Category Archives: Political Correctness

Home Theater Broadway: The Great Comet Killed by Political Correctness, Bad Producing and Really...

The Great Comet aka Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 is closing on September 3rd, the victim of stupidity. It was killed by political correctness, bad producing, and really bad PR.

I first saw The Great Comet on Gansevoort St. in a tent. It was dinner theater and quite amusing. Then it moved to a tent on West 45th St. When it was finally moved to the Imperial Theater on Broadway, pop star Josh Groban starred as Pierre. The box office was great. He and the show received Tony nominations.

But Groban could only stay so long. The producers knew this in February when they announced his replacement: a totally unknown actor from Hamilton named Okieriete Oak Onaodowan. Im sure hes very talented, but hes not a star or even a name anyone knows. Why did the producers think replacing Josh Groban with such a person regardless of color or nationality would be a good idea? Beats me.

If there was some push to get a black Pierre, why not Brian Stokes Mitchell? Norm Lewis? Leslie Odom, Jr? James Monroe Inglehart, from Aladdin? Did no black star want to do it? What about Usher? Jamie Foxx?

So then came Oak, as he is known. But he is known to few. So the box office literally went off a cliff. Overnight, the show dropped from an average $1 million a week take to around $840,000. The producers realized Oak despite his great talent was not drawing a crowd. The idea came to ask Mandy Patinkin to step in. Even for three weeks, that would get the box office back up and more.

But political correctness stepped in. Replace a black actor with a white actor? There was an outcry. Patinkin, who would have been a great Pierre, pulled out. It didnt matter that Oak, the black actor, had replaced Groban, a white actor. The whole thing is crazy. This had nothing to do with color. It had to do with saving the show. Theater is color blind. But its not star blind. This show required a name on the Marquee. Maybe Oak could have come back after Patinkin righted the ship.

But now, with no Mandy, no Oak, no nobody of an color, The Great Comet will close. All those jobs down the drain. And for what? Botched PR. Botched producing. Nobody wins, everyone loses. What a shame.

Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News. He writes for Parade magazine and has written for Details, Vogue, the New York Times, Post, and Daily News and many other publications. He is the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals.

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Broadway: The Great Comet Killed by Political Correctness, Bad ... - ShowBiz411.com

As a Christian, pastor and devout creationist Ive always watched modern science beat on its chest in claiming to be king of the universe while appointing individuals such as Charles Darwin to be elevated to a god in public schools.

However, recently were seeing the actual hypocrisy of modern science as it is faced with a rather awkward confrontation with political correctness which now claims that DNA no longer determines the gender of mankind. This evil claims that gender is simply a choice or merely parental manipulation despite DNA fact.

As a parent of a son and a daughter, I find these claims completely hilarious. Shame on modern science for heralding out such accusations of scriptural contradiction and hypocrisy at Christianity over the years just to denounce the one most solid scientific fact they have going for them, our DNA. All I can say to science is, Seriously, is that all the fight you have in you to let political correctness embarrass you like that?

Christians all over the world are dying for their fundamental truths, but modern scientists cant even stand up to political correctness. What a weak Constitution after all! Our children know right well that true science is The Study of Gods Creation.

God Jehovah reigns and Christ is King!

ScottLester

Crab Orchard

Read the original here:

Hypocrisy of modern science confronts political correctness - Beckley Register-Herald

Last week, a then-Google employees manifesto against diversity and inclusion in STEM drew sharp criticism and eager applause from the outlets youd expect. But Googles decision to terminate the employee, reported by Bloombergon Monday,is drawing controversy from both sides.

James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the manifesto, confirmed his dismissal in an email to Bloomberg stating that he had been fired for perpetuating gender stereotypes. Damore additionally told Bloomberg that he is currently exploring all possible legal remedies.

Of course, firing someone on the basis of their beliefs is inherently controversial.But when all things are considered and put into context, Google made the right decision, and anyone who continues to stand by Damore and his backwards views clearly has a lot to learn about the issue of gender and STEM, and gender and the workplace in general.

In his memo, Damore suggested that the gender gap in STEM is due to the biological inferiority of women, who are just inherently born less smart and less capable than their male counterparts.

We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism, he wrote.

He added: Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we dont have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

This gender gap has nothing at all to do with generations upon generations of gendered barriers to access education and join the workforce, of course. And these gender gaps in lucrative fields, and the wage gaps that stem from them, are all fair because women are just inferior, period. Thats Damores hot take, at least.

Across all fields, today, the gender wage gap continues to exist despite modern laws meant to prevent it, and this is largely due to cultural biases that cant be legislated away. Maternal leave policies enforce gendered expectations and severely limit working womens opportunities for advancement, and subliminal and overt discrimination in perceptions of who is more experienced and authoritative do the same. Meanwhile, cultural forces and limited female role models in STEM jobs subliminally pressure women to enter lower-paying fields.

