Well-argued piece by @Femitheist on why male (as well as female) circumcision violates body & rights of the child.

https://twitter.com/amyalkon/status/833312876903354373

Remember when it was cool for the national security adviser to tell fibs? good times, good times.

But of course nothing matches the audacity of trope by Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice on September 16, 2012. Rice went on several Sunday shows to peddle a story she knew was completely phony, one that was already quickly unraveling even as most in the media and administration tried to keep it intact.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/17/president-obamas-national-security-advisor-deceived-people-media-laughed/#.WKjgimrOa7Y.twitter

Nobody important (Dems, Libs, MSM) cares IRA.

It's all good 'cause they are "right" and whatever works is good, whatever "lies" are caught are okay, and what do you know anyway.

That First Amendment thingy wasn't too important was it.

"Milo Yiannopoulos found a bromance with Bill Maher. Then he met his other guests."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/02/18/maheryiannopoulos/?utm_term=.a040ac5f250f#comments

I do like the top-rated comments. If he's a serious journalist, let him prove it without help. Simon and Schuster doesn't need to give him an advance of a quarter-million dollars for his new book just to prove they're anti-censorship.

More on that book deal:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/milo-yiannopouloss-cynical-book-deal

Lots of food for thought.

> Simon and Schuster doesn't need
> to give him an advance of a
> quarter-million dollars for his
> new book just to prove they're
> anti-censorship.

I presume you're jealous.

You should accept that judgment, because next in line is a hearty supposition that you're an intrusive schoolmarm, eager to tell publishers how much they should pay for this and that, without regard to their own appraisal of market forces.

You won't be happy when some similar busybody from some other sector of our society decides how much your investments are actually about trying to "prove" inappropriate things.

And after that, we'd presume you're a stockholder in S&S... Though, of course, you should have disclosed that when offering your comment, right?

Cologne will further ban all trucks weighing more than 7.5 tons from entering the city center during the carnival. The nearby city of Dusseldorf is also considering a similar ban.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/17/german-cities-ban-trucks-during-carnivals-amid-terror-fears/

IF I were a stockholder in S&S, yes. I'm not.

More on that book deal:

http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/3/14119080/milo-yiannopoulos-book-deal-simon-schuster-dangerous-boycott

Here's where they imply, at least, that publishers are making themselves look pretty anti-intellectual if all they do is chase the moneymakers:

"...The imprints that survived were all built specifically to appeal to conservative readers, but not out of any high-minded ideas about celebrating the great American belief in free speech for all, or out of deep commitment on the part of the publishing CEOs to conservative values. These imprints were established because conservative readers have demonstrated that they can put a book on the best-seller list, and the Big Five houses are in the business of trying to publish bestsellers. These imprints are cogs in a money-making machine.

"And as conservatism evolves in the Age of Trump, these imprints are going to change with it in order to keep churning out books that sell.

"Milo Yiannopoulos is not a run-of-the-mill conservative thinker. His brand is ostensibly a winking, provocative, speaking-truth-to-power punk rock ethos — hence the title of his forthcoming book, Dangerous. But that image only rings true if you think that women, people of color, trans people, and other historically disenfranchised people have too much power over white cis men and need to be put in their place.

"That is what Yiannopoulos believes deeply. And while many more mainstream conservative thinkers would agree with him that liberals have a stranglehold on the culture and bully those who disagree with them, Yiannopoulos’s tactics are extreme even by their standards...

"...Ben Shapiro, a conservative in the more classic mold, cannot stand him. 'If I can’t tell the difference between your ironic tweet and [Ku Klux Klan leader] David Duke’s, that’s your fault,' Shapiro told Bloomberg News. 'He’s not making fun of racism. It’s clown nose on, clown nose off. It’s basic teenage bullshit by someone who is immature.'

