The NY Times plans a revision of American history: all slavery, all the time

The New Neo Posted on by

By now you may have read something about the NY Times’ 1619 Project to rewrite American history as the story of racism. Not just racism as a part of American history—racism as the story, the root of the story, the reductionist Theory of Everything Wrong With America, Past, Present, and Future.

I’m not making this up. If you read the link at my previous post about a talk Times executive editor Dean Baquet had with his staff, you may have noticed that a portion of Baquet’s remarks had to do with the 1619 project [emphasis mine]:

Baquet:[Keith Woods] wrote a piece about why he wouldn’t have used the word racist, and his argument, which is pretty provocative, boils down to this: Pretty much everything is racist. His view is that a huge percentage of American conversation is racist, so why isolate this one comment from Donald Trump? His argument is that he could cite things that people say in their everyday lives that we don’t characterize that way, which is always interesting. You know, I don’t know how to answer that, other than I do think that that race has always played a huge part in the American story.

And I do think that race and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story. Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that. Race in the next year—and I think this is, to be frank, what I would hope you come away from this discussion with—race in the next year is going to be a huge part of the American story. And I mean, race in terms of not only African Americans and their relationship with Donald Trump, but Latinos and immigration. And I think that one of the things I would love to come out of this with is for people to feel very comfortable coming to me and saying, here’s how I would like you to consider telling that story. Because the reason you have a diverse newsroom, to be frank, is so that you can have people pull together to try to tell that story. I think that’s the closest answer I can come.

In addition, that meeting featured remarks from staffers, one of whom had this to say:

I’m wondering to what extent you think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country.

And that is the basis of the 1619 project—that America began with the importation of slaves in 1619 into this country.

Well, I guess if you want to frame a narrative equating the American dream of liberty with slavery, that’s what you have to do:

Byron York describes it, and it’s not primarily about Trump [emphasis mine]:

In the Times’ view (which it hopes to make the view of millions of Americans), the country was actually founded in 1619, when the first Africans were brought to North America, to Virginia, to be sold as slaves.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of that event, and the Times has created something called the 1619 Project. This is what the paper hopes the project will accomplish: “It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race. The message is woven throughout the first publication of the project, an entire edition of the Times magazine. It begins with an overview of race in America — “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.”…

The essays go on to cover the economy (“If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.”), the food we eat (“The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.”), the nation’s physical health (“Why doesn’t the United States have universal healthcare? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War.”), politics (“America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others.”), daily life (“What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot.”), and much more.

The Times promises more 1619 Project stories in the future, not just in the paper’s news sections, but in the business, sports, travel, and other sections. The Times’ popular podcast, The Daily, will also devote time to it.

…A major goal of the 1619 Project is to take the reframing message to schools. The Times has joined an organization called the Pulitzer Center…to create a 1619 Project curriculum. “Here you will find reading guides, activities, and other resources to bring The 1619 Project into your classroom,” the center says in a message to teachers.

The paper also wants to reach into schools itself. “We will be sending some of our writers on multi-city tours to talk to students,” Hannah-Jones said recently, “and we will be sending copies of the magazine to high schools and colleges. Because to us, this project really takes wing when young people are able to read this and understand the way that slavery has shaped their country’s history.”

Make no mistake about what the Times intends to do. No more masquerading as a news organization. They are unashamed to be in the propaganda business now. And I suspect that school systems will leap to institute this curriculum and that most people will not even know it happened.

The left has been “deconstructing” American history for many many decades, and over time their vision has been inserted earlier and earlier in a child’s education.

This post is probably already enough to digest for today. But I plan to say a great deal more about the 1619 project and about American history some time in the next couple of days.

“Disloyal” Jews voting for Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest brouhaha over a word Trump used (“disloyalty”) stems from this Trump quote:

Trump made the comments after he was asked about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s suggestion that the U.S. might want to reconsider how much it pays Israel in aid after she and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., were barred from entering the country last week.

