RUTHFULLY YOURS

I haven’t read Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, “Born to Run,” but I read Dwight Garner’s review of it (NYTimes 9/21/16) and was incredulous about the following declaration: “Mr. Springsteen’s father was a frequently unemployed bus driver among other blue-collar jobs; his mother a legal secretary. They were fairly poor. In their houses – half-houses, more often – there was generally no telephone and little heat.” Bruce grew up in the 50’s and 60’s in the state of N.J. – not in Yoknapatawpha County in the backwoods of Mississippi. In America during the the 50’s, two thirds of all homes had phones and though air conditioning was not yet common, heating certainly was. I won’t quibble about whether or not these statements are partially true but I will say that a boy whose mother was a legal secretary was not poverty-stricken, so why the desire for that illusion? Does it increase his creds as a man of the people to boast that despite being a member of the 1% now, he came from dirt-poor beginnings?

Wealthy democrats in America are often confused and guilt-ridden about their extreme affluence. Hillary Clinton ranted about being in debt when she and Bill left the White House, a statement that was not only a lie but a telling one reflecting her embarrassment about their net worth. Do politicos believe that wealthy people can’t be seen as empathic towards the need of the poor? How strange, considering the billions of dollars that wealthy people have bestowed upon charities to help the needy not to mention to improve parks, libraries, schools, hospitals,, museums, cultural centers – urban environments that exist for all members of society to use and enjoy.

Once upon a time America was super-proud of those super-rich democrats Jack and Jackie Kennedy whose White House was decorated in a manner befitting lifestyles of the rich and famous. No false modesty or embarrassment in the elegant couture of our fashionable first lady or the family compound on Cape Cod – rich meant cultured, sophisticated, articulate and charming. Today, despite the preponderance of so many billionaire democrats – Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, George Soros, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, Oprah, Kanye and Beyonce, David Geffen – to name but a few – wealth is more commonly associated by the media with the Koch Brothers in a pejorative way that implies Republican influence peddling and nefarious finagling. The NY Times, whose advertisers represent the shops frequented by the 1% and merchandise too expensive to be labeled, uses its editorial and op ed pages to disparage the very audience at which the ads are pitched.

This is what we know as cognitive dissonance and it should make us squirm with its inherent dishonesty. There was a time when lower middle-class people were proud of being productive workers who didn’t consider themselves poor. Many of them were immigrants who came from the old country where poor meant people without enough to eat, without a house to live in, without the opportunity to work and support a family. Coming to America meant coming to a land of opportunity with free education and the chance to work hard and move on up – if not in one generation, certainly in two. Those people would not have exaggerated their poverty – that would have stripped them of their dignity. Today’s mores allow super-rich celebrities and politicians to tout their humble beginnings as proof of how deserving they are of their subsequent fortunes. I’d prefer reading that Bruce Springsteen was proud of his legal secretary working mom and a father who tried to find work wherever he could. I suspect that any family with enough expendable cash to buy their son a guitar probably had enough for a phone and portable heater. Bruce deserves his fame and fortune by virtue of his creditable talent – no need to flaunt his deprivation of a phone which jars us by ringing so untrue.

Students at the California State University–Northridge sat around in a big ball pit (which they a called a “vent tent”) and talked about hurtful words and their feelings as part of a school-sponsored inclusive language campaign.

According to video and documents obtained by Heat Street, the campaign lasted for a week, was put on by the University Student Union (USU), and cost more than $1,000 in student fees. It’s not clear exactly how much of that money was spent on the ball pit rental, or if there is any research supporting the idea that sitting in a ball pit while having a discussion provides any educational and/or therapeutic benefits.

The USU also printed out posters featuring several words and phrases that it deemed offensive and posted them all over campus. Some of the phrases are actually very offensive (“this b****,” “you are such a f**,” and “you stupid w****”) and others are much less harmless (such as “you’re being so crazy”) but in both cases, the posters are pretty useless. As for the less harmless ones, it’s clear that something like “you’re being so crazy” is often used in a lighthearted manner, perhaps to describe someone who is being silly, and therefore doesn’t really deserve a blanket warning against its use in all cases. As for the clearly offensive ones? Well, as Heat Street’s Jillian Melchior points out, “it’s pretty inconceivable that a university would feel the need to teach college students that it’s not nice to say, for instance, ‘you stupid w****,’ ‘this b****,’ or ‘f**.’”

