Unca Darrell

JULY 4, 2020 / Kimball on how to destroy civilization

THE VIOLENCE . . . exploding across the country now has almost nothing to do with the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white policeman. That was merely the catalyst for a process that has deep roots in American culture.

The moral is: ideas matter. For decades now, our colleges and universities (and increasingly our [grade] schools) have been preaching . . .

MAY 18, 2020 / A time capsule: journalists or activists?

Columbia Graduate School of Journalism (CJS) recently asked for my money. Here's the lede of the appeal:

FIFTY YEARS AGO, my classmates and I would have shared one of the proudest moments of our lives -- graduating from Columbia Journalism School. Instead, we'd gone on strike . . .

FEBRUARY 5, 2020 / Why Speaker Nancy Patricia Pelosi's . . .

. . . ripping up her copy of President Trump's state-of-the-union speech is important: It perfectly symbolizes . . .

NOVEMBER 30, 2019 / (Bumped) Donald John Trump is unfit . . .

. . . to be president of the United States. I plan to vote for Donald John Trump for president. The principal reason is  . . .

OCTOBER 10, 2019 / Democrats convert U.S. House of Representatives to . . .

. . . a Star Chamber.

Wikipedia defines the term "in modern usage [as] legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, 'star chambers.' This is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings."

The Wall Street Journal managed to write the following editorial without . . .

OCTOBER 4, 2019 / The left's war against America is not merely . . .

. . . political; it's civilizational.

UNCA D RARELY posts these days. More to come soonish, I hope, on the reason. Meanwhile, there is no better use of your reading time than this essay: Joel Kotkin, "Elites Against Western Civilization," City Journal, October 3, 2019, set out in full below.

July 11, 2018 / NPR plays fun and games with national identity

"Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!" is NPR's equivalent of CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" -- all Trump-bashing, all the time, in pursuit of humor for the progressive set.

Every "Wait Wait!" is horrifying in its own way. One time the host, Peter Sagel, joked that our president, like a child, was writing on the walls of the White House with his own feces. Not that funny, actually, but this sort of thing probably saves big bucks. Who needs writers when fifth-grade boys can supply free poo-poo jokes? 

Against that, a bit from June 30 was a small potato. The "Wait Wait!" gang was yukking it up about how the Supreme Court had, against the wise counsel of the American left, upheld the president's travel ban.

One panelist, Negin Farsad, said to be a comedian, actress, writer, and filmmaker from New York City, saw an opening. She shared her particular and personal reason for faux comedic outrage. 

"Not to brag," she bragged, "I'm from one of the travel-ban countries, Iran," punctuated with what may have been an old Iranian expletive, "Whassup?"

Mr. Sagal recognized Ms. Farsad's special claim to victimhood by condemning the president again for "stigmatizing your country of origin."

"Wait Wait!" fairly glowed with smug self-satisfaction. That Trump! If she hadn't already waded across the Rio Grande, he would have deprived America of Ms. Farsad's person and talents.

What no one on the show bothered to do, however, was . . .

JANUARY 16, 2018 / Andrew Klavan on the scandal . . .

of truth-telling.

NOTHING SCANDALIZES a leftist like telling the truth. Point out that women and men are different, that black Americans . . . 

NOVEMBER 7, 2017 / Unca D gives up on . . .

. . . The Houston Chronicle. 

 

November 7, 2017

The Houston Chronicle
4747 Southwest Freeway
Houston, Texas 77027

Account Number: *******

To The Houston Chronicle:

Please cancel my subscription and refund the balance of my account.

As a graduate of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism (M.S. 1971, Pulitzer Fellow) and a former reporter for The Houston Post, I act with considerable sorrow. I love newspapers. Receiving each morning a plastic bag filled with news, commentary, and other useful and interesting information—well, this has always seemed important, entertaining, even right. Unfolding the newsprint. Breathing in the musty ink. Losing myself in the flow of words and ideas. These pleasurable habits have sustained me for some considerable number of decades.

I am, however, also and foremost a Christian. As such . . .  

OCTOBER 27, 2017 / At the Houston Chronicle . . .

. . . dog bites man is a front-page story; man bites dog goes on page A11.

The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a "dossier" on Donald Trump is bombshell news. 

So writes Kimberley A. Strassel (Potomac Watch: "The Coming Russia Bombshells," October 27, 2017, The Wall Street Journal). 

This bombshell exploded last Tuesday. The Washington Post broke the story. The Chronicle subscribes, and has long subscribed, to the Post's feed. Back in the day, this meant that Woodward's and Bernstein's Watergate bombshells were regularly on the local newspaper's front page.

But that was then.