YEP. THE SNEERING IS THE MOST POLITICALLY DESTRUCTIVE AND DIVISIVE THING: Taibbi’s Twitter files exposes key point: sneering elite-media bias.
Archive for 2022
December 3, 2022
THEN: GET RID OF TRUMP SO WE CAN HAVE SERIOUS PEOPLE RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT AGAIN.
ICYMI: Abolish the TSA.
NOTHING A GOOD THRASHING WOULDN’T FIX: Activists Empty Tires on Dozens of SUVs in NYC.
FUN GIFT: Celestron – NexStar 8SE Telescope. #CommissionEarned
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Overlook Using A Shoulder Holster.
BE PREPARED: Victorinox-Swiss-Army Cutlery Fibrox Pro Slicing Knife. #CommissionEarned
NOW OUT FROM ANDREW WAREHAM: Dead End (The War To End All Wars Book 7).
He’s certainly producing a lot of stuff lately, and it’s still all good. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s dropped the academic job. Certainly An Emergent State, which I’m reading now, is affirmatively non-PC.
JACK SHAFER: The Confession of Sam Bankman-Fried.
“Please, shut up.” This is what lawyers tell clients who have been charged with crimes — or are in danger of being charged — because anything they say will only be dredged up by the prosecution to prove their guilt. Sam Bankman-Fried, the wunderkind behind the FTX and Alameda crypto trading scandal in which upwards of $8 billion has gone AWOL, rejected this foundational advice on Wednesday afternoon to give New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin a lengthy, live tele-interview.
Bankman-Fried didn’t just give prosecutors a few leads as he rambled. He essentially confessed in serial fashion to his many potential offenses.
“I didn’t ever try to commit fraud on anyone,” Bankman-Fried said near the top of the interview, as he began to shovel himself into the trench he has been digging since the scandal broke in early November. “Clearly, I made a lot of mistakes or things I would give anything to be able to do over again,” he said, adding vinyl wood paneling to his new underground home. “I was responsible ultimately for doing the right things and I mean, we didn’t. Like, we messed up big,” he said, installing a wet bar in his space. And then came the rug that pulled it all together. “There absolutely were management failures, huge management failures. I bear responsibility for that. There were oversight failures, transparency failures, reporting, like, so many things we should have had in place. I think that a lot of it was on the risk management side,” Bankman-Fried said. “Look, I screwed up.”
While SBF keeps digging, why hasn’t he been arrested yet?
I certainly understand why people would bristle at all of these sources of potential delay, but this sort of investigative slog is much more common in a white-collar case than a quick arrest. For instance, it took almost a year for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan (which is reportedly handling the FTX investigation) to charge the founder of the electric-truck start-up Nikola with fraud even though the short-selling firm Hindenburg Research seemingly did all of the work when it published a lengthy report that precipitated the investigation in the first place. And it took nearly two years for the department to charge Holmes even after the Journal’s John Carreyrou publicly exposed the central problems at Theranos.
Prosecutors at the Justice Department cannot — and do not — simply indict people based on what they read in the press, no matter how damning it may seem. Even if they desperately want to charge someone, prosecutors have to conduct their own investigation to develop robust, admissible evidence of criminal misconduct, which requires gathering and reviewing documents and data, speaking with witnesses, and — perhaps above all — time.
Rudy Giuliani made his bones in 1987 by ordering financial executives with insider trading charges escorted out of their offices in handcuffs; lots of investors presumably believe SBF deserves a similar fate.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Elon Musk Vows To Reveal Government And Media Collusion Once He Figures Out Where These Red Dots Are Coming From.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Heart failure linked to illicit meth use is rising.
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Please, America, don’t get into soccer.
EPIC HOLIDAY DEAL: Breville Barista Express Espresso Machine. #CommissionEarned
MARK JUDGE: The 1980s on Trial.
Compared to previous generations, kids today are less likely to have sex, drive, work, drink alcohol, date, or go out without their parents. A lot of this has to do with the advent of smartphones and social media. Kids these days are terrified that if they do something bold—or stupid—it will wind up on Facebook, YouTube, or Snapchat. In 2015, pop singer Ariana Grande, then 22, licked a doughnut—and it wound up on “The Today Show.”
But it wasn’t just Brett and me who were on trial. It was the entire era in which we grew up. An era of robust cultural confidence when men and women were equally celebrated, the 1980s have now, in the rearview mirror, become fodder for our modern media scolds.
For instance, several journalists noted during the hearings that I had written in praise of Hugh Hefner, who is now considered a symbol of toxic masculinity. This was taken as evidence of my retrograde sexual attitudes and projected onto Brett as proof of his being unfit for a seat on the nation’s highest court. What a crock of bullshit. The farther away I get from it, the angrier I feel.
For the record, my view of Hefner is equivocal. Hefner helped usher in the age of pornography, which is now a serious global problem that warps healthy and romantic sexual interaction. His grandiose claims about being a revolutionary are often hyperbolic, even silly. He’s also a terrible dancer.
And yet an honest man cannot completely dismiss him. Hefner, in fact, made the case for a type of man who is increasingly rare these days, who may indeed be disappearing in the era of #MeToo and weaponized sexual politics. Playboy, whose first issue was published in December 1953, defended the man who is urbane, intelligent, interested in art, literature, music, and architecture—and who loves women. Indeed, I would argue that Hefner didn’t always strictly treat women as sex objects. The Playboy man was educated, employed, and well-dressed, and he could entertain a young lady at his modern bachelor pad for an evening of conversation about Nietzsche, Picasso, and jazz, culminating in mutually satisfying sex.
Hefner’s magazine rejected the rugged outdoorsman type celebrated in most men’s magazines of the 1950s. He also criticized some of the counterculture of the time, rejecting the “noise” of rock ’n’ roll in favor of sophisticated jazz. The “Playboy Man” loved capitalism and disposable income, and Playmates from the early issues were photographed in tasteful ways, with their personalities and accomplishments frequently celebrated.
Yes, it was an exploitative nudie magazine. But it was also a long way from the charmless, ruthless porn of today. Old issues of Playboy, which published some of the best writers of the time, from Gore Vidal to Norman Mailer, read like Shakespeare compared to the Maxim mouth breathers that now represent a huge swath of the male population.
Hefner was also countercultural. As the entire country was getting married and moving to the suburbs, he defended spending a couple extra years in the city, driving a cool car, going to museums, reading great books, and buying the latest Dizzy Gillespie records. He created the kind of cool, urban bachelor who has all but disappeared in today’s world of niche personalities and interests. Men today are either frat bros, comic nerds, yuppie suits, IT geeks, or sulky, epicene hipsters. Nobody covers as much ground as Hefner anymore.
Hefner could have settled down with one woman and still stayed the man he created. Yet he was tripped up by sex, the very thing that made him rich and famous. Instead of making male sexuality something to be indulged with aplomb but not recklessness, Hefner made it a lifestyle, walking around all day in his trademark silk pajamas and red robe with a blonde on either arm. And that’s why he eventually became a joke. The journalistic quality of Playboy started dropping in the 1980s, and today it reads like a slightly more appealing issue of Details. The Playboy Mansion, Shangri-La in the 1970s, seemed gauche and tacky by the time Hefner died in 2017.
Read the whole thing.
Last weekend, I watched American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story, which was released on April 7th 2017, on Amazon Prime Video. It’s a fascinating very pro-Hefner drama/documentary series. Hef and other original staffers at Playboy appear in interviews, but many of the scenes are dramatically fleshed out by actors and actresses (pun not intended — well, maybe a little). As you may have surmised by the above release date, it was produced at the very end of the the period that such a series could be made. In October of 2017, #metoo became a household phrase, and Harvey Weinstein become a household name. A couple of weeks later, then-Amazon Studios chief Roy Price, who commissioned the Playboy series, and series by Weinstein, Woody Allen and former Mad Men producer Matthew Weiner, resigned.
The following year, in “The New Prudes,” author/illustrator Christopher R. Taylor wrote:
The people who told us “love the one you’re with” and “if her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal, if her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel” are now telling us that you have to get signed proof for every stage of sexual contact and even if you do, if she regrets it later, it was rape. The people who created Animal House are now wondering if its even okay to laugh at it. People routinely say “that could never get made today” about films like Blazing Saddles, but could you even make Pretty in Pink? Not according to its star Molly Ringwald.
Oceania has always been at war with the sexual revolution.
FIGHT THE POWER: Alabama students victorious in free speech case at state supreme court.
