{"id":67209,"date":"2023-06-12T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=67209"},"modified":"2023-06-10T09:22:18","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T13:22:18","slug":"monday-miscellany-6-12-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2023\/06\/monday-miscellany-6-12-23\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Miscellany, 6\/12\/23"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s alleged $5 million bribe; affirmative action for footnotes; and the feud between Trump and DeSantis over the Babylon Bee.<\/p>\n

Did Biden Take a $5 Million Bribe?<\/h4>\n

The day before Donald Trump was indicted for having classified documents after leaving office, the FBI\u2013under threat of its director being held in contempt\u2013finally turned over a document subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee:\u00a0 a report that Joe Biden as Vice President took a $5 million bribe.<\/a><\/p>\n

The report emerged in the course of an investigation of his son Hunter Biden\u2019s involvement with Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian oil company.<\/p>\n

\n

Democrats on the committee claimed that the report was discounted by the Trump administration\u2019s Justice Department, but former Attorney General William Barr says this is not true<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What struck me is that this story appeared on Fox News and other conservative sites. But I could find nothing about it in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or other mainstream media sources, except for USA Today, which reported not the substance of the story but Biden\u2019s joking denial, under the headline \u201c`Bunch of malarkey\u2019: Biden dismisses GOP bribery allegations.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

To be sure, the information, from a confidential FBI source whom the agency has previously found reliable, has not been verified.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t stop the media, of course, from trumpeting less well-sourced accusations of Trump.\u00a0 But surely the release of this document is \u201cnews.\u201d\u00a0 And it raises many other questions about the FBI investigation of the Biden family and the possibility of a coverup, with the full co-operation of the mainstream news media and the mainstream internet media, which shut down discussion of the contents of Hunter\u2019s laptop computer.\u00a0 Now it looks like a case of \u201chere we go again,\u201d with the establishment press carrying water for President Biden, who may have committed a crime far worse than what Trump has been indicted for.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to downplay what Trump is accused of.\u00a0 We\u2019ll talk about that tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Affirmative Action for Footnotes<\/h4>\n

That the academic world is in thrall to post-Marxist \u201ccritical theory\u201d and postmodernist identity politics is well known.\u00a0 But this is not just a matter of campus culture.\u00a0 It is affecting what used to be considered objective scholarship, including scientific research.\u00a0 A new cause is \u201cCitational Justice<\/a>,\u201d a new scholarly standard requiring that footnotes, bibliographies, and background research include work from members of racial and sexual identity groups.<\/p>\n

From an article on the subject by David Randall of the National Association of Scholars, an organization of dissident academics of which I was once a member:<\/p>\n

The latest fresh hell is\u00a0citational justice<\/i>. Which is quotas for footnotes. Now we\u2019re supposed to track the group identity of the authors we cite and make sure there are lots of blacks, women, and People from the Global South among them. There are already\u00a0articles<\/a>,\u00a0workshops<\/a>,\u00a0library guides<\/a>, and\u00a0position statements<\/a> on the subject. There isn\u2019t yet an Office of Citational Justice, but a professional bureaucracy will doubtless soon supplement the mandated do-it-yourself efforts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He recommends another critique of the concept from Areo Magazine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Areo\u00a0<\/i>author helpfully analyzes citational justice within three categories:\u00a0citational fairness<\/i>\u00a0(the contention that biases have reduced the number of footnotes granted to members of certain identity groups),\u00a0distributive justice<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cequity\u201d by identity group, applied to footnotes), and\u00a0retributive justice<\/i>\u00a0(the notion that people who offend progressive sensibilities should not be footnoted). The last is the purest expression of spite, as the Woke\u00a0seek to unperson<\/a>\u00a0any scientist who commits thoughtcrime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What I want to know is how scholars are supposed to identify what identity group the author of an article belongs to?\u00a0 The APA Stylesheet identifies authors by last name plus first and middle initials, presumably out of an earlier sensitivity lest anyone discriminate against women.\u00a0 Knowing the scholar only by last name and initial, there is no way to know if he or she is a woman or not.\u00a0 And what do we do about the transgendered?\u00a0 And how do we know anyone\u2019s race?<\/p>\n

And what if the subject of the research has not been studied by anyone from the listed group identities?\u00a0 And what if the key contribution to the field was made by someone whose political allegiance or ideological beliefs are not allowed?\u00a0 (I have seen research from the hard sciences questioned because it was conducted by a notorious sexist.)<\/p>\n

And what difference does any of this make to the requirements of the scientific method or the standards of rational inquiry, when the purpose is to discover and build on knowledge<\/em>?<\/p>\n

HT:\u00a0 George Leef<\/a><\/p>\n

The Battle for the Babylon Bee<\/h4>\n

Even the Babylon Bee couldn\u2019t make up something this silly:\u00a0 Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are feuding over the Babylon Bee.<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems that DeSantis hired someone who works for the Christian satirical site<\/a> to write jokes for him.\u00a0 After all, he is always hearing that he is awkward and humorless.\u00a0 But this has enraged Trump, leading him to condemn the Bee for endorsing his rival.<\/p>\n

The owner of the Bee, Seth Dillon, says that the jokes were against Democrats only, not Trump; that he voted for Trump twice; and that the site doesn\u2019t endorse anybody.<\/p>\n

Trump also doesn\u2019t approve of Dillon\u2019s friendship with Bee fan Elon Musk, who hosted DeSantis\u2019 tech-plagued announcement that he was running.\u00a0 Also, Dillon fired one of his employees\u2013an ardent Trump supporter\u2013for his bad language in a feud with a DeSantis supporter.\u00a0 (You will recall that the Babylon Bee is an evangelical publication.)\u00a0 So Trumpworld is up in arms against the Babylon Bee.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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