THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Theresa May Stayed Silent About Iran-Backed Bomb Factory In London.
Archive for 2019
June 11, 2019
June 10, 2019
OPEN THREAD: I’m with you in spirit.
VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: VA Democrats Accepted Donations From Ralph Northam’s PAC After Calling For His Resignation.
QUESTION ASKED: Will They Ever Leave Him Alone? Christian Baker Jack Phillips Is Being Sued—Again. “That’s the great thing about authoritarianism. You don’t need principles when you can just silence anybody who disagrees with you. Hypocrisy is… well, it’s baked into the cake.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Twitter Turns On An Editor Who’s Already Woke.
So we’ve reached the point in 2019 where Twitter seems to have declared that the obstacle to female progress in American journalism is the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.
A Vox headline complained of Mr. Goldberg’s “sexist quote.” At Deadspin, a headline declared “The Best Way for Jeffrey Goldberg To Help Diverse Journalists Would Be To Quit His Job.” The New York Times even found it worth a news article, headlined, “Writing Cover Stories Is Hard. For Atlantic Editor, Talking About Diversity Is Harder.”
Mr. Goldberg, my colleague at the Forward two decades ago, is someone I know as implacably opposed to bigotry. The magazine under his editorship has tilted left, with articles like “Impeach Donald Trump” and another earnestly complaining that “Sexism infects every kind of courtroom encounter, from pretrial motions to closing arguments — a glum ubiquity that makes clear how difficult it will be to eradicate gender bias not just from the practice of law, but from society as a whole.”
If Mr. Goldberg is insufficiently woke for the job, it’s enough to make a person wonder just who there might be out there with sensitivities sufficiently exquisitely attuned. Angela Davis? Elizabeth Warren? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
The New York Times article took note that “11 of The Atlantic’s 15 most recent cover stories were written by men.” It didn’t mention that 17 of the 23 most recent New York Times Magazine cover stories were written by men, which, on a percentage basis, works out to pretty much the same as at the Atlantic.
When the Goldberg caved to the Twitter mob and fired Kevin Williamson last year, Williamson counterpunched:
The Atlantic has often welcomed controversial writers. The magazine’s best-known contributor today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, arguably the nation’s foremost writer on race. He came in for criticism after writing, in his book “Between the World and Me,” that the first responders on 9/11 were “not human” to him, that he had come to regard such uniformed figures as menaces. I don’t share his view, but if that’s what he thought at the time, then I’m glad he wrote it. He could have pretended to have had thoughts and feelings other than the ones he did—but the truth is usually more interesting, and it is always more useful.
The late Christopher Hitchens was another frequent contributor to the Atlantic. He was routinely denounced by people on the left for his harshly critical views of Islam. He complained of the war in Afghanistan that “the death toll is not nearly high enough,” described the Jewish scriptures as “evil and mad” and directed shameful vitriol at Mother Teresa. Hitchens routinely and gleefully gave occasion for offense—and he was one of the invaluable essayists of our time.
“Yes,” Mr. Goldberg said when I reminded him of this precedent. “But Hitchens was in the family. You are not.”
As Woody Allen once joked, “Intellectuals are like the mafia – they only kill their own.” Best not to be a member of the Five Families.
DISPATCHES FROM THE WORLD OF TRANSNATIONAL “PROGRESSIVISM,” WHERE THE SONG OF RESSENTIMENT REMAINS THE SAME: Sad! NPR Reporter Defends Media Not Standing for National Anthem, Thinks It’s Being Political.
Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace could not be reached for comment.
ADVICE FROM KURT SCHLICHTER: Ignore The Never Trump Losers Who Are OK With Liberals Winning. “There’s a debate going on inside conservatism between the insufferable sissies who insist that we Normals are morally obligated to submit to being crushed by the leftists who hate us and want us enslaved or dead, and actual conservatives. Maybe I’m simplifying this intellectual dispute a bit – wait, no I’m not. You either want to defeat the liberal elite that despises us or you don’t.”
Plus: “Understand that the civility and decency requirement applies only to us, and it operates only to restrict our ability to accurately describe and aggressively fight our enemies. It does not apply to our betters’ conduct toward us. . . . Similarly, we are also morally obligated to submit to the loss of our rights. When Steven Crowder was demonetized by YouTube because he uttered words the elite disapproves of, I immediately began my countdown to the Lido Deck League validating it. I didn’t have to wait long.”
AT AMAZON, deals on Dishwashers.
EVERY TIME A MOSQUITO DIES, THE WORLD BECOMES A BETTER PLACE: The ‘Iron Dome’ for mosquitoes.
BARGAIN ALERT: Amazon has my book Lawless, with a foreword by Senator Cruz, for only $5.24 with free Prime shipping, which I believe is the lowest price it’s ever sold for.
UPDATE, 6:48 pm: Well, that was quick, Instareaders bought up all of Amazon’s copies, and now it’s only available from third-party sellers for $13.00. You can still get the Kindle for $5.22, though.
MICROBIOME NEWS: Athletes’ Microbiomes Differ from Nonathletes: Researchers are beginning to uncover a link between activity level and the microbial makeup of one’s gut. “Within two months I was a new person. I had no more fatigue. I could ride my bike hard three days in a row, no problem.”
SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Internet Hilariously Responds to ‘BirthStrikers’ Who Are Avoiding Childbirth Due to Impending Ecological Doom.
