{"id":6414,"date":"2018-05-30T15:06:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T22:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6414"},"modified":"2018-06-04T08:02:59","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T15:02:59","slug":"on-reporters-who-ask-no-unapproved-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=6414","title":{"rendered":"On Reporters Who Ask No (Unapproved) Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I was a newspaper guy — reporter and editor — for 40-some years. (Yeah, scary.)<\/p>\n

My attitude was, \u201cTell me your sacred cows — the stuff you don\u2019t want me to write about. Because that\u2019s what I\u2019m gonna write about.<\/p>\n

Not supposed to look into the real health benefits of marijuana, because it might \u201cencourage kids to try drugs\u201d? You\u2019ve already got them on all kinds of patented pharmaceuticals, including psychiatric drugs, that are probably much more dangerous. So I\u2019ll write about the health benefits of marijuana, and the way Prohibition only makes things worse, like when alcohol Prohibition turned us from a peaceful nation of wine and beer drinkers into a crazed culture going blind on bathtub gin while the distributors shot each other down with Tommy-guns in the streets.<\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t want me to write about how counterproductive it was to send unwilling draftees to fight a \u201csort of, limited\u201d war in the jungles of mainland Asia, \u201cTake that hill so we can give it back tomorrow\u201d? Thanks; I\u2019ll get right on it.<\/p>\n

What happened to that instinct to go find the story that the \u201cpowers that be\u201d wanted buried? Yeah, I know how the Internet has slashed into the paid-advertising model that supported \u201cobjective\u201d daily newspapers. But don\u2019t you think the ongoing loss of audience and credibility of the \u201clegacy media\u201d might also have something to do with the fact their little drones now all recite the \u201cLeftist line\u201d in unison \u2013 never challenge any of the sacred cows?<\/p>\n

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That what remains of the American and European \u201cnews media\u201d would become captive to the screeching Collectivist\/Globalist Left was predictable. First our colleges and now even the government youth propaganda camps (\u201cpublic high schools\u201d) have been captive to unionized Leftists pushing a thinly disguised Marxist agenda -\u2013 Franz Fanon, Noam Chomsky and the like -\u2013 for 45 years now. Public schools which quite purposely turn out graduates who are just barely literate enough to follow their marching orders, by the way, with most of a troublemaker\u2019s innate sense of curiosity long since ground out of them.<\/p>\n

(Real research is such a grind. We SO much more prefer the classes where we get good grades for just shouting our opinions about racism and oppression and stuff. And now we even get a free field trip to the state Capitol to shout it out for gun control! . . . even though we wouldn\u2019t know a muzzle brake from a stripper clip, and couldn\u2019t tell you who wrote the Bill of Rights or why he (or they) believed a citizenry armed with military-grade weapons is somehow \u201cnecessary to the security of a free state.\u201d . . . Or even where that phrase appears.)<\/p>\n

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With the exception of a few pretty network news readers with great hair, no one ever went into journalism for the money. The sense since Woodward and Bernstein took down Richard Nixon was that journalists had a mission to take down greedy white \u201cdeplorable\u201d politicians (and if we can\u2019t find any, we\u2019ll invent some. \u201cIf you\u2019re for enforcing the existing immigration laws like every other nation on earth, you\u2019re a racist!\u201d)<\/p>\n

The problem is not just a political \u201cleaning.\u201d The problem is that today\u2019s crop of journalists are so incurious it never occurs to them to notice that their assignment editors are taking orders from owners and publishers who are on the same globalist\/mind-control team as virtually all of those bought-and-paid-for politicians they\u2019re supposed to be \u201cexposing.\u201d The big corporate guys don\u2019t really care which politicians get taken down, since they\u2019ve bought the \u201cD\u201ds AND the \u201cR\u201ds \u2013 they own Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi AND Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and Trey Gowdy. It\u2019s Kabuki, it\u2019s a Punch-and-Judy show to make people feel they\u2019ve got a real choice.<\/p>\n

