President Trump Is Trying To Reform Harvard? Good! [Part 1: The Letter]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Add to the deserving targets of President Trump’s campaign to remove forced progressive ideology from American culture and society Harvard University and its proverbial ilk. You can also add Harvard and the other anti-American, destructive ethics corruptors the government supports to the list of unsympathetic bastions of Axis influence that are unlikely to get sympathy from the non-Trump Deranged public. The institutions are not quite as ethically repellent as criminal illegal immigrants or as indefensible as government waste, fraud and abuse, nor are they as obviously unnecessary as National Public Radio. Nevertheless, bravo! This needs to be done.

I’m tired, depressed and busy today, so I am tempted to just link to all the essays I have written over the past decade regarding the spreading ethics rot at my alma mater. The posts under the tag “Harvard” are here; the larger list of posts that include references to Harvard (and that in many cases should have that tag, but I sometimes am in a rush and I hate adding tags) here. Have fun reading all of that awful record: I’ll see you back here in about a month. Still, I feel it is my duty to “drill down” a bit, so here it comes.

Let’s look at what the Trump Administration is asking of Harvard, why, and why it is responsible. We’ll begin by noting that Harvard, as an independent, private institution, can do whatever it wants; it just can’t have its metaphorical cake and eat it too. If the school, like virtually all elite American institutions, is going to be an indoctrination camp for the far Left, it can fund its activities itself, becoming a Hillsdale College of the anti-American sect.

In an April 11 letter to Harvard president Garber (who took over when Harvard’s DEI, anti-white, anti-male president was forced to resign), the Trump Administration made (mostly) excellent points and what would be reasonable demands to a reasonable university, which Harvard is not (see above links). Here are selected features in that letter, with my observations in italics.

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“War Is Peace”: Kareem Abdul Jabbar on D.E.I…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On the 78th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking of Major League Baseball’s color barrier, the Los Angeles Dodgers, successors to the Brooklyn Dodger franchise that brought Robinson into the big leagues, hosted its traditional annual commemoration of the culture-altering event. For some reason Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, L.A. Lakers legend, was on hand to give a speech, and as a smart and articulate social commentator instantly proved that bias makes you stupid by saying,

“Trump wants to get rid of DEI. And I think it’s just a ruse to discriminate. So I’m glad that we do things like this, to let everybody in the country know what’s important. They also tried to get rid of Harriet Tubman. But that didn’t work. There was just uproar about that. But you have to take that into consideration when we think about what’s going on today.”

Oh.

A few points: D.E.I. is explicit discrimination, just of the anti-white male variety. How could banning clear discrimination be a “ruse to discriminate?” Would Kareem support DEI in the NBA when he was playing, which would have meant inferior white players taking the jobs of better black players in the interests of diversity? Why would a smart individual say something so self-evidently Orwellian?

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It’s Comforting, Somehow, To Know That NYT’s Thomas Friedman Is As Much A Hateful, Trump-Deranged Hack As Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I pay as little attention to Times opinion writer Thomas Friedman as possible, as he is in equal measures unethical and absurd. My curiosity wasn’t even piqued when I saw the title of his op-ed in today’s New York Times: “I Have Never Been More Afraid for My Country’s Future.” The rational response to that whine is “Who cares what you think? You’ve proved beyond all doubt that you are confused, biased and deluded!” After all, this is the same pundit who wrote, the last time I deigned to dismantle his idiocy (six years ago), that evil President Trump was “protected by big media outlets.” Got that? Donald Trump, who has been assailed by biased and dishonest reporting more than any previous U.S. President, has been protected by the news media! The rest of the column in question was similarly unhinged; I quoted an Althouse commenter who wrote, “I understand this doesn’t meet any federal definition for hate speech, and I dislike the notion that any speech be so labeled in a free speech society. However, Thomas Friedman’s article is what I consider hate in written form.”

