URLs du Jour

2021-11-30

  • You say you want a revolution? Adam Sexton tweets the threat issued by our state's senior senator:

    Threatening revolution in response to a court ruling? I'm pretty sure that's at least as bad as anything Donald J. Trump said on January 6.

    But (sure) it's OK when a Democrat does it.

    My ears pricked up a bit when I heard that on the local news last night. The WMUR report only managed to air the opinions of our pro-abortion representatives, and a Planned Parenthood ghoul.


  • Another take on abortion. Here's an NR article from Kevin D. Williamson: 'Roe' v. Me.

    Too often, we cannot or will not face the truth about abortion, because the truth is too horrifying — and because acknowledging that truth would morally oblige us to a course of political and social action that would be, to say the least, uncomfortable.

    And so we retreat into lies — and into facile similes, which are as good as lies. We know what an abortion does, and we know what is violently put to death in an abortion. About that, there is no serious question. In response, those who seek to keep the current abortion regime in place work to analogize away the human organism: “Sure, those are human cells, but we throw away human cells all the time — every time someone gets an appendectomy or a haircut.” Garry Wills, the noted Catholic writer, made precisely this argument in the New York Times, insisting that “my clipped fingernails or trimmed hairs are human life,” as though he were ignorant of the distinction between human cells and a human organism. Or: “Think of it as a parasite.” No, because “it” isn’t a parasite, or a tumor, or a failing organ or a gangrenous limb. “What about the 13th Amendment? Forcing a woman to provide labor for the fetus against her will!” No, pregnancy is not slavery.

    Pregnancy is pregnancy. And a human being is what it is, and it is that exactly, nothing else.

    I really want to go on quoting, but I don't want to test the "fair use" limits. KDW's article is very compassionate and insightful. And he doesn't mince words.

    (It's a good argument for why NR should release these articles from behind its paywall at some point. But it's an equally good argument for you to subscribe, if you don't.)


  • No jokes, please, we're Chinese. Jordan Boyd of the Federalist reports the latest corporate cowardice: Disney Caves To China, Drops 'Simpsons' Episode With Tiananmen Joke.

    Disney+ reportedly scrubbed an episode of “The Simpsons” from its launch in Hong Kong to appease Communist China’s censorship of pro-democracy content.

    The episode in question, “Goo Goo Gai Pan,” depicts Homer Simpson and his family traveling to China to adopt a baby for his sister-in-law and visiting various tourist sites in the country, including the remains of Mao Zedong. At one point, the family not only strolls past a row of tanks similar to those stared down by a pro-democracy protester in 1989 in China’s infamous Tiananmen Square, but one character reads a sign that mocks the communist regime’s censorship of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

    “Tien An Men Square: On this site, in 1989, nothing happened,” the sign states.

    Is this ironic? Censoring a cartoon episode that mocks censorship? ("Irony can be … pretty ironic sometimes" -- Buck Murdock)

    At the Washington Free Beacon, Chuck Ross piles on:

    Disney came under fire last year for filming parts of Mulan in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government carries out human-rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs. Credits for the film included special thanks to several Chinese Communist Party propaganda agencies. In 2016, Disney replaced a Tibetan monk character with a Celtic mystic in its film Doctor Strange in order to avoid controversy over the Tibetan sovereignty debate.

    While Disney has kowtowed to China, it has not shied away from social activism at home. Disney donated $5 million to social justice groups last year in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. Its subsidiaries ABC and ESPN endorsed the "Black Lives Matter" movement.

    Well, thanks to that $5 million, at least there's no more racial injustice here in the US.


  • But Disney is not the only bad joke. There's JPMorgan Chase, as exemplified by its CEO. Gerard Baker at the WSJ: Jamie Dimon’s China Joke Is on JPMorgan’s ‘Stakeholders’

    In the reign of China’s Ming dynasty, the full kowtow involved “three kneelings and nine prostrations.” Perhaps it’s a sign of progress that the Ming emperors’ modern successor seems to be satisfied with two.

    That’s the tentative conclusion we can draw from the self-abasement last week of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, before the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Dimon found himself in potential trouble with the current executors of the Mandate of Heaven when he repeated a joke he said he had told in Hong Kong earlier: “The Communist Party is celebrating its hundredth year. So is JPMorgan. I’d make you a bet we last longer.”

    A day later, evidently alarmed about the potential damage this might do to his bank in China, Mr. Dimon was on his knees. “I regret and should not have made that comment,” he said in a statement. A bank spokesman added: “Dimon acknowledges that he should never speak lightly or disrespectfully about another country or its leadership.” The Chinese government graciously accepted the double-grovel.

    Baker's musings about Dimon's crow-eating are interesting. Certainly this helped Chase maintain its business in China, and hence benefited its shareholders. And aren't businesses all about taking care of their shareholders?

    Maybe we can make an exception to that general rule in our dealings with ruthless dictators? Just asking.


  • I might have said "cesspool" instead of "ocean", but… Matt Taibbi looks at Jack Dorsey's resignation as Twitter CEO and wonders: Will Twitter Become an Ocean of Suck? (Note his implicit assumption that it's not already an ocean of suck.)

    Jack Dorsey, the extend-o-bearded CEO who co-founded Twitter and whose fame grew with that of his increasingly powerful platform during the Trump years, resigned today. His departure is the latest plot point in a long-developing Internet tragicomedy, which has seen what was supposed to be a historically democratizing technological tool transformed into a dystopian force for censorship and control. The departure of Dorsey, the rare CEO who not only has a conscience but appears to consult it more than once every few years, is bad news for those who already had complaints about the company, which during his tenure came to occupy a central role in what’s left of American intellectual culture.

    Yeah, that's why I have a blog. And that's why Taibbi et. al. have substacks.


Last Modified 2023-05-31 4:51 AM EDT