TO BE FAIR, “REFUGEE CAMP” PRETTY MUCH DOES SUM UP THE RULING-CLASS VISION FOR AMERICA: General Milley inspects tent city for evacuees built in 48 hours at Ramstein: “This is America.”
There was a time, of course, when people thought winning wars was America.
SOMETHING FOR NEXT SEMESTER’S BOOZE LAW SEMINAR: Minnesota Wine Makers Win Right to Use Out-of-State Grapes.
RIP: Willard Scott, ‘Today’ show weatherman and resident merrymaker, dies at 87.
Scott first made his name as an irrepressible comedian of Washington radio trading in shtick and satire as half of “The Joy Boys.” On local TV, he was the original Ronald McDonald — the hamburger chain went with a thinner actor for the bulb-nosed clown mascot in the national campaign — and had stints as a weather forecaster and Bozo the Clown.
In a broadcasting career spanning six decades, he was best known for his role on “Today,” the popular NBC weekday morning program. He debuted in 1980 and immediately made his presence known, draping his 6-foot-3 frame in outrageous costumes. He once dressed up as Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer known for her outré fruit-covered hats and garish dresses. On Groundhog Day, he appeared as the rodent.
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Unlike viewers who embraced Scott’s sincerity and warmth, his co-hosts did not find him refreshing. Pauley once publicly called him “an alien being,” and he endured an embarrassing public scrap with Gumbel.
In 1989, when “Today” had slipped behind ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the ratings for the first time, Gumbel wrote a stinging memorandum to his bosses. It was soon leaked to media outlets.
In the memo, Gumbel savaged Scott for holding “the show hostage to his assortment of whims, wishes, birthdays and bad taste. This guy is killing us and no one’s even trying to rein him in.” (Gumbel, widely regarded by colleagues as distant and haughty, issued scathing comments about other “Today” personnel, including film critic Gene Shalit, noting that his reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.”)
NBC brass insisted that Scott and Gumbel make up, and they soon did, at least publicly. Scott, who told a reporter that the memo “cut like a knife,” had the last laugh. The weatherman was soon earning $1 million a year from NBC, even though he was seldom on the air for more than three minutes an hour. And a call-in poll in USA Today, taken soon after the hubbub developed, reported that 27,300 people thought Scott’s weather segments helped the show. Only 854 took an unfavorable view of him.
Exit quote via the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi: “‘If you were to look at my resume,’ Mr. Scott wrote in his 1982 autobiography, ‘you’d see that I’m…bald, I’m overweight, I don’t make all the smooth moves, and I dress like a slob. ‘I take tremendous pride,’ he added, ‘in the fact that I beat the system.’”
HOW COMPUTATIONALLY COMPLEX IS A SINGLE NEURON? It takes 1000 artificial neurons to simulate it.
BIRTHING PEOPLE: It’s nice that Pete Buttigieg and husband Chasten posted a pic of their new children, but why from a hospital bed?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): They’re in a hospital, so shouldn’t they be wearing masks?
THE TRIBALIZATION OF AMERICA IS SUPER-DESTRUCTIVE, BUT STRONGLY ENCOURAGED BY OUR POLITICAL CLASS:
It’s almost like the political class doesn’t have America’s best interests at heart.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Stagflation rears its ugly head in US payroll data.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Corruption in University Admissions and the Administrative Allocation of Scarce Goods. “The Varsity Blues investigation uncovered a seamy side of university admissions. Multiple wealthy parents were indicted for securing their children’s admission to selective institutions through bribery. Despite the publicity the indictments and guilty pleas received, and the public schadenfreude over the sight of celebrities being arrested, the investigation is most notable for what it did not do: it did not deploy the federal government’s arsenal of anti-money laundering and anti-corruption tools against the universities involved. This represents a significant missed opportunity to address the serious problems that arise from rationing access to selective institutions via opaque, easily manipulated admissions processes designed to benefit university constituencies. Without deploying the same tools used routinely against other for- and non-profit organizations, the chances for real reform are significantly reduced. We call for universities and their boards to be held to the standards applied to other institutions with respect to corruption and money-laundering in their oversight of admissions programs.”
HAS THE PENNY DROPPED FOR THE BBC? I’m not surprised by the sad facts of this matter, but I am surprised it got past the Political Correctness Team at the BBC:
“The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police. He has now been identified as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a 32-year-old Tamil, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and sought refugee status […] Samsudeen had been arrested a number of times before Friday’s incident. But [Prime Minister] Ardern said that every legal avenue to keep him out of the community had been exhausted.”
Of course, the sway that the Pallywood Crowd holds over the UK press and elite is legendary. It was only a few years ago that the English village of Rotherham was exposed as a hotbed of misogyny of the worst kind, when Pakistani-born gangs of men abducted and raped more than 1,200 girls. Local government and much of the media were in full-blown politically correct denial that the gangs were almost all Pakistani Muslims. Criminologist Graham Hill wrote in 2020 that:
“The South Yorkshire police were scared to take action against a group of Asian men who were sexually abusing a young girl for fear of triggering unrest in the Asian community and being branded racist.”
Most of the UK press used the euphemism “asian” to describe them. And as we would later see here in the States this same dynamic works to the perpetrators’ advantage. Hill pointed out that:
“In 2011 Jack Straw, the former home secretary, suggested there was a cultural element to the then new phenomenon of “grooming gangs” and suggesting some men of Pakistani origin see white girls as “easy meat”. The former Blackburn Labour MP spoke out after two Asian men who abused girls in Derby were given indeterminate jail terms. At the time, he was quickly shouted down and labelled a racist.” (Emphasis added).
This is highly relevant today, as we watch the Taliban drag Afghanistan back into the 11th Century. The “Squad” continues to use this political correctness as a shield and sword when confronted on issues large and small. The question is whether House Democrats will finally start to distance themselves from knee-jerk bleating about “racism” and “islamophobia.” Every time the Taliban continue to further subjugate women, people ought to demand that the Democrats — including AOC, Tlaib, Omar and if he is coherent that day, the President– address the issue.
I’m not betting on much of a response.
IF THE PRESS HAS ITS WAY, YES: I Guess We’re Going to Ignore This Huge Joe Biden Lie, Huh?
ON PBS, CAPEHART SAYS AFGHANISTAN FIASCO IS A ‘MOMENTARY BLIP FOR THE PRESIDENT:’
On Friday’s PBS NewsHour, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC weekend host Jonathan Capehart insisted the fiasco in Afghanistan would be a “momentary blip” in the President’s approval numbers.
Related: Rescue groups: US tally misses hundreds left in Afghanistan.
—The Washington Post, today.
BUT THEY’RE UNDERAPPRECIATED:
WELL, OKAY THEN:
YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Politico: The Dangerous Legal Illusion of ‘Parental Rights.’
Related: Left-Wing Politico Sold for $1B to Biased German Company Axel Springer.
Of course, “The Dangerous Legal Illusion of ‘Parental Rights’” is a Comcast-approved idea:
(Classical reference in headline.)
WHERE DO I GET A FEW THOUSAND POCKET CONSTITUTIONS IN DARI AND PASHTO? Fort McCoy in Wisconsin currently housing over 8,700 Afghan refugees.
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