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Since April 2014, I’ve been trying to revive the useful old word “adventuress,” which means a reasonably good-looking heterosexual woman who manipulates other people into all sorts of drama.
Some of 2014’s special brand of craziness — SterlingGate, GamerGate, and now the UVA RaperGate that exploded so jaw-droppingly this afternoon, etc. — revolves around fairly attractive women playing the Political Correctness card for their own complicated ends. It used to be that you could kind of tell that the feminist and other whoop-tee-doos were being pushed by women with palpable reasons for being discontent.
Not an adventuress
When Andrea Dworkin, for instance, announced in the Guardian and the Globe & Mail that in 1999 she’d been raped in her locked and deadbolted hotel room in Paris after the hotel staff conspired to put a date rape drug in her beverage, well, it got some publicity, but the alternative suggestion — Dworkin is obese and unhappy and not quite right in the head — also suggested itself pretty obviously. (Especially because feminists had pretty much put feminism on hold for the duration of the Administration of the Sexual Harasser-in-Chief Bill Clinton.)
But ever since the Obama Campaign/Administration revived feminism and other forms of victimism, something insidious has happened: adventuresses have come flocking to exploit it. I first noticed this in Silicon Valley, and then there was V. Stiviano. Now this UVA Jackie story of catfishing the boy that pretty much has handed Gillian Flynn her next ripped-from-the-headlines thriller novel ought to make the pattern obvious.
Attractive women tend to have fewer problems than unattractive ones, but when our society, starting with the White House, relentlessly encourages reasonably attractive women to proclaim themselves victims … watch out. People are hardwired to like and believe attractive young women, so it’s pretty easy to be an adventuress, and they can wreak a lot of havoc.
My first thought was: “That’s an awful photo of Jerry Garcia.”
Steve, any chance that you popularized the term “the narrative”? I think I read it here first and now hear it every day on tv/radio/print.
The femme fatale. Formerly a staple of our literature and cinema, but who was virtually banished from the screen by radical feminists.
Perhaps, but I probably got it from commenters here.
It’s been around awhile, but is definitely picking up momentum.
* A friend of mine once commented that Dworkin's rapists (assuming that they existed) had to be the most dangerous rapists on Earth.After all, if they would rape Dworkin, then they would rape anyone and anything.
Only with this comment am I realizing I'm the iSteve faithful...Replies: @Steve Sailer
Waydaminit
After having criticised the Rolling Stone for creating a story without checking any facts you—-create a story without checking any facts.
Maybe ‘Jackie’ is an adventuress.
Maybe she’s not right in the head.
Maybe she’s catfishing.
Maybe she was raped.
Maybe many of these things.
Maybe none of these things
Maybe something else entirely.
If after knowing full well that she introduced an imaginary boyfriend to her friends and that she changed her story of rape many times (at first forced oral sex, later gang rape by five, still later by seven men) etc. you still think there's a way she could be all right in the head, then... you know, I just received an email from a rich Nigerian, all he needs is your bank account number.
Look, this must be quite the coincidence that just when Jackie invented and wrote texts in the name of the imaginary boyfriend and wanted to get the attention, sympathy and love of one of her friends, and that she just invented an imaginary date with this imaginary boyfriend, and that just that exact moment she got raped by someone else... but that then she didn't want to go to the police at all. You need to look at co-probabilities: it's not enough to ask what is the probability of woman lying about having raped, because let's just say it's very low. But you also need to take a look at the probability of an accomplished lier lying about getting raped also, after she's already lied about so many things. And I tell you that the probability of her lying about that, too, is extremely high.
Of course, there are many possibilities about commenter anony-mouse.
Maybe he's just a troll.
Maybe he's sincerely delusional.
Maybe he's stupid.
Maybe he's a paid hack.
Maybe none of the above. Or all of the above.
We don't know. We cannot know.Replies: @Steve Sailer
I FOUND JACKIE! I FOUND JACKIE!!
In socio- political analysis we often look at a variety of factors including ethno- religious identity which appears to be omitted here. Not so on the other side:
Charlotte Silver @CharESilver
Beinart mourns the passing of TNR into hands of gentiles & that more Jewish journos aren’t writing ab Israel
https://twitter.com/CharESilver/status/542713452578349056
Yeah, big “maybe”, alright.
