Category Archives: Media

We’ve already ruined any real chance of eradicating “fake news”

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It was at the top of the list for 2016 election rhetoric and whether you ended up on the winning side or the losing side, you’re probably still talking about it: fake news.

Fake news, by definition, is something that is not real – hence the term “fake.” The actual definition reads:

“News satire, also called fake news, is a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content. News satire has been around almost as long as journalism itself, but it is particularly popular on the web, for example on websites like The Onion or Faking News, where it is relatively easy to mimic a credible news source and stories may achieve wide distribution from nearly any site. News satire relies heavily on irony and deadpan humor.”

But no one is slamming The Onion or Faking News or El Mundo Today. Most are slamming CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, or any other source that isn’t CSPAN or a personal blog where someone reaffirms the reader’s exact beliefs. This is happening because people are angry and, more often than not, their anger is justified. The mainstream media on both sides, in print and in television has a slant. These outlets race to be first instead of accurate. During crises, we get wrong information. The key word is “wrong,” not “fake.”

But slants and mistatements of facts do not mean something is “fake.” It isn’t fake news to say that 20 students on a school bus died when only 6 did. It’s wrong. Because of this misunderstanding, we’ve completely obliterated any opportunity to teach people who may not understand the difference or even how to assess media sources.  In a matter of months, people have overused the term so much that the majority of people believe everything they see from a news outlet is fake.

Let’s take a look at an example that can be broken down without including partisan politics:

This past Wednesday it was announced that JonBenet Ramsey’s older brother is suing CBS News (and others) for $750 million after a series aired and insinuated that Burke may have had something to do with JonBenet’s death. Friday, his lawyer came out slamming CBS as “fake news” because of the series. Sound the buzzer because that. is. wrong. (For now, we’ll set aside the irony of perpetuating a story that is supposedly so defamatory, it’s worth $750 million)

FACTS: 1. JonBenet was killed. 2. Police have considered Burke a person of interest at some time or another. 3. 20 years later, law enforcement officials have no real leads on who actually committed the crime.
ASSUMPTIONS: The mother and father were ruled out, the ransom note is believed to be forged, and the brother was the only person left in the house “so it had to be Burke.” (Don’t lie, you know this thought has gone through your mind on at least one occasion.)

The assumption is a statement that may or may not be untrue. It isn’t fake, it just might be wrong and at this time, it isn’t something that can be substantiated. CBS has a duty to distinguish the facts they were able to prove and then present alternative possibilities that may or not be true.  Burke very well may have a case for defamation, but his lawyer is making a mockery of the real issue and instead trying to garner attention by equating the case to the rhetoric currently on the national stage.

“Fake new” in this instance would be a headline that reads, “Burke Ramsey picked up by aliens who say they were witness to him murdering his sister.”

“Fake is defined as not genuine or something that is counterfeit. “Wrong” is defined as something that is not correct. There is a very big difference. YUGE. Bigly.

Reporting that Brad Pitt was shot in the streets of L.A. by Russian insurgents when he is actually sitting at a local coffee shop reading to elementary school children is fake news. Certainly not all instances are as extreme as this, but fake news is something that can otherwise be verified by a reader or viewer…if they wanted to make the effort.

It is truly terrifying to me that individuals want someone to censor the Internet for them and impose some sort of regulation and restriction on entities so “someone” can make sure they’re seeing the news a company thinks they should see. That doesn’t sound like the United States at all. Why would someone who doesn’t trust MSNBC or CBS or ABC trust Google or Facebook or Twitter to take on the task of sorting through what is and is not “accurate” news? Better yet, why is any individual incapable of determining for themselves whether or not information is fake.

If individuals would look at what is wrong and where it can be proven wrong, a change may actually be made in how we absorb and share information.

That starts with a change the tone of the conversation. Instead of calling everything we don’t like “fake news,” tell your friends and followers why and keep it specific. “This article from [X] is not correct. I read the official report myself and this is actually what happened…” or perhaps, “I’ve seem {blank tv station} repeatedly get the facts wrong in {x types of situations} so I’ve just decided that they aren’t a reliable source of information during [x].”

One of the very best things about America is the free flow of information – good or bad, politically correct or not, genuine or fake. Besides, the most dangerous fake news headline is the one that perpetuates the idea that just because we don’t like or agree with something, there is no possibility it could be true.

