It was the weekly ritual.
You go to church on Sunday and you’re nice and wholesome.
Then you rushed home to watch All-Star Wrestling — sanctioned by the AWA. The American Wrestling Association.
You then sat at the edge of your chair screaming as Milwaukee’s favorite son, the one, the only, The Crusher delivered eye gouges, rammed heads together and beat those bad guys from pillar to post.
As Crusher Fest approaches, lets take a trip down Memory Lane and review exactly why this cigar-chomping grappler deserves a statue as well as a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame.
The interviews: You have to admire a gravel-voiced guy who had the vision and courage to make “Turkey neck” part of his everyday vocabulary. Every now and then, he’d blurt out “I’m gonna murder dat bum!” Obnoxious manager Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, who had a habit of interfering in matches, was always referred to as “The Weasel.” And rightfully so.
The training: The Crusher often said that he got in shape by running along the lakefront while carrying a large full beer barrel over either shoulder. And then he’d dance polkas with the dollies all night long. If athletes in other sports used this training regimen, nobody would go on the injured list.
The rivalry: Forget Packers-Bears. If you wanted intensity, The Crusher against Mad Dog Vachon was it. Talk about your action. As the legendary Marty O’Neal used to say, “Fans, this is one you won’t want to miss.”
The gimmick matches: You can’t be a beer guzzler and not challenge guys to a Saloon Match. The Crusher took on a young Dusty Rhodes in this match where wrestlers were stationed outside the ring to throw the participants back in after they flew out or tried to run away. A few times, The Crusher teamed up with his “cousin” Dick The Bruiser and vertically-challenged wrestler The Little Bruiser against Lanza, Mulligan and Heenan. Somehow Bobby The Brain did not game plan for The Little Bruiser.
Acting ability: The Crusher appeared in the star-studded 1974 motion picture “The Wrestler” with such acting luminaries as Ed Asner, The Bruiser, British Empire champion Billy Robinson, Verne Gagne, Ray “The Crippler” Stevens, Harold Sakata as Odd Job and Roger Kent at ringside. The unthinkable happened afterward. This movie was snubbed by dem bums at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He also starred in a Byron’s Tires commercial where he folded a casing in half and yelled “Don’t be a turkey neck! Get your tires from Byron’s!” You know, being a turkey neck was worse than being a nerd.
The music: The Crusher once served as a conductor for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In a perfect world, the song would have been “Beer Barrel Polka.” As a side note, you never saw Leonard Bernstein in a steel cage. Also, the Novas paid tribute to the wrestler who made Milwaukee famous by releasing a rock and roll song about him. It climbed to No. 88 on the Billboard chart. Maybe The Crusher should have bolo punched it higher. A lot of guys, not wanting to be turkey necks, learned the words and sang it in the shower to impress their significant others.
Category: media
-
No comments on Da Crusher
-
A whole lot of journalists are lazy progressive hipsters who hang out around the same people who think the same things and are, as a result, easily manipulated and played. Also, many of them are so liberal and have so many biases that it makes it even easier for progressives to spoon feed stories to journalists.
With some solid exceptions, an unfortunate number of journalists at most news organizations will gladly and repeatedly take pre-packaged stories from progressive interest groups and turn them into big stories. It’s why the New York Times ran those stupid stories about Marco Rubio’s tickets in 2016. It is why much of the national press is breathlessly reporting that Netflix is threatening to leave Georgia over its fetal heartbeat law. There’s just one problem — Netflix made no such threat.
This is all pre-packaged PR by a progressive PR firm and reporters, already more likely than not to be biased in favor of abortion rights, are falling all over themselves to report it.
What did Netflix actually say? Netflix said it’d donate to the ACLU to fight the law and maybe, possibly if the law is declared constitutional it might then consider reconsidering its business in Georgia.
Netflix is not going anywhere. Frankly, Netflix cannot afford to move production to higher cost states. It has Disney about to fire up a Netflix killer, it has exorbitant costs, and it has zero intellectual property to leverage against King Rat once it is up and running. It has to save money with Georgia’s lucrative tax credits.
The Netflix story is as badly reported as the others.
The media reported that Reed Morano pulled out of Georgia over the fetal heartbeat law, but that’s not really true. Morano was going to go scout out Georgia, but had not committed to any locations in Georgia or any other state for that matter. Georgia did not lose the business. No one had the business to begin with.
Likewise, CNN and other outlets reported that Kristen Wiig was scrapping a Georgia shoot, but there was no shooting in Georgia. It’s a story about a vacation in Florida that was never going to be filmed in Georgia anyway. It only got off the ground last month.
The media has breathlessly reported all these stories, but gotten every one of them wrong. Netflix is not leaving Georgia. The other two were not even committed to or planning on being in Georgia.
A progressive PR firm was able to get sympathetic progressives in Hollywood to saber rattle, knowing they could spin sympathetic reporters and it turns out they were right.
They will keep dripping these stories out in the run up to the 2020 election in Georgia. We will next hear about Disney pulling a Netflix. Then there’ll be other studios. Other actors with no projects in Georgia will say they canceled a project because it was going to be filmed in Georgia. Details will be nebulous.
This is all part of the playbook and at this point it is hard to conclude anything except the media is being willfully complicit in all of this.
Of course, there’s going to be another progressive outrage at some point and all the studios will start virtue signaling on those instead and everyone will forget about Georgia.
-
A Facebook Friend pointed out that the owner of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Lee Enterprises, is looking for …
Reporter – State Government
The Wisconsin State Journal, south-central Wisconsin’s leading news source, is seeking a smart and aggressive reporter to join its state government reporting team.
This is both the opportunity you’ve been looking for and the hardest job you’ll ever love. As one of two Capitol reporters, you’ll be expected to produce high-impact enterprise and watchdog stories amid the daily demands of reporting from a supercharged partisan environment. Coverage areas include all three branches of state government, politics and elections in a vibrant and constantly evolving political culture that is often in the national spotlight.
Experience in accountability reporting, aggressive use of public records laws, facility with data and an ability to develop sources and establish trust and credibility on both sides of the aisle is required. This position also demands an ability to report in real time for our online platforms and via social media, and an aptitude or desire to shoot video. At least five years of daily newspaper reporting experience is preferred. Past political coverage is desired, but a can-do attitude and demonstrated work ethic matter more.
To be considered for the position applicants must apply online at www.Madison.com/workhere by June 10, 2019. Please include a cover letter and five samples of your work or links to five recent stories.
Capital Newspapers offers:
- Competitive compensation
- Great benefits package including medical, dental, vision, and life, insurances; matching 401k plan; paid maternity and paternity leaves; and regular paid time off
- Culture of teamwork, professional work environment, and a focus on growth opportunities
- Free print subscription to the Wisconsin State Journal and free digital subscription to Madison.com for all employees
Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer:
The Capital Newspapers organization is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to maintaining a workforce that accurately reflects our audience and expands our voice.Pre-employment background and drug screenings apply.
Once upon a time — say, 20 to 25 years ago — I would have jumped at this. Not anymore, and for several reasons, the least of which is that according to their requirements I’m not qualified, since my 7.5 months of (very strange) experience at a daily newspaper is short of their five years requirement. The idea that weekly reporters are unfamiliar with deadlines is ridiculous. I have written more stories the day of production at the various places I’ve worked because the news came up just that day. Anyone who has done web content that has to be done right now is not unfamiliar with daily deadlines. I’m probably more qualified than some daily reporters on that point.
The State Journal is, remember, the newspaper I started reading, according to my parents, when I was 2 years old. (I bet nobody on the WSJ staff can say that.) I’ve been in the State Journal a few times, including two city spelling bee wins and therefore two state spelling bee appearances.
Wisconsin State Journal, May 1, 1977. That’s the look on my face when a few wild guesses got me a city spelling bee title. 
Eight years later I woke up one August Sunday morning and grabbed the State Journal to find out, to my surprise, I was pictured on the front page, because I sat next to a fellow UW Band member who had a Packers helmet-shaped umbrella, and the band had played at the previous day’s Packer preseason game. (A 33–0 loss to Washington, which was on its way to winning that season’s Super Bowl.)
Washington 33, Packers 0, which explains my disgusted look below the helmet umbrella. Note that this 1987 photo was taken by the same photographer who took my photo in 1977. I also contributed to the State Journal’s state basketball tournament 100th-anniversary special section, giving an abridged version of my high school’s 1982 state champion team.
I am well qualified other than that five-year thing. I majored in journalism and political science, I’ve interviewed every governor since Tony Earl and more state legislators than I can count. I can count as one of my career highlights telling a Catholic bishop that he can’t throw out a reporter in a public building. (Similar to what I told a school board president less than a year into this silly line of work.) And to fit in this 21st-century media age of ours, I can be a political pundit, on radio and TV, literally worldwide.
Wisconsin is a fascinating state politically speaking, though less so than it used to be, given that both parties have purged themselves of their more moderate elements. (Time was when the GOP had remnants of the old Progressive Party as late as the 1980s, and I recall a state representative, a Democrat, who Republicans told me was more conservative than some Republicans.) This is, after all, the same state that brought the nation Fighting Bob La Follette and Joe McCarthy. (Who defeated Fighting Bob’s son in a U.S. Senate GOP primary.)
So why am I not applying? First, with 31 years of doing this (including this blog and its predecessor opinion blog), I am now more used to telling people what to do than being told what to do. (Though at present I don’t really have anyone to tell what to do in the day job.) I tell people I hate politicians, including the ones I vote for. “Hate” is sometimes a strong word, but I certainly assume they’re all in it for their own political power and are therefore not averse to not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (As for their sycophants and other supporters, I believe you are what you believe in.)
The State Journal has been, based on the reports of others, bled considerably by its owner because of its owner’s poor newspaper purchase decisions. Daily newspapers are as a whole doing worse than weeklies, comparatively speaking.
