George Orwell’s fictionalized world where Big Brother reigns supreme is no longer a figment of the imagination, but a prophetic vision of present-day threats. Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, explains how and why Big Tech is making Orwell’s 1984 a 21st century reality.
OLDER POST…. (1/2016)
Someone recently said:
Why is it that the left loves to rewrite history? My theory is that to them the end justifies the means ironically in history that has led to genocide here and there.
To which I replied, “I agree.” (And I continued, as I am wont-to-do):
In reading an excellent book, early on there was this nugget:
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture…. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
However, outside of this smaller percentage who is feeling the [sarcasm] equality of State [/sarcasm], there is a much larger percentage who do not want to be bothered as they amuse themselves to death (totalitarian bents ignored in political theories).
They do not want to be bothered by what would have in our history brought people to arms. All they care about is the next text on their iPhone or another round online with friends playing Call of Duty, or who got injured in the last NFL game that impacts the chances of their team winning. THESE people who have replaced worldviews with entertainment will one-day get a rood awakening when their toys are gone.
Liberals — especially — want this amusement to curtail knowing about history so they can get another radical candidate in office who likewise thinks the Constitution is a living/breathing document.
To call someone a racist is a serious charge. A racist is someone who believes that one person is superior (or inferior) to another person simply based on their skin color. It’s a belief that is both foolish and stupid. But conservatives are accused by progressives of being racist on an almost daily basis. Is it a fair accusation? Or, is it just political posturing? And, if it is political posturing, what does it say about the people making the charge? Derryck Green of Project 21 has some provocative answers.
Conservative commentator Candace Owens tells lawmakers at a hearing about white nationalism that the country needs to talk more about what she called harassment of conservatives of color.
Patriotism has nothing to do with skin color or gender and that’s what I believe. I’m a patriot. Trump have helped the black community more than any American president in history. Reducing poverty and unemployment rate.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) played a clip of conservative commentator Candace Owens talking about Adolf Hitler during a congressional hearing about white nationalism. Owens accused Lieu of purposefully playing only a portion of the clip to “create a narrative.”
What is the alt-right? What is its worldview? How big is it? Michael Knowles, bestselling author and host of The Michael Knowles Show, took a deep dive into alt-right culture. Here’s what he learned.
At the 2017 convention of the Democratic Socialists of America, delegates chanted: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” after passing a resolution to support the boycott, divestment and sanctioning of Israel. — BLOOMBERG
Eight House Democrats have met with notorious racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan during their time in Congress — RPT
Chuck Todd is a dunce. I know I am suppose to be not posting for some cruise time, I watched Chuck Todd interview Liz Cheney… and his tropes about the right and antisemitism bugged me enough to be up at 4am posting before we drive to the port. But, he has a partial list of things in the following video that allow me to respond in short to a few of his points.
REMEMBER as well Chuck’s admission of using ALTERNATIVE FACTS, whatever that means.
“I think there is blame on both sides,” the president told reporters that day in August 2017. “You had some very bad people in that group,” Trump said, referring to the white nationalist groups rallying against removal of a Confederate statue. “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Let me explain using an adaptation of the quote:
“I think there is blame on both sides, the fascist group Antifa, who threw the first punches,[A] and the white nationalist groups in attendance” the president told reporters that day in August 2017. “You had some very bad people in those groups,” Trump said, referring to the white nationalist groups and Antifa thugs rallying against civil society. “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides, there were people there to support peacefully the taking down of these — to them — offensive pieces of our history memorialized. And there were others who were peacefully showing support for keeping monuments to our first sin as a nation, thinking that a society that forgets about our sins are doomed to repeat them.”
This is what Trump clearly said as Prager quickly points out:
[A] DAILY WIRE >>New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg made the mistake of admitting that along with the abhorrent, violent, white supremacists who terrorized Charlottesvilleover the weekend, many Antifa protesters were also enacting “hate-filled” violence, as they’ve done in several other cities in recent months. For noting that the “hard left seemed as hate-filled as the alt-right” — citing “club-wielding ‘antifa’ beating white nationalists being led out of the park” — Stolberg was hammered online, even after repenting and issuing a correction that depicted the violent left in more heroic terms.
