pre divorce Greitens
Watching the Star pretend to be vital is an exercise the suspension of disbelief…
We do it all the time watching movies. Pretend that the creepy dude on screen the is the real deal, in order to enjoy the movie more.
In other words, we suspend our disbelief in order to be properly terrified or whatever emotion the moviemaker is trying to elicit.
Similarly, to more fully appreciate the news and opinions in the Kansas City Star, we must pretend what we’re reading is fair, balanced and unbiased.
Okay, quick time out.
Does anybody who follows the Star (or New York Times, Washington Post, etc actually believe that’s the case? That objectivity rules?
Other than maybe folks like fellow blogger Jim Fitzpatrick – who after decades of working at the newspaper and swallowing his fair share of the kool-aid–and viewing life through that same political prism.
In other words, news media wise, Jim’s pretty much normal…
Unlike my 16 years at the Star, where I was viewed by most fellow staffers as an outsider.
As such, I can assure you that group think among reporters and editors was way more contagious than the coronavirus – if not nearly as deadly.
That said, I did a pretty good job of blending in and bending to their will and reporting standards. Which was evidenced by my rise to among the highest read and paid writers.
And thus most reporters there recognized that my mission was to provide a departure from the conventional norms via alternative viewpoints.
Which is why Jason Whitlock and I were the highest paid and read columnists.
Unfortunately most of the journalistic guidelines and practices that rendered the newspaper at least partly objective and less noticeably biased, have gone the way of that ill-fated Dodo bird.
The best (and arguably worst) example is the Star’s heavy-handed editorial board.
These people ares so full of themselves that all but the most liberal leaning readers find themselves in the unenviable position of being journalistically “henpecked.”
Because like it or not, if you want to get what passes for halfway comprehensive local news, you have to hold your nose and look past angry, overwrought headlines like, “Violent crime still causing more deaths than coronavirus?”
Like that’s a serious question?
Sure, lots of extreme oldsters and folks with exceedingly bad health pre-conditions have been dying (with great fanfare, thanks to the Star and much of the mainstream media).
At the same time younger folks – suddenly facing extreme financial difficulties – are not about to back away from the type of crimes that characterize their specific demos.
There’s a reason KC blocked off the entrances to Swope Park so people won’t gather there in mass, despite the lockdowns and safe distancing recommendations.
Can you guess what it was? And what happened to the photo that accompanied that story?
I was talking to Westport nightclub czar Bill Nigro the other day, and a friend of his who’s run a number of the top African American clubs in KC had told him how he sees his customers on Facebook, going out and partying like its 1999, with zero concern for “flattening the curve.”
They’re from a demographic that in many instances are less affluent, eat more unhealthy fast foods and live in multi-generational homes with older parents and grandparents.
And they know that the odds of their dying from coronavirus are all but nil.
Unfortunately, when they bring it home they expose their far more vulnerable relatives.
Which explains in part the higher death toll on blacks.
You think Star editors have any intention to exploring that line of thinking?
Don’t hold your breath.
They’d rather cover stories like former Republican Missouri governor Eric Greitens’s divorce, with pics of his wife by standing by him two years back after the story of his infidelity broke.
Star editors and reporters are never gonna let that dude off the hook. Like they are Joe Biden, who is facing even more serious charges of sexual malfeasance.
Too bad most of these so-called journalists won’t be around to dance on Greitens’ gave when he heads off for the great beyond a few decades on.
So yeah, with 46 killings in KC through this past Monday versus 13 coronavirus deaths, murder is outpacing the pandemic.
Which is undoubtedly consternating to the newspaper’s editorial board, given the Star’s full court press to make it appear coronavirus is the the only news that much matters.
Hence the editorial that effectively makes the news side of the newspaper look lame.
Go figure…
There is no amount of piling on Greitens that could be considered “too much” for this reprehensible fuck. Sound personal? It is. Even his wife had her fill of this fraud.
That may be, Jim…
He certainly was deserving of what he got, but those are just opinions.
Opinions that you and I may share, but not ones that ostensibly objective reporters should wield when covering news. And when it comes – not just to Greitens – but Parsons, Hawley, Trump, Kris Kobach and any number of other Republican pols, Star reporters, editors snd opinion wielders bend over backwards to cast them in a negative light time and and again.
Come on, HC. Guys like Trump & Kobach are their OWN worst enemies. Half the time, all you have to do is print exactly what they say and it sounds like a hit-piece.
Perhaps, Jim…
But that doesn’t give ostensibly straight-down-the-line journalists the right to leave objectivity in the rearview mirror and just bag on them over and over and over.
Or in the case of the Star’s editorial board suggest that Kobach get run over and left on a road nobody goes down.
It’s quiet apparent with the complete lack of veracity that the garbage MSM is going after Biden and the claims of his sexual assault…WHILE IN OFFICE. Poor Kavanaugh was tried and convicted by the press (and the lefties handjobs in the entertainment biz) for something that may or may not have happened while he was a teenager. The difference in approach by the media between the two cases is stark. They are trying their best to ignore the allegations against Biden, but breathlessly covered every last possible angle of the Kavanaugh fiasco.
