With the recent announcement of Kamala Harris as the VP pick of Joe Biden, many around these parts have been critical about the choice, in an absolute sense, with a variety of perfectly justifiable reasons to which one could point: her actions as DA of San Francisco, AG of California, and Senator from the Golden State provide plenty of fodder for her critics. In her defense, the reality of politics is that no matter who Joe Biden picked, he/she/xer was going to receive backlash from the opposition party. Others have criticized her on “relative” (purely political) grounds, and by that most people mean, turn the chess board around and play as the Democrats: what does she do to help Biden’s election prospects? The typical political calculation for Vice Presidential picks is that they’re supposed to add something to the Presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. First and foremost, she’s from a state (CA) that is already safely in the bag for him on election day. The next possibility is one of demographics: in the same way that Mike Pence (allegedly) made evangelical christians and probably some mainstream Republicans more comfortable with Donald Trump, he of the multiple marriages and pussy-grabbing reputation – and formerly a registered NY Democrat.
But before I answer the question of whether Kamala Harris, black politician with no Y-chromosome, brings home those particular demographics for Joe Biden, I think it’s important to understand how we got here. And I’m not talking about whether or not Joe Biden painted himself and his party into a corner when he declared months ago that he would choose a woman of color. I’m talking about much further back, to when Bill Clinton became the 42nd president of the United States.
It’s easy to forget that it has been just-shy of 30 years since William Jefferson Clinton ran for and won the highest political office in the United States. Thirty years. Of import for my hypothesis is what has happened to the democratic party over the course of those three decades. In short, what I believe most political pundits are missing is how completely the Clintons, particularly Hillary Clinton, took over the democratic party and its machinery in the years following the Clinton Presidency.
While conservatives will tell us that CNN has always been the “Clinton News Network,” even the most jaded of them would likely have to admit that they were surprised that she got not one, but two debate questions given to her ahead of time during the democratic primary in 2016. Of course, this Gramsci-like march through the institutions was helped by the steady emplacement of longtime Clinton pals on major news networks. Everyone knew that (former Marine) James Carville was the Clinton attack-dog when he appeared on the weekly news shows, but 25 years after Billy Jeff won, Wikileaks proved beyond cavil that major media outlets were having stories edited, and sometimes even written, by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The payrolls at most of the major media outlets still include (at least) a dozen former members of the Clinton entourage or political network. And this doesn’t even begin to describe how thoroughly Clinton loyalists pervade the Beltway bureaucracies.
One of my favorite examples of this is James Comey. There used to be an article available online from Salon (I believe) that came out in the early days of Hillary’s campaign explaining why James Comey was simply too conflicted to conduct the investigation into Hillary’s private email server. I can’t find it any more, no matter how hard I search. Memory-holed is the fact that James Comey’s early career was as an assistant U.S. attorney when Bill Clinton was President. So what? you say. Somehow Comey managed, as a managing Assistant U.S. Attorney in Richmond, to get assigned as deputy special counsel to the Senate’s Whitewater investigation in 1996. After that, he became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and was in charge of the investigation into Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich (and many others, including folks from Whitewater). The Presidential pardon power may be near-total, but somehow missed by Comey and the Press was that in addition to Rich’s original crimes, his wife donated big bucks to both the Clinton library and to – you won’t believe this – Hillary Clinton’s then Senate-campaign! “Nothing wrong here!” said Jim Comey, while he indicted Martha Stewart for securities fraud at the same time. None of this even begins to address Comey’s brother Peter being a partner at DLA Piper, the firm that both donated to the Clinton Foundation AND did the audit of the Clinton Foundation’s books. Evidently, there wasn’t a single lawyer or FBI official in all of Washington, D.C., to conduct an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server who could be considered a little less, ahem, “conflicted” or wrapped up in D.C. Swamp politics than James Comey.
None of this even begins to scrape the surface of the Clinton invasion of the DNC. So complete was the Clinton takeover of the DNC that they still haven’t recovered. See, e.g., Terry McAuliffe, who led Bill’s 1996 re-election campaign, then became head of the DNC (2001-2005), board member of the Clinton Foundation (2004), head of Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign (2008), and later governor of Virginia (2014-2018).
Now, just what in the hell does all of this have to do with Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s VP pick? Stay with me just a bit longer.
In the aftermath of Hillary’s historic election loss to Donald Trump, Herself wrote and published a book called “What Happened.” Before the book came out, I had heard from some very well-placed sources/friends in government that Bill and Hillary had an epic blowout over the manuscript. While one may be able to compare Bill’s, uh, proclivities to a serial date-rapist, his political instincts and charisma are undeniable. I was able to find one article that nicely summarizes this rift, but Ed Klein wrote a book about the entire thing that I just don’t have the time to read. The TL;DR version:
Since their fight last summer over the book, Bill’s negative feelings about Hillary’s memoir have grown even more intense as she’s used her book tour to blame her loss on Russian hackers, former FBI Director James Comey and women who didn’t vote for her.
Klein writes in his upcoming book that Bill warned Hillary a month before the election that she was losing and that she needed to campaign in the Rust Belt states. [emphasis mine]
As I noted in an article right here on March 3 (remember back in the Before-COVID times?), the problem for Hillary’s excuse-making in the aftermath of her loss was that Rust-belt counties that had twice voted to elect a black President, and were traditional locks for Team Blue, flipped to Trump over Hillary – an almost 30% swing – and those were the crucial counties in the crucial states.
Now we get to the delivery: why is Kamala Harris the choice for VP for Joe Biden? Because just like the bromide about military leaders fighting the last war, political leaders are usually fighting the last election. It might be more correct to say that politicians (and the military) fight what they think they learned and “know” about the last election (or war). As I noted above, typically a VP choice is supposed to bring home a demographic that the party thinks it needs to win the election. Kamala Harris is the democrats’ attempt to bring home the two demographics that they believe cost them the last election: women and blacks. In this case, however, democratic hopes are being pinned on a Vice Presidential candidate who couldn’t win a single state in her own primary, whose record as a public servant involves locking up a whole lot of black people, who has all the feminine charm and appeal that Hillary did, and who is widely known to have gotten her career in politics at the lap of Willie Brown.
A reasonable person might ask if the democrats really think this little of the two demographics to whom they’re making this naked appeal. The answer is a resounding “yes” – they’ve always thought this little of the intellect of blacks and women. Virtually every time Joe Biden opens his mouth (unscripted) he says something that reveals that is exactly how he thinks. And he just keeps on doing it. In the four years since Trump won Hillary lost, has the Democratic Party adapted and adopted different electoral tactics? The supposed mid-term “Blue Wave” that gave dems back the house may well have suggested that screaming racist!!1! as loudly as possible is a winning strategy.
And right on time(!) after the announcement of Kamala Harris as VP, the DNC operatives with bylines were out with the talking points about how anyone who criticizes KH is obviously both a racist and misogynist. It appears that the DNC is going to use the exact same losing strategy from Hillary’s presidential run with Kamala. And everyone knows Biden’s Veep pick is something more than the normal Veep, given Joe’s decaying mental state and the Media’s inability to hide it. The really short explanation for all of this might just be Maslow’s Law of the Instrument: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So maybe when all you have is “RACIST!!1!!” that’s what you do.
Maybe this is a winning tactic and maybe it isn’t – we’ll see in a few months – but I was curious and decided to check a metric that might indicate just how “racist” or “misogynistic” America really is. I offer it for your consideration – and perhaps hope – regarding the upcoming election.
Fifty years ago, interracial marriage was illegal in the United States. Hard to believe now, but no shit, in 1958 Richard Loving (white) and his wife (many claim was black, though she claimed she was Native American) were both sentenced to a year in jail for marrying, in violation of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute. The Supreme Court finally corrected that bit of nonsense (to which they had contributed, I should add) in 1967. Since then, what do the numbers say? Even the Guardian’s best efforts can’t spin the numbers because of the constant rise of interracial marriages over those 50 years. Even in just the last 20 years, the U.S. Census Bureau finds a steady rise in interracial marriages. And it isn’t just in Blue cities – it’s everywhere. Indeed, Kamala Harris herself is a byproduct of an interracial marriage, which makes me wonder aloud on this site again: how much do these endless cries of racism from democratic proxies like BLM, Antifa, and the MSM fall on the ears of those same crucial Rust-belt voters that went from being Obama voters to Trump voters?
My theory is that they work exactly the opposite of how they’re intended. They may play well in the party circles that Hillary, Biden, and the DNC apparatchiks travel, but two things come to my mind. First, it seems irrefutable to me that blacks were marginalized and shut out of popular American culture for many, many years, but since somewhere in the 1990’s, in everything from pop music to television to movies, blacks are vastly statistically over-represented in American culture. And I’m not saying that as a pejorative; indeed, quite the opposite. For example, make a list of the funniest/best 25 comics in US history – now note how many of those are black. It’s waaayyyyy more than 1 in 8 or 1 in 7, that’s for certain. Eddie Murphy did a bit in Raw where he absolutely ripped Italian Americans and their love of Sly Stallone as Rocky. Did it cost him professionally? Not one whit. Now make a list of the 25 best guitarists in U.S. history. My list has more than half of with “oppressed” as the best guitar players ever: Robert Johnson, Jimi, the Three Kings (Albert, B.B., and Freddie), Buddy Guy, and on and on. Now do virtually any popular U.S. sport (except those racist Canucks and their ice hockey!). You’ll begin to see my point. Do female vocalists as yet another example.
White kids from the 70s forward have grown up idolizing black men and women across a huge swath of the American cultural landscape and while those kids may be Marxists by education, they sure as hell aren’t racists. And I expect they’re being told that there are racists everywhere else, that schtick can only keep up when there are, well, some actual racists prevalent in large enough numbers to keep up the appearance. Hence the constant fake hate-crimes that the MSM keeps trying to sell the public on.
Second, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my best friend’s younger brother around race some years back. For context, my best friend is a (white) thirty-year cop, and – I feel compelled to note – perhaps the best possible human being by constitution and abilities to be a police officer. His younger brother – I’ll call him Karl – had a child with a mixed-race girl (black and white parents) when both were quite young. He was “into” black pop culture from the time he was very young and even had an invite to be a backup dancer for MC Hammer’s show waaaayyyy back in the day (yeah, no kidding – white boy could dance.) Anyway, we were talking about race issues once and Karl quipped to me: “Racism? For my generation? Bro, the best golfer in the world is black and the best rapper is white. We’re over it.”
Submitted for your consideration.
Hey, Broke-Cheese, where you at?
Donno
I too remember when racism was essentially dead in popular culture. Not long after the Dems went full identity politics, i.e. scab picking. Divide and conquer. I cant believe how successful they have been. I guess I had too much faith in my fellow Americans and underestimated the appeal of tribalism.
So much this. Makes me quite sad too.
It’s like they looked at Yugoslavia in the 90s and said, “hey, that seems like a good idea!”
Rwanda
Car guys I have a mystery.
My car has been sitting around for weeks on end. Today I put air in the tires using a cigarette port powered compressor (so the main batteries still had a charge), But the remote to unlock the doors was working. At first, I figured the battery in the key had died. So I got the spare, and that one also didn’t work. So I started to wonder if there was an electrical issue. I drove the car to a different parking spot about two car lengths behind me. After this, both keys worked to remotely unlock and lock the car.
What gives? (note, this is a hybrid, so it does not have a standard battery configuration)
*Stands outside of aircraft making an “A” with arms*
AVIONICS TROUBLE-SHOOTER!!!
Every electrical experience I have ever had only reinforces the notion that “gremlins” is the answer. Or voodoo.
I think it was the spider who spun another perfect web between the sideview mirror and the driver’s door.
One of my instructors in MATC once told us that, sometimes, electronics are just weird and there’s no rational explanation for the fault.
That is an old philosophy problem used to illustrate how that sentiment is nonsense, but I can sure see the temptation. Had a couple of glitches in my Jeep. I couldn’t find them, two electrical mechanics couldn’t find them. I think we should put Ozy’s theory of gremlins in the ‘rational explanation’ column.
There is, there are just so many variables that finding the true cause may be more than the whole system is worth.
It’s just a machine. I can never figure out why some things appear arbitrarily and then disappear. Hope it never happens again or if it does it stays ‘broke’ and the mechanic will change all the computer stuff, add $300 and your bill will be under a grand but the key will work. He probably used some air to blow the spider out, checked the thermostat.
I had a Chrysler van that I probably should’ve taken to a priest rather than amechanic. The damn thing would decide that the wipers, all the idiot lights and the open door dinger should go of for no particular reason and not stop. The only solution was to pull the wiper fuse and hope it would shut up at some point. It was maddening. I crraweled all over that thing with a miltimeter trying figure it out. My in laws spent several thousand on mechanics troubleshooting. So yeah, I settled on gremlins or malevolent spirts as the mos likely cause.
Volvos could be corrected when they had electrical freakouts by turning the key in the drivers door lock several times. Reset the ECU or some shit.
Lol… That sounds like a cheat code to a NES game. I never found the correct ritual for that damned thing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pzKArTR8A7Q
Gaia hates you because it’s not fully EV Solar, you planetary rapist!
I picked it because it was comfortable to drive.
If the properly powered cars were more comfortable, I’d have gone with one of them.
Besides, making lithium ion batteries is a filthy process, not to mention what goes into making solar panels.
Keyless entry and ignition? So you finally moved it with a physical key and the remotes started working again?
They’ve generally go some kind of “rolling code” on the transmitters to help prevent theft. I don’t fully get the algo as the math is above my paygrade, but it is one way. The remotes and the codes they send re-pair after successful uses and the codes “roll” after every use.
So it’s possible for whatever reason (i.e. another Ford in the area with multiple start attempts) the thing kept get unauthorized hits for ignition/entry and the thing disabled keyless until a proper physical authorization.
That’s just a guess, however.
No, it’s only got keyed ignition.
As for whether or not other fobs calling other fords over several weeks might cause a problem – I don’t know.
I do know there are other Fords in the neighborhood, and mine did sit for weeks without me entering the vehicle. So I can’t rule it out.
IIRC, the system doesn’t work that way. They’re designed to be able to sit in a crowded parking lot for hours, ignoring the codes for other cars.
I believe the only way to unsynt the fob is to overrun the sync buffer, which is usually 256 codes ahead of the last accepted command. Mash a button 300x while out of range, and you have to resync.
That wouldn’t have happened to the spare, it was in a drawer. The one on my keychain, maybe.
yeah, and it doesn’t sound like you had to resync (an involved process)
Did you try plugging the compressor back in and seeing if the problem happened again? Was the compressor still plugged in when you had the issue the first time?
My intuition says interference from the cig lighter may have blocked the signal from being properly received. Maybe there’s a capacitor that wasnt properly isolated from the receiver.
Squirrels?
You’re car might have been put into a low battery consumption state by not running it for so long. All of the electronics have some current draw when off and some systems are constantly in operation like a receiver for your fob.
By starting the car you perform POR or power on reset of the ECU and other systems. This could have reset the “sleep mode” state that the car was in.
This sleep mode is used to prevent the battery from dying when the car is idle for a very long time.
And yet, I was able to plug in their air compressor and run it normally off the car’s electical prior to starting the engine (and the keys were still noncooperative remotely until I moved the vehicle)
The battery was not necessarily so low that it could not turn over the car, but the car could have been in a low consumption state for all systems except ignition, lights, etc. The cig lighter is usually directly connected to the 12V battery without any keyed relay or switch, so it should behave normally.
If his generation is “over it”, why is it the only topic college-age kids seem to care about? Nostalgia?
“The demoralized can only see one thing” – Yuri Bezmenov
Their heads have been pumped full of shit, that’s why. Also, they desperately need a dragon to slay – there aren’t really left so they have to create an imaginary dragon. Besides, real dragons are dangerous, scary motherfuckers.
yep, this. people need purpose, and the millennials and gen z kids don’t have purpose.
I may be off-base here, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that one particular sub-group of that generation gets its voice over-amplified over the rest.
I hope you’re right, but my experience with my Millennial cohort is that a ton of them unquestioningly support the left and all this identity politics BS.
There’s a racist under my bed. Another one is hiding in the downstairs closet.
Your cats get into your closet?
Hope he meant the Beastie Boys,
Good Read, Ozy,
That’s how I read it.
Ok, Boomer.
Well, it certainly didn’t mean Eminem.
I’m not a Day over 57, Really
BTW – Happy B-Day, my friend. Hope you enjoy it.
happy birthday!
Happy Birthday youngster!
