Matt Philbin
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Congratulations to The Washington Post pop music critic Chris Richards, who on Nov. 15 covered himself in glory by earning the Post’s coveted Triple Crown. With one brief piece, Richards earned Self-Hating White Liberal of the Week; and Dog Whistle Discerner; and won the “Politicize This!” Challenge.
Imagine a CNN personality claiming to be mystified by the “daily Trump-fest.” This is, after all, the network of Brian Stelter, who never misses an opportunity to whine that Trump is “poisoning the American people” against the media. But let’s pretend that Christiane Amanpour really does lack all self-awareness and, perplexed, she recently turned to journalism mentor Jon Stewart for guidance. “I mean, every single newspaper, every radio station, every bit of social media …” she complained to the former Daily Show host in an interview that included comic Dave Chappelle.
The left’s Meltdown of Kavanaugh Rage Pot Luck & Hootenanny has certainly been entertaining. Cory Booker’s Concern Face alone was worth the price of admission.
I saw today that the Buffalo Wild Wings chain has introduced pumpkin spice wings. I only mention it to observe that a) it’s an abomination against nature and nature’s God and b) the Estrogen Industrial Complex’s emasculation-by-pumpkin-spice project is proceeding apace. When somebody figures they can make a buck tarting up the ultimate bar food with nutmeg (nutmeg!), we’re not too far from the day when “Guy-Time” will mean curling up with a flavored coffee and dreaming of Paris.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given the planet 10 years to live. Or something. This has upset the sort of people who know the IPCC exists and are given to taking its pronouncements seriously. You know, the kind of earnest souls who give thought to bovine gassiness.
In writing this column over lo these many months, I’ve heard from lots of people that “Alt-Left” is a lousy formulation for this collation of progressive pieties, liberal licentiousness, bohemian bric-a-brac and Bolshevik bossiness. The common complaint is that there is nothing “alt” about the beliefs and behavior it documents. Having sex with shrubbery, whining about “white people shampoo” or casting black magic spells on Donald Trump -- it’s all the stuff of the lefty mainstream.
More bad news for the NFL. According to Variety, viewership of the first three weeks of the 2018 season “are down an average 2% in total viewers from where they were at the same point in 2017.” Of course, ratings in the same period of 2017 nosedived 8%-10%.
It’s heartening to see a healthy respect for religious liberty being kindled at, of all places, The University of Wisconsin at Madison. There, young scholars have at long last come to the understanding that the practice of religion cannot be confined to worshipping at set hours and in set places. The religious observer mustn't be required to leave his faith in the pews. He must be free to take it to the ice cream shop!
Los Angeles has only one “LGBT-focused coffee shop.” This is surprising news to me, but then I believe pumpkin spiced latte is Big Coffee’s fiendish plot to turn America into a nation of jittery, fem Pajama Boys.
Remember when liberals in the media disdained everything about the Catholic Church? Simpler times. Then Pope Francis came along and muddied things. He talks about climate change, castigates capitalism and plays verbal footsie with lefty Catholic hobby-horse issues like divorce and gay acceptance. This Francis guy, they think, might be one of us.
It was supposed to be an inspirational advertising tagline, not a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” is the phrase Nike used to introduce unemployed QB Colin Kaepernick as the face of it’s 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign.
Sheila Jackson Lee was right! The astronauts must have planted an American flag on Mars because, according to Hollywood, they didn’t put one on the moon.
The new Neil Armstrong biopic First Man starring Ryan Gosling records the astronaut’s iconic small step, but ignores the other iconic moment from the 1969 moon landing: Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting the American flag.
NBC Sports is about to become a lot more watchable. According to The Washington Post, the network is in talks to terminate Bob Costas’s contract: "Costas, 66, joined NBC Sports in 1979 and has long been a reassuring presence during the Olympics, Super Bowls, World Series and other national events. That role has changed in recent years with the arrival of Mike Tirico from ESPN, and with Costas’s increasing interest in providing context and opinion on matters of the moment, such as the NFL’s concussion problem and gun violence in America."
There really are second acts in American life. Just look at Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. One of the greatest college and NBA players of all time, he’s since reinvented himself as the unofficial apologist for dissident black athletes, a superstar joining the ranks of race pimps like Al Sharpton and Jemele Hill.
When the higher education bubble bursts (and won’t that be a mess -- Gender Studies PHDs and Postcolonial Queer Poetry majors splattered everywhere!), you can still point your offspring down a sound career path. Pull Junior aside, look him purposefully in the eye and say, “Two words: sexbot repair.”
“When I managed to finish my first pussy hat, though, I was overjoyed.” That’s an actual line from an actual article in Slate about politicized knitting. It seems that’s a thing, with a “community,” and you can buy Donald Trump pincushions on Etsy
Reporters are really good at worrying about the standards of other people’s professions. Their own? Maybe not so much. Take Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach, who tells readers “Researchers are supposed to have what is known as ‘equipoise’ going into a trial.” Equipoise is a completely neutral attitude toward what a scientific trial may prove or disprove.
It’s a pressing question: Why are three out of four American vegans women? Well, women are more verbal than men, and vegans won’t shut up about being vegan … or is it just that men really are smarter?
Turns out the Washington Post is good for something besides being a puppy wee-wee pad or making spitballs to shoot at the interns while straws are still legal. Specifically, if not the Post and its flaky feminist subsidiary The Lily, I wouldn’t know that Zoe Hollomon, “a 39-year-old black queer activist in Minneapolis, represents synchronized swimming — and its future.”
Well, she doesn’t have much else to do these days. CBS has announced that Hillary “What Happened” Clinton will be playing herself on Madam Secretary, the show she inspired. Madam Secretary stars Téa Leoni as a woman Secretary of State. She’s super-smart, competent, empathetic and oozing with girl power.