'Try That in a Small Town' (VIDEO)

I love country music. 

Jason Aldean's a freakin' patriot. It's a certainty the left'd come after him. Democrats hate this country. Anyone who countermands that message must be destroyed.

At the New York Times, "Jason Aldean, Decrying ‘Cancel Culture,’ Has a No. 2 Hit": “Try That in a Small Town” went from overlooked to almost topping the charts after a week of controversy":

In May, the country star Jason Aldean released a single, “Try That in a Small Town,” with lyrics that paint contemporary urban life as a hellscape of crime and anarchy: “Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk/Carjack an old lady at a red light.”

“You think you’re tough,” Aldean sings. “Well, try that in a small town.”

Initially, the track got relatively little notice, landing at No. 35 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. That changed last week, after the song’s music video became a culture-war battlefield, with some accusing Aldean — one of country’s biggest hitmakers for nearly two decades — of employing racist dog-whistle tactics and the singer defending himself as the latest victim of an out-of-control “cancel culture.”

The controversy led to a rush on Aldean’s song, with both streams and downloads exploding over the course of last week. “Try That in a Small Town” makes its debut at No. 2 on the Hot 100, Aldean’s best showing ever on Billboard’s all-genre pop chart, beating current hits by Olivia Rodrigo and Morgan Wallen. Aldean was surpassed this week only by Jung Kook of the South Korean supergroup BTS, whose debut solo single, “Seven,” opens at No. 1.

The video for “Try That,” released on July 14, opens with Aldean performing before a stately building draped with an American flag; the structure was quickly identified as Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., where in 1927 a young Black man named Henry Choate was lynched by a vigilante mob after being accused — falsely, historians believe — of raping a white girl.

The video features one montage after another of violent street protests, robberies and people antagonizing police officers in riot gear. Those scenes are juxtaposed with images of American flags being hoisted, children playing and what appears to be a television news segment about farmers helping out a neighbor.

Three days after it was released, the video was pulled from rotation on Country Music Television, without explanation. But it has been widely criticized as a thinly veiled attack on the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Justin Jones, a Tennessee state representative, wrote on Twitter that lawmakers “have an obligation to condemn Jason Aldean’s heinous song calling for racist violence. What a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”

Aldean, 46, has denied that race plays any part in the lyrics, or that “Try That” is a “pro-lynching song,” saying on social media, “These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.”

Some artists came to his defense...

You Can't Cancel Me, I Quit

It's Mary Eberstadt, at the Wall Street Journal, "I was supposed to speak at Furman University. I decided to beg off rather than indulge an angry mob":

I was scheduled to give a speech on Monday at Furman University about my recent book, “Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.” I canceled it. Here’s why.

In the spring of 2014—in retrospect, the dress rehearsal for cancel culture—some commencement speakers around the country were disinvited or withdrew themselves from consideration owing to left-wing protests. I wasn’t among them. A few faculty members at Seton Hall University tried to have my invitation rescinded on the grounds that I wasn’t what they meant by “Catholic”—progressive. They failed. I delivered my address as scheduled at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Arena to some 6,000 graduates, families and friends, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters.

It was a thrilling event. I enjoy talking to students. I teach graduate students and young professionals, and I founded an organization that helps mentor hundreds of women involved in journalism and media, many of them right out of college. Those experiences probably explain why I had never been the object of protest by students.

But 2023 is light years from 2014. Some months ago, the head of Furman’s Tocqueville Program invited me to give a public lecture about “Primal Screams.” Not knowing a soul there, I googled. Nestled in scenic Greenville, S.C., the university was founded in 1826 by the Southern Baptist Convention. Furman’s website features young people said to be “innovative in their thinking, and compassionate in their approach to career, community, and life.” The Tocqueville Program has hosted impressive speakers. This seemed a promising opportunity to visit an attractive campus, befriend some students and faculty, and talk over ideas. What could go wrong?

Well, consider what happened to the speaker who preceded me last month in the same series: Scott Yenor, a professor of political science at Boise State University.

