Last week, I did one of my periodic cites of Jeff Snyder’s epochal “A Nation of Cowards“.

It was partly in reference to the Penny case.

Daniel Penny was the good samaritan who put a sleeper (not choke) hold on a mentally-ill man who was actively threatening people in the NYC subway. He was assisted by a black man and a latino fellow – all good samaritans, all men doing the right thing, all examples of what masculinity is supposed to be in the face of danger.

But Penny is being charged by Manhattan DA Lavrentii Beria. Oops – I mean Alvin Bragg.

He’s got a legal defense fund:

https://twitter.com/RonDeSantisFL/status/1657212176178855939

Penny (amd the other men) were the opposite of the “cowards” Snyder assailed. Naturally Beria..er, Bragg can’t tolerate that.

This has the potential to wedge NYC the way the Bernard Goetz case did.

In a just world, anyway.

…that the DFL made Minnesota a sanctuary state for Munchausen Mommies like this soulless crone.

(WARNING: You may vomit):

Maunchausen Mommy bribes “son” with money to take “his” chemical castration drugs. Evil. Sick. Beyond comprehension that a mother could do this to her child.

This is child abuse, and it needs to start being treated as such. pic.twitter.com/RKW8DTQvsw

— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) May 3, 2023

And when a Munchhausen Mom like this walks through a custody order to bring the kid that they’re “transing” to MN, the state will put her wishes above that of the other state’s court order.

Food for ugly, nightmarish thought.

What must it be like to be Jackie Rahm Little (who also goes by Joel Arthur Tueting), the guy arrested for a wave of arson and vandalism at mosques, a police car and Ilhan Omar’s office?

To commit one of the very few types of crimes that the Minneapolis law and order apparatus bother to investigate and prosecute – crime against Muslims?

If he’d burned down a bar in South Saint Paul, or a barbershop in North Minneapolis? He’d be a free man.

No, even if he had somehow gotten himself arrested. Because Big Left looks out for the insane and depraved:

Buried in the final paragraphs of the @StarTribune story on the mosque arson suspect is the tiny detail that this multiple-time previous offender with mental health issues had bail paid for by @MNFreedomFund

2023 #mnleg outcome doing nothing to address what enabled this. pic.twitter.com/zxg7WoHFxJ

— Walter Hudson (@WalterHudson) May 1, 2023

By the way – I hope Nancy Nord Bence will go public with any knowledge she has of this criminal’s activities.

To: Rep. Samantha Vang
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Gaslighting

Rep. Vang,

You wrote the “Social Credit” bill (you call it ‘Stop Hate’, but my title is more accurate) that I talked about on my show over the weekend.

You got a storm of criticism – almost all of it justified.

This was your response:

https://twitter.com/RepSamanthaVang/status/1651983286929858561

Well,no. That’s not what it does.

Y’see, the market for hate crime far, far outstrips the supply, notwithstanding the DFL’s “Reichstag Firing”. For example:

https://twitter.com/LiishKozlowski/status/1651996187753426971

The mosque fires were set, not just by one guy, the the one criminal in Minneapolis dumb enough to actually commit a crime that Minneapolis’s city government still gives a sh*t about.

No – Rep. Vang’s bill will essentially collect statemens about “microagressions” reported by protected classes.

Bumper sticker they don’t like?

Something overheard in a cafe?

A Trump sign?

Nobody knows. The bill allows no scrutiny, no Data Practices requests, no accountability or transparency of any kind.

It is, in every respect, a “social credit” bill.

Which is a key part of the Communist system, Rep. Vang, that your parents and her people fled.

That is all.

There’s sure been a lot of aggressive rhetoric from the DFL, especially its “LGBTQ” caucus, for the past (checks watch) 24 hours or so.

Here’s Alicia Kozlowski, elected representative from Duluth and, as such, person witih a lifetime sinecure of living on the public dime ahead of her:

Wow. That sounds serious.

It’s certainly got Rep Kozlowski’s dudgeon up:

https://twitter.com/LiishKozlowski/status/1651664530647265281

And then there was Rep Leigh Finke with, curioiusly, the exact same type of rhetoric:

https://twitter.com/leighfinke/status/1651756614817394688

Wow. Two marquee members of the LGBTQ caucus making “defiant” noises.

I wonder what’s up with that?

Oh:

A Republican lawmaker was verbally accosted by a Democratic colleague on the House floor Wednesday because she shared a tweet from the organization Gays Against Groomers, she told Alpha News.

Rep. Dawn Gillman, R-Dassel, retweeted a post regarding legislation that would have removed existing language in Minnesota law stipulating that pedophilia is not a protected sexual orientation.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who confronted Gillman about the retweet. Gillman said she was “yelled at and intimidated” by Finke, who apparently shouted “no!” when a colleague suggested moving the conversation off the floor.

“My interaction on Wednesday evening with Rep. Finke left me shaken and fearing for my personal safety. Instead of coming to talk to me, I was yelled at and intimidated on the House Floor,” Gillman told Alpha News. She said that this type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in other workplaces.

The incident was corroborated by multiple representatives who were there. Gillman asked to be escorted to her car after session.

Finke reportedly upbraided [1] Gillman over circulating this article.

Several questions, here:

1. Is House HR going to get involved, or are they still chasing after Peter Callaghan?
2. Is House HR going to come after me for writing this?
3. If this story is accurate, it’d appear that the House Cisgender Caucus is the one that needs a mutual defense agreement.
4. I wonder if writing this is going to put me afoul of the DFL’s new Social Credit policy?

Speaking of Social Credit policy, I’ll be talking about that, the Giillman/Finke incident, and much. more on the show tomorrow. Tune on in.

(more…)

It’s become a fad among “progressive” circles to “acknowledge”, at the beginning of a meeting or gathering, that the meeting is “occurring on land stolen from…” the various tribes indigenous to Minnesota.

The meeting, run almost invariably run by plush-bottom laptop-class academic/non-profit/government complex yoohoos, then continues with no land, dignity or status returned to the tribes.

I strongly suspect this bit of theatrical institutional rending of theatrical garments is more of the same: the U of M is “acknowledging” its theft from the tribes.

Sort of:

DAN KRAKER: The TRUTH report released today delves into the details of how the university profited off of Native land and people. It concludes that the U’s founding board of regents, quote, “committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples for financial gain.”

And it shows how millions of in revenue derived from timber, minerals, and other resources from Native land were invested in municipalities around the state, but not in tribal communities. Shannon Geshick is executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. She says it’s the first report in which a major university critically examines its history with Native people.

SHANNON GESHICK: One part of me is really appreciative of the– I guess– courage of the university. But also the other part of me is like, it’s time. It’s important that other voices are heard, not only the dominant voice. The TRUTH project kind of just rips that open and really reveals a narrative I think that a lot of people just don’t know.

And what will this lead to (emphasis added)?

In recent years, the University has committed to acknowledging the past and doing the necessary work to begin rebuilding and strengthening relationships with tribal nations and Native people. Openly receiving this report is another step toward honoring that commitment. While documenting the past, the TRUTH report also provides guidance as to how the University can solidify lasting relationships with tribes and Indigenous peoples built on respect, open communication, and action. As we engage in the important discussions that will now follow, that guidance will be invaluable.”

Translation to English: Expect more lip service – and, of course, more taxpayer money transferred to the academic/non-profit/government complex, “Native Division”.

The Strib finally hired a new editorial cartoonist to replace the worthless and unlamented Steve Sack.

It’s Mike Thompson.

And he’s brought a new sound to Minneapolis.

From Star Tribune Opinion's new editorial cartoonist, Mike Thompson: It's a bit noisy in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/MJ7cPrKJlG

— Star Tribune Opinion (@StribOpinion) April 23, 2023

No, not the popping of the Glock full-auto conversion.

It’s the wailing and gnashing of entitled, plush-bottom, White progressive Minneapolis Yoo-hoos losing their spit over being lampooned by an editorial cartoonist.

