Not really so weird

The New Neo Posted on by

From commenter “AesopFan” on the thread about the two versions of the song “Fast Car”:

It is profoundly weird that people who claim to be standing up for gays and lesbians are actually the ones erasing the history and achievements of homosexual people.”

It does indeed seem weird, but it’s really not. It’s completely logical and is actually required for leftist activism on certain topics today. It the argument on the left is that bigotry has kept a certain group or groups down in a certain field, and that such bigotry continues to the present day, the existence of earlier achievements by too many members of that group undermines the argument. Oh, one or two might be allowed as stellar examples of success against all odds. But if there are more than those one or two, the whole edifice of the argument begins to collapse.

That phenomenon is also the impetus for the proliferation of fake hate crimes in the last decade or so, although that has a many-decades-long history as well (see Tawana Brawley, for example). Real persecution and real hate crimes – which of course have actually existed and were more numerous historically – don’t need manufacturing.

But the narrative of continuing systemic oppression requires a steady diet of hatred directed at the victim group. If there isn’t enough evidence of that hatred, the evidence must be faked.

What Biden corruption? The IRS whistleblowers, the Democrats, the press, and Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Biden good, Trump bad. That’s all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

So many things have been emerging from the House hearings on the whistleblowers, plus some news on Trump, that I’m just going to do a roundup.

(1) Margot Cleveland discusses the Democrat narratives that attempt to discredit and/or minimize and/or distract from the testimony of the IRS whistleblowers on Biden corruption and FBI and DOJ protection of the Bidens.

(2) Miranda Devine covers the story in the NY Post.

(3) From Jonathan Turley, entitled “‘So Called’ Journalism: NBC Calls the Two Respected IRS Veterans ‘So Called Whistleblowers’”

(4) Here’s Megyn Kelly’s interview with the whistleblowers:

(5) Donald Trump’s Florida trial is scheduled for May 20, 2024. That’s after many of the primaries but not all of them. By that time, Trump may already have the nomination sewn up.

Let’s look behind the headlines about those terrible 83 Republicans who voted against the amendment to rehire pilots fired over refusal to get COVID vaccines

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve often seen it around the blogosphere – the old “uniparty” label for the GOP members of Congress. Here’s a typical treatment of today’s version of the old story (hat tip: commenter “miguel cervantes”):

83 Republican congressmen joined nearly every Democrat in Congress to defeat an amendment that would allow airlines to re-hire any pilots that they let go because of the vaccine mandates.

With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?

Of course, Democrats are awful. But nearly 100 Republicans also opposed this measure. 83 Republicans are STILL pro-vax mandate.

What a clown world we live in.

When people read that, what do they think? The author seems to be saying that (a) the amendment in question that the 83 GOP members opposed merely would allow airlines to rehire the pilots (b) those who voted against the measure support making vaccines compulsory for pilots; and (c) this represents a “clown world” in which people act like idiots and all is pretense, and the notion that Republicans in Congress represent anything much different from Democrats amounts to belief in one of those pretenses.

When I read the story, I thought: that’s a lot of Republicans. I wonder what they gave as their reason. And so I looked it up, and after about a minute I found this explanation [emphasis mine]:

The U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass an amendment to a bill on Thursday morning that would have required airlines to rehire pilots who were fired or forced to resign for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

Oh; that’s interesting. It would have required their rehiring, not just allowed it.

And in fact, the bill itself (not the amendment that was voted down, but the bill) “includes a prohibition on vaccine and mask mandates on airlines.” Also interesting. Nothing appears to keep airlines from hiring the fired pilots back. The bill passed overwhelmingly without that extra amendment.

But most interesting to me was the following – the reasons some GOP members gave for voting against the amendment:

Both Strong and Rogers, when contacted by 1819 News for comment, suggested that the amendment would offer undue authority to the FAA, which is currently under the control of the Biden administration.

“This Amendment proposed to give the Biden FAA new authority to mandate the hiring practice of airlines,” Strong explained. “Given that woke Washington bureaucrats are already trying to push their DEI policies on airlines hiring, I am concerned it is a slippery slope that would be abused.”

“I cannot support any measure that allows Biden’s FAA to meddle in private sector employment decisions,” Rogers said.

Now, you either buy their reasons or don’t buy them. But I think those condemning them should be aware of their explanation. But I don’t see that sort of evenhanded treatment of the background of the issue from pundits around Twitter and the blogosphere. What I see instead is propaganda.

