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MOVIE REVIEW: No Safe Spaces

December 8, 2019 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

No Safe Spaces skillfully, intelligently, and amusingly exposes the intellectual rot eating away at Free Speech in American higher education. Go see it!

No Safe SpacesI went to see Adam Carolla’s and Dennis Prager’s No Safe Spaces this afternoon and I had just one problem with the movie: At a huge multiplex in Knoxville, there were only eight people in the audience. It should have played to a packed house. And no, the large number of vacancies wasn’t because I was seeing the movie on a Sunday afternoon. I’d originally intended to see No Safe Spaces on a Saturday night — you know, a movie night — so I checked then to see if there were seats remaining and, indeed, there were seats available. Lots of them. On the theater’s seat-booking site, all but two seats were still empty on a Saturday night.

The truth is that every American ought to see this movie. The reality is that only conservatives who are already worried about the death of free speech in America will attend it. On the Left, they’re smugly happy with their increasing ability, both on campuses and in corporate America, to shout down and censor anything they don’t like. And in the vast middle, the Americans who need to start to care, people probably aren’t even aware that the movie is playing.

I wanted to tell my Little Bookworm, in her last year at an Obscenely Expensive (Hard Left) Liberal Arts College in the Midwest to go see the movie. I knew that, as she is maturing (and having problems with her excessively sensitive roommates), she might have made the effort to go. I didn’t bother telling her, though, when I discovered that the movie isn’t even playing in her college town, a place in which a message about free speech and open minds could do a lot of good.

Carolla and Prager are the two pillars anchoring the No Safe Spaces. Carolla presents himself as a working class yob and comic (and also America’s most popular podcaster) who has a visceral belief that we are destroying our youth by mentally coddling them and that the answer is free speech for them and for everyone. Prager is the Jewish intellectual, the college educated man who spent time in the Soviet Union during the heyday of its totalitarianism. Prager too is a free speech fanatic. Both men are agreed (rightly) that free speech — true free speech, not the European or Canadian simulacrums — is a uniquely American attribute and that its destruction is the first step on the road to totalitarianism. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Education, Free speech Tagged With: Adam Carolla, Alan Dershowitz, Brett Weinstein, Dave Rubin, Dennis Prager, Fox News, Greg Lukianoff, Harvey Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Lindsay Shepherd, Matt Lauer, No Safe Spaces, Shelby Steele, Transgender, U. C. Berkeley, Van Jones, Wilfred Laurier University

Harvard Law School turns its back on humane jurisprudence

May 12, 2019 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

Harvard Law School has abandoned one of the core principles of American jurisprudence — a citizen’s right to counsel when standing alone before the state.

Harvard Law School Ronald Sullivan

[UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! I hope you appreciate this post — and I hope that you read it through the filter that Glenn Reynolds provided: “To be fair, Rakesh Khurana is the Dean of Harvard College. The Law School itself hasn’t done anything wrong.” It was careless of me to make that mistake, but I stand by the general principles that animate this post regarding a lawyer’s role in keeping the government honest.]

I went to law school in a red state during the Reagan era. As you can imagine, law and order was a big deal there and then. Early on in my Constitutional Law class, our professor (a very famous Con Law scholar, I might add) asked the class for a show of hands signaling which of us would be willing to represent a defendant we knew was guilty of a heinous crime. Not a single hand went up.

He scolded us soundly and I have never forgotten what he said. I can’t remember it verbatim, I’m sorry to say, but I can remember the gist:

He said that, because the state’s police power is so vast; because it is judge, jury, and executioner; because it has a permanent cadre of lawyers dedicated to prosecuting law that they know intimately; and because of the breadth and depth of the state’s access to information, no one should ever have to face the law entirely alone.

Every individual, no matter how awful he is or seems to be, should have someone at his side when facing the awesome majesty of the government. We do this, not to allow bad people to escape justice, but to ensure that the government doesn’t abuse the tremendous power it has.

I found that very profound. But apparently my professor — and I did mention that he was a very famous Con Law professor — would be drummed out of Harvard Law School for that viewpoint: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Education, Law Tagged With: Attorneys, Due Process, Harvard Law School, Harvey Weinstein, Ronald Sullivan

Rape Accusations, Leftists, Blurred Lines, and poor Brett Kavanaugh

September 22, 2018 by Bookworm Leave a Comment

Once Orwellian Leftists got their hands on it, “rape” as traditionally understood became a malleable concept to be used to destroy political enemies.

Rape Pulp Magazine coversItem: Former Vice President Joe “Creepy Touch” Biden, when announcing that the Obama White House was creating a task force to address campus rape, stated “One in five of every one of those young women who is dropped off for that first day of school, before they finish school, will be assaulted in her college years.”

In fact, that statistic goes far beyond being a lie or a damn lie. It’s a complete fraud. This video soundly debunks that statistic:

Here’s the key takeaway:

[That “statistic”] comes from a study conducted over the internet at two large universities one in the Midwest and one in the South. The survey was anonymous no one’s claims were verified and terms were not clearly defined. In round numbers, a total of 5,000 women participated. Based on their responses, the authors, not the participants, determined that 1,000 had been victims of some type of non-consensual or unwanted sexual contact and — voila! — from one vaguely worded unscientific survey we suddenly arrived at a rape culture on college campuses. Tellingly, the study authors have since explicitly stated that it’s inappropriate to use their survey to make that claim. Much more comprehensive data from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics or “BJS” estimates that about one in 52.6 college women will be victims [sic] of rape or sexual assault over the course of four years. That’s far too many, but it’s a long way from one in five. The same BJS data also reveal that women in college are safer from rape than college aged women who are not enrolled in college — but the truth doesn’t serve the purposes of feminist activists or vote seeking politicians. Lies work much better and the one in five claim is tantamount to a lie.

Let me say it again: the notion of a campus “rape culture” is a grotesque lie, based on a manifestly flawed study, that the Left peddles because it allow them to control young women and destroy young men. As Glenn Reynolds likes to point out, no sentient adult actually believes this statistic because no loving parent would ever allow his or her child to go to a place that has a rate rape comparable to the rate in South Africa, one of the most sexually violent countries in the world. The only ones who believe these statistics are college administrators and the terrified female students brought to heel by these statistical lies.

For those unclear on why I added “Creepy Touch” to Biden’s name, this video helps explain:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Lefties on Parade Tagged With: Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton, Duke Lacrosse Team, Emmett Till, Garrison Keillor, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kavanaugh, Keith Ellison, Kevin Spacey, Kirsten Gillibrand, Matt Lauer, Mazie Hirono, Military, Rape, Rape Culture, Scottboro Boys, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Tawana Brawley, Underreported Sex Crimes

If you’re old and white, President Oprah has something to tell you

January 8, 2018 by Bookworm 6 Comments

When I have a few moments, I’ll write about what a disaster Oprah is and how unfit for president. Until then, this video clip will suffice.

Oprah’s solution to racism; Old white people “just have to die”.

What a horribly divisive message. pic.twitter.com/NOtaft2xxf

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) January 8, 2018

If the clip won’t load, you can see it here. I guess we should just be grateful that she’s contemplating a natural death for wrong-thinking people, rather than advocating for government intervention. But wait; as sure as night follows day, once a Leftist aggregates just enough power, that will come too.

Also, Matt Walsh wrote the best Golden Globes review I’ve seen today.

Filed Under: Hollywood, Identity politics, Presidential elections Tagged With: Golden Globes, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood, Identity politics, Oprah, Presidential elections

Why did Michael Flynn plead guilty to a big Nothingburger?

December 4, 2017 by Bookworm 25 Comments

My best guess: Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to telling a lie about legal conduct because he was taking the fall for someone very important.

Michael FlynnMichael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying about something that wasn’t a crime, earning himself the very real possibility of jail time. The interview in which he allegedly stated this lie was with FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Strzok is an interesting guy or, at least, has left an interesting trail of slime wherever he’s been. He was was relegated to desk duty in July when Mueller allegedly learned that Strzok had been sending seriously anti-Trump, pro-Hillary tweets to an FBI attorney with whom he’d been having an extramartial affair. I say Mueller “allegedly learned” because I wouldn’t be surprised if Strzok’s affair and his fanatical support for Hillary Clinton weren’t open secrets in the Progressive FBI bureaucracy, just as every Lefty in the business knew about people such as Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer.

Strzok was also the man who discretely downgraded Hillary’s overtly criminal act into just a little bit of passing carelessness and interviewed her without putting her under oath or recording the interview. And then, based upon Flynn’s failure to track perfectly conversations that may or may not have been rightfully recorded he ensured that Flynn is facing jail time.

Now that we have a pretty good handle on all of the Big Lies coming out of the FBI and Mueller’s investigation, the big question is this: Why did Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying about something that wasn’t a crime in the first instance?

I’m willing to bet big money that two things led to him pleading guilty: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bureaucracy Tagged With: Banana Republic, DOJ, Donald Trump, FBI, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions, Liz Crokin, Matt Lauer, Michael Flynn, Peter Strzok, Robert Mueller

Are Trump supporters racist? The Atlantic says so, but only because it lies

November 26, 2017 by Bookworm 10 Comments

Are Trump supporters racist? By abandoning both facts and logic, That Atlantic claims Trump is a neo-Nazi, so his supporters must be racists too.

Trump Supporters Racist Donald Trump Diamond and SilkMy Progressive friends have been on fire this holiday weekend, posting all sorts of articles from anti-Trump mainstream media publications. When I wasn’t cooking, eating, or stuporously digesting, I glanced through a few of them. It would take too much time to fisk them all because, as is the case with Ruth Bader Ginsburg decisions, they are all long, long articles, with the MSM manifestly hoping that length, repetition, and partisan fervor will hide warped facts and contorted logic.

Just for the heck of it, though, I’ve fisked one of the The Atlantic’s latest offerings because it overflows with outrageous assumptions and arguments. In The Nationalist’s Delusion, the author, Adam Serwer (or, as I came to think of him, Adam Sewer) promises to prove to us that “Trump’s supporters backed a time-honored American political tradition, disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination.” Well, with that agenda, how could I stop myself from seeing what it takes to make good on that promise?

The article starts with an endless riff about the Louisiana voters who once elected David Duke to Congress. The riff wraps up with Trump’s long-ago prediction that voter anger at Bush Sr.’s weak economy would lose voters to a hypothetical “Duke for President” run or a real Pat Buchanan run. Serwer’s logic is (1) Duke once won a Louisiana seat in Congress and (2) Trump explained why he thought Duke won, therefore (3) Trump is a neo-Nazi. Reading that syllogism, all I can think of is the Professor’s oft-repeated complaint in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” Whatever school Serwer attended clearly failed the Professor’s test.

In the face of Serwer’s syllogism, which is ridiculous on its face, it’s important to follow-up by reading Serwer’s own effort at summarizing what Trump actually said. Trump’s words had nothing to do with white supremacism:

A few days after Duke’s strong showing, the Queens-born businessman Donald Trump appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live.

“It’s anger. I mean, that’s an anger vote. People are angry about what’s happened. People are angry about the jobs. If you look at Louisiana, they’re really in deep trouble,” Trump told King.

Trump later predicted that Duke, if he ran for president, would siphon most of his votes away from the incumbent, George H. W. Bush—in the process revealing his own understanding of the effectiveness of white-nationalist appeals to the GOP base.

“Whether that be good or bad, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes. Pat Buchanan—who really has many of the same theories, except it’s in a better package—Pat Buchanan is going to take a lot of votes away from George Bush,” Trump said. “So if you have these two guys running, or even one of them running, I think George Bush could be in big trouble.” Little more than a year later, Buchanan embarrassed Bush by drawing 37 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s Republican primary.

In February 2016, Trump was asked by a different CNN host about the former Klan leader’s endorsement of his Republican presidential bid.

“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay?,” Trump said. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don’t know.”

Serwer concludes that Trump revealed “his own understanding of the effectiveness of white-nationalist appeals to the GOP base.” My read on the above is that Trump learned that, if the political class betrays its trust, there is an opening for a new candidate — any new candidate, not just a white nationalist.

To Sewer, er, Serwer, it’s neo-Nazis all the way down. Thus, having duly established (to his own satisfaction) that Republicans are Nazis because Trump supported Duke’s white supremacism, Serwer offers a paragraph manifestly intended to tie modern-day Trump supporters to Duke and, by association, to all Nazis: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Donald Trump, Media matters, Race Tagged With: Adam Serwer, Birther, Birtherism, Central Park Five, Central Park Jogger, David Duke, Freddie Gray, George Zimmerman, Harry Reid, Harvey Weinstein, Islam, Joe Biden, Kevin Spacey, Michael Brown, Muslim Ban, New Black Panthers, Pat Buchanan, Race, Racism, The Atlantic, Trayvon Martin, Trump Supporters, White Supremacy

The Sexual “Reign of Terror”: How we got here and where we’re going* (by Wolf Howling)

November 22, 2017 by Bookworm 36 Comments

Today’s sexual “Reign of Terror” started in the 1960s, when the Left turned social mores on their heads — and it will get worse before it gets better.

The Reign of Terror French Revolution Execution of Louis XVIThe original “Reign of Terror” occurred during the French Revolution, when socialism itself was fully birthed. It was a period during which the French Revolutionaries executed thousands of people, many of whom were themselves Revolutionaries, including the father of the French Revolution, Robespierre. We are seeing something akin to the Reign of Terror on the Left today with the sudden purging of stalwart Progressives who have engaged in sexual harassment and abuse. How did we get here and how will it end?

Through the early 60’s, we had conservative culture that I think could be defined by two things — a general belief in the chivalric code and a restrictive, though amorphous, view of appropriate sexual conduct and morals that was half Biblical and half Victorian. Society at large called girls “sluts” if they engaged in any sex outside of marriage. Meanwhile, we boys called such girls . . . on Friday nights with no real opprobrium unless we got the girl pregnant. There was a double standard, but one dictated by biological realities.

At its best, such conservatism comes from ancient Jewish and later Christian traditions aimed at creating and maximizing the strength of families, since families have, since time immemorial, been the foundational unit of civilized society. These traditions reined in men, whose biological impulse is to spread their seed far and wide. They made it clear morally that men should marry a woman, be monogamous during marriage, and raise the children of the marriage.

Having these traditions in place protected women, for whom pregnancy is a life-changing event, and, most importantly, protected children from the scourge of single motherhood. Today, the risks are poverty for the girls and criminality for the boys. In olden days, the more extreme risk was starvation.

Such traditions also promoted a healthy society, by limiting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, many of which were potentially fatal in the long run. At their worst, such traditions were stamped with 5th century Augustinian notions that sex was evil, sinful and dirty.

All of this set up a permanent tension in society. Perhaps most illustrative of this is American Puritan society during the century after their arrival on these shores in 1620. Despite being intensely religious, they also struggled with natural human impulse. True, they punished with fines and the lash unwed women who bore children (though Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, written long after the demise of Puritan society, unfairly caricatures that time).

But of all the discussions I have read in original sources, at least outside of the pulpit, the Puritan’s concern with unwed pregnant women was pragmatic, not biblical. They were concerned with the societal costs of unwed mothers and their children raised without a father.

That said, Puritans were, perhaps surprisingly, fully human in giving in to their sexual impulses. Best estimates are that half of the women in American Puritan society between 1620 and 1720 went to the altar with a baby bump. The Left, in attacking Western civilization, ridicules that as hypocrisy. Actually it is nothing more than the aspirational goals on one hand and the reality of humanity on the other, with Puritan mores intervening to shape, as best as possible, the result of that tension.

Fast forward to the rise of socialism and the socialist goal to remake the West into a utopian society. Ms. BWR, in an American Thinker article several years ago, pointed out that socialists have, since their inception, used sex as a tool to attack the Judeo-Christian religions and to sexualize children. In a related post of a few years ago, I traced the long effort of the socialist movement in this country to intervene in the family unit, inserting government (Leftist government) in loco parentis to strip sex of its moral and ethical dimensions for children. What began with the avowedly socialist Margaret Sanger in the early 20th century became part and parcel of the radicalized Third Wave feminist movement of the 60’s. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Lefties on Parade, Sex Tagged With: Bill Clinton, Charlie Rose, Feminism, First Wave Feminism, French Revolution, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Progressives, Reign of Terror, Second Wave Feminism, Sex, Sex Scandals, Teddy Kennedy, Third Wave Feminism

Not all sex scandals are created equal: breaking down the different types

November 17, 2017 by Bookworm 18 Comments

The sex scandals we read about are all different and require different responses, ranging from letting the voters speak to criminal prosecution.

Creepy Biden Bad Touch Biden Joe Biden Pedophilia Sex ScandalsExcept for hysterical stories about President Trump drinking water or feeding fish the wrong way, it seems as if the news is entirely taken over with breaking sex scandals in entertainment and politics. Despite the efforts to conflate them in order to get rid of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, there are very different types of scandals going on here and they call for different responses.  I’ve tried to break down the categories.

1. Roy Moore and Donald Trump — Let the People decide. Both Roy Moore and Donald Trump were well-positioned to win elections when they were hit by 11th hour — no, 11th hour and 57th minute — accusations that they had committed sexual improprieties against women. Both men denied doing so. (And yes, it’s true that Trump was caught on tape saying that, if you’re rich, you can grab women, which is no doubt a truism for the rich and powerful. However, he was not heard saying, “I am rich so I, personally, did grab women’s crotches.” So again, Trump, like Moore, has denied the claims against him.) The accusations against both politically-polarizing men, therefore, are “he said/she said” matters.

