Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Dilbert
2. DEI
3. Cancel
4. SMS
5. Veritas
1. Dilbert. This weeks’ Two Minute Hate was aimed squarely at Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, with the cancellation machine cranking up to DEFCON 1 (global thermonuclear war). Over the weekend, pressure on his syndication company got Dilbert cancelled everywhere. Along with the comic strip, all other Dilbert-related products are now gone. The cartoon will be available on his Locals channel. Might be available in the future on his personal web site. What did he do to trigger this? He reacted to a Rasmussen poll that suggests that a full 47% of all blacks have a problem with people who are white. Adams laid the commentary on pretty thick, insisting that nobody should spend any time with anyone who dislikes them, and in response move somewhere else, get away. Note that a lot of divorced Americans can identify with that particular lifestyle choice. Note that nobody, literally nobody disagrees with the notion of separating yourself from people who don’t like you. He made the comments during one of his daily podcasts, either Thurs or Fri, fully expecting the cancellation machine to get turned on. Cancellations started almost immediately and continue at this writing.
- At its most basic, this is an Adams attack on the media. Adams is an energy monster, with persuasion skills not unlike what Trump has. Every so often when faced with an intractable problem, Trump simply shook the box, rearranging what was inside it so he could solve the new configuration. With the cancellation express, the media is giving Adams an enormous amount of power over the public narrative and the more publicly he is cancelled, the more people will be listening to his response. And they don’t have a clue how he is going to use that power. At another level, Adams just purchased his unfettered free speech at the cost of his comic strip.
- What it the problem here? The problem is that from a persuasion standpoint, we are given our opinions, mostly by the media. Since the O’Bama years, the media has been waving the bloody shirt of racial hatred at Americans every chance they get. They are really good at it and have gotten exponentially worse during the Biden years. Sadly, that bloody shirt is working, as they have created a population of people who have been programmed to hate whites, particularly white men. These include me-too women and blacks. Essentially, the media has created and weaponized negative feelings and opinions based on race. The media is busily programming our neighbors and countrymen not to like us based on little more than the color of our skin, which used to be a Bad Thing. No longer.
- The technique used by the media in this story is well used to promulgate other hoaxes. The media takes a controversial statement. They create a video or sound bite by cutting off context before the statement and the context after the statement, finally running with the conveniently edited short sound bite or video. It is the same technique they used to manufacture the Charlottesville Fine People hoax that Biden claimed to be the reason he ran for president. It is the same technique used against Trump with the drinking bleach hoax, the Nicholas Sandman hoax, and the Kyle Rittenhouse hoax. There are others but you get the idea.
- The workflow of this event is striking. Adams makes an intentionally provocative statement, one that nobody disagrees with. Cancellations begin almost immediately. Once those on the cancellation express start taking a second look at what he did, the coverup begins, which is the current phase. Once people in the commentariat started questioning the cancelations, the media began the coverup phase. First was to call the Rasmussen poll unreliable, then moving smartly on to note that Adams spent too much attention to one poll, which is bogus, as polls like this are used to manufacture, to drive public opinion rather than measure it. Adams readily admits he could have been clearer with his remarks. The next feint was a claim that Adams called all blacks haters of whitey. When that didn’t work, they ended up pulling their best trick, labeling the entire exchange as a racist rant. This is widely used in article titles and works well.
- The response by race has been interesting. Black men typically sat back, thought something didn’t sound quite right and asked for more information. Once they got it, the context, they were good with what Adams was saying. Black women had a similar, though not identical response, as they are working from a position of vulnerability (me-too) more than a racial one. Asians were very, very quiet and said or did little in public. All the cancellation came from where it always does, from whites, particularly liberal whites falling over each other to be the very first to virtue signal.
- Adams spent about 1+40 on a Saturday podcast with Hotep Jesus. Good questions. Good discussion. Easy to find. First hour is most important. Worth your time to watch.
2. DEI. Last week, I discussed the DEI problems at Texas A&M and texas university (Austin). There has been a bit of news over the week.
- At A&M, a historically conservative university, DEI over the last 20 years has insidiously worked to rot the very fabric of university life. And it has worked very well. A piece by the James G Marten Center entitled At Texas A&M, a Different Kind of “Climate Change” posts the devastating results of the cultural rot that is DEI. Between 2015 – 2020, students who agreed and strongly agreed that they belonged at A&M fell precipitously. Whites were down 10%, from 92% – 82% during the period, Hispanics down 12%, 88% – 76%. Blacks down a whopping 27%, from 82% – 55%. When you practice and preach division by race as the penultimate value, sometimes the students actually listen to the instruction. I would submit that the diversity commissars are getting precisely the response they want at the cost of campus life and what makes Aggies Aggies.
