Author: Crowhill Report

The story is that research has shown that having women on boards of directors helps a company’s profitability. That may be true, but there’s cause to doubt the conclusion because you’re not allowed to say the opposite. Any research that showed that having women on boards hurts a company would be suppressed. It would end careers, the researchers would be labeled as Nazis and driven to suicide, etc. (I’m exaggerating, but only a little.)

IOW, you can’t believe conclusion A if nobody is allowed to contradict it.

But let’s set that aside and assume it’s true, for the sake of argument. Let’s say honest research has clearly demonstrated that companies that have more women on their board of directors outperform companies that do not.

Personally, despite what I say above, I think there might be something to the idea. Women can bring a different perspective, and viewpoint diversity is very important. As a side note, that illustrates the cognitive dissonance on the left, because they want to say “men and women are equal” and also say “adding women to a board of directors makes it better.”

Moving on …. Would such research justify a rule that all companies must have some number of women on their board?

I don’t see how that follows, and I think such a rule contradicts everything we’ve concluded over the years about discrimination. That is, you can’t judge an individual situation on the basis of group characteristics.

Even if we are 100 percent sure that having more of such and so group is correlated with better outcomes, that does not justify a bias in favor of hiring people in that group. This is elementary and basic stuff, but if you need convincing, just run it through your mind a few times with some other groups. Irish, Calvinists, basketball players, former Marines, people who can play the piano. Pick any group you like. Then imagine a hiring situation where a company picks applicants based on their membership in that group.

You can’t do that. It’s insane.

“Oh, sure, Bob is way more qualified than Jack, but Jack can play the piano, and we don’t have enough piano players on the board.”

It’s hard to know when an observation indicates a real change, or whether you just started noticing it more. For example, it’s common for people to take note when they see something three times in a day. E.g., “I’d never even heard of zucchini bread, and then I heard it mentioned three times in one day!”

It’s possible you had heard of zucchini bread before, you just never paid attention, and this time you did. It’s also not that unusual for there to be clumps in random distributions.

So I make this observation with the understanding that it might not have any significance at all, but it seems to me that it’s far more common these days for drivers to slow down or stop in the middle of the road, without any consideration for the people around them. I blame this on Google maps, and similar technology. People slow down or stop to read the directions.

But I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this.

A few years ago I went to DelFest in western Maryland, and I get their emails. Today I got a recording of Sierra Hull, who is an amazing mandolin player, and a lovely singer. But she has one of those “too sweet” voices that doesn’t do it for me unless she’s singing with a man. I feel the same way about Allison Kraus. She has a lovely voice, but it’s too sweet. It’s more enjoyable when she’s singing with Robert Plant, or some other guy.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Listen to the parts where Sierra is singing by herself, and compare that with when she’s singing with the fiddle player.

You can hear the same in “Compass” with Darrell Scott.

If you’re familiar with Allison Kraus, compare any of her songs with duets she does with dudes, like “How’s the World Treating You” (James Taylor), “Rich Woman” (Robert Plant), or to some extent in “Whiskey Lullaby” (Brad Paisley). Although she also sounds good with Dolly Parton in “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me.”

I was scanning the headlines from a magazine I’ve recently taken interest in and noticed how many social buzzwords it had. Imposter syndrome. Diversity. Quiet Quitting. Obsessions about race and sex.

It got me wondering (for the millionth time) which came first. Is the public actually preoccupied with these topics, and the media is dutifully covering them, or is the media creating obsessions by endlessly framing issues from a certain point of view?

The answer is obviously “both” — it almost always is — but “both” doesn’t mean one isn’t dominant.

My strong suspicion is that it works this way. Some small group of socially connected, elite types get obsessed with some issue. Media elites rub shoulders with that crowd, so they pick up those attitudes. “This is the new thing that everybody is talking about.” That filters down into the newspapers, magazines, silly TV talk shows, etc., and then becomes the new thing that “everybody” is talking about.

I stand athwart this nonsense. I won’t play. I try hard not to use the hip new words and phrases.

The breathless headline reads ‘White Men Really Are Insufferable’: Jimmy Kimmel Blasted For Playing Dead During Black Creator’s Emmys Acceptance Speech

Turns out it’s only a Tweet by a fan. Who cares?

The media needs to stop acting as if “somebody said something on Twitter” is news. It’s not. These are dysfunctional people on a dysfunctional platform that should just go away.