Saturday Miscellany

 First, Erin Burnett on CNN praises Hamas for the way they are presumably caring for their hostages:

We know these tunnels have ventilation. We know that they've been known to have air conditioning. There was shampoo. There was antibiotics. [...] There were medics and paramedics. [...] They had tampons and things, OK?!"

How about that? Not just AC, but tampons, too.

Second, much to the surprise of many, the Hamas massacre brought a vast outpouring of anti-Semitism on American college campuses. Including Brandeis, founded by Jews after World War II.

The student government at Brandeis University, founded after the Holocaust by the U.S. Jewish community, this week voted down a resolution to condemn Hamas. “It’s absolutely infuriating,” said a Jewish student who resigned over the 6-10-5 vote.

Third, at Princeton university, recently declared to be the best of the best:

Students at a Palestine rally at Princeton University are chanting "Intifada intifada, long live the Intifada" 

That is code for-- kill the Jews.

Fourth, Frank Bruni, formerly of the New York Times, currently teaching at Duke University, offered some perspective about today’s college students.

Many students now turn to the colleges they attend for much more than intellectual stimulation. They look for emotional affirmation. They seek an acknowledgment of their wounds along with the engagement of their minds. And that’s in significant measure because many schools have encouraged that mind-set, casting themselves as stewards of students’ welfare, guarantors of their safety, places of refuge, precincts of healing.

For us professors, the surrogate-parent paradigm means regular emails and other reminders from administrators that we should be taking our students’ temperatures, watching for glimmers of distress, intervening proactively and fashioning accommodations, especially if there has been some potentially discomfiting global, national or local news event. The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 reinforced that approach — and rightly so. Students who were locked down in their dormitories or homes, denied social interaction and estranged from the usual rhythms and rituals of college life, undeniably needed special attention.

As I have suspected and have long argued, today’s young people have been therapied within an inch of their sanity. As hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman said the other day-- they have “shit for brains.” 

He added that he will no longer contribute to his alma mater Columbia University.

Fifth, when you’ve lost Tom Friedman:

The fourth front is the intellectual/philosophical struggle between the international progressive movement and Israel. I believe that some elements of that progressive movement, which I realize is big and diverse, have lost their moral bearings on this issue. For instance, we’ve seen numerous demonstrations on American college campuses that essentially blame Israel for the barbaric Hamas invasion, arguing that Hamas is engaged in a legitimate “anticolonial struggle.” These progressive demonstrators seem to believe that all of Israel is a colonial enterprise — not just the West Bank settlements — and therefore the Jewish people do not have the right either to self-determination or self-defense in their ancestral homeland, whether it’s within post-1967 borders or pre-1967 ones.

Sixth, just in case you haven’t had enough, try this compilation of campus anti-Semitism, from Nellie Bowles, on The Free Press:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” (Okay, fine, that one’s funny; just think of the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine president calmly trying to explain preferred pronouns to a jihadi upon arrival. On second thought: TGIF will personally sponsor any queer activist who wants to fly to Iran. Honestly, I’m curious what would happen.)

Seventh, philosopher John Gray this in The New Statesman:

October 7 will be remembered as a day in which a new epoch of barbarism was born. In ethical terms, it will be a time when atrocities were accepted as legitimate weapons in human conflict. In its geopolitical dimension, it was the point at which the post-Cold War order finally ­fractured.

Eighth, the country is in the best of hands. The adults are in charge in the White House. Witness the witless Jake Sullivan. He wrote these words in a serious journal of foreign affairs, before the Hamas massacre.

Does he get an award for prescience or being obtuse or lying?

The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.

The region is quieter than it has been for decades. The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident. . . [Biden’s] approach returns discipline to U.S. policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region. . . 

Amazingly, there are people who buy this swill.

Ninth, from Dennis Ross in the New York Times. 

Over the past two weeks, when I talked to Arab officials throughout the region whom I have long known, every single one told me that Hamas must be destroyed in Gaza. They made clear that if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put their own governments on the defensive.

Tenth, meanwhile back in Oregon, the State Board of Education has decided to hand out diplomas to students who were illiterate and innumerate. 

Erielle Davidson has the story:

High schoolers in Oregon won’t need to demonstrate basic competency in reading, writing or math in order to graduate for at least five more years because, according to education officials, such requirements are unnecessary and disproportionately harm students of color.

