The Bluster Over Cumberbatch’s Blunder

Thanks to the internet and a 24/7 news cycle which feeds our fascination with celebrities, hardly a week goes by without a celeb feeling obligated to offer a mea culpa for misbehavior that somehow personally offended masses of strangers. The most recent case in point: actor Benedict Cumberbatch and his casual reference in a TV interview to an antiquated term for blacks.

Cumberbatch was responding to a question from PBS host Tavis Smiley about the lack of diversity in the British film industry when he said, “I think as far as colored actors go, it gets really difficult in the UK, and I think a lot of my friends have had more opportunities here [in the U.S.] than in the UK, and that’s something that needs to change.” This was in the context of praising black British comedian Lenny Henry, who launched a campaign to ensure greater diversity in UK media. “We’re not being representative enough in our culture of different races,” Cumberbatch told Smiley, “and that really does need to step up a pace.”

“Colored” as a racial term, of course, is a word that smacks of the days of pre-civil rights segregation in America. It has since been superseded by the kinder, gentler phrase “of color”—except perhaps among a few older-generation Americans who didn’t get the memo, not to mention the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Cumberbatch’s use of the word seemed jarringly dated, but considering the context of the discussion, it could not possibly be considered intentionally derisive. It wasn’t as if he were throwing around the “N” word at a KKK rally or in a rap song. He innocently misspoke while expressing his genuine concern, on a talk show with a black host, about securing more opportunities for black actors. Tavis Smiley himself didn’t even comment on his guest’s wording at the time. It was a minor, accidental error.

But of course, kneejerk umbrage lit up social media, as it regularly does. Some (but by no means all) people of color felt offended or even threatened, and sanctimonious people of non-color felt offended on their behalf. Actor David Oyelowo, who plays Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Oscar-nominated Selma, rightly countered that it was “ridiculous… To attack him for a term, as opposed to what he was actually saying, I think is very disingenuous and is indicative of the age we live in where people are looking for sound bites as opposed to substance.”

But the horrified Cumberbatch nonetheless felt compelled to issue a statement which, in light of his innocuous intent, was nothing short of groveling. He was “devastated” and “a complete fool,” he said of this “shaming” incident:

I offer my sincere apologies. I make no excuse for my being an idiot and know the damage is done. I can only hope this incident will highlight the need for correct usage of terminology that is accurate and inoffensive…

[W]hile I am sorry to have offended people and to learn from my mistakes in such a public manner please be assured I have. I apologize again to anyone who I offended for this thoughtless use of inappropriate language about an issue which affects friends of mine and which I care about deeply.

The media sat in smug judgment. The Atlantic deemed it “the right way to apologize,” as if The Atlantic were a sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Lindy West atThe Guardian sniffed that Cumberbatch needs to remember to check himself because he comes “from a very rich family whose wealth and success derive directly from slavery.” He is indeed from upper-crust origins built upon his ancestors’ involvement in the Barbados slave trade over two hundred years ago—which is no fault of Benedict’s unless one believes in collective guilt. And the notion of collective guilt is racist.

West, who is white, went on to give Cumberbatch grudging approval for his heartfelt apology, then to lecture him arrogantly that if some “people are still mad” at him afterward, he needs to “shut up” and “listen for awhile… Sometimes people don’t forgive you, and that’s OK. You’re not entitled to redemption, and a good apology doesn’t demand it.”

On the contrary, he did nothing requiring forgiveness or redemption. Yes, words matter, but so should intent, context, and common sense. Benedict Cumberbatch innocently misspoke. No offense was intended, no real-world harm was done. Strangers on the internet are not owed a contrite apology—although sadly, in our PC times they have been acculturated to expect one.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 1/30/15)

Fighting Back Against Jew-Hatred

Leave France or die. As Bret Stephens noted in the Wall Street Journal recently, it has come down to this choice for French Jews, who are beginning to stream out of the country as violent Islamic Jew-hatred there grows. They may certainly take advantage of Israel’s right of return if they choose, but if they are serious about the vow “Never again,” then it’s time for Jews in France and elsewhere to get serious about defending themselves.

Over a hundred years ago, long before the Holocaust, Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization, advocated that Jews arm themselves (“Jewish youth, learn to shoot!”). But today, long after the harsh lessons of the Holocaust, Jews are loathe to take up arms against their enemies. Instead, too many urge each other simply to flee their homes or conceal their Jewishness.

For example: for those who dare to stay in France, a French hairdresser has come up with a way to boost “Jews’ feeling of confidence as they walked on the streets”: a Magic Kippah made of real or synthetic hair that blends into the wearer’s hair, making it nearly invisible and thus making Jews less of a public target. This brings to mind British authorities advising soldiers not to wear their uniforms in public, making them, too, less of a target for Islamic murderers like those who savagely butchered Lee Rigby. Or American soldiers in Europe being cautioned not to wear their uniforms off-base due to threats from ISIS.

