CNN hustles for legitimacy by launching credibility recovery campaign

CNN produced a video of a single apple. Now, that is top design school quality right there. Like a Japanese flag. Simplicity really is best. The voiceover is tautology, this is an apple, this is an apple, this is an apple, the simple truth is this is an apple. Some people will tell you this is a banana, and so on.

The video was presented on Twitter with the hashtag #FactsFirst, which was quickly hijacked and subverted to emphasize CNN has a dodgy relationship with facts. The rebuttals on their own hashtag are quite good. A sample.

* Some people might try & tell you it’s just a clump of cells. You might even believe it. But it’s not. It’s still a baby

* Here's a #TruthApple for #FakeNews @CNN's rebranding effort #FactsFirst  (picture of Adam and Eve in the garden with an apple and a snake.

* This is an apple, a criminal, a crime family, and a crime syndicate. Report accordingly. (picture of the same apple, Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton.

* Even when @CNN tells you something is an apple...

... you still doublecheck it first before retweeting it!

* CNN needs to start following it’s own advice.  (photo of pregnant dude, captioned, “My body is awesome, Trans man expecting first child.)

* Shall we also apply this to gender dysphoria?

* 10 Times CNN Told Us An Apple Was A Banana! (CNN screenshot with chryon reading “Trump: election is being rigged by corrupt media)

* This is a baby. Some might try to tell you it's a clump of cells.

This is a man. Some might try to tell you he's a woman.

* “Some people might tell you this is a bump stock” (photo of a rifle with chyron reading Ryan:”We need to look into banning rapid fire bump stock”)

* Its just so cynical 4 a news organization biased as #CNN trying to preach #FactsFirst when their whole business model is #FakeNews

And so on.

Twitterers created their own hashtag to mock, #ApplesNotBananas, where the fun continues along the same line. A sample

* CNN #ApplesNotBananas #8: Experts in aviation 😂 Who knew? (photo of flight simulator with chyron reading “Boeing 777 will struggle to maintain altitude once the fuel tanks are empty)

* Truck Crash, (screen grab of CNN item titled “Berlin Christmas market: 9 dead at least 50 inured in [truck crash] ← wtf?

* You sure you want to anchor in on that one? (screen grabs of CNN politics page reading “Donald Trump just flat-out lied about Trump Tower wiretapping. Then another, “Exclusive: US government wiretapped former Trump …)

* Last Refuge posts a series of screen grabs this one titled #1

8 CNN t.v. screen grabs with chyrons reading Trump unlikely to discuss election meddling with Putin.

* CNN #ApplesNotBananas #4: "Putin did it"/"Putin didn't do it"
Screen grab CNN politics page. “Intel analysis shows Putin approved election hacking, the same article lower down, “But neither of the sources said they new of specific intelligence that directly ties Putin to the attack.

* CNN #ApplesNotBananas #5:  "Racial Profiling" (? - not even close)

Live CNN, Israel has done an unbelievable jos and they’ll profile. They profile. They see somebody that’s suspicious, they will profile. They wil take that person in. They’ll check …

CNN chyron reads “Trump says racial profiling will stop terror”

* Mass Extinction in Natural World

CNN Live presentation board reading Rising seas: flooding from NYC to haanghai, Dedlier heat waves, droughts, wildfires, Mass extinction in the natural world, Coral reefs, low-lying countries like Marshall Isl. would disappear. Chyron reads: White House tells lawmakers Trump ditches climate deal.

And so on.

Several sites agree the best video is the same voice and text as the CNN except with a banana substituting for CNN's apple to create the reverse meaning intended by the video about CNN's adherence to simple un-spun untainted straightforward facts.

I really like this cartoon by G.D. Trico, I think, that's what I make of the signature.

But, come on. Enter [political cartoon 3 monkeys] and see what happens. You cannot say it's all that original. Still, he sure can draw amusing monkeys.

One day I'll tell you about the time our Boy Scout troop camped at the outskirts of Nikko Japan. We had no idea that's the place with the Shinto shrine with the original monkeys carved right into the architecture.  Now (then) the entire town is given into the monkey souvenir trade. Almost every shop sells statues of these monkeys. And bears. (!?) They're all over the place.

We found out on the way back. Okay, fine. I'll just tell you right now.

