Note to readers: This essay originally ran on January 17, 2017, but in light of new context in cascading sex scandals there may be reason to take another look at the whole story. Also, I will add a warning about obscene photos below.  

I.

Behold the Washington Post Style section of January 3, 2017.

All but the trimmings of Page One and Two belong to a woman named Amanda Kleinman, who, we are told, is the leading victim of the headline's "Troll Patrol" -- online harassment resulting from that "viral fake news conspiracy theory" known as "Pizzagate." 

What is "Pizzagate?" Whatever it is, it is either not on the media menu (Breitbart); or it is served up by news organs such as the Washington Post as a complete nothing -- the original scoop of "fake news" as cooked up by "the Internet" beginning with the John Podesta Wikileaked emails that include possibly unusual, possibly coded references to "pizza," also something called "Spirit Cooking."

For example, in one of the weirder  "pizza" exchanges, a realtor on Martha's Vineyard writes to Democrat moneybags Susan and Herbert Sandler (the latter, per Wikileaks, a patron of Podesta) to let them know that some items were forgotten in a rental, including "a square cloth handkerchief (white with black) that was left on the kitchen island." Do they want it back?

Susan Sandler then writes an email to John Podesta about this handkerchief.

Sandler: "I think it has a map that seems pizza-related. Is it yours? They can send it if you want...."

Note that the original query from the realtor does not mention anything about a "pizza" or a "map."

Interesting? Odd? A code of political elites worth checking into? Unrelentingly, the media say no. They believe -- en masse -- that such communiques among the high and mighty, even those filled with clues to stories of elite depravity, require not investigation to see where they might lead, but eye-rolling and debunking to make sure they lead nowhere. Never mind that there exists a long and horrific history of such scandals erupting and being covered-up and at high levels of government and media, etc. The media mantra is clear. If you see something say nothing; or, better, say it's "fake news" -- but be sure to withhold from readers the most troubling exhibits driving research online, those that are closest to the sick heart of Washington power. The contrast between the vitality online, pulsing and crashing between jaw-dropping discoveries and brick walls, and the moribund newsrooms of the praetorian media, could hardly be more vivid.

For the sake of argument, if not the children, imagine entering Pizzagate with the understanding that the theories arise from real facts, not "fake news."

As noted above, sex trafficking and prostitution, often involving minors, is real. There is the fact of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his myriad connections to the high and glitzy, including 21 phone numbers for Bill Clinton (all under the name of Clinton Inc. factotum Doug Band). There is the fact that Bill Clinton was a frequent flyer on Epstein's "Lolita Express", riding some 26 times, five of those flights without any Secret Service. Erik Prince, citing a NYPD source familiar with the Anthony Weiner "sexting" laptop, claimed Bill Clinton visited Epstein's "sex slave" island at least twenty times; Prince claims Hillary Clinton visited six times. 

With this frame of reference for viewing power players at the highest levels, perhaps Anthony Weiner's perverted behavior -- another fact -- is not so very out of character, except insofar as came to public view. Another fact to consider is that shortly after Weiner's laptop was seized, there was a major bust of sex traffickers across the nation. Connected? 

It is also a fact that children disappear -- some anonymously, some in torrents of headlines, such as poor, little Madeleine McCann, who was kidnapped in Portugal on May 3, 2007. It is another fact that police drawings made public in 2013 in the McCann kidnapping case bear a resemblance to the Podesta brothers, John and Tony.

See for yourself.

This is all but certainly a coincidence. But that doesn't erase the resemblance. In fact, if I were a news editor, I'd send a reporter out to seek proof of the Podestas' whereabouts on May 3, 2007, the day Madeleine disappeared, just to make sure -- and especially after taking another look at Tony's stupendously twisted taste in "artwork" (children in bondage, dismembered bodies, the sculpture of a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer hanging in the vestibule, etc.). Remember how easy it was to shoot down the genuine fake news about Trump aide Michael Cohen, who was not in Prague last August? Why not do the same for the Podestas?  I would also check into reasons why the John Podesta Wikileaked emails begin or pick up on May 4, 2007 -- the day after the kidnapping. 

