Archive for 2019

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.”

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.

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.

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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.

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 econom