After listening to the entire #SeaTac recording, a humble prediction (of which I'm certain): 1) Many will express sadness and comment on the good-natured disposition of the guy; 2) Those observations will be castigated as examples of white privilege, racism, and hypocrisy.
The unfortunate and bizarre actions and demise of this obviously-troubled young man will become yet another social justice bone to fight over. @donlemon will ask, "What would they be saying if this was a Muslim - or someone with a foreign accent, or a person of color?"
@brianstelter will talk about it on his Sunday show. He'll note the empathy of the Twitterverse, the lack of emergency statements/tweets from Trump and the WH, and ask how much different this would be if the man wasn't white. If he wasn't shot down, he (and others) will ask why.
I don't know right now whether or not he was shot down, ran out of fuel, or drove it into the ground/sea. I would hope that the F-16(?) pilots communicated with him, warned him off of populated areas, steered him over water, and either fired or held fire based on his obedience.
Either way, I imagine this sad affair will become social justice fodder, because that's what we do now. Hope I'm wrong, but doubt it.
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The same people who castigate their fellow media for giving Trump a billion bucks in "free media" during the campaign - and who tell us Putin swayed the election with 100K in Facebook ads - don't understand why the rest of us see their across-the-board activism as a...
...24/7 advertising campaign for the Democratic party, and Leftist policies, organizations, and culture in general. The most heinous aspect of this 24/7 advocacy for liberals and liberalism is that they will never admit it - everybody knows that a political ad is the paid...
...manifestation of a political agenda. There's no subterfuge. But when reporters, "news" anchors and commentators all profess their ideological indifference and objectivity while actively advocating the liberal perspective of current events, they're providing one party with...
Can someone from the #WeBelieveSurvivors crowd explain to me the difference between Dr. Ford and Ms. Swetnick? Both have come forward and accused BK of inappropriate sexual predation, but Dems like Senator Gary Peters are saying that the Swetnick allegation wasn't "serious"...
...or "credible." Swetnick says she was the victim of a gang-rape, which would certainly qualify her as a survivor. She says she saw Kavanaugh at the party the night she was assaulted. Why are Dems - who are willing to believe Dr. Ford's allegation absent evidence, and who...
...have been telling us that questioning her veracity, memory, or intent is tantamount to suborning rape and harassing victims - not affording Ms. Swetnick the same support and activism? Why are they saying she and her lawyer ruined their chances with Kavanaugh and Ford?
The journalistic malpractice in this article was so egregious it made me go back to their original Ramirez article to read it more closely. Two issues jump out - First, Farrow and Meyer were given the names of two eyewitnesses, whose identities they chose to keep confidential.
What happened to those two witnesses? They had their names. Certainly they were contacted - nothing better for a follow-up story than an on-the-record account of an eyewitness, right? Yet in their follow-up shitshow of a story today, Farrow and Meyer don't mention these two...
..."onlookers." Nothing. Not, "We couldn't contact", not "They wouldn't speak on the record", not "They corroborated/denied..." Nothing. That tells me that those "onlookers" didn't do much to advance the story. Either way, someone should ask Ronan.
Please read every word of this article. If you need any more evidence that the assault on Kavanaugh's character has turned journalists into advocates with no interest in the basic standards of source credibility, it's here.
They interviewed a guy named Kenneth Appold. He said he was 100 percent certain that the story about Ramirez was true. He said he was certain because he'd been told the story by an eyewitness. He said he hesitated to come forward until he could contact that eyewitness.
He said he couldn't reach the eyewitness, but decided to come forward anyway. Farrow and Meyers reached the eyewitness, who had no memory of the alleged assault. They then quoted Appold's affirmation of the alleged incident for a number of paragraphs - despite the fact that...
Here are a few of the issues that jump out from this interview with Swetnick.
- First, she says she remembered Brett Kavanaugh was at those parties after 36 years because he "has a very distinctive face." He doesn't have anywhere near a "very distinctive face." By any stretch.
- Next, she said she believes he was wearing a Georgetown Prep uniform. At a gang rape party. In the summer.
- She said the reason she came forward was “I thought that I might have some information that might corroborate some of the things that she had stated.”
"Might have"? "Might corroborate"? "Some of the things"? This from the alleged victim of a violent gang-rape that she can't be certain didn't include Kavanaugh. "Might"?
- She uses some familiar terminology when describing behavior she says she witnessed from Kavanaugh:
Many of you are aware of my background as an interrogator for about 3 decades. Just watched this video of the @tvkatesnow interview with Julie Swetnick. There is no doubt in my mind, whatsoever, that Ms. Swetnick's story is complete, utter horseshit.
I'm not saying she's 'mistaken' or that something may have happened to her but it didn't involve Brett Kavanaugh. I'm saying that just about every word out of her mouth in this interview is contrived. She's lying. (And I would wager that Kate Snow had the same reaction.)
And I don't mean to suggest that it takes a career in interrogation to recognize Ms. Swetnick's lies and dissembling - I was just trying to express the depth of my certitude that Ms. Swetnick is a liar, and a really, really bad liar at that.