Pun Salad

• Wishful thinking? Mr. Ramirez pictures the state of one of the current major political parties:

  

  I would have made it a clown car, but probably that would have been too busy.

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• I'm not sure whether this is amusing, sad, or what. I've had a certain amount of fun with the University Near Here's yearly celebration of Martin Luther King's birthday. Examples: 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. (I skipped reporting the 2008 and 2016 events, because they were boring. And nothing much happened in 2021, thanks to Covid.)

  One major event in 2020 was the MLK Summit 2020, a closed event to which people needed to apply to attend. The big news for next year is, apparenty, a name change: it's the Audre Lorde Summit 2022!

  If you're like me, you have one question: Who is Audre Lord? Checking Wikipedia:

  Audre Lorde (/ˈɔːdri lɔːrd/; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia."

  Ah. Well, I guess she checked a lot more boxes than Martin did. She has a famous quote, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house", kind of a woke slogan. And probably MLK would never have gone here:

  In "A Poem For Women in Rage", Lorde imagines a Black woman intending to kill a white woman waiting for her lesbian lover. Through fury and rage, Lorde confronts the issues between white and Black women and how, "I am weeping to learn the name of those streets my feet have worn thin with running and why they will never serve me". As a Black, lesbian, feminist, Lorde dealt with inequalities between how white and Black lesbians were treated in public spaces. She takes out this rage on this hypothetical person in the poem to exhibit her anger over such inequalities.

  Interesting! You can check out the first page of the Summit's application at the above link, but the subsequent pages depend on you filling out the first page. I couldn't bring myself to do that.

  It's interesting to speculate on what caused the Summit's name change.

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• And not just as handy scapegoats. John O. McGinnis writes in City Journal to tell us Why Democracy Needs the Rich.

  The rich are in bad odor. The Left has made the “1 percent” a target of sustained moral and political criticism. But what exactly is wrong with the wealthy?

  Liberals often insist on the need for economic fairness. Some argue that the wealthy could pay more taxes without substantially harming the economy, though they should be grateful when taxpayers provide money to advance progressive goals. Others object to the very existence of large fortunes and seek to erode them via taxation. But the substantial majority of the very rich are self-made—two-thirds of the Forbes 400 built their own businesses, a proportion that is growing—and they add far more to the welfare of consumers than they retain in wealth.

  McGinnis has an interesting take: "The rich can stand up more easily than others to overweening officials and mobs, forming a bulwark against arbitrary or tyrannical rule." I.e., exactly the opposite of what progressive "reformers" claim.

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• Confucius would approve. Jeff Jacoby says Biden didn't go far enough: No genocide Olympics.

  AS THE People's Republic of China prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in February, its record of brutal human rights abuses is not being ignored by the Biden administration. White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced on Monday that "given the PRC's ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity," the United States would not be sending a delegation of government officials to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. To be sure, American participation in the games themselves will not be affected. "The athletes on Team USA have our full support," Psaki stressed. "We will be behind them 100 percent as we cheer them on from home." But there won't be any American dignitaries cheering in the stands.

  Chinese ruler Xi Jinping must be devastated.

  This so-called diplomatic boycott is the equivalent of coming in fourth in an Olympic event: It is an achievement that impresses no one, leaves no impact, and is soon forgotten. As international snubs go, it could scarcely be more trivial. Few if any viewers will notice the absence of American diplomats and politicians among the spectators; even fewer will care. Xi and his communist regime will revel in the propaganda triumph of hosting the world's foremost sporting event, even as their "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity" continue.

  Jacoby details China's ongoing thuggery against its own inhabitants and threats against other countries. I assume the 2022 Winter Olympics will someday go down in history in comparison with 1936's in Berlin.

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• Truth accidentally allowed to escape from the White House, is quickly apprehended. As reported at the Hill: White House cut Taiwanese official's video feed over map.

  After a Taiwanese minister showed a map that labeled Taiwan in a different color than China during President Biden's Summit for Democracy last week, the video of her presentation was reportedly cut by the White House over diplomatic concerns.

  Taiwanese Digital Minister Audrey Tang's map was shown for about a minute on Friday before the video feed of her presentation was removed, people familiar with the situation told Reuters.

  The video was replaced with an audio-only feed at the White House's request, the news wire reported. The presentation showed a color-coded map that ranked global openness to civil rights. Taiwan was labeled as green or "open," while other countries in Asia were marked as "closed," "repressed," "obstructed" or "narrowed.

  Can't have that getting out!

I started a new reading project, inspired by the New York Times shortlist of the 25 books on which they're asking their readers to pick "the best book of the past 125 years". (Which I noticed via Ann Althouse.)

Of those 25 books, I'd read 11. And one more was iffy: James Joyce's Ulysses. Assigned by my English prof, Jenijoy La Belle (who has her own Wikipedia page, good for her). I didn't come close to getting it. I may have looked at every page.

So: 14 books go on the TBR list, and the first up is Beloved.

It's not a pleasant read. Set mainly in the outskirts of 1870s Cincinnati, revolving around the story of Sethe, a onetime escaped slave. Sethe's life is a nonstop horror show, from the reality of slavery in Kentucky, a perilous botched escape, and eventual settlement into "124", a onetime refuge house for escapees. Unfortunately, 124 is haunted by a nasty poltergeist, the vengeful spirit of Sethe's daughter "Beloved". (We eventually learn how Beloved died. It wasn't pleasant.) Another ex-slave, Paul D, shows up and manages to send the ghost packing. But (oh oh) the spirit takes possession of another body, shows up at 124, and proceeds to form complex relationships with Sethe, her (living) daughter Denver, and Paul D.

That's the bare bones of the plot. Toni Morrison's prose is arty and not particularly accessible. There are multiple points of view, and a lot of skipping back and forth in time. I can see how people can find it to be important literature. It won a bunch of prizes, including the Pulitzer.

Fun fact (from the book's Wikipedia page):

In Virginia, Beloved was considered for removal from the Fairfax County senior English reading list due to a parent's 2017 complaint that "the book includes scenes of violent sex, including a gang rape, and was too graphic and extreme for teenagers". Parental concern about Beloved's content inspired the Beloved Bill, legislation that would have required Virginia public schools to notify parents of any "sexually explicit content" and provide an alternative assignment if requested. The bill was vetoed by Governor Terry McAuliffe. When McAuliffe ran again for the governor's office in 2021, a major event in the election was his statement during a debate that, "Yeah, I stopped the bill that—I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."