As DEI collapses, billionaires fund radical woke math



Jim Simons’ mathematical skills helped transform him from a prize-winning academic at Harvard and MIT into a legendary financier whose algorithmic models made Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful hedge funds in history. After his death last year, one of his consequential bequests went to his daughter, Liz, who oversees the Heising-Simons Foundation and its nearly billion-dollar endowment.

What Liz Simons has chosen to do with that inheritance might have surprised her father. Jim Simons devoted much of his charitable giving to basic research in mathematics and science, but his daughter’s foundation is moving in a very different direction. The Heising-Simons Foundation and similar organizations are supercharging a movement to remake K-12 mathematics education according to social justice principles.

Students are placed at a disadvantage when mathematical instruction is embedded in critical theory.

The revamp is profound. They reject well-established practices of math instruction while infusing lessons with racial and gender themes. The goal is to motivate disadvantaged students while dispensing with the traditional features of math — like numerical computation, which they struggle with on standardized tests — considered an oppressive feature of white supremacist culture.

Philanthropy-funded ‘anti-racist’ math

In many quarters, including corporations and universities, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are in retreat due to pressure from the Trump administration and the courts. Not so in public education, with curricula that are locally controlled and largely insulated from the dictates of Washington.

That allows progressive foundations and like-minded charitable trusts to continue to pour millions of dollars into reshaping math education for black and Latino kids — including an $800,000 grant this year from the Heising-Simons Foundation — even though no credible research exists showing that the social justice approach improves their performance.

“Politicians and legislatures, even school boards,” are often too “hamstrung” to get things done, Bob Hughes, the director of K-12 education at the Gates Foundation, said at an online symposium on the need for racial equity policies in America's classrooms. Philanthropy, he added, faces fewer barriers in making rapid changes.

The Gates Foundation has been a leader in the promotion of anti-racist math instruction. It supported a project called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.” The project discards basic tenets of learning, like asking students to “show their work” and find the “right” answer as vestiges of “white supremacy culture.” The pathway is promoted by EdTrust West, which also receives support from the Spencer Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and other major donors.

The Gates and Heising-Simons foundations have both supported TODOS Mathematics for All, an Arizona-based organization that calls for elevating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and anti-racist activism into all math instruction, with over $553,750 in grants in recent years. “We can no longer believe that a focus on curriculum, instruction, and assessment alone will be enough to prepare our children for survival in the world. We need anti-racist conversations for ourselves and for our children,” TODOS President Linda Fulmore announced in 2020.

Last year, the group hosted an hour-long webinar on “2SLGBTQIA+ identity in mathematics education.” During the event, a speaker expounded at length on various queer and indigenous identity groups while spending virtually no time on math-related curriculum or instruction.

At one point, the presenter erroneously claimed that there are “15.3 billion students in U.S. high schools” — a figure that would require the entire global population to be enrolled in American secondary education twice over. The speaker likely meant to say million.

‘Race-centered’ math

The foundations similarly fund practical lessons that put race at the center of math instruction. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the Heising-Simons Foundation supported a public-school program that encouraged kindergartners through second-graders to count the characters in picture books by race. At the end of each session, teachers guided students in creating racial scorecards for each book, then voting to select those with the fewest white characters. The exercise was presented as mathematics education.

Jo Boaler, a controversial professor of education at Stanford University who championed the push to remove eighth-grade algebra from San Francisco’s public schools in the name of equity, traces her support to this network of foundations. The Gates Foundation and Valhalla Foundation, which was founded by Scott Cook, the co-founder of tech firm Intuit, have long funded her math education project called YouCubed.

These deep-pocket donors also fund Danny Bernard Martin, a professor of math education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading voice of what critics call “woke math.”

Over the past six years, the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project, which Martin co-leads at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, has received nearly $2.5 million from the Heising-Simons Foundation. This year, the foundation announced an additional $800,000 grant to help the project develop tool kits for wider implementation among teachers, administrators, and researchers.

