Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press

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The Philadelphia Inquirer, which declines to print the photos of criminals who are black, sure is willing if the perp is white. That the perp is a former police officer is just icing on the cake for the Inky!

As we have previously noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer chose not to publish the photos of Quadir Jones, charged in the rape of a 13-year-old girl leaving a SEPTA train station on her way to school, or Yaaseen Bivins, already convicted and awaiting sentencing for an incident killing an unborn child, and now accused in the Roxborough High School shootings, but they made certain that we knew a former Warminster police officer who pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting five underaged boys was a white guy:

‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing’: For years, a Warminster police officer sexually assaulted troubled teens, DA says

James Carey assaulted four teenage boys he met through the D.A.R.E. program, prosecutors say.

Screen Capture from Philadelphia Inquirer, October 27, 2022. Click to enlarge.

by Vinny Vella | Thursday, October 27, 2022 | 12:26 PM EDT

A Warminster police officer acted as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and sexually assaulted four teenage boys he knew were dealing with difficulties at home, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said Wednesday.

More than 30 years after the initial alleged attacks, James Carey was arrested Wednesday and charged with felony sexual abuse.

“A police officer’s creed is to protect and serve his community,” Weintraub said. “In a perverse and cruel dereliction of duty, James Carey took advantage of the rank and credentials he had as a police officer on the job to prey on our community’s most vulnerable.”

Carey, 52, met his victims between 1988 and 2000, when he worked as an officer in the D.A.R.E antidrug program at schools in the Centennial School District in Warminster, Weintraub said. But he had access to victims beyond the schools, including on overnight camping trips to the Poconos and to Camp Ockanickon, a Boy Scout facility in Pipersville, the district attorney said.

With his conviction, Mr Carey faces a maximum of 94½ to 189 years in prison. 🙂 Whatever his sentence, I suspect that a convicted child rapist who is a former police officer will not much enjoy his time in prison.

Let me be clear about this: I have no objection to the Inquirer publishing photos of criminals. Indeed, I think that they should be published, and it is The First Street Journal’s policy to do just that. But that the Inky, which publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes proclaimed to be an “anti-racist news organization,” one which would:

  • establish “a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime,”
  • create “an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism,” and
  • examine their “crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media”

seems to have decided that the way to do that is to indicate for readers when crimes, especially crimes committed by police officers, are committed by white people.

Perhaps that’s what Miss Hughes thought would be the right thing to do after declaring that the Inquirer was a ‘white newspaper’ in a ‘black city.’

The Inquirer did not just publish the offender’s photograph after he was convicted, but did so on April 20, 2021, shortly after he was arrested, 1½ years before conviction, as I have documented in this screen capture, taken at 4:39 PM EDT on Thursday, October 27, 2022. Why the screen capture? It ought to be obvious: I do not trust the editors of the Inquirer not to scrub the earlier article once this is pointed out to them!

Want more proof? Published just this afternoon:

Samir Ahmad, taken during FBI sting operation, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News, on Twitter. Click to enlarge.

Guns used in Roxborough shooting later ended up in the hands of a Philadelphia sheriff’s deputy

Samir Ahmad, a four-year veteran of the department, was arrested while at work last week as part of an FBI gun trafficking investigation, court records say.

by Ellie Rushing and Jeremy Roebuck | Thursday, October 27, 2022 | 4:35 PM EDT

Two of the guns used in the shooting outside of Roxborough High School last month, which left a 14-year-old dead and four teens injured, later ended up in the hands of a Philadelphia sheriff’s deputy who then illegally resold the weapons to a federal informant, according to a court filing unsealed Thursday.

Samir Ahmad, 29, a four-year veteran of the department, was arrested at work last week as part of an FBI gun-trafficking investigation, the records say.