A few wrap-it-up thoughts from Charlottesville:
1. Striking how many of the white nationalists were young people, almost entirely men. 1/3
— Sheryl Gay Stolberg (@SherylNYT) August 13, 2017
2. The hard left seemed as hate-filled as alt-right. I saw club-wielding “antifa” beating white nationalists being led out of the park 2/2
— Sheryl Gay Stolberg (@SherylNYT) August 13, 2017
3. Among my unanswered questions: police response. Why did things get out of hand so quickly? Could violence have been prevented? 3/3
— Sheryl Gay Stolberg (@SherylNYT) August 13, 2017
PITTSBURGH SYNAGOGUE SHOOTER
I have clearly discussed the Left leaning philosophy of the white supremacist groups and the KKK many times on this site. From 3-of-the-4 largest supremacist groups telling it’s people to vote for Obama, to David Duke supporting Democrats in Congressional runs (one can see this in-depth in my third point HERE). Rr even the most recent support by Duke of Ilhan Omar, as I recently noted on my Facebook:
“By Defiance to Z.O.G. [Zionist Occupation Government] Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!” David Duke said in a Twitter caption linking to his blog post.
I noted in my excoriation of the Left’s idea that Trump supports white supremacists or that they support him was false — included in this refution was video of KKK members endorsing Democrats:
In my RECAP in that post I note that KKK and white supremacist members are,
“typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance).”
…The man accused of murdering at least 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning was a neo-Nazi who posted online about killing Jews—and raged at Donald Trump for being insufficiently anti-Semitic.
[….]
Bowers was also among a set of neo-Nazis who criticized President Donald Trump for being, as they saw it, not biased enough toward Jews. “Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,” Bowers wrote on Gab. “There is no #MAGA as long as there is a kike infestation.”
Bowers also bashed Trump for being insufficiently supportive of the white supremacists of the deadly Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally and of the Proud Boys, a violent alt-right gang….
In other words… Bowers ideology lines up well with Ilhan Omar’s, at least her stance on Jews and Israel. Here is some info from an older post about Ilhan (and Rashida Harbi Tlaib):
~ QUOTE ~
…two explicitly anti-Semitic women voted in by Democrats. GATESTONE has more:
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Harbi Tlaib of Michigan will be the first two Muslim women ever to serve in the US Congress. Most of the media coverage since their election on November 6 has been effusive in praise of their Muslim identity and personal history.
Less known is that both women deceived voters about their positions on Israel. Both women, at some point during their rise in electoral politics, led voters — especially Jewish voters — to believe that they held moderate views on Israel. After being elected, both women reversed their positions and now say they are committed to sanctioning the Jewish state.
America’s first two Muslim congresswomen are now both on record as appearing to oppose Israel’s right to exist. They both support the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Both are also explicitly or implicitly opposed to continuing military aid to Israel, as well as to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — an outcome that would establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Instead, they favor a one-state solution — an outcome that many analysts believe would, due to demographics over time, replace the Jewish state with a unitary Palestinian state.
Ilhan Omar, who will replace outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison (the first Muslim elected to Congress) in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district, came to the United States as a 12-year-old refugee from Somalia and settled in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, in the late 1990s.
In her acceptance speech, delivered without an American flag, Congresswoman-elect Omar opened her speech in Arabic with the greeting, “As-Salam Alaikum, (peace be upon you), alhamdulillah (praise be to Allah), alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah.” She continued:
“I stand here before you tonight as your congresswoman-elect with many firsts behind my name. The first woman of color to represent our state in Congress. The first woman to wear a hijab. The first refugee ever elected to Congress. And one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress.”
Omar faced some controversy during the campaign, including a disturbing report that she had married her own brother in 2009 for fraudulent purposes, as well as a tweet from May 2018 in which she refers to Israel as an “apartheid regime,” and another tweet from November 2012, in which she stated: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
[….]
JIHAD WATCHalso chimes in with the Left’s love for diversity at the expense of hatred:
…The hijabed (and therefore pro-Sharia) Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, is even more hateful than Tlaib. According to the Daily Wire, in 2012 Omar tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.” Challenged about this tweet much more recently, she doubled down and attacked the man who called attention to the tweet: “Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness.”
But Leftists rarely have to answer for their corruption, and in a Democrat House, Omar will much more likely be celebrated than investigated. She and Tlaib will enjoy establishment media accolades as they pursue their hard-Left, anti-American, anti-Israel agenda. Their presence in the House of Representatives may be evidence of “diversity,” but it is also a disquieting sign of the continued dominance of identity politics, and the increasing balkanization of the American body politic. Forthrightly pro-America, pro-Israel candidates would stand little to no chance in either of their districts. And that is indicative of a much larger problem.
~ unQUOTE ~
THE MEDIA MYTH OF INCREASED ANTISEMITISM
(Jump to new material) First, here are the two articles by David Bernstein Dennis Prager is reading from:
Has There Been a Surge of Anti-Semitism Under and Because of Trump? || In short, probably not. And about that ADL study everyone is citing… (REASON.org)
Correcting the ADL’s False Anti-Semitism Statistic || The spread of misleading information on hate crimes is counterproductive in the fight against real and rising anti-Semitism (TABLET MAGAZINE)
Dennis Prager is livid at the lies (The Fake News) we are “bathed in” on a daily basis. This is a great segment to pair with an earlier upload of mine, titled: “Antisemitism In America ~ #FakeNews” (DENNIS PRAGER).
…The ADL also reports that “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of these incidents were of the alt-right nationalist variety, and how many were related to leftist anti-Israel activism? There is no way of knowing from the ADL study, but to the extent the latter was the cause, that could hardly be blamed on Trump.
Finally, it’s worth noting, that despite showing a 57 percent increase in incidents overall, from 1,267 to 1,986, the ADL study shows a 47 percent decrease in physical assaults, from 37 to 19. This is obviously inconsistent with the meme that 2017 saw a surge in violent anti-Semitism. Physical assaults are also the most objective sort of incident to document, which adds to concerns about the robustness of the rest of the data.
[….]
I have no desire to let Trump off the hook for his very real flaws, and I am not nor have I been a Trump supporter or apologist. But the Jewish community’s assessment of the dangers of anti-Semitism should be based on documented facts, not ideology, emotion, partisanship, or panic. And the truth is this: The claim that anti-Semitic incidents increased 57 percent in 2017 is contradicted by the very ADL study on which that claim is based.
There are several problems with relying on this study for Trump-bashing, however. The first is that the study includes 193 incidents of bomb threats to Jewish institutions as anti-Semitic incidents, even though by the time the ADL published the study, it had been conclusively shown that the two perpetrators of the bomb threats were not motivated by anti-Semitism. One can only guess why the ADL chose to inflate its statistics in this way, but none of the explanations speak well of it.
Second, the ADL report itself acknowledges that some of the rise in incidents may simply be due to better reporting (“more people are reporting incidents to ADL than ever before”).
Third, “college campuses saw a total of 204 incidents in 2017, compared to 108 in 2016.” How many of those incidents emanating from traditional forms of anti-Semitism that one might associate with Trumpian populism, and how many from leftist/pro-Palestinian sources? The ADL doesn’t say.
Fourth, the ADL counts ambiguous incidents as anti-Semitic incidents, so long as they were reported as such. For example, the report states, “Jewish graves or cemeteries were desecrated seven times in 2017. The desecration of Jewish headstones is a classic anti-Semitic act employed for hundreds of years. The majority of the cemetery desecrations occurred in the first months of the year, at the same time as the bomb threats were called in to Jewish institutions, which contributed to a sense that the Jewish American community was under siege.” The problem is that desecrations of cemeteries of all faiths is not uncommon, and are often the product of either bored teenagers or vagrants. In fact, at least some of the cemetery incidents counted by the ADL were ultimately determined by police not to be anti-Semitic in origin. The desecraton of a cemetery in St. Louis got a particularly large amount of attention. The police eventually caught the perpetrator, and determined that he was just “mad and drunk,” not anti-Semitic. The ADL has not updated its study or press release to reflect such facts. Other questionable “anti-Semitic” incidents I’ve seen reported include graffitti with a swastika and “TRUMP.” Is the “author” supporting “Trump the Nazi” or attacking Trump by accusing him of being a Nazi? My inclination would in most cases be to suspect the latter, but surely it’s at least unclear….
Again, Chuck Todd is a dunce. The latest report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations shows that 72 percent of hate crimes against religion in the county were against Jews in 2017 (JEWISH JOURNAL). What is not known is that most of this is graffiti, not physical violence, BUT, actual altercations against Jews are from Black racist cults. Both the FEDERALIST and ALGEMEINER discuss the rise of attacks in Crown Heights.
The title of the video should be, “Anti-Semitism Increasing Under Trump A Myth,” maybe a subtitle should read… “But holds firm in the Democrat Party”?
I suggest reading the entire article in the FEDERALIST, it is well written and informative:
This week, an assemblywoman from Brooklyn — the New York City borough with approximately 2.7 million people, not some far-flung hamlet in flyover country — went on an near-hour-long rant in which she accused Jews of conspiring to gentrify her district and steal her home. In the midst of this outburst, Diane Richardson reportedly referred to one of her rivals as the “the Jewish senator from southern Brooklyn.”
This incident comes not long after a DC Council member named Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who represents the Eighth Ward of the capital of the free world in the twenty-first century, posted a video offering some of his thoughts on how “the Rothschilds” were controlling the climate to squeeze money out of the oppressed.
Both of these people have been treated as raving lunatics, which they might very well be. But a person could easily imagine the fate of any elected official in a large city had he or she aimed similar conspiracies at African-American neighbors. We would almost assuredly be plunged into a national conversation about the shameful bigotry that plagues our cities.
That’s not to argue that we should overreact to these incidents. Although certainly a serious concern, anti-Semitism is a relatively minor problem in American life. It is, however, getting difficult not to notice a trend among liberals of either ignoring, rationalizing, or brushing off anti-Semitism, which seems to be more commonplace on the Left than it has been in a long time.
But when identity politics and class warfare propel your movement, as it does the progressivism that’s becoming increasingly popular on the American Left, it’s almost inevitable that the Jews, who’ve tended to successfully navigate meritocracies, will become targets. This hate has traveled with socialists since Karl Marx first declared that “Money” was the god of the Jews.
[…..]
Extremists and quacks have always attempted to tether themselves to mainstream political movements. What’s more concerning than the presence of Sarsour and Mallory is how liberals have either ignored anti-Semitism or gone out of their way to rationalize it.
“[Many] black people,” wrote The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, in one of a number of articles working through this sudden “conundrum” of Jew-hating on the Left. “But many black people come into contact with the Nation of Islam as a force in impoverished black communities—not simply as a champion of the black poor or working class, but of the black underclass: black people, especially men, who have been written off or abandoned by white society.”
So, you see, “white society” is really at fault for Mallory’s turn towards anti-Semitism. Would anyone ever accept such reasoning for racism among the poor of Appalachia or the Jews of Brooklyn? At this point, you have to wonder what kind of relationship someone would have to enter to merit a full-throated denunciation from fellow liberals. I imagine nothing less than socializing with a conservative would do the trick.
At least Serwer concedes that the Nation of Islam is a consequential force in urban communities and offers a theory for its popularity. Most often, those who associate with anti-Semites are insulated and excused of any wrongdoing by the mere fact that Republicans are the ones bringing the charge.
For example, while it’s inconceivable that a person who spent a decade as a member of the Klan could find a place in politics today, despite its lack of influence, a member of the Nation of Islam can rise to become deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee without anyone in his party challenging his ascendency. Elizabeth Bruenig, a Washington Post columnist, recently praised Keith Ellison (she was far from alone) for “calling out the silly Farrakhan-related smear campaign against him for what it is: a totally cynical attempt to pit the black community against the Jewish community.”
Now, maybe it’s silly to point out that Ellison once appeared as a local Farrakhan spokesman in Minneapolis to defend a congregant who said “Jews are among the most racist white people I know,” or to mention that the left-wing magazine Mother Jonesreported that Ellison had embraced that idea that “European white Jews are trying to oppress minorities all over the world” and talked about “Jewish slave traders” (there was never a denial from the congressman’s office), or even that the DNC’s deputy chairman only distanced himself from anti-Semites during his 2006 run for Congress, and then only when right-wing bloggers started pointing out his past.
But is it really silly to point out that one of the leading lights of the Democratic Party told a group in 2010, after breaking with Farrakhan, that Jews were running American foreign policy or that he and Farrakhan attended a dinner honoring Iranian President and Holocaust-denier Hassan Rouhani in 2013?
[…..]
It’s also why Richard Spencer and David Duke [EDITOR’S NOTE: who tells people to vote for Democrats], people with few followers and zero political power, are given an inordinate amount of media attention while the fact that Congressional Black Caucus members, who both coordinated and met with the leader of the Nation of Islam, is given virtually no coverage at all. It’s why the deputy Washington editor of The New York Times, Jonathan Weisman, can write an entire fearmongering book purporting to examine Jewish life in “the Age of Trump” by stringing together a bunch of disparate incidents — some genuinely troubling, others imagined — to warn of the coming fascism, while meticulously ignoring the contagious strains of anti-Semitism that live, not on the periphery, but smack in the middle of the most celebrated activist movement in the country…..
But here is the good news (under reported) about hate-crimes in general (listen to full interview HERE):
ARE HATE GROUPS SURGING ACROSS AMERICA?
The WASHINGTON EXAMINER goes after the partisan hate-group with this excellent article:
Newsrooms were on fire this week with terrible news: The number of hate groups in the United States has soared to record highs under President Trump.
There are most certainly hate groups in the U.S., and even one is one too many, but I’d encourage everyone to approach the numbers reported this week with calm and caution. There’s nothing partisan operatives would love more than for you to panic and to believe them when they suggest that the problem can be solved by expelling “the other team” from power. That the figures cited by newsrooms come via the decidedly unreliable and hyper-partisan Southern Poverty Law Center also doesn’t help anything.
The New York Times reported, “Over 1,000 Hate Groups Are Now Active in United States, Civil Rights Group Says.”
“Hate groups ‘surge’ across the country since Charlottesville riot, report says,” reads the headline from the Miami Herald.
“Trump ‘Fear-Mongering’ Fuels Rise of U.S. Hate Groups to Record: Watchdog,” U.S. News and World Report said in a headline that sort of gives the game away.
First, let’s keep things in perspective. Remember, for example, that the rise in the number of hate crimes is attributable in some way to the fact that there are more reporting agencies ( hundreds, in fact!) than ever before. It’s easy to say, “Oh, it’s all because of President Trump,” pointing to incidents like his disastrous Charlottesville statement. But the problem of bigotry is far older and deeper than the current administration. That the Trump White House isn’t helping anything is one complaint, but don’t fall for the suggestion that it’s the main driver.
In 2015, for example, the group put Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on its “extremist watch list,” citing the one-time presidential candidate’s “anti-LGBT views.” Later, in 2016, the SPLC labeled women’s rights activist, female genital mutilation victim, atheist, and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslim extremist” because she opposes Islamic extremism. The British activist and extremist-turned-counterextremist Maajid Nawaz was placed in the same category. The SPLC lumps pro-family and pro-Israel organizations in with actual neo-Nazis.
As for the report the SPLC just released this week, IT CONCEDES THERE IS AN UPTICK IN THE NUMBER OF BLACK NATIONALIST GROUPS SINCE 2017, BUT IT DOWNPLAYS THIS FACT BY CLAIMING THOSE GROUPS “HAVE LITTLE OR NO IMPACT ON MAINSTREAM POLITICS AND NO DEFENDERS IN HIGH OFFICE.” I must’ve just imagined noted-anti-Semite and frequent Democratic guest Louis Farrakhan.
[….]
Hate groups are real. Hate crimes are real. The SPLC is not. It exploits hate groups to raise money and further political interests unrelated to the problem of hate. Don’t fall for the SPLC’s lies.
And from the interview of Liz Cheney, a comparison of George Soros is made and criticisms of him being made as similarly “antisemitic.” Dennis Prager deals with this in taking two calls, one discusses it explicitly… the other ends with Prager noting it (also hear an older show where Prager discusses him):
Dennis Prager covers a few issues, some of his thoughts on Michael Cohen, Rashida Tlaib calling Mark Meadows a racist, how the Left uses the “racist claim” to seemingly make a point, and the like. One of Rush Limbaugh’s points was that when Michael Cohen said this,
“I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power. And this is why I agreed to appear before you today”
… Rush knew someone else had written his statements. Yep. He is kowtowing to the Left, which he is from.