Sorry, Guy. I look at both of them in the same way. I’m always dubious of 30 year old allegations that suddenly come up when someone ascends to the top power spots in politics. (i.e. SCOTUS or POTUS). Both could be totally credible or both could be complete bullshit. I always ask the same questions: “Why now? Who is behind it? Who does it benefit?”
My personal opinion? Both are/were bullshit.
Media covers/reports things they think will get the most clicks and eyeballs. FoxNews showcases stories and story lines they think THEIR viewers will want to watch. CNN covers the news they way they think THEIR viewers will want to watch. Neither would do it differently unless they thought they could expand their viewership. It’s WAY more about dollars than politics. People WANT to watch a news channel that confirms what they ALREADY believe. They don’t want to watch anything that goes counter to that. You think CNN has converted one single FOX viewer into a CNN viewer or vice versa? Dream on. You could print EXACT quotes from Trump and his supporters would say they are bullshit and made up to make him look bad. Fake news!! People don’t want to be educated and informed. They want their views confirmed and validated. They all know what news outlet to tune in to in order to achieve that goal.
Hard to argue, Jim…
Then again, they do do some actual news and provide information above and beyond all that at times.
Am I wrong?
Not wrong at all, HC. The problem is people make no effort to distinguish between news and opinion. Too many take opinion AS the news.
True
We are having this conversation in a eddy adjacent to a fast flowing, fallacious river of information provided by 90% of the media, that knows, Americans are, for the most part, stupid, ill informed, indolent and willing participants in their own deception.
Decades of “Dumbing Down” the curricula in the halls of academe leave Americans not only unable to think critically, but afraid of the opprobrium brought down on their heads from the Beta-Males and “Karens” who control the “Narrative” if they question same.
A state of willful impercipience is not only an accepted state of grace in the Progressive Zeitgeist, it is the secular religion that absolves those who, with full knowledge of their sins, see themselves as “sin eaters” in an “Ends Justify The Means” war on an ideology that is inimical to their newfound Gods. The actual facts and a real time boots on the ground reality are substituted for an emotional, short term payoff. Kinda like selling our future down the drain to China in our freshly remembered past, only to find ourselves, during the CHINESE WUHAN LAB CREATED PANDEMIC, listening to media outlets, Hollywood stars, politicians and Captains Of Industry tell us that calling a CHINESE WUHAN LAB CREATED PANDEMIC that was created in China, in a Level 4 Bio-Lab, the CHINESE WUHAN LAB CREATED PANDEMIC is, of course, racist.
I won’t bother to list, the many, many URLs I have listed on this site, from Liberal publications, like the New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR etc. etc., who, themselves, admit to an overwhelming Progressive bias. The Kansas City Star, peopled with Progressives whose garden variety holier-than-thou sanctimony is a execrable miasma, the stench of which has choked out the truth for decades while expecting it’s ‘customers’ (Read: acolytes) to bend their knees and nod their heads at the pearls cast before those swine who willingly pony up cash for obfuscation, suppression of relative context and outright lies.
Over the last 3 years, Progressive publications have bolted out of the closet like Japanese bullet trains and promised their readers, out loud, on video, in print, to NOT cover Trump with any objectivity, because, you know…, orange Man BAD.
The truth takes a back seat to the narcissistic need for acceptance from the morons serviced by these publications whose now raison d’ etre is appearance at the tip of the spear in the “Resistance”. Appearance is the fulfillment of journalistic aspiration in the new Mission Statements of the 4th estate.
No story reveals the venal, corrupt, journalistic malfeasance of this now accepted form of ‘Journalism’ more than the “Russian Collusion” lie, which has done, so very much damage to our institutions and country.
Maybe the American morons who bought into this lie, have an excuse by way of an inferior education and a blinkered myopia fostered through the infliction of Media repetition, but the talking heads on cable news, the folks running the show in boardrooms at the New York Times, The Washington Post etc. etc. ALL KNEW IT WAS A LIE FROM THE START AND PARTICIPATED IN THAT LIE, IN ORDER TO FURTHER THE PROGRESSIVE AGENDA.
They knew, they all knew, they always knew.
The Kansas City Star is a disgrace, just like their “Big Brothers”.
When I can tolerate the stench from my long-ago former employer, I sometimes highlight at my blog “Another day, yet another demagogic and irresponsible Op/Ed by the KC Star.”
The Star ceased to be a broadsheet of legitimate journalism long ago. Today, it’s little more than a cheap tabloid of Leftist talking points. It’s obvious to all except the editorial board.
As for Greitens, neither the persecutors, nor prosecutors, have ever produced the infamous ‘smoking gun’ photograph. Funny dat. Yet that recorded phone call of the adulteress ex dishing dirt sure was sensationalized 24/7. How convenient.
The whole campaign against Greitens was trial by public demonization until the gutless wonders in Jeff City dutifully dropped trough and bent over for their media masters of public opinion. “Gotta get re-elected, doanchaknow?”
But didn’t we all have it on good authority from Bill Clinton that private indiscretions have nothing to do with profound public service? Funny dat…
Dead on the money.
(Off subject, but on your blog…)
Lincoln, worst president until Wilson.
https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Unmasked-Youre-Supposed-Dishonest/dp/0307338428