Daily Archives: July 9, 2022

San Francisco mayor London Breed has promised a crackdown on the bullshit that has destroyed our city. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Its been seven or eight years since a wave of illiberal norms around the discussion of race and gender began to hit an expanding array of progressive institutions. The name for this phenomenon kept changing, from political correctness to call-out culture to cancel culture to wokeness, because every time a new label came along, Republicans would slap it on literally anything that wasnt right wing. (Mitt Romney recently blamed President Bidens economic policies on his woke advisers.) What remained of the liberal left would have to clarify that, no, what they were critiquing was stuff that was really far out there: impenetrable jargon, irrational mobs, struggle sessions, creepy forced apologies, absurd firings.

In certain quarters, a deep fatalism set in about the survival of liberal values, articulated by critics including Andrew Sullivan and Wesley Yang, who has described the lefts new thinking as successor ideology a term that presumes it is destined to displace the old liberal ideology. Michael Lind, a co-founder of New America, claimed that, within the center left, debate has been replaced by compulsory assent and ideas have been replaced by slogans that can be recited but not questioned: Black Lives Matter, Green Transition, Trans Women Are Women, 1619, Defund the Police.

But I dont take the success of the illiberal left for granted. I think it can be halted. In fact, I suspect that the floodwaters are already receding.

The way the illiberal left has been dealing with race and gender is of a piece with the way it has approached a range of debates in the social-media era. Activists reduce nearly every issue to a moralistic binary and cast any dissent as a personal failing. Disagree with the policy activism of the Sunrise Movement? Youre a boomer happy to let the planet fry after you enjoy your remaining time on it. Not sure single-payer health care is the best strategy? You must want people to die on the street.

It is on identity-related issues that this style of thinking has made the most headway. Academia has produced left-wing philosophical challenges to liberalism that treat speech as tantamount to violence and regard political disputes as a zero-sum conflict between oppressor and oppressed. And while these illiberal norms often originated on campus, they have expanded into progressive communities like primary schools (mostly private ones), media, publishing, and political and social-activist organizations.

What has made this all feel so unstoppable is that critics had reasons to be afraid of speaking out against it. When the New York Times forced science writer Donald G. McNeil Jr. to resign for quoting (not using) a racial slur, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan suggested that anybody who disagreed with his termination was also racist. Its not hard to believe, she wrote, that any White person who would freely utter or defend the most offensive racial slur in English may well be someone with a history of other problems. This is a pure distillation of witch-hunt logic: Anybody who objects to the fairness of the proceedings is presumptively implicated in the crime of the accused.

But a system based on frightening dissenters into submission is a brittle foundation for social change. What appeared to be broad assent within elite institutions was actually enforced silence. It is beginning to give way to careful but firm pushback on campus, in media, and in politics.

After a Chinese-born professor had to give up teaching his class at the University of Michigan in October for showing students a dated film in which Laurence Olivier appeared in blackface, nearly 700 faculty members signed a letter calling for his reinstatement. The dean of Yale Law School, a staging ground for some of the most notorious abuses of this era, publicly expressed regret after school administrators last year tried to make a student recite a humiliating apology script following a trumped-up outrage (he had sent a jocular party invitation referring to his apartment as a trap house). This spring, after protesters shouted down a Federalist Society event on campus, the dean called this unacceptable and said at a minimum it violated the norms of this Law School. Meanwhile, a growing list of colleges is following the University of Chicagos 2015 establishment of the principle that a campus should be a place for free debate.

The recent Times editorial defending free speech against threats on both sides represents a turning point. The articles rather anodyne free-speech-is-good argument masked its larger significance: Americas most important newspaper was implicitly promising not to let social-media outrage campaigns dictate its decisions. The Philadelphia Inquirer in February published a history of its own blinkered racial past by Wesley Lowery that revealed how angry readers forced its well-regarded executive editor to resign over a column by the papers architecture critic* lamenting the burning of buildings during the George Floyd protests. While Lowery told the story in a neutral, just-the-facts way, it was impossible to interpret its publication as anything but a confession of error.

After Democrats lost seats in Congress in 2020, and nearly lost the presidency, they began to say out loud things they only whispered privately before. Former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter blamed white wokeness for denying the crime wave in his city. Congressman Ruben Gallego seethed over the lefts use of the word Latinx: When Latino politicos use the term, it is largely to appease white rich progressives who think that is the term we use. San Francisco mayor London Breed, whose city is also facing a spike in crime, lashed out at the bullshit that has destroyed our city.