The photos of now-fired Deputy Sheriff Samir Ahmad were freely available, and on Twitter an hour before Miss Rushing’s and Mr Roebuck’s story was published. The Roxborough High School football field shooting has been a major story in the City of Brotherly Love, so this wasn’t just a minor gun trafficking story. But the Inquirer reporters and editors did not, for some reason, publish the photos alleging to show the now-former Deputy Sheriff in the act of selling guns, somehow lifted from evidence lockers, to what he thought was a criminal and an illegal immigrant, but turned out to be an FBI agent.

The credentialed media sure didn’t like being called #FakeNews, something which challenged their veracity and credibility, but they sure have been caught in the act doing it, kind of a lot. The credentialed media rarely tell outright lies, but they often omit important pieces of information when the whole truth would undermine their political positions.

Now, here the Inky goes again, trying to conceal the races of black law-breakers, not that readers wouldn’t have guessed just from the names of the accused that they were black, but making sure that readers would know when an accused man (at first) and now convicted sex offender and rapist is white.

The part I really don’t get? The editors, reporters, and publisher of the newspaper know that people like me are watching, yet they keep doing the same stuff, over and over and over again.

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I guess the Inky needs help before Christmas!

This is not the first, nor even the second begging letter — just 3½ months ago — I have received from the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but it is as amusing as all of the others.

I have frequently referred to our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, in our nation’s sixth largest city and seventh largest metropolitan area as The Philadelphia Enquirer ever since RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake. I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I have found it very apt. The Inky, despite Philly’s size, is only our nation’s 17th largest newspaper, by circulation. Why? I have suggested that part of it is because the Inquirer censors the news!

Just two days ago, I pointed out that four people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love, and the Inky didn’t even mention any of them.

In attempting to meet publisher Elizabeth Hughes stated goal of making the Inquirer an “anti-racist news organization,” the newspaper published its “Black City. White Paper” series, which, in effect, told white readers and potential readers that the Inky was really not for them.

Nor is it even true. Philadelphia isn’t a “black city.” The 2020 census found that just 38.3% of the city’s population were non-Hispanic black, and Hispanics, who can be either black or white, made up 14.9%. Between non-Hispanic whites, 34.3%, Asians, 8.3%, and “other groups,” 4.3%, the city is 46.9% non-black, and it doesn’t take a terribly large percentage of the Hispanic population being white to get the city to majority non-black. The non-Hispanic white population of the city have certainly declined, but they are hardly gone.

More, the Philadelphia metropolitan area is very much majority white. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Inquirer practically marketing itself as a newspaper for a “Black City” isn’t really something that’s going to help it to sell well in West Chester or Bucks County.

The Inquirer used to proclaim itself, on the newspaper’s masthead, that it was a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. That “Independent Newspaper” blurb was even proudly emblazoned on its old building, but the newspaper under Miss Hughes has been telling us that no, it is no longer a “Public Ledger,” and that it is no longer a “Newspaper for All the People.”

Why did Annie McCain Madonia, the Chief Advancement Officer for the leftist Lenfest Institute, call me “a supporter of The Philadelphia Inquirer“? It’s simple: it’s because I am a subscriber for the digital newspaper.[1]As much as I really do love actual printed newspapers, I now live well outside the newspaper’s physical delivery area. Before I retired, I used to pick up a dead trees copy of the Inquirer to … Continue reading And I am paying $21.96 every four weeks for my digital subscription, more than I pay for The Washington Post, $99 a year, and more than I pay for The New York Times, $17.00 every four weeks. Given that I used to live in the Keystone State, and Philadelphia is the city about which I am most concerned, and about which I most frequently write, I’ll continue to pay that subscription. But I think that I have contributed quite enough to the Inky, thank you very much.

But the Inquirer needs to get better; it needs to report all the news, not just what Miss Hughes and Executive Editor Gabriel Escobar consider to be politically correct.

With the advent of digital publication, even though the dead trees edition has gotten physically smaller, newspapers in digital format are no longer constrained by word counts or assigned column inches. Newspapers have always had the ability to go more in depth than television news and their quick-fire show-and-tell stories, and now, with space constraints gone, really get into the heart of stories. The Inky can be better than it ever was.

I did, however, note, with a photo, that our forebears across the pond have been able to keep newspapers full-sized.

Instead, it has gotten worse. Instead, the newspaper has gotten so thoroughly eaten up with ‘progressive’ ideology that the editors refuse to cover the news which might be politically incorrect, refuse to publish the news which might be outside Miss Hughes ideology. With Lenfest’s ownership, the Inquirer actually can call itself “An Independent Newspaper,” but they are failing in the “for All the People” part. I have frequently noted the differences between journalism and journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading and too much of the Inky is the latter.

I’ve said it before: if I had Jeff Bezos’ money, I’d do what he did with The Washington Post: I’d buy the Inquirer and rescue it from its financial problems. But I would also clean house, I would make sure that the newspaper really did cover all the news, and publish all of the news, letting the chips fall where they may, regardless of whose feelings might get hurt. That’s what real journalists are supposed to do.

References

References
↑1 As much as I really do love actual printed newspapers, I now live well outside the newspaper’s physical delivery area. Before I retired, I used to pick up a dead trees copy of the Inquirer to take to the plant.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Journolism: ignoring the “Five Ws + H” in reporting due to political correctness

Despite having spent two years on the staff of the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student newspaper, I was never a journalism major. That does not mean that I have been completely uneducated on reporting and newswriting, though I must say that newswriting under 2022 standards is nothing like it was in the 1970s.

One of the most basic journalism standards is the “Five Ws,” frequently referred to as the “Five Ws + H.” It’s pretty simple: “who, what, when, where, and why,” with the addition of “how”. Who is involved, what happened, when and where did it happen, why did it happen, and how did it happen. These are the things for which every responsible editor looks, and will come back to the reporter or newswriter — not always the same person — if one of them is missing.

Sometimes, especially with a breaking news story, one or more of those “Ws” is simply unknown, and deadlines being what they were, and are, a story will get rushed to publication while missing one of the six important points. In most such cases, there will be a note at the end to the effect of “This is a breaking story and will be updated.” With the advent of digital publication, where newspapers have online versions, this can be fairly frequent, as newspaper editors, in competition with television and internet media, don’t want to sit on a story.

Which brings me back to something I covered Thursday evening, the decision of the Cherokee County School Board to not play the Highlands School girls’ volleyball team. Several credentialed media sources covered the story, and they gave us the “who”, the Cherokee County School Board, the “what”, the decision to forfeit all scheduled games with Highlands, the “when”, Thursday, September 21st, the “where,” the Cherokee County School Board meeting, and the “why,” because a “Hiwassee Dam High School volleyball player got neck and head injuries when a Highlands athlete spiked a ball”.

Except, as it happens, the credentialed media sources all censored part of the “why.”

Volleyball players spike the ball! They all try to spike the ball, to deliver a shot against the opponent with such speed and force that the defense cannot react quickly enough to prevent the ball from hitting the ground inbounds. That a player in a (supposedly) non-contact sport was injured by a spiked ball is infrequent, but certainly not unheard of.

If you read only the credentialed media stories, you might be scratching your head, wondering why the School Board would take such a decision, against one player on one team. Spiking the ball is, after all, part of the game, and if the Board were concerned that a spiked ball injured a player, and that somehow made the game unsafe, then a reader might wonder why the Board didn’t simply cancel all girls’ volleyball games, with all opponents.

And that’s the part of the “why” the credentialed media censored: the Highlands School girls’ volleyball player that so forcefully spiked the ball isn’t a girl! The unnamed-in-the-media player is a boy who “identifies” as a girl, and that’s why the Cherokee County Board of Education took the decision the way they did. The report from the Cherokee County Board of Education is here.

The Board’s report noted:

Mr. Jason Murphy stated to the Board that he hoped they voted on this issue based on their morals, ethics and Christian upbringing.

In other words, there was a political and religious aspect to the Board’s decision, as raised in the meeting, and it is at least possible, though the Board denied it, that political and religious considerations influenced the decision. Surely that would be a newsworthy part of the “why” of the decision.

