Programming note: Tonight I'll be checking in with "Tucker Carlson", live across America at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific, with a rerun at midnight Eastern for you west-coast types. And tomorrow morning, Tuesday, I'll be on the radio at 8am Eastern with Dave Allen at WSYR in Syracuse - where I'll be appearing with Dennis Miller next month. If you're in the presence of the receiving apparatus for the Tucker and/or Dave extravaganzas, I hope you'll dial us up.
The totalitarian social-justice wankers are still trying to force Tucker off the air for having the impertinence to bring up subjects that actually matter, as opposed to the usual rolling-news folderol - and too many once sane businesses are willing to do the left's bidding. It is a curious world in which cultural Marxists use corporations as the paramilitary wing of thought-control.
~Speaking of the bounds of permitted speech, a few days ago Pastor Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California put up the following sign:
BRUCE JENNER IS STILL A MAN
HOMOSEXUALITY IS STILL SIN
THE CULTURE MAY CHANGE
THE BIBLE DOES NOT
A week later, Mr Hoke is no longer pastor of his church. The culture may change, Bruce Jenner's "gender" may change, Pastor Hoke's career plans may change... At a certain point it becomes an open question whether the Bible will change. Mainline Protestantism has mostly equivocated and then crumbled in the face of cultural change, and, as one California vicar is learning after his first weekend without a sermon to deliver, even ostensibly more robust precincts of the church are not immune to the zeitgeist. Thomas Nelson, the dominant "Christian publisher", already regards the Holy Bible as sufficiently malleable to spin off into such lucrative variants as The American Patriot's Bible. Is it really so difficult to foresee them one day, sooner than you think, they'll be offering The Social Justice Warrior's Bible, in which it's explained that God is cool with whatever's your bag?
~If it is no longer prudent to say "Bruce Jenner is still a man", what can you get away with? How about a photo shoot with a grade-school kid and a naked guy?
Hey, wait a minute, wouldn't that be pedophilia? Well, no: it would be if you took your kit off, got out your selfie stick and corralled a local Fifth Grader into joining the session. But that's because you're binary and cisnormative. Cast off those dreary constraints and here's looking at you, kid:
On Monday, 10-year-old Canadian boy Nemis Quinn Mélançon-Golden was featured in a troubling Huck Magazine piece highlighting the life of a so-called "child drag queen."
Young Nemis, whose drag name is "Queen Lactacia," was shot by photographer Jonathan Frederick Turton for the spread. In one of the shots that did not make the magazine, Nemis, in full drag makeup and a black dress, is posing for a photo with the Season 7 winner of "RuPaul's Drag Race," Violet Chachki. In the shocking photo, Violet is wearing nothing but a pair of heels and a small piece of fabric covering his genitals...
For a significant number of people, the principal pleasure of contemporary parenthood seems to be the opportunity it affords for experimentation on children.
And no, Mr Turton is not in danger of the same sudden mid-life career change as has befallen Pastor Hoke - nor even of "shadow-banning" on social media. As Kate MacMillan says:
Trans-phobia evolved into pedo-phobia so fast we didn't even notice.
~It does seem to be getting faster, doesn't it? Eight years ago I wrote:
With blithe self-confidence, the post-war West changed too much too fast. We changed everything, and yet we'll still wonder why everything's changed.
Also from that piece:
The evolving justification for post-war immigration policy — from manufacturing to welfare to moral narcissism — is itself a perfect shorthand for Western decay.
On the speed of change, the left is flooring it. But don't worry, Paul Ryan got you a tax cut...
To return to where we came in, Tucker is under siege because he insists on talking about things that matter - the collapse of the family, the declining life expectancy of white males in rural America, the lack of economic need for mass immigration, the stunning job-destroying rise of automation - all of which topics are oddly connected. In a two-party system, it would be nice if Party A didn't always begin the debate by surrendering to Party B's premises...
~Last week I was tied up with deposition and other tedious pseudo-judicial twaddle in the various suits from college-loan cockwomble Cary Katz and his now deceased "CRTV". But we did our bit to right the ship come the weekend with a courtroom movie date, Primal Fear, and a very tender Song of the Week, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes". If a litigious wanker was blowing smoke up your nose all weekend long, I hope you'll want to catch up with one or other of the foregoing as a new week begins.
With Christmas in the rear-view mirror, why not buy a treat for yourself? There's worse ways to get through February than two on the aisle for me and Dennis Miller together on stage for the first time. We'll be starting the tour next month in Reading, Pennsylvania and Syracuse, New York. And remember that with VIP tickets you not only have the best seats but you also get to meet Dennis and me after the show. (A back rub and two choruses of "Marshmallow World" is extra.)
Catch you on the telly tonight with Tucker live across America at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific - and with Dave Allen on the radio at 8am Eastern Tuesday.
