Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 59

An Ode to America

I am always amazed that everyone in the world seems to appreciate how exceptional America is, BUT AMERICANS—at least those who are out burning, looting, and attempting to impose socialism and Marxism on us as ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter are.

I am always stumped by this question: If America is so systemically racist, so brutally unfair, so lacking in opportunity, so morally corrupt, why are millions of people from other parts of the world clamoring to get in? You know the answer, and so do I. Because America is an exceptional country where people who are willing to work hard, are free to achieve their dreams.

Take a look: The following article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title ‘C’ntarea Americii, meaning ‘Ode America ‘) in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei ‘The Daily Event’ or ‘News of the Day’ – 20 years ago.

AN ODE TO AMERICA

BY

Cornel Nistorescu

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.

On 9/ll, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the Army, or the Secret Service that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about.

Instead, the Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.

After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps, and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing: ‘God Bless America!’

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I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people.

How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put into collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy. What on earth unites the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their history? Their economic Power? Money?

I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace, I thought things over, I reached but only one conclusion… Only freedom can work such miracles.

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The Untouchable Chameleon Called Kamala

Have you been wondering what happened to America’s once free, curious, and probing media?

Yeah, me too.

Today’s news media is apparently getting its marching orders from the Democrat Party Machine.

Don’t believe me?

Earlier this week, an ad hoc group of Democrat Party operatives sent an extraordinary memo to all news media outlets warning them how they should cover Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s vice-presidential running mate.

If that had happened 30 or 40 years ago, that memo would have gone on the bulletin boards of newsrooms everywhere, and reporters would have thrown darts at it.

But not in today’s newsrooms.

The memo went out before Harris’s name was made public. Here’s what the memo said, in part:

“Our country — and your newsrooms — have learned a lot since the [death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody] and the subsequent protests for racial equality that his death spurred … We know from public reporting that many of your newsrooms had internal conversations about your coverage, your diversity, and your editorial judgments.

“A woman VP candidate, and possibly a Black or Brown woman candidate, requires the same kind of internal consideration about systemic inequality as you undertook earlier this year. We are here to help you with this challenge … We intend to collectively and individually monitor coverage, and we will call out those we believe take our country backward with sexist and racist coverage. As we enter another historic moment, we will be watching you.”

Okay, news media. Let that last phrase sink in: “WE WILL BE WATCHING YOU.”

Got it? Any criticism of Kamala Harris will be considered racist and sexist.

In other words, any news media organization that dares probe too profoundly into Harris’s political past, questions her incessant flip-flopping on issues, or her radical leftist ideas, will be branded with the dreaded scarlet letters “R” and “S” (Racist and Sexist).

The panicked legacy media are already scrambling to create a list of softball questions their toady, and sycophantic reporters can hurl at Harris with the force and punch of nerf balls.

Forget about questions that explore how Kamala Harris came into politics as the mistress of Willie Brown, the unscrupulous speaker of the House in California.

Say what?

Yes, Harris was an attractive woman in her mid-20s, who the married Brown flaunted at state political and social events. It was an open secret in California.

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And no, Californians haven’t forgotten it, Kamala. But I bet the legacy media have.

As a reward for her (ahem) companionship, Harris obtained several prominent, potent, and profitable political appointments in state government, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I dare any legacy media reporter to question Harris’s barefaced unscrupulousness at a press conference or vice-presidential debate.

Don’t hold your breath. It will never happen because if any news media outlet dared raise those facts, it would be attacked by the DNC for being sexist, misogynistic, and racist.

As political commentator and radio talk show host Tammy Bruce said recently:

“For decades, the Democrats have enjoyed a pliant media. Ranging from covering up for John F. Kennedy’s affairs, to ignoring Hillary Clinton’s health and corruption issues during the 2016 race, the media certainly have never needed such a public reminder about their duty to handle a Democratic politician like a fragile, and special, golden egg. So why now? Because identity politics demands it, and with news now disseminated beyond the broadcast networks and just a few loyal newspapers, Democrats need to reinforce the need for media protection in order to gaslight the public about their real agenda and inherent incompetence.

“Hiding Mr. Biden in a basement has been absurdly accepted by the media. Unable to toss Ms. Harris into a literal basement, they’re now trying to construct a virtual bunker for her.”

My introduction to Kamala Harris was during the disgraceful 2018 Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Like millions of other Americans, I watched as Kamala Harris harangued Kavanaugh and was, without a doubt, the most disrespectful and vicious of the Democrat senators.  The fact that she accepted the flimsiest of evidence in attacking Kavanaugh for the implausible and unsubstantiated accusation of gang rape speaks volumes about her judgment.

But watch out legacy media. Do not question her on her abysmal performance during the Kavanaugh hearings. After all, Kamala Harris is likely to become president if Joe Biden is somehow elected.

Think about it. At 77, “Sleepy” Joe has already said he’d be a “transitional” president, and it is generally acknowledged that he is more likely than other previous candidates to become incapacitated after he is elected.

We all know what that means. Harris is more than a vice-presidential candidate; she is a pinch hitter for Joe and therefore, must be viewed as a possible presidential contender.

Here is what Janice Shaw Crouse, former executive director of the World Congress of Families and Senior Fellow of Concerned Women for America, had to say about Kamala’s qualities as a president.

“She fails on every measure — significantly! 

“Leadership?  She is obviously, much like Hillary, a ruthless opportunist willing to do or say whatever it takes to get ahead. 

“Ideas/Policies?  She can be swayed; however, the political winds are blowing at the time.  Even her friends explain that she is “not ideological,” meaning she doesn’t take principled stances on important issues. 

“Experience?  She has dramatically failed upward!  The media have frequently acknowledged her “history of flip-flopping and deceit.”

Nevertheless, the Democrat Party has warned the media to handle Kamala Harris with kid gloves—not the vicious way they went after Sarah Palin in 2008.

You have been warned, legacy media.

Thou shalt not offend the untouchable chameleon called Kamala.

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Free Speech and Academic Freedom under Attack in Colleges & Universities

Having spent thirteen years as an administrator (department head & dean) at the University of Illinois, I learned early on how heavy-handed academia can be when it comes to practicing political correctness on campus.

The First Amendment right of free speech is too often denied students and faculty who don’t support or adhere to established liberal orthodoxy, which is the reigning type of groupthink on college campuses today.

