1. I love headlines like this. The Times tells us (in its print edition) , “Party Hosted By Drug Company Raises Thorny Issues.” Really? A group of top cosmetic surgeons had all their expenses paid to attend a promotional event in Cancun for a new competitor for Botox. The doctors were fed, feted, invited to parties and given gifts, then they went on social media and gushed about the product. The “thorny issue”: Should they have informed their followers that they had just received all sorts of benefits and goodies from the drug manufacturer to encourage their good will? (Because none of them did mention this little detail.)

Wow! What a thorny issue! I’m stumped!

Of COURSE it was unethical not to point out that their sudden enthusiasm for the product had been bought and paid for. This is the epitome of the appearance of impropriety, and an obvious conflict of interest. The Times article chronicles factious doctors’ self-serving and disingenuous arguments that they didn’t have such an obligation, but the fact that these are unethical professionals in thrall to an infamously unethical industry doesn’t make the ethics issue “thorny.”

2. The Assholes of Taylor University. Vice-President Mike Pence was the commencement speaker at Taylor University, and when he moved  to the podium, thirty or so students rose and walked out on him, in a smug and indefensible demonstration of assholery. The University should withhold the diplomas of every single one of these arrogant slobs until they author a sincere letter of apology to the Vice-President, who was the school’s invited guest.

Note that Pence did not walk out on the unethical “Hamilton” performers who ambushed him after their show, at which the Vice President was a guest, an audience member. He sat and listened to their obnoxious attack politely, though he had no obligation, ethical or officials, to do so. Members of Taylor’s graduating class who didn’t want to listen to the Vice President could have simply not attended the ceremony. Instead they chose to insult him, and embarrass their institution.

3. Whose business is it that Steve Mnuchin billionaire father spent more than 90 million on a sculpture of a rabbit? OK, it’s a legitimate oddity, or art trivia, of a “How about that?” gossip item. Does it have anything to do with Mnuchin whatsoever, except for socialists and communists who believe wealth is the equivalent of evil? No, it doesn’t, but an astounding number of pundits and journalists have used this non-story to focus their hate on the Trump administration. Here’s my favorite, a disgusting, ignorant hate piece (though Facebook wouldn’t call it that) by the Root: “Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s Father Just Blew $91 Million on a Stainless Steel Rabbit That Doesn’t Even Vibrate”:

Now we know Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gets his balling from his father…his dad just blew $91 million on a fucking stainless steel rabbit and not even the kind of rabbit that women enjoy. According to Bloomberg, Mnuchin’s papa, art dealer Bob Mnuchin, opened his wallet all the way up to buy the Jeff Koons creation at Christie’s auction house, making it the largest payout for a living artist…The rabbit that doesn’t vibrate was estimated to be worth some $50 million to $70 million and was a part of a group of works from the family of late media mogul Si Newhouse, Bloomberg reports……Bloomberg notes that the rabbit, which doesn’t have a pull string so that it can say, “What up, doc?” was a hit from the time it was created in 1986 and fetched $1 million in 1992; a large sum, even then. Bloomberg notes that the sale brings Koons back to the top of the art world, which is funny, considering he was caught copying another artist’s work just a year ago and was forced to pay $168,000 to the artist he stole from. Further proof that whiteness always falls forward.

Stupid, vulgar, unfair, ignorant, hateful AND racist. Nice.

4. Reason writes about what I also find interesting, that the mainstream media is applauding social media censorship. One would think, wouldn’t one, that the guardiams of free speech and discourse would be standing up for more speech, rather than silencing unpopular speech, as the democratic remedy for social media posts that many find “offensive”? Well, one would think that if one still believed, contrary to all evidence, that the mainstream media isn’t really a defender of free speech, but has become a partisan advocate that wants to have a monopoly on the manipulation of public opinion for a partisan agenda business, and that it regards the big social media companies as valuable allies. I was surprised—silly, idealistic, cockeyed optimist me—that so many journalists, news outlets and Facebook friends—not Democrats, though, I now expect them to applaud totalitarian measures–approved of New Zealand’s censorship after the Christ Church terror attacks. I was not as surprised when the news media attacked the Trump administration for  refusing to sign The Christchurch Call, another one of those virtue-signaling non-binding pledges, this one  “to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.” It’s been signed by online service providers and the governments of New Zealand, France, and 16 other countries, because none of those places has a First Amendment. Concludes Reason:

it should be deeply worrying to anyone who believes in free expression that governments and corporations are openly working together to decide what is and is not acceptable speech. Does anyone really trust the wisdom and sagacity of Twitter’s Jack Dorsey or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg—much less President Donald Trump or the leaders of Singapore (ranked 151st out of 181 countries for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders)—when it comes to defining good speech?

Between threatened crackdowns by Republicans and Democrats and European Union bureaucrats and cave-ins by tech giants trying to preserve market positions, the era of the open internet is almost certainly over. But that’s no reason to go gentle into that good night and allow free speech to be snuffed out like a candle, sacrificed in the name of fighting “online extremism.” We need to rebuild a consensus and a culture that answers bad speech with more and better speech, not voluntary “bans” and fear that our neighbors are too easily gulled into hatred and violence.

Bingo.