Muda69

Disney Cancels The Mandalorian Star Gina Carano Over Provocative Social Media Posts: https://reason.com/2021/02/11/disney-cancels-the-mandalorian-star-gina-carano-over-provocative-social-media-posts/ This was a very flawed comment: For one thing, Nazi soldiers absolutely beat Jews, in the streets and elsewhere. Carano is right that part of the Nazis' agenda was to persuade German citizens to hate and fear their Jewish neighbors—but what happened in 1930s Germany is not remotely similar to what is happening today in the U.S. The Nazi Party's demonization of the Jewish people led to genocide. The media's demonization of the Republican Party—which is not directly referenced in her post, but it's assumed that's what she meant—is obviously not comparable to the Holocaust. That said, Disney is wrong to say that Carano denigrated Jewish people, or that she is "abhorrent" for making such a comparison. She's a celebrity with an obnoxious political opinion, which is not exactly a rare animal. And that's the bigger issue with Disney's decision to drop Carano: hypocrisy. If the studio doesn't want to work with actors and actresses who make over-the-top Nazi comparisons, it has a major problem on its hands: Pedro Pascal, the star and eponymous character of The Mandalorian, once sent a tweet likening Trump's immigration policies to Nazi concentration camps. This is not so surprising: Hollywood is chock full of people with quirky political views making dramatic analogies. As Bloomberg's Eli Lake pointed out, Sean Penn is an apologist for former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Benicio del Toro dedicated an award to the memory of murderous Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. Nick Cannon praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a repugnant anti-Semite. (ViacomCBS fired Cannon for his remarks, but rehired him after he apologized.) Carano has occasionally made other controversial comments: She has criticized universal masking and suggested that combating voter fraud should be a major part of the Republican agenda. Disney apparently abandoned plans to give Carano her own show following one such post back in November. Some conservatives have called for a boycott of Disney following its decision. While I'm not the biggest fan of boycotts, it strikes me as reasonable for conservatives to be upset about this double standard. Why does Disney care more about Carano's dumb but relatively inconsequential Instagram post than it does about China's ethnic cleansing of the Uighur Muslims? If the company thinks "denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities" is abhorrent, then perhaps it shouldn't be working so closely with the Chinese Communist Party, which earned a "special thanks" in the credits of Mulan.

You are welcome, Chief Gonzo:

How many does Hamilton Heights? Howe Military? Nice to know we have you as the forum cop.

Did you tear up the paper and throw it away?

