Speaking of wordplay, we’re once again being told that Baby, It’s Cold Outside is actually an ode to date rape. As so often, the umbrage-takers display a remarkable level of tin-earedness regarding the sentiment of the song, and a joke about feigned intoxication as an excuse for behaving as one might wish. And as noted in the comments over at Instapundit, “There was a time progressives would have said it was about a woman who obviously wants to have sex, but is being oppressed by slut-shamers through fear.”

Update, via the comments:

From the Huffington Post piece linked at Instapundit:

You’d think that self-styled singer-songwriters would be able to deduce things from lyrics, arrangement and intonation. And it’s interesting how the rather sour, supposedly progressive interpretation, wheeled out every year in near-identical articles, assumes that the woman in the song is somehow passive and a victim, rather than an equal and willing participant. As Darleen puts it in the comments here, the song is in fact a kind of lyrical tango, “an intricate dance where each partner consents to play a part.”

And from a related CNN article, where the point of the song is, again, spectacularly missed:

Somewhere, Mr and Mrs Loesser, the writers of Baby, It’s Cold Outside, are rolling their eyes in unison.

Inevitably, and in keeping with tradition, Laurie Penny also misses the point:

Don't get me started on 'Baby, It's Cold Outside.' A jolly festive tune about ignoring women's sexual agency. I've heard it twice today.

— Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) November 30, 2015

Readers are invited to ponder which party – the songwriters or Ms Penny – is actually “ignoring women’s sexual agency.” A demonstration, were one needed, of how rote feminism can bleach away any trace of subtlety.

To my ear, and plenty of others, the woman in the song is far from passive and is listing the customary reasons for leaving, almost all of which are external social pressures and proprieties – gossipy neighbours, maiden aunts with vicious minds – while very much wanting to stay. The crude feminist reading of the song, illustrated above, is of him trying to coerce her. It’s actually about both of them, together, very knowingly, pushing against the social conventions of the time. Which is probably why the song was once considered somewhat risqué.

Still, one has to marvel at how the default progressive line is not only tin-eared and wrong, but actually an inversion of the songwriters’ intent.

The song isn’t about ignoring or overriding the woman’s preferences, or indeed drugging her – but quite the opposite. Throughout the song, they’re both thinking of ways to delay her departure. Half a drink, another cigarette. And despite the woman running through the list of obstacles to her passion, and saying that she “ought to say no,” because social convention expects her to forego her own preferences, the song concludes with the woman deciding that she’s “gonna say” that she tried to go home but was thwarted by the blizzard.

The two of them then agree, in unison and in harmony, that the weather outside really is terrible.

A display of leftist piety. And one man’s extraordinary patience. 

Via Jonathan.

In this push for ethnic, sexual and racial diversity – which I think is just a mask to enforce ideological homogeneity – there’s no understanding that ideational diversity is the only relevant value for a university. The rest of it is all predicated on the assumption that if you select people because of their ethnicity or racial background or gender, that will, in and of itself, produce diversity of ideas - which is really pernicious… The idea that you’re going to get a diversity of ideas because you have a diversity of classes of people assumes that ideas and identity are the same thing. And that’s an absurd proposition. In fact that’s an essentially racial – and racist – proposition.

Joe Rogan chats, at length, with psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson. 

It’s time to turn, once again, to the pages of Everyday Feminism, where Ms Hannah Brooks Olsen wants to educate us about “the real face of poverty” – specifically, Millennial poverty, as experienced by herself: 

As a white, 22-year-old college graduate in a second-hand dress, I did not look like what we think of as “poor.” Of course, at that exact moment, I had, yes, a college degree and a coveted unpaid (because of course it was unpaid) internship at a public radio station. But I also had a minimum wage job to support myself, $17 in my bank account, $65,000 in debt to my name, and $800 in rent due in 24 days.

It’s not a happy tale. This is, after all, Everyday Feminism.

I was extremely hungry, worried about my utilities being shut off, and 100% planning to hit up the dumpster at the nearby Starbucks… I had no functional stove in my tiny apartment because the gas it took to make it work was, at $10 per month, too expensive.

Such, then, are the hardships of “Millennial college grads,” whose suffering, we’re told, often passes unremarked:

Through college debt, we are minting a new generation of people with fewer opportunities, rather than more. Even if you glossed right over the teachings of Thomas Piketty…

the teachings of Thomas Piketty

…you probably know that those who begin poor are more likely to stay poor… New grads no longer start from zero  –  they start with a negative balance.

Well, it’s generally the custom that loans have to be repaid. And so choosing a degree course, or choosing whether to take one at all, is a matter of some consequence. Such is adulthood.

Many college graduates are worse off than they would have been if they’d directly entered the workforce debt-free.

And so, as in many things, one should choose wisely. Ms Olsen goes on to ponder the woes of “Millennials of colour,” and the alleged “gender pay gap,” before wondering whether all university education should be “free” – which is to say, paid for by some other sucker. Say, those who would see no benefit in being forced to further subsidise the lifestyle choices of people who end up writing for Everyday Feminism.

And then, eventually, we come to the nub of it:

Blake Neff notes the exquisite sensitivities on display at another $50,000-a-year educational institution: 

Hampshire College in Massachusetts has announced that it will no longer fly the US flag at all in response to an incident where the flag was taken down and burned. The president of the college says that by getting rid of the flag the school will be able to focus on other issues like halting Islamophobia and promoting gay rights.

Because focusing on “Islamophobia” and gay rights, prioritising these things, is what a college is supposed to do, obviously. And it simply can’t be done while the national flag is visible anywhere on campus.

Heather Mac Donald on open borders and indiscriminate immigration: 

Demographics were now driving immigration policy, not vice versa. State and city jurisdictions with large numbers of illegal aliens passed law after law to minimise or eliminate the distinction between legal and illegal status. The most egregious of those policies — and the ones that jump-started Trump’s campaign — were so-called sanctuary laws. These rules forbid state and city employees to co-operate with the already listless efforts of federal officials to enforce the immigration laws, shielding even convicted criminals from any possible risk of deportation.

Although local activists had complained about sanctuary policies for years, no one with power paid attention — until a young woman was fatally shot in July 2015 on the San Francisco Embarcadero by a Mexican drug dealer with seven felony convictions and five previous deportations. Kate Steinle’s murderer had recently been released from jail back onto the streets by the San Francisco sheriff, despite a request from federal immigration agents to detain him for deportation proceedings. Yet despite the belated national outrage directed at San Francisco for its sanctuary ordinance, the city reaffirmed that ordinance in May 2016 in a breath-taking demonstration of the rule that immigration demographics are political destiny — at least until now.

Tim Blair spies an intriguing way to combat bullying: 

Victoria’s controversial Safe Schools founder Roz Ward has been photographed harassing a bystander while marching in a Melbourne rally protesting against the election of Donald Trump as US president. Images obtained by The Australian show the high-profile LGBTI rights and anti-bullying campaigner trying to remove a cap from a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Trump 2016.” Ms Ward, who is carrying ­several copies of the Marxist newspaper Red Flag, is seen smirking while the distressed man tries to pull away and shield himself from her.