Ms. Jordan Lovingood asked the Board to consider how their decision will affect the Highlands’ player this decision is being made about. She stressed how we are teaching inclusion and acceptance in our schools, yet making a decision to not play a team based on sex.

(Board member) Mr. (Joe) Wood commented that no one is basing their decision on sex; it’s based on safety.

This would normally be a very contentious point, yet the credentialed media completely ignored all of it, because to have included it in their stories would have been to inform readers that the player in question is not, to use a phrase in the Board’s report, “100% girl”.

I frequently use the word “journolism”, the spelling of which comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. Perhaps some would find that unfair, but what better reflects when (purported) journalists ignore the basic principles of reporting and newswriting in order to protect the political position that ‘transgender’ girls are real girls?

The credentialed media got really, really upset when they were accused of #FakeNews, but what else would you call it when the media censor the news in the way they did in this story? If the media aren’t trusted, this is just part of the reason why.

I found out about this story not through the credentialed media, but due to definitely biased bloggers, and I put some effort into searching out confirmation of this through the credentialed media; it took the link to the Board of Education’s report of the meeting, in the Washington Examiner, certainly a conservatively biased source, to gain unbiased confirmation. But when biased bloggers report the whole story, while the professional media will not, there’s something wrong with our professional media.

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Journolism: media bias at its finest The credentialed media didn't publish anything untrue, but they deliberately chose to omit the most important fact

No, there isn’t a typographical error in the article headline. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Sometimes that bias is deeply buried, and at first, I wondered if this was a hoax, because I wasn’t finding any credentialed media verification of the story. But finally, I found it from an ABC News station:

After player injury, Cherokee Co. schools forfeit all volleyball games against 1 school

by Jordan Karnbach | Tuesday, October 4, 2022

CHEROKEEE COUNTY, N.C. — All girls’ volleyball teams in the Cherokee County school district will forfeit upcoming regular season games against one competitor due to a recent player injury, according to Cherokee County School Board member Arnold Mathews.

Mathews told us in an email on Tuesday that the board determined the varsity and junior varsity teams in the district won’t play the Highlands School volleyball team “due to safety concerns,” Mathews said.

That decision came after a Hiwassee Dam High School volleyball player got neck and head injuries when a Highlands athlete spiked a ball, which “forcefully struck” the athlete in the head, says Mathews.

Mathews says this decision does not affect any other sports or teams in the district.

You know what isn’t in any of the credentialed media reports? What isn’t there is that the ball which was forcefully spiked was spiked by a ‘transgender girl’, meaning: a male who identifies as a girl and is playing on the girls’ volleyball team.

Several non-credentialed sites picked up that part, and it took some digging through them to find the confirmation. There was considerable debate among the Cherokee County Board of Education meeting, but if you read through the meeting minutes, you’ll see what the credentialed media tried to hide: yes, the player in question is a “biological male”.

Dr. Lisa Fletcher, Principal Murphy High, informed the Board that at the athletic association meeting she had just attended the issue of student’s playing based on their birth certificate gender is going to be addressed in the future. She advised the Board to communicate with the Athletic Association regarding this issue.

Mr. Steve Colemen addressed the safety concern for the female players facing a biological male player. He added that the Board should make a stand because if it isn’t addressed now, it’s possible in the future that a Cherokee County team could face a team with all biological males playing; and if this isn’t addressed there is a risk for biological male students taking over women’s sports.

The Board of Education clearly took its decision based on the fact that the Highlands girls’ volleyball team had a male team member; that ought to be news, ought to be an important part of the story, and is the “why” for the entire decision, but the credentialed media have censored that part. The credentialed media didn’t publish anything untrue, but they skewed the entire story by deliberately omitting the most important, most relevant fact. How is that not lying?

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Bad causes attract bad people

In The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we note:

Those who claim to be transgender will be referred to with the honorific and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth; the site owner does not agree with the cockamamie notion that anyone can simply ‘identify’ with a sex which is not his own, nor that any medical ‘treatment’ or surgery can change a person’s natural sex; all that it can do is physically mutilate a person.

