Friday Links - 5 January

Clayton Cramer starts us off with a history lesson from 1774. This is So Weird

If this is not satire, then the Revolution was by this point unavoidable, but why does this Draconian law never appear in history books?

Tam at View from the Porch - Speaking of football...

The last time I really paid much attention to NFL football was the Eighties, when I was in high school.

In 2009 I described the Rip Van Winkle sensation of tuning in to a game.

Legal Insurrection - MIT President Sally Kornbluth Doubling Down on DEI After Gay’s Resignation

She sounds like the socialists who claim socialism will work this time because no one has ever tried True Socialism!

This time, MIT will try True DEI, and it will work

Again from Clayton Cramer - "Once is Happenstance. Twice is Coincidence. Three times is Enemy Action."

Sen. Menendez, the Democrat from Mafialand, has a problem with criminal accusations.

L'Ombre de l'Olivier - Sympathy for Claudine Gay: Limited admittedly, but still present

As eny fule kno, well eny fule who pay attention to the news, fairly recently appointed Harvard President Claudine Gay had a pretty miserable December and an even worse New Year. Her participation in the multiple vehicle car-crash of a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism caused a lot of people to pay attention to her and look for issues. This is especially the case since the poor lady decided that she didn’t want to lose her $1M+/year job by resigning immediately afterwards unlike her fellow car-crash victim from Penn. Of course she has now been resigned and (see below) her resignation statement is a classic of its kind, but her insistence on staying has probably made things worse for her and for the DEI sorts of wokery she championed.

American Thinker - DEI Can Only Exist in a Noncompetitive Environment

The resulting defense of Gay and the dissembling over the precise meaning of “plagiarism” has shown that academic credentials, even for a university president, are of only supplemental importance. The revealed truth of DEI is that what Ms. Gay represents is an order of magnitude more important than what she actually is. Whether she is qualified and can do the job for which she was selected is merely ancillary to her having it. This, of course, can only work for people such as Gay who exist in an environment free from consequence.

Adaptive Curmudgeon - Wear A Helmet: Thoughts About The New Year

Lucky for us it’s the dipshit gathering, not the deadly serious meeting of skilled and cunning immortals we’re told to fear. Our time is the uneasy faffing of stupid clumsy sweaty incoherent dweebs. The losers who got bullied in high school and never scored in college somehow got their hands on the wheel. Having gleefully driven into a ditch they’re stuck in the fucking ditch. They painted themselves into a corner. They ate the seed corn. They burned the bridges. They divided by zero. They made a mess so huge they themselves can’t wish it away. That’s what we’re feeling, the despair of losers who fucked up because they got power they didn’t merit. Their despair is not ours. They don’t know anything else but to double down on fucking up and it’s not working; which is not my fault. Nor is it your fault.