WHY IS THE WNBA SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATE, BIGOTRY, AND VIOLENCE?
JUST IN: WNBA player Angel Reese viciously elbows Caitlin Clark in the head as she goes in for a layup.
Reese could be seen completely missing the ball and making contact with Clark's head instead.
She was called for a flagrant 1.
The move comes as more and more WNBA players… pic.twitter.com/VOmjloMTRX
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 16, 2024
OPEN THREAD: Don’t you know that when you play at this level there’s no ordinary venue. . . . Can’t be too careful with your company.
But the real brilliance is here. I get my kicks at Texas State Line sometimes.
OF COURSE:
Unexpectedly! https://t.co/tE7USv8096
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) June 15, 2024
DISNEY TURNED STAR WARS FROM HERO’S JOURNEY INTO MAOIST HACKERY:
Disney’s new Star Wars series, “The Acolyte” is further evidence that Kathleen Kennedy and her acolytes (for life imitates art), are not just creating entertainment but are actively engaged in the cultural revolution.
This latest installment — referred to as the “gayest Star Wars” — and the dismal sequel trilogy before it, serve as tools in a broader agenda to dismantle traditional cultural norms. Kennedy, acting as a political commissar, curates Star Wars content to align with the woke revolution’s mission, adopting the Maoist tactics of eradicating the Four Olds: old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.
Kennedy has recently become a meme for this movement, thanks to her on-the-nose lampooning by “South Park.” The predictable corporate response has been canned articles with titles like, “Star Wars Boss Kathleen Kennedy Is Not a ‘Woke Warrior’ at Disney (Report)” which, as anyone who’s paying attention knows, is like printing, “COVID was absolutely NOT the result of a lab leak!” in March of 2020. For “Acolyte,” Kennedy brought in Leslye Headland, a woke lesbian with an axe to grind against her religious upbringing who admits that she rooted for the evil witch Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” and spent four years as Harvey Winstein’s assistant.
The transformation of iconic characters and narratives from the original saga into vessels for neo-Marxist propaganda underscores this strategic shift. In the original saga, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo epitomized the hero’s journey, representing the values of traditional culture. One as the farm boy with the secret lineage who heeds the call to adventure to avenge his dead father and reclaim his role in the world, the other as the redeemable bad boy or the beast to be tamed by the princess. Obi-Wan served as the sage archetype or Jungian wise old man common in such retellings of the eternal story, while Leia was both damsel in distress and leadership material. But that must be forgotten, as the world was obviously an oppressive patriarchy until five minutes ago, 1979’s Ellen Ripley be damned.
You can make the case that the original Star Wars was “Maoist Hackery” as well – Lucas wanted to write a parable about the Vietnam War, with Palpatine as Nixon and eventually, the Ewoks as the Vietcong. (No, really.), but was smart enough to bury that theme deep into its subtext. And he knew how to tell a story, blending and borrowing disparate elements from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials to Dune to Akira Kurosawa’s samurai movies to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Face. Lucas had a vision and a goal that transcended his cookie-cutter Bay Area far left politics:
There was no shortage of sci-fi in Hollywood at the time. But most were dark, dystopian tales like Rollerball, Logan’s Run, or THX 1138 (Lucas’s 1971 feature-film debut). Lucas was determined to make a different kind of sci-fi movie—something fun that was aimed at 14- and 15-year-olds.
“The reason I’m making Star Wars is that I want to give young people some sort of faraway exotic environment for their imaginations to run around in,” he said in an interview. “I have a strong feeling about interesting kids in space exploration. I want them to want it. I want them to get beyond the basic stupidities of the moment and think about colonizing Venus and Mars. And the only way it’s going to happen is to have some dumb kid fantasize about it — to get his ray gun, jump in his ship and run off with this wookie into outer space. It’s our only hope in a way.”
And despite all of the “Force is Female” boosterism of Kathleen Kennedy et al, Lucas was saved in the editing bay, way back in 1977, by his then-wife: Five Ways Marcia Lucas Gave Star Wars Its Heart.
UPDATE: I much prefer the Critical Drinker’s solo rants than his online chats with fellow pop culture critics, but in the most recent example of the latter format, he brings up another negative aspect to the Acolyte, which might be dubbed Michael Burnham Syndrome:
There’s a pattern here, right? Whether it’s Doctor Who, whether it’s Star Trek, whether it’s Star Wars, of taking something that used to be a unique to one specific male character, whether it’s Captain Kirk, he was the first character that we had that was venturing out into space. Or [Doctor Who,] the very first one, was played by William Hartnell, a white guy. To going back, reconning the history of these franchise, so that actually a Strong Diverse Woman actually did it before them, and we just didn’t know about it at the time. Star Trek’s done it with Michael Burnham. Doctor Who’s done it with the Timeless Children. And now we’ve got it here with Star Wars with with episode three of the Acolyte. I just think it’s such a consistent pattern, there has got to be intent behind this. They think they’re so smart by doing it, but like I don’t know, man, like I’m starting to notice this pattern occurring.
Later in the chat, the Drinker adds:
I could draw a lot of parallels between where Star Wars is at now, and where Doctor Who is at as a franchise. It’s that feeling of the game is almost up, we’re running out of time, running out of money, and it’s just like, we’re into pure “f*** you mode” now. We know you don’t like what we’re making, and we just say f*** you, we’re just going to put everything in that we want to put in: All the sociopolitical messaging, all of our own personal hang-ups, all of our own personal politics, all of it. It’s just going to get rammed down your throat, because we know we’re in The Last Chance Saloon right now, so why not? Why not just throw all the s*** up a wall and see what sticks, and Doctor Who’s exactly the same way.
I’m sure the producers and writers think that their work on the Acolyte and similar product from Kathleen Kennedy is simply their first or latest step in what they hope is a lengthy career in Hollywood, but based on “Streaming and Screaming,” Rob Long’s latest column at Commentary, they might want to think twice:
The limitations that kept the television business small and nasty and profitable—only so many hours in a day, only so many networks in business—began to loosen as basic cable stations emerged and produced original programming of their own. But it wasn’t until the introduction of streaming services that the business broke loose. With unlimited bandwidth to deliver hours and hours of content, unlimited storewidth to amass an endless library, and unlimited money coming in from Wall Street, the streaming services could make as many TV shows as they wanted. They hired writers and produced TV shows with money-drunk abandon, and the greatest thing about those go-go years was, you didn’t need to wait for someone else’s show to get cancelled. Nobody had to die and get out of the way. They just kept adding shows. How many shows? Put it this way: In 2019, the Writers Guild of America had about 11,000 members. Today, five years later, it has around 20,000.
Five years from now, unfortunately, it will probably have a lot less. Show business is going through a painful contraction. In 2023, American television production declined by 15 percent. In the first quarter of 2024, it’s down another 7 percent. Studio space, for the first time in 10 years, is operating at 70 percent capacity. It doesn’t matter how many shows you make, it turns out, if there are still the same number of hours in the day to watch them. So some of those 20,000 members of the WGA are not going to last long enough in the business to get old and in the way. Some of them are going to have to find another line of work now, while they’re still young.
“I’m outta here,” a former writer colleague of mine posted on a group text we share. “Heading to Missouri. Done with this crap.” He has spent the past two years writing and rewriting a project for a big streaming service, weathering the budget cutbacks and two major strikes, only to be told last month that his project is dead. Without the prospect of a show in production, and facing another year or two of unemployment, he and his wife had a complicated and fraught conversation about money (the most complicated and fraught topic there is), and they decided it was better to sell their house and move than stick around and struggle and, eventually, have him shuffle around the Brentwood Country Mart shouting at young people.
I’ve heard the same calculation from writers, directors, even people in talent management: cutbacks, tight belts, more people fighting over fewer opportunities, all signals to get out of the business while there’s still some money in the bank to start over, in some other place, in some other business.
Matthew Weiner should be a cautionary tale for those who produce streaming entertainment — ten to 15 years ago, at the height of Mad Men’s popularity among hyper-online critics, he was the subject of glowing interview after interview, and his name was mentioned in most of the cover stories and profiles of the show’s cast. The amount of ink and pixels spilled over the show was in direct proportion to its actual popularity among television viewers (hey, remember them?), as TV critic Richard Rushfield wrote in 2011:
Mad Men at its height was watched by 2.9 million viewers. In contrast, CBS’ military police procedural drama NCIS last week was seen by 19.7 million viewers. As far as I can tell, NCIS has never been featured on the cover of any major American magazine apart from TV Guide and one issue of Inland Empire, the magazine of California’s suburban Riverside and San Bernadino counties.
Then came #MeToo in 2017, and Weiner’s Hollywood career seems effectively over. One way or another, Kathleen Kennedy’s acolytes (pun intended) will have people gunning for their jobs as well, particularly if streaming viewership continues to contract.
THE LONELY LIVES OF SCIENTISTS: Experiment Reveals Microplastics in Every Human Semen Sample Tested.
LIKE BITE MARKS, HAIR AND FIBER, ETC., MOST “SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE” IS GARBAGE: Wired for Disaster: The Hidden Dangers of Wire-Cut Evidence in Forensics.
FOR YOUR DELECTATION: My summer recipe for chilled poached salmon. Thanks to whoever it was who mentioned it in the open thread the other day.
SO YOU’RE SAYING THEY’RE DOING THEIR JOB OF WEEDING OUT DANGEROUS OR INEFFECTIVE TREATMENTS? Only 1 in 20 animal studies results in treatments approved for humans.
GREAT SHOES: I just bought these water shoes for the beach and they are both inexpensive and super comfortable, they almost feel like you are walking barefoot.
PUT A CHICK IN IT AND MAKE IT GAY?
Great advice. https://t.co/wqGxCNcTOr
— Brant Hadaway (@BrantHadaway) June 14, 2024
JOHN TIERNEY: The March of Dimes Syndrome.
In the spring of 1979, a few weeks after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, more than 65,000 people marched on the United States Capitol chanting “No Nukes, No Nukes.” As a young reporter at the Washington Star assigned to cover this new movement, I interviewed march organizers and noticed that all of them had previously organized protests against the Vietnam War. This struck me as curious: How had they suddenly become so passionate and knowledgeable about nuclear power?
I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?
These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally.
For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished.
* * * * * * * * *
The March of Dimes syndrome is an ancient social affliction that is especially virulent today and destined to get even worse. Kings, generals, and high priests have always tried to maintain power by declaring new crusades—new enemies to conquer, new sins to extirpate. But it has gotten steadily easier for leaders to rally the public because of another phenomenon, known as Spencer’s Law, named after the Victorian sociologist Herbert Spencer, who observed a paradox in the reform movements of his day to combat poverty, hunger, child labor, illiteracy, and alcoholism.
These problems were widespread in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century. Then, as the Industrial Revolution lifted incomes during the nineteenth century, the working classes saw a dramatic improvement in their diets and living conditions. By mid-century, most Britons were literate because children were going to school instead of being put to work. Alcohol consumption fell dramatically. But it was only late in the nineteenth century, after so much progress had already occurred, that reformers captured the public’s attention with campaigns to help the needy, mandate universal education, and pass temperance laws. “The more things improve,” Spencer wrote in 1891, “the louder become the exclamations about their badness.”
Read the whole thing.
STARLINER AND SLS DON’T REALLY WORK, BUT SURE:
How do you draw a pride flag? 🤔
With SCIENCE!
This flag is a composite of NASA imagery of phenomena from Earth and far, far beyond it. Details below ⬇️
Credit: Rachel Lense pic.twitter.com/Cpth3jWyO4
— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) June 13, 2024
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Waterpik Cordless Advanced Water Flosser For Teeth. #CommissionEarned
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Scientists say they may have found evidence of “Dyson spheres” created by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.
Other astronomers, meanwhile, have proposed that the putative Dyson spheres might just be interference from nearby, hot, dust-obscured galaxies (or Hot DOGs), which are “surrounded by enormous, thick clouds of dust” and are “very good at emitting infrared radiation.”
The scientists who discovered the potential spheres are more than willing to admit that they might not in fact be what they appear to be. They’re going to do what every good scientist does in these situations: Seek more data, particularly via the James Webb Space Telescope, which can make direct observations of the stars.
Also, look for an elderly former chief engineer preserved within a transporter loop inside a starship atop the Dyson sphere:
IT EXPLAINS JUST ABOUT EVERY CURRENT “CRISIS” DECLARED BY THE LEFT: The March of Dimes Syndrome. Why have activists declared a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why, as radical prejudice declined, was there a rise in the number of “hate groups”? Why, as sexual violence declined in America, did academics and the #MeToo movement discover an “epidemic of sexual assault”?
These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes Syndrome. That organization, founded to combat polio, didn’t go out of business after it succeeded. It switched to a new cause, preventing birth defects. When activists achieve their original goals — like their victories for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights — they immediately find new ones. It doesn’t matter how bad the new mission is — or even whether it actually sets back progress toward the original goal. What matters to the activists is to stay in business.
NICOLE GELINAS: Regressives.
Modern New York City is a crucible of progressivism. From 2014 to 2022, progressive mayor Bill de Blasio held the reins at City Hall, and until early 2023, progressives held a majority in the city council. Since the 2018 Democratic state legislature victory, progressive policies have reshaped New York, introducing major criminal-justice reforms, higher income taxes, legalized marijuana, and widespread e-bike availability. With weak, moderate Democratic leaders in New York State and City—Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams—and with both levels of government until recently flush with cash, progressives have freely pursued their agendas in the legislature, council, and high-profile district attorney offices.
Under this regime, though, New York City is regressing. On any life-safety metric, from homicides to fire deaths, and on any measure of prosperity or well-being, from population to job growth, Gotham is stagnant or sliding backward. A walk around town reveals no enlightened, well-funded urban oasis but something more like a twenty-first-century version of Frank Capra’s dystopian Pottersville, with neon cannabis-for-sale signs blinking on storefronts, addicts nodding off on sidewalks, and street vendors selling stolen toiletries, even as drugstores lock up merchandise to deter shoplifters.
Hey, not every city can be the pristine shining beacon just 80 miles south: While NYC descends into chaos, Philadelphia is a model of urban order.
JEFF DUNETZ: Father’s Day Still Strange Without Dad.
When I was down in Florida just before he passed away, Dad was fighting dementia. He was desperately trying to hold on to his memory, continually reviewing everyone’s names, his kid’s names, the names of his children’s kids, the layout of our homes, etc. Incredibly, through that desperate struggle, my father kept talking and singing happily because that was my Dad.
I have two adult children, who bring me joy all the time. But celebrating Father’s Day together on Sunday can’t be as joyous as it was five years ago because my Dad won’t be there.
Read the whole thing.
IT’S ALL PETER BENCHLEY’S FAULT: A scientific mission to save the sharks: Despite protection measures, these fish are among the most endangered animals.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Joe Biden Shuffle defines the G7.
Biden spokesmen objected that the clip was taken “out of context.” The president, you see, was merely registering the presence of another parachutist who landed just out of the picture’s frame. My own view is that more context makes Biden’s performance seem even worse. As one naughty commentator put, if you look at the longer clip, Biden’s behavior is “even more horrifying,” more geriatric, more porous, “A dull head among windy spaces,” as T.S. Eliot put it in “Gerontion.“
Speaking of Eliot, Joe Biden is the perfect “objective correlative” for the G7 and kindred pustules of globalist exhibitionism. The pop singer Michael Jackson popularized a dance move known as the Moonwalk. Joe Biden gave the group its signature move: an alarming rictus, hoisted upon a vacant stare by a wizened, trembling hand, propelled uncertainly forward with halting steps and slow. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s the Joe Biden Shuffle. It will not, I am confident, be widely imitated — outside the parlors of late-night comedy, anyway — but it is certain to be long remembered.
He’s fine, absolutely fine:
Everyone freaking out about that Biden clip at G7.
I found the full video. The longer clip, in context, is even more horrifying. pic.twitter.com/obFINP7RNE
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) June 13, 2024
Just ask Joe Scarborough:
SUPERCUT!
Corporate media: Don't believe your lying eyes, Biden's never been sharper! pic.twitter.com/FW6e2ZPT5i
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 15, 2024
Besides, Barry assures me his former veep is fine as well:
Obama has to grab his hand to signal it’s time to move and then has his hand on his back the entire time to guide him off stage. Biden is not okay. They’ll all tell you not to believe your eyes, but my gosh is this obvious. https://t.co/3CJ72PYhA0
— Brittany (@bccover) June 16, 2024
WELL, GOOD: People with type 1 diabetes are living longer.
JOSH HAMMER: How to lock up those nasty pro-Hamas and Gaza protestors.
Jews have been terrified; one Jewish parent at Columbia, withdrawing his freshman daughter in April, analogized his experience to evacuating a refugee from a war zone.
Perhaps colleges and city centers will see a brief respite, as would-be revolutionaries jet off for summertime gigs at tony investment banks or do-goody nonprofits.
Such a respite would be nice.
But one would still be forgiven for asking the obvious question — which I’ve pondered often as a former law clerk on the US Court of Appeals and a frequent law school speaker: Why are none of these “protesters” in jail?
To ask the question is to answer it. Or as Andy Ngo wrote last year: Who funds Antifa protests? We all do.
Nearly every American city afflicted by mass protesting and rioting in 2020 ended up settling and paying out millions in taxpayer money to radical protesters who were allegedly subjected to force by law enforcement.
Denver settled to pay $1.6 million to just seven people.
Austin settled to pay $17.3 million.
The cities, led by Democrats, don’t even bother to fight the cases, preferring to write a check.
The settlement cash doesn’t just end up rewarding the protesters, awarded inflated attorney fees are used to reinvest in the legal groups to grow the operation for the next cause. Additionally, law enforcement morale declines as they are punished for doing their jobs.
But lawsuit settlements aren’t the only way that militant protesters and riot suspects get paid.
I assume there’s a similar dynamic going on today: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same. “One year, statues are toppled and the next, Jews are bullied, but it’s amazing how the far-left treats such wildly diverse issues with the same small toolbox. It has ever been thus. As one radical wrote for a Students for a Democratic Society publication in the 1960s, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’”
Besides, the authorities have invented much more severe crimes to prosecute these days:
¡NO PASARÁN!: “A banana republic—if you can keep it.”
What [Alvin] Bragg did was to turn a misdemeanor — whose statute of limitations had expired — into a felony under a New York statute that requires an accompanying crime without ever explaining what that secondary crime was.
We are bequeathing our children and grandchildren a completely different country than the one our parents, grandparents and Founders bequeathed to us.
Read the whole thing. Joe’s boss did promise “fundamental transformation,” so he can least boast that he delivered just that.
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