Revealing Quips on Abortion at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

[L] Michelle Wolfe [R] Sarah Huckabee Sanders WHCD 2018

During the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the headliner entertainer Michelle Wolf offered what was supposed to be a comedy routine.  Many have focused on the mean spirited ad hominem attacks on Trump White House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  However, what was truly revealing was Ms. Wolf’s barbs about abortion.

Although she claimed to only be a comedienne making jokes, much of Wolf’s  material was pointedly partisan, mostly aimed at those on the right.  Since it has become televised, the White House Correspondents Dinner (a.k.a. “Nerd Prom”) has devolved into a mean spirited roast.  As elites have attempted to delegitimize the duly elected Trump Administration since even before he took office, the mainstream media (with few exceptions) has embraced the modus operendi of “The Resistance” and politicized everything as well as mainstreaming progressive politics

Ms. Wolf  claimed that she did not want President Trump impeached because it would mean Vice President Mike Pence would take over.  This opposition seem born from Mr. Pence’s deep pro-life position.  Wolf’s joke about abortion was grotesque but fascinating because the premise and framing of her presumed bon mot reveal the lies of the pro-choice movement.

America had been propagandized that the left wanted abortion to the “Safe, legal and rare”. Sure.  

So what about: “Don’t know it until you try it – and when you try it really knock it.”?  Obviously a crude play on words.  What was more revealing was Michelle Wolf’s admission: “You know, you really have to get that baby out of there.”    Isn’t abortion supposed to be about unviable fetuses, or lumps of tissues?  These callous comments reveal that progressives feel so comfortable with abortion that they don’t mind admitting that it is infanticide during rubber chicken dinner jokes.

The latter half of Wolf’s un-“funny” about abortion seemed ill targeted.  Wolf seemed to justify abortion if it was for your secret mistresses.  Mike Pence is an evangelical Christian who rightfully has a reputation of being a Boy Scout.  



  If there is one thing that a Philosophy of Humor class inculcated was that in order to be funny, humor must have an element of truth to it but approach it from an unexpected angle to catch an audience by surprise.  With that in mind, enquiring minds want to know if this was a contrast to Mr. Pence’s straight as an arrow reputation, or is she insinuating that he is a hypocrite and has sex on the side and paid to cover it up.   It may be more likely that Wolf forgot who she was insulting and wanted to impugn the elephant not in the room, President Trump and his messy personal life.

That being said, it is interesting that a roomful of elites were not scandalized about killing human life as they ate their desserts. Apparently, joking about abortion is just another laugh line for them.  To be fair, a few voices in the media have registered protest about how the White House Correspondents' Dinner has confirmed the caricatures of the media made by Trump supporters.  But on the whole, the press corps has rallied around the banner of the First Amendment and speaking truth to power.


One of the reasons that the left has fought so hard against legislative attempts to mandate ultrasounds before abortion is because many mothers to be see an unborn child in the x-ray and might change their minds about terminating their pregnancy.  At the very least, an ultrasound impeaches the lies that they tell themselves to justify termination as part of “Women’s Reproductive Health”. 

Michelle’s Wolf’s jokes about abortion have served as cultural ultrasound.  Humorists often push the envelope to get a laugh and her routine about abortion certainly looked about those lines.  But the way she framed it revealed the truth about terminating a pregnancy.  The left now seems to embrace joking about killing a baby with laughs.  Perhaps such a comedic routine might have been edgily acceptable during a stand up set at a late night comedy club.  But Michelle Wolf’s venue was as the hired help of Nerd Prom, elite swamp dwellering jo-whore-nalists (sic) celebrating themselves wrapped around the First Amendment. Is it any wonder that President Trump chose not to attend?

Of course the First Amendment gave Ms Wolf to say whatever she liked, no matter how offensive. However, that does not mean that it is immune from critique and criticism.  The White House Correspondents’ Association extended an invite to Michelle Wolf so they certainly knew her shtick.  The lack of verbal reproach or walking away from the abortion “joke” speaks volumes about the attitude of elites. 

Polling has shown that approximately half of the country is pro-life.  Hundreds of thousands gather each year on the National Mall in the middle of January under the March for Life Banner to protest Roe v. Wade (1973).  Pro-Lifers have a reputation for being one issue voters.  Now that the left has dropped their veil about pretending that abortion is not about killing babies, we will see if the silent majority will embrace the practice like our media "betters"  or if there will be marked push-back.

Frederick Douglass on Freedom of Speech

Is Barack Obama Really Trying to Bridge News Universes?

During the initial episode of David Letterman's new limited run program on Netflix "My Guest Needs No Introduction", former President Barack Obama laments the lack of a common baseline of facts for the news.

 In some ways, this echoes a theme that Mr. Obama emphasized in his BBC Radio interview with Prince Harry about finding common realities on the internet. And during the speech at the Dallas Police Shooting Memorial, then President Obama lamented political polarization stemming from news coverage.  

Yet is is hard not to appreciate Obama's implication that those watching Fox News are "way out there" vis-a-vis the Mainstream Media represented by  taxpayer supported National Public Radio. His quip served as a laugh line to the Netflix audience at City College, New York. Such a jibe will affirm the biases of coastal elites who cannot fathom how fly over country could vote for a guy like President Donald Trump.  But it inspires a broader question of what is news and what is the prudent way to discern truth on current events. 

Some have fantasized about having a group that evaluates the news for its truthfulness.  But as it has been tried by Politifact's Truth-o-Meter  and the Washington Post's Fact Check with the Pinocchio scale, it has proven to be skewed and lacking. 

It is repugnant to the First Amendment to contemplate having the government take a role in vetting media.  It is bad enough that social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are using "curating" newfeeds to avoid conservative stories deemed as "fake news" and algorithms which shadowbans opinions not in favor with the social media powers that be. 

Then there is the question of how to cover a story.  Recently, CNN launched an advertising campaign with the spot "This is an apple" touting "Facts First".   The Media Research Center's study of coverage of the first eight months of the Trump Administration was 91% negative stories. In another study, the MRC examined one day of coverage on CNN, when 92% of the airtime was focused on President Trump, and CNN used 96 critics and seven supporters to back up their coverage. That hardly seems like facts first or fair and balanced news.

A more difficult thing to detect is the news that the mainstream media chooses not to report. A concrete example is when undercover video exposed that Planned Parenthood clinics were selling baby body parts.  Network news did not give one second of coverage, probably because it sullied a cause with which the networks suits agree. No wonder why there is a populist outcry against "Fake News".

Another niggling aspect is what "news" mainstream media outlets choose to report.  It is interesting to see how much that makes it on a network nightly news is just recycled packages that were creating for fluffy morning news shows. ABC is notorious for cross promoting entertainment programming as news.  The Tonya Harding 20/20 episode seemed to give as much airtime to its affiliated journalists as the protagonists in order to hype a film poised for Best Picture for the Oscars, which will be broadcast on ABC.  One should expect that NBC's News will be chock full of Olympic feature stories (as it broadcasts the Winter Olympics in February) when it is not bashing the Trump Administration.

As a news junkie, it is laudable to seek out news sources which do not comfortably give "confirmation bias".  In addition, it is necessary to vet the reliability of news sources when considering stories.  However, it is dubious that President Obama wants to find a real "baseline of common facts".  His out of this world comment seems more inclined to smear those who do not buy into the line from the mainstream media, shaped by the likes of the Journo-list and then disseminated via papers of record, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which then dictates the coverage in most of the rest of the media.

As much as one would like to believe that Mr. Obama is trying to bridge news consumption universes, this comes from a leader who gathered lawmakers around a table supposedly to work together on health care and then wanted to dictate terms.  It is likely that politically correct pressure about the consensus on the news would drown out minority opinions and counter facts.  So it would be like the pre-internet "fairness doctrine" days when there was little choice and the public could be simply swayed. 

President Trump on Freedom

As President Trump commemorated the 2017 National Day of Prayer by signing Executive Orders protecting religious liberty, he noted where this fundamental first freedom is derived. 

UC Berkeley Bungles Free Speech Again

Just over a half century ago, the University of California Berkeley led the Free Speech Movement, which inspired many of the political and cultural changes that started in the 1960s.  Free Speech meant having tolerance for differing opinions and uncomfortable speech.

Today, Berkeley finds itself at the center of the AntiFa movement.  While academics, anarchists and progressive foot soldiers mou-mou the memes about free speech, their actions indicate ideological intolerance and tyranny. In February 2017, black clothed street anarchists rioted around the Berkeley campus to stop Alt-Right polemicist Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking.  


