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Comment by spread_love | Hacker News Reader

> The Intrepid Reporter [TV Tropes link] is as much of a stock character as the Evil Corporation. You don’t hear much about the evil reporter, though

Er, like the Immoral Journalist? https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImmoralJournalis... The article itself supposes the conclusion "the news is fake."

> You don’t hear much about the evil communist, either.

Uh...the Red Scare? This one is incredibly easy to refute: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DirtyCommunists

The author's counterargument?

> I’d bet the world has seen a >1000:1 ratio of scenes featuring evil capitalists to scenes featuring evil communists

They'd bet. Ok?

View on HN

>Uh...the Red Scare?

First, that was before most of our lifetimes. Times have changed quite a bit on that front, which is the point. Second, thanks to the Venona Files we know the "scare" had a large basis in reality.

> The article itself supposes the conclusion "the news is fake."

As posted elsewhere, this should be sobering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9rbHpA_6W4

> Times have changed quite a bit on that front

When's the last time you heard the right use "communist" as an insult?

Thank you for the youtube link, it's ANOTHER example of the Immoral Journalist trope to add to my list.

>When's the last time you heard the right use "communist" as an insult?

I dunno, they've been relegated to AM radio & FOX News so I never hear them anymore. The mainstream news sources continue to be cleansed of wrongthink.

There is no fleshing out of contrasting ideas in the news, only competing echo chambers for people to mainline their confirmation biases directly in toe their veins with no challenge to their preexisting thoughts and ideas. Carefully crafted into 7 second soundbites of course.

> it's ANOTHER example of the Immoral Journalist trope to add to my list

Then you don't know what a trope is. These are actual clips of real "journalists" dutifully reading their party-line scripts. This isn't a portrayal.

Oh, that explains why you're totally our of the loop on how often "communists" are painted negatively in mainstream American media, you didn't see it.

> Then you don't know what a trope is

Oops, I sure do, it's when an element recurs in a piece of art. The piece if art you posted (the youtube video) was created by an artist to portray the message "the news is fake." Thus, ANOTHER example of the Immoral Journalist trope.

>you're totally our of the loop on how often "communists" are painted negatively in mainstream American media

Decades ago, sure. We're talking about during modern times though and over the last 30 years it's the capitalists that always get painted negatively in media.

>The piece if art you posted

So you missed the part where this isn't a portrayal. It's the actual journalists reading from a script, the same script they all read from.

And that's our "journalists", no wonder the news is so manufactured, homogenized and faked.

> over the last 30 years it's the capitalists that always get painted negatively in media

You said you haven't seen the media I'm referring to, meaning you're totally our of the loop on how often "communists" are painted negatively in mainstream American media. You simply don't have the data, you're guessing.

> So you missed the part where this isn't a portrayal

Sure didn't, it's also a piece of art that was created by an artist. Did you know that art can include clips from reality? They're called "documentaries."

So again, if you knew what a "trope" was you'd understand that the artist that edited this art is using the Immortal Journalist trope.

>You simply don't have the data, you're guessing.

I'm happy to review your data. Care to post it?

>it's also a piece of art that was created by an artist.

It's as much of a piece of art as our posts on HN are.

> Er, like the Immoral Journalist?

"You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." — Hearst, apocryphally

>> I’d bet the world has seen a >1000:1 ratio of scenes featuring evil capitalists to scenes featuring evil communists

> They'd bet. Ok?

The context was "in the past several decades", if this means 3, that goes to 1992. I'd say that's a very, very safe bet. I'd take it too. If it was to 1982 it would be less so but still safe.

Otherwise it's been a long time since the cold war. The 'Red Scare' even longer.

I can't even think of a major movie since 2010 that had a villain who was socialist besides The Interview, Team America, and Red Dawn 2012 but those aren't even fake examples.

Even in your "Dirty Communists" TVTropes links all the examples were Cold War era, the only two modern films I found were also using historical real references:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheDeathOfStalin

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/BridgeOfSpies

I could list a countless modern films/shows where the enemy was an evil billionaire entrepreneur or faceless corporation. A wealthy capitalist in a suit is pretty much today's standard cliche villain trope.

>I can't even think of a major movie since 2010 that had a villain who was socialist besides The Interview, Team America, and Red Dawn 2012 but those aren't even fake examples.

>A wealthy capitalist in a suit is pretty much today's standard cliche villain trope.

This was true during the Cold War, too. In the Bond films, Soviet Russia is the enemy in exactly one film, For Your Eyes Only. Red China is the implied power behind the throne in two, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice. In every other entry in the series, the villains are SPECTRE and a variety of madmen, predominantly the billionaire type.

Another example is the frequently made claim that "Muslims are always the villains in Hollywood". It is far, far, far easier to name films in which "Islamophobia" is the greater evil than the opposite, both before and after the September 11 attacks on the US. The Sum of All Fears is one example in which the book's Islamic villains are explicitly replaced (by "neo-Nazis") for the film.

The author hasn't provided any reason this is correct besides "betcha".

Was there a more common insult than "communist" by the American right in the last decade? Most using it think it's synonymous with "socialist" and means Obamacare.

All the examples were NOT cold war era; Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Salt, Kundun, lots more. The Death of Stalin is a poor example, along with praise, it was criticized for making light of great suffering.

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