The sight of grown men actively beclowning themselves is rarely a pleasant sight. However, there is an exception when the people engaged in the activity write ridiculous stuff to please their paymaster.
Elon Musk’s revelations about the hyper-partisan decision-making process which led Twitter to actively meddle in the 2020 election by working with the FBI, and quite possibly other agencies, to suppress the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or rather, the emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a) Hunter Biden was engaged in corruption and influence peddling and b) Joe Biden, in the form of his alter ego “the Big Guy,” received a rake-off from that corruption. That information could very well have decided the election if, for instance, the media called out Joe Biden on his lies about the laptop and emails.
I'm Old Enough To Remember…
When Trump Called Out The Laptop From Hell…
Biden Lied To The World… The Corrupt Media Played Along… pic.twitter.com/ic2pFyprUP
— Spiro (@Spiro_Ghost) December 3, 2022
Now that the laptop has been authenticated by at least one major news organization (CBS Authenticates Hunter Biden’s Laptop and Signals the Wheels on the Bus Are Coming for Joe), all they have left is to defend Hunter Biden’s mental fragility:
Elon is spending the evening trying to embarrass someone who’s struggled with addiction so that he can juice engagement on the platform he bought that’s hemorrhaging money.
Great guy. pic.twitter.com/PP5JC115sO
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) December 2, 2022
And to try and ridicule the information.
“Why MAGA & Elon Musk are so adamant that people be able to post photos of Hunter’s johnson is something that probably should be explored with their preachers or psychiatrists, but it is certainly not a matter for constitutional scholars or litigators.” https://t.co/u6MDMpXxVI
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 3, 2022
That’s right. The Pierre Omidyar-funded Democrat outlet, The Bulwark, has actually posted a story headlined, “No, You Do Not Have a Constitutional Right to Post Hunter Biden’s Dick Pic on Twitter.” Now, I’m sure Tim Miller takes second place to no one in his appreciation of male genitalia (NTTAWWT), but the kindergarten attempt to make fun of the stakes is not only wrong, factually, but misses the entire point.
First off, I’m not seeing a groundswell of demand outside the offices of The Bulwark and perhaps the Lincoln Project to ogle “dick pics.” There are undoubtedly a few members of a protected class who have put those images in their personal archives, but I’d hazard a guess that the number is minimal. The larger lesson (or maybe a smaller lesson, as I have not personally viewed the images in question) is that if you don’t want pictures of your penis circulating on the internet, don’t take photos of your penis. Miller, in a stereotypically dishonest Bulwark way of framing, has equated Twitter stomping on images of Hunter Biden’s penis to their prohibiting the sharing of news about the story. And he’s using the rationale for the former to justify the latter.
This defense seems to be gaining currency among the stump-broke, pseudo-conservative, dark-money-funded media.
Deleting pornographic pictures of Hunter Biden was appropriate. Twitter's suppression of the New York Post story about Hunter’s laptop was far less defensible. But no amount of misguided rhetoric can transform a Twitter story into a government scandal. https://t.co/srFyYcFyDX
— David French (@DavidAFrench) December 3, 2022
It was funny seeing Elon Musk take time out to dunk on the noted combat veteran and champion of the “blessings of liberty.”
And, in doing so, destroy their credibility
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 4, 2022
No, it was not appropriate to delete the images.
This is a lazy attempt to revise history.
The New York Post was censored for reporting on documents obtained from Hunter Biden’s personal hard drive. The HD also contained pornographic pictures that the Post did not publish.
Getting it straight is not that hard. https://t.co/lxdJfRWj5a
— Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC) December 4, 2022
The images were not stand-alone images sent to a paramour and then spread in “revenge porn.” The images were on a hard drive, along with evidence of sex trafficking, drug use, influence peddling, and financial fraud. They, in the words of Law and Order’s Jack McCoy, “go to character.” By themselves, there might have been a case for their suppression had they not belonged to the son of a presidential candidate. There is as much legitimacy in suppressing those images as in suppressing any other content from that laptop. The images did not belong to Twitter, and under Section 230, they had no legal responsibility for them or to stop them.
The argument that it was okay for the Biden campaign to demand the laptop contents be suppressed is also specious. It might not be a “constitutional” violation for the Biden campaign and Twitter to work hand-in-glove, but there are very definitely issues of illegal campaign coordination and in-kind donations. What Miller seems to want us to forget as he’s dragging us into his hobby is that we know the FBI was involved in this decision. We are really sure that 51 “former intelligence officials” didn’t sign a letter saying the laptop was probably Russian disinformation unless representatives from some of those agencies were touching base with Twitter and Facebook making the same claim.
The only reason to interfere with the flow of information from and about Hunter Biden’s laptop was to help Joe Biden. Mission accomplished. Now the cretins who did it are claiming moral superiority by virtue of their interference in a federal election. No. Not happening. None of it works that way.
