Four years ago this week, the media elite despaired at the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was 87 and had been in ill health for years. Not only did journalists openly admire the progressive spin Ginsburg brought to the Court, they also fretted a quick pre-election confirmation of a nominee selected by Republican President Donald Trump would soon unravel Ginsburg’s liberal legacy. Long before her death, the media had revered Ginsburg as a left-wing legal icon. “She has been called the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s rights movement,” CBS’s Charlie Rose hailed in October 2016. “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon,” NBC’s Craig Melvin gushed on Today in February 2019. A few months later, CBS’s Nikki Battiste joyously introduced a piece about a Ginsburg appearance at the University of Buffalo: “We start off with one of my favorite women.” Co-host Gayle King heartily agreed: “Everybody loves her!” Ill with pancreatic cancer, Ginsburg died September 18, 2020. “President Trump has said that he would nominate a successor and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate has said that they would try to act on a confirmation for a successor,” NBC correspondent Pete Williams explained during his network’s breaking news coverage that night. Media liberals, of course, were still fuming about how Senate Republicans in 2016 blocked the a Democratic replacement after the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. During MSNBC’s breaking news coverage on September 18, Rachel Maddow commiserated with ex-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton about the unfolding “feminist catastrophe.” “We ended up with Justice [Neil] Gorsuch instead of Justice Merrick Garland. I think a lot of the emotion around that in the country was, in part, that the Republicans and Mitch McConnell had done something that really did feel like it broke the system,” Maddow told Clinton. “But it also felt like a feminist catastrophe in you not becoming the first woman president, despite Justice Ginsburg’s fervent belief that you would be.” The next morning, the broadcast networks jumped to celebrate Ginsburg. “What a life it was! What a legacy it was!” ABC’s Terry Moran exclaimed on Good Morning America. “Her character, her intellect, her fierce determination to see the words ‘equality’ and ‘liberty’ made real for Americans, changed America. Overnight crowds gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 87 years old. So many young people there, saying goodbye to a most improbable pop icon.” Over on NBC’s Today, co-host Peter Alexander noted Ginsburg’s Jewish faith: “By Jewish tradition, a person who dies on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, as it was yesterday, is a person of great righteousness.” “Well, righteousness is an apt description,” correspondent Andrea Mitchell echoed. “Strength, incredible strength. This woman was so determined, she could do anything!” The Washington Post’s banner headline that morning praised Ginsburg as “A Pioneer Devoted to Equality.” Four years earlier (February 14, 2016), the same newspaper’s headline after the death of conservative Antonin Scalia was scornful: “Supreme Court Conservative Dismayed Liberals.” Some journalists reacted as if a beloved family member had died. “Me and the girls get into the car. We are waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting,” actress Ali Wentworth related the following Monday (September 21) on on ABC’s Live with Kelly and Ryan. Talking about her husband, Good Morning America co-host George Stephanopoulos, Wentworth continued: “He finally comes in. He bursts into tears. ‘Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.’...We sat there in the parking lot, crying for 45 minutes.” Amid the tears, the media mobilized to fight any conservative replacement. “Democrats can’t just threaten: they have to mean it,” threatened Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC’s AM Joy, September 19. “It’s time for Democrats to step up, and use everything in their power to ensure that if Mitch McConnell and President Trump do what we all believe and know they’re going to do, that there will be a price to pay no matter who wins the election in November.” During live coverage of a memorial service for Ginsburg on September 23, ABC’s congressional correspondent Mary Bruce channeled both grief and outrage: “I think for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s supporters and admirers on the left, especially many women across this country, it has been a week full of anguish, and also outrage at this fight to fill her seat.” During NBC’s coverage of the same event, White House correspondent Peter Alexander argued it would be disrespectful for Trump to fulfill his constitutional duty to pick Ginsburg’s successor: “The President’s already made it clear that he’s not going to respect the ‘fervent wish,’ in the words of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself, that it would be the next president, the next president, who would ultimately determine who would replace her on the Court.” Still, NBC’s congressional correspondent Kasie Hunt told anchor Lester Holt that, despite the tough talk, Democrats “don’t have very many options, Lester, and I get the sense that there is a sense of sadness, in some ways, that’s settled in with Democrats who realize there’s nothing they can do to give Ruth Bader Ginsburg her dying wish.” Three days earlier, Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt had reminded her audience that Ginsburg herself had embraced the idea of Presidents sending up nominations in an election year: “If you look back at what she told The New York Times in 2016: She said, ‘That’s their job. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being the President in his last year.’” On Saturday, September 26, Trump tapped federal judge Amy Coney Barrett as his choice to replace the late Justice. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos highlighted the self-serving “criticism from Democrats, including Joe Biden, who said that Judge Barrett could be a threat to the Affordable Care Act, also says it shouldn’t even be voted on until after the election. And several Democratic senators saying this is an illegitimate sham process.” On that evening’s Nightly News, NBC’s Hallie Jackson suggested Barrett’s religious views were possible reason to reject her: “Her Catholic faith, a core value, and central to questions about how she’d rule on issues like abortion.” A distressed Jeffrey Toobin opined on CNN: “The judicial philosophies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is, who has, departed, and Amy Coney Barrett could not be more different under our system. And so the difference for reproductive freedom, for health care, for gun control or the absence thereof, affirmative action, so many issues, her views will be diametrically opposed to Ruth Ginsburg’s.” Over on MSNBC, Slate senior editor and legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick, also slammed Barrett as extreme: “Whether it’s doing away with the ACA [the Affordable Care Act], doing away with Roe, expansive gun rights, limiting environmental protections — public polling is way, way out of step with where she is....Those are not values, I think, that the majority of Americans share.” In the end, of course, Judge Barrett was confirmed on October 26 by a vote of 52-48, with all Democrats voting ‘no’ and all Republicans voting ‘yes.’ There’s no doubt that, if the parties were reversed, the media would have championed the rights of Democrats to ram through an election-year appointment to push the Court in a more liberal direction — because that’s exactly what they attempted in 2016. For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.

What is the opposite of “natural?” The obvious answer is “artificial.” The obvious answer is not the correct one. I worry that the rhetoric around 'natural birth' has gone too far by neglecting the question of prudence, the possibility of good doctors, and the reality of the dangers of childbirth. “Artificial” come from the Latin artificialis/artificium: "handicraft." It is defined by that which is made or produced by human beings. “Art,” as expression through a medium, shares the same etymology. Art and nature I recently attended a lecture by Oxford philosopher Dr. Jan Bentz entitled “Objective Beauty in a Subjective World: Introduction to the Philosophical Question of Beauty.” Bentz began with the same question but argued in favor of the classical worldview — held by Plato, Aristotle, and later Aquinas — that art, properly understood, is a continuation of nature, rather than its opposition. Nature, to the ancients, was not the wilderness per se, but God’s imagination: logos. So, Dr. Bentz argues, the opposite of nature is in fact the opposite of logos: It is chaos. Good art, he went on to say, corresponds to nature by reflecting its material and spiritual reality. Beautiful art must have three components: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (proportion), and claritas (clarity). By these standards, we can judge beauty. Good art is not capricious or random in its execution, as we so often see in modern art galleries. Truly good artists must be trained (brought out of chaos through order) to imitate nature through their chosen media. Furthermore, good artists are made better by interdisciplinary study. The art forms, in the classical worldview, are not discrete mechanisms of autonomous expression but varied modes with a unified purpose: discovering and articulating truth. Just prior to the lecture, I’d been chatting with my girlfriends about one conflict in the ongoing mommy wars: “natural” birth versus medically assisted birth, which is coded in the discourse as “unnatural” or artificial. A dear friend has just been through a very difficult experience: an early cesarean section after placenta previa followed by several days in the NICU with her little warrior. False dichotomy It struck me during the lecture that perhaps the home-birth vs. hospital debate is mired in the same false dichotomy as the modern art world, which emphasizes non-relational autonomy and prioritizes ideas over technique. Many home-birth advocates imagine that any form of medical intervention necessarily disrupts the “natural” process of birth, which requires only instinct to facilitate. But if we consider medicine as an art form, as it was for Hippocrates, then the practice itself is not “unnatural” but rather a continuation of nature, as evidenced by the original Hippocratic oath. I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment. I will reverence my master who taught me the art. Equally with my parents, will I allow him things necessary for his support, and will consider his sons as brothers. I will teach them my art without reward or agreement; and I will impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know, to my master’s children, as to my own; and likewise to all my pupils, who shall bind and tie themselves by a professional oath, but to none else. With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage. Nor shall any man’s entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child. Further, I will comport myself and use my knowledge in a godly manner. I will not cut for the stone, but will commit that affair entirely to the