Category Archives: PC

Political Correctness and its “unintended’ consequences.

Same As It Ever Was

Posted on by
2

The other day, a pack of the usual crowd of waxy yellow Leftyblog and Leftytweet buildup  teased themselves to ecstasy over this photo:

It’s a group of “Trail Life” boys – from a breakaway sect of Boy Scouts that bars openly gay members – “giving a Nazi salute” as they recited their creed. 

Except it wasn’t:

But it turns out that the boys were not saluting Hitler and contrary to the first Associated Press caption, they were not reciting a creed. The boys were singing “Taps,” a longtime Boy Scout tradition that the Texas Trail USA troop had adapted as their own.

The boys had gathered in a circle with their hands raised straight into the air. They gradually lowered their hands as they sang the song. It concludes with their hands flush against their side.

“It really misrepresented what was going on,” [John Stemberger, chairman of the board of Trail Life] told me. “There are children involved and that made it more outrageous. They were exploited and misunderstood.”

The picture accompanied what was actually apparently a relatively fair story.

But when it comes to the un-PC, “fair” isn’t part of the left’s playbook. 

Read the whole thing.

Let’s Try A “Thought” Experiment

Posted on by
14

Find one of your children.

Wait for when it’s super cold out – like, below zero.

Soak them with a super-soaker.  Then force them outside, and don’t let them back in the house, or any cars, or into the neighbors’ houses.

When (hopefully) someone calls the cops, you’ll be thrown into jail for child endangerment.  And you should be.

Because “idiot” wouldn’t describe it – but “evil” pretty much would.

Most of you have no doubt seen this story; a Saint Paul middle school forced a junior high kid to wait outside, in a swimsuit and towel, in -2 weather and -25 wind chill.   There’d been a fire drill while she was in the pool, and the teachers didn’t let her go to her locker, grab a coat, or anything but a towel (emphasis added):

[The girl] asked to wait inside an employee’s car, or at the elementary school across the street. But administrators believed that this would violate official policy, and could get the school in trouble, so they opted to simply let the girl freeze.

Let’s try to go through the “minds” of these hamsters:  Given a choice to “violate policy” and “endanger a child’s health and safety”, the kid got chucked under a bus.

What does it say that a bunch of junior high kids are smarter, and have more moral clarity, than their administrators?

Her fellow classmates, at least, huddled around her to try to keep her warm. And one teacher did eventually lend her a coat.

There should be arrests.  Idiot school administrators should be frog-walked out of their building in handcuffs.   Their mug shots should be splashed all over the TV, so parents can keep their children away.   Licenses should be slowly torn into long, thin strips.

But that’ll never happen.

Cutting The Cookies

Posted on by
5

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I found “Robin Hood” on Netflix, the updated version released by the BBC in 2006. The casting was more interesting than the show.

The BBC modernized the story but only up to the 2006 Code of Stereotypes: the Bad Guy Sheriff of Nottingham must be a White male, Maid Marian must be a butt-kicking, wise-cracking feminist, the hero’s side-kick must be a dumb White guy to serve as the butt of all jokes, all war veterans must have PTSD and be ticking time-bombs for violence, at least one racial minority must play a supporting role as Member Of The Merry Band (Hispanic preferred) and most important of all, no Black may be cast in an unsympathetic light.

In 2014, that Code has been updated to require at least one gay character and, if at all possible, a disabled person, e.g. “Glee.”

In this “Robin Hood,” there is no Friar Tuck in the Merry Band (religious characters are forbidden under the new Code), but there is a Saracen woman named D’jaq and of course, she’s smarter than all of the White males put together. But get this – D’jaq is supposed to be slave captured by King Richard’s armies fighting Saladin in the Middle East. She ought to be an Arab Muslim. But she’s played by an English actress of Indian descent using a Pakistani accent to sound foreign. Why? Probably because there is a giant immigrant population in England from former Crown colonies like India and Pakistan and the BBC Code must acknowledge them by substituting a Paki for a Hispanic in the Member Of The Band slot.

The most amazing thing of all? The Master-at-Arms, who kills innocent women and children so the Sheriff can blame Robin Hood for it, is a Black man. The fake Abbess who’s really a con artist, is a Black women. Black people are criminals! That would never happen in an American series.

Rearranging the priority of victims to cater to local sympathies makes business sense for the film maker. But it also reflects a certain callousness. Casting a show to fit the Stereotype Code means you don’t actually care about the people being stereotyped, only that the correct boxes are checked to meet your quotas.

Joe Doakes

I think I wrote about that a few years back, when my kids were still watching the Disney Channel (back when I’d still let kids watch the Disney Channel); all of the cookie cutter “Disney Movies” had the same basic characters:

  1. The spunky, low-income white kid.
  2. The Latina tomboy who kicked everyone’s butts athletically (except, perhaps, #4 below
  3. The black, Chloe-O’Brien-level tech nerd.  Always, always, always the black kid was the nerd. 
  4. The lead character – almost always a blonde white boy…

…and a painstakingly-mixed bunch of supporting characters.

“Oh, Lord, When Will Someone Have The Guts To Take On Big Vapor?”

Posted on by
5

 Minnesota.  The state where everything that isn’t mandatory, is banned. 

Or at least someone will be busy trying to ban it. 

