THE IDIOCY OF MODERN IDENTITARIANISM SUMMED UP IN ONE STORY: Steven Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Finds Its Maria, Anita, Bernardo & Chino.

“When we began this process a year ago, we announced that we would cast the roles of Maria, Anita, Bernardo, Chino and the Sharks with Latina and Latino actors. I’m so happy that we’ve assembled a cast that reflects the astonishing depth of talent in America’s multifaceted Hispanic community,” said Spielberg. “I am in awe of the sheer force of the talent of these young performers, and I believe they’ll bring a new and electrifying energy to a magnificent musical that’s more relevant than ever.” ….

“I am so thrilled to be playing the iconic role of Maria alongside this amazing cast,” said [Rachel]  Zegler. “West Side Story was the first musical I encountered with a Latina lead character. As a Colombian-American, I am humbled by the opportunity to play a role that means so much to the Hispanic community.”

Why do Puerto Rican characters in West Side Story need to be played by Latinos, but not Italian characters by people of Italian or (better yet, given the demographics of New York’s Italian community, specifically Sicilian) descent? Why is having a Colombian-American a politically-correct choice to play a Puerto Rican? What do Colombia and Puerto Rico have in common besides different dialects of the Spanish language? If you were trying to cast an Australian of 1960, would casting an English-speaking actor from the US, or India, be “authentic”? Isn’t kind of insulting to assume that all Spanish-speaking countries are interchangeable?

I’ve been working on a paper about legal definitions of race and ethnicity in the U.S., and the designation of “Hispanics” as non-white was not exactly historically inevitable. “Mexicans,” along with other Spanish-speaking peoples of the Americas, were usually considered to be legally white in the census and otherwise, though Mexicans were sometimes sent to segregated school thanks to local policy. When affirmative action programs started in the Sixties, “Chicano” (Mexican-American) groups lobbied for Mexican-Americans to be included as a “minority” group. Once Mexican-Americans were included, the category gradually expanded. First, it was anyone with a Spanish surname. But that proved overbroad, because many Italians have last names that sound Spanish, and many people of Hispanic descent do not. So eventually this morphed into “Latino” or Hispanic. But why, for example, an Argentine immigrant of Italian heritage is less “white” than a native-born American of Italian heritage is a mystery. Having lived in Peru, the irony of seeing like-skinned Latin Americans of mostly European origin who are generally contemptuous of darker-skinned Latin Americans suddenly becoming “people of color” eligible for minority preferences if they immigrate to the U.S. is something to behold.

But as Glenn might note, dividing people into artificial “races” creates extra opportunities for graft.

Oh, and while we’re at it, here is Zegler’s “racial” background:  “Her father is of Polish ancestry on his own father’s side, and of Irish, German, and Italian ancestry on his own mother’s. Rachel’s mother is of Colombian origin.” So do we give Spielberg only half-credit for finding an actor who at best is half-Hispanic? Why does anyone sane want to go down this rabbit-hole?

UPDATE: And speaking of double standards, friend read this and commented, “And why is it OK for almost none of the actors on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are Jewish in real life?”

WHAT WOULD BE RACIST WOULD BE GIVING HER HORRIFIC RECORD A PASS BECAUSE SHE’S BLACK: Jonathan Tobin: Opposing Honors for Angela Davis isn’t Racist: “Opposing honors for Angela Davis isn’t so much an indication of support for Israel or remembering the moral imperative of anti-Communism as it is as matter of public decency.”

A MODEST CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM: People keep informing me that I can’t claim that Angela Davis was involved in the criminal conspiracy that resulted in the murder of a judge because a jury acquitted her.

This reflects a common misconception that being “acquitted” in a criminal trial means that the defendant was found to be “innocent.” What it actually means is that the jury found that “the prosecutor failed to prove that the defendant was guilty (a) of the precise crime charged and (b) beyond a reasonable doubt.” (On (a), a prosecutor may, for example, have a slam-dunk case on negligent homicide, but decide for strategic reasons to only charge first degree murder, and fail to persuade the jury that the defendant met the specific criteria of that charge.)

It wouldn’t solve the entire problem, but I think it would help clarify things if instead of “guilty/not guilty,” the jury form provided for “proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime(s) charged”/”not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime(s)” charged/and “likely innocent of the crime(s) charged.”

Besides clarifying matters, it would be informative to the public and a prosecutor’s supervisor if a prosecutor more than very infrequently pursued prosecutions that resulted in “likely innocent” verdicts.

UPDATE: That whole “innocent until proven guilty” thing? That’s in the eyes of the law. If the jury acquits OJ, the government has to treat him as “innocent.” I, on the other hand, can conclude for my own purposes that he is 100% guilty based on the evidence presented.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Someone in Birmingham should respond to the Angela Davis controversy by endowing an award named after Judge Harold Haley, the judge murdered with firearms purchased by Davis.

UNLESS YOUR IDEA OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS BOLSHEVISM: Cathy Young: Sorry, Angela Davis is No One’s Human Rights Hero.

The Davis kerfuffle reminds me of when Davis came to speak at Brandeis when I was a student there. I got to ask the first question. She had given a rather moving account of she and her family being denied voting rights as black people in the Deep South, so I asked her why, given that history, she would join the Communist Party when that party deprives *everyone* of the right to vote when they take power. She skillfully avoided answering the question, but I heard through the grapevine that my question caused quite a stir in left-wing classes in sociology and whatnot, as students wondered why I would think that her American communism had anything to do with communism elsewhere. In other words, the leftist students were utterly ignorant of the widely-known fact that the USSR controlled the American Communist Party. From what I can tell, the current generation of leftist student activists are that much more ignorant about relevant matters, as incredibly insipid “intersectional” analysis substitutes for actual knowledge of history, economics, philosophy, and other forms of knowledge.

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO SUPPORT OUR PREFERRED NARRATIVE: New York Times: Angela Davis Says She’s ‘Stunned’ After Award Is Revoked Over Her Views on Israel.

Let’s get a few basic facts out of the way. Angela Davis was a long-time Soviet apologist (and VP candidate for the Soviet-controlled U.S. Communist Party) who was implicated in the murder of a  judge, though a jury failed to convict despite strong inculpatory evidence. She has never met an anti-American totalitarian dictatorship or terrorist group that she didn’t like.

In short, she likely belongs in prison as an accomplice to murder, and she certainly doesn’t deserve any awards.

An Alabama civil rights organization nevertheless planned to give her an award. Some members of the Jewish community, apparently, objected. With regard to Jews in particular, she has long been complicit in antiSemitism. As recounted in his book Chutzpah, when Alan Dershowitz, who worked on her legal defense, asked her to speak out on behalf of Soviet Jews imprisoned as dissidents, Davis responded that they were all “Zionist fascists” who deserved their fate. She also had a long “professional” association with radical black antiSemites such as Stokely Carmichael.

The New York Times, rather than recounting any of this relevant history, essentially publishes a Davis press release, suggesting that no one could possibly have any objections to her beyond her advocacy for “Palestinian rights.”

And the “mainstream media” wonders why a large segment of the American public doesn’t trust it.

YES, IT DID: Media Fabricated Narrative About Conservatives Mocking Ocasio Cortez Dance Video.

(Bumped, by Glenn).

EPIC TAKEDOWN BY RABBI DANIEL GORDIS OF THE JEWISH PROGRESSIVE LEFT’S PRETENSIONS:  The American ‘Zionist’ Assault on Israel. Excerpt:

Jonathan Weisman (the author of a very interesting recent book on American anti-Semitism), quotes Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Washington, DC…. Weisman writes that on Yom Kippur, “Rabbi Zemel implored his congregation to act before it is too late, to save Israel from itself.”

A Reform Congregation in DC should save Israel before it is too late? Does no one see the hubris (and the humor, frankly) in such a suggestion? Who are these people who are being urged to save Israel? Can they read the op-ed page of a Hebrew newspaper? Since they cannot, and since the vast majority of the Hebrew press is not translated into English, why do they imagine that they know what’s best for Israel without being exposed to what millions of Israelis think, without access to Israeli discourse on the subject? (Not speaking Hebrew is no crime, of course, but should it not engender at least some humility when it comes to speaking about Israel?) American progressives imagine that they have what to teach liberal, secular Israelis because they are… more intelligent than Israelis? Better educated? More moral? More deeply committed to Israel’s decency?

