On to Whopper

Wunderkühes

On to Whopper

Groupthink

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            An interesting study, Sharing Knowledge and “Microbubbles”: Epistemic Communities and Insularity in US Political Journalism, has come out of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. It identifies a number of major clusters (microbubbles) of highbrow gossips who, collectively, have appointed themselves the center of the journalistic universe. All news that matters doesn’t come from collective discovery, but, rather, from within their tribal ranks.

            They collaborate by tweets, phone calls, late evening meals, emails, passing notes in editorial and staff meetings, focus groups, and various other and sundry outhouse links.

            The elites among the bubblers include the Washington Post, NPR, the New York Times, and NBC. The congressional flock includes Bloomberg, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press. The TV cluster has ABC, Fox, and CBS as its controlling cast. CNN sits in the privy with the flies buzzing, fiddles around with itself, and forms its own enlightened circle.

            Since this study actually came out of a journalism school rather than an ag school, the executive summary concludes that the bubbles have long formed blind spots that forever constipates the news bureaus with tedious bias and agenda narratives. In other words, the real conclusions are glossed and shaded from real earth tones. The grit and moxie to bring this to print, however, must be applauded.

            Way to go Professors Nikki Usher and Yee Man Margaret Ng!

            What we would have changed from down under the hill at the Ag school would have been to define the real problem how city stupid operators control the news. More to the point, it is long past time to recognize that line breeding works only when it works.

When it doesn’t work, genetic diversity and hybrid vigor is needed, and … it is needed in serious quantities.

Groupthink

The resignation letter penned by Bari Weiss, the outgoing opinion writer and editor from the New York Times, needs to be read in every metropolitan center over a loudspeaker.

Ms. Weiss was brought into the Times following that tired old newspaper’s horrendous misreading of the American psyche during the 2016 elections. There were lessons to be learned about what and how most of the nation, apart from the liberal eastern elites, actually think. What happened during her tenure, however, was that life went on as if 2016 didn’t happen, and the bubblers continued to pass notes on evening cocktail napkins.

Indeed, 4000 antagonistically poisonous op-eds were not just penned but run by that blue rag against the president. Ms. Weiss finally had enough and quit. She was tired of the bullying, the chronic groupthink, the progressive tribalism, and the absolute absence of imagination of the blue mob to actually understand there is life west of the Hudson and east of the San Andreas Fault.

She summed it up perfectly. The tribe does not understand that truth must be a collective effort. It does not come from an ongoing orthodoxy known only to the enlightened few that are anointed and pupated within the bubbles.

On to Whopper

Somebody needs to tell the co-chair of the board of the holding company that owns Burger King, Daniel Schwartz, that the newest evidence suggests there has been no global warming for the past 30 years.

As demonstrated by journalistic orthodoxy, however, that doesn’t matter. The bubblers still rank global warming as a continuing, foundational tenet and Burger King demonstrates distinct separation anxiety about any departure from the safety of that membership.

 Schwartz has to be yet another first cousin to somebody within groupthink’s central casting as demonstrated in his actions denigrating the hallmark ingredient to his company’s identity, beef.  He’s out there staking the future of his burger joints with a promise to bring fartless calves to his tables as if hungry teenagers in Omaha or Bakersfield actually care about such exaggerated flatulence.

His first stab at seeking the aureate, fartless title is the grossly erroneous claim that beef contributes 14.5% of greenhouse gases. That, of course, fits the narrative that beef, his most important ingredient, is bad. What is bad is his data and his message. He’s referring to a note card somebody handed him regarding world contributions.

The beef he buys, American beef, actually passes gas to the tune of a mere three percent of this country’s GHG. If the point is to spout superlatives, that is a whopping (pun intended) 5% of the comparable collective contributions by Schwartz’ human relatives.

Shame on this character!

His gambit into Charlatanville only gets worse. He intends to reduce his grill grind methane emission by 33%. By his noble efforts, the Whopper is going to pose as the model to reduce the real output of America’s beef herd farting to two percent of the nation’s GHG, and, of course, that is going to make him a better world citizen, and, at the same time, his company will sell more burgers.

He might even be the subject of one of NYT’s biased, lollypop op-eds.

The industry out here in the hinterland, of course, is wondering how we are going to raise these new world order wunderkühes. By the co-chair’s own admission from the boardroom, the key will be the input of top scientists and that secret of all secrets feed ingredient, lemon grass.

Elite scientists and lemon grass share the signpost on the road to Valhalla.

The problem is, as one industry observer notes, there is not conclusive evidence that lemon grass has any real effect on pinching bovine sphincter voluntary responses. A Cal-Davis study has found there is no real evidence lemon grass reduces methane emissions. The other study, one from Mexico, is not yet published.

The bottom line is groupthink bubbles, orthodoxy elites, and fartless whoppers are looking more and more … like three peas in the same hapless pod.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “His claim is the ration will include 100 grams (conversion is .22 pounds) of lemongrass … HUH?”