The phenomenon of late fame

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting piece on the phenomenon of late fame. Robert Graboyes concentrates on music:

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of history’s three greatest composers (along with Beethoven and Mozart), but his fame didn’t really blossom until the mid-19th century—75 or 80 years after his death. That fact contains both sadness (that he never enjoyed the fame he deserved) and joy (that his name rings out around the world and across the centuries). … I’ll share the stories of a handful of mid-20th century folk/pop musicians whose fame (in selected circles) was similarly deferred—along with some clips of their music.

That started me thinking about other arenas and other examples of late fame. I think the quintessential one is Van Gogh, who struggled tremendously in his life (from some unspecified and episodic mental illness, among other things like poverty) and sold very few paintings, although more than the one painting of legend:

We don’t know exactly how many paintings Van Gogh sold during this lifetime, but in any case, it was more than a couple. Vincent’s first commission was from his uncle Cor. He was an art dealer and wanted to help his nephew on his way, so he ordered 19 cityscapes of The Hague.

Vincent sold his first painting to the Parisian paint and art dealer Julien Tanguy, and his brother Theo successfully sold another work to a gallery in London. The Red Vineyard, which Vincent painted in 1888, was bought by Anna Boch, the sister of Vincent’s friend Eugène Boch.

Without the help of his brother Theo, Van Gogh would have been even worse off. But things were bad enough, and he killed himself at the age of thirty-seven in 1890. Now Van Gogh is one of the most popular artists ever, whose work fetches astronomical prices at auction.

But I think it’s somewhat of a myth that he was a complete failure in his lifetime. From his Wiki entry, I was surprised to see that he did have more recognition during his lifetime that I’d previously known, plus he was acknowledged with at least some praise and acknowledgement shortly after his death:

After Van Gogh’s first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh’s alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy. In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by “fire, intensity, sunshine”. Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890. French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh’s work.

After Van Gogh’s death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891, there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels. In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh’s suicide was an “infinitely sadder loss for art … even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived.”

Van Gogh’s fame and reputation started to build in the early years of the 20th century and he became quite famous in mid-century. So it did take a while for him to reach his present mega-fame.

Another example of a very different kind that comes to mind is Ignaz Semmelweis, who’s not really what you’d call a household name even now. But he was disgraced in his lifetime and rehabilitated only after death:

In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had thrice the mortality of midwives’ wards. The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in 1861.

Despite his research, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.

His findings earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory of disease, giving Semmelweis’s observations a theoretical and scientific explanation, and Joseph Lister, acting on Pasteur’s research, practised and operated using hygienic methods with great success.

Another extremely well-known example of the “late fame” genre is poet Emily Dickinson, reclusive and nearly unpublished in life but now considered one of the greatest American poets:

Although Dickinson was a prolific writer, only 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.Today her poems are widely regarded as groundbreaking with their use of short acerbic lines, lean descriptions, and slant or off-rhyme. Her poetry primarily deals with nature and mortality.

One thing all three – Van Gogh, Semmelweis, and Dickinson – had in common was that their work was unconventional for the times, trailblazing even. It took the passage of time for them to be appreciated. I’ll let Dickinson have the last word:

Success is counted sweetest,
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purpose Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

More about the terrible death of Henry Nowak

The New Neo Posted on by

Now we learn even more about the behavior of Henry Nowak’s murderer, as more news slowly is revealed:

It turns out that Vickrum Digwa is far more vicious and depraved than we were led to believe, and that Britons have not been allowed to see much of the evidence. Neither was the jury, because the judge deemed the evidence too disturbing to share with them. Think about that and let it sink in: Digwa was so depraved in his behavior that the judge withheld evidence of his crime from the people who needed to know because it would enrage them.

If that withholding of evidence from the jury is true – and I’m not 100% sure it is – I’m not sure on what legal grounds it would happen; “it would be too upsetting” hardly seems sufficient. I’ve been puzzled and frustrated from the start by all the gaps in the record and especially in the reporting of the trial itself.

There is some reference to it in the judge’s sentencing remarks, or at least a reference to something similar:

Your brother, Gurpreet, arrived on the scene very shortly after your attack had finished. You then filmed Henry desperately trying to get away from you, somehow scaling a fence, onto a communal bin, before landing on a car in front of the property next door. Bloodstains show that he had got one, more or all his injuries before then.

You then showed a callous disregard for his wellbeing, knowing you had stabbed him to the chest. You continued to make films of Henry suffering, ignoring much of his desperation at having been stabbed. You told him that had not happened, no doubt to convince others who were nearby. Your attitude did not change even though Henry was clearly going downhill very fast. Your brother did much the same, although he may just have been accepting that which you had told him, rather than lying himself. …

You kept Henry’s phone with the incriminating recording of you on it. You had no intention of handing it over. It was found on you after you had been arrested and taken into police custody.

There was a conversation between the two brothers in Punjabi as they were being driven to the station. At least the police had the presence of mind to record that conversation (or maybe the act of recording was automatic?). It was in that conversation that Vickrum Digwa confessed to his brother that he was guilty, and this confession was discovered when the conversation was translated.

The following allegedly involves video taken by a home security camera, but I can’t find the Daily Mail article referred to:

A home security camera then captured what may be the most chilling exchange in this entire case.

Henry: “I am dying.”

Digwa: “You’re not dying bro.”

Ten minutes later, Henry said: “You stabbed me.”

Digwa replied: “No, I didn’t.”

In the ten minutes that followed the stabbing, Vickrum Digwa did not call an ambulance. He filmed Henry for a full five minutes instead.

That clip was deemed too disturbing to be played in court.

Which clip was deemed too disturbing – the one Digwa filmed? The one from the home security camera? Or both? I don’t think either has been released to the public (although we’ve seen the police videocam with certain aspects blurred). I continue to find it surprising that the jury didn’t see the video made by Digwa on Nowak’s cellphone (perhaps it came under some self-incrimination exclusionary rule?) or in particular the home security video (some privacy rule?). The judge almost certainly saw all the videos, but I’ve been unable to find anything that clarifies further.

A question that remains for me is how much time passed in its entirety, from the stabbing itself to Henry’s death. This would seem important in determining if he could have been saved. More time seems to have passed than we originally were led to believe. There’s also this:

It is apparently true that if the stab wound had pierced an artery, [Nowak’s] chances of survival were low, especially by the time they arrived. But it did not. It pierced a vein, and the resulting leak would have been far slower, because such wounds clot far more quickly, slowing the bleeding. It is likely that the act of dragging Nowak and then handcuffing as they did reopened and stretched the puncture, and that led to his quickly dying.

A doctor testified that Nowak could not have been saved no matter what, but I won’t believe that until I hear more corroborating details. There will be an inquest to look into it further:

The full inquest into the death of Henry Nowak will open with a jury at Winchester Coroner’s Court on 20 September 2027.

More than a year away? What on earth?

From Ace, who thinks an hour passed between the stabbing and the death, although I’m not sure on what that is based:

People point out there was a trauma center five minutes away — but they allowed the “racist” to bleed out on the ground for an hour while chatting with the racist foreign family of killers.

This is a case of a murder that grows in meaning and force rather than fading. I suppose it will fade – no doubt authorities are hoping for that. But it taps into so many themes of recent years: “anti-racism” resulting in racism against the non-favored groups, the focus on hate speech as an actionable offense (especially in Europe and Canada) if the hate speech is against those favored groups, the phenomenon of violent crime by immigrants from foreign countries (although Sikhs are generally quite law-abiding), and DEI prejudice on the part of police. It also highlights the ubiquity of recording devices, without which I doubt Digwa would have been convicted at all.

Pratt falling in Los Angeles tallies

The New Neo Posted on by

I couldn’t resist a pun for the title of this post. But the content is no joke. We all knew that the vote counting in California is very very slow, and that there’s a history of it turning towards the left as it goes on and if there’s a hint of someone on the right doing relatively well.

Does that mean there’s cheating? Maybe. There’s certainly a strong desire to win coupled with a less-than-convincing devotion to assuring that the will of the voters will be carried out no matter what the outcome. The mail-in ballots that can come in late, the drop-boxes, the rabid leftist partisanship, all combine to create at the very least a lack of trust in the system on the part of anyone on the right.

And so it was almost a foregone conclusion that this would be happening, and that it would seem suspicious whether it is or not:

… [T]he race for second place in the mayor’s contest is moving in a direction that should concern Spencer Pratt supporters, and anyone who thinks Los Angeles needs to move toward a more centrist, common-sense course.

Friday afternoon’s update added roughly 140,000 ballots countywide, with about 42.7% from within the city of Los Angeles.

