Rule 4: DC Comics cancels book for blasphemy.

In an interesting turn of events, DC comics has cancelled a series because of a ShirtStorm.

DC Comics is set to release an outrageous and blasphemous new series featuring Jesus Christ as the sidekick for an "all powerful" superhero.

Let DC Comics know that this comic is inappropriate. It should be immediately pulled from their release schedule.

According to Fox News, the "Second Coming" comic "reimagines why Jesus left earth the first time and is coming back again." Author Mark Russell recently shared a bit about the concept behind his comic. He explained, "God was so upset with Jesus's performance the first time he came to Earth, since he was arrested so soon and crucified shortly after, that he has kept him locked-up since then."

There was a petition associated with this campaign, it got 20,000 signatures. DC decided that they didn't want to be on the news for blasphemy, and folded.

The Guardian was shocked, simply shocked I tell you:

But the comics publisher has now told retailers that the series has been cancelled. The decision follows a 200,000-signature petition from anti-abortion, anti-LGBT conservative campaign site CitizenGo calling on DC to pull the comic. "Would DC Comics publish similar content about other religious leaders, such as Muhammad or Buddha?" said the petition. "This content is inappropriate and blasphemous."

Leaving aside the answer to the question (which is "no" obviously, DC Comics would NOT publish similar blasphemy about Buddha or Mohamed) what's happened here is interesting. For years we have been amazed that a single phone call will cause a school board, a publisher, a TV show, basically any public body to cave in to SJW demands. One single complaint gets nativity scenes deleted from Christmas decorations at City Hall all over the Western world.

Here's one going the other way. That never happens. It never matters how many people complain about blasphemous or otherwise objectionable art, music or video. Governments and media never ever care how many people object to that stuff.

Except this time they blinked. This time, the community at large complained, and DC backed off. Live by the ShirtStorm, die by the ShirtStorm.

I don't view that as a good thing, sadly. What would have been nice is if DC respected their audience and didn't try to print this shock-schlock bullshit. I suspect they cancelled this thing because it is a turkey and they know they're going to lose money on it. The cover art looks like shit, the inside can't be better. No doubt they hoped a nice spicy bit of the usual controversy, where a few Christians yell and then get shouted down by the media horde. Except this time the horde didn't get any traction, and the Christians showed up in numbers. An accountant did the math, and that was that.

What's not good about this is one flavor of mob censorship is not better than another flavor. Lefties. righties, this is not the distinction that makes a difference. The distinction is -freedom-. There is no freedom when all that decides what gets done is the loudest mob. Freedom is telling the mob-du-jour to go fuck themselves and doing what you want.

Therefore, I can't celebrate this as a "victory" of decency against assholes. This is two sets of assholes fighting. What we want to do here is sell guns to both sides, and then run the survivors out of town on a rail. (Figuratively speaking of course. One can't take for granted that some ninny-nanny won't call the cops over a figure of speech, these things must be explicitly laid out.)

Big Study: Video games do -not- cause violence.

Another moral panic bites the dust.

A new study from the Oxford Internet Institute claims to have found no link between time spent playing violent video games, and increased aggressive behavior teen teenagers.

Wow, really. You think? Like since every teenager in the friggin' world has been playing Doom and Quake since the 1990's, if the games caused violence we should all be dead by now. Why do we keep seeing this "X causes violence!!!" trope in the news then?

This was supported by co-author Dr Netta Weinstein from Cardiff University who said: "Our findings suggest that researcher biases might have influenced previous studies on this topic, and have distorted our understanding of the effects of video games."

 

This is a polite way of saying what Mark Twain said previously, waaaay back in history there, "figures don't lie but liars figure." A sentiment so obvious that it is probably carved in hieroglyphics inside a pyramid somewhere.

Karl Marx's gravestone vandalized, oh noes!

If this isn't a sign of the times:

The suspected vandal damaged a marble plaque which was taken from Marx's original 1881 gravestone and incorporated into the 1954 monument.

Images of the defaced memorial, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year, show what appears to be damage done by a hammer to the lettering of Marx's name and the marble on which it is mounted.

I am not a fan of vandalism. I'm not saying it is a great thing to go out and smash up monuments to people I don't like.

What I am saying it that the Karl Marx grave marker sat undisturbed in London since they planted him in 1881, until now.

What I am saying is that this is the New Rules starting to bite down. Lefties have been breaking statues of Churchill and George Washington and pissing on war monuments for 20 years. Somebody out there decided it was time the Left had one of -their- monuments destroyed.

