Sunday, March 14, 2021

The Pentagon’s Fight With Tucker Carlson Proves It Doesn’t Even Exist To Win Wars Anymore


Tucker Carlson may have never served in the armed forces, but he’s still decisively winning a PR war against the U.S. military. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, of course. The U.S. military loses most of the wars it fights these days.

During America’s long golden age as a country, the military typically abstained from politics and won wars. But in the decaying Globalist American Empire, the military plays a very different role. Protecting America and winning conflicts isn’t the military’s goal at all. Instead, the armed forces have become a skinsuit. This once-great institution has been repurposed into a vehicle for globalist and left-wing domestic political goals.

The clash between Carlson and the DoD began on Monday. In remarks delivered for the Communist holiday of International Women’s Day, Biden boasted of how he and President Obama had worked to make the military a fully gender-neutral body:

I’m incredibly proud that in 2015, under the Obama-Biden administration, we took the final steps to open up all positions in the military to anyone qualified to serve in them. The women who join today’s military aren’t told “no” when they apply to fly fighter jets or attack helicopters just because of their gender. They aren’t told “no” when they want to apply to Ranger School or infantry officer basic training. [White House]

Biden bragged that it is easier than ever for pregnant women, and women who care about their appearance, to serve in the armed forces.

We’re making good progress designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating — updating requirements for their hairstyles.

And Biden said, overtly, that his administration would be fighting to change the military to make it more feminine, a place where a woman trying to become a general is as easy to understand as a woman becoming a teacher or a nurse.

And some of it is going to take — and — you know, an intensity of purpose and mission to really change the culture and habits that cause women to leave the military: That women are — making sure more diverse candidates are considering — being considered for career-advancing opportunities at every single level. That women aren’t penalized in their careers for having children. That women aren’t just token members, but integral parts throughout all branches and all divisions.

In response, on Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson said what any American would have said 50 years ago, and what every reasonable person still believes now: That making the military more feminine makes it weaker, not stronger, and that carving out new rules so that pregnant women can serve (while keeping their hairstyles and painted nails to boot) is grotesque.

Nothing Carlson said is insane, or even particularly notable. What’s notable is the shrill, borderline ridiculous response from the once-apolitical Defense establishment.

That’s not a screencap from DNC, or Slate, or the Center for American Progress. That’s a screencap from Defense.gov, an official website of the American military. It should be disturbing to anybody who cares about the military’s overall efficacy. How can anyone feel confidence in a military that writes headlines about it “smiting” TV talking heads who “dissed” it?

The body text is no less appalling:

The United States military is the greatest the world has ever seen because of its diversity, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said during a news briefing this morning. Kirby addressed this because a Fox cable show host used his show to denigrate the contributions of women in the military and to say the Chinese military is catching up to the U.S. military because it does not allow women to serve in the percentage the United States does. [Department of Defense]

Sick burn! They don’t even say the loser’s name, because he’s so lame like that.

The Department of Defense used Twitter to issue another passive-aggressive attack on Carlson, but in fitting fashion, this attack hurt the one making it more than the target:

“Women were limited to supporting roles in the military early on.” Any historically observant person might realize that “early on” the U.S. military actually won the wars it fought in.

Does anybody who isn’t a full-time Twitter addict find this appealing or impressive?

Despite all the embarrassing attacks levied on him, Carlson has actually been generous in his response. On Thursday night, even as he doubled down on his criticism of maternity madness, Carlson described the military as “the last functional institution of any size in this country.”

Tucker is being far too charitable. The military has become just as dysfunctional as every other institution in America. Soon, it could get even worse.

For starters, the woke turn of the armed forces isn’t an innovation of the newly-arrived Biden administration. It has been progressing for years. It continued throughout the Trump Administration.

True, President Trump had some limited victories, such as a temporary return to the ban on service by transgender individuals. But the Trump military was entirely invested in making it as easy as possible for the military to keep pregnant women in active service. This press release, for instance, was issued under Trump, not Biden:

The Fit and Wear tests are part of an effort to roll out a flight uniform designed specifically for pregnant aviators.