Mayor Karen Bass remains firmly in first place with 34.98% of the vote. The real drama is the battle for the second runoff spot between Pratt and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. …

Raman gained 23,115 votes in Friday’s update, compared to 10,711 for Pratt and 20,419 for Bass. In a single ballot drop, Raman netted 12,404 votes on Pratt. …

Put another way, she received more than twice as many votes as Pratt in this batch.

The upshot is that Pratt may fall to third place as more votes come in. And if he’s in third, he won’t be on the ballot. California’s voting system is designed to give voters a November choice of leftist and more leftist, rather than Democrat and Republican. But realistically, even if Pratt holds onto second place, at present he is only getting about a quarter or third of the vote compared to a combined Democrat/leftist vote that constitutes a definite majority.

Why anyone would vote for Bass or Raman is beyond me. I understand that Democrats will vote for Democrats. But these two have had their chances and have failed to help the city. If I lived in LA, I think that even if I were a Democrat I’d give Pratt a chance.

D-Day: 82 years after

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly-edited version of a previous D-Day post.]

Today is the eighty-second anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy landings in WWII that led to Western Europe’s liberation.

I wonder how many people under forty, either here or in Europe, now know or care what happened there. The dog barks and the caravan moves on.

The world we now live in seems so vastly different, including the relationship between the US and western Europe. But make no mistake about it; if threatened in a way that finally gets their attention, Europeans would be counting on us again. And although until a while ago I still thought that we would probably be up to the task, I now have my doubts. It would depend on the administration in charge. And we pretty much know our press would fail us.

About forty-eight years ago I visited Omaha Beach, site of the worst of the carnage. A quieter place than that beach and those huge cemeteries, with their lines of crosses set down as though with a ruler, you never did see.

But the scene was quite different back in 1944. The D-day invasion marked the beginning of the end for the Germans.

The weather was a huge factor, and the Allied commanders had to make the decision knowing that the forecast for the day was iffy and the window of opportunity small. For reasons of visibility and navigation (maximum amount of moonlight and deepest water), the invasion needed to occur during a time of full moon and spring tides, and all the invasion forces had already been assembled and were at the ready. To postpone would have been hugely expensive and frustrating, but to go ahead in bad weather would have been suicidal.

This is how bad the weather looked, how difficult the decision was, and how much we owe to the meteorologists, who:

…were challenged to accurately predict a highly unstable and severe weather pattern. As [Eisenhower] indicated in the message to Marshall, “The weather yesterday which was [the] original date selected was impossible all along the target coast.” Eisenhower therefore was forced to make his decision to proceed with a June 6 invasion in the predawn blackness of June 5, while horizontal sheets of rain and gale force winds shuddered through the tent camp.

The initially bad weather ended up being an advantage in other ways, because the Germans were not expecting the invasion to occur yet for that reason:

Some [German] troops stood down, and many senior officers were away for the weekend. General Erwin Rommel, for example, took a few days’ leave to celebrate his wife’s birthday, while dozens of division, regimental, and battalion commanders were away from their posts at war games.

In addition, there was Hitler’s personality and his reluctance to give autonomy to his military commanders:

Hitler reserved to himself the authority to move the divisions in OKW Reserve, or commit them to action. On 6 June, many Panzer division commanders were unable to move because Hitler had not given the necessary authorization, and his staff refused to wake him upon news of the invasion.

.

This didn’t mean that the beaches were not heavily fortified and manned, especially Omaha:

[The Germans] had large bunkers, sometimes intricate concrete ones containing machine guns and high caliber weapons. Their defense also integrated the cliffs and hills overlooking the beach. The defenses were all built and honed over a four year period.

The number of Allied casualties was enormous. Reading about it today makes one appreciate anew what these men faced, and how courageously they pressed on despite enormous difficulties. This is just a small sampler of what occurred on Omaha Beach at the outset; there was much more to come:

Despite these preparations, very little went according to plan. Ten landing craft were lost before they even reached the beach, swamped by the rough seas. Several other craft stayed afloat only because their passengers quickly bailed water with their helmets. Seasickness was also prevalent among the troops waiting offshore. On the 16th RCT front, the landing boats found themselves passing struggling men in life preservers, and on rafts, survivors of the DD tanks which had sunk. Navigation of the assault craft was made more difficult by the smoke and mist obscuring the landmarks they were to use in guiding themselves in, while a heavy current pushed them continually eastward.