They have no frame of reference. Modern MSM editorial cartoons have all the intellectual diversity of The Colbert Show or NPR.

So the calls for “canceling” Thompson have already started.

It’ll be interesting to see if Thompson is forced to repent of his sins.

In 1940, France had by most measures the most powerful military in the world.

More combat divisions, more (and by some standards better) tanks, more aircraft than its competition, including the Germans.

And yet when the German invasion came in 1940, the country collapsed in six weeks.

American conservative wags, often almost badly taught enough in history to pass as Democrats, chuckle and call them “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”. It’s wrong; the French at their best fought fiercely; the German after-action reports in the advance on Dunkirk gave them high marks for courage and skill.

American pseudo-intellectuals blame a “Maginot Mentality”, believing the French idea was to hide behind a line of fortifications that they didn’t yet know had been made obsolete by the Stuka and the Panzerkampfwagen. This, too, is myopic; the Maginot Line was built as a reaction to France’s horrific losses in World War I. The theory was, a line of elaborate fortifications backed by an artillery arm that had emerged from World War I as the best in the world, could enable a relatively small force of middle-aged reservists to hold most of the French frontier, including defending the French industrial heartland that’d been ravaged in 1914-1918, while the younger troops formed a mobile army that in theory had not much less progressive a doctrine than the Germans.

On paper, France should have been able to repel a German attack. Oh, there were problems; the French Army preferred the security of telephones and couriers to the flexibility of radio. Most French tanks had tiny crews – 2-3 men – featuring turrets where one man had a workload that German, British and American tank designer gave to two and eventually three men. There were problems.

But the biggest problem? France was physically and demographically exhausted. With catastrophic casualties among the generation generation that came of age during World War I, the birth rate had crashed. France staffed that large army by drafting nearly everyone and keeping them in the reserves for a long, long time. And yet the baby bust among men in their twenties was a major problem.

Perhaps worse? France was morally exhausted. The war had sapped the nation’s institutions, enervated its culture, left it roiling in two decades of internal political bloodletting – call it cultural depression, maybe the beginnings of slow cultural suicide.

That was exacerbated by near civil-war between Communists and the Right – strife that led much of France to put poxes on both houses (much as Germans did in 1933, when a strongman came along to make politics just go away and let them get along with their lives).

When the Germans attacked in June, 1940, many French soldiers fought ferociously. Not a single German soldier leaked through the Maginot line – only one small outpost fell. The few French tanks using modern doctrine held the Germans to a draw in head-to-head combat.

But the German breakthrough at Sedan, which hinged on many French weaknesses (couriers getting lost, telephone lines breaking) led dizzyingly rapidly to the fall of a France that was, behind the front lines, just not in the mood to fight for itself.

Viewed materialistically, France had everything it needed to resist Germany.

Morally, it collapsed so fast it still shocks the world.

It took four years of occupation, a national reckoning, and a couple of decades of the Francocentric influence of Charles De Gaulle to right the French cultural ship, at least as close to “righted” as France ever gets.

The parallels with America today are a little sobering.

More next week.

…when minstrel shows were considered bad form.

That’s apparently changed:

Gender Ideology Cult Leaders ⬇️

Dylan Mulvaney & Jeffrey Marsh discuss ‘girlhood’ and what it means to be a ‘girl’

😵 👧🏻#DylanMulvaney #JeffreyMarsh #tiktok pic.twitter.com/pRxNhuQqP5

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 9, 2023

Jeffrey Marsh is enough to give me species dysmorphia.

The Good News, of a sort? The social media at Bud LIght, and its parent Anheuser Busch, have gone quiet since the Dylan Mulvaney flap.

Bud Light operates one of those fun, friendly social media accounts we see quite often from corporate giants these days. On March 30, it tweeted or replied to tweets over fifteen times, with messages on the order of “Win tickets to Stagecoach for you and a friend! Travel and hotel accommodations covered” and “Have a cold one for us.” On March 31 came twenty more tweets and replies, including “There’s still time to win beer money. Which women’s team do you think will win it all?,” and a reply to a well-wisher: “Bud Light loves you back.” On April 1 it was more of the same, but we haven’t heard from Bud Light since 8:50PM that evening, when it tweeted: “Beers on us? Must be game time. For a chance to win, cheer on your team with #EasyToEnjoySweepstakes in the replies.” That was the day that Mulvaney was revealed to be Bud Light’s new spokesdude. But isn’t Bud Light proud, like all LGBTQETC activists constantly insist they are?

It isn’t just Bud Light, either. The UK’s Daily Mail reported Sunday that “The famous beer also hasn’t posted on their main Instagram feeds since March 31 and have not posted to Facebook since March 30. Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has also gone without posting since April 1.” This is unusual, for “while they have gone a few days without tweeting in the past, the @BudLight is typically fairly active, as are their other regular social channels.” What could account for this? It looks as if it’s because of Dylan Mulvaney.

So, “get woke, go broke”. Simple as . Bob’s your uncle, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

As we discussed last week, Bud LIght’s chief executive, Alissa Heinerscheid, is a young, intensely “woke” woman, a product of a $60K/year prep school, Harvard and Wharton.

Now, we can joke about her background – as Dennis Prager says, “it takes an elite education to produce someone this stupid” – or the near term results of the decision.

But while Heinerscheid may not be “smart”, or “well-educated” in any holistic sense of the term, she is certainly well-schooled. And that brings us to….

The Bad News: What if Anheuser Busch knows this, and considers it an acceptable cost to build up its Environment and Social Governance (ESG) score – the American version of Red Chinese “Social Credit” score for business (and people, sooner than later, if they get their way)?

The Vice President flew to Nashville…

…to support the three legislators who bum-rushed the House floor to demand legislation against the law-abiding gun owner who had nothing to do with…

…the Nashville massacre that Vice President Harris ignored.

Because the three representatives are the real victims…

So, businesses are opening in a building that got re-opened after…uh, some unfortunate events, apparently:

https://twitter.com/kare11/status/1644218483285139457

“The 2020 fires”?

A bad streak of accidents?

Spontaneous combustion?

Flaming rocks from the sky?

In a city full of media that bellows “off what?” when the DFL says “jump”, KARE11 has lapped the field at going “woke”.

So I won’t try.

This is Shawn Holster – long-time friend of the blog, show and me personally:

No, I will not use the term "unhoused" For one, a physical structure to reside in is only one aspect of which is missing in the term [home]lessness. Two – "housing" is a political euphemism. Progressive policy seeks a nation of renters, not homeowners. Why? Dependency.

— Shawn Holster (@ShawnHolster) April 5, 2023

It is indeed a short step from “Unhoused People” to “Un-Corralled LIvestock”.

Ownership culture is a mortal threat to progressivism – which is why Big Left is trying to ease its linguistic relics out of the language.

…like a resume that looks like this:

It’s the woman who made, uh, trans-woman Dylan Mulvaney the poster…um, person for, not Stella Artois, not even Blue Moon, but..

…Bud Light.

Beege at and our old friend David Strom at Hot Air run down the rest of the story.

Nothing says Bud Light like…well…

I remember when Bud Light commercials used to be everyone’s favorite during the Super Bowl

They’d have rock music, good looking women, and full contact sports clips

Now they do this virtue signaling insanity just days after a Trans terrorist killed little kids

See ya 👋🏼 https://t.co/Urbv0h6lij

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) April 2, 2023

Thing is, I didn’t like Bud Light before this. It is barely drinkable. It isn’t even legally beer in Europe. It’s malted battery acid. Bilge drippings.

What the hell’s a guy supposed to boycott?

“What if someone built a restaurant named ‘Swastika’?”

It wasn’t a question I ever got to ask the owner of Uptown’s late, lamented (?) Soviet-themed restaurant. I wasn’t going to ask the waitstaff or the bartender; they’re working stiffs and they don’t need to care one way or the other. But when friends asked me to meet there, I was a little uncomfortable; nobody would attend, much less open, a restaurant named “Swastikas”. You could probably sneak a few themes through: Blutwurst und Boden, or maybe Ein Fork, Ein Stein, Ein Menu.

But Hammer and Sickle? A direct reference to the emblem of one of the three most lethal regimes in history?

I went – long story. Great selection of vodka, and the best piroshki I’ve had since the Vomit Comet killed off the late, great “Russian Tea House” on University Avenue. It wasn’t my party, didn’t need to make a fuss…

…but I wasn’t especially pained to see that the concept has apparently gone to the great restaurant Lubyanka in the sky.

But when one door closes, a window opens. Maybe.

Another new restaurant, this time on the East Side of Saint Paul, gets into funky historical and cultural turf – maybe.

Juche is the official ideology of the North Korean regime. It’s Stalinism with a Korean accent. In terms of cultural and historical overtones, it’s a simple word that, viewed through a Nork lens, is as loaded as Lebenraum or Wrecker.

Not viewed through a Nork lens, it’s not entirely unlike the idiomatic and unobjectionable-to-admirable Finnish maxim of Sisu – self-reliance, grit, determination, stoicism.

And I’d love to figure it out. So, long story short, I guess I know where I’m eating next weekend.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is spreading salt and grit on his sidewalk, trying to stay ahead of the thaw-refreeze cycle. So engrossed is he, he doesn’t see the Nissan Leaf with GUTTERBALL GARY and CAT SCAT, both bloggers at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“. They pull to a stop and get out of the car.

SCAT: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shiiiiure great to see y’all…

GUTTERBALL GARY: Shut up. You ReTHUGliCon wingnuts are running on “woke”, but most Americans love woke!

BERG: Provided they are spoon-fed an indulgent definition of the term first.

SCAT: Well, none of you crazy fat wypipo can define…

BERG: “Woke” is believing that

1. the institutions of American society are currently and intentionally set up to oppress (minorities, women, the poor, fat people, etc.) and that…
2. virtually all gaps in performance between large groups prove that this oppression exists,
3. the solution to this is equity – the artificial levelling of the social, sexual, political, economic and in some cases literal playing fields across ornate intersectional lines
4. This “Equity” is enforced by relentless mob action.

GUTTERBALL GARY and SCAT stand, slack-jawed, as BERG continues casting salt upon the land. Er, sidewalk.

BERG: Anything else?

There is nothing.

And SCENE

SCENE: It’s an ordinary morning in the home of Edwin DUCHEY, Proprietor at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”.    DuChey was badly scarred by a childhood in which he was routinely bullied – by much younger children.

He’s sitting in the living room, sorting through emails on his phone, as his partner, Stacey Hinton, Executive Director of “Keep All Racists Eternally Nonplussed”, a white progressive support group and, like DuChey, a commited but unremarkable DFL activist, does much the same.

Their daughter, NIGELLA DUCHEY-HINTON, age 6, crawls into the room on all fours.

NIGELLA: Look, meowther and ffffffffather. I’m a kitty cat!

DUCHEY: (Looks at HINTON). What do you think, honey?

HINTON: Nigella? That’s an important decision, but you know I support and love you no matter what.

DUCHEY: (Looks at his phone). Honey? There’s a clinic in Honduras that specializes in species transition…oh, look, it says “for American progressives!”.

HINTON: Perfect!

NIGELLA: You mean puurrrrrr-fect! (NIGELLA crawls from the room)

DUCHEY: Yes, Nigella!! I’ll book a ticket to…uh, what’s the capital of Honduras, hon?

HINTON: Austin.

DUCHEY: I’ll get on it.

(As DUCHEY scrolls around looking for tickets to Austin, Honduras, their oldest son, Bjorn O’BRIEN – Hinton’s 14 year old son from a previous relationship, walks into the room.

O’BRIEN: I am Napoleon Buonaparte!

HINTON: Do tell, Bjorn.

O’BRIEN: It’s not Bjorn. I am Napoleon. My destiny is to conquer the world.

DUCHEY: So you identify as…Napoleon, the president of France in World War 2w?

HINTON: (Sotto Voce). The Civil War, honey.

