Tag Archive for: MAINSTREAM MEDIA

SANDOVAL: Left Wing Media Seethes At Young, Fertile, Republican Women

Left-wing media has identified a dangerous new political archetype: the thin, fertile, Republican woman.

Beware the burgeoning online “womanosphere” urging an audience of young women away from feminism and towards marriage, children, and being attractive, warns The Guardian. The outlet points to prominent conservative commentators such as Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, along with publications like Evie Magazine, as emblematic of this clunkily-named counterpart to the “manosphere.”

These women are united by their “desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview,” according to The Guardian, which casts “women as submissive homemakers” and “men as strong providers.”

Oh, the horror. “Gender-essentialism” refers to the outlandish belief that men and women are different. One is free to draw varied conclusions from this fact. The left has taken up a strange quarrel with the concept of biological sex itself, an argument which defeats itself at the outset. How can one analyze why female commentators specifically appeal to females without acknowledging the validity of the category?

The outlet warns of “an organized effort” to create an “alternative rightwing media ecosystem targeting young female US audiences.” One discerns the outlet’s terror at the prospect — no great wonder, given the much vaunted “podcast strategy” helped win over young male voters to Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

“Organized” is supposed to be a dirty word. It connotes an insidious masterplan to take women off birth control and put them on quick-slimming diets. But the legacy media, with its extreme left-wing bias, is surely no less organized and strident in its political and cultural prescriptions than the “right-wing media.” Notice the asymmetry in terms. The New York Times and Netflix are simply media. They claim neutral ground. It’s a powerful rhetorical trick. If they can successfully assert themselves as unbiased observers and artists, they fashion reality itself in their terms.

This strategy shifts the window of acceptable belief to the left. Sure, they say, we welcome a diversity of opinion — anywhere between Hillary Clinton and a Tesla vandal.  Any objections to left-wing madness are easily characterized and dismissed as “extreme.” Including objections which members of the Democratic Party levied just twenty years ago.

“I believe that marriage is not just a bond, but a sacred bond between man and woman,” said a younger Clinton. “It exists between a man and a woman going back into the mists of history as one of the founding, foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization.”

Sounds an awful lot like a “womanosphere” talking point.

“Young women are particularly vulnerable to these appeals,” according to The Guardian. This is the proposition of feminism: women deserve all the same rights as men but are agentless creatures capable of none of the same responsibilities. It seems a tension born not out of logic, but political maneuvering. Feminism cloaks itself in the language of equality to disguise a cheap aim: endless goodies. This, at the cost of the well-being of men and women alike.

The Guardian blames conservative commentators for “capitalizing on a real crisis of loneliness” among young people.

“Conservatives aren’t focusing on the real issues,” whines the leftist, “Like making sure third graders have a robust understanding of prostitution and bondage.” Appeals to unity from the left are always bungled by their own inability to cleave from Woke.

“Don’t let them trick us into thinking we can be separated into rural and urban,” said Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) at a recent rally. “Black and white and Latino.” Note the capitalization from her producers. Even in a sentence calling for unity, she can’t help but isolate “white.”

More to the point: why shouldn’t one relate young people’s loneliness to a culture plunging leftwards? At the very least, one must admit a correlation between rising alienation and rising egalitarianism. It seems no outlandish conjecture that men and women might be happier and more at ease with one another were they to assume some “antiquated,” sex-specific standards. And basic hygiene and fitness.

“Young women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that’s not a given,” writes The Guardian.

Therein lies a sick admission. The Democratic Party prefers women fat, infertile, single, and unhappy. Why? Because those women make the most fervent ideologues. Leftism inverts natural hierarchies. It lofts the ugly and sick above the beautiful. It punishes any natural inclination towards the latter. This appeals to malcontents who depend on such an infrastructure to confer them status and meaning. Or a green card, as the case may be.

Who profits by a woman being thin and fertile? Why, only the woman herself, the young man interested in dating and marrying her, her future family, and all the rest of society by extension. The left’s supposed concern for female “freedom” and “independence” is false. They’d just prefer women be dependent on the state, not a husband.

