Close readings: Heintzelman’s brush with potential dissent

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 0 Comment
Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem.

Colin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem.

Indy reporter and Missoula’s actual best journalist Derek Brouwer sent me this tweet from Missoulian publisher Mark Heintzelman, who narrowly avoided witnessing a protest at the annual meeting of the Chamber of Commerce. Granted, no one actually protested. But they might have, given the way things are going in this country. Quote:

Our colors were just presented at the annual meeting of the @MissoulaChamber and, thankfully, everybody stood.

What a relief! Again, no one knelt or raised one fist in the air or conveyed anything but deferential respect for the flag—sorry, “our colors,” because apparently we’re all sailors in the War of 1812—but if they had, Heintzelman would have been against it. He sounds a little disappointed no one did. Close reading after the jump.

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American press remains free to defend itself against nine-figure lawsuits

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments
Peter Thiel makes a grasping, strangling gesture.

Peter Thiel makes a grasping, strangling gesture.

The New York-based gossip website Gawker.com shut down yesterday, after its parent company, Gawker Media, lost a $140 million lawsuit to Hulk Hogan. Univision purchased Gawker Media from bankruptcy and will continue publishing many sites in the network, including Deadspin and Gizmodo, but the flagship has been eliminated. Yesterday, former executive features editor Tom Scocca published this scathing postmortem advancing two points, one of which I find more interesting than the other. First, he contends that Gawker was effectively gaslighted by its enemies, who convinced founder Nick Denton and other key members of the staff that they really were operating beyond the pale of respectable journalism. That seems both plausible and unfalsifiable. Second, and more compellingly, Scocca suggests that freedom of the press is complicated when billionaires can fund massive lawsuits designed to put media companies out of business. Background and consideration after the jump.

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Autostraddle retracts Sausage Party review, citing problematic taco

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments
Selma Hayek plays a sexually ambiguous taco in Sausage Party.

Selma Hayek plays a sexually ambiguous taco in Sausage Party.

The problem with going on hiatus is that you invariably miss the year’s most important events, e.g. controversies over racial/sexual overtones in talking food. Probably, you already heard that Sausage Party has been added to the long list of Seth Rogen movies we agree to remember as funny. The film garnered mostly positive reviews, including one from Autostraddle written by a freelancer and subsequently unpublished. The site took down that review and ran a lengthy retraction/apology last week. It reads, in part:

After we published the review, we heard from Latinx readers who believe the portrayal of Salma Hayek’s taco was racist and that it reinforced harmful stereotypes. We heard from readers who were upset that we labeled the taco a lesbian when it seems more likely that she was bisexual. We heard from readers who questioned the consent of the sexual encounter between the taco and the hot dog bun. We heard from readers who found the taco to be a damaging portrayal of a predatory queer woman.

They are not kidding.

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Grassley: “2day’s journalists r too elite for ordinary Americans”

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 0 Comment
Six-term senator, man of the people and wizened child Chuck Grassley

Six-term senator, man of the people and wizened child Chuck Grassley

Elitists: they’re everywhere, according to people whose words and ideas are broadcast to millions. Obama was an elitist for saying every American should go to college. Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord told CNN that fact-checking is elitist. Elitism seems concentrated in the journalistic class, particularly when politicians identify it. Just this morning, Senator Chuck Grassley (R–IA) posed this question to his Twitter followers:

You can tell Grassley is a man of the people because he uses chatspeak abbreviations. Journalists are too elite for him, an ordinary American who has served in the Senate for 30 years. But his tweet raises some questions.

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CNN pretty much screws Paladino on “Lynch @Loretta Lynch” typo

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments
A screen shot from CNN.com this morning

A screen shot from CNN.com this morning

It’s no wonder Carl Paladino supports the candidate for president who wants to do something about the media. The Buffalo businessman last graced the news in April, when he told NPR’s Morning Edition that he and his fellow Trump supporters wanted an exterminator “to get the raccoons out of the basement” of government. I assume he was referring to waste, fraud, and abuse, for which raccoons are notorious, but some reporters thought he meant black people. In defense of this maybe tenuous reading, Paladino does look like the kind of person who refers to black people in code, constantly. But you can understand why he might consider himself the victim of uncharitable reporting. This morning, CNN comes along with this:

A top Donald Trump supporter drew fire Wednesday for a tweet that he says was a “well-intended mistake,” which seemed to call for the lynching of Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The tweet from New York businessman and former gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino said “Lynch @LorettaLynch let the Grand Jury decide,” according to reports and screen grabs on Twitter. The message was replaced with another that simply said “@LorettaLynch let the Grand Jury decide.” Paladino was apparently weighing in on FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau would recommend no charges in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

This story appeared under the headline Trump supporter tweet appears to call for lynching of Loretta Lynch. Appears to whom? Speaking as a person who has to go back and delete part of every tweet in which I use Twitter’s @ autofill, I did not at first read Paladino’s as advocating the lynching of the Attorney General.

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