Mediaboss Marketing

I saw the No Safe Spaces movie. In this conservative documentary about the importance of free speech, talk-show host Dennis Prager and lad-mag TV star and podcaster Adam Carolla spend a lot of time walking in slow-motion toward the camera and sucking on cigars. They make a persuasive case that todays college students are fairly intolerant of non-woke opinions. They provide an intermittently amusing and also chilling reminder that the First Amendment rests on somewhat precarious footing and that our civics education has gone to hell. But Im not entirely persuaded that America is in as much danger as No Safe Spaces claims.

NO SAFE SPACES (3/5 stars)Directed by: Justin FolkRunning time:100 min

No Safe Spaces is at its best when it presents actual evidence of its thesis that kids today dont respect the First Amendment. Theres some frightening footage of an anti-Ben Shapiro protest at UC Berkeley and of a Toronto college teaching assistants railroading at the hands of a moronic super-woke academic committee. Most effectively and prominently, it features a long and effective retelling of the Bret Weinstein saga.

For those of you who observe online flame wars as a hobby, youll already know that Weinstein was a liberal lecturer at Evergreen State College in rural Washington. Evergreen has a tradition of a day, based on the ideas of a radical Harlem Renaissance playwright, where black students disappear so white people can specifically feel how much they contribute to society. A couple of years ago, the black students informed the white students that the black people would remain on campus and it was the duty of thewhitestudents to disappear. Weinstein rightly declared this an illiberal tendency. Students protested him and forced other students to denounce him, Gang Of Four-style. And then the college fired him. They deserved to pay ten times the $500,000 settlement that Weinstein eventually received.

Your tolerance of No Safe Spaces may vary upon whether or not you think this is an isolated case, or a harbinger of a left-wing Big Brother future. Prager and Carolla think it might be the end of freedom. Im not so sure. Woke culture is mostly ridiculous, and violent protests against righty gadflys like MiloYiannopoulos and Ann Coulter are completely ridiculous. But its not like people areactuallybeing canceled because of their ideas, expect for maybe Milo, but one could safely argue that he cancelled himself by being a huge jerky weirdo. In the end, Ann Coulter still gets to appear on TV, as does pretty much everyone else. No Safe Spaces also prominently features the voices of Van Jones and Bill Maher, hardly fascist sympathizers, reflecting the movies central thesis that speech should be free. Not everyone agrees, but enough people do.

No Safe Spaces weakens its case with lame cartoons interspersed thoughout, including a bad Schoolhouse Rock parody where Antifa riddles the First Amendment with bullets, and a superhero cartoon called Social Justice Warriors thats about a thousandth as funny as the Robert Smigel and Adam McKay-written X-Presidents cartoons to which its indebted. Meanwhile, the rich get richer.Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, two of the major victims of this movement according to our documentary hosts, make a lot of money and have careers that many politically-correct pundits would envy. Peterson gets a custom-tour of Carollas personal garage, where they gawk at vintage sportscars. The movie ends with Prager conducting the L.A. Symphony Orchestra and Carolla driving fast around a racetrack. These dudes are not gulag-bound anytime soon.

For the screening, my safe space was a comfortable recliner in a fancy walking-mall multiplex in the southwestern suburbs of Austin, Texas. At the time, this film was, apparently, the number-one doc grosser in the country, despite only playing on 300 screens. There were six people in the audience midday pre-Christmas, four of whom applauded at the opening credits, so I assume they know someone who worked on the picture. In any case, thats about what you expect for a movie whose projected audience is people who legitimately believe that the progressive left is about to set the world aflame. Millions of those people exist, but they tend to watch such material on Twitter, and Twitter is about as unsafe as spaces get. Maybe thats why theyre so worried.

This concludes my review of the No Safe Spaces movie.

Go here to read the rest:
No Safe Spaces Movie Review - Book and Film Globe

Twitter: You use it to scream into a void at work, make enemies, or get fired, and in return, nothing good happens and using it only makes you sad. It's cigarettes for your brain. Sometimes you find a good joke on the site, sometimes you network online and make new friends, and almost all of the time, those instances are drowned out by the nonstop caterwauling of online Nazis, boomer idiots, and the president of the United States.

Miami is a particularly insane place to be online, because the city attracts narcissists, and 85 to 90 percent of being a Miamian in the 2010s revolved around Posting About Where You Were and Why It Was Important and Exclusive. Florida is a largely crazy place to live, and living inside the brains of Floridians online each and every day is even crazier. So, inspired by this BuzzFeed list of the decade's most brain-melting political tweets, here's a rundown of the best and worst that Miami Twitter offered this past decade.

