I end up defending the damnedest people on this blog.
Since 2012, I’ve put up three posts on what an unethical and obnoxious political cartoonist the Washington Posts’ Tom Toles is part of my ongoing campaign to retire the editorial cartoon completely, since as Toles proves routinely, it distorts facts under cover of being satire. His commentary on the Wuhan virus has been especially despicable.
But I digress: I come to defend Toles, not to bury him.
Incredibly, the Washington Post learned this week that a guest wore a costume including blackface at a Toles Halloween party in 2018, and launched an investigation into it. This momentous event—from two years ago—was deemed so important that the Post assigned two reporters to the hot breaking story. From the result yesterday,
“At the 2018 party at the home of The Washington Post’s editorial cartoonist, [a]middle-aged white woman named Sue Schafer wore a conservative business suit and a name tag that said, “Hello, My Name is Megyn Kelly.” Her face was almost entirely blackened with makeup. Kelly, then an NBC morning show host, had just that week caused a stir by defending the use of blackface by white people: “When I was a kid, that was okay, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
…Some of the approximately 100 guests at the home of the cartoonist in the District’s American University Park neighborhood said they didn’t notice the blackface. Some noticed it and said nothing. A few people walked up to Schafer, who was then 54, and challenged her about her costume… Nearly two years later, the incident, which has bothered some people ever since but which many guests remember only barely or not at all, has resurfaced in the nationwide reckoning over race after George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, was killed when a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Many protesters have called on white Americans to reassess their own actions or inactions when confronting violent and everyday racism alike.”
What one woman wore as a satirical Halloween costume as an obvious critical commentary, not of African-Americans but of super-white conservative Megyn Kelly’s on-air defense of wearing blackface has bothered “some people” for almost two years, the Post story says. Wow. That’s incipient mental illness. “I just can’t sleep—I keep thinking about the blackface a woman I don’t know wore at Tom Toles’ party in 2018!” Such an assertion needs to begin a story about unhealthy race-grievance obsessions and their consequences, not a two-year old Halloween party.
Inspired by the George Floyd Freakout, one of the guests at Toles’ party, a woman of Puerto Rican heritage, decided this was the perfect time to contact Toles and complain about the Megyn Kelly costume. Got that? Because a cop killed a black man in Minneapolis and triggered protests and riots all over the country resulting in millions of dollars of property damage and hundreds of injuries and deaths, Lexi Gruber thought the appropriate response for her was to call up the host of a 2018 party to complain about a guest’s makeup.
Last week Gruber emailed Toles, whom she had never met other than attending his party, and told him,
“In 2018, I attended a Halloween party at your home. I understand that you are not responsible for the behavior of your guests, but at the party, a woman was in Blackface. She harassed me and my friend — the only two women of color — and it was clear she made her ‘costume’ with racist intent.”
The e-mail went on to say that the incident had “weighed heavily on my heart — it was abhorrent and egregious.” She asked Toles to identify the woman.
This is where Toles’ progressive bias finally bit him. What he should have written in response was, “I’m sorry, but you should have dealt with that situation when it occurred. I am not responsible for what my guests do, nor am I responsible for helping other guests who decide two years later that they have a score to settle with one of them. Bye.” Instead, he responded by offering “apologies for your experience at the party. A lot of people show up who I don’t know, and I don’t recognize the woman you’re inquiring about.”
Ah, but as the Post’s crack investigative reporting team discovered—a team larger and more committed to justice than, say, the paper’s half-hearted investigation of Obama’s IRS’s efforts to squelch Tea Party activities during the 2012 Presidential campaign—Toles did know Schafer, who had been to his parties before and is a friend of his family. This meant the cartoonist was involved in a blackface cover-up, which is ironic since blackface is itself a coverup. And as the Post knows better than anybody, the coverup is worse than the crime, not that wearing an anti-Megyn Kelly costume with blackface at a private party is a crime. Not yet, anyway.
