176 Comments
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Chris Bray's avatar

Ten minutes after hitting "post," it occurs to me to compare David French to the people in China who made the wall posters telling the victims of famine that the Great Leap Forward was a huge success. Only a very few marginal online voices objected to the Sydney Sweeney ad, comrade! You have remembered incorrectly!

Steersman's avatar

LoL. "Potemkin Villages 'R Us"

Reader East of Albuquerque's avatar

WE ARE YOUR SOLE SOURCE OF TRUTH jaja

Gunther Heinz's avatar

Ah yes, the BIG CHARACTER posters. Brings back fond memories!

Steersman's avatar

Ta for the Like. 🙂

Not sure if you've covered another one of the NYTimes many "failings" in that regard, but a post by an erstwhile NPR columnist Lisa Simeone and my response to her:

QUOTE: And today, days later, the New York Times is still, still referring to this man as a woman.

Fuck the NYT.

"What Motivated the Minneapolis Church Shooter? We May Never Know. Investigators combing through piles of evidence from an attack on a Minneapolis church cautioned that these kinds of shooters often leave more questions than answers. .... when Ms. Westman was 17, she filed a petition to legally change her name to Robin, noting that she identified as female." UNQUOTE

https://lisasimeone.substack.com/p/minneapolis-shooter-was-a-man-not/comment/151121958

https://lisasimeone.substack.com/p/minneapolis-shooter-was-a-man-not/comment/151145090

I had posted an open letter to the NY Times on such failings though I doubt you'll be surprised by the "crickets" response:

"Open Letters; Ideological Capture; New York Times and Slate"; https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/open-letters-ideological-capture

carolyn kostopoulos's avatar

violent crime stats for women are up because they include MEN wearing wigs in those numbers.

Nate Winchester's avatar

I do find it plausible that pumping natal women full of testosterone might induce female violent crimes to climb.

carolyn kostopoulos's avatar

Absolutely, but the greatest percentage of the rise is men claiming to be women while committing crimes that are typical of men

CeeMcG's avatar

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Geary Johansen's avatar

David French is a White Monkey.

A short video of humiliating jobs for White Monkey jobs for Westerners in China- jobs so demeaning no Chinese person would take them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkCLVsyg-Nc

Rather Curmudgeonly's avatar

I used to have a graphic depicting "the slippery slope" argument and notable on that was the David French point.

Arne's avatar

It's hard to overestimate the power of groupthink. What would happen to French if he wrote a column that criticized Cracker Barrel?

Richard Parker's avatar

Let a Hundred Jeans Bloom!

Yuri Bezmenov's avatar

Name and shame the fake con minstrel show. David French, Max Boot, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, etc. They were always sock puppets for controlled opposition.

Chris Bray's avatar

Tom Nichols, Tim "Surfer Necklace" Miller, Jen Rubin, Sarah Longwell, David Brooks....

Richard Parker's avatar

David Brooks (Deserves a Second Mention)

HWSr.'s avatar

I’m offended for surfers, man. Those aren’t puka shells, they’re straight up pearls. Gah. Heheh

PapayaSF's avatar

I’m still disappointed in Jonah Goldberg. I thought Liberal Fascism was an excellent book. It’s very sad that he became a Never Trump type.

Andy G's avatar

Agreed.

But Jonah is mostly just wrong, compared to the Frenches and David Brookses of the world. He’s far less dishonest, especially if the topic is not narrowly Orange Man Bad.

K2's avatar

Yes! kinda reminds me of when Little Green Footballs went to shit. Something in the water….

Ian Schmidt's avatar

It probably eats at Charles that he brought down Dan Rather now, so I'll allow it.

K2's avatar

That’s part of what made the hard left turn so shocking. Maybe he sold LGF to someone?

Ian Schmidt's avatar

The story I've heard is that he got a new girlfriend who was hard left. A significant number of men will abandon principles for p*ssy. I've seen it happen and I'm sure everyone else has too.

K2's avatar

Somehow that makes it even worse…sigh.

Ernest More's avatar

Suicide of the West is better. Goldberg has, in many ways, withdrawn from partisan politics and adopted a more philosophical approach to public policy matters. And yes, Trump is very much worthy of criticism. He may be (very) correct on several major themes, but his personal failings and general incompetence are all too real. He was propelled to office by Progressive insanity. It's a shame that he lacks the ability to forge a lasting movement. Someone with better character and more intelligence is needed to reform and sustain the nascent MAGA movement.

Andy G's avatar

“Goldberg has, in many ways, withdrawn from partisan politics…”

Whether or not your statement is technically true, in publicly fixating on critiques of Orange Man Bad, and allying himself with those who are opposed to the GOP, Goldberg has decidedly *not* withdrawn from partisan politics on essentially the most important partisan political issue of all.

