Pun Salad

Today's example of Simon's Assertion:

Apologies if your cultural upbringing didn't include that episode of Star Trek. (It's good, though, you should check it out.)

Also of note:

• As the saying goes: without double standards, they would have no standards at all. It's been nearly ten years, but Becket Adams has a long memory: Sports Journalists Jettison Their Affection for Silent Protest. (archive.today link)

  You’ve got to hand it to Major League Baseball: Like sports journalism, it has an uncanny ability to upset everyone.

  The San Francisco Giants held a Pride Night recently in which players were expected to wear ballcaps featuring the team’s logo in the colors of the current rainbow pride flag, which includes the colors of the trans movement. Because who doesn’t, over some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, want to pay respects to a hypersexual political entity that encourages gender dysmorphia in children?

  As it so happened, four Giants players were none too keen to honor the rainbow mafia.

  So, in silent protest, three players affixed to their ballcaps the scriptural reference “Genesis 9:12–16,” which refers to the rainbow as the symbol of God’s covenant with humanity. A fourth player, Sam Hentges, simply wore his normal season hat.

  Well, those players were righteously condemned. By some of the people who fawned over Colin Kapernick's knee-taking back in 2016. Becket compares what they said then with what they're saying now.

  Courtesy of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Pun Daughter and I plan on going to Fenway Park for the Red Sox-Nationals game on the 29ᵗʰ. The Sox are awful this year, but I will try to pretend that the game matters. It's also Puerto Rican Celebration night at Fenway, and I can't imagine that anyone would object to that!

• It bites. Winona Ryder told me so. Megan McArdle notes that It’s a great time to be a socialist. Until reality sets in. (WaPo gifted link)

  It has never been a better time in America to be a socialist. We aging Gen Xers who thought that socialism had been decisively refuted by the fall of the Berlin Wall have been refuted ourselves: Democratic socialists now run Seattle and New York City, and come January, probably D.C. too, where Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary that generally decides the district’s mayoral elections.

  It is a heady moment for the left, because socialism’s tainted brand has recovered from the vivid failures of the Soviet Union. Fully 66 percent of Democrats tell Gallup they view socialism favorably, while 42 percent say the same of capitalism. This makes the left see a revolution marching toward victory, because it can promise something that the center left cannot: a disruptive break with an unsatisfying status quo.

  The challenge is that socialism’s rise is spiky, concentrated in blue cities where affluent (but often downwardly mobile) college graduates cluster. That’s a problem for the Democratic Party, where the excesses of progressive governance are helping to make the party’s brand toxic in the less true-blue areas. But it’s also a challenge for the socialists, because cities are the hardest place to execute big plans for new taxing and spending.

  Why hardest? Because cities are pretty easy for the (m|b|tr)illionaires to exit. States are slightly harder, but the National Taxpayers Union argues. Millionaires Leave If You Tax Them: New York's Millionaire Exodus Has Already Left New York's Government Nearly $12 Billion Poorer

  As expected, the 1,607 comments on Megan's post, according to the AI summary, are dominated by socialist cheerleading.

  (Don't recognize the reference above? Here you go.)