PREENING INTERRUPTUS: “Acts of planned and gratuitous aggression, including narcissistic aggression — which is what these ‘protests’ are — should be treated accordingly. It’s important that these cossetted pinheads, so gorged on their own sense of entitlement, learn to fear those on whom they recreationally impose themselves. Their expectations of impunity should be shattered.”
Read the whole thing.
WE LIVE IN SOFT TIMES: Mental health days for students: An increasingly accepted reason to stay home from school.
HEATHER MAC DONALD ON THE DEFENESTRATION OF PLACIDO DOMINGO:
The AP had spent two years trying to get sources to talk about Domingo; a feminist music critic had also been on the hunt but abandoned the project for lack of cooperating witnesses. After the AP’s persistence finally paid off, other outlets scrambled to catch up. NPR was particularly aggressive but the well of complainants with first-hand experience of Domingo’s womanizing had apparently run dry. Nevertheless, on Friday, September 20, NPR ran a story headlined “Met Opera Faces ‘One More Catastrophic Crisis’ As Employees Must Work With Domingo.” The piece was based on four anonymous sources at the Metropolitan Opera, where the Domingo-starring Macbeth was set to open in a few days.
* * * * * * * *
There are three possible justifications for Domingo’s scourging, each more unpersuasive than the last. The first is to punish his past behavior. But his alleged infractions occurred decades ago, making punishment too belated to be just or meaningful. None of his accusers brought their objections to anyone in authority. If they wanted to punish him, that would have been the time to do so. Now, the overwhelmingly anonymous nature of the accusations and the passage of time prevent Domingo from mounting a defense. Some of the alleged incidents were undoubtedly more ambiguous than the accusers are disclosing. But without a known accuser, Domingo cannot establish the facts of these incidents, even if he could remember what may have been a fleeting and misunderstood gesture.
* * * * * * * *
This idea that Domingo poses a current risk to females even in his immediate orbit is pure hysteria. Domingo is a near-octogenarian. The most recent allegations against him, even if they constituted an actual danger at the time, date from over 15 years ago. After those allegations belatedly surfaced, his every movement would have been under a microscope. Were Domingo still inclined at his age to make advances, it would have taken a suicidal recklessness to engage in any behavior that could be massaged into a harassment incident. But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that he let slip, even now, an appreciative glance or ambiguous compliment. Are we supposed to believe, in this era of “strong women,” that a female chorister is so vulnerable and weak that, faced with someone who is operating under a potential death sentence, she can’t simply rebuff an advance? Domingo’s 20 accusers somehow survived the trauma of being propositioned by one of the opera world’s most charismatic stars. Why would the trauma today be so much more lethal to require proleptically snuffing out a still fertile career?
Read the whole thing.
Now that AP has devoted its considerable resources to destroy a — checking notes — 78 year old opera legend, and CNN its own efforts to gin up a moral panic around a comic book movie, when does the left’s new Moral Majority come for what Matthew Walther, writing in The Week in the fall of 2017, the peak of the #MeToo movement, dubbed “The sexual predators everyone still worships:” the world of rock and rap music? As Kay Hymowitz wrote in the LA Times in the following year, “#MeToo feminists may not realize it, but their other target is sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” Doesn’t AP now have to aim their guns there, to prove that they’re not simply shooting down the easy targets that are elderly men who would be nearing the ends of their careers anyway, even without a push from what Heather Mac Donald dubs “the brittle rigidity of contemporary feminism… Drunk on its own power, it is turning its massive armamentarium of narcissistic grievance on male success with an ever more neurotic standard of transgression?”
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Military History.
I’VE ENCOURAGED HIM TO DO SO: ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author JD Vance on running for office: ‘You never say never.’
THE MEDIA’S JOKER PANIC WAS ALL GINNED-UP NONSENSE:
Then there is CNN, which went big reporting on all things Joker.
“’Joker breaks records despite warnings about violence,” read one headline.
