Asian man loses job because his name is "Robert Lee"

Justice is dead in America and the insanity of wealthy, politically-correct liberals is on the march.  Sports channel ESPN says it has pulled an Asian announcer from a game at the University of Virginia for having the same name as Confederate general Robert E. Lee.  "Lee" is the second most popular last name in Korea (behind "Kim" and ahead of "Park"), so does this move by a top media organization indicate a certain cultural bias in its judgment or just plain stupidity?  Some would argue that it is just another incidence of liberals being racist. 

Journalist Victor Morton , of the Washington Times, wrote:

"Apparently, even being Asian doesn’t mean people won’t take you for being a white nationalist.

ESPN confirmed Tuesday night that it had decided to pull an announcer from calling a University of Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee. This Robert Lee is Asian.

'We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment, it felt right to all parties,' reads the ESPN statement posted at the popular Fox Sports college-football blog Outkick the Coverage.

'Did I mention that Robert Lee is Asian?' wrote disbelieving blogger Clay Travis, who first broke the story, citing 'multiple Outkick fans inside ESPN.'

Mr. Lee had been scheduled to call the Cavaliers Sept. 2 game in Charlottesville against William and Mary.

'It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play by play for a football game has become an issue,' ESPN said in its statement.

That wasn’t the 'shame' Mr. Travis had in mind, ridiculing the sports-network leviathan for political correctness, calling it 'MSESPN.'

'They were concerned that having an ASIAN FOOTBALL ANNOUNCER NAMED ROBERT LEE would be offensive to some viewers,' he wrote.

The fatal violence in Charlottesville earlier this month grew out of a white-nationalist and neo-Nazi march in favor of keeping up a statue of Robert E. Lee — 'the Confederate General who died in 1870 and shares a name with' the ESPN announcer, Mr. Travis helpfully explained.

'Is there anything more pathetic than ESPN believing people would be offended by an Asian guy named Robert Lee sharing a name with Robert E. Lee and calling a football game? Aside from some hysterical photoshops and Internet memes which would make everyone with a functional brain laugh — Robert E. Lee pulling out all the stops to stay in Charlottesville now! — what was the big fear here? Does ESPN really believe people are this dumb or that having an Asian announcer named Robert Lee is too offensive for the average TV viewer to handle?' Mr. Travis asked rhetorically.

'Yes, yes they do,' he answered."

This is just another indication that the Democrat Party is the face of the establishment in America today, just as it was the face of the establishment in pro-slavery America.  It appears that the public relations departments of every major corporation in America are stocked with former Democrat campaign operatives mouthing politically-correct platitudes that often, as in this case, make no sense at all.  So not only do the Democrats control the media, the entertainment industry (aka "the ministry of propaganda"), academia, and the permanent bureaucracy -- the Democrats control most of the big corporations as well.  No wonder the true Left, the real Left, has stopped calling Democrats "leftists" and insist that they are merely "corporate Democrats of the faux Left."

Think of Phil Murphy, Democrat candidate for Governor.  It costs more to remodel his shithouse than it costs to build a working class home in New Jersey.  Or Democrat candidate for Assembly Kate Matteson, who wears a pink pussy cat hat -- oh so "faux revolutionary" -- to accent a $600 pair of high heels.  These people are fake, they are phonies.  We are witnessing what Marxist philosopher Guy Debord called:  "The Society of the Spectacle."

To be continued...

Democrat Cory Booker's war against art

So is this how it will be from now on?

Every few years some new fashion -- or new regime -- will dictate that all the art previous to it (or some subset thereof) will be subject to ideological cleansing for the purposes of re-education.  Statuary -- the plastic arts -- should not simply be objects interpreted by philistine politicians and ideological groups for the convenience of their propaganda battles. 

Art exists apart from such concerns.  Art is its own thing -- a communication between the artist and the person experiencing the art.  Often, art is meant to disturb, to engage the mind with many considerations.

But instead of erecting new art -- in proximity to the old -- to show what was and what is (which will also be, soon enough, what was), as a kind of progression, the fashion now is to rip it down, hide it, or destroy it.  This formula has been notably  practiced by ideological groups like the Taliban and ISIS:

And here is the Islamic justification for destroying art:

This is the direction our nation is heading?  This is what we are choosing?  This is who we are now?  Are you proud?

The artist who conceived the statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his horse, Traveler, was a New York City native by the name of Henry Shrady.  As a sculptor, he is best known for the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial on the west front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.  As the few of us remaining who read American history know, General Grant was the Union General who defeated General Lee and concluded the war against the Confederacy.  He later became President of the United States.  So does anyone really believe that the artist was trying to "celebrate" the ideology of the Confederacy when he designed the statute of General Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia?

The statue of General Lee had not been completed at the time of Henry Shrady's death, and so a second artist was employed, Leo Lentelli, who brought his own ideas to the project, altering the work somewhat.  Lentelli was a sculptor and teacher of sculpture at the Art Students League and Cooper Union, in New York, and the California School of Fine Arts, in San Francisco.  He had studied art in Bologna and Rome, and had emigrated to the United States at the age of 24.  Some of his best-known work is in Rockefeller Center, Steinway Hall, and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, in New York.  One wonders what of his other work will be persecuted.

There is an artist behind every piece of work targeted, for ideological reasons, and slated for destruction or suppression.  How can we expect a shallow, celebrity-seeking politician like Senator Cory Booker to understand the connection between an artist and his work?

Could Booker -- who has existed his whole life in the corrupting avarice of Wall Street, followed by the venal corruption of municipal politics, followed by the high arrogance of the United States Senate -- how can we expect him to understand?  Has Senator Booker the imagination in his mind and the craft in his hands to fashion even a single, beautiful object? 

Ah, but he does have the cunning to know how to gain political advantage by destroying it.  And that appears to be enough these days.

"Round and round and round we go... in a dance to the music of time... endlessly repeating the past's errors... in bliss, ignorant, forgetfulness."