Cockburn

Have you met the Greenidge sisters — Kirsten, Kerri, and Kaitlyn? They are quite the trio. Kirsten, the eldest, is a playwright who teaches at Boston University; Kerri, the middle one, is a historian and the director of American Studies at Tufts University; and youngest Kaitlyn is the author of the award-winning We Love You, Charlie Freeman who also writes for the New York Times. Fancy that? Kerri has found herself in hot water this week after she signed the now notorious Harper’s letter in defense of free thought and free expression. She appears to have been stunned by the hostile reaction the letter received. Within hours of its publication she tweeted: ‘I do not endorse this @harpers letter. I am in contact with Harper’s about a retraction.

In an interview last week with Breitbart News Tonight, Ann Coulter revealed a curious episode from her past in which she met Jeffrey Epstein. Coulter recalled Epstein picking her up in a limousine and taking her to his Manhattan townhome. She was so creeped out by the encounter that she later asked to be dropped off two blocks from her own home. Cockburn has acquired the transcript of Coulter's story. ANN COULTER: I had my own encounter with Jeffrey Epstein, and before I give you this little vignette: very important that I tell you something. All of my friends know I have absolutely no radar on freaks, on weird people. I'm a terrible judge of character.

Actor and comedian Terry Crews is taking heat for criticizing the Black Lives Matter organization over its tendency to hone in on police brutality and ignore far larger issues in the black community. He recently tweeted that he wants to make sure 'black lives matter' doesn't turn into 'black lives matter more'. Predictably, he was met by reactionary shrieks of ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘coon’.Crews appeared on CNN on Monday night to explain his objections to BLM, and instead received a lecture from Don Lemon about the grievous errors in his line of thinking.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, some industry pundits predicted that the ‘techlash’ — the souring of public opinion on huge technology companies like Facebook and Google — would cool off or even disappear entirely. After all, with everyone cooped up at home, surely we’d develop a newfound appreciation for the technologies that became the only way to connect with others?That was short-lived. Following extraordinary social pressure amid this summer’s heated civil unrest, an advertiser boycott of Facebook has taken hold. Under the moniker Stop Hate For Profit and backed by the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP, brands from Starbucks to Unilever to Coca-Cola have bravely pulled ads from Facebook for the month of July.

The New York Times’s 1619 Project is meant to be all about details that, it alleges, were ‘conveniently left out’ of America’s ‘founding mythology’. But should its Pulitzer-winning curator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, worry more about the details she’s been slipping in? And what’s the relationship between the Times’s 1619 Project and 1619 Enterprises, a company for whom Hannah-Jones’s techie partner, Faraji has supposedly worked? When she's not explaining how destroying property isn't violence on national television or circulating conspiracy theories about fireworks, Hannah-Jones is giving puff interviews, like this one to Glamour in May, in which she endorsed some of her favorite products.

One of the internet's most elusive questions — who funds the Federalist? — has finally been answered. Well, sort of. NBC announced Tuesday that Google would be banning the Federalist from its ad platform, meaning the conservative website will no longer be able to earn money from running Google ads. The Federalist was targeted alongside ZeroHedge, a right-wing financial blog. Or so NBC claimed. 'We have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on and explicitly prohibit derogatory content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race from monetizing,' a Google spokesperson said of the decision. 'When a page or site violates our policies, we take action.

What has happened to New York media? Just as the New York Times was experiencing its own Inner Mongolia Moment over the now notorious Sen. Tom Cotton ‘Send in the Troops’ op-ed, the Maoists at New York magazine were going after their best columnist, Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan revealed on Twitter yesterday that his column wouldn't be appearing. The reason? His editors are not allowing him to write about the riots. https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1268564124423933953 Presumably Sullivan’s editors are frightened that he might make the radically bourgeois point that looting and violence are wrong.

Cockburn was thrilled to see the New York Times take an interest in The Spectator last weekend, after the paper published an article about our London office’s ‘incestuous ties’ with the governing elite. Amazing that during a global pandemic and nationwide rioting, the NYT saw fit to dedicate few inches on page A8 to a political adviser on a northern European island. ‘Rogue Trip by Boris Johnson Aide Makes U.K.’s Spectator Part of the Story’, declared the headline. At least that was the revised headline — the first suggested, erroneously, that The Spectator was in ‘turmoil.’ The Spectator may be in many things, but turmoil isn’t one of them. The Gray Lady isn’t known for its fair-mindedness these days. But its coverage of the Speccie was surprisingly reasonable.

Twitter began ‘fact-checking’ President Trump’s tweets for the first time last week, raising questions about the role that social media giants play as gatekeepers of digital information.After the President asserted that mail-in ballots would be ‘substantially fraudulent’, a blue notification was placed at the bottom of the original tweet: ‘Get the facts about mail-in ballots’. The notification links to a fact-checking page with the heading ‘Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud’.

Uh oh, Chris Cuomo has been engaging with a nefarious Chinese media company. Like countless quarantined dads across the globe, the CNN host has been trying out dances and other trends with his daughter, Bella, on a popular social media app called TikTok that allows users to make and share short videos with assorted visual and sound effects.Never mind that the app may be sending personal data to the Chinese Communist party, Chris is begging for a fair dose of mockery for his dancing. Accordingly, Cockburn pulled out his notebook and fountain pen to critique some of Chris’s attempts to win over Gen-Z. https://www.tiktok.com/@bellavcuomo/video/6830824175419100422 What does the world need to see right now?