Category Archives: Political Correctness

By Rob Schofield

It seems certain that one of the contributing factors in the disastrous calculus that led Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to believe he could get away with his murderous and criminal invasion of Ukraine was his perception of weakness and division in the United States.

It was not a completely unreasonable perception to hold.

Like others around the world, Putin was watching carefully on Jan. 6, 2021, as American democracy appeared to teeter for a moment on the apex of the Washington Monument. Hes seen how the COVID-19 pandemic helped deepen the fractures in our already divided nation.

He was fully aware of the way the U.S. has disengaged in recent years from its traditional post-World War II European friendships. And you can bet your bottom dollar that hes also been aware of the waya certain former U.S. presidentand some of his noisiest sycophants have consistently voiced admiration for his ruthless tactics, while doing everything within their power to undermine the current inhabitant of the White House.

In Putins deeply twisted mind, it probably seemed like the optimal time to do the thing hes always done violently bully other humans he perceives as weaker in order to accumulate more power.

A funny thing has happened, however, in the days since Putin launched his brutal and unprovoked blitzkrieg. Contrary to what had seemed to be the case, the Kremlin despots principal adversaries have shown themselves to be notthatdivided or dysfunctional.

First off, it turns out that 14 months of sober and coherent national leadership in Washington have helped change the U.S. national landscape in some important ways.

With Ukraine War, Republicans get religion on democracy | John L. Micek

U.S. unemployment has plummeted. Wages and incomes are up. Poverty is down. The pandemic has been greatly tamed. The climate emergency is once more an important national priority. And thanks to the current presidents timely and utterly essential action, the nations European alliances have been rebuilt just in time.

Meanwhile, as he marshaled his troops and launched his brutal invasion, Putin found the Biden administration wasskillfully exposing his every move to the light of dayand almost universal international derision and condemnation.

But perhaps even more important, the last few weeks have brought to the fore something Putin probably hadnt counted on: The American people are not as divided as it might have seemed.

Yes, weve got some enormous challenges to overcome. Americas ideological, political, racial and geographic divides are as formidable these days as theyve been in decades.

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Progressives detest the American rights enabling of massive economic inequality, its denial of science and refusal to respond to the environmental crisis, its willingness to spur and capitalize on white fears, its backward-looking social agenda, and its tolerance of Trump.

Conservatives hate the rapid social change thats overtaken the country in recent decades, the political correctness they see on the left, the environmental and pandemic regulations that theyre convinced are merely designed to control their lives, and the lost primacy of traditional Christianity.

But doggone it, its also been made clear in recent weeks that the overwhelming majority of Americans have absolutely no taste for genuine tyranny.

Donald Trump and a few genuine extremists may harbor, or even express, a deeply troubling admiration for Putins murderous machismo, but most Americans right and left passionately hate what Putin stands for. We look around and see what we have and the life we enjoy or aspire to (and that which is being brutally stolen from the courageous people of Ukraine, and put at risk in other Eastern European countries) and agree that, for all its flaws, the U.S. has always stood, and should always stand, for something different and better.

As North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis has repeatedly and rightfully observed, Putin is a force of great evil in the world. This is froma March 2 report in RaleighsNews & Observer:

Anybody who compliments Vladimir Putin, is complimenting a mass murderer, Tillis said during a news conference. There are no compliments coming from me or my office.

In other words, first things first.

Americans have many, many monumental challenges to tackle and difficult debates in which they must engage going forward, but its also clear that we are broadly and strongly united in our opposition to Putinism.

Much as was the case prior to World War II, many have been slow to this recognition and inexcusably blind to other crises around the world in which other peoples have been the victims of similarly horrific wars of aggression.

Now, however, that circumstances have awakened us, it seems there is at least a better-late-than-never chance for us to recognize that we have a lot more in common with each other and all others who oppose despotism than we had previously imagined.

The world looks on anxiously to see if our national light bulb clicks on.

Rob Schofield is the director of North Carolina Policy Watch, a sibling site of the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, where this column first appeared.

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Putin's war in Ukraine is a reminder: Maybe we're not as divided as we think | Rob Schofield - Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Republicans are attacking President Biden for having the political courage to ban the import of Russian oil and gas to stop putting our money in Vladimir Putins pockets to finance his human slaughter and destruction in Ukraine.

Never mind Bidens continuing escalation of the economic war against Russia by world democracies was overwhelmingly welcomed by Americans regardless of political party. Seventy-nine percent said they supported the ban in aWall Street Journalpoll even if it led to higher gas prices.

