Archive for 2019
January 15, 2019
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Universities Face Increased Pressure from Job Programs That Generate Results, Not Just Debt.
ROBERT MUELLER GETS HIS OWN ACTION FIGURE:
The Mueller action figure, which will begin shipping in early summer, is hardly the first politically charged creation from the Brooklyn-based manufacturer. FCTRY raised more than $600,000 on Kickstarter to fund a “Notorious RBG” figure inspired by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year.
They’ve also created figures of former President Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The current president was transformed into a middle finger-raising “Trump Over Re-Action Figure” in 2017.
That same year, FCTRY made headlines when it announced that it would donate all profits from its Trump figure to the American Civil Liberties Union.
“That Trump is an infantile idiot with the mental age of a 10 year old.” “I know, I know – hand me my Robert Mueller and Bernie Sanders action figures so that I can help the DNC Adventure Team fight the evil orange man!”
GABBARD, CASTRO FACE THE LONGEST ODDS IN 2020 WHITE HOUSE BIDS: There was a time when some folks thought Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) brought hope of a revived moderate, independent-minded wing of the donkey party. But then she decided to run for president.
Then there’s former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who like Gabbard last week announced a loooonnnnnnggggg shot bid for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. He was a young, rising-star Texas Democrat. Then Beto happened.
Much more here about both Democrats (much of which you may not know). They have virtually no hope of actually being nominated, but keep an eye on both as potential veep nominees or cabinet members should whoever does get the Democratic nomination defeat President Donald Trump in November 2020.
LET THEM EAT BIG MACS — WHY TRUMP GETS AMERICA:
INT – APARTMENT – AFTERNOON
JESSICA (Harvard ’09, JP Morgan ’10 to ’12, Obama White House Staffer ’13 to ’16) is returning to her Georgetown apartment after her morning Tibetan throat singing class. There is a yoga mat under her arm. She shares the apartment, and a lovingly open relationship with ZAK (Columbia ’10, Senior Green Urban Planning Correspondent at Vox.com, Fellow of the Aspen Institute for Ideas ’14 to ’17), who is blogging at their Hygge-influenced open-plan kitchen. JESSICA looks visibly disturbed.
ZAK
Honey, what is it, is everything OK?
JESSICA
It’s… It’s…
ZAK
Don’t worry about the Whole Foods delivery. It came just after you left. The chia seeds, flax seeds, pea protein, dried goji berries, resistant potato starch, turmeric powder, and collagen hydrolysate were all in there. They even remembered the coconut oil this time!
JESSICA
No it’s not that.
ZAK
What is it?
JESSICA
It’s Trump… Did you see what he did this time?
ZAK
The Big Macs?
JESSICA begins to ‘literally shake’. Her yoga mat falls to the floor and unfurls.
JESSICA
Not just the Big Macs… He put packets of Hot Mustard sauce in the Eleanor Roosevelt silver servewear… Zak, I – I don’t think…
ZAK pushes back on his chair and slowly runs both hands through his hair. He gets up and hugs JESSICA.
ZAK
It’s going to be fine baby. Just remember your breathing exercises, OK? Alternate nostril breathing, just like you were doing this morning, OK?
JESSICA begins to weep.
Read the whole thing. (The fictional Jessica would really dive for the fainting couch if she discovered that Franklin and Eleanor would have loved what Trump did yesterday.)
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad. “But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements. And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.”
Last week I had a screengrab from “F is for Family,” an animated show that is not for everyone, because the F is for something else deployed with remarkable frequency. It’s set in the time of my early adolescence, so just about everything they get right makes me hurt. It’s so, so, so 70s, and not in the happy-drippy retcon style – oh they had cheap weed and everyone was cool and no fatal STDs and awesome fashion! No child, no, no; it was awful. They get that right.
The fashion was not awesome, but the lack of major STDs was pretty cool, not that we properly appreciated it at the time. But we were starting to by 1983, which was, as Lileks says, “the early middle of the beginning of the 80s.” The seventies really lasted until about 1982.
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? NASA asteroid warning: 167ft rock discovered on New Year’s Eve barreling to Earth TOMORROW. “Even at the lower end of the size estimate, the asteroid is big enough to be considered a potential hazard. A similarly sized asteroid injured more than 1,500 people in 2013 when it exploded over Chelyabinsk Oblast in Russia. The so-called Chelyabinsk meteor exploded with 20 to 30 times more power than an atomic bomb.”
It’ll be a clean miss, but that we barely saw it coming is troubling.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are You Neglecting Your Meat?
THE IDIOCY OF MODERN IDENTITARIANISM SUMMED UP IN ONE STORY: Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Finds Its Maria, Anita, Bernardo & Chino.
