Shortcuts & Delusions: Dingdongs & Goofballs

By
Dillon Eliassen
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3
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Dillon Eliassen originally wanted to title this installment “Shortcuts Ampersand Delusions Colon Dingdongs Ampersand Goofballs,” but Being Libertarian‘s Editor-in-Chief said the site doesn’t have enough bandwidth to support it. Dingdongs & Goofballs was the humor column Dillon wrote while an undergrad student, wherein he pointed and laughed at jerks. Due to a feeling of temporary and misguided nostalgia, Dillon decided, for one night only, to bring Dingdongs & Goofballs out of mothballs.

 

Yahoo News is fake news. I don’t employ “fake news” as the dismissive epithet President Trump and those of his ilk hurl at media outlets they don’t like. Yahoo News is fake in that they publish factually inaccurate stories, as well as articles containing zero newsworthiness.

Case in point, the now revised story about the recently found wreck of World War II battleship USS Indianapolis. If you’ve read a book about the end of World War II, or watched this famous scene from Jaws, you’d know the Indianapolis was the ship that carried the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Yahoo‘s original headline for their article about the Indianapolis described the ship as one that “…Helped Create the Atomic Bomb…” Now, unless the Indianapolis is a Transformer, either Decepticon or Autobot, and developed WMDs while in robot form, it didn’t help create anything. The Indianapolis delivered the bomb; It had nothing to do with building it. I suppose an explanation for this is Yahoo News might be run by a bot that conflated “deliver” with “help create” the way a doctor “delivers” a baby. You know the way robots are: always attempting human characteristics but somehow always missing the mark. Much like Hillary Clinton.

This is just one example of Yahoo News being a shoddy enterprise, but, it’s small potatoes compared to this story about Macklemore. He had responded to someone (who is either a god-tier troll or a retard-tier social justice warrior) who tweeted, “macklemore [sic] hair seems to be the chosen haircut of the racists now. I call on @macklemore to get online and denounce his own haircut.”

Macklemore replied, “Got rid of it over a year ago.”

I think we can all agree that changing his ‘do does not go far enough; the only way Macklemore can truly atone for this sin is to set himself on fire. I don’t mean just his haircut, either; he must go full Thích Quảng Đức, which is close to going full retard.

I really hope Macklemore (apparently he’s a rapper? Judging from his name, I thought he was a fish) was obliviously responding to a troll. Irregardless, the Yahoo News reporter covering Macklemoregate was determined to blow the lid off this can of worms, writing:

The haircut in question is shaved on the sides and floppy and voluminous on the top. It has been sported by celebs such as David Beckham and Brad Pitt — and Nazi youth in the 1930s and ’40s and modern-day supremacists.

The haircut has become so associated with the white nationalist movement that the Washington Post recently ran a story called, “Does this haircut make me look like a Nazi?” Racked also weighed in: “Just FYI There Are Other Haircuts for Men Besides the Hitler One” (even offering the alternative style, the “Cute Boy Flop,” as a replacement), and Esquire published a story titled “Eric Trump’s New Haircut Is a Little Too ‘White Nationalist’ for Comfort.”

(…)

Another option if you’re feeling particularly bold: Shave the head bald. However, to avoid venturing into another neo-Nazi trend, Pazos offers a stylish twist: “Bleach the entire head like Kanye West or Amber Rose — just add a toner to avoid bright-yellow hair.”

My mom is a hair-dresser, and I feel it’s my duty to get involved in this haircut justice movement. I hereby call upon the estate of Charlie Chaplin to denounce his Hitler mustache! Actually, it shouldn’t even be called a Hitler mustache since Chaplin was the first one to popularize that style of facial hair. Hitler did a lot of bad things, but I think we can all agree that some of them were adopting the likeness of Chaplin without the comedian’s consent, and of cultural appropriation.

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I admit this is pretty low-hanging fruit (Yahoo News is probably where rejected Buzzfeed writers go, but that doesn’t mean they get a pass), but I’m writing about these absurd episodes to show that oftentimes, if not a majority of the time, the media are not “speaking truth to power” or working diligently to provide the most factually accurate articles as is possible to research and report on. It seems most people with access to a blog or WordPress, or whatever, fancy themselves righteous crusaders committed to the truth and justice. In reality, most journalists, whether professionals or amateurs, pursue and write articles that conform to their agenda, and by being reported on, these topics take on a tacit sense of importance and/or urgency that they would not otherwise be afforded.

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And that’s the way it is as far as you know.

Image: Getty

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Dillon Eliassen

Dillon Eliassen is a former Managing Editor of Being Libertarian. Dillon works in the sales department of a privately owned small company. He holds a BA in Journalism & Creative Writing from Lyndon State College. He is the author of The Apathetic, available at Amazon.com. He is a self-described Thoreauvian Minarchist.

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