We Got Here Because of Cowardice

 From Bari Weiss, at Commentary, "We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage":

I'm in @Commentary. @louweiss can die happy. https://t.co/TZnKkY4cb3

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 14, 2021

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears.

Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon...

In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully.

In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan, your whole life can be ruined. Just ask Tiffany Riley, a Vermont school principal who was fired—fired—because she said she supports black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.

In this ideology, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. It is why statues of Grant and Washington are being torn down. And it is why William Peris, a UCLA lecturer and an Air Force veteran, was investigated for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out loud in class.

In this ideology, intentions don’t matter. That is why Emmanuel Cafferty, a Hispanic utility worker at San Diego Gas and Electric, was fired for making what someone said he thought was a white-supremacist hand gesture—when in fact he was cracking his knuckles out of his car window.

In this ideology, the equality of opportunity is replaced with equality of outcome as a measure of fairness. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, the course must have been defective. Thus, the argument to get rid of the SAT. Or the admissions tests for public schools like Stuyvesant in New York or Lowell in San Francisco.

In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your fathers. In other words: You are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion or your class. That is why third-graders in Cupertino, California, were asked to rate themselves in terms of their power and privilege. In third grade.

In this system, we are all placed neatly on a spectrum of “privileged” to “oppressed.” We are ranked somewhere on this spectrum in different categories: race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Then we are given an overall score, based on the sum of these rankings. Having privilege means that your character and your ideas are tainted. This is why, one high-schooler in New York tells me, students in his school are told, “If you are white and male, you are second in line to speak.” This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

Racism has been redefined. It is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. If disparity is present, as the high priest of this ideology, Ibram X. Kendi, has explained, racism is present. According to this totalizing new view, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an “anti-racist.” There is no neutrality. There is no such thing as “not racist.”

Most important: In this revolution, skeptics of any part of this radical ideology are recast as heretics. Those who do not abide by every single aspect of its creed are tarnished as bigots, subjected to boycotts and their work to political litmus tests. The Enlightenment, as the critic Edward Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism.

What we call “cancel culture” is really the justice system of this revolution. And the goal of the cancellations is not merely to punish the person being cancelled. The goal is to send a message to everyone else: Step out of line and you are next.

It has worked. A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey.

Why are so many, especially so many young people, drawn to this ideology? It’s not because they are dumb. Or because they are snowflakes, or whatever Fox talking points would have you believe. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life—the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt. An epidemic of loneliness. A crisis of meaning. A pandemic of distrust. It has taken place against the backdrop of the American dream’s decline into what feels like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others. And so on.

“I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thrusting for faith.” That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with Communism. The same might be said of this new revolutionary faith. And like other religions at their inception, this one has lit on fire the souls of true believers, eager to burn down anything or anyone that stands in its way.

If you have ever tried to build something, even something small, you know how hard it is. It takes time. It takes tremendous effort. But tearing things down? That’s quick work.

The Woke Revolution has been exceptionally effective. It has successfully captured the most important sense-making institutions of American life: our newspapers. Our magazines. Our Hollywood studios. Our publishing houses. Many of our tech companies. And, increasingly, corporate America.

Just as in China under Chairman Mao, the seeds of our own cultural revolution can be traced to the academy, the first of our institutions to be overtaken by it. And our schools—public, private, parochial—are increasingly the recruiting grounds for this ideological army...

More.

 

Report: Raiders Coach Jon Gruden Resigns After Release of Anti-LGBTQ, Misogynistic Emails (VIDEO)

The news is everywhere. 

I hate everything right now. Everything sucks. Leftists have ruined this country and they're not done.

Video here, "[BREAKING NEWS] Ian Rapoport report Jon Gruden resigns as Raiders head coach."

At Sports Illustrated:

From our breaking news segment on @nflnetwork on the stunning exit of Jon Gruden as #Raiders coach. pic.twitter.com/ii5Jdxr6zp

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) October 12, 2021

Raiders coach Jon Gruden resigned after the release of numerous offensive emails he sent from 2010 to 2018, according to NFL Network's Tom Pelissero.

The New York Times published a report Monday evening detailing a number of emails featuring misogynistic, racist and anti-LGBTQ language sent by Gruden. A Wall Street Journal report was released last week in which Gruden used a racist trope to describe executive director of the NFL Players Association DeMaurice Smith.

Gruden reportedly referred to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as a "clueless anti football p---y" as well as a "f----t" in the emails released by the New York Times. He also claimed the NFL pressured the then-St. Louis Rams to draft Michael Sam, a gay player selected in 2014. Gruden also "criticized Goodell and the league for trying to reduce concussions and said that Eric Reid, a player who had demonstrated during the playing of the national anthem, should be fired," per the Times.

Raiders owner Mark Davis met with Gruden early Monday evening, per ESPN's Adam Schefter. The meeting ended with Gruden's tenure as Las Vegas's head coach coming to an end...

RTWT.

See more news here. 

 

Mob Justice is Trampling Democracy

At the Atlantic, "THE NEW PURITANS: Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better. But for those whose behavior doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless."

The Woke Left's Boycott Industry Eats Its Own

At great piece from Mark Hemingway, at Real Clear Investigations, "The High-Pressure Business of Selling Woke Corporate Armor."  

