sisu

Present at the re-creation

Twitter buddy Pete602 caught old-style pols Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Diane Feinstein in the social-media headlights of a newly empowered electorate this morning:

If Schiff and Feinstein want to see "Russian bots" they can look out the window.
We are their "bots" and we have torches and pitchforks.#tcot #pjnet #p2 pic.twitter.com/sixFOhgNBh

— pete602 (@petefrt) January 24, 2018

Like Peter Finch's Howard Beale, we are "mad as hell," but unlike Beale's passive television audience who "do whatever the tube tells you," we deplorables can see behind the curtain and don't have to let fake-news pols get away with their tendentious false narratives any more. Case in point, the power of the twitter hashtag to spread the word. Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit explains:

BOOM! Twitter DESTROYS Adam Schiff and Sen. Feinstein: Internal Analysis Finds NO RUSSIAN BOTS Behind #ReleaseTheMemo.

Last week, the House Intelligence Committee quietly voted to make available to fellow House members “a memo documenting abuse of the FISA program,” reports Fox News’s Chad Pergram.

As TGP’s Cristina Laila reported previously — News of the FISA memo spread like wildfire on social media. Trump supporters pushed a #ReleaseTheMemo campaign after GOP Reps came forward demanding the document be released to the American public.

We were part of that Reynoldsian grassroots Army of Davids that tweeted early and often in the last few days using the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag and inundated Schiff’s office with phone calls confirming we are not Russian bots.

Desperate Democrats like Adam Schiff (above) trotted out their shopworn Russia, Russia, Russia narrative to try to hold back the cascade of truth spilling out over the damn of official lies.

Then came the Democrats' lame attempt to stem the tide:

On Tuesday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) urged Twitter and Facebook to conduct a thorough forensic examination into the #ReleaseTheMemo campaign as ‘potentially an ongoing attack by Kremlin-linked social media actors’ also referred to as “Russian bots.”  

But we weren't buying, and neither was Twitter itself: 

Even The Leftist Daily Beasty Boys Concede: "Twitter’s internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo" https://t.co/d1HDWsAQD4

— Andrew Bostom (@andrewbostom) January 24, 2018

Thanks to the power of social media, You CAN fight City Hall.

Update: Too delicious not to note:

Russian bots might be behind controversial #ReleaseTheMemo campaign, Democrats say https://t.co/soqCdt1gyN pic.twitter.com/oSR7jSnKX4

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 24, 2018

His major coup "was getting women to smoke"

"With no phone to call for help, I used my bobsled push training to break out," quipped Olympian Johnny Quinn this morning, adding his voice to the latest Twitter trending topic, #SochiProblems. We love Quinn's All-American, can-do (pun intended) solution to post-Soviet lavatory logistical problems being encoutered by athletes and visitors alike at the winter Olympics sponsored by former KGB officer Vladimir Putin's Russia.

We're no fan of moral-equivalency guru Noam Chomsky's. But what he had to say a few years back about public relations as propaganda in fancy dress rings true and sheds light on the recent controversy over that Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad with its dreamy cinematography of doe-eyed children singing "America the Beautiful" in seven languages. All sugary innocence. Why did it make us feel as though the good folks at Coke were rubbing our noses in it? Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart explains:

The ad instantly provoked a deeply polarized response on social media, with conservatives ripping the ad for promoting multiculturalism with a deeply patriotic anthem. 

On the multiculti side, there were smug, self-congratulatory sermons scolding melting-pot types like ourselves for xenophobic/racist views we do not hold:

At this point, we shouldn’t be shocked by the intolerance of some towards immigrants and other cultures.  But who could’ve predicted the outrage we saw over the Coca-Cola commercial that aired during last night’s Super Bowl?!

Mosaicist vs assimilationist:

And to be honest, the notion of “E pluribus unum” is more relevant today than it was in 1782 because of our nation’s evolving demographics…

In the years to come, it will be a learning experience for all [of] us as our nation evolves into an even more beautiful mosaic.

