But this blog negotiates a landscape that is more often marred by bad news than brightened by good. And there's more bad news to report (granted, it's also amusing news, but bad news nevertheless): the fact-free press, led by cynical conspiracy monger, frauduct peddler and Trumpian rabble-rouser Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, has stepped up to "defend the legitimacy" of the Trump presidency, calling upon the conspiracy-theorist-in-chief to use his presidential power to "blockade" the "lying mainstream media."
You'll notice that the last link in the paragraph above leads to the aforementioned Not-Doktor Stoopid's "blog," which rarely contains original content but is mostly a curation of misinformation from other sites. In this case, LoonyC curated a post from Mike Adams' Natural "News" site. Both the re-post and the original post on Adams' site were published on December 2.
In an "open letter" to His Unholy Orangeness, Adams urges Trump to refuse to let the mainstream press corps into his (ultra)White House at all. After all, declares Adams (repeating by rote what every faithful Trumpian knows), the mainstream media are Drumpf's enemy and "they will do anything and everything to destroy you." Says he:
It's time to deprive those lying, deceptive media outlets of all the oxygen in the room. Blockade them from all White House announcements and presidential events. Bring in the real media... the independent publishers, radio hosts and bloggers who are truly the only remaining free press in America.
We all have teams of writers, video editors, bloggers and researchers ready to report the real news about the successes of your new administration. We will defend your legitimacy as President and help defend the Republic against the assaults of the Fidel Castro-worshipping lunatic fringe left.He forgot to mention "in terms of the utter-disrespect-for-inconvenient-facts factor." They've got it all over the "lying" mainstream media on that one.
My own network of online sites includes Trump.news, WhiteHouse.news and hundreds of others. Combined with Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com, DrudgeReport.com and others, we already dwarf most of the mainstream media outlets in terms of reach. We absolutely dwarf all mainstream media in terms of the public trust factor.
Adams also uses his post as an opportunity to boast to Trump about his own search engine, GoodGopher, which, he writes without any apparent irony, "excludes all the mainstream media liars and news fabrication propagandists working for CNN, WashPost, NYT, MSNBC and so on. We already have an authoritative list of who's who in the independent media. Compiling a contact list would only take a day or two."
"What good is a totally censored search engine?" you may be asking. All the good in the world, it seems, if you feel a need to lower a cone of ignorance over yourself every time you do an Internet search. It's sort of like the cone of silence in the old Get Smart TV series, except instead of preventing the escape of secret information, it prevents the infiltration of facts. Or maybe it's more like parental block, except instead of protecting kids from online exploitation it protects willfully stupid adults from learning real facts.
Facts may be stubborn things, but they're not nearly as stubborn as those who like to make up their own "facts."
Adams, like everyone else in the conspiracy biz (not to mention the basket of gullibles who embrace and spread phony conspiracies on social media), seems to have a very casual relationship with the truth, and that is putting it charitably. To advance his own agendas he isn't above perpetuating distortions and libelous falsehoods (e.g., his recent smear campaign against Dr. David Gorski, aka "Orac," as I wrote about in April of this year). Nor is he above casually posting complete misinformation that doesn't libel anyone but is simply, ludicrously inaccurate.
If Adams were just another blog-fodder blowhard there wouldn't be much cause for concern. But there are larger and more serious issues that stretch far beyond cranky little blogs like this.
For Adams is both riding the crest of an enormous wave of disinformation and making that wave bigger. He's part of the "alternative" press/"independent" media that are the vanguard of the
"post-truth" era. These are the media that are tailor-made for Trump, and he for them. It's a match made in infotainment (with the emphasis on "tainment") heaven.
Granted, the mainstream media have made serious missteps themselves, and we shouldn't let them off the hook. And I'm not just talking about the insane amount of non-critical attention and free promotion the media have consistently handed to Trump on a silver platter, or the way they embraced the "Crooked Hillary" narrative and made a huge deal about the non-issue of her emails. I'm also talking about the way major news outlets such as Washington Post may have lent undeserved legitimacy to a questionable group, PropOrNot, in their own reporting about "fake news." The conspiracy lunatics and the alt-right and the Trumpians are all over that one, but Rolling Stone and Fortune also weighed in critically. Even so, it would be folly to discount the possible roles played by Russian operatives in influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and certainly foolish to dismiss the influence of fake-news sites and the under-informed voters who take these sites seriously.
Apart from the dumbing-down issues there are more serious matters of public safety at stake. On Sunday, December 4, 2016, Edgar M. Welch, a 28-year-old white gunman from North Carolina, apparently fueled by the ludicrous and debunked "Pizzagate" conspiracy narrative, walked into Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in northwest Washington D.C., and fired from an AR-15 rifle. He had driven six hours from his home to "investigate" rumors that the pizzeria was harboring young children as sex slaves, as part of a child-abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton. Yes, there are idiots who truly believe that; Ron and I just got scolded by a couple of them on Facebook within the past few days. If you ask me there are far too many people who seem to be unhealthily obsessed with pedophilia, and it's not the Clintons and their cronies.
Fortunately Welch was arrested before anyone was hurt, but what about the next angry nutcake who walks in? Comet Ping Pong has reported that they have received lots of disturbing threats in the wake of Pizzagate, and even some of the neighboring businesses have received threats as well.
Pizzagate is far from the only blatantly false conspiracy tale making the rounds, and what is disturbing is that Donald Trump himself seems to be a big believer in conspiracy theories and conspiracy web sites, and is stocking his administration with others who have a fondness for fake news sites and conspiracy stories. And if that doesn't worry you, just a little bit... then what are you doing on this blog?
Once again without irony, Mike Adams concludes his December 2 post thusly:
It’s time to #TakeDownCNN once and for all. The network doesn’t deserve to operate in any free society (but they might feel right at home in North Korea). And it’s time to support the rise of the new, independent media in America.Uh-huh. Freedom of the press is an inalienable right in America, but only freedom of certain types of press: the fact-free, totally self-serving-to-cynical-scammers-and-hatriarchs variety.
But if you care about actual freedom of the press, and about responsible journalism, there's plenty you can do. Start with becoming a fact-checker yourself. Read with a critical eye, especially if the content seems to fit too neatly into someone's preferred narrative (even or especially your own). And hold the mainstream media's feet to the fire, but don't dismiss them just because they're mainstream. This isn't to say that you should automatically dismiss a source just because it's "alternative" or "independent," but keep your eyes open and your b.s. detector active, always.
Otherwise, Trump and his cynical champions and surrogates may lead all of us around a corner from which there will be no turning back.
PS added on 19 December 2016: Here is some background information about the traditions of irrationality and hysteria that ultimately gave rise to Pizzagate. Waves of hysteria have been part of American history, not just for decades but for centuries. The problem is that today, the popularity of social media makes it easier than ever to spread the hysteria, and fake news sites make the irrationality much more difficult to battle.
8 comments:
I see Lenny's back on Facebook now... He must've got away with a two week ban but anyway... You mention his IBMS scam and he's not posted anything significant on his IBMS Facebook page except occasional cringe-inducing "motivational" pictures for ages and the German language "Dr" page has been pretty much bereft of IBMS content since the "Watchgate" fiasco.
I think it's pretty certain that in spite of his ludicrous claim to have 26,000 or so members back in the Vaterland it's all been a rather embarrassing flop for him the same as the US version. Looking at the pictures of his one and only German "event" at best a few dozen morons have parted with €500 to Light-Fingered-Lenny and I can't see that actually meeting the fat fraud will have done much to encourage them to keep stumping up the €89 per month subs or whatever the figure is. He quite simply doesn't have anything to sell apart from a load of "YA YA DU BIST EINE CHAMPION" crap which he then undermines by acting like a petulant teenager when people don't worship at the alter of his own self- ascribed and self-aggrandising magnificence.
I really am becoming quite worried that Lenny's income streams are failing to rightly compensate him for his all encompassing genius and status of the world's leading whatever he is this week™... IBMS USA - Failed, IBMS Germany - Failed, Sales of books - Negligable, Sales of 'Be-Pure' supplements - Non-existent, Sales of German line of supplements - I'm guessing but doubtless insignificant. Where will he turn for his next dishonest buck (or Euro)? I have noticed him plugging an idiotic "EMF killer" which is just the old "Orgone" scam from yesteryear and I know he's got some sort of affiliate thing going there but I doubt that's pulling much in at their insane prices.
I think it's perhaps time to have a bit of a whip-round to keep the poor old dear in private jets, butlers, bling watches, Mercs and lakeside mansions.. Oh and Golden horsey statues of course...
Oh, my, yes, Loony-Tunes is back full throttle, regurgitating fake news as usual, e.g., the allegations about Russian hacking are just part of an elaborate plot by Clinton; there was a conspiracy to destroy all of the information about pedophile rings in which Clinton was involved; Trump is king; and so on and so forth. Loony had one post that seemed to be standing up for the Native Americans at Standing Rock, but he utterly failed to mention the Trump cabinet appointments (and Trump's own business ties and interests) that almost certainly assure that the pipeline will be built as originally planned.
So, yes, Lenny is still an idiot, struggling for relevance and income, still lying on social media about how extravagantly successful and well-loved he is. And you know that country estate in Georgia that he boasted about buying back in September -- even posting numerous easily traceable shots of it from one of the many real estate sites on which it was listed? It was finally sold in early November, to an apparently very wealthy attorney whose name was neither Leonard nor Amy.
