Author: Crowhill Report

LeVar Burton says he’s fine with cancel culture, except that it’s misnamed. He says it should be called “consequence culture.”

Before I explain where he’s wrong, I have to admit that there’s some sense to what he’s saying.

When you’re a social being in a social world, actions have consequences. People might not like you when you fart on a crowded train. And (I know this sounds counterintuitive) but I’ve often felt that our culture has become more coarse as the threat of being punched in the face fades.

To put that another way, you’d be very polite to Mike Tyson’s daughter. (“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson.)

So then, what’s the difference between “there’s a consequence for anti-social behavior” and “cancel culture”?

I can think of four things that characterize cancel culture that make it loathsome, and distinguishable from the simple idea that actions have consequences.

1. The inability to see that there might be another side to a question. Case in point, the treatment of Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College.
2. The immediate leap to super-heated, spittle-faced frenzy, often without any regard for the facts.
3. The lack of any mercy or forgiveness. The absolute worst thing you can do with the cancel culture mob is apologize to them. They simply take that as proof of your guilt and pile on harder. There is no grace.
4. The lack of historical perspective. I.e., applying today’s moral norms to things that happened in another time and/or environment.

And while we’re making distinctions, there’s also the matter of boycotts. When people propose to boycott MLB because they’ve gone woke, isn’t that “cancel culture”?

Maybe, and maybe not. Again, there are distinctions to be made.

• A boycott goes after an organization, not a person.

  Having said that, it’s worth noting the boycott might be motivated by the same kind of mental errors mentioned above — e.g., the inability to see the other side, and the immediate frenzy without knowing the facts. That sort of woke attitude often characterizes the boycotts from the left.

• Some boycotts are designed to push an organization back towards the norm (e.g., sports is supposed to be a political safe space) while others are designed to push an organization towards the radical extreme (e.g., you must change your bathroom policy).

To sum up, while I loved you as Geordi La Forge, LeVar, you’re off the mark on this one.

This is very funny.

Cops are trolling LeBron on TikTok and I am 100% here for it

I’ve said many times the Babylon Bee is the new paper of record. It tells more truth through satire than most news outfits can even understand.

This article is from Not the Bee. It’s where they tell true stories.

In which Pigweed and Crowhill talk about beer for 40 minutes.

They start with hop classifications, and review Pigweed’s 3 categories of hops

• Tobacco / Earthy (Fuggle, Mt. Hood, Northern Brewer, Saaz)
  • Even skunky
• Piney (Chinook, Northern Brewer, Simcoe)
  • Resins and stickiness
• Fruity
  • Grapefruit
  • Tropical fruit?

About what about cold beer? Why is it so important to drink beer cold? For much of history, beer was drunk warm, or at least not cold, and in cold climates, a mug of warm ale would revive you.

A relatively new craze on the beer scene is sour beer. What makes it sour, and why do people like that?

The boys also take issue with their fellow beer geeks who seem to think they have to criticize Budweiser.

They end the show with a pair of beer challenges. 

I didn’t follow the Chauvin case closely, and I didn’t hear the evidence or arguments the jury heard. Like everyone else, I was appalled at the first video that came out, but I also saw some other videos, and I’ve heard some things that cast doubt on Chauvin’s guilt. Still, absent some clear evidence of misconduct, I think it’s best to assume the jury did their job and reached the right verdict.

But we have to face the fact that they were operating in a very ugly environment. Hanging over their heads was the threat of widespread rioting and looting if they did not convict. Most of the media presented the case as a foregone conclusion, and said the only possible way to a not guilty verdict was if the jury was racist. (I am so sick of that accusation.)

There were clear threats of violence if the jury did not reach the “right” verdict. The jury members may have feared not only for the safety of the city, but for their own safety, or the safety of their families. The mob insisted on having its way, and the civil authorities have shown a reluctance to stop them.

This is not the way justice is supposed to work.

We have become way too accustomed to people leaping to conclusions before the facts are in, and we’ve also been way too accommodating of this mob mentality.

This is not a new thing. According to this article, there were similar pressures in the Sam Sheppard case, on which the movie Fugitive was based. And it seems every culture has to fight a constant battle against mob justice.

Right now — no matter what you think of the result of the Chauvin case — the battle seems to be going in the wrong direction.

Trump was a very flawed man in many ways. But when I made a threat assessment for the United States, and which presidential candidate would probably address those threats more effectively, I decided Trump was the better choice.

Joe Biden has done nothing but confirm my judgment.

Number one on my threat assessment was woke culture. Number 3 was riots, BLM and the move to delegitimize the U.S.

Biden has been worse than awful on both of those, and now he plans to offer grants to history classes that teach the racist and discredited 1619 project and critical race theory.

I would like to say the sooner this moron is out of office, the better. But that would just give us Harris.

The best chance for something like a return to sanity is a Republican rout in the mid term.