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Nikole Hannah-Jones: the squeaky wheel gets academic tenure — 59 Comments

1. Right up there with Howard Zinn.

2. The only reason slavery came to colonial America ( existed in pre-Columbian America), is that Europeans temporarily culturally appropriated black african culture and purchased preexisting slaves from slave owning African kings, who were more than happy to rid themselves of their undesirable slaves

3. This is absolutely disgraceful (although predictable), and it is yet another black mark against UNC (home of the infamous athletic cheating scandal of several years ago). This woman has no academic qualifications (nor any real journalistic ones), she is being hired at an outrageous salary (at a public school), and she is being granted “tenure” (an academic privilege which should long since have been abandoned) without any scholarly accomplishment. That this decision was made from a combination of cowardice and fear of the “woke” mob is obvious. The death-knell of America’s institutions of higher (mis)education has well and truly sounded.

4. I took only one history course in college, so I am not the most knowledgeable person on history- though I have read a fair amount of books on history since college. In only a cursory perusal of the NYT’s 1619 Project, even a history nebbish like me could find 2 glaring errors.

   Such as claiming that Thomas Jefferson made big profits from his slaves. Which is why his heirs needed 50 years to pay off his debts, right? Or claiming that efforts in England to stop the slave trade were a big reason for the colonies breaking away from England. Which doesn’t quite jibe with there being a clause in the Constitution that a decision on stopping importation of slaves would be delayed for 20 years. Right on the dot, when it was first voted on, importing of slaves was banned circa 1807.

   And historians with doctorates have gone on for pages and pages about the factual errors in the 1619 Project.

   Having an ignoramus-better said a PRETENTIOUS IGNORAMUS- like Hannah Jones being granted tenure merely indicates the degradation of academia.

5. This is a black mark for UNC. It’s unclear how this will work out, as Hannah-Jones is reported to be “distressed” over how she has been treated. How dare anyone question her credentials? The last report I could find locally was that a course she was to teach this fall is no longer on the schedule, and another is now listed as taught by “staff” rather than her own name.

6. UNC is ranked #28 among national universities.

   https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/unc-2974

   We will look back at this period as American Lysenkoism.

7. I recall this 2006 incident of car terrorism at UNC.
   ________________________________________________

   On March 3, 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, an Iranian-American, intentionally, as he confessed, hit people with a sport utility vehicle on the campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to “avenge the deaths of Muslims worldwide” and to “punish” the United States government. While no one was killed in the vehicle-ramming attack, nine people were injured (none seriously).

   Shortly after the attack, he turned himself in and was arrested. He pleaded guilty to nine counts of attempted first-degree murder, and in 2008 was sentenced to 33 years in prison, on two counts of attempted murder.[2]

   In one letter, Taheri-azar wrote, “I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, who obtained a doctorate degree.”[3] He told investigators he wanted to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.”[4]

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_UNC_SUV_attack
   ________________________________________________

   He was born in Tehran but raised in America from the age of two on. He was a graduate of UNC. The Chancellor and one of the professors made excuses for Taheri-azar,

   He is scheduled for release in 2032. Not long enough.

8. This is a black mark for UNC. It’s unclear how this will work out, as Hannah-Jones is reported to be “distressed” over how she has been treated. How dare anyone question her credentials?

   It’s a reasonable wager she’s been larded with unearned praise for 25 years now and hasn’t a clue as to what her actual skills are and what her actual accomplishments are.

   Note this:

   https://disrn.com/news/nyt-writer-nikole-hannah-jones-called-white-people-barbaric-devils-and-bloodsuckers-in-recently-surfaced-1995-letter/

   And recall she grew up in Waterloo, Iowa and had for her maternal-side grandparents a pair of perfectly respectable white working-class people. She’s been damaged goods for a long time.

