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🇺🇸 Cartoon Strip Canceled

🇺🇸 Cartoon Strip Canceled

Plus, what time is it on the moon?

March 06, 2023

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Plus, Europe is pushing for a lunar time zone.

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FLAG POLLS

📉 Friday, March 3, President Biden Job Approval: Approve 48, Disapprove 50 (Rasmussen Reports)

🐎 Thursday, March 2, Virginia: Trump vs. Biden: Biden 47, Trump 46 (Roanoke College)

🐘 Thursday, March 2, Virginia: DeSantis vs. Biden: DeSantis 48, Biden 43 (Roanoke College)

🐘 Thursday, March 2, Virginia: Youngkin vs. Biden: Youngkin 55, Biden 39 (Roanoke College)

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QUICK CLICKS

Fauci in February, Another Derailment, Cop City Molotov Cocktail

World: China expands defense budget 7.2%, marking slight increase (AP)

COVID: Fauci commissioned paper in Feb. 2020 to 'disprove' Wuhan lab leak theory — then pretended not to know author: emails (NY Post)

US: Second Norfolk Southern train derails in Ohio (CBS News) + No hazardous material on board 28 cars of Norfolk Southern train derailed in Ohio (NBC News)

US: Manchin Balks On Endorsing Biden, Teases ‘Political Decision’ (Daily Wire)

US: Biden renews call for new voting protections in visit to Selma (CNN)

US: Atlanta's future police training facility 'Cop City' set ablaze (Fox News)

US: ‘I am your retribution’: Trump rules supreme at CPAC as he relaunches bid for White House (The Guardian)

RACE

Cartoon Strip Canceled

Credit: Art of Charm CC 3.0

Late last month, controversy ensued when Scott Adams – creator of the Dilbert comic strip – suggested White people should stay away from Black people based on the results of a Rasmussen poll. In the survey, 26% disagreed with the phrase “it’s ok to be White,” while 21% weren’t sure.

Reporting from the Left: Scott Adams' problematic comments are nothing new, cartoonists say (NPR)

Reporting from the Right: USA Today, Other Newspapers Drop ‘Dilbert’ Over Creator Scott Adams’ Racially Charged Comments (Daily Wire)

From the Flag: Many quickly denounced Adams’ comments as racist, and a number of newspapers have decided to stop running the Dilbert strip. Some say the phrase “it’s ok to be White” has been co-opted by White supremacy groups. Others maintain the poll results are troubling and worthy of deeper discussion. Here’s more from both sides.

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Adams’ Comments Were Brutish and Obfuscated a Deeper Conversation

Because Adams’ comments broke with the prevailing narrative, he’s been canceled, which is no surprise given race was the topic.
Adams now says his comments were hyperbolic, but he could have avoided “cancelation” by framing what he said differently.
The typical, knee-jerk response to Adams’ comments will do nothing to help race matters.

“Is It Still OK to Be White?” Matthew Boose, American Greatness: “Scott Adams’ viral rant… has received lots of media attention. (He) was of course… summarily purged with the usual performative outrage. No one bothered to ask the obvious question: Why should blacks believe otherwise, when they are told that America is all about them? At work, school, and in the media, the overbearing cult of black idolatry and white guilt is the closest thing to religion that many Americans still encounter in everyday life. It has become an almost inescapable presence, so pervasive indeed that it often passes unnoticed. … This is the situation of American whites. There are magic, blasphemous words he dare not utter, patterns he dare not notice, for fear of being consumed by the cruel, avaricious monster of ‘social justice.’ Most of all, he must not answer the firehose of racial calumnies directed his way, or question the narrative of black victimhood with which he is constantly smothered.”

“Swift self-destruction: Why did Dilbert artist unleash that racist diatribe?” Howard Kurtz, Fox News: “White resentment of minorities is hardly a new phenomenon. The advent of affirmative action made many Whites – including in newsrooms – feel that this was not equality in the Martin Luther King Jr. mode but reverse discrimination based on their skin color. The urban riots of 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, made some whites feel there was a double standard in justice and crime. But Adams, who launched Dilbert in 1989, has been fabulously successful. Even if he’s right about what he sees as race-related setbacks, he’s hardly a poster boy for oppressed White people. … In videos over the last two days, Adams has contended that what he said was not racist at all. He said that calling Black Americans a ‘hate group’ was just ‘hyperbole’ - which seems like a pretty weak defense.”

One more opinion piece from the Right: The martyring of Scott Adams Kat Rosenfield, UnHerd Opinion

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Adams Went Off The Deep End After Reading Bad Data

After progress in the 1950s and especially the 1960s, America is re-segregating, hurting Black children in particular.
Adams' rant is not only morally wrong, it came in response to bad data, and lacks any coherent thought.
It’s stunning that Adams would choose to torpedo his career and reputation based on such a dubious poll.

“The ‘Dilbert’ Cartoonist and the Durability of White-Flight Thinking” Charles M. Blow, New York Times Opinion: “Adams was consoling himself for failing in the role of white savior… because, in the minds of some white people, Black people are pathologically broken. As Adams concluded: ‘This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape.’ … He’s not alone in this view or approach. Since the process of school desegregation began in the 1950s; the gains of the civil rights movement of the 1960s… as more Black people trickled out to the suburbs to which white people had fled, there was some ebb to segregation and some hope that it was coming to an end. … Now? America is resegregating. A 2021 analysis… found that ‘out of every metropolitan region in the United States… 81% were more segregated as of 2019 than they were in 1990.’ That pattern contributes to more segregation in our schools, which research has shown has negative outcomes, particularly for Black children.”

“The Foolishness of Scott Adams” William Saletan, The Bulwark: “Adams is wrong. Not just morally, but practically. His advice is empirically unfounded and would make everything worse. … The poll had several problems. For starters, ‘It’s okay to be white’ sounds innocuous, but it’s also a trolling slogan, and some nonwhite respondents may have recognized it as such. … Every time one of these racially incendiary arguments comes along, the cycle repeats itself. The offender gets canceled. His opinion is dismissed as unthinkably repellent. He and his allies seize on that dismissal as evidence that the establishment is suppressing dissent. Nothing should be unthinkable, the dissenters argue. There’s some secret truth, some taboo insight, that the cancel culture is hiding from you. Sorry, but there’s no great insight here. … His reasoning is as sloppy as his research. In every way, he’s just wrong.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: The Poll That Did in Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Is Even Dumber Than You Can Imagine Aymann Ismail, Slate

FLAG THIS

More Unites Us Than Divides Us

A poll conducted in 2020 asked Black and White Americans to rate a variety of groups using a “feeling thermometer” that ranged from 0 to 100.

It found each group holds largely positive views of each other: 62% of Black Americans rated “whites” warmly, while 66% of White Americans said the same of “blacks.”

As for “colder” ratings (below 50 degrees), 18% of Black Americans rated “whites” coldly, while 6% of White Americans rated “blacks” coldly (American National Election Studies).

FLAG FINDS

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WATERCOOLER

Cronkite Retires, Dumpling Drama, Little Debbie Is Real

Cronkite speaking at a NASA ceremony in February 2004

On This Day in 1981: Walter Cronkite signs off as anchor of the CBS Evening News after 19 years at the post, with one last "that's the way it is."

Eater: The Great LA Dumpling Drama

Fast Company: The vertical farming bubble is finally popping

Real Clear Science: Could Artificial Intelligence Have Invented Cubism?

Today I Learned Little Debbie is an actual, real-life human – and she's currently serving as the Zebra Cakes maker's executive vice president.

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