AUTHOR

Natalie Sandoval

Contributor. Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatalieIrene03

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Gulf of America Floods America’s Gulf

The conqueror always draws the map. And when President Donald Trump issued among his first executive orders a directive to rename what was formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, it was more than simply a naming preference. It was a signal to the world that he was not a man afraid to upset the status quo, even when it came to changing the world’s maps. Without firing a shot, Trump conquered the Gulf of Mexico.

The changing of place names is nothing new. When the biblical Joshua conquered Kiriath-arba, he renamed it Hebron, which you can still find today in a place called Judea, which some now call “the West Bank” but was known long before that as Judea. The Democratic Republic of Congo became Zaire for a few decades, until it became the Democratic Republic of Congo again after another regime change. St. Petersburg, Russia was renamed Leningrad, U.S.S.R for a long minute until it once again became St. Petersburg, Russia. Closer to home, Colonel Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain became officially known as “KFC” in 1991 — the year we frowned upon fried foods. One of these is not like the other, but you get the picture. Circumstances change, and names change along with them.

Most married women in the United States (79%) still adopt their husband’s last name, and civilization somehow adapts. But because of its geographic significance, and more likely because it is Trump, not everyone is happy with the Gulf of America. Most notably, the Associated Press — the nonprofit entity that calls itself “the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats” — has come out in opposition Trump’s name change:

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

This is not insignificant. The “AP Stylebook” is indeed the standard style guide to which most news outlets look to write news copy. From everything to how to handle the Oxford comma (you should handle it!), to whether or not to use “canceled” or “cancelled” (use “canceled” in American publications), the AP sets the standards. If you’ve ever wondered why news outlets use the standard abbreviations for states (e.g., “Tenn.” for Tennessee) instead of the postal abbreviations (“TN”), the AP is the reason. Most news organizations will have their own house style that will supersede the AP on certain items, but by and large, the AP is the defining framework for most news copy out there.

However much the AP gives the appearance of being principled when it comes to name changes, it hasn’t exactly borne that out in practice. The AP has led the way in the pronoun wars, and the way in which it has led is nowhere near the way language has operated “for more than 400 years.” For example, in 2017, the AP issued guidance saying, “Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to botheither, or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people.” That same year, the AP approved the pronoun “they” for singular usage. The AP has also long championed the use of preferred pronouns in place of pronouns that correspond to biology.

Put up against that background, the AP’s bucking against the Gulf of America seems awfully arbitrary. As veteran journalist Mark Hemingway aptly pointed out on X, “News organizations will call a man a woman no questions asked, but ‘Gulf of America’ is a bridge too far?” Hemingway wasn’t alone in noticing the double standard. Georgia Congressman Mike Collins (R) quipped, “Stop deadnaming the Gulf of America.”

But it may be difficult for the Associated Press and its fellow Gulf of Mexico protestors to hold the line. Remember Rand McNally, who published all those paper maps and atlases we used to carry around? They’re playing a wait-and-see game:

“Rand McNally will await final legal and public review through the Secretary of the Interior’s office, as required in President Trump’s Executive Order, before making any adjustments to our Atlases and maps regarding the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m betting they fall in line with the change. Big Tech has a bigger footprint than the AP or paper map companies, and following the federal government, both Google Maps and Apple Maps have both incorporated the gulf’s name change.

While Mexico (the country, not the gulf) is now threatening to sue Google for updating its map, much of the opposition has gotten lost in the flooded zone of Trump’s flurry of executive actions. After all, who has time for the Gulf of America when paper straws are under assault?

The Gulf of America’s abrupt name change is symbolic of Trump’s larger sweeping out of America’s cupboard. It’s a political chess move that has no easy escape except to just go with it. Will a future administration restore it to the Gulf of Mexico? Perhaps, but not without having to own the fact that they’d be giving away America.

