6:39, 6:36 a.m.

6:35 a.m.

How do we know there won't be some dramatically effective 9/11 memorializing at the big fight?

Question: Where is Trump during the 9/11 anniversary ceremony?

Answer: Preparing to do commentary for a boxing match in Florida. pic.twitter.com/tS2Sw63Dxf

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) September 11, 2021

Also, is it racist to accuse Trump of bad taste?

Dreams...

Springsteen's: 

 

Ono's:

Imagine all the people living life in peace. pic.twitter.com/5xA11BVN3p

— Yoko Ono ☁️ (@yokoono) September 11, 2021

I don't know what you think of "celebrity 9/11".... It's a matter of taste, but they are trying, with decent enough sincerity.

"I never once believed — nor do I now — that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion...."

"But brick by brick, the university has... transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division. Students at Portland State... are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues.... [I]n 2017, I co-published an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy. Its title: 'The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.' This example of pseudo-scholarship, which was published in Cogent Social Sciences, argued that penises were products of the human mind and responsible for climate change. Immediately thereafter, I revealed the article as a hoax designed to shed light on the flaws of the peer-review and academic publishing systems. Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department.... In 2018 I co-published a series of absurd or morally repugnant peer-reviewed articles in journals that focused on issues of race and gender. In one of them we argued that there was an epidemic of dog rape at dog parks and proposed that we leash men the way we leash dogs. Our purpose was to show that certain kinds of 'scholarship' are based not on finding truth but on advancing social grievances.... ... Portland State filed formal charges against me [for 'r]esearch misconduct' based on the absurd premise that the journal editors who accepted our intentionally deranged articles were 'human subjects.' I was found guilty of not receiving approval to experiment on human subjects."

From "My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit. The more I spoke out against the illiberalism that has swallowed Portland State University, the more retaliation I faced" by Peter Boghossian (at Bari Weiss's Substack).

ADDED: The Wikipedia article on Boghossian is interesting. Excerpt:

"The pay was 9 pounds — about $17. With two young children to feed, she showed up at 8:30 p.m. to tune her harp and was handed a piece of sheet music."

Only later did she learn that the notes she played were to be the intro on 'She’s Leaving Home' by the Beatles.... Mrs. Bromberg’s harp intro and rhythm, backed by a full string section, set the poignant tone of the track before Paul McCartney (who recorded separately) began the lyric 'Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock as the day begins.'...  She played harp on two early James Bond films starring Sean Connery — 'Dr. No' (1962) and 'Goldfinger' (1964)... She also performed the solo intro to the 1976 hit disco single 'Boogie Nights' by the band Heatwave. She recalled that the heat in the studio was so intense, she played with her feet in a bucket of icy water.... During the 1960s and ’70s, she was a member of the BBC’s Top of the Pops orchestra... Mrs. Bromberg couldn’t afford child care, her son recalled, and he was dragged along to the Top of the Pops studio and sat in the control room alongside Michael Jackson (at the time part of the Jackson Five), the Osmonds, Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones.... Her Ukrainian grandfather (at the time Ukraine was part of the Russian empire) was a principal trumpet player in Kiev’s symphony orchestra before fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms. He settled in London, where he made a scant living playing in coffeehouses. Other members of the family moved to the United States, and a cousin of Mrs. Bromberg, the multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg, became one of Bob Dylan’s favorite guitarists, playing on several of his albums."

From "Sheila Bromberg, harpist on Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ dies at 92" (WaPo).

I'm glad to see a long obituary for someone who played a supportive role. That "She’s Leaving Home" harp touched many hearts, and there's no reason to believe she wasn't properly paid. 

As for that cousin, David Bromberg, he wasn't just a backup player to Bob Dylan. I remember him as a solo artist in the early 70s. His recording "The Holdup" was pretty popular at the time. I don't know how many times we went to see him at The Ark in 1971 and 1972.

"Are we creating a brave new, standardless world stripped of any canonical texts? Or are we reaching backward?"

"[M]any of those behind the most radical political experiment in history studied in little, rickety houses, in medium-sized, mostly uncultured cities or on the edges of sprawling farmlands. They read with the aid of candlelight. They were Zoom-less. They squeezed their studies in between milking cows and learning how to use a rifle. They were steeped in the greatest minds of the ancient world and the Enlightenment. The Founders did not have the benefit of any playground or tablet or teachers union, but they were free thinkers. The Constitution, Speed pointed out, 'was largely the work of people instructed at home.'" 

From "American Homeschooling Goes Boom/Meet the parents yanking their children — some five million of them — from schools that they say aren't working" by Suzy Weiss (at Bari Weiss's Substack).

Film clip for 9/11.

 

Don't be put off by the larger context here. I've clipped a section that is entirely the reaction of human beings on the street in New York City on that day. 

You can scroll out of my start and stop points and watch the entire movie. Moore has made it available free on YouTube. I have never watched the movie, but, with 20 years distance, I am considering watching it today.

"When acceptance is the highest value, when avoiding condemnation online is worth more than the truth, the truth will be swiftly discarded."

"Online likes, followers and reputation — weak, empty values — dominate the teenage world because teenagers are not being taught alternative ones by the culture or, often, by the adults in their lives. They — we — are not being given the tools to answer the questions that really matter: What is truth? What is justice? And what is the purpose of life?"

From "I'm 17. And I'm Immunized from Woke Politics. Here's how" by Daniel Idfresne (at the Bari Weiss Substack). 

Idfresne has a YouTube channel. Here's an example of what he puts up:

"It was the last known missile fired by the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan, and the military called it a 'righteous strike'..."

"... a drone attack after hours of surveillance on Aug. 29 against a vehicle that American officials thought contained an ISIS bomb and posed an imminent threat to troops at Kabul’s airport. But a New York Times investigation of video evidence, along with interviews with more than a dozen of the driver’s co-workers and family members in Kabul, raises doubts about the U.S. version of events.... While the U.S. military said the drone strike might have killed three civilians, Times reporting shows that it killed 10, including seven children, in a dense residential block.... 'Because there were secondary explosions, there is a reasonable conclusion to be made that there was explosives in that vehicle,' the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, said last week. But an examination of the scene of the strike, conducted by the Times visual investigations team and a Times reporter the morning afterward, and followed up with a second visit four days later, found no evidence of a second, more powerful explosion. Experts who examined photos and videos pointed out that, although there was clear evidence of a missile strike and subsequent vehicle fire, there were no collapsed or blown-out walls, no destroyed vegetation, and only one dent in the entrance gate, indicating a single shock wave. 'It seriously questions the credibility of the intelligence or technology utilized to determine this was a legitimate target,' said Chris Cobb-Smith, a British Army veteran and security consultant.... Neighbors and an Afghan health official confirmed that bodies of children were removed from the site. They said the blast had shredded most of the victims; fragments of human remains were seen inside and around the compound the next day by a reporter, including blood and flesh splattered on interior walls and ceilings." 

From "Times Investigation: In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb U.S. officials said a Reaper drone followed a car for hours and then fired based on evidence it was carrying explosives. But in-depth video analysis and interviews at the site cast doubt on that account" (NYT). 

The article looks at evidence about the driver, Zemari Ahmadi. We're told he "had worked since 2006 as an electrical engineer for Nutrition and Education International, a California-based aid group." He was observed picking up 3 passengers on his way to work. He made a stop at a Taliban-controlled police station to get permission, the passengers said, to distribute food. Our military claims they saw him put heavy objects in the trunk, but there's camera footage, and he is, the Times says, filling containers with water from a hose.

6:34 a.m.

6:11 a.m.

"Every Republican in the country — especially those running to the right in primaries — is salivating over Joe Biden [igniting] the vax debate. Republicans think that he's made even pro-vax conservatives into 'anti-vax mandate' Americans."

Said a top House Republican aide" quoted in "America's civil war of 2021" (Axios). The Axios writer, Mike Allen, begins dramatically:

Top Republicans are calling for a public uprising to protest President Biden's broad vaccine mandates, eight months after more than 500 people stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to overturn the election. 

Why it matters: It has been decades since America has witnessed such blatant and sustained calls for mass civil disobedience against the U.S. government.

See what he did there? He conflated civil disorder and civil disobedience! Civil disobedience is protest that takes the form of not following the rule that you oppose. Here, that would mean you don't get the vaccine. That's nothing like storming the Capitol.  

Allen also quotes "an official close to Biden": "Biden beat Trump by promising strong action based on science." What's the science of how human beings act when the government compels them to do things to their body? 

