Today marks the first anniversary of the scamdemic. We’ve come a long way in understanding, here and at Fakeologist and many other sites you’ll find in the blogroll. Here’s just a short list of things I did not understand on 3/11/20 to I have a better grasp of on 3/11/21.
Virus schmirus … the field of virology is bankrupt. Stefan Lanka takes it all the way back to John Franklin Enders, who won the Nobel Prize in 1954 for some very bad work. This makes me wonder at the corruption of the Nobel Prize committees, how they is possibly used to advance hoaxes and bad science, and deliberately. Think … Barack Obama winning the Nobel after winning the 2008 election, and not having done a damned thing to earn it. But Nobel gives off an aura, and Obama became a “great man” after that in the eyes of American Democrats. He could do no wrong, which thereby allowed him to do much wrong. In the same manner, as Lanka claims,
“[A] completely unscientific approach originated in June 1954, when an unscientific and refutable speculative article was published according to which the death of tissue in a test tube was considered possible evidence for the presence of a virus. Six months later, on 10 December 1954, the main author of this opinion was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for another equally speculative theory. The speculation from June 1954 was then raised to a scientific fact due to this distinction and became dogma which has never been challenged to this date. Since June 1954, the death of tissue and cells in a test tube has been regarded as proof of the existence of a virus.”
There’s an old saying that we should never confuse conspiracy with stupidity, and as Einstein reminded us, the potential for human stupidity is infinite. Nonetheless, given the passage of time and opportunity to correct course, opportunity for at least one virologist to excel beyond the boundaries set by training, and the ridicule that befalls anyone who disputes virus theory, I have to conclude that the existence of the “virus” is protected by a propaganda barrier. Take but one example, the conclusion by Robert Gallo in 1984 that AIDS was caused by a retrovirus, HIV. Maybe 150,000 HIV-positive patients have been murdered by doctors and their antivirus drugs since that time, and none speak out. Gallo is a criminal of historic stature, and goes on about his business insulated and protected by his colleagues and other powerful forces.
That tells me that viruses are a psyop, invented to hide a host of sins from industrial pollution to electromagnetic fields to what we have now, medical fascism.
Virus schmirus.
PCR tales … I wrote very early on that, in my opinion, the PCR, or polymerase chain reaction machine, was the beating heart of the scam. I learned around that time that its inventor, Dr. Kary Mullis, was a vocal opponent of its use in identifying HIV-positive people. He was ignored, of course, as PCR was in the wrong hands, criminal hands. The AIDS scam could not have been pulled off without it. Of course, I don’t know the man, only having read his book, but I have the sense that had he been allowed to live, he would be an energetic opponent of use of PCR for Covid-19. He came off, to me anyway, as an honest man.
The PCR machine is the virus. It is a black box that can be amped up or down depending on the needs of those behind the scamdemic. It is not identifying a virus, but rather some well-placed snippets of human genome that take its place, so that “testing positive” means not that you have the virus, but rather, nothing. Testing negative means nothing. The PCR machine in this usage is merely noise. And yet on and on it goes, each “positive” test resulting in two weeks imprisonment without due process for the person testing that way, and any associated with that person. This is how I spell “FASCISM,” a system of medical processes so corrupt that there are few historical precedents for it save Hitler’s Germany or the AIDS hoax.
The PCR machine is an amazing tool, so powerful that it can locate a particular grain of sand on all of California’s beaches. In ancestral and archeological studies, in criminology, it is remarkable and useful. But its strength is also its Achilles heel, that in the wrong hands it can be used for a massive criminal hoax, and only a very few are informed enough to know that. Faith in white lab coats is but one of the downfalls of human beings.
Masks and distance follies … there is no science behind either face diapers or social distancing. In fact, social distancing violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and no medical authority can issue rules that supersede the Constitution. But they did. It is just a sign of how lawless we are, and how little protection the Bill of Rights ever offered. We’ve always been governed by unseen people using politicians and elections as their cover. The Bill of Rights was a feel-good exercise.
Masking is humiliation, a shaming technique. I routinely shop without a mask, and rarely make eye contact with anyone. They are embarrassed, but also too weak to stand up against tyranny. They are schooled in obedience to authority, and never took time to learn how to think critically. This has not been a good showing for humanity. But even in the sixteenth century, it was no difference. Here’s Étienne de La Boétie writing back then:
The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.
