In The Mailbox: 06.01.23

Posted on | June 1, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.01.23

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in May. I appreciate your support!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Google Vs. Fair Elections, Self-Defense May Be Legal In Chicago,
Flappr: Until?
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #2096
EBL: Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also, Mahlagha Jaberi
Twitchy: “It Is DEFINITELY Allowed”, also, News Site Tries To Gotcha DeSantis, Twitter Rates Them A Rotten Tomato
Louder With Crowder: #BoycottTarget takes lead on iTunes: Conservative values Trump mainstream artists Taylor Swift, Luke Combs, also, Mom dresses like drag queen at school board meeting to make point about what’s appropriate for kids
Vox Popoli: Saving the Devil Mouse, Clown World vs Gamma World, Never Talk to the Media, and The Little Trashmaid Sinks

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: I wouldn’t be dead for quids
American Conservative: ‘Back to Basics’ in Education Is Not Enough, also, To Our Country and Our Dead
American Greatness: Target’s Marketing VP also Works for Organization Pushing Transgender Agenda in Schools, also, Over 300 COVID-Era Medical Papers Retracted due to Scientific Errors, Ethics Concerns
American Thinker: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, also, The Vote Fraud Monster Is Coming for Ted Cruz
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue…Tuesday, also, Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Who is telling these companies to go woke?, also, Russian tourists disgusted by food served at Cuban luxury hotels
BattleSwarm: Q: What Does It Take To Fire A Black Female SJW Professor? A: Holding A Machete Against A Reporter’s Neck, Paxton vs. Phelan Slap Fight, and LinkSwarm for May 26
Behind The Black: Pushback: If the young are beginning to resist the leftist queer agenda, then there is real hope, also, North Korean rocket fails in attempt to put spy satellite into orbit
Cafe Hayek: Only Airheads Believe That the Economy Is Well-Served by ESG Investing, also, Minimum-Wage Legislation Came From a Bad Place
CDR Salamander: Marines – “Huh. Riverine Looks Useful.”, The World We Won, The World We Made, & The World Red China Built While We Were Distracted,
Chicago Boyz: Dealing With The Threat, also, Welcome Wagon Essay Series: 2
Da Tech Guy: Stacy Reminds me Why I admire him so, also, State Farm Decides California is a Bad Risk
Dana Loesch: Pathological Altruism Via Rainbow Marketing,
Don Surber: Why This Compromise Sucks,
First Street Journal: Lies, damned lies, and statistics, Democrisy: How the #Climate activists want you to do as they say, not do as they do, and The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about its impending death
Gates Of Vienna: German Police Told to Go Easy on Culture-Enrichers, also, Diversity is Our Strength!
The Geller Report: Academic Study Shows That Being A Leftist Drives You Mad, Makes You Crazy, also, FDA Admits That Childrens’ Hearts Are Damaged by Covid Vaccine
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Four Views of Io’s Volcanoes, and Loomer, Jones, and Pushaw
Hollywood In Toto: Tom Hanks Promotes Truth (After Honoring Serial Liar Biden), also, The Boogeyman Lacks That Signature Stephen King Spark
The Lid: HELP! Jane Fonda Wants Me In Jail Because White Men Cause Climate Change, also, GETTING SPECIFIC: Comer Wants FBI Docs For $5 Million In Biden Bribes From Ukraine … Dated June, 2020
Legal Insurrection: Trump Trashes Kayleigh McEnany for the Crime of Allegedly Misquoting Iowa Poll Numbers, also, Colorado College Students Boo and Turn Their Backs on Commencement Speaker Liz Cheney
Nebraska Energy Observer: Were you aware, Once more into the breach, and Down in the Dumps? Well, This Might Help
Outkick: ESPN’s Sam Ponder Responds ‘Biology Is Not Bigotry’, also, Dodgers Pitcher Blake Treinen Backs Teammates Religious Stance Against Dodgers Pride Night
Power Line: Target In a Crossfire Hurricane, also, Senior moment with a local twist
Shark Tank: Mast Chides Biden’s Foreign Policy – “Weakness Invites Aggression”
Shot In The Dark: The Next Big Thing, I Love A Happy Ending, and Notes To Self Re 2023 Session Part I
STUMP: Video: U.S. Mortality Trends 2020-2022 part 8: External causes of death, also, Update: Why Have “Full Contributors” Lost So Much Ground In Twenty Years in Public Pensions?
The Political Hat: Racial Quotas Are Still Unconstitutional, Massachusetts To Parents: Sterilize Your Kids Of Face Child Abuse Charges, and Cabin Boy Living
This Ain’t Hell: Jane Fonda blames the “climate crisis” on the patriarchy, Texas fall short, Default could have catastrophic effects for veterans, and Reserve Marine Lieutenant Colonel helps bust human-trafficking ring
Transterrestrial Musings: A Declaration Of Decadence, And The Beat Goes On, and C. Boyden Gray
Victory Girls: CUNY Law Grad Goes Full Anti-Semite In Commencement Speech, also, FDA Capriciously Bans OTC Meds For Livestock And Pets
Volokh Conspiracy: Political Ignorance and Misinformation on the Left, also, A Lawyer’s Filing “Is Replete with Citations to Non-Existent Cases”—Thanks, ChatGPT?
Watts Up With That: “We have no reason to be against nuclear energy other than prejudice & stupidity”, also, The South African Energy Crisis: A Battle between Power Needs and Environmentalists
Weasel Zippers: WTF Is Going On At Disneyland?, MSNBC Shocked: After 28 Months Of Joe Biden, “Things Are STILL Expensive Across The Board”, and Dem Rep. Jamaal Bowman: “We Need To Stop Drilling For Fossil Fuels Completely”
The Federalist: We Need More Christians Like Trevor Williams Not Anthony Bass, Leftist Midwits And Their Media Allies Redefine ‘Banned’ Books, To Address The Loneliness Epidemic, The Feds Want To Control Your Town And Friends, Biden Administration Demands Georgia Schools Show Pornography To Kids, and To Beat The Dodgers’ Anti-Christian Hate, MLB Stars Must Refuse To Play Ball
Mark Steyn: The Shrinking World, also, The War at Sea: Sink the Bismarck!