In the case of both Moore and Trump, it quickly became clear that the women making the allegations were politically opposed to the candidate against whom they asserted wrongdoing. The only exception is one of Moore’s accusers, who contends she is a Republican. Unfortunately for her credibility, her past is drowned in drugs and alcohol and she has a history of accusing men of sexual assault and harassment. That could mean she’s a vulnerable person upon whom men prey, that she’s hanging out with the wrong crowd, or that she’s a liar.)

In the case of both Moore and Trump, when seen in context of the time and place, the alleged behavior is not that outré. Trump was living the lush life in New York during the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, when the city was drenched in hyper-sexual behavior. I’m not defending that time — it was a time of loose morals, to say the least — nor am I saying that those who participated in the debauchery have a good excuse for doing so. Nevertheless, if there’s ever a situation in which one can say “everyone was doing it,” the New York scene back then was the time and the place.

Likewise, when it comes to Moore, we’re talking Alabama in the 1970s. Alabama was not New York. Instead, it was probably closer to the 1950s, a time of unprecedentedly high teen pregnancies — high because women married and got pregnant at 16, 17, and 18. If Moore did have a penchant for teens, these girls were considered “of age” and the age difference was not seen as an overwhelming barrier. Again, I’m not saying his behavior was nice or moral; I’m saying it was not illegal and it was also not far from the mid-line of normal for that time and place.

One other aspect of the Moore case that deserves attention is the fact that people have raised credible concerns about the yearbook that Gloria Allred refuses to allow any experts to inspect. Suspicious people have pointed out that the yearbook was signed in December (who signs a yearbook then?); that the handwriting in the note differs from that in the signature; that the year 1977 is written twice, which is itself unusual, and that it is written in two different hands; and that the signature, which the initials DA appended, is the not the way Moore signed things but is, instead, the way Moore’s clerk signed his name when he presided over the divorce of the woman now accusing him. That is, she wrote his name along with her initials to show that she was authorized to sign on his behalf. Lastly, considering what an incredibly contentious career Moore has had, Alabama voters may wonder why these long-standing claims against him are emerging for the first time only when it’s too late to get another Republican on the ballot. Hmmm. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Crime and punishment, Politics, Sex Tagged With: Al Franken, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Joe Biden, Melanie Morgan, Pedophiles, Roseanne Barr, Roy Moore, Sean Hannity, Sex Scandals, Sexual Harassment

Once again, a hypocrisy check, this time about Judge Roy Moore *UPDATED*

November 11, 2017 by Bookworm 61 Comments

The difference between Roy Moore’s situation and the Hollywood story, the unreliable accuser, and the WaPo’s manifest bias, means I currently believe Moore.

Judge Roy MooreSorry for the long silence, but it’s been an all family, all the time few days, interspersed with a quick-turnaround legal research project. I’ve been a bit insulated from the news, but have not missed the claim that Judge Roy Moore molested a 14-year-old in 1979. I find myself peculiarly unconvinced that he did something wrong.

The question is whether I’m being a hypocrite, because I was so ready to accept that the Hollywood types have done wrong, while I’m currently still willing to give Roy Moore the benefit of the doubt. Here’s my reasoning, so you can see what I think and tell me if there’s merit to my argument or if I’m lying to myself. First, here are the reasons I believe that some, although perhaps not all, of the allegations about Hollywood types are true:

1. Hollywood has had a reputation as a sinful fleshpot for 100 years.

2. We know with near certainty, based upon decades of memoirs, that the casting couch was a real thing.

3. We know from looking at the Hollywood product in the last couple of decades that Hollywood has no room for conventional middle-class morality.

4. In the case of Harvey Weinstein, he was caught on a wire admitting that he’d sexually assaulted a woman — only to have the case dropped when he donated a nice sum of money to the prosecutor’s campaign fund.

5. Hollywood circled the wagons around Roman Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to drugging and sodomizing a 13-year-old. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bits and Pieces, Hollywood, Media matters Tagged With: Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood, Media Bias, Roman Polanski, Roy Moore, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, WaPo, Washington Post

I’m not a hypocrite when I don’t see Trump as a sexual predator

November 5, 2017 by Bookworm 17 Comments

I have six reasons why I don’t think Trump is a sexual predator akin to the Hollywood mashers. Do you agree? And if you do, do you have even better reasons?

