The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

It’s Come to This

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 37 Comments

Ace saw this and could scarcely believe it, but it’s true: Some guy with an online gaming site got fired — fired! — for a Tweet — a Tweet! — about L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling:

Josh Olin, the community and eSports manager at Evolve developer Turtle Rock Studios, is no longer with the company in the wake of a series of remarks related to vilified Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
Olin, a former community manager at Treyarch Studios (Call of Duty: Black Ops) and Riot Games (League of Legends), said on Twitter on Wednesday, “Here’s an unpopular opinion: Donald Sterling has the right as an American to be an old bigot in the security of his own home. He’s a victim.”
The tweet was in reference to Donald Sterling’s private racist remarks being made public, the ensuing media attention and punishment meted out by NBA league commissioner Adam Silver. The commissioner announced on Tuesday that Sterling was banned for life from NBA events and would pay a fine of $2.5 million. Silver is also attempting to force a sale of the Clippers.
After Olin’s remarks hit Twitter, some of his followers — he has some 142,000 — challenged the original tweet. “When you were raised in an era where segregation was perceived as ‘right’, that will stick with some people,” Olin later said. “Doesn’t make him a monster.”
Olin later clarified that he believed Sterling was a victim because of “illegal wiretapping resulting in a MASSIVE, life altering breach in privacy.” Today, Olin tweeted he was “expressly not defending [Sterling’s] remarks or actions.”

This is insane: Person X says foul and offensive things in private conversation, which is recorded by Person Y. When the recording is made public, vehement condemnation descends on Person X. Everyone agrees his comments were offensive, but when Person Z says merely that Person X has a right to privacy and the right to his own opinion, unlimited personal destruction must be unleashed against Person Z because . . . ? Well, why, exactly?

It’s insane, like I said, but don’t start me talking. I could talk all night.

 

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Racism

Gay Baby Merchant Boasts: ‘My Vast Wealth and Contacts Will Crush Anyone’

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 114 Comments

British couple Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow with two of their surrogate babies.

A British millionaire who stars in a Sky TV reality show about his surrogate baby business responded to an e-mail from a critic by boasting about his £18 million London mansion and threatening to use his influence to “crush anyone” who opposed him.

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow is CEO of the British Surrogacy Centre and, along with his gay partner Tony, stars in the series The Parent Makers that began airing last month on the Sky 192 satellite channel. Publicity for the show drew a hostile online reaction from Luke McKee, an Australian exile living in Asia. McKee posted a message full of anti-gay slurs (“queers,” “faggots,” etc.) at a right-wing online forum, suggesting that Drewitt-Barlow’s surrogate business may be violating British and U.S. laws. After a lengthy e-mail exchange with McKee, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow sent a message Friday morning calling McKee a “stalker” and “trailer trash,” and bragged that his wealth would protect him from investigation or adverse publicity. An excerpt of that e-mail:

From: Barrie Drewitt-Barlow <[email protected]>
To: Luke McKee
. . .
Sent: Friday, May 2, 2014 9:26 AM
Subject: RE: i always have the last word

. . . This time, you have met someone who is not only wealthier than you who can fight your pathetic attempt to blacken their name, but someone who is far more intelligent then you and someone who actually, does not give a shit about what anyone else in the world thinks of him! . . .
Do yourself a big favour and move on, you cannot win a fight against me, I’m far too well respected for some little idiot like you to do anything to. And as far as using other people to do the job for you as you say, hahahhahahaha I laugh in your face, and say to you, BRING IT ON, my vast wealth and contacts will crush anyone you bring onto your team! . . .
[T]onight, I will sit in my 16 bedroomed, £18 million pound London mansion, sipping champagne and eating the finest foods available to me, cooked by the house keeper and served by one of our three live in maids, before tucking my stunningly good looking 5 children up in their amazing bedrooms! After which, I will go for a swim in my swimming pool with my husband and talk about how much money we have made over the past 48 hours whilst YOU, sit in the poverty of your own making! Now do something worthy with your miserable life and get a job!

