Welcome to Monday, May 25, 2026: it’s Memorial Day, a holiday in America. From Wikipedia:
Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. It is observed on the last Monday of May. It is also considered to be the unofficial beginning of summer.
Memorial Day is a time for visiting cemeteries and memorials to mourn the military personnel who died in the line of duty. Volunteers will place American flags on the graves of those military personnel in national cemeteries
One of those graves is at Arlington National Cemetery, where my father is buried (he was a retired Lt. Col. when he died, and had served twenty years.) Here’s a photo of the graves at Arlington, and a photo of my dad, inscribed to my mother (I think this was before they were married).
There’s a Google Doodle honoring the day (click icon below to see where it goes); the folded flag, which covered a coffin, is given to a deceased soldier’s wife or relatives after the funeral.
It’s also National Wine Day and National Tap Dance Day. Here’s one of my favorite tap performances: Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing to the “Shorty George”. Watch the whole thing. The dance if from the 1942 film “You Were Never Lovelier“. Info from YouTube:
You Were Never Lovelier was Rita’s third and last film released in 1942 and her second time as Fred Astaire’s dancing partner. Except for “The Shorty George” number, all their dances were rehearsed in the attic of a funeral parlor! They had to stop every time a funeral procession came through and couldn’t start up again until all the mourners had left. But if those conditions disrupted rehearsals, it didn’t show on-screen. The results were fabulous. Rita later called this movie one of her favorites, but it was also memorable to her for another reason. During rehearsals of “The Shorty George”, Rita experienced one of her “most embarrassing” moments when she fell down during the dance and knocked herself out cold! The film is set in what was one of Hollywood’s favorite locales at the time, Buenos Aires, and also features Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra to add to the Latin flavor of this memorable musical.
and from the Wikipedia entry on the movie:
A synthesis of American Swing or Jive with virtuoso tap dancing is performed by Astaire and Hayworth, both in top form and exuding a sense of fun in an arrangement by Lyle “Spud” Murphy. The title refers to a popular dance step of the time, attributed to George “Shorty” Snowden, a champion African-American dancer at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom and reputed inventor of the Lindy Hop or Jitterbug dance styles. Here, as in the “Pick Yourself Up” and “Bojangles of Harlem” numbers from Swing Time, Kern belied his claim that he couldn’t write in the Swing style.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The NYT reports that the U.S. and Iran have agreed in principle to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran has said it will get rid of “highly enriched uranium.” But the details have yet to be nailed down.
The United States and Iran have agreed in principle to a deal that could wind down the war in the Middle East, but the final approval by leaders of both sides could take days, a senior U.S. official told reporters on Sunday.
The deal would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and commit Iran to disposing of its highly enriched uranium, but how Tehran would do so was still being negotiated, said the U.S. official, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly. President Trump has insisted that the United States seize the material as part of his vow to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran’s leaders and official state media have not publicly commented on what is in any potential agreement or what is being discussed. Officials from both countries have said any agreement would be an initial framework that would lead to further negotiations, rather than the last word.
News of a possible deal came after a roller-coaster few weeks, with Mr. Trump at times threatening to restart attacks on Iran, and at others saying there was progress in last-ditch negotiations to stave off a return to full-scale war — all while offering few details. Then, on Saturday, the president announced on social media that the two countries had “largely negotiated” a memorandum of understanding “pertaining to PEACE.”
On Sunday, however, he said he had ordered his negotiators “not to rush into a deal.”
If a deal were certified, Mr. Trump said in his social media post on Sunday, the United States could end its blockade of Iranian ports, which it had used to pressure Tehran to reopen the strait.
Over the last 24 hours, both American and Iranian officials have emphasized the concessions they hoped to secure.
Three Iranian officials said on Saturday that a potential deal would stipulate only that nuclear matters would be negotiated within 30 to 60 days. Like the U.S. official, they spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The possible deal does not address Iran’s supply of missiles, nor does it stipulate a moratorium on enrichment, the U.S. official said on Sunday. Those issues would be addressed in future negotiations, the official said. In previous rounds of negotiations, the United States has sought at least a 20-year commitment.
Everything is being put off, as usual. What will happen, I think, is that Iran will retain its abilities to make a nuclear bomb, the people will remain oppressed, and Iran will keep accumulating missiles to fire at Israel and the Gulf States. Even in nascent form it’s a bad deal.
*Readers seem to agree that whatever deal is hammered out won’t work. As of this morning, here are the totals for the poll about Iran I posted yesterday. As you see, 90% of those responding don’t think the war will wind down completely within two months. I voted “no” as well.
