URLs du Jour

2020-06-10

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One of my good-hearted, but relentlessly progressive, Facebook friends posted the slogan shown on our Amazon Product du Jour on her timeline. It's a pretty good slogan. Because it's near-irrefutable.

As would be any mutation. "All Lives Can't Matter Until       Lives Matter". Just fill in the blank with your desired subset of humanity. Hispanic? Female? Sure. Trivially true.

Better not say "White" or "Blue", though. Even though it's equally (and tautologically) true. That would draw a hectoring lecture about what the slogan "really means".

When you need to explain what a slogan "really means", though, maybe it's not that great a slogan. I came across an online article from (I am not making this up) Parents magazine which is entitled (I am not making this up either) "6 Reasons 'All Lives Matter' Doesn't Work—in Terms Simple Enough for a Child".

Somehow I think they really mean "in Terms Simple Enough Even for You, Dumbass."

  • In contrast to the Deep Thinkers at Parents, the WSJ had a really good op-ed from Nestride Yumga: Violence Threatens Black Lives

    If the only black lives that matter to the Black Lives Matter movement are those taken by rogue police officers, then let it be clear: Not all black lives matter to them.

    It tears my soul as an African-American resident of Washington that 30 young black men and women in the District of Columbia lost their lives to violent crime in the first three months of 2020. The police didn’t kill them, but that doesn’t mean their lives mattered less.

    A related tweet seen at Power Line:

    Why it's almost as if the only Black Lives that Matter are the ones that can be used to political advantage.


  • At Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen invites us, in language befitting a wonk, to Solve for the journalistic equilibrium. By juxtaposing two quotes from the same NYT story:

    In a company memo, the chief executive of the politics news site said he supported staff members’ right to march, adding that the publisher would cover bail for any employee who is arrested…

    According to several people with knowledge of recent discussions at Axios, Mr. VandeHei said he did not intend his note to actively encourage marching in protests. He has also reminded the staff that the company’s reporters still need sources to open up to them, and that appearing to take one side could jeopardize their position.

    and:

    Ethics guidelines at The Times — similar to many other newsrooms across the country — say the company’s journalists “may not march or rally in support of public causes or movements” or publicly take positions on public issues. It adds, “doing so might reasonably raise doubts about their ability or The Times’s ability to function as neutral observers in covering the news.”

    Anyone not harboring such doubts at this stage of the game is welcome to e-mail me for details on this incredible deal I can offer you on the Brooklyn Bridge.


  • At the NR Corner, Stanley Kurtz has a question about Wheezy Joe Biden: Can He Withstand the Left's Pull From the Center?

    The resignation of the editorial page editor of the New York Times for publishing an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to quell the riots marks the completion of the long, slow transformation of the Democratic Party. Whatever face the Democrats present to the world, their woke left fringe is now in charge. That fringe has not only abandoned core American principles like freedom of speech and due process, it has reimagined American history as a story of “systemic” oppression and demanded radical transformation along identitarian–socialist lines. If the New York Times can’t stand up to Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of its odious and just-plain-false 1619 Project, how will Joe Biden stand up to a woke New York Times?

    Past his prime, without a policy compass to speak of, Biden would be long gone if he hadn’t been the Democratic establishment’s last best hope of blocking Bernie Sanders. Biden is supposed to give the party a moderate face that will appeal to centrist voters. Increasingly, however, the bases of the two parties are becoming the real contestants in this election, while the candidates are just along for the ride. True, Trump is larger than life and a constant media obsession. Yet Trump appeals to Republicans — whether they like his style or not — chiefly because he protects them from the illiberalism and cultural overreach people such as Hannah-Jones. Trump’s larger-than-life personality matters less than it seems because he’s all about the base.

    Joe wants to be President, badly. And I expect that's how he'll govern: badly.


  • Let's see who else we can dump on today. Ah, here's Betsy McCaughey at the NYPost with a suspect class: Public-health ‘professionals’ keep showing how unprofessional they really are.

    Three months ago, America was told to trust the public health experts. Never again. Most are left-wing ideologues cloaked in the mantle of science. On their advice, states slammed their economies shut, put 40 million people out of work, sent school kids home and pushed businesses into bankruptcy.

    These experts hardly blinked at the economic losses. They and their media allies raged at anyone who questioned them for putting dollars ahead of lives. Now these same experts are doing a 180-degree turn, saying the threat of the virus is less important than big marches against racial injustice. This, even though they admit the marches will lead to more infections. Hypocrites.

    Well, yeah. I note our local "professional", Rich DiPentima, is running for the NH House. Which meant that he had to give up his weekly column in our local newspaper, where he self-identified as an epidemiologist. I especially enjoyed his March 2 column where he consistenly referred to "COVIT 19".


  • And Michael Graham at NH Journal finds an unsurprising mental illness in the governing class: NH Pols Suffer From Protest Politics Hypocrisy

    Sen. Jeanne Shaheen wants New Hampshire voters to know that she supports the Black Lives Matter protests across the state, from “Portsmouth, Manchester, Wolfeboro, Concord and beyond,” she tweeted on Saturday. “Granite Staters have come together this week to stand up for justice and equity, and to affirm that Black lives matter. I stand with all of you.”

    But just a few weeks ago, Shaheen had a very different take: “Stay Home. Save Lives.” She tweeted out several messages urging Granite Staters to “heed” Gov. Chris Sununu’s instructions for fighting the spread of COVID-19, including “Don’t gather in large groups or get together with friends.”

    It's incurable.


Last Modified 2024-01-23 5:12 AM EDT