O’BRIEN: Identifying has nothing to do with it. I am Napoleon. Could you lend me $500 until Jefferson buys Louisiana from me?

HINTON: Give him my MAPE Credit Union card, Ed.

(DUCHEY fishes card out of his fanny pack and gives it to young Bjorn, who doffs his “admiral” hat in a grand imperial salute before leaving the room)

HINTON: He needs a shower.

HINTON: They didn’t take as many of them in 1895, during the Civil War.

HINTON: Oh, right. Of course.

(Sean KASSEBAUM-HINTON, age 10 and Hinton’s son from a “break” in her and DUCHEY’s relationship, enters the room,

SEAN: Mom? Dad? Can I get some running shoes?

DUCHEY: Sure, son.

HINTON: Not your son. Sure, Sean. What’s up?

SEAN: I want to get in shape so that when I’m old enough I can join the Army or the Marines or something.

(HINTON and DUCHEY sit, blanching in poorly-muted horror).

HINTON: The military?

SEAN: Yes, mom. I want to serve this country. And tanks are cool!

(DUCHEY and HINTON exchange glances).

DUCHEY: Your mother and I will need to talk about it, son.

HINTON: Not your son.

SEAN: OK, Mom and Ed. (SEAN leaves the room)

DUCHEY: OMG.

HINTON: What have we done wrong?

DUCHEY: Well, according to Lt. Governor Peggy…:

https://twitter.com/AlphaNewsMN/status/1636146393130627079

DUCHEY: …nothing at all.

HINTON: But this is just so wrong. How have we failed him so?

DUCHEY: Maybe I can get him in to see a therapist…

(COLIN MANDELA DuChey, age 17, Edwin’s son from an earlier relationship, walks into the room)

COLIN MANDELA: Hey, I need the keys to the car and some money for liquor; Terry’s older brother is buying. We’re going to LaCrosse to hit on biker chicks.

DUCHEY: I hear you and believe you. (Digs keys and a couple of hundreds from the fanny pack).

COLIN MANDELA: (Grabs the money). No, stupid. Not the Prius. That’s gay. I want the Jeep.

(HINTON digs keys from purse).

COLIN MANDELA: Later, b*t*hes.

HINTON: It’s part of being a good parent.

DUCHEY: The Lieutenant Governor says so.

And SCENE.

So maybe not all HR people are remedial:

Resumes including 'they/them' pronouns are more likely to be overlooked, new report finds (via @CNBCMakeIt) https://t.co/MJFq12ksO8

— CNBC (@CNBC) March 2, 2023

I’d love to see if that is still true at companies that officially embrace “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI), or if the actual hiring managers at companies that adopt such frippery also find potential employees like that to be a complete pain in the ass, too…

Senator Smith took to Twitter to shill for “ESG“ – rules that require businesses to make decisions based on “Environment, Social Credit, [woke corporate] Governance l”practices.in other words, replacing fiduciary responsibility with “woke“ “social justice“ (read: Marxist) values.

Republicans are attacking a rule that simply says environmental, social, and governance factors can be considered in investment decisions.

It’s the free market approach they claim to support, but they’re trying to put their own values in the middle of your investment decisions. pic.twitter.com/FBSfJWKk8J

— Tina Smith (@SenTinaSmith) March 1, 2023

there are really only two possibilities:

• Smith really is this ignorant.
• She knows she can count on a majority of her voters being this ignorant.

Given the last few elections in Minnesota, #2 isn’t the dumbest strategery .

Berg’s 8th Law is universal and omniscient.

American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.

To wit:

Presidential candidate Nikki Haley was accused of using “her Brown skin to launder White supremacist talking points” during a racially charged interview on MSNBC Sunday night.

“I see [Haley] and I feel sad,” Daily Beast contributor Wajahat Ali told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, “because she uses her Brown skin as a weapon against poor Black folks and poor Brown-Black folks.”

“[S]he uses her Brown skin to launder White supremacist talking points,” Ali added.

There is no harder job in America than to be a female, black, Latino, Asian, gay or Muslim conservative.