I’m sure any day now they’ll find the real chemistry major. He’s probably sitting at a bar swapping stories with the real killer of OJs wife.
Nice photo of Lena Dunham in the year 2040
Possibly the funniest caption I’ve ever read
Steve is one of the wittiest writers ever, right up there with Iris Murdoch, Henry James and Muriel Spark.
That boy she was trying to impress into asking her out didn’t so much dodge a bullet as an ICBM.
Frenchmen are into smelly, hairy women, and being into large women is not uncommon among Frenchmen.
OT:
Renowned computer author Charles Petzold said that early computing (for him in the 60s and 70s) was too public for him, meaning that it was too “social”.
This reminds me of something you said a few months ago:
https://www.unz.com/isteve/npr-when-women-stopped-coding/?highlight=women+in+computing
It’s used quite a bit in Leftist Critical Theory circles.People commonly refer to the patriarchal narrative, the racial narrative, etc. Heck, “Skip” Gates even slipped into it when commenting on his arrest for contempt of cop:
http://boingboing.net/2009/07/21/prominent-black-prof.html
Have to confess, I had never considered the possible role of the feminist need to keep things on the down low for the sake of Bill in the Dworkin case. Frankly, I just assumed that the wonky details of the case combined with a visual survey of Dworkin* was enough to sow seeds of doubt
* A friend of mine once commented that Dworkin’s rapists (assuming that they existed) had to be the most dangerous rapists on Earth.After all, if they would rape Dworkin, then they would rape anyone and anything.
Steve, have you read Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle? One of his main characters, Eliza, is a multi-faceted adventuress. You’d find her interesting if you continue to investigate this theme.
Charlotte Silver @CharESilver
Beinart mourns the passing of TNR into hands of gentiles & that more Jewish journos aren't writing ab Israel
https://twitter.com/CharESilver/status/542713452578349056Replies: @syonredux
That article was hysterically funny.Some choice bits:
Yeah, that’s going to happen real soon…..
Sure, because we all know that the impact of Jewish journalists and writers on the USA was driven by the huge numbers of Jews in the USA…..
You don’t say
Really? Where? Compared to whom?
Yeah, sure, I mean we all know that White Anglo Gentiles make up a vanishingly small percentage of Americans.I mean, that must be why four out of eleven NYTIMES’ columnists are Jewish, right?
“My first thought was: “That’s an awful photo of Jerry Garcia.””
Too good! Kinda wish we had both Jerry and Andrea still around. True entertainers.
Derbyshire came up with ‘narrative collapse’.
This is more like narrative apocalypse.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prolapse
This is more like narrative apocalypse.Replies: @Anonymous
More like prolapse:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prolapse
There’s also another suggestion. Some people really, really like roast beef.
It’s PoMo boilerplate.
Talking about discrete ‘narratives’ was already widespread in Christian theological circles 25 years ago. A simple definition is here.
This article by Alan Jacobs in First Things was published over a decade ago, and it’s already a retrospective on this trend.
What’s ironic is that narrative theology was a kind of conservative reaction against extremely left-wing stuff like liberation theology. But focusing on ‘narratives’ without absolute control over those narratives’ interpretation and transmission is risky stuff . . . .
Andrea Dworkin was raped? How did she know?
It reminds me of an old joke about a conversation between the circus midget and the fat lady:
Midget: “I’m gunna have sex with you one day.”
Fat Lady: “If I ever find out about it, I’ll kill you.”
Adventuress or just plain crazy with borderline personality disorder?
(“Feminist” goes after Silicon Valley)
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/12/10/The-Madness-Of-Queen-Shanley
G-d almighty, that’s one disgusting creature. It looks like cannibalistic fat sister from Motel Hell.
And how could any woman listen to this vile pile of flesh?
“Since April 2014, I’ve been trying to revive the useful old word “adventuress,” which means a reasonably good-looking heterosexual woman who manipulates other people into all sorts of drama.”
Let’s see now. Adventuress Paris Hilton was caught canoodling at her favorite pet shop in West LA with a mystery gentleman.