In the 21st century, as the STEM field has become one of the highest paying lines of work, its also become hotbed for sexism notably in the form of workplace sexual harassment and even assault. Roughly two-thirds of women in STEM reporting harassment or assault in the workplace; many of these women have little choice but to quit their work, unable to find help and support to deal with sexual abuse in male-dominated workplaces, where its predominantly men who are in positions of power to decide who stays and who goes, whats acceptable and what isnt.

In writing the manifesto, Damore may have been practicing his right to free speech, but in the STEM field, where women are sidelined, belittled, excluded and harassed as is, the sexist tirade was a direct attack on the already fragile world women in STEM are forced to exist in.

By keeping Damore on board, Google would have been validating, even legitimizing his views, and telling its female employees, telling female computer science students, telling young girls across the country that the idea they are inferior is a perfectly OK view to have.

Additionally and more to the point, every day, employees are fired from jobs for harassing women or uttering racist, exclusionary commentary that sharply contradict a companys values and mission statement.

Thats not excessive political correctness thats called running a company. Because in todays world, running a successful company requires more so much more than hiring entitled white men and looking away as they say and do whatever they want at the expense of everyone else. In todays world, running a successful company means establishing an environment where everyone, no matter their identity and background, feels welcome to share, create, and produce.

Inclusivity is a cornerstone of the STEM field not because of political correctness or ideological purity or any other reason the right would like to name its a cornerstone of STEM because inclusivity is what yields the best collaborations and the greatest innovations. To suggest that women and people of color are only being included because of political correctness and not merit isnt just offensive, its factually inaccurate.

And, on that note, Damores assertion that women arent in STEM because theyre incapable is wrong, but frankly, the idea that women arent in STEM because of active choices theyre making is wrong, too.There are far fewer female role models working in STEM jobs due to sexism of generations past; women comprise just 24 percent of the STEM workforce as of 2009, and so it may be difficult for young women to picture themselves in this line of work. On the other hand, adolescent boys have no shortage of men working in STEM jobs to identify with and aspire to be.Encouraging manifestos against women in STEM by doing nothing to fight them establishes hostile work environments which push women away, and discourage young women from getting on board and contributing.

Of course, at the end of the day, it would be a mistake to regard this issue of STEM and gender as one exclusive to Google. Bloombergs report also featured this haunting note

The imbroglio at Google is the latest in a long string of incidents concerning gender bias and diversity in the tech enclave.Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick lost his job in June amid scandals over sexual harassment, discrimination and an aggressive culture. Ellen Paos gender-discrimination lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2015 also brought the issue to light, and more women are speaking up to say theyve been sidelined in the male-dominated industry, especially in engineering roles.

But ultimately, Damore may have been right about one thing: STEMis a difficult place for women to be right now. However, thats not due to shortcomings on their end, so much as it is to shortcomings in the characters of the men theyre forced to work with.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Stop Making Google's Decision to Fire Sexist Employee About 'Political Correctness' - Mediaite

Actor, writer and director Lena Dunham. In Dunhams world opinions and thoughts that dont align with hers need to be shut down. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Images

Last week, the actor, writer and director Lena Dunham sent out a provocative tweet to her 5.5 million followers, while frustrated at a flight delay in JFK.

The creator, writer and star of the HBO series Girls, believed she had earwigged on a conversation that deserved to be called out on social media the supreme court of public opinion.

Her tweet read: Just overheard 2 @AmericanAir attendants having a transphobic talk. We should be teaching our employees about love and inclusivity.

This was an arbitrary, unfounded accusation, against two humans who have nothing to do with her, and who are trigger warning! fully entitled to think what they like; totally free to have a personal conversation about whatever they please.

But in Dunhams world opinions and thoughts that dont align with hers need to be shut down, in an approach that wouldnt be out of place in the censorship culture of East Germany.

There was no proof provided. American Airlines later said that the times and places didnt match up. They dont fly from the terminal she was flying from. They were unable to substantiate her allegation.

Clearly, she couldnt miss the opportunity to jump on board the most current, right-on cause. It showed her up to be, at best, incoherent, and at worst wrong.

Her actions represents a hijacking of true liberalism that has its basis in stifling free speech. Those who really are liberal definition: willing to respect and accept behaviour and opinions different to our own must fight this pervasive belief system that is threatening the most cherished of all liberties. Otherwise we are rolling back decades of progress that has created a western world where free speech is one of the fundamental tenets of society.

Why is is now acceptable for certain political groups to shout down and shut down anyone who isnt in agreement with their orthodoxy?

Why is it coming from the left, not the right. The branch of politics we should be able to trust seems to have largely forgotten that tolerance and equality cannot be parsed.

