Fox regular and radio host Mark Steyn is under fire for outrageous remarks made while substituting for Rush Limbaugh on his program. In discussing the San Francisco’s “shelter-in-place” order due to the coronavirus, Steyn referred to the city as a “big gay town” and the order as an effort to prevent “all the gays dropping dead.” While Steyn (who is a regular and substitute host on Tucker Carlson’s show) is known for controversial statements but this is clearly beyond the pale of acceptable commentary.
In discussing the order, Steyn asked “Why are they doing that? Why is San Francisco the first to do that? Because they’ve got all the gay guys there.” He then went from bad to worse:
“It’s a big gay town, San Francisco, and they’re the ones with all the compromised immune systems from all the protease inhibitors and all the other stuff. And they don’t want all the gays dropping dead on the San Francisco mayor’s watch. So that’s why they’ve got all that sheltering in place there.”
Steyn explained further that if “there was a big gay apocalypse” then “Trump would get blamed for it.”
The commentary was inexcusable even if meant in jest. No one is suggesting that he does not have a free speech right to express himself but that does not mean Steyn should not be criticized for offensive comments. There has to be some level of decency left in commentary, particularly when referring to a pandemic that has left millions in isolate and thousands facing serious and potentially lethal illnesses.
https://theothermccain.com/2020/03/21/gay-men-spread-chinese-virus-at-miamis-south-beach-winter-party-festival/#disqus_thread
From the article on top: “Gay Men Spread Chinese Virus at Miami’s South Beach ‘Winter Party’ Festival” I have no problem with gays but this reminds me of the San Francisco party I mentioned earlier that spread what was then called AID’s. This type of behavious is an epidemiological disaster.
Ahhh!
Too late we discover that health and well-being derive from righteous and moral behavior.
There’s a reason your mother told you to sit up straight.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/362080/#respond
While we’re at it, we can save a little public money by shuttering the Commission on Civil Rights, which was never worth much and has been worse than useless for about 40 years now.
It isn’t much better in medicine. The NEJM response to UPenn Med Ed Dean, Dr Stanley Goldfarb’s excellent WSJ piece, was on par with the shill from Yale Psychiatry. Accessible only to NEJM subscribers, I have copied a portion of their piece.
Misdiagnosis, Mistreatment, and Harm — When Medical Care Ignores Social Forces
In a 2019 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns,” former University of Pennsylvania Dean of Medical Education Stanley Goldfarb echoed a dismissal that some physicians have been voicing for decades…
Social, political, and economic structures — those highlighted by Goldfarb as well as structural racism, settler colonialism, other structures of marginalization, and the inequalities each of these produces — are injuring and killing people. To stop these processes, we need a range of community- and team-based interventions, many of which occur beyond clinical practice — such as urban and regional planning to ensure the availability of safe housing and healthy food, and policy and systems changes to guarantee fair access to gainful employment and protection from environmental degradation. As clinicians, we endeavor to treat our patients’ diseases and injuries. But when we dismiss social factors as peripheral, we not only miss opportunities to improve outcomes, we may in fact fail at medicine’s core responsibilities to diagnose and treat illness and to do no harm.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1916269
The basis for the WSJ article was that the American Collge of Physicians “stepped out of its lane recently with sweeping statements on gun control. And that isn’t the only recent foray into politics by medical professionals.” The author of the article “was chastised by a faculty member for not including a program on climate change in the course of study.”
Right there we understand what Goldfarb was writing about. Your NEJM article, Estovir, is a response to that article and it should have started with Dr Goldfarb is absolutely right.
We go to a physician for his knowledge on Diabetes, not climate change. We go to a surgeon to surgically correct a problem that is harming us not for him to advocate gun control.
The NEJM article seems to desire a cultural shift in medical education to substitute a social justice type curriculum instead of the scientific approach to treatment. This attack on the medical community as stated in the article has been in progress since the 1960’s and with the attacker’s powers in Washington we have seen physicians no longer engaged with the patient rather today they are engaged with the computer. Instead of a physician private practice located in a community where the physician can learn the social implications of the people in that community that individual physician is bought up by a large company or hospital that repositions that physician away from the community.
The elite universities can talk all they want about social justice and how others should do their jobs. I suggest that those in the elite universities go outside their walls and remain outside for a decade or so in order for them to be educated in the real world so that when they return to their elite universities they will have been educated about that real world they seem to know little about.
For people without access to the WSJ article I have printed it up completely.
Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns
At ‘woke’ medical schools, curricula are increasingly focused on social justice rather than treating illness.
By Stanley Goldfarb
Sept. 12, 2019 5:54 pm ET
The American College of Physicians says its mission is to promote the “quality and effectiveness of health care,” but it’s stepped out of its lane recently with sweeping statements on gun control. And that isn’t the only recent foray into politics by medical professionals. During my term as associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school, I was chastised by a faculty member for not including a program on climate change in the course of study. As the Journal reported last month, such programs are spreading across medical schools nationwide.
Why have medical schools become a target for inculcating social policy when the stated purpose of medical education since Hippocrates has been to develop individuals who know how to cure patients?
A new wave of educational specialists is increasingly influencing medical education. They emphasize “social justice” that relates to health care only tangentially. This approach is the result of a progressive mind-set that abhors hierarchy of any kind and the social elitism associated with the medical profession in particular.
These educators focus on eliminating health disparities and ensuring that the next generation of physicians is well-equipped to deal with cultural diversity, which are worthwhile goals. But teaching these issues is coming at the expense of rigorous training in medical science. The prospect of this “new,” politicized medical education should worry all Americans.
The traditional American model of medical training, which has been emulated around the world, emphasizes a scientific approach to treatment and subjects students to rigorous classroom instruction. Students didn’t encounter patients until they had some fundamental knowledge of disease processes and knew how to interpret symptoms. They were expected to appreciate medical advances and be able to incorporate them into their eventual fields of practice. Medical education was demanding and occasionally led to student failure, but it produced a technically proficient and responsible physician corps for the U.S.
The traditional American model first came under attack by progressive sociologists of the 1960s and ’70s, who condemned medicine as a failing enterprise because increased spending hadn’t led to breakthroughs in cancer treatment and other fields. The influential critic Ivan Illich called the medical industry an instrument of “pain, sickness, and death,” and sought to reorder the field toward an egalitarian social purpose. These ideas were long kept out of the mainstream of medical education, but the tide of recent political culture has brought them in.
As concerns about social justice have taken over undergraduate education, graduate schools have raced to develop curricula that will steep future educators in the same ideology. Today a master’s degree in education is often what it takes to qualify for key administrative roles on medical-school faculties. The zeitgeist of sociology and social work have become the driving force in medical education. The goal of today’s educators is to produce legions of primary care physicians who engage in what is termed “population health.”
This fits perfectly with the current administrator-rich, policy-heavy, form-over-function approach at every level of American education. Theories of learning with virtually no experimental basis for their impact on society and professions now prevail. Students are taught in the tradition of educational theorist Étienne Wenger, who emphasized “communal learning” rather than individual mastery of crucial information.
Where will all this lead? Medical school bureaucracies have become bloated, as they have in every other sphere of education. Curricula will increasingly focus on climate change, social inequities, gun violence, bias and other progressive causes only tangentially related to treating illness. And so will many of your doctors in coming years.
Meanwhile, oncologists, cardiologists, surgeons and other medical specialists are in short supply. The specialists who are produced must master more crucial material even though less and less of their medical-school education is devoted to basic scientific knowledge. If this country needs more gun control and climate change activists, medical schools are not the right place to produce them.
