Obama Alinsky Republicans

There's a lot to marvel at in today's Two Minute Hate from The Fox Nation, but let's start with the hed. Who's a noun, who's a verb and who's an adjective? Those pesky nouns can be pretty flexible:

• "Alinsky Republicans" could be a direct object; the NYT is helping some unnamed actor Obama them
• "Obama Alinsky" could be a noun pileup (like "George row doc") modifying Republicans, and the NYT is helping those Republicans
• "Alinsky" is the verb, and the Times is helping Obama to Alinsky some Republicans

If you've been keeping up with the Glenn Beck faction of the American right, you picked Door #3. Saul Alinsky's so well known* that he can be used as a verb (apparently meaning "to practice some concept that sounds like it ought to be in Rules for Radicals even if it isn't"). It's his tune that the Chicago thugs in the White House are playing as they march us toward the socialist abyss. Alinsky has reached the exalted level of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Planet Fox: He can illustrate a story even if he's never mentioned in it (or identified in the caption).

So what's going on with the story itself? Apparently malign L.A. Times dimbulb Andrew Malcolm picked up a story from the Daily Caller claiming that an NYT reporter had advised the White House media staff how to make its Twitter messages easier to follow. Malcolm at least follows up by acknowledging that there's a rather less dramatic side to "what's the hashtag you guys are urging people to use?" -- as in, maybe the reporter was asking for information. At Fox, it's too good to correct.

To paraphrase my favorite almost-certainly-apocryphal LBJ quote: Even if you can't come right out and say your enemy is pronging barnyard animals, you can always make him deny it.

* He gets around for having been dead nearly 40 years.

Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Leave the rooster, that's human interest! And thus do some stories (short answer: no, but thanks for asking) always find a home on the front page -- even, at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, when the existential peril to the country is reaching peak Kenyan.

Fantastical creatures, in all fairness, are sort of a hereditary ailment of American journalism. Today's Freep, at least, has the excuse of bordering the same lakes:

But the party press has a particular fixation on certain moral fables made incarnate in the supernatural. Take it away, The Washington Examiner!

When Ben Carson, in his speech at the Republican National Convention, drew attention to Hillary Clinton's tribute to the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909-72), no eyebrows ascended. But when Carson went on to invoke Alinsky's admiration of Lucifer, and tie Clinton to that community organizer, the guffaws began in earnest.

"So are we willing," Carson asked, "to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?"

Anyone who has actually read Alinsky, I believe, would have to take the question seriously. 

Well, to be fair -- I'm still waiting for reports from some of you -- so would anyone who has actually read Milton (see, e.g., Jagger & Richards, 1968). But it's somehow reassuring to see the old guy keeping such august company.

Stop press!

Yes, Virginia, there is a planet on which the fourth most important story in the history of the world in space is "notes between Clinton, lib activist Alinsky revealed":

Previously unpublished correspondence between Hillary Clinton and the late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky reveal new details about her relationship with the controversial Chicago activist and shed light on her early ideological development.

Fair 'n' Balanced cousins? Guys? Can I suggest that if you aren't already driven into paroxysms of rage at the mere sight of the secret, yellow and midnight hag, you're going to need more than a little light on her early ideological development to get there. Or maybe not.

Manly girls, girly men, made-up stories

Having watched the lie get halfway around the world, shall we see what happens when the truth puts on its pantsdress cover?

Things got worse for America, of course, before they got better. Here's the follow-up from the Friday predawn hours:

A retired female gunnery sergeant has blasted the Obama Administration’s plan to create a "unisex" look for the Marine Corps by swapping out the Marines' iconic hats with a new hat that some have derided as "girly" ...

Ready for the punch line?
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The black guy played golf in 2013 again!

You guys! Guess what party the McClatchy Washington Bureau is arriving late at:

WASHINGTON--On a windy winter day in 2013 at one of Florida’s top golf courses, President Obama and Tiger Woods played a friendly round together for the first time.

Some 44 months later, the president’s trip to Port St. Lucie, Florida, has been revealed: $3.6 million.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article111163862.html#storylink=cpy

Strictly speaking, no. As the fourth graf suggests, the trip was "revealed" in (ahem) 2013. (Fox, usually better at chronicling the usurper's hijinx, caught up the following day, though it had borrowed a precede from the Daily Caller earlier.) Perhaps we meant the cost had been revealed?

... The GAO report was requested by Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article111163862.html#storylink=cpy

That's a relief. I thought for a moment there it might be someone who didn't already have a Washington bureau to call their own. Anyway, now that McClatchy has awakened to the scope of the Kenyan menace, could we suggest some stories to catch up on?

