Taking out liberal icons

Mark Steyn writes today,

...On Fox the other day I remarked rather casually that the sex scandals were taking out liberal icons. When you point that out, liberals yell about Roy Moore. But hardly anyone outside Alabama had ever heard of Roy Moore, and, within the GOP establishment, he's reviled as a fringe kook to the point where McConnell & Co would rather lose the seat. Whereas, if you wanted to strike at the very heart of liberal self-satisfaction, you couldn't have plotted a better cast of fall-guys than this:

Harvey Weinstein, the producer of all those Oscar-bait chick-flicks with Meryl Streep and Judi Dench, so superior to all the shoot-'em-ups for the rubes;

Kevin Spacey, the star of everybody's favorite insider political drama;

Charlie Rose, the host of the oh-so-civilized PBS talk-show that's an antidote to all that ghastly right-wing yelling on Fox...

I was thinking to myself: hmm, Hollywood, TV drama, PBS... But what about radio? And then out of the blue yesterday came the latest firing:

Garrison Keillor, that nice man who reads poems to us very slowly every day on the way to work on NPR's "Morning Edition".

And even better, his defenestration came a day after he'd rushed to Al Franken's defense in The Washington Post.

Nancy Pelosi was wrong: Conyers is about the only non-icon in this story - he's just another lifelong political hack three decades past his sell-by date. Queen Mary famously said that when she died they would find Calais engraved on her heart. Well, Judi Dench had Harvey Weinstein's name tattooed on her butt, which is close enough. To a certain kind of upscale liberal, the Weinstein Company, "House of Cards", "The Charlie Rose Show", and "Prairie Home Companion" were all engraved on their hearts.

And they're all gone.

~Among the non-icons swept up in the wake of Hurricane Harvey are a few non-sex fiends who nevertheless create a "hostile work environment" for female staffers:

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) found himself in the spotlight when The Washington Times reported Monday that he arranged for the payment of more than $48,000 in taxpayer funds toward a "severance package" — for a former staffer who threatened to slap him with a hostile workplace lawsuit back in 2015.

The publication revealed that an attorney charged with advising members of the House of Representatives on employment issues negotiated a $48,395 payout for the former senior staffer of Grijalva's that equaled five months of her salary. The employee received the settlement when she left the congressman's office after spending three months on the job in exchange for dropping her lawsuit, which alleged Grijalva frequently was drunk and created a hostile work environment.

Grijalva is a sleazy thug who used the power of his position to intimidate private citizens by arguing that, if you appear before his crappy committee, you've somehow put every jot and tittle of your life within his jurisdiction. But apparently, when he uses taxpayer funds to settle booze suits, that does not fall under any such public scrutiny. I regard him as a man unfit for office even by the low standards of Congress. As I testified two years ago to the United States Senate:

Raúl Grijalva, the Congressman from Arizona and Ranking Member of the House UnEnvironmental Activities Committee, earlier this year sent a letter to seven scientists, including professors Curry and Christy – a quite disgraceful letter that no citizen-legislator in a representative parliament has any business sending to anybody, demanding among other things details of speaking fees, travel expenses, and email communications stretching back a decade. Commissar Grijalva presumed to be able to do this because these scientists had voluntarily testified before his committee, and thus, as he saw it, had submitted to his jurisdiction over every aspect of their lives. I hope this Senate sub-committee will distance itself from Commissar Grijalva' s deformed understanding of his role. But, in the event that, following my voluntary appearance here today, any Senator demands in five years' time to see my emails and know what hotel I stayed in in Cleveland or Copenhagen, I might as well give you my answer now: You ain't gettin' nuthin '.

Read more here.