After all, the 2016 election was supposed to be between the harridan of the Clinton Crime Family, and the Younger Brother of the Bush Crime Family, right? Between the Tattaglias and the Barzinis, basically. Which one was going to do what Wall Street and George Soros and the Saudis bribed them to do? Duh.<\/p>\n

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What disgusts me so much is not just that virtually everyone in the \u201clegitimate, mainstream news business\u201d is now a well-trained Marxist, all reading from the same list of talking points disguised as \u201cquestions.\u201d It\u2019s that they just don\u2019t show any damned curiosity.<\/p>\n

You really need just two things to be a reporter. OK, it helps to be able to organize your thoughts and write the facts in descending order of importance in a hurry in crisp, clear sentences. But the two things you really need are curiosity, which should be inborn, and a second thing, which takes some discipline and training, because it goes AGAINST the politeness that our mothers taught us.<\/p>\n

The second thing you need is to not be afraid — to boldly demonstrate that you have no fear whatsoever — of being taken for an idiot or an a-hole.<\/p>\n

I was a newsman — reporter or editor — for 40 years. Many\u2019s the time I called the \u201cpublic relations director\u201d of some government agency. \u201cIs it true,\u201d I\u2019d ask, that your boss, the director of the agency, said or did this really dumb, outrageous thing yesterday?<\/p>\n

Many\u2019s the time I\u2019d hear, \u201cNow Vin, have you been talking to those black helicopter conspiracy nuts again? Does that sound to you like something the director would say and do?\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re good at this. Did you want to confess to being some kind of black-helicopter conspiracy nut? You\u2019re not likely to get invited out with the rest of the gang for beers on Friday night, not likely to get to spend time with the prettier gals in the newsroom, if you get THAT reputation. Easier to chuckle and say, \u201cYeah, Tom, I guess you\u2019re right.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a real reporter doesn\u2019t give a damn about being thought of a \u201cnice guy.\u201d He says, \u201cIt\u2019s interesting, Tom, but in those two rhetorical questions you just asked me, I didn\u2019t hear the word \u2018Yes\u2019 or the word \u2018No.\u2019 So, again, yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m., did your boss say and do that stupid thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Vin, I don\u2019t really know. I\u2019ll have to check.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d appreciate it, Tom. And when you don\u2019t know, Tom, maybe in future you should just f-ing TELL me you don\u2019t know, what do you think? \u201c<\/p>\n

But the current gang doesn\u2019t even ask the most obvious, staring-in-your-face questions. Just as examples, off the top of my head, here are five:<\/p>\n

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1) HILLARY\u2019S HEALTH<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twenty months ago, in the fall of 2016 — despite the fact she didn\u2019t seem to have the stamina to do more than a couple of public appearances per week, when Donald Trump was out speaking to cheering throngs of 30,000 people three times a DAY, often going till 1 in the morning \u2013 Hillary Clinton and her doctors insisted she was in perfectly fine health to stand up to the rigors of serving in the most daunting office in the world — the Presidency of the United States — for a full four years.<\/p>\n

Since then, this woman — who has no job, who\u2019s free to set her own leisurely pace — has broken her toe, broken or sprained her wrist, fallen down a flight of stairs in India (aides at either arm caught her, as usual), and is now seen out in public on hot summer days wearing a weird get-up consisting of a long heavy coat with a decorative scarf draped around her shoulders, obviously concealing some kind of sturdy metal back brace, something out of Skeletor in the comic books.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m surprised they don\u2019t have her creeping around with a four-legged walker, wearing a bicycle helmet.<\/p>\n

Yet you\u2019ll remember back when Hillary collapsed and had to be thrown bodily into her van at the World Trade Center memorial observances in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2016, she and her doctor claimed she had \u201cpneumonia\u201d — \u201cpneumonia\u201d which was curiously all better when she emerged from her daughter\u2019s apartment to greet the gathered folk out on the sidewalk about an hour later.<\/p>\n

Doctors report someone who has pneumonia so severe as to cause a complete fainting collapse do not \u201cget all better\u201d within an hour.<\/p>\n

