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4) San Francisco Voters Turn Away from Progressive Craziness
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“For now, at least, San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
That’s an exaggeration, but the voters did opt for common-sense reforms to a city that has been made unlivable by weird leftist experiments. Here’s the basis for the Chronicle’s take:
Voters approved ballot measures Tuesday to loosen restrictions on the police and screen welfare recipients for drugs, while a measure to boost developers was leading and likely to pass.
Voters also backed a slate of moderates to run the local Democratic County Central Committee, whose endorsements could reshape who is elected in San Francisco for years. Four years ago, progressives won all but two seats on the DCCC.
In addition, The Chronicle also notes that Proposition B, an attempt to increase police staffing but only if coupled with a tax increase, won only 32 percent of the vote.
“Progressives are staring down a deep-pocketed tech community that thinks their policies are destroying the city,” The Chronicle concludes.
Ironically, it was liberal high-tech millionaires and billionaire executives who once provided the dollars SUPPORTING the looney “progressive” anti-police/sanctuary city and high-welfare policies that brought the city to its knees. Now, even THEY are opting for a return to normalcy. Let’s hope that these reforms aren’t arriving too late to save one of America’s iconic cities.
It’s nice to see that even though it took years of decay and destruction, the patience of many tech moguls has finally been exhausted.
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5) Brits Tell Kids NOT to Watch “Racist” Disney Classic Mary Poppins
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Now it’s Mary Poppins who has run afoul of the “sensitivity police.” She’s joined British children’s author Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and mystery writer Agatha Christie.
The classic Disney film "Mary Poppins" has had its age rating raised from U (for Universal, the British equivalent of G) to PG, which means children under the age of 15 should not watch the Julie Andrews/Dick Van Dyke classic without the supervision of an adult.
The reason? The British Board of Film Classification says it is “unsuitable for young children” because it includes two uses of the “discriminatory” word “Hottentots,” a term describing Africans that is used by a character in the film.
The word was created by Dutch settlers near Cape Town and was probably in imitation of the language of the Khoikhoi tribe. Britain’s Daily Mail says that “over time it came to be regarded as a derogatory and offensive term.”
We suspect almost no children — or even adults — are today familiar with the archaic term. The board agrees the term wasn’t offensive in the period in which Mary Poppins is set, but the fact that the word isn’t immediately condemned in the film means children have to be protected from it.
Last year, Stephen Spielberg came out unequivocally against such nonsense when he attacked “sensitivity experts” who try to change classics. The 76-year-old director said “For me, it is sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way.”
He’s right, of course. And for those who don’t want kids to watch Mary Poppins, we say: Go fly a kite!
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6) States of Consciousness
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