“When we began this process a year ago, we announced that we would cast the roles of Maria, Anita, Bernardo, Chino and the Sharks with Latina and Latino actors. I’m so happy that we’ve assembled a cast that reflects the astonishing depth of talent in America’s multifaceted Hispanic community,” said Spielberg. “I am in awe of the sheer force of the talent of these young performers, and I believe they’ll bring a new and electrifying energy to a magnificent musical that’s more relevant than ever.” ….
“I am so thrilled to be playing the iconic role of Maria alongside this amazing cast,” said [Rachel] Zegler. “West Side Story was the first musical I encountered with a Latina lead character. As a Colombian-American, I am humbled by the opportunity to play a role that means so much to the Hispanic community.”
Why do Puerto Rican characters in West Side Story need to be played by Latinos, but not Italian characters by people of Italian or (better yet, given the demographics of New York’s Italian community, specifically Sicilian) descent? Why is having a Colombian-American a politically-correct choice to play a Puerto Rican? What do Colombia and Puerto Rico have in common besides different dialects of the Spanish language? If you were trying to cast an Australian of 1960, would casting an English-speaking actor from the US, or India, be “authentic”? Isn’t kind of insulting to assume that all Spanish-speaking countries are interchangeable?
I’ve been working on a paper about legal definitions of race and ethnicity in the U.S., and the designation of “Hispanics” as non-white was not exactly historically inevitable. “Mexicans,” along with other Spanish-speaking peoples of the Americas, were usually considered to be legally white in the census and otherwise, though Mexicans were sometimes sent to segregated school thanks to local policy. When affirmative action programs started in the Sixties, “Chicano” (Mexican-American) groups lobbied for Mexican-Americans to be included as a “minority” group. Once Mexican-Americans were included, the category gradually expanded. First, it was anyone with a Spanish surname. But that proved overbroad, because many Italians have last names that sound Spanish, and many people of Hispanic descent do not. So eventually this morphed into “Latino” or Hispanic. But why, for example, an Argentine immigrant of Italian heritage is less “white” than a native-born American of Italian heritage is a mystery. Having lived in Peru, the irony of seeing like-skinned Latin Americans of mostly European origin who are generally contemptuous of darker-skinned Latin Americans suddenly becoming “people of color” eligible for minority preferences if they immigrate to the U.S. is something to behold.
But as Glenn might note, dividing people into artificial “races” creates extra opportunities for graft.
Oh, and while we’re at it, here is Zegler’s “racial” background: “Her father is of Polish ancestry on his own father’s side, and of Irish, German, and Italian ancestry on his own mother’s. Rachel’s mother is of Colombian origin.” So do we give Spielberg only half-credit for finding an actor who at best is half-Hispanic? Why does anyone sane want to go down this rabbit-hole?
UPDATE: And speaking of double standards, friend read this and commented, “And why is it OK for almost none of the actors on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are Jewish in real life?”
LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT-CHECKERS: CNN ANALYST ACCUSES BLACK CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST OF ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’. CNN’s Areva Martin goes on a radio show, and the fun begins:
“Sirius XM radio host and Fox News Contributor David Webb brought Martin onto his radio show to discuss diversity in media, and he noted that he has always considered his accomplishments to be more important than his skin color when applying to jobs […] “I’ve chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that I’m qualified to be in each one. I never considered my color to be the issue — I considered my qualifications to be the issue,” Webb explained.”
Martin replied:
After Webb said that expertise and experience are what matter, Martin interjected: “That’s a whole ‘nother long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don’t have the privilege of.”
Martin apologized for her comment and insisted that her team gave her incorrect information about Webb’s race. Exactly how does that work?
“Oh, by the way, Areva, you’ll be on with a white guy, so if you’re backed into a corner, you know what to say…”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Arizona State University restores students’ porn access.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure that no one at Reynolds Online University cares about what you’re “researching” when not on class time.
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR PROSTATE: “Of all the potential prevention strategies, the one most likely to attract buy-in from guys is sex. In the clinical vernacular, ‘ejaculatory frequency’ appears inversely related to PCa risk—i.e., the more often you climax, the less likely you are to suffer the disease.”
UPDATE: From the comments: “So combine this with semen curing depression in women from yesterday…” It’s a healthtastic win-win!
NOW OUT FROM GREG BENFORD: Rewrite: Loops in the Timescape. Sounds really good. I’m ordering it.
BRUCE BAWER: ‘Understanding’ Ourselves to Death.
OLD AND BUSTED: CNN newsreader getting the vapors over “the First Amendment and boobs.”
The New Hotnesss? CNN Panel Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Sexist’ Salad Joke:
A CNN panel accused President Donald Trump of being “sexist” Monday night because the president made a joke about first lady Melania Trump making salads.
