Hollywood’s Oscar inclusion rules

The New Neo Posted on by

Actor Richard Dreyfuss has something to say on the new Oscar rules about – what else? – diversity and inclusion. He says they make him vomit.

Here are those rules, if you’re curious.

Personally, I haven’t been watching movies for quite some time. I’m sure there are still a couple of good ones being made, but I hadn’t had luck with movies for so long that I finally just stopped watching. So as far as I’m concerned, movies have already died anyway. But if they needed a final nail in the coffin this is would be it. The racial and ethnic bean-counters – and “women” are also considered an under-represented group in the movie business (which I suppose is true in certain categories like cameramen; oops, camerapeople) – have won the day.

Some from Column A some from Column B? Ah, but it seems that just about everyone wants to do this for the sake of virtue-signaling; they just realize it’s hard to accomplish (emphasis mine):

But some studio sources and independent producers, who spoke off the record because they didn’t want to appear anti-inclusion, say the standards can be byzantine to understand and difficult to gather data for. Multiple studio sources say when they got to the disability/health questions on this year’s submission forms, they largely skipped them.

“When I first looked at it, I’ll be honest, I really freaked out,” says one source. “I felt like I was looking at my taxes. Everybody at the studio looked at each other like, ‘What do we do with this?’ “

The introduction of the RAISE standards is part of Aperture 2025, a broad slate of inclusion policies the Academy passed in 2020, which also included adding mandatory annual unconscious bias training for Academy staff and setting a fixed number of 10 best picture nominees starting in 2021. Aperture 2025 follows on the membership goals the organization set — and met — following the #OscarsSoWhite controversy in 2016. Today, 34 percent of Academy members identify as women, up from 25 percent in 2015, and 19 percent are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, up from 8 percent in 2015.

Self-identify as women, that is, because I doubt they’re giving them DNA tests (my emphasis):

The Academy says that in the second year of the rollout, it has added resources to help with the process, directing production companies to sites like Free the Work and Staff Me Up, which maintain databases of cast and crewmembers who self-identify as being from underrepresented groups.

The solution is simple for white men in the industry: just self-identify as women. Problem solved in one fell swoop, because now they will be considered twofers, both women and trans. No surgery or hormones necessary, just self-identifying.

Not to mention Elizabeth Warren, who if she ever has a notion to do so can have a stellar new career in film.

Rachel Dolezal, anyone?

Closing arguments in Jean Carroll’s civil case against Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s no surprise that newspapers almost uniformly refer to this in their headlines as a rape case. And while it’s true that Carroll alleges that Trump raped her, that’s not the charge. The actual charges are battery and defamation. There’s almost no evidence other than “she said he said” – and date, time, and even the year in which the act is supposed to have occurred are not pinpointed.

Take a look [my emphasis]:

[Judge] Kaplan instructed the nine jurors at the trial’s start that the central claim pertains to “battery.”

He said that in a civil case, battery can result from even the slightest unlawful touching of another person.

“The law does not draw a line between different degrees of violence. It totally prohibits all unconsented-to touching from the least to the most violent that a reasonable person would find offensive. In other words, anything from a gentle but unwanted peck on the cheek to stabbing somebody with a knife could be battery for purposes of a civil case like this one,” Kaplan said.

By that standard, most politicians might be at risk of such suits, and certainly Joe Biden would be guilty of said unwanted touchings. Does lumping all those things together legally really seem like a good idea?

More:

The jurors will be asked to decide whether Carroll has proven that Trump committed battery. If they decide that Trump committed battery, they are expected to be asked to what degree. After that, Carroll’s attorney has proposed that jurors be asked separately whether Carroll has proven that Trump engaged in forcible touching, sexual abuse and rape. The judge has yet to make a decision on that proposal.

The trial also involves a claim by Carroll that Trump made defamatory comments while denying her allegations.

For defamation, jurors will be asked if Carroll had proven that Trump’s statement was defamatory and whether clear and convincing evidence had proven that Trump made the statement maliciously.

He said she was lying and also that she wasn’t his type. Should either of those things be classified as defamation, when the first is a person’s attempt to defend himself or herself, and the second is merely a personal opinion? I don’t think in either case it ever should be considered defamation, and I don’t care who is being sued, Trump or Biden or Joe Shmo. If a person is accused of something, that person’s protestations that the accuser is lying – that person’s defense of himself or herself – should be protected speech. And opinions about whether one is attracted to another person also cannot be defamatory, in my opinion. But of course, I don’t make the law.

Also:

Earlier on Monday, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which Trump says women let him “grab ’em by the pussy” bolstered the accounts of Carroll and other women who accuse Trump of sexual assault.

“He admitted on video to doing exactly the kinds of things that have brought us here to this courtroom,” Kaplan said in her closing argument.

Now, maybe the following has changed since I was in law school – quite a few things have. But back then, it was considered a hallmark of our legal system that a court case should only involve the facts of that case. After the verdict, in the sentencing phase, other things could be allowed into the record. But I don’t believe that a statement made by the defendant that was not about the plaintiff – and Trump’s “grab them” statements were not about Carroll, nor are they alleged to be – would have been allowed into evidence back then (I could be wrong; I’m doing this from memory). What’s more, the “grab them” tape was made in 2005, approximately ten years after the battery against Carroll is alleged to have occurred.

In addition, Carroll’s suit against Trump was only allowed all these years after the statute of limitations on such suits had expired, because New York passed a special law, conveniently allowing such things for a year:

The trial [which began] Tuesday stems from a second lawsuit filed in November 2022, alleging defamation and battery under New York State’s new Adult Survivors Act. The legislation opened a one-year window in which people who say they were the survivors of sexual abuse as adults could sue even if the state’s statute of limitations would otherwise bar their claims.

I don’t think there’s any question that one of the motives for this law was to get Trump. But there’s a reason for statutes of limitation, and those reasons are apparent in the current trial. Memories fade, the allegations are not tied to a particular date, and how can Trump ever defend himself against something so vague in time, or find witnesses or schedules that could exonerate him? It’s a travesty, and I would say that no matter who the defendant in such a case might be. The only possibly justifiable exception might be if someone was a child when the alleged battery happened, and even then I come down more on the side of protecting the defendant from false claims – and false claims do occur, and not just against politicians.

Nevertheless, I believe this jury will find Trump guilty, although I don’t think the evidence justifies it. I would be quite flabbergasted if they didn’t find him guilty.

Watching “Petrouchka”

The New Neo Posted on by

Michel Fokine’s ballet “Petrouchka,” created in 1911, is one I’ve seen many times. But perhaps I’ll never see it again, because I have a feeling it’s pretty much banned now. I’m virtually certain that one of its puppet characters, the Moor, would be considered irredeemably racist today.

The music is my favorite Stravinsky composition by far. The Fokine choreography is surpassingly strange, and the stage is full of people much of the time, with every character doing something different and creating the impression of a village fair come to life. The costumes are wonderful, with less of an ensemble quality and more like the individual costumes worn by the actors in a play. It’s a ballet, but only three characters wear pointe shoes, and two are street entertainers and one is a puppet. There are three puppets, but they periodically escape from the confines of puppitude and take on a life of their own.

I’ve always been very sensitive to staging, and this ballet is one of the most intricate in terms of staging. Probably the most intricate. That makes it extremely hard to film and hard to produce in the first place. There are certain magical moments I would always look forward to that were absolutely thrilling on the stage and – as with most filmed dance – lose quite a bit in any video.

One was the moment that the three puppets – the pretty but vapid Ballerina, the sad and introspective Petrouchka, and the bold and confident Moor – move off the stage with its restrictions (the dancers are on armatures to create the effect of puppets) and out into the crowd, staying in character. The Moor, with his forceful wide-open movements, represents the extroverted person of action, whereas poor Petrouchka is the introverted depressive. The Ballerina puppet is attractive, empty, and fickle.

Another wonderful moment is when the coachmen thump their arms on their upper torsos to keep warm as dusk begins, and then when the snow starts to fall as the coachmen and nursemaids twirl and twirl. That snowfall might just be my favorite moment in the staged ballet. Another is when the magician in charge of the puppets picks up the fallen Petrouchka (the dancer having sneaked offstage surreptitiously while the crowd surrounds him). The transformation from dancer-pretending-to-be-puppet into actual puppet always surprises the audience, which lets out a collective gasp of wonder. But in the video the magical quality is of course nowhere near as strong.

And then we have the final moment when the ghost of Petrouchka on the roof – the real dancer – flops forward and seems to turn into a puppet again before our very eyes.

Here is a filmed stage production that features Nureyev.

And here is a Russian film that opens up the action somewhat and sometimes shows more than what would happen on a stage, although for most of the time it’s faithful to the stage productions:

Can Republicans win another presidential election?

