My Kind of Town

Jonah’s still in Chicago for today’s Ruminant, and he isn’t terribly comfortable with the pre-summer ...

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Jonah’s still in Chicago for today’s Ruminant, and he isn’t terribly comfortable with the pre-summer weather. Still, severe cold in spring is less frustrating than our political dysfunction, and Jonah has plenty to discuss on that front. After exploring the distinction between disinformation and misinformation and the state of American media bias, he turns to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, Florida’s controversial education bill, and why misusing the term “groomer” is both immoral and tactically foolish for Republicans. Ready your bingo cards for a predictably freewheeling ride.

Show Notes:

– The Remnant with Megan McCardle

– Jonah on disinformation at the UChicago Institute of Politics

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  1. Avatar photo
    Melissa

    Jonah you are so right about the “groomer” issue. Discussing sexual content with kids K - 3 is wrong in an school setting. But trying to argue the point by calling others horrific names, like groomer or pedophile is immoral. It’s a loosing strategy for conservatives. Try the Glen Youngkin approach!

    I keep reading about the mistreatment of David French, and his writings reflect some trauma. Can someone explain this to me? I see criticisms of his writings, but not to the level you implied in the podcast.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Cam

    I think the problem in Chicago was to go with preposterous when the better answer may be “Who knows?” I’ve been a follower/reader or many years, and now a subscriber. I’d prefer a lot less knee-jerk anti-Trump and “I have no home” navel gazing and more solidarity with many of us engaged in the struggle, particularly in the blue states.

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  3. Radicalartist

    Jonah mentioned the controversy over the leaked Disney internal zoom meeting that sparked the recent anti-Disney campaign post the "don't say gay" controversy. He questioned if it was intended to quell the internal strife to which I can say most definitely, it was. However it was part of the companies ongoing "Reimagine Tomorrow" efforts that have given a lot of power to people whose first priority is progressive activism to craft standards for content and directs the network level management on standards they then discreetly, and not so discreetly try and enforce. I have worked with some of the people in the video, I can't say I know them well but I can tell you they are sincere. It has become a problem internally and as Jonah noted it really is a danger to Disney as a cultural institution. If someone at The Dispatch ever wanted to do a piece about it (I don't trust people like Rufo etc. to be nuanced) I'd be more than happy to talk, and provide contact info for others I think may be willing to be interviewed (anonymously).

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  4. Avatar photo
    Seth B

    Jonah,
    The claim that a sixth of Biden voters would *not* have voted for him had they known more about Hunter Biden's laptop is disinformation. I looked into this a week or so ago when an acquaintance sent me a NY Post story touting this nonsense.
    You are correct that this comes from The Media Research Center, an organization which appears to have all the integrity of the World Weekly News. On their website's home page at present (accompanied by a banner reading - I kid you not - "Stealing the American Presidency 2020"), there's a link to this study. I'll reproduce the link below for anyone who cares to get a good laugh.
    The study never actually mentions Hunter Biden. But that's neither here nor there. The key thing to understand is that the questions asked in the survey are so absurdly leading that the answers obtained thereby are useless. Sarah would have a field day with this one!
    The survey worked as follows. The respondents would first be buttered up with a question like this gem:
    "At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that Joe Biden chose as his running mate and successor Kamala Harris, rated the most left wing Senator in America, even more leftist that Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist?"
    Gee wiz!
    Then the respondents/marks would be asked a follow-up:
    "If you *had* been aware that Joe Biden’s running mate Senator Kamala Harris was found to be more left-wing than Bernie Sanders, would you have... [various options: still voted for Biden, switched to Trump, not voted for President, etc.]" 🤣
    And so on and so forth ad nauseum. Every question either reflected very negatively on Biden or very positively on Trump - and every question was immediately followed by the question that effectively asked, "Well, now that you known Biden is a monster and Trump is the messiah, don't you regret voting for Biden?"
    Even students who fumbled their way to a C in an intro to stats class would recognize that such a "study" has zero scientific validity. I promise you, the people at MRC are well aware of this - and yet they promoted it anyway. I therefore label it DISinformation - not mere misinformation. The dum-dums at the NY Post and elsewhere (the Ginni Thomases of the media landscape) who gullibly reported this stuff are therefore guilty of misinformation.
    It's a classic information laundering scheme.
    https://cdn.mrc.org/TPC-MRC+Biden+Voter+Messaging+Survey+Analysis+Nov+2020_final.pdf

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  5. Avatar photo
    PaulH

    There is something ironic about having Ben Smith -- he who was responsible for making the Steele Dossier public -- on a panel about disinformation. Was he there to give the "pro" side?

