The National Park Service website has an Underground Railroad page. It used to feature a large photograph of the remarkable female “conductor,” Harriet Tubman (left above). The page began, “The Underground Railroad — the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil War — refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage.” But some boob or combination of boobs thought that the Trump EOs and other measures aimed at purging divisive, partisan and often discriminatory “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs from the government, education and other private institutions mandated eliminating straightforward and historically accurate information. It wasn’t just the National Parks Service, of course. The Defense Department also eliminated many pages that celebrated important minority veterans, such as civil rights champion and icon, Jackie Robinson.
Reacting to Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby‘s tweet above, the Maine House speaker and majority leader (Guess which party…) demanded that she take it down. Libby refused, so the body’s Democrats introduced a censure resolution. Their contrived reason: her post included photos and the first name of a minor, the male athlete who was allowed to compete in female-only sports. Both the photo and student’s name were publicly available and had been published by media sources. Obviously, this was an effort to silence an effort by an elected official to have the public understand “what’s going on here,” and, as we all know from the motto of an Axis-supporting newspaper of note, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
I’m afraid I don’t know enough about fencing to comment as intelligently as I need to regarding this episode, but I’m going to charge on anyway…
USA fencer Stephanie Turner was scheduled to face Redmond Sullivan at the Cherry Blossom Fencing Tournament held at the University of Maryland. As the match was about to begin, however, Turner “took a knee” and removed her mask, signifying that she would not compete against Redmond the Division 1A Women’s Foil event. Redmond, you see, is a formerly male fencer who has recently “identified” as female. Turner had decided that as a matter of principle she would not compete in women’s fencing against a “man.” “I saw that I was going to be in a pool with Redmond, and from there I said, ‘OK, let’s do it. I’m going to take the knee’,” she explained
After her protest, Turner was slapped with a “black card” signifying that she was suspended and out of the tournament.
“I knew what I had to do because USA Fencing had not been listening to women’s objections,” Turner said. “I took a knee immediately at that point. Redmond was under the impression that I was going to start fencing. So when I took the knee, I looked at the ref and I said: ‘I’m sorry, I cannot do this. I am a woman, and this is a man, and this is a women’s tournament. And I will not fence this individual.'”
U.S. Fencing responded with a wokey, weaselly statement undoubtedly drafted by the DEI Dept.:
Here it is: “Can Male Authors Publish Books Under Female Names?”
Well, of course they can, but the real question is little better. “I’ve recently heard some sharp comments from friends about male authors publishing books under female names. The pseudonyms are sometimes gender-neutral, but in genres dominated by women, readers assume that these writers are women too,” blathers “Name Withheld.” ” I know there are historical examples of the inverse: female writers using male names or gender-neutral names that are assumed to be male. But are these equivalent? Whatever difficulty male authors may face in majority-female literary genres today cannot compare to women’s historical struggle to live a public life. Is it unethical for these male authors to present themselves this way?”
Today this unwelcome turd turned up on my mailbox from a “Kerry Brad”…
Good morning! What if I told you the typical Ashley Madison member isn’t a reckless playboy but a brown-haired engineer, a highly successful Virgo, and – more often than not – the eldest child in their family? New data from Ashley Madison, the discreet dating platform with more than 80+ million members worldwide, reveals a surprising reality about who’s engaging in non-monogamy – and it’s not who you might expect.
The numbers tell a fascinating story:
More than one-third (33%) of respondents say they’re happy in their marriages/relationships.
70% of members stick to just one affair at a time, debunking the myth of serial cheaters, while only 2.7% have had four or more affairs simultaneously.
Women seek affairs earlier than men – 13% of women have been in their relationship for less than a year before looking elsewhere, compared to just 3% of men.
While men in engineering and trades make up a significant portion of members, women in sales, IT, and law enforcement also turn to affairs.
Virgos, Geminis, and Scorpios are among the most likely to stray.
This data challenges everything we think we know about who joins Ashley Madison and why. I’d love to connect you with Paul Keable, Chief Strategy Officer at Ashley Madison, who can dive deeper into the typical profile of an Ashley Madison member, what this reveals about modern relationships, and more. Let me know if this data would be a fit for an upcoming story. I look forward to hearing from you, either way!
The letter cam complete with a copy of the company’s member survey. Not familiar with Ashley Madison, you lucky stiff? Its website homepage used to welcome viewers (maybe it still does; I am not moved to check) thusly:
The Pentagon has eliminated lower physical fitness standards for women in combat units via an order by Defense Secretary Hegseth announced yesterday. All physical fitness requirements for combat arms positions will now be be “sex-neutral.” Well, a) GOOD!, and b) Why did anyone ever think it made sense to have it any other way?
The New York Times, being pathetic, spins like crazy to make the order sound mean and discriminatory as well as harmful. The order “is likely to significantly reduce the number of women who meet the requirements,” the paper sniffles, and is “likely to hinder the recruitment and retention of women in particularly dangerous military jobs.” So what? The military sets standards for being qualified for combat, and having different standards for different groups is the epitome of DEI idiocy. Hegseth “argued that women should not be allowed in combat units if they could not meet the same fitness standards as men,” sayeth the Times. Why would he have to argue that at all? What’s the counter-argument? I don’t see one.
There were three distinct stages in my consideration of the sui generis Cinerama feature from 1963, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World.” The movie’s gimmick was that it collected more comedians and comic actors in a single Hollywood production than has ever been featured before, which meant, naturally, that it had to be the funniest movie ever….or so we were told.
I first saw IAMMMMW at Boston’s Cinerama Theater when I was 12. It was the first of the new, improved, seamless Cinerama features, which meant it was inferior to the original format, which wrapped around the audience. There were few effects in the movie that took advantage of the giant screen, either. But like all boys under 20 or so, I thought IAMMMMW was very amusing and a lot of fun. Girls didn’t get it, for the most part, and that has never changed. It’s physical comedy and slapstick throughout, and often cruel slapstick. This is a real male-female divide that appears to be timeless.
I was also, even back then, an omnivore of popular culture. Seeing so many familiar comedy icons of the era (and the previous one) in one movie was a thrill; of course, that was one of the main goals of the film. Sid Caeser, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney and more, with well-conceived cameos by the likes of Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis and Don Knotts—in the waning period of Hollywood all-star cast spectaculars, the idea of doing one with comedians was irresistible.
I saw the movie a second time in my thirties, and was shocked how different my reaction to it was. To be fair, I recalled many of the sequences that would have been funnier as a surprise, but the film seemed over-long, abrasive and, most surprisingly, sad. The subplot in which Spencer Tracy plays an aging police captain who becomes disillusioned with his professional and family life to the extent that he tries to steal the money that has set off an insane race among the assorted loonies is more tragedy than comedy, and, oddly, Tracy didn’t play any of his role for laughs. Grace, my wife, hated the movie in 1963 and hated it just as much when I made her watch it again with me.
I hadn’t followed the Lizzo dieting scandal because, frankly, I couldn’t care less about the in-your-face obese pop star who has been the current champion of the “love your body”/”fat is beautiful” mob. Lizzo, who performed with svelte female dancers to emphasize her proud flab, made defiant fatness part of her brand, wearing costumes that normally would be taboo for any woman not a size 6.
Well, if it works, it’s show business! But somehow toward the end of 2024, Lizzo started slimming down via Ozempic, dieting and a personal trainer, so she is now sporting a more conventional model of female beauty. Predictably, her fat fans feel betrayed, and they should.
We’ve seen this so many times before that I hesitated to even post on it, but no previous fat celebrity so aggressively asserted that she loved her extra pounds and that society’s obsession with fit female bodies had to be rejected. All of these photos…
…accompanied past features about how the singer insisted that fat was “normal” and that she “loved her curves.” And now what is she saying? She doesn’t need to say anything; her conduct speaks for her. She decided to exploit being fat as a gimmick, not caring how it would encourage unhealthy lifestyles among her female fans, then as soon as losing weight and becoming more typically attractive seemed like a wise career move—reinvention!—she discarded “fat is beautiful” like a house guest who had stayed too long.
We shall see if a performer of Lizzo’s rather unremarkable talents can stand out among all the other comely female pop singers. If not, don’t be surprised if she starts hitting the all-you-can-eat buffets again.
Remember that little problem with the new Texas Rangers “double logo” cap? The Chesapeake Baysox say “Hold my beer!”
The Double-A minor league affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles in the Eastern League unveiled a new “alternate identity”: the team is also calling itself the Chesapeake Oyster Catchers as “a tribute to the Chesapeake Bay’s rich heritage and thriving ecosystem.” Let me interject here that I don’t understand why a baseball team wants or needs an “alternate identity,” unless it’s the Chicago White Sox, who last season broke the modern record for lousiness with 121 losses (out of 164 games). How does a baseball team turn into Batman? Well, never mind…
The team unveiled two new logos centers inspired by the oyster catcher, a distinctive black-and-white shorebird with an orange beak that flocks in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. The bird hunts shellfish, and thus “is a symbol of strength and ingenuity—qualities that define both the Chesapeake region and its passionate baseball fans.”
And here is a close-up of the one that no one connected with the team seemed to be paying enough attention to…
“Wait,” some social media wags noted on social media, “Isn’t that thing in the glove a…?”
Yikes and holy female anatomical parts, Batman! The Baysox/Oystercatchers quickly removed that onscene logo from its social media posts, website, and online stories. That’s a good first step: now fire everyone in the marketing department who didn’t see what that “oyster” looked like and say something before the team embarrassed itself and everyone else.
Why is the Cognitive Dissonance Scale the graphic I chose for the final word on Disney’s “live-action” remake of Walt’s biggest and most important hit, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”? (For some perspective, realize that we have the same relationship on the timeline to that film that it had to the Presidency of Millard Fillmore.) It is clear that this cultural ethics train wreck, which EA has been dutifully covering (here,here, here, here here, and here), is now stuck inextricably in cognitive dissonance territory. For most viewers, what they think about the movie will be influenced far more by their biases and what they associate with the movie than the movie itself.
That’s how the scale works, as I keep explaining ad nauseam. If Disney is generally a plus-5 on a ticket-buyer’s scale (once upon a time, Disney would have been a plus-10 or higher on everyone’s scale) and the movie in a vacuum would be at “Meh”-level Zero, Disney would pull the film into positive territory. If Disney is in negative territory already for a different viewer, the film begins with an anchor chained to its metaphorical ankles.
Thus it is hardly surprising to see this as the early returns on the film (which doesn’t officially open in theaters until tomorrow):
Ethics Alarms 