Martin’s views extend far beyond typical calls for educational equity. He regards mathematics instruction as fundamentally a “white supremacist construct” that inflicts “epistemological violence” on black students. In his estimation, even DEI programs are too conservative — mere accommodations “rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries” and designed to appease “white logics and sensibilities.”

The solution Martin proposes is radical: Black students should seek instruction exclusively from black teachers at “independent black institutions.” They should resist the temptation of “advanced coursework and mathematics-related employment” and instead engage in “walkouts and boycotts” to protest against mathematics education as it currently exists.

RELATED: Test scores drop at SF elementary school that spent $250K on 'Woke Kindergarten' program to teach anti-police lessons, 'disrupt whiteness'

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The very structure of math instruction, Martin contends, has dehumanized black students through low test scores and failing grades.

The ideas of the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project and its leaders have reverberated through America’s classrooms. California’s new mathematics curriculum framework, which guides K-12 education statewide, repeatedly cites Martin.

Educators have sharply criticized the framework for leaning heavily on politicized concepts of math. The document suggests, for instance, that teachers “take a justice-oriented perspective” when providing instruction and discourages the use of “tracking” — or the practice of separating students into different classrooms based on their abilities.

Educators push back

Williamson Evers, a former assistant secretary of education and a fellow at the conservative-leaning Independent Institute, has been monitoring what he calls the “woke math” movement for years. “It’s very important to have math skills,” he told RealClearInvestigations.

Evers rejects the identity-based claims made by Martin and others who have called for minority students to abandon math education over alleged racism. “There are mathematicians and scientists on every continent from every background, and this idea of boycotting education would harm black schoolchildren.”

Elizabeth Statmore, a math teacher at the elite Lowell High School in San Francisco and a critic of social justice math, says the way to improve the performance of black and Latino students lies in the nitty-gritty, such as better teaching, holding students accountable, and providing them with more academic and emotional support.

Critics say the emphasis on prose over calculation will exacerbate the very disparities that social justice advocates claim to address.

“But it’s not sexy; they’re not on the keynote circuit like Danny Bernard Martin and Jo Boaler,” Statmore said. “They’re building a brand, not doing the kind of math education research that is helping to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children.”

Representatives of the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Erikson Institute, and Martin did not respond to requests for comment.

The Heising-Simons Foundation’s focus on racializing math education reflects its broader ideological commitments. Like many progressive foundations, it uses its significant funds to advance a range of left-wing policies that might have a hard time establishing themselves without billionaire support.

The foundation has also donated to PolicyLink, the organization behind DefundPolice.org, and to the Anti-Police Terror Project, which advocates for abolishing police departments in high-crime cities like Oakland, California. Liz Simons was also among a small clique of California megadonors behind the push to elect progressive prosecutors such as George Gascón in Los Angeles and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. They declined to pursue felony charges against a range of violent offenders over concerns about racial equity.

The attempt to reimagine mathematics through the lens of critical race theory isn’t new — scholars have been working along these lines since the 1980s. They argue that historical racial oppression continues to influence everything from geometry curricula to standardized testing. Traditional emphases on objectivity, rigorous standards, and subject-matter mastery should be replaced, the scholars argue, with ideological exercises designed to promote racial and social consciousness.

What is new is the scale and speed of adoption. As America has grappled with questions of racial justice in recent years, billionaire foundations have provided the resources to implement these ideas widely in both public and private schools.

The donors appear motivated by a deep sense of ideological commitment to righting past wrongs related to racial injustice.

At the 2020 education donor symposium, Liz Simons recalled her experience working briefly as a Spanish bilingual teacher in an impoverished community in Oakland. “The much larger systemic problems,” she witnessed, Simons said, guided her to the goal of shaping early childhood education.

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation, noted that she previously worked as the vice chancellor of “equity and inclusion” at the University of California, Berkeley. Expanding racial equity in education, she said, has been her “life’s work.”