Also, Donald Trump (who — contrary to most reporting — often initially says a lot less than he really knows) commented that Hillary would show up for the presidential debates all buzzing with energy, but less than two hours later would need help shuffling into her van — kind of like someone who was being \u201cjuiced up\u201d for special occasions. <\/p>\n

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Yet reporters — whose first job is to be curious — shrieked that it was (and apparently remains, to this day) completely out-of-line to challenge the \u201cofficial version\u201d on Hillary\u2019s health, that only black helicopter Conspiracy Nuts would visit the Vidzette Web site and listen to Dr. Ted Noel explain that Hillary Clinton was showing every sign of the mood-and energy-swings of a patient on L-Dopa therapy (which can create a high like cocaine, followed by a serious slump) for advanced Parkinson\u2019s Disease.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FhacgZQcmWs<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vzKIM1SR_Po<\/a><\/p>\n

Still not curious? Still not willing to risk being ostracized from the gang that goes out for beers on Friday night because you\u2019ve started asking whether Hillary and her doctor lied about her physical fitness for office? Not even upset about being lied to?<\/p>\n

After all, Parkinson\u2019s is not just a neural, but also a neuro-PSYCHIATRIC disorder; it can affect judgment, mood, and reasoning. Yet you did everything you could (from one-sided coverage, to slipping her the debate questions in advance) to rig the presidential election to PUT THIS DAME IN CHARGE.<\/p>\n

(Actually, “one-sided coverage” is being overly polite. If Hillary had been a Republican, news of her crimes — including purposeful destruction of evidence under subpoena, many of those crimes stemming from her illegal use of a private, unsecured computer to hide the solicitation of tens of millions in Russian bribes via the “Clinton Foundation” — would have been a steady drumbeat of headline stories every evening, accompanied by the kind of theme music usually reserved for accounts of demonic possession. Meantime, as they infamously refused to show or report the size of his vast and enthusiastic crowds, Donald Trump — one of the greatest American natural orators to surface since William Jennings Bryan — was portrayed through brief, carefully chosen sound bites as an oaf and a gibbering moron.) <\/p>\n

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What about her drinking? The DNC emails — shipped to Wikileaks by Seth Rich, who paid the price — reveal staffers asking (I paraphrase) \u201cIf I\u2019m supposed to go over at dinner time to ask Hillary about this, who\u2019s going to sober her up?\u201d It\u2019s widely reported the reason she wouldn\u2019t give a concession speech on election night — as well as offering a few comforting words of thanks to her supporters — is that she was blind, screeching drunk. And what about the night that the rescue mission in Italy was waiting for her go-ahead to go rescue Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi? Drunk? In an L-Dopa \u201cdown cycle\u201d coma?<\/p>\n

A good choice to have her \u201cfinger on the button\u201d of nuclear war?<\/p>\n

Maybe there should be a legal requirement that all presidential candidates still in the race at that point undergo a thorough physical exam administered by a panel of INDEPENDENT physicians in early May, six months before our presidential elections — with public reporting of any debilitating disease encountered.<\/p>\n

(It might have ruled out that partial fourth term for the fast-failing FDR. And did the voters really not have a right to know John F. Kennedy suffered from colitis, prostatitis, and Addison’s disease, which affects the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar? That he also had osteoporosis of the lower back from a war injury, causing pain so severe that he was unable to perform simple tasks such as pulling the shoe and sock onto his left foot? That to fight the pain, Kennedy took as many as 12 medications at once, including codeine, Demerol and methadone for pain; Ritalin, a stimulant; meprobamate and librium for anxiety; barbiturates for sleep; thyroid hormone; and injections of a blood derivative, gamma globulin, to combats infections? (all per presidential historian Robert Dallek of Boston University, in his Kennedy book \u201cAn Unfinished Life.\u201d) That during the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Kennedy was taking steroids for his Addison’s disease, painkillers for his back, anti-spasmodics for his colitis, antibiotics for urinary tract infections, antihistamines for his allergies, and on at least one occasion, an anti-psychotic drug to treat a severe mood change that Jackie Kennedy believed was brought on by the antihistamines? Mind you, he stood up to all this pretty well. Still: No concerns? The voters had no right to know?)<\/p>\n

