WAIT, I THOUGHT OBESITY WAS A WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC. Australian Academics Attack Campaign for More Female Exercise Because of “The Male Gaze.”
Archive for 2017
August 13, 2017
GETCHER “GOOLAG” t-shirt right here.
PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENTS: Obama After Nidal Hasan’s Mass Shooting at Fort Hood: Don’t Jump To Conclusions.
TERRY MCAULIFFE NEEDS TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS: “There was no police presence. We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park watching.” “I’ve seen how the police have managed crowds here in Madison, Wisconsin — huge rallies with opposing sides. I’d like to know how the police in Virginia could be so impotent. Are they so afraid of being accused of doing something wrong that they protect themselves by doing nothing?”
The same thing happened at Berkeley. And in Chicago.
ROD DREHER: CHARLOTTESVILLE IS THE KIND OF AMERICA THAT IDENTITY POLITICS IS CALLING INTO BEING. It’s time for straight talk about that:
Finally, we on the Right have to start speaking out without fear against identity politics — and calling out people on the Left, especially those within institutions, for practicing it. The alt-right has correctly identified a hypocritical double standard in American culture. It’s one that allows liberals and their favored minority groups to practice toxic identity politics — on campus, in the media, in corporate America, on the streets — while denying the possibility to whites and males. By speaking out against left-wing identity politics, and by explaining, over and over, why identity politics are wrong and destructive, conservatives strengthen their position in chastising white nationalists on the Right.
But none of this will matter at all as long as the Left refuses to oppose identity politics in its own ranks. As I keep saying here, you cannot have an identity politics of the Left without calling up the same thing on the Right. Left-liberals who want conservatives to stigmatize and denounce white nationalism, but conservatives who do so will be sneered at by white nationalists as dupes and fools who advocate disarmament in the face of racist, sexist forces of the Left.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): David Marcus was warning of this over a year ago: How Anti-White Rhetoric Is Fueling White Nationalism: White people are being asked—or pushed—to take stock of their whiteness and identify with it more. This is a remarkably bad idea.
Related: We’ll have more Charlottesvilles. I’d rather have a culture in which people responded to ideas and groups they dislike with peaceful criticism, but we haven’t had that for a while.
I’M PRETTY SURE THE MOSCOW MULES ARE AT LEAST AS HARD ON YOUR LIVER: Are copper cups used for Moscow Mules poisonous?
WHOA — BILL WHITTLE GETS WOKE: There is white privilege:
Watch the whole thing.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS. Shameful: Markos Moulitsas spreads ‘dangerous lie’ about ‘NRA and American conservatives:’
Daily Kos founder and Vox co-founder Markos Moulitsas wasted no time in using the tragedy in Charlottesville, Va. to propagate a disgusting smear about conservatives and the NRA.
Moulitsas tweets, “NRA and American conservatives/Nazis are one and the same.”
Curiously, two of the other founders of Vox have each written:
Not everything the Nazis touched was bad. Hitler was a vegetarian. Volkswagen is a perfectly good car company. Universal health care is a perfectly good idea. Indeed, the Nazis actually did a pretty good job increasing economic growth and improving standards of living (they were, many think, the first Keynesians, adopting the strategy even before Keynes had come up with it), pushing Germany out of a depression and back into expansion. Unfortunately, they also set out to conquer Europe and exterminate the Jews. People shouldn’t do that.
—“Nazi Ideas,” Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, September 11(!) 2006.
And fellow Voxer Mathew Yglesias tweeted last year:
Perennial question from last year: Is GE happy to be associated with Vox?
ESPN’S SURRENDER TO GRIM NEW REALITY:
The reality is that the glory days are over for ESPN. Instead of making the $6.4 billion it earned in 2014, it’ll soon be earning $2 billion or less. Iger, or his successor, will have to decide whether to invest in it or to let it hobble along in its diminished shape. Disney will have to decide whether to keep paying megabucks for professional sports rights — thinking of them as loss leaders like the Olympics for NBC — or whether to give up those rights to save money. If it does the former, ESPN’s profits will dwindle even more. If it does the latter, fewer sports fans will want to subscribe.
I’ve been in the magazine and newspaper business my whole working life. I’ve watched the same forces diminish my industry. My former employer, the New York Times, has millions more viewers and subscribers than it ever did when print reigned supreme. Yet it is barely profitable, because the internet destroys a media company’s advertising base and the Times can’t charge subscribers as much as it could charge when readers were buying the dead tree version.