How well do these people know the country they’re being asked to save? What can they say about the ideological worlds represented by readers of Haaretz and Makor Rishon and what animates the worldviews of each? Can they name five Jewish communities along the Gaza border and speak about how they’re different? How those communities see the conflict? They cannot, of course, and as very few have spoken at length to people trying to raise their families in Sderot or Sha’ar HaNegev, they have no real idea what life is like there.

… one can, and should, at least acknowledge that Beinart and Zemel both care about Israel and believe that what they are doing is best for Israel.

That, though, cannot be said for more extremist elements in the American progressive community, where positions that are ostensibly meant to make Israel “better” are clearly just camouflage for a desire to do Israel harm. No group embodies this better than IfNotNow, which, as a recent New York Magazine article noted, had participants say Kaddish for Palestinians who were killed by Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border. “‘We do not organize Kaddish prayers for ‘Arab terrorists’ or ‘Hamas members.’ We say Kaddish and mourn the unconscionable Israeli violence on Palestinian protesters,” one of INN’s leaders said to New York Magazine.

Many of the young people who are involved in or leaders of INN are bright and sophisticated, the graduates of America’s finest colleges [? America’s finest colleges are among the most parochial institutions in the country–DB]. So it is rather astonishing that they did not apply any of the critical thinking skills that got them into college and then through it to bear on this issue. If the killing of Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border (which is unquestionably sad) is so obviously “unconscionable Israeli violence,” why did the Israeli political left not protest? Why were even Meretz and Labor mostly silent after many Gazans were killed at the border? Do American Jewish progressives ever ask themselves what they know that Israelis do not?

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: How “sophisticated” are the likes of IfNotNow activists? Their level of “sophistication” stretches little further than the (obviously bogus) notion that Israeli Jews are white, Palestinian Arabs are “people of color,” and the latter therefore win the intersectional sweepstakes and require unquestioned devotion. Beyond that, it’s leftist dogma all the way down.

THE MEDIA IS LETTING THE ACLU GET AWAY WITH MASSIVE HYPOCRISY: The ACLU has been very active both politically and in litigation in opposing federal and state legislation that in various ways penalizes boycotting Israel. Commentators up and down the progressive left have been relying on the ACLU for the proposition that this legislation is a violation of First Amendment free speech rights.

For the record, the ACLU is misstating various Supreme Court holdings; as Eugene Volokh has explained, as a general rule there is no recognized right to engage in, as opposed to advocating, an economic boycott.

But let’s assume that the ACLU sincerely believes there is, or there should be, such a constitutional right. One would logically expect that ACLU to therefore be on the side of religious bakers, photographers, caterers, and so on, who choose to boycott same-sex weddings despite civil rights laws that require the contrary. In fact, the ACLU not only hasn’t supported the service providers, it has strongly supported government suppression of these boycotts.

But wait, some interlocutors have told me, there’s a difference between supporting antidiscrimination laws protecting Americans from discrimination, and laws protecting a foreign government from discrimination. There may be all sorts of ideological, moral, and practical differences; there are no constitutional differences. (And note that protecting same-sex weddings from discrimination is not quite the same thing as protecting homosexual individuals from discrimination.)

So from a constitutional perspective, either you support the right to boycott in the face of government attempts to protect a class from discrimination, or you don’t. The ACLU, however, wants to have its (same-sex wedding) cake and eat it too: boycotts against disfavored entities (Israel, or the military in FAIR v. Rumsfeld) are constitutionally protected, but boycotts contrary to laws it likes are not. It doesn’t work that way, and certainly won’t under the current Supreme Court. If any reporter that’s quoted the ACLU on the Israel legislation has asked how the ACLU justifies its hypocrisy on the issue of boycotts and the First Amendment, I haven’t seen it.

UPDATE: RELATED: American Thinker: AntiSemitism, BDS, and the ACLU

NON-SCANDAL OF THE DAY: Yorktown Elitist and Bronx Hoaxer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Went by “Sandy” Well into College at Boston U.

I’m no fan of Ocasio-Cortez, but “young adult drops cutesy nickname for more imposing-sounding given name when entering the professional world” hardly seems newsworthy, much less a scandal. Focus on issues of actual importance that don’t make you look like obsessive nut jobs, people.

