VDH: How Were the Universities Lost?

After October 7, the public was shocked at what they saw and heard on America’s campuses.

Americans knew previously they were intolerant, leftwing, and increasingly non-meritocratic.

But immediately after October 7 — and even before the response of the Israeli Defense Forces — the sheer student delight on news of the mass murdering of Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America.

Indeed, not a day goes by when a university professor or student group has not spouted antisemitic hatred. Often, they threaten and attack Jewish students, or engage in mass demonstrations calling for the extinction of Israel.

Why and how did purportedly enlightened universities become incubators of such primordial hatred?

* * * * * * * *

The Ivy league and their kindred so-called elite campuses may soon go the way of Disney and Bud Light.

They think such a crash in their reputations is impossible given centuries of accustomed stature.

But the erosion is already occurring — and accelerating.

At the present rate, a Stanford law degree, a Harvard political science major, or a Yale social science BA will soon scare off employers and the general public at large.

These certificates will signify not proof of humility, knowledge, and decency, but rather undeserved self-importance, vacuousness, and fanaticism — and all to be avoided rather than courted.

I don’t know about that — you may not be interested in the Gleichschaltung, but many corporatist CEOs and their human resources departments will be for some time to come.

Related: ‘I Am Sorry:’ Harvard President Claudine Gay Addresses Backlash Over Congressional Testimony on Antisemitism.

As the backlash grew into an uproar, Gay issued a statement through Harvard’s official social media channels on Wednesday in an attempt to clarify her response to Stefanik’s line of questioning.

“There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students,” Gay said. “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”

But the damage had been done, an error Gay acknowledged on Thursday as the fallout continued. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced an official congressional investigation into antisemitism at Harvard. Hours later, Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from an advisory group to combat antisemitism on campus that Gay established only weeks earlier, citing her congressional testimony.

“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Gay said in the interview. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”

“Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth,” Gay added.

“My truth,” huh? As Mark Steyn wrote in 2005 after then-NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey first brought that phrase into national prominence:

When Governor Jim McGreevey announced last year he was stepping down, he told the people of New Jersey something very modern. He said, “My truth is that I am a gay American.” That’s a very contemporary formulation: “my” truth. To John Paul II, there was only “the” truth. To the moral relativists, everyone’s entitled to his own – or, as the Governor continued, warming to his theme, “one has to look deeply into the mirror of one’s soul and decide one’s unique truth in the world.” That sappy narcissism is what the New York Times boilerplate boils down to: “abortion, homosexuality and contraception” is an alternative Holy Trinity for the church of the self.

In any case, it’s a nice tell by Gay that Harvard’s postmodernism, and its related syndromes, postcolonialism and postnationalism, aren’t going to change anytime too soon:

No, Dr. Gay.

You were given an opportunity to speak your truth. And you did.

Not once.
Not twice
Not 5x.
Not 10x

I asked you 17x(!!!) in the hearing about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates @Harvard code of conduct.

You spoke your truth under oath 17x. And…

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) December 8, 2023

HOW IT STARTED: CAIR Congratulates President-Elect Joe Biden, Vows to Hold Biden Administration Accountable on Muslim Inclusion, Civil Rights, Racial Equality and Just Foreign Policy.

In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said:

“CAIR congratulates President-Elect Joe Biden on his electoral victory, and for building an inclusive election campaign focused on the unity of our nation.

“President-elect Biden has pledged to end the Muslim Ban on his first day in office, include Muslims at every level of his administration and address issues of racial and religious discrimination.

“We plan to join other American Muslim leaders and organizations in ensuring that the Biden administration fulfills these promises. We also plan to continue holding our government accountable when it errs.”

—PR Newswire, November 7^th, 2020.

How it’s going: CAIR executive director ‘happy to see’ Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.

The co-founder and executive director of a major American Muslim civil rights organization characterized Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel in which more than 1,200 were killed as Gazans “break[ing] the siege, the walls of the concentration camp.”

“Yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in,” Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad said at a November conference hosted by American Muslims for Palestine. Audience members cheered Awad’s remarks.

Awad characterized the Oct. 7 attack as “self-defense,” which he said Palestinians have a right to — while Israelis do not.

“Yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, had the right to defend themselves,” said Awad. “Yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.” Awad did not mention Hamas in his speech; he did not differentiate between “the people of Gaza” and the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack.

“Gaza became the liberation source, the inspiration for so many people,” said Awad. “The Gazans were victorious.”

—Jewish Insider, today.

As Guy Benson adds, “Notice that this is not a ‘hot mic’ or hidden camera admission caught on tape. This is a declarative statement, enthusiastically made in public, at a Muslim-American conference. It drew applause in the room. Open, brazen, fearless support for terrorism and violent anti-Semitism.”

DISPATCHES FROM POST-WEIMAR AMERICA: College presidents expose the moral rot within their institutions.

Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology basically stuck to giving name, rank, and serial number. They repeated carefully rehearsed phrases obviously pre-cleared by lawyers and comms teams.

Gay particularly kept restating the same phrases, not even bothering to find different variations. One formulation she clung on to, as though it were a talisman that would save her from the bad men and women that had her pinned on the stand, was, “We are deeply committed to free expression, but not when it violates our policies against bullying, and intimidation, and harassment. Then we have strong disciplinary processes in place.”

Gay invoked “processes” in other contexts, too, despite diminishing returns that, by the end of the ordeal, had turned the term into an object of derision.

“I didn’t ask about your processes,” an obviously exasperated Texas Rep. Nathaniel Moran spat out at one point. “I am asking for action. How many students have been disciplined? How many have been held to account?”

Crickets.

On questions about expelling foreign students, who have obviously been a substantial part of the anti-Jewish demonstrations, Gay’s magic words were, “Our international students are an enormous source of pride for Harvard and part of our strength as an institution. But we hold those students accountable to the same set of disciplinary processes that we hold all of our students accountable to.” This was repeated again and again, only demonstrating that someone had sat with her and worked out messaging.

“Antisemitism has no place at Harvard” was another incantation Gay hurled over and over, despite the enormous evidence showing Jewish students being harassed at Harvard and the school’s long and shameful history of Jew hatred.

But her robotic answers notwithstanding, Gay did not have the most horrific answers of the day. That dubious distinction goes to either Magill or Kornbluth. It’s a tossup, so I’ll let the reader decide.

Magill’s came in an answer to Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York. Stefanik asked, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment?” To which the smiling Magill eagerly affirmed, “It is a context-dependent decision.”

“That’s your testimony today? Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent upon the context?” said an incredulous Stefanik. “That’s the easiest yes, Ms. Magill!”

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported:

OLD AND BUSTED: “Give the People What They Want.”

The new hotness? Why publishers stopped caring about their readers.

It was easy to choose books for my young nieces and nephews this Christmas. First, I ruled out stories about boys who think they are girls, girls who dream of having their breasts removed and pet rabbits unhappy at being misgendered.

Then I rejected books telling toddlers how to be anti-racist and older children how to be allies to their black classmates. Feminist manuals on women who changed the world, all of which feature at least one woman who was actually male, went the same way as history books that divide the past into tales of victimized black people and evil white people. Worthy tomes about climate change, rising sea levels and Greta Thunberg were also discarded. By this point, with so few books remaining, the choice was all but made for me.

It turns out I am not alone in this book-selection method. Although publishers insist upon churning out fashionable woke thinking, the public is just not buying it. Take Page Boy, actor Elliot Page’s gender transition memoir. Page secured a whopping $3 million for the book but, according to the sales tracker BookScan, only 68,000 print copies have been sold. Readers, it seems, are less than enthusiastic. The same goes for Claudia Craven’s novel, Lucky Red. Only 3,500 copies of this “queer feminist western” have shifted, despite Craven receiving a $500,000 advance.

