FAST TAKES
Conservative senator: GOP in Denial on Trump
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake at Politico says he can’t blame voters who felt “abandoned and ignored by the major parties” for having backed “a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process.” Both parties, he says, share the blame for the voters’ “despair.” But for conservatives to now go into denial about what’s happening is like Noah ignoring the oncoming flood: “At some point, it might be time to build an ark.” Republicans “shouldn’t hesitate to speak out if the president ‘plays to the base’ in ways that damage the [GOP’s] ability to grow and speak to a larger audience.” They must also “take the long view” on issues like free trade and “stand up for institutions . . . that have served us well for more than two centuries.”
Analyst: Google Algorithm Has a Jewish Problem
Google has adopted Perspective API, which helps moderators identify and root out online comments that may be “toxic,” reports Liel Leibovitz at Tablet. It does so by reading various databases “and letting them figure out the likely patterns.” But in Google’s case, “the machines learned the comments sections of The New York Times, the Economist and the Guardian.” So the phrase “Jews control the banks and the media” was deemed only 10 percent toxic, while “Many terrorists are radical Islamists” was deemed 92 percent toxic. In other words, when the machines only “read the Guardian and the Times, they’re going to inherit the inherent biases of these publications.” So they’ve learned that “statements about Jews being slaughtered are controversial, addressing radical Islamism is verboten and casual anti-Semitism is utterly forgivable.”
From the right: Dem IT Scandal Is Not About Bank Fraud
In Washington, “it’s never about what they tell you it’s about,” warns Andrew McCarthy at National Review. And “the case of Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s mysterious Pakistani IT guy, is not about bank fraud,” with which he’s been charged after trying to flee the United States for Pakistan via Qatar. Turns out “Awan and his family cabal of fraudsters had access for years to the e-mails and other electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees.” Indeed, “they were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that Awan & Co. smashed to bits of bytes before making tracks.” Yet Awan remained on Schultz’s payroll (after working for various Democrats since 2004) until his arrest. Says McCarthy: “This appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.”
Foreign desk: Vladimir Putin’s Really Bad Bet
Even if Vladimir Putin did collude with Donald Trump’s campaign to steal the election, which Matthew Walther at The Week remains skeptical of, he’s “probably suffering from a serious case of buyer’s remorse right about now.” The new sanctions voted by Congress “will be crippling for the Russian economy and hard on many American businesses.” And the language of the bill puts Moscow “on the same level as Iran and North Korea as enemies of the United States rather than curmudgeonly partners.” For all intents and purposes, “the Cold War is back — and heating up very quickly.” So if Putin “planned on eventually getting the United States and its NATO allies off his back,” he’s probably feeling like he’s been “double-crossed.”
Culture critic: New Series Makes ’20s Icons Come Alive
Paul Beston at City Journal writes about “America in Color,” a new Smithsonian Channel series that “chronicles the nation’s history, from the 1920s through the 1960s, via digitally colorized footage.” The effect, he says, “is revelatory” — especially the episode on the 1920s, traditionally seen only in black and white, which makes “it seem almost as if these people were still around, as if the events were transpiring in an eternal present, the way they do in memory (or in dreams).” It’s a reminder that “people in the past didn’t live in the past. They lived in the present, just like we do, making it up as they went.”