Liberty is the natural condition of the people. Servitude, however, is fostered when people are raised in subjection. People are trained to adore rulers. All freedom is forgotten by many there are always some who will never submit.
If things are to change, one must realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny.
This leads naturally to that vast network of corrupted people who gave us the scamdemic.
Psychopaths, liars, tools, apparatchiks, morons … I imagine myself in conversation with important people, something I hope we all do so that I am not alone and crazy. I don’t imagine the conversation is real, only that I would say certain things to people like Anthony Fauci or Klaus Schwab … I would say “There are only two possibilities with you, that you are either a psychopath or a moron. There really is no middle ground.”
But there is lots of middle ground. Psychopaths are maybe 5-6% of the population, and generally find their way to power. Deceit is second nature to them, always going on, always cunning and manipulating honest people to their will. They are de La Boétie’s “vast network of corrupted people.” But there are others who fall in line behind them.
Liars usually know the truth, or have some sense of it, but are too afraid to speak up due to loss of job and income and prestige, and of course, fear of ridicule. They are basically cowards, but I remember Noam Chomsky, who I once admired, saying that people cannot live in constant tension, and have to resolve it. Liars will eventually resolve the lies to make them the truth if only for tension relief. Thus all of the low-level bureaucrats I and other have dealt with, who imagine they are doing a public service by shutting down small businesses and imposing stupid requirements, have their minds right. They are not psychopaths, not stupid, just human and cowardly. We need to send them not FOIAs, but rather just mirrors.
Then there are morons, or just stupid or brainwashed people. This is most of what we are seeing around us. I have long known that television is mildly hypnotic, and that we are in a small trance when we watch it. Those who make TV news know this, and have had 92 years now to understand how to use the medium. They place good looking people in nice clothing behind desks and have them read to us. They exude confidence. They tell us lies, but before we can think too much about a certain lie, they tell another. And another, switching from one person to another, never giving us a chance to think about anything, not that the schools teach thinking skills. Repetition is key, so that no matter where we tune in to news, the message, though shaded differently, is essentially the same. So from Amy Goodman to Alex Jones, with everything in between, the message is always the same. Goodman and Jones are both government agents, or agents of some powerful force, and both have been outed here. They are tools, apparatchiks. They are not so much dishonest as just worker bees doing there job every day.
I can probably speak for everyone who traffics here that we’ve come a long way now to understanding the scamdemic. The march ahead will center around the vaccine, whatever that might be. I don’t see people dropping dead, but then, I don’t know the future and make no predictions. All I know is that I will not be taking it, but also read that in Britain, our mother country, there is talk that people will have to flash a Covid Pass with their tracking devices smart phones to even enter a grocery store. That might be our future too, though I do note that outside of stores now are parking spaces for people to order online and wait for clerks to deliver to their cars. That might be our future if we don’t do the jab.
I do see that Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia are much more locked down than the US, although California, Washington and New York are fascist hell holes. Those are the major offshoots of the British Empire besides the US, if Britain ever really let go. There seems more willingness to capitulate in those countries. But I cannot say too much, as I live in a rural area and only rarely put on a mask.
Every mask I wear has a political message on it, from USELESS to SHEEP to OBEY … my only means of justifying capitulation to the nonsense.
I keep hearing people saying “I just want this to be over.” It is the most intense agitation propaganda campaign I have ever seen. I know that the lead-ups to WWI and WWII and post-911 were intense, and that the Cold War was a long and intense agitprop affair. But within those confines were were still able to live free, travel, shop, go to ball games and attend church. The scamdemic may end up being the grandaddy of all of the agitprop campaigns. It is monstrous evil.
And no, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus on the horizon. It will not be over soon.
Piece of Mindful 
Have you noticed?
Along with flu,
seems this 5 syllable word has all but disappeared…
H_ O_H D _ _
L E T’ S J O I N H A N D S
A N D S A Y I T T O G E T H E R.
Repetition mitigates the sting…
https://is.gd/GnYjBT
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Except for a few issues, everything in my town is open and back to 2019 normal, although I’m aware various Covid restrictions, policies are still happening in different States or locations on the planet.
I’ve learned much about human behavior this past year, finding it’s going to be hard to trust anyone, regardless of their profession or social status, from here on out.
POM was on top of this hoax from the beginning. Thank you!
