First, a quick reminder of Michael Crichton’s Gell-Mann Amnesia phenomenon:
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
Remember it now, in all its perfect logic and lucidity?
Now let’s advance to the home page of Danmarks Radio (DR), which I remind you once again is taxpayer funded:
Greta Thunberg detained by German police during big climate demonstration
Mads Vestergaard, TV2 News, January 18
The article reminds readers of the protests going on in Lützerath, Germany, where the green extremists who persuaded Germany to shut down all of its nuclear power plants have been doing their best to prevent Germany from digging coal out of the ground to compensate for the (unexpectedly!) missing power.
Things got a little heated there over the weekend, and the police have been removing protestors from the area.
That’s just the set up. But then imagine: on Saturday…
…a familiar face appeared.
The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg—lifted from the ground by three police officers.
“Greta Thunberg was part of a group of activists who rushed to the edge (of the coal mine, ed.). But she was then stopped and carried from the area to establish her identity,” a spokesman for the local police said, according to Reuters.
Lifted up and carried away, the poor martyr!
Journalismists, power up! An innocent young protester has been brutally manhandled by the German police—code red! Fire up the indignation!
But wait:
Viral Video Of Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Being Detained Is Apparently Staged
Sarah Weaver, Daily Caller, January 17
We’re being gaslighted again.
The video from Daily Caller shows St. Greta laughing with the police offers, who appear nothing but deferential to her holiness as they help her pose for photographs. The cops and the journalismists seem to be having as merry a time as St. Greta herself. It’s all good fun.
It’s not a detention. It’s not an arrest. It’s a photo-op.
Allow me to pull some stills from the Daily Caller video in case you missed some of the obvious tells:
Have you ever seen such brutality?
The photographer moves in for the money shot—and the smile disappears!
Any of you ever been arrested, ever, or taken into police custody? For any reason?
Was it as jolly as all that?
Were the police compliant with the photographers you’d invited along for the event?
Have a good laugh, did you?
Splendid time had by all?
Were I to be arrested tomorrow, I’d want the media to emphasize just how relaxed and informal the process had been. I’d want people to know it hadn’t been a big deal: I’d want them reassured that I hadn’t done anything heinous and the police had just been playing along for the photographers.
After Thunberg had been taken away by police in combat clothing, she was led along with other protesters into a bus that the police had set up around the coal mine.
Whether Thunberg has already been released by German police is unclear, but according to Reuters, the spokesman for the local police has stated that she—along with the other detainees—will be released during today or evening.
Odd that St. Greta seems to want and get this more serious treatment for her silly little PR stunt: odd that the media give her the exact phony headlines and copy she needs to perpetuate her standing as St. Greta the Afflicted.
Not a word about the chummy treatment from the cops, or the big smiles when she didn’t know she was being photographed—and, of course, a total absence of pictures in which she’s smiling.
This disturbed young woman, this mentally ill high school drop out, is their baby. She’s like Gandhi and Joan of Arc and Rosa Parks all rolled into one snarling little lapdog bitch!
But never mind all that.
Let’s move on to DR’s next article, which is surely objective and accurate…
I’d leave it at that, but an article published yesterday evening, after I’d published my post about the absence of Danish news about Biden’s confidential document woes, made it clear why Berlingske’s US Correspondent Mikkel Danielsen isn’t writing about Biden’s problems: he’s got bigger and more important fish to fry.
They’re supposed to protect the west, but there’s a problem: America’s youth are too dumb and too fat for service
Mikkel Danielsen, Berlingske.dk, January 17
Journalism! Misinforming you one day at a time.
And I can now see that Berlingske has finally found the angle of approach to the Curious Case of the Senescent Senior’s Daffy Document Dilemma:
Analysis: Biden’s advanced age is suddenly a political strength. A frail old man does not look like a criminal
Kristian Mouritzen, Berlingske.dk, January 18
Even I didn’t think they’d go with something that craven. Just goes to show, like the lady said: No matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up.
I’ll have words about Mouritzen’s “Analysis” tomorrow…