To the non-pizza-initiated, this probably seems like a sensational tangent; within Pizzagate, however, there are even more data points that connect, possibly, to reveal the outines of even greater crimes, possibly involving ever higher and even mightier people. Here, for example, is one such set of data points; here is another; here are many more. I don't know what to make of them -- some are surely blanks, dead ends, but others are intriguing and not in a good way. Here is quite perplexing and well-sourced story headlined, "The Clinton-Silsby Trafficking Scandal and How the Media Attempted to Ignore/Cover It Up." Never heard of it? Give it a read. 

But we are also looking at a significant cultural story.

As founders of a multi-million-dollar Big Democrat lobbying firm, Tony and John Podesta amassed clients in industry and governments, a Kalorama mansion (two doors down from the Obamas' new home), senior White House jobs, and the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate. Simultaneously, they seem to be be on friendly terms with a "performance artist" whose palette is pain, genitalia (warning, yuck), bodily fluids and the occult. I refer to performance/flim-flam artist Marina Abramovic, whose Wikileaked dinner-invite to Tony and John Podesta to come over to her place for some "Spirit Cooking" was just not another rubber chicken Kiwanis Club meal ticket. 

Once upon a time, such men whose business is to erect Pillars of Society would have shunned such associations, if only to avoid questions from journalists. Certainly, they would not have hung out with them (or hung their work on their walls) if only to preserve their public reputations. 

Now, it's:

"Dear Tony [read in throaty Balkan accent],

"I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you will be able to let me know if your brother is coming? 

"All my love,

"Marina"

That's Marina, above, with the shirtless child.  

Imagine the city room turned stenography pool (as if anyone knows shorthand anymore) when this "Spirit Cooking" item popped up in never-proven-wrong Wikileaks. Creeper-artiste wants to "Spirit-Cook" for Washington mover-shaker/White-House-confidante? Hey guys, what's "Spirit Cooking"? It's what? And Tony Podesta collects this woman's "art"? What other "art" does he collect? Kids? What? "Naked teenagers in the bedroom"? A Jeffrey Dahmer victim look-alike hangs in his vestibule? A painting of two men about to eat a third hangs in John Podesta's Hillary Clinton for President campaign office? Who are these weirdos running around the halls of power in our democratic republic, which, as Madison told us, depends on morality to survive? And what's with the nauseating homage to cannibalism for dessert? Bizarre Beck is going there in his weird way, too?  

Worth ... reporting?

Nope, at least not in the "classic" sense. The media have no questions, none -- just answers. They issue rejoinders, not reports. Abramovic's invitation to Spirit Cooking "ostensibly, makes playful reference of one of Abramovic's past works," writes New York Magazine's Eric Levitz. "Abramovic's mention of `Spirit Cooking' appears to refer to her 1996 artwork that consists of a book with recipes," says the Washington Post's Abby Ohlheiser. Never mind that it's the pukesome "Spirit Cooking" video, mentioned later, that actually grabbed people's attention.  

In other words, the media have no curiosity, they have insistence. They don't know whether the "playful" or culinary explanations are correct for a fact -- they just know. 

For the record, the Abramovic "cookbook" is a sophomorically obscene update on "eye of a newt, toe of a frog" stuff: "Mix fresh breast milk with fresh sperm milk..."

"Again, this isn't an actual recipe book for eating dinner," the Post reporter writes, interposing herself between reader and gag reflex, "and there's no evidence that the recipes were served at the 2015 dinner at the artist's house...."  

"No evidence"? Did Ms. Ohlhiser delve through sedimentary layers of the city dump to confirm? 

