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.

The Giant Biting Pear of Salamanca, originally by Ursula Vernon

Math Teacher Goes Berserk
First Street Journal
357 Magnum
EBL

The Romance of Radicalism
357 Magnum
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Who Made Who
A View From The Beach
EBL

Rule 5 Monday: The Komi Girls
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
EBL
Flappr

NAACP: ‘Stay Out of Florida, Negroes’
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL
Flappr

In The Mailbox: 05.23.23 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

The Deadly Menace of Feral Youth
The DaleyGator
357 Magnum
EBL
Flappr

In The Mailbox: 05.24.23 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum
EBL

Aspiring Rapper Update
The DaleyGator
EBL

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: FMJRA Award

CNN Warns of Weather ‘Misinformation’

Posted on | May 28, 2023 | Comments Off on CNN Warns of Weather ‘Misinformation’

When did the concern about “misinformation” arise? Why and how did the news media become obsessed with this paranoid fear — once mocked in a popular cartoon — that “someone is wrong on the Internet”?

We can leave aside the etiology of the “misinformation” obsession (as I’m contemplating this as the subject of a future American Spectator column) and instead ponder its teleology — where is this leading? What is the ultimate goal of the self-appointed “experts” vigilantly monitoring Twitter and Facebook in their tireless effort to prevent the spread of “misinformation”? Obviously, complete censorship is their objective. The “experts” crave the authority to be able to suppress anything they dislike or disagree with, and they seek not only the cooperation of Big Tech in this project, but also desire to use governmental power to advance their censorship agenda. In order to do this, it is necessary for them to exaggerate the dangers of “misinformation,” so that CNN would have you believe that TV meteorologists are at risk:

“Murderers.” “Criminals.” “We are watching you.”
These are just a handful of the threats and abuse sent to meteorologists at AEMET, Spain’s national weather agency, in recent months. They come via social media, its website, letters, phone calls – even in the form of graffiti sprayed across one of its buildings.
Abuse and harassment “have always happened” against the agency’s scientists, Estrella Gutiérrez-Marco, spokesperson for AEMET, told CNN.
But there has been a rapid rise recently, coinciding with extreme weather in Spain. A severe drought has shrunk water levels to alarming lows, exacerbated by record-breaking April temperatures.
The abuse got so bad that in April, AEMET posted a video on Twitter calling for an end to the harassment, and asking for respect. Even the government intervened. Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition, posted on Twitter in support of the agency: “Lying, giving wings to conspiracy and fear, insulting … It is time to say enough.”
The harassment of meteorologists by conspiracy theorists and climate deniers is not a phenomenon confined to Spain.
National weather services, meteorologists and climate communicators in countries from the US to Australia say they’re experiencing an increase in threats and abuse, often around accusations they are overstating, lying about or even controlling the weather.
In Spain’s case, much of the trolling revolves around the rehashing of an old conspiracy theory: so-called “chemtrails.”
Under many of the agency’s Twitter posts, especially those that refer to more extreme weather, users have posted images of blue skies, crisscrossed with wispy, white trails. They falsely claim the trails contain a cocktail of chemicals to artificially manipulate the weather – keeping rain away and causing climate change.
It’s a theory roundly rejected by scientists.
Airplanes do release vapor trails called contrails, short for condensation trails, which form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals around the small particles emitted by jet engines.
But scientists have been clear: There is no evidence “chemtrails” exist. . . .

Notice the conflation of “conspiracy theorists and climate deniers” — if you are skeptical about the dire global-warming predictions (produced by computer models that have proven less than reliable), then you are in the same category as kooks who promote paranoid ideas about “chemtrails” and, it is implied, are sympathetic to weirdos who make death threats against TV meteorologists. And what is causing this terrible harassment? “Misinformation”!

In France, meteorologists have been accused of exaggerating the country’s drought and heat.
Météo France, the French national meteorological service, said the agency’s communications are “the object of more and more repeated attacks,” a Météo France spokesman told CNN.
Climate misinformation on social media is particularly widespread, he said. It “seems to be on the rise, both in terms of the number of attacks directed against scientific publications but also the increasingly aggressive tone of the insults.”

So, CNN wishes us to believe, the spread of “climate misinformation on social media” is responsible for “repeated attacks.” And notice how CNN then connects this to other “misinformation” trends:

US meteorologists and climate communicators have not escaped the barrage of abuse and conspiracies.
“Whenever I posted about global topics, like the yearly temperature report, the comments section would be filled with political jabs and conspiracy theories,” said Elisa Raffa, a broadcast meteorologist with Queen City News, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
As a woman in the media, she more often receives comments about her appearance than the science she’s communicating, she told CNN.
Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, said she’s seen a ramp up of abuse lately.
“I receive almost daily verbal declarations of my ignorance and climate alarmism,” she told CNN.
Some disinformation experts draw a straight line from the conspiracies that flourished during the Covid pandemic — when experts faced a slew of abuse — to the uptick in climate conspiracies.

Whoa, wait just a doggone minute there! What “conspiracies” around COVID-19 are we talking about here? Like the fact that basically everything the “experts” told us about the pandemic was wrong? As for the “slew of abuse” that resulted, I personally believe it was a small fraction of what these alleged “experts” deserved, and that Anthony Fauci should be sentenced to life in federal prison. Does that make me a “conspiracy theorist”? And as for Ella Raffa’s complaints about what people say in the comments section, or the “verbal declarations” against Jennifer Francis, my response is two words: “So what?” Being subject to criticism is just part of the job, especially when your job, in the case of Ms. Francis, is promoting “climate alarmism.”

Why do these people expect to be immune to criticism? Doesn’t this have something to do with the fact that they exist inside bubbles of groupthink, where everyone shares the same beliefs and opinions? Don’t they realize that the “consensus” agreement about climate change is an artifact, created by systematic exclusion of skeptics from the institutions responsible for producing The Science™? And a similar exclusionary process exists in institutions of academia and journalism, now run by fanatical “progressives” who would never knowingly hire anyone who might be inclined to vote Republican. Then notice who gets quoted by CNN as an authority on “misinformation”:

As Covid-19 fades from the headlines, climate change has become a strong rallying point. There’s been a big increase in “insults directed at all organizations related to the weather,” he told CNN.
“It’s a logical evolution of the broader trend around pushback on institutions, and the erosion of trust,” said Jennie King, the head of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on disinformation and extremism.
These kinds of conspiracies are usually grounded in the idea that a set of institutions is “using the pretext of climate change, or the pretext of solving public policy issues, to enact some insidious agenda,” she told CNN.
And the weather is an easy way in. Many aspects of climate science can feel very technical or abstract, but the weather is something people interact with frequently, said King.
“It’s a much more immediate way to bring a wider audience into that skepticism … planting seeds of doubt against the climate agenda writ large,” she said.

Were I inclined toward speculation, I would be likely to guess that this CNN story originated at the suggestion of Ms. King and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). Really, think about it — how likely is it that a CNN reporter would come up with the idea for this story on her own? And what do we know about the ISD? Take a look at this list of the ISD’s “Partnerships & Funders,” which includes among other contributors, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Omidyar Group, the Open Society Foundations (i.e., George Soros), a host of government ministries from countries including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, and the U.K., as well as the European Commission, the United Nations, and the U.S. State Department and DHS.

No conspiracy theorist could imagine a more perfect assemblage of global elites behind the ISD, and what is the real agenda served by this CNN article using the ISD as its “expert” authority? CENSORSHIP.

This think tank “focused on disinformation and extremism” is trying to promote the belief that critics of the “climate change” consensus must be silenced to prevent “harassment” of meteorologists — with the implied suggestion that such critics are a potential terrorist threat.

And CNN is just reporting the news, see?

Whereas I, on the other hand, am obviously a dangerous extremist who must be suppressed, in order to save the planet or whatever.

Category: CNN, Conspiracy Theories, Global Warming

Sixty Million Dollars Up in Smoke? (Yet Another Aspiring Rapper Update)

Posted on | May 26, 2023 | Comments Off on Sixty Million Dollars Up in Smoke? (Yet Another Aspiring Rapper Update)

Before I explain why this post is illustrated with a photo of actor Stacy Keach, permit me to suggest that readers follow my Instagram page. While I don’t post much there except family photos and pictures of various meals I eat, the fact that I’ve got fewer than 400 followers on Instagram is a little hard on my pride, considering my reputation as a New Media wizard. Now, about that photo . . .

Being a boy named Stacy is difficult, but I could always point to the tough-guy actor whenever I was taunted about having “a girl’s name.” A Shakespearean-trained stage actor, whose father was also a successful actor, Stacy Keach got his first starring film credit playing Doc Holliday with Faye Dunaway as his co-star in Doc (1971). He later became best known as the detective Mike Hammer in three seasons of the eponymous TV series. More recently, Keach has been the narrator of the long-running CNBC series American Greed. But for some of us, the greatest role of Keach’s career was in Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke.

Stacy Keach as Sgt. Stadanko

Those familiar with Cheech & Chong’s album material know that the narcotics officer Sgt. Standanko was first introduced by Sister Mary Elephant as a special guest speaker at Our Lady of 115th Street Catholic School, where the students “do seem rather well-informed” about drugs. As later played by Keach in the 1978 movie Up in Smoke, Sgt. Stadanko begins sampling the illegal substances, with remarkable effects. And this came to mind when I began investigating the career of “Big Rig Baby,” a rapper based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

As you can see, “Big Rig Baby,” a/k/a Patrick Earl Williams, enjoys displaying his sports cars and gold jewelry on his Instagram page which has more than 50,000 followers. Now, I don’t have any sports cars or gold jewelry, but why should I have less than 400 followers on my Instagram page? Don’t readers love me? Am I that much less popular — less talented, less beloved — than “Big Rig Baby”?

Certainly, I’m less likely to be sent to federal prison than “Big Rig Baby” who, it seems, is the Bernie Madoff of aspiring rappers:

SEC Shuts Down WeedGenics
$60 Million Cannabis Offering Fraud
Washington D.C., May 23, 2023 — The Securities and Exchange Commission obtained an emergency order to halt an alleged ongoing offering fraud and Ponzi-like scheme by Integrated National Resources Inc. (INR), which does business as WeedGenics, and its owners, Rolf Max Hirschmann and Patrick Earl Williams, who have raised more than $60 million from investors to expand their cannabis operations, but have instead used the majority of funds to make $16.2 million in Ponzi-like payments and to enrich themselves.
According to the complaint, since at least June 2019, Hirschmann and Williams have promised investors they would use raised funds to expand WeedGenics facilities, which they guaranteed would produce up to 36 percent returns, but in reality Hirschmann and Williams never owned or operated any facilities — it was all a sham. The complaint alleges that when Hirschmann and Williams received investors’ funds, they transferred the money through multiple accounts to enrich others and for personal use such as entertainment, jewelry, luxury cars, and residential real estate. The complaint further alleges that in an attempt to avoid detection, Hirschmann, acting as the face of the company, used the fake name Max Bergmann the entire time he communicated with investors, while Williams, as Vice President of the company, worked behind the scenes while spending investor funds on his more public career as a rap musician known as “BigRigBaby.”
“Rolf Hirschmann and Patrick Williams allegedly had no real company, no product, and no business, yet despite this, they promised investors everything and then delivered nothing,” said Michele Wein Layne, Director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office. “This action demonstrates that, despite the defendants’ extensive efforts to avoid detection, the SEC has the ability to uncover fraud to protect investors.”
The court granted the SEC emergency relief against INR, Hirschmann, Williams, and several relief defendants, including a temporary restraining order, an order freezing their assets, and appointment of a temporary receiver over INR and the entity relief defendants. A hearing is scheduled for June 2, 2023 to consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction and appoint a permanent receiver.
The SEC’s complaint charges the defendants with violating the antifraud provisions of the securities laws and seeks permanent injunctions, conduct-based injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, and officer and director bars. The SEC also seeks disgorgement with prejudgment interest from the named relief defendants.

Sixty million dollars . . . Up in Smoke?

Sgt. Stadanko could not be reached for comment.

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

Aspiring Rapper Update

Posted on | May 26, 2023 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update

Willie Maxwell, a/k/a ‘Fetty Wap’

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed rapper is king, and the performer known as Fetty Wap certainly was on top of the hierarchy a few years ago, after his first single, “Trap Queen,” rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Let us quote the first verse in its entirety:

I’m like, “hey, what’s up, hello”
Seen yo pretty ass soon as you came in the door
I just wanna chill, got a sack for us to roll
Married to the money, introduced her to my stove
Showed her how to whip it, now she remix it for low
She my trap queen, let her hit the bando
We be counting up, watch how far them bands go
We just set a goal, talking matching lambos
At 56 a gram, 5 a hundred grams though
Man, I swear I love her how she work that damn pole
Hit the strip club, we be letting bands go
Everybody hating, we just call them fans though
In love with the money, I ain’t never letting go

In case you didn’t get it, the references to “stove” and “remix” are about manufacturing drugs at the “trap house” (i.e., a place used to deal narcotics), and the “bands” refer to banded stacks of $100 bills. In other words, this is a song about drug trafficking, boasting about the wealth to be gained as a successful dealer, e.g., with a goal of “matching lambos” — Lamborghini luxury automobiles. Fetty Wap, a high school dropout from Paterson, N.J., was evidently familiar with this deadly and illegal business, and was 23 years old when “Trap Queen” became a hit in mid-2015, eventually accumulating more than 100 million plays on Soundcloud. Now let’s examine Fetty Wap’s personal life, per Wikipedia:

Fetty Wap is the father of six children with five women.

Aydin (born May 2011) with Ariel Reese
Zaviera (born March 2015) with Lezhae Zeona
Khari (born March 2016) with Masika Kalysha
Amani (born April 2016) with Elaynna Parker
Lauren (2017-2021) with Turquoise Miami
Zy (born 2018) with Lezhae Zeona

In early 2018, model Alexis Skyy named Fetty Wap as the father of her daughter Alaiya. In 2019, Fetty Wap publicly stated that he is not Alaiya’s biological father, but is still a father figure to her. In December 2020, Brandon Medford was revealed to be Alaiya’s biological father. Their sex tape [i.e., Fetty and Alexis] was leaked in January 2017.
Fetty Wap appeared on the third season on VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood, which documented his strained relationship with Masika. He also appeared on the ninth season of Love & Hip Hop: New York which documented his strained relationship with Alexis Skyy.
In September 2019, Fetty Wap privately married model Leandra K. Gonzalez. A year later, Fetty Wap officially divorced from Gonzalez.

Fetty Wap Sends Cease And Desist to Alexis Skyy Over Sex Tape Leak (DOCUMENT) https://t.co/tg96bLVJNA

— TMZ (@TMZ) January 10, 2017

So, we have here a performer who got famous by singing about narcotics trafficking, fathered six children with five different women before he turned 30, and who was accused of fathering a child by another woman who co-starred with him in a “sex tape” that went viral in 2017.

Recounting this biographical narrative reminds me of those who, many decades ago, lamented certain mid-20th-century trends that they warned could lead to a coarsening of culture and a lowering of social standards, but why bring up Senator Bilbo at this late date? You didn’t come here for a sociological discussion, but rather to get the latest hiphop news:

Wednesday, May 24, 2023
For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York

Willie Junior Maxwell II,
also known as “Fetty Wap”
Sentenced to 6 Years’ Imprisonment
for Drug Trafficking Conspiracy

Defendant Was a Member of an Organization
that Distributed More than 100 Kilograms
of Cocaine, Heroin, Fentanyl, and Crack Cocaine
Across Long Island and New Jersey

Earlier today, in federal court in Central Islip, United States District Judge Joanna Seybert sentenced William Junior Maxwell II, who is the rap artist known as “Fetty Wap,” to six years’ imprisonment and five years of post-release supervision for conspiracy to distribute cocaine. On March 7, 2023, Judge Seybert sentenced Maxwell’s co-defendant Anthony Cyntje, a New Jersey correction officer, to 72 months’ imprisonment for his role in the drug trafficking conspiracy. Maxwell’s remaining four co-defendants pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI); Raymond A. Tierney, District Attorney for Suffolk County; and Rodney K. Harrison, Commissioner, Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD), announced the sentence.
According to court filings, from approximately June 2019 through June 2020, the defendants distributed more than 100 kilograms of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and crack cocaine across Long Island and New Jersey. The defendants obtained the narcotics on the west coast and used the United States Postal Service and drivers with hidden vehicle compartments to transport the controlled substances across the country to Suffolk County, where they were stored. The drugs were then distributed to dealers, who sold them on Long Island and in New Jersey. Five of the defendants also used firearms to protect their drug organization and distribution chain. Defendants Anthony Leonardi, Robert Leonardi, Brian Sullivan, and Kavaughn Wiggins participated in the purchase and transportation of the narcotics from the west coast to the east coast where they were processed, stored and ultimately resold. Maxwell was a kilogram-level redistributor for the trafficking organization, and Cyntje transported kilograms of cocaine from Long Island to New Jersey.
Search warrants executed during the investigation resulted in the recovery of approximately $1.5 million in cash, 16 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of heroin, numerous fentanyl pills, two 9mm handguns, a rifle, a .45 caliber pistol, a .40 caliber pistol, and ammunition.

Senator Bilbo could not be reached for comment.

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