BLUES: Silly child recommends Stars and Bars!

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2024

Then too, there's our own tribe's culture: Last evening, American journalism's silliest boy made one of his silliest statements.

In fairness, everyone can make a mistake. Last night, at 8:46 p.m., the silliest child offered this:

WATTERS (2/28/24): No "DEI Thursday" is complete without a Primetime victory. The Tennessee House just passed a bill that would ban the display of Pride flags in public schools.

Liberals aren't happy. But we believe the only flags that should be flown in the classroom are your state's flag and the Stars and Bars. 

So, happy DEI Thursday, everybody!

Everyone can make a mistake. In this case, the silliest child said this:

Unlike liberals, he believes that the Stars and Bars should by flying in public school classrooms! He authored the endorsement on Jesse Watters Primetime, his eponymous nightly clown show.

For the record, this silliest child is 45 years old! Last June, the corporate suits at the Fox News Channel selected him to anchor that "cable news" channel's weeknight lineup, replacing Tucker Carlson.

Each week, the silly child authors a "DEI Thursday" in which he puts his childish understandings on full display. Last night, he delighted the world with that groaning recommendation concerning classroom flags.

Fill disclosure! The silliest child issued this latest groaner at 8:46 p.m. Eastern.  Seven minutes later, after a commercial break, he explained what he actually meant, then moved to his next silly topic:

WATTERS: Just a little clarification. Stars and stripes, not stars and bars.

Earlier this week, Joe Biden was licking ice cream cones and talking about the border and about the Mideast war. You can't take anyone seriously with their tongue hanging out and ice cream dripping from it.

The White House should agree with that...

You've heard of the movie Dumb and Dumber. This silliest youngster comes next.

The silliest child went on from there to continue his endless, and endlessly silly, ice cream monologues. As noted, this silliest boy is a weirdly old child. the corporate suits thought he would perfect as the face of their "cable news" efforts.

In fairness:

Yesterday, the stupidity was general during prime time over this "cable news" channel. 

This red tribe's prime time lineup starts at 5 p.m. with its highly rated program, The Five. 

In truth, the program should be called "The Four Against One"—and so it went again yesterday, as four red tribe panelists began interrupting the program's one liberal as she attempted to respond to the screeching comments of "Judge Jeanine" regarding violent crime.

Who the Sam Hill is Judge Jeanine? You're asking a challenging question. At Fox, we'd have to say that' she is cast in a recurrent role as The Known World's Loudest Loudmouth.

That doesn't mean that "Judge Jeanine" is always wrong on the general merits. Our own blue world has performed so poorly regarding certain high-profile issues that even someone like Judge Jeanine will often get to be right on the (general) merits.

Yesterday, we saw no sign that thar was the case. First though, we offer a thumbnail account of who this typecast performer is. We direct you to the world's leading authority on her life and times:

Jeanine Pirro

Jeanine Ferris Pirro (born June 2, 1951) is an American television host and author, and is also a former judge, prosecutor, and politician in the state of New York.

Pirro was elected as a judge of the Westchester County (N.Y.) Court in 1990. In 1993, she was elected to the position of Westchester County district attorney. She is the first woman to be elected to either of those positions. 

[...]

From 2008 to 2011, Pirro hosted a weekday television show [on the CW network] entitled Judge Jeanine Pirro. From 2011 to 2022, she hosted Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News Channel. 

Pirro has authored six books, including Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy (2018). 

Following the 2020 presidential election, Pirro made false claims of voting machine fraud. In 2022, Pirro became a co-host of The Five.

[...]

Pirro was among the hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines that Fox News settled for $787.5 million and required Fox News to acknowledge that the broadcast statements were false.

She made false claims of voting machine fraud, then became host of The Five! As a TV performer, she'd started out on the CW, engaged in this stupid shit:

Judge Jeanine Pirro

Judge Jeanine Pirro (known simply as Judge Pirro since the premiere of its second season) [was] an American arbitration-based reality court show, presided over by retired Westchester County, New York, District Attorney Jeanine Pirro. The series debuted on The CW on September 22, 2008 and ended in May 2011.

As with other court shows, such as Judge Mathis and Judge Judy, a former judge serves as neutral arbitrator, and awards the litigants monetary judgments, of up to $5000, which is paid in full by the program's producers. However, this program dealt more with the emotional aspect of each case, which was one of the show's benchmarks.

[...]

Some reality television stars, along with a wrestler, appeared on the show during its run.