Obama uses first-person pronouns!
Hillary wrote a paper about ALINSKY!!!!!
Obama wants the Marines to wear girly hats!
BENGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obama sat next to an Arab guy at dinner this one time!
Hillary is running for office, with politics!


Let me know if I can help.

* McClatchy could also take a note from the follow-up -- just like in the textbook, kids! -- pointing out that Obama didn't seem to have learned much.

Today in Kenyan Muslim perfidy

The world is gray, the mountains old, the forge's fire is OMG buy GOOOOOOLD and freeze-dried food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For the communists are coming to take away the last memories of the Reagan Age.

While we're waiting for the apocalypse, we might as well unpack a few things. We're looking not just at the aggregator version of the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, we're admiring the social media version of The Washington Times: "Washington Times Communities, social journalism from independent voices*." So let's see how close we can get to the top Fox Nation headline from the actual story at hand:

A new Cold War is brewing here in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and it has nothing to do with the frigid temperature.

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I couldn't either

News language is nothing if not imitative. Rather than looking up all that pesky grammar and style stuff, it's often easier to fall back on what the other guy is doing. If Drudge randomly drops pronouns and the heavens don't darken, might as well try it yourself -- particularly when the count is tight.

Now, what do you suppose made a rewrite of a local cut-n-paste from the real estate listings the fourth most super-important story of the afternoon? Well ... Chicago, gangsters -- maybe the commenters can tell us!

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Today at Vacation Bible School

What are those pesky Satanists up to now, The Washington Times?

Florida agreed Thursday to let the Satanic Temple put up a holiday display at the Capitol, effectively putting to end a First Amendment lawsuit being filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Women and children off the streets! What would the display have looked like?

The state had previously denied the satanists from building a display of an angel falling into the fires of Hell right next to a more Christian-themed one of a nativity scene. But the Americans United for Separation of Church and State — citing the Hobby Lobby case — said it would sue on behalf of the satanists, on the grounds that the state couldn’t constitutionally keep out a display it deemed “offensive.”

Maybe the writer meant "Christmas-themed*?" Because as Christian themes go, you'd have to say that angels falling into hell ranks right up there:

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
 
... And the deuil that deceiued them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night, for euer and euer.

It's kind of like Alinsky Fever -- you'd like to think the people who wave a book around and scream about the coming apocalypse would want to, you know, open the thing every now and then and see if the lyrics have changed.

(And no. You could say "denied their request to build" or "blocked them from building," but not "denied them from building.")

* A Little Drummer Boy falling into a lake of fire? Works for me.

Today in Kenyan Muslim perfidy

Is nothing safe from his marauding Alinskyite touch?

A change to the Marine Corps' uniform hats could leave hard-nosed Leathernecks looking a lot less macho.

According to the New York Post, President Obama's plan to create a "unisex" look for the Corps has officials on the verge of swapping out the Marines' iconic caps with a new hat that some have derided as so "girly" that they would make the French blush.

Well, iconic is as iconic does. As the Post reports (but Fox doesn't), the style you see at right in the illustration* is "based on a style the Marines used from 1904 to 1918"; it's apparently called a Dan Daly, after a Marine of that era whose insight on its alleged girliness might be welcome.**

Fashions change, of course, and this isn't the fashion section anyway. We do, though, maintain an active interest in the sort of question-begging that makes this "Obama's plan." Here's the Post:

A change to the Marine Corps’ uniform hats could take the hard-nosed Leathernecks from the Halls of Montezuma to the shops of Christopher Street.
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War on birds!

Not content with his War On Christmas and Stealth Assault On The Second Amendment, the feckless Kenyan Muslim socialist is going after the weakest and most defenseless among us -- our sparrows!

At least, that's how the War on Birds is reaching the public agenda over at The Fox Nation ("for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion"). Its source is the Washington Free Beacon ("dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day"):

Bird enthusiasts are calling on the Obama administration to cease its devastating war on birds and reverse an obscure mining rule killing possibly a million or more birds a year.

The soul of the inverted pyramid, right? Broad summary in the lede, followed by support below? Meaning the next things we should learn are which "bird enthusiasts" are involved, how their call is expressed, and how the "war on birds" belongs to the Obama administration. Keep your eye on the pivot foot as we move through the next few grafs:
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The face of Goldstein

Why do you suppose this might be Wednesday afternoon's No. 2 story at America's Leading Cable News Network? One hates to be in the habit of quoting Orwell too often, but ... how does the Two Minutes Hate start off again?

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen.

