Welcome to the partisan fury, Michelle Wolf
White House Correspondents Association roaster Michelle Wolf joins a club with likes of Kathy Griffin, Khizr Khan, Stormy Daniels and David Hogg — little-known or unknown figures who suddenly became surrogates for the hyper-partisan rhetorical warfare of the Trump era. President Trump tweeted his disgust at Wolf’s weekend routine on Monday, she was a hot topic on “The View” and the subject of a long and loud CNN exchange between Chris Cuomo and a conservative official. Journalists wondered if the annual WHCA dinner should be changed or ditched. A backlash quickly surfaced. Wolf had become a political symbol, much like Parkland student Hogg when he spoke out on gun restrictions, Khan when he spoke against Trump at the Democratic National Convention, Griffin when she posted a picture of herself with a mock-up of Trump’s severed head. Trump’s supporters took up the cause. Cuomo interviewed Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who tweeted that he and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, director of strategic communications at the White House, walked out of the dinner. A “Fox & Friends” chyron read: “Should all women be critical of Wolf’s jokes?” Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer called it a disgrace, to which Wolf tweeted: “Thank you.” But a backlash to the criticism quickly developed, with some wondering why the correspondents should be surprised to get edgy comedy from an edgy comedian. “The comedian did her job,” said Sara Haines on “The View” Monday. “She is there to push the envelope.” Don’t like it? “Hire a juggler next year,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel tweeted. In his interview with Schlapp, Cuomo pressed the point that many Trump opponents made: how can you be insulted by Wolf’s routine and not by some of the things that Trump has said or done? While Wolf’s performance was vulgar and unseemly, “the three-year performance of candidate and president Donald Trump has been vulgar, unseemly and infinitely more damaging to our civil discourse,” tweeted conservative commentator Bill Kristol. The White House quickly sniffed an opportunity. Trump, who held a rally in Michigan at the same time as the dinner, asked aides for an update soon after leaving the stage. When he watched it being talked about on cable TV the next day, he called several outside advisers to bash the comedian, saying she was unfunny and mean-spirited. He told at least one confidante that it again proved he can’t get a fair shake from the media and he was certain his base would agree with him Wolf, who begins a Netflix show later this month and is best known for work on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” was not made available to The Associated Press on Monday. She tweeted a few replies to critics. Her routine directed barbs at Congress, Democrats and the media. But the jokes that targeted Trump, his daughter Ivanka and press aides Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway attracted the most negative attention. Her comedy was risque; C-SPAN radio cut away from her routine over what its management called an “abundance of caution” about whether she’d violate FCC indecency guidelines. Wolf joked that Ivanka Trump had proven as useful to women as “a box of empty tampons.” She wished for a tree to fall on Conway, not so she’d get hurt — just stuck. Wolf suggested Sanders burns facts and uses the ashes to create perfect eye makeup. Margaret Talev, president of the reporters’ organization that puts on the dinner, said in a statement that she’d heard from members who expressed dismay with Wolf’s monologue. The WHCA wanted to honor free press and great reporting, “not to divide people,” Talev said. “Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.” Some reporters, notably Maggie Haberman of The New York Times in expressing support for Sanders, made their feelings known publicly. It’s not the first time comics have made people uneasy at the event, particularly since it has been televised across the country: Don Imus, Stephen Colbert and Larry Wilmore all had their critics. Trump’s absence magnified the reaction to Wolf, since no one took to the podium to punch back. Trump did so on Twitter. “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it,” he tweeted Monday. “This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Blake Dowling: Dark Data, Dark Web, Dark Side?