Bleakest corporate tweet: UPS thanking Miami-area cops for possibly shooting a UPS driver to death.

UPS has been roasted incessantly since the December 6 shooting in which a team of 18 Miami-area cops fired their guns into rush-hour traffic after alleged robbers highjacked a UPS truck and took its driver, Frank Ordonez, hostage. Ordonez, the two robbers, and an innocent bystander died. In a since-deleted tweet, UPS thanked the cops for their service.

Worst Javier Ortiz moment: Miami's police union president saying 12-year-old Tamir Rice deserved to be murdered by cops.

Choosing a single Javier Ortiz Twitter moment is like eating only one Pringles chip from the can, except the chips in this instance are racist statements from a powerful cop and the canister holding them is bottomless. But the worst among the bunch is clear: Before Ortiz was forced from his position heading the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, he tweeted that Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old child holding a toy gun, deserved to be shot dead by Cleveland cops.

"Act like a thug and you'll be treated like one," he wrote online in 2015 after Rice was killed. We refuse to let him forget it.

Best way to get fired online: The time a radio host got canned for offering $1,000 to permanently injure Devonta Freeman.

Former Miami Hurricanes defensive tackle Dan Sileo was fired from his job on WQAM in 2013 after offering $1,000 to anyone who injured then-Florida State Seminole Devonta Freeman.This incident made the list less because of what happenedand more because Sileo had a subsequent meltdown and perfectly encapsulated the misspelled, bizarrely capitalized, and bone-chilling way male boomers get angry online in modern society.Sileo went from offering money to hurt people to claiming he was in hiding and had to hire armed guards because of the backlash. Few sentences are as perfect as "I have hired a PRIVATE COP and He is ARMED..THANK U..GO CANES." Sileo wins bonus points for threading his tweets out of order. Perfect boomer mindset.

Best hoax: Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson possibly making up a story about pigeon husbandry.

Miami native and former NFL star Chad Johnson could get his own list for all the crazy things he has done online, but the strangest was claiming in 2010 that he found a pigeon and watched that pigeon lay eggs. Some intrepid internet sleuths, however, discovered he was just using pigeon photos from the first page of Google Images.

Worst use of police time:Miami Beach cops arresting a dude for a parody Twitter account.

Miami Beach cops arrested Ernesto Orsetti in 2018 after he allegedly made an account that purported to be run by MBPD spokesperson Ernesto Rodriguez. That arrest seemed unnecessary on its face and could have had some serious repercussions for First Amendment rights. But prosecutors dropped the charges after noting Orsetti had written that retweets "are just RTs" in his bio, so don't let anyone tell you that phrase is meaningless.

Weirdest fight: Former Miami Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Twitter feuds with Karl Lagerfeld and Mariah Carey.

As former New Timescolumnist Kyle Munzenrieder wrote in 2016:

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Miami, is like the Azealia Banks of Congress. She always seems to find herself feuding with some celebrity or another. Beyonc, Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Lopez have all found themselves on the other end of a critical Twitter lashing from Ros-Lehtinen.

However, the congresswoman has good reasons for her beefs. Ros-Lehtinen usually reserves her ire for stars she believes are propping up dictators throughout the globe while ignoring human rights.

In fact, the member (and former chair) of the powerful House Committee on Foreign Relations has taken it upon herself to become Washington's top voice calling out Hollywood stars who dabble with dictators.

That habit led Ros-Lehtinen to yell at then-Chanel head honcho Karl Lagerfeld for going to Cuba, former NBA great Dennis Rodman for traveling to North Korea, and even Beyonc for her 2016 trip to Havana. Did you know Mariah Carey took a bunch of money from former Angolan dictatorJos Eduardo dos Santos? Ros-Lehtinen sure remembers.

Best political tweet: Marco Rubio promising in writing he would not run for reelection.

Staring at this tweet approximates the feeling of staring directly at the sun. Kudos to the senator for having the guts to leave the post online.

Worst trend:#FloridaMan

Look, New Times(and even this reporter) is also guilty of leaning into the Florida Man aesthetic for cheap laughs in the social media era. But there's nothing funny about Florida Man stories they make for quick, viral hits on Twitter, but they ruin the lives of people who overwhelmingly have drug problems or mental-health issues. Think twice before you retweet those posts, folks. If you can't understand why, download this Chrome plug-in from the podcast Citations Needed that replaces the term "Florida Man" with the phrase "Man likely suffering from mental illness or drug addiction."

Best Twitter moment of the decade: The day all of conservative media screamed at a Miami Cheesecake Factory.

This incident didn't get much media play when it happened. But it might be the single funniest thing to ever happen in Miami politics, and it deserves to be immortalized as a shining example of how politics and social media broke everyone's brains in the post-Trump era. In May 2018, Eugenior Joseph claimed he was threatened by staff at the Dadeland Mall Cheesecake Factory for wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Joseph claimed staff gathered around his table and "smacked their knuckles" around him. So he called the cops. And the cops determined nothing happened.This did not stop Fox News from putting Joseph on the air to discuss the so-called incident while he proudly wore his MAGA hat. Pundits such as Ben Shapiro and white-supremacist bog-witch Ann Coulter came to Joseph's defense online and acted as if he had somehow been the victim of a hate crime for an incident that might not have even happened. Amateur conservative YouTubers briefly began appearing at Cheesecake Factory locations and screaming about Donald Trump. (Really.) And the Cheesecake Factory apologized online. Two days later, the company said it had fired two employees. But it also seemed to suggest Joseph was lying about portions of what had happened.

The incident reveals Americans have two paths in life: You can become a Eugenior Joseph and perform on camera for the TV propaganda machine, or you can sit behind a desk while waiting for 5 o'clock and trying to drink away the pain of writing branded tweets for a cheesecake chain. Here's to 2020.

Jerry Iannelli is a staff writer for Miami New Times. He graduated with honors from Temple University. He then earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He moved to South Florida in 2015.

The rest is here:
The Worst Miami Tweets of the 2010s Decade - Miami New Times

First it was the moon landing, vaccines, and New Coke. Now nutty conspiracies are surrounding the life-and-death matter of hurricanes.

With warming waters providing extra fuel, tropical cyclones have become more frequent and more intense in recent years, causing deadly flooding, widespread power outages, and hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. Some people (ahem) see a sinister plot behind it all, an attempt to overhype the threat of disasters so that Big Government can take over (or something). This bonkers hurricane trutherism has spread from right-wing blogs to a much broader audience.

And it might already have real-world, fact-based consequences. A working paper suggests that by downplaying hurricane risk, conservative media hosts like Rush Limbaugh could be discouraging people from getting out of harms way.

Before Hurricane Irma struck Florida in 2017, causing more than 100 deaths and $50 billion in damages, hurricane trutherism got a lot of attention. Limbaugh the most popular talk show host in the country cast doubt on Irmas severity and the motivation behind advisories prodding people to evacuate.

Here comes a hurricane, local media goes on the air, Big hurricane coming, oh, my God! Make sure you got batteries. Make sure you got water. It could be the worst ever. Have you seen the size of this baby? Its already a Cat 5. Limbaugh went on to suggest that the hype about Irma would lead to a bigger audience for TV stations, a boost in local business from worried residents stocking up on supplies, and of course, panic over climate change. Shortly thereafter, Limbaugh evacuated from his South Florida home to escape Irmas wrath.

The right-wing commentator Ann Coulter followed with her own take on Twitter: HURRICANE UPDATE FROM MIAMI: LIGHT RAIN; RESIDENTS AT RISK OF DYING FROM BOREDOM. Limbaugh and Coulters comments were covered by the mainstream media, and Google searches for hurricane conspiracy reached an all-time high.

The damage was done. For their study, the researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles found that only 34 percent of Floridians who likely voted for President Trump in the 2016 election evacuated before Irma hit, compared to 45 percent of Hillary Clinton voters. But ahead of two other hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Harvey in 2017 when skepticism of hurricane threats was less widespread in the media, the researchers found that Trump and Clinton voters evacuated at similar rates.

The researchers looked at GPS location data from 30 million smartphone users to compare evacuation patterns for hurricanes Matthew, Harvey, and Irma, and juxtaposed that with voting data from the 2016 presidential election. The authors declined Grists request to comment because the paper is in the final stages of peer review.

Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication who was not involved in the study, said the findings appeared to be in line with recent research showing that the media can have a strong effect on decision-making.

In the Trump-voting districts in this study, theres a natural skepticism of the government, and I think that skepticism is being exploited to the great detriment of peoples health and safety, she said. We tend not to think of evacuating a hurricane as having anything to do with partisan politics, but were starting to see that it is becoming part of the political debate.

Limbaugh isnt the only one undermining public trust in hurricane forecasting. Earlier this year, Trump doubled down on a lie that forecasts had projected that Hurricane Dorian was headed to Alabama, going so far as to present a doctored NOAA map extending the hurricanes range of possible paths with a Sharpie.

To be sure, the media does get excited about hurricanes theres a lot at stake and viewership ratings do tend to spike during big storms. But doubting that hurricanes are dangerous can put lives at risk.

