Category Archives: Political Correctness

KRASNIK, Poland When local councilors adopted a resolution two years ago declaring their small town in southeastern Poland free of L.G.B.T., the mayor didnt see much harm in what appeared to be a symbolic and legally pointless gesture.

Today, hes scrambling to contain the damage.

What initially seemed a cost-free sop to conservatives in the rural and religiously devout Polish borderlands next to Ukraine, the May 2019 decision has become a costly embarrassment for the town of Krasnik. It has jeopardized millions of dollars in foreign funding and, Mayor Wojciech Wilk said, turned our town into a synonym for homophobia, which he insisted was not accurate.

A French town last year severed a partnership with Krasnik in protest. And Norway, from which the mayor had hoped to get nearly $10 million starting this year to finance development projects, said in September that it would not give grants to any Polish town that declares itself free of L.G.B.T.

We have become Europes laughingstock, and its the citizens not the local politicians whove suffered most, lamented Mr. Wilk, who is now lobbying councilors to repeal the resolution that put the towns 32,000 residents in the middle of a raucous debate over traditional and modern values. The situation also illustrates the real-life consequences of political posturing in the trenches of Europes culture wars.

When Krasnik declared itself free of L.G.B.T., it was joining dozens of other towns in the region that had adopted similar measures with strong support from Polands governing right-wing Law and Justice party and the Roman Catholic Church.

The declarations, part of the partys efforts to rally its base before a presidential election in 2020, did not bar gay people from entering or threaten expulsion for those already present. Instead they vowed to keep out L.G.B.T. ideology, a term used by conservatives to describe ideas and lifestyles they view as threatening to Polish tradition and Christian values.

Cezary Nieradko, a 22-year-old student who describes himself as Krasniks only open gay, dismissed the term L.G.B.T. ideology as a smoke screen for homophobia. He recalled how, after the town adopted its resolution, his local pharmacist refused to fill his prescription for a heart drug.

Mr. Nieradko recently moved to the nearby city of Lublin, where the regional council has also adopted a free of L.G.B.T. resolution but whose residents, he said, are generally more open-minded.

Jan Albiniak, the Krasnik councilor who drafted the resolution, said that he had nothing personally against gay people, whom he described as friends and colleagues, and that he wanted to contain ideas that disturb the normal, regular way our society was functioning.

He said he had drafted the resolution after watching an online video of abortion rights activists screaming at Christian men in Argentina. Although that had nothing to do with L.G.B.T. issues or Poland, Mr. Albiniak said the video showed that we are dealing with some sort of evil here and can see manifestations of demonic behavior around the world that must be stopped.

In response to a rash of anti-L.G.B.T. resolutions across Polands heartland, the European Union, of which Poland is a member, as well as Norway and Iceland, have said they will cut funding to any Polish town that violates Europes commitment to tolerance and equality.

The European Parliament also passed a resolution last month declaring all 27 countries in the bloc an L.G.B.T. Freedom Zone, although like the Polish resolutions declaring the opposite, the declaration has no legal force.

All the posturing, however, has begun to have concrete consequences.

Krasniks mayor said he worried that unless his towns free of L.G.B.T. status is rescinded, he has little chance of securing foreign funds to finance electric buses and youth programs, which he said are particularly important because young people keep leaving.

My position is clear: I want this resolution repealed, he said, because its harmful for the town and its inhabitants.

That will be an uphill struggle.

Faced with the loss of foreign grants, several other Polish towns that declared themselves free of L.G.B.T. or adopted a family charter trumpeting traditional values have in recent months changed their mind. But the 21-member council in Krasnik, having voted last year against repeal, recently rejected an appeal by the mayor for another vote.

Only one member has openly voiced a readiness to change sides. I made a mistake, said Pawel Kurek, who abstained on the original vote but now says the resolution was foolish and should be rescinded.

On a national level, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Law and Justice, told the newspaper Gazeta Polska last week that Poland must resist L.G.B.T ideas that are weakening the West and against all common sense.

Underlying the stalemate in Krasnik are the political and demographic realities in a region where many young people have left to find work abroad or in Warsaw, the capital, and where the Catholic Church remains a powerful force.

While many older people like their town being free of L.G.B.T., young people who have remained are appalled. Amanda Wojcicka, a 24-year-old convenience store worker, said the idea was embarrassing.

But Jan Chamara, a 73-year-old former construction worker, said he would rather live on a diet of just potatoes than give into economic pressure from outside to repeal the resolution. I dont want their money, said Mr. Chamara, who said he had never seen gay people in Krasnik but still felt precautions were necessary. We will survive.

Krasnik has acquired such notoriety that a French minister responsible for European affairs said he wanted to visit the town recently to show his opposition to discrimination during an official visit to Poland. The official, Clment Beaune, who is gay, called off the visit to Krasnik after what he described as pressure from Polish officials not to go, a claim that Polands foreign ministry said was untrue.

When Krasnik and other towns adopted free of L.G.B.T. resolutions in early 2019, few people paid attention to what was widely seen as a political stunt by a governing party that delights in offending its foes political correctness.

But that changed early last year when Bartosz Staszewski, an L.G.B.T. activist from Warsaw began visiting towns that had vowed to banish L.G.B.T. ideology. Mr. Staszewski, a documentary filmmaker, took with him an official-looking yellow sign on which was written in four languages: L.G.B.T.-FREE ZONE. He put the fake sign next to each towns real sign, taking photographs that he posted on social media.

