We’ve got a full line-up of stories, so let’s start with a new category, with a hat tip to Red State for the title:
You Don’t Hate the Media Enough
One of the most despicable traits of our mainstream media is the bad faith way that they take a quote wildly out of context, and then pull their dresses over their heads and launch into a performance art piece of faux outrage.
One example would be when Sarah Palin referred to “targeting” vulnerable Democrat candidates for House and Senate seats, and the MSM pretended to believe that she was soliciting hitmen to kill Dem candidates, or something.
Maybe the most famous example was when Trump joked in a 2016 speech that maybe the Russians could find and turn over Hillary’s lost emails. It is still hard to believe that the Democrats were mendacious enough to pretend that he was collaborating with the Russians, and to use that obviously humorous quip as the basis for a presidential impeachment!
They were at it again this week, this time pretending that when Trump used the word “bloodbath,” he wasn’t discussing dire financial ramifications of allowing the Chicoms to attack our car market. Even though the quote came from the middle of a speech about… wait for it… the dire financial ramifications of allowing the Chicoms to attack our car market.
No, the Dems cried havoc, and let slip the whores of war.
Wait, that’s not right. I meant the dogs of war. Or was it the dog-faced pony soldiers of the presstitues of the MSM?
Anyway, everyone from Imhotep Pelosi (Aiiii! The mummy walks among us!) to every Dem pol and media talking head in sight started ranting about how Trump was calling for a genocide, or something.
Of course multiple conservative web sites immediately cited Merriam Webster’s definition of “bloodbath,” one meaning of which is “a major economic disaster.”
(Like, for example, the dire ramifications of allowing Chicoms to attack our car market.)
And they also quickly produced a series of news clips featuring dozens of Democrats and MSM “journalists” (but I repeat myself) using the word in exactly the same way Trump did.
Ugh! As this category suggests, whenever we think we might really hate the lying media, we must remember that we STILL don’t hate them enough.
But I’m not a hater.
A mocker and a sarcastic critic, sure. Guilty as charged. But I’m no hater.
Therefore, I’m going to give our leftist opposition a fantastic tip to make their “journalism” less pathetic: If you’re going to insist that the word “bloodbath” be taken literally – which is incredibly stupid, but hey, you do you – then it must be used only when there is literally blood involved.
Here are a couple of examples:
“Democrats defund police; bloodbaths ensue in major blue cities.”
“Democrats open our borders to hordes of foreign criminals; bloodbaths ensue.”
“Taxpayer money is used to fund Planned Parenthood abortuaries all over the country; it’s a bloodbath every day!”
You’re welcome, Democrats. Now please re-think your life choices.
Today in Schadenfreude Corner, I’ve got a quick bit of movie news.
If you’re not a low-down whitey-hating racist – and I know that you aren’t – you probably missed the promotional push leading up to the opening last Friday of the movie, “The American Society of Magical Negroes.”
And your mental health is better for it. Unfortunately for me, part of my heroic role here at Cautious Optimism is to subject myself to various political assaults on the American project so that you don’t have to.
I won’t lie though: I did not watch this movie. But I did read two reviews, and then I watched the trailer. (On an unrelated note, if there are any opthalmologists in CO Nation, can you tell me how long the burning and blurred vision that comes after splashing bleach in one’s eyes usually lasts? Asking for a friend.)
The premise is that white people are so maliciously racist that they are a constant threat to innocent black people, requiring blacks to condescend to their white fragility. The mentor to the protagonist sets the table in the first minute of the trailer, when he asks his protégé, “What’s the most dangerous animal on the planet?”
Just as the kid starts to answer, “Sharks,” the mentor interrupts him with, “White people…when they feel uncomfortable.”
Get it? It’s not a racist screed played ironically as a horror film, or an acerbic social critique.
It’s a comedy!
(I’m reminded of an old Gilbert Gottfried routine in which he imagined the pitch meeting to persuade tv executives to greenlight “Hogan’s Heroes”: “It’s about a bunch of allied prisoners in a concentration camp during the holocaust. And it’s a comedy!”)
So this insulting mess of a film opened in 1,146 theaters nationwide on March 15th… annnddd… it bombed! It brought in a pathetic $1.3 million on its opening weekend, and that total included a huge drop from its first day to its second.
Even more shockingly, it only got 31% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, even though the critics famously give virtue-signaling extra points for woke themes in movies. Any film focusing on a transgender handi-capable person of color fighting the patriarchal forces of white, straight America is usually spotted 60% right off the bat (10 points for each of those checked boxes).
