March 21, 2023

Source: Bigstock

As a schoolkid, Media Matters scribe Eric Hananoki was the Asian student in no danger of throwing off the curve.

With a face that screams “Godzilla is attacking the city; we must run!” Hananoki-san has the cushiest job ever: He watches TV for material to cancel rightists.

And last week Hananoki thought he had the scoop of a lifetime!

Hidden away in the Fox News/Dominion lawsuit document dump was a “buried text” in which Tucker Carlson approvingly sent one of my columns to a name-redacted high-profile friend, who read the column and replied that it was “a smart piece.”

Hananoki, a.k.a. Edward R. Minnow, went ballistic:

Internal text reveals Tucker Carlson reads the work of a Holocaust denier at a white nationalist hub. Fox News host Tucker Carlson shared the work of David Cole, a Holocaust denier.

Ghidorah’s coming! Run for your rife!

Except…no one cared. As Hananoki gloated, “I got you now, Tuckeru Carruson,” not a single other media outlet went for the story. One guy—Keith Olbermann—went wicky-wacky-woo over Hananoki’s “bombshell.” Olbermann tweeted an iPhone video of himself reading the story every hour on the hour for two full days. I’m not making that up. The disgraced unemployed cowherd tweeted himself in his apartment reading Hananoki’s story at the top of every hour from March 10 through March 12, pausing only from 10 p.m. March 10 through 5 a.m. March 11 to get some sleep.

Dude literally went to bed tweeting about me, got seven hours, woke up, and started again.

That’s pathetic in a way I almost don’t wanna mock. In previous columns I’ve mentioned that I was a bully in high school, but I always had one unbreakable rule: Never make fun of the retarded kid. There’s no sport in it.

Olbermann aside, Hananoki’s “bombshell” laid a tamago. But despite Hananoki’s incompetence, there are significant reasons to put the “Tucker shared a David Cole column” incident under a microscope.

First, and this is something I feel compelled to add lest Hananoki’s foolishness cause other people of note to stop sharing my pieces, I’m not a Holocaust denier. I’m just not. The last time leftist imbeciles pulled something like this, in 2019 when the Memphis NAACP and ADL tried to get a tough-on-crime, tough-on-illegal-immigration criminal court judge fired because he shared one of my columns on Facebook (“Memphis judge shares Holocaust denier’s column!”), it ended up before Tennessee’s top judicial review board (a move the leftist orgs and Memphis Democrats forced), and the board, made up of retired state supreme court justices, JAG officers, attorneys general, DAs, and FBI investigators, officially declared that I’m not a Holocaust denier.

I literally have a judicial ruling stating that I’m not a denier. Granted, Wikipedia refuses to allow any mention of that on my page. But still, it’s a fact. Hananoki’s “evidence” that I’m a denier is a 2013 Guardian piece that purposely didn’t call me a denier, and an article about that 2019 Memphis case published before the board issued its ruling (Hananoki linked to a piece saying “Memphis judge shares Holocaust denier’s work,” but he didn’t link to the conclusion of the case when the board ruled that I’m not one).

I’d love to sue, but I’d be unable to prove damages because there’s no evidence that anyone but Olbermann read Hananoki’s hit piece.

If a bonsai tree falls and nobody hears it, David Cole cannot prove monetary or reputational harm. Wikipedia refusing to mention the judicial ruling? That’s likely actionable. Sadly, rightist attorneys are too busy defending 1/6 rioters; no chance of them helping me out! Why fight a global disinformation juggernaut when you can defend a tard who beat a cop with a pole?

But here’s the bigger point: Nowhere in Hananoki’s article did he mention the topic of the column of mine that Tucker shared.

Don’t you think that’s kind of important? What was the column about?

An actual journalist would’ve answered that. The reason hack-anoki didn’t was that he wanted to create the impression that Tucker had shared something involving the Holocaust (indeed, Olbermann took the bait and made that exact claim: “Carlson shared Holocaust denial!”). But no, the column had nothing to do with the Holocaust or Jews.

“If a bonsai tree falls and nobody hears it, David Cole cannot prove monetary or reputational harm.”

It was my anti-Trump Nov. 17, 2020, piece in which I used the city of Chico, California, to illustrate a point about Trump’s absurd “stolen election” claims. Chico had gone for Trump in 2016. But in 2020, it shifted to Biden, while at the same time rightists swept the city council. In my column, I explained the anomaly (Trump losing the city while rightists swept local elections). The people of Chico—82 percent white and roughly 50/50 GOP/Dem—voted on the meat-and-potato issue of crime. Trump’s “platinum plan” reparations scheme, his pardoning of black convicts to please Kim Kardashian, his abandonment of his 2016 immigration hardline, and his descent into QAnon conspiracies, had alienated voters. All Chico GOPs who ran on crime won.

In that column, I cautioned rightists: Don’t sink further into QAnon stupidity with “stolen election” nonsense. Be noticers, not sleuthers; step away from the dry erase board and concentrate on what voters see in their daily lives:

The opposite of “noticing” is “sleuthing.” Noticing is when you see what’s right in front of you. Sleuthing, on the other hand, is all about saying, “What’s right in front of me is not enough. I wanna play superspy.” Noticing is saying, “I see what you see.” Sleuthing is saying, “I see what you can’t.” Guess which one resonates better with voters?

“We can afford to lose Trump,” I concluded. “We just can’t afford to not replace him with something better.”

Tucker shared that column the day it ran. And the response from his friend was, “That is a smart piece. Trump also became a hard person for ‘noticers’ to support with all his ridiculous false boasts.”

Tuck and his friend got it.

I urged rightists to curb the “stolen election” craziness; I warned that it would only lead to defeat and disaster. This was a month and a half before January 6th, and two years before the 2022 midterm catastrophe caused by MAGAs who put “sleuthing” before meat-and-potatoes issues.

Credit where it’s due; I had no idea Tuck shared that column until Hananoki brought it to my attention. So I went back and looked at Tucker’s shows from that week, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, through Friday the 20th. And you do see a pivot. Prior to the 17th, Tuck was echoing Trump’s “I won and dey stole it” gibberish. But after the 17th, Tuck started calling out Sidney Powell and other Trump-team all-stars for their baseless claims. But then he received a huge backlash from MAGAs, including boycott threats, and he backed off, even though we know from other texts/emails in the Dominion suit that Tuck’s skepticism about Trump remained.

That week, Nov. 17, 2020, Tuck could’ve done the right thing. We see from his appreciation of my column, and from the other emails/texts released via the Dominion suit, that privately he knew Trump was dangerous and harmful. Privately he foresaw the same disaster I did.

That would’ve been a good time for him to take another drive down to Mar-a-Lago to berate Trump in person. Carlson had done that regarding Covid, to the detriment of the nation. Had he done so the week of Nov.17, he might’ve derailed Trump from the calamitous course that led to January 6th, the Georgia runoff double loss, and the 2022 midterm catastrophe.

But Carlson couldn’t face losing MAGA viewers. Yeah, Carlson knew Trump’s insane. But he also knew that MAGAs are worse; if he didn’t atone for his crime of briefly flirting with 2020 election reality, they’d destroy him.

MAGAs can go from “you’re the greatest American hero” to “you’re a traitorous commie Soros-backed pedo” in the blink of an eye. We’re seeing that every day as MAGA ramps up its ruthless war on Ron DeSantis (and anyone on the right who dares choose DeSantis over Trump).

As I wrote in a previous column, nobody fears Trump. Nobody fears a guy whose entire arsenal is childish nicknames. What they fear is his mindless shock-troops.

They fear the anonymous losers who beat the shit out of cops to bash their way into the Capitol.

They fear the huge-audience Trump loyalists like Steve Bannon.

They fear MAGAs because MAGAs are irrational. Nothing’s more frightening than that which cannot be reasoned with. DeSantis governs flawlessly, yet he’s called “pedo Soros.” Bannon steals millions of dollars from MAGAs (proven in court), yet he’s called a hero.

That’s scary shit. Remember, back in 2020 Bannon and his incel Muslim houseboy Raheem Kassam called for me to be fired from Takimag for disagreeing with them. And boy we got emails! Furious emails. Fortunately, my employer doesn’t cave to angry mobs, so I’m still here. But at any other job, I’d have been toast, because MAGAs decided I was no longer the “based Jew” but the TRAITOR JEW!

These people are dangerous, and 2024 is the year that either the MAGAs break the right or the right breaks the MAGAs. This is gonna be the most pivotal primary of my lifetime; it’ll make Ford v. Reagan 1976 and Bush v. Buchanan 1992 look inconsequential. Because all parties in those contests cared about real-world wins. MAGAs don’t. They’re so detached from reality, they see losses as wins, and those fake wins are as real to them as actual wins. Indeed, the fake wins are better, because in an actual win, you have to start governing, which usually leads to compromise. With imaginary wins, like Trump 2020 or Kari Lake 2022, the “administration” can’t err because it’s fantasy.

Trump’s first term was marred by compromise and failure. But his second, imaginary term is going just great! And that’s where MAGAs choose to live. Like nerds who prefer anime women over real ones, because imaginary girlfriends never argue or need to be fed or express dissatisfaction with your sexual performance, MAGAs are happier with a fake winner like Lake. She’s the perfect governor because “Governor Lake” exists in an opium dream.

Getting into a primary contest with MAGAs is like playing Russian roulette with an immortal; only you can lose. MAGAs can’t lose an election because they don’t recognize loss.

Tucker could’ve fought this cancer in November 2020. He should’ve had the guts to be honest with his audience.

Yeah, he would’ve lost some viewers.

Briefly.

My friend Ann Coulter lost followers after she denounced Trump, but she ended up gaining more, because in the end, when you do what’s right and honest, your losses are temporary but your gains increase over time.

Ann has an iron spine; Tuck’s is putty. And now he spends every other show defending the jailed 1/6ers who might not have gone to jail had Tuck said publicly what he knew to be true in November 2020.

And that, Eric Hananoki, you fraud, is the actual significance of your “bombshell.”

You’re welcome.

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