Rule 5 Monday: Michelle Dockery

Posted on | January 1, 2019 | 2 Comments

I have a lot of friends who all think Terry Pratchett was God’s gift to the fantasy genre, but with a couple of exceptions I just haven’t gotten around to reading his books or watching the various movies & TV shows made from them. Until last night, when I spent a most pleasant three hours watching Hogfather, in which Miss Dockery plays Susan, a governess whose grandfather takes it upon himself to play the part of the title character when that character goes missing. Her grandfather being Death, this makes for an interesting story all in itself, but there’s a lot more to it, and it’s great fun. Here we see Susan with her grandpa when everything’s been wrapped up all tidy and proper, belike.

A family portrait.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny – Hot Pick of the Late Night, Morning Mistress, The 90 Miles Mystery Box #482, and Girls With Guns.

Animal Magnetism – Rule Five Hoofed Rats Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL – Mrs. Santas, It’s A Wonderful Life, Heather Unruh, Don’t Abandon The Kurds Rule 5, Sandra Bullock In Bird Box, Annalise Breaux, Bre Payton RIP, The Greatest Christmas Movie Evah!, Jamie Lee Curtis, and The Poseidon Adventure.

A View From The Beach – There’s Nothing Fishy About Laura Haddock, Friday Morning Fear, It Sure Is, US Huntress Gets UK’s Goat, “What a Night!”, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, ‘Tis the Night Before the Night Before Christmas, and Client 9 Did the Heavy Lifting with the Russian.

Proof Positive – Essie Davis, Vintage Babes, and HP doing Sex In Advertising.

Dustbury – Hande Yener, Alexandria Occasional Cortex, and not just the winner but the runner-up in the Celebrity Legs Gallery annual poll.

Thanks to everyone for their links!
Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Amazon Fashion – Jewelry For Women

Category: Rule 5

Decline and Fall

Posted on | January 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Decline and Fall

Marcus Aurelius.

“I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all. I scribbled all my opinions on the margins of the pages, and very soon found myself a vehement partisan of the author against the disparagements of his pompous-pious editor.”
— Winston Churchill, My Early Life

A six-volume hardbound boxed set of Edward Gibbon’s classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire can be purchased for $68.46 from Amazon, but I don’t suppose many young people appreciate what a tremendous bargain that is. Our youth seem to have no interest in history, and would prefer playing video games to reading books. But I mention Gibbon because I’ve spent the past few weeks with the Decline and Fall as my bedtime reading. I purchased my old three-volume Modern Library edition secondhand about 25 years ago, and am now on my second or third re-reading. Gibbon begins his survey by recounting the condition of the Roman Empire at its peak, from the reign of Nerva (96 A.D.) through that of Marcus Aurelius (180 A.D.) when the empire “comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.” Nothing like this had ever previously existed in human history, an empire that stretched from Scotland in the north to the African desert in the south, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Turkey and Syria in the east, encompassing the entirety of the Black Sea as far east as modern Tbilisi in the republic of Georgia.

What caused the fall of this mighty empire, in a word, was decadence.

Rome’s greatness was rooted in the hardy virtues of the Republic, where the citizen-soldier was expected to serve in the common defense, and where the highest offices were held by men who had distinguished themselves in military as well as civilian life. A sense of hereditary honor was deeply inculcated in Rome’s leadership caste — the patricians — who strove to deserve their patrimony by the performance of civic duty. The patrician spirit of service for the public good inspired respect among the common people of Rome — the plebeians — who saw that they also benefited from increasing power and prosperity of the Republic. The origins of the Empire in the Republic, and the civil wars that made Augustus (Octavian, heir of Julius Caesar) the founder of imperial rule, are a subject of history that preceded by some two centuries the period at which Gibbon begins his tale of how the Empire, which had survived and even expanded despite the misrule of Augustus’s successors, declined toward its division and collapse. And the cause was decadence.

Success is too often in history the predecessor to destruction. Rome made unprecedented advances in so many fields, including architecture, engineering and military science, and conquered so many distant nations, that the citizenry obtained a condition of luxury hitherto unknown by any large population anywhere in all human history. A system of well-built roads connected every part of the empire, the Roman fleet commanded the entire Mediterranean Sea, and the powerful legions guarded the frontier from the Antonine Wall in northern England, across the Rhine and the Danube to the Tigris on the frontiers of Persia.