Sadly, the credentialed media do not follow the same rule. Rather, they almost uniformly refer to the ‘transgendered’ by the names and sex they claim to be, rather than doing something really radical like telling the truth.

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain had the story of Steven Joaquin Perez, a man male who believes he is a woman and who calls himself “Zhoie”. Mr McCain concentrated on Mr Perez’s actions in trying to provoke law enforcement and security personnel to take action against him, as a “first amendment auditor,” comparting such to “sovereign citizens,” people who believe that they are completely independent of what they see as a corrupt government. I encourage you to read Mr McCain’s original on that part.

Me? I’m more interested in the complicity of the credentialed media in perpetuating the lie that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. Mr McCain likes to link an archived version of his sources, to help people get past paywalls, and I saw the archived version of the story here. I went to the original.

Guard won’t be charged in shooting of YouTube activist ‘Furry Potato.’ She’s suing him

by James Quelly | March 13, 2019 | 6:25 PM PDT

Zhoie Perez, second from right, speaks during a news conference in downtown Los Angeles. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times). Caption is a direct quote from The Los Angeles Times. Click to enlarge.

Los Angeles prosecutors Wednesday declined to file criminal charges against a security guard who shot and wounded a YouTube personality during a bizarre clash outside a synagogue last month, an announcement that came just hours after the woman filed a civil lawsuit against the guard and his employers.Edduin Zelayagrunfeld, 44, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon Feb. 14 after shooting 45-year-old Zhoie Perez while she was filming outside the Etz Jacob Congregation/Ohel Chana High School building in the Fairfax district.

Prosecutors had asked the LAPD to conduct a deeper investigation into the incident before they made a filing decision, but they formally rejected the charges Wednesday. In a declination memorandum, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Harlan wrote that prosecutors ultimately would not be able to disprove Zelayagrunfeld was acting in self-defense.

There’s more at the original.

I went to the original for the specific purpose of counting how many times the Times referred to Mr Perez as though he was a woman. The word “woman” is used once to refer to him, and the feminine pronouns are used — assuming I counted them correctly — fifteen times. The article does note that he is “transgender” once, but does not tell us Mr Perez’s real name; I only know it because Mr McCain had looked it up and posted it.

Look at the photo that the Times used. Even Stevie Wonder could see that Mr Perez isn’t a woman, but the Times called him one uncritically. A different photo used my Mr McCain doesn’t really indicate Mr Perez’s height in the same manner, but reveals a clearly masculine face. Every bird, every reptile, and every mammal can tell the difference between males and females of their own species, and my observations are that dogs and cats, at the very least, can distinguish between the sexes of human beings, but somehow the left, including our credentialed media, have lost that very fundamental ability.

It has been said that bad causes attract bad people, and Mr Perez is simply another example of it. He went to a synagogue to deliberately provoke a fight, and he succeeded. One would think that someone who is ‘transgendered’ would want to live a relatively quiet life, in the hopes of getting his circle of friends to see him as a real woman, rather than have publicity demonstrating to the entire country that no, he ain’t a real woman, but a complete kook. The “first amendment auditors” are certainly right that they do have rights, but going about proving it by trampling on other people’s rights, and trying to provoke confrontation is not exactly a way to win friends and influence people, or at least not to influence people to support them.

And if bad causes attract bad people, then the reverse is also true: if you see a bad person, look at the causes he supports a bit more closely, and you’re very likely to find those political causes he supports aren’t all that great.

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Larry Krasner and The Philadelphia Inquirer sure love them some propaganda!

We have previously mocked told our readers — both of them — that The Philadelphia Inquirer has informed us that:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

Now, the District Attorney’s Office has told us that these are “street groups”.

Investigators believe that Johnson and Simmons targeted these young men because of their affiliation with a rival street group.

The left sure love them some propaganda!

Apparently, the way to end gangs is to redefine them away.