Corporations Get Political With 'Cancelling' Georgia After State Passes New Voting Rights Legislation (VIDEO)

At the video, Tucker Carlson shreds "woke" corporations who have, really, no business getting involved with "racial" politics in Georgia (or for any other state, frankly), and the only bummer about the video is it doesn't include the Turcker's interview with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who sounds like a stand-up guy, and pledged not to back down to our wannabe corporate dictators (and it ain't just Coca Cola and Delta Airlines, to say nothing, sadly, of Major League Baseball).

Of course, there's "mainstream" news coverage at the Los Angeles Times, "‘There is no middle ground’: Corporate America feels the pressure on voting rights."

And, naturally, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, "Companies, facing new expectations, struggle with pressure to take stand on Georgia voting bill":

Companies are finding it increasingly difficult to stay on the sidelines of the nation’s social and political debates after a year of intense protests that led many firms to declare their support for racial justice and opposition to attempts to overturn the presidential election.

On Friday, executives from more than 170 companies -- including Dow, HP and Estee Lauder -- joined the corporate push to protect voting access not only in Georgia but in states across the country, writing in a statement that “our elections are not improved when lawmakers impose barriers that result in longer lines at the polls or that reduce access to secure ballot dropboxes.”

“There are hundreds of bills threatening to make voting more difficult in dozens of states nationwide,” the companies said in the statement, which also included signatures from the CEOs of Target, Salesforce and ViacomCBS. “We call on elected leaders in every state capitol and in Congress to work across the aisle and ensure that every eligible American has the freedom to easily cast their ballot and participate fully in our democracy.”

But as major corporations speaking out about Georgia’s controversial voting law discovered earlier this week, deciding when to step in, how far to go and whether to follow up with actions, can be fraught.

On Fox News Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) compared early-voting rules in Georgia to other states and defended the measure. “They’re not going to get back on board because they’ve been pressured by their board of directors, who have been pressured by these activists. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

He also said: “They’ll have to answer to their shareholders. There’s a lot of people that work for them and have done business with them who are very upset,” and said that “We are not going to back down when we have a bill that expands the opportunity for people to vote on the weekends in Georgia.”

After initially mild criticism of the measure, which was signed into law last week, companies scrambled to issue more forceful statements. James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, described the bill as “wrong” and “a step backward.” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian offered up an abrupt change in tone, calling the legislation “unacceptable” and contrary to the company’s values.

Those statements won guarded praise from activists — as well as calls for more concrete action. “Delta’s statement finally tells the truth — even if it’s late,” Nsé Ufot, head of the activist group New Georgia Project Action Fund, said in a statement.

But companies have struggled with growing expectations from the public and employees that they take stands on important social issues, forcing corporate leaders into positions on issues they’d probably prefer to avoid, from Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem to the “bathroom bills” that targeted transgender people to President Donald Trump’s statements about voter fraud in the 2020 elections.

Last summer, it was the Black Lives Matter protests, when many companies made clear their support for racial justice.

And now: voting rights.

At a time when public faith in a number of institutions — the presidency, Congress, the electoral process and the media — is faltering, many Americans continue to look at big companies and entrepreneurs with admiration.

“The whole idea of companies getting involved in political issues, it’s all pretty new. They prefer to stay above the fray,” said Bruce Barry, a management professor who teaches business ethics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “But now they are getting religion on these issues, including voting rights.”

For weeks, activists and civil liberties groups had been complaining about the proposed changes to Georgia’s voting laws — long before companies took serious notice. At first, the corporate reaction was mostly muted. The Georgia U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement expressing “concern and opposition.”

But on Wednesday, an open letter from 72 Black executives seemed to open the floodgates. The letter said the new Georgia voting bill would make it “unquestionably” harder for Black voters in particular to vote. The letter also said, “The stakes for our democracy are too high to remain on the sidelines.”

Executives from the companies that made Friday’s statement acknowledged these leaders, saying they “stand in solidarity with voters 一 and with the Black executives and leaders at the helm of this movement.”

“What we have heard from corporations is general statements about their support for voting rights and against voter suppression. But now we’re asking, put those words into action,” Kenneth Chenault, managing director and chairman of venture capital firm General Catalyst and the former CEO of American Express, who helped organize the letter from the Black executives, said in a CNBC interview... 

 

'I do not like you, Mr. Joe'

Me neither.

From Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Twitter.

The 'Woke' Takeover at the New York Times Facing Pushback

It's not that big of a "pushback," but it's something to see, nevertheless.

One really interesting development is the role that Nikole Hannah-Jones played in the despicable firing of veteran Times correspondent Donald McNeil (covered here previously). 

For one thing, Hannah-Jones apparently attempted to "dox" Aaron Sibarium, a reporter at Free Beacon. He writes on Twitter: "It was my personal number, actually. And Hannah-Jones left it up for two days after someone 'mentioned it'."

I read the whole Slate piece linked by Sibarium, and while I can't verify a word Hannah-Jones says, she still comes out looking like the awful person she is. (She's the Pulitzer-winning "journalist" who hatched the mindbogglingly dumb "1619 Project," and she's bitter she's taken so much heat for it; and I don't believe for a second that she had "no role" in the firing of Donald McNeil; she's as "woke" as "woke can be, and being "woke" means being intolerant as hell, so you probably should just take her words with some heavy salt, that is, if you even want to read the Slate piece). 