The action, which he called performance art, provoked outrage across Europe as it put a spotlight on what Mr. Staszewski described in an interview in Warsaw as a push by conservatives to turn basic human rights into an ideology.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has accused Mr. Staszewski of generating a fake scandal over no-go zones that dont exist. Several towns, supported by a right-wing outfit partly funded by the government, have filed defamation suits against the activist over his representation of bans on ideology as barring L.G.B.T. people.

But even those who support the measures often seem confused about what it is that they want excluded.

Asked on television whether the region surrounding Krasnik would become Polands first L.G.B.T.-free zone, Elzbieta Kruk, a prominent Law and Justice politician, said, I think Poland is going to be the first area free of L.G.B.T. She later reversed herself and said the target was L.G.B.T. ideology.

For Mr. Wilk, Krasniks mayor, the semantic squabbling is a sign that it is time to drop attempts to make the town free of anyone or anything.

But Mr. Albiniak, the initiator of the resolution, vowed to resist what he denounced as blackmail by foreigners threatening to withhold funds.

If I vote to repeal, he said, I vote against myself.

Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting.

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After Going Free of L.G.B.T., a Polish Town Pays a Price - The New York Times

Im profoundly disappointed in the Cleveland Indians plan to change a proud name in place for 105 years. The Woke Cancel Culture never ends. Lets look at facts.

Some American Indians consider the name an honor. such as the Spokane people of Washington State, who have worked with the minor league Spokane Indians on culturally respectful team uniform designs and other symbols, plus exhibits at the stadium and cultural outreach.

Why not listen to Native Americans instead of a small group of white Americans?

Changing a name makes no ones life better. Least of all, Native Americans.

The Indians made this decision in the wake of the George Floyd death. One should have nothing to do with the other.

Alternatives:

Community outreach benefiting Native American causes, education, and families.

Honoring Native Americans with pre-game rituals.

Symbolic honors, such as using images that record Native American heritage.

The teams heritage also matters. The Cleveland Indians are part of my familys tradition, not some other team.

Changing the name is short-sighted and historically ignorant and based on political correctness, elitism, and white guilt.

Lad Dilgard,

Galena

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Changing Indians name will achieve nothing but negatives - for fans and Native Americans - cleveland.com

In Marty Rochesters column, Oy Vey: The excesses of identity politics (March 24), he criticizes President Biden for picking a diverse cabinet with the insinuation that because it is diverse, it is not the best cabinet he could have picked.

In that he provides no factual basis for these not being the most capable candidates, the only conclusion I can draw as to why he thinks they are not the best candidates, is because of their diversity.

What does that say about him?

Kenneth Cohen,Creve Coeur

I would like to compliment the Jewish Light on publishing articles by Professor Marty Rochester. These well-written highly rational discussions provide a good balance to the fact-free emotional diatribes we frequently see in other articles or letters you choose to publish.

I was particularly taken by his recent article (March 24) decrying the selection of cabinet and thousands of other appointments (to say nothing of a vice president) based on ethnic or other criteria rather than provable qualifications. Rochesters analogy to getting on an airplane, the crew of which had been selected based on political correctness rather than competency, was particularly telling. It is a dangerous and difficult world with domestic and international problems which need to be addressed by the best qualified people to achieve solutions beneficial to our nation. Instead, we see those who simply check the diversity-biased identity boxes required by Democrat pressure groups.

Im reminded of an interview conducted with Jesse Jackson in the early years of the President George W. Bush administration, wherein he criticized the president for not appointing a sufficient number of black Americans. When it was pointed out to Jackson that President Bush had in fact appointed a number of such people to high positions Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and many others Jackson replied that they should not be factored in, as they had been selected based on merit. The Biden administration need not worry that they will be accused of doing the same.

Steve Finkel,Creve Coeur

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Letters to the editor: Divergent reactions to commentary | Letters To Editor - St. Louis Jewish Light

No one can dispute that America is currently undergoing a racial reckoning. Ever since the killing of George Floyd in the spring of 2020, a nation-wide soul-searching over racism has seized hold of the collective imagination, with everyone from massive corporations to national media outlets leading the charge against America's enduringeven risingwhite supremacism.

But what if everyone is wrong? What if the media and the national conversation isn't exposing racism so much as creating it, or at least, creating the impression that it is far more prevalent than we thought?

This is what I found in my recent report for the Manhattan Institute, The Social Construction of Racism in the United States. The report is an analysis of a wide variety of data sources, including several new surveys that I conducted. And what I found is that media exposure, partisanship and a person's anxiety or depression levels explain much of what passes for racism todayas well as essentially all of its reported rise.

We know this in a more general sense on an intuitive level. The idea that party identification shapes perception, for example, is pretty uncontroversial. And social scientists have long known that exposure to unusual events that make news shapes our perceptions; Gallup surveys consistently show that concern with racism tends to spike after major events like the Ferguson protests, George Floyd's killing or Trump's election.

But this effect has been in hyperdrive in recent years. And there's evidence to suggest that the constant beating of the racism drum has led many to see racism where they didn't previously.

Mentions of racism in national news outlets have soared since 2015. And this media activity has coincided with a drop in the number of Americans who describe Black-white relations as good. From 2002 to 2013, 70 percent of Americans believed that race relations were good, a number that dropped to half after 2014.

How do I know that negative media attention to race, rather than a worsening reality, is driving perception? Here's where my research comes in. To get at this question, I asked respondents the following question: Did they believe young Black men were more in danger of dying in a car crash, or of being shot by police?

There is a correct answer to that question: Cars are around ten times more lethal to young Black men than police bullets. But it was something people on one side of the political spectrum were much more likely to know than the other side. I asked respondents a second question to test this: Do they believe white Republicans are racist? And what I found was that people who answered yes to the second question, who believe white Republicans are racist, were much less likely to accurately assess whether cars or cops were more lethal to Black men.