To be fair, publishers are definitely doing a service to the environment by publishing books that no one wants to read: Book Publishers Go Green To Reduce Their Carbon Footprint. In the United States alone, the publishing industry uses about 32 million trees annually to make books. On top of that, producing books emits over 40 million metric tons of C02 each year.

By knowing ahead of time that they’ll be releasing a book that no one will be buying, publishers can save many, many trees! (At least until the laws of economics finally catch up with them.)

JIM TREACHER: White House Interns Demand Gaza Ceasefire or Something.

Say what you want about Generation X, but at least when we were young, we understood that we didn’t matter. Nobody cared what we thought about anything, because we didn’t know anything. We were stupid, ignorant children, and we knew it.

* * * * * * * *

That was us. We sucked, and we knew it. In multiple languages. So what?, we shrugged.

But today’s kids have been raised to believe they’re winners. Stars. They’ve been on camera their whole lives. So when a few of them manage to nab a White House internship, they imagine it makes them important somehow.

But not important enough to sign their names, of course. They “can’t remain silent,” but they don’t want you to know who they are. Because then they’d be forced to stand behind their words. They’d need to deal with the consequences of their actions. They want to be big shots, without any of the accountability.

Fortunately, everybody’s laughing at these little idiots, and at the “journalist” who thought this was somehow a news story.

But there’s one person who’s not laughing at them, because he’s too far gone to react, otherwise he’d do as Noah Rothman suggests: Fire the Insurrectionary Interns.

The Biden White House has struggled to mollify the small number of weepy pencil pushers with whom they are surrounded because they cannot be appeased. They have profoundly misjudged their relative importance and do not understand their roles. Still, the administration has convinced itself they are representative of a broader constituency they cannot afford to alienate. That consideration doesn’t apply to this group of 40 youngins. They have served themselves up on a platter.

Fire the interns. If the courage of their convictions is so shallow that the 40 choose to remain anonymous, the administration should clear house. There is no shortage of eager and accomplished candidates willing to (key word) serve in the White House. By contrast, this crew isn’t satisfied with service. They want to be made martyrs. Who is Joe Biden to stand in their way?

The fact that they’re not walking the plank is today’s daily reminder that Biden isn’t in charge of his own White House. (But we know who very likely is, and his worldview aligns rather neatly with the disgruntled tikes running around the current (P)resident.)

UNEXPECTEDLY: Children with liberal parents more likely to suffer mental health problems: Study.

MOVE ALONG CITIZEN; NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Transgender Activist Threatened to Target Christian Girls in Bathrooms and Rape Them to Death.

FINALLY: Taylor Swift is Time’s person of the year.

Taylor Swift’s record-setting year just got a little bit bigger: She was named Time magazine’s person of the year, the first entertainer ever to be a solo honoree.

The big picture: Swift’s Era’s Tour was a national phenomenon, she dominated the charts, had multiple albums hit No. 1 in a single year, and released a blockbuster concert film to boot.

• Swift’s year ranks with the likes of the Beatles, which released three No. 1 albums in 1966, and Michael Jackson, who ruled over 1983 with “Thriller,” Axios’ Troy Smith notes.

Driving the news: Time’s Sam Lansky describes Swift in the person of the year cover story as “the last monoculture left in our stratified world.”

• “This was the year she perfected her craft — not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era. The world, in turn, watched, clicked, cried, danced, sang along, swooned, caravanned to stadiums and movie theaters, let her work soundtrack their lives.”

• Swift also sat for a rare interview, telling Lansky: “I realized every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she said, referencing the time around the 2009 VMAs when Kanye West interrupted her on stage during an award speech. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”

To be fair, Swift’s nomination is arguably a step up from 2006, when Time declared “you” were the person of the year, as Jonah Goldberg wrote at the time:

The intellectual flubber of Time’s decision is manifest on many levels. Though some argue that Time was patting the American people on the head for voting the way they wanted in the last election, the more obvious explanation is that Time’s editors didn’t want to offend anybody. “If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people,” Richard Stengel, Time’s newly vintaged managing editor, told the Associated Press. “But if you choose millions of people, you don’t have to justify it to anyone.”