Mr. Yenor had been invited to speak on “Dostoevsky and Conscience.” An inhospitality committee sprang into action, “triggered” not by his speech topic but by opinions that he had expressed elsewhere, including his critique of feminism and support for “sex-role realism.” Scores of faculty and student protesters “silently” objected inside and outside as he spoke. Three armed policemen were assigned to his protection. Within the auditorium, protesters lined the walls the professor had to pass, holding posters with ad hominem slogans and quotations of his taken out of context, staring balefully at him throughout.

I called Mr. Yenor to ask for his take. “Never in my life have I experienced a crowd so uninterested in learning, and so unwilling to hear,” he said. “They were simply filled with malice.” No one in the administration commented on his treatment, much less apologized for it.

Soon after, something called the Cultural Life Program at Furman, which requires students to attend a certain number of public speeches, mysteriously decided to deny credit for mine unless the program inserted a different faculty interlocuter rather than the one who had invited me—presumably because the latter would have been too supportive. An article was posted by the independent online student newspaper, the Paladin, attacking the Tocqueville Program, applauding the public abomination of Scott Yenor, darkly noting that Catholics had been invited as speakers, and taking potshots at me. There’s no evidence that the indignant writer had read my books or even knew their titles. The piece accused me of perpetuating “dangerous” (dog whistle) myths, adding that students “demand to interrogate” (another whistle) the Tocqueville Program.

Posters advertising my speech disappeared en masse around campus the week before the event. They were replaced and disappeared again. Furman community members following social media and conversations on campus relayed independently that the protest was expected to be “substantial,” as two put it. They also informed me about a letter that was sent by some students to the Cultural Life Program’s committee, caricaturing my work and calling me names in an effort to revoke credit for attending my speech.

As I mulled what to do about such unexpected hostility, different calculations came to mind. What might be the odds of an ugly Yenor-style experience? Likely high.

What about the odds of physical injury? Low, but not nonexistent...

Keep reading.

 

He Just Doesn't Want to Murder You

From Suzy Weiss, at the Free Press, "Scores of Facebook groups called ‘Are We Dating The Same Guy’ promise sisterhood and security. But they’re a lot more like a crowd-sourced Stasi":

The screenshot, taken from dating app Hinge, shows software engineer Evan,* with thick black hair and a big, toothy smile. His profile says he is 5 feet 8 inches and graduating from Berkeley. Underneath reads a caption:

“Evan, 26 🚩🚩🚩”

The way the screenshot is positioned, it looks like Evan is gazing at the red flags next to his name.

Evan’s profile had been posted anonymously on the Facebook group “Are We Dating The Same Guy? | New York City NYC”—which started in March 2022 as a place where women compare notes on men. It currently has more than 82,000 members.

In the past year, scores of similar Facebook groups have sprung up across the U.S. in cities including Charlotte, Philadelphia, Tampa, St. Louis, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Austin, and in far-flung locales such as Kosovo, Melbourne, and Thailand. Some have more than 30,000 members, others less than a hundred. Almost anybody can join as long as you agree to a few rules. One requirement is usually a variation of this: Do you swear that you will not screenshot or share anything found in this group with anyone outside of this group? This is vitally important to the integrity of our group and safety of our members.

There are rules against “bullying, gaslighting, shaming, victim blaming, or aggressive behavior,” too. But regardless of the Fight Club–style bylaws, the groups are pretty much a free-for-all.

The anonymous woman who posted about Evan regaled her group with stories about their four-month relationship before he dumped her.

“He struggles with empathy,” she wrote. “He also never tells you what he needs and expects you to guess what he needs.”

“He sounds like a classic love bomber to me,” opined one commenter, whose profile photo shows her posing on an Adirondack chair with a corgi.

“Borderline personality disorder,” another commenter snarked.

“This push and pull is part of the hunt if he is a covert narcissist,” said a third. “They are skilled predators and usually have had this same relationship over and over again.”

Another: “Textbook narc.”

Dozens of similar comments followed, speculating about Evan and his various pathologies...

 

Christopher Rufo at New College, Sarasota, Florida (VIDEO)

This man is amazing.

Behind-the-scenes: the provost and president of New College attempted to shut down our conversation with faculty and students, citing a threat against Trustee Eddie Speir. But Speir and I insisted that we continue with the program—and establish a new standard for open discourse.