Name changes are tough, but conquerors aren’t strangers to new names. As Scripture tells us in Revelation 2:17, those who persist in Christ will also get new names:

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (ESV)

The Gulf of America is only a body of water, and a name change won’t bridge the gulf between Americans. But it may wake America up to the fact that the tide has indeed changed, and we as a nation will have to change along with it. Only names written in stone don’t get changed. Now that we’ve changed the name of the gulf, let’s strive toward the stone.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Ten Topics You Rarely Hear Discussed Openly and Rationally on Mainstream Media

Many of us are familiar with the ideological and political biases of mainstream media, in particular the media’s uncritical embrace of leftist commitments on issues like inclusive language, hate speech, transgenderism, abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, the Christian faith, education, and pandemic policies.

It’s par for the course.

Much of the mainstream media does not simply defend its favoured positions; it also refuses, all too often, to give a fair hearing to opposing viewpoints. The silencing, censoring, and exclusion of opinions that newspaper, radio, and TV editors deem politically incorrect impoverishes our public square by making open and candid discussion of a wide range of issues practically impossible.

This would not necessarily be the case in an ideologically and politically diverse media system, because the one-sided and exclusionary editorial policies of one media organ could be checked and balanced by the diverse biases and editorial policies of another. However, in practice, many mainstream media do in fact speak with one voice on lots of important issues, including issues that are by no means settled in the general population.

Sometimes the silencing of dissenting viewpoints is achieved through overt censorship – as we saw when Facebook suppressed arguments that entertained the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis, or when Twitter censored pretty much any assertion that could be construed as even slightly unfavourable to Covid vaccines. But more often than not, it is achieved by refusing to give any airtime to arguments from “the other side.”

In many ways, this is more sinister than overt censorship, because it is subtle and may easily go completely unnoticed.

I have had personal experience of this “from the inside,” so to speak. I used to write occasionally for a prominent national newspaper in Ireland, as well as a regional newspaper in Spain. Soon after I began to seriously question Covid measures or the science behind lockdowns, my contributions at both newspapers ceased to be published, quite abruptly. There was simply no editorial interest in questioning the fundamentals of the national response to the virus.

The average newspaper reader or TV viewer knows nothing of this filtering process. They just pick up the newspaper or switch on the TV and assume that there are “serious” people and experts who will be given a platform to express themselves. They will naturally assume that if no credible voice defends this or that position, it must be because the position is weak or indefensible. It will not occur to the average reader or viewer that the reason there are no “credible voices” on the other side is because they have been filtered out in advance.

Mine is one of those voices. There are many others.

It is not that mainstream media never discuss contentious issues. Rather, media “debate” on contentious issues is often bland and uninspiring, due to its near total exclusion of reasonable voices from the other side. Officially sanctioned positions are echoed uncritically by talking heads on TV and radio, and the “other side” is dismissed as a bunch of crazies or “extremists” in op-eds and on chat shows, even though moderate dissenting voices are refused airtime or never invited to participate in the debate in the first place.

This is bad for citizenship and bad for democracy, because citizens are exposed to one set of pat answers on the issues of the day, and not taught to process complexity and nuance. Citizens who should be learning to think for themselves are instead encouraged to passively imbibe a set of one-sided slogans, slogans that most journalists do not even think to interrogate or put to the test, like “I’m personally against X, but would never impose my opinion on someone else,” or “I am spiritual but have no time for organised religion,” or “Populists are a looming danger to democracy,” or “We must do everything possible to combat misinformation and hate speech,” or “The unvaccinated are granny-killers.”

The top ten

Here are ten topics that most mainstream media cover from a broadly leftist-progressive perspective, with almost no consideration of dissenting arguments, no matter how evidence-based and no matter how qualified or credentialed their author happens to be. In other words, ten topics that most mainstream media cannot or will not discuss openly and rationally:

