Liberal pundits, heal thyself

I couldn’t resist rebutting the claptrap of one of Substack’s (allegedly) rising stars.

In the past, true or classical liberals weren’t like they are today.

Bob Dunning’s more liberal than I’m conservative. According to Substack, Mr. Dunning is also one of Substack’s rising all-stars. 

From Mr. Dunning’s Substack, I can keep abreast of liberal thinking. As you’ll see at the end of this piece, I can also try to make sense of non-sensical Substack metrics.

As one might predict, Dunning’s views are diametrically opposed to my own and, like all liberal pundits, reek of hypocrisy, double standards and lies of omission.

As the following excerpts reveal, Dunning is not a happy pundit these days:

“As I watched Donald Trump's victory speech, I had to burp when he said he would "heal" the country,” wrote Dunning on Wednesday.

“This from a man who the day before the election told a packed rally that Nancy Pelosi is a "B-word" (and actually mouthed the word) and whose running mate on the day before the election told a crowd that the sitting vice president of the United States was "trash" and that he was going to "take out the trash" on election night.

“Those guys have a lot of kissing and making up to do before this nation heals …”

Let the rebuttal begin …

I don’t always use what-aboutisms to debunk trashy essays, but I am today. 

Let’s concede that Trump called Nancy the B-word and our future VP called our current VP “trash” (which, FWIW, is refuse he did “take out”).

I believe I’m being fair and accurate when I note it’s Dunning’s team that’s incessantly compared Trump to Hitler (which, for the record, is about as vile a political slur as one can make.)

While some Republican leaders think Kamala Harris and her crowd are “trashy” people, this is a mild pejorative compared to Democrats who spent four years calling people like myself hate-mongers, racists, extremists, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, science deniers, grave threats to democracy and “deplorables.”

The last label comes from one of the Democratic Party’s Mt. Rushmore nonimees, Hillary Clinton, words that probably didn’t advance our national “healing” project.

Here’s Hillary’s full quote (emphasis added):

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause].”

My comment: Note that these words drew laughter and applause from this Democratic audience.

Hillary then defined deplorables as “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it …”

To reinforce her efforts at reconciliation, Hillary added: “some of those folks … are irredeemable.”

Me: According to Tuesday’s election results, at least 72 million Americans are “Trump supporters.” If “half” of them are deplorable citizens, that’s 36 million Americans Hillary labelled as racist, sexists, homophobic, etc.

Trump only called one Democrat “a bitch.” 

Furthermore, one can make a strong case this is an apt descriptive modifier … Or at least one could understand why Donald Trump might use this word to describe this particular political rival.

After all, Mrs. Pelosi spent the last eight years using non-stop “lawfare” and over-the-top rhetoric to get Trump impeached, sent to prison and/or break him with legal bills. 

Even Mr. Dunning would probably agree with me that Nancy Pelosi can’t stand Donald Trump and did all she could to make his life a living hell. 

This context provided, it’s not terribly surprising Trump would call such a person the B-word. (I might have called her worse).

Still, Trump didn’t call “half” of Democratic supporters the bile Hillary called Trump’s legion of supporters.

Regarding JD Vance calling Kamala “trash,” I’d argue … if a dirty shoe fits …

As I pointed out in a couple of columns, Kamala became a political star only because she had a two-year affair with Willie Brown, the political king and  queenmaker in California and Kamala’s boy friend for two years… while Brown was still legally married.

Some might say this is “trashy” behavior.

Once Kamala was designated a rising political star, she married Doug Emhoff, a man who had an extra-marital affair with his children’s nanny, whom he got pregnant, and perhaps paid to abort the unborn child. This caused his wife to divorce him and no doubt humiliated and traumatized his children.

Our future Second Gentleman then maybe pulled strings to buy his mistress’s silence and/or set her up with a cushy job with a media company owned by Amazon and perhaps helped this former teacher’s aid buy a $1.4 million house in the Hamptons.

After he was single again, Emhoff assaulted one of his next girl friends in public at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kamala presumably knew all this and still married the guy - behavior that meets many people’s definition of the word “trashy.” 

