Category Archives: Political Correctness

At the same time, Hajkova insists that exposing stories of sexual assault and homophobia is an overtly political act, clearly connecting to contemporary debates over #MeToo and LGBT.

In that, she could risk a backlash. Holocaust history has become something of a minefield in Central Europe, as right-wing regimes seek to mould narratives to suit their agenda.

Terezin sits just 60km from Poland, where the Law & Justice (PiS) government is pressing for tight control of WWII history including the Nazi death camps that were established in the country to mobilise support for its nationalist populism.

This push, which includes a Holocaust law criminalising claims that Poles engaged in any of the Nazis crimes, has put academics on the frontline. Historians straying from the official narrative have faced lawsuits, job losses and persecution in the press.

But the Czech approach to 20th century history is very different. Highly individualistic, Czech society is largely immune to the blood-and-soil rhetoric employed to promote nationalism elsewhere in the region, suggests Ondrej Klipa, an associate professor at Pragues Charles University.

That may have also helped to stymie the relationship of Czechs with Terezin. Hajkova says she has faced no blowback from her work on the camp, though the author suggests there are more specific reasons her work has not incurred the kind of anger that it might meet elsewhere.

There is no real debate over the history of Terezin in Czechia, she says, although is careful to stress that this is her personal, rather than scholarly, opinion. Compared with most countries towards the eastern end of Europe, Hajkova continues, the Czechs understand the Holocaust as a story apart that does not play a large role in national memory.

That, she suggests, may be because the country did not suffer the same depth of trauma as its neighbours. However, the historian also notes the way in which virulent anti-communism has come to dominate the national narrative in the Czech public and political spheres.

Its a dynamic illustrated by recent political episodes. The former Senate president Jaroslav Kubera became a hero last year when his defiance of the Chinese Communist Party ended in a fatal heart attack. Yet that status was bestowed upon him by the nation not long after he told an audience at Terezin that totalitarianism and racism have taken the form of environmental protection, gender equality, political correctness and multiculturalism.

More recently, protestors appeared on the streets of Prague wearing yellow stars, claiming that those refusing COVID-19 vaccination will be marked out in the same way that Jews were during the war. Still, there was little public outcry, save for the objections of stunned Jewish groups.

Thus, Hajkovas book challenges not so much established national narratives of the ghetto and Holocaust, but a virtual wall of silence.

I think its liberating and helps people to think about the societies they live in to tell these silenced stories, the author argues. Czechia has not had this reckoning with its past when it comes to communism, nor the Holocaust.

See the article here:

The silences of Terezin - Balkan Insight

Before Wakanda, there was Zamunda.

The 1988 film Coming to America, directed by John Landis, depicted a realized African dynasty that could only be described as fit for a prince. Naturally, no better fit for the main role was there than comedic prince Eddie Murphy.

The films release resulted in both domestic and worldwide success at the box office and is now revered as a cultural treasure and a nostalgia-inducing classic in Eddie Murphys royal arsenal of filmography.

So when the announcement came that a sequel was in the works, it understandably came with some skepticism. In a world of political correctness and cancel culture, fans of the original film feared that the sequel would not include elements of what made the 1988 film so iconically funny.

Eddie Murphy returns as Prince Akeem Joffer, the heir to the Zamundan throne, now a doting husband to his Queen Lisa, played by Shari Headley. He is also now a loving father to three daughters; his oldest and youngest daughters, Meeka and Tinashe, are played by Kiki Layne and Akiley Love respectively, and Murphys real-life daughter Bella has the role of Akeems middle daughter, Omma.

When Akeems father King Jaffe, played by James Earl Jones, passes away, he must travel once again to Queens, New York, to find the true heir to the throne of Zamunda. With the help of his loyal confidante of 30 years, Semmi, played by Arsenio Hall, Akeem locates his son, Lavelle, played by Jermaine Fowler.

Accompanied by his mother, played by Leslie Jones, Lavelle returns to Zamunda with King Akeem to learn of his newfound princely duties. King Akeem concludes that there is more to being a king than assuming the throne, and that family is the greatest ruler of all.

One of the triumphs of the film is its ability to introduce sociopolitical issues relevant to real-life experiences of Black people. This is displayed in a particular scene where Lavelle is at a job interview at the Duke and Duke firm. The reference to the business is a clever nod to the Brothers Duke from the 1983 film Trading Places, two other antagonists in the EMCU (Eddie Murphy Cinematic Universe).

Interviewed by Calvin Duke, played by Saturday Night Live news correspondent Colin Jost, Lavelle points out the disparities that exist between him and his white interviewer. Much to Dukes chagrin, Lavelle is more than happy to walk out of the interview so as not to feel any further onslaught of microaggressions.

Although there were opportunities in the film where the comedy couldve been taken back to 1988, the fresh take on dry humor and the myriad of cultural references bring the world of Zamunda into the 21st century. As a word of caution, older fans can take note from Akeems daughter Omma: to be on fleek is no more.

The storyline would be remiss if it didnt include some of the original films beloved characters, many played by Hall and Murphy: the neighborhood barbers with their tongue-in-cheek rapport, the musical stylings of Randy Watson and Sexual Chocolate, and the chaotic-but-devout Reverend Brown. Also returning is the head of the McDowells fast-food empire, Cleo McDowell, played by John Amos.

Alongside the characters from the 1988 film, Coming 2 America embellishes a star-studded cast that is on par with the gems of the Royal Jewels. Fans can revel in cameos from Morgan Freeman, En Vogue, Salt-N-Pepa, Gladys Knight, Teyana Taylor, Rick Ross and Trevor Noah, to name a few.

While Coming 2 America may not have met the full expectations of those fans who longed for a film that calls back to the era of Eddie Murphys Raw, the purpose of the film served as a way to blend the generations of fans who consider the original film a staple of Black cinema. Zamunda may be a place of fiction, but the reality of Black excellence lives on.

See the original post here:

'Coming 2 America' is a royal flush 30 years in the making - Mesa Press

( Halfpoint/Getty Images)

With last weeks introduction in Congress of the misleadingly named Civics Secures Democracy Act, we are headed toward an epic clash over the spread of uber-controversial pedagogies Critical Race Theory and Action Civics to Americas classrooms. I dont know whether the country will wake up to the danger of this legislation before or after it passes. Sooner or later, however, the truth will out. When it does, the culture war will have merged with K12 education-policy disputes to a degree never before seen.

Because this new legislation is a backdoor effort to impose a de facto national curriculum in the politically charged subject areas of history and civics, the battle will rage in the states, at the federal level, and between the states and the federal government as well. The Biden administrations Education Department will almost certainly collaborate in this attempt to develop a set of national incentives, measures, and penalties that effectively force Critical Race Theory and Action Civics onto states and localities. The likelihood of education controversies moving from third-tier to first-tier issues in federal elections has never been greater.

The Republicans who have co-sponsored the Civics Secures Democracy Act in the Senate (John Cornyn) and the House (Tom Cole) have been hornswoggled and hogtied into backing legislation that is about as far from conservative as a bill could be. It should be said in extenuation of their decision that the bill is careful to bury its true ends under anodyne jargon. You have to know a lot about Action Civics, for example, to understand that this bill is designed to force it onto the states. Most conservatives dont even know what Action Civics is, much less understand its misleading jargon. The very term Action Civics is a euphemism for political protests for course credit, something close to the opposite of a proper civics course. Thats one reason why the Civics Secures Democracy Act is so egregiously misnamed.

There have, of course, been many important education battles in our time. The conservative movement was founded by William F. Buckleys 1951 book, God and Man at Yale, an early attack on the secular socialism of the university. Cultural issues remained important to movement conservatism, yet the focus soon turned to politics and policy in the ordinary sense. The 1960s gave birth to a series of intense cultural battles, with universities as epicenters of controversy. Yet many of the clashes were over the war and the draft. For the most part, the federal government kept out of higher-education controversies in that era.

The battle over the teaching of Western Civilization at Stanford in 1987 kicked off a decade-long culture war over multiculturalism and political correctness, the ancestor of our clashes today. At this point, education battles began to seep into national politics, especially via the actions of Education Secretary William Bennett and National Endowment for the Humanities chair Lynne Cheney. Even so, universities incubating what eventually was to become todays woke culture were largely insulated from government intervention by academic freedom.

The Obama administration pushed the K12 Common Core on states, but the founders of Common Core made a calculated decision to omit the controversial subjects of history and civics from that effort. They understood the dangers of mixing education policy with high-intensity culture war issues. Now, however, in an attempt to complete the creation of a de facto national curriculum, the top supporters of Common Core (including, sad to say, a few conservatives) have formed an alliance with the top national advocates of Action Civics and Critical Race Theory. The result is what we see in the Civics Secures Democracy Act and what were likely to get very soon from the Biden administration a de facto national curriculum in Action Civics and Critical Race Theory. And all of this is happening as woke culture is spilling out of the campuses and into the wider society. Once the reality of this new push for education reform comes into the open, we will see the culture war merge with the details of federal education policy in unprecedented fashion.

