After introducing several different categories to write about in recent columns, today I’ve got one schadenfreude story, and three “Unexpectedly” stories.
Today’s Schadenfreude Corner tale arises when two axiomatic lefty principles come into unresolvable conflict.
I remember an example of this from a campus debate years ago: Many cultures (most of them in Africa and the Middle East) practice female genital mutilation (FGM), a bloody ritual of removing part of the female anatomy associated with sexual pleasure. Feminists of all political stripes strongly object.
But multiculturalists – another trendy leftist constituency – reflexively see indigenous and non-Western cultures as superior to Western (Euro-centric, Judeo-Christian, free-market) culture. (American Indians, for example, were environmentalist pacifists living in Eden, until evil white guys showed up and taught them how to fight and scalp, or something.)
So African and Middle Eastern cultures are morally superior to the West. Except when they violate women’s rights by practicing FGM…which is a part of their culture…which is morally unassailable…but evil, if it is misogynist. But who are WE to impose our Western anti-FGM standards on the noble, indigenous…misogynists?
You could see blue hair and nose-rings being blown off of heads all over campus during that debate.
(Conversely, conservatives had a much simpler take on that topic: “What are you, nuts? FGM is barbaric. Stop it immediately.” End of debate.)
Well, progressives in Chicago now have a similar dilemma. Because last month a “trans-woman” was standing on a street corner at 4:30 a.m. – as one does, in a super-safe city like Chicago – when a car pulled up. An armed guy in the car said, “bad gay,” and fired three times, hitting the poor guy twice in the legs and once in the groin.
Sidebar: One way you know that being a trans-woman isn’t a thing is that getting shot in the groin hurts more and in very different way if you’re a “trans-woman” and not an actual woman.
“But Martin, Illinois has very strict laws that stop people from owning and carrying guns, so how could that guy possibly use a gun to shoot the confused dude?” none of you are asking, because you have an IQ much higher than AOC’s. Bless her heart, and her juicy booty. (Her words, not mine.)
Anyway, the lefties in Chicago immediately sprang into action and began making signs condemning transphobia and preparing for mass protests. Until some learned that the shooter had actually said, “bad gay” in Spanish.
Okay, they said. Not great. We were hoping for a white guy. But Hispanics – sorry, Latinx-es – shouldn’t be transphobic either, so we can still condemn him—
Then it turns out that the shooter was a Venezuelan. Here illegally. With criminal ties to drug cartels.
D’oh! Three strikes! What to do?
Anyone who attacks a trans guy is evil…except if he’s a brown newcomer…or undocumented citizen? Or is it now non-papered American? Anyway, no human is illegal!
Except maybe when he points at a guy in a dress and yells, “That’s a MAN, baby!” in Spanish, like a Guatemalan Austin Powers?
We feel your pain, Chicago Democrats. If by “feel your pain” you mean “laugh at your self-inflicted stupidity.”
Now on to a trifecta of “Unexpectedly” stories. (For newcomers to the column, these are tales in which leftist policies are put in place and produce predictably terrible consequences, to the shock of those who pushed those policies.)
First up is a story from the lefty rag The Guardian (UK), about a great labor “victory” in the leftist sanctuary city of Minneapolis. Dissatisfied Uber and Lyft drivers there persuaded the city council to pass a minimum pay ordinance which would force the companies to give them what they called a substantial raise.
When the lefty mayor vetoed the ordinance (which is shocking in and of itself!), the council over-rode the veto. Of course I like to see workers get paid as much as they can earn in a free market, and I trust that market – drivers, customers and ride services – to hash out what a fair wage is, rather than having that dictated by a bunch of bureaucrats.
The Guardian’s headline is hilarious in its cluelessness. The first half reads, “Minneapolis drivers protested wages – and won.” But then, the second half of the headline tells the rest of the story, “Lyft and Uber are choosing to leave the city rather than pay up.”
UNEXPECTEDLY!
“Yay!” say the drivers, “Victory is ours!”
Annnndddd… the drivers are out of work, and more citizens are stranded without rides.
Spoiler alert, people: the real minimum wage – always and everywhere – is zero. And you’ll be earning exactly that!
Speaking of minimum wages and dopes who haven’t learned their lesson, how about that California? Next week a new law goes into effect that raises fast food workers’ pay in Cali from $16 an hour to $20.
Yay! Power to the people! It’s about time that pimply-faced teenagers at McDonalds are able to afford a cliff-top mansion next to Babs Streisand in Santa Barbara!