The doom that’s been impending since 1968.
(Classical reference in headline.)
BAN ALL THE THINGS! Philadelphia Politicians Want to Ban…[Checks List]…Bay Windows.
City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson has introduced an ordinance that would ban these protruding windows in the neighborhoods of Point Breeze and Grays Ferry. Balconies would be verboten too. His aim, he says, is to prevent undue clashing with the traditional brownstone homes that populate the area.
“I call them pop-out windows,” he told local radio station WHYY last week. “That’s where we have these monstrosity developments with windows with aluminum siding that are green or orange or blue, and they don’t fit on these blocks that are all red-brick rowhouses.”
For some, the bay windows that have been popping up on new townhomes and condominiums throughout the city are just the most outward sign of the city’s rapid gentrification.
“They are an icon of that change, and maybe for a lot of people, they are an icon of unwelcome change,” Patrick Grossi of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia tells the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I’m so old, I can remember 2008, when “Change” was a mantra of the far left.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Bryan Cranston Dedicates Tony Award to Journalists ‘In the Line of Fire.’
But assuming The Hill is quoting Cranston correctly, notice that he specified “the real journalists.” That doesn’t include anybody who reports bad news about Democrats. It doesn’t include Fox News and Breitbart.com and the Daily Caller and the site you’re reading right now. It doesn’t include all the people currently being demonetized and deplatformed on YouTube because a Vox.com vlogger threw a temper tantrum over some mean insults. It only includes the people who agree politically with Bryan Cranston, and who reaffirm Bryan Cranston’s worldview. Only the real journalists are “in the line of fire.”
As Jim notes, “The Breaking Bad star is currently portraying Howard Beale in the Broadway adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 media satire Network, which was revived a couple of years ago to #Resist Trump or Fox News or whatever.”
I doubt anybody on Broadway was self-aware enough to notice that there’s a direct line from Chayefsky’s film, to the 24/7 hard left MSNBC to Trump. Choose the form of your destructor, to coin an Insta-phrase.
UPDATE: Get Woke, Go Broke? Tony Awards Fall to All-Time Ratings Low.
STEELE HAD CLINTON LINKS BEFORE FUSION GPS: A new batch of State Department emails obtained by Judicial Watch in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation shows former British spy Christopher Steele had a key aide to Secretary of State John Kerry promoting him within the government. Kerry’s role in Spygate may be more significant than heretofore realized.
And, perhaps even more important in some respects, the emails further show that Steele was dealing with Clinton inner circle types before he was retained by Fusion GPS and paid indirectly by Hillary’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
TIC-TOC-TIC … Go here.
SUCKING IN THE ‘70s: Why is John Dean testifying before the House about the Mueller report today?
Democrats will defend this, I suspect, by arguing that all they’re trying to do is call public attention to what’s actually in Mueller’s report. Most Americans haven’t read it; many don’t know even some of the bottom-line findings. If Dems can get a little extra media attention and TV time by having a familiar name run through those findings, so much the better. Is Dean’s name familiar to anyone under the age of 65, though? Conversely, is anyone over the age of 65 waiting for Dean’s take to make up their mind on Russiagate? If you’re the sort of person excited to see Nixon’s lawyer lay into Trump, your mind’s been made up about the president since before day one. If they want to get the word out about Mueller’s findings, they should have Oprah or Taylor Swift testify about their understanding of the report’s conclusions. A show this big deserves a star above the D-list.
Dean, arguably the ultimate MSM “Republican” who only attacks Republicans served as a punching bag for House GOP members:
You want to see Louis Gohmert reading to him a New York Times article identifying John Dean as the man who gave the order to burglarize the Watergate Hotel and who hired the burglars.
“That’s a lie,” Dean says.
“Take it up with the New York Times,” Gohmert snaps back.
Soon after — maybe right after, though there’s usually a Democrat between Republicans — Jim Jordan accuses Dean of having advised Lanny Davis and Michael Cohen to withhold Cohen’s testimony from Republicans, while sharing it with Democrats.
Then, soon after that, Matt Gaetz drills down on an interesting question — How much is Dean being paid to do His One Job of accusing Republicans of being Nixon?
And how many Republican presidents has he so accused? He notes that John Dean has made a lucrative “cottage industry” of accusing almost every Republican president of being “worse than Nixon.”
Exit quote from Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA): “It was brought up when one of our candidates talked about Russia being a threat, & former president Obama said the 80s are asking for their foreign policy back. Well guess what, this committee is now hearing from the ‘70s, and they want their star witness back.”
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: Plan to alter Earth’s orbit to escape being eaten by dying Sun.
Shouldn’t we stick to the simple stuff for now — like firing rockets full of pollution into the upper atmosphere to fight global warming?
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THIS WILL END WELL: California to Provide Full Health Benefits to Illegal Immigrants under Age 26.
Cloward and Piven smile.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: “AOC’s possible next step: primarying Schumer in 2022 or Gillibrand in 2024 for a Senate seat from New York, sources tell Axios on HBO.”
(Link safe; goes to Twitchy.)
DEPARTMENT OF UNUSUAL ARGUMENTS: “Abortion Laws Are ‘Bad for Business’ Nearly 200 CEOs Say.”
Increasingly, CEOs want to be seen as persons of the left. And to be seen as a lefty, one has to support the left on every single issue.