ALL BETTER NOW? Samantha Bee apologizes to Ivanka Trump: ‘I crossed a line.’

I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.

It was “inappropriate and inexcusable” and entirely scripted and prerecorded, and TBS’s standards & practices division (aka, the network censors) allowed the show to air, presumably after previewing it. As Sean Davis tweets, “If the Turner non-reaction so far is any guide, Roseanne’s big mistake was putting her comments on Twitter instead of in her show’s script. The fact that a whole network reviewed, approved, promoted, and aired Bee’s scripted slur is the best protection Bee could ever buy,” adding that “The Roseanne and Samantha Bee scandals aren’t comparable. Roseanne wrote something on Twitter and her show was immediately cancelled. In the case of Samantha Bee, an entire network’s legal and editorial team knew exactly what Bee would say, approved it, and broadcast it.”

So it’s very likely this check-the-box apology will be enough for her to keep her job amidst the destructive malevolence that is Time-Warner-CNN-HBO. And her own promise to the New York Times at the beginning of 2017 that “We’re facing a new reality after the election. These next four years are going to require a broad coalition of straight-up decency.”

Interesting word that. Back in January, while leftists were freaking out over Trump’s “shithole” comments, Glenn wrote, “I’m amused when people who’ve spent 50 years declaring the very concept of decency repressive and outdated suddenly start with the ‘have you no decency?’ shtick. When Joseph Welch used that phrase, it was pretty much Peak Decency, or as we’re now told, a horrible regressive time of racism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia.”

Update: Samantha Bee Apologized for Giving Her Audience What It Demands.

Consider this: The YouTube channel for “Full Frontal” posted just that final 50-second segment containing her Ivanka rant as its own video Wednesday night. It’s now deleted, but the show clearly thought it was a winner until the backlash began.

Of course, Bee will be right back at it next week, just with less salty language.

As for the backlash to her remarks, I suspect media figures were extra-sensitive to getting busted for the dreaded double standard attack, given the swift blowback to Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett.

Bee should remember comedy is all about timing.

And getting paid: Autotrader.com “suspended” their sponsorship of Bee’s show; likely the network feared a repeat of social media panicking Laura Ingraham’s sponsors.

More: State Farm has also suspended its sponsorship of Bee’s show, according to showbiz site The Wrap. 

TCO: Tesla Model S insurance almost $1,800 a year, Autopilot crashes again. “The high cost of repairs has made the Model S the most expensive car to insure.”

ANOTHER “FREE SPEECH: WHO NEEDS IT?” HOT TAKE: A professor at Mizzou argues in the Washington Post that there is no good reason private colleges should have to let the KKK or [insert your preferred cultural bogey] come to their campuses. How about “because they said they would?” He also admits that “some cases will be more difficult to resolve than the not-so-hypothetical Nazi marches, Klan rallies, and cross burnings that many readers will find impossible to defend.” Given the actual number of such events on campuses (Have I missed a recent spate of campus cross burnings?) his “some cases” would more usefully be phrased as “practically every case.”

WALSH HANDED OVAL OFFICE TO BUBBA, MUELLER CAN GIVE HOUSE TO PELOSI: Remember that time when Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh indicted Casper Weinberger right before the 1992 presidential election and stopped George H.W. Bush’s comeback dead in its tracks?

LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby says Bill Clinton can thank Walsh for his 1992 defeat of an incumbent chief executive. I would say Walsh, gadfly Independent Ross Perot and the Bush betrayal of his famous “Read My Lips, No New Taxes” promise.

TEST DRIVE: 2019 Aston Martin DB11 AMR: More for your V-12 dollar.

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Sports Equipment.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

21ST CENTURY CRIMESTOPPERS: Vigilante Dads Hunt Sex Predators in Oklahoma City, Streaming It Live on Facebook.

CHANGE: Colorectal cancer screening should start at 45, new guidelines say.

HE ISN’T WRONG: CNN Plays Footage Of Trump Supporter Shouting At Jim Acosta: ‘You Work For CNN, Dude. You’re A Scumbag!’