"Then the Comments section of your blog became taken over by a far-Right cabal which was just as offputting as any conceivable Far Left gang of assholes might have become."

I received this email from Todd Grimson which begins with a compliment about this post that I put up yesterday and continues with some less-than-complimentary stuff:

Exceptional piece. I liked your blog early on, then became annoyed when it seemed like you kept taking shots at novels and fiction in general -- as this was/is my chosen field, the highest calling in my view, where I excel. I thought you were perhaps demonstrating some misgivings about how the writing of blogs might be viewed in the future (where, as Criswell reminds us at the beginning of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, we all shall one day reside); also, listening to some actor's performance on an audiobook does not equal the actual reading experience, end of fucking story (to invoke TRAINSPOTTING's Irvine Welsh). 

Then the Comments section of your blog became taken over by a far-Right cabal which was just as offputting as any conceivable Far Left gang of assholes might have become. You came to realize this, it seems, but it took you a long time. 

I brought your attention recently to the Netflix series based on my book just as a friendly gesture and I suppose because of the friendly feeling engendered by years of reading your blog. The show has become a phenomenon.

Grimson gave me permission to publish that. The Nexflix show is "Brand New Cherry Flavor":

And here's Criswell: 

A "cabal" is "A small body of persons engaged in secret or private machination or intrigue; a junto, clique, côterie, party, faction" (OED). So have at it, cabalists.

"Michelle Obama said that it was 'the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen,' an observation that put Michelangelo, Mozart and Miles Davis in their place."

"There have been a few detractors but most have been confined to isolated pockets of social media, like guerrilla fighters facing overwhelming odds. What is it that generates so much excitement?... [W]hatever [Hamilton]’s true merits, it has at least bridged the ever-growing gap between Broadway and popular song. Think of it, if you like, as Les Mis for the beatbox generation. Just as the Boublil and Schönberg celebration of life on the Parisian barricades goes overboard with the bombast, so Miranda’s narrative bludgeons you with facts. The one obvious problem is that the rap lyrics are at the same time mundane and relentlessly dense.... The effect is sometimes numbing: imagine if Cole Porter, who had a more nimble grasp of language, wrote nothing but list songs. We’d be bored."

From "Hamilton review — Facts aren’t music to everyone’s ears" by Clive Davis (London Times).

"Hamilton" is reopening in London after the lockdown, so this is a reassessment from Davis. If you want to get into the subject of how people in England respond to an American telling of the Revolution, you'll have to go back to reviews written in 2017. So don't wonder about why Davis isn't doing that. 

He's mostly bellyaching about rap, and I thought the complaint "rap lyrics are at the same time mundane and relentlessly dense" was worth thinking about. I don't listen to enough rap to have a valid opinion, but I do find it offputting because it demands a lot work out of the listener. You have to pay attention... though I always resort to looking up the lyrics and reading them if there are ever lyrics I want to be familiar with, as occasionally happens.

But what is this category of songs called "list songs" — "imagine if Cole Porter... wrote nothing but list songs"? I'd never heard of this, but there's a Wikipedia article:

"A woman in a gorilla mask riding a bicycle threw the small white object past Elder’s head..."

"... as seen in a video posted on Twitter by Spectrum News reporter Kate Cagle. The woman appeared to be white, Elder is Black, and ape characterizations have been used as a racist trope for centuries. Moments later, the woman took a swing at a man who appeared to be part of Elder’s team. The man was hit by at least one other heckler just before Elder was escorted into the SUV." 

From an L.A. Times report quoted in "‘If Elder Were a Democrat’/Without double standards, would the U.S. media have any standards at all?" (Wall Street Journal). 

Here's the Kate Cagle tweet discussed in the quote:

Breaking: A flying egg narrowly missed the back of recall candidate @larryelder's head after it was thrown by an activist wearing a gorilla mask in Venice. A scuffle broke out and the candidate was escorted into an SUV.

Here's the raw (pun intended)
CW: f-bombs@SpecNews1SoCal pic.twitter.com/FeFx3wnuSD

— Kate Cagle (@KateCagle) September 8, 2021

The WSJ piece points us to Kyle Smith's piece in National Review: "Why Isn’t the Attack on Larry Elder the Biggest Story in America?"