REMINDER: When a Democrat is president, and he and Congress can’t agree on a spending bill and the government shuts down, it’s Congress’s fault. When a Republican is president, and he and Congress can’t agree on a spending bill and the government shuts down, it’s the president’s fault. Or so our media and intellectual elites would have us believe.

It’s also true, though, that Trump didn’t help his own p.r. on this one by announcing that he was willing to shut down the government over the border wall, instead of playing it like Obama and Clinton and insisting that Congress was shutting down the government by not acceding to their budgetary demands.

UPDATE: RELATED: Josh Kraushaar: Why Trump is Losing the Shutdown Fight. The shutdown appeals to Trump’s base, but Trump’s base of 40-45% of the voting public won’t be enough to win reelection, unless the Democrats are dumb enough to nominate someone as unpopular as Hillary Clinton, leading even a significant cohort of Trump-haters to vote for him as the lesser evil.

PROJECTION, THY NAME IS RASHIDA TLAIB: Tlaib tweets, in reference to Congressional support for a bill expanding the law banning business boycotts of Israel: “They forgot what country they represent.”

Also Tlaib:

Tlaib shared that her family members still living in the West Bank where her roots are “still very strong” ― were “absolutely proud” of her win, particularly her grandmother. “I’m going to be a voice for them,” Tlaib said.

PAUL KRUGMAN “EVOLVES” ON YET ANOTHER ISSUE TO ALIGN HIS ECONOMIC VIEWS WITH PROGRESSIVE POLITICS: Krugman: The Economics of Soaking the Rich.

Krugman argues in favor of marginal tax rates in the 80% range for the “rich.” Economist Bill Anderson comments on my Facebook page (reprinted with permission): “At the 2004 Southern Economic Association meetings in New Orleans, I asked Krugman in a room full of economists if he believed we should go back to the 1980 top rates [of 70%]. His answer: ‘Oh, no! Those rates were insane!’ His exact words. So, it is official; Krugman now endorses insanity. How appropriate.”

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT TO SUPPORT OUR NARRATIVE: Several days after the Cleveland Clinic acknowledged that it fired a doctor for anti-Semitic tweets, including, shockingly, a threat to “give all the yahoods [Jews] the wrong meds,” the New York Times still hasn’t found the story newsworthy. Any guesses as to whether the doctor in question is affiliated with “white nationalism,” or is instead an “anti-Zionist” Arab-American?

THIS IS YOUR MIND ON GLENN GREENWALD: Everyone is misreporting the Texas BDS lawsuit:

In short, this story is being widely misreported, the hysterical claims that Amawi is being forced to sign a pro-Israel pledge or personally do or not do anything in particular regarding Israel outside the context of her business are false, and the First Amendment lawsuit will almost certainly lose. Moreover, it’s nearly impossible to think of a way in which Ms. Amawi’s speech pathology business would ever have an opportunity to in any way boycott or otherwise economically harm Israel, rendering this pure political theater.

MEMORIAL TO TREE OF LIFE SYNAGOGUE SHOOTING VICTIMS VANDALIZED AT POMONA COLLEGE: But the perpetrators were apparently leftist activists, not neo-Nazis, so no one at Pomona cares. As the saying goes, if the left didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE IT’S HOT: Constitutional Hardball Yes, Asymmetric Not so Much. In which I demur from the academic consensus that the Republicans have been shattering constitutional norms while the innocent Democrats have been quiescent.

INTERESTED IN GETTING A MASTER’S DEGREE IN LAW WHILE WORKING FULL-TIME? GMU Antonin Scalia Law School is Launching a New Juris Master (JM) Degree Program.

UPDATE: Got a few emails asking under what sort of circumstances someone might be interested in this degree. IMHO: (1) professionals like HR professionals, Capital Hill staff (we are 2 miles from DC), etc., who deal with legal issues all the time, and want to be better-versed in legal reasoning and lingo. (2) Someone who is pursuing a career in public policy, and wants the analytical rigor of law school without taking the LSAT or spending four years in part-time study. (3) Someone whose employer rewards/demands a master’s degree, but who wants to not just go through the motions but actually learn something important and useful.

VIRTUE SIGNALING IS A POWERFUL DRUG: 48 Yale Students Arrested During Protest.

