Tag Archives: #SpecialSnowflakes™

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Ivy League research associate wants clerks at Wawa to pay for her commute

Talia Borofsky, from her Twitter profile.

Cry me a river! Talia Borofsky is “a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental institute, where she researches the evolution and ecology of cooperative hunting.” Dr Borofsky lives in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia but commutes to work at Princeton University, and she greatly saddened by the fact that cashiers at WalMart and hamburger flippers at McDonald’s won’t be paying as much for her daily commute!

Amtrak’s sudden fare increases bite the hand that feeds it

Amtrak recently raised multi-ride fares along the Northeast Corridor without adequate prior warning to its ridership. The drastic increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers, writes Talia Borofsky.

by Talia Borofsky | Thursday, August 15, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT

In July Amtrak raised multi-ride fares along the Northeast Corridor by anywhere from 32% to 70% without directly notifying its ridership in advance.

Amtrak, a federally funded and federally majority-owned company, is meant to serve the public. The drastic fare increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers after the infrastructure bill dedicated a total of $22 billion in direct grants to the company.

You might think from Dr Borofsky’s first two paragraphs that her complaint is that she wasn’t notified far enough and directly enough in advance, but that’s not it. What upsets her is that she’s having to pay more for a direct service she receives.

Investopedia notes:

Amtrak receives considerable subsidies from both state and federal governments but it’s managed as a for-profit company. This isn’t unusual. No country in the world operates a passenger rail system without public support.

But Amtrak’s “for-profit” status is sadly ironic. The train company has never been profitable since its founding nearly fifty years ago. It’s only thanks to its subsidies that the company has survived.

In other words, Dr Borofsky’s daily commute has never been entirely paid for by her fares. It has always been subsidized by taxpayer dollars, many of which are taken from people who earn less money than she does. But hey, if you’re a daycare worker in Philly, or a laborer for a roofing company in Lexington, shouldn’t you be glad to know that some of the money you pay in taxes goes to pay for “a postdoctoral research associate” at an Ivy League university, who earned her doctorate at Stanford, the hoitiest and the toitiest of the colleges west of the Mississippi, to research “the evolution and ecology of cooperative hunting”?

As a postdoc at Princeton University, I commute from Philly to Princeton using Amtrak. This commute used to make financial sense; rents in Philadelphia are almost half the price of those in Princeton, and Princeton provided a helpful although limited commute subsidy.

However, the commute became unaffordable for me and likely many others on July 1; the 10-trip (one-way) ticket package between Princeton and Philly shot up from $230 to $390, and the monthly pass increased from $576 to $975. These sudden increases have impacted many postdocs and graduate students at Princeton, whose budgets were already strained by the previous fares.

There’s such a whiff of elitism from Dr Borofsky’s OpEd. As a “postdoctoral research associate” at an Ivy League university, she is paid much more than most Philadelphians. According to Glass Door:

The estimated total pay range for a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University is $57K–$67K per year, which includes base salary and additional pay. The average Postdoctoral Fellow base salary at Princeton University is $62K per year.

The minimum of $57,000 is slightly higher than the median household income of $56,517 for Philadelphians overall. But Dr Borofsky apparently believes that the baggers at Giant Food Mart or the clerk at Wawa brewing her large coffee for the train ride — yeah, I’m guessing about that last, but everyone in Philly should drink Wawa coffee! — should have to contribute a bit more to pay for her train ride.

Dr Borofsky continued to tell readers about Amtrak’s poor service, and that the suddenness of the fare increase was “exploitative.” I have no qualms with her point that the increase was sudden, nor that Amtrak’s service isn’t the greatest.

But it’s her concluding one-sentence paragraph that gets me:

Train travel should be viable for all, not just the wealthy.

No, train travel should be available to those who pay for the service. Why should I, a retiree, be required to pony up some of my tax dollars so that Dr Borofsky doesn’t have to pay for the service she receives? Why should the janitors at Princeton be required to help fund her commute?

The subtitle of her article states, “The drastic increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers,” but no; the drastic increase is a boon to the taxpayers, the ones who are already subsidizing her train ride. The good research associate should pay for the services she receives herself.

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Special Snowflake™ melts down.

Unfortunately, I have to make a trip to Ashland today, but I felt the need to screen capture a few things before Erica Marsh decides to block me or protect or delete her tweets.

Miss Marsh described herself as a “Proud Democrat: Former Field Organizer to elect President Biden. Volunteer for the Obama Foundation.” And then she included her ‘pronouns,’ as though anyone looking at her photo couldn’t tell that she’s female.

On June 10th, she tweeted:

My name is Erica (She/Her), I’m a Proud Democrat, fully vaccinated and boosted, still wear 2 masks whenever I go out and support Ukraine 🇺🇦. I will never stop advocating for progressive candidates and causes fighting against the fascist ULTRA MAGA. RT IF YOU ARE WITH ME

Naturally, there was a Ukrainian flag in the tweet, but, significantly enough, no American flag. I think that says something. That she “still wears two masks” says something else

Well, on Thursday, she said something pretty stupid:

Today’s Supreme Court decision is a direct attack on Black people. No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed. Today’s decision is a TRAVESTY!!!

Apparently Miss Marsh believes that black Americans are just plain inferior. What other way is there to read what she tweeted?

Of course, after people pointed it out to her, she quickly realized what she had said, and had to issue a clarification:

Allow me to clarify this tweet, which is being manipulated for propaganda and misinformation by ULTRA MAGA.

The intention of my tweet is to highlight that prior to affirmative action, there existed a supposedly merit-based system for Black individuals to gain admission to colleges. However, these institutions employed racial profiling to prevent Black individuals from attending under the guise of this “merit” system.

I want to emphasize that my statement in no way suggests that Black individuals are less intelligent than people of other races.

Perhaps she didn’t realize what she wrote, but it was in the past tense, “prior to affirmative action.” If she had actually read the ruling, or Grutter v Bollinger, she’d have realized that the Supreme Court had previously required an end date for Affirmative Action programs, June 23, 2028 under Grutter, but as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the ruling at hand, neither Harvard University nor the University of North Carolina, the two colleges part of the case, had specified how they were going to taper off their race-based preference systems by that date, had made any progress to doing so, nor could give any projected date for its end.

A lot of people criticized Miss Marsh’s tweets, but hey, when you speak in public criticism is something you can get.

Finally, she went all Special Snowflake™, because she apparently got her precious little feelings hurted.

If anyone is a defamation lawyer who works on contingency, please (direct message) me. Thanks.

President Harry Truman once said, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” That’s pretty good advice for Miss Marsh. But I checked just before posting this, and at least she hasn’t blocked her critics — at least not me, anyway — or ‘protected’ her account.

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The Special Snowflakes™ get upset over everything! History is especially upsetting to them

The Battle of Perryville, Kentucky, was fought on October 8, 1862, between Major General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio and Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Mississippi. From Wikipedia:

The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, was fought on October 8, 1862, in the Chaplin Hills west of Perryville, Kentucky, as the culmination of the Confederate Heartland Offensive (Kentucky Campaign) during the American Civil War. Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg‘s Army of Mississippi[b] initially won a tactical victory against primarily a single corps of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell‘s Union Army of the Ohio. The battle is considered a strategic Union victory, sometimes called the Battle for Kentucky, since Bragg withdrew to Tennessee soon thereafter. The Union retained control of the critical border state of Kentucky for the remainder of the war.

On October 7, Buell’s army, in pursuit of Bragg, converged on the small crossroads town of Perryville in three columns. Union forces first skirmished with Confederate cavalry on the Springfield Pike before the fighting became more general, on Peters Hill, when the Confederate infantry arrived. Both sides were desperate to get access to fresh water. The next day, at dawn, fighting began again around Peters Hill as a Union division advanced up the pike, halting just before the Confederate line. After noon, a Confederate division struck the Union left flank—the I Corps of Maj. Gen. Alexander M. McCook—and forced it to fall back. When more Confederate divisions joined the fray, the Union line made a stubborn stand, counterattacked, but finally fell back with some units routed.[9]

Buell, several miles behind the action, was unaware that a major battle was taking place and did not send any reserves to the front until late in the afternoon. The Union troops on the left flank, reinforced by two brigades, stabilized their line, and the Confederate attack sputtered to a halt. Later, three Confederate regiments assaulted the Union division on the Springfield Pike but were repulsed and fell back into Perryville. Union troops pursued, and skirmishing occurred in the streets until dark. By that time, Union reinforcements were threatening the Confederate left flank. Bragg, short of men and supplies, withdrew during the night, and continued the Confederate retreat by way of Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee.[9]

Considering the casualties relative to the engaged strengths of the armies,[4] the Battle of Perryville was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. It was the largest battle fought in the state of Kentucky.[10]

There’s more at the original.

Though the Confederate States assumed that Kentucky should just naturally be part of the CSA, the Bluegrass State never seceded from the Union, declaring neutrality between the USA and CSA instead at first. Later, the state legislature petitioned the Union for support. Kentuckians fought on both sides, some 35,000 for the Confederacy and 125,000 for the Union.

The city of Perryville isn’t much of a much, with a population of fewer than 1,000 people, but the town logo has, horrors!, offended some of the Special Snowflakes™.

You see, the town logo has the Confederate flag on it. Oh, not as some homage to the Confederacy, but as a remembrance of the battle, about the only thing of note for the area. It also has the American flag on it as well, and the date of the battle. The Perryville Battlefield State Historical Site is nearby.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Central Kentucky town had a Confederate flag on its city logo. That may be changing.

By Karla Ward | June 8, 2021 | 9:00 PM EDT | Updated: June 9, 2021 | 9:29 AM EDT

The Perryville city council voted last week to form a committee to work on a redesign of the city’s logo, which currently includes images of the Confederate flag.

Perryville’s logo became a topic of discussion at the May council meeting, when Councilman Tim Simpson suggested putting up Perryville city flags between the American flags hanging along Second Street, according to a city Facebook post.

“It really never even crossed my mind as far as what it was and what it looked like,” Councilwoman Kelly Gray said in an interview Tuesday, until she took a good look at the city’s logo that night.

“I’m looking at the flag, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, we cannot do that,’” she said.

There’s a good deal more at the original.

One wonders: why would Mrs Gray be so very upset over a logo depicting the battle when she and her husband Adam have claimed to be very concerned with historic preservation?

Perryville residents Kelly and Adam Gray have been sued by the Kentucky Heritage Council over alleged changes they made to a historic property. The couple say they only improved the property and are “baffled” by the suit.

The civil suit, filed in Boyle Circuit Court, concerns a structure at 122 N. Bragg St. in Perryville.

The suit claims the historic structure, referred to as the Bond House, has been altered in violation of a Preservation and Conservation Easement, which allowed the Grays to benefit through reduced property tax payments. . . .

According to the suit, KHC claims when the Grays bought the building, the deed described it as subject to all easements and restrictions, and that the property must be “maintained forever substantially in the condition it was in” at time of purchase.

The suit describes several changes the Grays made to historic attributes of the home, including wood windows, brick nogging, interior and exterior doors, interior wood trim and interior plaster walls and ceilings.

The suit also states the defendants caused or allowed a signature from a soldier at The Battle of Perryville that was located on a plaster wall to be removed, as well as historic stair elements from the property.

Maybe it was the signature of a Confederate soldier?

“We could have saved ourselves an immense amount of money if we had just built a brand new house from the ground up, but because we have a passion for historic preservation and for Perryville, we thought it was more important to save a piece of history despite the extra costs that we knew would come along with that,” Kelly Gray said. She said she and Adam Gray “value historic preservation … and want our children and grandchildren to have the privilege of seeing these historic structures standing 100 years from now. However, in the end we are really on the same team, which continues to baffle me. Why is an organization suing us for doing exactly what they fight for each and every day?”

Judging by the photos in the Danville Advocate-Messenger, the Grays are on the right side of history as far as the restoration is concerned; the building was condemned and looked like it was about to fall down. But for a lady who claimed she has “a passion for historic preservation,” why is she so opposed to celebrating the history of the region? Yes, the Confederates fought there, but they also lost the initiative in Kentucky in part because of that battle; General Bragg’s Army had to retreat from the state, and the Union dominated Kentucky through the rest of the war.

Historic preservation means preserving history, not denying it, yet that is what Mrs Gray wants to do. My good friend Robert Stacy McCain[1]Yes, I mean “my good friend” in a different way than I did when I so described Amanda Marcotte. 🙂 wrote:

But as the American patriot John Adams famously said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Sadly, today’s left are trying to prove Mr McCain wrong: the ‘state of facts and evidence’ can be altered if they are incorrectly taught, or not taught at all. The dedicated historic preservationist Kelly Gray wants to what, say that the Union won a great victory at Perryville, by fighting against nobody?