What does the not-so-civic Civics Secures Democracy Act of 2021 actually do? Above all, it appropriates $1 billion for federal grants to support K12 curriculum development, teacher training, and research on the K12 teaching of history and civics. Sounds good, if expensive, until you look at the fine print. Priority for grants is decided according to two basic criteria.

First of all, priority goes to grants that support evidence-based practices. The bill goes on to list these supposedly evidence-based practices, which are essentially the menu of troubling teaching techniques favored by the movement for Action Civics (Bill Page 5, Line 16-Page 6, Line 5). These are the very same practices I have written model legislation to block at the state level. They include: 1) directing teachers to discuss current social and political controversies in class; 2) out-of-class political protests and lobbying (nearly always for leftist causes) for course credit (in the bill, called projects and experiential learning) and 3) internships with (invariably leftist) lobbying and advocacy organizations for course credit (in the bill, called service learning).

Programs in media literacy are also marked as a priority. These programs ostensibly warn students away from dangerous conspiracy theories. In practice, however, they discourage students from looking at conservative sources and hold up mainstream media fact-checkers (largely left-biased) as sources of ultimate authority. Essentially, media literacy programs favored by advocates of the new civics inculcate the Democratic Partys position on fake news.

The upshot is that the lions share of this billion-dollar jackpot will support mandatory leftist protest, lobbying, and indoctrination, while supporters of traditional civics and history will be frozen out.

The second criterion for priority applies to grants that improve knowledge and engagement among traditionally underserved students, as well as grants that promise to close gaps in knowledge and achievement among students of different income levels, racial and ethnic groups, and native languages. This gives the inside lane to Critical Race Theory, while largely disqualifying those who believe that American history and civics can unify if presented in a broadly similar manner to students of all incomes, races, and ethnicities.

That may sound too strong. Keep in mind, however, that the main public justification for the controversial, Critical Race Theory-based Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards just approved in Illinois was that they would be more likely to attract minority teachers and more likely to appeal to minority students, thereby closing achievement gaps. Yet those standards force teachers to call America systemically racist, affirm the fluidity of gender, mitigate their Euro-centrism and whiteness, and substitute activism for achievement when grading students. Finding creative ways to present traditional civics to minorities is one thing. Teaching radical activism is quite another.

Yet the movement for Critical Race Theory in education essentially presents itself as fulfilling both priority criteria for grants listed in this bill: experiential advocacy projects designed to appeal to minority students. We are talking about Black Lives Matter protests outside of police stations for course credit. And the grants will be disbursed by President Bidens Education Department, sure to be staffed by left-leaning bureaucrats who believe as does the president that our country is systemically racist. Put together the priority criteria and a Democrat-controlled Department of Education and you will see a tremendous number of grants going to Critical Race Theory-based political advocacy programs, all under the label of civics.

Critical Race Theory, of course, is antithetical to the classically liberal principles upon which our constitutional republic rests. Teaching it is actually a form of anti-civics. Yet that is what hundreds of millions of dollars disbursed by the Civics Secures Democracy Act is going to be used for.

So, the Civics Secures Democracy Act is a massive boondoggle in support of politicizing students and teaching them to trade away equality and individual liberty for identity politics and the redistribution of . . . well, pretty much everything. But theres more. On top of its billion-dollar lure, the bill revamps a key national test as a backdoor way of imposing a de facto national curriculum on the states.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), famous as the nations report card, is the national test that allows us to tell how well the states are doing at teaching basic knowledge and skills. NAEP allows us to see that, whereas Americas reading and math scores had once been headed up, Common Core has brought them down. Yet NAEP was never intended to create a national curriculum. On the contrary, NAEP was deliberately designed to make it difficult or impossible to link its results to state or local curricula. If anything, by revealing the failure of Common Core, NAEP has already discredited the very idea of a de facto national curriculum.

For decades, however, some have dreamed of using NAEP as a way of imposing what amounts to a national curriculum on the states. If NAEP could be aligned to specific history or civics standards, and administered in such a way as to facilitate state-by-state comparisons between results, the test could effectively force a federal curriculum on states and localities. Variable state NAEP results could then be tied to the awarding of federal grants. State-by-state rankings would have a profound effect on parental satisfaction with schools, and thus on migration in and out of state by both individuals and businesses.

