Larry Elder is going to have to address specific aspects of his ex-fiancee's allegations

I've deliberated all day whether to post about this. I first ran across the Politico account on my morning news perusal. But I see it's also been covered by The Hill, The Week and The Sun. Others as well, although I cite these by name because they are not the kinds of publications that are inclined to jeopardize their journalistic standing over sketchy accusations of gun brandishing and general sybaritic behavior hurled at a California gubernatorial candidate.

There was a time when Larry Elder was an articulate spokesman for responsible living. In particular, the corrosive effect of fatherlessness, and in particular among black American households, has been a subject he's emphasized in columns, broadcast shows and tweets. He could be fearsomely effective when going toe to toe against black pundits who peddled the collective-racial-victimhood line. His views on social issues are pretty run-of-the-mill conservative, perhaps even a bit more libertarian than, say, mine. 

Like so many right-of-center figures I'd once admired and considered go-to spokespeople for foundational principles that informed my worldview - Victor Davis Hanson, Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager, to name a few - he became enamored of Donald Trump, a lapse in judgement that considerably eroded my respect. 

Still, it was a surprise today to see that the personal-life shoe has apparently dropped.

Granted, Ms. Datig has some degree of axe to grind, given the acrimonious nature of their split. But there are two levels to her story: the broad outline and the minute details. It seems to me that Elder owes the voters of California, as well as followers of his column and podcast, a thorough refutation of the broad outline, if indeed such a refutation cn be mounted. 

Regarding Elder's alleged fondness for marijuana, I can't begrudge him that per se. It doesn't seem to have interfered with his work. However, it does not seem to have had the mellowing effect on him that advocates of weed mainstreaming put forth as one of its selling points. In fact, quite the contrary. 

The Politico account provides the fullest picture of how Elder and Alexandra Datig met:

Datig described meeting the ambitious talk show host in the early 2000s at bacchanalian parties populated by Hollywood celebrities like rapper Snoop Dogg and hosted by publisher Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. 

Elder, who has since taken to broadcasting in a robe a la Hefner in YouTube segments called “Robe Rage,” was “an A-lister’’ at the gatherings, Datig said. In one home video she provided to POLITICO, Elder brags about his relationship with Snoop Dogg, saying, “I introduced him to the evil weed… I taught him everything he knows...I’m the one who made him what he is, I can’t believe he turned his back on me, motherfucker.” 

And while she is now a conservative blogger who takes her addiction recovery quite seriously, she somehow, earlier in life, got mixed up in as tawdry a business as there is:

Datig, 51, became well known in Los Angeles in the 1990s as a leading witness and informant in the prosecution of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. Datig described being paid $10,000 per day and getting First Class air travel as one of the women who worked in Fleiss’s network. She has subsequently spoken out strongly against human trafficking.

Was all that behind her when she attended the bacchanalian parties, or was there some overlap?

It seems a tattoo became an issue between her and Elder:

Earlier in the relationship, Datig said, she was pressured repeatedly by Elder to get a tattoo declaring her to be “Larry’s Girl’’ — and even urged her to design one which included the Superman logo. 

She agreed to get it — after he said he would get an accompanying tattoo declaring his love for her, she said. “He never did,’’ she said.

I'm not making any politics-level prognostications here. It's not super likely, but it's entirely possible that he could replace Gavin Newsom as California governor.

My interest is on the level of integrity concerns. The question of greatest importance is whether Larry Elder is a phony. If so, the credibility that has made him the Sage of South Central goes up in a cloud of rich, pungent smoke. 

 

 

Sunday roundup

 Why can't you get an Uber ride in Boston? Because the city council outlawed surge pricing:

Boston is one of the cities that passed a law banning what’s known as “surge pricing” among gig-economy companies. That allows ride-share rates to be raised during high-demand hours. It’s a good system because it provides a greater incentive for drivers to log on, reducing wait times while allowing the drivers to earn more than they normally would.

But Boston outlawed that, so some of the drivers are asking why they should bother working during the worst traffic conditions if there’s nothing extra in it for them. One driver told the Globe that he’s been making one-third less during peak hours since the law went into effect. The City Council originally claimed that they were passing the law to protect consumers from “outrageous” prices during peak demand hours. But in reality, as we’ve seen in so many other cities run by Democrats, they were doing whatever they could get away with to damage Uber’s business model. This was done on behalf of the traditional taxi companies and their unions who provide plenty of donations to primarily Democratic political campaigns.

Scott Hubbard at Desiring God takes a look at the matter of sin still showing up in our lives even after we've said yes to Jesus.  

Andrew T. Walker at Baptist Press on what a Christian response to Pride Month looks like. 

