EVERGREEN HEADLINE: The Atlantic Becomes a Laughingstock.
From September of 2008, when the Atlantic’s idea of an acceptable mainstream conservative was the Kerry and Trump supporting uterus detective, Andrew Sullivan.
Archive for 2018
April 5, 2018
YEAH, PRETTY MUCH:
What really happened is that women at The Atlantic complained that Kevin’s abortion views upset them. And since making women feel bad about their life choices is a mortal sin, he had to go.
Remember, at The Atlantic, women can’t even handle men’s shirts. More on that here.
IF THE SEXES WERE REVERSED, THIS WOULD BE SEEN AS PROOF OF FEMALE SUPERIORITY: Students Rate Male Professors More Highly Than Female Professors, Even When They Teach Identical Courses.
OPEN THREAD: Commune joyously in the comments.
SPACE: Rocket Lab will try to launch its first commercial mission this month.
It’s business time. It’s New Zealand, after all.
HOW COPYRIGHT LAW GOT WEAPONIZED: My Daily Caller Op/Ed from today. You can’t criticize what you can’t hear.
**Bumped from early morning**
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Jimmy Kimmel and Joss Whedon Sure Are Brave to Criticize the Trumps.
FASTER, PLEASE: Dual attack with two existing drugs destroys lung cancer.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Florida DNC Member Resigns After Allegedly Referring to African Americans as “Colored People.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Stem cell transplant shows promise for macular degeneration.
FEATURE CREEP: Your Nosy Amazon Alexa Can Now Interrogate You.
AT AMAZON, Champion Men’s Classic Jersey T-Shirt.
OIKOPHOBIA ON THE RISE AFTER TRUMP WIN: Misdemeanor charge filed against Texas councilwoman and @MomsDemand volunteer for berating teen girl in a Trump shirt.
(Classical reference in headline.)
ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: YouTube Shooting Highlights Frustration Among Some ‘Creators.’ “Some independent video makers complain YouTube has limited their viewership and shortchanged them on ad payments.”
As the number of creators has grown and uploaded a wider range of videos, advertisers have grown more skittish about putting their messages next to what they deem objectionable content. Top brands including Procter & Gamble Co. pulled spending from the site last year after discovering YouTube running their ads before extremist, racist and hateful videos.
In response, YouTube last year began requiring video producers to have more than 10,000 views from their combined videos before they can start making any money from ads. The company also hired more human reviewers to vet videos, removing clips or entire accounts they see as violating their terms of service.
YouTube prohibits nudity, violence, and other categories of content it deems potentially harmful or dangerous. Its terms also restrict copyrighted content and personal information uploaded without consent.
Earlier this year, YouTube raised the bar even more for its video creators that want to carry ads. Rather than 10,000 views, YouTube channels must now have accumulated at least 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. YouTube said a “significant” number of channels would be affected but declined to provide more details. The company said nearly all affected channels make less than $100 a year in ad revenue.
The changes had little impact on YouTube’s most popular stars, some who make more than $100,000 on a single video, including sponsorships, according to Evan Asano, chief executive of Mediakix, a marketing agency for YouTube creators. But the new policies cut tens of thousands of smaller video makers off from getting paid, Mr. Asano said.
Some of them, like Chris Thompson, said the company has gone too far in removing content without being clear about what rules it violates.
Indeed. YouTube has been deplatforming countless conservatives without cause or explanation — and yet it was a lone progressive who went on a shooting spree.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Gender Madness Alienates Democratic Insider.
Not long ago, when my wife was pregnant, a coworker asked if we knew what we were having. I told this friend, and we were all excited.
Another coworker immediately started lecturing me in front of everyone about how this was grossly cis-heteronormative and that rather than forcing an identity on my child because of genitals, I should cultivate an environment in which the child would be able to flourish and explore the play of gender.
This went on for fifteen minutes. Now, the thing is that people at my work know that I have a hot temper and usually avoid talking to me about something as trivial as whether or not one lunch spot is better than another. Nobody wants to get dragged into it because they all think that I will, in the words of one former colleague, “Go Full Kanye” on them. In spite of this trepidation, a colleague felt that this gender nonsense was important enough to risk my temper and bloviate in front of our staff. The points gained from performed holiness, what we called “being ‘pi’ (short for ‘pious’, but contemptuously)” growing up, were worth the risk of my explosion, possibly, but more terrifying was that this colleague of mine simply didn’t care about the risk of my temper and was so committed to this gender nonsense that she just went for it.
The room for reasonable people on sex/gender issues is vastly closing in this party.
Read the whole thing.
Sadly, I think Kevin Williamson will soon find that National Review was far more tolerant of his controversial views than will be true at The Atlantic. As I noted in the essay in question concerning progressives’ situational regulation, so too the Left also embraces situational free speech. Indeed, well before Williamson had even written his inaugural column, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, had defended his hiring of Williamson on grounds that he preferred “all things being equal, to give people second chances and the opportunity to change,” and he further seemed delighted about Williamson’s promise to cease tweeting given that it would be interpreted as “a positive development and a sign of growth.”
As Derek Hunter of the Daily Caller tweets, “I want [Victor Davis Hanson] to pick my next lottery numbers. This was posted just a few hours ago.”
UPDATE: “Kevin Williamson’s firing is how you got Trump, as well as the alt-right’s near-mainstreaming. Here’s why,” Ben Shapiro writes. Read the whole thing.
WELL, GOOD: “Nightmare” superbugs continue to lurk in US, but control efforts working. “Scary headlines, but 2006-15 data show declines in prevalence of these nasty germs.”
DISGRACEFUL: The Atlantic fires conservative Kevin Williamson for actually believing what he says. Meanwhile, Williamson’s first and only piece is at #1 on their most-popular list. But I guess Jeffrey Goldberg couldn’t stand up to the triggered social-justice warriors among his staff. A sad marker for what’s happened to “mainstream” journalism. Lefties get a pass for this sort of thing all the time. And if Williamson’s bad enough to fire, then hiring him was a bad enough decision that Goldberg should resign.
UPDATE: No sympathy for Williamson from Ace. “A lot of us believe that we’re in a cold civil war and that the left is now determined to leverage its sociocorporate power to coerce conservatives into either parroting the leftist line or else remaining strictly silent. . . . Looks like the Cool Kids you admire you so much don’t admire you enough to let you sit at their table for longer than a few minutes. Maybe this will finally open your eyes to what’s actually going on right now.”
REVIEW: SIG Sauer P225-A1.
AT AMAZON, save on Small Appliances.
HANDICAPPING THE MIDTERMS: A reminder that all politics is indeed local — and often loco, too.
FIRST CLASS, JEFFREY GOLDBERG, FIRST CLASS: Cowards! The Atlantic has fired Kevin Williamson for actually believing what he says.
To borrow from one of Goldberg’s favorite words during his era of being official court stenographer to the Obama administration, that’s really chickenshit.
SHE’S LOSING IT: Hillary Blames James Comey And Pizzagate For 2016 Loss In Bizarre New Talk.
There’s video at the link, but it’s a wince-inducing challenge to watch the whole thing.