Yglesias implies the New York Times has too much integrity to do business in China. However, it looks like the article that Musk was sharing in praise of the Communist Partyâs success in curtailing COVID came from the New York Times. Overall, I agree that Muskâs pro-China attitude is bad and concerning.
The New York Times is blocked in China as part of their censorship regime. So is Substack. It would be better for their businesses if A.G. Sulzberger and Chris Best were as skilled as Musk at getting Xi to do special favors for their companies. But achieving that goal would require them to fundamentally compromise the integrity of editorial businesses in a way that I think would outweigh the benefits.
Iranian government raping and executing thousands of dissidents.
The Iranian government continues to murder people. And the mainstream media isnât covering it.
Wikipedia says Mahabad had around 168,000 people 15 years ago. Itâs the capital of an Iranian province and itâs mostly populated by Kurds.
The tribalists who sided against Harry and Meghan could watch the Netflix documentary and then apologize.
I just want to say â because I like Reisman and still recommend his treatise on economics â that I disagree with and dislike his gender commentary and attacks on trans stuff. It looks to me like itâs clearly just a current tribalist political trend and Iâm sad to see him vigorously participating.
I think both main tribes are being dumb on gender and trans issues. I wish the right would shut up about it and focus on something else that matters more (but not abortion, please stop that activism that too ugh). And I wish the left was way more wary of the medical authorities, drugs and surgeries (the right isnât being very good on that either and mostly complains about the wrong things). Reisman in particular has the ability to do something way better if he would focus on economics or timeless political philosophy.
I think you mean the South Park episode mocking Harry and Meghan (s26 e2). FYI I think theyâre victims who have been harassed and lied about by the media (including by that South Park episode). A lot of people are really biased against them for no good reason. Some is related to the monarchy being powerful or people being biased in favor of the monarchy. Some seems to be right-wing tribalists hating them for being into center-left charity.
Yes I meant that episode.
I donât really pay a lot of attention to public figures, and I wouldnât base my opinions on them on satirical cartoons if I did.
How do you distinguish between lies and satire? I think there are aspects of the way you use âlieâ that I donât fully understand.
It can be both lying and satire.
Satire implies a range of underlying realities or ballpark of what the underlying reality is. There are some conceivable realities where that satire is funny and some where it makes no sense.
For example, the previous episode had satire about Kanye liking Nazis. That would have been unfair and dishonest if Kanye hadnât actually said some pro-Nazi stuff (I havenât paid much attention but it seems to be uncontroversial that he did that) or at least if Kanye hadnât even said something else kinda similar that it could be a reasonable parody of. That South Park episode humorously exaggerates on a true issue.
Another way to look at it is, if you know the reality, the Kanye Nazi episode is still funny. But if know the reality, the Harry and Meghan stuff is no longer funny due to being too inaccurate, unfair, mean, etc.
And itâs meant to be funny especially for people who have been following some news and see the connections between things in the episode and IRL events. People with some knowledge of the situation are the target audience. In other words, the episode is designed to appeal to people who believed a certain false media narrative that apparently fooled Matt and Trey too. (But they take on a lot of responsibility to have done adequate research before doing an episode like that for a huge audience. Itâs their job to know what theyâre talking about.)
Thereâs also a common pattern where a victim wants to be left alone by abuser(s), but that is not working, so they dare to speak up to complain and try to get a change. That doesnât actually make them a hypocrite or aggressor, but some people will regard them as the problem and the party who is disturbing the peace. Perhaps you can understand the generic logic of the situation and think of other examples.
Youâre probably influenced without realizing it, just like e.g. New York Times readers who think they know itâs biased and think they are avoiding being manipulated. But even if you arenât, millions of other people are being influenced by the episode. It is going to make Harry and Meghanâs IRL lives worse/harder.
BTW I also mentioned it partly because I believe multiple other forum readers/posters have pre-existing anti-Harry-and-Meghan views due to being fooled by media coverage and having right-wing tribalism biases.
South Park has often disagreed with the mainstream media and conventional ideas. In lots of ways a counter-culture show.
So when South Park joins its voice to the mainstream media, it implies that an issue is pretty uncontroversial. Both the mainstream and counter-culture are on the same side!
If the mainstream doesnât like you and then someone can say âEven South Park hates themâ it makes you look extra bad.
South Park has certainly advocated mainstream opinions before, e.g. they attacked NAMBLA. And that one is genuinely pretty uncontroversial. NAMBLA has few supporters. It takes a creepy outlier like Sarah Fitz-Claridge or David Deutsch to have a more positive view of NAMBLA.
On the other hand, Harry and Meghan have tons of supporters who were left out of the South Park episode. Itâs an actual controversy with lots of people on each side. In cases like that, South Park has tended to help give a voice to the side with a lot less voice/power/influence in the media, but this time South Park sided with establishment power (rather than noticing its flaws and mocking it as usual) while actually misleading making it look in the episode like Harry and Meghan were the ones with more media voice.
The South Park episode basically made it look like Harry and Meghan are the establishment power in this case and were being mocked as South Park normally does, and made it look like the media is on Harry and Meghanâs side. But that isnât true: the monarchy is the establishment power and the media has been far more favorable to the monarchy. The monarchy is the kind of thing South Park would normally disrespect, and they have done that before and did do it a little in this episode too, which makes it extra misleading that the episode is mostly taking the monarchyâs side (and mostly doing that without mentioning the monarchy or presenting it as a conflict between two sides â they kind of made it look like Harry and Meghan were complaining about nothing by basically only showing them complaining while omitting everything they were complaining about from the show).
I appreciate how this mirrors the harassment youâve endured.
Fwiw the Harry & Meghan parts of the episode were not something I found particularly interesting. I did think about how I donât know any part of their story and it could be a misrepresentation.
When I initially commented about the episode it I was entirely thinking about the Kyle storyline and his pursuit of a new image.
https://www.tiktok.com/@history/video/7208979430243421482
I had never heard of this horrible oppression of women in America, but Wikipedia says itâs true.