Well, isn’t that convenient. Heaven forbid a news editor do something controversial that would have to be defended on the merits. Spare the delicate flowers such hardship!

Stengel added that if Time had to choose a real person to be Person of the Year, it would likely have been Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “It just felt to me a little off selecting him,” Stengel said.

One might wonder if it felt “a little off” to past Time editors who awarded the Man of the Year award to Hitler in 1938 or to Stalin — twice, once in 1939 and again in 1942 — or to the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.

But the answer is that it didn’t bother the old editors, not really. Because Time’s Man of the Year award was originally conceived as something other than the Mother of All Puff Pieces.

Time founder Henry Luce swam against the stream of Marxist determinism which held that history unfolded according to cold, impersonal forces. He believed individuals — i.e. great men and women — matter. He said the original award should go to the person “who most affected the news or our lives, for good or ill, this year.” That was the point of picking Charles Lindbergh as the first Man of the Year — because he, and he alone, seemed to be ushering in a New Age. Hitler was MOY in 1938 because he might have been ushering in a Dark Age. You are Person of the Year because the editors of Time want to live in a Feel-Good Age where everyone is empowered (hence Time’s rationalizations about the people-power of the Internet)*.

Of course, Time has punted many times before. For example, in 1988, beating the fierce competition, Earth was named “Planet of the Year.” No doubt that choice sounded very clever in the editorial-board meeting.

Time’s 2001 decision, naming Rudy Giuliani person of the year, was even more telling. This was a true profile-in-cowardice moment. There was no intellectually defensible standard for suggesting that the able mayor affected the news or our lives more than Osama bin Laden, who at the time seemed at least to be the Gavrilo Princip of the 21st century. (Princip was the fellow who launched World War I, which in turn launched World War II and the Cold War.)

The only reason not to give bin Laden the title Person of the Year — other than a purely commercial concern about newsstand sales — is that being Person of the Year has become a compliment. Sure, I suppose groups like the Shriners or the Knights of Columbus have always had their Persons of the Year, and they always meant it in a good way. Nonetheless, readers in 1938 and 1979 understood that Hitler and Khomeini weren’t being honored as humanitarians.

Similarly, given the ramifications of his attack, not least of which, seeing the enormity of anti-Semitism on the modern American left for the first time, Mohammed Deif, who planned Hamas’ 10/7 terrorist attack on an Israeli music festival would have been a likely shoe-in to be the 2023 Man of the Year. But Time magazine has spent the sixty years since Luce’s death becoming increasingly irrelevant. Why emerge from its torpor now?

*Because the “wrong” people are empowered by it these days, Al Gore is now having second thoughts about “inventing” the Internet: Al Gore Says Social Media Algorithms ‘Ought to be Banned’, Calls Them ‘Digital Equivalent of AR-15s.’

GUYS, WE’RE HERE FOR YOU. TAKE AS LONG AS YOU NEED TO SORT THIS ALL OUT: Washington Post journalists plan 24-hour strike amid prolonged contract talks.

The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents more than 1,000 editorial, advertising and other non-news staff at the Post, said mismanagement by the previous publisher led to nearly 40 layoffs last year – half from the newsroom – and the company was now seeking to cut another 240 jobs through buyouts.

Representatives for the newspaper’s management did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the labor dispute.

According to the union, management has threatened to impose more layoffs if too few staffers accept voluntary severance packages.

“That means fewer Post employees making the critical journalism that keeps our communities informed and holds our public officials accountable,” the Guild said in an online statement.

Moreover, after 18 months of contract negotiations, “the company is refusing to pay us what we’re worth or bargain in good faith,” the union said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “So on Dec. 7, we’re walking off the job for 24 hours.”

A Guild-produced online video features numerous Post journalists, including chief Ukraine correspondent Siobhan O’Grady, pledging to strike and urging readers to “respect our picket line by avoiding Washington Post journalism” during the walkout.

