Columnist.
The Beverly Hills Hotel, owned by the sultan of Brunei, is a ghost town. The sultan recently imposed Sharia on the citizens of this small country in Southeast Asia with a population of less than 500,000. The law includes the punishment of death for any who engages in the "crime" of homosexuality or adultery. Jay Leno, one of the celebrities attending a rally in front of the hotel, said: "It's people being stoned to death. Hello!" Meanwhile, Bill Maher, another member of the almost-all-Hollywood left, discussed the kidnapping of mostly Christian Nigerian schoolgirls by a radical Muslim group. But, Maher added, "There's no mention here of connecting this to the religion, which is always what I am seeking to do because I think that's the elephant in the room." Maher, unlike the Hollywood lefties protesting the hotel, insists Islam itself, not merely Sharia, is the issue.
In 1996 California voters passed Proposition 209, which prohibited discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity or sex in admissions to public college and universities. But the moment 209 passed, UCLA, according to a new book, set about figuring ways around it. "Cheating: An Insider's Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA," by Professor Tim Groseclose, describes what the author insists are illegal admissions practices that he witnessed at UCLA. Groseclose's story begins in 2008 when, as a member of a faculty oversight committee for admissions, he asked for a random set of application files. He suspected that UCLA was using racial preferences in its admissions decisions -- in violation of Prop 209. When UCLA refused to give him the files, he grew even more suspicious. In response, he resigned from the committee and alerted the press.
A secretly taped conversation between long-time L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his then-girlfriend was released. The NBA has now banned Sterling from the league. The commissioner recommends that Sterling sell his team. Goodness, what happened? The old guy had a quarrel with his girlfriend, which she apparently -- surreptitiously -- recorded. The most eye-raising parts have to do with Sterling, 80, telling his less-than-half-his-age girlfriend that he doesn't want her attending games with black people, specifically with Magic Johnson. She can "f--k" anybody, he said, just don't bring "them" to the games.
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has died. Sympathetic obituaries say things like "wrongfully convicted" or "exonerated." But the black middleweight-title-contending boxer was neither. Carter, in 1966, murdered three people. But Hollywood later made a movie, "Hurricane," in which Denzel Washington brilliantly portrayed Carter as a wrongfully convicted near-saint, hounded mercilessly by a determined, racist detective. Excellent moviemaking, but it adds more sludge to the widely held notion of the "racist criminal justice system" that supposedly "warehouses" black males for no reason other than wrong place, wrong time, wrong skin. So, what really happened that night in Paterson, N.J., when three people were shot and killed? Why did Carter get prosecuted? Was Carter, as the media continue to say, an "innocent man" who was "wrongfully convicted"? Did the courts "exonerate" him?
If the Rev. Al Sharpton, the bigoted, anti-Semitic, non-tax paying race-hustling poverty pimp, had any credibility left, it just vanished. The beneficiary of a lifetime of passes from our race-conscious mainscream media, Sharpton ran into an outlet not afraid of him -- The Smoking Gun. They obtained material that exposed Sharpton as an FBI "informant." Sharpton, of course, denies that this constitutes "snitching." No, he says he "volunteered" to "cooperate" with the FBI -- and for the most honorable of motives. Why would the government-hating "civil rights" leader cooperate with the feds? Sharpton told Joe Scarborough, co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," that he did so to root out "mob influence" in the record business. To this, the suppliant Joe Scarborough actually praised Sharpton, calling him "a great example."
For reasons perhaps only psychiatrists understand, Democratic presidents seek, at last, finally and forever, to "solve" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe it's something akin to discovering that ultimate, clean-burning, renewable source of energy. Then when the talks collapse, an inevitability as long as one side refuses to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, Israel gets blamed. Secretary of State John Kerry, weeks ago, boldly announced his trip to the Middle East where he would shuttle between the parties, applying his decades of foreign policy experience and skill to at last resolve the conflict. Then came the reality check. "There are limits to the amount of time the president and myself can put into this," said the exhausted and frustrated Kerry, "considering the other challenges around the world, especially if the parties can't commit to being there in a serious way." A recent Times of Israel headline said: "Kerry Focuses Blame On Israel For Collapse Of Talks."
A quick way to kill debate is to accuse your political adversary of "lying." Still, it's hard to figure out what else propels President Barack Obama to falsely assert, yet again, that employers rip off female employees by paying them 23 cents less per dollar than men -- *for doing the same work.* In his last State of the Union address, Obama said: "Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work. She deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job." See, the president begins the statement with a fact. That is, women *on the whole* make 77 cents on the dollar compared to the earnings of men, on the whole. But here, as he has other times, Obama has added *for the same work,* or, as in this case, "equal pay for equal work." This makes the statement not only flat out false, but insultingly so.
The Los Angeles City Council asked Mickey Kantor, President Clinton's ex-secretary of commerce, to head a commission to assess the shape of American's second largest city. The report pulled few punches. Los Angeles, said the report, "suffers from a crisis in leadership and direction." L.A., it says, risks becoming "a city in decline." These problems include: a public school system with a high inner-city drop-out rate, where many of those who do graduate are unable to read, write and compute at grade level; the worst traffic in the nation; nearly $30 billion in unfunded pension liabilities (more than Detroit); last in job creation among big cities since 1992 and the only one of the seven largest cities "where the number jobs has actually declined since 1990"; and according the a recent study by the liberal Brookings Institution, now last in job creation for young people in the 100 largest metropolitan areas.