*As the peace process in Gaza has stalled, and the country refuses to disarm, Israel has expanded the proportion of the territory that it controls, from 53% to 59%.
Israel’s military has deepened its hold on the Gaza Strip, significantly expanding the territory it controls under the seven-month cease-fire and fortifying the line that separates it from areas controlled by Hamas.
Israel now holds around 59% of the enclave, up from 53% at the start of the U.S.-brokered cease-fire in October, people familiar with the matter said. The increase came as Israeli troops moved the so-called yellow line, which marks the division of territory, deeper into Hamas’s zone of control, the people said. In at least one spot, Israel moved the line forward a few hundred yards to intersect with Salah al-Din Road, Gaza’s main north-south artery.
In addition, in central Gaza, the Israeli military has been fortifying the line with a deep trench and high sand berms along its length, satellite images show. Similar earthworks can be seen in areas of northern and southern Gaza, but the fortifications through the center, where much of the population lives, are longer, more continuous and designed to be harder to breach since the area is more vulnerable to attack, Israel’s military says.
Satellite images show the line is now dotted with at least seven new outposts, each protected by sand berms. Some are paved with asphalt and host more than a dozen buildings. They beef up Israel’s position on the line and add to dozens of outposts scattered throughout its side of the enclave.
The fortifications show how the division of Gaza is hardening amid a logjam in President Trump’s peace process, as Hamas resists pressure to disarm its fighters and Israel continues to attack them. The situation means extended limbo for Palestinians who are still living among the ruins, and has created a no-man’s-land inside the enclave, a territory that Israel has long denied it wants to occupy permanently.
. . .As long as Hamas remains in control of part of Gaza, Israel insists it won’t withdraw its troops, and many Arab governments say they won’t fund reconstruction of the enclave. The U.S.-led Board of Peace is pushing to get on with the task of reconstruction, including erecting new housing developments on the Israeli side of the line for Palestinians—a step some Arab governments as well as Hamas are resisting, according to Nickolay Mladenov, the diplomat leading the Trump-brokered effort to end the conflict.
“The more we stabilize the status quo, the more that status quo becomes difficult to remove,” Mladenov said in mid-May, warning of a situation in which Gaza becomes permanently split in two.
Asked about the movement of the yellow line, Israel’s military said it was operating on orders from the country’s political leadership. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Gaza Peace Plan of Trump et al, which is an unholy mess, decreed that the strip should be disarmed in Phase 2 (beginning last January) and Hamas should give up power as well as its weapons. But you know it won’t do that: its latest excuses are that it won’t do that until a) there are two states in place and b) Israel withdraws from Gaza. The a) bit simply ain’t gonna happen, and the b) bit won’t happen until Hamas disarms. I’m pretty sure that if it did disarm, Israel would withdraw—after all, Hamas is tying up IDF troops needed elsewhere. So, the conclusion is that the line will stay, though I don’t see why Israel shouldn’t say why they moved it further south. But the Trump Peace Plan is prety much DOA.
*Jonathan Kay has been reporting on the apparently fictitious burials of indigenous children at the First Nations Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia. As you may know, it was pretty much the Scandal of the Year in Canada (over several years), carrying the implication that indigenous children had either died or been killed secretly, and were buried on the grounds of the school. But so far they haven’t found any graves, nor are they looking for them. Kay reports in Quillette that “Canada’s newspaper of record asks: ‘What if they ultimately find nothing?’” The answer is pretty much, it wouldn’t matter.
A month ago, I offered some predictions about how Canadian journalists would cover the five-year anniversary of the country’s infamous “unmarked graves” social panic, which began on May 27, 2021. On one hand, this kind of important landmark would be difficult for news outlets to ignore. (After all, this was considered the Canadian “Story of the Year” at the time.) On the other hand, any intellectually honest retrospective that these outlets produced would require at least some passing explanation as to why the entire Canadian media establishment had fallen hook, line, and sinker for a story that turned out to be fake—something that most journalists have so far proven unwilling to do.
On Wednesday, it will have been exactly five years since the Kamloops First Nation in British Columbia claimed it has found 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children on the grounds of the community’s former residential school. In the weeks that followed, gullible reporters transformed the narrative into a kind of horror-movie script, complete with mass murdering priests and midnight burials.
It all turned out to be complete nonsense. In five years, not a single actual grave has been found.
The only evidence that had been offered in support of the original claims consisted of a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the former residential school grounds. As reporters (belatedly) learned, GPR technology merely detects sub-surface soil dislocations—not actual graves. These dislocations canbe associated with graves, but also with pipes, rocks, tree roots, and a dozen other common subsurface artifacts. To truly identify actual graves, one must dig—something that the Kamloops First Nation leaders who originally advanced these false claims have conspicuously failed to do; despite having received more than $12-million from Canada’s (equally gullible) government for search activities.