And I see it often from the right as well as constantly from the left. The message is just a different one. And sometimes – actually, quite often – the propaganda message from the right serves to divide the right – which is not to say that there aren’t some Republicans in Congress who really do seem to be Democrats-lite. But they are nowhere near as numerous as they used to be.

So – propaganda to the left of me, propaganda to the right:

I try to be fair and present a fuller version of the story and let the reader decide. Of course, time constraints and knowledge constraints mean that my efforts never come close to actual fullness. But I certainly try not to just give a kneejerk response.

RIP Tony Bennett

The New Neo Posted on by

He had a long run: 96 years. He kept singing to the end, although he gave up performing in 2021 due to slowly advancing Alzheimer’s.

From his Wiki page, I learned that Bennett was also a lifelong artist. You can see some of his paintings here. Another thing I learned was that Bennett served as an Army infantryman in the European theater during WWII.

His talent showed itself early:

He was the son of grocer John Benedetto and seamstress Anna (Suraci), and was the first member of his family to be born in a hospital. In 1906, John had emigrated from Podargoni, a rural eastern district of the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria. Anna had been born in the U.S. shortly after her parents also emigrated from the Calabria region in 1899…

By age 10 he was already singing, and performed at the opening of the Triborough Bridge, standing next to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia who patted him on the head. Drawing was another early passion of his; he became known as the class caricaturist at P.S. 141 and anticipated a career in commercial art. He began singing for money at age 13, performing as a singing waiter in several Italian restaurants around his native Queens.

Bennett attended New York’s School of Industrial Art where he studied painting and music and would later appreciate their emphasis on proper technique. But he dropped out at age 16 to help support his family. He worked as a copy boy and runner for the Associated Press in Manhattan and in several other low-skilled, low-paying jobs. However, he mostly set his sights on a professional singing career, returning to performing as a singing waiter, playing and winning amateur nights all around the city, and enjoying a successful engagement at a Paramus, New Jersey, nightclub.

Bennett’s career hit a low point during the heyday of the Beatles and other rock or pop groups, but it revived later on and he performed a great deal with new generations of artists.

His signature song, of course:

The revisionist history of the song “Fast Car”

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s come to this:

One recollection that I can confirm with the aid of historical evidence is that [in 1988] ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman was everywhere. I heard it in seedy gay bars, at civil-service leaving dos, at family barbecues. It is one of those songs that announces itself instantly as a classic for the ages. But unlike most songs in that category, it is beguiling in a subtle way. The acoustic guitar riff is simplicity itself, with just a few repeated, easily imitated notes…

It was a multi-platinum international mega-smash hit…

A recent cover of the song by country singer Luke Combs has returned ‘Fast Car’ to public attention. It has spent the past three weeks at the top of the Billboard Country Airplay Chart in the US, and has reached No2 in the Billboard Hot 100.

I remember the song well, too. It was one of those songs that grabbed you immediately – something about Chapman’s voice, as well as the unexpected rhythms of the song, and of course the understated but heartbreaking lyrics. Although Chapman herself was black and perhaps gay (who cared or even knew about the latter?), the song had no color. It was about hope, how love and obligation can tie a person to a life of failed dreams.

Now, a country artist – a white man, since to the left this is highly significant – named Luke Combs has made the song popular again. Cover songs of old hits are ubiquitous and ordinarily non-controversial, but guess what? This one isn’t allowed to stand without the woke crowd creating a fiction about the new version versus the old:

Sadly, in the Great Age of Stupid that we live in, somebody had to say something daft about the cover, to make it all about race and sexuality. Step forward Emily Yahr of the Washington Post. In a tweet announcing her article, she wrote: ‘As Luke Combs’s hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” dominates the country charts, it’s bringing up some complicated emotions in fans and singers who know that Chapman, as a queer black woman, would have an almost zero chance at that achievement herself.’

There is so much wrong in this tweet. For one thing, the fact that the original version is very clearly not a country song, and that Chapman is not a country artist, seems to have passed Yahr by entirely…

The article is on an even stickier wicket when it comes to Chapman’s sexuality. It tells us that Chapman ‘does not discuss her personal life’. Nevertheless, Yahr feels perfectly entitled to do so based on hearsay. She is also blasé about pigeonholing Chapman with the ridiculous word ‘queer’.

