TEACH WOMEN NOT TO COMMIT SEXUAL ASSAULT: Man Katy Perry Kissed on American Idol Says He Didn’t Like It.

Benjamin Glaze spoke to The New York Times about what he described as the “uncomfortable” kiss ― which happened to be his first kiss ever ― broadcast Sunday on the season premiere of the recently rebooted show. Glaze didn’t consent to the kiss and said he would’ve refused it if Perry had asked permission.

“I wanted to save it for my first relationship. I wanted it to be special,” Glaze, now 20, told the Times.

We need to put an end to our pervasive culture of female sexual entitlement.

FROM BAUHAUS TO THE OUTHOUSE: Five Women Accuse the Architect Richard Meier of Sexual Harassment. As a result, “Sotheby’s has closed an exhibition of collages and silk-screens by Mr. Meier at its S2 Gallery in New York.”

WELL. FBI disciplinary office recommends firing former deputy director Andrew McCabe. “The FBI office that handles employee discipline has recommended firing the bureau’s former deputy director over allegations that he authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to a reporter and misled investigators when asked about it, leaving Attorney General Jeff Sessions to decide whether he should fire the veteran official just four days before his expected retirement date, people familiar with the matter said. The recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility is likely to add fuel to the political fire surrounding former deputy director Andrew McCabe, who abruptly stepped down from his post earlier this year but technically remained an FBI employee.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, QUIT LIT EDITION: “A few years ago I quit my Ph.D. program. It was the second best decision I’ve ever made.”

Plus:

To be honest, I’ve found the for-profit world to be far more supportive of me as a person than academe ever was. Rather than being soul-crushing, working for “the man” has been liberating and allowed me to be who I want to be in the world. Plus, my parents aren’t terrified anymore, which is a nice perk.

Yes, academia portrays the outside world as harsh, cruel, and exploitative, but in fact it’s usually the reverse, because in the outside world few people exercise so much unchecked discretionary power over others’ careers as they do in academia.

And note this from the comments:

I’m a professor in an engineering discipline, and it’s a familiar canard that STEM Ph.Ds easily get jobs. They don’t, and we’re overproducing as well. Further, we’re sacrificing the quality of undergraduate education by channeling money to support these students, which are often from a very small handful of countries, with minimal potential to contribute to ours, or the world’s economy, because our professors need their slave labor, and realize their positions are tenuous without continued research productivity. It’s a very sick system, it’s justified all different ways to Sunday, and it is going to break.

Indeed.

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DENUCLEARIZING NORTH KOREA AND ENDING A COLD WAR-ERA WAR:

Trump is a man who intuitively seeks and finds leverage in business negotiations…Since his election in November 2016, that skill is now applied to two entwined problems from Hell that for six decades have boggled U.S. foreign policy officials and the vain goblins at the Council on Foreign Relations: ending The Korean War and halting nuclear proliferation.

It’s my latest essay for The New York Observer.

“YOU DON’T GET TO INVITE THE RADICAL LEFTISTS INTO YOUR CORPORATE UTOPIA WITHOUT OPENING THE DOOR TO A MAJOR FIFTH COLUMN:” Jordan Peterson on corporate virtue signaling.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is still #1 most read at Amazon.

MEGAN MCARDLE: What Larry Kudlow’s Appointment Means:

There are roughly three schools of thought on the announcement that Larry Kudlow will replace the departing Gary Cohn as the head of the National Economic Council. The first, most common among liberals, is a dismissive sneer. Kudlow, they say, is an ideologue, a supply-sider zealot, a mere television personality who doesn’t even have a PhD. (Neither did Jeff Zients, Cohn’s predecessor in the Obama administration, who came out of the management consulting world. I do not recall many on the left worrying about his lack of credentials).

The second reaction, most common among establishment conservatives, is relief. Kudlow’s a supply sider! They exclaim. He has experience in government and the private sector! He believes in free trade and liberal immigration policies! What a terrific moderating influence to counteract the protectionists and immigration restrictionists in the administration!

The third view, which I share, is best summed up by the hashtag #LOLNothingMatters.

In truth, these kinds of appointments generally matter much less than DC types think they do.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING: New Jersey’s New Budget Aims to Raise Taxes on Almost Everything.

I GOTCHER “COLLUSION” RIGHT HERE: Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn just nuked himself on Russia.

SHE’S STILL NOT READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP: Jonah Goldberg on Hillary’s Other America.

For years, I’ve been writing that the great myth about Hillary Clinton is the notion she shared even a fraction of her husband’s political skills. There is no transitive property to marriage. If Bill Clinton could play the xylophone, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have gained the skill when she said, “I do.” So it goes with politics. Bill Clinton would never dream of saying anything like this. Having risen in Arkansas politics — not an over-performing state GDP-wise — he understood how to talk to working-class voters in ways Hillary never learned in 40 years of standing next to him sagely nodding.

So, what’s wrong with what she said? Well, nearly everything, starting with the fact that she probably believes all of it. It shows that she really doesn’t like large swathes of the country. She has a Manichaean view that says people who voted against her are backward, racist, sexist, and kind of dumb. I didn’t love the slogan “Make America Great Again,” and Lord knows I didn’t like Trump’s campaign style. But for millions of decent Americans, Trump’s program was optimistic. “We’re gonna make America great again” may sound unequivocally racist to the race-obsessed, but that’s not how everyone who liked it heard it. How easy and comfortable it must be to think that anyone who voted against you is against “black people getting rights.”