 

Are the police being properly policed?

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When I moved to South Georgia, I decided there wouldn’t be much I would say “no” to. I was going to try new things, keep an open mind, and learn as much as I could about everything. One of those things was participating in the Citizens Police Academy near my town. I joined for many reasons, but one reason in particular was my fascination with how much people in smaller communities love their police officers. Writing for All On Georgia, we frequently share articles about the police department and the sheriff’s office and comments usually never stray from ‘Way to go!’ and ‘Great job, guys!’ I was like a bug to the light on this issue, especially coming from Metro Atlanta where the public-police partnership is basically non-existent.

Personally, I’ve never had a terrible experience with any law enforcement officer. I grew up in a community where the cops talked to kids, came by the neighborhood pool, and talked to you about listening to your parents. I’ve also had the opportunity to talk several courteous officers with a mild sense of humor out of giving me a traffic ticket – or ten. But it’s amazing what the media can do when they have the ability to push an agenda 24/7.

Like most, I was mortified by the story of the DeKalb officers who entered the wrong home and ended up shooting the homeowner and fatally wounding his dog. Like most, my heart aches to see the calls for violence against officers around the nation for no reason other than their employment status. Like most, I have read the news articles, seen the live coverage, and watched on social media as the respect for the thin blue line fizzles into an untouchable pixie dust while all-things-policing have become racially charged and politically motivated. There’s a huge problem between the public and police right now.

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(Photo: Lansing State Journal)

Just recently, I saw an article out of Michigan go viral. A “well-behaved” teenager was pulled over by an officer for flashing his lights. The article, which included body camera footage, was cluttering my Facebook feed for days, featuring the officer as some sort of animal who yanked a kid from a car, threw his phone into traffic, and emptied his weapon. SEVERAL news articles would have you think that. CNN’s headline read, “Cop kicks teens phone out of hand, shoots 7 times.” HuffingtonPost’s said, “Unarmed Teen Flashed Lights at cop and ended up dead.” The body camera footage might even have you thinking that, too, considering what was released is cut off as soon as the actual scuffle begins, but an independent Google search shows you images of the officer in the hospital, bruised and bloodied. That picture didn’t appear in one viral article, but it isn’t a hoax and certainly changes the dialogue about the incident.

I don’t know the full extent of what happened there. I can only draw conclusions from the information that is available, but it’s getting old watching people draw conclusions from a single source with one issue when in other aspects of life, they’ll trust anyone but the mainstream media. Many of my anti-government friends who question everything else reported by the media are quick to jump to the defense of anyone but the officer when a scuffle emerges.

In the story from Michigan, the teen may have been unarmed, but I’m not sure how that’s relevant in a physical fight. You don’t need a weapon to kill someone and being a police officer doesn’t make you any less of a person. If it were your husband, or son, or father, how long would you want them to wait before fighting for their life? ‘Public servant’ doesn’t translate to ‘public sacrifice.’

Consider this video from Laurens County back in the late 1990’s. The dashcam video shows three and a half minutes of heartwrenching and gruesome footage of a standoff between Deputy Kyle Dinkheller and a deranged veteran who ends up loading a rifle in front of the deputy, charging him, and emptying the magazine – killing Deputy Dinkheller. All of this is on the video. If you watch it, you would stare -dumbfounded- wondering why the deputy didn’t fire sooner.

(WARNING: The video is graphic and horrific in language and content)

It’s difficult to place ourselves in their shoes, and I am glad we hold our public servants to such a high standard of integrity and expertise, but I also know that I am not cut out to be a cop. Are you? I think back to a few weeks ago when my CPA class had to use a gun simulator on a traffic stop that escalated. We were given a gun and had to decide when to ‘use force’ on our aggressor. It was a computer game, essentially, and the ‘perpetrator’ scared the living daylights out of me when he started moving and shaking and whipping his hands in and out of his pockets. I KNEW what was coming on a game and I still reacted by firing all six bullets in my gun. And on my ride-along, we responded to a call in an area that I know that if I lived in it, I would probably walk around with my gun drawn 24/7. So, I ask again…your judgement casts easy, but would your glass house weather the storm if the shoe was on the other foot?

I also have to wonder if the people who are so angry about law enforcement officers have actually had a bad experience themselves, or if they are just living vicariously through stories and victims in the media. These stories are happening – there is no denying the incidents – but is it as often as we are led to believe?

It is almost cliche now to say ‘there are bad people in every industry,’ but it’s true. It’s just not every industry that has open records requests and the media breathing down their neck on a daily basis. When I make a mistake in my job, I fix it and the world keeps spinning. When an accountant doesn’t properly balance a sheet, the world continues turning. When a board of elected officials votes to do something unscrupulous, the world. keeps. turning.

What I’ve found is that when an officer does do something wrong, other officers are quick to point that out or condemn the action. Very few of them are looking to cast the wide net and taint the entire force or industry, if you will. And if you talk to your local officers, you’ll find that most of them don’t look at the world the way the media portrays them to be looking at the world.

This isn’t a defense of the bad ones, but rather a question of whether or not we are fighting the right fight, or just fighting to fight. I don’t know what the answer is. We cannot disarm law enforcement officers and we certainly cannot disarm the media. The difference is that the media comes out unscathed while exacerbating what is a very bad time to be a police officer in the United States. Perhaps the activists who would like to see reform on aspects of policing should save their energy for stories which expressly show wrongdoing, so not only can proper action be taken, but when there is a ‘victory for the public,’ it is not at the expense of the integrity of a movement.

78% of Georgians are Anti-Second Amendment?

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It’s a surprise to absolutely no one by now that campus carry is an issue close to my heart. As a Georgia State University graduate, I believe students deserve better and I feel the state is wrong in hindering their right to protect themselves. Because of this, it irritates me greatly when someone tells me “No one really cares about campus carry” or “It’s just not a hot topic right now”. Oh but it is– in Georgia and across the nation– so you can imagine my confusion upon the release of the AJC poll recently stating 78% of Georgia voters oppose legalizing weapon possession on college campuses. Well, I’ll be darned. I thought this was an interesting tidbit of information so much so that several folks did some investigating and this is what we found.

Let’s discuss by playing the circle game:

  • Jay Bookman is the AJC writer here and polling connoisseur.
  • Bookman’s boss at the AJC is Bert Roughton …the Senior Managing Editor.
  • Mr. Roughton’s wife is a lady named Melinda Ennis Roughton.
  • Mrs. Ennis Roughton holds the ever-so-ironic occupation of Co-Head for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in Atlanta.
  • She is also Executive Director for Georgia’s WIn List, (the Democrat organization looking to elect liberal women to higher offices in Georgia).
  • Georgia WIN will be having their annual Legislative Breakfast on January 30th and the keynote speaker is Jay Bookman.

Now, I am not discrediting the entire poll (which is available here: AJC POLL January 2014) but I do want to consider EXACTLY who was polled.
We’re talking about respondents of which:

  • 41% believe the Georgia economy is not in good shape,
  • 47% believe we should expand Medicare through the ACA,
  • and only 38% of the respondents had children in schools in Georgia.

Nowhere in the poll was the concept of the campus carry act explained: that it would only apply to legal weapons carry permit holders (those over the age of 21 or honorably discharged military)– meaning, people who likely already conceal carry everywhere else in the state.
People uninformed on the issue hear, “Do you want to give college kids guns to take to take to their beer pong matches?” I take great offense to firing off questions (see what I did there) to an uninformed electorate.

I simply can’t help myself in being suspicious of ulterior motives by the AJC here when the reporter et. al is in the sack with the anti-gun lobby and the questions mislead the public. The issue is a Constitutional one….and this poll leads us to believe that 78% of Georgians don’t stand for the Constitution. Again, I am just shocked to my very core that the AJC would seek to mislead.

How To Be Conservative & Not Despise the VMA’s

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Here we are again. Another post-MTV-VMA morning and everyone is all up in arms over the vulgarity and promiscuity of the show and I’m just standing over here like, ‘Where have y’all been?’

MTV hasn’t been appropriate for anyone under the age of 18 AT LEAST since they began airing ‘Undressed’ in 1999. And I’m not exactly sure how what we saw on the VMA’s is any different than Jersey Shore, The Real World or the latest and greatest music videos- all things we don’t consider society’s best. What you allow your children to watch is your business, but it may be a tad hypocritical to permit Beyonce thrusting in a music video and then be mortified by Miley. Personally I was more upset over what she did to my favorite song, but I digress.