The selection of Kamala was when Biden lost the election.
I think it might have been the selection of Biden, but I couldn’t argue with you. 😉
Seriously, when I heard she was the choice, I was like, “Wait – wut?!” All the pandering for the black vote and you pick her as your WoC? The woman who called Biden a racist and said she believed Tara Reade?? That’s really Team Blue’s choice?
Who could they have picked that would have fared better? Bernie would have been a bust. The DNC couldn’t get their Lincoln project friends to join to push Bernie. Biden was/is their best shot.
Kamala, like you say, was absolutely horrible.
Klobuchar. Two-Scoops barely lost here in 2016 and has a great chance this year, particularly with all the bullshit riots and an insane governor.
She would have delivered Minne for sure.
Pull a Trump. Select an unknown cipher for a running mate.
Surely, there is a black, female executive working for a Fortune 500 that could have been talked into running as VP>
That would have been an excellent choice!
Jim Webb?
What you see now is the best they have got. Even for a bunch of Pols they are cringey. If you think back on the Dem primary Creepy Joe really was head and shoulders above the Betos, Swalwells and, MaryAnns. What a freak show.
That brainless idiot Obama at least had charm, Fat. Now let’s have a pushup contest.
I think Biden had a slim chance for a small window of time just by being “not the guy who was president during the pandemic”. Because people are shaved apes, Trump would be fairly or unfairly attached to the current problem and as voting is a form of sympathetic magic, the subconscious would lead them to vote for Biden as a ritual to end the pandemic.
But Biden fucked it up by a) opening his mouth and b) selecting Harris, of all people.
Before the selection of Harris, I bet OMWC that Trump would win in a landslide (I think defined as 10 percent more of popular vote or greater). I like my odds more and more everyday.
You think he wins popular by more than 10%?
I have a hard time with the Dems getting less than 45% of the vote, no matter how terrible their candidates are.
45% of actual voters, or 45% of actual voters+fraudulent votes?
*insert Mitt Romney gaffe here*
I don’t think all of the 47% who don’t pay taxes actually vote.
neither do all of the 53% that do pay
Well, that and the rapidly progressing senility.
Outside of maybe Tulsi, I’m not sure who would have been a demonstrably better choice though. They all had serious warts. Honestly, he should have tried to talk Michelle O into it.
Oof. Yeah i forgot Tulsi was an option.
Though i don’t know if she really would have fared that well, since… You know… She didn’t do hot in the primary.
That’s why I said “maybe”. I guess we overestimate her because, to a libertarian, she’s far less repugnant than the rest of that crew.
Picking Tulsi was impossible as long as Clinton has any influence in the party.
Michelle O might be more toxic than Hilary. And as things have gone since March, anyone from Chicago has less credibility than Harris.
Hell, he could have pushed for Oprah as a running mate.
I swear I saw a headline from early in her career touting her as the first Indian in some office or other.
Select an unknown cipher for a running mate.
They kept running third and fourth tier possiblities up the flagpole, and every one had some disqualifying problem in their background.
I thought it was when he quoted Mao to explain his choice?
What gives? (note, this is a hybrid, so it does not have a standard battery configuration)
Next time, don’t park in the Faraday cage.
Struggle sessions are so hot right now.
This is all totally normal. Gee, I wonder why normal people will vote for a guy like Trump who they don’t actually like very much? It’s such a riddle.
Trump needs to run these clips along with Senile Joe and Horizontal Harris comments supporting these actions.
I’m gonna have to fact check you Ozy. Biden is not in a deteriorating state. Didn’t you see his speech that was read and pre-recorded and how he didn’t have his brain fall out? Proof that calling him demented was stupid.
But just like you Crazy Trumptards belive Antifa is violent, despite no self identifying antifa member having been reported as a participant in a murder for the last 25 years, you can’t believe the truth when it’s right there smacking you in the face. This is because you are dumb and backwards.
Solid effort; I give it a “B.”
Damnit, I deserve a B+.
Great work on the article Ozy.
B+??
Sure. I think Gumption is worth something. Just be happy i’m not Demanding an A-
I know the Dems are touting his acceptance speech as “live”, but is there any independent basis for concluding that it actually was?
Never have I looked forward to H&H like I am now.
Some rightwinger on Twitter claims during the speech Biden had no watch and was wearing a lapel pin, then when he came out to join Harris and wave at the fireworks he had a watch and no label pin.
He got absolutely swarmed with reporters insisting that wasn’t true.
One of my instructors in MATC once told us that, sometimes, electronics are just weird and there’s no rational explanation for the fault.
My experience has been that when it’s doing something which makes absolutely no sense, a bad ground is involved.
Can confirm.
/Triumph owner.
Submitted for your consideration.
Fantastic job, Ozy!
I had no idea where the fuck you were headed, but it was a pleasant surprise.
I’ve said it many times, racism exists, it will always exist, but the US is the least racist place on the planet.
Dems screwed the pooch on this one.
I’m gonna have to fact check you Ozy. Biden is not in a deteriorating state. Didn’t you see his speech that was read and pre-recorded and how he didn’t have his brain fall out? Proof that calling him demented was stupid.
He could have recited that speech while riding a bicycle!
Fine article, Ozymandias.
Thank you, Homple!
They’re always good.
I’ve been a fan of Greg Ellifritz and his awesome articles for some years. Now that he’s retired from policing, I’m detecting a little more salt in his already-salty writing.
https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/traveling-to-mexico-during-a-global-pandemic
Interesting. I wonder how long the Mexican tourist industry can survive at 30% capacity and 40%-off hotel rates – yikes. And the oppressive plague measures sound like a major turn-off. I don’t like travel enough to put up with that crap.
Yeah, I find the strategic thinking interesting to analyze… The choice of Kamala is one that still baffles me. I don’t get it. I know Biden had painted himself into a corner, but I think Susan Rice was a better pick than Kamala. Time will tell, but i think one thing Trump has been trying to do for the last 4 years is break up the African American voting bloc for the DNC, and either they Dems are terrified, or don’t believe he can pull it off.
I have heard a theory that they’re a sacrificial slate. The DNC expects a loss and are gearing up for colossally ugly shenanigans, and don’t want to tar their more viable future candidates rendering them unelectable.
But that’s just a theory. They could be looking at the poor polling of the riots and going “we need a Law and Order Candidate, Stat!”
This. Groper Joe is Bob Dole circa 1996.
I think Susan Rice was a better pick than Kamala
Once they limited themselves to 7% of the talent pool, that pool got predictably shallow. Rice and Harris were probably the least bad picks, but Rice has her own baggage that Trump would feast on – Benghazi, and a big player in setting up the soft coup attempt. Hard to say which would have been “better”, IMO.
Plus Kamala is campaign tested. I don’t believe Rice has ever run for any public office.
White kids from the 70s forward have grown up idolizing black men and women across a huge swath of the American cultural landscape and while those kids may be Marxists by education, they sure as hell aren’t racists.
My dad fits this to a T. He has always had conservative political opinions, but he has been fairly even keel and detached about them until now. These days, he’s fucking pissed at constantly being called a racist. People like my dad saw 40 years of racial healing evaporate overnight.
Almost EVERYONE – every white kid playing football in the 80s – absolutely adored Walter Payton. It didn’t matter who your team was, Walter Payton was THE. FUCKING. MAN. He was beloved even by even his fiercest rivals. I don’t know about his private life, but he was seen as the embodiment of class, hard work, excellence, you name it.
I could probably go through all of American culture in the 80s and I daresay most of the “Greatest _________” of that era were black – fill in the blank with almost any profession that had significant public following. Pick music, comedy, sports, television (Bill Cosby, anyone?) and I can’t think of an area in which black Americans were not front and center, without it being jammed down your throat. No government office of diversity had to mandate the Cosby Show be huge. Or that Whitney Houston, New Edition, Boys 2 Men, Bobby Brown, LL Cool J, Oprah, and on and on dominate their respective endeavors.
And now look where we are.
Well, I think it’s fair to say they’ve been pretty underrepresented in rockabilly bands.
But otherwise, yeah. Diversity happens, man.
Rockabilly? *spits*
They are not underrepresented in bluegrass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYuqnUs9gP8
Uncle John Scruggs, Cedric Watson, The Ebony Hillbillys, …offhand that is all I can think of but there is a long history and deep tradition of black female banjo players.
Bo Diddly?
