KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: 2021 Miracle — Media Finally Finds a Mob It Doesn’t Like. “The first thing I noticed while scanning the news was that virtually every conservative commenting on the situation was condemning the violence. Immediately. That stood in stark contrast to high-ranking Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media spending all last summer telling us that things were peaceful while we were staring at burning buildings.”
Archive for 2021
January 7, 2021
IT’S COME TO THIS: Women’s Fitness magazine apologizes after telling readers to ‘burn off Christmas calories.’
“I find it really sad that in 2020 you’re promoting the need to ‘burn off’ Christmas calories,” tweeted one person.
“I think that’s a very triggering and outdated message to be sharing. You’re encouraging women to work out from a place of guilt/shame which I think is very negative and dangerous.”
A consultant psychiatrist added: “Hugely concerning and problematic language. We shouldn’t be ascribing moral labels to food and exercise or encouraging people to adopt an earn and burn mentality; it’s the fall out from these damaging marketing campaigns that I see only too well in clinic.
“As a mainstream fitness magazine, why not use the opportunity to promote the positive mental and physical health benefits to be gained from going outdoors/ exercise; improved mood, better sleep, more energy etc. Disappointing.”
Others accused the publication of using “damaging” language and urged it to delete the tweet.
The magazine has now issued an apology, explaining that its intention was simply to encourage people to work out over the festive period.
Why apologize? Stick to your guns and tell the women who find the topic of exercise to be “triggering and “damaging” and “disappointing” to simply read Cosmo instead.
GOODER AND HARDER: Washington state’s ‘re-opening plan’ called ‘a roadmap to a near complete collapse’ by hospitality industry. “Inslee announced what is called ‘Healthy Washington–Roadmap to Recovery,’ but it does not actually re-open anything, but extends restrictions.”
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Closed is open.
EVEN THE W.H.O. SAYS LOCKDOWNS ARE JUSTIFIED ONLY AS A SHORT-TERM RESPONSE TO OVERLOADED HOSPITALS: University of California infectious disease specialist denounces unscientific lockdown extension.
OUT ON A LIMB: Dear Cosmo, You’ll Never Convince Us Obesity Is Healthy.
The real question should be: Why DO mainstream magazines think they can convince us that being anorexic OR obese is beautiful and healthy? It’s not, and they can’t — at least not anymore. Ever since the internet and social media allowed independent content creators to go viral without Vanity Fair’s help, simply pushing “pretty” models isn’t going to be profitable for a costly mainstream magazine anymore. They’re now competing for “pretty” with all the healthy, normal-sized independent online creators who don’t charge a subscription fee and aren’t bogged down with all the politically correct stuffiness you see in mainstream media content. And best of all, they’re authentic.
They’re competing with YouTubers and writers like me and my friends, who barely spend any money on content yet can be just as influential, if not more. One thing that was incredibly shocking to me in my time working in cable tv is just how much these established media outlets spend on things like hair, makeup, and studio sets. I couldn’t understand how they were turning any profit…unless, they were being funded top-down, which is increasingly the case for a lot of established media outlets these days.
So, being simply “entertaining” or “aesthetically pleasing” is no longer profitable for an established fashion magazine like Cosmo. Mainstream beauty magazines need to convince their audience that they are still worth reading over an independently-run website like Evie Magazine, for instance. So they’re going to remind you why you’re really choosing their magazine: not because you’re looking for beauty or entertainment, but because they are Cosmo and Cosmo is still the arbiter of how “beauty” is defined. Nobody can compete with that.
Read the whole thing. And note that it’s appearing on a Website called Evie Magazine, founded by a woman named Brittany Martinez who explained her goals in an article at Quillette in 2019: Women Needed a Magazine that Doesn’t Lie to Them. So I Started One.
For decades, magazines have sold women countless lies about sex, emotional fulfillment and health issues—usually under the guise of “empowerment.” They prey on women’s insecurities by normalizing unhealthy extremes (first it was borderline anorexia, now it’s obesity). They encourage casual sex and lie to readers about its emotional ramifications. They tell women they’ll be unhappy with a husband and kids but fulfilled working for a male boss at a big corporation. They laud celebrities who aren’t good role models, turned Hillary Clinton into an object of worship, and attack or ignore women who don’t share their views.
Millions of women—especially here in the United States, where I live and work—have been left out. They’re tired of having to go to trashy publications just to find useful reads on health and beauty. For decades, women’s publications have tried to convince women they can be just like men, instead of celebrating femininity and what makes women wonderfully unique. It was this gap in the market that made me and my colleagues wonder: “What if there were a conservative Cosmo?”
From that question, Evie Magazine was born. She’s an online publication covering health, beauty, fashion, relationships, career and culture. Her mission is to empower, educate and entertain young women with content that celebrates femininity, encourages virtue, and offers a more honest perspective than they get elsewhere. She’s Classier than Cosmo, Sexier than Refinery29, and Smarter than Bustle. Millennial women are Evie’s audience, but so are the “Gen Z” women born from the mid-1990s onward. (Do men read Evie? Sure they do—even if they might not admit it.)
Is Evie “feminist”? That depends on your definition of feminism. The reality is, modern feminism in its doctrinaire form isn’t popular. Many women realize that, at its core, progressive third-wave feminism can express itself as a form of self-hatred: a rejection of our feminine beauty, unique gifts and the natural role we play in our communities. In effect, it seeks to turn first-rate women into second-rate men. Paradoxically, this movement also is suffused with negative and condescending attitudes toward masculinity, whereas Evie readers love their men, and are thankful for the protection and sacrifice that men often have been called upon to deliver throughout history.
I don’t know if Martinez is looking for additional funding, but Evie dovetails absolutely perfectly with the topic of an 2012 article by the Professor in the New York Post headlined, “Where big GOP bucks could matter:”
For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.
For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.
This stuff writes itself, probably more easily than the Spin Sisters’ pabulum. And opening up a major beachhead in this section of the media is probably a lot cheaper than challenging major newspapers and TV networks head on.
The only losers will be the political consultants who ate up so much of the GOP’s cash this time around.
Are rich Republican donors smart enough to do something like this? Well, we’ll find out.
They haven’t yet, but 2021 would be a damn good time to start.
WHEN ARE WE GOING TO ADMIT THAT TRUMP IS UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT?: I know this isn’t going to win me any popularity contests with most Instapundit readers, but I’m here to express my opinion, not to reflect readers’, so here goes.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud that could plausibly be said to have cost Trump the election, nor even a single state. It’s true the media and big tech were overtly pro-Biden, and while that’s not good for democracy it’s also not illegal or fraudulent, and thus has no bearing on whether Biden won the election or not. And all that is why Trump’s lawyers lost every single case they brought before judges of all parties and ideologies, including a dozen or so rulings by Trump-appointed federal judges who would undoubtedly have preferred that he won.
But it’s more serious than that. Even if you accept any of the not-completely-crazy theories I’ve seen of how the election was “stolen,” at best that gets Trump to a narrow victory in the Electoral College. Yet the president continues to insist not just that he won, not just that the election was stolen, but that he won in a “landslide.”
There is no excuse for political violence, and Trump, admittedly, did not ask anyone to engage in violence. However, if you tell people that their votes didn’t count, that the election was a sham, that the election you lost wasn’t even close but in fact a landslide in your favor, it’s only natural to expect that some people will be inclined to resort to violence, because the whole point of elections is to settle political matters without violence. If the election process is a total fraud, then violence is to be expected.
Even in the face of the violence yesterday, Trump, while telling the rioters to go home, also continued to insist that he really won in a landslide, thus continuing to foment violence. He is unfit to be president. And no, that doesn’t excuse all the examples of bad behavior on the left over the past 4 years, and that bad behavior undoubtedly created an atmosphere in which violence becomes more acceptable (not least by the tacit and sometimes explicit acceptance of the mass violence last Summer). But the basic moral principle of “two wrongs don’t make a right” still applies. Sometimes if you fight fire with fire, you burn down your house.
FWEEDOM RIDER: The Secret Life of Kamala Harris. “I remember sitting in a large group at the coloring station. A few of the kids were talking about their mommies and daddies, but everyone went quiet when I started to cry. The teacher rushed over to see what was wrong. Honestly I didn’t even know. ‘She’ll be fine,’ the teacher assured my classmates. Suddenly it hit me. ‘Pwonouns,’ I blurted out between sobs. ‘Gin-doored pwonouns.’ My parents had to come pick me up. ‘What’s the matter?’ they asked, looking concerned. ‘Twans wives,’ I said, no longer crying. ‘Twans wives matter’.”
Heh™.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof decries diversity efforts as ‘performance’ of being the ‘good type’ of White people.
WHY THIS TRUMP SUPPORTER BACKS PENCE: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains his view that Vice President Mike Pence was right on the issue of his authority to accept or reject states’ electoral votes.
SO WE HAVE AN ELECTION THAT 40% OF OUR NATION THINKS WAS STOLEN. THINGS CAN’T GO ON THIS WAY. We need Florida-style reforms to make elections trustworthy. Other nations manage that, and we could too except that the people in charge haven’t wanted to. We’re now seeing the results of that fecklessness and it needs to change.
Meanwhile, does anyone think there wouldn’t have been riots if Trump had been declared the winner?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Even if you believe — as David Bernstein states above — that the election didn’t turn on fraud, you should be concerned that so many people do. It’s important, as I’ve been writing since at least 2002, that elections not only be free of fraud, but trusted by the vast majority, even among those who lose. We don’t have that, and the huge number of stories about potential election fraud that were running in mainstream media right up until election day indicates that if Trump had been declared the winner, Democrats would be running around screaming fraud. We need a system that is obviously trustworthy enough that the vast majority of people will trust it, and we certainly don’t have that. Other countries do.
UNARMED PEACEFUL PROTESTER SHOT BY POLICE: Woman shot inside US Capitol dies. “Babbitt has been identified as a 35-year-old San Diego resident who served four tours with the Air Force.”
Related: Ashli Babbitt: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.
Also: Husband pays tribute to shooting victim Ashli Babbitt.
It’s a better strategy for making martyrs, which is bad strategy indeed.
DON’T IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON: Nothing Illustrates the Madness of Our Age Quite as Well as Political Prayer Candles. “I mean, it’s not like Jesus went anywhere. He’s not on hiatus or taking a sabbatical from His role as the Messiah. He isn’t in the concussion protocol on the sideline, with some other currently alive human being stepping in as backup.”
HMM: Did Russian State Media Reveal a Mobile ICBM Cheating Program? “In September 2020, state-run RT (formerly Russia Today) published an article that appears to reveal a program for cheating with regard to the limit in the New START Treaty on deployed warheads by means of covert deployment of mobile ICBMs.”
RIOTS? THEY WERE MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS. Calls to impeach Trump, again, for ‘inciting’ Capitol riots.
ONE MILLIONTH SIGNATURE COLLECTED: Gavin Newsom Recall Effort Just Reached a Major Milestone.
AT AMAZON, Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar.
WAPO: “Trump Administration Seeks to Undo Decades-Long Rules on Discrimination.”
It’s not clear from the article, but it appears the Trump Administration is (finally) trying to rein in disparate impact liability under Title VI. Disparate impact liability has always been a scandal. It is liability not for discrimination at all. Rather, it makes just about everything a recipient of federal funds can do presumptively illegal, regardless of whether it is motivated by race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. The Supreme Court determined long ago that Title VI (as opposed to Title VII) does NOT impose liability for disparate impact. But that hasn’t stopped the federal bureaucracy from taking the the (erroneous) position that Title VI regulations can and do impose disparate impact liability even if Title VI itself doesn’t. You can read why the bureaucracy is dead wrong in my school discipline article.
Alas, if this 11th hour action by the Trump Administration is what I think it is, it can be rather easily repealed by the Biden Administration.
DECOUPLING: The NYSE will delist three Chinese telecoms after all. “In today’s announcement, the NYSE said it’s making the decision after receiving ‘new specific guidance’ confirming that yes, the executive order does apply to China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.”
Related: U.S. Officials Weigh Adding Alibaba, Tencent to Investment Ban.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma could not be reached for comment.
AND THE BEARDS HAVE ALL GROWN LONGER OVERNIGHT: Same Vox writer who said riots could lead to serious social reforms also wants all the Capitol rioters arrested.
I PREDICT A SUDDEN INCREASE OF INTEREST IN LAW AND ORDER: They really are ‘defunding’ the police, and it’s not going well.
HERE WE GO AGAIN: With 2021 Still Young, We Already Have Trouble from Tehran.
Iran wasted no time setting a terrible tone for its 2021 foreign policy this week, making it clear that Tehran remains firmly committed to expanding its nuclear program and defeating U.S. sanctions.
First, its paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy seized a South Korean-flagged chemical tanker sailing the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, reportedly for maritime pollution violations, according to Tehran. The tanker and crew are being held in Iran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards repeatedly have seized ships in international waters off Iran’s coast as a means of taking hostages to use as bargaining leverage in disputes with foreign countries or companies.
The pollution charges furnish a convenient pretext for a not-so-veiled attempt to squeeze Seoul to release some of the $7 billion in Iranian assets frozen in South Korea by U.S. sanctions. The fact that the ship hijacking occurred shortly before the upcoming visit to Tehran of South Korea’s deputy foreign minister is no coincidence.
It gets worse.
They probably be rewarded handsomely for bad behavior under a Biden Administration.