I actually had the privilege of attending the a “Bridging the Gap” Women’s Conference in Charleston, SC this weekend and I was impressed by the excellent messages conveyed throughout the summit. Everything from standing up when your time is right to challenging to the liberal media to holding elected officials accountable, all in an effort to restore our great nation. But one issue that was neglected in the conference, and in every other speech, conference, summit and convention I have attended, is the role of pop culture in today’s society. It’s no secret that it’s skewed to the left. Between Lady Gaga’s everything-but-policymaking songs and Barack Obama tweeting Katy Perry post-performance, it is evident this is no small thing we are up against. But pop culture will always be there (unless we start banning and censoring) and it will always present underlying messages to children, teens and uneducated adults. The remedy is circumventing the message they are sending.

There is this new radical approach- it’s called parenting. When I was in middle school, Eminem was all the rage. I was allowed to listen to one *radio edit version* of his songs (The Real Slim Shady, of course). The album was not allowed in our home. My mother explained to me that the music did not reflect our values and did not reflect well on me to be listening to it. Of course I was irritated at the time and told all my friends that  my mom didn’t want me to be cool or have fun but somehow I still managed to absorb the message she was sending. It’s amazing what parenting can do. I’m a firm believer that when you’re instilling the proper values in your children, the outside ‘noise’ is irrelevant. You can also like a song and not become some terrible society-ruining citizen. Being exposed to the ‘badness of pop culture’, going home from school alone sometimes because my mom had to work and hearing about promiscuity from friends had zero effect on me because of what I learned early on from home. And I’m not the exception.

We, as conservatives, also need to stop publicly condemning things we can control for but simply don’t like. When you make it acceptable for your children to look to the media for role models, you’re going to lose. And so will your children. Start by teaching them what you want them to know.

A Defense of Blurred Lines: Feminists, Relax

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Here we are again. Everyone knows how I feel about modern-day feminists (I can’t stand them and they can’t stand me). I love dresses, I look forward to the day that I’m someones wife and mom and I believe that if you’re secure enough in your “equality” to the guy sitting next to you, you don’t have to tell everyone.
So when this article was posted on Policy Mic over Blurred Lines and the ‘rapey’ lyrics and video, of course I had to respond.

The author and self-proclaimed feminist, Elizabeth Plank, takes issue with what she calls ‘offensive’ lyrics, objectification of women and an agenda for greater tolerance for sexual harassment. When she says, “The stunning model (who I wouldn’t recommend looking at unless you’re ready for a dramatic drop in your own self-esteem)…”, I can almost picture her foaming at the mouth in total disgust. Clearly the song has struck a chord. (See what I did there?) So let me pose a few questions to Ms. Plank:

1) When did you begin to look to pop culture as leaders in your movement? Have we, as a society, hit such a low that our role models and leaders are those in the entertainment industry? I find that embarrassing. When I look for women of accomplishment, I can assure you that I’m not looking at a stage. Also, your linkage of Blurred Lines to violence against women is quite a stretch. I have a hard time believing that someone would hurt a woman and then follow with ‘Well, Robin Thicke did it in his music video”. Please.

2) Where is the outrage towards Lil Wayne? Jay-Z? Brittany Spears? Nicki Minaj? John Mayer? Neil Diamond? Madonna? Whitney Houston? Please be consistent.

3) In response to the ‘If you ask Robin Thicke, the video is absolutely degrading to women’ statement. Can you say publicity stunt? Sorry honey, but you’ve been duped. It’s not uncommon for musicians and actors to make inflammatory statements in order to draw attention to themselves and their projects. Paging Alec Baldwin.

4) What happened to the constant diatribe about women being free to do whatever they want, whenever they want without judgement when it comes to sexuality? Is that not one of the core principles around the ‘free’ birth control argument? So why the sudden issue with ‘crazy, wild sex’? And what about that notion of ‘It’s no ones’ business what happens in another persons bedroom”? Paging Sandra Fluke. And again, consistency is key.

5) Finally, let’s address the “right to choose”. I was under the impression that feminism is principled on women and choices, regardless of circumstance. Why condemn the Director of the video who is obviously fairly successful? Why shame the models in the video who are earning a living? Why condemn the ladies who love the song and are just having fun? No one put a gun to the Director’s head, no one forced those girls to dance in next to nothing and no one told me I can’t change my radio station.

