.. It’s amusing, and a little sad, that “The Bachelor” so consistently struggles to land an eligible bachelor. Forget happily ever after: It just needs to find a guy we want to spend 12 weeks watching on TV.
The show’s recent crop of leading men has underwhelmed.
.. Meanwhile, the franchise is overflowing with female talent: professionally accomplished, emotionally intelligent, actually intelligent, witty, beautiful women who make for interesting romantic leads.
.. It’s to behold a particular kind of romantic coupling — one where vastly overqualified women compete for the attentions of a mediocre dude. For women who have found themselves in a similar position, it can all get a little too real.
.. One of the fantasies promoted by “The Bachelor” is that the patriarchy is as strong as ever, even as traditionally male power structures are waning in America. The show gravitates toward leads with macho jobs — racecar driver, farmer, soccer player, personal trainer. This is an American throwback that is exclusively invested in elevating white men. Why didn’t “The Bachelor” reinvest in one of its most eligible runners-up from last season, Eric Bigger, the sweet Baltimore guy? He says he was never approached. One reason comes to mind: He is black.
Why Evangelicals Can’t Shake Off Suggestions They’re Racist
The resignation of A.R. Bernard from the White House Evangelical Advisory Board was nearly ignored
.. More extreme members made headlines by defending the president, and echoed his blame of “both sides.” Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “the media has painted, the liberals have painted—a false narrative that the president is a racist.” Jerry Falwell Jr. claimed the president “does not have a racist bone in his body,” and in a tweet praised his initial statements regarding Charlottesville as “bold” and “truthful,” saying that he was “so proud of Donald Trump.”
.. Johnnie Moore, a lay pastor on the council, has said, “We believe it would be immoral to resign.”
.. the media attention given to this story is part of a larger, ever-tightening narrative connecting racism and the evangelical church.
.. Evangelical voters were never expected to support Trump in the first place—a candidate who, for countless reasons, seemed antithetical to their traditional values. But they did.
.. Dan Cox, the research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, described white evangelical support as “incredibly consistent and incredibly loyal,” and said that “it’s hard to conceive of an event or an action taken by Trump that would lead them to abandon him at this point.”
.. During that time, support for the ban declined across every religious category, except among white evangelicals
.. Pew has also reported that Trump’s support was strongest among evangelicals who attend church most frequently. Among those who attend church at least monthly, 67 percent “strongly approve of Trump” as opposed to 54 percent of those who “attend less.”
‘The President Speaks for Himself’
Reply
To most people with any awareness of Arizona politics, Mr. Arpaio is an abomination to the rule of law, the principle of equal justice and plain decency.
.. abusing and humiliating them, refusing to stop even after a federal judge told him to, and arresting journalists for reporting on it all.
.. Yet to President Trump, Mr. Arpaio is a role model: a man for whom the “rule of law” means that he can do what he wants when he wants, who humiliates those weaker than him and mocks those who try to constrain him, who evades scrutiny and accountability — in short, a perfect little tyrant.
.. The Arpaio pardon is not only morally reprehensible on its own, it is also in line with Mr. Trump’s broader attitude toward law enforcement. Consider his affection for the Milwaukee County sheriff, David Clarke, an Arpaio in waiting who has called activists in the Black Lives Matter movement “terrorists” and who runs a county jail where inmates have a tendency to die under suspicious circumstances.
.. During the presidential campaign,
- Mr. Trump endorsed the use of torture on terrorism suspects,
- encouraged supporters at his rallies to assault protesters and
- made racially tinged comments about a judge overseeing a case involving Trump University.
In his seven months as president, Mr. Trump has
- attacked federal judges who ruled against the administration’s travel ban;
- tried to impede investigations into his allies, including Mr. Arpaio;
- and exhorted police officers to treat suspects roughly — which earned a quick rebuke from his own Justice Department and police officials around the country.
But this is Donald Trump’s rule of law — a display of personal dominance disconnected from concerns about law and order, equality or the Constitution.
Why the Left Can’t Let Go of Racism
Liberals sell innocence from America’s past. If bigotry is pronounced dead, the racket is over.
Suddenly America was in moral trouble. The open acknowledgment of the nation’s racist past had destroyed its moral authority, and affirming democratic principles and the rule of law was not a sufficient response. Only a strict moral accounting could restore legitimacy.
Thus, redemption—paying off the nation’s sins—became the moral imperative of a new political and cultural liberalism. President Lyndon Johnson turned redemption into a kind of activism: the Great Society, the War on Poverty, school busing, liberalized welfare policies, affirmative action, and so on.
This liberalism always projects moral idealisms (integration, social justice, diversity, inclusion, etc.) that have the ring of redemption. What is political correctness, if not essentially redemptive speech? Soon liberalism had become a cultural identity that offered Americans a way to think of themselves as decent people. To be liberal was to be good.
.. The “safe spaces” for minority students on university campuses are actually redemptive spaces for white students and administrators looking for innocence and empowerment. As minorities in these spaces languish in precious self-absorption, their white classmates, high on the idea of their own wonderful “tolerance,” whistle past the very segregated areas they are barred from.
.. . But to be innocent there must be an evil from which to be free. The liberal identity must have racism, lest it lose innocence and the power it conveys.