Ian Schmidt's avatar

If Goldberg had interesting and thoughtful criticisms of Trump's actual negatives that would be one thing. But he's ultimately just as dishonest as David Brooks, only on a lower budget.

Also, this far into Trump 2.0, I would rate "general incompetence" as obviously not a correct statement. He clearly learned a ton from his first term and spent the 4 years off making a lot of plans. Shutting down USAID may be the most consequential conservative thing any President has ever done, in much the same way that Trump did more for the pro-life movement than any previous Republican.

PapayaSF's avatar

Trump has a big ego and wants a legacy, so I’m pretty sure he’s working to make MAGA a lasting movement. If I’m right, a lot will happen before the midterms.

Andrew's avatar

MAGA has internal disagreements and people in it willing to criticize Trump, and yet doesn't blow up over it. That makes me optimistic about it long term.

Nate Winchester's avatar

Liked that one, even thought his second book was pretty solid.

James Mead's avatar

Follow the gravy drops with Jonah

He's always been a grifter a David Brock like chameleon

jabster's avatar

Goldberg is a great writer. He's a reasoned defender of conservative/libertarian principles. But he's got a case of Long TDS (albeit a mild one) that he hasn't been able to shake. The Dispatch wants to be a conservative alternative, but instead it's become a bit of an Orange Man Bad hobbyhorse.

Kristol is a fraud and a hack.

Again, OK to be Never Trump, if you have defensible reasons. Not OK to have TDS.

PapayaSF's avatar

Goldberg: Writes an excellent book about the dangers of the left.

Trump: Delivers huge victories over the left, the biggest in generations.

Goldberg: “No, not like that!!"

Gym+Fritz's avatar

No, it’s not OK to be “never Trump”, that the same as TDS. You can dislike Trump as a person; you can disagree with any or all of his specific policies or the specific things he has done, but keep in mind that most of what Trump has actually done is right out of the supposed GOP playbook, hell, it’s out of their dreambook. Never Trump is a clever phrase some democrats in their marketing dept. came up with that really rings the bell with certain types of people. You don’t want to be one of them.

Andy G's avatar

Well put.

Except you can’t be a conservative if you disagree with “or all” of his specific policies.

But you can and should be free to disagree with and criticize any number of them

RobMc's avatar

Excellent points on Jonah.

Frank Canzolino's avatar

You meant menstrual show, didn’t you Yuri?

Gym+Fritz's avatar

No, it’s not OK to be “never Trump”, that the same as TDS. You can not like Trump as a person; you can disagree with any or all of his specific policies or the specific things he has done, but keep in mind that most of what Trump has actually done is right out of the supposed GOP playbook, hell, it’s out of their dreambook. Never Trump is a clever phrase some democrats in their marketing dept. came up with that really rings the bell with certain types of people. You don’t want to be one of them.

Ian Schmidt's avatar

Right. Trump exposed that the GOP is just half of the Uniparty and most of its members are willing to practice failure theater, in which they can't do anything conservative because the Democrats won't allow it and what can you do? I'm still shocked that the Big Beautiful Bill was passed and shuts down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (And in the process exposed CPB's "our funding is only 15% from taxpayers" as a complete lie: 15% came on the books from taxpayers, but the other 85% came from USAID, who got it from taxpayers).

Nate Hartley's avatar

They serve no purpose but to cosplay being a conservative while enabling the Left's long march through our institutions. They are nothing but turncoats actively aiding and abetting the enemy.

Vee's avatar

I have a theory that many of the people formerly on the right who subsequently moved to the left because of massive TDS were never that attached to conservative principles. Trump just made them show their true colors.

CB's avatar
Sep 1Edited

Some of them, like Bill Kristol's father, Irving, were actually Trotskyites back in the day. An old friend, gone now, knew Irving Kristol in NYC before WW2, said he was a controlling prick even then. My friend marveled at how many leftists were against U.S. involvement in the war when the Nazis and Soviets had a nonaggression pact and split Poland between them, but became huge supporters of U.S. entry in the war overnight after Hitler turned on Russia. Seems they cared more about communist lives than American. After a stint as Scoop Jackson Democrats, they later allied themselves with conservatives (hence "neoconservative") so that they could influence and later control U.S. foreign policy. Typical example is Victoria Nuland, one of the promotors of overthrowing the democratically elected president of Ukraine back in 2014. That was under Obama, but she also held positions under Bush and Biden.

Richard Parker's avatar

His Sainthood Pete Seeger sang anti-war praises for the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Alan's avatar

Trump is making all the pretenders, haters, conmen (and women), false patriots, traitors, liars, schemers and flatterers show their true colors. Not just nationally, but internationally, too. He's a one-man wrecking crew of all the posers in the world.