Larry Flynt has died: https://news.avclub.com/larry-flynt-has-died-1846244281

https://mises.org/power-market/nbas-national-anthem-mandate-another-political-ploy-pro-sports In response, the NBA quickly issued an edict that all NBA teams must play the anthem before every game. Ridiculously, the Mavericks organization was forced to clarify that "the decision to not play the anthem before games wasn't because the franchise lacks love for the United States." This is a song and dance we Americans should be accustomed to by now. During the early twentieth and late nineteenth centuries, Americans adopted a variety of new pro-government rituals designed to inculcate an ideological preference for political unity, uniformity, and obeisance to the regime. Most notable among these was the introduction of the "pledge of Allegiance," written by a socialist, and designed to inculcate into Americans the idea that the United State was forever "indivisible." (It was also part of a business scheme to sell American flags.) By the 1920s, the national anthem was growing in popularity as well. This was all in contradiction to earlier nineteenth century values of Jacksonian republicanism which valued localism and a suspicion of national rituals. Jackson, for example, had refused to go along with the customary political declarations of days of prayer and "Thanksgiving." The Jacksonian view was that Americans can manage their own cultural affairs at the local level without any need for quasi-religious national rituals of "unity." Thanks to the Civil War and the First World War, though, local cultural autonomy gave way to new cultural expectations that Americans stand around pledging allegiance to the state or singing secular hymns extolling the wonders of "the land of the free." Any dissent from these "traditions" was to be condemned as acts of "hating America." This politicization of pro sports continued to today, even if it has taken a bit of a left-wing turn in recent years. The Rise of the Sports-Anthem Connection The fact that participation in these rituals at sports games has become almost mandatory—at the risk of being punched in the nose by some red-faced "patriot"—would have struck most nineteenth-century Americans as rather odd. Indeed, the connection between the national anthem and professional sports games appears to have not begun until the end of the First World War. Before the First World War, playing the national anthem or sporting events was quite rare. No one expected it to be done, and hiring a band was expensive. According to mlb.com, the most conspicuous early use of the national anthem was at game 1 of the 1918 World Series during World War I. Unexpectedly, during the seventh-inning stretch, a military band played the national anthem in an effort to liven up a reportedly surly and war-wearied group of spectators. Use of the anthem spread from there. The anthem's use expanded even more during the Second World War, as Matt Soniak notes: But even after the war, the habit of playing the anthem at every game was not firmly in place until the Vietnam war. It was during the Vietnam war, however, that the spread of the national anthem's use finally met with some resistance. Historian Marc Ferris, in his book Star Spangled Banner notes that similar protests took place in the NFL during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Ferris recounts how "Responding to [protests during the playing of the anthem at the 1968 Olympics] the league's commissioner, Pete Rozelle, required players to hold their helmets in their left hands and salute the flag during the anthem." But, This was not without its detractors within the NFL, and, Ferris notes, "Anthem controversies [during the 1970s] helped institute and increased analysis of sports, which turned into the primary battleground over the beleaguered national anthem and its meaning." By the Obama era, however, not even this grassroots spread of the anthem was sufficient for the federal government. By 2009, the Pentagon was actively using taxpayer money to pay the National Football League to expand "patriotic" displays: In total, 6.8 million in taxpayer money was doled out to sports teams—mostly NFL teams—for so-called paid patriotism. A Marketing Gimmick In most cases, the use of the anthem was not directly subsidized, however. Usually, team owners quite voluntarily employed the anthem as a marketing gimmick. In times of war, team owners were happy to use the anthem as a type of advertising to make an emotional connection between the customers—i.e., the spectators—and the team's product. Wrapping a commercial product in the flag and apple pie to increase sales is hardly unique to pro sports. But pro sports may have used this tactic more successfully than any other industry. Prior to its use in sporting events, the national anthem had been cunningly used by Vaudeville acts "when the management would bring out the flag to win applause for a poor act." This fact, related by Baltimore Orioles general manager—and World War I veteran—Arthur Ehlers was presented as a reason why Ehlers opposed playing the national anthem at every game. Ehlers felt overuse of the anthem could be done cynically, and would "cheapen" the song. Ehlers, it turns out, remembered things correctly. In an article in Collier's magazine in 1914, the amused author notes the widespread use of the anthem to elicit a positive response from audiences at performances: Apparently, by 1914, it had already become fashionable to use the anthem to browbeat spectators into assigning deep meaning to what was clearly—like NBA basketball—never anything more than trivial low-brow entertainment. The author, with his sarcastic reference to the anthem as a "Doxology" knew when he was being manipulated. Decades after the Collier's writer observed the anthem's value as a commercial strategy, Ehlers, it seems, was attempting to actually preserve some dignity for the anthem. Everything Is Political The NBA's new mandate that every team must play the anthem is the sort of thing we've come to expect from organizations like the NBA and the NFL. Although the NBA has spent much of its time in recent years trying to appeal to Chinese nationals, it has apparently decided that it's still in the game of pandering to Americans, with gimmicky displays of "patriotism" on the one hand, and "Black Lives Matter" slogans on the other. Of course, pro sports organizations could have elected to simply not have any political content to its games at all. That would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, organizations like the NBA and the NFL have spent the last few decades relying on the national anthem as a cynical ploy. Employing "antiracism" and BLM politics is just the natural evolution of this. The NBA's latest turn toward supporting use of the national anthem shouldn't be read as any sort of move toward right-wing politics. It just a signal that the NBA continues to believe it can easily manipulate its audience with slogans and displays of jingoism. The NBA is probably right. It most certainly, and sadly, is right.