9. By any calculus one might propose, Nikole Hannah-Jones is not a journalist. She is a propagandist, a demagogue and a racist. Once rare and now, not at all uncommon, her racism is directed against the color of her own skin. Self-hate is a heavy cross to bear. But a pretense of self-hate in order to rake in filthy lucre is evil.

   Whereas the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is enabling and supporting evil.

   Any alumni who now donate to UNC @ Chapel Hill will now be complicit in that evil.

10. And recall she grew up in Waterloo, Iowa and had for her maternal-side grandparents a pair of perfectly respectable white working-class people. She’s been damaged goods for a long time.

    It has been fascinating to see people who where raised with at least one white parent, that they love, gain power by demonising US history and ‘white’ people. Hannah-Jones has benefited by believing/pretending that she is a victim.

11. In some ways, the Left is the biggest ally the Right has in the fight against the Left. How many tenured professors at UNC are outraged over this, even if they can’t admit it publicly or even to themselves? How much trouble is Hannah-Jones going to cause for the university going forward? At minimum, some sort of lawsuit against UNC over racial discrimination is almost certain at some point.

    Mike

12. Good clip on CRT;

    https://youtu.be/ZxRm8ZXaBd0

13. I’m starting to think there is something off about people like this. Maybe she is a narcissist. Her refusal to admit when she was wrong, doubling down on her errors, and the audacity to demand tenure without even proving her abilities as a professor – IDK, it’s just not normal.

14. @shadow:

    But it’s a stratagem which works in our current society. So expect to see more of it until there is a Discontinuity.

15. Maybe she is a narcissist.

    Ya think?

16. Once rare and now, not at all uncommon, her racism is directed against the color of her own skin.

    Dunno. Her father’s family migrated to Waterloo from some location down South; I want to say a small town in Georgia but I’ve forgotten. He drove a city bus for a living; died about 15 years ago. IIRC, her maternal-side grandfather was a skilled worker and her grandmother a lapsed schoolteacher (I’ve lost the link to their obituaries). IIRC, the family’s name is Novotny. Her grandparents were ordinary looking; her mother is disfigured by obesity. One sister (IIRC) was an employee of the Iowa corrections department, married a hispanic dude, and died about ten years ago divorced and childless. Another sister’s occupation I forget; she has several children (one deceased in infancy) and has had a string of men in her life, a couple she’s had children by and a couple to whom she was married. IIRC, one of her men was the scion of a local (black) family that seems to breed felons. A couple of her children, now around age 20, have social media pages. I know it’s crass to point this out, but one thing that strikes you about NHJ and her nieces is that family heritage, eating and exercise habits, and a complete absence of a sense of style have taken their toll. I imagine that’s one vector influencing her thinking over the years, if thinking is what it can be called. AG Sulzberger is her enabler, of course, another item on the bill of particulars against him.

17. Here’s a statement regarding NHJ from UNC’s School of Education:
    “We, the faculty of the School of Education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill urge the UNC Board of Trustees to resist political and philanthropic pressure, reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom and academic excellence, and support established university governance procedures by acting immediately to review Nikole Hannah-Jones for tenure.” https://ed.unc.edu/

    Now you just know that the next candidate for tenure at this illustrious school will be none other than that gift to the field, Jill Biden, “Ed.D.”

    I see that some previous commenters referred to NHJ’s appointment as a “black mark” against UNC. Pun intended?

18. The 1619 Project is just a pack of lies. My ancestor came to Virginia in the same way. He was an endentured servent. He served his time and was rewarded with land. The Jamestown settlement was almost destroyed by the Indians in 1622 with whole towns being burned to the ground. The fool also so acted as if Plymouth colony did not exist.

19. Actually slavery was already in America. The American Indians practiced it.

20. At The Hill (and elsewhere) I have read that the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, to which NHJ was appointed, is usually a tenured position, and that the usual academic credentials do not apply. I believe it’s also the case that tenure was initially denied because a wealthy conservative donor objected. All of that could be true, and it could also be true that NHJ did not get a fair shake at first, but she would still be a race-baiting narcissistic PITA. I second those commenters who see trouble ahead for UNC.