Phyillis (who else?) Kahn is tackling Big Flavored Water, and the scourge of second-hand water vapor:

The bill would mean you could not use an e-cigarette in indoor buildings or public spaces that ban smoking, just like traditional cigarettes.

E-cigarettes have exploded in popularity. So far, there have been no conclusive medical studies on their health impact and that has e-cigarette fans saying let’s wait before we put on any restrictions.

There is no evidence that they harm even the consumer (at a level beyond that caused by coffee or energy beverages, to say nothing of alcohol), much less anyone else. 

And people enjoy them – which, in Minnesota, is a big red flag:

Since she opened her e-cigarette shop in Uptown, Sina War, an ex-smoker herself, has seen a surge in business.

“Electronic cigarettes allows me to have the same habits and allow me to cut the nicotine level down,” War said.

War says Rep. Phyllis Kahn’s bill will hurt those trying to quit traditional smoking. 

“Having her include this in the clean air act makes electronic cigarette smokers who use this to quit smoking, go back to where they were 10 months back,” War said.

But it’s for your own good!  Because the DFL cares!

Kahn says she is concerned about the explosion in popularity of e-cigarettes.

“They are everywhere. Now, just think were they are going to be a year from now,” Kahn said. “Just remember, we are not banning it. We are just regulating it the same way cigarettes are.”

“Just think were they are going to be a year from now”

Enjoying flavored water vapor and, maybe, quitting smoking? 

I suspect tobacco tax revenue is playing its role.

(Title courtesy Gary Miller)

Legal

Posted on by
1

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Conservative turned down by liberal photographer. This is not a problem because “Conservative” is not a Protected Group under civil rights law and therefore not entitled to legal rights. He has no rights because we say he has no rights. It’s purely a matter of definition.

Baby killed, chopped into pieces. This is not a problem because Unborn Child is not a Person and therefore not entitled to legal rights.

800,000 Tutsis killed by Hutsus in Rwanda, 1994. This is not a problem because Tutsis are Enemies of the State and therefore not entitled to legal rights.

Jew gassed to death in Nazi Germany. This is not a problem because “Jew” is not a Full Citizen and therefore not entitled to legal rights.

Black man whipped to death by White man – in 1820. This was not a problem because a Negro was a Possession and therefore not entitled to legal rights.

Sooner or later, wouldn’t you think people would begin to notice a pattern? That when a society gets comfortable using its legal institutions to over-ride rights divinely given to all human beings, things end badly?

Now let’s talk about modern Democrat electoral tactics, and where they’re likely to take the country.

“It’s the law” is the new “we’re just following orders”.

Doakes Sunday: I Cried Because I Had No Shoes…No, Wait…

Posted on by
18

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Wendy Davis is running for Governor of Texas.  She’s been trying to play the victim card – grew up poor, lived in a trailer house, worked her way through college and law school, husband left her – but it’s not working.

Turns out she lived in a trailer for about three months, her husband put her through college and Harvard Law School and she divorced him (and he got custody of the kids in a state like Texas, which tells you a lot about her).

Latest thing – she complains that her opponent doesn’t understand what it’s like to overcome adversity.  He hasn’t walked a mile in her shoes.  And now that she’s a candidate, he’s running scared.

The guy’s in a wheelchair.

Reminds me of the other runners complaining that Oscar Pistorius had an unfair advantage because hisaluminum legs didn’t tire.  Excuse Me, The Man Has No Blinking Legs!  And YOU think YOU are the victim here?  Unbelievable.

For Harvard-lawyer Wendy Davis to play the Victim card against a man in a wheelchair, leaves me with just one question:  Why do Democrats hate cripples?

Joe Doakes

 In a year when the two most prominent Harvard Law grads are Ryan “Uncle Tom” Winkler and Wendy “Abortion Barbie” Davis, I think HarvLaw needs to work on its PR.

It’s Just…Unknowable!

Posted on by
2

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at the neighborhood hardware store.  As he examines a some hardware for a household project, Avery LIBRELLE steps around the corner and sees BERG, and engages him before he can react.

LIBRELLE:   Blogger Berg!  You’ve been lying about Democrats!

BERG:  Um, OK.  How so?

LIBRELLE:   You’ve been saying on your blog that Minnesota Democrats favored banning guns!

BERG:  Well, yeah – Alice Hausman introduced a bill that called for confiscating guns with magazines larger than seven rounds.

LIBRELLE:  But did any guns get confiscated?

BERG:  Well, the bill got shredded and then withdrawn!

LIBRELLE:  So no guns got confiscated! You totes can not say that Democrats favor confiscating guns if no guns were confiscated!

BERG:  But they introduced the bill…

LIBRELLE:   You also keep saying the DFL supports what you call the “daycare union jamdown”?

BERG:  Yep. The DFL voted on straight party line to compel daycare and home healthcare providers who get government subsidies to vote on joining the union. And before you say anything – yep, it’s “Just a vote”.  A vote the Democrats have already rigged with “daycare providers” who haven’t been in the business for years, but support the union.

LIBRELLE:  But have any daycare providers been pushed into a union?

BERG:  Um, no…

LIBRELLE:   Hah!  There is no forced unionization!

BERG:  Er, only because the courts slapped an injunction on it.  The DFL supported it…

LIBRELLE:  Nya nya nya, can’t hear you!  You also keep saying the DFL pushed through a “Senate Palace” at the last minute, spending – you allege – 90 million dollars on a Senate Office Building.

