The Atlantic magazine last month hired Kevin Williamson, formerly of the conservative National Review, as a columnist. I have long been aware of Williamson’s horrible views and was shocked that a supposedly liberal magazine would hire him but Goldberg has pretty conservative views too. For example, he was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Iraq war.
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Is there anyone who is more misunderstood and persecuted than Sam Harris? Once again he charges that he has been unfairly maligned, something that seems to happen to him with remarkable frequency. The occasion this time was that he invited Charles Murray to appear on his podcast after the latter’s talk at Middlebury college had to be cancelled due to protests. The title of the podcast was Forbidden Knowledge, suggesting that Harris was giving a platform for ideas that are true but are too politically incorrect to be allowed to be expressed openly. What is this dangerous knowledge that dare not raise its head in public? It is the old idea that when in comes to intelligence, the black community just does not have it to the same degree as whites and that this largely explains the socioeconomic disparity between the two communities. (I wrote yesterday my views on Murray and the shoddy way that he exploits people’s racial prejudices about intelligence in pursuance of truly regressive social policies.)
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He takes a close look at the scandalous state of the immigration court system where justice is at the bottom of their priorities. Not providing even two-year old children with legal representation is just one of the many problems.
I had no idea that there are so many daytime TV shows that feature courtroom cases for the purposes of entertainment, as he shows in the introduction.
Teachers are finally taking action to protest the lack of investment in public education that has led to their low and stagnant salaries, lack of adequate supplies for students, and poorly maintained facilities. To add insult to injury, teachers are constantly vilified by right-wingers as lazy moochers who complain despite having cushy jobs and their summers off. Teachers have long been fed up with this state of affairs but now they are getting angry.
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So here we are again, debating the tired and discredited thesis propounded by Charles Murray and his late co-author Richard Herrnstein in their book The Bell Curve about the role of intelligence in socioeconomic success and as its pertains to race. These issues have resurfaced in a new book by David Reich and Murray has once again returned to the spotlight. Andrew Sullivan who, as then editor of The New Republic gave a huge amount of space to publicize that earlier book, has emerged to defend Murray’s ideas. Sam Harris has once again aligned himself with odious ideas and defends them as courageous truth-telling in the fight against political correctness.
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While much attention has focused on Fox News as a purveyor of propaganda and falsehoods in the service of Donald Trump and the people he represents, less attention has been paid to a news company that has a much broader reach in the country and that is Sinclair Broadcasting, the owner of many local radio and TV stations.
In this clip, John Oliver shows how local newscasters at Sinclair stations are tightly controlled by the owners in a way that would make the leader of any totalitarian nation envious.
My post on Pankaj Mishra’s critique of Jordan Peterson aroused some interesting and thoughtful responses. As I said, I did not know anything about Peterson or his works and some tried to clue me in and provide perspective. As recommended by some, I went online to see some videos by and of Peterson and it turns out that there are a lot! I picked some based on whether their titles promised topics of interest to me, not a very effective strategy with YouTube, I know, but the only option I had if I did not want to devote the rest of my life to watching a ton of his videos. I have watched a few and plan to watch a few more and will post my comments on them after I have had time to digest them.
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Yesterday, I wrote about the case where the Pulse nightclub shooter’s wife Noor Salman was acquitted of all charges, despite the determined efforts of prosecutors to make life as difficult as possible for her and coerce a confession. Fortunately for her, the jury overcame the ‘scary Muslim terrorist’ fear-mongering and cleared her. But as Shaun King reminds us, many people do not escape the heavy hand of prosecutors seeking conviction at all costs and gives the case of Natalie Pollard, where she took a plea deal just to avoid being badgered by the legal system.
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