McConaissance Quietly Concludes

It remains wild to me that during the first trump administration there was a long debate over terminology after AOC (correctly) called border internment "concentration camps" and now having concentration camps is a core domestic policy. The purpose of that stupid debate was to normalize the idea.

This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.

I wrote about the ways propaganda takes root, how attacks against trans people in the US and UK reflect different mythologies of protection, and why combating disinformation at the local level might be a more effective way to dismantle these frameworks than abstract online arguments with strangers.

regulatory oversight stifles innovation

regulatory oversight stifles innovation

yeah I mean it’s genuinely sad that the “reasonable old school” Republican (who Dems eagerly and unanimously voted to confirm) is out here doing pressers blatantly geeked out coke and it’s not subtle

NYT shows how Bari Weiss really screwed this up. She didn't attend any of the 5 screenings of the story, which began on Dec. 12. She only first weighed in on Thursday, and the show incorporated her suggestions. She then waited until weekend to ask for more edits. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/b...

It’s become impossible to ignore that Trump is hiding evidence he committed crimes with Epstein. A journalist needs to ask Trump directly if he’s ever had sex with someone he met through Epstein, and if he’s ever slept with someone who might be under-age.

From @parkermolloy.com at New Republic. newrepublic.com/article/2047... I'd go a bit further. The system needs no conspiracy to function. It just needs everyone to understand the direction things are going in. Bari Weiss was put there not to protect a legacy, but to align its politics differently.

This person analyzes American politics for a living www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

I wrote about Yglesias' attack on critical race theory, and why framing Black intellectuals as aggressive sneaky infiltrators threatening to murder innocent liberalism is pretty racist. www.everythingishorrible.net/p/yglesias-a...

I won’t be taking any criticism from these folks about what’s normal and what isn’t, thanks though

I'm not sure Brendan Carr believes in anything outside of careerist opportunism and a generalized disdain for corporate oversight if the President was a brony you'd immediately see him prancing around in a velour zebra onesie

"back to the mines with you"

I wrote about Bari Weiss, 60 Minutes, CBS News, and what all of this says about the state of mainstream media. www.readtpa.com/p/the-kill-s...

and often encourages people who might have never watched it previously to check it out to see what you're trying to hide I vaguely remember some guy coining a phrase to explain this phenomenon

Don’t worry, guys. Special envoy to the president Ric Grenell wants you to know that the CBS thing is totally on the up and up, and not to please the admin. He’s proving that by demanding CBS fires people.

I just uploaded @jasonparis.bsky.social 's recording of the segment CBS News pulled from "60 Minutes" to YouTube:

WATCH: Here's the segment CBS News pulled from "60 Minutes" last night

Canadian TV network bravely airs dissidents’ report on U.S. abuses after political commissar orders its suppression

Here's Roger Goodell in the Oval Office hanging out with President Trump while he suggests suspending habeas corpus. Definitely not the kind of behavior that's detrimental to the league whatsoever

If you pay attention to any large industry long enough and follow it to its logical conclusion you eventually end up sounding like a communist even if you started off testing CPU case fans. youtu.be/cUrJVdF2me0?...

like, this isn’t a person who you can tell “ummmm as the proprietor of a right wing opinion substack i think i know when a TV news story months in the making about foreign prisons is ready”

There is an entire English language available to describe Pete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon - celebrating massacres like Wounded Knee, honoring Secession, purging women & black officers, military threats to NATO allies, extrajudicial killing in the Caribbean and Pacific - yet Ben Smith says:

In 2022, Bari Weiss ran this viral first-person piece by a top Levi’s executive. She claimed she was hounded out of the company because of her vocal stance on COVID restrictions. There are no quotes from the company. Or her colleagues. Not even a “no comment.” www.thefp.com/p/yesterday-...

"Authoritarian propaganda isn’t just designed to mislead. It’s designed to pour lemon juice in the wounds of cultural divisions, distract from corruption and unchecked corporate power, and construct a permission culture for cruelty."— @karlbode.com www.damemagazine.com/2025/01/02/a...

I mean the more interesting conversation (to me) isn't that Bari Weiss isn't good at journalism, it's that she's not very good at agitprop, the REAL role she was hired for

This is like when the NYT wrote that a Jan 6er showed up at Obama’s house armed to the teeth and completely neglected to mention Trump gave out Obama’s address on social media THE DAY BEFORE

Decided to check this for fun (I’m great at parties) and the first mention of “tariffs” is paragraph 15

it's odd to see the people who can accurately assess Bari Weiss isn't a good journalist and failed upward into her role as chief brunchlord, but can't take the additional leap to realize this is part of an active plot by extraction class media ownership to actively destroy journalism and consensus

After what we're seeing at CBS, if today is not the perfect day for everyone to find some independent journalism & nonprofit newsrooms to support... what day could be better?

This Yggy retweet is the first and only example I have found of someone involved with the Harper’s letter criticizing Bari’s 60 Minutes decision

Reporter: We have 3 videos, 2 breathalyzers, 4 bartenders, and a minivan full of nuns attesting to how the driver was drunk and reckless when he hit the school bus. Weiss; What did the driver say. Reporter: He and his lawyer won’t talk. We asked them 5 times. Weiss: I’m killing your story.

Perspective matters. "The country is falling apart" for whom? Billionaires are making record profits and have reoriented the governing apparatus to guarantee them even more record-breaking years That was the goal and it's going well for them

Bari Weiss’ CBS is what the tech fascists mean by creating “parallel” journalism. Create new fake brands (“The Free Press”) or hollow out existing brands and replace with right-wing clones. Or both! That’s why I included her in the “Mirror World Mafia” last year.

A free press cannot function if the government is able to exercise veto power over critical reporting simply by refusing to engage. The public has the right to question how CBS will ensure the independence and integrity of its journalism going forward.

Indeed

Folks, you can’t have Christian Nationalism without the antisemitism. It’s a central tenet of the ideology. The fact some of these Jewish Heritage folks are just realizing this is wild to me.

ambiguous causation-free challenges

Ramaswamy, taking a bold stance against bigotry, which he had supported as a party member before realizing the racism also included him.

Weird how The Free Press was able to publish all of these without comment from the Washigton University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

i came out to have a good time and honestly....

they are chosen by affluent media ownership SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE they aren't burdened by any sense of responsibility to their profession or the public

The Olivia Nuzzi story and the Bari Weiss at CBS story are the same story, which is that the upper echelons of legacy media are absolutely rife with people who worship power and don't feel burdened by any sense of responsibility to their profession or the public.

love this for them

It's important to note for the consultant people: Kat is tied for first place, she's raised more money in this race than anyone else, and she hasn't used Twitter in months. It's a website filled with racist AI snuff films and it's rigged against you specifically. There's no good reason to use it.

An editor who thinks novelty is having a town hall with Alan Dershowitz, or publishing the thousandth anti-woke story, doesn’t think having first hand testimony of migrants suffering abuse because of US decisions is newsworthy.