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HEY, WHEN DID FOX BUTTERFIELD JOIN CNN? California has spent billions to fight homelessness. The problem has gotten worse.

CNN is far from the first outlet to Butterfield homelessness in California. In December of 2009, SF Weekly had this classic Fox Butterfield-esque line: “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s.”

Funny how that keeps happening when spending goes through the roof on homelessness or the unhoused, or whatever the Orwellian term du jour is this week.

 

HEY, WHEN DID FOX BUTTERFIELD JOIN THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE? Broken Homes: “San Francisco spends millions of dollars to shelter its most vulnerable residents in dilapidated hotels. With little oversight or support, the results are disastrous.”

MAY THE FOX BUTTERFIELD BE WITH YOU: “We Can’t See ‘Star Wars’ Anymore,” columnist Tim Kreider opines in the New York Times:

Now that it’s one franchise among many, “Star Wars” seems timeless, but the original is very much a product of the 1970s: Mr. Lucas began writing it while American troops were still in Vietnam and Nixon was being consumed by his dark side. It’s remembered now as a proto-Reaganesque, reactionary backlash against the morally ambiguous cinema of the ’70s, but it’s also a countercultural, anti-fascist fable about shaggy young outsiders fighting a revolution against the faceless, armored henchmen of a military technocracy. The Empire is comfortably identified with our favorite movie enemies, the Nazis, which helps disguise the fact that they are also, metaphorically, the imperialist invaders of Vietnam, confident in their devastating firepower to crush an ill-equipped insurgency. This subtext got a lot less subtextual in “Return of the Jedi,” in which the occupiers’ superweapons are thwarted by the guerrilla tactics and crude booby-traps of a pretechnological people.

By the time James Cameron’s “Avatar” made this allegory painfully overt, it felt uncomfortably weird watching American audiences cheer fantasies of indigenous peoples defeating capitalist invaders bent on exploiting their resources, even as our own battle droids were blowing up insurgents in oil-rich Iraq. You could imagine Al Qaeda or Timothy McVeigh identifying with Luke blowing up the Death Star — plucky underdogs destroying symbols of invincible power with dollar-store equipment and an audacious, suicidal plan. How did we end up on the wrong side of this story?

How indeed? (And as Ted Franks of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute notes on Twitter, Kreider paraphrases “Comfortably Smug’s” classic take on Luke Skywalker as mass-murdering crypto-jihadi without credit.)

Or to put it another way:

(Classical reference in headline.)

FOX BUTTERFIELD, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Despite Taylor Swift’s Endorsement of Bredesen, Blackburn Up Big in TN.

Related: Taylor Swift Should Put Her Tax Money Where Her Mouth Is. Why claim residency in Tennessee, especially if, in Taylor Swift’s words, red-state policies don’t represent ‘MY Tennessee values?’

UPDATE: Perhaps this headline explains why Blackburn is ahead: Bredesen Spokesman: ‘Gun Nuts’ Are ‘Biggest Terrorist Organization on The Planet.’

To paraphrase the legendary fictitious rock manager Ian Faith, Bredesen really shouldn’t worry about it though — it’s not like Tennessee is a big Second Amendment state.

(Bumped; classical reference in headline.)

IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE, IT’S FOX BUTTERFIELD! “Why Are So Many BASE Jumpers Dying?” asks the National Geographic. To be honest, I’d say the photo answers the question quite nicely:

national_geographic_base_jumpers_9-2-16-2

(Classical reference in headline.)

HEY, WHEN DID FOX BUTTERFIELD START WRITING HOLLYWOOD REPORTER HEADLINES? How Eddie Redmayne’s Transgender Role in ‘The Danish Girl’ Went From “Commercial Poison” to Oscar Contender.

(The Danish Girl’s not exactly printing money at the box office, which only benefits its chances in the era of the uber-politicized stick-it-to-the red states Academy Awards; Butterfield Effect explained here.)

In other news from politics and gender-obsessed Tinseltown, “The new Ghostbusters are fighting the ghosts of the patriarchy.”

Bless their souls! But of course they are.

FOX BUTTERFIELD, IS THAT YOU? “Scholar-activists must be ready to fend off the perception that their activism taints their scholarship, or that they’re going to indoctrinate students.”

Err, because they are? And note this:

Juggling the two identities isn’t new, but the task seems tougher today. The crowd was perhaps thicker during and just after the civil-rights and political movements of the 1960s and ’70s, which drew in so many young people, future professors among them. Now activists are more visible, their protests or remarks potentially bringing unwanted attention on social media or cable news — and prompting complaints to universities.

Yes, we wouldn’t want uncomprehending lay people to discover what’s going on inside the cloister; best keep the liturgies in Ecclesiastical Latin for that reason.

FOX BUTTERFIELD, IS THAT YOU?


The Butterfield Effect strikes the MSM once again!

FOX BUTTERFIELD, IS THAT YOU?

(Headline background here for those who don’t remember the cognitively dissonent textual stylings of Mr. Butterfield.)

FOX BUTTERFIELD, CALL YOUR OFFICE THE WASHINGTON POST: In Virginia, Gun Sales Are Up, But Crime Is Down. “Last year, 420,829 firearms were bought through licensed gun dealers in the state. That’s a 73 percent increase over 2006. Leading the list were pistols (175,717), followed by rifles (135,495). According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, central Virginians packed more heat than anyone else, followed closely by Northern Virginians. And yet, as more firearms are sold, the crime rate has continued to drop.”

It’s a mystery.

FOX BUTTERFIELD, IS THAT YOU? With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat? “A Pew study released Tuesday finds that Americans think gun violence has escalated when in reality it’s way down from two decades ago. The violence has dropped, meanwhile, even as gun ownership has increased.”

UPDATE: Reader Roland Hess writes: “Wouldn’t it be ironic if the imagined threat that Americans were arming themselves against had its roots in a creeping sense of insecurity perpetuated by the gun grabbers as they preach about the epidemic of gun crime? If you keep telling a free people there is a wave of violence just over the horizon, they are likely to take appropriate measures, and those may not square with the solutions preferred by the mandarins.” That would explain the Pew poll showing that most people think gun crime is up when it’s really down. . . .