See, "An Exhausting Week at the New York Times: Nikole Hannah-Jones on Donald McNeil’s resignation, what the reporting got wrong, and how she was involved."

And here's a second bit of inside information on what's happening at the Old Gray Lady. It turns out that Bret Stephens, who was formerly editor of the Jerusalem Post, before jumping ship from the Wall Street Journal for the Times (for reasons I guess having to do with his own "woke" evolution), wrote a scathing commentary piece that the totalitarian editors of the Times spiked, obviously because Stephens was hitting too close to home. 

In fact, someone at the Times leaked the Stephens op-ed to the New York Post, where it was published in full (no doubt to the bitter consternation of Nikole Hannah-Jones and her evil black allies working inside the Times' black radical "lynch gang" now despoiling --- even more than the Times could be already be despoiled --- the newspaper's reputation.

See, "Read the column the New York Times didn't want you to see":  

Every serious moral philosophy, every decent legal system and every ethical organization cares deeply about intention.

It is the difference between murder and manslaughter. It is an aggravating or extenuating factor in judicial settings. It is a cardinal consideration in pardons (or at least it was until Donald Trump got in on the act). It’s an elementary aspect of parenting, friendship, courtship and marriage.

A hallmark of injustice is indifference to intention. Most of what is cruel, intolerant, stupid and misjudged in life stems from that indifference. Read accounts about life in repressive societies — I’d recommend Vaclav Havel’s “Power of the Powerless” and Nien Cheng’s “Life and Death in Shanghai” — and what strikes you first is how deeply the regimes care about outward conformity, and how little for personal intention.

I’ve been thinking about these questions in an unexpected connection. Late last week, Donald G. McNeil Jr., a veteran science reporter for The Times, abruptly departed from his job following the revelation that he had uttered a racial slur while on a New York Times trip to Peru for high school students. In the course of a dinner discussion, he was asked by a student whether a 12-year-old should have been suspended by her school for making a video in which she had used a racial slur.

In a written apology to staff, McNeil explained what happened next: “To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself.”

In an initial note to staff, editor-in-chief Dean Baquet noted that, after conducting an investigation, he was satisfied that McNeil had not used the slur maliciously and that it was not a firing offense. In response, more than 150 Times staffers signed a protest letter. A few days later, Baquet and managing editor Joe Kahn reached a different decision.

“We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent,” they wrote on Friday afternoon. They added to this unambiguous judgment that the paper would “work with urgency to create clearer guidelines and enforcement about conduct in the workplace, including red-line issues on racist language.”

This is not a column about the particulars of McNeil’s case. Nor is it an argument that the racial slur in question doesn’t have a uniquely ugly history and an extraordinary capacity to wound.

This is an argument about three words: “Regardless of intent.” Should intent be the only thing that counts in judgment? Obviously not. Can people do painful, harmful, stupid or objectionable things regardless of intent? Obviously.

Do any of us want to live in a world, or work in a field, where intent is categorically ruled out as a mitigating factor? I hope not.

That ought to go in journalism as much as, if not more than, in any other profession. What is it that journalists do, except try to perceive intent, examine motive, furnish context, explore nuance, explain varying shades of meaning, forgive fallibility, make allowances for irony and humor, slow the rush to judgment (and therefore outrage), and preserve vital intellectual distinctions?

Journalism as a humanistic enterprise — as opposed to hack work or propaganda — does these things in order to teach both its practitioners and consumers to be thoughtful. There is an elementary difference between citing a word for the purpose of knowledge and understanding and using the same word for the purpose of insult and harm. Lose this distinction, and you also lose the ability to understand the things you are supposed to be educated to oppose.

No wonder The Times has never previously been shy about citing racial slurs in order to explain a point. Here is a famous quote by the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater that has appeared at least seven times in The Times, most recently in 2019, precisely because it powerfully illuminates the mindset of a crucial political player.

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights’ and all that stuff.” Is this now supposed to be a scandal? Would the ugliness of Atwater’s meaning have been equally clearer by writing “n—, n—, n—”? A journalism that turns words into totems — and totems into fears — is an impediment to clear thinking and proper understanding.

So too is a journalism that attempts to proscribe entire fields of expression. “Racist language” is not just about a single infamous word. It’s a broad, changing, contestable category. There are many people — I include myself among them — who think that hardcore anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. That’s also official policy at the State Department and the British Labour Party. If anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and racist language is intolerable at The Times, might we someday forbid not only advocacy of anti-Zionist ideas, but even refuse to allow them to be discussed?

The idea is absurd. But that’s the terrain we now risk entering.

We are living in a period of competing moral certitudes, of people who are awfully sure they’re right and fully prepared to be awful about it. Hence the culture of cancellations, firings, public humiliations and increasingly unforgiving judgments. The role of good journalism should be to lead us out of this dark defile. Last week, we went deeper into it.

 

The 'Black Sins' of the New York Times

Following-up, "Donald McNeil Out at the New York Times.