  1. The birth shortfall across a large part of the Western world and its contribution to the ageing of our populations – barely mentioned, let alone debated.
  2. The ethics of administering transgender hormone therapy to children and adolescents – seems to be taboo for many editors.
  3. Religious faith as a personal commitment and way of life – almost invariably, this is either ignored, treated superficially, or discussed as a wholly subjective “lifestyle option,” rather than a serious truth claim.
  4. The ethics of abortion and techniques of assisted reproduction and their impact on women’s lives – the pro-life perspective is almost never given a fair hearing.
  5. The difficulties and challenges surrounding the accommodation and integration of refugees – anyone questioning refugee policies is dismissed out of hand as “anti-immigration” or bigoted or racist.
  6. The evidential basis and ethical merits of Covid policies like lockdowns, mandatory masking and mandatory vaccination – government advisors were essentially given a free pass to say whatever they wanted, while dissenters were either silenced or dismissed as enemies of public health.
  7. The steep increases in excess mortality in 2021 and 2022, and its possible underlying causes – it has been reported on, but strikingly, not discussed to even a fraction of the extent that Covid deaths were.
  8. The claim that reducing our “carbon footprint” can reverse global warming, and that this will avert a global catastrophe – you will rarely if ever hear this topic treated in a rational, critical and scientific manner, just uncritical repetition of a set of pre-packaged climate crisis mantras.
  9. Populist and anti-establishment political movements – instead of engaging rationally with their claims, these movements are generally dismissed as “alt right,” “hard right,” or “demagogic” and anti-democratic.
  10. The perspective of stay-at-home mothers or women who choose to sacrifice their careers or accept more modest careers, in order to be more available to their children – apparently, most mainstream journalists are unable or unwilling to discuss such a choice sympathetically.

This article has been republished from David Thunder’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘They Created An Industry’: How Leftists Gaslight Americans On Extremism

Democrats’ final pitch to Americans this November as the midterms approached couldn’t have been more clear: Republicans are “extremists” hellbent on destroying Democracy.

Joe Biden infamously declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic” at a September speech in Philadelphia. But 50 million Americans voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — 50 million Americans who, according to their president, are fringe “extremists.”

Interest in the word “extremism” is vastly more pronounced in Washington D.C. than in any state over the last year, according to Google Trends. On a scale of 0-100, DC stands at 100, with Vermont, Virginia and Maryland following at 22, 20 and 16, respectively. Swing states such as Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey have a relative interest in the word of 8, 7 and 8, respectively. In short, obsession with the problem of extremism is mainly a passion project of the D.C. elite.

Following the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center, Democrat lined up to support Roe v. Wade, and even enshrine it into law. Biden promised to codify Roe if Democrats took majorities in the midterms, and Vice President Kamala Harris lamented the potential overturning of Roe back in May.

But Roe v. Wade allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy, well into the second trimester, and most Americans support restrictions on abortion after the first trimester, which ends at 12 weeks. In fact, the Mississippi abortion law that sparked the Dobbs decision would not ban abortions until the 15th week of pregnancy.

Progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal called a Florida bill that bans explicit discussions of sex and gender in classrooms “extremist.” Jayapal is one of many Democrats who inaccurately dubbed this legislation the “Don’t Say Gay Bill,” although it nowhere prohibits individuals from saying the word “gay.” Despite Democrat claims of extremism, a majority of registered voters supported the legislation, and only 35% opposed it. Opposition to transgender surgery for children has also been dubbed “extremist” by LGBT activists, but a recent poll from McLaughlin and Associates finds that 65% of Americans think the transgender movement has gone too far in recommending such procedures to minors.

Brian Levin, who directs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, told the Daily Caller that extremism can be defined as “a position that is … antithetical to our constitution and the processes of our democracies, particularly with regard to bigotry and discrimination,” but admitted that the word is often thrown around too lightly.

“Sometimes we label people extremist because we’re too lazy to debate them, but other times people are labeled extremists because they are,” Levin told the Caller, adding that political problems arise, “when we have people running for various types of critical office who are election deniers.”

Kyle Shideler, the director and senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, said the term “extremist” is problematic from the start.

“I think we should discard the term altogether. If we need to talk about ideologies that potentially lead to violence, we need to talk about those ideologies on their own terms. So if we have concerns about Neo-Nazi groups, we should talk about neo-Nazism,” Shideler told the Caller. “Same thing if we’re concerned about anarchists like Antifa. You don’t need a blanket term to do it. We should identify groups and ideologies on their own terms.”