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More ‘journolism’ from the Lexington Herald-Leader

Brandi Whitaker, a former Madison County teacher, pleaded guilty to unlawful use of electronic device to induce a minor in 2017. She was given shock probation that same year. WKYT. Click to enlarge.

No, that’s not a typo in the headline: The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

The Lexington Herald-Leader doesn’t like to publish photos of people accused of, or even convicted of, serious crimes, but they made an exception in the case of Brandi Whitaker, formerly a biology teacher at Madison Southern High School near Berea who allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old male student; Miss Whitaker pleaded guilty to an electronic communication charge, a Class D felony in Kentucky, and was sentenced to a year behind bars.

Part of a series that the newspaper carried on teachers who’ve had their licenses suspended, primarily for sexual abuse of students, was mentioned because Miss Whitaker received a “shock probation” in less than two months.

Man arrested, charged after shooting in downtown Lexington early Sunday morning

by Taylor Six | Sunday, October 2, 2022 | 2:10 PM EDT

A man is facing multiple charges after he was arrested in downtown Lexington following a shooting that sent a man to the hospital early Sunday morning.

Twenty-eight-year-old Adrian Black was arrested by Lexington Police after he allegedly shot a man near the Fifth-Third Pavilion and Cheapside, according to Sgt. Nate Williams.

Around 1:45 a.m. on Sunday, police working in the downtown entertainment area heard shots fired. The located a adult male victim with non-life threatening injuries.

According to Williams, police were able to locate Black who was leaving the scene in the immediate area.

Williams stated officers on the scene were told by witnesses that there was a physical altercation before the shooting between the suspects.

Adrian Black, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Adrian Marcel Black, born February 7, 1994, was not exactly unfamiliar to the Lexington Police Department, as the public record from the Fayette County Detention Center shows two previous mug shots of him, dated March 22, 2014 and June 11, 2019. He faces charges of:

  • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, two counts, a Class D felony, which, under KRS §532.060 carries a sentence of one (1) to five (5) years in the state penitentiary.
  • KRS §508.010, Assault, First Degree, a Class B felony, which, under KRS §532.060 carries a sentence of no less than ten (10) to twenty (20) years in the state penitentiary.

The crimes of which Mr Black has been accused are serious ones, far more serious than that to which Miss Whitaker pleaded guilty, as measured by the fact she was convicted of a single Class D felony, while Mr Black faces a Class B felony charge, yet what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal chose not to print his photo, unlike the case with Miss Whitaker.

I might not have covered this, had the newspaper not published the photo of Miss Whitaker; that would have been consistent with their policy — a policy with which I disagree — of not publishing such photos. But they did publish Miss Whitaker’s photo, then returned to their standard operating procedure by not publishing Mr Black’s. Yet Mr Black, if he makes his $50,000 bail, is far more of a clear and present danger on the city’s streets than Miss Whitaker!

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Just because a public school library does not carry sexually-charged books does not mean that such books are banned

The image to the right is a screen capture if the results I got when I Google searched for libraries in Bucks County. This section of the map shows other libraries.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is, of course, aghast that concerned parents might not want their impressionable children exposed to certain materials, primarily sexually explicit materials, and things which glorify what the federal government has sometimes referred to as “minority sexual attractions.”

A parade against book-banning in Doylestown, as Central Bucks School District targets ‘sexualized content’

Bans, restrictions and challenges to books have reached levels not seen in decades

by Jeff Gammage | Sunday, September 25, 2022

One marcher was costumed as the cover of Lawn Boy, the Jonathan Evison book that was banned for its gay and lesbian content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.

Another was outfitted as All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, which was banned for similar reasons.

Others wore the oversize dust jackets of other books that have been targeted in libraries and school districts for supposedly inappropriate content.

Note the use of language by Jeff Gammage, the Inquirer reporter: “supposedly inappropriate content.” Any responsible editor would have blue-penciled that loaded phrase right away, but there is no evidence that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. has any responsible editors.

