The FBI’s Catholic Canard - WSJ - "House Republicans are accusing the Federal Bureau of Investigation of political bias, and the bureau certainly isn’t helping its own defense. See its retraction of a field-office report lumping some “traditionalist” Catholics with “violent extremists” and calling for government investigation. A whistleblower last week leaked a January report from the FBI’s Richmond office entitled: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.” According to this FBI catechism, “radical-traditionalist Catholics” are characterized by their devotion to the Latin Mass, their disdain for modern popes, and their “frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.” The Latin Mass? Maybe that was a threat to the Roman republic, circa 50 A.D., but not to America’s in 2023... Some 70 million Americans are Catholic, and it’s no shock that they are a diverse church. The intellectual sloppiness—and danger—of the report is its embrace of the false leftist political narrative that religiously inspired support of traditional marriage or pro-life views amount to a rising domestic terror threat. The document is notable for its lack of evidence that “radical” traditionalist Catholics have done anything to warrant targeting—beyond noting that some outside “extremists” have popped up in places of worship or online forums. This feels like a repeat of the Justice Department’s shoddy rationale for targeting parents for objecting to school shutdowns or mask mandates. The document’s “open source” reporting comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has spent years branding mainstream conservative groups as “hate” organizations and has no credibility outside progressive circles. The FBI gumshoes also point to articles in Salon and The Atlantic, which shows they need to expand their reading lists."
Libs of TikTok on Twitter - "NBC News is upset that a parent filed a police report on a middle school teacher for reading an LGBTQ book to students For some reason they didn’t provide examples from the book which the teacher showed to students. I wonder why… It teaches how to have gay sex and use sex apps."
Of course, on Facebook lots of credulous liberals lapped it up
NBC fact-checked on Twitter for 'misleading' on LGBTQ book parents complained about - "NBC News was fact-checked by Twitter users Wednesday after the media outlet used a misleading photo in a tweet about a sexually-explicit LGBTQ book increasingly found in school libraries across the country. "An Illinois teacher offered her middle schoolers a bestselling LGBTQ-themed book. Parents filed a police report over her book choice," the NBC News tweet read. While teacher Sarah Bonner read to her class the LGBTQ book entitled "This Book is Gay," NBC used a photo of the teacher holding a different book. Twitter users flagged the tweet as misleading. "The incorrect book is shown. The book in question is, ‘This Book is Gay’ which explains how to find sexual partners online and contains sexually explicit pictures," the community note read... Several users shared graphic depictions and information contained in the book, such as sexual positions and instructions for "boy-on-boy" sex. Fox News Digital previously reported the novel discusses orgies, kinks and sex apps. It includes detailed information on how to have anal and "girl on girl" sex. The book was ranked ninth among the most banned books in the U.S. according to Vanderbilt University. Juno Dawson, the author of the widely banned book claimed it is "definitely not pornographic" in a recent interview with Rolling Stone Magazine."
Meme - "Did some background checking in case some nuance was missed out. Turns out both men had schizophrenia (the times square attacker made his worse with PCP), yet the punishment was wildly different."
"Charlottesville car rammer James Alex Fields gets life plus 419 years"
"Killed: 1
Injured: 22
Reason: Attacked by mob
Years behind bars: 419 plus life"
"Jury lets 'Kill them all' Times Square rampage driver off the hook in fatal attack
"Killed: 1
Injured: 22
Reason: "Just wanted to kill them all"
Years behind bars: Zero"
A two tier justice system once again
Meme - CNN: "Target is being held hostage by an anti-LGBTQ campaign"
CNN (as fat guy with knife): "Leave the multibillion dollar company alone..."
