Archive for 2017

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Problem of Sex.

The sexual revolution was the joint product of 20th century social theories and technological innovations that together allowed women to leave family settings and move into the workplace. It seemed unstoppable. Gender segregation gradually declined and women were thrown together with men at all levels, from sailors in submarines to interns at the White House. With dazzling rapidity the family itself began to be regarded as a vaguely sinister and definitely reactionary. Heterosexual marriage was disestablished and gender itself became a construct. It even became permissible and even virtuous for biological men to use women’s locker rooms provided they identified as female. No major problems were anticipated by the prophets of the new morality and the architects of the remade world prepared to celebrate their victory.

Suddenly a strange thing happened. The increased opportunities for sexual interaction promised by 60s prophets, rather than kicking off an endless party raised the curtain on a darker prospect. The 60s chant “if it feels good, do it” gave way to a new, more fearful phrase: rape culture. “Rape culture,” warned one university department, “is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety. … Most women and girls live in fear of rape.”

What happened?

What the sexual prophets had forgotten to anticipate was the re-emergence of the sex problem. The forces which institutions had successfully contained for centuries were on the loose again. . . .

Clearly what is needed is some clear and stable definition of what was in or out of bounds. How far can one interact with the opposite sex without infringing on their “safe space”? How could consent to initiate a relationship be unambiguously obtained? Which words not uttered, what actions not done? Formerly these red lines were widely known within a given community. However the search for a such a code is complicated by the fact that many of the advocates of the sexual revolution are also fervent believers in multiculturalism.

We are learning the latter complicates the former. Without a dominant culture there is no dominant reference point, no North Star.

Before you tear down a fence, they say, you should probably have some idea what it was meant to keep in, or keep out.

WHY ROY MOORE MIGHT WIN: BLAME THE MEDIA. “How have we reached a point in this country when nearly half the voters of a U.S. state so mistrust, and even revile, major media outlets that they are willing to brush aside credible evidence and elect an accused sexual predator simply out of spite? How have we reached a point where a president of the United States can just declare ‘fake’ news he doesn’t like—and largely get away with it?”

I dunno, maybe skim my blog archives back at least to 2003? Or maybe read this. Or this.

FLASHBACK: A LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED WITH NIR ROSEN: “It seems that Rosen has been getting away with making outrageous statements for so long that it’s no wonder that he felt emboldened to tweet away and mock Logan with impunity. This time, though, he happened to have hit on a subject that was offensive to leftist sensibilities as well as those on the right — and he discovered that there are finally consequences, even for Nir Rosen. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

How many of these anti-American hacks are out there doing allegedly factual reportage? They keep turning up. See, e.g., Chris Hedges. And as was noted after Toby Harnden’s revelations about the Baghdad press corps, the journalistic omerta that keeps these things from being reported only serves to undermine the entire profession’s trustworthiness.

Related: Kyle Smith: Unhinged coverage of Trump is hurting the media.

A year ago this week, I marveled at the pot-boiling-over frenzy of Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome in the media. Well, today, the media’s kitchen is a shambles. Spaghetti sauce is splattered all over the walls, and the Fourth Estate is pouring more Prego marinara into the pot while keeping the heat turned up to the level marked “thermonuclear.”

Not only is everything (still) hyper-politicized, but the lines between news media, lifestyle media and flat-out activism have faded into irrelevance. . . . The unhinged coverage of all Trump scandals, real and imagined, has cost the media in the eyes of the public, among whom only 39 percent said they had a “great deal” or even “some” confidence in news outlets last November.

Indeed.

CUE THE LEFT’S SEETHING AND GNASHING OF TEETH IN 3…2…1…: Time Inc. Is Said to Near Sale in Deal Backed by Koch Brothers.

Time Inc. is nearing an agreement to sell itself to the Meredith Corporation in a deal backed by Charles G. and David H. Koch, the billionaire brothers known for using their wealth and political connections to advance conservative causes.