Worse still, the thrust of the Washington Post article more or less erases Chapman’s huge success in the 1980s, implying that being a black lesbian thwarted her ambitions. Back in the real world, Chapman was nominated for several Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year for ‘Fast Car’ (Bobby McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ beat her to those, somewhat incredibly). She won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best New Artist.

Oh, it’s just us old folk who remember. Yahr herself seems rather young, if you go to her Twitter page. The young seem increasingly willing to just make stuff up and ignore history, even recent pop song history, in order to make some sort of leftist point about racism or another “ism.”

Some of the replies there are as follows:

“Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman was nominated for 3 Grammy Awards including Record of the Year and Song of the Year. She won for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best New Artist.

She has 7 other nominations for Grammy Awards and two wins.

Never heard of Luke Combs but remember when Tracy’s Album blew up. I tend to listen to metal and I could still sing every word of her song to this day. But I guess that doesn’t make for much of a grievance story.

At this point, I think these “journalists” simply write these stories for the sake of controversy. They spend no time bothering to research the actual topic and instead pretend history doesn’t exist prior to today.

How old are you? This song was top of the charts when it came out and is STILL iconic to Gen X. Sad commentary from you.

Darius Rucker is black and is quite popular in country…

Are you serious.

Tracy Chapman absolutely crushed it with this song.

I still hear it all the time.

I think your editor should be fired for letting you do this story.

I know, right? It’s not like a Black woman could ever do a cover of a country song and have it blow up to be a worldwide hit!

“AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIYEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUU…”

It just goes on and on like that, and I see no retraction or contrition from Yahr or the “democracy dies in darkness” WaPo – and come to think of it, isn’t that WaPo slogan racist?

Your children belong to the schools, where their trans status will be kept secret from parents

The New Neo Posted on by

Children used to be taught that it was a danger sign if anyone asked them to keep something a secret, especially if that “something” was related to sex. And children were taught that they shouldn’t keep secrets, either.

Now that’s so 20th Century – at least in many states. To take some examples:

There’s New York [emphasis mine]:

The New York State Education Department released guidance Monday to advise schools on how to create “affirming” environments for transgender children, suggesting that teachers keep students’ gender transitions a secret from their parents.

School systems should not use the student’s transgender name with their parents, unless the child advises otherwise according to the New York guidance. The student is the only one who knows if it is “safe” to come out to their parents and the first thing educators should ask a transgender student is how they can help them through their transitioning process, the guidance states.

“Some TGE [transgender and gender expansive] students have not talked to their families about their gender identity because of safety concerns or lack of acceptance and may begin their transition at school without parent/guardian knowledge,” the guidance states. “Only the student knows whether it is safe to share their identity with caregivers, and schools should be mindful that some TGE students do not want or cannot have their parents/guardians know about their transgender status.”

Extraordinary abrogation of parental rights concerning a minor child, with the school in collusion with the child to keep the secret. And yet typical, and not just in blue states:

At least 168 districts governing 5,904 schools nationwide have rules on the books that prevent faculty and staff from disclosing to parents a student’s gender status without that student’s permission, according to a list compiled by the conservative group Parents Defending Education and shared with The Post.

The 3,268,752 students affected by such policies go to class in all kinds of districts — large and small, affluent and poor, urban and rural, red and blue — stretching from North Carolina to Alaska.

The non-comprehensive list includes two of the largest school districts in the country, Chicago Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District — along with other city jurisdictions like DC Public Schools, Baltimore City Public Schools, San Francisco Unified School District, Portland Public Schools, and Seattle Public Schools.

Districts from deep-blue university towns — Berkeley and Palo Alto, Calif.; New Haven, Conn.; Iowa City, Iowa; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Hanover, NH; Durham, NC; and Madison, Wis. — appear on the list, as do 11 districts in deep-red Idaho, 16 in purple Pennsylvania and seven in Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected in 2021 in part on a platform of giving parents a bigger say in their children’s education.

I doubt that most parents are even aware of these general policies, either. The whole thing is somewhat of a stealth operation, although it’s been getting more publicity over time.

Here’s an article about the situation in Idaho.

And here’s a recent one that is quite comprehensive:

Districts are using legal theories pushed by activist groups like the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Among the most important are that children have a federally guaranteed right to privacy from their parents in school, that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution establishes children’s right to transition without the consent or knowledge of their parents, and that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects transgender students from the “harassment” of school districts “outing” them to non-compliant parents. The Title IX theory, the most chilling, is supported by the radically progressive notion that parents represent a danger to the welfare of transgender children until they prove otherwise by providing “affirmation.”