In polite Canadian society, it is still considered ideologically outré to admit frankly that none of these supposed “unmarked graves” have been found, or even to suggest that evidence was ever necessary to prove their existence in the first place. From the start of the social panic, these (unidentified) children were cast as sacred martyrs, and their grim fate was attested to by (equally sacred) Indigenous elders who’d claimed to have experienced some kind of mystical “knowing.” The whole movement quickly became an ersatz religious movement for Canada’s upper middle-class lawn-sign set.
. . . In that aforementioned April 21 column, I tried to imagine how Canadian media outlets would square this circle. And this is what I came up with:
We’ll get a lot of studiously vague interview pieces, illustrated with photographic portraits of [Kamloops First Nation chief Rosanne Casimir] or other Indigenous figures staring morosely into the middle distance. These pieces will feature an early passing reference to the original unmarked-graves announcement from Kamloops—that moment of moral ‘reckoning,’ according to the usual stock phrase—but then segue hurriedly to emotional laments about the ‘unfinished work’ of reconciliation. This will be followed by carefully worded references to the ‘doubts’ that some Canadians have about the existence of unmarked graves, and then a substantial section about the scourge of ‘denialism.’
Yesterday, the Globe & Mail—sometimes referred to as Canada’s “newspaper of record”—published its big fifth-anniversary spread, giving me an opportunity to put my predictions to the test. And it turned out that I got things mostly right. Indeed, the words “doubt” and “denialism” are right there in the Globe & Mail’s sub-headline (“Five years after a grim announcement in B.C., uncertainty gives rise to doubt and denialism.”) National “reckoning” gets a shoutout, too. And the Globe & Mail photo pool supplied readers with the obligatory image of a Kamloops First Nations “knowledge keeper” staring resolutely out into space.
. . . But the article also served up a few surprises, which are worth exploring in some detail. The “unmarked graves” farce is arguably the greatest journalistic scandal in Canada’s history. Over the last half-decade, several outlets have (grudgingly, in most cases) admitted that they got the original story wrong—including the National Post, New York Times,and, more surprisingly, the CBC. But many others, including the Globe, had never (to my knowledge) explicitly done so—whether out of embarrassment, fear of being labelled an enemy of Indigenous “reconciliation,” or, more likely, some combination of both. The new Globe article offers clues as to whether the newspaper(and similarly herd-minded legacy media outlets) will ever fully pivot to a genuinely truth-based approach to the subject.
And here’s the “it doesn’t matter” bit:
In paragraph eight, the writers try a second motte-and-bailey gambit. We are informed that “regardless of what they find [in Kamloops], the fact remains that more than 3,500 children are named on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation‘s registry of students who died as a result of the residential school system, which operated in Canada for more than 160 years.” This is absolutely true. But it’s also completely irrelevant. No one disputes the information published by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which, unlike the Kamloops hysteria, was based on careful research. In that case, researchers had names, dates of birth, and other identifying details for the victims. None of that exists in the case of the Kamloops story.
The Globe’s implicit argument here is that it doesn’t really matter all that much if those 215 children actually existed or not, since we have the names of 3,500 other children that can be trotted out for the same purpose—so, at worse, we’re still batting 94% on dead-child statistics.
And so they probably won’t dig up the “graves”, which probably are artifacts and not dead bodies. It is to Canada’s (and its media’s) eternal shame that this has become a sacred story that cannot be contradicted, especially by evidence. The default answer is, as Kay notes, that it doesn’t matter because the story still instantiates the fact that First Nations people were discriminated against, though they are not sacred. And the discrimination was true, but you can’t simply accept stories that are right there waiting to be either falsified or verified.
This reminds me of Wilfred Reilly’s book Hate Crime Hoaxes, in which he shows that a number of, say, black “hate crimes” on campuses and elsewhere (e.g., the placing of nooses, graffiti using the “n-word”) were actually perpetrated by members of the group supposedly attacked. Why would a black person write anti-black graffiti? Well, to get personal attention (while remaining anonymous, of course), but also to keep alive the idea of their group being persecuted. And most places, especially campuses, buy into this, for when a hate crime is revealed aas a hoax, the college rarely reveals that, or says, like Canada, that it doesn’t really matter because bigotry remains a problem. This is no way to seek the truth.