The New Neo Posted on by

Mark and Mollie Hemingway say no, not unless something is done to “unrig” future elections. And this “rigging” that needs to be undone is not what is conventionally thought of as fraud:

America’s propaganda press traffics in disinformation. Its Big Tech oligarchs censor news and information helpful to conservatives, while elevating biased news and information that helps the Left. And its election systems have been overrun by privately funded groups that run Democratic “get out the vote” campaigns to traffic ballots into ballot boxes…

Instead of election day, we now have an “election season”—during which, over a period of months, we flood homes across the country with tens of millions of mail-in ballots, regardless of whether secretaries of state or local registrars have any idea if those ballots are being sent to the correct addresses. This in a country where 11% of residents move every year. We then wait for sophisticated partisan turnout operations funded by activist billionaires and run by ideological statisticians to round up those ballots in entirely selective ways.

I think this is undeniably true. It is indeed a complicated, multiply-determined situation, but ballot harvesting – a relatively recent development – is key:

The more likely explanation for these results [the failure of the “red tsunami” to materialize in 2022] is that Democratic ballot harvesting operations have reached such heights of sophistication that they can parachute into decisive battlegrounds and scare up enough votes among ignorant and unmotivated citizens to overcome the natural enthusiasm of informed and self-motivated voters

Even attempts at reform may have been taken over by the left and used for their own purposes:

A related issue is the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which was created to allow states to share voter registration data. In theory, this multistate cooperative allowed states to clean up their voter rolls and potentially reduce fraud by weeding out duplicate registrations. In practice, however, ERIC was once again another seemingly benign group run by Democratic activists. A number of Republican states have stopped participating in ERIC, after the organization was unable to satisfactorily answer questions about how they were securing the voter data of more than 30 states, and whether that data was being purloined for Democratic ballot harvesting.

The article is good at description, but vague on remedies. For example:

Similarly, conservative think tanks and advocacy groups need to get beyond policy papers and fundraising and use their resources to get aligned citizens to demand integrity and accountability of so many of our foundering institutions. The Right is generally uncomfortable with pressure campaigns; but they would do well to remember that these institutions have already largely been captured because the Left had no compunctions about them. If anything, we need to cultivate our own organizational powers specifically to counter the Left’s unchecked desire to make threats. If leftist shock troops want to burn city centers to the ground, intimidate conservative lawmakers at their homes, or shut down legislative bodies with protests, this behavior must be countered immediately with the force and legal consequences necessary to stop them from pursuing these reprehensible tactics again.

I see a number of problems that won’t be solved that way. The first is that, because Democrats tend to control the big cities even in purple states (and some red states), and efforts such as ballot harvesting are easier in urban areas, Democrats have an advantage in that arena. The same is true for lawyers dedicated to election issues; they are far more numerous on the left. And the left has a potent weapon in accusations in court of “racism” and/or “voter suppression” against any efforts to secure the election process.

What’s more, I think a great many voters who otherwise would be on the right have become turned off from the GOP and ascribe to the “uniparty” theory. Many of them don’t want to vote, or if they do, they don’t want to vote for anyone who fails to meet their strict standards. I don’t see how they can be won back by the GOP, certainly not without losing many others. Trump got the support of some disaffected voters on the right, but at this point he turns off many of the more moderate people on the right as well as many in the middle. And someone like DeSantis might end up alienating many of the Trump voters; we’ve certainly seen evidence of that in online discussions, anyway.

Of course, there is also the Gramscian march of the left through the institutions, which means not only that the press, the schools, and the entertainment business push the leftist line, but at this point it often includes large corporations and even the military.

And yet…and yet…I still think it’s possible for the right to win a presidential election, although highly unlikely. Maybe that’s just because I hate the idea of giving up. But I agree with the Hemingways that a dedication to “unrigging” is of the utmost importance.

I think the answer to Evangeline Lilly’s question about masculinity and femininity is crystal clear

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Evangeline Lilly before, but here’s the discussion:

Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly is best known for her roles in the television series Lost and in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Wasp. She is also a writer and a philanthropist…

Evangeline recently posted a thought-provoking message on Instagram about femininity and masculinity. The post questioned why society applauds masculinity in women but villainizes it in men, and why femininity is celebrated in men but debased in women. She didn’t reference any particular incident, but it’s no secret that we live in a culture that rewards men for wearing girly dresses while encouraging women to act like men and prioritize being a boss babe at the office rather than starting a family.

“Why are we only applauding masculinity in women and villainizing it in men? And why are we only applauding femininity in men and debasing it in women? Why can’t we just allow for all of it?” Evangeline writes in the caption of her photo.

Let me take a wild wild stab at the answer.

First of all, who is this “we,” kemosabe? It’s the left that Lilly is talking about, whether she knows it or not. She might be forgiven for not realizing this, though, because the left so dominates the “dialogue” (which is more or less a monologue) in so many venues.