As the boats approached within a few hundred yards of the shore, they came under increasingly heavy fire from automatic weapons and artillery. The force discovered only then the ineffectiveness of the pre-landing bombardment. Delayed by the weather, and attempting to avoid the landing craft as they ran in, the bombers had laid their ordnance too far inland, having no real effect on the coastal defenses.

These obstacles and unforeseen circumstances were extraordinarily costly in terms of the human sacrifice that occurred that day. Note that I use the word “obstacles and unforeseen circumstances” rather than “mistakes.” Today, if the same things had occurred (at least, while under the aegis of a Republican administration), they would be labeled unforgivable errors rather than the inevitable difficulties inherent in waging war, in which no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Another historical footnote is the following passage from Eisenhower’s message to the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. It’s another sign of how times have changed; the word “crusade” has become verboten.

In his pocket, Eisenhower also kept another statement, one to activate in case the invasion failed. It read:

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

The note was written in pencil on a simple piece of paper, and is housed in a special vault at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library & Museum in Abilene, Kansas, a bit of thought-provoking fodder for an alternate history that never occurred.

[NOTE: I’ve read that there’s a new movie out about Eisenhower and D-Day, entitled Pressure. Has anyone seen it?]

Not saving the SAVE Act

The New Neo Posted on by

The SAVE Act was voted on in the Senate, and four Republicans joined the Democrats to stop it. Can you guess the four?

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) offered the amendment. The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections and require voters to present photo identification at the polls.

The four Republicans who voted against the amendment were Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Collins I understand. She has to vote this way to try to keep her Maine seat, and if she loses it Maine will almost certainly elect a Democrat. Also, if it was just Collins voting against this, it would have passed.

The other three? No excuse, and yet predictable.

Think the NY Times story about Platner’s ex-girlfriend’s complaints was an anti-Platner hit piece? Think again.

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday we had some revelations in the NY Times about Graham Platner’s treatment of women. Its publication indicated to me one of two things, maybe both. The first is that the Democrats would really like to rid themselves of Platner and replace him with someone with a less offensive past (a low bar indeed). The second is that they were getting ahead of the story.

Ace describes some of the claims thusly:

NYT: “Ex GF of Platner Says He Knew All About “My Totenkopf,” Used Physical Force Against Her, Bragged That He Would Rape His Male Enemies, “Not in a Gay Way,” But to Show “I’m Dominant” …

Most of the Democrats refused to address this except to say that Platner’s reformed, and that he needs to beat Collins and is poised to beat Collins and that this will give them a Senate majority, as though that would justify anything. And of course, in their eyes it would.

Fetterman was one exception, however (although here he’s addressing some previously-revealed offenses of Platner’s):

“[Platner] is a guy that had a problem with me, how I dress, but he seemed to have no problem posing in a towel at a disgusting website that consistently had serious problems about that kinds of depravity,” Fetterman told Fox News host Sean Hannity. …

“Let me make a deal. I’ll tell P-Hustle, I’ll wear a suit every day, if he releases all those texts and messages that he’s had,” Fetterman said. P-Hustle is a reference to the account name Platner reportedly had on his Kik account. …

Fetterman replied [when asked if there were more lies to come from Platner], “Well, he lied to everybody. He said that there wasn’t any after his Nazi tattoo situation. And now there’s more and more of the things. So he’s already lied about that.”

Fetterman added, “So I assume, you know, it’s like they say, for every ranch you see in Texas, there’s 50 that you haven’t seen. So I’m sure there’s plenty, a lot of more ranches in P-Hustle’s life.”

I think the Democrats actually would like to rid themselves of Fetterman, or at least muzzle him. But he’s not up for re-election until 2028, and they won’t replace him then unless they find someone they think can win in Pennsylvania.

But I digress.

The story behind the Times story about Platner’s girlfriends actually seems to have been even more Byzantine than I originally suspected. Take a look:

But these allegations [of girlfriend abuse] are buried [in the Times story] under mountains of campaign flack bullshit and then packaged as “intimidating” and “unsettling.” Normal people have another phrase for it: domestic abuse.

That characterization is by design.

Let me be clear: the New York Times story was not journalism. It was a soft catch-and-kill operation. It was a favor to Platner’s campaign, a disservice to readers, and an insult to the women who say they were hurt by him.

One of those victims, Lyndsey Fifield, is my friend.

Fifield has been attacked by the left as not credible because she’s on the right politically – therefore, of course, lying. Believe all women – if they’re Democrats.

More:

The term ‘catch and kill‘ refers to a shady practice where a public relations firm or consultant works with a friendly news outlet that was pitched or ‘stumbled’ upon a negative story about a client to effectively ‘catch’ and then ‘kill’ the story — or delay it until it no longer has impact.

A ‘soft catch and kill’ works similarly, though it mostly involves the publication still running the story in a timely manner, but the details are softened or buried deep in the narrative to soften the bite. …

In fact, for the first third of the New York Times expose, they focused on women provided to the newspaper by the Platner campaign — who, of course, sang the degenerate former bartender’s praises. And frankly, that is all many readers will come away with, because that is about as far as their attention span lets them get into the narrative. Which is, again, the point.

I didn’t know that “catch and kill” terminology, but that’s the sort of thing I meant by “getting ahead of the story.” In other words, the friendly outlet shapes it before an unfriendly one does.

This is the part that wasn’t apparent from the story itself:

Prior to publication, I’m told that the Times spoke to two women who had credibly accused Platner of sexual assault. This detail was revealed to Fifield — likely in an effort to encourage her to divulge more of her story. Those women’s allegations never made it into the story. They were effectively ‘killed’ by the Times’s editors and by Platner’s attorneys, I’m told. …

Even more telling, and perhaps a tip of the hat to the nature of this soft catch and kill, is the fact that numerous Democrat aligned influencers and operatives were essentially flooding the zone on social media in the hours before the story was published. Somehow, they knew that one of the women was an activist in the conservative movement — a detail that surmisably came from the New York Times or from the Platner campaign, or both, ahead of publication. Others appear to have known details that were cut from the story.

Then there’s Fifield herself (see this describing and quoting a series of tweets of hers on X) [my emphasis]:

Fifield explained that in early April, the New York Times contacted her and she told them she was not interested in discussing her story. The reporter told her there are other women coming forward about Platner’s conduct. “ They said but wait—there are other women. Women terrified to tell their stories, too, and you need to band together. WE will help you. We will protect you. Men can’t keep getting away with this,” she wrote.

You could say that the Times was another abusive, lying boyfriend. Don’t ever believe what they promise [my emphasis]:

After seeing former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s downfall, she reversed course. She told them her story and even “let them take pictures of my diary pages.” She sent screenshots of her message exchanges with Platner.

“I explained very clearly that, like many women abused by their partners, I had not told anyone about his violence at the time—I had covered for and defended it. I accepted his earnest apologies. They said that’s fine because the diary entries and my on the record story was enough,” Fifield wrote.

The reporters connected her to other victims and she told them they were “doing the right thing” even though they had misgivings. Fifield also realized that Platner was in a relationship with one of the other victims while she was dating him.

She further explained that she felt guilty about having remained silent for so long, but at some point, she decided she couldn’t continue to keep this under wraps. “I couldn’t stay silent as he continued to lie and lie and lie. I want my daughters to boldly speak out if they’re ever abused as I was,” she wrote. …

“After the story went up I began to ask them … wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why are there 11 paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history (more than has been published about Graham’s by far)?

“Why does it say “nobody could corroborate” when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?”

The piece was obviously written in a way that would discredit her and/or make it easy for the left to attack her. She was naive, but it makes sense that she wanted to tell her story. It was a mistake to tell it to the Times – but then again, if it had appeared in an outlet on the right, it would also have been discredited because the only true “truth” appears in the leftist MSM.

ADDENDUM:

More here, including this from Fifield:

It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.

As Fetterman said, there are probably “a lot more ranches in P-Hustle’s life.”

Blog tech talk

The New Neo Posted on by

The blog’s been having too many “too many requests” interludes here lately and I would like to fix the problem, whatever it is. The sales people at my host say (predictably) that I need to upgrade, to the tune of a lot more money. But I have my doubts about whether that’s necessary.

Usually the “too many requests” message only lasts at most about a half-hour or forty-five minutes, but I don’t want it to happen at all. So I ask you to please bear with me and be patient for at least a few more days while I try a bunch of other possible fixes.

This is not my forte, but I can always upgrade if it doesn’t work. Nothing I do at this point should disrupt service … hopefully.