Behind-the-scenes: the provost and president of New College attempted to shut down our conversation with faculty and students, citing a threat against Trustee Eddie Speir. But Speir and I insisted that we continue with the program—and establish a new standard for open discourse. pic.twitter.com/XW23nimZM9

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 28, 2023

And watch, "My Speech to the Faculty at New College of Florida."

More, "Gov. DeSantis taps Christopher Rufo, 5 others to transform New College of Florida into ‘classical college’."

Andrew Marantz, Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation

At Amazon, Andrew Marantz, Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.

The Move to Eradicate Disagreement

From Graeme Wood, at the Atlantic, "What troubles me when the censorious types speak is not that they speak but that their response is to call for less speech."

Twitter Freaks Debate Deplatforming Libs of TikTok, Again, In Leaked Thread; Taylor Lorenz, Who Cries About Her Own Alleged 'Death Threats,' Mocks the Death Threats Libs of TikTok Receives

At AoSHQ, "The Purplehair Nosering Genderfux of Twitter are at it again, reports Libs of TikTok on her blog."

The Western Citizen is Dying? (VIDEO)

At the Friedman Center in Israel, Victor Davis Hanson discusses his new book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, with Caroline Glick:

Bill Maher: 'We Will All Be Gay in 2054' (VIDEO)

Bill Maher at his finest. 

Donna Brazile, one of Friday's guests, was not pleased. Nor was Glaad, for that matter. 

WATCH:

What Happens on Campus Doesn't Stay on Campus

From Bari Weiss, "Graduation Week With Common Sense:"

There is no more reliable cliché in the news business than “if it bleeds it leads.” But the rule of thumb that was just as dependable, if not quite as catchy, in the years I spent at legacy newspapers is this one: campus craziness sells. It sold to readers of The Wall Street Journal just as reliably as it did to readers of The New York Times. If conservatives and progressives can unite over anything it’s that neither can resist hate-reading a story about Oberlin kids protesting the cultural appropriation of dining hall banh mi.

Until very recently, though, neither group took those kinds of stories very seriously. Neither did most of the editors who commissioned them. They were not unlike the crossword puzzle: a fun distraction. A nice mix for the reader dutifully getting through serious, important coverage about foreign policy and the economy and politics.

Sure, sure, the kids were doing crazy things. And yes, some of it was a little excessive—even most of the progressives could agree on that. But this was college! Remember Berkeley and Columbia and Cornell in the 1960s? Campus was always a radical place. Everyone assumed that the kids would grow out of it. That the politics of the quad would inevitably fade as these young Americans made their way in the world, onto marriage and kids, onto mortgages and life insurance policies, and onto jobs at places like JP Morgan and Bain, Amazon and Random House.

This isn’t at all what happened. Rather than those institutions shaping young people in their image, it’s the young people who are fundamentally reshaping those institutions in their own. As Andrew Sullivan put it: We all live on campus now. It turns out those campus stories were serious in ways many couldn’t—and still refuse to—imagine.

But you already know that. If you’re a Common Sense reader you’ve long noticed that one of our main areas of focus from the start has been education. Our reasoning is simple: We believe that if you want to understand what’s coming for the country and the culture you better pay very close attention to what’s happening on college campuses. Also: our high schools. And increasingly, our elementary schools. Even our kindergartens.

That’s why we’ve done deeply reported stories about the transformation of America’s elite high schools and the radicalization of our medical schools and our law schools.

It’s why we have been ahead of the curve in our reporting on the terrible consequences of Covid lockdowns.

It’s why we’ve run whistleblowing essays, like Paul Rossi’s first-person account of his refusal to indoctrinate his students and Gordon Klein’s essay about suing UCLA.

It’s why we’ve reported on the smearing of parent activists and free-thinking professors—and introduced you to courageous figures like Kathleen Stock, the University of Chicago’s Dorian Abbot, and Peter Boghossian, who resigned his post as a philosophy professor at Portland State University last year with these words: “For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn’t?”