My surveys found that 70 percent of white Americans and 95 percent of Black Americans who agree with the statement "white Republicans are racist" believe that young Black men are more likely to be shot by the police than to be killed in a traffic accident. Fully 53 percent of Biden voters got the answer wrongcompared to just 15 percent of Trump voters.

This is not about intelligence or being informed. Indeed, educational attainment made no difference to the result.

Much of the false perception we have of rising racism is due to traditional news media. But a lot of it comes from social media, too, which is accelerating the problem.

In the same survey, 53 percent of Black Americans who use social media said they had experienced "people acting suspicious" around themcompared to 31 percent of Black Americans who do not use social media. Across several questions, controlling for age, income, education and other factors, social media exposure significantly increased a Black person's sense that they had been a victim of racial discrimination.

And rather than a corrective, higher educationwhere students are exposed to far left ideas on race like critical race theorymay lead to even greater sensitivity to racism. Research tends to find that minorities with degrees are more likely to report discrimination than their non-college educated counterparts. My surveys also showed that college-educated Black Americans are significantly more likely than those without a degree to be offended by so-called microaggressions, like people saying, "I don't notice race."

But this isn't just a question of getting a question wrong on a survey. The effect this false perception of rising racism is having on societyespecially on Black Americansis devastating. And just reading a few paragraphs written by someone with an extreme view on racism in America can have an impact, I found.

I asked some Black survey respondents to read a passage from the critical race theory-inspired writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, a passage from Coates' writing about how "the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body." To others I gave nothing to read, or a mild paragraph.

What I found was staggering: Reading even a single paragraph from Coates had a significant impact on Black respondents' ability to believe in their own agency.

Just 68 percent of Black respondents who read Coates' paragraph agreed with the statement, "When I make plans, I am almost certain that I can make them work"compared to 83 percent of those who did not, a statistically-significant effect.

In other words, even brief exposure to critical race theory narratives disempowers Black people. This reinforces previous research that found that heightened perceptions of racism caused harm to Black Americans.

Moreover, the effect is being amplified by politics and higher education. Black Biden voters were twice as likely as Black Trump voters to say that they personally experienced more racism under Trump than under Obama. And liberal Black Americans with a college degree were almost 30 points more likely to be offended by white people saying things like "I don't notice people's race" or "America is a colorblind society" than were Black Americans without degrees who identify as conservative.

There was, however, consistency on one front: Throughout my surveys, African-Americans see themselves as independent and resilient, while white liberals are more inclined to see them as weak and needing protection.

When asked whether political correctness was demeaning to Black people or necessary to protect them, 51 percent of Black liberals chose "demeaning" and 49 percent "necessary." But white liberals chose "necessary" by a 62-38 margin.

You can see this in another one of the survey questions. I asked respondents "If you had to choose, which is your ideal society?" One option was, "Minorities have grown so confident that racially offensive remarks no longer affect them." The other option read, "The price for being racist is so high that no one makes racially offensive remarks anymore." Again, the difference between Black and white respondents was significant, and instructive: 47 percent of Black liberals chose the resilient option in which they were immune to racially offensive remarks, compared to just 29 percent of white liberals.

In casting Black Americans as uniquely in need of protection, white liberals are actually having that impact, shaping a reality that harms people of color.

And this perception is in direct contradiction with reality. Attitudes to inter-racial marriage and interaction have become steadily more liberal across the nation, while the number of Black people shot by the police has declined by 60-80 percent since the 1960s.

When the media exaggerates the level of racism in America, redefining non-racist words and actions as racist, this distortion of reality is not just false; it's actively disempowering minorities.

Racism, like crime, is unlikely to ever fall to zero. But progressive media's mining for racism has reached a point of diminishing returns, with perceptions doing more harm than good.

Eric Kaufmann is a professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and is affiliated with the Manhattan Institute and the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

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The Media Is Creating a False Perception of Rising Racism. My New Study Proves It | Opinion - Newsweek

Photographer: Angela Weiss/AFP

Photographer: Angela Weiss/AFP

HOWARD WOLFSON: Your new book, New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation, is out. I've been interviewing the mayoral aspirants this year and thought it would be exciting to talk to you about the mayors you look at in your book. You begin with a discussion of Ed Koch. Tell me about him.

THOMAS DYJA: Ed Koch was an underdog. He was not a favorite of the political establishment. He ran from outside. Hugh Carey, the governor, was pulling for Mario Cuomo and he went through a bruising primary and then a runoff against Cuomo. Over his three terms, he did a remarkable thing. He really did bring a lot of life back to the city in the face of enormous challenges.

But as with everyone, there were dark sides to it. He racially charged the city in ways that were destructive and that, to his credit, he recognized later in his life and tried to publicly apologize for.

But in other ways, on his housing initiative, for example, he brought about a paradigm shift in how we look at housing in this city. Koch laid the groundwork for renewal, not just in the kind of rah-rah, New York is back way, but by opening the city to new housing and new ideas.

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The first successful wave is the whole urban pioneer thing that brings back the boomers and begins the gentrification of the city. Then there was a second wave that brought in immigrants and helped them settle in neighborhoods. This created an order that allowed crime to come down.

Another thing he did was create an administration that had an enormous impact on the city over the long term. You see many of the same names and faces that he brought in to City Hall turning up later under Mike Bloomberg and in all the kind of superstructure that surrounds the city. This is started by Koch saying, I want good people in here who can do the right thing, and I will field the political flak.

HW: One of the things I found powerful in your section about Koch was that you made his and the citys response to AIDS central to the narrative, where I think in a lot of other discussions about his tenure, its sort of off to the side.

TD: It was devastating. We still have no idea of how much of an impact, how many people we lost. The complication of his own professed identity adds another layer. How did someone who most of the gay community consider one of them deal with the AIDS crisis? To me, it wasnt just that one through line that through line had an impact on everything. And that was just like so many other through lines in the book. You couldnt just talk about housing as a discrete topic, or cultural things as a discrete topic real estate has an impact on the art business. It goes on and on.

HW: As New Yorkers, we like to think that were in control of our own destiny. Certainly there have been times over the last 40 years where reality disabused us of that fantasy or that belief. Was the fiscal crisis solved by Koch and New Yorkers, or did larger economic trends enable the city to recover?

TD: New York is an odd place in that it has its own micro-economy. Its the city economy that is open to the influence of whats happening in the rest of the world, but its banks make it a leader, dictating a lot of whats going on in the global economy.

One of the most important factors to keep in mind is that no one ever really thought the city couldnt eventually pay its bills back. There was a philosophical decision that was made by kicking the city out of the credit market. But the city was going to be able to refinance and get going. It was able to take advantage of changes in the economy that werent necessarily a product of the people of New York, but were derived from powers based in New York: lower interest rates, the ability to refinance.

If the people of New York brought it through the fiscal crisis, it was by surviving that era. So Koch is defeated by Dinkins in the [1989] primary in large measure because of the racial divisions that had developed and really sort of exploded.

Everybodys also tired of Koch. There is a kind of Koch fatigue, where even he admits hes running on fumes. The city was so ready to move on at that point.

HW: One of the things that is surprising to me is how incendiary and routinely divisive Kochs language was, especially around race, but also in response to any sort of routine criticism. It makes me wonder, was New York a rougher place during that period?

TD: When I moved here in 1980, it was definitely surprising how visceral it was. And the press loved the fact that Koch would spout off and insult people in a way that was kind of amusing at first. By the second term, it stopped being amusing; the press was not so tickled by it, but in general the city was more and more exhausted by it.

I do think the city was a matter of survival then. You had friends who got mugged and peoples cars being broken into; if that was the worst of it, you were lucky. It was a hard place to be. I remember the convenience of big-box stores when they first came in and thinking, Wow, look at all those towels. And buying hardware. Before, there werent big hardware stores; there were small ones and you were lucky if they had what you wanted, and they were expensive. There were things that were difficult about life in New York and almost intentionally so. That changed over time and became better, but we ended up not necessarily liking the results. Kochs New York was a much testier place. We look back with amusement and nostalgia, but the reality is that it was exhausting.

HW: In the last couple of years of the Bloomberg administration, there was a mini boom of 70s nostalgia that developed. Obviously there were some exciting things happening in the arts and culture, but it was a difficult time to live in New York in a lot of ways.

TD: Nostalgia is about loss, not just in a kind of historic sense or an objective sense about place, but its so often about ourselves. One of the things I really insisted on myself in looking at this was, I can have all the warm and fuzzy emotions I want to have about my memories, but I really needed to look at it as objectively as possible.

HW: Koch is beaten by David Dinkins, the only one-term mayor of the mayors that you cover. Theres been a reappraisal of Dinkins, especially after his passing [Nov. 23, 2020]. Where do you come down on the Dinkins mayoralty?

TD: Certainly the years deserve some re-evaluation because hes handed a combination of peak AIDS, peak crack, peak crime all the problems that are cresting in the second half of the Koch years crash on top of him. Added to that is a press corps that, when you look at what Koch does and what the press corps does and says during those years, youre shocked. The treatment of Dinkins is stunning. When you have writers comparing him to Babar its jaw-dropping. Koch goes to the Inner Circle Show in a big Afro wig. These are things that are just not acceptable now. And he faced that.

I think most of all, he faced that he never dreamed of becoming Mayor Dinkins. Out of the Harlem circle of power, he was the least expected to become mayor out of [Charles] Rangel and [Percy] Sutton and [Basil] Paterson. It fell to him in a certain way. He didnt have that kind of fire in the belly that Koch had to do this and that Rudy Giuliani would have, and that Bloomberg would have.

There was also a bit of a fissure in his administration between being effective and trying to serve the people who elected him. But when we look ahead to what happens the renewal of Times Square begins under him. Safe Streets, Safe City is passed, which lays the groundwork for one of the major sources of money that Giuliani is able to use to staff up the police department. A lot of the groundwork is there. But he was just never able to convince anyone that he really meant it.

One of the things that was surprising to me when he ran for re-election against Giuliani there is this myth that nice liberals held their nose and voted for Rudy over Dinkins because they wanted a change. But looking at the vote breakdown, the numbers were pretty much the same. It was the turnout that killed Dinkins. In a lot of black communities, turnout was way down. In Staten Island, which had a secession vote on the ballot allowed by Governor Cuomo, theres a huge boost in turnout. So you have depressed turnout in black neighborhoods and increased turnout in Staten Island, and you get Rudy Giuliani.

HW: One of the characters you introduced during the Koch-Dinkins years is Donald Trump. It struck me that in a lot of ways Trump learned his politics and his mode of discourse in New York City in the 70s, in the 80s, and never forgot it. Does that make sense to you?

TD: Absolutely. When the person who teaches you how to function in the city is Roy Cohn, youre starting at a pretty frightening place. It all leads up to a person burning their way through the structure of democracy for their own needs and their own gains.

The other interesting thing about Trump to me was watching how he started. He was helped along by Brooklyn machine guys like Carey and Abe Beame. The fact that he got that first deal to redo the Commodore Hotel and turn it into the Grand Hyatt this was actually a positive thing. It was a bit of a boondoggle, but it did flip the switch on that area and really started momentum for the move across 42nd Street. So I guess even a broken clock can be right twice a day.

