July | 2017 | Jessica Chasmar

1 J.K. Rowling finally apologizes (sort of) for stunningly false claim about Trump — 3 days too late

Harry Potter author and darling of the left J.K. Rowling has finally apologized (sort of) for a stunningly false tweetstorm against President Trump that racked up thousands of shares in the past three days.

Rowling’s original series of tweets on Friday called Trump “horrible” for seemingly ignoring the extended hand of a young boy confined to a wheelchair, who was visiting the White House during a July 24 “Victims of Obamacare” event.

The clip Rowling retweeted, which was deleted long before her apology came, left out the beginning of the encounter when the president payed special attention to the boy.

“That clip of Trump looking deliberately over a disabled child’s head, ignoring his outstretched hand, has touched me on the raw,” Rowling wrote in a series of now-deleted tweets. “My mother used a wheelchair. I witnessed people uncomfortable around her disability, but if they had a shred of decency they got over it. (unless related to him by ties of blood, and therefore his creations) [people are] treated with contempt, because they do not resemble Trump. This monster of narcissism values only himself and his pale reflections. The disabled, minorities, transgender people, the poor, women. Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition.”

As you can see in the clip below, her entire rant is based on a complete lie.

So @jk_rowling is on a tirade about how Trump ignored a kid in a wheelchair, but she conveniently left out the clip from the beginning: pic.twitter.com/v3tBXI8WY9

— エリック (@scratch_point) July 28, 2017

A woman claiming to be the mother of the boy had reportedly asked others on social media to contact Rowling and set the record straight.

“If someone can please get a message to J.K. Rowling: Trump didn’t snub my son & Monty wasn’t even trying to shake his hand,” Marjorie Kelly Weer wrote on Facebook. “(1. He’s 3 and hand shaking is not his thing, 2. he was showing off his newly acquired secret service patch). Thanks.”

Rowling tweeted the following statement Monday evening:

“Re: my tweets about the small boy in a wheelchair whose proferred hand the president appeared to ignore in press footage, multiple sources have informed me that that was not a full or accurate representation of their interaction. I very clearly projected my own sensitivities around the issue of disabled people being overlooked or ignored onto the images I saw and if that caused any distress to that boy or his family, I apologise unreservedly. These tweets will remain, but I will delete the previous ones on the subject.”

Notice she didn’t apologize to Trump for smearing him.

It’s also worth noting that Rowling issued multiple tweets in the time between her anti-Trump tirade and her apology, even after several high-profile critics called her out on it, including fellow British liberal Piers Morgan.

I’m not squirming.
But I will keep on this until she deletes those tweets. Using a disabled boy to falsely smear someone is disgraceful. https://t.co/HpXXjXcO58

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 30, 2017

It was shameful and irresponsible for such a prominent fiction writer to tweet fiction as fact and then let that lie continue to spread over the course of three days. I suppose it’s good that Rowling deleted the tweets and apologized to the boy and his family, but Trump deserves an apology, too. Any decent person would know that. But I’m not holding my breath.

Chelsea Clinton also not-so-surprisingly fell for the lie. This explanation left me asking, “Huh?”

Hello Piers-I hadn’t seen the full video until now. I removed the retweet. And, the President should have shaken the boy’s hand at the end.

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) July 30, 2017

4 Bunny Ranch brothel offers Sean Spicer PR gig

Sean Spicer already has a job offer after his not-so-surprising departure from the White House. The Moonlite Bunny Ranch, subject of HBO’s 2002 series “Cathouse,” has offered him the opportunity to get into a different kind of prostitution, repping for the legal Nevada brothel.

“I have some very knowledgable connections on the Trump team, and they’re telling me that the president was angry over [Spicer’s] missteps in front of the press,” brothel owner Dennis Hof said in a statement that popped up in my inbox this afternoon. “I think Sean will really flourish with a change of scenery, and I’m thinking that a spot on my public relations team may be the perfect place for him.”

Judging from Hof’s demeanor on “Cathouse,” this next statement seems highly plausible:

“I get compared to Trump for a lot of reasons,” he said. “We’ve both had huge media presences for decades now. My public relations guys are the best at maintaining that, and they could be a really good influence on Sean, serving as mentors in a business that’s a lot cleaner than politics…legal prostitution.”

Hof, a Trump-supporting libertarian (I knew I liked him), who unsuccessfully ran for Reno’s state Senate seat last year, said he’s willing to offer Spicer a significantly higher salary than he was used to getting under Trump.

