China to Hollywood: Don’t Say Gay! Hollywood: Yes Sir!

We already knew that Hollywood and corporate America are filled with total frauds on issues related to “human dignity” and “social justice,” but here’s your latest example. Before I get to that punchline, recall that the entertainment industry made a big show of opposing Florida’s (popular) new parental rights law (which I’ve addressed several times). Boycotts were threatened, Disney blessed an employee “walkout” while weighing in heavily, and other forms of public pressure were applied. At the Oscars, the three emcees “said gay” onstage – the Florida bill in no way bars the saying of gay, but such details are beside the point – to loud audience cheers. This was before The Slap, of course. Stunning and brave: 

“We’re gonna have a great night tonight—and for you people in Florida, we’re going to have a gay night.”

Oscar hosts address Florida’s widely-criticized “don’t say gay” bill. https://t.co/1H1Y9jC9bl#oscars pic.twitter.com/6Tmf3RcXAP— ABC News (@ABC) March 28, 2022

Hollywood stands firmly behind the LGBTQ community, you see. Queer erasure will not stand. We say gay!*

*Exceptions apply: 

Hollywood to Florida: WE SAY GAY!

Hollywood to China: We will certainly not say gay — thank you for your censorship notes, please give us money. https://t.co/XndYsuOKXT— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 13, 2022

References to a gay relationship in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” were edited out of the movie by Warner Bros. for the film’s release in China. Only six seconds of the movie’s 142-minute runtime were removed. Dialogue that was edited out alluded to the romantic past between male characters Dumbledore (Jude Law) and Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen). “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling revealed Dumbledore was gay in 2009, but the movies had never explicitly referenced the character’s sexuality until this third “Fantastic Beasts” entry. Warner Bros. accepted China’s request to remove six seconds from the movie. The dialogue lines “because I was in love with you” and “the summer Gellert and I fell in love” were cut from “The Secrets of Dumbledore” release. The rest of the film remained intact…

“As a studio, we’re committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors,” Warner Bros. said in a statement to Variety. “Our hope is to release our features worldwide as released by their creators but historically we have faced small edits made in local markets.” “In the case of ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,’ a six-second cut was requested and Warner Bros. accepted those changes to comply with local requirements but the spirit of the film remains intact,” the statement added. “We want audiences everywhere in the world to see and enjoy this film, and it’s important to us that Chinese audiences have the opportunity to experience it as well, even with these minor edits.”

What a statement. “Nuanced” and “minor” edits were “necessitated” by “local requirements.” But don’t worry: “The spirit” of the film, with the LGBT references carefully excised, remains in place. And mission accomplished: The film debuted in China before it was released in the United States (meaning that the “don’t say gay” version appeared on silver screens over there before Americans could see the uncensored original), it won the Chinese box office in its opening weekend, and the studio raked in millions – despite the minor complication of 25 million people in Shanghai being forbidden from leaving their homes, by government decree. Those people might be slowly starving, but other regions carried the Warner Brother release to a multi-million-dollar victory. Nice “win” for Hollywood. Audiences in Xinjiang providence, ground zero of the ongoing CCP genocide, were unavailable for comment.

The Chinese Communist Party demands gay characters be literally erased from movies before they’re shown to domestic audiences. Hollywood, which preens and postures on these issues back home, eagerly salutes – as it does on various censorship orders from Beijing. Will Disney encourage its Chinese employees to walk out of work in protest of this? At least the ones who haven’t been forcibly locked into their apartments for weeks? Will we get a statement from the CEO lamenting another industry heavyweight bowing to systemic homophobia? Absolutely not. This is a company, after all, that thanked the CCP for the privilege of shooting a film near concentration camps holding millions of ethnic and religious minorities. They censored other content to whitewash China’s human rights abuses. So they’ll say gay all day, so long as it’s within the context of appeasing woke activists and domestic employees eager to attack the Republican governor of Florida. They’ll sit down and shut up the nanosecond Chairman Xi tells them to. While we’re on the subject of sniveling hypocrisy, will any major Western corporate sponsors have anything to say about the upcoming FIFA World Cup? 