Republicans briefly joined with congressional Democrats in a bipartisan call for Biden to ban Russian gas imports until he did. Then they reverted to form blaming Biden for rising gas prices instead of Putin. Announcing the ban, Biden noted U.S. gas prices already had gone up 75 cents a gallon since Russia began massing troops on Ukraines border before the invasion and would only get worse. He called it Putins price hike.

These arent Putin prices, railed Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. Theyre President Bidens prices. Gas prices started rising the day President Biden took office when he canceled the Keystone Pipeline and halted new drilling on federal lands. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee tweeted: Russia isnt responsible. Bidens shutdown of American energy is.

Republicans are demonstrably wrong about which American president crashed U.S. oil production. Oil production fell off a cliff when President Trumps failure to protect Americans from the pandemic shut down the economy. It slowly came back as highway and air travel resumed. PolitiFact reported Bidens oil production in 2021 was on par with Trumps in 2020 and exceeded every other year he was president.

The claims Biden destroyed energy production by halting drilling and pipelines also are provable lies. Biden approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling in 2021 compared to 2,658 in Trumps first year. Oil companies have another 9,000 approved drilling permits they havent used, choosing to return higher profits to shareholders instead of drilling for more oil. Also, someone should tell Republicans pipelines carry oil, they dont produce it.

The most positive outcome for the entire world, literally, from Putins horrific war would be if it finally begins speeding all of us toward the transition to clean, renewable energy.

Republican politicians dont appear to be worried about nightly television coverage of Putins atrocities in Ukraine building even more American support for Bidens leadership of world democracies at this frightening moment in our history that could easily escalate into a world war. They probably should be.

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Its a reminder of how important it is for the U.S. to have competent, intelligent leadership during dangerous times. Right on cue, former President Trump got a big laugh by babbling insanely to Republican donors with his hilarious joke about painting Chinese flags on the sides of American planes to bomb the shit out of Russia so the U.S. can sit back and enjoy a nuclear war between Russia and China.

It was only slightly more deranged than congressional Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar (on video) addressing a white supremacy rally where the crowd gave Russias president a big round of applause, chanting Putin! Putin! Putin!

Republicans believe American hostility toward Putin will fade as their party continues to blame Biden instead of Putin for higher gas prices. Thats the steady drumbeat on Fox News from Tucker Carlson and other Fox hosts who consider Putin just another violent Trump supporter annoyed by the political correctness of American democracy.

Republicans are convinced their hottest political issue against Democrats in the midterms will still be rising inflation under Biden and gas prices in big numbers along every highway will be the biggest advertisements for that. They expect the anger and hatred for their fellow Americans who are Democrats pumped up under their former president will, pardon the expression, trump any moral objections Americans with short attention spans will have about the horrific atrocities being committed by a villainous communist adversary against human beings living in a foreign country they couldnt find on a map.

I think theyre wrong. Most Americans really do think theyre better than that. And living with the very real threat of Russian aggression sparking World War III is different from living under any other recent American war.

Since the draft was abolished after Vietnamwhich I wholeheartedly endorsed after our tragic involvement in that warits been far too easy for America to go to war with an all-volunteer military. Thats because most of us were never touched by it. President George W. Bush asked us to support two wars by going shopping.

A war threatening the entire free world has to upend some of the divisions in American politics. We still have no idea how that war will end, but it could be quite a while before any of us can look away.

Joel McNally is a national-award-winning newspaper columnist and a longtime political commentator on Milwaukee radio and television. Since 1997, Joel has written a column for the Shepherd Express where he also was editor for two years.

Mar. 14, 2022

9:37 a.m.

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Republicans Attack Biden for Making the Right Move on Gas Prices - Shepherd Express

In Vladimir Putins speech on February 24, announcing what would be a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (in his official Orwellian euphemism, a special military operation in the Donbas region), a whole paragraph was dedicated to the Wests supposed undermining of traditional values:

Properly speaking, theattempts touse us intheir own interests never ceased until quite recently: they sought todestroy our traditional values andforce onus their false values that would erode us, our people from within, theattitudes they have been aggressively imposing ontheir countries, attitudes that are directly leading todegradation anddegeneration, because they are contrary tohuman nature. This is not going tohappen. No one has ever succeeded indoing this, nor will they succeed now.

To anyone following Russian politics and society, these words ring familiar. When Putin entered office for a third presidential term in 2012, in the wake of massive protests and declining popularity, his government wholeheartedly embraced the notion of traditional values as official ideology guiding both domestic and foreign policy. While a usefully vague and often undefined concept, traditional values are seen as encompassing patriotism, spirituality, rootedness in history, respect for authority, and adherence to heteronormative and patriarchal ideals of family and gender. In the rhetoric of the Kremlin and state-loyal media, LGBT rights, feminism, multiculturalism, and atheism are identified not only as foreign to Russias values, but as existential threats to the nation.