*Some people grouse when a black actor takes on a “white” role, as is going to happen in a new movie of “The Odyssey”, but it seems verboten to have a white actor play a “black” role, like Barack Obama or Martin Luther King. Well, I can see why the latter holds, since the significance of both Obama and King rested on their connection with being black, but in his latest column, John McWhorter gives three good reasons supporting this asymmetry—at least for the time being.
The director Christopher Nolan has confirmed that in his film of “The Odyssey,” Helen of Troy — the mythical figure who launched a thousand ships — will be played by the dark-skinned actress of African parentage Lupita Nyong’o.
Some people have implied this is a denial of history, a performative woke gesture. Would we tolerate white actors playing Black historical figures, they ask? “Casting a Black woman to play a White woman in a foundational work of European literature is no more right than casting a White man to play Shaka Zulu!” Elon Musk objected. The “End Wokeness” X account has pitched in to the outrage with a tableau of hypothetical movie posters of films with white actors playing various Blacks in Wax, such as Anthony Hopkins cast as Nelson Mandela.
. . .The people who think it’s wrong to cast Nyong’o because Brad Pitt shouldn’t be Shaka Zulu pretend there is no diachrony involved in how we judge such things. Never mind that Helen of Troy was a mythical character. There are perfectly good reasons white actors should not be playing Black characters in our moment.
For one, Black actors don’t have as many opportunities as white actors. They should at least be the default choice for playing characters of their own race. It is true that opportunities for Black actors are opening up: a Black military commander in “Game of Thrones,” a Black Little Mermaid, and Black characters in the Regency romance series “Bridgerton.” However, it has only been this way for about 10 minutes, and Black actors still work under limitations. No one would say that a Black young actor, regardless of hotness or talent, could most likely have the opportunities that Timothée Chalamet or Sydney Sweeney has.
The critics also ignore power relations. If Mark Wahlberg played Muhammad Ali, as End Wokeness’s mock-up has it, Wahlberg would be taking a role from actors in a not so powerful group. If Michael B. Jordan played John F. Kennedy, it would be punching up.
Plus, white actors playing Black figures in “blaccents” of various degrees would verge on minstrelsy. It’s one thing that Black British or African actors such as Idris Elba and Thandiwe Newton do American blaccents in roles (and uncannily well). But Reese Witherspoon or Steve Carell? Um — no.
. . In some future time we should have no problem with a talented white man playing the lead in “A Raisin in the Sun,” a white woman cast as Representative Barbara Jordan, or white people singing in “Porgy and Bess.” I didn’t say tomorrow — but sometime.
These three answers convince me that McWhorter is right, but I can see that all the points are arguable. Yes, there are fewer black actors, but should you go for race over talent in an affirmative-action move to create equity? The “power” reason is to me the least convincing. It’s a postmodern variant of a), and “punching up/down” arguments never convince me (they’re used in sciencc, for example, to try to get powerful professors to avoid criticizing assistant professors, but nobody’s beyond criticism). I’m not sure that white actors playing blacks have to assume a black accent or argot, so the minstrel argument isn’t too strong, either. But taken together, all three seem okay to me, though there are probably some black people who could be played by whites right now, like Matthew Henson, a black man who explored the Arctic with Robert Peary. Insofar as his blackness wasn’t instrumental in his accomplishments, would it be so bad if he were played by a white, Hispanic, or Asian? But yes, there are some black people now who could be played credibly only by black actors.
For a much longer discussion of this issue, which in the end agrees with McWhorter (but at daunting length), read Cathy Young’s “Homeric Heresies” at Quillette.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej is overworked, as usual (he’s just written a book):
Hili: You said you were taking a break.
Andrzej: Yeah, except I forgot how to actually do that.
In Polish:
Hili: Powiedziałeś, że robisz sobie urlop.
Ja: Tak, ale zapomniałem jak się to robi.
*******************
From Meow Incorporated:
From Things With Faces; a happy cup:
From Give Me a Sign:
From Masih, who’s obviously angered at Trump trying to forge a peace with Iran and not giving a fig about the freedom of the Iranian people:
While Trump negotiates a deal with the Islamic Republic, a deal with zero human rights clauses, regime is hanging people in silence. Today they hanged another innocent Iranian.
Mojtaba Kian was arrested, tried, and executed in less than 50 days.
