I rarely open Facebook. At best, it’s boring and banal. At worst it’s ugly and dangerous. I don’t have a Twitter account. I’m too old to tweet. I’ll leave that to the birds – and bird brains like Donald Trump. It’s not that I don’t want to keep up with friends and family. But I […]
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Posts tagged with 'Facebook'
A Farewell to Alarms?
Could this really be goodbye for Alex Jones? The conspiracy theorist has just been banned by Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify. And my response is: What took you guys so long? Alex Jones is a bad joke. A dangerous bad joke. He is the kind of hazard Oliver Wendell Holmes obviously meant when he […]
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The Blight of the Bots
You might think social media is the salvation of democracy, but I think it’s a blight. As a former newspaper editor, I deplore the mob mentality I come across on web sites like Twitter and Facebook – and in those odious chat rooms Call me an elitist if it scratches your itch, but I […]
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In the Fake News Era
To an old reporter like me, the “fake news” phenomenon is hard to take. In my day, we were so careful to check and double-check our stories. There was a a total ban on “single-source” reports, for example. If we couldn’t get a story confirmed, we didn’t publish it. Now, with nearly half of […]
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A Digital Protest? Really?
In another time, Americans might be marching on Washington today, massing in front of Congress to support the Democratic sit-in against gun violence. But I know of no plan to march. Instead I got an invitation – by email of course – to join a “digital protest.” So I won’t have to leave the […]
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Crazy Rants and Real News
If Donald Trump were some run-of-the-mill guy back in Queens, he would probably be committed to a mental health facility after the craziness he has been spouting. But, as the Republican Party’s flag bearer, he is taken seriously by the media. Every nutty remark he makes is amplified by the wide-eyed “journalists” who follow […]
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Racists Strut Their Stuff
I am astonished – shocked – by the shameless way in which racists are flaunting their bigotry in America today. Take this comment from Maine’s Governor Paul LePage: These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty – these types of guys – they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they […]
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A Turkey from Tennessee
I suppose President Obama will let another turkey off the hook this holiday season. He isn’t likely to respond to Elizabeth Lauten’s rude rant against his daughters. He won’t need to. Responses from outraged Americans are pouring in. The communications aide to Tennessee Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher posted a scathing Facebook attack against Malia and Sasha, […]
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A World of Make Believe
More and more, this world of ours becomes a pantomime, a charade, a chiavari. Nothing is what it seems. Not even the “news.” You will read about the power of “social media” in the press, and the TV pundits will talk of Twitter and Facebook and the blogosphere as if they were the real “voice […]
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What I have noticed about Jamaicans on Facebook
I don’t know if it is only my observation, but I have a lot of friends on Facebook from many different countries and I read a lot of there posts. It seems to me that most of my black Facebook and there black Facebook friends from other countries posts a lot of things about racism […]
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