Category Archives: Media Criticism

Racism In Higher Education

And they can’t even see their own problem:

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Ivy League and other top-notch schools practice such ugly discrimination. After all, they had similar practices in the 1920s to ensure their schools did not have “too many” Jewish students. Today, they just want to make sure they don’t have “too many” Caucasians or Asians on campus. All they have done is change the groups targeted for discrimination.

Suzy Weiss and many other high-school seniors across the United States are being discriminated against because of their skin color or because they have an epicanthic fold in their eyes. Such racial and ethnic discrimination is morally wrong, and neither “diversity” nor anything else can justify it.

And yet they continue to attempt to do so, while calling us racists.

The GOP Problem With Minorities

It’s not that they’re for small government — it’s that they’re inconsistently so:

Consider Indian Americans: More than 85 percent voted for Barack Obama, and 65 percent generally vote Democratic. This despite the fact that, like Jews (another anti-Republican minority), Indian Americans are wealthier and less likely to receive government support than the overall population. What’s more, Indian Americans should be natural allies of limited-government politicians, given how much government dysfunction they’ve witnessed back home.

So how do Republicans manage to alienate nearly every minority? By applying limited-government principles very selectively. During the last 50 years the GOP has opposed welfare handouts, racial preferences, and multiculturalism. Yet the Party of Lincoln has looked the other way when the government has oppressed minorities through racial profiling, discriminatory sentencing laws, and, above all, immigration policy.

America’s immigration laws are an exercise in social engineering that should offend any sincere believer in limited government. They strictly limit the number of foreigners allowed from any one country, largely to prevent America from being overrun by Hispanics and Asians.

We definitely need immigration reform, but not the kind being worked on by the Gang of Eight.

An Authentic Screed

That is to say, a righteous screed about suburbia and authenticity,and our intellectual betters (just ask them!) in the “studies” departments, by Lileks, unleashed by the not-to-be-lamented death of Paolo Solari.

You know, it strikes me that these snotty urbaphiles should love the idea of space colonies, at least in the regard of their being planned communities.

Lipidophobia

OK, here’s yet another article extolling the terrors of fat:

Also known as Eskimo Ice Cream, akutaq, (pronounced agoodik or agooduk) is a classic native dish that is still popular today. Traditionally, women made a batch of the frosty treat when the men returned with a freshly killed polar bear or seal. Today, modern versions are usually prepared with Crisco, but traditional recipes called for meat and fat from caribou, moose, bears, seals, and fish.

Ingredients: Reindeer fat, seal oil, salmonberries, blackberries

Fat content: It’s hard to estimate without a known serving size of this native treat. But consider this: An average serving of reindeer fat packs a whopping 91 grams of fat. A different version made with fish, berries, and seal oil contains 9 grams of fat.

And you know what? Those on the traditional Inuit diet have very low rates of hearth disease. So what does this do for your thesis? You know what’s wrong with most of the dishes listed? Hint: it’s not fat.

Beyond ObamaCare

Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin respond to their critics:

The first thing to note is that none of our critics actually defend Obamacare, and therefore none dispute the argument of the piece. Their dispute is entirely with what we propose instead — which our piece of course lays out only briefly and broadly, since we assumed that the argument that replacement is still the right way to think about things first had to be made. Their lack of interest in defending the law is interesting. Do they agree with us that Obamacare cannot work as enacted? Do they agree that piecemeal reforms will not work and Obamacare must be replaced? If they do, do they imagine that the party that forced this unpopular law down the country’s throat will be trusted to fix or replace it once it fails?

If they don’t agree that Obamacare is untenable (as we assume at least some of them don’t), how would they defend it? Do they not think it is headed for an insurance death spiral? Do they not think the financial incentives it sets up will result in far higher federal spending and far fewer insured Americans than its advocates promised? Do they think it will lower premium costs? Is it sustainable over time? Have you seen much of a substantive answer from the left to these commonly voiced concerns?

The critics of our piece offer no such answers, and actually suggest that we’re wasting our time repeating the obvious case against Obamacare. Several of them want to get right to a debate about what should replace it. That’s great. Not all of them, though, want to discuss the solution we pointed to. Kevin Drum acknowledges (twice) that he didn’t actually read our piece; he just read Yglesias and Klein (who just summarized Yglesias) and “sighed.” We know the feeling.

Don’t we all?