Political Scientist Richard Ned Lebow Won’t Apologize for Lingerie Joke

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, "He Makes a Joke. She Isn't Laughing: ‘Lingerie’ Comment in Elevator Leads to Uproar Among Scholars."

This is really too much. And good for him, Professor Lebow isn't backing down.

No jokes, please. We are fainting-couch feminists. https://t.co/nb0mlP5bjV

— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) May 7, 2018

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The Totalitarian Transgender Menace

There's not a bit of hyperbole in the blog post at the Other McCain. These she-male "transgender women" are menacing thugs and very dangerous actors.

Robert Stacy McCain is always exhorting folks to wake the hell up, and I've gotta say, time is of the essence.

Read the whole thing at the link, "Transgender Supremacy: Understanding the Ideology of a Totalitarian Menace."

Transgender Supremacy: Understanding the Ideology of a Totalitarian Menace https://t.co/5WmkzJK9DM pic.twitter.com/9wDPgcUXQ2

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) May 5, 2018

Natasha Oakley Spicy Margarita Time (PHOTOS)

On Twitter:

Spicy margarita time 🇲🇽♥️ @mondayswimwear pic.twitter.com/5KqthfL7kY

— Natasha Oakley (@Tashoakley) May 4, 2018

Plus:

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— A Bikini A Day (@ABikiniADay) May 2, 2018

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— A Bikini A Day (@ABikiniADay) May 1, 2018

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Min Jin Lee, Pachinko.

Samantha Hoopes Invites You to Explore (VIDEO)

I can think of something I'd like to explore with Samantha Hoopes (IYKWIMAITYD).

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Chloë Sevigny on Why She Chose Not to Add Her Voice to #MeToo

At the Guardian U.K., "Chloë Sevigny: ‘I didn’t want to name names. I think they’re commonly known as assholes anyway’ - More than 20 years ago, the actor was anointed ‘the coolest girl in the world’. As her new film opens, she talks about A-list movie stars hogging the best TV roles and why she chose not to add her voice to #MeToo":

Last year, Ronan Farrow, who broke some of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault allegations in the New Yorker, approached Sevigny and asked if she’d be interviewed by him about her experiences of Hollywood. She turned him down. “I didn’t really have anything to say to him,” she says. “I’ve had experiences that are kind of common, verbal experiences, or innuendos. But I didn’t feel they offended me to such a degree that I wanted to name the names. I think they’re commonly known as assholes anyway. Do you know what I mean? I felt it would draw attention to myself, in a way. Which I know is the wrong thing to say, because we have to be vocal for people who don’t have a voice… ” She trails off, then starts up again. “For someone to say ‘What are you doing after?’ during a casting session is not so unheard of. Yeah, it shouldn’t be done and lots of girls might feel vulnerable and not know what to do in that situation. For me it was like: really?” She laughs. “I do feel like what Harvey Weinstein did compared to Al Franken [the former senator of Minnesota] – there has to be some delineation. Instead they’re all grouped together.”

Was she just naturally buoyant enough to push back against casual propositions?

“I think maybe growing up around some men in my life who were a little chauvinistic [helped]; I don’t know. I can’t even remember now who said it to me, but a female casting director said, in a room full of people: ‘You have to make the men want to fuck you and the women want to be you.’”

Ew.

“Yeah. I almost wish I could remember who she was. Not that I want to call her out, but I feel like that was almost more damaging in a way. To think to myself, that’s really what I have to be? And then trying to figure out how to be that. This was from a casting person who was like, this is how you’re going to get the jobs and then that permeating through how I thought about myself, and the commodity I was. That was more damaging than the guy asking me what are you doing after or saying you should take your clothes off more. Shocker.”

It makes sense that Sevigny, while sensitive to all the nuances surrounding #MeToo, held back when approached by Farrow; to be in a room with her is to be reminded that Sevigny, while friendly and charming, is a non-conformist who makes up her own mind, thinking long and hard before she answers some questions and doubling back to qualify them once she has. She is politically at odds with her family, a situation she finds depressing, but is well used to by now. Sevigny grew up in Darien, Connecticut, the US equivalent of the conservative Home Counties, but after moving to New York at 19 and falling in with a fashionable art crowd, rapidly moved away from the opinions she’d grown up around. Her family watch Fox News, she says, “which I try to zone out whenever I go home. It’s a losing battle. They’re at an age when – now it’s just the sad undercurrent of tension, and me having to block it out or ignore.”

