U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 173

Over the weekend, the Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. As with most press coverage, there was little pretense that the Mueller probe was supposed to be a neutral fact-finding mission, as apposed to religious allegory, with Mueller cast as the hero sent to slay the monster.

The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” to him featuring the rhymey line: “Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.”

The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller’s reputation, noting Trump’s Attorney General William Barr’s reaction was an “endorsement” of the fineness of Mueller’s work:

In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a “witch hunt,” Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD

The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it

We Are The Sprocket Holes vol. 334: RIP Larry Cohen

Rest in Peace: Larry Cohen, Director of THE STUFF and IT’S ALIVE, Has Passed Away

Awwww Yeah vol. 105

Let sex offenders ride the trains: Our society is already too cruel in its ostracism

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 172

Disney-Fox Deal Primer: The Ins And Outs Of Hollywood’s Mega Merger

previously on 

NERRRRRRD! vol. 77

Steve Ditko: Inside His Studio Sanctum Sanctorum

POSTED ON MARCH 16, 2019 BY RUSS MAHERAS

Negation Aspiration vol. 147

"Consider the newsreels of concentration camps at the end of World War II, which left no doubt that the Nazi project had been genocide. 
"Later, Nick Ut’s widely disseminated 1972 war photos of 9-year-old Kim Phuc ('Napalm Girl') running from her destroyed village in Vietnam — naked, burned, desperate — displeased President Nixon, who tried to claim they were 'fixed.' They weren’t, and the photos helped pierce public denial and build opposition to the Vietnam War." 
 "When the voiceover in one Turkish version, which doesn’t show the shooting itself, explains that the gunman in the video pushes memes celebrating the Bosnian genocide of the 1990s, the video cuts not to internet screenshots of the meme, but to photojournalism from the Bosnian Serbs’ ethnic cleansing campaign of Bosnian Muslims." 
 "In the New Zealand case, the perpetrator’s manifesto laid bare his extremist beliefs. But the gory video is what demonstrates the consequences of that ideology. "When white supremacy is thought to live only in words, it becomes abstract, mutable, even deniable. The very real extensions of that ideology are easy to ignore. 
 "It’s in this context that the importance of excruciating documentary films like Alain Resnais’ 1956 'Night and Fog,' a 32-minute film about the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust, becomes apparent. The French government periodically re-airs 'Night and Fog' as a public service: to remind people of the horrors of war. Even some American high schools in the ’80s used to show it to make the devastation wrought by racists with weapons indelible in the hippocampus.... 
 "In 'Night and Fog,' as the camera pans over images of the empty concentration camps, an unseen narrator asks: 'Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners?'"

Do people really need to be protected from the New Zealand shooter’s footage?

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

MAR 16, 2019 | 3:15 AM

Negation Aspiration vol. 146

"At multiple points in the manifesto the author expresses the hope that his massacre will spark further attempts at gun control in the United States, which he believes will lead to gun confiscation and a civil war. He believes this civil war would be the best opportunity destroy the American “melting pot”. This idea is repeated often enough that it seems to be something the author legitimately believes in. Given the tone surrounding the Candace Owens passage, it seems clear that it was “bait”, thrown out to attract attention on social media and sow further political division. The entire manifesto is dotted, liberally, with references to memes and Internet in-jokes that only the extremely online would get."

Shitposting, Inspirational Terrorism, and the Christchurch Mosque Massacre