I can think of three reasons why the PC wave may be ebbing. The first is that many liberals who were uncertain how to respond to these norms have seen enough of them to decide they dont like them, having gone from positive or indifferent to critical. Writers like Matthew Yglesias and Jeffrey Sachs, who a few years ago were dismissing the notion of any rising trend of illiberalism on the left as a myth, have since conceded the trend is very real. Left-wing publications like Jacobin and commentators like Briahna Joy Gray have increasingly criticized the lefts rigid approach to gender and identity.

Second, the cultural changes brought about by these ideas quickly exposed their inherent impracticality. One response to the Floyd murder was a massive surge in demand for workplace racial-sensitivity training, some of which was clumsy and some of which was simply ludicrous. Some anti-racism trainings defined white supremacy to include written communication, a sense of urgency, scientific, linear thinking, planning for the future, and other habits of any viable organization.

The third, and largest, factor curtailing political correctness was the 2020 elections. The defeat of Donald Trump removed an accelerant in the discourse. By rubbing the countrys face in his unapologetic racism, and posing as a transparently disingenuous critic of cancel culture (who was, in reality, trying to cancel his critics all the time), Trump did more to encourage PC excess than a thousand Robin DiAngelos could have.

The Democrats middling performances in 2020 and the 2021 off-year elections, and the lessons they might contain for the upcoming midterms, have brought elected Democrats face-to-face with the consequences of allowing the most militant members of the progressive movement to bully their party into adopting maximalist stances on issues like school closings, immigration enforcement, and crime. Its now much harder for progressives to depict, say, support for enforcing immigration law or opposition to defunding the police as inherently racist when its clear the communities supposedly offended by those positions support them. There is an old saying that politics is downstream from culture, but in this case, culture is downstream from politics. When Democratic elected officials openly blamed their troubles on purity tests imposed by social activists, it gave permission for liberals elsewhere to resist tactics to which they had previously submitted.

It turns out that democracy itself has been the corrective factor. The passions of the past half-decade have shown that, for all its faults, the Democratic Party, with its multiracial coalition that is accountable to the public, is the institution in American life that is best equipped to beat back illiberalism. The Republican Party succumbed completely to fanaticism long ago.

*Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Philadelphia Inquirers architecture critic resigned over a column published during the George Floyd protests.

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Political Correctness Is Losing - New York

In an interview with the far-left Daily Beast, director David Cronenberg blamed political correctness for the lack of sex scenes in modern movies.

Given that theres so little adult sex in contemporary mainstream North American cinema, the Daily Beast asked, has it become more difficult to make an intensely eroticized film likeCrimes of the Future?

Of course, Im aware of how things have cycled, because I feel like Ive been here before with political correctness, and now its something else, Cronenberg replied. But it really is the same thing, which amounts to people trying to censor what other people say and think and do. It seems to be a common thing with us human beings that we do that periodically. I have to ignore it.

Crimes of the Future is the latest from the 79-year-old director of The Fly (1986), Scanners (1981), Dead Ringers (1988),Eastern Promises (2007), The Brood (1979), and The Dead Zone (1983), among others.

Cronenberg is primarily known as a creator of body horror, where we witness terrible things happen to a persons body. The Fly is a pretty extraordinary example of that and one of the best remakes ever made.

Keep in mind that it is not just sex missing from movies. It is also sexiness. Now that the humorless puritan harpies in the Woke Gestapo are in charge, any attempt at sexiness is attacked as something akin to rape. Oh, that awful male gaze. Oh, that awful objectification.

I havent seen Crimes of the Future, but if the past is prologue, whatever sex might be in will not violate the Woke Production Code prohibiting sexiness. Sex that degrades and disgusts is fine with the Woke Gestapo. Ugliness is the new beauty the more disgusting, the better.

Im not criticizing Cronenberg. He is what he is, a terrific and original filmmaker. But its not his style thats verboten. Whats verboten is beauty, erotica, titillation, wish-fulfillment, the forbidden joys of T&A you know, those things that make life worth living. That has never been Cronenbergs style.