This is so old. It’s time to stop looking for reasons to be upset. I can respect a viewpoint I don’t agree with if they are consistent on principle and application, but the invariability in the feminist movement is beyond frustrating.  Going back to #2, I would imagine I could find something offensive in almost every song out there (like here, here, here, here, here or here, to name a few), but isn’t the liberal mindset about freedom of expression? Music is an expression and some people express themselves differently (I hope you hear the Madonna’s “Express Yourself” right now). Who are you to cast judgment? I would also suggest you lighten up because nothing looks weaker than a bitter woman.

Besides, how are you so uptight that when you hear the “bump…bump…bump”…, you don’t start to wiggle? Errybody get up.

“Teen Pregnancy is a Good Thing”

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I made a grave mistake this morning. As I was trolling on some feminist blog sites, I found the article “Will the teen mom shaming ever stop?” Like a train wreck, I couldn’t look away.

Apparently, May is “National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month”. The images are below, but the ridiculousness is clearly in the text. It seems as though the author is upset by the apparent insinuation that mother’s can’t change the world. Wrong. I believe the message depicted is targeted at teen mom’s not changing the world. Which is a substantial claim. The blogger is also upset about the particular comments about the cost of raising a baby because it doesn’t matter what age you are, it’s still expensive a raise a baby. We all know this is true, but how many teenagers do you know that make enough money to support themselves WITHOUT a baby?

This brings me to my confusion with feminists. There are so many types yet they don’t adequately identify themselves. There are those that don’t see ‘sex’ at all and define women as the same as men, despite a few physical differences. We can think of them as the ‘feminist jihadists’. There are the feminists who believe that career trumps family, these are the ‘orthodox feminists’. And there are the feminists who simply think that they are always right regardless of topic. These are the ‘feminist ignoramuses’. (Point of information: the word ‘feminist’ separates you from being a ‘male’ equal just by default use of the term.) All types wear pant suits.

Despite the ‘type’ of feminism said blogger is aligned with, I can come up with several hypocritical and contradictory notions based off of just these few statements.
1). If the idea of feminism promotes the idea of being career oriented and not being in the home,
2.) Weren’t they the same people lobbying to have Plan B Emergency Contraception available over-the-counter to young girls?
3.) Teenagers engaging in sexual activity is not about love. (They may think it is, but it is not.) That means that the acts are simply meaningless, experiments on account of both parties. Doesn’t this also contradict the idea of respecting women and making people aware of your ‘value’?
4.) Feminists want women to be career-driven and independent. At what point would a teen mother be independent if she can’t afford to care for her child and herself and is pushed to collect social benefits?
5.) Why are we upset about discouraging children from having children?

Being a mother is supposed to be a heart-warming experience some people would give anything to get (check http://www.advancedfertility.com/choose.htm to learn about the fertility issues). Being a teenager is supposed to be fun and about finding yourself. You can’t find yourself if you’re caring for a baby. These advertisements are not about shaming, they are about prevention. Hence the name of the awareness month: National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month. The reality is that teenage pregnancy DOES affect the outcomes of your life. And if you’re doing it alone, as feminists would expect, that creates even more hardship. It’s time that feminists stop looking for problems when there aren’t any. They are lookin’ for love in all the wrong places.

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A Lazy Award for a Lazy President

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Time Magazine just released their ‘Person of the Year’ and it was revealed to be none other than…Barack Obama. I feel like naming Obama as ‘Person of the Year’ is just plain lazy. Selecting the President of the United States? A plan and boring figurehead? Is that the best you can do? And not only that, but this is the 2nd time they’ve named him the POTY. (ha- great acronym.)

I can think of SEVERAL other people who made more of an impact (whether positive or negative, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, , American or foreign, famous or not famous, political or apolitical) on society.

  • Malala Yousafzai, the teen Pakistani advocate for education for girls who was shot by the Taliban? (awarded 2nd place)
  • One of our Gold Medal Olympians?
  • An American Soldier?
  • Someone who helped in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy?
  • A business owner?
  • A Patriot?
  • An Executive Director of a NonProfit Organization?