He again attacked the two Democrats — saying Tlaib had said “horrible things” about Israel and that Omar is “a disaster for Jewish people.” He also baselessly accused Tlaib, an American of Palestinian descent, of violence.

“I can’t even believe that we’re having this conversation. Five years ago, the concept of even talking about this — even three years ago — of cutting off aid to Israel because of two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” Trump fumed.

“Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty, alright?”

The hue and cry and charges of anti-Semitism on Trump’s part are practically Orwellian in nature. So now, saying that Jews who vote for people who want to destroy Israel shows disloyalty to Israel is somehow anti-Semitic and similar to the old charge of dual loyalty among Jews?

That’s twisted “logic,” but it’s par for the course. One can criticize Trump’s remarks—I criticize them, for example, on the grounds that they conjure up the possibility of misinterpretation and give the left ammunition—without calling them anti-Semitic. They are not anti-Semitic.

Logic is not the only thing that’s twisted. For example, see this by NBC News:

[Trump’s] insistence that Jews must be loyal to Israel is widely considered to be an anti-Semitic stereotype, one that says American Jews have a higher allegiance to a country other than the U.S.

Trump’s insistence that Jews be loyal to Israel? A higher allegiance? Where, pray tell, is he insisting that? His remarks were a descriptive statement of fact: Jews who vote for people who want to destroy Israel (the party of Omar and Tlaib) are not loyal to Israel.

Whether they should be loyal to Israel or not is another question entirely. But the old “dual loyalty” accusation is based at least to some extent on a religious truth, which is that Judaism itself dictates a certain loyalty to Israel.

In modern days, that loyalty is not always present, and in Jews who do not live in Israel that loyalty is not placed above loyalty to country. But—although Trump is not insisting on anything, he is simply correct in saying that Jews who vote for a party that includes and fails to specifically condemn and reject Omar and Tlaib and their anti-Israel anti-Semitic politics are being disloyal to Israel and its continued existence.

Trump added this today:

“In my opinion, the Democrats have gone very far away from Israel. I cannot understand how they can do that,” Trump told reporters from the White House South Lawn on Wednesday. “They don’t want to fund Israel. They want to take away foreign aid to Israel. They want to do a lot of bad things to Israel. In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel.”

And also this, which I think is very telling:

When asked by a reporter on the White House lawn Wednesday afternoon if his comments were anti-Semitic, Trump dismissed the criticism.

“No, no, no. It’s only in your head. It’s only anti-Semitic in your head,” said Trump, pointing to the reporter.

And he clarified what was already crystal clear from his initial remarks:

In response to a question Wednesday, he clarified that the “disloyalty” he meant was to Israel and fellow Jews.

“If you vote for a Democrat, you’re very, very disloyal to Israel and to the Jewish people,” he said.

As I wrote earlier, I think bringing up the subject of Jewish loyalty at all is problematic. On the other hand, it’s simply true that with Judaism goes a special relationship to Israel—not a higher loyalty necessarily, but one that non-Jewish people don’t share. That loyalty has never before conflicted with American policy, because—and this is also the case—the US has always had a special relationship with Israel (and Jews) as well, beginning with the Founding Fathers (read about it here).

Now one of the two major parties is breaking that special relationship. Actually, it’s not just now—Obama was a trailblazer in that regard, too, although it’s gotten much worse lately. Trump is trying to call attention to that fact, and he’s certainly succeeded in that regard. However, he did it in a way that conjured up in a semantic sense if in no other sense—and the left will make as much of that as they can, in an attempt to hurt Trump—the old charge of dual loyalty.

Perhaps that was purposeful, as well. Perhaps Trump believes that the public knows he is a friend of Israel, and that therefore the charges of anti-Semitism will fall for the most part on deaf ears. Perhaps.

[NOTE: On the Founding Father’s attitude towards the Jews:

The mutual admiration between Israel and the United States is hardly a recent phenomenon.

