The exclusion of Gabbard comes one day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) suspended her campaign, leaving the race with only one female candidate and prompting extensive soul-searching and criticism from Democratic women and media figures.
“I so wish that we had a woman president of the United States, and we came so close to doing that,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I do think there’s a certain element of misogyny.”
Former presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) omitted Gabbard entirely in her reaction to Warren’s departure, telling reporters, “Look at what’s happened. There are no women currently in this race.”
Of course, as Glenn noted on Wednesday, “racism aside, let’s be honest: They can’t allow her on that stage, or the stale geezers who remain will look even staler and more geezerish.”
THE WOODY ALLEN WITCH HUNT: In a post written before Hachette Book Group cancelled the publication of Allen’s memoirs, and then updated after the axe fell, Rod Dreher writes:
I would love to know something about the demographics of the crowd — specifically, how many of the walkout protesters are under the age of 40. The reason I ask is because for a long time now, I’ve been hearing from conservative academics that as the old-school liberals move into retirement, they are being replaced by Millennial and Gen Z academics who are Jacobins, with no respect for liberal values of free speech, free inquiry, and expression.
* * * * * * * *
So if you get on the wrong side of the woke mob, neither the fact that the accusation against you has not been proved, nor your status as one of the most important film artists of the 20th century, will help. My God.
Hachette Book Group on Friday dropped its plans to publish Woody Allen’s autobiography and said it would return all rights to the author, a day after its employees protested its deal with the filmmaker.
“The decision to cancel Mr. Allen’s book was a difficult one,” a spokeswoman for the publisher said in a statement. “We take our relationships with authors very seriously, and do not cancel books lightly. We have published and will continue to publish many challenging books. As publishers, we make sure every day in our work that different voices and conflicting points of views can be heard.”
Bulls**t. They caved to the progressive mob. Now woke 27-year-olds can push around the head of publishing houses, and determine who can and cannot be published. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Read the whole thing. Dreher goes on to link to a tweet by former Reason columnist Michael Moynihan, who notes that “Still available from Hachette Book Group: the autobiography of Joey, a ‘gripping’ account of a mafia serial killer who copped to 38 murders. You’ll be wowed by ‘the frank intelligence of’ the author!”
Frankly acknowledging this might suggest that the liberals have endorsed ideas — e.g. oxymoronic notions of “sexual liberation” — that have been deeply harmful to women, all for the sake of knocking down obstacles to political power. I wonder how much betrayal [Woody] Allen must feel now. He did his part to push a liberal sexual and political agenda, was celebrated for it, and now he’s being drummed out of polite society for enjoying the fruits of these efforts?
As Steve wrote linking to Hemingway’s piece, “I’d just add that perhaps the saddest part about Woody Allen et al. is that they never understood they’d become disposable once they were no longer useful to the cause.” Having starred in the 1976 anti-Blacklist film The Front (one of his few films strictly as an actor, not a writer-director), I wonder how Woody is taking being cancelled by his fellow leftists?
UPDATE: A high-school friend who lives in Italy now writes:
The news that I want to share is that the numbers being reported don’t seem to include those admitted to the hospital. In Italy we have (approximate numbers) tested 20,000, 4,000 confirmed, 200 deceased, 500 cured in the hospital and 600 currently in intensive care. I don’t know if anyone is in the hospital with covid19 and not in intensive care. Anyway, that’s 1300/4000 (32%) requiring hospitalization. I sure hope the US finds a way to help the uninsured (and under-insured) masses!
Well, they’ll get treated and then their bills will get written off or passed to Uncle Sam. But that’s an awful lot of people requiring hospitalization. The ratio looks awful, but that may just be a function of who’s getting tested. At least, I certainly hope so.
YES, BUT SHE WANTED TO BE MORALLY RIGHT MORE THAN SHE WANTED TO BE FACTUALLY RIGHT: Historian: I warned the 1619 Project’s author she was wrong about the Revolutionary War. The 1619 project wasn’t about being right. It wasn’t even about history. It was about pushing an anti-American narrative. It’s best understood as a psywar operation aimed at demoralizing the enemy, in this case the American people.
Warren fell apart not because of her agenda but because her utter dishonesty about her personal life eroded her credibility as policy wonk. Her decision to double-down when called on lying about her Native American ancestry, her debunked allegation that she’d been fired from a school job for being pregnant, and her false claims that her kids had never attended private schools all shattered her persona as a thought leader and ideologue. Her personal opportunism, as well, made it easier to argue that her platform was opportunistic. So when voters got to pick between Sanders’s socialism and Warren’s, the choice became very easy.
Warren’s embarrassing performance in her home-state primary — third place, behind Biden and Sanders — suggested that the public airing of her iniquities had even taken its toll with her own constituents. The relative popularity of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal in select far-left enclaves of Massachusetts did not boost her, despite her convictions on those issues and her reasonably articulate (if economically and logically lackluster) advocacy for them. Warren was able to rise to the top of the field, even when it had more talented candidates still in it, with her entire policy portfolio on the table. But once she became the most visible candidate, her penchant for lying about herself became impossible to ignore.
Getting dunked on by Pete Buttigieg over her goofy “wine bar” riff during the December Democratic presidential debate did her few favors. As Buttigieg replied, “This is the problem with issuing purity tests you yourself cannot pass.”
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