Today in 1968, Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vita” reached the charts. It is said to be the first heavy metal song to chart. It charted at number 117.
That was the short version. The long version takes an entire album side:
At the other end of the charts was South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela:
Quite a selection of birthdays today, starting with T.G. Sheppard:
Charlie Sykes used to produce solid conservative/libertarian content, and does here:
Apparently, we have to remind people about this again:
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
― Benjamin FranklinThere is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
― Ray BradburyWe’ve devoted a great deal of time lately to discussing illiberalism and authoritarianism, and justifiably so. But we have to recognize that liberalism and free expression face a two-front assault — from the intolerant Left as well as the troglodyte Right.
ICYMI: The other day, the American Booksellers Association donned the sackcloth of wokeness and issued this statement of performative groveling:
American Booksellers Association @ABAbook
The “serious, violent incident” here was sending out copies of this book:
Some background.
The author of the offending book, Abigail Shrier, writes for the Wall Street Journal, and is a graduate of Columbia College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. Her book is obviously controversial, but it was named one of the best books of the year by The Economistand one of the best of 2021 by The Times of London.
Reviewing the book in Commentary Magazine, Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote:
“If you want to understand why suddenly it seems that (mostly) young girls from (mostly) white middle- or upper-class backgrounds (many of whom are in the same friend groups) have decided to start dressing like boys, cutting their hair short, changing their name to a masculine one, and even taking hormones, using chest compressors, and getting themselves surgically altered, you must read Abigail K. Shrier’s urgent new book, Irreversible Damage.”
But not surprisingly, this sort of thing triggered opponents, who demanded that it be suppressed.
After receiving two Twitter complaints, Target stopped selling the book (a decision they later reversed… and then reversed again). Hundreds of Amazon employees signed a petition demanding the company stop selling the book.
Even the ACLU seemed to break bad on the idea that the book should be available in the marketplace of ideas. Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted: “Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans…. We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.”
He declared: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.”
Shrier commented: “You read that right: Some in today’s ACLU favor book banning. Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, went further, tweeting: ‘I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.’
“This,” Shrier wrote, ”is where leftist extremism, encouraged by cowardly corporations, leads.”
**
Under normal circumstances, the American Booksellers Association is very much into free expression and opposed to censorship. They are the sort of people who wear buttons declaring “WE READ BANNED BOOKS.”
Its website still includes this declaration:
But it turns out there are limits to free expression, not just for the ABA, but for many of the nation’s booksellers. This month ABA sent a mailing to 750 bookstores, which included a copy of the heretical book. Blowback was fierce.
Publisher’s Weekly reported that the American Booksellers Association was “facing withering criticism from booksellers after walking back its promotion of an anti-trans title to member bookstores.”
Among booksellers… there was little disagreement about the content of the book. “As longtime @ABAbook members with beloved staff across the gender spectrum, we’re extremely disappointed and angered to see the ABA promoting dangerous, widely discredited anti-trans propaganda, and we’re calling for accountability,” the Harvard Book Store wrote on Twitter.
Within hours, it issued the fulsome apology. Shrier’s reaction:
Despite the tone of the apology, the wokest of the booksellers were not satisfied. The outraged booksellers, “said the statement fell short, calling out the organization’s use of the passive voice in the opening sentence.” ReportedPublishers Weekly:
“They also demanded greater transparency about how the decision to include the book was initially made, and called for demonstrable steps to restore trust with trans book workers and authors. Some called on the ABA to offer promotions for trans authors’ books at no cost.”
But elsewhere, the reaction to the ABA’s statement was blistering, with much of it focusing on the irony of an organization devoted to selling books apologizing for selling a book.
Rich Horton @PurePopPubJoanne Mason @JoanneMason11
Brian Schubert @SchubertBrian
Howard WallJuly 15th 2021
Annie Kenney @lennysperson@ABAbook I understand burning books can be very cathartic for those frightened of words.
__hodl__running #btc☂️🟩 @__hodl__@ABAbook Information is not violent JFC this is ridiculous and dangerous, go read this again
Francis Wheen @FrancisWheenThis is not a debate over Transgenderism, but rather a question of whether we can even have a debate at all. It is an objectively ominous moment when the folks who sell books think there are some ideas too dangerous to print… or read.
Take note: if you are offended by a book, (1) don’t buy it, (2) don’t read it, or (3) make an effort to correct or refute it.
Don’t burn it.