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

What ‘Diversity’ Really Means

Posted on | June 1, 2023 | Comments Off on What ‘Diversity’ Really Means

No matter how much the elite pretend otherwise:

A recruiter for the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force referred to white men looking to join the air force as “useless white male pilots,” according to emails obtained by several British media outlets.
The comments were reportedly made by Squadron Leader Andrew Harwin in an email discussing board placements for ushering recruits through training.
“I noted that the boards have recently been predominantly white male heavy. If we don’t have enough BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] and female to board then we need to make the decision to pause boarding and seek more BAME and female from the RAF,” Harwin, who worked at the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre, reportedly wrote in a January 19, 2021, email.
“I don’t really need to see loads of useless white male pilots, let’s get as focused as possible, I am more than happy to reduce boarding if needed to have a balanced BAME/female/male board,” he added.
One RAF source told The Telegraph that the “email clearly demonstrates the endemic culture that was created by the senior leadership to chase ridiculous diversity statistics that were patently unachievable.”
A later email from January 19, 2021, said that the recruiting pool for minorities and women had been “drained.”
“From 336 Cs [candidates] we have [about] 10% female, 5% BAME which we will burn through quickly using the boarding profile proposed,” the email said.
Thirty-one men will be compensated roughly $6,000 each as a result of their training being delayed due to diversity quotas, according to Sky News.

Where this anti-white “diversity” mania began, of course, is in higher education, where discrimination against white males has been more or less overt for the past 25 years. The admissions data that came out of the lawsuit Harvard showed that, year after year, 14% of the freshman class was black — demonstrating that a de facto numerical quota was in effect, otherwise some variation in the percentage would have been expected. Asian students sued because, it was equally obvious, no matter how clearly their superior academic aptitude was demonstrated by GPA and SAT scores, the number of Asian students admitted to Harvard was artificially “capped” at around 20% of the freshman class total. Expert testimony showed that an Asian student whose GPA/SAT gave him a 25% chance of being admitted to Harvard would have had a 95% chance, if he had been black. In other words, being black was worth at least four times as much as academic aptitude. And this type of blatant bias is now being replicated in corporate America (see “Google Lawsuit Exposes Stalinist Climate Protecting Anti-White, Anti-Male Bias,” Jan. 10, 2018).

