'Can't anybody here play this game?': Google skates again.
Casey Stengel would have spotted this bogus play, the so-called Google congressional hearing, from the cheap seats. "Can't anybody here play this game?" the famous baseball manager would have asked the Republicans hemming and hawing and ignoring their way through the biggest existential threat to conservatives ever.
Apparently not, Casey.
The scene was the House Judiciary Committee. Waiting to testify was the CEO of Google, where for at least the last five years, conservatives have been attacked, marginalized, removed, defamed, harassed, and demonetized – all to the sounds of glee if not ecstasy from purple-haired Google engineers.
At least the ranking Democrat – soon to be chair – Congressman Nadler, figured it out right away. He attacked conservatives for objecting to Google's heavy-handed and deceptive treatment as "conspiracy theorists."
Nadler knew that the real issue was Google's hostility to conservatives and how the search engine titan is working to remove them from the public stage.
Nadler said none of that is really happening, and even if it is, that is OK with him. Meanwhile, on the other bench, Chairman Goodlatte spent a good chunk of his time wondering if Google is keeping track of people as they go up a flight of stairs using a fitness app – and more importantly, whether political candidates are getting the lowest possible rates as they do for print, radio, and television ads.
Not a word from the chairman on the daily hostility to conservatives emanating from Google. He was having a hard enough time reading his script, let alone figuring out how conservatives are under attack.
Can't anyone here play this game?
Despite Nadler's and Goodlatte's best efforts to deny and minimize Google's mission, it is hard to imagine how anyone could disagree that Google has been targeting conservative news sites for extinction. We know that because it comes from inside Google itself.
About a year ago, ex-Googler James Damore said Google had created a "hostile work environment" for conservatives like him. He told one story after another of the raw treatment he received at the hands of the high priests of liberalism at Google and how this point of view filtered into the search results, constantly pushing down conservatives and elevating liberals.
All the time denying it.
Then, more recently, we had the infamous leaked video of a company-wide Google meeting televised around the world, but still labeled private and confidential. One after another, top executives consoled themselves and their underlings regarding the catastrophe of the Trump election.
They wondered how they had let it happen, and more importantly, what they could do to stop anything like that from ever happening again – i.e., anyone disagreeing with the Google hive mind. In the meantime, distraught Googlers were free to use the counseling and grief rooms.
Over the last several days, internal emails confirm what thousands of conservative Google and YouTube creators already experienced firsthand: Google engineers were obsessed with driving Breitbart and other conservative sites out of business. They could do this in at least two ways: 1) alter the Google algorithm to ensure that liberal sites get more Google traffic and 2) demonetize conservative sites by removing Google ads.
As a YouTube creator with 125 million views under my belt, I've seen firsthand the arbitrary and secretive methods Google, etc. uses to squash conservatives. The biggest one of all is enforcing the so-called community standards. That means if any member of the Young Democrats complains about your videos, YouTube will just yank them down or demonetize them.
The "community standards" crowd does not stop there: they move on to other companies that provide financial and other support services for creators and attack them as well until they also remove conservatives.
Google even hire groups like the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center to enforce its anti-conservative orthodoxy.
Nadler calls that a conservative conspiracy theory. Thousands of YouTube creators call that a daily fact of life – easily seen in constantly diminishing traffic to conservative sites.
The CEO of Google looked like the cat who ate the canary when he perfunctorily denied the political bias that has become the central organizing feature of his company. What canary?
It is not just Google. Facebook, Twitter, and other outfits also target conservatives for extinction. We also know how easy it was for their executives to hornswoggle Republicans in Congress when questioned as to whether they too were anti-conservatives.
They too denied it. They too could barely stop themselves from bursting out laughing during their carefully crafted denials.
But here is the weak spot: Google, YouTube, and other members of the hive mind enjoy special exemption from liability laws because they convinced Congress they are not publishers or editors. They are just a warehouse for others. How could they be held responsible for libel, etc. that ended up on their pages if it is not truly theirs? So Congress said they are not.
Now they pick and choose viewpoints with impunity and immunity. All the while, the only thing Republican leaders can do is wonder if their fitness apps are working properly. These leaders should spend less time worrying about their heart health and use the apps that verify brain function.
This is too easy for the Democrats. Embarrassingly easy.
They are playing the game as best they can. Republicans don't even know they are up to bat. Or how often they have already struck out.
Colin Flaherty was first kicked off Google five years ago, when it told publishers it would not send ads to any of my stories documenting black violence and media denial. Now he plies his trade in books like Don't Make the Black Kids Angry and on videos at minds.com/ColinFlaherty. And oh, yeah: he is Google-certified in all four areas.