Holy cow! Europe doesn’t have free speech. I’m glad I don’t live there.
SWANSEA, Wales (AP) — The student who mocked Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba on Twitter after the player collapsed on the field during a match has been jailed for inciting racial hatred.
Liam Stacey, a 21-year-old student at Swansea University, admitted to the charge last week and was jailed Tuesday for 56 days.
Geraldo Rivera was right!
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “The wearing of the hoodie is not something you want to cultivate among young people. When the Miami Heat wear it, the message is given that there is something innocent and noble about it. It is neither innocent nor noble.”
Thomas Sowell writes: It is not often that I agree with Geraldo Rivera, but recently he said something very practical and potentially life-saving, when he urged black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.
There is no point in dressing like a hoodlum when you are not a hoodlum, even though that has become a fashion for some minority youths, including the teenager who was shot and killed in a confrontation in Florida. I don’t know the whole story of that tragedy any more than those who are making loud noises in the media do, but that is something that we have trials for.
People have a right to dress any way they want to, but exercising that right is something that requires common sense, and common sense is something that parents should have, even if their children don’t always have it.
I teach a lofty cognitive-based system to help people notice and to let go of their interfering patterns of muscular tension but I’m losing my clients to cheap thrill digital release Asian massage parlors promising ecstasy for just $100. How can I compete with this when I demand that my clients pay attention to their habits and let go of those responses that don’t serve them?
Or are they frequently lazy and irresponsible?
In his front-page-of-the-business-section “Economic Scene” column in The New York Times last week, Eduardo Porter wrote, “The United States does less than other rich countries to transfer income from the affluent to the less fortunate.”
Think about that sentence for a moment. It ends oddly. Logic dictates that it should have said, “transfer income from the affluent to the less affluent,” not the less fortunate.
But for Porter, as for the left generally, those who are not affluent are not merely “less affluent,” they are “less fortunate.”
Why is this? Why is the leftist division almost always between the “affluent” and the “less fortunate” or between the “more fortunate” and the “less fortunate”?
To understand the left, one must understand that in its view the greatest evil is material inequality. The left is more troubled by economic inequality than by evil, as humanity has generally understood the term. The leftist divides the world not between good and evil but rich and poor.
Because inequality is the chief moral concern of the left, the words “less affluent” or even “poorer” do not meet the left’s moral needs. It needs to believe, and to have others believe, that what separates economic classes is not merely how much material wealth members of each class have. Rather, it is the amount of good and bad luck — “fortune,” as the left puts it — that each class has.
This is how the left justifies high taxes. Isn’t it only fair and moral that as much money as possible be taken from the lucky and given to the unlucky? After all, the affluent didn’t achieve affluence through harder work, but through greater luck.
To acknowledge that most of America’s affluent (meaning those who earn over $200,000) have attained their affluence through hard work is to undermine the fairness issue at the core of the left’s understanding of economic inequality and justification for confiscatory taxes.
For the left, affluence is won, not earned. Indeed, English is one of the few languages that even has or uses the word “earn” in regard to income. In Romance languages such as French, the verb meaning to earn is “gagner,” which means “to win.” In terms of language, in America, people earn their wealth, while in most of Europe and Latin America, people win it.
Kelly McBride is a widely quoted journalism ethicist. She works for The Poynter Institute.
She describes herself thus: “Kelly spent 14 years covering saints and sinners in Spokane, Wash. Now she’s at Poynter, searching for the soul of American journalism.”
Here’s another description at the Poynter site: “Kelly McBride is Senior Faculty/Ethics at The Poynter Institute. She teaches journalists from around the world to strengthen their ethical decision-making skills and to improve their writing, reporting and editing skills.”
So you’d think she’d be careful before opining on an inflammatory case where few facts are known.
But you’d be wrong in this case.
Kelly’s inflammatory and irresponsible writing here illustrates how she and Poynter are leftist activists more interested in fomenting race hatred than in encouraging good journalism.
Kelly McBride writes for Poynter March 23: “How does a story about teenager’s illogical killing go from barely registering a mention in local newspapers to a national conversation? It’s carried by people who care — by family, by bloggers who fear for their own children and by communities with tools that connect them to each other for fortification, while they wait for someone to listen.”
Without knowing the important facts in the case, Kelly McBride has already made up her mind and is opining publicly in a case so incendiary that people may well die from protests regarding it. She writes that Trayvon Martin’s killing was “illogical” and that people who make that case “care” and “wait for someone to listen.”
Somebody to listen? This case has dominated the national news for days now.
I emailed Kelly: “Regarding your latest essay, how do you know that Trayvon’s killing was unjust? How do you know his killing was illogical? Why are you opining about the lack of justice in this case when so little is known about it? Are you more interested in fomenting racial hatred than in good and fair journalism?”
If I get a response, I will post it.
Kelly writes for Poynter: “Before social media came to dominate our lives, I’d like to believe that traditional media would have demanded justice for Trayvon. Certainly traditional newsrooms played a crucial role this past week. But it’s reassuring to know there are more people, with more tools, demanding justice.”
Kelly McBride has already made up her mind that Trayvon Martin did not receive justice. She’s banging the drums for a particular outcome in a case where we know nothing. By so doing, she’s fomenting the very racial hatred and social unrest that will likely kill innocent people just as the LA Riots did after the news media’s irresponsible editing of the Rodney King beating video to make it look like he was just a bloke driving while black until needlessly beaten by white police.
