As IF Times

link Scarlett Johansson Threatens to Sue Over Nude Photos – UsMagazine.com.

Of course, the FBI is all over this one.  Apparently dozens of agents have volunteered their own personal time to work on this case.  The amount of time spent poring over evidence will be astronomical.   Staff will be pulled off cases looking for terrorist bombers in order to solve this pressing case.  Removing nude pics from the Internet.  Good luck with that. 

Poor Scarlett is obviously aghast that someone would hack into her telephone and steal private photos of her.  Living as she does in fairyland, she was unaware that just recently, Congressman Anthony Weiner had also suffered the fate of having his tighty-whities displayed on the world’s biggest billboard.  Of course in Weiner’s case, he was targeting a specific audience. but unlike Scarlett, the only ones who may have been interested were probably gay men.

The philosophical issue is that pictures stolen from Scarlett’s phone are equivalent to having them stolen from a locked drawer in her house.  I suppose that makes sense in theory and we won’t argue with the principle.  But here is the essential seam which separates principled types from common sense types: theory is not reality.  I can bake a pie and place it on my window to cool, but if it’s on a busy street, certain unprincipled types are going to take my pie.  If I want to park my convertible on Chicago’s south side, it may not be a good idea to leave the Nikon in full display on the car seat.  

Celebrities who need exposure to further their careers are often the ones to bleat about privacy issues when they know that their lives are lived under a microscope.  At least Oprah and Joy Behar are smart enough not to take nude pics of themselves on their phones.  Imagine the audience for that.  Anyone who thinks cell phones are private are plain delusional.  If Wikileaks can hack into top military secrets, what makes anyone think their Verizon account is safe?   In real life, people regularly have things stolen from their cars, their homes, they may even have nude pics of themselves circulating without their consent, but those are the hazards of real life.  Years and years of indifferent applications of punishments for law breaking has resulted in expectations of a certain amount of criminal behavior in our society.  How many people these days don’t lock their car or house when they leave?  What does it say when years ago, in many cities, it was common to see “no radio” stickers on car windows?   Most petty crimes aren’t even prosecuted any more for the time and effort involved. 

Celebrities should not live under the delusion that they are immune from the vicissitudes of life that normal people deal with.  Celebrity status does not entirely insulate them from the society they choose to live in.  They only benefit is that they get to publicize their moral outrage.

link When race is mentioned in the Chicago Tribune – chicagotribune.com.

More idiocy masking as objectivity.  The ill advised policies of political correctness actively pursued by liberal sensibilities are fast becoming caricatures of stupidity.  In the animal world, only the highly advanced humans would ignore the most basic tenets of survival.  The natural equivalent of all of this politically correct nonsense would be if Wildebeest were to blithely frolic about while all around them lions began to gather. This is fantasy, we would never see this because Wildebeest are not that stupid.

In the human world, thanks to moronic notions of fairness, people are asked to literally turn a blind eye to the nefarious elements of society.  Apparently, the label of racist is the most heinous of all things one can be accused of, more to be avoided than other sundry labels such as, oh let’s say, murderer, child molester, or Internet creep.  We know this thanks to the exploits of Fidel Castro, Roman Polanski and of course recently, Anthony Weiner.  Because of this mentality, we have an entire expensive and cumbersome bureaucracy dedicated to making life miserable for the travelling public at airports including the prototypical Swedish grandmothers and nursing infants.  Rather than scrutinize the segment of society that has historically been most at risk to cause grief and mayhem to innocents, why not be inclusive and give the Mexican prisoner treatment to everyone? This despite the fact that troublemakers tend to have distinct characteristics of appearance and background.

The non-reporting of all the facts that pertain to the rash of mob attacks in many US cities, but in particular as depicted by this Chicago paper is fomenting the same type of willful stupidity.  If the ‘kids’ involved in the mob attacks are not only generally, but almost exclusively black, wouldn’t that be germane to the story?  When the Tribune reports that packs of ‘kids’ were attacking innocent civilians, are the readers supposed to imagine a gaggle of Richie Cunninghams mobbing them?  What if you had to fill out a police report?

“Well, let’s see, there were 7 or 8 of them…they were young… all had arms…some had hair….”

“Any other distinguishing characteristics? Hair color, race perhaps?”

“Oh no, we didn’t notice whether they were all black kids wearing baseball caps askew,  baggy pants  and speaking Ebonics or not, no sir, none of that occurred to us because we’re not racists at all, no sirree…”

The whole charade is farcical.  For some to pretend that racial issues don’t exist and that those dynamics don’t come into normal social interaction is ostrich behaviour at its best.  When the current President of the United States is elected into office coming out of nowhere, with no executive experience, no history of legislative achievements and with a closet full of sketchy collaborators, there is no explanation for it other than the naked truth.  He was elected because he was black.  Given similar qualifications, no other person would have been elected if they didn’t have the racial advantage.  If fact, much has been made of this milestone in American history.  This achievement has been endlessly trumpeted by the liberal left as proof of society’s evolution.  The only thing this has really proved however is that a black president can be just as incompetent as a white president.  But hey,  at least they were inclusive.  The policies and results derived from Obama’s time in office would never be tolerated by the public and media if he were not black.  In fact, any criticism of his agenda is construed as a racist attack.

Nevertheless, Obama proves that people of color can achieve high office and indeed THE highest office, so the on going arguments for politically correct sensibilities are outdated.  The old chestnut of the disadvantaged inner city black youth has less validity.  The  achievements of Obama, of Oprah, of Condaleeza Rice, of Colin Powell, although exceptions, prove that the possibility for great success exists for black people and that resorting to anti social, criminal lifestyles is an option, not a destiny.

The delusion of the left over the foibles of people of any color perpetuates the segmentation of people and prevents true equality in society.  It’s unclear to me why people should be regarded as one big homogeneous glop.   It is an affront to rational thinking.  Stupidity and brilliance are present in all peoples and as such, instances of both should be pointed out, especially by an ‘objective’ media.  Those that ignore this are the true racists.