Are The Media Bewitched By Trump?

Joel Bellman writes: “He is, as many have noted, by far the least qualified individual by temperament, experience, intellect, and judgment of any major party presidential candidate in, like, forever.”

The liberal Jewish writer does not bother to back up his assertions. Donald Trump’s educational attainment (Wharton MBA) show he’s in the top 2% for IQ. He must have something going for him as well in the other categories to be on the verge of the American presidency.

“I’m afraid that this year’s presidential campaign is no momentary lapse of reason. It’s a total eclipse, and it sometimes feels like the darkness will never end.”

In other words, a liberal Jew fears the goyim will rediscover nationalism.

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Jewish Rap Kingpins and the Politics of Musical Identity

Few things have done more to morally uplift America than rap music.

These great musicians are every bit the equal of pimps, hos and dealers and what they push is equally valuable.

Jewish rappers are everything that Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos had in mind for the Jewish role in the world.

Jesse Bernstein writes:

Any Jewish rapper working today owes an enormous debt to Def Jam Records founder Rick Rubin and the troublemakers he released upon the world—Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch. From the day Licensed to Ill (1986) dropped, the Beastie Boys—that rollicking, nasally, raunchy trio of New York Jews—has been unapologetically themselves, in all their irreverent glory.

Rubin and the Beastie Boys created a space for themselves in popular music that hadn’t existed in a meaningful way since before World War II: a space for Jews to coexist with black music, while also distinguishing themselves from “whites.” The Beasties meant to offend, meant to subvert assumptions—and their way of achieving that (besides giant inflatable penises on stage) was to not only behave in a manner oh-so-unbecoming of well-to-do New York Jews, but to create some of the most enduring rap albums of the era while paying proper homage to the African-American artists who created the genre in which they worked.

Though the Beasties were rarely so explicit about the politics of musical identity in their lyrics, they were blatantly Jewish, from their nasally delivery to their penchant for performing in Orthodox Jewish garb. Judaism wasn’t always a part of their actual lyrics, but it was the defining characteristic of who they were: They were New York Jewish kids, and they flaunted it, even after they moved to L.A…

Arian Aslani, aka Action Bronson, is a mountain of a man who sports a frizzy red beard that makes his head seem even larger than it is, and at around 300 pounds, he’s got the type of heft that gives him an almost regal bearing; to watch him sample haute cuisine in his Vice eating series, Fuck, That’s Delicious, is what I imagine watching William Taft eat must’ve looked like…

So wake up early, hop off the shitter
Employ a lawyer that’s been bar mitzvahed
Never trust goyim, see me sippin’ spritzer
Hookers with Spitzer

“That’s the way it goes when you party just like I do/ Bitches on my dick that used to brush me off in high school/ Take over the world when I’m on my Donald Trump shit.”

…No mainstream rapper has ever been as openly, deliberately Jewish as Dave Burd, aka Lil’ Dicky. His first mixtape, So Hard (2013), features Burd standing in the middle of a gigantic, flaming Magen David, and the first track, “Ham,” starts with “Whoa, so hard/ Jews is never supposed to go ham, but fuck it.” It’s a joke, but on another level, it’s illustrative of the struggle at the center of Dicky’s persona—the tug-of-war between Dave Burd, the nebbishy Jew who openly wishes he “could just say black things,” and Lil’ Dicky, the brash, confrontational rapper who goes clubbing with Snoop Dogg and Fetty Wap…

Drake has straddled his given identities like very few rappers do. His father was black, and he comfortably uses the n-word; however, his mother was white and Jewish, and even though being black and Jewish isn’t a contradiction in any way, it still is perceived that way in the mainstream. He’s embraced it, though. Though his Judaism is usually manifested in punchlines (“Bar mitzvah money like my last name Mordechaiiii”), he still posts Passover pictures on Instagram, and “You and the 6,” addressed to his mother, is as good as a year’s worth of phone calls. And of course, the music video for “H.Y.F.R.” is the greatest moment in Jewish hip-hop history. What other rapper could pull off a bar mitzvah-themed music video with Lil’ Wayne, DJ Khaled, and Birdman?

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Facebook Complies With 95% of Israel’s Demands on ‘Incitement’

Good to know. There’s nothing I hate more than incitement.

Forward: Facebook, Google and YouTube are complying with up to 95 percent of Israeli requests to delete content that the government says incites Palestinian violence, Israel’s Justice Minister said on Monday.

Perhaps spurred by the minister’s threat to legislate to make companies open to prosecution if they host images or messages that encourage terrorism, their rate of voluntary compliance has soared from 50 percent in a year, she said.

“Our main aim is for those companies to do their own monitoring of material containing incitement,” Ayelet Shaked said after a meeting with Facebook officials.

“Just as ISIS (Islamic State) video clips are being monitored and removed from the network, we want them to take the same action against Palestinian material that incites terrorism,” she told the International Conference on Counter-terrorism near Tel Aviv.

“The world now understands that (social) networks serve as a greenhouse for terrorists,” Shaked said in her speech.

Facebook declined to confirm Shaked’s assertion that it complied with 95 percent of Israel’s requests, but a spokeswoman said it constantly takes down offensive material and responds to requests from many countries, organizations and individuals.

“We came to listen and see if can be do better. We have zero tolerance for terrorism,” she said, adding that Facebook’s standards “make it clear there is no place for terrorists or content that promotes terrorism on Facebook.”

Both Shaked and Facebook said they would prefer companies voluntarily remove inciting content than be prosecuted.

A spokesman for Google, parent company of YouTube, which Shaked said complied with 80 percent of requests, declined to comment.

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Remembering A Great Gay American

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How a smartphone camera changed the discussion on Clinton’s health

The Hill: The Clinton campaign almost got away with it.

On Sunday at a 9/11 ceremony marking 15 years since the attacks, Hillary Clinton wasn’t feeling well to the point she had to make an early exit. Her handlers obviously knew what such an exit would do: Feed the narrative — irresponsibly called conspiracy theory at that point by too many posing as objective journalists — that there really was something more than allergies surrounding the Democratic presidential nominee’s health.

So Clinton was whisked away. Reporters embedded in her campaign were left in the dark for 90 minutes as to her whereabouts while the escape from New York was concocted.

And she almost got away without any video footage via news crews showing it.

But as Clinton approached her van, a 50-year-old man by the name of Zdenek Gazda filmed her with his smartphone. Gazda is a Czech immigrant, Clinton supporter, and to my pleasant surprise, a huge New Jersey Devils fan.

He proceeded to upload the video onto his Twitter feed, which can serve as everyone’s own newsroom. As of Tuesday, more than 11 million people have viewed his Tweet, and at least hundreds of millions more worldwide have seen the video via broadcast outlets and other forms of social media such as YouTube and Facebook.

Gazda joins the growing list of citizen journalists armed with a camera and his or her own broadcast station via Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or all of the above. And if he wasn’t there at that moment, you can rest assured Clinton’s communication team would have been spinning the “nothing-to-see-here” line and most of the media would be spinning along a much different, muted tune.

Without video evidence, some conservative outlets may have raised questions about Clinton leaving such a solemn and sacred event early. But those questions and scrutiny would have stayed in that bubble, called crazy and conspiracy and therefore out of traditional media. As a result, 9/11 retrospectives and some political talk from the Sunday talk shows would have dominated the headlines instead.

For Team Clinton, it would have been mission accomplished. No need to share the diagnoses of pneumonia for Clinton or for anyone on the campaign staff. Even Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) could have kept his own spell with the disease under wraps instead of suddenly sharing that little piece of information yesterday in an effort to attempt to portray it as a downright epidemic.

Instead, Clinton is finally forced to share her prognosis of pneumonia — if that’s all this is, which some top doctors are questioning — and will release more of her medical records this week, as will Trump, on “Dr. Oz.”

But the Clinton campaign tried to keep Americans in the dark once again. There’s a reason nearly 70 percent of the country in poll after poll finds her to be not honest and trustworthy.

“She entered the van on her own accord,” deputy press secretary Brian Fallon had the audacity to say to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Monday despite Gazda’s video clearly showing three people helping a fallen Clinton get in.

“We could have done better yesterday, but it is a fact that public knows more about [Hillary Rodham Clinton] than any other candidate in history.”

Yup — which is why more medical records need to be released next week. The hubris of the defeated is dumbfounding sometimes.

But it never should have come to this: Both Trump and Clinton should — being elderly at 70 and almost 69, respectively, while seeking arguably the most stressful and grueling job in the world — be examined by independent doctors and have those findings released to the public in full.

Given the stakes, is that really such an outlandish request?

The Gazda video serves a powerful and potentially devastating image the Clinton campaign will have to answer to for the remainder of the campaign with every cough and other health oddity on the campaign trail.

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