WHY PEOPLE IN OLD MOVIES TALK FUNNY: The Disappearance Of The Mid-Atlantic Accent.

THINK OF THIS AS A TRANSFER OF MONEY FROM TAXPAYERS TO A DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUENCY, THOUGH, AND IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A FAILURE AT ALL: $23 Billion In Annual Federal Tax Credits For Higher Education Have No Effect On College Attendance.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Men Are Not Monsters. “Most males do not hurt females or other males, or even dogs and cats. Yet they’re all treated as potential perpetrators, and our boys feel the weight of this prejudice.” It’s becoming more and more apparent that historical demands for equality have morphed into current-day demands for supremacy.

I HOPE THIS IS WRONG: The Antibiotic Apocalypse Is Almost Here. “Researchers have discovered bacteria in China that can defeat even the “antibiotic of last resort,” reports the BBC, which describes the development as the possible start of an “antibiotic apocalypse.” MCR-1, the mutated gene that resists colistin, the antibiotic used when others fail, appears to already be widespread among livestock in China and is beginning to appear in an alarming number of human infections.”

Widespread use of antibiotics in livestock has been a dreadful idea.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Are American Universities Overrated? At this rate, if they aren’t now they soon will be.

HARVARD LAW “HATE” CRIME: John Hinderaker over at Power Line has an amusing story about the “hateful” genesis of the HLS shield and the school’s early, slaveholding benefactor:

The back story is that the money that founded the law school came from a man named Royall, who was a slaveholder. This is how the law school itself tells the story:

Harvard Law School was established through a bequest from the estate of Isaac Royall, a wealthy Antiguan plantation owner and slaveholder who immigrated to Boston. Royall’s coat-of-arms, with its three stacked wheat sheaves, remains the school’s crest to this day.

The law school’s crest is displayed, among other places, at Wasserstein Hall. Someone, presumably a person associated with the movement on campus to do away with such reminders of the Royall family, put black tape over the seal. Then, overnight, someone removed some of the pieces of black tape and put them over portraits of black faculty members that hang in the hallway.

This supposed hate crime was described by a second-year student named Michele Hall, who also posted photos of the portraits with tape over them . . . . The reaction was what you would expect. Ms. Hall writes:

I am constantly reminded of the legacy of white supremacy that founded this school and still breathes through every classroom and lecture hall. I am also shown the small inroads that professors of color have made, breaking apart the notion that whiteness is the epitome of legal scholarship.

Whiteness is the epitome of legal scholarship? Seriously?

Ms. Hall further declared, “The defacing of the portraits of black professors this morning is a further reminder that white supremacy built this place, is the foundation of this place, and that we never have and still do not belong here.”

Okay, so if you really believe this, Ms. Hall (and like Hinderaker, I don’t think she does), why don’t you go to Howard or some other “historically black” law school, where you won’t have to be “reminded” that former benefactors, students and alumni were possibly slaveholders? Is it not sufficient to soothe your soul that you very likely attend one of the best law schools in the country because HLS has vigorously embraced the liberal/progressive policy of affirmative action? And do you really think that any institution that has received a generous grant from a slaveholder means that you do not “belong” there? If this is the case, you do not “belong” in about 90 percent of the best universities in the country, I suspect.

The truth is that Ms. Hall doesn’t really belong in any decent law school. She apparently has zero talent at logic, and her emotions control her brain. Sadly, these traits would likely put her on the short list for a federal court judgeship by the Obama Administration.

CNN FAILS TO GRASP SOCIAL MEDIA, suspending reporter Elise Labott for two weeks for editorializing “House passes bill that could limit Syrian refugees. Statue of Liberty bows head in anguish,” in a tweet, Ed Morrissey writes:

A two-week suspension isn’t going to convince anyone that CNN reporters (or any reporters) are robots without their own biases and opinions. If anything, it’s better for consumers to have those out in the open. Media bias was obvious long before Elise Labott hit Twitter, and suspending her over this tweet isn’t going to convince anyone that it’s been cured, at CNN or anywhere else.

In fact, that is one of the merits of social-media interaction — so that consumers can interact with and get to know reporters. CNN obviously values that promotional value, or they’d order Labott and other reporters off of Twitter and Facebook altogether. If reporters do nothing but tweet headlines, there would be no value to their engagement at all; CNN tweets headlines all day long, and people can find links there if that’s all they want.

CNN is apparently still clinging to the notion of “objectivity” like one of the legendary stories of Japanese soldiers stranded on desert islands and still claiming allegiance to the emperor long after the war had ended. “Objectivity” was a fable the MSM needed to promote during the early days of the original national broadcast networks, first radio in the 1920s, and TV after World War II, to convince the American public — and the FCC — that it was delivering a neutral product that appealed to the largest possible audience. (A premise the MSM regularly broke with impunity, of course.) Building a national broadcasting network was staggeringly expensive, which is why for decades TV channel choices were so limited; today, anyone can start a Website with just a few clicks of a computer mouse.

In the 1980s, CNN broke the big three TV networks’ logjam on the news. Perhaps its current management might join the rest of us in the 21st century someday.

Of course, Labbott’s suspension raises another question for CNN viewers: if the network is going to continue to pretend to be “objective,” then why do all their reporters’ Kinsley-esque gaffes keep occurring from the left?

RANT: The Straight-Four Is the Purgatory of Car Engines.

DUCK AND COVER: Claudia Rosett: The Next Failure of Imagination: Nuclear Terrorism?

As with so many Democrat presidential candidates before him, Obama was sold in 2007 and 2008 as the latest iteration of “the next JFK” – be careful what you wish for.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Colbert Drops to 3rd Place Behind Kimmel as New Poll Shows CBS Host Alienating Audiences:

Most importantly for Colbert, he’s found a niche in offering what the Jimmys can’t really offer (particularly Fallon): consistent political satire and more substantive interviews with big political guests (his interview with Joe Biden as the vice president openly displayed his inner conflict on running for for president was widely-praised in this space and pretty much everywhere else). But therein lies the rub: most sit-downs with politicians don’t exactly result in riveting television (outliers like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton to a lesser extent notwithstanding). And Colbert has shown almost no willingness to hit both sides of the aisle even close to equally… it’s simply not in his DNA.

Consequently, according to a Hollywood Reporter poll just released, Colbert has successfully alienated self-described Republicans who see what’s being offered on a nightly basis and exploring or staying with other options. And with the country as polarized as it is, the host is thereby saying goodbye to half his potential audience, which can’t be a sound business model.

Per The Hollywood Reporter‘s survey of 1000 late-night viewers aged 18-65, only 17 percent of those identified themselves as Republican watch Colbert, while attracting 47 percent of those who identify as Democrats, a 30-point gap. But more liberals watch late-night TV than stuffy, old conservatives, right? Guess again. In Kimmel’s case, the split is 34 percent Democrats, 33 percent Republicans. In Fallon’s case, it’s 36-31 Democrats.

Why so even-keeled? Because Kimmel and Fallon go through great lengths to be apolitical. To equally mock or simply find other props and topics to use for comedy outside of political humor and (oftentimes in Colbert’s case) commentary on how stupid/awful/inept Republicans are. It’s a smart approach if the goal is to reach as broad as audience as possible, something Colbert never cared to achieve going back to his Comedy Central days and The Colbert Report. In character, out of character… Colbert is Colbert. And that’s fine on Comedy Central, even downright expected. But network TV? Not so much…

The ratings result of said approach is now beginning to come to fruition as the bloom comes off the rose ten weeks since his debut.

Who could have seen this coming? Err, lots of people — including me. As I wrote a year and half ago when Colbert was first announced as Letterman’s successor, CBS forgot the lessons of the 1996 HBO movie The Late Shift, based on the best-selling book by the New York Times’ Bill Carter on how NBC forced Johnny Carson’s hand and pushed the increasingly isolated and emotionally brittle king of late night TV into retirement, and chose Jay Leno, rather than Carson’s hand-picked successor David Letterman to replace him:

What particularly makes The Late Shift such an interesting film is that when it was originally shot, it looked like CBS got the better of the deal, with Letterman dominating the ratings. As it turns out, according to the Internet Database:

Subsequent airings after the initial release have added an additional epilogue on how the Hugh Grant interview boosted Jay Leno’s ratings past David Letterman’s.