Staffer for conservative GOP Latina congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna discusses how loving and accepting the left is:

https://twitter.com/realannapaulina/status/1624535858744270848?s=46&t=64DOJH9nkmIreW_h6awUVw

Berg’s Eighth Law has no exceptions.

A friend of the blog emails regarding the “Muhammad” flap at Hamline that I wrote about last week:

It is entirely possible that Aram Wedatalla read the syllabus for the course last summer, saw that there was a warning about the image of the Prophet and signed up for the course with an eye toward kickstarting her political career by manufacturing this incident. Aram Wedatalla is after all President of the Muslim Student Association at Hamline. This is a great resume builder for someone who sees their future in the NGO/Nonprofit universe and eventually following in the footsteps of Ilhan Omar into public office. The mind positively boggles at the thought that she was “blindsided” by the picture of the prophet, Aram Wedatalla is not an Innocent.

It’s very entirely plausible.

In fact, it’s entirely possible this entire situation has resulted in no victims whatsoever.

Wedatalla may have launched her career – no mean feat for a “-studies” major at an also-ran university.

Professor Lopez Prater? She became a national cause celebre, perhaps the most famous adjunct professor in the country, and got herself a gig at a more viable school.

The U of M Art Department profs that spoke out on her behalf? They got to thread that needle between being keeping their “woke academic” card and still defending free speech (by one of their own, natch).

There were no losers!

Other than Hamline.

Hamline University – my neighbor here in the MIdway, a university with almost as much hamfisted woke cred as Saint Thomas and Macalester, recently fired an art professor for showing an artistic representation of Mohammed.

Here’s a quick rundown:

López Prater, an adjunct professor, showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class-causing an uproar back in October. Since, many Muslims viewing visual representations of the prophet are prohibited, some thought the professor’s actions as highly “Islamaphobic”. Take a look:

Despite a “trigger warning”, it appears the student was triggered when Dr. López Prater, showed the classroom a medieval depiction of Muhammad, an “incident of hate and discrimination“, apparently. Hell, even the university’s associate vice president of inclusive excellence (AVPIE) found it to be “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic“.

It sent the message for all to hear: “triggered students are more important than academic, or really all, freedom.”

The story got some national play – which couldn’t have helped the struggling little university.

Of course, Hamline’s concern for diversity of academic opinion, or for that matter the less fashionable consitutional rights, is just as dismal.

But let’s stick with today’s controversy. Hamline is trying to back-track. Ellen Watters, chair of Hamline’s board of trustees, wrote:

In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed…It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two coexist.

But it may be too late. Lopez Prater has filed suit:

The lawsuit filed on behalf of López Prate states the professor suffered loss of income from her adjunct position, emotional distress and damage to her professional reputation and job prospects.

David Redden, a lawyer for Dr. López Prater, says the university’s change of heart on the “islamaphobia” accusations does not change the lawsuit and that he, and his client, will pursue legal action against the university.

And other academics have risen to the defense…

The tenure-stream faculty of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota writes to address the recent non-renewal of adjunct instructor, Dr. Erika López Prater, from her term appointment at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.https://t.co/tAswVeLtt2

— UMN Department of Art History (@umn_arthistory) January 13, 2023

…of their fellow academic.

So the good news is, even some academics have reached a point where they won’t spontaneously erupt into a Maoist struggle session on command. Provided it’s their freedom at stake.

It’s a tiny, tiny start.

Children can decide they are any gender or orientation they want…

…but adults can not, and indeed must not be allowed to.

DFL representative Sandra Feist, from the moldy blue suburbs of Henco, speaking on behalf of a bill that would, uh…

…put tampons in boys restrooms in Minnesota schools:

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1615612642722254850?s=46&t=Iw7hbbQWYHb83IRjbtXkVQ

Remember – there is no such thing as “woke culture“, peasants!

While not a single tampon in will be used to deal with a “period” in a bio-boy, I do predict this will lead to a golden age of practical jokes played with tampons.

BTW, the Moe Howard estate called. There will be a cease and desist coming from their lawyers about that hairdo.