Weekly Roundup: Own Goals Edition
Diversity is, truly, our strength. When I look at the Opinion page of the Huffington Post, I see a veritable Benetton advertisement's worth of diverse people writing diverse articles with the following diverse titles:
Blessed Are The Religious Right, For Theirs Is The Presidency Of Trump
Why The Politics Of Hate Will NEVER Win (with photo of Trump)
Trump - ‘The Grand Experiment’ (Video) (Poetry & Politics)
I Persuaded My Parents To Dump Trump... I Think
Hillary Clinton — Why I Trust Her
The Moment This Republican Decided To Vote For Hillary
That accounts for half the front page; there are also three pieces that mention "luxury travel". I can't say that any of these articles were particularly engaging or well-written, but they were very much on-message, which is more important. Is this really the future of journalism? Diversity quotas for how somebody looks or "identifies", while all of the content hews the same strident line?
Here at Riverside Green, we've published black people, white people, Jewish people, Asian people (what an odd catch-all for what is essentially two-thirds of the world population!), men, women, trans people, and teenagers. Never have we published anyone to meet a quota. We try to maintain a broad acquaintance of potential writers, both ideologically and DIVERSITY-wise. There are going to be months where you read this site and it's all pretty much "white" men --- meaning people who trace their ancestry to cultures as diverse as Eastern Europe, South Africa, and South America. Sorry about that. I suppose I should do more to embrace the bright future. I have a dream that my son will one day live in a nation where he will be judged not by the quality of his writing, but by his ability to fit into an approved victim-status group.
Alright, let's see what your local chapter of the Literary KKK got up to this week.
Since this was my first week as a reduced-content TTAC contributor, I thought I would take one final stab at the way things used to be. The resulting article, titled Buick Must Die, was a roaring success. I expected there would be some blowback, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the enfant ignorant of Buick, Stu Fowle, would pen an illiterate and mostly incorrect "rebuttal" to TTAC that I would then be permitted to refute point by point. Some days the good guys really do win.
At R&T I discussed the characterless limbo of the Toyota GT86. More importantly, I covered the MSF Level II instructor school and my experience there. Needless to say, I'm very pleased and proud to be among the first driver coaches to receive MSF Level II certification.
Brother Bark wrote a eulogy for the lightweight sports car. He should have offered to buy that S2000 he's driving in the photo. For reasons that only partially escape me, I think the S2000 is the next air-cooled Porsche --- at least when it comes to hysterical market values.
He also penned a review of the Lotus Evora 410 GP Edition for Jalopnik, his first piece for the Univision Empire in a little while.
Stay tuned for a great week at Riverside Green, where we will have, uh, something really great!