I’m just as shocked as you are

Yeah, in news that will shock about three people at most, Russia’s been fiddling with American media… the US company referred to in the above graphic is something called Tenet Media, which I was not previously familiar with; it was co-founded by this ghastly individual, and it stands accused of taking ten million dollars from RT and funnelling it to a variety of other ghastly individuals on their dubious talent roster. The accusation levelled against them don’t actually name specific names, but that hasn’t stopped people from working out who Tenet has been paying on Putin’s behalf… including such figures as Grim Fool and Dave Rubin. I don’t recognise all the names, but those two stood out to me. Tim I’ve spoken about before, and, well, this news certainly casts recent hysterics he had about Ukraine in a different light; Rave Dubin is primary notable for the loudness with which he “left the Left” and the shamelessness of his grifting despite the blatant contempt with which most of his fellow right-wing goons view him.

Rubin was quick to note on Twitter that the indictment presents him and the other unnamed “commentators” as victims of RT/Tenet’s perniciousness, and that’s how they’re presenting themselves. Technically I suppose that’s correct, insofar as they didn’t know who they were actually being paid by… but weird, isn’t it, how little curiosity they all appear to have had about exactly why they were being paid some ridiculous amounts (Rubin made $400,000 per month for his efforts, apparently, and Beanieman was getting $100,000 per individual video) to be all ra ra (Ras)putin; I’ve seen an article claiming actually was curious about where this money was coming from, but he was easily fobbed off by a bullshit profile of a non-existent person the RT people cobbled together to conceal themselves. I suppose when you’re a victim of being paid nearly half a million dollars, you don’t pay too much attention to who’s victimising you.

Anyway, Lauren Chen also used to work for Glenn Beck‘s network The Blaze, which shows just how shitty she’s willing to get. I say used to because The Blaze rather hastily dumped her once this Russian business was announced… apparently even a professional liar and all-round scumbag like Beck has limits regarding who he’ll associate with. Still, I’m sure she’ll be fine, her Russian friends will probably look after her, and in the meantime I suspect we’ll eventually find this was just the tip of an iceberg containing a lot more pieces of right-wing shit shilling for mother Russia, whether knowingly or not. As long as they’re being victimised with lots of money, eh…