I also learned that the presumption of innocence, the legal principle that a person is considered innocent until proven guilty, often is not adhered to in academia as it is in the rest of society.

Instead, when a faculty member at a university is accused of some violation or breach by a student or fellow faculty member, he or she is generally assumed to be guilty until proven innocent—a process that can take a year or longer, hold up a faculty member’s tenure vote, or obstruct a student’s graduation as a campus committee investigates the charges.

Is it possible that this obstreperous and fractious climate could get any worse on college campuses?

You bet. And it already has.

Take this edict just handed down at the University of Southern Maine.

That University requires all members of the community to sign a “Black Lives Matter Statement and Antiracism Pledge.” The pledge mentions Ibram Kendi, a historian, and author who popularized the concept of “antiracism.”

“We stand in solidarity with those who are working for justice and change. And we invite you to join us in pledging to be a practicing antiracist at the University of Southern Maine and in all aspects of your life. We believe, as Ibram Kendi writes, that ‘the only way to undo racism is to constantly identify it and describe it — and then dismantle it.’ The University will publish the list of antiracists. There very well may be retaliation against those who do not sign the pledge.

Let that last sentence sink in. There very well may be retaliation against those who do not sign the pledge.

Retaliation. Reprisal. Retribution. Vengeance.

That’s what will happen to you if you refuse to abandon your right to free speech, free thought, and freedom to oppose a mandated pledge. Not everybody agrees with the Marxist ideals of Black Lives Matter, so why should they be forced to pledge allegiance to it?

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The pledge is not only unconstitutional; it is a violation of the sacrosanct principle of academic freedom. Universities cannot nor should not prescribe how students and faculty think or to follow a prescribed orthodoxy.

Well, guess what? More and more universities and colleges are doing just that.

Recently, a political science professor at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, told Inside Higher Ed News that he is facing “possible termination” for refusing to view “diversity” videos that the administration is mandating.

“My quarrel is not so much with the content of the materials the administration would impose upon us but rather the coercive imposition itself,” Jeffrey Poelvoorde wrote in an open letter to Converse.

Catholic scholars issued a letter of disapproval after Loyola University Maryland, a Jesuit-run college in Baltimore, announced last month that it would remove the name of the Southern short story writer and essayist Flannery O’Connor from a dormitory after the school’s president said “racist leanings” emerged in the writer’s correspondence.

In Louisiana, Nicholls State University President Jay Clune asserted in a campus-wide email in June that “free speech does not protect hate speech,” worrying advocates of free speech on campuses.

Even the American Civil Liberties Union says there is no such thing as hate speech. There is only free speech.

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“With faculty, we see an uptick in universities requiring mandatory diversity training and sensitivity training,” Zach Greenberg, a program officer with campus free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told The Washington Times.

Greenberg noted that universities have their free speech rights as organizations but added, “Generally, they can’t force faculty to conform to any political orthodoxy.”

Do you want to bet?

When Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson blogged disparagingly about the Black Lives Matter movement, saying its “Hands up, don’t shoot” mantra was a “fabricated narrative” he was reprimanded in a statement by his dean, who called his analysis “offensive and poorly reasoned.”

At several schools, including Missouri State University and the University of South Carolina, students who have yet to arrive on campus are being told to stay home for writing social media posts that are viewed as racist.

Marquette University in Milwaukee revoked admission of an incoming lacrosse player after learning that she had posted to Twitter “some ppl think it’s okay to [expletive] kneel during the national anthem, so it’s okay to kneel on someone’s head.”

Was the student’s tweet tactless and juvenile? No doubt. Nevertheless, the First Amendment protects her right to say it.

“We’re seeing a lot of universities investigate and punish students for allegedly hateful speech that they say online,” said Mr. Greenberg, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “And the vast majority of this expression is protected under the First Amendment.”

The crackdown on speech, for some, represents a disingenuous attempt to stifle dissent, not uproot racism. Some of the academic clashes have already landed in court.

Ilana Redstone, who is affiliated with the Heterodox Academy, a group of professors dedicated to “open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement,” said viewpoint diversity needs to remain critical for colleges, even in turbulent times.

“Engaging with a diversity of viewpoints should be a priority within higher education,” Ms. Redstone, associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in an email. “We can and should encourage intellectual humility and a curiosity about the ways different people understand the world.”

I couldn’t agree more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein

One of the most puzzling things I have seen from the Democrat party in the past three years has been its unremitting support for China and the Chinese Communist Party that runs it.

Democrats like Diane Feinstein have short memories when it comes to China. I don’t. I was in Beijing on June 4, 1989 when I witnessed the CCP unleash the Chinese army on the students and demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

By the time the army was finished thousands of students and demonstrators had been slaughtered in the square and in the surrounding neighborhoods.

More recently, the world has witnessed China’s deplorable behavior toward religious organizations. It is in the process of striking the final blow to religious liberty with new “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups” that went into effect in February.

“In practice, your religion no longer matters, if you are Buddhist, or Taoist, or Muslim or Christian,” a Chinese Catholic priest told reporters recently. “The only religion allowed is faith in the Chinese Communist Party.”

In the western region of Xinjiang, the home of the majority-Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, authorities have installed a massive police state and is estimated to have imprisoned up to 1.5 million residents.

[image error] Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang

Most recently, the world has learned of China’s internecine behavior regarding the Wuhan Coronavirus. Instead of warning the world about the virus, the CCP coldly and calculatedly shut off the rest of China from Wuhan but allowed hundreds of thousands of Chinese to travel from Wuhan to the United States, Europe and other Asian nations. In effect, the CCP was saying “we won’t be the only ones who suffer from the virus.”

We may never know if the CCP created and released this virus purposely as a form of biological warfare or if it was released by accident. It is clear the virus was made in a Wuhan laboratory.

So when I saw this letter that Maura Moynihan sent to Senator Dianne Feinstein regarding her vigorous defense of Communist China in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, I had to share it with my followers. Maura Moynihan is the daughter of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York.

Here is that letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein. I wonder if she will answer it.

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I have known you since 1992 when you won your first term as Democratic Senator from California. You served with my late father Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York.

I am writing to express my shock, nay, horror, when I listened to your vigorous defense of Communist China in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week when you stated; “We hold China as a potential trading partner, as a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time and as a country growing into a respectable nation. I deeply believe that.”