“This effort is important,” said 1st Lt Avery Thomson, lead program manager for Maternity Development efforts in the AFUO. “Current aircrew members are modifying their flight duty uniforms, at a significant personal financial cost, or they are borrowing bigger uniforms from their husbands, which creates a safety of flight issue. The Maternity Flight Duty Uniform will help remove a barrier for approximately 400 pregnant Airmen each year.” [Air Force]

The military also spent most of 2020 vowing to overhaul the force to maximize diversity and inclusion (as opposed to, say, fighting prowess). In December, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced a review of all aptitude tests administered by the military, to ensure these tests did not hinder the higher goal of “diversity.”

But even before George Floyd’s death, the military was touting diversity as its greatest strength. In a 2019 tweet, the DoD bragged about how military service prepared one woman for a career as a “beauty influencer & diversity activist.”

All these tweets, initiatives, and obnoxious cable TV clapbacks are more than a distraction. They reveal the fundamental nature of the modern military. Whatever the U.S. military cares about, it’s certainly not winning wars. In fact, in many ways, the U.S. armed forces are barely a “military” at all now. Instead, it is an enormously expensive vehicle for pushing progressive politics and enriching defense contractors and war profiteers.

A military that wants to win wars would focus ruthlessly on preparing to do that. It wouldn’t pick fights with cable news hosts as an excuse to talk about how “badass” and “lethal” women in combat are:

A military that cares about winning would maintain rigorous physical standards for soldiers, instead of weakening them to help women pass. It would promote entirely based on rigorous measures of merit, instead of throwing those standards out and explicitly warning officers that their promotions are contingent on hitting diversity targets. It wouldn’t worry at all about the “fairness” of making sure pregnant women can return to service without enduring a career setback. It would have exactly zero jobs for “gender adviser”:

The military’s domestic political purpose also shows in how it is used. America keeps 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, which are useless for controlling the country or defeating the Taliban. Their only purpose is domestic, to allow Washington politicians to posture as tough on terrorism, supportive of women’s rights, or just vaguely “pro-military.” Twice as many troops are deployed in America’s own Capitol, ostensibly to “protect” it from a “right-wing insurgency.” But as Revolver explained this week, the real purpose of the occupation is to send the message that conservatives are dangerous (why would we need troops in the Capitol if they weren’t, after all?) and stricter laws are needed to curb their freedoms.

No troops at all, meanwhile, are deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border, even though hundreds of thousands cross the border illegally every year, and even though protecting the frontier has been the traditional obligation of standing armies for all of human history. Why are they gone? Because only militaries concentrated on foreign threats protect their country’s border. America’s military is focused inwardly.

Militaries are meant to win wars and defeat foreign adversaries. But the four branches of the American armed forces serve a very different purpose. They do not win our current wars, and they do not effectively prepare to win future ones. 

America doesn’t spend $700 billion per year to deter Chinese aggression or defeat the Taliban. America spends $700 billion per year to tell women that they are just as good at being soldiers and sailors as men are. It spends $700 billion per year to affirm, against all external evidence, that “diversity is our strength.” It spends $700 billion a year to prop up the balance sheets of defense contractors and provide de facto welfare to the lower middle class. It spends $700 billion a year in order to give transgender soldiers free sex changes. Slashing the DOD budget in half might be the most appropriate approach to “welfare reform.”

After all, the American armed forces are now just a woke welfare department with drones.


The Report of Meghan Markle “Preparing a Bid To Become President” is BURYING THE LEDE


By now several people have reviewed a Daily Mail article based around a premise, a media hook, that Meghan Markle might be “preparing a bid to become president” and that’s why she did the Oprah Winfrey interview.   If you focused on that media hook, you likely missed the lede.

Media stories often contain the fingerprints of motive, a slight truth hidden in a background of obfuscation, and you can find the leftist activity if you know what to look for.  The buried lede in the story is this short segment:

[…] “One senior Labour figure – a veteran of Tony Blair’s Downing Street administration with strong links to Washington – claimed to The Mail on Sunday that Ms Markle, 39, was networking among senior Democrats“… (read more)

There it is: “networking among senior Democrats.”  That’s the data point to focus on.

That’s the part of the story that tells us exactly what was going on in that Oprah interview; and it is exactly what we suspected it was HERE and HERE.

Of course she was “networking” with “senior Democrats”, specifically she was networking with Obama’s Chicago crew; and that leads to Oprah, Obama’s biggest narrative engineer.

The Markle interview was purposefully orchestrated, racism claims intentionally injected, recorded, and then timed to be released/broadcast the day before the trial against Derek Chauvin while the George Floyd protestors were activated.  This is how the Obama crew operate.  This is how the leftists work.  None of this is accidental and that statement by the “senior Labour figure” is 100% correct…. except for the cover story to hide the motive.

As we shared last week:

“People who have watched the way the Obama team use pop culture to advance Marxist political objectives have already seen through the ruse of the Meghan Markle comments with Oprah Winfrey. It was not accidental the interview comments about racism were organized, timed and released to coincide with the George Floyd trial in Minnesota. It’s how the cultural Marxists work.

If any group of people can see through to the orchestration of this, it is you, the CTH community. We have researched the Obama use of racism as a political tool for years; that technique includes using media figures like Oprah. The Chicago fingerprints of the familiar architects are clear as day on this ridiculous story.”

“Considering the Oprah angle; and considering Oprah is one of the primary conduits, advance agents and protectors of all things related to President Obama; it would not be surprising to discover that Obama’s team of Chicago provocateurs are in the close-background of the Markle network. Useful division based on advancement of racist accusations is a classic Maoist approach to achieve modern Marxist outcomes.”

Well, there you have it. Today we discover that prior to the interview: “Ms Markle, 39, was networking among senior Democrats.

Any questions?



Our National Destruction Is a Failure of Boundaries

 

Article by Chuck Mawhinney in The American Thinker
 

Our National Destruction Is a Failure of Boundaries

We have all been circling around the genesis of our society's ills since the COVID epidemic struck and the riots and peaceful protests began.  It is not ironic that everything happened seemingly at once; rather, once the wound appeared, it became inflamed and infected almost immediately.

On the most fundamental level, we are suffering from a complete disrespect for boundaries.  The idea of boundaries is fairly simple, yet its roots grow deep, indeed to the core of humanity.  One of my favorite books describes the entire book of Genesis from the Bible as an ironic story about boundaries (The Book of J, Harold Bloom & David Rosenberg).

Genesis describes the boundaries of the land of Canaan, but it also explains the boundaries between neighbors, between enemies, between men and women, between tribes, and most importantly between God and man, Heaven and Earth.  The boundary between God and man exists even for the atheist because his faith is rooted not in a divine being, but in something else.  Whatever it is that he believes in matters not.  Science, anti-science, political ideology — something gives him sustenance, and between him and that ideal, there lies a boundary.  It may only be his own misery he has faith in.  That is enough to create a boundary.

A crude explanation for the need of religion is that dogma explains boundaries to us in no uncertain terms.  You can believe wholeheartedly in the right for women to have control over their own bodies, but you cannot say that by killing an innocent living human being, you have not crossed a boundary.  So the argument is not whether the boundary exists or not, but do you respect it?   I can think of no prose where a more fitting word has been chosen than in "forgive those who trespass against us."  Trespass.  The fact that this word was chosen informs you that its author was keenly aware of boundaries.

How we deal with boundaries is called "morality."  You do not need to be religious in order to adopt a code of behavior and respect for a moral view of the world.  You only need to see why morality is needed.  As Jordan Peterson observes, even within packs and herds of animals, there is an instinctive morality that is observed lest the pack turn on the outlaw.  Mankind boasts a most sophisticated moral view whose subtitles and gray areas have been adjudicated, been debated, and even led to war.

Our founding fathers understood the reality and the need for boundaries.  They were tasked to create political limits among the branches of government and also to define the boundary between government and society.  They could not make their population moral.  But they could and did apply a moral code to their definitions.  Those things that protect the individual from the State were called "The Bill of Rights."  These rights derive from a commonsense notion that man is not the creator, but the created.  Whether you believe solely in evolution or solely in creation or something between the two, humankind did not create humankind.  That's common sense.  There is a boundary between us and the nature of our creation.  We did not create ourselves.

Therefore, the logic goes, there are certain things within the human being that make him sovereign, and those elements are endowed through creation in us.  They are not subject to state authority.  They "belong" to the individual.

Most notably, the human mind is the sole property of the individual, given him by creation.  We did not create our minds or our bodies.  Neither did the government.  This fact should be part of "gender studies" as well as "race relations."  Dialectic reason says that what comes from an individual's mind — i.e., what he thinks — is therefore also a gift of creation.   It cannot be taken or abused or stifled by the government.  We call this "freedom of speech" because what we say reflects what we think.

Freedom of speech becomes freedom of the press.  When we shout down or cancel someone's speech, we are seriously crossing a boundary.  In the old days — say, two years ago — there was always someone to stand up for this right.   "Let him say his piece," we might say to a dissenter.  "Then you can have yours."  Sadly, that is not the case today.  Mob mentality is taking over.

Why do the feds usurp authority from the states, and why do the states demand of the feds, and why do people trespass on someone's right to speak?  Why does the Executive Branch make law when the Congress is constitutionally assigned that responsibility?  Why are so many boundaries being invaded, and why is trespassing no longer a crime?

The answer is obvious.  We no longer respect boundaries.  We have become that tribal human animal before religion awoke us to the necessity of morality.  The whole concept of existentialism rides on the concept of organized and lawful conduct.  Some say "social contract."  Pick your terminology; say it how you like.  The ends are the same.  This society is fracturing at an alarming rate.  Nothing can turn the tide until boundaries are once again recognized and respected.  There is no moral code without them.

There are other more powerful forces at work also.  We call them Google and Facebook and Amazon, a dozen companies seeking to strike down freedom of speech on the altar of their self-righteous narcissism.  They are zealots, worshiping the ideological god of Critical Theory and insisting you repeat their rhetoric lest you, the infidel, be canceled.  They wish to control your thoughts.

This radical religion is devoid of wisdom from its founding presupposition.   Critical Theory should deconstruct (their favorite word) its own thinking!  Just as the ego of a narcissist knows no bounds (by definition), Critical Theory does not acknowledge the universal fact that boundaries exist.  Move over, Google — you're crowding me!  Why they wish to control your thoughts and opinions is anyone's guess.  (Power, maybe?)  How they are doing it is by algorithms, keywords, and the beginnings of artificial intelligence.  What they are doing is crushing our right to hold thoughts that do not confirm to their dogma.

Anti-trust laws were put in place for this reason.  Monopolies by their nature invade the boundaries of other businesses trying to survive.  They can manipulate markets and apply irresistible pressure on groups and individuals.  It's always the zealots who will not permit debate or dissension.

If we are to open our national borders and forgo immigration laws, we will no longer be a country.  If we no longer protect the citizenry from criminals by arresting them and prosecuting them, there will be no justice, no peace whatsoever.  If we allow Big Tech to censor the digital world, there will be no intelligent debate or truth-seeking.  Without truth-seeking, we have no education, no possible way forward.  At that point, can we really call ourselves "civilized human beings"?






Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage


Pentagon's woke sex engineers are wrecking the military with Biden's blessing

Article by Robert L. Maginnis (U.S. Army, Retired) in 
The American Thinker

Pentagon's woke sex engineers are wrecking the military with Biden's blessing

In less than two months in office, President Biden proved he is guilty of rank malfeasance when it comes to the nation's security, and several of his civilian and military advisors totally refuse to listen to critics such as Fox News reporters who just may have our collective best interest in mind.

On Tuesday, Fox News's Tucker Carlson reported on the Pentagon's woke catering to pregnant service members' desire for more fashionable uniforms and stylish hair.  The report was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but Carlson's broader point was dismissed by the Pentagon's chief spokesman, who said, "What we absolutely won't do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military. ... We know we're the greatest military in the world today, and even for all the things we need to improve, we know exactly why that's so."

I'm not sure how much of this statement is spin or arrogance.  However, it is disturbing that Pentagon spokesman John Kirby so quickly dismissed Carlson's comments because there are serious points to be made.  For a long time, the politically woke crowd that often occupies the Pentagon's E-Ring refused to listen to contrary advice about social experimenting with our fighting force, yet Mr. Kirby boasts, "we know exactly why that's so."

Mr. Kirby continued that Carlson "demeaned the entire U.S. military, and how we defend and how we serve this country."  Really?  No, the Fox News report called into question the silliness of Pentagon priorities and not the dedication of our troops.

Our military abilities are fading, and it's because we dismiss criticism like that on Carlson's show.  That reminds me of something former five-star General Douglas MacArthur said: "I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."

The "insidious forces working from within" are the military brass like Mr. Kirby, who kept quiet over the past two decades as the left imposed a readiness-busting social agenda on our armed forces.  President Bill Clinton pushed gays in the military, Barack Obama removed all combat exemptions for women (even ground infantry combat), and now Mr. Biden insists that our armed forces needs transgenders and non-warrior-experienced females running combatant commands.  The rationale for these changes was allegedly equal opportunity and diversity, which totally ignores the realities of the battlefield and the purpose of our armed forces: to defend this nation by being ever ready to kill the enemy, free of politically motivated and socially engineered distractions.

Unfortunately, none of these leftist personnel changes earned true constitutional oversight hearings from Congress.  Rather, our political "leaders" caved to faux allegations of bigotry and leftist intimidation.  The fact is that when it comes to ideology versus readiness, even at the Pentagon and in the halls of Congress, the latter always takes a knee.

Further, it's a sad fact that the American armed forces, which Mr. Kirby labels the "greatest," will certainly be tested, and likely within the next decade or so, by a military not encumbered by such stupidity.

Mr. Kirby says he won't take advice about personnel matters from news reporters like Carlson or the communist Chinese.  Would you "take advice" from the Pentagon's 2020 report on the People's Liberation Army?  That report soberly indicates that China is ahead of the United States in key combat areas and showing no sign of slowing.  Soberly, ever since Mao Zedong ruled China, the communists made no secret of their intent to destroy America.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is doing everything it can to weaken our national security, and that goes beyond the left's rancid social re-engineering of our ranks.

President Biden is turning our national security on its head and making us far more vulnerable.  Earlier this month, Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden's national security adviser, published an interim national security strategy that lists the administration's top national security issues.  Unlike President Donald Trump's 2017 strategy, which focused like a laser on Communist China, Biden's guidance focuses on racial justice, climate emergency, rising nationalism, and receding democracy.

The last of Biden's seven national security priorities is China and Russia.  They don't even make the "biggest threats" list.  The president wrote: "I direct departments and agencies to align their actions with this guidance[.]"  That means we prioritize what the Pentagon report labels as an existential threat behind climate change.  Then it gets worse.

Even though Mr. Biden's interim strategy promises to protect "the security of the American people" by fighting infectious disease and disinformation, it totally dismisses the importance of walls and borders, a back-hand at the Trump administration's success at securing our border with Mexico.  This "guidance" comes just as the Biden administration lies about our southern border immigration crisis and as COVID-positive illegal aliens flood into the country aided by our tax dollars.  Worse, there are likely many foreign characters among these invaders who plan to cause us harm and will quickly blend into the countryside.

