When Someone Wants To Scare You

It’s harder to analyze events than to paste labels on them. Events come thick and fast, and pundits have to say something. It’s mostly pundits I’m talking about, but not entirely. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme, they say, and then they reach for one of these tropes. When the tropes are repeated again and again, they can influence policymakers. They flatten everyone’s thinking.

Here are five that I find particularly irritating.

Nuclear Diner

It’s a good read about how pundits quickly give you rhetorical shortcuts when writing about current events. Cheryl Rofer over at Nuclear Diner gives you five signs that the author of the post, op-ed, or Twitter you’re reading is lazy writing and to be avoided.

Imagine That

https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/704546657239465984/via-67rk0gk23p7a1jpg-jpeg-image-411-613

In other words: they have to lie to win.

Where’s the Response?

The January 6th Committee has released its findings with referrals for criminal charges and not a sound from the man identified as a criminal. Why so quiet? (You read that with Heath Ledger’s Joker voice, didn’t you)

The Lost Hope of Love

Gandolf

The question I keep asking myself – what’s the use of writing about politics? What purpose is there in pointing out the inconsistencies, the hypocrisies, and the outright lies of the current administration?

I started blogging in 2003, writing about everything political, hoping against hope things would change. And for eight years, I held out hope. I had hope that compassion, acceptance, and inclusion would win out.

And then 2016 rolled around, and all my hopes turned to horror. I have watched over these last three years as racists, white nationalists, and bigots freely walked the White House’s halls. Hell, the crafting of policies occurred with them seated at the table. Meanwhile, twitters released daily, barely lacking qualities of an educated pre-schooler, are enflaming the uneducated and intellectually lazy masses.

I had, for a few years anyway, hope that love would govern the day. It is not to be so. Instead, hate, fear, and insecurity rule this era.

People holding the idea that the Office of the President of the United States being nothing more than a seat for a puppet surely have not been paying attention. Shit indeed runs downhill.

Ain’t Breaking MyHeart

(Salon) According to Reuters, iHeartMedia is trying to kick the debt can further down the road by trying to pay off its maturing bonds by purchasing other ones while undergoing yet another corporate overhaul.

But this time, the company’s bondholders aren’t playing along. Per Reuters, a group that claims to represent more than half of the company’s lenders are refusing to cooperate with the restructuring plan, meaning that there is a very real possibility that iHeartMedia may have to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to evade its creditors.

Should such a restructuring happen, there’s a very real chance that it could allow iHeartMedia to force Limbaugh, Hannity and its other top talents to renegotiate their contracts for a lower payment amount. Of course, that’s assuming that there would be any takers on what are likely to be bonds that would be sold at fire-sale prices.

I’m trying to find some tears of sympathy, but to no avail. Ain’t no empathy being evoked either.

The era of conservative radio dominance is slowly coming to a close. With Fox News and its continued sexual harassment problems, iHeartMedia’s financial woes, and their audience dying off, I don’t see them being players in the 2020 election. I don’t think they will even have that much of an influence in the 2018 election.

Your mileage may vary, of course.