You prick! lolol

Drewitt-Barlow has often been controversial. Last year, he and his partner sued the Church of England demanding religious recognition of same-sex marriage. That lawsuit provoked criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron from conservatives like Colin Hart of the Coalition for Marriage, who told the London Daily Mail: “The ink’s not even dry on the [new marriage law] and churches are already facing litigation. We warned Mr. Cameron this would happen, we told him he was making promises that he couldn’t possibly keep. He didn’t listen. He didn’t care. He’s the one who has created this mess. Mr. Cameron’s chickens are coming home to roost and it will be ordinary people with a religious belief who yet again fall victim to the totalitarian forces of political correctness.”

The commercial surrogacy business is a growing international trade that has been criticized as  a form of “human trafficking,” especially by women’s rights advocates who say the lucrative practice — which is outlawed in many countries — enables wealthy people to exploit poor women as “breeders.” Reuters reported last year:

India opened up to commercial surrogacy in 2002. It is among just a handful of countries – including Georgia, Russia, Thailand and Ukraine – and a few U.S. states where women can be paid to carry another’s genetic child through a process of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and embryo transfer.
The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of surrogates have made India a preferred destination for fertility tourism, attracting nationals from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, to name a few. . . .
A U.N.-backed study in July 2012 estimated the surrogacy business at more than $400 million a year, with over 3,000 fertility clinics across India. . . .
India’s surrogacy industry is vilified by women’s rights groups who say fertility clinics are nothing more than “baby factories” for the rich. In the absence of regulation, they say many poor and uneducated women are lured by agents, hired by clinics, into signing contracts they do not fully understand.
In May [2012], surrogate mother Premila Vaghela, 30, died days after delivering a child for an American couple at a clinic in Gujarat. It was recorded as an “accidental death” by police.

Negative attention was also focused on surrogate parenthood last year by the highly-publicized case of a gay couple whose son — which they said was produced by a Russian surrogate impregnated by one of the men’s sperm — was exploited by an “international syndicate” of pedophiles known as the “Boy Lovers Network”:

Mark Newton, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison last week by U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker. Authorities say Newton and his partner, Peter Truong, 36, paid a Russian woman $8,000 to give birth to a boy they said was conceived using artificial insemination with Newton’s sperm. The men began sexually abusing the boy before he was two weeks old, recording the acts on video they shared online with other pedophiles.
“What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?” Judge Barker said Friday in giving the maximum sentence to Newton, an American who had become an Australian citizen. Prosecutors said the case was tried in Judge Barker’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana because images of the boy were found on the computer of an Indiana man who was arrested as part of a larger child-pornography investigation.
Records in the case had previously been sealed, the Indianapolis Star reported. Newton and Truong made the boy available for molestation by other men in France, Germany and the United States, according to prosecutors. “For more than one year and across three continents, these men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen,” said U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett.

Barrie Drewitt Barlow is @Gaydads on Twitter. The Sky TV show has its own Twitter account, @TheParentMakers. Luke McKee is  @gaysabovethelaw on Twitter.

 

Category: Gays, Great Britain

Lesbian Is Now a Fashion Statement, Also: Gender, Identity, Roles and Feminism

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 69 Comments

The cover of the latest issue of Flare, a Canadian women’s fashion magazine, adds new meaning to the phrase “lesbian chic.” Apparently, “loving ladies and living proud” a la celebrity lesbian Ellen Page is what stylish Canadian women are now expected to do.

Stephanie Verge’s feature interview with Page is rather tedious:

With a quiver in her voice and wearing a T-shirt proclaiming “All Love Is Equal,” [Page] stood in front of a crowded Las Vegas room at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s inaugural Time to Thrive conference and uttered the words every adolescent lesbian who’s ever watched (and rewatched) the roller derby flick Whip It dreams of hearing: “I am here today because I’m gay.” She went on to say that she was “tired of lying by omission.”

(Point One: Gay people do not actually believe that “All Love Is Equal”; they disdain heterosexuality, otherwise they wouldn’t be gay. Point Two: How does Stephanie Verge know “the words every adolescent lesbian . . . . dreams of hearing” unless . . .?)

It was the eight-minute speech pinged around the blogosphere, and one that Page and her manager planned meticulously in collaboration with the HRC Foundation. Page wanted her announcement to be aligned with a cause, ideally one having to do with LGBTQ youth (promoting the safety, inclusion and well-being of queer teens is an HRC Foundation priority). . . .

(Translation: It was was a political publicity stunt.)

“I was very nervous. I was very nervous, yes. Yes. Very, very nervous. Yes. I was emotional, deeply, deeply emotional.” Though she told her parents she liked-liked girls when she was 19, she was still coming out to herself eight years on. “You think you’re in a place where you’re all I’m thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don’t feel shame about being gay, but you actually do. You’re just not fully aware of it. I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.”

(She was a heterosexual impersonator?)

One of the perks of being an out lesbian: being able to wear whatever you want. Less than three weeks after her big speech, Page attended theVanity Fair Oscar party wearing a leather-accented Saint Laurent tux by Hedi Slimane. “I felt happy and confident and the difference was huge,” says Page. . . . For years, she endured pressure to conform to industry standards, i.e., dresses, but those days are over.

OK, you can read the whole thing if you care. But what kind of simplistic reduction is this? Being a presumably straight girl means “pressure” to wear dresses, and once you come out as a lesbian, you get the “perk” of “being able to wear whatever you want”? As though there are no heterosexual women who wear pants and no lesbians who wear dresses? What is this, 1957 or something?

When I was tweeting about this Thursday night, a conversation ensued with someone who doesn’t seem familiar with feminist theory:

Maybe I’ve become too familiar with feminist theory, that I expect other people to understand the difference between sex and gender, between sexual preference and gender roles. Feminism is about the abolition of gender — that is, eradicating all “socially constructed” differences between the sexes. According to feminism, it is the oppressive male patriarchy that imposes the “feminine” role — a humiliating condition of submissive inferiority — on women. To be “feminine,” according to this theory, is for a woman to be passive and yielding toward men, to shape her appearance and behavior in ways that are acceptable and attractive to men. By contrast, feminists view the “masculine” role as typified by domination and aggression which ultimately is about reducing women to the role of “fuckholes, breeders and slaves.”

This is why lesbianism is the goal of feminism. Only by escaping male domination can women escape the prison of “gender” and the inherently violent act of male sexuality: PIV (penis-in-vagina) intercourse, which is both the means and motive of women’s oppression: “All PIV is rape, OK?” and “No woman is heterosexual”:

What men call heterosexuality is an institution where men make women captive for PIV, to control our reproductive functions and steal our labour. . . .
It’s part of the global male infrastructure that ensures men a constant supply of ready-tamed and pre-possessed women to effortlessly stick their dicks in, impregnate and abuse. The more it grows, the easier it is for each individual man to break any woman’s will and trick her into PIV and being owned by him — and maintain submission level with the help of men’s institutions.

If you don’t understand and believe this — if you recognize this as complete lunacy — then obviously, you are not a feminist.

Now, some of you familiar with lesbian culture may be asking yourself, “What about butch dykes? Aren’t they acting out a ‘masculine’ role? If feminists reject gender roles, what about women who emulate stereotypically masculine behavior and appearance?” Oh, but see, butch dykes are subverting the patriarchy by demonstrating that females can perform the “masculine” role. However, because of the transgender vogue, many butch lesbians are now undergoing hormone treatments and surgery to become “transmen,” a trend that one older feminist laments:

Why are all the butches becoming men? Why can’t they understand that gender is a social construct, and that women don’t have to conform to a feminine ideal? Isn’t that what we were fighting for — a world in which women could wear tool belts and neckties and do anything we damn well please, without the constraints of gender?
At its very core, this was the vision of the feminist movement, and lesbians more than anyone understood how transformative this could be.
Years ago, I asked the same questions, but today, this conversation makes me uncomfortable. Because I am of this older generation, I have seen things change — and not change — for a long time.
I have, in my life, loved many butches. My relationships and affairs have almost always been with masculine women and, more recently, with trans men as well.
In my experience, for as long as I have found myself in intimate circumstances with butches/studs/masculine-identified women — from way back when I was too young to be in the bars where I was meeting and going home with them — a curious thing happens. Once there is enough trust established, I become witness to a moment of confession. The confession goes something like this: “I don’t know how to explain this, but I don’t exactly feel like a woman. I mean, I’m butch, and that’s close, but honestly, I’m not sure what I am.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are many, many proud butch women who are exactly that: women. In today’s terminology, their gender expression is masculine, and their gender identity is female. They wear their tool belts proudly, and I am happy to admire the show. For them, a butch identity resolves the issue — if people have a problem with it, it’s their sexism or homophobia rearing its head.
But that experience is not everyone’s, and it never has been.

If you did not previously believe all feminists are crazy, perhaps now you’re beginning to change your mind. Feminism requires women to be fanatically certain about theory, while being perpetually confused about reality. Everything is whatever they say it is. Feelings triumph over facts. So if some women say they “don’t exactly feel like a woman,” a gynecological examination — proving that they have the biological equipment — cannot refute their feeling.

And if you are such an intolerable smart-ass as to point out that this emphasis on subjective feeling is typically feminine . . .

OK, I denounce myself.

 

 

Category: Celebrities, Culture, Feminism, Gays

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.02.14

Posted on | May 2, 2014 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Broadcaster Under Fire For Airing Edited Interview With Narendra Modi

BJP candidate Narendra Modi

BJP takes revenge by releasing unedited copy of interview


NAACP’s LA Chapter President Resigns Amid Sterling Flap
Chapter had honored Clippers owner previously, planned to do so again

Pro-Russian Mob Clashes With Police In Donetsk
Confrontation in prosecutor’s compound ends in violence; 26 injured



POLITICS
Big Jump In Military Sexual Assault Reports

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel

Outrage or sign of progress?


Phoenix VA Officials Put On Leave Over Patient Wait List

Florida Senate Approves In-State Tuition For Illegals

Chris Stewart (R-UT) Wants To Cut Funding For Federal Paramilitary Units After Bundy Dispute

Internal Memos Show EPA Worked Behind Scenes To Kill Alaskan Mine

Retired General Criticizes Lack Of Military Response To Benghazi

Officials Struggling To Fix State Obamacare Exchanges

Reid In A Bind Over Bipartisan Calls For Keystone Vote



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Oil Down Slightly On Increased Supply Ahead Of US Jobs Data: NYMEX $99.47, Brent $107.77
US Stocks Slip Ahead Of Jobs Data
Weekly Jobless Claims Jump To 344K Ahead Of Jobs Report
Yellen’s Fed Resigned To Diminished Growth Expectations
Consumer Spending “Surges” 0.9% In March
Box, Zendesk Among IPOs Stuck Watching The Market
Microsoft Releases Fix For Internet Explorer
Foursquare App Split Strengthens Challenge To Yelp
Google Deals Made Phones More Expensive, Lawsuit Claims
BASIC Celebrates 50th Birthday
NYC To Reinvent The Pay Phone



SPORTS
OKC’s Durant Brings It, Scores 36 To Force Game Seven Against Memphis

“Mr. Unreliable”? Apparently not

“I’m not going to give [the Daily Oklahoman] credit for nothing.”

Subban Lifts Habs Past Bruins In Double OT

West, Pacers Rally Late To Force Game 7

Blue Jackets Aiming Higher After Playoff Season

Royals Fall To Jays 7-3

Sterling Could Use Divorce To Avoid Clippers Sale

Cano, Elias Lead M’s Past Yankees

Sharks Hit New Low In Collapse Against Kings

Dodgers Outlast Twins In Extras To Sweep Doubleheader

O’s Sweep Pirates In Doubleheader At Camden Yards

Marlins Hang On To Sweep Braves

Rays Sweep Doubleheader From Red Sox

Bryce Harper Has Thumb Surgery, Out Indefinitely



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Why Elizabeth Olsen Is Hollywood’s New Sweetheart

Coming soon to the latest Godzilla remake

From cult hits to blockbuster glitz, the twins’ little sister is turning heads

Jason Priestley Dishes On Tori Spelling, Brad Pitt In New Memoir

Samuel L. Jackson Angers Porn Stars


Columbia Records Drops Naya Rivera

Miley Cyrus Delays Europe Tour Due To Illness (Again)

Josh Hartnett Opens Up About His Hiatus From Hollywood

Floyd Mayweather Broke Up With Fiance After She Got An Abortion

Mike Fisher: I Stay Out Of Carrie’s Way When She’s Focused On Work

Demi Lovato Discusses Her Bipolar Disorder: “It’s A Daily Thing”



FOREIGNERS
Boston College Again Immersed In Ireland’s Troubles
Car Bomb In Nigeria’s Capital Kills 15
Kerry Calls For Regional Force To End Bloodshed In South Sudan
Ukraine Reinstates Conscription As Situation In Donets Basin Deteriorates
Illegal Gold Mine Collapses In Colombia; 3 Dead, 15 Missing
Russia Revives May Day Tradition
Norks Replace Top Army Official Amidst Nuke Warnings
Riot Police Clash With Defiant May Day Protesters In Istanbul



BLOGS & STUFF
Doug Powers: Benghazi Amnesia – Would The IRS Accept “Dude, That Was Two Years Ago” As A Response During A Tax Audit?
Twitchy: “LIAR” – This Is Why Jay Carney Was Trending On Twitter
Captain Capitalism: Why Dennis Prager Is Dangerous To Young Conservatives
Max Boot: The Iraqi Military’s Downward Spiral
American Power: Victims Of Communism Day
American Thinker: Roe And Gay Marriage
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Joining The New Elite – A How-to Guide (Part 3)
Conservatives4Palin: Sen. Patty Murray – We’re Flat Broke, So Let’s Add Another Massive Entitlement Program
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, May 1
Jammie Wearing Fools: Actual Media/Obama Spin – Only Obamacare Saved Moribund Economy From Contracting
Joe For America: Government Web Bots To Scour Internet For Hate Speech
JustOneMinute: Not A Coverup, A Strategy
Pat Dollard: Terry McAuliffe Tells Harry Reid To STFU About “Washington Redskins”
Protein Wisdom: Now That We Know The Benghazi Coverup Was Planned…
Shot In The Dark: Take It Off My “Personal Time”
The Jawa Report: DC “Congresswoman” Declares Invasion Of Iraq “Most Catastrophic War Of 20th Century”
The Lonely Conservative: Who Will The Thought Police Come After Next?
This Ain’t Hell: DIA Chief Forced Out
Megan McArdle: Watch Obamacare Make Health Costs Soar


I’m positive that we have plenty of material for Rule 5 Sunday left over from last week, but if you have linkagery from this week’s post, the deadline to submit them is noon tomorrow.
DO IT.


Category: Live at Five

Tommy Vietor: Van Driver, NSC Spokesman, Hipster At Large

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 38 Comments

by Smitty

Listen, Tommy, you smarmy little creep.

His first job for Obama was as the driver of a press van, and he rose up the ranks through the 2008 campaign, and then the White House press office, to become the National Security Council spokesman.

You went to some little liberal arts school in Ohio, where you may or may not have been introduced to a few key points before getting hired by #OccupyResoluteDesk:

  1. You do not leave men to die in combat.
  2. If you, or your pathetic boss, is such a worm as to fail to grasp Rule 1, you need to come clean immediately and beg forgiveness from your betters, whose sacrifices over the years keep craven worms in nice suits and ties.
  3. Your best bet is to find a nice liberal think tank to swim in once the rodeo clown is out of office. With good fortune, I’ll avoid ever encountering you in person and sharing unfiltered views with you.


via HotAir

Update: linked by the excellent Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club

Category: Uncategorized

Wombs for Rent, Babies for Sale: TV Promotes Gay Surrogate Business

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 66 Comments

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow is CEO of the British Surrogacy Centre, a business that specializes in hiring surrogate mothers for gay men:

Barrie and his partner were the first same sex couple in the UK to use a surrogate mother and to be recognised on the birth certificate of those children, as parent 1 and parent 2. Over the past 14 years Barrie has been involved in many media shows to highlight surrogacy and same sex parenting . . .

Now Britain’s Sky TV is promoting this lucrative trade in human flesh:

Britain’s first gay parents are appearing in their own TV show, recording the path to surrogacy.
The Parent Makers, which is set to air on Sky this month, follows the lives of Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow, who run the British Surrogacy Centre, in Chandlers Quay, Maldon.
The 10-episode series will feature footage of their lives at home, at work, wedding preparations and how they deal with their five children, Saffron, Aspen, Orlando, Jasper and Dallas.
Barrie, 43, said TV bosses are so impressed with the first series that they have already given the go-ahead for a second, which will begin filming in July.

How wonderful — free advertising for your baby-selling business!

And, of course, what could possibly go wrong?

Two Gay Men Used Russian Surrogate
Mother to Create Boy for Sex Abuse Ring

Peter Truong and Mark Newton with their 5-year-old sex toy, 2010

Perhaps you’ve forgotten that story from last July:

Police Vow to Pursue Pedophile
Ring ‘To the Ends of the Earth’
Authorities in Australia say they intend to apprehend and prosecute every member of an international child pornography ring that exploited a boy who was molested from infancy by two men who reportedly created him with a Russian surrogate mother. “With this network, rest assured that we will pursue them to the ends of the Earth to make sure each and every one of them faces justice for what their role has been in crimes against this child,” Queensland Police Officer Jon Rouse told the Australian Broadcasting Company.
Officer Rouse is a member of Task Force Argos, the special unit that investigated the case of two Australian men who sexually molested a boy for six years, providing video of their crimes — and even paid sexual encounters with the boy — to an “international syndicate” of pedophiles called the Boy Lovers Network.
Mark Newton, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison last week by U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker. Authorities say Newton and his partner, Peter Truong, 36, paid a Russian woman $8,000 to give birth to a boy they said was conceived using artificial insemination with Newton’s sperm. The men began sexually abusing the boy before he was two weeks old, recording the acts on video they shared online with other pedophiles.
“What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?” Judge Barker said Friday in giving the maximum sentence to Newton, an American who had become an Australian citizen. Prosecutors said the case was tried in Judge Barker’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana because images of the boy were found on the computer of an Indiana man who was arrested as part of a larger child-pornography investigation.
Records in the case had previously been sealed, the Indianapolis Star reported. Newton and Truong made the boy available for molestation by other men in France, Germany and the United States, according to prosecutors. “For more than one year and across three continents, these men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen,” said U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett.
Two U.S. men, John R. Powell, 41, of Florida; and Jason Bettuo, 36, of Illinois, also face federal charges in connection with the case. Police say they believe Newton and Truong created the boy “for the sole purpose of exploitation,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald . . .
Prosecutors said videos showed the boy “performing sex acts on Newton with a disturbing level of sophistication” when the boy was not yet 2 years old. At least eight different men had sex with the boy, investigators believe. ”The purchase of the child for the explicit and sole purpose of exploiting him across a network of men is incredibly depraved and very sad tale for that little boy,” Officer Rouse said.

So, nothing at all to worry about: Just a TV network promoting a business that rents out wombs to supply gay men with babies.

Barrie Drewitt Barlow is @Gaydads on Twitter. The Sky TV show has its own Twitter account, @TheParentMakers.

(Hat-tip: @gaysabovethelaw on Twitter.)

 

Category: Gays, Great Britain

Majoring in Minimum Wage

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 28 Comments

You may not remember “Hard Times for Gender Studies Major,” a post last August featuring the lament of @Andria_XX, who had an “Honors BA in Social Justice and Peace Studies” and was pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies:

“I have a honors BA and I’m defending my MA thesis in two weeks. I am also apply[ing] for jobs and I can only find stuff in the service industry. I applied for a Hotel Front Desk Clerk job today. My degrees mean NOTHING. I am at the end of my rope.”

That was absolutely one of the most popular posts in the six-year history of the blog. Her advanced degrees in trendy “studies” are worthless? Gosh, maybe she should have asked somebody. That came to mind when I saw this post today at Money Runner:

The Wall Street Journal has an article bemoaning the well educated barista economy. Of course they don’t put it quite that way in their article, the subhead if which is: A new study offers an unsettling explanation of why young adults have been hit so hard.
But in the spirit of those who hailed the benefits of losing your job. Not only can you get a chance to do your own thing, but according to Nancy Pelosi, those unemployment benefits you get create more jobs.  And if you lost your job becaue of ObamaCare, it’s really not a loss, but an “escape.”
With that view in mind, I want to explain why college educated baristas are a net plus for the American people.
Let’s face it, modern college graduates have just left the greatest brainwashing system since the Communists invented the “re-education centers” to set their enemies right. Do you really want those budding neo-Marxists to get on the first rung of the ladder of success?

Indeed. Let them be oppressed among the toiling masses. Let them live in squalor, eating Ramen noodles and trying to figure out how they’re going to pay the electric bill and the rent and their student loans. Let them go bankrupt and suffer nervous breakdowns and, when they get out of the looney bin, let them stand beside the highway intersection holding up crudely lettered cardboard signs:

GENDER STUDIES MAJOR
Will Criticize Patriarchy for Food!

Because, hey, who says the free market isn’t efficient?

 

Category: Economics, Education

Arkansas School Suspends Teacher for Gay-Rights Activism … No, Wait …

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 53 Comments

One can easily imagine the outrage of progressives if a gay teacher were subjected to disciplinary action for his political beliefs, but that’s not what happened in Star City, Arkansas:

Star City School District teacher Philip Holthoff has been suspended with pay and under investigation by the district Friday after he allegedly made racist comments on a white supremacist website.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization which identifies hate groups, says they’ve been keeping their eye on the website called “Stormfront” whose slogan is “white pride world-wide.” The SPLC says they identified Star City teacher Philip Holthoff as posting racist comments on the site under a pseudonym, “David Lee Saxon.”
“I teach social studies in a public high school and I am racially conscious,” wrote poster David Lee Saxon.
The SPLC says they were able to identify Holthoff’s connection to the website by a donation.
“Mr. Holthoff gave money on April 20th to the site so we were taking a closer look at him and that’s how he came up as a donor on Stormfront,” said Heidi Beirich of the SPLC.
Beirich says she reached out to Holthoff before publishing his alleged connection to Stormfront.
“He was using a pseudonym online, David Lee Saxon, but by looking at all of the posts by Saxon, it’s very easy to figure out that this is Philip Holthoff, which he confirmed in a conversation to me,” Beirich said.

This story came to my attention via a Twitter debate between Aaron Walker and another user which, I am told, focused on the question of whether First Amendment protections apply without regard to the content of offensive speech. One might also see in this story an issue of whether anyone has a right to be employed by public schools. The whole matter of “employment rights” — which the labor movement has propagandized to the point that few ever question it — is problematic to me from a libertarian perspective:  In a free economy, employment is arranged by mutual voluntary consent; if an employee is free to choose his employer, and to quit a job whenever he wants, then by similar principle, the employer should be able to hire, fire or promote anyone, for any reason, without being subject to tort complaints.

By my lights, then, whether or not Star City schools discipline Philip Holthoff — up to and including termination from his job — is not a matter of Holthoff’s “rights” in any sense. Assuming that the school board members are accountable to the voters who elected them, they are acting entirely within their prerogative whatever they do. It is only the bogus entitlement mentality of “employment rights” that could possibly make anyone think otherwise.

Therefore, it doesn’t make any difference whether Holthoff was posting on Stormfront or on an NAACP website, or for that matter, if he was marching in the Little Rock Gay Pride parade. The content of whatever it was that may have offended his employer is irrelevant, from a libertarian perspective. However . . .

How did the SPLC get donor information at Stormfront?

Here at Hatewatch, we’re taking a deeper look at the donors who keep the largest hate site on the Internet — Stormfront — up and running. Taking in more than $100,000 a year in contributions, Stormfront is one of the best-funded hate sites in the world.
Although the site has hundreds of “Sustaining Members” that pledge $50 a year, a detailed financial study by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that usually less than a dozen donors provide more than half of the income Stormfront takes in each month.
In fact, only a handful of high value contributors cover most of the costs involved in keeping Don Black, owner of Stormfront, and his vision of “White Pride Worldwide” online.
This month, Philip Holthoff, an odd and intensely racist Arkansas high school social studies teacher was among them, pledging $100 on April 20th. . . .

How does SPLC know how much money Stormfront collects and from whom? Given what we know about how IRS employees leaked information on donors who supported California’s Prop 8, shouldn’t we be suspicious about this kind of scrutiny of donors? Such a suspicion is not about the content of one neo-Nazi site, but rather about the means by which this kind of investigation is carried out.

Meanwhile, do parents know who is teaching their kids in public school?

The SPLC’s files suggest that Holthoff, 53, has been an active neo-Nazi for most of his adult life. Records show he joined the neo-Nazi National Alliance in May 1980 at the age of 19, where he was given membership number A3148. Records also show Holthoff joined National Vanguard in May 2005 as member #V0547, and he is listed as a “lifetime” member of White Revolution.
In a 2007 Stormfront post, Holthoff outlined his pedigree in the racist movement. “I was a loyal NA [National Alliance] member for years, went to two national leadership conferences and once stayed a week in WV [West Virginia] with a friend who was employed on staff under WLP [now deceased leader of the National Alliance William Pierce],” he wrote on Stormfront. “After the death of WLP the infighting and rumors and excessive secrecy disgusted me and I left and joined NV [National Vanguard]. I was at the second [David] Duke leadership conference and had so much hope. I suspect most of those present were NV members.”
Expressing common movement fantasies about rounding up “race traitors” after the revolution, Holthoff wrote earlier this year that he hopes a “top secret group” of white supremacists will form to “bring to justice“ those “traitors” who promote interracial activities like the Super Bowl.

What? The Super Bowl is about “race traitors”? And nobody told me?

As shocking as it is to learn that a guy who has been a neo-Nazi since he was a teenager would be working as a public school teacher — even in rural Arkansas — what about teachers who are associated with other controversial political organizations? For all you know, your kid’s science teacher may be an environmentalist who supports the eco-terrorist Earth Liberation Front. Maybe your local school teachers are supporting Planned Parenthood, or GLSEN, or the pro-abortion lesbian youth organization known as the Girl Scouts.

Heck, some of them may even be Democrats.

We must investigate these dangerous extremists in our public schools!

 

Category: Education, Racism
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