“There’s a reason that everyone graduates from jobs in presidential administrations to the private sector,” Hof laughed. “Once I negotiate an incentive package with Sean, he’s going to be real happy here on Team Bunny Ranch.”

The press release didn’t say how much the Bunny Ranch is willing to offer for the job but revealed that past incentives included free “booty passes” to explore, ahem, the ranch’s attractions.

Sounds like a sweet deal, and not a far stretch from what Spicer was doing in the White House. In journalism school we always (lovingly, of course) called the PR kids prostitutes, so prostituting for prostitutes (whoring for whores?) seems doubly appropriate.

0 Societal rejects harass Chick-fil-A diners, steal fisherman’s catch in name of animal equality

A band of societal rejects filmed themselves this week harassing Chick-fil-A diners and releasing a fisherman’s catch without his consent — all in the name of equal rights for animals.

Members of the group Direct Action Everywhere stormed into a Chick-fil-A in Pinellas Park, Florida, on Tuesday, holding fake knives and covered in blood as confused onlookers participated in the restaurant’s Cow Appreciation Day.

Check it out here:

Animal rights activist Kayla Leaming, wife of the man who recorded the incident, told the Tampa Bay Times that Chick-fil-A is guilty of speciesism.

“It’s normalizing violence, and perpetuating the idea that one life is more valuable than another life just because of the body you’re born into,” she said.

That’s rights, folks. Apparently we’re “ists” if we think we’re more valuable than chickens. Granted, this group’s behavior is unhinged, annoying, intrusive, and self-defeating, but equally unhinged is the woman attacking the man filming and trying to grab his camera. Note to readers: If you find yourself in this uncomfortable situation, keep your cool and call the police, wait for management to intervene or leave. Your children aren’t going to be irreparably damaged because someone yelled “meat is murder” in their presence, but they are going to be damaged by witnessing their mother completely lose it. She should have used it as a learning opportunity to teach her children that those rabble-rousing losers are the result of years of personal failures, and that people who are happy, kind and secure with their lives shouldn’t feel the need to project their own irrational fears on a captive audience.

Activists with the same group later confronted a family fishing in Crescent Lake Park in St. Petersburg and threw the family’s freshly caught dinner back into the water without their permission.

The Leamings again proudly posted footage of the confrontation online, which showed them sending their young son in as a prop to spew their unsolicited propaganda on a family enjoying their afternoon outdoors. After nearly four minutes of loudly berating two of the men for fishing, Mike Leaming grabbed their tilapia and chucked it into the water.

Watch this:

One of the fishermen, identified as 35-year-old Bob Hope, called the police, but the activists were already leaving the scene when an officer arrived, police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez told the Tampa Bay Times.

Police have declined to press charges against the Leamings, despite being inundated with complaints.

“I only shared it on social media because the police officers did nothing to protect my rights,” Mr. Hope told the Times. “If there were people fishing all over the lake, and these people showed up, that’s a protest. We were fishing by ourselves when we were ambushed. That’s not a protest, that’s harassment.”

“By the way, that fish was an invasive tilapia,” he added. “They’re destroying the ecosystem and killing our bass population.”

See that, dummies? If you would have spent one minute chatting with the locals instead of breathlessly vomiting your garbage, maybe you would have come to some understanding as to why population control can be necessary and why you need to find joy in your life.

This video is trickier for me to analyze because I, personally, would be infuriated if someone did this to me. I’m not an expert, but once that fish is caught legally, it’s yours fair and square, and I would 100% consider this theft or destruction of property. But again, the fishermen could have dealt with these idiots a little bit better. Protect your catch, stand your ground and do not engage — not in the slightest. If the harassment continues, record them and call the police, but don’t get up in their faces and start screaming. It could lead to a fight or even worse, and at the end of the day, it is just a fish.

In the current political climate, when it appears everyone has reached their absolute boiling point, it’s a valuable asset to be able to calmly stop and ask yourself, “Is this really worth it?”

2 Watch this truck run over a fracking protester

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

British police are beefing up their presence at a heavily-protested fracking site in Lancashire after a demonstrator was hit by a utility truck Monday.

The protester was doing what is known as “slow walking,” where demonstrators obstruct a road or highway by blocking vehicles. The guy got what was expected when he darted in front of the fast-moving truck, and he luckily walked away with just bruises. Police caught up with the driver but no charges were filed. Watch below:

0 Don’t be a Lena Dunham

“Ignorance and close-mindedness is what breeds people like Lena Dunham and allows extremists to thrive.”

Click to play: