QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Was Einstein a Racist? Only by 21st-century college-campus standards.

And as Glenn noted earlier today: Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name removed from book award over racism concerns; American Library Association changes award name after examining ‘expressions of stereotypical attitudes’ in books.

Why does this keep happening? Kevin Williamson offers one of the best explanations: “The generation that reached what passes for maturity in the age of social media is the most status-obsessed—and hence etiquette-obsessed—since the ancien régime. They are all miniaturists: There hasn’t been an important and original book of political ideas written by an American Millennial, and very few of them have read one, either. But they are very interested in individual pronouns and 280-character tweets. It is extraordinarily difficult for any one of them to raise his own status through doing interesting and imaginative intellectual work, because there is practically no audience for such work among his peers. Worse, the generation ahead of him stopped paying attention to Millennials years ago, and the generation behind him never started…. Status obsession does funny things to one’s map of social reality. It leads to all manner of bizarre thinking.”