Search Results
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: It’s Stephen King’s Turn to Get Eaten by the Left.
Stephen King, one of the more obnoxiously lefty celebs whose writing skills had deserted him years ago, tried to suggest a ceasefire for the Fourth.
“Progressives, go find a Trump supporting friend–the one you haven’t spoken to since November of 2016–and give him or her a hug. Trumpies, find a “liberal snowflake” friend and do the same. Just for today, let’s all be Americans.”
It’s a nice enough sentiment. It wouldn’t have been all that extraordinary a generation ago. But this time around it unleashed a howling mob of lefties lecturing King about his “privilege” and putting out the usual twaddle about how Trump’s very existence is endangering their lives. Or the lives of all the oppressed people they know.
Read the whole thing.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY. Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam on the BBC’s Diversity Push: ‘I’m a Black Lesbian.’
Last month, BBC “comedy controller” Shane Allen announced a new slate of shows for the fall with a particular emphasis on the diversity of the programs…Someone asked Allen if that would rule out shows like Monty Python in the future. He replied, “If you’re going to assemble a team now, it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes. It’s going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world.” That didn’t sit well with director and Monty Python cast member Terry Gilliam. Gilliam was asked what he thought of the comments and said he wanted to henceforth be known as a black lesbian:
Speaking at a press conference at the Karlovy Vary film festival, where he was presenting his new film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam said: “It made me cry: the idea that … no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented… this is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian… My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.”
He added: “[Allen’s] statement made me so angry, all of us so angry. Comedy is not assembled, it’s not like putting together a boy band where you put together one of this, one of that everyone is represented.”
Sooner or later, each leftwing “diversocrat,” as Heather Mac Donald has dubbed them, has his Freudian slip, where he admits that, as Howell Raines, then-editor of the New York Times once did, that diversity in and of itself is a more important goal than the actual quality of the end product his institution produces.
Monty Python was the culmination of the British satiric revolution of the 1960s, which began with Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller’s 1961 play Beyond the Fringe, the 1968 play Forty Years On, written by Bennett and starring John Gielgud, and David Frost’s 1963 BBC series, That Was The Week That Was, aka TW3, the Jurassic-era equivalent of today’s Daily Show. With the exception of the American-born Gilliam, most of the Monty Python cast spent their salad days as Frost’s comedy writers. (It’s no coincidence that Frost in turn was occasionally mercilessly satirized on Python.) As Peter Hitchens wrote in his brilliant 1998 book, The Abolition of Britain, combined, these works were a cultural sea change in England:
Beyond the Fringe, Forty Years On and TW3 created a tradition of ‘anti-establishment’ comedy which continued long after its roots were forgotten. There may still have been an ‘establishment ‘of snobbery, church, monarchy, clubland and old-school-tie links in 1961.There was no such thing ten years later, but it suited the comics and all reformers to pretend that there was and to continue to attack this mythical thing. After all, if there were no snobbery, no crusty old aristocrats and cobwebbed judges, what was the moral justification for all this change, change which benefited the reformers personally by making them rich, famous and influential?
* * * * * * *
It also made the middle class, especially the educated and well-off middle class, despise themselves and feel a sort of shame for their supposedly elitist prejudices, based upon injustice and undermined by their failure to defend the nation from its enemies in the era of appeasement. Thanks to this, in another paradox, they have often felt unable to defend things within Britain which they value and which help to keep them in existence, from the grammar schools to good manners. They are ashamed of being higher up the scale, though for most middle-class people this is more a matter of merit than birth, and nothing to be ashamed of at all.
* * * * * * *
Since the 1960s, when the Left began its conquest of the cultural battlements, it has always been surprised and annoyed by Tory election victories. The 1970 Tory triumph, though entirely predictable, took the cultural establishment by surprise. The 1979 Tory win, though even more predictable, infuriated them. They had won control of broadcasting, of the schools, of the universities, the church, the artistic, musical and architectural establishment? How was it possible that they could not also be the government? Their rage was enormous, and increased with each successive Labour defeat. It was an injustice. How could the people be so foolish? Now, instead of aristocratic snobs misgoverning the country, the establishment was portrayed as a sort of fascistic semi-dictatorship, hacking at the NHS and the welfare state, waging aggressive wars abroad and enriching itself while the poor lived in misery.
This series of falsehoods has now become a weapon ready and waiting for unscrupulous demagogues to harness, and perhaps use against the new ‘establishment’ which has benefited so much from the satire boom and the alternative comedians. Once you have begun to use dishonest mockery as a weapon, you can never be entirely sure that it will not eventually be turned against you, by others who have learned that abuse and jeering pay much easier and swifter dividends than hard fact or serious argument. It could be that the civilized mirth of the sixties leads in a direct line to the crude hyena cackling of the mob. In any case, there is no sign of the humour industry taking the side of traditional morality, patriotism or civility. The best it can do is dignify itself with noisy and public collections for sentimental and prominent charity. Once you step beyond the fringe, you sooner or later find yourself in very wild country indeed.
