A little off the top
Democrat Hillary Clinton, the millionaire presidential candidate who’s cozy with Wall Street, has claimed she wants to be relatable to the electorate, but a New York City street-blocking stop for what’s reported to be a $600 haircut last week has little in common with the average Joe.
The candidate, who according to a witness was on the way to an event at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, often has her hair done by the owner of John Barrett Salon, who charges $600 for a haircut (and an extra $600 for color).
Clinton’s representatives did not respond to questions about the incident and the cost of the cut, but perhaps Barrett gives her a discount if he kicks in a little something (wink, wink) for the Clinton Foundation.
Usually, the store closes off a private entrance and elevator bank for her arrival, but perhaps her tardiness caused the traffic disturbance.
Intolerance U.
A conservative professor at Marquette University who outed an incident in which a junior faculty member berated a student who dared to defend traditional marriage may soon lose his job.
The officially Catholic university said Professor John McAdams, who revealed the recorded 2014 incident on his popular blog, has been recommended for suspension and must admit “guilt,” apologize or be fired.
The junior faculty member told the student that his defense of traditional marriage was unacceptable in her ethics class and compared his views to racism. “You can have whatever opinions you want,” she said, “but I can tell you right now, in this class homophobic comments, racist comments and sexist comments will not be tolerated.” Then she suggested the student drop the class.
McAdams, in his blog, accused the junior faculty member of “using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merits, but are deemed ‘offensive’ and need to be shut up.”
The faculty member, who is now at another university, was hailed as a liberal hero but also was said to have received mean emails.
McAdams compared the demand over his “guilt” to the Inquisition, a group of Middle Ages institutions within the judicial system of the Catholic Church where victims who “confessed” to consorting with Satan and spreading heresy would be spared execution.
Don’t be ugly
From the State Department that brought you the Iran nuclear agreement comes a tweet that appears to offer advice for the ugly.
“Not a ’10’ in the US?” reads the message from the Bureau of Consular Affairs official Twitter account. “Then not a 10 overseas. Beware of being lured into buying expensive drinks or worse – being robbed.”
In other words, for the unattractive, if a person pays attention to you, they’re probably just trying to rob you.
Thanks for the, um, advice, U.S. government.
In time, another government tweet sort of walked back the insensitive message: “Some have been offended by our earlier tweet and we apologize that it came off negatively.”
Social media had a time with the tweet (and apology), one user responding: “‘Some’ have been offended by earlier tweet? Strike 2 @TravelGov. Don’t parse apology. Tweet was offensive, period.”
Tell the truth, get fired
An 18-year veteran anchorwoman for WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh was fired recently not for her on-air coverage of a March 9 mass killing of a family of six attending a backyard cookout but over a station Facebook post she wrote about the situation.
The ambush-style killings, which took the lives of, among others, a pregnant woman and a child in Wilkinsburg, Pa., were reported to be drug related. And, as of last week, the perpetrators hadn’t been caught.
But in the Facebook post, Wendy Bell said exactly what likely was being said in developing profiles of the killers at police headquarters. She wrote, “You needn’t be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They’ve grown up there. They know the police. They’ve been arrested.”
Her accuracy was too much for the station, which said it ended its relationship with her because her comments “were inconsistent with the company’s ethics and journalistic standards.”
Bell, who said she lived “next to three war-torn communities” in Pittsburgh and grieved the family’s death, said the incident “makes me sick.”