The easiest time for an ugly guy to get a new girlfriend is when he already has an old one.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing, because it’s not: Cheaters are awful people. But it’s still the God’s honest truth.
Ask any group of ugly guys, and they’ll tell you: They’ll go half-a-year without any luck — nothing but rejections and bad dates — but the moment they get a new girlfriend, they’re suddenly flooded with options. Now that they’re taken, all the hot women are coming out of the woodwork.
(As a fellow ugly guy, I gotta say, it’s REALLY annoying.)
Married dudes have noticed that wearing a wedding ring doesn’t repel a woman’s advances. In many cases, it’s practically a fishing lure.
Why?
Because women are insanely competitive, and people want what they can’t have.
When a beautiful babe chooses a boyfriend, everyone knows that she had thousands of suitors, yet she still selected that guy. So, his social status grows — even if he’s “unconventionally attractive” — along with his dating options.
Don’t get mad at the messenger, folks: This is human nature.
Divining the mainstream media’s tea leaves is about 25% understanding human nature, and 75% knowing how the media works. The media might be monstrous, vain, and partisan, but they’re still comprised of flesh-and-blood human beings. They’re members of a very specific tribe, and within that tribe, there’s groupthink, social expectations, a code of conduct, and shared values.
More often than not, the real story isn’t what they published — but why they published it. Once you figure that part out, it’s easy to stay ahead of ‘em.
I’ll show you how it works:
The first telltale sign is when the media outlets at the top of the hierarchy all begin publishing the same stories. The media industry is a top-down ecosystem; the minnows take their cues from the whales. Even today, you’d be surprised how many small market news directors will religiously tear through The New York Times before assigning any stories.
Why?
Because that’s how they were trained.
As a practical matter, it empowers the larger media outlets to set the national agenda, because this ecosystem gives their stories legs: First The New York Times will report on it; then the mid-tier and low-tier ones echo it; then The Times will circle back with a follow-up story about how this is a huge deal in the heartland — citing those mid- and low-tier outlets’ stories a few days later.
It’s incestuous, self-serving, and won’t work indefinitely, but it guarantees a story will stay in circulation for at least a week — and with just a little luck, much longer than that.
Either way, in today’s 24/7 media culture, a week is an eternity. You can do a lot of damage in a week.
The second sign is when the same stories all echo the same themes. When a mainstream media thought leader, like The New York Times, NBC News, or The Atlantic gives a story their “seal of approval,” it’s kind of like the phenomenon with the ugly dude and the hot girlfriend: That editorial “spin” has already won the support of their industry’s A-Listers.
If you’re a low-rung journalist with ambition, it’s awfully tempting to hop aboard that bandwagon and cry “One of us!” — and so, lots of ‘em do. (Hey, they wanna work at The New York Times one day, too.)
When three or more A-Listers in the mainstream media release the same story with the same theme, it means you’ll be hearing about it for no less than a week. If the story fails, it’ll go away.
But conservatives don’t get to decide if a story fails!
That takes us to the third sign: Stories that animate liberals will always be elevated. This usually means that liberal causes, politicians, and policies will be promoted and conservative ones trashed, but not always. Sometimes, liberals like to read about doom-and-gloom — that “The End Is Nigh!” (They’re pessimistic by nature and enjoy doom-scrolling.)
But no matter what, the stories and spin will always reflect a VERY leftwing worldview.
Why?
Because the media is VERY liberal and they’re primarily concerned with impressing each other.
Between 95% and 97% of all journalists’ donations go to Democrats. If you’re a journalist, your next job will be in a liberal office. Whoever hires you will be liberal; your new colleagues will be liberal. Your professional success (mostly) depends on being well-liked by liberal gatekeepers.
In this ecosystem, conservatives just don’t matter. (And, when you read their work, it certainly shows.)
I’ll give you a quick example: Yesterday, three mainstream media heavyweights — The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Independent — all released stories with the exact same theme: The Trump administration is filled with virtue-signaling, cosplaying, unmanly and/or wrongly-gendered phonies who are ugly-looking.
At The Atlantic, the story was entitled “Trump’s Cosplay Cabinet.” It included such gems as:
In Donald Trump’s administration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem rotates through various costumes—firefighting gear for drills with the United States Coast Guard, a cowboy hat and horse for a jaunt with Border Patrol agents in Texas, a bulletproof ICE vest for a dawn raid in New York City. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posts photos of himself doing snowy push-ups with U.S. troops in Poland and deadlifting with them in predawn Germany. And FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino spars with agents on the wrestling mats of Quantico.
