ProPublica tells us the terrifying story of a sociologist having to change his teaching because of the oppression of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Stop Woke Act means that he can no longer teach his college classes about how white oppression and racial injustice are the base structure of American society. There are two problems with this story: But a clash with state law seemed inevitable, once Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, proposed what he called the strongest legislation in the nation against “the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory.” Last April, DeSantis signed the Individual Freedom Act, also known as…
Author: Tim Worstall
Vice reports in a new piece that the police are killing ever more Americans. This is, given the method they use, true, but it’s horrendously misleading. For there are also more Americans. It is more – more that is, not exactly – true to say that the rate of police deaths is roughly steady. One unnecessary death at the hands of the police is one too many, of course. Others might be called rather more necessary – taking down an active shooter strikes most of us as being a very reasonable deployment of violence. The numbers Vice uses don’t distinguish here:…
Jezebel shouts that the laws about abortion and the law about guns are exactly the same, then directs us to the judge’s decision stating this. Where the judge, carefully and in detail, tells us all that the laws about abortion and guns are actually different. This is not a display of good journalism. The specific point here is that Jezebel says “Judge Says California Can’t Do to Guns What Texas Did to Abortion” and they follow this up with “California Democrats trolled Texas Republicans by using the same bounty hunter mechanism in a gun control bill that Texas used to ban…
Wired publishes a piece of activist propaganda while leaving us with the impression that this is a reasonable projection and good science. It’s neither of those two, it’s both bad science and hysteria about the immediate future. That makes it great activist propaganda and appalling journalism. The claim is that we’re currently in a La Niña period and we’re about to be in an El Niño. At which point all the climate change that has been delayed by La Niña will descend upon us and then society will be broiled. “Global heating will set the stage for extreme weather everywhere in…
Teen Vogue wants the kids back from college for the holidays to propagandize in favor of abortion. No, really, this is what they’re saying here in “How to Talk About Abortion With Your Family.” They’re not at all thinking about a talk along the lines of “Mom, Dad, I have a little problem here, can we talk about it?” They actually are suggesting that around the tree, over the presents, the talk should be brought around to the subject of abortion. And those who don’t agree with it being brought around to agreeing with it. “If you’re heading to holiday gatherings…
Jezebel tells us that questioning biological males in women’s sports leads to shootings…
BuzzFeed News reports that the minimum wage just must rise. Its evidence is a case study of one particular lady in South Carolina. The problem is that the numbers in the story simply do not add up. Further, the actual thing complained about is not the hourly wage, but the number of hours of work possible to gain a wage, which is an entirely different problem. It’s not unusual for the sort of arts graduates who become journalists to get confused by numbers but this just means that those trying it need to be a great deal more careful than BuzzFeed News…
Jezebel and Rolling Stone are making a desperate last-minute attempt to boost their favored Senate candidate in Ohio by casting shadows upon their non-favored candidate, J.D. Vance, who is a Republican. Jezebel really ups the temperature here with its headline: “ Noted Shyster JD Vance Is Funding the Burning of Live Monkey Testicles” which, when we come to think of it, is fairly strong. The source is Rolling Stone which says “J.D. Vance Has a Burnt Monkey Testicle Problem,” which actually sounds worse. It’s possible to describe the same events less sensationally. The Food and Drug Administration requires that any new drug be…
In a new piece, Esquire asks Republicans, “What would you do about inflation?”, while not asking the same question of any Democrats at all. That is, the people currently in power don’t have to answer for what their being in power has caused. We can see this in the headline: “Republicans Claim They’ll Fix Inflation. We Asked 8 GOP Senate Candidates How.” So, why aren’t any Democrats asked that same question? The subhead gets, to those who are economically informed, worse: “Just four answered — and none of their solutions will make much of a difference for years.” That’s the problem with inflation:…
In a new piece, Vice has taken comments from a Republican candidate about one thing and pretended that they apply to another thing. Thereby making possibly true, possibly controversial, comments look absurd. This is not something that a media outlet hoping to inform would do – it is something one aiming to misinform would. (RELATED: Late Show Host Forced to Eat His Words After Calling GOP Candidate Tudor Dixon a Liar) The headline captures the thrust of the piece — they make it plain right from the start: “GOP Candidate Said Elites Drink Blood, Sell ‘Baby Body Parts’ After Abortion.” That’s…