The Met’s embrace of hate, school aid soars as enrollment sinks and other commentary
February 13, 2023
“Why Born Enslaved!” (1873), by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, a marble bust
portraying a black woman, bound by a rope, had always been understood as
an antislavery work—until the “antiracist” Met decided otherwise.
Culture critic: The Met’s Embrace of Hate
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art has mounted an exhibit whose curatorial philosophy” might “spell the end of art,” thunders City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald. The “Fictions of Emancipation” exhibit is “a barometer of hate,” a bid to “cancel” the French sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux for daring to portray “the inhumanity of slavery” as a white artist. (Though “the ban on portraying blacks applies only to white artists” and “black artists may even use stereotypes that would doom any nonblack artist.”) “The curators started with their conclusion: the West is unremittingly white supremacist,” especially “when it appears to be fighting white supremacy,” and “manufactured evidence to support that conclusion, evidence provided solely by parroting the tired nostrums of academic theory.” “This hate is a betrayal of the Met’s civilizational responsibilities.”
Physician: US Has Made Addiction Too Easy
The idea that anyone with a gambling addiction has only himself to blame “has allowed state lawmakers to ignore arguments that more access to gambling might make it easier for people to lose control,” warns Dr. Matthew Loftus at The Atlantic. Similarly, pot-legalization advocates “emphasize” marijuana’s benefits. Yet millions “suffer because of their addictions,” while companies use “underhanded tactics” to “make money off the misery of addicts.” Fact is, more “access to gambling” leads to more “gambling addicts,” and weed legalization has “contributed to a rise in opioid-related deaths.” We should make it “as difficult as possible to access things that impair our ability to make good decisions.” Gambling “should take place in casinos, not on smartphones”; weed should be used “only under a health-care provider’s supervision.”
Eye on NY: School Aid Soars as Enrollment Sinks
“Led by a massive decline in New York City, enrollment in New York’s public schools continued falling last year and has sunk to its lowest level since the mid-1950s,” observes the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin. The city “has now had three consecutive years of significant drops” — “more than 110,000 students, or almost 12 percent, in just four years.” And public charter schools “are educating a bigger share of New York’s students, with enrollment climbing from 91,927 (3.4 percent of all students) in 2013-14 to 175,065 (7 percent) in this school year.” Despite sinking enrollment, “the statewide teachers union has pressed lawmakers to hike state aid for local school districts,” though that aid has “climbed 15 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the past decade.”
Republican: This Red Wave’s for Real
“Unlike during the red wave that was predicted for the 2022 midterm elections,” The Hill’s Joe Concha flags one well under way, as census data “underscore a grim reality for the biggest blue states: More people are leaving states such as California, New York and Illinois than moving to them,” even as “other states, such as Florida and Texas, saw large gains in population.” Prime reasons include crime and income taxes (which are zero in Florida, Texas and Tennessee). It’s not just people: “New York’s tax base, for example, decreased by $19.5 billion in 2020,” while “Florida gained $23.7 billion in gross income.” Yet Gov. Kathy Hochul “is proposing a $227 billion budget for fiscal year 2024,” vs. a $115 billion plan for Florida, which already has a larger population, but “spends half as much money to run the state.”
From the right: Overruling the District of Crazy
Last week the House voted to side with Mayor Muriel Bowser and nix a law passed by the District of Columbia City Council “to ease sentences on carjackings, burglary and other felonies even as carjackings and theft have become an epidemic in the city,” note The Wall Street Journal’s editors, “with 31 Democrats joining the GOP.” But junking it requires the Senate to act, too, and “our guess is that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will allow” Dems up for re-election “to vote with the House, but not enough to get to 60 votes and break a filibuster.”
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