All of it happened under a… pic.twitter.com/hjsNS2ZdsG
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) May 24, 2026
From Luana. Here’s Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico saying about anything he can that will hurt his candidacy. God is nonbinary, there are six sexes, etc. Is this “progressive”? (Talarico won the Democratic primary and will face the former governor of Texas for an open Senate seat). It reminds me of the ad that took the wind out of Kamala Harris’s sails:
This ad alone is gonna make Paxton win by 5 lololol pic.twitter.com/DVWYrdWC7p
— Dr. Toledo Dem (@styt101) May 23, 2026
The Number Ten cat in a Trumpophobic mode (which is always):
What are the odds Trump is seen on a golf course this weekend? pic.twitter.com/kfMPGEZdm3
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) May 22, 2026
Reposted by Emma Hilton. She does look undernourished; I see no muscles:
Sadly this is not toned? This is malnutrition https://t.co/6dA3ifEoxs
— Sharron Davies HoL MBE (@sharrond62) May 13, 2026
One from my feed. Remember this one? The best video ever. But I don’t know what happened to the cat.
A cat fell from a stadium roof and was caught by a fan flag.
Best use of team merchandise ever 👏pic.twitter.com/sfbIqivPFO
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 24, 2026
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Hungarian Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she got to Auschwitz. She was fifteen years old. https://t.co/bPxZEGPdLi
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) May 25, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, Bob Dylan at 20:
Bob Dylan — Ted Russell, 1961.
— Nothings Monstered (@nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social) 2024-12-17T19:42:30.126Z
Can you spot the ski jump? This is clearly from Norway, and Matthew can tell us:
Spot the ski jump!
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-05-24T13:53:59.449Z
Re. the new Odyssey.
It seems to me that it’s all a matter of what the creators are trying to do with the film.
If they are trying to convince people of false historical assertions, then it’s not good. But I’m quite sure that the film is not trying to convince anyone that Helen of Troy was from sub-Saharan Africa.
Apart from that, an artist should be free to reimagine, fantisize, experiment, to his/her heart’s content.
Reminds me a bit of Bridgerton — which I’ve never watched — which apparently imagines an alternative London in the 19th century. Why not?
And if Nolan wants to imagine or experiment with a black Helen of Troy, knock yourself out.
I mean, there is an entire genre that reimagines things in alternative settings or universes, i.e. science fiction, which no one seems to get bent out of shape about.
We should be accustomed by now with these racially mixed depictions of ancient and modern fiction. The multi-racial streaming series based on the Lord of the Rings being one example. Even depictions of actual history with a racially inaccurate cast is fine by me, although there are reasons to raise objections.
What matters to me is whether the movie is any good.
What goes around comes around, though. In the movie The Whale, Brandon Fraser played the part of an obese gay man. There was backlash from the far left against that. But again, why not?
Jared, you wrote:
This is definitely not the opinion of woke people who are defending Christopher Nolan now. (I know that not all defenders of Nolan in this matter are woke.)
The real question here is whether there is a double standard.
I find McWhorter’s arguments very suprising and unconvincing. For instance, he seems to be saying that if Churchill were to be played by a black actor that would be okay because, historically, black actors were discriminated against. So even if there were no such discrimination today, black actors would be justified getting to play Churchill because of past discrimination (against actors who are dead now).
And then this from McWhorter:
The part in bold makes no sense at all. Of course, physically beautiful actors will have more job opportunities in acting then plain looking ones. So why would one say that when a plain looking black actor has fewer opportunities than a hot looking white one (think Robert Redford), this is is because of racial discrimination. Who wrote this? Was it really John McWhorter, the guy who wrote an explicitly anti-woke book and seems to be against affirmative action today ?
Kay bold added: “The whole movement quickly became an ersatz religious movement [..]”
Eric Voegelin (writing in 1968) :
“ERSATZ RELIGION
THE TERM “GNOSTIC mass movement” is not in common use. Therefore, when one encounters it one expects it first to be defined.
[..]
By gnostic movements we mean such movements as progressivism, positivism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism, and national socialism. We are not dealing, therefore, in all of these cases with political mass movements.
[..]
Gnosticism was a religious movement of antiquity.”
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin
1968, 1997
Regenery Press, Chicago;
Washington D.C.
… separate from that, “diachrony” as used by McWhorter is a great word to know.
The thing that bothers me about black actors playing historical or literary roles that are clearly white based on local or time period is that the choice is usually political rather than artistic (I say that not actually being able to recall a case in which it was an artistic choice).
Larry the Cat is an ass. The reason Trump couldn’t just pop into his son’s wedding was that it was held in the Bahamas. Heads of State can’t go to other counties like tourists, especially not for an afternoon. The logistics and the cost would have been remarkable. As Trump said, he would have been damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t.
Don Jr. married his latest wife in Palm Beach, then went off to the Bahamas for a re-enactment.
Last I heard, Palm Beach is in the US, and the orange-utan could have gone there if he’d wanted to.
On this Memorial Day, let’s remember Kash Patel going snorkeling at the USS Arizona memorial in Hawaii last summer.
