Tag Archives: #Schadenfreude

Posted on by

You’re despicable!

When Hillary Clinton derided half of the supporters of Donald Trump as a “basket of deplorables,” she created a meme that she hadn’t intended, with millions of people mocking her by calling themselves deplorables. Mrs Clinton later expressed regret for her choice of words, primarily because she was afraid it would cost her votes, but it was, fortunately, too late: following the 2016 elections, Mrs Clinton remained a private citizen.

One would think that Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, even as deeply unself-aware as she is, would understand that certain words used to describe your political opponents become words taht can be used to mock the speaker right back. So, when she calls Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) “2021’s most despicable villains,” she ought to be prepared for the quote from Daffy Duck: “You’re despicable!”

I suppose that depends on your definition of “wonderful.” From the wholly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, to the inconsistent yet authoritarian response to COVID-19, President Biden’s “wonderful” seems more like a wonderful gift to Republicans running for office in 2022.

The famously atheistic Miss Marcotte would probably be aghast that I’m listening to Father Ray Kelly, a parish priest in Ireland, singing a version of Hallelujah at a wedding, while I write this, but I digress. Despite my bad ears, I can hear music if there is no other background noise.

    He went into office taking the threat to democracy seriously, studying “How Democracies Die” by Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. His theory of how to meet the moment was a sound one: Prove to the public that democracy can work, and people will fight to keep it. So he focused his energies on passing Build Back Better, a massive social spending and economic reform package that was meant to be a New Deal-style rebuttal to the cynicism and disillusionment that allows authoritarianism thrive. There are reasons to criticize Biden’s approach — I certainly felt like he should have put more of a priority on shoring up electoral systems and imprisoning the coup ringleaders — but Biden was absolutely correct that any strategy to save democracy requires demonstrating its value to the public.

    Despite Biden’s boldness, however, here we are at the end of 2021, with fascists ascendant and the pro-democracy majority feeling demoralized. Biden’s approval ratings have been underwater for months, with more than half of Americans disapproving of his performance in office. Biden’s theory wasn’t wrong. Saving democracy does require showing that government can work. But Biden isn’t doing that. On the contrary, the message most Americans are getting is that he failed, Democrats failed, and maybe it’s time to give up fighting.

    The worst part of all of this is it’s mostly not Biden’s fault. Nor is it the fault of congressional Democrats, 96% of whom support Build Back Better and, almost certainly, some kind of bold democratic reforms to save election systems from Trump’s grubby little fingers. No, the fault lays entirely with two Senate Democrats, both of whom are awash in corruption: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Of course, what Miss Marcotte alleged was corruption was the normal business of candidates holding fund-raisers, and, shockingly, those fund raisers included people who are opposed to President Biden’s programs. Also shockingly, it seems that Senators Sinema and Manchin are supposed to represent the citizens of their states, all of the citizens of their states, and not just the Democratic Party.

In 2018, Senator Manchin was opposed in the Democratic primary by Paula Jean Sweerengin, a far more liberal candidate; the Democrats of the Mountain State rejected Miss Swearengin 111,589 (69.8%) to 48,302 (30.2%). Senator Manchin then went on to win the general election 290,510 (49.6%) to Republican Pat Morrissey’s 271,113 (46.3%).[1]Miss Swearengin won the 2020 Democratic senatorial nomination with 38.39% of the vote in a three-way contest, but was then defeated by incumbent Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito in the general … Continue reading

In 2020, West Virginians gave 545,382 (68.62%) of their votes to President Trump, and just 235,984 (29.68%) to Joe Biden; the Mountain State was second only to Wyoming in the strength of its support for Mr Trump.

Senator Manchin, it seems, represents the people who elected him, the people of West Virginia, and not the national Democratic Party. And that Miss Marcotte finds despicable.

Miss Marcotte has found success with her “edgy” writing, but she has found success preaching to those who have supported her positions all along; actually persuading others has never been her strong suit. It’s not exactly an attempt at persuasion to label the two Senators “despicable,” “sinister figures,” “these two jackasses,” or “snakes in the grass.”