I’m truly impressed by that statement, and as a result, am prepared to “avoid Washington Post journalism” for much longer than that.

RIP: Norman Lear, TV Legend, Dies at 101.

Lear’s publicist confirmed to Variety that he died at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes. A private service for immediate family will be held in the coming days.

“Thank you for the moving outpouring of love and support in honor of our wonderful husband, father, and grandfather,” Lear’s family said in a statement. “Norman lived a life of creativity, tenacity, and empathy. He deeply loved our country and spent a lifetime helping to preserve its founding ideals of justice and equality for all. Knowing and loving him has been the greatest of gifts. We ask for your understanding as we mourn privately in celebration of this remarkable human being.”

Lear had already established himself as a top comedy writer and captured a 1968 Oscar nomination for his screenplay for “Divorce American Style” when he concocted the idea for a new sitcom, based on a popular British show, about a conservative, outspokenly bigoted working-class man and his fractious Queens family. “All in the Family” became an immediate hit, seemingly with viewers of all political persuasions.

Lear’s shows were the first to address the serious political, cultural and social flashpoints of the day – racism, abortion, homosexuality, the Vietnam war — by working pointed new wrinkles into the standard domestic comedy formula. No subject was taboo: Two 1977 episodes of “All in the Family” revolved around the attempted rape of lead character Archie Bunker’s wife Edith.

Lear made one major miscalculation with All in the Family. By the early 1970s, most conservative-leaning characters on TV had been tossed into the dustbin of history by Lear’s fellow McGovern-supporting Democrats in Hollywood, due to efforts such as CBS’s then-recent “Great Rural Purge.” Because of these efforts, with Archie emerging as the last major character standing on the right, Nixon-era “Silent Majority” audiences loved him, despite his myriad foibles. Since then, as Rob Long wrote in Commentary in June of 2020, every generation of TV producers and audiences accidentally stumble upon the same phenomenon:  How Right-Wing Characters Become Sitcom Sensations:

In the early 1970’s, All in the Family captured the tumultuous controversies of its time. The show’s main character, Archie Bunker, was a reactionary bigot always mixing it up with his progressive, liberal son-in-law, Meathead. The show was designed by the producer Norman Lear to be a form of left-wing agitprop that would expound on the virtues of the younger, modern, and open-minded generation while exposing and mocking the petty small-minded prejudices of Archie. He would rail weekly against the changing American culture using scandalously edgy language that today is utterly unthinkable. Archie Bunker was supposed to be the butt of the joke, the dinosaur heading to extinction, a symbol of everything that was wrong with America in 1970.

The fans, though, refused to see it that way.

Archie Bunker caught fire with audiences. He became a national sensation, his catchphrases on T-shirts and lunch boxes and used in Johnny Carson monologues. The progressive writers and creators of the show may have thought Archie was the bad guy, but the audience saw a hard-working veteran who paid the bills and put food on the table—Archie held down two jobs!—all the while being forced to listen to his ultra-lefty layabout jobless graduate-student son-in-law tell him what a terrible person he was, often with his mouth full of a pork chop Archie had paid for. If Archie occasionally refers to Jews, African Americans, and homosexuals with hateful slurs, well, hey, the guy pays the mortgage. He’s earned the right to rant a little.

It helped that Archie was, by far, the most hilarious character on television at the time. Comedy writers, even really really liberal ones, naturally want to write for the character who brings the most heat to the screen. The more talented the writer, in fact, the more likely it is that he will sell out his principles for a really solid laugh. Still, it must have rankled Lear and his team to see Archie embraced by the audience, to realize that the character wasn’t theirs anymore—that the fans preferred their own version.

Had Google existed back then, and had you Googled “insane theory about All in the Family,” you’d probably be directed to something like this: “All in the Family is a show about a guy who dreams of being an empty-nester with his devoted wife but who instead is forced to support his married daughter and her lazy, super-woke husband. To get them to move into a place of their own, he does everything he can to drive them away, including loudly emitting a fusillade of reactionary notions. But the kids, especially his worthless son-in-law, are too lazy to move.”

