ENDORSED: As Daylight Saving Looms, Suppose We Spring Forward, and Never Fall Back?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN):
Archive for 2019
March 9, 2019
“NEWSGUARD” NEEDS WORK: A notice of “NewsGuard’s treatment of Instapundit, which Gordon Crovitz and I both read regularly but which has not received a green check.” Sad!
AT UC DAVIS, A Diversity Dodge. “UC Davis is free to help qualified students on an economic basis. On the other hand, under state law, UC Davis cannot give preference to any student on the basis of race or ethnicity.”
AT AMAZON, Glencairn Whisky Glass Set of 4.
A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: CNN to be sued for more than $250M over ‘vicious’ and ‘direct attacks’ on Covington High student: lawyer.
WELL, I KEEP ‘EM IN MY CAR AND IN MY OFFICE: Life-saving emergency kits to stop uncontrolled bleeding going to all East TN public schools.
Bleed kits and AEDs should be in more places.
AT AMAZON, save in Car Care.
REVIEW: Remington Tac-13.
HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS LAUNCHES PODCAST: Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), a former Talk Radio host and pastor of a Southern Baptist church, is the host and the first guest is HFC Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). Will be interesting to watch this podcast as it grows, as part of the mostly unremarked resurgence of this form of digital programming.
WHEN DOES THE BULWARK START CONSERVING CONSERVATISM? Bulwark’s token* lib deletes tweet mocking Donald and Melania Trump at Alabama memorial.
Earlier: The Bulwark, Bill Kristol’s Successor To The Weekly Standard, Called Out For Sending Pro-Choice Lib To ‘Own The Cons’ At CPAC.
* No, there is another.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The “Martial/Marital” typo only makes it better.
MICHAEL JACKSON’S ERASURE FROM HISTORY BEGINS:
James L. Brooks, co-creator of The Simpsons, says that the 1991 episode guest-starring Michael Jackson is being yanked, permanently.“It feels clearly the only choice to make,” Brooks told the Wall Street Journal. “The guys I work with—where we spend our lives arguing over jokes—were of one mind on this,” he added.
* * * * * * * *
Brooks says the episode in question will be removed from all platforms including DVD sets and streaming services. “I’m against book burning of any kind. But this is our book, and we’re allowed to take out a chapter,” he told the Journal.
But tossing his episode down the memory hole is in itself is a form of book burning. Should Michael Jackson have appeared on the Simpsons? In retrospect, of course not. But the assumption that 21st century audiences can’t handle knowing that he once did seems beneath a series that once — a long time ago — contained some of Hollywood’s smartest comedy writing. (When does Apu start getting spliced out?)
Pop culture of the past exists in part as an unintentional time machine, showing us how its creators viewed the world at that time. We laugh at the stilted acting and $1.99 production design of Jack Webb’s 1960s version of Dragnet, but millions of mid-‘60s Americans shared Webb’s views on narcotics and crumbling social mores. The original Star Trek had at least one episode that can be viewed as grudgingly defending the Vietnam War, and its (very silly) final episode was premised on the sexist notion that even in the 23rd century, women won’t be allowed to command a starship. M*A*S*H’s first three seasons were awash with sexism – and contained the series’ funniest writing. What about Archie Bunker’s racism? Will network execs give 21st century audiences the benefit of the doubt that they can figure out that Bunker was a parody, not a role model?
As I warned a year ago, when the #MeToo crowd started looking askance at Hollywood’s sex-obsessed 1970s sitcoms, I Felt a Grave Disturbance In The Force, As If Millions Of Sitcoms Suddenly Cried Out In Terror And Were Suddenly Silenced.
