SPENGLER: Mediocrity’s Envy of Genius: The Dirty Secret of Cancel Culture.

The Cultural Revolutionaries at the New York Times this week reviewed the witch hunt against classical musicians, who stand accused of racism simply because the great Western composers happened to be white. Cancel culture is despicable in all of its manifestations, but I take this particular instance personally: I trained in the school of musical analysis founded by Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). My principle teacher was Carl Schachter, who also taught Prof. Timothy Jackson of the University of North Texas, the target of this particular witch hunt.

It’s all about envy.

Read the whole thing. As Kevin Williamson wrote in his 2019 book, The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics, “David Foster Wallace argued that aspiring amateurs who envy professional athletes suffer from the ‘delusion that envy has a reciprocal.’ They believe that if only they could get themselves on the other side of the envy equation, then all of the loneliness and dissatisfaction they feel in their current situation of envy would be transubstantiated into joy and contentedness equal in weight and scope. Envy and spite are two cocktails with a heavy pour of the same brand of hatred—and both are methods for trying to make that interior pain exterior.”

CUOMO DIDN’T DO ANYTHING A BUNCH OF DEMOCRAT GOVERNORS DIDN’T DO: “Cuomo’s actions were hideous, but they were far from unique. The only reason to investigate Cuomo, but not his Democrat peers would be that his coverup was especially ugly and clumsy. But nailing a few Cuomo associates for obstructing an investigation while shrugging at the thousands of deaths would be an outrage and typical of the broken system.”

SOMEHOW THIS REMINDS ME OF THE STATE OF JOURNALISM TODAY: These Cockroaches Start Eating Each Other After Sex, And Not Because They’re Hungry. “In such cramped quarters, their wings are probably not all that useful. . . . Removing each others’ wings could therefore be the most loving act for roaches of this kind.”

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, TAKE MY ADVICE. TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS, AND BIKE ON THE ICE: Watch: This guy replaced his bike wheels with circular saws so he could ride on a frozen lake.

BRYAN PRESTON: Did Frozen Wind Turbines Impact the Texas Freeze? Here’s the Data.

JIM TREACHER: Baltimore Activist Wants to Pay Criminals Not to Kill People. “I like this idea, obviously. You can catch more flies with a carrot than a stick, or something. But why rely on the government to do it? It should be privatized. It’s up to each of us to make the world a safer place. Here’s what I suggest: Go around your neighborhood and remind everybody that it’s a nice place and it would be a shame if something… happened to it. You never know when somebody’s gonna get shot, do ya? But for a very reasonable price of $1,000 a month, you’ll agree not to shoot anybody. Is that really too much to pay to ensure your family’s safety? Who could refuse such an offer?”

Heh, indeed.™

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Donations ‘Requested’ by Newsom Exploded as His Emergency Powers Ballooned: Big businesses gave millions to Newsom’s initiatives and were rewarded handsomely.

WOKE STUPIDITY COMES TO AUSTRALIA: Governor General’s staff to be asked to do woke ‘privilege walk’ so they can identify how entitled they are while being asked bizarre questions like ‘were your parents ever addicted to drugs?’

Proper response: “I’m entitled not to be subjected to this idiocy.”

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM AND SEXISM? Was 60 Minutes TV’s Most Toxic Workplace?

[Ira Rosen, the author of Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at ‘60 Minutes,’] also writes that Wallace regularly peppered colleagues with questions about their sex lives; lashed out at them for no good reason; grabbed the bottoms and breasts of women who worked in the office; pulled them onto his lap; and snapped bra straps.

“The verbal harassment I experienced from Mike Wallace and other TV big shots was, in a word, criminal,” Rosen writes. He says he stuck it out for so long “in part out of fear, but mostly out of ambition.”

It is depressing to think that a “60 Minutes”-worthy story — on the ingrained culture of harassment at a cultural institution — took place at the nation’s most prestigious and most popular TV newsmagazine. The writer Sally Quinn ventured into this territory in “We’re Going to Make You a Star,” a 1975 memoir about her stint at CBS News. She wrote that Hewitt tried to sabotage her after she said no to his advances. (The reviews were vicious.)

In a 1991 article for Rolling Stone, the journalist Mark Hertsgaard reported that Hewitt and Wallace routinely harassed women in the workplace. In 2017, “60 Minutes” tried to obscure its past. Richard Zoglin, a biographer, was hired by Simon & Schuster, a publisher then owned by the CBS Corporation, to write a book on the show’s history in time for its 50th anniversary. After he started asking about the treatment of women on staff, he was replaced by a new author: Jeff Fager, who had succeeded Hewitt as the show’s top producer.

Rosen does not go into the book fiasco but does note that CBS fired Charlie Rose, a “60 Minutes” correspondent and a co-anchor of “CBS This Morning,” after a number of women had accused him of sexual harassment. He also includes the 2018 firing of Fager, whose career ended after he sent a threatening text message to a CBS reporter who was preparing a “CBS Evening News” segment that dealt with allegations of sexual harassment against Fager himself. (The problem went to the very top: The CBS Corporation also fired the company’s chief executive, Leslie Moonves, after a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault.)

The above New York Times review doesn’t mention if this infamous moment in Mike Wallace’s career appears in Rosen’s book. As described by the late Roger Ailes, someone else who understood the blending of theater and journalism even more than Hewitt and Wallace:

Recognize that any time you are in the presence of a newsperson, the conversation is fair game for the record. Jimmy Carter’s famous confession that he sometimes had lust in his heart for women other than his wife was uttered to a Playboy magazine journalist as he was leaving Carter’s home at the conclusion of the formal interview. Even Mike Wallace, big-game hunter of the unguarded moment, got caught in this snare. As recounted on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal by TV critic Daniel Henninger in March of 1981, Wallace:

was interviewing a banker in San Diego about an alleged home improvement fraud involving mainly black and Hispanics, who supposedly had signed contract they couldn’t understand, which led to foreclosures on their home mortgages.The bank hired a film crew of its own to record the interview with Mr. Wallace. The bank apparently left its recorder running during a break in the CBS interview, and the tape has Mr. Wallace saying, in reply to a question about why the black and Hispanic customers would have signed their contracts, “They’re probably too busy eating their watermelon and tacos.”

When the Los Angeles Times got wind of this indiscretion and reported it, there was at least a minor uproar from reporters and others about Wallace’s “racially disparaging joke”. Wallace ultimately pleaded “no bias”, admitting that over time he’d privately told jokes about many ethnic groups but that his record “speaks for itself”. Henninger added, “Needless to say, this has to be the most deliciously lip-smacking bit of irony to pop out of the oven in a long time. Here we have the dogcatcher cornered. The lepidopterist pinned. The preacher in flagrante delicto. This is the fellow who has imputed all manner of crimes against social goodness to a long lineup of businessmen and bureaucrats. From here on out, all future victims of Mr. Wallace can take some small comfort in knowing that although they may stand exposed as goof-offs, thieves and polluters, he’s the guy who made the crack about the watermelons and tacos.”

Eventually, as the cost of the equipment Wallace used for his stings became affordable to all, James O’Keefe and others on the right would begin to employ the same investigative techniques that 60 Minutes pioneered, only aimed at Wallace’s fellow leftists. As I wrote in 2011: Investigative Journalism: It’s All Fun and Games until the MSM Gets Stung.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Time to End Hostile Powers’ Influence Operations at American Universities.

LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT CHECKERS AND EDITORS: New York Times suggests that The Rush Limbaugh Show’s Bo Snerdley might not even exist. The Gray Lady “is erasing the black man who worked with Rush Limbaugh.”

To be fair, there are fewer and fewer layers each day: Getting the Hell Out of Dodge.

NASA’S PERSEVERANCE ROVER LANDS ON MARS.

Hopefully no one in mission control is wearing a problematic shirt.

SOUNDS LIKE GOOD MARKETING! He started a covid-19 vaccine company. Then he hosted a superspreader event.

BRUCE CARROLL: S.C. Democrats Throw Tantrum as Fetal Heartbeat Bill Passes State House.

DAVID MARCUS: The Reform Party Roots Of The New GOP Are Its Future. “Republican voters will not go back to the neoliberal GOP of the past 30 years, and if that means losing some elections, it means losing some elections.”

“Trumpism,” for lack of a better word, is a fusion between conservatives tired of the do-nothing GOP Establishment, and blue-collar Americans without a home in the newly Woke Democrat party.

It can be a powerful combination, and it’s here to stay.

GOYA’S DECEMBER EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Daily Beast Editor Accuses Tucker Of Adding Googly Eyes To AOC, Turns Out It’s Just Her Face.

KIA AND HYUNDIA/GENESIS ARE BECOMING A REAL THREAT TO MERCEDES, AUDI, ETC.: Kia K8 Is an Elegant-Looking Large Sedan.

THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN TEXAS: Texas Electric Reliability Council Removes Board Members From Website as Their Residencies Are Questioned. “About a third of its members don’t even live in Texas.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School Board Mocks Parents Who Support Reopening: ‘They Want Their Babysitters Back.’

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): One thing we’ve learned from the pandemic: Not only are public school teachers not essential workers, they don’t even regard themselves as essential workers.

LIVE IN FIVE… FOUR… THREE… ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: New ACLU Head Has a Civil Rights Problem Back Home. “The American Civil Liberties Union’s new president, Deborah Archer, is a faculty member at New York University’s law school, where she runs its civil rights clinic. But NYU Law has its own civil rights problem, which is why I filed a Title IX complaint against NYU.”

UNEXPECTEDLY! Biden Open To Considering Reparations Depending On Progress Congress Makes On Study.

Racial reparations is a widely unpopular proposal in the United States which, even immediately following the racially charged death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only 20 percent of Americans supported.

Psaki made the remarks during an exchange with a reporter who brought up that Biden said during his campaign that he supported a study for reparations. “Does the President support the legislation?” the reporter asked. “He stopped short of saying that during the campaign. Would he sign that if it came to his desk?”

“Well, he’s supported a study of reparations, which is I believe is what’s being discussed, and studying the continuing impacts of slavery, which is being discussed in this hearing on H.R. 40, I believe it is,” Psaki responded. “And he continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today. Obviously, that is — having that study is a part of that, but he has signed an executive order on his first day, which would begin to deliver on his commitment to having an across-government approach to addressing racial inequality and making sure equity is a part of his entire policy agenda.”

I’ve noticed in recent weeks that Democrats have been using “equity” where they usually use “equality.”

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT INSTEAD OF WINNING WARS:

A WORTHY CAUSE: Donate Ammunition for the FASTER Program.

Independence Institute’s FASTER (Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response) program trains armed school staffers to stop school violence quickly and administer medical aid immediately.

In order to maintain their certification, these staffers need to meet annual training requirements, and in order to do so, they need ammunition. In fact, depending on the level, FASTER classes require between 500-800 rounds of ammunition for each class member.

Economic uncertainty and the real threat of anti-gun action by the federal and state government has made ammunition scarce and unaffordable.

So, we are asking for your help to give ammunition via a first-of-its-kind Ammo Drive. Our goal is 50,000 rounds—enough to get us through the 2021 FASTER Colorado training season.

Details on how to give at the link.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The Texas energy blame game.

Speaking of which: Andrew Cuomo’s brother Chris Cuomo shames Ted Cruz for not being ‘present and responsive’ during a crisis.