ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What If The Donald Spoke Like a Brit?
Archive for 2015
December 19, 2015
YES, AVOCADOS ARE GOOD FOR YOU. Also, delicious.
WELL, OF COURSE:
What if Muslims in the community objected to a lesson about Christianity that demanded that students read the Nicene Creed out loud? Would the New York Times portray the Muslims as potentially violent? I don’t think it would. In fact, I think the NYT would portray the reading aloud of the Nicene Creed — “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty… And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God” — as a violation of the Establishment Clause.
The NYT quotes one of the parents as understanding the assignment to be an instruction “to denounce our Lord by copying this creed of Islam,” which is “an abomination” to her family’s faith and that the school had simply “cloaked in the form of multiculturalism.” And therein lies the problem. How do you know what the school is really doing? And quite aside from what the school meant to do, there’s the question of how it is perceived, which is an important part of Establishment Clause analysis.
Our various elites have gotten dangerously out of touch with the country. They are being forcefully reminded of this fact, and those reminders are likely to become more frequent, and more forceful, in the future.
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CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: PAC Tied to Challenger Slams Congresswoman Over Alleged Links to Sheldon Silver.
IN THE SOVIET UNION, ONLY THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN; THE PAST IS ALWAYS CHANGING: Rhodes Scholars bully University of Cape Town into removing Cecil Rhodes’ statue; England’s Oxford University likely next. In March, the UK Guardian quoted this charming fellow:
Adekeye Adebajo, a Nigerian Rhodes scholar and executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, said on Friday: “At the time I got the Rhodes scholarship, all I could think about was getting a good education and fighting for pan-Africanist issues. This wealth was stolen from Africa when Rhodes plundered the continent, so I felt absolutely no guilt about using the money to criticise what he stood for.”
Yesterday, Daniel Hannan wrote in the London Telegraph that Cecil Rhodes’ statue at Oxford’s Oriel College is next to fall — and now sports a warning label:
Earlier this year, a student at the University of Cape Town emptied a bucket of faeces over a statue of Cecil Rhodes on campus. The bronze sculpture, he and his friends maintained, was symbolic of the “institutional racism” and “white supremacy” that apparently dominate the university.
How did the campus authorities react? By explaining that almost every prominent figure in the late nineteenth century held some views that our generation finds jarring? By gently pointing out that you can disagree with someone, even detest someone, without defacing his statue? By expelling the instigators on grounds of sheer oafishness?
Sadly not. The university senate convened to discuss what to do about the offending mass of metal. Outside, as they deliberated, protesters chanted “One Settler, One Bullet!” Eventually, it was decided that the right not to be offended trumped everything else, and the statue is now boarded up, awaiting its fate.
Now, an Oxonian mob, using the same cretinous #RhodesMustFall hashtag as in South Africa, has complained that walking past that statue inflicts violence on them. Incredibly, rather than telling them to mind their own business, Oriel has rushed out a statement to the effect that it is talking to the planning authorities about removing the effigy and, in the mean time, has put a notice next to it, with the following text:
“Many of Cecil Rhodes’s actions and public statements are incompatible with the values of the College and University today. In acknowledging the historical fact of Rhodes’s bequest, the College does not in any way condone or glorify his views or actions.”
As Hannan writes, “Cecil Rhodes is commemorated by Oriel because he left money to the college. Accepting that money in 1902, and honouring the benefactor, doesn’t mean endorsing his opinions today. If you’re really too dim to understand this, maybe you shouldn’t be at university.”
Read the whole thing.
(H/T: Milo Yiannopoulos.)
STAR WARS MEETS KEN BURNS: Dan Drezner and a couple of friends have put together a delightful parody of Ken Burns’s Civil War series, using the Star Wars civil war instead of the real-world one. It’s a happy reminder of a phenomenon I first wrote about in 1998 whose positive aspects have become too easy to forget in today’s grouchy environments. Dan writes:
But the above video should also remind us of one of the Internet’s glories: It’s the place to discover that there are other people out there who share your enthusiasms, and can help you express those enthusiasms in socially tolerant ways. Yes, LOTS of people are “Star Wars” fans, but only a small fraction of these people probably “get” the idea of mashing up “Star Wars” with a 25-year-old PBS civil war documentary. In the pre-Internet age, I suspect Rosenberg, Bunch and I would have just kept these quirky thoughts to ourselves, unaware that others might share the same goofball enthusiasm. Thanks to the Long Tail, however, we have discovered that we were not alone. And discovering that you are not alone is a pretty wonderful feeling in this galaxy.
I can’t figure out how to get PJ Media and the WaPo site to cooperate with an embedded video, but you can see the here.
NEED A HOSTESS OR HOLIDAY GIFT? Here’s one that looks pretty on the coffee table but is still full of actual words and ideas. Good for guys too! (It says so right in the Amazon reviews.)