More.

Paris Hilton Does Cosplay Photo Shoot

At Drunken Stepfather, "Paris Hilton Does a Photoshoot in Cosplay of the Day."

Bicentennial of Birth of Karl Marx, the Man Whose Ideas Killed Untold Millions

From Paul Kengor, at WSJ, "Marx’s Apologists Should Be Red in the Face":

Opinion: Marx’s apologists should be red in the face, writes @DrPaulKengor https://t.co/diNstXSF9T

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 5, 2018

May 5 marks the bicentennial of Karl Marx, who set the stage with his philosophy for the greatest ideological massacres in history. Or did he?

He did, but deniers still remain. “Only a fool could hold Marx responsible for the Gulag,” writes Francis Wheen in “Karl Marx: A Life” (1999). Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung, Mr. Wheen insists, created “bastard creeds,” “wrenched out of context” from Marx’s writings.

Marx has been accused of ambiguity in his writings. That critique is often justified, but not always. In “The Communist Manifesto,” he and Friedrich Engels were quite clear that “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.”

“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property,” they wrote. “But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population.” And this: “In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”

Marx and Engels acknowledged that their views stood undeniably contrary to the “social and political order of things.” Communism seeks to “abolish the present state of things” and represents “the most radical rupture in traditional relations.”

Toward that end, the manifesto offers a 10-point program, including “abolition of property in land,” “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax,” “abolition of all right of inheritance,” “centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly,” “centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state” and the “gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.”

In a preface to their 10 points, Marx and Engels acknowledged their coercive nature: “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads.” In the close of the Manifesto, Marx said, “The Communists . . . openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”

They were right about that. Human beings would not give up fundamental liberties without resistance. Seizing property would require a terrible fight, including the use of guns and gulags. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and a long line of revolutionaries and dictators candidly admitted that force and violence would be necessary...

More.

Obama Trump Swing Voters

At the New York Times, "They Voted for Obama, Then Went for Trump. Can Democrats Win Them Back?":

I interviewed 38 Obama-Trump voters. Takeaway: Most Americans are not thinking very much about politics. They have busy lives. They don't have time for Twitter. https://t.co/KAFHZqVKTB

— Sabrina Tavernise (@stavernise) May 4, 2018

RITTMAN, Ohio — In the daily race that is her life, Sharla Baker does not think about politics very much.

She rises early, drives to the gas station to buy coffee, feeds her baby, dresses her two other children, ages 3 and 2, and hustles them all off to day care. By 9:30 a.m. she pulls into a hair salon 45 minutes away, where she is training to be a cosmetologist. She waxes and cuts all day long, making only the money she earns in tips, which on a recent day last month was $8.41.

But Ms. Baker does vote. She picked Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012. He seemed sincere and looked like a happy family man. But most important, he was a Democrat. Her great-grandmother, who grew up poor in Pennsylvania, always said that Democrats look out for the poor people.

In 2016, though, she voted for Donald J. Trump. Yes, he was rich and seemed mean on his TV show, “The Apprentice.” But she liked how he talked about jobs and wages and people being left out of the economy.

Now, more than a year later, she is wavering.

“I voted for Trump because I wanted some change going on,” said Ms. Baker, 28. “But then again, maybe he’s going to do the wrong change.”

The swing of Obama voters to Mr. Trump proved a decisive factor in the 2016 presidential election. Of the more than 650 counties that chose Mr. Obama twice, about a third flipped to Mr. Trump. Many were in states critical to Mr. Trump’s win, like Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

John Sides, a political-science professor at George Washington University, has estimated that 9 percent of voters who cast ballots for Mr. Obama ended up voting for Mr. Trump. Among white voters who had never been to college, it was 22 percent.

Now, as the country lurches into another election season — this time the prize is control of Congress — a crucial question for Democrats is whether the party will be able to lure these voters back. Democrats have had some early successes. Wins in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia have given Democrats hope that voters might be souring on Mr. Trump — to the point that the party might flip control of the House and possibly even the Senate. Next week’s primary races in Ohio and West Virginia, both states that went for Mr. Trump in 2016, will also serve as tests of voter enthusiasm for Democrats.

