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P.C.-CULTURE

Worst Side Story Anyone expecting a standard revival of ‘West Side Story’ is in for a surprise. By Terry Teachout

https://www.wsj.com/articles/worst-side-story-11582246801?mod=opinion_reviews_pos1

My sentiments exactly. If the P.C. crowd wants a P.C. musical, let them compose their own music and lyrics and not defile a classic….rsk

Pop quiz, boomers: What’s your favorite musical? If I had to guess, I’d go for “West Side Story.” Not only did the original 1957 production light up the hit parade four times in a row, with “Maria,” “One Hand, One Heart,” “Somewhere” and “Tonight,” but the 1961 film version was a box-office smash that won 10 Oscars and remains to this day a small-screen staple, while regional theater companies all over America continue to stage the show with remunerative regularity. As for Broadway, this fourth revival of “West Side Story” had been in previews since December and is selling out nightly. Nor is anyone buying tickets to see the big names in the cast, because there aren’t any: This is a starless production. No, they’re going to see “West Side Story” because it’s “West Side Story.”

Unfortunately, a suburban mom who goes to Ivo van Hove’s new Broadway revival without knowing anything about Mr. Van Hove’s work in general or this production in particular is in for a very big shock. This is not the “West Side Story” you know and love, and there are some—quite a few, actually—who’ll likely tell you that it’s not “West Side Story” at all. Jerome Robbins’s finger-popping choreography has been scrapped, and the rest of the show is heavily cut (it now runs for an intermission-free hour and 45 minutes, an hour shorter than the 2009 Broadway revival). “I Feel Pretty” and the “Somewhere” ballet are nowhere to be seen in Mr. Van Hove’s production, which takes place not on New York’s Upper West Side in the ’50s but—surprise, surprise—here and now. Oh, yes, there’s no balcony or fire escapes, just a huge empty stage. Instead, the upstage wall of the 1,761-seat Broadway Theatre has been replaced with a proscenium-size projection screen on which are alternately shown scenes of the mean streets of New York and giant live-TV images of the cast in action.

Boys Will Be Girls … and Feminists Will Be Furious By Richard Bernstein

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/02/19/boys_will_be_girls__and_feminists_will_be_furious_122456.html

In January, the august New York Public Library withdrew as host of a forum organized by a self-described radical feminist group called the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF. The irony was palpable: The planned meeting was titled “An Evening With Canceled Women,” since the five speakers from WoLF all claim to have been “deplatformed” – i.e., shouted down by hecklers or kicked off speakers lists – because they questioned claims made by transgender advocates regarding sexuality and identity.

In other words, as some conservative news outlets gleefully reported, the New York Public Library canceled the “canceled women”! Why?

The library had no comment, but it likely feared that it too would become a target of activists who have demonstrated and even threatened violence during other programs sponsored by the group.

“It’s very common for people to say we deserve to die,” Kara Dansky, a board member of WoLF, said in a phone interview.

Actual death threats seem rare, but there are plenty of signs of an angry front opening up in the culture wars. Although religious figures and people on the right have challenged the transgender movement, the conflict with WoLF involves feminist stalwarts of the social justice left who support their fundamental rights but reject the idea that a man can truly become a woman, or vice versa.

Specifically, the ire of trans activists and their supporters has been aroused by some basic positions taken by WoLF and others, namely: 1) that a person’s sex is biologically determined and can’t be changed, even by surgery; and 2) that the pieces of legislation passed or pending in several countries and American states to extend civil rights protections to transgender people, usually called Equality Acts, are wrongheaded and harmful to women and children.

The number of liberals making those arguments publicly is still small. But it is growing. And it has already given rise to a strange reshuffling of the political deck, as some feminists of otherwise impeccable leftist credentials have formed alliances with conservative and evangelical groups that would fervently disagree with them over just about everything else – abortion and gay marriage most conspicuously. In January, the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., hosted a panel called “The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns From the Left,” during which several speakers from WoLF, including two lesbians, explained their point of view to a supportive Heritage audience.

