NY Times ridiculed for using shotgun shell photo to promote article attacking AR-15s

While attacking America’s "toxic gun culture," the New York Times appeared to have inadvertently used the wrong photo while referring to AR-15s, as many Twitter users pointed out over the weekend.

The paper’s editorial board published an op-ed on Saturday titled "America’s Toxic Gun Culture," claiming that the prevalence of AR-15s among "right-wing" figures is causing a rise in political violence.

"The AR-15 has also become a potent talisman for right-wing politicians and many of their voters. That’s a particularly disturbing trend at a time when violent political rhetoric and actual political violence in the United States are rising," the New York Times editorial board wrote.

However, as many social media users pointed out, the photo used in the article showed rows of shotgun shells, ammo that would not be used in AR-15s which are typically chambered in .223 and/or 5.56.

"Complains about AR15s...with a picture of shotgun shells. This is hysterical," Club for Growth senior analyst Andrew Follett wrote.

"I find it amusing," Townhall.com columnist Kurt Schlichter responded to a tweet pointing out the shotgun shells reading, "I am once again begging the MSM journalists to take just a couple of basic firearms class to avoid dumba--ery like this."

Conservative writer A.G. Hamilton wrote, "Does the entire NYT really not have one editor that can review gun-related articles to notice something as basic as using a picture of shotgun shells for an article about AR-15s? Definitely inspires confidence about the contents of the article

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ny-times-ridiculed-using-shotgun-shell-photo-promote-article-attacking-ar-15s-hysterical

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UK: Skin colour is uniquely embarrassing

Though it was sensible for Lady Susan Hussey to resign, I do find the chorus of disapproval that has greeted her unpleasant. Reading a transcript of her exchange with Ngozi Fulani of Sistah Space I feel rather sorry for both of them – the only word springing to mind being ‘misunderstanding’. Such different backgrounds; generations so far apart; these misunderstandings can easily occur. At a Buckingham Palace reception where Ms Fulani may have felt nervous and awkward (as would I) it’s altogether possible she did think Lady Hussey’s asking where she came from was meant rudely. But I think it was not. And if not, shouldn’t the incident just be put down to clumsiness?

That last question is genuine because some do think that, regardless of motive, the very act of asking someone like Ms Fulani about their origins is rude. The question should simply not be asked. It is this and not the Palace encounter that I want to write about. We seem to be getting into an awful muddle.

There can be no doubt we do sometimes feel curious about where someone comes from. We don’t necessarily mean where they were born; Boris Johnson was born in New York but nobody would say he ‘comes from’ America because his family don’t. We often mean where someone’s forebears came from, even if they themselves were born in Britain. It’s fair to say it’s not rude to ask where someone comes from when the most likely answer would name a town, county or even nation within the United Kingdom.

Then how about abroad? Accents interest me and if someone’s accent is foreign I’ll often ask where they’re from, prefacing my question with a reference to their accent. Nobody, so far, has ever taken offence.

Not problematic, then, if the enquiry is about where abroad a foreign accent points. And not problematic if the implied enquiry is about coming from somewhere on our islands.

Well now, by eliminating what’s not problematic, I think we’re whittling down to what is. It’s about race, isn’t it? Race orethnicity. And when people talk about ethnicity they often mean race. And by race they usually mean skin colour. Of course racism can be white-on-white but the word and concept gain their power and notoriety from the history of our relations (and those of other formerly imperial nations) with colonial subjects who were not white.

I put it to you that colour is what’s implicitly under discussion. If Ms Fulani had been of white Swedish ancestry and wearing a thick knitted jumper of recognisably Nordic design, would it have been hurtful or ‘racist’ to ask about her origins, even if she turned out to be a British subject? No, she wouldn’t have minded. Sandi Toksvig, who’s from Denmark, wouldn’t mind being asked about that.

So let’s not beat about the bush. If a person’s skin is not white, and only if a person’s skin is not white, it is coming to be regarded as rude to enquire about their origins. Thus does the class of liberal, tolerant, ‘inclusive’ people (to which it might be said I myself belong) betray – by its embarrassments about language – its hidden condescension. Basil Fawlty’s ‘Don’t mention the war’ becomes ‘Don’t mention colour’. Why not? Is there anything wrong with not being white? Not in my book.

Liberals, however, have redefined the very word ‘ethnicity’ as code for what they must not say: ‘skin colour’. Euphemisms and coy circumlocutions are excellent markers of unacknowledged unease. Out go ‘old’, ‘fat’ and even (these days) ‘Welsh’ (as in ‘the Welsh’) and in come ‘senior’, ‘large’ and ‘the people of Wales’. We may genuinely mean to be kind by skirting a topic, but in fact we’re acknowledging a prejudice. When others politely step around what you are (‘confirmed bachelor’, ‘never married’, ‘lifelong companion’ – I’ve had it all) it serves only as the reminder of an unvoiced embarrassment. Those non-white Brits who complain about being asked where they’re from collude unwittingly in the insulting supposition that there could be anything awkward about their answer.

The headline to a profile in the Times catches my eye. ‘I never thought I’d see a south Asian prime minister.’ South Asian? This is becoming the advised term for someone from what we used to call the ‘subcontinent’. ‘South Asian’ may soon be the only polite way you can describe a non-South-American person whose skin is brown. Discomfort about words such as ‘Indian’ has been increased by the accession of a prime minister whose Britishness is unquestioned but whose origins are Indian. ‘Indian’ sits awkwardly between an ethnicity and a nationality.

I acknowledge the complexities and the anxieties, and have no answers. But is ‘south Asian’ really being used geographically here? If not, then we’re positing an ethnicity that doesn’t exist. Why? People’s origins are so important, yet we seem to be cutting ourselves off from fascinating conversations about when and why a person or their ancestors came to Britain – and all because of our silly and unacknowledged preoccupation with pigmentation.

Because of one thing there can be no doubt: nobody white would qualify as south Asian, whatever their passport. This is equally true of the continent where I was born and raised. Had my youthful dreams of reaching Downing Street come true, the headline ‘First African prime minister of the UK’ would definitely not have been used. Pity, then, the Afrikaners, whose very name means ‘African’ and who have no country but South Africa: they still don’t qualify. Even Egyptians wouldn’t normally be called Africans.

Depressingly to me, it really is about skin colour, but we cast desperately and illogically around, plundering the lexicons of geography, nationality and ethnicity (perhaps we should try geology next) for ways of not saying so. ‘Coloured’ has yielded, shamefaced, to ‘of colour’. Black people alone have stood up for their pigmentation, and reclaimed ‘black’ from what was once abusive territory.

I wish the same could be done for ‘brown’. Golden brown is my favourite skin colour. Perhaps in another life I can be brown. For this blessing I’d happily accept questions where I’m from

https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/the-truth-we-dare-not-speak/ ?

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UK: With £7billion wasted on diversity and inclusion, it's time to stop banging the drum for workplace wokery

No worries for staff at Warwickshire County Council, where bashing the bongos is all in a day's work. The council organised an African drumming workshop for employees as part of Hate Crime Awareness Week.

Quite what bouncing into Graceland has got to do with encouraging people to report alleged hate crime is anyone's guess. Nor are we told how much this Expresso Bongo session cost. But, hey, it's only taxpayers' money, so who cares?

In recent years, public bodies have frittered away £7 billion of our hard-earned on workplace wokery. It ranges from daft stunts like African drumming sessions to frankly sinister brainwashing seminars on 'unlearning whiteness'.

One million working days in the Civil Service alone are wasted every year on politically motivated 'equality, diversity and inclusivity' training.

Staff at the publicly funded Intellectual Property Office spent 24 days playing a specially designed 'Respect At Work' board game — which sounds a bit like Monopoly for Guardian readers.

'Declare your pronouns or go directly to Jail.'

