That is what he was and what he remains. In the 80s, he was a sexist and racist and homophobe.
He did not do anything to improve his reputation.
He beat Madonna -- who now tries to claim otherwise, but police were called and her infamous interview with Carrie Fisher remains part of the public record. He directed how many films and, yet, not one featured an African-American in a major leading or even supporting role. He thought he 'addressed' the homophobe charge, remember?
The last year of Ellen DeGeneres' ABC sitcom ELLEN, Mr. Penn showed up on the episode that Emma Thompson guest starred on and that was supposed to be his begging for forgiveness from gay America and those of us with relatives and friends who are gay.
I have never praised Mr. Penn here or elsewhere. That is because I know what he is. He is a thug.
And that is really coming out these days. Last month, he was in the news for his attacks on men who did not dress the way he wanted them too. They were not 'manly' in his (homophobic) eyes. He lashed out at Harry Styles and others.
Sean Penn is and always will be a thug.
I never applauded him for MILK. Harvey Milk was a sexually active man. Mr. Penn played him as though he were an eighth grader with a crush on James Franco. You thought he might whisk Mr. Franco off somewhere and . . . hold hands with him -- nothing more. He won an Oscar for sexually neutering the man he was supposed to be playing.
People have mistaken his madness for talent. Now that the thug is calling for the use of nuclear weapons, maybe we can all admit reality?
Friday, April 8, 2022. We're staying brief to make one key point: NYT owes NYP an apology.
Do we ever learns? Or maybe the better question is: Do they ever learn>
As
2001 drew to a close, the US press began destroying their own
reputations. It was one act of professional suicide after another.
October 2001, for those who don't know, is when THE NEW YORK TIMES ran
their first cover story linking -- falsely linking -- the 9/11 terrorist
attacks on the US to the government of Iraq.
There was no link.
Saddam
Hussein ruled Iraq at the time. He did not allow al Qaeda to operate
in Iraq. Had they operated there freely, they would have overthrown him
because he was over a secular government and because they were
sympathetic to those who were not in power in Saddam's Iraq.
But
NYT, THE WASHINGTON POST, the broadcast networks, the cable networks,
etc, etc repeated one lie after another to start that illegal war.
It's
probably hard if you weren't there when it happened and if you weren't
of an age to have grasped it as it happened -- hard to now understand
what took place. Back then, the media could talk of nothing but Iraq.
That's the same US media that ignores Iraq today that barely noted that
the war hit the 19 year mark last month, that acts as though US troops
are no longer in Iraq and that the US created (imposed) some wonderful
government there.
They lied. They lied over and over.
Liars got rewarded.
Kevin Drum is at MOTHER JONES. No consequences. It's not just big media that rewarded liars, little media has done the same.
But they lied.
Oprah
didn't suffer. She brought Judith Miller onto her daily program to lie
and when an audience member challenged the lies Judith was spewing,
Oprah attacked the audience member.
No one ever took accountability.
And
the media suffered. In the aftermath, they wanted to pretend as though
there was no reason for so many to distrust them and even now they act
that way. Especially now. They don't mention Iraq and they hope
everyone else has forgotten.
But that was a sea change for perception of the media.
It
appears it was also a behavior shift because the media had not only
done nothing to restore trust in their own profession, they have
continued to present lies as fact and ignore reality while silencing any
questioning.
The rolly polly and disgusting
Brian Stelter of CNN was speaking this week about disinformation. No,
he wasn't finally taking responsibility for his multitude of
journalistic sins. The idiot really thought he had a soap box to stand
upon and lecture others from. A conservative student commented with a
list of the most recent appalling journalistic sins -- or some of them,
there are far too many for one person to ever list unless they're
delivering a 24 hour filibuster -- and Brian avoided the question and
wanted to instead wanted to talk about Ukraine and how others worked
with FOX NEWS there regarding a journalist and -- I'm sorry, we aren't
that stupid.
And we're not whining, "Why can't you all work together!"
In
fact, the problem has often been that you do work together -- right and
left -- such as when you sold the illegal war on Iraq.
Working together is frequently the only work you ever do.
You're certainly not working for the public good.
You 'work' to advances causes and candidates.
You're not telling the truth. You're actively suppressing the truth.
Anne
Applebaum, after disgracing herself as THE WASHINGTON POST for years
(Bob Somerby long ago dubbed her Annie Apples_ wanted to tell people
this week that there was no reason to cover Hunter Biden's laptop and
the proof of corruption it contained.
It appears that some media have a new narrative after admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is legitimate after all.
According to Atlantic Magazine writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne
Applebaum, the story never did matter because it was just not
interesting and “totally irrelevant” to her. Strangely, however, it once
did. Applebaum pushed the false narrative as she was slamming others
for publishing “Russian disinformation” and using the Hunter Biden story
as an example. It only became uninteresting when it turned out to be
true. The one convincing assertion, however, is that it was simply not
viewed as “relevant.” What was clearly relevant for Twitter and most
media outlets was the election of Joe Biden. Otherwise, as captured by Gaston de La Touche, it is a matter of sheer boredom.
Applebaum was at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, for the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference on
Wednesday. The conference appeared largely an echo-chamber, a
disappointing lineup for UChicago which is known to value a diversity of
opinion. Applebaum slammed Fox and its viewers: “Those who live outside
the Fox News bubble and intend to remain there do not, of course, need
to learn any of this stuff.” (For the record, I work as a legal analyst
at Fox).
What an idiot and what a
liar. She's at THE ATLANTIC now so she can probably lie more freely.
But the country's not better off because of it.
Hunter
Biden's laptop was a news story THE NEW YORK POST can claim credit for
having broken in October 2020. I keep waiting for their triumphant
column. If i'ts run, I haven't heard of it. To be honest I don't have
time to comb through the web for it and depend on friends to keep me up
to date.
So when one called last night and
was reading from THE POST online, I was really sad. I thought it was
Miranda Devine and I thought she was a better writer than what was being
read. She is. It was by John Stossel. I loathe John and always
have. He can argue he's been mis-portrayed by the media and that may be
the case. I loathe him because he's an off-putting ass and that's from
his on air personality when he used to be on 20/20.
Is he as big of an idiot as I've always thought?
Yes, he is.
I
was going to destroy Mrianda for the column I thought she wrote. But
it was John. Writing at THE NEW YORK POST, he wanted you to know how
bad it was with the attacks on THE POST.
I'm tired of stupidity.
Ava and I covered the most important point regarding THE NY POST and the laptop and the media's response.
Do not offer that the report was dismissed.
That's not good enough.
If you're on some basic cable show, that might pass for informed.
You're not informed.
And only John could be so stupid to write for THE POST and to leave the most important detail out.
Yes,
as we all know, the report was censored -- TWITTER and FACEBOOK. And
as we all know, opinion columns insisted it wasn't true.
That's not the worst thing.
The
worst thing? THE NEW YORK TIMES did a 'report' that they called an
investigation and the 'report' centered on how supposedly people working
at THE NEW YORK POST were furious with their paper over that story and
did not feel it was accurate or truthful or even journalism.
NYT relied on no named source and most people in the kow say that NYT did a work of fiction (I believe that they did).
So grasp that NYT did not investigate the laptop but they did make time to 'report' on a rival paper, to attack the rival paper.
That's out of bounds. I twas out of bounds when it happened.
But that was part of the attack strategy to dismiss the story.
THE
NEW YORK TIMES owes THE NEW YORK POST an apology because when they ran
that article -- unsourced -- attacking the paper's integrity, they made
it personal.