OR
The young adventuresses Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashians made quite the wave in Malibu last weekend when their bright new shiny red Lamborghini pulled up in front of billionaire beach to pick up their guest, a dashing, debonair gentleman. No one knows for sure the persons identity but a nearby beachcomber distinctly recalls the monniker “LJ on the Low Low Ya’ll!” being thrown in his direction. Could it be LJ Low? The Bay Area’s current aspiring rapper? Who is the mystery man? Tune in to the next episode of Keeping up…with those Krazy and Zany Adventuresses.
Looks like the trans Pritzker guy.
My memory is you got it from a Stephen Hunter novel.
Only with this comment am I realizing I’m the iSteve faithful…
“Let me tell you what’s going on, and why this one is so touchy. We are fighting the narrative. You do not fight the narrative. The narrative will destroy you. The narrative is all-powerful. The narrative rules. It rules us, it rules Washington, it rules everything. Now ask me, ‘What is the narrative?’
“What is the narrative?”
The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide ‘These are the lies we tell today.’ No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they have chosen to live their lives. It’s a way of arranging things a certain way they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture. They know, for example, that Bush is a moron and Obama a saint. … And the narrative is the bedrock of their culture, the keystone of their faith, the alter of their church. They don’t even know they’re true believers, because in theory they despise the true believer in anything. ”
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/08/journolist-2-0/
Andrea Dworkin looks like John Popper the lead frontman for Blues Traveler.
"What is the narrative?"
The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It's so powerful because it's unconscious. It's not like they get together every morning and decide 'These are the lies we tell today.' No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it's a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they've never really experienced that's arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they have chosen to live their lives. It's a way of arranging things a certain way they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture. They know, for example, that Bush is a moron and Obama a saint. ... And the narrative is the bedrock of their culture, the keystone of their faith, the alter of their church. They don't even know they're true believers, because in theory they despise the true believer in anything. "Replies: @Steve Sailer, @ben tillman
Let me find the quote by Stephen Hunter on The Narrative.
Only with this comment am I realizing I'm the iSteve faithful...Replies: @Steve Sailer
Yes!
Since I’ve been reading iSteve, I see examples of the narrative everywhere:
Just a few examples I’ve seen today:
1) Ronan Farrow’s Twitter feed – purest distillation of narrative propaganda I’ve ever seen::
Tweets by RonanFarrow
2) Latest column by Nick Kristof, Narrative slave, all the right credentials, Harvard, NYT etc…if he wants to hold on to the megaphone he knows he needs to write stuff like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/opinion/nicholas-kristof-what-if-whites-were-the-minority.html
3) This tumblr account by Harvard Law Students (inner sanctum of The Cathedral) reads like a parody of PC gibberish:
http://socraticshortcomings.tumblr.com/
There’s a lot that happens in this world and in this country…but the few slivers of fact that fit into the narrative are what gets amplified
“the narrative” — First heard it used by Limbaugh two years ago as in the media having a pre-prepared “narrative” to use for certain reoccurring subjects such as illegal immigration. He calls it the media template sometimes
Please no more pictures of Andrea Dworkin – even right-wingers have rights!
As Desiderius says, ‘narrative’ is/was a popular term in postmodernist scribblings. Postmodernism was supposed to topple old “grand narratives”, but of course those old narratives just got replaced with new and equally grand ones, which are often just the inverses of the old ones.
Google image search reveals two photos of Andrea Dworkin from her 20s when she was fairly attractive. Carbohydrates are a hell of a drug!
The first time I encountered the concept that modern journalism was increasingly about making sure “the facts” conformed to a predefined “NARRATIVE” was in William McGowan prescient “Coloring the News” published in 2001.
The “NARRATIVE” has its roots in Cultural Marxism, it that it all about dividing the world in to oppressors and the oppressed, fact be dammed.
As mentioned above, post modernists have been using metanarrative or master narrative since at least 1979 when Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition was published in English.
A wonderful adventuress story is breaking in Britain right now. East Indian political woman leaves Consevatives to join UKIP, then accuses party official coming on to her, then incriminating text messages – from her to him – are revealed.
The cherry on top is that the Oxford college where she says she got a degree has now publicly announced they’ve never heard of her.