Considering that rockabilly is basically Mel McDaniel and… well… Mel McDaniel, I can see why.
*blink*
*blink*
It’s like I don’t even know you man.
Bo Jackson – the guy was literally a walking talking demi-god in the 80’s.
Bo knew
Me too. I went through grade school in the 70s in the shadow of the civil rights movement and MLK. All we had to do was treat everyone fairly, not discriminate based on race, and we could put the whole thing behind us. Since then I served in the military, attended schools, and worked beside people from every race and nationality without ever once pre-judging one of them on race. But now I’m a racist with special privileges.
Like your dad, I feel like I stuck out my hand in friendship and had it slapped away. That hasn’t turned me into a raging racist but it has soured me on anyone and everyone who wants to lecture me on my sins. They can seriously fuck-off, I’m done with the race-baiting grifters.
it started with Rodney Kind and Reginald Denny…….
King,
Through their lean years in the 80’s and 90’s, race-hucksters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton kept the grift going. Often with outright lies and fabrications like the Tawana Brawley fake rape.
In about 1965, in France, I sat in a class with black, Asian and white NCOs, the instructor was 1LT who explained the SC decision very well and very carefully. In summary he said just because the SC says so doesn’t make it so but everyone will be assigned to units in the US, according to needs and race will never again be a consideration. AFAIK that became the military rule.
I live in a rural MN township, in the last census there was one Asian. No one cares, never has. Money all has the same color.
Gold or gtfo with your green shit.
Autists and goldbugs are thick on the ground here.
Rai, you metallite.
Money all has the same color.
Ha! Someone who has never seen federal spending up close.
Given that “blacks” are roughly 12% of the population, I would say that they have been hugely over-represented in popular culture since the 70’s. Even then they dominated most professional sports, music, comedy (Richard Pryor), and were starting to get major roles in acting.
Do Jews next.
I think phrase is how WW2 started.
I did, once. It didn’t work out, but she was really pretty.
HS crush on a Jewish chick. Wow, those curves and a rack that would make Q drool. Later found out the mix- Cuban mom and English Jewish dad. But she was dating a senior and then played for the other team so alas.
Nice.
Isn’t that also Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s background?
Was it Jamie-Lynn Sigler?
I was unaware of that, but there are some similarities and that explains it.
No, wasn’t Ms Sigler.
If you want to date Jamie-Lynn, best be Italian. Sicilian, by preference. But not a fucking moron like that Jackie Jr.
Clearly underrepresented in comedy.
Neil Diamond, Mel Brookes Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner
Hows that HM?
Just a start!
My point is that Jewish-Americans are, what, 2 percent of the population? But their representation in entertainment and influence on our popular culture is way larger than their numbers. Why? In part, due to historical trends in Europe in which Jews were not allowed to work in many professions considered “honorable,” like farming or soldiering, they could only find employment in trades like acting and singing, which were culturally considered at the same level as, say, prostitutes or gong-farmers. Thus, for many Jewish immigrants, that was the trade they possessed when they came here. Just like how the mid-West was once full of German grocers and butchers. The long tradition of Jews in entertainment aligned favorably with the beginning of mass media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thus they were uniquely positioned to take advantage of the birth of this new industry. Which I find hilarious when cretins breathlessly moo about Jews controlling the media. Well, your dumb ass should have thought about that before you prevented them from working as farmers or joining craftsmen guilds.
Because we are all to blame for what people in the past did.
Not “you” you, bro.
Heh. I knew what you meant, but its not often that i can Libertarian Shame HM, you’ll have to forgive me for not letting the chance slip by.
And musicians.
Robin Williams: I was at a German talk show once (and they asked) “Why do you think there isn’t so much comedy in Germany?” And I said: “Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?”
I was working on a long form article on this exact subject, but I’ll just cut to the chase and put it in a comment. Here’s the thesis:
In every competitive endeavor – indeed, in the most brutally competitive endeavors – blacks succeed at rates that are statistically aberrant. For example, in music, either you can play the guitar or you will be at home. No one will listen to a singer sing off-key because of a “curve” on singing that allows shitty black singers a leg up on white ones who can sing in tune. No one will pay money to see a black comedian who isn’t funny simply because of the “historical disadvantages” blah blah blah.
Conversely, the two areas where blacks seem to lag (in statistically aberrant numbers) behind their white counterparts are the two areas where the govt steps in to mandate they get a little extra help: business (i.e. wealth creation and accretion) and education.
Strange coincidence, eh?
The TL;DR version would be that blacks* excel when competition is at its most intense and fail miserably when treated as “less than” – and govt steps in to tip the scales.
*I also suspect this result would obtain for any race. I don’t know if the numbers would be identical, but I strongly suspect that if white proggie liberals treated Chinese/Japanese/Koreans the same way they treat blacks, we would have a permanent underclass of Asians getting abortion on demand, unable to accrue wealth because they were told they needed special help to open a business, the minimum wage had been raised to keep them out of the workforce, etc.
I think it would strongly depend on the amount of immigration occurring into those communities. From Amy Chua’s work, we know that West Indian and Nigerian immigrant families, for example, succeed at greater rates than the average American population. However, the rate of immigration from Africa is not large enough to have a discernible impact on the current African-American culture. On the other hand, Asian-Americans haven’t had 400 years of history that evolved separated from their origin countries; Asian-American communities still regularly absorb a large wave of recent immigrants that bring their culture with them. Particularly, the Confucian values of hard work, delayed gratification, and extreme importance placed on education. The constant infusion of new cultural blood would do a lot to offset the damage done by Progressive social engineering.
The three African engineers I work with (born in Africa) don’t seem to have much interest in integrating in to current African-American culture.
Yeah, there is often a split like that for the 1st generation. It’s the 2nd generation where things get interesting. My dad is West Indian, and he, my uncle, and aunt certainly did integrate, but it was the 60s and early 70s, so can you blame them?
Well, having grown up in the 60’s and 70s’, I bought into that whole Age of Aquarius BS. I just assumed the whole world would be fully integrated and happy by the time I was old.
Fuck if I can figure out how we got from there to here.
“Particularly, the Confucian values of hard work, delayed gratification, and extreme importance placed on education.”
Can not be emphasized enough.
Confucius was a Calvinist?
Wait – weren’t we just told that is whiteness, through and through?
However, the rate of immigration from Africa is not large enough to have a discernible impact on the current African-American culture.
My third-hand understanding is that African immigrants generally want nothing to do with African-American culture.
Interesting.
I think I disagree that music and sports are any more brutally competitive than most businesses, though.
The black middle class is disproportionately represented in pubsec jobs, where results and “competition” are least present, and affirmative action/quotas have been pushed the very hardest.
Not sure what to make of it.
Around the time I was born, it used to be Italian and Irish middle class disproportionately represented in pubsec jobs. Those aren’t necessarily patronage jobs, a teacher still has to get a degree for example. So they aren’t as generationally-damaging as direct dependency.
The problem for blacks is that affirmative action came in at roughly the same time as the Great Society programs. Those welfare programs sucked in a lot of blacks and rural whites into a cycle of direct dependency. I don’t know how you systematically break that cycle – “workfare” in the 90’s seemed like a start but the unions like SEIU seem to have increased their clout because of it and unions have a tendency to restrain labor supply.
That has more to do with class than race. There was a time when the slovenly Italians excelled, and before them the filthy Irish. When those groups stopped looking at pop culture avenues as their meal ticket, they no longer dominated pop culture.
My point being that pop culture is a somewhat useless yardstick. I do agree that in the other areas where government pretends to help, they do more to retard progress than enable it. The older I get, the more it looks like that is by design.
I dunno. I’ve seen some shit on Comedy Central that would be to differ. Tell me that the only reason people are not getting up and walking out of this shit is not because they engaging in some racial struggle session.
Good read! DC is one of the most fucked-up, dysfunctional places on earth. I can’t wait to cash out & scram.
If anyone would know about broadcasting false information…
“It is distracting to have a lot of false information broadcast,” she said. “I think it’s distracting to us as broadcasters doing this because we feel a responsibility to correct stuff. “And it is awkward to have to interrupt, and it makes us make hard decisions about what we’re not showing so that we can clean some stuff up that was otherwise said that people might otherwise believe is factually true. I will just say personally I feel like there’s no clean, easy, and perfect way to do it, but we do our best.”