You made no mention of the death and destruction wrought by the deadly virus from Wuhan which the Chinese authorities deliberately covered up and allowed to spread across the USA. To date the virus has killed more than 150,000 American citizens and caused unspeakable economic and psychological carnage, which Chinese Communist officials have celebrated in official statements, stating “Go ahead and Die USA!” Do you deeply believe that this is the conduct of a “respectable nation?”

China’s rise has lifted millions out of poverty, but its growth has come at a fearsome price for the Chinese people. You stated that you “have been to China and I know China well.” So, you know the Chinese Communist Party’s grotesque record of crimes against humanity, because it is well known.

[image error]You know that the Chinese government holds millions of its citizens in massive concentration camps where they are subject to slave labor, torture, slaughter and deprivation that would make a Nazi proud. You know that the Chinese Communists imprison and murder their citizens for the crime of “counterrevolutionary thought” the sentence imposed on the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, a poet, and author, who died in a Chinese jail in 2017. You know that China operates a multibillion-dollar organ transplant industry, where organs are carved from the bodies of living political prisoners. Does this support your assertion that China is a “respectable nation?”

In 1979 when you served as Mayor of San Francisco you made Shanghai your Sister City, and you are known to be a close friend of Jiang Zemin, who in 1999 created his Gestapo – the PLAC – to persecute people of faith and critics the Chinese Communist Party. In 2014 Jiang was found guilty of genocide in Tibet in the Spanish High Court.

Your husband Richard Blum is the director of the American Himalayan Foundation so you know that China has just started a border war with India from Occupied Tibet and that the Chinese Communist Party – CCP- will torture a child if they are caught with a photograph of the exiled Dalai Lama. You also know that Communist China has built thousands of hydro dams in Tibet, thereby stealing and weaponizing Asia’s water supply. And of course, you know how the CCP violated its pledges to Hong Kong and now rules the city with CCP law, not English Common Law. Is this how you define the conduct of a “respectable nation?”

You supported President Clinton’s delinking of trade and human rights in 1994, stating that holding China to international standards of conduct was “unproductive” and that such measure would “inflame Beijing’s insecurities.”

Are you more concerned about preserving financial support from Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley, which openly collaborate with the CCP to further enslave their people? Official records show that you are the 2nd wealthiest member of the Senate, with a net worth of $94 million. Is your vigorous defense of the CCP due to your husband Richard Blum’s firm Newbridge Capital earning millions by investing US pension funds and more in China?

As Democratic Senator from California, you have sworn to defend the United States from “all enemies foreign and domestic.” For decades, the CCP has declared the United States “Enemy #1” in official statements, laying out their plans to “destroy the US from within.” This is happening in every sphere of our society, in plain sight.

Have the standards of conduct and human dignity fallen so low that the Senior Democratic Senator from California, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, hails Communist China as a “respectable nation” with such brazen confidence, as our country has been brought to its knees by the CCP Virus, assured that not only will nobody notice, but worse, nobody will care?

Senator Feinstein, which side are you on?

I await your timely response.

Sincerely,

Maura Moynihan

 

Depression Era Whodunnit Keeps You Guessing

Below is my review of Caleb Pirtle III’s book Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon–the third book in his BoomTown saga series.

Here is Caleb’s biography on Amazon:

“Caleb lives in the present but prefers the past. He is the author of more than eighty books, including four noir thrillers in the Ambrose Lincoln series: Secrets of the Dead, Conspiracy of Lies, Night Side of Dark, and Place of Skulls. Secrets and Conspiracy are also audiobooks on audible.com. All of the novels are set against the haunting backdrop of World War II. His Lonely Night to Die features three noir thrillers in one book, following the exploits of the Quiet Assassin, a rogue agent who has fled the CIA. He takes the missions no one else wants. He is expendable, and he knows it.

“Pirtle is a graduate of The University of Texas in Austin and became the first student at the university to win the National William Randolph Hearst Award for feature writing. Several of his books and his magazine writing have received national and regional awards.

Pirtle has written two teleplays: Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, a mini-series for CBS television starring Kenny Rogers, Loni Anderson, Dixie Carter, and Mariska Hargitay, and The Texas Rangers, a TV movie for John Milius and TNT television. He wrote two novels for Berkeley based on the Gambler series: Dead Man’s Hand and Jokers Are Wild. He wrote the screenplay for one motion picture, Hot Wire, starring George Kennedy, Strother Martin, and John Terry.

“Pirtle’s narrative nonfiction, Gamble in the Devil’s Chalk is a true-life book about the fights and feuds during the founding of the controversial Giddings oilfield and From the Dark Side of the Rainbow, the story of a woman’s escape from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. His coffee-table quality book, XIT: The American Cowboy, became the publishing industry’s third bestselling art book of all time.

“Pirtle was a newspaper reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and served ten years as the travel editor for Southern Living Magazine. He was an editorial director for a Dallas custom publisher for more than twenty-five years. He and his wife, Linda, live in the rolling, timbered hills of East Texas. She is the author of two cozy mysteries.

Now that you know something about this accomplished author and writer take a look at my review of Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon.

Depression Era Whodunnit Keeps You Guessing

Review By

Ronald E. Yates

When I began reading Caleb Pirtle III’s Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon, the third book in the author’s Boom Town Saga, I immediately recognized the East Texas town of Ashland in which the novel is set. No, I have never been there, and I don’t even know if Ashland, Texas exists.

But small towns in the Midwest all seem to exude the same mood and texture—especially ones in depression-era rural America.

That was the first thing that impressed me about Pirtle’s prose. The descriptions of people and places are inspired and vivid. Ashland could have been the small town in Northeast Kansas where I grew up, and the people and places in the town could have been in Greenleaf, Kansas, population 650.

Good writers compel readers to “see” the scenes they are creating. The words they use are carefully crafted to create pictures in the reader’s mind. Good writers enable readers to employ all relevant senses when they create a scene. I can go on and on here about the basic literary rule that says writers must “show” and not “tell.”

Instead, I’ll let the author himself demonstrate what I am talking about. Here is a scene from Chapter 22 of the book in which the newly appointed African-American constable of Ashland named Waskom Brown, who is investigating the murder of a young “taxi dancer,” enters the Dinner Bell café.