In June 2021, the Biden White House released a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which claimed that domestic terrorism comes from “racial or ethnically motivated violent extremists and networks whose racial, ethnic, or religious hatred leads them toward violence, as well as those whom they encourage to take violent action.”

The document not only decries “explicit” calls for violence against religious and ethnic minorities, but also words that are “less explicit, lurking in ideologies.” Chief among these ideologies are, according to the document, “conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.”

Shideler told the Caller that the government’s use of the term “extremism” blurs the line between speech that calls for violence and constitutionally protected speech, causing the government to censor speech which they claim is so extreme that it leads to violence.

“It’s a sort of bait and switch that’s been perpetuated, because they will use the term extremist and say not everyone who is an extremist is a terrorist and they have first amendment rights … But then they will turn around and say ‘oh there’s a rise in extremism.’ And so they dance between whether they’re talking about people who are actually engaged in criminality or people who hold certain ideas,” he added.

As an example, in July 2021 then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House was working with Facebook to determine which posts on the platform should be flagged for “disinformation” on the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” Psaki said, noting that “Facebook has repeatedly shown that they have the levers to promote quality information.”

“[The left] created a terminology, and then they created an industry,” Shideler told the Caller, “and they staffed that industry with certain academics who held a particular viewpoint.”

Levin told the Caller that people who spread extremist ideologies online but don’t necessarily call for violence still contribute to a negative environment.

“Those individuals are at least part of the ecosystem of extremism even if they’re not the bullseye center of it,” Levin said.

AUTHOR

SARAH WEAVER

Staff writer.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Italy: A great example of why I take mainstream media coverage of populism with a grain of salt

The major newspapers seem to believe that the superiority of their political opinions is a self-evident fact that needs no explanation.


There was a time when journalists from respected media outlets like the BBC, the New York Times and the Guardian, at least made a sincere effort to distinguish between reporting the facts and reporting one’s political opinions. But that era is long over. We now live in a world in which journalists blithely dismiss political movements they disagree with as “extreme,” “hard-right,” and “fascistic,” as though the superiority of their own political opinions was a self-evident fact that needed no explanation.

This is perhaps nowhere more clear than in the response of Western mainstream media – in particular media that embrace progressive-leftist positions – to the prospect that Giorgia Meloni will be Italy’s first-ever female prime minister. From the tone of that response, one would think that Meloni was advocating the abolition of democracy, the abrogation of rule of law, or some sort of Putin-style military incursion into neighbouring territories.

Here is a sample of mainstream coverage of Giorgia Meloni’s election:

  • BBC: “Ms Meloni is widely expected to form Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two. That will alarm much of Europe…”
  • CNN: “Giorgia Meloni claims victory to become Italy’s most far-right prime minister since Mussolini.”
  • El País: “The strong result for the extreme-right obliges the EU to be smart in how it manages its relationship with Meloni.”
  • The Guardian: “Giorgia Meloni is a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe.”
  • New York Times: “The country’s hard turn to the right has sent shock waves across Europe after a period of stability in Italy led by Mario Draghi.”

Meloni, president of the conservative Fratelli d’Italia, or “Brothers of Italy”, party, swept to victory in Italy’s recent elections, and is now poised to become Italy’s first ever female prime minister. She is undoubtedly a controversial figure, and her style can be a bit shrill.

She defends a range of positions that are now viewed with disdain by many Western politicians and journalists, such as the primacy of the natural family, the importance of maintaining a birth-rate above replacement level, the ideal of heterosexual marriage, the sanctity of human life, the value of national identity and culture, the positive value of religion, the opposition to transgender operations for children, and the rejection of illegal immigration.

On the other hand, being a bit shrill or abrasive hardly makes a political leader a threat to democracy or a harbinger of political instability. And let’s not forget that the positions defended by Meloni were perceived as perfectly normal in many parts of the West a few decades ago, so it is hard to see why they would now put her outside the pale of civilisation or make her a serious “threat” to Europe.