The Civics Secures Democracy Act of 2021 is very much part of an effort to use NAEP to force a revisionist history and civics curriculum down the throats of unsuspecting states and localities. The bill would increase and regularize NAEP assessments in history and civics, facilitate state-by-state comparisons, and condition grants on the willingness of a state to participate in the history and civics portions of the test on a regular basis. Grant renewals would also be conditioned on statewide performance on the reorganized NAEP.

Combine this with the ambitions of the new, supposedly bipartisan, Educating for American Democracy (EAD) initiative (aptly described as a Trojan Horse for Woke Education). The leftist leaders of EAD, who just happen to be the chief public backers of the Civics Secures Democracy Act of 2021, issued a draft report on implementation that I have seen, but that seems not to have been released to the public in final form. That draft report calls for NAEP to be redesigned to align with EAD. This would be an inexcusable national power-grab and an affront to the proper purpose of NAEP. Its clear, however, that this is exactly what the bogus leftist civics coalition wants. (For a new report by the Heritage Foundation critical of EAD and its national ambitions, go here. For more critiques of EAD, go here and here.)

In effect, we are looking at an effort to impose a new federal Common Core in the politically explosive subject areas of history and civics. Worse, the program in each of these areas does more than just lean a bit toward the left side of the political spectrum. Instead, it sharply breaks with fundamental assumptions in American education, first by promoting illiberal Critical Race Theory, and second by turning what should be a politically neutral classroom into a training ground for leftist advocacy and lobbying.

All around us, the culture war has broken the bounds of the university and spilled into our day-to-day lives. Conservatives and traditional liberals are rightly up in arms about the woke assault on our most fundamental freedoms, extending to inculcating guilt and shame in elementary-school students for the color of their skin. The Democrats in Congress, in league with the Biden administration and the leftist Action Civics movement, are about to supercharge this culture war by injecting it into the heart of federal education policy. Whether sooner or later, this is destined to become the greatest education battle of our lifetimes.

See more here:

The Greatest Education Battle of Our Lifetimes - National Review

When Jennifer Lopez sang "This Land is Your Land" at the presidential inauguration in January, my phone blew up with messages saying, J. Los singing your song!

Its understandable why so many friends and peers associate the song with me: I talk about Woody Guthrie an awful lot. Ever since I first read Bound for Glory in high school, Ive never quite been able to shut up about the man: this Walt Whitman with a James Dean sneer, this Will Rogers with a razor in his shoe, this proto-punk poet who was just anarchic enough to believe in human decency, American potential, and though he sprouted from deeply racist roots in Jim Crow Oklahoma a racially inclusive society.

And so, as youd expect, his anthemic, tongue-in-cheek retort to Irving Berlins God Bless America has a special place in my heart, too. Its long been a central pillar of both my public performances and my educational programs for kids.

In theschool programsI teach on social justice, I use the song to unpack the idea of ownership. Whereas the chorus and first two verses speak to what we collectivelygetfrom America, the rarely sung additional verses ask what weowe to each other, specifically.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple;By the relief office, I'd seen my people.As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,Is this land made for you and me?

In the programs I teach on writing, meanwhile, I use the song to teach about structure and rhyme scheme, and the ways in which a masterful lyricist like Guthrie is able to break all the rules.

But lately, Ive been rethinking my reliance on the song in my teaching, and the unintended message I may be sending to kids through its lens on American history a lens that obscures the fact that our land was, in fact, taken from its native inhabitants by force.

In 2019, Mali Obomsawin, a member of the folk trio Lula Wiles, wrote a piece for Folklife Magazine on how the song speaks to her as a citizen of the Abenaki First Nation: This land is your land, this land is my land These lyrics shake me up like a soda can every time I hear them. She makes a compelling case for why the lyrics, intentionally or not, reinforce Native oppression.

The article was met with quick backlash. Conservative papers reacted about how youd expect, but the reaction from many on the left was damning too. What both sides shared was a breezy dismissal of the concerns of a woman of color one with multi-layered expertise on the subject by largely white male authors.

Obomsawin is not the first Indigenous American musician to object to how This Land is Your Land has been sung and used over the years. Raye Zaragoza has spoken out about it too, and Buffy Sainte-Marie, one of the best-known Indigenous performers of all time, has long voiced her objections.