The "black sins" here are those of "Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC)" staffers at the Old Gray Lady, who are cancelling anyone, no matter how good or how esteemed in their past work, like Donald McNeil, who as noted, seems like an arrogant bastard, but I read his reporting myself, and dang, he's good.

But he's out now. A victim of the cancerous cancel culture that is destroying American institutions up and down the line, from corporate America, to newsrooms, and especially the public schools. 

Here's John McWhorter, who's a Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, and an expert on race relations in his own right. He doesn't care if he's called "Uncle Tom," because he's heard it for decades, when referring to the "N-Word" wasn't a big deal, and he brushes it off like a "pussy hat" some idiot progressive trying to make him wear one and turn him pink.

See, "The N-word as slur vs. the N-word as a sequence of sounds: What makes the New York Times so comfortable making black people look dim?":

On what Black History Month and the racial reckoning mean at the New York Times …

Over the past week, the Times’ crossword puzzles have included many clues having to do with black culture and issues, and in fact have been by black constructors. A fine gesture for Black History Month.

But then the other night we learned that longtime reporter Donald McNeil, who has done groundbreaking work on the pandemic, has been fired, at 67. His sin was that on an NYT-sponsored educational trip with teenagers, he used the N-word in referring to it (as opposed to actually using the word).

Inevitably, in response to outcry over how needlessly punitive this is, his inquisitors and defenders will note that he is documented to have said some other things that suggest that he is not completely on board with what a certain educated orthodoxy considers the proper positions on race, and that he was reputed to have treated some staffers in a discriminatory way. However, if the complaints were only these, it is reasonable to suppose that he would still have his job. It was the N-word thing that pushed things over the edge, and is the focus of the letter signed by 150 staffers demanding, in effect, his head on a pole.

That is, for people like this, the N-word has gone from being a slur to having, in its mere shape and sound, a totemic taboo status directly akin to how Harry Potter characters process the name Voldemort and theatre people maintain a pox on saying “Macbeth” inside a theatre. The letter roasts McNeil for “us[ing] language that is offensive and unacceptable,” implying a string of language, a whole point or series thereof, something like a stream, a stretch – “language.” But no: they are referring to his referring to a single word.

The kinds of people who got McNeil fired think of this new obsessive policing of the N-word as a kind of strength. Their idea is “We are offended by this word, we demand that you don’t use it, and if you do use it, we are going to make sure you lose your job.” But the analogy is off here. This would be strength if the issue were the vote, or employment. Here, people are demanding the right to exhibit performative delicacy, and being abetted in it by non-black fellow travellers.

One way we know that this pox on even uttering the N-word to refer to it is that it was not the common consensus quite recently...

More.

 

Donald McNeil Out at the New York Times

Actually, it's both Donald McNeil and Andy Mills (a podcaster of whom I've never heard). 

But McNeil was a superstar at the newspaper. Back in spring/summer 2020, my wife and I saw him appear on CNN a number of times. He's an arrogant bastard, but he did seem to know what he was talking about. But he made an extremely detrimental faux pas while leading a field trip of young people to Peru in 2019. As Andrew Sullivan noted on Twitter last night, regarding McNeil's resignation, "This reads like a confession procured by the Khmer Rouge. It’s both ridiculous and terrifying."

As I always tell my (extremely "woke") 25-year-old son, be careful of cancel culture, and avoid partaking in it, because it always come back to you, with not-so-excellent consequences. Or another way of putting it, "the revolution eats its own."

See, "Two Journalists Exit New York Times After Criticism of Past Behavior":

Two journalists responsible for some of The New York Times’s most high-profile work of the last three years have left the paper after their past behavior was criticized inside and outside the organization.

In two memos on Friday afternoon, Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor, and Joe Kahn, the managing editor, informed the staff of the departures of Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science correspondent who reported on the coronavirus pandemic, and Andy Mills, an audio journalist who helped create “The Daily” and was a producer and co-host of “Caliphate,” a 2018 podcast that was found to have serious flaws after an internal investigation.

Mr. McNeil, a veteran of The Times who has reported from 60 countries, was an expert guide on a Times-sponsored student trip to Peru in 2019. At least six students or their parents complained about comments he had made, The Daily Beast reported last week. The Times confirmed he used a “racist slur” on the trip.

In their memo, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn wrote that Mr. McNeil “has done much good reporting over four decades” but added “that this is the right next step.”

The statement was a turnabout from last week, when Mr. Baquet sent a note to the staff defending his decision to give Mr. McNeil “another chance.”

“I authorized an investigation and concluded his remarks were offensive and that he showed extremely poor judgment,” Mr. Baquet wrote, “but that it did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious.”

Days after that note, a group of Times staff members sent a letter to the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, that was critical of the paper’s stance on Mr. McNeil. “Despite The Times’s seeming commitment to diversity and inclusion,” said the letter, which was viewed by a Times reporter, “we have given a prominent platform — a critical beat covering a pandemic disproportionately affecting people of color — to someone who chose to use language that is offensive and unacceptable by any newsroom’s standards.”

Mr. Sulzberger, Mr. Baquet and Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive of The New York Times Company, replied to the group in a letter on Wednesday, saying: “We welcome this input. We appreciate the spirit in which it was offered and we largely agree with the message.”

