Winsome, lies, and classic rock

Notably absent from the original version of the article are the words “Winsome” and “Sears.”

“As polls closed late Tuesday, states throughout the country saw a range of candidates of color racking up election wins in historic results,” reads the opening line to the USA Today article titled “From Boston to Cincinnati, people of color won local elections in historic firsts.”

It adds, “The gains ranged from mayoral elections to state offices, in many cases the first time such posts have been won by people of color or candidates from marginalized communities.”

The report mentions Michelle Wu, who will become Boston’s first female and nonwhite mayor. The article mentions Eric Adams, who will become the second black person to serve as mayor of New York City. The article even mentions Abdullah Hammoud, who will become the first Arab American to serve as mayor of Dearborn, Michigan.

But the original version of the article, which was published in the early morning hours of Nov. 3, made no mention whatsoever of Winsome Sears, the Republican candidate who defeated Democratic Virginia Del. Hala Ayala in the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race.

Sears is black. She was born in Jamaica. She immigrated to the United States as a child, growing up in the Bronx. Sears later served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1983 to 1986. She will now serve as Virginia’s first-ever female lieutenant governor.

Seems like a “historic first,” right?

USA Today updated its article eventually to include Sears’s victory in Virginia, attaching a curious editor’s note, which reads, “This story has been updated to reflect additional races that were called on Wednesday.”

It is curious because Sears was named the projected winner of the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race relatively early in the evening, hours before the USA Today article was published. Sears even delivered a victory speech before the USA Today story went live.

It’s tempting to dismiss this as a one-off, but forgive me if I am a little sensitive when it comes to the issue of the media diminishing minorities who don’t toe the liberal line. Members of the press love to accuse minorities of being bad or even fake minorities when they deviate from liberal orthodoxy. Comedian Dave Chappelle and New York Nets star Kyrie Irving, for example, have been accused of being pawns for the white man because of their respective criticisms of the transgender community and vaccine mandates. So, you’ll pardon me if I suspect similar dynamics are afoot when a groundbreaking “historic” black Republican woman is inexplicably excluded from a USA Today write-up of “historic firsts” in the Nov. 2 elections.

Saving face

Someone is lying.

Last week, the Intercept published a report seeking to explain how a Democratic-aligned stunt aimed at Virginia Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin went so horribly wrong.

On Oct. 29, during a rainy campaign stop in the Charlottesville area, a group of khaki-wearing, tiki torch-wielding actors, including a black man, lined up in front of Youngkin’s campaign bus, chanting, “We’re all in for Glenn.”

Staffers in the employ of since-defeated Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe immediately seized on the demonstration to accuse Youngkin of being the preferred candidate of white supremacists.

“The Unite the Right rally was one of the darkest days in the Commonwealth’s history,” said McAuliffe spokeswoman Christina Freundlich. “This is who Glenn Youngkin’s supporters are.”

Other McAuliffe campaign staffers made similar comments on social media. Most tellingly, Democratic operative Lauren Windsor, who helped coordinate the protest, feigned shock when images of the demonstrators initially went viral.

However, moments after the photos were shared on social media, everything fell apart. Even the dimmest of social media users called BS on the stunt. Democratic officials disavowed involvement in the incident. Some even condemned it, calling on those responsible to apologize for weaponizing white supremacy to score cheap political points. The Lincoln Project later admitted responsibility for the demonstration. Windsor likewise copped to coordinating the event.

Now, however, Windsor and the Lincoln Project claim the hit job was actually pretty savvy and that it’s the McAuliffe campaign that initially claimed the demonstrators were white supremacists and an incurious national press that failed.

“It was never intended to appear real,” the Intercept reports, citing internal Lincoln Project emails Windsor provided to “demonstrate that she had not intended to create a hoax, allowing us to review her inbox itself to demonstrate that the emails were not doctored.”

The report adds, “The operatives were instructed to reveal to any reporter who asked that they were there on behalf of the Lincoln Project. The problem for the actors: Nobody in the media approached them. They were likely scared off by the drizzle, said Pete Callahan, another Democratic operative.”

There’s a problem with this claim.

Reuters news pictures editor Jim Bourg, who is stationed in Washington, D.C., claims reporters did, in fact, ask the actors for their names and affiliations. Repeatedly.

“We repeatedly asked them individually their names, who they were with, and what group if any they represented, and they would not say anything at all,” he said in response to the Intercept’s reporting.

This sounds more believable than the idea reporters were “scared off by the drizzle.” It’s commonplace for a picture editor to ask for the names and affiliations of those featured in photographs. It’s for captioning purposes, primarily when the photos are intended for widespread distribution on wire services.

Again, someone is lying.

On the one hand are the tiki incident organizers, one of whom acted surprised when the incident was first reported. They have every reason to lie after royally mucking up a poorly conceived political hit job.

On the other hand is a Reuters Washington editor, who, well, it’s unclear why he would lie.

Classic rock is canceled

New York Times contributing opinion writer Jennifer Finney Boylan has found a new target for the cancel mob: classic rock.

From my cold dead hands.

“The past several years have seen a reassessment of our country’s many mythologies — from the legends of the generals of the Confederacy to the historical glossing over of slaveholding founding fathers,” writes Boylan in an article titled “Should Classic Rock Songs Be Toppled Like Confederate Statues?”

The article adds, “But as we take another look at the sins of our historical figures, we’ve also had to take a hard look at our more immediate past and present, including the behavior of the creators of pop culture. That reassessment extends now to the people who wrote some of our best-loved songs. But what to do with the art left behind? Can I still love their music if I’m appalled by various events in the lives of Johnny Cash or Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis? Or by Eric Clapton’s racist rants and anti-vaccination activism?”

The answer is, “Yes.” It’s relatively easy to separate the art from the artist. Conservatives learn how to do this from a very young age.

Indeed, only people who have enjoyed a near-total ideological stranglehold on popular culture for the past several decades, hearing their most dearly held beliefs and position repeated back to them by nearly every single actor and singer, would struggle with such a question in adulthood.

“For a lot of baby boomers,” Boylan continues, “it’s painful to realize that some of the songs first lodged in our memories in adolescence really need a second look. And it’s hard to explain why younger versions of ourselves ever thought they were OK in the first place.”

Boylan adds, “I want to live in a world where I can be moved by art and music and literature without having to come up with elaborate apologies for that work or for its creators.”

Good news! One need not come up with elaborate backstories to enjoy music any more than one need assurances the chef who cooked one’s meal pays his full taxes and supports abortion. Just enjoy the damn steak.

You don’t even need to read the entire opinion article to understand the author is off the nut. The story is predicated on the notion that Don McLean’s “American Pie” is one of the “the greatest” songs ever, which it certainly isn’t. Instead, it is one of the most unforgivably maudlin, saccharine bits of self-important feelgoodery produced in the past 50 years, right next to John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”

That Boylan approaches the question of problematic popular music from the position that “American Pie” is a great song tells you from the get-go the thought experiment is doomed to failure.