Sykes and other anti-Trump conservatives tend to dismiss other conservatives’ claiming a culture war is taking place in this country. It’s hard to argue that we’re not in a cultural cold war when you cannot even discuss a controversial issue.
The Arizona Republic:
The Phoenix Suns built an early lead, and then unraveled. The Milwaukee Bucks snatched a Game 5 road win, 123-119, to take a 3-2 lead on Saturday. Trailing 16 points after the first quarter, the Bucks overcame the deficit and continued to build on their own lead. It started in the second quarter.
“Well, both second and third,” Suns coach Monty Williams said. “You give up 79 points. And the reasoning behind it, I gotta look at the film to see, but we just didn’t have the same energy that we had in the first and fourth, when you look at the numbers.”
In those two quarters, the Bucks scored 79 points. And they did it shooting 32-of-45, including 10-of-17 from 3.
“It just put us in a hole,” Williams said. “I felt like we were playing from behind for a long, long time.”
Still, guard Chris Paul didn’t want to fully boil it down to that stretch. At least, not until he could delve into it more.
“It’s a 48-minute game,” Paul said. “I’ll go back and look at it and see, but we gotta play the way we started off the game. We gotta put a full game together like that.”
In the third quarter, the Bucks eventually built a double-digit lead, but not until after a more evenly-matched stretch.
“We were trading basket for basket for I think five minutes straight,” Suns guard Devin Booker said. “We’re at our best when we get stops and get out in transition. So that’s what we hang [our hats on] on defense, and we just have to be better.”
In the second quarter, the Bucks shot 70.8%, while the Suns shot 35.7%. Booker played just 6:14 in the second quarter. Williams wouldn’t dabble in re-thinking that decision in hindsight.
The federal government is stepping up its effort to purge the internet of COVID-19 “misinformation.” On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki singled out a dozen specific anti-vaccine Facebook accounts and called on the platform to ban them.
“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” said Psaki. “All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including ones that Facebook owns.”
She was discussing a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report on “confronting health misinformation.” It instructs social media platforms to redesign their algorithms so that false information about COVID-19 is deprioritized, to shield journalists and medical professionals from harassment, and even to address misinformation during livestreams, a task that the report admits is “difficult” given the streams’ “temporary nature and use of audio and video.”
“We all have the power and responsibility to confront health misinformation,” tweetedSurgeon General Vivek Murthy. “That’s why we included recommendations for individuals, educators, researchers, health professionals, tech companies, and more.”
The federal government is not explicitly ordering tech platforms to take down content. These dictates are essentially strongly-worded suggestions. But you’re forgiven if you think Psaki’s summary of the report sounded like command.
“Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts,” she said. “Posts that would be within their policy for removal often remain up for days, and that’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.”
Psaki was alluding to anti-vaccine content, though the report itself impugns “medical misinformation” more broadly. Of course, the government itself has spread plenty of “medical misinformation,” from the early bad guidance on masks to White House coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci’s deliberate misstatements about the herd immunity threshold. For months, government health officials treated the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origins as a wild conspiracy theory, and Facebook followed suit: It vigorously censored content that promoted the lab leak theory. That policy was not revised until June.
Efforts by the government and tech platforms to suppress misinformation have undeniably resulted sometimes in the suppression of information that is either factual, or could plausibly turn out to be factual. (This has been the case outside the realm of pandemic-related content as well.) New initiatives undertaken by the federal government that would encourage Facebook to be even more heavy-handed with potential misinformation should be met with skepticism: The track record is just not very encouraging.
The White House’s targeting of Facebook should make critics a little sympathetic to Mark Zuckerberg’s position. Prominent legislators from both political parties—as well as the current and former presidents—want to aggressively regulate his company if not break it apart entirely. Facebook’s CEO must feel tremendous pressure to give federal health bureacrats exactly what they’re asking for, or else.
Instead of defending the rights of private companies to set their own moderation policies independent of whatever the government would like them to do, Republicans are taking this opportunity to further erode Facebook’s autonomy. Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) even suggested that the site’s submission to the feds renders it an agent of the state.
“The social media platforms are increasingly just arms of the federal government and the Biden White House,” Hawley tweeted. “Why should the #BigTech companies continue to be treated as private companies when they function as agencies of the federal government.”
Hawley is essentially saying that a private company complying with the government becomes a state actor, and thus should be bound to the same restrictions as any other public agency. (Former President Donald Trump’s doomed social media lawsuits rest on a version of this argument.) But Hawley and others are also attempting to punish these same private companies for not doing what the White House wants. (In Hawley’s case, he wants Facebook to suppress fewer posts.) That’s quite a Catch-22: Facebook is in trouble either way.
