You Don’t Hate the Media Enough (3): Chaffapalooza Edition

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Wrapping up from Monday’s post

First, from the comments section, Nate Winchester writes:

I like to call the second method the “chaff” method (referencing missile defenses of planes). Especially since it’s pretty effective to throw up so much stuff people get too exhausted to ever bother seeking out the truth.

Chaff, that’s perfect and catchier than my term “diversion.” Thank you, Nate. Consider your idea stolen.

Second, regarding the media’s use of chaff, I cited a clip from NBC News which placed the second Trump assassination attempt within the context of “increasingly fierce rhetoric” by implicitly linking Republican claims about Haitians in Springfield to bomb threats in that city.

This is the classic “tomato, tomahto ploy” used to depict both sides as guilty of a misdeed (when only one is), so let’s just call the whole thing off. Except that on Monday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine stated:

“Thirty-three threats; Thirty-three hoaxes,” Gov. Mike DeWine announced during a press conference. “I want to make that very, very clear. None of these had any validity at all.”

DeWine said during the press conference that many of the threats came from “overseas.”

“We have people unfortunately overseas who are taking these actions,” DeWine added. “Some of them are coming from one particular country.”

Overseas? Well now. I doubt there are many people overseas who are being incited by JD Vance to call in bomb threats, so what do you think is going on? DeWine used the term “many” and not “all”, but I bet the rest of them stemmed from the same information warfare campaign chaff dispenser, one that also has the dual purpose of depicting the average Trump voter as a “gap-toothed Cletus.”

As far as Lester Holt and NBC News goes, mission accomplished.

And… as far as the identity of that “one particular country,” does anybody know what Thierry Breton is up to these days or where he is? He’s all into misinformation, meddling in our elections, and I heard he’s got time on his hands. 

 
Third, I had the over/under of the Trump assassination story disappearing as Thursday. Well it looks the under was the way to go. Yesterday the top headlines on CNN, New York Times, and the Washington Post were P. Diddy, exploding pagers, and Kamala at NABJ. Well yes there is the NY Post and Fox, but only them. As for the through the day, a story or two about the near-assassination would emerge way down below the digital fold, like the body of a Mafia victim that briefly bobbed to the surface of the water before sinking forever into the deep.

The Most Wrecked House on the Market

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So, I am an aficionado of a certain kind of YouTube series – of ambitious DIYers who most usually have either mad professional building skills, or a generous income (most often both), plus absolutely insane levels of optimism, who take on a decrepit bit of housing, or at least something with all or most of a roof on it. Over a number of years or months, these skilled, and hopeful masochists take on an abandoned or derelict rural property – a tumbledown pig farm in Belgium, a decayed village house or farmstead in Portugal, a ruinous French chateau, a French village hoarder house with half the roof fallen in, or a burned-out country cottage in Sweden. Usually at least half the time-lapsed video is of tearing out the decayed bits, and sometimes the finished result is a painfully ultra-modern interior and looks like one of the display rooms in an Ikea outlet … but if the owners are happy in it, who am I to quibble over their tastes in interior decoration.

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It’s In the Small Details

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A few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed that I’d spend 1-3 hours a night watching YouTube videos. But this has evolved quite a bit from the early days of shaky cams, airplane noise in the background, and questionable advice. The questionable advice is still out there but is swamped by so much good advice and programming.

Although I haven’t flown as a pilot in command of my mighty 100 hp Beechcraft since the late 80s, flying and aviation safety videos have held my interest. Specifically, aviation accidents and their causes.

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Dogs

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I’ve heard it said that without the dog, man could never have undergone the transition from scavenging or hunting to herding, and then from herding to large-scale agriculture. That was because the dog has made himself useful to man, not as a tool, a means of locomotion, or a direct supplier of food, but as a comrade, a cooperator. The domesticated dog was able to pick off young and healthy specimens of the large animals from their herds — the wild oxen in Europe, and rams, goats, horses, and so on — without which there could be no herds, and no large domesticated draught animals for pulling the plow. The man and his dog learned to work together at a common enterprise — or common enterprises, because the intelligent dog could be bred for all kinds of tasks, such as herding, tracking, birding, watching, retrieving, and so on. They say it’s been about 40,000 years since the domestication of the dog. By now, the dog is the only creature on earth whose inborn directives are by nature oriented towards man. We can tell it is so, can’t we? I mean this in no sentimental way. The dog by nature considers himself as part of the human pack.

