The New Normal/Political Correctness Run Amok Thread

[swordfish]

Shame - Today's wimpy, lame kids apparently can't handle song lyrics from Queen.......

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12424449/We-woke-Classic-Queen-song-Fat-Bottomed-Girls-mysteriously-dropped-groups-new-Greatest-Hits-collection.html

EXCLUSIVE: We will woke you! Classic Queen song Fat Bottomed Girls is mysteriously dropped from the group’s new Greatest Hits collection

• Fat Bottomed Girls has been dropped from the group's Greatest Hits collection 
• The 1978 track has been enjoyed by generations of fans 

By KATIE HIND

PUBLISHED: 17:01 EDT, 19 August 2023 | UPDATED: 17:15 EDT, 19 August 2023

It is one of Queen's best-loved songs but Fat Bottomed Girls has been mysteriously dropped from the group's new Greatest Hits collection.

The 1978 track, which was written by guitarist Brian May, has been enjoyed by generations of fans as a humorous and hard-rocking tribute to a young man's appreciation of fuller-figured ladies.

But 45 years later, it appears that lyrics such as 'left alone with big fat Fanny, she was such a naughty nanny, big woman, you made a bad boy out of me' and 'fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round' have been hit by the woke cancel culture.

It was such a popular hit for Queen that it appeared fourth on the band's original 1981 greatest hits album along with Bohemian Rhapsody, Don't Stop Me Now and We Will Rock You.

But last week it was nowhere to be seen when Universal Records announced they would be releasing a version of the record on Yoto, the new audio platform aimed at young people.+3

The 1978 track, which was written by guitarist Brian May, has been enjoyed by generations of fans as a humorous and hard-rocking tribute to a young man's appreciation of fuller-figured ladies

But 45 years later, it appears that lyrics such as 'left alone with big fat Fanny, she was such a naughty nanny, big woman, you made a bad boy out of me' and 'fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round' have been hit by the woke cancel culture

The move has left music industry insiders bemused, with bosses insisting that Fat Bottomed Girls has wrongly been singled out as it is 'merely a bit of fun'.

One told The Mail on Sunday: 'It is the talk of the music industry, nobody can work out why such a good-natured, fun song can't be acceptable in today's society.

'It is woke gone mad. Why not appreciate people of all shapes and sizes like society is saying we should, rather than get rid of it. 

The original sleeve for the song, which was taken from Queen's album Jazz, featured a scantily clad female riding a bicycle but was altered after some stores refused to stock it.

The new version was the same image with knickers drawn over the woman. 

May told Mojo magazine in 2008: 'I wrote it with Fred in mind, as you do, especially if you've got a great singer who likes fat bottomed girls... or boys.'

The newly released Yoto greatest hits album, released in collaboration with Queen's record label Universal, is aimed at introducing the band to a younger audience.

 

 

[Muda69]

12-Year-Old Boy Removed From School Over 'Don't Tread on Me' Patch: https://reason.com/2023/08/29/jaiden-colorado-gadsden-flag-dont-tread-on-me-school/

Quote

Jaiden is a 12-year-old boy who attends the Vanguard School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He is the subject of a video that went viral on social media; it shows the boy and his mother confronting a school administrator who asserts that the Gadsden flag patch on his backpack violates district policy.

"The reason that we do not want the flag displayed is due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade," says the administrator.

 

On Monday, school officials removed Jaiden from class due to his Gadsden flag patch. His mother has fought back against this disciplinary action, explaining that the flag—a coiled snake above the phrase "Don't tread on me"—is not a pro-slavery image; it has its origins in the Revolutionary War and was intended as a symbol of resistance to British tyranny.

District officials did not respond to a request for comment, but Libertas Institute President Connor Boyack—who first publicized Jaiden's situation—shared an email that they sent to Jaiden's mother, in which the district reiterated its position that the Gadsden flag is an "unacceptable symbol" tied to "white-supremacy" and "patriot" groups.

It's true that some white supremacists have appropriated the flag. But so have classical liberals and libertarians—including Reason (check out our 404 Error page). Some lefty groups have cited Gadsden too. There's even a pro-LGBT version.

In any case, Jaiden's mother is absolutely correct that the flag's origins have nothing to do with racism or slavery. In their email, district officials approvingly cited a 2016 Washington Post article by Reason's Eugene Volokh evaluating an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case. The case in question involved a post office employee whose Gadsden flag hat had generated racial harassment claims. But ultimately, the EEOC declined to rule that the Gadsden flag was a racist symbol.