The profound influence of Jewish tradition on America’s Founding Fathers can be seen in the Constitution of the United States. Such influence should come as no surprise given John Adams’ view expressed in a letter to Thomas Jefferson:

“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.”

According to Woodrow Wilson, the ancient Jewish nation provided a model for the American colonists:

Recalling the previous experiences of the colonists in applying the Mosaic Code to the order of their internal life, it is not to be wondered at that the various passages in the Bible that serve to undermine royal authority, stripping the Crown of its cloak of divinity, held up before the pioneer Americans the Hebrew Commonwealth as a model government. In the spirit and essence of our Constitution, the influence of the Hebrew Commonwealth was paramount in that it was not only the highest authority for the principle, “that rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” but also because it was in itself a divine precedent for a pure democracy, as distinguished from monarchy, aristocracy or any other form of government.

Jews also contributed directly to the American Revolution. President Calvin Coolidge paid tribute to their role in the War of Independence:

The Jews themselves, of whom a considerable number were already scattered throughout the colonies, were true to the teachings of their prophets. The Jewish faith is predominantly the faith of liberty.]

An American Muslim changer

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Artfldgr.”]

Here’s a very interesting article about another kind of changer, who told his story recently in a talk to the Heritage Foundation:

Khalid, now a scholar in cybersecurity studies at the University of Maryland, was born in the United Arab Emirates and lived in Pakistan before emigrating to the United States in 2010.

As a 14-year-old struggling to fit in at an American public high school, Khalid said he turned to the internet to make sense of what some saw as the negative connotation of his first name, “Mohammed.”

He said he quickly became enthralled with the answers online extremists offered.

So we have a very young Arab Muslim immigrant who came here with his parents and in trying to cope with a difficult transition process became enthralled with online groups who gave him what he needed at the time, which was a sense of belonging and purpose, as well as an explanation for what was wrong in his life.

Makes sense.

This is where it led:

“The more I confided in them, the more separated and secluded I became from my own family,” Khalid said. “My family could not figure out what was wrong with me; they did not know what was happening because I kept it very well hidden from them.”

Khalid was arrested in April 2014, charged with conspiracy to provide material to terrorists, and convicted. He says he spent five years in federal prison.

At 17, he was the youngest person to be convicted of terrorism-related charges in the U.S.

His change began in prison—and, like the impetus for his original immersion in extremism and terrorism, it was not so much ideological as interpersonal:

Slowly, with the help of officers at the juvenile detention center, he said, he began to emerge from the extremist mindset.

The officers “explained about their struggles, they explained about their dreams, about their journeys,” Khalid said.

“And so began a process of humanization, a process in which I was able to finally relate to these people whom I’d other-ized under the umbrella of Islamist ideology, and whom I finally, when I reached that beginning step, began to see as human beings,” he said.

He found what he was looking for—understanding—in what he’d considered an unlikely place.

Khalid is still a Muslim. This is his suggestion for the future:

I see … a lot of my friends actually struggling to reconcile [Islam] with the society they find themselves in. They want to be partakers of this American culture. At the same time, they want to hold on to a Muslim identity that unfortunately, you know, sometimes is collapsed together with a whole bunch of outdated traditions. … I think moving forward, a lot of people individually have to decide how they want to interpret the religion, instead of letting religion be this one-size-fits-all approach.

I am pretty sure that some readers will see this and say it’s some elaborate form of taqiya. I don’t think so. It seems sincere to me.

There are a number of Muslims in Western countries who have advocated a similar moderate or reform Islam. I wish them good luck. They’ll need it.

Does their “Medicare for All” pledge at the debates mean anything for the Democrats in 2020?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember during one of the debates, this happened:

Well, now this is happening

After rushing to out-socialist Bernie Sanders by unquestioningly embracing Medicare for All, the Washington Post reports that presidential candidates have begun singing a different tune. Kamala Harris might be carrying the melody, but she’s getting a lot of harmony from the rest of the choir…

Simply put, Medicare for All was polling poorly. So for most of the candidates a pragmatic decision is to pull back from it—for now:

…[T]his isn’t about the ACA at all. ObamaCare customers are a relative drop in the bucket in the US population. The problems with Medicare for All are related to the 150 million or so people who get their insurance through their employers, and who have a relatively high level of satisfaction with their coverage. The disruption of that system would be massive, and Democrats are starting to belatedly recognize that it would be massively unpopular too.

