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Tom Selleck
credit: iMDb

It’s a story I’ve told before, but it’s once again pertinent.  Many years ago, during his Magnum P.I. days, Tom Selleck was a guest on The Tonight Show.  Readers of an age will remember the host was Johnny Carson and what Carson meant to Americans for so many years.

During their conversation, Carson asked Selleck his opinion on the politics of the day.  Selleck responded, but not as Carson imagined he might.  He said he was an actor, his job was playing people he was not as well as he could, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone would care what he thought about politics.

As I recall, Carson was pleasantly surprised, and the audience, taken by surprise, paused for a moment and then applauded with enthusiasm.  Selleck was right, and smart.  Why would any actor, any entertainer, risk alienating half of his audience with political pronouncements?  Of course, far too many do just that, often saying they have some obligation to “use my celebrity” for the greater good.  Some actors are smart people, others aren’t, but no actor willing to piss off half his prospective audience can reasonably be thought anything but self-destructive and narcissistic .

I’ve seen, and purchased, pretty much all of Selleck’s work since.

Selleck, even back in the 80s, was obviously a grounded, thoughtful person and as such, displayed commendable humility.  Circa 2022, Caryn Johnson—AKA Whoopie Goldberg—apparently is not and is not in the humility business.  As I’m sure you know by now, gentle readers, Goldberg really put her foot in it on The View:

Offensive yes, but primarily because it is so historically ignorant and self-righteous.  Sort of surprisingly, there are consequences, as Brietbart.com explains:

Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended from ABC following her controversial comments about the Holocaust in which she said the extermination of six million Jews was not about race.

‘Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,’ ABC News president Kim Godwin said in a statement.

‘While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,’ Godwin added. ‘The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.’

Several sources told Page Six that ABC insiders are neither pleased with Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust comments nor her apology after the initial backlash and believe she should be disciplined.

‘ABC staffers and Disney Network execs are saying Whoopi went way too far. And board members are not happy with her apology and want a fuller retraction. The word is that Whoopi is in ‘deep shit,’ one ABC source told the outlet.

‘Why does Whoopi seemingly get a pass when others don’t? Perhaps this time she won’t. Many at the network — including her fellow hosts — believe Whoopi is too controversial now for the show,’ the source added.

I’ll discuss the issues raised by this excerpt shortly, but for the moment, let’s consider some of the thoughts of an actual Jew, John Podhoretz, at The New York Post:

You see, in the early 1980s, when Johnson became Goldberg, it was still commonly understood that Jews were a people apart. We were apart due to facts of history, due to discrimination and hatred based on our very being and — for those who practiced the faith rigorously — due to the way we ate, dressed, celebrated the Sabbath and prayed.

And we were apart because we were the only people in history to be targeted for mass extermination by one of the most powerful countries in the history of the Earth — something that had happened in the living memory of half the people on the planet at the time.

Flash forward to 2022, when Whoopi Goldberg says offhandedly on ‘The View’ that the Holocaust was a white-on-white crime. ‘The Holocaust is not about race,’ she says. ‘These are two white groups of people.’

Forget that Hitler called the Germans a ‘master race’ and that according to classic Nazi doctrine, Jews constituted a ‘subhuman Asiatic race.’ You see, Whoopi told Stephen Colbert as she tried to clean up the mess she had made early in the day, ‘I think of race as being something I can see.’

That’s nice that she thinks about it that way. But it’s monumentally ignorant, stupid and almost jaw-droppingly offensive. Six million people literally died because that wasn’t how the people who killed them thought about race. And as for the ‘something Whoopi can see’ doctrine, let’s remember that Hitler’s goal was the extermination of all Jews on the planet — and then as now, there are millions of Sephardic Jews with skin hues that would not classify them as ‘white.’ Even Whoopi wouldn’t ‘see’ them that way.

No, what Whoopi clearly meant was that the Jews she knows have light-colored skin, and the Jews she has seen in movies about the Holocaust have light-colored skin.

Therefore they were ‘white.’ And since racism only involves black and white, they were also “white” to the Nazis, and the genocide was a white-on-white genocide.

Back when Johnson became Goldberg, Jews weren’t considered ‘white,’ exactly. And they weren’t not-white either. The point here is that such a classification system is meaningless when it comes to Jews, no matter the color of their skin.

Quite so.  Why would Goldberg say something so profoundly ignorant and plainly stupid, and why would she compound that stupidity on Stephen Colbert’s late night show?  It’s quite simple: she’s a D/S/C mouthpiece on a show designed to play to the female D/S/C base.

Imagine, gentle readers, you’re in Goldberg’s position. You’re paid millions to spout woke nonsense on a daily basis, and the more outlandish, the better.  You check two major boxes: female and black.  Controversy equals ratings, equals revenues, equals millions for the mouthpieces who spout woke orthodoxy.  It’s a circular echo chamber.  Until Goldberg stepped over the line, there was virtually nothing she could have said that would not be praised as received wisdom from every element of D/S/C world.  That kind of blind support and praise tends to make one intellectually sloppy, which can become a real problem when one is intellectually sloppy in the first place.

Few things are as intellectually sloppy as current woke orthodoxy on race.  Only white people can be racist, all white people are racist and everything is about race.  White people must admit their racism and atone for it, but of course, they can never sufficiently atone because they’re systemically racist.  Race is about skin color—blacks good, whites evil—and nothing else.

As regular readers know, I’ve often noted the hubristic trap the woke spring on themselves.  D/S/C philosophy is perfect, because it’s formulated and revised by morally and intellectually superior beings–the self-imagined elite.  They think themselves elite because they have credentials, whether degrees from the right—left—universities, governmental titles, they’re professional athletes, entertainers, or merely obscenely wealthy.

Because of their innate superiority, their philosophy and policies cannot possibly be wrong.  Being non-falsifiable, they cannot fail, nor can anything they say or do in defense of their policies possibly be wrong.  Everything they say and do is self-evidently correct and brilliant—until their policies, exposed to reality, inevitably fail.

When that happens, it is only because they were misunderstood, taken out of context, they’ve magnanimously allowed Normal Americans–inferior beings–to continue to exist to obstruct and slander them.  How can such intellectually stunted Deplorables possibly understand the minds and works of the sophisticated, who don’t need to wear masks or engage in Covid theater?  Not enough money has been spent, not enough time has passed for the wonders of their policies to fully succeed, and always, Normal Americans haven’t been given their policies good and hard enough.

How could it be otherwise for Goldberg, who cannot possibly be wrong, because everyone she knows thinks the same way, and in praising her,  praise themselves.  Another possibility—by no means exclusive–is Goldberg is simply an awful human being, one who came to allow hate of those she considers beneath her to run her mouth.  After years of doing just that on The View, why would she have any reason to think anything she said would not be praised?

All human beings of any political disposition are subject to hubris.  The Bible, Proverbs 16:18 (King James Version) explains it well:

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

However, when one embraces a socialistic/communistic mindset, hubris, which leads to personal and societal destruction, is the inevitable result.  The only unknown is the final body count.  That’s another facet of history of which Goldberg is obviously unaware, or chooses to ignore.

Many are calling for Goldberg’s figurative head.  After all, under the exquisitely sensitive, infallible rules of cancel culture, shouldn’t Goldberg fall?  In October of 2018, Kurt Schlichter addressed this issue:

Here’s what I think. I think there actually are no rules anymore. I think the elite is so terrified it is losing its power that it is tossing out the foundations of the society it is supposed to organize and manage, that is, the rules. I think our elite actually does not believe in rules, that their attempts at enforcing the rules are merely a grift designed to jam up Normals and provide a way to keep them in line.

Indeed, but I’d add when D/S/Cs allow themselves to so hate their political opponents they no longer see them as worthy of rights, as inferior, even evil, pseudo beings, what measures are forbidden in dealing with them?  Hmm.  I’m almost seeing some historical parallels.  You?

In 2015, Schlichter suggested a solution, not only for Goldberg, but for all occasions:

This is only the beginning – the new rules liberate us from the constraints that for so long kept us from truly making conservative progress. All those ‘principles’ and ‘ideals’ about right and wrong and all that only served to take our eyes off of the real prize – our power, which we would only use for the common good.

Sure, we were all sad to see the old rules go, but gone they are. Our liberal friends made sure of that. So let’s make the best of it!

Keep in mind, gentle readers, I abhor cancel culture.  It is fundamentally unfair, cruel, un-American and in many instances, purely evil.  However, in dealing with people unrestrained by right and wrong in pursuit of power, sometimes one must adopt their tactics, force them to suffer the evil they so smugly inflict on others.  There is no other way such people will learn, or at least, will hesitate to inflict evil on others in the future.  So it always is with bullies.  Mika Brzezinski, a prominent woke talking head, is worried about just that:

‘It is the worst thing that can happen in a career,’ she added. ‘And so, I really feel like, especially at ‘The View,’ where their show is based on arguments, it’s based on debates, it’s based on making moments, and they’re pushed to do that. And I hope that there is some learning for everybody on the show in terms of grace, in terms of forgiveness, in terms of more of a space of kindness. I know that may not make as many ratings, but, you know, this is something that is just going to, like, start getting ridiculous. I mean, if Whoopi Goldberg is canceled, that would be the end. I mean, that would be the end of this all. This cancel culture is getting so out of hand. There are so many positives, Joe, that could happen out of this mistake, and instead, I feel like it’s headed in the wrong direction.’

Interesting that such people recognize cancel culture “is getting so out of hand” only when it’s being applied to them.  Cancel culture is “out of hand” when it merely exists.

That said, Goldberg is not a teacher or other Normal American working hard every day to make ends meet.  Deplorables like that are canceled on mere accusations, and even when those accusations are proved to be false, because thought crime, even intention crime, is more than enough to warrant the cancelation of such non-elites.  Merely being white is sufficient.  No, Goldberg is an entertainer whose worth to her employers is defined precisely by how much revenue she can produce.  I’ve been a performer all my life, and I know I’m only as good as my last performance.  If I can’t produce, no one is going to pay to hear or see me.

Ultimately, if Goldberg is thrown off The View—whether that show contributes anything to humanity is another issue–it will be because she embraced hubris, believed herself invaluable, invlunerable.  Her employers will determine whether her big mouth has eliminated her value.  No value, no gigs.  That’s show biz.