The Grauniad  was very distressed that their favorite dude Karl had his grave messed with. I hope they will think about it the next time somebody takes a hammer to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they want to cheer him on. A faint hope to be sure, but still.

The Hopeful Phantom

Internet destroying nation's youths!!!

Yes friends, the nation's youth are being imperiled. Again.

Children have become such screen addicts they are abandoning their friends and hobbies, a major report warns today.

Researchers found under-fives spend an hour and 16 minutes a day online. Their screen time rises to four hours and 16 minutes when gaming and television are included.

Youngsters aged 12 to 15 average nearly three hours a day on the web – plus two more hours watching TV. The study said YouTube was 'a near permanent feature' of many young lives, and seven in ten of those aged 12 to 15 took smartphones to bed.

It concluded: 'Children were watching people on YouTube pursuing hobbies that they did not do themselves or had recently given up offline.'

I've lived through five of these moral panics now. When I was a baby in the 1950s, it was comic books that were imperiling the nation's youth. When I was a boy in the '60s and 70's, it was television and pinball. Then in the 1980s it was video games. In the 1990s it was video games and internet addiction. In the 2000s it was social media that was going to kill us all. Now the buzzword is "screentime".

No matter what new thing comes along, there's going to be some bunch of assholes dedicated to telling you that its going to kill your children. Just remember that its all made-up, and you'll be fine.

The Phantom

TERFs beg Conservative men for help.

Radical lesbian feminists seem rather bewildered at being left standing on the platform while the Gravy Train rattles off down the tracks on its biscuit wheels.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Kara Dansky, a feminist lawyer and spokeswoman for Women's Liberation Front (WoLF), spoke against the so-called "Equality Act" at the Heritage Foundation on Monday, denouncing the transgender and gender identity movement as anti-women and anti-lesbian in particular. Her remarks echoed the London Pride March sign declaring that "Transactivism Erases Lesbians."

Did you get that? The WoLF spokesbabe giving a talk at The Hertiage Foundation? BWAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!  But wait, it gets better! This is my favorite part:

"This is a men's Rights movement — this is really a men's rights movement," Dansky declared, calling for men to stand up for women and denounce the transgender movement.

So why are these Lefty radical fruitbats talking at the Heritage Foundation? This is awesome:

"The completely illogical statement that 'trans women are women' is recited like a Big Brother mantra in every Leftist space," Beck declared. "No one really believes it, but saying so will jeopardize your career, your community, and your life."

Beck, Dansky, and Chavez only spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation because no liberal organization would welcome them, despite the fact that they are liberals — radical feminists!

These radical feminists received a standing ovation at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Monday. Their bravery in speaking truth to the Left's increasingly intolerant orthodoxy inspired an audience that would normally grimace at the idea of siding with homosexual activists.

Yes, those horrifying Nazis at the pro-gun, anti-abortion Heritage Foundation gave the Grrrlz a standing ovation.

Proving once again that everything you ever hear in the media about Republicans, conservatives, gun owners and what have you is always, always bullshit. Lying Lefties always lie.

The Phantom

Update: Andrew Sullivan noticed the lesbians at the Heritage Foundation.

The core disagreement, it seems to me, is whether a trans woman is right to say that she has always been a woman, was born female, and is indistinguishable from and interchangeable with biological women. That’s the current claim reflected in the Equality Act. But is it true that when Caitlyn Jenner was in the 1976 Olympics men’s decathlon, she was competing as a woman, indistinguishable from any other woman? Contemporary orthodoxy insists that she was indeed competing as a woman, and erases any distinction between a trans woman and a woman. Similarly, public high-school girls track or wrestling teams would have to include female-identifying biological males — even if they keep winning all the trophies, and even if the unfairness is staring you in the face.

Post-Modernism meets Reality, crumples up and goes on fire.

Media Meltdown: the puddle spreads.

The Daily Telegraph issues an apology for printing absolute horse shit:

Following last Saturday's (Jan 19) Telegraph magazine cover story "The mystery of Melania", we have been asked to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published. Mrs Trump's father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family.  Mrs Trump did not leave her Design and Architecture course at University relating to the completion of an exam, as alleged in the article, but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model. Mrs Trump was not struggling in her modelling career before she met Mr Trump, and she did not advance in her career due to the assistance of Mr Trump.

There's more. It seems that the original article was absolutely stuffed with bullshit, so much so that the Telegraph is paying Melania Trump money and legal costs as a settlement.