Your Bubble Is Not the Culture - "As NBC reporter Benjy Sarlin put it, “The people saying Lin-Manuel Miranda has had some fall from grace because leftist Twitter doesn’t like him probably don’t notice every kid now associates him with blockbuster Disney musicals, which is about the biggest cultural cachet possible.”... As for the Wizarding World: In 2020, the year Rowling made her most pointed statements on transgender issues, Harry Potter sales went up for its British publisher, Bloomsbury. In fact, “the paperback edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ was the fifth-bestselling children’s book of 2020 to date, 23 years after it was first published.” This past June, the biggest Harry Potter store in the world opened in New York City to rave reviews. HBO is currently airing several specials celebrating 20 years since the first Harry Potter movie. And despite the pandemic, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has reopened on Broadway. The persistent popularity of Potter probably explains why outlets whose critics insist that the Potter party is over keep publishing pieces about the franchise. Insider, for example, has run over 80 such items—from “What It’s Like to Visit the Real-Life Diagon Alley” to “28 Major ‘Harry Potter’ Movie Deaths, Ranked From Least to Most Heartbreaking”—in the last year alone. Some cultural critics may not know that Harry Potter is still massively popular, but the people running the click farms they work for do... Obviously, none of these statistics tell you much about the moral merits of any position or argument put forward by Miranda, Parks and Recreation, or Rowling. But they do tell you about the culture and its preferences. Yet the average person wouldn’t know most of this from consuming much of what passes for trendy internet cultural criticism. What explains this discrepancy between what some critics are claiming and what consumers are actually enjoying? Here are three reasons:
Being a critic can lead you to lose sight of the experience of the audience... One of many things that made the late Roger Ebert great was that he retained the ability to watch something as a conventional moviegoer and rate it accordingly, even if as a critic, he’d seen 100 similar films and had a different reaction from that perspective. He knew that most people who go to the movies are not looking for the next great work of cinema, but rather something with which to enjoyably pass an afternoon with their families. So he would do fancy film events where he’d discuss the technicalities of cinematography in the work of Martin Scorsese, and then turn around and give four stars to Iron Man...
Many cultural critics live in an unrepresentative internet bubble. Much of the current divergence between elite discourse and popular preference can be reduced to a simple heuristic: Most critics are on Twitter; most consumers are not. If you examine the coverage proclaiming the end of Harry Potter or Lin-Manuel Miranda, or castigating any other wildly successful cultural product or personality, you’ll quickly spot a pattern: The only evidence they tend to cite is an assortment of tweets...
Culture writers, like most people, want to justify their existence and significance... this talented performer couldn’t just say, “I love music, and I’m lucky enough to have found a way to get paid to play it and bring some joy to those who also enjoy it, while supporting myself and my family.” He had to be saving our entire civilization’s reputation in the eyes of extraterrestrials. Ever since then, I’ve been attuned to the heroic stories people tell about their jobs, as opposed to the reality of those jobs. Everyone wants to believe they’re saving the world... Watching movies and television for a living can seem privileged and indulgent compared to other vocations, especially in a world on fire. But once you start treating TV and film as politics, suddenly the project feels far more consequential... The deep-seated need to justify one’s own relevance is how we end up with cultural criticism that evaluates art as politics, rather than as art which also has political elements....
To be sure, criticism is not a purely populist endeavor. The role of a reviewer is not merely to follow and explain the crowd, but to evaluate art regardless of public opinion and hold it to the highest standard. But lots of what passes for criticism these days isn’t that; it’s just following a different, much smaller crowd, typically on social media. And this undermines the entire project. Cultural criticism—like any form of guidance—can’t be heard when it’s entirely disconnected from the people it’s meant to reach. After all, if anything is “cringe,” it’s culture writers telling their audiences that they should hate the things that bring them joy, especially at such a difficult time."
Did the Navy remove a Pride Month post from its Instagram account? - "An Instagram user, whose bio states she is a naval officer, pointed out that the Navy’s account appeared to have removed a Pride Month post in the past 24 hours... “For the first time in my life I am ashamed to have served in this joke of a Navy,” one commenter wrote. “Just don’t understand why you chose to celebrate who people have sex with,” another user posted."
End Wokeness on Twitter - "Wow. The MLB just quietly removed their LGBTQ+ Pride logo."
Xbox Removes Their LGBTQ+ Pride Logo 4 Days Into Pride Month
Melissa Chen - "Standardized testing has its problems, but it isn’t a function of systematic racism nor does it perpetuate it. Standardized tests actually go way back to 7th century China, where it was an alternative to the kind of bribery and cronyism exposed in our recent college admissions scandal. It also helped limit the influence of the military and the aristocracy. Till today, the gaokao (高考) is the lone criterion for admission into Chinese universities. One Chinese saying aptly compares the exam to a stampede of “thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of horses across a single log bridge.” Razib Khan wrote recently about the historical consequences of eliminating examinations and tests, as occurred during the Eastern Han, the Tang, and the Yuan Dynasty. A coterie of great families, or ruling castes, came to dominate the administration, and unattached youth of talent were excluded and marginalized. The testing regime was uniformly disliked by the aristocrats because they already had power, connections, and polish. They perceived in themselves the right to rule. They required no test to validate their self-worth. For those born to rule, the memorization of ancient texts and the drafting of learned essays is tedious. But to the bright but unconnected, mental rigor was a chance to demonstrate their worthiness. The more general objection is that standardized testing favors the privileged due to the cost of the tests, as well as the reality that those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds tend to be more well prepared to take these tests. This is almost certainly true on some level, though the success of the children of poor Bangladeshi immigrants in New York City shows the meritocratic path that testing can provide. Tests are imperfect. But what is the alternative? Over the past few years graduate schools have been removing the GRE as a requirement for admission. What will the consequence be? If the history of China is any guide, those with connections and pedigree will benefit. Without a hard-to-fake entrance exam, recommendations from those you trust will loom large again. The abolition of the GRE will be a back door through which the “letter of introduction” returns. Who will be hurt by this? Who will benefit? There are many answers here, but one thing seems obvious: those without connections will suffer. International students. Those from working-class backgrounds. Non-traditional older students trying to turn their life around with the benefit of hindsight. When academics rely on networks of those they already know, the circle of inclusion will begin to narrow. Ironically, attempts to “foster inclusion” by removing standardized testing will inevitably constrict the space of those included."
