Item Great writers are found with an open mind
I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell and promote fine writing. A colleague’s forwarded email has set me straight. Sent to a literary agent, presumably this letter was also fired off to the agents of the entire Penguin Random House stable. The email cites the publisher’s ‘new company-wide goal’: for ‘both our new hires and the authors we acquire to reflect UK society by 2025.’ (Gotta love that shouty boldface.) ‘This means we want our authors and new colleagues to reflect the UK population taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability.’
First, diversity always leads to mandatory quotas. Absolutely always. Second, diversity enforces and creates banality. We do not want books written by authors who “reflect the UK population”. We want books written by authors who soar far above it. Diversity is mind cancer.
Item Southern Baptists Call Off the Culture War
America’s largest Protestant group moves to cut ties with the Republican Party and reengage with mainstream culture…
“The generational shift happening in the SBC has thrust the group into the middle of an identity crisis,” says Barry Hankins, the chair of the department of history at Baylor University and co-author of Baptists in America: A History. “The younger generation thinks differently than the old-guard Christian right about culture and politics, and they are demanding change.”…
Greear has promised to lead the denomination down a different path, which, he has said, must include efforts both to repent of a “failure to listen to and honor women and racial minorities” and “to include them in proportionate measures in top leadership roles.” If the meeting in Dallas is any indication, his vision is resonating with a large number of the next wave of Baptist leaders.
Skip the nonsense that “Republicans” are creatures different than the enlightened. Note the call for diversity. Then study instead this bet. Ten bucks (bloggers are not rich) says the Southern Baptists embrace gmarriage within five years of this writing. Anybody want to bet against me?
Item A Society for the Prevention of Knowledge
I have recently read that the Diversity office at the University of Michigan employs 93 people, many of them at princely salaries. Nice digs if you can get them. The notice came in an article that logged the stunning growth of college administrative positions at the expense of tenured professors and, of course, the bank accounts of the parents who send their children to college, apparently not to be educated but to be diversified, like a mutual fund.
I wouldn’t like to disagree with Esolen, but I can’t believe it’s only 93. If we cobbled together all “FTEs” of people sworn to uphold Diversity, I’d guess we have at least double this figure. And that’s not counting students. I’m also guessing that 93 doesn’t include the secretaries and other support staff. Diversity is a vampire leach that will suck the organism dry if it is not burned off.
Item Judge blasts peaceful pro-lifers as ‘dangerous,’ jails them 45 days
A Michigan judge sentenced two pro-life advocates to 45 days in jail on Thursday.
Monica Migliorino Miller, executive director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, and Will Goodman were arrested June 1 outside the Women’s Center of Michigan, run by abortionist Jacob Kalo at 6765 Orchard Lake Road in West Bloomfield county.
They were charged with breaching 48th District Court Judge Marc Barron’s probation order to not go within 500 feet of any abortion center in the United States.
Barron told the two Thursday they were “anarchists” who followed their own laws, and referred to Goodman, a full-time pro-life activist, as “a danger to society,” according to Lynn Mills of Pro-Life Michigan, who was at the hearing.
This item is only here to prove that the USA, and also other Western countries, have political prisoners. The Constitution somehow doesn’t stop this.
Briggs, we should be betting on how many weeks it takes them to embrace the abomination.
With the academic year over, exams marked, grades posted it was time for me to return to the UK. News of a massive heatwave getting set to blanket eastern Canada made the current heatwave in Britain look like small beer by comparison except for the fact that air-conditioning technology has but a faint hold on the British mindset. I prepare to annoy the manager of the local Sainsburys by standing in the dairy and frozen food aisle reading The Times.
Before leaving I popped into Chapters (Canada’s largest book retailer) to grab something to read for the 20 hour door to door trip. If you get beyond the front of the store which has diversified into all sorts of gew-gaws nobody really needs, and get to the back and the book shelves it’s not terrible. I picked up Roger Scrutons’ “How to be a Conservative” and Martin Cruz Smiths “Wolves Eat Dogs” and wended to the cash. I don’t know why I stopped, I sort of wish I had not but I noticed that Bill Clinton had co- written a thriller with James Patterson and this was mildly intriguing.
At the entrance to the store the customer is confronted with two flashy displays. On the right a large shelf marked “New Realeses and Bestsellers”. I considered Jordon Peterson, not to read so much as to carry into the faculty lounge, or leave on my desk to aggravate those who clearly wish to be aggravated, but I demurred. To the left was another large display “Summer Murder Mysteries and Mayhem”.
As I pondered I noticed that both Clinton and Peterson were surrounded by women. I leave the reader to insert their own joke here. However I began to count. On the bestseller main shelf there were 48 titles, 40 written by women. On the Summer Mystery shelf there were 42 titles, all written by women. Ergo 90% of current literary output is written by women ( I think you will find my math flawless), this represents something of a revolution, or at least a corporate fiat. However pity the poor young man who approaches these displays and thereby concludes most of his entire sex is a bit stupid.