Dec
7
2023

I Agree With Sonny Bunch

Please don't miss "Readers added context".

David Strom adds that this may be the Best Troll Ever. And in case you don't know who Saira Rao is:

Some people and/or statements are so amazingly stupid that the only appropriate response is to laugh at the statements and ridicule the people.

Saira Rao is the stupid person in this case, and her claim that Time Magazine’s naming of Taylor Swift as Person of the Year is a celebration of the “White love of Black and brown genocide” is a ridiculous statement worthy of ridicule.

Rao, you may remember, is the grifter who has convinced bored middle-aged White women to pay her unGodly sums of money to call them irredeemable racists. This business model, I admit, is pure genius, as Affluent White Female Liberals (AWFLs) love to show their virtue by pretending to believe they are “doing the work” to become better people.

Strom says "you may remember", but I have to admit that I had forgotten her after a single blog item I wrote over four years ago. At the time, I left open the possibility that her website was a "fiendish parody".

If so, she's a consistent parodist.

Also of note:

  • I'd say "hilarious" instead of "abhorrent", but… the National Review editorialists viewed and deplored University Presidents’ Abhorrent Hypocrisy on Anti-Jewish Speech.

    All of a sudden, America’s elite universities have started to sound like John Stuart Mill. Asked yesterday by Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) whether students who call for “intifada” or shout “from the river to the sea” were acting “contrary to Harvard’s code of conduct,” Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, struck a notably enlightened pose. Such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech,” Gay insisted, was “abhorrent” to her personally, and “at odds with the values of Harvard.” But she could not in good conscience move to do anything about it, given Harvard’s “commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.”

    Ah.

    The first problem with Gay’s answer (which was not fixed by a subsequent clean-up attempt) is that it is a brazen lie. Harvard does not, in fact, “embrace a commitment to free expression.” It does not tolerate views that its speech police consider to be “objectionable, offensive, hateful.” And, as the plain language of its own policies makes clear, it does not endure opinions that are contrary to its “values.” There is, of course, a strong case to be made for the university as an incubator of all ideas. Were Harvard known for a consistent liberalism, it might be able to defend the indulgence of students who chant “intifada” at their peers. But Harvard is not known for any such thing. On the contrary: Harvard is known for sanctioning scholars, for revoking acceptances, for disinviting academics, and for having created an environment in which students feel unable to share their beliefs. Per the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Harvard’s score in the Free Speech Rankings is an “abysmal” “0.00 out of a possible 100.00.” In its latest evaluation, FIRE accorded Harvard a “-10.69,” which, the outfit recorded, is “more than six standard deviations below the average and more than two standard deviations below the second-to-last school in the rankings, its Ivy League counterpart, the University of Pennsylvania.”

    Of all things to be outraged about! I've long considered the statements of university presidents too obviously mealy-mouthed and self-serving to be taken seriously.

  • This is Pun Salad, and I am a George Will fanboy, and Elizabeth Warren is a joke in herself, so… this column's headline, its author, and its subject is kind of a perfect storm: Any way you slice it, Elizabeth Warren’s war on Big Sandwich is crummy.

    Although not all worrywarts are progressives, all progressives are worrywarts. They believe that there are evermore things urgently in need of their supervision — things to ban or mandate or regulate to help society shimmy up the pole of progress.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is progressivism incarnate. The former Harvard Law School professor should possess, if there were such, a PhD in Advanced Worrying. She represents the cutting edge of modern fretting, forever anxious lest something, somewhere, escapes the government’s improving attention. So she has Xed (tweeted, for those who are not au courant) her joy that the Federal Trade Commission recently has been preoccupied with the menace of Big Tech is turning its disapproving squint at Big Sandwich. (This delicious phrase is from the Washington Examiner’s Tom Joyce.)

    This makes me want to get a Spicy Italian for lunch. And I don't mean Monica Bellucci.

  • Don't plan on driving an EV vary far down the Road to Serfdom. Politico reports Congress provided $7.5B for electric vehicle chargers. Built so far: Zero.

    Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change.

    Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger.

    States and the charger industry blame the delays mostly on the labyrinth of new contracting and performance requirements they have to navigate to receive federal funds. While federal officials have authorized more than $2 billion of the funds to be sent to states, fewer than half of states have even started to take bids from contractors to build the chargers — let alone begin construction.

    It's Politico, so the partisan bias is blatant; eeevil Republicans are looking to subvert this noble cause. Not to pull the plug (heh) on an obvious boondoggle.

    And the article confidently states: "Consumer demand for electric vehicles is rising in the United States". I guess they don't read Money: Car Dealers Have Too Many EVs (and That's Good for Buyers).

    Well, it's good news for buyers who want an EV. But the simple fact is that supply > demand. For a good schadenfreudian time, Google electric vehicles piling up.