Monthly Archives: February 2022

The generally excellent Berlin daily newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, has just cut off its nose to spite its face. In a move that leaves it bereft of its most thought-provoking weekly columnist, the editors have effectively forced out Harald Martenstein, who has worked at the newspaper since 1988.

His transgression? Making a distinction.

His greatest skill? Making distinctions.

German societys weakest underbelly when it comes to anything referring to the countrys past history? Making distinctions.

Martenstein wrote in a column published on February 6, 2022, about demonstrators in Israel, France and more recently, Germany, about anti-vaxxers who chose to wear the Judenstern, the yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi terror.

Martenstein wrote (my transcription based on the original text) that those who chose to wear the Judenstern did so to make themselves into an absolute Good, an absolute victim.

Their abuse of this unquestionably very shameful symbol of Germanys dark Nazi history is despicable. Martenstein pointed out that those protesters action was presumptuous, that it does dilute history and that it is hard for survivors to witness. But, he opined, it is not anti-Semitic.

The columnists assertion was subsequently discussed intensively inside the Tagesspiegel, but only after outside voices had taken exception to Martensteins writing.

As the Americans say (I am one by virtue of birth), reasonable people can disagree about it.

What reasonable people who believe in freedom of the press really should not disagree about is that the columnist had a right to express that opinion, particularly as it was based on a well-reasoned distinction.

Martenstein made the distinction between, on the one hand, people who compared living politicians, parties and movements to Hitler and the Nazis, making their current domestic political enemy into the ultimate form of the bad, and, on the other hand, those anti-vaccination demonstrators wearing the Judenstern, who wanted to signal perversely and inappropriately their own supposed oppression.

He maintained, correctly in my view, that the people who equated those two groups manifested a fundamental contradiction in their own thinking.

Furthermore, in his subsequent farewell article in Der Tagesspiegel (following a decision by the top brass to expunge his presumably offensive column from the newspapers electronic records), Martenstein explained resolutely that he held those demonstrators to be dumb and ahistorical.

But he wrote that other people who have demonstrated about destroying the state of Israel are far more dangerous. Clear distinctions.

Here s the rub: The newspaper published Martensteins farewell piece on Sunday, February 20, with an editorial note from the Chefredaktion, the editor(s)-in-chief. They stated that the column one in well over a thousand he wrote for the newspaper over his many years there had been strongly criticized by internal editors and by readers.

OK, thats fine. Thats freedom of opinion.

Then comes the explanation (my translation): The editors have intensively considered this column and the criticism of it. We have conducted conversations with colleagues (female and male, about which the German language is painfully and these days, politically correct and precise), social scientists, those affected and the author himself, and we decided, that we should never have published the column and we therefore have deleted the column from the online edition of the newspaper.

Of course, the editor who must have read and published the column is still with the paper, one must assume. No word on the bad oversight, based on the newspapers current logic. When things like that happened at the venerable New York Times, the opinion editor was axed.

All of this is so very German and so very, very Berlin leftist. Germans not only love to discuss everything into the ground.

The political correctness brigades also obliquely like to refer to scientists validating the top brasss ex post facto view without naming them.

That happens when everybody knows that on most issues and on this one in particular scientists can be found to validate many a viewpoint. Just pick your social scientist.

Now, let me be clear: I am a great admirer of Germanys Vergangenheitsbewltigung, its official coming to terms with its history.

In fact, I have been since the 1980s when I studied three years in Bonn before finishing my PhD dissertation on the Jewish post-war poet Paul Celan, a true master of the German language.

For the record, I find the anti-vaxxers despicable anywhere. I was very happy to see that the Berlin police had decided to disallow use of the Judenstern in demonstrations.

Often, I have said that Germany is the only country that has truly taken responsibility and owned up to its past.

So it is no surprise that the weighty subjects pertaining to German history would be subject to massive discussion. And they have been to the countrys credit.

That is certainly not true of my culture just witness the current culture war in the United States about critical race theory and how to teach American history. It amounts to the right and conservatives in general not wanting to teach the truth about slavery and civil rights.