“Waskom left the crime scene, turned his face into the wind, and climbed the hill toward the Dinner Bell. The cold followed him inside. The rain stopped at the door.

“He glanced around the café. Faces were staring down into empty plates, sopped clean by chunks of day-old biscuits. Few were talking, and it sounded as if they had little to talk about when they did, nothing more than simple eulogies to the weather, their jobs, the sonuvabitches who hired them, the sonuvabitches who fired them, how much money they were making, and how many hours they were working to earn it, how much they were worth, and the shame and disgrace of remaining poor while laboring eighteen hours a day and longer on the weekends to make other sonuvabitches rich. Waskom figured they were talking about him and Doc. Nobody liked their jobs. Nobody dared quit. The bread was stale, the meat tough, the potatoes cold, the coffee as watered down as the barrow ditch where Louise Fontaine fell, but, thank God, they could afford to eat, and they would not forget the days when they couldn’t.”

[image error] Author Caleb Pirtle

I have spent hours and hours in small-town cafes like that. I can almost “hear” the despondent, melancholic grumbling; “smell” the chicken fried steak, potatoes, coffee, and cigarette smoke; “see” the diners sopping up the gravy with dried biscuits from greasy white plates; and “feel” the desolate, cheerless ambiance.

The Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon is saturated with a “film noir” consciousness that takes you by the hand and leads you into the lives of richly developed characters such as Eudora Durant, publisher of the Ashland Reporter-Times newspaper; Doc Bannister, a con-man, card sharp, and wheeler-dealer; Ollie Porter, a 12-year-old boy who is looking for his father; and Waskom Brown, a scammer, and schemer with a checkered past.

As I was reading Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon, I kept thinking about the advice Chicago author Nelson Algren once gave in his depression-era novel, A Walk on the Wild Side:

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

Somehow Algren’s counsel seemed relevant for this book.

Pirtle has deftly recreated the depression-era oil fields and boomtowns of East Texas, with their clammy black sludge, stagnant oleaginous stench, and assemblages of roughnecks, drillers, and speculators.

After reading a few pages of Pirtle’s book, I had the odd urge to wipe my shoes on something so that I wouldn’t dirty up the carpet.

At its heart, this is a murder mystery about a young woman named Louise Fontaine, who is found dead in a ditch on the outskirts of Ashland with a single bullet hole in her neck. Who could have done such a thing—even to a taxi-dancer who earned her living at 10 cents a dance and perhaps a few dollars more for dancing horizontally at Maizie Thompson’s Sporting House?

You’ll get no spoiler alert from me. If you want to know whodunnit, you’ll have to pick up the book yourself. You won’t be disappointed.

What Ever Happened to Impartiality and Objectivity in the Media?

I know it’s no longer de rigueur to talk about objectivity in the news media. And if you do bring up the concept of objective news coverage, you are likely to hear rejoinders like: “Objectivity in the news is impossible because human beings are not objective creatures.”  

Okay, I get it. We are all subjective beings. All of us carry biases with us wherever we go. No argument there. Every news story is influenced by the attitudes and background of its interviewers, writers, photographers and editors.

But during the 30 years I worked as a reporter and editor, I always felt it was my duty to make every effort to achieve the journalistic ideals of objectivity and fairness.

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I believe most of my colleagues at the Chicago Tribune did the same.

And if we didn’t, some crusty and crabby editor would come over to our desk and yell at us.

“Keep your opinions out of your stories, Yates. Nobody gives a (insert appropriate noun here) what YOU think.”

It took just a couple of interactions like that with a few legendary Tribune editors to learn to keep my opinions to myself.

Sadly, too many reporters today aren’t given those marching orders.

As a result, I see stories that are filled with the reporter’s biases. Even worse, are stories that are incomplete, one-sided, or just plain deceitful.

Take the coverage of the so-called “protests” that are still ongoing in places like Portland and Chicago.

Mainstream media outlets have consistently failed the public by refusing to focus on the devastation left behind by rioters in those and other cities across America, according to independent journalist Michael Tracey.

In a self-published article titled “Two months since the riots and still no ‘National Conversation,'” Tracey traveled to cities affected by violent protests and documented his findings using photographs and conversations with store owners and residents.

Those he interviewed told him media outlets like CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC and all of the networks, didn’t want to hear about the destruction Black Lives Matter agitators and ANTIFA thugs were causing because it didn’t fit the narrative that President Trump was at fault for sending in federal agents to protect federal property.

Just a few days ago several hundred people dressed in black and carrying BLM signs descended on Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best’s home in an effort to intimidate her because she has condemned the violence and destruction caused by BLM and ANTIFA.

[image error] Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best

As the protestors approached the police chief’s house, dozens of neighbors, some carrying rifles and shotguns, came out and formed a perimeter to protect her home. That would have been considered a major newsworthy event 20 or 30 years ago.

Not in today’s highly subjective news environment.

Monday, Best begged the Seattle City Council not to cut the police budget by 50 percent and to forcefully condemn the rioting and destruction in Seattle.

She implored the city council “to stand up for what is right. These direct actions against elected officials, and especially civil servants like myself, are out of line with and go against every democratic principle that guides our nation.

“Before this devolves into the new way of doing business by mob rule here in Seattle, and across the nation, elected officials like you must forcefully call for the end of these tactics.”

The response from the Seattle city council? Crickets. More importantly, this incident was NOT covered by the mainstream media.

This is not journalism. This is what Nazi Germany’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels would have called “news management.”

It is bias through selection and omission. An editor or producer expresses a bias by choosing to use, or not to use, a specific news item or story. Within a given story, some details can be ignored, and others included, to give readers or viewers a different opinion about the events reported.

I am seeing this again and again in the American news media. If the story doesn’t fit the preferred narrative, don’t run the story—no matter how relevant and significant it is.

Recently, the Media Research Center conducted a study of how the media cover President Donald Trump. For anyone who watches CNN, MSNBC, the networks, or who reads the nation’s newspapers, the results were not surprising.

The Center viewed some 1,007 evening news stories about the Trump White House on cable news channels, ABC, CBS, and NBC for three months over the summer. That’s the equivalent of about 36.7 hours of coverage, by TV standards an eternity of news time.

