OH MY: Durham Investigation of Obamagate Expands. “According to recent court filings, Durham has gained access to a significant amount of FBI internal affairs files in his effort to uncover the Obama administration’s maneuvers to promote bogus allegations against Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Team Obama’s disingenuous investigation of the anti-Trump allegations, called Crossfire Hurricane, relied on the discredited Christopher Steele dossier, which was paid for by party activists.”
Archive for 2022
February 2, 2022
BOOHOO: Whoopi Goldberg’s co-hosts reportedly furious over suspension from ‘The View.’
Normally I’d oppose punishing people for what they say, but since the left has decided we’ll live in a society where people are punished for what they say, I want them to get it good and hard.
Of course, it would be a real national service simply to cancel The View, which is perhaps the dumbest thing on broadcast TV. Which is an accomplishment of sorts.
JEFF ZUCKER EXITS CNN AFTER RELATIONSHIP WITH SENIOR EXECUTIVE: “Jeff Zucker resigned on Wednesday as the president of CNN and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division, writing in a memo that he had failed to disclose to the company a romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN…In a memo to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Zucker wrote that his relationship came up during a network investigation into the conduct of Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor who was fired in December over his involvement in the political affairs of his brother, former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.”
As Matthew Zeitlin, formerly of BuzzFeed and Slate tweets, “so the Cuomo scandal has brought down the governor of New York (duh) and the presidents/CEOs of CNN, Human Rights Campaign, and Time’s Up.”
UPDATE: “Zucker was nailing Gollust who used to work for Andrew Cuomo. Zucker was paying Chris who was working for Andrew. CNN spent all of 2020 painting Andrew as the greatest governor in the country while he shoveled covid+ elderly into nursing homes, then covered it up,” Ben Shapiro tweets.
WELL, BUREAUCRATS: Feds Make Tesla Remove ‘Rolling Stops.’ It’s A Terrible Decision.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Israel Set To Deploy National Laser Shield. “Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced a plan on Feb. 1 to deploy a ‘laser wall’ in the country’s south later this year to shoot down rockets from Gaza. The system will be initially deployed as an experimental weapon in southern Israel, then be expanded “elsewhere” around the country.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Fire Whoopi Goldberg? That Won’t Fix What’s Wrong with ‘The View’ (Or Anything Else on TV).
It always comes down to survival of the fittest, and in TV Land, the fittest aren’t the most knowledgeable or balanced. The fittest tend to be the prettiest, the most sensationalistic, and those who are best at generating strong emotional responses from viewers.
Goldberg has two outta three, and that ain’t bad.
So go ahead and fire Whoopi Goldberg… or don’t. But if she does get fired, the economics of TV infotainment require that ABC News hire someone pretty much just like her.
Read the whole thing.
BRENDAN O’NEILL: Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust revisionism.
But perhaps the most revealing and unsettling thing said by Goldberg was this: ‘But these [were] two white groups of people.’ She means the Nazis and the Jews. Both white folk. So how can it have been about race? Isn’t race all about white privilege and black victimhood? Isn’t it all about the ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white fragility’ that contemporary white Americans and Europeans display towards black people in their every interaction? This captures how impoverished and shrivelled the woke set’s understanding of racism is. They seem to view everything, even history, even the Holocaust, from their own self-flattering, highly Americanised, Silicon Valley-approved, 2020s understanding of racism as consisting of white arrogance and black pain and unwitting slights and ‘microaggressions’ committed by the racially unaware masses. Goldberg was projecting this alarmingly naive and hyper-nouveau view of racism back into history, so that even the Holocaust starts to look confusing because wasn’t it white folks on both sides?
Read the whole thing. Last week, the Blaze reported: Anti-Defamation League sparks backlash after changing definition of ‘racism’ on website: ‘Racial hierarchy that privileges white people’
According to the ADL, racism is the “oppression of people of color” through systems that privilege white people.
“The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” the ADL’s definition of “racism” reads.
The website states the page was last updated in July 2020. Prior to the update, the ADL’s definition of “racism” did not narrowly pit one racial group against another, but spoke broadly about beliefs of superiority and inferiority.
“Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another,” the definition previously read.
* * * * * * * * *
In addition to being accused of promoting CRT, Jews observed how problematic the definition change is considering that the Holocaust, for example, was entirely about race, but does not fit the ADL’s updated definition of racism.
“THIS is entirely unacceptable,” the Jewish Policy Center said.
“The Anti-Definition League,” mocked Noam Blum, who works for Tablet Magazine, a Jewish publication.
“Amazing to see the actual moment when an institution is captured,” Andrew Sullivan tweeted in response to the ADL’s new definition of racism. And as Bari Weiss added yesterday, “To understand the implications of the@ADL‘s redefinition of racism, just watch today’s episode of The View.”
But it’s not an entirely new development:
Exit quote: “Whoopi described the Holocaust as ‘white people doing it to white people. So, this is y’all go fight amongst yourselves,’ Ace notes. “Whoopi’s racial calculus is odious but it’s all but accepted as Scientific Fact by the Media-Government Complex: There is no such thing as racism against white people, and as conservative Jews realized long ago, and as progressive Jews are only learning now to their alarm, ‘white people’ is defined as including them for these purposes.”
UPDATE: ABC Suspends Whoopi Goldberg For Two Weeks Over Holocaust Remarks.
More: “Whoopi definitely wasn’t ‘suspended.’ She sat down with producers and they agreed that Rubber Rooming her for a couple of weeks will take the heat off and also give the impression that they took it seriously and ‘did something.’ This isn’t cancel culture. You’re being played,” Noam Blum of the Tablet tweets.