The Special Snowflakes™ are just so terribly, terribly offended by the Confederacy and slavery, things which died in this great land 156 years ago. There are no Confederates left, there are no former American slaves remaining alive. History itself is now the perceived enemy of the snowflakes and the #woke[2]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.

The Perryville logo does not somehow celebrate the Confederacy; it states that a great battle was fought there, 158½ years ago. If someone were to walk the streets of that small town and ask, what the heck does that symbol mean, a knowledgeable resident could say that yes, a Civil War battle was fought there, and the result was that the Confederates were forced out of Kentucky as a result. Ought not that to be a history the snowflakes would want?

References

References
↑1 Yes, I mean “my good friend” in a different way than I did when I so described Amanda Marcotte. 🙂
↑2 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.
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The left are pro-choice on exactly one thing (Part 2)

@Jenn_Pastrak is a proud Canadian, and says so on Twitter! She is so proud of her positions that, when she got into a Twitter debate with @FreckledLiberty, and started losing it — rather spectacularly, I might add — she wound up blocking her opponent:

Freckled Liberty is an online libertarian, a Jew —oh noes! — and, well here’s her Twitter bio:

Well, Miss Pastrak revealed to the world the difference between Canadians and Americans:

And thus we have it: Americans value freedom and liberty and our constitutional rights; Canadians, or at least Miss Pastrak, values the collective over the individual. That’s why freedom of speech in Canada is not protected, why you can be criminally liable if you say something which hurts someone else’s precious little feelings, why Canadians have no individual rights to not go along with the hive mind. She had the nerve to tweet “anti-vaxxers shouldn’t reproduce,” yet got her precious little feelings hurt when there was was some actual blowback on that. A former American President once said something about staying out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat, but I suppose that wouldn’t mean anything to a Canadian, would it? Then again, we have our own Special Snowflakes™ like Amanda Marcotte, perfectly willing to stir up some [insert slang term for feces here], but very ready to block anyone who disagrees with her.

Miss Pastrak did not resist, and she has been assimilated. What is amazing, though, is that she admits it. As an American, I’d be ashamed to admit something like that, but then, as an American, I am used to having my rights, and exercising them. Miss Pastrak would apparently have been right at home in the Soviet Union, where the collective, as defined by the General Secretary of the Communist Party, always trumped the individual. She would have been right there, were she the right age, celebrating sending Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anatoli Sharanskii to the GULag.

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#FirstWorldProblems: British writer worries about having a son who will grow up with running water and electricity

British Vogue isn’t exactly my go-to source for high-brow intellectual articles. Pieces like Oscars 2021 Red Carpet: The Best Dresses From the Night might not be the most inspirational articles on the scientific topic of Climate Change, but whatever! I’m sure that the lovely Amanda Marcotte would have approved of this article, and the author, until she revealed that she had, Heaven forfend! gotten pregnant!

Is Having A Baby In 2021 Pure Environmental Vandalism?

By Nell Frizzell | April 25, 2021

Is having a child an act of environmental vandalism or an investment in the future? Is it possible to live an ecologically responsible life while adding yet another person to our overstretched planet? Can I get away with it if I just never learn to drive, never get a dog and keep wearing the same three pairs of jeans for the rest of my life?

For the scientifically-engaged person, there are few questions more troubling when looking at the current climate emergency than that of having a baby. Whether your body throbs to reproduce, you passively believe that it is on the cards for you one day, or you actively seek to remain child-free, the declining health of the planet cannot help but factor in your thinking.

Well, not to worry, if enough people think the way Nell Frizzell does, we won’t have to worry too much about anthropogenic global warming climate change, as in a few more generations, there won’t be any more humans.

Oh, wait, I forgot. I need to stop using my sarcastic global warming climate change, because:

Scientific American magazine announced Monday that it would stop using the term “climate change” in articles about man-made global warming and substitute “climate emergency” instead.

So, what, now I have to switch to global warming climate change emergency? Sometimes it just gets so difficult to keep up!

But what got me was Miss Frizzell’s next sentence, which was a continuation of her second paragraph:[1] Miss Frizzell appears to be correct, in that her website “About” page states that she lives with “her partner, (and) her son,” which leads me to assume that she is not married.

Before I got pregnant, I worried feverishly about the strain on the earth’s resources that another Western child would add. The food he ate, the nappies he wore, the electricity he would use; before he’d even started sitting up, my child would have already contributed far more to climate change than his counterpart in, say, Kerala or South Sudan.