While downplaying one’s Jewish identity may be a prudent temporary ploy, it is no guarantee of safety and certainly no solution to actually combating anti-Jewish violence, in France or anywhere else. Neither is carrying cell phones in case of emergency, as Orthodox rabbis are now urging observant Jews to do on the Sabbath, contrary to Jewish law. Attackers bent on knifing you to death are not going to give you the time to dial the police, give the dispatcher your details, and wait for the unarmed French cops to arrive.

Magic Kippahs, cell phones, and one-way tickets to another country are not the answer to genocidal Muslim fundamentalism or other threats to Jews. The only long-term, dignified solution is to fight back.

Esther Goldberg at the American Spectator gets this. In response to Stephens’ WSJ article urging Jews to abandon France, Goldberg declared in her article “Jews Need to Start Packing” (heat, not suitcases) that “Sometimes it gets to where you need to take the matter of your protection into your own hands.” Although France doesn’t have the blessing of our Second Amendment, she suggested that

Jews in France should let it be known that they intend to carry a weapon for defensive purposes. Jewish communities everywhere should raise money for their legal defense when they get arrested... They might even start an unstoppable trend. After all, who wants to be a victim?

Of course, this is no easy matter for Jews in tightly gun-controlled Europe, but it’s long past time for European citizens as a whole (and Australian, as well) to begin pushing back against those restrictions and their cultural aversion to private gun ownership if they hope to secure their personal and national security, and their very civilization.

Here in America we are blessed with our Second Amendment, which enshrines the natural right to self-defense. Even unarmed American Jews are safer here than anywhere, but they shouldn’t take that for granted.

Recently in southern California’s Valley Village, to select one example, Judah Cohen reported on what the LAPD officially designated a hate crime: several Jewish families with their children and elderly were harassed, threatened and almost run down by unidentified Latinos driving in a black SUV with no license plates. This occurred around noon as Jews were walking home from Shabbat morning service. The SUV swerved into one Jewish man and struck him with the passenger-side mirror. 

One witness told Cohen, “They are looking for Jews, driving around the neighborhoods yelling derogatory anti-Jewish remarks… They called us ‘f-ing Jews’ and said they were going to ‘f’ing get us’, and I took them as serious.” Another witness, a grandparent, declared: “They said they will be back, and we are scared. I’ve never lived in fear like this inside my own home, but my shotgun is loaded and easily accessible.”

A shotgun – good for that grandparent. Cell phones and Magic Kippahs aren’t quite as effective at repelling violent savages as a 12-gauge or a concealed-carry handgun in the hands of a Jew trained to handle it.

But Judah Cohen urged his readers to remember that Jews are not vigilantes: “Don’t start carrying a gun. Walk in groups and be cautious. Be extra courteous.” He suggested that Jews protect themselves as they walk by praying or thinking about the Torah. Unfortunately, walking in groups was little protection for the Valley Village victims that Cohen had just investigated, and courtesy or spiritual contemplation won’t spare you from a beating or stabbing or shooting by Jew-hating thugs.

Cohen did concede that “If you must carry a gun, know how to use it. One organization that can teach you how to use a gun is http://cjhsla.org/jewscanshoot/. Own a gun, know how to use it,” he concluded.

As it happens, I am affiliated with that website. My friend Doris Wise Montrose, the founder and president of the Los Angeles-based Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (CJHS), recently created a self-defense offshoot of CJHS called “Jews Can Shoot” (JCS), which prepares and empowers participants (who don’t necessarily have to be Jewish) to defend themselves and their rights and freedoms with training in firearms and self-defense. (I interviewed her about JCS for FrontPage Mag here.)

“Every Jew a .22,” as Meir Kahane put it. It’s time for Jews to take the targets off their own backs and put Jew-hatred in their sights.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 1/30/15)

The Rise of the Hollywood Nice Guy

Nice guys finish last, as Leo Durocher’s aphorism goes, and that may seem especially true in Hollywood, where the ruthlessly ambitious jockey for fame and fortune. But Jason Kennedy is proving that success in that world doesn’t necessarily require compromising one’s values.

Kennedy, the 33-year-old cohost of E! News and E! News Weekend, may be heralding the rise of the nice guy in Hollywood. As a Glamour profile notes, he is so cleancut that he drinks in moderation, doesn’t smoke, and doesn’t frequent strip clubs. His dad is his hero. He apparently even told his E! producers that he refused to say “tit” on the air. “That’s just disrespectful to women,” he explained. “And my mom’s going to be watching!”

Hollywood isn’t known for having a Christian-friendly atmosphere, but that doesn’t faze Kennedy, who leads a weekly Bible study group – that’s right, a Bible study group in the belly of the secular beast – so large that it had to move from his Hollywood Hills living room, where it began two years ago as a monthly meeting of about 10 people, to a hotel ballroom (the Glamour writer claimed that the gathering she attended in March of last year numbered more than 600).

That gathering’s guests have included Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Justin Bieber, so it’s not just a bunch of networking wannabes. Admittedly, shallow celebrities are notorious for proclaiming themselves to be “spiritual, but not religious,” so some of the attendees may simply have latched onto the Bible study as another spiritual fad (see: “Madonna and Kabbalism”). But for Kennedy and no doubt most of the others, the group “is where I come to survive Hollywood,” as he told Glamour. “Being here reminds me of who I want to be—just a better man. It makes me a better boyfriend too.”