If you wonder why people in your work unit don't throw things at the telescreen when Soros (or Alinsky, or Blumenthal, or Gruber) comes on, you're not looking in the right direction:

Billionaire George Soros gave $246 million to groups behind Wednesday's "Day Without a Woman" protest, according to a report by a conservative think tank.

Wednesday is "International Women's Day," and schools in at least four states canceled classes so teachers and staff members could participate in "Day Without a Woman" demonstrations.

While movement organizers say the demonstration is meant to spotlight gender inequality, critics say it is intended to protest President Donald Trump. The strike was created by the same organizers of the historic Women’s March on Washington in January, which drew hundreds of thousands in protest of the president.
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Ground control to Maj. Alinsky

It's time for another visit to The Fox Nation, that happy outpost where Fox readers can go when the mothership is bending over a little too far backward to accommodate the scary Kenyan Muslim socialist in the White House. Headlines mandatory; facts optional.

Hed writing, as you've probably gathered by now, is a pretty patterned sport. There are rules about how things are named, which verbs can be elided, whether corners can be cut, and where in the article the headline should come from. If you're new to the game, the answer to the last one is "really, really high." Here's the text:

In early November, NASA will seek applicants for its next class of astronaut candidates, hoping to bolster its reserves of brave spacemen -- in the face of a National Research Council report that warned the corps was getting too small.
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Now that's just making stuff up

The Fair 'n' Balanced Network stands apart from its more enthusiastic right-wing stablemates in one important way: When the fiction referee is looking, it almost always has its pivot foot down. No matter how stacked the deck or bizarre the proposition, there's usually a source or a reference somewhere in a Fox story that makes the headline at least technically not-false.* When Fox tells you that "critics question" some action or inaction of the Kenyan Muslim usurper, the critics might be paid Fox contributors, but they are critics, and they are questioning, and there you are.

Here, though, Fox is just out-and-out lying. No, homework hasn't been canceled on Wiccan and Pagan holidays.** That's partly because it hasn't been canceled on any other holidays either, but it's mostly because Fox is simply  -- well, you know, making stuff up.

Students at University of Missouri don't need to cram for exams that fall on Wiccan and Pagan holidays, now that the school has put them on par with Christmas, Thanksgiving and Hanukah.
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The endless capacity for self-delusion

You'd think we would have learned in the 2012 election -- or, you know, maybe back when Iraq invaded Kuwait -- that the one thing the courtier press can't afford to do is give bad information to the party. When that happens, we get a condition called "bounded rationality": leaders make decisions that appear perfectly rational, as long as nobody minds that the information they're based on is clueless. And in that light, Bill Kristol is hard to distinguish from the advisers who told Saddam Hussein that invading Kuwait would be a nearly consequence-free way of settling his lingering interstate disputes over slant-drilling and those pesky loans from the earlier war:

The new Quinnipiac poll of the New Jersey Senate contest shows Jeff Bell only 11 points down to Cory Booker, 51 to 40 percent, among likely voters. It goes without saying that a race can move a dozen points in the final five weeks of a campaign—especially when a little known challenger (but one who's well-regarded by those who do know of him) is taking on a pro-Obama incumbent who's barely above 50 percent in an anti-Obama, anti-incumbent year.

... But take a further look at the poll results. Booker leads Bell, 51-40. Seventy-six percent of Booker supporters and 84 percent of Bell supporters say their mind is made up. Do the math. Among those whose mind is made up, Booker leads Bell 39 to 34 percent.

So Booker's hard lead over Bell is a mere 5 points.

"Hard lead" is kind of a novel statistical concept, so maybe it's rude to point out that with a +/- 3-point maximum margin of sampling error* (at 95% confidence for the full sample of 1,058), this one's also pretty close to the traditional standard of statistical significance. But by all means continue:

He'll outspend Bell over the next month. But money can't buy you love. Sometimes, it can't even buy you votes. If New Jersey flips in November, we'll remember this Quinnipiac poll as Jeff Bell's fire bell in the night.

Or not. Two more recent polls (CBS/NYT, in the field Sept. 20-Oct. 1 with 2,011 likely voters, and Monmouth, in the field Oct. 2-5 with 477 likely voters) give Booker even larger leads. Without Quinnipiac's "is your mind made up, or do you think you might change your mind before the election?" question, we can't calculate "hard support" in those polls, but let's follow Kristol's suggestion and take a "deeper look" at the Quinnipiac results anyway. Since we're all making up our own stats, we can test the Uppity Black Guy Factor: How is support for one smooth-talking black dude related to opposition to another smooth-talking black dude?

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