So, it wasn’t just a child, but a Western child which worried her. That child in South Sudan, who wouldn’t contribute as much to climate change? He’d be born into one of the world’s poorest countries:

South Sudan sits near the bottom of most human development indices, according to the United Nations, including the highest maternal mortality and female illiteracy rates.

Just how seriously am I supposed to take an article on saving the planet from a website that is also featuring “To All The White Boys I’ve Dated Before”?

So, no, he wouldn’t contribute as much to global warming climate change emergency, because he would very probably be born into a village with no electricity or running water, be more likely to be an orphan given the country’s high maternal death rate, and have a life expectancy of only 57.6 years. He would, in all probability, suffer more than Miss Frizzell’s British-born and reared son, but hey, he’d have less of an impact on global warming climate change emergency!

“(T)he nappies (her son) wore”? Well, if Miss Frizzell was all that worried about the contribution to global warming climate change emergency from those nappies, she could have bought cloth diapers, and washed them out in the toilet, as my mother, and every other American mother had to do in the 1950s. Was Miss Frizzell’s concern about the climate sufficient to encourage her to do that, or was she doing like most other First World mothers do in the 21st century, and buy disposable nappies?

But, at least in one regard, Miss Frizzell has told the truth, told a truth that so many of the climate activists either don’t realize or are reluctant to admit: to do as they say we should, they are going to have to leave London and Paris and New York, and start living that South Sudan lifestyle:

You don’t have to look into the future or to other continents to see that the world as it is organised now is dangerous for children. According to the World Health Organisation, 93 per cent of all children live in environments with air pollution levels above the WHO guidelines. Pollution now kills more people than tobacco – and three times as many as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Across the world, more than one in every four deaths among children under five is already directly or indirectly related to environmental risks. Even here in the UK, where our wealth and geography has so far largely protected us from the effects of climate change, children are already dying from pollution-related respiratory problems.

And yet, like millions of others, I did it anyway. I had a baby. I’d have another if my partner agreed. Is that because I am selfish, myopic or greedy? Did I simply learn to compartmentalise my thinking, choose to listen to the arguments that supported what I wanted to do anyway, or ignore what was right in front of my face? Perhaps. But I also believe that when it comes to the future health of the planet, the question is not one of whether or not we continue to have babies. People will always have babies. Here, there and everywhere. Instead, it is a question of how we raise those babies, of learning to live within our environmental means, of turning away from the fever of consumerism and overturning a political system that rewards a tiny rich minority at the expense of everyone else.

Perhaps Miss Frizzell could bring up her son, not in Oxford, with its consumerism and ridiculous real estate prices and pollution and conspicuous consumption, but in South Sudan. Living there, he would certainly grow up “learning to live within (his) environmental means”!

Miss Frizzell is a writer, her About page telling us that she has written for many august publications. Well, couldn’t she do that anywhere, and simply send her stories to Vogue over the (non-present) internet in her Sudanese village (without electricity).

Miss Frizzell appears to feel some guilt at having had the privilege of growing up in a modern, Western society. So, I have to ask: does she feel enough guilt at that to move somewhere else?

References

References
↑1 Miss Frizzell appears to be correct, in that her website “About” page states that she lives with “her partner, (and) her son,” which leads me to assume that she is not married.
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The truth? The truth? They can’t handle the truth!

I have had my differences with Patrick Frey, the Los Angeles County assistant district attorney who blogs as Patterico. A devout #NeverTrumper, I believe that he allowed his hatred of President Trump to outweigh the huge policy problems of having Joe Biden in the White House.

Nevertheless, unlike some of the conservative #NeverTrumpers, he actually remained (mostly) conservative.

Law Professor Ends Her Career By Speaking Uncomfortable Truths About Race

As a second professor ends his own career by listening.

Patterico | March 14, 2021

Let’s handle the latest Big Racial Controversy in a different way. Instead of reading a predictable, cookie-cutter story summarizing the Big Racial Transgression and the aftermath, let’s watch the transgression unfold first, and imagine how we should react if we saw this happen but didn’t know how it had played out. I’ll give you the cookie-cutter summary afterwards. (You already know if you read the headline.) Try to ignore the commentary in the next two tweets and just watch the videos.

Here’s the transcript.

PROFESSOR SANDRA SELLERS: They were a bit, jumbled?
PROFESSOR DAVID BATSON: Yeah.
PROFESSOR SANDRA SELLERS: [Laughs] That’s the best way I can put it. It’s like, OK, let me reason through that, what you just said, kind of thing.
PROFESSOR DAVID BATSON: Right, right.
PROFESSOR SANDRA SELLERS: Yeah, unfortunately. And you know what? I hate to say this, I end up having this, you know, angst, every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks. Happens almost every semester.
PROFESSOR DAVID BATSON: Hmm, mmm. [Nods]
PROFESSOR SANDRA SELLERS: And it’s like, “Oh, come on.” Get some really good ones, but there’s also usually some that are just plain at the bottom, and it drives me crazy.
PROFESSOR DAVID BATSON: Yeah, and, and —
PROFESSOR SANDRA SELLERS: So I feel bad.

There is more: namely, the other professor’s response.

You can follow the link embedded in the article title to read more; the entire thing is around 2,600 words long, but, very briefly, Mr Frey discusses the obvious impacts of Affirmative Action, that admitting lesser qualified students based on race means that those students, being less well-prepared, are more likely to underperform or fail.

In the meantime, Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, has apologized for the private remarks of two nursing professors. At least as far as I can tell from The Philadelphia Inquirer article, there were no racially based comments made, but simply general assessments of their students.

In the video, two members of the nursing faculty at Widener University are discussing their students’ academic progress in blunt terms.

“They’re going to bomb this next test,” one said to the other, who responds, “I think so, too.”

“I don’t care though. Let ‘em fail.” the first one said.

The conversation was meant to be private, according to the university, but the professors mistakenly shared it with their nursing class, causing conversation on social media accounts and outrage among some students, parents and alumni in the Widener community. . . . .

“They do not know anatomy at all,” Francis says on the video, expressing concern that students would “move on” and not “represent the school well.” Marquis said she got so mad at students last year before the pandemic hit that she decided to make her “heart failure” questions harder.

I’m just an evil reich-wing conservative, but it seems to me that when a nursing professor assesses that her students “do not know anatomy at all,” that’s not being mean and cruel and vicious, but a real assessment on something nurses are supposed to know. That statement isn’t one for which the University should apologize, but one which should concern the school about how poorly the students are doing.

If a waitress messes up an order, a customer might not get the food he wanted. If an accountant makes a mistake, the books won’t balance. But if a registered nurse makes a mistake, a patient can die! Depending upon specialty, a nurse has to be able to accurately administer chemotherapy, which is basically the administration of poison into the body in a dose designed to kill cancer cells but not quite kill the patient. A nurse has to be able to accurately assess a patient. A nurse has to be able to read orders and spot errors that a tired doctor might have made.

But now, the most important educational concern is that the school not hurt someone’s precious little feelings. That’s far more important than actually educating students, and granting degrees only to those who have learned the material.

The truth is not always a pleasant thing, but the truth is that not all people were created equal, that some were simply born smarter than others, some simply worked harder than others, some are simply better prepared for academic challenges than others. But as long as we pretend differently, as long as we fail to recognize the plain truth right in front of our faces, we are going to get poorer performances from people who asked for admissions and jobs and roles for which they were simply not well-prepared.

Mr Frey’s article noted the differences between performance in law schools based on race, differences which are very real. My part noted two Widener University professors, and race does not seem to be a part of the equation; the problem was that most of their students, regardless of race, weren’t performing, and weren’t performing in a field of study which could lead to them having other people’s lives in their hands.

The acceptance of mediocrity leads to mediocre performance; the acceptance of the lesser leads to poorer performance.

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O, their precious little feelings are hurt again!

A Philadelphia building mural by artist Michelle Angela-Ortiz, painted in a tribute to “LGBTQ activist and Latinx community icon Gloria Casarez,” Philadelphia’s first director of LGBT affairs, was painted over on the “former site of the 12th Street Gym in the Gayborhood.”

Why? The building had been sold to Midwood Investment and Development, a developer from New York City, which planned to build a 30-story housing complex. The new owners planned to demolish the building. Painting over the mural cost the developer money, but would spare the local “gayborhood” from seeing the mural being visibly knocked down.

And now, it’s an act of violence!