Mary Ann Caton's avatar

Hi Vee, it’s Mary Ann, one of Jenna’s regular readers. While we don’t usually agree on RFK’s decisions, I’m with you 100% on this one. Watching many friends and relatives who were what I call “country club “ Republicans become Democrats in 2015, they are all now where they should have been all along.

Anne Emerson Hall's avatar

The reference to Jenna confused me. My apologies.

Mary Ann Caton's avatar

Not a problem! I had started to question my own sanity for a minute, though! LOL

Mitch's avatar

they are most attached to easy paychecks for talking out both sides of their mouths.

Steenroid's avatar

He gets away with it because he is writing for an audience of readers that are unaware of the real world. They only are aware of things that support their view. I always felt like anyone that read the NYT was an elite snob that just wanted the other elites to accept them.

Bobby Lime's avatar

The only thing I have to do financially with The New York Times is that I subscribe to their puzzles. The only one I really enjoy is Wordle, which you don't need a subscription to play, anyway. I'm keeping the subscription for now because I want a record of my stats, also, because I have a daily death match with it against a dear friend: who will solve the puzzle in the fewer number of turns today?

When I started as a subscriber a couple of months ago I would look through the comments for each game. My estimate is that maybe one in five at best came from a mind whom I would be interested in knowing. The clubbiness and the humblebragging were nauseating. Some ****h took me to task because I hadn't known that "FIRST NATIONS" referred to the native people of Canada.

Didn't there used to be an ad that went, "Who reads The New York Times?" I think there was, and I think we know.

Reader East of Albuquerque's avatar

I always thought that the NYT was biased, I complained a lot about it, but it was still the best newspaper in the US for its breadth and depth of coverage. Therefore I subscribed. After covid, however, I now see NYT as colluding in a criminal operation. Plus, many of the writers and editors are jabbed to the max and out of their minds— and not just about covid. I canceled my subscription, good riddance, several years ago.

The Great Santini's avatar

The problem I had/have with the NYT is that they lie. And it is just too much trouble to sort out the many lies from the nuggets of truth (if any) that might be found in their pages.

CB's avatar

You probably know about Walter Duranty, but for any who don't, here's how Brave's AI summarizes him:

"Walter Duranty, a New York Times reporter who served as its Moscow bureau chief from 1922 to 1936, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a series of articles published in 1931 that covered the Soviet Union under Stalin.

His reporting has been heavily criticized for denying the existence of the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Ukraine during 1932-1933 that resulted in the deaths of millions, with estimates ranging from 3.9 million to as high as 7 million.

"Duranty's dispatches, which relied heavily on official Soviet sources and downplayed the severity of the famine, were described by historians as unbalanced, uncritical, and often echoing Stalinist propaganda.

Despite repeated calls from historians and organizations for the Pulitzer Prize to be revoked due to the misleading nature of his work, the Pulitzer Prize Board has not rescinded the award, citing a lack of clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception."

Andy G's avatar

The change from ordinary left bias to outright abandonment of all objectivity was signaled by this NYT Jim Rutenberg piece in August 2016:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness-and-a-proudly-provocative-presidential-candidate.html

If you can’t read the OG piece, you can read about it within the body of the article here:

https://nypost.com/2016/10/11/the-new-york-times-abandoned-its-integrity-just-to-bash-donald-trump/

Mary Ann Caton's avatar

Permission structures.

Bobby Lime's avatar

What was it Mary McCarthy said about a Lillian Hellman book? It was something like, "There isn't a single honest word in it, including 'and' and 'but.'"

Alan Potkin's avatar

I believe the McCarthy quote was "everything she [Lillian Hellman] says is a lie, including "a", "an", and "the".

The Great Santini's avatar

Every time I talk to my Left Wing Friends (I still have a few), they come up with something new. The latest was that SecDef Hegseth wants to take the vote away from women. This was so bizarre that I had to look it up. Turns out Hegseth posted a video from a preacher talking about various things, mostly about his faith. One of the participants remarked in passing that he thought giving the women the vote was not consistent with biblical teaching. (Personally I have no opinion about this matter and don’t think it’s relevant.) The video was apparently posted on Hegseth’s personal account. The video that I found was a series of interviews on CNN with Church leaders where the CNN Interviewer took exception to biblical teaching about families and the roles of men and women. But somehow, the passing comment of a secondary participant to a interview in a video that the SecDef shared has been misrepresented as Administration Policy. I wish these exaggerations & misrepresentations were a rarity. Unfortunately it is a regular feature of Left Wing discourse. The examples are legion.

cat's avatar

Leftists have to sift through a lot of speeches, books, videos and websites to find either an offhand or casual remark, or take something completely out of context, to try to prove a point. Yet when points are blatantly and repeatedly made by leftists, somehow nobody is supposed to notice or believe what's right out in the open.