Abdullah Al Nasari:

“If a fan raises a flag ???‍?? in a stadium and it is taken away, it will not be because we want to offend him, but to protect him. If we don’t, another spectator could attack him. If you buy a ticket, it is to attend a football match and not to demonstrate.” pic.twitter.com/vwKZWiLQbx— Football Tweet ?? (@Football__Tweet) April 13, 2022

Adidas, for example, made a big show of running a trans athlete ad during March Madness. Are they comfortable sponsoring the upcoming overt bigotry at the World Cup, based on their own alleged “values”? Or does their “commitment” to the cause stop the moment their bottom line is potentially threatened? We all know the answer. After all, we just saw the same farce play outwith Woke Corporations’ bankrolling of Beijing’s Genocide Games. Believe whatever you’d like about the Florida law. But performative opponents who say nothing in the face of bona fide oppression and bigotry when it suits their financial interests should be ignored, if not aggressively called out. Silence is violence – is it not, activists? I’ll leave you with my radio monologue on all of this: 

 

Chris Christie Has a Theory About Liz Cheney

While making a panel appearance on ABC's "This Week," former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) shared his theory about Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who was removed from her position as the House Republican Conference chair last May. According to Christie, she "wanted to be kicked out."

POLITICO'S Laura Barron-Lopez, who was also on the panel, had asked Christie "why are Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger being kicked out of the House Republican Conference," pointing out "they seem to have no place in the party."

Christie, who frequently makes such panel appearances, provided a lesson about Republican voters. "Look, inside Washington, D.C. politics is not something that the Republican Party en masse is all that concerned with. It’s what the primary voters decide to do," he offered.

"And just because you have a group of folks inside the House GOP caucus kicking folks out, look, my view is always Liz Cheney wanted to be kicked out, because remember, the first time that she made the statements she made she was re-elected to her leadership position. It's only when she continued after that, that looked like somebody who wanted to make a point and wanted to be kicked out," Christie continued.

Host Jonathan Karl offered that Cheney "says the point she's making is to defend the Constitution of the United States," prompting Christie to respond "look, whatever it is, it wasn't like she was looking to protect her position and the first time that Republicans inside that caucus had a chance to vote on Liz Cheney, they voted to keep her, overwhelmingly."

Cheney's fellow House Republicans had taken issue with how Cheney's beef with former President Donald Trump was acting as a distraction when it came to unifying efforts to defeat President Joe Biden's agenda and elect Republicans. 

In February of last year, House Republicans voted to keep her in the role. 

Issues for Cheney really started to heat up though, especially in early May of last year. Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who chairs the Republican Study Committee (RSC), was quoted in Axios as saying "I don't know" if Cheney would retain her position in a month from when asked. "That’s up to her. I think a lot of us would like to see her join the team, be on the same team, same mission, the same focus. And at this point, that’s what many of us are questioning."

Cheney did not last a month. She was ousted on May 12, 2021 in a voice vote and was replaced by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who still holds the position today. 

Since then, problems have only grown for Cheney and other House Republicans. She and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who was also referenced during the Sunday panel by Barron-Lopez, were the only two Republicans to vote in favor of the January 6 Select Committee. They're also the only two Republican members to serve on it, though they were both appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). No members appointed by the minority party serve on the select committee, since Pelosi blocked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's picks of Reps. Banks and Jim Jordan (R-OH), leading McCarthy to pull all his picks.

House Republicans, such as members of the House Freedom Caucus, have called on Cheney and Kinzinger to be stripped of their committees. The RNC also earlier this year voted to censure Cheney and Kinzinger.

Cheney herself made a Sunday show appearance, on CNN's "State of the Union," during which she was asked by host Jake Tapper about the select committee and whether it has made a decision to refer Trump for criminal charges. 

While Cheney said "we have not made a decision about referrals on the committee," she also shared that "I think that it is absolutely the case, it's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway."

The exchange between Tapper and Cheney also further solidified how unified the committee members are against Trump, as Cheney shot down Tapper's claims "there is a dispute on your committee."

"There's not really a dispute on the committee," Cheney shot back, also later adding that "I wouldn't say that it's accurate right now to say that there's a dispute on this issue." 

"The committee is working in a really collaborative way to discuss these issues, as we are with all of the issues we're addressing. And we will continue to work together to do so. So, I wouldn't characterize there as being a dispute on the committee." Cheney also explained. "I think that it is the single most collaborative committee on which I have ever served. I'm very proud of the bipartisan way in which we're operating. And I'm confident that we will -- we will work to come to agreement on all of the issues that we're facing."

"It is absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing … was unlawful."

