To lose one centrist columnist, Mister Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.

A pair of prominent writers announced they’re leaving their prominent publications Tuesday. The resignations appear to be related to recent debates within the wider media landscape about the alleged stifling of public discourse.

Bari Weiss, a former op-ed staff editor and writer for The New York Times, resigned from the newspaper today, while prominent New York writer Andrew Sullivan announced this would be his last week at the magazine.

So what’s the betting? Is a new and exciting Centrist Gazette about to burst onto the scene?

I’m sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in

There’s a reason they call it Penis News…

UK's biggest cervical cancer charity shuts down disgustingly transphobic lie that 'only females get cervical cancer' https://t.co/BcZfB4ihSt

— PinkNews (@PinkNews) July 14, 2020

… Read the rest

Trump is holding a kind of rally disguised as a press briefing at the moment. Apparently he’s sweating heavily and failing to charm his audience.

“What a terrible question to ask” — Donald Trump reacts to George Floyd’s killing by suggesting to CBS that systemic racism is a myth because more white people are killed by cops than blacks people (nevermind that a much higher percentage of black people are) pic.twitter.com/dhnHNh4irS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 14, 2020

The president is so dense that he doesn't understand freedom of speech only constrains the government. Nothing prohibits a private company from, say, banning the Confederate flag from being displayed at events. https://t.co/lSn8oLqSjj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 14, 2020

That really … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on A firm grasp.

first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home

David Brooks, Bill Kristol,Thomas Friedman, Ross Douthat – just off the top of my head.

To a large extent the New York Times’ editorial page has long been a who’s who of “very serious people”, AKA the same centrist “very serious people” whose propagandising helped land America in Iraq. To say that centrist writers wouldn’t see the New York Times as their home, would imply that they’d never heard of it.

But the big thing that struck me here was this:

This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few

I hadn’t, but now that you point it out…

Has anyone else noticed that it's "Woman" when transwomen have done something wrong, and "Trans women" when they're the victim? https://t.co/ozIE4DZH9T

— Jack (@j4ppleby) July 14, 2020

… Read the rest

Another fresh exciting novel idea from Brendan O’Neill – masks! Masks are authoritarian! Fight the power!

Here come the sneerers. Their target this time? Anyone who expresses even a tiny amount of scepticism about mandatory mask-wearing in shops. Within hours, mask sceptics have become the new climate-change deniers. They’re granny-killers. They’re sociopaths. They’re the kind of people who care more for their right to breath all over the fruit and veg at Lidl than they do for the continued existence of people over the age of 75. The speed with which mask scepticism has been turned into a foul blasphemy that only thick people who probably voted for Brexit would ever engage in rather confirms that this latest manifestation of

And then there’s this shit.

Blackpool woman accessed child abuse images in hospital bed

This “woman”:

Julie Marshall used public wifi to look at some of her 80,000 images as she recovered from a heart attack in August 2017, Preston Crown Court heard.

…

The 54-year-old, who had no previous convictions, admitted downloading images from the internet between June 2004 and April 2018 in February.

They included 677 images of the most serious nature, known as category A images.

…

She was also given a 10-year notification order to sign the sex offenders register and a six-year sexual harm prevention order.

“She” is also not a woman.

Statistics? What are they?… Read the rest

Inclusive to all survivors…except women who want women-only spaces. Remove barriers to anyone who wants support…except women who want women-only spaces.

“We continue to provide women only space within our Centre to all who identify as women” – so a massive beardy bloke gets to be in the women only space at their Centre provided he says “I am a woman.” That’s fine then.… Read the rest

Bari Weiss has written a pompous self-admiring letter to the New York Times explaining why she is awesome and the Times is pathetic so she quits so there.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home.

Wait a second. Why would the Times want to bring in first-time writers? Why would it be a bad thing that first-time writers would not otherwise appear in the paper? Why isn’t it just obvious that first-time writers don’t just get to appear in the Times … Read the rest

A Vanity Fair piece from last month by trans woman Grace Robertson says how wrongy-wrong JK Rowling is and muses aloud about why.

Rowling, a British feminist, is soaking up these anti-trans views—she’s transphobic because everyone she reads and listens to is. Why? That’s the real mystery. Some pin the blame on many British journalists’ close ties to 2000s “skeptic” movement, largely built around dismissing pseudosciences such as homeopathy and “anti-science” views. My view is that it’s about just how white and privileged journalism is in the U.K.

Wait wait wait. Back up a step. Don’t be in such a hurry to step over that. What about this skeptic movement which is built around “dismissing” – or rather saying what … Read the rest

A Russian historian says things they don’t want to hear.