21. Her father was from Mississippi according to this article:
    https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2021/02/11/what-does-1619-project-teach-pulitzer-winning-project-native-iowa-nikole-hannah-jones/6719245002/

    It mentions being bussed to an elementary school in a “wealthy” neighborhood in the 1980s as part of desegregation plan, and says she graduated from Waterloo West High School, which I believe is predominantly white. I put “wealthy” in quotes, as in relatively, I imagine, not like Greenwich, Connecticut.

    Waterloo itself is kind of a gritty manufacturing center and has a fairly large African American population. If the John Deere plant is no longer the company’s largest tractor factory, which it may well be, it was their first. It originally produced the Waterloo Boy, an early model of which is in the Smithsonian, and was purchased by Illinois-based John Deere. John Deere, the person, many here might recall as the inventor of the mole board plow, which helped to break the prairie sod. Waterloo also has a meat packing plant and has since the 1890s. The population of Waterloo is much smaller than it was in, say, the 1930s and 1940s, when it was among the biggest cities in Iowa, and when the John Deere plant would have produced a lot of tractors (which were replacing horses).

    On the west side of Waterloo is Cedar Falls, home to the University of Northern Iowa. Cedar Falls is relatively well to do, and kind of a smaller version of Ames and Iowa City.

22. Others here obviously know associated detail, but I recall a Twitter exchange of hers with historian Phillip Magness.

    Her response to him I recall as unprofessional at best, and didn’t address his substantive points at all. From this article, which documents a big revision to the 1619 wording, it must have been one of Magness’s tweets — who is mentioned in this link — some time over the prior six months:
    https://www.thecollegefix.com/new-york-times-makes-clarification-to-1619-project-after-its-own-fact-checker-calls-it-out/

23. “Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism”

    What in the world do those two subjects have to do with each other, that they are co-joined in a university faculty position?
    All the rest of the foundation’s chairs make sense.

    https://knightfoundation.org/knight-chairs/

24. Re: “Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism”…

    AesopFan:

    I saw that and had much the same thought.

    Who knew that those Studies departments academia granted to 60s/70s protesters were but the thin edge of a very long, thick wedge.

25. Incidentally, the Everly family moved from Kentucky to Chicago then briefly to Waterloo before moving to the small town Shenandoah in far southwest Iowa, close to Nebraska and just north of Missouri.

    In Shenandoah, the Everlys played live music on the two radio stations there, owned by seed men (nursery owners) Henry Field and Earl May. Shenandoah was mentioned briefly in Ken Burn’s country music special on PBS.

    Henry Field’s sister, Jesse Field Shambough, is known as “the mother of 4-H” for starting the first 4-H clubs. She graduated from nearby Tabor College, which was kind of an offshoot of Oberlin. A house in Tabor was on the Underground Railroad, and the owner was a good friend of John Brown, who visited often.
    https://nonpareilonline.com/lifestyles/pottawattamie_county_history/the-dodge-connection-a-soldier-s-life-in-the-iowa-4th-infantry/article_bd1d4c83-fe4c-51d8-881b-0b1ced60ca46.html

    His father, George Gaston, and especially his mother, were set against Alonzo’s enlistment. However, they were neither timid pacifists nor tepid in their support of the Union cause. The family believed fervently in equality of races and sexes.

    They were friends with the radical abolitionist, John Brown, who advocated violence and sought to instigate slave revolts. Brown often visited and stayed at the Gaston home before his death in 1859 at the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

    While Brown’s attempt failed, he became a hero to the North and a traitor to the South. In fact, early planning for that revolt took place in the Gaston home, which also served as an armory for 200 rifles and ammunition. As if that wasn’t enough, their house was also a stop on the Underground Railroad. Later, the Gastons founded Tabor College, modeled after the progressive Oberlin College in Ohio. …

    This PDF on KMA radio talks about the Everlys beginning in Chapter 9, at page 99:
    https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Station-Albums/KMA-Iowa-Book.pdf

    Chapter 10 covers Earl May’s founding of Omaha TV station KMTV. Chapter 11 talks about the Everlys more at page 124, industry changes, and the end of live radio.