David Bowie fans might remember today for two reasons. In 1974, his “Diamond Dog” tour ended in New York City …
… six years before he appeared in Denver as the title character of “The Elephant Man.”
Two Beatles anniversaries of note today: The movie “Yellow Submarine” premiered in London …
… six years before John Lennon was ordered to leave the U.S. within 60 days. (He didn’t.)
The 1970 Summerfest started today with a pretty good lineup:
Birthdays today start with pianist Vince Guaraldi. Who? The creator of the Charlie Brown theme (correct name: “Linus and Lucy”):
I have been too busy (including vacation) to comment on the Bucks’ trip to the NBA Finals before now.
But Wednesday night’s 109–103 win that tied the Finals at two wins each requires me to post this from the Arizona Republic:
The Phoenix Suns had turned each of their previous three playoffs series in their favor with Game 4 victories on the road.
Not this time in the NBA Finals.
The Milwaukee Bucks withstood a mega 42-point effort from Devin Booker by forcing 17 turnovers that led to 24 points in topping the second-seeded Suns, 109-103, in Wednesday’s Game 4 to even the series before a charged sellout crowd of 16,911 at Fiserv Forum.
“The turnovers just crushed us tonight,” said Suns coach Monty Williams as the third-seeded Bucks also got 17 offensive rebounds and 19 second-chance points.
“We shot 50% from the field, but they got 19 more possessions. Over the course of the game when you just give it up that many times, the turnovers and offensive rebounding was a bit of a hill for us to climb.”
The fans chanted “Bucks in 6!” as Game 5 is set for Saturday at Phoenix Suns Arena.
“How bad do you want it? How bad do you really want it,” Bucks All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo said. “And just leave-the-game-swinging kind of mentality. Try to be aggressive. Try to get stops. Try to set screens. Do everything physically possible to put yourself in a position to win this game. I think everybody was feeling that. That’s what we did.”
Phoenix had won its previous Game 4s in its journey to the finals.
- at Los Angeles Lakers: Won 100-92. Tied series at 2-2 (Won in six).
- at Denver Nuggets: Won 116-102. Took 3-0 series lead (Won in four).
- at Los Angele Clippers: Won 84-80. Took 3-1 series lead (Won in six).
Again, not this time.
Khris Middleton scored a team-high 40 points with 14 coming in the fourth quarter while Antetokounmpo added 26 points, 14 rebounds and eight assists to just one turnover as the Bucks won Game 3 and 4 at home in this best-of-7 series.
“You need somebody who can make those shots,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “He and Giannis in a pick-and-roll, Giannis setting great screens. Khris, I thought he had some good looks kind of early. But then he just stayed with it. Credit to him. A lot of big, tough shots, and then the tough finish in transition. He was special. A lot of good stuff from Khris. And defensively, too, I think he’s given us a lot on that end.”
The Bucks overcame a seven-point deficit with 8:39 left in the fourth quarter to even the series. Game 6 will be back in Milwaukee on Tuesday.
Game 7, if necessary, will be July 22 in Phoenix.
“When you have that kind of a lead in the fourth, if we can just hold on to the ball and get good possessions, you feel like you can at least hold it there,” Williams said. “So I got to look at the film and see, was it schematics or was it just their defense, I’m not quite sure yet, but we certainly had a lot of self-inflicted stuff tonight.”
The Bucks closed the game on a 27-14 run as Middleton gave the Bucks the lead for good, 101-99, on a jumper with 1:28 left.
Fourteen seconds later, Antetokounmpo, the 2019-20 NBA Defensive Player of the Year, followed that up with a massive block of Deandre Ayton’s lob dunk.
“I thought I was going to get dunked on, to be honest with you,” the two-time MVP said. “But you know, going down the stretch, just do whatever it takes to win the game. Just put yourself in a position that can win the game. I saw the play coming. I saw that Chris was going to throw the lob and I was just going to jump vertical toward the rim. Hopefully I can be there in time, and I was there in time and was able to get a good block.
The loss puts a damper of the performance of Booker, who bounced back from a career playoff-low 10-point effort in Game 3 to post his third 40-point game this postseason.
“You knew it was going to happen,” Suns wing Cam Johnson said. “You knew he wasn’t going to have another tough night. You know he’s going to get to it and he’s going to get buckets. That’s just what he does. He’s a great player. He’s one of the best players in our league.”