I know there's an old saying,"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." But my suspension of disbelief is a little bit stretched here. For this to be mere stupidity, all the people and all the lawyers working for the Telegraph would have to be eight year olds. Therefore, the corporate structure at the Telegraph must have considered publishing this thing "worth it" even though they knew it would cost them money.

What would make this "worth it" I leave as an exercise for the reader, because I got nothing. I can't imagine why they'd bother.

The Phantom

Update: Seen first at Small Dead Animals.

Supremes: Yes, Trump IS the commander in chief.

Today, to the sound of great tooth gnashing and wailing from the fruitbat Left, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that yes, the President does get to decide who is allowed in the armed forces and who is not.

Here is what they're screaming about:

The president abruptly announced on Twitter in July 2017 that the military would not permit trans personnel to serve. Thereafter, former Defense Secretary James Mattis convened a panel of military experts to conduct an independent review of the subject. Their findings served as the basis of Mattis' February 2018 memo which implemented Trump's request.

What does that all mean, exactly?

That memo provides that individuals with a history of gender dysphoria — a clinical term referring to anxiety triggered by the conflict between one's biological sex and the gender with which they identify — may enlist provided they are willing to serve in their biological sex and have not suffered gender dysphoria for a continuous three-year period prior to recruitment. Active personnel who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria may continue to serve provided they do so in their biological sex.

Basically, despite the shrieking and wailing of the Left and their paid character-assassins in the media, nobody is "banned" from the military any more than any other medical condition is banned. It does mean that the military has chosen not to go along with the gender-dysphoria cosplay that so many Lefties seem to consider mandatory. 

Update: To illustrate the point, here's the downside of getting your bowels in an uproar about "trans-inclusion" and "cismale white hetero patriarchy!" in the military.

As for readiness, it is not solely a Navy problem. Over the holidays, I talked to an Army dude who has been in for 17 years (and is really looking forward to getting out in 3 more years). He was bitching about readiness and how it has taken a back seat to SHARP. He was really irate about this.
“What’s SHARP”, I asked.
He told me. SHARP is Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention. According to him, that is much more important than readiness training. He’s had to stand down from a training exercise to attend a SHARP class. Can you imagine that?

Yes I can, because I've seen the same shit at hospitals. You get one (1) class on infection control. You never stop getting Wokeness and harassment classes. Because that's what's important in a hospital, y'know. 

Google: The end is nigh.

He's coming.

Here's a classic scenario from a toxic work environment. A snowflake triggered by the use of an every-day normal word in a work meeting.

A Google executive sparked a fierce backlash from employees by using the word "family" in a weekly, company-wide presentation, according to internal documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Many Google employees became angry that the term was used while discussing a product aimed at children, because it implied that families have children, the documents show. The backlash grew large enough that a Google vice president addressed the controversy and solicited feedback on how the company could become more inclusive.

What does that look like in real life?

One employee stormed out of the March 2017 presentation after a presenter "continued to show (awesome) Unicorn product features which continually use the word 'family' as a synonym for 'household with children,'" he explained in an internal thread. That employee posted an extended rant, which was well-received by his colleagues, on why linking families to children is "offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong."

One guy posts a snowflake rage-fit on the internal communication network, a bunch of other people have themselves a little ShirtStorm agreeing with him, to the point where upper management has to do a groveling ritual to calm the storm.

At work? Are you kidding me?

Don't we recall the last guy who embarrassed Google with a controversial internal memo was publicly shamed and fired? James Damore, name ring a bell?

I'd go into the details of the snowflake memo, but they don't really matter. Here's the bottom line of it:

Use the word "family" to mean a loving assemblage of people who may or may not live together and may or may not include people of any particular age. STOP using it to mean "children". It's offensive, inappropriate, homophobic, and wrong.

So why is the end nigh for Google? Because they are encouraging and rewarding mobbing behavior among their employees. Using a word in the culturally normal way in a technical presentation generated a couple of days worth of uproar on the company network.

All that activity occurred during work hours. Those people were not doing any revenue generating work while they were raging on about pronouns. But worse, now every guy who has a presentation to make is worried about what harmless word is going to be the next one to cause a mob. Will it be "team?" How about "shoe" or "badminton?"

Net result, the smart people who get all the work done are going to see that and leave the company. You can't work in an environment where snowflakery is more important than a major product presentation. The ones who are left behind, such as the idiot who objected to using the word "family" in a sentence, are the ones who DON'T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING. They are a cost, not an asset.

Dead company walking.

Update: Welcome Instapundit readers!!! Woohoo!