The Kremlin has constructed a pernicious ideology of homophobia as geopolitics.

Feminists, whether activists in womens peace movements or researchers in the academic field of feminist international relations, have long known that issues of gender and sexuality are at the heart of security. War is gendered not just in the sense that decisions to go to war are overwhelmingly made by men and that almost all the killing and other atrocities in wartime are performed by male bodies. Gender norms and gendered inequalities also shape how people are affected by war, whether we speak of men not being allowed to leave Ukraine, women being charged with the responsibility for evacuating children and elderly, or trans people whose mobility may be hindered by a mismatch between their gender and what is stated in their passport. As political scientist Iris Marion Young argued in The Logic of Masculinist Protection, ideas of masculinity, femininity, family, proper and improper sexuality are vital elements of stories about who and what needs to be protected, from whom and by whom. Keeping to this script, Russian Kremlin-loyal media circulate footage of women and children in Donbas who, the story goes, are under attack from Ukrainian Nazi forces forced to flee to Russia.

Of course, questions of gender are seldom at the forefront of analysis when bombs are falling, tanks are rolling in, and civilians are slaughtered. As militarization unfolds, establishment, masculinist national security expertise tends to be privileged as the only rational and objective way of explaining the world; other perspectives, including feminist security analysis, are dismissed as nave, idealistic, and out of touch with reality. As Putins speech hints, however, Russias invasion of Ukraineand its security policies more broadlycannot be understood in isolation from the politics of gender and sexuality. The reality is that the Kremlin has constructed a pernicious ideology of homophobia as geopolitics, and in official Russian rhetoric the war in Ukraine is framed as the continuation of this politics by other means.

It is not necessary to dig deep or read between the lines to make the argument that national security in Putins Russia is a gender and sexuality issue. The Kremlin, for one, explicitly defines national security in gendered terms. The federal national security strategy, published in July 2021, makes at least 20 references to traditional values in its 43 pages. Under the heading Achieving National Security, the strategy document says that:

Special attention is devoted to supporting the family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood . . . childrens upbringing and their overall spiritual, moral, intellectual and physical development. . . . Higher birthrates are necessary in order to increase the population of Russia.

With its full embrace of traditional values in the early 2010s, the Putin regime instrumentalized a nationalist, authoritarian form of gender conservatism that had gradually grown stronger in Russian political life since the late 1990spromoted by the Russian Orthodox Church, intellectuals such as Natalia Narochnitskaya and Aleksandr Dugin and, increasingly, establishment politicians. As traditional family and gender ideals were framed as matters of national survival, adherence to hetero- and cis-normativity became qualifying conditions not just of respectability, but of national belonging. As Masha Gessen describes in The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2018), false accusations of pedophilia became a way to demonize political opponents, and LGBT movements and feminists increasingly became targets of scapegoating. The 2013 law banning propaganda for non-traditional sexual relationships among minors not only restricted possibilities to speak and inform about sexuality and gender issues in publicsomething similar is now unfolding in the United States, it should be notedbut also designated homosexuality as a danger to children and to society.

The legal enshrinement of compulsory heterosexuality and vilification of queer and trans people have continued since then. In 2020 a ban on same-sex marriage was added to the Russian Constitution. In late 2021 a number of LGBT organizations, including the umbrella NGO Russian LGBT Network (whose work to evacuate queer people from Chechnya in 2017 was documented in the recent film Welcome to Chechnya), were added to the federal list of foreign agents. LGBT organizations are not the only ones targeted. Critical journalists and researchers, oppositional politicians, and human rights activists are also harassed, silenced, jailed, or killed by the increasingly authoritarian regime. At the same time, queer and trans people often face specific and aggravated forms of exclusion and violence due to societal hostilities, lack of family networks, and discrimination in housing, work and healthcare. According to research conducted by Alexander Kondakov and the Center for Independent Sociological Research in Saint Petersburg, hate crimes against LGBT people increased significantly after the propaganda law was passed in 2013.

The narrative that LGBT rights are a weapon used by the West to weaken and destabilize Russia has been a recurring grievance.

Russias turn to traditional values also has external dimensions, as indicated by Putins speech on the eve of war. The narrative that LGBT rights are a weapon used by the West to weaken and destabilize Russia has been a recurring grievance. Speaking to students in Belarus in 2018, Russias foreign minister Sergey Lavrov spoke of the need to protect Christian values from same-sex values that are being imposed . . . coarsely and openly. According to this logic, the facts that NATO expands into territories Russia considers part of its sphere of influence and that European and American leaders talk of gay rights as universal human rights are two sides of the same coin.

