A friend of the blog emails:
I had to look up this Twitter account because I was sure it was parody, but it wasn’t.
Berg’s 21st Law – “When it comes to “progressive” policy, yesterday’s absurd joke is today’s serious proposal and tomorrow’s potential law. – applies to policy, but I think rhetoric probably qualifies as well.
Minneapolis.
It has an educational achievement gap at the very bottom of the national pile.
It’s on track to have its worst year for violent crime in a generation.
The gap between haves and have nots is daunting; crossing 394 between Kenwood and the North Side, or driving up Washington from the posh North Loop to Near North, is a little like crossing the Berlin Wall in 1974.
The public class is governing like Lewis Carrol’s Mad Queen is teaching a sophomore-level poli sci “laboratory” experiment – focused on bikeability and ramming trains down horse-and-carriage sized streets and telling the subjects public safety is a “privilege”.
Its downtown is decimated by Covid, its formerly stellar entertainment districts cowed by Covid and jittery from spasms of hooliganism and violence.
It’s ruling class can’t be bothered with any of that, other than chanting it’s all Trump’s fault.
But what can they do?
Virtue-signal about policies that went out of favor sixty years ago:
…where “do something” is the homeowners equivalent of putting a bumpersticker on their car.
For decades some Minnesotans added language to their property deeds barring future sales to people of color.
Two new initiatives hope to raise awareness of these racially restrictive covenants and their impact, get them removed and also raise money to increase Black homeownership in the city. And it starts one lawn sign at a time.
It’s true – these were parts of covenents in deeds, and some deeds may still have some of that language tucked away…
…over seventy years after they became illegal and unenforceable, in 1948.
The article points out, correctly, that at one point those covenants did at one point affect where populations were able and allowed to settle.
And it’s intellectually honest to note that demography takes forever to change organically – Saint Louis Park or Highland Park haven’t been semi-formal “Jewish Ghettoes” since well before World War II, and yet both still retain elements of that history.
It’s also intellectually honest to note that the demography that was forced by the covenants has been reinforced for decades, now, not by property covenants, but by the two-tiered public school system with the lower tier reserved for poor kids; by a social welfare state that uses the inner city as a warehouse for the poor; by welfare policies that have encouraged the breakdown of all families, but with the black family leading the fall.
“It starts……”
And, let’s be honest, stops, unless those wealthy progs want to change the system they own.
Or give their property away.
Otherwise, it’s just another, bigger, more expensive bumper sticker.
Did the management at “Black Rifle Coffee Company” – the gleefully un-PC, over-the-top God Guns ‘n Guts-oriented, veteran owned coffee company – go “woke”?
[CEO Evan Hafer] quickly debunked the notion that he made derogatory remarks about BRCC’s customers or conservatives and then proceeded to explain how the New York Times deliberately twisted his words and took them out of context. According to Hafer, his conversation with the NYT Magazine reporter was in the context of racism and anti-Semitism in America in light of Hafer being the target of an organized attack last year because of “my last name and my heritage.”
“We were purely discussing that,” Hafer says, and he was not conflating those groups with conservatives.
“The New York Times, as we know, the chances of them being objective were fairly slim, but we gave them the opportunity,” he added. He went on to mention veterans issues he hoped to bring attention to. But, unfortunately, the New York Times chose to go with “the salacious headline” about the company instead.
Hafer reiterated that racists and anti-Semites have no place in his company.
“I really need you guys to get the facts straight on this, which is: There’s no chance in hell I’m gonna talk s–t about conservatives to the New York Times. It’s just not gonna happen.”
You live and you learn. That’s my take.
Steven Kruiser is a little less forgiving…of Hafer:
How long do the mainstream media hacks have to keep exposing themselves as frothing-at-the-mouth haters of conservatives before conservatives get it? If Hafer truly thought that the Times was going to give him a fair shake and that this would be a good marketing opportunity, then he’s too monumentally stupid to be around anything that isn’t toddler-proofed. It’s like walking into a biker bar while wearing a tuxedo and being surprised you got your a** kicked after you called all of them wusses. It’s just super easy to predict how some things are going to work out.
Conservatives shouldn’t be treating The New York Times and its ilk with any kind of courtesy. Unless you want to be a turncoat, it’s not going to work out well for you. Don’t hang out with an enemy who spends all day pointing a knife at you then turn away and act surprised when you get stabbed in the back.
And here’s the most important lesson for conservatives: don’t pull the knife out, hand it back to your enemy, then turn away again.
Well, Kruiser’s gonna kruis. At the risk of giving Hafer too much credit – something I tend to be wont to do – he’s a businessman from Utah, not breezy media analyst; there’s a first time for everyone.
Not saying that stands up – Black Rifle is pretty savvy, generally.
Further evidence for my eternal advice – if you’re a conservative, any conservative, and the mainstream media are interviewing you for any reason, record the interaction. Every single time. If you’re misquoted, wrenched out of context, played for a patsy – as is likely in many corners of the media these days – you’ll have evidence.
Fearless prediction: the adherence of the left’s official opinion-makers to this video:
…whether its’ Samantha Bee or Ibram Kendi, to an almost plagiaristic level (but for the fact that it will be in earnest, not at all satirical) is going to take six months.
This quote popped to mind…
“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
…when I read this twitter thread:
To plumb the depths of our culture’s intellectual collapse, here’s the NR article Cooke wrote on the subject.
Warning up front: It’ll be an investment of time. Over two hours, to be exact.
It’s Jordan Peterson, interviewing former NYTimes editor Bari Weiss, who famously resitned from the paper, roasting it all the way for its obseisance, not to “journalism”, but to the feelings and politicized motivation of a small, “woke” faction of the staff.
It’ll be worth the investment:
If we can’t trust our institutions – law enforcement and the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the media – to act fairly and dispassionately – then the Republica has a huge problem.
Also: the Republic has a huge problem.
This video’s been making the rounds. I’ve had at least a half dozen people refer it to me. It’s Brad Taylor, speaking last week at the Rosemount School Board, on how his education has already been given over to indoctrination:
I give speaker points: the kid is excellent.
All you folks moving to the third-tier burbs looking to escape the lunacy? The lunacy is following you. Running away ain’t gonna work. You’re going to have to stand and fight.
And a few thousand more like Mr. Taylor and his like (I’m looking at you, Kyle Kashuv, wherever yo88u are) it may be a fair fight.
As re getting him on the NARN? My people are already calling his people.
I have a hunch one of these is going to be mandatory for everyone in public life sooner than later…
…and I should really get cracking on mine.
Remember earlier in this week, when I ran the video of Seth Dillon of Babylon Bee echoing my complaint that when the world is insane, satire is impossible?
I had one of those moments at something like 2AM, when the cat woke me up and I checked thje news.
I read a news story that I thought was either a weird dream at best, or a not-especially-deft bit of satire by some Babylon Bee knockoff at worst. I went back to bed.
And woke up to find it was neither:
Victoria’s Secret is replacing its supermodel angels with seven high-profile women known for their accomplishments rather than their figures in its evolving brand to help “inspire women.”
The lingerie company announced on Wednesday that its new VS Collective campaign aims to “positively impact the lives of women” with its products, experiences and initiatives.
The campaign also includes new partnerships with professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas, world champion free skier Eileen Gu, model, refugee and mental wellness supporter Adut Akech, body advocate and model Paloma Elsesser, journalist Amanda de Cadenet and LGBTQIA+ activist Valentina Sampaio.
Look – I kind of got Viotoria’s Secret’s 2019 decision to ditch the “Angels” and their annual cheeseca; not being a marketer, I’m not sure what the net pros and cons of “pelting your target demographic with images of women that were mostly fantasy objects for men” versus “selling the idea that you kind of are that fantasy, for that special someone, if you buy our unmentionables”.
I suppose it’d be more or less like having Wilt Chamberlain endorse an Erectils Dysfunction remedy; half of the audience might think “THAT’LL HELP ME BANG 20,000 WOMEN TOO!”, and the other half could get…inteimidated?
I guess I’ll let the marketeers market.
