Category Archives: culture

Mind Your Place

Posted on by
Reply

Ken Harrelson, a broadcaster for Chicago’s White Sox baseball team and himself a some-time baseball player, thinks basketball player LeBron James should just shut up and play.

Well I used to watch LeBron [James] but no more. I wish these guys would keep their nose out of politics and just play because people didn’t come to hear their opinions on politicians[.]

Because everyone should just mind his place.

This stinks.  It’s of a piece with the Left’s identity politics: blacks are required to vote a particular way, women are only allowed specific opinions, whites have privilege, and on and on.  It’s the return of segregation, only it’s political segregation rather than physical, and political segregation doesn’t even pretend to be equal while separate.

There’s much with which I disagree in James’ commentary, but his status as a professional basketball player no more disqualifies him from commenting on political matters, or any other subject, than does my status as a writer qualify me to comment.

Oh, and on the subject of political commentary by sports figures, maybe Harrelson should heed his own advice and stick to calling baseball games.  He’s is, after all, “just” a sports figure like James.

Or not.  Because sports figures really do get to comment on politics.

An Interview Ducked

Posted on by
Reply

The New Yorker invited Steve Bannon to a panel debate, its New Yorker Festival.  Then, after “public criticism,” the mag disinvited him.  Other scheduled participants also…objected.

Shortly after Mr Bannon was announced as a guest, several film stars, producers and comedians declared on Twitter that they didn’t want to be on a schedule with the former White House senior adviser. Actor Jim Carrey, comedy producer Judd Apatow, and comedian John Mulaney all backed out, citing Mr Bannon’s participation as the primary reason.

New Yorker editor David Remnick made the laughable claim that

This…[is] a question of putting pressure on a set of arguments and prejudices that have influenced our politics and a President still in office[.]

From that, Remnick claimed, the Festival was not an appropriate venue for engaging Bannon.

What abject cowards are Remnick, Carrey, Apatow, and Mulaney. What better way to show up Bannon, to put[] pressure on a set of arguments and prejudices that have influenced our politics and a President still in office, than to debate him and expose the foolishness of his positions and those arguments and prejudices?

They’ve exposed their own prejudices, and they’ve shown they have no arguments to make to counter Bannon.

Nike

Posted on by
Reply

Nike makes shoes, among other things.  It also has chosen to use Colin Kaepernick in its new Just Do It campaign.  You recall Kaepernick: ex-49er quarterback who’s the instigator and leader of the NFL players’ campaign of contempt for our national anthem and our flag and of insult for the generations of our veterans who’ve fought, been maimed, and died for our freedom, including these players’ right to be stupid and to engage in contemptible and insulting behavior.

But wait—aren’t the players protesting police brutality, discrimination, and other social injustices?  That’s certainly their claim.  However, if their claim were accurate, they’d protest police brutality, discrimination, and other social injustices instead of attacking our anthem, flag, and veterans.  They’d also go into the neighborhoods where these things are occurring and actively help the locals, as many of the players who aren’t behaving so contemptibly and insultingly are doing.

Further, even if that had been their message at the outset, it’s clear that their message has been not understood that way by much, if not most, of their audience.  They would, then, clarify by changing their message delivery in order to have their message better understood.  Instead, the players have continued their delivery unchanged in the slightest.  From that, it’s clear that either their message never was what they claimed it to be, and they’ve been attacking these symbols and defenders all along, or they’ve walked away from their message and now are simply engaged in a toddler’s ego trip of out-stubborning those who disagree with them.

The players know all of this; in particular, Kaepernick knows all of this; and Nike knows all of this.  Yet,

Nike has said it “opposes discrimination of any type and has a longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.”

Too bad that doesn’t apply to our anthem, our flag, or our veterans.

I’ve bought my last Nike product.  I’m Just Doing It.

Governance by the Left

Posted on by
Reply

It’s only light bulbs, so who cares?  The Know Betters of the EU care, and the subhead on the Deutsche Welle article at the link says it all.

The sale of halogen lightbulbs is being banned across the EU, as LEDs are touted as greener alternatives. Advocates insist the move will save consumers money in the long run and lead to lower carbon emissions.

If that were true, then LEDs would have no trouble competing in a free market and supplanting halogens quite rapidly and freely.

However.

Ordinary citizens are just too grindingly stupid to be trusted to make the correct decisions.  Irmela Colaco, Energy Efficiency Project Leader for the German environmental group BUND:

It’s high time that the planet and consumers were protected from these power guzzlers[.]

Because consumers are just slack-jawed idiots who cannot protect themselves—or who cannot be trusted to protect themselves in the right way.

This is the Europe our own Leftists want us to emulate.

Colloquialisms and Racism

Posted on by
1

Ron DeSantis, Republican candidate for Governor of Florida, suggested in an interview shortly after his nomination, that his just-nominated Progressive-Democrat opponent, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, would, if elected, monkey up the Florida economy.

Oh, the hue and cry from the Progressive-Democrats, the NLMSM, and from Gillum.  A colloquialism that plainly means to mess with things, or to mess things up, suddenly is a racist bull horn—much more than a dog whistle according to Gillum.

How can this be?  One candidate says another candidate will mess things up, and this is racist!?

Oh, wait—Gillum is black.

Notice that.  Gillum isn’t a political candidate who happens to be a black man; he’s a black man who happens to be a political candidate.

Americans for generations have worked hard to make race irrelevant.  All men are created equal, equal employment, Martin Luther King’s dream, and on and on.

But not anymore.  The Progressive-Democrat, his Party, and the Left in general insist that what’s important here is the man’s race, not his policies.  It’s his race that gives meaning to the colloquialism, not his policies.

This emphasis by the Progressive-Democrat, his Party, and the Left in general on race is rank racist bigotry.  That it’s wholly artificial, done by politicians solely for personal political gain and by pseudo-journalists solely for click bait makes their racism even worse.

Gillum’s cynically artificial racism should disqualify him from public office.