A recent study from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that as hurricanes become stronger, it hasnt led more people to evacuate. A survey of coastal residents in Connecticut found that people who had evacuated in the past and later thought it had been unnecessary were less likely to plan to leave town in the event of a future hurricane.

Hurricane trutherism is just one of many conspiracy theories tied to climate change out there. Youtube is full of misinformation about geoengineering and chemtrails, the white clouds that airplanes leave in their wake. Though its good sport to mock these ideas, they stem from real fear and can pose real dangers to those who believe them.

Although often parodied as inconsequential fantasies entertained by disenfranchised people on the fringes of society, the authors of one 2015 study wrote, conspiracy theories can influence what ordinary people intend to do in important domains, like voting or vaccinating their children.

As a nonprofit news outlet, we rely on reader support to help fund our award-winning environmental journalism. Were one of the few news outlets dedicated exclusively to people-focused environmental coverage, and we believe our content should remain free and accessible to all our readers. If you dig our work and agree news should never sit behind a paywall only available to a select few, donate today to help sustain our climate coverage. Donate now, and all gifts will be matched dollar-for-dollar through December 31! Double your impact today.

DONATE NOW!

Read more here:
'Hurricane truthers': Bonkers conspiracies are putting lives in danger - Grist

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) There are the makings of a rebellion brewing in the mainstream American Jewish community.

Its not a Jexodus, the rights quixotic dream that Jews will migrate en masse to the Republican Party.

It is a potential rebellion of the median Jew: pro-Israel, pro-two states and perfectly comfortable sitting among the 71 percent of Jews who voted for Hillary Clinton. The sort of Jew who isconcerned aboutleft-wing anti-Semitism on college campuses,but knows well enough to be more concerned aboutdeadly right-wing anti-Semitism.

The issue is simple: The Republican Party, from Donald Trump on down, has a huge anti-Semitism problem. Yet too many American Jewish organizations, which purport to represent the Jewish mainstream, are tiptoeing around it.

When pressed absolutely up against the wall, they might issue a timid plea to speak more carefully a mild rebuke that still usually comes wrapped in an insulating layer of gratitude for pro-Israel gestures.

Most Jews are not fools. We know there is a connection between the scare-mongering aboutSoros globalistsand cultural Marxists andcosmopolitan elites rhetoric that has become the conservative movements primary tool of political mobilization and the surge in anti-Semitic harassment, marginalization and violence that has plagued Jews in recent years.

Were tired of our own establishment organizations talking a big game about fighting anti-Semitism wherever it lies, only to supplicate themselves to a man and a party who has regularly and consistently trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes in pursuit of a political vision radically antagonistic to the values of American Jews.

The latest group to abdicate its duty? The American Jewish Committee.

Eyes fell on the AJC again this week afterPresident Trump, in remarks to the Israeli American Council, suggested that Jews arent nice people, would vote for him primarily to protect our own wealth and are disloyal to Israel. He even threw in an anti-Native American racial slur for good measure.

The AJC, which justinaugurated a social media campaign to Translate Hate,should have been especially attuned to what was happening here.

Trump has repeatedly hit on all of these anti-Semitic themes before. Hes complained thatJews wont back him because he doesnt want your money. Hes told American Jews that Israel is your country.

In many ways, Trumps IAC speech perfectly encapsulated the emerging conservative consensus about American Jews: Were disloyal to America in favor of our actual country, Israel, to which were also disloyal. Ann Coulter, at least, heard the message loud and clear:

Yet instead of a robust condemnation of yet another anti-Semitic indulgence from the president of the United States, the AJCs reply stood out from the rest of the Jewish community for adopting a tone that can only be described as groveling:

Well gosh, Id hate if Donald Trump hit a mine on the road to appealing to Jewish voters. He might get hurt!

Somehow a statement that purports to condemn Trumps anti-Semitism seemed to express more concern about Trumps well-being than that of the Jews. More than a few observers contrasted the wishy-washy response given to Trump with the AJCs considerably more robust reply to Rep. Ilhan Omars Benjamins remark:

The AJCs approach to Omar was not prefaced with sincere appreciation for her political accomplishments, nor couched in language that suggested they were primarily concerned with her well-being. She gets unadulterated scorn, and the AJC will never, ever let her forget it.

Apologists contend that kid gloves are warranted for the president because he and his party are pro-Israel unwavering, as the AJC gratuitously put it at the opening of its gentle admonishment.

The message? Being pro-Israel (or at least pro-Likud) isa get-out-of-anti-Semitism-free card. Groups like the AJC are sending the message that the correct positions on Israel will suffice to forgive any amount of anti-Semitism in America.

And Republicans have felt entitled to play that card, again and again, to wash away increasingly more brazen anti-Semitic indulgences.