In the process it has alienated good people with diverse opinions and important minds. Rather than debate, many people now say nothing. Instead, they keep their thoughts to themselves. The space for intellectual debate is reduced. But a society without an open and honest debate is one that is more likely to turn to violence.

Political correctness, a stultifying, boring, self-righteous and prissy movement that patronisingly assumes everyone is a victim, began as a good idea to protect the vulnerable in society. Now it is silencing dissenting voices of any kind. What started as awareness and education has morphed into finger-pointing and thought-policing.

But if people dont feel free to tell you what they are thinking, how can you confront them? How can you change the other persons mind if their voice is not allowed to be heard?

We cannot confront racism, discrimination and prejudice without first knowing they are there. We cannot develop certainty in our own convictions, unless we have had them challenged.

The smothering of free speech is being carried out in a very modern way and appears to be the preserve of naive activists.

In the media, its about wilfully conflating opinion with news. Its about reading the headline and deciding youre offended, without any context, and instantly labelling the target sexist/misogynistic/homophobic/racist, delete as applicable. Its lazy and its anti-intellectual.

On campus, its about protesting against talks at universities until they are called off for security reasons, and bleating about no-platforming censorship by another name.

Its about setting a lynch mob on social media, calling for the sacking and destruction of people with whom you do not agree. Making them social pariahs, or turning an individual with the brain to question a contentious issue into a bad guy.

Its creating a climate of fear so that those few brave enough to do the important job of putting a voice to what many people are thinking but are afraid to say are intimidated and cowed.

And ultimately there is a reaction. Irish-American satirist Bill Maher believes that the backlash against this forced thinking and free-speech stifling has resulted in a madman in the White House.

Talking about the importance of freedom of expression, he said: The Democrats have gone from the party that protects people to the party that protects feelings. Liberals do this all the time. They get offended for people who themselves wouldnt be offended.

Nearer home, Rory ONeill, whose alter ego Panti Bliss was the figurehead of the marriage equality referendum campaign, is similarly minded and argues an inclusive society is one in which we all have to accept a difference of opinion. If everyone feels browbeaten into acting the same, we lose the creativity of difference. I think its absolutely fine if an evangelical Christian dislikes homosexuality. I just dont want them to try and make everybody else be the same as them.

The lesson is simple: let those with dissenting views speak you might learn something.

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Larissa Nolan: Political correctness will hurt us all in the end - Irish Times

The governments attempt to restore the compulsory plebiscite bill has been blocked by the Senate, paving the way for a voluntary postal vote.

The plebiscite was to be held on November 25 with the government offering to remove the $15m of public funds for the yes and no cases.

On Wednesday morning the government attempted to restore the plebiscite bill to the Senate notice paper. Labor, the Greens and Nick Xenophon Team used their numbers in the Senate to block the attempt to revisit it, with Derryn Hinch voting to allow debate but committing to block the plebiscite.

With the compulsory plebiscite rejected again, the government will now attempt to fall back on its Plan B of a voluntary postal ballot to be conducted between 12 September and 15 November.

Earlier, Tony Abbott urged Australians to vote against marriage equality, arguing that a no vote would protect religious freedom and stop political correctness in its tracks.

The former prime minister hit the ground running in the campaign against same-sex marriage at a doorstop on Wednesday, in contrast to Malcolm Turnbull who said on Tuesday he would certainly support a yes vote but I have many other calls [on] my time.

Marriage equality advocates are still investigating a legal challenge, with several legal experts questioning the constitutionality of appropriating $122m to pay for a postal plebiscite and using the Australian Bureau of Statistics to run it.

Asked before the result if he was disappointed that a voluntary postal vote would be held instead, Abbott said no, saying it was important that we make the most of the opportunity we now have.

Obviously I will be voting no but in the end this is not about the politicians, this is about the people its about your view.

And I say to you if you dont like same-sex marriage, vote no. If youre worried about religious freedom and freedom of speech, vote no, and if you dont like political correctness, vote no because voting no will help to stop political correctness in its tracks.

The Australian Marriage Equality co-chair Alex Greenwich said Abbotts intervention was totally dishonest but nothing new because opponents have always tried to make this issue about something else.

They know the settled will of the Australian people is in favour of marriage equality and in support of all couples being treated equally under the law.

On Tuesday the government argued it was on strong legal ground with a voluntary postal vote, despite lacking parliamentary approval.

The acting special minister of state, Mathias Cormann, said the plebiscite would be conducted as a survey by the ABS, paid for by an appropriation made through a finance ministers advance to the agency.

The constitutional law expert George Williams told Guardian Australia the decision to have the ABS run a postal plebiscite remains vulnerable to legal attack.

It can be challenged on the ground that the expenditure of money on a postal vote lacks parliamentary approval, the dean of University of New South Wales law faculty said.