“And my priority at least is to make sure that we broadcast as little false medical information as possible, and we had a bunch of that tonight around COVID — not only lying about the president’s record, I don’t know what Don, Jr. meant when he said the president has delivered ‘P, P and E’ to our brave frontline workers,” Maddow continued. “It’s just PPE, but that didn’t get delivered in a hurry. The president making some false claims about therapeutics and immunity and other things about COVID that just makes me — it’s really bad on a night with this many people watching to still be broadcasting false information to a country where we’ve lost 176,000 Americans already. And the last thing we need is more lies and misinformation about what this virus is, how it works, and how you can or can’t protect yourself from it. So I’m — I get — I feel that acutely, but technically they did — they did pull it off.
Obvious slip suggests that the speech was at least live but THAT is what concerns you? Everyone knows what was meant.
But I’ll grant Jr did look like he was on something. And Kim G. was way over the top. Maybe her next speech could be her as a cheerleader doing a routine or something.
Well don’t feel obliged on my part.
““And it is awkward to have to interrupt, and it makes us make hard decisions about what we’re not showing so that we can clean some stuff up that was otherwise said that people might otherwise believe is factually true.”
“…a responsibility to correct stuff”
That is one hell of an admission, honey.
Sorry to OT, But the headline was too good to pass up.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/25/trump-republican-convention-suburban-women-401449
But are BLM’s scare tactics working on Women in the Suburbs?
Not to mention the scare tactics of governors and teachers unions.
From the dead thread’s link to a Michelle Malkin tweet. I like this guy’s thinking, and once the emotional appeal of cracking marxists’ skulls fades, the reality of the shit sandwich remains.
https://twitter.com/christotampabay/status/1298027502359781379?s=21
Do read his replies down, especially what would happen if the would be commies were deported to China for Hong Kongers.
The rioters are the best advertisement against Democrats I can imagine. Why would Trump stop them while they are destroying the Democrats who run every place they have trashed? After the election, sure, fun time will be over and adults will have to step in.
Great article.
A reaction to the section on proportional representation of prominent/famous black people in arts, sports, etc.: When you grow up and live where I do, one sees your note about proportion, and that it’s greater than “…1 in 8 or 1 in 7…” and subconsciously goes “Huh? What are you talking about? It’s like 1 in 2. If you don’t believe me, let’s just go on a drive or go to the store.” So looking at media, people like me are “yeah, seems natural”.
Now, being all informed and intellectual, I get that your number is right writ large and mine’s wrong. But when all of your observations in your formative years (and then beyond, but especially formative) tell you something, it gets kinda hard-coded in.
Adding to that thought: it really struck me when I went through a 6-year deep dive into playing guitar. Blacks are so vastly overrepresented among the best guitar players ever that I kept wondering about it. When I stumbled onto the same thing in comedy, I had a feeling there was something larger at play but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I thought about singing – like, do “greatest female vocalists in US history” and you’ll probably be close to guitar numbers. Of course, sports was always there and we had Jimmy-the-Greek explanations, so I kept wondering if a particular cultural affinity might explain what I was seeing.
Piano was the thing that finally made me realize it might have to do with competition and nothing else. Piano is the ultimate “white guy” instrument and yet, within a few decades of the end of the Civil War, there were great black players and composers, culminating probably in Scott Joplin’s ragtime, which begat a host of amazing black pianists and entire schools of playing (like stride) that you can clearly trace. Fats Waller and the entire jazz scene produced scores of pianists of incredible talent. Count Bassie eventually gets us to Art Tatum, perhaps the greatest American pianist ever (even noted by classical pianists like Horowitz as being of unmatched talent).
All of which combined to destroy for me the notion that blacks needed special treatment to succeed. It’s utter horseshit. And it all derives from the same proggie notion, the worst form of racism of all: the soft racism of low expectations. Because they’ve gotten a big chunk of that population – and whites, as well – to buy off on it. It’s insidious and demeaning.
“Piano is the ultimate “white guy” instrument ”
Nah, it’s clarinet.
Really? You ever priced pianos vs. clarinets? Tell me which one a black family could afford more easily and have a place to put it.
As the proud father a bassoon player I’m going with bassoon.
My son’s student bassoon cost $6k. You can get a new “spinet” piano for $1k. Used they can be found for “just take out of the room” prices.
The question is if a struggling family of any color has the place and ability to get into their home.
I might concede to the bassoon… or french horn.
The cost of a free piano is moving and tuning. That’s not cheap, but it’s a sight cheaper than a bassoon.
I should add that $6k was used as well!
And those costs are practically eliminated with modern electric pianos.
Do not like. I don’t like playing the organ either. I like the firmness of a piano key.
some of the costly electrics have pretty good recreation of the piano key feel. not perfect, but good.
I just don’t see how hitting an electric key harder will make the note louder.
I don’t play piano.
But I do know that sensors can be very simple (on or off) or quite complex (measuring speed or force).
So it is quite possible to build a keyboard where you are sensing the force applied to the key as well as when the key is merely pushed.
I do play and have a Yamaha upright that has silent technology, meaning that I can plug in headphones and push a pedal down and play to my heart’s content and no one can hear a thing. It is truly miraculous. Under the keys (at night) you can see the red light from what amounts to a field of lasers that sense any movement (and acceleration) of the keys to produce perfect ‘feel.’
I had a nice electric when I was in China that had pretty good feel, but it’s still not the same as the moving hammers.
I also still have the DGX-660 I first bought to start learning 4 years ago. The kids enjoy all of the sounds it can make.
I just don’t see how hitting an electric key harder will make the note louder.
There are two main components to that. Velocity sensitivity (how fast the key is depressed), and aftertouch (how hard the key is depressed). Velocity sensitivity can be achieved with two simple on/off buttons that are depressed at different points in the keystroke. Measure the time elapsed between the two buttons being pressed, and you can calculate velocity.
Aftertouch can be measured using force sensitive resistors. The harder you push, the more the resistance changes.
Some of the difference in classes of keyboards is between how many gradations in force/velocity can be translated into differences in volume/tenor (i.e. how many recordings they bothered to do of a real piano) and how well the keys are weighted to match a real piano.
Everything trashy said
For the ultimate in electronic mimicry of a physical instrument
https://www.roland.com/us/products/v-piano_grand/
Lot’s of assumptions there, Ozy.
Nearly every church has a piano. And pianos were very common instruments in the 19th century, used ones didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Shit I just got a flyer in the mail about 100 or so used pianos for sale – and I don”t even play piano!
The poorest families had violins instead of pianos. There were probably more great black fiddle players than great black piano players, but the fiddle players are all forgotten because the piano music appealed to the northern audiences more.
I grew up with an electric organ in the house – cheaper than a piano. One of my sisters took to it like a duck to water, but she practiced half the time at church because it was easier to concentrate, nobody bothering her, etc.
I know, they’re built in. It’s the problem with making a very broad generalized statement of principle. It’s also worse with this crowd: there’s so many pedants that you can’t get past the quibbling to discuss the validity of the original point being made.
The point is not whether piano is THE MOST WHITE INSTRUMENT EVAH!!! The point is that blacks were enslaved up through the late 1800s and the current legal and political understanding of the consequences of that is that blacks need “special” assistance as a result of it.
I am providing counterexamples across a huge swath of American culture that undermine that notion and the piano is simply one (more) example of that. Whether it’s the “whitest” of instruments isn’t really that important. I should think it sufficient for my point that there were something pretty close to zero black, professional pianists in America in, say, 1870. A few decades later, Joplin invents ragtime and then exposes the public to it at the Chicago World’s Fair (1893). (This also is sufficient to step around HM’s comment about “corporate white” music adopting black music – that may be true for 1993, but it sure as hell wasn’t in 1893). Joplin realistically could have had zero expectation of commercial success as a first generation free black man composing on what I believe would be fair to call (then) a predominantly “white person’s” musical instrument.
What’s there to discuss? Without a point of disagreement, what’s left?
The mandolin is pretty fucking white.
And Tundra swoops in with yet another pedantry.
My hat is off to you sir.
My brother had a piano AND a clarinet. And we had free lunches… it’s do-able.
Clearly you haven’t looked at the freshman class of any leading music school in piano.
Piano and violin are dominated by the CCP.
Blacks have a strong presence in cello. Don’t know why, but they do.
Pipe organ is ultimate white guy instrument, and keytar, definitely keytar.
Accordion?
