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The Week’s Most Chiding, Abiding, and Yuletiding Headlines

SOMETIMES YOU RAP THE WINDOW, AND SOMETIMES THE WINDOW RAPS YOU
“When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” —Maria, The Sound of Music

“It’s a trap!” —Admiral Ackbar, Return of the Jedi

In British playwright Ray Cooney’s 1990 farce Out of Order, the catalyst for the whimsical misunderstandings and lighthearted tomfoolery is a defective sash window that violently slams down when opened.

As a theatrical gag, it’s a decent idea. In real life, it’s downright hilarious.

Last week, a budding rapper (aren’t they all?) named Jonathan Hernandez-Zuluaga—who went by the stage name Taz UFO—decided to rob a home in Lee County, Fla. That’s the problem with “budding” as a profession…the pay really sucks. And the 32-year-old dreadlocked father of five realized that “budding” wasn’t gonna be puttin’ no presents under the tree this year for the kids he couldn’t support. So of course burglary was the solution! After all, the dude had a lengthy rap sheet for theft and larceny (he was also the suspect in a 2014 murder case). The “budding” thing certainly didn’t apply to his criminal career; he was quite the accomplished pro.

After scaling the wall of a private residence, Hernandez-Zuluaga pried open a large sash window and lifted the panel high above his head so he could climb through. And the panel came crashing down on his neck, suffocating him. When the cops showed up, they found Taz UFO hanging from the window, his arms dangling in the air like they just don’t care.

Whatever else might be said about Taz, he was fully committed to his art, dying while giving the world the greatest possible cover of Busta Rhymes’ “Break Ya Neck.”

On a possibly related note, phone calls and emails from local homeowners have been pouring in to the residents of the house Taz tried to rob, inquiring where they got their windows and how fast they could be installed.

Hernandez-Zuluaga’s baby momma described her beloved as a kindhearted man who was like a breath of fresh air to all who knew him (he certainly provided some fresh air to the room in which he perished). She’s started a GoFundMe to pay for Taz’s funeral expenses. “He was destined to be GREAT beyond great at that I know his close friends will ensure his music lives on,” the grieving rap-widow wrote. “All he wanted in life was to make it with his music.”

R.I.P. T-Pane.

ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ARE HIGH
At this most festive and holy time of the year, Christians around the U.S. gather (in some cities via Zoom, because Democrats have closed the churches) to reflect upon the birth of Jesus and the glory of the nativity tale. Interestingly, it appears as though both Matthew and Luke left out the part of the story where baby Jesus scored a shitload of fentanyl and wrote a bad check (“pay to the order of Cæsar Augustus for all taxes owed”).

At least that’s how a “church” in Claremont, Calif., (at the easternmost edge of L.A. County) sees it.

This Christmas, Claremont United Methodist Church has rejiggered its annual nativity scene as an homage to George Floyd. Mary and Joseph are depicted as BLM protesters, while the little baby in the manger is portrayed as a representation of not just Floyd but the “dozens of black men and women shot and killed by police.”

The head of the church’s “creative peacemaking committee,” Pam Bunce, and the committee’s “facilities engineer,” Genaro Cordova, told The L.A. Times that it was a toss-up whether to craft a nativity scene that distorts scripture in the name of fighting COVID, or one that does so in the name of fighting racism.

In the end, racism won the coin toss.

Cordova constructed the mannequin of Mary to be posed in the “hands up don’t shoot” position generally associated with leftists who dismiss the nativity as a fairy tale but cling to the Michael Brown myth no matter how many times it’s debunked. Additionally, the list of names above the baby Jesus detailing those “dozens of black men and women shot and killed by police” includes Emmett Till, which demonstrates how religious dogma can evolve over the years, as the notion of Till having been shot by cops is rather a new twist.

Bunce told the local Daily Bulletin newspaper that the point of the nativity scene is to make Christians understand that Jesus “came [to earth] to stand with the people who are marginalized.” Which in today’s America would probably be the business owners who’ve lost everything due to COVID and BLM riots, as opposed to the thugs and looters who sacked entire retail districts with impunity.

Speaking of COVID, Claremont United Methodist’s Reverend Karen Clark Ristine told the Times that she’s disappointed by the fact that so few people have shown up to gaze in amazement at the wondrous Christmastime racial-justice exhibit her church constructed.

