I will readily grant you that Showtime’s new series, The Affair, which wrapped up its premiere season in December, is not crafted to appeal to a broad-based audience. Indeed, there are two or three things that I don’t like about it myself—starting with the theme song, written and performed by Fiona Apple. Let’s just say that Cole Porter/Rosemary Clooney she ain’t. But on the whole I really enjoyed The Affair. It has one thing going for it that most TV shows do not: None of the characters are likeable or even sympathetic. Perhaps Breaking Bad came close, but from time one did find one’s self sympathizing with Walter White—even knowing that he was, as his sometime business partner put it, the Devil.  But there’s not a single character in The Affair—no, not one!—who attracts the viewer’s sympathy. Imagine a writer with all of Dostoevsky’s talent but one of his humanity and you’ll understand something of this show’s world-view.

The Affair tells the story of an extramarital fling between two sad and not particularly nice people, both of whom for their own reasons are ill content with the trajectory of their lives. Each episode is divided roughly in two, covering more or less the same events but presented first through the eyes of one protagonist and then through the eyes of the other. This is a neat contrivance and very plausible. For instance Noah, the unfaithful husband, sees Ruth as a sexy, seductive flirt; Ruth, the cheating wife, sees Noah as an aggressive horndog. Small details that the viewer learns to watch for signal these and other differing perceptions—of Noah’s wife, of Ruth’s husband, etc. Moreover, the story of their affair is framed within an ongoing murder investigation whose details only gradually become clear. In the final episode past and present converge as you began to suspect that they might two or three episodes earlier. But enough remains unexplained to make the finale a cliffhanger and I was glad to learn that The Affair has been renewed for 2015.

But, as I said, the thing about The Affair that really intrigues me is the unlikeability of the characters. Take Noah. He feels sorry for himself, well, because his life isn’t exactly what he wants it to be. But he’s got a wife and family, a job he enjoys (teaching high-school English), he’s a published novelist. And no matter how hard you try to sympathize with the guy, there’s no escaping the light-minded frivolity of his behavior. Ruth, on the other hand, has a good reason to hate the place she’s in—she and her husband lost their young son in a tragic accident. Okay, fine, but must she constantly display the scarlet V of victimhood?

And as with the protagonists, so with their families and friends. We soon learn to dislike Noah’s whiny wife even though she is a woman scorned. Ruth’s cuckolded husband is, not to put too fine a point on it, a jerk—so it’s hard to sympathize with him either. Ditto down the cast. I found myself reflecting more than once that The Affair communicates some stark truths that are seldom acknowledged: that most men and women are shallow and boring, that most marriages are sad and hollow, that other people’s kids are whiny and unattractive, that sex is a tawdry diversion, that true romance is a sham. Ah, but I admonished myself, such truths only apply to other people’s lives! And that’s The Affair’s real hook: It places the viewer in the role of the Pharisee in the temple crying, “I thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men!” Let me tell you, the realization of that took my self-esteem down a peg.

Be that as it may, The Affair is smartly written, brilliantly acted—compelling from start to finish. To tell the truth, I’m a bit apprehensive about the show’s second season. Remember how they screwed up Twin Peaks? Let’s hope that a similar fate does not befall this estimable show. Anyhow, I highly recommend The Affair.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:55 PM EST

Updated: Monday, 12 January 2015 9:45 AM EST

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So what’s worse than mowing down a dozen people with automatic weapons while shouting “God is great” and “We have avenged the Prophet”? Describing the shooters as Islamofascists.

If there’s one thing you can count on from our enlightened progressive elites in the wake of a terrorist attack, it’s a finger-wagging lecture about the evils of Islamophobia. Sure, that pile of bloody riddled bodies is rather unsightly—but don’t you dare ascribe responsibility to the religion of peace! After all, those writers and cartoonists who were killed today in France were only executed because they failed to tread Islam with sufficient respect.

Somehow I doubt that the enlightened would display such forbearance if the terrorists in question had referenced the Bible or the Cross of Christ rather than the Prophet Mohammed. We’re still getting lectures about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the proscription of Galileo, the Salem witch trials—blah, blah, blah. Not that I advocate forgetfulness in regard of Christianity’s sometimes intolerant and bloody history. But such things lie in the past whereas on the other hand Islam’s bloody history is being written now—today.

