MTG
Marjorie Taylor Greene

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called NYC a terrible, filthy, crime-riddled place where drug addicts are dying in the streets.

The pride of Milledgeville, GA is bewildered why anyone would want to live in The Big Apple.

Here’s a suggestion for Marge: the next time you visit Gotham, don’t waste your time spewing nonsense, such as comparing Donald Trump’s arrest to the sainted Nelson Mandela, who was arrested and spent 27 years in South African jails, or Jesus Christ, who was arrested and crucified.

Why don’t you visit some of New York’s treasures? Spend some time at the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Morgan Library, Whitney Museum or New York Public Library’s Rose Main Reading Room?

How about enrolling for a class or two at Columbia University or New York University? A nice ride on the Staten Island ferry will provide a terrific view of Statue of Liberty.

You could catch a basketball game at Madison Square Garden to cheer the revitalized Knicks, or get a preview of this year’s National League World Series team by rooting for the Mets at Citi Field.

And before you leave, be sure to check into one of NYC’s world class medical facilities for a check-up.

New Yorkers want to make sure that you are healthy enough to drive the Republican clown car for many more years.

Johnson & Johnson’s tarnished credo. Robert Wood Johnson crafted J&J’s corporate credo in 1943, long before the notion of social corporate responsibility.

“We believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors and nurses, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services,” is how the credo begins.

The credo built an enormous amount of goodwill for the drug company. That helped it deal with the Tylenol tampering crisis of 1982. J&J’s handling of the crisis is a standard in PR textbooks.

J&J’s credo doesn’t look too shiny these days, as the company on April 5 filed a second bankruptcy for LTL Management, the shell company created to house thousands of lawsuits alleging that J&J’s Baby Powder causes cancer.

J&J had to up the ante with a settlement of $8.9B after a judge rejected the first bankruptcy offer of $2B.

The company is playing the Texas two-step corporate move in which a subsidiary is formed with few assets but all lawsuits and then declares Chapter 11.

The maneuver should be below the standards of a company that boasts of its commitment to the public good.

But the vaunted credo also says that J&J is committed to reducing costs.

That’s what J&J seems to be highlighting these days.

Handling Trump’s lies and deceit… PEN America, the writer’s advocacy group, published “Countering misinformation and disinformation about the indictment of Donald Trump,” just prior to his New York court appearance.

In its tips for journalists and community groups, PEN America warned “the public is likely to be inundated with conflicting information, some of it reliable, some of it accidental misinformation, and some of deliberate disinformation.”

The result: people will suffer from information overload that can cause confusion and make it difficult to figure out what sources to trust.

The handy guide can also be used for Trump’s upcoming legal battle in Georgia over his bid to steal the Peach State’s presidential election, and in Washington over the former president’s top secret document heist.

And God forbid, but it will be an invaluable resource if Trump returns to the White House.

Elon Musk toys with NPR… The Twitter boss slapped a “state-affiliated media” label on the public broadcaster’s platform even though US government funding accounts for about one percent of its operating budget.

The label puts NPR in the same category as propaganda channels from Russia Today and China’s People’s Daily.

Musk said the labeling was done in the spirit of fair play, “if we label non-US accounts as gov’t, we should do the same for the US.”

But Twitter defines state affiliated media as "outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” That doesn’t ring true for NPR.

The broadcaster provided Musk with its publicly available financial documents that show 40 percent of its funding comes from corporations and 31 percent from local stations.

Elon now says he may have made a mistake, though the label remains.

My hunch is that Musk applied the label to generate publicity for himself, while tweaking liberals.

As Twitter owner, Musk has the right to manage the platform as he sees fit. As advertisers flee Twitter, it may not be along for much longer.

Jim Jordan, Ohio’s most famous wrestling coach, believes national advertisers and the media have formed a tag team to pin conservative voices to the mat.

He is zeroing in on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media for allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints.

GARM launched in 2019 to create brand safety standards to ensure advertising does run on platforms or alongside content that a company may consider questionable.

American Express, Walt Disney Co, Shell, General Motors, Colgate Palmolive and Hershey are among its Blue Chip members.

The House Judiciary Committee chair said GARM may be violating antitrust laws.

He accused GARM with working to “demonetize and eliminate disfavored content online.”

He claims the group’s “collusive conduct reduces consumer choice and cuts off access to diverse coverage on matters of national interest.”

Meanwhile, conservatives pounded the decision by ABC's "Good Morning America" to blur the text-to-donate plug on former President Trump's podium during his speech at Mar-a-Lago on the night that he was arraigned in New York.

ABC did not blur Joe Biden’s text-to-donate message on his podium in the 2020 campaign.

“How blatant do you want your bias to be?," asked District Media Group president Beverly Hallberg during her appearance on Fox & Friends.

She may have a point.