George Washington’s Birthday and the Battle for History Rangers giving tours go off script about the American Revolution. Time to rein in the Park Service. By Michael Pillsbury

https://www.wsj.com/articles/george-washingtons-birthday-and-the-battle-for-history-11581718686?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

George Washington’s birthday is celebrated on Monday, so consider this thought experiment: It is 2026 and Washington and close military advisers like Alexander Hamilton return for a 250th-anniversary ride on the eight decisive battlefields where American independence was won.

At first, they might be pleasantly surprised to see the battlefields still intact. But suppose the visiting heroes lean down from their saddles to listen to the park rangers leading tours in green-and-gray uniforms. Expecting to hear a recounting of battles that formed the republic, they instead hear stories about identity politics and climate change. Hamilton, upon returning to his only home, in New York—a site that attracts thousands of visitors annually—would be taken aback to hear, as I did on a visit, park rangers editorialize that he stashed his wife there so he could carry on with his mistress in his Wall Street home.

This casual, official reinterpretation of history has alarmed many modern historians and Americans, including those like me with relatives who served at Valley Forge. In 2016, a park ranger reportedly telling tourists at Independence Hall in Philadelphia that “the Founders knew that when they left this room, what they had written wouldn’t matter very much” resulted in news articles and calls for her resignation. Rangers, however, aren’t required to stick to any script when interpreting the Revolution. Washington and Hamilton might ride on to privately owned Mount Vernon for a more authentic experience.

Traditionally, great powers trust their military forces with protecting and interpreting the sacred battlefields of their founding fathers. After the Revolutionary War, the U.S. military protected the battlefields, conducted “staff rides” to review decisions and scenarios, and encouraged private donors such as the Ladies of Mount Vernon to restore other historical places tied to Washington.

Science Says There Are Only Two Genders, No Gender ‘Spectrum’ By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/science-says-there-are-only-two-genders-no-gender-spectrum/

In the increasingly brainwashed world we live in, it is incredibly refreshing when experts are willing to speak the politically incorrect truth. In Thursday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, biologists Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton provide extensive commentary on the transgender fad and the notion of gender fluidity. What does the science say?  In short, it says that are only two genders: male and female.

Sadly, such an obvious conclusion can get you branded as a bigot these days

And what about the gender “spectrum” and gender being a social construct? Wright and Hilton completely destroy the basis of these concepts. “If male and female are merely arbitrary groupings, it follows that everyone, regardless of genetics or anatomy should be free to choose to identify as male or female, or to reject sex entirely in favor of a new bespoke ‘gender identity,'” they write. “To characterize this line of reasoning as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution.”

They explain that “In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time.” Humans, just like most animals and plants, have two distinct biological sexes with the corresponding anatomy for reproduction. “No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex ‘spectrum’ or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary.”

According to Wright and Hilton,  denying the “reality of biological sex” in favor of subjective “gender identity” raises “serious human-rights concerns for vulnerable groups including women, homosexuals and children.”

The #MeToo movement ignored a Ninth Circuit judge guilty of terrible misconduct By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/the_metoo_movement_ignored_a_ninth_circuit_judge_guilty_of_terrible_misconduct.html

In December 2017, the #MeToo movement claimed Judge Alex Kozinski, widely recognized as one of the most brilliant judges on the Ninth Circuit. Kozinski was also a libertarian in an activist circuit. Ironically, it now turns out that his close friend, the late Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a judicial activist, was the real sexual harasser.

At the #MeToo movement’s height, around fifteen women claimed that Kozinski, a Romanian-born child of Holocaust survivors, had sexually harassed them. Their charges ranged from his showing female clerks pornography, to using trying to read a hidden label name tag as an excuse to touch the woman’s breast, to kissing both male and female lawyers on the cheeks.

An interesting aspect of Kozinski’s departure was that one of the main people to help push him out was Heidi Bond, who alleged that Kozinski showed her pornography on the office computer, asked inappropriate questions, and was generally abusive to her.

