Archive for 2016

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Left’s Impulse to Bully Is Universal. “It is widely understood that the Left wants to impose censorship on the rest of us, and where it can, it will. The experience of conservative speakers on university campuses is the most obvious proof. But the truth, I think, is worse: it isn’t just censorship. The Left wants to bully disagreement out of existence. . . . Here in the U.S., we are witnessing a populist revolt against bullying liberalism, but what we are seeing here is mild, I suspect, compared with what is in store in Europe. And, of course, when all dissent on what millions see as the most vital issues of the day is barred as ‘far right,’ it is inevitable that unsavory elements will be part of the populist uprising.”

LOVE IN THE TIME OF ROBOTS:

Female robots offer a particularly provocative window into the current cultural mood. And they’re everywhere, including sprawling alongside naked men in a huge orgy on Sunday’s episode of “Westworld.” Margaret Atwood, whose 2015 book “The Heart Goes Last” features sexbots of both genders, calls female machines emblems of the discomfort that women stir in some men. “They’d rather have a simulacrum that doesn’t talk back, resist, or despise them,” Ms. Atwood observed in an email.

This is rich. Women have been using robots — a vibrator is a primitive sex robot, after all — and calling them instruments of sexual liberation (and even calling it “sex with machines”) precisely because they free them from having to deal sexually with men, who bring complications and an upsetting tendency toward having their own needs and desires. But when men do it, even in fiction, it’s problematic.

Self-awareness fail: The word “vibrator” doesn’t even appear in this article.

WELL, YES: Tim Carney on Hillary: A President We Simply Cannot Trust.

Nobody trusts Hillary Clinton. Neither Republicans nor Democrats trust her. Her oldest friends and her closest allies don’t trust her. And she has consistently earned that distrust by lying, changing her story, bending the rules, hiding her work, and stonewalling.

Only 11 percent of likely voters find her “honest and trustworthy,” a NBC News poll found over the summer. Less than one in four Democrats were willing to use that label for her.

Even Donald Trump is more trustworthy than Clinton, voters told the Washington Post. In a recent Post poll Trump won on the trustworthiness question by a 12-point margin. Trump this fall has consistently won that question by double-digit margins.

Her closest confidantes don’t trust her, hacked emails show. In September 2015, Hillary Clinton said at an Ohio campaign event. “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center … I plead guilty.”

Five days later, Neera Tanden, a honcho in the Clinton campaign, emailed campaign chairman John Podesta asking, “Why did she call herself a moderate?” Podesta replied, “I pushed her on this on Sunday night. She claims she didn’t remember saying it. Not sure I believe her.”

If Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief and longtime top-aide readily assumes she lied to him about something that small, you have to wonder if she feels any fealty to the truth in any circumstances.

Oh, I don’t wonder.

THE HILL: Experts hedge bets as election tightens. It’s Schrodinger’s election now: Hillary and Donald are each both President-elect and not President-elect, and they’ll stay that way until we open the box in a couple of days.

HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO RAMPANT AGE DISCRIMINATION? Seeking ‘to be visible,’ more Americans 65 and older are getting plastic surgery.

Maria Vargas was fed up with looking like an old woman. That was how the 68-year-old felt when she walked down the street. “I’d lost the looks of men,” said Vargas, who is divorced. “I’d walk by men and men would probably go, “Yeah, there’s a cute grandma.’” So in February, after months of wrestling with the decision, she got a neck lift.

“I got so excited about the difference that it made that I was like, ‘Oh my god, I want more,” said Vargas, a Sacramento, CA resident who had never had elective plastic surgery before. Now, she said, “No 30- or 45-year-old guy is going to ask me, ‘Hey, what’s your number, honey?’ But a 60-year-old will.”

Wait, I thought the Male Gaze was a bad thing. Plus:

There are different economic considerations now. More Americans 65 and older are working than at any time since the turn of the century, and many face age discrimination.

If opportunities are accruing to the young “and you begin to get old, you want to fit in….You’re invisible. And maybe this is the way for people to be visible.” Milner said.

Or at least not mistreated.