The idea of the Medicare for All pledge was to appeal to the base, otherwise known as the far left. And the idea of the reversal, and/or the hedging, is to appeal to what now passes for the moderate wing of the party.

And the overarching idea is that voters have short memories, and that the position switches won’t come back to bite the Democratic candidates. And then, when and if elected, they will do whatever they wish because—in the immortal words of Barack Obama—they’ll have more flexibility because they won’t have to worry so much about the voters’ opinions.

[Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.]

The growing acceptance of anti-Semitism by the Democratic Party

The New Neo Posted on by

The left has been anti-Israel for a long, long time.

And “anti-Israel” is often a cover for anti-Semitism, and a rather poor one at that. The main clues that indicate anti-Semitism rather than mere criticism of Israel are (1) if Israel is held to a different standard than the rest of the world; and/or (2) if Israel is frequently lied about. In addition, if it’s Israel-hatred rather than mere Israel-criticism its practitioners sometimes slip by speaking of “Jews” as a synonym for “Israel.”

I seem to recall the turning point in all of this being the later 60s. Part of it was the 1967 war, but that was just (IMHO) a convenient excuse for something that was happening anyway. To the best of my knowledge, it was during that time that a number of movements on the left driving the phenomenon coincided.

One was the fact that Israel itself begin its turn to the right. There had been a very explicitly leftist strain in some of its founders and in its kibbutz and moshav movements, and these became less dominant over the years as the peace overtures kept failing and the terrorist carnage continued or at times increased.

So the left no longer felt a kinship with Israel as a left-leaning country. But it was much more than that. Another important factor was the Palestinians’ success at anti-Israel propaganda and their self-positioning as the world’s semi-permanent victim group par excellence. Propaganda just might be their main export. Perhaps their most successful propaganda effort was the al Durah incident of 2000, discussed here many times and in the work of Richard Landes (highly recommended is his blog the Augean Stables).

The al Durah incident resonated in particular in Europe. A wave of openly-expressed anti-Semitism swept over many countries there, and anti-Semitism has subsequently come to dominate the Labor Party in Britain. This has been helped along by a decidedly anti-Israel media that pushes the Palestinian propaganda line, as well as an educational system in which—especially at the university level—it has become an act of unusual courage to defend Israel and to try to set the historical record straight. it is like swimming against a huge tide at this point.

And the entire thing feeds into a European anti-Semitic tradition that’s never too far away.

In the US, on the other hand, we have no such tradition of entrenched anti-Semitism except for isolated incidents. America is one of the most strongly Israel-supporting and Jewish-supporting nations on earth, and that remains true. However, anti-Semitism has been growing on the left in general and in our own universities in particular, paving the way for more.

We see the fruits of that in what is happening in the Democratic Party these days. The groundwork done at the university level is a major part of it:

Jew-hating faculty — mostly from the Middle East Studies departments, Black Studies, and Women’s Studies — inject emotional, odious imagery and lies about Jews into their classroom lectures, emails to students, and academic symposia.

Most students are not going to take the trouble to independently learn the actual history between Israel and the Palestinians, and this ignorance creates an enormous opportunity for the propagandists, an opportunity they have seized with vigor. And some professors who might be inclined to defend Israel probably remain silent due to their fear of exposure and their vulnerability to the inevitable charges of “racism”—both for supporting the supposedly “apartheid state” of Israel as well as opposing the views of many minority professors and students on campus.