The Central Bucks school district is prohibiting their school libraries from carrying books and other material which are sexually explicit and age-inappropriate, because a great many parents do not want their children exposed to such. But the school district controls only the public school libraries; the ones listed in the screen capture are the Bucks County free public library system, and they can carry whatever books and material they wish. If some student wants to read All Boys Aren’t Blue he can check the public library, or order it from Amazon. The question is whether the school system should be exposing public school students — and Pennsylvania, like every other state, has a compulsory education law — to a book which details and attempts to glorify the experiences of the author “growing up as a queer Black man in Plainfield, New Jersey.”

In addition to describing Johnson’s own experience, it directly addresses Black queer boys who may not have someone in their life with similar experiences.

Perhaps, just perhaps, some parents do not want their sons and daughters exposed to that.

The district superintendent said the measure would ensure that students read “age-appropriate material,” but civil rights groups have been alarmed.

“No one is saying that every book is or should be appropriate for every child,” said parade organizer Kate Nazemi, a parent with two children in the Central Bucks district, one of the state’s largest. “Librarians and teachers work actively to find the right books for the right kids. They are educators. And they’re being treated like they’re not.”

Well, that’s just it. As we have previously noted, child rearing is the responsibility of parents, and not of the school system or of teachers. More, the public schools and their employees should be subject to the wishes of the taxpayers and parents who fund them, but the “educators” are acting as though they should be supervising the parents, rather than the other way around.

Nazemi, a member of Advocates for Inclusive Education, a coalition that opposes extremism, said district parents have the power to restrict the books seen by their own child. But they shouldn’t have the right, she said, to have a book removed for nearly 18,000 district students.

Of course, once the students are past the schoolhouse door, the parents aren’t present to see what library books their children check out, are reading, or even having passed to them by another student or a teacher. And those students who want to read Lawn Boy can easily get it.

Mr Gammage let his bias creep into his supposedly-straight-news article again, when he described Advocates for Inclusive Education as a coalition that opposes extremism. Their own website has a page The Issues, and all of the issues they have listed stem from a very politically liberal attitude about what schools should teach students about normal and homosexual sex.

Discounting LGBTQ Children’s Social & Emotional Needs
We believe school is a place where children should feel safe to learn and grow together, and where all students are given the tools they need to excel. LGBTQ youth are a legally protected marginalized group who have historically suffered discrimination and therefore need supportive and affirming school policies to ensure their protection.

Issue 1: Affirming Symbols of Support
The Pride Flag has been identified as an effective tool in making students feel supported and welcome in the school environment. We don’t believe it is a divisive and political symbol.

Of course it’s a political symbol! It is a symbol which takes the political position that homosexuality and transgenderism are things to be supported and approved, and it is actively hostile to those who believe that homosexuality is just plain wrong. The public schools should be taking no position, either way, on this.

We are keeping an eye on draft Policy 321 that codifies pride flag removal and more (introduced on 9/14.)

Issue 2: Affirming Names and Pronouns
Some schools in CB are rolling out a new “gender identification procedure” where teachers are not allowed to call a student by their preferred/affirming name unless their parents/guardians have approved this change in the student information database, or the requested name is contained within their name, like Sam for Samantha.

Students must feel safe to learn. We believe this directive will adversely affect academic performance, school attendance, and lead to increases in anxiety and depression.

If “students must feel safe to learn,” I have to ask: do the Advocates care about those normal girls who do not feel safe when boys “identifying” as girls are allowed in the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? Or doesn’t that feeling of unsafety count?

One wonders what the Advocates for Inclusive Education would say if a student persisted in calling a ‘transgender’ student who wanted to be called Lia by his previous name of William. Would the Advocates state that he should be punished? Jared Jennings, the boy who thinks he’s a girl and goes by the name “Jazz”, whined to Oprah Winfrey:

For the most part boys aren’t really accepting of me because I am transgender and therefore not many guys have crushes on me at my school. They think if they like me they will be called gay by their friends because they like another ‘boy.’

Clearly, there are at least some people who wouldn’t accept young Mr Jennings’ claim that he was actually a girl.

