Uncle Media WANTS YOU to Stop Asking Questions About Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein is dead and for our national media that can only mean one thing: Man your battle stations! To the ramparts!
The duty at hand, of course, being to demean and degrade anyone who finds the least bit suspicious the official account of the suicide of that rarest of birds — a plutocrat actually doing time.
Yes our media, those who in our Hollywood-fueled imagination are the first to question official narratives but in our sad reality are actually the last, have sprung into action to voice condescending contempt for anyone who dares harbor dark suspicions about the veracity of what we are told about the powerful.
- “Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories run riot,” sniffed the ever-increasingly reactionary Guardian.
- “Just hours after the high-profile financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on Saturday, unsubstantiated theories about his death began to gain traction online,” tut-tutted the BBC.
- “Mr. Epstein’s death has also unleashed a torrent of unfounded conspiracy theories online, with people suggesting, without evidence, that Mr. Epstein was killed to keep him from incriminating others,” school-marmed the New York Times, which has NEVER seen an official version of ANY event it didn’t like.
The problem here is not that there is no solid proof to back up any one specific claim about Epstein’s demise.
The problem here is that the media/political/judicial establishment has once again proven itself more concerned with deep-sixing inconvenient questions about the privileges of the world’s powerful than with asking hard questions about how this very rich and very connected man was able to get away with abusing so many girls for so long in the first place.
Even in dying, Epstein seems to have gotten away with something, but that seems to inspire not the least concern or consternation among our media elites.
The Epstein case, in short, is another chance for our media to display its servitude to plutocracy, its knee-jerk resistance to any idea or fact which challenges a boilerplate concept that all is basically well and that while an interloper like Trump must occasionally be run out of town, our overall structure of rule by a moneyed elite is beyond question or reproach, much less outrage.
EPSTEIN’S MASSIVE CRIMES
One hardly need be a “conspiracy theorist” to notice the yawning gap between what should have happened when someone raped dozens of minors and what DID HAPPEN when the rich and connected Epstein raped dozens of girls. (Needless to say, the term “conspiracy theorist” itself is reserved for those outside power and is never used to describe those in government and media who, for example, falsely claimed Saddam had WMDs or assured us Trump’s secret alliance with Putin was going to be unmasked any day now.)
The basic facts of Epstein’s abuse are hardly in dispute.
Federal investigators as far back as 2005 identified 36 girls Epstein had molested, but gave him a slap-on-the-wrist deal in which he was allowed to plead guilty to one count of soliciting a prostitute and one count of procuring an underage girl for prostitution. He served 13 months in jail, but during his “sentence” was allowed to go to his downtown West Palm Beach office, up to 12 hours a day, six days a week. While later on probation and “house arrest,” he was also allowed to fly to his office in Manhattan and take his private jet to his place in the US Virgin (har har) Islands.
The toll of Epstein’s predations would, of course, eventually grow into the 100s. The youngest victim? 12.
But has the media’s instinct tilted toward outrage — toward demanding answers about how justice was bent in favor of a rich man — or was its gut reaction to smear anyone whose natural response to this perversion of justice was simple skepticism when this filth managed to cheat the proverbial hangman?
THE MEDIA’S FEEBLE RESPONSE
A media fulfilling its Fourth Estate role — serving as watchdog to prevent the rich and powerful from becoming a new permanently privileged over-class — would be focused, laser-like, on the simple fact that this whole story stinks to High Holy Heaven.
I mean it is not like there are no lingering questions here.
First off, the question that seems to have dawned on hardly anyone in media, is “Where the hell is Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s procurer, the pimp for the pimp?” Court records show that Maxwell, the ex-girlfriend of Epstein who continued to be Epstein’s procurer after they reverted to being “just friends,” had as her primary duty procuring up to three young girls a day for Epstein.
So who is this Maxwell character?
Well, she is the favorite daughter of Robert Maxwell, the thieving press baron who stole millions from his company’s pension funds, while, by the way, working as a spy for Israel’s Mossad. Six serving or former heads of the Mossad attended Maxwell’s funeral, during which Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said, “He has done more for than Israel than can today be said.”
What exactly did Maxwell do? Well, among other things he helped the Mossad find Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who spilled the beans to the world about the existence of Israel’s atom bomb. When the famed US journalist Seymour Hersh revealed Maxwell’s role in the subsequent Mossad kidnapping of Vanunu in Italy (Vanunu served 18 years in prison, 11 in solitary confinement), Maxwell and his Mirror newspaper group sued for libel. The case was later settled when the Mirror “acknowledged that Mr. Hersh ‘is an author of excellent reputation and of the highest integrity who would never write anything which he did not believe to be true and that he was in this instance fully justified in writing what he did.’”