Hollywood liberals keep making the same mistake. They try to create a right-wing villain and end up writing an audience favorite. When Gary David Goldberg created Family Ties, the story goes that he pitched it to NBC as a show about parents from the ’60s generation raising a family in the Reagan ’80s and trying to instill the progressive values of their youth in the kids of today.

And again in 2009, with Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson. Lear managed to revitalize Hollywood, in spite of himself.

At least until the SJWs and #metoo crowd decided it was time for plenty of leftist autophagy, starting almost a decade ago, perhaps because these days, there’s no need to imagine Archie Bunker’s fever-swamp anti-Semitism, when it’s being piped out of the establishment left’s academic citadel – and into Hollywood – on a daily basis.

THE ONE-MAN* WRECKING MACHINE: Dylan Mulvaney Named To Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ List For Social Media.

* To be fair and inclusive, behind every one-man wrecking machine is a complicit woman: Bud Light VP stresses need to get beer ‘brand in decline’ away from ‘out-of-touch’ frat boy image to one of ‘inclusivity.’

UNEXPECTEDLY: House Democrats ditch “Bidenomics” messaging.

House Democrats have rejected the White House’s months-long campaign to sell the term “Bidenomics.”

Why it matters: Democrats are going into the 2024 election divided on how to communicate about the economy at a time when most voters are dissatisfied with it.

What’s happening: House Democratic leadership stopped pushing the term months ago.

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and House Majority PAC, two key fundraising arms, are also avoiding it on social media and press releases, as polling indicates the tagline is ineffective.
• In a meeting this past summer to discuss economic messaging strategy, House Democrats decided to stick with “People Over Politics” rather than “Bidenomics,” one senior Democratic leadership aide told Axios.

Zoom in: The “Bidenomics” catchphrase seemed to present a host of issues, according to Democratic sources.

• The term was seen as tone-deaf to voters still struggling economically and also invoked a president with lackluster polling numbers.

• One Democratic strategist said the biggest problem wasn’t using “Biden,” but that the term was too philosophical and required too much explanation.

• Democrats across the board intend to keep many of the policies behind the “Bidenomics” tagline front and center heading into 2024.

But then, so do Republicans: Economists Predict Recession in 2024; Oil Likely to Hit $100 Per Barrel Again.

FLUSHING OUT TERRORISTS:  Israel Is Flushing Out Hamas’ Terror Tunnels With Seawater.

Hamas promised “From the river to sea.” Israel is bringing the sea they wanted right to their front door (and basement).

Related:

Sky news anchor: “Palestinians in Gaza don’t have electricity”

IDF Spokesperson: “They literally filmed Hamas parading the hostages being released on their charged smartphones”

Sky news anchor: “Um, we gotta end this interview” https://t.co/90z9mkB3D5

— Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) December 4, 2023

DISPATCHES FROM POST-WEIMAR AMERICA:

The presidents of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?

The… pic.twitter.com/eVlPCHMcVZ

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 5, 2023

Martin Heidegger smiles.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Meanwhile Penn is trying to revoke Amy Wax’s tenure and fire her for criticizing their affirmative action program.

THE DRAG STRIP IDENTIFIES AS A QUARTER-MILE, AND THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS IN 2023: Tesla Cybertruck’s Race Against A Porsche 911 Was Apparently An 1/8-Mile Run. Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the race was a quarter mile, but a satellite view of the drag strip tells a different story.

MORE OBAMA-ERA RERUNS RETURN: ISIS Claims Responsibility For Catholic Mass Bombing.

In 2014, Mark Steyn dubbed ISIS as being “fast-track Nazis.” Yet they’ve got much more competition in that grim race to the bottom a decade later, with Hamas on the prowl in Gaza.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Girl on Cross-Country Field Trip Assigned to Sleep With Biological Male.

WOW, THAT WAS FAST!

Shot: In Germany, global warming is changing more than just the climate. It’s changing politics, too.

—NBC News, October 24^th, 2021.