Illustrated edition Trump not a sexual predatorI was with a group of friends yesterday, all of whom are anti-Trump Progressives. (And yes, I do have such friends because if I didn’t, I’d be a very lonely person here in True Blue, where I live.)

At one point in the evening, our conversation worked its way over to the subject of sexual predators. All the women were very careful to name Ailes and O’Reilly, but they couldn’t avoid Woody Allen (none will see his movies any more), Harvey Weinstein (an example of the problems women face), Bill Cosby (who would have believed it?) and Kevin Spacey (such a talented actor, but his career is over).

It would have been surprising if the conversation at that point hadn’t turned to Donald Trump. After all, if their own side is bad, the other side must be much worse. So it was that one of the women alluded to a poster making the rounds on Facebook. It wasn’t exactly the one reproduced below (which I couldn’t find), but it was similar:

Trump sexual predator

My first instinct was to defend Trump. My second instinct was that, with five of them and one of me, all that would happen would be a verbal beat-down, without my being able to change anyone’s mind. Frankly, if I can’t move someone a little to the individual liberty side of the political spectrum, I don’t waste my time.

And then there was my third instinct. This involved asking myself why I’m not a hypocrite for forgiving Trump whatever sexual sins he committed in the 1970s and 1980s, and absolving him today of being a sexual predator. I decided that, before I engage with any Progressives, I’d better have a clear answer to that in my mind.

So, the end result is this list of reasons explaining why I’m not a hypocrite when I don’t castigate Trump as a sexual predator. Please feel free to attack my weak reasons, strengthen my strong ones, and add reasons that I missed: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Donald Trump, Hollywood Tagged With: Access Hollywood, Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, Billy Bush, Donald Trump, Gorsuch, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Nikki Haley, Roger Ailes, Sexual Predator, UN Ambassador, Woody Allen

Peter Thiel’s excellent point about political correctness and indulgences

November 2, 2017 by Bookworm 56 Comments

When Peter Thiel compared Political Correctness and the Catholic Church in 1517, he revealed how truly corrupt Political Correctness really is.

Harvey Weinstein Antisemitism Predator Rape Political Correctness

Harvey Weinstein was so certain that political correctness would whitewash his sins.

I had the pleasure last night of attending an event at which Peter Thiel was the main speaker. Before he started speaking I knew that he was one of PayPal’s founders and one of Facebook’s earliest investors, that he openly supported Trump’s candidacy, and that he destroyed Gawker for outing him.

After Thiel’s speech, I knew a bit more: He’s a committed conservative-libertarian, he’s a lawyer, he’s extraordinarily well-read, and he’s a truly creative, highly intelligent thinker. Also, there’s no obvious artifice about him. He may be a billionaire, but he doesn’t view his membership in that club as proof of his brilliance. Instead, he’s an iconoclast who thinks deeply about things and, through his conclusions, proves his brilliance.

Thiel began his talk* by examining whether our society’s technology is flat-lining. He challenges the conventional wisdom is that we’re still in an upward technological trend, but that the low-hanging fruit is gone, and the geniuses have dried up. He feels the opposite is true: We’re stagnating now, there’s a great deal more fruit than just the low-hanging variety, and there is untapped genius out there.

The big question, of course, is why there is untapped genius? The most obvious answer is funding. In the computer world, where innovation is still happening, guys (mostly guys) can do what’s been done since the 1970s: Come up with a great idea at their home computer and, through hard work, intelligence, and luck, leverage that idea into something people need or want, and that then makes its inventors very, very rich.

However, there’s trouble brewing in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) world. Contrary to popular wisdom, which is that all STEM college majors will result in better paying jobs than any liberal arts major could, the only two STEM majors with a serious job market are Computer Science and Petrochemical Engineering. In everything else, a large pool of people is competing for the same money.

More than that, those handing out the money want to invest in sure things. That means the only projects getting financed are the safe ones, the ones that don’t challenge the status quo, and that don’t come out with some major, counter-intuitive thinking that could change an existing paradigm.

The problem for science types is that, in the 21st century, while one can still come up with computer technology on the cheap, it’s impossible to do so in the sciences. While early scientists once needed a microscope, a Bunsen burner, a few Petri dishes, and a note pad, today’s scientists rely upon equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They can function only with corporate, academic, or government funding. This turns every lab into a fiefdom, in which a large number of people are competing for a finite slice of research dollars and fame.