Somehow, though, Id never heard these perspectives until recently. Maybe its because the media is publishing wider perspectives than they used to. More likely its because Im paying more attention.

I dont want to throw away my beloved This Land is Your Land. But the opinions of musicians like Obomsawin and Sainte-Marie matter to me.

Like many white Americans, I was jolted out of a complicit slumber by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor this past year. Instead of just shaking my head and dashing off another ineffectual social media post, I decided to go deeper this time. I helped start a racial justice coalition in the Boston suburb where I live and another in children's music. I worked more closely than I ever had with Black and brown peers in these groups. I heard their stories, I asked questions. I learned to talk a little less and listen a little more.

And then, a few months ago, I was faced with a dilemma: I received a Grammy nomination, along with four other white nominees, for Best Childrens Album of the Year. Unlike when I was nominated as part of an all-white slate in 2013, this timeI recognized that there was a problem.

Artists of color have been deeplyunderrepresented in this category over the years. While there are complicated and nuanced reasons for this, the end result is a lack of representation that is not OK especially in a genre like childrens music, where musicians are uniquely tasked with modeling fairness, kindness and inclusion.

So, after much deliberation and communication with others involved, I and two of the other five nominated acts decided to respectfully decline our nominations. An NPR story on our decision led to a rash of national coverage. Like Obomsawin, we were trolled by white nationalists, but we also heard from many on the left who felt our move was misguided. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who weighed in were white.

I dont want to throw away my beloved This Land is Your Land. Its one of the songs that made me want to be a songwriter and that, despite its shortcomings, still resonates with me deeply. But the opinions of musicians like Obomsawin and Sainte-Marie matter to me. If I value their worth and intellect as musical peers and human beings, then I need to make a genuine effort to hear them to check my defensive instincts and be willing to reconsider my assumptions, even around something I love.

This is the work of allyship. Its not about political correctness. Its not even about getting it right. Its about trying to create more space for other voices and being willing to loosen our grip on the things weve convinced ourselves we need.

In this case, it may mean coming around to the idea that the best way to honor Woody Guthries vision of an equitable and inclusive nation is to live his famous words rather than sing them.

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Why I'd Rather Live Woody Guthrie's Words Than Sing Them - WBUR

How much blood has to spill on the streets of a city before elected officials give up political correctness and embrace tough policing.

Seattles murder rate rose more than 60 percent last year and violent assaults are up this year too.

Portlands worse. Shootings more than doubled last year.

Mayor Ted Wheelers cave-in to his violent Antifa and BLM friends led to cuts of tens of millions in police

That left the city with 55 homicides in last year: the highest number in a quarter century.

For context, only 20 people were murdered the year Wheeler first took office in 2016

This year, so far, we are already on track to top 100 murders.

And whats city halls solution? Portland has one of the lowest number of officers per capita anywhere in America.

And were short 90 cops right now. The city hasnt hired a single cop in the last 8 months.

And now the city council, unbelievably, wants to cut police 5% more with the promise it will put back 1 percent next year

How does this hit YOU?

When youre hurt or dying or in trouble and you call 9-1-1 for a lights and siren cop at top speedthe bureaus GOAL is to get to you 8 minutes after dispatch.

Theyre currently averaging 11 minutes.

My suggestion? Buy a gun, spend time at the range, get your shots inside the ten ring, and aim for center of mass.

The post Northwest Government Seems To Urge People To Buy A Gun For Protection appeared first on The Lars Larson Show.

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Northwest Government Seems To Urge People To Buy A Gun For Protection - 550 KTSA

THOMAS BALL (HAS, Feb 20) has completely misunderstood my previous letter (HAS Feb 16). I was not suggesting that any letters should not have been published long may we continue to Hear All Sides.

I was merely pointing out the absurdity of complaining that you are not allowed to say something, and then saying it thereby demonstrating that you ARE allowed to say it!

Political correctness if it even exists clearly does not amount to suppression of free speech as Mr Ball has alleged, though I hope he agrees that it is a good thing that certain racist, homophobic and misogynist terms of abuse are no longer deemed acceptable.

Mr Ball is even free to present complete garbage as fact, for example his assertion that Christians who wish to adopt children must hide their faith, and that same-sex couples are given priority.

I hope that no one, gay or straight, Christian or otherwise, who is considering adoption will be put off by these entirely unfounded claims.

Pete Winstanley, Durham.