BERG:  They did!

LIBRELLE:  So where’s the building?

BERG:  It hasn’t been built yet.

LIBRELLE:  Ah hah!  So there is no Senate Palace!

BERG:  So what you’re saying is that until a Democrat policy is actually implemented, we can’t hold the DFL accountable for it?

LIBRELLE:  Obviously you hate womyn!

(And SCENE)

(The above exchange was closely modeled after several actual conversations with real DFLers)

 

It’s Not Pining For The Bloody Fjords

Posted on by
Reply

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Leftists despair when their own principles collide, leaving it impossible to decide who to hate.  Example:

We all want clean energy.  Windmills seem like the perfect answer, opposed only by Conservatives who love Big Coal.  Hate Conservatives, right?

Except birds fly into the blades and are killed, including protected species like the American Bald Eagle.   In November, Duke Energy was fined a million dollars for killing birds at its wind farms.  So hate Progressives who promote wind farms?  Or hate companies that produce clean energy?

On December 9th, Obama’s Interior Department released new rules giving wind farms a 30-year permit to kill birds, including bald eagles.  So hate President Obama?

Imagine if a Republican president had done this.  No wonder Liberals are distraught these days.  It’s just so hard to know who to hate.

Joe Doakes.

When it’s the only thing you actually create, you can understand why they get touchy about doing it right…

Bob and Carol & Jane & Alice

Posted on by
11

Two’s company; three’s potentially legal

A narrow national majority favors same-sex marriage.  Will that majority favor a plurality?

When it comes to debating social issues, the  ”slippery slope” argument often holds the least amount of traction.  As Minnesota was racked by contentious debate surrounding last year’s marriage amendment, one of the litany of debate volleys was that opening the door to same-sex marriage could inevitability lead to polygamy.  Same-sex marriage supporters dismissed the notion, suggesting the argument was tangential at best, and a “scare tactic” at worst.

Boo:

Advocates for so-called plural marriages are applauding a ruling by a U.S. District Court judge that struck down key segments of Utah’s anti-polygamy law, saying they violated constitutional rights to privacy and religious freedom.

In a 91-page decision issued Friday, Judge Clark Waddoups effectively decriminalized polygamy in Utah, ruling that a central phrase in the state’s law forbidding cohabitation with another person violated the 1st and 14th amendments.

In all fairness, the lawsuit, brought about by the stars of the TLC reality show “Sister Wives”, depicting a Utah Mormon family with one legal wife and three “wives” who live with them, was more over striking down language that prevented religious cohabitation than actually allowing polygamy.  Kody Brown, the “star” of “Sister Wives” remains only legally married to one woman.  But proponents and opponents of polygamy alike agree that the ruling has opened the door to potentially allowing multiple partners in a marriage.

The debate reached the pages of the New York Times, and in true Gray Lady fashion, presented four arguments in favor of what is now being called “plural marriage” with only two dissenting points of view.  To ape T.S. Eliot, this is how social convention dies, not with a bang, but with a series of op-eds.

If the contours of the New York Times‘ debate on polygamy looked familiar, they should – because they neatly conform to the same lines of argument that have defined the same-sex marriage debate.  Laws against polygamy are discrimination.  Plural marriage advocates deserve respect and dignity.  Plural marriage makes us freer as a society.  Heck, even the arguments against “scare tactics” make a triumphant return.  Opponents can sight studies showing the negative effects of polygamy on women and children, but essentially are reduced to arguing that the move represents a further tumble down that ill-defined “slippery slope.” Continue reading →

A Holiday Present To “Protect” MN

Posted on by
7

The Select Committee on Capitol Security met yesterday. 

They moved to hire some new State Patrol and rent-a-cops.   There wasn’t a whole lot of controversy there, although Representative Woodard and Senator Ingebrigtsen noted that security in the parts of the Capitol that need it is already pretty good. 

But the reason reason people paid attention to yesterday’s meeting was because Rep. Michael Paymar intended to push his proposal to ban legally-carried firearms in Capitol complex buildings (the Capitol, the State Office Building and the Judicial building). 

 More than 800 Minnesotans have filed with the DPS to indicate that they have a permit to carry a firearm and may bring their pistol into the Capitol. Originally, the draft recommendation would have required gun owners to update that notification annually; at Ingebrigtsen’s urging, that timeframe was adjusted to renewing the notification every five years, and was adopted by the committee.

In other words, you renew your notification as often as you renew your permit.  Truth be told, I already thought I had to do that…

…if, hypothetically, I had a carry permit and desired to carry at the Capitol. 

After that bit of fairly sensible legislation, it was looney-time:

Paymar argued that the fact that the Capitol had so far been spared any violent altercations was not evidence that current safety measures are adequate.

“Having a ‘cross your fingers’ kind of policy coming out of this entity, which is charged with making recommendations about public safety on the Capitol complex, to me, is irresponsible,” said Paymar, who chairs the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee.

Mijnnesota’s carry-permit holders are the single constituency in Minnesota least likely to cause a problem , at the Capitol or anywhere else.  Ever  Period. 

