Snarky Celebs Give Melania a Hateful Sendoff

Remember those halcyon days of yesteryear when American comedians managed to poke fun at politicians on both sides of the aisle and make all Americans laugh together, instead of dividing us by mocking grotesque stereotypes of Americans in flyover country? Remember when late-night television was dominated by Johnny Carson, who managed to make clever quips about current events without descending into vicious snark aimed at half the country?

That is a distant memory, and our culture is immeasurably the worse for it. Now the Left enjoys total political domination in the field of entertainment, and late-night TV features a gaggle of uniformly leftist comedians/hosts who spent eight years refusing to mock Progressive Messiah Barack Obama, and the subsequent four years spewing increasingly angry nightly monologues about the Man Who Is Not Obama who occupied the White House until last week.

And not just Donald Trump, but his wife Melania as well, whom they despise because she is not Michelle Obama. In fact, The CBS Late Show, hosted by the eminently punchable and politically uninsightful Stephen Colbert, gave the First Lady an insulting musical sendoff Wednesday as she and her husband prepared to leave the White House.

Colbert’s comedy chops are only slightly less worthless than those of fellow propagandist/faux comedian Seth Myers from the NBC version of Colbert’s show, Late Night With Seth Myers. Myers, you may recall (but more likely not), is most notable as the unfunniest Saturday Night Live alumnus in the leftist propaganda outlet’s 45-year history.

But I digress. Colbert, as I was saying, decided an appropriate way to celebrate Kamala Harris’ new administration was by offering up a hateful roasting of Melania Trump the evening after her dignified farewell address. He began by slamming the former First Lady for not issuing a denunciation of the Capitol Hill violence earlier this month swiftly enough – not that anything would have been quick enough to satisfy the Left.

Friday Must-Reads 1/15/21

This week's must-reads, several of them by brilliant people I'm honored to call friends:

"Cancelling the Classics? The Woke Crowd Comes for Homer's 'Odyssey'" by Matthew Pheneger at The Imaginative Conservative.

"Boys to Men," by Anthony Esolen at Crisis Magazine.

"Spirit Murder, Lizard Brains and the Abolition of Whiteness" by my friend Larry Sand at the California Policy Center.

"Conservatives -- we have to be our own deus ex machina" by my friend Andrea at Bookworm Room.

"Driving Out the Scapegoat" by my friend Bruce Thornton at FrontPage Mag.

"The Virtue of the New Totalitarians" by Roger Kimball at American Greatness.

"Institutionalized Obedience: Americans & the Lockdowns" by Habi Zhang at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Left's Weapon of Mass Instruction

For anyone in Southern California next week, I'll be speaking to the Rancho Mirage Republican Women Federated group at their upcoming noon luncheon at the Agua Caliente Resort there on Wednesday, January 20 -- inauguration day, no less.

I'll be speaking -- in person, not via Zoom -- on a topic I've written about recently: "The Left's Weapon of Mass Instruction" -- the cultural Marxist indoctrination of our children that is metastasizing throughout our nation's educational system, but I'll be trying to cover ground even beyond that in a short talk.

If that's the kind of thing that sounds like fun to you, either seek professional help or come check it out if you're in the area.

Friday Must-Reads

 

Time for another Friday collection of important articles from the week that grabbed my attention. As always, inclusion here means I generally support the arguments but do not necessarily agree with every sentence or with the authors themselves on other issues. Check 'em out:

"The Neighborhood Stands Between Us and Totalitarianism" by Annie Holmquist at Intellectual Takeout.

"My New Year's Resolution: Have More Enemies" by David Deavel at Imaginative Conservative.

"Why I Believe in Islam" by Fr. James Schall at Crisis Magazine.

 "No, Erasing White Authors From School Won't Help Kids Read Better" by Joy Pullman at The Federalist.

"Letter From a Struggling Young Man" by Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.

"Back to the Past to Find Strength For the Future" by Jeff Minick at Intellectual Takeout.

And two from Victor Davis Hanson: "Defenders of Civilization" at American Greatness and "Is the Wisdom of Homer Immune to Cancel Culture" at Patriot Post.

Congress' Gender 'Inclusivity' Jumps the Shark

Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is also a pastor at St. James United Methodist Church of Kansas City, Missouri, delivered the opening prayer for the 117th Congress last Sunday. After invoking “the God known by many names and faith,” he closed the prayer, of course, with “Amen.” Then, in a moment of shark-jumping absurdity, he added, “and A-woman,” apparently ascribing gender to the word “Amen” and attempting to be inclusive of the female sex.

