“Portlanders live in a like-minded bubble, making it easier to get things done, harder for dissenting voices to be heard.”

You don’t say? And then there’s this absolutely shocking paragraph:

It means city leaders are more simpatico and tend to get things done with less rancor than counterparts in state and federal government who deal with intense urban/rural or liberal/conservative divides. But it also means that many conservatives living in Portland — yes, they exist — feel increasingly marginalized. Some people across the political spectrum worry that the trend breeds intolerance.

Yeah, but if everyone agrees with you, you must be right, right?

In a move that should surprise just about no one, a “historical novel” about Mohammad’s wife has been deep-sixed by Random House:

Random House said it had been advised the book “might be offensive” to some Muslims, and “could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”

The decision was taken “for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel,” said the company’s deputy publisher Thomas Perry in a statement. 

In other words, Random House knows that every time someone “offends” a “small radical segment” of Muslims, people start dying, so they’ve started practicing what amounts to self-censorship. What’s more nauseating, however, is that American academics were evidently instrumental in halting the book’s publication:

Professor [Denise] Spellberg, from the University of Texas in Austin, was quoted saying the book was “ugly”, “stupid” and “soft core pornography”.

Three days later, Professor Spellberg argued in the same newspaper that she could not have “single-handedly stopped the book’s publication”.

But she conceded: “I felt it was my duty to warn the press of the novel’s potential to provoke anger among some Muslims.”

Denise Spellberg, in case you were wondering, is an associate professor specializing in Islam and gender studies. I wonder how she’d feel if a publisher refused to publish her important tract “Writing the Unwritten Life of the Islamic Eve: Menstruation and the Demonization of Motherhood”, calling it “ugly” and “stupid”.

At a conference entitled “Preventing Another September 11th“, Dr. Spellberg called for greater protection of religion and civil rights in the U.S. Evidently, she’s less interested in the “civil rights” aspect of that statement.

And, lest anyone think that I’m suggesting that Random House, as a private firm, has any sort of obligation to publish this novel, whatever its merits, let make it clear that I think they should be allowed to refuse to publish whatever they please. I just think it’s a sad testament to how culturally spineless we in the West have become, essentially letting thugs with knives, bombs, and AK-47’s dictate what will be published and what will not. It’s espeicially disgusting that a member of the academy would rather prevent a book from being published than to write a critique of it after the novel had come out, especially since said academic would almost certainly never stand for a similar treatment of her own work.

Some guy was handing out Socialist street poetry down on 13th the other day. He asked me if I wanted some, and I declined.

I’m not sure if this is from the same guy or not, but thankfully, a co-worker took a poorly-photocopied poetry booklet from someone, which I subsequently found in the garbage. Check below the fold for an example of one Michael Chusid’s fine verse, from his epic “A Life of Livelihood: Workers of the World, Relax!”:

(more…)

One hopes that this news report from the UK is wildly inaccurate:

The National Children’s Bureau… has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

…

[The report] alerts playgroup leaders that even babies can not be ignored in the drive to root out prejudice as they can “recognise different people in their lives”. 

The world has gone fucking mad.

According to Ezra Levant, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has opted to drop its case against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s (which I previously wrote about here). The plaintiff’s reaction can be read here. Maclean’s, for its part, seems a bit unimpressed:

Though gratified by the decision, Maclean’s continues to assert that no human rights commission, whether at the federal or provincial level, has the mandate or the expertise to monitor, inquire into, or assess the editorial decisions of the nation’s media. And we continue to have grave concerns about a system of complaint and adjudication that allows a media outlet to be pursued in multiple jurisdictions on the same complaint, brought by the same complainants, subjecting it to costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the inconvenience.

The story isn’t over yet, however, as a separate decision in British Columbia is still pending.