No, seriously – Minnesotans at large commit murder at the rate a little over 2 per 100,000 people per year.  There’s been one unjustified homicide by a carry-permittee in ten years; the math breaks down to .1/5 million Minnesotans/year, or .002/100,000 annually.  That’s right around three orders of magnitude safer. 

Mr. Paymar would more aptly worry about one of his Saint Paul constituents – perhaps the many supporters of terrorist-accomplice Kathleen Soliah, who live in Paymar’s neighborhood and tacitly condoned her activities in the seventies – freaking out and killing people in the Capitol than the state’s legal carry permittees. 

No, this wasn’t done because of any danger, real or perceived or even fabricated.  This was done to try to try to salvage at least a smidgen of “Protect” MN’s narrative from this past session – the addlepated notion that legislators were “intimidated” by gun owners who carried openly and legally during last spring’s epic waste of taxpayer time hearings on Rep. Paymar, Hausman and Martens’ various gun grab bills.  The staff at Capitol Security refute that idea with prejudice; ask them for yourself. 

Emphasis added in this next bit:

Ingebrigtsen pushed back, and pointed out that Gov. Mark Dayton had already said publicly he does not favor a move to ban firearms in the Capitol.

“We’ve also got the governor saying the same thing,” Ingebrigtsen said. “[Dayton] doesn’t see anything wrong with law-abiding citizens carrying handguns on the Capitol complex.”

The vote fell, 2-2 (ties are counted as defeats); Lt. Governor Yvonne Prettner Solon (there’s a trivia question for you) and Paymar voted for it, Ingebrigtsen and Woodard voted nay, SCOM justice Lori Gildea abstained (she might have to hear a court case on the issue someday…)

…and Ann Rest, a DFL Senator from Plymouth who is as electorally bulletproof as an Armored Humvee, didn’t show up. 

Don’t think for a moment that was an accident.  Even safe DFLers are nervous about the Metrocrats’ insane obsession with disarming the law-abiding. 

Not that they’re going to stop them. 

No, that’s our job.  At the ballot box. 

(NOTE TO DFL LEGISLATORS:   If I had a carry permit, I doubt I’d ever carry openly.  It’s not my style.  But feel free to be intimidated – not by any gun I’d hypothetically carry, but by the fact that I can shred through every single actual factual assertion that Heather Martens and Richard Carlbom make about the gun control issue like a riding mower going through a daisy patch, and not break a sweat.  Be intimdated by the fact that if either Martens or Carlbom debated me, or any of 500 other gun rights advocates, in a face to face, open debate, I’d fold them up like origami swans and make them scamper away like scared bunnies.  Be intimidated by the fact that I, myself, have convinced liberal Democrats that you are wrong, and I’m just getting started.  Ignore any gun I might hypothetically be carrying.  Be intimidated by the weapon between my ears.  On this issue, your side is carrying a pellet pistol; I’ve got a .44 Magnum, and I don’t mean one of those wimpy four inch barrels, either)

Our Person Of Either Gender Implementing The Rights And Responsibilities Of A Spouse And Parent, Who Art In Heaven…

Posted on by
Reply

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The big news at the Minnesota Continuing Legal Education Real Estate Institute was same-sex marriage passed this Summer and how does that affect spousal rights in Minnesota?

I thought the biggest laugh was this section of Minn. Stat. 517.201:

“Subd. 2.Rules of construction. When necessary to implement the rights and responsibilities of spouses or parents in a civil marriage between persons of the same sex under the laws of this state, including those that establish parentage presumptions based on a civil marriage, gender-specific terminology, such as “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” “father,” “widow,” “widower,” or similar terms, must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.

Good news, Mitch, you are no longer a Husband or Father, you now are a person of either gender implementing the rights and responsibilities of a spouse and parent.

Frankly, I prefer “Interchangeable Marital Unit” or since we all know which role men are assigned in divorce court: “Cash Cow.”

Joe Doakes

The Sexist “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”

Posted on by
32

The party that stood four-square behind Representative Ryan Winkler for calling Justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom“…

…has the vapors over two of the most innocuous jokes…

Nov. 16, 2012: “Poor Susan Rice. She’s the first woman in Washington to get in more trouble opening her mouth for a president than Monica Lewinsky.”

Nov. 18, 2012: “I keep hearing about this fantasy football thing. I don’t get it. My idea of fantasy football is where I am the quarterback and Angela Jolie is the center.”

They’re from Craig “Captain Fishsticks” Westover, an advisor to MNGOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson.  And the first one is accurate to a journalistic fault.

And, uh, note the dates.

So they – in this case, “Sam Jasenosky”, who would seem to be an undergrad journalism major (what else) – have been reduced to digging through advisors’ twitter feeds for any sign of political incorrectness to be tortured out of context.

I can hardly wait to see the ABM TV ad next year.

Here’s the fun part, though; ABM are the real sexists:  from yesterday’s post about the GOP candidates:

Julianne Ortman: A genie.

And lest the reader mentally compare Ortman – a graduate of U Penn law school and a former adjunct professor George Washington U  - to the “Djinn” of Arab mythology, they helpfully included video of Barbara Eden playing a jiggly, bubbleheaded blond piece of eye candy:

 

Because when you’re a Democrat, it’s only sexism if you’re one of the bad guys.

And because that’s what female conservatives are to Carrie Lucking’s little troupe of howler monkeys.

If Paul Wellstone really had all the integrity people said he did, he’d puke.

One Day At “Minnesotans United For All Social Progressive Causes”

Posted on by
8

(SCENE:  at the offices of “Minnesotans United for All Social Progressive Causes”, a modest little 501c4 non-proft in the Griggs Building in Saint Paul, located on a hallway close by “Take Action Minnesota”, “ProtectMN” and a who’s who of other Minnesota social activism non-profits supported by liberals with deep pockets.   Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK and Avery LIBRELLE are sitting at Ikea desks across the aisle from each other.  BIRKENSTOCK looks depressed).

LIBRELLE:  What’s the matter, Moonbeam?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Oh, the usual.  Just worried about job security.

LIBRELLE:  Why?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, work in the non-profit field depends on having another cause that progressives with deep pockets are willing to pour big money into.

LIBRELLE:  Right.

BIRKENSTOCK:  And in a matter of two years, we not only stopped the Marriage Amendment, but passed Gay Marriage.

LIBRELLE:  Yay!

BIRKENSTOCK:  Right, yay.  But that’s a cause that should have taken years.  Like abortion – that’s been a steady gig for progressive activists for a couple of generations now.

LIBRELLE:  True.

BIRKENSTOCK:  But with the issue now a non-issue, that’s that many fewer jobs for people like us.

LIBRELLE:  Well, you could always sign on with Heather, down the hall at “ProtectMN”.  Lotsa money going into that group soon.

BIRKENSTOCK:  I thought about that.  But I’d have to deal with all those gun people.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, yeah.  I hear you.  They never just shut up and realize that they’re wrong.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, there’s that.  But it also depends on Heather not screwing the whole thing up.

(Both look at each other and break into laughter)

LIBRELLE:  OK, point taken.

BIRKENSTOCK:  It’s just that gay marriage was a major income generator for people like us.  I’m just afraid that some of us – maybe me, maybe some other Macalester poli-sci grad with no marketable job skills – might have to go out on…on…

LIBRELLE:  Say it…

BIRKENSTOCK:  …on…

LIBRELLE:  You’re among friends.

BIRKENSTOCK: The private sector.  (Chokes back a sob)

LIBRELLE: Hug it out.

(The two trade hug. BIRKENSTOCK sobs softly)

(Door opens and Gretel STROMBERG, Executive Director of MUFASPC, walks into the room carrying a thick file of paper).

STROMBERG:  Hey, everyone.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (un-hugging, sniffling a little)  Hi, Gretel

LIBRELLE:   Hi

STROMBERG:   Why the long face?

BIRKENSTOCK:   It’s the way I was born…   (Resumes sobbing)

LIBRELLE:  I think it’s a figure of speech, Moonbeam.  (To STROMBERG) We were just talking about how there might be fewer jobs in advocacy now that gay marriage is a done deal.

STROMBERG:  What? Oh, you two sillies.  Not a chance.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (stops sobbing) Huh?

LIBRELLE:  What’s up?

STROMBERG:   Oh, have no fear.  We have a new cause.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (Looks at papers).  Wow.

LIBRELLE:  See?

STROMBERG:  It’s all about love. We don’t discriminate against love.

BIRKENSTOCK and LIBRELLE: We don’t discriminate against love.

(And SCENE)

Teacher Of The Year

Posted on by
53

Perhaps you’ve heard; Minnesota’s new “Teacher of the Year”, Saint Paul science teacher Megan Hall seems to have answered the question “are today’s public schools nothing but left-wing indoctrination centers” with a rousing “Hell yeah!”

This is from her acceptance speech, with emphasis added by me:

Teachers are persistent and responsible and generous because we believe that every child in America, regardless of circumstances of birth, deserves a decent chance at a good life. [Applause] From where I stand, teachers create equality of opportunity. From where I stand, teaching is a profession that takes a gritty patriotism. And from where I stand, teachers are American democracy’s last line of defense against the tyranny of the 1 percent

Don’t believe me?  Here’s the video

How over the top was it?  Even the City Pages’ Aaron Rupar seemed to feel a little uncomfortable: “Yeah, maybe that would’ve been a good line to save for when you’re having beers with your liberal buddies after the speech”.

For all I know Ms. Hall is a perfectly adequate teacher – and in my experience in the Saint Paul Public Schools, adequate would have been pretty superlative.

But I have to wonder:  if Ms. Hall is protecting the students from “the 1%”, who is going to protect them from the Saint Paul Public Schools?

Because between the child abuse, the brain-dead kommissariat masquerading as a bureaucracy, and the massive horde of intellectually-walking-dead union members Ms. Hall shares a district with?

I’ll take my chance with those gol-durned rich folks, thanks.

But look at it her way; I suppose if I taught for a district with the worst major-market achievement gap in the United States, with a minority graduation rate lower than Miley Cyrus’ neckline, a district that minority parents were decamping from as fast as they can find open spaces in charter schools or suburban schools via open enrollment, I’d look for a scapegoat too.

Dueling PCs

Posted on by
8

On The Frisky, Jessica Wakeman takes umbrage at a question asked in a review of an HBO documentary about a gay middle-schooler who was shot by a classmate whom he’d asked to a school dance.

I understand the article is a review of a documentary, so it may be the film itself that prompted these questions. (I have not yet seen the film.) But what I object to is the phrasing — I’m disgusted by the Times suggestion that Brandon McInerney could have been “bullied” by another boy for simply voicing an attraction to him and for dressing in a way that was not typically “masculine.” That’s not what “bullying” means.

