January 1, 2018

That's the weird thing about words. They don't stay right where you put them. Other people come and move them around.

It's like those refrigerator poetry magnets.
I'm laughing at Craig Silverman, BuzzFeed News Media Editor, for his dumb plaint: "I Helped Popularize The Term 'Fake News' And Now I Cringe Every Time I Hear It/After a yearlong battle for its meaning and ownership, 'fake news' is now both an empty slogan and a deeply troubling warning sign."

Cringe on, little man. Or step up and join the world of adults — people who share words with others.

77 comments:

damikesc said...

Seems upset that his cutesy phrase fits "journalism" he likes very well.

dreams said...

He doesn't want to eat his own words because they don't taste good or because they're of poor taste.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

"Micro-sads"? I like that. When did it appear as a tag?

dreams said...

Other people come and move them around and sometimes shove them back in your face.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Hmm. Clicked through to review all the "micro-sads" posts. So it goes back to 2014 and is rarely used it seems.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

As Jim Treacher says:
"Modern journalism us all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on democrats."

Michael K said...

"Fake News" is an issue because the "news" media has become a propaganda arm of the left.

The days when reporters reported the news and not their own opinions would be welcomed back.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Fake News is empty because it boomeranged, flipped back the curtain, and nipped the fake wizard MSM in the butt.

Fritz said...

IIRC "fake news" was popularized as one of the early excuses for Hillary losing. Trump quite correctly threw it back in their faces and made them eat it.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

WaPo makes excuses for Strozk and McCabe. If Strozk and McCabe were on the opposite side of the political spectrum, their actions would be a big deal.

Hillary Clinton is a free woman because of FBI corruption, DOJ corruption and media corruption.

The leftwing MSM continue to push the "Fake News" that Hillary did nothing wrong.

Curious George said...

"Michael K said...
"Fake News" is an issue because the "news" media has become a propaganda arm of the left.

The days when reporters reported the news and not their own opinions would be welcomed back."

So would unicorns.

Ray - SoCal said...

Alt right is big into repurposing words via memes.

Trump is great at it.

If not for Trump, would fake news be so powerful a term.

News has been partisan for a long while, just there was nothing to compare too. Now there is.

Reminds me of the joke, A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

Derek Kite said...

If we needed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that journalists aren't very bright, the fake news meme provided it.

Rob said...

Silverman's article is a useful reminder that "fake news" started as a descriptor of false Facebook stories that were presumably partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump. In a classic exercise of jujitsu, Trump adopted the term (he no doubt thinks he invented it) to employ against his media opponents, and he succeeded to such an extent that his usage became the primary meaning. Indeed, many on the left have forgotten that their side originated the term. Karma's a bitch.

Curious George said...

"Cringe on, little man."

Ha. Perfect.

Jaq said...

Maybe if they were more careful about not being so partisan in their reporting, it never would have caught on, but the whole purpose of his using the term “fake news” was partisan.

Oso Negro said...

The false Facebook stories that are cited are preposterous, National Enquirer type stories, like "Babysitter inserts baby into her vagina". While such a story may be discouraging because it reflects on either the gullibility or deliciously low sensibilities of its readers, it is not dangerous to the republic. Fake news such as one that claimed fired FBI head Jim Comey would testify he never told President Trump three times that he was not under FBI investigation, have more serious repercussions.

Jaq said...

Did you find those magnets with that phrase on your door in Madison?

dreams said...

And this...

"When I read AP reporter Darlene Superville’s story, it was immediately obvious that she had either misunderstood Trump’s tweet or intentionally lied about it. She also plainly didn’t know the meaning of the verb “retweet,” since Trump had tweeted an original statement, not a quoted one.

Getting to the truth will take a bit of context, so here goes:

In short, Superville’s story said, “President Donald Trump reacted to reports Saturday about the coming retirement of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe … by retweeting falsehoods about McCabe’s wife.”"

http://www.dailyinterlake.com/frank_miele_editors_2_cents/20171230/column_a_finger_in_the_dike_holding_back_the_fake_news

Jaq said...

HA, thanks for that link dreams.

Talk about “fake news”!

