This one is cross-filed with the Ethics Alarms “Fake News” stories, in the “Future News” sub-file. I would say it’s disgusting, but the mainstream media’s standards have become so disgusting that I don’t know what qualifies as disgusting any more. It’s like complaining, “This is a disgusting maggot-infested road-kill sandwich!!! I should be able to get a better maggot-infested road-kill sandwich than this!”

CNN dredged up Alyssa Farah, who previously served as White House communications director under President Donald Trump for a few months in 2020. She was a guest because apparently CNN was tipped off that she could be counted on to denigrate her former boss. We will be seeing more of this, as the mainstream news media embarks on its mission of trying to torpedo Trump’s 2021 Presidential prospects, since it is increasingly clear that a relatively bright GOP sea anemone will be able to defeat Joe Biden. Factual problems with Trump are obviously deemed inadequate, so now the media is stooping to getting predictions of dire actions from people with no more expertise or credibility than Alyssa Milano.

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On November 9, 1938, Hitler’s  Nazis began their campaign of terror against Jewish people by destroying their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. This was “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” which continued through November 10, and is now recognized as the beginning of the Holocaust. The carnage of hate left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, with many of them sent to concentration camps for several months until they promised to leave Germany. How many supposedly educated American know about the significance of this date? I’ll be watching to see where the news media notes it, and which sources do. The event is not generally taught in the public schools; I didn’t learn about it my school system back in Arlington, Massachusetts, which was then regarded as one of the best in the state. Sir Lawrence Olivier was my teacher, as my family never missed an episode of “The World at War” on Sundays.

1. Here’s another reason I pay obscene amounts to read the New York Times: it is astounding how extreme Left the Times Sunday Book Review section is. This is the part of the paper that makes no pretense of being written for anyone but the New York City intellectuals, and it is fingerprint evidence of just how smug, biased, anti-capitalism and contemptuous of their own country this toxic group is. The Times just published a compendium of notable reviews during the publication’s 125 year history, and the brie and Chablis Democrats loved it, especially novelist Mario Puzo’s snide review of conservative William F. Buckley’s 1968 collection of essays, “The Jewelers Eye.” Here was the passage that spattered brains on my bathroom ceiling:

“Buckley is as royally condescending to his betters as he is to peasantry. He derides Arthur Schlesinger for talking such nonsense as that the best defense against Communism may be the social welfare state. Again this is surely innocence at work. He doesn’t quite get Schlesinger’s drift, which is, obviously, that when a force stronger than yourself says, “Your money or your life,” you hand over the money, and if you’re really smart you hand over some of your money before anybody gets tough about it. It would seem unnecessary to simplify in such a fashion, but Buckley still thinks he is being begged for a handout; Schlesinger knows it’s a stickup. I do not mean to cast aspersions on the welfare state with this analogy; after all, a stickup within the legal framework of our society — via the vote, etc. — is the last word in exercising individual freedom.”

Yes, Puzo is advocating socialism as a wise and necessary capitulation to the inevitable march of Communism. Gee, I bet he was surprised when the Wall fell. And while Buckley was annoying, Puzo calling Schlesinger his “better” is more than biased, it’s ridiculous. Schlesinger was the Kennedys’ court liar, successfully draping the sociopaths in glory for decades until their corruption was undeniable. He also warped the American historical record for half a century by, among other things, declaring Woodrow Wilson a great President and Eisenhower a weak one. But of all the reviews of the past the Times chose to reprint, guess which one came in for the most praise in the next Review’s letter section.

2. Speaking of The Times on Sundays, “The Ethicist” covered a dilemma that I bet social media has made disturbingly common. A woman wrote to Appiah (that’s the Ethicist’s real name) explaining that she had an affair with a cad who, unbeknownst to her, was in a supposedly committed relationship with someone else all the while. He dumped the inquirer (and had taken up with another back-up lover), and then she discovered that her ex-‘s partner was one of her Facebook friends, though one she had never met. Now the FBF was visiting her city, and wanted to finally meet.

The question: should she tell her that her love is really a cheating heel? The Ethicist gets it right (he usually does): Of course. Why wouldn’t she? It’s the Golden Rule all the way. The fact that she also gets to stick it to the bastard is just a collateral benefit.

3. Who are those 15%? Yesterday CNN was reporting on yet another depressing poll of Joe Biden’s approval (I know, polls). This one said that “only” 15% of those polled strongly felt that the President was doing a good job. Who are these idiots? What is it that they like so much?

The lies? The dementia? The gas prices? Afghanistan? Hunter’s paintings? The flood of illegal immigrants? The College Fix found an unexpected answer: somewhere in that 15% of mouth-breathers are Brown University professors. Professor Wendy Schiller of the Brown political science department, for example, praised Biden for bringing a restoration of “stability” and “predictability” to the Presidency: “He seems to me to have a moral fortitude where he is really certain that what he’s trying to do is the right thing to do for as many people as possible.”

Ivy League professors who reason like that are teaching our best and brightest.

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1. [Insert boring double standard comment here] This was already mentioned in another comment thread today, but attention must be paid: on MSNBC, “The Cross Connection’s” host Tiffany Cross brought on African-American lawyer and pundit Ellie Mystal, who has one of the more disturbing Ethics Alarms rap sheets. Mystal finally got too extreme for “Above the Law,” as difficult as that is, and now hangs his web shingle out at the far, far Left “The Nation.”

Cross asked Ellie about the gun-rights case currently before the Supreme Court [Item#2], where the question is whether a state (New York) can forbid citizens from carrying guns outside the home. Somehow, he used the question to justify stating that white people primarily care about “using their guns on black people and getting away with it. That’s what they want. That’s what they actually are in it for.” Cross, who had the same responsibility as any TV host whose guest makes a flat-out racist statement about any race or group, didn’t object to Mystal’s despicable assertion or question it. As Sir Thomas More reminded his jurors during his trial for treason, the maxim of the law is that silence denotes consent.

Anti-white racism is more or less routine on MSNBC, but this was more flagrant than usual, especially after Cross introduced Mystal as “our audience favorite,” and her “pal.” Remember, Mystal is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, They sure did him a lot of good.

2. Speaking of that gun rights case, the questioning from the justices last week had all listeners convinced that New York’s law requiring those seeking a license to carry a handgun in public to show a “proper cause” would be struck down, as a majority of justices felt that it imposes an unreasonable restriction on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Essentially, Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, was unable to make a convincing argument that the right of a citizen to arm himself or herself for self-defense was more pressing in the home than out of it. “If the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow people to protect themselves,” Chief Justice Roberts said, “that’s implicated when you’re in a high-crime area. It’s not implicated when you’re out in the woods.” This exchange was part of the discussion over whether a permissible law could limit gun possession in “sensitive areas.” But what’s a sensitive area? And, as Justice Roberts summarized the question, “You don’t have to say, when you’re looking for a permit to speak on a street corner or whatever, that, you know, your speech is particularly important, so why do you have to show in this case, convince somebody, that you’re entitled to exercise your Second Amendment right?”

That also addresses one of the standard arguments of those who would ban semi-automatic weapons: a citizen doesn’t “need” such a powerful firearm. Yet the essence of liberty is that the citizen gets to decide what is needed in an individual case.

The guess here is that the Court will try to craft some narrow exceptions where a state can legitimately allow a gun ban, like sports stadiums. That, however, will not be an easy line to draw…

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