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I’ve learned much about human behavior this past year
Same here.
2020 was eye-opening for me, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that this mega event began in 2020 i.e. perfect vision. Those with their eyes open can now see exactly what we are surrounded by; those who wish to remain ignorant (eye closed) are welcome to do so as well (and even most ‘awake’ people will choose this path).Regardless, when the music finally stops, nobody can complain that they weren’t given all of the evidence they needed to arrive at the obvious, logical conclusion: not all ‘humans’ are the same. This realm is not what we were led to believe it is.
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I’m always intrigued by this line of argument, but it seems like it always breaks down over a disagreement about whether one can draw this hard black and white line, or whether everyone is on a spectrum of “wake-ability” or whatnot. Is it even provable one way or another? It seems like Descartes’ problem – he knew he was conscious, but how could he say for sure that everyone else was as well?
In your view, you grant SOME others consciousness, a small group beyond yourself, but the rest are NPC’s…
When some argue that at any moment, a seeming NPC could “wake up,” maybe your response is, that they were always different from the other NPC’s – they were always OPEN to new info, just hadn’t put the pieces together, or quite gotten out of the cave.
It is bizarre to talk to friends who are so rigidly locked into dogmatic belief in the mainstream… But it could also just be a kind of simple-minded naivete, and inability to fathom the Big Lie, or the Machiavellian nature of power. Rather than some fundamental inhumanity on their part.
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What really bugs me about their skepticism towards the possibility of a Big Lie… Is that we are given past historical examples of it, say in Nazi Germany where Jews were “the virus.” And Goebbels openly discussing the technique. Yet it’s still always those OTHER countries, in other times, who do that sort of thing. And – even when they say “I don’t trust government” or “I don’t trust corporations” – in practice, that only means in small matters. In large matters, they absolutely do trust them…
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This realm is not what we were led to believe it is.
Any beauty, any tranquility one experiences is tossed in like a bone to a dog. It’s a bonus, but certainly not the rule.
Enjoy a moment of tranquility and beauty:
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WEF planned its move waaaaaay in advance of the plandemic. Here’s some of the birdie-poop they’re using to pollute minds of young people around the world. One more demonic dimension of the global 4IR (Fourth Industrial Revolution) psyop.
“In 2011, Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, founded the Global Shapers Community to empower young people to play an active role in shaping local, regional and global agendas.”
“The Global Shapers Community is a non-profit organization registered in Geneva, Switzerland and housed at the World Economic Forum. The Forum’s contribution to the Shapers organization includes significant financial and in-kind contributions for operational support including staff time, technology tools and opportunities to interact and collaborate with its membership network.”
Who’s shaping whom?
https://www.globalshapers.org/story
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Imagine.
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Stephen King, anyone? (Hope you don’t mind the off-topic, MT.)
I was watching some old interviews -eg a roundtable on the Dick Cavett show where he appeared alongside Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives), Peter Straub and George Romero. King impressed me with his facile way with words, clever turns of thought and wittiness. I thought, I can believe this cat wrote all those books. MAYBE he’s just a front for a writing committee, but I could believe he’s the real deal.
At the same time – the story we’re given about his origins doesn’t add up. His rags-to-riches tale of being “discovered” by a sympathetic Doubleday editor, and catapulted at warp speed into wealth and stardom. Listen to the details, as told by Thompson in a fairly recent interview. Doubleday has just purchased, I guess, American rights to King’s book for a measly $2500 (albeit in 70s dollars, and big to the starving King.) And then:
Thompson: “…I remember that day very clearly. I first received a call from our rights department saying a UK publisher had visited the night before. That’s the way it worked. The foreign publishers would show up at a US publisher’s office and they would deal with the rights people. They’d ask, “What have you got that you’re not showing anybody else? What do you think is going to be the next big thing?”
Well, there was an individual who worked in the rights department. His name was Bob Banker. He was one of the people I had asked for a supporting reading because I’d asked for editorial support on Getting It On, and that didn’t really do the trick. So with Carrie, I decided to try a different tactic. I went to sales and advertising and rights to get enthusiastic reports from them on what they thought they could do with the book. Bob loved the book and remembered it when the British publisher was visiting. He said, “This is really quite good.” So, the English publisher took it away, read it that night, and the next morning called and said, “We want to buy this. I have permission to go to $400,000.”
JS: Wow!