Nope, accordion is extremely multi-ethnic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH2eRRh4Bls
Bagpipes?
Never give up. Never surrender.
“I think that [Republicans] have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting. They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the Electoral College on Election Day,” Clinton claimed. “So we’ve got to have a massive legal operation, and I know the Biden campaign is working on that.” …
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually, I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton concluded as Palmieri raised her fists in the air.
Buckle up America, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances
Huh. So just like a replay of 2016 when Trump was excoriated for being noncommittal in advance about accepting the election results but crickets when the other side flat out didn’t and doesn’t accept them.
I, for one, can’t wait for Biden’s tell-all memoir of the campaign titled
What HappenedWhere Am I?.I think What Just Happened? would also work.
“I Need My Tendie Nub-nubs,” would be a hit.
Speaking of Clinton pulling the strings from the sidelines… what, exactly, does she DO now and why is anyone paying attention?
//Loading…
Find out tomorrow, if SF is in the mood (that Cthulhu-esque mood of madness and blood-splatter).
The counter (that I have seen ad nauseam) to the argument that blacks are overrepresented in entertainment and sports is that they are performing for white people and therefore, still oppressed because white people think that’s all they’re good for. I have seen the phrase “dancing monkeys” used.
I have heard the same. Explaining that growing up poor can put a fire in your belly or that smart people take the path most likely to lead to success. When, and it will, the economic disparity between blacks and whites closes we will see far less overrepresentation of blacks in certain industries. That will only happen when blacks stop supporting the political party that has actively destroyed their families and communities for decades.
It’s not just supporting the political party. It’s also rejecting the self-destructive aspects of the urban culture.
Your community can’t get anywhere if success is categorically rejected as a forfeiture of your identity
That party created that problem with the welfare system and they did it deliberately.
I dunno if I put 100% of the blame on LBJ. He certainly took advantage of an opportunity, but the themes from Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals echo in my head. Urban black culture inherited greatly from British highlands culture, which has dealt with similar issues for centuries.
When surveying the history of American popular music from the early 20th century onwards, these seems like an odd claim to me. It could be argued that Scott Joplin is basically the father of almost every genre of pop music today, from jazz to Broadway to rock ‘n roll to blues to pop country. It can all be traced back to ragtime. And before that, bluegrass, folk, and even Sousa marches, evolved in a milieu where Scot-Irish folk musical traditions came into contact with West African musical traditions in Appalachia and gave birth to “mixed” musical babies. (It also gave us the mixed culinary tradition of barbecue). Barbershop developed in, you guessed it, Black barbershops. Etc. etc.
While there has been a long-running corporate tradition of taking African-American musical styles and repacking it in a more palatable form through white artists; there has also been a long tradition of white cats just down with the scene, getting excited about the music and wanting to play it. In the 1930s and 40s, a ton of white folks rushed to Harlem to listen to Bird, Monk, Calloway, etc., my grandparents included. Sure, Goodman was the first cat to play Carnegie Hall, but he had musicians from Count Baise’s and Duke Ellington’s orchestras up there with him, as well as the fact that his own band was racially integrated. White people listening to swing and jazz during that era were well aware of the black artists of that time. That’s why Bugs Bunny characterized them in ways that might be eyebrow-raising today.
Yes. I had to re-read Ozy and your comment. I’d agree that blacks of have had an outsized effect on popular music for much of the 20th century onwards.
What’s also fascinating is how in turn musical tradition in America spread globally.
Accurate or not, I love the idea of rock n’ roll tanking the Soviet Union.
And maybe in the context of HM’s comment, it wasn’t an outsized effect, really. It was adding to the mix – pushing it forward.
I love watching old footage of Sly’s TV appearances and concerts. Always plenty of white dudes there, soaking up the funk.
As Sly told us: “Don’t hate the black Don’t hate the white If you get bit Just hate the bite.”
Although Sly was allegedly threatened by the Black Panthers for having white dudes in the band. So there’s that.
I’ll still go with the evening drama “Dallas” helping the downfall.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hotel-dallas-shows-how-tv-865438#:~:text=Dallas%20was%20the%20only%20U.S.,and%20its%20stars%20folk%20heroes.
That’s a good take on the subject, but I think it goes back to the Olde Country, and traditional Polka, most of the european people had individual styles,
it dawned on me listening to Norteno in SoCal one day,
I like Polka
HM – you and I don’t disagree. I just picked the 1990s as a qualifier because of television and other forms of mass entertainment. See my comment above about Joplin. Indeed, Scott Joplin is one archetype of my point about black success vs. affirmative action. Joplin was born just a handful of years after the Emancipation Proclamation, yet he goes on to be one of the most influential piano composers of his time (and of all time, really). WHYCOME HE NO NEED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?!??!
Joplin begat Waller, Bassie, and many, many others, all of whom were at the top of a profession – music – which is ruthlessly egalitarian in its competition. You either can play the horn or you cannot. You can either hit a jump shot or you don’t make it very far (unless you’re Shaq, of course). You are either funny or you get booed off stage. You can either run the rock or you will be replaced by someone else who can and no coach who wants to keep his job gives a fuck about your skin color.
In all of these endeavors, blacks succeed wildly. To me this destroys the entire theory that underlies Affirmative Action. The whole “systemic racism” and “historically disadvantaged” falls apart when examined. What it really is, in my mind, is cover for the worst racism of all – the soft racism of low expectations. The problem is that it’s worked wonderfully to brainwash a big chunk of that population into believing that what they need is Dems to put their hand on the scales. THAT – they claim – is the only way for blacks to succeed. It’s racist as all get out and the two places govt doe sit is where blacks lag behind in statistically significant numbers. Go figure.
I am an old white bigot.
I laughed at all the racial and ethnic stereotypes in Bugs Bunny and the other classic cartoons when I was a kid.
And I feel no shame. I will never repent.
And Elmer Fudd was always the butt of the joke. That doesn’t count of course.
That’s why Bugs Bunny characterized them in ways that might be
eyebrowhare-raising today.That’s Dethpicable!!!!!!
? Hullo mah baby* ? ? ?
*A “coon” song written in the era of the novelty of the telephone (and not Bugs Bunny, but near as dammit)
And obligatory: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VrlNkh9nbm0
Sounds like my comment about success of blacks is more controversial than this article, so maybe that will be next up after all. I stand by the thesis: blacks succeed far beyond their ‘expected’ numbers in the most competitive endeavors; the only areas in which they lag behind are the direct result of govt interventions that reduce competition. From minimum wage laws to affirmative action in education and business, all of these govt interventions have worked to undermine success for blacks.
Regarding the meat of you article, I think I agreed last time that the Democratic party told blue collar workers to fuck off and go away. And that this was the deciding factor in the last election. And will be the deciding factor in the coming election.
I agree that the Clintons took over the party; however, Obama did a good job of hijacking the big chunks of the party away from the Clintons. This, of course, benefits no one except the Obamas.
Clinton told them to fuck off. Today the Dems have gone full commie and are telling them that they intend to burn their houses down.
I dont see how Biden can lose.
I look forward to that.
What counts as the “most competitive endeavors”, and why, may be the linchpin of the article. (Primarily) physically competitive, no question. Entertainment gets a little squishier – we all know crazy talented bands and singers who never hit the big time – there’s a corporate layer that picks winners and losers. And, of course, business has different kinds of competition and success – there’s small business, where the metrics are pretty direct, and big business, where top-level success starts getting more political or at least more divorced from metrics that individuals are directly responsible for. Cut-throat competition happens in a lot of venues; what drives success in those venues varies.
Linchpin? How about a trigger warning, buddy?
Team Blue’s unrelenting campaign – and sub rosa assumptions – about blacks needing upper-class, white proggies’ hands on the scales in order to succeed has been the single most destructive force contra black success.
The other thing I’ve always hated – and can’t believe no one has ever brought up in litigation – is how Affirmative Action absolutely undermines black and female success. If you’re a black guy or white woman and you’re wildly successful as a military officer, your first meeting with white guys (if you could read their minds) would have this thought bubble: “Is this guy/gal good… or are they an AA decision?”
That thought never occurs to a guy lining up across from a black hockey player or someone watching a black singer or a black piano player.
How awful to blacks who are in their positions on their merits, including a number of my friends in the Marine Corps. I had never thought about this either until a friend of mine – a black pilot who I had gone through a bunch of training with as we came up through the same system – when he and two other black pilots pointed it out to me.