School districts that buy into these theories are not merely embracing the idea that hiding children’s gender transitions from their parents is legal, but that divulging the information without the child’s consent is illegal and possibly perilous to the student’s safety. In Dover, Pennsylvania, for example, a mother of a middle school student castigated a local school board after discovering that school staff had been addressing her 12-year-old daughter with male pronouns for a year. School officials even sent the child to a hospital for an evaluation without informing the parents. When the mother confronted the school board, she was told that there was a law against informing her.

Once again, we see the work of activist groups that for a while have flown under the radar while they helped changed policies all over the country. In some states, legislative bodies have enacted or are attempting to enact laws that make such secrecy illegal, although (and I can’t find the link at the moment) some school districts are defying the laws and continuing to secretly transition students.

If parents are actually abusive about this or any issue, there have been longstanding mechanisms in place in all states to deal with that. In these trans student situations, however, the secrecy policies have no requirement to prove or even to allege that parental abuse has occurred. A child’s request – a child’s failure to explicitly give permission for any reason – is enough to cause the secret-keeping. The child and the school are in collusion to keep a secret – a very big secret indeed, with major repercussions – from the parent.

It’s astounding that this is happening, but it’s really just part of a continuum of moves by which the left is increasingly taking on the task of child-rearing and indoctrination. The number of teachers and administrators who are fine with these policies, or go along with them out of fear, is extraordinary. And the number of Democrat state legislators who think it’s a great idea is enormous.

The left seems so confident that the secrets public schools keep will only be kept from those awful parents on the right. And so they don’t see a policy like that ever coming back to bite them. They expect to be in control forever, so it’s okay to take rights – or children – from conservatives. And in a state such as California, failure to affirm is increasingly defined as a form of child abuse; I’ve already written about that here as well as here.

The Marxist librarian

The New Neo Posted on by

I missed this story back when it first happened, in April of 2022. This explains what I’m referring to:

A large organization that drives the training of U.S. librarians and their use of public funds has chosen a self-described “Marxist lesbian” as its next president amid growing concern about libraries actively connecting children to sexually explicit activities and materials.

Her name is Emily Drabinski, and she won the election 5,410 votes to 4,622. I mention that because apparently the organization has 54,000 members, consisting of “librarians, libraries, library graduate schools, members of library boards and associations, and library students.” If in fact they all get to vote, most of them certainly did not, because the total participation was a little under 19%, and Drabinski’s share amounted to 10% of the total membership.

I couldn’t care less if Drabinski is a lesbian; I care that she’s a Marxist, and I care that she’s an activist who supports the following:

In a TV interview with a Boise station last week about her ALA election, Drabinski conveyed surprise at public concerns about libraries making pornographic materials available to children and buying them with taxpayer resources.

“It’s like concerted political efforts to sort of push this, sort of story about what libraries do which seems very, you know, it’s anathema to what libraries actually do, that we are, sort of pushing pornographic materials on our patrons and it’s really not what we do at all,” she claimed. “…There’s no big library agenda.”

Contrary to her claims in that interview, however, Drabinski’s other YouTube videos are replete with teaching other librarians how to “subvert” and inject hard-left politics and sexuality into their publicly funded work. For one example, consider one of many such lectures she gave to other librarians on July 6, 2021, titled “Teaching the Radical Catalog.”

In the lecture, Drabinski discussed her homosexual coming out experience and how saturating in a campus environment of proliferating sexual identities changed how she approaches being a librarian. At her first librarian job, “At Sarah Lawrence, absolutely everybody was queer. … There were so many ways to be gay. … And it was my job to teach those students how to find themselves in our library catalog,” she said. She described queering the library as “critical thinking” and “thinking critically about the catalog.”

Here’s a slide from that presentation showing the sexuality sections of the Library of Congress catalog. In it, you can see the Closed Captioning of what Drabinski is saying while showing the slide, which includes affirming the idea that “queerness includes the subversion of those kinds of normal family types.” She’s referring to the family types that naturally produce children — i.e. a married man and woman…

“We can equip our students with the capacity to wring what they need out of library structures, and wringing what you need out of systems that exclude you is a necessary life skill for survival and revolution,” she concluded in her talk. “And we can also help build a way of shaping students as agents of change both inside the library and out.”

Much much more at the link.