Let’s see … what should I write about today? Pretending to murder the President of the United States? No, that’s been done. It was ironic as I was posting my Memorial column about togetherness and unity on Twitter the other day and I see all these Tweets about Kathy Griffin. Let’s see what she is up to, hmmm beheading the President. That is exactly what I was talking about in the piece, people behaving so, so badly that it is beyond comprehension. Odd that it wasn’t on the news yesterday. You hear a lot of the same rhetoric from right wing media outlets like Drudge Report, Fox News, etc. … “If this had been former President the world would be more outraged, there would be war in the streets,” but it’s a left-wing comedian and it’s Donald so maybe they are right (pun intended)? I watched the news (ABC/NBC) last night, no mention of this. People forget that celebrities, politicians, athletes are actually human beings. Like him or hate him, the Donald is a person, too. If you can’t respect the man or the woman, try and respect the office. Jeez, Griffin, humanity sinks deeper into the sea of the pathetic thanks to you. Basic human dignity – FAIL. Oh well. For today we are back to technology. There is a company called Lattice Data that Apple just scooped up for about 200 million. Lattice specializes in machine learning and transferring “dark data” into usable information. What the hell is dark data? Is that what the Emperor keeps on his iPad? (Zing) Dark data is data that is unstructured and uncharacterized. It could be geographical information on customers, financial information, pictures. Think about some growth analysis, we cranked out 4.4 zettabytes of data in 2013. That is going to grow to a projected 40+ zettabytes by 2020. Experts say 90 percent of the data in existence was produced in the past two years. This info must be stored somewhere – and data centers are not cheap. Cooling data centers are not cheap. What do we do with all of this data? Enter Lattice, they take the data and using artificial intelligence they “label” it. So, all of this information that is compiled from everything in our internet of things world could be used in medicine, political campaigning, logistics, genetics even human trafficking. MEMEX is a program which analyzes mountains of data on sex workers via, online ads, job postings, rates, geographic region, and they can take the data and identify trends which may lead them to a human trafficking ring. This is not just data on the traditional internet, this application also dives into the dark web. The darknet, dark web or deep web are areas of the internet where search engines do not go and where you must have a specialized browser to get there (like Tor). Users are anonymous and not traceable by IP address on the normal web. So, guess what happens? It’s like Kathy Griffin day every day on the dark web. Drugs are for sale, weapons, pornography, hitmen, all those things. I wrote a piece about the online drug emporium, Silk Road last for INFLUENCE Magazine if you want to check it out. Some say the dark web provides an anonymous place for corporate whistleblowing. I call BS on that one. You can write a letter to the NY Post and not sign it if you really must disclose some sinister corporate shenanigans. Others say if you buy drugs online you take violent crime out of the drug business; pay with bitcoin, it comes to your home, no gun battles in Compton or elsewhere. That argument is slightly more valid, but it’s still illegal, in Florida at least. For now. For the People. There you have it, darkness everywhere coming at you like the platoon of Storm Troopers on the forest moon of Endor. Thanks for reading. ___ Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and can be reached at Dowlingb@aegisbiztech.com.
Will Lochamy: News, at the speed of Trump
If you don’t like the current headline, just wait five minutes. I’m sitting here at 7 p.m. trying to write a relevant piece for publication at noon tomorrow. The problem is I don’t know what is going to be relevant in seventeen minutes, let alone seventeen hours. I woke up one morning swimming in jokes about people needing their morning cup of covfefe. He fell asleep mid-tweet while trying to type the word “coverage,” right? It’s no big deal. But wait… Sean Spicer says it was deliberate and the president and a small group of people know what he meant. What in the what!? Who is the small group? Is it Boris and Natasha? This is a huge deal! (Or would be in anything other than the Trump news cycle.) So I should write about covfefe, right? But to be relevant by tomorrow, I would literally have to invent a new word, expect the leader of the free world to tweet it while falling asleep, then have his team make up an excuse that raises way more questions than it answers. By the time you read this, covfefe will regrettably be old news. Maybe I should write about Kathy Griffin. It only took a few hours of daylight to be reminded that she isn’t funny. She’s apparently as mindless as she is hard on the ears. Hiring her was the second worst decision CNN has made next to having panels made up of fourteen people. We SHOULD be having a debate about free speech and how you can say insanely vile and disgusting things, right? Not happening. Instead, I’ve got to guess who will have their feelings hurt tomorrow. We are pulling out of the Paris climate accord. It’s the most nonsensical move since making up a story about covfefe being some codeword. Maybe I should write about that. The future is here, people. We have self driving cars, (fake) hoverboards, and my grandmother has figured out how to text me at 5:30 a.m. Meanwhile, rather than embracing our newfound renewable energy, we’re going to reinvest in a 2nd century technology. Yeah, that’ll show em’ who’s boss. Any other time and it would be the story of the year, yet I can’t even decide if it was the story of the day. So here we are, people of the future… although it feels like President Trump wants us to be the people of the past. If I had to guess (and I do), I’d bet that by the time you read this we will have all washed down our bacon, egg, and cheeflablah biscuit with some covfefe, opened our eyes to the fact that Gilbert Gottfried is obnoxious, and hopped in our horse-drawn carriages to fetch some asbestos-flavored lead paint to snack on. Oh, and the coral reefs are dying. ••• Will Lochamy is co-host of the radio show, “Oh Brother Radio” on Birmingham Mountain Radio (107.3FM).