“At some point … our diploma is going to end up looking a lot more like a participation prize than an actual certificate that shows that someone actually is prepared to go pursue their best future,” former Oregon gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan told Fox News.

Eleventh, on a somewhat lighter note, a comely married special education teacher in Missouri was arrested for propositioning a sixteen year old student. Her husband was away on a trip, so she decided to take advantage of the situation:

The Daily Mail has the story:

Rikki Lynn Laughlin, 24, reportedly exchanged nudes with a student at St. James High School - where Laughlin worked a special education teacher. The teacher, who is married with a one-year-old daughter, faces six felony charges for pursuing the 16-year-old, sending him pornographic images and soliciting ones from him. She married Grant Laughlin, 23, in June 2022 and the Missouri couple share a one-year-old daughter together. The teacher posted frequently on her social media accounts - where she shared snaps of her spending time with her daughter and husband, in her classroom and posing in front Trump 2020 flags.

Now she has been indicted and faces up to two decades of hard time.

It used to be called courtly love; now it’s a felony.

Twelfth, I don’t need to tell you, but the pronoun wars aim at forcing people to use bad grammar, among other things. Giving  the pronoun “they” a usage as singular is just the beginning. Now, we learn, thanks to the University of Birmingham in England, that listening to someone using bad grammar will damage your brain.

The Daily Mail has this story.

For many, bad grammar can be maddening. 

Now experts have discovered it really does cause a physical reaction – and even affects our heart rate.

Instances of bad grammar can include mixing up tenses within a sentence, confusing the singular and plural, using a double negative or misusing a comma.

Examples of the pet peeve include 'We don't need no education', 'I ate porridge for breakfast and drink milk' or 'Anna and Mike is going skiing'.

Analysis revealed the more errors a person heard, the more regular their heartbeat became – a sign of stress.

The researchers said grammatical errors appear to activate a 'fight or flight' response within the human body.

Thirteenth, on a more personal note, I am looking for a literary agent or a publisher for my new book, entitled “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” Please send any suggestions or recommendations to my personal email: StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

Please subscribe to my Substack.

First, Erin Burnett on CNN praises Hamas for the way they are caring for their hostages:

We know these tunnels have ventilation. We know that they've been known to have air conditioning. There was shampoo. There was antibiotics. [...] There were medics and paramedics. [...] They had tampons and things, OK?!"

How about that? Not just AC, but tampons, too.

Second, much to the surprise of many, the Hamas massacre brought a vast outpouring of anti-Semitism on American college campuses. Including Brandeis, founded by Jews after World War II.

The student government at Brandeis University, founded after the Holocaust by the U.S. Jewish community, this week voted down a resolution to condemn Hamas. “It’s absolutely infuriating,” said a Jewish student who resigned over the 6-10-5 vote.

Third, at Princeton University, recently declared to be the best of the best:

Students at a Palestine rally at Princeton University are chanting "Intifada intifada, long live the Intifada" 

That is code for-- kill the Jews.

Fourth, Frank Bruni, formerly of the New York Times, currently teaching at Duke University, offered some perspective about today’s college students.

Many students now turn to the colleges they attend for much more than intellectual stimulation. They look for emotional affirmation. They seek an acknowledgment of their wounds along with the engagement of their minds. And that’s in significant measure because many schools have encouraged that mind-set, casting themselves as stewards of students’ welfare, guarantors of their safety, places of refuge, precincts of healing.

For us professors, the surrogate-parent paradigm means regular emails and other reminders from administrators that we should be taking our students’ temperatures, watching for glimmers of distress, intervening proactively and fashioning accommodations, especially if there has been some potentially discomfiting global, national or local news event. The coronavirus pandemic in 2020 reinforced that approach — and rightly so. Students who were locked down in their dormitories or homes, denied social interaction and estranged from the usual rhythms and rituals of college life, undeniably needed special attention.

As I have suspected and have long argued, today’s young people have been therapied within an inch of their sanity. As hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman said the other day-- they have “shit for brains.” 

He added that he will no longer contribute to his alma mater Columbia University.

Fifth, when you’ve lost Tom Friedman:

The fourth front is the intellectual/philosophical struggle between the international progressive movement and Israel. I believe that some elements of that progressive movement, which I realize is big and diverse, have lost their moral bearings on this issue. For instance, we’ve seen numerous demonstrations on American college campuses that essentially blame Israel for the barbaric Hamas invasion, arguing that Hamas is engaged in a legitimate “anticolonial struggle.” These progressive demonstrators seem to believe that all of Israel is a colonial enterprise — not just the West Bank settlements — and therefore the Jewish people do not have the right either to self-determination or self-defense in their ancestral homeland, whether it’s within post-1967 borders or pre-1967 ones.