Only a racist would have badthink about whether a person is an AA hire. Report to your reeducation, er, anti-racism training right away.
Oh, I am perfectly certain that once La Revolucion is successful, I’m going straight to Camp.
is how Affirmative Action absolutely undermines black and female success.
There’s a former EEOC chair that felt the same way. Unfortunately he was into porn in the workplace and pubic hairs on coke cans.
Why would you put a pube on a Coke anyway? Sounded iffy to me the first time I heard it.
If course it does. And none of it has anything to do with getting passed over for a promotion.
Still, I like the sound of “Justice Long Dong Silver”.
We’re encountering something like this on a fairly regular basis in my job. We hire a law firm to take on some of our work, and often they have to hire a few associates to manage our workload. We are now beginning to impose diversity requirements on the firms (*sigh*), so they raid a depleted labor market with, frankly, an unrealistic set of hiring criteria. Almost all of the competent black/brown and women are snatched up by the best firms and companies, so the second and third tier firms we use are passing by marginally competent white/asian males to hire diversity candidates who couldn’t make a job stick, even though they added diversity “value” simply by being on the roster.
It’s a frustrating experience to hire a firm partly because of its diversity (*sigh*), and then have to
blacklistdo not use list a disproportionate number of the diversity hires because they’re incompetent.Similarly, favorable opportunities for women “owned” businesses. I know of a couple where the wife is the “head” and the husband is number 2 but does the day to day work. Or there’s a more equal distribution of work but the wife is still listed at the top.
they added diversity “value”
I have yet to hear an explanation of what value is added simply by having a workforce with a certain ethnic/religious/whatever makeup. Even if you grant that they bring a different viewpoint of some kind to the job, how does that improve the actual output?
It doesn’t.
Next question.
This. I’ve never encountered anybody who came up with a brilliant idea that would be completely unknowable or counterintuitive to a white male.
Or that the only diversity is based on certain characteristics. Different background, different life experiences, even different education? That would be my two other work buddies despite sharing similar skin color and same XY chromosomes.
It’s the disaster of central planning. No room for nuance, only for easily identifiable metrics.
I hire who I feel will work best with the team. How the fuck can you quantify something like that?
“Your unmutual attitude is undermining the goals of the company, Tundra. For your own good, we’re going to have to let you go.”
Someone who doesn’t cause more heartburn by their mere presence and has an additive effective on the team’s performance? Crazy talk, I know.
The other thing is that if someone wanted to dq an applicant on impermissible grounds because they’re a bigot, unless they’re downright stupid, the hiring manager is never going to write down “didn’t hire because XXX” where XXX is a protected characteristic.
*steals office supplies on the way out*
Bookmarked
Thanks Ozy
De nada, Scruffy.
Pardon the OT. I’m sure the Jacob Blake shooting was covered here, but I’ve pretty much been off the grid since Wednesday. Just popping in to say that after reviewing the video, it looks like the officer’s initial shot was due to a sympathetic squeeze. …then the fog of war ensued for subsequent shots.
Bad trigger discipline.
You know, it very well could have been.
That fact alone would make this a negligent homicide, but good luck trying to prove it in court.
OT: Is Veblen right about anything?
An unplugged digital clock is never accurate?
Is this one of those “If a tree falls in a forest and kills a mime, does anyone care?” kind of philosophical questions?
Quantum entanglement would mean I would burst into spontaneous applause?
Ahem: it’s reliably perpetually wrong. Like NYT columnists.
So Delta and American have announce huge layoffs as the first round of stimulus comes to an end.
So takes the blame when all these union workers (see on topic; that’s my story and I am sticking to it) go on the dole 60 days or so before the election?
Some querulous internet person was recently lamenting never being able to watch Buster Keaton again after having seen Seven Chances. (Premise is the now-familiar one that he must marry by the end of the day to inherit a fortune.) Toward the end as he grows more frantic, he bumps into a black woman, apologetically tipping his hat to her. To this viewer his embarrassment was evidence of BK’s racism. I suspect both that BK was quite liberal and said commenter had never heard of miscegenation laws. Perhaps don’t watch old films if you’re ignorant of the historical context and don’t care to learn.
OFFS! How pathetic that some people won’t consume any form of entertainment (or commerce, for that matter) without first running everyone involved through some sort of purity test.
The General was ode to the Confederacy, therefore BK is a racist.
I’m kind of surprised that the huge outdoor mural to The General in the town where it was filmed in/around is still untouched. Guess the BLM cultural revolutionaries haven’t discovered it yet.
The General was the chief topic: BK ought to have remembered 80 years later that the South lost and not glorified it, apparently.
*60
Has Biden lost the Cardi B vote yet?
Biden promises to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 per year
“We changed our minds, we are not going to raise taxes on all micromillionaires and anyone richer than that.”
Crap, that includes me. Tax shelter! Tax shelter!
He no doubt plans to give them back their full SALT deduction though.
The SALT deduction thing is the epitome of cognitive dissonance.
Better pass laws forbidding them from leaving the country and taking their money with them while you’re at it.
Whew, it’s a good thing middle-class voters are safe from having to pay more to fund Biden’s promises.
At the rate Congress is spending, 400K will be the top 3 quintiles in ten years.
I bet this guy is fun at parties.
Tonight was the “I’m not racist, and my Black friend says so” portion of the RNC, featuring speeches from Tim Scott and Herschel Walker, among others, and a lot of predictable talk about “opportunity zones” and the Democratic “plantation.” For the hard stuff, we turn to the undercard. Here’s Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis “gun couple” who famously mounted an armed defense of their topiary from Black Lives Matters protesters: …
Tonight’s RNC message: We love Black people so long as they’re nowhere near our front yard.
How badly did they want to say the n-word? On the strength of the McCloskeys’ appearance, we award Monday’s proceedings 10 out of a possible 10 Atwaters.
The McCloskeys likely love black people as long as they aren’t kicking in their front gate and threatening them with violence, at least they probably used to.
How dare you tell black people how they can protest
You know what I find most frustrating about idiots like this? Is that they think they’re clever.
If you have black friends it really does undercut the notion that you’re an unrepentant bigot. It’s a definitional thing, but what they’ve done is re-define racist to mean saying anything even slightly unflattering about blacks ever, anywhere, in your entire life – which is to say, that the word racist no longer means anything.
True racism is a failure in discrimination: it is to judge a book by its cover and NEVER accept the possibility that an individual of a particular group has redeeming characteristics outside of whatever bigoted stereotype you’re using as a measuring stick. Having “black friends” definitionally means that you recognize that skin color is NOT the sole defining characteristic of a person’s worth.
And I will once again point out how everything with Progs is progjection, so this should tell you all you need to know about this guy. But I’ll bet he has “black friends” too. Except they think the proper things, so that’s different, mmkay?
As Dave smith says: Racist can mean anything from “Saying black instead of African-American to Genocide”. When a word can mean any of those things, a lot of people are going to dismiss you when you call someone racist.
My first weigh in on Jacob Blake shooting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUnT5aFygg
There are more nearly identical to that. The finer points of shoulda coulda can be argued all day but
I am the cop? You fight me and try to reach in your car, I am shooting you.
Perfect example of the incessant need to have music in all videos or movies. So nice to watch older movies and hear near silence or the lack of constant background noise.
Pulled over for suspicion of driving under the influence of marijuana, huh?
Weak.
We need to stop with the victimless crime bullshit. But I don’t hear that coming from the loudest voices on either side. Instead, we get the-police-do-nothing-about-looting-and-arson along with arrested-for-not-wearing-a-mask.
^^^^ This.
Sounds like my comment about success of blacks is more controversial than this article, so maybe that will be next up after all. I stand by the thesis: blacks succeed far beyond their ‘expected’ numbers in the most competitive endeavors; the only areas in which they lag behind are the direct result of govt interventions that reduce competition. From minimum wage laws to affirmative action in education and business, all of these govt interventions have worked to undermine success for blacks.
Maybe it’s because sports and music are pretty much immune from *artificial* barriers to entry. Nobody gives a shit if Bo Jackson passed “Theory of Football 1 & 2” as long as he can run right through linebackers and free safeties.
Jesse Owens didn’t have to be a card carrying
Nazianything to qualify for the ’36 Olympics.*ahem* The KC Royals would like a word.