No truth to the rumor that he played Frisbee golf at Arlington Cemetery or lit his bong from the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (But there’s always next year…)
The full and total amorality of this administration continues to astound.
Assuming this is you, Robert: A friend of mine has been renting his Pasadena house to an Altadena refugee who is just moving back next month…he had had minor direct structural damage but significant hazardous waste and debris cleanup. Hope your rebuild is continuing along steadily and you can return to your lovely hilltop perch.
The first most important identification of Helen of Troy are that she was born of Zeus (in the form of swan) and the rape of her mother, Leda, the Spartan queen. We don’t know what color swan he was at the time (there are black swans). Secondly, the most important aspect is that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, fought over by Demi-gods and powerful kings, her abduction launching “a thousand ships” in the Trojan war. The casting seems valid if Christopher Nolan considers Lupita Nyong the world’s most beautiful woman.
Would surely have been a white swan, since black swans were not known to the Old World until the discovery of Australia.
I have no idea what Lupita Nyong’o looks like and I can’t be arsed to find out, so this is no shade on her personally. I just don’t thing think that Mr. Nolan needs to consider her the most beautiful woman to cast her as Helen. Catering to modern sensibilities he could have decided to cast an obese ugly woman with an annoying voice and a boorish manner — the face that sank a thousand ships and chased away a million movie patrons.
As soon as I saw the “Yellow Line” invented in Gaza awhile ago I thought: “THAT’D make a good new border, call it the Yellow FAFO Line.”
Which is coming to pass.
As much as we might dislike Trump (or Bibi), to blame him for imperfect results in fights with either Hamas (“Palestine”, for there is no daylight between them), or Iran… is unfair. There is nothing ANYBODY can do against the power of jihadi madness that makes sense or is just by our metrics: other than just stay the damage as much as possible.
Yellow Line/”International” border it is. FAFO.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
I won’t argue the Gaza Yellow line, though I think you’re wrong; but in my opinion it is very much NOT unfair to blame the orange-utan for “imperfect results” in the fight against Iran.
Feckless Trump and his even more feckless self-styled Secretary of War clearly had and still have no plans to deal with Iran’s evident ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, with all the economic consequences that entails.
What’s more, there did not seem to be any thought given to the possibility of Iranian missile and drone attacks both on US military bases in the Middle East and on oil facilities in the Gulf States.
This was a classic FAFO by the Trump administration – they f*ed around, and they found out; and we and a significant portion of the world are paying the bill.
The Ancient Greeks weren’t black and neither were their imagined gods. McWhorter can argue all he likes, but it takes you out of the film to see a mediocre looking Black actress playing Helen of Troy. The Greeks themselves would have considered it insulting. They could have found a southern Euro actress for goodness sakes. If Black people want more Black representation on screen, then write more good original screenplays with more Black people in them. Bridgerton is a good example because it imagines an alternative race-neutral 18th century and Shonda Rimes is a good writer.
One can make artistic choices for an individual project or film. It is the pattern of those choices across the industry that reveals that contemporary social messaging trumps storytelling or historical fidelity. It’s not surprising. The project of an abstract “humanity” that obliterates difference and treats all as interchangeable has quite the distinguished history. That lovely day when there is neither Jew nor Greek, rich nor poor, male nor female—when all are one—or some such secularization of the original Biblical formula. Anyone who seeks to maintain such distinctions is the problem.
But until we reach that enlightened age of equity, we simply must invert the former hierarchies for a while. McWhorter’s polite “sometime in the future” framing is not a serious call for balance. It’s rhetorical cover to justify ideologically skewed asymmetry. I hope to never see a white portraying Barbara Jordan any more than a black woman playing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If we are fortunate, this movement will burn itself out when new shiny toys catch celebrity attention. Until then, I’m guessing that some white historical figures will remain off limits to black actors. I really don’t envision a black Hitler, Robert E. Lee, concentration camp guard, John Wayne Gacy, or Gulag fiend—no matter how scarce acting jobs are or how creative the artists might be.
Memorial Day. You can still find communities in the South that use the older “Decoration Day.” It can be quite an event in small towns, with people gathering to decorate entire cemeteries.
The Kamloops graves hoax and “moral panic” took place several months after the BLM “moral panic” episode south of the border. I suggest that Canada suffers from periodic attacks of “moral panic” envy. This malady is a close relative of Physics envy, a syndrome found on academic campuses, which manifests itself in symptoms called “Critical Theory”. Canadian correspondents can no doubt tell us more about the Kamloops graves case.