BT: (laughs) Everybody was stunned. I was stunned. I mean, you’re just hoping that the next level will be some kind of decent sale or a nice advance. But this was epic. This was the deal that established Stephen King. Very often it’s a movie coming out that will do it, in terms of establishing a future career. And certainly, that did help with King eventually! But internally, this early paperback sale before anybody else had seen it for $400,000 was going to ensure that there would be future novels published.”
……..Now, what kind of businessman, looking at an unknown, unproven commodity, and negotiating to buy, starts with a “stunning” opening bid? Even if he thinks it has great potential, he would still offer DoubleDay the “normal” amount – and keep it in his back pocket that he can go higher, if they want to haggle. I mean, this UK book buyer is just Saint Nicholas I guess, and probably throws money from balconies, when he isn’t ennobling poor American school teachers.
https://suntup.press/keys-to-the-kingdom/bill-thompson-part-one
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Yeah, that doesn’t look right. If King is indeed starving, he offers him maybe $10K for full rights no royalty, and King chomps on it. That sort of thing is called “back story,” and is written by others.
Another, since we’re off subject, Ellen DeGeneres, says she was living with a girlfriend in New Orleans and drove home one night past a car wreck, and later learned the victim was her lover/room mate. She is devastated, and sits down and writes her “Letter to God,” which torpedoes her to stardom. She also vows that she wants to be the first woman comic to be invited to sit down after her routine with Johnny Carson. Of course, it happened. Later she gets her own show, comes out, and says her phone does not ring for two years, and then she gets her own daytime show.
Not buying. Hers was a professional backstory too. I’m not even sure she is gay. She looks a lot like Aaron Rodgers too.
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Tim R, God help me, throw out an invite to talk Stephen King and I’ll always bite. I inhaled his books all through high school and read everything I could find about him. I’m over him now… haven’t been able to stand his mid-to-late-career novels. But at the risk of having my conspiracy theorist card revoked, I believe his back story, and this Thompson interview cements that belief. Yeah, the foreign-rights-sale story is bizarre, but it’s the only thing in the interview that seems a little weird, but it’s only a little weird, and what do you or I know about what a UK foreign rights buyer in the 1970s would and wouldn’t have done? Maybe the guy was a genius at spotting hot commodities but a dumb-ass at negotiation?
The verisimilitude and overall consistency of King’s back story is so solid that it just doesn’t seem like propaganda to me. As we’ve talked about a lot here in the wake of Covid, propaganda isn’t SUPPOSED to make sense. It’s not supposed to hold up to close scrutiny. But King’s back story does. In this Thompson interview, I was struck by comments he made about the weak aspects of King’s earlier books that Thompson got him to rewrite—weaknesses which reared their heads and grew exponentially when Thompson stopped editing him. He says that in the original draft of Carrie, Carrie White grew to the size of a giantess during the climactic prom scene, and grew horns, and turned into a comic book monster, and Thompson urged him to tone all that down and ground the ending in the character’s reality. That kind of utterly ridiculous over-the-top ending is standard Stephen King now. (Under the Dome took a thousand or so pages to reveal the whole thing was caused by little-kid outer space aliens treating the people of Earth like toys in a sandbox. After slogging through all that book’s shallow, clunky, on-the-nose political allegory, only to have my intelligence assaulted by the final insult of that ending, I wanted to punch King in the face.)
Many years ago, I worked at a restaurant in New Orleans where another waiter, a black guy, told me he’d grown up in Maine, had gone to school with and been friends with King’s kids. He had no reason to lie and didn’t make a big deal out of it. I realize “I knew a guy who knew a guy’s kids” claims are never convincing to other people, but it convinced me that King, even after becoming a wealthy bestselling author, actually sent his kids to public school. If you’re a member of the elite, you don’t do that, because you don’t have any romantic or sentimental attachment to the public school system that plebes who grew up in it have.
I’m convinced that King ascended to the level of Court Jester through talent and hard (and obsessive) work. I’m convinced he believes the shit he watches on CNN and MSNBC, and that he laces his books with opinion pieces about now, is real. I think he’s surrounded by people who stroke his ego and keep him in a bubble and have no problem at all guiding him toward beliefs that serve their purposes.
If he were an agent, they wouldn’t craft his back story with such meticulous attention to detail. Again, that’s not what propagandists do.