In Bongino’s case, his run-in with a skilled jiujitsu instructor left him with a swollen right elbow. But such are the risks of Trump’s Cosplay Cabinet, in which his underlings perform near-daily tone poems to a certain type of MAGA masculinity, publicly pantomiming their professional responsibilities.
Noem, who has earned herself several dismissive, Mattel-inspired nicknames—“Border Control Barbie,” “ICE Barbie”—is perhaps the most conspicuous offender. She has been photographed behind the controls of both a Coast Guard boat and a Coast Guard plane, donned a helmet and Border Patrol fatigues for an ATV tour along the southern border, and posed in cargo pants and an ICE vest. In a social-media video, she wielded a tricked-out automatic rifle, the M4 muzzle disconcertingly pointed at the head of the agent directly to her left.
The same outlet that never said a peep about liberal politicians’ strange predilection for “accent borrowing” whenever they spoke to southerners or blacks doesn’t like it when conservatives coordinate outfits during media appearances, eh? It’s a weird line of attack, because Democrats cosplay, too.
Who could forget Michael Dukakis riding a tank, wearing a helmet that would’ve fit Rick Moranis in “Spaceballs”?
(By the way, the nicknames they cited — stuff like “Border Control Barbie” — aren’t nicknames conservatives use. They’re actually reporting on their own nastiness.)
Nonetheless, Maureen Dowd at The New York Times followed suit: “Trump’s Vicious Sewing Circle.” Same general theme as The Atlantic piece, with Dowd claiming that Trump’s cabinet as a bunch of femme-boys(?) cosplaying as masculine:
Trump’s macho crew, it turns out, is a vicious little sewing circle.
There was once a fear that women would be too emotional at the top, but look at Elon. He maniacally jumps around the stage, and he is known to mist up in the middle of interviews about his work and his love life.
And if you don’t want an unstable creature at the top, particularly at that bastion of masculinity, the Pentagon, why would you hire Pete Hegseth? …(He even ordered up a spiffy makeup studio next to the Pentagon briefing room, as CBS reported.)
Trump, who often casts by looks, may have liked Hegseth’s slick style and pretty face. But even the Emperor of Chaos must realize this Princess of Chaos has to go.
Kinda wild: I guess Andrew Dice Clay-era stereotypes and/or misgendering are trendy again. (“Hickory Dickory Dock! OHH!”)
Finally, on the exact same day as The New York Times’ and The Atlantic’s stories, the Independent pushed the envelope even farther: “Mar-a-Lago face: The plastic surgery trend that’s taking over Trump’s inner circle.” Here’s the opener:
At Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, his inner sanctum gathered in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Among the guests were Melania Trump, Kristi Noem (the Homeland Security Secretary), and Lauren Sanchez (wife of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos). As they stood meters from each other, it was hard not to notice the similarities. The women gleamed like the polished marble around them, their appearances unmistakably sculpted by the hands of modern cosmetic science. They’re not the only examples of a certain pinched look among the upper echelons of America’s right wing. In fact, the plastic surgery trend has become so prevalent that it has earned a nickname: Mar-a-Lago face.
The media is directly mocking the physical appearances of Melania Trump and Kristi Noem… yet tried to convince us that Jill Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris were supermodels! (I love the 2023 article from 2023: “Exclusive: Plastic surgeon explains why Jill Biden looks so amazing age 71.”)
But that’s what they’re throwing at the wall. Now, they’re waiting to see if it’ll stick.
So, beginning Monday, late-night comics like Jimmy Kimmel will push this narrative: “Hey, didja hear of a new thing called ‘Mar-a-Lago face? Har, har, har!” And there’ll be follow-up stories about cosplaying Republicans — or snarky comments about plastic surgery, coupled with belittling comments about pro-Trump women.
Since they love to echo each other, it’ll probably be framed as a pro-feminist stance, too. I’m guessing they’ll somehow try to connect plastic surgery to the Patriarchy — that exposing this “scandal” is actually liberating to women.
(It’s not, of course. It’s meanness for its own sake — misogyny masked as feminism.)
Reread this column on Friday. I’ll buy each of you a Diet Coke if I’m not right.
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