UPDATE: Thanks to the wonderful readers of InstaPundit, Amazon actually sold out of the book for a couple of days. It’s now back in stock.
UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: And now it’s out of stock again, until 12/23. You folks are amazing (or Amazon restocked with just a couple of books).
YEAH, NICE WEATHER CAN REALLY MESS UP YOUR SHOPPING EXPERIENCE. AP Blames Warm Weather For Slow Christmas Season Sales: “This morning, Anne D’Innocenzio at the Associated Press actually told readers that this year’s relatively warm Christmas season weather is what’s hurting Christmas shopping season sales. It couldn’t possibly be the ‘slowdown reality’ USA Today cited in headlining Friday’s second straight steep stock market drop, could it, Anne? Most other Americans participating in the real world have recognized the existence of a ‘slowdown reality’ for at least the past few months…Maybe, just maybe — no, make that probably — this ‘strategic buying’ behavior, which the press would likely consider alarming if it were occurring during a Republican or conservative presidential administration, is occurring because people don’t have a lot of discretionary money to spend because of the pathetic economy of the past seven years.”
Unexpectedly.
IN DOCS VS. GLOCKS, IT’S GLOCKS 1, DOCS 0. Eugene Volokh notes why this is a bad free speech decision, and he’s right. But it’s also a response to overreach by the medical community. And while I agree with Eugene’s analysis, I think that the battle for physician autonomy has been largely lost, and with a lot of collaboration from the medical community. Once you let the state into your medical practice — or, as is often the case, welcome the state into your medical practice — then what do you expect? Things will be driven by politics, and they’re likely to be politics you don’t share. As Eugene notes, the well-being of doctors isn’t the real concern here, but this is a point that needs to be stressed.
THIS IS BEING SPUN AS PROOF OF HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY GUNS, WHEN IT’S REALLY A SIGN OF HOW FEW ARE KILLED BY CARS NOW: Good News, Americans! Cars Are Now Killing as Few People as Guns! “I cannot imagine why people’s trust in the media is so low. Christopher Ingraham, in writing the piece that goes along with graph, is at least not oblivious to what the numbers actually mean, despite the deliberately misleading headline.”
Plus: “Two out of every three gun death is actually a suicide. So actually, if that ‘gun violence’ line only counted violence against others, it would plunge down as well. And then the two lines wouldn’t even be converging. So the whole chart itself is a bit questionable. But despite what the numbers actually mean, the gun control obsession is whatever Democrats decide this time counts as an ‘assault weapon.'”
ANIMALS ARE EATING ANIMALS, and something must be done!
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Oberlin crybullies demand “An $8.20/hour stipend for black student leaders who are organizing protest efforts,” just one part of their “Gargantuan 14-Page List Of Demands.”
And don’t even get them started on the existential crisis that is General Tso’s chicken made with steamed instead of fried chicken, and the “disrespectful” “appropriative” nature of Oberlin’s undercooked sushi rice.
Iowahawk’s response is terse: OBERLIN DELENDA EST; another Twitter user suggests appropriate relief efforts for their students deprived of haute cuisine:
OPTICS: Obama Stops in San Bernardino, Meets Some Families of Terror Victims:
President Obama made a quick stop in San Bernardino on Friday night to meet with some of the families of the victims of the county Christmas party terrorist attack.
Obama landed in the Inland Empire after 7:30 p.m. and was met at the airport by Mayor Carey Davis. He and Michelle Obama then motorcaded to Indian Springs High School. The White House pool report noted “onlookers and a handful of protesters lined the route.”
He stayed for almost three hours before hopping on Air Force One, headed for Honolulu for his two-week vacation.
Which brings us to…Aloha Hawaii! The Obamas touch down for their annual Christmas getaway to the tropical islands… as the cost of their vacations since 2009 tops $70m.
DO WE REALLY WANT THAT? WOULDN’T IT MAKE IT EASIER FOR THE WHOLE THING TO GO DOWN? Will the U.S. Finally Get a Unified Power Grid? The claim is that it will increase reliability, but I wonder.
AT AMAZON, For the fruit lover on your list.
MICHAEL WALSH: Air Slowly Going Out Of Rubio Balloon. Rubio has a lot of strengths, but Walsh is right about this: “Just as Mitt Romney’s devotion to Romneycare should have instantly disqualified him in the 2012 GOP nominating process, so should Rubio’s opportunistic advocacy of ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ rule him out of serious consideration.” That’s a real problem, and the crappy omnibus bill just made it worse for him.
LAW PROFESSOR: Why I Sued My Law School.
REPURPOSING OLD RADIOS AS Bluetooth speakers.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Go To College Or Go To Jail? “I’m thinking, I’m thinking!“
IN THE MAIL: MEAT: Everything You Need to Know.
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