Harvard University’s admissions policy is proof that one can remember negative history, write about it in great and vivid detail, and still be doomed to repeat it. In the name of “affirmative action” and “diversity,” Harvard is doing to Asian-American applicants exactly what it once did to Jewish applicants: discriminate. Lee Cheng explains.
Elizabeth Warren is bent on using the race card, even if it means falsely claiming Native American heritage. Dennis Prager explains why race doesn’t matter.
(43-minutes) Larry Elder was painting the Democrats and Hollywood types faces “embarrassed” last Thursday (2-7-19) regarding the story of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring wearing “black-face” for themed parties when they were younger (see NATIONAL REVIEW). Obviously, the bigger story is how the media has ignored a governor calling for infanticide publicly, and instead, focusing on a “racial” issue (see WESTERN JOURNAL). This being said, no one else does a better job of calling out the hypocrisy on the Left than does the “Sage of South-Central,” Larry Elder. (See “Black People In ‘Whiteface’”)
I inserted quite a bit of video and pictures to “colorize” Larry’s audio. From Kurtis Blow’s appearance on Soul Train, to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tropic Thunder portrayal of a black man. I had to purchase the 1971 Valdez Is Coming in order to clip the portion the caller mentioned, to the 20/20 documentary on Mumia Abu Jamal (see CNS-NEWS). Enjoy this long audio/video of hours one, two, and three – zeroing-in-on the black-face controversy and the hypocrisy of the left. Each excerpted hour is labeled in the upload. Enjoy.
Here is the Governor of Virginia looking for room to Moonwalk:
I have to post this crap because there are two “like-minded” stories about similar issues. The first story deals with the iconic Mary Poppins. A movie that has delighted generations of Disney fans. THE EVENING STANDARD notes however, that in a New York Times piece, a professor writes that the movie is racist (why the NYTs would publish such nonsense is telling):
The classic family film Mary Poppins has been branded racist by a US academic who accuses Dame Julie Andrews of ‘blacking up’ with soot while dancing with chimney sweeps.
In a piece for the New York Times, Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner criticises one of the film’s iconic moments, when Mary Poppins joins Dick Van Dyke’s Bert to dance on a rooftop for the classic song Step in Time.
He writes: “When the magical nanny (played by Julie Andrews) accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, her face gets covered in soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks even blacker.”…
The article goes on to show support for the differing side regarding the movie… and the professor complains that the racist alt-right “likes the movie a lot” — I guess supporting his silly position. I assume anyone defending the Disney movie is now “alt-right.” Here is more:
Fans were divided over the professor’s remarks.
One wrote online: “I think this is a reach. She was friends with a chimney sweep. When she went out and danced with him she got soot on her face if I recall this correctly.”
Another wrote: “Mary Poppins wasn’t flirting with black face! It was soot in their faces from being a chimney!!!”
A third said: “This is a candidate for the stupidest New York Times article of all time.”
However others agreed with some of the points raised.
Michael Schulman, ,a writer for the New Yorker said: “This made me think about class, too – how Mary Poppins, a posh domestic, scrambles the class divide and introduces Jane & Michael to the much more fun world of pleb chimney sweeps. Further scrambled in the sequel when the Bankses are also in the poorhouse.”
Author Mr Pollack-Pelzner posted online after his article was published: “The chief reason I wrote this article was the hope that a Disney exec would read it, take another look at the forthcoming Dumbo remake, and ask if there was anything just a little bit racist they might want to rethink before it hits the big screen.
“Here’s one thing I’ve learned about the alt-right, after I wrote this article and received a zillion hate messages in response: they sure like Mary Poppins!”
Wow. His reasoning is “rock solid.” [/sarcasm]
This second story is a couple of weeks old, but worthy considering the above. And yes, this has to be the sign of the Apocalypse. The AZ CENTRAL notes the following:
A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party at a downtown Phoenix restaurant. I walked around to view the photographs on the wall.
Then a photograph caught my attention.
Friends said, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work.” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces. I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned and said it’s men in blackface.
I asked the waitress to speak with a manager. Instead, I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive. Evidently, someone else had made a similar comment about the photograph before.
Yet, the photograph remained on the wall. He said he would talk to the other owners and get back to me. While leaving, I asked him had he spoke with the other owners. He had not spoken with them, but mentioned Google said it’s coal miners after work….