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Political correctness row: 'Political correctness does not amount to the suppression of free speech' - The Northern Echo

The decision of Amnesty International to withdraw its designation of Aleksey Navalny as a prisoner of conscience reflects not the success of Kremlin actions but rather a fundamental change in the West, Sergey Shelin says. Fifty years ago, the West spoke on behalf of freedom. Now it doesnt.

Instead, many of its opinion leaders worry about political correctness and want to avoid any problems if someone dredges up something from the past of an individual they would have supported earlier, an approach that seriously limits their ability to influence Russia and other authoritarian states, the Rosbalt commentator says (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2021/02/26/1889594.html).

I dont know how long the new West will be what it is today, Shelin says. But in its present state it cannot help us morally because it simply isnt capable of doing so. Its view of reality is completely different from what it was a half century ago. Then the language of freedom existed, in which it was possible to speak with the West. But now it doesnt exist.

Both sides are the losers, he suggests, as the Amnesty International action shows. That is because most Russians accept the mistaken notion that Navalny is simply a pawn in the geopolitical game and are convinced that he has no real possibility of achieving power inside his own country.

In the short term, all this is true, Shelin continues. But not in the long term and not even in the medium one. That becomes obvious if one considers the Brezhnev era, whose most important feature was not stagnation but the ideological dispute with the West about rights and freedoms.

In that dispute, the West confidently attacked, and the Kremlin tried to defend itself. The Nobel prizes given to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1970 and Andrey Sakharov in 1975 marked them as moral leaders. Both dissidents and the powers shared that assessment and that laid the groundwork for real change.

Still more important, he says, is that when perestroika began, people at the top and bottom viewed these changes not only as a moral victory of our homegrown defenders of rights and freedoms but as a success of Western values which were viewed as indivisible and convincing.

But what do we see now? Amnesty International apologizes for what it feels compelled to do in stripping Navalny of its designation as a prisoner of conscience but it also makes clear that it feels it has no choice, making statements he made 15 years ago more important than the fundamental issues he is raising now.

Clearly, a different atmosphere exists in the West and therefore the Wests ability to affect Russia has changed. What Russians and everyone else can see is that the West is no longer engaged in the defense of rights and freedoms but in punishment for sins against political correctness no longer how long ago they were committed.

In todays world, there is no chance that Navalny would be given the Nobel Prize as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov were. Their petty failings would have kept them from receiving it, just as they are preventing Navalny from being a prisoner of conscience on the lists of Amnesty International.

Those who make these decisions simply want toavoid running afoul of the guardians of political correctness. They no longer are concerned with promoting the Western values about rights and freedoms. That is a defeat not only for the West in Russia but a defeat for the West as such.

It no longer speaks confidently for the principles on which it claims to be based. It simply wants to avoid problems with those who demand political correctness regardless of what that means for anyone, Shelin says.

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Political Correctness Dominates West And Weakens Its Influence Over Russia And Other Authoritarian Countries - OpEd - Eurasia Review

Bill Maher is no stranger to saying controversial things during his 40-year career and he knows it comes with the territory of being a public figure. But now theReal Timehost says that no one is safe from having any past mistake used against them or blown out of proportion due to the age of cancel culture and woke mobs.

The internet, and more specifically social media, has made it so that much of our daily lives are documented and archived. It also means that as norms change and the definitions of what is acceptable evolve, past actions can look pretty bad.

Bill Maher has no problem with this nor does he think that actually offensive and reprehensible behavior should be permitted. But the comedian wants a little nuance brought to the discussion when it comes to canceling someone.

As he explained last night inReal Times New Rule segment, people need to be allowed to make mistakes and not have their lives ruined. It doesnt matter if it is Gina Carano, aBachelorcontestant, or a random guy driving his truck. Maher says its time to stand up to woke mobs.

Anyone who has watchedReal Time with Bill Maherfor any length of time knows that Bill Maher strongly opposes political correctness and the hyper-sensitivity he says exhibited by liberals. Everything from Halloween to elections has been negatively influenced by wokeness according to Maher. It was just last year that Maher called on liberals to stop judging peoples past behavior by todays standards.

In many cases, the only way to get out from under the microscope is to apologize. Recently, celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Chris Harrison have issued public apologies after facing backlash for past transgressions and comments. Maher refuses to accept this as the right thing to do and instead calls for more people to stand their ground.

