Brace Yourself for the Cheapfakes

Plus: The pro-Hamas protests turn even more vile

Happy Father’s Day, which we will mark with the obligatory dog pictures before we get into the darker corners of our political culture.

Leo is our boys’ oldest friend. Here’s his last visit to see his buddy, Pete.

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Leo doesn’t think Milwaukee is a “horrible” city.

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This is his “I’m ready to go fishing” look.

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And, from this morning, Eli needed comforting after he heard thunder.

Here come the Cheapfakes

ICYMI: Here was Murdoch World’s screaming cover story, spawned by a dishonestly cropped video clip that got millions of views.

Even Xitter’s community quickly fact-checked this bullshit:

But as Mark Twain probably didn’t say: A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on.

Welcome to the world of Cheapfakes. The Wapo has a deep dive into the shallow minds behind new fakery and flummery:

This past week, the RNC feed has misleadingly called attention to two video clips of Biden. One was so distorted that it resulted in a “community note” on the X platform calling out its dishonesty. But the RNC’s dismal track record — which we have highlighted on multiple occasions — has not stopped right-leaning outfits from echoing the RNC’s framing and reinforcing its narrative that Biden has lost a step….

The New York Post video on social media was a vertical edit, which further removed the context of Biden’s conversation — nothing of the panoramic view to the right and left can be seen. This is a good example of how cutting a viral “moment” vertically, without taking into account what’s going on in the rest of the frame, can alter perception….

The use of these clips is an especially pernicious couple of examples of manipulated video — what we label “isolation” under our guide to manipulated video — because it’s intended to create a false narrative that doesn’t reflect the event as it occurred. The RNC and its avid followers in the conservative media earn Four Pinocchios.

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Speaking of fakery, your weekend must read from Renée DiResta: How I Became ‘CIA Renee’ - The Atlantic

Exit take: Brace yourself for more of this. And worse.

Appalling and Vile

I’m tempted to say that the pro-Hamas protests took an ugly turn in recent days, but there has always been a morally depraved undertow to some of the protests. Four days after the October 7 terrorist attack, when I wrote about the vile rhetoric of some of the anti-Israel protesters, I added this caveat:

What follows is not an indictment of “all leftists,” or of those who sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians. It is, instead, a description of the moral depravity of those who actually celebrated, downplayed, rationalized, or ignored the atrocities in front of them.

And a reminder: We never promised you a safe space.

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Once again, please spare me the whataboutism. This was beyond appalling.

The Biden White House issued a quick condemnation.

In a statement Tuesday, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates called the demonstrations “horrifying behavior.”

“The events at yesterday’s memorial to those murdered at the Nova music festival are outrageous and heartbreaking,” Bates said.

“Profane banners of terrorist organizations should not be flown anywhere, especially not on American streets. Antisemitism has no place in the United States. This horrifying behavior is all the more reason for ‘Americans to stand united against antisemitism and hate in all its forms,’ like President Biden urgently called for at the Holocaust Memorial Museum last month,” he added.

The protests took place Monday night; a large crowd gathered outside the exhibit, where they lit flares and chanted “long live the intifada,” CBS reported. New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday said he was “extremely troubled” by the protesters, adding, “you cannot call for peace while you’re celebrating what happened on October 7,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

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And this:

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And there was this: “Pro-Palestinian protesters vandalize homes of Brooklyn Museum director, board members.”

Vandals defaced the front of the homes with red paint and also painted inverted red triangles on the doors, which Jewish advocate Aviva Klompas described as a “symbol used by terrorists to mark targets they want to take out.”…

At least one of the addresses hit was an apartment building on Fifth Ave. on the Upper East Side, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said.

“This is not legitimate protest. This is not free speech. This is vile antisemitism making Jews unsafe,” he wrote on X. “We cannot turn a blind eye to this.”

Local residents said they were outraged by the hate display.

“It’s terrible what happened,” said Kenneth Albert, 69, a neighbor. “it looks like it’s antisemitic because the word zionist is in it and then they had a flag here. I have a front apartment, but I didn’t hear anything last night.”

Exit take: To put it mildly, this is not winning friends — or advancing the cause of peace — in any way.

Nota Bene

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Finally, Happy Father’s Day to best father ever, Jay Sykes 1922-1985

(Portrait by Carrie Schwerm Hauger)