Meet Natasha Bolter!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2869234/Ukip-s-sex-scandal-accuser-lied-going-Oxford-misspelt-college-CV.html
Well we do know for sure that she invented the chemistry major. If you still don’t think it was her who wrote those text messages, then there’s a really nice bridge you can buy from me for real cheap. We also do know that she changed her story many times over. If you think she really was raped by the nonexistent chemistry major and his confederates, then… well, I also have real estate on the other side of the Moon. We also do know that she invented (or at least exaggerated by several orders of magnitude) the story of The Beer Bottle Smashed on Her Face.
If after knowing full well that she introduced an imaginary boyfriend to her friends and that she changed her story of rape many times (at first forced oral sex, later gang rape by five, still later by seven men) etc. you still think there’s a way she could be all right in the head, then… you know, I just received an email from a rich Nigerian, all he needs is your bank account number.
Look, this must be quite the coincidence that just when Jackie invented and wrote texts in the name of the imaginary boyfriend and wanted to get the attention, sympathy and love of one of her friends, and that she just invented an imaginary date with this imaginary boyfriend, and that just that exact moment she got raped by someone else… but that then she didn’t want to go to the police at all. You need to look at co-probabilities: it’s not enough to ask what is the probability of woman lying about having raped, because let’s just say it’s very low. But you also need to take a look at the probability of an accomplished lier lying about getting raped also, after she’s already lied about so many things. And I tell you that the probability of her lying about that, too, is extremely high.
Of course, there are many possibilities about commenter anony-mouse.
Maybe he’s just a troll.
Maybe he’s sincerely delusional.
Maybe he’s stupid.
Maybe he’s a paid hack.
Maybe none of the above. Or all of the above.
We don’t know. We cannot know.
This is a bit unfair. In “Gone Girl” one woman engineered the whole plan from the very beginning to go national (or at least statewide). In Jackie’s case, she was probably looking for sympathy from friends and maybe romance. And, doubtless, she got sympathy from Rubin, when Rubin followed up.
Jackie did not report the matter to the police or even set herself up as campus-wide VictimGirl. She did not strap a mattress to her back and parade around campus or arrange an interview with Good Morning America.
I expect she hesitantly told her story to Rubin, feeling Rubin out to get a sense of where the story was going, and providing increasing detail as she was psychically stroked and pumped. Eventually, and probably imperceptibly, things got out of her control. But how could she back down? She was on tape. Rubin took notes. Further, Jackie did not remember her earlier versions of the story.
The “adventuress”, if anyone, was Rubin. Unlike Dworkin, Rubin couldn’t/wouldn’t manufacture her own first-person story for the Cause. But she could search until she found a good prospective candidate and inflate her story.
As Hunter Thompson once put it, ” . . . couldn’t get humped on a bad night in Juarez.” He didn’t say that about Andrea Dworkin, but he certainly could have.
‘Aryan’ Dworkin
http://youtu.be/o0tPX9iQKkk?t=1h32m4s
Good God, the photo is shocking. The true face of feminism. I would suggest the “Glass” in the RS article is really a sly shout-out to Stephen Glass. The RS UVA author is an adventuress too.
That’s about my impression. I grabbed it up as soon as I saw it, which was likely here. Now Rush Limbaugh’s using it.
I know one thing about The Narrative for certain: it refers to a real thing. I know this because the first time I saw it used, I thought it was a great way to name something that I’d noticed for years, but had no specific name for. “Mythology” is a pretty good one, too, except that it might elevate the thing beyond its station.
Maus, if RS had used “maybe” that way, and that many times, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
See my review.
I think the focus on the adventuress/professional victim is misplaced – these people have always been with us. Similarly, spinning this as some kind of Obama administration initiative is too facile for you, Steve (unless you are auditioning for a job at Breitbart.com, in which case feel free to moderate this comment to oblivion.)
What’s changed is that the media, and to some extent the culture, have become permeable to this kind of absurd panic, where it would once have been rightly dismissive. I suspect, as intellectual properties like TNR are turned into click-magnet lolcat aggregators, and expensive columnists and investigative reporters are profitably downsized to $18k/yr purveyors of “epic snark”, your timid media careerist doesn’t want to risk saying anything that twitter might consider “problematic”.