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) responds to a New York Times report saying the Jan. 6 committee has evidence to make a criminal referral for former President Trump to the Justice Department. #CNNSOTU @CNNSotu pic.twitter.com/Aftprmjmd4

— CNN (@CNN) April 10, 2022

Later in the segment, Cheney, as Democrats have also done, compared the war and catastrophic loss of life in Ukraine to perceived threats to democracy in the United States. In doing so, she threw McCarthy under the bus. Tapper had goaded Cheney into such a response:

TAPPER: House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is in the region. I think he's in Poland. He just issued a statement in support of democracy and the individuals fighting for a free and democratic Ukraine.

And I'm just wondering if you feel that there's any disconnect there, given the fact that he has not exactly been supportive of your efforts to get to the bottom of the attempt to overturn the election in the United States.

CHENEY: Well, what I would say is that what's happening today in Ukraine is a reminder that democracy is fragile, that democracy must be defended, and that each one of us in a position to do so has an obligation to do so.

Clearly, I think Leader McCarthy failed to do that, failed to put his oath to the Constitution ahead of his own personal political gains. And I think that, at the end of the day, each one of us is responsible for our own actions and activity.

But, if we don't stand for our Constitution, if we don't stand for democracy, if we don't stand for freedom, if we -- if we forget that our oath to our Constitution is an oath to a document, it's not an oath to an individual, we have got to always remember that, or our democracy is in peril.

Cheney is facing a primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, whom Trump endorsed last September. In addition to the former president, Hageman has the support of numerous House Republicans. The primary is August 16.

 

What the Left Has Done to Women

 

As I have documented on a number of occasions, the Left ruins everything it touches. There is no exception. From universities to high schools and now including even elementary schools, to late-night TV, to sports, to the arts and, increasingly, science, the Left is a destruction machine.

And nowhere is this damage more evident or tragic than with regard to women.

In fact, nothing demonstrates the power of left-wing ideology as much as what this ideology has done to women. So powerful is leftist ideology, it is more powerful than women’s nature.

Here are five examples:

No. 1: The Desire to Bond with a Man

For all of recorded history, virtually all women sought a man with whom to bond. Of course, a progressive would argue that this was true only because all societies implanted this desire in women or because societal pressure gave women little choice about the matter. It is not, progressives would argue, innate to female nature to yearn for a man.

But whatever the reason — innate nature or societal expectation — it is a fact that women desiring a man was virtually universal.

Then along came modern left-wing feminism, which communicated to generations of young women through almost every influence in their lives — most especially teachers and the media — that a woman doesn’t need a man. In the witty words of one feminist aphorism, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Unfortunately, however, the reality is most women need a man just as most men need a woman. Most men don’t fully grow up without a woman, and most women don’t fully grow up without a man (I am, of course, referring to heterosexual women and men). If you need proof, ask almost any married person, man or woman, if marriage matured them.

No. 2: The Desire to Marry

Along with wanting a man, the vast majority of women wanted to marry. It was assumed that wanting that public commitment to and from a man was part of female nature. Yet, the Left has successfully undone that part of women’s nature, too.

As a result of feminist and other left-wing indoctrination, the belief that a woman doesn’t need a man led to the inevitable upshot: marriage isn’t necessary. And it might even be a tool of oppression. And as a result of that, a smaller percentage of American women are marrying than ever before.

This has serious social consequences. We have long known that single men perpetrate most of the violent crime in society. Single men are a societal problem. What we have not acknowledged — and perhaps not even known — are the deleterious effects of women not marrying.

While single women don’t commit nearly as much violent crime as single men do (though they may be starting to catch up), single women are increasingly a societal problem. The most obvious problem is that women who have children without ever marrying their children’s father — or another man — produce a highly disproportionate percentage of social misfits. But many women who never give birth nor marry also constitute a societal problem. They are more likely to be angry and to express that anger in support of radical causes that undermine society. As Barron’s reported, while overall a mere 14.2% of the population contributed to “racial justice causes” such as Black Lives Matter in 2020, “nearly half of single women in the U.S. — a larger percentage than single men or married couples — supported or were actively involved in racial justice protests.”