There is no denying that mob mentality comes with its own set of dangers. Social media makes it easy for both the truth and misconceptions to spread quickly. Countless articles, essays, and op-eds have been written about cancel culture. Even former President Barack Obama has criticized it. Altogether, it means that this is a complex topic that has valid points on all sides.

But Bill Maher lays out his argument in under seven minutes. He cites polls indicating that a majority of Americans are afraid to share their political beliefs and oppose the sensitive climate we live in. He argues that nobody stands up to it because its safer to just join the mob. Anyone considering breaking out of that mold will have Bill Maher with them.

What did you think of Bill Mahers New Rule segment on cancel culture? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Bill Maher: Cancel culture and woke mobs need to be stopped - Last Night On

During the Trump administration, the media and the Left in general were obsessed with Trumps lying, reporting breathlessly everytime he said something that was the least bit inaccurate as a lie. (I will admit he very often got things wrong and may have even intentionally lied at times, but Im not going to cry to the heavens because a politician may have lied thats what they do.)

And, as a corollary to this obsession, the Left also told us how Biden was going to tell the truth and how they, in general, were paragons of truth and virtue and could be trusted to tell the truth, unlike those baddies in the Republican/Conservaitve/Trump-supporting camp.

The latest example is Biden himself saying that when he came to office, there was no plan for distributing the vaccine, even though on the day of his inauguration, nearly 1 million vaccines were being administered per day.

If one does a simple search, you can find a press release from Sept. 16th from the Department of Health and Human Services outlining the details of the distribution plan, including the announcement of a contract with McKesson Corporation, signed in August, to execute the task.

This is DISTRIBUTION, not development of the vaccine, which was well underway at the time and, as we all know, achieved the amazing feat of delivering the vaccine in less than 12 months (i.e., Operation Warpspeed).

But nevermind. Biden and his entire administration lie repeatedly about what the Trump administration did, but never express a single iota of appreciation for their unprecedented work to fund and remove barriers for the vaccines development.

Does the media call him or them on that? No. They echo those sentiments and report them uncritically. The hypocrisy of it all is too much to take! How can we trust the 4th Estate to properly monitor and hold to account our government when they lie about one administration while allowing the other administration to lie without limit?

Its bad for democracy, and not in the fake way the ninnies in the press cried about it when Trump criticized their biased coverage. This is REALLY bad and can lead to corruption and abuse on levels unimaginable. Why would anyone in the Biden administration feel the need to be truthful and transparent when they know the media will carry their water at every step?

But if we move away from the strictly political sphere and into the world of entertainment, which has become so political as to be nearly inseparable from politics, we see more such blatant lying.

Disney+ recently fired Gina Carano, star of their hit series The Mandalorian, for the following reason: her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable. This is a serious charge. I wouldnt blame a company for firing someone who expressed such sentiments, but what if this charge werent true?

That is precisely the case. I will try and summarize as briefly as possible. Her two actions on Twitter that led to these charges were as follows: she identified her gender as beep/bop/boop on her profile page, and likened the hatred that some people are showing to their fellow citizens to what happened in Nazi Germany leading up to the Holocaust.

Carano was accused of making fun of trans people by listing her gender as beep/bop/boop, but explained very clearly at the time that that wasnt her intention and that rather she was pushing back against Twitters demands that all people must list their preferred pronoun. She was pushing back against Big Tech censorship and political correctness. But her explanations were routinely ignored and she was instead convicted of being transphobic, thus the accusation of her denigrating people based on their culture.

Her tweet about Nazi treatment of Jews was not in the least anti-Semitic. Only someone 100% bent on misinterpreting it could come up with such a ridiculous charge. She made it clear that she was referring to the tendency of people to hate their neighbors as being a bad thing, a dangerous thing that could lead to worse things, and did not accuse either side specifically of being guilty of such behavior. She was criticized for using the Holocaust analogy too casually and apologized for her overreach in that regard, but her clear intention certainly wasnt to denigrate people based on their religious identity.

And yet, here was Disney, lying about who she was, and lying in a particularly horrible way.

Just play the flip-it game and imagine if Disney fired a liberal actor for comparing something to the Nazis oh wait. That happened, at least the liberal actor part. Pedro Pascal, the lead actor in The Mandalorian, compared the Trump administration to the Nazis for their treatment of illegal immigrants, and used a picture from the Obama administration to prove his point. Of course, he faced no such charges from Disney or anyone else, much less termination.

The hypocrisy is so brazen, so shocking, Im not sure what to do or say anymore.