Here’s what the Media Research Center found:

“Over the summer, cable and broadcast networks have continued to pound Donald Trump and his team with the most hostile coverage of a president in TV news history — 92% negative, vs. just 8% positive.”

Joseph Goebbels would be proud of this kind of faux journalism.

The news media no longer even pretend to care about journalistic standards of objectivity, integrity, professionalism, or the well-being of this country. They think the American people are a bunch of naïve blithering idiots.

Sometimes I wonder if they aren’t right when I talk to people who regurgitate the propaganda and lies that saturate cable and network newscasts.

I make it a point to watch all White House press briefings. I know. I must be masochistic. But I guess once a journalist, always a journalist. You can take the journalist out of journalism, but you can’t journalism out of the journalist.

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Anyway, it’s an amazing show as reporters drop all pretense of objectivity and fairness and interrupt, rant, and rave as they ask press secretary Kayleigh McEnany the most ludicrous questions I have ever heard.

Recently I heard these gems regarding our nation’s battle with the China coronavirus:

–“How many deaths are acceptable to President Trump?”

–“You’ve said many times that the U.S. is doing far better than any other country when it comes to testing. Why is this a global competition to President Trump, if every day Americans are still losing their lives?”

–“Is it possible that President Trump’s impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving Americans a false sense of hope?”

And finally, this brilliant bit of questioning about the ripping down of Confederate statues by a masterful CNN reporter:

“Does President Trump believe that it was a good thing that the South lost the Civil War?”

That’s when Kayleigh McEnany shook her head and walked out of the briefing room.

Good for her. No press secretary should have to endure such a journalistic clown show.

So where do we go from here? It all depends on who wins the presidential election on November 3.

If it’s Trump, expect more of the kind of ersatz journalism that abets the Democrat party while it assails Trump and his army of deplorables.

If it’s Joe Biden, expect a breathless media love fest the likes of which we haven’t seen since the sainted Barack Obama occupied the oval office.

In the meantime, stay tuned, if you can stand it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

America, You’ve Really Had a Wonderful Life

Today, I am reposting this perceptive article by political commentator Peggy Ryan. I think it rings true today as America navigates its way through multiple crises.

America, You’ve Really Had a Wonderful Life

By: Peggy Ryan

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, an angel, Clarence, is sent to help George Bailey, a man who’s sacrificed his dreams for family and community but is now falsely accused of stealing $8,000 and facing jail.  When George wishes he’d never been born, Clarence grants that wish.

Suddenly, George finds himself in a world where his beloved hometown, Bedford Falls, has been turned into anarchy and slums.  The town’s named Pottersville after a greedy, power-hungry oligarch, Henry Potter, who now owns everything.  In this new world, George sees people he’d helped to succeed now destitute, living in run-down projects, with no hope for anything but survival.  Here his once-quiet, peaceful town is a cacophony of flashing lights, sirens, drunken brawls, and strip clubs.  Those who haven’t turned to drink or chaos are locked behind closed doors, trapped in fear, depression, and hopelessness.

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Like George Bailey, America’s been given a glimpse of what our country would look like if Hillary Clinton had been elected president or what it will look like if Joe Biden wins in November.  In this new world, our beloved country is now the People’s Republic of America.

In the People’s Republic, people stand helplessly by as their jobs disappear, as shortages of water, meat, toilet paper, and other essentials drive hoarding, panic.  They’re confined to quarters, denied freedom of movement even on beaches and in parks.

Here there’s no competition, no pesky ads and commercials for restaurants, high-end sneakers, or luxury cars, because government allows only state stores, Walmart, Target, big-box stores.  Gone are the small businesses that offer designer clothes and shoes, the mom-and-pop ice cream shops, bookstores, jewelry stores, hair salons — the list goes on of businesses deemed nonessential.  In the People’s Republic, it doesn’t matter what people want; they’ll get only what they need to survive.

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” —John Adams

In this new world, paltry government handouts (stimulus checks) are supposed to heal the wounds of people forced out of business, of private schools that couldn’t survive shutdowns, of people  who couldn’t pay rent or feed their families once their paycheck stopped coming.

Here the streets are filled with violence, racist mobs who attack people for the color of their skin (white).  Looting, burning, even killing is condoned, even encouraged by  leaders.  These supposed leaders refuse federal help to put down riots because they don’t want the violence to end.  It’s their violence, their cause, their country.

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In the People’s Republic, the Constitution is dead, the Declaration of Independence but a memory.  Americans have surrendered their right to free movement, religious freedom, property rights to a single despot, a governor.  One man or woman brought down an entire state with pen and phone.  Obama must be so proud.

But most devastating is Americans’ loss of their God-given right to pursue happiness.  From morning to night, America’s airwaves carry nothing but soul-sucking, spirit-killing hatred.  Leftists preach either directly or through their mouthpieces abject hatred for white people, Christians, conservatives, pro-life advocates, the president of the United States and any who support him.  They preach seething hatred for America.

“The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom – they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords, can look up to heaven for assistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country.”

—Samuel Adams, American Independence speech, 1776

Media savage the American people with a daily dose of fear, panic over an epidemic that doesn’t threaten our country’s survival but promises to destroy our country’s economy, our spirit, our liberty.

Thus, in the People’s Republic, cheerful waves and smiles of neighbors or strangers are replaced by suspicious stares, accusatory shouts that people are standing too close or missing their masks.  Here people can’t be all chummy with neighbors and friends because any one of them could be the silent carrier of the death virus.  Better to do without friends, not to see family, not to trust or welcome anyone if a lonely, destitute existence will “keep them safe.”

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Gone is the rush of joy when proud parents watch their kids or grandkids “walk,” because in this world, there are no graduations, no celebrations, no joys.  Gone is the pride and sense of accomplishment when Americans land a great job, buy their first homes, or start their own businesses.  In the  People’s Republic, these aren’t accomplishments — merely proof of white supremacy, proof of capitalist greed.

In It’s a Wonderful Life, George no longer recognizes his hometown. He confronts his guardian angel, demands an explanation for all the strange things he’s seeing.  Clarence tells him there is no George Bailey, no driver’s license, no 4-F card, no insurance policy because George Bailey was never born. “You’ve been given a great gift, George: a chance to see what the world would be like without you.”

And you’ve been given a great gift, America: a chance to see what this country would be like if Donald Trump had never been elected president, a preview of if Joe Biden wins in November.