The same oh-so progressive Hollywood that has spent decades ridiculing the Eisenhower 1950s as stuffy and puritan is now a hundred times more stuffy and puritan. The awful fifties gave us Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Jane Russell, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, and the bullet bra. The Woke 2020s are like living in a convent. Never in the history of movies has sexiness been censored and outlawed. Its disgraceful and a violation of human nature.

Anyway, as someone who is pro-objectification and T&A, lets hope this era of Woke McCarthyism ends soon.

The seventies and eighties really were awesome, and I have the Blurays to prove it.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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Nolte: David Cronenberg Blames Political Correctness for Sexless Movies

Is our society becoming too sensitive day by day? From our culture, political correctness, religious beliefs, to what we eat or do or wear, people have actually gone mad and become sensitive to the power of irrationality. From social media to everyday life and everywhere in between, diversity of thought is being slowly snuffed out.

We all have a right to free speech, albeit with limits. But it appears that problems start whenever that free speech is exercised to say something unpopular. In a bid to create an increasingly tolerant society, are we in some ways becoming less tolerant to divergent voices? And is this really a bad thing?

If it feels like political correctness is an ever-expanding concept, then it might also be a deeply unpopular one. Among the general population, 80% believe that "political correctness is a problem in our country". Even young people are uncomfortable with it. On this particular issue, the 'woke' are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn't a good proxy for support of political correctness, and it turns out race isn't either. We may feel that insisting upon an increasingly politically correct society is a good way of protecting those who have historically been oppressed or subject to greater disadvantage, but according to research, this may not always be the reality. It seems that most people in today's world are offended by something or the other, whether it be something political, a religious belief, some random movie or even a schoolbook.

People who inhabit social media are a great example. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, are laden with people attempting to find an issue with something that does not exist. However, the subject of sensitivity is difficult to tackle, because what makes anyone the judge of what you can or cannot be sensitive about? There is a saying: Good morning. Welcome to social media! Give it a few minutes and very soon someone or the other will disagree with you and within seconds the start of a full blown war of words. Boom! And minutes later, it goes viral.

Here is the thing: Sensitivity, if given a suitable reason, is understandable and easy enough to accept. For example, before films with explicit content, such as a rape or suicide, a scene that might trigger an individual due to a past incident in their life is a logical explanation for being sensitive about a certain film. It is a completely different thing to protest the showing of a movie because you specifically are offended by it and its contents, no matter the important lessons it aims to teach.

This is true for even children and young adult literature. Many renowned authors who have written excellent and inspiring books filled with exceptional themes, lovable characters and a captivating plot, have had their best-selling books banned from schools due to their graphic text and mature themes. Many classic novels have reshaped the imagination, but were once banned because of their content. If students cannot learn, through school-assigned literature, these valuable lessons that might move them in positive ways, how else will they learn them?

Certainly not in entertainment, as movies and OTT platforms are also chastised for being too honest. Any form of art must always be kept in a safe and special place. The art in which dramatic performers act with flair to express what are often unbelievable stories, where playwrights are free to compose the most magnificent scripts that may contain the juiciest topics of today, from race to politics, homosexuality, gentrification and suicide.

Our thoughts and ideas are a form of expression. Though everyone would like to be safe, life is not filled with seat belts or helmets or knee pads. There are bumps and gashes that everyone must go through, and when you suffer them, you learn and you feelthat is the point of being alive.

While we're on the topic, let's move on to political correctness. Nowadays it appears that if anyone goes against a popular opinion, they are the enemy. Say a person leans neither Right nor Left, and have views from both sides, taking a moderate stance on many important issues, such as abortion, gay marriage, immigrants and education. No matter one's belief, there will always be someone there to counter their stance, thus putting them in the position of being insulted for believing their own ideas.

I'm sorry, but whatever happened to freedom of speech? Are people not allowed to have a difference of opinion? Now, as I said earlier, if someone is offended by what one person has said, a respectful conversation should ensue as to why that is. Otherwise, disparaging someone's opinions because they do not match your own is unfair, rude and distasteful.

Oversensitivity is a sentiment that most people run into regularly nowadays, especially on social media, and this hypersensitive mindset is good for nothing but resentment and anger. Calm down, recognize that everyone has different beliefs and stop getting so upset about nothing.

Originally posted here:

The Oversensitivity Overkill - The Citizen

There comes a time when enough is enough, and I have found that, when I reach that point, its time to hit the road.