The reason Drabinski’s name has come up recently is that recently the Montana librarians have said “enough”:

The Montana State Library Commission voted Tuesday to withdraw from the American Library Association (ALA) because of its self-described “Marxist lesbian” president.

“Our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist,” reads part of the letter the Montana commission voted to send to the ALA.

In a 5-1 vote, with one member abstaining, the commission voted to immediately separate from the national library group…

And Idaho may follow:

“Drabinski has said in interviews that librarians aren’t focused on assisting minors in accessing pornography, but her writings and public presentations reveal that she has dedicated her professional career to precisely that while using taxpayer resources,” they wrote. “Drabinski proposed using ‘queer theory’ to guide the way books are cataloged in libraries.”

Drabinski proposed doing so in a 2013 paper at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Idaho lawmakers also complained “the ALA has provided LGBT resources and pressured libraries to include explicit materials on transgenderism and sexual deviance targeting young children.”

More whistleblowers on Capitol Hill

The New Neo Posted on by

Whistleblower “X” has been identified:

Whistleblower X is IRS Special Agent Joe Ziegler, a gay Democrat married to a man.

No doubt a secret white supremacist far-right homophobe.

Here’s a timeline of the Biden family’s activities relating to influence peddling.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: if the perps were Republicans, this would be practically the entire 24-hour news cycle right up till the election and beyond.

The left’s Kamala problem

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people think Joe Biden will somehow be “retired” from the 2024 election, and someone like Newsom will run instead. And although I think that’s a distinct possibility, I am far from thinking it’s a done deal.

Because – how do you solve a problem like Kamala (cue music)?

Commenter “Jerry” writes:

I think you are overestimating how big an obstacle Kamala is to a Newsom nomination (in the event that Biden “decides” to not run).
She was such a loser in 2020 that she dropped out practically in the same speech she announced her candidacy. She’s gotten no better. Plus there is already at least one viable, if odious to many, opponent declared. The party also finds that other candidate odious but fears he could easily defeat Harris. So Newsom is “invited” to run and Kamala is off the stage by the second debate.
Yes, there will be some half-hearted grumbling about another white men only primary but that will fade quickly with a few public and private consolation prizes.

That seems to be a popular opinion on the right, but it’s not my opinion. I don’t think the grumbling will be half-hearted.

Of course, some Democrats would be relieved to see Kamala go. But for others I believe that she has too many intersectional pluses: that is, she is female and black (her Indian heritage isn’t as much of an advantage as those two, but it does solidify her position even further as a “person of color”). Pushing her aside will be a trigger for rage for quite a few Democrats, I believe, either female or black or both – and that’s a sizable proportion of the Democrat constituency. And they’re not the only ones.

But most importantly, she is already VP; not only that but she’s the very first female VP. Historic! Also the first black VP, although that’s not quite as historic because we’ve already had a black president. I think a sizable number of Democrat voters will feel that she shouldn’t have to be in a presidential debate against other candidates for the presidency. She should be the obvious choice if Biden “retires.” If she’s booted out because she performs poorly, I think a lot of people on the left will be quite angry.

The Democrat leadership – whomever is plotting the course – will have to figure out a way around that, and I don’t think it will be all that easy.

Also, I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I think Joe himself will not go gentle into that good night. As a very young man, he decided he would and should be president, and now he has that prize. He will not give it up easily, although they may indeed figure out a way to force him to do so. But I think Biden himself is a more formidable obstacle than most people credit.

From a post I wrote in April of 2020:

But what does Joe Biden want, and why would he think that he’s the man to do it? Is he running merely to stop Trump? That certainly wasn’t true in his previous bids. To bring a divisive America together? But on that score he offers nothing but intermittent and lukewarm lip service. Not rhetoric, not energy, not unity, not a record of achievement, nothing but the desire to be president. one he’s had since he was a very young man:

“When [Biden] first met [future wife] Neilia’s mother, she asked what he wanted to do for a living. Biden informed her he intended to become president of the United States.”

Biden had met wife-to-be Neilia when he was 22 years old and married her at 24, so this encounter with his future mother-in-law must have occurred during those years between 22 and 24. That’s how early he had the ambition to be president, and had not only formed the notion but it was firm enough that he was willing to state it to his future in-law as a solid intention and qualification to marry her daughter.

Biden has lost quite a bit of cognitive power over the years. But I don’t think he’s lost a single ounce of ambition and narcissism.