In this way, traditional values and sexual politics become linked to geopolitics and, in effect, to the status of Ukraine and other post-Soviet states. In 2013 the Russian newspaper Izvestiya warned that West-sponsored LGBT activism could spark a gay revolution risking to throw Russia back to the societal chaos of the 1990s. This must be seen against Putins repeated warnings about a possible color revolution in Russia, similar to those that had taken place in Ukraine in 20045 and in Georgia in 2003. As the Maidan protests against the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych began in Ukraine in late 2013, Russias largest newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda claimed that the protests were co-organized by nationalists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and homosexuals. Understanding this explicit link that is made between sexuality, gender, and geopolitical confrontation is necessary for making sense of the statements made by Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who spoke out in support of the war earlier this month:

For eight years there have been attempts to destroy what exists in Donbas. Donbas has fundamentally refused to accept the so-called values that are being offered by those aspiring for worldwide power. There is a specific test of loyalty to these powers, a requirement for being permitted into the happy world of excessive consuming and apparent freedom. This test is very straightforward and at the same time horrifyingthe gay parade. The demand to organize a gay-parade is a test of loyalty to this powerful world. And we know that if a people or a country refuses this test, they are not considered part of that world, they are considered as aliens to it. . . . Therefore, what is happening today in international relations does not only have political meaning. It is about something different and much more important than politics. It is about human salvation, about on which side of God the Savior humankind will end up.

War, aggression, and colonization are supported by what political scientist Michael J. Shapiro calls violent cartographies, imaginary moral maps depicting the homeland as innocent and good and the territories of Others as dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. All ambiguity and complexity not fitting this Manichean model must be ignored, denied, or constructed as foreign. In the geopolitical worldview of the Kremlin, Russia is standing up for traditional values in the face of a morally corrupt West weakened by sexual liberalism. In numerous speeches, Putin has positioned Russia as an international leader in the defense of traditional values. In this way, gender conservatism contributes to carving out a meaningful geopolitical role for Russia in a world order where LGBT rights have become international politics and increasingly framed as a question of civilization and modernityan indicator of who, in the words of Hillary Clinton in her speech to the UN Office in Geneva on Human Rights Day in 2011, is on the right side of history and who is not.

The Kremlin and other actors actively promote this narrative beyond Russias borders. The rhetoric of traditional values and its concomitant geopolitical worldview are circulated in Kremlin-loyal Russian media and consumed by many Russian-speakers in nearby countries. As historian Bethany Moreton just noted in these pages, in transnational organizations promoting family values such as the World Congress of Families, Russian pro-Putin oligarchs fraternize with U.S. evangelicals, ultra-conservative Catholic organizations, and parts of the European radical right, seeking common strategies to combat gender ideologya catch-all term of derision used to describe everything from abortion and sex-ed in schools to trans rights and same-sex marriage. In the United Nations, meanwhile, Russia has worked together with some states in the Islamic world and Sub-Saharan Africa, and more recently, nationalist populist regimes such as Poland and Brazil, to roll back sexual and reproductive rights.

Fear-mongering over gender dissolution comes straight out of a nationalist and fascist playbook.

This is not to suggest that Putin is a puppet-master directing attacks on womens and LGBT rights elsewhere. But it is indisputable that the current Russian regime has articulated a powerful and influential counternarrative to the liberal idea that LGBT rights are an inevitable element of modernityone that has been received appreciatively by some Christian conservatives and far-right figures in the West, who see Putins Russia as a bulwark against wokeism and political correctness.

In the narrative of Russia standing up for traditional values against Western gender indoctrination, the figure of the innocent child has a key position, as media studies researcher Maria Brock argues. Protecting Russian childrenembodying the nations futurefrom predatory homosexuals as well as from harmful LGBT ideology has been a recurring argument, used to motivate both the 2013 gay propaganda law and the 2013 Dima Yakovlev law, which banned U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children. Recently, transgender people and trans rights have become the perhaps most potent symbol of how progressive ideas of gender supposedly endanger children. For example, pro-Kremlin media have reported about bathrooms for the third sex being introduced in Scandinavia. In a speech at the Valdai club in 2021, Putin called the idea that a boy can become a girl and reversely a monstrosity and a crime against humanity. In an interview with the Financial Times in 2019, clearly targeting an international audience, Putin painted a dystopian picture of Europe, using gendered and racialized tropes, as he argued that the liberal idea has created a society where children are told they can play five or six gender roles and migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity.