surgeons. Whatsoever house I may enter, my visit shall be for the convenience and advantage of the patient; and I will willingly refrain from doing any injury or wrong from falsehood, and (in an especial manner) from acts of an amorous nature, whatever may be the rank of those who it may be my duty to cure, whether mistress or servant, bond or free. Whatever, in the course of my practice, I may see or hear (even when not invited), whatever I may happen to obtain knowledge of, if it be not proper to repeat it, I will keep sacred and secret within my own breast. If I faithfully observe this oath, may I thrive and prosper in my fortune and profession, and live in the estimation of posterity; or on breach thereof, may the reverse be my fate! If medicine is so practiced, with reverence for the body and nature, and the determination to restore it to wholeness in proportion to whatever condition it presents with clarity, then it is indeed the art of medicine and is not only not unnatural, but a beautiful cooperation with nature. The act of helping other people is arguably the most natural part of the human experience, in the sense that God created us for one another, to live in harmony and cooperate with His will in community. Something less than art Growing skepticism toward the medical community, however, has been earned. I gave birth to all my children at home with an excellent team of midwives. I began my journey as a home-birth mom during 2020, when nurses, doctors, and hospital administrators were behaving in such a way as to inspire distrust, peddling falsehoods about the COVID vaccines, making care inaccessible and inconvenient, and violating HIPAA as a matter of course. In obstetrics specifically, the cause for mistrust goes back farther. The standardization of abortion — the willful destruction of human life — made the art of medicine something less than art, because such an act fundamentally violates nature. The “cascade of interventions,” as well as the administration of medications with financial gain in mind, is also frequently cited by home-birth or free-birth advocates as a reason they avoid hospitals. Many of us know women who have had terrible outcomes because of medical abuse or neglect. This represents, in many cases, a failure to respond proportionally to the patient and an essentially hubristic approach that too frequently results in more damage than necessary. A good doctor is hard to find. Still, I worry that the rhetoric around “natural birth” has gone too far by neglecting the question of prudence, the possibility of good doctors, and the reality of the dangers of childbirth. The hubristic, radical autonomy implicit to the exponents of the “free birth” movement is not a proper “return to nature,” as they have branded themselves, but a fetishization of chaos made plausible by the betrayals of modern medicine. Ironically, this is a true betrayal of nature, despite the crunchy exterior. Perhaps the conflict is necessary to bring to light the shortcomings of both sides and to help women make prudential decisions about where to give birth. I fear that the highly politicized battles, one-upsmanship, and snide condescension on both sides may encourage the opposite. Either way, I think the question of art adds a new dimension to the discussion that might help.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be cataclysmically Earth-shattering. The first trailer already has 200 million views, and theories about the story, delays, and gameplay are everywhere. At this point it doesn't matter how long Rockstar takes, whenever it drops it'll be the only thing anyone talks about for weeks. If we are going to hear official news of a delay, one former Rockstar developer thinks we won't know until closer to launch. Based on their track record before GTA 6, I'd be inclined to believe them. Continue reading GTA 6 “not in a position” to be delayed yet, ex Rockstar dev says MORE FROM PCGAMESN: GTA 6 release date, Best open-world games, GTA 5 cheats

So much as videogames are mechanical objects, where the goal is to do things, unlock things, and advance through successive obstacles and challenges, the most frightening prospect, when playing the game, is that you might be unable to progress. Dark Souls and Elden Ring play on this fear consistently - the threat of Malenia is not only that she’s extremely hard to defeat, but that you might not be able to defeat her at all; that the game might somehow permanently beat you. It’s a subtle, unspoken terror that was especially present in the earlier Resident Evil and Silent Hill games. Continue reading Mixing Cyberpunk and Silent Hill, Hollowbody nails horror game design MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best horror games, Best indie games, Best survival games

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The new take on Flappy Bird will include alternate game modes. | Screenshot: The Flappy Bird Foundation Last week, The Flappy Bird Foundation announced a game called Flappy Bird. But while the group has been framing it as the triumphant return of a classic mobile game, Flappy Bird’s original developer, Dong Nguyen isn’t calling it a comeback — in fact, he says he’s not involved at all. Nguyen posted as much on X (for the first time since 2017!) this morning, saying he didn’t “sell anything.” The Flappy Bird Foundation wrote in the announcement it shared with press last week that it had “acquired the rights from Gametech Holdings, LLC,” which had secured the trademark from Nguyen, but it doesn’t appear as though that was the result of any dealings between him and the group. No, I have no related with their game. I did not sell anything. I... Continue reading…