RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/24/swifties-need-to-grow

EXCERPTS

Taylor Swift was in London last week, and it felt like a collective mania had briefly taken hold of the capital.

As Swift’s seemingly never-ending Eras tour was in town, you could hardly move for millennial women wearing cowboy hats and glitter. But it wasn’t just hardcore Swifties who were in the grip of Taylor-mania. Transport for London released a special Swift-themed Tube map to mark her presence, with lines renamed after her albums, stations renamed after her songs and the map’s colours jazzed up with sequins. On Friday, the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace was performed to the tune of Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’. Walls across the city were decked in Taylor Swift murals.

When you think of a ‘Swiftie’, you’re probably imagining a teenage girl – or a thirtysomething professional who thinks she’s a teenage girl. But some of the guests at the London concerts over the weekend were a long way out from even those demographics.

Prince William, the heir apparent to the British throne, posed for a selfie with Swift before attending the concert for his 42nd birthday. Although he did have his two older children, Charlotte and George, in tow, his vigorous, frenetic dancing to ‘Shake it Off’ made it all too clear that he was the biggest Swift superfan of the bunch.

Even Keir Starmer was out among the Swifties. The Labour leader posted a snap of him and his wife, Victoria, at the concert on X, noting that he was making a ‘“Swift” campaign pitstop’, to groans all round.

What is going on here? Why are fully grown, adult politicians fawning over a star who makes pop music for teenagers? Or at least, in any sane era, should be making pop music mainly for teenagers. It surely can’t be down to her underwhelming lyrics. After all, this is the musical genius whose latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, contains such lyrical masterpieces as: ‘We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s but without all the racists’; ‘You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate’; and ‘Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto’.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/braggs-double-standards/

Left-wing progressive Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg decided to drop all charges against thirty-one of the forty-six pro-Hamas agitators who were arrested after breaking into and seizing Hamilton Hall at Columbia University’s campus on April 30th. Fourteen of the remaining agitators still facing charges were offered “Adjournments in Contemplation of Dismissal,” which would have resulted in dismissal of their cases if they did not engage in additional criminal conduct during the next six months. They refused the offer. The fifteenth defendant is James Carlson, a forty-year-old privileged scion of a wealthy family who is considered a “possible leader” of the Columbia University rioters who broke into Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside. He has been charged with criminal trespassing, on top of additional charges for other crimes he allegedly committed.

The thirty-one rioters who invaded Hamilton Hall and got off scot-free were initially charged with trespassing in the third degree, which is a misdemeanor. They would have received no jail time in any event with let-the criminals-go District Attorney Bragg still in office. But even a slap on the wrist for the rioters was too much for Bragg to consider.

One of DA Bragg’s prosecutors cited a lack of evidence as justification for the decision to drop the charges against the thirty-one pro-Hamas rioters. He claimed there was no proof sufficient to tie each specific hooligan who was arrested to illegally taking part in the invasion of Hamilton Hall and in the destruction of property or injury of anyone during the course of the building’s seizure and occupation. The prosecutor blamed the problem in part on the absence of security-camera video, thus rewarding the rioters who had disabled or covered the cameras in the first place while wearing masks to hide their identities.

Judge Kevin McGrath went along with the charade by announcing in court that “All these matters are dismissed and sealed in the interest of justice.”

Judge McGrath has it backwards. Dismissing even the mildest of charges against the pro-Hamas thugs is a gross miscarriage of justice. But what else can we expect from DA Bragg’s office, backed up by cooperative criminal judges?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

Plus-sized beauty queens are another aspect of the war on standards.

Sara Milliken, who has been described as “morbidly obese,” was crowned Miss Alabama 2024 in the National American Miss pageant. The virtue-signaling crowd was ecstatic. “Finally, we have a pageant winner who doesn’t look like Barbie,” they cheered, as if this marked a milestone of tolerance and understanding. Ms. Milliken may have many fine qualities. Getting up from the table isn’t one of them.

Our culture is now dedicated to eradicating standards. 

On June 1, Bailey Anne Kennedy became the first transgender “woman” to win the Miss Maryland USA contest. Why should a contest for women be limited to real women? 

Should academic competitions be open to those with low IQs? What’s wrong with a cooking show including contestants whose idea of fine cuisine is a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli?

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote of “the hatred directed against the privileged in body and spirit: the revolt of the ugly and bungled souls against the beautiful, the proud and the cheerful. The weapons used: contempt of beauty, of pride, of happiness.”