That's where the TV stardom began. Yesterday, Judge Jeanine led the onslaught on Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal on The Five, as Tarlov tried to report the fact that violent crime statistics are actually down nationwide.

(For our money, Tarlov didn't do her usual outstanding job with this somewhat technical topic. It's generally accepted that homicide is the violent crime for which the data are most reliable. That said, homicide figures seem to be substantially down, on a nationwide basis, despite what the TV judge and her three accomplices said. For two links, see below. Many other reports can be found.)

On yesterday's broadcast of The Five, Jesse Watters, the silliest child, was one of the judge's accomplices. Three hours later, the silliest child endorsed the Stars and Bars, then moved on to the vanilla ice cream dispute. 

This is the type of idiocy which gets peddled each day on this red tribe "cable news" channel. Is it possible that the journalistic culture of our own blue tribe could somehow be thought of as worse?

We'd start with the way our major blue orgs let this red tribe idiocy go without any serious attempt at reporting or criticism or comment. Our general impression would be this:

Big news orgs don't want to tangle with the bombastics at Fox. Our blue news orgs are willing to avert their gaze—to let this inanity go.

That said, our own assessment of the situation goes a bit beyond that. We were struck by the dumbness of our own blue stars as we watched blue cable last night—as blue stars continued to declare the new observation, that we'll probably have to resort to voting against Donald J. Trump to keep him out of the Oval.

Our stars have prayed for Trump to be stopped by an outside event over the course of the past few years. Starting on Monday, we'll tell you why we almost think that our blue tribe's journalistic culture has been almost as bad as theirs.

This rumination will take us back through the different cultures described in The Iliad. For a quick observation, try this:

As the famous poem of war begins, the Achaeans (the Greeks) have conducted a ten-year siege of the towering walls of Troy. Start-ng right in Book One of the poem, their all-male cast is driven by rage and by a prevailing culture in which the taking of sexual slaves is regarded as fully normal.

Inside the towering walls of Troy, a different culture obtains. In Book Six, Hector, the hero of Troy, is about to return to a battle from which he doesn't expect to return. On his way to an expected death, a scene like this obtains:

At that, Hector spun and rushed from his house,
back by the same way down the wide, well-paved streets
throughout the city until he reached the Scaean Gates,
the last point he would pass to gain the field of battle.
There his warm, generous wife came running up to meet him,
Andromache the daughter of gallant-hearted Eetion 

[...] 

She joined him now, and following in her steps
a servant holding the boy against her breast,
in the first flush of life, only a baby,
Hector's son, the darling of his eyes
and radiant as a star.

Inside the walls of Troy, Hector's son is the darling of his eyes and radiant as a star. 

The husband comforts his warm and generous wife. Then, this famous, deeply human moment occurs:

In the same breath, shining Hector reached down

for his son—but the boy recoiled,

cringing against his nurse's full breast,

screaming out at the sight of his own father,

terrified by the flashing bronze, the horsehair crest, 

the great ridge of the helmet nodding, bristling terror—

so it struck his eyes. And his loving father laughed,

his mother laughed as well, and glorious Hector,

quickly lifting the helmet from his head,

set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight,

and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms,

lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods.

Briefly, the husband and wife—the mother and father—share  delight in their darling son as Hector approaches the House of Death.

As it turns out, Hector's prayer to Zeus and the deathless gods reflects the values of Late Bronze Age warrior culture. But inside the walls of Troy, this highly domestic family culture is repeatedly seen to obtain.

At present, the culture of our own blue tribe and its leadership cadres differs from the ridiculous culture routinely found Over There. 

That said, our own blue culture is deeply flawed, and has been for a very long time. 

Next week, we'll briefly start with one major star's peculiar shout-out to her "beloved colleagues." From there, we'll move ahead to her shout-out to her "beloved viewers."

In our view, something seems to be weirdly wrong inside that cultural realm. It's very hard for us blues to see the faults of our own culture, but that will be the very large set of flaws we'll flawlessly explain.

The silliest child endorsed the Stars and Bars, then moved ahead to the ice cream.  As we look ahead to November, has the stumblebum culture of our own blue tribe actually served us well?

Reports concerning homicide rate: For reports concerning the apparent drop in the homicide rate, you can click one of these links:

From Axios: 

Homicides in U.S. set to drop by record numbers this year

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Did US homicide rate rise or fall in 2023? The answer might surprise you.

Many similar reports exist, except inside the very loud world of Fox News star Judge Jeanine.