Hard Times at the LA Times, Leaving CA, & Professor Potato (posted 1/29/24)

In my Friday column I covered a bunch of stories in which people who have been sowing dumb policies are now reaping their deserved results.  Exhibit A was the government/crony capitalist top-down pushing of electric vehicles, and the ways in which that attempt is imploding.

Exhibit B was the ongoing erosion of mainstream media, seen in stories about how CNN has started to get worse ratings than the Ring-Doorbell network and the Watching Paint Dry network, and about how Sports Illustrated and the LA Times are both going through huge layoffs.

Please allow me to pick up where I left off, with two more fun stories about the LA Times. The first one involves one of my favorite types of situations: when lefties fight inside the tent, because two of their cherished beliefs are clashing. 

One past example is the conflict that arose when feminist multiculturalists – who believe that all indigenous/non-Western cultures are inherently superior to corrupt Western ones – were confronted with African, Middle Eastern and Asian societies who practice female genital mutilation.  (What do you do when noble, non-Western people of color… turn out to be misogynistic oppressors of women?)

(Besides burst out in a rousing, Nelson Muntzian “HA-HA!”, if you’re a reprobate like me.)

Another example was when anti-Semitic freaks carrying a “Queers for Palestine” banner found out what Palestinians would happily do to them if they were in Hamas-istan: 

Jew-hating QFP activist: What?  If I’m gay, you’d throw me off a tall building to my death? 

Peaceful Jihadi: Yes, inshallah.

QFP activist: What about if I’m bi-sexual?

Peaceful Jihadi: We throw you off shorter building, breaking some of your bones.

QFP: Well, I guess that’s not so—

PJ: Then we drop stones on you until you’re dead.

QFP: So, if I’m trans…?

PJ: Throw you off building, then crush you with stones.  Then pull stones off you and spit on you, then drive corpse around Gaza in back of truck while firing rifles in the air and giving candies to the children to celebrate.  (HA Inshall-HA!)

And, scene.   

Well just such a lefty-on-lefty slapfest is going on at the LA Times right now, this time pitting the sanctity of unions vs. the holiness of racial identity politics.

As previously covered, the paper is laying off a big chunk of its employees.  Rigid union rules dictate that all cuts must be made on the basis of seniority, i.e. last hired are the first fired. 

This policy often hamstrings struggling employers, because it puts unions’ self-interest ahead of trying to keep the best-performing employees in the fight to keep the business going. 

But in this case – oh, sweet irony! – most of the older employees are white, while most of the recent hires are “diverse” (i.e. they think exactly like all of the others in the hive, but their skins are slightly different shades than the evil, old whiteys). 

You’ve got that right: their own unions are forcing management to protect the biased whites and fire the biased peoples of color!  Oh, the weeping and the gnashing of teeth and pronouns!

If you can still read through your tears of laughter, you should check out the way that the young employees are getting their dashikis, serapes and gender-non-binary-onesies over their heads and wailing over the tragedy:

“If these layoffs go through, our caucuses will be decimated. The Latino caucus will lose 38% of its members. The Black caucus will lose 33%.  The AAPI and MENASA (I’m not looking those up, because I’ve got a life to lead over here) caucuses will lose 34%!” 

But I notice that they don’t say a word about the “old white lady who pretends to be a Cherokee” caucus!  Won’t somebody think about Liz Warren?!  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Fortunately, virtually all of the “journalists” at the LA Times are anti-conservative hacks who are terrible at journalism-ing, and whose past terribleness has brought them to this hilarious precipice. 

So whoever gets fired, it’s going to be a win-win for karma, justice, and the American way.  And for Orville Redenbacher, whose popcorn sales should be going through the roof!

Speaking of the LA Times, on Tuesday they published an editorial that was definitely worth reading.  It was written by a Letters Editor named Paul Thornton, and even though he’s a [shudder] white male, you should read his commentary.

It’s titled, “If you Want to Leave, Fine.  But Don’t Insult California on the Way Out,” and it is a thing of beauty. 

Thornton has to acknowledge that 800,000 people left CA in 2022, and more last year.  But he’s irritated because many of them “feel the need to express disdain…and even anger” for their home state.  Then he defends how great CA is, with its “liberal politics” and its irrelevantly small Republican party. 

He later insinuates that the people fleeing CA are just jealous because, as he puts it, “We have 39 million people, Hollywood and Shohei Ohtani.”  But I don’t think those examples constitute the persuasive bragging points that he thinks they do.

Sure, you’ve got 39 million people. But many of them are illegal aliens, addicts with extensive dirty-needle collections, and Democrat politicians.  (And some of them are possibly all three.)

Yes, you’ve got Hollywood.  But that seems to be mostly a collection of child-grooming, America-hating narcissists turning out unwatchable movies and lectures about how everything we like sucks, and how we suck, and how we should still give them our money.  (Hat tip to Doctor Evil: “How about NO!”)

And if I’m not mistaken, “Shohei Ohtani” is the Japanese practice of ritual suicide by disemboweling.  Which seems like an odd Chamber of Commerce talking point.

Thornton’s pivotal line is, “But reasons to leave don’t explain the impulse to insult CA on the way out.” 

Oh, but they do!  The leftist establishment has been obnoxiously dismissive of conservatives and non-leftists, smearing them as racists and bigots, and micromanaging their lives with armies of locust-like bureaucrats (my apologies to locusts, who are just as God made them) and repeatedly mugging them for tax money by using all of the coercive power a bullying government can exert.

So yeah, California’s rulers deserve worse than bad-mouthing, but that’s the least that ex-pat Californians can give them. 

And if you’re concerned with showing people civility… you first.

I can’t close without telling you about the insane video that horrific Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (from guess which party?) put out last Tuesday to tout her new plan to provide “free” community college education to kids in Michigan.

(Community note: There’s no such thing as a “free” good or service.  The new JUCO tuition will now be paid for by taxpayers.)

For some reason, Whitmer appears in the video along with – I’m not making this up – a talking potato.  The potato has a human mouth, teeth and eyes, and looks as creepy as that description sounds like it would.  (Rumors that the potato is played by Brian Stelter, in his first tv appearance since being fired by CNN, have not been confirmed.)

Whitmer calls the abomination “Professor Potato,” and she engages in a dialogue with it that is so stilted and moronic that it might have come straight from Karine Jeanne-Pierre in a press briefing. 

You’ve got to see it to believe it, but I can’t promise that you will be able to un-see it. So watch at your own risk. 

In Professor Potato’s defense, though, he has not been caught plagiarizing nearly as often as Harvard ex-president Claudine Gay has.  

So he’s got that going for him.   

Hamas delenda est!