The dumbest loudmouths in running choose to cripple themselves further by embracing disinformation

The arrogantly yet spinelessly ignorant are unprepared to swim in even the shallow end of the delivery-information pool. They even brag about it

I paid no attention yesterday to any of the yutzes pretending to grieve over the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol Building. Instead, I thought back to an officer who died the day after the chaos from multiple strokes, according to a medical examiner.

Here’s what NPR had to say about that…over three months after the officer’s death.

If you remember the name Brian Sicknick, it’s probably because in the immediate aftermath of the tumult, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt simply made up a story, or ran with an obviously unverified one from “officials” who were likely FBI or CIA sources.

Conveniently, Officer Sicknick was not a Trump supporter, allowing for the NYT to amplify the rage surrounding the completely fictitious attack its reporters so nonchalantly described.

Did The New York Times already know it would soon need to walk this claim back? After all, Sicknick has relatives, and if this reporting turned out to be false, one of them would surely come forward with any details the media got wrong.

Apparently so, as this was the headline over the same article less than four hours later:

But The New York Times knew that this didn’t matter. It was already over; the propaganda campaign has already worked. Every “liberal” media outlet takes its cue from the Times, which has access to the best lying intel-community sources and members of U.S. Congress, and these had already acted on the bullshit story.

This approxiately is what you would have seen had you performed a Google News search on January 13, 2021 using the terms “Brian Sicknick,” “head,” and “fire extinguisher.” But it’s two years later, and those dozens and dozens of stories remain live on the Web uncorrected. Including this one:

If you did follow the Officer Sicknick story it was happening, you may remember an entire second false narrative developing about Sicknick dying instead as result of being sprayed with pepper spray, bear spray, or both. This was bullshit propagated by the U.S. Department of Justice as a means of shifting the inevitably collapsing “fire extinguisher” narrative in the direction of a more mundane end to Officer Sicknick’s life. (Funny how the DoJ, which in theory oversees the FBI and answers to the President of the United States, and The New York Times seemed to be in perfect synchrony throughout.)

Obviously, anyone who believed these stories was an utter fool, because the second one clearly underscored that the first must have been made up and the same sources were promulgating both narratives. Innocent reporting mistakes—including the basic confusion under which most modern-day corporate “reporters” admittedly labor—could not have led to the wildly changing stories the media were circulating.

Yet the bullshit continues to the present day, all of it catering to the “liberal” viewers of CNN and MSNBC whose minds have been turned to toxic waste silos by disinformation (intentional misinformation) for years on end.

As I said, I tried to avoid watching creatures like the husk of Joe Biden—already the worst president in American history in what amounts to a solo Special Olympics time-trial—address the public yesterday. But I saw a clip of him lying about five Capitol Police officers dying as a result of the “insurrection” on January 6, 2021. The four apart from Sicknick all committed suicide sometime after the events at the Capitol, and Biden shamelessly and unjustifiably called them victims of the “insurrection” and hence of the “insurrectionists.”

I keep hoping to actually watch this asshole fall down and smash his headlike protuberance on the dais on the way down, just to see of this stops the battery that’s obviously been planted in him somewhere. And Hakeem Jeffries, the Wall Street fellator who now ranks as the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, repeated the same lie yesterday to either the same or a different crowd of hand-wringing goobers in D.C.

Now, this is not the first time I have called attention to the categorical unreliability of the corporate media. I just honestly wonder how anyone who reads this newsletter or anything like it can continue even allowing their televisions to display CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News (Tucker Carlson may appear to be on a reality winning streak now, but he’s still just a tool at root) and hence reward the advertisers on these networks by keeping ratings high. Why the fuck would any sane American want these companies to remain solvent, much less watch their output? And how can anyone read The New York Times or The Washington Post unless actively seeking a lower IQ level?

These outlets are all corrupted by the government and billionaire money. All of them. Accept it and start ignoring them all.

This systemic failure has consequences in the distance-running barkosphere, because for whatever reason, the fitness media is dominated by people who vote Democrat or consider themselves progressive in the same way the hunting and fishing media is (I’m guessing) dominated by people who vote Republican or consider themselves conservative. As a result of the collapse of the “liberal” media, almost everyone in the running media has been madly amplifying fake news for years, often if not almost always obliviously rather than purposefully—a situation exacerbated by the influx of “liberals” into the running media who are just not the best thinkers.

