaders we can trust. Trust requires competence and character, which is clearly lacking here.

The disclosure bears the footprint of Breitbart.  He does not commonly release such info unless he has much more evidence to back it up in his back pocket.  This is how his release of the ACORN videos destroyed that organization.  Breitbart  seeks to control the narrative, and he frequently succeeds.

Should he resign?  If we accept this behavior then we have lowered the bar so low a double jointed midget could not limbo beneath it.    If this is forgiven or accepted  understand that voters don’t get the leaders they want, they get the leaders they deserve.

In her book Patriotic Grace Peggy Noonan made a point I have repeated often in this blog.  During the old days of three major networks we all got our news from the same sources.  A small elite decided what was important and reported it.  It may have been biased but we all at least heard the same news.

With the advance of the new media which includes more TV broadcasts like CNN and Foxnews, AM talk radio, and the explosion of internet access, blogs and social networks we no longer see the same news. We tend to seek news sources that support our existing view. We read and listen for confirmation rather than information.

Eli Pariser in this excellent TED speech offers a perspective on how the internet and social media make this division of information even worse.  Using algorithms to determine what you want to see from your previous selections, outlets such as Facebook and Google feed your bias even more.  As he notes two different people can search the same entry on Google and come back with completely different results from the same search criteria.

His argument has merit but it is incomplete.  This assumes a certain passivity in the user.  Many readers have their certain blogs that they go to, but they actively select their source.  If they click to National Review Online or American Thinker they know they are getting a conservative viewpoint just as they would know if they turned their dial to Foxnews.  But if one wants to click on the Huffington Post and see a more liberal viewpoint then they have the power to do so.  The point is that readers are actively engaged in selecting their sources in many cases.

Still, Pariser makes an very valid point and perhaps it would be a great idea to allow users to complete a profile of what they want to see rather than assume from their last views.  Just because I recently rented “In and Out” and “The Bird Cage” doesn’t mean I prefer movies about gay men.

We are more than our habits.  It should not be the mission of either media elites or internet algorithms to change our minds, nor to confirm our biases.  The new media best serves us by offering options and clarity.  To reach this objective they must look beyond mere algorithms.

The Pubic Hair on the Coke Can

I remember the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 as a pivotal point in my thinking about politics.  While liberals criticized his experience or qualification, the hearing themselves became a media farce with innuendos of claims of sexually improper advances towards Anita Hill.  It seemed your political persuasion dictated who you believed.

When Anita Hill was asked why she did not bring charges at the time she claimed to be unaware of her options at the time. The idea of a black woman with a law degree working for the EEOC not being ‘aware’ of her options at the time just lacked all credibility with me.  When Thomas had to answer questions about a comment made decades earlier about a pubic hair on a Coke can, I asked “is this how we vet important public officials?”

Few were the questions about the law and the functions of the court, Clarence Thomas’s experience or previous decisions.  It was about dredging up a long forgotten minor, for all we know totally nonexistent, personal exchange with a staffer.  The pubic hair on the coke can became a vulgar symbol of the politics of personal destruction.  Clarence eventually controlled the narrative when he finally called the exchange a ‘high tech lynching.’

To hear Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum make this the focus of a hearing for a Supreme Court justice was unbearable.

I was struck that this moment in history similarly impacted Andrew Breitbart as he wrote in his new book Righteous Indignation.  He realized that the battlefield is not just the world of ideas as debated in the halls of Congress, but that the battle is with the media itself.  The battle is over who controls the narrative.

He refers to the Democrat Media Complex (shortened throughout the book as the ‘Complex’) being the major news networks and major metro papers  The New Media is the Internet, blogs, AM radio and to some extent Foxnews.

While many of us write, post and preach to the choir- Breitbart jumps into the lion’s den and seeks not just to humiliate the politicians and organizations with his exposes- he seeks to humiliate the ‘Complex’ itself by showing how they avoid covering stories that cast disfavor on their anointed leaders and party.

He brilliantly staged the roll out of the James O’Keefe ACORN story to trap the Complex in their own lies and cover-up.  He offered the story to ABC first and they turned it down. He then offered it to Fox who verified  the story and then ran with it. He kept releasing additional tapes until the cover-up became obvious and the Complex could no longer ignore it.

The end result was the defunding and demise of ACORN.  But the rise of the New Media made the Complex the bigger casualty.  The battle is not just about political ideas; it is about who controls the narrative.

Mistakes are undramatic. We all make them, but many would prefer the drama of sinister motives and conspiracy theories  to the realities of bad judgment and human error. It makes for better headlines and fodder for book titles.

Conspiracy theories are often just thinly veiled prejudices. Behind so many such theories is a distrust of Jews who have been the brunt of endless conspiracies, most notably the endlessly enduring fraud, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

But conspiracy theories are certainly not limited to Jews.  Neocons, the Federal Reserve, and various councils formed to address social, political, and economic problems are often deemed to be mere conspiracies to achieve power and wealth at the expense of the rest of us.  But that fact that so many of these organizations fail at their mission does not mean they are a conspiracy.

Conspiracies usually are the result of preordained conclusions that read for confirmation rather than information.  If I want to believe that George W. Bush was responsible for 9/11 I will be able to collect reports of meetings and events that appear to confirm that theory, and simply ignore any contradictory evidence.  There were similar claims that FDR intentionally grouped our ships in Pearl Harbor to drag us into war.  Many in the Middle East believe that Israel caused 9/11 to drag the U.S. into a war against Islam. They repeat the falsehood that the Jews knew not to go to work at the World Trade Center on the day of the attack.  This theory persists even after Bin Laden took credit for the attack.

If you find yourself falling for a conspiracy theory remember the following:

• Never attribute to a conspiracy that which can be explained with simple incompetence or error.  Humans do tend to err, often dramatically.
• There are few people who can keep a secret.  Just witness the leaks of confidential and privileged information.
• Ask yourself what information would you accept that disproves this theory.  If every bit of evidence that disproves the theory is twisted to just further prove the theory; if  your theory can not be disproven then it is likely a conspiracy theory.  When a Swiss court in the 1930’s determined that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fraud the Nazis just claimed that was proof that the Jews controlled the courts.
• In the face of irrefutable evidence you can still reach the wrong conclusion. Many conspiracy theories are believed because they rely on facts that are true. But part of the truth can be more misleading than all of a lie. By reading for confirmation, the theorists ignore the conflicting evidence.
• We often prefer the comfort of lies rather than to question our own beliefs.  It is easier for us to believe in a villain than to accept the uncertainty of human fraility.  Unwavering certainty in explaining very complex events is the hallmark of a conspiracy theorist.
• Just because one is well read does not mean the theories they espouse have validity.  The very intelligent and the well educated are not immune from the intellectual biases that accept evidence that supports their views, while rejecting evidence that refutes it.

The best remedy for conspiracy theories is an open mind, skepticism, and curiosity.