Disney/ABC, Starbucks, and the NFL should merge, as they are this week’s prime example of how to drive away customers while engaged in absurd CEO virtue signaling. 

ABC/Disney

I never watch television. Its news is a waste of time, with well-groomed, overpaid readers and hokey camera coverage that takes an hour to cover what 10 minutes of a well-written article can better convey. Take the news coverage itself: The EU is falling apart, the talks with North Korea are on and it looks like war will be averted and another country denuclearized, and the Mueller investigation seems more ridiculous than ever. The economy looks so strong that even the NYT’s Neil Irwin conceded words were almost inadequate to describe an economy so strong that it was adding 223,000 jobs in a month, an unemployment rate falling to 3.8 percent, an 18-year low. Contrast this with what this week’s news has been emphasizing.

Compare all the coverage of the royal wedding in Britain with the far more important story that a reporter was secretly jailed for 18 months because he was standing outside a UK courtroom describing the trial of what is euphemistically called men who “groomed” young girls, when the actual description is Muslim men raping and sex trafficking young girls under the averted eyes of the state apparatus tasked with protecting them.

The primary issue is that for years the British state allowed gangs of men to rape thousands of young girls across Britain. For years the police, politicians, Crown Prosecution Service, and every other arm of the state ostensibly dedicated to protecting these girls failed them. As a number of government inquires have concluded, they turned their face away from these girls because they were terrified of the accusations of racism that would come their way if they did address them. They decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation.

By contrast, Tommy Robinson thought it was worth the aggravation, even if that meant having his whole life turned upside down. Some years ago, after crawling over all of his personal affairs and the affairs of all his immediate family, the police found an irregularity on a mortgage application, prosecuted Robinson, convicted him, and sent him to prison on that charge. In prison he was assaulted and almost killed by Muslim inmates.

What can be said with absolute certainty is that Tommy Robinson has been treated with greater suspicion and a greater presumption of guilt by the United Kingdom than any Islamic extremist or mass rapist ever has been. That should be -- yet is not -- a national scandal. If even one mullah or sheikh had been treated with the presumption of guilt that Robinson has received, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the rest of them would be all over the U.K. authorities. But different standards apply to Robinson.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to ignore the repeated double standards of the major networks -- something any normal person can understand -- and which certainly galls and drives them to the polls to express their outrage. And it’s easiest to see, on the “entertainment” side of the programming.

As for the sitcoms and entertainment, I find it vulgar, tasteless, partisan left, and unentertaining. 

This week, the focus was on Roseanne Barr, who tweeted that Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s former adviser and now his live-in companion, was the offspring of the “Muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes.” We are informed, said ABC that this tweet was so “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values” that it was cancelling her very very popular show, which had yielded the network a reported $45 million in revenue. (This from a company owned by Disney, which hires convicted pedophiles to work on kids’ shows.) 

For those of us with a memory longer than a nanosecond, we do not recall the press being a bit concerned when President GW Bush was regularly portrayed on their pages as a chimp or with his bloody head stuck on a pike in a popular TV series. NPR, which taxpayers unfortunately still support, tried to explain why the Roseanne tweet was bad, bad, bad but the latter was just fine. 

I’m not inclined to detail the most vulgar of the comments regularly appearing on the screen, but John Nolte does a fine job of it.

The very same media that just 18 months before was in a barely-controlled panic over what Trump might do to norms, now demand we be horrified over the idea of describing MS-13 as “animals,” but does not believe there should be any professional consequences for using the words “c*nt” and “c*ckholster” on national television.

And these were not jokes. I’ll defend a joke to the end of the earth. This was just name-calling; this was two angry leftists, Samantha Bee and Stephen Colbert, screaming sexist and homophobic obscenities at Ivanka “The Feckless C*nt” Trump and Donald “The C*ckholster” Trump.

Oh, sure, our media went through the motions of throwing a tut-tut at their ideological colleagues Colbert and Bee, but drew the line at the only true norm-enforcer known as a “professional consequence,” even as this very same media destroyed Roseanne Barr, Justine Sacco, Curt Schilling, and  Elizabeth Lauten.

Welcome to the media’s new norm, y’all -- you can now call the president’s daughter a “feckless c*nt” and the president a “c*ckholster” and suffer no professional consequences. Well, done media!

Speaking of “professional consequences,” how about that Joy Reid? America’s Norm Sheriffs would like to announce another new norm: You can now lie to the whole world to cover up your bigoted, anti-Semitic, conspiracy theory-spreading backside; you can even lie to the FBI; and you still get to remain a star at NBC News, an anchor at MSNBC.  

Speaking of backsides, how about that Stormy Daniels? America’s Norm Sheriffs would like to announce another new norm: Since our Russian collusion and obstruction hoax has collapsed, we’re gonna go with the porn star and her hack lawyer. 

Speaking of hacks, how about that Jake Tapper, whose ego and self-regard cannot be sated with a trivial title like Norm Sheriff, and so he has anointed himself America’s Decency Czar. And now America’s Decency Czar would like to announce a new standard of decency: In the noble crusade of gun-grabbing, it is totally cool to allow your audience to boo a rape victim. Harrumph. Harrumph.