Dr. Goldfarb is a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-by-my-pronouns-11568325291
Thank you Allan!
As you know I am an immigrant, and Cuban which empowers me to advocate for immigrants and Latinos as a physician and researcher. I hardly ever have anybody at the medical school push back on me because they know I am one of “them” to which the NEJM article authors speak. Unlike my patients I am fluent in English and educated. Dr Goldfarb’s article, posted by me on these pages when it was first published, was / is spot on. He got roasted by NEJM authors but, considering the authors and their affiliations (UC and Harvard), they did not disappoint.
There is only 1 person with whom I spar at the medical school: the director of HIV/AIDS. Im trying to get that person fired. Looks promising
From the University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, and the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco (S.M.H.); New York University, New York (H.H.); the University of California Irvine, Irvine (A.J.); the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (S.D.S.); Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School — both in Boston (M.M., P.E.F.); Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, Baltimore (J.A.G.); Princeton Uni- versity, Princeton, NJ (K.A.W.); and Univer- sity College London, London (M.G.M.)
What you are is a coward who abandoned not only his country but his countrymen and family in order to falsely and deceptively obtain benefits as a parasite in search of a generous host. What you are is a hyphenate and false construct of generational welfare, affirmative action privilege, etc.
You are not dissimilar to the Vietnamese parasites who live very comfortably in America through the false supports of generational welfare, affirmative action privilege, etc., while the ghosts of 58,000 dead American kids are forced to remain forever in the s—hole country they were forced to fight for and the Vietnamese parasites abandoned.
Amedica ben bedy bedy goood to me: The land of the “free stuff” and the home of the fleeced.
Dang!
Estovir, it appears we agree. Dr. Goldfarb is entirely correct. Unfortunately this elitism is spread through our entire country to many of the largest cities mostly on the east and west coasts. It eventually leads to devastation for the people but there are too many people with their hands out while others have their hands in our back pockets. Some are starting to learn whether they be immigrants or others and turning the tide. That is why the left and elites wish to keep the spigot of immigration open without controls. They want to repopulate their masses for the benefit of themselves and their political party.
I mention this because of a comment you made some weeks ago regarding immigration that sounded a bit off balance.
Allan,
Immigrants are our only hope of infusing this sinking country with family values, Christian values, a work ethic and appreciation for America.
They should come to America legally. If I had my druthers I would take one immigrant from Latin America who wishes to work and build America, and in return export 10 lazy, entitled, gimme gimme gimme Americans to a country like Venezuela. Perhaps a reduction of their BMI from 35-40 to 20-25 will make them value America
George,
If you ever come to my clinic or have a medical need, I will treat you like you were Jesus Christ Himself. I wont delight in prescribing Crucifixion, in nailing spikes into you, giving you vinegar when you need water or thrusting a lance into your side but I do have to follow the script, Monty Python and all that.
Estovir, I do not criticize people for being fat. That is their right and you keep inferring that they are less worthy than thin persons. I look for value in the individual not on these other things even though they might have health value. Same with imigrants. I look for value for my country and American citizens as a whole. I don’t like to be too judgemental of decent people.
I don’t think immigrants are the answer to the problems we face. The problems are inherent to societies that no longer have to worry about the basics to life. People forget. Immigrants forget as well especially when they rapidly adopt the habits of a society that has difficulty remembering. Then again with our welfare system in place immigrants might want to come just for the handouts.
A work ethic and appreciation of America should be important when America provides citizenship to anyone. However, you limit it to Christian values. Are there no other values in the world that are good? What about Jewish values? I pick that group because that is where Christians initially came from. Maybe there are other groups with values. Do you wish to exclude them?
Allan I would engage you and others if you embraced a consistent set of principles, any set of principles: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Santeria, pick one, any of them. But abide by them. You and most on here subscribe to relativism and no inner reflection.
This is the internet. Like social media, there are no truths, there exists only the feeding of the ego, the whimsical, the pyrrhic victory, the dictatorship of relativism or the Cluster B traits / Axis II.
the internet allows for a fluidity that is terribly dishonest, a poor ROI and a time suck. This is all noise and of little honor really. Little long term profit.
Re: Immigrants…
Immigrants gave America its foundational soul. They provided the spirit and drive that the Puritans lacked. The Puritans were sola scriptura…lots of hammer via the word alone. Immigrants provide roots, culture, values, community (e.g. Italians, Poles, Latinos etc) that Anglos lack (e,g. English, Germans, Northern Europeans). Stiff upper lip is fake. Heart is the real deal.
America has lost its way and the answer is not the economy, it is not capitalism, it is not free markets, its not more hammer. The answer is the soul of the people. Jesus Christ appealed to the latter and look how that changed the world.
Such are my thoughts. Playtime is over. Family is calling.
Salut
Estovir, you are drawing your conclusions while standing on very thin ice. These conclusions seem to be drawn based on your comparisons to yourself which is not the gold standard.
The soul indeed is important and makes the man but that man expresses himself by what he does and how he acts. You sound like you have built your own ivory tower around your body and have become more like the persons you disdained in this recent posting than the one you wish to portray.
Perhaps a bit of inner self reflection is required.
Salut.
Do the communists have telephones in Koobuuh?
Have a dose of “original intent.”
_________________________
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof
Stop forced integration
“CORONAVIRUSItalian Virologist Says Concerns Over “Racism” Crippled Italy’s Coronavirus Response
Political correctness proves deadly yet again.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=39&v=mNMdg4morQs&feature=emb_logo
https://summit.news/2020/03/20/italian-virologist-says-concerns-over-racism-crippled-italys-coronavirus-response/
So, Turley can’t handle the truth either. Must be that left over leftism coming through again. To say you don’t like it is one thing. To speak for everyone, as though you are the moral authority, and say it isn’t acceptable / inexcusable commentary, is making a judgement for the rest of us.
No thank you Mr. Turley.
“His commentary is inexcusable even if meant in jest”……….
LOL ” in jest” ?!! OMG are you kidding??!!
Professor, you must not be at all familiar with Mark Steyn.
Steyn’s the name, satire his game. He has a wonderful outlook on life, and is a talented writer, imo.( and is a Canadian citizen)
Perhaps his remarks should have ended with this tag… ” No gays were harmed in the making of this satire”
He’s like a televised Babylon Bee satirist.
Absolutely!
A lot of we the people still believe in the BIBLE
What is says and promies. More people need to read it
Meh. The US population is largely…large. As in gluttonous, slothful, obese and rotund. Add to this their wrath, outrage, greed and envy, all built on a sure foundation of pride
So, nah….Baby Boomers esched the Bible decades ago. How else to explain their sky high divorce rate, disintgrating nuclear family and putting away their “seniors” in nursing homes because well, they needed their parent(s) bedroom to create a mancave
Then there are their children….oh lawdy lawdy…the children of Baby Boomers….
None of them know the basic prayers, own a Bible, attend church bc their parents wanted their kids to decide what religion to adopt when they became adults
So yeah, the Bible, praying as a family, Grandpa and Grandma telling Bible stories to well behaved little ones sitting on the floor because they loved and admired their grandparents have no basis in the daily (yearly?) lives of Baby Boomers
Mespo, Squeeky, Paul S Schulte, TIA, George, Kurtz, Karen, Allan, Okyl, Olly….all can tell you how they have no use for any of those arcane practices because, dont cha know, its all Sophistry!
Mespo, Squeeky, Paul S Schulte, TIA, George, Kurtz, Karen, Allan, Okyl, Olly….all can tell you how they have no use for any of those arcane practices because, dont cha know, its all Sophistry!
