• Remember stories like this from the 1990s (or for that matter from 1980 about Reagan, age 69 at the time)? Remember all the stories like this last year about 77-year-old Joe Biden? Me neither.
• Mark Perry has struck again, finding that Ohio State University—I mean, THE Ohio State University—has a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI, but really “DIE” if you arrange the letters accurately) staff of 132, with an average salary of $77,000 and total estimated payroll cost of $13.4 million, which would cover in-state tuition for 1,120 students. Here are the first 34 officers—notice not only the salary levels but the overlapping and seemingly redundant titles:
So I repeat my simple, two-step reform idea for public universities: State legislatures should pass a simple law that the total staff (including outside consultants) for DIE offices can be no larger than the faculty of the university’s History department; second, no DIE staff person may receive a salary higher than a full tenured professor. Incidentally, Ohio State drastically underpays its senior DIE staff compared to other universities that I’ve seen.
• Gee, maybe Democrats are starting to get a clue that minorities don’t like their obsession with “identity politics” and gender-bending language? From Politico today:
Democrats fall flat with ‘Latinx’ language
As Democrats seek to reach out to Latino voters in a more gender-neutral way, they’ve increasingly begun using the word Latinx, a term that first began to get traction among academics and activists on the left.
But that very effort could be counterproductive in courting those of Latin American descent, according to a new nationwide poll of Hispanic voters.
Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.
More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term. . .
Money quote:
“The numbers suggest that using Latinx is a violation of the political Hippocratic Oath, which is to first do no electoral harm,” said Fernand Amandi, whose firm advised Barack Obama’s successful Hispanic outreach nationwide in his two presidential campaigns. “Why are we using a word that is preferred by only 2 percent, but offends as many as 40 percent of those voters we want to win?”
Also this, at the very end:
One of the founders of Univision, Joaquin Blaya, said they built the network around the concept of using the words Latino and, especially, Hispanic, because it reflected the Spanish language and united Spanish speakers from across Latin America. He said his objection to Latinx is that it’s “too weird. It’s dumb. It’s foreign. It’s not Spanish.”
“Democrats are helping Republicans make them look out of touch,” said Blaya, a registered Democrat. “We built a network around our Spanish language and we have a shared culture around it. Why are we trying to change this? It’s offensive to a lot of people.”
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.