I am also really, really tired of the political bullshit, basically at every level of government. (A political reporter who hates politics? A government reporter who increasingly hates government?) I would say that Republicans are often wrong, but Democrats are nearly always wrong, and that “wrong” thing applies to nonpartisan politicians too. Beyond party and ideology, political reporters spend far too much time covering the horse race and stories of zero importance to real people (which I tried to point out, not always successfully, in my radio pundit days), and infinitely too much time copying and pasting the news releases that come into their mailboxes from politicians, would-be politicians and their supporters and opponents, and too little time answering the question that has been posted on top of my monitor for more than two decades: What does this story mean to the reader? That is particularly an important question to answer for political crap.
If the State Journal wanted some street cred with the political right of Wisconsin (who are more likely newspaper readers and subscribers than those on the left side), they would hire someone like me, but they won’t. Those who know my conservatarian bent who lack that in Madison would probably refuse to talk to me or call me rude names. (Of course, I could write a story about that.) It would be fun to, as I’ve been known to do at political meetings, sit in the audience at a meeting and glower at the participants. I bet Tony Evers would really, really love me.
And yet, the odious phrase “the personal is political” should be erased from our collective consciousness because it should not apply. The State Journal is looking for a reporter and not a columnist to tell the Madison lefties (who are presumably their readers) what a bunch of self-centered idiots they are. (Arguably repeatedly telling your readership they’re wrong is a subpar way to boost your business, particularly in this era in which the only acceptable views are views that agree with yours.) I believe that neither Wisconsin nor Madison is the center of the universe, and while visiting my hometown is sometimes fun, the vast majority of Madison’s people are not people I would choose to associate with, let alone have as neighbors. (As if anyone can afford Madison house prices.) I also suspect I’d have to give up my side sports broadcasting thing, which is more fun than my day job.
Being hated by various State Capitol types would be fun, or would have been fun, but that was then, and I prefer living with real people, not in the People’s Republic of Madison.
-
This is one of those one-word games.
If you’re too impatient to watch or listen to the whole thing …
-
Today would have been the 100th birthday of a sports announcer you may not have heard of recently, but could be heard all over your TV — Lindsey Nelson, as chronicled by David J. Halberstam:
Beginning in the 1950s, Nelson graced play-by-play television and radio microphones nationally and locally for four decades. He is one of only four men to receive the Pro Football Hall of Fame‘s Rozelle and Baseball Hall’s Ford Frick Awards, (Curt Gowdy, Jack Buck and Dick Enberg).
In New York, Lindsey will always be remembered as one of the three initial voices of the Mets. In the rest of the country, Nelson was known for his football broadcasts. He did tons on network television and radio, and was used often by NBC and CBS on both the NFL and college football.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMWtU1LTWhQ
From 1962-78, 17 Mets seasons, Nelson was joined on both radio and television by Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner. They were a beloved threesome. Nelson said, “We never had a cross word.” The Mets broadcasts were structured and predictable. Kiner clutched his cigar, Murphy his cigarette and Nelson his inanimate object, generally a pencil. Each called their innings with a seductive charm.
During their early overlapping years in the Yankees booth, Red Barber pontificated, Mel Allen emoted happily, Phil Rizzuto brought a neighborly warmth and Joe Garagiola blamed the Yankees demise on “termites in the bat rack.” Nelson said, “We didn’t have to be funny. Our jokes were down on the field.” The Mets were notorious for futility until the late 60s.
The Mets trio out-survived eight managers from Casey Stengel who rings a bell with everyone to baseball’s Joe Frazier who rings a bell with no one.
While Nelson was excellent on radio, his strength was television. Lindsey said, “On television, you simply write cutlines for the pictures. On radio, you paint the whole canvas with words, pace and information.”
On television, the Mets were an immediate hit. When Lindsey learned that the Mets were planning to carry 120 of their 162 games on the tube their first year, Nelson took advantage of the growing number of color television sets. He started wearing garish and lurid sports jackets that he bought off the rack. It drew attention away from the staid air crew at Yankee Stadium. You’d mention Nelson and many would say, ‘Oh, the guy with those loud jackets.’
When Lindsey was honored with the Frick Award, the Hall’s spokesperson Bill Guilfoile aptly said of the jackets, “They clashed with his soft southern drawl.”
Nelson said that the two New York baseball teams “were a clash of competing cultures. The Yankees represented dignified efficiency and the Mets represented futility but were unwilling to recognize and admit it.”
When Nelson was a Mets announcer, NBC-TV’s World Series coverage always included an announcer from the participating teams. And so when the Mets inexplicably won the 1969 World Series and got to the 1973 World Series …
Like other human beings, Nelson dealt with family issues. His older daughter, Sharon, was born retarded. His beloved wife Mickie died suddenly while on vacation in Spain. His longtime Mets statistician Art Friedman said, “Lindsey couldn’t handle booze. He had been on the wagon for twenty years. But when Mickie died, he was off the wagon for a while. One drink and he was out”
Nelson was very private. Kiner said, “As friendly as we were, I never felt I really knew him.”
After the 1978 season, Nelson left the Mets unexpectedly and joined the Giants broadcasts where he followed legendary announcers like Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons and Al Michaels. After three short seasons in San Francisco, he told a writer, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.” He was gone. It was the last baseball he did.
