Diversity hire through affirmative action doesn't mean unqualified

My Sunday movie was Broker, a Korean film from 2021. I was intrigued by it because it features two men taking care of a baby. No, they’re not gay. They deal in underground child placement. For a price. This particular case seems a bit sketchy from the start. A church has an orphanage and as part of that has a baby box by the door. One woman places a baby on the ground near the box. Then a woman (the same one?) shifts the baby into the box. The men retrieve the baby – and delete the video of the baby in the box. The men find a note saying the mother will come back. They disregard it because they see lots of those notes and never see the mother. But the next day she shows up and she joins the men on a trip to another city to meet a potential couple because she wants to approve who will raise her child. There are two women police officers trying to nail the men for infant trafficking. There’s also the widow of the baby’s father who sends goons after them. Along the way they stop at the orphanage where one of the men grew up and one of the boys hides in their van. The question is will the two men (or maybe one of them), the mother, the stowaway boy, and the infant form a family? There are a lot of hints they might and hints they might not. I enjoyed this one. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Daily Kos community reported a bill has been introduced in the Ohio legislature would make some drag performances a felony. Penalties increase if a minor sees the performance and up again if a child under 13 sees it. The bill is part of a long list of Republican efforts in many states targeting the LGBTQ community. One of the sponsors claims it really isn’t about drag and insists the term “drag queen” isn’t in the bill.

As the Plain Dealer noted, the bill’s definition of “adult cabaret performance” instead identifies drag queens as “performers or entertainers who exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s or entertainer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts, or other physical markers.”

Which pretty much sounds like a drag queen. So, as in many other places, Republicans are not real good with honesty. Singer Tony Bennett recently died at the age of 96. I admire his long career, though he didn’t perform the type of music that I like (which is classical). Even so I appreciated this thread (on Threadreader) by Michael Harriot about Bennett’s big break. Most of the thread is about the rise of the Harlem Renaissance after WWI. His story ends with Pearl Bailey organizing shows at a white club in Greenwich Village in 1949. Every black entertainer would have been delighted to be a part of it, but Bailey wanted to make her show “diverse.”

So she hired a white opener, probably the least famous musician in the place So when Bob Hope asked who her opening act was, bc he wanted someone to take on the road, Pearl Bailey was like “Some local kid named Tony Bennett. You like him?” The rest is history. Now here is the moral of the story: Just because Tony Bennett was a diversity hire who got his job through affirmative action… It doesn’t mean he wasn’t qualified.

Tevye of the Kos community told the story of Shayden Walker of Amarillo, Texas. He’s 11 and has several conditions, including autism, ADHD, and bipolar. He gets bullied. A lot. On July 3, Shayden knocked on the door of Brennan and Angell Ray. He was lonely and in desperate need of a friend. He had met the couple before and knew they were kind. Shayden asked if they knew and kids his age. But the ones Brennan mention had become bullies. Brennan and Angell posted a video of the situation and started a fundraiser. They wanted to show how sweet Shayden was and how destructive bullying is. It went viral so fast Angell had no time to warn Shayden’s mother. Within 24 hours the fundraiser hit $37,000 and they shut it down. Some of the money went to Shayden for a vacation. There were several offers for travel destinations. Some money was donated to nearby tornado victims and towards relief for Ukraine. The video has topped 100 million views and Shayden now had friends around the world. Local residents created a “Shine Like Shayden” to offer their support and to take a stand against bullying. Attendance was quite good. There are bullies in the world. There are also a lot of wonderful people. Down in the comments rebel ga posted an image that says:

Coupon for: One Free Hug. Infinite uses. Redeemable at any nearby friendly person.