As IF Times

Source: Bruce Springsteen is embarrassed to be an American | Fox News

Seems like there’s an endless supply of stupid from the alt-left hate spigot. As no doubt everyone is aware, many in the shrill alt-left community are not amused by their candidate’s loss in the last election and more specifically, with the ascension of Donald Trump.

We’re almost 2 months into the aftermath of the election and the snowflakes are still holding their breath and pounding their fists. Self styled ‘celebrities’ have vociferously come out in protest over the result.  Like an infested boil, they feel the need to constantly scratch and poke at it and worst of all, are compelled to share this with others.

Nobody cares. They may be yelling into an echo chamber, but normal people look at these ‘brave’ culture warriors in a new light; as entitled deniers of a democratic process.  I can’t recall the last time my plumber needed to foist his views of immigration upon me.  Nor do I recall my mechanic lecturing me on Roe vs Wade while performing an oil change.  We seldom need to direct our waiter to bring us the bacon mushroom burger but hold the political sanctimony.  Because despite their possibly strongly held views, nobody else cares what they think. It’s always been unclear to me why people whom are fortunate enough to make a living off of some marketable talent, think that their expertise and wisdom extends past their guitar pick or stage deck.  It’s the height of arrogance.

In 2003, The Dixie Chicks chose to enter the political fray with their negative sentiments on George Bush during a concert in the U.K.  That seems to be the model for Springsteen’s recent declaration of embarrassment of being an American at a concert in Australia.  Way to be brave Bruce, go for the low hanging fruit.  It would be a tad more impressive if you were in Saudi Arabia or China criticizing human rights.

The fact is, he could have just as easily revealed that he collects furby porn or prefers to wear string underwear.  It’s irrelevant.  Artistes of all stripes should get involved politically if they don’t like things by doing what regular folk do.  Write articles, be an activist, run for office, but don’t invade the sensibilities of paying customers with vapid rants.  Take the advice of the aptly named Dixie Chicks concert tour years ago… Shut Up And Sing.

Source: The 7 Worst Examples of Fake News From the Mainstream Media – John Hawkins

The current rage over the preponderance and influence of ‘fake news’ is amusing because I’ve been writing about this stuff for many, many years.  From the smallest of manufactured news items concerning some straw man issue to the grand scale concoctions regarding Global Warming, fantasy narratives have been common reportage in the mainstream media for a long time. What seems to have turned the zeitgeist from tolerance to outrage is that now, fake news is widely blamed for causing the election loss of the candidate from the left.

Not to be deterred, the fake news business is turning its guns against Donald Trump, attempting to discredit his creds even before he puts his hand on the swearing in bible.  We’ve alluded many times to one of the biggest ironies in modern culture and that is,  historically, people’s access to information has never been better, yet they are as likely to be uninformed, or more correctly, misinformed as ever.

We can blame to some degree, the internet business model.  Many ‘news’ sites have been created over the past decade to compete somewhat with the established oligarchy of news outlets.  With free access notionally provided by the internet news sites, whose revenue models are based on clicks instead of subscriptions,  people increasingly defer to them as information sources rather than read more in depth coverage.  Who hasn’t turned on their browser and scanned through Google News or MSN News?

While this may give an overview of the headlines of the day, nobody makes money on headlines, so the tactic is to make people click further on the page.  The standard model is to create an attention grabbing headline such as “Dog has sex with man” and then follows up with clickbait such as “12 reasons why this can ruin your marriage“.  Internet users have to navigate a minefield of “What celebrity X looks like today is amazing” stories in order to get to legitimate news stories.  How else to explain the ubiquity of Kim Kardashian stories if not for their ability to attract clicks from people desperate to catch up on her most recent adventures? When stories such as “10 things that Trump did in Moscow” come to light, the line between fake and reality truly disappears.  (I mean, who doesn’t want to know at least what 5 of those things were?)

They’ve dumbed down the news business to emulate the format pioneered by Cosmopolitan magazine, famous for cover stories such as ” 6 best ways to keep your man” and “7 ways to a sexier butt“.  With the ascension of Donald Trump to the Presidency, we can expect at least 4 years of fanciful news from some of the more hysterical partisan news websites.  But that’s not the root of the issue; the real threat is the proliferation of fake journalists.  While it’s easy to disregard anything from sites with names such as TMZ, MTV, or Rolling Stone, there is more and more evidence that stories from outlets such as CNN, New York Times and Washington Post, are nakedly partisan and often fanciful in their telling.

One of these days, Donald Trump will actually do something shocking… and we won’t know if it’s true.