THE ONLY BLACK LIVES THAT MATTER TO BLACK LIVES MATTER ARE THE ONES WHO CAN WRITE BIG CHECKS TO BLACK LIVES MATTER: Black Lives Matter Believes Jussie Smollett, ‘We Can Never Believe Police.’
Meanwhile: 81% of Black Americans Don’t Want Less Police Presence Despite Protests—Some Want More Cops.
SHOCKER: Social media clout doesn’t translate into book sales.
A book by Billie Eilish seemed like a great bet. One of the most famous pop stars in the world, Ms. Eilish has 97 million followers on Instagram and another 6 million on Twitter. If just a fraction of them bought her book, it would be a hit.
But her self-titled book has sold about 64,000 hardcover copies since it came out in May, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks most printed books sold in the United States — not necessarily a disappointing number, unless Ms. Eilish got a big advance. Which, of course, she did. The book cost her publisher well over $1 million. . . .
An author’s following has become a standard part of the equation when publishers are deciding whether to acquire a book. Followings can affect who gets a book deal and how big an advance that author is paid, especially when it comes to nonfiction. But despite their importance, they are increasingly seen as unpredictable gauges of how well a book is actually going to sell. Even having one of the biggest social-media followings in the world is not a guarantee.
Here’s the thing: Social media doesn’t have a lot of effect on the rest of the world. Facebook drives some traffic to sites, but in my experience not as much as it used to. Twitter never drove traffic. Instagram is designed not to drive traffic. Other sites like Tik Tok or Yik Yak aren’t any better. The thing about walled gardens is, the walls keep people in, and looking inward. Social media also cultivates an expectation for instant gratification, which books don’t offer.
ED WEST: The unbearable whiteness of being an academic. “Why are so many white people claiming to be black or indigenous?”
Until recently, Carrie Bourassa had been a woman to inspire all. An indigenous member of the Métis Nation who had overcome poverty and racism to scale the heights of academia in Canada, she was a scientific director for indigenous peoples’ health at a leading scientific institute and described as ‘a selfless leader and a tireless champion for all Indigenous peoples in this country’. She had also edited a book on indigenous parenting; all in all, the type of person you expect to see in pious public sector celebrations of women put out by the BBC.
On one occasion Bourassa had delivered a TEDx Talk at the University of Saskatchewan ‘with a feather in her hand and a bright blue shawl and Métis sash draped over her shoulders’. Calling herself Morning Star Bear, she had tearfully told the audience: ‘I’m just going to say it — I’m emotional…. I’m Bear Clan. I’m Anishinaabe Métis from Treaty Four Territory,’ and went on explain how she had grown up experiencing racism, violence and addiction in the community. Bourassa had in articles and talks opened up about the difficulties of being raised by her Métis grandfather and facing the ‘intergenerational trauma’ of her people. It was a story that seemed to push all the right buttons – which was perhaps the problem.
But then some serious allegations came to light casting doubt on Morning Star Bear’s fitness for office: Bourassa, it turned out, was white. Her forebears were all Russian, Czech and Polish farmers, who while the Metis struggled with the arrival of the Europeans were back in Tsarist Russia, living lives of unbridled white privilege as agricultural workers.
Read the whole thing.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
Some of its shakier proponents fell in love with fine trouser creases over substance. As did others who knew better, but hated missing out on all the best cocktail parties on both ends of the Northeast Corridor. Not to mention, the green room at MSNBC.
CORN, POPPED: CNN and Chris Cuomo Are on the Brink of All-Out War. “Despite the decisiveness of CNN’s actions following last week’s revelations, there are hints that the fireworks may only just be getting started. On Monday afternoon, the New York Post reported that Cuomo was ‘preparing to file [a] lawsuiT’ — reportedly to the tune of at least $18 million — ‘over the remainder of the four-year contract he signed last year.’ Sources on both sides told me they were caught off guard by the Post item, but Puck’s Matthew Belloni later reported that Cuomo had lawyered up with Bryan Freedman, who helped handle Megyn Kelly’s NBC exit, and that CNN was working with Daniel Petrocelli, who successfully battled the Trump administration when it attempted to scuttle a merger between AT&T and CNN’s parent company. Zucker reportedly told staff Tuesday that Cuomo did not receive severance.”
