Archive for 2019
April 7, 2019
THE DEEP STATE PROTECTS ITS OWN: Ukrainian to US prosecutors: Why don’t you want our evidence on Democrats?
AND THE ANSWER IS NONE. NONE MORE WOKE. New Gillette Ad Celebrates Obesity.
Flashback: Meet the “woke” feminist behind that Gillette ad (video).
WELL, SOMEBODY NEEDS TO: Judicial Watch rightly puts the screws to Justice and the FBI. “That we’re being stonewalled suggests that someone has something to hide.”
A PINCH OF JEALOUSY: Sulzbergers Whimper That Murdochs Took Their Global Lunch and Ate It.
Or as the famous line usually attributed to the late Charles Krauthammer goes: Rupert Murdoch identified a small but under-served niche market in America — half the country.
SUZANNE VENKER: If you want your relationship to last, become a ‘satisficer.’
THE MOST DISTURBING THING ABOUT JOE BIDEN:
For many years, he described the driver of the truck that struck and killed his first wife and their daughter in December 1972 as drunk, which he apparently was not. The tale could hardly be more tragic; why add in a baseless charge? The family of the truck driver has labored to correct the record, but Biden made the reference to drunkenness as recently as 2007, needlessly resurrecting a false and painful accusation.
This is truly disturbing. But by our current standards, hair-sniffing rates condemnation, while the false accusation of an innocent dead man, and the embellishment of a personal tragedy — could the Biden tragedy be more tragic? — are forgotten and/or ignored.
This says so much more about Biden the man than any too-close shoulder grasp ever could. It also says plenty about the contrition junkies who influence America’s news cycle, and, as Jim Geraghty pointed out recently, about the media who for many years had dutifully served as Joe Biden’s reputational bodyguard.
Read the whole thing.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Retired Emory Law Prof Asks ABA To Censure Law School For Suspending Law Prof Over Use Of ‘N-Bomb.’
In defending suspended Emory law professor Paul Zwier, professor emeritus William Carney asked that the university be disciplined after he said the law school and university administrators punished the law professor—and violated his academic freedom—for using a racial epithet in a context that was neither gratuitous nor directed at an individual as a slur.
Carney also included lengthy exhibits with his letter documenting Zwier’s own account of how he used the slur in a torts class while discussing an offensive battery civil case. The professor later used a variation of the slur in a private conversation with a black student, who had called for his resignation, during which Zwier shared that he had been called a “n—-r lover” when he was young because of his parents’ support for civil rights, Carney’s letter said. …
In calling for Emory to be put on academic probation, Carney noted that, when the law school dean sent an open letter to the Emory law community last August condemning Zwier and later suspended him, “There was no discussion of the context or teaching purpose of the use of the word.” “It is clear that Professor Zwier used the ‘N word’ in a teaching context, discussing how cultural changes have made the use of certain words potentially actionable without physical context,” Carney said.
Carney also cited ABA standards that “vigorously protect” academic freedom in the classroom and AAUP standards that similarly extend First Amendment protections to potentially offensive speech if it is germane to the subject matter being taught. “Professor Zwier’s use of language falls squarely within that standard,” Carney said.
The biggest reason for our current reign of woke terror is that administrators are spineless and bow to the mob at the least sign of trouble. Perhaps some genuine consequences will stiffen their spines.
GEORGE KORDA IS ASKING TOUGH QUESTIONS: Is there a race problem at the University of Tennessee?
The University of Tennessee’s leadership owes citizens an answer to this question: Is there a race relations problem at the state’s flagship university?
The reactions of Wayne Davis, University of Tennessee-Knoxville chancellor, and Randy Boyd, interim UT system president, cannot possibly be motivated by the “blackface” incident in which two young white men were photographed with a black substance on their faces. The photo, with an unambiguously racially-charged caption, appeared for a period of time on a social media platform before being taken down.
Was the individual who wrote the caption racist, drunk, stupidly thinking they were being clever, or some combination thereof? There seems to be no intense interest in finding out why. The focus is on what’s to be done about it.
Twice in 2018 a swastika was painted on the Rock at UT. No one knows whether it was a true act of hate, an anti-Nazi trying to stir controversy, or a drunken prank. Nevertheless, these are anecdotal incidents in the context of the entire, massive university community made up of approximately 29,000 students and nearly 5,000 faculty and staff.
Nevertheless, after the latest incident, Chancellor Davis swung into action. As the News Sentinel reported on March 6, “immediate and ongoing” bias and sensitivity training will be put in place for faculty, staff, and administration, beginning with executive administration. “Student training” will begin in summer orientation and incorporated into First-Year Studies classes. . . .
The same Tennessean story’s second paragraph said, “The idea comes after an incident where two people, believed to be University of Tennessee-Knoxville students, appeared to wear blackface in a Snapchat image with a racist caption.”
Believed to be? Two individuals, weeks after the incident, were still “believed to be” students? And in response, all 29,000 UT-Knoxville students, as well as faculty and administrators, and perhaps nearly 200,000 pre-college students, are being funneled into training programs to ensure … what?
Well if there’s not a race problem, we’re wasting a lot of money on administrators and programs, so of course there is.
YOU UNLOCK THIS DOOR WITH THE KEY OF IMAGINATION. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into…the Saturday Open Thread.
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR ALL OVER AGAIN: $840M in gold bars prepared for loading onto Russian jet at Venezuelan airport: report.
SECESSION IS SUCH AN UGLY WORD. LET’S CALL IT CONSTITUTIONAL UNCOUPLING. New York bill proposes splitting Empire State into three districts. I’m quoted.
OF ALL THE PEOPLE I WOULDN’T HAVE EXPECTED TO UNDERSTAND STUFF IN THIS ERA, BRET EASTON ELLIS WOULD HAVE BEEN HIGH ON THE LIST: Bret Easton Ellis: Why liberal lunatics are deeply wrong about Kanye West.
JUST NBC THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES: How Rachel Maddow Turned Into Infowars.