In a statement to Times staff on Friday, Mr. McNeil wrote that he had used the slur in a discussion with a student about the suspension of a classmate who had used the term...

Still more at that top link.

THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

Following-up from earlier, "John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School."

From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "Colorado Relieves John Eastman of His Duties, Chapman Bars Him From Speaking at Law Review Symposium He Organized; Eastman Speaks at Arizona State Federalist Society Event Despite Opposition From Students and Dean." 

Click through to read it all at the link.

Lol! Lincoln Project Senior Advisor Rachel Bitecofer Blames Capitol Hill Riot on NYT's David Brooks

Heh. 

She's is (or was) a very successful up-and-coming political scientist with something of an un-academic background (working class, even), which didn't necessary endear her to some in the "elite" political predictions-modeling-forecasting community. And now it looks like some unwanted attention is surrounding here, and it's not fair!

As she was working her way up in the discipline, Emory University Professor of Political Science Alan Abramowitz, mentored her, helped her refine her modeling, and (I think) co-published some academic articles with her, thus helping her get established, and get placed in a university position. Abramowitz, as you might recall, is a forecaster at Larry Sabato's (hilarious wrong) "Crysal Ball," so if Abramowitz was still associating with her amid the period of her "Lincoln Project" affiliations, maybe he'll be running for the tall grass pretty soon here, lol. 

At the Other McCain, "Lincoln Project Senior Adviser Blames Capitol Riot on … David Brooks?":

If you’ve never heard of Rachel Bitecofer before, she’s a Ph.D. political scientist who captured widespread attention from liberals for her analysis of the 2016 election and her accurate prediction of the 2018 midterm elections. This got her a gig as a “senior adviser” to the Never-Trump grift gang at the Lincoln Project, and let me say this: Not everything she says is wrong. Bitecofer’s theory of how Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election was that a lot of people didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t believe Donald Trump had any chance of winning. Also, black voter turnout was way down because, let’s face it, Hillary wasn’t Obama.

But I could have told you that, without benefit of a Ph.D. Whereas I am just a blogger, Bitecofer has leveraged her credentials to market herself as an all-knowing, all-purpose political expert, which led her to offer the remarkable claim that David Brooks of the New York Times is somehow responsible for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot...

Keep reading.  

John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School

 At Instapundit, "Well, if you’re a lefty you can be an unrepentant terror-bomber and get a cushy slot at a top university. But if you peacefully speak at a rally for the right, well, you get this: 'Law Prof John Eastman Retires From Chapman ‘Effective Immediately’ Amidst Uproar Over Speaking At Trump Rally Last Wednesday'."

Here's the letter, originally published at the American Mind:

It is with mixed feeling that I announce my retirement from Chapman University today. Apart from prominent visitorships at the University of San Diego and the University of Colorado Boulder, my entire academic career has been as a professor and Dean at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law.

During my tenure as Dean, the law school achieved the highest national ranking it has achieved to date, moving from 163rd to 93rd in that short three-year period between 2007 and 2010. I wish Dean Parlow much success in regaining and surpassing that high water mark.

I have also enjoyed a strong working relationship with the University’s current President, Daniele Struppa, dating to my Deanship when he was serving as the University’s Provost and Chancellor. And I applaud his defense of me in particular and academic freedom more generally in this recent controversy.

But I cannot extend such praise to some of my “colleagues” on the campus or to the few members of the Board of Trustees who have published false, defamatory statements about me without even the courtesy of contacting me beforehand to discuss. The political science faculty, for example, made numerous false statements of fact and law in their diatribe against me. They asserted, for example, that I have made “false claims” about the 2020 presidential election which “have no basis in fact or law and seek to harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic.”

Had they bothered to discuss the matter with me, they could have learned that every statement I have made is backed up with documentary and/or expert evidence, and solidly grounded in law. For example, it is a fact that partisan election officials and even partisan-elected judicial officials in numerous states altered or ignored existing state laws in the conduct of the election, the instances of which are well documented in the petition for writ of certiorari I filed in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the President. And it is clearly established law that Article II of the Constitution assigns to the legislatures of the state, not anyone else, the sole, plenary power to determine the “manner” for choosing presidential electors. And it is a fact that numerous legislators wrote to Vice President Pence indicating that their electoral votes were problematic at best because of these illegalities and urging him to delay the electoral count proceedings long enough to allow the legislatures in the contested states time to review whether their electoral slate was legally certified.

By way of example, 21 members of the Pennsylvania Senate, including the powerful President Pro Tem of the Senate, outlined in a January 4 letter the numerous instances of violations of state law by state election officials and even the partisan-elected judiciary in the conduct of Pennsylvania’s election, thereby usurping the sole power that the Legislature has pursuant to Article II of the federal constitution to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors. Because of those illegal actions, the Senators noted “that PA election results should not have been certified,” and asked that the Congress “delay certification of the Electoral College to allow due process as we pursue election integrity in our Commonwealth.” Similar letters were sent from Pennsylvania house members, and from legislators in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Arizona’s included this: “Based upon the clear and convincing nature of the evidence [of illegality and fraud], we respectfully ask that you recognize our desire to reclaim Arizona’s Electoral College Electors and block the use of any Electors from Arizona until such time as the controversy is properly resolved through the pending litigation or a comprehensive forensic audit.”