Widening disparities

When it comes to math instruction, social justice means stripping it of basic features like numbers. In workshops hosted by the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project in 2023, the group promoted “numberless word problems” — mathematical exercises stripped of numerical computation. The method, instructors explain, is designed to counter “European ways of knowing and doing.”

Sisa Pon Renie, one presenter, spoke of wanting to challenge the “persistent myth that math is just abstract and without any cultural relevance.” The project champions this numberless approach as essential for “helping children understand how mathematics might be an important tool to understand social issues and promote justice.”

But critics say the emphasis on prose over calculation will exacerbate the very disparities that social justice advocates claim to address.

“Imagine you’re a Cambodian refugee, and you get some math problem that’s loaded with prose,” Evers, of the Independent Institute, said. “Maybe you’re very good at the figures part, the calculating part, the mathematical part.”

Such students, he argued, are placed at a disadvantage when mathematical instruction is embedded in critical-theory frameworks and dense with English text. “They unnecessarily load these things down, make it harder, and it’s not even math. It’s an inadequate mode of teaching.”

The real-world consequences of these approaches have played out most dramatically in San Francisco. A decade ago, officials removed Algebra 1 from middle schools, arguing that the change would give black and Latino students, who were underrepresented in the math class, more time to prepare while avoiding placing them in lower-level tracks.

David Margulies, a parent involved with the San Francisco community, observed that families wanting their children to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade shifted away from public to private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Students who don’t take the math class in middle school find it more difficult to take calculus in high school.

RELATED: Major university caught in new DEI cover-up

Photo by via Getty Images

“Families figured out how important this is, and they are looking elsewhere,” he noted.

A 2023 Stanford study found that San Francisco’s Algebra 1 experiment did little to close racial achievement gaps. Black enrollment in Advanced Placement math classes remained unchanged, while Latino participation increased by 1%.

Meanwhile, education systems that have increased rather than decreased academic rigor have seen notable improvements in black student performance. In 2019, Dallas public schools began automatically enrolling students who performed well on state exams in middle-school algebra. The program increased black participation in advanced mathematics from 17% in 2018 to 43% in 2023.

Walking it back

Last year, during a Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project webinar titled “Who Is Labeled Smart?” Martin addressed the backlash against San Francisco’s push for educational equity. He toned down his scathing critique of merit-based advanced education programs that he believes harm black and Latino students and made a surprising statement about his own son’s schooling.

“I’m guilty, I’m guilty,” Martin said, almost sheepishly. “My son is, quote unquote, in one of those tracks.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

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The U.S. Army hit its 2025 recruiting goals four months ahead of schedule, the branch’s secretary announced Tuesday. The news was revealed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed authored by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who described the branch meeting its 2025 fiscal year goal of 61,000 new recruits as “personal.” The achievement marks the first […]

The ‘education establishment’ always resorts to fearmongering



If the U.S. Department of Education suddenly went away, what would change for local families and communities? Not much.

For starters, the Department of Education doesn’t “educate” anyone. It’s a middleman. Americans send their taxes to Washington, D.C., the bureaucracy takes a big chunk of it to pay staff and overhead, and the rest is sent to states and local communities with a bunch of red tape. Reducing that bureaucracy should save money, which means schools could actually receive more funding.

Parents are better at making decisions for their children than federal bureaucrats.

Furthermore, there’s no evidence that the federal involvement has improved education. Since the department was created in 1980, federal per-pupil spending has skyrocketed, but results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — also known as the Nation’s Report Card — have been largely stagnant.

Yet a recent Fast Company article declared that ending the Department of Education “would be disastrous for Title I schools,” with a special emphasis on Greater Johnstown Public Schools in Pennsylvania. And who is making that claim? Not surprisingly, it’s largely people who benefit from the current system, including the head of the local and state teachers’ unions, the director of the law firm that’s led efforts to increase school taxes, and the director of a policy center that has historically received substantial funding from unions.