Chaser: Munich Paralyzed As Heavy Snow Buries Germany, Central Europe.

—The Weather Channel, Saturday.

Greta can now declare “mission accomplished” in Germany, and get back to being remarkably old school with her politics: Greta Thunberg accuses Israel of ‘war crimes’ and ‘genocide.’

How is her toy octopus doing?

20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE? “Diversity plane crashes are coming.”

NYT publishes a new article about how a shortage of air traffic controllers is leading to dangerous mistakes. Meanwhile, some in the Federal Aviation Administration are pushing to lower standards for new controllers, like decreasing the importance of the AT-SAT standardized test and hiring more people with disabilities.

Don’t get me wrong here. People with audiovisual and cognitive impairments should have opportunities to live good lives and work fulfilling jobs. However, air traffic control is a profession that needs people that can stay mentally stable and able to see and hear things as clearly as possible. The FAA’s push for equity may have deadly consequences in the future.

What could possibly go wrong?

UNEXPECTEDLY: Kiss Announces ‘New Era’ as Virtual Band.

Kiss made a stunning revelation at the close of their final concert: The human version of the band is done, but a virtual Kiss will continue on.

The face-painted legends – made up of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer – gave a rousing performance at Madison Square Garden to close their End of the Road tour. “This is the end of the road,” Stanley declared early in the set. “It seems sad, but tonight’s a night for joy. Tonight’s a night to celebrate what we did together.”

Over two hours, Kiss did just that, delivering hits from throughout their incredible career. Still, it’s the way things ended that will have fans talking.

After Kiss played “Rock and Roll All Nite,” their final (human) song of night, Stanley told the crowd, “The end of this road is the beginning of another road.” Moments later, the group exited that stage amid a flurry of fire. Then, as their tune “God Gave Rock n’ Roll to You” began to play, avatars of the Demon, Starchild, Catman and Spaceman characters appeared. Fast Company notes that the effects were created using “a combination of LED screen projection, lasers, and heavy metal smoke and pyrotechnics” helping the images appear “three dimensional and much larger than life.” Meanwhile, video screens displayed the message: “A new era begins.”

George Lucas’ visual-effects company Industrial Light & Magic was tasked with creating the new virtual Kiss. Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, which was behind the popular ABBA Voyage hologram show, will handle how, where and when the avatar version of Kiss will roll out.

“Is it a Kiss concert in the future? Is it a rock opera? Is it a musical? A story, an adventure?” Pophouse executive Per Sundin pondered. “These four individuals already have superpowers. We want to be as open as possible.”

Well, two of the guys have the superpower of keeping the brand name going long — very long — after the band’s freshness date had expired. The other two were left wondering who was dressing up as them under the costumes and makeup: Gene Simmons Says Both Ace Frehley and Peter Criss Turned Down Invitations To Perform At Kiss’s Final Concerts.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Bill Cosby Joins Hamas So Feminists Will Stop Condemning Him For Rape https://t.co/Xllnzhxesp pic.twitter.com/YuutvWpkP4

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 4, 2023

DEPEND UPON IT, SIR; WHEN A RESTAURANT OWNER KNOWS A TERRIBLE RECESSION IS RAPIDLY APPROACHING, IT CONCENTRATES HIS MIND WONDERFULLY: Vegan no more: Why some Calif. restaurants are putting meat back on the menu.

VDH ON POST-WEIMAR AMERICA:

Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world—and now in America as well. The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations and anti-Enlightenment societies.

At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel. Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom—before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.

The subtext was that the overwhelmingly minority students (whose school is ranked academically near the bottom among New York City schools) were acculturated to the racist reality that as the “oppressed” they were exempt from any punishment for hunting down their own teacher. As a Jewish (and thus white) “oppressive” supporter of Israel, she was reduced to, in the words an enthusiastic commenter on a Tik Tok video of the riot, a “cracker ass bitch.” And so the student pack tracked her down as if they were hunting an animal. The old Nazi youth gangs tried to kill Jews because they were not considered “white;” our new Nazis hunt them down because they allege that they are. The common denominator between the 1930s and 2023 is an unhinged hatred of Jews.