Eye of the beholder, but even among allies there is dispute. When we learned this morning that Coke had belatedly added E pluribus unum to the opening frames of the commercial, we twittered our delight. But some on our side of the aisle were calling the whole thing a distraction, protesting that "making a fuss" over the Coke ad was distracting social-media voices from their primary task of holding Republican leaders' feet to the fire over Obama & Company's "comprehensive immigration" campaign:

I'm all for adding #EPluribusUnum to anything but I can't see making a fuss about a coke ad in the first place @SissyWillis @Drudge_Report

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Far more important to keep the pressure on @SpeakerBoehner than on coke in terms of the issue @mtranquilnight @SissyWillis @DRUDGE_REPORT

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Which brings us back to Chomsky and Edward Bernays and the title of this post. Chomsky writes of Bernays:

His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn't smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.

Similarly, those charming hyphenated-American children are trying to get LoFo (low information) Super Bowl viewers to absorb Coke's amnesty agenda:

The controversy surrounding Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad has focused public attention on the company's pro-amnesty agenda. With the majority of its revenue coming from its international business, the company has long been known for its globalist rather than American world view.

As Andrew Breitbart famously tried to teach conservatives, culture is upstream of politics.

Update:

@mtranquilnight Me too. Tried to broach the subject among friends the other day, and no one was interested :)@DaTechGuyblog

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) February 8, 2014

"Are these jerks trying to hurt us on purpose?"

People, I am not making this up pic.twitter.com/sYFQsxqEEr

— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) October 2, 2013

"Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service area is closed, except for 1st Amendment activities," reads the sign on a single barricade unit placed impotently (see context image below) at the edge of the expansive green whose centerpiece is the Second Infantry Division World War I Memorial.

"A perfect metaphor" for the Obama presidency, we twittered Matt Lewis and John McCormack this morning as the impotency and bluster of the Administration's latest attempt to put one over on the #lofos — low-information fellow Americans who aren't paying attention to the President's partial government-shutdown sideshow that's closing down things people really care about, like WW I and WW II memorials on the National Mall — came into focus via Drudge, the blogosphere and twitter:

@mattklewis Poignant & dignified WWI memorial & surround'g green = #wethepeople. Lame barricade w sign = Obama presidency @McCormackJohn

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) October 2, 2013

"With her usual good humor and good sense, Mary Katherine Ham — paired with the sublimely clueless Alan Colmes on Martha McCallum's Fox "America's Newsroom" — has the last word:

"Are these jerks trying to hurt us on purpose?"

Ya think?

Stand with Rand: Tea Party Turks and the filibuster heard 'round the world

"My Tea Party cup runneth over," we twittered Mark Tapscott this morning in appreciation of his bracing filibuster post "Is Rand Paul America's William Wallace or Robert the Bruce?" wherein the DC Examiner columnist compares the generational struggle between Young Turk Rand Paul and Old Bull John McCain to the conflict between Robert the Bruce and his don't-rock-the-boat father in the film "Braveheart."

"He has definitely energized the base in a way that it hasn't been energized in a long time," enthused Tea Party Express Chair Amy Kremer following Paul Rand's filibuster heard 'round the world (Wednesday night the hashtag #standwithrand was number one trending topic worldwide on Twitter). The DC Examiner's Susan Ferrechio explains:

Until Paul's appearance, the Tea Party's popularity appeared to be waning. Republican leaders pushed Tea Party lawmakers to the sidelines during budget negotiations with President Obama. After a very successful 2010 election, the Tea Party took a beating in the 2012 [national] contests. And pollsters found that fewer and fewer people were affiliating themselves with the movement.

But Paul's filibuster attracted huge support on social media sites, from conservatives and liberals, and some believe it could mark a comeback for the movement …

By night's end, 40,000 new followers had signed up for Paul's Twitter feed.

We were caught up in the euphoria Wednesday afternoon and into the evening as C-SPAN 2 live broadcast the junior Senator from Kentucky doing it "the old-fashioned way," holding forth on the senate floor— with a little help from his friends, including our own fave, Sen. Ted Cruz! — for just under 13 hours of spirited discourse. We loved Hugh Hewitt's take:

[Rand Paul] engaged the country in a serious discussion of first principles. You may not agree with him, but he did it. The Constitution was actually discussed on the Senate floor for more than a dozen hours. Incredible.

He put the president on the defensive, using the force of argument to penetrate the White House's standard operating procedure of never engaging its critics on a serious level. Eric Holder, the hapless AG, came away scorched.

Paul also took an old, old device and married it to the new communications technology, instantly generating hundreds of thousands of messages about him and his argument which spread across the Twitterverse and associated platforms at an astonishing speed …

Senators Cruz, Lee, and Rubio are the sort of skilled talkers that the other side does not have. 

In this metaphorical battle to retake the Shining City, Sir William Wallace's words on the eve of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 resonate:

We come here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, determined to avenge our wrongs and set our country free."

Update: Why we love Twitter:

Sens. McCain and Graham appeared in the Senate gallery to criticize Rand Paul. #StandWIthRand twitter.com/ExJon/status/3…

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) March 7, 2013

Howard Kurtz and the media's "astonishing slowness" on Trayvon Martin

Once again the people sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas are way ahead of the lamestream media, who appear to prefer peddling their tired racist narratives to getting the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

"On Reliable at 11, Derek McGinty, Lauren Ashburn, Eric Deggans on media's astonishing slowness on Trayvon Martin killing & Sharpton's role," Howard Kurtz twittered the lineup for his Sunday show "Reliable Sources" this morning. We appreciate his candor but couldn't resist a little snark in our reply:

Astonishing? I saw it right away. It's why the bloggers and tweeters are leaving Palin's "lamestream" in the dust. :)

Breitbart's Ben Shapiro was on top of it from the start:

We will not stop vetting the media, including Al Sharpton! Persist we much!

Bill Hobbs cut through all the speculation and irresponsible "reportage" [rhymes with garbage] that had whipped up some of our more suggestible fellow Americans into a frenzy:

I have no idea what REALLY happened in Trayvon case, & neither do you. Nor does Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton.

As we've been twittering ourselves the last couple of days:

Sensed in my BONES, from the moment it entered my consciousness that Sharpton was involved, it was laced w lies.

SHARPTON'S INTEREST TOLD ME IT SMELLED: Zimmerman was on ground being punched when he shot Trayvon Martin.

So creepy watching lamestream media fall for the latest iteration of Sharpton & Co's tired old narrative.

Now that our "mainstream" betters are starting to ask the questions they should have asked two weeks ago, how will they handle the poison and vitriol of the virtual lynch mob being fomented by members of the New Black Panther Party and other spawn of President Obama's old Harvard Law mentor Derrick Bell's Critical Race Theory?

#LynchMob: RT @dangainor: Terrorists: #NewBlackPanthers offer $10,000 bounty 4 capture of shooter Zimmerman http://bit.ly/GOZ0Gr #Trayvon

Our buddy Pete DaTechGuy isn't holding his breath:

Martin Killing #msm outrage; Black Panther bounty, Black youth killed in cities by other blacks #iseenothing

What's it going to be, Howard Kurtz?

Update: Soros-backed MoveOn is gloating:

The Department of Justice has announced that its Civil Rights Division, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will investigate Trayvon Martin's death. This is a positive step.

However, the Sanford Police Department has a history of failing to successfully prosecute crimes when the victim is African-American and the alleged assailant is not. Sign the petition to the Department of Justice telling them to launch an investigation of the Sanford Police Department.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

It's the ObamaCare, stupid! "I believe Rick Santorum is our man"

"There is hope for our Nation again / Maybe for the First time Since we Had Ronald Reagan," home-schooled Tulsa, Oklahoma sisters Camille and Haley Harris of First Love Band (above) sing their hearts out in a foot-tapping, All-American video that's gone viral: "Yes I believe Rick Santorum is our man! / Game ON! He's got the Plan /  Lower Taxes, Raise Morale, To Put the Power in our Hands."

"This race is coming down to the economy, the deficit and control of your life, which is ObamaCare," an upbeat Daniel Henninger quoted Rick Santorum on the campaign trail Super Tuesday Eve in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, noting parenthetically that "there was no mention of contraception, gays or the role of women."

In August, no one thought this guy would be toe-to-toe with the Romney machine in March. What happened?

I went to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Monday to find out. Out of 1,189,530 votes cast the next day in bellwether Ohio, Mr. Santorum lost to Mitt Romney by only 10,288, at last count. He's doing something right, and what one learned in Cuyahoga Falls, an Akron suburb, is that it doesn't have much to do with the famous Santorum controversies over social issues. It's about ObamaCare. And it's about the idea of freedom.

A mind-focussing, dueling-videos embodiment of the cultural-wars divide: This season's wholesome Heartland hotties' First Love Band Santorum video (top of post) vs the steamy "viral video of 2007," Obama Girl's "Crush on Obama (above) that includes raunchy double-entendre subtitles like "Universal health care reform / it makes me warm … Up in the Oval Office you'll get your head of state … I like it when you get hard on Hillary in debate." Take your pick.