Given, the United States has done far too little and Germany has done a lot.

Now, however, Germany has earned the right and the responsibility to make and to allow distinctions.

However, rather than doing that, most Germans tend to slather any such issue with an emotionally driven response that fails to make distinctions. For if they do so, they see themselves and their compatriots see them as going down the road to fascism, yet again.

Again, totally unnecessary, for if any people have demonstrated that they can be democratic and uphold a democracy, it is the Germans.

That the editors of the major Berlin newspaper, however, have not reached the cultural and political maturity to make distinctions is disheartening.

Todays world, todays challenges and todays politics cry out for making careful distinctions, not only about past German history but also about current challenges.

It is time for Germany to shed the habit of historical guilt, which really betrays an over-wrought sense of self, and to make and allow the distinctions so necessary to understanding and to commentating on todays world.

In short, to the Tagesspiegel editors: Das ist keine Meinungsfreiheit und keine Pressefreiheit! That is not freedom of opinion and not freedom of the press!

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Germany and the Battle Over Political Correctness - The Globalist

Former President TrumpDonald TrumpBarr says Trump 'lost his grip' in forthcoming memoir Five things to know about Ukraine's President Zelensky Schumer to meet with Biden's Supreme Court pick Wednesday MORE inched closer on Saturday to a 2024 comeback campaign, delivering a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)in which he hammered President BidenJoe BidenBiden approval near record low amid economic frustration: poll Barr says Trump 'lost his grip' in forthcoming memoir Capitol Police to reinstall fence for State of the Union address MORE and congressional Democrats on everything from theconflict in Ukraine to their handling of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

In a sprawling tirade that stretched formore than an hour, Trump repeated his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and railed against what he described as an inefficient federal government obsessed with political correctness and dominated by weak leadership that failed to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all, Trump said to a doting audience in Orlando, Fla. They are indeed brave. As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our elections were not rigged and if I was the president.

Trump also repeatedly signaled that 2024 is still on his mind. At several points in his address, he implied that he was still the rightful president of the United States and suggested that a 2024 presidential bid remains very much on the table.

Trumps speech came near the tail end of CPAC, which is set to end Sunday afternoon. And despite his status as the loser of the 2020 presidential election, the gathering underscored the vise grip he retains over the conservative grassroots.

Throughout the conference, attendees repeatedly expressed a desire for Trump to run for the White House again in 2024. Ahead of his speech on Saturday, droves of eager onlookers filed into the main conference room, hoping to catch a glimpse of the former president.

Trumpattended a reception with supporters before making his remarks, during which heoffered no further information about his 2024 ambitions aside from saying that his allies would be very happy with his decision.

His speech was billed by CPACs organizers as a chance for Trump to present his vision for the U.S. ahead of a potential 2024 presidential campaign, butthe former president largely stuck to his typical talking points, including railing against so-called woke American culture andcalling for the completion of his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border

In his address, Trump also tore into Democrats over coronavirus-related mandates and praised certain Republican governors for their handling of the pandemic, though he didnt mention Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisFive takeaways from CPAC 2022 Trump wins CPAC straw poll as DeSantis's support grows Trump tears into Biden as he moves toward 2024 campaign MORE (R) by name, despite DeSantiss status as the face of conservative opposition to COVID-19 restrictions.

I can tell you that the Republican governors did quite well, thank you, Trump said. The emergency is over, and we will submit to this left-wing tyranny no longer.

DeSantis, the most notable of several potential 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls who delivered speeches during the four-day gathering before Trump's address, was the center of attention at the conference on Thursday.

Trump has repeatedly floated the notion of a 2024 comeback bid for the presidency, though its unclear if hes made up his mind on a run. Still, hes made clear that shouldhe mount another bid for the White House, he believes he should be the presumptive GOP nominee.

His political ambitions were on display on Saturday as he projected Republican victories in the 2022 midterm elections, slated for Nov. 8, as well as in the 2024 presidential election, when Biden will once again be on the ballot.