Confronted by the Post reporters on his perfidy, Toles huminahumina-ed, “I meant that I didn’t recognize any bad intent. I didn’t feel it was my place to tell [Gruber] who my other guest was when she had misinterpreted what the other guest intended” with her costume.” The first part is obviously a poor attempt at spin, and the last part is what he should have told Gruber, but didn’t.
The Post got involved because Gruber wrote an email seeking Post coverage of the scandal–Did you know that what a guest chooses to wear at your private party years ago can be a scandal in 2020? —writing, “I wanted to know who this woman is. . . . What impact does she have on society? I think this is an important story — that a party full of prominent people in Washington welcomed a person in blackface, danced and drank with her, and watched in silence as she harassed two young women of color.”
I must point out here that the alleged harassment consisted of the woman in blackface, Shafer, being at the party, and replying “I’m Megyn Kelly — it’s funny!” when Gruber and a black friend confronted her. Even the accounts of the two guests who confronted Shafer don’t describe “harassment.” Not dropping to one’s knees and begging for forgiveness when someone accuses you of racist conduct and you disagree is not “harassment”—or didn’t used to be.
As I began, I don’t understand this story at all.
Gruber’s friend who joined her in confronting Shafer/Kelly at the party is an African American woman named Lyric Prince. Contacted by the Post reporters, she said that she wants Schafer to have to explain publicly “why she did what she did.”
“I don’t want an apology because that time has long passed,” Prince says. She also wants Toles to make it clear publicly “that what [Schafer] did was wrong and that . . . that’s not the kind of person that he knows to be a good person.” and wants “people who read this story to say to themselves, ‘I cannot excuse my friend’s bad behavior because it does reflect on me if I say nothing.’ ” Prince, witnesses say, shouted at Shafer.
But Shafer was harassing Prince. Now keep that straight; I don’t want to have to go over this again.
Now Toles is groveling, when not spinning. First he told the reporters that he had told his friend at the party that her costume was inappropriate, then he said he was not certain that he had said anything. “I may have told her that wearing blackface wasn’t appropriate, but I’m not sure I did,” he said, “and maybe I should have. . . . I could have told her to leave. I didn’t and that’s on me. Maybe I should have.”
The Post story has now exposed Shafer to the cancel culture, so she is also desperately groveling, telling the Post that the day after the party she called Toles with “absolute remorse about the costume . . . extremely upset on reflection, and apologetic,” explaining that, as Toles now says, “She did not come with the intent to confront, embarrass, ridicule or insult anybody.” Shafer also says she has spent many hours in therapy talking about “how carelessly I behaved. I’m deeply ashamed.”
I know that’s what I do when I make a joke that later I conclude was in bad taste. I go to therapy and discuss it for hours. Doesn’t everybody?
The Post tries to mitigate the damage to Shafer from its resurrecting the Megyn Kelly costume story by telling us that on her Facebook page, “Schafer posts often about her opposition to President Trump and her support of immigrants [presumably this means illegal immigrants…I’m just specifying because democracy dies in darkness], gun control, gay rights and anti-racism causes, including photos she took at marches and demonstrations she attended.”
She’s a good person, you see. Not one of those racist Republicans.
Never mind: the mission was still accomplished. Schafer informed her employer, a government contractor, about the blackface incident and The Post’s forthcoming article, and she was fired.
For a bad choice of costumes at a 2018 Halloween party in a private residence.
I’m sorry, I’m a little slow this morning: explain to me again why this is news?
Toles’s boss, Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, is quoted in the article and says: “Blackface is abhorrent, period.”
Got it.
Hiatt also says he is glad Toles has apologized, though as we have seen in so many other instances, once a social justice warrior or an outrage mob has a metaphorical knee on your neck, it’s hard to make them take it off. Toles’ apology occurred in another email exchange with Gruber, which did not go well; in fact, it is what prompted Gruber to sic Toles’ own paper on him.
