{"id":82427,"date":"2022-06-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=82427"},"modified":"2022-11-11T11:18:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-11T17:18:40","slug":"meet-the-gatekeepers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=82427","title":{"rendered":"Meet The Gatekeepers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Washington Post<\/em> correspondent David Weigel \u2013 with whom I had a few minor interactions, back in the 1990s when he was working at the late, unlamented \u201cCity Pages \u201c\u2013 got suspended from the WaPo<\/em> last week for retweeting an un-PC joke that was around most likely before man landed on the moon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I\u2019m not exactly leaping to Weigel\u2019s defense, here. When covering a Minnesota legislative race, he once got into a bit of trouble (I\u2019m told) for getting the candidates District wrong. Also the candidates name. You know \u2013 the kind of stuff that journalists used to get into trouble for getting wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, he was hounded into a suspension without pay by a group that has become, in fact, the equivalent of the layer of commissars that used to accompany the Soviet army into battle: the parallel political advisors that could veto the decision of any military commander. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of them \u2013 a male and graduate of the Stanford journalism program \u2013 wrote a student op-ed castigating the University\u2018s food service for not prepackaging his meals, since he had too much anxiety to go to the buffet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only one who finds himself rooting for this twerp and Weigel to have a cage match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes I wonder if the problem with millennials is that they had no great existential struggles in life, as a group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans have evolved over humanities history to be keenly adapted to responding to existential crises. And life certainly threw them crises. Up until our great great grandparents times, life itself \u2013 surviving past age three, not succumbing to famine or injury or childhood diseases or childbirth or a war, was a great and noble struggle in its own right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our parents\/grandparents generations had the depression and a couple of world wars to deal with. The generation after that, a number of decidedly first world crusades; ending communism or ending poverty, and\/or getting to the moon, depending on one\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve got a generation now, maybe two, whose greatest struggles have been a recession and society \u2014 and, it would seem, at the end of the day, the least worthy and yet most intractable opponent of all, themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Post correspondent David Weigel \u2013 with whom I had a few minor interactions, back in the 1990s when he was working at the late, unlamented \u201cCity Pages \u201c\u2013 got suspended from the WaPo last week for retweeting an un-PC joke that was around most likely before man landed on the moon. Now, I\u2019m not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[453,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ch-ch-changes-generational-politics","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82427"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82436,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82427\/revisions\/82436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}