Striving to be a better man would seem to make Kennedy an oddity in a town that too often tolerates, if not actually rewards, outrageous and naughty behavior (think Charlie Sheen’s Winning! ways). But Jane Buckingham, founder of a trend-forecasting firm called Trendera, believes that bad boys are becoming culturally unfashionable and that nice guys are in. Women, she says, “are tired of the bad behavior, the men who cheat, the guys who go out and get drunk all the time... We want guys who make our lives better, not guys who are going to make our lives more chaotic.”

The gentlemanly Kennedy agrees. “Girls—if I’ve learned anything—want good guys,” he says. “I don’t think it pays off being the jerk anymore. Women, at least in my life, are getting tired of that. You can’t get away with that stuff today. Everyone’s paparazzi, and everyone’s on Twitter.” As for the bad boys of the sort that dominate reality shows and tabloids, he dismisses them with a simple, “I think we have moved on to a new era.”

Asked by Glamour if his squeaky-clean image isn’t cool enough for the town that is infinitely more popularity-conscious than any junior high school, he replies: “Not at all. Never entered my mind. I’ve never heard someone say, ‘He’s too nice. I don’t want to be around him.’ I mean, look at Tom Hanks. He’s like the male Oprah. Everybody loves Tom. He’s still going strong.” He continues:

And you know, when I sit down to interview the biggest actors in Hollywood, the true A-list guys like Matt Damon or a George Clooney, the most successful ones seem to be the nicest. I’ve met a lot of famous people, and douchebags out here are a dime a dozen. But those guys, they understand that being nice pays off. And I think that’s starting to spread.

Not only has his goody-goody reputation not hindered his opportunities, but “being a so-called good boy has paid off for me. I’ve got my dream job. And I’ve found my dream girl.” He was referring to fashion blogger and former model Lauren Scruggs, whom Kennedy wed last month. Scruggs had lost her left arm and eye in a ghastly plane propeller accident three years before; she has since said that Kennedy’s love and devotion made her feel beautiful again.

“What if we could get people to talk about guys for doing the right thing, for being gentlemen?” he says. If we could, that would be a much-needed course correction for a pop culture desperately in need of upstanding role models among its stars. The E! host denies that he is such a role model. “But guys need better influences today.” Indeed they do, and if Jason Kennedy can become a successful and highly visible symbol of that aim, then more power to him.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 1/28/15) 

‘American Sniper’ Under Fire

By the time you read this, director Clint Eastwood’s blockbuster about the late warrior Chris Kyle will have become the top-grossing war-themed film of all time in North America. And that box office success has exposed the stark contrast between an American audience starved for patriotic Hollywood fare on the one hand, and a radical left viciously trying to maintain control of their narrative on the other.

I wrote recently for FrontPage Mag about American Sniper and its leftist film critics, who don’t dispute the film’s artistic merits but are frustrated by this apolitical movie’s refusal to condemn both George Bush’s war and Chris Kyle’s role in it. As the film breaks box office records and shows little sign of slowing down (attendance dropped a mere 27% in the second weekend; it drops off at least twice that for most films), the left is ratcheting up its disgusting attacks, and a Muslim civil rights organization is joining in.

Always good for a despicable soundbite, Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker Michael Moore made a shameful accusation of snipers like Kyle as “cowards.” Professional provocateur Bill Maher, the man who once mistook the 9/11 hijackers’ fanaticism for courage, labeled Kyle a “psychopath patriot” for unapologetically taking out at least 160 of the enemy in Iraq. Smear merchant and Jew-hater Max Blumenthal dismissed Kyle as an “occupier [who] mows down faceless Iraqis” in Eastwood’s film.

A writer named John Wight, in a piece for Huffington Post that also ran in the Russian propagandist news network RT, where he is a regular contributor, declared the film to be American exceptionalism propaganda and evidence of our country’s “moral depravity.” Here is a sample of Wight’s own moral depravity:

Chris Kyle was not the warrior or hero portrayed in American Sniper. He was in fact a racist killer for whom the only good Iraqi was a dead Iraqi. He killed men, women, and children, just as his comrades did during the course of a brutal and barbaric war of aggression waged by the richest country in the world against one of the poorest.

To hear it from the left, you would think that we invaded Iraq simply for the fun of slaughtering impoverished Iraqi civilians. There is never any mention of al Qaeda, the international terrorism of Saddam Hussein, Iranian-backed militias, etc. – the actual barbarians with whom we were at war to secure freedom and democracy for those impoverished Iraqi civilians that the left claims we murdered by the hundreds of thousands. That’s because for the left – as usual – America is the bad guy, and thanks to the success of Eastwood’s movie, the left views Chris Kyle as the face of our racist imperialist aggression.