In both cases, perhaps alienating half your potential customers after posing as “objective” may not have been the best strategy for survival.
“WELL THIS IS AWKWARD. THIS PIECE PROMOTING VIOLENT LEFTIES RAN IN THE LOCAL SECTION OF TODAY’S WASHINGTON POST,” Curtis Houck of NewsBusters tweets.
The Post’s article is headlined, “What draws Americans to anarchy? It’s more than just smashing windows.” Yes – it’s the puff pieces they know they’ll get from newspapers like the WaPo:
Anarchists — who are often grouped with the antifascists, or antifa — have been increasingly visible across the country, engaging in high-profile protests that sometimes turn violent. In Berkeley, Calif., they have squared off with far-right and other groups, rioting to stop people they deem to be fascists from speaking on campus — ticking off debates about free speech. In Portland, Ore., the threat of violence between anarchists and far-right groups forced a popular family parade to be shut down.
Interviews with a dozen anarchists in the Washington area and beyond show a group that, while angry with President Trump, would be dissatisfied with any U.S. leader. (They protested President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, too, but it was a smaller group.)
They said they think liberals become complacent when a Democrat is in the White House, letting injustices go unquestioned. But they also think marginalized groups will fare worse under the Trump administration. In their minds, the entire U.S. government should be abolished and reimagined on a much smaller scale. [Oh wait, they’re libertarians now? I don’t think so — Ed]
“The Trump presidency has certainly given a boldness to fascists and racist movements throughout the country, and that’s a moment where anarchists are ready to respond in a way that many others aren’t,” said Samantha Miller, 32, a D.C. anarchist who helped organize the Inauguration Day protests.
And the photo atop the Post’s article graphically illustrates how “anarchists are ready to respond in a way that many others aren’t.” It features a smug-looking 37-year old fella dressed in black, wearing polka-dotted sunglasses – and carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder. It’s reminiscent of Rolling Stone’s efforts to glamorize convicted Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The Post would never be caught dead running a photo of a member of the alt-right in such a “look at how cool this guy is” pose, and rightly so. But as the captions I added to it illustrate, the masked slipped a bit with this photo selection.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: An Expert’s Guide To Preventing Food Poisoning.
OK, BUT I’M NOT SURE IF PINCH WILL:
● Shot: “I’m a White Man. Hear Me Out.”
—Headline of New York Times column this weekend by Frank Bruni, 52.
● Chaser:
Not long ago, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the 41-year old publisher of the New York Times, was greeting people at a party in the Metropolitan Museum when a dignified older man confronted him. He told Sulzberger that he was unhappy about the jazzy, irreverent new “Styles of the Times” Sunday section. “It’s very”—the man—paused—“un-Times-ian”
“Thank you,” Sulzberger replied. He later told a crowd of people that alienating older white male readers means “we’re doing something right.”
—“Tumult at the Times,” New York magazine, November 16, 1992.
It was during that era that former Timesman Peter Boyer described the atmosphere in Pinch’s newsroom as “moderate white men should die,” according to William McGowan in his exceptional 2010 book Gray Lady Down.
Based on Bruni’s cri de coeur yesterday, it sounds like little has changed there.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN IRAN: Iranian parliament votes to spend more on ballistic missiles. Yup, Obama’s nuke deal with Iran was a very very bad deal.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to convert a container ship into a world-class superyacht explorer.
CHARLIE MARTIN: Breaking News: Donald Trump is President.
Donald J Trump is President. Really. Won it fair and square, he was inaugurated seven — almost eight — months ago, and very probably is going to be President for another three and a half years.
Minimum.
So, now, children, let’s calm down. All of you people over there saying Trump is unqualified and should be removed? Give it up. He’s qualified by the only qualification that matters: he is over 35, he is a native US citizen, and he won the damned election. The Constitution doesn’t have a clause in it for removal by vote of the media, or because his political opponents don’t like him. The only reason he can be removed Constitutionally is if someone finds high crimes and misdemeanors.
Now, I know that some people are fantasizing about the Democrats taking the House, and passing a Bill of Impeachment, and somehow getting the Senate to convict.
To which I say, “be careful, you’ll get chafed.”
Besides, look what we know now: the Russian collusion story is effectively dead — the famous Golden Showers Dossier is the product of a Democratic opposition research house, talking to Russians is actually not a crime, and the case has gotten much stronger that the DNC emails weren’t obtained by Russian hackers. If you’re hanging your hopes on the Emoluments Clause, remember that George Washington ran his business while President. If George Washington could do it without hitting the Emoluments Clause, it’s going to be tough passing the laugh test with Trump.
