Category Archives: Social Commentary

Humor, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Claire Berlinski

9 Comments

..is rebranding:

I felt rebranding was in order, though, for it struck me this morning that the photo you have been looking at was taken in 2008. It does not reflect the maturity, wisdom, and insight I have acquired since then.

Nor does it convey the deep and appropriate alarm I wish to suggest when discussing profoundly important geopolitical events such as the rise of ISIS, the return of Russian Imperialism, the criteria I will use to select my next Commander-in-Chief, and the incentives we are creating to rapid nuclear proliferation. Nor, above all, does it convey the most significant geopolitical event of my life: my catastrophic realization that I may have been wrong in my assessment of French demographic trends. So I believe this photo more accurately conveys “the deep and serious questions we must all ask ourselves.”

It also properly suggests that I am older and more knowing. Now, of course it would be beneath me to exploit, for political purposes, my opponents’ youth and inexperience. Nor is it my intention to do so. I am merely concerned about truth in advertising: I am 47 years old. Were you to consider a photo of me at age 39, is might mislead you. You would be ill-served by underestimating my wisdom and gravitas.

Moreover, it would be quite unfortunate were you to meet me in person and think, “But Claire looks older than her photo.” Clearly, it is much more important that you meet me and think, “Goodness. Claire looks even better than her photo.”

I’m sure she does.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

“Liberal” Academia

Kurt Schlichter has a modest proposal:

Understand that the purpose of modern American “education” is not to educate students. It is primarily to provide cushy, subsidized sinecures for liberal administrators and faculty while, secondarily, providing a forum to indoctrinate soft young minds in the liberal fetishes du jour. Actually educating students is hard, and a meaningful education is anathema to liberalism. In the liberals’ ideal world, the universities would simply fester with leftist nonsense and not even bother with trying to teach their charges anything at all. And today, it’s pretty close to being the liberals’ ideal world.

…As I discuss in my book Conservative Insurgency, and as others like Glenn Reynolds have observed, with modern academia we normal Americans are paying to support a suppurating abscess in our culture that, left untreated, will kill its host. We need to lance this boil and drain the leftist pus.

Except there’s nothing liberal about them.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is the kind of thing he’s talking about: Leftists outraged that a university won’t police the attire of students off campus.

As I said, there is nothing liberal about this. It’s totalitarian.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Scott Walker’s “Insidious Agnosticism”

2 Comments

Ann Althouse takes the odious Dana Milbank to the wood shed.

It’s quite amusing to see all these non-Christians in the media (almost literally) pontificating on who is and isn’t Christian. It reminds me of the radio interview I had with Thom Hartmann a few years ago, when he tried to insist that McVeigh was a Christian terrorist. I said, no, he said himself that he was agnostic. “But wasn’t he born a Christian,” he asked, as though it was a race? Ultimately, he had to back down.

As I’ve noted on Twitter, Walker’s response is exactly right. He can’t know whether Barack Obama is a Christian, though there’s little good evidence that he is, or ever has been. As it says in 1 Corinthians 2:11, “For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them?”

[Update a few minutes later]

Walker himself responds on his refusal to take the media’s bait:

There has been much discussion about a media double standard where Republicans are covered differently than Democrats, asked to weigh in on issues the Democrats don’t face. As a result, when we refuse to take the media’s bait, we suffer.

I felt it this week when I was asked to weigh in on what other people said and did and what others’ beliefs are. If you are looking for answers to those questions, ask those people.

Yes, and it infuriates them that they can’t get a gaffe out of him, and so they have to manufacture one.