In addition, the use of the ABS will open up a new line of attack based upon arguments that the functions of the ABS do not permit it to conduct a poll of this kind.

Williams warned that running the poll so quickly would have the effect of disenfranchising large numbers of young people and that a postal vote would mean that the votes of many young people and people from overseas will not be counted.

The constitutional expert Anne Twomey told Guardian Australia the ABS had the power to collect statistics, or numerical data concerning facts describing it as most unusual for it to collect opinions rather than facts.

It is arguable that this goes outside its functions, although it could also be argued that it was collecting statistics about the number of people who hold particular opinions, she said.

On ABCs AM Twomey also questioned the method of appropriating funds, noting that a finance ministers advance has to be for some kind of emergency thats unforeseen [and] here we have an issue that has been foreseen and previously there had been allocations for it in the budget.

Greenwich said it was encouraging that constitutional experts were speaking out about the fact that parliament, not a plebiscite, needed to resolve marriage equality, adding that no minister should be able to spend $120m without parliamentary oversight.

Labors deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, told ABC AM a plebiscite would put Australian families through the trauma of having their relationships discussed as inadequate, described as having something wrong with them.

Plibersek said Labor would remind people [the plebiscite] is a flawed process, but you can count on us to continue to make the case for marriage equality.

She labelled Turnbulls claim he was too busy to campaign as a weak cop-out. On Tuesday Greenwich described it as an an absolute disgrace that would reduce confidence in the postal plebiscite.

Plibersek said Abbotts comments were exactly the sort of thing Id expect Tony Abbott to say, responding that religious ministers would not be forced to solemnise same-sex marriage and it was not political correctness for gay couples to politely ask to have the same rights as others.

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Senate blocks government attempt to restore compulsory plebiscite for marriage equality - The Guardian

3.41am EDT 03:41

Thats it for tonight. Thanks to Mikey Bowers and Paul Karp, Gareth Hutchens and Katharine Murphy. Thanks for your company. It was a blast.

Tomorrow is Thursday, the last sitting day.

Go well.

The Murray-Darling faction.

Ive been misrepresented.

Naughty Nick McKim.

Night night.

Updated at 4.12am EDT

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3.08am EDT 03:08

Christopher Knaus

The Greens have introduced a bill to the Senate to raise the Newstart allowance by $110 a fortnight. Newstart has not risen in real terms since 1994 and the maximum Newstart allowance is now $38.39 a day, less than half the minimum wage, and below the poverty level. The Greens senator Rachel Siewert said:

We are a wealthy country and have the resources available to us to significantly reduce the existing rate of poverty, if only there was the political will to do so. No one in a country as rich as Australia should be living in poverty.

The Greens are hopeful for Labor support for the bill, given their recent rhetoric on addressing inequality.

The bill also comes three weeks after the human services minister, Alan Tudge, used a speech to argue increasing welfare payments was not the way to solve poverty.

Updated at 3.11am EDT

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3.01am EDT 03:01

South Australian response:

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3.00am EDT 03:00

Tony Abbott has spoken to Ben Fordham on 2GB in his regular spot. Inevitably, same-sex marriage comes up and Fordham asks about Abbotts sister Christine Forsters remarks on Twitter that we covered earlier this morn.

Forster was taking issue with Abbotts remarks calling on people to vote no if they value marriage, freedom of speech and if they wanted to vote against political correctness.

Abbott says his sister is a great person but they have agreed to disagree on marriage.

He tells Fordham she wasnt always a supporter of same-sex marriage.

I mean she joked years ago that she just got herself out of one marriage, why would she be rushing into another one. The gay activists at university, the last thing they wanted was same-sex marriage because they thought marriage was a bourgeois patriarchal institution so a lot of people are quite late converts to this thing which they are now absolutely passionate about.

Updated at 3.11am EDT

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2.46am EDT 02:46

The call for a judicial inquiry into allegations of water theft in the Barwon Darling section of the Murray Darling has passed. As I said before, there is no way the Senate can compel minister Joyce to hold this inquiry.

It is an expression of the Senates will but they have no big stick to wave.

Updated at 3.12am EDT

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2.29am EDT 02:29

The Senate is now debating the need for a national judicial inquiry into the Murray-Darling Basin. It was supported by Labor, NXT, Cory Bernardi and the Greens. It is not supported by the Coalition.

The Senate is voting now.

Even if the Senate supports this bill, which it looks like it will, it has now power to force the water minister, Barnaby Joyce, to hold a judicial inquiry.