The strength of this military power created the Pax Romana, which made possible the flourishing of commerce and the arts, but this peace and prosperity eventually produced decadence, and by 476 A.D. Rome was sacked by the Goths under Alaric. This history, as memorably chronicled by Edward Gibbon in 1776, was once familiar to every statesman — Churchill “devoured” it as a boy — but today, in our own far advanced condition of decadence, how many young people know anything at all about what happened to the Roman Empire? This disinterest in history, this willful disregard for our civilization’s accumulated knowledge, is itself symptomatic of decadence. Young fools prefer 5-Minute Daily Meditations by a gay fashion magazine editor to studying history.

Category: Books, History

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short

Posted on | December 30, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Merry Christmas!
Animal Magnetism
A VIew From The Beach
Proof Positive
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL

Can We Deport the NY Times, Please?
The Pirate’s Cove
EBL

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Anthony Halliday a/k/a ‘Stephanie Hayden’
EBL

Socialist Disaster in Venezuela is Sending Economic Refugees into Prostitution
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Sunday Morning Coming Down
A VIew From The Beach
EBL

Kulaks of New York
A View From The Beach
EBL

Transgender Rage: You Can’t Have a Women’s Symbol at a Women’s College
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.24.18
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

#MeToo: ‘No Idea That the Famous Actor Was an Alleged Sexual Predator’
EBL

Democrats: Government Is Christmas, and Trump Is the Grinch or Something
EBL

Happy (High) Holidays
EBL

Worst Santa Ever
EBL

The @emrazz Thread: Feminist Dreams of Eliminating All Male Life on Earth
357 Magnum
EBL

[AykroydVoice] Jonah, You Ignorant (Something Like ‘Unrecoverable Twit’) [/AykroydVoice]
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.26.18
Proof Positive
EBL

Trump Goes to Iraq, #FakeNews Media Embarrass Themselves
EBL

In The Mailbox: 12.27.18
Proof Positive
EBL

Too Tall or Too Black? ‘Intersectionality’ in Missouri Harassment Lawsuit
EBL

Category: FMJRA Award

The Happiness Industrial Complex

Posted on | December 30, 2018 | Comments Off on The Happiness Industrial Complex

Young people (and by “young,” I mean under 40) generally know nothing about the 1960s, except what they’ve seen in movies or on TV, and therefore some are falling prey to the same scams and hustles that typified the so-called “Age of Aquarius.” For the benefit of these young fools, therefore, I must explain that during the 1960s, a lot of alienated youth in the West got heavily into Eastern mysticism — yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. — which became a sort of racket, and sometimes turned into weird cults. Shady characters were able to pass themselves off as gurus and “enlightened masters” possessed of esoteric knowledge, and attracted followings of naïve spiritual seekers. Many thousands of American kids from middle-class suburbia devoted their lives to a perpetual adolescent rebellion against their parents, and this phony Eastern “enlightenment” gold rush that began circa 1967 was one aspect of that rebellion. Rejecting Judeo-Christian religious tradition (with all those “Thou shalt not” moral restrictions), the spiritual seekers of the 1960s also rejected the tradition of Greco-Roman philosophical rationalism. To explain why these young fools abandoned every tradition of their own culture, in order to pursue an ill-informed attempt to emulate the beliefs and practices of Oriental paganism, would require a more thorough explanation than I could provide in a blog post. The relevant point is that this trend gave rise to an entire industry of “spiritual” hustlers, who cashed in by selling themselves as teachers of Ancient Wisdom, which was usually mixed in with a lot of self-help pop psychology and pleasant sounding slogans about peace and love.

Remember Julia Baugher, a/k/a Julia Allison, the used-up “fame whore” whose wasted life became a sad parable of Internet celebrity life?

Julia Baugher at the Burning Man festival.

As part of her effort to “re-invent” herself (i.e., to find some way to get paid without having to work an actual job), Ms. Baugher convinced a publisher to give her an advance for a book grandiosely entitled Experiments in Happiness: How I Learned to Live a Life Filled With Love, Creativity, Meaning…and a Little Bit of Magic. She was unable to deliver the manuscript she’d promised, the publisher attempted to get her to return the advance payment, and there may have been threats of legal action involved, but that’s irrelevant to my point, namely that Ms. Baugher’s pursuit of happiness led her to some strange places. She became a fixture on the “alternative” music festival circuit, running around with her DJ boyfriend “Rain Phutureprimitive” (a/k/a Chad McNally) until he decided he was into “polyamory” (a/k/a, screwing around, threesomes, orgies, etc.). She went to the annual “Burning Man” festival in the California desert where in 2014, she married herself in an “exuberant celebration & sacred ritual of self-love.” Along the way, Ms. Baugher spent years “studying and developing a deep faith and integrating ‘New Age’ ideas like yoga, acupuncture, meditation, ashrams, and holistic medicine into my life.” In other words, this young woman born during the Reagan era, who had attended an eminent Catholic university, went traipsing down the same path of Eastern mysticism previously trodden by all those idiot hippies of the 1960s.

Now a self-proclaimed “Change Activist” and “Social Alchemist,” Ms. Baugher is all about devotion to her spiritual “sisters,” including trips to Bali with her “best girlfriend” Myka McLaughlin. Whatever . . .

The ‘Change Activist’ and her girlfriend in Bali.

You see that “happiness” is marketed as a commodity by clever hustlers who understand that in an affluent society there are millions of people like Julia Baugher, born into middle-class comfort, who are desperately in search of some deeper meaning to their empty lives. There are corporate executives and other successful people who believe their career achievements and wealth entitle them to a greater share of happiness than is enjoyed by the common rabble. These would-be consumers of “happiness” represent the demand side of a market equation from which spiritual hustlers hope to get rich by providing the supply. Like the hippies of yore, however, the 21st-century seeker of spiritual enlightenment doesn’t want anything to do with the Bible or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Insofar as any belief system is part of the Western cultural tradition, this is sufficient to render it obsolete, invalid and worthless in the eyes of the spiritual seeker, who either craves “ancient wisdom” from some non-Western culture, or else will prefer a trendy new belief (e.g., “climate change”) as the basis of his enlightened worldview. After all, if happiness and “enlightenment” can be found by any hillbilly yokel attending a Baptist church in Kentucky, there isn’t much social status to be gained by this pursuit. No, the upwardly-mobile middle-class college-educated spiritual seeker prefers to believe in something exotic, and this requires innovation by the hustlers of the Happiness Industrial Complex.

Say hello to Sah D’Simone, a homosexual immigrant from Brazil who, at age 23, became co-founder of a now-defunct fashion magazine, Bullett. After he was ousted from his position as creative director of Bullett in 2012, D’Simone embarked on “an intense journey of self-discovery, one that led him to silent retreats with monks in Nepal”:

A 30-day meditation retreat turned into a life-changing sojourn that completely turned his life upside down. Being so in his head for so long healed him, but it also forced him to confront his pain, those who hurt him, and his traumatic past.
“The experience allowed me to rewrite my past,” he says. It was letting go of his past, of his enemies, of those who hurt him that Sah says allowed him to grow. “Forgiveness came with finding a space within myself to let go. “It isn’t that suddenly unpleasant triggers and memories disappear. You realize that holding a grudge is so damaging to you. It ages your body and brain and boost cortisol. You’re drinking poison thinking about the other person while they’re living their life.”
Actively letting go, Sah says, is what’s allowed him to take power back into his own hands.

Since 2016, D’Simone has been self-employed as a “Holistic Health & Happiness Coach, Raw Vegan Chef, Meditation & Yoga Instructor, Humanitarian” whose specialty is “helping people move forward through obstacles and change into living evolved, elevated and expanded lives.” He recently published his first book, 5-Minute Daily Meditations: Instant Wisdom, Clarity, and Calm, which is in the top 20 of Amazon’s bestsellers in the category of Taoism. Interestingly enough, his ex-fashion model sister has also re-invented herself as a hustler of happiness:

I dropped out of college and moved to NY when I was 21 and soon after got into Bravo TV’s “Make Me A Supermodel”. It was a very interesting experience. They wanted a blank canvas, but more and more I began to notice how much I had to say, and how much I actually wanted to create and be free.
There were fun moments, of course, especially when I lived in Paris and London, but when I came back to NYC, my brother Sah D’Simone was starting Bullett Magazine, and asked me to be the photo director.
I was completely disassociated with my body from binge eating, to not eating, to drugs and alcohol, all to hide and suppress my feelings. . . .
In the spring of 2014, Sah came back from his first pilgrimage to India and stayed with me. His stories led me to question my whole existence in a new way I had never really done before. That summer I broke up with my boyfriend of 7 years, saved enough money and bought myself a one-way ticket to India. . . .
Bodh Gaya was my first stop, the place where Buddha became enlightened. I met my first teacher, the incredibly witty and profound Ven. Sarah Thresher, an English Buddhist Nun, during my first 10-day silent retreat.

So there you have it — the gay former fashion magazine editor and his ex-model sister are now prepared to sell you the Secret of Happiness™ at their week-long spiritual oceanside retreat in Mexico:

When was the last time you felt completely free? When was the last time you dedicated yourself to the things that bring you true joy? This special retreat was designed for you to come play, heal, and create deeper connections to yourself and nature in the hidden paradise of Mazunte, Mexico.
These seven days are carefully curated to allow you to take charge of your personal growth while being held in the supportive healing container. In addition to daily meditation, yoga, and breathwork practices and wisdom talks, you will be given ample opportunities to explore the town and go on adventures. The adventures include hiking, swimming, sea turtle and whale watching, rest by the ocean, massages, local culture.

Cultivate self-compassion and self-acceptance
Become present and emotionally intelligent
Learn how to feel at home in your body
Nourish your mind and body with group practices, wisdom talks, and local healing foods
Fall in love with yourself and life all over again

The brother and sister team of Sah D’Simone and Moun D’Simone created this one of a kind retreat out of love to help you reconnect with your bliss and your heart’s desire. You will return home, rejuvenated and ready to live a more joyful, fulfilling, and creative life.

The cost of this “personal growth” experience is $1,200 per person, with a shared room, or $1,700 for a private room. Add in the round-trip airfare which, JFK to HUX, would be about $300, and this weeklong vacation — no, wait, I meant to say, spiritual retreat — will cost you around $2,000.

There’ll be no Baptist hillbillies from Kentucky down there watching the whales and listening to “wisdom talks” in Mazunte, I’ll bet.

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

That’s from a book of ancient wisdom, and anyone — whether a Kentucky hillbilly or a Brazilian homosexual — could benefit from studying it. But you see it’s impossible to get rich by urging people to read the Bible and pray, to follow the familiar and humble paths of Christianity, in an age where young fools want to believe they need to take a pilgrimage to India or a spiritual retreat to the Oaxaca coast in order “to live a more joyful, fulfilling, and creative life.” Folks who can afford to spend $2,000 on a Mexican vacation don’t want to read the King James Bible or listen to any sermons about sin and salvation. No, they want 5-Minute Daily Meditations, Buddhism, “Holistic Health” and “wisdom talks.”

Well, I’ve never been to Mazunte or studied with Buddhists in Bodh Gaya, but I do know a thing or two about what’s called street smart, and I know what a scam looks like when I see one. Why are so many people who think of themselves as “elite” such easy marks for an obvious hustle?

There is such a thing as an honest hustle, but paying a gay fashion magazine editor to teach you all that secondhand Buddhist hippie “peace and love” crap? That makes as much sense as paying a washed-up fame whore like Julia Baugher to give you relationship advice.

Of course, I have no esoteric insights to share, and I’m not fool enough to imagine anyone would pay me $1,200 to teach them how to “cultivate self-compassion and self-acceptance” or whatever. All I know is that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Culture, Religion

‘An Apparently Consensual Relationship’

Posted on | December 29, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘An Apparently Consensual Relationship’

Lauren McCluskey was returning from class Oct. 22 when she was shot to death on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City. McCluskey was a 21-year-old senior from Pullman, Washington, who was a member of the university’s track team. She was on her cellphone talking to her mother at the time of her fatal shooting, and her mother heard Lauren scream, “No! No! No!” The killer was Lauren’s ex-boyfriend, a man she had met less than two months earlier. On Sept. 2, the first week of her senior year at the university, Lauren went to the London Belle, a Salt Lake City bar, where she met Melvin Shawn Rowland, who was working as a bouncer at the bar. However, Rowland didn’t tell her his real name. He also didn’t tell her his real age — 37 — nor did he tell his new girlfriend that he was a registered sex offender who had spent nearly a decade in prison after being “convicted of attempted forcible sex abuse and enticing a minor over the internet in 2004.”

In the two months since Lauren McCluskey’s murder, investigators have exposed how Rowland, who had been on parole since 2013, was able to evade supervision and how university officials and law enforcement failed to protect his victim, despite numerous “red flag” warnings:

More than three weeks before Lauren McCluskey was killed on campus by an older man she had dated, two of her friends told staff at University of Utah dorms that they were scared about the man’s control over her, how he talked about guns and often stayed in her room.
That Sept. 30 report, and other information learned by housing officials in days that followed, was not passed to university police or campus safety advocates who may have intervened.
McCluskey began reporting her own concerns to campus officers on Oct. 12. But a formal case was not opened until Oct. 19 — and in that weeklong gap, McCluskey twice called Salt Lake City police’s dispatch line looking for more help. And even after campus police opened their case, no work happened because the assigned detective was off, and she did not return to the investigation until after McCluskey was killed.
The man who killed McCluskey on Oct. 22 was on parole, and some of her allegations — and the report to housing officials that he might have had a gun — could have led to his arrest for violations of the terms of his release. But an independent review released [Dec. 19] found: “There was never an attempt by any of the officers involved to check his ‘offender status.’ Further, there were no policies or procedures that required such checks.”
These missed opportunities were among the shortcomings detailed in the review, ordered by U. President Ruth Watkins after McCluskey, a 21-year-old track athlete, was shot to death outside her dorm by registered sex offender Melvin S. Rowland, 37, who later died by suicide. . . .
Former Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner John T. Nielsen, who led the review . . . specified multiple missteps the investigative team found, including the handling of reports by McCluskey’s concerned friends.
And the report described an unaccredited police force that was not trained to recognize or respond to possible interpersonal violence; didn’t know how and wasn’t expected to check on a suspect’s parole status; leaned toward communicating with victims by email or text rather than in person; conducted victim and witness interviews in its lobby; and didn’t ensure important information was followed up on when assigned officers were off duty. . . .
When McCluskey’s friends reported their concerns to housing staff, it appears to have been the university’s first opportunity to step in. Housing officials are often the first to discover a student is in trouble, the review said — but in McCluskey’s case, the early attempt to intervene was blocked.
The two friends told a resident assistant that McCluskey was in an unhealthy relationship with a man who talked about bringing a firearm to campus. One of them expressed fear that McCluskey might get seriously hurt. Both said Rowland had been “practically living with her” at the dorms.
The housing coordinator responded by saying she would talk to McCluskey about the guest policy.
The next day, housing officials agreed a report should be filed with the campus safety team, but nothing ever was because the computerized system was down. As housing officials continued to talk with each other about McCluskey’s situation, they focused on whether housing rules were being broken rather than assessing her safety.
They decided “not to ‘overstep,’” the report noted, because she was an adult “in an apparently consensual relationship.” They did not contact campus police or the behavioral intervention team on campus tasked with responding to cases of abuse.

Oh, she was an adult in “an apparently consensual relationship” with a bouncer from the bar, so university officials didn’t want to “overstep” with this guy who (a) was not a student, but (b) was “practically living with her” in a dorm. Even if there were limits to what officials could do to protect an adult student from her own unwise choices, however, what about their responsibility for the safety of other students? If McCluskey’s friends thought her relationship with this guy was “unhealthy,” and if his presence in the dorm was violating school policy, wouldn’t this guy’s behavior suggest a risk to others? But even after she broke up with him, nobody seemed to take this danger seriously:

Lauren McCluskey was both concerned and frustrated when she called Salt Lake City Police on October 19.
A convicted sex offender whom she had met just a month earlier was continually harassing her after she ended their short relationship. But police at the University of Utah, where she was a student, weren’t doing enough to put a stop to it, she said in a call to 911.
“I’m worried because I’ve been working with the campus police at the U, and last Saturday I reported and I haven’t gotten an update,” she told Salt Lake City Police dispatch.
“They haven’t updated or done anything,” she added. . . .
McCluskey and Rowland met at a bar in September and dated for about a month until McCluskey learned he had a criminal conviction and had lied about his age and name, the review said. She ended the relationship on October 9, according to a time line of the events.
Over the course of the next two weeks, she called campus police a number of times to report harassing messages as well as an attempted extortion. She told police she sent $1,000 to an account in hopes of keeping compromising photos of her private, according to the review.
Audio from McCluskey’s 911 calls to Salt Lake City Police show that she was increasingly frustrated by the pace of the university investigation. She first called Salt Lake City Police on October 13 to say that she had been blackmailed for money, and the dispatcher advised her to talk to University of Utah police.
“I’ve contacted them already, I just wanted to talk to you as well,” McCluskey said. “Yeah, I was just concerned because I wasn’t sure how long they were gonna take.”

Whoa! A college girl calls 911 to report she’s being blackmailed with “compromising photos” by an ex-boyfriend who is a convicted felon, and your response is to tell her to call campus cops? Meanwhile, the campus cops are doing . . . what? Nothing? Eating donuts?

Compare and contrast this case to what happened to Jeremy Rowles, who was a Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri when he made the mistake of asking a fitness instructor for a date, and was suspended for “harassment.” Campus enforcement of Title IX policy has become so extreme that any male student who asks a girl for a date is at risk of being expelled, but they let a convicted sex offender move into a girl’s dorm?

As I explained in the Missouri case, the problem “is that we have abandoned the social norms by which courtship was once regulated,” and “young people find themselves attempting to negotiate relationships in a Hobbesian nightmare (‘Bellum omnium contra omnes’) of social anarchy, where the rules are uncertain.” Add in the factor of political correctness — I don’t have to point out the obvious, do I? — and university officials are helpless to do anything to prevent real dangers, while at the same time persecuting students for relatively harmless behavior.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

Category: Education, Sex Trouble, Violence Against Women

Alabama vs. Oklahoma Tonight

Posted on | December 29, 2018 | Comments Off on Alabama vs. Oklahoma Tonight

Did you know that tonight’s national championship semifinal between Alabama and Oklahoma will match the two best quarterbacks in the country?

Seldom do a Heisman winner and his runner-up meet after the winner is crowned. Even given that rarity, this may be the best postseason clash of college quarterbacks we’ve ever seen. Both are coming off of historic regular seasons, with each in line to trump the record for Total Quarterback Rating, which ESPN has tracked since 2004 and is measured on a scale of 0 to 100. . . .
“Kyler Murray has accomplished more in one season and had more impact on the Sooners’ tradition in one season than any other player in our history,” former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer told The Athletic. “He’s broke all the damn records.” . . .
At the same time, [Tua] Tagovailoa has been the figurehead of the Tide’s offensive ascension since replacing Jalen Hurts in last season’s national championship game. Saban has been in Tuscaloosa since 2007, and this year’s offense has been his best in terms of, well, everything.

Alabama has produced an average of 527.6 yards and 43.9 points per game. The big question tonight is Tagovailoa’s ankle:

Alabama sophomore quarterback Tua Tagovailoa said his injured left ankle, which required a minor surgical procedure to repair four weeks ago, is at about “80 to 85 percent” as the top-ranked Crimson Tide prepares for Saturday’s Orange Bowl national semifinal against No. 4 Oklahoma.
The sophomore provided the update Wednesday at the first media availability for the Crimson Tide since arriving in South Florida. He said he was continuing to undergo rehabilitation in hopes of recovering fully from the injury he sustained against Georgia in the SEC championship game. . . .
“Tua’s been able to practice and get all the reps that he’s needed to get,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said Monday. “It’ll be interesting to see after having a few days off, with the additional rehab, how that impacts his ability to get closer to 100 percent.”

Playing against the Heisman Trophy winner less than a month after ankle surgery? No big deal. Just another game. Roll Tide.

My son bought me a new HDTV for Christmas, so I’ll be here watching the game after tonight’s episode of The Other Podcast.

Category: Alabama, Football, Oklahoma

Too Tall or Too Black? ‘Intersectionality’ in Missouri Harassment Lawsuit

Posted on | December 28, 2018 | 1 Comment

Jeremy Rowles (left) was accused of harassment by Annalise Breaux (right).

The increasingly weird world of Title IX enforcement:

An official at Mizzou indicated during a deposition that a male student who was physically larger than the female student he asked out may have violated the school’s Title IX policy because his physical size gave him “power over her.” . . .
When a Mizzou official was questioned regarding a case where a black male Ph.D. candidate at the school asked out a white female fitness trainer, she bizarrely suggested that the fact that the male student was larger than the female student gave him “power over her” and violated school policy. . . .
The male student, whom The Daily Wire will refer to as John Doe, asked out the female fitness instructor, who will be identified as Jane Roe. She said she was busy but discussed with him possibly going out later that month. Two days later, she told him to “stop making romantic advances toward her,” according to John’s lawsuit against Mizzou. Despite not wanting to date him, Jane asked John to keep taking her to dance classes.
John did this, and later asked Jane to recommend some YouTube videos to help him improve his dancing. She suggested private lessons but told him she didn’t teach privately. She then, according to John’s lawsuit, avoided him for the next week.
On October 14, 2016, John wrote Jane a three-page letter “apologizing for being awkward around her, expressing sincere feelings for her, and asking [her] what if anything she wanted from Plaintiff,” his lawsuit said.
Cathy Scroggs, who was Mizzou’s Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs when the incident involving John and Jane occurred, was asked during a recent deposition if the accusation against John satisfied the school’s policy for sexual misconduct regarding one having “power or authority” over another. Scroggs responded, “I think he was perceived as having power over her.”
She was further questioned as to the “nature of [John’s] power over her.” The interviewer asked if it was just John’s “size” that contributed to that “power.”
Scroggs responded: “His physical size.” . . .

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) I’m not sure why Ashe Schow used these “John Doe/Jane Roe” pseudonyms in her article, since the names of Jeremy Rowles and Annalise Breaux are matters of public record, included in the court document that adds interesting details:

Plaintiff Jeremy Rowles (“Rowles”) is an African-American man and a former Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Missouri (“University”). In the fall of 2015, he first encountered Annalise Breaux (“Breaux”) at the Kaldi’s Coffee House where she worked. His order did not come out right, so Breaux apologized to him and gave him a token for a free drink.
The following spring, Breaux began teaching dance fitness classes and the University’s Student Recreation Center (“Rec. Center”). Rowles started attending Breaux’ dance classes, after which their interactions became more personal, and the two spoke to one another more often. Breaux thought Rowles was friendly, and she did not interpret his behavior or comments as flirtatious because she thought he was gay.
Then, on April 12, 2016, Rowles asked Breaux out on a date after their dance class. Breaux felt extremely uncomfortable and told him she was “too busy this week.” Over the next week, Rowles sent Breaux several Facebook messages, which became more frequent and increasingly romantic in nature.

Well, this is practically a romantic comedy script: Boy meets coffee shop barista, she gets his order wrong, he enrolls in her dance class and tries to flirt with her but — plot twist! — she thinks he’s gay! Then the boy asks the girl on a date and sends her “romantic” Facebook messages and, next thing you know, girl accuses boy of harassment. However, he’s African-American so he might be a victim of racial discrimination, which in the modern calculus of “social justice” could be enough to cancel out his “male privilege,” and Act Three is the courtroom drama where the campus Title IX enforcer is asked to explain the rules — a scene sure to become a comedy classic. In the Hollywood version, the story would end with a wedding scene between them, as the girl’s racist relatives admit that “love conquers all.” Also, maybe the guy’s best friend (who is secretly gay and had a crush on him) finally comes out of the closet.

What has happened — we aren’t supposed to notice this, let alone lament it — is that we have abandoned the social norms by which courtship was once regulated. In the 21st century, we are expected to celebrate as “progress” the destruction of these norms, because American society circa 1950 was controlled by the prejudicial forces of racism, sexism and homophobia. Thus, in the name of “progress,” “diversity,” “inclusion” and “social justice,” young people find themselves attempting to negotiate relationships in a Hobbesian nightmare (“Bellum omnium contra omnes”) of social anarchy, where the rules are uncertain and you never know if you’ve broken the rules until somebody sues you, gets you fired from your job or calls the police. You’ll be condemned as a bigot if you express concern about the dangers of this social anarchy.

In a sense, both Jeremy Rowles and Annalise Breaux are victims of “progress.” The ideological crusade for “social justice” is justified in the name of protecting us from oppression, but what happens to those who find themselves accused of being oppressors? You see that the Title IX regime on university campuses, allegedly intended to protect women’s right to “equality” in higher education, has a way of turning student romance into a political battlefield. In the old days, a college girl who was the object of unwanted “romantic advances” would have enlisted the assistance of a male protector — her boyfriend, perhaps, or her brother — who would have warned the rejected suitor to leave her alone, or else. This sort of old-fashioned enforcement of social norms, of course, is nowadays prohibited by the same ideological regime that subjected Jeremy Rowles to the Kafka-esque ordeal of a “harassment” complaint. But while no young man would enjoy being threatened with a punch in the nose, I don’t think being targeted by the Title IX enforcement machinery is an improvement over the old-fashioned way.