“How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?”. - DJT on Twitter

“But Trump’s tweet was incorrect. McCabe’s wife, Jill, did not get $700,000 in donations from Clinton for a Virginia state Senate race in 2015. The money came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party … McAuliffe is a longtime supporter of Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.” - AP

So I guess Trump is a liar because long-time bundler and Clinton supporter McCaullif, who got filthy rich off of his connections with the Clintons, doesn’t actually have physical strings that Hillary controls with a wooden cross!

FAKE NEWS!

Jaq said...

Why exactly would a state senate candidate, State Senate!, need that much money? I wonder if she gets to keep any leftovers when she retires, or uses it to hire family and friends and political allies. Kind of like the Clintons use their foundation.

rehajm said...

The first time I heard it was from Hillary before the election when she was introducing the term to apply to all the truths about all her felonies. Shortly after the election the alternative definition was created to dismiss the truth about the lies lefties were inventing to get Trump.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Or step up and join the world of adults — people who share words with others.

If only that were still the case.

whitney said...

I like that you called him a "little man". I think it is deserved

Original Mike said...

Blogger Fritz said..."IIRC "fake news" was popularized as one of the early excuses for Hillary losing. Trump quite correctly threw it back in their faces and made them eat it."

I have a couple of good friends who have unthought-out liberal tendencies. They aren't very political and live in Madison, WI so it's just the default condition. When they do make political comments, they are straight out of the MSM. Last New Year's Day we had them over to watch football and they made a few "knowing" comments about fake news. I knew where that came from because the "fake (IOW right-wing) news" was a MSM meme at the time. They don't talk about "fake news" anymore.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

It is sad that the democrat media and Hillarywood are not fully successful in their Fake News delivery.

The left struggle to understand how they can up their propaganda game.

Unknown said...

At the bar there is a younger guy who fancies himself a poet. Now, he doesn't call himself a poet -- it sounds presumptive and pretentious to describe one's self that way, most likely --but he says he writes poems. I guess not all who plumb are plumbers, I don't know.

He sits in a booth with a beer and writes in his notebook, scribbles things out, writes again. Sometimes he appears mildly anguished, which I can imagine poets looking like: there is a word, the perfect word, but it just won't come to mind.

Words can be tricky: they have different associations for different people, and you may be trying to play off of the different associations to achieve a deeper meaning. Or perhaps you're just trying to find the best word that conceivably rhymes. It probably sucks when you start with what you consider the perfect word, but then no other good word rhymes with it. Maybe Cole Porter already used up all of the good rhymes. And he wasn't even a poet.

But I don't think the younger guy writes the kind of poems that rhyme; if you are skilled at rhyming there's more money in rap nowadays. More chicks, too: you might still have 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.

Maybe his poems are good, maybe not: as far as I know, he hasn't let anyone at the bar read them. That doesn't mean others haven't heard them, of course: maybe there's a friend, or a girlfriend, or a friend he wants to have as a girlfriend, who he has shared his work with. Exposed his soul. Maybe that person really likes his poems. But maybe she doesn't like the poems enough to actually have sex with him. Which probably can be the source of more poems, because: unrequited love is suffering. And poets suffer, a lot.

The rap guys, though: they don't seem to suffer much. And on the Ave you meet more than a few aspiring rappers. Some will shoot you some rhymes for a cigarette; others are hawking CDs they made that they swear are about to blow up. They certainly seem like they have more confidence than the young bar poet. They might still have 99 problems, but rhyming ain't one.

- james james

Bill Peschel said...

I remember how the Dems flipped "swiftboating" from "telling the truth about John Kerry and how he gamed the medals system in Vietnam" to "any partisan attacks."

cronus titan said...

The media was quite used to creating any narrative they wanted without accountability. Then came Trump, who did not put up with their crap. Like any bully, the media had no idea what to do when someone hit back. It never occurred to the self-proclaimed geniuses, movers, and shakers that Trump was capable and willing to co-opt that term and rub their noses in it. They are still scrambling to figure out a line of attack that he does not throw back at them twice as hard.

Of course, there is always the option of just doing their job and reporting facts, but that is no fun and does not get any invitations to the most exquisite dinner parties in Georgetown.

Original Mike said...

"Silverman's article is a useful reminder that "fake news" started as a descriptor of false Facebook stories that were presumably partly responsible for the election of Donald Trump."