Just ask the surviving members of Python, who are discovering the hard way that all leftwing revolutions eventually devour their own.
More from Steve Hayward at Power Line: “Liberals and the Death of Comedy.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: In Philadelphia, the Far Left Bullies the Left.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Netflix film crews ‘banned from looking at each other for longer than five seconds’ in #metoo crackdown.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Twitter CEO Caves To Liberal Backlash, Says He Was Wrong To Eat Chick-Fil-A.
Which seems odd, considering the good work they’ve done during crises. “Chick fil A employees in Orlando showed up for work on Sunday, departing from the normal hours the fast food chain keeps in order to prepare food for first responders and people donating blood to victims of the shooting at gay nightclub Pulse,” USA Today reported. In December, the chain’s restaurant in the Atlanta airport opened Sunday due to the “massive power outage at the airport, [when] restaurant employees came to the rescue for thousands of stranded — and hungry — travelers,” a local TV affiliate reported.
One of the leftists attacking Jack Dorsey was Democratic operative with a byline Soledad O’Brien. “Don’t look now, but Soledad O’Brien has a Chick-fil-A problem of her own,” Twitchy notes.
ANNALS OF LEFTWING AUTOPHAGY: Woke Restaurant Serves Discomfort Food.
Sometimes you can have the best of intentions and still miss the mark completely. Such is the case with Busboys and Poets‘ “Race Card” initiative, which aims to foster discussions about race and privilege among its diners by handing out literal “Race Cards”—cards featuring larger questions about the state of race relations in America—to patrons as they enter.
A recent Facebook post featuring one of the “Race Cards”—which reads “Did you perceive me as racist because I’m a white male?”—has garnered more than 150 shares and even more comments, with people criticizing Busboys and Poets for taking a somewhat tone-deaf approach in trying to foster a conversation about race. Other “Race Cards” that Busboys and Poets employees are handing out read: “What is your experience with race in America?,” “Have you ever been in a place where you were the racial minority?,” and “How often do you discuss race with your friends or family?”
Akosua Johnson, who posted the picture that went viral, says that a bartender at Busboys and Poets handed them the card when they sat down at the bar. Johnson, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, wrote on Facebook that the bartender, who was white, “had no idea how to actually engage with this poorly constructed, forced ‘conversation’ and so just walked away immediately after dropping the cards in the middle of my meal.”
Read the whole thing. I don’t know what the calorie count for schadenfreude is, but there’s a huge serving to be had here.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Google in deep doo-doo from environmental wackos over feeding stray cats. “As you might imagine, the leftists over at Google are cat people. And since they feed themselves, they feed nearby cats, too – tons of stray feral cats on their corporate headquarters grounds, known as the Googleplex. They call that not feeding strays, but more grandly: “colony care.” And according to this New York Times report, that’s a problem, because the cats are now doing what cats do, which is eat birds, specifically, the local owls, which has gotten the equally powerful local environmentalists up in arms.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Wellstone legacy ‘goes dormant’ after family ousted in Democratic feud.
As John Podhoretz tweets, “This is one of the more fascinating pieces of 2018 so far–the battle of the woke left vs. the older left.”
More thoughts from Power Line’s Steve Hayward, who concludes, “The subtext is clear. Minnesota’s urban liberals have decided their principal message to rural Minnesotans is: ‘Drop dead.’ Looks to me like one more small step to Minnesota turning red.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: 22 Police Cars Vandalized in Antifa Hotbed Portland on May Day.
Why do big government-loving socialists despise the state’s law enforcement mechanisms so?
ANNALS OF LEFTWING AUTOPHAGY. An extra shot of karma: Starbucks gets boycotted by the angry, frothy, Leftist mob they all but created.
As conservative videomaker Ladd Ehlinger tweeted in 2013 while Justine Sacco was having her life destroyed by the Twitter outrage mob being ginned up by BuzzFeed, “Just because you’re in the mob one day, don’t think it protects you from the mob the next day.”
ANNALS OF LEFTWING AUTOPHAGY: #BoycottStarbucks trends on Twitter after video shows arrest of two black men at Philadelphia location.
Amid outrage, Starbucks issued a statement online, writing, “We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed this led to an arrest.”
During a Facebook Live statement uploaded Saturday afternoon, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross described the incident. He said the men were “trespassing,” because they were non-paying customers who wanted to use the bathroom. When Starbucks employees asked the men to leave, they refused and the police were called. He said the officers “did absolutely nothing wrong.”
However, several on social media disagreed and #BoycottStarbucks soon became a trending topic on Twitter Saturday. Many called the arrest racist and discriminatory.