Longtime Notre Dame fans remember the years when live college football on network television was limited. So on Saturday nights, Fighting Irish games were shown in a recorded, condensed version of one hour. Lindsey voiced them and is often heard saying, “As we pick up the action later in the quarter…”
Nelson passed at age 76 in 1995, after suffering for years from Parkinson’s. Like many other early network television sportscasters, Lindsey was a member of Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation. He grew up during the depression and served the country in the European theater during World War II in a correspondent’s and communication role. He was always fascinated by the military. In his seasons doing the Mets, he was known to often have a military related book with him on airplanes and bus trips.
In one of the great coincidences in sports broadcasting history, Nelson and legendary announcer Jack Buck were both injured in the Battle of the Bulge.
Nelson was born and reared in Columbia, Tennessee and was hardly a child of the privileged. His dad was a traveling salesperson and Lindsey’s mom was in his words, “the greatest influence on me.”
As a student at the University of Tennessee, he “devoted every waking moment to thoughts of the Vol fortunes on the gridiron.” He tutored athletes in freshman English, spotted for the radio announcer and was a stringer for newspapers. In other words, he got hands-on experience early.
When the Vols advanced to the 1940 Rose Bowl, Nelson, a student at the time, traveled to Pasadena and served as a spotter for NBC Radio’s Bill Stern. Ted Husing and Stern were then America’s top two sports announcers. In his early years on-air, Nelson considered himself a protégé of Stern. Their play-by-play styles were somewhat similar. Both were upbeat, called games enthusiastically and did so with a sense of urgency.
Nelson was chosen to be a spotter for the former football game between the reigning NFL champion and the College All-Stars at Soldier Field in Chicago. He was going to be paid $5, back in the days when $5 was pretty good money. So he rode the bus from Tennessee to Chicago, where upon arrival at the All-Stars camp he found out that the broadcast had been canceled because NBC decided to carry a speech by Vice President Henry Wallace. So Nelson was in Chicago with all of 50 cents. His choices with 50 cents were lodging or food, so he bought a copy of the Chicago Tribune “because it was the thickest paper in town,” found a spot in Grant Park that night, laid ou the paper on the grass and slept there that night, bought breakfast the next morning and then hitchhiked to Tennessee. The fact I once slept on the floor of a hotel room covering a state baseball championship pales in comparison to that.After the war, Lindsey returned to Knoxville where he broadcast minor league baseball and University of Tennessee football games. In 1950, for that matter, Nelson met Vin Scully who was in Knoxville to cover the Alabama-Tennessee game for CBS Radio. Scully had begun doing the Dodgers the summer before. Lindsey was also an announcer for the Liberty Network which recreated baseball games. In one thirty-day span, he recreated 62 games. It’s nice to be young!
A big break came in the early 50s, when he was hired by Tom Gallery who was the first ever administrative director of NBC Sports. In a hybrid role, Lindsey did lots of supervisory work for Gallery, called college football games and beginning in 1957 teamed with Leo Durocher on NBC’s Game of the Week. He also was the play-by-play announcer for the network’s NBA broadcasts.
Nelson went through mostly ups in his career and a few downs. On network TV, he did Cotton Bowls year after year, the Rose Bowl and two World Series when the Mets qualified, in 1969 and ‘73.
Here is a down:
In his wonderfully written autobiography, Hello Everybody, I’m Lindsey Nelson, he writes “Networks have a unique way of dealing with situations in which they have people that they have decided for some reason or other not to use. The weapon is silence. You just don’t hear from anybody.”
Bob Costas labeled Nelson, “a cheerful chronicler.” One of Nelson’s later assignment was doing the NFL on CBS Radio. Lindsey would always paint an environment of infectious enthusiasm. Fans got a sense that he’d rather be nowhere else other than the ballpark. I can recall a game he did from old Candlestick when the Niners were dominating the NFL. Lindsey: “Wherever you went around San Francisco this morning, the subject of conversation was this 49ers team. Whether it was the hostess turning over the tables at a restaurant, the cab driver or the doorman, they all wanted to talk about Joe Montana and today’s big game.”
He never changed. Early in his career as he was just beginning to surface on the national scene, Variety wrote, “Lindsey Nelson has been touted for many years as one of the tip-top grid casters. Precise, methodical and efficient, he may not have the color of Bill Stern, the heartiness of Mel Allen, the analytic powers of Red Barber or the glamour of Ted Husing, but as an information purveyor who’s right on top of the play, he’s almost prescient, the peer of any and the superior of many.”
As time evolved, Nelson developed his own friendly personality on-air and was loved by many throughout the country.
The baseball stadium at the University of Tennessee is named in Lindsey Nelson’s honor.
Packer fans of, uh, long experience are familiar with Nelson’s work:
-
“I’m not going to let them bully me out of reporting,” said Tim Pool after recording an Antifa protest where angry activists cursed at him. There might have been violence, but Antifa’s “de-escalation team” protected him, he says.
That surprised me. “Antifa has a de-escalation team?” I ask Pool in my latest internet video.
