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JUNE 24,  2022

NOTE TO READERS, AT 7 P.M. ET:  Of course we're aware of today's Supreme Court decision on abortion, and the reaction.  I've been monitoring as much coverage as possible, and will have some comments later. 

I HOPE THE BACKLASH TURNS INTO A DELUGE:  We're starting to see a backlash in Hollywood over censorship and woke demands.  May this grow.  Hollywood can play a major role in a march of sanity if it rejects, once and for all, the curse of cancel culture.  From Fox: 

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish declared Monday that his company will not censor its old content for material that may offend modern audiences.

Bakish made the comments as the Paramount+ streaming service launched overseas and he discussed the company's large and historical catalog.

"By definition, you have some things that were made in a different time and reflect different sensibilities," Bakish explained, according to a June 20 piece by The Guardian.

He went on, "I don’t believe in censoring art that was made historically, that’s probably a mistake. It’s all on demand – you don’t have to watch anything you don’t want to."

Paramount has recently seen that there is big money in appealing to American nostalgia, as "Top Gun: Maverick," a sequel to Paramount Pictures' "Top Gun" (also starring Tom Cruise) in 1986, smashes box office records.

As streaming services featuring classic films have risen in recent years, many have grappled with the rapidly changing social mores of modern society.

HBO Max briefly pulled "Gone with the Wind" from its programming in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020, causing "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg to slam the idea of censoring older films about America’s past.

"Personally I think if you put things in a historical context — because if you start pulling every film ... you're going to have to pull all of the blaxploitation movies because they're not depicting us the right way," Goldberg said at the time.

Netflix made some recent changes to distance itself from a liberal agenda after figuring out it was hurting their bottom line with a loss of subscribers. In May, the streaming service laid off 150 employees, canceled several woke projects and sent out a memo telling employees to quit if they’re offended by content the company produces.

COMMENT:  More and more we hear people say that they want the real America back, the America they remember.  Now, I admit that memory can be deceiving, but I think we know what these folks mean –they want back an America that believed in itself and in the founding values, and were proud of those values. 

Hollywood has a significant role in projecting an image of this country's greatness.  Maybe we're seeing that role returning.

June 24, 2022       Permalink 

JUNE 23,  2022

THE WISE JUSTICE SPEAKS – FROM CLARENCE THOMAS:  Justice Clarence Thomas, who has withstood terrible abuse since his nomination to the United States Supreme Court because he thinks for himself, speaks out on how liberal policies have destroyed black communities.  A very good read.  Show it to your teenaged kids.  From the New York Post: 

In this excerpt from the just-published “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words” by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta, the Supreme Court justice reflects on changes in his hometown, Savannah, Ga. The book is based on more than 30 hours of interviews Pack conducted with Thomas and his wife Ginni for the film of the same name; 95% of the book’s material is new, including this excerpt.

Michael Pack: You have talked a little today about how life in the black community has not been improved by many well-intentioned social programs. Do you think, in some sense, it is worse than when you grew up?

Clarence Thomas: It’s a disaster. When I grew up, you had family, you didn’t have drugs, you didn’t have gang-banging. You could walk down the street.

There was a change in our society. I think that these programs certainly had an impact. Just go back to Savannah and take a look around you. Our worst fears were realized. We didn’t want to be right; we wanted to be wrong. It wasn’t about winning an argument. No, we wanted to lose the argument. We did not want the damage to occur; that’s why we were involved. I don’t particularly like public life; I never wanted to be in public life. I’d like to go to football games. I’d like not to make decisions about other people’s lives, but what drags you into it is when you see these principles being undermined, which leads to such destruction. The policies destroy people, and, ultimately, I think, we’re going to destroy the very thing that allows us to have liberty and to have a free society.

MP: So the heirs to those movements, like Black Lives Matter, focus on other things: mass incarceration, police brutality. What do you think of the current movements for racial justice?

CT: I don’t really follow the movements du jour. I don’t quite understand them. It’s fascinating to me that the radical groups in the sixties, that we all were aware of and fond of back then, like the Black Panthers — that’s kind of mainstream now. But we knew they were more marginal back then. I don’t know what to say about this. But if you look at some of the things that still are problematic, like bad education, unsafe neighborhoods, drugs, alcohol, breakdown in families, it seems like these are things that we warned about back then.

We were told, basically, take a long walk on the short pier. And I understand that. I understand people not wanting to hear an opposing view. But at the same time, we’re not taking ownership of these policies’ having a significant role in the damage that’s been done.

MP: You’ve made many trips back to both Pin Point and Savannah. When you return, do you reflect on your life? Do you reflect on how it is now?

CT: I don’t reflect a lot about these sorts of things. A lot of this is depressing, and it didn’t have to happen. The Savannah that I return to is not the Savannah I grew up in. There are good parts, you’re free to move about. You don’t have the segregation, but you’ve got pathologies that we didn’t have before. You’ve got the crime we didn’t have before. You’ve got the disintegration of families that you didn’t have before, disorder you didn’t have before. And they were things that were avoidable. You didn’t have to do that to poor people, and it’s just heartbreaking. Something has changed, so it’s kind of hard to go back.

COMMENT:   Read the rest.  Absolutely valuable.  Clarence Thomas is a national treasure, a keeper of great values.  But when he retires from the Court, he will be ridiculed and laughed at by the hard left, which now dominates the civil rights movement. 

I just hope history is kind to Clarence Thomas, because he deserves it. 

June 23, 2022       Permalink

REMARKABLE RON:  Hand it to Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.  He knows how to govern, and he knows how to run for office.  The Democrats loathe him, which is a good-enough recommendation for me.  There is major presidential talk about Ron, should Trump not run...and even if he does.  A late New Hampshire poll show DeSantis making a dramatic impression on the Republican Party.  From Fox: 

DURHAM, New Hampshire – A public opinion survey in New Hampshire, the state that for a century has held the first primary in presidential race, indicates that Florida Gov. Gov. Ron DeSantis has a razor-thin margin over former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary match-up.

According to polling numbers released on Wednesday by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, 39% of likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State would support the first-term Florida governor, with 37% backing the former president. Respondents were provided a list of potential contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, and DeSantis margin was well within the survey’s sampling error.

Former Vice President Mike Pence stood at 9% in the survey, with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, at 6%. The other possible Republican White House hopefuls on the list offered by the pollsters stood at one percent support, or less.

The survey suggests support among New Hampshire Republicans for DeSantis is surging. Trump held a 43%-18% advantage in support of DeSantis the last time the UNH Survey Center asked a 2024 GOP presidential nomination preference question, in October of last year. Trump topped DeSantis 47%-19% in UNH’s survey last July.

COMMENT:  Clearly, a large number of Republicans are prepared to consider candidates other than the former president.  We make no predictions, and early leaders sometimes fade.  But I have the sense that Ron DeSantis is becoming a major national figure, with the political skill and brainpower to maintain that status.

June 23, 2022       Permalink