Updated at 3.12am EDT

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2.24am EDT 02:24

Updated at 3.12am EDT

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Di Natale: Roberts's story has changed more times than I've changed underpants as it happened - The Guardian

The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival continued this week in Jamestown, NY, with outstanding stand-up comedy interspersed with great conversation and debate at the nearby Chautauqua Institution a summer community devoted to immersion in art, culture, creativity, and philosophy. On Friday at the Chautauqua Pavilion, Kelly Carlin continued an In Conversation series- this time sitting down with comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff and Stephen J. Morrison, executive producer of CNNs acclaimed History of Comedy series.

The conversation touched on a number of important subjects, including some incredible insight from Kelly about what it was like to grow up in the shadow of George Carlin which led to one of the most interesting conversations of the entire week a debate about the merits of political correctness. The conversation left people talking all day following the panel discussion- as they left the theater, over lunch and into the night.

The ability to speak freely is a precious and sacred principle to everyone who performs comedy. Any threat to that right has historically resulted in strong backlash from comedians. But in the past two years, the debate has changed a bit. In 2015, Jerry Seinfeld complained about college campuses being too-PC, but since, there has been a growing minority speaking out in favor of political correctness, even in comedy.

Historian Kliph Nesteroff quickly got down to the heart of why the PC debate is changing. The phrase political correctness, he said, is being used too often, by too many people and they dont use the phrase in the same way. Nesteroff said recent use of that phrase to justify hate has changed his opinion. The phrase politically correct has been co-opted, he explained, and colored by the fascist movement, who he argued is using the phrase to excuse bigotry. I dont want to complain about the same thing a racist group is complaining about, he said. Kliph argued that its time to stop defending the right to be politically incorrect and suggested that perhaps the comedians who are complaining, are being too sensitive. Yes, we want to preserve [free speech], but do we have a persecution complex? he asked. Comedians now are so defensive, they will respond as if they are under attack. Maybe the problem is the comedians ego.

Morrison agreed that the PC debate is changing and witnessed this first hand when conducting interviews for CNNs History of Comedy. He said his opinion started to change after hearing comedians talk about their realizations about their own racially charged humor or gender slamming jokes. He gave the example of Sarah Silverman who argued that you have to listen to people on college campuses, who are often on the right side of history.

Kelly Carlin had a different take- noting that limiting speech has never been a good strategy to change behavior. She referred back to her fathers thoughts on the subject, arguing that his sentiments are still relevant today. One of the reasons he didnt like political correctness on campuses, she said, is because its a pernicious form of intolerance because it is disguised as tolerance. George Carlins full quote that Kelly referenced was this: political correctness is Americas newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control peoples language with strict codes and rigid rules. Im not sure thats the way to fight discrimination. Im not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.

Carlin also quoted her fathers material on the softening of language how the term shell shock, changed to battle fatigue which gave way to post traumatic stress disorder. Carlin said that soft language takes the life out of life.Language should be honest, she said, and real. And not hiding behind something.

The Lucille Ball Comedy Festival takes place every year in Jamestown, NY, with satellite programming at the Chautauqua Institute. For more information, visitlucycomedyfest.com.

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Is It Time to Embrace Political Correctness? Kelly Carlin, Kliph Nesteroff and Stephen J. Morrison Take on the PC Debate - The Interrobang

A Google employee created an uproar this weekend when his manifesto about criticizing the companys diversity initiatives went viral among employees. The senior software engineer claimed the diversity programs discriminated against employees like himself by creating an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be discussed honestly.

Google staffand lots of other peopleare peeved, and its not hard to see why. The author of the document (a full version of which was posted by Gizmodo) argued that the gender gap in software engineering in part boiled down to biological differences between men and women. The ideas arent particularly well-reasoned. For instance, he wrote, Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for womens representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. Ultimately, he contends that efforts to boost racial and gender diversity were unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

While his comments were apparently roundly rejected by most employees and Googles own diversity officer, some employees reportedly came to his defense. Vices Motherboard reported that Google employees anonymously praised the employees views on an app called Blind, where tech employees can discuss workplace problems.This is actually terrifying: if someone is not ideologically aligned with the majority then hes labeled as a poor cultural fit and would not be hired/promoted, wrote one commenger. Another said: The fella who posted that is extremely brave. We need more people standing up against the insanity. Otherwise Diversity and Inclusion which is essentially a pipeline from Womens and African Studies into Google, will ruin the company.

The internal culture clash is troubling for a company that is under investigation by the US government is for underpaying women employees, and for Silicon Valleys reputation in the wake of its sexual harassment troubles.

But it also reflects a disquieting trend across the country: Discussion about diversity and free speech is increasingly defined by people on the ideological extremes. On one side, we have the militantly politically correct leftfor instance, the students who shut down Charles Murrays speech at Middlebury College.

The liberal ideal sees free speech as a positive-sum good, enabling an open marketplace of ideas where, in the long run, reason can prevail, as Jonathan Chait recently put it, but left-wing critics of liberalism instead see the free-speech rights of the oppressed and the oppressors set in zero-sum conflict, so that the expansion of one inevitably comes at the cost of the other.