The media’s intense hostility to Meloni, and by extension, the popular movement that brought her to power, can be explained by one simple fact: her opinions on “hot button” issues have put her directly at odds with the progressive-leftist movement that now dominates social media, mainstream media, EU bureacracy, and the Biden Administration. And that, for many self-styled progressives, puts her far beyond the moral and political pale.

One does not have to support Italy’s newly elected prime minister or her opinions to understand that mainstream media’s coverage of her is nothing short of reactionary. Progressive-minded journalists seemed unwilling or unable to understand how opinions different to their own could end up resonating with a sufficient number of Italians to propel the leader of a conservative, pro-life party into power.

Indeed, the crude, reactionary coverage of Meloni’s victory was quite reminiscent of the coverage of Trump’s election – a mix of perplexity and indignation at the prospect that a large number of voters might actually hold opinions radically at odds with those of progressive-leftist journalists and politicians. The only explanation that occurred to progressive-leftist analysts, in both cases, was that the voters in question were either ignorant or manipulated.

If journalists report on political elections almost exclusively as ideological cheer-leaders, dismissing opposing opinions as part of a “hard right” agenda that menaces the future of democracy, then they are not doing their jobs. They are not actually attempting to understand social reality as it is, nor are they attempting to empathise, even remotely, with voters who wear “the other shirt.” It becomes impossible for them to understand the motives and points of view of their fellow citizens, and it becomes impossible for them to respect the opinions of citizens who see the world differently from themselves.

When journalists become completely tone-deaf to opinions at odds with progressive-leftist principles, or automatically dismiss such opinions as anathema to liberal democracy, their coverage of political events loses any appearance of impartiality and their work becomes largely irrelevant to a large swathe of the citizenry. Once journalists enter into “campaign” mode, many citizens tune out or treat their pronouncements with a grain of salt.

And rightly so.

This article has been republished with permission from the author’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘My Son Hunter’: An imperfect but necessary indictment of media’s corruption

This satirical film reveals a disturbing truth about modern mainstream journalistic standards.


We all love the literary motif of the unwilling prostitute who, at the end of the story, does virtuous deeds to save herself and others. In Crime and Punishment, Sonya is instrumental in Raskolnikov’s redemption. Director Robert Davi uses the same formula to tell the story of President’s Biden son in My Son Hunter.

Grace struggles to pay for her college tuition, so she is a favourite escort of powerful men. As she encounters Hunter Biden in a world of cocaine, wild sex, and rampant corruption, she offers him a path to redemption — and of course, he rejects it.

Now, Davi is no Dostoevsky — nor does he intend to be. My Son Hunter is first and foremost political satire, all-too-frequently engaging in cheap shots. But it does take a stab at Dostoevskyan psychological profundity, and in that endeavour, it partly succeeds.

The shadow of successful Beau Biden — Hunter’s deceased brother — looms large over Hunter, who struggles to find meaning in life. Very much as Raskolnikov, he comes across as a pathological narcissist who engages in criminal activity as a way to prove to himself that he is so great so as to be above the law.

Overblown

Unfortunately, My Son Hunter often goes overboard and loses effectiveness. I lost count of the number of times Joe Biden sniffs the hair of women in the film. Is that necessary? That portrayal runs the risk of playing into the left-wing narrative that criticisms of the Bidens focus on petty things that can be easily dismissed.

The stakes are high, so a more focused and incisive portrayal was needed. Say what you want about Oliver Stone’s leftist politics and penchant for conspiracy theories, but he surely can strike an opponent in his films — Richard Nixon and George W. Bush being the most notorious cases.

The story of Hunter Biden lends itself to Stone’s sober cinematographic style, but My Son Hunter misses an opportunity, to the extent that it aims for low-hanging fruit. Yes, the Bidens are corrupt, but one is left wondering: can they be that corrupt? While the dialogues between Joe and Hunter are clever and amusing, the perversity defies credibility. Perhaps Davi was deliberately aiming more for Saturday Night Live’s lampooning style all along. If so, the film works at some level, but never entirely.