Hundreds of such incidents are now occurring on a daily basis—as the country is leaving its Weimar phase and heading at warp speed into normalizing Jew-hatred and worse. Instructors singled out Jewish students in classes at UC Davis and Stanford. Pro-Hamas students ripped down posters, swarmed public buildings, and disrupted traffic.

Meanwhile, the lamps are going out all over Europe as well: London on the brink: a 1970s New York-style fate is just a step away.

Benjamin Disraeli observed that London was “a nation, not a city”. Today, 150 years later, many people in Britain feel more disconnected from their own capital than they ever have. Meanwhile, Londoners live in fear that theirs is a condemned city spiralling out of control.

The marches for Palestine that have taken place every Saturday since the Hamas pogrom on October 7 have turned central London into a no-go area at weekends, especially for Jewish families but also for many others.

These marches are accompanied by anti-Semitic chants and placards, war cries, intimidation and violence. To millions of Londoners, they feel more like a bid to take over the streets than a genuine protest.

In a similar way, environmental activists have mounted innumerable protests in the capital that threaten the leisure and livelihoods of ordinary people.

From the desecration of great works of art by Van Gogh and Velazquez in the National Gallery to shutting customers out of their local banks or impeding emergency services by stopping traffic, the likes of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion exult in wreaking havoc on everyday life in the capital.

Residential areas are increasingly unaffordable even for the middle classes, while the office districts are being hollowed out by working from home. Up to half of private sector employees are still only coming into the office part time, if at all. Comparable figures are higher in the public sector.

The passive tone, the implication that “these things eventually happen; hey, whattaya going to do?” regarding the collapse of London is also highly reminiscent of tone of most articles on New York going to the dogs in the 1970s and ’80s, until others found a way to stem the tide — at least for a couple of decades.

JIM TREACHER: Libs Sure Do Hate Children.

There are some reports that the kid has Native American ancestry, but that shouldn’t even matter. You simply don’t attack a child in print for attending a football game, no matter who his ancestors were.

But that’s how libs operate. They hate children, both in and out of the womb.

They lied about a minor named Kyle Rittenhouse who defended himself against three white guys who were chasing him during a riot. They lied about a minor named Nicholas Sandmann who smirked at a Native American while wearing a MAGA hat. They’ll lie about anybody they see as an enemy.

If you’re white, or appear to be white, they don’t care how young you are. They’ll try to ruin your reputation because it makes them feel good.

Bullies like Carron J. Phillips will attack a child for a paycheck, but a lot of his comrades are happy to bully people for free. It’s their favorite hobby. And they’ll keep doing it until their targets start fighting back.

Go get ‘em, Holden.

Why is a profession that holds itself out as “sports journalism” so obsessed with political activism?

DO NOT WANT! Here’s what it’s like on The Beam, Top of Rockefeller Plaza’s ‘frightening but fun’ new ride.

Like the erectors of nearly a century past, up to seven guests can plop atop one of the two parallel beam rides before being hoisted 12 feet in the air. It costs $25 in addition to Top of The Rock’s admission fee, which starts at $40.

True to the inspiring image, it begins facing the 69th- and 70th-floor observation decks. But unlike the builders, “The Beam” spins 180 degrees for a magnificent view of Central Park, the Hudson River and the skyscrapers of Midtown plus upper Manhattan.

After all, that scene was the backdrop for the historic image.

Although the modern attraction includes many more safety features than the 850-foot high suspended blue-collar bunch were privy to in the ’30s — including locking seatbelt, back frame and most importantly ground close below — tourists say that the years-old sentiment remains.

“To think that men used to do this all the time without harnesses is mind-blowing, the bravery they must have had,” Oklahoma City mom Kim Brooks, 45, told The Post after embarking with her family.

Isn’t watching NBC’s programming terrifying enough, without having to ride their white-knuckle amusement park ride, to boot?