Major League Baseball’s absurd and self-wounding decision to lump all of the old Negro League season and career statistics in with those of its own players is impossible to defend logically or ethically. Ethics Alarms discussed this debacle of racial pandering here, three days ago. What is interesting—Interesting? Perhaps disturbing would be a better word—is how few baseball experts, statisticians, historians, players and fans are defending this indefensible decision or criticizing it. As to the latter, they simply don’t have the guts; they are terrified of being called racists. Regarding the former, there is really no good argument to be made. MLB’s groveling and pandering should call for baseball’s version of a welter of “It’s OK to be white” banners and signs at the games. Instead, both the sport and society itself is treating this “it isn’t what it is” classic like a particularly odoriferous fart in an elevator. Apparently it’s impolite to call attention to it.
Major League Baseball announced yesterday that it is now incorporating statistics of the Negro Leagues and the records of more than 2,300 black players who played during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s into its own record books. This, of course, makes no sense at all: it is The Great Stupid at its dumbest. It is the epitome of DEI fiction and manipulating history. And, naturally, when everyone wakes up and realizes how brain-meltingly stupid this was, it cannot be reversed.
Because doing that would be “racist.”
Thus, lo and behold, legendary catcher Josh Gibson (above) becomes Major League Baseball’s career leader with a .372 batting average, surpassing Ty Cobb’s .367. Gibson’s .466 average for the 1943 Homestead Grays became the season standard, followed by the immortal (I’m kidding) Charlie “Chino” Smith’s .451 for the 1929 New York Lincoln Giants. These averages surpasse the .440 by hit Hugh Duffy for the National League’s Boston team in 1894.
Gibson also becomes the career leader in slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177), moving ahead of Babe Ruth (.690 and 1.164). Gibson’s .974 slugging percentage in 1937 is now the MLB season record, with Barry Bonds’ .863 in 2001 dropping to fifth (that stat is also corrupted, but for a different reason). Bonds now trails legendary (kidding again) Mules Suttles’ .877 in 1926, Gibson’s .871 in 1943 and Smith’s .870 in 1929. Bonds’ prior OPS record of 1.421 in 2004 dropped to third behind Gibson’s 1.474 in 1937 and 1.435 in 1943.
Can you spot what’s troubling, alarming, ominous, about the photo above?
Feathers!
That’s Washington Commanders (Shhhhh: they used to be called “the Redskins”) coach Dan Quinn above wearing a T-shirt depicting two feathers hanging off the Commanders’ “W” logo. The New York Times instantly did its best Donald Sutherland (in the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” finale, when the protagonist of the movie has been revealed as completely pod-ified) imitation….
You know: cancel him, shun him, brand him a racist, get him fired.
Oooh, “unsanctioned”! How long before all of us will need permission from our enlightened, woke and empowered censors before our shirts can be safely purchased and worn without dire social consequences?
Standig got right on the scandal of the Commanders’s coach daring to wear a shirt that evoked his team’s previous nickname, which was finally changed when—you should be able to recite this by now—-“a lifetime black petty criminal overdosing on fentanyl and resisting a lawful arrest died under the knee of a bad white cop in Minnesota.” This incident obviously mandated that an NFL team in Washington D.C. capitulate to long-standing contrived protests over a team name (that was never intended as a slur nor taken as one by the vast majority of Native Americans) and a now-banned team logo designed by a prominent leader of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe.
I live in the Washington, D.C. area. Literally nobody likes the politically correct, “inoffensive” name “Commanders” except the non-football fan activists who demonstrated their power by forcing the team to change it. It’s like a scalp hanging from their belts.
In related news, Rhode Island has announced that it will join 11 other states and require all lawyers must submit to DEI indoctrination—sorry, training—in order to maintain their law licenses.
Resistance is futile.
And, may I note with pride, where else on the World Wide Web will an NFL coach’s choice of attire evoke pop culture references to “Apocalypse Now,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation”?
Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-odlCalifornia teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well.
A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.
I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.
Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”
Why do communities keep electing officials who are ignorant of the law, history, and the U.S. Constitution?
Three days ago, North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown, (Guess which party!) announced on social media that her city would host a Black-owned business fair this coming weekend at the conclusion of Black History Month. The fest would feature local black vendors, community resources, an art corner and an area for children. Food trucks and live entertainment would enliven the proceedings. It would be a fun day of promotion for all participating—black-owned only!—businesses.
Haley posted this support for mass rioting (what else could it mean?) about a month after the bad cop Derek Chauvin helped an overdosing career crook to his demise (or not) while George Floyd was over-dosing on a cocktail of drugs, including fentanyl. Three days earlier, the mass Black Lives Matter protests had begun under the unjustified assumption that Floyd’s death was a racial crime. In Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, the “mostly peaceful” protests turned to vandalism and arson. Her tweets were also among the many statements from public officials that predetermined Chauvin’s guilt, making certain that he would not get a fair trial (and he didn’t.)
To Haley’s credit, she hasn’t take down either pandering tweet (yet), but I regard it as further evidence that she is a weasel, and will say and “believe” whatever seems beneficial to her career calculations at the time.
Glenn Loury, is an economist, academic, and author who holds the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. Since he is tenured, Loury doesn’t feel constrained by the lock-step ideological conformity so many of his race (he’s black) hew to in the wake of the George Floyd Freakout. In his latest newsletter on substack, Loury writes in part,
Poetic truth “thri[ves] more by coercion than reason,” accusing all who dispute it of complicity with the ineradicably racist system that governs and has always governed the country.
That Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown is one such poetic truth; that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is, I believe, another. Despite the aptness of Steele’s term, poetic truth is no truth at all, nor is it particularly poetic. It is power masquerading as fact, brute force in the guise of knowledge. The cities that burned across the country following Floyd’s death were expressions of such a truth, as was the incarceration of the police officers convicted of a crime they did not commit. The scramble toimplement race-based policies and quotas, to elevate self-appointed gurus of “antiracism,” and to proclaim, against all evidence, the unreconstructed nature of American society were all tendrils of the same truth, which still threatens to assert itself whenever an incident emerges that fits its preferred pattern.
The cost in life, limb, and property incurred by this particular poetic truth would be bad enough. But I fear that, in the aftermath, when the embers have cooled and Chauvin’s name has been forgotten by everyone save his family, the true danger of the poetic truth of George Floyd will come to fruition.
Later in the piece, Loury quotes John McWhorter, the New York Times pundit: Continue reading →
…when it is the extreme anti-police, anti-law enforcement ideologues the Washington Post supports and slants the news to assist that are the reason shoplifting is out of control in D.C. and other cities.
The photo above that accompanies the laughable Post editorial shows the infamous CVS Pharmacy at 14th and Irving streets NW. There, in recent months, roving mobs of thieves have staged “smash and grab” mass raids resulting in the store having empty shelves and the local neighborhood having little access to needed supplies. “Shoplifters ransacked this CVS over two days early last month, and it hasn’t been restocked since,” the concerned editorial board wrote. “Weeks later, there’s still hardly anything to buy — or steal. The CVS at 14th and Irving symbolizes extreme retail theft and the harms it can engender. Distressing and inconvenient to ordinary people, threatening to businesses and livelihoods, and repellent to tourists, unchecked shoplifting can corrode a community’s spirit.”
The Post, which has never uttered a metaphorical “boo” regarding its woke, black Democratic mayor directing a huge, block letter “Black Lives Matter” message to be painted on a downtown street two years ago, is engaging in outrageous hypocrisy. “Black Lives Matter,” of course, means “Police Beware” and “Enforce the Law At Your Own Risk.” In related news, the Supreme Court today turned down Derek Chauvin’s last ditch appeal to get his unfair trial declared what it was; I’m assuming they don’t need the grief. They have to work in D.C. after all.
Yes, it’s come to this! In the town of Tangerhütte, about 2 hours east of Berlin, Germany, a daycare center that for decades has been named in honor of the most famous child murdered during the Holocaust in World War II, is removing Anne’s name.The Anne Frank Daycare Center will become the “World Explorers Daycare Center” because…wait for it!…the name makes some “migrant” parents feel “uncomfortable.” It isn’t welcoming enough, or something, now that Israel is at war with Gaza.
The daycare center’s director explains that the change from the center’s current name is now troubling “parents with migrant backgrounds” who complained that they found it “challenging” to explain Anne’s story to their children. Of course, the whole idea behind such honors is that succeeding generations remember important stories, like we remember the complex tragedy of the Civil War with statues of its many flawed participants…wait. Oops! Never mind.
City officials now insist the renaming is necessary “to celebrate the diversity” of the children attending the daycare center, as explained by Andreas Brohm, the mayor. Because of the large number of Hamas supporters in the town, Anne Frank no longer aligns with the “new focus on diversity,” Brohm said. Despite Germany’s strong support for Israel as part of its penance for launching the Holocaust under He Who Must Not Be Named, respecting diversity—Kill the Jews/ Don’t kill the Jews: Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!—elevates the feelings of many parents about the current name above “the global political situation.”
[I]f her name comes off the daycare, where does it stop? How many schools all over the world carry her name? A lot. And how quickly will that change if the local population decides that having a school named after Anne Frank sends the “wrong” message about “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? Where does this end? Given the amount of ugly anti-Semitism we have seen this weekend, and what is promised to come, I am not sure where it ends.And I’m not sure that the West has the backbone to stop it, either.
Oh, I’m absolutely sure it doesn’t! After all, a life-time petty hood died of a drug overdose under the knee of a Minnesota cop three years ago, so of course Anne Frank’s name has to go. Come on! It makes perfect sense!
The Great Stupid is all-powerful, and its reach is infinite…
Subhead: “Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful. The blowback was fierce.”
To begin with, read it all, and to the extent you can stand it, the comments. I included some trenchant quotes below, however.
Now the takeaways:
1. If there is a more vivid and depressing illustration of how far public education, teacher competence and race relations have declined since, oh, let’s say 2008, I don’t know what it could be.
2. The episode was triggered, a black student told the Post, when a white teen read “nigger” while reading “Mockingbird” to the class. The student disobeyed the teacher’s instructions to skip the slur, and “the kid looked at every Black person — there’s three Black people in that class — and smiled.” Well: a) Asking a student to read a passage of any book to the class when she feels part of the text must be skipped is incompetent. b) Of all the passages to have a student read from “Mockingbird,” choosing one that includes “nigger” smacks of deliberate sabotage. c) Presumed facial expression racism? At this rate, we should be back to “separate but equal” in no time.
3. “Freeman-Miller wondered: Did the school really have to teach Harper Lee’s classic but polarizing novel, as was mandatory for all freshmen?” There is no reason for any novel to be regarded as “polarizing,” except to those who regard literature as indoctrination tools. The educational process is to read the novel, discuss its literary merit, its context, its cultural significance, the ideas it communicates, and it why it works (or not) for a particular reader.
Ethics Alarms 