But will we make it to November?   Governors drunk on power aren’t releasing their grip on the people; they’re doubling down, rolling back plans to reopen their states.  Many order everyone to wear a mask, proving they can control the people right down to the air they breathe.  Some are defunding police, paving the way for unopposed violent insurrection.

For those who think government seizure of private business is justified because a pandemic calls for drastic measures or who see house arrest as citizens just doing their part, or excuse rampant anarchy and violent mobs because we’re all racists and need to be punished, you’ve found your home: the People’s Republic of America.

But if you want the unbridled joy of true freedom, the miracle of America, then speak now or forever hold your peace.  Americans are settling into subjugation, tyranny is becoming “normalized.”  Today, most Americans don’t plan resistance; they quietly await their overlords’ next edict, another shutdown, mail-in voting, mandatory chips.

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.  The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.”  —George Washington

Governors will never cede their newfound power back to the people, will only tighten their grip, expand their orders.  They’ll use their unchallenged authority to steal the 2020 election.

And then it will be as if Donald J. Trump had never been elected president.

To paraphrase Clarence’s final appeal from It’s a Wonderful Life: “You see, [America], you’ve really had a wonderful life.  Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it all away?”

Don’t you see, America?

Peggy Ryan is an IT specialist. Currently, she is an author and political commentator. She’s been widely published on multiple conservative Internet sites. Peggy Ryan can be reached at PeggyRyan1203 @ gmail.com

I Never Cared

I don’t know who wrote this little treatise entitled “I Never Cared,” but I think it reflects the feelings of millions of Americans today who are fed up with those who want to destroy our way of life, who promulgate the culture of victimhood, who propagate the myth of “white privilege,” who kneel, burn, and loot, and who unremittingly disperse the ludicrous notion that some lives matter more than others.

I for one, have had it with these bleating throngs of malcontents who are fearless when it comes to attacking statues and monuments that can’t fight back, but who don’t have the cojones to put on the uniform and defend the freedoms that permit these same losers to remonstrate and rampage through our streets.

Read on:

I Never Cared

By

Anonymous

I never cared if you were “gay” or whatever acronym you chose to call yourself. Until you started shoving it down my throat.

I never cared what color you were, if you were a good human being. Until you started blaming me for your problems.

I never cared about your political affiliation. Until you started to condemn me for mine.

I never cared where you were from in this great Republic. Until you began condemning people based on where they were born and the history that makes them who they are.

I have never cared if you were well off or poor because I’ve been both. Until you started calling me names for working hard and bettering myself.

I’ve never cared if your beliefs are different from mine. Until you said my beliefs are wrong.

I’ve never cared if you don’t like guns. Until you tried to take my guns away.

Now. I care. I’ve given all the tolerance I have to give.

This is no longer my problem. It’s your problem.

You can still fix it. It’s not too late.

But it will be. Soon.

I’m a very patient person. But I’m rapidly running out of patience.

There are millions of people just like me who are sick of your Anti-American crap!

We are done caring about your immature and irrational feelings.

You are not entitled to enjoy the freedoms America offers you if you attempt to take those same freedoms from fellow Americans.

We have had enough!

America is the greatest country on earth and if you hate it, then, by all means, leave.

It’s as simple as that.

We won’t miss you.

And there are plenty of Americans who will be happy to show you the door.

I’m one of them!

 

 

An Old Letter from El Salvador

Between 1980 and 1982, I spent a lot of time for the Chicago Tribune in Central American countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua–all of which were involved in some vicious uprisings and revolutions. From time to time, I post one of the stories I wrote from these places. The following story was one I wrote from San Salvador. 

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—In 1937, a year after Juan Chong arrived in San Salvador from Hong Kong and opened the Canton China Bar and Restaurant, an American journalist dropped in for a drink.

“I think he was from New York,” said Chong, shifting his 80-year-old frame in the old wicker chair behind the bar. “New York World. Yes, yes, that was it.’

Chong, his ancient brown eyes peering out from behind wire-rimmed bifocals perched on his nose, examined the reporter sitting across the bar from him.

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“You American?” he asked. The reporter nodded.

“You know something?  You’re the first American journalist to come in here since 1937. You work for New York World, too?”

“The Chicago Tribune,” the reporter answered. “The New York World died a long time ago.”

“You come to write about the war, right?” Chong asked. The reporter nodded again.

”There had been some trouble just before that other reporter showed up,” Chong said, recharging his memory cells with a shot of vodka. “Some peasants up north had shot a couple of soldiers. There was talk of another rebellion like the Matanza.” (The Matanza, or “slaughter,” had occurred In 1931 and 1932, when some 32,000 men, women, and children were killed by government forces after an ill-fated uprising by the Trotskyite Indian named Farabundi Marti).

“We were all very excited about It, Chong said, igniting an ancient pipe.”But this American journalist, he was not. He said Americans didn’t care about little revolutions in little countries.”

Then, eyeing the reporter before him, Chong said, “I guess Americans think differently now, eh?”

Indeed they do. The little unimportant banana republic visited so long ago by the New York reporter is suddenly front and center in the eyes of American foreign policymakers.

Today, the whole world Is watching to see how the United States handles Itself in an 11-year-old  revolution pitting left-wing guerrillas of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) against the four-man, civilian-military junta of  President Jose Napoleon Duarte that is backed by Washington.

And unlike 1937, when just one American reporter wandered into town to take a quick look around, San Salvador is a city overrun with journalists from all over the world.

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Most stay at the 235-room Camino Real Hotel, which has evolved into a kind of unofficial media headquarters for anybody covering the hostilities here.

Besides a well-stocked bar, where foreign correspondents tend to gather evenings in clusters to discuss (well, argue) solutions to El Salvador’s problems, the Camino Real offers a  government-run telex room for filing stories and messages.

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It is not just camaraderie and the dubious benefits of flock journalism that lure journalists to the Camino Real – It Is safety.

“This is the hotel for the International Press,” explained William, the head bellhop. “Neither the left nor the right would be so stupid as to attack this hotel. This is neutral territory.”         ·

Most journalists feel a little naked In El Salvador. Since the fighting began in 1980, five foreign correspondents and photographers have died – not to mention the two dozen or more El Salvadoran journalists who have been tortured or murdered. Conversations in the Camino Real bar tend to be sprinkled with bravado and twists of gallows humor as reporters attempt to put such things out of their minds the way they have always done in war.

