Trendlist: Althouse

Friday, February 26, 2021

Althouse

At the Lunchtime Café...
"We are deeply disappointed in this decision. We are not going to give up the fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 to help millions of struggling American workers..."
"Should older people with slightly above-normal blood sugar readings — a frequent occurrence since the pancreas produces less insulin in later life — be taking action..."
Willfully and lewdly printing indecent writings.
"As [Christopher] Rufo sees it, critical race theory is a revolutionary program that replaces the Marxist categories of the bourgeois and the proletariat with racial groups..."
"The implication that white people got better, that [George Floyd] served as a martyr for this country."
"His first word was 'crocodile,' three syllables."
At the Sunrise Café...
I got vaccinated.

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 08:01 AM PST

... reflect.

"We are deeply disappointed in this decision. We are not going to give up the fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 to help millions of struggling American workers..."

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 07:14 AM PST

"... and their families. The American people deserve it, and we are committed to making it a reality."

Said Chuck Schumer, quoted in "Biden's minimum wage increase runs afoul of budget rules/The Senate parliamentarian has issued a ruling that could jeopardize the rest of the president's $1.9 trillion Covid relief package" (Politico).

Speaking of reality, do you think he's really disappointed? I imagine he's relieved. He and his party have the benefit of looking as though they tried and the benefit of not having the potentially deleterious policy actually imposed on us.

"Should older people with slightly above-normal blood sugar readings — a frequent occurrence since the pancreas produces less insulin in later life — be taking action..."

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 06:51 AM PST

"... as the American Diabetes Association has urged? Or does labeling people prediabetic merely 'medicalize' a normal part of aging, creating needless anxiety for those already coping with multiple health problems?... Defenders of the emphasis on treating prediabetes, which is said to afflict one-third of the United States population, point out that first-line treatment involves learning healthy behaviors that more Americans should adopt anyway: weight loss, smoking cessation, exercise and healthy eating. 'I've had a number of patients diagnosed with prediabetes, and it's what motivates them to change... They know what they should be doing, but they need something to kick them into gear.' Geriatricians tend to disagree. 'It's unprofessional to mislead people, to motivate them by fear of something that's not actually true.... We're all tired of having things to be afraid of.'"

From "How Meaningful Is Prediabetes for Older Adults?/A new study indicates that the condition might be less of a worry than once believed" (NYT).

Willfully and lewdly printing indecent writings.

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 06:17 AM PST

Screen grab:

"As [Christopher] Rufo sees it, critical race theory is a revolutionary program that replaces the Marxist categories of the bourgeois and the proletariat with racial groups..."

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 05:02 AM PST

"... justifying discrimination against those deemed racial oppressors. His goal, ultimately, is to get the Supreme Court to rule that school and workplace trainings based on the doctrines of critical race theory violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act.... Rufo insists there are no free speech implications to what he's trying to do. 'You have the freedom of speech as an individual, of course, but you don't have the kind of entitlement to perpetuate that speech through public agencies,' he said. This sounds, ironically, a lot like the arguments people on the left make about de-platforming right-wingers. To [Kimberlé] Crenshaw, attempts to ban critical race theory vindicate some of the movement's skepticism about free speech orthodoxy, showing that there were never transcendent principles at play. When people defend offensive speech, she said, they're often really defending 'the substance of what the speech is — because if it was really about free speech, then this censorship, people would be howling to the high heavens.' If it was really about free speech, they should be."

From "The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness/How the right is trying to censor critical race theory" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT).

Here's a good comment over there: "The problem with your argument is that Critical Race Theory is presented at schools and workplace sessions as the TRUTH, not just an (unprovable) social science theory. And it would be very uncomfortable (if not career or social suicide) to question this theory in front of one's bosses and peers."

That makes me think of Justice Jackson's famous line, one of the most important points about freedom of speech: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

The problem is compelled speech. To be compelled to assert belief in what you do not believe is a severe intrusion on individual free speech, and that seems to be what is happening in these workplace training sessions. Is there some way to present the insights of Critical Race Theory as ideas to be understood and weighed against other ideas and debated instead of compelling attendance at events where the ideas are dictated and participants are forced to attest to the dictated beliefs?

"The implication that white people got better, that [George Floyd] served as a martyr for this country."

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 05:09 AM PST

"The martyrdom of Black Americans is very prevalent among particularly white liberals and we see that, I think, in how we celebrate MLK and how a lot of these folks will uphold the whitewashed and martyred idea of Dr. King without actually exploring his radical nature and radical ideology.... [It was] the typical well meaning white liberal kind of paternalistic type of racism... She called to apologize in a way and it just really rang hollow to me. It rang like somebody that, one, didn't reflect on what she said before she heard that I was upset. She also resorted to it as an individual hurt, in saying sorry she hurt me, without an ability to see a wider level and see as what it was, racist behavior, racist mentality. And I kind of started to say that and I'm like, 'You've got a lot of work to do.' And she said, 'I'm trying to do that work. Maybe you could help me.' And I told her that it's not for me, I'm not here to do the work for you. You've got to do it yourself."

Said Matthew Braunginn, one of the "two," in "Two Sustainable Madison Committee members resign over 'God bless George Floyd' remark" (Madison 365).

Braunginn utters a long but important phrase: "the typical well meaning white liberal kind of paternalistic type of racism." Consider how regarding Floyd as a blessed martyr is a kind of racism. Understand why Braunginn was so outraged over this that he quit his alliance with some well-meaning Madison liberals.

"His first word was 'crocodile,' three syllables."

Posted: 26 Feb 2021 03:39 AM PST

Said Prince Harry, quoted in "We didn't step down, we stepped back, Prince Harry tells James Corden on The Late Late Show" (The London Times). Harry was talking about his son Archie.

Am I the only one who recognizes this perfectly silly remark as a Princess Margaret joke? I've blogged this before, from the hilarious book "Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret":

The Princess liked to one-up. I have heard from a variety of people that she would engineer the conversation around to the subject of children's first words, asking each of her fellow guests what their own child's first words had been. Having listened to responses like 'Mama' and 'doggy', she would say, 'My boy's first word was "chandelier".

Three syllables. Chandelier... crocodile... what's the difference? The difference is what the "spare" chose to do with her/his life.

At the Sunrise Café...

Posted: 25 Feb 2021 04:14 PM PST