Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

REGULATORS AT WORK: The long, frustrating wait for better sunscreens in America. “The Food and Drug Administration’s ability to approve the chemical filters in sunscreens that are sold in countries such as Japan, South Korea, and France is hamstrung by a 1938 U.S. law that requires sunscreens to be tested on animals and classified as drugs, rather than as cosmetics as they are in much of the world. So Americans are not likely to get those better sunscreens — which block the ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer and lead to wrinkles — in time for this summer, or even the next.”

WELL, PROGRESSIVES ARE KOOKS AND MORONS, SO. . . Progressive Attitudes Towards Sex Are Pretty Damn Incoherent Right Now. “It’s not just that the arguments for “no sex in movies” are unconvincing to me. It’s that I don’t even believe that the people making them are convinced by them. Instead I think that it’s pure visceral emotion being sold as actual argument – most of these people are simply scared of sex. They find it icky and frightening. The good news is that they are of course free to avoid sex in their own lives, to whatever degree they choose. The trouble is that they want to consume pop culture and, because sex is a big of life and narrative art must be free to depict all elements of human experience, they often find themselves confronted with the existence of sex in movies and TV. And it appears that, because they’ve been brought up in a social and political environment that has taught them that their momentary psychic comfort is the only thing that matters, they assume that all of the rest of us have to accept sexless and sanitized movies and television.”

Why we listen to the ravings of self-centered neurotics is a mystery. But as a culture, we unaccountably do. More mocking and shaming of self-centered neurotics would help.

Plus: “I just find it so bizarre, where we are as a culture when it comes to sex – there’s a lot of explicit “sex positivity” married to a society full of people who find sex scary, in a way that’s connected to a broader fear about human experience and its many risks. The result is a culture where a young woman starting an OnlyFans on her 18th birthday and immediately filming herself performing sex acts for cash is seen by many as a matter of feminist empowerment, but where there’s perpetual controversy about whether it’s OK to talk to a stranger on the street. (You know, the reason a lot of us exist, because our parents or grandparents struck up a conversation on the street.)”

CRAZED CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES DESTROYING LEFTIST INDOCTRINATION CENTERS: Columbia University Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony After Protests. “The ceremony, which was scheduled for May 15, has taken place outdoors on its New York City campus where students had set up a pro-Palestinian encampment that was taken down by police last week. The protests over the Israel-Hamas war that have swept campuses nationwide have prompted university administrators to rethink commencement plans with a goal of protecting students and guests from potentially ugly and violent political disputes.”

Crazy idea: Stop making “commitment to social justice” an admissions factor. Or, you know, just stick with the current approach. It’s changing the higher education world much faster than reformers like me ever could.

MICHAEL WALSH: On Abortion, Take The Win and Move On. “Conservatives need to understand that handing the abortion club back to the Left is political suicide. They should instead be celebrating their Dobbs win, the partial restoration of the Tenth Amendment, and the option to put their morals where their mouths are and fight for their beliefs at the state level, as the Constitution intends — especially in a fraught national election year. To lose the White House over an issue that’s already been constitutionally decided is lunacy. So take the win and move on to the next battlefield. There’s no shortage of them.”

Related: On abortion, Trump gets what many conservatives don’t.

JEFFREY CARTER: By Any Means Necessary: Yesterday Climate, Today Hamas, Tomorrow?

The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution. “You must participate. Hiding your head in the sand is exactly what the terrorists want. For an example, see voter turnout in Chicago. They have a Marxist for mayor. Let me try to help my liberal friends. Though it is very hard to understand, when someone says they want to kill you and they protest publicly, they really do want to kill you. We don’t think that way but they do.”

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Testified She Was Never Arrested. Court Records and Text Messages Indicate She Was.

Before becoming one of the Justice Department’s top leaders, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke was allegedly involved in a violent domestic dispute, according to court documents, records, and text messages—an incident that ended in her arrest and was ultimately expunged. During her Senate confirmation, Clarke specifically denied ever having been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime. . . .

Clarke’s ex-husband, Reginald Avery, alleged to the American Accountability Foundation’s Tom Jones in 2021 that Clarke attacked him with a knife, deeply slicing his finger to the bone, on the night of July 4, 2006, while they were married and living in Maryland.

According to messages and documents reviewed by The Daily Signal, police arrested Clarke that night. She did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

She’ll get a pass due to race, skin color, and — particularly — political affiliation.

IF THEY’RE HIDING SOMETHING, IT’S BECAUSE THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE:

JIM MEIGS: Unscientific American: Science journalism surrenders to progressive ideology.

Today’s journalistic failings don’t owe simply to lazy reporting or a weakness for sensationalism but to a sweeping and increasingly pervasive worldview.

It is hard to put a single name on this sprawling ideology. It has its roots both in radical 1960s critiques of capitalism and in the late-twentieth-century postmodern movement that sought to “problematize” notions of objective truth. Critical race theory, which sees structural racism as the grand organizing principle of our society, is one branch. Queer studies, which seeks to “deconstruct” traditional norms of family, sex, and gender, is another. Critics of this worldview sometimes call it “identity politics”; supporters prefer the term “intersectionality.” In managerial settings, the doctrine lives under the label of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI: a set of policies that sound anodyne—but in practice, are anything but.

This dogma sees Western values, and the United States in particular, as uniquely pernicious forces in world history. And, as exemplified by the anticapitalist tirades of climate activist Greta Thunberg, the movement features a deep eco-pessimism buoyed only by the distant hope of a collectivist green utopia.

The DEI worldview took over our institutions slowly, then all at once. Many on the left, especially journalists, saw Donald Trump’s election in 2016 as an existential threat that necessitated dropping the guardrails of balance and objectivity. Then, in early 2020, Covid lockdowns put American society under unbearable pressure. Finally, in May 2020, George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer provided the spark. Protesters exploded onto the streets. Every institution, from coffeehouses to Fortune 500 companies, felt compelled to demonstrate its commitment to the new “antiracist” ethos. In an already polarized environment, most media outlets lunged further left. Centrists—including New York Times opinion editor James Bennet and science writer Donald G. McNeil, Jr.—were forced out, while radical progressive voices were elevated.

In other words, journalism went from a sometimes-propaganda enterprise to a full-time propaganda enterprise.

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE WOULD BE NO CONSEQUENCES: ASU Senior Is Triggered After Learning Her Arrest During Pro-Hamas Protests Has Consequences. “Notice how she repeats “the cause” several times, without sharing much detail on this oh-so-important movement that she’s willing to throw away her future for. This attitude reminds me of a recent piece by RedState’s Brandon Morse; he pointed out that based on the naive answers these student revolutionary wannabes gave, so many of them just glommed onto the protests out of a desire for community, while not truly understanding what they’re truly supporting.”

OPEN THREAD: Expatiate at will.