“They have people who try and make sure nobody from their side starts it—because cameras are rolling,” he answered.
Pool is part of the new media that now cover stories the mainstream media often miss.
I’ve become part of that new media, too. I still work at Fox, but now most of my video views (117 million plus) come from short videos I post on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Pool considers himself a man of the left. He supported Bernie Sanders and once worked for Vice. But now he often finds himself criticizing his fellow leftists.
“This really strange faction of people on the left are saying ridiculous things,” he says. “They’re helping Donald Trump.”
Trump probably does gain support when people watch street protests turn violent.
“Look at this protest in Portland,” recounts Pool. “A Bernie Sanders supporter showed up with an American flag—to protest fascists. What did Antifa do? Crack him over the head with a club.”
Pool won new followers with his coverage of the Washington, D.C., conflict between a Native American protestor and Covington, Kentucky, high school teens wearing Trump hats, including one who looked like he was smirking.
“All these big news outlets, even The Washington Post, CNN, they immediately made the assumption ‘He must be a racist sneering at this Native American man’,” says Pool. “I didn’t make that assumption…. I just see a guy banging a drum and a kid with a weird look on his face.”
Pool and Reason‘s Robby Soave were the rare journalists who bothered to examine more of the videos.
“The initial narrative that we heard from the activists was that this kid got in this man’s face…. It’s actually the other way around,” Pool said. “No one else watched the video.”
No one? Major news outlets said the student was racist without ever examining the full video?
“Here’s what happens,” Pool explains. “One left-wing journalist says, ‘Look at this racist!’ His buddy sees it and says, ‘Wow, look at this racist.’ And that’s a big ol’ circular game of telephone where no one actually does any fact-checking. Then The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN all publish the same fake story.”
Although Pool made those big-name outlets look like irresponsible amateurs, he doesn’t have a journalism degree. In fact, he didn’t even finish high school. He dropped out of school and just started videotaping what interested him, funding his videos with ads and donations from viewers.
“I want to know why things are happening. Some people don’t trust the media. I don’t know who to believe. Why don’t I just go there and see for myself?”
That’s brought him more than a million internet subscribers.
It’s also made him an advocate for free speech.
“When I was growing up, it was the religious conservatives that had the moral panic about music and swear words. But today the moral panic is coming from the left. Today, the left shows up with torches and burns free speech signs.”
I’m glad there are young journalists like Pool, who still value open debate.
Actually, we have lots of new media options today.
Joe Rogan’s podcast covers viewpoints from all sides. He has won a huge audience.
Dave Rubin reports on YouTube from a classical liberal perspective.
Naomi Brockwell covers how tech is changing the world.
On the right, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, and Candace Owens irreverently critique my New York City neighbors’ sacred cows.
On the left, Sam Harris has attracted a big podcast following by discussing all kinds of ideas, and Jimmy Dore takes a principled left-wing stand.
I don’t agree with all those new media people. I very much disagree with some of them. But I’m glad they are out there, giving us more choice.
I guess the multiple Steves fit in this category. This blog is separate from my day job as editor of one of the nation’s finest weekly newspapers. Then there’s sports broadcasting Steve (though there is some overlap).
The difference is that I have a journalism degree, which taught me various journalism skills (asking the five Ws and one H and the inverted-pyramid) and knowledge such as libel and slander law. There’s only so much you learn in school, though, and my working at a weekly newspaper for three years in college taught me real-world journalism. Journalism is like most lines of work in that you get better at it by doing it.
On the one hand, most of those listed by Stossel don’t have that real-world experience, which might make their work suspect. (Change that to “will make their work suspect” to those in the media.) On the other hand, in the information market obviously they’re filling niches that the mainstream media isn’t filling. If the mainstream media were more serious about their work, they might ask why that is and do something about it.
-
The Milwaukee Bucks lost game one of their NBA Eastern Conference semifinal.
And that was the highlight for both the Boston Celtics and their former player-turned-commentator Paul Pierce.
First, the Celtics, reported by the Boston Globe:
The Celtics’ locker room was as quiet and sullen as it had been all year. Players dressed quietly at their stalls, or soaked their sore legs in ice buckets, or scrolled through their phones.
But none of the players talked to each other. They didn’t mention Giannis Antetokounmpo. They didn’t think about their missed opportunities. They didn’t talk about what comes next.
About seven months ago, they’d started on a journey that they believed would lead them to the NBA Finals. And if some bounces went their way and some young players continued to rise, maybe they would even win it.
No one envisioned an end like this, with the Bucks crushing them so thoroughly in Game 5 of the conference semifinals, 116-91, on Wednesday night that the Milwaukee fans were able to spend the better part of the fourth quarter reveling and partying while the most important players on both teams just watched from the bench.
-
One of the two Car Chase Wonderland YouTube channels recently posted tributes to movies with car chases featuring Ford Mustangs …
… and Dodge Charger …
… both of which were featured in the greatest car chase of all time:
My exhaustive coverage of Corvettes on this blog has included the lamentation of the lack of great movies and TV shows that feature Corvettes as central to the setting.