While mainstream media types were obsessing all week over an Obama-friendly, manufactured crisis — Don't ever let one go to waste! — that the White House and its fellow travelers were frantically trying to spin as a Republican "War on Women," Rick Santorum was quietly going about his rounds under the radar in towns like Cuyahoga Falls. Henninger explains:

In any other election, complaining about the size of government might be GOP boilerplate. Not now. Mr. Santorum put the current moment's elevated concern about government in broader context. Of regulation, he said: "There's been this huge explosion of the federal government … I've talked to so many business people who say, 'I could live with Clinton, Bush, it was a little better, but I'm spending all my time trying to figure out what this president is doing next to me.'"

Henninger nails it this morning on Fox:

The deficit, the economy and the right to run your life … I think Santorum has tapped into something that none of us had recognized.

I think he's finally found his way to an idea that resonates. Under Obama, government has gottten bigger and bigger. It's gotten too big. Obama is impinging on their space.

The day Santorum's status rose is the day he turned to Mitt Romney and took apart RomneyCare piece by piece. It is that word, the mandate, the forcing mechanism that resonates.

"Something that none of us had recognized." Ties in nicely with the Twitter hashtags of the week, #VetThePrez and #VetThePress as the late Andrew Brietbart's re-enspirited Breitbart.com and Michelle Malkin's new curator-rich Twitchy.com flood the social media space with the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

We know it's unfair, but compare this image of First Love Band's littlest player (above) with the sluttish Obama Girl of half a decade ago. :)

This just in on Fox as we go to press:

A good day for Rick Santorum. He swept Kansas caucuses with 57% of the vote.

"This election is about big things … We have to have a nominee who can get up there and draw a clear contrast with the President of the United States."

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

An Army of Andrew Breitbarts

"She just paints whoever inspires her," twittered Mandy Nagy — aka Liberty Chick — last summer, referring to her mother's expressionistic portrait of Andrew Breitbart (detail above). "This is my war cry for 2012. You need to join me in my war against the institutional left. This is not your mother's Democratic party. Duh!" the social-media provocateur extraordinaire told a CPAC12 audience recently.

"We've lost our Samuel Adams," twittered Mark Tapscott midmorning. "Thoughtful, passionate, complicated. Actually challenged liberals to be better at arguing for what we believe in" said liberal FoxNews contributor Sally Kohn. "Back to blogging!" admonished comrade-in-arms Susie, aka Stoutcat, adding her tears to the torrent of heartbreak, fond memories and renewed resolve that drowned out all else in our twitterstream and on Fox as word emerged, disbelieving tweet by tweet, of Andrew Breitbart's untimely death at age 43 from natural causes. Susie's hashtag, a play on Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, resonates:

An Army of Andrews [#armyofandrews]

Like the conspiratorial "dog whistle" of our statist adversaries' nightmares, Breitbart's passing was a call-to-arms for the freedom fighters to ratchet up our defense of the Shining City. "In his honor, I'll fight harder," vowed Lori Ziganto, aka Snark and Boobs, and from our twitterfriend Rachelle Friberg, gratitude and sorrow:

"Thank you, Andrew Breitbart, for inspiring young blogging journalists like me. You will really be missed :(

"I am Andrew Bretbart right now, and if you are a blogger on the right, so are all of you," declared Peter of DaTechguyBlog:

On the left there are plenty of people celebrating (literally on twitter right now) but the line from Spartacus was never more true than today:  He'll be back and he'll be millions.

I know because I'm one of those millions, and if you are a blogger or radio host on the right who has gotten involved in the last few years, so are you …

He understood better than almost anyone else that it was the stories the media refused to cover, more than what they actually said, that really was the lifesblood and power of the MSM leftist bias

To your stations, bloggers, and disintermediate at will!

Update: "God bless you, Andrew. Rest in peace, friend. We will continue the fight," promises that other tireless disintermediator of the powers that be, Sarah Palin:

For me, just one of those memories was in Pella, Iowa, last year after the premiere of “The Undefeated.” Andrew held court in the restaurant at the local hotel talking about his favorite topic: how “culture is upstream of politics” and how conservatives must be unafraid to fight the leftwing media, cultural, and political establishments. The loss of his voice in this fight will be deeply felt, but thankfully his work lives on at his “Bigs,” and thank God for his inspiration and leadership.