At Ricochet, this week’s GLoP (short for Goldberg, Rob Long and John Podhoretz) podcast is titled “A Cheeseburger of Schadenfreude,” because Hillary’s Deplorables on Steroids speech vindicates what conservatives have been saying about her for decades. Near the end of the podcast, the guys riff on her Norma Desmond-ish tone and joke that somebody should make an “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille” parody video of her. But someone already did; Obama-supporting comedienne Lisa Nova – back in 2008. It speaks volumes about where the left was in 2016 that someone who they had rhetorically beaten like a bongo eight years prior in the rush to nominate The One ended up being their nominee. (Well that, and arguably rigging the race to avoid Bernie getting the nomination.)

LIFE IN THE NEW VICTORIAN ERA: It was just several sips of Japanese sake, for heaven’s sake, but was it enough to sink this flight attendant’s career?

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T WORKING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED: 24 Pets Died Flying With U.S. Carriers Last Year. 18 Were On United.

UPDATE: And the p.r. hits keep on coming: United flies dog to Japan by mistake.

BREAKING: Famous Actor Got Paid More Than Less-Famous Actor in ‘The Crown.’

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Professor notes men are taller than women on average, SJWs storm out angrily.

The speaker you’ll see here is biology professor Heather Heying, wife of professor Bret Weinstein. Both Heying and Weinstein left Evergreen State College as part of a settlement deal last year. Heying was making a point about physiological differences between men and women. “Are men taller than women on average?” Heying asked rhetorically. She added, “Does anyone take offense at that fact?”

It seems someone in the audience did because Dr. Peter Boghossian (seated on the right) turned toward the back of the room and Professor Heying chuckled.

“So I would say you could be irritated by it,” Heying said. She continued, “You could be irritated by the fact that women have to be the ones that gestate and lactate. You could be irritated by a lot of truths but taking offense is a response that is a rejection of reality.”

But before she had even finished her statement, a group of students got up and walked out of the room. As Heying continued to talk about physiological differences between men and women, there was a loud commotion in the back of the room. One of the protesters apparently damaged the sound system on the way out.

Then the Weimar Republic called the kids and told them to dial back the unreality (and the vandalism) a notch or ten.

WHEN KNIVES SAVE LIVES: NZ Midwife performs tracheotomy on choking beau. “I find it slightly ironic that this is being reported in a UK paper, where the only ones carrying knives are the criminals. A person could die while people are trying to find a knife in polite company.”

THE 30 DAY “BRO DIET:”

But why do people call it a bro-diet? “Bro” became a condescending way to label those whose fitness advice was based more on experience than science. Since many lifters’ approach to training and eating wasn’t completely dependent on research, it was called “bro-science” and deemed unreliable.

Though the terminology stuck, it’s not really an insult anymore. You see, “bros” often know what they’re talking about because they’ve been doing their own research through decades of trial and error.

Like “mansplaining,” it’s often criticized, but also often right.

BUT OF COURSE: ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Director Ava DuVernay Uses Racism to Explain Away Bad Reviews.

I’d been waiting for this movie since the third grade; what a shame they made such a hash of it.

YOU HARDLY EVER SEE THIS HAPPEN ANYMORE: Man Dressed As Elsa From ‘Frozen’ Pushes Police Wagon Out Of Snow.

TRIGGER DISCIPLINE: Seaside High teacher accidentally fires gun in class, students injured.

Dennis Alexander was teaching a course about gun safety for his Administration of Justice class when his gun went off at 1:20 p.m.

Alexander was pointing his gun at the ceiling when it fired. Pieces of the ceiling fell to the ground.

A news release from the Seaside Police Department said no one suffered “serious injuries.” One 17-year-old boy suffered moderate injuries when fragments from the bullet ricocheted off the ceiling and lodged into his neck, the student’s father, Fermin Gonzales, told KSBW.

The teacher had just told the class that he wanted to make sure his gun wasn’t loaded, when the gun fired, according to Gonzales.

Every gun is loaded.

A PROFESSOR, A COMEDIAN, AND FORGED TWEETS: Prof smears conservative comedian as ‘alt-right Neo-Nazi.’ “The professor has since deleted his original post, but has pledged to continue his activism despite the backlash.”

TRUMP HIRES EARLY PJ MEDIA ADVISOR LARRY KUDLOW AS TOP ECONOMIC ADVISOR.

I’m goofing on Jon Gabriel’s post today: “Trump Hires Ricochet Contributor as Top Economic Advisor.” Given that “The road to the White House goes through Ricochet,” Gabriel quips that he better “spruce up my LinkedIn profile.”

The road to the White House also apparently runs through my adopted hometown in Texas: “Glen Rose native taking advisor post in White House,” the nearby Stephenville Empire-Tribune reports:

Brooke Rollins, 45, the CEO and president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, is taking a job in the White House Office of American Innovation, led by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor.

Rollins has led the Austin-based conservative think tank for 15 years.

“Brooke is an exceptional and visionary leader who has had a tremendous impact on Texas and the direction of this nation,” TPPF executive vice president Kevin Roberts said in a statement. “We are enormously proud to have her serve the president in the White House Office of American Innovation. In no uncertain terms, she is the right person for the job.”

The Washington Post reported that Rollins will replace Reed Cordish, who is stepping down as assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation.

On Feb. 16, Rollins was the guest speaker at the Somervell County Republican Club’s annual Reagan Dinner at the Citizens Center in Glen Rose.

The county’s Republican Party chair, Deedee Jones, was a teacher at Glen Rose High School for 14 years, and had Rollins in one of her U.S. history classes.

I attended that dinner, and can confirm that Rollins is an exceptional public speaker and it’s a very safe bet we’ll be hearing much more about her.

BREAKING: Feds Charge Former Equifax Executive with Dumping Stock Ahead of Data Breach Announcement.

REVIEW: 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe.