DeSantis Announcement Bested by...Playstation?! Canada Says Poor People Should Kill Themselves, Notre Dame Prof Says EVERY College Grad Should Prepare for Blue Collar Jobs (The Five for 05/26/23)
Hey, weclome to The Five.
As we gear up for the holiday weekend, I wanted to make one personal note about Memorial Day.
I was 18 when 9/11 happened, and my Uncle was in lower Manhattan. I tried to sign up to serve, but was ineligible due to an extra rib. I did not go to war, but my friends did. And everybody came home—even a friend of mine who was with an OGA (“Other Government Agency”) doing spycraft work in Bagdad. I didn’t think he’d make it through—he did.
But as the war in Afghanistan was winding down…I got the call about Pvt. Aaron Toppen, one of the final combat deaths in Afghanistan. I ran point on PR for a complicated funeral service that involved CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, Illinios Governor Pat Quin, and an Army General…and a planned protest from Westboro Baptist Church, a hate group who WANT to see dead soldiers.
Thankfully, Westboro never showed, and I did my very best to serve this young man’s grieving family, his community.
As long as The Five continues (which I plan to be for the rest of my life), every Memorial Day weekend I will re-run this photo essay from The Atlantic of Pvt. Toppen coming home for the last time.
Memorial Day is not just an excuse to get off work and cook burgers. It is a time to honor the fallen. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to do just that.
Now, let’s get into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Before we get into the actual story of the LA Dodgers and…a very unusual group, here are some other headlines around this current event.
Yahoo: Jesse Watters labels LGBTQ+ Nuns’ Org: “Hate Group”*
*Nobody in their right mind would buy into the idea that these people believe they’re actually nuns
Hate Loses: The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are the heroes of this Dodgers story **
**We’re going to look at their heroic deeds.
In this case the most straightforward reporting on a group removed from, then re-invited to, a Dodgers game comes from Fox News:
The Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday decided to invite the Sisters of Indulgence back to their Pride Night event next month after initially removing the left wing group of so-called "trans nuns" from their honoree list.
"After much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Los Angeles Dodgers would like to offer our sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community and their friends and families," the organization said.
"We have asked the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to take their place on the field at our 10th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night on June 16th. We are pleased to share that they have agreed to receive the gratitude of our collective communities for the lifesaving work that they have done tirelessly for decades.
Observations:
A. Technically, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence may file taxes as a nonprofit (they give money for gender reassignment for minors), but the whole point of this thing is to mock Christians in general and Catholics in particular. Sorry if I have a hard time thinking “charity” is the focus of a male stripper grinding on Jesus as he dies on a cross.
B. As a Christian and a supporter of free speech, I ardently support the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgance’s rights to mock Christianity, including on Easter Sunday.
If free speech doesn’t protect those you disagree with, it doesn’t protect you either.
C. But I can’t imagine this is going to go great with Dodgers fans. LA is home to the largest Catholic Diocese in the US. So, fair play is fair play…but good luck to the team if they think they can sell as many tickets to drag queens as they just lost due to offended Catholics who will no longer be in the bleachers.
Keep in mind, every baseball team has a PRIDE night. Nobody cares. Nobody’s protesting these games. The outcry only came about by calling a group “heroes"that exist to mock the sincerely held beliefs Catholics according to the aforementioned USA Today article.
D. Yes, it’s completely valid that the Catholic Church is facing another abuse scandal in Illinois…that does not justify this.
E. Catholics should be held in a positive light here for their very mild reactions…as the most they’re going to do is stop attending baseball games.
If the Sisters switched gears and started depicting mocking Mohammad…how do you think that would go? The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, and perfectly nice people who would turn the other cheek. But I’m willing to bet somebody would show up via an international flight from an ISIS camp and start taking heads…literally.
F. “Hey look, the focus isn’t on us!” -Bud Light, probably.
[two]
Governor Ron DeSantis took to Twitter Wednesday night to announce his candidacy, with interview questions from Elon Musk and a handful of his friends. More than 600,000 people tuned into the live-audio only event…which crashed the app for some people.
Before we get into the reactions, it’s worth noting that Playstation drew 3.9 million live viewers just a few hours before. That’s not exactly a fair comparison, as PS has fans globally. In my opinion, it’s less important that DeSantis drew just 0.2% of the U.S. population to listen to his announcement…and more that he just sounded so flat-footed.
Although Twitter Spaces is live and doesn’t offer a playback feature, you can catch recordings of the main announcement and some of the Q&A here.
As far as the reactions go…President Trump responded with…whatever this is…over on Truth Social.
Most commentators thought DeSantis was…quite underwhelming, myself included.
It’s odd that I agreed with some of his points, but he was so boring I just couldn’t hang with him.
But, DeSantis is already jumping to head-to-head status with Trump in the primaries.
So what’s the takeaway here? The bump seems to have come from the fact that there was an announcement, not the announcement itself (the live Twitter event).