And now, presenting Congress member Judy Chu

The New Neo Posted on by

Democrat Judy Chu is the US House member from California’s 28th District. The other day she was quizzing Bessent and an exchange ensued about whether Trump cares about the American economy as opposed to the Iran War. As part of the back-and-forth, Bessent was making a reference to Woodrow Wilson’s entering WWI, and asked her the following question and got the following answer:

Cultural illiteracy.

Not knowing anything about Chu other than what I said above, I assumed that perhaps she hadn’t been educated in the US, which might account for the lacuna in her knowledge of history. But I discovered that she was born, raise, and educated in this country, and that her father was a WWII veteran:

Chu was born in Los Angeles as the second of four children to May Lin and Judson Chu. Judson was born in Chico, California, to Chinese parents from Jiangmen, Guangdong and served during World War II in the 10th Army Corps in Okinawa. He brought over his wife May from his ancestral home in Xinhui County as a war bride in 1948.

Chu grew up in South Los Angeles, near 62nd Street and Normandie Avenue, until her early teen years, when the family moved to the Bay Area. She graduated Buchser High School in Santa Clara, California in 1970.

In 1974, Chu earned a B.A. degree in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1979, she earned a Ph.D. degree in psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology of Alliant International University’s Los Angeles campus.

She’s been in Congress since 2009. And since Chu is 72 years old, she also doesn’t have the excuse of having been educated recently, when history has mostly been jettisoned in favor of wokeness. And yet there is that abysmal ignorance.

Nor does Chu say something like, “I know, it’s on the tip of my tongue but I forgot for the moment.” That would be more acceptable. But no; she merely says “I don’t know” and proceeds with her prepared talking points.

The murder of Margaret Swan

The New Neo Posted on by

The death of Margaret Swan mirrors the death of Iryna Zarutska. Although Swan is much older and also black rather than white, otherwise the murders are uncannily alike and equally chilling. We know even less about the perpetrator in Swan’s stabbing, but he is also a black man who suddenly, and with no provocation whatsoever, viciously stabbed a woman to death in front of a bunch of train
passengers who didn’t intervene.

Whatever delusions or triggered grievances were sparked by the mere sight of such women, the acts are consummately evil.

This is what surveillance video shows:

Security footage shows [66-year-old] Swan sitting alone inside MARTA train car 134 around 11:25 a.m. on Saturday, according to an arrest warrant.

The warrant states [25-year-old homeless man] Matthews walked up to stand near her right side, pulled a knife out of his front pants pocket, grabbed Swan by her head, and cut her throat.

Swan screamed and attempted to rise from her seat before Matthews grabbed her right arm and stabbed her roughly 18 to 20 times in an unprovoked attack.

Matthews then threw Swan to the floor and stood beside her until the northbound train pulled into the Oakland City Station at approximately 11:27 a.m.

There were many witnesses were able to furnish an almost immediate description of the murderer, which enabled police to catch him quickly. He had gotten off the train at the next stop but was still in the station, still holding the bloody knife and dressed in his bloody clothing. But that quickness on the part of the police didn’t help Margaret Swan.

This decision seems to have been a factor:

Swan’s devastated daughter Shanae Sams told The Post on Monday, ripping local officials over the temporary decision to allow free access to MARTA during systemwide renovations for the FIFA World Cup.

In other words, the MARTA system became a haven for homeless people and others with little or no money, such as Matthews.

One of the comments at the NY Post goes like this:

I expect to see every member of the clergy, celebrities, politicians, athletes and BLM members who showed up for the optics of supporting George Floyd at his THREE funerals to be in attendance for this poor lady. If the crime doesn’t fit the narrative, there’s not an activist in sight. Sincere condolences and Godspeed to the family.

Although this attack occurred last Saturday, we still know nothing about Matthews’ life or record, other than that he was homeless. Why have we been told so little?

As for non-intervening bystanders, I don’t judge them too harshly at this point. We don’t know how many people were on the train, or who they were. If it was just a few, and mostly women or the elderly, were they supposed to confront a knife-wielding maniac? I doubt I would have done a thing. Was anyone armed with a gun, which is legal in Atlanta? I have no idea. Were they afraid of a Daniel Penny type of situation, in which a Good Samaritan was criminally tried? I also call your attention to this article analyzing the Zarutska murder and why bystanders did nothing in time.

RIP Margaret Swan.