I will admit to a sense of schadenfreude here: it’s always a good feeling when Miss Marcotte’s political views are frustrated because, in the end, what she wants is just bad for our country.

References

References
↑1 Miss Swearengin won the 2020 Democratic senatorial nomination with 38.39% of the vote in a three-way contest, but was then defeated by incumbent Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito in the general election, 547,454 (70.28%) to 210,309 (27.00%), an utter rejection of liberal policies by West Virginia voters. Miss Swearengin left the Democratic Party in 2021, complaining that it was too conservative, for the People’s Party, a hard-left successor to a draft socialist Bernie Sanders movement. Yeah, she’s way too left-wing for West Virginia.
Posted on by

Schadenfreude! The rampage of the #woke is trampling the woke!

I have been somewhat — OK, OK, maybe more than “somewhat” — disparaging of the #woke,[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading so a gleam appears in my beady brown eyes when I hear of yet another of the left getting destroyed by their own. We have previously noted the ‘turmoil’ at The New York Times, and that editorial page editor James Bennet was fired resigned, and deputy editorial page editor James Dao was demoted reassigned to the newsroom. We noted Bari Weiss Twitter thread that “The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.” A few days later, Miss Weiss was gone, too.

Then, a couple of months ago, The Washington Post reported that Times “star reporter”, who had joined the NYT in 1976 as a copy boy, used the infamous “n” word, not in a statement he made but in quoting something from someone else, was history. The Post said that Mr McNeil “wasn’t fired, according to people with knowledge of the decision, but was essentially compelled to resign.”

And this morning, we have this gem, also from the Post:

Inside the Teen Vogue mess — which is really a Condé Nast mess

By Sarah Ellison | April 4, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT

From the start, Alexi McCammond seemed an unlikely candidate to become a top boss within the storied Vogue empire — at least on paper.

Only 27, she had little editing experience and had never managed a staff before she was tapped as editor in chief for Teen Vogue early last month. A stranger to the world of glossy New York magazines, she had spent the past four years as a junior reporter at a news start-up in Washington, scrapping for incremental scoops and gritty campaign-bus assignments alongside scores of other young D.C. journalism strivers.

Yet in her short career, McCammond had acquired the rare sort of Washington currency that translates to Manhattan’s power centers: buzz.

It was a wave of buzz — her youthful reporting successes amplified by a high-profile celebrity dust-up and vivid and appealing national TV appearances — that helped put her on the radar of Anna Wintour, the legendary longtime editor of Vogue and top Condé Nast executive, who hired McCammond.

Shades of Ali Watkins, the New York Times reporter who kept her job even after it was revealed she had been sleeping with one of her sources, though the Times at least tried the fig-leaf cover of reassigning her to a different beat. Miss Watkins had buzz, don’t you know!

Alexi McCammond was hired as editor in chief of Teen Vogue after four years of covering politics in Washington. (Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)

“Alexi has the powerful curiosity and confidence that embodies the best of our next generation of leaders,” Wintour announced March 5.When it all fell apart within days — after a staff uproar over anti-Asian tweets that McCammond posted as a college freshman — some critics saw a parable about an unforgiving “cancel culture” in elite media. Others clucked over the irony of Condé Nast both hiring and firing a young Black woman in its flailing attempts to align with a renewed push for diversity.

Now, I have to admit it: when I looked at Miss McCammond’s photo in the Post, “young black woman” is not really what I see.[2]As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to … Continue reading

So at the start of the year, when New York Magazine poached Teen Vogue’s top editor — Lindsay Peoples Wagner, a 30-year-old who is one of the few Black women ever to helm a Condé Nast title — Wintour and Condé CEO Roger Lynch may have wanted to send a reassuring signal in picking a replacement. In McCammond, they found not only a journalist gaining notice for her work, but also a young Black woman with the stylish good looks of many Condé editors.

T J Ducklo and Alexi McCammond. Phots from Twitter and Instagram.