Huh – the two New York Timespeople assigned to this piece and their layers and layers of fact checkers spelled “libertarian” wrong:

Wikipedia shows Koch Family Foundations supporting causes like:

  1. CATO Institute
  2. Reason Foundation
  3. cancer research
  4. ballet (because seriously: F***. THAT. SHIT.) …

If there’s one thing I know about billionaires, it’s that they only care about money. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Soros. They aren’t fooling me. Bill Gates isn’t fooling me with his vaccination campaign in Africa. He’s just trying to make African children live longer so they will buy more copies of Windows. Wow. Not even trying to hide it.

Now, I don’t know why the KOCH brothers want gay people to have the right to marry. Everybody knows marriage is for a man and a woman. Even Obama said that. Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve amirite? I haven’t figured out the angle. Maybe it’s like this:

  1. legalize drugs
  2. legalize gay marriage
  3. sell drugs and oil to gays
  4. ????
  5. PROFIT$$$

I don’t know exactly how it would work, but we can all agree that they’re evil.

That’s a safe bet among the Times’ core audience. The rest of us are noting that this deal, if it happens, is Instapundit-approved, and hopes that the Kochs do a far better job of transforming Time magazine and its spin-off publications back to their center-right roots than Bezos has done reining in the Post.

UPDATE: Done deal. As Glenn tweets, “What is best in life?”

THE PLASTIC TURKEY BAND ARE OFF ON ANOTHER WORLD TOUR: April Ryan, Leftists Beclown Themselves Over Sarah Sanders’ Thanksgiving Pecan Pie.

April Ryan, an inexplicably esteemed member of the White House press corps, having tried and failed to promote a “fake news” controversy over White House’s Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ Thanksgiving pecan pie, has not apologized or acknowledged her error, has rejected Sanders’ face-saving attempt to smooth things over, and is apparently worried that Sanders will publicly poison her and her fellow journalists. You can’t make this stuff up.

Ryan’s history, as documented at NewsBusters, is full of embarrassing statements, unhinged rants, and stunning ignorance of very basic facts.

Not least of which, the CNN “political analyst” tweeting in July that a Trump official first coined the word “stagflation.”

Credentialed-but-not-educated – and the worst political class in American history, as Glenn likes to say, who have no idea how easily they’re being trolled by the administration over their past fake news and anti-GOP hyperbole.

(Classical reference in headline.)

AP: AL FRANKEN “ASHAMED AMID GROPING CLAIMS…BUT LOOKS FORWARD TO RETURNING TO WORK ON MONDAY AND GRADUALLY REGAINING VOTERS’ TRUST.”

Except Al Franken doesn’t feel shame:

Recall what Franken said in his “Giant of the Senate” book about apologizing about making rape jokes (if you can call them that) about Lesley Stahl. Franken admitted that he faked the apology in order to win election to the Senate. He wrote:

To say I was sorry for writing a joke was to sell out my career, to sell out who I’d been my entire life. And I wasn’t sorry that I had written Porn-o-Rama or pitched that stupid Lesley Stahl joke at 2 in the morning. I was just doing my job.

I learned that campaigns have their own rules, their own laws of physics, and that if I wasn’t willing to accept that, I would never get to be a senator.

How do you suppose Franken really feels about attending the Minnesota State Fair and posing for pictures with the masses, most of whom are not pretty young women? I assume he considers it tacky –“a sell out” of “who he’d been his entire life.”

The butt grab may therefore be Franken’s “f*** you” to the “rules” of campaigns and to ordinary decency. It may be his reassertion of “who he has been his entire life” — not a “giant of the Senate” (as he mockingly described himself), but an unbounded smasher, via pranks, of convention and bourgeois morality.

I don’t mean to drain lechery out of my diagnosis. For many, constraints on sexual predation are the worst part of bourgeois morality. Scratch a slayer of bourgeois convention and you will often find a lecher. And a virulent sexist.

Exit question: Why is No One Talking About the Fact that Al Franken is Married?

