Culture beat: The Defiant Dave Chappelle

For all the pans of comedian Dave Chappelle’s latest Netflix comedy special from “super-woke” modern critics, gibes National Review’s Katherine Timpf, audiences “liked it. They liked it a lot.” Yes, “Chappelle was making jokes about untouchable subjects — such as race, the LGBT community, and school shootings” — but “out in the Real World,” boundary-pushing humor has “always been popular.” Indeed, studies suggest that “the people who support extreme levels of political correctness” are the ones out of touch. All in all, Chappelle points the way for us to “stop being afraid” of politically correct mob mentality. “It’s time to stop pretending we’re offended when we’re not, and it’s time to speak up against the loud, self-righteous, whiny few.”

Media desk: The Press’ Dr. Zaius Moment

Journalistic elites are having a “Dr. Zaius moment,” jokes Reason’s Nick Gillepsie: Like the elitist orangutan in “Planet of the Apes,” they’re “paternalistically” trying to shield their “infantile audience (read: you and me) from ugly images and realities.” Thus, The New York Times reported on a “macabre” pro-Trump video — but, to spare readers’ sensitivities, didn’t “link to or embed the video in support of its characterization.” Similarly, “Meet the Press” denounced a Trump rally without showing footage of it. This approach will only accelerate “the loss of confidence and trust in the media,” prompting readers to seek out “alternative sources of information,” including “shady, conspiracist” Web sites. “Paternalism didn’t work for Dr. Zaius and it’s even less likely to work for the solons” of the media, who should give readers “more information, not less.”

Impeachment watch: What Pelosi Wants

Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is “not about removing President Trump now,” Charles Lipson suggests at Real Clear Politics, but about “damaging him so he can be defeated next year.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows that a Republican Senate won’t convict Trump, so she’s clearly pursuing the “more realistic” and “purely political” goal of preventing Trump’s reelection. Rep. Adam Schiff’s “closed-door sessions,” “refusal to allow Republicans to call witnesses,” and “prohibition of White House participations” are clear indications of the speaker’s strategy. Still, Dems only control the House because they ran moderates in pro-Trump districts, so this course will hurt “vulnerable, centrist Democrats” — and “the damage could mount.”

Iconoclast: ‘Endless Wars’ Should End

President Trump’s hasty pullout in Syria “has produced a mess in both humanitarian and geopolitical terms,” sighs The Week’s Damon Linker, but that result was “not at all” inevitable. With supportive staff and careful planning, “far less bloody and chaotic” outcomes would be unfolding. Fact is, US policy in the Middle East “has been an overreaching mess for a long time.” Yet “Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment” is always “ready with arguments about how we must never, ever, ever withdraw from the region.” On Syria, it argues “the U.S. owes greater loyalty to a battlefield ally (the Kurds)” than to “a long standing member of NATO (Turkey),” though Syria’s Kurds are “dominated” by a far-left terrorist group. Despite Trump’s “moronic way of governing,” he’s at least trying to leave the Middle East — a step towards fashioning “a saner and more sustainable foreign policy.”

From the right: Worker Freedom at Risk

In last year’s Janus case, the Supreme Court ruled it “unconstitutional to require non-union government workers to pay fees to public-employee unions,” yet some states have engaged in “underhanded attempts to save the unions’ bacon,” reports Lance Izumi at the Washington Examiner. California has promoted “union recruitment of government workers” and made it “more difficult for those workers to exercise their Janus rights.” School-district employees can’t even “opt-out of having their personal information shared” with unions every four months. Alaska, by contrast, is giving workers every opportunity to opt out of union fees. “Worker freedom from government unions is the law of the land” but Americans must “push their governments to respect their rights, not undercut them.”

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann