* Is this a Horrible Hate Hoax or an amusing satire by a spirited fourteen year old?
If she hoped for a pompous, panic-stricken, mutton-headed response, she certainly got it.
* A necessary ingredient in these hoaxes getting national attention is a reporter with an agenda, an Erdely type. If a hoax falls in the forest, does it make a sound? No, you need a megaphone to make a hoax – it takes two to tango. Often the people the reporter interviews are actually waving big red flags but the reporter drives right past them – she is wearing her ideological blinders. She interprets the facts in a way that fits the story that she wants to write. She ignores the ones that don’t fit. She doesn’t try to call up the “perp” whose name is right there on the credit card receipt (or “he did not respond to my attempts to contact him”). If the other waitresses or her boss are unenthusiastic about what a great waitress the “victim” is, that’s interpreted as meaning that they are racists too – this poor woman not only has to put up with racist customers but racist bosses and racist co-workers too! Or if they make some ambiguous statement that is really damning her with faint praise, the reports fails to see that and interprets their mild endorsements as meaning she is another Saint Rosa Parks.
* How stupid do people have to be to still be falling for these hoaxes? I saw another story about a waitress who claimed someone wrote we don’t tip black people on her receipt. Shouldn’t the default reaction be it is a hoax until proven otherwise?
* Sometimes I wonder if the people who run schools have ever actually sat down and talked to a child.
Like I am shocked, just shocked, to find out that children do not always act like mature, responsible adults who understand why some topics are considered deeply serious business, but instead make jokes or act irreverent about them. I thought children were considered paragons of thoughtful good judgment, which is why we let them vote, drink, drive, get married, and sign contracts. Also, kids never bully each other or say mean things. Totally.
* They [MSM] had no problem exquisitely parsing Hillary’s rationalizations for why it was ok to keep top secret info on an unsecured server in her basement, or on how it is possible for a person to be a white Hispanic if he kills a black person but otherwise he is just Hispanic (so at the moment when he pulled the trigger, for an instant George Zimmerman was like Schrodinger’s Cat, white and not-white at the same time – only by observing whether the bullet hit or missed could we know which one he was), but when it comes to stuff like understanding jokes made by Republicans their powers of subtlety completely fail them and they cannot understand the simplest joke.
Or as Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man [woman/ person of undefined gender] to understand something, when his [her/their] salary depends upon his [her/their] not understanding it!”
or as Orwell said,
“Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [English Socialism], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.”
* My favorite example of this kind of propaganda was this Jap Jem from WWII. The Japanese wanted to turn the Filipinos against the US, so they dropped leaflets over the Philippines with the following message:
Guard Against Venereal Diseases
Lately there has been a great increase in the number of venereal diseases among our officers and men owing to prolific contacts with Filipino women of dubious character.
Due to hard times and stricken conditions brought about by the Japanese occupation of the islands, Filipino women were willing to offer themselves for a small amount of foodstuffs. It is advisable in such cases to take full protective measures by use of condoms, protective medicines, etc.; better still to hold intercourse only with wives, virgins, or women of respectable character.
Furthermore, in view of the increase in pro-American leanings, many Filipino women are more than willing to offer themselves to American soldiers, and because Filipinos have no knowledge of hygiene, disease carriers are rampant and due care must be taken.
US Army