And on the other is the anti-PC backlash liberals have provoked, of which the rambling, confused tirade of the Google employee is the latest example. And hes not alone. As the election of Donald Trump has made clear, many Americans feel enslaved by political correctness. The extreme left has claimed a moral monopoly and attempted to shame dissenting views out of existence.

Dissenters are unlikely to consider the value of diversity and opportunity if they dont feel psychologically safe, as the Google author says repeatedly, in mainstream conversations. Shaming forces these perspectives onto sub-channels of the Blind app and websites like Breitbart, where these ideas tend to go unchallenged.

Neutralizing this dangerous ideological split is all the more urgent given the fact that Trump seems as enthusiastic about capitalizing on identity politics as the extreme-left zealots he rails against.

The presidents populismwhich during the campaign seemed centered on economic injusticeis proving to be far more focused on fomenting cultural clashes. Recent developments bear this out: his assimilation-driven immigration initiatives, the bizarre trans military ban, and talk of a government investigation into Harvard Universitys discrimination against Asian-American applicants. Silicon Valley wont solve its diversity problems until it both acknowledges its failures and engages in a broader dialogue about why those failures matter. Similarly, the US will only create opportunity in the face of difference when its public stops letting ideologues on both sides dominate the conversation.

Originally posted here:

The real problem with that Google employee's viral anti-diversity memo is bigger than Silicon Valley - Quartz

jeremy traum for the boston globe

When an anti-Muslim activist group organized March Against Sharia rallies in cities across the country in June, it wasnt the first time Americans gathered to fight a suspicious religion from overseas. One August evening in 1834, a small mob gathered with torches and weapons on a dark hillside in what is now Somerville, intent on battling a grave threat: Roman Catholicism. Squinting up at the Mount Benedict Convent of the Ursuline nuns, the crowd swapped stories of outrages committed behind its walls: nuns sexually exploited, novices forced to wear painful corsets, starved, tortured.

These patriots could not understand why their Protestant leaders not only tolerated such evils, but even sent their own daughters up to the convent. The nativists understood they needed to take matters into their hands. So they did. They tore apart the convent, tossing pianos from its upper windows, smashing sculptures, damaging paintings, and scouring the compound for elusive victims. Finding none, they reduced the convent to a smoldering heap, cheered for a while, and went home.

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Mount Benedict Convent is long gone. Americas religious tensions are not as officials in Texas showed this summer, when the state became the eighth to legislate against the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Sharia law. To Muslims, Sharia is form of canonical law meant to govern how believers interact with one another and how their society runs; while there are moderate interpretations of Sharia, American media coverage generally deploys the term in connection with the fundamentalist vision of groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda.

As a historian of 19th-century Boston, I see parallels between the anti-Sharia activists and the antebellum nativists who claimed that Irish immigrants were loyal to the pope, not the United States; who saw Catholic parochial schools as evidence of an unwillingness to assimilate; and who insisted that the Vatican was preparing to invade America via a tunnel it was digging beneath the Atlantic seabed.

Just as the rumors of abuse at Mount Benedict proved baseless, theres little evidence that American Muslims desire, let alone seek, the implementation of Sharia law. Critics have thus dismissed the anti-Sharia movement as nothing more than a thinly veiled prejudice, part of our habitual suspicion that certain ideologies, religions, and ethnicities are plotting the countrys downfall.

Global trends toward interconnection, economic growth, social progress, and stronger civil society have not completely bypassed the Islamic world.

Yet our history of conspiracy theorizing and racial paranoia doesnt fully explain the timing of all this anxiety about Sharia. Why has Sharia law has become a mainstream preoccupation now, rather than, say, after 9/11? A history of religious bigotry doesnt explain why the most feared weapon of Islamist radicals has shifted from bombings and hijackings to a theological doctrine.

While the anti-Sharia movements growing profile might suggest otherwise, only a slightly larger percentage of Americans suspect US Muslims of anti-Americanism today than in 2002.

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The question is: What has prompted the outcry against Sharia now, nearly a generation after the attack on the World Trade Center, when public suspicions of Islam have increased but little? The case of Mount Benedict suggests that conspiracy beliefs about social minorities often propagate when social majorities themselves become divided. Catholicism became a flashpoint then, just as Islamic law is today, because rapidly evolving standards of politeness were leaving many Americans behind.

As it turns out, shifts within a community for instance, in the way middle-class, native-born citizens treat one another have profound effects on how members of that community view those on the outside.