Just as they did in Viet Nam, for example, and Cambodia. Except that in the Camino Real bar, Viet Nam and Cambodia are taboo subjects. Most of those covering the war In El Salvador, it seems, did not work In Southeast Asia, and there is a perverse, albeit unnecessary, need on their part to convince Viet Nam-era reporters, that this war is more dangerous than their war.

There is indeed something much more ominous about this conflict, with its constant beheadings, mass murders, and disappearances.

But it is impossible to apply a Bo Derek kind of scale to war. People get blown up. They lose arms and legs and feet and hands. They die. Who is to say El Salvador rates a ten on the danger scale while Nicaragua and Angola and Cambodia are only 8s? Such comparisons are not only absurd; they are obscene. Suffice it to say that thus far, El Salvador, with Its 30,000 dead, is still far from the 1.3 million soldiers and civilians killed In Viet Nam (including 105 journalists).

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[image error]There does seem to be something about El Salvador’s tragic conflict that makes you look over your shoulder a lot, however.

Perhaps it’s that there are so many fanatic fringe elements in this New Jersey-sized nation of five million running around flaunting machine guns, machetes, and machismo.

Right-wing death squads armed with razor-sharp machetes and rifles roam the city streets looking for “subversives.

Left-wing guerrillas blow up somebody’s house or place of business just about every night. And out on the streets, you learn to examine every car that passes you for the barrel of a rifle or pistol pointed at your belly.

“I don’t think El Salvador has ever been more unhealthy,” said Chong, relighting his pipe. “People don’t come to my place after eight at night anymore because they are afraid somebody is going to throw a bomb through the door. People are scared.  I’ve never seen them so scared.”

Outside the Canton China Bar and Restaurant, three government soldiers with semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders stood on the corner talking. Chong watched them for a moment.

“When I left China, it was during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria,” he said. “The war was terrible. I wanted to find a peaceful place to live, so I came to Central America. What a mistake. Of course, I’m too damned old now to care. But sometimes, when I see bodies in the streets with their heads chopped off, I think I should have stayed In China.”

(POSTSCRIPT: More than 75,000 civilians died at the hands of death squads and government forces, and guerillas killed another 4,000 during the civil war in El Salvador (1980-1992). Three well-known atrocities punctuated the 12 years of violence: the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero that sparked the conflict, the rape, and murder of three American Maryknoll Nuns and a lay missionary that caused international outrage, and the 1989 Jesuits Massacre that finally compelled the international community to intervene. Some 550,000 people lost their homes, and another 500,000 fled the country as refugees during the war. In 1992, The Chapultepec Peace Agreement was signed by the combatants in Mexico City, formally ending the bloody conflict.) 

 

Flashman–Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great foreign correspondent

Today I am re-posting a column that appeared a while back in The Economist. Written by an unnamed foreign correspondent, it takes a sardonic and self-effacing view of foreign correspondents by suggesting that Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great journalist. As with all satire, there may be more truth here than we hacks care to admit. Enjoy. 

From The Economist, Dec 24, 2016

REBELS had captured the dam that supplied electricity to Kinshasa and turned off the lights in the Congolese capital. Now they were marching on the city. Panic reigned. Pro-government thugs were going around lynching suspected rebel spies. Some they hacked to death. One they tossed off a bridge and shot as he bobbed in the river.

A city under siege, full of power-drunk kids with Kalashnikovs, is no place to be. Your correspondent was there and feeling frightened. Which reminded him of one of the great cowards of English literature. He asked himself: in this situation, what would Flashman do?

For readers who have not yet met him, Flashman was the villain of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, a pious novel about life at a British boarding school published in 1857. The author, Thomas Hughes, portrayed him as a bully who roasted small boys over open fires but ran away sniveling from anyone bigger than him.

A century later, a Scottish journalist called George MacDonald Fraser wondered what happened to Flashman after he was expelled from school. He answered his own question with a series of wickedly comical historical novels. In Fraser’s telling, the adult Flashman was every bit as horrible as the schoolboy, but through sheer luck and sleazy charm became one of the most decorated heroes of the Victorian era: Brigadier-General Sir Harry Flashman, VC, KCB, Legion of Honour, San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (4th class), etc.

His career took off when, having joined the army because the uniform attracted women, Flashman found himself besieged in a fort in Afghanistan. He feigned sickness to avoid fighting. When all the other defenders were killed or wounded, he grabbed the British flag and, pleading for mercy, offered it to the Afghan warriors surging over the walls.

Just then a big explosion marked the arrival of a British relief force. Flashman was found unconscious, draped in the flag and surrounded by dead Afghans. Everyone assumed he was defending the colours, not surrendering them, and he won the first of many medals.

Morally, it would be hard to find a worse role model. Over the course of 12 books, Flashman bullied underlings, betrayed friends, cheated on his wife Elspeth and stabbed in the back anyone who blocked his escape route. Yet there is much that this fictional Victorian rotter can teach modern reporters. Though he was leery of journalists (“tricky villains, especially if they work for the Times”), he would have made an outstanding one.

Flashman’s first instinct was for self-preservation. This is a useful (and underrated) trait for journalists. Had he been stuck in Kinshasa in August 1998, Flashman would have headed for the best-guarded hotel and hung out in the bar by the swimming pool. That is what your correspondent did, and it proved an excellent policy. The beer was refreshing, the brochettes de boeuf delicious and the conversation highly informative. All the power brokers, spies, moneymen and diplomats passed through. By listening to them, your correspondent gleaned a fuller picture of what was going on than if he had ventured out to the front line, which would have involved a lot of hiding in ditches and trying unsuccessfully to figure out who was shooting at whom.

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Hang back from the shooting, and you often get a better view. During the Crimean war of 1853-6 Flashman used all his wiles to hang back, describing the campaign with colour and precision from safe hilltops. Unfortunately for him, he was then caught up in the most foolhardy maneuver of the entire war.

His horse bolted towards the Russian cannons, causing Flashman unwillingly to race out ahead of the Charge of the Light Brigade. British newspapers interpreted this as “Flash Harry” up to his usual heroics.