Do the Democrats care that this might alienate a significant number of Jewish voters? Quite simply: no. A great many Jewish voters on the left don’t see the anti-Semitic aspects of the current over-the-top criticism of Israel, and are not aware of what’s a lie and what is not. Many of them are not religious Jews and don’t feel strong ties to Israel. And ultimately, although the Democrats are pleased to have the money of Jewish donors, the Jews as a voting bloc are inconsequential in number.

Democrats have also successfully demonized Donald Trump to their constituents as a racist and an anti-Semite (the latter charge being especially risible). That’s one of the ways in which they present the eventual Democratic nominee as being the only sane choice to stop the awful Demon Trump.

Trump is well aware of all of this. One of his latest tweets:

The important part there is “are the new face of the Democrat Party. Live with it!” It is a strategic decision the Democrats have made to do just that.

The media is purposely covering up Tlaib’s and Omar’s anti-Semitism…

The New Neo Posted on by

…but even that is Trump’s fault.

Trump provides a convenient reductionist Theory of Everything Wrong With the World.

Excerpt:

…New York Times Opinion staff writer and editor Bari Weiss openly admitted to the Reliable Sources panel that the media was purposely ignoring the blatant anti-Semitism espoused by Democratic Congresswomen Ilhan Omar (MN) and Rashida Tlaib (MI) because of President Trump.

Weiss argued that “one of the problems of this moment” was how “everything [Trump] touches becomes toxic”. So, “it’s very hard to cover, sort of, complicated characters and stories like them because [of] the President…”

Her example for how the media abdicated their duty to report on topics they deemed “toxic” focused on the lack of coverage regarding the Congresswomen’s agenda on their trip to Israel.

She noted that Trump putting pressure on Israel to bar Omar and Tlaib was a “huge story” but it paled in comparison to the “scandal” that should have been the real story.

First, Weiss pointed out that the anti-Semites declared they were going to Palestine instead of Israel on their itineraries. She then dropped the bombshell that the trip “was being sponsored by a group that literally published neo-Nazi blood libels and said that it supported female suicide bombers. You know, hailing them as heroes. That’s a scandal.”

It was a scandal “that has not been covered by any mainstream paper or network …” she lamented. “If someone like [Iowa Republican Congressman] Steve King was going to Sweden or Norway and eating with neo-Nazi groups, that would be front-page news,” she added.

She then posed a question to the panel: “is the fact that Trump has lodged racist, horrible attacks on these women, has that made them sort of untouchable for us to cover in an accurate way?” She never got a real answer from anyone on the panel. Instead, fill-in host John Avlon quickly moved away from those facts and back to bashing Trump. Moments later, the segment was over.

Fascinating example of a person, Bari Weiss, struggling to tell the truth, but only managing a partial truth because Trump Derangement Syndrome and/or the need to prove to colleagues and the left in general that she has the requisite Trump-hatred is paramount.

She does this by blaming Trump for the entire thing, and by charging him with having launched “racist, horrible attacks” on the two women.

No, he has not. But that’s the media “narrative,” and they’re not giving it up, nor is Weiss. It’s part of the “Trump is a racist” cry that we’ll hear from now till at least the election and probably beyond.

[NOTE: Weiss seems surprised at what the media is doing here, and acts as though she’s only just noticed it, or only noticed it since Trump’s presidency. Just about everyone on the right noticed it a long, long time ago. Funny thing, that.]

My day so far

The New Neo Posted on by

[WARNING: Trivial whining and carping about minor problems ahead. Or, you can just jump to the video at the end.]

It’s not that my day so far has been bad. It’s just—well—you be the judge.

A while back I was invited to a big bash that’s due to take place this weekend. I’ve had my outfit chosen for about two months, which is uncharacteristically organized of me.

Except…except…

This morning I tried on the outfit. In the last two months, I’ve lost a few pounds due to strict adherence to a diet, and I found that the previously well-fitting and flattering outfit is just a trifle big. Sometimes you can get away with wearing something big, but not this outfit. It edged towards the shapeless and boxy. So i thought it needed minor alterations—just a couple of side seams to taper it.

