From "James G. Watt, Interior Secretary Under Reagan, Dies at 85/Mr. Watt once declared that Interior Department policies over years had swung too far toward conservation under the influence of 'environmental extremists'" (NYT).
Watt resigned on October 9, 1983, after his attack on The Beach Boys and that remark about "two Jews and a cripple":
As planning for the 1983 Independence Day celebration on the National Mall began, Mr. Watt said that pop-music groups retained in recent years had attracted 'the wrong element'.... The Mall’s most prominent band had been the Beach Boys, popular since the 1960s. Mr. Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist who did not smoke or drink alcohol, proposed the Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton... and military bands, saying they would better represent the patriotic, family-oriented themes he preferred.... Reagan informed him that he and his wife, Nancy, were Beach Boys fans....Upset by a Senate vote barring him from leasing any more federal land for coal mining, [Watt] described a panel reviewing his coal-leasing policies as having “every kind of mixture — I have a Black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
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47 comments:
When I hear the name James Watt, the first thing that comes to mind is his cover of Mad Magazine. (I hope the link works; my office computer blocks me from accessing "http" websites as insecure.)
He was a stellar guy. Not Sam Brinton level, mind you. But a stellar government appointee nonetheless.
I confuse him with Earl Butz. Another honesty is not wanted victim.
Too bad Watt never really came out and said what he thought instead of his constant obfuscating...
"I have a Black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
That sounds like an inclusive Netflix casting chart. James Watt--a perfect understanding of DEI years before the phrase was invented.
He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.'
Sadly, in that instance he was right. As we see today with the climate change hysteria.
It was stupid of Watt to undermine the panel he had himself appointed; he wanted to mock affirmative action even while he practised it. This by the way was not necessarily an attack on minorities (if women are even a minority), nor even an implication that no minority person deserves to serve on a government panel.
There is a tendency for environmentalism to empower people who have education but little actual participation in the economy to fuck up the economic activities of owners and workers. Watt's panel may have been an example.
Watt wisely told us, not to worry about terrible things coming to the environment..
Because the rapture was coming, and so we wouldn't have to worry about it.
People like Grete Soundboard now tell us terrible things coming to the environment..
But because (According to THEM), it's Now TOO LATE.. We don't have to worry about that, either.
Serious Question: Looking back at it; who was more environmentally astute? Al Gore? or J Watt?
The beach-boys are unwholesome.
Now do 9 inch nails... or death metal.
Whenever I have to document the "diversity" of my group, I squelch the temptation to write, "I have a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple. And we have talent."
It would end my career, of course, but it feels like the natural response to the "how diverse are you?" prompts. And it's no more ridiculous than some statements I've seen that were written in all earnestness.
Wasn't he mocking implicit selection criteria at the time, which has only become more explicit in the years since?
I remember seeing about 50 stop signs, in CO and CA, with "Watt" scribbled under Stop.
I remember Watt very well, because at the time I was engaged with Sierra Club in fighting for protecting desert wildlife like tortoises and indigenous sacred sites from the unfettered off-road recreation abuse that was destroying vast acreages of public lands across California, Nevada and Arizona.
I remember President Reagan helicoptered down to a shopping mall parking lot filled to the brim with supporters in his first year as President, and me and my fellow protester stood silent in the cheering crowd with our little signs saying "Fire Watt!"
I was appreciative and proud of how polite the crowd was with us, much safer than going into Bureau of Land Management hearings where "Barstow to Vegas" off-roading enthusiasts wearing guns would surround us, and we had to walk out w law enforcement to our car.
I hated Reagan for Watt. But as the years passed, I came to see the greater vision & good Reagan did for the nation, despite his insufferable Interior Secretary and what they allowed on public lands.
My Grandmother taught me, never speak ill of the dead.
There must be some sick individual that gets a weird satisfaction from an attempted weak smear of a dead man, long out of public life.
Hard to know what quotes are real and what quotes are manufactured by the liar left.
He likened his critics to Nazis???!!!!
What an evil man. Progressives would never do that!
"I have a Black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
Sounds like Biden's exclusive list of potential Supreme Court nominees, when is he gonna get criticized by the NYT?
Gilbar:
Greta has the world ending on June 21, 2023.
From the article:
"He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.' He told Business Week: 'Look what happened to Germany in the 1930s. The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism. The dignity of man was subordinated in Russia. Those are the forces that this thing can evolve into.'"
He wasn't entirely wrong. Stopped clock and all that.
JPS, thanks for throwing in that last sentence: "And we have talent."
I seem to recall George Will commenting at the time that Watt's reasoning fit well into the affirmative action mindset, though he could have accomplished it more compactly by hiring (paraphrasing here) "a Black female Jew with one leg shorter than the other." But Will went on to protest "cripple," an unnecessarily cruel descriptor. (Though, I dunno, possibly better than "handi-capable," which was making the rounds about that time. As one of the--temporarily, I hope--crippled at the moment, hobbling around on a broken right tibia, I'd take "cripple" over "handi-capable," but that's just me.)
I live in a divided battleground state. But the state university in all administrative departments and many faculties is overwhelmingly liberal. This means that for many years search committees and HR departments have been discriminating against 50% (or 49%) of the population in its hiring practices. It would be impossible to prove bias in any one case but using the principles with which we have become familiar through critical race theory we can say that the final outcome proves implicit bias. 50% of the people of this state have ben excluded at all levels from being hired in their own state university which they support with their tax dollars. And, again using principles with which we are now familiar thanks to forced indoctrination in critical race theory we know the answer. The departments must come up with a plan to rectify their imbalance or lose funding. Based on observing boycotts which got the attention of corporation I'd say a 20% slash in the budgets of departments which do not come up with and execute a plan to stop excluding 50% of the state will get their attention.
It isn't race or orientation we are talking about here - it's a sifting mechanism which would exclude Christian blacks, evangelical or Catholic Hispanics, gays who support free speech, and whites who love either American history or European literature who are excluded from the departments teaching those subjects for that reason. And its 50% of state which is being excluded.
Essentially, you must be a leftist and this shows when we see that in Wisconsin, a divided state, the state university in recent time has been hiring solely leftists because that's who now makes up the entire workforce. And this behavior by hiring committees and HR departments can be corrected by the Wisconsin state legislature because it is undeniable and because the rules we have learned in critical race theory seminars will correct it and the left can't oppose the application of this type of rule. (Though, when it means hiring Christian blacks or free speech gays or whites knowledgeable about European culture, they will.)
I live in a divided battleground state. But the state university in all administrative departments and many faculties is overwhelmingly liberal. This means that for many years search committees and HR departments have been discriminating against 50% (or 49%) of the population in its hiring practices. It would be impossible to prove bias in any one case but using the principles with which we have become familiar through critical race theory we can say that the final outcome proves implicit bias. 50% of the people of this state have ben excluded at all levels from being hired in their own state university which they support with their tax dollars. And, again using principles with which we are now familiar thanks to forced indoctrination in critical race theory we know the answer. The departments must come up with a plan to rectify their imbalance or lose funding. Based on observing boycotts which got the attention of corporation I'd say a 20% slash in the budgets of departments which do not come up with and execute a plan to stop excluding 50% of the state will get their attention.
It isn't race or orientation we are talking about here - it's a sifting mechanism which would exclude Christian blacks, evangelical or Catholic Hispanics, gays who support free speech, and whites who love either American history or European literature who are excluded from the departments teaching those subjects for that reason. And its 50% of state which is being excluded.
Essentially, you must be a leftist and this shows when we see that in Wisconsin, a divided state, the state university in recent time has been hiring solely leftists because that's who now makes up the entire workforce. And this behavior by hiring committees and HR departments can be corrected by the Wisconsin state legislature because it is undeniable and because the rules we have learned in critical race theory seminars will correct it and the left can't oppose the application of this type of rule. (Though, when it means hiring Christian blacks or free speech gays or whites knowledgeable about European culture, they will.)
Flawed, but prophetic.
I love The Beach Boys but given this bill of particulars Watt was not far off the mark:
- the original 5 have 14 marriages between them.
- Dennis Wilson’s last marriage came as a result of his having impregnated Mike Love’s (his cousin) illegitimate daughter.
- The song “Never Learn Not to Love” from their 20-20 album was, except for some lyric changes, written by Charles Manson who had moved into a Dennis Wilson’s house.
- Drugs, drugs and more drugs.
- The legal battles are legendary
Blogger tommyesq said...
"I have a Black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
Sounds like Biden's exclusive list of potential Supreme Court nominees, when is he gonna get criticized by the NYT?
Exactly ! Well said.
Are we sure he didn't get that from this old joke?
A black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple walk into a bar.
Actually, not the cripple.
"I remember Watt very well, because at the time I was engaged with Sierra Club in fighting for protecting desert wildlife like tortoises and indigenous sacred sites from the unfettered off-road recreation abuse that was destroying vast acreages of public lands across California, Nevada and Arizona."
As it turned out, you saved those vast acreages for unfettered solar panel abuse.
"He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.' "
He got that exactly right. I bet he never even imagined ESG.
We can't buy decent light bulbs, toliets or cars. We're being forced to buy EVs. The electric utilities are headed to forced blackouts. They also want to control your thermostat under the guise of "demand control."
A liberal, in principle, diverges from normal with progress.
Two men and a womb.
Perhaps Madonna, who is the modern model of a material girl in secular progression.
He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.'
Environmentalists that colluded with governments and corporations to push CFLs, the recurring ozone "hole", acid rain, ocean "acidification", oppose nuclear reprocessing, spread the Green blight, environmental arbitrage, clear cutting for industrial wind and solar, etc.
"He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.'"
Guilty as charged.
My future brother-in-law made the national news when he showed up for the Beach Boys concert wearing a t-shirt that said "the wrong element."
I like the Beach Boys. I don't think their music is unwholesome, but Dennis Wilson did have a weird friendship with Charles Manson. Still, his comments about them sound out-of-touch. It's like listening to politicians or judges talk about internet-related things. So many of them sound clueless.
The time constraints of my busy life preclude any possibility of my reading of Watt's obit. I will say this, however: It's probable that in the course of his life Watts did some other things that were more substantial than making dumb remarks. Without reading the obit though, I'm sure the NYT would like Watts to be remembered for nothing else.... I'm sure that when, say, Daniel Ortega dies, they will make brief mention of his past history of child rape and instead concentrate on how he bravely battled Ronald Reagan in order to bring Nicaragua to its current Utopian state.....The bad things Republican do are character defining. The bad things that people of the left do are downplayed as the minor character flaws of great men.
I recently read a bio of Charles DeGaulle. DeGaulle went to church every Sunday and never cheated on his wife. His wife was even more strait laced than he. When he was President, she urged him to pass a law to ban mini-skirts.....It's safe to say that Jean Paul Sartre was and probably still is more highly revered by the left than DeGaulle. By me-too standards, Sartre is far more despicable than DeGaulle, but it just doesn't matter. The leftist lens towards history is both a microscope and an eye patch.
Even in '83 The Beach Boys were an oddly retro target to attack. If he'd chosen Black Flag or one of their peers he'd have avoided that taint of impending Moralistic Majority senility.
I won’t read the execrable NYT but I wonder if they said anything nice about Watt? I doubt it. Back in the day they covered for Hitler and Stalin so does this make Watt worse than Hitler?
I may be getting closer to understanding the minds of our lovable neo-Marxist totalitarians.
"He banned women’s pantsuits in his department, but the edict was flagrantly violated"
...by women with no fashion sense. Women in pantsuits, the equivalent of men in shorts.
Watt was rightly derided when he claimed increased UV exposed from a shrinking Ozone layer (then a media-driven hysteria) could be countered by simply wearing a hat, full-body-covering clothing, or an umbrella.
Critics jeered, asking where all the plants and animals would get their anti-UV umbrellas.
@ rhhardin Yeah, Earl Butz, the “loose shoes” guy, came to mind for me, too.
IIRC correctly, Watt was upset about the kind of crowds a "rock" act like the Beach Boys tended to attract, not the band itself. Not that he didn't tarnish them at all, but I don't think they were the real focus. Anyway, Nancy Reagan publicly proclaimed that SHE liked the Beach Boys and somewhat put Watt in his place.
As for the above "bill of particulars," it should be made clear that Dennis Wilson's "strange friendship" Charles Manson took place BEFORE anyone knew Manson was a serial killer.
Overall, I can't say that the BB were any more or less "moral" than any other bands of that era. But even if they had some personal foibles and failings, who cares? On balance, they certainly contributed more happiness to people through their music than they exacted misery through their personal failings as individuals.
I recall Ann Gorsuch at the EPA then and the abuse she got.
Guess where her son works today?
As village attorney for a rural upstate NY community my mother assisted in the application for sewage treatment funds from the Federal government. She was asked how many blacks lived in the village (at the time, none). She asked how many were needed.
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
"'The beach-boys are unwholesome.'
Now do 9 inch nails... or death metal."
I want to [regulate] you like a [spotted owl]...
- The depraved protagonist of NIN's "Closer" after having worked at the EPA
So Tipper Gore was correct about the Filthy Fifteen, and music being a primary source of America's moral degeneracy? Give me my Aqualung, and leave me alone!
As we see today with the climate change hysteria.
Hilarious! Policies that would prevent Canadian wildfires severe enough to blanket the Northeast and Midwest with particulate pollution 6 times higher than what’s normal or healthy is “hysteria.”
You people live in a fantasy and this thread’s affection for and agreement with a bigoted retrograde who found The Beach Boys too degenerate for his tastes is predictable and demented.
As we see today with the climate change hysteria.
Hilarious! Policies that would prevent Canadian wildfires severe enough to blanket the Northeast and Midwest with particulate pollution 6 times higher than what’s normal or healthy is “hysteria.”
You people live in a fantasy and this thread’s affection for and agreement with a bigoted retrograde who found The Beach Boys too degenerate for his tastes is predictable and demented.
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