Annnnndddd…
Well, you know. McDonalds and Chipotle have already said menu price hikes are coming. Pollo Loco will be automating salsa-making, and Jack in the Box is testing fryer robots. Pizza Hut is laying off all in-house delivery drivers, and a smaller chain is cutting 73 driver positions by mid-April.
UNEXPECTEDLY!
Thousands of fast-food workers who were starving at $16 an hour will now be thriving at $0 an hour. Congratulations everybody! Well done, Gavin!
Meanwhile, 6600 households in New York City – which should be known as “California East” or “Minneapolis South” – were recently polled about how satisfied they are with the way things have been going in their city.
Since 76% of them voted for Biden in 2020 and 66% of them voted for Eric Adams for mayor in 2021, and they have voted heavily for the one-party Democrat control that they now have, they all reported that everything is both hunky dory and tickety-boo in the Big Apple. The end.
HA! I kid, because I love.
Actually, a sizable majority of New Yorkers have recognized that their city has gone to shite in ways various and sundry, and half of them say they are planning to leave.
The numbers are grim. “Only 37 percent are happy with the level of public safety in their neighborhood, and only 34 percent are satisfied with their neighborhood’s cleanliness.” When asked to rate the quality of life in NYC overall, only 29.8% said “excellent” or “good.”
And that’s down from 51.2% in 2017!
Breitbart sums it up well: “The same Democrats complaining about this voted for this. They voted to end stop-and-frisk. They voted for politicians who declared New York a sanctuary for illegal aliens. They voted to release violent criminals. And now they are all, ‘Oh no, our city sucks. How could this have happened?’”
We can tell them how…
UNEXPECTEDLY!
And now, for a quick little “celebration of excellence” from right here at home…
Ron DeSantis just whipped the Mau’s House again! Disney finally gave up their big, year-long lawsuit, with the only condition being that Florida drops their counter-suit.
Which is the equivalent of a trash-talking boxer preening and mouthing off before a fight, and then, five rounds later, begging the other fighter, “Please stop hitting me. No mas. Let me crawl around the canvas and try to find my mouthpiece, which I’m hoping has at least some of my teeth in it!”
The DeSantis team took a victory lap online, re-posting some of the MSM headlines from when Disney first filed their self-humiliating lawsuit, which came after DeSantis challenged their last-minute, dirty-trick appointment of an all-new board to the Reedy Creek Development District.
At the time, lefty outlets crowed, “RDS’ Board Rages Against Disney after Legal Humiliation!” and “Out-negotiated by Mickey Mouse: How Disney just Beat Ron DeSantis!”
And now, after having their first “free-speech” lawsuit against RDS tossed in January, they’ve lost the final round to him.
Man I hope we can someday have that guy as our president!
One final note: we’ve enjoyed having our youngest – or as I like to call her, my tech support – at home with us during her spring break this week. She was able to fix a problem I’ve had with my website.
Regular readers know that whenever I post a new column on the CO site, I post my previous one on my page (Martinsimpsonwriting.com). I’ve also recorded a couple of videos of my rambling on various topics, but I’ve had to house them on Youtube. My last one – titled “CS Lewis & William F. Buckley on our Current Election” – had a glitch that kept people from seeing it.
My daughter spent two minutes doing some kind of sorcery over the keyboard, and my three videos can now all be found on my site, under “Videos” on the main page, and I’ll be recording and posting another one shortly. If you’re interested, and don’t mind watching a guy with a face made for radio, please check them out.
Also, if I wasn’t so proud of her I wouldn’t mention this, but my youngest just accepted a 10-week, paid research fellowship in astro-physics this summer at UC-Boulder. If that’s a good experience, she wants to apply to start a PhD there next fall. Which would mean that both of my daughters would be living within about 40 miles of each other, in a gorgeous place that we love to visit!
I know. I’m a simple hillbilly English major, and all I know about planets is that Men are from mars, women are from Venus, and all other made-up genders are pulled from Uranus. (Dad joke!) And my daughter is double-majoring in astro-physics and planetary science!
Honestly, I sometimes feel like I’m being pranked. I’ve got a smoke-show wife with a heart of gold, two amazing daughters, a paragon of canine excellence in Cassie the Wonder Dog, and the amazing CO nation to rant to instead of paying for therapy!
And Easter is coming!
Have a great weekend everybody, and don’t forget…
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 