While the media freak out over Trump’s norm-busting tweets and tariffs, they are gleefully annihilating every norm with respect to journalistic standards of truth, of moral decency, of professional standards and ethics, of not making a political hero out of those who do anal for money, of not filing false reports with the FBI, of not  -- my God -- booing rape victims. 

Starbucks

I generally avoid Starbucks unless away from home and there’s nothing else conveniently available, but my impression is that it generally attracts hipsters willing to pay a lot for coffee with the added feature you can park your computer there and play games or do work without needing to rent an office. Following a contretemps when two young black men were ousted for hanging around there without buying a cup, Starbucks CEO instituted a mandatory “anti-bias” reeducation program for its employees and announced its cafes and restrooms were open to all free of charge. The CEO who instituted this policy might be surprised to learn this -- though we aren’t -- the restrooms are now a mess.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, "Managers and baristas regularly deal with a range of problems in the restrooms, from drug use to defecation outside the toilets, according to some current and former employees."

“Drug use wasn’t happening in the bathroom every day, but it was definitely something that was happening once a week. The cops were called a lot,” said 21-year-old Darrion Sjoquist, a former Seattle Starbucks barista.

Once, when he was taking out the bathroom trash, he said he was pricked by a hypodermic needle. He said he and other Seattle baristas asked Starbucks to install Sharps containers -- the kind of locked boxes found in doctors’ offices -- in the bathrooms, to encourage drug users to properly dispose of their needles. -- WSJ

As Starbucks transitions to their all-inclusive bathroom policy following an embarrassing incident in which the police were called on two black customers who asked to use the bathroom without purchasing anything, the company faces sagging sales and unhappy customers.

Maintaining clean and safe bathrooms is particularly important now for Starbucks. The company is facing slowing retail sales and has decided to focus largely on its cafe business after agreeing earlier this month to sell to Nestlé SA the rights to distribute most of its packaged drinks in grocery stores.

“Everything is tied together. If the restaurant management doesn’t keep the restroom clean, things could slip in the kitchen, too,” said 70-year-old Apple Valley, CA Starbucks customer, Donald Whittemore.

According to foodservice research firm Tachomic Inc., bathroom cleanliness is among the top factors for consumers choosing whether or not to use a restaurant. In their most recent quarterly ranking of fast-food customers, Starbucks ranked 20th in terms of bathroom cleanliness. Let's see how they rank next quarter.

So if you want to pay a lot for a cup of coffee, or sit in a café chock full of homeless loiterers or use a filthy bathroom -- Starbucks is for you. I expect that doesn’t describe the bulk of their usual clientele.

The NFL

Professional football was long considered America’s favorite sport until its commissioner decided it was okay if some players wanted to enrage the paying customers by disrespecting the flag and national anthem, kneeling to virtue signal their support of who knows what. He forgot that the fans are generally patriotic Americans who just want to watch the game, sip an overpriced beverage, eat and enjoy themselves. Today NFL revenues are down, only 3 in 10 Americans have a favorable view of the game (according to the Economist/You Gov poll). Perhaps seeing a connection with this lamebrained decision by the Commissioner Roger Goodell, the League has now decreed that those sumptuously rewarded athletes who do not want to stand during the display can wait in the locker room until it is over.

In more significant news, the report of the Inspector General on the DOJ/FBI handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has been delayed again. It is expected now to be issued this week.  Meantime, the Trump-Russia probe seems to be on ever shakier legal foundations, and the links to government-paid spies and agent provocateurs ever stronger. The FBI’s description of the relevant conversation, which  “launched the probe” by their telling seems at odds with the facts: 

Meanwhile, something doesn’t gel between Mr. Downer’s account of the conversation and the FBI’s. In his Australian interview, Mr. Downer said Mr. Papadopoulos didn’t give specifics. “He didn’t say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her,” said Mr. Downer. “He didn’t say what it was.” Also: “Nothing he said in that conversation indicated Trump himself had been conspiring with the Russians to collect information on Hillary Clinton.”

For months we’ve been told the FBI acted because it was alarmed that Mr. Papadopoulos knew about those hacked Democratic emails in May, before they became public in June. But according to the tipster himself, Mr. Papadopoulos said nothing about emails. The FBI instead received a report that a far-removed campaign adviser, over drinks, said the Russians had something that might be “damaging” to Hillary. Did this vague statement justify a counterintelligence probe into a presidential campaign, featuring a spy and secret surveillance warrants?

Unlikely. Which leads us back to what did inspire the FBI to act, and when? The Papadopoulos pretext is getting thinner.

The Mueller case against George Papadopoulos appears to be “much ado about nothing,”

In contrast, evidence of John Brennan’s plot to infiltrate the Trump campaign to defeat his presidential bid grows ever stronger -- what amounts to “an anti-Trump spy ring out of Langley.“

It’s hard to process so much craziness, isn’t it?