When your only arguments are nothing more than fearmongering, you’ve ceded the debate.

Title I will remain

For better or worse, ending the Department of Education would not end Title I funding, which is supposed to help low-income students. Title I existed before the Department of Education and would likely be administered through a different department if the agency were shuttered.

As with other federal involvement, we have no evidence that Title I has been effective overall. For example, the Nation’s Report Card has for decades shown a consistent achievement gap between economically disadvantaged and non-economically-disadvantaged students.

There has been talk of changing how Title I is distributed to improve its effectiveness. One option is converting the funding to block grants that states could administer with fewer strings. This would put decision-making power closer to the students who are impacted by these decisions and enable state leaders to direct funds where they see the most need. It would be an improvement over the current Washington-based system.

Better still would be to bypass the states and convert the funding to scholarships, enabling parents to choose the educational support that their children need. Ultimately, there’s no constitutional role for the federal government when it comes to education, which makes sense given the impossibility of bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., knowing what’s best for children in, say, Pennsylvania.

One of us was formerly a teacher and principal in Johnstown public schools and is now the principal of Bishop McCort Catholic School, also in Johnstown. He has dealt with Title I firsthand in both environments and seen the problems caused by the red tape and lack of flexibility with the funding. He’s confident that dismantling the Department of Education — and making any federal funds portable so parents could choose the best environment for their children — is the best way to support the students served by Title I.

Parents over bureaucracy

And that’s the bottom line when it comes to education. Parents are better at making decisions for their children than federal bureaucrats. Pennsylvania public schools spent nearly $22,000 per student in 2022-23 (the latest data available). In the Greater Johnstown School District, per-pupil spending was more than $23,000. Yet 82% of students scored below proficient in math, and 77% scored below proficient in English. Imagine what parents could do if they could direct even half of that funding to the educational option that worked better for their kids.

Dismantling the U.S. Department of Education will not destroy education, but it may put a dent in the public schooling bureaucracy. Despite the fearmongering of people who work in the system, less bureaucracy and more freedom for parents and students are good things.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.

Feminism weakened our military — now it’s time to fix the damage



In the spring of 2003, the U.S. military spearheaded a major push in high schools nationwide to recruit young women. Military recruiters even called homes asking for high school girls by name.

Meanwhile, military recruiters handed out trendy military “swag” at schools to help boost recruitment efforts. This occurred against the backdrop of the tragic story of 19-year-old Pfc. Jessica Lynch, whom the enemy captured in the post-9/11 Iraq War.

Truly moral nations do not place their women on the front lines.

Her eight days in captivity and her dramatic rescue became a round-the-clock news event. Jessica’s story was initially romanticized to lure young women into military service. Many moms, however, sensed the “fake news” was not telling the whole story.

Jessica Lynch’s nightmare

The heinous reality of Lynch’s captivity, revealed in her authorized biography, “I Am a Soldier, Too,” shattered the romanticized narrative surrounding women in the military. In captivity, Jessica endured three hours of torture by several Iraqis, which included anal sexual assault and rape. Her spine was fractured, her arm shattered, multiple other bones were broken, and she suffered internal injuries.

By the grace of God, Jessica was rescued by U.S. special operations forces from behind enemy lines. When asked eight months later in an interview by ABC’s Diane Sawyer about the decision to include the brutal sexual assault in the book, Lynch — to her credit — said, “It was a decision to tell the reality, not selective parts, of a story of going to war.”

We owe Lynch a debt of gratitude for her honesty and courage in sharing such a painful truth.

Obama lifts the ban

In 2013, 10 years after Lynch’s rescue, the Obama administration officially lifted the ban on women serving in combat roles. In fact, women were already serving in combat when Obama initiated this major policy shift, even though Congress had not approved it.

The original policy only allowed women in combat roles if they met the same training standards as men. When they failed to do so, the Pentagon lowered the standards, weakening military readiness and effectiveness. Twelve years of data now justify reconsidering why women were banned from combat roles in the first place.

Beyond physical strength differences, other practical concerns make integrating men and women in training or war zones problematic. These include increased romantic relationships, sexual activity, higher rates of STDs, unintended pregnancies, abortions, and sexual assault. Military leadership ignored these concerns to push a political agenda.

Thankfully, the “roar to restore” was heard in the 2024 election.

Reinstating sanity

Moms for America is grateful to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for having the courage to say aloud that women — especially moms — do not belong in combat. Years of radical feminist indoctrination have led young women to believe there is no difference — physical or emotional — between men and women. Such indoctrination has misled women, marginalized men, and perverted the natural chemistry of relationships between them.

Strong, intelligent, determined, and accomplished women have long held critical noncombat roles in the military, including medics, nurses, doctors, intelligence analysts, communications specialists, cybersecurity experts, logistical specialists, linguists, and many others. These roles are no less essential to the military’s mission than the infantry.

Men and women possess incredible and unique gifts and, in some roles, can perform to the same standards. Yet men and women are different, and acknowledging those differences is not discriminatory.

The call to reinstate the ban on women in combat does not disrespect the valued women who serve in the military, the parents who have daughters in the military, or those women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Instead, it is a call back to sanity — to evaluate and assess a policy that never should have been changed.

Lowering standards for women decreases the military’s effectiveness and strength to protect and defend America. Moreover, keeping women in combat puts them at the same risk of torture and rape that Jessica Lynch endured during active combat.

Truly moral nations do not place their women or children on the front lines.

The feminist left has demonized the God-given instinct of men to protect women since at least the 1960s. It is time to tell the truth again. It is OK to say that we want men to protect women — and we are grateful for it.

It’s time to protect once again America’s mothers and daughters: Ban women in combat.

Meet the ‘I don’t know’ generation



During my freshman year of high school, my English teacher required each student to memorize quotes from the play “Julius Caesar.” Ever since, I have turned to Shakespeare’s words in times of turmoil and turbulence to remember essential truths:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves ...”
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
“This was the most unkindest cut of all.”

Likewise, in 2013, then-future British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Hong Kong and spoke about finding solace and fortitude amid life’s brevity and failures. He said he often looked to a passage from “The Iliad.” In a remarkable show of erudition, Johnson recited that excerpt in ancient Greek for more than two minutes, leaving his audience in awe.

No one wants to say it, but we are fostering an entire generation of Americans with 'slower' brains.

Last year, actor Jeff Goldblum appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” When asked how he “stays inspired,” he delivered a lengthy, heartfelt quote from George Bernard Shaw about “the true joy in life.” His effortless recall was striking.

Such spontaneous displays of deep knowledge are rare today for a sobering reason: We are raising a generation less and less capable of presenting such learned feats. Students simply do not study as they once did, nor can they retain information at the same level. As a result, their knowledge gaps are enormous — so vast, in fact, that those outside the teaching profession might find them hard to fathom.

This is not hyperbole or melodrama; it reflects the lived reality of today’s American classroom. Students possess shocking gaps in their knowledge. Can they name the state capitals? Planets in the solar system? Basic grammar, cursive, oceans, or continents? Do they understand what makes certain presidents great? Are the years 1066, 1215, 1776, or 1941 significant to them? Sadly, the list goes on.

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics confirms this decline: study times have fallen, and students complete less homework. Even when they study, they often become distracted by phones and other devices. Gen Z reportedly spends up to nine hours a day on screens.

Most American college students study less than two hours per day. Strangely, despite these dwindling efforts, grades have soared and graduation rates are higher than ever. This paradox — less work yielding better results — casts doubt on modern education. It recalls a line from the 1990s group C+C Music Factory: “Things That Make You Go Hmmm ...”