So while I can intellectually understand the idea that Victoria’s Secret might shy away from their harem of supermodel “Angels” (complete with some of the more Hefner-y aspects of that image), and simultaneously the idea of feminists wanting companies to use more examples of female empowerment in marketing…
…I guess I’m struggling to see where or why a business and industry that produces lingerie, a milieu which ostensibly exists to make women feel sexy for their significant others, sees itself as a vehicle for that sort of empowerment.
Especially given the role models they’ve selected. The linked article lists :
…actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas, world champion free skier Eileen Gu, model, refugee and mental wellness supporter Adut Akech, body advocate and model Paloma Elsesser, journalist Amanda de Cadenet and LGBTQIA+ activist Valentina Sampaio
…most of whom fit fairly squarely into the modern current western notion of “beauty”…
…and probably the most “controversial” of the picks…
…Megan Rapinoe, a woman whose entire claim to fame is successfully chasing a ball around a field and stridently proclaiming the dominant social narrative on cue in front of cameras, and who also matches the current western notion of beauty, if you have a secret thing for Reinhard Heydrich.
Beiing neither a lingerie buyer, a second-wave feminist nor a Heydrophile, I am probably not the one to comment.
I’m still trying to figure out if Victoria’s Secret, the brand, is…:
Either way, I think I’m gonna buy stock in whatever VS’s more traditional competitors might be. It just seems…market-prudent.
The Minneapolis City Council is going full blown Maoist.
The council sent an “open letter“ to city employees in May, “encouraging“ them to sign a declaration that there was pretty much nothing to any white culture but racism:
In a May 28 meeting, Bender referred to an open letter which all city employees are invited to sign — anyone who signs the letter is acknowledging racism as a public health crisis, accepting responsibility for the “pain” they have caused as “stewards of the City of Minneapolis’s policies,” and recognizing that Minneapolis has been and continues to be harmful to the BIPOC community.
The letter was filed into the official city record and will be published on June 11 with the signatures of all who choose to sign, making it easy to know which employees decide not to sign the letter.
Bender said this statement should not have to be “courageous.”
“This should be baked into our systems, and what we all commit to unwaveringly every day,” Bender declared. “Our staff of color, particularly in Minneapolis, have been carrying the burden of white supremacy throughout our systems every day, for a very long time.”
Riots decimate entire neighborhoods.
Gangs turn commercial streets into free fire zones.
Hot rodders make the streets unlivable after dark on weekends, at best, and at worst blaze away at each other, harming only bystanders (as usual)
And this is what the city Council busies itself with.
I’ve never much liked the entire “Seventies Midwestern Arena Rock” genre.
But among the bands in that genre, it’s Styx that’s always gone beneath and below the rest, the one whose impression to me swerves from apathy into active dislike.
It’s not that they couldn’t play. They certainly had live game.
But unlike REO Speedwagon, or Head East or Trooper or April Wine (I know, they’re Canadian, but they fit the genre) or Michael Stanley Band or any of the others that were more or less like them, Styx’s Dennis DeYoung spent most of the late seventies and eighties whining about how awful being a pop star was, how degrading the machinery of the stardom industry was, and what mindless sheeple the fans were.
To which I eventually responded “OK – then go to work in a meat processing plant and quit your whining”.
We’ll come back to that.
———-
This is the Sinead O’Connor I suspect most of us remember:
This is the response I suspect most of us, even us Protestant goyim that found, nevertheless, much that was admirable about JPII, would have loved to have made:
Thirty years and change along, and it turns out it wasn’t (just) rabid anti-Catholicism. Turns out she really, really, really loathed being a pop star, and she also had some serious mother issues:
In the book, she details how her mother physically abused her throughout her childhood. “I won the prize in kindergarten for being able to curl up into the smallest ball, but my teacher never knew why I could do it so well,” she writes…O’Connor was 18 when her mother died, and on that day, she took down the one photograph on her mom’s bedroom wall: the image of the pope. O’Connor carefully saved the photo, waiting for the right moment to destroy it.