26. After my previous comment I wondered if perhaps Allan Bloom had foreseen this. I didn’t want to delve into “The Closing of the American Mind” again. However, there is a well-chosen list of quotes, which capture Bloom well, so far as I recall. In particular I was interested in the Nietzsche section:

    https://theclosingoftheamericanmind.com/#TheNietzscheanization

    One of my problems with the “It’s-Marx-All-the-Way-Down” approach to the left is that the left has mutated quite a lot from Marx and, while I’m far from a Nietzsche scholar, I’m inclined to agree with Bloom that Nietzsche (thence Heidegger) is the missing piece to that puzzle.
    _________________________________________

    In general, sophisticated Marxism [turned into] cultural criticism of life in the Western democracies…. But none of it came from Marx or a Marxist perspective…. It was, and is, Nietzschean, variations on our way of life as that of ‘the last man.’
    _________________________________________

    Bloom died in 1992, so we don’t know exactly what he would make of today’s crisis. I expect he wouldn’t be surprised, but in his time he was waving red warning flags, rather than mapping out the future.

27. HumphreyP:

    You seem an interesting chap. We share a liking for the miniature essay form.

    However, I can never find a place in your comments to latch on and respond. Which I don’t mean as criticism, just that I wouldn’t want you to be discouraged on that account. I do read you and I expect others as well.

    It might help if you gave an idea of the stakes early in your comment. When I read your latest, I was immediately lost. Who are the Everly’s and why should I care? I guess they are related to NHJ. Or are they related to the Everly Brothers?

    Just a thought.

28. Thanks, huxley. The Everlys is the Everly family, the parents and their sons Don and Phil, the sons of course who would become big stars not long after they left Shenandoah. The parents played live music on the radio, occasionally with Don and Phil.

    They migrated from the South like Nicole Hannah-Jones’ father, first to Chicago. They auditioned and nearly stayed in Waterloo, where NHJ would grow up, but wanted to raise their sons in a still smaller town, and moved to Shenandoah, which they heard about in Waterloo. Waterloo would have been a booming industrial city when the Everlys were there.

    That’s some good advice.

    That’s also a good link on The Closing of the American Mind. I didn’t understand a lot of it when it came out, but it opened me up to reading much more broadly, especially since so much of my reading then was academic and narrowly focused then for such a long time.

29. I would add that it is accurate to say that Waterloo has seen better days, and many there definitely experience poverty (as did the Everly family, in fact).

    For many who live there, including many minorities, people who are college professors or managers at the John Deere or meat packing plants are “wealthy.” Meat packing jobs don’t pay like they used to, and typically are staffed by minorities. They have been a draw for many immigrants from Latin America to Iowa, and from all over the world.

    The population of just the city of Waterloo is 67,000 today. I have to correct myself above. It was about the same in 1950, but wasn’t higher prior to that but was instead rapidly increasing. It was about 75,000 prior to the 1980s farm crisis. HNJ attended elementary school in the 1980s, and Waterloo would have been hit especially hard in 1985-1987 or so, when John Deere’s sales would have ground almost to a halt. So it would have been very depressed much of her time there. By the time she graduated from high school in the 1990s, things would have been picking up but still not like they were in the 1970s.

    That Waterloo’s population is less than before is in part due to more people living in surrounding communities. Also, Deere still has a big plant, but probably not nearly as labor intensive as in the past.

30. Victory for Bozo.

31. A long and interesting article:

    https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-art-of-spiritual-war/

    Michael Anton on Machiavelli. Buried in it is the key to deciphering Moldbug… but that’s by the by. Meanwhile I’ve been busy with Molotov’s memoirs. If it were inadvisable to elect me Town Dogcatcher before, it’s even more so now.