We could, but given our history on this blog, reasonable people would know our name had been hacked by the likes of you.
Join me and my family at 8pm as we join millions across the country for a minute of prayer.
“Join me and my family at 8pm as we join millions across the country for a minute of prayer.”
Olly some proselytize to convince themselves of their rightousness while you and many others quietly carry on.
Allan,
His comment was odd. I actually was agreeing with his opinion to a large extent until he closed with that last paragraph.
He’s a bit weird with more than one personality I think. I personally like your style.
Mike:
Like a lot of people, I find great societal utility in the Christian religion. I just won’t accept as true anything they throw out there as dogma. It’s a false choice between being religious and being anti-religious. They’re are lots of shades in between.
mikeesposito – 2 things: 1) What is my new middle name that you have assigned me and 2) are you related to mespo?
1. Not sure.
2. God no!
mespo – well, one question has been answered. 😉
Paul’s middle name is Charlie, like Charlie Brown, from the Peanuts Gang.
WW33 – wrong!!!
PCS,
It’s not nice to upset Mother Nature.
It is similarly not nice to upset World War Thirty-Three.
Tread lightly.
George – I am not too concerned since she only guessed my middle name wrong and was waasaaaay off. Hence the hint. 😉
Mother Nature is my name, taken names is my game 🎱
https://youtu.be/3wzAxkkzS78
WW33 – shouldn’t that be “taking names is my game
No, Paul, taken sounds much better. Language is nothing but a construct. Strings…as they say….but I guess correct Ingles would be taking, but for some reason taken sounds better…i don’t know why. 🙄😄😎
Don’t worry, Paul, when it comes to serious 😒 paperwork, I promise you, you have word, I will not joke around and triple check everything. I already am a triple checker of the docs bc of the Ps and the Ds and the Bs….ya know. Well, more like p and b and d. And the m and n and w too. Lol.
Better to just use the Pi sign and Delta sign etc.
My word***
Maybe I have it wrong but it sounds like the donkey broke out of his stable and is now wondering around walking the wrong way.
Meh. The US population is largely…large. As in gluttonous, slothful, obese and rotund. Add to this their wrath, outrage, greed and envy, all built on a sure foundation of pride
Waal, we don’t always see ourselves as others do.
DSS – I see myself as a 20 y/o 6′ 5″ college junior with all the knowledge and wisdom I have today. Sadly, no one else sees me that way. 😉
Oh, and while I am thinking about it, didn’t some people here like yyy, fishwings, and bad anonymous and others say snide and hurtful things about me being a prepper??? Well, who’s scrounging dumpsters for copier paper to wipe their rear ends on now??? Not me! Sooo, here is an Irish Poem for those scoffers, in line with the topic of this thread!
Preparation Ache???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There was a Reporter named Squeek-
And often the target of cheek!
But she started to prep –
Before it was hep,
Sooo, now they must say she’s tres chic!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
There’s a difference between being prepared…and being a prepper, Squeeker.
Oh, just admit you were wrong. It won’t hurt, I promise you.
I have food, tp, water. ammo, cat food litter, coffee, books to read, etc. Even lots of hand sanitizer, and basic meds. I am a bit short of masks, but I will correct that before the next Zombie Apocalypse. But, I can shelter in place for 3 months with no problem. Longer if I stretch the food a little.
How about you???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
All set, on my end, too, Squeeks, and I happen to have plenty of masks, as well. And I didn’t have to do any panic shopping — or much shopping at all. Very few people will dispute that it’s good to be prepared.
Anonymous:
“Prepper” stands for “preparedness”. A global pandemic qualifies as a catastrophic disaster. Due to the global nature of modern travel, future pandemics are indeed likely.
prep·per
/ˈprepər/
nounNORTH AMERICAN
noun: prepper; plural noun: preppers
a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.
The whole “prepper” thing is a bit more complicated than the simple “generic” definition supplied by Karen.
Even the OED doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a bit more detailed than her source.
OED: “New words notes for October 2018”
https://public.oed.com/blog/new-words-notes-september-2018/f
Prepper:
“Prepper is added with a generic meaning ‘a person who or thing which prepares or readies something’ as well as a more recent and specific one, ‘a person who anticipates a catastrophic disaster or emergency occurring on a local or global scale and actively prepares for it, typically by learning survival skills, preparing to become self-sufficient, and stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.’ The earliest use of the latter meaning is from a 1998 post on a Usenet newsgroup called alt.y2k.end-of-the-world and addresses ‘fellow y2k preppers’—people who were stockpiling goods and weapons in anticipation of the so-called Y2K computer bug, which some believed would cause a global catastrophe due to computer programs being incapable of processing 21st century dates.”
https://public.oed.com/blog/new-words-notes-september-2018/f
No one will say that it isn’t good to be prepared, but there’s a line…which sometimes takes one into Crazyville.
WTF is wrong with you Chips? You need the OED to explain prepping to you? Damn!
“You need the OED to explain prepping to you? Damn!”
Nope, but Karen apparently does.
Anonymous – our definitions were the same.
Unless you think “prepper” still refers to those preparing for Y2K? It has not had that connotation for 20 years…so…
Most people used to fall into the category today known as “preppers.” My Granny was a farm girl who canned as long as she was ambulatory. People had well cared for guns and ammo, and hunted, trapped, and fished. They cured and smoked meat. Pickled. Saved fabric scraps to make patchwork quilts or braided rag rugs. Preparing for lean times or hardship was just basic responsibility. We could have lived for 2 years off my Granny’s canning cupboard.
I don’t understand this insistence on mocking the prepared. There have always been natural and man made disasters.
Here in CA, rather recently, we had:
1. Mass shooting that caused class closures
2. Wildfires
3. Mudslides
4. Earthquakes and ground shifting that affected roads
5. Evacuations
6. Repeated and frequent power outages as the electric company agitated for more money and less liability
7. Sudden loss of water, propane, and septic providers as CARB banned the registration of heavy vehicles pre-2010
8. Covid-19 pandemic
I’d say that CA has had its share of disasters. It is wise to prepare. We have plenty of food – human and animal, water, a generator…we’re good. I’ve been sharing toilet paper and frozen meat with people who can’t find it in stores.
The line to where preparing crosses to unhealthy mental unease would be if people sold their homes and lived in bunkers, or committed suicide. That’s pretty rare, thankfully. Most “preppers” just have supplies and ammunition. In fact, the Mormon community has long has distribution centers where you can buy bulk foodstuffs. Being prepared with food stores is part of their culture.
“I don’t understand this insistence on mocking the prepared.”
No one here is ‘mocking the prepared’, given the comments I’ve seen.
“The line to where preparing crosses to unhealthy mental unease would be if people sold their homes and lived in bunkers, or committed suicide. ”
No, that’s Karen’s “line.”
“Prepper” redirects to “survivalism” on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism
It’s a mindset — a lifestyle — and it’s so much more than just being prepared, like”Granny.”
As for the addition of Y2K to the OED’s definition?
Most people get it. Karen chooses not to “get it” because it suits her.
We’re all gonna die at some point; something’s gonna get us. In terms of preparedness, where does one draw the line? There are preppers…and then there are Preppers… (We know that Squeeky has (or had?) a bunker, at one point, FWIW.)
“The 3 Ways Doomsday Preppers Will Die”
12/17/2013 06:05 pm ET Updated Feb 16, 2014
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-3-ways-doomsday-preppers-will-die_b_4462190
(And yes, it’s from HuffPost, but some people won’t care.)
The mortality rate is 100%. If we fear t tomorrow or long for yesterday we lose the joy of the moment.
Nicely done Squeek! Critical thinkers will recognize your visionary planning.
This is the man of Squeeker’s dreams:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-proof-survivalist-bunker-can-house-500-people-for-25-years/
Another “visionary” just like Squeeks.
Do AIDS patients have compromised immune systems? Yes.
Is the gay community the highest risk group for HIV? Yes
Is the largest community of HIV positive gay people in America living in San Francisco? Yes
Would the mayor of San Francisco be cognizant of the special risk of immunocompromised gay people in San Francisco, the drug users sharing needles, the infectious waste needles on the street? The human feces and vomit? As well as the fact that unprotected sex is quite common in San Francisco? Yes.
Did San Francisco issue a “shelter in place” order? Yes.
Do Democrats blame Republicans for the mess they make of their own cities? Yes
Filter that through his style of British wit, and you get his statement. (While he is Canadian, he was educated in Europe.) Everything that he said was true. In fact, gay people are talking about exactly that. If you are immunocompromised (cancer patient, HIV positive, etc), you have to shelter in place and take extra precautions against this pandemic. Truth. It would indeed destroy mayor London Breed’s political career if she allowed the gay capital of the world to suffer mass casualties.
People in San Francisco have been very upset for years about the human feces and dirty needles. Now they are truely panicking.
People in San Francisco have been very upset for years about the human feces and dirty needles. Now they are truely panicking.
People in Frisco put Vincent Hallinan’s son and then Kathy Boudin’s son into the District Attorney’s chair. Because stupid.
Beyond the pale of acceptable commentary? Do you have any gay friends or relatives? Of course they talk about cities with a high percentage of gays.
I have listened to Mark Steyn off and on for years. He is a good person. He is known for political satire and wit, with a decidedly British flair. If I recall correctly, he is a Canadian who was educated in the UK, which is why he has a British accent.
The point is that in identity politics, your worth is judged based upon your race, political affiliation, gender (or total confusion thereof), and sexual orientation. In the identity politics scale, gay people are “worth” more than straight. Trans are worth more than cis.
San Francisco is a very gay town. Of course it is. There’s nothing wrong with that. People can congregate and associate with whomever they choose. Steyn joked about a gay apocalypse being blamed on Trump due to the identity politics scale, as well as the unhinged efforts by Democrats to blame Trump for a Chinese origin plague to benefit politically. In addition, San Francisco is a cesspool. Democrats and Libertarians have a very permission attitude towards drugs. Hollywood glamorizes it. San Francisco has been a drug haven since the 60’s. It’s a hedonist Mecca. It also used to be an arts and cultural center of CA. I used to enjoy going there. But now the drug culture, hedonism, Democrat policy of emptying prisons, and their pro-homelessness and illegal alien stance has turned San Francisco into a slime pit. There is human feces everywhere. Poop maps. Infectious, used needles lying around. Homeless shooting upon near preschools and elementary schools.
Democrats will not take responsibility for the mess they have literally made of San Francisco. It is always someone else’s fault. They always need more taxes. They create crime and then the elites live in gated communities. The city is absolutely disgusting. And they have no idea how much pollution they create, because the ocean breeze blows it inland to wreck havoc in the Giant Sequoia groves. I live in CA, and we conservatives hate what has befallen beautiful San Francisco, which used to be the jewel of the state.
San Francisco will always be a target of conservatives. Identity politics will always be a target. Blaming Republicans for things that are not their fault will always be a target.
I have said for weeks that they are going to have a bad time of it trying to contain a plague in San Francisco with Medeival levels of human waste and needles. What the heck are they going to do? As Steyn said…blame Trump. And, yes, if a lot of people in San Francisco fall ill with Covid-19, it has the highest concentration of LGBT in the United States, and will probably be referred to as a gay apocalypse.
Mark Steyn’s satire wit is correct. If there was a gay apocalypse in San Francisco, Democrats would blame Trump for it. Do you think they would blame themselves for creating a Medeival cess pool of drugged out addicts and the insane lurching around the streets like the Walking Dead?
In context, the LGBT community blames Ronald and Nancy Reagan for the AIDS epidemic. Perhaps people who are not familiar with San Francisco are not aware.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgance are a gay charity group who dress in drag as nuns to mock the Catholic Church, and Christianity in general. Their main goal is to help fund raise for AIDS. And boy, do they hate the Reagans, even in death. The general consensus in the gay community is that AIDS is Republicans’ fault. Not their own for way too many of them flatly refusing en masse to practice safe sex and monogamy. No. This are conservative ideas and therefor anathema. It’s the Reagans. When a cure was not forthcoming, the gay community will never forgive them. In the early years, it was not known how it was transmitted. Since it was found most often in the gay community, there was a lot of fear and mistrust. After Rock Hudson’s diagnosis came out, I recall Sharon Stone saying how she ran a bunch of red lights to go to a clinic to get tested, because she had kissed him on screen. Sharon Stone is not a Republican. And yet, this early era of fear of catching a deadly disease from casual contact is, again, laid at the door of conservatives and Republicans.
Boy George and George Michael had both referred to AIDS as the gay epidemic and gay plague devastating their friends and love ones. I recall well when Boy George said during an interview that he had survived the plague without contracting it. This is the language used, and hardly shocking.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/11/nancy-ronald-reagan-aids-crisis-first-lady-legacy
The gay community was wrong. Neither Nancy nor Ronald Reagan abandoned them during the AIDS crisis. But they wouldn’t know that from all hte Democrat propaganda floating like San Francisco fog around the city.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/ronald-reagans-quiet-war-aids-14783.html
Therefore, there is a decades long, well-established history of referring to illnesses that disproportionately affect gay people as gay plagues or epidemics, by the gay community itself. There is also a long history of wrongly blaming such epidemics on Republicans.
Hence the source of Mark Steyn’s comment. It most certainly was not hateful towards gay people. Rather, it criticizes identity politics, the mess made of SF, and passing the buck.
I wouldn’t blame rank-and-file homosexuals for the inanities of the gay lobby (though I think those inanities are an intensification of vectors to be found among rank-and-file homosexuals.
A critic of male homosexuality, JGM van den Aardweg, has offered that an understanding of the self as an injured party is foundational to male homosexuality and generative. The animadversions contra the Reagans and contra Ed Koch are consistent with his thesis. They’re also consistent with the thesis that homosexuals understand themselves as Special. For public agencies to do what they can with available resources is unacceptable. That means you’re ordinary, and not Special.
Neither Koch nor the Reagans were antagonistic or indifferent or otiose. The medical research establishment was put to work on the problem and managed to find a meliorist solution of sorts within fifteen years which generated a 75% decline in the annual death toll (from 60,000 to 15,000). NB, in 1998, 160,000 died of lung cancer; in 2018, the number was 142,000.
Karen’s screed about SF is BS. I have been stayed several times in the last 3 years for days at a time and have spent much of that time walking around (including a grim walk through the Tenderloin one day). I know the lay of the land and the neighborhoods – I lived there for about 6 months years ago.
There is nothing outside of the Castro signaling the town is gay, or outside of the Tenderloin, that is dirty or cringe worthy. The vast majority of citizens are fully hetero, the women beautiful – as they often are in big US cities – and the men masculine – as they are in most places. The sidewalks and neighborhoods clean and safe – it’s too expensive for street criminals.