Putins words clearly echo Western far-right and conservative movements, reiterating their tropes of children being indoctrinated by transgender ideology and immigrant men raping white womenthe former president of the United States, after all, launched his candidacy with a promise to build a wall to keep out Mexican rapists. However, this obvious mimicking and discursive borrowing should not lead us to view Russian authoritarianism and geopolitics through a U.S.-centric culture wars lens. Indeed, while sharing some tropes of gender and race with right-wing nationalists in Europe and the United States, the narrative of Russia standing up for traditional values against a degenerated West has long-standing roots in Russian intellectual history.

The myth that Russia has a divine mission in carrying the torch of true Christian civilization after the Wests plunge into ungodly materialism, secularism, and individualism dates back to at least sixteenth-century thinking of Moscow as the Third Rome and is prominent in the works of nineteenth-century novelists such as Dostoevsky. The contrasting of a supposedly godless, atomistic, mechanistic, and immoral West to a deeply religious, communitarian, spiritual, and moral Russia characterized nineteenth-century Slavophile thinking and was picked up by late-Soviet and post-Soviet religious nationalist writers.

Much has been written about Russian nationalism and its complex relationship to Europeand to the form of modernity represented by the West. One important aspect with repercussions for sexual politics is an ambivalent relation to imperialism. One the one hand, Russia has pursued an imperial, civilizing mission against peoples seen as culturally and racially inferior, for example in the Caucasus and Central Asia. On the other hand, Russia is perceived as historically suffering under Western cultural, economic, military, and epistemological hegemony. This peculiar colonizer/colonized identity, characterized by decolonial and feminist scholar Madina Tlostanova as a subaltern empire narrative, has important repercussions for sexual politics.

These are not harmless skirmishes in the culture wars of late-stage capitalism: they are grave matters of life and death.

According to historian Dan Healey, discourses on gender and sexuality in Russia have been shaped by a tripartite geography of perversion where Russia is imagined as an in-between space of sexual morality and innocence, neither part of the decadent West or the primitive Orient. Such a moral mapping influenced the conservative gender politics of the 1930s Stalin regime, when the Communists reintroduced the ban on sodomy (which had been lifted after the 1917 revolution) and explicitly depicted homosexuality as a security threat in the form of underground, pro-Hitler networks of homosexualsHealey calls the conservative turn under Stalin the birth of modern Russian political homophobia. In this way, Putins and Kirills framing of the war as tied to Russias brave resistance to Western sexual promiscuity and gender indoctrination of children draws on well-established narratives, familiar to most Russians.

Important as this historical genealogy is, there is nothing uniquely Russian about imagining collective identity or national security in gendered terms. Associating the geopolitical foe with sexual or gender perversity is part of a queer-phobic state repertoire known from many contexts. The 1950s gay panic in the United States, when accusations of homosexuality became a smear tactic in Joseph McCarthys anti-Communist crusade and homosexuals were barred from serving in the federal administration as they were seen as potential Soviet spies, has obvious similarities to how LGBT movements in todays Russia are described as a fifth column planted by the West. In several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Uganda and Zimbabwe, political and religious leaders talk of homosexuality and LGBT activism as pawns of Western attempts to re-colonize Africa. A somewhat similar pattern can be noted in the Chinese governments recent regulation banning sissy men, referring mainly to male celebrities inspired by South Korean and Japanese androgynous fashion trends, from appearing on television and streaming sites.

Fear-mongering over gender dissolution, the feminization of men, and sexual and racial degeneration as signs of a nations or civilizations decay comes straight out of a nationalist and fascist playbook. In these ideological schemes, national rejuvenation and the recovery of collective greatness requires a return to a mythical time when men were supposedly manlier and women womanlier and white hetero-patriarchal hierarchies went unchallenged. German Nazism and Italian fascism both celebrated traditional femininity and equated national strength with male virility. Similarly, contemporary far-right movements in Europe and North America see the weakening of mens authority in family and society, feminism, LGBT rights, multiculturalism as signs of the Wests fading in the world.

Feminists have shown how European colonial expansion and imperial domination historically has been imagined in sexualized terms, as penetration and subjugation of feminized peoples and territories, described as virgin lands, terra incognita, or dark continents. In contemporary Russian discourse, especially in online commentary, Internet satire, and memes circulated in social media, sexual and gendered metaphors of the war in Ukraine and Russia-West relations abound. Half-jokingly and half-seriously, Europe is sometimes referred to as Gayropa. Comparisons between Ukraine and a prostitute selling herself to NATO and Western leaders are one example of how feminizing tropes work to strip the Other of agency and the capacity of self-determination. Pictures of Putin or a Russian bear fucking NATO or a Western male leader from behind draw on both sexism and homophobia to depict the war in Ukraine as a masculinity contest between Russia and the West.