Well, Tom Friedman 2025 says “Hold my beer!” One of my Trump Deranged lawyer-actor friends sucked me into reading Friedman’s latest “hate in written form” by posting with approval on Facebook this excerpt from “I Have Never Been More Afraid for My Country’s Future“:

“This whole Trump II administration is a cruel farce. Trump ran for another term not because he had any clue how to transform America for the 21st century. He ran in order to stay out of jail and to get revenge on those who, with real evidence, had tried to hold him accountable to the law. I doubt he has ever spent five minutes studying the work force of the future.”

Wow. It takes a special kind of dishonesty to say that Trump ran for President to stay out of jail when the only reason he was prosecuted anywhere was to stop him from running for President. Impressively, all of the Althouse commenters defenestrations of Friedman’s 2019 Trump hate apply exactly to his recent column. Let’s see another ludicrous excerpt…hmmm, which to choose, there are so many…Ah! Here’s a good one:

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The Unethical Obscurity of Larry Doby

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yesterday was “Jackie Robinson Day” in baseball, with every player wearing the civil rights and baseball icon’s retired uniform number 42. April 15, 1947 is the day Robinson, following the bold plan of Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey to desegregate baseball, officially broke the game’s color barrier in an event with national, cultural and societal significance. (I’ve written a lot about Jackie, a great man as well as a great baseball player.) Baseball is justly proud of its role in advancing civil rights (and justly ashamed of its long exclusion of black players before and after Robinson’s trailblazing), but commenter “Old Bill” reminded me this morning of the undeserved and unfair relative obscurity of Cleveland Indians great Larry Doby, the second black man to play Major League Baseball.

“It was 11 weeks between the time Jackie Robinson and I came into the majors. I can’t see how things were any different for me than they were for him,” Doby once said. Well, they weren’t. Doby’s courage and fortitude while battling bigotry and hostility to integrate what had been a white man’s game were no less than what Robinson displayed.

Lawrence Eugene Doby was born on December 13, 1923, in Camden, South Carolina. Larry’s father, David, was a stable hand, grooming the horses of many wealthy New Jersey families. When Larry was eight years old, his father died in a tragic accident. After that the boy was cared for by his aunt and uncle as well as his mother and moved from locale to locale, finally settling in Patterson, N.J. Even before graduating from high school, Doby was playing second base in the Negro Leagues under the assumed name of Larry Walker for the Newark Eagles. Despite is tender years, he was considered a rising star. He entered college, where he was a basketball stand-out, and was drafted and joined the Navy during W.W. II. Doby was honorably discharged from the military in January 1946, and inspired by the news that the Dodgers had signed a black player, Robinson of course, he changed his career plans from teaching to baseball. Doby sensed that the times they were a-changing. He rejoined the Negro League Eagles, believing that might be a path to the Major Leagues.

When his team went on to win the Negro Leagues World Series in 1946, Doby attracted the attention of maverick Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck, now best known as the man who sent a midget up to bat. Veeck, like Rickey, had long sought to integrate baseball, which for Veeck was the American League. He became convinced that Doby was the right player to do it. Veeck decided that he would purchase Doby’s contract and bring him up to join Cleveland right after the 1947 All-Star break. Doby’s white team mates on the Indians refused to look at or speak to him. Doby told an interviewer in 2002, “I knew it was segregated times, but I had never seen anything like that in athletics. I was embarrassed. It was tough.” 

He didn’t win a place in the Indians regular line-up until the next season, when the Indians won the AL pennant with him playing the outfield every day. That fall Doby became the first black player to hit a home run in the World Series, winning Game Four 2-1 and sending the Indians to a World Series victory the next day. A remarkable photo taken after Game Four showed Doby embracing white Cleveland pitcher Steve Gromek. (I was told that this photo is famous: I’ve followed baseball and baseball history most of my life, and I had never seen it. But there is a statue of Pee Wee Reese with his hand on Jackie Robinson’s shoulder! ) in what was supposedly a watershed for race relations.

