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A contrived media tsunami based on faux racism, that enraged almost everyone, especially those on the left, when most of the discussion in the other thread is about how pundits and Trump rhetoric led to mass murder....and you think I'm the one who is not self-aware?

No, the media sells stories people want to consume.

No this is incorrect and we will argue about this. Maybe not today.
In the meantime please read as much of this Matt Taibbi stuff as you can. It's part of his book Hate Inc on the media due out in October.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/introduction-the-fairway

Guys, you can’t spend an hour telling us the media is downplaying how racist and abominable the Black Israelites are and then also tell us it was all just a faux racist narrative the media ginned up to divide us and make us think there’s racial tension in America. It gets confusing.

It isn't my fault that some of the narratives that are explored are a little advanced. No one is claiming that the Black Israelites don't exist or weren't there. Just that they weren't included in the coverage because the angle that the media wanted to push was smug white kid in maga hat. And the media wanted to do this because division is a part of what the media does.

I read it, but the conclusions are based on conjecture and anecdotes (examples). For sure the media editorializes their product to what they think is important, but the bottom line is, if it's not interesting to people, it's not going to be sold, and if it does not get sold, they don't get to write interesting things. As media becomes more fragmented, the stories become more sensational...because the competition is much fiercer.

Don't worry guys, Charles Murray is a relentless racist crank. His racist policies aren't news worthy because it's the same spiel he's had for 30 years

I feel like this point has some legitimacy to it, but it's nice to see some of my detractors get caught up in a reasoning they previously rejected

If you can be honest for a minute...

Take a lower-middle class white person, who may not necessarily be racist, but has some prejudices. Do you think a contrived story that portrays a mid-western white kid as the symbol of racism, and that perspective gets plastered all over the place....and it turns out to be entirely made up....you do not think there is not going to be some resentment/blow back? You do not think that's going to push those prejudicial folks further into their own corner?

You are insane if you do not think stories like Convington contribute to the divide, and it was completely contrived.

My take is, you do not care, you want them angry so you have someone to fight, and, more importantly, shout down at the rest of us less righteous folks, and I think that's despicable.

*has* Charles Murray been in the news lately? Pretty sure the mainstream press got bored with his shtick and moved in like the late 90’s.


The guy above me just said it was “entirely made up” and “completely contrived.”

I'm not even going to bother to correct you, other than to say "story" has an important contextual meaning.

Has a leftwing Podcaster had any Black Israelites on lately while lamenting what an undeservedly bad wrap they've gotten in the mainstream press?

Again, just a stunning development from you over here.

You appear to be innately worse than analogies than other people.

Keep on contributing to great discourse Fly. What are you taking issue with?

I think part of the issue here is that I require some logical consistency to how I think. And I don't see this as a team sport the way that you do. So I don't really care about the Covington kids. Yeah--if you don't want to be presented badly on the news probably don't go to protests wearing maga hats. I get that.
But it does seem pretty clear that the story was slanted in order to do everything I've claimed the media does. Is it a big deal? Well...that depends on whether you want to treat this in isolation or not. If you treat it in isolation it obviously isn't a big deal. But if you treat it as prototypical behavior from the media then it points to a pretty big problem.

The El Paso story blew up for the same reason Convington blew up. It feeds the narrative they believe in. The same for the Smollet story. None of them are discussing Dayton. I do not want to say these folks like it when something like this happens (under these circumstances), but they for sure feel validated, you can tell by their post, and their righteous indignation when they say "I told you so", to which Fly has specifically done. They look for the racist angle. Which also tells you who the media is selling too.

Your claim that the media divides seems unfalsifiable. There is no such thing as political coverage that you can't argue is divisive.

That's a fair point. However, when they start calling people racist, who are not necessarily racist, they make it personal. When the media feeds a narrative like this one, it makes the left angry at the right, and the right defensive. That narrative, in the case of Covington, was built upon lies.

This is where you've got to take a second and think before posting and you're going to get attacked pretty hard by the others. 21 people reported dead from white supremacists terrorists is going to be a big story for that reason alone.

They are not talking about 21 dead, they are talking about white supremacy, Trump and radicalization.

Yeah, and why can't they just talk about 6 million dead without mentioning their Jewishness?

That distinction--while debatable--won't go over well.

Why are you not talking about Dayton? Further, go look at the LA times op-ed I posted. You spent most of your time arguing that pundits and Trump leads to radicalization and violence like El Passo. Oddly enough, researchers do not see radicalization as common factor in mass shooters, and coincidentally the things they do find in common are things I presented in one form or another...and I was called out for holding water for white supremacist...

So, until you start talking about something else, I can only go by what you've talked about.

That could be the case...but what I see is focus on white supremacy instead of mass shooting, and that makes me angry because it's missing the forest for the tree.