8:40 pm in downtown Cleveland

 Need a Tea Party smile?

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Crazy Times Edition from Bookworm

BookwormRoom runs a weekly illustrated gallery of photographs and memes.  Over the weekend, she ran "The Crazy Times" edition, and here are two she posted:

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Sports Illustrated goes “woke”

 

Eric Utter published a piece about Sports Illustrated over the weekend at American Thinker.  I am not much of a sports fan, but his opening paragraphs offer a good summary of the cultural decline in America.  And his article is a good follow-up to my blog yesterday on the future of arts communities – if there is a future.  Mr. Utter begins:

The Left ruins everything. Television. Movies. Economies. Cities. Lives. Religion. Comedy. Sports. Everything. Literally everything.

It does so in many insidious ways. It divides us with multiculturalism and critical race theory. It makes some groups bitter, envious, and indolent by telling them they are victims of other groups’ bigotry…and that there is nothing any of the groups can do about it. It revises history, changes language, and restricts speech, all in an effort to restrict thought. It brandishes “wokeism” as a weapon and “cancels” those it dislikes. All of this has led to a more ignorant—and less fun—America.

The left has recently rendered sports less a form of entertainment that can bring all of us together and more of a vehicle to lecture and hector fans, in an attempt to hammer them into strict conformity of thought. We have all seen this with anthem protests, BLM messages, boycotts, etc., etc.

And now, even a once nearly-revered sports publication, Sports Illustrated, has completely given in to the mendacious minority mob that demands all things be seen exclusively through the prism of race/class/gender/politics. Sports Illustrated, like nearly all mainstream media, has leaned left for many years but has just recently completely abandoned all balance and objectivity in an apparently desperate—if puzzling­—attempt at virtue-signaling.

. . .

Mr. Utter then goes into specifics based on the latest issue.  Read the rest of Mr. Utter’s piece here.

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The future belongs to those who show up

 

Mark Steyn has been on record for years pointing to demographics and birth rates as the primary issue facing civilization.  In his column today, he revisits the issue, quoting liberally from his 2006 book America Alone.  Mr. Steyn begins:

Happy Whit Monday to my Commonwealth cousins throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific, and to our readers in much of Continental Europe. And of course to my fellow Canadians a happy if locked down Victoria Day. Enjoy it while you can.

Front page news from yesterday's New York Times:

World Is Facing First Long Slide in Its Population

Me in my international bestseller fifteen years ago:

The single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged... These countries – or, more precisely, these people – are going out of business.

The Times front page yesterday:

All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.

Me in 2006:

The salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history... This isn't a projection: It's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: By 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noël Coward remarked in another context, 'Funiculì, funiculà, funic yourself.'

The Times yesterday:

Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.

Me fifteen years ago:

[In Japan] the shortage of children has led to a shortage of obstetricians...

[China's] population will get old before it's got rich...

The 'experts' of the western world are slower to turn around than an ocean liner, and in Europe they were still yakking about the 'population explosion' even as their 1970s schoolhouses, built in anticipation of traditional Catholic birthrates, were emptying through the Nineties and Oughts...

One can talk airily about being flushed down the toilet of history, but even that's easier said than done. In eastern Germany, rural communities are dying, and one consequence is that village sewer systems are having a tough time adjusting to the lack of use. Populations have fallen so dramatically there are too few people flushing to keep the flow of waste moving...

The Times yesterday:

The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older...

Me a decade-and-a-half ago:

Speaking for myself... I'd rather date Debbie Reynolds than Angelina Jolie. But even to put it in those terms is to become aware of how our assumptions about a society's health – about its innovative and creative energies - are based on its youthfulness. Picture the difference between a small northern mill town where the mill's closed down and the young people have moved away and a growing community in the Sun Belt. Which has the bigger range of stores and restaurants, more work opportunities, better school choice? Which problem would you rather have - managing growth or managing decline..?

In theory, those countries will find their population halving every thirty-five years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there's no point sticking around a country that's turned into an undertaker's waiting room. Not every pimply burger flipper wants to support entire old folks' homes single-handed...

Everything The New York Times finally got around to yesterday, I said in 2006. My book was an international bestseller, including on the Times' own Top Ten list. Yet it did not bother reviewing America Alone. . .

Read the rest here.

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What will happen to Ohio's cultural icons?

 

In the ancient days of my youth, I spent many years in the performing arts business.  Cleveland area theaters and other performing venues have been closed for over a year.

When the lockdowns and masks were rammed down our throats, I immediately wondered how the arts communities would survive.  Theater companies, opera companies, orchestras, etc., and non-profit operations such as Playhouse Square always have fund-raising challenges;  they depend on the goodwill and contributions of boards of trustees, and they are always flirting with deficits.  So I was concerned after the lockdowns that one of the principal sources of cultural product for, say, Playhouse Square, was the Broadway theater, and the Broadway theater was at risk.  

Broadway has always been the sine qua non of legitimate and musical theater, both essentials in our American culture.  So I was distressed but not entirely surprised to read a gloomy piece at American Thinker last week on the prospects for the Broadway stages.  Here’s Alexander Nussbaum on the subject:

Bye-bye Broadway: A grim prognosis for New York’s theaters

New York City Broadway theaters closed on March 12, 2020. The closure was supposed to be for just one month. Fourteen months later, the theaters are still closed. But now Governor Cuomo has announced New York’s theaters are cleared for reopening, starting September 14. No less than 23 plays are scheduled to open between September and November.

Theaters will be allowed to open at “full capacity,” but with “social distancing,” with “capacity limitations are only governed by the ability of people to socially distance by six feet.” Maybe this makes sense to someone who is “woke,” but it does not make sense to me. Theater seats are not exactly six feet apart. In fact, a problem with Broadway’s theaters when they were open was that, when most of the theaters were built, only a tiny percent of the population was over 6 feet tall or over 250 pounds.

Broadway’s 41 theaters range in capacity from 600 to just under 2,000, but more than 30 [theaters] seat more than 1,000. A play has to be at close to 100% audience capacity to be economically viable. Taking out seats would require drastically raising already pre-Wuhan Virus sky high prices. Cuomo has hinted all theater patrons will require proof of vaccination.

I keep hearing how resilient New York City is and that it will be back. But I think New York City is finished forever as a “world” capital; it is Karachi, Pakistan now – the biggest city and commercial, not political, capital of a populous nation.

I’ll believe the Broadway theater will be back and viable when I see it happen. 

Mr. Nussbaum looks at the demographics, the economics including the costs of a night out on the town, household income stats, and especially tourism:

Sixty-five percent of attendees were tourists. The theater thus depends on tourists.

Let’s us add that all together and see how it can not mean anything else but the death of Broadway theater.

How is New York City, with its defunded and demoralized NYPD and rising murder and shooting rate, going to attract tourists? Attacking and killing the few tourists that were still coming, is now in, in this woke BLM city. What is the difference between New York and Mount Everest? Both have no culture, no economy, no restaurants, no police, and are extremely dangerous. But Mount Everest will get tourists.

Whites and the rich have fled the city. With the economy demolished, who is left to afford the Broadway ticket price, which because of fewer seats, will be even higher than the 145 dollars the report quoted? Older people are still afraid to leave the house because of the virus, and many did not survive Cuomo.

Read the full article here. 

Those arts organizations that can survive to re-produce plays, musicals, operas, or music already created might revert to the local community-theater model, no longer dependent on huge grants and contributions from individuals and companies, and no longer committed to union contracts.  Another possible outcome, as we sink further into socialism, will be a dreaded “partnership” between the arts communities and the socialist state.  Under that model, major government and corporate grants may roll in, but at a terrible price:  a professional performance might be great, but it’s more likely to be laced with, or used to advance state propaganda.   

On the other hand, maybe Ohio audiences will tear a page from Texas.  Headline from HotAir:

Two weeks ago 73,000 people watched a fight indoors in Texas.
What's happened with COVID since then?

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Patrick Hampton on Medical Tyranny

 

Whether you decide to get the COVID jab or not, the vaxx-passport - - or some other proof of vaccination, is yet another wedge that tyrants use to divide their subjects (that would be us).  And it’s happening here and now.  Patrick Hampton at Patriot Post adds to the discussion:

With mask mandates lifted in most states, many Americans are enjoying their return to what they believe is normal. But we are also seeing the true faces of those in power who seek to use sensitive medical information — like vaccination status — to oppress others.

Private companies, organizations, and educational institutions announce their plans as people return to the office and classrooms — some requiring proof of full COVID-19 vaccination before walking through their doors. Some businesses plan to even segregate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.

Not getting the “jab” is the new Scarlet Letter. Once worn as a punitive mark to label someone as an adulterer based on the American novel bearing the same name, those who are open about their non-vaccinated status will be forced to exist on the fringes of society.

. . .

It’s not even about science anymore. It’s about control and an allegiance to certain ideas — possibly totalitarianism.

. . .

Read the rest of Mr. Hampton's article here.  Previously posted and related CTP posts are here and here.

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Peter Skurkiss on Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (RINO-Ohio) (with UPDATE)

 

Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker asks whether “anti-Trump RINO Rep. Anthony Gonzalez [can] survive a primary challenge?”  Gonzalez represents Ohio's 16th congressional district, which includes part of Northeast Ohio including Wayne County and parts of Cuyahoga, Medina, Summit, Portage and Stark Counties.  Mr. Skurkiss begins:

You may recall that Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (RINO-Ohio) is one of ten Republican House members who voted to impeach President Trump after he left office on the bogus charge that he had incited the riot in the nation's capital on January 6.  For this, Gonzalez was formally censured in early May by the Ohio Republican Party and asked to resign.

Far from being chastised, Gonzalez continued his vendetta against Trump and by extension MAGA supporters.  He next voted for the Democrat resolution to establish a commission to investigate the January 6 fracas.  Nancy Pelosi, chief proponent of the commission, says the commission will be "independent and bipartisan."  Who in his right mind could believe Pelosi on this?  Was there anything remotely fair or honest in the way Pelosi's House of Representatives held its two Trump impeachment trials? 

In reality, the January 6 commission will function as a red herring designed to advance the Democrat agenda going into the 2022 election.  The commission will be to focus media attention on the false Democrat argument that the events on January 6 constituted an insurrection.  By any objective standard, it did not.  All the ensuing kabuki theatrics will be a replay of the Russian collusion hoax, with the corporate media aggressively pushing the Democrat agenda.  This will be done with the intent to take the spotlight off the mounting failures of the Harris/Biden administration.  And for this, Gonzalez voted "yes."

It is interesting to hear Gonzalez's spurious argument as to why he shouldn't be purged from the Republican Party or primaried.  It's the usual trite blather: we need to be a big tent party; we can't chase voters away; dissent is healthy.  There is some truth in all those sayings, but they miss the point.  Gonzalez conflates his treason to the GOP with legitimate dissent.  Nobody would have thought ill of Benedict Arnold if he had merely disagreed with George Washington on tactics or strategy.  But Arnold went beyond the pale.  He gave aid and comfort to the enemy, just as Anthony Gonzalez has done.  Gonzalez seemingly lacks the wisdom to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln ("a house divide cannot stand") or Jesus (Mark 3:25: "and if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand").

Gonzalez is in survival mode.  He's throwing self-serving excuses around in the hope that some might stick.  Just as likely, he's also auditioning for a lucrative post-political career in the arms of those who first recruited him to come back to Ohio from California to run for office.  Gonzalez is angling to be the poster body purged by the narrow, mean-spirited Republican Party.  His big-money backers will lap that up. 

Skurkiss closes with a comparison to Jane Timken’s candidacy for Portman’s Senate seat in the 2022 election:

As to Gonzalez's vote to impeach President Trump, Timken was initially soft on Gonzalez.  . . .  But now that [Josh] Mandel, a MAGA man, has sharply criticized Timken for supporting Gonzalez, she has abruptly changed her tune.  She now is reported to favor Gonzalez out of office.  Some profile in courage that Timken is.  . . .

Anthony Gonzalez and Jane Timken typify all that is wrong with the established Republican Party.  The sooner they and their ilk are driven from power, the stronger and better the party will be.  To be a big tent party does not require that back-stabbers be tolerated.

That’s most of Mr. Skurkiss’s article, but click here for the entire article.

Update from David M. Drucker at the Washington Examiner:

Republican Max Miller is poised to ride an endorsement from Donald Trump to victory over Rep. Anthony Gonzalez in a GOP primary in Ohio, a contest unfolding as a clear test of the former president’s influence with grassroots conservatives.

Miller, a 32-year-old former Trump White House aide, was endorsed by the former president soon after announcing for the Cleveland-area 16th Congressional District. Trump was intent on getting revenge on Gonzalez, a second-term congressman among the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him in the waning days of his administration for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s swift endorsement of Miller has, so far, kept other Republicans who might want to challenge Gonzalez, 36, out of the race. Party insiders are skeptical that will change, setting up a one-on-one contest between pro-Trump and anti-Trump candidates on track to reveal how much punch the former president has in GOP primaries post-White House.

More here.

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