But, wait, there’s more …

Also, by the third or fourth month of his administration, Kamala Harris must have known Joe Biden had lost his mental faculties. 

However, per Kamala, this was no big deal and certainly not a detail American citizens needed to know. 

How does one describe a politician who is/was eager to cover-up such a shocking scandal? 

Adjectives that do NOT come to mind would include “pristine,” “noble,” and “honorable.”

To me at least, any political leaders this chicken sh*t and duplicitous need to be taken out with the daily trash. (I’ll work on my own healing columns later).

I’d also add that liberal “journalists” who refrain from mentioning these details have trashed the concept of a “watchdog” press corp.

I agree with Mr. Dunning that the nation needs to “heal,”but for some reason I do not think Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and our other magnanimous Democrat leaders were ever going to lead this healing effort.

RFK, Jr. is always an easy target for cheap shots …

Dunning - the Great Advocate for Healing and politicians exhibiting class - added this cheap shot “word of advice” in his election re-cap:

“... (It’s) Probably best to get whatever vaccinations you think you might need before new U.S. Surgeon General RFK Jr. makes it a felony for anyone to give you a shot.”

My comment: Except for Donald Trump, nobody in America has been as falsely maligned, slandered and censored as RFK, Jr. who, ironically enough, tried to take the high road in his presidential campaign.

Maybe this was Dunning’s effort at humor, but Kennedy’s never said he was going to “make it a felony” to get a vaccine.

All he’s said about said shots is they should be voluntary and the government shouldn’t make people get a shot they’ve decided they either don’t need or think might be dangerous.

In fact, on the vaccine issue, Kennedy is simply “pro-choice.” 

It’s Dunning, Biden, Harris et al who are brazen hypocrites when it comes to espousing the view that American citizens should NOT be allowed to make their own choices about what substances get injected into their blood streams. 

Again, for the record, it was supporters of Harris who said deplorable anti-vaxxers should not be treated in hospitals and should be fired and apply for welfare.

Playing the Nazi card …

Dunning added a reference to the “Trump-is-a-Nazi” narrative/meme when he suggested Americans might want to flee the country to avoid the coming concentration camps.

“Also, updating your passport might not be a bad idea, “ he wrote. “Unless you are here illegally, in which case you probably don't need a passport to be escorted out of the country by the newly sworn-in Trump Troops.”

Apparently, Dunning and the legions of other anti-MAGA journalists really do think they might need to get out of the country to escape the Gestapo Trump is somehow going to activate from the ranks of government bureaucrats (the overwhelming percentage of whom also despise Trump).

Again, for the record, the quarantine camps (drawn up by public health experts getting their guidance from the WHO and NIH) weren’t conceived by Donald Trump appointees.

And what would be wrong with using federal law enforcement officials, or even military troops, to remove people who are illegally in this country?

If a few of America’s 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants are deported, they probably won’t self-deport. Presumably, it would take some unit of government “troops” to send them back home.

*** The share button is perhaps the best weapon for contrarian authors hoping to boost readership numbers … so thanks for sharing and cross-posting.) ***

Mr. Dunning’s Substack metrics are hard to explain …

The other reason I subscribe to Mr. Dunning’s Substack (for free) is because I think his subscription numbers and published Substack metrics are highly dubious.

The headline for the above-mentioned article is “Trying to explain the unexplainable.” For what it’s worth,  I can’t (plausibly) explain the numbers Mr. Dunning’s Substack supposedly has. 

I first discovered “The Wary One” because Substack’s PR Department emailed a feature story about Dunning to Substack’s 17,000-plus authors. 

According to the Substack article I wrote about here, Dunning had been fired from his small California community newspaper, The Davis Enterprise. 

The 77-year-old columnist then started a Substack newsletter and in - two months - already had “thousands” of paid subscribers. (“Thousands” - plural - means Mr. Dunning has at least 2,000 paid subscribers).

This “Substack success story” caught my attention because I too had been a well-known local journalist and columnist in my home town and I too was considering starting a local Substack newsletter (which I’ve now done).