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A Morning “Nelson”! Condign Justice For NY A.G. Letitia James

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

This story has so much delicious irony to it, I’m afraid to look in the mirror for fear that I have literally turned into Nelson Muntz, the “Simpsons” character who mocks everyone else’s misfortunes.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has referred New York Attorney General Letitia James to the Department of Justice for alleged mortgage fraud. Bill Pulte, director of FHFA alerted U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in part,“Based on media reports, Ms. Letitia James has, in multiple instances falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms…This has potentially included 1) falsifying residence status for a Norfolk, Virginia-based home in order to secure a lower mortgage rate and 2) misrepresenting property descriptions to meet stringent requirements for government backed loans and government assistance.”

You can read the documents here and here. In one case, the Democratic Party hit-woman charged with executing the lawfare against Donald Trump so he couldn’t run for President received a lower mortgage rate by falsely swearing that a home in Norfolk, Virginia would be her “primary residence” when her job as New York’s Attorney General required her to live in that state. In the other, James misrepresented a five-unit property as a four-family unit to receive “a conforming loan through the Freddie Mae/Freddie Mac Form 3033,” which is only available for buildings with four or fewer units. Hilariously, this is the same woman who prosecuted Donald Trump for misleading financial statements, intoning that “No one is above the law.” Perfect!

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Weenie of the Week: “White Lotus” Star Aimee Lou Wood

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Oh, suck it up and laugh, you spoiled celebrity snowflake.

Aimee Lou Wood, one of the stars of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” is whining about how “Saturday Night Live” cast member Sarah Sherman impersonated her in a sketch wearing silly fake teeth as a spoof on the actress’s trademark gap-toothed smile. Wood called it “mean and unfunny.”

Awww. Were her wittle feelings hurt? Saturday Night Live made fun of Katherine Hepburn’s shaky voice, Dana Carvey played Paul McCartney as a smarmy ass, the show cast obese actor John Goodman as Linda Tripp, portrayed President Gerald Ford as a bumbling boob virtually every week for a full yea, and styled George W. Bush as a moron, and you’re upset because they kidded your teeth?

Your front teeth look like Bugs Bunny’s, kid. Own it.

“I have big gap teeth not bad teeth,” she wrote. Yeah, it’s called “satire.” SNL did a CNN sketch spoofing then anchor Bobbie Batista, who had a slightly askew eye, with the actress crossing her eyes for the whole sketch. Batista didn’t complain.

“I am not thin skinned,” Wood wrote in one of a series of posts on her Instagram account, proving that she is thin-skinned and doesn’t comprehend the celebrity phenomenon or that satire thingy.

This is why comedy is dying in the Age of the Great Stupid. Incredibly and foolishly, the show apparently has apologized for mocking her, which, if I were planning on ever watching the show again after all these years, would have caused me to junk the idea.

No, Trump Does Not Have a “Plan” to Deport Citizens

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

My son, who should know better but who is unfortunately surrounded by Trump Deranged hysterics all day long, told me today that he is terrified that he will be deported. He was adopted from Russia, and naturalized when he was less than a year old. Then he got updated citizenship documents when he was 18. He was convicted of a felony, reckless driving and eluding when he was still in his teens, and there is no chance, none, zero, that he will or could be deported. Nevertheless, he refuses to believe me.

I blame a lot of despicable people for this, including President Trump, who thinks trolling the hysterics is funny. It’s not. My son says he can’t sleep, and he already suffers from intermittent anxiety and depression. The main culprits, of course, are the same people and institutions who claimed that Trump is Hitler reincarnated, that he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, that he’s a Bond super-villain who wanted the Presidency so he can achieve world domination. Trump, being an incurable jerk, deliberately feeds their false narratives and paranoia by saying things like, “I may serve a third term” and riffing about invading Greenland.

The worst culprits may be, as usual, the news media. Consider this report on NBC, headlined, “‘Obviously illegal’: Experts pan Trump’s plan to deport ‘homegrown criminals’” Well, that’s a lie right up front: Trump said nothing about any plan: there isn’t a “plan.” Then the story undercuts its own headline, saying, “Trump has suggested that “homegrown” criminals who have been convicted of certain crimes should be deported, but the idea raises significant legal questions.” Ideas don’t raise any legal questions, they are just ideas. I think child sexual abusers should be castrated and forced to eat their genitals with chocolate sauce, but I’m not seriously proposing it. This is the Big Lie technique again: Trump says something on a whim, the news media and the Deranged treat it as a serious proposal, and then gullible people (like my son, unfortunately), lose their minds.

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‘The Great Stupid’ Marches On: “Good Morning” Is Racist, Apparently

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Here is woman beyond help, miserable because she sees racism in everything, and is actively searching for features of daily life to make her feel insecure, unsafe, and angry:

What can you say about such a poisoned individual? How did she get this way? Does she think Gene, Donald and Debbie are sending racist “dog whistles” to white supremacists in the audience? Oh probably. But now she can solemnly lecture anyone who greets her with “Good morning!” about their racial insensitivity.

There has to be a clinical name for this proclivity, but for now, “The Great Stupid” will just have to suffice.

_______________

Pointer: Moonbattery

KABOOM! Ethics Dunces: George Clooney and Any Audience Member Who Doesn’t Jeer the End of “Good Night and Good Luck”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I honestly thought this was a joke. As a stage director, I couldn’t believe that a Broadway show—a drama, supposedly— would stoop this low. My head has been in a continuous state of eruption since I found out the report was accurate.

George Clooney has a vanity project on Broadway, a stage adaptation of his well-received 2005 movie about Edward R. Murrow’s high stakes showdown with demagogue Joe McCarthy at the height of his power. He co-wrote the screenplay and directed while also playing a supporting role. Now, twenty years later, Clooney has moved himself into the starring role as Murrow (previously played by a better and more Murrow-like actor, David Strathairn).

The play has been getting luke-warm reviews, but none of the ones I read mentioned this little detail: At the end of the play, which is supposed to be about the importance of a courageous press that “speaks truth to power” and is trusted by the public to be fair and uncorruptible, a giant photo of Elon Musk giving the alleged “Nazi salute” is projected on the backdrop.

It was not a Nazi salute, and the Axis news media that represented it as such proved just how far the profession of journalism has fallen since the halcyon days of Edward R. Morrow. But the photo surely isn’t intended to convey that message. Clooney, or some lunatic, with Clooney’s approval, was trying to equate McCarthyism with the Trump administration, and McCarthy’s totalitarian methods with Musk. It’s such a bizarre and idiotic analogy that I can’t properly critique it because I don’t comprehend the thinking behind it. It is lizard-brain level at best, and I always thought Clooney was smarter than that. (My dog Spuds is smarter than that.)

But reports are that the Trump Deranged Broadway audiences gasp and react as if this is brilliant commentary. I would have walked out. Any decent American or responsible theater-goer should walk out.

I still am hoping this is a hoax.

Can This “Democratic Norm” Be Saved?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

One of the most hackneyed attacks on President Trump is that he violates “traditional democratic norms.” Of course, this is another Democratic Party double standards play: most assertive Presidents ignore some “traditional norms” while forging new ones, and the last Democrati in the White House crushed some surprising traditional norms I thought were secure, like the norm of enforcing immigration laws, and the norm of selecting Cabinet members on the basis of their abilities rather than their EEOC categories, the norm of holding press conferences, the norm of having the elected President actually be the President, and the norm of not dropping out of a re-election campaign once it has begun so the party can install a more promising replacement without the formality of primaries and a democratic nominating process.

A democratic norm that is definitely on death’s door in the Trump Administration is the traditional respect the President has extended to reporters and journalists. Yesterday, President Trump was openly hostile and insulting to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins when she questioned him in the Oval Office on the deportation of El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He called her a “low-rated anchor” while insulting her employer, CNN. Passing a question off to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the President sniped, “Can you just also respond to that question because you know it’s asked by CNN and they always ask it with a slant because they’re totally slanted because they don’t know what’s happening. That’s why nobody’s watching them.” Ouchie! Later in the session, Trump responded to another question about Garcia from Collins by saying, “How long do we have to answer this question? Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country’? Why can’t you just say that? Why do you go over and over …and that’s why nobody watches you anymore! You have no credibility.”

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