Category Archives: The Culture

Jackie Robinson was a Republican

His politics was one of the baseball great’s facets that defies the canned deification process. And it got him fired as a newspaper columnist in 1960 for supporting Nixon against Kennedy.

“No one will ever convince me that the [New York] Post acted in an honest manner,” he was quoted in 1962. “I believe the simple truth is that they became somewhat alarmed when they realized that I really meant to write what I believed. There is a peculiar parallel between some of our great Northern ‘liberals’ and some of our outstanding Southern liberals. Some of the people in both classes share the deep-seated convictions that only their convictions can possibly be the right ones. They both inevitably say the same thing: ‘We know the Negro and what is best for him.'”

And 53 years later, not a damn thing has changed. Except the cosmetic. Saying Negro is now taboo.

The choke on the dashboard

Miriam does great reminiscences. She’s even written a book about them. But while most of her experiences were big-city urban (from which I was gratefully spared) get her on the subject of the unreliable American car of yesteryear and remember, just remember.

Cars (Japanese, Korean, German, even most American ones) are so reliable nowadays, they don’t put a choke on the dashboard anymore. Computers run the carburetor now. Most cars no longer have carburetors. We thought we had it good back then, choking the carb (before it was a diet reference) on a cold morning. But it really was pathetic!

Not to mention carrying cans of motor oil in the trunk for occasional roadside replacement. Miriam mentions them.

Via Miriam’s Ideas.

Social Justice Bullies

I was joking around with Mrs. Charm the other day about the self-righteous intolerance of so-called Social Justice Warriors when Mr. B. spoke up to say that the intolerant SJWs are well known to his high school freshmen class.

It’s never too early, apparently, to learn of the vile patriarchy (privileged white males like me and Mr. B.) vs the oppressed (all women and everyone else).

These proto-authoritarian leftist Democrats are misnamed, surely. Social Justice Bullies would be more appropriate. They will not debate or argue. Agree with them or be denounced a racist: “To disagree with the millennial social justice orthodoxy is to make a pariah of oneself willingly. Adherence to the narrative is the single litmus test for collegiate (and beyond) social acceptance these days.”

Collegiate and much earlier, it would seem, even unto the depths of high school.

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Rule 5: Vargas

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Gimme that old time class & gender warfare

The Hildabeast has waddled into the fray, facelift covering deep wrinkles, dog jowls and all, with the “middle-class economics” theme Wormtongue prepped for her. It’s to be class warfare as usual, the Democrat staple, rhetorically pounding the rich while surreptitiously keeping the grasping hand out for them under the table.

The Worm’s already crippled the middle class with a rotten economy and new taxes he claimed were for the rich. Can Godzillary do it one more time?

With a side dollop of “war on women,” of course. Lately translated into a rash of phony campus sex assualts and a very real demand for unlimited late-term abortions, viability of the “new born” be damned. (Scissor their spines and into the dumpster with ’em!)

You think we’re in a culture war now? At least we won’t have to see His Earness grinning like a fool all the time. Once her Lizardness is elected and has no more need to pretend for the rubes, she won’t do grins.

She is deaf to human cordiality, has a bad temper, and treats subordinates with haughty disdain. In that sense she is more authentic than her equally callous and narcissistic, but charismatic husband.”

Will American voters ever learn? Higher taxes and more unemployment is what class and gender envy will get you, suckers. Eight more years of a sorry Democrat economy, the Groper back in the White House harassing interns and the ever-corrupt and mendacious Queen of Benghazi sneering around her expensive dental implants whenever the band plays Hail To The Chief Uterus.

As she once famously declared: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” We’re going to find out.

UPDATE:  PJMedia’sRoger L. Simon: “Is everyone throwing up yet?…Oh, well, American ‘liberalism’ has been screwing the lower classes for the last fifty years.  Why stop now?”

MORE: Bill Quick at Instapundit: “Clintons: Gulling the 47% while wholly owned by the 1%.”

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Rule 5: Red Swim Suit

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General Lee surrendered today

One hundred fifty years ago. Thus this is the last major day of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. Which lefty TNR thinks should be celebrated every year from now on. Heretical though that is, I tend to agree. Make it a subtext of Martin Luther King Day.

Nevertheless, while I despised racial and ethnic segregation when I was a teenager in the 1950s and understood it, not conceptually as so many do now, but by seeing it in action every day, and while I have no love at all for the Confederacy or its elites like Lee and his slave-owning, aristo cronies (including some of my own ancestors), I share kinship and deep sympathy with the defeated Rebel junior officers and common soldiers.

So I quite like the sentiment of the following old song which some of them sang after the war, if I do not agree with all of the words. They would understand the over-weaning, over-regulating, over-taxing and endlessly incompetent and corrupt federal government—and predominantly Democrat news media of today. They saw it coming.

Oh, I’m a good old rebel,
Now, that’s just what I am,
And for this Yankee nation,
I do not give a damn.
I’m glad I fought agin ‘er,
I only wish we won.
I ain’t askin’ any pardon for anything I’ve done.
I hate the Yankee nation and everything they do.
I hate the Declaration of Independence, too.
I hate the glorious union, t’is drippin’ with our blood.
I hate the stri-ped banner, and fit it all I could
I rode with Robert E. Lee,
For three years, thereabout.
Got wounded in four places,
And I starved at Point Lookout.
I catched the rheumatism
Acampin’ in the snow.
But I killed a chance of Yankees
And I’d like to kill some more.
Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is stiff in southern dust.
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us
They died of Southern Fever
And Southern steel and shot
I wish there were three million
Instead of what we got.
I can’t pick up my musket
And fight ’em down no more
But I ain’t agonna love ’em
Now that is certain sure
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am
I won’t be reconstructed
And I do not give a damn
Oh, I’m a good old rebel,
Now, that’s just what I am,
And for this Yankee nation,
I do not give a damn.
I’m glad I fought agin ‘er,
I only wish we won.
I aint askin’ any pardon for anything I’ve done.
I aint askin’ any pardon for anything I’ve done.
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I went to the 125th surrender commemoration at Appomattox back in 1990. It was stirring, except for the play-acting reenactors whose gotch-gutted bellies and faultlessly-tailored uniforms made it a sham.
I expect the news media will write about the anniversary today and, as they have ever since the first one in 1865, get most of the details wrong.

Via Mouth of the Brazos.