#TIMESUP: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Turn. “None of this is particularly surprising in view of what already was known, but King obviously could not survive a ‘me too’ retrospective. On the whole, this is probably for the best. Leftists are determined to show that all of our other heroes had feet of clay, so King–the closest person we have to a secular saint–may as well join them.”
Archive for 2019
May 28, 2019
OPEN THREAD: Proceed as usual.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Death of Merit and the Race to Mediocrity in Our Increasingly Marxist Universities.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: What makes happy marriages, left and right.
Plus:
Then there’s the question of sex. The report found that those same religious conservatives enjoy far higher satisfaction in their sex lives than either secular or less religious couples do. As French points out, we never see “happy, sexually vibrant religious married couples” on TV shows or in movies.
The conventional wisdom is thus that freewheeling, secular people are having the best sex. But actually, religious conservative women reported the highest levels of sexual satisfaction, and it’s not even close.
The parents on The Kids Are Alright seem to have a pretty good sex life.
A FORMER UT STUDENT AND LONG-TIME INSTAPUNDIT READER WRITES to tell me he’s working with this company, Locus Biosciences. Scientists Modify Viruses With CRISPR To Create New Weapon Against Superbugs. I’ve been saying “faster, please” on phage therapies for a while.
Here’s their video.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Toronto Identifies Public Enemy #1: Millennials with Plastic Coffee Cups.
Old and busted: Banning farting cows and planes and cauliflower. The new hotness? Banning Tim Hortons.
THE BASE GETS ITSELF A NEW ELITE: Back in 2010 at the New Criterion, the late Kenneth Minogue warned:
My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.
Stein’s Law posits that “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” As Mark Steyn writes today, “The Base Gets Itself a New Elite:”
As I’ve been saying for four years in a Trump context, it’s easier for the base to get itself a new elite than for the elite to get itself a new base. Three years ago the Brexit referendum revealed that Parliament and the people had become misaligned: If over half the people support a policy that no “mainstream” party supports, then in what sense are those parties mainstream?
Speaking of which:
(Via Small Dead Animals.)
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hating Trump Is the Only Unity Democrats Can Find.
AT AMAZON, save in Safety and Security.
DISPATCHES FROM PALLYWOOD: Palestinian Authority TV Series Features Uncle Teaching Nephew How to Shoot at ‘the Jews.’
(Classical reference in headline.)
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE MEMORY HOLE AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Did you hear, Glenn has a new book out? In The Social Media Upheaval, he writes:
In bragging about how he manipulated the political news media, Obama foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes described them this way: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Knowing nothing makes you easy to manipulate. Lack of relevant life experience makes you easy to manipulate. So maybe people should know more? I’ve written elsewhere about the failures of our educational system, but in a time when two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is, it’s not crazy to think that our populace could be toughened up when it comes to mental nutrition.
Good lord. I’ve linked here before to a 2013 video by Holocaust education advocate Rhonda Fink-Whitman, interviewing depressingly clueless incoming freshmen (hope that f-bomb isn’t too triggering) at several Philadelphia-area colleges, but I had no idea that number had been quantified, but as the Washington Post reported last year, “Holocaust study: Two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is.” AOC and Ilhan Omar’s future constituencies are assured.
MORE ON BOGREN VS. HAWLEY: Ed Whelan at NRO:
With all respect for Senator Hawley, I am less enamored than others are of his criticism of Bogren.
For starters, from my review of the exchange, Bogren was making exactly the point of principle that I have made: To argue that a principle that applies to A also applies to B is not to “compare” A and B or to assert that they are equivalent.
Further, Bogren made it clear that he was advancing legal arguments on behalf of his client, not expressing his personal views. (Hawley seems to have understood the exchange otherwise.) Bogren’s arguments strike me as exactly what you’d expect from someone representing his client.
Do conservatives really want to embrace the general proposition that arguments that a lawyer makes on behalf of a client should, without more, be held against the lawyer? That’s a proposition that, apart from being unsound, could redound to the detriment of conservative nominees who have defended religious liberty or pro-life legislation in unpopular contexts.
And here’s the link to my Volokh post on Hawley’s demagoguery.
MY NEW BOOK IS UP TO #3, JUST BEHIND MARK LEVIN, ON THE MEDIA/INTERNET/POLITICS LIST. Thanks to everyone who bought it!
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Gray Man: Camouflage for Crowds, Cities, and Civil Crisis.
#HIMTOO? Tony Robbins Loses Role With $38B Planning Firm.
Self-help guru Tony Robbins is on the defensive in the wake of recent BuzzFeed reports that nine women accused him of sexual misconduct and that he was filmed using racial slurs in the 1980s.
Robbins is also out of one of his jobs now that Creative Planning, a $38 billion registered investment adviser based in Overland Park, Kan., has severed ties with him, InvestmentNews reports.
The firm’s quick decision to eliminate Robbins’ position, chief of investor psychology, and remove him from its advisory board following the accusations, has won praise from marketing professionals and advisers.
“There are takeaways and lessons that other RIAs can learn about how to take action when something like this happens to their brand,” April Rudin, president of financial services marketing firm The Rudin Group, tells the publication. “There’s a woman issue here and there’s a brand issue here, and when these things come up it’s important to take swift action.”
Heaven forfend they proceed cautiously and wait for all the facts.
I DON’T KNOW, I CAN IMAGINE QUITE A BIT: Hollywood hates Trump, Republicans even more than we thought, according to Vanity Fair’s insider account.
Christian Toto:
The far-left magazine serves up a behind-the-scenes pastiche of an industry reeling over Trump’s very existence. Author Nick Bilton showcases a number of scripts circulating around Hollywood as well as what industry players have to say about them.
It isn’t pretty.
Several scripts feature Matt Drudge, the new media superstar whose bare bones web site draws millions of eyeballs each week. Others imagine Andrew Breitbart, not as the Happy Warrior who inspired citizen journalists, but as a loner smoking dope in his college dorm.
It’s all part of an amazing essay capturing the current Hollywood mood.
Read the whole thing.
Trump Derangement Syndrome makes Bush Derangement Syndrome look like a mild head cold.
OR AS KEITH RICHARDS CALLS IT, “BREAKFAST.” Man dies on flight after swallowing 246 cocaine packets.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Are Facebook, Twitter, Google evil or just everywhere? What we have to do about big tech.
I’m not sure I mentioned it, but I have a book out.