We’re flunking. Help us!
Category: Blithe Spirit
The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times
A couple of refugees vs. the first amendment
What’s his name and his American wife.
Not to be laughed at, says Jonathan Turley:
The media went into a frenzy this weekend when the bonny Prince Harry gave a huge Hurrumpf to the First Amendment. On a show appropriately called “the Armchair Expert,” Harry declared the First Amendment “bonkers” and expressed frustration of how it protects the media in its “feeding frenzy” over his life.
Harry’s criticism of the First Amendment can be dismissed as the unfamiliarity of a royal refugee. However, it is actually far more serious than that. Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle have attacked media rights in England and succeeded under the laws of the United Kingdom. They are now joining a growing anti-free speech and free press movement in the United States.
He’s got nerve. Did he ever hear of the 1776 uprising?
NBC Chicago reporter: Mayor Lightfoot will only give interviews to “Black or Brown journalists” – HotAir
Is this lady in over her head?
To absurdum this idiotic reductio to its inevitable conclusion, reporters might end up having to argue the racist “one drop” rule just to compete in the Chicago market. Lightfoot has certainly incentivized that outcome with this new standard.
Reporters will want to take 23&Me and Ancestry.com DNA tests to see if they can find any claim at all to “Black or Brown” ethnicity, and then demand access to Lightfoot accordingly.
Can you see an editor promising good coverage for just a drop?
The Gray Lady Winked by Ashley Rindsberg, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®
A book worth reading, I’d say.
Blurbs by two heavyweights:
“The New York Times is by far the most influential newspaper in the world and thus receives far too little journalistic scrutiny due to its power to affect careers. Any book that casts a critical eye on the Paper of Record’s history, as this book does, is performing a valuable service.”
-Glenn Greenwald, Journalist & New York Times Bestselling Author
“In an account brimming with fascinating, if morbid, detail, Ashley Rindsberg rigorously exposes the dark side of the New York Times. For 99 years- since a 1922 description of Hitler as someone ‘actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism’-it has labored under the shadow of its dynastic owners’ triad of problems: capitalist guilt, Jewish self-hatred, and an ambition for power, wealth, and status. The Times‘ importance means the family’s issues have done much damage.”
-Daniel Pipes, Historian & President of…
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Lightfoot ‘can’t be written off completely’ but has ‘a lot of work to do’ to have s hot at re-election, BGA president says – Chicago Sun-Times
This is true. Not that I’m a constant watcher of her. Even so, it’s hard to miss.
If [David] Greising were a teacher filling out Lightfoot’s report card, he’d say the biggest “room for improvement” is in the “works well with others” category.
So far, Lightfoot hasn’t. In fact, her abrasive, micro-managing style and thin-skinned propensity to take things personally and lash out is alienating people and driving them away.
“Lori Lightfoot’s pique, her vulgar statements, her open personal animosity toward some of the people she gets caught up with doesn’t necessarily seem to advance an agenda. It looks more like a lack of discipline on her part. She keeps shooting herself in the foot,” Greising told the Sun-Times.
He pointed to Lightfoot’s recurring tension with Gov. J. B. Pritzker and her string of recent losses in the Illinois General Assembly.
Not to mention how she comes across to the…
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Anne Bradstreet | Poetry Foundation
Her poetry is intensely religious, addressing problems of faith and perseverance, making her very helpful in our time.
The Role of Concupiscence in the Decline of the Catholic Church – Philosophy in Progress
The role of concupiscence in dimming our spiritual sight has long been recognized by many, among them, such luminaries as Plato, Augustine, and Blaise Pascal:
There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God. (Pensées, Krailsheimer #269, p. 110)
Cuts to chase:
Has anyone pointed out that this is the real root of the rot in the Roman church? The depth of the corruption is hard to fathom, both in the sense of understand and in the sense of measure the depth of. R. R. Reno reports:
From 1990 until 2010, I taught at a Jesuit University and was privy to insider gossip. The Irish philosopher William Desmond recounted some of his experiences as a…
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Equity and its discontents
Equity, thy name is RESULTS! Whatever it takes!
‘Equity’ as currently used refers to equality of outcome. It could be achieved in a footrace by attaching weights to runners so as to insure that they all cross the finish line at the same time. One would thereby purchase the benefit of envy-free equality of result at the cost of excellence and high achievement. Would it be worth it?
Call that the burning question of the day.
And then there is the question of who would attach the weights and how they would go about doing so. Would they not have to be UNEQUAL in power and authority to those equalized to bring about the latter’s equality of result?
Say what???
I suspect that those who support ‘equity’ imagine themselves as among the equalizers and not the equalized, just as those who are for central planning think of themselves as among…
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Maricopa County withholding subpoenaed hardware from election audit, citing alleged ‘security risk’ | Just The News
New board, new priorities for Oak Park village government – Oak Park
Let the record show, and let readers note, the good-news out-with-old-in-with-new meeting that makes for a new Oak Park Village board.
A very encouraging message here, though the story was light on “new priorities,” which were not emphasized, and time enough for that.
