July 05, 2017

...and They Did it on the Fourth of July

Let me just put this here...




...because, yeah, it needs to stay up.

So, in the aftermath of some recent CNN scandals, including CNN employees being caught on camera admitting that the Trump/Russia story is pretty much a nothingburger set up to garner ratings and undermine the administration AND CNN not only retracting a rather libelous story about Trump and his associates, but firing the reporters and editor involved, one Trump fan took this clip from some WrestleMania and photoshopped in the CNN logo. Trump retweeted it. 

One might think that CNN would (after such a dreadful series of self inflicted credibility debacles) react to Trunp's crude but silly victory lap with a bit of good natured contrition. 


CNN is staffed by aristocrats who dine upon free range pheasant and whose lips will never touch crow.

No. CNN tracked down the Trump fan who made the .gif and....

 CNN's 'KFILE' publisher Andrew Kaczynski wrote the network would not be publishing the identity of the user "because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, [that] showed his remorse."

"CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change," Kaczynski warned in his article.  
Emphasis mine...obviously.

Lets see if we can...translate this.

Nice life you've got there...be a shame if someone were to uhh..doxx you and let all 'dem people in the black masks with the bike locks and the,uh, lettah openahs know where your family lives, where your kids go to school, and where you work. It'd just break our hears if your employer suddenly became the subject of a twitter mob and found employing a suddenly unpopular fellow like you....bad for business. But, hey...we gots an offer for youse...One ya can't refuse. 


Meanwhile...

North Korea just fired off a missile that can hit Alaska. If it was a 2 stage missile, then a three stage version ought to be able to hit anywhere in the U.S.A.
Russia is up to no good.
China seems to be basing their foreign policy on the East India Company. (oh the endless ironies of life) and are a major strategic foe. 
The various subsets of radical Islam seek to kill, convert or enslave us all.
M-13 and other gangs rampage across our country and kill our citizens. 

None of those threaten our freedoms like the notion that our lives can be ruined by weaponized social media because we said something that a powerful person found offensive. 
I don't know who this guy is other than that he apparently shitposts on Reddit. 
There is a high probability that he is a douche.  
That's not the issue. 

 
Now, Trump's tweeting is cancer. It is an oozing zit upon the face of the presidency. Many of his tweets are ill considered stupid and counterproductive. While this was not one of those tweets in my opinion, opinions may vary on that point.
It doesn't matter, because that is not the issue.

This is... 

A massive media conglomorate decided to hunt down a private citizen and destroy his life because he published a crude commentary ON THEIR MISBEHAVIOR. Furthermore, the implied threats they use, of censure, becoming unemployable and, (never directly expressed, but very much understood) extrajudicial violence and intimidation are not how we do things in a republic.

 This sort of thing has been going on for at least 5 years....

 
...but it seems to be picking up speed now. 

This is how totalitarian societies come about. 

When people become to afraid to exercize free speech, free speech is dead.
 

CNN is a private corporation This cannot be fixed by legislation, as the ability to interfere editorially is exactly the power we don't want the government to have. Extortion is a possible existing charge of course, but such a prosecution might have worrisome precedents. 

This needs to be met with public outcry. We as a society need to make it plain that this will not stand. 

Whether we still, as a society possess the understanding of Civics to grasp the importance of this is unclear. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:26 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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