Saturday Miscellany

First, if it had appeared anywhere else, it would have been denounced as sexist. New York Times editorialist Michelle Cottle explained this week the difference between male and female bonding. 

Responding to the simple fact that today’s Americans have few friends and fewer social relations, Cottle raised the salient point-- men connect with men and women connect with women-- differently.

Which is where playtime comes in. Pursuing a hobby is widely recognized as a good way to meet people and establish connections. But the folks who study this sort of thing say it is especially useful for men because of a fundamental difference in how the genders bond. Boiled down: Women talk; men do stuff.

Women share their feelings. Men do things together.

While women can maintain ties through conversation-heavy engagements, the experts say, men are better served by side-by-side bonding. That is, they participate in activities together, during which community and camaraderie are established. On occasion, between rounds of bocce or even rounds at the sports bar, the men may bring up how much they hate their boss or the results of their latest stress test. Behold! Male bonding in action.

In truth, this is self-evident. And yet, kudos to Cottle for bringing it to the resolutely anti-sexist readers of the New York Times.

Second, on the Fox News watch, the channel introduced its new evening lineup this week, the one that was made necessary by its firing of Tucker Carlson.

The results were a ratings calamity. Opening at 8:00, Jesse Watters had 800,000 fewer viewers than did Tucker. Great decision by the executives at Fox.

Third, yesterday I reported on the rise and fall of corporate diversity officers. I based my remarks on a Financial Times story. On cue, the Wall Street Journal echoed the point yesterday.

This, from the Journal:

In interviews, current and former chief diversity officers said company executives at times didn’t want to change hiring or promotion processes, despite initially telling CDOs they were hired to improve the talent pipeline. The quick about-face shows company enthusiasm for diversity initiatives hasn’t always proved durable, leaving some diversity officers now questioning their career path. 

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer. 

Fourth, obviously, I have not seen the movie about Barbie. I have nothing of consequence to say about it. For your edification, however, here are a few remarks from The Daily Mail reviewer Sarah Vine.

'Barbie or no Barbie, it’s not intrinsically that good a film. It’s uneven, disjointed, the plot makes no real sense — and the dead hand of corporate America weighs heavily upon it. 

'But my main objection is that Barbie is not really a film about Barbie at all. 

'It’s one hour and 54 minutes of extended misandry, dressed up with a few fun dance routines and one or two (granted fairly decent) jokes. 

'Every male character is either an idiot, a bigot or a sad, rather pathetic loser. 

'If the roles were reversed, and a male director made a film about how all women were hysterical, neurotic, gold-digging witches, it would be denounced — quite rightly — as deeply offensive and sexist.'

Fifth, according to the former chairman of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company that put Hunter Biden on its board of directions, the president’s crackhead son is dumber than his dog. What more is there to say.

Sixth, reports tell us that industry and manufacturing are returning to America. It’s called onshoring. It is reducing our dependence on foreign manufacturers.

And yet, in the semiconductor wars, a battlefield where the future of civilization is being played out, something strange is happening in Arizona. You recall that Taiwan Semiconductor, the leading manufacturer of a certain type of chips, was going to build a new production facility in Arizona. Everyone cheered American technical expertise and ingenuity.

And yet, now the project has been delayed. The problem, a shortage of skilled workers. The company chairman, Mark Liu, explained that he might have to bring in workers from Taiwan.

Two cheers for the American educational system.

Seventh, as though on cue, the Wall Street Journal reported this morning about a tool making factory in Texas. It could not make a wrench.

The world’s largest tool company couldn’t figure out how to make a wrench.

Stanley Black and Decker built a $90 million factory on the edge of Fort Worth, Texas, intending to burnish the Made-in-the-U.S.A. luster of the Craftsman brand by forging mechanics’ tools with unprecedented efficiency. But the automated system was a bust, and the tools that were supposed to be pumped out by the million are so hard to find that some consider them collector’s items. 

In March, 3½ years after breaking ground, Stanley announced it was closing the factory. The property is now being advertised for sale.

The Craftsman plant was a high-profile example of a drive among U.S. manufacturers to bring offshored plants back home. Government incentives and a desire to shorten supply chains have sparked a factory-building boom. The high cost of American labor makes automation critical for plants to turn a profit.

Eighth, and now we have the news that grooming works. Reports have it that some 40% percent of the student body at Brown University-- my own alma mater, incidentally-- now consider themselves to be LBBTQ. A third of the students at Princeton and a quarter of those at Yale and Harvard also embrace sexual ambiguity.

Some students believe that the schools are simply allowing more students to be who they really are. In truth, it seems that the grooming mania has done serious damage to America's best and brightest college students. Of course, if they are that easily manipulated, they might not be the best and the brightest.

And yet, I offer this sidelight, one that no one has dared bring up. How many of the students at these formerly great institutions are now lining up for mental health counseling. Last I heard, from a reliable source at a liberal arts college, the number was 40%. 

So, our radical leftist culture has not only made young people sexually ambiguous, it has produced an epidemic of mental illness and emotional distress.  

Subscribe to my Substack.