And why might the left be doing what Lilly describes? The goal is to break down the old values that have to do with family and society, and celebrate those who cross what the left sees as those barriers. A masculine man and a feminine woman are too traditional, too (for want of a better term) conservative. A masculine woman and a feminine man supposedly break those stereotypes. Plus, celebrating them is a method of virtue-signalling for those who do it.

This sort of thing is why I usually don’t report on the ups and downs in Ukraine

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s because the fog of war is unusually thick in Ukraine.

One thing I have noticed almost from the start is that the only constant is the war itself. So I tend to especially discount any reports that say it’s about to be over.

Other than that, though, we have this sort of thing, which is typical:

Russia’s main mercenary group announced plans on Friday to pull out of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, but Ukraine said the group’s fighters were reinforcing positions to try to seize it before Russia marks victory in World War Two day next week.

He said, he said.

If you want to know more about Bakhmut, there’s this by Stephen Green:

Russian forces — all three varieties [one of which is mercenary groups like the one mentioned in the above quote] — have been trying to take the town of Bakhmut since last summer. In the process, the town is almost entirely rubble and virtually all of its 70,000 or so residents fled long ago. Bakhmut is of no real operational importance. It’s only being fought over so hard because Russia’s leadership decided to peg their prestige to taking it, and Ukraine’s decided it was worth making a stand to take Russia down a notch.

As I was reading Green’s piece, I started thinking of WWI trench warfare. And then, towards the end of the article, he makes a similar comparison.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much news today that a roundup is in order:

(1) Turley on Blinken and Hunter Biden. Turley believes Blinken may indeed have committed crimes as well as impeachable offenses.

I predict nothing will come of this.

(2) Ted Cruz on the possibility of Hunter Biden being indicted:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he thinks the Biden administration’s Department of Justice is very close to indicting Hunter Biden, but that it likely will only be used to justify its pursuit of former President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-KY) issued a subpoena to the FBI, ordering that a bureau form alleging a “criminal scheme” involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and an unnamed “foreign national” be turned over after a whistleblower told Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that it alleges a “bribery scheme.”…

“And I got to say, the evidence, not only against Hunter Biden, but the evidence against Joe Biden being complicit and profiting from this corruption, is growing and growing and growing,” the senator added. “Look, I think the Biden Department of Justice is going to end up indicting Hunter, but if they indict him just for the gun crime or just for a tax crime, they’re going to try to explain it as ‘he is a troubled soul. He’s got substance abuse issues, but look how fair we are, and now we can go target Donald Trump, which is what the Biden Department of Justice wants to do. That will be the tell.”

The DOJ is also likely to tie in some sort of prosecution of Trump with today’s conviction of the Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy, as I indicated in my earlier post today.

(3) The story behind the latest allegations against Clarence Thomas. Excerpt:

Harlan Crow’s tuition payments made directly to these schools on behalf of Justice Thomas’s great nephew did not constitute a reportable gift. Justice Thomas was not required to disclose the tuition payments made directly to Randolph Macon and the Georgia school on behalf of his great nephew because the definition of a “dependent child” under the Ethics in Government Act (5 U.S.C. 13101 (2)) does not include a “great nephew.” It is limited to a “son, daughter, stepson or stepdaughter.” Justice Thomas never asked Harlan Crow to pay for his great nephew’s tuition. And neither Harlan Crow, nor his company, had any business before the Supreme Court.

(4) Kim Gardner has resigned:

[St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Noble]….held that there was sufficient evidence to find that Gardner and Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Desilets had acted with “intentional disregard for the judicial process” and announced that he would be appointing a special prosecutor to pursue a case of “indirect criminal contempt” against them both.

(5) If you’re looking for a good summary article about the trans youth contagion movement, here’s one from City-Journal.

Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy

The New Neo Posted on by

This guilty verdict was a forgone conclusion, considering that the trial was held in DC and the judge refused to move it:

A jury on Thursday convicted Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, and three allies of a seditious conspiracy to derail the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, a historic verdict following the most significant trial to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Jurors also convicted the four men — Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl — of conspiring to obstruct Congress’ proceedings on Jan. 6 and destroying government property. The jury acquitted a fifth defendant, Dominic Pezzola, of seditious conspiracy but convicted him of obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 proceedings as well as several other felony charges.

Historic, all right. “Historic” because they were convicted under a law that isn’t often used and that is ripe for abuse. This article about seditious conspiracy is over a year old and it’s in the leftist Guardian (and concerns the Oath Keepers, another January 6th group). But it explains a few of the problems with such charges:

The charges are significant because they allege that the January 6 attack went beyond disorderly conduct and assaults on law enforcement, instead constituting an organized and violent attempt to stop the democratic transfer of power.