HW: You say Rudy was essentially attempting to build a city for the deserving who did what they were told. Thats a pretty tough judgment. Whats your overall take on the Rudy years?

TD: There was very much a place where I needed to put my personal feelings aside and try to look at Rudy in a clear-eyed way. Its important to keep in mind that when Rudy first shows up, hes kind of a guy in a white hat. Hes the one guy whos willing to go after Wall Street. Hes the one guy who brings down the pizza connection, mob stuff.

Hes kind of a fusion Republican and brought this kind of nonpartisan approach to things. And he did deliver on some of that. He delivered a leadership that we didnt have under Dinkins. The biggest failing I would say of Dinkins was that sense of letting the city feel like it was out of control, even when it wasnt. Giuliani made people feel that there was someone in control, and then he crosses the line when he decides to control New York. New Yorks not a place that wants to be controlled, but it wants somebody in control of the thing.

I want to give Rudy credit for running the city at the beginning and in a way that was fresh and open to both sides. But that quickly shifts gears into something that is much more about maintaining order over people. This is the first time we start talking about identity politics and political correctness and multiculturalism these catchwords were using now were all aflame in the 90s. A lot of his political, policy things are tied in with the cultural things that are going on, and much of this is about maintaining control for the old white ethnic powers that are feeling very much under siege.

HW: One of the strands that you draw in the book throughout all of the mayoralties is this question of order versus disorder. Theres always a seesaw, and at some points people are looking more for one than the other. And then theres a reversal. Rudy clearly is on the order side of things. You posit that by the end of the second term, people had had quite enough of it.

TD: Cities are like this they need this switch back and forth between order and disorder. They need that energy that happens when, Hey, heres a big thing thats up in the air, lets put some order on it. Or, Lets blow this thing up. Wall Street becomes a massive gusher of wealth because it had been very circumscribed, very much a 9-to-5 thing. And then the Reagan era blows it up. All these different people introduce the unexpected into the markets again, and that creates a vast amount of wealth. What was orderly suddenly becomes disorderly. But what you can never do is try to create a city that is 100% orderly, because it doesnt exist. Its a computer model. Its SimCity; its not a real place. Giuliani didnt get that. I point out that a lot of the things that he talked about with his big civility push, things that everybody was up in arms about, like lower speed limits, were policies Bill de Blasio later put forward. They werent necessarily horrible things. But when you put them in a context of, Were going to give you five or six things that all happen to most impact people of color, its destructive. Same when you tell people that they have to do these things to be better citizens, to be civil, which is a fraught word. You can have too much order.

HW: So he is leaving at the end of his term and New Yorkers have had their fill of him, and then 9/11 occurs, and everything changes at least for a time. Can you talk about the post-9/11 Rudy?

TD: Remember that the months before 9/11 were just crazy. Rudy was saying terrible things about people whod been killed by the police. Then theres the whole divorce. It became petty and venal and really unattractive, and we were ready to move on, and then 9/11 happens and somehow he transforms and steps into this role of being the city father. He was an amazing figure for this period. He goes to every wake and funeral; hes present in such an important way. If only hed been able to approach the previous eight years with that level of empathy, with that sense of unity, it would have been a remarkable period, because he had it in him somehow.

HW: David Axelrod, the Obama strategist, has a theory around politics. When it comes to chief executives, people look to correct the deficiencies of the predecessor. Often you get opposites: Koch replaces Beame; Dinkins replaces Koch; Giuliani replaces Dinkins. Looking back on it, New York City politics would have been very different absent 9/11. I think in a lot of ways, Freddy Ferrer was better positioned to win the Democratic primary than Mark Green, absent 9/11. The attack upended the political situation both in the primary and the general. So you have the election of Mike Bloomberg, which might not have happened absent 9/11. Talk about the Bloomberg years, recognizing that Im clearly not objective.

TD: Youre right that the expectation for Bloomberg was that he was going to lose. Every prediction was that he was not going to win. So he won in a surprising way, which is also something Koch had. A lot of the people around him were connected to Koch, too. The sense of the city facing an urgent challenge was something those people understood. I think the most important thing he did getting out of the gate was bringing in the best people and re-creating a sense of service, reconnecting the business community that Giuliani did not really have much of a relationship with, to involve them again in the future of the city.

He did that by drawing on his own connections. It was a different paradigm of the city that he was bringing in where he was the center point of every network. For all the pluses and minuses of that, it was made to look apolitical, but in fact it was a new kind of political, and it proved to be effective in some places. But in places where I think there might not have been as much personal investment or a sense that maybe this was something that was intractable, sometimes the ball got dropped. Sometimes he gave things to people who were given maybe more rope than they should have been, who should have been reined in much earlier than they eventually were.

HW: You talk about the city regaining its innocence after 9/11. I think that is a very underappreciated factor in the politics and the culture of the city after 9/11. There was this sense of unity and fraternity that was important in setting the tone for that decade.

TD: The wonderful writer Rebecca Solnit calls it a disaster utopia. We just clung to each other and did all that we could together. The nature of the pandemic is that you cant do that. And that has been incredibly difficult hanging out your window or banging a pot just isnt the same as getting together with two other families, and going to the firehouse and contributing things.

I think that people were ready to get past the divisiveness of Rudy, but then when you threw in 9/11, we really were pushed together. Now, as time goes by, we hear more from communities of color who feel that they were treated unfairly over time. It became apparent that the security we were so focused on, or many of us were focused on, was built on unfairness to others. When you look at some of the things that the NYPD was doing over those years, what was the cost of that sense of unity?

