July 14, 2014

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The Week’s Most Compulsive, Convulsive, and Repulsive Headlines

ALL THE DUMB YOUNG SOCIALISTS
Forty-two percent of the so-called “€œmillennials”€”€”that socially conscious and factually stunted cohort of Americans aged 18 to 29″€”favor socialism over capitalism, according to a new study called the Reason-Rupe Spring 2014 Millennial Survey.

But in an apparent contradiction, the same survey found that twice as many millennials said they preferred “a free market system” over “an economy managed by the government.” They may be simply confused and/or dumb, as a previous poll found that only 16 percent of millennials were able to correctly define “socialism” as government ownership of the economy.

The more recent poll found that only a third of millennials are employed full time, while another third are attending school, and yet another third are either full-blown wastrels or part-time layabouts.

A full third of them still live at home with their parents, and a mere 16 percent say they believe they’ll be economically better off than their parents.

“€œIt’s been like a morbid slapstick bioterrorist Three Stooges comedy the past few months at the CDC in Atlanta.”€

Most appallingly, 53% of the 2,000 millennials polled said they’d consider voting for Hillary Clinton should she run for president in 2016. The next closest candidates were also Democrats”€”Joseph Biden (30%) and Elizabeth Warren (22%). The best-performing potential Republican contenders were Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, each of whom could only manage a piddling 17% of respondents who said they’d consider voting for them.

If in 2016 the millennials decide to put down their bongs and vote, they may be all the grease that Hillary Clinton needs to rocket luge-like into the Oval Office. If that happens, expect the endless race-baiting of the past six years to quell a bit in favor of continual cultural castration of males.

Thanks, millennials. Thanks for nothing.

CENTERS FOR DISEASE (OUT OF) CONTROL
It’s been like a morbid slapstick bioterrorist Three Stooges comedy the past few months at the CDC in Atlanta, featuring one bungled handling of lethal microbes after the next.

Back in March, a CDC lab somehow “accidentally” contaminated a sample of animal flu with the highly fatal H5N1 bird flu virus before schlepping it off to another lab in Georgia.

In June, at least 60 CDC scientists may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria after another incident involving sloppy screening processes.

Now it turns out that there had been another shipment of viable anthrax bacteria in 2006 as well as a delivery of Clostridium botulinum“€”the bacteria that causes botulism”€”the same year.

On July 1, a half-dozen 60-year-old vials of smallpox”€”at least two of which contained live samples”€”were discovered in an unsecured storage room at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. By international agreement, only Atlanta’s CDC and Russia’s State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology are permitted to retain live samples of smallpox.

As a result of all the bad PR, the CDC has closed the two labs associated with the anthrax and avian flu fiascos. CDC Director Tom Frieden says he is “astonished,” “disappointed,” and “angry” about the revelations, calling it the result of “totally unacceptable behavior.”

Well, at least he feels bad. That should help everyone sleep better at night.

BASEBALL TEAM MAY BAN “INSENSITIVE” CLOTHING AT GAMES
For God knows what reason, the San Francisco Giants baseball team hosted a “Native American Heritage Night” late in June. A fracas broke out in the stands between a pair of “Native Americans” named April Negrette and Kimball Bighorse and an unnamed phenotypically Caucasian male fan who was wearing an Indian headdress. According to Negrette, she demanded the man hand over the headdress”€”which he did”€”whereupon she refused to give it back, leading to shouting and eventual police involvement. Video evidence of Negrette being handcuffed shows that she was hardly acting like a humble squaw that evening.

Despite the fact that strong-arming someone out of their property and then refusing to return it is robbery or at least thievery, Giants owners were more concerned about the fact that an Injun woman, no matter how loud and obnoxious, was offended by a headdress.

A group calling itself Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry issued a statement that said, “we hope (the Giants and police) will treat cultural misappropriation as hate speech, as that is the way it feels to have sacred items mocked.”

In a July 1 email, the Giants’ director of special events, Faham Zakariaei”€”no, we can’t pronounce it, either”€”stated:

Regarding prohibiting headdresses, our efforts in communicating to our fans moving forward that culturally insensitive apparel will not be tolerated and if found offensive, will be asked to be removed, is the direction that we want to take things in.

Giants Senior Vice President of Communications Staci Slaughter”€”who probably doesn’t realize that countless Indians were slaughtered and that her surname is potentially offensive to them”€”told USA Today Sports:

We are considering expanding the policy to be more explicit about culturally insensitive signs and articles of clothing.

Apparently it never occurred to her that her team’s name may be highly offensive and insensitive toward the feelings of giant people not only in the Bay Area, but across the globe. As a society, we’ve at least progressed to the point where no one would call a team the “Midgets,” so why does “Giants” get a pass? Wow. Just Wow. Completely problematic and totally unacceptable.


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