Tsk-tsking and providing cover are not just the work of Left-wing reporters, however. "No, John Podesta's Spirit Cooking Dinner Wasn't About Devil Worship" is the headline on an equally non-reported Townhall column by conservative columnist Katie Pavlich, who declares (based on what we don't know) that the 2015 "Spirit Cooking" dinner was put together on to promote Abramovic's "cookbook."  

By the way, a copy of the limited edition of Spirit Cooking, the 1996 book -- 12 etchings with aquaprint and 25 letterpress prints -- was recently estimated to sell at auction for between $20K and $30K. And herein lies the true genius of Marina Abramovic: marketing. But that's only part of the story. The other part is that the media sanctifiy all: the pornography, the pentagrams, the blood, the urine, the masochism, and, of course, the psychiatric-ward-ready exhibitionism. Art. What a toxic Trojan Horse  "art" has been for the degeneration of taste, sensibility and soul in society at large. Which is another story. Or is it the main story? 

Or is it something else as well?

Here is a curious exchange on Reddit with Abramovic about "occult magic": about how it is "art" when it is in a gallery. But, she explains, "if you are doing it [occult magic] in a different context, in spiritual circles or private house or on TV shows, it is not art." 

So, it is ... occult magic?

Ah, that ever-cryptic Marina. "I am so looking forward to the Spirit Cooking dinner at my place..." Always keep 'em guessing. Secret to success.  Of course, whatever "it " is, it is one more reason to be grateful Donald Trump is president. In the Trump administration, Marina Abramovic will not be Asst. DepSec for Satanic Outreach -- 

-- or White House chef.

The more I look at the whole Pizzagate story -- racing, coursing, spreading sub rosa (comb through the vectors of progress amid the misfires and spurts on voat sometime) -- the more it takes shape as a front in the culture war, and, perhaps, one of those central, do-or-die fronts. Deplorables know they are at least seeing manifestations of perversion and rot. They know, too, that the basis of the story isn't "fake news," it's a dorsal fin on the shark that ate our culture. So far, no matter what the MSM does not do, the Deplorables are winning. The story isn't going away.

II.

Back in October/November, when Pizzagate was just a tiny slice, the media's presidential election of Hillary Clinton was only a matter of time. Mustn't have any more depravity leaking out at the seams of Clintonworld, not after another Weiner-Gate, this one the Big Kahuna (connected to that national sex trafficking bust a week later?); nothing must distract from "pussygate," and especially not anything out of Hillary's Russia-connected campaign chairman John Podesta, or, for that matter, Tony, whose degenerate tastes in "art" once would have caused him to be shunned or even arrested by Pillars of Society, not hired and rewarded by them.

The media, they see nothing.

In December, after a man shot a gun inside Pizzagate's pizza restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, Pizzagate became entrenched across the media as a victimization story, pure and simplistic. 

Megyn Kelly confirmed this narrative in a sweetie-pie-interview of James Alefantis, owner of Comet Ping Pong. A fixture among DC Democrats including his notorious "opposition-reseacher" boyfriend David Brock, Alefantis had played host to Podesta, also Obama and Hillary fundraisers, but was nonetheless able to use his interview on "conservative" Fox News to airbrush Pizzagate Exhibit A: his once-public Instagram account (jimmycomet), which showcased much of the evidence driving much of the most heated Pizzagate speculation. Before locking the account (saved here), Alefantis, male, single and homosexual, used it display a seemingly inexhaustible supply of photos of babies and toddlers in luridly disturbing poses, including chewing stacks of money, with a price tag, taped to a table. There were pictures of chubby-cheeked wee ones with hashtags such as #Hotard, and #chickenlovers. An Instagram friend posted photos of a child-sized coffin. There were dungeon-like rooms tagged #murder and #KillRoom. There were pizza slices being used as X-rated sexual accessories. Even jimmycomet's profile picture was overripe with man-boy symbolism. 