But why are these particular panics sacrosanct? Presumably because the management disapproves, presumably because the ad-clicking market segment now demands it, presumably because the change from a prestige TNR model to high ROI buzzfeed model also changes the audience demographic – younger, more female, more cat friendly, madder at dad, gullible. A website that could make money marketing to the old audience (unless they’re all dead, ofc), under the new market realities, could start a rebalancing. Also make money.
It’s weird. Ha’aretz, Forward, Jerusalem Post, Arutz Sheva, Failed Messiah, etc. are to Jews like Facebook and MySpace are to teens.
They say absolutely anything they want in those forums protected by this weird psychic sense that only their buddies are going to read it. Go figure.
Regarding the Dworkin pic, I think she popularized the lesbian/overalls/keys-on-a-retractable-keychain thing.
Agreed, Danindc. Steve outdid himself with that caption.
Steve is one of the wittiest writers ever, right up there with Iris Murdoch, Henry James and Muriel Spark.
Dworkin was relatively tall for a woman which is not always clear from the surviving photos — this was before the invention of widescreen haha
Anyway her common-law husband was this West Village gay photographer, and I think they eventually got legally married. The thing that really hurt Dworkin’s prestige was her anti-Clinton warpath during impeachment, but the timing of that correlates with other indications of her losing her marbles, e.g. the subsequent Guardian story about being drugged and raped by Parisian room service. If you read a few pages out of her older tracts like “Right-Wing Women” it can be kind of intriguing in small doses, like the ravings of a background character in a Philip K. Dick alternative-history sci-fi novel
http://youtu.be/o0tPX9iQKkk?t=1h32m4sReplies: @Scotty G. Vito
Well why do you think the DDR always kicked ass in women’s shotput
What's changed is that the media, and to some extent the culture, have become permeable to this kind of absurd panic, where it would once have been rightly dismissive. I suspect, as intellectual properties like TNR are turned into click-magnet lolcat aggregators, and expensive columnists and investigative reporters are profitably downsized to $18k/yr purveyors of "epic snark", your timid media careerist doesn't want to risk saying anything that twitter might consider "problematic".
But why are these particular panics sacrosanct? Presumably because the management disapproves, presumably because the ad-clicking market segment now demands it, presumably because the change from a prestige TNR model to high ROI buzzfeed model also changes the audience demographic - younger, more female, more cat friendly, madder at dad, gullible. A website that could make money marketing to the old audience (unless they're all dead, ofc), under the new market realities, could start a rebalancing. Also make money.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @NOTA
The decline in subscription to only ad-driven is a big problem. In the 1990s my wife and I used to pay $20 a year or whatever for The Atlantic Monthly and received a lot of quality in return. It was aimed at intelligent married couples who both read it — you could see from the many ads that were aimed at luxuries that only middle aged married couples would buy jointly. But now it’s hard to get any subscription dollars for anything on the Internet (I pay for the NYT, but that’s the main one for me). So ads drive everything now and advertisers on the whole prefer women to men because men give women more money to spend than women give men to spend.
What's changed is that the media, and to some extent the culture, have become permeable to this kind of absurd panic, where it would once have been rightly dismissive. I suspect, as intellectual properties like TNR are turned into click-magnet lolcat aggregators, and expensive columnists and investigative reporters are profitably downsized to $18k/yr purveyors of "epic snark", your timid media careerist doesn't want to risk saying anything that twitter might consider "problematic".
But why are these particular panics sacrosanct? Presumably because the management disapproves, presumably because the ad-clicking market segment now demands it, presumably because the change from a prestige TNR model to high ROI buzzfeed model also changes the audience demographic - younger, more female, more cat friendly, madder at dad, gullible. A website that could make money marketing to the old audience (unless they're all dead, ofc), under the new market realities, could start a rebalancing. Also make money.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @NOTA
I don’t think the media has become resistant to the narrative over the years. Instead, there are now more ways for people who don’t buy the narrative to speak up, and get the attention of others. It doesn’t take all that many people pointing out that the emperor is naked before the all the serious people in the front rows have to start going along with the crowd’s laughter, or they’ll look as ridiculous as the emperor.