Booker set a record for most points scored in his first postseason run as he has 542 in the playoffs, but didn’t find much comfort in his special Game 4 performance.
“It doesn’t matter at all,” Booker said. “I said that after last game too, when I struggled shooting it. The main objective is to win the game. So anything that goes on throughout the game, it doesn’t matter, for real.”
Phoenix led 82-76 going into the fourth quarter as Booker had 18 points in the third quarter on a perfect 7-of-7 shooting.
The Suns shot 70.6% from the field in the quarter (12-of-17).
However, Booker picked up his fifth foul with 10:50 left in the fourth.
The Suns were up six, 85-79, when Cameron Payne replaced Booker and led, 93-90, when Booker returned with 5:55 remaining.
“He could have gone for 50-plus tonight,” Williams said. “I wanted to get him in maybe a minute earlier than I did, you’re just holding on trying to get as many stops and solid possessions as you can, but it’s not an ideal situation, but I thought we managed it well.”
Booker didn’t get called for another foul, but had two instances when the whistle could’ve easily blown against him. He grabbed Jrue Holiday in transition with 3:38 left in the game, but wasn’t called for the foul.
After the game, lead official James Capers said Booker should’ve been called for the foul on that play.
“During live play, I saw a clean sweep of the ball and thought it was a no call,” Capers said. “However, after seeing the replay, I now realize that I missed Booker’s right arm around the waist of Holiday, and it should have been a defensive foul on the play.”
The Suns went into halftime tied at 52-52 as Booker led all scorers with 20 on 8-of-15 shooting after scoring just 10 in Game 3 on 3-of-14 shooting.
Mikal Bridges added seven points in the first half as the Suns led by as many as nine in the first half. Chris Paul managed just two points in the first half on 1-4 shooting.
Paul finished the game with 10 points and a game-high five turnovers.
The Bucks, as a team, had five total turnovers.
“It was me, I had five of them,” said Paul about the turnovers. “It was bad decision making. That time we were down two and I tried to cross over right there, slipped, turned it over. I had some bad passes in the first half. They got a significant amount more shots than us, so for me I got to take care of the ball.”
His last turnover led to a Middleton layup on the other end to put Milwaukee ahead, 103-99, with 27.2 seconds left.
Usually so careful with the ball, Paul has totaled 15 turnovers in the last three games. When asked if Paul was physically OK, Williams said the 16-year veteran was fine.
“Great players have games like that,” Williams said. “We expect him to bounce back. He had five (turnovers), but we had 17 and they scored 24 points, you know what I mean? That was pretty much the game right there. Then you double that up with the offensive rebounding, so it wasn’t just Chris. As a team tonight, we got to take better care of the ball.”
Bridges didn’t score again after halftime as he took just four shots for the game, marking the second straight game he didn’t score double figures after posting a career playoff-high 27 in a Game 2 win in Phoenix.
This is a slow day in rock music, save for one particular birthday and one death.
It’s not Tony Jackson of the Searchers …
… or Tom Boggs, drummer for the Box Tops …
Benny Avni:
When I first got a whiff a while back of the plot, I thought, no way: Even the Iranian regime wouldn’t undermine the nuclear talks in Vienna by kidnapping a journalist as distinguished as Masih Alinejad. Then another thought nagged me: What if the Biden administration, eager to cut a deal with Tehran, would prevent the Feds from indicting, and airing the case in public.
Turns out I was wrong — up to a point — on both counts.
All I knew earlier was that FBI agents had shown Ms. Alinejad high-resolution photographs and videos that were taken by someone that might have worked for, or with, the Iranian camarilla. The G-men told her she was in danger. She and her husband, the journalist Kambiz Foroohar, were hustled to safe houses for their protection and told to cancel all planned international travel. Later, when they returned home to Brooklyn, an NYPD squad car was stationed constantly in front of their house.
On Tuesday night the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against five Iranian agents. Although FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney, Jr., was quoted in the indictment as saying “this is not some far fetched movie plot,” it sure sounded like one.
The pictures and videos I heard of included depictions of Ms. Alinejad and Mr. Foroohar, their daily routines, their Brooklyn home, the garden in front of it — the works. They were shot by an apparently unsuspecting American detective, hired by Iranian agents. They’s said he’d aid an investigation into an uncollected debt from someone who escaped to Dubai.
