woke Archives - The Pennsylvania Daily Star

Commentary: The Decline and Fall of Newspapers

August 9, 2022August 8, 2022 RealClearWire

A few years ago, you would have unfolded your newspaper and read opinion and analysis like this. Those days are gone. Today, most of us get our news and commentary online, perhaps supplemented by network or cable television, although TV viewership is far smaller than in the days of “The Big Three.” Buried alongside those iconic broadcasters is the public’s confidence in news from all sources. Only 16% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, only 11% in TV news. Those numbers keep sinking. Today, if Walter Cronkite ended his broadcast, “And that’s the way it is,” most people would just smirk.

Commentary: The Democrats’ New Political Norms May Soon Come Back to Haunt Them

August 2, 2022August 1, 2022 Admin

In the era of peak woke we are supposed to accept any radical departure from long-held custom and tradition as the new normal.

Perhaps. But if so, is the improved new code of behavior at least reciprocal? Will the radical Left really wish to live by its own novel normality when it loses power?

Commentary: ‘Woke’ Corporate Support of Black Lives Matter Has Deadly Consequences

July 21, 2022July 20, 2022 RealClearWire

You’ve heard the chants in the streets of America: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon.”

You’ve seen the graffiti scrawled on walls and monuments and broken windows in the wake of “peaceful protests”: ACAB, which stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.”

Commentary: U.S. Spirals Toward Lawless Carnage; BLM and Woke Corporations Silent

May 25, 2022May 24, 2022 RealClearWire

Being “woke” once symbolized one’s awareness of the historical and present injustices faced by an individual or group in the pursuit of their advancement or being. It meant that the blinders of matters of racism and systems of oppression were removed so that one could fully awaken to the reality that racism exists. It is a continual and daily acknowledgement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I am a young, 26-year-old black man in America. I have seen true racism, and the racist carnage in Buffalo, Charleston, Houston, and other cities across our country, and it has stirred in me and in many others a desire to see justice served.

Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: The Cycles of Revolutions in Our Midst

May 17, 2022May 16, 2022 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

We are witnessing a number of radical military, social, and political revolutions that are changing the United States—and the world—in fundamental ways that we still have not appreciated.

The taboo about never mentioning the first-strike use of nuclear weapons in a major conventional war is now apparently over. Vladimir Putin routinely threatens their use. Communist China hints at its growing nuclear capability and is hell-bent on rushing into production a huge new nuclear missile force. The world is defining nuclear incineration down.

Academia’s Woke Influence on the Media: Analysis

February 28, 2022 Admin

Higher education’s push for Critical Race Theory influences not just college campuses, but also American society and media.

Earlier this year, Campus Reform reported on a Jan. 20 speaking event at the University of Pittsburgh where three scholars used the Critical Race Theory framework to examine three controversial court cases decided in Nov. 2021.

Commentary: The Woke War Machine vs. America’s ‘Minutemoms’

February 15, 2022February 14, 2022 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Group protesting; "no justice no peace" sign

Critical social justice’s (CSJ) march through America’s institutions is very nearly complete. CSJ, and its woke evangelists, easily penetrated and commandeered U.S. colleges and universities.

Even White House occupant Joe Biden speaks incessantly about “white supremacy.” The Department of Homeland Security tells us white domestic terrorism is the top threat to America.

Not to be left out, corporate America has proclaimed its total fealty to woke ideology. Leaked documents show companies like Coke imploring their employees to “be less white.” Raytheon—whose laser-guided bombs are disproportionally dropped on people of color—tells its white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, English-speaking employees to deconstruct their identities, “identify [their] privilege,” and “step aside” in favor of other identity groups. AT&T offers employees training that says racism is a “uniquely white trait,” telling white employees that they “are the problem.” It’s pure racism, of course. But not a single Fortune 500 CEO has spoken out against it. They’re too frightened to do so.

Commentary: Woke Is Broke and Costing Democrats

January 25, 2022January 24, 2022 RealClearWire

We are in the first month of 2022, and, from every sign, it appears my Democratic friends are determined to stick to their guns when it comes to both their agenda and how they intend to sell it. In other words, America has not heard the last of the Woke Police.

The 2021 elections, especially in Virginia, could have served as a wake-up call for Democrats. When Terry McAuliffe announced he thought parents should not be telling schools what to teach, the voters spoke loudly and clearly that they felt differently. Attempts to make Republican Glenn Youngkin into the Old Dominion’s version of Donald Trump fell flat as he scored a solid victory.

You might think that after the events of 2021, Democrats would be inclined to engage in some self-reflection. You would be wrong. How do we account for the largest increase in the inflation rate in a generation? President Biden has decided Sen. Elizabeth Warren has it right. Defying logic, gravity, and common sense, they have placed the blame on “meat conglomerates.” Why the cost of a steak would cause spikes in the cost of so many other items, including gasoline, is a carefully guarded secret. Why don’t Democrats in a position of leadership make clear they will not submit to viewpoints held by such a small percentage of the public?

Commentary: The ‘New Normal’ and the Assault on Reason

January 18, 2022January 17, 2022 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Our political situation is so chaotic and strange right now that we can’t take anything for granted—including what is normal. So it’s often necessary to explain what may seem obvious to readers of American Greatness, but is regarded as strange or almost incomprehensible to other people.

For example, it is obvious to me, and probably to you, that today’s “progressive” agenda is actually pushing our country back to a more primitive past.

Consider some of the most urgent priorities of woke ideology:

Commentary: Five Times Campuses Ruined Holidays in 2021

December 24, 2021December 23, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

two people with Santa hats looking at Christmas tree

Woke and leftist ideologies often target traditions and celebrations around holidays, particularly those that pertain to Christianity and American identity.

With 2021 coming to an end, Campus Reform has compiled a list of the top five instances of colleges and universities ruining holidays on campus.

1. Colleges celebrate Valentine’s Day with ‘Sex in the Dark’

Multiple colleges hosted a question and answer “Sex in the Dark,” a virtual Q&A event with health experts, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Commentary: Five Times Campuses Ruined Holidays in 2021

December 24, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

Woke and leftist ideologies often target traditions and celebrations around holidays, particularly those that pertain to Christianity and American identity.

With 2021 coming to an end, Campus Reform has compiled a list of the top five instances of colleges and universities ruining holidays on campus.

1. Colleges celebrate Valentine’s Day with ‘Sex in the Dark’

Multiple colleges hosted a question and answer “Sex in the Dark,” a virtual Q&A event with health experts, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Commentary: Christmas Movies Without the Hollywoke Scrooge

December 19, 2021December 19, 2021 Admin

Christmas tree, TV playing The Grinch and stockings on chimney

Hollywoke may be spearheading the War on Christmas, but three cable channels are mounting a far more effective counteroffensive, running traditionalist Christmas movies 24/7. And one of them, Lifetime, is a surprising beachhead. While HBO Max is showcasing the insufferable Seth Rogan’s latest bomb, Santa, Inc. (angry elf girl wants to succeed white male Santa Claus), the once male-bashing Lifetime “for Women” now boasts such romantic “heteronormative” fare as My Sweet Holiday, A Sweet Christmas Romance, and A Christmas Village Romance. Lifetime has joined the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries to reflect a realistic rather than fantastical vision of and for women, and their genuine desire for true love over a feminist-fueled man-light career pursuit.

Some Grinches criticize the films as bland, corny, and predictable. They’re certainly not on par with Yuletide classics by Ernst Lubitch (The Shop Around the Corner) or Leo McCarey (An Affair to Remember), and they do stress a secular more than spiritual Christmas magic. But normal viewers gleam from them values no longer found in the tiresomely “dark, edgy” mainstream series and feature films, such as beauty, sensitivity, warmth, uplift, and niceness.

Start with beauty. The movies are gorgeously photographed to resemble, yes, Hallmark cards. Many depict Robert Frostian villages and valleys in holiday winter, but even major cities like San Francisco in A Christmas Village Romance, Chicago in A Kiss Before Christmas, and New York in the majority appear as lovely metropoles instead of the crime-ridden progressive hellholes the Left has made of them.

Commentary: America at the Intersection of Woke and Incompetent

November 19, 2021November 18, 2021 Pennsylvania Daily Star Staff

For as long as most of us have been alive, there have been declarations that America’s best days are behind us and that we are in a slow, steady decline. Against this backdrop, there is a growing sentiment that our present leadership in Washington is something altogether different, and worse.