The Supreme Court has ruled that K-12 officials have significant authority to limit students' free expression rights in order to promote classroom cohesion. But the school cannot discriminate against Jaiden's viewpoint by wrongly and arbitrarily declaring the Gadsden flag to be a hate symbol.

"There is nothing inherently disruptive about a student displaying a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack," writes Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "Public school administrators can't ban the expression of an idea, symbol, or viewpoint just because they personally dislike it."

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis also came to Jaiden's defense, describing the flag's message as "iconic" in a post on X.

"The Gadsden flag is a proud symbol of the American revolution and [an] iconic warning to Britain or any government not to violate the liberties of Americans," wrote Polis. "It appears on popular American medallions and challenge coins through today and Ben Franklin also adopted it to symbolize the union of the 13 colonies. It's a great teaching moment for a history lesson!"

When reached for comment by Reason, Polis reaffirmed his comment and noted that he also agreed with sentiments expressed by Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.).

"I oppose banning the Gadsden flag in schools for the same reason I oppose conservative schools districts that ban LGBTQ flags in schools," wrote Lieu. "Let kids be their authentic selves and give them a world of information—students can figure out what's important to them."

 

[swordfish]

1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

12-Year-Old Boy Removed From School Over 'Don't Tread on Me' Patch: https://reason.com/2023/08/29/jaiden-colorado-gadsden-flag-dont-tread-on-me-school/

 

Liberal idiots are always trying to re-write history to further their agendas.......

[Muda69]

Men took over a job fair intended for women and nonbinary tech workers: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/05/1203845886/women-tech-conference-men-grace-hopper

Quote

An event meant to be a career-builder for women and nonbinary tech workers turned into yet another symbol of the industry's gender imbalance after self-identifying men showed up in droves.

The Grace Hopper Celebration takes the name of a pioneering computer scientist and bills itself the world's largest annual gathering of women and nonbinary tech workers.

Tickets for the four-day event, which took place in Orlando, Fla., last week, ranged in price from $649 to $1,298, and included a coveted chance to meet one-on-one with sponsors such as Apple, Amazon, Salesforce and Google.

With some 30,000 annual attendees, that career expo was already a competitive space, according to past participants. But this year, access was even more limited by what the organizers described as "an increase in participation of self-identifying males."

Videos posted to social media showed scenes of men flocking around recruiters, running into event venues and cutting in front of women to get an interview slot. Footage showed a sea of people, hundreds deep, waiting in line for a chance to enter the career expo.

As one poster put it, "the Kens had taken over Barbieland."

Some of the attendees had lied about their gender identity on their conference registrations, said Cullen White, the chief impact officer with AnitaB.org, the nonprofit that organizes the conference.

"Judging by the stacks and stacks of resumes you're passing out, you did so because you thought you could come here and take up space to try and get jobs," White said during the conference's plenary address. "So let me be perfectly clear: Stop. Right now. Stop."

Tech jobs were once a safe bet for workers looking for stable, lucrative careers. But an industrywide wave of layoffs earlier this year left hundreds of thousands of workers suddenly without a job.

Women were disproportionately affected by those cuts, making up 69.2% of all tech layoffs, according to The Women Tech Network. And that's on top of the industry's ongoing gender imbalance. Women hold just 26% of jobs across all STEM occupations and even less — 24% — in computer fields, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Bo Young Lee, AnitaB.org's president, said in a video post that the shift in demographics had robbed the conference of the joyous and supportive atmosphere that had helped previous conference-goers grow.

 

"We tried to create a safe space. And this week, we saw the outside world creep in," she said. "I can't guarantee you that we'll have solutions tomorrow. But I can promise you that we'll be working on solutions, and we won't do it in a bubble."

Earlier in the week, the organization addressed calls to ban men from the conference by saying that "male allyship is necessary" to work toward overall inclusivity and also that federal law prohibited discrimination based on gender.

NPR reached out to AnitaB.org for additional comment but had not received a response by the time this article was published.

I don't know.  I find this whole thing rather humorous.

 

[swordfish]

A real quagmire......Was this supposed to be an inclusive event, or just a "sexist" event?

Never heard of "self-identifying men" .....after googling the term, it Kinda sounds like a trans.....maybe....

Can we please just get back to male/female?