It is also a fact that a forensic analysis of the one voting machine courts have permitted to be inspected demonstrated not only that the machines are capable of switching votes, but they actually did switch votes in Antrim County, Michigan.

In other words, it is patently untrue that my statements have “no basis in fact or law.”

As for the claim that by raising these issues, I have sought to “harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic,” nothing could be further from the truth. As noted above, the Constitution sets out the authority for choosing electors, and that authority was usurped by non-legislative partisans in several states. Legislators in the contested states have quite reasonably asserted that the illegal conduct effected the outcome of the election. If true—and a full forensic audit would confirm whether or not it is true—then the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic were not just harmed but completely subverted by those partisan actors who violated election laws in order to permit the counting of illegal votes. Shining a light on what occurred is the highest defense of the constitutional republic, and such an investigation ought to be welcomed by citizens of all political stripes rather than blocked by those who are acting as though they have something to hide.

The letter signed by 169 members of the Chapman faculty and Board of Trustees is even more scurrilous. It claims, falsely, that I “participated in a riot that incited” last week’s violence at the nation’s Capital. I participated in a peaceful rally of nearly ½ million people, two miles away from the violence that occurred at the capital and which began even before the speeches were finished. And unless simply identifying illegal actions by election officials qualifies as “incitement”—under the law and well- established Supreme Court precedent, it clearly does not—then this charge is really an attempt to shut down the exercise of First Amendment rights. Nor did I “spout lies” about secret folders in the machines—the forensic audit discussed above has identified the suspension files in the software. Neither is there anything “conspiratorial” about simply identifying the available evidence.

I am grateful that not a single one of my colleagues at the Law School signed such a defamatory letter. To my knowledge, not one of the faculty signers has a law degree, and the three members of the Board of Trustees who are lawyers (and hyper-partisan Democrats) are clearly not well-versed in the constitutional questions at issue—either the Article II role of legislatures, or the definition of the “incitement” exception to the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. Nevertheless, these 169 have created such a hostile environment for me that I no longer wish to be a member of the Chapman faculty, and am therefore retiring from my position, effective immediately. I am currently on leave from Chapman while serving as the Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy at the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder, so my mid-year retirement will not have any impact on my Chapman students. Once that visitorship is concluded, I plan to devote my full-time efforts to the Claremont Institute and its Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, which I direct.

Still more, "Statement from the Office of the President."

Claire Lehmann, et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions

At Amazon, Claire Lehmann et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age. 

Eric Clapton? Just Wow!

Well, it was 1976, for some context. He's a little out of control, obviously. And at a live concert, basically telling immigrants to leave, they're not welcomed? Man, that's harsh. 

But Britain was a shithole country in the 1970s and Labour policies were destroying the very fabric of society. Maybe Clapton's message was actually resonating with people, with his fans. But that was then and this is now. There's no way a performer can get away with saying anything like that nowadays, not even with the context and no matter how true. In fact, you know celebrities are ALWAYS cancelled for exactly the truth they speak on topics the left thought they'd already silenced through their campaigns of intimidation and violence.

See, "Did Eric Clapton really ask foreigners to 'get out'? Truth behind racist remarks amid 'Stand and Deliver' release."

And, this isn't really a new issue. He apologized for his previous comments in 2018, but this is the age of the Twitter rage mob, so no one's safe. Absolutely nobody. 

All the racism wouldn’t fit in one screenshot pic.twitter.com/8xu2hZkt6S

— Deren Ney (@DerenNey) November 27, 2020

Everything is 'White Supremacist'

 Big eyerolls here, but it's absolutely true.

And it's the most stupid thing. I feel bad for white people, especially meekly progressive whites who are too afraid of being labeled "racist" (and having their lives destroyed) to stand up to the bullying. 

At NYT, "'White Supremacy' Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More":

THIS—>”’White Supremacy’ Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More.” The New York Times https://t.co/jhgUkDPq3H

— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) October 17, 2020

"As July 4 and its barbecues arrived this year, the activist and former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick declared, “We reject your celebration of white supremacy.”

The movie star Mark Ruffalo said in February that Hollywood had been swimming for a century in “a homogeneous culture of white supremacy.”

The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of New York City’s most prestigious museums, acknowledged this summer that his institution was grounded in white supremacy, while four blocks uptown, the curatorial staff of the Guggenheim decried a work culture suffused in it.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board issued an apology two weeks ago describing itself as “deeply rooted in white supremacy” for at least its first 80 years. In England, the British National Library’s Decolonising Working Group cautioned employees that a belief in “color blindness” or the view that “mankind is one human family” are examples of “covert white supremacy.”

In a time of plague and protest, two words — “white supremacy” — have poured into the rhetorical bloodstream with force and power. With President Trump’s overt use of racist rhetoric, a spate of police killings of Black people, and the rise of far-right extremist groups, many see the phrase as a more accurate way to describe today’s racial realities, with older descriptions like “bigotry” or “prejudice” considered too tame for such a raw moment.

News aggregators show a vast increase in the use of the term “white supremacy” (or “white supremacist”) compared with 10 years ago. The New York Times itself used the term fewer than 75 times in 2010, but nearly 700 times since the first of this year alone. Type the term into Twitter’s search engine and it pops up six, eight or 10 times each minute.