So we know Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine, worked as a spy for the Mossad.
Maxwell himself died in mysterious circumstances, drowning alone after apparently falling naked off his yacht — named Lady Ghislaine. Post-mortems may have been inconclusive as to the cause of death — heart attack? drowning? — but what was certain was that he left behind billions of dollars in debt and a deeply grateful the Israeli state.
We do not know if Ghislaine Maxwell followed her father into service to the Mossad. But we do know that Alexander Acosta, the former federal prosecutor who signed off on Epstein’s sweetheart deal, said cryptically that he had done so after being told Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” and after he had been told “to leave it alone.” And we do know that for some reason Acosta also gave Maxwell immunity from prosecution when awarding Epstein his sweet plea.
Surely our intrepid media are chomping at the bit to get at the truth of these tantalizing tidbit,s yes?
No.
The Times and the rest of the inexplicably uncurious scribes guarding the republic cared only that when it came to Acosta, another Trump scalp could be claimed. The team tribal sport of politics is, after all, all that matters to our “reporters.” Whether some foreign intelligence agency played a role in allowing a monster to prey on American girls, most of them from crappy homes — who the fuck cares?
Not, of course, our mainstream media.
Even when the Washington Post and BBC did finally feel compelled to notice the elephant in the corner that is Ghislaine Maxwell, neither saw fit to even mention Robert Maxwell’s intelligence background, nor the libel suit Hersh won to prove his claim, nor Acosta’s cryptic remark.
Why would anyone follow up on that?
But that is not all. We also know it was Ghislaine Maxwell who provided Epstein’s entrée to high society by introducing the former high school teacher to figures like Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. And we also know Epstein had friends in high places in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Barak admits having gotten to know Epstein about 17 years ago, and acknowledges having met with Epstein “more than 10 times and much less than a hundred times.”
Thank goodness for that.
The man Barak says hooked him up with our late “financier” was the late Israeli leader Shimon Peres, the father of Israel’s nuclear bomb.
Epstein and Barak apparently remained on good terms even years after Epstein’s pedo conviction. The politician was photographed coming out of Epstein’s apartment in 2016, and Epstein invested $2 million in a surveillance company Barak was starting a year earlier.
Move along folks — nothing to see here!
NO SHORTAGE OF SHADY CHARACTERS
Of course, Epstein’s Israeli connection is hardly the only relationship which could have proved, uh, inconvenient for someone very rich and very powerful. There are plenty of people not sad to see him dead, to say the least, with Randy Prince Andy no doubt topping the list. Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s lawsuit alleged she was lent out by Epstein to Andrew three times for sex when she was 17. The royal family, of course, has no money nor power. They also don’t have too much in the way of brains, at least if Andrew’s ill-advised decision to let himself be photographed deep in conversation with Epstein in Central Park shortly after the latter finished doing his not-so-hard time.
Again, this does not mean Good Queen Elizabeth had Epstein rubbed out. But it does — or should — raise questions about just what the link is between having friends in high places (or, perhaps, to be “conspiratorial,” to have dirt on them) and being able to break the law with impunity.
But rather than rise to the occasion and help us get to the bottom of this tawdry affair, the media’s response has overwhelmingly been one big “shut up.”
There have of course been some in mainstream media who have smelled a rat.
But largely only insofar as that rat can be laid at the doorstep of the US political party they oppose (as if there is a difference between the Republican pigs who enabled Epstein and Democrat ones).
President Trump of course tweeted suggestions it was the Clinton machine wot done it, and the corporate Democrats naturally returned the favor (with the latter predictably reverting to their Ruskkygate facial tic to boot).
Both sides of course have reason to be happy Epstein is gone.
The highest profile Epstein victim, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, was a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago when Maxwell recruited her for Epstein. Hurrah! Say the Democrats, ignoring the fact that Giuffre, at least, said in a sworn statement that Trump never even flirted with her. Still Trump WAS friends with the guy.
Clinton for his part has been in much the same boat as Barak when it comes to ties with Epstein. He has had to admit knowing the guy — too much public proof to issue the standard blanket denial — but he has then tried to brush off his ties as insignificant.
In Slick Willy’s case, the record is still not exactly clear. Records show he took 11 trips — as many as 27 flights — on board Epstein’s 727 jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.” Clinton’s spokespeople (he of course is as always not being man enough to own up to his own actions personally) say the number was only four.
Obviously, it does not look good.
