12/26/2016
I am thrilled to report that Radio Derb now numbers among its listeners the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Yes, in between figuring how to invest their six-digit salaries and touring the auction houses to furnish their multi-million-dollar homes, the poverty warriors of Montgomery, Alabama find time to tune in to my own humble vaporings.Thus on December 21st the fearless champions of social justice posted an article headlined Ann Coulter Attends VDARE Christmas Party — Her Second White Nationalist Event In Three Months.
Breathlessly they report that:
On Dec. 9, Coulter made her way to the party hosted by VDARE, a white nationalist website founded by English immigrant Peter Brimelow. The site — which is named after Virginia Dare, said to be the first white child born in the New World — focuses on opposing non-white immigration into the United States, but has also published the writings of anti-Semites.How did the stalwart defenders of the poor find out about Ann’s dropping in on our Christmas party? Why, from listening to the December 9th Radio Derb podcast. Quote:
At the event, Coulter granted an impromptu with another English white nationalist and regular VDARE contributor John Derbyshire.It’s always flattering to be noticed, of course; but after I got through blushing with pride, the thing that mainly registered with me about this piece was the journalistic shoddiness.
If you have a certain line of work, you naturally view the productions of other people working in the same line with a critical eye. As someone who writes internet commentary for a living, that’s how I approach an article like this one. In the case of the SPLC, whose net assets currently stand at close to a third of a billion dollars, I would expect the standards of their output to be way higher than those of the far less well-endowed outlets I write for.
It’s disappointing, therefore, to see how sloppy their work is. There is an error of fact in the very second sentence of this one. Virginia Dare is not said to be the first white child born in the New World, except by people too lazy to check their facts. Even the entry in the leftist website Wikipedia states, in its first sentence, that "Virginia Dare … was the first English child born in … the New World." The first white child, as we keep patiently pointing out, was Snorri Thorfinnsson.
A third of a billion dollars, and they can’t afford a fact checker? We do better than that here at VDARE.com, and — trust me — we don’t have a third of a billion dollars.
And the whole piece is written in the stilted, formulaic language of Cultural Marxism. Everyone who opposes uncontrolled mass immigration is a "white nationalist." Everyone who wants to preserve the U.S.A.’s demographic balance — as Senator Edward Kennedy promised to do when presenting the 1965 Immigration Act — is a "racist." Any article not compliant with anti-white orthodoxy is a "screed" … and so on.
Stilted, formulaic, and dishonest. The Center for Immigration Studies is described in that SPLC article as "anti-immigrant." If you go to the CIS website you see they describe themselves as being, quote, "animated by a pro-immigrant, low-immigration vision which seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted." How is that "anti-immigrant"? You can have negative feelings about tsunamis without being "anti-water."
And yet the SPLC is quoted reverently in major media outlets like The Economist and the New York Times, as if this cheesy racket with its second-rate "reporting" were the National Institute of Standards. There is the real journalistic malfeasance.
I guess that’s how things are in this fallen world. A third of a billion dollars won’t buy you fact-checkers, or a decent regard for the meanings of words, but it'll have the world of so-called "serious" journalism lining up to kiss your ring.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.