‘New Republic’ Politicized Titanic Sub Disappearance By Hyping That CEO Donations ‘Leaned Heavily Towards Republican Candidates’
“OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was not a Republican megadonor, but his donations over the years leaned heavily towards Republican candidates,” TNR wrote in a now-deleted tweet prior to the latest news that the vessel was destroyed.
The situation involving the missing Titanic explorer sub took a tragic turn today with the U.S. Coast Guard announcing the sub had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” and that there were no survivors among the five who were onboard.
Here are the names and photos of those who perished:
Praying for the safe return of :
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 73
Stockton Rush, 61
Hamish Harding, 58
Shahzada Dawood, 48
Sulaiman Dawood, 19#Titanic #OceanGate pic.twitter.com/n0Yp8xZy2B— MARISA (@MarisaSpice1985) June 21, 2023
While our thoughts and prayers are with their families, it’s also important to point out that the story as it developed brought out the worst in some folks, as evidenced by a “report” from the far-left “New Republic” website, which for some reason thought it was vital to alert readers that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush had made donations to Republicans.
From the article:
Public campaign finance records indicate that Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate currently stuck on the missing Titan submersible that was running a tourist expedition of the Titanic wreck, has been a consistent Republican donor over the years.
Now a point of caveat here: According to these public finance records, Rush was not a Republican megadonor, but his donations over the years leaned heavily toward Republican candidates.
Federal Election Commission campaign finance filings show a Stockton Rush of Washington state employed by OceanGate giving $1,500 to Culberson for Congress, the principal campaign committee for now-former Republican Congressman John Culberson who represented Texas’s 7th district from 2001 to 2019. Culberson had a 100 percent scorecard rating from the conservative Family Research Council, a 92 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, and a 4 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. Not exactly a RINO.
Later, we learned that the staff writer for the piece, Daniel Strauss, had actually sought out comments from Washington state Democrats to confirm whether or not Stockton Rush was just a run-of-the-mill political donor or a GOP megadonor:
Washington state Democratic consultants told The New Republic they don’t regard these donations as a sign that Rush is anything like a GOP megadonor, just that he leans to the right.
Understandably, the story sparked outrage to the point that tweets from the publication on it (including this one – archived link here) have disappeared.
But the Internet, as they say, is forever:
I’m actually speechless… pic.twitter.com/IsFfGfm2vI
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) June 21, 2023
Deleted Tweet vs Second Attempt
Not an improvement, @newrepublic. pic.twitter.com/pTPtt40ykP
— Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) June 21, 2023
Not sure which is more interesting: that this was published by a team, and not one person thought to say, "this is extremely gross," or the headline's use of the past tense "had," as if the New Republic knows something the rest of us don't. https://t.co/DYQ7zIC6k4
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) June 21, 2023
The New Republic thinks the CEO of Oceangate deserves to suffocate on the bottom of the ocean because he supported Republicans https://t.co/ycUug56nzc
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 21, 2023
Not surprisingly, CNN brought Strauss on – presumably to talk about his “report”:
🚨Post-Licht CNN Update🚨
They invited the guy who wrote the “One of the Guys Who’s Gonna Die on the Sub Gave Money to Republicans” piece to talk about the sub. Awesome work, everyone. https://t.co/a22jQFbh8F
— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) June 21, 2023
I don’t have a prestigious journalism degree, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but something I do know is that when you’re a reporter, and you write something, it should have some journalistic value to readers by striving to inform them of things they might like to know about a current event, an ongoing situation, an important public figure, etc.
What journalistic value did the story on Stockton Rush’s political donations, published at a time when he and the others onboard might have been taking their last breaths or already dead, bring to anyone? I mean, I guess what we were supposed to get from that is that maybe the author of the story thought Rush deserved to die along with the others because of his political leanings?
It makes no sense.
I get that there’s going to be criticism for taking on such an endeavor, along with criticism over the fact that Rush, despite his GOP donations, seemed to be “woke” on some level when it came to hiring experienced crew members, and also allegedly cut corners when it came to safety. I also get that there are going to be people who (understandably) believe that any rescue effort that potentially would have involved more loss of life should not have been undertaken for people who likely knew the risks they were taking from the outset.
