In Friday’s column I wrote about some of the best things in life, followed by some of the worst. Today I’m starting with things that make sense, and will end with just one example that baffles me.
First up in the “that makes total sense” column:
An article in the Washington Examiner, “The Collapse of Britain’s Health Service, the crown jewel of socialized Healthcare,” detailed the problems of – prepare yourself for a chain of sarcastic quotation marks — a “free,” “universal,” “healthcare” system.
Those problems include long wait times, excess deaths, and the government’s hiding of damaging data.
After often waiting for literally hours – the average time Brits wait for an ambulance after having a heart attack is 90 minutes! – patients are commonly evaluated in waiting rooms or hallways. Government figures show that “tens of thousands of people spend 12 hours or more on hospital gurneys after being admitted to the emergency department.”
And leaked internal reports indicate that the government has been lying about wait times and excess deaths, because the real numbers are even worse.
So the government took control of something, and promised free and universal access to that thing, and then shortages developed and quality fell like Joey Gaffes mounting a mobile airplane staircase?
Makes sense.
I refer you to the words of the late, great Milton Friedman (peace be upon him): “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
In other totally predictable news, arrogantly woke Disney is having some serious financial trouble.
Starting at the end of this week, Disney will apparently make the first round of staff and cost cuts, following by a larger one in late April, which sources are now describing alternatively as “the big one” or a “bloodbath.” (Both better movie titles than “Avatar: The Way of Water.”) The goal is to cut 7,000 staff and save $5.5 billion.
Not that long ago, Disney was the California of corporations, holding an unassailable position at the top of the heap.
Cali had amazing climate, topography, and natural resources, in addition to incredibly rich human resources in the forms of a premier university system, and the cultural and financial world-leaders of Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
Around 40 years ago, any sane observer, looking at all that California had going for it, would say, “This state is so blessed in so many ways that even the most delusional and destructive of all political philosophies could not bring it low!”
And the first in a long line of socialist morons said, “Hold my kale smoothie, and watch this.”
And then… yada yada yada… it’s all brain-drain flight, fires, floods, and sidewalks covered in human waste and dirty syringes.
Disney was similarly situated, and has followed the same path.
Its brand was one of the strongest in the world, buoyed by almost a century of classic animation masterpieces beloved by successive generations of star-struck fans, and theme park destinations where American parents would gladly take their kids to spend the second mortgage they’d taken out on their homes.
Then, as if in a Biblical “pride goeth before the fall” parable, a bunch of leftist locusts began to eat away at a great company. They decided to start forcing a “not so secret gay agenda” into every movie and cartoon in sight, and were dumb enough to be caught on video bragging about it.
Leftist political and sexual agendas forced rewrites of cherished stories. Suddenly the (Danish) Little Mermaid had to be black, and the Lion King had to be a vegetarian, and all of the villains had to be straight white guys. Snow White (voiced by Ellen Degeneres) was awakened by a (French) kiss by Cinderella (voiced by Dylan Mulvaney).
The Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe still lived in a giant piece of footwear. But now it was an enormous Birkenstock that had been converted into a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.
“Martin, were there trans storylines?” you are not asking, because you already know.
I’ll put it this way: Jack and Jill went up the hill… put Jane and Jill came down. And that was NOT water in the pail on that return trip.
Perhaps I’ve said too much.
To top it all off, the corporation that had enjoyed a 60-year-long sweetheart tax deal for Disney World decided to pick a political fight with Ron DeSantis and the parents of Florida. Brilliant!
(If that’s not the perfect political example of a “F*** around and find out” story, I don’t know what is!)
Perhaps the best individual story that summarized Disney’s woke idiocy is that of Victoria Alonso, the uber-powerful president of production, VFX and animation at Marvel, which Disney bought for $4 billion in 2009.
Alonso proudly touted her own status as an openly gay woman of color — although judging from pictures, she’s about as “colorful” as Lizzie Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – and received many MSM journalistic tongue-baths that noted her “fiery passion and outspokenness over diversity and inclusion.”
You’ll not be surprised to know that she has a memoir coming out next month – at Disney book label Hyperion Avenue, naturally – about her corporate rise, with the clunky, non-sensical title “Possibility is Your Superpower.”
As a one-time voracious reader of comic books, I cannot imagine a less enticing superpower than “possibility.” I mean, if an armored suit, X-ray vision, the power of flight, and using webs to swing around NYC were all off the table, I STILL wouldn’t pick “possibility.”
In fact, I’d quickly choose either “parallel parking on the first try” or “being able to come up with annoying running jokes in political columns” over “possibility” any day of the week!
Anyway, Alonso’s story ends in a hilariously satisfying way, and one that is likely to depress the sales of her idiotic autobiography.
She went to the unwatched Academy Awards ceremony a couple of weeks ago, and when she noticed that the two photographers on the red carpet were both female, she made a big, politically correct deal of it. She insisted that the women put down their cameras and take a pic with her, gushing, “Look at this! Two women! We’ve worked so hard to get here and we’re not going anywhere.”
aaannnnnddd…
Eight days later she was fired.
To which there are only three acceptable responses:
1. Cue the sad trombone.
2. HA! HAHA!! HAHAHA!!!
3. That makes perfect sense.
Here’s a story that doesn’t appear to make sense, but only at first glance.
It’s the story of Tiffany Thomas, who won a professional women’s cycling race last week in NYC. Although her teammates on the elite LA Sweat cycling team range in age from 24 – 32, Thomas is 46! Several news reports stated that, “Tiffany only started cycling [at 40], yet she was immediately successful and has since dominated events.”
So is Thomas just one of those athletic anomalies who defies the normal strictures of aging to remain competitive long after most have retired? Is she like Tom Brady?
Well, sort of.
Because like Brady, Tiffany Thomas is [cue Austin Powers voice] “a man, baby!”
And now it all makes sense.
Obviously, the headline, “Old, Inexperienced Woman Cyclist Dominates Elite Young Women Cyclists in Race,” is counter intuitive.
But “Older Dude Kicks Female Butt in Women’s Cycling Race?” Well that just rings true, doesn’t it?
Insulting. Aggravating. Obnoxious.
But true.
(Fun fact, proving that irony is dead: When Thomas isn’t using the power of testosterone to crush his smaller, more estrogenical competitors, guess what his day job is. That’s right: BIOLOGIST! You can’t make this stuff up.)
So I guess there’s really only one thing that doesn’t make sense to me right now, and it is this:
I’ve watched all of the Lord of the Rings movies, and found all of the hobbits in them to be quite charming.
And yet I don’t care for Janet Yellen at all.
“Dr.” Jill Biden/Victoria “Looking for Work” Alonso, 2024!