Giuliani Press Conference [11/19/20)

This is potentially the most important media event in the history of the United States of America.

https://www.oann.com/rudy-giuliani-and-trump-campaigns-legal-team-hold-press-conference/

Let’s use Google (please, no laughing yet…) to determine how “top” news organizations are covering a mass criminal conspiracy (if proven) which involved installing a losing candidate (Joe Biden) in the place of the candidate who actually won (Donald Trump).

That would be a big story, if true, right?

Let’s do a quick survey.

Because it’s the job of the news media to parse the one-hour-and-thirty-minute event and give American citizens an overview of its salient points.

Google search result for “giuliani press conference” videos page 1 (let’s presume a person might want to watch the whole thing for themselves):

–Result 1. Located on YouTube (owned, like Google, by Alphabet Inc. [how convenient]). Nine minutes. Key term: “hair dye”. Content: Jimmy Fallon

–Result 2. CNN. Two minutes and 42 seconds. Key term: “baseless claims”. Hey, CNN: do you treat all affidavits with such blanket dismissal?

–Result 3: Located on YouTube (part of Google conglomerate Alphabet Inc). Thirteen minutes and 51 seconds. Key term: “insane”. Content: Seth Meyers.

Let’s pause a moment.

Are we to assume that Google is impartially allowing the “most popular” results to rise to the top of their search here? We are presented with 2-out-of-3 results which directly benefit the search engine’s holding company (Alphabet) by way of a subsidiary (YouTube).

Sure, people like a good laugh.

But are comedy monologues usually the most popular when something as serious as a national criminal conspiracy comes to light?

To make fun of Rudy’s running hair dye is an ad hominem attack. Sure, it’s in good fun, right? But did Jimmy Fallon make fun of the room full of press who followed Rudy’s impassioned feat of logic with inane non sequiturs? I doubt it.

To characterize Rudy’s press conference as “insane” is to characterize Rudy himself as “insane”. This is, again, an ad hom attack which conveniently avoids addressing the event on any intellectual merit whatsoever.

Then, strangely, we have “news” wedged in between these two self-dealing redirects by Google. News in the form of CNN. What we appear to find is that, either A: CNN is the most popular news network in the USA (not true based on television ratings, financial solvency, etc.), or B: Google is pushing the views of a not-widely-popular network as being WILDLY-POPULAR.

Well, at least we can hope the title of said news coverage retains the appearance of impartiality.

Nope.

CNN’s video is titled, “Rudy Giuliani spouts baseless claims at news conference.”

Well, then.

That’s all we need to know, right?

Might as well not even watch it.

…the hour-and-a-half version, much less the 2′(!)42″ version.

CNN is really providing a service here.

They are thinking FOR US.

The video is just complementary.

The title says all you need to know.

There is no subtle shading.

It is black and white.

To CNN (at least), it is clear that Rudy Giuliani’s sworn affidavits are “baseless claims”.

How, I wonder, did CNN come to this conclusion?

Are they able to, point by point, refute each affidavit in a mere two minutes and 42 seconds?

Perhaps an auctioneer delivers the story using logic of which Bertrand Russell would even be proud?

But I doubt it.

And I won’t waste my time being burned again by CNN.

CNN is worse that the village idiot.

Because CNN is not unaware of what it is doing.

–Result 4: Ohhh…The Guardian. U.K. The king’s English. They talk in that proper, fastidious accent. Surely they will be measured and retrospect in their approach. Forty-three seconds. Key terms: “sweaty”, “hair malfunction”, “bizarre”. Right. As has been said recently, your opinion stopped mattering to us in 1776.

–Result 5: People magazine. One hour, 48 minutes, and 39 seconds (no less). Sounds promising. Key terms: “hair dye” and “sweat”. The title is already telling me what to think. It’s already telling me what to focus on. I don’t like that.

–Result 6: Newsweek. A whole whopping 26 SECONDS! Video title: “Tucker Carlson defends Rudy Giuliani”. God forbid…

–Result 7: Located on YouTube [where’s Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?]. The Young Turks. Eight minutes and 45 seconds. Key term: “literally melting down”. Again, ad hominem attack to cast aspersion on the facts presented.

Hey. Rudy is old. Lights can be hot. Lawyers have dropped off his team because THEIR LIVES HAVE BEEN THREATENED. Oh, and there’s this little thing called WORK. Work generates HEAT. A heated human body naturally SWEATS to cool itself down. When’s the last time you saw a “journalist” sweat?

Result 8: Sky News Australia. Surely the Aussies will offer a different take in their one minute 46 second video. Key term: “hair dye sweat”. Ok, maybe not.

Result 9: CNN. Again!!! Wow…they must really be popular. Let me guess: they give Rudy a fair shake here and, therefore, the video is lower rated by Google (and, you know, “we the people” who utilize this fair and balanced search engine)? Again, with CNN, the title says it all (no need even watching [apparently]): “CNN reporter debunks Giuliani’s dangerous and false claims.” Wow. So Pamela Brown (whoever the fuck that is) takes just four minutes (!) to refute an hour-and-a-half press conference from extremely literate speakers (not limited to Giuliani, but including lucid delineation by Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis).