Carolyn Moore explores just what it was about a cartoon she ran across that bugged her so much:

I saw this cartoon online a few weeks ago, and I can’t shake it so I’m going to have to write about it. Just in case it doesn’t show up on your screen I’ll describe it. It’s Jesus schooling a group of religious leaders. “The difference between me and you,” he says, “is you use scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what scripture means.”

When I saw it online, it had all kinds of “amens” in the comment section. And I have to admit: it sounds good. What could sound more anti-bad-religion and pro-Jesus than the idea of letting love be our filter for understanding what the Bible says? The wording is so slick and catchy that it’s a shame it is such bad theology. 

And it is. 

Jason Riley, writing at Quillette, looks into how Thomas Sowell's Harvard years were when rumblings indicative of his ultimate direction as a thinker could first be discerned. 

I'm currently reading The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman. My interest was therefore piqued by this piece by him at Deseret News:

“Others” do not exist for “our” satisfaction or self-actualization. Rather we all exist for the sake of one another. And that, of course, has implications for sexual morality and behavior. To those who acknowledge their bodies as who they are, not simply the raw material of self-creation, and who understand the rational, dependent nature of our life, sex can never be simply a means of personal pleasure whereby others are reduced to being mere instruments of our own satisfaction. Nor can it come to occupy a central place in how identity is understood. It is not sexual desire that defines us but the relationships of which sexual activity is a meaningful part.

Danielle Pletka, writing at The Dispatch, makes clear the it would be a supremely bad idea for the Biden administration to enter into a revived JCPOA-type agreement with Iran.

Republicans' most recent fool's errand - harboring any kind of hope that the Very Stable Genius would focus on policy and knock it off with the stolen-election nonsense - ought to be one more learning experience for them, but it seems the party has become impervious to learning experiences. Gosh, maybe he'll clean up his act for the next rally:

Former President Donald Trump dashed the hopes of Republicans on Saturday who spent the weeks leading up to his public reemergenceencouraging him to keep his focus on policy and Democratic shortcomings, rather than re-litigating his 2020 election loss once again. 

In a nearly 90-minute speech to North Carolina Republicans gathered for their annual state convention, Trump baselessly claimed that his defeat by President Joe Biden last November was "the crime of the century" and likened the 2020 presidential contest to a "third-world" election. 

"Remember," Trump told the crowd after repeating numerous falsehoods about widespread election fraud, "I am not the one who is trying to undermine American democracy, I am the one who is trying to save it." 

"What happened to this country in that last election is a disgrace," he continued, noting that he has been pleased with Republican-led efforts in Florida and Texas to impose new legislative restrictions on voting. "I would like to see Georgia be much tougher," he noted.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial on Mitch Daniels's commencement address at the school he presides over, Purdue University.  

Walter Williams, RIP

 I rarely tear up at the passing of public figures. Even though I've been steeped in music my entire life, the passing of musical heroes rarely evokes an emotional enough response that I do a bit of blubbering. That's true in other realms as well. I noted the passing of, say, William Buckley or Roger Scruton with solemnity and rekindled admiration, but I kept my feelings in check. I always thought there was something a little forced about that kind of thing. There are so many aspects to the lives of those we don't know personally that, if subjected to the light of day, would bring larger-than-life figures down to the human level. 

But the passing of Walter Williams got to me. 

He brought a clarity to the defense of economic freedom that was unique. 

The interesting details of his life have been well-noted over the past few days: coming from the same Philadelphia neighborhood as Bill Cosby, Fat Albert and Weird Harold, making his living as a cab driver before really immersing himself in his academic career, writing a letter to President Kennedy from Korea while serving in the military castigating the government, particularly the Defense Department, for systemic racism, serving as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department, has early leftward inclination (he preferred Malcolm X to Martin Luther King as a civil-rights icon, embarking on a lifelong friendship with Thomas Sowell while at UCLA. (I didn't know until the other day, however, that NBA legend Julius Irving was his cousin.)

But, as I say, it was the clarity he brought to matters of economics once he'd attained intellectual maturity. He explained why the minimum wage, rent control and most professional licensing are terrible ideas. He pointed out that while slavery is an abominable institution. it's sadly universal throughout human history rather than unique to the development of the West. 

He vehemently opposed redistribution in general.

During the runup to the passage of the "Affordable" Care Act, he put forth this illustration, and I'm paraphrasing a bit, but not much: Suppose you and I are walking down the street and we come upon someone in obviously dire circumstances - sick, possibly injured, clearly destitute. Now, if I were to pull a gun on you and say, "Give me money to get this person some help," we can agree that that would be a dastardly act. Now . . . why would it be any less so if it's the government pulling the gun?

Perhaps the greatest Walter Williams quote of all is this:

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?

We can only pray that someone as dedicated to freedom and as articulate about defending it can rise in our midst.