April 19, 2023 - 7:00am
Dominion Voting Systems, the maker of voting machines and tabulation software used in 28 states in the 2020 election cycle, has settled its defamation lawsuit against Fox News for close to $800 million. Fox, along with other conservative news outlets, had aired allegations that Dominion had participated in a broad conspiracy to steal the presidency from Donald Trump by switching Republican votes to the Democrat column.
Faced with evidence that Fox’s own key on-air commentators — including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity — had scoffed at the idea that such a grand scheme to subvert the election had taken place, the network chose on the eve of the trial to avert a lengthy and embarrassing court process, and probably got off cheap. Reporters looking forward to a six-week stint of breathless reportage about Fox News and anticipated testimony from Rupert Murdoch expressed disappointment with the settlement — the New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg reported that “a sense of shock prevails”— but most informed observers knew that a deal would likely be struck, with only the record-breaking price tag remaining uncertain.
The Dominion saga is far from over, as the company still has pending cases against other media companies as well as Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who are being sued for defamation. But what remains of key interest is the readiness with which major media outlets embrace the diction of Democrat consultants when it comes to labelling unfounded allegations as “lies”.
This goes not just for the 2020 election, but for virtually anything that Trump or his surrogates say. Indeed, critics of the new role of “fact-checker” have pointed out that these supposed truth-seekers are laughably partisan in their checking, as when the Washington Post accused Trump of “lying” for having said that he received 75 million votes, when the number was actually 74 million, or referring to him as a liar for calling his voting base “the greatest political movement in the history of our country.”
But regarding the 2020 election, affirming the sanctity of the process has become creedal and a sign of loyalty to the democratic process. That election is alone in American history as unassailable.
Who remembers the 2004 presidential election, when John Kerry was “supposed” to cruise to an easy victory over George W. Bush? Bush’s victory in Ohio was, we were told, corrupted and stolen by Diebold Election Systems, a manufacturer of voting machines which had alleged ties to Republican political figures. To this day there are dead-enders on the Left who believe that Kerry had the election stolen from him.
Or consider 2016, when Hillary Clinton’s loss so baffled her devotees that they launched a four year “Resistance” to the Trump presidency that was festooned with conspiratorial musings so lavish that they included a front-page New York Magazine assertion that Donald Trump had been recruited as a KGB mole in the 1980s, with the long-term aim of installing him as a Kremlin puppet.
Fox News tried to play both sides in the wake of the 2020 election, and got its fingers burned by airing clumsy suppositions about election fraud that stupidly named names. It will no doubt have learnt its lesson, but do not expect this to be the last time we hear complaints about America’s hallowed election process — from either side.
Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind.
Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind and author of The Last Days of New York.
SethBarronNYC
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SubscribeClearly written by someone who hasn’t seen Inbetweeners.
In a poor article, a supremely bad sentence.
‘But what is so different, so unsettling, about the “Dubai porta potty” legend — as it is known for reasons you can work out for yourself — is how wilfully it has taken root, and how ancient the Western fantasies are that it speaks to.‘
I lived in Dubai 90s to 00s and saw the blatant evidence of Arab male depravity when it came to sex. We were hunted on the streets as children by Arab men trying to lure us into their cars. This was a consistent feature of my youth until the Russian prostitutes arrived.
We lived near a large detached house which my neighbour’s dubbed the ‘p***y palace’, as there was usually a line of women outside from midnight into the early hours of the morning – waiting to be let in for god knows what level of debauched behaviour.
The stories we heard about what happened to Western women who were lured into liaisons with an Arab man were often the most disturbing – obviously none of the content would ever reach the papers so much of this could be considered to be urban legend, but the behaviour from some Arab men would make you believe otherwise.
This isn’t to say that all Arab men were like this, I had some local male friends outside the expatriate community who were respectful and civil.
So I’d guess there may be more to the influencer stories than meets the eye. There is no freedom of the press in the UAE, which bears reflection.
‘Influencer’ is a job? Really.
“just another grotesque tumescence of our own porn-saturated culture that social media has helped to create — and is probably just as likely to go down in a Kensington mansion as an Emirati penthouse”
This writer can’t understand what’s happening right in front of her face… (a) If these things are going down in a Kensington mansion, it is likely owned by someone who also has an Emirati penthouse. (b) Social media has played a minor role in creating our porn saturated culture; it ain’t even the internet that’s to blame. It’s the numerous slips down the slippery slope that have fundamentally changed social expectations of sexual ethics – everything from decriminalizing pornography (because, hey, it’s harmless, right?), to making divorce no-fault (because, hey, it’s harmless, right?), to pretending men and women do or should have the same sexual desires (because, hey, women are the same as men, right?), etc. etc.
The lack of self-awareness in UnHerd’s vast stable of feminist writers is, I regret to say, just what misogynists would expect of them. Please, ladies, stop letting the side down…
Indeed.
Having visited Dubai many times, the first part of this article rings pretty true in its description of Dubai, and indeed much of the “developed” Middle East. It’s all neon lights, and garish displays of wealth galore. The more tasteless and ostentatious the better.
Whilst Poppy might be right that sexual debauches can occur anywhere, she skates over the reasons for it and wrongly identifies the causes in my opinion.
First, there’s the eye watering amounts of money sloshing around. What do you buy when you can afford everything, and already own it? Next, repressed sexuality, combined with fundamentally misogynistic attitudes, in which white women are essentially viewed as whores. See Rotherham for further details. Next add in a pretty shaky, biased legal system. And hey, presto, you can do what you like.
Trying to project all that onto some weird fetishes Westerners might have for the Arabian Nights etc seems a bit of stretch to me, but hey ho.
An utterly ghastly place with even more ghastly Brit ex pats: The capital of seditious hypocricy and a weird form of totalitarianism marching hand in hand with debauchery…
Brings to mind the stories of pre-WWII Berlin.
Christ told people that they’d already committed adultery just by thinking it.
Islam’s equivalent changed Allah’s teaching when he became obsessively lustful toward his daughter-in-law, enabling him to marry her.
The somersaults of Islam’s scholars in order to justify this are legendary.
In terms of the contrasting messages given about sex – well, you join the dots.
I am far more concerned by their cowardly support of Islamist terrorism, and control of our horse racing industry. The hypocricy of these Arabs is beyond belief.
The hypocrisy is the other way around.Every Informed people in UK horse racing will have heard the rumours surrounding Sheikh Mohammed’s sexual sadism.And yet everyone in UK horse racing has chosen to turn a blind eye because UK racing is so dependent on his patronage.Of course maybe the rumours are false
Well said
calculated to enrage the skiing set.
It does of course have apurpose built indoor ski centre-marvellous.
I can’t imagine too many people fantasising behind closed doors about what goes on in Dubai. I think even in a culture as depraved as ours most people haven’t sunk quite that low.
I dunno, Poppy’s feminist nihilism about internet-heavy pop culture is not that interesting. Exploring the vacuousness of entitled leeches has no redeeming features.
It’s the modern world, innit? Poppy takes a deep dive into it and reports back, so we don’t have to. It’s a useful service, I think.
The article seems to be rather stuck between wanting to scold the perception that Dubai has a lot of debauchery-for-hire going on, while also conceding that it is, in fact, true that it does. Plus, the fact these exoticized Eastern cultures do have rules that demand women wear bags over their heads because men cannot be expected to maintain self-control otherwise, might have something to do with how they are perceived in the West.
Side-note: I dimly recall that line from Disney’s Aladdin causing a bit of a fuss at the time it came out, and I think Disney changed it. But, again, if you decapitate people, or flog them, as part of your judicial system, eh, people may draw their own conclusions about how you do things.
Fair points, except i wouldn’t regard it as “stuck” but rather a useful exploration of some of the underlying issues deep within the Western psyche around sexuality via the “otherness” of Eastern culture.
I’ve long suspected that ancient conflicts, including but not confined to that between Christianity and Islam, have their basis in some almost unfathomable dichotomy involving sexual relationships,and the control (or otherwise) of primitive urges. For this reason, i admire Poppy Sowerby’s imaginative effort in bringing this up-to-date. I can imagine some readers spluttering over their cornflakes.
Robin Williams was going pretty wild and off script in that movie. Disney had to remove some of the lines, but it was still hilarious.
Whose appetite?
That’d be the phages, not the philes.