David Dubrow

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Culture War: DC McAllister and Yashar Ali

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For the decent things that Twitter can sometimes be good for, it is nevertheless inherently poisonous in the same way that a firearm is inherently dangerous: the moment you pick it up with the intent to use it, you’re engaging in risky behavior that can result in the destruction of another human being.

Conservative columnist Denise (DC) McAllister learned that over the weekend.

A week or so ago, McAllister was already subject to ridicule over saying, on Twitter, that the television program The View “…seems to me to be a roundtable of delusional mental midgets ricocheting ignorance and lack of emotional regulation.” Meghan McCain, who is on The View, replied with, “You were at my wedding, Denise.” For reasons known only to fans of Meghan McCain, this became a popular meme. It’s possible that McAllister was invited to McCain’s wedding because McCain was marrying Ben Domenech, the co-founder of The Federalist, a website McAllister wrote for.

On Friday, March 29, McAllister tweeted, “Trying to talk to my husband while Carolina is playing. He looks at me and says, ‘Woman, you know better than this. The game is on.’ He’s right. I slipped. Commercial comes on. I fetch him a beer. He grabs me. Deep kisses. Patience and timing, ladies. That’s the lesson.”

Yashar Ali, a left-wing journalist, felt the need to tweet this in response:

Why he tweeted this is anybody’s guess. Whatever you think of McAllister’s domestic arrangement, Ali made fun of it and her, so McAllister tweeted back by saying, “Oh so sad. @yashar is lost. He does’t know his purpose as a man. He doesn’t know his purpose as a human being. He doesn’t know his purpose as an Individual. So he wallows and tries to find himself in another man’s asshole. Sad.”

She went on in a similar vein with other tweets. For this she was roundly criticized by blue checkmark-bearing Twitter users from the left and the right. It got so bad that she deleted the tweets and even apologized, but by then it was too late. She’d already been fired by The Federalist and The Daily Wire. The mob destroyed her. It’s what Twitter mobs do.

Here’s a broader context.

  • Clearly there was friction between McAllister and The Federalist from the You were at my wedding, Denise meme. It was unwise of McAllister to make a blanket statement about the hosts of The View if only because the boss’s wife is on there and you don’t talk shit about the boss’s wife. Even if the boss’s wife’s greatest accomplishment is being born into a wealthy political family. So it’s no surprise that The Federalist would find an easy excuse to can McAllister. Which is a shame, because by firing McAllister now, they’ve caved to the mob. They’ve tarnished their brand. Better to have fired her right after tweeting about The View: that would have been more honest.
  • Yashar Ali, a left-wing journalist, achieved some notoriety recently when an NBC staffer tried to get him to hold off on a story on behalf of the DNC. He tweeted out the experience, which did wonders for his career: the story exposes everything the right has been saying about journalism for decades, and conservative commentators have been feting him and marveling at his courage and honesty. “He’s on their side, but he’s one of the good ones.” Considering the deserved drubbing that the now-shameful trade of journalism has earned over the last several years, I’m not surprised that Ali tweeted out his story with the NBC/DNC shill; it’s tailor-made to boost his career and give him cred on the side he’s been trying to destroy. “Rommel may have been with the Germans, but he was a good WWII general.” Great. But he was on the other side, and if you’re fighting a war, you destroy the enemy. You don’t admire him. He’d become the Flavor of the Month among the conservative blue checks and their fans on Twitter, so any attack on Ali must be foiled. Until he publishes something else to attack the right. But for now we love him and you leave him alone because he did that one good thing that time out of the goodness of his heart.
  • I’m not going to pretend that I understand DC McAllister’s marriage. I suspect it works for her. When she puts exchanges with her husband like the one above out there and uses them as teachable moments for other women, she’s opening herself up to ridicule. Combined with the You were at my wedding, Denise meme, I imagine that she was feeling a bit raw. So she fired back at Yashar Ali. He mocked her domestic arrangement, so she mocked his domestic arrangement. For everyone so upset by what she said, please describe the exact temperature burn she should have used to fight back so she wouldn’t be roundly attacked by people she probably thought were on her side. How should she have reacted to not get fired by The Daily Wire and The Federalist? Should she have sat back and taken it? Why? Would you have?
  • Like it or not, McAllister’s attack on Yashar Ali reflects the feelings of many people on the right, the vast majority of whom don’t have blue checkmarks next to their names on Twitter. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s nice, I’m merely saying that it’s a mode of thinking that’s far less unusual than anyone would like to admit. The online right’s embrace of prominent gay conservatives is troubling to many. Not because they hate gay people, but because they see it as a tacit acceptance of a lifestyle their faith abhors. This is not a view I share, but it is a view, and it’s there, and it’s a factor.

Despite McAllister being swarmed by a Twitter mob that he had a hand in creating, Ali had to tweet this out to maintain his Victim Status:

This is why the right will lose the Culture War. They will lose and they will be humiliated and they’ve earned the L because they are far more interested in knifing their own soldiers in the back than getting on the field. As admirable as they think Ali is now, he’s still going to stick it to them every chance he gets because he’s on the field and they aren’t.

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Feedback Requested on Story Idea

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The vast majority of my fiction involves the fantastic, the numinous, or the supernatural in some way. It’s the kind of fiction I like to read, and people always say that you should write the stories you’d want to read. Still, it’s good to branch out sometimes and write fiction that’s a little more grounded in reality. But it’s got to be interesting. It’s got to be credible.

With that in mind, I’ve got an idea for a novel I’m working on, and I’m looking for feedback to determine if it’s believable or not.

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The novel focuses on an actor, the son of political activists. Despite his political connections he’s a relative unknown, skating by on looks, ethnicity, and sexual orientation to make his career. He’s fortunate enough to land a role on a mid-list television show that showcases his ethnicity and sexual orientation, but it’s not enough. It’s not catapulting him to the stardom he deserves. So he creates some fake, threatening hate letters that he mails to himself, and shows them to the television studio. He figures that if they think he’s important enough to get hate mail, he’s important enough to get a bigger role with a larger salary.

No dice. A few people are properly sympathetic, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Frustrated, he takes his efforts to the next level. He hires a couple of men to beat him up (but only a tiny bit: remember, his face is his fortune) and make it look like a hate crime focusing on his politics, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. In planning this hoax, he makes some fundamental mistakes: he hires people he knows to perform this fake beat-down; he arranges for the beat-down to happen on the coldest night of the year when people are trying to stay warm instead of hunting for gay, black no-name actors to assault; he makes sure the beat-down happens near security cameras that are pointing in the wrong direction; he describes the assailants as white conservatives in one of the most left-wing cities in the country; and he pays the assailants with a personal check.

In one way, the attack is a success: his story makes the national news. Politicians, A-list actors, and journalists across the country unquestioningly swallow what is an obvious pack of lies, and amplify it as a symbol of the country’s appalling bigotry. He’s feted as a survivor and civil rights activist. Half-witted journalists conduct softball interviews designed to make him look like a suffering saint. Anyone with the gall to question his hoax is pilloried as racist and homophobic. He becomes the perfect victim-hero. A household name.

The local police, however, begin to pick at the massive holes in his account, and despite that they work for the most corrupt city in the United States, they indict and arrest him. Not in the interest of justice, as he’s told exactly the kind of made-up story they love to hear: racist white conservatives hunting for innocent black men. No, they indict him because he made the city look foolish with such an obvious hoax, pulled off so poorly. And, more importantly, they indict him because he’s shone a spotlight on the inner workings of a hopelessly corrupt city infrastructure, and that can’t happen. Almost-nightly murders are one thing: they’re bearable. Stupid hoax hate crimes are another.

The actor’s foolishness in planning and execution makes this a slam-dunk case. He’s fired from the TV show. He’s mocked for his stupidity and derided for his blatant attempt to incite a race war in the style of the Rodney King riot. Nevertheless, he protests his innocence throughout. Why not? What does he have to lose? With his political connections and first-offender status he’ll never see the inside of a jail cell. So he bluffs it out.

And it works. A former First Lady (or maybe even a former POTUS; I’m still working that out) who lived in the city where the fake hate crime took place makes a call to someone, who makes a call to the State’s Attorney, who drops all charges against the actor. He pays a nominal fee, does a few meaningless, comfortable hours of community service, and goes free. Then he does a victory lap in which he continues to maintain his innocence. When asked about why they dropped the case, the State’s Attorney gives multiple answers, none of which ring the slightest bit true. The State’s Attorney’s office is perfectly aware of how horrible this looks, how it puts the city’s fundamental corruption on full display, but simply doesn’t care. This will all blow over in the wake of the next news cycle. And if you don’t like it you can call the chaplain; he’s available for counseling.

As for the actor, his name is still known worldwide. He’s a free man. He beat the system.

—

So, what do you think? Is this a believable story or not?

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Not the End of the World: Just the End of the Benefit of the Doubt

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Everybody likes to complain about how divided the country is. Consider the irony: those who bleat most loudly about our divisive politics also mouth the “diversity is our strength” bromide. Diversity is, by its very nature, divisive. Diversity isn’t strength. Unity is strength: political, cultural, and moral unity. Shared ethics. A nation isn’t strong when its population consists of different skin colors, cultures, and genders; it’s strong when its population shares a unity of purpose, mores, and love of country. The United States no longer has that strength. The diversity that our progressive betters demand that we cherish includes loathing of America’s Constitutional system of governance, its founding, its people, its bedrock principles, and its standing in the world as an economic and military titan. Their raison d’être is acting on that loathing. That’s the diversity you must embrace. Their hatred of this country is more valid than your patriotism: accept this or be destroyed.

Where this leads us is the end of the benefit of the doubt. Every last ugly thing you’ve suspected has proved true over the last several years, barring stupid conspiracy theories like 9/11 Trutherism or Russians stealing the 2016 presidential election:

  • Progressives have a problem with Jews and Israel. It’s called anti-Semitism. We’ve suspected this for decades. Now they’ve proved it.
  • There is a shadow government (the Deep State) that has far too much influence on daily events than any unelected group should.
  • Progressives would rather murder babies both inside and outside of the womb than jeopardize a single vote from one of their prime interest groups: abortion enthusiasts.
  • Hollywood doesn’t just possess different values from ours. They seek to impose their corrosive values upon us through their near-monopoly on television/movie entertainment.
  • Federal law enforcement is corrupt in its leadership. The fish rots from the head down.
  • The vast majority of the news media exists to push progressive ideas, not report the news.
  • The university system is a corrupt institution that focuses on indoctrination over education.
  • We have a two-tiered justice system that plays favorites, and not just rich over poor.
  • The Republican party prefers talk over action. They’re weak and spineless and lacking in character, even the good ones.
  • Both political parties favor open borders for different reasons. They will be shielded from the consequences of their policies. You won’t.
  • Every last talking head on television, in print, and online is full of shit 99% of the time. Including me.

So now that we live at the End of the Benefit of the Doubt, what do we do?

Stop thinking about revenge. Or payback. Or how your favorite politician is going to stick it to Hillary or Mueller or anyone else. It’s not going to happen and unless you’ve been personally wronged by all the stupid bullshit going on in Washington D.C., your anger is misplaced. Don’t put your faith in politicians, even so-called outsiders. They’re all bad. All of them. They think they can run your life better than you can, even those who claim that they want to leave you alone. If you want to be angry, get mad at yourself: you believed in things that the evidence of your senses (including common sense) told you was untrue. I’m all for tribalism, and I rejoice in owning the other side as much as anyone. But social media battles won’t win the war. James Gunn is still making movies. Pete Davidson is still fucking Kate Beckinsale. These things don’t impact your life. Either laugh or get angry. Then get past it and move on.

If you want to do something about the End of the Benefit of the Doubt, live your life recognizing, in the present, how corrupt America’s institutions have become. Take nothing for granted. And, as uncomfortable as it is, you have to push back. You have to ask difficult questions, because growth comes from discomfort, not ease. We’ve lived lives of ease for too long, and it’s made us soft. Me included. During our decades-long vacation we let lunatics who believe that there are dozens of genders run our schools and make cartoons for our kids to watch. And we did it because we didn’t question the received wisdom. Diversity isn’t our strength. Tolerance of bad ideas isn’t a virtue. We are not a nation of immigrants; we’re a nation of citizens.

Push back. There are more of us than there are of them. Our leaders, such as they are, in Washington, Hollywood, the news media, and education need to be told that they’re on the fringe, not the mainstream. Question them, kick them out, humiliate them, and, when possible, reject them. They’re the enemy. They show you that every day. Why not believe them?

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Bits and Pieces 2/28/2019

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Bill Maher ruffled feathers/made headlines/pick-your-cliche in the most recent episode of his show, claiming that people who live in red states/flyover country are secretly envious of the blue state coastal elites, and want to be like them. “We have Chef Wolfgang Puck, they have Chef Boyardee,” he said. “They don’t hate us, they want to be us.” If I had it in me to be insulted by what anyone on television has to say anymore, I suppose I could muster some outrage over this. But I can’t. We rubes in the red states have seen how the elites live and don’t want any part of it. What’s telling is that Maher didn’t mention mores as a reason for this envy. He didn’t say, “We have abortion clinics on every corner, they have traditional families.” He didn’t say, “We have strict gun laws, they have personal responsibility.” And he didn’t say, “We have Hollywood, ground zero for institutionalized prostitution, sexual harassment, drug addiction, and pedophilia; they have churches.” What Maher’s proud of isn’t what we’re proud of. We just wish that the coastal elites would stay in their bailiwicks instead of moving to red states and voting for the same policies and politicians that ruined their original homes.

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I’ve watched as many episodes of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television program as I’m likely to; you can read my general impressions of it here. Now that I’ve gone through the vast majority of it, I’m struck by how much it’s a product of a different generation, a different set of TV rules for storytelling, tone, and style. Many of the episodes were two-parters, which stretched the envelope for a time before the advent of VHS players. Tone-wise, it was far from all doom-and-gloom. The fleeing Colonists encountered many planets on which humans lived and thrived; no matter what happened with the Cylon War, humanity was probably going to survive. Everything wasn’t a world-ending emergency, unlike today’s type of apocalyptic programming. Faith and God were very important to the Colonies; Commander Adama (who had the power of telekinesis, go figure) led the Colonists to Earth based initially on religious faith, not knowledge of our planet’s location in the universe. A later episode has the Colonial Fleet meeting Lucifer (yes, that Lucifer), who can only be defeated by angels (yes, those angels) who resurrect a fallen pilot and tell the Colonists where to find Earth. This kind of thing simply isn’t done anymore in science fiction programming. Yes, many of the episodes were hokey, silly, or corny, but it had heart. And, at the time, it was all we had. I highly recommend it as a fascinating look into the popular entertainment of just a few decades ago.

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I recently read Eleanor Bourg Nicholson’s novel A Bloody Habit and enjoyed it, for the most part. To get the most out of it, you have to have read Bram Stoker’s Dracula recently, or have more than a passing recollection of the events therein. Bram Stoker has a cameo in A Bloody Habit, and the novel reads very much like a combination of Dracula pastiche and correction of the faith-based elements of the Stoker work. The vampire hunters of Habit are miles from the dashing, stake-wielding Van Helsing and Holmwood: they’re men of the cloth who recognize vampirism as demonic possession, and treat it as such. If you can work your way through the first third’s foundation-building, you’re in for a treat.

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Appalling Stories 3 is coming soon, and while it hews to the previous volumes’ themes, it’s a different style of work. Get ready.

 

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A Message to the Covington Kids

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I hold no illusions that what I write here will be read by the Covington High School students mired in the latest case of social media-fueled media malpractice. It’s really a message to my son, who will have to learn these lessons eventually; the sooner he takes them to heart, the better off he’ll be.

Hey guys:

I’m not going to pretend that I understand what you’re dealing with now. I’m assuming, however, that if you were attending the March for Life to protest the horror of abortion, you’ve got good parents who are guiding you along the path to being decent adults. At your age I didn’t care about any issues outside of my personal desires, so I salute you.

Obviously the attendant ugliness isn’t what you expected. It’s bad that it happened, but it’s worse if you don’t learn anything from it. Here are the biggest takeaways:

Adults lie. You probably knew this already, but it’s particularly galling when thousands of adults are lying about you, what you’ve done, what you’ve seen, and what you believe. There’s a big difference between white lies and lies designed to destroy you, and you’re being subjected to the latter, and it sucks. It’s disillusioning. Nathan Phillips lied to the media about what he did to you and what you did. He has a history of lying about his service record and previous encounters with white people. You’re being lied about by politicians, news reporters, entertainers and their brain-dead fans, and it’s absolutely crazy, but here we are. They’re lying about you not because of anything you’ve done personally to them, but because of what you represent: the millions and millions of people who hold different values. You’ve become proxies for President Trump, his voters, and anyone who stands against abortion. They hate you (and us) so much they’ll lie about you to ruin your lives. So yes, adults lie.

Only your family has your back. It’s absolutely shameful that the diocese and school immediately and publicly rushed to judgment against you, despite that these are some of the adults who know you best. Any apology at this point is too little, too late: the damage has already been done. Their primary interest isn’t in protecting or even educating you: they live first and foremost to maintain their jobs. Students come and go, parishioners move elsewhere, but the school and the church live on. They don’t have your back. Not even the strangers who are outraged on your behalf have your back, at least not for long; we’ll move on to a different outrage next week. Only your family has your back. Don’t trust your teachers or clergy to protect you. Trust your parents. Trust your family. They’re the ones who will see you through this.

Entertainers are, for the most part, scum. I understand the desire to lionize actors, musicians, and comedians. They entertain us and it’s natural to like them for it. It’s hard to dislike someone who makes you laugh. Just remember that they’re doing a job, nothing more. They have no special skills outside of that job. They don’t have the wisdom of the brilliant people they sometimes portray, and for the most part, they lack curiosity, education, and ethics. Hollywood is a town that’s known worldwide for rampant sexual assault, pedophilia, substance abuse, and institutionalized prostitution. So when you see something like this:

Consider the source. John DiMaggio is the actor who does the voice for Jake the dog in Adventure Time. And now he’s hoping you’ll die. He doesn’t even know you. He hasn’t bothered to inform himself as to the particulars of the incident. He’s representative of the majority of the entertainment sphere. So don’t make the mistake of elevating entertainers. They’re not good people just because they’re on screen. In fact, most of them aren’t good people at all. Don’t you have something better to do than give the people who hate you your time and money and attention?

Most adults are cowards. While you’ll find a lot of air time devoted to attacking you for just being there and wearing MAGA hats, you won’t find a lot of air time devoted to attacking the Black Hebrew Israelites. Which is weird, because they called you “faggots”. If white nationalists had called black kids faggots, you can be sure that every gay rights organization on the planet would have jumped on them with both feet. But they haven’t, because the Black Hebrew Israelites scare them. Because they’re cowards. Anyone in media who doesn’t denounce this racist, bigoted group the Black Hebrew Israelites is either a coward or someone who agrees with them. Note also that the majority of people who called for you to be beaten up or even murdered weren’t saying they’d do it themselves. They asked other people to do it, because they’re cowards. Like Reza Aslan.

This is all very cynical, I know, but it’s also the truth, and it’s something you’re living right now. I wish you the best of success in everything, particularly your lawsuit.

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Flash Fiction Writing Contest!

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On Tuesday, October 23, The New York Times published short stories focusing on the end of the Trump-Russia investigation, and one of the more notable (if poorly-written) tales involved a U.S. Secret Service agent helping a Russian spy assassinate President Trump.

In the wake of the recent scare involving unexploded bombs sent to prominent progressives, CNN, one of the progressive targets, blamed Trump for inciting the bomber.

What’s clear is that these two seething cauldrons of progressive bile masquerading as news outlets are using their bully pulpits to destroy a president they disagree with. This is unacceptable, no matter who you voted for.

It’s time to not just fight back, but write back. To that end, publisher Obsidian Point is sponsoring a flash fiction writing contest. In 1,000 words or less, tell us a story that describes the downfall of NYT, CNN, or both. We want to see, in writing, “Dear Diary” Jim Acosta get his comeuppance. What would make Don Lemon’s self-satisfied smirk vanish? What fake news story would finally get the failing New York Times to shut its doors? Which scandal would befall the ancient-but-still-twitching Maureen Dowd?

We’re not looking for assassination porn; let the amoral progressives at The New York Times publish those kinds of masturbatory fantasies. Any genre is welcome, from horror to comedy to science fiction to thriller to whatever. Make us laugh, make us cringe, make us throw up all over ourselves. But make it good.

Send your story to appallingstories@gmail.com in any format that can be opened with Microsoft Word. Remember, 1,000 words or less. Deadline is Sunday, November 4. One story per writer.

The winning story will receive a Chick-Fil-A gift certificate and will be published in the upcoming anthology Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice, the sequel to the top-selling Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice. Runners-up will be published online in this space.

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