Anthony Esolen, whose post also includes a pic of himself and Jasper the Wonder Dog.

Reminds me of something Maurice Maeterlinck said:

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.

You Don’t Hate the Media Enough (2)

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Stories like the second Trump assassination attempt allow us to view the various media strategies of the Left unfolding in real-time. I alternate between horror and fascination, watching how the media tries to grapple with impossible stories and tries to gaslight us yet again. L’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.

We need to understand the framework in which the media operates. As a longtime mentor once said to me, the media reports stories, they don’t report events. Events are data, stories sell papers/ads/impressions. It seems at times most stories in the media fall into one of the two masterplots, stranger comes to town or hero goes on a journey.

Of course there is the (false) assumption that the story being told is an accurate portrayal of events. Forget bias and sleaziness, that assumption just fails as a matter of epistemology.

The story paradigm has two other aspects that are important. The first is that stories have a limited life span. Not only do stories get stale over time and fall out of the public’s consciousness, but stories can be replaced in that consciousness by newer stories. The second is that media stories for the Left are never about the story as much as they are about the story ending and its lessons for society as a whole: gun control, misogyny, Orange Man Bad. The media writes every story not just about the present, but based on the story’s past, for its future.

The media typically knows the story they want to write and they will then find the facts to back it up. A reporter or editor knows the right name in their Rolodex that will provide them with the pull quote they are looking for to justify their actions.

The second assassination attempt comes at an awkward time for the Left, so, clearly, they want it squelched. Going back to what I wrote about Audrey Hale, a smart media outlet which doesn’t mind acting as the PR firm for the Left can roll even with the worst of stories, if it understands that you don’t have to “defeat” a story on its merits if you understand how to manipulate its arc.

So we can expect the media to use two strategies.

The first is suppression. Unlike with the Audrey Hale story, with the second Trump assassination attempt there is no manifesto to suppress. And unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks the second shooter is alive. However, the media uses an important trick in how it gathers information. If it wants to speed up a story’s arc and keep the story alive with new revelations, it will deploy assets into the field and keep digging up new information — new, exciting stuff to write every day. It will then juice the story with the appropriate pull quote from an “expert” from the media Rolodex.

If the media wants to slow down a story it will rely on news releases, such as they are, from investigators or authorities. It’s that relationship with authority which determines where the story is going to go, and who is going to define the story — the media or the investigating authority?

A good example of this is a headline from last night’s Washington Post:



“Investigating” “Potential” “Attempt” “FBI”? This is the type of damage control verbiage a press agent would use for a client who got caught on the 2024 equivalent of Epstein Island (not that we would ever know). How much actual digging is the WPost going to do on this story — or are they just getting their pull quotes so that they can consider it case closed? Something to watch for, going forward.

Another example of this phenomenon was the “Cats of Springfield” story, which the media claimed had been debunked on the basis of a phone call to an official in Springfield. The right quote from the right authority and case closed. No media outlet actually went to Springfield and conducted an investigation. If anybody does get around to conducting an investigation, the results will come, much like the eventual revelation of Hale’s writings, too late.

It’s good DeSantis is going to launch his own investigation regarding the assassination attempt, because otherwise we would probably start getting results by next Christmas.

The second strategy is diversion to another story line, through the use of stray voltage or simply by putting up other dust to cloud the immediate picture and slow down the clean narrative of someone trying to kill the Republican nominee (again). In less than 12 hours after the aborted assassination attempt we had the following:

-There is the “Trump had it coming due to his rhetoric” narrative, which is the equivalent of the “short skirt” argument in a rape case. No word yet if the media will investigate itself for its own rhetoric calling Trump Hitler or a Caesar who would destroy the American Republic.

-There is the attempt to draw an equivalence between the assassination attempts and Vance’s rhetoric regarding Springfield narrative. You know where this is going, the “tomato” “tomahto” argument — so let’s just call the thing off.

-Then there is the pure stray voltage angle of this is an election campaign stories that are always just around the corner. I’m sure there will be a story coming soon, breathlessly reporting Kamala buying a bag of Doritos.

The over/under of this story disappearing without a trace, unless DeSantis or someone else can grab control, is this Thursday.