We recently asked people who cast ballots for both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump to describe how they felt about the president and the Democratic Party ahead of the midterms. In interviews with 38 voters in 14 states across four months, a clear pattern emerged. Voters said they did not like Mr. Trump as a person and did not consider themselves die-hard supporters. Some were even embarrassed by him.

But many were basically satisfied with his policies. The tax bill was mildly positive, they said. Several had a bit of extra money in their paycheck. They liked that he was trying to address illegal immigration. Only a few regretted their vote...

More.

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

At Amazon, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Can Democracy Save Itself?

I like this one, from Ronald Inglehart, at Foreign Affairs, "The Age of Insecurity: Can Democracy Save Itself?":

In the long run, democracy seems to be the best way to govern developed countries. https://t.co/5zh8R2s2hi

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) May 4, 2018

To  a large degree, the shifts between democracy and authoritarianism can be explained by the extent to which people feel that their existence is secure. For most of history, survival was precarious. When food supplies rose, population levels rose with them. When food grew scarce, populations shrank. In both lean and fat times, most people lived just above the starvation level. During extreme scarcity, xenophobia was a realistic strategy: when a tribe’s territory produced just enough food to sustain it, another tribe moving in could spell death for the original inhabitants. Under these conditions, people tend to close ranks behind strong leaders, a reflex that in modern times leads to support for authoritarian, xenophobic parties.

In rich countries, many people after World War II grew up taking their survival for granted. They could do so thanks to unprecedented economic growth, strong welfare states, and peace between the world’s major powers. That security led to an intergenerational shift in values, as many people no longer gave top priority to economic and physical security and no longer felt as great a need to conform to group norms. Instead, they emphasized individual free choice. That sparked radical cultural changes: the rise of antiwar movements, advances in racial and gender equality, and greater tolerance of the LGBTQ community and other traditional out-groups.

Those shifts provoked a reaction among older people and those holding less secure positions in society (the less educated, the less well off) who felt threatened by the erosion of familiar values. During the past three decades, that sense of alienation has been compounded by an influx of immigrants and refugees. From 1970 to 2015, the Hispanic population of the United States rose from five percent to 18 percent. Sweden, which in 1970 was inhabited almost entirely by ethnic Swedes, now has a foreign-born population of 19 percent. Germany’s is 23 percent. And in Switzerland, it is 25 percent.

All this dislocation has polarized modern societies. Since the 1970s, surveys in the United States and other countries have revealed a split between “materialists,” who stress the need for economic and physical security, and “postmaterialists,” who take that security for granted and emphasize less tangible values.

In the U.S. component of the 2017 World Values Survey, respondents were asked a list of six questions, each of which required choosing which of two goals was most important for their country. Those who chose things such as spurring economic growth, fighting rising prices, maintaining order, and cracking down on crime were defined as materialists. By contrast, those who gave top priority to things such as protecting freedom of speech, giving people more say in important government decisions, and having greater autonomy in their own jobs were designated postmaterialists.

In recent U.S. presidential elections, this split has had a major influence on voting patterns, dwarfing the effects of other demographic traits, such as social class. Consider the 2012 election: those who gave priority to materialist values in all six of their choices were 2.2 times as likely to have voted for the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, as they were for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, and those who gave priority to postmaterialist values in all six choices were 8.6 times as likely to have voted for Obama as they were for Romney. This relationship grew even stronger in 2016, when Trump, an openly racist, sexist, authoritarian, and xenophobic candidate, ran against Hillary Clinton, a liberal and cosmopolitan one, who was also the first woman nominated by a major party. Pure materialists were now 3.8 times as likely to vote for Trump as they were for Clinton, and pure postmaterialists were a stunning 14.3 times as likely to vote for Clinton as they were for Trump.

Economic insecurity can exacerbate these cultural pressures toward authoritarianism. In 2006, the Danish public was remarkably tolerant when protesters burned Danish embassies in several Muslim-majority countries in response to a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad published by a Danish newspaper. At the height of the crisis, there was no Islamophobic backlash in Denmark. The next year, the anti-Muslim Danish People’s Party won 14 percent of the vote. But in 2015, in the wake of the Great Recession, it won 21 percent, becoming Denmark’s second-largest party. A backlash against the European migrant crisis was the immediate cause of the party’s support, but rising economic insecurity strengthened the reaction...