Whitewashing Gloria Casarez mural is a violent act against Philly’s LGBTQ community | Opinion

By David Acosta | December 24, 2020 | 12:41 PM EST

On Wednesday, Midwood Properties, a New York-based real estate developer who bought the property which used to house the 12th Street Gym, whitewashed the Gloria Cazares mural before demolition was set to start to make way for a 30-story housing complex. The act was not only deliberate, but it was also done in bad faith without consulting either the artist who created the mural, Michelle Angela Ortiz, or Mural arts.

For months, a group of us — including friends of Gloria; Gloria’s wife, Tricia Dressel; the artist; Mural Arts and concerned neighbors who opposed the project — had been working with Midwood Properties to try and preserve the mural and if not salvageable, to create a new project that honored Gloria’s legacy as well as the legacy of the Black abolitionist Henry Minton who lived on the property and was part of the underground railroad. It is believed that the property still contains tunnels used at the time, a fact that should be investigated so that the property can be designated as historically significant and so as to prevent its impending demolition.

The erasure of the mural feels particularly painful as it was the only mural depicting a Latinx LGBTQ woman of color in a city with 3,600 murals to date and counting. The mural’s position in the heart of the Gayborhood was also significant to the LGBTQ community who see the neighborhood as an important location with historical ties to business, and community-based organizations, and as a place where the LGBTQ community has for decades celebrated not only our community festivals but also some of our most important civil rights achievements.

There’s more at the original, including all sorts of tropes of the #woke:

The optics of literally painting over the mural with white paint is not lost on those of us whose lives oftentimes feel invisible because of the color of our skin, our economic conditions, our sexual orientation and our stories as immigrants.

It was difficult to keep from laughing at all of that. The building was scheduled to be torn down! If the “Gayborhood” wanted the mural saved, they should have gotten the money together and bought the building themselves, before it was sold to a developer.

In what has already been a difficult year for so many, the destruction of the mural is a violent act against all of us who saw our lives and our work represented on that wall.

A “violent act,” huh? The City of Brotherly Love has seen 486 people killed in the streets; that’s violence! But the “Gayborhood” is worried that someone painted over a mural that was going to be destroyed anyway. When the “Gayborhood” gets together to try to work at stopping the slaughter of primarily heterosexual, young black males in Philly, I’ll start to be impressed with their abhorrence of violence.

I have to admit it: when I see the name “Gayborhood,” and realize that the old 12th Street Gym catered primarily, though not exclusively, to homosexuals, and that a 30-story housing complex will be built there, I have to wonder just how much of this is a concern that the population required to support a housing complex of that size will change the complexion of the area. Once the complex is built, there will be a lot of normal people moving in. Being in Center City, they’re likely to be mostly white and mostly liberal, and unlikely to be ill-disposed to homosexuals, but they will still be primarily heterosexual.

If a neighborhood tried to preserve its character by exerting political pressure to stay primarily white, it would be denounced as shockingly racist. Yet, when depressed, minority neighborhoods try to fight ‘gentrification,’ which involves primarily white, well-to-do individuals buying and fixing up run down properties, no, that isn’t racist at all. And if a ‘gayborhood’ is trying to preserve a primarily homosexual culture in their area, is that somehow illegally discriminatory?

The gym closed almost three years ago, because “the gym would have had to pay at least $500,000 to address fire-code violations found by the Department of Licenses and Inspections. He also said real estate taxes on the property have surged in recent years.” I have to wonder: how much degradation did a building vacant and (probably) unheated for almost three years suffer? Had it been broken into and seen homeless squatters camped out inside? It couldn’t be pretty.

The local patrons thought that a liberal government might save it:

But, of course, politics doesn’t somehow erase half a million dollars, or more, of fire code violations. Every commercial building in Philadelphia is subject to those kinds of inspections; do the “LGBTQ community” somehow think that their favorite places should somehow be exempt?

Every community is, and ought to be, subject to the same rules, the same laws, and the same economic laws. There ought not to be some special considerations for one particular group, due to race or sexual orientation or sex, that somehow overcome local building codes or economic problems. And if a mural gets painted over because the building got sold, well, too bad, so sad, but that’s life.

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The Special Snowflakes™ are just so upset! "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." -- William F Buckley, Jr

I’m old enough to remember when the left supported an absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment, and I agreed with them. From Wikipedia:

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others.

With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement was influenced by the New Left, and was also related to the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. To this day, the Movement’s legacy continues to shape American political dialogue both on college campuses and in broader society, impacting on the political views and values of college students and the general public.

In 1971, The New York Times and The Washington Post received parts of what eventually were called the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg, who was partially an author of them. President Nixon’s decision to seek an injunction against the newspapers to prevent their further publication of them was overturned by the Supreme Court in New York Times Company v United States, by a 6-3 margin. Associate Justice Hugo Black wrote:

I adhere to the view that the Government’s case against the Washington Post should have been dismissed and that the injunction against the New York Times should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented to this Court. I believe that every moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. Furthermore, after oral argument, I agree completely that we must affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the reasons stated by my Brothers Douglas and Brennan. In my view it is unfortunate that some of my Brethren are apparently willing to hold that the publication of news may sometimes be enjoined. Such a holding would make a shambles of the First Amendment.

Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, followed in 1791. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country.

Freedom of Speech and of the Press continued to expand, and what appears to have been the last vestige of government censorship, that of censoring pornography, has finally faded away due to the ubiquity of pornography on the internet; technology has rendered porn uncontrollable.

But now, the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: “Woke is a political term originating in the United States referring to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It derives from the … Continue reading and the Special Snowflakes™, creatures of today’s left, have become utterly appalled that people who have different opinions than their are allowed to speak, allowed to publish:

Penguin Random House staffers broke down in tears over release of Jordan Peterson book: report

Employees cried to management at a town hall addressing the book’s release in March

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News | November 24, 2020

A new report shows inner turmoil that is apparently taking place at Penguin Random House Canada over the publisher’s release of a book written by Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Peterson, a psychology professor from the University of Toronto and a popular podcast host who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, announced on Monday that he is releasing a new book titled “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life,” which is set to be released in March of next year.

However, Vice reported on Tuesday that Peterson’s book has sparked an emotional outcry within the Canadian publishing giant with an effort by employees to pressure the company into canceling the book’s release.

According to the report, “several” employees confronted management of Penguin Random House Canada (PRHC), a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, at an internal town hall on Monday and “dozens more have filed anonymous complaints” about PRHC’s plans to release the latest work from the politically and culturally outspoken professor.

“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” one town hall attendee, who is also a member of the LGBTQ community, told Vice.

So, quit! If this unnamed “member of the LGBTQ community” is not proud to work for PRHC, there is no law — other than the laws of economics, I suppose — forcing him to stay there.

Another employee alleged that “people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives” with one explaining that Peterson had “radicalized their father” and another insisting the publishing of Peterson’s book will “negatively affect their non-binary friend.”

Well, wahhh! Dr Peterson’s arguments have persuaded some people, and the #woke don’t like it, so they want to clamp down on his speech so that others won’t hear it.[2]Full disclosure: if I have ever read anything by Dr Peterson, I do not recall doing so, or that he was the author of something I did read.

PRHC is, of course, a private company, and therefore their decision to, or refusal to, publish anything, by anyone, is not an act of government censorship. But Penguin Random House is in the business of publishing, so yeah, they are going to publish things that the company believe will make money.

PRHC told Vice in a statement, “We announced yesterday that we will publish Jordan Peterson’s new book ‘Beyond Order’ this coming March. Immediately following the announcement, we held a forum and provided a space for our employees to express their views and offer feedback. Our employees have started an anonymous feedback channel, which we fully support. We are open to hearing our employees’ feedback and answering all of their questions. We remain committed to publishing a range of voices and viewpoints.”

We have previously noted how the #woke are really, really, really opposed to Freedom of the Press, at least as far as printing things with which they disagree. But, at bottom, much of it is fear that healthy debate undermines their own positions, because their positions are, well, kind of stupid. How would you like to have to defend the position that girls can be boys and boys can be girls?

Children have their own ‘logic,’ and I suppose that it sounds good to them. But, being children, there’s always the great fear that the grown ups will show up, and to the #woke at Penguin Random House, Jordan Peterson is one of those awful grown ups.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia: “Woke is a political term originating in the United States referring to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It derives from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke”, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.

First used in the 1940s, the term has resurfaced in recent years as a concept that symbolises awareness of social issues and movement. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics, socially liberal and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has also been the subject of memes, ironic usage and criticism. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.” I confess to being one of those who uses the term disparagingly.

↑2 Full disclosure: if I have ever read anything by Dr Peterson, I do not recall doing so, or that he was the author of something I did read.