Archive for 2023

I GET WHERE HE’S COMING FROM, HONESTLY:  We need to talk…

OPEN THREAD: Just do it.

OF RACISTS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS:  The word “racist” got used up a few years ago.  It had been used so often to apply to things that obviously weren’t racist that it lost its sting.  “White supremacist” took its place, but it’s headed in the same direction.

Oh well.

WELL, GOOD, REPUBLICANS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET ORAL CONTRACEPTIVES MADE OTC FOR YEARS: Arizona governor OKs over-the-counter birth control. But the story contains this: “The announcement comes amid a conservative effort to restrict and ban access to contraception and abortion nationwide.”

Is anyone trying to restrict and ban access to contraception? I’m not aware of that happening anywhere.

BECAUSE SHE’S ABSOLUTELY THE VERY BEST AT SETTING GINORMOUS PILES OF CASH ON FIRE? How does Kathleen Kennedy still have a job at Lucasfilm?

The critics of Kennedy’s tenure as head of Lucasfilm certainly can’t blame her for everything that’s gone wrong with their beloved franchises. But it’s fair to say that the largest amount of blame lies at her feet. As criticism mounted, the seventy-year-old has turned increasingly toward the idea that the critiques are borne out of sexism or a “toxic fan base”, more upset about her “The Force Is Female” T-shirt and her promotion of Strong Female Characters. She’s repeatedly touted that the majority of her story team working on Star Wars is female, and Lucasfilm pointed out to the New York Times with satisfaction the introduction in The Last Jedi of the first Asian-American female star, Rose Tico — who became a target of ruthless fan hatred as soon as the film was released.

Kennedy’s next pet show for Disney+ is The Acolyte, whose star Jodie Turner-Smith was booed at the Celebration gathering for describing her character as “a powerful leader in a very woman-centered world, which I was very excited to kind of be in that because I feel like Star Wars is very patriarchal.” Leslye Headland, the showrunner whose experience includes The Bachelorette and Russian Doll, admitted her discomfort with Star Wars‘s masculine vibes: “I’m not sure how much I care about Han Solo anymore. When I was little I really liked him. When I watch him now, I’m kind of like, ‘Gosh a lot of my psyche makes sense now.’”

Inheriting a stable of beloved male characters only to have this year’s Mary Sue belittle them throughout the movie is not a way to keep a fan base happy; nor is using fan-baiting when the inevitable backlash occurs.

VANITY FAIR: Can Anyone Fix California?

TL;DR, considering that Sacramento, SF, Oakland and LA passed every law that Vanity Fair’s staff and core readership wanted:

 

BRENDAN O’NEILL: That breastfeeding bloke is the last straw.

Surely the breastfeeding bloke will be the last straw? All last week, institutions of repute – ITV, the TUC, sections of the Labour Party – insisted that Mika Minio-Paluello is a mum. In truth, he’s a man. This former Labour special adviser and TUC staffer is a bloke who only says he’s a woman. Science, reason and every chromosome in his own body beg to differ. And yet ITV had him on the news saying the cost-of-living crisis is ‘tough if you’re a mum like me’. When actual women pushed back against this lunatic description of a man as a mother, they were scolded by the TUC and the rest. ‘Mika’s a mum!’, cried the elites in a frenzy of unreason.

A couple of days into this outbreak of establishment derangement, Mika himself posted a Twitter thread that included a photo of him breastfeeding a baby. He wasn’t really breastfeeding, of course. Because he’s a man. He does not lactate like a woman. He cannot produce the milk an infant needs. To some of us it looked like he was posing with a babe at his parched, useless fella’s nipple to try to validate his identity as a ‘transwoman’. What say you now, TUC? Stella Creasy? All you bourgeois radicals on the internet who raged like modern-day witchfinders against Rosie Duffield when she dared to say Mika isn’t a mother? Do you still say he’s a mum? Do you think he’s breastfeeding that child? Do you think it’s okay to try to make a newborn suckle on the moob of a biological male?

Here’s why this story – mad as it is – matters. Because it represents yet another provocation by the elites. Yet another front in their culture war on truth and reason. Yet another of their assaults on us and what we know to be true. These ideologues are goading us. They say we should call women who give birth ‘birthing parents’, but this bloke? He’s a mother and woe betide the crone who disagrees. Actual breastfeeding should be called ‘chestfeeding’, they suggest, but this man putting a desiccated teat in a newborn’s mouth? That’s breastfeeding. Seriously – for how much longer are we going to tolerate this gaslighting?

Related: Let Allie Beth Stuckey explain the proper response to being called a “transphobe.”

We should have a strong aversion toward men trying to “breastfeed” babies. We should be averse to the idea that “female” is a costume to be donned or an identity to declare. These fears and aversions are healthy and logical.

What they aren’t is irrational. This is why “transphobe” isn’t accurate, because “phobia” is an *irrational* fear or aversion. But the fear and aversion felt in this case are extremely rational.

Read the whole thing.

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: The New York Times spreads misinformation about misinformation.

The gatekeeper of establishment gatekeepers, the New York Times, regularly crusades against spreading “disinformation” or “misinformation” and in favor of censorship.

In a story on Thursday titled, “Ruling Puts Social Media at Crossroads of Disinformation and Free Speech,” the Times explored how dangerous it might be if the federal government is not allowed to direct social media companies on what kind of speech is allowed.

The Times frames the pro-First Amendment ruling as a right-wing victory carried out by a Trump-appointed, right-wing-friendly judge who seems to be warm to “debunked” claims from “vaccine skeptics.” The Times reported that this case was “being overseen by Judge Terry A. Doughty, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump and has previously expressed little skepticism about debunked claims from vaccine skeptics. In one previous case, Judge Doughty accepted as fact the claim that “Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent transmission of the disease.” (Emphasis added). 

Wait, what was that?

“Judge Doughty accepted as fact the claim that ‘Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent transmission of the disease.”

COVID-19 vaccines DON’T stop transmission of the disease. Believing that is not accepting a “debunked” claim.

Here’s what the CDC says, “Vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others, although at much lower rates than unvaccinated people.”

So, in their effort to make this judge look like a right-wing goon who wants to allow the spread of misinformation, the Times spreads their own misinformation.

I certainly wasn’t the only one who noticed.

If only the Gray Lady had a veteran columnist with decades of experience assigned to the coronavirus beat who could keep track of these things. If only.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HOW DOES IT FEEL? Sound of Freedom Sends a Rolling Stone Writer Into Fits of Rage.

I haven’t even seen Sound of Freedom yet, but I’m already convinced I need to based on the absolute hysteria emanating from the left.

As I reported yesterday, The Guardian set off the parade of stupidity by tying the movie, which is based on a true story, to QAnon. Does the movie mention QAnon, Hillary Clinton, Pizzagate, or anything of the sort? Not even a little bit. Rather, it’s just a story about saving a girl from human traffickers in South America.

Admittedly, I severely underestimated how triggering that would be for some people, and now a reviewer from Rolling Stone is having a “hold my beer” moment.

We’ll start with his actual article, but the continuation of his freakout happens elsewhere.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

Exit question: