Dear Weekend Jolter,
The headline above might be harsh. (I pulled punches when I last posted about the burning topic of natural-gas bans.)
But if we adopt the view that disparate impact demonstrates the inherent bias of the policies that lead to it, then the ever-multiplying city-level restrictions on gas stoves are at least discriminatory. A move by Los Angeles to zero out gas lines in new buildings is bringing these concerns to the fore.
Now, the outrage factor here probably simmers at around medium-low, compared with that over inflation, Supreme Court drama, the border, Ukraine . . . which is proper. Still, it represents yet more municipal misjudgment that tends to backfire with voters (see Boudin, Chesa). Why does Los Angeles matter? While dozens of U.S. cities have gone in this direction, the presence of so many Asian restaurants in the sprawling coastal metropolis (which includes America’s largest Koreatown) highlights how these policies harm, even inadvertently, certain cooking cultures that depend on live fire.
The Los Angeles Times, with Korean BBQ on the brain, recently published candid quotes from Asian restaurateurs concerned that any switch to electric would compromise their cuisine. To some, electrification is assimilation:
Leo and Lydia Lee, owners of RiceBox, a Cantonese BBQ restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, use gas to cook the entirety of their menu, with the exception of rice. Gas powers the stoves used to cook dishes in a wok and the custom barbecue oven used to prepare the restaurant’s signature char siu Duroc pork, roasted low and slow with a sweet honey glaze.
“The wok itself is really essential to Asian cuisine,” Leo said. “By taking gas away, you’re telling us we cannot use woks anymore, essentially taking away our identity and heritage. It forces us to adapt to American culture.”
This is Los Angeles, and some chefs are conflicted, torn between wanting to combat climate change and stay true to their culture.
One such individual, Bryant Ng, emphasized the importance of using natural flame when cooking with a wok, telling the L.A. Times, “You can’t really replicate that with something electric without an actual flame.” He described the switch to electric or induction as hard but possible — yet also costly.
“It may be prohibitive for many restaurants,” Ng wrote. “And would discriminate against restaurants owned by POC.”
Hope is not lost for these restaurants, as the rules would apply to new construction, not existing establishments, and some are pushing for restaurant exemptions. But those home cooks and professional chefs who do occupy no-gas buildings would feel something amiss without the flame, as Phil Klein noted, and it’s hard to get past the reality that Asian and Latin American cultures are uniquely impacted by these rules.
Every policy involves trade-offs, of course. I happen to believe climate change is a problem worth addressing. But the trade-offs should involve clear benefits, and it’s not evident these bans produce them. Moving new buildings to all-electric will require more electricity generation, only a fraction of which is powered by renewables today. In fact, natural gas remains the biggest source of electricity generation in the U.S., followed by coal. Los Angeles endeavors to clean up its electric grid over the next decade (watch out for an “overstretched grid,” Andrew Stuttaford warns). But until that mix changes, electrification may be more health than climate policy, cutting down on indoor fumes without slashing emissions generally. Where stoves are concerned, that seems to be a trade-off that chefs, not governments, should weigh.
The California Restaurant Association, which is fighting a similar Berkeley measure in court, is beginning to amplify the point that minorities are disproportionately affected. In circulating that same L.A. Times article, the group tweeted this quote from its president: “With the sheer number of restaurants in L.A., this will have a massive impact on the future of the restaurant industry and how many diverse cuisines are offered.”
Translation: Absent needed exemptions, these bans threaten to turn the country’s rich culinary melting pot into one big bowl of Progresso.
* * *
But enough about soup. A new issue of NR is out, and you can find its digital likeness here. There is also much to say about the alarming threat on Justice Kavanaugh’s life this past week, and about the role political rhetoric plays in creating this environment. You can read more on that here, and below.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
It’s time to start taking security for Supreme Court justices seriously: The Frightening Threat to Brett Kavanaugh
About those gas prices: Biden’s $5 Gallon
Called it: Chesa Boudin Must Go
The double standard of justice is getting old: The Biden Justice Department’s Shameful Pandering to Bomb-Throwing Rioters
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: Biden Is an Old Man Overwhelmed by Events
Rich Lowry: The United States Has an Epidemic of Gang Shootings
Alexandra DeSanctis: Abortion Supporters, End the Violence
Andrew McCarthy: The Threat on Kavanaugh’s Life Didn’t Happen in a Vacuum
Dan McLaughlin: Democrats Need to Call Off Targeting Supreme Court Justices after Armed Assassin Arrested at Kavanaugh’s House
Dan McLaughlin: Ilya Shapiro Resigns from Georgetown Law School
Caroline Downey: Schools Reopened after Covid — But the Kids Never Returned
Kyle Smith: Hollywood’s China Breakup Is Long Overdue
Ryan Mills: Recall Organizers Say Incompetence, Not Politics, Drove Boudin Ouster
Jim Geraghty: Ultra-Progressive Politics Rebuked in California
Charles C. W. Cooke: Progressives Have a Twitter Problem
Brittany Bernstein: January 6 Committee Shows Previously Unseen Footage of Capitol Riot
Kevin Williamson: Of Course Haircuts Have Genders
CAPITAL MATTERS
Joseph Sullivan reads the digital tea leaves on inflation: Has Inflation Peaked? Google Trends Data Say No
Dan McLaughlin explains why Democrats can’t fix it: Why Democrats Can’t Handle Inflation
Dominic Pino calls foul on Biden’s latest use of the Defense Production Act: Biden’s Flagrant Abuse of Emergency Powers Must Be Stopped
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Jack Wolfsohn talks to Matt Walsh about his new documentary: Matt Walsh Stumps the Left with One Simple Question . . . And Madeleine Kearns tackles that doc here: Is the Truth Transphobic?
Top Gun: Maverick has Armond White pondering another classic: Tom Cruise’s Hit Revives Sternberg’s Last American Film
Brian Allen heads to the home and studio of the Lincoln Memorial sculptor for some monumental history: Exploring Chesterwood, Home of Lincoln Memorial Sculptor Daniel Chester French
FROM THE NEW, JUNE 27, 2022, ISSUE OF NR
Christine Rosen: Ban Kids from Social Media
Andrew McCarthy: Russiagate Misunderstood
Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Modest Burden of Life
Mario Loyola: What Is the Ukraine Endgame?
AT RISK OF PROVIDING TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING . . .
NR’s cover story by Christine Rosen poses a very fair question:
Why don’t we have a legally enforceable age requirement for the use of social media? As a society, we long ago agreed upon age-restriction laws governing a range of behaviors (driving, voting, enlisting in the military, smoking, drinking alcohol, getting a tattoo). Why do we treat social-media use differently?
A recent survey by Common Sense Media of social-media use found a significant increase in the number of children ages eight to twelve (so-called tweens) using social-media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. “The huge number of kids using social when they’re so young — it makes me want to cry,” Diana Graber of Cyberwise told the New York Times. “These social-media apps are not designed for children.”
And yet for far too long we’ve effectively acted as if they were, because we’ve done little to prevent children from having access to them. The age limit of 13 that currently governs social-media platforms was arbitrarily chosen as part of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which came into effect in 2000 (four years before Facebook was created). It was meant to restrict how companies could use children’s data as well as requiring “verifiable parental consent” for those younger than age 13.
As anyone who has ever stumbled across an eleven-year-old’s Instagram account will tell you, however, the system never worked. The request to verify one’s age is merely a suggestion, with no real effort at verification. There are no financial or legal repercussions for the companies that fail to confirm the ages of their users and every incentive financially for them to look the other way as underage kids create accounts. You could call it an honor system, but there is little that is honorable about the goals these social-media companies have set for drawing ever-younger users to their platforms.
America is in trouble on inflation, and Dan McLaughlin succinctly explains why:
There are only two fixes for inflation: reduce the supply of money, or increase the supply of goods and services. How do you reduce the supply of money? There are four ways to do this:
- Slash public spending, so the government is injecting less money into the economy.
- Raise interest rates, which puts recessionary pressure on the economy.
- Raise taxes without raising spending, so the government is extracting more money from the economy.
- Incentivize a shift from spending to savings, which reduces the amount of money chasing goods and services.
Increasing the supply of goods and services can really only be done by government by lowering the cost of supply — either by reducing regulatory burdens, eliminating environmental roadblocks to drilling and other development, cutting business taxes, reducing trade barriers, or pursuing other efforts to get government out of the hair of business.
Nowhere on this list is anything Democrats prefer to do, with the arguable exception of tax hikes — and when Democrats promote tax hikes, they almost always do it in conjunction with even larger increases in spending. They can’t make it easier for business to drill for oil or build stuff. They can’t cut spending. They can’t rework the tax burden for more consumption taxes and fewer taxes on investing (to incentivize more savings and investment and less spending). . . .