“Moral panic envy” is correct. On December 11, 2020 at my cozy university the police violently arrested a black student in the main campus dining hall. He was tasered and handcuffed and taken to lockup. Student groups called it an obvious example of anti-black racism. The university president, who had been in the job only a few months, called it “an unsettling event [that] is raising important questions about our processes and protocols.” Lots of people were obviously eager for our own George Floyd moment.
I guess they were disappointed by later events:
In December 2020 the university was still in pandemic lockdown – only students and employees were allowed on campus. The guy was not a student (he was an alumnus). The previous day he had been told by campus security he was not allowed on campus. The day of the incident he harassed a female student on campus, leading to a complaint. Campus security looked for him and found him in the dining hall. University policy required he be removed after the harassment complaint had been lodged. He refused to leave, the Mounties were called, and he violently assaulted the Mountie (put the Mountie in a headlock from which escape was possible only with the taser). He was charged, then released. And charges were later dropped.
All of this was explained in a report by an independent legal counsel hired by the university president’s office. Not surprisingly, that report and some of the president’s various statements about those events have been disappeared from what’s otherwise a pretty complete record of the president’s statements to the community on public or political events.
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It’s not merely that “a number” of such instances were hoaxes, it’s that the number of hoaxes vastly exceeds the number of real incidents. This can only be because actual racism has declined to such low levels that hoaxes are needed to sustain the myth of ongoing racism.
There are about 30 million black American adults, nearly all of them walking around with a video recording device. If, as we’re supposed to believe, black Americans are suffering from “daily” incidences of “oppression”, there would be new such videos every day, and you can be sure that a big deal would be made of the most choice examples. Yet how many videos of black Americans being mistreated have you actually seen, from, let’s say from the last year?
On casting of actors, much as I respect John McWhorter’s opinions, I think he’s wrong here. At least in the UK, representation of black actors on TV is vastly higher than their fraction of the population, by a factor of about 3 (even more so in adverts), so, no, it’s not that they would otherwise lack opportunities.
I’m pretty convinced that casting black actors in historical dramas like Wolf Hall is a deliberate attempt to re-write history and give the impression that the UK has always been multi-racial. (Which is just wrong, the UK was 99.9% white up until the 1950s.)
So, no, Helen of Troy should not be played by a black actress. Even if Helen is entirely mythical (and not based on any real person), it’s still a Greek myth from European cultural heritage and so should be treated that way.
Any day now, deep social thinkers will no doubt suggest that Helen of Troy should be played by a “trans woman”.
On the other hand, hasn’t the reverse of this sort of thing also occurred? In 2019, Disney did a remake of “The Lion King” with real (sort of) animals. Voice parts were done by humans, but perhaps the next remake will improve even on this.
Jon, not Helen of Troy being played by a transwoman. No, Helen actually was a transwoman. Don’t ask how so. I don’t know. But it feels right – that Helen was a transwoman. (Truth is a feeling.)
Funny you should mention the trans thing but Elliot Page aka known as Ellen Page was originally rumoured to play Achilles in The Odyssey. Snort a tiny frail woman to play a buff fierce warrior… yeah not going to work.
Apparently she may now be playing ‘Elpenor, the youngest member of Odysseus’s crew who tragically falls to his death and later appears as a ghost in the Underworld’. This is irony at play and a probable metaphor for her life and career.
This film seems to want to tick as many progressive boxes as possible. The only box that ultimately matters is the box office ticket sales. The public has the final say.
Are flags in most countries folded into triangles?
If Canada’s flag was folded like that you wouldn’t be able to tell it wasn’t Poland’s. Which would be fine. The First “Canadian” Army that fought in Normandy and cleared the Scheldt Estuary included many expat Polish soldiers. (Anachronism alert: We didn’t adopt the now-familiar Maple Leaf as our flag until 1965. Poland’s flags go back to the 13th century.)
Is that a doctored photo of Demi Moore or did she really look like that?
No, Moore really looks like that.
Apparently heroin chic has returned.
Why assume Helen was “white?” Herodotus said Ethiopians were the most beautiful of all men. I may be wrong but I don’t think the ancient Greeks shared our modern obsession with skin color.
For starters, Helen is described as white in the text repeatedly (and all cultures, including Ancient Greece/Rome, have been fully aware of and concerned with ethnicity and ancestry, though the particular nomenclatures and groupings would have been different from those used in America today).
Hmm… if it’s all about working actors you can get the best actor, black, white, brown, then colour ‘correct’ in post production.
AI anyone?
If McWhorter’s claim comes to fruition…
We will know this when a black man plays Josef Mengele… then it will be all about the performance of evil and not the colour of the protagonist.
Huh? What does this mean? Are we to understand that the residential school system killed those children?