The BBC reported that the film has been criticized “for Kyle’s attitude towards his victims.” First, Kyle’s targets weren’t “victims”; they were terrorists who thought nothing of committing the heinous crimes which the radical left ascribes to our own soldiers instead. Second, the BBC is referring to a selective quotation from Kyle’s autobiography, on which the film was based, about Iraqis being “savages” who were better off dead. Here is a passage from an excerpt published at Huffington Post, of all places:

Savage, despicable evil. That's what we were fighting in Iraq. That’s why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy ‘savages.’ There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there. I only wish I had killed more. Not for bragging rights, but because I believe the world is a better place without savages out there taking American lives. Everyone I shot in Iraq was trying to harm Americans or Iraqis loyal to the new government.

He clearly was not referring to innocent Iraqi civilians but to the enemy. And his description of jihadists as savagely evil is accurate. It takes a real moral perversity to distort this passage in order to paint Kyle as a murdering bigot.

The BBC also noted that the George Soros-funded American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which describes itself as the largest Arab civil rights organization in the U.S., has complained that “a majority of the violent threats we have seen over the past few days are result of how Arab and Muslims are depicted in American Sniper.”

The ADC reportedly has collected “hundreds of violent messages targeting Arab and Muslim Americans from moviegoers,” mostly from Facebook and Twitter. “American Sniper makes me wanna go shoot some f**kin Arabs,” read one tweet, dotted with emoticons of guns. Of course, threats of violence are unacceptable, but it’s easy to find innumerable examples of stupidity and hatefulness in every corner of the intellectual slums of social media. When has that ever translated into the overhyped anti-Muslim violence we’ve been told to expect ever since 9/11/2001? Never.

The ADC, which has a history of praising Hezbollah and Hamas, wrote to Clint Eastwood and star Bradley Cooper, who played Kyle, asking them to speak out in order to help “reduce the hateful rhetoric,” but to their credit, neither gentleman has yet responded. A spokesman for American Sniper’s studio did, however, release a statement denouncing “any violent, anti-Muslim rhetoric, including that which has been attributed to viewers” of the film. “Hate and bigotry have no place in the important dialogue that this picture has generated about the veteran experience.” True, and that should include hate and bigotry from the left.

The left and its Muslim allies like the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee fear the record-breaking popularity of American Sniper because it doesn’t conform to the leftist narrative about the war or multiculturalism or America’s military imperialism. Hollywood is the pop culture tip of the spear for that narrative; if the left begins losing its monolithic grip on Hollywood – and American Sniper is evidence that it is – then their whole sham threatens to disintegrate.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 1/28/15)

The Boy Who Didn’t Go To Heaven

Last April I wrote a review of the bestselling book Heaven is for Real for Acculturated, in which I kept an open mind about young Colton Burpo’s tale of visiting heaven during a life-threatening medical emergency. After all, though we should always be skeptical, his story was one in a thousand-year tradition of remarkably similar near-death experiences (and not only in the Christian tradition). And just as there is no physical proof that heaven exists, neither is there proof that it doesn’t. But another boy who claimed to have made a similar journey announced recently that the book based on his experience was spun out of lies.

The 6-year-old Alex Malarkey – incredibly, that’s his real name – and his father Kevin were in a terrible car crash in 2004. Alex wasn’t expected to survive, but after two months in a coma he woke to share a vision of the angels who took him through the gates of heaven itself. Though he was and remains paralyzed, his father helped Alex write and publish in 2010 The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World, touted on the cover as “a true story.” The book did brisk business for Christian publisher Tyndale House, selling over a million copies and spawning a TV movie.

But as far back as 2012, Alex and his mother Beth both began complaining that the book was a distortion and embellishment of Alex’s experience. Tyndale claims that Beth refused to meet with them and discuss her concern over the “inaccuracies,” and so they continued to publish the book.

Until last week, that is, when Alex, now a teenager, published a brief open letter in which he firmly renounced his “remarkable account,” saying,

I did not die. I did not go to Heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth.

It’s hard to know what the full truth is here. Kevin and Beth have been estranged since the book’s publication – there are accusations that Kevin “neglected his duties” as husband and father – and Alex himself apparently has never received any royalties from the book despite being named as co-author. Despite Alex’s repudiation of his heavenly vision, it’s possible that he and his mother are simply fed up with how Alex has been treated by a too-adoring segment of the Christian community, by his own father, and by Tyndale.

Whatever the truth, what is the impact of Alex’s statement? What does this mean for believers and non-believers alike? What does it mean for other tales of near-death experiences?

First, it means that the lucrative publishing industry that has built up around such miraculous tales will take a big hit in credibility and sales. Tyndale House, for example, has announced that it is pulling Malarkey’s book from the shelves. Other such books may droop in sales as well, and any future ones may have difficulty finding a home with even Christian publishers, at least until the Malarkey controversy fades.

More importantly, it means that skeptics or outright atheists have been handed damaging ammunition for assaults against the very notion of an afterlife, certainly any that resembles the stereotypical vision of winged angels and Pearly Gates.