That these discriminatory practices have now spread to other English-speaking countries, and are being enforced in military training, goes to show how wrong it is to laugh at the latest insane trends in academia. Once bad ideas take hold on college campuses, they usually seep out into the real world, often with disastrous consequences.

Category: Great Britain, Military, Racism

In The Mailbox: 05.31.23 (Concentrated Punditry Edition)

Posted on | May 31, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.31.23 (Concentrated Punditry Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I am most of the way home, spending a couple of nights at the Stratosphere (like McCarran Airport, I refuse to use the new name) to decompress and relax a bit before my appointment with the VA tomorrow morning and the drive back to Tonopah on Friday. I spent a lot of time hanging around Dulles yesterday because some plans fell through, but I was very tired and not in the mood to try and wade through several days of Feedly posts after being unable to do anything Tuesday because the wifi at the Days Inn in Fredneck failed me. So here’s a bunch of substackery and submitted stuff. Enjoy. Probably going to get caught up later tonight and tomorrow.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Well, sugar, anyway.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #2089
357 Magnum: “Indiana Jones & The Insufferable Feminist”, The Catch & Release Strategy Doesn’t Work In Criminal Justice, Texans Are Still Armed,
Gab News: A Potent Weapon In The Culture War,

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Baldilocks: The Lizard Eye, “I Screw Therefore I Am”, People Of The Lie,
CDR Salamander: Make The Quad A Quint With A Center Square By 2035, Diversity Thursday, Fullbore Friday,
Dana Loesch: DeSantis Broke Twitter, Gov. DeSantis Joins The Dana Show,
Don Surber: Already Lying About Trump’s Second Term, T-Girls May Tip The Election, AP Dares Not Ask About Ukraine, and The Media Protects A Satanist
Glenn Reynolds: Is This The Real Life? Is this Just Fantasy?
Protein Wisdom Reborn: I’ve Got Your “White Fragility” Right Here, My Brother, The White Face Of Black Supremacy,

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Visit Exciting Lowndes County!

Posted on | May 31, 2023 | Comments Off on Visit Exciting Lowndes County!

Look, I’m not saying that every day in Lowndes County, Georgia, is filled with thrilling automotive stunts, but last week, one Florida driver passing through really gave ’em a show on Highway 84:

It looks like a scene straight out of the “Dukes of Hazzard.” A wild video captured the moment a driver hit a tow truck’s flatbed and went flying through the air in south Georgia.
Channel 2 Action News obtained the body camera video from the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office from the May 24 crash.
In the video, you can see deputies on the side of a traffic incident on Ga. 38/U.S. 84 when a car comes down one of the lanes and doesn’t slow down.
The car goes up the back of the tow truck and flips through the air.
One of the deputies immediately springs into action and rushes to help the driver. Georgia State Patrol confirmed the driver survived the crash but was hospitalized with serious injuries.
According to the GSP report, the driver’s car “vaulted” approximately 120 feet over the tow truck and hit another car in the back. The car then traveled another 23 feet after impact with the other car.
A Lowndes County deputy was hit by flying debris from the crash and taken to the hospital. No other injuries were reported.
Georgia State Patrol Lt. Crystal Zion told ABC News that the crash stresses the importance of Georgia’s Move Over Law.
“It takes out the distractions of driving fast or phones or other people in the car. Basically, you know, when you see those lights to slow down, move over,” Zion said.
It’s unclear what, if any, charges will be filed against the driver, who remains hospitalized with serious injuries. The deputy injured by the debris was released from hospital and in good condition.

“Hospitalized with serious injuries”? Yeah, being covered in your own fecal matter is pretty serious, because . . . wow!

Distracted Georgia woman does her best 'Dukes of Hazard' impression…

Fortunately, nobody died in this wild incident in Lowndes County, Georgia. pic.twitter.com/O4PbWZd0Wn

— Red Voice Media (@redvoicenews) May 31, 2023

The local Chamber of Commerce should hire this woman to do repeat performances every weekend as a tourist attraction.

Category: Georgia

How White Is @TizzyEnt?

Posted on | May 29, 2023 | Comments Off on How White Is @TizzyEnt?

Film editor and social-media SJW Michael McWhorter (@TizzyEnt on Twitter) “can safely be described as white as a debutante’s taint,” in the immortal words of Jeff Goldstein, and the excellence of that phrasing was sufficient to call my attention to a story I’ve been trying to ignore for more than a week, the “CitiBike Karen” saga. The reason I’ve ignored it is because (a) there seems to be some confusion as to what actually happened and (b) I didn’t want to get into the difficult task of explaining how this bike-rental system operates. Also (c) everybody else was all over it and why jump on the social-media dogpile merely to duplicate their efforts? Anyway, here’s something of a summary:

[Sarah Jane] Comrie, a physician’s assistant at Bellevue Hospital, encountered a man on May 12 who claimed he paid for a Citi Bike that she said she had rented first. Part of the confrontation went viral on social media with more than 40 million views, which has since resulted in Comrie keeping out of the public eye, receiving death threats, and NYC Health + Hospitals placing her on leave after some people branded her a “Karen.” . . .
Lawyer Ben Crump, who has been involved in some of the most controversial racial cases in recent history, claimed in a now-deleted tweet that Comrie had tried to “steal” the bike.
“This is unacceptable! A white woman was caught on camera attempting to STEAL a Citi Bike from a young Black man in NYC,” Crump tweeted. “She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is EXACTLY the type of behavior that has endangered so many Black men in the past!”
According to [Comrie’s lawyer Justin] Marino, the NYC healthcare professional had finished a 12-hour shift when she paid for the bike and removed it from its docking station, only to have the group approach her with one holding onto the handlebars, insisting it was his. One man allegedly pushed the bike back into its docking station, prompting the woman to call for help, Marino told The New York Post, adding that one of the men covered the bike’s QR code so the woman could not pay for it again.

Exactly why these five black youth accosted Comrie over this rental bike, I don’t understand, and if anyone else do understand what was going on here, please explain in the comments. At any rate, this guy McWhorter has repeatedly doubled-down in smearing Comrie, which is why Goldstein felt obliged to weigh in at length:

The facts, to the extent they continue to matter, are not in dispute — especially if what we are after is an accurate presentation of how to contextualize the 90-second viral video that threatened to ruin the life of Sarah Comrie, a white physician’s assistant, whom the left set about to turn into an objective correlative of white “Karenicity,” of female whiteness weaponized as a means to consciously control and subjugate black men.
McWhorter was and continues to be one of the driving forces of this narrative, having recently appeared on TYT to once again bemoan the racism of Ms Comrie and the dangers she posed to black men as a direct result of her whiteness. . . .

Read the whole thing. McWhorter is a definite type, the sort of “progressive” who poses as a Courageous Truth-Teller, soliciting admiration for his moral excellence in repeating whatever the favored left-wing narrative of the day might happen to be. And this is why he can’t apologize or retract his errors in regard to Sarah Comrie, because to admit he was wrong — she was the actual victim in the viral CitiBike incident, not the black accusers who claimed she was stealing a bike from them — would be a confession of fallibility, and thus call into question the validity of the reflexive and formulaic identity politics game he’s playing.

But the main point is that line by Jeff — “as white as a debutante’s taint”!