Erin Strout is a mean little dipshit who used to work for Women’s Running. She did a lot of interviews with pro runners, who in most cases have contracts that require them to give interviews to certain outlets. Because WR is among the many dubious beneficiaries of Phil Knight’s “Magic Boost” propaganda arm, Strout has gotten to talk to a lot of elite women (and others) who otherwise would have laughed at her interview requests, at least the smart ones. Strout’s social feed is a listless yet pungent fart-groan. She loves to see men canceled for spurious reasons, ignores or tacitly approves of doping, and has been at the forefront of declaring that “women” whose cocks and balls flop around in locker rooms (depending on specific pelvic moments, of course) should be eligible for female sports. She's also working on some kind of book, a grimly entertaining prospect in itself, like a blind epileptic aspiring to become a sharpshooter.

Here was her helpful input yesterday on the events of January 6, 2021.

Strout was among the many “liberals” who was so freaked out by the recent transfer of Twitter to new ownership that she was practically funereal about her impending flight from the platform, which of course has become a sullen squat.

This seems about right, too.

Strout reliably retweets the most profligate liars in the corporate media, including, fittingly, the successful-woman-bashing megapsycho Taylor Lorenz. She is the perfect tool for the uniparty establishment, motivated by resentment and emotional spasms and devoid of morals or powers of discernment. And Ben Collins, a twerp who should have the grin knocked off his face with a sandblaster from a range of six inches, is NBC’s most flagrant and insufferable liar.

Peter Bromka, an oddly enthusiastic writer for a functionally illiterate person, has often retweeted the same fake-news distribution agents. But he cannot be nearly the asshole Strout is. He may not even be an asshole at all by traditional standards. His perpetual denial of Shelby Houlihan’s doping and other reactive burbling stems mainly from the fact that he’s a dummy with impulse-control problems.

Bromka appears to have been true to his word. But first, he was part of what I consider a remarkably enlightening exchange.

Here, Jonathan Levitt, a career jocksniffer who peddles a bloodwork scam called Inside Tracker, goes out of his way to retweet someone whose strong work ethic he disagrees with. He then admits he has no idea who @Jason is, but after Bromka assures him @Jason is “a bafoon,” he announces he’s muting the guy. It was as if the whole lot of them had been attacked by the suggestion that someone works harder than they do.

These proudly entitled whiners have no idea why they remain piss-ignorant about everything, as they don’t know how misinformed they are to begin with.

Being a journalist, or merely thinking your voice in any area matters, by definition means not merely exposing yourself to information sources you dislike or mistrust for whatever reason, but absolutely relishing the opportunity to explain to reality fans what’s wrong about them. A refusal to even look at outlets declared off-limits by tribal fiat is basically an advertisement of wanting to remain a fucking idiot for life. And if someone calling herself a journalist or even a podcast host takes this stance, then he or she is a noisy, confident, and defiant fucking idiot. Hence my irritation, which some of these wincing and mincing cowards still have a hard time parsing.

Ellie Pell is a special case of an idiot who has retained the mind of an eleven-year-old rich brat for some twenty years. Despite her taking a few silly cracks at me and my work here, I’d feel bad for her if she didn’t somehow combine knowing nothing at all with supreme, even parodic levels of superiority—not self-confidence, but prima facie status-claiming.

On no evidence, she simply believes she runs with wise and desirable people instead of a bunch of hollow-headed pussies who pay sleazeballs like David and Megan Roche for coaching advice.

Pell recently posted about becoming injured and cross-training for two weeks or so inside a gym. On Christmas Day, with all gyms closed, she decided to try a run on dangerously icy roads (and I know from being on them how bad they were). It took her 45 minutes, and she was quite happy with this adventure. This is someone who goes on about her recovery from eating-disorder demons and expresses something like disdain for people who are struggling.

Some runners who have worked hard to overcome their own eating disorders, and have been stable for many years, become quite incensed at people who are obviously in the grip of sheer compulsion writing publicly about being in recovery. I get that, but to me, this part of Pell’s persona is the most honest part there is, because she seems to believe it. Most of the crap she slings around is just defiant, inconsistent, reactive, Bromka-like nonsense. She may be fucked up, but this is her being as real as she can.

I think this post makes clear why I so ruthlessly target running pundits so often for stuff few if any people really care about. It’s not fundamentally because they say and write stupid things. It’s because the ones with the largest platforms are not combining lying, having no brains, and hiding from accountability because they invented it. HOKA and Brooks Running aren’t getting away with being immoral companies in isolation. These people and entities are taking cues from the media that has helped turn the United States of America into sick and rapidly fragmenting joke.

At least we’re all happy, right?