Then there was Amanda Kleinman, the Post "troll" victim and Comet Ping Pong performer, whose band is so "alternative" it makes references to pedophilia (more below). 

There was a lot of smoke to clear up in such an interview, one would think. But not for a journalist.

This must have been such an ordeal for you, Megyn Kelly said to open the "interview." 

Kelly did display one disturbing snap -- the little girl whose arms are taped to the table. Alefantis says this is his godchild, her sister did the taping, her parents were nearby. Pretty strange, but ... ok? But what about the rest of his internet photo album? Kelly failed to take note of other images burning the antennae of "normal" people in "flyover country," according to whose sensibilities (still intact, lo, these many decades after the Sexual Revolution) children are sacrosanct and should not be objectified, ever, even as a "joke." And what's with the pizza slice pics as X-rated sexual accessories? Is "pizza" a pedophilac code word? How about the profane and unappetizing grafitti/art inside Comet? The pedophile "jokes" onstage? Isn't this place supposed to be a restaurant for kids who play ping pong while waiting for their cheese and pepperoni?

But no, nothing. The non-interview ends, and, as in WaPo's star-victim-treatment of Kleinman this month, the Big Media yawning cover-up continues.  

Who is Amanda Kleinman? 

For all that newsprint, the Post tells us little. We see four large photos of the woman, but her face is hidden or obscured in every image. She is a "college counselor," we learn, but must go online to find out Kleinman counsels college students at George Washington University. Mainly, Post readers learn that Kleinman is a Pizzagate Victim. As Jeff Bezos's sheet explains, "Because Kleinman's band had appeared at the Washington restaurant at the center of the bogus claims, she, too, was being called a pedophile."

"Because the band appeared"? Post readers are supposed to believe Kleinman was called a pedophile just for showing up. The paper thus successfully interposed itself between its readers and the video of  "Kleinman's band," live and in concert at Comet Ping Pong, in which Kleinman appears onstage in the masked persona of a character called "Majestic Ape," joking about pedophilia. Seriously.   

But wait. Pretend you're still reading the Post. Near the end of piece, you come across this description of Kleinman performing:

The trolls know her as the flamboyant musician who dresses up in a red ski mask and blond wig to perform in her electronic rock band, Heavy Breathing. 

Red ski mask? Blond wig?

It is here where the extent of the Post's cover-up really shows through. If "the trolls" know Kleinman by her red ski mask and blond wig -- having viewed pictures and videos Kleinman has herself placed online to promote "Heavy Breathing" -- why don't Post readers get to know her that way, too?

Is it because she looks like ... such a weirdo?

\

This screenshot (bonus pedophile refererence) comes from the top video on Heavy Breathing's Youtube channel. But Post reporters opted to present Kleinman only in drab office clothes, at a neat little desk, She covers her face in her hands, the caption says, in reaction to what online nasties are saying about her. Is that a blush pinking her cheeks? Poor flower. 

Any deeper online investigation (i.e., one that takes 10 minutes) churns up more and more of Amanda Kleinman and Heavy Breathing's toxic cultural bilge. An anonymous researcher posting at a blog called State of the Nation isolated a series of extremely horrific images from a Heavy Breathing video called "Neutered Noel." These include such ghastly crimes of violence and torture as these:

They also include little kids -- even a baby inside a slice of pizza.   

Media insist people have no sense of humor; we're so deplorable we don't even know we're looking at "music" and "art." Of course, what we are really looking at is the old struggle, tradition vs. chaos, morality vs. the vortex. Once, it was between rowdy Cools and silent-majority Squares, the anti-Establishment vs. the Establishment. The Establishment lost when (as discussed in The Death of the Grown-Up) it was subsumed and re-made by anti-Establishment.

A Deplorable Revolution now brings Donald Trump into the White House; the outrage that powers Pizzagate derives momentum from this same movement. Where did our country go? people wondered and voted Trump.

Now it's time for another question: Who stole our culture? It reeks.