The Other McCain

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

Bad Arguments in Support of Bad Policy

Posted on | February 20, 2024 | Comments Off on Bad Arguments in Support of Bad Policy

“Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.”
— Homer Simpson

Saturday will mark the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the good news, I suppose, is that Russia didn’t succeed in capturing Kyiv and conquering Ukraine entirely. This must be balanced against the bad news, namely that Russia has succeeded in conquering most of the Donbas region, as well as a substantial part of southern Ukraine. The war has become largely a stalemate, with both sides entrenched and battling for relatively small gains. When the Ukrainians finally pulled out of Avdiivka over the weekend, Reuters noted it was Russia’s “biggest gain in nine months.” Nine months to take one relatively minor crossroads town north of Donetsk — scarcely evidence of Russian military prowess. At the same time, however, Ukraine’s failure to hold the town could be cited as evidence of Ukrainian weakness, but instead it’s being used by the Biden administration as a cudgel to blame Republicans for opposing unlimited aid to Ukraine.

We are expected to believe that Russia would not have taken Avdiivka if Congress had greenlighted whatever spending the Biden administration asked for, so that the GOP is essentially being accused of aiding Putin. This “argument” isn’t actually an argument at all; instead it’s just a retread of the old “Russian collusion” smear. Michael Brendan Dougherty has endeavored to clarify the situation:

Last week the Senate passed a foreign-aid bill including over $60 billion in weapons and munitions to be made in the U.S. and donated to Ukraine. There are obvious questions to raise about this. Given that this is less money for fewer weapons than were sent to power last year’s counteroffensive, how does the U.S. expect this to change the situation on the ground in Ukraine? Can anyone really say the bill increases America’s military-industrial readiness if it further commits America to a conflict that is devouring munitions faster than we can produce them?
Instead of answering these questions, Republican senators who supported the appropriation set about characterizing their opponents and anyone who doubts the utility of more aid to Ukraine as ignoramuses or the victims of demagogues, or implying that they were deficient in love of country.
Senator Mitt Romney blamed manipulation: “The shock jocks and online instigators have effectively riled up many in the far reaches of my party.” Far reaches? But polls have shown for a very long time that a majority of Republican voters oppose more aid to Ukraine. Many more Republican voters oppose this than regularly listen to shock jocks. . . .

Read the whole thing. The attempt to turn this into some sort of patriotic referendum — if you don’t support this bill, you don’t love America, we are told — suggests that there are no strictly factual or logical arguments in favor of the current policy. Why would you need to resort to impugning the motives of opponents, if you had facts and logic on your side? And it’s worth pointing out that many Republican opponents of the Biden policy aren’t anti-Ukraine (or pro-Russian), but are simply trying to leverage this as part of a deal to get some kind of action toward securing our own borders. Because, believe it or not, there are actually some Republicans in Congress who are listening to what their constituents are saying: “Why should we keep spending billions to defend Ukraine against foreign invasion, if we’re not going to defend America against foreign invasion?”

Furthermore — and here I want to avoid getting too far into the tall grass of military/geopolitical details — the biggest problem that Ukraine is facing cannot be solved by pouring in more U.S. taxpayer dollars. Ukraine’s biggest problem in its war against Russia is a shortage of military manpower. Last spring (“Pentagon Leak Confirms Ukraine Suffering Shortage of Trained Manpower,” April 12) I tried to call attention to this problem, which had started becoming apparent to me in late 2022. Even if we could give Ukraine all the weapons they need, the manpower shortage would still make it difficult, if not impossible, for them to mount an effective counter-offensive against Russia.

Merely throwing money at Ukraine’s problems won’t fix the problems. One consequence of the Russian invasion has been the discovery that the United States and its allies lack the capacity to manufacture enough artillery ammunition and other supplies in sufficient quantities quickly enough to meet an emergency demand. It doesn’t matter how many billions of dollars Congress votes to spend, we’re still not going to be able to put enough equipment into Ukraine to make complete victory over Russia a reality this year, or next year, or the year after that.

Looking on the bright side, Russia’s military resources have been severely degraded by the long war in Ukraine, so that it’s not like Russian tanks will be rolling into Kyiv any time soon. But in terms of ejecting the Russian army from the Donbas, that’s just not a feasible near-term goal, and Biden’s policy can’t change that reality. Do the Republicans in the Senate who want to write a blank check to Ukraine understand this? I haven’t seen any evidence that they do, but at the same time, my cynical hunch is that many of them are just eager to do whatever the lobbyists for defense contractors want. And while I’m not against fat contracts for Lockheed, Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc. — the Military-Industrial Complex provides a lot of good-paying jobs for U.S. workers — that doesn’t overcome my aversion to hearing people make dishonest arguments in favor of bad policy. Tell the people the truth, stop smearing your critics as traitors, and try to win arguments on the basis of facts.



 

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Category: Ukraine

‘News’ in the Post-Literate Age

Posted on | February 19, 2024 | Comments Off on ‘News’ in the Post-Literate Age

Sitting here with my office TV tuned to CNN — I watch CNN, so you don’t have to — I’m struck by the arrogance of their assumption that they get to decide what is and is not newsworthy, as if their audience had no other source of information about what’s going on in the world, and no desire to know anything else except what CNN is “reporting.” They have spent most of today going on and on about the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, as well as the war in Ukraine, and they seem to imagine that no one sees through this wall-to-wall coverage in terms of its motive, i.e., to revive the “Russian collusion” hoax against Trump, and to attempt to blame Republicans in Congress for the failure of Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion. It’s about a political narrative, you see, and every other thing in the world — including events much closer to home, of far more relevance to the day-to-day lives of Americans — must be suppressed in order to focus attention on their propaganda message.

It’s exasperating to watch this, which probably has a lot to do with why CNN is permanently stuck in third place in the cable news ratings. There may be people for whom CNN is “must-see TV” — State Department bureaucrats, perhaps? — but certainly it’s not a mass-market product.

Part of what’s gone wrong with the news business is that, over the course of recent decades, the decline in our education system has produced a generation — most people under 40 — who can best be described as post-literate. Whether or not they have the ability to read, they simply do not read. They are not consumers of the written word, in the way that educated adults used to be. They do not read articles. They may click headlines, but as far as actually reading anything, they can’t be bothered. Give them a TikTok video or maybe an Instagram meme, but the written word has no appeal to them. Generally, such people lack curiosity. They don’t have the kind of “need to know” that would inspire them to consult multiple sources in search of the story that they’re not getting from mainstream media. This is how people become susceptible to paranoid conspiracy theories and weird cults — if you do not have a sufficient storehouse of facts committed to memory, you are apt to believe whatever you’re told, if the person telling the story is charismatic and possessed of a gift for narrative, and telling you something that flatters your sensibilities. One of the things about the written word is that it has a permanence that the spoken word lacks; you can learn more by reading than by listening, and having the written text available allows you to double-check your memory of what you’ve learned.

Some 40 years ago, Neil Postman brilliantly described the problems of the TV-saturated culture in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, and now we are seeing these problems destroying the news industry, as such. Headline in The New Yorker: “Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?”

Part of what’s put the scare into the journalism cabal is the specter of artificial intelligence software replacing them. To this threat, the inimitable Ace of Spades blithely responds:

I know one thing: AI might be able to quickly rewrite boring AP headlines but they’ll never be able to crank out gems like:

Cash App Cougar Fani Willis:
Yes, I Paid Taxpayer Funds to Hire
a Human Meat-Mallet to Pound My Snizz
Into Thin Tender Strips Like Veal Scallopini

You can’t argue with that. As in any competitive business environment, the key is to find your “value-added” advantage, and while Ace clearly has found his advantage, what about all these like-minded liberals with degrees from pricey private colleges who are all trying to reach the same niche market of people like themselves? None of them would ever think of calling Fani Willis a “cash app cougar” or otherwise mocking any Democrat, no matter how much mockery they might deserve. Most members of the vast herd of liberal journalists are disposable — without any inherent value — simply because all of them are “reporting” from the same point of view. So when we hear of the latest round of media layoffs, we shrug in indifference. Nothing of value has been lost.

If somebody pulled the plug on CNN, would anyone notice? Would their audience — smaller than the audience for Paw Patrol cartoons on Nickelodeon — be saddened by the loss of CNN? If so, why? What is the raison d’être of CNN? What do they provide their audience that these TV viewers can’t get anywhere else? Unlike Ace of Spades, who is truly unique, the clowns on CNN are more or less interchangeable, all of them with basically the same liberal worldview, and thus indistinguishable from 95% of all the other Democrat Party hacks in the media racket.

Somewhere, of course, State Department bureaucrats are watching CNN’s Alexei Navalny coverage and thinking to themselves: “Yes! Our message is getting out!” But there are more people watching Paw Patrol.

Adjust your expectations to reality. Good night.



 

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Category: Journalism

Our Obtuse Media and ‘Gun Violence’

Posted on | February 19, 2024 | Comments Off on Our Obtuse Media and ‘Gun Violence’

Obtuse
2 a: lacking sharpness or quickness of sensibility or intellect: INSENSITIVE, STUPID
He is too obtuse to take a hint.
b: difficult to comprehend: not clear or precise in thought or expression

How can it be that so many things which are obvious to any reasonably intelligent and well-informed person are seemingly beyond the comprehension of most journalists? That question occurred to me when I saw this headline from NPR:

Kansas City shooting raises questions
about how kids are getting a hold of guns

How obtuse can one possibly be? The use of the word “kids” in this headline is misleading, and perhaps deliberately so. True, two minors have been charged in the Kansas City shooting — teenagers, whose ages have not been publicly announced by authorities who have charged them with illegally carrying firearms and resisting arrest. But these suspects aren’t really “kids,” as most people would use that terms. They’re criminals, most likely gang members, of a type rather common in urban America. There were many actual kids — that is to say, children — at the Super Bowl victory parade who weren’t carrying pistols, unlike the teenage gang-bangers who shot wildly into the crowd in downtown Kansas City. To conflate innocent “kids” with these juvenile members of the criminal underclass is to obscure the basic categorical issues involved.

Kansas City Shooting, Teens Seen
on Camera Arguing Before Shots Fired

It’s what they call a “beef.” Young black males swaggering around with pistols, ready and willing to shoot anybody who “disses” them, so that every argument is at risk of suddenly turning into a shootout.

There is a very specific pattern of behavior involved here, and certainly this pattern does not implicate all “kids” as being equally at risk. As I said last week (“Kansas City Fans Celebrate Super Bowl Victory With Parade and Mass Shooting”), this behavioral pattern is familiar to anyone who pays attention to crime news:

[M]y hunch was this was some kind of beef between teenage gangbangers, likely committed with stolen pistols featuring extended magazines and a “Glock switch” for automatic fire: “Pray and spray” mode, which explains the high ratio of wounded victims to fatalities. Your teenage gangbanger doesn’t spend any time at the target range, OK? He doesn’t aim his weapon, he just points it in the general direction of whoever he’s beefing with.;

THESE “KIDS” ARE STEALING FIREARMS! Excuse me for using boldface caps-lock mode, but the folks at NPR don’t seem to be paying attention, and are thus misleading their audience about what’s really going on in urban American culture. There is a reason, after all, that burglaries have become so commonplace in many communities. These “kids” know that a lot of people keep their guns in their vehicles, so they do smash-and-grab vehicle burglaries with the idea that, among the other valuables to be thus obtained, a firearm might be part of the haul. Stolen guns are the preferred weapon of the gangsters who deal drugs, because these weapons cannot easily be traced back to them and, as basic economics suggests, the demand calls into existence a supply.

This is what Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd is getting at when he mocks those who speak of “low-level non-violent crime” in reference to drug dealing and property crimes — there is a connection between these different types of crimes. If you start showing leniency toward drug offenders, burglars and thieves, you will sooner or later experience a rise in violent crime. There are patterns in human behavior, and veteran law enforcement officers like Sheriff Judd see this every day.

As for me, I’m just a guy with a blog, but I could easily link a hundred headlines about shootings like this one in Kansas City that started with a “beef” between young black males. Such shootings happen more or less routinely at shopping malls, on public transportation, in parks, at birthday parties, at funerals, etc. All you have to do is pay attention to the news, and the pattern is easily apparent. Why is it, then, that the professional journalists at NPR are so obtuse about this subject?



 

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Category: Crime

Shannon Cortez Gooden: Burnsville Gunman the News Media Won’t Name UPDATE: Local Media Breaks Embargo

Posted on | February 19, 2024 | Comments Off on Shannon Cortez Gooden: Burnsville Gunman the News Media Won’t Name UPDATE: Local Media Breaks Embargo

Sunday evening, I was riding in the car with my brother Kirby, scrolling through the news on my phone, puzzled that police in Minnesota had not yet named the gunman who killed two cops and a paramedic in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville. The gunman also died during the incident, so that identifying him could not possibly interfere with the investigation. Nor was there any reason for the news media to refrain from naming the gunman, because dead men don’t file libel lawsuits. When we got back to the house, it didn’t take too much work to find that the gunman had already been identified by Alpha News.

That was 9:34 p.m. Sunday, about 18 hours after the shooting in Burnsville. A bit more digging enabled me to confirm that Shannon Gooden lived in the same black of 33rd Avenue where the Burnsville shooting happened, and there are also online records of Gooden’s previous court cases related to a child custody dispute. According to one online account (which I can’t confirm), Gooden’s wife caught him having sex with his 14-year-old stepdaughter, which was the reason police had been dispatched to the residence. But whatever the facts of the case may be, police have acknowledged that the perpetrator of the shooting is dead, and yet won’t name him publicly — and the mainstream news media appears perfectly willing to go along with this.

The motive for such a cover-up is . . . mysterious.

UPDATE: Scott Johnson at Powerline:

The suspect is obviously known to law enforcement. Why hasn’t he been identified? Your guess is as good as mine. The Star Tribune has the bylines of five reporters (count ’em) on its current story, but nothing on the identity of the suspect.

This isn’t mere laziness. It’s journalistic negligence.

UPDATE: Finally! The Saint Paul Pioneer Press reports:

The man who fatally shot two Burnsville police officers and a firefighter was a 38-year-old who pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon from a 2007 case. He petitioned the court in 2020 to have his gun rights restored, which a judge denied.
Shannon Cortez Gooden was found dead in the home, where he was a renter, according to law enforcement sources and other records.
Law enforcement said Sunday that “several guns and large amounts of ammunition” were found in the home, which Burnsville police were dispatched to about 1:50 a.m. Sunday. Someone in the house in the 12600 block of 33rd Avenue South called 911, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said during a Sunday news conference.
When officers arrived, the armed suspect was barricaded inside the home with family members, including seven children between the ages of 2 and 15, Evans said.
After talking with police negotiators for “quite a bit of time,” the suspect opened fire on officers who were inside the home, and multiple officers returned fire, according to Evans. During the shootout, the gunman fired from several locations inside the house, fatally striking Burnsville officers Paul Elmstrand, 27, and Matthew Ruge, also 27, and firefighter/paramedic, Adam Finseth, 40. Sgt. Adam Medlicott was also injured.
Police received a report about 8 a.m. Sunday that the suspect was dead inside the house. A person with knowledge of the matter said the gunman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The suspect will be officially identified by the medical examiner, but law enforcement sources confirmed to the Pioneer Press Monday that he was Gooden. A court filing in a civil matter showed Gooden was served at the 33rd Avenue address in December.
A relative of Gooden’s said the family didn’t want to comment Monday.

So now the news media embargo on the gunman’s identity has been broken, and the story will now disappear from the national headlines.



 

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Category: Crime, Media Bias, Minnesota

Rule 5 Sunday: Snow Bunny

Posted on | February 19, 2024 | Comments Off on Rule 5 Sunday: Snow Bunny

— compiled by Wombat-socho

On time for once. This week’s appetizer downloaded from Pinterest.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Lining Up Another Shot Friday, also, the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Charles Napier & Hot Women, Anti-MAGA Millions, The Underdoggs, Upgraded, “My Funny Valentine”, Mata Hari, Everest, The Execution Of Lady Jane Grey, Jennifer Simonetti Bryan On Wine, and Voltaire

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Apollonia Llewellyn, Fish Pic Friday – Surf Girl Liv, Maryland Seeks To Permanently “Fix” Striper Regs, Bobulinski Testifies, Sunset Over The Empire, Some Wednesday Wetness, MDDNR Finds Excuses for Striper Dearth, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Super Bowl Sunday Sunrise and MD Announces Emergency Striper Regs

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. for February 16th

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP

Posted on | February 19, 2024 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP

— compiled by Wombat-socho

People are arguing on X about Starship Troopers again. Ignore the movie (which is fun but dumb) and read the book instead.
SOTD
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

One more for the road.

FMJRA 2.0: The Giant Wombats of Gor
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Joe Biden’s Punch Line Presidency
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Monday: Coffee, please
Animal Magnetism
Flappr
EBL
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 02.12.24
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.13.24
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

How to Lose a Special Election
Flappr
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.14.24
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Kansas City Fans Celebrate Super Bowl Victory With Parade and Mass Shooting
The Daley Gator
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.15.24
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.16.24
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending February 16:

  1.  (tie) A View From The Beach and EBL (10)
  2.  357 Magnum (9)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

WTF, ‘Eritrean Migrant Factions’?

Posted on | February 18, 2024 | Comments Off on WTF, ‘Eritrean Migrant Factions’?

It is claimed that the president of Eritrea is a brutal dictator, but seeing how these people behave, who can blame him for being brutal?

Riots between rival factions of Eritrean migrants broke out in the Dutch city of The Hague on Saturday evening as police officers were left injured and cars were set on fire outside a conference centre.
The home of the war criminal trying International Criminal Court saw war zone-like scenes brought to its doorstep as supporters of the leftist government of Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki gathered in the Opera Hall Centre in The Hague’s city centre on Saturday evening.
A group of anti-government Eritreans gathered outside of the building in protest, however, it quickly devolved into open riots, with the anti-government faction smashing the windows of the hall and setting it on fire.
Riot police were dispatched to help protect the building from further damage and the pro-government Eritrean group within the conference centre were escorted from the building under police escort, Der Telegraaf reports.

The description of Afwerki as “leftist” might be misleading; like, you’re saying he’s the Justin Trudeau of East Africa or what? By describing him as “leftist,” you’re trying to get me to be against Afwerki, but seeing as how it’s the opponents of the dictator causing the riots, maybe I should be pro-Afwerki. Having searched my conscience for a reason to give a flying fuck about Eritrea, however, I must confess I found nothing. Instead, I’m leaning toward the conclusion that Eritreans are nothing but trouble and we should send them all back to Eritrea.

What are these people doing in Charlotte, North Carolina?

Charlotte police on Saturday made several arrests, deployed pepper spray and closed a major road for an “unlawful protest” that they said blocked a business hosting a cultural festival.
Police in a news release identified the festival on Monroe Road as an “Eritrean cultural event.” The Charlotte Observer’s news partner, WSOC-TV, reported the protest was over international politics, with two groups at the scene: one supporting the government of the east African country of Eritrea, and another saying the country’s president is a brutal dictator.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department posted photos from the scene of officers in riot gear and said its Civil Emergency Unit was met with violence and aggression and that the crowd of 200 set a tractor-trailer on fire.
By the time the scene cleared around 9:30 p.m. Saturday, police said they arrested eight people, including three male participants who face charges of impeding traffic and a female participant who faces charges of impeding traffic, inciting a riot and assault on a government official for hitting an officer. The other arrests were for charges that included impeding traffic and failure to disperse, a news release said.
Police said they seized a firearm from the female protester.

This is America, OK? Your disagreements over the government of Eritrea are of zero interest to us and, in consideration of your being here (and not there) we expect you to behave yourselves. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure a majority of Americans — especially the people in North Carolina whose roads you’re blocking — would be happy to deport all of you Eritreans.



 

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Category: Eritrea, Netherlands, North Carolina

How Trump Derangement Syndrome, #MeToo and Tumblrinas Ruined Disney

Posted on | February 18, 2024 | Comments Off on How Trump Derangement Syndrome, #MeToo and Tumblrinas Ruined Disney

You probably never saw Raya and the Last Dragon, which was not exactly a box-office blockbuster — it barely broke even — and is certainly not destined to be remembered as a classic Disney cartoon.

Nevertheless, Raya and the Last Dragon is historically important because the 2021 film marks the decisive turning point in the downward trajectory of Disney. Ace of Spades on Friday linked and excerpted a lengthy recounting of this history by Alan Ng, editor-in-chief of the website Film Threat. “The D-Files, Part 3: Disney the Killer of Dreams.”

Because Ng’s story is such a long one, and because Ace’s excerpts do not provide the necessary backstory for those who haven’t followed the twists and turns of Disney’s trajectory, I feel obligated to give readers a thumbnail history. Under the leadership of Michael Eisner, Disney in the late 1980s became the most successful studio in Hollywood and, beginning with 1989’s The Little Mermaid — which won two Academy Awards; Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “Under the Sea” — launched a string of animated features that became known as “The Disney Renaissance.” Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995) — Disney could do no wrong. Not only did these cartoon features bring in blockbuster box-office revenues, they also sold lots of VHS and DVD copies (every kid in the 1990s and 2000s grew up watching these videos over and over), to say nothing of the toys, costumes and other merchandising sales. Meanwhile, with funding from Steve Jobs of Apple computers, Pixar Studios began producing feature-length computer-animated movies: Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), etc. The popularity of this new-style animation eclipsed the old ink-and-paint animation style, and by 2006, Disney bought out Pixar.

In 2009, Disney added the Marvel franchise to its portfolio, and in 2012, bought Lucasfilms, bringing the Star Wars franchise into the brand. Bob Iger had succeeded Eisner as head of Disney in 2005, and these acquisitions — Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars — put Iger atop a seemingly indestructible entertainment juggernaut. The hits just kept coming, with the Pirates of the Caribbean series (five films, 2003-2017) adding to the Disney empire’s pile of successes. And then Trump happened.

It is difficult to find words for just how much hatred and craziness were generated in Hollywood by Donald Trump’s 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton. The show-business moguls had gone all-in for Hillary, and were as stunned as anyone when, on the evening of November 8, 2016, Trump won decisively in the Electoral College although (as Democrats never stopped pointing out over the next few years) Clinton had won the popular vote by a 3-million vote margin. Along the way to this result, Hillary had stirred up a frothing cauldron of feminist sentiment, which did not dissipate with her defeat. Instead, there was born the Women’s March movement and, eventually, the #MeToo campaign, launched in the fall of 2017 and initially inspired by widespread accusations of sexual abuse by movie mogue Harvey Weinstein. Very quickly, #MeToo — which must be seen, in retrospect, as a symptomatic side effect of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) — came knocking on the doors at Disney.

In acquiring Pixar Studios in 2006, Disney had regained the services of genius John Lasseter, who had started as an apprentice animator for Disney in 1979 but left in the mid-1980s to pursue computer animation, first with Lucas, and then with Pixar, where he directed their first three smash hits, Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Toy Story II. After Pixar was acquired by Disney, Lasseter was promoted to chief creative officer of Walt Disney Feature Animation, reporting directly to Disney CEO Iger. On November 21, 2017, the bombshell struck: The 60-year-old Lasseter was “taking a leave of absence,” it was reported, after complaints of “unwanted advances” and other similar misconduct.

The “leave of absence” proved permanent, and in June 2018, Lasseter’s exit from Disney was announced. Lasseter was replaced by Pete Docter and Jennifer Lee, the latter largely responsible for the 2013 hit Frozen. But this became more that the mere replacement of an executive, as Alan Ng writes, Disney decided “radical changes needed to be made in the racial and gender makeup of its leadership and creative process. This change began with Raya and the Last Dragon.” After that film began development in 2018, “a major recruitment push was made to hire more women from outside the company to reach a 50/50 male/female balance for equity’s sake.” It should go without saying that these new hires were younger and less experienced than the “old white guys” who got shoved out the door to make way for this “equity” crew and, given that they knew they were only hired for political reasons, the new hires brought with them a militant attitude. This brings us to the most shocking of Alan Ng’s revelations about Disney’s new hiring process:

Instead of hiring formally trained artists from traditional institutions like Cal-Arts, Disney (with the help of Women in Animation) explicitly recruited from social media sites, including Tumblr and Reddit — a fact confirmed by numerous sources. . . .
What mattered was that your social media profile checked the right boxes (i.e., “female” and “not White”). . . .
Another source noted that Tumblr was “UNEQUIVOCALLY” the base for new talent. Women from the social media site were quickly scooped up and placed on Raya and the Last Dragon, along with other animated shows and features. Talent was always an afterthought. It was more important that these women could pad the quotas and become useful foot soldiers for the cause of DEI. Once in, the activists were asked for referrals, and now they were in a position to hire other artists from their “friend squads.” They were now hiring based seemingly on their politics; these “friend squads” quickly created a powerful contingent not just at Disney. . . .
he vast majority of the newly hired Tumblr talent is self-taught. There’s nothing wrong with that as an artistic starting point. Successfully copying your favorite artists is the first indicator that one has minimal talent. The problem is that Tumblr is not art college and will not give you the proper training required to grow. Tumblr-based artists are constantly being affirmed by fellow Tumblr artists…which breeds an unhealthy level of narcissism and bad habits. Constructive criticism is the key to growth, but online criticism of one’s art is always taken personally and inevitably sparks drawn-out struggle sessions of hurt feelings followed by personal attacks. Best to keep your criticisms to yourself if you want to be part of the “friend squad.”
It is well-known in the art community Tumblr has a bad reputation. In fact, “Tumblr cartoons” is a term for awful animation featuring bad design and uninspired storytelling. One source told me, “Tumblr was Ground Zero for this mess we’re in. . . .”

This is madness, and it’s important to understand how this obsession with DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) connects to Trump Derangement Syndrome and the feminist theme of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Hillary’s message was, “It’s her turn” — voters owed her the job, because she’s a woman. Electing Trump instead was a gigantic middle-finger answer to that demand, provoking a feminist rage that fueled the #MeToo movement, took down Lasseter and resulted in Disney hiring a bunch of women artists from Tumblr, effectively creating a No-Males-Allowed climate inside the studio. As Alan Ng writes: “The mission of DEI is not equality…it’s revenge. The final outcome is a complete takeover…a reset…of the entertainment industry as a whole.”



 

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Category: Feminism, History, Movies
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