Former actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman, of Family Ties and Violet fame, said the election of President Trump may be the tipping point for the “woke mob mentality” that terrorize American culture.
Speaking with The Irish Times about the state of Hollywood and the downfall of cinema, Bateman discussed a book she had written about beauty standards and how it struck a chord with people who had been chasing plastic surgery.
A Cambridge University museum has claimed Britain’s exploration of Antarctica was “colonial” – despite only penguins living there.
The university’s Polar Museum holds personal artefacts linked to the explorers of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
The museum informs visitors that the daring and often fatal expeditions to the South Pole were “in the colonial mould”, despite the southernmost continent having no human population to conquer or exploit.
Let’s start with what isn’t true, what never happened and what’s upside down and backwards about which party in the federal election campaign has been most keen to introduce American manic disorders into Canadian politics.
Joining other leaders around the world in extending pro-forma congratulations to U.S. President Donald Trump on his narrow electoral victory last November, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is said to have said: “I congratulate President Trump on his victory and look forward to joining him in his war against woke, leftist ideology.” Except Poilievre never said that, despite what you might have read on social media. Poilievre is not an admirer of Trump, and Trump certainly isn’t fond of Poilievre.
With all the current debate about tariffs and trade, it would seem timely to talk about one of the worst American exports ever: the concept of ‘white privilege’. This notion – that you can have an automatic and decisive advantage in life because of your skin pigmentation, regardless of your class, sex or where you live – is one of the most divisive myths of our times.
Over the centuries, the disputes between France and England have steadily escalated and experienced a thousand and one twists and turns. From Agincourt to Mers-el-Kébir, via Trafalgar, the relationship between the Gauls and their best enemies across the Channel has been characterised by rumbling storms—interrupted, however, by lovely clear spells, such as the marriage of Charles I and Henrietta of France or the signing of the Entente Cordiale. This is the charm of our European history, which overzealous Brussels officials would like to erase and replace with a peaceful era of perpetual bureaucracy.
The left’s fascist efforts to shame, blacklist, and censor comedians deemed “offensive” has failed. Anti-woke comedians “seem emboldened by the current climate,” laments far-left the Wrap.
“If there was an effort to make stand-up comedy a bit more genteel a few years ago — with offensive words and phrases placed out of bounds,” writes the Wrap, “a second Trump administration has emboldened more transgressive voices who are willing to wind it back to the days when it was fine to have a laugh at the expense of women, trans people, people of color and the mentally disabled.”
Amid the turbulent Donald Trump presidency, many American scholars are considering relocating abroad, including to Canada. Some here view this potential influx as a “brain gain” for the country, but others worry it could exacerbate existing problems in the post-secondary system.
Critics argue that the arrival of U.S. talent could limit job opportunities for Canadian academics and intensify challenges like underfunding, program cuts and faculty layoffs. They warn that while attracting top scholars may be beneficial, it could hinder the development of Canada’s own academic and research capacities.
It means they get worse. Hard as it is to believe that’s even possible.
At a screening of the new Snow White movie in London last month, influencers walked through an artificial fairytale forest, complete with a full-size thatched cottage filled with models of furry animals. In the US, Disney paraded an actual bunny in a brown knitted jumper down the red carpet at the film’s Hollywood premiere.
But the film’s theme of being at one with nature seems not to have extended to the real-life environment, with company documents showing the making of Snow White generated more greenhouse gas emissions in the UK than the latest Fast & Furious film, despite the latter’s reliance on an array of gas-guzzling cars.
A flagship Labour council is telling staff to undergo a “privilege” test as part of its efforts to combat unconscious bias against ethnic minorities.
Westminster city council is also seeking to boost recruitment of “global majority” candidates for senior posts by giving them preferential treatment over equally qualified white applicants – and ensuring there is at least one ethnic minority candidate on shortlists for jobs.
This month’s Doublespeak Award goes to the BBC. President Trump is spearheading a ‘purge’ of America’s top museums, it breathlessly reports. The madman in the White House has instructed the Smithsonian Institution to put back all ‘memorials and statues’ that were ‘improperly removed’ from federal property in recent years, the Beeb says. Hold up. Call me a stickler for linguistic accuracy, but isn’t a purge when you tear monuments down, not when you put them back up?
Several longtime corporate sponsors of San Francisco’s Pride celebrations are pulling their funding for the festivities, leaving Pride organizers searching for another way to raise $300,000.
In the past four weeks, multiple companies told San Francisco Pride, the nonprofit behind San Francisco’s annual Pride Parade and Civic Center celebration, that they would not support the 2025 Pride celebrations. In an interview with SFGATE, San Francisco Pride’s executive director, Suzanne Ford, said she was “really disappointed” by the developments.
Same thing happened in Toronto and of course they Blamed Trump but I suspect Trans advocacy triggered the about face.
Or maybe it’s just that Pride is regarded as an anachronism?
I had forgot about my “banned on YouTube” Pride vids. Here’s a blast from the past saved on Vimeo. Pride 2010 to be exact.
h/t DS
The next time someone blithely assures you that “woke is over” now Donald Trump is back, politely direct his or her attention to the following story. In the US state of New Jersey, hospitals have been giving new parents a questionnaire to fill in.
And this questionnaire asks them to specify their newborn baby’s sexuality.
It’s pretty hard to explain Doctor Who to someone who has never seen the show. For those that haven’t, it’s a British science fiction show which first aired in 1963 and has been on and off the air ever since. The show’s main character is The Doctor and super-genius alien who travels through time and space in a ship called the TARDIS which in theory is supposed to blend in with the surroundings but in practice always looks (from the outside anyway) like a British police box.
Most Canadians think that sharing gender pronouns on work calls and in video meetings has either no impact or actually “encourages stereotypes,” according to a new national survey.
The Leger poll found that 36 per cent of people agreed with the former and 29 per cent with the latter.
A new report looking at the prevalence of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI and EDI) practices in federal research grant-funding agencies says the ideology has “come to dominate” the academia and government.
The report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute studied how DEI appears in academic and research bodies, including three federal research granting agencies.