But does Malarkey’s malarkey prove or disprove anything about the afterlife? Apart from being a sad tale of exploitation (and possibly even fraud), public credulity, and family dysfunction, the answer is no. This is what I previously wrote about Heaven is for Real:

The fact is that all of us are ignorant of the realms beyond the narrow chinks of our caverns. To paraphrase Hamlet’s familiar lines, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in all our philosophies. Colton Burpo brought a childlike innocence to one of the most profound and mystical questions of our existence – is heaven real? Whether or not one believes his answer is real brings to mind the words of Thomas Aquinas: “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

While credulity is easy, so is disbelief. The trick is to balance skepticism with intellectual curiosity and the humility to know that “now we see through a glass, darkly.” Now we know only in part, but the time will come for each of us when we know the truth face to face.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 1/26/15)

‘Gender Justice’ Professors Urge Discrimination Against White Males

Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was recently the scene of a forum on misogyny titled “Transforming our campus and strengthening our community.” The discussion, hosted in part by the Canadian university’s Gender and Women’s Studies Program, and featuring a panel of professors and local “gender justice” activists, gave rise to solutions that are as sexist and racist as the problems they claim to be addressing.

What seems to have sparked the forum’s focus on misogyny is a scandal involving the Dalhousie dentistry school, whose Class of DDS 2015 Facebook page (which seems to have been taken down) reportedly featured sexually explicit posts from some male students, such as voting on which woman they'd like to have “hate sex” with and jokes about using chloroform on women. While this was highly inappropriate to say the least, the forum participants seemed oblivious to how inappropriate it would be to respond by punishing all male students at Dalhousie by essentially sending them to the back of the bus.

Jacqueline Warwick, professor of musicology and former coordinator of Dalhousie’s Gender and Women’s Studies Programs, offered up the not-so-subtle suggestion, for example, that teachers combat misogyny in the classroom by refusing to call on the male students first, thus encouraging more participation from the females. In other words, Warwick’s solution to misogyny is misandry.

“I do think, in general, there are a lot of studies that indicate women, girls are socialized not to speak first,” Warwick said. “And so to make a conscious rule, a deliberate rule that is explicit, that ‘no, men are not allowed to speak first,’ is certainly a strong way of addressing that issue, but one that will at least get people thinking about it,” she mused. “That’s already some progress, I believe.”

This is anything but progress, of course, but she is correct that it will get people thinking about it. What reasonable people will think is that treating men like second-class citizens in the classroom is discrimination and bigotry, and that it will exacerbate the widening gap between female academic achievement and male academic failure. But because it is directed at the perceived white male patriarchy, progressive academics firmly believe that this is acceptable gender justice in action, and a step closer to their dream of a utopia through totalitarian social engineering.

Jude Ashburn, who identifies as a “non-binary trans person” and is an outreach coordinator at a local gender and sexual resource center, said after the discussion that she (?) thinks black students should also be given similar priority in the classroom. “When I do activist circles or workshops, I often say, ‘OK, if you’re white and you look like me and you raise your hand, I’m not going to pick on you before someone of color,’” said Ashburn after the discussion. “So I do give little disclaimers, like people of color will have priority, or if you’re a person with a disability, you’re pushed to the front… I mean, you know, bros fall back,” she added with a laugh.

The fact that she can be so open and honest about her blatant racial discrimination speaks volumes about the agenda of such “gender justice” activists and the irrational atmosphere of political correctness that dominates universities today.

According to her, Dalhousie and other universities need to deal with the issue of misogyny on campus “within a trauma-informed, feminist, survivor-centered collaborative approach,” whatever that means. I suspect it means that Ashburn and her ilk believe that justice consists in keeping women in a state of perpetual victimhood, and delivering gender payback against all men.

Another of Ashburn’s preferred methods of reducing campus misogyny is to encourage students to abandon their “white privilege” (why associate whiteness with misogyny? Men of color aren’t misogynistic as well?). “[W]hite people need to start unlearning their privilege and challenging ourselves,” she said, adding that “anyone who holds privilege in this culture needs to seriously begin the work of giving up that privilege and learning how to live without it.”

Jacqueline Warwick seemed to agree but added, “That’ll be a difficult one for people to accept” – as it should be, because that suggestion, like the collectivist notion of white privilege itself – is racist, divisive, and punitive. But it’s an ingenious progressive weapon for inducing guilt in self-hating whites and for creating more social and racial conflict.

In response to a question that calling on women first in the classroom might engender discrimination against men, Judy Haiven, a management professor at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, responded casually that “I suppose at some point that could happen,” but apparently it’s a small price to pay for gender equality. “There has to be some type of affirmative action so that women, I hope, start to take more of an active role in the classroom.”

Ashburn said that this approach is difficult and upsetting to some people because they have to give up some “privilege.” She also said during the panel that she feels “burned out” when “What about the men?” is asked in “every conversation” about misogyny. Speaking of which, unsurprisingly, there were no male participants on the panel. Because why should anyone care about men being included in that conversation or in any proposed solutions?

In addition to the panel’s recommendations of preferential treatment for female and black students, some Dalhousie faculty members and students themselves recently proposed a mandatory “equity course” to explain to students “the root causes of gender-based violence and oppression.” This isn’t education, but indoctrination.