When liberal pro-Obama scholars question the legality of President Barack Obama's actions to implement Obamacare, the issue of illegal presidential use of power moves from partisan to frightening. George Washington Law School's Jonathan Turley is the second most quoted law professor in the nation and a two-time Obama voter. He recently testified before Congress on Obama's extensive use of executive orders and administrative actions to make unilateral changes in Obamacare, immigration policy, minimum wage and the IRS qualifying standards for non-profit status. As to Obamacare, Obama, so far, changed it in at least a dozen major ways, including, but not limited to, postponing the employer mandate, allowing insurance carriers to let their insured keep an old policy, and, more recently, redefining the Obamacare "hardship" exemption so broadly as to nullify the individual mandate for at least two more years.
When blacks gave 80 percent of their vote to the Democratic Party in 1964, black activist Malcolm X called them "political chumps." White voters, X said, "are so evenly divided that every time they vote, the race is so close they have to go back and count the votes all over again. Which means that any bloc, any minority that has a bloc that sticks together is in a strategic position. Either way you go, that's who gets it." Yet Democrats, said Malcolm X, failed to deliver on a promised and much anticipated new civil rights bill, knowing the party could still count on their blind support in the next election.
Just Not in Hollywood
Ted Nugent apologized. Now it's Spike Lee's turn. Rocker Ted Nugent, a Republican and a fierce defender of the Second Amendment, said this about President Obama: "I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame, enough Americans to be ever-vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America."
Richie Incognito, an NFL Miami Dolphin, is a clubhouse bully who was suspended for traumatizing teammate Jonathan Martin. A new NFL investigative report found that Richie, a white, soon-to-be free agent veteran, abused Martin, a black player then in his rookie season. The report accuses Incognito and two other players of using racially charged abusive language and engaging in abusive conduct directed toward the black rookie. Incognito, according the to investigation, was the ringleader. Richie Incognito, meet former Los Angeles City firefighter Tennie Pierce. Or more precisely, meet Pierce's firefighter "friends" -- who stand accused of bullying the black LAFD veteran. Incognito can relate to this story of what happened to Pierce's friends and co-workers.
Michael Sam appears to be a fine young man. But, no, he isn't the first openly gay male U.S. athlete to play in a major sport. And "brave"? Can we please dispense with the absurd Jackie Robinson comparisons? Wake me when a black collegiate pro prospect "comes out" as a Republican. A starting senior on the University of Missouri football team, Sam looks like a mid-round draft pick in the NFL. He recently "came out" to his teammates, many of whom said they already knew or suspected. Neither teammates nor coaches had an issue. Most normal people ask, "Who cares?" or "Can he play?"
Dylan Farrow, now 28 years old, is the adopted daughter of Oscar-winning director Woody Allen. In "An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow," published in The New York Times, Dylan accuses her father of inappropriately touching her "for as long as I could remember." She said: "When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me." Not good news for Mr. Allen -- or for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Here's why.
Democratic fundraiser/actor Ben Affleck -- and the next big-screen "Batman" -- recently gave an interview to Playboy. His own bias against Republicans, he admits, prevents him from fully enjoying a Republican actor's performance. "It's ... hard," said Affleck, "to get people to suspend disbelief." Affleck said: "When I watch a guy I know is a big Republican, part of me thinks, I probably wouldn't like this person if I met him, or we would have different opinions. That (bleep) fogs the mind when you should be paying attention and be swept into the illusion." Fair enough. But how do you think conservatives feel?
The Rev. William Barber, head of North Carolina's chapter of the left-wing NAACP, recently said this about black, tea-party-supported Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, S.C.: "A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy." Sounds like Barber might have mentored an ex-high school classmate with whom I recently had the following exchange: Ex-Classmate: "Uncle Tom in its purest form, that's Larry Elder, you hate your own people, need your ass kicked. ... I remember you from Crenshaw High. Your politics are so predictable. Man, you're such a phony. White folks don't accept you like you assume. When I lived in Orange County, you were kind of a joke."
The media quickly came up with a term for the apparently politically orchestrated George Washington Bridge traffic jam: "Bridgegate." Now what catchy term do the media attach to the explosive new book castigating the incumbent wartime commander in chief? "Gatesgate"? Hardly. Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is suspected of orchestrating, for political payback, a traffic jam on the GW Bridge. "Meet the Press" spent more than half of its most recent show -- 28 minutes not counting commercials -- on "Bridgegate," less than 11 minutes on the Gates' allegations, another 12 minutes reporting on women living in poverty and exactly zero seconds on the just-released jobs report.
CNN's Candy Crowley seems absolutely, positively astonished that Republicans could oppose raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits. To her Republican guest, Crowley asked this "question": "If I am an unemployed American ... or if I am a minimum wage worker and I see Republicans who say, 'You know what? It's artificial, it messes with the marketplace, it might mean some teens can't get into the job market,' why would I become a Republican?"
Michael Steele, then-chair of the Republican National Committee, criticized Obama's stimulus plan as "a wish list from a lot of people who have been on the sidelines for years ... to get a little bling, bling." Steele, who wanted to expand the GOP's appeal to young voters, used the expression to, in Steele's words, "take the party to the streets," while making the GOP more "relevant" to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings." In 2008, Obama took 66 percent of the 18-to-29-year-old vote, and 60 percent in 2012. To broaden the GOP's appeal, consultants hold forums, town halls and focus groups to figure out ways to attract the youth vote. Is it the core message -- low taxes, low regulation, secure boarders and strong national security -- that young voters find off-putting? Is it the messenger? Former Democratic Chair Howard Dean once referred to the GOP as the "white" party.