I would have personally enjoyed a more sober style because there is a far darker theme in the film. My Son Hunter is not about the moral failings of a privileged, corrupt drug addict. It is not even about crony capitalism and globalist elites. The real central theme is the media’s rot.

Media manipulation

Two scenes are particularly frightening. At the beginning of the film, Grace is at a Black Lives Matter protest, and records some of her comrades engaging in violent deeds. A fellow activist says: “You can’t post that video… it will make the protest look bad… Those people are too ignorant to understand complex moral issues. You have to withhold things for their own good. We choose truth over facts.” Grace acquiesces.

Towards the end of the film, Grace summons a journalist to expose Hunter’s corruption. The man tells her: “Even if what you are saying is true, it’s not news. We have the chance to take down a fascist dictator [Trump]… I’m sorry Grace, this one is not for me.” We now know that Twitter and Facebook — with their disturbing algorithms — were not the only ones trying to bury Hunter’s laptop under the sand.

As Mark Zuckerberg recently acknowledged, the FBI itself pressured him to do so, because they did not want the bad Orange Man to win the election — all with the excuse that the whole story was Russian disinformation. Later on, both the Washington Post and the New York Times had to reverse their stance and admit that, in fact, the laptop does contain compromising emails.

Plato infamously recommended telling people the Noble Lie. Very much as the Black Lives Matter activist in this film, Plato believed such lies were for people’s own good, as they were too stupid to understand things. In his seminal study of totalitarianism, Karl Popper persuasively argued that Plato’s plan became a central tenet of totalitarian regimes. That is the real fascism.

While being far from a perfect film, My Son Hunter provides meaningful insight on this issue, and hopefully it might become an important step towards much-needed media accountability in this woke age.

For the time being, we need to be realistic. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make an Oliver Stone-like blockbuster about the corruption and hypocrisy of the Left.

Rather, keep an eye out for low-budget productions like My Son Hunter that are bypassing the Hollywood production and distribution system. These include Uncle Tom I and II, various Christian films, such as Run, Hide, Fight.

They will not be great works of art, but at least they will be something. And from there, the quality of such films may gradually improve, until we again see mainstream studios portraying corrupt politicians from both sides of the political spectrum.

AUTHOR

Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

POLL: Majorities Of Both Parties Say The Media Isn’t Trustworthy

Huge majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents say the U.S. media is biased and its main goal is to advance its own agenda, according to a Thursday poll from the Trafalgar Group and Convention of States.

More than 76% of poll respondents stated that the media is primarily focused on advancing their own political opinions and agenda, with 62.7% of Democrats, 76.1% of Independents and 90.3% of Republicans agreeing.

The poll surveyed 1,084 likely general election voters between Dec. 4 and Dec. 7. and reported a 3% margin of error. Trafalgar employs a number of methods for conducting its polls, including live phone calls, automated calls, emails, text messages, and two other proprietary methods it does not share publicly.

“Thanks to the decentralization of the news through the internet and social media, the mainstream press outlets no longer have a monopoly on controlling the news,” Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States Action, said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller. “Unfortunately, the mainstream media has been slow to adjust to this reality and don’t seem to realize that the average American can now see in real time the difference between the actual facts of a story versus what the mainstream media says. People are realizing the open bias and partisanship of the press, and it is making them increasingly cynical.”

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE CHART ON MAINSTREAM MEDIA FOCUS BY THE TRAFALGER GROUP

The Trafalgar Group was one of only two polling firms that accurately predicted Trump’s victory in the presidential election of 2016. The firm was also among the few that predicted Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ win in 2018, as well as Republican victories in Virginia in November.

The poll is only the latest indicator of Americans’ loss of trust in the media. A June survey from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that the U.S. ranked the lowest in trust for the media among 46 nations with developed media industries.

“This is an extraordinary (though unsurprising) finding,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said after the report’s release. “Most amazing is that the corporate sector of the US media is failing in every respect: financially, culturally, collapsing trust.”

The poll also shows a dramatic drop from the “new low” for trust in the media established in January 2021, when just 46% of Americans stated the media was trustworthy. The Trafalgar poll now puts that number at 23.7%.