And it won’t do to argue that the Islamofascists don’t speak for or represent Islam. These barbarians carry out their massacres, beheadings, rapes, persecutions with scarcely a peep of protest from supposedly moderate or mainstream Muslims. Probably it’s true that a majority of Muslims do not support or approve of Islamofascism. But a significant minority of them do approve of it, or the depredations of ISIS, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc, etc. would not be possible. Like Hitler and other mass murders before them, the Islamofascists enjoy a significant measure of popular support.

The claims that Islam, a political ideology as well as a religion, makes on its devotees are such that the door to extremism always stands ajar. To point this out is to open one’s self to charges of bigotry and racism from people whose reaction to such horrors as today’s massacre in Paris is first to avert their eyes and then to blame the victim. Such behavior, I suppose, is the postmodern version of a principled stand: emotionally satisfying, morally bankrupt.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:25 PM EST

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Consternation! Angst! Indignation! Outrage! One gropes and fumbles for words adequate to describe the reaction of the Harvard faculty to the terrible news…that in 2015,they’re going to be paying more for healthcare.

You’d probably have to walk a long way across the Harvard campus to find a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences who opposed the Affordable Care Act. But in November 2014 said faculty members voted overwhelmingly to oppose “cost-sharing measures” that would boost their out-of pocket costs under the university’s revised employee health insurance plan. It seems that various Obamacare provisions, such as extended coverage for “children” up to the age of 26, free preventive services and the impending “Cadillac tax” on high-dollar healthcare insurance plans, are driving up costs for Harvard. And faculty members are shocked—shocked!—to learn that a percentage of those costs are being passed along to them.

Yes, America, that sound you hear is the rending of academic regalia and the gnashing of professorial teeth in the Harvard faculty lounges as our academic elites grapple with the sad realities of the, ahem, Affordable Care Act. Poor Mary D. Lewis, a history prof, was heard to sob that the increased deductibles and co-pays amount to a pay cut! And economics professor Jerry R. Green thundered that the hikes constitute a tax on the sick!

And we feel their pain, don’t we? Because millions of Americans have already been screwed by the ACA—and misery loves company. When you recall how many academic experts contributed to the design and marketing of Obamacare, when you imagine how many of them snickered at the ignorance of the rubes and rednecks who opposed it, It’s really a pleasure to see this crowd bending over to take their medicine.

Posted by tmg110 at 3:13 PM EST

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Once again there are plenty of contenders for the title—but the jester’s motley has to go to MIT professor of economics Jonathan Gruber, the celebrated Obamacare architect who became an overnight unperson when his impolitic truth-telling went viral.

Gruber, whom the Obama Administration paid a cool $400,000 for consulting services during the design phase of the Affordable Care Act, was caught on video sharing such gems with select audiences as the observation that the bill’s “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” thanks to “the stupidity of the American voter.” So much for the professor’s reputation as a healthcare expert! Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed that she’d never heard of the guy—until video showing her praising Gruber’s analysis of the ACA was unearthed. As for President Obama he waved the whole embarrassing business away, saying that Gruber was just some obscure outside consultant—this despite the fact that White House logs showed him to have been a frequent visitor.

Democrats and their media enablers had a fit. Though some insisted that the whole Gruber business was a “nothingburger” others had to admit that his revelations had inflicted serious damage on the already tarnished Obamacare brand. Perhaps worse, his sneering condescension, practically a caricature of the Ivy League elitist snob showed Mr. & Ms. Flyover Country America just what their lords and masters really thought of them: “too stupid to understand” the intricacies of high-level government policymaking.

Gruber’s humiliation culminated in a farcical hearing before a congressional committee in December 2014, during which he was made to look like an absolute fool—no very challenging task. It was, in effect, the Professor’s coronation as 2014’s Clown Prince, a dishonor well earned and richly deserved. Congratulations, Jonathan!

Posted by tmg110 at 11:01 AM EST

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There are plenty of contenders for the title but nobody made a bigger crater last year than Wendy Davis. The Texas Democratic state senator caused a sensation on the Left with her 2013 filibuster of a bill regulating abortion clinics in the Lone Star State. Well, there’s no surer method than that of winning the hearts and minds of progressives! Davis became the Great Blonde Hope—the smart, sassy, photogenic champion of “choice” who had what it took to flip Texas from red to blue. She announced her run for governor in late 2013 and walked away with the Democratic nomination in March 2014 to the accompaniment of phenomenal media hype.

Alas, from there it was all downhill for Davis.