Our national security is becoming threadbare thanks to Mr. Biden, and so are our armed forces, which stand between our population and a world ready to destroy this nation.  Yet President Biden, his cabal of sycophant politicos in Congress, and others within his radicalized administration, along with a long list of present and former bobble-headed military brass, continue to march against science and history, trying to ruin the world's "greatest military" and our national security. 

Speculation is increasing as to Biden's longevity as president being somewhere significantly less than his four-year term.  Under a President Kamala Harris, we should expect our situation to be further degraded even to the danger point.

Sometimes even Fox News hosts have good ideas that look beyond ideology, Mr. Kirby.  They too are Americans, and in the best interest of our national security, let's not be so dismissive and blinded by our own ideological lenses.  We cannot afford to be distracted from the truth even if it is wrapped in sarcasm.

 





Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage


“A Formula for Tyranny and More Racism”

Attempts to equalize group outcomes are a 
contradictory and self-defeating exercise.



Editor’s note: the following is adapted from Glenn C. Loury’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee on March 4, 2021.

Thank you for this opportunity. In speaking about black American disadvantage and its implications for American democracy, I draw on many years of study as economic theorist and public intellectual.

My testimony rests on two observations—about the dynamics of human development and the foundations of racial identity. I will conclude by expressing reservations about government pursuing a program to equalize group outcomes—rather than a program to provide equality of opportunity for all.

First, two statements of principle:

(a) Persistent black disadvantage is an American tragedy—a national, not merely communal, disgrace.

(b) Wherever inequality is a problem, we should address it forthrightly. But we should do so on behalf of a program of human decency, not of racial equity.

For many, these principles will seem to be in conflict. In actual fact, they complement one another.

Now, my two observations:

Concerning human development, my studies have taught me that human growth occurs inside of social institutions. The family, community, school, peer group—such cultural institutions of human association are where development is achieved. Studying informal social relations among individuals can be more important for understanding inequality than examining formal economic transactions between them.

Concerning racial identity, I have learned that “race” is not given in nature. Rather, it is something we are making and remaking—all of us. That is, there would be no “races” in the long run for any society unless, on a daily basis and in regard to their most intimate affairs, people pay assiduous attention to the boundaries separating themselves from racially distinct others. I have also learned that this “race-making” relates closely to how developmental resources are allocated among individuals in our society.

These connections I have identified between “race” and human development lead me to conclude that durable racial inequality is, ultimately, a cultural phenomenon. It implicates not simply the transfer of financial resources but, more fundamentally, the decisions we make daily about with whom to associate and identify. These are conceptions about identity embraced by people of all races. What I called “social capital” when I introduced that term in my doctoral thesis more than four decades ago is, on this view, a critical prerequisite for creating what economists refer to as “human capital.” In turn, human capital—the experiences, skills, training, education, and acquired social aptitudes that constitute and reflect a person’s human development—determines that individual’s earnings power and, as a result, his ability to generate and accumulate wealth.

Persistent racial inequality occurs when the social fact of racial identity limits access to developmental resources and the acquisition of human capital. Financial disparities, like the much-touted racial wealth gap, are to be expected under such circumstances. The remedy here should be to focus on development for all of our people, which means focusing on their behaviors that determine their acquisition of skills.

Here I would sound a cautionary note: while we cannot ignore the behavioral roots of racial disparity, we should discuss and react to them as if we were talking about our own children, neighbors, and friends. We Americans are all in this together.

Persisting racial disparities deserve our attention not via racially preferential public policy, but rather by emphasizing through law and action that we all share a common citizenship and a common humanity. We should be fashioning American solutions to American problems and, ultimately, getting beyond “race” altogether when deciding on public action. As Dr. Martin Luther King envisioned, our civic discourse should be grounded in an unwavering commitment to trans-racial humanism. That will sound like a pipedream in today’s racially supercharged environment. But in light of what I have come to know about human development and racial identity, it is the only way forward. Indeed, there is a fatal contradiction at the heart of the argument for group equality of outcomes. Put differently, identity-group-based egalitarianism is an incoherent social-justice program.