Michael Needham stated yesterday on a Sunday news show that the dollar amount of Russian Facebook ads in Wisconsin was $54 (and some odd cents).

Richard Dillman said...

So my word-hoard is porous and fluid. Who knew?

David said...

Nice to see cruel neutrality confirmed in the very first post of the year.

Cringe on, little man. Ooof. That hurts so bad.

caplight45 said...

George Lakoff has been teaching progressives to redefine and repurpose words for years. Part of the linguistic strategy to refine morality and subdue errant thought and speech. Karma sucks.

Unknown said...

A few years back there was a kid on the Ave that I called the Dylan Kid. He dressed in vintage clothes to wear things that look like Bob Dylan might've worn, back in the day. He had the electric howl of hair, only red. And the sunglasses. And the aloof pose: he obviously studied hard at studied cool. Like Madonna and the British accent she sometimes has.

He would play his acoustic guitar a few storefronts down from the bar, and sing his songs, songs that sounded like Dylan songs from back in the day. Back in the day was back again, at least for him.

I remember him being pretty good, if not particularly original. But then they said that about Dylan too, early on. For awhile the Music Industry kept trying to find the New Bob Dylan: Bruce Springsteen was one of those so anointed. By the New Dylan they meant pretty much the Young Dylan, or at least up to, then stopping, at That Christian Thing.

Maybe there were a lot of New Dylans that were doing That Christian Thing, and the Music Industry simply ignored all of them: that could've happened. Not likely, but it could have happened. And I'd rather listen to Bob Dylan do That Christian Thing than any Bruce Springsteen, but I'm not going to elaborate on that right now: maybe we can just cut it short and agree to disagree.

So the Dylan Kid would gather a small audience, people would drop money in his open guitar case, he'd give a studied cool nod and keep playing. Not much patter between songs, just his small following applauding and approximating an Experience. From Back In The Day.

There was a way to make him lose his studied cool, though: you just had to ask him to play a Dylan song. You know: a Real One. Sometimes he would say he didn't know any, which was kind of a Dylan thing to say. But sometimes he would get visibly angry: he sung his own songs. With weaving rhymes and whimsical characters and train references.

But when people see Dylan they want to hear Dylan, even if the guy really isn't Dylan. Maybe that is unfortunate, but if you dress like Seventies Elton John you should probably expect someone to ask you to play Bennie And The Jets. On acoustic guitar. I'm sure that someone, somewhere has done exactly that, and it is probably on YouTube.

The Dylan Kid left the Ave years ago. Maybe to a bigger city; maybe he is bouncing around the country, playing small bars in small towns. Where the patrons want him to sing "Like A Rolling Stone." Maybe he now plays a few Dylan songs at these small bars in small towns; people can wear you out that way.

And maybe he is accompanied by a woman who sees him as more than a Dylan facsimile, as she goes through thrift shops trying to find his vintage Dylan clothes. Maybe she understands that he needs a steam shovel, mama, to keep away the dead. Or a dump truck, baby, to unload his head. Hell, perhaps she brings him everything and more, including a blanket to put on their bed.

I'm not sure what would make a blanket a Dylan Blanket, but I bet he has a pretty good idea on that.

- james james

MadisonMan said...

"micro-sads" (laugh)

Cringe on Little man is a great line. Perfect!

Wince said...

With all the battle space prep assailing the term "fake news" by the opinion-media complex lately I'm preparing to receive the mother load of fake news from them in 2018.

Mary Beth said...

Using a term isn't the same as making it popular. The person who made the term quotable is the Tweeter-in-Chief.

"Fake news" is so similar to "Faux News", the slur used to denigrate FOX News, I wonder if it grew out of that or just occurred separately.

Clyde said...

The people in Silverman's business have behaved as badly as the Harvey Weinsteins behaved in theirs. Small wonder their credibility is in tatters.

Speaking of mental incoherence, did anyone else notice that the refrigerator magnet poem about wanting a blue House and a blue Senate in 2018 was in salmon? Somehow, I'm not surprised. "Try again, space cadet!"

Quaestor said...

I guess not all who plumb are plumbers...

There are a few who comment here who plumb the depths.

Quayle said...