If after knowing full well that she introduced an imaginary boyfriend to her friends and that she changed her story of rape many times (at first forced oral sex, later gang rape by five, still later by seven men) etc. you still think there's a way she could be all right in the head, then... you know, I just received an email from a rich Nigerian, all he needs is your bank account number.
Look, this must be quite the coincidence that just when Jackie invented and wrote texts in the name of the imaginary boyfriend and wanted to get the attention, sympathy and love of one of her friends, and that she just invented an imaginary date with this imaginary boyfriend, and that just that exact moment she got raped by someone else... but that then she didn't want to go to the police at all. You need to look at co-probabilities: it's not enough to ask what is the probability of woman lying about having raped, because let's just say it's very low. But you also need to take a look at the probability of an accomplished lier lying about getting raped also, after she's already lied about so many things. And I tell you that the probability of her lying about that, too, is extremely high.
Of course, there are many possibilities about commenter anony-mouse.
Maybe he's just a troll.
Maybe he's sincerely delusional.
Maybe he's stupid.
Maybe he's a paid hack.
Maybe none of the above. Or all of the above.
We don't know. We cannot know.Replies: @Steve Sailer
It’s also not beyond belief that an attractive young woman who likes to create fake drama is more likely to get herself into real drama.
The cherry on top is that the Oxford college where she says she got a degree has now publicly announced they've never heard of her.
Meet Natasha Bolter!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2869234/Ukip-s-sex-scandal-accuser-lied-going-Oxford-misspelt-college-CV.htmlReplies: @Anonymous Nephew
Natasha Bolter sounds like the name of an unsuitable woman to whom one of the Woosters is attracted in a Wodehouse novel.
(the real Natasha, it tranpires, was expelled from the Labour Party for not paying her dues)
“Natasha Bolter thrown out of Labour Party before ‘defection’ to Ukip”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11287413/Natasha-Bolter-thrown-out-of-Labour-Party-before-defection-to-Ukip.html
“‘Teacher’ Natasha Bolter may not hold qualifications”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11288165/Natasha-Bolton-may-not-be-qualified-a-teacher-despite-claimsUKIP.html
One thing about these adventuress skanks deserves mention. Namely, they are untouchable, and they probably know it.
Read the following beauty. It’s a 10-line executive report.
http://www.rexburgstandardjournal.com/news/rexburg-police-woman-admits-to-false-rape-claim/article_ec0b872e-05bd-11e3-9c82-001a4bcf887a.html#axzz2c4xG2Wnx
The article says the following, in an entirely innocent manner: 1) women make false rape allegations “all the time” according to the police; 2) they suffer no consequences.
Fincher is easily one of the best directors of the current generation. One of the most admirable aspects of his career is his ability to sense the mood of the population. To smell the Zeitgeist, so t speak. His better movies touch nerves. “Fight Club” is probably the epitome of the spirit of the 1990s and the angst and disorientation of the X-ers . “Gone Girl” can serve as a textbook on early 21st century gender politics.
The ending of Fincher’s most recent movie was a killer. The adventuress got away with murder. Her husband, despite knowing everything, was helpless.
Now watch as Jackie suffers no repercussions beyond indirect infamy, and Eldery continues her “career” as if nothing has happened. The ones that will get hurt the most will be the fellows at Rolling Stone – a traditionally male-oriented magazine.
On the exact same date she had an imaginary date? Well, maybe she did have group sex. But rape is sufficiently rare that it would be quite the coincidence if this woman was raped at the exact time of her imaginary date.
One thing I’ve noticed about this case is that Erdely is hard to spell. Hell, I don’t even know if I got it right this time. I was spelling it “Erderly,” based on someone else’s typo.
"What is the narrative?"
The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It's so powerful because it's unconscious. It's not like they get together every morning and decide 'These are the lies we tell today.' No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it's a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they've never really experienced that's arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they have chosen to live their lives. It's a way of arranging things a certain way they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture. They know, for example, that Bush is a moron and Obama a saint. ... And the narrative is the bedrock of their culture, the keystone of their faith, the alter of their church. They don't even know they're true believers, because in theory they despise the true believer in anything. "Replies: @Steve Sailer, @ben tillman
That’s true to some extent, but there’s also deliberate coordination of the narration, as in the case of Journolist or the more recent (current?) Gamechanger Salon.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/08/journolist-2-0/