Aside from Solyndra, Benghazi, telling Americans “You didn’t build that’, Fast & Furious, Class Warfare, the defense of Big Bird, his endless golfing, the Fiscal Cliff debacle, the credit downgrade, unemployment rates, the increase in the national debt, “We’re doing just fine”, the spending, the handouts, the mediScare, the bailouts, the tax increases, the NDAA, the gun control talk, Obamacare, and the total disregard for the American people…is that REALLY the best you could do, Time Magazine?

Give me a break.

If I Looked Like a Victoria’s Secret Model, I’d Wear Wings Too

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I’m pretty vain. Not about you or the guy down the street but I care a lot about how I look. I’d say my expectations for myself are likely more unrealistic than “what society expects of me”. I often wonder what makes me that way. I wasn’t abused as a child, I wasn’t bullied, and I didn’t have any other “triggers” that would make me focus on my appearance–other than the fact that I spent some time in my teen years a “bit” overweight. (No need for numbers here, they don’t matter now. It’s a thing of the past. I’ve also burned every picture from that era so don’t expect some lovely before and after creation.)

I played with Barbie, was a tennis player who loved the cute outfits and when I receive the Victoria’s Secret catalog in the mail, I still have about 3 minutes of unrealistic goal setting which usually ends with me heading to the gym.

This all has nothing to do with the societal movement to be thin or fit or whatever the trendy phrase is today. Playing with Barbie as a child did not incline me to believe a certain body type was “right” and I never believed that people on TV were what I was supposed to look like. That’s why the yearly outrage over the Victorias Secret fashion show makes me SO mad.

Maybe when we were all still in the dark about modest airbrushing, maybe when we shifted pant sizes make the former size 4 a size 2 to mess with women’s minds and maybe when Jane Fonda was the leader in fitness, I could understand the “pressure”. Maybe.

But now we know that magazines shape things up to make the models look better. (Sometimes they even airbrush limbs off on accident). Now we know that the average female is not going to look like something from Victoria’s Secret without working out 3 hours a day, every day, and eating minimally. And we know many guys who there who don’t even appreciate such a body type. We know all of this. And people are still very, very angry. You sound like feminists.

If you want to live your life making choices by whether or not a Victoria’s Secret model would do it, then that is your right. It is also your right to eat as you please, not exercise and deal with the ramifications of that. And every lifestyle in between.

My point here is that YOU are in control of YOU and a girl in lingerie shouldn’t irritate you, infuriate you or send you into a rant. If you’re comfortable with yourself, then it “ain’t no thang”. We claim that the media shouldn’t dictate aspects of our lives (political, monetary, etc.) What is the difference here? Why are people so intimidated by a company that historically portrays LINGERIE on skinny MODELS? You don’t have to watch it, you don’t have to buy it, and you don’t have to look like them.

For the record, if I looked like a Victoria’s Secret model…I’d walk around wearing wings, too.

But I don’t, so here’s me…all bundled up

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What does it mean to be an American?

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My new favorite trolling place is the Planned Parenthood Facebook page. I stumbled upon it while I was cross-posting my blog on contraception last week and have been absolutely fascinated (read: shocked) by the vile and nasty things they post that are completely unrelated to the sexual health and preventative care agenda they claim to carry out (Surprise!). It’s more of place to bash conservative legislators  and a safe haven for sexual preference discussion (and I’m not talking about preference of partners).

One of their recent posts implied that in order to be 100% American woman, you need to believe in options and (absolute) freedom of women’s reproductive health.

It seems to be a widely held notion by the left that access to free stuff is what makes America, America. Naturally, I was irritated by this logic, so I asked some folks from near and far, of different political affiliations, races and religions what being an American means to them. Here are a few of the responses:

  • “It means i among the luckiest people to have ever lived in the history of the planet.”
  • “Really soon, I think it will mean ‘a fight to the death’.”
  • “Being American, to me, means being free to earn one’s future through hard work, intellect, and a little bit of luck without having an overbearing government changing the rules every inning.”
  • “Well to me… being an American means being free. I know that sounds so generic, but there’s a reason that I don’t live in the Middle East. I want to have the ability to be with and love whomever I desire, practice whichever religion I feel drawn to or maybe practice no religion at all. In my opinion, part of being an American is accepting other people for who they are and who they aspire to be. I’m not saying that everyone lives by this principle, but I feel and hope that our country continues to grow into it. One of the things that I love about our country is the amount of diversity that is among us. And I believe that is what it means to be an American.”
  • “Being an American is being in an exceptional position that no other peoples in the history of Mankind have had the privilege. It is knowing that you are free. Free to succeed – or fail. Free to create – or not. Free to speak, think, interact, worship without suppression from any form of government.”