Theyre going to find out the hard way starting Nov. 8 and even more so starting November 2024, Trump said of Democrats' chances in the elections.

Were going to kick the Biden crime family out of the White House in 2024,he said.

Read the rest here:

Trump tears into Biden as he moves toward 2024 campaign | TheHill - The Hill

When this blog started, newspapers were still writing, so-called Web logs, or blogs

From February 26, 2015, Of pocket lint and political correctness:

But I was also embarrassed because I had allowed myself to be inconvenienced and bothered and worried for weeks over nothing more thanpocket lint.What I had feared was some potentially large problem turned out to be something easily resolved with a paper clip. Seeing how simple and obvious the solution was made me feel kind of stupid because I hadbeenkind of stupid.

That has happened before. And it will happen again.

There are two morals to this story.

First, of course, is that the charging dock on a cellphone can get clogged with pocket lint. If yours starts to get a bit unreliable, shine a flashlight in there and poke around a bit gently with a toothpick or the end of a paper clip. That should take care of that for you. Good to know.

The second lesson here is just as practical, but it has wider implications. The second lesson here is that briefly feeling kind of stupid can be a Good Thing. It means theres a solution that you hadnt seen before maybe even a quick, easy, obvious and no-cost solution. And briefly feeling a bit stupid owning up to the fact that there was something simple you had overlooked or failed to think of is a small price to pay for the relief that comes from no longer having to worry about problems that turn out to be easily solved.

Theres a perverse impulse to get defensive when confronted with anything that might make us feel embarrassed or force us to admit that we maybe did something foolish or unthinking. And that defensiveness can lead us to resent or to reject the simple advice that can free us from what may turn out to be wholly avoidable and easily resolvable problems.

It was kind of stupid of me to jump to the conclusion that my phone was broken in some expensive way. But it would have been far more stupid to stubbornly cling to that conclusion, refusing to believe that Brad knew more than I did and refusing to let him help me by not just solving my problem but showing me how to avoid it in the future.

Read the whole post here.

(Over the past seven years, phone technology has improved a lot, but charging ports still remain vulnerable to pocket lint. That part of the post is still timely, but the reference to political correctness now seems dated. The memo went out a couple of years ago that common decency and regard for others will no longer be sneered at as political correctness, but henceforth as wokeness and cancel culture.)

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Feb. 26 Flashback: They'll never learn | Fred Clark - Patheos

Article content

Political correctness has hit an unprecedented low in a Picton supermarket. Gingerbread men have been neutered. While shopping in the bakery section of this store I spotted an attractively displayed tray of these spicy treats. About to put it in my cart, I glanced at the label and discovered that it read Gingerbread Persons.

Astounded by this transformation of the gingerbread man from a favourite childhood treat to a sexless bit of cake I wondered what might come next. Suddenly, I envisioned a package of anatomically correct gingerbread persons, six male and six female, lined up on a styrofoam tray, politically correct to the last crumb. The magic disappeared with this alarming thought.

If gingerbread men are to become persons, surely the man in the moon must follow suit, along with the Sandman, the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, and the postman. Spiderman, Superman, and Batman cannot be overlooked either. It will matter little that they began their lives as males. Now, to be politically correct they must become persons. Superperson, Spiderperson, and Batperson now will save our planet. Wonder Woman will transition to Wonder Person and the Six Million Dollar Man will become the Six Million Dollar Person.

The Man from Uncle will become gender neutral along with The Third Man of the big screen, who will be reinvented as The Third Person, not to be confused with a pronoun. Manhole covers will be renamed Personhole covers and all references to manpower will be changed to personpower.

Song titles will be changed to ensure their political correctness. Stand By Your Man will become Stand By Your Person and When A Man Loves a Woman will be retitled When a Person Loves a Person.

Where does the lunacy end? Changing prejudicial or offensive appellations to something showing greater sensitivity makes sense, but neutering innocent gingerbread men in a bakeshop oven is overkill. Usually, attempts to make gender non-specific end with clumsy words that make little sense. The decision to change the word chairman to chairperson, or, simply chair is an example. Each time I hear the phrase chair of the meeting, I imagine a Morris rocker or a recliner presiding as the minutes were read.

