Virginia Fallon and More Stuff(ed) Journalism

Virginia Fallon

By Olivia Pierson

A staggeringly ill-informed, yet rather telling op-ed was published on Stuff this week by Virginia Fallon titled “Sometimes Politics Should Trump Friendships.”

Fallon admits to not knowing any President Trump supporters in this country bar one, a friend of hers whom she describes as “funny and intelligent” rather than a “MAGA-hat wearing, mouth breathing simpleton.” 

Since finding out that her friend supports what Fallon touts as Trump’s “disregard for black lives,” their 30-year friendship is now over.  

So much for the intellectual tolerance of the Left, but we’ve come to not expect this from them anymore.  

As someone who closely follows American politics every day, I am constantly floored by how woefully ignorant Kiwis remain about the topic.  If the folks of NZ digest news from America via our MSM: print, TV and online outlets such as the NZ Herald, Newshub, the Dom Post and Stuff(ed), their ignorance is understandable, though not forgivable. Though we live in an information age, the sad fact remains that Kiwis have become so politically brain-dead from a diet of spoon-fed “news” borrowed from very selective sources, they have absolutely no idea what is going on in the land of the brave and the home of the free. 

Take this black lives mattering business for instance: it is a fact that President Trump has done more in just four years of his first term in office to help and assist black lives than former-President Obama did in the entire eight years of his presidency.
 
This is why Black Americans are crossing from the Democrat Party into the GOP in droves - and that’s not just hyperbole.

The prison reform of the First Step Act which President Trump saw enacted was a second chance for first time offenders, who were caught doing a crime not because they were violent, hardened criminals, but because they were utterly desperate and opted for actions outside of the law.  Alice Johnson has become the poster-great-grandma for First Step after her sentence was commuted by President Trump and she recently received a full pardon. 

Johnson, a mother of five children, worked for FedEx for ten years, suffered from a gambling addiction and lost her job.  Divorce followed and then the loss of her son in a motorcycle accident.  She went bankrupt and lost her family home. 

Johnson then became involved in a drug-trafficking ring based in Memphis, was arrested as a first-time, non-violent felon and received a lifetime sentence without parole in 1997.  She served 21 years of her sentence as a model prisoner in correctional facilities hundreds of miles away from her large family. 

Her case was put before Obama as part of his 2014 clemency project but was denied. It was Kim Kardashian who picked up Alice’s case to try to get her a pardon in 2018 and was successful.
 
Johnson is now a free-woman - and a formidable one at that. 

The disgusting practice of pregnant women giving birth in prisons while chained to their beds continued in 40 states throughout Obama’s presidency.  It was President Trump who banned this astonishingly medieval form of restraint in all federal prisons as part of the First Step prison reform. 

Black Americans are fleeing into the Republican camp - and the only reason for that is Trump. Many voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, and then also for Hillary Clinton in 2016.  But their lives never improved, until Trump’s presidency.  

Their reasons are diverse: from the record low black unemployment rate that Trump achieved for them with the aid of tax-cuts, new manufacturing and Opportunity Zones, to lower medication prescription costs for their family members.  There’s also the school choice education reform which gives generous tax-credits to low-income families so they can afford private schooling for their kids. 

But the most recent issue causing Black Americans to cross party lines is the overwhelming Black Lives Matter violence.  

The more that Democrats embrace and submit to this Marxist hate group, who loudly rant about defunding the police, the more terrified black people now feel in their own neighbourhoods.  If the police really were to be defunded across the country, they know black-on-black violence would escalate through the roof - and that’s something Democrat leadership never openly addresses, and neither does the NZ media.  

So perhaps Virginia Fallon’s recently ditched old friend, whom Fallon wrote was “a woman who spent her younger years railing against injustice; a woman who marched for human rights issues,”  still does care deeply about those causes and has the wherewithal to recognise they will be monumentally abused if the Democrats win the election.

Many Trump supporters are a far-cry away from being the “mouth breathing simpletons” that Fallon wishes they were.  Most of them are just better informed than Fallon about what has happened to America under decades and decades of swampy Democrat and Rino leadership.  

Judging by her uncultivated, bogan-esque personal image littered with in-your-face tattoos, perhaps with her great knack for coming down on the ignoramus’ side of history Fallon could write some gripping anti-Trump articles as an activist-at-large for BLM with special emphasis on the next chapter of a Seattleite, police-free CHOP zone.  I mean, there were only 65 reported offences inside CHOP between June 8th and June 30th, including aggravated assault, larceny-theft, rape, and two homicides of black men committed by other black men.  I wonder why NZ journalists don’t cover the reality of BLM with any veracity?  

Personally, I think Fallon may have just ditched a longstanding friend whom she could actually learn a lot from - and help make her a better writer by filling in some of her conspicuous knowledge-gaps.