You don't mean Lenny was LYING!!!! with those pictures of the lakeside mansion do you?
No... I can't believe that... As if he would do such a thing ;-)
To be honest I'd love to know where he really is living. As far as I know his previous address was a rather tatty flat (apartment to you colonials) somewhere in S.C and yet he suddenly and miraculously moved to a lakeside mansion in N.C...
Where I come from there's an expression... "Pull the other one, it's got bells on." Do you have an American equivalent?
The lakeside mansion was in South Carolina, and he never owned that one either. He lied about it being damaged by a hurricane, which he said necessitated the move to the place in Georgia. I'm actually not sure if he ever lived in North Carolina, although that ill-fated and profoundly stupid January 2015 lawsuit claimed that he was a resident of Iredell County, N.C. He may have just been lying about his residency to make it easier for that fourth-rate N.C. law firm to represent him.
We Yanks do use the expression, "pulling one's leg," though it usually refers to something more benign, such as teasing or joking. And what Lenny is doing is neither teasing nor joking; rather, it is a desperate ploy to puff himself up in the eyes of his drastically shrinking fan base. In any case I think that most Americans would understand, "Pull the other one, it's got bells on," as an extension of the pulling-one's-leg metaphor, unless of course they were fixated on the "pull my finger" theme, which has an entirely different connotation.
once Trump gets in you'll be thrown into jail with your crooked Hillary and the negro for spreading lies about Dr. C he's a personal friend of Donald
Hahahahahahahaha, "Throw Connie" etc. Whenever I receive a comment like this -- and frankly, I receive far too few of them -- my first thought is always that it's a friend of mine just playing a prank by doing a fine imitation of Lenny Coldwell's ignorant rants. My second thought is that it might be an ignorant fan of Lenny's. But the style is so very, very Lenny that if it's not a prank, and not a fan who thinks imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it has to be Lenny himself. So let's assume, just for grins, that this comment actually comes from Lenny, who has been known to write similar comments on other blogs (and in private emails when attempting to intimidate other bloggers).
Of course your thoughts are as welcome here as anyone else's, Lenny, and always have been. Unlike you, I actually post dissenting comments on my blog, and I've even posted ones that were downright abusive to me. I walk the "free speech" talk a lot better than you, apparently.
So let's address the points you made in your brief little comment. First of all, even though you've been attacking me for more than four years now, and have told numerous outrageous lies about ME (lies that actually endangered me), you've yet to point out anything I've written about YOU that is a lie.
I write opinions about you based upon your own inane writings and interviews, which are publicly available. (And yes, you *are* a racist and bigot and anti-Semite; you prove that nearly every day on social media.) Beyond that I question your credentials and accomplishments, for which you have never provided anything remotely resembling verification. (Certificates that you purchased from phony "schools" don't count, nor does that honorary "doctorate" in humanities from an unaccredited fundamentalist Baptist "university" count.)
None of what I have written on my blog is a jailable offense in the America that I love and that you profess to love. It's not even worthy of a civil suit, as you have learned, much less worthy of criminal charges. And you know it.
Finally, if you think that getting a "gold card" because you gave money to Herr Drumpf's campaign makes you a "personal friend of Donald," you're either profoundly stupid, or you are pandering to people who are profoundly stupid... or both.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dE4Xq6rJFwQ/WAvs6IzSZLI/AAAAAAAAFWo/jgllW3UDFfgN54tEAuOfpRsJRsHRi_QBgCLcB/s1600/Trump-the-Nakedest-Emperor.jpg
But thanks for writing to me, and Happy New Year. Don't let America's door hit you in the butt on your way back to Germany.
On the other hand, if this is just a friend playing a prank, I'll reiterate:
Hahahahahahahaha!
I can only assume "Throw Connie in jail with Hilary" is in reality none other than Not-A-Doctor Leonard Coldwell himself.
Now... I think in the US you have a thing called 'due process' guaranteed by the constitution. As far as I'm aware telling the truth about an out and out charlatan is not a criminal offence even if the charlatan were a 'personal friend' of the president and even if it were the president doesn't have the power to summarily jail people who upset their "personal friends".
Of course in reality Donald Trump would refer to Lenny as "Leonard who?" and this is just a childish and pathetic temper tantrum from a congenital liar.
Yeah, Longdog, I'm pretty sure that "Throw Connie" is LoonyC. And yes, I am very careful to keep my writings within the bounds of what I believe to be Constitutionally protected speech. So until Drumpf and his cronies upend the Constitution -- and you never know, because Drumpf HAS said that he would like to "open up libel laws" -- I will continue on my present course. Lenny can rant away, but the more he rants the more he will be ridiculed.
Well, at least he has that gold card from the Donald Trump campaign. I wonder if he'll add that to the "credentials" page on that awful Bio web site.
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