As the fourth most liberal member of the Texas Senate, Davis was not exactly positioned to appeal to voters statewide. For instance her celebrated filibuster, which really amounted to a futile last-ditch defense of partial-birth abortion (the bill was eventually passed), turned out to be a political liability of elephantine proportions. Nor did Davis prove herself an adroit campaigner; her campaign’s general nastiness and her own gaffes attracted unflattering attention. Responding to criticism from her GOP opponent, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot, Davis sniffed that he should quiet down until he’d “walked a mile in my shoes.” Abbot, who suffered a crippling injury as a young man, is confined to a wheelchair.

Liberal pundits who’d ballyhooed her candidacy suddenly found themselves wondering how badly Davis would lose. The outcome exceeded their most pessimistic expectations. The Great Blonde Hope wasn’t defeated—she was creamed, slaughtered, had her clock cleaned. When the votes were counted it turned out that Greg Abbot had beaten Wendy Davis by 59-38%—a crushing twenty-point margin. Davis, the champion of “choice,” didn’t even manage to carry a majority of female voters. Her run for governor was, in a word, a debacle.

So congratulations, Wendy! In a political year with plenty of tough competition, you were without doubt The Biggest Loser of them all.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:49 AM EST

Updated: Monday, 5 January 2015 6:39 PM EST

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There’s no clearer illustration of the Democratic Party’s disconnection from the concerns of mainstream America than its embrace of environmental fanaticism.

Though environmental activists make rhetorical concessions to populist themes—prating of “climate justice"—the fact remains that environmentalism is the hobby horse of well-off progressives. That is to say, it’s the preserve of people who need not fear the negative fallout from radical environmental policies. A tenured professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, knows no one who works as a coal miner—so what’s it to him if the coal industry is throttled by the EPA? The CEO of a New York City-based nonprofit whose six-figure income and porcine benefits package cushion her against price fluctuations couldn’t care less if government restrictions on fracking cause the pump price of gas to skyrocket. On the other hand, the professor and the CEO get to feel intellectually and morally superior to the bitter clingers who complain about these things. It’s a sweet deal indeed for our coddled elites.

But not for the Democratic Party. Though its fealty to environmental extremism rakes in the campaign cash, the indirect costs to the party are high and getting higher. At a time when jobs and the economy are the number-one issues on the minds of middle-class and working-class Americans, the Democrats find themselves wedded to an environmental ideology that sanctifies limits and restrictions. Progressives of a bygone era celebrated government-sponsored projects like the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. But today’s progressives, though they pay rhetorical homage to such things, are much more likely to be found in court, seeking to prevent dams, pipelines and power plants from being built. Thanks to their influence, the Democratic Party has largely abandoned pro-growth economic policies, instead expressing its residual populism through various expansions of the bureaucracy. The party’s foremost populist is Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts: the very model of a faculty-lounge elitist and an enthusiastic booster of the regulatory state.

Democrats comfort themselves with the thought that demography is destiny: that the changing character of the US population will deliver into their hands a permanent majority. Or to put it another way, they no longer think it necessary to produce results. Why worry about the economy when history is on their side? This mind-set, I believe, goes far to explain the failure of the Obama Administration to address economic issues in the period 2009-10, when the Democrats had a lock on government power. Instead Obama led his party up the blind alley of healthcare reform and “green energy.” Sure, the latter was supposed to produce “millions of jobs”—but this was nothing more than empty campaign rhetoric. In fact, Obama and the Democrats did nothing for the middle class, nothing for the working class and nothing for minority groups who were particularly hard hit by the economic downturn. The systemic economic problems that candidate Obama decried in 2008 have only gotten worse during his presidency.

The Democratic Party’s fixation on—one might go so far as to say addiction to—radical environmentalism is not the only example of its disregard for what used to be called lunch-bucket issues. But in its overt rejection of economic growth, its embrace of an ideology of limits and restrictions—not to mention its contemptuous attitude toward the concerns of average Americans—the radical environmental agenda sends a clear signal to voters that their priorities are no longer those of the Democratic Party. 

Posted by tmg110 at 1:06 PM EST

Updated: Thursday, 25 December 2014 12:05 AM EST

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As a progressive of the faculty lounge elitist variety Barack Obama is impervious to the notion that careless rhetoric can have serious consequences. So of course it never occurred to him and his minion Eric Holder that people in high public positions should watch what they say at times of stress and crisis. No surprise there. When has our Community Organizer-in-Chief ever passed on an opportunity to deliver a supercilious lecture?