32. “They feed everyone to the wolves, hoping the wolves will eat them last….”

    :-/

33. Well just another bit of evidence that blacks of “accomplishment”- including black grads of and profs at prestigious universities – have not accomplished anything at all, other than having black skin, being able to spout the usual hate-whitey / the USA is racist rubbish, and gaming the system of set -asides.

    This is really unfortunate to those blacks of real accomplishment; you know, the ones you never hear or read about; e.g., chemical engineer, Doctor Robert G Bryant, NASA Langley Research Center , who has patented several inventions.

    Blacks of real accomplishment totally destroy the narrative promoted by the execrable race hustlers like Sharpton, Hannah-Jones and others, which is why you rarely hear about them.

34. Zaphod:

    I read the Anton article. He said the quiet part so quiet I couldn’t hear it.

    Seems he spent more time impressing the reader with how deeply he read Machiavelli than explaining how Machiavelli relates to the present-day beyond truisms like attacking one’s opponent at his weak points or accepting allies like Greenwald and Taibbi.

    Was Machiavelli really a Hari Seldon-like mastermind (from Asimov’s “The Foundation Trilogy”) with a master plan spanning centuries into the future? I have no idea. I’m not taking Anton’s word based on this article.

    I guess if one is steeped in Machiavelli, Leo Strauss and whatever else circulates in Michael Anton’s circles, the article made more sense.

    At least when I read Charles Reich’s “The Greening of America,” which also took on the corrupt, rotten institutions of its time, I could tell who the good and the bad guys were and what the program was — dope, dancing, feeling, loose-fitting clothes!

    Of course Reich’s clarity made him look silly decades later. Still, full marks for saying what he meant clearly.

35. Anton inspired me to look back at “The Greening of America.” It’s been 50 years. Here’s the second paragraph:
    ___________________________________

    There is a revolution underway — not like revolutions of the past. This is the revolution of a new generation. It has originated with the individual and with culture, and if it succeeds it will change the political structure only as its final act.
    ___________________________________

    Compare with Anton’s call to arms:
    ___________________________________

    …Machiavelli faced a challenge so startlingly similar to ours that it almost seems as if history does repeat itself. To put it as succinctly possible, he sought to liberate philosophy and politics—theory and practice—from a stultifying tradition and corrupt institutions. And then he did it. He recruited and trained a new army, defeated his enemy, promulgated a new teaching and conquered the world, or at least the West—with books….
    ___________________________________

    So instead of hippies dancing in bellbottoms we have cyberwarriors pounding their keyboards. I guess. It’s a shame Anton doesn’t write as clearly as Reich.

36. Was Machiavelli really a Hari Seldon-like mastermind (from Asimov’s “The Foundation Trilogy”) with a master plan spanning centuries into the future? I have no idea.

    Yes, you do. That’s a crackpot notion.

37. Blacks of real accomplishment totally destroy the narrative promoted by the execrable race hustlers like Sharpton, Hannah-Jones and others, which is why you rarely hear about them.

    You rarely here about them because you don’t often hear about private citizens doing their jobs, even when they’re highly accomplished. You hear about crudniks like NHJ because they’re being promoted by awful people who dispense speaking fees and spots in the media.

38. Art+Deco:

    I saw what you wrote about me the other night. Have you no shame? Apparently not.

    You don’t get to put words into my mouth or into my head. You steer clear of me and I’ll steer clear of you.

    It’s not a lot to ask.

39. Huxley, I’m getting a better feel for your reluctance to call CRT, BLM, and Antifa Marxist. You are much better read in philosophy than I. You see nuances were I don’t. My knowledge of Marxism and Communism is from my years in the Navy. We had training classes on Communism. I served with a man who was a POW in Korea. I knew men who were POWs in North Vietnam. Their experiences had turned them into preachers for free enterprise and against state dominated dreams of equality. Whenever I see calls for the end of private property, the end of meritocracy, a state dominated economy, the end of free speech, and the end of religion; I see Marxism/Communism and I know it is an evil that I have been opposing my entire adult life. Whether or not some Nietzschean or Machiavellian ideas are involved in the present attack on our system is a side issue for me. Marxism in its various manifestations in the 20th century killed too many people for me to not be opposed to it no matter the nuances of the philosophy.