Diane and I recently completed a swing through Kentucky, and, while we obviously kept connected to The Alpena News through its digital edition, we also enjoyed stepping away from the normal grind of news, news, news.

While the Roe vs. Wade decision did not escape us, nor the Michigan Legislature reaching consensus on the 2023 state budget, we didnt allow ourselves to be absorbed by that chatter. Instead, we hiked mountain trails, went spelunking in a cave, and, of course, visited some historical sites always a must for any of our excursions.

But, for those who really know me, you also know I never escape the news entirely.

The historical stop we made on this trip was to the birthplace and early childhood residences of President Abraham Lincoln. It was fascinating studying the early history of Lincolns life and how, but for a few disputes over property deed claims that led to his father moving the family to Illinois, Lincolns life might have taken a different course entirely.

A great orator and writer, I was struck by one particular quote of Lincolns during the visit.

History is not history, Lincoln wrote, unless its the truth.

Which led me to wonder: What truth will my grandchildrens children grow up with in this push for political correctness in todays culture?

This past week, much was being made of new polls that were taken showing an erosion of faith in the American ideals that our country was founded on. A Rasmussen Poll revealed only 27 percent of people believe the founding fathers would consider the United States a success.

Worse, 53% said the Founding Fathers would look to todays county as a failure in this exercise of democracy.

Admittedly, the Rasmussen Poll is a conservative one. Turning to a more liberal-based national poll, the Gallup poll, only 38% said they were extremely proud of the country.

Both polls reveal a disturbing reality in the country today our country is hurting.

Events like Jan. 6 have taken a toll on the populace as everyone tries to decipher truth from fiction. The further we move from that date, the more we wrestle with the reality of perception from that day becoming the reality, whether it is true or not.

As I pondered Lincolns quote, I was reminded of another president, Ronald Reagan, who, at the end of his term, reminded Americans that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

Weve got to teach history based not on whats in fashion but whats important, Reagan said. If we forget what we did, we wont know who we are. Im warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.

All of us conservative and liberal, white and Black, young and old, male and female owe it to our children to not allow the American spirit to disappear.

Our Founding Fathers may not have been perfect, but they formed a republic that has stood the test of time. They, and the brave men and women who gave their lives for our freedom, deserve our efforts to preserve and appreciate their sacrifice.

And that, my friends, is the truth.

Bill Speer recently retired as the publisher and editor of The News. He can be reached at bspeer@thealpenanews.com.

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We must work to restore the American spirit - Alpena News

Bette Midler recently made a political statement that kind of made sense.

The liberal actress posted a tweet on Independence Day complaining about the erasure of women that got more than 100,000 likes.

WOMEN OF THE WORLD! she wrote. We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They dont call us women anymore; they call us birthing people or menstruators, and even people with vaginas! Dont let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!

While Midler is wrong about abortion, which kills an innocent human being, the second half of her tweet makes more sense.

Midler is correct that these woke terms people use to describe women are terrible, and liberals should stop using them.

Nowadays, liberals, including politicians, use terms such as birthing people and menstruators (or people who menstruate). Notably, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) have referred to women as "birthing people." Meanwhile, terms such as humans with vaginas, people with vaginas, and bodies with vaginas have appeared in the liberal sphere.

These are terms used to describe those whom normal people would refer to as women. Liberals who use these terms see them as inclusive because they include women who say they're men and women who identify as made-up Tumblr genders.

While the liberals who use these terms may feel like theyre being inclusive, theyre not. Its not hard to call women women. Instead, they opt for dehumanizing, and frankly gross, alternatives.

A few years ago, just about everyone would have agreed that calling people by the name of their genitals or a reference to their genitalia is not only an insulting and gross reduction of people but also perverted. The facts remain the same: It's still gross and dehumanizing.

This also correctly feeds into the perception that liberals are too woke and politically correct. That approach is off-putting to normal people, who dislike the PC police: 80% of Americans view excessive political correctness as a problem, according to a 2018 poll conducted by More in Common.

Along with using terms such as Latinx and womxn, these weird terms to describe women are not a good look for the Democratic Party; notice we dont see any Republicans using these terms. If the Democratic Party wants to win elections, it should want people to think its candidates are normal people. Needlessly weird behavior like this will not help that perception, even if it has little to do with policy.

Here is the solution to this issue: Call people what they are men and women. Its not hard.

Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.