No one wants to say it, but we are fostering an entire generation of Americans with “slower” brains. Students increasingly claim they cannot study, explaining that they simply “cannot remember anything” when it is time for an exam. A new family of expressions — “brain rot,” “doom scrolling” — have emerged to describe the damage.

Why don’t kids read any more? They can’t concentrate. And even if they could, many lack the vocabulary or cultural-historical knowledge to appreciate what they read. Try understanding “A Farewell to Arms” when you know almost nothing about World War I. Try grasping “The Kite Runner” if you have never heard of Afghanistan.

Traditional methods of rigorous study and rote memorization have largely fallen out of favor, dismissed as relics of a bygone educational era. In their place, newer objectives — such as promoting “21st-century skills,” emphasizing social-emotional health, encouraging “digital literacy,” or exploring identity — have taken center stage.

At the same time, modern “thought leaders” and consultants, many with little or no firsthand classroom experience, often mock the foundational goals of education: building strong reading and writing skills and cultivating deep, substantive knowledge.

But we can do something about it: When we raise the bar, our young people can and will rise to meet it.

And here is the dead giveaway. Many of the same kids who claim they cannot study for academics somehow find a way to memorize dozens of plays on the football field, lines for a drama production, or moves for a video game.

I tested this theory in my classroom, asking students to memorize foundational American texts: the Preamble to the Constitution, the First Amendment, and the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. At first, they balked. But over time, something remarkable happened. They didn’t just learn the words; they learned something essential about themselves. They discovered that effort yields rewards and that they were capable of more than they had believed. As my freshman English teacher taught me, some truths are worth remembering forever.

Knowledge isn’t just valuable in the marketplace; it’s essential for a well-lived life. It builds the foundation of a substantial self, grounded not in fleeting trends or momentary chicness, but in the wisdom of the ages.

Without intellectual rigor, our children will never know what they’re capable of or how high they can reach. The solution is simple yet profound: Ask more. Demand more. And watch the magic happen.

If Democrats Didn’t Have Double Standards … | 9/15/22
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If Democrats Didn’t Have Double Standards … | 9/15/22

Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden’s Double Standard at the FBI
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Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden’s Double Standard at the FBI

Bozell & Graham: The outrage over Pelosi-mocking videos

Two videos mocking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were hot topics heading into Memorial Day weekend. One distorted and slowed down Pelosi's speech at the Center for American Progress to create the impression she was drunk. The other one was an edited package of Pelosi's very real verbal blunders and stammers that aired on the Fox Business program "Lou Dobbs Tonight."

President Trump was slammed for retweeting the Lou Dobbs video, and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani was condemned for sharing (but then taking down) the distorted "drunken" Pelosi video. It's routinely suggested by the left that nearly all misinformation in America can be blamed on Trump and his backers.

Trump fakes aren't considered outrageous. In January, a video of Trump's first address from the Oval Office was badly doctored by a Seattle TV station, making it look as if the president was sticking his tongue out languidly between sentences, and he appeared more orange than he looked in the actual video. This wasn't unnoticed. Millions of his supporters saw this and were outraged. It undoubtedly came across the radar screen of those same journalists who are now so upset about the Pelosi videos.

Yawn. It's Trump. Trump deserves it.

When President Trump creates a verbal miscue, the late-night comedy brigade has a field day. A misspelled tweet. A facial expression. A hand gesture. It takes nothing to trigger media mockery. What if it's a Democrat? In the Dobbs video, Pelosi cites "three things" and holds up two fingers. If you think anyone in the late-night world is going to pan Pelosi for mental errors, you're not paying attention.

The perpetually angry left and its allies in the "news" media were outraged that Facebook and Twitter didn't take down the distorted Pelosi video, although Facebook reportedly "deprioritized" it, making it less visible. They don't remember how they have mangled videotape (and audiotape), like when NBC was sued for allegedly mangling George Zimmerman's phone call about Trayvon Martin. Or when everyone pretended President Trump called all immigrants "animals" when he was really discussing MS-13 murderers. Or when everyone misrepresented the Covington Catholic kids as hate-speech villains.