Update II: Professor Reynolds links. Be sure to check out related links, including this from that other professor, at Legal Insurrection:

I've often wondered where to go with this blog. I now know.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Jeb's lame ultimatum: Are you with the sane Republicans or Not?

"In South Carolina this afternoon, TX Gov. Rick Perry held a press conference to detail his economic plans," writes PJ Media's Bryan Preston: "The very first reporter tried distracting him by bringing up the birther nonsense. Perry was having none of it; he cut the reporter off in mid sentence, said the issue is a 'distraction' and put the focus right back on his plan … Every reporter who brings this up from now on should be treated with equal or greater contempt." Good to see a potential POTUS refusing to let the lamestream media control the narrative spin.

"Are you with the sane Republicans or Not? GOP voters need to decide," writes the WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, reporting on the contents of an exclusive and perhaps unwittingly snotty e-mail statement from Jeb Bush regarding the recent Rick Perry "birtherism" flap:

Republican candidates should categorically reject the notion that President Obama was not born in the United States. It is a complete distraction from the failed economic policies of the President.

You need to get out more, Jeb. As we wrote in comments at Commentary's Facebook page in response to Peter Wehner's similar scolding of the Perry campaign for lacking "discipline":

Seems to me the pussyfooting advice of old-school campaign advisers cautioning against saying anything controversial drains the life out of the authentic — if sometimes unpolished — American voices of the Tea Party favorites whose vision has given us hope of regaining the Shining City.

It was Sarah Palin's fierce determination and authentic American voice that had energized us back when we were holding our nose at the prospect of voting for John McCain as the lesser of two evils in the 2008 presidential election. We used to like and admire Jeb as an effective and accomplished former Florida Governor but haven't been able to stomach his condescending brand of "sane" Republicanism since he "gratuitously dissed Sarah and thereby all her fans back in February of 2010" with this little gem:

I mean, I don't know what her deal is. My belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity.

"What a pompous busybody," we wrote in a twitter exchange with protein wisdom, who caught the conscience of Jeb the would-be kingmaker in 140-or-fewer characters this afternoon:

Next up, he'll tell us how sane people are supposed to speak to the Hispanics. Complete with flow chart.

Update: Perry's poke on Obama's birth certificate has had the desired effect, explains Richard Viguerie:

Obama has ignored it and the blue-nosed gentry of the Republican establishment, such as Jeb Bush and Karl Rove, have all risen like cussed-out Sunday school teachers to chastise Perry. In the mean time, conservative voters in the upcoming primaries have been reminded that there’s only one good ol' boy running who gets the joke, and that’s Rick Perry.

Cross-posted at Riehl World View.

Occupy Wall Street: What rough beast?

"The Occupy Wall Street movement is growing, and lots of activity is taking place in social media," writes Social Media Research Foundation Director Marc Smith of Connected Action, who generated the "NodeXL SNA Twitter Map" above tracing the connections among people who tweeted the term “#occupywallstreet yesterday. Click here for larger image.

"DUMB MOBS," we tossed into the twitterflood of #occupywallstreet commentary this morning as Mark Steyn's "pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world" slouched inchoately towards a public square near you, even as "progressive" opportunists seeking to distance themselves from their own crony-capitalist corruption were scrambling to align themselves with the delusional "99%." Howie Carr said it best:

The fact that the national Democrats are trying to throw in with these layabouts tells you all you need to know about both groups …

In a few months, we’ve gone from grassroots to George Soros astroturf. From Arab Spring to Irish Spring.

Smith's "Node XL SNA Twitter Map" brought to mind this image from an earlier post comparing the flocking behavior of Darwin's Starlings on Otmoor to the behaviors of humans signaling each other on Twitter: "Individuals, but moving in a single entity. And the reason for this behavior? Well, thousands of eyes looking for predators on the roost site. Nothing could escape their gaze, no raptor could surprise this soaring mass of bird flesh … The birds are also maneuvering for position, social position."

We were intrigued with the elegance and suggestiveness of "sociologist of computer-mediated collective action" Marc Smith's visualization (top) of who was twittering whom yesterday on the topic de jour. We were unsurprised to see the likes of MSNBC harpie Rachel Maddow (nearly 2 million followers) and Soros sucklings Media Matters (40 thousand plus) amongst the "top most between users," but it wasn't only the well funded who were able to wield influence. The map was "scaled by numbers of followers," our side of the aisle was having a lark shining the light of truth, justice and the American way on #occupywallstreet's "faux poos," and there was Big Journalism's own diggrbiii (7 thousand plus followers) among the top 10. Quality, not quantity?