That’s correct.  Telling someone you’re attracted to them when they’re not interested is not bullying.

It’s sexual harassment.

It’s a whole ‘nother set of lawyers.

Glad I could help.

Continue reading →

An Open Letter To MPR News

Posted on by
13

To:  MPR News
From:  Mitch Berg,Uppity Peasant
Re:  Re-Joyce And Be Glad

MPR,

Last week, in a similar open letter to the management at the news-blog MinnPost, I asked how they squared the fact that they were accepting sponsorship for their “news” coverage – let alone sponsorship from non-profit issue advocacy groups and the government that journalists are supposed to hold accountable - with professional journalism’s purported ideals and ethics.

These ideals are – we are told – set forth in the “Society of Professional Journalists’ “Code of Ethics“. 

Now – in 2011, MPR accepted a grant from the Joyce Foundation supporting the production of a series, “Following the Firearm“.   As Joyce notes…:

The Center selected reporters working in the Great Lakes region and awarded them fellowships to enable them to undertake in-depth investigative reporting projects. The fellows also attended workshops to learn from experts in gun crime and gun policy. MPR News reporter Brandt Williams spent four months researching the story. The four-part series looks at the sources of Minneapolis crime guns, sentencing for gun crimes, the impact of gun violence on the African American community, and the challenges surrounding firearm tracing.

Now, as has been noted in this space, the Joyce Foundation is the primary sponsor of gun control groups in the United States.  They donate a lot of money to groups like Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns“, the Violence Policy Center (whose “research” on Second Amendment issues is notable for its strident inaccuracy)…

…and the MinnPost, whose own “journalism” on the subject has been increasingly suspect for the past year or so; the MinnPost would seem to have turned into a PR firm for the “Gun Safety” movement.   

But enough about them; let’s talk about MPR.

The SPJ Code of Ethics’ “Accountability” section says that the journalist should…:

  • Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.  So how does reporting news on a controversial subject that is directly sponsored by a group that is a generous advocate for one side of the story not a real conflict of interest?
  • Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.  I’d say getting sponsored by a key pressure group – including having, according to Joyce, a parade of Joyce-approved “experts” paraded before your reporters – qualifies. 
  • Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.  Seems pretty self-explanatory.
  • Disclose unavoidable conflicts.  Was there disclosure?  Yep, there was, to a point; Joyce’s involvement was noted, although Joyce’s stake in the issue - its funding of gun control groups to the tune of tens of millions of dollars – was, near as I can tell, not. Strikes me as avoidable. 
  • Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.  How does MPR News’ acceptance of sponsorship from a special interest group not qualify?

 Your series aired back in 2011 – and to be fair, it presented factual information without pushing a political point of view especially overtly.  But neither did it go out of its way – in my opinion as a news consumer, activist on the subject and one-time reporter – to present much considered dissent from material supporting Joyce’s desired narrative, either. 

Which would make for an interesting parlor discussion – not that MPR News is especially interested in parlor discussions with people outside the Journo tribe. 

But beyond that?  About a month after the Joyce-sponsored series ran on MPR, the MPR News website published a commentary piece by Heather Martens - director and one of very few members of “Protect Minnesota”, a gun-control group.  The piece was notable for its complete absence of fact; every single non-numeric assertion made in the “Commentary” was false.  Every single one.  

And since I can’t imagine MPR News would publish a commentary by, say, a 9/11 Truther, or someone who favors white supremacy on biological grounds at all, much less without some sort of dissenting comment, I thought it was odd that MPR News granted her the bandwidth they did.

“Protect Minnesota” is also sponsored – almost entirely – by the Joyce Foundation, which had underwritten MPR’s series the previous month. 

Am I connecting dots that don’t belong connected?

Perhaps.  But if MPR had allowed its reporting to be sponsored by the NRA, and then ran an unaccompanied op-ed by Ted Nugent, people would talk, wouldn’t they? 

I don’t expect an answer, of course; MPR News doesn’t like engaging people outside the tribe (as I found last year, when one of your executives mis-addressed an email telling an MPR News staffer not to engage with me, to me). 

But since MPR News spends such time and effort claiming the moral and ideological journalistic high ground – claims to which I’ve given public credence in the past – it’s worth asking. 

Even the SPJ Code of Ethics says so.

Sincerely,

Mitch Berg
Uppity Peasant

Continue reading →

Manners

Posted on by
15

As you know, I am a Second Amendment activist.   This blog has always reflected this; indeed, the first post on this blog was a gun rights article.  It’s one of my most active topics. 

So consider that when I say this:  Starbuck’s CEO was right to ask gun owners to please not carry openly in his chain’s stores.

It’s his business – and annual “Starbucks Appreciation Days” aside, the vast majority of his chain’s clientele is going to be people on the political center-to-left – people who, rightly or wrongly, find firearms disconcerting. 

Bear in mind he’s not posting his stores to tell concealed carriers to keep their guns out; he’d just appreciate Real Americans not rattling the ninnies among the center-left masses who stop by every day for their Frangelicaccinos. 

That’s it. 