It is a sad day to realize that we live in a country when the major powers in our culture government, media, entertainment can simply lie about important topics and get away with it scot-free, all the while accusing their opponents of being inveterate liars.

It is truly a kind of totalitarianism, one not so much imposed by armed revolutionary guards, but by subtle yet nearly complete control of the channels of communication by one side to achieve their ends. Lying is par for the course for them because they genuinely believe that the ends justify the oh-so-noble means.

Just know that when you destroy truth in a culture, when you need it to defend yourself it wont be there for you. The only way to halt this precipitous and destructive trend is to demand truth, real truth, from all sectors of society and to not tolerate it yourself. Tell the truth, for the truth will set you free.

Trey Hoffman

Peachtree City, Ga.

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Lying continues with Biden, ignored by media - The Citizen.com

I know it can be dangerous, but I was just thinking

So theres this story in one of the outdoor magazines I subscribe to and it tells of how the state of Oklahoma has introduced a bill to create a hunting season for Bigfoot. Yes, you read that right.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Justin Humphrey, a Republican, isnt designed to kill Bigfoot; its intent is to trap the creature. But heres the clincher and clear proof that common sense among too many of our population has drifted off to la-la land.

It will be a great way for people to enjoy our area and to have some fun. A lot of people dont believe in Bigfoot, but a lot of people do, Humphrey said. Just like some people like to go deer hunting, while some dont.

That logic, or lack thereof, is as lame as the Bigfoot fantasy itself. Hey, Bigfoot boy, people go deer hunting with the hope or expectation of killing a deer. We know there are deer; we have seen them. But this Bigfoot fantasy? I think it might go a long way in helping to explain that, if enough people can actually believe in something like Bigfoot, heck, you might be able to get people to believe that a lying, corrupt, failure-ridden, bankrupt businessman is, well, actually none of those things and can become our president.

This is but one more example of how some people are drifting away from reality into their own strange reality orbit. What next, people spending billions on their pets while homeless people and the poor in this country go wanting?

Why, yes, Virginia, that just happens to be the case.

An Associated Press story, which ran in this newspaper on Jan. 15, declared that, last year, Americans were expected to spend a whopping $99 billion on cats and dogs, according to the American Pet Products Association.

Pets, which were once banished to the backyard, are now sleeping in their human beds as Americans treat their cats and dogs like family members, the AP said.

Family members? theyre dogs and cats, for crying out loud. What about homeless veterans? Could we send a couple of billion dollars their way? And how about the poor and the struggling working class, whose numbers rise with every passing year. We should be ashamed.

To be clear, I love dogs not so much cats as much as the next person. Heck, I once had a wonderful dog, Bear was his name. He was a Newfoundland and to this day, I grieve his passing. In fact, I was so moved that wrote about it more than 35 years ago and to this day, people still bring that column up.

Dogs comfort older folks, relax our children and provide us with companionship, particularly for those who live alone. But lets put all of this in perspective. They are animals, not meant to be dressed up like dolls, not meant to be treated as royalty, not meant to be treated better than humans.

OK, now that I am on a rant, lets go to complaint No. 3. I was watching this guy on YouTube a few weeks ago and was listening to him telling his amazed guest about how he travels to Colorado to hunt elk with a bow. And when he talked about his success, he repeatedly made a reference to how he harvested his elk.

It seems that it has become fashionable to replace the word kill with harvest because, you know, it sounds so much nicer. This is the same group of largely right-wing rednecks who criticize the liberal establishment for their political correctness.

As I remember, the first time I heard any of this harvest stuff was in a news release out of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. That was more than 20 years ago and I called them out on it then. It just didnt sound right. When I head out, with a bow, a rifle, a muzzleloader or a shotgun, I have no desire to harvest anything. Ill put off the harvesting for when I pick my tomatoes or peppers. As for hunting, I kill my game. And any talk about harvesting is just another attempt to soften up the act, as if we needed to soften it at all. We dont want to offend non-hunters out there and, more to the point, we dont want to offend those folks who are against hunting.

Hunters should ban this word from their vocabulary because all it does is soft-pedal what it is that we, as hunters, do out there.

Well, its time to get out the shovel and work on the driveway. Is it my imagination or are we getting snow just about every day now? Yeah, Im heading out to harvest a big pile of snow.

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Jensen Afield: Of dogs, cats and Bigfoot | Weekend Magazine | rutlandherald.com - Rutland Herald