THE ARISTOCRACY OF VICTIMHOOD:
The aristocracy of victimhood can be seen everywhere if you train your eyes to see it (don’t get me started on the new push for reparations). And the corrupting power of this cultural shift is profound. Because we’re not just heaping praise on victims, we’re investing extra legitimacy to their ideas and arguments. If we as a culture want to say that the Pale Penis People can’t wear sombreros or cook Korean food, I’ll pound away at my keyboard about how stupid that is. But ultimately, that idiocy falls under the loosey-goosey rubric of fashion and manners. If we’re going to start saying that victims’ ideas are “more right” simply because the people spewing them are victims, then we are committing a kind of civilizational suicide. I don’t care if you spent your youth at the bottom of a pit putting the lotion in the basket when commanded to, you’re still wrong if you tell me two plus two equals seven.
If anti-Semitism is wrong, it shouldn’t matter how bad Ilhan Omar’s childhood was. If racism is wrong, it doesn’t become less wrong if a survivor of Auschwitz says something racist.
Read the whole thing.
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, I’M BACK MONDAY: One second, I’m shoveling snow on the driveway, the next I’m laying flat on my face and stomach, praying “Oh, Lord, please don’t let that knee be broken.” It was and now I’m in recovery mode.
AT AMAZON, deals on Major Appliances.
FED-UP HOUSE REPUBLICAN RELEASES BRUCE OHR TESTIMONY SHOWING MAJOR CONFLICT OF INTEREST:
In his testimony, Ohr revealed that former British spy Christopher Steele was simultaneously paid by both the FBI and the Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.
Read the whole thing.
I WISH WE HAD THEM IN KNOXVILLE: the joy of Whataburger. I mean Five Guys and Moo-Yah are okay, but . . . .
And I’m a big fan of their spicy ketchup.
RECYCLING IS STILL GARBAGE: Fiscal realities are finally persuading towns to junk their recycling programs, as the Atlantic reports sorrowfully. Alana Semuels nicely analyzes the fatal economic flaws of recycling but ends with a bit of green sermonizing:
Americans are going to have to come to terms with a new reality: All those toothpaste tubes and shopping bags and water bottles that didn’t exist 50 years ago need to go somewhere, and creating this much waste has a price we haven’t had to pay so far.
Actually, we’ve already paid the price by building landfills with with expensive liners and other environmental safeguards. And we’ve paid a lot more for recycling programs that were never necessary. Yes, those water bottles do have to go somewhere — and there’s plenty of room for them right back where they came from, in the ground. Why are greens horrified by the prospect of a plastic bottle made from petroleum being buried in a landfill? The plastic poses less of an underground threat than the petroleum did. It’s much better environmentally (and cheaper) to put plastic bottles in a local landfill instead of shipping them off for recycling to Asia (the only place with any market for them), because some of those bottles end up in rivers that send the plastic waste into the Pacific Ocean.
Eric Boehm at Reason has a much savvier take on the scrapped recycling programs:
Like most other civic issues, recycling programs should be judged by their costs and benefits. That means an honest assessment of the costs and benefits, one that leaves out the social signaling of environmentalism and the feel-good effects of putting an empty Coke bottle in a plastic bin that’s painted blue instead of black. There is no need to recycle all the things all the time, and the market seems to be sending towns and cities a powerful signal about the benefits of calling trash, trash.
A LITTLE PISTOL MAGIC: Soldiers and police use software and Bluetooth connections to help them shoot better.
BRADLEY ON THE MOVE: A 1st Cavalry Division Bradley maneuvers during an exercise at Fort Hood, Texas.
COCKTAILS FROM HELL: Belated post, but I’ll be signing my new book today at 2 pm Central at the Barnes and Noble Arboretum store in Austin, Texas. The address is 10000 Research Blvd, Austin, Texas 78759. The Arboretum shopping center is at the southwest corner of Highway 183 and Loop 360.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor says she plays “chicken” with men while walking to empower women. “The idea of patriarchy chicken is as follows: by refusing to move out of the way to avoid collision with men going in the opposite direction, women are somehow empowering themselves.”
It might be more aptly renamed “presuming on chivalry.” But then, “feminists” do that a lot.
CENTRAL PLANNING NEVER GOES OUT OF FASHION: Wishful Thinking on Antitrust. Jonathan Clarke dismantles a progressive law professor’s plan for giving vast new economic powers to antitrust bureaucrats and judges.