‘Tis a pity that can’t both lose.
HOW’S THAT “PERMANENT DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY” COMING ALONG? Hispanic Voters Are Now Evenly Split Between Parties.
FUN GIFT: Flingshot Slingshot Flying Screaming Monkey – Set of 4! – Watch them fly! #CommissionEarned
HILARIOUSLY UNWOKE: Mel Brooks says his only regret as a comedian is the jokes he didn’t tell.
It’s not too late to tell them, Mel…
FREEDOM ENABLES CREATIVITY: Imagine that, when you liberate the human spirit to create without guardrails, you can get more quality, independence, all kinds of good things. Darrel Eves, executive producer of the record-setting series”The Chosen,” explains how it works.
SHOCKER: Politico: Don’t look now, but Dems “souring” on vaccine mandates. “Gee, I wonder why Democrats might want some daylight between Joe Biden and themselves these days — especially on unconstitutional exercises of executive power? With Biden’s vaccine mandates getting shot down in federal courts, the political risks of angering vast swaths of the electorate for no good purpose have become apparent to Biden’s allies. For now, Politico reports, but it’s true inside and outside of the Beltway.”
It’s important that they experience this as a defeat, for educational purposes.
THIS CAN’T POSSIBLY END BADLY: Remy: Raise the Debt Ceiling Rap (Again). New video from Reason TV:
LIFE EXTENSION: Grape seed extract found to extend lifespan of old mice.
DISPATCHES FROM THE PARTY OF DIVERSITY AND TOLERANCE: Far-left Axios Is Mad Conservatives Are Building Their Own Internet.
What did they think would happen? I’m so old, I can remember when lefties told everybody to “learn to code.”
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Despite Near-Record Homicides, Philadelphia DA Proclaims No ‘Crisis of Crime.’
IF YOU GET UP MORE, MORE CHANCES TO FALL: Study links overactive bladder to increased falling risk in older adults.
DEMS SILENT ABOUT NEW DATA ON TRUMP TAX CUTS: Heartland Institute’s Justin Haskins took a look at the IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) data for 2017 and 2018 and found — surprise! — the Trump tax cuts helped middle class taxpayers far more than “the rich.”
Funny thing, though, neither His Fraudulency, nor Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or any of the other leading Democrats asked yesterday for comment responded, even though the data demonstrates they were all wrong on the issue in 2017 and since. Why you suppose that is?
EIGHT YEARS TOO LATE: De Blasio Imposes New Vaccine Mandate And New Yorkers Scream ‘Enough!’ “Most businesses are already not complying with the existing mandates, and people are announcing they won’t comply with this one.”
OH, THAT WAR ON CHRISTMAS: Oakland’s Jack London Square Christmas tree torched.
UPDATE: Christmas tree goes up in flames, volunteers robbed while decorating homes in Chicago.
OVERBRED: Most dog breeds are highly inbred, and unhealthy, researchers say.
As Bill Murray knew, better to be a mutt.
This piece in the New York Times is really something, and I mean that in the worst possible sense.
Erin Aubry Kaplan lives in Inglewood, “a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los Angeles County,” and she decides to build a Little Free Library, as they are called, in her front yard so neighbors walking by can borrow a book. She builds one because she loves books, but because in our puritanical times nothing can be as simple as that, she writes that she also put one up “to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about improvement, and could carry them out in our own way. There are organizations that help people build these little libraries, but I did mine independently. I envisioned it as a place for my neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic.”
Fine. But then things get a little crazy. A white couple stops and looks at her library and Aubry Kaplan freaks out: “Instantly, I was flooded with emotions — astonishment, and then resentment, and then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of, Get off my lawn!”
She doesn’t yell “Get off my lawn,” thankfully, and she doesn’t take down the library because a white couple stopped and looked at it without even borrowing a book. But, while embarrassed by her initial reaction, she comes to see it as natural: “What I resented was not this specific couple,” she writes, “It was their whiteness.” Technically, she put the little library out for “everyone,” but it was really for everyone but white people, and when the white couple stopped and looked at the books, they were transgressing on black space, once again pushing black people to the margins, appropriating black expression, and gentrifying the black neighborhood. Aren’t whites the worst?
I’m so old, I can remember when librarians would judge people by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.
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