PUTTING THE TOTAL IN TOTALITARIANISM: Nothing escapes the Sauronic eye of the cancellation squad, which is now after U. of North Texas professor Timothy Jackson for writing an article in the music theory Journal of Schenkerian Studies that was skeptical of a fellow prof’s allegation that there is a “‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” And like clockwork, Dean John W. Richmond of UNT’s College of Music has announced an investigation into Jackson.
Archive for 2020
July 31, 2020
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF “THIS IS CNN” AND THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: CNN Redefines Women As ‘Individuals With A Cervix.’
A TALE OF TWO TWITTERS:
Shot: Twitter finally bans ex-KKK grand wizard David Duke.
—The New York Post, today.
—Fox Business, yesterday.
WHY NOT TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SERIOUS NEWS FOR A FEW MINUTES? Florida Man Friday: $300,000 Lamborghini Bought with Stolen Stimulus Money.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Mastering Small Self-Defense Guns.
EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Taxpayers Not Funding Abortion Overseas Is ‘Racism,’ Now?
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING:
● Boss From Hell! Ellen DeGeneres Treats Her Talk Show Staff Like ‘Peasants!’
Fortunately though: Ellen DeGeneres Addresses Toxic Workplace Allegations in Letter to Staff: “I Promise to Do My Part.”
In her letter, DeGeneres notes that her show has changed since she first launched it 17 years ago, and she vows to fix the issues that have been building up over time. “On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness – no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect,” she wrote. “Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry. Anyone who knows me knows it’s the opposite of what I believe and what I hoped for our show.”
When does DeGeneres do a Weinstein-style pivot to take on the NRA and Donald Trump?
GLOBAL COOLING IS MUCH WORSE THAN GLOBAL WARMING: Rapid Loss of Sunlight Could Have Unleashed Snowball Earth Events in The Past.
‘A WIN FOR SANITY:’ Trader Joe’s Now Denies Being Racist. “Trader Joe’s panicked because somebody put up a silly petition calling them racists because they label their burritos ‘Trader Jose’s.’ Actual Trader Joe’s customers, the people who keep the store in business, let them know how crazy it was to give in to such ludicrous demands. Now the company has decided to just keep doing what they’re doing. Good for them.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Less stress, better grades: With schools closed, some kids thrive.
“I was worried about the distractions of being home with my mom and my sister and doing extra chores,” Natalie said. “But then things changed.”
Things changed, too, for Marcos Adame, whose grades improved because he could spend more time on problematic subjects. They changed for Sebastian Hernandez, 15, who has more energy, and for 10-year-old Jacob Lalin, who discovered he could mix schoolwork with Lego.
At a time when many of their peers struggle with isolation, uneven online teaching or lack of access to computers, a fraction of students have discovered that distance learning can offer a unique kind of relief — and they have thrived. . . .
“There are intrinsic characteristics that may allow a child to thrive more under the current circumstances,” she said. Children who are introverted or those “who process information internally and gain energy from time and space for introspection” would likely fare well.
Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Austin Beutner agreed that some students, especially adolescents navigating middle school, have excelled at home, away from the pressures of school and a strict routine. He praised Natalie’s school, the Harry Bridges Span School in Wilmington, as an example of one doing “extraordinary work” with online learning.
“Actually, we’ve heard from middle-schoolers; some students who felt they’d been bullied or were having trouble socially in the melting pot that’s middle school are actually liking a little bit of space and enjoying study more,” Beutner said. “And so there are some for whom being in this environment has actually benefited. We’ve heard all kinds of anecdotes.”
Natalie said she felt more relaxed despite what she considered an increased workload. She ate healthier, slept longer, rushed less. She spent more time on projects and stayed connected with friends through texts.
Note the beneficial effect of extra sleep, mentioned by many in this story. Sleep deprivation is a major and destructive side effect of schools.
If only someone had thought about this stuff before.
MORE ABOUT THE WASHINGTON POST’S NEWSROOM APPARATCHIKS: Hans Bader sees a major step in the “debasement of journalism.”
INDEED: Vandalism Is Violence: Destructive Riots Are Not ‘Just Property Damage.’ “Property rights are human rights, and we discard them at our own peril.”
MR. JONES AND THE DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF SHODDY JOURNALISM:
Stalin was undoubtedly the general leading this crime against humanity, but he had lieutenants. And not all were Russian. Foremost among them was Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard), the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Man in Moscow.” Duranty was fond of saying the Soviet experiment required sacrifice — omelets and broken eggs and all that — and spent his decades-long career lying to the people of the United States about the extent of Soviet atrocities in Ukraine and elsewhere.
“Mr. Jones” is, in many ways, a film about Duranty; indeed, Holland and writer Andrea Chalupa seem uncertain that we can understand his story without reference to other, more famous writers from the era. Holland and Chalupa suggest in “Mr. Jones” that George Orwell’s (Joseph Mawle) “Animal Farm” was inspired by Jones’s work, and the movie is, for some strange reason, framed around Orwell’s writing of that modern fable. This is the movie’s one misstep, a suggestion that the audience cannot comprehend the horrors they’re about to witness without a reference point from middle school.
Duranty comes in for a beating — justifiably portrayed as a hack and an apparatchik for a loathsome regime; shown living in a literal den of iniquity, hosting drug-addled orgies to gather blackmail material for his friend Stalin — and for good reason: It’s high time this tool of genocide got his comeuppance onscreen.
Read the whole thing.
Earlier: Me and Mr. Jones: A New Film Exposes one of the Oldest Deceits of the New York Times.
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? NASA Detects 5 Asteroids Flying Past Earth This Week.
THINK OF THE PRESS AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Germany’s economy fared worse than the US economy, but Trump-hating journalists are mangling numbers to convince you otherwise.
I BLAME THE SCAREMONGERING MEDIA: Man fires ‘warning shots’ in Miami hotel lobby after telling guests ‘you all aren’t social distancing.’