He is accused of child pornography; the charges may be a way to shut him up.

While Dmitriev was held in pre-trial detention, a group of Kremlin-backed historians have worked to rewrite the history of one of the largest sites the historian uncovered, Sandarmokh, where 9,000 victims of Stalin’s Great Terror are buried. The new narrative casts the site as a World War II-era burial ground and dilutes Sandarmokh’s association with Stalin. “This is happening across the board,” Galkova said. “We see how convenient it is to switch over attention from the collective memory of the repressions to the Great Patriotic War [WWII].”

You too, huh? We’ve got that … Read the rest

Kids – don’t try this at home.

Originally a comment by Papito on The thought-terminating lie.

I think the problem is that people don’t know the difference between “existential” and “epistemological.” I don’t believe that people such as JK Rowling pose an existential threat to transpeople so much as an epistemological threat.

Maybe “existential” sounds more fancy to TRAs, or more dramatic. They want desperately to be validated, but just like stolen library books, they won’t cease to exist because they’re not validated. Nobody is denying trans people (or stolen library books) exist, they’re just denying that trans people know what they think they know. That’s an epistemological quarrel.

The trans religion goes like this: in addition to the physical sex of people, people also have … Read the rest

The “let’s smear Fauci” plan doesn’t seem to be going all that well.

I've known Tony Fauci for years. He is a consummate professional whose advice has been sought out and respected by Presidents of both parties. These attacks on him are disgusting and say more about those leveling them than about Dr. Fauci. https://t.co/GARizcNM4s

— Zeke Emanuel (@ZekeEmanuel) July 13, 2020

your reminder that every disaster movie starts with some asshole president like Trump ignoring an expert like Dr. Fauci

— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) July 13, 2020

.@Acosta to @PressSec with the question of the day: "Why is the White House trashing Dr. Fauci and sending out opposition research like memos to reporters? The president has gone off

Business Insider notes that not listening to Fauci is one thing (Trump listens to no one and wouldn’t understand if he did) and smearing him is another.

Sidelining Fauci is one thing. Actively defaming him is much worse, though entirely expected from this White House.  Trump and his lackeys are smearing Fauci, probably the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, as wrong “about everything” and even circulating a list of Fauci’s alleged mistakes to reporters, as though it’s dirt on a political rival. 

President Trump tolerates only one kind of relationship with his employees, toadying. Everyone who won’t boot lick ends up fired, libeled, under investigation by Bill Barr, or all of the above. Since Fauci is a civil servant

Dan Scavino, the guy who helps Trump with his tweeting (he spells the hard words except when Trump forgets to ask him), posted on Facebook yesterday:

Sorry, Dr. Faucet! At least you know if I’m going to disagree with a colleague, such as yourself, it’s done publicly — and not cowardly, behind journalists with leaks. See you tomorrow!

Schools and…oh my god…football!!!!!!!!!!!

Meanwhile no of course Trump is not trying to silence Fauci, why would you even think that?… Read the rest

Now Trump is just saying the CDC is lying about the pandemic to damage him.

He needs to be taken away and locked up.

President Donald Trump retweeted a tweet Monday morning which accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of lying about the coronavirus in order to obstruct his reelection. 

The original tweet was written by Chuck Woolery, the original host of “Wheel of Fortune,” who is also a conservative. 

I don’t know what “Wheel of Fortune” is, beyond “some game show or other.” Fabulous that the president is sharing the views of a game show Personality in order to persuade us that the CDC is lying about a pandemic.

The tweet reads: “The most outrageous lies

No.

“Center the trans person.”

No.

Now about this business of Trump and Pence and DeVos working to kill off teachers…

As coronavirus case numbers soar across the country, continuing to reach record highs in many states, the nation has begun to confront the uncomfortable questions of if and how schools should open in the fall. While there is near universal agreement on the need for the education system across America to provide classes to students, the question is how?  Should schools open up physically, risking the spread of the highly communicable virus among students, teachers, and ultimately to those who they live with? Or should there be a greater emphasis on virtual and distance learning, which sacrifices a significant part of the educational experience,

Oh good, now we’ve done our best to spread the virus to Okinawa.

The governor of Okinawa island in Japan has demanded that a United States military commander take tougher prevention measures and have more transparency after officials were told more than 60 marines at two bases have been infected with the coronavirus over the past few days.

On Sunday Okinawan officials reported 61 cases, 38 of them at marine corps air station Futenma, which is at the center of a relocation dispute, and another 23 at Camp Hansen since 7 July.

Sorry, sorry. Our bad. These things happen. We’ve put the bases into lockdown now; are we good?

The disclosure of the exact figures came only after repeated