”deeply troubling” : now there’s a phrase that is a giveaway of a hive thinking politico type. Who uses that phrase but professional talking heads? It was contrived to have the sound of calm deliberation and equanimity befitting of a U.S. Senator or national leader of high aspiration to high national office.

Dignity! Always dignity!

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Of course "fake news" originated on the left. Trump just picked it up and ran with it, and by now most lefties have already forgotten where it came from.

Craig Silverman gives himself too much credit, though. The first instance of "fake" being tied to news that I remember was the "fake but accurate" of the GWB Rather/60 Minutes report on Bush's TANG service.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

I like your bar James.

Achilles said...

Blogger Clyde said...
“The people in Silverman's business have behaved as badly as the Harvey Weinsteins behaved in theirs. Small wonder their credibility is in tatters.”

When your job is to mindlessly parrot dnc talking points and “report” what the wealthy owners of your organization tell you to report you might as well hire women willing to give the boss a bj. It isn’t like you have to be particularly intelligent to be a leftist mouthpiece.

Original Mike said...

@dreams - Just read your 10:01 link. Good grief.

narciso said...

Buzzfeed that's the outfit being sued by gubarev for libeling him with the dossier, who has had to dismiss carasquillo, for harassment issues, they did commit random acts of journalism as rush would put it, back in 2016, defending Ben Carson and cracking egg mcmuffins shell, but that is rare.

Jupiter said...

Achilles said...

"When your job is to mindlessly parrot dnc talking points and “report” what the wealthy owners of your organization tell you to report you might as well hire women willing to give the boss a bj."

Nina Burleigh is her name, the one with the Presidential kneepads. She's faking news at Newsweek at the moment.

narciso said...

Tale this new revelation about papafob, now if you didn't know that downer is a puffed up popinjay like John Kerry, you might think it had some merit. Although as pointed out last night it is thin gruel cor a search warrant.

narciso said...

Take Kurt eichenwald, please, before he was mocked for his tentacle porn fetish, he made his mark re that phony discrinination story at texaco for the times, that was 20 years ago

Jupiter said...

Heh. Wikipedia says she's also an adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University. A working girl.

Fernandinande said...

Craig Silverman: "fake news site National Report set off a measure of panic by publishing fake story about Ebola outbreak:"

National Report is a comedy site.

Their current headlines are:

"Trump to Nominate Chris Christie to Supreme Food Court"

"Man Shouts ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Before Photobomb"

"Area Mall Offering 10% Discount to Non-Active Shooters"

"‘Wounded Social Justice Warrior Project’ Rebuilds Hope; Sense of Purpose"

"Trojan Name New Ultra-Thin Skin Condom after Donald Trump"

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Just read via twitter...

“Germany imports a bunch of men from countries where women can’t safely leave their own homes. Now German women can’t safely leave their own homes.”

narciso said...

Why do real stories don't get covered

https://mobile.twitter.com/lukerosiak/status/946878519677804544?p=v

In the true crime realm Judith exners story has been references in filn

narciso said...

But Mary pinchot meter, hasn't been mentioned. It was referenced by sailors examination of the real story behind the post's katherine graham, rhetorical question, it roasts all the wrong sacred cows Phil graham, John Kennedy even some CIA operatives like angleton.

Original Mike said...

"In the true crime realm Judith exners story has been references in filn"

Hey, narciso! How about considering a New Year's resolution of correct spelling and grammer. When I take the time to decipher, you often have interesting things to say. But I usually skip right over you because it's a pain to figure out what you're trying to say.

narciso said...

Blame automistake, it makes all sorts of cromulent edits. On my tablet.

narciso said...

I will try to be less cryptic

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/44-years-later-a-washington-dc-death-unresolved-93263961/

Original Mike said...

@narciso - Turn it off, man. I turned mine off because it made more mistakes than it corrected.

I've always assumed that what you're doing is some kind of performance art. And not that you have reason to care, but I really do skip reading you. The mistakes are so thick it's too hard to decipher.

narciso said...

Like the doomsday machine in star trek, I don't know how.

Original Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Original Mike said...

For the iPad it's:

Settings > General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction

tcrosse said...

@narciso -It might help to get a keyboard to plug into your tablet. Just guessing.

Unknown said...

No Althouse comment on the Dylan Kid story.