It would be nice if right wing idiots would quit attacking states and cities in the US they think are too liberal. Democrats don’t spend their time gloating over red states with “hillbilly heroin” problems and ghost town cites. Given who their leader is these days, it’s hard to not think there is something seriously wrong and un-American with today’s nasty GOP.
btb – this says it all.
https://wmmr.com/2019/04/17/someone-made-an-interactive-san-francisco-poop-map/
Check it out.
Paul, I’ve been there and walked the streets. It’s as clean as any American city with warm weather that attracts homeless people, in red or blue states. In my miles of hiking I never encountered human feces, other sources of filth not seen on Main St USA, and even less danger, except when in the Tenderloin. My hike through there was incident free as well. In fact, there appeared less visible homeless people than I encountered on a trip to LA and in line with the cities in the warm red state I live in.
btb:
Good to know your powers of physical observation match your powers of political observation.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xdae/more-people-pooping-in-san-francisco-than-ever-all-time-high-vgtrn
btb – so SF just hired human pooper scoopers for 180k for no reason? BTW, I have been to SF, too.
Paul:
Oops btb wasn’t counting on that! Damn, thrashed on the facts again!
Here’s some fact for our numb nut residents of spotless cities.
SF tourism increased for the 9th straight year – 10 years ago was the Great Recession. Your bum-f… city wishes it had SF’s “problems”.
btb – I live in a town, not a city, you ignorant slut.
Then I’m sure the city where you go to WalMart for sushi is spotless and a real mecca for discerning international tourists who could afford to go anywhere.
What a snob you are, Bythebook. And in terrible denial about SF. Perhaps you should speak with the mayor.
Bythebook:
Here are Seeing homeless men in wheelchairs without shoes in the winter, women with infants on the streets, young men and women on the streets doing drugs, it was painful,” wrote the commenter.
Handlery used to assure his visitors the city was doing all it could to combat rampant homelessness, but he no longer makes those claims.
“I am sorry about the street scene,” Handlery responded to the commenter. “But unfortunately our city has failed to address the issue.”
San Francisco’s hotel owners and managers are increasingly frustrated that their gorgeous city, with its many museums, fine restaurants and scenic vistas, has an ever-deteriorating, dismaying flip side to the postcard. In a city that spends $305 million a year to combat homelessness, those who serve as San Francisco’s hosts struggle to explain why the problem isn’t getting any better.
“I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been,” said Handlery, who’s been in the San Francisco hotel business for 38 years.
Kevin Carroll is the executive director of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, which advocates for 110 hotels. Among hotel managers and owners, “everybody’s talking about it,” he said.
“You see things on the streets that are just not humane,” he said. “People come into hotels saying, ‘What is going on out there?’ They’re just shocked. … People say, ‘I love your city, I love your restaurants, but I’ll never come back.’”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfchronicle.com/news/amp/SF-tourist-industry-struggles-to-explain-street-12534954.php
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Cable-cars-climb-halfway-to-the-stars-but-SF-12372796.php?_gl=1*1m4jtql*_ga*YW1wLUJyYjZHLWl6VU5yOGRZa3N1LW5QNk1RNzkxcHBIN1RPb1Q4T3U2U3Bod3NHd2lLMnF5Z1pjVVlzTlNQdHFXM20.
…It’s as clean as any American city with warm weather…
btb,
That one statement is your tell that all you’re doing is manufacturing an opinion to be argumentative. Of course given actual evidence, the city is not as clean as any American city. And as far as warm weather goes, it does have its moments, but no one that’s actually lived there (I have for 2 years) will tell you it has warm weather. I grew up in Minnesota and I know cold. Hell, do you think much has changed since Mark Twain’s days? The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco.
A funny joke Olly that I retell regularly (He also said he won 1st prize in a contest and won a weekend in Philly – 2nd prize was a week in Philly.) but if you’re on the street, the difference between a low of 50 and high of 65 vs 0 and 20 counts.
In “The Lady is a Tramp” lyrics
“she hates California…. it’s cold and it’s damp, that’s why the lady is a tramp……”
Great song.
https://youtu.be/4MMnAh23ys4
That is funny btb. I’ve lived in CA since 1979 and there is a huge difference between a Minneapolis 50 and a San Francisco 50. Hell, a January 40 in San Diego requires a coat, in Minneapolis, it’s shorts and T shirt weather.
I lived in Vermont, and we dropped the convertible top in 50 deg spring weather. Not so much in Sept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5n-6mSe9os
Go directly to 3:00 since this seems to be acceptable behaviour to you.
It’s not the warm weather that makes them stay. It’s the homeless friendly policies.
Living the dream here in CA:
1. Democrat politicians do not want to criminalize homelessness, so police are directed to look the other way
2. They build facilities for them and give out free needles, which leads to an exponential increase in dirty needles strewn on the street.
3. They have policies like right to sleep and right to park. When an RV dumps blackwater human sewage in the street, the city tickets them just like they would any homeowner. NO! Just kidding! No, the city periodically sends power washers to clean it up. Everywhere is Skid Row now. I can tell you from personal experience that the very air smells of feces, because it is part of the city dirt now.
4. Threshold for felony theft raised to $950. Homeless are free to steal all they want without consequence to feed their drug habit, as long as they don’t go beyond $950. A homeless encampment popped up near my husband’s work. There are crimes all the time now.
Democrats created policies that enticed more homeless. That’s why they spent a quarter of a billion dollars in one county in one year alone, with nothing to show for it.
That’s why freezing NYC has such a high homeless population, too.
If homeless are drawn to a warm area, but they are fiercely opposed to hanging out and shooting up in the sidewalks, then they move on. Business owners and homeowners are so desperate that they pay for defensive architecture like spike on the sidewalks, or slanted benches. This is because politicians refused to uphold law and order. The addicts are too deep in and won’t accept rehab or shelter because they’d have to stop doing drugs. That’s why they want to live on the streets. The mentally ill are unable to make a good decision. Yet Democrats are fine with people living in the bushes at standards less than a Third World Country. That’s not humane. That’s turning the US into a Medieval cess pool.
And Medieval cess pools spread disease. What a fine time SF and LA are having right now, trying to quarantine plague, when homeless people are taking a dump on the sidewalk. They made quite a mess, literally.
As long as Democrat politicians refuse to take responsibility for the negative consequences of their policies, nothing will get better. Why would anything change if they, and their cheerleaders, pretend there isn’t a problem?
Karen said: “It’s the homeless friendly policies.”
And it’s everyone’s dream… to be homeless.
And it’s everyone’s dream… to be homeless.
As with every other difficult circumstance we find unavoidable, make it as comfortable as possible. That’s Karen’s point. This is not that difficult.
Karen, these are not liberal policies, they are national policies based on SC decisions from the 70s and 80s regarding loitering laws and forcible commitments to mental institutions, coupled with a national drug problem. You cant go to any city anywhere in the US where this is not a problem and that includes red states.
I would personally favor tougher loitering laws and active efforts to commit those who need it, coupled with decent facilities of last resort. Parks, library’s, and city streets should not be bedrooms for anyone, for their sake but more importantly for taxpayers sake who didn’t build these facilities for that purpose and who deserve to use them as designed. Unfortunately this takes money to create the decent and safe alternatives as well as changes to our laws. Many on the streets are drunks and drug addicts who will be there no matter what, but many are not, or fell into that position after hard luck many of us would not do well with. The answer is tough love, compassion, and money. How to write those laws is for legislators.
Bythebook – you have called me names over some seriously stupid things before, but arguing with me over whether San Francisco is considered a gay town or not, or if it has a human waste problem due to homelessness is one of the most ridiculous. It is not attacking the city to say that it has a lot of gay people. Rather, I critize the Liberal policies that completely ruined the city, making it a Walking Dead of homelessness.
Are you seriously using the “I’m an expert because I stayed in a San Francisco Holiday Inn” argument?
My relative lived in San Francisco for years, and only recently moved. No. It’s not just the Tenderloin, and I hope you threw your shoes away.
You keep denying that San Francisco has a human waste problem. Yet the mayor, London Breed, often talks about the problem. Conventions have moved locations away from SF because they have a problem.
So since San Franciscans often talk about the city’s problems, why is my talking about it “screed?” Or “right wing idiot.” Answer – when you can’t deal with the facts, demonize the messenger.
Also, do you not know any gay people? Because they would explain to you that SF is the gay capital of the world, second only to Hollywood. Since gays are a very small fraction of the population, neither city is majority gay.
Or, you could pick up a travel magazine and learn about how SF is marketed to the LGBTQ community. Is this a right wing hate group? Why, no. It’s a travel site for San Francisco geared towards the LGBTQ community:
“San Francisco is the city ruled by love and celebration of diversity. Which helps explain why the city has come to be known as the epicenter of the worldwide LGBTQ community…
Here are some of reasons why San Francisco became the world’s gay mecca:
Castro Neighborhood
Take a walk through history in one of the original U.S. LGBTQ neighborhoods and make your way right to the LGBTQ center of San Francisco. Every store, restaurant, bar and nightclub in this district welcomes you with open arms, with none of the stress you typically have when you’re trying to figure out if a business is LGBTQ-friendly in other cities. Make some time to explore the GLBT History Museum and learn more about the struggles of the past, then party the night away at the QBar. Find a hotel in the Castro neighborhood.
1974: Castro Street Fair
Another highlight of the Castro District is the Castro Street Fair, held every month in October. This street celebration dates back to 1974, when founder Harvey Milk brought artists, vendors and artisans together in this community fair. Today, you can buy handmade goods directly from LGBTQ makers, find your way to the dance floors, or enjoy the music coming from multiple stages.
2017: Rainbow Honor Walk
Forget the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You need to check out the Rainbow Honor Walk that recognizes prominent LGBTQ individuals who made a long-lasting impact throughout their lives. Swing by the intersection of Castro St. and Market St. to find these plaques. As you walk along the blocks in this area, you will learn about many people who excelled in their fields, performed the activist work needed to make the LGBTQ community what it is today, and contributed their hearts and souls to this cause.
1942: WWII Stronghold
San Francisco became a military stronghold during WWII, establishing bases like Fort Funston and Fort Mason. It was a symbol of freedom for 1,650,000 men, as it was the last part of the country that they glimpsed before they saw combat on foreign lands, and the first thing that they saw when they returned. Thousands of young male enlistees descended on city looking for love, sometimes with each other, sometimes with locals who were their fans.
2016: Demilitarized Fleet Week
Today, the military has markedly little presence and most of the bases have turned into tourist attractions, housing developments, or local hangouts. The annual Fleet Week, when military guys and, increasingly, gals, descend on the city, is a highly celebrated occasion for the LGBTQ community where sexy men in uniform can be spotted in every corner of the city from the Marina to the Castro letting freedom reign in the post-Don’t Ask, Don’t tell world.
PRIDE
1970: First Pride March
Thirty courageous people risked it all to march down Polk Street to City Hall in a time when any association with homosexuality risked discrimination and worse. The following day a “gay-in” took place in Golden Gate Park drawing hundreds more. Combined, these mark the genesis of the Gay Freedom Day Parade. Today, Polk Street is home to a wide range of LGBTQ-friendly restaurants, bars, nightclubs and Disco Diva clubs, such as the Cinch and the Lush Lounge. Of course, you don’t have to wander through Polk Street and the surrounding areas at night to have a good time. During the day, you see unique boutiques, plenty of antiques and restaurants that cater to every taste. Most of the businesses in this area are small and locally owned, so you get a true sense of San Francisco’s local flavor (sometimes literally, if you head to a cafe or bakery).
2018: 48th Annual Pride
Nearly 2 million people will descend on San Francisco from every corner of the world. This is the largest gathering of LGBTQ people in the nation and takes place over 10 action-packed days. The day before Pride, Pink Saturday, is one of the the biggest public parties of the year. Pride is now enjoyed by millions worldwide–gay, lesbian, straight and everything in between. Plan your SF trip for the last weekend in June and take part in the biggest Pride event in the U.S. You’ve got the high-energy parade and truly creative floats, tons of performers and a celebration that spans the entire weekend. There’s nothing quite like taking part in Pride with tens of thousands of people joyously celebrating who they are in the most accepting city around. These are the best areas to stay for San Francisco Pride.
Politics
1977: Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay elected official in California history, only to be gunned down, along with beloved pro-gay Mayor George Moscone, by fellow supervisor Dan White, on Nov. 27, 1978.
2016: Harvey Milk Democratic Club
Openly gay Assemblyman Mark Leno serves his 14th year. San Francisco is full of openly gay city, county, and state officials including Board of Supervisor David Campos, and former Board of Supervisor, now current California State Assemblyman, Scott Wiener. Two of the city’s most prominent political clubs include LGBT-centric Harvey Milk and Alice B. Toklas. It is impossible to get elected to citywide office without LGBTQ support.
Changing The World For the Better
1964: Gay Capital of America
San Francisco is touted as the “Gay Capital of America” in “Life” magazine. Activists of all stripes flock to San Francisco to start the fight we know today as the gay rights movement, and to take it first to the rest of America and then the world.
2016: Marriage Mecca of the US
After a series of victories and defeats for California’s Proposition 8, the U.S. Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage legal across the United States, invalidating every last ban. San Francisco first issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004 and was recently voted LGBTQ “Marriage Mecca” by GayCities members.
2017: Gay Men’s Chorus’ Lavender Pen Tour
When the new Trump Administration began rolling back LGBTQ protections and rights, San Franciscans immediately took action with demonstrations for equal rights. While many took to the streets of San Francisco in peaceful protest, others, such as the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus decided to fight hate by taking their message of love to several red states this October. The Lavender Pen Tour is an attempt to support and encourage LGBTQ+ people and their allies by promoting acceptance and love through music.
Drag
1933: Female Impersonation
Finocchio’s was a nightclub and bar in the sexually liberal San Francisco Barbary Coast. In 1933, with the repeal of prohibition, the club offered female impersonation shows, the early name for drag queens, that drew enormous crowds that quickly spread across the city like glitter.
2016: Drag Club Oasis
One of San Francisco’s ruling drag queens, Heklina, opens Oasis, a popular drag club. Drag shows take place at more than 20 venues per week including Trannyshack and Sunday’s a Drag. San Francisco is also headquarters to the legendary Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the largest charitable drag organization in the country.
2017: Hunky Jesus Contest
Easter can be a trying time of year when you have to go through yet another round of “poorly formed political opinions” from extended family. Want a way better way to spend that weekend? Escape to the Hunky Jesus Contest and see just how sinful (and hunky!) this saintly figure can be. You get to ogle long-haired eye candy walking around shirtless, or you can throw on a loincloth and join in on the contest. The competition is fierce, and you get an Easter celebration that you’re going to want to make into a tradition right away.
Into The Night
1908: First Gay Bar
Among the first “notorious” gay bars in San Francisco was a dark, secretive place known The Dash, known only to insiders. Waiters cross-dressed and for $1 would perform sex acts in private booths. In 1972, Twin Peaks Tavern opened its door and windows to the public. Gay bars in the Castro now often boast as many non-gay patrons as gay ones, with people of all sorts enjoying the open, nonjudgmental atmosphere.