Meme - "How did a generation raised on South Park and family guy become so offended by everything"
What’s missing from the conversation about systemic racism - "“He thinks there’s no systemic racism.” No, it’s just that I think we overstate its role in American society today... Redlining is now widely seen as a major justification for reparations for Black Americans, especially in light of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s famous Atlantic article, “The Case for Reparations.”... However, as with so many matters of race, the redlining story is more complicated than many know. For one thing, there’s the matter of how many white people owned homes and lived in the redlined areas. An interesting National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by the economist Price V. Fishback and co-authors matched households in the 1930 and 1940 censuses to their locations in neighborhoods in “residential security” maps of 10 major Northern cities produced by a New Deal mortgage entity, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. The researchers found that white people accounted for 82 percent of individuals living in the lowest-rated areas. White people also owned 92 percent of the homes in these areas. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation made a higher share of its loans to Black people than the other lenders at the time... the Redlining 101 story — that cigar-chomping bigots in suspenders drew lines around where Black people happened to live while giving loans to poor whites — doesn’t fully hold up... Nor do we tend to hear that the cops kill vastly more white than Black people. Or, if we do, the issue of disproportion comes up, just as it must on redlining. But then comes poverty — leaving us again with a more complicated picture than many seem to find convenient... Black Americans are two and a half times as likely as white Americans to be killed by cops, and also more than twice as likely to be poor. And crucially, as a report on policing, poverty and racial inequity in Tulsa makes clear, policing is concentrated in poorer neighborhoods, which are more frequently communities of color and which receive more frequent calls for service... data also suggests that when it comes to police shootings, with all factors taken into account, such as whether the suspect was armed and whether the officers had just cause to fear for their lives, cops kill white people in greater numbers than Black people... None of that means that racism hasn’t existed or doesn’t exist. But it also suggests that socioeconomic factors matter as well, and a lot. This is a point made by the historian Touré Reed, who wrote an important book to this effect; his father, the political scientist Adolph Reed Jr., is of similar mind, as is the historian Barbara Fields — all three want us to think more about class than “antiracism.”"
Thread by @RichardHanania on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "IQ scores for 10 year-olds by ethnic background. Even though Caribbean and African parents generally have more education, most categories of Hispanic immigrant children outperform them. How many people would have guessed that?... Hispanics outscoring blacks on standardized tests is old news. But people keep pointing to the supposedly highly selected nature of African and Caribbean immigration and so might be surprised by the results."
Thread by @wil_da_beast630 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The entire Black African sample here is 57 people. Carribean's a bit over 40. One group measured here had a non-normed IQ of "117." Anything's possible, but I'll be reeeallly curious to see how scores for at least the larger groups here compare to the next WISC, NAEP, etc. OK - the sample with the 117 score had 16 kids in it. There's also an Asian group with a 96 IQ: sample of 12. Last: I'd also have a few questions re definition. Blacks are back at 85 here - but a "US Black" seems to be someone with no immigrant parents OR grand-parents: other Blacks would be excluded (?) or placed in one of 5-6 other Black/mixed categories."
Toronto school board considers banning caste-based discrimination. But it’s facing resistance - "the TDSB’s proposal has met with resistance from the Canadian Organisation for the Hindu Heritage Education (COHHE), who called the motion “Hinduphobic”. In a petition that has garnered 5,000 signatures, the group argued that there is a lack of evidence of caste oppression in Toronto and hence makes the motion “misleading” and “lacking in integrity”. Rajakulasingam, however, differs, saying that the motion doesn’t single out any faith but instead addresses how it affects South Asian, African, and Caribbean diasporas."