Bond was in the news again in December 2019 because of her alternative career as bestselling romance novelist Courtney Milan. The Romance Writers of America kick Bond out after she used social media to accuse other romance novelists of racism. Bond, who is half Chinese, wrote on Twitter that one novelist’s 1999 work was a “f**king racist mess.”

While conceding that she not read the book, Bond found offensive the way the novel described its Chinese heroine. It was a vicious attack against a book that tried to write with sympathy (whether successfully or not) about a different culture two decades before “cultural appropriation” was a thing. Bond’s role in two attacks from the left, one against a judge and the other against an author, doesn’t mean that her accusations were wrong. Still, her commitment to identity politics is noteworthy.

The real irony is that the truly vile judge on the Ninth Circuit wasn’t Kozinski, it was Judge Stephen Reinhardt, an activist judge and an icon of the left. Although Reinhardt died in 2018, a House Judiciary subcommittee heard testimony on Thursday about Reinhardt’s incredibly abusive, demeaning conduct towards Oliva Warren, a female clerk:

The Dangerous Denial of Sex Transgender ideology harms women, gays—and especially feminine boys and masculine girls. By Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Transgender ideology can take on a comical character, as in a recent American Civil Liberties Union commentary objecting to sales tax on tampons and similar products while pondering: “How can we recognize that barriers to menstrual access are a form of sex discrimination without erasing the lived experiences of trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, as well as women who don’t?”

Yet it’s one thing to claim that a man can “identify” as a woman or vice versa. Increasingly we see a dangerous and antiscientific trend toward the outright denial of biological sex.

“The idea of two sexes is simplistic,” an article in the scientific journal Nature declared in 2015. “Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.” A 2018 Scientific American piece asserted that “biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male.” And an October 2018 New York Times headline promised to explain “Why Sex Is Not Binary.”

The argument is that because some people are intersex—they have developmental conditions resulting in ambiguous sex characteristics—the categories male and female exist on a “spectrum,” and are therefore no more than “social constructs.” If male and female are merely arbitrary groupings, it follows that everyone, regardless of genetics or anatomy should be free to choose to identify as male or female, or to reject sex entirely in favor of a new bespoke “gender identity.”

To characterize this line of reasoning as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution.

Parents Who Refuse ‘Gender-Affirming’ Treatments Castigated as ‘Neglectful’ By Wesley J. Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/parents-who-refuse-gender-affirming-treatments-castigated-as-neglectful/

It’s one thing when adults decide to radically alter their bodies to accord with their identified gender. But when these body-altering interventions are performed on children — blocking normal puberty, mastectomies on 13-year-olds, etc. — that is a different kettle of fish.

“Treating” gender-dysphoric children via body-altering interventions should be deemed unethical because — among other concerns — children can’t decide these things maturely, we don’t know the long-term consequences to their health, we don’t know how such potentially permanent alterations will impact their wellbeing, and some gender-dysphoric children cease identifying as their non-biological sex as they reach adulthood. Alas, much of mainstream medicine supports such interventions, at least when parents consent.

But that isn’t enough for the transgender lobby. Its advocates often treat resistance to their agenda as a moral panic in which all dissent must be crushed, even — perhaps especially — when parents seek to protect their gender-dysphoric children from having their normal body functions interfered with or altered medically.

Furthering the ongoing assault on parental rights in this area, an article just published in the Journal of Medical Ethics advocates treating a parent’s refusal to allow (what proponents call “gender affirming”) medical interventions as an egregious form of “neglect” that warrants calling in the authorities. From, “Medically Assisted Gender Affirmation: When Children and Parents Disagree:”

Prada and the New Fashion Police A legal settlement threatens designers’ artistic expression.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/prada-and-the-new-fashion-police-11581120144?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Move over, Anna Wintour. New York City regulators now have the final say over what constitutes a fashion faux pas. This week the city’s Commission on Human Rights announced a sweeping settlement with Prada over some of its designs, and the terms threaten artistic expression across the industry.