John Duffner's avatar

There’s lots of graduate level nuance when they need it to be there.

What's avatar

yeah, but can they parallel park, if not, no vote.

The Great Santini's avatar

Takes two spaces. Maybe three.

Steve's avatar

Leftists always project. All of their falsely claimed “innocent” associations that they deny actually mean anything (such as Obama and Bill Ayers, or their CCP ties) are actually their true selves. They no longer even associate with anyone not brainwashed into their cult, and they’re so indoctrinated in that thinking, they believe EVERYONE is just like them in this regard.

Holly S.'s avatar

People who agree with what French and St. Felix write let them do their thinking for them. They are apparently unaware they are part of a self fornicating loop of useless culture reporting. Thanks for reading the Times and calling them out so I don’t have to, Chris!

The Ungovernable's avatar

David who?

David Lang Wardle's avatar

If I ever wanted David French's opinion (I don't), I'd beat it out of him.

The Great Santini's avatar

As for Cracker Barrel (CB), they have gone “Woke”. They’ve injected an overwhelming emphasis on DEI into the corporate culture, they’ve made major PR efforts in support of DEI and they have a DEI enthusiast as a Board Member. They’ve even painted their rocking chairs in ‘pride colors’. So yep, went “woke”. As to the Brand destruction, it was in many ways parallel to Bud Light. CB was brand was as a country store with down home cooking and antiques displayed in the restaurant . Corporate, who was “woke”, decided to do away with everything that made CB different. They changed the menu. They went to microwave preparation of prepackage meals. They removed the antiques and replaced the decor with bland walls. They changed the logo. And, finally, they spent weeks telling us everybody loved the new stores. But they didn’t. And now, in panic, they are reversing course. Did “wokeness” cause this brand suicide? Or did it just cause the corporate leadership to go braindead, which led to the suicidal rebranding? Or is the “Wokeness” just a symptom the brain rot that also led to the brand suicide? Does it really matter? It still ends up “Go Woke, Go Broke”.

Murray James's avatar

but how much of the new sign or store decor can be labeled woke? these are style issues. The right used them to highlight the boardroom wokeness with success.

the rainbow chairs excepted. - the flag of shame... but the right outrage machine will never say that out loud.

Brian Nelson's avatar

I thought (had hoped actually) that this clown was USMA alum, alas only Harvard. Was all geared up to make my case to close the service academies...but the exact same argument could be said about the ivies. Who are these people?

Every single USMA graduate I know has TDS. I'd like Trump to issue an EO that forbids any federal agency from hiring anyone from an ivy or military academy until 2035. Let's see how much that drains the swamp.

bsn

The Great Santini's avatar

There are many Academy Grads who support MAGA. In my extensive experience it is about 1/3-1/3-1/3. One third MAGA, one third with TDS, one third neither.

Brian Nelson's avatar

I should have qualified my experience to the last 18 years in the Guard. Likely fewer USMA graduates there—and my experience is 100% TDS, and what I would call ‘procedure over people’ bias. Actually this bias is probably 70-30 Army wide, likely higher within NCO Corps—maintain the standards style of thinking.

Thanks Santini. You helped me see my own bias as well.

bsn

Qtto's avatar

Bastard French is an attorney and former JAG who used to direct combat “dos and don’ts” from an air conditioned bunker miles away from danger!

I refer to males (cannot call him a man) like him as “Pimp Weasels”… no disrespect to pimps or weasels intended!

Airish's avatar

Re: Sydney Sweeney. The WaPo ran innumerable pieces of this, generally in the vein of this “analysis.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/07/28/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-ad/

Francis Turner's avatar

And he totally jumps over the larger issue behind the Cracker Barrel logo change, that the logo change was just part of a complete rebranding makeover of the chain which meant throwing pretty much everything the chain has been well known for since it started and becoming a sterile generic food place.

For someone who, as he claims, was such a fan of "Cracker Barrel’s country-fried steak and mashed potatoes" it's weird that he doesn't even mention the fact that the rebrand was intended to change the menu choices significantly too.

CTW's avatar

At least he has the respect of M Gessen…..

Chris Bray's avatar

An equal amount of penis and testicle between the two of them

Refenestrated's avatar

“Interestingly, breasts, and the desire for them, are stereotyped as objects of white desire, as opposed to, say, the Black man’s hunger for ass.”

The Banal Provocation of Capitalizing “Black” But Not “White”, by Doreen St. Fake Accent Mark Over the E.

nymusicdaily's avatar

guessing that in kreyol, putting a fake accent mark over the E makes you gangsta. you know like claudine gay (mai ja na swi pa sou pos ka ja na pol kreyol)