The Bill of Rights enumerates our rights to speak, publish, assemble, worship and keep and bear arms.  That means you have the right to give a pro-Vikings speech in front of a Packers bar, to march your Communist Re-Enactor club through a suburb full of Holodomor survivors, hold a southern Baptist revival meeting outside a mosque, or carry your firearms into a gathering of Vegan Nuns for Cesar Chavez.  Not only are none of them good ideas, all of them are just plain bad manners. 

Along those lines?  There is no genre in libertarian alt-media than the bobbleheads who film themselves walking down the road with an AR-15 slung over their shoulders, almost literally begging for a cop to pull over and ask what he’s doing, allowing the bobblehead the opportunity to lecture the cop on what the law really says.  The bobblehead is right – but it’s still stupid.

Our Bitchy Overlords

Posted on by
5

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Unconstitutional and ineffective. Pretty much sums up his whole administration.

First, military surplus rifles have been imported for years and sold out of the NRA magazine. They’re not automatic weapons, they’re antiques. German Mauser rifles. Russian sniper rifles from the Siege of Stalingrad. M-1 rifles we left behind in Korea. Now, we’re going to ban anybody from bringing them into the country? Why? Who does the rule affect? A few people who collect antique rifles. It will have absolutely no impact on crime.

Second, the ATF received 39,000 requests to transfer restricted weapons to gun trusts last year. Restricted weapons are machine guns. Transfers of machine guns require ATF approval, a fee, background investigation, etc. It’s not the same as buying a regular gun, it’s a big deal, even if the transfer is simply from me to my son. So some smart lawyers came up with the idea of putting the gun into the trust. The trust owns the gun, not me, so the beneficiaries of the trust can use it but the trust continues to own it.

Not one single person who was killed in America last year, was killed by an ATF-registered machine gun. The new rule affects collectors, not criminals. It will have absolutely no impact on crime.

Joe Doakes

Barack Obama: afflicting the afflicted, comforting the comfortable.

Missing Persons Report

Posted on by
10

The Nobel Peace-Prize-winning Obama Administration has been beating the war drums like John Bonham has risen from the dead and wants to get through the gig so he can trash the hotel already

And still we’ve seen no sign of Madea Benjamin.

Or Cindy “Absolute Moral Authority” Sheehan.

Or Code Pink.

Their relatives are starting to get nervous.

If you have any information as to their whereabouts, please call 1-976-PEACECREEPS.

Thanks.

Toss Those Sausages Onto The Conveyor Belt, Peasant

Posted on by
14

“I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” (J. Wellington Wimpy, “Popeye” canon).

“As your attorney, it is my duty to inform you that it is not important that you understand what I’m doing or why you’re paying me so much money. What’s important is that you continue to do so” (The Samoan lawyer in Hunter S. Thompson’sFear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

“But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good” (Allison Benedikt, Slate, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person“, Slate’s DoubleX, August 30, 2013).

The promise of big government – from Stalin’s “Five Year Plans” to Obama’s “Hope and Change” – is always just down the way.  Around the corner,  The light at the end of the tunnel at the end of the tunnel you’re in.  It’s just one five-year plan away. 

And when you’re living in a city run by people who think we can build a better life through more light rail, then waiting for utopia is OK, more or less, provided you’re not one the eggs that gets broken to make the omelet, whether you’re a University Avenue business or a Kulak.  (at least until you can find a way to sell your house) is a perfectly fine option. 

But when it’s things that are the here and now?  Like you and your future? Your kids and theirs?

Now it’s personal.

Allison Benedikt writes for Slate  -     to be exact, one of their clubby pseudo-feminist brandettes, DoubleX.  

And while the quote above does spell out the thesis of her piece pretty well, there’s always more to mock:

Some Of Us Are More Equal Than Others:  Give a point to Benedikt for at least giving a shout-out to human nature, especially the human nature of socialist institutions:

Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)

But of course, it is a perfectly fine argument against both; intentions aside, universal systems always end up being two-tracked systems; one for the plebeians, and another for those who have to manage them; public schools and Obamacare for most of us, but “elite” schools and exemptions for thekommissars, for Chelsea and Sasha and Malia and Matt Damon’s spawn (who will, naturally, grow up to manage the plebes). 

But that’s not the main argument (not that an actual “argument” is warranted) against Benedikt’s “idea”. 

The Unicorn School System:  According to Benedikt, if we’re all forced into the public school system, it’ll improve because parents just won’t stand for it.

So, how would this work exactly? It’s simple! Everyone needs to be invested in our public schools in order for them to get better. Not just lip-service investment, or property tax investment, but real flesh-and-blood-offspring investment. Your local school stinks but you don’t send your child there? Then its badness is just something you deplore in the abstract. Your local school stinks and you do send your child there? I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.

Perhaps you are.  For a while, anyway.  I speak from experience, having spent years trying to get the Saint Paul Public Schools to be anything more than a malignant pathology. 

But the simple fact is that when pseudo-intellectual dabblers like Allison Benedikt say things like…:

And parents have a lot of power.

…that’s where you know she’s either never had to deal with a truly malignant administration, or her definition of “power” is different than yours and mine.

Parents have the “power” to come in and stuff envelopes and help chaperone field trips and do whatever the system wants warm bodies to help with.

Push back against institutional stupidity in the curriculum?  Scrutinize the plans the system has for your kids?  Demand better out of “standards”, or – more importantly – teachers and programs?

