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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Matt Taibbi

It seems he contradicts himself. He says journalism should aspire to impartial, bipartisan, and fact-orientated ideals, yet he made a huge name for himself doing the very opposite, like his highly viral article about Goldman Sachs role in the 2008 financial crisis, which was as much fact as it was editorializing. Same for that Trump book.

regarding Michelle Goldberg, covid, and the MSM, everyone was wrong. The MSM overestimated vaccine, lockdown, and mask efficacy . They overestimated the infection fatality rate. The finge-right was probably wrong about underestimating death toll. But probably many deaths were erroneously labeled as Covid deaths.

Gladwell is predictably bad in debate form, like his books.

I have found that it's not so much that the media is right or wrong, although it is wrong a lot, but it's like wrong through omission, not admission. There are always key details left out. Most media sucks, either mainstream or alternative. Alternative is better ,but not that much better. I think random blogs, anons on 4chan, and twitter accounts of people with few followers and no status/clout, are the most accurate. Mainstream and alternative media are both affected by the same clickbait incentives, just different biases. Non-profit media is bad, too, because it's also biased , even if not as click-baity.

Regarding Douglas Murray, the media dropped the shooting story in part because it was no longer in the news cycle. the media does this even when the perpetrator is white, like the 2017 las Vegas shooting, which also inexplicably vanished from the headlines despite being a much worse shooting and having far more unresolved elements, so it's not so much a race or identity issue. I think though the media is more likely to omit information if the perpetrator does not fit a convenient archetype or narrative. But a story is dropped when the key details are resolved, and or it stops being interesting, or it is replaced by the latest outrage or whatever is attention-grabbing at the moment. The Canadian trucker story also vanished equally abruptly. It's interesting how stories end so fast sometimes. but other times they drag on forever even though nothing has changed much, like Ukraine.

Gladwell makes a compelling case that old time media was right to exclude people like Gladwell! Kidding aside, there needs to be more to the argument than “diversity good.” Question is has diversity improved the media product.

Did Gladwell turn out to be the long lost father of Sean King and Rachel Dolezal? What exactly is Malcolm's claim to being "diverse"?

Apparently both of his grandparents on the mother's side were of partial black ancestry. This is also news to me.

So he's.....an octaroon? A quintroon?