2016: Best Gaybourhood In The World
Castro and SoMa were named the world’s best Gaybourhoods by GayCities members in 2016. Any given night, you can find bars packed and clubs hopping with a mix of locals and tourists who come to gay it up in the city. The original gay center was Polk Street and parts of the Tenderloin, both of which still boast gay bars, but transitioned to make the Castro and gayest neighborhoods anywhere, with at least a dozen gay bars within a few blocks of each other on Castro, Market and 18th Street. The South of Market Area is also a new hot spot for LGBTQ bars, clubs and festivals, such as the Folsom Street Fair.
Leather & Fetish
1938: Sailor Boy Tavern
The first proto-leather bar in San Francisco was the Sailor Boy Tavern, which opened in 1938 and was primarily for visiting navy men looking for action. In the 1960s, the leather scene established itself in SOMA with bars such as the Toolbox.
2019: 25th Annual Folsom Street Fair
The leather subculture attracts people from near and far, leaving a legacy that has boomed into what is the leather event of all leather events–Folsom Street Fair. This leather pride event is the largest of its kind, held in September and centering around the BDSM community through 200 vendor booths, tons of live music performances, demo stations and exhibitors. This is truly an only in San Francisco experience that brings in people worldwide. If Folsom only whets your appetite for leather events, Up Your Alley attracts over 10,000 leather men and takes an edgier approach to its fetish explorations.
HIV/AIDS
1981: First cases of GRID
Young men in San Francisco were among the first diagnosed with GRID (the incorrectly named Gay Related Immuno Deficiency). HIV would soon afflict millions. It quickly became a worldwide pandemic.
2016: HIV/AIDS Endemic
San Francisco leads the world in cutting-edge treatment, meaning that few die of HIV any more, and in prevention, with the goal of zero new infections by the year 2020.
Cinema
1920: Castro Theatre movie palace
The Castro Theatre gets its chandelier and becomes a renowned movie palace. LGBTQ film are financed and set in San Francisco, and increasingly shown in art houses there.
2019: 44th Annual Frameline Film Festival and 17th Annual Fresh Meat Festival
Frameline Film Festival is the largest queer film festival in the world. Running for nearly two weeks, it features films from the best screenwriters, directors, actors. The Castro Theatre is its primary home. Transgender and queer live art performances take center stage at this long-running Fesh Meat Festival, organized by Fresh Meat Productions. You get one of the most creative, compelling and community building experiences as you enjoy an eclectic lineup that will make every other live art festival seem like a distant second.
San Francisco earns its name as the gay mecca of the world, whether you’re looking to step foot in the oldest gay bar or you want to learn about the history of the LGBTQ community. The thriving gay neighborhoods are warm and vibrant, and they give you some of the most unique events you’ll find anywhere. Plan your trip to San Francisco. Save up to 35% on LGBTQ-friendly San Francisco hotels.
https://www.sftravel.com/article/why-san-francisco-world’s-gay-mecca
Or you could check out the latest Gallup Poll
The San Francisco metropolitan area has the highest percentage of the adult population who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) of any of the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas, followed by Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/182051/san-francisco-metro-area-ranks-highest-lgbt-percentage.aspx
Karen, your slander of SF is false. Yes, they have a homeless problem. So does every city in America that is warm, and many that aren’t. That’s not due to SF policies, it’s due to SC rulings on loitering and forcible commitments to mental institutions as well as a national drug problem. It is not overtly gay unless you hang out in the Castro, and no I don’t go there.
For the typical tourist or visitor, SF is a delightful and beautiful place full of mostly hetero people and the streets are as clean and safe as anywhere, if not more so, because it’s so expensive to live there – don’t go the Tenderloin!
As I noted, tourism has increased for 9 straight years (since the Great Recession), and it’s not because it’s cheap.
PS I visit people when I go there and so the see the city like a resident, and do a lot of walking. They don’t live in the suburbs. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this stuff from Karen, bythebook.
The Gay Pride event at the beginning of HIV was held in San Francisco. Gays from all over the world ended up in San Francisco and the bath houses. When the event was over they Took HIV all over the world.
Are you seriously using the “I’m an expert because I stayed in a San Francisco Holiday Inn” argument?
His son lives in the Bay Area, at one time in a waterfront condo in Sausalito. Other places on that street sell for about $700,000 a pop, so the U.S. Attorney’s office would appear to pay satisfactory salaries. He has an ex- who lives or lived on the same block.
None of this is true or relevant.
When I read the article I knew what the comments would be like and wasn’t disappointed.
Sad isn’t it?
Yep.
Well, I am glad that I met your expectations!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
You wouldn’t want to throw them a curve when they’re expecting a fastball. 😉
I didn’t see one from you at the time I read them, I’m sure it would have stood out from the others. You should encourage the rest of the gang to aim higher, aspire for creativity and excellence, not settling for being just common and predictable.
enigma:
Now that is honest-to-goodness, genuine virtue signaling and smug moralizing. Bravo
On this blog your response is common and predictable
Ditto there Anonybo!
Enig………80% of Protestant black preachers preach that homosexuality is a sin.
And 100% of Fox News opinion shows are bastions of hatred. Note I did distinguish between the actual news shows and opinion shows. There’s Shepherd Smith… oh wait, he bailed out. There’s still Chris Wallace, he’s the only one left.
100% you say. Bastions. It takes a special kind of stupid to claim 100% and expect rational people to believe you.
Well done! Don’t despair though. Right about now, Paint Chips is preparing a hold my beer post.
Enigma:
Get off this hate is always bad mantra. Hate is damn useful is an existential situation and it enforces social mores. It’s all part of the emotional toolbox of humans who can wield the tools the right way or the wrong way. It’s childish to hate on hate. You need it to motivate you, just as you do love, pride, loyalty and all the rest.
Why am I not surprised?
enigma:
Because you either know I’m right and refuse to acknowledge it or you blithely deny eons of human experience in psychology and history. The only place I ever heard where hate arguably wasn’t present was the Garden of Eden and that didn’t turn out well at all. Ask Able.
We can just agree to disagree. Hate generally uses up a whole lot of energy that could be put to better use.
“And 100% of Fox News opinion shows are bastions of hatred.”
You paint with a very broad brush Enigma. Let’s take Tucker who I sometimes watch. He cares about families and family values. AT least we know where you stand.
Another example, in case you needed one, that in the liberal mind, liberal hate = speech and conservative speech = hate.
So, why should we take liberals seriously?
“Greed is Good!”
The truth came out this week when typical, common and hyphenated Americans displayed their cold-blooded, wanton greed as they selfishly ravaged store shelves everywhere, including the toilet paper section for crying out loud!
All races are racist. Chinese refer to Westerners as Gweilo or “foreign devil.” Mexicans name Norte Americanos “gringos.” Blacks use “cracker” in the pejorative. It’s not accurate to say that only Americans are racist. All races are greedy. I went to the store today and the shelves were empty. Common, typical and hyphenated people in America have ravaged the product counters in stores large and small throughout America.
Communists (i.e. liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats) complain persistently about racism by Americans and the “greed” of those Americans conducting free enterprise in the free and open markets. A popular film, “Wall Street,” was made disparaging the fictional thesis that “greed is good.” Perhaps a movie can be made of the Chinese allowing worldwide pandemics to spawn from “wet market” contamination and referring to Westerners as Gweilo or “foreign devils,” or blacks in America using “honky” as a reference to Americans. How about a movie depicting the abject greed of typical and common Americans selfishly snatching, confiscating and absconding with every last shred of product they deem consumable, utilitarian or marketable during the apocalypse.
