Hillary’s PC words
If — or when — Hillary Clinton announces her candidacy for president, at least one group is ready to strike back at any journalist or pundit who dares to use any one of 12 words or groups of words that the group insists absolutely must not be used to describe the former first lady and secretary of state.
The HRC Super Volunteers told Amy Chozick of the New York Times last week that they would be “watching, reading, listening and protesting coded sexism.”
The words? They would be “polarizing,” “calculating,” “disingenuous,” “insincere,” “ambitious,” “inevitable,” “entitled,” “overconfident,” “secretive,” “will do anything to win,” “represents the past” and “out of touch.”
Nope, none of those sound like Clinton.
Tectonic plates and Oreos
What do tectonic plates and Oreos have in common? Well, at a Pennsylvania school recently, Double Stuff Oreo cookies were going to be used to simulate the three types of tectonic plate boundaries and the geographical features that are created at the boundary, according to the science class teacher leading the session, as reported in Reason.
The problem? What to do with the cookies after the hands-on activity. Well, you eat them, of course. But since first lady Michelle Obama or city hall or the school district may have banned the Nabisco treats in nutritional fervor, you don’t take any chances, and you send out a permission slip first.
The permission slip, which notes the students cannot eat the Oreos without permission, helpfully tells parents “the ingredients of the Oreo are listed on the back of this sheet and on my e-board.” And just to be sure parents understand, she writes that “students do not have to eat the Oreo if they do not wish to do so.”
Next up: Chemistry class permission slips allowing students to use sulfur, even if their religion forbids it.
Strange bedfellows
Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and the National Rifle Association (NRA) likely were never on the same page during his career in the House. But the far left liberal, in promoting his new book, “Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage,” says his fellow Democrats could learn something from the NRA.
“Given the left’s vision of itself as the tribune of the people,” the openly gay former congressman writes, “it’s a bitter irony that conservatives have proved so much better at grassroots advocacy.” “When LGBT leaders cited Gandhi and King, I offered my own counterexample — the National Rifle Association’s great success in dominating the policy debates about gun control, despite being in a minority on the issue in every national poll I have seen.
“Liberals who try to comfort themselves with the notion that the NRA wins legislative battles because of their vast campaign contributions are engaged in self-deceptive self-justification. The NRA wins at the ballot box, not in the streets and not by checkbook.”
Frank, in fact, credits much of the gay rights movement’s recent success to its following the NRA’s model.
In promoting the book, he also has taken on other subjects, including Vice President Joe Biden, who he says is “talented but lacks discipline” and is “his own worst enemy.”
Referring to recent incidents in which the vice president appeared to be inappropriately touching women, Frank said the veep “can’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself. It’s out of good intentions, but I think he has unfortunately diminished people’s perception of his abilities.”
Don’t go there
Far left MSNBC cable network doesn’t have the highest ratings in the world, but officials there realized in the middle of a show recently that guest panelist Jamilah Lemieux had gone a bit far in her comments and needed to be dialed back.
Discussing Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his preference for country music after singers in the genre “collectively” responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the guest panelist saw a darker motive.
“Nothing says let’s go kill some Muslims like country music,” she said. Then she added sarcastically, “Fresh from Lynchburg, Va., (where he launched his 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination at conservative Liberty University last week), so he obviously doesn’t want to be a polarizing candidate, he wants to bring people together. That’s absurd.”
No one at the time spoke up about such an over-the-top statement, but they must have heard from a few people — even some Democrats like country music — between segments.
“We have a programming note,” fill-in host Ari Melber said later in the show. “A few minutes ago on this show, a guest made a comment about country music. That comment was not appropriate, and we want to be clear this network does not condone it.”