But, alas, I’m one of those MAGA deplorables … and even more conservative than Donald Trump.

My metrics compared to Bob Dunning’s metrics …

Out of curiosity, I’ve compared my Substack metrics to Mr. Dunning’s.

While Mr. Dunning’s ultra-liberal Substack generated 2,000 paid subscribers in two months, “Bill Rice, Jr.’s Newsletter” - which I started 18 months before Dunning’s newsletter - topped out at 311 and has been going backwards for many months.

I might be out on the street today if I hadn’t started The Troy Citizen local Substack two weeks ago. That Substack has already generated 47 new paid subscriptions, a figure that makes me want to dance a little two-step.

However, 47 paid subscriptions pales in comparison to Mr. Dunning’s instant 2,000-plus paid subscribers.

I certainly don’t begrudge anyone else’s Substack success, I just don’t think the metrics I’ve seen at The Wary One are easily “explainable.”

An ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison …

For example, we can actually do an “apples-to-apples” comparison on Substack election stories since Mr. Dunning and I both posted election re-cap articles Wednesday.

My election story now has 99 “likes,” 58 comments and 13 cross-posts. Mind you, I only have 298 paid subscribers (not 2,000-plus like Mr. Dunning).

Mr. Dunning’s election story (referenced above) generated 27 likes, 16 comments and one cross post.

Take-away: At best, Bill Rice Jr’s Newsletter has 15 percent of the paid subscribers as Mr. Dunning, but I still had 3.6X as many “likes” and my story was cross-posted 12 more times than my liberal colleague.

How does one explain that?

While I know from Substack’s glowing feature story on Mr. Dunning that he had at least 2,000 paid subscribers, I didn’t know how many total subscribers he had.

But I now know because I just clicked on this author’s name and his number of total subscribers popped up.

Per this clicking exercise, Mr. Dunning has only 5,400 total subscribers (compared to my 6,685).

This also seems odd to me as this would mean that Mr. Dunning’s ratio of paid subscribers to total subscribers is at least 37 percent (2000 paid/5,400 total).

My ratio of total subscribers to paid subscribers is 4.4 percent (298 paid/6,685 total). Per my research, very few Substack authors with at least “hundreds” of paid subscribers have a paid ratio of more than 4 percent.

One would think if at least 2,000 subscribers were paying for Mr. Dunning’s content, he’d generate more than a couple dozen “likes” and a lot more than 10 to 15 Reader Comments.

Some reasons must explain this …

I say this is “unexplainable,” but there must be some explanation for these odd anomalies.

Maybe ultra-liberal Substack authors do have a paid ratio that’s at least 9-fold higher than “conservative” authors.

Maybe liberals don’t make comments as much as conservatives and rarely if ever cross-post a colleague’s articles.

Maybe if I was liberal, I too would already have “thousands” of paid subscribers at my original Substack and my new one.

Or … maybe something funny is going on and these Substack metrics aren’t on the up-and-up.

My conclusions …

I recently wrote a story about 200,000 Washington Post readers (allegedly) cancelling their subscriptions when the newspaper wouldn’t endorse Kamala Harris.

Several Post columnists resigned in protest, saying they were worried anti-MAGA journalists would no longer have a “voice.”

My conclusion is that, on Substack, the “voice” that now apparently gets the most paid subscribers (and thus money) is the voice that attacks Donald Trump, JD Vance and RFK, Jr.

Trust me here: Even in the coming Nazi Trump administration, this cacophony of liberal voices will never have to worry about being silenced. 

And if anyone thinks these fair and balanced “journalists” are going to quit ridiculing and attacking Donald Trump and his supporters and begin promoting “national healing,” I have a prestigious major newspaper I’ll sell you.

***

(One always needs to have goals. My current subscription goal is to get back to 311 paid subscribers, but first I have to get two more to get back to 300 - a figure that would no doubt make Bob Dunning blush with embarrassment.) 

Also, thank goodness for my generous Ko-Fi supporters …

One-time Ko-Fi donations greatly appreciated!