The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson,  Missouri and the accidental killing of Eric Garner in New York City presented Obama with just such an opportunity—in this case to berate racist cops and white America generally. Never mind the facts of those cases. Never mind the facts in general. The two incidents represented one of those “teachable moments” of which progressives are so fond—moments when the rest of us are expected to sit quietly with folded hands while being tutored in the fine points of institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, blah, blah, blah. And Obama was having a high old time—until yesterday, when two New York City police officers were assassinated in New York City, shot while sitting in their vehicle by a lowlife dirtbag who’d promised on Facebook that he was going to “put wings on pigs.”

No, I’m not saying that Obama’s loose talk makes him complicit in the murder of those two cops—one Asian and one Hispanic, for those of you who care about such trivia. What I am saying is that the whole leftie pack of them—Obama, Holder, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, the repulsive Al Sharpton, all that miserable crowd—bear a large share of the moral responsibility for the climate of rage and hate that resulted in this crime. They had plenty to say about Brown and Garner. But where were they when rioting hoodlums burned down a big chunk of Ferguson? Where were they when demonstrators marched through the streets of New   York chanting “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now”? They were silent and nowhere to be seen.

When Mayor de Blasio arrived for a press conference following the shooting, the NYPD officers present turned their backs on him in a silent but eloquent gesture of contempt. Since the moment he assumed office, de Blasio has been bashing and demonizing the New York Police Department. Yesterday he had the unmitigated gall to demand that the murder of two NYPD officers not be politicized—meaning that the occasion should not be used to condemn his own gross and glaring failure of leadership. This was received with the incredulity and scorn it deserved. The same should be reserved for Obama’s call for “patient dialogue” and all similar bleats from the leftie fever swamps.

Posted by tmg110 at 2:46 PM EST

Updated: Sunday, 21 December 2014 2:53 PM EST

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I'll be away from the blog—and, I fervently hope, shielded from the meteor shower-like bombardment of current events—for the next week or so. I have no doubt, though, that on my return there will be plenty of outrages to blog about. See you then… 

Posted by tmg110 at 2:02 PM EST

Updated: Friday, 12 December 2014 2:09 PM EST

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Everyone agrees that Rolling Stone magazine beclowned itself with the publication of a story about a horrendous campus gang rape that almost certainly did not happen. In recent days many heads have been shaken, many hands have been wrung, over the mag’s gross and glaring irresponsibility. (Why RS was ever taken seriously as a purveyor of respectable journalism, though a good question, is beside today’s point.)

But all this clucking disapproval has been accompanied by pious reminders that while RS may have stepped all over it, campus rape is nevertheless a huge problem. After all, is it not true that twenty of every one hundred women in college falls victim to rape? When that statistic is rolled out heads nod in agreement—automatically, as if in response to some Pavlovian stimulus. Consider this gem from the editorial board of the UV student newspaper, the Cavalier:

Though the facts of Jackie’s story are uncertain at this point, there are several facts about the larger issue which we have long known are true. Twenty five percent of college women are sexual assault survivors. Fewer than 5 percent of college women who are raped report to law enforcement. Fraternity men are three times as likely to commit rape as non-fraternity men. All these statistics have not changed—with the release of the Rolling Stone article or the retraction of it. And all of these statistics still must change.

In other words—pay no attention to the lever puller behind the curtain!

The ease with which people accept that one-fifth of women in college fall victim to rape is remarkable when you consider how incredible it is on its face. The number of rapes actually reported to the proper authorities, i.e. the police, is much, much lower. Even allowing for the claim, no doubt true, that many rapes go unreported, it’s hard to fathom where that twenty-in-one-hundred factoid comes from. Unless, that is, you’re familiar with the ideological and social conditions on the typical university campus: part Ingsoc, part Bacchanalia.

Let’s take the social dimension first. The Sexual Revolution, that glory of the Sixties, has not worked out quite as the Woodstock Generation hoped. Stripping away the social conventions and taboos that used to surround the sex act has not resulted in free-spirited bliss. It has, rather, reduced sex to a commodity. Romance has been replaced by the hook-up culture—a highly convenient arrangement for young men if not necessarily for young women. Having a girlfriend or boyfriend is so fifteen minutes ago: Friends with benefits are much easier to acquire. And discard. So casual sex is in and commitment is out. There’s a problem, though. Young women have a difficult time adopting a casual attitude toward sex. Add to this scenario copious amounts of alcohol and drugs and you have a highly combustible compound.

