THE PORNIFICATION OF CONSERVATIVE INC.
It’s an interesting read, though given the headline, I was really expecting something far more NSFW, alas.
Archive for 2016
May 28, 2016
THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG, BUT IT BENDS TOWARDS ENDLESSLY REPEATING MARXIST CLAPTRAP:
Shot: In historic visit to Hiroshima, Obama calls on the world to morally evolve*.
—The Los Angeles Times, yesterday.
Chaser: Obama’s naive idealism has caused havoc as America makes the same mistakes over and over again.
—Charles Krauthammer, the London Telegraph, yesterday.
* Apart from the naiveté of the notion (a variation on the left’s 150-year old religious belief that man is perfectible), I’m not sure if the world is ready to take advice on its moral evolution from a guy who alternately poses in front of styrofoam Greek columns and sits down for interviews with women who eat Fruit Loops out of their bathtubs.
HIROSHIMA AS GUN CONTROL – great observation on Memorial Day weekend by Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club:
So more government we will have up to any extent necessary to make safety mandatory. The moral drama of WW2 vanishes, leaving [Obama’s] Hiroshima speech as an unvarnished plea for an arms-control bureaucracy; the demand for a global safe space; a call for gun control on a planet-wide scale.
Read the whole thing.
CBS NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR JOHN DICKERSON: ‘Our Job’ to Steer Away from the Clintons’ Past — “Elections are supposed to be about the future.”
Flashback: New Host of Face the Nation John Dickerson Advised Obama in 2013 to ‘Destroy the GOP.’
IN THE MAIL: From Michael Savage, Teddy and Me: Confessions of a Service Human.
Plus, today only at Amazon: EcoSmart Electric Tankless Water Heater, $349.00 (39% off).
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1115.
I’M MUSLIM, DON’T PANIC: “An asylum seeker who jokingly wore a T-shirt saying ‘I’m Muslim, don’t panic’ was so savagely beaten by his fellow refugees that he had to be rushed to hospital.”
Malcolm Muggeridge, call your office.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: The Tragic Mismanagement of Chicago’s Public Schools.
Chicago’s public school system is on the verge of facing financial insolvency, and it’s not because selfish taxpayers have been starving it of revenue—both the Windy City and the state of Illinois have significantly higher than average tax rates. Much of the school district’s acute fiscal distress can be chalked up to mismanagement, plain and simple—short-sighted decisions by blinkered public officials who chose to mortgage the school system’s future against pension benefits for current retirees. Crain’s Chicago Business reports that CPS is finally drowning under the weight of interest on debt it has accumulated over the last decade. . . .
This kind of financial mismanagement is not unique to Chicago—a recent study found that debt accumulated by teacher pension funds is costing teachers nearly $7,000 per year in salary—but it appears to be especially acute there. If state legislators and district superintendents had managed their resources with an eye to the future, they would have tens of thousands of dollars more to hire better teachers, experiment with new educational programs, and otherwise invest in the well-being of their students. Instead, they have saddled themselves with debt that will be virtually impossible to pay off without severe cutbacks to the city’s underperforming schools.
All is proceeding as I have foretold.
ACE OF SPADES: Why I Hate The Media, A Continuing Series.
Read the whole thing.
KATIE COURIC’S CAREER OF ATTACKING GUN RIGHTS: Couric’s editing trick “wouldn’t have been exposed if it weren’t for The Virginia Citizens Defense League releasing its own audio of their members being interviewed. It’s as if they were suspicious that they wouldn’t be treated fairly. Of course, that would be a good assumption if they were aware of Couric’s long career of attacking gun rights…The following are just some of the worst examples of Couric’s career-long push against gun rights as collected from the MRC’s archives:”
Related: “Whatever it is that Katie Couric does, it’s not journalism.”
Just think of her as a Democrat operative with a byline, and you really can’t go wrong.
MARK RIPPETOE: Can You Put Your Kids on a Strength Training Program?
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“VOTE FOR HILLARY; AT LEAST HER LIES ARE PREMEDITATED.”
Heh, indeed™.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Trump consistency about being inconsistent seems almost calculated to destroy the accountability that comes with being interviewed. It has already managed to displace the usual policy wonkery and debate of issues with something showier and more grand. A Trump political rally seeks to focus collective emotions, not make reasoned cases for one set of policies over another. To borrow a page from the rhetoricians, Trump rejects logos (the appeal to reason) when making his pitch and goes directly to pathos (the appeal to emotion) as he strives to elicit tears, laughter, and ultimately agreement from his supporters.
In dismissing logic and consistency for pure emotion, Trump has created a powerful reality-distortion field in both politics and journalism. The field doesn’t actually permit Trump to “get away with” lying in interviews: If you query his supporters, most will concede their man’s many fibs. In their minds, though, the “truth” matters less than what’s in Trump’s heart. It’s not that truth and fact don’t matter to them—it’s that truth and facts don’t matter enough to affect whether you want to vote for him. In an environment in which political success is almost totally detached from information, the “truth-finding” interview is becoming one of the first casualties.
By rejecting the authority of the press to judge him, Trump has debilitated if not destroyed the power of the interview, befuddling a press corps that still believes it can bring him down with one more gotcha, one more “Pinocchio”, one more “Pants On Fire” from the fact-checkers. Trump is laughing at them now.
— “How Donald Trump Destroyed the Interview—A century-old political institution may have met its match,” Jack Shafer, the Politico, yesterday.
In 1993, novelist Michael Crichton riled the news business with a Wired magazine essay titled “Mediasaurus,” in which he prophesied the death of the mass media—specifically the New York Times and the commercial networks. “Vanished, without a trace,” he wrote.
The mediasaurs had about a decade to live, he wrote, before technological advances—”artificial intelligence agents roaming the databases, downloading stuff I am interested in, and assembling for me a front page”—swept them under. Shedding no tears, Crichton wrote that the shoddy mass media deserved its deadly fate.
“[T]he American media produce a product of very poor quality,” he lectured. “Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it’s sold without warranty. It’s flashy but it’s basically junk.”
* * * * * * * *
As we pass his prediction’s 15-year anniversary, I’ve got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It’s gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren’t going extinct tomorrow, Crichton’s original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.
— “Michael Crichton, Vindicated — His 1993 prediction of mass-media extinction now looks on target,” Jack Shafer, Slate, May 29 2008.
Related:
Consider, after all, the last month in politics. Recently, news stories noted that a White House guest rapper, paroled on a pending felony charge, had his ankle bracelet go off. The White House deputy national security advisor and senior speechwriter Ben Rhodes bragged about how he more or less lied and perpetuated a con to ram through the Iran deal without Senate oversight. Former Obama speechwriters joked on television about writing the lie, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.” Obama himself threatened to cut off federal funds to states that did not share his reinterpretation of the 1972 Title IX Amendments to include bathroom access of their choice for the transgendered. Meanwhile, the FBI weighs a federal felony indictment against Hillary Clinton, just as stories have resurfaced of Bill Clinton’s frequent and unescorted flights on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein notorious “Lolita Express.” If that is a typical month in the life of the current administration and ongoing presidential campaign, then what exactly are the norms by which we can judge Trump as a renegade? The proper critique of Trump is that he would not restore decorum to political discourse and behavior that long ago were debased.
— “Why Republicans Will Vote For Trump,” Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institute, Tuesday.
THEY WON’T DO IT, OF COURSE, AS NATIONAL PRIDE TRUMPS SAFETY: 150 Health Experts Ask To Move Olympics From Rio Over Zika Fears. “In an open letter sent to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday, the experts said the games should be delayed or relocated ‘in the name of public health. The Brazilian strain of Zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before,’ the letter said. ‘An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the games, potentially acquire that strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic.'”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: ‘Bye, Christakises, Said The Greengrocer.
Read the whole thing.
CONOR FRIEDERSDORF TALKS TO a 22-year-old Trump supporter. Key bit:
We are young, urban, and have a happy future planned. We seem molded to be perfect young Hillary supporters. But we’re not. Both of us voted Libertarian in 2012, and ideologically we remain so. But in 2016? We’re both going for Trump.
For me personally, it’s resistance against what San Francisco has been, and what I see the country becoming, in the form of ultra-PC culture. That’s where it’s almost impossible to have polite or constructive political discussion. Disagreement gets you labeled fascist, racist, bigoted, etc. It can provoke a reaction so intense that you’re suddenly an unperson to an acquaintance or friend. There is no saying “Hey, I disagree with you,” it’s just instant shunning. Say things online, and they’ll try to find out who you are and potentially even get you fired for it. Being anti-PC is not about saying “I want you to agree with me on these issues.” It’s about saying, “Hey, I want to have a discussion and not get shouted down because I don’t agree with what is considered to be politically correct.” . . .
This is a war over how dialogue in America will be shaped. If Hillary wins, we’re going to see a further tightening of PC culture. But if Trump wins? If Trump wins, we will have a president that overwhelmingly rejects PC rhetoric. Even better, we will show that more than half the country rejects this insane PC regime. If Trump wins, I will personally feel a major burden relieved, and I will feel much more comfortable stating my more right-wing views without fearing total ostracism and shame. Because of this, no matter what Trump says or does, I will keep supporting him. . . .
Look who PC culture does empower. Yesterday’s “Google doodle” was a racial separatist who admired Osama Bin Laden. I think she is just as hateful as white supremacists, but she is celebrated by Google. I don’t think Google would celebrate a white separatist with a fun drawing and a place of honor on its front page! I have a problem that it celebrated someone who denounces America, but I’m willing to debate why she should have no place of honor instead of just denouncing Google.
You hear a lot of that.
REMINDER: FAHRENHEIT 451 WAS A WARNING, NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE. Professor: If You Read To Your Kids, You’re ‘Unfairly Disadvantaging’ Others.
As Ray Bradbury predicted, books will be burned to protect everyone’s feelings more so than to block the ideas within them.
Related: Bradbury: between dystopia and hope.
TECH BARONS FEAR HAVING TO HIRE AMERICANS: Donald Trump has done the unthinkable: Unite Silicon Valley.
PETER THIEL’S REMINDER TO THE GAWKER GENERATION: ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Related: The Liberal Case Against Peter Thiel Is The Worst Kind Of Hypocrisy.
MOHAMMEDANS CONQUER SANTA CLAUS: “On Christmas Island, residents must obey strict Islamic barbecue regulations.”