All of those criticisms are valid and speak to questioning a person’s judgment. That’s relevant, and it’s newsworthy.
But it strikes me as unseemly and grotesque to make a person’s political donations a focal point of a potentially tragic story that has nothing to do with politics. Especially when one considers that at the time the story was published, it was speculated that the vessel’s oxygen supply was about to run out (assuming it had not already imploded).
In my opinion, what gets lost sometimes in the midst of the frenzy of developing stories and reactions to them is the human component:
When you lose your humanity, this is what you write about. https://t.co/H8PA83tZjV
— Tony Katz (@tonykatz) June 21, 2023
As history has shown us over and over again, in man versus sea battles, the sea almost always wins, and unfortunately that is how the Titanic sub story turned out.
As history has also shown us, there are some “journalists” out there for who callousness and scoring cheap political points take precedence over actual journalism and compassion.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
The logical conclusion (as experience has shown) to leftism/fascism/communism is genocide.
It starts with little things like this.
Hunter Biden leans to the right, but that’s only when he’s topsy turvy from drinking, shooting up or smoking dope — which is like 90% of the time.
“I guess what we were supposed to get from that is that maybe the author of the story thought Rush deserved to die along with the others because of his political leanings?”
Yes.
When they come right out and tell you how they think, believe them.
I don’t see it on LI yet, but pieces of the sub have already been found. The passengers are gone.
Woke kills.
Everybody’s looking for clicks on the story, which traced a predictable path through hope for hope, when it became necessary to bail out in the fourth act and branch out into different paths, interviews with the families for the women’s channel and political affiliations for the leftist political channels / diversity hires for the rightist political channels.
But it’s all clicks, an entertainment choice for diverse audiences.
This channel is reporting that the latest dumb thing that the left has said reflects badly on their character, the traditional fodder of the right news channels.
I presume some Leftist has already written both a story on how Global Climate Change destroyed the sub, plus as a bonus how these wealthy people dying will somehow help the carbon profile of the world.
Probably ten minutes after the sub was reported missing.
The Left loves billionaires. They would have literally no power without all those rich guys Soros, Bill Gates, all the Foundations that shelter and grow their fortunes while forwarding Leftist woke agendas. Private jets don’t cause global warming because Kerry and the Davos set are solid Lefties. Etc. It’s the rare billionaires who aren’t Left that honk them off, like Elon and the Koch Brothers.
TNR no morals, just naked political hate. Remember the following series of a combat soldiers “diary” articles during the worst of the Iraq war fighting? Turned out the “dairy” was a fraud.
The New Republic.
Scott Thomas [Beauchamp]
July 12, 2007
Shock Troops
Baghdad Diarist
I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq. She wore an unrecognizable tan uniform, […] The thing that stood out about her, […] the fact that nearly half her face was severely scarred. Or, rather, it had more or less melted […] We were already halfway through our meals when she arrived. […[ “Man, I can’t eat like this ,… with that f8cking freak behind us!” […] she was intently staring into each forkful of food before it entered her half-melted mouth. […] “Are you kidding? I think she’s f8cking hot!” I blurted out. […] “I love chicks that have been intimate–with IEDs….
…. My friend was practically falling out of his chair laughing.
I know another private who really only enjoyed driving Bradley Fighting Vehicles because it gave him the opportunity to run things over […] He kept a tally of his (dog) kills in a little green notebook […] One particular day, he killed three dogs. […[ I didn’t see the third kill, but […] Everyone was laughing…
“So, you killed a few dogs today,” I said skeptically.
“Hell yeah, I did. It’s like hunting in Iraq!” he said, shaking with laughter.
Excerpts from Eugene Lyons 1941 book The Red Decade:
archive.org/download/thereddecade
The New Republic
[…] the New Republic, which led all the rest in avid and undiscriminating acceptance of the myth of Stalin’s Utopia. The Nation contended for the honors but never could master quite so much brilliant misinformation on the subject. The dullish and platitudinous stuff of its Louis Fischers, Maxwell Stewarts and Freda Kirchweys was not quite a match for the New Republic’s Bruce Blivens, George Soules, Malcolm Cowleys and outside talent. Both journals in these years ran over with superlatives on the Russian theme-even the letter columns hummed with hymns.