Wow, what a great line. He needs to copyright that one.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Category: Racism

Chicago Group Hired Gangsters to Be ‘Peacekeepers’ and It’s Working Out Just About the Way You Might Expect

Posted on | May 29, 2023 | Comments Off on Chicago Group Hired Gangsters to Be ‘Peacekeepers’ and It’s Working Out Just About the Way You Might Expect

Remember when President Obama got elected and America’s public schools suddenly became excellent? No, you don’t remember that, because it never happened. The guy Obama appointed as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is a Harvard-educated liberal who had previously been appointed by the Daley machine as Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, where he worked no miracles, and neither did he do anything during his eight-year tenure as Secretary of Education that anyone remembers as praiseworthy. In 2016, with money from Steve Jobs’ widow, Duncan started a group called Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny). Duncan has said that Chicago CRED “proceeds from the belief that the surest way to stop gun violence is engaging directly with those most at risk of shooting or being shot and giving them a reason to put down their guns”:

Said another way, we believe that the individuals we work with are not the problem — they are the solution. They are the only ones with the experience, relationships, and courage necessary to do the difficult, dangerous work of reaching out to friends, neighbors, and family members and getting them to also stop shooting. . . .
Our comprehensive approach includes street outreach, counseling, life coaching, education, and employment. . . .
Many of our outreach workers and life coaches are slightly older versions of the people caught up in gun violence, so they have their trust and respect. We also give participants a modest paycheck, starting at about $125 per week and rising to about $225 per week over the course of our 12-24-month program as long as they stay involved, attend regularly, and advance through the program. Our goal is to help them transition into the legal economy.

So they’re paying people not to shoot each other, and hey, it’s a “comprehensive approach,” which explains the excellent results!

Chicago’s 2022 homicide rate was 25.8 per 100,000, more than twice as high as Los Angeles (9.9) and five times higher than New York City (5.1). About the best you can say for Chicago is that it’s not as violent as Baltimore, Detroit or Memphis, but does that really qualify as “success”?

If Arne Duncan was just spending Laurene Jobs’ billions on this “comprehensive approach,” it would be no more than a laughable folly, but because Illinois is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party the taxpayers are now footing the bill for Chicago CRED’s “violence prevention” operation, and how’s that working out?

One of our participants was killed today as he left one of our sites. He had just written about how much achieving his HS diploma would mean to him & his family.
Devastated doesn’t describe what we are feeling- please keep his family and our @ChicagoCred family in your prayers.

— Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) May 18, 2023

CHICAGO (WLS) — A man who worked to stop gun violence was killed Wednesday in a shooting outside a community outreach center. Chicago police said they are looking for two people involved.
Police said 28-year-old Ronnie Roper was in a South Side parking lot at about 12:16 p.m. when two people walked up and shot him in the head.
The shooting occurred just outside Chicago CRED’s outreach center in the Roseland neighborhood. The victim was a member of that group that works to stop gun violence. . . .
“It has been devastating,” said CRED site manager Necole Muhammad. “The staff is in shock and traumatized. The family is traumatized.”
CRED said Roper was on track to get his high school diploma later this year.
“He was very excited about making sure he brought that into fruition for his family, and because he had individuals that were team him,” Muhammad said.
The group was founded by former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Duncan had just left the center minutes before the shooting.
Duncan released a statement saying, “We lost to gun violence a man who had been with our program for the last nine months. He came to us because he wanted a way out of his life on the streets and had made great progress toward that goal…”
He went on to say in part that this death is a reminder that, “We have so much more work to do to make Chicago a safe city with meaningful opportunities for everyone.”

Way to go, Harvard-educated genius! Maybe you can find the guys who shot Ronnie Roper in the head and pay them not to shoot anyone else — because that’s the “comprehensive approach,” am I right?

Undeterred by this incident, Chicago CRED had big plans for making the city safe this Memorial Day weekend:

If there’s unrest downtown or mass shootings elsewhere in Chicago this Memorial Day holiday — often among the year’s most violent weekends — a special team of 30 “Peacekeepers” wearing yellow vests will be mobilized to help calm things down, state officials said Tuesday.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker authorized funding the anti-violence strategy in 2021 when he signed the Reimagine Public Safety Act, creating the state Office of Firearm Violence Prevention.
More than 500 people have been hired as Peacekeepers, trained to deescalate conflicts in 102 “hot spots” in 14 Chicago communities. . . .
The money for the program in the current budget year — $11 million — is set to increase to $30 million in the next year, according to state records. . . .
In addition to that larger program, the state is spending $750,000 on a “crisis prevention and response unit” of at least 30 specially trained Peacekeepers.
That unit is available 24 hours a day every week to respond to shootings in Chicago and will be active during the Memorial Day weekend, according to DHS, which funds the program.

A key element in the “comprehensive approach” is paying money to convicted criminals as “outreach workers,” and apparently a record that includes attempted murder is no problem in getting hired:

Chicago ‘peacekeeper’ Oscar Montes

A Chicago man wearing a neon yellow “peacekeepers” vest helped a group of people beat and rob a motorist in Little Village on Friday night, according to a Chicago Police Department report. The allegations come after city and state officials lauded the use of “peacekeepers” as a tool they would deploy over the Memorial Day weekend to tamp down violence across the city.
Oscar Montes, 31, was held without bail by Judge Maryam Ahmad on charges of robbery, aggravated battery, and unlawful vehicular invasion Sunday afternoon.
The trouble began around 10:55 p.m. as Chicago police officers saw a large group fighting near 23rd Place and Washtenaw. Additional CPD units were sent to stabilize the situation.
But less than five minutes after officers cleared up from that incident, CPD surveillance officers reported that a group of people had pulled a man from a car and started beating him, a police report said.
A 37-year-old man was pulled from his vehicle by “multiple offenders,” including one wearing a neon vest, a Chicago police spokesperson said Saturday. During Montes’ bail hearing, prosecutor Charles Golaszewski said six or seven men joined Montes in pulling the victim from the driver’s seat.
The group punched and kicked him on the ground. Montes took the victim’s phone and beat the man with it, Golaszewski alleged. Another man took the victim’s wallet before everyone scattered as Chicago cops returned to the scene.
A police surveillance camera recorded the entire attack, Golaszewski said, and officers who reviewed the footage identified a man wearing a yellow vest as one of the attackers.
Police officers searched the area and quickly located Montes walking away from them while removing “a neon ‘peacekeepers’ vest,” according to the CPD arrest report. No other arrests were made.
The victim was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in serious condition with significant injuries to one eye, cuts, bruises, and abrasions. Golaszewski said he suffered a facial fracture, rib fracture, and a left eye injury that has caused partial vision loss. It is unclear if the victim’s vision will fully return.
A CPD officer signed complaints on behalf of the victim, who was “not capable” of signing the papers himself “due to his injuries,” the police report said. . . .
His defense attorney on Sunday said [Montes] has a 14-year-old child and is a certified emergency medical technician. He volunteers “when he can” and goes to church, the lawyer said. But neither the public defender nor Golaszewski mentioned any peacekeeping activities that Montes might have been involved with.
Montes is on parole for a 2012 case in which he pleaded guilty to aggravated discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle. Golaszewski said those allegations stemmed from an incident involving a rival gang member of Montes in Little Village. Court records show Montes was originally charged with attempted murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.
He was released on May 6, 2022, after serving a little more than ten years of a 12-year sentence, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. State officials are reviewing his parole status in light of the new allegations.

Doing a heckuva job keeping the peace. As of 10 p.m. Sunday, there had been 47 shootings in Chicago this weekend, including 11 fatal shootings, plus another homicide by stabbing. No comment from Arne Duncan.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Chicago, Crime

From the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ to the Bulls–t Age of Wokeness: A Brief History

Posted on | May 28, 2023 | Comments Off on From the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ to the Bulls–t Age of Wokeness: A Brief History

You may not recognize that long-legged young bathing beauty, but she was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars back in the day when the movie business was run by men who knew how to make money by producing movies that people actually wanted to watch. Strangely enough, while many today would scoff at the old-fashioned capitalist greed that motivated Hollywood producers in mid-20th-century America, many of the movies they made were artistically superior to anything produced by the soi disant “progressive” filmmakers of our own era, including the 1947 classic in which our long-legged bathing beauty starred.

Today’s ultra-woke studios have no original ideas, and specialize instead in ripping off old movies, remaking beloved classics and turning them into merde. How could they ruin Indiana Jones? That franchise was solid gold, and yet they found a way to turn it into crap. And they performed a similar feat with The Little Mermaid, turning a beloved children’s cartoon into a live-action box office disaster. A major part of what’s gone wrong in 21st-century Hollywood is that they’ve become obsessed with “representation” of various political causes (e.g., cramming gay and transgender themes into every project) and “diversity” in casting.

Movie moguls back in the day didn’t give a damn about such things. What they wanted was money, and the way to make money from movies was to give the people what they wanted — including sexy dames, like that long-legged beauty pictured up top (about whom some of you guys may be having concupiscent urges, despite the fact she’s been dead for more than 20 years, you sick freaks). Like the movie moguls of the Golden Age, this blog operates with an understanding of human nature, famously expressed by Rule 5: “Everybody loves a pretty girl.” You will never go broke selling cheesecake, and this principle of commerce was understood by such men as Howard Hughes, the Elon Musk of his age.

Aviation pioneer and movie mogul Howard Hughes

In June 1942, Hughes spotted a model in the pages of Life magazine. She was just 17 years old, but Hughes believed he could make her a movie star — and he wasn’t wrong. This is something most people don’t understand about the Golden Age of Hollywood. Back then, it was understood that beauty was the essential quality for any actress. The studios would put a pretty girl under contract and give her acting lessons, speech lessons, dancing lessons, singing lessons, etc. You can teach those things, whereas beauty — well, you either have it or you don’t, and thus it was that Howard Hughes took one look at that long-legged teenager modeling in Life magazine and said to himself, “She’s gonna be a star!”

Hughes hired the girl, and sent her to RKO Studios for “development.” Not long after arriving in Hollywood, she attracted the attention of a famous jazz singer more than 20 years her senior and, after a whirlwind romance, they were married when the future RKO star was just 19. They soon divorced, however, but by 1945, she starred in four movies, did another three films in 1946, and then in 1947, made her breakthrough as the femme fatale in the film noir classic Out of the Past.

Yes, it’s Jane Greer we’re talking about — and you, dear reader, got this far in the story because you just had to know, “Who is that dame with the long legs?” Because I know a thing or two about human nature. Set the hook, then reel ’em in — get the reader interested in the story, and they’ll stay until the final credits roll. And what could be more calculated to arouse reader interest than Jane Greer’s long legs?

This, in essence, is why the Golden Age of Hollywood is so vastly superior to the woke bullshit of movies nowadays. In the old days, with profit as their motive, the moguls of Hollywood tried to produce movies that appealed to the ordinary sentiments of ordinary people, obviously including ordinary guys who liked to see a good-looking dame.

Jane Greer (and her legs) in ‘Out of the Past’

Was there any political “cause” advanced by a movie like Out of the Past? Was there some kind of uplifting message in the movie? Not at all. As the mogul Sam Goldwyn allegedly said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” The movie business was about selling tickets, baby, and what better way to sell tickets than a sinister love triangle with a couple of tough guys falling for a deadly dame like Jane Greer?

And isn’t it strange how, in trying to make movies for profit, Hollywood in the Golden Age almost accidentally produced great art?

Out of the Past is considered one of the greatest of all films noir. Robert Ottoson hailed the film as “the ne plus ultra of forties film noir.”

If the conservatives who run Hillsdale College ever decide to start a film school, I hope they’ll take note of this lesson.

Category: History, Hollywood, Movies

FMJRA 2.0: Take It Away, Harry

Posted on | May 28, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Take It Away, Harry

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD: You’re Breakin’ My Heart
This year I arrived at Balticon for the first time since 2019 only to find that without a face panty, I couldn’t attend panels, enter the dealers room, or visit the art show. But hanging out in the consuite was fine! WTF, Balticon. I can’t breathe through a face mask and the NIH says they don’t do shit anyway. 0/10, will not be returning next year.
In happier news, the draft in Pete’s league continues to go well for me, the season has been expanded to 162 games, and I’m looking forward to the season starting.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.