Your correspondent has never galloped into a Valley of Death, but he has occasionally blundered into sticky situations. Once during the civil war in the Ivory Coast, he ran into a rebel roadblock—a heap of branches and a broken fridge with a cow’s skull on top. The youngsters manning it were stripped to the waist, armed with rocket-propelled grenade-launchers and drunk at 10.30 in the morning.

Flashman, faced with superior firepower in unsteady hands, would have smiled, made himself pleasant to his captors and tried to buy time. That is what your correspondent did, swigging Kou Tou Kou (a fiery spirit distilled from palm wine) out of a shared plastic jerry can. Eventually, he was rescued by a French army officer, who persuaded the rebels that journalists are not spies.

Modern reporters use all sorts of methods to stay safe. They hire fixers. They go on “hostile environments” courses. They send back a barrage of WhatsApp messages describing where they are. None of this is as effective as Flashman’s nose for danger and intense desire to avoid it. Nor can any course teach his genius for getting out of it. Which is probably just as well: throwing one’s lover off the back of a sled to lighten its load and escape pursuing Cossacks is hardly cricket.

Flashman also immersed himself in the local culture. He picked up foreign languages absurdly quickly. By the end of a long career, he was fluent in nine and could rub along in another dozen. He never learned much in a classroom—Latin and Greek bored him senseless. Rather, he learned by listening to native speakers and catching the rhythm and feel of their dialect.

Usually, he did this in bed. Tall, handsome and effusively whiskered, Flashman was successful with women from a wide variety of cultures. Not all ended up hating him. On one occasion, to pass the time in a dungeon in Gwalior in India, he tried to count his conquests and arrived at a figure of 478. That was in 1857 when he was only 35; he lived to 93.

Speaking multiple languages often saved his skin. Locked up during the Second Opium War, he was the only British prisoner who understood that their Chinese jailer planned to execute one of them. Asked to translate, he lied that the jailer planned to send one of them with a message to the British and French forces besieging the town. Eager for freedom, a soldier who was blackmailing Flashman pushed to the front—and was conveniently beheaded.

In some ways being a scoundrel made Flashman a better reporter

A good foreign correspondent networks with powerful people, the better to understand the motives behind important policies. Flashman rubbed shoulders with Wellington, Lincoln, and Bismarck (though Bismarck loathed him and tried to have him killed). His accounts add fistfuls of spice to the historical record.

Indeed, the Flashman Papers can be useful background reading during reporting trips. It was thanks to Flashman that your correspondent understood, when visiting the Summer Palace in Beijing, the scale, and scandal of its destruction by British troops in 1860. When covering a flood in Madagascar, he could find no better short history of the island than Flashman’s Malagasy adventures. And Flashman would have chuckled to learn that lotharios are now known there as bananes flambés, after a popular dessert.

The Flashman Papers purport to be written by Flashman himself—the secret, honest memoir of a garlanded rogue, discovered in a Leicestershire saleroom in 1965 and “edited” by Fraser, with helpful historical footnotes. The books are so well researched that, to naïve readers, they can appear genuine. When “Flashman” was first published in America, about a third of the 40-odd reviewers took it at face value. One called it “the most important discovery since the Boswell papers”. Fraser laughed till it hurt.

Strenuous research (Fraser was a keen amateur historian) and dollops of first-hand observation (he was an energetic traveler, too) are the raw materials of great journalism. To this Fraser added a crackling prose style and a gift for storytelling. As an observer, Flashman was often caustic but never blinded by the pieties of his age. He believed neither in the civilizing mission of the British Empire nor in the myth of the noble savage. So whether he was observing Englishmen, Sikhs or Zulus, he recognized fools, heroes, and charlatans for what they were.

In some ways being a scoundrel made Flashman a better reporter. Many modern correspondents tend to preach. This quickly becomes tedious. Journalists who profess outrage at every minor politician’s off-colour remark soon run out of words to describe real outrages.

Flashman did not have this problem. He was callous and made no effort to pretend otherwise. This made his prose more convincing, for he let the facts speak for themselves. On the rare occasions when he was moved to make a moral judgment, the effect is electrifying. One such instance occurred when he was press-ganged onto a slave ship, where he saw Africans branded, chained and crammed below decks.

“The crying and moaning and whimpering blended into a miserable anthem that I’ll never forget, with the clanking of the chains and the rustle of hundreds of incessantly stirring bodies, and the horrible smell of musk and foulness and burned flesh. My stomach doesn’t turn easy, but I was sickened…when you’ve looked into the hold of a new-laden slaver for the first time, you know what hell is like.”

He admitted that, if someone had approached him in his London club and offered him £20,000 to authorize a shipment of slaves, he would have taken the money. Out of sight, out of mind: this was also the attitude of many of his respectable contemporaries to buying slave-made sugar or cotton. Fraser did not need to remind readers that Flashman—a sociopath—was in this respect little worse than millions of 19th-century British tea-drinkers.

Laptop, flak jacket, condoms

Being a foreign correspondent is the most enjoyable job there is. The men and women who are lucky enough to do it today travel the world, meet new people, sample exotic new dishes and grapple with new ideas. Even when it is uncomfortable, it can be exciting. To make the most of a posting, journalists must be open to new experiences and skilled at seeking them out. It helps to have a fat expense account.

Flashman sometimes had no money at all, but made up for it with resourcefulness. When fleeing from angry gun-toting slave-owners in New Orleans, he crept into the French Quarter and inveigled his way into a luxurious brothel by seducing the madam, who fell in love with him and asked her butler to ply him with fine wine and Cajun delicacies.

Your correspondent had a more austere time in the Big Easy in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina. At one point he too had to beat a tactical retreat from an angry gun-toting homeowner. Alas, with all the hotels in town closed by floodwater, the only place to sleep was in a cramped, sweaty caravan with half a dozen other hacks, some of whom snored.

Whenever your correspondent visits a place where the ultimate cad once trod—Harper’s Ferry, Isandlwana, even west London—the relevant passage from the Flashman Papers comes easily to mind. Such memorability sets a standard that journalists rarely match. Most of his own work, he knows, is written in haste and soon forgotten.

As he writes this, he is about to head for Afghanistan, where Flashman earned his first laurels. In his luggage will be the first “Flashman” on his iPad. And at the first whiff of danger, he will bolt.

This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition of The Economist under the headline “The cad as correspondent.”