This sort of gender-obsessed totalitarianism is so blatantly discriminatory that it may be hard to take seriously, but it is increasingly becoming the norm in the politically correct setting of today’s universities, both here and in Canada, where young minds are propagandized to see everything reflected in the funhouse mirror of gender, race, and class. If Dalhousie University really wants to end gender discrimination, perhaps its first step should be to rid itself of gender justice activists.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 1/26/15)

Folks, please go here and vote for my celeb Kevin Durant, the nicest guy in the NBA, for Acculturated's Celebrities Behaving Well Award.

The link to my article about him is here if you need reminding why this humble, grateful, decent role model deserves it.

He's got tough competition - the Pope, for God's sake! And someone even more infallible, Angelina Jolie! Go Team Kevin! Go Team Kevin!

Zuckerberg’s Year of Reading Copiously

One of my New Year’s resolutions, besides resolving to actually commit to New Year’s resolutions, is to shift more of my media diet toward reading books. Imagine my surprise, then, when social media magnate Mark Zuckerberg himself began the New Year by announcing, “I'm looking forward to shifting more of my media diet toward reading books.”

My resolution stemmed from my growing dissatisfaction with myself for spending an inordinate amount of time scanning the internet for interesting reading, while leaving myself less and less time to settle down with interesting reading from a veritable skyscraper of unread books accumulating at home. It was adversely affecting my attention span, my patience, my capacity for self-reflection, my very sense of time and space, etc. – all the usual mental and psychological changes people experience who allow themselves to be caught in the gravitational pull of the black hole of the internet.

I don’t know whether Mark Zuckerberg came to a similar realization, but in any case, he explained that “I've found reading books very intellectually fulfilling. Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today.”

This isn’t exactly a revelation for those of us who have always found books fulfilling (and not only intellectually, but creatively, emotionally, and spiritually as well), but it may come as one for countless young people who admire Zuckerberg and who have grown up on social media and the internet, young people whose experience with books has been limited to uninspiring school assignments – that is, if schools actually assign books to be read anymore, and if students actually bother to finish them.

And so Zuckerberg posted a challenge that he plans to embrace in 2015 and in which he urges Facebook followers to join him: the creation of a book club community on a dedicated Facebook page called A Year of Books. “We will read a new book every two weeks and discuss it here,” he stated. “Our books will emphasize learning about new cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies.”

His first selection was The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moises Naim. With a title reminiscent of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (coincidentally, Fukuyama himself provided a blurb for Naim’s book), The End of Power explores the decay and dispersion of centralized power in the arenas of business, religion, education, family, “and in all matters of war and peace.”

The thesis of this book notwithstanding, Mark Zuckerberg’s own power – his power to influence – is far from being in decline. His recommendations could potentially steer hundreds of thousands of Facebookers toward any books and ideas he chooses to support and disseminate. This could make him the book guru that Oprah Winfrey used to be, when her television book club suggestions created instant bestsellers and national conversations about them.

Zuckerberg’s Year of Books page got off to a roaring start with a quarter of a million “likes,” and at least 50,000 people signed up to read The End of Power along with him. To give you some sense of comparison: by most estimates, it takes fewer than 10,000 copies of a book sold in the first week to guarantee a spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Fifty thousand sales would make The End of Power a blockbuster.

But in what may have been a portent of disinterest to come, The End of Power sold only 13,000 copies after its selection. That was still enough to propel the book overnight into Amazon’s top 10 books from its previous rank of 45,140th. But the book club itself kicked off not with a bang but with a whimper: a Facebook Q&A with Zuckerberg and the author Naim that lured fewer than 200 participants into the online chat, and not all of those had even read the book. The Washington Post deemed it “a pretty lame start.”

What went wrong? The Post speculated that for technical reasons, ironically, Facebook isn’t the best venue for such a Q&A. It’s also difficult for the average Facebooker to keep up the biweekly pace, particularly with tomes that make for fairly heavy reading (Zuckerberg’s second selection, just announced, is Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, which weighs in at over 800 pages). 

It’s too early for a postmortem on A Year of Books, but Zuckerberg may have to find creative ways to keep the ambitious book club’s vital signs from flatlining. If he can pull that off – and I’m rooting for him, actually – while maintaining the intellectual quality of the selections, his project may have a significant influence on the reading habits of social media fans, many of whom might not otherwise come out of Facebook’s black hole long enough to sit down with an actual book.

(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 1/23/15)

Vanderbilt Professor Under Attack for Criticizing Islam

Last week, in response to the Paris massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, Carol M. Swain, an openly conservative professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, wrote an op-ed for The Tennessean titled, “Charlie Hebdo attacks prove critics were right about Islam.” Naturally, any critique of Islam from our leftist-dominated campuses is going to be met with frothing outrage, and Professor Swain’s article was no exception.

“What would it take to make us admit we were wrong about Islam?” the professor began. “What horrendous attack would finally convince us that Islam is not like other religions in the United States, that it poses an absolute danger to us and our children unless it is monitored better than it has been under the Obama administration?” Good questions, and ones that those of us whose eyes have long been opened to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism have been asking ever since September 11, 2001, if not before.