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/2023/11/09/football-eye-black-isnt-blackface/

Quote

When La Jolla High School played Morse High School under the Friday night lights on October 13, students from the surrounding San Diego area filled the stadium to cheer on their prospective teams. Making posters, dawning face and body paint, yelling chants, and sporting jerseys were all part of the electric football game atmosphere.

J.A., a middle-schooler from Muirlands Middle School, attended the game with another student and that student's mother. To show support for his team, J.A. let his friend put eye black paint on his face. A security guard even complimented the design. The game was largely uneventful with La Jolla winning handedly (56–6). But almost a week later, J.A. was called into a disciplinary meeting with his parents at Muirlands. 

In that meeting, J.A. was told he would be suspended from school for two days and was no longer allowed to attend future athletic events because he wore "blackface" to the football game. The suspension notice only specified that he was being suspended because he "painted his face black at a football game," and the alleged offense was marked as "Offensive comment, intent to harm." J.A.'s father told the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment nonprofit, that no one complained or said anything negative about his son's eye black while at the game. The school's principal also failed to specify how they found out about the incident.

 

As Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at FIRE, notes in a November 8 letter to Muirlands Middle School, "J.A.'s non–disruptive, objectively inoffensive" face paint is absolutely constitutionally protected expression.

In the letter, FIRE reminds school officials that "public school students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate." It argues that "the First Amendment protects J.A.'s non-disruptive expression of team spirit via a style commonly used by athletes and fans."

Eye black applied under the eyes and even on the cheeks is not blackface, and to suggest as such is a gross mischaracterization. Blackface is dark makeup applied all over the face to mimic, exaggerate, and mock black people. J.A. was simply cheering on his local football team with friends—and there is no reason to punish him for that.

In the 1930s, Babe Ruth was the first professional athlete seen wearing eye black. Ruth believed that black grease worn under the eyes blocked out the sun's glare during games. Now athletes may wear eye black to prevent glare, to hype themselves up, or maybe just because they are superstitious. And fans wear it to show support and spirit for their beloved teams—just like they would wear a hat, jersey, or even body paint.

I proudly wore eye black for water polo games and swim meets in high school. We called it "war paint." And last Sunday, while I jumped, cheered, and booed at Lincoln Financial Field while the Philadelphia Eagles faced off against the Dallas Cowboys, it was hard to find a player not wearing eye black. 

"Muirlands Middle School administrators should make time this Sunday to watch a few NFL games," Terr tells Reason. "Maybe then they will realize that athletes and fans often liberally smear eye black on their faces, whether to look cool, show team spirit, or intimidate their opponents. The student engaged in a fun and harmless form of self-expression."

FIRE is calling on Muirlands to lift the ban on J.A.'s attendance at future athletic events and to remove the infraction from his record.

 

[swordfish]

47 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

https://reason.com/2023/11/09/football-eye-black-isnt-blackface/

 

Losers.......

[swordfish]

Crazy kids - Don't they realize it's OK to be "racist" if you are liberals, donating to liberal candidates?  https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/trader-joe-s/recipients?id=D000042254 

FTR - SF doesn't have a Trader Joes in the local sea, but have visited the store on occasion and will again, so I (really) DC.....

https://nypost.com/2023/12/07/lifestyle/trader-joes-racist-product-labeling-practice-called-out-on-tiktok/

Trader Joe’s ‘racist’ product labeling practice once again lands grocer in social media hot seat

 

POV: Another Gen Z Trader Joe’s shopper finds out there’s a Trader José.

The popular Monrovia, Calif.-based grocer has once again gone viral over a decades-old product-naming practice that has previously been referred to as “racist.”

A youthful TikToker named Kyi (@kyeatdaays) reignited the debate after calling out the free-spirited retailer over the way it chooses names for various packaged foods, based on their imagined country of origin.

Kyi, who currently has just 161 followers on the popular app, managed to snag 2.1 million views, roughly 150,000 likes, and scores of comments on the clip.

She used the popular point-of-view method to illustrate her alleged surprise, upon realizing that a frozen sack of Mandarin Orange Chicken — one of the store’s more obsessed over items — was actually branded as “Trader Ming’s.”

 

In a caption, she wrote: “POV: U just found out Trader Joe’s does THIS to cultural foods.”

The viral moment calls to mind a 2020 brouhaha begun after a San Francisco Bay Area high school student delivered a petition to the company, requesting that Trader Joe’s cancel the unusual tradition.

Viewers of the new video expressed their own opinions on the subject, many of them lighthearted, with plenty of them expressing support for the retailer.

With more than 560 stores in 43 states, most Americans have already seen the labels, typically found on foods that can be attributed to one specific culture.

“For the Italian food it’s Trader Giottos,” one commenter pointed out.

“Big missed opportunity to call it Trader Zhou’s,” joked another.

Others confessed to enjoying the “Trader Jacques” on various French foods, like the store’s signature wheel of brie cheese.

“As a Mexican, I rather enjoy Trader Jose,” said one happy shopper.

“I thought they were all traders that know each other and sell each other their own foods,” one viewer deadpanned.

Other commenters were surprised that the discussion was taking place at all, saying they thought that the store had halted the naming practice years ago.

“I could have swore they said they were going to stop doing this … omg,” said one, likely referring to a statement Trader Joe’s issued after receiving the 2020 petition.

But after the company’s initial pledge to make the change, it quickly backtracked, saying in another statement that it would be sticking by its longstanding tradition.

[swordfish]

Finally someone demonstrated to a liberal that if you want to toss around slurs like "Transphobic" and "Bigot" you should be prepared when a "slur" like "Misogynist" gets tossed back at you.

https://news.yahoo.com/riley-gaines-hits-back-squad-215754999.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACGYd4dkQVwF0OvlKrhZrpRg8XRDraXzZMlE7oPeOhv68ZZkbJoQNmAcgM2wtOlHONqvNvg7vmNBS1QtpoQtgeCEfbTv480HBkbVFsKXa1uiseiZxJQ_KQm-1oO4r5_ackIkdvhL_1Kq00-N8CcVEjTnM-6CH8vir8NKDDcRBVgy

"There's a place for everybody to play sports in this country," Gaines said, noting transgender Americans were included in her view. "But unsafe, unfair and discriminatory practices must stop."

"Inclusion cannot be prioritized over safety and fairness," the NCAA legend concluded in her opening remarks. "And ranking member Lee, if my testimony makes me ‘transphobic,’ then I believe your opening monologue makes you a misogynist."

Lee called a point of order, urging that Gaines' remarks to be struck from the record, but the point of order was withdrawn after a brief discussion.

[swordfish]

I'm sorry, but January 6 was NOT an insurrection.  NOW - If the now former President had, say maybe, called up the 101st airborne and ordered them to hold the Capital and then never left, then I could understand calling his actions an insurrection and would SF whole-heartedly support him being disqualified to run for the office of President ever again.

So in 2020 - 2021 in the midst of the BLM riots when Representative(s) Pelosi, Cortez, Pressley, Watters, and many more supported the rampaging protests all over the country - even Kamala Harris is quoted "protesters should not ever let up". https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/15/fact-check-quotes-democratic-leaders-riots-out-context/6588222002/ Where is the outrage over that?  Actual damage was done to many cities and lives were lost during those riots.  Then the city of Portland Oregon was taken over by a group of anarchists. 

But on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump utters "March to the Capital peacefully and make your voices heard" and is accused of inciting an insurrection. 

Today's left wing is using these accusations and selling them as proven truths to convince enough voters to discredit, and disqualify Trump as a viable candidate. The fact that a State's Supreme Court would hear this case from a lower court, let alone turn the lower court's decision over demonstrates the overt partisanship of that court.  

[Muda69]

So what exactly was the big kerfuffle about non-gender neutral toy aisles?   

[swordfish]

As a guy whose career includes air travel at approximately 60 - 75 legs per year (historically) SF's confidence in the airline industry's governing body (the FAA) that is prioritizing DEI over safety - is hereby greatly compromised......  

https://www.foxnews.com/us/faas-diversity-push-includes-focus-hiring-people-severe-intellectual-psychiatric-disabilities?fbclid=IwAR1dJMTF31jzKk3ojHvnav-z232APnHa-0LFGB_LWkViTRM7kCQLj6QyQU4

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer "severe intellectual" disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. 

"Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring," the FAA’s website states. "They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism."

The initiative is part of the FAA’s "Diversity and Inclusion" hiring plan, which says "diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond." The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.

The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg's Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.

[swordfish]

SF is guessing Disney & Lucas Films is potentially re-thinking it's wokeness levels......