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Bette Midler is right about the erasure of women - Washington Examiner

Ive always loved Barstool Sports, but the companys freakout after Roe fell has been telling. Theyre willing to challenge elite politics when it comes to just about everything except sexual ethics.

In one of his Emergency Press Conferences last weekend, Portnoy reacted to Dobbs v. Jackson by saying the nation is going back in time. Portnoys employees at Barstool got busy retweeting his video and posting their own pro-abortion content as well. This includes the second biggest personality at Barstool and Portnoys right hand, Dan Big Cat Katz. Katz reacted differently when Portnoy interviewed former President Donald Trump two years ago, lambasting him for politicizing the company.

The CEOs support for abortion, then, is all the more revealing about where the left draws the line on what matters to them. If Portnoy wasnt kicked out of his social standing for his take on Covid restrictions or for speaking with Trump, his brazen appeal to the left on abortion shows how strongly they value men and womens ability to have sex without consequences.

Barstool has raked in immense profits from podcasts like Call Her Daddy which provide women step-by-step guides to encourage new sexual experiences. While CHD Host Alex Cooper promoted female empowerment through performing raunchy sexual acts, men like Portnoy benefit from an increasingly loose culture surrounding sex. And his freedom to sleep around and enjoy womens bodies for carnal pleasure partially hinges on easy access to abortion.

In lock-step with most on the left, Portnoys arguments in the video concerning a womans geographical abortion access and disrespect for conservatives regard for the Second Amendment hold no substantive constitutional ground. This makes sense considering he then ushered in one of the most consistent narratives of the leftist elite: the Constitution is no longer useful or worthy of respect.

At what point do you look at the Constitution and say hey, this was written by people who had slaves. Maybe not everything is exactly to a tee in the Constitution? Like a million years from now, youre going to use a document written Portnoy said. The world evolves, people evolve, technology evolves, youve got to evolve. You cant stick with this document and look at that and be like thats the end all, be all.

The obvious fallacies in that argument aside, Portnoy isnt a full-fledged progressive by any means. In fact, he has a reputation for riling up the left. As the leader of what can only be described as a media and pop culture behemoth, Portnoys staunch views on individual liberty have generated a lot of negative attention from corporate media.

They groan when Portnoy appears on Tucker Carlson Tonight, they roll their eyes as he champions private enterprise through his pro small business charity, The Barstool Fund, and they threw a fit when he met with President Donald Trump for an interview at the White House. Barstool Sports as a company is known for its outright rejection of political correctness.

Much of what makes Portnoy so iconic and Barstool so appealing to young people are these acts displaying such indifference for what causes corporate America seems to heed. According to a poll in Morning Consult, Gen Z-ers are far less likely than millennials to hold a favorable view toward cancel culture. Portnoys recent comments and his companys actions, however, fail to provide the kind of independent thought unabridged by special interests that they crave. His arguments from the press conference are uniform to that of other woke corporations.

Later in the video, Portnoy called the left crazy and President Joe Biden a moron. But he defended his voting for them due to what he sees as the rights involvement in Supreme Court failures, and he used the opportunity to insert one more plug of support for another leftist cause: same-sex marriage:

I end up having to vote for a moron like Biden because the right is going to put Supreme Court people in who are just ruining this country by taking basic rights away You look at what theyre doing and its like, youre taking away basic rights. Whats next? Same-sex marriage? Like what is next? Its insane. Thats why we have to vote for the moron like Biden whos borderline incompetent because its too dangerous to vote Republican.

Barstool also now has an LGBT podcast entitled Out and About, for which the company allocated $100,000 toward a rainbow flag truck. Many of the companys most famous personalities were at the gay pride parades in Chicago and New York City in June, which they made sure no one missed on social media.

Further publicizing his recent elite opinion, a former critic of his at the liberal Business Insider published an article highlighting Portnoys pro-abortion viewpoint the same day Portnoy posted the video.

This level of pandering on sexual ethics helps someone like Portnoy eliminate some of his own bad press hes amassed and makes him more appealing to those within the elite social spheres he runs, such as the Hamptons where he bought a nearly $10 million beach house earlier this year. Even though Portnoy has garnered so much of his following from young people eager to cling to a figure who doesnt subscribe to the accepted mainstream narrative, hes no rebel when it comes to toeing the line on what the left values most highly.

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Barstool Subverts Elites On Everything Except Sexual Ethics - The Federalist