Interestingly enough…not one of those answers mentioned anything about reproductive health choices being a prerequisite for Americanism. I find it interesting that in a time when we are so divided, organizations are looking to ‘unite’ people over reproductive issues and claim a basis for being an American based on “freedoms” from consequences (abortion). Social issues in general need to be placed on the back burner while we work to revive our economy and restore our core principles that make America great. The last election is a prime example of misplaced priorities and a misunderstanding of Americanism. Before we can rebuild, it looks as if we need to re-teach 62,611,250 people (the number who voted for Obama) what it means to be an American.

Make sure to ‘Like’ the Perspicacious Conservative on Facebook.

 

Why Do Liberals Hate Success?

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Ding Dong, the Ding Dong’s Dead.

This morning on CBS Sunday Morning, Bill Flanagan of MTV did a segment on the death of the Twinkie. (You can see the full clip here). These 3-minute commentaries leave me yelling, shouting and throwing things at the television almost every Sunday morning. The intensity of the ’tilt’ to the left is beyond my comprehension. Here is a small excerpt of the commentary:

“Is it possible in this noble Constitutional republic…corporate interests intent on breaking every last union have stooped so low as to cancel production of the Hostess Twinkie, the Devil Dog, and the Reindeer? Has Capitalism sunk this far? Will the President bail out Hostess as he did General Motors?…Who is the heartless corporate CEO who pulled the plug…”

At least he got the first sentence right…”Constitutional republic”…that we are. Aside from that, it really got me thinking…why do liberals hate success so much…but not celebrities?

Every where you turn, there is a shaming for success. Liberals hate pretty much all wealthy white men. They are blamed for most of the issues concerning American right now. They have stigmatized the “1%” because they have worked hard…and often times play hard. But why the disconnect?

Someone posted a picture of a Twinkie funeral on my Facebook page with the caption “The Truth Will Come Out. Unions: Hostess CEO received 300% raise before bankruptcy. Labor blasts ‘myth’ that union strike killed Twinkies” Then, in a back and forth, came to this:
Somewhere, someone, decided that it’s not okay to be successful. Someone decided that it’s wrong for a CEO to make more money than a blue collar worker. Someone decided that we need unions to constantly challenge executives because they earn more. Someone decided that it’s not okay to have more money than someone else …but ONLY on the basis that they also don’t have that same large amount of money. And what’s more interesting is that they don’t want to be equal on a high earning scale, they want everyone to be equal on a low-earning scale. They want upper middle class and upper class people to be yanked down to their level.

But why are liberals so angry? It can’t be because conservatives don’t share their earnings. They do. It’s called a donation. (Here is the definition, since many liberals don’t understand the difference between a tax and a donation) There have been several articles describing the charitable giving on behalf of conservatives and it’s a known fact that liberals prefer the oh-so-trustworthy, ever-so great-at-handling-cash government to redistribute funds as opposed to nonprofits. In fact, research says wealthy AND red states are much more likely to donate to charity. Even the Huffington Post tried to twist conservative giving by unsuccessfully trying to claim that donations to churches don’t count. So what of it? If they’re sharing –just not with the government- why do liberals hate success? And why do they give a pass to the entertainment industry?

And why do they give a pass to the entertainment industry? Why don’t they go after their ‘own’? Take a look at someone of the wealthiest liberals:
Bill Gates $54 billion
Larry Ellison of Oracle $$27 billion
Michael Bloomberg $18 billion
Jeff Bezos of Amazon $12.6 billion
Anne Cox Chambers of Cox Enterprises $12.5 billion
George Soros- $14 billion
Barack Obama
Bill & Hilary Clinton
Not to mention the plethora of celebrities that endorsed the Democrat platform during the last election: 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, Ellen Degeneres, Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Vanessa Williams, Reese Witherspoon, Bill Cosby…here is the list of HUNDREDS of them.

Someone, please tell me why. Why are liberals shaming success? And why are they so forgetful of all the ‘success’ on their side when they’re criticizing and degrading successful conservatives? Who do they think is paying for all their dependency and entitlement programs? Why is it okay for Bill Cosby to rake in millions but not a CEO?