Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Our Prussian School System

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More thoughts from Glenn Reynolds on the public-school disaster, over at the Daily Caller.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland:

Got that? Let me repeat it just in case. A German judge took children away from their parents because “he family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”

In August, 20 armed police, equipped with a battering ram just in case, arrived at the door of this Darmstadt family and forcibly took four children, ages 7 to 14.

Was there anything wrong with the children? Nope. The judge — whose name, by the way, is Marcus Malkmus, in case you have a voodoo doll handy or wish to burn him in effigy — the judge admitted that the children were 1) academically proficient and 2) well adjusted socially.

He just didn’t like homeschooling.

Why? Pay attention now: this takes us deep into the heart of a leftist: because he feared that “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”

The invocation of “tolerance” is especially cute, don’t you think?

As Glenn writes: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Gleichschaltung!”

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Latest California Idiocy

12 Comments

Condoms for cooks’ hands:

So this law is in fact encouraging the very problem it strives to prevent. God, I’m glad I’m not governed by California—what a bunch of knuckleheads when it comes to food! Why don’t you people actually try to know what the f**k you’re talking about before legislating? Jesus.

I am continually washing my hands in the kitchen when I cook. This is moronic.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bullies

6 Comments

When they pretend to be victims:

If the ASA boycotters are receiving unlawful “threats,” they should file criminal complaints or commence legal action under anti-stalking or similar laws. Or they could call out those making the threats by name.

But unlawful threats do not appear to be what is at issue.

Rather, it appears the boycotters cannot withstand the withering criticism from American civil and political society.

The academic boycotters have lived for too long in a bubble in which their views predominated because students were too intimidated to speak up, other professors didn’t want to take on single-issue fanatics, and administrators were intimidated.

But we are not intimidated. As I stated before, this is the hill we will fight on. Lawfully. Intellectually honestly. And without allowing the academic boycotters to play victim.

Good for Professor Jacobson.

Take away their non-profit tax status.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bridgegate

31 Comments

Why it’s a scandal, but the IRS targeting isn’t:

you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents.

That’s juicy, just as Bridgegate is juicy. It’s something we can all understand, it speaks to our greatest fears, and it’s the sort of thing TV newspeople could gab about for days on end without needing a fresh piece of news to keep it going.

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

Why? Oh, come on, you know why. Christie belongs to one political party. Obama belongs to the other. You know which ones they belong to. And you know which ones the people at the three networks belong to, too: In surveys going back decades, anywhere from 80% to 90% of Washington’s journalists say they vote Democratic.

Scandals are not just about themselves; they are about the media atmosphere that surrounds them. They are perpetuated and deepened by the attention of journalists, whose relentless pursuit of every angle keeps the story going. That is exactly what has been missing from the IRS scandal from its outset; Republicans in Congress have been the dogged pursuers, not the press.

…in the end, [it’s] because Christie is a Republican. Christie isn’t them.

Yup.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bridging the scandal gap.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Unprecedented Non-Warming

5 Comments

A new global temperature index:

What we see is that the halt in warming is without precedent in the recent warming period. As such, something *is* amiss with predictions of not only continued, but *accelerated* warming. The something that is amiss appears to be that:

  1. Sensitivity has been very significantly over estimated and
  2. Natural climate variability, whatever the cause, has been under estimated.

The former undermines the claim of drastic future warming, the latter undermines the claim that recent warming was uniquely attributable to anthropogenic forcing.

Let’s be absolutely clear: that represents a complete vindication of the skeptical position and a refutation of the alarmed position.

Anyone who disagrees is obviously a denier.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Going Galt

15 Comments

America’s already done it:

The implications of this are actually terrifying. What are those nearly 92 million people doing with their time, other than sitting around depressed?. Many, of course, are on some version of welfare. Some are panhandling. We see the homeless on the streets of all our big cities. Others are moving into a shadow economy, much of it illegal (drugs, prostitution), not paying taxes on whatever they earn. It’s truly a sad situation. No wonder so many states are moving toward legalizing grass. Everyone wants to zone out.

This is rapidly approaching a a pre-revolutionary condition, but not for a revolution many of us would want to undergo. To avoid it, a massive change must occur at the federal level. But Barack Obama, mired in a dead ideology, doesn’t seem prepared to do anything but prolong the situation with highly conventional liberal solutions that have failed for decades, maybe even centuries.

And yet there is so much he could do. The most obvious, many of us know, is to unshackle the energy industry. He should dismantle much of the bureaucracy as well. There’s a lot more, of course. But the point now is to realize that when you have nearly 92 million people deserting the labor force in a country of 317 million (many of who are children too young to work), you have a catastrophic problem on your hands.

Even if he’s capable of realizing that, he’s ideologically incapable of changing.

[Update a few minutes later]

Non-Recovery

This is a recovery only in the narrow, technical sense of growth in GDP. But it’s not growing anywhere near fast enough to provide jobs for those who want and need them. It’s the worst economy since the Great Depression, brought on by similar foolish policies.

[Late-morning update]

December probably wasn’t a one-off:

The smiley-face crowd’s next line of defense is that December was a one-off — some are even blaming inclement weather, which is pretty pathetic, given that those who predicted seasonally adjusted job additions of almost 200,000 already knew what the month’s weather was like — and that the generally upward trajectory seen during most of 2013 will resume. There are many reasons to question that optimism.

I think a lot of wishful thinkers are underestimating the destructive effects of uncertainty in health insurance on hiring.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Liberal” “Apologies”

30 Comments

Tammy Bruce: It’s time to stop accepting them.

In the normal world, accepting an apology is the classy thing to do. We all do make mistakes, and the apology ritual is one that allows people to forgive and forget, and move on.

This is all well and good if the issue at hand truly was a “mistake” delivered by someone of good will. When dealing with partisan liberals, however, neither of those apply.

Arguing for harm to come to someone because you disagree with them is neither a mistake nor an accident. It’s a contemplated idea, cultivated into a message and delivered as an argument. Targeting a toddler for derision because it serves a political agenda isn’t something that mistakenly pops into someone’s head. It springs from an existing loathsome well.

It would be valuable for today’s conservative leadership to recognize that comments like Mr. Bashir’s and Ms. Harris-Perry’s aren’t mistakes — they are public illustrations of what sits at the core of today’s liberalism — hatred, paranoia and cruelty.

Romney should have said something like “While I wouldn’t be so ungracious as to accept an apology, it’s worth pointing out that this was not an isolated incident. It’s just the latest outburst of lies and calumny against me and my family that have been coming from the left ever since I had the temerity to run against Barack Obama for president.”