If the Affordable Care Act Can’t Cover a Little Girl Battling Cancer, What the Hell Good Is It?: https://www.cato.org/blog/affordable-care-act-cant-cover-little-girl-battling-cancer-what-hell-good-it

Berkeley Dorms Guarded by Cops Who Only Let Students Out To Eat, Use the Bathroom, or Get a COVID-19 Test: https://reason.com/2021/02/10/california-student-dorms-guarded-by-cops-who-only-let-them-out-to-eat-and-use-the-bathroom/

https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-judiciary-75aecf3b586e90f590944a54094d394a Thoughts about this and what it will eventually mean for Indiana youth athletics?

HSE superintendent mixed messages on Black Lives Matter leaves community hurt, confused https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/hamilton-county/education/2021/02/10/community-reacts-hamilton-southeastern-superintendent-letters-black-lives-matter/4454388001/ (Note: URL is behind a paywall) What a quagmire.

Thank you for answering "yes".

At Times, Don McNeil Scandal Deepens: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/at-times-don-mcneil-scandal-deepens/ So these were rich liberal white kids. An older white man questioned their woke assumptions about “cultural appropriation,” and that hurt their feelings. The older white man supposedly said that high incarceration rates among black Americans might be a result of high black crime rates, and not racism. Hey maybe he’s wrong about that, but that’s a debatable proposition — though not to these rich white progressive snowflakes, who were “triggered.” I would very much doubt that a New York Times reporter would deny that white supremacy exists, but I would imagine such a figure saying that it is not as ubiquitous as these teenagers think it is. Over nit-picky crap like this, the Times cashiered an irreplaceable resource of science reporting expertise. That newspaper doesn’t want to be a newspaper anymore; it wants to be a day-care center to coddle woke crybabies. Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon peeked in on a private Times employee Facebook group, and reports on infighting there: “Harmed.” When Sibarium reached out to Nikole Hannah-Jones for comment, she doxxed him by releasing his phone number onto Twitter, in violation of Twitter’s policy. But we know that nobody will ever hold Hannah-Jones responsible for her actions. She’s untouchable. After all, she runs The New York Times, and tells Dean Baquet and A.G. Sulzberger what to do — including, it appears, to fire an old white man after 45 years of service to the Times, and who happens to be one of the most valuable science reporters in the nation, for spurious ideological reasons. What does this say about the Times‘s commitment to serious journalism? To providing its readers with the best possible coverage on urgently important news (McNeil was the lead Covid-19 reporter)? It is clearly more important to the Times leadership mollify the zealously woke screaming meemies in the newsroom than it is to serve the readers who pay the salaries of the whole lot. What is it going to take for sane, serious people to regain control of The New York Times?

IMO any grade 9-12 school with over 1000 students is considers "large".

AOC and Schumer Want Taxpayer Funding for Covid-19 Funerals https://mises.org/wire/aoc-and-schumer-want-taxpayer-funding-covid-19-funerals

Yes, it was. What do you consider to be a "small" school? A "large" school? Does the IHSAA have a hard and fast boundary regarding such labels?

Calling this newly proposed NCC a 'small school' conference is a fairly relative label, is it not? If for some strange reason Lafayette Jefferson moves to the Hoosier Heartland conference then yes, IMHO the 'small school' label would apply. Why? Is this the old 'city speed' argument again?

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Not until the day that Mr. Trump leaves this world, I'm afraid. There is too much money to be made by the MSM, and too much time and money for the U.S Congress to waste on such a boondoggle.

I thought there was something about if Mr. Trump is convicted they could then bar him from ever running for a public office again? Because you know the Democrat side of the uni-party is scared to death right now of a 2024 Trump presidential run.

Marty Schottenheimer, NFL coach with 200 wins, dies at 77: https://apnews.com/article/nfl-charlotte-los-angeles-chargers-football-north-carolina-1970bcb9df70f8efa02f62dcc0f1ae2f Truly an NFL coaching icon. He will be missed.

I see your point. But I don't think even a re-tooled NCC as described here would help the likes of a Western or WL in a tournament run, not unless the overall strength of the NCC programs improve.

Wait a second, I thought the Hoosier Conference touts itself, at least here on the GID, as the perfect conference schedule to get a football team ready for the tournament?

Are the Classics Racist?: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/are-the-classics-racist/ Mr. Lowry nails it.

Rossville Maconaquah

As the Indianapolis area urban sprawl moves northward along I-65 Lebanon stands poised to become the next Zionsville.