Political correctness

The Dark Side of Art?

Featured image Cambridge University’s Fitzwilliam Museum has an excellent collection that includes, among others, paintings by John Constable, one of my favorite artists. Like this one: A lovely image of the British countryside, right? Not according to the museum. It now comes with a warning: The Fitzwilliam Museum has suggested that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark “nationalist feelings”. You might think England is a pretty country–I do–but how is that »

Renaming Is For the Birds

Featured image The mania for renaming in the interest of political correctness has come to birds: Dozens of birds with “harmful and exclusionary” names are to be renamed in the US and Canada to eradicate links with individuals with racist or colonial pasts. How exactly can a bird species’ name be “exclusionary”? The move by the American Ornithological Society (AOS) will see all birds named after individuals rebranded following years of controversy »

Biden Administration Pushes “Indigenous Knowledge”

Featured image The Biden administration has released a “guidance” to federal agencies that calls on them to include “Indigenous Knowledge” in decision making: Today, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) jointly released new government-wide guidance and an accompanying implementation memorandum for Federal Agencies on recognizing and including Indigenous Knowledge in Federal research, policy, and decision making. You may wonder, »

Math For Dummies

Featured image It is an inconvenient truth that various ethnic groups do not, on average, perform equally well on objective measures of intellectual accomplishment. Mathematics is particularly problematic, in that results are hard to fudge–basically, answers are either right or wrong. Liberals have responded to this conundrum by dumbing down one discipline after another. Their theory is that if they lower standards far enough, they will arrive at a point where racial »

Conservatism, Animal-Style

Featured image Whenever I am down in the LA area, as I am today, my mind runs to ordering French fries “animal style” from In-n-Out burgers. (IYKYK.) But today, opening up the Washington Post, I discover the origins of a possible new sect of conservatism: Animal-House conservatives, who naturally do things “animal-style.” Yes, the Post really does suggest that the 1978 comedy blockbuster Animal House bears some responsibility for the Reagan era »

The Power Line Political Lexicon, Updated

Featured image Our periodic lexicon of the real meaning of key political phrases has grown somewhat chaotically, so I decided to bring some order to it by alphabetizing it (with a couple of exceptions where a pairing is essential for meaningful contrast or revealing maximum leftist incoherence), and denoting new entries (“Dark Money” this time) with an asterisk. Herewith: Ableism: the idea that ability, competence, achievement, and merit are somehow better than »

Will Comedians Save the West?

Featured image I’m starting to wonder. We’ve noted here repeatedly the tergiversations of Bill Maher, and of course we could dilate the long history of the effectiveness of political satire and comic philosophy at least as far back at Aristophanes. And then there’s Ricky Gervais, who more or less blew up for good the Golden Globe Awards in 2020.  And here’s his latest (just one minute long): I doubt there is a »

The Decline of the West in One Fight Song

Featured image As you know, the NFL’s “Washington Football Team” finally settled on a new team name: the “Commanders.” I wonder how many focus groups it took to settle on this. Was it harder than coming up with “Oklahoma is OK”? Is “Commanders” really a good name for a city whose commands to the populace are increasingly resented? (It might help if the team had a commanding record to boast about in »

These People Are Crazy

Featured image Kamala Harris hosted some kind of event earlier today. Several mask-wearing (why?) women participated. As is now common in gatherings of liberals, they began the meeting by introducing themselves and stating their pronouns. And, weirdly, by describing themselves–their hair color, the dresses they were wearing, whatever. This might possibly make sense if it were a meeting of blind people, otherwise not. Utterly bizarre. Here is Kamala: VP: "I am Kamala »

Joshua Katz: Good news & bad

Featured image The good news is that our friends at the New Criterion have appointed Joshua Katz to serve as one of its Visiting Critics next season. Professor Katz is Cotsen Professor of Classics at Princeton. A linguist by training, a classicist by profession, and a comparative philologist at heart, he is the recipient of numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship on the languages, literatures, and cultures of the ancient and »

People of Color Banned

Featured image This is a familiar story: at Marquette University, Native American students complained that the school’s seal was “disrespectful to indigenous people.” Here is the old seal. It shows, among other things, Father Marquette, after whom the university is named, in a canoe with an Indian who is said to be his guide: Per the College Fix, the seal was taken from this painting of Marquette with a group of Indians: »

The big yawn

Featured image Tomorrow, the Washington Football Team will announce its new name. The team will do so on NBC’s Today Show. Apparently, those in charge of the team and the network think there’s significant national interest in what the former Redskins will call themselves. I doubt there is. Most fans of the team are interested in the new name, but I’m not among them. I don’t care. Here are my two predictions »

Freedom in an age of fear

Featured image Abigail Shrier is the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. Standing athwart the trans craze shouting stop, she and the book have achieved a certain notoriety. Having been invited to give a speech at Princeton, she was of course canceled, only to emerge off campus before a limited audience of 35. She gave a wonderful speech addressed to young people. The theme, as Bari Weiss aptly »

How Racist Are Our Highways?

Featured image In recent months, liberals have floated the idea that the U.S. highway system is “racist,” and therefore vast amounts of money must be spent to expunge that taint. Pete Buttigieg caught quite a bit of flak for making this claim, but did not back off from it. Supposedly, one shining example of racist highway construction is Interstate Highway 94, which links Minneapolis and St. Paul. The claim against I-94 is »

The tomahawk chop, a postscript

Featured image John and I both wrote last night about the use of the tomahawk chop by fans of the Atlanta Braves. I speculated that even if the Atlanta Braves tried to stop fans from chopping, the effort would probably be unsuccessful. Today, a Braves fan informs me that the Braves did, in fact, try to do away with the tomahawk chop two years ago. He writes: On the first day of »

Chop On!

Featured image I checked out on this year’s baseball season due to wokeness on the part of Major League Baseball (moving the All-Star game out of Atlanta) and the Minnesota Twins. I paid virtually no attention to baseball all year, but haven’t been able to resist tuning in on the World Series. I had no clear favorite. I like the Astros, in part because one of their biggest stars, Jose Altuve, is »

Regarding Jon Gruden

Featured image Jon Gruden is out as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders because of what he wrote in private emails. The emails are described by the media as “racist,” “homophobic,” and “misogynist.” From what I can tell, the racism consists of making fun of the lip size of the head of the players’ union who is Black. The homophobia consists of calling NFL commissioner Roger Goodell the other “f” word and »