    Yes, I am a Neanderthal. 🙂

40. “Well just another bit of evidence that blacks of “accomplishment”- including black grads of and profs at prestigious universities ” – John Tyler

    It’s not necessarily a racial thing per se.
    IMO it’s another kind of elite money-laundering, like book advances, “honorariums” for speeches, and the like.

    https://nypost.com/2021/07/02/biden-picks-former-boss-at-upenn-to-be-ambassador-to-germany/

    The appointment is just business as usual: most presidents give diplomatic top spots to donors.

    In July 2019, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Biden was paid $911,643 by Penn. The student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, counted just nine on-campus appearances by the then-former senator and vice president between February 2017 and February 2019. Five of those events featured cameos by Gutmann.

    Nice work when you can get it.

41. @Huxley:

    Very short version:

    If you openly promote a plan of societal reconstruction today, let alone merely describe what is wrong with our institutions, you get called a Nazi. Even if you’re not. Actually especially if you’re not but your priors are based on observable reality (anathema to the Progs). So it is meet and proper to be prolix and a little obscure. And this sounds rather like Curtis Yarvin on one of his less wordy days.

    Anton also points out that philosophy, ideology, and direct action are three different spheres and that the intellectual/personal character capacities, and ‘programming’ required for each sphere (note, not level… not implying any moral hierarchy here) are different. Any half-decent religion not currently half dead knows this. Christianity is 9/10 dead, so most of us have forgotten it. The West will not be re-won by a Legion of Simpering Bill Buckleys or by an army of Brown Shirts. It Takes a Village.

    As I’ve said before, too, I think there’s another point to Painting With Words Prolixity: Societies are such vast encompassing things and we are ourselves tainted by living within them and have absorbed a huge number of Givens (some of which we might wish to discard to effect change) — You simply cannot come at it in a few pithy propositions. (But you should have a few pithy propositions handy to inspire the guys who are going to have incoming lead.) Big picture is Blind Men feeling up the Elephant, from the Inside. This takes time and a LOT of wordy chatter before a general picture emerges. We’re early days.

    With regard to preceding para, nobody on the Polite Right takes a dump on Strauss and Jaffa for being wordy and somewhat Talmudic. With them, it’s a feature, not a bug. But when you get down to it, Second Founding and all that retconning of what the USA is supposed to mean is a part of What Went Wrong — may have been done with good intentions, but it’s just an esoteric branch of the rotten tree of Western Liberalism. So another aspect of the “You’re Prolix and Can’t Describe it in 3 Paras” is Antibodies in Action.

    None of the above is to imply that I am not prolix and woolly-headed just because I am and not because I’m holder of some deeper lore. I’m just a dummy hoping that my part of the Elephant doesn’t turn out to be too cloacal when the lights come on.

42. Zaphod:

    In my life I’ve been a writer, a poet, a technical writer and a programmer. All four of those have been about clear, effective communication for me. I grant that it takes work and not everyone has developed the skill for it, but otherwise I’m with Einstein:
    __________________________________________

    If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.
    __________________________________________

    (Or as a Groucho said, “Find me a four year-old child!”)

    That’s how I understand much of the difficulty of Heidegger. He was still hacking away in the jungle and hadn’t cleared the path yet. That happens with bad programming code as well.

    There’s also the possibility, which applies to much academic writing IMO, complexity raises one’s status as a deep thinker.

    So, while it’s splendid to cross swords with you, I’m not convinced you or Anton couldn’t be clearer if you wished.

    I may be way off, but I wonder if the real message isn’t sufficiently beyond the pale that it’s dangerous to speak it plainly. Which I can understand. There are things I don’t say.

    Getting back to Anton, did you follow the Machiavelli stuff? Have you made the pilgrimage to the Prince and the Discourses?

    I have read some of both, but not studied them. Apparently I missed his overarching strategy to transform Western Civ, but page by page I found him to be a delightfully clear writer.

43. So I was looking for Machiavelli material and ran across the Kidadl collection of “family-friendly” Machiavelli quotes. There’s a concept! But it’s not bad.

    I learned that “Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer” is Machiavelli, not the Godfather. And Machiavelli is more of a revolutionary then I remembered:
    __________________________________________

    I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

    Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.

    As a general thing, anyone who is not your friend will advise neutrality while anyone who is your friend will ask you to join him, weapon in hand.

    https://kidadl.com/articles/important-the-prince-quotes-machiavelli-on-power-and-politics
    __________________________________________

    Kidadl also provides “family-friendly” quotes from Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra.”

44. I’m going to have to revisit “The Prince.” It’s a short book, only a few hours long.

    In the meantime I’ll also watch the British “House of Cards” series about a fictional British politician who through Machiavellian means succeeds Thatcher for PM. It is one of the great British TV dramas.

    (I never watched the American “House of Cards,” not because I was boycotting Kevin Spacey, but because I didn’t want my memory of the Brit version contaminated.)

    If you ever hear the catchphrase, “You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment,” that’s Ian Richardson from “House of Cards.”

45. @Huxley:

    Technical Writer.. I guess you’re the nearest I’ll get to corresponding with the late Robert M. Pirsig!

    I have no valid argument against your point that things should be clear. I’m going to take your offered partial out that folks are still hewing a path. And that’s absolutely a true fact. It really is a non-trivial problem to find a way out of an all-encompassing system when you’re living in the Matrix. May be impossible… one can but try.

    “I may be way off, but I wonder if the real message isn’t sufficiently beyond the pale that it’s dangerous to speak it plainly. Which I can understand. There are things I don’t say.”

    Imagine if you will, a certain “Yes” Meme along these lines:

    https://i.redd.it/ldzu5p6gjol31.jpg

    But also hacking a path. Some of it is unsayable and much is presently unknown. The big issue is how to design a ‘Fix’ which won’t evolve back into what we find ourselves in today. Most Matrix Denizens will repeat the Muh Constitutional Republic Mantras, not grasping that as sure as Night Follows Day, doing that just recreates same initial conditions and system transfer function –> you get the rest.

    “Getting back to Anton, did you follow the Machiavelli stuff? Have you made the pilgrimage to the Prince and the Discourses?”

    I’ve read the Prince several times. Arguably read the Prince and Suetonius and Procopius at a too impressionable age. Scarred for life. Never yet the Discourses. Machiavelli is pretty simple I think… at least in the Prince. Power isn’t difficult to write about if you’re prepared to shock people — ***and do it posthumously***. Anton is (pardon me) possibly a bit of a perfumed poseur. He’s also alive. And has had his brains fried by too much American Constitutional Talmudism (Strauss/Jaffa). But if the perfumed poseur helps move one person in the right direction, he hasn’t lived in vain. That’s the Prince speaking, I guess. Must put my money where my mouth is and read the Discourses.

    The Yarvin Addressing His People from the Sportspalast:

    https://www.patreon.com/posts/fire-down-below-53015648

    It’s long. I listen to this kind of stuff while working on bikes.

46. Returning to the original subject, commenter Félix Rodríguez at Powerline made this suggestion: “perhaps they should have given her 3/5 tenure.”

47. “…and didn’t address his substantive points at all…”

    Simply because she can’t. (That is, because it’s not possible to do so without sounding like the utter charlatan she is.)

    Ergo, best ignore the substance of the criticism and instead scream (or imply) “Racist” or something…

    (But as they say, “All the way to the bank…”…not that she shouldn’t participate in the American Dream, necessarily; but it is a bit of a snarky “methodology” …though it does seem to have become an industry.)

