SF Gate, the San Francisco Chronicle’s second-tier, free online version, has come out swinging in defense of House Speaker and San Francisco fossil Nancy Pelosi’s penchant for mining enhanced knowledge streams for even more enhanced financial gain via informed stock trades and such. The raison d’être for the Botox’d gavel banger’s actions being acceptable? Why, she has to know these things! No, really.

(Thomas) Carvo (a recent Penn State grad who lives in Austin, Texas, and runs a stock tracking TikTok) told SFGATE that members of Congress, including Pelosi, probably do have better information than the general public. But he argues that it’s the job of politicians to keep track of current events and other economic determinants; keeping tabs on that information does not necessarily translate to insider trading, he argues.

Apparently, being a Nittany Lion means being a nitwit. But I digress.

Served as a side dish in this restaurant of ridiculousness — those meddling kids!

Nowhere is this more evident than on TikTok, where legions of amateur investors and personal finance enthusiasts — with lots of free time on their hands over the pandemic and motivated, in part, by the subreddit Wall Street Bets — share Pelosi’s list of recent call option purchases alongside tips on cryptocurrency or high-yield savings accounts. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of videos if you search “Nancy Pelosi stocks” on TikTok.

Nosey people wondering how the people they elect to serve them, not the other way around, use information gathered. Ingrates. But again, I digress.

Quoting my colleague Mike Miller’s excellent analysis from earlier today:

Like insider traders who have inside information on a particular company, its products or services, and/or any other important information known only by “insiders,” congressional lawmakers have insight into pending legislation that might very well drive the price of a particular stock (or multiple stocks) up or down. That said, the quickest way to make “a lot” — or “lose a lot” — of money is by participating in the options market, which is generally not recommended by stockbrokers (I was one for 27 years) to the faint of heart or those with insufficient assets to withstand potential substantial losses.

As we who reside at or around the sports desk located somewhere below decks of the Good Pirate Ship RedState are well aware, if you know which play the other team is about to run or which pitch the opposing pitcher is about to throw, you have an immediate, unfair advantage. It’s called cheating. Cheating is bad, be it in sports or public office. Passing it off as “well, they need to know these things” is in the same category as excusing someone in the HR department tweeting about employees’ love lives. When you are in a position requiring knowing privileged information, you don’t make it public — and you don’t use it for personal gain. Either demonstrate utter unworthiness to hold said information.

While it’s shooting fish in a barrel with one hand while picking low-hanging fruit with the other to lampoon media attempts at excusing insider trading by any other name, the problem such attempts at running cover create go far deeper, with far greater seriousness, than providing shots of snark. Those who write and publish such stories know their direct reach is limited, and 99.44 percent of those who are reached already belong to the choir (and not the good one).

Instead, they work with the knowledge that such efforts will be coordinated and corroborated throughout mainstream media, the goal being this disinformation gets disseminated by those who do watch, listen, and read, down to those who don’t — via water cooler and lunchroom talk. This is why conservatives need to stop ceding the battlefield without a fight via cultural retreat, and be equally aggressive in getting out the truth by active participation in society. We can’t change the media. We can change hearts and minds with active truth-telling.