COLUMN BY

ANDERS HAGSTROM

White House correspondent.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Esteban Santiago [a.k.a. Aashiq Hammad] is a Puerto Rican Salafist Sunni Muslim

EDITORS UPDATE:

WeSearchr and GotNews published more of their findings that neither the government nor media have yet discovered or released: BREAKING: #FortLauderdale Terrorist #EstebanSantiago Joined MySpace As “Aashiq Hammad”, Recorded Islamic Music – GotNews

Fort Lauderdale Airport terrorist Esteban Santiago registered on MySpace under the name “Aashiq Hammad” and recorded Islamic religious music on the site, 3 years before he ever deployed to Iraq as a U.S. soldier, destroying the lying mainstream media’s narrative that he was just a mentally disturbed veteran and that “Islam had nothing to do with it.”

[ … ]

And take a look at the three songs recorded by “Aashiq Hammad.” The first one is titled “La ilaha illAllah”, which is Arabic for “There is no God but Allah,” and the first half of the Muslim declaration of faith, the Shahadah:

[ … ]

That song was recorded in 2007, 3 years before Esteban Santiago went to Iraq as a U.S. soldier in 2010, destroying the lying mainstream media’s narrative that he was a “mentally disturbed veteran”, although even they admit Santiago went into an FBI office in 2015 and told agents he was being forced to watch ISIS videos by voices in his head (or something).

2007 was also the year that “Naota33” was posting on an explosives/weapons forum about mass-downloading Islamic propaganda videos, as GotNews exclusively revealed yesterday.

[ … ]

“Aashiq Hammad” also has Bryan Santiago — Esteban’s brother — as a connection…

The perpetrator of today’s random shooting at Fort Lauderdale, Esteban Santiago Ruiz is a Puerto Rican Salafist Sunni Muslim who was a resident of Anchorage, Alaska. CBS reported that he walked into an Anchorage, Alaska FBI office in November 2016 claiming he was forced to fight for ISIS.

He was born in New Jersey, but moved to Penuela, Puerto Rico to live with his brother and mother shortly thereafter. He moved to Alaska in 2015 for work, and had been employed as a security guard. Same job as Omar Mateen, the perpetrator of the Orlando Pulse Nightclub Massacre. He was “fighting with a lot of people” during his time in Alaska, including his girlfriend. At the time of the shooting, he was receiving mental help for his depression .

Santiago Ruiz is reportedly a Sunni Muslim with Salafist beliefs, and he is a father of one. He served in the Puerto Rican National Guard for six years. He also signed up for the National Guard as a combat engineer and served a year in Iraq. Reports indicate he had a history of mental health issues. In November 2016, he walked into the FBI office in Anchorage, claiming he was fighting for ISIS.

Esteban Santiago Ruiz’s record:

  • February 2015: Eviction for nonpayment of rent.
  • January 2016: Fourth-degree assault and damage of property, from a domestic violence incident. Santiago settled the charges.
  • On January 6, 2017 Esteban Santiago killed 5 people and injured many more in the . His name was released by Florida US Senator Bill Nelson on MSNBC. He was carrying a military ID.
  • On January 6, 2017 Esteban Santiago killed 5 people and injured many more in the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting. His name was released by Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson on MSNBC . He was carrying a military ID.

Santiago took Delta Airlines Flight #1088 from Anchorage to Minneapolis – Saint Paul Thursday night. He landed Friday morning, and then took Delta Flight no. 2182 from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Fort Lauderdale. He then appeared in the Terminal 2 baggage claim area wearing a Star Wars shirt.

Witnesses say he appeared to randomly target his victims during the shooting spree which has left at at least five people dead and many more injured. He was apprehended by authorities when he stopped shooting to reload, witnesses said.

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Fort Lauderdale Airport shooter had told FBI he was forced to fight for the Islamic State

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Santiago pictured wearing a black on green Palestinian Keffiyeh scarf giving a “one-finger salute,” a gesture displayed by the ISIS gunman who shot the Russian ambassador in December.