So, let me get this straight: is the whole world (and particularly the United States [whose election has just been stolen by criminal conspiracy]) just a bunch of fart-joke-laughing middle schoolers who gleaned nothing from this masterpiece of oratory other than from the 10 minutes (out of NINETY MINUTES) where Rudy’s hair dye ran down the sides of his face?

I get it. Funny. Ha ha. That’s right. Let’s just discount the whole thing. Let’s discount “America’s Mayor” who saw us through the dark days of 9/11/01. Let’s just take a big dump on him. Let’s kick this prostate cancer survivor in the nuts because, God forbid, he uses hair dye. And, GOD FORBID, he sweats when he works.

For this audience:

a Rudy Giuliani fart is more literate–more articulate than a Joe Biden State of the Union address could ever be (God forbid the later actually happens).

Result 10: Located on YouTube [$]. Bloomberg. One hour, 48 minutes, and 39 seconds. Hmmm…same exact feed as People? Wow. That said, it’s the only result on page one which seems to even attempt taking Rudy as seriously as CNN takes the Green New Deal.

If you’re not much on videos, then read. This seems to be a fairly accurate transcript (though I have just browsed the top portion [after having watched the entire press conference]).

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/rudy-giuliani-trump-campaign-press-conference-transcript-november-19-election-fraud-claims

I believe the three people who spoke (Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis) will go down in American history as heroes for what they did today. And so will those working in the shadows (like Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing).

This is the most epic break in the matrix (or Debord’s “spectacle”, whichever you prefer) in modern American history. It will be remembered that it all started here.

-PD

I fidanzati [1963)

This is a fucking depressing film.

I don’t think I’ve ever started like that before.

Because it matters.  How you start.

But maybe it’s just a mirror.

This film.

I can imagine few pieces of cinema summing up my life at this moment quite as well as I fidanzati does.

I’m sure there’s a dangling modifier in there somewhere.

But what about the welder?

The man adrift.

Sent to some godforsaken place for the company.

I made the right decision.  But I went to the wrong place.

Unfortunately, there is no separating the two.

Work.

Too much work.

All of our thoughts occupied with work.

And what do we get out of the equation?

Nothing.

Almost nothing.

Might as well be nothing.

It is a particularly Italian version of hell on display in I fidanzati.

Ermanno Olmi was a brilliant director here.

And he lives.  84 years young.

Sure.

Some things end well.

Young girls like happy endings.

But this one is hard to get over.

It’s really harrowing having nothing to live for.

And how would I know that?

You have a phone.  It doesn’t ring.

In fact, you sometimes wonder whether your messages get delivered at all.

You have a heart.

When is the last time someone spoke to your heart?

I understand.

We are shackled.  Paralyzed.  Crippled.

Life is sucked out of us like a lemon peel in the Sicilian heat.

No, I don’t understand.

Is this how karma works?

Surely this jungle will spare me.

I can think of Anna Canzi.

Her face is a melody.

And I relate to those sad cheeks.

You keep writing because you haven’t yet expressed it.

It.

That which you need to get off your soul.

Soul.

That living feeling inside you.

Primitive man suffering with his superstitions.

Poor man paying for his ignorance.

Not all are willfully unprepared.

What could have prepared you for this situation?

Other than this situation?

That is Situationism.

Science and humanities will argue that metaphor…or rather analogy.

That this will teach you.

It is like this.  And like that.  But unlike the other thing.

No.

I disagree.

It is unlike anything I’ve ever known.

Youth was lonely.

This is vicious.

There is.

A bar down the street.

But only in the movies.

Yet here it is exposed for what it really would be.

Empty.

Loud music and louder lights.  Life!  Vitality!  Excitement!

Inside is an old woman at a cash register.

There is a little metal display tree with ballpoint pens on one side.

The rest of the lopsided taunt is vacant.

And then the little boy.

Getting ahead in life.

Like Michele Sindona.

Making the espresso.  Quicker!  Faster!

Washing the dishes…

And hauling the fruit back and forth…

The citrus.

The service.

The difference in price from one location to another.

Goldfinger.

They Drive by Night

Good god…

It doesn’t get much more depressing.

And there should be some positive message to end it off.

And there is.

Which makes it even more sad.

Because the film was running long.

And maybe it won’t win shit at Cannes.

Did you ever think about that?

So then you have a depressing film on your hands for domestic audiences.

And they spend their hard-earned cash.

And what the fuck is this shit?

Oh…Anna, Monica…don’t go see this film.

It is so depressing!

But there’s the answer.

I fidanzati succeeds because it shows a side of life we don’t want to see.

What?

It succeeds…53 years later.

Because it was true.

It stuck to its guns.

It was meaningful.

So many other films from that year…

Utterly pointless.

Diversions.

Sad candy.

But here…

Yeah.  It’s a bummer.

But it’s real.

You can stare up at it and wonder how Signor Olmi painted such color in black and white.

How he lovingly distinguished gray from grey…and Juan from Gris.

Is it the same?

From language to language?

Gray?

Even within the Commonwealth…

We damned Americans.

No.

And yes.

This.

Sadness transcends.

No explanation needed.

The machines rule us.

Time is our master.

Money mocks our fragility.

On every continent.

An indispensable story.

 

-PD