There we were on a bus slowly climbing the narrow wending road up a mountainside in the fog. It was frightening. Sharp turns all over the place, nothing but curves and turns, upward, ever upward. Very slowly. Very carefully. Occasionally the fog broke and we'd get glimpses of mountainside but that was it. The road was not constructed for buses. Then suddenly on a right turn around a hairpin curve the fog lifted to reveal through the left side windows a lake just floating in the clouds. We could have driven straight into it. I suddenly realized how Japanese produce all those paintings of floating lakes, and floating mountain tops, and trees growing from clouds. This was it! We were actually traveling through a Japanese painting. It blew my mind and the experience left an indelible impression. Our view from the bus momentarily looked exactly like a thousand Japanese paintings.

Our bus continued to a field surrounded by trees where we set up camp. We had the worst little Army tents.

I hated campouts. I just did. Bootcamp is not for me. Whatever fun we were having we could have in the comfort of home. We could wake up in bed. We could use electricity to fix breakfast. We wouldn't have to clean up so assiduously and we'd have hot water. I didn't care for the smoke, for looking for wood, the cold, the gray skies, the dirt, the hard dank surface to sleep on. I didn't like the discomfort. I didn't care for scrounging for food. I didn't like singing their songs. I hated marching. The activities did not appeal to me. But I was copying my older brother who did like all those things. So I followed.

He likes to explore so a claque of us, not the whole troop, set off to see what kind of trouble we could get into, and that's how we discovered that peanuts grow underground. I don't even know what possessed one of us to uproot some farmer's plants to find that out. It's not the sort of thing I would do. Nevertheless we were delighted. They tasted disgusting. It was just so surprising to discover peanuts growing in Japan. That's something they didn't teach us in Japanese Culture class. See the things you find out by being a little punk?

We also discovered a nearby resort. The scoutmaster did. We'd have preferred to avoid it. I don't know how our scoutmaster managed this, I don't have any idea how he arranged this ad hoc addition to our campout, but he wanted us cleaned up and this resort was the perfect solution. I do not think this was planned. It was sprung on us. The next thing I know is we're all naked and running around a sauna with separate pools for different intensities of heat. There were a couple of old Japanese men in there too, visitors at the resort, who were fascinated, amused, interested, appalled, delighted, miffed, surprised and angered and tolerant of twenty or so American boys suddenly and noisily invading their peace and their meditation.

We thought they were pervs.

What are they doing in there anyway?

And stop looking at us so much. Gawl!

Whatever. It remains the most beautiful hot sauna pools that I've seen. It has not been topped. Its location is outstanding. Now whenever I see photos of hot tup pools, I'm taken back through the decades by memory as if that moment exists with present day time. It was simply beautiful. A natural wonder. And I still think about if our scoutmaster paid the hotel, or what. He said we were invited.

Onto the bus to go home. The ride down was not like the ride up.

But first a quick stop in the small mountain town to shop around and to take in what's going on. I don't recall how we came up with money to shop. I always needed more money. Our dad did teach us how to earn money, mowing lawns and washing cars, and generally making ourselves useful doing things people don't want to do. What a way to go. I resented that too. I resented having to do physical work for money. I vastly preferred he just give us some but he was such a miser with us all the time. We did go shopping. I did buy three monkeys and a bear and an original painting of a colorful dragon that the guy painted in a single stroke by loading a wide brush with rainbow colors and dragging the brush across the slippery paper just so, to deposit the pigments evenly until they run out, in circles over previous circles, so the rainbow crosses over itself, and jiggling the brush as he goes to leave marks in the pigment that resemble fish scales. The head was painted in black with wild whiskers  already drawn in, and the clawed feet and legs were added when the colorful curves were finished. The artist did this right before our eyes. I stood mesmerized watching him work. I took home my painting and studied it. I marveled at the man's technique. What an amazing place. This place, Nikko Japan, kept blowing my mind.

So that's Nikko Japan from a boy's point of view.

Here's Nikko Japan from the writers at Wikipedia.

Yes, I like G.D.Trico's three monkeys quite a lot. This was 2009, and I added a monkey. The Shinto priests were not concerned with depicting actual monkey behavior. What a sense of humor. They presume to instruct people how to behave while referring to their subjects as monkeys.