As reported by one women’s activist organization, Women’s Voices Women Vote, already in the 2012 election, “the marriage gap dwarfed the gender gap…”

No. 3: The Desire to Have Children

At least as much as wanting to bond with a man and wanting to get married were deemed a part of women’s nature, the desire to have children was regarded as even more embedded in female nature. Yet, incredibly, leftist ideology is even succeeding in eliminating that part of women’s makeup. More women than ever before — abroad as well as in America — are choosing not to have children. See, for example, the article, “More women like me are choosing to be childfree. Is this the age of opting out?” published, appropriately, in The Guardian. The author ends her piece this way: “I’ll say it plain: I don’t want children, I never have, and it doesn’t feel like any kind of lack. To me, it just feels like being alive.” She speaks for an increasing number of women.

Another part of women’s nature that the Left has undermined is the desire of women to have sexual relations with a man who might commit to her. Or, at the very least, to have sex only with a man to whom she has some emotional attachment. Left-wing feminist ideology has even been able to undermine that. Three generations of American women have been indoctrinated into believing that their sexual nature is the same as that of a man. Therefore, she can have “hookups,” i.e., non-emotional, non-committal sex, just like men can with no emotional fallout. And so, many young women do. But a far greater percentage of them experience regret or even depression than do young men who engage in “hookup” sex, a form of sex that is indeed part of male nature.

No. 5: The Desire to Protect Children’s Innocence

Perhaps the most amazing thing progressive ideology has done to women is to subvert the innate female desire to protect children, specifically children’s sexual innocence. The movement to teach very young children about sex, about “gender fluidity,” expose them to “Drag Queen Story Hours,” etc., is overwhelmingly led by and composed of women.

Leftism would appear to demonstrate that ideology can trump human nature. Such is the power of social indoctrination. One inevitable result is a generation of more depressed young women and more regretful middle-aged women than ever before in American history.

The Left ruins everything it touches. You can add women to the list.

Biden’s Deadly Energy Policy

 

President Joe Biden’s feckless, weak leadership in foreign affairs and his misguided “green” energy policies are killing innocent women and children by financing Vladimir Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Biden’s ideologically driven energy policies are also wrecking the U.S. economy, but that’s for another column — as is our analysis of how Hunter Biden’s activities have compromised his father. That’s our upcoming piece: “Never Underestimate the Power of Blackmail.”

This week, our research shows how Biden’s energy policies are financing the horrific genocide and war crimes Putin is perpetrating against the Ukrainian people. According to the Ukrainian government, more than 10,000 of its citizens — mostly women, children and elderly — have been brutally killed by Russian invaders. More than 6.5 million have become displaced within the country. Over 10 million are refugees.

Property and infrastructure damage are already in the hundreds of billions. Hundreds of Ukrainian civilians have been tortured before being murdered, and their bodies found with their hands bound behind their backs. Worse is sure to come as Putin’s forces reposition to seize control over sovereign Ukrainian territory in the eastern part of their country and along the Black Sea coast.

A U.S. president should lead a strong, positive stand against vicious totalitarian despotism. Biden ought to be exhorting the “Free World” to do everything possible to help the Ukrainian people win the war being waged against them by Putin’s Russian army. But Biden’s fight against fossil fuel is apparently more important than Ukrainian lives and freedom.

Since the invasion, despite seven rounds of “financial sanctions” against Russia, Putin and the oligarchs who support him, Russian petroleum products and natural gas continue to fuel Putin’s genocide. The European Union admits about 45% of the bloc’s natural gas imports, and 25% of its oil imports, come from Russia. This means our “Euro-allies” have sent Putin nearly $40 billion for Russian energy since his invasion began.

Here’s how Biden’s energy policies became so deadly. On his first day in office, Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have provided 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil per day to U.S. refineries. We also have enough untapped oil to make Saudi Arabia envious. Alaska’s north slope has 40 to 50 billion barrels of untapped oil, and the Nanushuk Formation is a “super basin,” capable of producing tens of thousands of barrels of oil daily. In the western quarter of North and South Dakota and eastern Montana, the Williston Basin, known as the Bakken, is a largely underutilized oil basin with up to 7 billion barrels of untapped oil.

With all this untapped petroleum and natural gas available, why aren’t oil producers extracting it? Simple answer: They don’t trust Biden. Oil investors and executives are afraid as soon as they invest the millions necessary to tap these and other promising locations, Biden will succumb to pressure from the eco-loons who control him and pull the plug on their projects, as he did with the XL pipeline. Has anyone asked the “Green New Dealers” how burning foreign oil is better for the environment?