HW: You briefly touch on Bill de Blasio, because the book really ends at the conclusion of the Bloomberg years. De Blasio in many ways is the reaction of Bloomberg and his opposite. Youre pretty tough on de Blasio. When you look at the current field knowing what you know about New York City politics and mayoral elections, how do you imagine that the next couple of months might play out?

TD: De Blasio is the only one of these mayors who didnt come in at a moment of emergency. The other four all walked in the door with people saying the citys going up in flames. Sometimes literally. What crippled de Blasio was the inability to create an idea of one city, no matter how much he talked about Dickens. We need a mayor who is going to be able to ask New Yorkers individually to step up in their lives and look at how we work with each other, how we live with each other, how we contribute to the city in ways that arent just about tax revenue and flipping the switch in the ballot box. Which one of those mayoral candidates is that one hasnt yet been made evident to me, but were watching and hoping.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Howard Wolfson at hwolfson1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net

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NYC Mayoral Election: Thomas Dyja on 40 Years of City Leadership - Bloomberg

When the NFL decided not to punish players who kneeled during the pre-game national anthem, some fans reacted by refusing to attend games, buy league merchandise, or watch games on TV.It took several years for the NFL to win fans back and some -- like me -- broke the habit and never returned, in person, or on TV.Last season, some Major League Baseball (MLB) players also took a knee, but it did not appear to me to be as regular an occurrence as with the NFL. Perhaps it had something to do with the difference in the number of games each sport plays? Apparently, though, MLB is now trying to play catch-up.The commissioner announced last week it is moving the 2021 All Star Game from Atlanta to a yet-to-be-determined location. The stated reason is because the league believes a new Georgia law has made it more difficult for African Americans to vote. The charge has been denied by Gov. Brian Kemp, who has demonstrated he has a backbone by refusing to back down in his support of the law, the purpose of which he claims is to boost voter confidence in the integrity of elections. Those who have reportedly read the law say it doesn't say what critics claim.Delta Airlines and the Coca-Cola Company, both headquartered in Atlanta and caught between Democrats and Republicans, have appeared to bow to considerable pressure to oppose the voting legislation for fear of bad publicity and widespread boycotts.Bullies can only be encouraged by these responses. Where are the CEOs and others who have the nerve to stand their ground and oppose people with nothing better to do with their time than to demand the removal of Confederate statues, change the names of highways dedicated to those who held viewpoints they disagree with, and engage in other unproductive behavior, like moving an All-Star game? Why don't we hear them say "buzz off," or use even stronger language?MLB must know there will be financial consequences to their decision. Atlanta employs many African Americans in front offices, at concession stands, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses, many of which rely on baseball, especially an All-Star game. Atlanta's economy will take a hit at a time when the pandemic has hurt many businesses.A statement by the Atlanta Braves said the organization is "...deeply disappointed by the decision. ... This was neither our decision, nor our recommendation and we are saddened that fans will not be able to see this event in our city. ... Our city has always been known as a uniter in divided times and we will miss the opportunity to address issues that are important to our community. Unfortunately, businesses, employees and fans in Georgia are the victims of this decision."Baseball fans will think they are being taken for granted, as did fans of the NFL. They pay top prices for tickets and contribute to advertising dollars by watching sports broadcasts. They don't want political correctness forced upon them. Sports are supposed to be an oasis where people can escape from the issues and politicians they have to endure elsewhere.I have been a baseball fan since I was a child. I fondly remember games my Dad took me to when the Washington baseball team was known as the Senators. I have taken my kids and grandchildren to Nationals games in recent years.This move by Major League Baseball may prove counterproductive to the brand and potentially harm the fan base. Just as I have found other things to do during football season, I can do likewise when it comes to baseball, as painful as that will be.Washington baseball fans were forced to exist without a team for 33 years. I suspect the District of Columbia and fans of other teams can do without it if MLB doesn't reverse course. If not, fans won't be singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," but "Take Me Out OF the Ballgame."

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Cal Thomas: Take me out of the ballgame - West Central Tribune

HARRISBURG State Representative Stephanie Borowicz (R-Clinton/Centre) released the follow comments in a press release on Monday evening:

Speaking from her perspective as a former student athlete, Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R-Clinton/Centre) Monday participated in a state Capitol news conference to officially introduce the Fairness in Womens Sports Act (House Bill 972), which would further ensure athletic fairness in Pennsylvania by allowing only biological females to compete in womens sports.

I am so proud to be here today as one of the prime sponsors of this legislation to protect womens sports from becoming another interscholastic casualty of political correctness and identity politics, said Borowicz. If there was ever a perfect opportunity to cancel something so disconnected from the highest ideals of American culture and athletic competition, it is guaranteeing that female athletes are no longer forced to compete against biological males either individually or playing on womens sports teams.

At the federal level, Title IX was originally designed to stop discrimination and create equal athletic opportunities for women. However, allowing biological males to compete in girls sports reverses nearly 50 years of advancement for women.

Way back when in the 1990s, when no one was offended by Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head or drinking out of a hose, I learned about the value of teamwork through high school sports, said Borowicz. My competitive nature probably comes from my formative years as a volleyball player. I remember during my senior year when I won the MVP award for an entire tournament. I was 17 years old and uncertain of my capabilities as a player. I remember how much that award boosted my confidence as a woman athlete. Realistically, I probably would not have reached that level of success or contributed to winning three straight state championships if my team had to compete against biological males.