As a pastor (with a Master of Divinity degree, no less), surely Cleaver cannot be unaware that “amen” comes from Hebrew filtered through Greek and Latin, and means “truly” or “so be it.” Was he seriously suggesting that the word somehow excludes women? Even people who are ignorant of its etymology understand that “amen” is the traditional conclusion of a usually Christian or Jewish prayer and has nothing to do with the male sex. In addition to Cleaver’s theologically confused appeal to a “God known by many names and faith,” his “a-woman” remark was the most idiotic feminist virtue-signaling since the corruption of the word “history” to “herstory.”

Cleaver unashamedly shared a video of the prayer on social media and was swiftly and justifiably roasted on Twitter. “Bruh you do know what Amen means, right?” wrote one commenter. Another respondent tweeted, “’Amen and awomen’? Is there a stupidity contest this year in government?” To that, someone replied, “Cleaver is off to an early lead.” Newt Gingrich tweeted, “perfect House Democrat prayer ending as House Dems focus on gender security by abolishing virtually every normal gender term [like father and mother].”

What Gingrich was referring to was the new House rules package for the 117th Congress, approved in a 217-to-206 vote on Monday, which “includes sweeping ethics reforms, increases accountability for the American people, and makes this House of Representatives the most inclusive in history,” according to a statement from the Committee. The package includes the establishment of a “Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth,” which will require Congress to “honor all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral.”

Ergo, in clause 8(c)(3) of rule XXIII, perfectly normal terms which describe those “familial relationships,” such as “father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, or granddaughter,” must be eliminated because they are “gendered” and will offend the bullying transgender lobby.

Friday Must-Reads

 

Time for another dose of Friday Must-Reads, articles which caught my attention this week. As always with these Must-Reads, I generally approve of the arguments but not necessarily with every idea or sentence.

"Hurtling Toward Totalitarianism" by Julian Christopher at New Discourses

 "2020: The Year in European Islam" by my friend Bruce Bawer at FrontPage Magazine

"Cancel Cult Comes for Homer" by Rod Dreher at American Conservative, and in a related piece, "Stupiditas Omnia Vincit" by Christopher Coulombe at Crisis Magazine

Also by Dreher: "West Point & Critical Race Theory," about the cheating scandal there.

"2020: The Year We Lost Our Common Sense, Courage, and Civil Liberties" by Robert Bridge at the Strategic Culture Foundation

"What to Worship, How to Obey: The New Rules of Cancel Culture" by Peter Wood at the new Deep Dives Into Critical Issues blog run by my friend, documentary filmmaker Gloria Greenfield

"When Being Woke Becomes Criminal -- and Deadly" by my friend Andrea at her must-follow Bookworm Room blog

"Make America Beautiful Again" by Francis Lee at Crisis Magazine

And a belated Christmas reflection by George Weigel at First Things, "What the Magi Teach Us."

Friday Must-Reads

 Welcome back to another edition of Friday Must-Reads:

"Where Did the New Mad Left Come From?" - Victor Davis Hanson

"The Origins of Sexual Totalitarianism" - Carlo Lancellotti at First Things

"Old White Lives Don't Matter" - Rod Dreher at The American Conservative

"Peter Navarro vs. the Slavery of Lies" - Auguste Meyrat at Crisis Magazine

 "The Real Stakes of the War on Christmas" from my brilliant friend Bruce Thornton at FrontPage Magazine

"The University as the Woke Mission Field: A Dissident Women’s Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out" - Samantha Jones at New Discourses

Friday Must-Reads

 

On a couple of occasions in the past I made tentative attempts to post a weekly handful of articles I highly recommend about aspects of culture, politics, and history that personally appeal to me, but I didn't stick with it. I've decided to give it another go, starting with the links below, which are in no particular order:

 

Prayer, Beauty, and Civilization - from The Imaginative Conservative

The 'Dictatorship of Relativism' Has Arrived - from Crisis Magazine

Mask Mandates Are a Means of Social Control Through Social Isolation - from Stella Morabito. Everything Ms. Morabito writes is a must-read.

Are the Democrats Waking the Sleeping Giant? - from The Bookworm Room. My friend Andrea is one of the most thoughtful, interesting political bloggers you'll ever come across, so I recommend reading her at The Bookworm Room regularly.

The Tragedy of Transhood - from First Things

The Coming Tsunami of Hate Speech Legislation - from Crisis Magazine

The Scars of 2020 - from American Greatness. Anything by Victor Davis Hanson, of course, is brilliant and enlightening.