Inflation might get marginally better on its own as global supply chains continue to recover, but so long as Democrats and progressives are in charge, no solutions will be on the menu.
From the editorial on the alleged assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh:
As disturbing as this news is, we cannot say it is surprising. In the weeks following the leaked Justice Samuel Alito opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, pro-abortion protesters have vandalized and firebombed pro-life organizations, harassed churchgoers, and shown up at justices’ homes. Leading up to the incident at Kavanaugh’s house, justices received a flood of death threats. Even after news broke of the foiled assassination attempt, protesters gathered Wednesday evening to picket outside his home.
Biden has tried to thread the needle by not opposing protests at justices’ homes as long as they were peaceful. When former White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked last month about activists posting a map of justices’ homes, her response was, “I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document.” While saying that Biden wanted the protests to be peaceful, she added, “I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest.”
The Left mostly shrugged at this problem. Georgetown Law professor Josh Chafetz argued that protesting in front of justices’ homes was justified because fencing had been erected in front of the Supreme Court building. One opinion piece from NBC’s Noah Berlatsky, which aged particularly poorly, was headlined, “Brett Kavanaugh is not in danger — unlike the abortion precedent he’s ready to overturn.” . . .
The time for playing games is over. The prospect of the assassination of a Supreme Court justice linked to the outcome of a pending case poses such a significant threat to our republic that it should send chills down the spine of every American. The House should pass the Supreme Court security bill immediately, Biden should stop equivocating about intimidation efforts by his own side, federal laws against protesting at judges’ homes should be enforced, justices should receive all the protection they need, and we should all pray for their safety.
Kyle Smith asks Hollywood, somewhat rhetorically, whether all the pandering to China is worth it:
Hollywood is coming to the sad realization that pursuing Chinese money is not worth the creative and moral cost. Disney effusively thanked several different arms of the Chinese police state in Xinjiang Province — gracias, Gestapo! — in the credits of 2020’s Mulan, a movie built to appeal to China, and the Communist Party banned it anyway. China demanded that Sony censor Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood for its unflattering portrayal of Bruce Lee — and Lee was not even a Chinese national. (He was born in San Francisco and raised in British Hong Kong.) Tarantino refused, and Sony properly told China to stuff it. The same movie could easily have been banned for a different nonsensical reason: It starred Brad Pitt, whose movies were banned from China for years because he had starred in Seven Years in Tibet.
China banned The Dark Knight (the problem was a scene with a Hong Kong money launderer), Ghostbusters (no ghosts allowed), Deadpool (too violent), Noah (Christian prophecy is a no-no), and Joker (too dark? Who knows? R-rated movies generally don’t get released in China unless they are cleaned up).
Meanwhile, American consumers are beginning to be disgusted by Hollywood’s partnership with an evil empire and to notice the double standard. Appeasing China will cost Hollywood some brand value. This spring, as Disney was making a fuss about a Florida law that bars teachers from bringing up sexuality among little kids, Warner Bros. was mollifying China by removing gay references from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore — whose title character is gay, at least in the original version. The Warner statement was classic corporate doublespeak: “We’re committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s censors are now the “integrity safeguarding” lads. The movie went on to gross $28 million in China, only $7 million of which goes back to WB. Was it worth it? China has made itself a cultural pariah, and Hollywood doesn’t need to continue grinding its principles to dust to be its partner.
Honorable Mention
Consider this your weekly reminder that National Review cruises are back. You can find details on how to join National Review Institute on the next one here: http://nricruise.com/
Shout-Outs
Nate Hochman, at the New York Times: What Comes After the Religious Right?
Ilya Shapiro, at the Wall Street Journal: Why I Quit Georgetown
Josh Barro: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post?
Sean Trende, at RealClearPolitics: The Senate Seats Most Likely to Flip in 2022
CODA
I recently returned from a too-brief visit with family to New Orleans where I got to swing by a couple of the great clubs on Frenchmen Street, which is always a treat. We caught Dominick Grillo & the Frenchmen Street All-Stars, aptly named, at the Spotted Cat. I will share the only video I can find on their YouTube page, but it gives you a taste of the swing they bring. I overheard the bartender on a Sunday night talk up their drummer as the best in the city. A little bit of salesmanship? Sure. But not necessarily hyperbole.
Seen any lively live acts lately? It is the start of the summer concert season, after all. Share with this list, send me a song: jberger@nationalreview.com.
Thanks for reading.