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“Despacito” Desperation

When Hillary Clinton talked about carrying hot sauce around in her handbag, on the popular Breakfast Club show featuring the annoyingly monickered Charlemagne Tha God, did anyone believe her? It was such an obvious and shameless ploy to get African-Americans to see her as “relatable.” For Mrs. Clinton, however, that was ‘a bridge too far.’

Now Joe Biden provides the cringe.

“I just have one thing to say,” Biden informed his audience at an event celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Looking down at his phone, he struggled for a moment. “Hang on here.”

And then he played a song. “Despacito,” which means “Slowly.”

Try not to think too much about this, for the song is a little sexually suggestive. The Daily Wire reprints a translation of the lyrics, for your disgust or delectation. 

First element of cringe: It was an obvious play for Latino sympathy. The song itself had nothing to do with anything other than that it was a popular song from “the community”  When you are this pandering, this patronizing, this transparent about your play to the cliché, what kind of respect do you hope to get?

Second element: It’s such a desperation move — with the Florida Spanish-speaking vote in jeopardy. Cuban-Americans, especially, are turned off by the Democrats’ move further left, having themselves left Cuba to come to American freedom. And the generally woke-socialist mindset of the Biden-Harris team (or is it Harris-Biden?) is a bit hard to take for the generally culturally conservative folks hailing from the south.

When will Democrats try authenticity again?

Third element: Assuming riots and conflagrations aren’t precisely that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture media and media people Popular

Gray Lady Commies

The New York Times has long leaned left. But is it really a stable Pisa-tower lean, at this point? It sure seems that, in recent years, the Gray Lady has gone extreme, abandoning its “respectable” center-left perch. 

The change, economist Alex Tabarrok writes for FEE, appears to have happened “around 2010-2014,” when we can see “an inflection point” where phrases and buzzwords like “social justice” and “diversity and inclusion” increased in number in Times editorials and news stories.

Forget, for a moment, the why — is it demand side, with the paper trying to court Millennial readers; or supply side, a result of new hires out of journalism programs and other indoctrination factories; or a mixture of both? — and concern ourselves with how far will the Gray Lady go?

Communism, apparently.

Or, at least, “Automated Luxury Communism,” as identified in what may be the stupidest article to appear in any newspaper in years.

“The plummeting cost of information and advances in technology are providing the ground for a collective future of freedom and luxury for all,” the author asserts, upon the evidence of innovations he has identified as arising . . . in our capitalist mixed economy, chiefly in the market sector: lab-grown burgers and “molecular whiskey.”

It all smacks of a loafer’s Marxism, with robots and AI as the proles. I could explain this better had the author bothered to do any real work on his vision, but, unfortunately (?), he offers nothing but a “wouldn’t it be neat if” blog post. 

That the Times’ placed on its front page.

I guess since Democratic pols are now calling themselves socialists, their lead thought organ must seize the advance guard position by going full commie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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New York Times, communism, socialism, journalism, pandering, newspaper,

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