The brouhaha began in December 2018 when Chinyere Ezie, a lawyer at a social-justice nonprofit, discovered Prada’s Pradamalia collection. Prada described its bag charms, figurines and other trinkets as “a new family of mysterious tiny creatures that are one part biological, one part technological, all parts Prada.” Ms. Ezie instead saw “blackface imagery” and “Sambo like imagery,” she wrote in a Facebook post that went viral.

Within days, Prada pulled the merchandise and said it “never had the intention of offending anyone and we abhor all forms of racism and racist imagery.” Ms. Ezie still filed a complaint. In this week’s settlement Prada denies engaging in unlawful discriminatory practices. Yet the agreement gives New York City bureaucrats broad influence over the fashion house’s day-to-day operations, including its creative process, training and hiring.

Prada now must appoint a diversity and inclusion officer who can review all of “Prada’s designs before they are sold, advertised or promoted in any way in the United States.” The diversity cop will ensure that “Prada’s activities, including, without limitation, its production, advertising, and business activities, are conducted in a racially equitable manner.”

Uproar Over Essays Turns MLK’s Dream Inside Out By  Heather Mac Donald 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/uproar-over-essays-turns-mlks-dream-inside-out-11581033256?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
The University of Montana judged contest submissions on content instead of the writers’ race. Big mistake.

The University of Montana asked students, staff and community members to participate in an essay contest on the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. When the school released the results last month, Montana students and race activists across the country accused university officials of racism and disrespect. That’s because all four winners were white. Turns out some would rather the school had honored King by judging entrants on the color of their skin rather than the content of their submissions.

The four contest winners started receiving threats, and the African-American studies program, which had sponsored the contest, removed their photos and essays from its website. A central fact—no black students had even submitted an essay—failed to defuse the racism charge.

Critics blasted “shameful” university officials for holding a contest at all. A lecturer on the college race circuit admonished the university for thinking that “there is a universality around writing an essay,” when in reality blacks express themselves “completely different.” One black student sniffed that participating would have been a “sellout/compromise.” “Having grown up in all white spaces,” he posted on Facebook, “I often avoided events such as this because I knew the purpose was a performative gesture from the administration.” How the student determines when events are not “performative gestures” was left unspecified.

The African-American studies program was denounced for not canceling the competition when the organizers realized the skin color of the six entrants. “I cannot understand how anyone would think remembering the legacy of MLK Jr. is achieved by giving four white girls a shout out,” wrote a critic. “Do not center Whiteness on the day we are supposed to remember MLK Jr.’s legacy.”

‘Sesame Street’ To Feature Cross-Dressing Gay Entertainer For Impressionable Preschoolers

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/06/sesame-street-to-feature-cross-dressing-gay-entertainer-for-impressionable-preschoolers/

Watching a cross-dressing gay man interact with their favorite TV characters is sure to affect impressionable young minds.

The popular TV program “Sesame Street” will soon feature Billy Porter, a cross-dressing homosexual entertainer. According to the Huffington Post. “Billy Porter dusted off his now-iconic velvet tuxedo dress for a forthcoming appearance on ‘Sesame Street.’”

Yes, that fun and often educational children’s TV series that taught you the letters of the alphabet decades ago is now preparing to teach your kids or grandkids that men dressing like women and having intimate relationships with other men is as normal as learning the alphabet —and how to form those alphabet letters into real words, like gay and transgender.

“Children are sponges. They soak up everything they are exposed to. For instance, if a child is exposed from birth to three different languages, he will become fluent in all three in what appears to be an effortless fashion,” says the American College of Pediatricians.

Young children learn through imitation. According to Parents magazine, “By 15 months, most toddlers have developed the motor and cognitive skills necessary to carry out the action to be imitated. Children this age are usually mobile and have some hand-eye coordination. What drives toddler imitation? In part, it’s the instant connection that mimicry creates between parent and child.”