A micro-sad for me.

So I'm going down to the bar to drown my sad little micro-sad, and watch part of a Bowl Game.

The Huskies have already lost their Bowl Game on Saturday. That was a micro-sad, too.

Micro-sads remind me of something Dr. Seuss might've said. Which reminds me of when I did a Seussian riff on Althouse's word “squunched” and got no response, either.

It's OK, though: there is a woman at the bar that reminds me of Althouse.

That works, too.

- james james

Original Mike said...

Blogger tcrosse said..."@narciso -It might help to get a keyboard to plug into your tablet. Just guessing."

Or, he could proof read. Just a thought.

tcrosse said...

Or, he could proof read. Just a thought.

Quite right. But his stuff reads like it was written on one of those useless on-screen keyboards, too small for the size of his fingers.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Michael K said...
"Fake News" is an issue because the "news" media has become a propaganda arm of the left.

The days when reporters reported the news and not their own opinions would be welcomed back."

To which Curious George replied: So would unicorns.

Yesterday I was listening, in default of any other option, to a local SF-produced NPR show called "Philosophy Talk". The two University profs hosting it went on and on about the problems with un-intermediated media these days, comparing it to the halcyon days of "curated" "unbiased" news of yore (meaning the 50s-80s).
At first I thought, they must not have lived through the same reality I did.
but then I decided, No, no one, not even an academic, could be that ignorant. They must be saying these things on purpose. They are merely lying for effect.
Most news and popular media I see/hear these days provokes a similar reaction. Perhaps my Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect has undergone remission.

Michael K said...

One can wish, yet not expect wishes to be granted.

Donatello Nobody said...

Don't be too hard on narciso -- he does have interesting things to say, and I kind of enjoy the puzzle!

dreams said...

Don Surber.

"I include in my new book in greater detail that story of BuzzFeed reporting unverified items from the Russian dossier.

But while reporters Ken Bensinger, Miriam Elder, and Mark Schoofs (a Pulitizer winner) were unable to confirm the veracity of the urinating prostitutes story, they went with the story anyway on January 10, 2017, under the premise that the memo had been passed along to Trump, who was then the president-elect.

This dossier has floated around the press since at least September 2016, and no one in the press has independently confirmed the facts in any of the 35 memos in it.

The Russian dossier is Fake News -- very damaging and very false -- but Silverman wants you to stop calling it Fake News."

http://donsurber.blogspot.com/2018/01/media-regrets-creating-fake-news-canard.html?spref=tw

Original Mike said...

"Don't be too hard on narciso -- he does have interesting things to say, and I kind of enjoy the puzzle!"

It is not my intention to be hard on narciso. They are his posts and he can do as he pleases. And if they weren't interesting, I wouldn't say anything; I'd just continue to skip them. But I thought I'd take the opportunity of the new year to let him know they're being ignored. If it's performance art, maybe he could consider dialing it back a notch.

And I realize I may be the only one.

Jupiter said...

narciso said...
"Like the doomsday machine in star trek, I don't know how."

Listen. People who use computers divide into two distinct groups, content consumers and content producers. Content consumers do not need an actual computer. They can get by with one of the numerous computer-like toys sold by criminal organizations like Apple and Samsung. Producers, however, require an actual full-size keyboard.

tcrosse said...

And I realize I may be the only one.

You're not.

Donatello Nobody said...

Original Mike -- of course you're right, it would be good for narciso to fix the auto-correct issue. I didn't really think you were being too hard on him, I just thought the whole subject was amusing. Cheers!

MayBee said...

narciso is an internet treasure with so much knowledge in his head he often forgets the rest of us aren't privy to his stream of thought.

narciso said...


Point taken, I used to post with the laptop, then I moved to the android phone and the tablet, the keyboard does split and sometimes covers the screen.

Jaq said...

I always figured that what narciso was doing was a style choice. I kind of liked it.

Martin said...

"Fake news" was originally meant to apply to pieces from such as Breitbart and FNC that put Trump in a better-than-Hitler light.

But he brilliantly turned it on his accusers and applied it to them and made it stick, so now they want to ban the term.

This move to stop using the term "fake news" is a huge win for Trump and it is not being recognized as such (of course).

Ifor one intend to keep using it.