For every professor who refuses to cave, though, there are so many more who don’t. Indeed, the major theme that has emerged in our reporting is institutional retreat—schools that have abandoned their founding mission, leaders that have decided to follow, and professors paid to think for themselves who seem very scared of doing so. Exhibit A: Suzy Weiss’s story last week on the destruction of David Sabatini, the world-renowned molecular biologist who, until recently, was a star at MIT’s Whitehead Institute. Now he’s unemployed. Sabatini is a symbol of a system and culture that has eaten its own.

But it’s not all bad news—not by a long shot. Just as we have exposed what’s gone so wrong, we have been moved as we watch people, often ordinary Americans, try to make things right.

Those builders include the parents behind the homeschooling boom—which appears to be even bigger than we understood when we reported on it back in September; the fascinating group that has convened around Synthesis; and those who have planted a flag in Texas with the University of Austin, or UATX. Since Pano Kanelos, the university’s inaugural president and former head of St. John’s College, broke the news of the new university in Common Sense half a year ago, UATX reports that they have raised over $100 million in donations, pledges, and land from more than 1,000 donors. Perhaps most amazingly, the school has received some 5,000 inquiries from prospective faculty. This summer, they are offering their first summer school program in Dallas. I’ll be there, along with teachers like Niall Ferguson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rob Henderson, Thomas Chatterton-Williams, Nadine Strossen and Arthur Brooks.

None of these projects lack naysayers. But I’m bullish on the builders...

Keep reading, especially for all the links she's posted.  

He Was a World-Renowned Cancer Researcher. Now He's Collecting Unemployment.

Utterly mind-boggling.

One of the worst cancelings I've ever read about.

From Suzy Weiss, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "Behind the fall of David Sabatini, 'one of the greatest scientists' of his generation."

Cathy O'Neil, The Shame Machine

At Amazon, Cathy O'Neil, The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation.

Amber Athey Fired from News Talk 105.9 WMAL, Washington (VIDEO)

She made fun of Kamala Harris. A mob came after her and called the radio station. The radio station caved to the mob. 

For nothing. It was funny joke and totally unobjectionable. 

At the Spectator World, "I was fired for a joke about Kamala Harris’s outfit: A ‘conservative’ radio station caves to the mob."

And on Tucker's the other night. She very funny:

The Takeover of America's Legal System

A truly must-read article, from Aaron Sibarium, on Bari Weiss's Substack, "The kids didn't grow out of it." 

Ms. Bari has the introduction:

If you are a Common Sense reader, you are by now highly aware of the phenomenon of institutional capture. From the start, we have covered the ongoing saga of how America’s most important institutions have been transformed by an illiberal ideology—and have come to betray their own missions.

Medicine. Hollywood. Education. The reason we exist is because of the takeover of newspapers like The New York Times.

Ok, so we’ve lost a lot. A whole lot. But at least we haven’t lost the law. That’s how we comforted ourselves. The law would be the bulwark against this nonsense. The rest we could work on building anew.

But what if the country’s legal system was changing just like everything else?

Today, Aaron Sibarium, a reporter who has consistently been ahead of the pack on this beat, offers a groundbreaking piece on how the legal system in America, as one prominent liberal scholar put it, is at risk of becoming “a totalitarian nightmare.”

This is a long feature on a subject we think deserves your time. Save it, share it, or print it to read in a quiet moment...

And read Mr. Sibarium in full. Really. Don't miss it

 

Leftist Fury Erupts Over Emma Camp's Op-Ed Piece at the New York Times

Now they'll try to cancel her. (*Eye-roll.*)

At Fox News, "Liberals erupt at college student's NYT op-ed about being afraid to speak out on campus.”

ADDED: At Hot Air, "NY Times published an opinion piece on campus self-censorship and progressives are proving the author's point."

Thomas Chatterton Williams, Batya Ungar-Sargon Discussing Whoopi Goldberg on Briahna Joy Gray's (VIDEO)

Batya is a really fun lady to watch. I've never seen someone push a thesis (found in her book, Bad Faith) so consistently fierce.

She's great. Just fabulous.

'Headlining an intimate show in Austin, Texas before a rapturous crowd of fans, the embattled comic and podcaster tackled his controversies — particularly the widely circulated viral video of the comedian using the n-word on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience...'