The time has come for words and images that are blatantly sexist or insensitive to disappear. It was a step in the right direction when Aunt Jemimas picture was retired from boxes of pancake mix and there was discussion of pensioning off Uncle Ben from packages of rice. However, neutering the Gingerbread Man is going a step too far. He did nothing to deserve such a fate. He was no threat to Womens Liberation and surely was not offensive to any race or creed. He was just a piece of cake.

After reading the label on the tray I was about to put in my grocery cart, I returned the gingerbread persons to the shelf. While a gingerbread man by any other name might smell and taste as sweet, it would not be the same.

On principle, I refuse to eat a gingerbread person. How political correctness has managed to extend its reach to a grocery store bakeshop boggles the mind. When the Gingerbread Man becomes politically incorrect, it is time for us to give our heads a shake and stop the ridiculous word games that mock our intelligence.

Go here to read the rest:

Their castration of gingerbread men - County Weekly News

Michael BloombergMichael BloombergThis SOTU, Biden can win back voters with a plan for lower drug prices Bloomberg: Democrats headed for 'wipeout' in November without immediate course correction The risks and implications of China and Russia's unholy alliance MOREwrites in a new op-edthat he is "deeply concerned" the Democratic Party is "headed for a wipeout in November, up and down the ballot."

The former New York City mayor and Democratic presidentialcandidatepoints to the recent recall of three school board members in San Francisco while makinghis argument in Bloomberg News.

"Coming from Americas most liberal city, those results should translate into a 7 to 8 on the Richter scale, because the three main factors that drove the recall are not unique to the Bay Area," Bloomberg writes.

"The school board members seemed more concerned with political correctness than educating children. Instead of reopening schools, they spent their time renaming them, stripping off the names of historic figures like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln before a public outcry forced them to reverse course," he added.

Bloombergnotes that a"recent Democratic Party poll showed that voters perceive it as being too 'focused on the culture wars' from renaming schools to defunding the police."

"But the advice that party leaders are giving members of Congress to 'correct the record'when Republicans criticize them on schools and culture isnt going to cut it,"he added.

Bloomberg also writes that swing voters "will decide the 2022 midterm elections," adding that "polls show they are swinging away from Democrats."

"The earthquake that shook San Francisco needs to shake up our party, before voters do it themselves in November," he writes.

See the article here:

Bloomberg: Democrats headed for 'wipeout' in November without immediate course correction | TheHill - The Hill

RANDOLPH Its not over until school board critics say its over.

That seems to be themantra of those unhappy with the school boardforeliminating one day of thetwo-day Rosh Hashanah holidayfrom next years school calendar.

That decision was made a few months ago and reinforced twicesince, including in a 5-4 vote at a contentious meeting last week.

That session was punctuated by the appearance of five local Republicans, all of whom criticized the boards move.

In no particular order, the list included state Sen. Anthony M. Bucco, Assemblyman Brian Bergen, Morris County Commissioner Tayfun Selen, who is also a CD-11 congressional candidate, Larry Friscia, a CD-11 candidate as well, and last, but not least, county commissioner Deborah Smith.

It was Smith who releaseda statementprior to last weeks meetingurging a big turnout.

As we said, the board has now voted on thecalendar three times, includingthe original vote, but Smith is not giving up.

She sent out another statement this afternoon expressing disappointment at the boards action and urging another big turnout at the March 15 meeting to continue pressing the issue. Other critics have done likewise on social media sites.

This board is not focused on education or teaching children about the diverse community thatmakes up Randolph or thehistory of the people whobuilt this wonderful township and this nation, Smith wrote. This board is focused on political correctness and joining a deeply disturbing trend among school boards across America of culturally cleansing our society of all traditions and history.

It is indisputable that Republicans in general seem unhappy withpublic education thesedays. And itcertainly can pay politicaldividends.