Meanwhile, as our sister site Twitchy notes, “‘Liberal privilege is real:’ People are asking why Disney fired Gina Carano but only suspended Whoopi Goldberg.”
Related: Eve Barlow breaks down the worldview that is ‘erasing’ the Jewish history with Kennedy on Fox Business (video):
(Updated and bumped.)
BLUE CITY BLUES: Downtown Denver business owner to charge 1% fee to recover shoplifting losses. “Since 2019, he says shoplifting at his downtown and Federal Boulevard stores has tripled.”
JAMES LILEKS’ WEDNESDAY REVIEW OF MODERN THOUGHT:
Almost 60% of the respondents approved of lockdowns and restrictions. Something had taken hold: Perma-concern. I don’t know what it’ll take to change it, aside from everyone getting it. I was surprised when the news about anti-viral treatments in pill form (there are four, I think, of varying efficacy) didn’t seem to make a dent in the mindset of the Perma-concerned.
The only comparable mindset: Cold War nuclear dread. Fear of Climate doesn’t match, because it’s indistinct and slow and elsewhere. Nuclear dread was immediate and personal. Same here.
The difference is that no one wanted to live in constant worry over Soviet nukes. Everyone was happy when the USSR fell, except for the hectoring misanthropic collectivists who used their participation in a mass movement and hatred of their own society as a cover for their own unhappiness.
I don’t know, maybe some parallels apply.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Freddie deBoer on Covid as Liberal 9/11.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Three major Virginia universities scrap COVID booster mandate after AG calls them unlawful.
WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE RIDICULOUS: Elite NYC private school updates logo, motto to combat racism as parents cry ‘wokeism.’ “Manhattan’s elite Collegiate School set up a special task force and spent three years debating its ‘Dutchman’ mascot and motto — then issued a 400-page report that’s a lesson in wokeness-run-amok, critics say. . . . After a lengthy design and feedback process, the school announced last week that it will replace its prior motto, ‘Unless God, then in vain,’ with ‘Wisdom, Community, Kindness’ — in Latin. The school also completely refashioned its longtime mascot, the Dutchman, after debate over potential feelings of exclusion and excessive Eurocentrism involving it. The mascot was generally considered to be a representation of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of the New Amsterdam colony.”
Well, the “wisdom” part is clearly aspirational, because they certainly aren’t demonstrating it now.
In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”
Or at least some part of said horse.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Oh, so This Is Why There’s a Border Crisis. “Just ask White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. According to her, ‘We had every intention of implementing a different approach’ than the Trump administration on immigration.”
KEEP UP THE PRESSURE: Princeton alumni group publishes letter criticizing event’s lack of viewpoint diversity.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Maxine Waters continues to pay daughter with campaign cash, adding up to $1.2M so far.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Minimalist Wallets for Men & Women RFID Front Pocket Leather Card Holder Wallet (Brown Hunter, Leather). #CommissionEarned
MOST AMERICANS AGREE, OF COURSE: Tulsi Gabbard Blasts Biden for Using ‘Identity Politics’ to Choose SCOTUS Nominee.
Plus, a reminder: “Biden chose Harris as his VP because of the color of her skin and sex — not qualification. She’s been a disaster.”
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Diabetes Deaths Hit 100K Two Years in a Row: Wonder Why?
WAS IT A COVER-UP OR JUST A NARRATIVE IN SYNCH? JustTheNews.com has an exclusive this morning that shows that the State Department knew all along that Hunter Biden was up to his neck in corrupt practices in Ukraine. John Solomon reports that:
[T]he email’s stark message directly conflicts with the narrative the mainstream media, State Department witnesses and Democratic congressmen gave the public two years ago, when they insisted Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with the allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings — while creating the appearance of a conflict of interest — had no impact on U.S. efforts to fight corruption in that country.
“The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine,” Kent wrote multiple high-ranking officials in the State Department in Washington.
Read the part where the State Dep’t and White House ran interference to keep Biden from being personally confronted with this information. It’s what Nixon and others called “plausible deniability.”
In either event, the public is owed some explanations, and that’s what FOIA is for.
EVERYTHING IS FINELY BALANCED: Luján stroke jolts 50-50 Senate. “Underscoring the narrow majority, Democrats on the Commerce Committee, which Luján is a member of, almost immediately yanked three nominations that were expected to get votes on Wednesday. An aide noted that the agenda was being ‘recalibrated to take into consideration the need for all Democratic votes in order to move certain nominees forward.’ The announcement appeared to catch senators off guard.”
REMINDER: Daniel Pearl Was Murdered 20 Years Ago Today. “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.”
THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS, AND THE SPINELESS ADMINISTRATORS WHO ARE ENABLING IT ARE THE BIGGEST PROBLEM: FIRE Survey Finds Most People See Cancel Culture as a Threat to Democracy and Freedom. “The chilling effect of self-censorship is real — and can have an alarming effect on how Americans communicate.”
FINALLY, AN ONLINE EXPERIENCE WORSE THAN TWITTER: Woman Says She Was ‘Virtually Gang-Raped’ in Facebook’s Metaverse. “Vivek Sharma, Meta’s vice president of Horizon, told Verge that the incident was ‘absolutely unfortunate,’ and the beta tester didn’t use a safety feature that’s meant to block someone from interacting with you. Sharma said the tester’s report was ‘good feedback.'”
THE WASHINGTON POST CORRECTS an embarrassing error about the Constitution, at Seth Barrett Tillman’s insistence.