GET WOKE, GO BROKE? Dick’s pulled the plug on selling assault-style weapons and now its hunting business is ‘under significant pressure.’

However: Dick’s soaring sales prove it can succeed without assault rifles.

Never mind the fact that Dick’s never sold assault rifles, because those are illegal.

CHANGE: British scientists create human corneas using 3D printer.

NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S C-RATIONS: New MRE Headed for the Front Lines Includes Mini Spinach Quiches. “Even sooner than that, troops will see their dreams of a pepperoni pizza MRE come true as new ration with ‘high-heat-tolerant mozzarella cheese’ is released.”

BEE GETS STINGING BACKLASH FOR VILE IVANKA INSULT: Trump enthusiast Roseanne Barr does an obscenely racist tweet and is fired despite having a hugely popular sitcom. Trump resister Samantha Bee flings an obscenely unfunny insult at Ivanka Trump and … crickets? Well, as LifeZette’s Michele Blood reports, there is a backlash and it is growing. Stay tuned.

WHAT’S IN A NAME? Pentagon Rebrands PACOM as ‘Indo-Pacific Command.’

“In recognition of the increasing connectivity of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, today we rename the U.S. Pacific Command to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,” Mattis said Wednesday at the command’s headquarters in Honolulu. “Over many decades, this command has repeatedly adapted to changing circumstances, and today that carries that legacy forward as America focuses west.”

For weeks, Mattis had occasionally referred to the Far East as the “Indo-Pacific” region. Speculation about the name change heated up a week ago when one reporter publicly inquired about it at the Pentagon. Mattis made it official at the change-of-command ceremony in which Adm. Harry Harris turned PACOM over to Adm. Phil Davidson.

Under the U.S. military’s scheme for dividing the globe into six geographic combatant commands, India was already part of Pacific Command. No personnel or assets are being moved as part of the change.

The name change is more than mere branding. As China continues to install more anti-ship/anti-aircraft missiles along their own coast and in the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean takes on new importance. In the event of a shooting war, the US Navy will have a much easier time sinking Chinese shipping there than closer to the Chinese Mainland/SCS.

CAMPUS CHRONICLES, LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS EDITION: A college president takes FIRE to task for classifying bans on “verbal abuse” (like this, perhaps?) and “posters promoting alcohol consumption” as speech codes. The “scourge of excessive alcohol consumption,” he feels, particularly makes the latter an example of “imbalanced sensationalism.” Would he similarly defend 1950s- and 60s-era efforts to censor speech that threatened to spread the “scourge of Communism?” The Red Menace was, after all, quite a bit better armed than are the forces of demon rum.

ANTIAGING: Peter Attia has a clinician approach to longevity and discusses Rapamycin dosage. Rapamycin is interesting, but I’m not ready to try it yet.

MARGOT CLEVELAND: 3 Reasons Rod Rosenstein’s Special Counsel Appointment Was Illegal.

In appointing Mueller as a special counsel, Rosenstein apparently ignored governing federal regulations. Those regulations are codified at 28 C.F.R. § 600.1-600.10 and limit the circumstances under which a special counsel may be appointed. A special counsel may only be appointed when, among other requirements, a “criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.” The regulations also require the attorney general (or in the case of recusal, the acting attorney general) to provide the special counsel “with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated.”

The May 2, 2017, special counsel appointment, however, referred not to a criminal investigation, but to a counterintelligence investigation. It also lacked any specific factual statement. It was not until more than two months later that Rosenstein referenced a detailed factual scenario—and one that had no connection to the presidential campaign!

Read the whole thing.

CHANGE: Honda’s New Business Jet Has Longer Range—and a Toilet Seatbelt.

Back when it was still in development, I wrote a story about the Honda Jet for Popular Mechanics.

JOHN HAWKINS: The Best Quotes from Jordan Peterson’s ’12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.’