Keep reading.

Leftist Media's Jihad on Sarah Sanders (VIDEO)

She's so effective she's been targeted for destruction by the radical left media jihadists.

See, for example, WaPo, via Memeorandum, "As a willing warrior for Trump, Sarah Sanders struggles to maintain credibility."

And watch, Laura Ingraham, at Fox News:

Myla Dalbesio Jaw-Dropping Sunset Photo Shoot (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Kendall Jenner Braless in White Evening Dress

At Taxi Drier, "Kendall Jenner Braless in See-Through White Evening Dress."

The Redistribution of Sex

All this stuff about "incels" is freaky and rather disgusting, frankly.

But considering there's a major push to legalize prostitution on the left (it's "sex work," don't you know?), it does seem rather inevitable that "progressive" social policies designed to satisfy a "right to sex" will emerge. Such a right is a bullshit, of course, but I've already seen idiot libertarians like Will Wilkinson making the argument that incels should get cash vouchers to help them afford women of the night, or something.

It's too weird. In any case, see Ross Douthat's column at NYT, FWIW:

My Wednesday column: The Redistribution of Sex, which apparently has many readers on this platform already:https://t.co/Jb9vzkngKB

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 2, 2018

Ashley James in White Lingerie

At Taxi Driver, "Ashley James Nipples in See-Through White Lingerie."

And, at the Daily Star, "Ashley James exposes bare breasts in see-through lingerie snap: ASHLEY James certainly isn't afraid to flash the flesh."

Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Russell Banks, Cloudsplitter: A Novel.

When Old Left and Far Right Share a Bedroom

Pretty interesting.

At NYT, "A Very German Love Story: When Old Left and Far Right Share a Bedroom":

Helmut Lethen, 79, and Caroline Sommerfeld, 42, both writers, represent two generations and two intellectual camps in an ever more divided Germany. They are political enemies. And they are married, having the conversation their country is not. https://t.co/uoHdp8IPIR

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) May 1, 2018

VIENNA — When she says identity, he hears exclusion.

When he says diversity, she hears Islamization.

He accuses her of forgetting history. She accuses him of obsessing with history. He calls her a racist. She calls him a national masochist.

Helmut Lethen, 79, and Caroline Sommerfeld, 42, are both writers. They represent two generations and two intellectual camps in an ever more divided Germany. They are political enemies.

And they are married.

Their marriage is exceptional, incomprehensible even, but it is also a laboratory for tolerance and a rare window into how the other side thinks. Intimately and daily, they are having the conversation their country is not.

It is a very German love story (though the couple reside in Austria, where the husband teaches), one neatly pegged to the 50th anniversary of the counterculture movement that remains a touchstone of global postwar history — and to the ascent of the counter-counterculture movement of today.

May 1968 was as important in Europe as it was in the United States, fueled similarly by a youth bulge, sexual liberation, disgust with the Vietnam War and general discontent with the era’s political establishment.

And it spawned much the same trajectory for its baby boomers, from budding student revolutionaries to button-down liberal elites.

Germany was no exception. And neither was Mr. Lethen.

A student activist at the time, Mr. Lethen toyed with Communism, rebelling against Germany’s postwar elites which, as he put it, “still stank of the Nazis” — only to become part of the country’s cultural mainstream.

Ms. Sommerfeld, a philosopher in her own right, was swept up in another countercultural movement: In the summer of 2015, as hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived in Germany, she discovered the “New Right,” the intellectual spearhead of a nationalist movement that considers Islam and globalization existential threats.

Her husband had celebrated the arrival of the refugees: “I think it is the first time in our cultural history that we have welcomed the foreign in this way,” he said.

Ms. Sommerfeld, though, felt “anxious” and “repelled.”

Today, she hopes her own fringe movement is tapping into a shifting zeitgeist that will reverberate in Germany and beyond, just as her husband’s did in its day.

“We are the megaphone of a silent majority,” she claims...

Well, I'm with her, to borrow a phrase, lol.

Still more.

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