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4451944-former-mandalorian-actor-sues-disney-lucasfilm-with-musk-backing/

Gina Carano, known for her role in “The Mandalorian,” is suing Disney and Lucasfilm for discrimination and wrongful termination, and X owner Elon Musk is backing the suit.

Carano was fired in Feb. 2021 by the production company behind the “Star Wars” spinoff for what it called “abhorrent” social media posts from the actress. She compared Nazi Germany to politics today and mocked face masks worn during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit, filed in the Central District of California, claims Carano was terminated “all because she dared voice her own opinions, on social media platforms and elsewhere, and stood up to the online bully mob who demanded her compliance with their extreme progressive ideology.”

Lucasfilm said at the time of her firing that the company did not intend on employing the actress in the future. The company said her posts “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, posted on its platform that the company is committed to free speech and is “proud to provide” financial support for Carano’s lawsuit to empower the actress “to seek vindication of her free speech rights on X and the ability to work without bullying, harassment, or discrimination.”

Carano alleged that the company “chose to target a woman while looking the other way when it came to men” in the lawsuit, since the company “took no action” against male actors who also posted controversial statements online.

She posted on X that during her career with Disney and Lucasfilm she was “being hunted down” and that her words were “consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize” her.

“A couple months ago @ElonMusk tweeted that if you had been fired from using the platform (X) for exercising your right to free speech, he would like to offer these people legal representation,” her post said. “To my surprise, a few months ago I received an email from a lawyer who had been hired by X to look into my story & many others.”

[Muda69]

Also from Google Gemini:

Why would Gemini be so anti-white? Well:

Edited February 23 by Muda69

[temptation]

9 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Also from Google Gemini:

Why would Gemini be so anti-white? Well:

“White supremacy is our nation’s #1 threat.”

[swordfish]

Don't forget - there is no such thing as reverse - racism.......

[swordfish]

A premium example of a "Hypocrite"

https://nypost.com/2024/03/27/real-estate/jon-stewart-found-to-have-overvalued-his-nyc-home-by-829/

Jon Stewart benefited by 829% ‘overvalue’ of his NYC home even as he labels Trump’s civil case ‘not victimless’

But it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to look into Stewart’s own property history, which shows his New York City penthouse sold for 829% more than its assessed value, records confirmed by The Post reveal.

In 2014, Stewart sold his 6,280-square-foot Tribeca duplex to financier Parag Pande for $17.5 million.

The property’s asking price at that time is not available in listing records.

But according to 2013-2014 assessor records obtained by The Post, the property had the estimated market-value at only $1.882 million.

6

The 2013-2014 property assessment of Jon Stewart’s Tribeca penthouse.NY Gov

The actual assessor valuation was even lower, at $847,174.

Records also show that Stewart paid significantly lower property taxes, which were calculated based on that assessor valuation price — precisely what he called Trump out for doing in his Monday monologue.

Pande, who purchased the penthouse from Stewart, then resold the property at a nearly 26% loss, according to the Real Deal — at just over $13 million — in 2021.

Timothy Pool, a political commentator known for more right-leaning views, alleged on X that Stewart was being a hypocrite.

[Muda69]

NPR's Uri Berliner Has Shown That DEI Is About Punishing Heresy: https://reason.com/2024/04/17/nprs-uri-berliner-has-shown-that-dei-is-about-punishing-heresy/

Quote

Uri Berliner, a long-time editor at National Public Radio (NPR), has resigned from the media organization.

His saga began last week after he published an essay for Bari Weiss' The Free Press in which he criticized creeping liberal groupthink at his place of employment. Many NPR employees were furious that he would "torch his workplace," though Berliner's piece carefully noted that he still believes the outlet is important and should continue to receive government funding.

For writing about his own outlet without seeking permission from his bosses, Berliner was suspended for five days without pay. But ultimately, he has chosen to resign.

"I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay," he said, referencing statements made by NPR CEO Katherine Maher—whose considerable history of tweeting woke nonsense is now under public scrutiny as well.

And he is quite correct. Berliner's article for Weiss concludes with this thought: "What's notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview. And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity."

Berliner cited Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and coverage of the lab leak theory of COVID-19's origins as coverage areas where NPR's bias in favor of the progressive, establishment Democratic Party perspective led the outlet astray. A media company that did not completely dismiss non-progressive opinions out of hands might have fared better.

The absence of viewpoint diversity at NPR should be no surprise, however, when its CEO apparently believes that ideological diversity is a "dog whistle for anti-feminist, anti-POC stories." For Maher, diversity involves "race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, geography"—everything except diversity of thought.

 

And Maher is not alone. Some 50 of Berliner's colleagues signed a letter to Maher demanding that she enforce NPR's current editorial line by weaponizing all available tools at her disposal.

"Staff, many from marginalized backgrounds, have pushed for internal policy changes through mechanisms like the [diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)] accountability committee, sharing of affinity group guidelines, and an ad-hoc content review group," they wrote. Elsewhere in the letter they put the term diversity of viewpoints in scare quotes.

It certainly does not sound like the DEI accountability committee works to broaden NPR's ideological perspective. On the contrary, the employees who are obsessed with DEI seem to care first and foremost about rooting out anti-DEI heresy.

Now Berliner is not a victim of cancel culture: Most journalistic organizations would exercise some disciplinary authority over an employee who publicly discussed internal company policies without prior approval. But there should be little question that he accurately described a real problem at a (regrettably taxpayer-funded) media outlet. The acronym DEI ostensibly stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion—and the public is learning precisely what those terms really mean.

Indeed they are.

 

[Muda69]

'A Failed Medical School': How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA: https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-racial-preferences-supposedly-outlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Quote

Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles's David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science courses in college, earned a 3.8 GPA, and scored in the 88th percentile on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).

 

Without those stellar stats, some doctors at the school say, students can struggle to keep pace with the demanding curriculum.

So when it came time for the admissions committee to consider one such student in November 2021—a black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average—some members of the committee felt that this particular candidate, based on the available evidence, was not the best fit for the top-tier medical school, according to two people present for the committee's meeting.

Their reservations were not well-received.

When an admissions officer voiced concern about the candidate, the two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

"Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate's scores shouldn't matter, she continued,  because "we need people like this in the medical school."

Even before the Supreme Court's landmark affirmative action ban last year, public schools in California were barred by state law from considering race in admissions. The outburst from Lucero, who discussed race explicitly despite that ban, unsettled some admissions officers, one of whom reached out to other committee members in the wake of the incident. "We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants," the official wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "This is troubling."

"I wondered," the official added, "if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion."

Since Lucero took over medical school admissions in June 2020, several of her colleagues have asked the same question. In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university's Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a "failed medical school," said one former member of the admissions staff. "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it."

This story is based on written correspondence between UCLA officials, internal data on student performance, and interviews with eight professors at the medical school—six of whom have worked with or under Lucero on medical student and residency admissions.

Together, they provide an unprecedented account of how racial preferences, outlawed in California since 1996, have nonetheless continued, upending academic standards at one of the top medical schools in the country. The school has consequently taken a hit in the rankings and seen a sharp rise in the number of students failing basic standardized tests, raising concerns about their clinical competence.

"I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," a member of the admissions committee told the Free Beacon. "People get in and they struggle."

It is almost unheard of for admissions officials to go public, even anonymously, and provide a window into confidential deliberations, much less to accuse their colleagues of breaking the law or lowering standards. They've agreed to come forward anyway, several officials told the Free Beacon, because the results of Lucero's push for diversity have been so alarming.

"I wouldn't normally talk to a reporter," a UCLA faculty member said. "But there's no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school."

Within three years of Lucero's hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.

Those tests, known as shelf exams, which are typically taken at the end of each clinical rotation, measure basic medical knowledge and play a pivotal role in residency applications. Though only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA, having increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020, according to internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

That uptick coincided with a steep drop in the number of Asian matriculants and tracks the subjective impressions of faculty who say that students have never been more poorly prepared.

One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don't know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients.

"I don't know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors," the professor said. "Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students."

And for those who've seen the competency crisis up close, double standards in admissions are a big part of the problem. "All the normal criteria for getting into medical school only apply to people of certain races," an admissions officer said. "For other people, those criteria are completely disregarded."

Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA's anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.

The bar for underrepresented minorities is "as low as you could possibly imagine," one committee member told the Free Beacon. "It completely disregards grades and achievements."

Lucero did not respond to a request for comment.

Several officials said that they support holistic admissions and don't believe test scores should be judged in isolation. The problem, as they see it, is that the committee is not just weighing academic merit against community service or considering how much time a given student had to study for the MCAT. For certain applicants, they say, hardship and community service seem to be the only things that matter to the majority of the committee's 20-30 members, many of whom were handpicked by Lucero, according to people familiar with the selection process.