Yet, in fairness, its hard to see the boards Rosh Hashanahdecision having anything to do with political correctness.

The move seems more aresult of theboard trying to ensure therequired 180-days of teaching into theschool calendar without extendingthe school yearuntil late June.

Since this issue hasnt ended, one question is how determined will the board be to stay the course?

To a layman, this doesnt seem like such a tough issue. A check of the official 2022-23 school calendar shows 184 days of teaching with four snow/emergency days built in.

How hard would it be to reduce the snow days to three and make the second day of Rosh Hashanah a school holiday?

That seems particularly feasible when you realize the remote learning many schools wereable to do during the height of the pandemic can make traditional snow days obsolete.

Many school boards take pride in saying theyre above politics, but a purely political decision is needed here.

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The Never-ending Calendar Issue in Randolph - InsiderNJ

Did Russia invade Ukraine because of western nations showing respect for people who are transgender, people adding their pronouns to the email signatures, or increasing political correctness?

Thats certainly a point of view being pushed by several prominent conservative commentators in recent days.

Jumping on the bandwagon today is former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, writing in the Wall Street Journal, and published in The Australian, Abbott argues that a variety of factors have lead to Russian leader Vladimir Putin having the confidence to invade Ukraine.

Among the steps that lead to war Abbott lists a reluctance from US President Joe Biden to put troops on the ground in Ukraine, moves to close down coal-fired power stations, and respect for people who are transgender.

The worst contemporary folly is the constant undermining of Western civilisation, history and national virtues.

Partly it is deliberate subversion by cultural Marxists, but mostly its the polite acquiescence of diffident and historically ignorant people conditioned not to give offence.

These days the rights of men who want to be women routinely trump those of women who dont want to face unfair competition in sport. Abbott writes.

Victorian Liberal Tim Smith took to social media over the weekend to draw a link between the conflict in Ukraine and peoples use of gender pronouns.

The Liberal member, who recently returned to the parliament after some extended personal leave following a drunken car crash, closed off comments on his post after just over nine hundred responses.

Lyle Shelton, the former head of the Australian Christian Lobby, now spokesperson for Fred Niles Christian Democrats, was on Twitter praising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, asking if he was indeed the most courageous man on the planet?

Before making a segue into Our leaders dont even have the will and courage to stand against political activists demanding our children be taught their gender is fluid. No wonder the West is in decay.

Leaving us to wonder if Shelton is potentially the highest user of the rainbow flag emoji on the internet.

On Sky News presenter Andrew Bolt took aim at the British secret service, saying theyd been more focused on learning about gender pronouns than the security of the nation.

British spies are being urged to consider the white privilege and declare their pronouns, he, she, zed, ze, then, they, whatever. Bolt ranted.

This is just amazing, its very symbolic, no wonder Putin and Xi Jingping, they look at the west and think this is our chance to strike, theyre so busy peeking down their pants figuring out what gender they are, they wouldnt even know how to pick up a gun'

Maybe, just maybe, this war will shake us out of that nonsense. Bolt said.

Over inThe Spectator writer James Macpherson asked Will woke survive the war?

At the very moment Putin was surrounding Ukraine with rocket launchers, British soldiers were taking a break from tiresome military exercises to discuss unacceptable behaviours such as bullying, sexual harassment, and racism.

Doesnt Putin know we have the most diverse, equitable, tolerant and trans-inclusive militaries in the history of the world? Macpherson wrote.

One thing we do know, is that in region of the world which has some of the most homophobic and anti-transgender laws, Ukraines President has taken a different path and spoken out about having respect for gay, lesbian and transgender people.

Back in 2019 when asked heckled during a press conference,President Volodymyr Zelensky said this in support of LGBTIQA+ people.

I dont want to say anything negative because we all live in an open society where each one can choose the language they speak, their ethnicity and their orientation. Leave those finally at peace, for Gods sake!

Graeme Watson

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War due to the Woke: Conservatives link culture wars to actual war - OUTinPerth