Thus Littlefield and Agoglia [the NBC executives who chose cheerful lovable Jay Leno over the cranky neurotic David Letterman to replace Carson], despite being portrayed as Machiavellian manipulators on massive scale, end up looking like rather smart guys, in spite of themselves.

* * * * * * * *

Letterman’s retirement would be the perfect time for CBS to find a host to replace who connects with Middle America, the massive audience that Letterman and CBS’s late night division chose to abandon. Instead, by going with Colbert, CBS chose to continue to alienate this large group of viewers. Or worse, “CBS Declares War on Heartland of America,” as Rush Limbaugh said yesterday. “Why would CBS hire such a divisive host who is already failing in Late Night?”, John Nolte pondered yesterday. “All about the left holding on to the culture.”

As I wrote last year, “The early-1990s CBS executives portrayed in The Late Shift left the former ‘Tiffany’ network shortly after hiring Letterman. Too bad their successors seemed determined to live out their predecessor’s mistakes, in a seemingly unending ideological loop.”

I’M NOT SURPRISED: Anonymous Yik Yak threat to “shoot every black person I can on campus” was made by . . . wait for it . . . a black student. His name is Emmanuel Bowden and he’s been arrested on a single charge of making a false report of a threat of terrorism.

This kind of thing is happening a lot these days. So much so, that there is a website dedicated to documenting all of these false accusations of “hate crimes,” and it contains 213 cases in just the last few years.

REALITY: 27, JOHN KERRY: Ø.

● Kerry: It Took A Long Time To “Neutralize” al-Qaeda, “We Hope To Do Da’esh Much Faster Than That.”

—Secretary of State John Kerry speaking to reporters yesterday.

● “At least 27 people were killed when 10 Al Qaeda gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali’s capital and took 170 hostages — but the grenade-toting assailants spared the Muslims inside.”

—The New York Daily News, today.

NEWS FROM THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: How to Cope With Anxiety During Terror Threats.

Was talking recently to a friend, a fairly typical academic liberal from DC who pays little attention to the news. But she’s suddenly pretty worried about DC getting atom-bombed. I think the mood in the country has shifted quite a lot, recently. . . .

Related: The Unexpected Return Of Duck And Cover.

PEGGY NOONAN: Paris is different, but the president can’t seem to change:

Finally, continued travels through the country show me that people continue to miss Ronald Reagan’s strength and certitude. In interviews and question-and-answer sessions, people often refer to Reagan’s “optimism.” That was his power, they say—he was optimistic.

No, I say, that wasn’t his power and isn’t what you miss. Reagan’s power was that he was confident. He was confident that whatever the problem—the economy, the Soviets, the million others—he could meet it, the American people could meet it, and our system could meet it. The people saw his confidence, and it allowed them to feel optimistic. And get the job done.

What people hunger for now from their leaders is an air of shown and felt confidence: I can do this. We can do it.

Who will provide that? Where will it come from? Isn’t it part of what we need in the next president?

I’m not sure what Noonan’s chief objection is, since on the eve of the 2008 election she wrote that Mr. Obama “He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief.”

What we’re seeing in Iraq, Syria, Paris, Mali and elsewhere is the end result of that change in “the direction and tone of American foreign policy,” which Noonan believed needed changing. (And it’s quite a change, by the way.)

By the way, there’s another president who provided optimism and confidence. As Glenn tweets today in response to Slate, “Too bad you guys un-personed him starting in 2005. Miss him yet?”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: White House calls for wide distribution of tourniquets to reduce fatalities in emergencies. “Last week’s attack in Paris, which killed 129 people, is precisely the kind of tragedy advocates believe calls for the ready availability of tourniquets, for use when manual pressure isn’t enough to stanch bleeding.”

Two thoughts: (1) This is a good idea; but (2) We’ve reached the point where this is a good idea.