“Child abuse is an identity crisis and fame is an identity crisis, so I went straight from one identity crisis into another,” she said. And when she tried to call attention to child abuse through her fame, she was vilified. “People would say that she’s fragile,” Geldof said. “No, no, no. Many people would have collapsed under the weight of being Sinead O’Connor, had it not been Sinead.”
Of course, being an “artist” (I put the term in scare quotes not because O’Connor isn’t one – she was an exceptional singer – but because the term has been stretched far beyond meaning these days) means being able to pass the abuse on without ever having to adopt any sort of adult coping skills, which is one of the reasons people go into being one in the first place.
The piece is an interesting read, although kind of depressing by the time you get to the end and really digest it.
Oh, yeah – I said I’d come back to Styx and Dennis DeYoung. I have a habit of saying “we’ll come back to that”, and I don’t, always. I should go back through a few years of this blog’s history and finish some of those threads.
Anyway. DeYoung.
Uh…
Actually, for all the whining about the pop star life he had (and still has), and how vocally I dislike most everything he has ever written, in or out of Styx, DeYoung would seem have avoided the most cliched pitfalls of stardom; he’s abstemious and rigorously healthy, as devoutly Catholic as O’Connor is, well, not, and he’s been married to the same woman for 50 years; he used to take his family on the road to avoid, y’know, all the problems that families get when Dad is on the road all the time. And as whiny as most of his music was, in interviews he’s always been one of the funniest, most genial, and seemingly audibly well-adjusted, grateful people in the music business.
That might be worth an article all by itself.
1985:
“Progressive” “In” Crowd (academics, media, non-profiteers, etc): “It is good to be politically correct”.
(Months of mockery, from conservatives and just plain real people ensue).
1986:
“Progressive” “In” Crowd: “Political Correctness” doesn’t exist, and is just a term made up by right wingers to try to ‘satirize’ us”.
1994:
“Progressive” In Crowd: “It’s time for comprehensive Gun Control . Join Handgun Control, Incorporated!”
(Months of mockery, from conservatives and just plain real people. and a tidal wave of political annihilation, ensue).
2000:
“Progressive” “In” Crowd: “Gun Control” doesn’t exist, and never existed, and is just a fairy tale the right uses to scare its followers and increase gun sales!”.
2002:
“Progressive” In Crowd: “It is good to be diverse”.
(Months of mockery, from conservatives and just plain real people ensue).
2002006:
“Progressive” “In” Crowd: “Diversity” doesn’t exist, and is just a term made up by right wingers to try to ‘satirize’ us”.
2018:
“Progressive” In Crowd: “It is good to be ‘woke'”.
(Months of mockery, from conservatives and just plain real people ensue).
2021:
“Progressive” “In” Crowd: “Wokeness” doesn’t exist, and is just a dog whistle the “alt right” uses to try to ‘satirize’ us”.
2022: What will be next?
A friend of the blog writes:
Interested in who gets an interview for this
I’m gonna guess the credentials are entirely social.
And that the interview sounds like something from Animal Farm.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is biking through Como Park when he hears some muted sobbing. He looks toward a park bench, where he notices Avery LIBRELLE sitting, wearing four masks, which are becoming slowly soaked in tears. BERG visibly hesistates, but his sense of compassion overwhelms his reflexes. He gets off the bike and walks over toward LIBRELLE
BERG: Er…hey, Avery…
LIBRELLE: (Stifles a sob) Stay at least 12 feet away!
BERG: Nooo problem. What’s the matter?
LIBRELLE: I…I don’t know. It’s just that with the CDC suddenly scaling back mask mandates, and Governor…
BERG: Klink
LIBRELLE: …Walz ending mask mandates early, I just feel…(sobs again)I.
BERG: How?
LIBRELLE: Strangely… empty.
BERG: Like part of your purpose in life has been removed.k
LIBRELLE: (Small sob)
BERG: Like all your moral authority has been snatched away.
LIBRELLE: (Bigger sob)
BERG: Like you’ve lost your only response to that evolutionary instinct you have to respond to what you see as an existential threat – a sabertooth tiger or a famine or Pearl Harbor? That you’ve had your power to fill the void left by generations of plenty, safety and security has been ripped from your life?