Progressives have also bragged about stopping "Radical Son" turned neoconservative David Horowitz from speaking because of burdensome security concerns and added costs to sponsors and limited the crowd.

Three groups invited Ann Coulter to speak at Berkeley on April 27, 2017.  The University Administration made all sorts of nigglesome demands, such as requiring expensive bonds for security, limiting the talk to students and even demanding that the event occur during the day.  As she was determined not to be the one to cancel, Coulter agreed to all of these "ridiculous"  demands, with the request that any rioting students be expelled.  Still Cal Berkeley Administrative offices sought to cancel the event.

Unlike Yiannopoulos and Horowitz, Ann Coulter is both an established agitating author who can make the television circuit.  So instead of just accepting Berkeley cancelling her speaking event, Coulter took to television to ridicule and challenge the imperial leftist Berkeley chancellor, vowing to go to campus anyways to speak.

After just one day of bad press, Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks backtracked,  In announcing that Coulter's speech could be rescheduled to May 2nd, Dirks wrapped himself around the rhetoric of the free speech movement, but did not specify the secure venue where the event would occur.   

This P.R. recovery move by the Berkeley Chancellor was too clever by half. In seeking to staunch the unflattering image, the date was moved to when there would be no classes held.  Moreover, because of the last minute switcheroo, additional expenses would be incurred.  In addition, Dirks did not check with the inconvenienced speaker.  For her part, Coulter claims that she is unavailable May 2nd and is going to appear anyways on April 27th. 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Dirks was slated to resign in August, 2016 because of widespread criticism from the faculty for the way he handled a sexual misconduct claim and budgetary deficits, yet he still remained.  After besmirching Berkeley's reputation for being the bastion of the Free Speech Movement, one wonders why he still has a job. Furthermore, inquiring minds are interest on University of California Chancellor Janet Napolitano's perspective.

Barbara Boxer on Hollywood Free Speech

A Favorable First Amendment Slant Should Save the Redskin's Trademark

For several years, there has been a politically correct effort to force the Washington Redskins to change their name.  In fact, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was convinced with withdraw the NFL franchise's trademark protection in 1999 and 2014, citing that "the term redskin" as derogatory and offensive even though the USPTO had approved the mark over 80 years before. Washington Redskin's owner Daniel Synder appealed claiming that case law and the weight of the evidence had been ignored.  A federal district court agreed with the Patent Office's withdrawal of the trademark in July 2015. 

However, a Federal Appeals court handed down a ruling which may well be a game changer.  The Portland Oregon dance rock band "The Slants" won a Federal Appeals Court case which began in 2011 over their provocative moniker.  The Slants are composed of Asian Pacific Island band members and pride themselves as taking on racism presumably by embracing a name which many consider to be ethnic slander. 

The Slants

In a December 22, 2015 decision, the Federal Appeals Court ruled:

“Many of the marks rejected as disparaging convey hurtful speech that harms members of oft-stigmatized communities. But the First Amendment protects even hurtful speech...

The government cannot refuse to register disparaging marks because it disapproves of the expressive messages conveyed by the marks."

That ruling ended The Slant's legal Misery, but also serves as a strong indication that the Redskin's ruling will not stand. The Redskins were stripped of trademark protection because of "hurtful speech".  In addition, the Redskin's case is even stronger as the USPTO had already approved the trademark years before and then sought to yank it away.  However, because the Redskin's appeal is in another circuit, the Slant's ruling is not automatically set a precedent.  And the US Supreme Court could also overturn the Slant's First Amendment trademark protection.

But until then..

UPDATE: 01/18/2017:  The Slants get their day at the highest court in the land as Lee v. Tam reaches the Supreme Court. The justices will decide whether the government can penalize free speech which it finds offensive or if the government granting a trademark protection allows it to disassociate from ideas which the public might find offensive 

UPDATE: 06/19/2017:  In an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that the government can not refuse to register trademarks that are considered offensive.  The Supreme Court's ruled that the disparagement part of the trademark law, which had been a provision in effect since 1946, is unconstitutional.

Most believe that the Supreme Court's holding will hail favorably for the Washington Redskin's trademark dispute.