We must resist the glib dismissal of gender and sexuality as having nothing to do with military and security matters.

On a more general level, also beyond overtly aggressive and imperialist rhetoric, gender and sexuality are important building-blocks when nations define a collective us and identify what must be protected from whom. Russias geopoliticization of gender is mirrored by homonationalist and femonationalist discourses in the West, when gay rights and gender equality are portrayed as evidence of our national superiority vis--vis backward Others, whether Muslim immigrants or homophobic Russians.

In the contemporary world, the identification of outsiders within who allegedly threaten the domestic gender order and the promise to save and rehabilitate sexual morality and respectability from disintegrating forces have become an important part of an authoritarian toolkit. Variants of this logic are evident in Christian conservatives and nationalists attempts to ban gender indoctrination in schools and higher education across the West, in Hungarys recent ban on information that promotes homosexuality to children, and in Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaros repeated attacks on feminists and LGBT advocates.

The consequences, it must be recognized, are dire and deadly. These are not harmless skirmishes in the culture wars of late-stage capitalism: they are grave matters of life and death. Gender normstropes of masculine protection, women-and-children in need of saving, and sexual and gender deviance as a threat to the body politicfuel and perpetuate authoritarianism, militarism, and, as Russias war on Ukraine now makes all too plain, state aggression. Without addressing the former, there is little hope of changing the latter. One step must be to resist the glib dismissal of gender and sexuality as having nothing to do with military and security matters. To womens rights defenders, LGBT activists, and other groups fighting for democracy and social justice in both Russia and Ukraine, the links between militarist authoritarianism and the policing of gender and sexuality are already well known. They have been among the first targets of the authoritarian crusade for traditional values and now stand in the frontlines protesting Putins aggression. Their expertise should be widely acknowledged and their work supported in every possible way.

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Putin's Anti-Gay War on Ukraine - Boston Review

Rock legend talks cancel culture, an artists mission statement, bizarre pre-show rituals, becoming Alice, and all his favorite stuff.

Alice Cooper has been at this shock-rock thing for over half a century, and he has lost nothing off his fastball. I once described The Coops aura as the godfather of a spiteful, sloppy, defiant, obscene, deafening burlesque freak show that cared less for anything healthy and decent than anyone or anything imaginable, and that unhinged cocktail continues to serve as a glaring beacon for fringe kids from six to 60. At this point in his unlikely success story, Alice has become something of a reliable measuring device to see how much the majesty of performance art can challenge the vague parameters of popular music. Ok, maybe thats too much pressure to put on him, but he can take it, just ask him.

I did.

Below is my fifth (or is it sixth?) discussion with Alice, a fun exercise I first experienced in 2009. Unfortunately, due to circumstances hard to fathom now (did anyone say a once-in-a-century pandemic), we have not spoken since 2018. What? That is way too long. There is a nourishing quality to speaking with Cooper that is not available in most rock star chats. When he starts to muse on whatever subject I toss at him, it is still hard to believe that this person/character that first rocked my world at 11 years old, is speaking withme. But there is also comfort in knowing that there is no pretense in Alice Cooper; except, yknow, the character thing. He shoots from the hip about alcoholism, God, vaudeville, horror films, as well as regrets, family, love, and life as easy as he might offer insights into his golf game or the weather.

He is back on the road with a kick-ass band and his sword and hisguillotine and his snake and his songs aboutnecrophilia, spiders, madhouses, thumbing his nose at teachers, damning false preachers, and hammering those parts of our daily construct that need to be taken down a peg or two.

And thank goodness for all of that, and for another few minutes getting inside the mind of Alice Cooper, who does not disappoint again.

Happy belated birthday.

Oh, thank you. 74 never looked so good.

I have always seen you as a cultural barometer both on the fringe and in the mainstream. Considering the high tensions in our culture with political correctness and safe zones on college campuses and the general tone that no one anywhere should be offended,where does Alice come down on this?

You know, its very unusual right now. I think that weve kind of forgotten freedom of speech. I mean, if you dont agree with what is proper now, then you are absolutely blackballed. Youre not allowed to have an opinion anymore. I saw a movie the other day and it was called,No Safe Place, where they were talking to college students and some were saying, If he doesnt agree with what we believe, then he cant speak at our school. And thats missing the point! You have this freedom of speech to affectotherspeech. You can choose to not show up, or dont listen to him, and if you disagree, then you can let him know by booing. But hedoeshave that freedom, thats an American freedom. All of a sudden, we have this faction yelling No! Total intolerance to the point where if he doesnt believe what we believe, he doesnt get to speak, and Im going, What?

