Holy "diversity", hallowed be thy name!

Two recent items on "diversity", one bemusing and the other chilling.

First, the comical one:(courtesy of the Globe "City Weakly")

Harvard works to be all-inclusive
When filling out housing forms at Harvard, students can check one of two gender choices: male or female. But starting in the fall of 2008 , students may be able to select a third choice: transgender . The proposal comes as part of an ongoing effort to meet the needs of all students.

Leave it to the humorless PC-niks at the Globe to report such a gem with a solemn face. Cripes, it just calls out for a certain sophisticated light hearted humor, the type the old New Yorker was good at( before it became Bush-crazed). I recall an amusing piece in the magazine on "monosexual liberation" where the punch line went something like: "we just want to be left alone"


And now, hold on to your hat( or better, your kid) , because the next item is really creepy:
Same-sex teaching upheld

It seems that if you send your little urchin to school in Lexington, this is what his teachers feed him:

Joey Wirthlin was exposed to similar material in the first grade at the same school, said the complaint. His teacher read aloud "King & King," a fairy tale about a prince who rejects his mother's entreaties to marry a princess. The prince ends up falling in love with and marrying a prince. The book concludes when the two princes kiss.

And if you, the poor schmuck of a parent, have any qualms about this, forget them. It's all for your own betterment, as the Globe piously instructs us. After all, it teaches diversity!

Upholding Diversity Lessons

How many Cambridge WARMmongers does it take to change a lightbulb?

"No, no! You can't! That would be just too mean! And you know what the bumper sticker says: 'mean people suck!.' "

The preceding was a direct quote from my conscience( conservatives do have consciences, you know). Let me explain what occasioned these rare qualms. In line at the supermarket, browsing Cambridge's august paper of record, The Cambridge Comical, my eyes were caught by this intriguing headline:

Group fights global warming on the neighborhood level

Well that's good news, I mused, now that Cambridge has joined the fray, GLOBAL WARMING hasn't got a chance. Especially with such fearsome foes as "Greenport, Cambridge’s first neighborhood environmental group," leading the charge.

And how does this stalwart group propose to save Cambridge? Light bulbs, yup, light bulbs - who woulda thought it. According to the Cambridge Crockical:

Greenport’s most recent initiative is encouraging Cambridgeport residents to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs that last longer and use up to 75 percent less energy than a regular light bulb. This month, they received a donation of 1,000 CFLs from NSTAR, the dominant electric company in the state.

And, get this:

The changing of 1,000 bulbs in Cambridgeport will save enough energy to light almost 20 homes for a year, according to those statistics.

Wow, this is really big league stuff. Everybody knows that if GLOBAL WARMING isn't stopped, and soon, Cambridgeport will be the first to go under when the water level of the Charles River rises.

"Now there you go again"(that pesky conscience!) "you start kinda straightfaced, but then you lapse into facile mockery. Don't be so darn mean."

But you must understand, I pleaded. It's unfair. It's facile because it's just so easy. There are just too many tempting targets here in Cambridgeland.

Cambridge trashes Minuteman

Leave it to Cambridge and its sister libraries to accomplish what the Brits couldn't: wipe out the Minuteman. That's what the Minuteman library network did with its new card design. (Guess which one is the new card!). I suppose the political correctniks felt a picture of a patriot with a gun would offend the tender sensibilities of lefty milquetoasts. So the bad Minuteman with the gun had to go - and be replaced with a soporific bland layout, inscribed with a grocery list of goody-goody banalities, guaranteed to offend nobody and to inspire no one.
Heck if Clowncillor Galluccio was around back then, the Minutemen couldn't even have fired BB guns. Might put their eyes out!

Courage and the cult of the self

The serendipitously named Harvey Mansfield, besides being just about the only real man at Harvard, ( see his "Manliness") is also a very sophisticated defender of classical values. For example, in a recent review of a book on Plato's conception of courage(a virtue much in need nowadays: America is truly up against a terrifying foe) , he maliciously highlights the discomfort this manly virtue evokes in America's twittering liberal intelligentsia:

"Contemporary theorists of liberal democracy chicken out completely, for even when it is their declared business to consider liberal virtues, they do not consider this one. Whether we think of gain in the terms of economics, or of esteem in the language of psychology, the self is a kind of deity and our theorists are its theologians. They seem to be afraid of courage."