He could run through outfield walls, too, if I recall correctly.
That’s exactly my point, so I think you are probably saying it better than I can. The addition of “artificial” helps, I think.
The problem with your point is that your examples are all Show Biz. So the importance is exaggerated. It’s a chew-them-up-and-spit-them-out industry – for every star there’s 40 has-beens-and-never-weres. The less-talented get jettisoned rather quickly and if they have no backup plan they live in poverty.
The disproportion you speak of is a problem, not a point of pride.
So my point that blacks don’t need special treatment and succeed in a “chew them up and spit them out” industry shows that they need special treatment?? (You’ll have to explain why show business is unique at being a chew them up and spit them out industry as distinct from, say, venture capital.)
And why is it a “problem” and not a “point of pride”? Does it not undercut the notion that blacks are “less than” whites? Does it not prove my point that if blacks can succeed in those circumstances, then they sure as hell should be able to succeed in business and academics?
Jerry Seinfeld once talked about comedy being writing. Sure, some of the best are great on their feet, but even that is an indicator of native intelligence. So why is it that blacks are doing disproportionately terrible in academics, yet have outperformed at the highest levels of comedy, music, and sport?
In short, why does “show biz” have any relevance at all to my point?
“shows that they need special treatment?”
Point out where I said that, please.
The point – said many times by Sowell, Elder, etc. – is that you point out a statistical aberration as if it is a fact that blacks are outperforming at some things when all it points out is that they are attempting to succeed at those things more than others are attempting.
You are right, blacks should be able to succeed in business and academics. Why aren’t they? Because they’re putting disproportionate effort into lower-odds-of-success endeavors.
The KC Royals would like a word.
I was absolutely astounded when I saw him (via the miracle of teevee replay) break a baseball bat over his knee. I don’t care if it was cracked or not.
The guy was a god.
I like watching his first hit just for giggles.
He beats Carlton to the bag on a chopper to the right side – and he’s a right-handed hitter. Unreal.
He did it a number of times and I know those were not ALL already cracked bats. Dude was an absolute freak of nature.
An older colleague from Birmingham, Alabama, told me he saw Bo in high school at a track meet and that he basically won entire meets all by himself. The wikipedia entry on it seems pretty convincing.
I saw the Royals play the Red Sox in ’87. Front row seats right over the visitors’ dugout. I knew Bo was big, but when he came jogging in from the outfield at the end of an inning… holy shit was that guy a brick house! His thighs were fucking enormous, they had to had custom-tailored his trousers.
Was also his first NFL game November 1, 1987. He only had a few carries, but almost one of them for a touchdown. Went around the end like everyone else was in slow motion – looked at the cornerback with an angle and teleported 15 yards ahead instantaneously. I don’t think the Raiders even knew what they had then.
“Watch: BLM Protesters Shot By Homeowners While Marching Through Rural Town”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-blm-protesters-shot-homeowners-while-marching-through-rural-pennsylvania-town
And so it begins.
Makes me think of the scene from The Two Towers, at the begining of helms deep when the elderly bowman cant keep the bow drawn.
Marching through rural neighborhoods just asks for something like this to occur but considerably worse. This wasn’t bad really but sooner or later it’s bound to happen.
The Idea of marching through a Rural Neighborhood to try to effect change in an urban police force is absurd on its face. The whole point is to stir up animosity and cause shit.
If you go out looking for trouble, don’t be surprised when it finds you.
They are not trying to effect change in an urban police force. They are trying to light the fuse. The handlers put those useful idiots there hoping one or more would be shot.
They are commies and commies are the same everywhere always. They are trying to spark some kind of chickenshit revolution.
When they did the protests in my town, the police chief made it clear that if the protests are peaceful, his department won’t bother anyone but if it turns into a shitshow, they will start arresting people and throwing the book at them.
Also, my portion of the town is in Lake County where there is a heavy Republican presence, so it was assumed that people took their 2nd Amendment rights seriously.
Democratic pollsters rejoice…
A couple of thoughts: We have been watching Antifa and BLM loot, burn, and assault for weeks. The system is using kid gloves on them, not because of the police but because of the pols that control the police.
We are paying a lot of taxes so that we dont become victims of that and we wont have to form mobs of our own. We are not getting our money’s worth.
By ordering the police to stand down the pols are destroying the credibility of the police. Without that credibility the citizenry are going to form their own mobs.
We are getting nearly zero info on who the BLM actors are. Not the useful idiots and not their handlers. We do, however know who their pols and financiers are.
Backlashes are wild and ugly things, but some people just won’t learn.
Here’s your stupid prize, thanks for playing.
True racism is a failure in discrimination: it is to judge a book by its cover and NEVER accept the possibility that an individual of a particular group has redeeming characteristics outside of whatever bigoted stereotype you’re using as a measuring stick. Having “black friends” definitionally means that you recognize that skin color is NOT the sole defining characteristic of a person’s worth.
I hate a lot of white people, too.
Does that count?
Do you hate the right white people, that is the question.
There are lots of Black people the Dems are okay with you hating too.
From my experience during college, it was usually the middle and upper class black students from the suburbs making the biggest stinks while the ones from the hood understood that they were there to fuck around and actually do something of value. I went to DePaul in Chicago and used to hear about how racist the campus was but most of the professors and administrators where overly accommodating towards minority students.
*there to not fuck around
Same school as me.
The only racist thing I ever encountered “around school” was when I was taking the Red Line between classes and I’m standing on the platform at Jackson and some jag from ACORN comes up to me with some spiel and asking for a donation. I’ve got 4 textbooks in my arm (no backpacks in those days) and I said “I’m a college student, I don’t have any extra money” (and I wouldn’t have given even if I did) and he starts yelling “YOU RACIST MOTHERFUCKER, YOU GODDAMNED WHITE SON OF” and then the train came and I got in and he was still yelling.
I was there when someone from the Black Student Union claimed that they found a noose on campus. It caused a huge frenzy and the administrators because they were cowards blamed the College Republicans because of the Affirmative Action Bake sale they had a month or two before the incident.
And right now Randy Newman is singing, “Rednecks” on Pandora.
That anti-short asshole?
What’s the matter little buddy?
Great satirical song. “Free to live in a cage…”
Trivia: Because of that song, Tom T and I always refer to the LSU Tigers as “the college men.”
My gym is opening against state orders and is requiring masks at all times. The idea that I’m in more danger from the ‘vid than I would be trying to do a ‘heavy triple’ in a mask is so absurd that it almost has to be a permanent policy. Because once you’re forced to do something that makes zero sense, there’s no possible benchmark you can reach so that it will stop.
That’s my worry about masks.
I can’t even stand to keep one no more than an hour or so. No way I’m working out with a mask on.
Lionel Messi wants to leave Barcelona. His teamates are ecstatic.
With Koeman coming in, I would think everyone would be wanting to leave.
I think Bayern just scored against them again.
I saw Man City wants him. I remember when everyone did a spell at Man U during their careers.
Without even reading the entire article, I’m going to take a stab at what Camela adds.
She gets the California vote in for Biden! Whooohooo! I bet we never thought he could pull that one off!
I’m glad someone saw through to the essence of the article. 🙂
I finished reading it. See my comment below. If I hear the word ‘systemic racism’ one more time, I’m going to go into a rage, and I’ll hear it 50 times tomorrow guaranteed.
A friend of mine said his workplace is now doing this systemic racism training bullshit and I guess they had a session and not many people showed up. Now he thinks they’ll try to make it mandatory. It’s 100% pure bullshit.
I can tell you this, I would be soon unemployed, because no one is going to call me racist and get away unchallenged. This shit needs to fucking go away now.
Despite what you are I perceive about racism, it is now so thoroughly installed in academia, the business world, entertainment, and now they’re trying to make it part of government, that I don’t know how we ever get rid of, the idea of ‘systemic racism’.
Basically the people pushing this shit do not care what we serfs think. All I hear all fucking day is ‘systemic racism’, which leads to everything bad in the world, even the commie flu is systemic racism, and they’re going to push this shit to the bitter end even if 99% of American reject is as bullshit, they don’t care. This is what they’ve invested everything in, in order to get their beloved Marxism.
NO JUSTICE? NO PEACE!
This seems fine
I know a few places around Baltimore where if they try that, there’s going to be one hell of a fight, guaranteed. This people really need the shit beaten out of them so they can learn some manners.