Archive for 2018

WILL BE HERE TOO IF WE GET MANY MORE CARAVANS. THE LEFT REFUSES TO ADMIT THEIR “NOBLE SAVAGES” AND “DISADVANTAGED ETHNICITIES AND CULTURES” DON’T PLAY WELL WITH WESTERN TOLERANCE:  Violence Against Gays on the Rise in Europe.

AND I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TOO:  The Elephants.

YES, BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THEY’RE FATED TO WIN.  ARROW OF HISTORY AND ALL THAT JAZZ.  YES, THEY ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT WITH RELIGIOUS FERVOR:  Do They Want Jackboots?

RIP: James Karen, Actor in Poltergeist and So Much More, Dies at 94.

He was constantly on the air in the Philadelphia area from the mid-‘70s onward as the friendly spokesman for Pathmark Supermarkets, which for me made his role as the angry jerk running the brokerage house in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street all the more surprising.

#METOO AND THE DEATH OF AMERICAN MANNERS:

The #MeTooer of the moment is Rebecca Traister, a writer who relishes the broadside insult. In a recent New York Times interview, she was quoted on the beneficial effects of white-hot anger: ‘In early 2017,’ outraged by the defeat of Hillary Clinton, ‘I was walking with my husband, and I felt like my brain was going to boil. I was telling him how hard it was for me to think because I was so angry. He said to me, “Well, maybe that’s your book: anger.” I was like: “Of course, that’s my book.”’ The resulting volume is titled Good and Mad.

I also feel incoherently mad sometimes, but mostly I manage to keep it under wraps. One of those recent occasions was in a crowded elevator headed to a party on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where normally I could expect to meet lots of likeminded liberals. During the ride up, a left-wing editor with whom I’ve had friendly relations for years practically shouted at me: ‘Well, you’ve been in trouble lately. How’s it feel?’ She was obviously referring to the piece by the banished male malefactor, and I was frankly shocked at the aggressive tone and at her asking the question in front of strangers on the way to a social event. Suppressing the urge to rebuke her for rudeness, I used what’s become my stock response: I had published far more controversial pieces that provoked much more dangerous reactions, so the #MeToo Twitter storm wasn’t much to fear. Unsatisfied with my response, she shifted her attention to my wife: ‘How do you feel about the piece, as a woman?’ It was a rude question, given my female editor and I had published the piece, not my wife.

Once at the party, I thought I was safe. Almost immediately, however, I was introduced to another defenestrated ‘male aggressor’, a radio personality whose show I very much missed. Assuming he was an ally, I told him that I’d published the controversial piece by his former radio colleague, who happens to be paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. Rudely, he dismissed my writer’s case. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he confided. ‘He [my writer] actually was culpable — he did some bad things.’ No solidarity among liberal victims, handicapped or not, but plenty of nastiness and no politesse.

As Glenn noted last year, “Bourgeois culture is bad because it limits the flexibility of the elites. When the middle class was ascendant, it had the power to force bourgeois norms on elites, and even many of the poor. This led to social goods that people miss now, but it was also experienced as confining by those so constrained.”

OPEN THREAD: Talk about what you like.

CNN: MEGYN KELLY’S “EXIT FROM THE 9 A.M. HOUR OF THE ‘TODAY’ SHOW APPEARS TO BE IMMINENT. Variety reported on Wednesday evening that Kelly and NBC News executives have had conversations about a new role for her.  A person familiar with the matter confirmed that to CNN Business and said Kelly’s show will be ending. Negotiations about the end date and other details are still underway, the person said. Kelly’s offensive remarks about blackface Halloween costumes on Tuesday have raised more questions about her future at NBC. Spokespeople for NBC News declined to comment, and most staffers at the news division remain in the dark.”

Related: Megyn Kelly Desperately Grovels to her New Friends on the Left After Committing Wrongthink.

As Glenn tweeted tonight, “Roger Ailes’ longterm plan to wreck a competitor bears fruit.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Hey, I called it over a year ago.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PROGRESSIVE HOSTILITY: “Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don’t hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives.”

CIVILITY: New York Times now printing fantasies of President Trump being assassinated with help of Secret Service.

Related: It’s Going To Get Worse. “We live in a political culture that magnifies the other side’s violence even as it minimizes our own team’s misconduct as marginal and rare. Can we not see where that leads? We are still blessed with relative political peace. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves. That can change. The late Sixties and early Seventies saw a surge of political violence on a scale that would shock the conscience of Americans today. We do not want to walk down that road.”