Public sector organisations, from Government departments and Town Halls to the police and fire brigade, employ more than 10,000 full-time diversity enforcers, on an average salary of £42,000 a year.

Celebrating diversity at the taxpayers' expense is the country's fastest-growing job creation scheme.

Back in the summer I brought you news of a few of the exciting career possibilities being advertised. Here's a couple of examples . . .

The NHS is constantly pleading poverty, but that didn't stop Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals creating a role for a 'Head of Leadership, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing' on the thick end of £76,000 a year — triple the starting salary of a junior doctor.

In Surrey, they were desperately seeking an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead on 53 grand, plus an extra five per cent allowance to compensate for the cost of living and commuting in one of the more expensive parts of the country.

But then the advert stressed that working from home was to be encouraged. So why the top-up? Presumably to pay for their Netflix subscription and Hobnobs when they're WFH.

The mystery is how they manage to organise all these workshops and seminars when hardly anybody employed by the Civil Service bothers going into the office more than one or two days a week. Can you do African drumming over Zoom?

And even when they do turn up, in between playing woke board games, ingesting diversity dogma, and taking part in 'self-hate' sessions, it's not surprising they never get any proper work done.

OK, so it's easy to mock. But at a time when so-called public services are a shambles and the country is mired in post-Covid debt, with taxes at a 70-year high, it's nothing short of a scandal that so much is being flushed down the gurgler on political fripperies.

The job of the NHS, for instance, is to treat patients. Full stop.

Not to tell staff how to think. Yet if the salary structure is any indication, the Left-wing bureaucrats who run the health service value equality and diversity officers above nurses, ambulance drivers and junior doctors.

With seven million people waiting for operations, how the hell can the NHS justify spending 76 grand, plus perks, on a 'Head of Leadership, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing'?

What about the wellbeing of patients suffering from cancer, or waiting interminably at the back of the queue for a new hip? As I said, quite apart from the outrageous expense, the really sinister aspect of all this is the entire public sector's ruthless promotion of contentious woke doctrine such as 'critical race theory' — which peddles the lie that Britain is an evil society built on racism.

If staff don't buy into this wicked creed they can forget about promotion. If they openly challenged it, they would probably get the sack after being fitted up on a charge of 'racism' or 'transphobia' or somesuch.

The diversity commissars demand absolute fealty.

It even extends to private companies, who must sign up to the woke agenda if they are to stand any chance of winning contracts from the public sector.

All this has come to pass during 12 years of nominally 'Conservative' Government. This week, 40 Tory MPs finally rebelled, demanding that the Chancellor turns off the tap for everything from hiring diversity tsars to holding woke workshops.

They're wasting their time. There's no more chance of that happening than England winning the World Cup this century. They might as well get with the programme. The game's up.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11530723/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-7billion-wasted-time-stop-banging-drum-workplace-wokery.html

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DOJ Official Admits Targeting Pro-Lifers Is Response to Overturn of Roe

The Justice Department has been targeting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

Gupta delivered remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary earlier this month. The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a “devastating blow to women throughout the country” that took away “the constitutional right to abortion” and increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work—including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta looks on as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a news conference at the Department of Justice Aug. 2. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforces the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which “prohibits threats of force, obstruction and property damage intended to interfere with reproductive health care services.”

It protects both pro-life pregnancy centers and abortion clinics, as a DOJ official noted to Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, last week.

At least 98 Catholic churches and 77 pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations have been attacked since May, but the DOJ has apparently not charged a single person in connection with these attacks. Meanwhile, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has charged 26 pro-life individuals with FACE Act violations this year.

The DOJ has not responded to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment on this point.

Pregnancy resource centers are typically run by pro-life women who seek to offer expectant mothers alternatives to abortion. Such centers provide diapers, baby clothes, and resources for both mothers and fathers, empowering them to care for their child, overcome addictions, build community, and find jobs.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/12/12/doj-official-admits-targeting-pro-lifers-is-response-to-overturn-of-roe/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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