LIBRELLE: (Wracked with a convulsive sob).
BERG: (Lets LIBRELLE cry a bit, then) Well, the good news is, most people have been vaccinated…you’ve had your vaccine, right?
LIBRELLE: (mustering some irate composure). Of course.
BERG: Well, there. you…
LIBRELLE: Twelve doses.
BERG: (jaw flaps in breeze for a moment before he shakes it off). Makes sense. To go with the four masks.
LIBRELLE: It’s six.
BERG: Of course it is.
And SCENE.
Remember when there was an unstated rule, when following news coverage of a crime in the Metro – if they didn’t mention the offender’s ethnicity or show a photo, it actually answered the question?
New addition to the rule: if the story pertains to criminal justice’s response to last year’s riots, and the offender’s ideology – “Boogaloo”, “proud boy”, whatever – isn’t mentioned, you know by omission whose “side” they were on.
Prove me wrong.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Chickification: the process by which a formerly male activity is ruined for the men who enjoyed it.
I subscribe to a couple of airplane magazines. In the past, the articles mostly covered maintenance and repairs, flying safety practices, and heads-up notices of regulatory changes. There was endless encouragement to take kids flying to develop a love of aviation to keep the sport alive. The phrase “$100 hamburger” was tongue-in-cheek (it refers to the practice of flying your airplane to another airport for no real purpose, just eat lunch and come home. Adding up all the costs of owning and operating an airplane, that hamburger cost you $100, at least. But hey, considering the boat, motor and trailer, what did that walleye cost you? It’s not about the money, it’s about the sport). Flying apparel was logo ball caps. Flying club meetings were sitting on folding chairs in a hangar shooting the breeze with other pilots.
Lately, I’ve noticed a change in the magazines. Now that the editors are women journalism majors hired to make the headquarters office acceptably diverse, the content of the magazines has shifted. They’re all about getting more women flying, more girls interested in aviation. Flying articles emphasize mothers juggling flying careers and family. Glossy photos show foodie destinations. Flying apparel is fashionable. It’s a noticeable shift in emphasis away from old men in favor of 30-ish women. I fully expect Standards of Conduct and Speech Codes for flying club meetings within the next year. Nobody is allowed to say it, but adding women to a club changes the club and seldom for the better.
Women don’t need special programs or rules or encouragement to be accepted at a male activity such as flying (or shooting at the firing range). Just show up and the guys will fall all over themselves welcoming you. Forcing your way in is a sure way to force the guys out and after that, it’s just one big cat-fight which nobody ever wins until everyone stomps off in a huff and the club closes.
Joe Doakes
Which may be the goal, at least for some.
I’ve repeatedly said that satire – the Babylon Bee, the Onion, of course Betg’s Law, and of course Titania McGrath, among a few others – are the real journalism of the age.
McGrath [1] proves it with this Twitter thread:
It’s really uncanny; satire exposes our reality better than NPR and Sixty MInutes, combined, have in decades.
The one, single public official in either city that didn’t marinade themselves in shame in the face of the rioting last year was Saint Paul’s top cop Todd Axtell.
Don’t get me wrong – Axtell has been no less DFL-doctrinaire an anti-gunner than any other urban police chief. He knows where his next paycheck is coming from.
But as Jacob Frey went blank in front of the cameras (only to wake up to tear into a Trump tweet, as Lake Street burned west to Nicollet), as Lisa Bender mumbled about public safety being a sign of privilege, and Melvin Carter apparently went into hiding, Axtell had the great common sense to go on TV and send a message to the rioters that had scourged my neighborhood the previous day: “We’re not abandoning any part of Saint Paul” – which, tacitly, also said Yes, public safety is a privilege, one that every %$#@@ one of you taxpayers of every race and orientation pays for with your tax dollar. And the SPPD, which got behind on the count on Thursday the 28th, at least went on to prove it Friday the 29th, meeting the rioters on the Marshall-Lake Bridge and sending them scampering back to easier pickings west of the river.
It was one of precious few times I’ve been happy to live in Saint Paul in recent years.