"Shapiro is an instructive figure because he is, in many ways, a more conventional mirror to Yiannopoulos. Like Yiannopoulos, Shapiro is published at Threshold Editions, where he wrote a book alleging that the left is strangling free speech — incidentally, the same general topic that Dangerous is slated to cover. He and Yiannopoulos briefly overlapped as writers for the right-wing website Breitbart before Shapiro left — in protest, Bloomberg News says, of its transition from far-right (more traditionally conservative) to alt-right (neo-Nazis). It’s a transition in which Yiannopoulos is considered to have been instrumental...

"...If progressives really want to undermine the increasing visibility of alt-right figures like Yiannopoulos, a blanket boycott of Simon & Schuster is most likely going to be counterproductive. A better response would be supporting progressive writers and writers of color and the imprints that promote them, to amplify voices that are too often undermined and ignored."

Publishers are in business to sell books.

Next question.

Of course, but since the parent publisher is S&S and rather prestigious, you'd think they'd prefer someone with a lot more substance - like maybe Rush Limbaugh, for all I know. (No, I haven't read more than a few short pieces of his.)

M.Y. has been around long enough to prove that he's more about baiting people and getting paid for it than saying anything he actually believes. I.e., an embarrassment not just to other conservatives but to any publisher that takes him on.

> publishers are making themselves
> look pretty anti-intellectual if
> all they do is...

well, Golly... If they "look" so tragically "anti-intellectual," then tenderhearts across the landscape will be crestfallen, and S&S will lose market share, right?

Nightmare for them... If that's "all they do."

But no skin off my nose.

Nor off your own. Right?




Do you or do you not want to police the expression of ideas in the public sphere?



Here's an article about what can happen when you teach your kids to argue thoughtfully.

I'm confused. When was Milo ever a serious journalist? I thought he was always a somewhat comedic provocateur.

Either way you've reported the facts Lenona. If you want to boycott S&S over this no one is going to stop you. But I doubt most of us care.

"you'd think they'd prefer someone with a lot more substance"

But what would their paying customers prefer?

Hmm..

Simon & Schuster also publishes this kind of books:

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Make-Me-Love-You/Johanna-Lindsey/9781501105470

Man sexts underage girls, sends pictures of his Anthony Weiner to them, solicits pussy pix from them, does web searches for how long it takes for a kid to die in the back of a car, and "forgets" his child in the back of a car, whereupon the kid dies.

He is —

— say it with me:

... a "good father."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4233236/Ross-Harris-ex-wife-stands-son-s-death.html

If a helicopter lands upside-down in a tree, no one rushes to establish the pilot's bona fides as a "good pilot." For some reason, though, the act of reproduction carries some genetic immunity to being labeled a "bad parent."

I like pretty young faces.

What the...?

http://www.providr.com/awkward-family-photos-that-are-funny/4/

Just remember Kevin if you chop people up and hide their bits around town like some sort of demonic scavenger hunt all of your neighbors will just say 'He was quiet person who kept to himself.' or 'He was a nice guy who never bothered anyone.' Otherwise they think they have to take responsibility for not stopping you. Especially after you spend the night drunkenly sleeping in your yard with a bloody axe. You get the same thing with evil parents.

Say, Kevin, did you get the helicopter analogy from here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoDt_uxb_E

"Heckler doesn't stand a chance"

By comedian Steve Hofstetter. It's short.

(Or maybe that idea is older than that.)

I posted the video last May.

No, I'm not boycotting S&S - I never buy new books anyway, so it's not an issue. (It's easy enough to get used books - even fairly recent ones - for pennies, care of booksalefinder.com - and so you can avoid supporting Amazon AND put the money into your local community, which I certainly care about.)

What IS an issue is the dumbing-down of society and the people who should be fighting against it and aren't. Even Bill Maher, who doesn't pretend to be a bookworm, has complained about that - especially in colleges. Namely: "...history, religion, economics — all the courses recent college graduates have been allowed to skip so they could study Madonna and Muhammad Ali and vampires and lesbian novels after World War If and porn and how to brew beer. Those are all real college courses, I couldn't have improved on them comedically if I tried."

Also: "Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn’t insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable."

And, in 2003, Yale's Harold Bloom wrote:

"Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining."

So, if the reasons are complex, all the more reason for RICH publishers not to make things worse, IMHO.

"But what would their paying customers prefer?"

Well, you know. You can get a dozen breathless screeds on the amazing life of Katy Perry or Britney Spears, bold and insightful book-length advertisements on the wisdom of Chelsea Clinton...

... and maybe three serious books, total, on George Washington.

You must be forced by a college to buy serious books on any STEM subject, or history.

Magazine subscriptions to Time or People are on sale frequently, but Aviation Week & Space Technology remains little-known.

Thanks, Rad. Exposure definitely counts - and shelf space is clearly limited.

Harold Bloom was saying, in the same op-ed, that kids who read Harry Potter are no better off than kids who don't read at all, since it does not "lead" to books by better authors. I found that pretty outrageous. (He got clobbered for that and vowed never to talk about the series again.) While it IS true that there's no evidence to suggest that HP fans will pick up better books in the long run on their OWN if they're not already in the habit of reading, or even increase the number of books they read, that's not the fault of young people - they need help in learning to ENJOY books that, unlike Rowling's, have depth instead of length. (For example, "Macbeth" is only about 100 pages long.)

So if kids have parents who don't read to them at all, HP may be their only chance of starting a habit of reading for fun - it's not as if they won't hear about the books from at least a few classmates. While their teachers shouldn't have to assign their students to read ANY bestsellers that are somewhat lacking in depth, they can still gently recommend to their HP fans that they read certain better books for fun. (Bloom seems to have little interest or sympathy for those young people who grew up surrounded by ADULTS who don't like to read and who can't be expected to pick up the classics on their own - and yes, such families existed long before TV.)

In the same vein, parents who DO care about reading to kids don't have to read them HP in the first place - the parents just can't be lazy about gently pushing them towards books that actually challenge their brains. (Just because superhero comics are pretty difficult for kids under a certain age doesn't mean they're being challenged in the right direction.) Even kids are smart enough, sometimes, to recognize that a diet of literary candy is not going to make them truly happy or enriched in the long run. But again, teachers (like Bloom) cannot blame young students for not moving on to better books if they don't have any family or friends to push them in that direction - or if the teachers refuse to help them on an individual basis.

More on HP and one dad's disillusionment:

https://www.google.com/#q=%22Harry+Potter+and+the+Death+of+Reading%22

Harold Bloom shutting the hell up about what fiction people are inspired to read is a really good move on his part.

From part 2 of the op-ed by Ron Charles (it says "Ron Charles is a senior editor of The Washington Post's Book World section":

"The schools often don't help, either. As I look back on my dozen years of teaching English, I wish I'd spent less time dragging my students through the classics and more time showing them how to strike out on their own and track down new books they might enjoy. Without some sense of where to look and how to look, is it any wonder that most people who want to read fiction glom onto a few bestsellers that everybody's talking about?"

Note that he didn't say anything about eliminating time spent on the classics - just that students really need help to learn a love of good reading as individuals.

For the record, I enjoyed the first three HP books and the first three movies in particular, much in the same way that I like salted peanuts, but I'm not about to have them as a dinner entrée. (And I'm pretty sure I didn't let any strangers catch me reading them in public.)

Last paragraph:

"According to Amazon, the best-selling book of 2006 was 'Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems,' by Cesar Millan. My favorite was 'The Law of Dreams,' a first novel by a 56-year-old writer named Peter Behrens. It's the story of an orphaned boy who doesn't know why he survived the evil force that killed his parents -- and left him scarred. Set during the Irish potato famine of 1847, it's not a fantasy, and it's not for children, but there are plenty of monsters here, and Behrens writes in a style that's pure magic. As of this writing, it has sold 8,367 copies in the United States. It's enough to make a book critic snap his broom in two."