Which gets us to political correctness. Thiel sees political correctness as something akin to this famous video moment, with the blooming flowers emanating from a man’s head standing in for American energy and innovation, and the foot being political correctness: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Political correctness Tagged With: Academia, Ben Affleck, Bill Clinton, Brett Ratner, Counter-Reformation, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Indulgences, Kevin Spacey, Martin Luther, Nina Burleigh, Peter Thiel, Political correctness, Protestant Reformation

A rotating cast of stock-players in the Weinstein scandal — guest post by Lulu

October 19, 2017 by Bookworm 13 Comments

Guest blogger Lulu has noticed that the women speaking up about the Weinstein scandal fall into a few distinct categories, none of which seem very brave.

Harvey Weinstein Hollywood ScandalLike everyone else, I have been watching the Harvey Weinstein story unfold with some fascination. Of course, the “why now?” aspect remains unanswered, and the other shoes have yet to drop on other perps and pervs. It has been remarkable to watch the Hollywood omerta code and how it was honored for decades. For me, an observer of human behavior, it has been fascinating to observe the reactions of the Hollywood community: the liars, the hypocrites, the actual victims, the game players. They’re all there.

First thing I noticed was that confessions seemed to follow a pattern. Harvey made lewd requests. The actress says she refused. Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie fit into this group. He tried. They declined. Harvey was pretty bold. These are daughters of Hollywood celebrities. It doesn’t deter him. These aren’t hungry small town girls he can easily manipulate. No, here the message is definitely about power. I can even humiliate people with famous parents and everyone is too scared of me to stop me. It’s a power play to be sure. I am intrigued by the fact that everyone famous says she said no. No one famous could possibly admit that she said yes if she did.

The liars: Meryl “I never knew, this is the first I’ve ever heard of it, Harvey Weinstein is God” Streep. Jane “I only heard about it last year. I’m totally shocked” Fonda. Brave feminists. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hollywood Tagged With: Ashley Judd, Courtney Love, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood, Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lawrence, Jimmy Kimmel, Meryl Streep, Saturday Night Live, Stephen Colbert

Bookworm Beat 10/18/17 — the illustrated edition

October 18, 2017 by Bookworm 14 Comments

No matter how sad, crazy, or offensive the news is, there will always be clever people making great visual for the illustrated edition post.


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Open Threads Tagged With: Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Melania Trump, NFL, Second Amendment, Stupid Leftists

“Me too” — women of America unite as victims of men *UPDATED*

October 16, 2017 by Bookworm 34 Comments

The Me Too meme on Facebook encourages a sense of victimhood in women, and is part of the way we deny biological reality and cultural anti-rape bulwarks.

Facebook Me too memeIf you’ve checked out Facebook in the last 24 hours, you’ve probably seen a lot of your female friends post two words: “Me too.” This is a shorthand version of a meme that started yesterday:

Me too.

If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too.’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

Please copy/paste.

As you’ve surely noticed, the meme jumbles together harassment and assault, which are entirely different things. Assault is a criminal act. It involves any unwanted physical touches on the person, from the butt grabbing Ben Affleck apparently enjoys, to the pussy-grabbing that President Trump noted rich guys get away with (without ever saying he’d done it himself), to out-and-out rape. Harassment, on the other hand, doesn’t involve physical contact. It involves mental contact, with the man using words or touch-free motions to impose his power or sexual desires on an unwilling female.

Just about every woman I know who routinely appears on Facebook has put up a “Me too” post. I suspect, though, that few of them have actually been raped, something for which I am grateful. One of the virtues of life in America is that women aren’t raped often, even on college campuses.

In addition to rape, of course, there are other sexualized (not sexy) touches that men visit on unwilling women. I once had a guy twerk on me on a crowded bus, years before twerking was a thing. Technically, this was probably an assault, but I simply ignored it. In my mind, it wasn’t a “guys are animals, I’ve been assaulted” moment. Instead, I took it as a “there are way too many crazy people wandering around San Francisco” thing and got on with my life.

From what I gather reading my female friends’ posts and comments, many of the “Me too” women had that type of interaction — unwanted touches that were fleeting, offensive, and part of life in a world with men — and characterize it as an “assault.”