Guffaws! Condé Nast found a woman with enough ‘black’ in her to qualify as black — perhaps they were using the old “one drop rule“? — but those “stylish good looks of many Condé editors” certainly seem to come from some obviously Caucasian ancestors. Looking at Miss McCammond’s photo, I see a woman no darker a complexion than I have on a summer’s day. She very famously dated T J Ducklo, briefly a Biden Administration deputy press secretary, who got himself fired resigned after threatening a Politico reporter who was going to reveal that relationship.

Mr Ducklo sure looks white to me! A white boyfriend, a light complexion, mostly Caucasian-ancestry features, but Miss McCammond was hired at least in part because she was black? Shades of Rachel Dolezal!

I might have skipped the Post article entirely had I not previously noted Lauren Duca, previously a columnist and editor at Teen Vogue, who was used as a supposedly informed commentator by CNN. The very left wing Miss Duca has had her own problems with wokeness:

In May 2018, it was announced that Duca would be a visiting scholar at New York University’s journalism department.[32][33] In the summer of 2019, Duca taught a six-week course there entitled “The Feminist Journalist.” The class was taught under the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and focused on intersections of feminist ideology and the practice of journalism, and was made up of high-school and college students.[34] Four weeks after the course, students sent a collective formal complaint to school’s journalism department regarding Duca’s conduct during the class, writing, “We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor with more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn.”[35] Students allege that Duca targeted an exchange student, writing that she “consistently targeted this student on the basis of a communication difficulty the student cannot change.[35][36]

The left have created a situation in which the 27-year-old Miss McCammond lost her new job because of a couple stupid tweets she made when she was a college freshman. Given that the left tried to torpedo the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over wholly unproven and unprovable accusations from the 1980s, when he was a minor, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that their own wokeness is coming back to bite them in the ass. Schadenfreude!

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to race. However, in reading the Post, it seems that the newspaper also capitalizes ‘white’ when referring to race, something specifically not done according to the AP Stylebook.
Posted on by

Irony of ironies: Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) caught the virus

Remember when President Trump tested positive for COVID-19? He was criticized and outright mocked for his resistance to wearing a face mask.

So, what will the left say if a state Governor, one who instituted mandatory face mask orders, who closed down some sections of the economy and severely restricted others, always wore a mask in public, closed public schools, ordered testing on anyone entering the state, and pretty much instituted all of the restrictions that other Governors did, tested positive himself?

As a good Catholic, I am not allowed to ever wish COVID-19 on any person, and I will deny ever having done so. But there is a certain sense of schadenfreude when one of the tinpot dictators who think that they have the right to tell us how we have to live our lives, for our own good, don’t you know, to keep from getting the virus winds up getting it himself.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf tests positive for the coronavirus

by Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA and Cynthia Fernandez | Updated: December 9, 2020 | 3:13 PM EST

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced Wednesday.

“I have no symptoms and am feeling well,” he said in a statement, adding that he and First Lady Frances Wolf, who is awaiting test results, are quarantining. The governor said he plans to continue working remotely, “as many are doing during the pandemic.”

The announcement comes as daily COVID-19 cases in the state climb higher than ever and hospitals contend with severe shortages of staff needed to care for infected patients as well as Pennsylvanians experiencing other health issues.

Wolf was last seen in public during a Monday news conference with Health Secretary Rachel (sic) Levine,[1]Richard Levine, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, is a male who is so mentally ill that he believes he is female, and goes by the name of “Rachel.” In accordance with The First … Continue reading where they both wore face masks, even while speaking.

There’s more at the original, but as Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) and Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) have continually inflicted overbearing restrictions on people, on jobs, and on businesses, purportedly to help fight COVOD-19, the irony that Mr Wolf would contract it, with everybody around him masked up and socially distancing themselves, tells us something: the measures that have been imposed have not worked to the extent that they can justify what those restrictions have done to people economically and socially.

References

References
↑1 Richard Levine, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, is a male who is so mentally ill that he believes he is female, and goes by the name of “Rachel.” In accordance with The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we are properly identifying him as male, use the proper, male, pronouns to refer to him, and address him by his proper, birth name where appropriate.