A free speech lawsuit against the University of Alabama in Huntsville by its Young Americans for Liberty chapter over a policy that required permission to speak on campus will proceed after the state’s highest court reversed a lower-court ruling.
The lawsuit challenged a UAH policy that “limits most student speech to small ‘speech zones’ and requires students to obtain a permit three business days in advance to speak on campus,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal nonprofit that represents the YAL club.
The group challenged the permit requirement and argued it violated the 2019 “Alabama Campus Free Speech Act.” University spokeswoman Elizabeth Gibisch has not responded to an email sent in the past week that asked for comment on the ruling.
Like I said, fight the power.
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Apple working with China to suppress freedom protestors?
Related: Tim Cook’s Silence Just Said Everything.
🚨WATCH: Apple CEO Tim Cook ignores our questions on China as zero-COVID lockdown protests rage in the country. Full video 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/m0NpgRN6U4
— Hillary Vaughn (@hillary__vaughn) December 1, 2022
Flashback: A Slow Kowtow to China.
Demanding obeisance has a rich history in Chinese culture. In 1793, British envoy Lord George Macartney was charged with opening permanent trade relations with China. The Chinese still clung to the old feudal demand of the kowtow. In the old days, the Chinese believed that the emperor literally ruled the world, which meant foreign rulers were more like vassals. And all vassals must acknowledge the supremacy of the emperor, the Son of Heaven. The problem was that Macartney was essentially a stand-in for the British crown, and he couldn’t in good conscience recognize the emperor as his sovereign.
Kowtowing requires three kneelings and nine prostrations—meaning the supplicant actually lies face down on the floor—in order to demonstrate total inferiority. Macartney agreed to kneel out of respect, but he wouldn’t put his head to the ground nine times.
The Chinese were offended and Britain and China didn’t get the trade deal. I bring up this anecdote for three reasons. First, it’s worth recognizing that the trade deal was in the interests of both countries. Lots of “realists” think that countries do things solely out of raw self-interest. That’s arguably true. But the definition realists use for self-interest is way too narrow. Notions of national pride and honor are also forms of self-interest.
Which brings me to the second reason. America should have some notion of honor. We don’t have a crown, but we do have certain ideas and ideals that we like to claim similar loyalty to. We also like to claim that these ideas and ideals are universal. When we figuratively kowtow to China, we are openly admitting to China that both claims are untrue—or at least negotiable. You can’t claim to believe human rights are universal and inviolable while simultaneously excusing or ignoring the mass violation of human rights that defines China under CCP rule.
Last, none of this is in our interest. It’s not like the Chinese respect us for our groveling. They enjoy watching us bend to their demands and mock our obsequious desire to gain favor as proof of their superior system. They use our self-flagellation over race as a cudgel in their propaganda and diplomacy. Such appeasement only buys greater demands and worse moral and strategic compromises.
* * * * * * * *
I whiggishly believe that one day China will be a free country. And when it is, the Chinese will not look back on America today as a spiritual ally the way those who were slaughtered at Tiananmen Square did. They will see us as a country that sought approval from the regime that persecuted their ancestors for the cheap at any price of Fast and Furious 9 ticket sales.
As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM: UChicago announces ‘The Problem with Whiteness’ course.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
THE STIG CRASHES BADLY: NBC’s Ben Collins’ pissiness over Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ speaks volumes about modern MSM.
(Classical reference in headline.)
VOX POPULI, VOX DEI: Two-thirds want border wall and E-Verify to slow illegal immigration.
OUT ON A LIMB: Kanye’s Downfall Shows Why Free Speech Works.
Well, that didn’t take long. In just a few weeks, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has gone from potential Republican superstar to a completely disgraced antisemitic lunatic.
Kanye’s fall from grace hit its nadir on Thursday during a stranger-than-fiction interview he did on InfoWars with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Ye said, and this is a direct quote, “I like Hitler.”
“I like Hitler,” Ye expounded. “The Holocaust is not what happened. Let’s look at the facts of that. Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities.”
It somehow got even stranger.
“[Nazis] did good things, too,” Ye went on to say later in the interview. “We’ve got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time. The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world.”
In case there was any shred of doubt left as to Ye’s intent, he followed up the interview by tweeting out a literal swastika. (Yes, seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.)
As Dan McLaughlin wrote before the pro-Hitler rant: Kanye West Canceled Himself.