A follow-up on our post from last week, which highlighted the hard Left turning on some of its longtime showbiz idols over various transgressions against wokeness. The episode that inspired our post was Jon Stewart's buzzworthy appearance on "The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert, during which the former "Daily Show" host punctured the absurdity of the disintegrating elite "Consensus" that the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis was "debunked," a "conspiracy theory," and even racist. Legions of Very Online so-called progressives have excoriated Stewart for straying from their obsolete tribal talking points, fuming that he's become a dangerous right-wing conspiracy monger. Of course, what is actually dangerous is a news media and scientific establishment that refused to entertain the lab leak theory because it was associated with a politician they didn't like. Journalists abandoned journalism and scientists abandoned science because of Donald Trump – a shocking and outrageous dereliction, especially given the stakes:
The shift reflects how some scientists who previously avoided the topic or were quick to dismiss it are grappling with enduring uncertainties about the virus's origin, free from the politicization that clouded such discussions during the Trump administration. Chan said there had been trepidation among some scientists about publicly discussing the lab leak hypothesis for fear that their words could be misconstrued or used to support racist rhetoric about how the coronavirus emerged. Trump fueled accusations that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab in the city where the first Covid-19 cases were reported, was connected to the outbreak, and on numerous occasions he called the pathogen the "Wuhan virus" or "kung flu." "At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins," she said.
This is a scandal. An entirely plausible and viable theory (for reasons witheringly raised by Stewart) about the origins of a virus that has killed millions of people worldwide, and more than 600,000 Americans, was simply deemed verboten for political reasons. There is no excuse for that. Journalists and scientists often lament insufficient levels of public trust in their institutions, yet public figures who asked reasonable questions about the Wuhan lab were roundly and thunderously blasted as peddling "misinformation" and tech companies aggressively censored similar content. Based on nothing. The evidence has not changed, but the conventional wisdom has, likely because Trump is out of office. The trust deficit is being richly earned by the institutions that decry it. Stewart helped expose the ridiculous and harmful charade by using humor to make an incredibly obvious point that was not allowed to be made for many months. And for that sin, he is being digitally flogged by many within his own tribe. So far, he has not backed down, but the pressure is still mounting. Here's the latest example of woke scolding, via a disgraced former newsman:
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Scientists, and the very ideals of science, are under attack on many fronts. This is dangerous and shortsighted. So I was dismayed to hear Jon Stewart add to the "questioning" when he went on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week. My thoughts here.https://t.co/p38C7zXvEX
— Dan Rather (@DanRather) June 20, 2021
Two other public figures we mentioned in our previous post were Bill Maher and Lin Manuel Miranda, the host of HBO's "Real Time" and the creator of "Hamilton," respectively. Both are successful men of the Left in the entertainment industry. Both have found themselves in the Woke Crosshairs. They've proceeded quite differently. Maher has effectively gone to war with the scolds, while Miranda has grovelled. The latter's groveling has only encouraged more "controversies" and additional apologies, the most recent of which is related to a remarkably esoteric "issue" (the allegation of "Afro-Latinx erasure" in a film adaptation of another LMM project). Well as it happens, Maher has now offered some advice to Miranda on precisely this topic (content warning for language):
Bill Maher's advice in to Lin-Manuel Miranda: stop apologizing to Twitter ffs! pic.twitter.com/ilwjRJ7Lv0
— Turncoat Don (@TurncoatD) June 19, 2021
“Stop the apologizing,” said Maher about Miranda’s reaction to criticism that his new film, In the Heights, does not depict more darkly-colored Puerto Ricans onscreen. “You’re the guy who made the founding fathers Black and Hispanic! I don’t think you have to apologize to Twitter.” ... “This is why people hate Democrats; It’s cringey,” said the host of Miranda’s critics. “I mean he’s a Latino making a Latino movie with a Latino cast. Not good enough. Nothing is ever good enough for these people. They’re like children. We don’t raise our children right and it’s reflected in the media. No one ever tells their children, ‘Shut the f*ck up. Sit down. Listen to your elders. Stop bitching.'” Maher finished with, “People are going to have to stand up to these bullies, because that’s what it is, bullying. It’s ‘I can make you crawl like a dog and I enjoy it.'”Good advice. Miranda would be wise to take it because Maher is right, for this particular type of mob, nothing is ever good enough, and they'll torment and bully someone forever if their tactics are rewarded with weakness. I'll leave you with a word from the
Also, Twitter – where so much of this nonsense metastasizes – is not remotely representative of American reality:
Also, 3% of the population creates 90% of all tweets.
— Brian Riedl ?? (@Brian_Riedl) June 20, 2021
Twitter still matters and can be a leading indicator, but its outsized influence on media, corporations, & politicians seems to be the illusion of numbers.
Pew data sources:https://t.co/SrqIrT23JXhttps://t.co/MHJXgQ7m9b
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