But who\u2019s going to push for such a mandatory medical exam, if reporters aren\u2019t curious (and moderately courageous) enough to push back against \u201cNo one is allowed to challenge Hillary\u2019s health. What are you, a right-wing conspiracy nut?\u201d<\/p>\n

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2) THE OCTOBER BIMBO PARADE<\/strong><\/p>\n

In October of 2016, in what Hillary Clinton figured would be the death blow to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, Hillary\u2019s people brought forward half-a-dozen women who claimed that — some time between seven and 22 years previous — Donald Trump had bumped them, touched them, or groped them.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning, there was something very weird about this parade of aging, puzzlingly butch, supposedly outraged feminists.<\/p>\n

First, no newspaper I worked for in the past 40 years would have run ANY of these women\u2019s accounts in the closing weeks of a political campaign, when the accused would obviously be short of time and resources to marshal a defense. The first thing we would have asked was: \u201cDid you file a police report at the time? Can we see a copy? Do you have any court documents — including affidavits sworn under penalty of perjury, both by yourself and by witnesses — to back up your claims? No? How does it come that you bring this forward only now, years later, in the closing weeks of a national election campaign? Especially against a rich guy, whose lawyers might have been expected to at least buy your silence, years ago, in which case there\u2019d be some kind of paper trail?\u201d<\/p>\n

Breaking news often slows down in the summer. All KINDS of assignment editors should now be instructing their eager young reporters: \u201cGo talk to those women, now. How did the Hillary campaign find and recruit them? Did the Democrats run a classified ad, \u2018If you\u2019d like to help Hillary win and you\u2019ve ever had any contact with Donald Trump and you\u2019re willing to say he bumped you, please call Democrat attorneys Gloria Allred or Lisa Bloom at the following number. Free meals and airfare, other perks available\u2019?<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat about the British guy who told the Daily Mail he was sitting across the aisle from Trump and the one who said she was groped on an airliner, guy said it was the woman whose hands were all over Trump, that she confessed to this fellow passenger when Trump was in the men\u2019s room that she hoped to get the rich guy to marry her?<\/p>\n

\u201cMeantime, who paid these women\u2019s legal fees and travel costs? If the Hillary campaign paid, how was that reported on campaign finance reports? If Allred and Bloom charged less than their usual fees, was the difference reported as an in-kind contribution to the Hillary campaign? Are any of these women willing to admit now that they did it for political reasons, to try and help Hillary win?<\/p>\n

\u201cDo any reporters regret promoting their totally undocumented, uncorroborated charges with zero skepticism? If not, ask them how much time or space they\u2019ve given to Juanita Broddrick\u2019s quite credible report that she was raped by Bill Clinton, or to Hillary\u2019s well-documented, illegal, multi-million-dollar \u2018pay for play\u2019 operation at the State Department.\u201d<\/p>\n

3) JOBS AND FACTORIES SHIPPED OVERSEAS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in 2016, the geniuses of the political Left — including Barack Obama himself — ridiculed Donald Trump\u2019s claims that American factories and jobs have been shipped overseas, and that he could and would bring them back. Obama famously got himself videotaped at a \u2018PBS Town Hall,\u201d telling a hand-picked audience that it simply couldn\u2019t be done. \u201cWhat kind of magic wand does he have?\u201d asked a man with zero experience in business, trade or commerce:<\/p>\n

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(The “magic wand” diatribe: https:\/\/news.grabien.com\/story-flashback-obama-mocks-trump-promising-keep-carrier-plant-us<\/a> )<\/p>\n

For decades, laid-off machinists and steel workers in this country have been told by these paid-off call girls of the multi-national corporate globalists \u201cGet an apron and apply for a job as a busboy at the International House of Pancakes. Haven\u2019t you heard? America is a \u2018service economy\u2019 now; nothing to be done about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, I\u2019ve got a friend who used to be in the machine-shop business, who was telling me YEARS before Trump got into politics that \u201cfactories being shipped overseas\u201d wasn\u2019t just political rhetoric, it\u2019s been going on LITERALLY. Competition from China and other countries that blatantly violate our patents — often sending us lesser quality-controlled stuff that can break at really bad times, like when a jet is airborne — drives these outfits out of business.<\/p>\n