The Times then reminded Ristine that her church has been closed since March for COVID, so that’s why there are no crowds of gawkers.

Damn, the pandemic restrictions finally did some good.

A Christmas miracle.

“I AM BIRTHING PERSON, HEAR ME ROAR!”
2020 was a bad year for definitions. Well, it was a bad year for everything. But definitions certainly took a major hit. In October, after Amy Coney Barrett used the phrase “sexual preference” while discussing homosexuality, Merriam-Webster’s altered the definition of the term overnight to recategorize it as “offensive.” Peter Sokolowski, the dictionary’s editor at large, proudly told the press that the definition was changed for political reasons “in connection with the SCOTUS hearings.”

Not coincidentally, the definition of “Sokolowski” was updated to “unashamedly dishonorable politically motivated hack.”

Also in October, Dictionary.com altered the definition of “court packing” so that the word could apply to politicians who attempt to alter the “ideological composition” and not just the number of Supreme Court justices. The change was carried out to satisfy liberal Twitter, which demanded that the nomination of Barrett be seen as an example of “court packing” even though it wasn’t.

That the new definition of court packing applies to every Supreme Court pick ever doesn’t bother today’s lexicographers, who are all a bunch of worthless Sokolowskis.

But last week saw the greatest redefinition of the year. In a series of tweets, Harvard Medical School officially redefined “woman” as “birthing person.”

Yes, “woman” is now an inaccurate term for the type of human who has ovaries and a womb and whatnot.

“Globally, ethnic minority pregnant and birthing people suffer worse outcomes and experiences during and after pregnancy and childbirth. These inequities have been further highlighted by #COVID19,” the formerly respectable institution tweeted.

For some odd reason, women across the ideological spectrum took issue with the new terminology, which—many pointed out—sounds a bit Handmaid’s Tale in its reduction of females to mere “birthing persons.” “Why not just call us ‘lactators,’ ‘gestators,’ or ‘uterus-bearers,’” one commenter asked. Several Twitterers pointed out that what Harvard was doing was “erasing” and “diminishing” women, something that leftists so adamantly claim should never be done when it comes to race. So why do it with gender?

Feeling the heat, the Harvard brainiacs tweeted a clarification:

The [Harvard] webinar panelists used the term “birthing person” to include those who identify as non-binary or transgender because not all who give birth identify as “women” or “girls.” We understand the reactions to this terminology and in no way meant for it to erase or dehumanize women.

Essentially, because a small handful of mentally troubled women (many of whom have been subjected to parental abuse and medical malpractice) call themselves “men,” society is no longer allowed to say that only women give birth.

At least according to Harvard Medical School, which last week earned its new dictionary definition: “kindergarten for incurable retards.”

“HEROIC ACTOR DISRUPTS PRIVILEGED WHITE RACIST’S NIGHT AT THE THEATER”
Black Americans love insult humor. From Fred Sanford calling Aunt Esther an “ugly ol’ ape” to George Jefferson calling Tom and Helen “zebras” to everything the Wayans siblings have ever done, insult comedy—especially as personified by the “yo mamma” jokes of “the dozens”—is intimately associated with American blacks. And there’s a good reason for that: Insult comedy helped kill one of the worst racists in U.S. history.

John Wilkes Booth—who apparently, it turns out, wasn’t such a bad guy after all—purposely timed his entrance into the vile neo-Nazi Abraham Lincoln’s private balcony with the covering noise he knew would be generated by a guaranteed laugh-line in the play Lincoln was viewing, Our American Cousin. In Act III, Scene 2, the eponymous hero finally tells off the pretentious and rude dowager Mrs. Mountchessington:

“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap!”

In 1865 that was roughly the equivalent of “suck mah dick you dry-pussy-havin’ stank-ass ol’ ho.”

The laughter from the snappy put-down enabled Booth to creep up behind the president and erase a racist. And now Booth’s handiwork is being hailed by the San Francisco Unified School District, which has decided to erase Lincoln from all public schools, because the sixteenth president is four score and seven times worse than Hitler.

“Abraham Lincoln, once a hero, is now a bad guy in some S.F. education circles,” the San Francisco Chronicle announced last week:

Lincoln is one of dozens of historical figures who, according to a school district renaming committee, lived a life so stained with racism, oppression or human rights violations, they do not deserve to have their name on a school building.

In the words of the chair of the San Francisco School Names Advisory Committee, Jeremiah Jeffries (who so black he be ridin’ his bike an’ got a ticket for tinted windows), “Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”

Yes, the guy who freed the slaves, destroyed the Confederacy, and got assassinated for it didn’t care about black lives.

Funny enough, Jeffries and his San Fran cohorts have also ordered Dianne Feinstein’s name removed from Dianne Feinstein Elementary School because back when she was mayor in 1984, she allowed a Confederate flag on capitol grounds. But Lincoln, who defeated the Confederacy, is also banned.

Totally logical.

If the dude who freed practically every black in the U.S. “did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to him,” what white person could ever pass muster?

Well, maybe Booth, the Antebellum Antifa. Makes as much sense as anything in a city that’s Sic Semper Tyran-nuts.

AS INTROSPECTIVE AS A DUNG BEETLE AND TWICE AS RANK
If the U.S. mainstream media has a collective personality type, it’s “workplace shooter.” As a rule, most workplace shooters are small, bitter people who sit alone at the office silently fuming, growing more and more resentful with each passing day over the fact that they’re not as well-liked, accepted, or successful as they think they should be.

Workplace shooters put the entire responsibility for their woes on others. That’s pretty much the defining workplace-shooter creed: “If I get fired, if I get disciplined, if I’m not welcome at the watercooler klatch, if the pretty secretaries never respond to my advances, it’s never my fault.”

Prospective workplace shooters never entertain the notion that their unpopularity is tied to their behavior, their personality, or their general loathsomeness.

Last week, the New York-based nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists released a “special report” that can best be described as a page from a disgruntled shooter’s journal of self-pity. The report ostensibly covers the current “persecution” faced by reporters, editors, and news writers worldwide. The overall theme is “Everybody hates us, and it’s their fault not ours, and help us, President Biden, you’re our only hope!”

Paragraph after paragraph of the report is dedicated to whining about how journalists are no longer liked or respected, written from the strikingly oblivious perspective of “But, we’re so great! We’re so important! How could you not like us?”

Even though the report grudgingly admits that China is the worst global offender when it comes to the actual persecution of journalists (followed by Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia), the report’s authors conclude that the true culprit is Donald Trump:

Lack of global leadership on democratic values—particularly from the United States, where President Donald Trump has inexhaustibly denigrated the press and cozied up to dictators such as Egyptian President Abdelfattah el-Sisi—has perpetuated the crisis. As authoritarians leveraged Trump’s “fake news” rhetoric to justify their actions—particularly in Egypt—the number of journalists jailed on “false news” charges steadily increased. This year, 34 journalists were jailed for “false news,” compared with 31 last year.

So the assaults on journalists are Trump’s fault because he “cozied up” to el-Sisi (if Trump’s “cozying” is what caused the problem, why is the problem most prevalent in China, where Trump did the exact opposite of “cozying”?), and Trump’s rhetoric against “fake news” is why journalists are being repressed. However, the report fails to criticize Big Tech’s rhetoric against “fake news.” In fact, the authors cheer Big Tech’s battle against “fake news” as a positive thing for journalism.

Trump’s condemnation of “fake news” endangers journalists. Big Tech’s condemnation of “fake news” preserves journalistic integrity.

Seems legit.

The report calls on Joe Biden to step in and fight the “lack of trust in media in the U.S.” by propagandizing from the White House in favor of mainstream journalists and against any skepticism of their work. The authors also want Biden to help “social media companies” put the kibosh on “toxic speech, misinformation, and online harassment [that] have corrupted the information environment and undermined public trust.”

These “journalists” have no beef with the dictatorial excesses—state propaganda and speech suppression—of leaders in China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia…they’re just pissed that said excesses are being used against them rather than for them.

Of course, an easier solution to the problem of “lack of trust in the media” might be to just not shill so much for the Democrats, which invariably leads to credibility-killing moments (“BLM riots don’t spread COVID!”/“Outdoor dining spreads COVID!”…“Russian interference in our elections is a vital story”/“Chinese interference in our elections is a nonstory”), but that would likely be asking too much of the lonely, hateful office schizos brooding in their cubicles and cursing the world for rejecting them.