Invite a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., did?

Dont worry, hes a champion of Israel!

Say the Republican Party is controlled by the Jewish lobby, as former Minnesota congressman (and Trump-endorsed GOP Senate candidate) Jason Lewis did?

Its fine these are not my views about American support for Israel, period.

Even where other Jewish organizations have clearly and robustly condemned Republican anti-Semitism,the media (both Jewish and non-Jewish) routinely fails to follow up. There are no dogged demands for comment, no monthlong storylines about the GOPs anti-Semitism crisis.

Repeated instances of conservative anti-Semitic rhetoric are routinely glossed over and effectively forgiven even asRepublicans defiantly refuse to apologize for them. They spit in the face of the American Jewish majority, then have the chutzpah to call themselves defenders of the Jews and theyre allowed to get away with it largely without question.

Bari Weiss famously justified putting more intense focus onleft-wing anti-Semitismbecause it is supposedly more insidious than the right-wing variety: harder to spot, more easily integrated into reputable political, academic or media circles.

Yet we do not lack for organizing or editorials against left-wing anti-Semitism. If there is a form of anti-Semitism that has truly resisted consistent registration on the public radar, it is mainstream right-wing anti-Semitism.

On the mainstream right, we see conspiracy theories aboutJews buying Congressor trafficking migrants or orchestrating impeachment allowed to run rampant in the highest levels of government and in the most influential sectors of the media. And when they do predictably explode intovandalism, harassment or violence, few dare hold accountable the mainstream actors from political officials to Fox News mouthpieces who so eagerly served up the toxic stew.

Whats bizarre is thatthe AJCs own polling decisively demonstrates how far it has deviated from American Jewish priorities. This year, 78 percent of American Jews told the AJC that anti-Semitism on the extreme right represents a very or moderately serious threat, compared to 36 percent for the extreme left.

When it comes to attributing blame to political parties, the numbers are just as stark. Asked to assign responsibility for current levels of anti-Semitism on a 1-10 scale, Jews gave Republicans a median score of 7 compared to a 3 for Democrats.

When the political apparatuses of the American right from the president to Congress to Fox News repeatedly and regularly transmit anti-Semitic conspiracies of the worst sort, injecting them into American political discourse and normalizing them as a feature of American public life, it is not innocent. It needs a clarion response. We are screaming for the communal institutions that represent us to reflect this reality to reflect our reality when representing us on a political stage.

In fact, just this summer, the AJC expressed outrage at President Trumps comments today criticizing American Jews who support and vote for Democratic candidates, calling it shockingly divisive and unbecoming of the occupant of the highest elected office, and the comments inappropriate, unwelcome, and downright dangerous. What has changed since then? How is it that Trump can double-down on his anti-Semitism and get an effective green light on it?

The AJC needs to think very carefully about its future if it continues along this path. What is the use ofan organization that describes itself as the Jewish State Department if it stops reflecting the interests and preferences of most Jews? Increasingly Jews mainstream Jews are asking ourselves that very question.

In the meantime, American Jews will continue to fight anti-Semitism vigorously and unsparingly wherever it manifests. No distractions. No free passes. No timidity.

If the American Jewish Committee is interested in actually representing the American Jewish community, it should stand by us.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

See the original post:
American Jews know anti-Semitism is a problem on the right. Why are Jewish organizations increasingly letting it slide? - JTA News

Tucker Carlson, who is beloved by white supremacists, hosted a political candidate on his show this week who also appears to be a white supremacist. Pete DAbrosca is running for a seat in Congress and has been widely praised by the most extreme right-wing figures and organizations, including InfoWars and VDARE.

Fox News Tucker Carlson recently hosted Pete DAbrosca, a congressional candidate who has ties to white nationalism and has supported the bigoted, anti-immigrant campaign of a group known as groypers, who are trolling conservative public events with anti-Semitic dog whistles and other hateful rhetoric.

Since DAbrosca announced his congressional bid and anti-immigrant platform over the summer, hes been lauded by far-right personalities and publications including Ann Coulter and the white nationalist publication VDare and appeared on the conspiracy theory outlet Infowars (which he had also appeared on before). In that most recent appearance, he agreed with the host that Democrats get elected through illegal voting and defended the leader of the groypers, a far-right media figure, Holocaust denier, and pro-segregation activist named Nick Fuentes who hosts America First on YouTube

Lets be blunt and call a spade a spade: Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist. He tries to cover it with veneer of mainstream conservatism, but it comes shining through far too often to be deniable.

Read the rest here:
Tucker Carlson Hosts White Supremacist on Show - Patheos