Harry would get the auction catalog, he\u2019d go and see the Chinese literally buy all the fancy, computer-controlled machine tools (the \u201cmachines that make machines\u201d), pack them up, and ship them back to China.<\/p>\n

In only a year-and-a-half in office — despite not only every congressional Democrat but more than half of the RINOS trying to block EVERYTHING he\u2019s trying to do — Donald Trump is showing us PRECISELY how a tough, knowledgeable, confident trade negotiator can start to turn this around.<\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t there any reporters out there in the \u201clegacy media\u201d who find this CURIOUS? Who might want to ask some real questions about how it\u2019s being done \u2013 something that for decades we were told was impossible \u2013 instead of just reading the prepared questions they\u2019re handed, about the \u201cdangers of a trade war?\u201d<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t there a single fiber of independence left in you? Maybe enough to hand that list of questions back to your editor and say, \u201cThese are the same questions Chris Wallace and Martha Raddatz and Wolf Blitzer asked Ross and Lighthizer and Mnuchin on TV last weekend. Where are you getting these questions? Do they all come out of the same hive? I think maybe we should do a story on the hive that\u2019s generating these identical lists of questions. Who handed them to YOU, and where did HE get them?\u201d<\/p>\n

No? Didn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

So maybe it\u2019s time to admit, not just that you\u2019re a lady of easy acquaintance, but that you\u2019re not a particularly talented or energetic one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4) BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, MAN OF MYSTERY<\/strong><\/p>\n

How does a kid whose high-school nickname was \u201cBarry the Stoner\u201d get into Columbia? Who paid his tuition? One of those people from Arabia that he later bowed down to? Why?<\/p>\n

How come no one who attended Columbia during those years has ever come forward to say they remember being at school with Obama? Who were his dorm mates and girlfriends? Where are his term papers, his senior thesis?<\/p>\n

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The little-known and underqualified Obama got into the U.S. Senate because his better-known opponent\u2019s divorce child-custody file got released to the public, revealing wife Jeri Ryan — \u201cStar Trek Voyager\u2019s\u201d luscious \u201cSeven-of-Nine\u201d — accused her ex (Jack Ryan, formerly of Goldman-Sachs, who even has the same name as the hero of some of those Tom Clancy novels) of urging her to participate in public sex acts in sex clubs. How did a Superior Court judge in heavily Democrat Los Angeles County come to release that file, which both Ryans agreed to keep sealed, to protect their then-5-year-old son? Why has no one ever investigated the motivations for Judge Robert Schnider\u2019s curious action, without which Barack Obama would almost certainly still be a low-rent Chicago \u201ccommunity organizer\u201d?<\/p>\n

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The strange chain of events that led to the election of a mystery-man president is somehow less interesting and important than a publicity-hungry porn star saying she once boinked Donald Trump, 10 or 12 years ago — despite the fact we know she accepted $130,000 in exchange for signing a document, years ago, saying she had in fact NOT ever had sex with him and would never mention such a claim again — in which she apparently agreed to pay a $2 million penalty each time she did? You\u2019re happy to be \u201cin bed\u201d with this kind of morally pure truth-teller?<\/p>\n

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Oh, and how about 5) CATASTROPHIC MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING<\/strong><\/p>\n

(It\u2019s a bunch of bull. Pull on your spectacles and go do some reading.)<\/p>\n

— V.S.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a newspaper guy — reporter and editor — for 40-some years. (Yeah, scary.) My attitude was, \u201cTell me your sacred cows — the stuff you don\u2019t want me to write about. Because that\u2019s what I\u2019m gonna write about. Not supposed to look into the real health benefits of marijuana, because it might \u201cencourage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,22,84,87,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-media","category-politics","category-regressive-left","category-the-deep-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1Fs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6414"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6445,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6414\/revisions\/6445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}