In the annals of pointless protests, this may be the most pointless:

Forty-eight students at Yale University were arrested Friday during a protest in the investment office calling on the university to divest from Puerto Rican debt and fossil fuel companies. According to a press release from Fossil Free Yale, the student group organizing the protest, the sit-in began at noon Friday and continued until 5 p.m., when police began making arrests. More than 350 students rallied outside the office, cheering on the students being escorted by the police.

Let’s imagine the students “won,” and the university divested on Day X from Puerto Rican debt and fossil fuels. You know what would have changed in the world on Day X plus whatever? Exactly nothing. Of course, if the students really, truly wanted to help Puerto Ricans, I’m sure there are plenty of charities that would love to accept the difference between their $73K a year cost of Yale attendance and the cost of attending State U., if students were inclined to make a real sacrifice rather than engaging in political theater.

HOW THE GRASSROOTS WOMEN’S MARCH GOT TAKEN OVER BY PROFESSIONAL LEFTIST ACTIVIST ANTI-SEMITES: Tablet: Is the Women’s March Melting Down? This is great reporting from The Tablet, and the sort of investigative reporting the New York Times and NPR would be doing is they valued real journalism over being part of the resistance.

BUT THE NARRATIVE: I can’t vouch for the robustness of these results, but according to this Morning Consult poll from August, 11% of liberals and 3% of conservatives have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of neo-Nazis.

THE IMMORALITY OF SOCIALISTS: Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy.

Chomsky goes on and on about the horrors of what he calls “neoliberalism” since 1979. As with other leftists of a similar ilk, he simply ignores the fact that the rate of extreme poverty globally has fallen from around 27% to around 4% (!). Indeed, poverty rates worldwide have fallen dramatically more generally. You’d think if you were a socialist (or really almost anyone, but especially socialists), this would be the greatest thing to happen in the history of mankind. And yet, they not only don’t celebrate it, they don’t even acknowledge it. Which makes you think that their purported concern for the poor and downtrodden isn’t really what’s motivating them.

NOT IF YOU’RE CONSISTENT, BUT: Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism.

Goldberg writes, “certainly, some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but it’s entirely possible to oppose Jewish ethno-nationalism without being a bigot.” Sure, if you’re a libertarian or socialist type that rejects ethnicity and/or nationalism for anyone, then having the same view of Jewish nationalism is not anti-Semitic. But very few critics of Israel who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) are actually against ethno-nationalism; indeed, they want Israel to be replaced by an Arab/Muslim majority state ruled by that majority (and not, as Goldberg suggests, a “bi-national state”), and thus not only don’t oppose ethno-nationalism, they support replacing a liberal ethno-nationalist state that grants autonomy to its domestic Arab population to be exempt from military service, to study in Arabic in public school, and so forth, with an Arab one that would almost certainly be illiberal.

What would be the fate of the Jews of Israel under that scenario? Let’s hear from the late Edward Said, the leading Palestinian nationalist intellectual in the English-speaking world before his death:  “I worry about that. The history of minorities in the Middle East has not been as bad as in Europe, but I wonder what would happen. It worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don’t know. It worries me.” In short, while Said apparently hoped the Jews would make out all right, the strong possibility (I’d say great likelihood) that they would be murdered, exiled, and/or oppressed was not sufficient to tame his desire for a Palestinian state replacing Israel. That’s what most BDS supporters and anti-Zionists think, and that’s why declaring that “Palestine should be free from the river to the sea” is an implicitly genocidal slogan.

MAX BOOT IS JUST AS GRATING as a former conservative as he was as a leading necon. In today’s example, he writes about an Israeli-based company that sells spy software to dubious governments. The headline blames this on “Israel,” not the company. Rather than correcting this, Max sends out a tweet itself suggesting that “Israel” is responsible for “enabling foreign oppression.” Meanwhile, it turns out that the company is actually owned by a San Francisco-based private equity fund, and has been since 2013, making it all the more opaque why “Israel” is the focus of the op-ed.

REMINDER: All modern American presidents exercise power that is morally and constitutionally illegitimate.

Also, the U.S. has no nobility or official ranks, and over-the-top state funerals and public mourning for retired leaders are more reminiscent of monarchies than redolent of the principles of a constitutional republic. Before the growth of the modern federal behemoth, we had funerals like Grover Cleveland’s, “marked by simplicity and absence of pomp.” Carry on.