WHAT HAPPENS ON CAMPUSES EVENTUALLY SPREADS ELSEWHERE: “The nation’s highest military court has thrown out the 2012 rape conviction of a Coast Guard enlisted man because admirals and prosecutors packed the seven-member jury with five women, four of whom held jobs as advocates for victims of sexual assault.”
Archive for 2018
January 28, 2018
ABOUT THAT “BLUE WAVE.”
Related: These 10 Democrat Senators Are Up For Re-Election.
If you’re interested in the future of the Trump presidency, you’ll do more good by picking a House or Senate race and working on it than you will commenting on blogs or tweeting.
AND DEMOCRATS TELL US THEY’RE THE SMART ONES:
YOU SPELLED “TOXIC FEMINISM” WRONG: NBC: Toxic masculinity in boys is fueling an epidemic of loneliness.
“MINNESOTA MAN” EXPLAINS MALL STABBINGS. “This past Thursday Abdiraham pleaded guilty to the assault charges. The Star Tribune story by Paul Walsh continues to suggest that the motive for the assaults was psychological. At the plea hearing, however, Abdiraham issued a statement clarifying the motive for his assaults. Abdiraham explained that he was waging jihad in support of ISIS.”
AS KURT SCHLICHTER SAYS, THEY’RE GOING TO HATE THE NEW RULES: Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men.
OPEN THREAD: Yours to do with as you will.
WELL, THAT’S NICE: Kate Middleton Donates Hair to Cancer Charity Event. “It’s lovely to think somewhere a little girl is happily wearing a wig made from a real princess’s hair.”
PERVNADO SACKS ALVY SINGER: Can Woody Allen Work in Hollywood Again?
[Mia Farrow’s] allegations are not new, but the response from stars who once worked with Mr. Allen is now different. Mira Sorvino, who won an Oscar for her breakout role in Mr. Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite,” publicly apologized to Ms. Farrow, while others, like Colin Firth, have distanced themselves from the director. The shift raises questions about whether Mr. Allen can maintain the clout to attract A-listers to his future films — he is at work on another screenplay — and how much any of his projects can outrun the controversy. Ms. Aronson and others believe that it helped sink Kate Winslet’s Oscar chances for Mr. Allen’s 2017 film, “Wonder Wheel.”
Onscreen, another casualty could be “A Rainy Day in New York,” Mr. Allen’s soon-to-be-completed next movie, which was financed and due to be distributed by Amazon. The company has not made any decisions about the film’s future, but Amazon is having serious conversations about ending its relationship with Mr. Allen, which could leave the movie without distribution, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Amazon has contractual obligations to Mr. Allen and the film, one of these people noted.
Making the situation more thorny for Amazon: Roy Price, who was ousted as the head of Amazon Studios in October amid sexual harassment allegations, was the one who brought Mr. Allen to the streaming service, spending lavishly to do so. He bankrolled “Wonder Wheel” for an astounding $25 million, a huge step up from Mr. Allen’s pre-Amazon films. (Released in December, it took in just $1.4 million at the North American box office.)
According to the New York Post, “Insiders predict that, even if ‘A Rainy Day in New York’ ever sees the light of day, none of its actors will even support their own work. ‘There will be no premiere, no print or TV ads, no interviews. No one will promote it,’ said a movie distribution executive. ‘I wonder if it will even make Cannes?’ speculated a film festival insider of the May event. ‘The French love him and don’t care about sex scandals. [Actresses Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve have scoffed at the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.] But Amazon does. Jeff Bezos is not dumb.’”
I’m sure Baldwin considers Allen to be a thoroughly “modern human being,” just like Anthony Weiner.
SPACE: The White House seems interested in the Falcon Heavy launch. “The Trump administration has come into office at a time when new space companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are challenging dominant aerospace industry companies, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. A key difference between the new competitors is that they’re willing to invest more of their own funds into developing launch vehicles—both SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets have been substantially funded by private money. Successful flights by these vehicles may raise questions about why the federal government should spend billions of taxpayer dollars on traditional contractors for other heavy lift vehicles. . . . So far, the Trump administration has played it both ways—acknowledging the importance of the newly emerging private space sector but also offering praise for NASA’s large and costly Space Launch System. However, sources have indicated that Pence’s office is closely watching the private companies and success here could have policy implications.”
H.L. MENCKEN PREDICTED OUR ERA PRETTY WELL:
The longtime Baltimore Evening Sun columnist, American Mercury editor, and rumbustiously splenetic critic, who graced this orb from 1880 to 1956, would not be published in any major newspaper today. The reasons he foresaw over a century ago, when he decried the “cheap bullying and cheaper moralizing” whose purpose was the extirpation, the annihilation, of anything resembling a robust exchange of ideas. Two beliefs puffed up the righteous censor, according to Mencken: first, “that any man who dissents from the prevailing platitudes is a hireling of the devil,” and second, “that he should be silenced and destroyed forthwith. Down with free speech; up with the uplift!”
Today we are patronized, and bullied, by our inferiors.
EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE EXPERTS TOLD US FOR DECADES: High Fat Diet Good, High-Carb Diet Deadly: “High carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke. Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.”
Related: The Suicide of Expertise.
TO BE FAIR, THE CONSTITUTION IS OVER 100 YEARS OLD: “Does Manchin think the Special Counsel is part of the judicial branch?”
YEAH, BUT UNIONS ARE FULL OF ICKY WHITE WORKING MEN WHO DON’T SHARE THE LATEST PROGRESSIVE VIEWS ON GENDER AND INTERSECTIONALITY: Democrats Paid A Huge Price For Letting Unions Die. “The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not. If you want a two-sentence explanation for why the Midwest is turning red (and thus, why Donald Trump is president), you could do worse than that.”
HOW THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE SPILLS INTO THE REST OF SOCIETY: Social Justice? You Were Warned.
RULES FOR RADICAL REPUBLICANS: Gonzo Street Artist Challenges Grammys Hypocrisy With Racy Posters.
Kurt Schlichter wrote last year, “[Shove] Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals Right Back in the Left’s Ugly Face.” Sabo, working in deepest blue Los Angeles is one of the very best at it.
Related: The Night Jay-Z Stabbed Lance “Un” Rivera & Almost Ended His Career.
AT AMAZON, New Arrivals in Men’s Athletic Shoes.
MICHAEL WALSH: About That ‘Blue Wave…’
Read the whole thing.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Luxury Deal on the Market Right Now Is a Used Rolls-Royce Phantom. Actually, that’s always been true. I went to law school with a guy whose brother sold luxury cars, and he said the biggest splash-for-the-cash was a used Rolls. If it was noticeably outdated, that just made you look like old money.
AT AMAZON, January Savings in Small Appliances.
Plus, deals on DVDs.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Even Smaller Asteroids Are A Threat. “The real issue is that articles calling these asteroids ‘potentially dangerous’ miss the point: The asteroids that caused the Chelyabinsk or Michigan events weren’t labeled ‘potentially hazardous’ because they weren’t tracked at all. Something the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor (15-20 meters) hitting an urban center could still be devastating.” We’ll need a lot better surveillance if we’re going to keep track of those.
LICENSE TO KILLJOY: As Tom Wolfe wrote, paraphrasing Malcolm Muggeridge, “We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.” Back in October, while Harvey Weinstein was being defenestrated near-daily in the news, Rob Long, as part of his “The Long View” column in the dead tree edition of National Review, wrote up a satiric lawsuit featuring a dozen Bond girls suing the living daylights (sorry) out of Her Majesty’s swinging secret agent.
The above-named plaintiffs — and others to be included at a later date — allege that in separate instances the above-named defendant, James Bond, repeatedly made unwanted advances upon their persons, in locations including public areas, private hotel rooms, corporate-jet interiors, ski slopes, and hollowed-out volcano hideaways. Further, plaintiffs claim that defendant refused to accept their demurrals, would not take “No” for an answer, and in some instances used his considerable latitude vis-à-vis License to Kill etc. to coerce, intimidate, blackmail, and relentlessly pursue the plaintiffs into unwanted situations.
Half the article is behind the NR subscriber paywall, but you get the gist of it: how could James Bond survive in the Weinstein-inspired #Metoo era? It turns out that maybe he can’t.