[…] when the Five Year Plan was bogged down and kicking wildly in the morass, the New Republic (December 12, 1930,) hailed its “success” and poked fun at the discomfiture of capitalist observers. “The progress of the Five Year Plan,” it boasted, “is causing the American newspapers to react wildly, in fact an atmosphere of panic seems to prevail.”
This tweet isn’t as crazy as the one that all but accused Elon Musk of being responsible for the sub sinking.
It was @popcrave account that said the sub was Starlink to communicate. Of course there is no way the sub could use satellite communications under water.
They eventually deleted the tweet. Even Snopes got in on the act though I’ve just checked and they’ve gone back and fixed their garbage. https://www.foxnews.com/media/left-wing-fact-checker-embarrassed-trying-tie-elon-musk-titanic-sub-situation
Of course not. Normal radio-spectrum signals don’t carry well through liquid water.
Funny thing about Starlink, though: We used it during an extended RV vacation. It sounds hyped-up and fantastical, but it actually works. Really, really well. It worked in the sun, through the clouds, through the rain, through the snow, in the heat, in the cold. It worked when the kids covered the face of the “dish” with a layer of dirt and gravel. The only thing it had trouble with was heavy tree cover.
And it was faster and more responsive than many land-based ISPs, and WAY better than any other satellite service I’ve used. I’d still be using it now if the local ISP weren’t significantly cheaper (although Starlink’s service was better, in my opinion).
So yea, “popcrave” can poke fun if they want, but I say, don’t knock it ’til you try it.
And 90-95% of political donations by criminals, pedophiles, and anti-Semitic billionaires go to Democrats. What’s your point, New Republic?
But sure, piss on a dead man’s legacy. It’s not like he’s going to defend himself.
Do the Clintons next. Please.
The current all or none, with us or against us, public discourse isn’t helpful. Sure generally the d/prog have bad ideas bit occasionally their blind squirt finds a nut. The same with the right, mostly we have good ideas but occasionally some do veer off into crazy town.
This episode is another event where media and some other observers are demanding it be viewed through the prism of electoral politics, political tribe and policy preferences. I would prefer to all keep that crap quiet until after the funerals but that doesn’t seem like a popular view.
It’s fine to point to the guy’s woke hiring criteria of ‘inspiration v experience’ as likely contributing to the failure of his vessel. IMO the gloating from some corners of media based on political donations is ghoulish.
Well-said, Chief.
There was a time when The New Republic – despite being to the left – was quite readable, and the articles were by literate writers with some real-life experiences under their belt.I am talking about a time so far back that Saturday Review of Books was still around, and Atlantic was amazingly good. Same with the New York Review of Books.
That was loonnngg ago. I used to get them in the mail when I was in the Navy, and when done with them, put them in the reading room of our barracks. Those thinking service people, especially enlisted, are dumb, think again. I REGULARLY saw my shipmates reading those publications. Not thumbing through them, reading them.
Well, I guess swabbing nostalgic has it’s upsides. I bet it was very exciting back before electricity was invented. Lets get up to date? Eh?
Stephen Glass.
Scott Thomas Beauchamp.
TNR have been printing rubbish since the 1920’s. Outright lies and slanders against suburban “bourgeois” middle class Americans. You know, those dull-eyed saps watering their lawns with a garden hose in one hand and a can of beer in the other.
Those Eisenhower voters. Nuclear Family Values. You know, Fascists.
The freaks at TNR – Atlantic print snotty garbage like,
[…]”Probably the most influential single review (Lord of the Rings) from this period was by one of the leading American literary critics of his day, a Marxist modernist, Edmund Wilson (1956). Its significance is not so much its questionable judgments (the books show “poverty of invention” and their hero “has no serious temptations”) as its contemptuous mockery, extending from the title, “Oo, Those Awful Orcs!”, to the dismissal of The Lord of the Rings as “juvenile trash.” That tone remained a constant throughout the next half-century.”
