Ellie Kemper ‘witch-hunt’ shows why it’s hard to fight real racism

By David McElroy · June 1, 2021

Do you know why it’s become hard to get people to take real racism seriously? It’s because ignorant leftist activists scream, “Racism!,” about things which are nothing of the sort.

I don’t care about debutante balls. (They’ve always seemed ridiculous to me.) I had never heard of actress Ellie Kemper until today, so I can’t say I care much one way or the other about her reputation. In the big picture, I don’t even care about the tempest in a teapot which was stirred up on social media about Kemper’s debutante past.

But this latest idiocy is a perfect object lesson in the danger of listening to those who compete with one another to see who can be the most “woke.” Rational people who can still think in sane ways are being bullied by a tiny minority of leftist activists who have no such ability to think rationally.

As these dishonest activists gain influence and power, we’re seeing a small preview of the chaos that lies ahead for this dying culture.

In 1999, Ellie Kemper was crowned “Queen of Love and Beauty” at a debutante ball in St. Louis, Mo. Kemper’s family was part of the wealthy St. Louis elite, so it was no surprise for her to be “presented” at such an event. And for a 19-year-old college student from her background, it was simply a social honor.

This particular St. Louis event was the 105th annual Veiled Prophet Ball. It’s no different from balls which take place all over the country among the upper class. To me, such balls are laughable, but they’ve been traditions in pretty much every city of any size over the last century.

So why are the woke upset with Kemper? Why is she being called a “KKK Princess” by the leftist idiots?

The St. Louis ball was founded by a man named Alonzo Slayback, but he and everything he ever did are now considered evil — simply because he had been a Confederate soldier.

In addition, the ball had not been open to blacks or Jews of St. Louis society prior to 1979. Although this offends our sense of fairness — and would never be done today — that wasn’t unusual for upper class events of the past. You and I can probably agree that this exclusion was completely wrong, but that was before Ellie Kemper was even born.

The leftist woke warriors want you to believe that Kemper is somehow in league with white supremacists, but all they have is the history of an elitist social organization that had views and rules which matched the views and rules of its past.

Kemper was just a 19-year-old college student who was honored to be chosen queen of a ball that was a big deal among her social set. To pretend it has any political significance — or that it reflects poorly on Kemper — is idiocy at best and dishonesty at worst.

I don’t like such balls. I have little sympathy for social elites. I don’t really care one way or the other about Ellie Kemper. (As far as I recall, I’ve never seen her in anything.)

But I do care about honesty and fairness. I believe in seeing the past through a proportional lens. And I can tell you without question that if you’re going to “cancel” everybody who has been connected to an organization or social group which has done something distasteful or morally questionable in its past, you’re going to have to cancel everybody and start all over.

This idiocy has nothing to do with racism or “white supremacy” or anything that Kemper has actually done. This is nothing but another opportunity for activists to scream their hatred for anyone who they can vaguely connect to the evils of the past.

There’s still real racism in this world. There are white racists and black racists and racists of every ethnicity. But it’s harder to get people to take real racism seriously when you scream irrationally about something such as this.

A rational person is going to look at the details of this alleged controversy — then realize there’s nothing to it — and ignore your accusations in the future.

An insane and irrational person is going to grab torches and pitchforks and eventually start an American version of China’s Cultural Revolution.

If you know what that means, you will be very afraid.

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When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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