From whatever angle these theorists view courage, it troubles them. On the one hand, courage entails sacrifice of the self(as the brave soldiers in Iraq who dying to keep us safe and free):

"Our individualism prizes the self, but courage deliberately endangers the self for the sake of--what? It seems that the answer would have to be that we value something more than our selves, more than our principle of individualism, and this would be uncomfortable to confront."

This unease is compounded by another aspect of courage, alien to many intellectuals, - its manly assertiveness:

"If liberal society is to focus on the self, its main anxiety has to be the exaggeration of the self when in conflict with other selves. The enemy is testy pride nourished by courage, and the solution is toleration in the active and positive sense of "civic engagement." Liberals who deplore the trend toward "bowling alone" never think of overcoming the lack with martial virtue, such as courage seems to be."

Global warming helps out Cambridge

Well things sure have changed for the better on the mean icy streets of Cambridge since our last post(Snowjob).

What happened to all the snow this morning? Did the City take our advice and send out squads of idle municipal employees to clear our walks in the dead of night.

What, are you kidding! No, the city relied on its old standby: Global Warming. For Cambridge "Warmmongers"(thank you, Mark Steyn) Global Warming has come through again. Not only does it explain everything, now it is actually doing the city's job. So, Cambridge bureaucrats can go back to doing what they do best: nothing.

The Reeves saga(continued)

A couple of themes running through yesterday's interview of Mayor Reeves by Michael Graham merit comment:

1. Reeves mentioned(without challenge by Graham) that the people of Cambridge elected him, implying that he had a mandate for his shenanigans. Not true. Hizzoner was elected by his fellow City Clowncillors. Which brings me to my second point: Cambridge's nutty city government.


2. Reeves, several callers, the jejeune Cambridge Chronicle reporter - all fatuously repeated the nostrum that Cantabridgians are "oh-so, so-bright." Well, if they are so smart, why do they have such a looney municipal setup. Imagine this: nine City Councillors all elected at large - thus representing everybody and nobody. Next, these Clowncillors huddle together and annoint one of their own as mayor. To cap it all off, the Clowncillors and the fake mayor shunt off the responsibility of running our lives to a City Manager. So we end up being ruled by unacccountable bureaucrats while our useless ceremonial Mayor merrily prances around the country with his city credit card and the equally useless City Clowncillors are left to do what they do best: lunatic lefty grandstanding.

Michael Graham socks it to Mayor Reeves(Update)

Good old Michael went after the slick and slippery Reeves like a pit bull. Then Graham interviewed a babbling Cambridge Chronicle reporter. She sounded like she was about 10 years old - and just as sophisticated . Left wing political correctness certainly does tend to stunt intellectual growth. At the end of the day, I stick with what I said in my previous post on this fiasco.

Flash: Mayor Reeves to be interviewed by Michael Graham

Extra, extra! This just in: hizzoner, our high living pseudo Mayor, Ken Reeves, will be grilled by Michael Graham on his expense fund hijinks today at 3:00 on 96.9 FM. Tune in. Graham, who will be filling in for Jay Severin, is far and away the best and staunchest radio talkmeister in the Boston area.

Our Harvard overlords present us with a new master, or should we say, mistress

Well, the jig's just about up for the Harvard guys. Or, at least so says Heather MacDonald in this wonderfully mean essay: Harvard's Faustian Bargain America's Oldest University Selects a Dreadful President

For MacDonald, "The feminist takeover of Harvard is imminent." Before her elevation, the ominously named Faust* ran The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where disgruntled Harvard females can always go for whine and cheese.

Now this is the person who is going to replace Larry Summers, a guy who ran the entire Treasury Department of the whole United States, for crying out loud. An article in the Harvard Crimson(will wonders never cease!) gets it just right:

Former University President Lawrence H. Summers’s critics, it seems, should be happily sated: Faust appears to be everything Summers was not. In the stead of a bold albeit tactless social scientist and a former cabinet secretary, Harvard has ensconced a career academic and mid-level administrator culled from the women’s studies henhouse.

Calling all Harvardians: forget the "gender gap" crap; focus on the stature gap.

So what does this dust up amongst our masters mean to us poor serfs here in Cambridge. Probably nothing. The fist that will rule us might well be velvety, but it nevertheless will be a Faust.

*means "fist" in German

Snowjob

Wanna hear a good one?