The Washington Post editorial board felt a need to pronounce on the subject on Friday, trying to play the role of Solomon, only to make the situation even more lopsided. "The 'slurring' video, accompanied by manufactured accusations of drunkenness, may fall on one side of the [censorship] line," the Post proclaimed. "The stammering video may fall on the other."

It may fall on the free speech side of the line? A truthful, untouched video may be OK? Be still our hearts.

The Post insisted that the Fox Business clip package "offered a misleading impression of a perfectly coherent 21-minute news conference" (as if holding up two figures and saying "three" is perfectly coherent). They snidely added the president did not "pull it from the right-wing fever swamps of social media. He took it instead from the fever swamp of Fox Business Network."

The social media giants should strive to create a clear and balanced standard for what content will be banned, no matter which party is affected. Right now, it seems to conservative Americans that the current policy is to take down videos and accounts quickly and haphazardly, often based on angry left-wing-activist complaints. Conservatives cannot count on the "independent fact-checkers" to police videos, since they have all the same leftist biases as these activists and the "news" media. If these imbalanced current practices continue, these social media companies will be as mistrusted as the Old Media.

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NBC manages to dig up a standard to smack a conservative with

Chuck Todd demanded something of a conservative on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last weekend that he and his network rarely seem to ask of themselves: a consistent standard.

Erick Erickson was put on the spot to atone for the supposed sins of Rush Limbaugh and others who, in Todd’s view, waxed conspiratorial in the wake of Cesar Sayoc’s alleged mail bombs. And, to be fair, I’m sympathetic to that view in some of its particulars.

But after Erickson similarly acknowledged as much, Todd began frothing at the mouth as if the acknowledgement wasn’t passionate enough. Erickson responded this way: "The problem is in this situation, we have a lot of people who no longer trust the media, they don’t trust institutions, they don’t trust their neighbor. We've gone inward. Unfortunately, I do think it’s gonna be an external threat that brings us together. There is nothing left in this country that unifies us as a whole."

Not bad, but maybe it’s time consider if one of those external threats might ultimately be the media itself. Because to make Erickson answer such a question, in a way that displays such an appalling lack of self-awareness or humility concerning NBC’s own malfeasance index the last few years, is truly a diagnosis of the media’s intention to keep our civic dialogue fractured at all costs.

To sum up, here’s what Chuck Todd has to ignore in order to get all Church Lady-uppity when Erickson basically refused to become a Democrat before his very eyes:

*The perpetual rehiring of Keith Olbermann, who not only has a penchant for his own conspiracy theories involving Trump and Putin but also a long track record of saying things like Michelle Malkin is a “big mashed up piece of meat with lipstick on it” and S.E. Cupp is “a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does.”

*Matt Lauer’s infamous rape dungeon.

*Refusing to publish Ronan Farrow’s revelation about Harvey Weinstein’s appetite for sex slavery, including threats by company lawyers to come after Farrow if he didn’t back off the story.

*Making Nicolle Wallace its cover girl of the week after she proudly admitted that her advice to Jeb Bush during the 2016 presidential campaign was to punch Donald Trump in the face.

*Propping up Joy Reid’s lies that her social media accounts were hacked in order to protect her from past statements about gays that would get conservatives hanged by NBC.

*NBC still employs the notorious liar-turned-hilarious meme Brian Williams.

*And most recently, the network buried evidence that would have supported the cause of Brett Kavanaugh’s innocence and has given unnumbered uncritical television appearances to Michael Avenetti, whom Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has referred for criminal investigation for making false statements to Congress and obstruct its investigation.

But sure, let’s haze Erickson for the sins of others. Because infotainment. Because tribalism. Because pro wrestling. Because of anything other than honest analysis or real debate that might actually help heal our national dialog.