Other details were even more ominous. One of the conspirators researched military-type speed boats to learn which, after an abduction of Ms. Alinejad, could transport her by sea from the Brooklyn waterfront to Venezuela, where she’d be speedily transferred to Iran. Similar abductions of dissidents, including one from France, have ended up in death.
The Iranian regime has attempted to kidnap Ms. Alinejad before. In her autobiographical book, “The Wind In My Hair,” the Iranian-born Brooklynite details how she canceled a trip to Turkey, where she was told she could meet family members. Just in time she realized the plan was merely a setup by Iran to abduct her.
When Ms. Alinejad first learned of the new plot eight months ago, she was really scared, she told Voice of America’s Farsi Service, where she has a radio show.
Then she concluded that the mullahs are now more scared of her than she is of them. That is because her simple but powerful message, combined with an engaging personality and unparalleled on-air charisma, are so subversive to a rigid regime like Iran’s. It means that she really does threaten its hold on power.
I witnessed Ms. Alinejad’s ability to engage audiences and rouse feelings a while back, in one of our first meetings. She constantly fiddled with her iPhone, posting endless messages and videos to her millions of followers on Telegram, Facebook, and other social media — all without missing a beat on our conversation.
At one point she even managed to get a whole flock of Long Island wild turkeys to answer her bird call loudly, and approvingly. (I suggested she should enter, and win, Kentucky’s annual turkey calling contest.)
While the entire world was busy arguing about resolving Tehran’s nuclear threat, Ms. Alinejad, a journalist who escaped Iran after calling out regime officials, developed a much simpler message: Why should any woman hide a beautiful shock of hair like hers under a hijab, as the Iranian law dictates.
That query became a powerful symbol of the clerical regime’s oppression of women (and also of men). Her followers regularly post selfies as they remove mandatory hair coverings in public squares or defy the ban on women entering sports stadiums. Many of the women get arrested but, inspired by Ms. Alinejad, they remain defiant.
Ms. Alinejad says the kidnapping plot will not deter her from fighting for human rights in Iran. Will America now back her? President Biden vowed to place human rights on top of his foreign policy. Ms. Alinejad’s campaign, however, got no recognition from the administration.
Unlike Secretary of State Pompeo, who warmly and publicly hosted her at the State Department in 2019, Secretary Blinken has yet to meet or acknowledge her feminist message. On Tuesday night the State Department issued a bland statement, generically calling on the Iranian regime to respect human rights and freedom of expression, adding that the kidnapping plot “is a law enforcement matter and we refer you to the Department of Justice for any further inquiries.”
Really? As the FBI’s Mr. Sweeney said in the indictment, “We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S. based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran.” What part of “backed by the Iranian government” is no “matter” for our top diplomats? At least Washington could now demand the release of Alireza Alinejad, who was arrested, convicted in a show trial and sentenced to eight years in Iranian dungeons for the “crime” of being Masih Alinejad’s brother.
To add insult to injury, the administration announced, on the day Justice unsealed the indictment, the removal of Iranian oil executives from a list of sanctioned regime officials. It was almost as if Washington rewarded Tehran for a failed plot to seize an American woman on our own soil.
Sure enough, administration officials are making clear to reporters who ask about the indictment fallout that they remain eager to renew a nuclear deal that, if nothing else, fail to end the ayatollah’s nuclear ambitions while making Tehran’s oppressors flush with cash and assuring their survival in power.
![Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by [Abigail Shrier]](https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/NbKbLWLWYRdMGA_F7WlhUsC4WXVwiHF_tD5B-p6VmhBhLHYAulbLSQ0hgyKkTrCQOoCNzqo-ntBuXk5-844mXuZ1IpsoHQtqkgbwaItnQwLCy8VzVolqcAimzLtvmuvDqVrV8LoR42fAVVQwKdenntE-2SZaG8GwHlQJH69usQdkjfE3UrKHMQQ93e9wGCP3ZOXtbQFmk2lBOBm3mQXyGmWB9dgOy8dtBAh2ub0s0FRlK5JjzcNPKqXf1VA1KkJEEMx76UKf2vEk-65KVYcF4z0bXsbYWntu9cERxWuHjDIIpbKL1wpfOPHfJhC2TL6ed-XsNkn7KaRRsZtQJWHEluK8=s0-d-e1-ft#https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_324,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7f12f17-63e0-4234-9cba-902621948bea_324x500.jpeg "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by [Abigail Shrier]")
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 