Starbucks’ CEO (now executive chairman) Howard Schultz, a self-proclaimed “life-long Democrat,” floated the idea of having his baristas lecture customers on racial tolerance, trashed Trump, openly endorsed Hillary and afterwards, vowed “to hire thousands of refugees after President Donald Trump’s first executive order that temporarily banned travel from seven mostly-Muslim nations.”
Naturally, in response, #BoycottStarbucks is trending today, as the revolution eats its own – and washes the remains down with really mediocre coffee.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Drag queens banned from performing at Free Pride Glasgow event over fears acts will offend trans people.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Florida DNC Member Resigns After Allegedly Referring to African Americans as “Colored People.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Gender Madness Alienates Democratic Insider.
Not long ago, when my wife was pregnant, a coworker asked if we knew what we were having. I told this friend, and we were all excited.
Another coworker immediately started lecturing me in front of everyone about how this was grossly cis-heteronormative and that rather than forcing an identity on my child because of genitals, I should cultivate an environment in which the child would be able to flourish and explore the play of gender.
This went on for fifteen minutes. Now, the thing is that people at my work know that I have a hot temper and usually avoid talking to me about something as trivial as whether or not one lunch spot is better than another. Nobody wants to get dragged into it because they all think that I will, in the words of one former colleague, “Go Full Kanye” on them. In spite of this trepidation, a colleague felt that this gender nonsense was important enough to risk my temper and bloviate in front of our staff. The points gained from performed holiness, what we called “being ‘pi’ (short for ‘pious’, but contemptuously)” growing up, were worth the risk of my explosion, possibly, but more terrifying was that this colleague of mine simply didn’t care about the risk of my temper and was so committed to this gender nonsense that she just went for it.
The room for reasonable people on sex/gender issues is vastly closing in this party.
Read the whole thing.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Starbucks forced to put cancer warning on its products in California.
Ahh, California’s Proposition 65, the gift that keeps on giving. What doesn’t cause cancer in California?
Back when I was still living there, I stopped going to the local Starbucks when the Obamacare laws required them to list the calories in their products on the menu boards. It just didn’t seem worth it for bad coffee, milk and flavoring. But such laws won’t stop Starbucks and most other corporations to reflexively keep pushing for bigger and more intrusive government.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Walmart to remove Cosmopolitan magazine from checkout lines, citing #MeToo movement.
Flashbacks (for those who’ve forgotten how far to the left Walmart’s management leans):
● Walmart CEO criticizes Trump but is not stepping down from advisory council.
● Walmart’s Walton family backing [Hillary] Clinton.
● Walmart Ripped for Supporting Cap and Trade at Annual Meeting.
● “Leslie Dach: a well-known progressive and former senior aide to Vice President Al Gore. In July 2006, Dach was installed as the public relations chief for Wal-Mart. He drafted a number of other progressives into the company, seeking to change the company’s way of doing business: its culture, its politics, and most importantly its products.”
Related: After the Pervalanche.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Failed NYC mayoral candidate and Cuomo supporter Christine Quinn tries to backpedal after calling Cynthia Nixon an ‘unqualified lesbian.’
As someone asked on Twitter, “How do you qualify as a lesbian? Asking for a friend.”
UPDATE: Ed Koch Held Decades-Long Grudge Against Cuomos Over “Vote For Cuomo, Not The Homo” Posters.
The more things change…
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Queer Socialists Mock Barbra Streisand. America’s Largest Socialist Organization’s “Queer Branch” Isn’t Fond of Babs.
And the answer is none. None more woke.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: As Obama Presidential Center comes closer to reality, tensions on race, class surface.
When Bronwyn Nichols Lodato began pushing to prevent a portion of Chicago’s Midway Plaisance from being developed into a parking garage by the Obama Foundation, she never expected to be criticized as anti-black.
After all, she is an African-American woman who has lived in Hyde Park for more than a decade and is sensitive to both the city’s racial tensions and the needs of her neighbors.
“All I wanted to do was make sure my kids could play with no garage in their park,” she said. “I have three young children and we live in a condo and the Midway is our yard. My story is simply, how can we keep the park so our kids could play there?”
But soon after taking up her campaign, Lodato, who believes the South Side deserves what she calls “jewels” of open space, found herself under fire by people who believed that the garage would foster business in the area. Some accused her of siding with her well-off white neighbors and taking a stance that hurts the struggling communities around hers.
But of course — any action that might prevent Mr. Obama from achieving a desired goal is by its very nature automatically racist. Additionally, I’m told by reliable media figures that merely uttering the word “Chicago” is doubly racist.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY. LGBT Vigilantes Find New Bigot Nests: Meet the new anti-gay enemy — gays who say gay families are like other families.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: 500 Women Scientists: Bill Nye Does Not Speak for Us and He Does Not Speak for Science.
ANNALS OF FEMINIST AUTOPHAGY: Margaret Atwood is the Next Course at the Feminists Cannibal Feast, Sarah Hoyt writes.
As Megan McArdle wrote earlier this month, funny how the “bad feminists” are the ones “who still believe women have power.”