But because sedition charges so rarely go to trial, there isn’t a great deal of precedent for how such trials proceed, experts say. And US prosecutors have a checkered history in securing sedition convictions. “It’s been used in ways that have been absurd and has been used in ways that were slam dunks,” said Joshua Braver, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin.

By the way, we’re not talking about charges of sedition but rather seditious conspiracy, which is even easier to abuse. When I was in law school, there were three criminal law principles that troubled me immensely, and they were felony murder, conspiracy, and entrapment – and the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys cases involve the political misuse of those last two (conspiracy, because the bar is so low for the prosecution proving it, and it often just amounts to thoughtcrime; and entrapment, because the bar is so high for defendants’ successfully using it as a defense). I wrote at some length about all of this, in connection with the previous Oath Keepers trial, and I suggest you read it for more background on seditious conspiracy and its uses by the government.

In the past, prosecutors were more aware of the dangers, and more reluctant to bring such charges because of the huge potential for dangerous abuse:

Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past.

“Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.

Prior to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys January 6th cases, the most recent such prosecution was against “Islamist extremist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine co-conspirators with seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors alleged that Abdel-Rahman and his followers plotted to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building and several other landmarks around New York City.”

Prior to that, it was the Puerto Rican extremists who in 1954 shot up the House of Representatives and wounded five members of the House. I wrote about that incident in this previous post, written just a few days after the January 6th protests, and in it I harked back to a previous post I’d written in 2018 about the Puerto Rican shootings. The differences between January 6th and the shooting in 1954 is quite obvious.

Julie Kelly has been the best reporter on all the January 6th cases, and she’s been writing about the Proud Boys case, too. Here’s what she had to say about the jurors (the judge in the case is also named Kelly, in case you’re confused by that):

I refer you to several articles she’s written on the case. The first is this [my emphasis]:

The government devoted an untold amount of resources and manpower to the case. The former president loomed large as prosecutors frequently cited his September 2020 debate remark for Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” as a call to action. (More on Trump’s legal jeopardy related to the outcome of the trial in Friday’s column.)

Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Joseph Biggs, and Dominic Pezzola have been incarcerated under pretrial detention orders since early 2021 on various counts, including conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. By the time jury selection began in December, the defendants had been in jail for almost two years awaiting trial…

Two cooperating witnesses and multiple FBI agents and police officers took the stand over the course of several weeks to detail the defendants’ alleged plot to strike “the heart of our democracy,” assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe said on Monday. “Their success was only temporary. The Constitution survived.”

The conspiracy, Mulroe explained, can be “unspoken, implicit, a mutual understanding, or a wink and a nod”—a laughably broad definition for an offense akin to treason.

Please read the whole thing; an excerpt isn’t adequate. Also see this article by Ms. Kelly, in which she explains how the Proud Boys case is most likely a prelude to charging Trump in connection with it:

Any convictions in this trial would give Special Counsel Jack Smith, an independent prosecutor in name only, justification to pursue similar charges against Trump as a coconspirator of sorts…

Prosecutors insist the conspiracy began on December 19, 2020—a date that should alarm Team Trump. At 1:42 a.m. on December 19, Trump tweeted this: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” According to the Justice Department, that prompted Tarrio and Biggs to formulate plans to “radicalize” the group…

[That this could be a prelude to charging Trump] explains why Graves’ prosecutors pulled every dirty trick in the book to ensure convictions. Further, the burden of proof for the conspiracy charges is shockingly low.

That low bar is one of the things that so upset me when I was in law school.

And here is Kelly’s piece from today, after the verdict was announced:

…Joe Biden’s Justice Department seized on the [seditious conspiracy] law’s vague language—the same manner in which top officials weaponized an untested post-Enron evidence tampering felony—to criminalize political dissent. Six members of the Oath Keepers were found guilty of seditious conspiracy at two separate trials and four other defendants, including one member of the Proud Boys, have pleaded guilty to the offense. Both seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding are felonies punishable by up to 20 years in prison each.

Most of the government’s evidence consisted of inflammatory text messages posted in group chats, which included the presence of an unknown number of FBI informants. No defendant was accused of bringing weapons to the Capitol or assaulting a police officer. Tarrio, the group’s leader, was in a Baltimore hotel on January 6, having left Washington under court order following his arrest on January 4, 2021 for an unrelated incident.

I also refer you to Ace’s post on the subject.

NOTE: I expected this news; in fact, I would have found it shocking if this DC jury had not found them guilty. Nevertheless, it is another intensely depressing example of how far things have gone, and how successful the left has been.