Note that, in every instance, the Advocates for Inclusive Education are pushing policies to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism. Some of us, myself most certainly included, see pushing those types of things as extremism on the left.

Far down in the Inquirer article was a single paragraph which proved that books aren’t banned:

Glenda Childs, owner of the Doylestown Bookshop, set up two displays of banned books in her store, proudly offering them for sale.

I absolutely support Miss Childs and her right to sell what she calls “banned books”. Given that the store website lists Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls as a “banned book,” I’d say that her definition is rather expansive, but that’s another subject.

But Miss Childs and her bookstore are private businesses, which may do as the owners choose; the government may not prohibit her from doing so. Public school libraries? Those are government institutions, and yes, they are subject to the decisions of the public. Other than the Library of Congress, no library in the United States, public or private, carries everything that is published; librarians have to take choices based on what is available, and what they can afford, concerning what they will and will not purchase and carry.

Public school libraries have a special duty, because they have what is, in effect, a captive audience, students in attendance because they are required to be there, by law. And they already take decisions based on content: how many carry Mein Kampf, or, Heaven forfend!, that great American classic, Huckleberry Finn? Do the Advocates for Inclusive Education bemoan schools which do not carry those very famous books, or would the Advocates say that, hey, if you want to read Huckleberry Finn, it’s easily available on Amazon?

The left were horrified, horrified! when some conservatives, looking at the overly-sexualized presentations in support of homosexuality and transgenderism, started calling them “groomers.” But it is reasonable to ask: what purpose other than “grooming” do they have, in their attempts to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism? Tolerance is one thing, but the constant pushing of those subjects is something else entirely.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer the stereotype of criminals being black is so strong in Philly that the newspaper not giving the race of criminal suspects simply reinforces it.

No, that’s not a typo in the headline. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: A Death in ‘Killadelphia’

We have previously noted the murder of Everett Beauregard and mentioned the #WhitePrivilege shown by The Philadelphia Inquirer in reporting the story, how innocent white victims get stories in the Inky, while few black murder victims get anything reported about them.

Publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes vowed to make what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. an “anti-racist news organization,” and how it has led the newspaper to delete racial references to criminals, and, shazamm!, they’ve done it again.

Police say killing of recent Temple grad was ‘completely unprovoked,’ not a robbery

“Mr. Beauregard’s life was cut short by this horrific act of violence and for no apparent reason whatsoever,” said Homicide Capt. Jason Smith.

by Ellie Rushing | Friday, September 23, 2022

Philadelphia police said Friday they now believe the fatal shooting of a 23-year-old in West Philadelphia was “completely unprovoked,” and that the shooter did not interact with the victim before firing at his back.

“This was not a robbery attempt as we initially believed,” said Homicide Capt. Jason Smith.

Everett Beauregard had just exited a train at the 34th and Market SEPTA station around 12:30 a.m. Thursday, and was walking home after spending time with friends in South Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, police say, surveillance video shows a young man, with a gun concealed in his hoodie, had been walking around the area, near the 400 block of North 35th Street, for about an hour.

Video shows Beauregard walking past the suspect, who then suddenly turns around and fires multiple times at Beauregard’s back, striking him once in the back of the neck.

Beauregard fell to the ground, and the suspect ran away, firing one more shot as he fled.

Of course, the Philadelphia Police Department did not describe the killer as a “young man” in the surveillance video, but as “a thin built Black male”. Everyone in the city will automatically suspect that the killer is black, so it would not have hurt the Inquirer to give the actual description, even though it’s part of the video which they did link. Let’s tell the truth here: the stereotype of criminals being black is so strong in the City of Brotherly Love that the newspaper not giving the race of criminal suspects simply reinforces it.

The Inky tweeted, and Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar said:

It’s official! We’ve got a new look ✨

But from our first edition on June 1, 1829, to The Philadelphia Inquirer you see today, our mission of providing essential local journalism has remained unchanged.

Apparently “essential local journalism” means censored local journalism! Why is telling the truth so hard?

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.