TMR's Year In Review: New Age Began Showing It's Age

TMR really got taken for a ride this year, with racial cultism dominating the blog for most of the last quarter, because there was simply no way for my post-racial ass to ignore the fact mulatto America's two biggest cults are (gulp) blacks and whites. 

That left NewAge - TMR's main focus - hanging a bit during, what should have been, a pretty triumphant year.

For instance, I'd already told you, the previous year, Mitt Romney was selling worthless supplements. And this year - BAM! - supplements, like Mitt Romney on the stump, were found to be less-than-worthless, for anything, but raising money for criminals.

Excuse me, did I say "criminals"? I meant, "the best human being to run for the White House in quite a few election cycles." 

Yes, I still find it amazing that anyone willing to write that about Romney couldn't also be bothered to report on the ramifications of Mitt's deceptions, or that Instapundit's readers (who are supposed to be smart) didn't demand to know how they were duped. But - Hey! - that's the always-reliable, and oh, so trustworthy and informative conservative blogosphere for you!

   

 In order to see what "real conservatism" looked like this year, you had to begin again - from the blog of a real professor, Edzard Ernst (MD, PhD, FMedSci, FSB, FRCP, FRCPEd and Yabba Dabba Do). Though started last year, Prof. Ernst has been gloriously knocking down one "alternative" medicine fallacy after another using science, and - not only did he invite TMR to write a guest post (which - though many would doubt it - I graciously declined) but, this year, he also started including cultism into his mix of factors that have kept the hippie's silly belief system, and practices, alive. 

 In other words, 2013 was the year Edzard Ernst stopped playing nice, and I, for one, want to thank him - specifically - for stepping into the breach and becoming MY big ol' bear. 

And, from the bottom of my blacker-than-black heart, I also want him to know this fact:

TMR has totally got "Fast Eddie's" back in 2014. 



Of course, when covering NewAge, I can go into so many directions it might make some wonder where the parameters are (if you're new, you'll just have to watch these videos, above and below, to learn how to spot believers or - to get my take and understand what they're up to - the rest of the blog).

Anyway, though I found an unusually large number of psychics, gurus, life coaches, "prayer warriors," and yoga instructors, etc., busted this year - and even with murderer James Arthur Ray getting out of prison - the biggest NewAge story of 2013 was, easily, the death of Sylvia Browne, scam artist extraordinaire.

I don't care how gullible I know mankind to be (see the videos above) that anyone allowed that ugly, crazy, deceitful bitch to convince them of anything is beyond me. But, she got away with it, and - with her death - still, somehow, left the world a better place. 

As Martha Stewart says, in the end, it's "a good thing".

I would say that, though:

Sylvia dying probably saved me a murder conviction, myself.

When I plan on watching NewAge die,...

TMR's Year In Review: The "Race" To The Bottom Began

I could belabor the point, as I have for the last few months, but shamefully to me - especially as a black Republican - 2013 was the year the Right lost on the subject of race. Barack Obama may have been the target, but a dehumanized Trayvon Martin caught the bullet, and the Tea Party's whooping and hollering was enough to make almost any black person (or person of conscience) recoil in disgust.

That was it - the Tea Party was done. Unwilling to silence our worst actors, there wasn't a single thing the Right could say to advance our arguments on any subject, much less race. And you want to know what the further tragedy was?

The Right started the year with the upper hand.

The media had blown their Trayvon/Zimmerman reporting, in such an obvious way, it would've been easy to swing blacks around for the Left's crime of wildly exploiting the case - all it took was a little compassion.

But no. The Right, being insecure about any effect the Left's media manipulations have, decided not to speak truth to power - but to go after the low-hanging fruit of an, obviously grieving, black community. Blacks weren't being media savvy enough. And one group's wrong was just as politically opportune as anybody else's (AKA the liberal media's) right?

Conservatives couldn't have been more wrong - I'm talking Westboro Baptist Church wrong - and the Right either (take your pick) couldn't see it, couldn't admit it, or - the worst of the worst during, what was obviously, a mourning period for blacks - just didn't give a damn. I've told you:

Appearances are just one of the problems with groupthink.

It appears the Right has been in full-on "Race Hustler" mode for too long. By attacking Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in this way, they'd gotten so used to it, they thought it would work in any situation - even the unnecessary death of a teenager.

That led to such unfortunate comparisons as The Black Panthers - who fought racists - being compared as equal in evil as the Ku Klux Klan, who perpetuated it. It simply won't wash historically, but then, whites also denying the context of our lives became a HUGE problem.

One that, luckily enough, the movie 12 Years a Slave seems to have remedied somewhat.

