Spectator Life

A big part of the social contract for a modern society is an agreement that citizens will grant the state a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence in exchange for that state protecting its subjects, including from mobs within the state and other illegal behavior. The expectation is that the rules will be enforced fairly and equally, or the contract loses legitimacy.  The United States has a First Amendment that protects speech to a level that doesn’t exist in other countries, including speech that is openly supportive of terrorism and mass murder. In this regard, the groups organizing campus protests are putting on a fine civics lesson for everyday Americans exhibited by the main groups behind many of the current college protests we are witnessing.

Cockburn wasn’t sure how he would occupy his time after the season finale of The Bachelor aired last month. As it turns out, following daily updates from the pro-Palestinian encampment on the University of California, Los Angeles campus is better than anything on TV. The latest scene — banana warfare —is particularly absurd. The encampment, which began on April 25 with 100 students, has swelled to over 400 protesters. Organized by UC Divest, the activists are demanding that the university system divest from companies associated with the Israeli military, cut ties with Los Angeles Police Department and academically boycott Israeli universities.

During his 2022 Senate campaign, former NFL running back Herschel Walker said he graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in criminal justice. Like many things said during the campaign, however, this turned out not to be true: Walker had dropped out his junior year to pursue professional football. But now the NFL star is back in class.  Walker first registered for summer classes at UGA last year after losing his Senate race, and according to a recent post on #redcupgeorgia, he’s still hitting the books. A picture from the account shows the sixty-two-year old Senate hopeful turned student sitting in a classroom surrounded by his much younger peers.  https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1782512683742310550?

New York I’m on Columbia’s campus today. Sorry, I mean, “The People’s University for Palestine.” I graduated from the university in May 2020. My alumni ID allows me access. A couple of days ago, student protesters started occupying the South Lawn, in front of Butler Library. The police force was called in. Some arrests were made. The police were able to clear the eastern half of the lawn, but the western half remains occupied. Students have pitched tents. Hand-painted signs hang from clotheslines that stretch around the lawn. “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine.” “Free All Palestinian Prisoners. Ceasefire Now.” “While You Read Gaza Bleeds.” “Admitted Students Enroll in Revolution.” Palestine flags and keffiyehs are everywhere.

I live outside Pittsburgh, home to fans who bleed the black and gold of the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates (OK, well maybe not the Pirates, who have been mired in mediocrity for most of the twenty-first century). Surprisingly, though, I’ve discovered the most joy as a sports fan bringing my six-year-old son, Bates, to watch the minor league Wheeling Nailers hockey team play in the barebones, nearly fifty-year-old Wesbanco Arena.  I came late to hockey, having played baseball through two years of college. It wasn’t until my early-thirties that — living in Washington, DC and fueled by the hockey mania that gripped the nation’s capital in the early days of the Alex Ovechkin era — I learned to skate and eventually graduated to beer leagues.

Undoubtedly the best moment in the testimony of Minouche Shafik, the President Columbia University, before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last week was elicited by Representative Jim Banks. Why, he wanted to know, was the word “folks” spelled “folx” throughout an official guidebook for the School of Social Work? Shafik coyly suggested that perhaps the authors did not know how to spell, which might well be the case. But you cannot watch her squirming response without feeling the hot, sticky, and slightly nauseating air of disingenuousness wash over the proceeding.  “Folx,” as Shafik must be aware, is just the latest instance of weaponized orthography disseminated by the academic left. Think “Latinx” and you are on the right track.

President Joe Biden’s latest reelection campaign ad, Willow’s Box, highlights the story of Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman whose traumatic pregnancy loss made national news after her hospital neglected to give her the emergency care she needed, resulting in her needing two stays in the intensive care unit. Certainly, Ms. Zurawski’s ordeal presents a harsh reminder of our healthcare system’s serious faults. However, Biden’s ad twists this story to promote a pro-abortion agenda at the expense of important medical and legal facts. In this ad, written commentary appears between video shots of Ms. Zurawski and her husband tearfully displaying the contents of a box of items they bought for their pre-born daughter, Willow. In 2022, Willow tragically passed away when Ms.

“I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda,” said hapless University of California Berkeley Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Last week, Chemerinsky and his wife, Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk, were humiliated at a home dinner they hosted for third-year law students when Malak Afaneh, a Palestinian-American student who is co-president of the Berkeley chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine, produced a microphone she had brought with her and launched into a speech protesting the dinner and, apparently, her host.

I’ll fight you to the death on this one: Colorado’s dining scene is hotter than a habanero.  A land-locked state within spitting distance of the culinary vacuum that is the Midwest (sorry, Chicago) might not spring to mind for its food scene. But nods from the Michelin guide prove the Mile High City and wider Colorado have a story to tell, minted in September 2023. I hopped in the Subaru and sampled a smattering of them, from Denver’s farm-to-table outposts, to whimsical epicurean adventures in Aspen, via stylish Italian brunches in Boulder. Denver Glo Noodle House 4450 W 38th Ave, Denver, CO 80212 As a tourist, you’ve got to hit Denver Biscuit Company for brunch, once.

Brexit, the gift that keeps on giving: from June 14, 2024 to January 2025, a reduced Eurostar service will run between London and Amsterdam. Why? Part-closure of Amsterdam Centraal leaves no space for the extra bureaucracy now necessary. Passengers returning to London will change at Brussels to go through security and passport checks, adding up to almost two hours of extra journey time. Global travel booking platforms such as OMIO have reported a surge in train travel in recent years. Cheaper prices (compared to flying) and environmental concerns are cited as the main drivers. But Eurostar’s capped passenger numbers and indirect routes will surely increase air travel in 2024, literally flying in the face of Dutch sustainability policies.

Nike — named after the Greek goddess of victory — is seemingly too scared to be associated with US armed forces; or more aptly, too frightened to offend someone. Their famous Military Blue sneakers have been renamed: as the “Industrial Blue” Jordan 4. I was watching Nike’s “Jordan Retro Preview” event on the Nike Sneakers app, tempting my urge to buy yet more sneakers (at more than sixty pairs, I desperately need some more). In most ways, it was like every other Sneakers Live stream. There was good releases (the Jordan 1 “Artisanal Red”), some very bad ones (dear God, the green Jordan 1s) and many, many, many more that I expect to see on clearance shelves across America.

Imagine a movement of alcoholics wanting to glorify alcoholism. They’ll claim alcoholism is normal, even healthy. They’ll charge anyone who says otherwise as infected by a societally instilled form of methyphobia, the abject fear of alcohol. The movement will be sponsored by the alcohol industry, eager to gin up sales with the advent of “alcoholic positivity” promoting their addictive beverages. There will even be conferences around the country featuring activist alcoholics selling alcoholism as beautiful. The same movement is happening today with food.  TLC’s My 600-Lb Life returns with season twelve on Wednesday. Each episode offers a painful illustration of the consequences of extreme food addiction glorified today by activists for “body positivity.

After twenty-five years battling her weight before a studio audience, Oprah has finally dropped those pesky forty pounds... with the help of weight-loss drugs. Now the media mogul has dropped WeightWatchers too.  Earlier this week, Oprah announced that she would be leaving the company after nearly a decade on its board of directors and starring in commercials.   “I look forward to continuing to advise and collaborate with WeightWatchers and CEO Sima Sistani in elevating the conversation around recognizing obesity as a chronic condition, working to reduce stigma and advocating for health equity,” said Oprah, who apparently no longer needs the weight-loss program.