The meaning of the words has expanded, too. Ten years ago, white supremacy frequently described the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, the neo-Nazi politician from Louisiana. Now it cuts a swath through the culture, describing an array of subjects: the mortgage lending policies of banks; a university’s reliance on SAT scores as a factor for admissions decisions; programs that teach poor people better nutrition; and a police department’s enforcement policies.

Yet the phrase is deeply contentious. Influential writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor, have embraced it, seeing in white supremacy an explanatory power that cuts through layers of euphemism to the core of American history and culture. It speaks to the reality, they say, of a nation built on slavery. To examine many aspects of American life once broadly seen as race neutral — such as mortgage lending or college faculty hiring — is to find a bedrock of white supremacy.

“It is not hyperbole to say that white supremacy is resting at the heart of American politics,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor of Princeton, a socialist activist and professor of African-American studies, said in a speech in 2017.

But some Black scholars, businessmen and activists — on the right and the left — balk at the phrase. They hear in those words a sledgehammer that shocks and accuses, rather than explains. When so much is described as white supremacy, when the Ku Klux Klan and a museum art collection take the same descriptor, they say, the power of the phrase is lost.

Prof. Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard University who has written magisterial works on the nature of slavery and freedom, including about his native Jamaica, said it was too reminiscent of the phrases used to describe apartheid and Nazi Germany.

“It comes from anger and hopelessness and alienates rather than converts,” he said.

The label also discourages white and Black people from finding commonalities of experience that could move society forward,

Professor Patterson and others said. “It racializes a lot of problems that a lot of people face, even when race is not the answer,” Professor Patterson said.

Glenn C. Loury, a conservative-leaning economics professor at Brown University, hears in the term an attempt to spin a mythic narrative about a fallen America.

“So we declare structures of our country are implacably racist,” Professor Loury said. “On the other hand, we make appeals to have a conversation with that country which is mired in white supremacy? The logic escapes me.”

Then there are those whose cultural signposts are found outside the Black-white divide. The essayist Wesley Yang, the son of Korean immigrants and the author of “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” often examines racial identity and has found himself watching the debate over these words as if through a side window. Did this thing called white supremacy really so neatly define the lives of Black people and Latinos and Asians?

“The phrase is destructive of discourse,” he said. “Once you define it as something that has a ghostly essence, it’s nowhere and everywhere”..."

Stop Apologizing to the Mob

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "BOYCOTTS, ‘CANCEL CULTURE’ LOSE THEIR APPEAL FOR MANY AMERICANS."

And this part, especially:

The article goes on to mention Trader Joe’s also pushing back against cancel culture. At Ricochet, Bethany Mandel writes, “How to Handle to Mob: Stop Apologizing:”

Ellen [DeGeneres] and her producers need to take the Trader Joe’s tactic: responding to a petition that some of their labels were racist, the supermarket chain pushed back and defended themselves, saying they are not racist and they’re not going anywhere. After the first statement about justifiably troubling workplace behavior, this is what those involved in the show should have done with repeated reports of workplace malcontent. “We are sorry that these individuals speaking to you off-the-record are not happy working on one of the most successful shows in daytime history. They know how to contact HR with a resignation letter and are invited to do so at their earliest convenience.”

Maine Leftists Can't Cancel Michelle Malkin

If you've been following along, Michelle Malkin continues to take the conservative fight right to the enemy, with no backing down.

Here's her essay, "Cancel culture strikes again: Banned in Maine."

And on Twitter:

This is so crazy, but we prevail. We are on our FOURTH venue with less than an hour to go. #MalkinBannedInMaine #FreeSpeech #OpenBordersInc #AmericaFirst pic.twitter.com/IkL9LnvKCQ

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 17, 2020

Screw you #cancelculture and God bless you, #AmericaFirst citizens in Maine - I will never forget your persistence & patriotism! 🇺🇸🔥❤️💙 @umaineCR @MaineMayorNick @AdrienneMaine https://t.co/aXLJWtyNRB

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 18, 2020

In November, I was banned in Boston after speech-squelchers on the left and right forced the cancellation of my lecture at Bentley University, a small private institution. The grassroots activists who had invited me were rejected by every major event venue in the nation’s purported Cradle of Liberty. The tail-tuckers cited security concerns or jacked up their rental fees to make it prohibitively expensive to gather peacefully to discuss—gasp!—ideas.

Lou Murray of Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies heroically persisted, pulling together a great event at a private home attended by 100 patriots who risked their privacy, friendships and even their jobs to listen to—gasp!—ideas. (Watch the video here.)

Soon after, a group of conservative students at the University of Maine, a publicly funded school, invited me to bring my nationalist message about who’s funding the destruction of America to their campus. This prompted the College Republicans’ faculty adviser, political science professor Amy Fried to resign in protest. That led to the de-chartering of the CR group. Why? Because I refused to disavow other young students who have asked trenchant, pesky questions at Young America’s Foundation and Turning Point USA lectures about the GOP elites’ support of wage-suppressing, job-outsourcing, Democrat voter-importing policies that put American students, workers and families last.