Yes, attacking the media, exclusively, would've won the day - and probably turned many of the issues requiring a vote or consensus to conservative's advantage. Impossible once the racial tit-for-tat started:

But then, here, I should only speak for myself,…

 

TMR's Year In Review: White Welfare - Instapundit Once Again Shows The Poor Black Folks How It's Really Done

Online cults? Cliques? Groupthink? I've been against them from the start. Never forgetting how Ann Althouse got so popular (it's all on the strength of her profound "writing," right?) I howled with laughter when I saw this:

"IF NATIONAL REVIEW DOESN’T PROPERLY APPRECIATE MARK STEYN, I imagine we could find a place for him at PJ Media."

And, Boy - considering Steyn's a syndicated columnist with a regular gig on The Rush Limbaugh Show - he certainly does need Glenn's help!

There were others but, this year, my favorites were Instapundit's many handouts to Utah's former Tea Party candidate for governor, David Kirkham. He, who admitted - in private, under TMR's careful questioning, last New Year - that he was only running because he'd sold his sports car business, and was "bored". (Which, I think, is Instapundit's sole reason for existing, too. That and, of course, your money,...)

As fate would have it, Kirkham eventually went on to have a heart attack, and so, would have to amuse himself with something other than fanatically toying with his fellow citizen's lives. 

It's a pity, really:

Because that has to mean there's no "Heaven On Earth" after all,…

 

TMR's Year In Review: There Wasn't A Single "Scandal"

All year, like arrogant children, Instapundit, Althouse, Ace of Spades Headquarters, Hot Air, Legal Insurrection, and all the rest, cried and screamed Yes We Can! But, now that we can see their work in hindsight, all their readers were doing for the last 365 days was repeatedly committing the same stupid mistake:

They never questioned if their favorite blogger's delusions - regarding themselves or whatever the current political situation - were correct.

But why should they? Right-Wing readers certainly weren't clamoring for conformation this year, just more red meat - they HAD to nail Obama! These are the same types who love to brag how sure they are they couldn't be tricked into a cult, or cultish thinking. 

Suckers.

"Nobody joins a cult,...You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like."

Professor/bloggers, stoking mass hysteria online, can be a funny thing - if fraudsters could be called "funny" - since it's all about connected individuals attempting to get their fellow citizens needlessly worked up for a profit. Deception, dead ends, blind alleys - no behavior was too low to stop Right-Wing bloggers this year - as long as the money kept rolling in. Working those Amazon portals were the only true "successes" they had:

"It must be frustrating to [Obama's] opponents that,…investigators never managed to nail him,…never found the scandal,..."

I doubt it - they're not frustrated at all. As Glenn Reynolds once said, the best thing about being a professor is they don't have to care if what they say is right. Like homeopaths and all the rest, there's no ethical code they're bound to - they just have to keep you coming back for more. So, after leading you to follow Mitt Romney off a cliff, abusing an already-tattered trust was the name of the game this year.

   

 And it will be - as long as you continue to swallow it:

Like the fools you are,…

 

Bagoh20 Stops By - Acts White - Destroyed Christmas

With an online "friend" like bagoh20, who needs enemies?

  "What a fucking poseur. What a surrender. Did you learn that in France?"

Good guess but no, I learned it from those nice folks you hang out with.

I see you'd rather fight and scream names at me rather than them.

That should also be an education in how to get here.

Merry Christmas, bagoh:

And try to be of some use next year,...

 

Have Blacks Made Shows Only To Make Fun Of Whites?

Despite the fact that an average of 14.6 million Americans tune in each week to track the adventures of the Robertson family when you count DVR recordings, I've never understood the appeal. For me, the question isn't why Phil Robertson was suspended. The real mystery is why he and his family -- who run a successful business making supplies for duck hunters -- have a television show in the first place.

I have a theory. Here is what you need to keep in mind as you waddle through this controversy: The reason that "Duck Dynasty" is on television is to make liberal studio executives at A&E, and parent company Disney feel superior, while making big profits for the studio.

The Robertsons are on television so that people in New York and Los Angeles -- the kind of folks who refer to anyplace in between as "flyover country" -- can feel progressive and enlightened by comparing themselves to simple country folks in Louisiana who, according to the elites, are neither. (And can make lots of money doing so.)

"Duck Dynasty' is this era's ode to "Amos 'n' Andy." In that show -- which aired on radio and television from the 1920s through the 1960s and which was created, written and produced by white people -- Americans were given the opportunity to laugh at African-Americans, adding insult to the injury that this group of citizens was already sustaining before the civil rights movement.

Now, Americans have a new group to laugh at -- a self-described "bunch of rednecks from Louisiana."

I'm with you 100% except for one difference - however they're portrayed, Duck Dynasty signed up for the heckling of themselves and others like them:

There wasn't nothing "reality television" about Amos & Andy,...