Biden’s impediments to U.S. domestic oil production are killing Ukrainians. U.S. domestic exports would allow European nations to wean themselves from Russian oil and natural gas and starve Putin of cash he needs for weapons and manpower to kill Ukrainians.

The day Biden took office, America was energy independent. Now, because of his pathetically insane energy policies, our spineless, witless and potentially corrupt president is releasing millions of barrels from our Strategic Petroleum Reserves and going hat in hand, begging totalitarians in Iran and Venezuela to sell us more oil to relieve our “pain at the pump.” Meanwhile, Putin continues his Biden-funded genocide.

China Is Building Lots of Nuclear Weapons

 

The media is concentrated on Ukraine. The war has been raging for weeks. The bodies are mounting. We have endless reports of Russian atrocities. The pressure for a more robust Western response is pervasive. I have no doubt that Russian troops are committing atrocities, but the Ukrainians are using these heinous stories to back us into a situation that could end up devolving into nuclear war. I’m totally fine with continued efforts to rearm and resupply the Ukrainians, but troop deployments and no-fly zones are not going to happen. As we’re tied down in Ukraine, China has been watching the whole situation from afar. They’re eyeing Taiwan. I hope the Biden foreign policy team realizes that, along with the notion that Beijing is not our friend. 

Biden’s foreign policy crew got played when they tried to pressure Moscow through Beijing. We shared information about Russia’s troop deployments near the Ukraine border. China ended up sharing this information with the Russians. It was a three-month dance that once again showed the appalling naivete of this administration. When your boss has been wrong for four decades on foreign policy, are we shocked? 

China’s nuclear push long predates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but U.S. wariness about direct involvement there may have reinforced Beijing’s greater emphasis on nuclear weapons, seeing them as a way to deter the U.S. in a Taiwan conflict.@AlastairGalehttps://t.co/jXRyc0McbB— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) April 10, 2022

With Biden tied down in Ukraine, China has decided to inject some steroids into its nuclear weapons program. They need a deterrent of their own with regards to the US and Beijing’s ambitions concerning Taiwan (via WSJ):

China has accelerated an expansion of its nuclear arsenal because of a change in its assessment of the threat posed by the U.S., people with knowledge of the Chinese leadership’s thinking say, shedding new light on a buildup that is raising tension between the two countries.

The Chinese nuclear effort long predates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the U.S.’s wariness about getting directly involved in the war there has likely reinforced Beijing’s decision to put greater emphasis on developing nuclear weapons as a deterrent, some of these people say. Chinese leaders see a stronger nuclear arsenal as a way to deter the U.S. from getting directly involved in a potential conflict over Taiwan.

Among recent developments, work has accelerated this year on more than 100 suspected missile silos in China’s remote western region that could be used to house nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the U.S., according to analysts that study satellite images of the area.

American leaders have said the thinking behind China’s nuclear advance is unclear. Independent security analysts who study nuclear proliferation say they are also in the dark about what is driving Beijing after exchanges between Chinese officials and analysts mostly dried up in the past few years.

China plans to maintain an arsenal no larger than necessary to ensure China’s security interests, they said, adding that the Chinese military believes its nuclear weapons are too outdated to present an effective deterrent against a potential U.S. nuclear strike.

“China’s inferior nuclear capability could only lead to growing U.S. pressure on China,” one person close to the leadership said.

The risk of miscalculations this time could be higher, however, because while the U.S. and Soviet Union communicated about their nuclear weapons during arms control talks from the late 1980s, the Chinese program and Beijing’s thinking on the role of nuclear weapons has been shrouded in secrecy. China has declined to engage in nuclear arms control talks with the U.S., saying Washington should first reduce its nuclear inventory.

U.S. government and private sector estimates put China’s nuclear arsenal in the low hundreds of warheads, far below the roughly 4,000 warheads held by both Russia and the U.S. The Pentagon says it now expects China to have 1,000 warheads by the end of this decade.

China is also reportedly worried about US efforts to topple the regime. That’s not new. Any authoritarian government needs an outside threat to maintain its credibility and that of its police state. It’s the perfect pivot to any lingering domestic issues. The mass mobilization of the state towards building or strengthening areas relating to the national defense. Can Biden guide us through this? I don’t think he can. I also want to know what was said between Biden and Xi over the Ukraine War when it seemed possible that China could supply Russia with military equipment. Yes, I know they’re classified communications, but Trump’s calls were leaked constantly. I want to know what was said because I bet the word salad was delicious.