Eh, why bother arguing. The staff at TNR have always been insufferable, marxoid jerks.
He “leans right” and yet went full DEI on not hiring 50 year old white guys with submarine experience. So what does that mean?
The way I see it, that’s the move of a CEO trying to keep his company marketable to the “Woke elite” portion of his customer base. Nothing more, nothing less.
Whatever keeps the checks cashing.
Musk is being hammered since StarLink is used by the Oceangate surface vessel and how poorly StarLink compromised the Titan. Except, satellite frequencies don’t penetrate the ocean. Any and I mean ANY excuse to fabricate a story (lie) will happen.
Watching the Titan coverage. While the CEO “gave” to Republican elections… his mindset and how he ran the business is quite “Left”!
NBC is talking about retrieval of the bodies… there is nothing to retrieve. They were reduced to a mist and essentially dissolved into the ocean by the pressure. So glad only ROVs needed and it’s now just a wrap up.
It’s like he donated to politicians most likely to approve his big-business ventures, instead of taxing the company into oblivion. Or something.
I imagine we’ll find a perfectly reasonable, purely-business explanation for everything he did as CEO, regardless of how much dirt the media will try to dig up.
Are they insinuating that those who donate to Republicans will be “disappeared” by those who oppose Republicans, thus demonstrating the power levels operating behind the scenes?
This is sick and demented behavior by the vile New Republic, and, like-minded Dumb-o-crats.
The Dumb-o-crats lack any modicum of compassion and humanity. They are spiteful, vindictive, evil and callous reprobates. Everything and every situation must be reduced to an assessment of individuals’ respective political loyalties and allegiances. That’s the hallmark of a goose-stepping, totalitarian fanatic and zealot. It’s how vindictive Maoists and Stalinists behave; not rational and compassionate Americans.
One way or another, the current headline will be made to fit the Narrative! Nothing is off limits, no matter how distasteful.
So….. where’s the commentary on the other three adults? Must not fit the narrative.
No offense, but it’s white noise for addicts. That goes both ways. Addicts with megaphones. Addicts being obnoxious, especially toward each other. Yeah, this guy is a real schmuck, another activist journalist in an ocean of the same that shows his true self. And the addicts are unable to ignore. Just another day. It’s like starting from scratch each day, and neither side has a clue how the other feels or believes. It must therefore be reinforced.
Where is the value being led by what turns the twittersphere on? To see how far the reflexive addicts have digressed, with no end in sight? Of course, there are important matters that should be raised, often loudly. But to seek out digressions to provide a fix to activists and addicts seems more harmful than helpful, and a poor choice.
To the atheist left everything is political.
The Left aren’t atheist: politics is their religion, the government their god (from whom all blessings flow).
Ergo: political dissent is heretical; ignoring unjust laws is rebellion; and personal freedom, independence, and self-sufficiency are apostasy.
That’s why they cannot leave us alone or allow us to disagree respectfully, and why their attacks on our way of life often have a zealous fervor that approaches jihad.
It’s because to the Left, that’s exactly what it is — a holy war against the Right. The two most mind-boggling things about that are: 1. How many on the Right haven’t woken up to it, and 2. That it hasn’t gone fully “hot” yet.
“There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea” – Aristotle (possibly)
Neat! So Aristotle was Schroedinger before Schroedinger was!
Hull failure was one of the failure modes I thought would happen. Carbon fiber and titanium have almost no ductility, and additional sharp stresses at that pressure (like hitting any piece of the Titanic, or the ocean floor, even with what would ordinarily be minimal force) can cause delamination to start. Once it does it’s almost impossible to stop without relieving that pressure first. If hull failure wasn’t instantaneous it’s a race to the surface before you die, assuming they even recognized the problem to begin with. Obviously they didn’t make it.
“Oh, snap!”
Years ago the Trieste was in a deep dive and looking at those hot vents. Trieste used gasoline for buoyancy. The crew suddenly realized that the hot water under pressure was weakening the ship … superheated…leaking the gasoline tanks. They immediately began to surface. The real fear was that they wold get close to the surface but then sink back down for good. They made it.