The president cracked the joke to the national championship-winning Clemson football team during their Monday visit to the White House. Trump noted that because of the shutdown, he had to personally purchase a spread of fast food for the team’s visit, and joked that his food choices were better than having the first lady make them “some quick little salads.” (RELATED: CNN Cries Sexism During Discussion On Hillary’s Health)
CNN anchor Erin Burnett and analyst Joan Walsh accused the president of being sexist for assuming that the first lady would prepare the salads.
“That’s appalling,” Walsh said. “It seems to me that the president will not be happy until there is one single female Republican voter in the country. It’s incredibly sexist.”
“Sometimes what people say when they’re being funny exposes exactly who they are and what they think,” Burnett agreed.
Such as titling your book, as Joan Walsh did, What’s the Matter with White People?
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? “Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruthProject, Google, and others, plans to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms over the next five years,” DNC-MSM house organ Columbia Journalism Review reports:
Writing in CJR, the project’s co-founders argue that America needs “a dramatically new approach at the local level—grounded less in the traditional commercial model and more on a reawakened spirit of public service among reporters.”
Steven Waldman and Charles M. Sennott say that they want to model their initiative on organizations like the Peace Corps and Teach for America, providing opportunities and support to emerging journalists while also helping newsrooms around the country do civically important reporting. Waldman first pitched the idea in the pages of CJR more than two years ago, calling for a new national service program dedicated to journalism.
Shades of the conversation that David Westin, then-president of ABC News, had shortly after the 2004 election with Tina Brown, back when she had a show on CNBC, which Rush Limbaugh paraphrased as “We need more foreign correspondents in Alabama:”
RUSH: So, anyway, she’s got David Westin on the program, and she says, “David, would you have a reporter/producer live in any of these communities?” She’s talking about the red states of America here, folks. “Would you have a reporter/producer live in any of these communities and saturate themselves in these cultures so that they get more stories from those communities?”
WESTIN: I think we don’t do that enough, and I’m not just talking religious communities. I’m talking all sorts of communities across the country. I think that… You understand this, Tina, living in New York or in Los Angeles, we have busy jobs. We go into the office every day. We tend to socialize with the same people, or the same types of people, and I think it’s terribly important for journalists to get out whether it’s overseas or domestically and try to understand.
RUSH: We need more foreign correspondents in Alabama! We need more foreign correspondents north of Palm Beach County in Florida! We need embeds to go to church, find out what’s going on with these holy rollers! Ah, folks, you can’t know how much I love this.
On Google’s journalists as Peace Corps initiative, the Columbia Journalism Review concludes:
Report for America won’t save journalism, just as Teach For America can’t save teaching, and the Peace Corps hasn’t brought about an era of global unity. But in a time of crisis for local newsrooms, it’s a bold attempt to reinvigorate a vital organ of American society.
Nothing like viewing yourself as a member of the Peace Corps having parachuted into a strange unknown town to provide the proper level of condescension when reporting local news. Will Ted Striker and Elaine Dickinson join the team?
Found via Ace, who notes that “Google will now be arranging for the payment of its own cadre of ‘journalists’ embedded in local news stations across America. I wonder if the media will become even more pro-Google than they are now.”
PARLIAMENT REJECTS THERESA MAY’S BREXIT DEAL:
The Brexit deal painstakingly negotiated by British prime minister Theresa May over the past two years was rejected overwhelmingly by Parliament on Tuesday.
The deal, which fell in a 432–202 vote in the House of Commons, represented the only established path forward to prevent a so-called “no-deal” British exit from the European Union, which is set to take place in March and would likely result in massive political and economic upheaval.
In response to the historic defeat, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a vote of no confidence, which, if passed, would oust May and give Corbyn a chance to form a new government. If Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister then failed to gain the support of a majority of MPs within 14 days, Parliament would dissolve and a new general election would be held.
May, in advocating on behalf of the deal she has negotiated over the past two years, cast it as the only viable option that accorded with the will of the British people, who voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union.
“This is the most significant vote that any of us will ever be part of in our political careers,” May said as the five-day Commons debate concluded. “The time has now come for all of is in this House to make a decision . . . a decision that each of us will have to justify and live with for many years to come.”
If Brexit falls and Corbyn becomes PM, I suspect these will be big sellers in England.
ZOOM: New Shelby Mustang steals the show at Detroit Auto Show. “With five-inch diameter exhaust pipes and a 700-horsepower engine, the car runs counter to the forward-thinking image of electric cars and low emissions that Ford attempts to convey. The Mustang is also the final car in Ford’s lineup, after its announcement that it will exclusively build the SUVs and crossover cars currently popular with customers.”
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad.
Talking about the yellow-vest movement, French geographer Christophe Guilluy observes: “Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist, but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.”
That’s right. It’s class war masquerading as something else, but people have seen through the mask.
Read the whole thing.