This is some twist. 

At the Hollywood Reporter, "Joe Rogan Returns to Stand-Up Stage, Mocks His Controversies."

The Left's Culture War as Class War (VIDEO)

It's Batya Ungar-Sargon, at the Hill-TV:

And check out her book, at Amazon, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.

Victor Davis Hanson for Hillsdale College (VIDEO)

Here's his book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

And the video:

Houston vs. Atlanta Is Rob Manfred's Nightmare World Series

I've been watching a lot of sports, but I've had no time to write about them. 

John Gruden, my favorite guy, resigns. Dodgers win seven elimination games in a row, but can't hold on against the relentless Braves.

College football: U.S.C.'s program has been nuked, their head coach fired. (And besides that, there's more scandals on that campus than the Vatican.)

Work's been busy and thus posting light. I'll pick up the pace after I get my term papers graded. That's the semester hump. After that it's pretty much downhill.

Anyway, don't miss this piece at W.S.J. Very good, "The MLB commissioner yanked the All-Star Game out of Atlanta and punished the Astros for their cheating scandal. Fans are not expected to be forgiving in either city":

HOUSTON—Sometime in the next week or so, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred will hand off the World Series championship trophy in one of the two cities in America in which he might be most despised.

One is Houston, the site of Tuesday night’s Game 1, where Manfred is seen as a villain over his handling of the sign-stealing scandal that tarnished the Astros’ title in 2017 and stained their players’ legacies. Many fans here believe Manfred scapegoated the Astros for committing a crime that was widespread at the time and unfairly transformed them into the most hated franchise in professional sports.

The other is Atlanta, where Manfred sparked a political firestorm by pulling the All-Star Game in response to Georgia’s new voting law. The move, which the Braves publicly opposed, enraged some state officials and alienated a portion of fans, who are now celebrating even more important games coming to town.

However it shakes out, it is a hellish proposition for Manfred. Sports commissioners frequently hear boos. (Just ask Roger Goodell how much he enjoys showing his face in New England.) But the vitriol Manfred will face at the end of this World Series will be particularly vicious, and coming from all directions—whatever he does now.

Manfred is pinned between liberal and conservative American politics in part because MLB began to respond to calls to act on social issues last year. It left the commissioner simultaneously under pressure to take those stances to their logical conclusion, at the same time he is still facing resentment from people aggrieved at the positions.

If the series ends in Atlanta, Manfred will deliver baseball’s highest honor at the ballpark that he deprived of hosting the All-Star Game. At the time, Manfred said relocating the game was “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.” The Braves responded by saying they were “deeply disappointed” and noted that moving the game was “neither our decision, nor our recommendation.”

“Unfortunately, businesses, employees and fans in Georgia are the victims of this decision,” the Braves said.

To Manfred, relocating the All-Star Game had nothing to do with the Braves or the people of Georgia but was rather a move to stave off further controversy, people familiar with the matter said. MLB worried about the possibility of players boycotting the game—or having to answer questions about their status for months leading up to it. Ultimately, MLB knew that no matter what it did with the All-Star Game, people would be angry. Manfred determined moving it to Denver was the better option.

Certainly, some people in Georgia who are against the voting law supported Manfred. Republican politicians in the state, however, are viewing the Braves advancing to the World Series and as some sort of karmic payback. “It’s really ridiculous to inject politics into sports and then to baseball, but that’s what they did,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday.

Astros fans feel like victims, too, and blame Manfred for undermining what should have been the proudest moment in the history of the franchise. In January 2020, Manfred suspended then-manager A.J. Hinch and then-general manager Jeff Luhnow for their involvement in the Astros’ scheme. (They were both fired that same day, though Hinch has since resurfaced as the manager for the Detroit Tigers.) Manfred also docked Houston’s first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts and fined the team $5 million.

Whether they should be mad at Manfred is another story. In spite of everything, no players were punished for their roles in the scheme. In the two seasons since the revelation of the scandal, the Astros advanced to the American League Championship Series and now the World Series. They’re doing just fine.

But to some in Houston, the Astros were singled out for something other teams were already doing...