Neil deGrasse Tyson Uses Science to Show Why Whites Resemble Monkeys More Than Blacks | WATCH
"Science" means that denigrating white people is good
Ecume Aztec, a soulslike that lets you play a mexican warrior in the time of colonization, wants to add the ability to join the Spanish, and the Intersectionalists are not happy! : KotakuInAction - "They listened to customers that wanted the game to be historically accurate in depicting the fact that many of the oppressed vassal states of the Aztecs actually sided with the spaniards to overthrow the Human sacrificing and warring Priest kings. As you can imagine, the forums are filled with many screams of "NAZIS WANT TO ERADICATE BROWNS!" and similar bullshit by people, that can not fathom that both sides of that conflict were assholes and very barbaric, and that simply giving the player more choices is not a sign that the devs are trying to revive colonialism...."
Blaming Jim Crow, Northwestern student journalist says the way White people walk on sidewalks is too racist - "The opinion editor of the Northwestern University’s student newspaper recently published an article asserting that White people walk awkwardly on sidewalks because of their internalized racism. “When I first got to Northwestern, I wondered why walking around on campus could be so frustrating. Even when sidewalks were relatively empty, I would often have to walk way around people to pass without bumping into them,” wrote Kenny Allen of The Daily Northwestern... Laying out the claims by University of Richmond sociologist Bedelia Richards for determining “whether one’s university is racist” -- such as which groups feel most “at home,” whose “norms, values and perspectives” are legitimated, and “who inhabits positions of power” -- Allen concluded that “white people” meet most of the criteria"
Amanda Gorman Book Sales Soar After Florida Book Ban - "The work of author and poet Amanda Gorman is getting a boost in sales after a Florida book ban. Following a ban of her poem The Hill We Climb, sales for it and her books Call Us What We Carry and Change Sings have skyrocketed. It’s a show of support for the 25-year-old, who said she was “gutted” after hearing that her inaugural poem—recited during President Biden’s 2021 swearing-in ceremony—was placed on restricted access at a K-8 school in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The incident has denied otherwise easy access to The Hill We Climb... The titles, despite being written for elementary-aged students, are now only available in the middle school section of the library. Younger students would have to make a special request to see the items... The school district maintains that the texts are technically still available, just transferred to another section of the library. Gorman replied to that line of thinking. “A school book ban is any action taken against a book that leaves access to a book restricted or diminished”"
Liberal language twisting gets more ridiculous by the day. Given this logic, moving a book from a lower shelf to a higher shelf is also a "book ban"
Stop Funding Hate are the true bigots - "These middle-class censors, this bitter Twitter-army that seeks to starve certain media outlets of funding, are classic bigots. People get confused about the word bigot. They think it only applies to horrible racists or blokes who think women are only fit for housework. In truth, the dictionary definition of bigotry is intolerance to those who hold different opinions to oneself. That’s Stop Funding Hate. Their entire raison d’être is intolerance to alternative ways of thinking. Their entire movement is a bigoted one... they have the gall to brand others as ‘hard right’, even though their sole tactic is to weaponise the undemocratic economic power of the capitalist elites and use it to punish newspapers, magazines and broadcasters that dare to offend their soft, southern sensibilities... Stop Funding Hate’s bigotry can also be glimpsed in its classist obsession with the tabloid press"
Big Brother comes to America - "A writer for the New York Times was enthusiastically supporting a call made by ‘several experts’ around the Biden administration to create a Reality Czar. Apparently, a Reality Czar is needed to counter the campaign of disinformation being pushed by bitter conservatives. The NYT commentator concedes that giving someone the authority to pronounce on what is and isn’t real ‘sounds a little dystopian’, but suggests it is warranted by the threat of ‘disinformation and domestic extremism’... The NYT is not alone in demanding that the government take an active role in determining what is true. Recently, New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights published an alarmist report about the allegedly distorted perceptions held by millions of conservatives. Apparently, huge numbers of conservatives wrongly believe that their views are suppressed by digital platforms on partisan grounds. To prevent this view from gaining greater influence, the authors of the report call on the government to set up a ‘new Digital Regulatory Agency’. No doubt this agency would become another tip of a spear to be hurled at anyone who accuses the giant social-media companies of showing bias against the political right... Since the invention of the modern media people have put forward critiques of its sometimes biased nature. That has been a fairly unexceptional feature of the cultural landscape. Yet now, would-be Reality Czars have rebranded such criticisms as a ‘false narrative’ and an example of ‘political disinformation’. When claims of media bias are denounced as a form of malevolent disinformation, it can only be a matter of time before such claims are criminalised. One of the aims of the current campaign