I can sew. But I’ve learned that when I try to do something like that myself it never looks quite right. Better to have it done professionally, even though the cost of alterations these days is surprisingly high ($28 for that type of little job is the going rate).

I found a tailor who assured me on the phone that he could have it ready in just a few days. And so I went to his shop. I’ve been there before, so I thought I knew where it was.

Thought I knew.

I parked nearby, took a hike in the blazing heat to purchase the permit, and just as I had put some money in the machine, a woman came charging up to me asking, “Do you need a ticket? Mine still has time on it.” Alas, since I had just that moment purchased one, I thanked her profusely but said I didn’t need it.

And then I went into the stop. It looked different than I remembered. What appeared to be the same little old (probably about my age) guy with the same foreign accent was in the back. But when I showed him my garment and asked about alterations, he said they only did men’s at this shop. So I asked him where the regular tailor was and he told me one block up.

And so I started up the hill to the next street. But when I got there, I couldn’t see anything like a tailor shop. I walked a couple more blocks and knew I had better turn back.

In the car again, I turned on my GPS and saw that the shop’s address was now on a side street. I drove there, walked in, and saw that it was the right place. I asked the owner if he’d once had a shop a block down on the main street. “Yes,” he answered. “But a long long time ago.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Eighteen years.”

Eighteen years. My goodness.

The whole thing took about an hour rather than fifteen minutes.

And while we’re at it, it’s time for a rerun of this. Enjoy!:

Abortions: past, present

The New Neo Posted on by

Whenever I see a comparison of abortion rates in the pre-Roe v. Wade past and abortion rates since it’s been legal in this country, I think of a book I read long ago. It was a memoir by a woman brought here by her parents as a 12-year-old around 1900, who was raised poor in a tenement in a New York City immigrant community.

I’ve looked for the quote and can’t find it. So this is from memory, and memory can be fickle.

The author wasn’t arguing one way or the other about abortion. It wasn’t a political book; it was a memoir, and she was merely describing things. But she wrote that illegal abortions provided by several local abortionists were highly common in that immigrant community—so common that they were the main form of birth control in an era in which birth control was also clandestine and illegal to distribute.

The author wrote that many married women had a few children and then an abortion every year or so for the remainder of their reproductive lives. I have no way of authenticating this or knowing what percentage of the whole it represented. I do know that families tended to be bigger then and so it clearly wasn’t a universal practice.

This also points out the difficulty of knowing how common abortion was back in the days when it was illegal, and polls on the subject were not done, and even if they were done people would probably be disinclined to answer honestly.

In addition to surgical abortions, there was a vast pharmacology of substances believed to be abortifacients as well as practices thought to induce miscarriage:

Abortifacients were discreetly advertised [in the late 1800s in Britain] and there was a considerable body of folklore about methods of inducing miscarriages. Amongst working-class women violent purgatives were popular, pennyroyal, aloes and turpentine were all used. Other methods to induce miscarriage were very hot baths and gin, extreme exertion, a controlled fall down a flight of stairs, or veterinary medicines. So-called ‘backstreet’ abortionists were fairly common, although their bloody efforts could be fatal…

In New York, surgical abortion in 1800s carried a death rate of 30% regardless of hospital setting, and the AMA launched an anti-abortion campaign that resulted in abortion becoming the exclusive domain of doctors. A paper published in 1870 on the abortion services to be found in Syracuse, New York, concluded that the method most often practiced there during this time was to flush inside of the uterus with injected water. The article’s author, Ely Van de Warkle, claimed this procedure was affordable even to a maid, as a man in town offered it for $10 on an installment plan. Other prices which 19th-century abortion providers are reported to have charged were much more steep. In Britain, it could cost from 10 to 50 guineas, or 5% of the yearly income of a lower middle class household.

In those days pregnancy was common because of the lack of safe and effective birth control, and childbirth was far more life-threatening than it is today. The terrible irony is that a huge part of the push for birth control was that it was understandably believed that it would practically eliminate the motive for abortion.