Other CNN headlines read, Joker premiere sparks security concerns,” Joker hits movie theaters with controversy and extra security,” “Aurora victim’s family upset over Joker storyline,” Joker spurs security precautions from the US Army and the Los Angeles police,” Joker expected to break box office records as controversy and anxiety swirls,” Joker shatters box office records despite its controversial depiction of violence,” and Joker uses a song by convicted pedophile Gary Glitter. He’s probably making money off it.”
Now is a good time to remind you that CNN is a subsidiary of Warner Media, which also owns Warner Bros. In other words, these CNN headlines are what we in the news and entertainment business call “cross-promotion.”
The B-movie horror director William Castle was famous for building up a moral panic around his movies in the late 1950s to gin-up plenty of PR. And of course, being known as “Banned in Boston” did nothing but generate additional sales for dozens of lurid novels and movies from the late 19th century until the 1970s. As with Disney’s recent efforts to generate controversy over a black Little Mermaid, Warner Brothers and CNN are apparently simply bringing those promotional efforts into the 21st century.
IOWANS TO BE DECLARED RACIST SHORTLY: Latest Polling Indicates Kamala Harris’ Campaign Has Cratered in Iowa.
DON SURBER ON CHINA: Xi May Face A Coup. “The Taiwan News reported that even though she graduated five years ago, Chairman Xi’s daughter has returned to Harvard for graduate studies. The newspaper speculates that Xi sent her to protect her safety.”
MARK STEYN REVIEWS THE DOWNTON ABBEY MOVIE:
A week ago I was having a conversation in the Fox News green room about the Downton Abbey movie with …well, go on, guess: Tucker? Kilmeade? No, it was Tyrus. A hulking ex-professional wrestler who could crush the average effete English earl between his toes doesn’t seem the most obvious fan of Downton’s doings, and we disagreed on Lady Mary, for whom he has an intense loathing and to whose icy bitchery I’ve warmed up over the years. But it does suggest the broad appeal of Julian Fellowes’ “franchise”, and helps explain why, franchise-wise, Downton Abbey clobbered the latest Rambo at the box office: Stallone’s swan song cost three times as much and its box-office take is less than half.
To be sure, if you’ve never seen the earlier capers, it will be largely meaningless as a stand-alone movie — but then that’s true of the new Rambo and X-Men and Ant-Man and everything else at the multiplex. Perhaps, in the manner of The Avengers, they should have subtitled it Downton: Endgame, or Infinity Tea or Age of Carson. Strung around a visit to the Abbey by George V and Queen Mary, the plot hinges on a broken boiler and the servants’ resentment at a toffee-nosed Page of the Back Stairs from Buckingham Palace — so it makes a nice change from the Incredible Hulk ripping yet another hole in the space-time continuum.
Indeed it does, and I can say that as someone who’s watched the movie after only having seen about 15 minutes of the original TV series. Read the whole thing.
FOSSILS VERSUS FOSSIL FUEL: ‘Fossil Fuels Have Got to Go’: Jane Fonda, Sam Waterston Arrested at Climate Change Protest.
THERE IS NO FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO MOCK — OH, WAIT: Cal Poly investigates Instagram photo ‘mocking’ illegal immigrants. Not only is the university powerless to stop students from mocking illegal immigrants, which is just speech, even investigating students who do so is a First Amendment violation.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Beto O’Rourke Announces Support for Menstrual Equity Act on National Period Day.
The 21st century is not turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Millennials should avoid the socialism trap.
WHAT EVERY COOK NEEDS: Beef Tallow. For when you don’t want to use bacon grease.
KAMALA THE COP STRIKES AGAIN: Harris Claims Giuliani Has ‘Broken Many Laws’, Can’t Name Any.
When your campaign can’t handle Democratic Party operatives with bylines such as CNN’s Anderson Cooper (in the above link), BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith, and sucks at Photoshop memes, it’s officially not ready for primetime. Time for an upgrade?
Okay, Angie, now that you’ve admitted the obvious, you want to apologize for calling the people who warned you that it would turn out this way racist xenophobe bigots?
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