Conserving separate biologically specific teams, which Title IX protects, furthers efforts to promote womens equality. Biologically specific teams accomplish this by providing opportunities for female athletes to demonstrate their skill, strength and athletic abilities while also providing them with opportunities to obtain recognition and accolades, college scholarships, and the numerous other long-term benefits that flow from success in athletic endeavors.

All things considered, the opportunity for girls to compete on a level athletic playing field must be defended at all costs, said Borowicz. Im truly honored to stand alongside my fellow women legislators in cheering on our outstanding student women athletes by co-sponsoring the Fairness in Womens Sports Act.

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Borowicz comments on her support of transgender sports ban - Lock Haven Express

In a 2019 essay entitled Seizing the Means of Knowledge Production, the Columbia sociologist Musa al-Gharbi describes one of the most striking developments of the past few years: the way that a series of ideas, drawn from postmodernism and critical theory, has achieved a surprising degree of hegemony within large segments of the academy, the foundation and museum worlds, HR departments, and the national media.

Terms barely known a decade ago are now commonplace not only among activists, journalists, the intelligentsia or students at elite liberal arts campuses, but among the undergraduates in college classrooms nationwide, raising really fascinating questions about the flow of ideas: how a discourse, once associated with such figures as Derrick Bell, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Kimberl Crenshaw was diffused, disseminated and dispersed.

You know those words and phrases: cultural appropriation, implicit bias, intersectionality, microaggressions, systemic or institutional racism and sexism, white privilege, and woke.

None of those terms is truly new. Most trace their roots to the 1970s, 80s and 90s. But it is only recently that these ideas gained traction in the national press.

This shift in language is not merely of linguistic interest. We are in the midst of a cognitive and moral revolution unmatched since the mid- and late 1960s, when ideas drawn from neo-Marxist and feminist thought, anticolonial and national liberation thinkers, liberation theology, and the Black Power movement posed an earlier challenge to conventional liberalism, or when, in the wake of world war, psychoanalytic and existential ideas dominated the discourse of the professional class.

What we are witnessing is a paradigm shift, as a new generation of thought leaders grapples with some of the pressing issues of our time, and as a new cohort of activists, on campus and elsewhere, deploys a new language to advance a variety of causes, from climate change to transgender rights.

I do not invoke the phrase paradigm shift lightly. I am convinced that we are witnessing something like what Friedrich Nietzsche meant when he wrote about a transvaluation of values -- a shift that has provoked alarm among the many academics associated with the Heterodox Academy or the journalists who publish on Substack.

Why would this be the case? Because of a genuine shift in attitudes toward free speech, sexual and gender identity, consent, and the value of incremental reform. There is a growing sense among many students that:

Today, any discussion of this new discourse inevitably raises the specter of a supposedly intolerant cancel culture with its purportedly rigid strictures of political correctness. This is a view summed up in the title of a recent book by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay: Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity -- and Why This Harms Everybody. Youll recall that Pluckrose and Lindsay sought in 2018 to discredit a whole set of programs in gender, race and sexuality studies by submitting a number of bogus articles to academic journals in those fields.

The new discourse has also generated a political backlash -- a war on woke -- as state legislatures, including those in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia and even New Hampshire (plus some leading French politicians), seek to suppress the teaching of critical theory or critical perspectives on U.S. history under the guise of preventing the propagation of divisive concepts.

There is the call, in Georgia, for every public college and university to identify every course that focuses on privilege and oppression, or the proposal in South Dakota, to bar schools from using any content associated with efforts to reframe this countrys history in a way that promotes racial divisiveness and displaces historical understanding with ideology.

So let me be clear: I am not here to decry this paradigm shift as a retreat from historic liberal values of free speech and freedom of inquiry, or as a symbol and symptom of cultural and intellectual decadence and stagnation.

Arguments like those found in Cynical Theories grossly oversimplify the arguments advanced by figures like Derrida, who was quite right in doubting grand narratives of progress, recognizing the indeterminacy of many truth and fact claims, and asserting the limits of rational inquiry.

The issues that this new paradigm and discourse seek to address are real and pressing, and the questions that it seeks to answer are excruciatingly difficult:

In a very different context, I have described youth as a cultural avant-garde, as the agents of change and transformation who have, historically, been responsible for the creation and actualization of new sensibilities and value systems. That kind of cultural ferment is visible around us today and is creating lots of discomfort as new boundaries of acceptable behavior remain to be delineated.

At times, pushback is not only appropriate, but necessary, especially when viewpoint diversity, open inquiry, constructive disagreement and academic freedom are at risk. But we also need to recognize that at least since the late 18th century, cultural reinvention is youths historic task and wild exaggeration is often the form that this process takes.

It certainly an overstatement to claim that "Each generation goes to battle against the ones that came before." But the historical process is dialectical, and those of us who are academics should feel blessed to have a front-row seat as a set of values appropriate to an extraordinarily diverse society is debated and defined.

I only wish that the campuses offered many more courses that explicitly addressed the issues that our students are confronting -- especially those involving identities, inequities, intimacy and interpersonal interactions -- from an academic perspective.

Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

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What Starts in the Academy Doesn't Stay There | Higher Ed Gamma - Inside Higher Ed

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday warned that anti-white racism might be building in the United States and said that political correctness "taken to the extreme" would have lamentable consequences.

In an interview with political scientists broadcast on national television, Moscow's top diplomat saidRussiahad long supported a worldwide trend that "everyone wants to get rid of racism."

"We were pioneers of the movement promoting equal rights of people of any skin color," he said.

But Lavrov stressed it was important "not to switch to the other extreme which we saw during the 'BLM' (Black Lives Matter) events and the aggression against white people, white U.S. citizens."