Check back for more next Friday. 

The War on 'Manly Men'

Amid all the election mayhem and politicized coronavirus hysteria of the past several months, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the cultural realm, not the political arena, is where the deeper threat to our freedoms and civilization lies, because the culture is where hearts and minds are won or lost. The Left has always known this, but the Right tends to obsess over the political and scorn the cultural as trivial and unserious. If we never grasp how critical it is to engage the Left on that front, we will lose the Long Game. Let’s look at a couple of recent examples of one aspect of the Marxist assault on our culture in which the Left is gaining ground – their agenda to subvert our traditional norms of masculinity.

After what was widely touted in the media as a “history-making” appearance, Vanderbilt University female soccer player-turned-football kicker Sarah Fuller was recently named Special Teams Player of the Week by the Southeastern college football conference (SEC), along with Florida University player Kadarius Toney.

What did Fuller do to earn this honor? She “[t]ook the opening kickoff of the second half against the Tigers, as her perfectly-executed kick sailed 30 yards and was downed at the Missouri 35-yard line,” the SEC crowed in explanation.

That’s it. She was on the field for one play – not for a high-pressure, game-clinching field goal, but for a low, line drive of a kickoff that “sailed” a mere 30 yards. In all fairness, this kick was intended to be short in order to prevent a runback, but apparently, as a soccer goalie, longer kicks aren’t her strong suit: “[The short kickoff] was designed for her because that’s what she’s used to striking,” the head coach later tried to explain to reporters. And “perfectly-executed”? Perfectly-executed is the standard, not the exception, with kickoffs. One perfectly-executed kickoff is not an award-winning achievement – unless the kicker is a woman.

What would have happened if Vanderbilt’s opponents had returned the kick? “Football is not a contact sport,” the late Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty is credited with quipping. “It is a collision sport.” At 6’2”, Fuller isn’t petite (it’s unclear what her weight is; she is the only player on the Vanderbilt roster whose weight is not listed), but it’s a fair bet that if one of the male Missouri blockers hurtling downfield at full speed after Fuller’s kickoff had targeted her, or if she had tried to tackle the ball carrier, the question of whether women can compete on a truly equal footing with men in a collision sport would have been settled in one single collision. To avoid that very possibility, Fuller jogged to the sidelines immediately after her kick.

Thought Criminal

The most compelling science fiction is that in which the core of the story is not the threat of hostile aliens or Death Stars, but the dangers posed by our own humanity. Think of the tales of Philip K. Dick, for example, or those of Theodore Sturgeon, or of course, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Such is the case with the just-released new novel Thought Criminal by author Michael Rectenwald, former New York University professor-turned-champion for academic freedom, and an expert on the intellectual history of the social justice movement.

In January of 2018 I interviewed Rectenwald for FrontPage Mag here about being outed as “the Deplorable Prof,” the man behind an anonymous Twitter account which he used to criticize the social justice ideology of his (at the time) fellow leftist academics. Rectenwald went on to publish a book about the shunning and harassment directed at him by his colleagues and the NYU administration, titled Springtime for Snowflakes: Social Justice and its Postmodern Parentage from New English Review Press, which also published his subsequent books, Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom and Beyond Woke. All are must-reads for understanding the totalitarian ideological currents of today’s Cancel Culture.

Rectenwald’s new novel is set in a near-future dystopia where personal robots keep constant surveillance and report any conversations or actions that reflect dissident thinking; where Smart Cities track your every move; where a massive, centralized database known as Collective Mind “has outmoded traditional higher education and made knowledge acquisition a matter of instant package downloads.” The Collective Mind also threatens to regulate all thinking and obliterate individual identity.

Not simply “a system of control imposed by an independent entity,” Collective Mind is a system that is “only possible when a collective became complicit in its own subjection and when the subjects imposed subjugation upon each other.” Think on this in the context of the current state of America today, in which a disturbing number of the population eagerly complies with useless, authoritarian mask mandates, and angrily shames those who do not comply.

As Thought Criminal opens, Cayce Varin, 48, has lost his prestigious position as professor of the Theory of Mind and AI-Neuroscience at Transhuman University in Santa Cruz, Region of California, over an affair with a graduate assistant. This very human transgression has also earned him a registration as a Thought Deviationist and Vaccine Resistor, and thus he is hauled in by robot law enforcement agents to the Essential Data complex, which houses the most important processors of Collective Mind.