12 NEWS Best columns: The U.S.
APQThe Texas Department of
Public Safety sent out an
Amber Alert advising that
the horror movie doll Chucky
from the Child’s Play series
had kidnapped a 5-year-old
named Glen. The alert stated
the 28-year-old, 16-pound,
3-foot-1-inch tall suspect
was last seen wearing “blue
denim overalls” and “wield-
ing a huge kitchen knife” at
a home at a specific address
in Henderson, Texas. Public
safety officials apologized,
attributing the phony warn-
ing to “a test malfunction.”
A woman who answered the
phone at the listed address
curtly said, “Yes, I’m aware,”
before hanging up.
QA Texas
prosecutor
surprised the
judge at a
pretrial Zoom
hearing by
appearing
as a cat face.
Rod Ponton didn’t realize
he had the cat filter on the
computer, and his usually
sober face was replaced with
that of a blue-eyed kitten.
When the judge pointed it
out, Ponton said, “I don’t
know how to remove it.” He
tried to press on, telling the
judge and other lawyers,
“I’m prepared to go forward
with it.” Ponton eventually
removed the filter, saying,
“I’m not a cat.”
Q A toilet seat that once
belonged to Adolf Hitler has
sold for $18,750 at auction.
The white wooden seat was
taken from Hitler’s Bavarian
retreat, the Berghof, by a
soldier, Ragnvald Borch, at
the end of the Second World
War. The seat remained
on display in the soldier’s
basement for decades until
his son decided to auction it.
Bill Panagopulos of Alexan-
der Historical Auctions said
the toilet was “as close to a
‘throne’ as the dictator would
ever get,” adding, “One can
scarcely imagine the plotting
the tyrant undertook while
contemplating the world
from atop this perch.”It must be true...
I read it in the tabloidsWith former President Trump off golfing full-time, “the greatest threat
to U.S. democracy” may be Tucker Carlson, said Max Boot. The top-
rated Fox News host has gone off the deep end, “spreading dingbat,
dishonest conspiracy theories” to more than 4 million viewers night
after night. Last week, he attacked the Covid-19 vaccines, warning that
“the most powerful people in America” were “lying” about them. He
never specified what the lies were, but discouraging Fox’s mostly elderly
viewers from getting vaccinated may cost them their lives. Carlson used
the same vague innuendo to downplay the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection,
saying, “The known facts bear no resemblance to the story they’re tell-
ing.” The Black Lives Matter protests were also based on “an utter lie,”
Carlson said, claiming that a Minneapolis cop didn’t kill George Floyd
by kneeling on his neck for eight minutes, and that Floyd “almost cer-
tainly died of a drug overdose.” This is blatantly wrong: Two autopsies
found that while Floyd had fentanyl in his system, he died because he
couldn’t breathe. Carlson likes to portray himself as an embattled, lone
voice of truth, but in reality, he peddles “lunatic conspiracy theories
that endanger people’s lives and shred our social fabric.”The Framers of our Constitution feared the “fickleness and passion” of
the masses, said David Frum. Rather than creating a pure democracy,
they set up the Electoral College and the Senate to serve as “a necessary
fence” against “impetuous,” uneducated, unpropertied majorities. But
234 years later, it’s an extremist minority that threatens our nation’s
stability. In 2016, Donald Trump got just 46.1 percent of the national
vote—less than Al Gore, John Kerry, and Mitt Romney got in defeat.
But thanks to the Electoral College— ironically set up to prevent popu-
list demagogues from taking power—an unfit “flimflam man” became
president. In 2020, Trump was walloped by 7 million votes, but the
Electoral College gave him an opening to try to bully a handful of states
into nullifying the vote. The anti-democratic practices of gerrymander-
ing and the Senate filibuster have also entrenched minority rule, leading
to congressional paralysis, growing power for the presidency and the
courts, and far-right extremists running amok— brandishing guns at
state capitols, refusing to wear masks in defiance of the common good,
and trying to seize the presidency through violence. America needs more
democracy, not less; majority rule, not the tyranny of a rabid minority.In the McCarthy era, intimidated Hollywood movie studios promised
not to “knowingly employ a communist,” said Jonathan Chait. The
era of the blacklist has returned, but this time for right-wingers. Actor
Gina Carano, who had a role in the Star Wars offshoot The Mandalo-
rian, was fired by Disney last week for her social media posts, which
were deemed anti- Semitic and transphobic by an online mob. Carano’s
offense was sharing an Instagram story that compared the fate Jews
suffered in the Holocaust with how some Americans are now ostra-
cized “for their political views.” The comparison to Nazi Germany
was “overheated” but not uncommon in political discourse, and it was
inherently “not anti- Semitic.” Carano was condemned for other con-
troversial posts she made, including a claim that a photo ID should be
required to vote and a sardonic joke on “he/him/his” identifications,
with Carano adding “boop/bop/beep” to her Twitter bio. It’s possible
to disagree with Carano’s fairly standard conservative views without
destroying her career. In the McCarthy era, some of the writers and di-
rectors who were blacklisted, were, in fact, “bona fide communists.” It
was wrong then to purge people who were sympathetic to Joseph Sta-
lin, and it’s wrong now to fire people who agree with Donald Trump.Carlson
has lost
his marbles
Max Boot
The Washington Post
The new
Hollywood
blacklist
Jonathan Chait
NYMag.com
The tyranny
of a rabid
minority
David Frum
TheAtlantic.com
“Cancel culture necessarily erases intent. It relies on taking someone’s worst
moment out of context, on elevating a moment of ignorance, on exaggerating
a misstep and using that error to destroy someone’s life. We live in a time when almost everything
is posted, recorded, and shared—that’s the reality. Yes, I agree, it’s terrible. But we can’t unplug the
internet. Living in this world is going to require a deep and generous ethic of forgiveness. That isn’t
possible without insisting that intent matters.” Bari Weiss in BariWeiss.substack.comViewpoint