The Morning Briefing: Grande Order of Fake Outrage Edition

Feelings…Nothing More Than Feelings

Hopefully, everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend, whether it was a long one for you or not. I can comfortably say that to the Morning Briefing regulars, as I know that most of you aren’t constitutionally opposed to fun.

Our friends on the left, alas, aren’t so carefree and fun-loving. We’ve discussed the permanently aggrieved nature of the modern progressives before. As I am often accused of never having anything nice to say about the other side, let me try something new here: I frequently find myself marveling at their ability to continue to surprise me, especially with their ability to concoct outrage and/or resentment in almost any given situation.

Take, for example, the young women’s rights writer for The Guardian, who finds the Starbucks policy of asking for people’s names a trigger for resentment.

Never mind that she doesn’t even go so Starbucks, which she readily admits at the top of the article. One doesn’t need something as mundane as firsthand experience to take offense at things that aren’t really offensive in the first place:

I do not drink the coffee in Starbucks because it doesn’t taste good. But even if I did, I wouldn’t, for another reason: my name. Because if you’re a half-Turkish, half-Iranian second-generation immigrant like I am, it means you have a name that few can pronounce, and which even your parents can’t agree how to spell. (My father spells it with a Sh, my mother with an Ş. In their defence, they don’t agree on much.)

When your own parents can’t agree on the spelling of your name, and beloved co-workers continue to get it wrong after years of gentle admonishing – well, I’d rather not have to go through the rigmarole of painstakingly spelling it out to a barista.

My daughter has an unusual name — it’s Polish — and she loves Starbucks. Never once have they gotten her name right and never once has she been offended or traumatized by the experience.

Because she was raised by sane people.

Starbucks provides a literally rewarding workaround for this name horror. One can simply download their app, pay with that and earn rewards for each purchase. The name on your app is the name on your cup. PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE AVOIDED.

The Starbucks grievance is small potatoes compared to the Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, who is so easily triggered in the MAGA era that she is now freaked out by every single red baseball cap on Earth.

While the liberals are busy finding offense and outrage at every turn, they put in extra effort to weave elaborate fictions about conservatives doing the same. The recent anniversary of President Obama’s tan suit incident was brought up to the point of trending on social media for a couple of days. The liberals have made it part of their fever dream lore that conservatives wildly overreacted to him wearing the suit and were triggered by it for some reason.

None of that happened, but facts don’t get in the way of the liberal caricature of conservatives.

The Vox Pox

Liberal Vox.com’s self-proclaimed mission is to “explain the news.” The site and its writers never make the claim that the news is being explained honestly or accurately, however.

Vox writer Aaron Rupar had an embarrassing start to Labor Day because he didn’t spend fourteen seconds with the Google machine to do some basic fact-checking on his way to try and dunk on President Trump:

Deleted this tweet because Obama’s Labor Day statements included this language too pic.twitter.com/KTXWSTIKiF

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 2, 2019

That Rupar even bothered to make the correction is surprising. He usually finds being held to any standards of accuracy to be irritating:

Writes for a site that purports to explain the news but thinks it's pedantic to know what the hell he's talking about. https://t.co/f0DAS1kyyS

— SFK (@stephenkruiser) September 2, 2019

Personal Note

In addition to my Morning Briefing duties, I am now an Associate Editor here at PJ Media. Predictably, I’m already drunk with power:

Let’s link!

PJM Linktank

14 Real Obama Scandals That Have Nothing to do with His Wearing a Tan Suit

This Labor Day, Unions Are Gunning for Workers’ Free Speech Rights

Beto Campaign Exploits Mass Shooting By Selling Obscene T-Shirt

Feds Launch Raids on Homes of UAW Brass

Election 2020: Will America Be the New China?

The Kruiser Kabana

Tortoise goes to his local boozer every day for tipple

Remember: don’t wear your white-hot takes after Labor Day.

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PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”