Cambridge property owners are required by law to remove snow from all sidewalks next to their home or business within 12 hours after snow stops falling in the daytime and before 1 p.m. when the snow has fallen overnight.(A Message from the Public Information Office)

So, let's see, it's almost two days since the snow stopped falling. So, I guess all Cantabridgians can now safely venture forth on the mean streets of Cambridge. What is that you say? The sidewalks are fit neither for man nor beast! But how can that be? The Cambridge Public Information Office assures us that, legally, that can't be so

But, alas, it is. Why? Why are Cambridge residents forced year after year to risk life and limb on sidewalks worse than ice rinks.?

Beats me. Ask the Mayor; your favorite City Clowncillor; maybe even Cambridge's all powerful éminence grise, the City Manager. Oh, and lots of luck in getting a straight answer.

During the nineties, I spent some time in Albany, NY, an impoverished, bleak excuse for a city. But poor old Albany did one thing right. With about the same population as Cambridge, but with a tiny fraction of its resources, Albany kept the sidewalks reasonably clear of snow. It worked like this: if a property owner refused to clear his sidewalks within 24 hours after the snow ended, City Hall would, upon complaint, send out a crew of workers to do the job and then bill the owner. Period, end of snow. And it really worked, I was forced to resort to it once on a especially refractory store owner.

So why not something similar in Cambridge. Heaven knows Cambridge has in reserve a small army of shnivel servants, 9 out of 10(no, let's be fair, no more than 7 out of 10) of whom sit around doing next to nothing day after day after day. Let them go forth, bravely, where no city worker has ventured before, shovel in hand, to, for once, earn their keep. And at their head, snow blowers at the ready, our intrepid do nothing City Clowncillors.

His Dishonor the Mayor or "that wascally weeves"

Pity poor Mayor Reeves! The fearless Cambridge Chronicle has been on his case again for his high handed ways with the taxpayers' money:

"After months of stonewalling the Chronicle’s attempts to get copies of his travel receipts, it turns out Mayor Ken Reeves doesn’t have any."

Sounds bad for our chief City Clowncillor! But wait, a few paragraphs down, the ingenuous journalist bizarrely enough exculpates the rogue:

"City employees and Cambridge elected officials are required to submit receipts to the city auditor in order to receive reimbursements for city-related expenses. That process does not apply to officials with city-issued credit cards. City Manager Bob Healy, Superintendent Thomas Fowler-Finn and Reeves are the only people in Cambridge with city-issued credit cards."

Gee, if Reeves was not required to keep receipts, then, duh, what is the point of hounding him for not keeping receipts. (And, assuming he used his city credit card, aren't the credit card statements sufficient as receipts?). Of course, the question remains why Reeve made himself look like a fool by his "stonewalling."

So, there you have it: a typical Cambridge stand off: inept rascally mayor up against equally inept crusading press.

Mass Pirgchiks

Don't you hate it when one of those little Mass Pirg creeps buttonholes you on the street and with moon-faced disingenuous earnestness assaults you with the passive-aggressive line "do you have a minute for the environment?"

The delightful C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis' "Surprised by Joy" is a wonderful book. It is delightful and sublime. Like all Lewis' work, it confounds the dreary atheists(and the even drearier agnostics) and recalls to us the beauty of the divine.

The book is also an affecting portrait of his childhood, worthy of comparison to Tolstoy's "Childhood". Here's how he sketches his parents:

"My father's people were true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and to tenderness; men who laughed and cried a great deal and who had not much of the talent for happiness. The Hamiltons[his mother's family] were a cooler race. Their minds were critical and ironic and they had the talent for happiness in a high degree-went straight for it as experienced travelers go for the best seat in a train."

The excellent Mitt Romney

A couple of years ago my darling wife and I were fortunate to see Mitt Romney up close in a seminar room at the Kennedy School. Bright, articulate, and affable. What a refreshing contrast to the snarky democratic apparatchiks which, as usual at the Kennedy School, comprised about 90 % of the audience.

In a recent interview with Romney, Power Line confirmed our impression:

"Romney answered every question with poise and assurance, remaining focused yet genial throughout."

Patriotism

"Patriotism is the highest form of dissent." (Mark Steyn)

Leafblowers

Leafblowers. The most extraordinary thing about leafblowers is why these appaling contraptions are not banned outright. Somehow, a city that is seriously considering a requiring a gun license for BB guns(yes, you heard right, BB guns! ), and that prohibits smoking within a certain number of feet outside of city hall, has problems with outlawing these abominations.