Other features of the campaign included a spinning wheel with offensive words, which students would spin and then discuss whether they found the language offensive, and a board where students could write for themselves which words they considered to be harmful. According to Heat Street, one student apparently wrote “When I hear the word ‘edgy,’ it makes me feel triggered,” but it’s not clear exactly just what in the fresh hell that student was talking about, or what people on campus are going to be expected to do about it. After all, “edgy” is pretty universally seen as a harmless word. Should people on campus be expected to suddenly stop using it because one random person considers it offensive for some random reason? I feel like the answer there is pretty clearly “no.”

Join STK now and save the knish from cultural appropriation….!!!!
A Cornell University football coach has apologized for “cultural insensitivity” for posting a picture of two students wearing sombreros.

The picture, which the coach, Roy Istvan, posted on Tuesday, shows two students wearing the hats and the caption “EMAN & FOSTA! THE BIG SOMBRERO!”

Istvan later deleted the post and apologized in a series of tweets, according to a Cornell student publication called The Tab:

“I award the big hat to team members who represent the best teamwork and winning spirit on and off the field,” Istvan wrote.

“I am truly sorry for the cultural insensitivity and understand how our expression of pride [c]ame at the expense of others in the Cornell community.”

Why was such an apology necessary for a picture of two dudes in hats? It seems to me that that kind of apology doesn’t really match the crime. But according to a report in the Cornell Review, the school’s conservative and libertarian publication, it definitely matched the outrage.

After a picture of the tweet was posted on the Facebook page for MEChA de Cornell, a Chicanx/Chican@ student group, the comments poured in:

For example, this one from Barbara Cruz:

There’s legit like dozens and dozens of designs of hats in this world. I feel like a crown makes more sense. A fancy top hat. Like. Why a sombrero?

Or this one, from James Gan:

The people defending this are the same people who see all Asians as math loving gamers and all blacks as thugs.

(Because somehow your view on a hat says something about your view of two entire races?)

The outrage went far beyond this particular comments section. According a screenshot posted on Facebook, a member of the Student Assembly named Matthew Indimine sent an e-mail calling it an “extremely offensive image” and demanding an apology.

Okay. Call me insensitive, but I do feel like the phrase “extremely offensive image” should be reserved for, you know, extremely offensive images. Like pornography. Or depictions of violence. But two fully clothed dudes in hats? Nope. You may, like Cruz, think that another kind of hat would have been a better choice, but if the issue you have with an image is the style of hat the people in it are wearing — and only the style of hat the people in it are wearing — then you’re probably getting a little more upset than you should be.

I do not usually go out of my way to publicly disagree with National Review editorials, but I respectfully dissent from our piece calling for the impeachment of IRS commissioner John Koskinen.

He shouldn’t be impeached. He should be imprisoned.

When the feds couldn’t make ordinary criminal charges stick to the organized-crime syndicate that turned 1920s Chicago into a free-fire zone, they went after the boss, Al Capone, on tax charges. Under Barack Obama, the weaponized IRS has been transformed into a crime syndicate far worse than anything dreamt of by pinstriped Model-T gangsters — because Al Capone and Meyer Lansky did not have the full force of the federal government behind them.

If you do not know the story — in which case, shame on you — a brief recap: After years of pressure from Democratic grandees including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Senator Chuck Schumer, the IRS began targeting conservative nonprofit groups for various kinds of illegal harassment. Applications for nonprofit status were wrongfully delayed and denied, while investigations into those organizations’ tax statuses were turned into partisan fishing expeditions in order to expedite harassment against donors, volunteers, and political activists. This involved organizations that are under the law explicitly permitted to engage in political activity. Democratic officials at the state level joined in and continue to do so, with California attorney general Kamala Harris demanding donor lists from California-based nonprofits that came into her crosshairs — with no legal justification.

This is a flat-out illegal campaign of criminal harassment and intimidation of political activists involving the criminal misuse of federal resources for illegal partisan political ends.

And what is IRS Commissioner John Koskinen up to? Lying to Congress and overseeing the destruction of evidence.

Every day this crime-enabling, justice-obstructing, lying, craven, tinpot totalitarian walks around in the sunshine is a day we should be ashamed to be Americans.

Oh, but he’s sorry! So, so very sorry.

Koskinen was called before the House on Tuesday to explain a few things. One of those things is: Why is the IRS destroying evidence under subpoena in this case? Another was: Why is the IRS commissioner lying to Congress?

Koskinen is fluent in the mustelid dialect of Washington: “We did not succeed in preserving all of the information requested, and some of my testimony later proved mistaken.” There is a term for failing to “succeed in preserving information requested” during an official investigation: obstruction of justice.