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Not my conversation, but I am convinced that neither McCartney nor Lennon wrote the music attributed to them. But, and take to mind its target audience and genre, it is good stuff. Somebody talented wrote it. It got written.
With King, I only read IT, and obsessively as I had just been traumatized at the time. The image of the killer clown was an archetype. Is he that good, or is there someone that good behind him? Does it matter?
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I think he’s talented and motivated and obsessed with writing. The Thompson interview confirms what I’ve long thought—that his earlier novels were exceptional because they were edited by people who challenged him and reined him in. I would imagine that, these days, editors don’t challenge him much, if at all. For one thing, he’s Stephen King. How could his ego not be huge after the success he’s had? Why risk upsetting him or incurring his wrath? As long as his name is on the cover, his books don’t need to be good anymore in order to sell. (Though I don’t think they sell nearly as well as we’re told. I have a theory that his name is as good for money laundering as it is for money making. Can’t drop all my conspiracy thinking just because I have a soft spot for his early books.)
As for McCartney and Lennon… their back stories seem, to me, more typical of fake propaganda back stories, though I haven’t read as much about them as others here no doubt have. From what I can tell, their back stories are kind of loosely sketched out, sprinkled with a few memorable anecdotes, but nothing to elaborate. Same with J.K. Rowling, who I’m convinced is a total fake. King, on the other hand, has rambled endlessly about his back story, and lots of people who know him have, and having consumed a lot of those ramblings, all I can say is that they’re more convincing than made-up bullshit has ever been, in my experience.
To answer your last (rhetorical) question: No, it doesn’t matter, lol.
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But I like your idea about his sincerity and being used or directed, very plausible.
Also- I read his later book Duma Key – had that exact problem. Interesting character development in first half, then derailing gradually into a tedious supernatural second half.
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I’m not saying his entire story is fake, but maybe elements of it, like this strange business deal. True I’m no expert on 70s UK book buyers, but Thompson himself says it was “stunning”. Yes strange things and flukes happen, but I would say it’s LIKELY false. Or more to the story being kept secret.
As to going to public schools, who says that isn’t part of the technique of the system – there’s a phrase about “angels among us” that might be relevant. Don’t we often talk about visible elites being likely fronts? So maybe the real powers, or some insiders, keep a low profile, and some might even live modestly. And want to be connected to the workaday world.
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I think a far simpler and more plausible explanation is that, sometimes, exceptionally hard-working and talented members of the lower class rise to fame and fortune. In order to stay there as long as King has, they would need to have the right personality type—be easy to manage and control. Our leaders know quite a bit about controlling the hearts and minds of the masses while keeping them bamboozled by propaganda. I don’t think keeping someone like King in the dark would represent much of a challenge. Sprinkling the occasional genuine success in with all the phonies makes the overall con more convincing, don’t you think?
The MM idea that all uber-famous people come from the Families or are otherwise born to their thrones is too pat for me. Many, maybe most of them, sure. But I suspect even many of the more privileged ones are kept in the dark about how they, and their work, are used. Artists are more persuasive if they sincerely believe in what they’re doing. An entire class of artists who know damn well that they’re lying through their teeth wouldn’t cast the spell that commercial entertainment must cast in order to serve its social-engineering purpose.
When screenwriter William Goldman said, “Nobody in Hollywood knows anything,” this may have been what he was talking about. Having EVERYONE know would be as impractical as having NOBODY know. I think there’s plenty of room for a genuine success story like Stephen King’s.
Obviously, your guess is as good as mine though. As Mark says, it doesn’t really matter. But it’s fun to speculate.
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I just recently (within the last few days) came to suspect that the rock stars of the 1960s and 70s, said by Dave McGowan to almost all have been the children of intelligence agents or military brats … were probably assigned to those families with the understanding that they would one day fake their deaths. This leaves out any real families and all of those assorted continuity problems. The “stars” maybe did have some talent that could not be found or used within the families, or cloned. This is a new path for me, a better explanation, more work to do. It explains why John Denver’s hit song, Leaving on a Jet Plane, was meant to foreshadow his death, as they could easily fake his death at any time in his career, which could have lasted 3, 7, or 33 years. He was one of the more talented ones. But I am betting that if I dive into family photos, I will find with most of them, as we found with Morrison, Denver and Joplin, that they were ghosted in in a dark room. Military families was just a cover, and real people with real talent, some less some more, out of the ranks of ordinary people, were used. Jim Morrison will never turn up.