It’s also interesting that Trump seems to be counting on the “other” candidates (Haley, Ramaswamy, Scott—maybe Pence) splitting DeSantis’ support, but we don’t see that happening in the polls just yet.
This is the Culture & Commentary issue, so here a few cultural questions.
A. Can a boring candidate win?
B. Cable news is dying…will DeSantis help that by not giving the media fodder for people to tune into…by going straight to the voter? (This could have serious financial implications for traditional media, if Ron is the Republican nominee).
C. Why is Trump not back on Facebook and Twitter? Seriously, that’s a bad idea. How much will it hurt him to skip over the major social networks? He seems to be prioritizing his social media business over another bid at the White House.
C. And finally…it’s worth noting where things are now, vs. where the polls will be when debates begin, after the candidates have had time on the ground in key states, etc.
Remember, the reality TV guy who came down the escalator in 2015 was given no shot to win in the beginning. Politics swing fast in the U.S., and Ramaswamy, Scott and Haley are lagging greatly at this point, but that’s far from a final outcome.
At this point in the 2008 election cycle, the presumed candidates were NYC Mayor Rudy Guilianni…and Hillary Clinton.
Anything can happen.
UPDATE: DeSantis raised $8.2 million in the first 24 hours. I’m not exactly sure how to compare that to the $18 million Trump raised last quarter, as it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but both seem to be experiencing strong momentum.
[three]
What if you had to learn a trade…at a four year college to earn a Bachelor’s degree?
One Notre Dame professor thinks this could fix higher ed.
Universities should equip students with a trade skill as part of their education, according to a University of Notre Dame political scientist.
Professor Patrick Deneen recently gave a speech on the “future of liberalism” at the Catholic University of America. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute sponsored the May 17 event and The College Fix attended the speech and interviewed attendees.
Professor Deneen (pictured) also wrote a new book called “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future.”
Deenen said in his presentation that in the “modern world” there are two political parties – the “party of order” and the “party of progress.”
The “party of progress” has created an American society of “rapid change” that not only fostered “disorder [and] instability” but also caused a “decline of norms and customs,” Deneen said.
To remedy the situation, Deenen said the “party of order” needs to replace the “party of progress.”
Being a professor, Deenen gave suggestions on how to implement this “party of order” at the university level.
Deenen said colleges and universities need to increase their opportunities for students to study and develop “urban trades” and suggested they could require students to learn a trade in order to graduate.
Yes. This. All the way.
In our society of rapid change…everybody wants to talk about the Drag Nuns at the Dodgers game…nobody wants to turn a wrench anymore.
Part of what caused the student debt crisis is scam colleges creating an imbalance amount of money owed vs. a completely useless skill set.
If you’re a certified electrician alongside some stupid major around “Jazz Age Philosophy and Anthropology” or some such nonsense…you can still go out and make $80K a year. The other electricians will find you to be a pompous jackass…but hey, you’ll stay out of bankruptcy.
This is one of the best ideas of 2023, full stop.
[four]
Sooo…Canada.
One third of Canadians are apparently fine with prescribing assisting suicide for no other reason than the fact that the patient is poor or homeless.
The results were contained in a recent Research Co. poll probing just how comfortable Canadians were with the current state of the country’s MAID (medical assistance in dying) regime.
Starting in March 2021, Canada became one of only a handful of countries to legalize assisted suicide even in instances where a patient does not have a terminal illness. Ever since, a Canadian can be approved for MAID simply for having a “grievous and irremediable medical condition.”
Research Co. found that 73 per cent of poll respondents favoured the current regime, and only 16 per cent opposed it.
If a Canadian’s only affliction was “poverty,” 27 per cent said they would be fine with legalizing that person’s access to MAID. Another 28 per cent pegged “homelessness” as an appropriate bar to qualify for MAID.
As a writer and journalist, I detest the overblown comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany, which is something lazy people do to attempt to degrade their rivals…and to the point where the comparison has lost all meaning.
Unless, you know, a country is actually cool with killing people en masse because they’re seen as inconvenient, dirty, inferior.
I doubt this idea will stay contained by our northern border. Expect to see this disgusting policy proposed in the U.S. within the next few years, disguised as “compassion.”
[five]
I’m guessing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will not be seeing Padre Pio, the story of a Catholic Priest during WWI. Shia LeBouf has been in some of my favorite films (Fury, Lawless), and I’ve been exited for this one.
Shia appears to have turned in another barnburner performance, and this would normally be the kind of project that becomes tantalizing awards show bait. But Hollywood hates Christianity…so yeah, I don’t have high hopes for the Rotten Tomatoes score on this one.
See it in theaters June 2nd.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a collaboration between Leondardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. So yeah, not much to say…it’s gonna be a hit.
Based on the true story of a serial killer in Osage Reservation country and the birth of the FBI during the Oklahoma oil boom…the main thing that’s noteworthy about the trailer release is that Apple TV+ confirmed this movie will go exculsively to theaters, before hitting your streming box.
Cool. I’m all about preserving the theater experience for event films. See it October 6th.
Until the next one,
-sth