Sixth, just in case you haven’t had enough, try this compilation of campus anti-Semitism, from Nellie Bowles, on The Free Press:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” (Okay, fine, that one’s funny; just think of the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine president calmly trying to explain preferred pronouns to a jihadi upon arrival. On second thought: TGIF will personally sponsor any queer activist who wants to fly to Iran. Honestly, I’m curious what would happen.)

Seventh, philosopher John Gray this in The New Statesman:

October 7 will be remembered as a day in which a new epoch of barbarism was born. In ethical terms, it will be a time when atrocities were accepted as legitimate weapons in human conflict. In its geopolitical dimension, it was the point at which the post-Cold War order finally ­fractured.

Eighth, the country is in the best of hands. The adults are in charge in the White House. Witness the witless Jake Sullivan. He wrote these words in a serious journal of foreign affairs, before the Hamas massacre. Of course, they have since been deleted.

Does he get an award for prescience or being obtuse or lying?

The Israeli-Palestinian situation is tense, particularly in the West Bank, but in the face of serious frictions, we have de-escalated crises in Gaza and restored direct diplomacy between the parties after years of its absence.

The region is quieter than it has been for decades. The progress is fragile, to be sure. But it is also not an accident. . . [Biden’s] approach returns discipline to U.S. policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region. . . 

Amazingly, there are people who buy this swill.

Ninth, from Dennis Ross in the New York Times. 

Over the past two weeks, when I talked to Arab officials throughout the region whom I have long known, every single one told me that Hamas must be destroyed in Gaza. They made clear that if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put their own governments on the defensive.

Tenth, meanwhile back in Oregon, the State Board of Education has decided to hand out diplomas to students who were illiterate and innumerate. 

Erielle Davidson has the story:

High schoolers in Oregon won’t need to demonstrate basic competency in reading, writing or math in order to graduate for at least five more years because, according to education officials, such requirements are unnecessary and disproportionately harm students of color.

“At some point … our diploma is going to end up looking a lot more like a participation prize than an actual certificate that shows that someone actually is prepared to go pursue their best future,” former Oregon gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan told Fox News.

Eleventh, on a somewhat lighter note, a comely married special education teacher in Missouri was arrested for propositioning a sixteen year old student. Her husband was away on a trip, so she decided to take advantage of the situation:

The Daily Mail has the story:

Rikki Lynn Laughlin, 24, reportedly exchanged nudes with a student at St. James High School - where Laughlin worked a special education teacher. The teacher, who is married with a one-year-old daughter, faces six felony charges for pursuing the 16-year-old, sending him pornographic images and soliciting ones from him. She married Grant Laughlin, 23, in June 2022 and the Missouri couple share a one-year-old daughter together. The teacher posted frequently on her social media accounts - where she shared snaps of her spending time with her daughter and husband, in her classroom and posing in front Trump 2020 flags.

Now she has been indicted and faces up to two decades of hard time.

It used to be called courtly love; now it’s a felony.

Twelfth, I don’t need to tell you, but the pronoun wars aim at forcing people to use bad grammar, among other things. Giving  the pronoun “they” a usage as singular is just the beginning. Now, we learn, thanks to the University of Birmingham in England, that listening to someone using bad grammar will damage your brain.

The Daily Mail has this story.

For many, bad grammar can be maddening. 

Now experts have discovered it really does cause a physical reaction – and even affects our heart rate.

Instances of bad grammar can include mixing up tenses within a sentence, confusing the singular and plural, using a double negative or misusing a comma.

Examples of the pet peeve include 'We don't need no education', 'I ate porridge for breakfast and drink milk' or 'Anna and Mike is going skiing'.

Analysis revealed the more errors a person heard, the more regular their heartbeat became – a sign of stress.

The researchers said grammatical errors appear to activate a 'fight or flight' response within the human body.

Thirteenth, on a more personal note, I am looking for a literary agent or a publisher for my new book, entitled “Can’t We All Just Get Along?” Please send any suggestions or recommendations to my personal email: StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

Please subscribe to my Substack.