SAD: Adios, California. “Sure, the liberals like to claim California socialism is working by pointing to the much heralded statistic that ‘California’s economy is the 6th largest in the world’ as calculated by the state’s Department of Finance. Indeed, California’s $2.62 trillion economy is larger than that of France, Canada, Brazil, Russia, and Italy. However, that GDP stat does not factor in California’s cost of living, which is 36.2% higher than the national cost of living. As Carson Bruno writes in Real Clear Markets, ‘using the cost of living adjusted data from the International Monetary Fund and adjusting California’s GDP data provides a better snapshot of California’s economic standing in the world. Doing so shows that California is actually the 12th largest economy — a drop of 6 spots — and actually puts the state below Mexico.’ Moreover, as Bruno points out, Silicon Valley ‘accounted for 50% of California’s private industry real GDP growth.’ In other words, without a few dozen mega profitable high-tech Silicon Valley firms such as Apple, Google, and Facebook, California’s GDP would be significantly smaller.”

PHIL HAMBURGER: PTAB, Patents and the Constitution.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Oil States vs. Greene’s Energy Group, et al. on whether the Patent and Trademark Office, acting through the Patent and Trial Appeal Board (PTAB), can decide the validity of existing patents. The question, in particular, is whether the PTAB is unconstitutionally extinguishing private property rights in a non-Article III forum without a jury. At stake, therefore, is a range of vital issues, including patents, property, and the right to be heard in a real court, with a jury.

In the debate over this case, what has not been sufficiently understood is the significance of the government’s granting property in form of a patent. This was a form of grant that ideally could be invalided only by a court of record.

I agree that patents are property, and that only a court — not an administrative tribunal — can constitutionally deprive people of property.

JOHN CONYERS STEPS ASIDE FROM JUDICIARY POST AMID SEX HARASSMENT INQUIRY:

“After careful consideration and in light of the attention drawn by recent allegations made against me,” Mr. Conyers said in a statement on Sunday, he is stepping aside on the Judiciary panel “during the investigation of these matters.”

The announcement came five days after the revelation that Mr. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, had settled a complaint in 2015 by a former employee who had said she was fired because she rejected his sexual advances. The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into the matter.

“I deny these allegations, many of which were raised by documents reportedly paid for by a partisan alt-right blogger,” Mr. Conyers said in the statement. “I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics.”

The news of the settlement was first reported by BuzzFeed News, which said it received documents about the case from Mike Cernovich, a right-wing online commentator. BuzzFeed has reported that a second woman has also accused Mr. Conyers of sexual harassment.

As one Twitter user noted, “I guess he missed the point where Cernovich purposefully gave the information to Buzzfeed knowing that Conyers would take the stance of Cernovich being a non-credible source.”

In the update to his post earlier today on Nancy Pelosi describing Conyers as an “icon” on Meet the Press and thus deserving of a Clinton and Kennedy-esque pass, Allahpundit describes Conyers’ stepping down from the Judiciary Committee as a “half measure.” He links to Josh Barro of Business Insider, who tweets that his theory is that “After her MTP interview landed so badly, Pelosi told Conyers he was going to step aside, and that it could be his choice or hers.”

As Allah asks, so when does Conyers resign? He’s 88, and based on his winning 77 percent in his re-election bid in 2016, his seat is exceedingly safe.

UPDATE: “Pelosi looks ahead,” Scott Johnson writes at Power Line. “Conyers ‘stepped down’ from his perch on the Judiciary Committee, where he was the ranking member. This, however, just clears the decks for impeachment hearings in the event that Democrats retake control of the House in the next Congress.”

“ROAD DIET:” L.A. Is Creating Traffic Jams to Push Commuters to Ride Bikes and Rail.

“In the 1960s we were building interstate highways, freeways through downtown areas, which was definitely the wrong approach,” says Feigenbaum. “Now we don’t want to build any roads at all. We just want to build bike paths. We want to narrow lanes. We’re saying that transit is going to solve everybody’s needs. Neither extreme is what we need.”

A new Reason TV video by PJTV alumna Alexis Garcia.

HOW LONG BEFORE ALIENS CAN SEE THIS ON THEIR LARGE SPACE TELESCOPES? Awash in Artificial Light, the World Gets 2 Percent Brighter Each Year. Honestly, we could probably see this on exoplanets now with what we’ve got. And hey, who could have guessed that making outdoor lighting more efficient would cause people to buy more of it?