So for even lefty critics to only give this mess 31% speaks to what a horrible abomination it is. (For comparison, the critics gave Rob “Meathead” Reiner’s Christophobic “documentary” “God and Country” 88%!)
To put it another way, if you added the earnings from the Meathead movie and this racist trash together, you wouldn’t even have enough cash to hire renowned Ukrainian energy expert Hunter Biden to lobby his dear departed daddy for one single month!
Speaking of financially disastrous decision-making, I’ve got a new entry in the “Unexpectedly” category:
The Planet Fitness chain of gyms recently started coercing their employees and customers to cater to the desires of sexually confused “transgender” people.
The business produced an operational manual that required employees to use “names, titles and pronouns” of strange sexual narcissists, and threatened to fire them if they wouldn’t do so.
The manual also acknowledged that some customers might “feel uncomfortable” with people of the opposite sex sharing showers and bathrooms with them, but insisted that, “This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to a transgender member.”
And just to demonstrate the company’s Orwellian bona fides, the manual said that this deranged coercion was meant “to foster a climate of understanding consistent with the Judgement Free character of Planet Fitness.”
Got that? “Judgment Free.”
But if a normal woman and her teenage daughter undress and head for the showers after a workout, and they notice some naked dude with heavy mascara and a beehive hairdo sitting in the locker room staring at them while he’s trying to make balloon animals with his phallus?
If they object, you know that the “understanding” commissars at Planet Fitness are going to judge the hell out of them for being transphobic bigots!
Anyway, late last week the Planet Fitness manual hit social media.
Annnndddd… their stock price plummeted 8% immediately, shaving $400 million off the company’s value.
UNEXPECTEDLY! (Also: more please.)
In Stupid Criminal news, I’ll take you to the big open space where our southern border used to be for the story of a guy who might be the dumbest criminal I’ve ever written about. (And I’ve written about the Biden crime family!)
This charmer is a 22-year old Lebanese named Basel Bassel Ebbadi. (He’s the terrorist so nice, they named him twice!) He was caught by the US Border Patrol in Texas on March 9th.
And even though I’m wary of disclosing sensitive tactics involving our national security, I’m going to disclose one clever forensic technique our border agents used to trip up ol’ double-Basel: They asked him – and this is a quote – “What are you doing in the US?”
And he said, “I’m going to try to make a bomb.”
(Rumors that he then slapped his forehead, said “D’oh! I mean, I’m here to seek political asylum,” have not been confirmed.)
Further fiendishly ingenious questioning tricked Basel-squared into admitting that he had “trained with Hezbollah for seven years… and guarded weapons locations for another four years.” And also that he planned to set off his bomb in New York City.
So a Hezbollah terrorist came through our porous border with plans to blow up part of New York, and the only reason he was caught was that he was dumb enough to confess when he was asked one question. (This guy is so dumb that he’s been called “the AOC of Jihadis.”) (By me, just now.)
And ABC and CBS did not even mention this story on their flagship morning and evening news shows on Sunday and Monday, while NBC did give it 45 seconds on Monday night. (Remember: we don’t hate them enough!)
Let’s end with a new and inspiring example of the Celebration of Excellence.
Thirty-seven years ago, a married missionary couple serving in the Philippines were pregnant with their fifth child when the mother suffered a life-threatening infection that required strong drugs which threatened her pregnancy. Doctors advised her to abort the baby because he likely had birth defects because of her severe illness, but she chose to have the child.
That baby was Tim Tebow, who would grow up to become the greatest college football quarterback ever, in my unbiased opinion (Go Gators!), winning two national championships and a Heisman trophy.
But as good of a player as he was (did I mention he went 4-0 against FSU?), he’s a better man. He’s been a fine example of Christian faith, raising money for various charities, including the pediatric cancer center at our home-town hospital where my daughter got her first nursing job.
(“Hey Martin,” you might be asking, “was she nominated last week for a state-wide nursing award in Colorado?” Yes she was, in fact. Thanks for asking.)
Ten years ago Tebow started a foundation that puts on an annual “Night to Shine,” a coordinated
series of world-wide “proms” for kids with Down Syndrome and a variety of other disabilities. (Watch a few of their videos online if you don’t mind getting choked up.)
In the cynical and debased world we live in, it’s hard for me to watch even Tebow without wondering in the back of my mind whether he’s too good to be true and authentic. But I was glad to see him speak in front of our congress earlier this month (I know: talk about “pearls before swine!”) in support of a bill to fund rescue teams to identify and rescue child sexual abuse victims.
I know that the government can screw up everything it touches, but this is a truly good cause, and I’m going to look into this bill, and I hope that it does what its sponsors want it to.
And I’m glad that his parents brought Tim Tebow into this world.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 