The ideological climate only makes things worse. To an extent that many people find difficult to fathom, radical feminism is the dominant force on the contemporary American university campus. Its dogmas reign unquestioned—indeed, they’re unquestionable on pain of persecution, purge and exile. And like the doctrines of George Orwell’s Ingsoc, the doctrines of radical feminism are riddled with contradictions.

First, it is argued that “gender”—one’s sexual identity—is not an innate trait but a social construct. From this it follows that there is actually no difference between men and women. In practice, this doctrine leads young women on campus to adopt the casual male attitude toward sex—to sign up for the hook-up culture. Sex without commitment! Sex without guilt! Empowerment! Liberation! So far, seemingly so good. But unfortunately there’s more. Because, second, radical feminism preaches that all men are potential rapists—that sex itself is problematical because it’s a form of domination and submission with women in the latter role—perhaps even that all sex is rape.

And that is the root from which sprang the amazing claim that one-fifth of all women on campus fall victim to rape. It isn’t rape as normal people understand it but “rape” as ideologically constructed by radical feminists. If you’re a young woman who drinks to excess at a frat party, hooks up with some equally wasted guy, has sex with him and wakes up the next morning feeling remorseful and used—don’t blame yourself for a bad decision. You were raped! And there are plenty of organizations on campus that will actively encourage you in that belief and pressure you into bringing charges against your alleged rapist. Those charges might not stand up in a court of law but the university administration, terrified of offending feminist orthodoxy, will actively participate in the persecution of the young man you met at that party, who is guilty of nothing more than the same bad judgment you displayed.

There aren’t many people in public life who are willing to point out these unsavory facts, but Fox News pundit Britt Hume is one of them. Last night on Special Report he noted that according to the FBI’s national crime statistics, the incidence of sexual assault in America over the past decade has declined by a whopping 58%—two sexual assaults per 1,000 women annually. It’s true, of course, that an unknowable number of rapes go unreported. But to believe in the campus rape epidemic you’d have to believe (1) that higher education is for some reason bucking the national trend and (2) that even as the number of reported rapes dramatically declines, the number of unreported rapes, on campus and elsewhere, is soaring. That, to put it as politely as possible, is a dubious proposition.

Anyhow, it turns out that the famous one-fifth factoid is based on an on-line poll of women at two universities only, with a definition of sexual assault that included unwanted touching, uninvited kisses, etc. In other words, sexual assault was defined way, way down so as to produce the desired result.

Given all this, why should anyone accept the claim that there’s a campus rape epidemic? Well, they shouldn’t—or least they should treat it with due skepticism. And it really should not be all right to destroy a young male college student’s life with a charge of rape for which no evidence exists. It happens all the time, though, on the excuse that women never lie about such things. But sometimes they do lie. The heroine of Rolling Stone’s hit piece lied and the magazine was all too happy to serve as her enabler. And the same, alas, is true of the entire University of Virginia establishment.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:42 AM EST

Updated: Thursday, 11 December 2014 11:48 AM EST

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That there exists on America’s university campuses something called “rape culture” is a feminist doctrine that only a bold man would question. Because it’s not simply doctrine—it’s a principle of Ingsoc, a never-to-be-questioned dogma that to doubt or criticize exposes the skeptic to charges of oldthink, if not crimethink.

Well, that was the situation until yesterday, when Rolling Stone’s shocking expose of gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity blew up in that ridiculous magazine’s editorial face.

But why the surprise? We’ve been here before, after all. Any time campus feminists and their media enablers have a shot at a group of privileged young white men who happen to be white, they take it. Just ask certain former members of the Duke University lacrosse team. So now, in the face of Rolling Stone’s well-deserved humiliation, we’re bombarded with pious reminders that, er, well, maybe this story isn’t true—but so many others are! Quite frankly, this is a claim that strains credulity.

The uproar over campus rape is largely based on a leftie con game: defining sexual assault down. Here’s a typical scenario. A female student gets blitzed at a party and has sex with an equally blitzed male student whom she just met. Next morning she wakes up feeling remorseful and used—which she was—and decides, with the hearty backing of the campus feminist establishment, that she was raped! Usually no charges are leveled against the young man concerned—but the young woman has made herself a statistic, very serviceable to male-bashing radical feminists. This is how the claim that one in five women on campus have been sexually assaulted. It’s as bogus as a 2008 Obama campaign speech.

I can’t help but wonder what young women who actually have been raped on campus—it happens, of course—feel about these frivolous charges, and about such fairy tales as the one retailed by Rolling Stone. You’d think that they’d be pretty damned upset…

Posted by tmg110 at 4:45 PM EST

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