Double Double Standard

There is clearly a double standard in how the national media treats the Republicans versus the Democrats. Over and over again news stories are slanted or even misreported (fake news) to forward the liberal agenda. Just in the last week numerous stories by the alphabet networks have been shown to be maliciously slanted ... in particular, by adjusting two timelines to slime Trump and Company. But this media preference for a political party is just part of the problem.

Clearly, the media also tilts the gender scale ... have you noticed? Women are almost always right ... particularly when arbitrating a he-said, she-said dispute. The male is almost always wrong, especially if he is a conservative. This is yet another double standard. Recently, in Alabama, Roy Moore lost his battle in the court of public opinion. He is a conservative and more people believed the accusing woman and not him. They might have been right but we may never know.

In the past, this gender bias in the media has occasionally been wrong. Remember the Duke lacrosse team smear, the UVA fraternity libeling by the Rolling Stone magazine? But these are rarities. Too often the veracity of these female accusers is presumed ... and the accused is led to the gallows without a stop in front of a jury. This media perp walk is wrong and does not serve real justice.

And this is not the limits of such media bias. There are other groups that are automatically presumed truthful. Need I name them? But when an accusers belong to more than one of these favored groups, then the power of their accusations is magnified. Maybe this is human nature, but it is a frustrating truth ... or should I say mis-truth?

The Answers

What is the solution to increased Islamic terrorist attacks inside the United States?


- Not being willing to identify the motivation of the terrorists?

- A mad dash to allow more unvetted Muslims to immigrate into the U.S.?

- Increasing the number of gun-free zones? (The Pulse nightclub was one ...)

- Running vanity shots of the killers on the covers of Rolling Stone magazine?

- Continuing to slow-walk the defeat of ISIS?

- Disrespecting Israel?

- Disallowing undercover surveillance inside Mosques?

- Closing Gitmo and sending many internees back to the Mideast?

- Giving Iran, the chief sponsor of world terrorism, $150 billion?

- Closing down "see something, say something" FBI investigations because of PC concerns?

- Increased government funding of CAIR and other such organizations?

- Inviting the Muslim Brotherhood back to the White House?

- Electing Ms. Benghazi, Hellery Clinton, as our next president?


In other words, more of the same is going to fix things ...

Goose for the Gander

When the terms "rape" or "sexual assault" appear in the press these days (the meme that apparently keeps the main-stream media's blood flowing ... witness Bill Cosby's spotlight), the gender that is top of mind is female. This makes a certain amount of cultural sense in that females are generally thought to be weaker and more vulnerable (Lena Dunham being a major exception). However, when I just read that there are more male rapes in the military than female ones (raw numbers, not percentages), I was a little taken aback ... see: Enews Strory. And this then got me to thinking.

With Rolling Stone magazine's apology for its poor reporting in the University of Virginia fraternity gang-rape story, our current obsessive media focus on male sexual predation on females has taken a step backward. However, the huge numbers of males being raped in prisons usually engenders only unsympathetic snickers. And, if a female teacher is revealed as taking sexual advantage of one of her male students, the reaction is generally far more subdued than if the genders are reversed. Why this lopsided set of standards? Have we not been inculcated for the last fifty years that the sexes are equal in all respects? Should not female sports teams be wearing blue shoes in sympathy for the plight of male sexual victims?

In truth, goosing a gander should be just as serious an offense as gandering a goose (or gandering a gander).

Firing Squad

I have previously written about the threat to the American fraternity system based upon the gang rape accusation at a University of Virginia fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, as published in Rolling Stone magazine. This resulted in the president of this university closing down all fraternities there until next Spring ... see: The Alpha of the Omega. Now we learn that this magazine's article, which never had checked with the fraternity in question, is beginning to unravel as many of its revelations are unable to be verified ... see: Enews Article.

This non-scandal is quite reminiscent of the Duke University lacrosse team scandal of a few years back which blew up in the faces of many of the professors and administration at this other "prestigious" southern university when lie after lie was exposed. We "broad-minded" liberal-educated erudites too often critique the Ferguson riots or the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as resulting from a mob mentality ... but somehow ignore this same mindless behavior in ourselves or in those in whom we have vested authority. Sometimes we form the firing squad well before even the trial is held.

It does seem that liberal pedagogues have a penchant to follow that age-old adage, "fire, ready, aim."

Afterward: See also John Hinderaker's article in The Powerline Blog.

Banalities

"Trust me, the President has a big stick. Trust me." quoteth Vice President Joseph Biden (see National Journal Clip)

Such base utterings coming from the Vice President of our once great nation seem almost unimaginable ... yet it has happened.  Has our country sunken so low that such snarky innuendos can be thought of as gaining any political foothold among voters?  Sadly, apparently so.  These things do not occur by accident.  They are not "slips of the tongue." Polling and focus groups have told Obama's green-eyeshade consultants that such phallic imagery will cause a certain defined segment of voters to feel a tingle go up their leg as they step into the voting booth this November.  And so, another decorum is abandoned.

We, as a people, have been so conditioned by a fire-hose media onslaught of sexual references and half-references to the point where a negative has become, for all too many, a positive.  Our popular culture is awash with such imagery:  "Desperate Housewives," Mr. Big in "Sex in the City," Abercrombie and Fitch's pornographic ads ... and on and on.  Even Al Gore's handlers, twelve years ago,  felt it appropriate to have his Rolling Stone magazine cover picture Photo-Shopped to augment his "package."  How low we have sunken ...

For those of you who have studied what happened to the Roman culture in its waning days, does this all seem so familiar?  Try imagining Caligula's visage superimposed into the National Journal clip referenced above.