Toles told Gruber he was “wrong” to deny that he knew who was wearing blackface, saying, “I am sorry — for that, and more,” he wrote, and he admitted that Schafer was “a friend.” He said he has realized that wearing blackface “was offensive in any context. I regret I did not see that more clearly at the time, and I apologize to you now unreservedly for that.” But when Toles did not give Gruber the offending guest’s name, offering instead to connect Gruber with Schafer so the latter could apologize, Gruber wrote, “Hiding her name is a deliberate act of white privilege and cowardice, not friendship.” She added, despite her earlier statement that Toles was not responsible for the conduct of his guests, Gruber replied that she has “a hard time believing that you are genuine in remorse. . . . I do not feel comfortable reaching out to a woman who publicly harassed me and my friend — simply because we are not white. This happened in public — and so I want a public apology, not a private one.”
And despite her earlier statement that she did not hold Toles responsible for the conduct of his guests, Gruber wrote, “We are an extension of the company we keep.”
I know this post has gone on far too long, but allow me to register these observations, because I think I’m beginning to understand “what’s going on here” a little better:
1. What happens at a private party, even one attended by a lot of Washington Post employees, should not be treated as news, especially when the party occurred two years go. At most, this is gossip columns stuff, and gossip columns are the bottom of the journalism barrel. The Post turning this into a news story is irresponsible, mean-spirited, unfair journalism.
2. By publishing this non-news story, the Post was pandering to the racial justice mob.
3. If its employee, Toles, had been involved in an actual newsworthy event, the Post would be obligated to cover it as if he were anyone else. Making him the center of a cheap and contrived story that involved no crime, no misconduct on his part, nothing that he had control over or responsibility for, is unforgivable—cruel, disloyal, and wrong.
4. Toles was correct to refuse to identify Shafer to Gruber, who is emotionally unhinged. No host should identify a party guest to a stranger, especially one with a vendetta, without that guest’s consent.
5. Toles and Shafer are progressives, and now forced to suffer in the culture they created. It is still unjust and unfair, but this how the leaders of the French Revolution ended up headless.
6. The reporters didn’t ask Fred Hyatt about the Post’s complete abandonment of any commentary on Virginia Governor Northam’s history of wearing blackface, or how its continued cheerleading for Northam’s various progressive policy measures fits with his paper’s decision to expose Shafer, who is neither a public figure nor and elected official, to the cancel culture. Nor did the reporters ask Prince and Gruber about their position on Northam, and if they were as determined to punish him as they were to shame Shafer.
7. It is wrong to conclude that Shafer isn’t ” the kind of person that I know to be a good person” based on the evidence of her party costume. It is completely fair to conclude that Gruber and Prince are not good people, however, based on their statements and conduct. They are bullies, they are self-righteous, they are without empathy or compassion, they are vindictive, and they, like so many of the compatriots, are engaged in an opportunistic power play, which the Post, being without proportion or compassion itself, happily enabled.
8. What’s going on here? Progressives and activists are using the toxic combination of the George Floyd Freakout, the desperation and cowardice of those in positions of power to survive the chaos, and the complete ethical bankruptcy of journalists to grab whatever benefits they can, achieve every ideological agenda item no matter how outlandish, and settle as many scores as possible, regardless of the inevitable carnage to lives, the culture and the nation.
Yeah, I guess I do understand after all.
Ethics Alarms 
This racial justice mob will do far more to discredit the civil rights movement than anything the Stormfront White Nationalist community said.
And despite her earlier statement that she did not hold Toles responsible for the conduct of his guests, Gruber wrote, “We are an extension of the company we keep.”
Wait, she was at the party!!! She was keeping company with the guy whose guest wore blackface. Why didn’t she leave that company?
-Jut
Freedom of association has reverted to the Salem-esque. Seems darn predictable.
Who else was at that Northam event, again?
Oooh, good catch. Why was she at the party at all, since she had never met Toles?
Agree with Michael Ejercito. Part of me – the part riddled with sangfroid – is actually rather enjoying the sight of progressives eating their own. Another part of me is wondering how many people who still possess critical thinking skills will be collateral dinner.
“Sangfroid.” Great word. You made me look it up. Thanks for expanding my vocabulary.
Same.
Did you use Merriam-Websters Webtionary? I did. This is the definition:
Definition of sangfroid
: self-possession or imperturbability especially under strain
Wonderful word.
jvb
At least, that’s what it means this week. Who knows what changes some college kid with an agenda will inspire MW to make next?
Ouch. Too close to the truth for comfort…
Yes.
“Collateral dinner”. That’s excellent. I am stealing that phrase.
jvb
Kind of you to say. I’m rather pleased with it myself! 😉
Jack said:
5. Toles and Shafer are progressives, and now forced to suffer in the culture they created. It is still unjust and unfair, but this how the leaders of the French Revolution ended up headless.
This one I don’t think I get. The old saying, “You made your bed, so don’t complain about being forced to lie in it” comes immediately to mind.
When someone sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind, this is the very definition of justice — so old, it’s virtually Biblical.
As to fairness, well, I guess I have to agree with that. The current “cancel culture” is inherently unfair, and no matter how just the outcome, actual fairness can never really be present using this process. Can an unfair process produce a just outcome? Absolutely.
So I guess I partially agree with you, but it was a totally just outcome — perhaps not by the standards of due process and certainly not fairness, but certainly from the standpoint of common understanding.
8. What’s going on here? Progressives and activists are using the toxic combination of the George Floyd Freakout, the desperation and cowardice of those in positions of power to survive the chaos, and the complete ethical bankruptcy of journalists to grab whatever benefits they can, achieve every ideological agenda item no matter how outlandish, and settle as many scores as possible, regardless of the inevitable carnage to lives, the culture and the nation.
That’s the way I see it as well. This is where your famous optimism comes into play, Jack, and we are supposed to nod our heads in the sure and certain knowledge that the American people will see this for what it is, and react with appropriate disdain.
There, I feel so much better having said it. Cynical Glenn is on holiday today. 🙂
Oh, they can’t complain that it’s unjust. and won’t. I will on their behalf, sort of like how a guardian ad litem represents the metally incompetent.
Heh. Love the simile. Entirely apropos.
What’s with all the French words/expressions today? First Sangfroid and now apropos! C’est la vie, I guess.
As they say, French is the language of diplomacy. I suspect in part that’s due to the fact that the French vocabulary is roughly 1/3 the size of American English. We have specific words for EVERYTHING, where as the French use words in combination to create an understanding. Tactically, this can easily result in one person saying one thing and the other hearing something quite different.
And that can be quite advantageous in some situations. It affords one an opportunity to be more polite. My use of “sangfroid,” for example – itself a combined word – made it possible for me to avoid an expletive-laden sentence that would have been much more expressive, but would have violated the decorum our host expects. 😉
For what it’s worth, judging by her picture and her name, isn’t Lexie Gruber quite obviously a white person of German or Jewish descent, not a “person of color”? Certainly, she appears to be far more white than George Zimmerman.
She identifies as a “person of color,” so that’s what she is.
White is a color.Isn’t it??
Logically it would be, since a white object reflects and scatters all visible wavelengths. All actual colors reflect at least one visible wavelength.
Black, on the other hand, absorbs all visible wavelengths and is not properly described as a color.
So by extending this logic, “People of color” would include white people, but not black people. So I guess, in order to be “POC”, blacks should start referring to themselves as “dark brown” or some other actual color.
You beat me to it
Actually color is a function of reflected light. White light occurs when all rays of the visible spectrum are reflected and stimulate the rods and cones in your eyes. Ironically black is the absence if color as no light is reflected, it is absorbed by the matter.
I identify as an aardvark; therefore, I am an aardvark.
jvb
If you add an extra a in aardvark you will be first in the phone book.
What’s a “phone book”? Is it that little case I wrap around my phone? Asking for my granddaughter…
My new name is “Aaron A. Aardvark.”
jvb
While she currently self-identifies as a “POC Gruber”, earlier in her storied career she identified as “POC Perez-Gruber”.
https://firstfocus.org/about/staff/lexie-perez-gruber
“Lexie Pèrez-Grüber.” That’s one complicated name. I figure if you are umlauting, then you have other issues.
jvb
The examples of virtue signaling related to Progressives’ social justice brainwashing campaign against our society are everywhere and the number of examples are growing exponentially. Real truth, real logic, real justice, real facts, real common sense have been buried in the quaint anecdotes of history and now they’re against the new social justice inspired chaotic societal “norms” which have been brainwashed in the minds of a huge swath of the vocal population and these social justice warriors are intimidating their way into positions of power.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; progressives and social justice warriors have already won the battle of the minds. Either a vast majority of the population is willfully consumed by the social justice bull shit or they are in literal fear of it; therefore, our society is screwed. Progressives’ social justice intimidation tactics have won the day.
I say that we’re nearing the brink because I honestly think it’s the truth.
So, let me get this straight….
Schafer dressed up as Megyn Kelly, and to satirize MK’s position on blackface, decided that “Halloween Costume Megan” would wear and support blackface. Toles and anyone else at the party is complicit in this costume and the whole lot of them need to be canceled. (Does that about sum it up?)
I guess the direct correlation is truly Tropic Thunder. Robert Downey Jr played the part of a fictional actor who had poor judgement when it came to blackface. That fictional actor wore blackface, thus Robert Downey Jr wore blackface. Thus, anyone associated with that film such as Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, producers, writers, key grips, lighting, design, costumes, makeup, catering, etc etc etc. will also need to be canceled, no?
The politics of blackface are similar to n-word controversies. What each one lacks is a nuanced perspective of what’s offensive and what is not offensive (whether or not offense is taken by very sheltered people.) There has to be a recognition of “why” blackface or word-usage is offensive and applied to that context. There needs to be nuance for utterance, reference, and usage; but as it stands, these topics are so “taboo” that ignorance is spreading farther and faster than intelligent discussion. Go figure that this is the world in which we live….in 2020.
That makes too much sense for the Left. Don’t confuse them with logic.
Yep. Robert Downey, Jr. is toast. It’s a shame, too. He’s a good actor. Jack Black is next – he played a Mexican monk-in-training.
jvb
I’ll agree with Steve here. We are nearing the brink. Something bigger is going on here.
People have literally lost their minds. They’ve lost the ability to show grace to one another. They’ve lost the ability to treat others the way they would want to be treated. They are consumed with the idea that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is the enemy and the enemy deserves to be destroyed.
Their hearts have been hardened.
The costumed guest was satirizing Megyn Kelly. This whole debacle is literally about a guest who didn’t get the joke. They’ve lost their sense of humor, too. She saw a woman wearing black make-up and presumed racism. Despite her protests to contrary, she judges Toles guilty by association in the same way the Jacobins, the Soviets and the Nazis held friends and family members responsible for the actions of others.
They may identify as Progressives, but they’re Fascists in all but name.
The silent majority of Americans who still believe that the freedoms assured in our Constitution are valid will vote this November. If Mr. Trump wins, he will be attacked in every possible way. If he wins by a landslide, the so-called Progressives will launch a wave of violence and carnage such as hasn’t been seen in the US for 150 years because they will presume he was put in office as a result of uncontested white racism. If he’s not re-elected, regardless of the margin, they will take it as a mandate to put forth as many damaging changes as possible and will then have to contend with the pushback of voters who previously remained silent.
God help us all.
I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time . . .
What’s more I’m wasted and I I can’t find my way home . . .
Blind Faith:
jvb
A.M. Golden said:
Their hearts have been hardened.
Ramases II smiles.
The silent majority of Americans who still believe that the freedoms assured in our Constitution are valid will vote this November.
My concern is, do the vast majority of Americans believe in the same definition of “freedom” as you and I? As we have seen in the pandemic, most are all too willing to trade freedom for security, which makes me wonder if they are really as committed to freedom as you think.
Progressives will launch a wave of violence and carnage such as hasn’t been seen in the US for 150 years because they will presume he was put in office as a result of uncontested white racism.
I actually live for that day. This has to come to a head sometime, and the longer it simmers, the worse it will be.
If Trump is defeated and all our worst fears come true, the result will be the same, only it will be those on the right trying to take back the country.
Either way, it’s certainly possible a reckoning of historical significance is only a few short months away. But probably, it will fail to meet either expectation, and the low-level civil war will continue.
People have literally lost their minds. They’ve lost the ability to show grace to one another. They’ve lost the ability to treat others the way they would want to be treated. They are consumed with the idea that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is the enemy and the enemy deserves to be destroyed.
But the enemy does deserve to be destroyed. And once the proper enemy has been identified no restraints keep the ‘just one’ from unrelenting punishment of the evil-doer.
What do you think of my theory that we trained our Hyper Progressive militants? Here is the way I describe it. We present material to the youths that says that fascism and Nazism were ‘absolute evils’ and were worthy of absolute destruction. We show them endless reels and present them with the important scene where the innocent-eyes child, in alarm and anger, demands to know why her or his parents did not act against it then? Why did they not take direct and violent action then to stop the evil?
Now, with that said, can you or anyone else take another viewpoint in regard to the same events? The ‘rise of fascism’ and German nationalism and all of that? Can you see any alternative to having that focused, virulent ‘hate’ of those people and their ‘destructive ideologies’?
The answer is “No” of course.
When one examines modern exponents of Antifaschistische Aktion one quickly uncovers the same resolute ideological certitude. Now I assume that you can see what I am getting at but my analysis goes further.
I think these ideas (insofar as they are ideas, except they are not, they are complexes of sentiment that are hard to define) have become installed in all of us, to one degree or the other. The tendency to vilify one’s enemies — to find and enemy and identify that enemy as ‘thoroughly evil’ and worthy of destruction — is completely American. It is part of a way that political players structure the information that is presented to the public. This has been used over and over again. Iraq and Iran come to mind.
So perhaps ‘what is going on today’ is best understood as an *outcome* of many different factors that combine together into a dangerous intoxicating elixor?
They were trained by Marxists and they are acting like Marxists. This is cultural Marxism and it is working just like it was planned. Once it became clear that Marxism wasn’t going to be widely accepted, it moved to postmodernism and cultural Marxism by replacing class struggle with racial struggle. The goal of the Communists was to destroy all aspects that hold society together; the family, the church, Western Society, history… Our education system has wholeheartedly been doing this for 40+ years.
Look at all the examples of schools that banned students for wearing clothing with Trump on it, but allowed Obama attire. Look at the kids charged with pop tarts in the shape of guns. Look at the thought police, the Marxist ‘People’s History of the United States’ as one of the most influential books for high-school history teachers, and the sharp disconnect between the viewpoints of teachers and the public at large. They get credit for protesting, but only ‘correct’ causes.
Once they get to college it becomes worse. They are swamped with full-blown Communist propaganda. If you think differently, you will be punished severely or thrown out of school. Higher education is reserved only for those who have the ‘correct’ political views and those who will pretend to. Look what happens if even a politically moderate speaker is invited? The university encourages the students to verbally and physically attack them. No ‘progressive’ student is punished for such deeds, but anyone who dares try to defend themselves from such attacks is subject to arrest and prosecution. Yes, it is a dystopian nightmare that never should have been allowed, but the judges didn’t have the guts to do their job and enforce the law, and most people said ‘it’s just college’, don’t rock the boat.
Now, 30+ years later, the real world is just like the college world. If a mob attacks you, beating you with weapons while screaming ‘kill him!’ and you defend yourself, who will be arrested? You and only you will be arrested. The mob gets to riot, loot, and burn with impunity. Donald Trump rallies get blocked by the courts. The politicians learned this in college. The police have to obey the politicians.
You are right, we did train them, because we allowed leftists to take over education and the government. But, because leftists will not hire non-leftists, the only way to prevent this is to BAN all leftists.
But even that — “they were trained by Marxists” — has to be lingered over as one thinks about American history. Marx and Engles were aware of the American Civil War and wrote extensively about it:
The influence of Marxian philosophy and analysis has a long history. If we are going to talk about cultural Marxism then we are going to have to push the time frame back quite a bit!
And understanding the rise of the present conflicts — which are now rising to inundate the country — has causal roots that definitely go back to the American Civil War. The radicalism of the Radicals (the Radical Republicans) was just as virulent as the virulency of today’s ultra-righteous activists.
They are not a ‘them’ they are we. Jack is in identifiable senses a ‘Radical Republican’ and there are others here, too, who understand things in similar ways. And this ‘spirit’ is tightly woven with Americanism as a quasi-ideology, and need I mention again the Americanopolis?
At that point it becomes an issue of the State. The State is a radical exponent of certain forms of American radical progressivism and quite literally seeks to impose them on the world.
I am curious to know if anyone reading this understand what I am getting at here?
You are right, we did train them, because we allowed leftists to take over education and the government. But, because leftists will not hire non-leftists, the only way to prevent this is to BAN all leftists.
I have to stick with my perception, my understanding, until I am convinced that I must modify it. We can say, and I will agree with you, that we allowed Leftists to take over education. Check. I definitely agree that post-Marxian ideas (Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm etc) have had extraordinary influence. Check. We can definitely see and identify the radicalism in *them*. Check.
But I assert that a similar, even largely identical, radicalism is part-and-parcel of Americanism. And these ideologies, or tendencies, are now an integral part of the State.
I didn’t want this to be a 5 page post, so I didn’t go back further. The study I find the most depressing is the one that makes it clear that leftists will take over any area they get a hold in. In the study they found that (among those making hiring decisions) 70+% of Democrats would decline to hire the most qualified candidate if that candidate was a Republican. They will only hire Democrats. The study found that roughly 30% of Republicans would decline to hire the most qualified candidate if that person were a Democrat. If you have any workplace with a large amount of Democrats, the number of Democrats will increase. Once it reaches a critical mass (roughly 70%), no new Republicans can be hired. Even if the workplace starts at 100% Republican, however new Democrats can be hired. I believe this is a big reason why Education and Government are so ideologically unbalanced. In many private companies, such decisions are made by people who need the company to succeed, and if the best people aren’t hired, the company suffers or fails. There is no such corrective force in education or government. They can (and do) continue to get worse and worse and worse, but they are not allowed to fail. The same reasoning may be extended to monopolies like the mainstream media or Hollywood as well.
The depressing part is, ‘What is the solution’? Banning Democrats from the workforce is obviously wrong, but if you let them in, they will make sure Republicans are banned from the workforce. The only way you can stop the discrimination seems to be by discrimination.
Many of these kids haven’t been taught about WWII hardly at all. In Oregon they made Holocaust history in high school a requirement only last year. Some of it isn’t what they are being taught but what they aren’t.
First off, I share a distaste for political cartoons. I have a very low tolerance for bullshit, which I think some of the commentariat here will attest to, I particularly hate the fart-huffing, pearl-clutching affectations of people who are pretending they care deeply about things when they in reality just find the cause celebre a convenient platform for a completely separate, prior position. I think political cartoons are the complete embodiment of that phenomenon. I find them dishonest, unintelligent, lazy, and perhaps most damning when you consider the medium: Unfunny. Snark-laden blurbs designed to give Shallow Hal’s perspective of politics aren’t useful or profound, but political cartoonists like to pretend they’re adding to the general discourse, or “StArTiNg A cOnVeRsAtIoN”, when in reality they’re just a shitposter with a platform, and something approaching a production value.