How many died as a result of then-common diseases that likely also killed many of their peers still living at home with their parents?
I was going to comment anyway so I’ll reply to you if you don’t mind, LM.
The NCTR records everyone who attended a residential school. This includes students who died at the schools (almost always due to tuberculosis +/- measles, — see below — plus epidemics of influenza) but it also includes former students who died years or decades after aging out of the system. We’re talking 120 years of national IRS death records. The 94% figure is a ludicrous distortion.
The NCTR made no attempt to determine if an Indian person who died at, say, 25 of homicide, at 45 of alcoholism or tuberculosis, or at 55 of diabetic kidney failure, really died as a result of being ever in a residential school. “Trauma” you see. No attributable-risk study has ever been done that relates age at death to residential school attendance. The registry should be regarded as akin to Arlington National Cemetery being open to war veterans even if a vet had “a good war” and a happy, successful post-war life, dying at 102. Many successful, integrated*, res school “survivors” used to describe their years at their school in similar terms, crediting them with ambition to make something of themselves, until it became politically disloyal to do so. Then most shut up.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission compared deaths from tuberculosis at the schools to deaths in children in settled Canada. It didn’t compare the rates to Indian children at their homes on Reserves, a statistic that we know to be high but wasn’t known with great accuracy in those pioneer days, still a vital omission. Activists this century accused the schools of exposing the healthy student body to children with TB in order to kill them. I can show (in more than 400 words) that this is false. Dr. William Bryce noted that nearly all the students he examined as part of his inquiry were already infected from their infant/pre-school life at home. The form of TB he could detect in those pre-Xray days was oro-cervical lymph node disease (scrofula), not lung disease. Scrofula can be (and was) a source from which TB disseminates fatally when a measles epidemic sweeps through (school or Reserve), but is not contagious in itself and so doesn’t work as germ warfare. (This is a medically fascinating blood libel, only the high spots here.)
(* “culturally genocided”)
Thanks Leslie. Are there even 215 identified indigenous children from interior BC whose fates are unknown and might have died at KIRS? My understanding is that the NCTR knows who all of the dead kids are and their fates and resting places are well known. If not then who could be buried in the old apple orchard? Many people seem eager for them to have been murdered and buried there. I get the sense those eager folks will have to hide their disappointment when it turns out none are.
Notice how none of the wokerati (I don’t remember the source of this word, sadly) complain when men play women’s roles.
For example, tha cartoon Bob’s Burgers has males playing all female characters except one (Louise.) Where is the outrage?
Of course the wokerati bellowed because, on The Simpsons, white actor Hank Azaria voiced the Indian character Apu, and white actor Mike Henry voiced the black character Cleveland Brown on The Cleveland Show.
Missiles (without atomic warheads) are bad weapons (even with GPS). Why? Because they cost too much. The Germans found this out the hard way. Each V2 cost 100 times as much as a V1, with roughly the same explosive yield. Worse, the V2 had to be built by German labor (in short supply during the war). By contrast, the V1 could be built by slave labor. To be blunt, each V2 helped Germany lose the war. The V2 may have been technically advanced for its day (it was), but it was still a disaster for Germany.
It is inevitable that a certain number of children will die in a boarding school. If the grave markers are wood, they will rot away over time. Hence “unmarked graves” go with the territory. This does not mean that the children were murdered by the system.
Regarding Gaza, the IDF does not engage in major strategic moves, like the Yellow Line (what color is next? Chartreuse?) without orders from the political establishment. Nor is the IDf authorized to talk about such subjects without the permission of that establishment. So all questions must be directed to that establishment (Netanyahu, or those to whom he gives permission to speak). And if you receive any answers about Israeli long-term strategic plans, please let the Israeli public know. Including, by the way, the IDF. Recently, the Chief of the General Staff, a very competent man, begged via the media, for the political sector to come up with a long term plan for Gaza. To my knowledge, as of this writing, he has not received a reply.
From the beginning of this war (7 October), once the IDF began the attack in Gaza (with the goal, proclaimed by Bibi, of destroying Hamas) the IDF performed, within the limitations given by the government, with valor and efficiency and, as much as was possible, with humanity. Yet, the government required the IDF to take territory, abandon territory, and retake that same territory, to the point that no one knew what the government would require in the short term future. This was very tough on our soldiers and reservists. Many of the latter have done hundreds of days of combat reserves, with devastating results to their families and businesses. Some of those families had both parents in the reserves, by the way.
For the first time in Israeli history, our n soldiers do not know what we are fighting for. Because the government either does not know, or won’t tell. Yet we continue to serve, because what is the alternative?