SOCK PUPPETS CAN’T DUNK: 76ers To Investigate Bryan Colangelo’s Alleged Use of ‘Burner’ Twitter Accounts.

The 76ers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo appeared to use five fake Twitter accounts to criticize players like Joel Embiid, disclose sensitive information and share team strategy, reports The Ringer’s Ben Detrick.

The accounts posted from April 2016 to last week and criticized players like Jahlil Okafor and Markelle Fultz, coach Brett Brown and executives such as Sam Hinkie. The tweets disclosed nonpublic medical information about Okafor and gossip about Embiid and Fultz. The accounts always defended Colangelo.

When Detrick reached out to the 76ers about two of the accounts, the 76ers later confirmed Colangelo had been behind one of them. Despite not mentioning the other three Twitter accounts, those three were switched to private after Detrick’s inquiries.

And according to the New York Post, “Internet connects Twitter dots to Bryan Colangelo’s wife.” As sports blog Deadspin adds:

Amazingly, if [Barbara] Bottini did in fact run the accounts, Colangelo’s not even the most prominent sports executive to get anonymously and vigorously defended online by their spouse. Jane Skinner Goodell got caught quibbling with reporters from a burner account while defending the honor of her husband, Roger, last year.

Found via John Podhoretz, who tweets, “So let’s be clear. Roseanne destroyed a $100 million show and that wasn’t the craziest thing on social media yesterday. The craziest thing is the 76ers’ general manager.” (Colangelo is both president of basketball operations and general manager of the Sixers.)

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND JOY REID’S BLOG: A Month Later, MSNBC Still Mum On Joy Reid’s ‘Hacking’ Claims.

WHAT WERE HER PARENTS THINKING? Florida woman named Crystal Methvin arrested again on drug charges.

DISPATCHES FROM THE NEW CIVILITY. Samantha Bee: Ivanka Trump certainly is a feckless c*nt.

But she’ll get a pass, of course. As Allahpundit writes:

Bee is “in the family,” to borrow a memorable phrase from liberal paterfamilias Jeffrey Goldberg. But Rutz is right that Kimmel or Colbert or any male host who’s also “in the family” would have taken some heat for saying this. It wouldn’t have been a firing offense a la Roseanne’s racist joke and an apology would have been duly offered, probably in the course of blaming Trump for letting their temper momentarily cloud their good judgment. (“It’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch Johnson!”) Family can always be forgiven but there are times when they need “correction.”

Even Bee probably would have had to apologize, though, if she had leveled this at a left-wing woman, as hard to imagine as that is. If she’d called Jill Stein a see-you-next-Tuesday for pulling key votes from Hillary in the Rust Belt, some perfunctory remorse might need to be arranged. The reason Bee dropped the C-bomb, which is rare even on pay TV, is because all the stars had aligned here and she knew it — she’s in the family, she’s a woman, the policy she’s describing is deeply loathed by Democrats, and her target was not just a woman affiliated with the right but Trump’s favorite child/advisor. Given a chance to utter one of the few remaining taboo words on television with impunity, knowing the sweet, sweet clapter it would produce, how could she resist?

As the Washington Examiner noted last year, after Bee described a young Democrat recovering from cancer as having “Nazi hair,” because he happened to have attended CPAC:

In January, just weeks before then-President-elect Trump was sworn into office, Bee made a call for decency.

“We’re facing a new reality after the election. These next four years are going to require a broad coalition of straight-up decency,” Bee said in a freewheeling interview with the New York Times.

“And we’re going to need to be able to talk to people who would normally feel alienated by my show,” she added.

Sounds like a good plan. When does she start?

When the next president has a (D) after his or her name.

Related: “Tonight, Bee is scheduled to receive an award from the Television Academy for ‘advancing social change.’ Were it not for double standards…”

Increasingly, I’m convinced that we’re living in the Matrix — and the robots hired Tom Wolfe to write the source code.

OH: Trump Demands Apology From Disney’s Iger For “Offending Millions Of People.”