Kelly writes: “Think of the Jena Six, the story of six black teenagers unjustly prosecuted in 2007 for attempted murder following a fight that erupted as a result of racial tensions. Black bloggers kept that story alive until Howard Witt, then a writer for the Chicago Tribune, brought it into the mainstream media. That took almost a year.”
As Craig Franklin wrote in the Christian Science Monitor:
By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they’ve all heard the story of the “Jena 6.” White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics.
There’s just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.
I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.
The reason the Jena cases have been propelled into the world spotlight is two-fold: First, because local officials did not speak publicly early on about the true events of the past year, the media simply formed their stories based on one-side’s statements – the Jena 6. Second, the media were downright lazy in their efforts to find the truth. Often, they simply reported what they’d read on blogs, which expressed only one side of the issue.
I just did a Google News search for “Kelly McBride.”
I found this about Al Sharpton:
“It certainly represents a change in our traditional view of the boundaries between journalism and activism,” said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “Al Sharpton is clearly an activist.”
…McBride said she does not view Sharpton as a journalist and doubts that many viewers do. The reason MSNBC puts Sharpton on the air is because it wants to reach an audience that is interested in things that he is, she said.
“I’m not saying this is without problems,” she said. “I think it’s very confusing. But it’s certainly the way we are moving in the journalism industry.”
Activist Kelly McBride is calling Al Sharpton an activist? Pot, kettle, black.
I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs Mondays at 7:00 pm PDT on the rabbi’s cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.
This week we study Parashat Tzav (Leviticus 6:1-8:36).
I just did an interview with Rael Levinsohn:
Human beings revel in beauty, sensual and erotic pleasures, many would argue that is what makes life worth living. The media and popular culture and the adult film industry exists to bring entertainment/pleasure to its viewers, that is a reality. If Judaism would be able to “photoshop” the world, would all these things be removed? What is our vision for the rest of mankind in regard to these matters?
Beauty has much less significance to Judaism than holiness. As the old saw goes, to the Greeks, the beautiful was holy, to the Jews, the holy was beautiful.
Beauty is like all the other pleasures of this world, fine in their place but never a reason to disregard God’s instructions.. You can’t trample on the Torah to indulge in your natural desires.
Torah has little to say about the importance of aesthetic beauty except as a vehicle to God. We should beautify our mitzvos.
Do you think religion, Orthodox Judaism in particular has unrealistic/cruel/stifling expectations in regards to pleasure and sexuality?
I think religion in general and Orthodox Judaism in particular are very realistic about beauty.They know that men in particular will give up everything to attain a beautiful woman. Beauty is powerful and like the desire for power or fame or pleasure, the desire for beauty must be constrained. Unconstrained pursuit of any of these things will ruin your life. This seems to be the theme of most movies and TV shows I watch. People pursue some temporal end like beauty or power to absurd ends.
What do you think G-d thinks of people who perform in the adult film industry? Do you feel pornography has any redeeming qualities, is there a place for it in existence?
Every religion in the world condemns porn. Judaism is no different in that regard. Any redeeming quality in porn is dwarfed by its damaging qualities. I think God hates people who deliberately and needlessly damage society and destroy the family unit. Some such people are pornographers, others are respected Hollywood types, others are bloggers and talk show hosts and lawyers and politicians.
Every civilization depends upon stigmatizing sexual expression outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage. Do away with this stigmatizing and men will increasingly act naturally (pursuing their lusts and not sticking around their spouse and kids).
What kind of person gets all militant at this point about Trayvon Martin (aside from his loved ones)? We don’t know what happened. We don’t know if his killing was justified or not. We don’t know if he was the aggressor. We don’t know if he was the victim of a murder. We don’t know.
Anyone with a smidgen of sense does not make public statements in such an inflammatory case without having the facts.
That Trayvon Martin was unarmed means nothing. Thousands of women are raped by unarmed men. You don’t need arms to kill somebody. You can be a deadly threat without being armed.
Anybody getting all militant about Trayvon Martin is a race-hating moron, habitually reacting to the stimuli of potential white racism. Only somebody who does not have a life will start marching in the streets and taking photos of themselves in hoodies when we don’t know yet whether Trayvon was a victim or a thug.
People who are acting out right now about Trayvon Martin are looking for an excuse to march and to get militant and to act aggrieved because they have this grudge against white racism and against America and they’re looking for any opportunity to trash this country and to feel like a victim so that they are then absolved from moral responsibility for their actions.
Trayvon Martin protesters would be better off working hard, getting educated, nurturing their friendships and their families rather than wasting their time marching about something they know nothing about. Losers march in ignorance. Winners work hard, get educated and support their friends and families.
The president bears much of the responsibility for this senseless hatred of America. He purposely whipped up racial hatred in this case and he did it out of ignorance of the case because not even the president knows what really happened that fateful night in Florida.
President Obama deliberately appeals to the mob and to the human’s worst instincts. He’s a race-baiter like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. He whips up hatred based on economic class, claiming that the rich one percent supposedly ruin things for the rest of us.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Hundreds of people descended on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on Monday evening to denounce the slaying last month of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and demand that an arrest be made in the highly charged Florida case.
The rally came the same day that hundreds of people joined leading civil rights advocates in Sanford, Fla., to criticize authorities for failing to arrest Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman, a Neighborhood Watch captian. Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense after reporting him to police as a suspicious person and apparently confronting the African American teenager.
At L.A.’s City Hall, protesters said the failure of authorities to arrest Zimmerman is an example of a criminal justice system that has failed repeatedly to protect the rights of African Americans and Latinos.
“I’m here because I want to fight racism,” said Alejandra Cruz, 27, an attorney who lives in East Los Angeles.
