We live in an age of hyper-trivial faux-controversies, almost all of them generated (if we speak just a little uncharitably) by overeducated progressives and left-wing politicos. If you follow politics on Twitter, you’ll encounter so many of these moronic spats that you may be tempted to despair of Western civilization. At Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings this week, for example, a posse of progressive activists claimed that Zina Bash, a former clerk for Kavanaugh, could be seen displaying a “white power” sign from where she sat in the hearing room.
The Scrapbook was not familiar with this hand signal, and we strongly suspect Bash wasn’t familiar with it either, inasmuch as her father is Jewish and her mother Mexican. Also, her grandparents fled Europe in the 1930s to escape the Holocaust. Such is the mass psychosis of left-wing Twitter, however, that the image was enough to make many seemingly functional adults believe the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to be part of a white-supremacist takeover.
Or consider the fight between Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Cynthia Nixon and Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the thermostat setting at their debate last week. Evidently the governor is notorious for cranking down the temperature at indoor public events in which he participates; at his first State of the State speech in Albany in 2011, lawmakers complained they weren’t inclined to clap because they had to sit on their hands to keep them warm.
Nixon wasn’t putting up with it for the race’s only debate, however; her chief strategist Rebecca Katz emailed WCBS-TV asking that the hall’s thermostat be set to 76 degrees. Working conditions are “notoriously sexist when it comes to room temperature,” Katz wrote, “so we just want to make sure we’re all on the same page here.” That comment, predictably, set social media ablaze with arguments about sexism and thermostats. The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and other media outlets hosted earnest debates about whether men monopolize thermostats and thus gain unjust advantage.
We missed the debate between Cuomo and Nixon and are unsure if Nixon took the stage in gloves and a fur coat, as we would have counseled, but the whole episode motivated The Scrapbook to look for the Weekly Standard thermostat so that we, too, could participate in this epic civilizational struggle. Alas, our large office block has deprived workers of control over the means of heating and cooling. If we now become Marxists, you’ll know why.