Founded in the United States in 2013, Black Lives Matter is a movement which became a rallying cry after the killing by U.S. police of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, last May.

The movement has led to a major debate about race, rights of people of color and the toppling of statues of figures linked to slavery or colonization in countries including the United States and the United Kingdom.

Lavrov accused the United States of seeking to spread what he called "a cultural revolution" around the world.

"They have colossal possibilities for it," he said in the interview.

"Hollywood is now also changing its rules so that everything reflects the diversity of modern society," he said, calling that "a form of censorship."

"I've seen Black people play in Shakespeare's comedies. Only I don't know when there will be a white Othello," Lavrov said.

"You see this is absurd. Political correctness taken to the point of absurdity will not end well."

Originally posted here:

Russia Warns of Anti-White 'Aggression' in US - The Moscow Times

My friend is taking a couple of vacation days this week. Three, to be exact. Asked what he intended to do those three days, he replied, "Lie down on my couch and watch the Masters. What could be better than that?"

There aren't many things in life that are perfect just the way they are. Maybe Mona Lisa's smile. Maybe "It's A Wonderful Life." Most Beatles songs. Hellman's Mayonnaise. A church choir singing "Silent Night" by candlelight on any Christmas Eve.

Then there's Augusta National, the most perfect 345 acres of real estate on God's green earth.

Like my friend, I haven't missed watching the Masters on television, at the very least, since 1966. That's the year the Golden Bear himself, Jack Nicklaus, won his second straight green jacket in a Monday playoff with Tommy Jacobs and Gay Brewer.

At that time, my family's television a black-and-white number, I had no idea the breathtaking beauty of the flora and fauna throughout the course. The green jacket was dark gray on my TV. Not until years later when my parents broke down and got a color set in the mid-1970s did I begin to fully appreciate that spectacular golf was no more than half of the allure of the place.

Then came 1985. My former boss at the Chattanooga News-Free Press, Roy Exum, called me into his office one April morning and told me, "You're going to the Masters for two days. Take a sketch book. Try to come up with something for the Sunday paper."

A few days after that, back on my own couch, I watched the methodical some would say agonizingly slow German, Bernhard Langer, claim that '85 title on a rain-soaked course.

But regardless of the winner, the Masters never lays an egg. It's sometimes quaint (the Iowa native and Prairie Golf Tour alum Zach Johnson in 2007) and often spectacular (Nicklaus' 17-under 271 in 1965, Tiger Woods' 18-under 270 in 1997). It can be eerily quiet on the front nine and deafeningly loud on the back.

It's both crushing (Greg Norman's 1996 collapse and Argentina's Roberto De Vicenzo signing a scorecard in 1968 that had him charged with a 4 on No. 17 instead of the birdie 3 he made, thus costing him the championship by a stroke) and cathartic (an older, more humble, less overwhelming Tiger winning in 2019).

It's also the club occasionally shoveling ice around the azaleas to keep them from blooming too soon if spring comes early. It's dying the water in the ponds and creeks a deep, smoky blue. It's wrapping all the sandwiches, including egg salad and pimento cheese which top out at $3, by the way, never a penny more in deep green paper so that should uncouth soul drop the wrapper on the ground, it will blend in until one of the 3,000 workers on Masters week sweeps in to remove it a minute or two later.

It's not allowing electronics on the course, which means that when the crowds gather around Amen Corner, the majestic and menacing 16th or the 18th green, they're actually glued to the golfers instead of Tweets from LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes.

It's enjoying the best cheeseburger and clam chowder imaginable in the clubhouse grille, the tables and waiters both dressed in heavily starched white cotton as real silverware and china make their distinctive ringing sounds, almost like a handbell choir.

It is, first and foremost, a yearly nod to a more civilized, cultured, mannerly time, political correctness be darned.

This is not to say the Masters is not without social awareness. Lee Elder, the first Black to play the Masters in 1975, will join Nicklaus and Gary Player as this year's honorary starters.

Yet there's also something to be said, whether you agree with it or not, for the private club not being blackmailed into moves it prefers not to make, such as when Martha Burke tried to force a Masters boycott in 2003 because of its all-male membership.

Said chairman Hootie Johnson of that attempt: "There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours and not at the point of a bayonet."

Touche! And true to his word, Johnson nominated Darla Moore in 2012 to become one of the first of the private club's six current female members.

This year's tourney begins at Thursday's dawn. Can defending champ Dustin Johnson win his second Masters in five months, having captured the fan-less, COVID-19, 2020 version back in November? Can Jordan Spieth follow last weekend's drought-ending win in San Antonio with another green jacket performance to match his 2015 title? Can the expected limited crowds of 12,000 sound as loud as the pre-COVID crowds of 40,000 or more come Sunday's back nine?

For those of us of a certain age (BT, as in Before Tiger), there may never be a greater Masters moment than Nicklaus winning the 1986 tourney at the age of 46, his son Jackie on his bag, the two of them exiting the 18th green that Sunday, arms around each other, both men in tears.

The final key moment in that sixth and final Masters triumph for the Golden Bear occurred on the 17th green, Nicklaus eyeing a 12-footer for birdie. Jackie thought the tricky putt would break right, Jack argued that Rae's Creek would pull it left. Jack's judgement earned him the birdie.

Decades later, Jackie told Golf Digest: "In the years after that, Dad and I stuck tees in the ground at the spot where the hole was, trying to make that putt again. We haven't made itnot once."

That's the Masters. Golfing magic you've never seen before and may never see again. And if you're not glued to your couch this week, you just might miss another moment in golf history never to be repeated.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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Wiedmer: The Masters is the only sporting event that always delivers - Chattanooga Times Free Press