It’s time to put an end to the concept of Americans being the sole “guilty” party in America. The common, typical and hyphenated “American” is guilty of depriving “fellow citizens” of essential, critical and potentially life-saving items as they prepare, presumably, for Armageddon.
___________
“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
-Alexander Hamilton
________________
Ben Franklin, 1787, we gave you “…a republic, if you can keep it.”
Ben Franklin, 2020, we gave you “…a republic, if you can take it back.”
________________________________________________________
“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
_______________________________________
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Quote: Joe Biden “Back 15, 20 years ago, when we talked about this in San Francisco, it was all about, well, gay bathhouses. It was all about round-the-clock sex. Come on, man“. Even senile joe remembers that San Francisco is perceived as a gay city. How does one determine where the pale line begins and ends? I see uncle joe’s statement as objectively more offensive that mark steyn’s attempt at satire but neither comment is beyond the pale.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/10/11/joe-biden-lgbt-town-hall-bathhouse-gay-sex-cnn-democrat-twitter-viral/
“if societal rejects who have rejected society were used it might be more all encompassing as it would include ALL of San Francisco.”
As it’s said: United we stand, divided we fall.
“Hate” isn’t the answer.
What is the answer? Allowing invaders and thieves to steal one’s country and treasure? Is your answer Generational Welfare, Affirmative Action Privilege, superior status of minorities, forced busing, unconstitutional and unfair “Fair Housing” laws, unconstitutional “Non-Discrimination” laws, Obongocare, social engineering, redistribution of wealth, the welfare state, etc.?
Thank you, comrade.
How could people consider themselves free if they were restricted from being able to “discriminate” throughout their lives? If Americans cannot discriminate, government can mandate each and every aspect of their lives.
Are you out of your ——- mind? Or have you absolutely no grasp of freedom and, specifically, American freedom?
These were the United (we stand) States before the unconstitutional “Reign of Terror” of the immutably illegitimate “Crazy Abe” Lincoln and his unconstitutional denial of legal secession, suspension of Habeas Corpus not in a condition of rebellion but secession, and “Reconstruction Amendments” which were improperly ratified and forcibly imposed under the duress of brutal post-total war military occupation.
The original intent of the American Founders and their predominant Constitution and Bill of Rights constitute the definitive answer.
NEWSFLASH – Mark Steyn makes reprehensible statement of fact.
Of course, we can’t have that in America. Dang!
Mark Steyn did not make the gays gay, the blacks black, the reds red, the browns brown or the yellows yellow.
People in all of these groups may speak with reference to Mark Steyn and Mark Steyn may speak with reference to them. These categories are not superior entities per the Constitution and they enjoy no superior or unassailable status – they are not “untouchable.”
Mark Steyn and all Americans enjoy the freedom of speech, thought, religion, belief, socialization, assembly, etc. Americans may say, think and believe anything they want and Americans may accept or reject anyone they want. Freedom of speech most certainly includes the freedom to disagree and to criticize. Free people shape and configure society not dictatorial government. Social engineering is pure communism and unconstitutional. People have to cope with their own characteristics.
People must adapt to the outcome of freedom. Freedom does not adapt to people; dictatorship does.
Comments Here Are Revealing
All the replies below confirm that Trumpers continue to view the Culture Wars as Job # 1. Never mind that the world has entered a crisis stage. There’s still plenty of time for nastiness. That’s how Trumpers show their ‘strength’.
here’s a guy with a chinese wife who studied at Shenzen Univ, has lived in china for about a decade and says this critique is
garbage, the name wuhan virus or china virus is inconsequential, the name does not incite hate, they refer to LOCATION
he gives many examples
that was weeks ago– and people are still fussing over the name!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_A2HKmZgI
maybe you will say he is racist because he was born in the RSA. of course!
What we call the virus is “inconsequential” unless we weaponize it. There is no other reason to call it the Chinese flu.
I’ll say the guy is a f..ing idiot.
A common name for a virus using its origin is usual. It is most certainly not weaponizing it. There has been zero rhetoric from Trump, or his administration, against Chinese Americans, or the Chinese people itself. He has, however, taken great issue with China jailing 8 doctors for disturbing the social order when they tried to warn the world. For allowing people to travel out of the epicenter. For lying. For not shutting down those exotic live animal meat markets of misery when the world warned them about it for years. For threatening to shut off the antibiotics that are now made in China. For falsely accusing the US of using a bioweapon of mass destruction.
He has emphasized the origin as China, not to persecute anyone of Chinese ethnicity but to rebut China’s propaganda that its source was a US weapon. China screwed up big time. The Chinese people are furious with their government. That can lead to a regime change. And so they are blaming anyone but themselves.
China, itself, referred to this as the Wuhan virus. Why? Because that’s how common names of infectious diseases often work. Origin or patient zero.
Everyone who claims that naming a virus for its origin is racist or bigoted is spouting Chinese propaganda. They are trying to save face because their abuse of their own doctors, and lies, allowed a plague to spread world wide. This is not the fault of the Chinese people.
Common names are often derived from species or location of origin. So stop spreading propaganda, unless you want to do a solid for a Communist Dictatorship that jailed doctors who tried to save lives.
Tick fever.
Possum fever.
Avian Flu
Swine flu
Legionnaire’s Disease (after the Legionnaire’s convention patient zero)
West Nile virus
Guinea worm
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Lyme Disease (after Lyme Pennsylvania)
Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (after the Ebola river in Zaire)
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
Valley Fever (named after San Joaquin Valley)
Norovirus (after Norwalk, OH)
Zika Fever (Zika forest, Uganda)
Ross River Fever (Australia)
Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (Omsk, Russia)
Marburg Virus (Marburg, Germany)
Japanese Encephalitis
German measles (named after German doctors who first studied it)
Spanish Flu (as has been pointed out, true origin unknown, but first reported deaths were from Spain)
Lassa Fever (Lassa, Nigeria)
that guy is married to a chinese woman in fact a doctor if I recall correctly, with whom he has children
and he’s lived there for a decade
of course you would think that someone who disagrees with you is an idiot
in spite of his first hand personal insight into China, its people, race relations and the Chinese, etc. because relevant experience never matters where “political correctness” is in question. it is basically like a religious dogma, not an issue to be discussed, only followed and believed,
I agree it isn’t fair to blame the Chinese people so I think it should be called the CCP flu so that the proper folk get all the accolades.
Kurtz, what you say is true. I absolutely cannot get through to people. I have given so many examples of this naming convention. But they are told Trump is racist, and plug their ears and shout lalalala when you provide facts. It is so frustrating.
These people are doing China’s dirty work to help a dictatorship save face.
Right, Paint Chips, and what did Biden call Trump when he smartly saved a lot of Americans from illness and death by creating a Chinese Travel ban? Biden called him a racist. That is the level of talk from the head of your party, playing the race card and being stupid at the same time.
“That does not mean Steyn should not be criticized for offensive comments,” nor the writer, for criticizing Steyn for those offensive comments. Look, some forty years since the assignation of openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk and San Fran has literally been labeled, by some, the “Gay Mecca of the World.” As for immunodeficiency and proclivities that invite, that is an unfortunate and little disputed fact. And so, shelter-in-place, God save the Gays!
No doubt De Blasio has similar motivation when he suggested a shelter-in-place for New York.
I fail to see how using their own term to describe a group is beyond the pale. Perhaps if societal rejects who have rejected society were used it might be more all encompassing as it would include ALL of San Francisco.