Archive for 2015

WHO’S AFRAID OF UBER?

Journalists may be tempted to over-identify with anxious workers when Uber pops up in their cities, noticeably disrupting an old-fashioned industry. So we get a spate of media attention on worker dissatisfaction with the “gig economy” from people who were never previously moved to write about taxi driver complaints about, say, the very high crime rate faced by cabbies or their problems with the taxi commission — two problems that Uber has at least partially alleviated.

In other words, while Uber’s disruption of an existing labor market is not particularly important to the national economy, it ends up looking important to a particular class of people. And that class of people happens to be the one that writes all the news articles. Which is why we keep reading about the gig economy, even though much of the country would hardly have noticed it without those reports.

Anything that happens to journalists or their friends is by definition a hot national trend.

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, DIVERSITY!: Lawsuit claims white male DC public works supervisor Christopher Lyons was fired because of his race.

Lyons claims in an explosive but little noticed federal lawsuit that he was fired as a District of Columbia Department of Public Works supervisor because black employees did not want to work for a “honkey,” as they repeatedly called him. . . . Lyons finally got the boot after just eight months on the job without explanation. But one employee certainly wished him a bon voyage. The day he was fired somebody posted a sign on Lyons’ door that said, “Get out white boy.” . . .

He was the only white supervisor at the DPW and apparently the first one ever at the Fleet division. . . .

Indeed, all the other workers in the fleet division were black, and if the allegations are correct, they almost immediately resented their new “honkey” boss.

When Smith addressed black workers at his first Fleet staff meeting in March 2012, garage mechanics called him a “cracker,”  “white boy,” and “honkey,” the lawsuit says.

Yeah, the thing I love most about the Obama Administration is all the racial healing this country has experienced.  The liberal/progressive emphasis on “diversity” sure is paying off.

DON’T BE SHTUPID, BE A SHMARTY: P.C. Police Go After Mel Brooks’ The Producers:

The intent behind The Producers can be easily discerned, if not from the material itself, then from the man who wrote it. Mel Brook’s is a Jew. So there’s that. Were that somehow not enough, Brooks has been explicit regarding his feelings toward Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust. Spoiler alert: he’s against them.

This protest points to a larger crisis of intellect in modern society. We’re losing the capacity to combat bad ideas with humor and mockery. Apparently, you can’t make fun of a thing without being accused of endorsing it. Amy Schumer’s a racist because she makes fun of racism. Mel Brooks is a Nazi because he mocked Nazism. God forbid this Imm see Blazing Saddles.

Which Brooks has stated in recent years could never be made in the ultra-PC climate his fellow Democrats have created. And as John Nolte warned at Big Hollywood a year ago, “‘Blazing Saddles’ Review: Buy a Copy Before the Left Burns Them All.”

YASSER ARAFAT COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT:

A story about Jeb Bush being in favor of amnesty, er… sorry, “comprehensive immigration reform” shouldn’t be anything new. But at the same time, the candidate seems to have been sending some mixed messages to the base over the course of his 2016 campaign. Not that long ago he said that he would rescind the President’s executive amnesty program, but speaking to a different outlet during that same week he hinted pretty much the exact opposite. It can all be so confusing, can’t it?

Fortunately, Jeb has cleared things up: “Jeb Bush vows to enact comprehensive immigration reform. To Telemundo. In Spanish.”

But of course — what else did you expect him to say? After all, “It is immigration—its universally celebrated benefits and its barely acknowledged costs—that is the third rail of U.S. politics,” Matthew Continetti wrote on Friday in “Revenge of the Radical Middle” at the Washington Free Beacon. “Trump didn’t step on the third rail; he embraced it, he won’t let go of it, and in so doing he’s become electric. Republicans, Democrats, journalists, corporations all want to define themselves against him, and their flaunting of their moral superiority only feeds the media monster, only makes Trump more attractive to the dispossessed, alienated, radical middle.”

Jeb is taking the radical middle for granted; they’re being enthusiastically courted by Trump. Which approach is more likely to woo them?

ANTIRACISM, OUR FLAWED NEW RELIGION: “Opposition to racism used to be a political stance,” John McWhorter writes. “Now it has every marking of a religion, with both good and deleterious effects on American society.”

Nietzsche killed God in 1883, but man is hardwired to believe in something. Which explains why much of the 20th century was a search for alternate religions: The State, environmentalism, feminism, hallucinogenic drugs, and virtually all other aspects of the left take on religious aspects as they become more and more radical. But then, as Tom Wolfe wrote in “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” “It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk.”

That was written in 1976; and while, with a few exceptions, the left has retired its camouflage gear, the religious fervor of the movement sees little sign of abating. See also: Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, both in the rhetoric of his more impressionable early supporters (“The Lightworker!”) and his own eschatological rhetoric. (“At some point in the evening, a light is going to shine down and you will have an epiphany and you’ll say, ‘I have to vote for Barack.’”)  Followed by the missionary-like tone of the Internet mob today. Repent! Confess your sins!

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: National Security Will Drive Genetically Enhanced Offspring. “I expect offspring genetic engineering will lead to brighter, better looking, higher performing, and healthy children and adults. What I’m less sure about is personality traits and moral reasoning circuitry. What choices will people make about how conscientious and benevolent and considerate their kids will be? Will psychopaths choose genetic variants to create offspring who are even higher functioning psychopaths? Will skills in deception be desired by some? The average performance of predator humans may well rise.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: India Loves MOOCs: In a country of rigid teaching styles and scarce university slots, students and professors are exploring what online learning can be. “Goyal set out to sharpen his résumé. In early 2014, he enrolled in three online data-science classes via Coursera, all taught by Johns Hopkins professors. By earning certificates from the courses, demonstrating expertise in areas such as the programming tool R, Goyal impressed Dunnhumby, one of Britain’s largest customer-analytics companies. He now works there as a Delhi-based senior analyst, using data to figure out what British shoppers want next. Throughout India, online education is gaining favor as a career accelerator, particularly in technical fields.”

CAMILLE PAGLIA: THE CLINTONS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF MONICA LEWINSKY:

Bill Clinton used her.  Hillary was away or inattentive, and he used Monica in the White House–and in the suite of the Oval Office, of all places. He couldn’t have taken her on some fancy trip? She never got the perks of being a mistress; she was there solely to service him. And her life was completely destroyed by the publicity that followed.  The Clinton’s are responsible for the destruction of Monica Lewinsky! They probably hoped that she would just go on and have a job, get married, have children, and disappear, but instead she’s like this walking ghoul.

Fifteen years later, that’s still the sad role left for her to play.

Yes, it’s like something out of “Wuthering Heights” or “Great Expectations”– some Victorian novel, where a woman turns into this mourning widow who mopes on and on over a man who abused or abandoned her.  Hillary has a lot to answer for, because she took an antagonistic and demeaning position toward her husband’s accusers.  So it’s hard for me to understand how the generation of Lena Dunham would or could tolerate the actual facts of Hillary’s history.

So have the times and standards changed enough that Clinton would be seen as Cosby, if he was president today?

Oh, yes!

Read the whole thing.