That’s my starting point. But really, nothing can explain David Crosby. He does not have talent, only connections. He’s ugly too.
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Would love to read a post of your take on the weirdness involving Prince’s death. Have you watched/listened to his sister Tyka Nelson? There are those who suspect “she” is Prince in disguise, and I’m inclined to think so myself. Here “she” is honoring his memory at the 2016 American Music Awards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxZaqFCUCqU
And they really went all-out with foreshadowing of his death. Yeah, we all know that his “death” in an elevator called to mind his “Let’s Go Crazy” lyric, “If the elevator tries to bring you down… go crazy.” But I haven’t seen or heard anyone talk about the words and video for his later and less well-known song “Face Down.” The song is about the supposedly imminent death of his career as a “washed-up singer” (one of the refrains is “Dead like Elvis!”). At the start of the video, a woman with her face obscured by a black veil sits down at his funeral to pay her respects, and at the video “she” lifts her veil to reveal she’s… guess who! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsD0dkACM8k
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Given the amount of time I put into John Denver, I just haven’t made a commitment to look into Prince. I wish somebody would – not just a hit and miss piece, but a thorough analysis. I’ll read the Wiki page, and hope that is all I end up doing.
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I’m more inclined to believe the guitar player Randy Rhoads of Ozzy and Quiet Riot fame became his sister Kathy Rhoads D’Argenzio
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Hi Mark, I’m convinced the majority of the “famous” people come from the families. Not all of them have talents but all are educated and trained and then sold as superstars. They educate their children of course as good as possible. That’s why Sly Stallone can play Polo riding a horse like a pro in Rambo 3 (you can’t learn this on a riding course, you have to grow up with horses to be able to control a big animal that way) , that’s why Emily Blunt does ballet dance, that’s why Vigo Mortensen speaks 7 languages. And so on. If you try all kind of education on your child you may found one that matches his talents and if not then it’s like Jack Black the actor or like Amy Winehouse the singer, etc. Not to mention all the fake scientists or philosophers. They then just keep selling them as superstars and people will buy it because the majority believes in superstars the same way as in Corona. Some of their children really have talents, others work really hard never getting good at anything, some don’t care at all and still can be sold as superstars. It think occasionally they have to allow someone from the outside to participate at their superstars cult just to keep up the illusion but this is rare. And they make sure the foreigners don’t keep the fortune for too long. Especially writers have all the support from the best available ghost writers. It’s easy to pretend to be a good writer, no? Stephen King is pretty consistent in his development, had some weaker books too on his list. His current characters are old people, which reflects his aging. I always wondered why he was called the king of horror while his books are actually a kind of mystery thrillers, right? It’s because his job is to play with the fear. He works for the fear industry. Some time ago I read the War trilogy from Ken Follett. The books are a good read and I enjoyed the reading a lot but I remember an interview where he told about the contract he got to write the trilogy, so it was not just a strike of creativity but a contract job. He uses a team of supporting people and I’m sure some of the chapters were written by others. The styles were too different. Yet still he is an excellent writer and knows how to create emotions. Or think Jason Bourne. Ludlum’s books kept up coming long after his death.
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I could tell mid-book where Ludlum stopped writing and others took over, have not read anything by “him” since – it’s been decades. But I agree generally with your comment. I witnessed at close hand how one “star,” Stockard Channing, had her whole life to train to be famous, and was even heralded as the next Lucille Ball. I worked for her mother in a far outpost, Billings, Montana (her mother had married an oil millionaire and moved there to be with him, he was childless, so her own fortune was greatly enhanced when he died and she inherited (almost) everything). You would not find Stockard (her stage name taken after her father and her mother’s first husband, founder or owner of Stockard Shipping & Terminal of Philadelphia) anywhere near Billings, but she did make one trip, perhaps only in order to receive a gift. Her only trip. She’s won many awards, but was also trained to be famous her entire life. It did not happen naturally, as I see it.
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Again though, as I said, this business deal doesn’t necessarily falsify the whole King story – it just (practically) self-falsifies itself.
What if King is totally genuine as you suspect – well maybe he believes the 400k was what we’re told – a book buyer so stoked he decided to just dump as much money as he possibly could on the novice writer.