All of which is irrelevant to this, I suppose. On the topic of this situation in particular, I’m going to caution against showing too much schadenfreude watching this guy get hung up on his own petard…. Unlike Trudeau or Wortham, progressives are throwing some mid-level allies on the pyre, and while I’m not sure that this is a particularly conscious trend, that has historically been the first step on the path to an attempt to hold the right to the left’s standards. Think Franken and #metoo as an example. I think this has fewer legs than #metoo because I don’t think there are as many people who have painted their face black in their lifetimes, nor do I think people *realy* care. But I would be gobsmacked if in the next six months a picture of someone right-of-center didn’t “surface” just in time to sewer someone’s chances in the general. Then the line will be “Look, we threw this guy to the curb, ignore Ralph, he doesn’t count. Why do conservatives hate black people?”
. . . which I think some of the commentariat here will attest to.
Oh Good Heavens, you’re a pussycat!
“The costumed guest was satirizing Megyn Kelly. This whole debacle is literally about a guest who didn’t get the joke. They’ve lost their sense of humor, too.”
That was my thought, exactly. Personally, I think it was great satire and very clever on the part of Shafer. The guest was just too stupid to get it. And now stupid guest wants her 15 minutes.
And you know next on the chopping block will be the brilliantly funny All In The Family episode “Birth of the Baby”, parts 1 and 2, where Archie and his lodge brothers show up in blackface.
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole damned series is condemned and Archie and Edith’s chairs are removed from the Smithsonian.
Fun fact! The part of Archie was originally offered to Mickey Rooney, who turned it down.
I wonder where Rob Reiner would fall on that debate?
Good question.
I am confused. Why are you defending Toles? Is it because he got caught in a whirlwind of wokeness and doesn’t know how to get himself out of it? Is it because he got hoisted by/on his own petard? He groveled. He got eaten. Too bad for him but he would have gotten eaten either way. Gruber was not out for reconciliation; she and her cohort smelled blood in the water and attacked, feasting mightily on Toles’ own weakness.
If we defend anyone, it should the woman who had the temerity to attend a Halloween party in blackface. She lost her job for mocking Megyn Kelly, whose comment was innocuous. Kelly apologized and lost her gig. Gruber and her friend are vicious, blood-thirsty and will not be satisfied until all who are guilty pay dearly for their sins and the sins of their fathers and mothers ad infinitum.
jvb
I also defended the disgusting NBA owner who was run out of the league because his mistress taped a conversation in their bedroom. What happened to Toles in this case shouldn’t happen to anyone, and if he had a pair, he would have said so.
Agreed.
We could hope that the ultimate result of this growing Grand Guignol sh*tshow nonsense will be that enough good people will increasingly be turned away by the damage done and manic irrationality of these groupthink mobs. If it only pushes people into quietly making a difference with their votes, it could be worth it. The more disciples of the left that are eaten by their own in the process, the better; it’s just a bonus.
And as the Post knows better than anybody, the coverup is worse than the crime.
Whew! Jack is rollin’ today boys and girls. Punctures an entire industry’s sanctimonious BS in a single clause.
And Ms. Shafer is out of work??? Why not Tom Toles?
I can think of a few times at the beach where coverups were definitely needed.
You know, one Thanksgiving I was joking around with my brother and cousins and did some pretend martial arts moves, then moved my mouth without saying anything, more moves, and then said “Let’s go that way!” satirizing the often very bad dub jobs done in 60s and 70s Kung Fu movies, a staple of weekend TV in the 70s. I’m glad I did that before there were cell phone cameras.
I suspect an unsaid part of this “news” story is to make sure people know their place even in private residences at private gatherings. If there can be an invisible line in the sand where there’s enough fear of one another among friends and family then social control by intimidation is successful. This story by the Post is a warning to progressives to behave.
Exactly.
I’m not going to look, because I can’t stand Toles’ cartoons, but I get he did a slimy, snarky comic ridiculing the Flynn guilty plea withdrawal and making fun of Flynn for lying to the FBI in their perjury trapping him. And here he lied to two WaPo investigative reporters? Isn’t that a crime in D.C?
Again, I think the solution is to not live in places like D.C. and other liberal bastions. These people are nuts.
The EA commentariat should award Jack with “Ethical Ethics Post of the Month” for this one. (The commentariat deserves an award to itself, too, for “awakened non-wokeness.”)