Here is my final conclusion, after many years of studying this issue: The dogged pursuit of equal results between racial groups across all venues of human endeavor is a formula for tyranny and more racism.

For those who emphasize identity, groups are fundamental building blocks of society. Groups matter—their culture and heritage, the music they listen to, the food they eat, the books they read, the stories they tell their children. All these things matter, and they all vary significantly across groups.

On the other hand, group-egalitarians claim that, absent injustice, we should have equal representation of groups in every human enterprise. But how can that be? If groups matter, some people are going to bounce a basketball 100,000 times a month and other people are going to bounce it 10,000 times a month. If groups matter, their members will not do the same things, believe the same things, think the same things, or act and react in the same ways. Groups have their own integrity, expressing themselves in how they live their lives, raise their children, and spend their time. This will inevitably result in a different presence of groups across various human activities. They will not have similar occupational or professional profiles. They will not be present in the same proportions as members of the National Academy of Sciences, as tenured faculty members, as tech entrepreneurs, hedge-fund managers, small shopkeepers, single parents, or petty criminals.

It follows that respecting groups’ integrity while demanding group equality is simply a contradiction. Attempting to impose equality despite that contradiction will only lead to disappointment, tyranny, and more racism.

Thank you.


Speech Nazis Object to the Word 'Niggling' Because It Sounds Too Much Like...You Know


Article by Rick Moran in PJMedia
 

Speech Nazis Object to the Word 'Niggling' Because It Sounds Too Much Like...You Know

There are some people who wake up every morning, have a cup of coffee, sit down, and do nothing all day long except look for something to be offended by.

How else can you explain Vogue’s Hamish Bowles offended by the use of the word “niggling” in a headline? Yeah, it sounds a lot like the “N” word but the reality is a lot different. Bowles was writing about Fleet Street coverage of the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle Oprah interview and objected to a headline in the Daily Mail from 2017.

Spectator USA:

He chose to focus his ire on one headline in particular: a 2017 front page of the Daily Mail featuring a comment piece by Sarah Vine that read: ‘Yes, they’re joyfully in love. So why do I have a niggling worry about this engagement picture?’

While Bowles admitted that the dictionary definition of ‘niggling’ is merely ‘bothersome or persistent especially in a petty or tiresome way’ he added ‘nevertheless, the word seemed a surprising choice and jumped from the page, as presumably it was intended to.’

Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said: “It’s a bit like claiming that a newspaper is racist because the ink it uses on its pages is black. It’s just silly and absurd.”

We saw this same sort of nonsense two decades ago when a Washington, D.C., politician who worked for then-Mayor Marion Barry said the word “niggardly” during a budget committee hearing. In fact, “niggardly” is a Scandinavian-rooted word that means “miserly” and has no connection to the racist insult.

But hey! It sounded racist. The guy lost his job over the incident until the blowback from free speech activists forced Barry to rehire him.

Do you think that ended the matter? Absolutely not. It seems that the staffer’s intent was questioned, that he used the word deliberately to insult black people. That’s sort of the explanation given by Bowles.

The Internet also expressed their thoughts over the whole fiasco as one user tweeted, “The absurb thing is that the author gave a dictionary definition in his piece. Then made an implication about how it might be interpreted by the reader in complete contradiction. Vogue: ‘Dictionaries lie folks!’ Where are we if journalists can’t take words in their true meaning?” The second user commented, “I have no niggling doubt on this -utter balderdash, with no apologies to balls…”

Ms. Markle is black. Any niggling doubts we might have about using that word in the same sentence as a black person should be laid to rest. It’s another glorious example of being racist and not being aware of it.

Perhaps we should permanently ban the letters “N” “I” and “G” to avoid any misunderstanding about our intent. To those too unwoke to understand, there are still 21 perfectly good letters that can be used.

So stop your bitching and comply.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/13/speech-nazis-object-to-the-word-niggling-because-it-sounds-too-much-like-you-know-n1432288





Don't Forget to Recommend
and Follow us at our

W3P Homepage