As we all know, that didn’t happen.

Why? Why do more people not take advantage of the amazingly effective, cheap, and readily available birth control we have today? Because too many people think it’s a huge bother, apparently. And sex is often spontaneous, or drunken, or both, and people know they have the backup of abortion.

[NOTE: For my views on abortion itself, please see this.]

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou being dragged into a dispute between National Review and Max Boot?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I started reading this National Review piece by Charles C. W. Cooke criticizing Max Boot’s recent fault-finding with National Review. I thought it might be subject matter for a post, but I didn’t have much interest in it after all.

But then towards the end I came across this salvo from Cooke [emphasis mine]:

In and of itself, Boot’s techniques are both tiresome and reprehensible. But when coupled with the ersatz I-take-no-pleasure-in-this lamentations that have become his hallmark in the Trump era, the affectation becomes too much to bear. Boot seems to fancy himself as Mark Antony, here to bury a Caesar he once loved, when in reality he is more like Romeo Montague: a callow, selfish, monomaniacal, self-pitying featherweight, who is constitutionally unable to prevent the escalation of petty infractions.

Say what?

To begin with, Romeo is usually identified, like Garbo, by first name only. What other Romeo is there (I know; I know—there are a few)? But at any rate, Cooke’s use of both names is not my main beef. My problem’s with the rest of what he wrote about Romeo:

“Callow” as in immature, inexperienced, naive. I suppose so, but what do you expect from a teenager? I hardly would hold that against lovestruck star-crossed Romeo Montague. Although his age is never specified with exactness in the play, he’s probably 16 or 17 or thereabouts, 18 or 19 at most.

“Selfish”? Well, I guess his parents might call him that. But I certainly never thought of him that way. Headstrong, impulsive, and yes, callow. But he is willing to sacrifice his entire life for Juliet.

“Monomaniacal”? An interesting way to look at Romeo, as a sort of Captain Ahab with Juliet as his Moby Dick. Hmmm. But isn’t everyone newly in love, particularly teenagers, somewhat narrowly focused on the object of adoration? Romeo does find time, however, for joking around with his friends. He also earlier developed a closeness and trust with Friar Lawrence, so he even has cordial relationships with older authority figures.

“Self-pitying”: not until he runs into a bunch of extraordinarily bad luck (some of it a consequence of his own actions). He’s in pretty dire straits when he succumbs to self-pity. And then his self-pity is rather easily assuaged when he is informed of Friar Lawrence’s plan.

“Featherweight”? Romeo can certainly hold his own in a fight. Is it the tights that upset Cooke so?

“Who is constitutionally unable to prevent the escalation of petty infractions”? This may just be the most puzzling accusation of all from Cooke. For starters, it’s Romeo who decides to try to de-escalate the fighting, as a result of his love for Juliet. Romeo’s attempt at pacifism not only convinces none of his friends, who cannot understand it and think he might be joking, but it also has dire consequences. As Romeo’s cousin and best friend Mercutio observes after being mortally wounded by Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, in one of the saddest moments of this tragic play:

After Mercutio dies, Romeo is maddened by grief and anger and goes for Tybalt, killing him. This makes his already bad situation much worse. It’s many things, but one thing it is not is an escalation in response to a “petty infraction.”

Unless you think your best friend and cousin’s murder is a “petty infraction.”

And Cooke never mentions Romeo’s most salient characteristic: how beautifully he speaks. I suppose Cooke gives credit for that to Shakespeare. Romeo just don’t get no respect from Cooke.

I have a theory. Perhaps Cooke’s original name was “Capulet.” That would explain his animus against Romeo Montague.

[NOTE: I guess this is as good a time as any to say that many people misunderstand the meaning of “wherefore art thou” in the original quote, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” The word “wherefore” means “why,” not “where.” Juliet isn’t looking for Romeo. She is wondering why the person with whom she’s just fallen in love has to be a member of the family feuding with her own family. Perhaps she should follow Cooke’s lead and say “Wherefore art thou Romeo Montague?”]