    The lack of media introspection about the coverage of the Steele Dossier (with a few notable exceptions) is still astounding. I was at a presentation on Russian influence on our politics shortly after the release of the Mueller Report (which confirmed precisely nothing in the Steele Dossier despite MSM expectations to the contrary). The panel included pundits and a WaPo reporter. I asked the panel whether they thought the Steele Dossier could have been Russian disinformation. The result was embarrassed silence (meaning, they were embarrassed that anyone would think it reasonable to ask that question). Eventually the WaPo reporter mumbled something about many of the facts in the dossier having been verified and the discussion went on.

    Now it turns out the the Steele Dossier was largely sourced from a Russian expat who the FBI suspected of being a Russian agent. It is unclear whether he was actually getting disinformation from Russian agencies or just making things up (I tend towards the latter view); but the possibility that the dossier was disinformation is something that could and should have been taken seriously.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    "Memogate"?!? Pish-posh. It was, and should always be remembered as, "Raᵀᴴergate."

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  7. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Two things:

    1. I loathe this whole “your side is worse” baloney with the intensity of a thousand suns. It’s the ugly offspring of Hitler is worse than Stalin. I don’t know why I should give a fig whether Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic garbage is worse than Marjorie Taylor Greene’s or whether Boogaloo Boys are worse than Anti-Fa.

    All of it is illiberal, ignorant nonsense and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt. Whenever I hear this stuff, it’s dripping with implications of my own irresponsibility for being Republican and I reject that categorically. It’s perfectly reasonable to be a Democrat or a Republican and reject the intellectual flatulence permeating the lunatic fringe of your own party.

    2. Anne Applebaum may not give a damn about Hunter Biden’s laptop and neither do I. But Twitter and Facebook did care and that’s the problem. In fact, not only do I agree with Jonah that the Media Research poll is probably bogus, I would be inclined to believe that censoring that stuff helped Trump because it corroborates the narrative that the media is out to get him. Everyone read the Hunter story precisely because it was censored.

    This is pretty much exactly what the right wing clown car means when they say “all the conspiracies are coming true.” The media is paid to care and if they’re going to scream about Steele from the rooftops while pretending the Biden thing is a nothing burger then they can’t be surprised when nobody trusts the bilge that spews forth from their fart factories.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    At some point, I would love to hear your story about going to an all-women’s college. According to the internet, Goucher went coed in 1986. Is that when you went?

    Also, I’d love another one of those reading-from-the-underrated-book Remnant episodes and that stuff about the Catholic Church and witch hunts seems a good topic.

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  9. Jon

    So let me get this straight Jonah.

    Prior to becoming president the trump's ran a family business. And Trump never held public office. Ivanka and Don Jr, whatever you think of them, we’re both high level executives in that business and both highly intelligent individuals. Jared Kushner ran his own separate 9-10 figure business.

    All of these people left their businesses to serve as advisors to Trump in his capacity as President. All officially and in the open.
    There is zero evidence that they even attempted to personally profit from such advisory capacities let alone actually walk away with millions.

    The Biden’s on the other hand had zero business other than the public service of one Joe Biden. All Hunter, Joe’s-brother, and with 100% likelihood when all is said and done- Joe himself did- under the best of circumstances- was to use Joes influence and contacts from his public service after Joe’s tenure as senator and VP (with that being an extremely generous take on what likely happened as it’s more likely that they also did so during his tenure in those official government positions) to earn millions of dollars from exploiting Joe’s political influence in China, Russia and Ukraine of all places. Clearly solely because of Joe’s political influence from his time as a senator and VP.

    And according to you Jonah- what the Trump family did was 100x worse than the Bidens.

    Sorry but that is insane.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Jason Gibson

      that's not how I took it. He was just more making it clear that you can't really go after hunter biden if you didn't care about the Trumps making money.

      To be fair I don't care about either. I think the situation reflects very poorly on everyone but I fail to see what it has to do with anything except a desire to see the other side lose.

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      1. Matt Foster

        I'd have to say the opposite. I care about both and would like to see families stop profiting from politicians' influence. Those who do - on both sides - should be prosecuted when possible.

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          Jason Gibson

          I don’t have a problem with prosecution. But it’s not really what we should worry about

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    2. Matt Foster

      You lost all credibility - and I mean every single ounce of it - when you tried to argue Don Jr is or ever was a "highly intelligent individual." That is absurd on its face, so everything else you said is virtually meaningless.

      Don Jr did not leave his business to serve as an advisor. Ivanka profited from trade deals with foreign countries (China for sure if I recall correctly) during Trump's term, which is horrifying. I think Jared just got a $2B loan from a Saudi bank, which is highly suspect.

      Whatever his crimes end up being, Hunter Biden is unlikely to be any worse than the Trump family.

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    Dusty

    Very grounded, well-reasoned episode. As always.

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