What most seem to have experienced, though, is some form of non-physical sexual harassment. That’s the kind of contact between men and women that is purely a head game — the man doesn’t lay hands on a woman, but he speaks or behaves in a way that’s purely sexual and can range from scary to offensive to (yes) funny, depending on how pathetic their genitals are when the raincoat opens to how genuinely funny their dirty, or slightly risque, jokes in the workplace are. (Yes, I will laugh at a clever, and not too dirty, dirty joke.) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Feminism, Women Tagged With: Assault, Ben Affleck, Bill Clinton, Feminism, Harassment, Harvey Weinstein, Hook-ups, Me Too, Miley Cyrus, Rape, Rape Statistics, Sexism, Sexual Assault, Slut Walks, Tinder, Victims

Toxic masculinity, Progressive hypocrites and victims, and real men *UPDATED”

October 14, 2017 by Bookworm 27 Comments

The past two months have proven that toxic masculinity is the Progressives’ purview, while real American men still get the job done no matter the risk.

This is not Toxic masculinity real men Progressive hypocrisyIn the late 1960s, the appropriate term of art for men who hadn’t seen the light was “male chauvinist pig.” Feminists applied this moniker to men who refused to recognize Second Wave feminism (equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities). As feminism morphed into trying to control male sexuality in a world that had abandoned old-fashioned codes of conduct, the term switched to “sexist.” The focus was no longer on equal pay for equal work and equal opportunities, but had switched to a focus on sexual harassment in the workplace.

The 1960s and 1970s war on sexism had a great run. Millions of trees died thanks to voluminous HR binders regularity workplace conduct, a whole industry of compliance coaches was enriched, and law firms seized upon compliance as a reliable income stream.  Eventually, though, most men began to wise up and stopped grabbing women or making unwanted sex a quid pro quo for workplace advancement. By the 1980s, the focus shifted from concrete harassment and assault on the job (with the later being a criminal act as well as a tortious one), to the intangible standard looking at what the so-called “reasonable women” would consider to be a hostile workplace.

Decades of training and litigation against chauvinism, sexism, and hostile workplace-ism have done their job. The biggest part of the bell curve of American men has been trained not to discriminate against women in the workplace, not to expose them to unwanted sexual advances, and not to create a hostile workplace.

You’d think the Progressives would celebrate, but that would mean you think that they’re interested in improving women’s lot, rather than maintaining power over America’s social dynamics. With the latter as their true goal, Progressives needed a new target. With men avoiding past behavioral sins, Progressives have shifted from blaming egregious behavior to blaming men for merely existing.

Yes, the fact that you are a man is toxic. Just by being you, you offend and crush women. You sit wrong, you speak or speak-up wrong in meetings, you explain too much . . . you’re just too, too male, you disgusting, bullying creature, you!

One of the results of this war on men qua men, is the feminizing of the most recent generation of young men, especially those from America’s self-styled Progressive elite. Here’s a concrete example: When I’ve visited my little Bookworm’s obscenely expensive liberal arts college, which is 63% female, the men I saw (a sampling of 30-40 on a small campus) were not traditionally manly. All gave off a vague bisexual or gay vibe.

Having thought about it, I’m pretty sure the gay guys actually were gay. I have a suspicion, though, that those who appeared bisexual were, in fact, young men who have been trained away from appearing manly. For example, they all end their sentences as women do, with upward inflection or uptalk. That is, even when making a declarative statement, their inflection rises at the end of the sentence, making it sound like a question.

When something shocks or surprises these young men, they press their hands to their cheeks as women do. They gossip as women do. And they engage in social spats as women do. That is, we’re not talking the hierarchical jostling that’s typical of men; instead, what I saw was “mean girl” behavior from young men. There is no toxic masculinity of campus because there is no (or very little) masculinity on campus to begin with.

Separate from the damage done to young men, what Progressives failed to realize with their full frontal attack on masculinity itself is that, when you clamp down on ordinary male behavior, you end up with a subterranean, festering, oleaginous, potentially explosive mass of truly toxic behavior. This hidden behavior is going to be at its worst in those communities that make the loudest noises about how evil such behavior is: Hollywood, with Progressives in Washington, D.C. a close second. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Lefties on Parade, Men Tagged With: Ben Affleck, Bill Clinton, California Fires, Donald Trump, George Clooney, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood, Hostile Workplace, Hurricane Harvey, Male Chauvinist Pigs, Male Virtues, Manly Men, Oliver Stone, Rape, Second Wave Feminism, Sexism, Sexual Harassment, Third Wave Feminism, Toxic Masculinity

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