“Too often in The Closer, it just sounds like Chapelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia.”
10/14/21
I made a couple of formatting changes to the newsletter in the hope that it’s easier to read. Specifically, I separated my editorializing so you’re not confronted with seemingly impenetrable blocks of condensed writing.
“Especially in light of the politicization of this particular aspect, we want to take this back to the science, take this back to our mandate as an organization to bring together the world’s best minds to outline what needs to be done.”
— Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 technical lead, on the new committee charged with breathing life into W.H.O.’s stalled inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. The committee, expected to be announced this week, represents an attempt by the embattled global health body to reset its approach to determining how the pandemic began, nine months after sending a team of international experts to China, only for its findings to become entangled in geopolitics and trailed by concerns over Beijing’s influence. Let’s hope this time around the group won’t be comprised of individuals with longstanding professional ties to the Wuhan lab and investigators who’ve already arrived at a conclusion before the investigation has even begun.
“I can attest that, after this experience, I am even more dedicated to fighting against vaccine mandates.”
— Allen West, a former one-term Florida congressman who is now a Texas governor hopeful, in a tweet sent from a hospital in Plano, Texas, where he is receiving care for COVID-19. West reported he was receiving monoclonal antibody treatment for the virus but there were still risks of COVID-related pneumonia.
“We have decided we will not have quotas for gender or ethnicity. We want every [Nobel] laureate (to) be accepted… because they made the most important discovery, and not because of gender or ethnicity.”
— Goran Hansson, the head of the academy that awards the Nobel Prizes in science, on why they will not be introducing gender quotas. Could we — dare we — apply this standard elsewhere like we used to, so that certain groups aren’t systematically disadvantaged in order to privilege others who have the greater claim to “victimization,” which is what’s currently happening under the “diversity, equity, inclusion” fatwas being imposed across society—fatwas that so obviously violate the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment? There was a time when the thing that mattered most was merit, but that concept, along with things like rigor, objectivity, timeliness, colorblindness — basically every virtue once associated with work ethic and principled impartiality — has been hijacked by a culture of counterproductive moralism and condemned as Whiteness.
“Hunter Biden isn’t Trump, but what’s he’s up to is bad and deserves your attention — even if you hate Fox News.”
— An actual headline from Business Insider. And no, that’s not a typo—they actually used “what’s.” (Update: They went back and stealth edited it.) But more importantly, what does it say about the mainstream media when this level of disclaimer is required in order to report something that’s going to force its left-wing base to endure a little cognitive dissonance? And what does it say when the handmaidens of the mainstream media feel compelled to insert disclaimers in headlines as a sort of defense mechanism, lest they be accused of heresy for promoting something that doesn’t conform to the absolutist progressive ideology dictating what is and isn’t permissible to say, let alone think?
“I think it’s dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act. . .If they want to be stupid, there’s no law that should be preventive. If they want to be arrogant, there’s no law that prevents them from that.”
— The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a 2016 interview with former Today show host Katie Couric, regarding RBG’s thoughts on people who kneel for the national anthem. Katie Couric has admitted she cut the comments, and that she let her personal political views influence her editing decision on what to include in the televised interview. Couric claims that Ginsburg, who was 83 at the time, was “elderly and probably didn’t fully understand the question,” and that she “wanted to protect” Ginsburg and felt that the issue of racial justice was a “blind spot” for her.
“Too often in The Closer, it just sounds like Chapelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia.”
— NPR, in a piece criticizing Dave Chapelle — who, as you can see in the above picture, is Black — for going “too far” in his recent Netflix special. You literally can’t make this stuff up. We have gotten to the point where even if you’re Black, if you upset the delicate sensibilities of the Left, you’re accused of having white privilege. This recurring dynamic says everything you need to know about the insular and detached stratum of American society currently playing the role of cultural signalers and institutional media gatekeepers.
“Now obviously, the three of these folks are definitely Black faces. However, they are not necessarily Black voices. And there’s a difference.”
— MSNBC weekend host Tiffany Cross, who criticized several Black media figures for not saying the things she wants to hear.
“This equipment is dangerous to the workers who use it, disruptive to communities, & terribly damaging to our climate.”
— Democratic Assemblyman Marc Berman, whose bill banning the sale of new gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, and other small motor lawn-care tools in California was just signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The new law requires landscaping equipment to be zero-emission (ergo, battery-powered or plug-in) by 2024 or as soon as the California Air Resources Board determines it’s feasible to make the transition. California will spend $30 million to assist professional landscapers and gardeners making the change to electric equipment. However, an industry expert who spoke to the Los Angeles Times said that an estimated 50,000 California businesses will be impacted by the new law and $30 million won’t be enough to help them cover the costs imposed.
“Pfizer announced that it would fully vaccinate everyone in the city over the age of 12 so it can carry out a study of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.”
— The New York Times. Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t we already told that the vaccines were safe and effective? Why, then, is such a study being conducted? I’d also like to highlight something that has received z-e-r-o attention: On average, it takes 10.7 years to develop and test a new vaccine. The current COVID-19 vaccines were developed in less than a year and, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, clinical trials for the Pfizer vaccine are not expected to actually end until 2023.