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The link between etiquette and Islamophobia comes into view in a 2016 Pew Research Center survey, conducted just as conservatives were excoriating the Obama administration for denouncing violent extremism instead of the more pointed radical Islamic terrorism. In that Pew survey, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 17 percent in believing that religious teachings, not violent people, bear the greater blame for religious violence. However significant, this partisan gap wasnt nearly as large as that elicited by another survey question: How should the incoming president speak about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam? By a margin more than twice larger, Democrats preferred caution; Republicans, bluntness.

Taken together, the two statistics suggest that Americans dont disagree nearly as much about violence and religion as they do about manners. So what do manners have to do with nativist suspicions? Quite a lot, if we reflect on the Mount Benedict episode.

Then and now, constitutional freedoms were thought to be at risk, and fears of an insurgent foreign faith sometimes combined with reigning norms of chivalry. Nineteenth-century nativists used their version of social media, cheaply printed tracts, to swap lurid tales of oppressed young women confined in both dress and spirit by a sexually repressive faith.

Todays anti-Sharia activists attribute the appeal of a dangerous and unsavory faith to poor education and brainwashing. The 19th-century nativists similarly believed that Catholics needed to be taught to read, and think, and act for themselves, or so proclaimed the anti-Catholic Rev. Lyman Beecher before a crowd on Boston Common, shortly before the Mount Benedict incident.

A conspicuous part of the mob, and that most responsible for allowing Mount Benedict to burn, consisted of Bostons volunteer firemen. Unlike todays professional fire departments, antebellum volunteer fire companies were highly fluid and drew members from many walks of life, from successful merchants to humble laborers. What the volunteer firemen did share was a rowdy sense of culture: They felt at home in an older, rougher masculine culture that revolved around drinking, fighting, and displaying physical prowess.

By the 1830s, that culture was on a collision course with a more feminized bourgeois urban society that increasingly eschewed displays of violence, embraced temperance, and, starting that decade, consumed etiquette manuals by the dozens. As the historian Karen Halttunen has shown, the genteel conventions explained in those manuals struck many Protestants as troublingly akin to Catholic ritual. Protestants understood their own religion as one of sincerity and spontaneous feeling. Catholicism and bourgeois manners appeared the opposite: practices of formulaic incantations that impressed the simple-minded but lacked real meaning.

This helps explain why the mob that pulled apart the convent didnt just commit violence, but rudely impersonated priests and inquisitors before it tore the convent apart. Their choice of target was no accident in this regard. The fancy Ursuline Convent was where the richest Protestant Bostonians sent their daughters to learn the very refined social manners that the firefighters disdained.

Anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment bear the greatest blame for the attack, but not all of it. What the Protestant nativists found so alien in the Ursuline Convent wasnt just the Catholic faith, but the affected mannerisms of so many Americans who suddenly thought themselves members of the middle class. While much of the grievance against the nuns of Convent Hill stemmed from prejudices as old as the Reformation, another crucial trigger was an identity crisis within Protestant society.

Charlestown Historical Society

A wood engraving depicts the aftermath of the riots of 1834. Anti-Catholic sentiment and resentment over changing manners had boiled over into violence.

Todays anti-Sharia movement emerges during a similar crisis of manners. In 2017, the issue is not so much dining or handshaking etiquette, but political correctness. A senior editor at The Atlantic recently offered this unflattering comparison: Political correctness requires more than ordinary courtesy: Its a ritual, like knowing which fork to use, by which superior people recognize each other. Other critics of PC culture go further, comparing its rigidity and abstruseness to a form of religious dogma Sharia law for snowflakes, as one Fox News personality memorably put it.

For its champions, political correctness isnt intended to oppress or exclude, but to encourage acceptance and inclusion. Champions of PC culture thus find its critics not only unjustified, but disingenuous and hypocritical. In their view, conservatives (along with occasional liberals such as Bill Maher) who carp about trigger warnings and tone-policing are ultimately concerned with maintaining a safe space in which to air their own retrograde views.

Yet this dismissal may be too cynical. When cultures adopt new scripts, insecurities bubble up, sometimes within social categories but often across them.

Along with a majority of whites, nearly a third of African-Americans believe that Americans are too quick to take offense at remarks made by those of other backgrounds. In Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, the anthropologist John L. Jackson found African-Americans unsettled by political correctness, not because it overturns racial attitudes, but because it requires their concealment. When racism was explicit, obvious, and legal, there was little need to be paranoid about it, Jackson explains.

The backlash against political correctness has a social dimension. While popular culture would have us assume that a sense of exclusion fuels conspiracy theories, recent psychological research suggests that such theories are less likely to thrive among solitary, isolated individuals.

Instead, conspiracy beliefs are more likely to propagate when people who feel uncertain about themselves receive messages of inclusion from others with similar concerns. Our polarized society has provided both conditions of late. The specter of PC manners has engendered uncertainty among many Americans, who in turn find inclusion among the like-minded at Trump rallies and other spectacles of anti-Sharia sentiment.

