I ain’t afraid of no jokes
When it comes to trolling, alt-right wunderkind Milo Yiannopoulos — whose name I had to check four times to make sure I spelled correctly — is the very best, like no one ever was. You may recall some months back, when he was mysteriously "unverified" on Twitter, as though suddenly it had become unclear if he was the real deal or perhaps a pod creature or some type of replicant. Well now he’s upped the ante a bit: Yiannopoulos has been officially permanently banned from Twitter. His crime? He irritated Leslie Jones, who is apparently famous, but who I had honestly never heard of until this story broke. Jones was indeed so flustered by Yiannopoulos’ horrible racist harassment campaign that she abandoned Twitter entirely.
The ironic masterstroke, of course, is that Yiannopoulos did not send the tweets that so infuriated Jones. He was, indeed, one of the targets of the tweets, which were sent by an account impersonating Jones. None of this appears to matter to the social justice crowd, who apparently view Jones’ blackness as being higher on the victimhood hierarchy than is Yiannopoulos’ homosexuality. It’s also cute to observe that, just last week, I was pointing out that it’s no longer important for hate crimes to contain any hate or any crime, and now just one short week later it’s not even important if the hate criminal actually did what he’s accused of. But what about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s constant quacking about how Twitter "doesn’t censor?" As Buzzfeed’s bizarrely gleeful summary explains it:
According to the company, Yiannopoulos’s permanent suspension isn’t a matter of speech as much as a matter of behavior — specifically, a violation of Twitter’s rules regarding the targeted abuse of specific users.
This can make sense if you sort of read it really quickly and don’t really pay attention, or perhaps if you have some sort of genetic what-words-mean impairment, but the rest of us can’t figure out what kind of "behavior" other than speech is even possible on Twitter. Now, Twitter is a private organization, and can absolutely regulate, control, suppress, and censor any use of its platform. Nobody denies that. It is, however, hypocritical to a lunatic degree for Twitter to engage in this sort of practice while simultaneously continuing to pretend that it doesn’t. Sorry, Jack, but Twitter most assuredly does censor.
Just Jack’s luck that this story had to break at exactly the same time Twitter was already trying to excuse its attempt to suppress the DNC Wikileaks reveal.
Okay, this time we’re definitely doing science
If there’s to be one entry in this week’s Last Week in Weird you’re going to think I’m making up, it’s going to be this one. Dear readers, I suspect — indeed, I hope — you’re not going to be so jaded as to take my word for it when I regale you with this amazing story of how badly corrupt what passes for America’s scientific establishment actually is. Now, admit it; you think this is a segue into a story about more climate change hoaxery, don’t you. No, friends, sit back and let your humble narrator tell you all about the paper the Journal of the American Medical Association just published, written by one Dr. Barack H. Obama. The paper’s thesis? That Obamacare has been a massive success and Republicans are evil. Well, Dr. O is half right!
That the scientific establishment is in the thrall of the Democratic party is not news, I assume, but certainly I can’t recall a prior instance of a peer-reviewed scientific journal actually publishing a propaganda glurge ghost-written for a sitting president and claiming it as a scientific paper. The best part?
Obviously, JAMA held the president to a different, lower standard than it would an academic scientist. In fact, JAMA editor-in-chief Howard Bauchner admitted as much. In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, he said that Obama’s article was peer reviewed, but that he was allowed "a bit more flexibility because of who he is." He also acknowledged that "we don’t fact-check every fact."
There it is, in black and pale yellow: "because of who he is," president Obama’s paper was subjected to less scrutiny than papers written by mere mortals would be. Nobody really cared if his facts were truly facts, and he wasn’t required to consider or respond to any actual objections. I’m pretty sure that’s how science works, right? People with enough left-wing political "cred" are held to lower standards? I suppose that’s one way to make sure we arrive at the correct truth, rather than suffering the inconvenience of truth that’s too true.
I realize I’m running the risk of being less humble a narrator than you’ve come to expect, but, honestly, I’ve been telling you fine folks for years now that "big science" is utterly corrupt.
Obama endorses Trump
Hard to believe, but if it’s in the paper it must be true: Obama has just come out in favor of Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016. Anyhow, Malik Obama, the president’s older, less obviously evil half-brother has.
"I like Donald Trump because he speaks from the heart," Malik Obama told The Post from his home in the rural village of Kogelo. "Make America Great Again is a great slogan. I would like to meet him."
Obama, 58, a longtime Democrat, said his "deep disappointment" in his brother Barack’s administration has led him to recently switch allegiance to "the party of Lincoln."
Mr. Obama is probably in luck as far as his desire to meet The Donald goes, as this is far too good a PR weapon to let it slip away. Had this story come out a few weeks earlier, I expect we’d have heard Malik Obama speak at the Republican convention, probably with a speech plagiarized from Nancy Reagan.
I’ve no kind words for dictator and tyrant Abraham Lincoln, as longtime readers well know, but I would be remiss if I failed to point out that Obama’s affection for monstrous socialist god-emperors doesn’t stop there:
He’s also annoyed that Clinton and President Obama killed Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy, whom he called one of his best friends.
Malik Obama dedicated his 2012 biography of his late father to Khadafy and others who were "making this world a better place."
Just when I think I’ve seen that name spelled every conceivable way, here comes the good ol’ New York Post with "Khadafy." Khadafy was, of course, not a good guy, nor was he making this world or any other a better place, but it’s undeniable that his murder did indeed make the world a worse place. Still, Malik, maybe next time you’re endorsing a candidate for president of the United States, don’t mention your fondness for crazy military dictators, yeah?
Prepare for unforeseen consequences
Remember how those of us who are sane have been warning the social justice warriors about the obvious consequences of their bizarre crusade to force men into women’s restrooms? Remember how we pointed out that the whole reason women have a separate restroom is because women — and especially girls — are not comfortable taking their clothes off in a confined space while surrounded by strange men?
Oops.
The African-American woman who leads a state chapter of the ACLU has resigned, citing her own daughters’ "frightened" reaction to biological males using the women’s restroom…
"I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six feet [tall] with deep voices, entered," she wrote.
"My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer," she continued.
Turning into a bit of an I-told-you-so week here at Last Week in Weird, isn’t it. Regardless of my state of having told everybody so, I would like to applaud Maya Dillard Smith for having her priorities sufficiently under control that she places the safety and well-being of her children above the insanity of the social justice war.
Gotta bomb ’em all
Presented without comment:
I lied. I have one comment. Remember when Nintendo sued that Seattle hipster who used Pokémon iconography in a sign advertising a PAX party? Hey, I can dream.