Politics

Imagine if former governor Andrew Cuomo had been as concerned with the safety of nursing home patients during the pandemic as he was with cranking out his crappy memoir. Perhaps more people would be seeing their grandparents this Thanksgiving. Alas, the Luv Guv had his eyes on a $5.1 million prize and therefore he had to quit, or at least check out of, his day job. Cuomo was not the only governor who mishandled the response to the pandemic — but his fall from grace was definitely the most captivating. After all, the media fawned over Cuomo. The talking heads drooled over his leather bomber jacket, his tough talk, his no nonsense press conferences and his possible nipple ring. Marie Claire dubbed him "America’s boyfriend" while Chelsea Handler wrote him a love letter.

Are the Republicans getting complacent? As you may have noticed, this diary hasn’t exactly been heavy on celebration of the Biden presidency. Indeed, our first few months have coincided with a period of distressing mismanagement in the White House. But in a fit of holiday generosity, today’s pre-Thanksgiving offering is dedicated to a thought experiment: what is the strongest realistic case for being bullish on Joe Biden? After a miserable period for the president, Republican triumph in 2022, and even 2024, is all but taken for granted and question marks loom over whether Biden will even seek a second term. But is everyone getting ahead of themselves? Here’s the case for White House optimism.

The college campus-born elite ideology that has swept through American institutions in recent years has gone by many names, from “identity politics” and “multiculturalism” to “intersectionality” and “cultural Marxism.” The essayist Wesley Yang coined the phrase “successor ideology,” referring to the doctrine’s replacement of traditional left-liberalism as the hegemonic ideology of the American ruling class. “Critical Race Theory” has become a household name alongside a surge in grassroots resistance to cultural radicalism in public schools across the country. But no term of art has taken hold quite like “wokeness.

Kid Rock feels like he emerged from a time capsule left for us in the Nineties, perhaps along with Dunkaroos and the decaying corpses of the Simpsons, who were replaced with inferior clones around the dawn of the millennium. In those heady days of nu-metal, Jackass and the Attitude Era, bored suburbanites and neglected “rednecks” unleashed their frustrations into jubilantly crass and confrontational entertainment that turned the raising of a middle finger into a kind of sacred ritual. Mr. Rock's breakout hit “Bawitdaba” hailed “the topless dancers” and “the...heroes at the methadone clinic,” and scorned “the crooked cops” and “all you bastards at the IRS.” Both he invited to, well, “Bawitdaba da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy.

In his timely new book Woke Racism, Columbia linguistics professor John McWhorter examines the force of an ascendant political religion that to his mind “has betrayed black America.” “White privilege becomes the original sin that requires perpetual atonement,” McWhorter observes. Woke rebukes white America for its passive, unpardonable complicity within a fundamentally racist system. One is cleansed only through self-mortification. According to McWhorter, a multi-racial Elect thinks of itself as a bearer of exclusive wisdom and empathy. Woke positions itself against the white race, men, Christianity, capitalism and private property, heterosexuality — in other words, against people, institutions, belief systems and worldly activities at the nation’s core.

There is something deeply sinister happening in the world of children’s literature. Whereas the children’s section at your local library or bookstore was once filled with fables and fairy tales, it's now filled with titles like The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish and Race Cars: A Children’s Book About White Privilege and How Mommas Love Their Babies featuring wholesome lines like “Some mommas dance all night long in special shoes. It’s hard work!” The illustrations accompanying that page are an outdoor shot of a strip club at night, with glowing neon lights and a woman protesting for fair wages for strippers. This is a recent tweet from the author: https://twitter.com/juniperfitz/status/1458215711805956101?

The fundamental right to self-defense won today. A jury in Kenosha acquitted teenager Kyle Rittenhouse on all counts related to allegations that he murdered rioters who attacked him. The prosecution’s case rested on the insane lie that legally carrying a firearm is an incitement to violence. Rittenhouse, they argued, was akin to an active shooter and thus deserved Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz chasing him, trying to take his rifle, hitting him in the head with a skateboard and pointing a handgun at his head.