The Epstein autopsy report

The New Neo Posted on by

Suicide by hanging.

I doubt anyone who didn’t already think that Epstein was a suicide will be convinced by the report. I already was leaning somewhat in the suicide direction and still am. But I also believe there was a neglect of the most basic precautions and, as AG Barr has written “serious irregularities” in the prison, either negligent or deliberate.

We don’t have many details of the autopsy report.

The New York Times takes a good long hard look at itself in the mirror…

The New Neo Posted on by

….and is pretty darn pleased with what it sees, for the most part.

Just needing a little tweaking to get the narrative right.

The link above is to a Slate article about a session Times executive editor Dean Baquet had recently with staff:

The remarks showed Baquet and the other speakers conceding some technical and procedural failings but rejecting, or avoiding, deeper criticisms of the paper’s performance. A staffer, submitting a question anonymously, suggested that the headline that had caused all the trouble—“TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM”—“amplifies without critique the desired narrative of the most powerful figure in the country.”

Baquet and other editors addressed the headline as an operational problem, the result of a “system breakdown,” where a front-page layout had left too little space for nuance. “We set it up for a bad headline,” Baquet said, “and the people who were in a position to judge it quickly and change it, like me, did not look at it until too late.”

The headline Baquet is referring to is one in which the paper did something extraordinarily rare for the Times: relate what someone on the right had said without simultaneously adding a spin that informed readers just how awful the speaker actually is. In other words, what used to be called “reporting the news.” My favorite phrase there was not from Baquet, but from the unidentified staffer who characterized that straightforward and accurate headline as “amplifying without critique the desired narrative of the most powerful figure in the country.”

In other words: when Trump does something good, or says something right, we can’t just tell you what he said without somehow negating it. We can’t “amplify” his words by publishing them “without critique.” We must negate anything good he says lest people start to trust him or like him or think he’s not a racist.

Because they know, absolutely know, he’s a racist, and anything he says that goes against that perception must not be allowed to stand. Baquet is quite clear in saying that they threw everything they had into the collusion charges, and now that it’s fizzled, “Trump is a racist” is the new focus.

But how best to do it? A lot of verbiage is exchanged on that score. Baquet indicates it can’t be done too explicitly. You can’t keep writing “Trump is a racist, Trump is a racist.” It needs nuance. It needs depth, variety and finesse. But some on staff want the paper to be more bold. Here’s the longer quote from that staffer (my remarks in brackets):

Saying something like divisive or racially charged is so euphemistic. Our stylebook would never allow it in other circumstances. I am concerned that the Times is failing to rise to the challenge of a historical moment. What I have heard from top leadership is a conservative approach that I don’t think honors the Times’ powerful history of adversarial journalism. I think that the NYT’s leadership, perhaps in an effort to preserve the institution of the Times, is allowing itself to be boxed in and hamstrung. This obviously applies to the race coverage. The headline represented utter denial, unawareness of what we can all observe with our eyes and ears. It was pure face value. I think this actually ends up doing the opposite of what the leadership claims it does. A headline like that simply amplifies without critique the desired narrative of the most powerful figure in the country. If the Times’ mission is now to take at face value and simply repeat the claims of the powerful, that’s news [pun almost certainly unintended] to me. I’m not sure the Times’ leadership appreciates the damage it does to our reputation and standing when we fail to call things like they are.”

You can see right there, as clear as can be, the Times’ sense of its mission. Forget the old function of the editorial page or of op-eds. An editorial isn’t enough; the opinion must be in the article and in the headline, force fed to the reader. Here’s Baquet again:

…what was wrong with the story is that the “Trump said X” headline wasn’t enough to capture the hypocrisy and all the kind of nuance we’re talking about. So I think we built a page on deadline that made it really hard to put a headline on it…We [should] have redrawn the page in away that allowed us to put a more nuanced headline on it. That would have been, in retrospect, the ideal situation.

Read the whole thing, if you can stomach it.