Archive for 2020
January 10, 2020
IT WOULD BE COOL IF IT WAS ON THE EXACT OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE SUN: NASA Satellite Discovers ‘Second Earth.’
Update (From Ed): All is proceeding as Gerry Anderson has foreseen.
ZHOU ENLAI GETS HIS ANSWER: As Jonah Goldberg writes, Gabriel Matzneff Flap is a Cautionary Tale for Cultural Aristocrats:
Matzneff, now 83, spent decades as a French literary darling. His work was supported by leading newspapers and literary publications. He’d appear on highbrow TV shows where he’d regale interviewers and audiences with the sublime pleasures of having sex with children in France and on sex tours of southeast Asia.
His overdue comeuppance is the result of a memoir by one of his victims, Vanessa Springora, who was seduced by a then-50-something Matzneff when she was 14.
“He was not a good man,” Springora writes. “He was in fact what we’re taught to dread since childhood: an ogre.”
In his book Under 16 Years Old, Matzneff writes, “To sleep with a child, it’s a holy experience, a baptismal event, a sacred adventure.” The book was first published in 1974 but was republished, apparently with no controversy, in 2005. In 2013, Metznaff received a major French literary prize.
How could a country that prides itself on being so enlightened celebrate an ogre? After all, we’re not talking about a Jeffrey Epstein, as horrible as he was. The well-connected billionaire spent vast sums to keep his sexual abuses at least somewhat secret. Matzneff not only confessed to his crimes, his confessions were celebrated as literary contributions.
The answer stems in part from the fact that Matzneff was a “Child of ’68” — i.e., a product of the left-wing “May 68” movement that shook France in the 1960s. These radicals subscribed to the idea that anything smacking of traditionalism or bourgeois morality was backward. Conventional sexual morality was part of the same rotten edifice as imperialism and racism. True liberation meant freedom not just from, say, capitalism, but also from the old-fashioned view that sex with kids was wrong. “It’s forbidden to forbid” was a rallying cry.
Much more from Rod Dreher, who quotes from “An American writer who lives in France, and is married to a French woman, tweeted about this story, ‘what my wife tried to explain to me about the crazy era in france producing the idea that children should be “liberated” to have sex with adults, was that the people arguing for this were the *wokest of the woke*. Sartre, Foucault, et al believed they were being *progressive*.’ and notes how such thinking filtered its way into everything from “the Catholic Church in Belgium [which] sponsored a working group to try to destigmatize pedophilia in society,” to rock stars in the ‘70s and ‘80s, to Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan (his last big hit in America for years), to today’s child drag queens:
I wrote here about Desmond Is Amazing, the New York 11 year old who has become the toast of the town, appearing on mainstream shows like Good Morning America and Today to spread the “inspiring” and “trailblazing” (seriously, their words) news of the sexualization of children for the cause of LGBT liberation. Progressive allies shriek that there’s nothing sexual about child drag queens, that it’s only about expressing femininity. I think some of them actually believe that b.s. That image above, with which I lead this column, is taken from Desmond’s Instagram feed. It is an image of him dancing for money at a Brooklyn gay bar. Yeah, you tell me that this is not about sexualizing little boys.
I want you to think about how those gatekeepers of mainstream cultural respectability, the network morning shows, are normalizing this filth as a sign of one’s progressive bona fides. Today and Good Morning America are shilling for the sexualization of children, and calling it progress. Is it really all that hard to see how French culture went berserk about child sexual exploitation from 1968 until pretty much today? And how we Americans, while not as extreme, have our own shame on that front?
Read the whole thing. In 1972, during his meeting with President Nixon, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was famously misquoted that he thought that it was “Too early to say” what the results of the French Revolution of 1789 were. According to W. Joseph Campbell at his Media Myth Alert blog, Zhou thought he was being asked about the 1968 revolution in France. That answer is now in.
NBC REPORTS THIS AS THOUGH IT’S A GOOD THING: Sweden’s environmental education is building a generation of Greta Thunbergs. “We tried to create green revolutionaries, make them think in a specific way.”
Lenin: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”
I’M SURE THIS IS TRUMP’S FAULT BECAUSE REASONS: Puerto Rico earthquake: Two-thirds of island still without power.
DECOUPLING: China’s manufacturing exodus set to continue in 2020, despite prospect of trade war deal. “China’s rising costs, tricky regulations and increasingly unstable geopolitical situation are forcing more manufacturers to move production elsewhere.”
Those are mostly self-inflicted wounds.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: ITV’s Dancing on Ice debut beats Doctor Who episode 2 in ratings battle.
(Via Peter Ingemi of DaTechGuy blog.)
SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN. I DON’T THINK THAT I CAN TAKE IT. ‘CAUSE IT TOOK SO LONG TO BAKE IT. AND I’LL NEVER HAVE THAT RECIPE AGAIN: Marianne Williamson Drops Out of 2020 Presidential Race.
Flashbacks: After the Democrats’ presidential debate in July, the Babylon Bee, America’s Newspaper of Record quipped, “Marianne Williamson Not Sure What She’s Doing Up Here With All These Crazy People.”
And from Twitchy in early July: Hot-hot Marianne Williamson endorses Jim Treacher’s piece on why she’ll be our next president.
Sadly, it was not to be. As Stephen Miller tweets, “You’re going to miss Auntie and her boxes of wine and Virginia Slims. You may not know it yet, but you’re going to miss her. Mark it,” adding, “With Marianne Williamson dropping out, that leaves Elizabeth Warren as the last Shaman in the race.”
WINNING: Dow crosses 29,000 for first time. “All three of the major averages hit record highs.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Obligatory: PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT 2016: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
WE CAN HOPE: Cracks in the Concrete: Is PC Culture in Danger of Extinction? Besides, its chief function was to get Trump elected and reelected. Once that’s done, what’s the point? . . .
ZERO FORESTER ULTIMATE CUSTOMIZED KIT SPECIALS GIVEN BY SUBARU: New edition of Subaru Forester comes with NSFW initials.
HE WAS A VERY BAD MAN IN NEED OF KILLING AND I’M GLAD HE’S DEAD: Trump Just Dropped a Bombshell in His Ohio Rally Speech, Revealing Soliemani’s Other Planned Targets.
DEMOCRATS ON SOLEIMANI’S DEATH: “HE WAS A MURDERER AND TERRORIST — BUT“ (Video):
STOP, OR I WON’T EVEN SAY STOP AGAIN: Atlanta PD Will No Longer Chase Criminals if They Flee From Cops.
(Classical reference in the headline.)
COVER-UP: Iran is using bulldozers at the Ukrainian plane crash site, which could make it impossible to prove what happened. It’s almost like they don’t want anyone to know.
IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: 800,000 years ago, a meteor slammed into Earth. Scientists just found the crater.
HE’S NOT WRONG: Prof calls college a ‘racket,’ blasts diversity hires. But then, it’s Walter Williams, who is seldom wrong.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. American Self-Criticism Borders on Narcissism: Many on the left forget that not everything in the Middle East is about the United States. To be fair, most lefty politics at least borders on narcissism.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: NASA, SpaceX prepare for Falcon 9 rocket to explode over the Atlantic.
If you’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, perhaps it’s no surprise you have to blow up a few space vehicles to get to space. SpaceX and NASA are preparing for the latest trial of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the in-flight abort test is likely going to lead to the destruction of a Falcon 9 rocket in the process.
That test has been pushed back a week, to Jan. 18, to allow “additional time for spacecraft processing,” NASA said Monday. The goal of the test is to demonstrate the Dragon’s emergency escape system before NASA gives the final thumbs-up for the craft to begin ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew program.
I wonder if Elon Musk has some big, showy surprise planned for the test.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: To Stop Spread of Hateful Messages, Iowa State University Restricted Sidewalk Chalk.
They talk about “hate speech,” but that’s constitutionally protected too. I think they’re really worried about a 2020 version of The Chalkening. Flashback: “It began at Emory University, but has quickly spread across the country like a calcium carbonate plague. #TheChalkening has now terrorized college students from the University of Michigan to Arizona State, with temporary, hand-scrawled messages of support for Donald Trump on public sidewalks and stairways. While various campuses have dealt with the scourge in different ways—some creating safe spaces for the triggered teens, some encouraging the free exercise of ideas in temporary outdoor media—one school, DePaul University in Chicago, is turning to extreme measures. They’re banning chalk. Or, at least, they’re banning the use of chalk. Whether the campus intends on performing door-to-door dorm searches for paraphernalia remains to be seen.”
More here.
ECONOMY ADDS 145,000 JOBS. “The department said the unemployment rate remained at 3.5 percent, or 5.8 million persons, which is the lowest level in 50 years.”