We need to consider that this combination of defensiveness and acceptance may encourage conspiracy beliefs about minority groups such as Muslims, even when the original social suspicions arent especially focused on those minorities. Put simply, the targets of our insecurities arent necessarily their true source.

As one 2015 study on the subject concludes, Conspiracy beliefs actually emerge from social motives namely, a genuine concern for other people that are victimized, endangered, deceived, or otherwise threatened.

The importance of self-uncertainty may be key to understanding the spread of nativist conspiracy theories of the antebellum period and today, and not just in the way suggested by reams of articles analyzing support for President Trump. The Trump phenomenon, most analyses suggest, stems from broad class and racial insecurities: fear of what a black president means for whiteness, or of how Latino immigration threatens white communities. Group status anxiety, according to this view, drives the paranoid style.

martin draper

A period map shows the ruins on Mount Benedict in what is now Somerville.

In fact, the collective insecurity we experience in our encounters with other races may provoke less paranoia than the intimate experiences of our still largely intraracial lives. Whatever comfort racially insecure whites find within the homogeneity of their communities and churches is bound to be lost when their own once-trustworthy white acquaintances start questioning their jokes.

The antebellum experience again suggests a parallel. At the peak of anti-Catholicism, anti-Masonry, and anti-Mormonism, social and economic opportunities were not shrinking but expanding for white Protestant men. Slavery remained relatively unchallenged, and Indian removal made land cheap and readily available. In Boston, immigration did little at first to increase competition for skilled labor; the immigrant Irish took pick-and-shovel jobs or worked as domestics. The relative status of non-elite whites had rarely been better.

Yet even under these rosy conditions, a significant number of white Protestants believed the pope was digging that tunnel under the Atlantic. Others believed that Masons were overthrowing the government. Still others swore that Mormons were kidnapping helpless young white women.

In August 1834, one group of these men, set apart from the mainstream of Boston society not by race, class, or religion, but by their increasingly unacceptable manners, acted out a paranoid fantasy.

None of this should encourage us to deny the reality of Islamophobia or its ultimate foundation in our religious, racial, and foreign policy history. But the recent alarm over Sharia may be more than just a knee-jerk response to unfamiliar forces. It as likely originates in the misinterpreted experience of many Americans: having their speech and behavior judged by to a new and apparently alien code.

Dealing with Islamophobia requires more than just refining our manners. It means the difficult and presently unpopular work of empathizing with those who seem to neither desire nor deserve the effort.

See more here:

How political correctness led to Islamophobia - The Boston Globe

What's Inside? Suing drug companies won't end addiction, Common sense is out the window.

Dear Centennial School Board members, Board Chair and school officials:

First, let me thank you for your volunteerism and service to the Centennial School District and families therein.

I am writing in that I am very displeased with the actions pertaining to the naming of Lynch schools.

This is a solution looking for a problem.

Whoever came up with the idea of renaming the schools needs their own sensitivity training.

As the Oregonian and others have widely quoted, this is a teachable moment." Aren't the schools about education? Shouldn't every child in the third grade learn how their education would be quite different if not for the generosity of the Lynch family?

The schools need attention to real issues and not political correctness.

What next? Ban education on Washington and Jefferson as they held slaves? Rename Washington, D.C.? to just the "District"? Should former Attorney General Lynch be forced to change her name?

Please stop this nonsense. There is enough real work at hand.

Thank you.

Wes Bell

Gresham

I read the July 28 Outlook article about Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, who wants to sue Big Pharma (the makers of prescription opioid painkillers) to recoup the cost of handling the opioid "epidemic."

Her tactic appears to involve getting a declaratory judgment that such pharmaceuticals are a public nuisance.

That's a legal stretch, especially since she employs a county medical officer who has thereby failed to manage this crisis. Shared liability will kill this lawsuit, were any liability to be found at all.

More to the point, perhaps Kafoury might consider not working so hard to attract so many addictive personalities to this county in the first place. The addicts are the nuisance, not the drug-makers or their product.

George Schneider

Gresham

The Centennial School Board has proposed omitting the name Lynch from two grade schools

because the name is offensive. Educating the public with a plaque on the school about the Lynch family and its land donations for educational purposes would be more appropriate and less expensive.

Educators within the district have told me that school shirts to be issued this fall have already omitted the name Lynch.

So much for public input. Will this silliness ever end?

What would they do If I said I was offended by boys in school with the name Peter or Dick? Are the names Merry or Sonny too cheerful for depressed students to handle? How about Jewish names offending Christians and Christian names offending Jewish people?

We want to be fair to everyone don't we?

What ever happened to common sense? I wonder what the Lynch family has to say about this slap in the face.

Sharon Drew

Portland

Read the rest here:

LETTERS: Political correctness has been taken too far - Pamplin Media Group