Many of those students follow a 21-year-old nationalist named Nick Fuentes who hosts a program (for now) on YouTube and DLive in his basement called “America First.” Because I refused to play the gatekeepers’ game of condemning every last joke or chatroom comment or tweet of someone followed by students whose questions I support, Fried believes that no students at her campus under her watch should be allowed to hear what I have to say about, well, anything.

How strongly do University of Maine officials oppose the free association of college students who want to know more about my work? Yesterday, I learned from Portland Sheraton at Sable Oaks general manager Ed Palmer and others that at least one University of Maine official—along with dozens of others cancel culture jihadists galvanized on social media by an anonymous Twitter account called “Support Maine’s Future”—had called to complain about the students and me after they posted an event notice last Friday. I reached out to top administrators, who did not respond by my filing deadline.

I also wrote to Fried, who responded late Tuesday evening: “I never did that. Didn’t happen. Whoever told you I did is incorrect. Thank you for checking, as you received a false report regarding me.”

I responded: “Too bad you didn’t pay me the same courtesy.”

Adrienne Bennett, a Republican candidate for U.S. Congress (Maine, District 2), challenged the school’s bullying tactics: “Free speech is the cornerstone of a free democracy. We are hearing reports that administrators from the University of Maine pressured a private Maine hotel to cancel an appearance by conservative speaker Michelle Malkin. If true, this is a disturbing development from Maine’s public, land-grant university,” she blasted. “All universities—but especially those that receive public funds—have an obligation to foster free speech and free inquiry. I support President Trump’s recent executive order on campus free speech. … I am disturbed that academic elites would interfere to block this speech. For those who disagree with Malkin’s views, the answer is debate and discourse, not censorship.”

My upcoming speaking schedule (for now) includes the New York Young Republican Club (Jan. 16); somewhere, hopefully, in Maine (Jan. 17); Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley (Feb. 11); Michigan Conservative Coalition’s Battle Cry 2020, Troy, Michigan (Feb. 14); Arizona State University (Feb. 26); and San Diego State University (April TBD).

A total of six organizations have now deemed me such a public menace that I’ve been barred from speaking at their venues or events: Mar-a-Lago (canceled by the Trump Organization after complaints by the Southern Poverty Law Center spread by left-wingers at the Miami Herald); Bentley University; the University of Minnesota (canceled at the behest of national leaders of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow); the New Jersey Right to Life Committee; an Indiana conservative group; and Young America’s Foundation.

Why is this censorship campaign from both sides of the political spectrum happening? University of Maine College Republican Jeremiah Childs astutely observed: “They’re doing this to delegitimize us because we’re popular.” Popular, peacefully expressed ideas that threaten establishment empires in both parties must be stopped. The pretense of free inquiry and association must be propped up by the tolerance hypocrites on the left and the culture warrior poseurs on the right. The illusion of “free speech” must be maintained by the keepers of the gate. Lying is lucrative. Telling the truth, controlled by no one, only gets you grief.

Aaron Calvin 'is portraying himself as the victim here...'

Heh.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "THE REPORTER FIRED IN THE “BUSCH LIGHT GUY” SCANDAL SAID HE FEELS “ABANDONED” BY THE DES MOINES REGISTER."

Previously, "Cowardly Aaron Calvin."

Cowardly Aaron Calvin

This started at the Des Moines Register, via Memeorandum, "Meet Carson King, the ‘Iowa Legend’ who's raised more than $1 million for charity off of a sign asking for beer money."

"Cancel culture" is the absolute worst, but this episode is diabolical.

At Twitchy:

ICYMI==> 'Cowardly': Des Moines Register reporter CALLED OUT for his own VILE tweets after milkshake ducking hero Carson King https://t.co/r65ojaeDZC

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 25, 2019

If journalist doesn’t use old posts to attack man going viral ~ $1M for charity, 4-6 doesn’t happen. Period. https://t.co/Yx4dap3FC8

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) September 25, 2019

Journalists & editors have a choice now: change how they approach these things or realize there are more of us than there are of them. It’s not hard.

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) September 25, 2019

Of maybe stop hiring 22 year old social justice political twigs with a privileged axe to grind.

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) September 25, 2019

The Cancel Culture is being lead by the media.

It's enabled by feckless corporations like @BuschBeer.

I find the companies that cave to this garbage even worse.

And for the people caught in the crosshairs: DON'T APOLOGIZE. Do not reward this malignant behavior.

— Melissa Mackenzie 🌐 (@MelissaTweets) September 25, 2019

You know what's worse than using a bad word at the age of 16?

RUINING SOMEONE'S LIFE.

— Melissa Mackenzie 🌐 (@MelissaTweets) September 25, 2019

Not a fan of journalists digging up viral celebrities' offensive high-school tweets.

The Des Moines Register did it to Carson King, the guy whose GameDay sign led to $1M raised for charity. Now it turns out the reporter has his own skeletons.

Unreal.https://t.co/go9C8VgqNI

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) September 25, 2019

4. If you’re going to pull up someone’s old tweets, write about them, and you have old racist tweets of your own, at least have the courage to take the heat, @aaronpcalvin.

Taking your account private is cowardly. pic.twitter.com/SdCEfg1A6Q

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 25, 2019