It sounded a little like riot night in Saint Paul over the past weekend – three separate shootings, including one at a crowded house party, combined with apparently hundreds of street racers dicing up and down the freeways, gave the city that Black Hawk Down kind of vibe.
Axtell commented:
And I don’t doubt Axtell means it. If nothing else, he’s built up some confidence in some parts of the public, including this mere taxpayer.
But if the SPPD catches them, then what?
They get handed over to a Ramco prosecutors office that is about as tough on crime as Mitra Jalali?
All but the trigger men, maybe, will be back out on the street before the ink is dry on their arrest records. Which are digital.
At least, that’s the sense people get.
If there was ever a time Saint Paul needed to be something other than a one-party desert, this is it.
The DFLin the metro likes to chant “We OWN This Town” after they win lopsided and at least partly fraudulent elections.
Yep, DFL. You do. And like a trust fund baby with a car you didn’t really pay for, wrecking it has no consequences for you. The trust will just get you another. Roseville. Maybe Rochester.
Good luck, Chief.
Tim Scott says America’s not racist.
So many Democrats call him “Uncle Tim”, it trends.
A journalist with an improbable sense of balance asks Kamala Harris the same question. Several times. Which ekes out an answer…
Nothin’.
I know I”m not the only one seeing a pattern, here…
Erin Maye Quade – who, you may recall, came within an epic suck up to the progressive movement of being Minnesota’s lieutenant governor – had this to say about Tim Scott’s rebuttal to the presidents… whatever that was Wednesday night:
This, on top of Ryan WInkler’s “Uncle Tom” jape at one of the most accomplished jurists of any race in US history, and of course the “Uncle Tim” slur earlier this week, is enough to make any moral creature ask…
…what is the Democratic Party going to do about its racism problem?
UPDATE: I’ve “cloned” this post from yesterday. You’ll see why in a moment.
This is an open thread for all the random dick-measuring y’all wanna do. Like arguing about the Holocaust.
An even on which this blog has been crystal clear throughout its history, if you happened to read any of it.
Or branch out and flame away over whether Van Halen is “Metal” or “Hard Rock”. Knock yourselves out.
The conversation — one of the most comical threadjacks this blog has had since “Dog Gone” was fumigated – will not metastasize into any other threads. I need say no more.
There was a little bit of kerfuffle earlier this week over this tweet, by “a member of the U of M’s student government”:
Is this not the ultimate expression of “white privilege?”
It can almost go without saying that she’s got a job coming up in Tina Smith’s office. So you can forget about the whole “accountability” thing.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I’m reconsidering my position on reparations for slavery. I’d be willing to have the United States government pay every person who was held as a slave in the United States. The proof could be DNA, family records, distinctive cheekbones or even oral family history. Once qualified, the applicant would be eligible to receive a reparations payment of $1 million. If the eligible person is deceased, the payment would be distributed to his/her heirs, per stirpes.
True, after a few generations, the payment amounts will be insultingly small but that’s because the relationship between the recipient and the harm is increasingly distant. My kids can expect a modest inheritance from me; my grandkids less so, my great-grandkids probably none at all, and the same for reparations.
By making the million-dollar payment, the United States would settle all accounts with the former slaves and the books would be balanced. Accepting the payment would include a waiver of entitlement to preferential treatment on account of race. Society would no longer entertain complaints about school discipline having a disparate impact, would no longer offer affirmative action in college admissions, would abandon goals and timetables for employment, and would outlaw set-aside quotas for minority owned businesses.
Any person who took the money and then tried to play the race card would be incarcerated for life without possibility of parole in prisons located in Siberia, operated under contract between our governments, since they have the infrastructure already built and trained personnel ready at hand.
Yes, it would cost a fortune. But if we could finally put the legacy of slavery behind us, it might be worth it.
Joe Doakes
There are times I wonder if paying the issue off with prejudice as Joe describes forty years ago might not have saved money.
Submitted without comment:
OK, not completely without comment.
Good kitty.
TEACHER: “Marco, can you gell us what the ‘Holocaust’ was?
MARCO: “Er…January 6?”
TEACHER: “Correct…”
