Hoystory.com

This year will mark the 20th anniversary of this blog. It started out on Google's "Blogger" platform, and has moved to and fro over the years, with different hosting providers, different software backends, different themes, but the same me. Hoystory: where we were For several years, Hoystory was hosted by GoDaddy. The price was reasonable […]

Late last week Facebook fired the first shot in the coming war between Big Media and Big Tech. In response to legislation that passed Australia's House of Representatives, but had not yet become law, that would require Facebook to pay Australian media companies anytime anyone linked to, or shared, an article from a news organization […]

Rush Limbaugh died yesterday at the age of 70 from lung cancer. As should be no surprise, thoughtful, kind-hearted liberals reacted on social media with a level of hatred and vitriol not seen since…well, the last prominent conservative died. I first started listening to Rush pretty frequently my junior year of college. I thought I'd […]

We're approaching the end of our first year living with the COVID-19 virus here in the United States. The report card for most of our elected officials and institutions is dismal—public education is among the worst. I see a lot of this close-up. My wife is a high school English teacher; my sister, a high […]

In an op-ed posted over the weekend at the New York Post, Jill Abramson, the former top editor at The New York Times, weighed in at the woke mess her former place of employ has become. After recounting some of her history at the storied newspaper, Abramson addresses Donald McNeil Jr.'s recent firing, and last year's […]

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was celebrated last month and I'm reliably informed that he was some sort of racially insensitive bigot who just wanted black Americans to act more white. I get into these "discussions" on Facebook and I should know better. I've had people I know touting "social justice" and I'll point […]

Unlike some on the right, I'm not a big fan of cancel culture regardless of its origin. There's this story out of Arkansas about a high school history teacher who got fired over an email he sent to state lawmakers over a bill they were considering prohibiting use of the fraudulent 1619 Project curriculum and […]

Another day, some more madness regarding The New York Times' recent firing of their star COVID-19 reporter Donald McNeil Jr. If you haven't read the previous post regarding this issue, then please do so now before continuing. Today's Washington Post has an article on the controversy by media critic Eric Wemple. The article helpfully contains some […]

If you've heard nothing of the latest madness at what has long been the gold standard of journalism in this country, The New York Times, then I apologize for what follows. In a sane world, this wouldn't have happened in the first place. This is not that sane world. Donald McNeil Jr.'s poor judgment call On […]

Last weekend, Salon, an online magazine whose best days were probably 15-plus years ago and now appears to be little more than a low-rent, clickbait version of Mother Jones, published a hit piece on Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) accusing the man who served one tour in Iraq and another in Afghanistan—and was awarded a Bronze Star—of stolen valor. […]