We're hard-wired to read into things, to divine patterns that may at some level, at some moment of danger, be key to our survival. The analogy of smart-crowd twittering with coordinated starling swooping seems obvious, but what else?  A human fetus, perhaps? Take another look. The foreboding of Yeats's "The Second Coming" comes to mind: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …"

'Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you," John Adams wrote Abigail in 1800 in a much-quoted letter that resonates in this time of turmoil: 

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

"The Littler 99%" posted by Dan of criticalmass and twittered with the hashtag #OccupySesameStreet. Compare little girl's wish list with actual "demands" posted by Occupy Wall Street bottom Mom's basement dwellers. 

Having failed to study history, the great grandsons of great grandsons of our Founding Fathers have become Mark Steyn's "zombie youth 'occupying' Wall Street … contemptuous of the world that sustains their comforts."

Update: Cool. Link at New York Times Business Day's Twitter article.

Update II: Maggie's links. Thanks, Bird Dog!

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Greta Van Susteren takes Tucker Carlson to the woodshed

"A mother does the same, c. 1897," Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

"The public shaming of Tucker Carlson. Cybervillage disapprobation of 'elders' like @gretawire [Greta Van Susteren's twitter handle] shape moral behavior," we twittered as the smoke began to settle this morning in the aftermath of a fiery flame war that had erupted in the blogosphere and twitterspere in response to "Mike Tyson: Sarah Palin met ‘the wombshifter,’" a gratuitously coarse Jeff Poor journalistic effort published by Carlson's The Daily Caller Friday evening. At issue were Tyson's foul-mouthed comments spun off from spurious allegations made by author Joe McGinnis in his hit piece, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, to the effect that a young Sarah Palin had had a one-night stand with basketball star Glen Rice back when she was a sports announcer on Anchorage TV station KTUU. Greta takes no prisoners:

I really don’t understand my friend Tucker Carlson. He owns the website The Daily Caller and it currently has on its front page the most vile story — referring to a sex act with Governor Sarah Palin as a “womb shifter.” It is even the headline. Do you know what that means? Figure it out. It is really vile. It is not just smut … this is violence against women.

Tucker should have used  judgment, a sense of decency and not promoted this denigration — a good journalist, a responsible journalist uses judgment. Tucker did not …

I don’t like it when I see that my friends do disgraceful things — but we need to start calling out even our friends to stop this. Tucker has daughters and a wife, and I would think he in particular would not want to be a purveyer of smut (and this is actually more, this is violence against women) and allow this to be posted on his website …

I keep asking myself, why would Tucker allow this to be posted on his website?  I am suspicous his website is not doing well and this is one quick last breath to create buzz to keep it afloat.

Ouch, squared. Moral education in the venerable Judeo-Christian principles that guided our Founding Fathers in fashioning the Shining City may have fallen out of favor amongst the establishment elites of our nation's mainstream institutions, but we old-fashioned Country Class types are firing at will, disintermediating the powers that be through the new media. As Jedediah Bila, herself a writer for Carlson's publication, twittered this afternoon:

I stand with gretawire. As a freelance opinion contributor to The Daily Caller, I'm very disappointed re editorial judgment.

And to her fellow Daily Caller writer Matt Lewis Jedediah affirmed:

I have publicly praised The DC many times for giving me the freedom to speak my mind in my columns & not censoring me.

I call it like I see it. If I go to bed at night knowing I stood up for what I think is right, I consider it a good day's work.

And a final word from Tammy Bruce, who salutes the man in the trenches who fired the first shot over Tucker Carlson's bow* early Saturday morning:

In Palin Report I mistakenly credit the excellent Gateway Pundit for 1st calling out DC. It was in fact the magnificent Dan Riehl.

Update: Twitter friend and filmmaker extraordinaire Ladd Ehlinger goes for the jugular. Don't get on his wrong side!

Update II: DaTechGuyblog links:

Tucker Carlson vs Dan Riehl? No contest.

Update III: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update IV: Dan Riehl,  Stacy McCain and Nice Deb link.

Update V: Love this from Cybrludite in the comments:

*Should that have been "a shot fired over his bow... tie"?