against disinformation is to legitimise and normalise the policing of media content. Campaigners uphold the absurd and long discredited idea of media neutrality in order to discredit alternative accounts about what the media are doing and what the social-media giants are up to. But they also want to go beyond protecting the reputation of Big Tech. Some now want nothing less than to establish a government agency that would act as the infallible source of truth and reality. One of the experts cited by the NYT suggests the Biden administration should set up a Truth Commission. No doubt anyone who questioned the biases of a Biden-led Truth Commission would be written off as a dangerous extremist peddling disinformation... When I want to engage with a narrative that calls into question my reality and lived experience as someone who lives in the UK, I turn to the New York Times. One of its recent headlines struck me as a classic example of disinformation. It said: ‘Britain’s Ethnic Minorities Are Being Left for Dead.’ Any reader of this fantasy story would strongly believe that Britain is an unusually malevolent society. This invented reality of Britain as an almost evil country is part of a broader pattern at the NYT. The paper always seems determined to present British society in the worst possible light. ‘Britain is undergoing a full-blown identity crisis’, gloated a reporter recently, before adding that it is a ‘hollowed-out country’, ‘ill at ease with itself’, ‘deeply provincial’, and engaged in a ‘controlled suicide’... The establishment of a Reality Czar and, in effect, a Ministry of Truth would deprive people of the right to determine what they hold to be true"
Liberals treat 1984 as an instruction manual
Eliza Orlins on Twitter - "Watching the #SuperBowl and seeing so many people in one place is making my heart race. This feels...unsafe. And, I guess I’m rooting for the team with the racist name over the team with the Trump-loving QB, in a sport that still hasn’t apologized to Colin Kaepernick... #SBLV"
I found the most Woke tweet of the Super Bowl and I feel the author deserves an award - "Here are all the elements contained in this one little nugget of wokeness:
Virtue signaling the dangers of human life during the Age of Rona.
Mentioning that you feel "unsafe" at least once.
Noting how rAciSt something is to show you are an intersectional ally in the struggle against patriarchal white colonizers.
Taking a shot at Orange Man Bad.
Invoking the name of His Holiness, St. Kaepernick, who footballs the best in the land and shall be forever praised, awomen.
I will note, however, that Eliza failed to mention the lack of LGTBQ+ players, how football contributes to climate change, or the phrase "white privilege." Do better, Eliza."
Jamil Jivani: A good dad can do more for kids than any government program - "How many more Father’s Days do we have before it becomes politically incorrect to celebrate our dads? Given the left’s backlash to some recent events, it’s not so far-fetched. But no amount of political correctness will change the facts: a good dad can do more for kids than any government program. Fathers are a solution to many of the social ills plaguing our communities. We shouldn’t be afraid to say so, even if that means offending ivory tower sensibilities. There was a time — not too long ago — when people across the political spectrum would openly recognize these truths. Recall, for instance, when Justin Trudeau was first running for prime minister in 2015. Journalist Francine Pelletier asked him about the prevalence of misogyny among young men. The Liberal leader included a dose of reality in his answer: “There’s a lot of communities in which fathers are less present than they have been, or might have been, in the past and there’s a need for engaged, positive role models.” A lot has changed over the past seven years, and Trudeau is a helpful barometer for measuring just how abruptly our culture has shifted. His reasonable and accurate comments on fatherhood in 2015 received blowback from legacy and social media, and it appears as though the woke mob left him shook. Just three years later, in 2018, Trudeau had settled in among the social justice warriors, adding words like “peoplekind” to his vocabulary to replace “mankind.”... Research shows that when a dad is missing in a child’s life, the odds of that child being exposed to violent behaviour increase significantly... We should expect institutions to not only acknowledge these truths, but to act on them. Public policy and community initiatives can keep more families intact, yet in today’s political environment, supporting fathers is a route to controversy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation recently to “encourage responsible and involved fatherhood” through “educational programs, mentorship programs and one-on-one support,” according to a press release. When retired football coach Tony Dungy appeared alongside Gov. DeSantis to endorse the bill, Dungy was subjected to a storm of criticism over his pro-fatherhood comments. Indeed, the criticism was so widespread on social media that Dungy felt the need to respond. Dungy stood up for himself by rightly pointing out that President Barack Obama used to tackle the problem of fatherlessness, too. In fact, the former coach’s comments at Gov. DeSantis’ press conference are similar to comments made by President Obama in 2008. It is the political left, not Dungy, that has changed since Obama was in the White House... I can think of no clearer example of blatant elitism than refusing to help these struggling families out of some desire to appease politically correct watchdogs. Part of helping is being able to talk about the problem, and debate potential solutions."