At this rate, there wont be any comedy after a while. In the seventies and Ive never had anybody disagree with this, by the way when Mel Brooks was making movies,everybodywas insulted. He didnt leave anybody out, and as a result,everybodywas laughing. We were less racial then than we are now, because now we pinpoint every single word that we say as possibly offensive. It doesnt matter what you say. You can say, Its a nice day, and its an issue. Oh yeah, its a nice day for you, maybe, but not for me! Im offended! What has happened to us? Weve become so politically correct that were almost robots. I believe in being politically correct, but at the same time, I think weve taken it to an extreme now, to the point where were bending so far over that you cant really say anything. Everybodys afraid to talk.

Now that you mentioned Mel Brooks films, there has been, for me, and you helped me get there in my youth, as did George Carlin, Richard Prior, orAll in the FamilyorLaugh-In, this idea that art never need apologize. Art is the way to puncture through social barriers, especially in music, because you do see, even now, in any kind of pop music, performers get away with pushing the envelope more than comedians or filmmakers. So, do you think what you do as a musical artist has more of an impact in this sense?

I think it used to be that way, but, again, I think artists now are afraid to say anything. Honestly, were getting to a point now where everybodys terrified that if you say one thing that sounds a little bit wrong, it hits the papers, and you are blackballed or you are a pariah. So, I think that youre getting to a point now where its getting dangerously close to1984orTHX-1138orFahrenheit 451, where were terrified to say anything. I mean, thats just not America.

I think a lot of people forget what stuff was thrown at you in the seventies. Its great that these days youre performing year after year as a tribute to the fact that you survived all that. But there was a time, and I remember because I was there, where people were genuinely threatened, society at large, was threatened by you, as it was previously with Elvis. I specifically love the Alice character because you encapsulated all the great deviant art forms, rock music, horror, satire, the drag scene, surrealism, you made this vessel that was almost, I want to say, Teflon. You somehow were able to survive all that. How?

You know, I think its just because I dont think I ever meant to hurt anybody. I always kind of saw the absurdity in everything. The same way, I see the absurdity in whats going on now in our society theres an absurdity to it. Its funny. And most people I talk to are actually making fun of this whole thing. You know, again, I truly believe nobody should be bullied. I never did that in my songs or my shows. I just said, Wouldnt it be funny if or Wouldnt it be scary if or Wouldnt it be dramatic if As an artist, youre supposed to challenge the person looking at your art. If not, then its just Hallmark cards. I mean, what artist hasnt challenged the system? Warhol, Dali, even, at the time, Shakespeare challenged the system. He was getting banned all over the place. Artists are supposed to act as a weird balance in society. And yeah, when we do, the audience wants us to speak out and be off center, because were the only ones that will. The audience will tell you, I wish I would have said that! Were allowed to say it because were artists! Were no different than anybody else. Except that we are. We are artists. And I, in my case, if I think about it, as you say, everybody was very wary of Elvis Presley, and then The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, all the time society was going, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! I dont know if I could buy into this. Like you said,All in the Family, and then later,The Simpsons,Family Guy, all the stuff that challenges norms poke fun at it. And yet there was a lot of truths going on in there. This is what we tried to do.

Yeah, the one thing I always loved about the Alice Cooper group and your later work as a solo artist, is you were extremely self-aware of what you were doing. The revolution was built in. I recently read something you posted on Twitter on the anniversary ofBillion Dollar Babies(the Alice Cooper bands 1973 mega hit album) and how its title and theme came from everyone in the group looking at each other and saying, This is crazy. We somehow made it and now were the biggest band in America! This was the kind of irony that was always built into Alice Cooper. You understood the humor from the very beginning of what you were doing.

Well, yeah, if you can substitute that for ego [Laughs]. When we would go on stage, and I still do this with my band, I say, When you go on stage, I want you to be ridiculously egotistical and over the top! Because the audience wants you to be that for them. They want you to be from some other place. They want you to be an Avenger. Because youre on stage with a guitar and an amp and youre singing these songs out here and theyrenot. Theyre listening to it. But I also remind them that when you get off stage, leave all that on stage. So, when they meet you, and they talk to you, they understand the fact that Oh, yeah, well, this ishim. But on stage, Alice is this other thing, you know, he speaks for us, and he makes fun of us, and he brings up things that were afraid to say, but Alice said it. None of this makes the artists any smarter, it just makes us artists. We have a different kind of license.

That reminds me, do you have a pre-show ritual? Do you have something that youve done from the very beginning, when you were in the band, even as far back as the sixties, all the way through your solo career? Because I know youre a sports guy. I could see you having something thats, I dont want to say idiosyncratic, but is there something you always do before you go on stage?

Well, you know, its changed because a lot of situations have changed. The early days, there was no dressing room. [Laughs] You were back behind the stage, just getting ready, and you showed up in your costume and just went on stage! And then it got a little bit more progressive, where, all of a sudden, now that youve made it a little bit, you have a dressing room. So then, it was like, Well, theres actually food back here! And now theres this this whole thing with your rider, you know? Nowadays I have definite idiosyncrasies. When I first get to the venue, I watch nothing but Kung Fu movies.Reallybad ones, though. Im talking about ones made in 1973 and then theres other ones that are just total fantasy ones that are so insane. Ill sit and watch them until Im numb. Then, and only then, do I start getting ready at half an hour, exactly, one half hour before show time. Thats when I start putting the makeup on. Then I start getting dressed, the whole thing. And as soon as I get dressed, I throw knives.

Wait what?

I am an expert knife thrower. In fact, I am in the Knife Throwing Hall of Fame.

Thats fantastic. I did not know this tidbit.

Oh, yeah. The guys that run the Knife Throwing Hall of Fame watched me throw and they put me in there right away. Because I could put 20 knives within a twelve-inch area, easily, with no problem and thats kind of fun. Heres the great thing I put different photos of people in magazines up on the throwing board especially if its a full picture ofanybody, it doesnt matter who it is, they get up on the throwing board. People walk in they go, Wow, why do you hate this person so much? And I have to tell them, Oh, no, no, no, its an honor to be on my throwing board. So, there might be Tom Cruise one night, and then the next night, it might be Betty White, you know, it doesnt really matter. Its just whos ever got the best full-legs picture in a magazine is gonna get up there.

That should be its own Instagram post: The Alice Cooper Knife Board.

Im telling you, its now become like a total pre-show idiosyncrasy, and when Im done with the knives, then I can get ready to go on. I wait for about ten minutes before I finally go on, go into the bathroom, and pray. Thats very essential for me. And at that point, I walk on stage, but Im still not Alice yet. As soon as I hit the stage and I make the appearance, then IbecomeAlice.

You can feel that change?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Its visceral.

Its this absolute difference in my posture. Theres a difference in my attitude. Theres a difference in justeverything. I take on the Alice Cooper character the same way if I were playing in any Broadway play, you know, youre this guy off stage, but the people want to see Alice Cooper. So, okay, Im the only one that knows how to play that guy, so I will assume all of the Alice Cooper characters, and he will be Alice for two hours and then as soon as I walk off stage, I leave him on stage.

I know you have to get going, so I have a couple of more for you.

Okay. Shoot.

Favorite TV show of all time? I know youre a TV buff, if I had to press you, your favorite TV show is

I loveDexterif youre talking about, you know, Netflix or anything like that. Regular network TV? Wow, I havent really been watching a lot of network TV at all, but probablyGhost Adventures. I watch it because I always believeknow your enemy, so I watch it and kind of take notes [Laughs]. But at the same time I know all those guys, and I tell them, Guys, be careful, I dont think youre dealing with ghosts at all, I think youre dealing with demons. At the same time then if I want to watch something really entertaining, I loveKilling Eve. Also, I started watchingReacher, which is really good, actually, because I read all the books and theyre keeping it accurate to the book. They even finally got a guy that actually looks like Reacher. In the book hes 260 pounds and 67. Tom Cruise didnt quite fit that bill.

Last one, I know youre a car guy. Is there a favorite car youre driving right now? What is Alice Coopers car of choice to tool around on a Sunday afternoon?

Right now, I am driving a DB11 Aston Martin that when you open the door theres a little plaque on the bottom, that says, Built in England for Mr. James Bond.

No shit.

Its the same kind of deal that they were using in the movieSpectre, remember the moveSpectre?

Sure.

I think this is one of the cars that they were using inSpectre. So, the license plate is Spectre 3.

That is the perfect ending to our latest chat. I could talk all night, but instead I thank you, as always, for a little time.

Always great to talk to you because youre creative with this whole thing. Its always fun. Its certainly a lot more fun than answering thenormalquestions [Laughs].

I really appreciate that. Youre my hero. You keep it up.

All right, man. I will.

ALICE COOPER TAKES THE NJPAC STAGE ON TUESDAY, MARCH 22! FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION ON THE SHOW AND THIS TOUR, VISIT HIS WEBSITE!

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The Uncensored Alice Cooper The Aquarian - Aquarian Weekly

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

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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.

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Their castration of gingerbread men - County Weekly News

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

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