"We were always outnumbered," an admissions officer told the Free Beacon, referring to committee members who expressed concern about low grades. "Other people would get upset when we brought up GPA."

Lucero hasn't been kind to dissenters. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, six people who've worked with her described a pattern of racially charged incidents that has dispirited officials and pushed some of them to resign from the committee.

She has lashed out at officials who question the qualifications of minority candidates, five sources said, suggesting naysayers are "privileged," implying that they are racist, and subjecting them to diversity training sessions.

After a Native American applicant was rejected in 2021, for example, Lucero chewed out the committee and made members sit through a two-hour lecture on Native history delivered by her own sister, according to three people familiar with the incident. No applications were reviewed that day, an official present for the lecture said.

In the anesthesiology department, where Lucero helps rank applicants to the department's residency program, she has rebuffed calls to blind the race of candidates, telling colleagues in a January 2023 email that, despite California's ban on racial preferences, "we are not required to blind any information."

That alone could get UCLA in legal trouble, according to Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that outlawed affirmative action nationwide.

Asking for information about an applicant's race when "no lawful use can be made of it" is "presumptively illegal," Mortara said. "You can't have evidence of overt discrimination like this and not have someone come forward" as a plaintiff.

Lucero has even advocated moving candidates up or down the residency rank list based on race. At a meeting in February 2022, according to two people present, Lucero demanded that a highly qualified white male be knocked down several spots because, as she put it, "we have too many of his kind" already. She also told doctors who voiced concern that they had no right to an opinion because they were "not BIPOC," sources said, and insisted that a Hispanic applicant who had performed poorly on her anesthesiology rotation in medical school should be bumped up. Neither candidate was ultimately moved.

Lucero's comments from the meeting were flagged in an email to UCLA's Discrimination Prevention Office, which has received several complaints about her since 2023, emails show. The office has declined to act on those complaints on the grounds that they aren't "serious enough" to merit an investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The Discrimination Prevention Office did not respond to a request for comment.

The focus on racial diversity has coincided with a dramatic shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the medical school, where the number of Asian matriculants fell by almost a third between 2019 and 2022, according to publicly available data. No other elite medical school in California saw a similar decline.

As the demographics of UCLA have changed, the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected.

Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline, per internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

"UCLA still produces some very good graduates," one professor said. "But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified."

The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA's decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add more time for research and community service. That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.

First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in "Structural Racism and Health Equity," a required class that covers topics like "fatphobia," has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review. They spend an additional seven hours a week in "Foundations of Practice," which includes units on "interpersonal communication skills" and, according to one medical student, basically "tells us how to be a good person." The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics.

"This has been a colossal failure," one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. "The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations."

Nearly a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams, data from the school show, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone a different test, the Step 2 licensing exam, that is typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs.

Around 20 percent of UCLA students have not taken Step 2 by January of their fourth year, according to the data. Ten percent have not even taken the more basic Step 1—an "extremely high number," one professor said, that will force many students to extend medical school.

"It's a combination of a bad curriculum and bad selection," another professor said, referring to the admissions process. Some students are accepted with GPAs so low "they shouldn't even be applying."

UCLA did not respond to a request for comment.

As medical schools around the country adjust to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ban, the experience of UCLA offers a preview of how administrators may skirt the law and devise public-spirited excuses for violating it.

Lucero has told the admissions committee that each class should "represent" the "diversity" of California, including its remote and rural areas, so that graduating students will return to their hometowns and beef up the medical infrastructure there, officials say.

Race is rarely mentioned outright, and unlike the committee for anesthesiology residents, the committee for students does not see the race or ethnicity of applicants.

Instead, officials say, Lucero uses proxies like zip codes and euphemisms like "disadvantaged" to shut down criticism of unqualified candidates, citing a finding from the Association of American Medical Colleges that, technically, most students with below-average MCATs make it to their second year of medical school. How well they do after that point goes undiscussed and undisclosed.

"We have asked for metrics on how these folks actually do," one committee member said. "None of that is ever divulged to us."

Update 05/24/24, 9:20 a.m: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that a fourth of UCLA medical students failed three or more shelf exams in 2021. The story has been updated to reflect that a fourth of UCLA medical students in the class of 2025 have failed three or more shelf exams.

The dumbing down of the medical practice, all in the name of DEI.