It’s all evidence that healing isn’t remotely on NBC’s radar as a goal as much as revolution and iconoclasm is. The leftists want their way, and they fully plan on breaking things to get it — the truth, context, or propriety be damned.

Erickson was basically asked to take responsibility for the actions of others, while NBC never takes responsibility for what’s going on in its own backyard, because he is viewed by Chuck Todd as a foreign agent, not a fellow American.

I think much of what the political Right refers to as "media bias" is an anachronism that harks back to a time when our country’s Venn diagram was much healthier than it is now. Although we weren’t as honest with each other as we should have been back then, we hated each other much less.

If we are honest with ourselves now, though, most of mainstream journalism and all of progressive journalism are simply broadcasting to and from a foreign country. The America of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and their clear Judeo-Christian underpinnings are not the target audience. Sadly, it seems to be their target.

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Bozell & Graham: Roseanne's spontaneous combustion

Who knew we would look back at Roseanne Barr's crotch-grabbing massacre of the national anthem in 1990 and see a mere flesh wound on her career? She embarrassed herself, mocking America in front of America, but her hit show rolled along.

But one egregiously racist tweet destroyed the "Roseanne" reboot of 2018 in a Hollywood minute. Tweeting that former Barack Obama top aide Valerie Jarrett is a mixture of the Muslim Brotherhood and "Planet of the Apes" put an abrupt end to the top broadcast television program of the year.

ABC made the right decision -- and the obvious business decision. You cannot compare blacks to monkeys. That is an old, dehumanizing trope. It is viciously mean-spirited to compare President Donald Trump to an orangutan, as many leftists have. But that is a mockery of one man's hair and intelligence, not the rhetorical equivalent of a burning cross.

In retrospect, everyone said ABC should have known this was going to happen. Barr has always been a loose cannon, and her politics have zigzagged from running on the presidential ticket of the nutty-left Green Party all the way over to backing Trump. But the network thrived with the original formula of "Roseanne," and it saw a win-win with a reboot: The show's old audience would tune in, and ABC could sell itself as reaching out to the red states after mysteriously dumping Tim Allen's hit show. The ratings were terrific. Then Roseanne drove the reboot over a cliff.

Dehumanizing tropes about black people don't always destroy careers ... when the black is a Republican. For example, Pat Oliphant didn't stop being the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world after he drew then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a parrot with large lips sitting on then-President George W. Bush's hand in 2008.

This was a trend. Christian Science Monitor cartoonist Jeff Danziger drew a barefoot Rice in a rocking chair saying, "I knows all about aluminum tubes! (Correction) I don't know nuthin' about aluminum tubes ..." In the radical fever swamps, cartoonist Ted Rall drew one with Rice saying, "I was Bush's beard! His house n----!" And a black male character replies, "Now hand over your hair straightener." He is wearing a T-shirt that says, "You're not white, stupid."

Even as "Roseanne" is canceled, let's not congratulate Disney CEO Bob Iger as the King of Televised Civility. This is the same company that dragged its feet for weeks after ABC co-host Joy Behar insulted millions on "The View" when she cracked that Christians like Vice President Mike Pence who act like "Jesus talks to you" have a "mental illness." We protested until Behar apologized on air, and she has since compared Trump to an orangutan, because it's just another day in the Resistance.

Days before the Barr debacle, Disney-owned ESPN rehired Keith Olbermann, fresh off a series of unhinged Trump-hating videos for GQ magazine and a book titled "Trump Is F---ing Crazy (This Is Not a Joke)." He's also vicious on Twitter, like this tweet to the president and former Sheriff Joe Arpaio: "You and @Potus can go f--- yourselves, you racist Nazi f---s!" In another tweet, he lectured Republicans with emphasis: "This is the creature you have unleashed on us. GET THIS SON OF A B---- THE F--- OUT OF HERE."

With Olbermann, no one inside the liberal-media bubble is yet preparing a spin for the next inflammatory incident: "Disney should have known what it was doing when it rebooted this unstable character for another run."

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