On 11 of the flights Clinton took, Maxwell was also present. As were, on some of the flights, other Epstein procurers, a soft-core porn actress, “two women described only as “Janice” and “Jessica,” etc. etc. etc.
Again, what is the response of our national media?
Is it curiosity? Suspicion? A drive to get to the bottom of this stinking cesspool?
Of course not.
It is to belittle anyone who smells any of this the least bit fishy. It is a knee-jerk impulse to protect power.
“Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, “choose your own reality” crisis story,” bemoaned the NYT two days in. The story, needless to say, provided ZERO CONTEXT for why people MIGHT be skeptical of the official narratives surrounding the Epstein story. Bill Clinton’s 27 flights on the Lolita Express, inevitably, were not mentioned in the Times’ op-ed, which saw fit to employ only the vague phrase “shadowy private jet flights” in glossing over Clinton’s junkets.
Now why would such an obvious omission, such a clear desire to shield the powerful from the consequences of their actions (much less the refusal to question the powerful about them) lead ANYONE to veer off into the weeds of “conspiracy?”
How stupid are our media figures and, more to the point, how stupid do THEY think WE are?
LAPDOG MEDIA — AN AGE-OLD STORY
Such mainstream media management of all narrative toward the benefit of elites is of course not new.
There is an illuminating passage in Hersh’s biography, Reporter, in which he describes how during his time at the New York Times’ Washington bureau, in the midst of the Vietnam War, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger would regularly call up the “Old Gray Lady” and spoon-feed Washington reporter Bernard Gwertzman whatever propaganda Kissinger had on his mind that day. It is worth quoting at length:
“There was a near-daily ritual that stunned me. On far too many afternoons around 5:00, (New York Times Washington Bureau Chief) Max Frankel’s secretary would approach Bernie and tell him that Max was at that moment on the phone with ‘Henry’ and the call would soon be switched to him. Sure enough, in a few moments Bernie would begin avidly scratching notes as he listened to Kissinger — he listened far more than he talked — and the result was a foreign policy story that invariably led the paper the next morning. After a week or two of observing the process, I asked the always affable and straightforward Bernie if he ever checked what Henry was telling him with Bill Rogers, the sectary of state, or Mel Laird at the Pentagon. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘If I did Henry wouldn’t speak to us.’”
Yes, folks, this is the kind of healthy skepticism — the type of journalistic independence — so crucial to the media’s watchdog role.
I hardly need give more examples of this kind of supine media service to power — economic or political.
Be it kick-starting foreign wars (who can forget Judy Miller and her aluminum tubes stories that the Times printed to help get the Iraq invasion off the ground), ignoring massive fraud that led to millions of Americans losing their homes in 2008, or pumping up preposterous stories about Russkies under every bed so the Democrats can continue to ignore the looting of America (and pocketing the resulting campaign donations), our media has proven itself not just incapable of the slightest curiosity or skepticism, but also downright hostile to the real interests of the American people.
A FEW GOOD APPLES
There have been several courageous attempts to get at the truth of Epstein matter by brave reporters. As early as 2003 Vanity Fair reporter Vicky Ward dug deep into the secrets of Epstein’s racket and eventually managed to get several of his victims — young and scared — to agree to go on the record about what Epstein had done to them. Despite the great risks taken by the girls — and the massive harassment Epstein and his clique directed at Ward — that reporter got the story. The whole criminal enterprise could have been lanced well over a decade ago, and other victims spared Epstein’s crimes. But Vanity Fair’s then-editor, Graydon Carter, himself later disgraced in the Me-too scandals, quashed the damaging information in the story, including the victim testimony, and turned the piece into little more than a society gossip column. It ran under the headline, “The Talented Mr. Epstein.”
Hard-hitting stuff, as usual from our media.
Epstein’s final reckoning with justice began when another reporter, Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald, courageously vowed that Epstein must not be allowed to get away with his crimes. Somehow, she managed to do what no reporter at the New York Times or Washington Post had managed — or wanted — to do: Dig into this story and secure the blessing of management to run with it.
These bigger papers have pitifully refused to look into the sins of a rich and powerful man — and of the global collection of slime that either joined in his crimes or enabled them. They could have warned us against jumping to conclusions about the death — while at the same time vigorously demanding answers about how this whole caper came about.
But they refused to do that. Sneering has taken precedence over probity.
We have seen again — clearly — that our national newspapers simply do not have the guts to do their duty.
Nor do they have, one must concede, any interest in doing so.
They cannot be trusted.
And that, friends, is why speculation is the order of the day.
When the media we entrust with uncovering secrets instead commits itself to furiously burying them, speculation of the wildest sort can and will be the only logical result.