Let’s game the impeachment out, though. Say it happened. Then there are going to be approximately 43 million Americans who are convinced that the President they elected has been removed by the people they were voting against when they elected him. I don’t care what you think of Trump, that won’t be good. And should it happen, what do you think the next election will be like?
So, stop.
They can’t. And I mean that literally. It’s not just a political posture. It’s a psychological need.
He’s got some advice for Trump supporters, too. Oh, and here’s one more excerpt:
Legacy media, it’s like this: if you want to have your reporting respected, your reporting is going to have to deserve respect. If you keep reporting fake news, people are going to keep thinking you report fake news.
For everyone: stop using the word “treason” unless you’re prepared to show which recognized enemy with which we have a legally-recognized state of active hostilities. And good luck with that.
But stop bandying it about recklessly: you’re accusing someone of a capital crime. That goes for everybody: Debbie Wassermann-Schultz, Hillary Clinton, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump Sr., basement-dwelling ne’er-do-wells whether they’re carrying a Swastika or a Hammer and sickle. If you want to know why accusing these people of treason is bad, read the Federalist Paper number 43 or just look at history: “treason” is an awfully convenient way to justify killing your political opposition.
Whatever your politics, it’s time to recognize that the election is over, and and what’s going on now is hurting the country and hurting the people. It’s time to start a acting like responsible citizens of a free nation.
Or at least it’s time to decide whether you want to be citizens of a free nation.
Indeed.
BLESS HIS HEART: Tom Brokaw claims he was ‘hacked’ after NewsBusters article shows up on his timeline.
It’s a tweet under Brokaw’s name to the NewsBusters article from Friday headlined, “Newsweek’s Nina Burleigh, Who Offered Bill Clinton Oral Sex, Decries Mrs. Trump’s Degrading High Heels”; Twitchy has the screencap.
Even more so than as with Anthony Weiner’s tireless efforts to fight cybercrime, I’m sure Brokaw will immediately order the entire NBC newsroom — and maybe even the staffers at CNBC and MSNBC — to investigate how one of the best known newsreaders in the country had his twitter feed “hacked” and bring the culprits to justice.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Hepatitis C Is Transmitted.
THIS IS SO WEIRD AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF HOPE AND CHANGE: One in eight American adults is an alcoholic, study says. “I think the increases are due to stress and despair and the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism.”
WE CERTAINLY ARE: Paying The Price For Breakdown Of The Country’s Bourgeois Culture.
I’m reading/rereading Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites right now, and he has a lot to say about that. He writes:
The new elites are in revolt against “Middle America,” as they imagine it: a nation technologically backward, politically reactionary, repressive in its sexual morality, middlebrow in its tastes, smug and complacent, dull and dowdy. . . .
The culture wars that have convulsed America since the sixties are best understood as a form of class warfare, in which an enlightened elite (as it thinks of itself) seeks not so much to impose its values on the majority (a majority perceived as incorrigibly racist, provincial and xenophobic), much less to persuade the majority by means of rational public debate, as to create parallel or “alternative” institutions in which it will no longer be necessary to confront the unenlightened at all.
Bourgeois culture is bad because it limits the flexibility of the elites. When the middle class was ascendant, it had the power to force bourgeois norms on elites, and even many of the poor. This led to social goods that people miss now, but it was also experienced as confining by those so constrained.
WHEN YOU BELIEVE THAT ‘THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL,’ YOU GIVE YOURSELF THE EXCUSE TO POLITICIZE EVERYTHING. Michael Walsh: The Left is Politicizing Classical Music Now.
AS WAS THE CASE IN THE OBAMA YEARS, once again, the British press are asking the questions that the DNC-MSM refuses to:
I just asked @GovernorVA if he wanted to condemn antifa as well as neo Nazi groups. He heard. Refused to answer. pic.twitter.com/W7vcH4fSI0
— Raheem ?? (@RaheemKassam) August 12, 2017
And note this. The Huffington Post reports, “Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville: State police and national guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters.”
Trial lawyer Robert Barnes tweets that ACLU of Virginia “confirms that police were given stand-down order. This invited the violence the city used to shut down a court-permitted protest.”
AT AMAZON, still on sale, J5 Tactical V1-Pro Flashlight.
WELL, YOU GET USED TO THAT HIT, I GUESS: Energy drinks could increase risk of cocaine use, study finds. Or, you know, people looking for that hit are prime prospects for both energy drinks and cocaine to begin with.