What if it was instead a more calculated decision to “induct” King into the big time – not just by the one guy, but by Intel or whoever. The beginning of influencing and directing him. They recognized a unique talent and wanted to exploit it. And buy it off wo explicitly saying so. Etc.
I’m still very agnostic as to his true origins though, myself.
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Tim R, it’s all too speculative and unknowable for me to argue about either way, really. I did find another thing interesting in that Thompson interview. They showed a letter Thompson wrote to King about his short story collection, Night Shift, where Thompson suggested cutting certain stories because the book would get a lot of attention from critics, and at this point in his career, he wanted to keep the critics happy. Nowadays, it’s quite obvious that every professional critic who reviews Stephen King is bought and paid for by his publishers. I have searched the Internet far and wide for a negative review of a recent Stephen King book, and can’t find a single one. This defies belief. Even if his current output was high quality (which it most definitely is not), there would be some critics who would pan him if allowed to publish honest opinions. What’s more, the praise for these books is so over-the-top, especially when you actually read them and realize how sloppy and shallow they are. This may be more a reflection of how homogenized our so-called culture has become, or about the aggressive drive to dumb down the masses to near-retardation levels as the elitists’ agenda ramps up.
The publishing industry has always paid for glowing reviews for certain chosen authors, but the aggressive drive to convince everyone that King is not only entertaining, but a Literary Genius, is off the charts. And King’s participation in the attempt to make his work seem Important is embarrassing. In his younger days, he aptly described his work as the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and large fries at McDonald’s. Once his work stopped being scary or exciting, he joined in on the marketing decision to gaslight anyone who noticed how much it sucked by suggesting that perhaps they just weren’t smart enough to appreciate Great Literature. Nauseating.
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Folks with the surname ‘King’ are usually related to royalty, also Fitzroy, Conroy, Stuart, Howard, etc. That info was gleaned from some ancestry site I used to belong to some time ago.
(Stephen King is one of the most popular answers on The Chase (quiz show), along with Freda Carlo, Winston Churchill, Drake, Victoria, and Oscar Wilde.
Yesterday, a Cornish contestant on show claimed she’d traced her family tree back to King John. I wonder how many more are?)
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A Fitz was a bastard son of the king. Sort of like a John Snow.
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Interesting about the reviews… I note that critics in general do seem able to slam or praise as they like, so I assumed that was part of the game. Can’t be too obviously Pravda, all the time… Though of course in general they are a rah-rah cheering section for the product.
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I don’t know if this comment (or my previous reply to Greg) will show, but I just wanted to say happy scamiversary to all of the fine folk here at PoM.
Here’s to another 12 months of complete and utter insanity 🥳
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I’m going off the rails on the Crazy train.
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Sell, sell, sell. Buy, buy, buy. Ding, ding, ding. Welcome to the perception plantation.
“Today, every part of America is all about marketing the brand, selling the sizzle instead of the steak. The operating philosophy is termed “perception management”, the attempt to substitute a utopian fictionalised version of events for reality. Great efforts are made to determine which actions or attitudes or sentiments to portray to the American public and the world, which items of information should be denied to the public, and which “indicators” are necessary to convey to audiences to influence their emotions and dull their objective reasoning. This perception management combines some facts, some unrelated truths, a great deal of deception, all wrapped in layers of what is termed “psychological operations”, and used to sell patriotism, wars, capitalism, fear and fascism. This is the legacy of Lippman and Bernays: an entire nation has degraded to the point where product substance is irrelevant and brand perception is everything.” https://thesaker.is/bernays-and-propaganda-propaganda-continues-unabated-part-5/
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Greetings all:
Forgive me for going a little off topic, but I had something happen to me recently that reinforces your inmate reference.
My better half was being discharged from the hospital after an overnight stay following surgery. In order to go back to his room to pick him up, I had to stop by the information desk, where I was asked a series of nosy questions, my DL scanned, & my picture taken. I was then given a “badge” to affix to my T-shirt which had my name, date, room destination & picture. (I thought for sure they’d want to see my Covid vac card. I don’t have one.)
When I asked what this was about, the answer was “we are securing the hospital & patient rooms. This allows us to make sure that no one with a history of violence, child molesting or engaging in predatory behavior gets in.” Oh yes, & I had to wear a mask or be escorted out immediately. (I won’t wear one unless I absolutely have to.)
All I keep thinking is “those who give up their liberty for security deserve neither.” Where does this madness end?
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