Tag: journalism

He wasn’t a viking!

ohiohedgehogLeave a comment

Y’all know I can occasionally get a wild hair up my @$$ about some silly little thing just because it starts down a slippery slope. And so it is with the “Viking” who led “the insurrection” earlier this month. So here’s a quick fact-check and some questions and insinuations which may flow therefrom.

  1. He wasn’t dressed as a Viking. Obvious to a LOT of us for several reasons. First, the horned head-dress. Vikings didn’t wear them. I know. I know. The Geats wore them. Beowolf was a Geat. The whole horned helmet wearing Viking thing came from costume designer Carl Emil Doepler who included them in the 1870’s era production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
  2. So why did the media insist on referring to him as “a guy dressed as a viking?” See that reference to Wagner above? Ring cycle? Y’all know about the Nazi/white supremacist connection there right? It’s a VERY short step from “Viking” to “Nazi” to “White Supremacist.”
  3. So what WAS he dressed as? Why don’t you ASK him? Multiple YouTube video interviews exist. He’s from Arizona. He self-identifies as a shaman (a word typically associated with Asian and North American so-called indigenous persons) who might also be termed a Medicine Man. Dude was LARPING as an American Indian.

But we can’t call him THAT, now can we? Doesn’t fit the narrative. And might tend to impugn the integrity of a protected minority group.

Gonna be a long four years.

Innumerate

ohiohedgehogLeave a comment

This month I’ve been reminded of the old Ben Rhodes quote. Rhodes was a Deputy Advisor for the NSA in the Obama Administration and will always be remembered (at least by ME) for saying “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old… They literally know nothing… We created an echo chamber… They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

And so it is with the COVID-19 coverage to which we’ve been subjected of late. First, there’s almost ALWAYS one word missing from coverage – “reported.” There’s a WORLD of difference between the number of actual COVID-19 cases and those being reported. And that difference effects virtually every calculation and resulted derived therein. And so starting 13 days ago there was this: THEY WANT A STAMPEDE:  Distortion and fear: the MSM won’t quit doing this, because they think (know?) it works. Which kinda led to this: THIS SHOULD* BE THE END OF ANY LEGISLATION BASED ON COMPUTER MODELS:  Inaccurate Virus Models Are Panicking Officials Into Ill-Advised Lockdowns.and even casual observations like this: YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: What the Media Isn’t Telling You About the United States’ Coronavirus Case Numbers. Eventually we started getting work like this: ALL MODELS ARE WRONG. SOME MODELS ARE USEFUL. But to be really useful, models must be based on accurate data, and a clear understanding of the processes being modeled, two things nobody has for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. ARE COVID-19 MODELS A SOUND BASIS FOR PUBLIC POLICY?. TL:DNR: No.

I could go on but am trying to stay away from the aggregating. But in THIS case I’ll make an exception.

My FAVORITE headline: Assume a Spherical Cow of Uniform Density in a Frictionless Vacuum.

Coronavirus: The Wrong Numbers. Will the media ever admit the failure of doomsday projections?

How Misinformation About the U.S. Needing ‘1 Million Ventilators’ Spread.

Grocery Workers are Beginning to Die of Coronavirus. The reporter tells us that at least four grocery store workers have died from Covid-19. Here is some quick math. About 2.5 million Americans work in grocery stores. About one in every 30 thousand Americans has now died of Coronavirus. Taking the simplest route, you would expect approximately 83 grocery, or 2.5 million/30 thousand, grocery store workers to have died of the virus.

Then we segue into this: WHEN IS A CORONAVIRUS DEATH ACTUALLY A CORONAVIRUS DEATH? Good question, raised by Julie Kelly of American Greatness. The answers are about as clear as a gallon of Mississippi River mud flats water.

I have more but I’ll assume I’ve exhausted your patience already. More after Easter?