We Need You!

This was the very first paragraph on a sports blog calling for writers.

"We're looking for new people to join our editorial staff here at _______ and we are especially interested in bringing aboard writers who will broaden our worldview. Women.People from other parts of the world. People with disabilities. Basically: we’re looking to encourage diversity on our site."

You only got it because you're a woman and have a disability, not because you have a unique point of view and/or your writing material is of merit. 

Too. Many. White. People.

The Oscar nominations were announced today and besides the usual disagreements on who and what should've nominated, some are very upset that the acting nominations were dominated by white people. As one concerned poster on IMDB entitled his thread "can we have a serious talk about diveristy in hollywood/awards."

The President of AMPAS also had something to with the lack of diversity in the nominations. In fact, she thinks AMPAS needs to "speed it up." 

Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs was diplomatic but clearly disappointed when I spoke to her at this morning’s Oscar nominations about the omission of African American-driven films like Straight Outta Compton, Concussion, and Beasts Of No Nation. “Of course I am disappointed, but this is not to take away the greatness (of the films nominated). This has been a great year in film, it really has across the board. You are never going to know what is going to appear on the sheet of paper until you see it,” she told me, while acknowledging the Academy’s very public efforts at diversity are moving too slowly. “We have got to speed it up.”

Gosh, it must be frustrating leading an organization so behind the times. I can't wait for trade magazines advocating for sensitivity training for all new members. The need to see darker pigmented human beings nominated has created its own twitter hashtag in the from of #OscarsSoWhite. At least that's a start, right? Because awareness and all.

As usual, though it hasn't been said already, people will blame the voting membership of AMPAS being filled with old, white men.

EDIT: Deadspin writer, Albert Burneko, lost his shit when the nominations were announced. As he writes -

For 363 days a year, nobody gives a fuck about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Today is one of the two remaining days, when suckers care—and other suckers pretend to care—about who gets nominated for the Oscars, which are worthless trash and always have been.

Did Burneko just call himself a sucker? Yep. He goes on about the injustice of Carol not being nominated for BP because it's so progressive aka features characters of the same sex who "love" each other. I mean, how can you not nominate it!

If you loved Carol, which didn’t get nominated for Best Picture, congratulations: As of today, it officially is not the same kind of movie as Forrest Gump. The milquetoast taste, bigotry, and self-regard the nominations reveal has been on abundant display every single day for more than 80 years, in your local cineplex, in the form of the movies these industry clowns crank out every week. How can you act surprised by this, let alone offended? Placing value on those same clowns’ choice of movies to award is precisely like rending your shirt because your favorite restaurant didn’t make Guy Fieri’s list of top places to eat.

 Hey now, Forrest Gump was a great film.

To add onto the "too white" nominations, LA Times, Hollywood Reporter and other prominent rags are building the narrative of racial injustice. As always.

EDIT: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti agrees that the Oscars lack diversity. 

Liberalism & leftists aren't diverse. Conservatism is.

Here's an interesting article on American Thinker about the current slate of POTUS candidates for 2016.

The Republican presidential debate process makes clear the true diversity of conservatism.  When the left talks of "diversity," it means diversity of identity: blacks speaking for blacks, women speaking for women, Hispanics speaking for Hispanics.  But even here, the left is not diverse at all. 

Look at everyone who has been considered at one time or another during this campaign season to have been a serious potential candidate for the Democrat nomination: Clinton, Sanders, Warren, Biden, and Kerry.  All four Democrats are very rich (Socialist Sanders is simply well off), and all five of these folks have spent their whole adult lives "working" in politics or law.  All five also live in the hothouse environment of the Beltway, where no one drills for oil or grows crops or builds trucks.

The contrast with the Republican field is stark.  At the last Republican debate, half of the candidates were women or members of minority groups.  Two of the eight were physicians; two of the eight were business executives; and five of the eight – Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, and Fiorina – came from very humble backgrounds.  These eight also live in places scattered around the nation – Florida, Ohio, Texas, Kentucky, New York, and Virginia.

The real difference in diversity, however, is in the diversity of ideas and policies.  The rhetoric of Hillary and Bernie is virtually identical, and both are saying exactly the same things that the left was saying twenty years ago.  There is never any serious reflection that what has been tried and failed ought to be modified or even rejected.  The dull, gray, silly theories of socialism are still clung to reflexively by the left.

The author of the article goes on into the policies and how conservatism is the saving grace of American politics and the nation. Overall, a decent read that brings up valid points that "diversity" when talked about on the DNC/leftist side is only skin deep. As an ideology they're lock step.

Diversity in the name of not being lilly white (and getting "names").

Sounds good. Has a nice ring to it. If you take a group shot of an entering class, say at an elite LAC (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore) or private (the Ivies, Duke), from above standing on a ladder, the group might just look like a crayola box.

Well, a group of Asian-Americans are saying "Fuck you, Harvard."

I wrote a little about (ethnic) diversity here when it came to college admissions.

Private universities can select their students as they wish, being a non-public institution, and there are varieties of ways to build a narrative of non-quotas being set (I do have a feeling that there is a quota), so I don't see Harvard being sued based on this accusation. Plus, it's Harvard. It has way too much clout and pull to lose if the case is approved to be analyzed and judged. It's been known, at least to me, that the Ivies and its like don't admit the very best students. Many of the admission committees want a "balanced class." That means science wiz of every color, poets and novelists, kid actors, star violinist etc. Athletes are the easy ones to blame for gaining admittance purely on athletic ability, and that's not contested since it's an accepted belief (and true). It's where the published poet and kid actor can a more well-rounded applicant, even with test scores in the accepted medium range, be rejected.

In the case of actors

Let's face it, I highly doubt Shia Labeof was accepted into Yale for mostly because of his demanding high school classes, high test score and essay. Same goes for all the actors who were accepted into elite universities or colleges that had an acting career well before they turned 17.

The man was in a couple of well-known films before he turned 18 and was on a hit tv-series where he won a Day-Time Emmy. Of course, it's easy to say that acting is his specialty, but how many kids enter acting and have made a career out of it? There's less kids wanting an acting  career than what is popularly believed. Those that are aware of how auditions and casting is done, for children, know that unless you develop oddly during puberty you're still going to get parts. The better the agent the better the chances. Rarely do cast directors cast an unknown -- they want a person with a reel and a history. An actors career depends on others opinion (mainly critics) and their handlers, which consist of a couple of agents, a manager and publicist. Film & tv acting is such a niche "extra-curricular" activity that it's rather unfair to give such a group a "leg-up" in college admissions. I mean, look at the admittance of the following -

Natalie Portman - Harvard
AnnaSophia Robb - Stanford
India Ennenga - Brown University
Emma Watson - Brown University (had a semester at Oxford)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - Columbia University
James Franco - NYU (masters), Yale (Phd in Film Studies)  

I bet if Daniel Radcliffe applied to all of the Ivies, Stanford, NYU and USC he'd be accepted in at least two Ivies and all of the rest. Why? Because he's Harry Potter. Heck, when it comes to athletes, one athlete even confessed that his coaches were even making phone calls to admissions in order to smooth out the process of applying and getting in. This was at Cornell. If Cornell, an institution not known for its sports, gets the hustle from the coaches there's no doubt that an actors agent commits the same phone calls on their clients behalf. Oh, you were in that one HBO tv-series as a main character alongside that one famous actor? Decent essay, middle of the road test score ... Accepted! Where? Princeton University!

I heard it once said that it's much harder to get into an Ivy than it is to get out (flunk out). I believe this is true.

Logic isn't a strength of the movie industry.

 Old age is getting to you, (Cate) Blanchett.

You've been on a role in the past couple of years. From your fossil fuel campaign, to your red-carpet complaining of cameras focusing on your dress, your annoying and tiresome complaint about the gender gap of women on screen and power positions within the movie industry and your supposed confession of having "many" relationships with women (I hope your husband at least knew about your trysts),  when, in such good timing, your next film (which will probably garner you an Oscar nomination) Carol, is about a married woman having an affair with another woman.

You're a great actress, but your idiocy as of late tells me you are an idiot -- but not located in neither LA nor NYC, but in Australia. Gotta spread the acting idiocy around the world. It's only fair. I mean, the UK has Kiera Knightley, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Emily Mortimer.

I mean, what the fuck is wrong with the left and the movie industry getting upset with the fact that women are in less power positions (more men means there is a higher probability of them being in power positions), and obsession with diversity? Just look:

NY Times.
Katherine Bigelow supports ACLU.
(Ethnic) diversity in Marvel movie.

And their weird push for same-sex relationship to be shown on screen.

The movie industry is probably the most hostile towards conservatives besides academia, the most social 'progressive' and the most glamorous out of all the entertainment sects besides the fashion world yet there is still (will always be) complaints about sexism and the supposed patriarchy that sidelines females WITHOUT any real proof of actual sidelining due to ones sex. They need to get the uber-left ACLU to conduct an investigation for the 'proof.' It's almost sad, really. I guess the all the male nurses should ask ACLU to investigate nurse hiring practices. I mean, it's responsible thing to do, right?