- The good news in Texas comes out of texas university which paused all DEI policies in its 13-campus system. Given reason was that the efforts were straying from its original intent. Real reason was publicity and pressure from the Texas legislature forcing the Board of Regents into action.
- At A&M, its DEI-centric hiring policy has been revised to only include cover letter, resume, personal statement and professional references when hiring. A&M is currently in the crosshairs of a civil rights lawsuit accusing it of creating a program where scholars of color were given preferential hiring treatment over white and Asian males.
- A white male medical student sued six Texas medical schools that rejected him for admissions while accepting other students who had lower MCAT scores. I think that young man is about to get all his student loans paid off and will become a certified doctor sooner rather than later.
3. Cancel. Cancel culture had themselves quite the week, continuing their ongoing war against JK Rowling over her lack of sensitivity to all things trans. Two publishers got themselves involved rewriting the published works of Roald Dahl and Ian Flemming. The Flemming rewrite of James Bond books published 60 – 70 years ago were to remove what the publisher called racially insensitive passages. To be fair, Flemming did allow modifications of his books so that they would be able to enter the American market, so that precedent was already set. Why the publisher is revisiting this 60 years later is open for criticism, but such are the times we are living in. Newest entry in the field was Roald Dahl, with its publisher, Penguin, working with the Roald Dahl Story Company now owned by Netflix, making widespread sensitivity edits of all his books. Most were made to make his characters less grotesque, remove the word female and all references to fat. Witches are turned into top scientists. Matilda now reads Jane Austen rather than Kipling. Once the news got out, public outrage was pretty loud and apparently, the publisher and owner heard it. They decided they would publish the revised books alongside the original unrevised versions. We will see how this all works out. Most interested in the sales numbers for the revised books. Finally, we have the ongoing war against JK Rowling, author of nearly 60 books translated into 85 languages with over 600 million sold worldwide. Esquire completely omitted her from the list of 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time in 2022. While wildly successful, Rowling did not have an easy time of it, with the first bomb threat coming in 2000 at a Harry Potter book signing. Apparently, the books were too dark and dabbled in witchcraft. It took a while for that witch hunt to peter out. The next witch hunt took off in 2020 following a series of Rowling tweets supporting the notion of men and women. The trans attacks after that became increasingly deranged, with Rowling finally siccing lawyers on a particularly vociferous critic this year. The lawsuit threat triggered a public apology from the crazy person. We will see how this does in court. Rowling is no longer suffering fools gladly. She is starting to fight back. And she has the resources to fight that fight.
4. SMS. Bringing Seattle to Anchorage, the leftist dominated Anchorage Assembly has been regularly deleting SMS text messages between members. This deletion appears to be done to hide from open meetings requests and keep the public from seeing their deliberations. A FOIA request by a citizen activist shows that at least three Assembly members including a newly elected state senator were colluding between meetings and destroying records of those meetings afterwards. And these clowns deign to accuse the mayor of lawlessness? Looks like the app of choice is something called Signal, a secret message auto-delete to do their dirty work. Information cost the activist several thousand dollars payable to the Municipal Clerk who works for the Assembly. Where would they get such an idea? Up here, most awful ideas are sourced out of Seattle, and sure enough the city of Seattle deleted thousands of internal SMS text messages during the 2020 Floyd, BLM, AntiFa riots, and the CHAS / CHOP takeover of a couple city blocks in Seattle with what appeared to be tacit approval of the city government. Residents and business owners sued for dereliction of duty and won. During the trial, it became evident city officials were routinely deleting internal SMS test messages. The presiding judge found that the city’s actions exceeded gross negligence and were done intentionally. The question is whether or not Seattle officials past and present will be held accountable.
5. Veritas. James O’Keefe left Project Veritas last week following a food fight between the Veritas Board and himself. Sounds like O’Keefe drove his people as hard as himself, being just as forceful and prickly as Steve Jobs. Eventually, this did not sit well with the Board, which moved to remove him. Timing of this is interesting, as it all broke loose following the sting operation on Pfizer. Board members went among the employees soliciting horror stories. They are in the early stages of a forensic audit of expenses in an attempt to find something to bury O’Keefe with. Their problem is that Project Veritas IS James O’Keefe, and he is the one who brought in all the donors. Those donors aren’t interested in either the Board or any internal food fight. O’Keefe has not been formally fired, though he did announce he was leaving last week. Statements from the Board are carefully crafted so as not to completely alienate donors. Should the current Board persist, I predict a dissolution of Project Veritas, as O’Keefe and his supporters take their show on the road. Hope it was worth it to the Board or whomever is leading this palace coup.
More later –
– AG