But the fact that such questions were being put forth by a major university professor, even a conservative one (with a very impressive résumé, no less), was notable. Swain pulled no punches:

More and more members of the PC crowd now acknowledge that Islam has absolutely nothing in common with Christianity, nor is it a worthy part of the brotherhood of man I long felt was characteristic of the Abrahamic religions. A younger, more naive version of myself once believed in a world where the people of the Book could and would get along because they all claimed Abraham as their father. No more!

Those were strong, clear sentiments about Islam that one doesn’t often – or ever – hear from American academics. She concluded with a statement that dared to challenge the West’s false idol of multiculturalism: “It becomes clearer every day that Islam is not just another religion to be accorded the respect given to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Baha'i and other world religions.” The attack on Charlie Hebdo, she wrote, “once again illustrates that Islam is a dangerous set of beliefs totally incompatible with Western beliefs concerning freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association.”

Swain’s solutions included “remov[ing] the foxes from the henhouses,” “institut[ing] serious monitoring of Islamic organizations,” and expecting Muslim immigrants to assimilate culturally. “If we are to be safe,” she wrote, “then we must have ground rules that protect the people from those who disdain the freedoms that most of the world covets.”

Among those who took umbrage at this blunt op-ed and complained to the Vanderbilt Hustler, the school paper, were: an international student from Pakistan who felt mortified by the piece; an agnostic junior who condemned Swain as xenophobic, hateful, and intolerant; a sophomore who accused Swain of “logical leaps” and “casual bigotry”; a graduate who warned against “fear of the Other”; another who purported to “debunk” Swain’s claims about Islam; and a Muslim undergrad who declared the op-ed to be hate speech and wondered, “How could such an educated, informed woman, a professor at Vanderbilt in charge of educating our youth, publish such ignorance?”

That same student, Farishtay Yamin, happens to be the publicity chair for Vanderbilt’s branch of the Muslim Students Association. She organized a student protest of Swain, saying, with no apparent trace of irony, “What I’m really trying to show [Swain] is that she can’t continue to say these kinds of things on a campus that’s so liberal and diverse and tolerant.” So much for the campus being liberal and diverse and tolerant.

The Muslim Students Association, the Muslim Brotherhood’s oldest offshoot in America, issued a statement, offering Professor Swain “kindness and respect” and forgiveness, pointing out that “she has allowed the acts of people who have distorted Islam to shape her views on an entire community of 1.6 billion people who practice peacefully.” Vanderbilt’s MSA invited her and others to attend their Islamic Awareness Month event called “Terrorism: Who Is to Blame” on Feb. 8. “Please join us for the event so that misconceptions can be cleared,” they urged helpfully.

The Vanderbilt Hustler editorial team responded by defending Swain’s right to free speech but denouncing her “brand of conservatism” as “disgusting and disappointing.” She has “undoubtedly abused her position” by “perpetuating a myth that seeks to shut down debate and discourage the legitimacy of the place that Muslim individuals hold in American society... In fact, many feel that Swain’s actions have created an environment that feels unsafe to some of her students.”

It’s ironic that Islam has created unsafe environments all over the world for Jews, Christians, women, gays, cartoonists, and even Muslims themselves, but the Vanderbilt Hustler editors blame Professor Swain for creating an unsafe campus environment for pointing that out (the Dean of Students even felt it necessary to reassure Muslim students that they are still safe on campus). Ironic, too, that – in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo assault – the editors claim that it is Swain who is seeking to shut down debate about Islam.

Last Sunday Professor Swain released a statement acknowledging that her op-ed “could have been written with a milder tone.” But given a chance to clarify her position in an interview, Swain did not back down. She told the Vanderbilt Hustler that, “What we don’t want in the United States is a repeat of what has happened in Europe… It would be beneficial,” she said, “if more Muslims would stand up and condemn jihadic violence against Christians, Jews, homosexuals and others.”

Asked how she reconciles the First Amendment with her “obligation as a professor to maintain a safe and civil environment” for “students who might feel threatened by your speech,” Swain replied,

I feel no special obligation to engage in politically correct speech. I think it is unfortunate that hate speech has become whatever makes a non-Christian uncomfortable… Any student who is threatened by a discussion of ideas cannot fully benefit from a liberal arts education… If a student takes one of my courses, then he or she has entered a political correctness free zone tolerant of divergent views.

Bravo. Thanks to the mental straitjacket of political correctness, no one who took exception to Professor Swain’s op-ed seems capable of grasping – or willing to grasp – the distinction between the ideology of Islam and its adherents. Criticism of the former is not the same as bigotry toward the latter. We must not allow the conversation about the world’s undeniable Islam problem always to be derailed by kneejerk accusations of mythical Islamophobia and intolerance. Unfortunately, freeing university students from that mental straitjacket will require an army of Professor Swains.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 1/23/15)

‘Selma’ at the Center of Racial Controversies

With another Martin Luther King, Jr. Day behind us, and nearly a half century after his murder, MLK is again at the center of racial controversy. This time the uproar centers on the new film Selma, which has been accused of rewriting history to minimize or exclude white and Jewish partners in the civil rights movement, and whose black director and lead actor have themselves been excluded from Oscar consideration.