Someone then reminded me of this movie:
It turns out Car Chase Wonderland also has footage of other Corvette chases …
… though the extent to which any of these Corvettes are central to the movie, except for the abominable “Corvette Summer,” is debatable.
-
First, a commercial: Some of the readers of this blog get blog links from Facebook. Some get blog links from Twitter. Some get it via email. Some have it bookmarked on their favorite browser.
Why should you sign up for email delivery? Because that way you won’t have to run the risk of not being able to read it in what some claim is a purge of conservatives from social media.
First, Robby Soave:
Last week, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism and research organization, published a list of 500 unreliable new websites. But the list, which included many conservative news and think tank websites, was itself unreliable, and Poynter has since retracted it.
“Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites, and the exclusion of others,” explained Poynter editor Barbara Allen in a statement. “We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology. We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report.”
How exactly the list found its way onto the Poynter website in the first place is a bit of a mystery. Poynter confirmed that its author, Barrett Golding, is a freelancer rather than an employee, but did not answer other questions about the process of greenlighting this project.
Golding’s LinkedIn account lists him as a freelance podcast producer for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC did not respond to my questions about whether other SPLC staff had any influence or involvement over the list. Golding did not immediately respond to my request for comment, either. According to his Twitter feed, he works with the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” project. He was formerly a research fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and a producer for NPR.
It’s worth trying to understand these connections because Poynter’s retracted list of news sites list was shoddy and overly broad in a manner reminiscent of the SPLC’s own work on tracking hate groups. As I explained in a recent piece for Reason detailing the group’s personnel issues, the SPLC tallies hate groups in a manner that suggests hate is always rising, even if it’s not:
According to the SPLC’s hate map, there were more than 1,000 hate groups in the U.S. in 2018—nearly twice as many as existed in 2000. The number has increased every year since 2014.
The map is littered with dots that provide more information on each specific group, and this is where the SPLC gives away the game. Consider a random state—Oklahoma, for example, is home to nine distinct hate groups, by the SPLC’s count. Five of them, though, are black nationalist groups: the Nation of Islam, Israel United in Christ, etc. The SPLC counts each chapter of these groups separately, so the Nation of Islam counts as two separate hate groups within Oklahoma (its various chapters in other states are also tallied separately). The map makes no attempt to contextualize all of this—no information is given on the relative size or influence of each group.
Additionally, the SPLC takes a very broad view of what constitutes hate: It considers the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group that defends religious liberty, as an extremist organization. It claims that American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray is a white nationalist.
The Poynter list made similar errors. It included InfoWars (a literal conspiracy site) but also conservative new websites like The Washington Examiner, National Review, and The Washington Free Beacon. These sites get things wrong from to time, but so do mainstream and left-of-center news sources. (Indeed, this entire episode is a prominent example of a mainstream source making a mistake.) But those publications are not misleading in the same sense that Alex Jones is misleading.
Poynter has done some good work in the past. Moving forward, it should be more careful about outsourcing its fact-checking to people who work for the SPLC.
Dan O’Donnell posted this last week:
Wisconsin Conservative Union, a popular Facebook group for conservatives in the state, was apparently taken offline during Facebook’s targeting of offensive personalities and fan pages Thursday.
“I was surprised by this,” said Wisconsin Conservative Union administrator Bob Dohnal, who said on The Dan O’Donnell Show that a friend called him Thursday night to let him know that his page had vanished. “It’s about 2,000 of the conservative leaders around this state. Nobody is talking about revolution or anything like that. It’s just been a place where everybody can exchange ideas and talk about candidacies and stuff.”
Dohnal added that he never received any warnings about any of the group’s posts or any notice that it had violated Facebook standards. He isn’t even sure if the group has been suspended or permanently removed from Facebook. He merely logged on and found it was gone.
On Thursday, Facebook permanently banned a number of fringe right-wing figures, including Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen in addition to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Dohnal doesn’t know why (or even if) his group was lumped in with and removed alongside them.
“There’s never been anything [posted] against gays or anyone of any race or sex or anything like that,” he said. “If there were, I would take them off right away.”
As of the publication of this article, Dohnal was trying to contact Facebook to determine why Wisconsin Conservative Union was pulled.
As of Wednesday, however, the site is back on Facebook.
What about Twitter? Michael Van Der Galien reports:
Last weekend, conservatives discovered that both Twitter and Facebook had launched a grand purge of nationalist-populist (as they prefer to call themselves) users. Alex Jones, Milo, Paul Joseph Watson, Tommy Robinson, and Laura Loomer were all targeted, albeit not all by the same social media at the same time. The bans and suspensions inspired Human Events editor Raheem Kassam to predict that there were more waves to come:
Wave 1: Jones, Loomer, Milo, Watson, Robinson.
2: Posobiec, Kassam, Cernovich, Chamberlain, Draino, Fleccas.
3: Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Levin, Shapiro, Beck.
4: McConnell, McCarthy, Paul, Don Jr.
5: Trump.
This is Big Tech’s plan to kill conservatism of all stripes.