    File under: Dump on yer country…and earn millions!! (Kind of like those trolling “work at home” ads you find in the comments sections all too often—not here, of course, we’re above all that….)

48. Re: Michael Anton, sorry, but the man is fabulous. Extraordinary. A tremendous mind (and asset). A clear-headed thinker. An articulate writer…even if some might prefer he really climb up there on the ramparts and bare a breast, his Toledo sword unsheathed—or razor-sharpened quill(?)…

    …Anyway, got news fer ye’: he IS on the ramparts….

49. “…’The Prince’…”

    I’m sure there’s a “Machievelli for Dummies” out there somewhere…. (penned by someone named Niccolo Hannah-Jones, no doubt).

    (Heavy stuff, though; so it might be recommended to start with the “The Little Prince” and then work yer way up.)

50. And a very apt essay on the Machiavellian “Biden” and “his”—oh-so-Machiavellian—“Don’t Worry Be Happy” message:
    https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/03/joe-bidens-happy-things/

    Read it and weep….

    File under: “That Obama fella is SUCH a kidder”.

51. Speaking of those “ramparts”…
    https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/no-this-is-not-getting-back-to-normal
    (From Jan. 2021)

    Ah Marianne, we hardly knew ye’…

52. Related:
    WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE TROTSKYISTS: …a year ago the Trotskyist Fourth International declared the New York Times’ 1619 Project to be a load of hooey.
    https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/459872/

53. “We, the faculty of the School of Education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill urge the UNC Board of Trustees to resist political and philanthropic pressure, reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom and academic excellence, and support established university governance procedures by acting immediately to review Nikole Hannah-Jones for tenure.” https://ed.unc.edu/

    Which will tell you what a collection of fools and frauds the faculty of the ‘school of education’ really is. If you want to move a tertiary institution in the direction of integrity, shutter the teacher-training program. In re your occupation programs, social work, library administration, and segments of the school of communications should be next on the bloc. In re academics and the arts, the fat targets are sociology, anthropology, American history, studio art, and speech communications / rhetoric. And the administration almost invariably has a clutch of bull$hit jobs, e.g. anything with ‘diversity’ or ‘institutional advancement’ in the title.

54. I’m sure there’s a “Machievelli for Dummies” out there somewhere…. (penned by someone named Niccolo Hannah-Jones, no doubt).

    Barry Meislin:

    I have not the slightest trouble with Machiavelli — a fabulously clear writer, even in translation and across the centuries. The problem with Machiavelli is that he is all too understandable in explaining the world is every bit as cutthroat as one feared.

    I need the “Michael Anton for Dummies.” I thought the article above was a disgrace as communication. I read his Flight 93 piece, so I know he can do better.

55. Bozo snubs Chapel Hill !

    Now she’s in at Cackles Alma Mater !

56. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/07/06/1619-project-founder-rejects-her-alma-maters-tenure-offer-cites-racism-and-sexism-n1459684

    Predicted headline “Historically black college, Howard University, found to be racist and sexist after all”

57. Well, on the chance that there were any prior doubts that she’s anything but an unapologetic Marxist, she’s successfully dispelled every single one of them….
    https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7313710-i-refuse-to-join-any-club-that-would-have-me

58. Re: NHJ refusing tenured position…

    I’m not sure about “Chairs of Race and Investigative Journalism,” but my impression is that uni professors work pretty hard and are plenty competitive with each other. Perhaps it’s different for tenured profs who are content to skate.

    I suspect that for NHJ there was more downside than up to accepting the appointment. Being a full-time race grifter looks like an easier gig. At least for now.

59. Bozo joins America’s worst prose writer Ta-Nehisi Coates to form the new dynamic duo of Howard’s race hustle program.

    https://spectatorworld.com/topic/nikole-hannah-jones-rights-wrongs-unc-howard/

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