The critically acclaimed Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay and starring David Oleyowo in a star-making performance as MLK, focuses on the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches for black voting rights. When the 2015 Oscar nominations were announced recently, Selma nabbed one for Best Picture, but all the individual nominees were revealed to be white, causing widespread media outrage about a lack of diversity, particularly in light of expectations about DuVernay and Oleyowo.

Racial ambulance-chaser Al Sharpton pushed his way to the front of the crowd, calling for an “emergency meeting” of his diversity task force to consider “action” against the predominately white voters of the Academy. He called the lack of nominations a “racial shutout” and declared that “the movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains – the higher you get, the whiter it gets.”

Sharpton was steamrolling right over the inconvenient truth that, as Breitbart.com’s John Nolte pointed out, ten black actors have been Oscar-nominated in the last five years, and three have won. Seven films focusing on race and racism have been nominated for Best Picture in that same time frame. Last year’s Best Picture – selected by the same predominately white Academy – was 12 Years a Slave. And then there is Selma’s nomination this year for Best Picture. In response to the outrage over Selma, the Academy’s President Cheryl Boone Isaacs – who is black – noted that the film’s Best Picture nod “showcases the talent of everyone involved in the production of the movie.”

But the Oscar brouhaha wasn’t the only Selma controversy. It has come under fire for depicting President Lyndon Johnson as a civil rights obstructionist, which Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library Director Mark Updegrove says “flies in the face of history.” LBJ and MLK had disagreements, Updegrove asserted, but were partners in the movement.

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Johnson’s top assistant for domestic affairs from 1965 to 1969, agrees, writing in the Washington Post that the film takes “trumped-up license” with the truth and should be “ruled out of awards season”: “Selma was LBJ’s idea, he considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement, he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted — and he didn’t use the FBI to disparage him.” Selma’s director DuVernay responded on Twitter that “LBJ's stall on voting in favor of War on Poverty isn't fantasy made up for a film.” She told Rolling Stone that the script originally was “much more slanted to Johnson,” but that “I wasn’t interested in making a white-savior movie.”

The portrayal of LBJ wasn’t the only cause for charges of inaccuracy against the film. Leida Snow at the Jewish Daily Forward pointed out that Selma “distorts history by airbrushing out” the Jewish contributions to civil rights. “The struggle for African-American civil rights was primarily one led and suffered by black Americans,” she wrote. “Nevertheless, white contributions to the ongoing war against discrimination should be noted.”

She stated that the Selma marches were “built on momentum generated by thousands of local efforts during the preceding months and years” – among them, the 1964 Freedom Rides, “in which well over a thousand volunteers, mostly white, and over half of them Jewish, risked their lives riding into Mississippi to face intimidation and harassment that included arrests, beatings, and murder.” And the 1964 murder of black Mississippian James Chaney and two Jewish New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, continued Snow, helped lead to passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Snow noted also that Jews assisted in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and twenty black colleges. They helped organize the 1963 March on Washington where Rabbi Uri Miller recited the opening prayer and Rabbi Joachim Prinz spoke before MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. And MLK himself wrote from prison to his friend Rabbi Israel Dresner, urging him to recruit rabbis to come to his support, resulting in a huge mass arrest of the rabbis who responded. Snow concludes that “There were many Jewish and other white Americans who supported them before, during, and after the marches from Selma to Montgomery, and ‘Selma’ misses a great teaching moment by excluding them.”

My friend J.E. Dyer at the Liberty Unyielding blog wrote that Selma is unfortunately a “superficial morality play” that omits the prominent presence in the Selma marches of Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the best-known rabbis of the 20th century, and a close friend of MLK. Dyer mentions that Heschel’s daughter “laments the film’s depiction of events as purely ‘political protest’ and not as a ‘profoundly religious moment: an extraordinary gathering of nuns, priests, rabbis, black and white, a range of political views, from all over the United States.’” By not showing her father marching, she said, the film “is depriving the viewers of that inspiration.”

All docudramas must, of necessity, make some concessions in historical accuracy to fit the requirements of storytelling: structure, pacing, invented dialogue, etc. None is going to be 100% factual. The problem is that Hollywood has always been the lens through which we all view and interpret not only the past, but current events, particularly in our time of propagandized education and increasing disconnect with our own history. The power of cinema is such that audiences tend to absorb uncritically the images and messages presented onscreen, and with them, the political perspective of the filmmakers.

Truth is the first casualty of war, it is said, and this is no less true of the culture war. A critically well-regarded film like Selma – especially in this current, racially charged atmosphere – will have more impact on how younger generations perceive the civil rights era than any number of textbooks, documentaries, memoirs, or articles pointing out historical inaccuracy. All of those are important and necessary weapons, but ultimately, the war for truth will be won or lost on the cultural battlefield, and the Selma filmmakers know this.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 1/21/15)