Wednesday, December 07, 2022

This Is Where I Get Off

It is very long and very detailed, and absolutely worth your time if you're a Twitter obsessive or an Elon obsessive and want to arm yourself to argue with family at Xmas in 18 days about either topic. If this one doesn't help you clear the room and ruin the holiday for everybody, nothing will.

I'm not slighting Mike Masnick but, you either agree with him already (and so why read all this incredibly tedious detail, which is all conspiracy theories ever are: incredibly tedious details which don't connect to anything), or you disagree (and so why read, etc.).  Or, like me, you're sick of it (and so why read...you get the idea.)

This is the quality of thought being dealt with by the likes of the estimable Mr. Masnick:
Put simply, the story of the "Twitter files" is a "nothing burger."  Mr. Masnick very eloquently says so:

And then Taibbi revealed… basically nothing of interest. He revealed a few internal communications that… simply confirmed everything that was already public in statements made by Twitter, Jack Dorsey’s Congressional testimony, and in declarations made as part of a Federal Elections Commission investigation into Twitter’s actions. There were general concerns about foreign state influence campaigns, including “hack and leak” in the lead up to the election, and there were questions about the provenance of this particular data, so Twitter made a quick (cautious) judgment call and implemented a (bad) policy. Then it admitted it fucked up and changed things a day later. That’s… basically it.

And, yet, the story has persisted over and over and over again. Incredibly, even after the details of Taibbi’s Twitter thread revealed nothing new, many people started pretending that it had revealed something major, with even Elon Musk insisting that this was proof of some massive 1st Amendment violation:

I won't bother with Elmo's tweet.  Read the source material if you're that interested.  I will just point out that Elmo and Ian Miles Cheong are in the latter group described by Mr. Masnick: "pretending that it had revealed something major."  You can do that one of two ways:  by ignoring the facts (which Mr. Masnick very carefully assembles, right down to the paper clips (sorry, reference to a case I worked decades ago; business loss.  The lawyer I worked with deposed the plaintiff and forced him to itemize every item lost when the roof over his operations collapsed.  Right down, as an admiring lawyer later told me, to the paper clips.  Saved a great deal of money in damages for our client.). Where was I...?), or by being wholly ignorant of the facts (two conditions which often appear alike).  And in either condition, are you going to read Mr. Masnick's article?

Nah.

So the article is just preaching to the choir.  It's very good preaching, mind you, but it assumes a limitless ability to absorb, analyze, and consider information, especially information to whatever preconceived notion you have. And I find most people (on both sides!) have a very limited grasp of any information at all, and trying to force more on them is like trying to force ten lbs. of shit into a 1 lb. bag.  It ain't gonna work.

More importantly, who cares?  Cheong and Musk are upset that the MSM won't cover their story, but the MSM have better reasons not to do so than Twitter had to not allow a link to a NYPost story on a laptop (and by the way, careful as he is, Mr. Masnick links to a CBS new story that reports on an FBI analysis of the data on said laptop, but does not establish that laptop belonged to Hunter Biden, or that he put the information on it. Mr. Masnick cites it for the principal that it does establish such provenance.  Not, the lawyer in me asserts, in a court of law; nor in the courts of logic, which are as extreme as the courts of law.  And which is why most people don't work there:  too fucking hard to deal with.  And I'm back to the 1 lb. sack and trying to fill it with 10 lbs. of material.  I meant what I said.)  But who cares?  The MSM isn't reporting on this because Mr. Masnick is right:  there's no there, there.  I'm still not sure there's any "there" in the laptop story.  I wouldn't put it past Russian trolls to cook up this bizarre tale knowing the Gym Jordans and Steve Bannons of the world were dumb enough to swallow it.  I mean when even the NYPost passes on it the first time and FoxNews won't touch it with a club (not at first), it's pretty damned sketchy stuff.  And almost all of the reporting since has been on the level of "some people say" and/or "people are saying."

It's entirely on a par with this one, which the MSM is ALSO NOT COVERING!  QUELLE SCANDAL!! WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE???!!!!  WHY THE COVER-UP???????

Wait a minute: Apparently I'm wrong about the MSM not covering this. Or is the NYPost the "MSM"? And didn't they start this problem in the first place with irresponsible journalism? (I happen to know this story is flat wrong.) 

I really can't wait for Xmas to get here.
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