“The new Superman, the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, is concerned about the environment, does not shy away from politics and will soon begin a romantic relationship with a male friend.”
— The New York Times, describing how the fictional Jonathan Kent — who is the son of Clark Kent — will soon begin a romantic relationship with a male friend, per an announcement by DC Comics. That same-sex relationship is apparently just one of the ways that Jonathan Kent, who prefers to go by Jon, is proving to be a different Superman than his famous father. Jon has “combated wildfires caused by climate change, thwarted a high school shooting and protested the deportation of refugees in Metropolis.”
“Me, my mom, dad, we were speculating who could be this important that we meet them in D.C. and we get to go on a cool trip and film.”
— Trevor Bernardino, a 13-year-old actor from Carmel, California and one of five kids who had to audition for the first installment of Vice President Kamala Harris’s YouTube Originals space series, “Get Curious with Vice President Harris.” The video does not mention that the kids are paid actors.
“We are in the midst of a rolling coup.”
— MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan. Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and though over 400 people were arrested for variations of “unlawful parading” from January 6th, not a single person has been charged for insurrection. Apparently that isn’t enough for MSNBC to update their talking points.
“We live in a sea of viruses. Why did this particular one break out in this huge Chinese metropolis, and not elsewhere? Where did the virus acquire the furin cleavage site, since no other viruses in the sarbecovirus subgenus, to which its closest relatives belong, has this feature?”
— The Washington Post editorial board.
I wonder if it has something to do with those risky coronavirus experiments that China was conducting at the Wuhan Institute of Virology—you know, the ones that U.S. diplomats warned Washington about in 2018?
Wait. . . wasn’t Wuhan where the virus first showed up, and where, according to a U.S. intelligence report, three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick with COVID-19 symptoms in November 2019, which is when epidemiologists and virologists believe the virus first began circulating in the city?
And didn’t FOIA requests reveal that “. . . assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful,” and that “The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present”?
Oh, and what about that whistleblower who recently leaked grant proposal documents showing a staggering level of deep involvement of EcoHealth Alliance with the WIV on matters of national interest, and that they were planning to create entirely new coronaviruses through the synthetic combination of preexisting virus backbones—viruses made more virulent in humans by the insertion of a furin cleavage site, a feature that distinguishes COVID-19 from all other SARS-related coronaviruses?
Oh well. The punditocracy still says it’s nothing more than coincidence, and Disney just released a documentary lionizing Anthony Fauci (called, simply, “Fauci”), so it’s probably just a bunch of Fox News nonsense.
$2,500: Pre-pandemic cost to reserve a container that can hold roughly 35,000 books.
$25,000: Current cost to reserve one of these containers due to pandemic restrictions causing severe bottlenecks in the global supply chain. High demand plus limited supply equals prices spiraling to the moon. It turns out that you can’t just turn off large swaths of the economy and expect to turn it back on again like you’re power cycling a modem. Who could have expected this, other than anyone with a brain?
64%: Proportion of Americans who think life was better before social media.
82: Docents that were fired by the Art Institute of Chicago for not being “diverse” enough. Docents serve as volunteer guides at the museum, where they lead tours, and though they’re unpaid, their training is pretty ridiculous: First, they have to have two training sessions per week for 18 months, and then “five years of continual research and writing to meet the criteria of 13 museum content areas,” in addition to other time consuming requirements. The average length of service for these individuals was 15 years. But because the vast majority are older white women, the demographics weren’t appealing enough to the institute, and so, as purely a matter of optics, they’ve been replaced by a more diverse group.
80%: Percentage of U.S. political science academics who lean left on the ideological spectrum, according to a recent study.
39%: Young people who “feel uncertain” about having children because of climate change.
38: Consecutive “Jeopardy!” games won by contestant Matt Amodio, whose record-breaking winning streak officially came to an end after accumulating $1,518,601 in overall prize money. It eventually came down to the “Final Jeopardy!” question. The clue under the category “Countries of the World,” asked what country Nazi Germany annexed and divided into regions of the alps and the Danube. The answer was “What is Austria,” which Amodio was the only contestant to miss.
89: Number of days a man stayed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport because he was afraid of flying during the pandemic.
$85 million: Sum allotted in the Build Back Better Act for “education and training programs for identifying and addressing health risks associated with climate change for pregnant, lactating, and postpartum individuals.”
2: Time, in years, that it took wildlife officers to track an elk that was spotted with a tire around its neck before they were able to tranquilize the animal and saw off its antlers so it could be removed (elks shed and regrow their antlers every year). Experts believe the tire had been around the elk’s neck for half of its life.
21%: Increase in homicides among people ages 19 and younger during 2020. As of Oct. 6, 2021, 1,165 people 17 or younger had died from gun violence and 3,216 had been injured.
4.3 million: The number of times Americans quit jobs in August, the highest amount on record since December 2000.
86%: Percentage of Americans who believe our society is better off with people of many backgrounds. (And yet the media and activist class continue to wage a campaign calling for those who object to the notion that America is a white supremacist country rooted in oppression to be condemned as racists and burned at the stake.)