You quickly find that “parental power” – especially in a one-party Democrat controlled city where the School Board is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the most extreme wing of the Democrat party – is a black humor chanting point. 

Not to say they don’t want your help, as Benedikt correctly notes: 

In many underresourced schools, it’s the aggressive PTAs that raise the money for enrichment programs and willful parents who get in the administration’s face when a teacher is falling down on the job. Everyone, all in.

But always, always, the only “power” that the system recognizes is the “power” to work within, and to feed your efforts into, The System.  The System as it is prescribed by the thinkers of deep thoughts.  Not by you.  Perish the thought.

Alas, Egg:  Your only real “Power” in Benedict’s fever-swamp dream, though, is the “power” eggs have in your Sunday omelet:

There are a lot of reasons why bad people send their kids to private school. Yes, some do it for prestige or out of loyalty to a long-standing family tradition or because they want their children to eventually work at Slate.[See also "Higher Ed Bubble"]But many others go private for religious reasons, or because their kids have behavioral or learning issues, or simply because the public school in their district is not so hot. None of these are compelling reasons.

Not for other peoples’ children, they’re not, perhaps – provided you’re the very sort of utterly illiberal person that rates the “liberal” tag these days. 

But you only get one shot with your children.  And the education your child gets – as opposed mere “schooling”, which is a distinction most ”liberals” miss – has a lot to do with how they do in life. 

Benedikt seems to think that having a couple of “lost generations” -

And “how our children do in life”, in aggregate, has everything to do with the future of our country – our economic performance 30-50 years from now.  

By the way – if we have a couple of lost generations of badly-educated people (our kids and grandkids), then from what basis are we going to build any “improvements?” 

The Cure Is The Disease:   Of course, school itself isn’t the problem.  Is it?

Or, rather, the compelling [reasons] (behavioral or learning issues, wanting a not-subpar school for your child) are exactly why we should all opt in, not out.

Among the most popular alternative schools – Sudbury, Waldorf and some private and charter Montessori schools – they don’t actually tell the children “you have to learn to read at a specified level by age 7″.  They assume that children, who are born with an innate drive to understand the world around them, will learn to read, and read very proficiently, at their own speed. 

And they’re right.  Barring serious physical or mental handicaps, every child does learn to read.  Long story short; there are no reading difficulties in a Sudbury or Waldorf schools.

It’s a piece of cake, really; those kids have just finished becoming fluent in a language (in some cases more than one); reading is comparatively simple in comparison.   Compare this to a public school, where kids are exhorted and threatened and cajoled into reading by an arbitrary point in time that is politically vital but, to the child, utterly meaningless – or be stuffed into “remedial” class, shamed, humiliated and, in short order, put on the “problem child” track. 

A friend of mine whose kids went to a Sudbury school – where every single child, no matter how damaged, learns to read by age eight, frequently by teaching themselves – notes that if learning to speak “to grade level” by age four was a government priority, you’d have rooms full of five year old “remedial speaking” students, being “remediated” at exquisite expense by unionized “educators” supervised by ranks of administrators. 

The point?  To Benedikt, your kids’ problems are even more reason to force them into the public schools – when there’s overwhelming evidence that in many cases school itself causes many of the problems in the first place.

This is especially true for boys – where a generation of academic feminism has turned public and most private education into a harrowing, self-destroying prison.  The system we have now might not have been designed to hamper boys’ development and turn education into a self-abnegating drudgery that they are only too happy to escape at the earliest opportunity – but how would it be any different if it had been? 

The system destroys our boys today.  We’re one academic fad away from doing the same to girls. 

And Yet Even Benedikt Knows The Answer:  Benedikt yammers on and on about the imperative to…

…what?  Help our kids?

No.  To support the institution.  To sacrifice a few generations of our kids’ well-being to support…what?  Not education, but the institution of publicly-funded schooling, and the industries – academia, textbooks, consultants, administration – that feed off it. 

And yet Benedikt herself hovers near the real answer – probably without knowing it:

I believe in public education, but my district school really isn’t good! you might say. I understand. You want the best for your child, but your child doesn’t need it. If you can afford private school (even if affording means scrimping and saving, or taking out loans), chances are that your spawn will be perfectly fine at a crappy public school. She will have support at home (that’s you!) and all the advantages that go along with being a person whose family can pay for and cares about superior education—the exact kind of family that can help your crappy public school become less crappy.

In other words, the crappiness of the school doesn’t matter, provided that the parents care enough. 

Good, engaged parents – the ones P.J. O’Rourke called “the ones with the eternal good common sense to give a shit” – are the answer.  And as Benedikt herself says, with good parents, the schools don’t matter.

Which is exactly what a generation of home-schoolers and charter-schoolers, not to mention private schoolers, have discovered; good parents do solve problems.

And in their capacity as good parents, many of them discover that avoiding the public schoolsisthe answer. 

She may not learn as much or be as challenged, but take a deep breath and live with that. Oh, but she’s gifted? Well, then, she’ll really be fine.

So why not cut out the sneering, incompetent middlepersons?

Bonus Question For Allison Benedikt:  When you’re in a nursing home someday – a public one, naturally, since one must assume you think old folks should all have the same treatment, just like kids – are you OK with being taken care of by the kids who grew up under the “lost generations” you seem to be comfortable with saddling our children with?