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) May 4, 2019
This prediction is right on the money: Monday night, several other rightwing accounts were banned. Among them a parody account of Alexandra Occasio-Cortez, Jewish conservative @OfficeOfMike, and even the @MAGAphobia account whose admin was Jack Posobiec (the same Jack Posobiec mentioned by Kassam in his tweet about who’d be targeted next).
I started @Magaphobia as an acct to track violence against Trump supporters all in one place
Today Twitter banned it pic.twitter.com/lencaWfWR9
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 7, 2019
In its explanation of the ban on the AOC parody account, Twitter pretended that it wasn’t made clear in the user’s name and bio that it was indeed parody. However, that’s not true at all:
So @twitter has today suspended @AOCPress, which had “parody” in both its name AND its bio. Yet they claim to allow parody in the suspension email itself. Hey @realdonaldtrump your followers are now being mass culled ahead of the election. #meddlingpic.twitter.com/XguTnO28jP
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) May 7, 2019
Conservative Millennial writer Courtney Holland adds:
.@OfficeOfMike has confirmed to me that he has been PERMANENTLY suspended from Twitter.
He also ran the @AOCpress account which is also permanently suspended.
Twitter claims he violated the rules with creating @AOCpress even though it clearly stated it was a parody account pic.twitter.com/ecMopPfE4w
— Courtney Holland 🇺🇸 (@hollandcourtney) May 7, 2019
As former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani rightfully puts it, these purges are nothing less than censorship.
‘AOC Press’ Parody Killed in Latest Big Tech Election Interference. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FREE SPEECH? THIS IS CENSORSHIP! https://t.co/eTQREYKw6j
— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) May 7, 2019
It’s clear: liberal Silicon Valley has picked a side with regards to the upcoming 2020 elections. All those who dare disagree are at risk of losing their accounts and therefore their audience.
This issue is, to use a word I hate, problematic. To no one’s surprise, Facebook is trying to have this both ways, as Jane Coaston reports:
For years, social media giants tried to avoid the question altogether, recognizing that under American law, digital platforms have unique protections that guard against lawsuits aimed at the content posted on those platforms. But users complained about extremism and misinformation weaponized on Facebook and elsewhere, putting Facebook, Twitter, and other tech companies under immense pressure to increase moderation and close the accounts of bad actors — the same way a publisher might reject an article or a writer.
In doing so, they’ve gotten sucked into the political fray they wanted to avoid. Conservatives, pointing out that Facebook and Twitter are self-described platforms, are arguing that banning some users while permitting others based on a “vague and malleable” rubric is infringing on free expression on sites that they view as more like a town square where all voices should be heard. …
Infowars is a publisher. Alex Jones, who has been the publisher and director of Infowars since its launch in 1999, can publish what he wants on it. If I pitched Alex Jones on an article for Infowars, he would be under no obligation whatsoever to publish it.
Amazon Kindle is a platform, which means Amazon provides the means by which to create or engage with content, but it doesn’t create most of the content itself — or do a lot of policing of it. If I wanted to read Mein Kampf on my Amazon Kindle, Amazon would be unable to stop me from doing so.
An even better example of a platform might be a company like Verizon or T-Mobile, which provides software and the network for you to make phone calls or send texts, but doesn’t censor your phone calls or texts even if you’re arranging to commit a crime.
But for Facebook, and all similar social media sites, this seemingly dense legal question is deeply important — for how it treats figures like Jones and Farrakhan, and even how Facebook arbitrates speech at all.
If Facebook is a platform, it then has legal protections that make it almost impossible to sue over content hosted on the site. That’s because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites like Facebook from being sued for what users say or do on those sites.
Passed in 1996, the act reads in part, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Back in 2006, the act protected the website MySpace when it was sued after a teen met an adult male on the site who then sexually assaulted her. The court found that the teen’s claims that MySpace failed to protect her would imply MySpace was liable for content posted on the site — claims that butted up against Section 230.
But if Facebook is a publisher, then it can exercise editorial control over its content — and for Facebook, its content is your posts, photos, and videos. That would give Facebook carte blanche to monitor, edit, and even delete content (and users) it considered offensive or unwelcome according to its terms of service — which, to be clear, the company already does — but would make it vulnerable to same types of lawsuits as media companies are more generally.
If the New York Times or the Washington Post published a violent screed aimed at me or published blatantly false information about me, I could hypothetically sue the New York Times for doing so (and some people have).
So instead, Facebook has tried to thread an almost impossible needle: performing the same content moderation tasks as a media company might, while arguing that it isn’t a media company at all.
Facebook is trying to have its cake and eat it too
At times, Facebook has argued that it’s a platform, but at other times — like in court — that it’s a publisher.
In public-facing venues, Facebook refers to itself as a platform or just a “tech company,” not a publisher. Take this Senate committee hearing from April 2018, for example, where Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that while Facebook is responsible for the content people place on the platform, it’s not a “media company” or a publisher that creates content.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16213391/Screen_Shot_2019_05_06_at_9.07.14_AM.png)
But in court, Facebook’s own attorneys have argued the opposite. In court proceedings stemming from a lawsuit filed by an app developer in 2018, a Facebook attorney argued that because Facebook was a publisher, it could work like a newspaper — and thus have the ability to determine what to publish and what not to. “The publisher discretion is a free speech right irrespective of what technological means is used. A newspaper has a publisher function whether they are doing it on their website, in a printed copy or through the news alerts.”
And even the language Zuckerberg has used about Facebook when appearing before Congress, as he did last spring, shows that he thinks of the service as a publisher — while his company simultaneously argues that it’s not.
In his opening statement to committee members, Zuckerberg said, “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.” And then he added, “I agree we are responsible for the content” on Facebook, while noting again that Facebook doesn’t produce content itself.
Why the line between platform and publisher matters
Facebook is far from alone in attempting to walk an almost impossible line between responding to users’ demands for moderation and editing while attempting to avoid the legal responsibilities of being a publisher.
Take Tumblr’s recent ban on nudity, Twitter’s continued back-and-forth on suspending and banning extremist users, Facebook’s recent efforts to curtail misleading ads that may have contributed to misinformation surrounding the 2016 presidential campaign: All of these moderating efforts are attempts to get out ahead of users who are dismayed by a constant cavalcade of bad actors and bots that make these sites less enjoyable to use (and less profitable for ad companies that post on these platforms, and thus, for the platforms).
And with the threat of impending regulations arising from European courts where American digital media protections don’t exist, Facebook is keener than ever to stay within the good graces of American users — and politicians.
So companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Tumblr are trying to be more, as Zuckerberg put it, “responsible.” But that’s landed them in a supercharged political environment, drawing the ire of the figures they’ve deemed dangerous and many others. For companies like Facebook, they’re damned if they do moderate content — both legally and politically — and damned if they don’t. …
Facebook wants to enjoy the benefits of being a content publisher — major moderation and editing powers along with the power to ban users for whatever reasons it wants — while also accessing the legal freedoms that come with being a platform under American law. And right now, Facebook is basically a publisher that keeps arguing that it isn’t.
That muddy legal territory has people worried that the social media giant will fail on both accounts — that it won’t handle material on its site as responsibly as a media outlet might, but will also stop providing an online “town square” where controversial voices can be heard.Since Facebook is now apparently reviewing the actions of users even when they’re not on Facebook, some are arguing that the stated terms of service that should dictate what’s permitted on Facebook and Instagram don’t do so in reality. That’s why organizations focused on digital civil liberties are just as concerned about Facebook’s decisions as some on the right.
Jillian York, a Electronic Freedom Foundation director, said in a statement, “Given the concentrated power that a handful of social media platforms wield, those companies owe their users a clear explanation of their rules, clear notice to users when they violate those rules, and an opportunity to appeal decisions.”
In April 2018, Facebook launched the “Facebook Here Together” campaign, stating that Facebook would “do more to keep you safe” from privacy violations and seemingly from bad content.
But that’s the role of a publisher — one that Facebook has argued time and time again that it doesn’t have. And that’s a big, big problem for the world’s most powerful social media company.
-
Andrew Ferguson wrote about last weekend’s White House Correspondents Dinner before the dinner:
Ron Chernow, the best-selling biographer and historian, has agreed to deliver the after-dinner speech at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, to be held Saturday night at the Washington Hilton. If we were to list the potential victims of our present era of post-humor comedy, his name would be near the top.
The WHCD is the event the Washington press corps throws every year to celebrate the Washington press corps. (If we don’t do it, it won’t get done.) It is best understood as a provincial trade meeting—a few hundred people in the same line of work crowd together in the poorly ventilated ballroom of a second-tier hotel to hand one another awards over plates of undercooked chicken. What separates the correspondents’ dinner from, say, the annual awards dinner of the Greater Tri-County Regional Conference of Waste Removal Technicians is that, sometime in the 1990s, people from outside the trade began to take an interest in the event.
That prompted Warren Henry to write of Ferguson:
He diagnoses polarization as late-night’s cause of death: “Jokes that nearly everyone understands as jokes require shared assumptions, even a broad reservoir of lightheartedness and goodwill, and we no longer share those in our fractured republic. Humor has been privatized.” This theory rings partly true, but Ferguson already captured the better explanation: “nobody seems to be trying.” This is what television writers say while admitting their shows have become unwatchable.
At Mel magazine, one network late-night writer tells author Miles Klee: “[E]very single person in late night knows it’s a dumb factory of lazy ideas… [The host] makes fun of it, the head writers make fun of it, the staff writers watch the tapings and just lament it all. But the alternative is taking a risk, and network TV just isn’t about that.”
Sadly, the television writers (and Klee) suggest two solutions to the awfulness of late-night shows that would only make them worse.
First, writers suggest the shows are not sufficiently leftist. The aforementioned scribe told Klee “the late night writers’ rooms are all extremely homogeneous groups of cynical, miserable white comedy dudes who figure out the ‘formula’ for the show early on and then never really work harder than they need to. Which makes sense, because the other big thing is that the people who make the actual decisions on these shows are all older, white dudes who are out of touch (but don’t think they are) and are never thinking in terms of comedy or upending power or doing anything interesting with the format…”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 