Space, The Multicultural Frontier

After first quoting from a letter that went out from NASA’s administrator to its employees on the importance of LGBT month, Bookworm Room notes how NASA is trying to thread the multiculti needle:

Am I the only one who finds it amusing that NASA, of all the available government organizations, has taken upon itself the task of both LGBT and Muslim outreach?  It’s hard to imagine two more different constituencies.

But amazing how often those two seemingly disparate branches of leftwing identity politics intertwine isn’t it? No wonder the remarkably non-distaff non-Muslim “Gay Girl From Damascus” became such a hit with western liberals who wanted to have it all.

But this trend isn’t new with NASA. Back in early 2008, I spotted a USA Today headline titled,“For NASA, ‘The Right Stuff’ Takes On A Softer Tone.” As I wrote back then:

Well, that’s one way to put it, I guess. Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and its movie version brilliantly depict America’s first astronauts fighting against NASA bureaucrats to keep their balls — the piloting skills they earned the hard way, by surviving dangerous, experimental aircraft.

It took NASA almost 50 years, but these days, since space is no longer about actually going anywhere useful, their bureaucrats have finally won that battle.

Besides, I’m sure that, to paraphrase Howell Raines shortly before the New York Times self-destructed on the launch pad, NASA’s absolutely certain that its obsession with identity politics has made it a far more successful organization today than it was during its prehistoric, caveman days, back when it was going to the Moon in the 1960s.