Fast Takes: Spare us the show Anna Wintour, how to blunt legal pot and more

Conservative: Anna Wintour, Spare Us the Show

As the Met Gala moves to honor John Galliano after he spent years atoning for antisemitic outbursts in 2011, Commentary’s Seth Mandel declares: “If the two options are ‘Let Galliano have his day in the sun’ or ‘Let Galliano have his day in the sun but with a fashion-based exhibition on anti-Semitism curated by Anna Wintour,’ my vote is for the former” — and not just because “I don’t trust Wintour to teach these important lessons about Jew-hatred.” Rather, “absolution” should come at the end of a long process — something that “gets skipped” in “the current political moment.” So: “If Galliano’s apologies have been accepted in some broad sense, then we don’t need a fashion show about his Nazi blackouts.” “Let the fashion world follow its exuberant heart wherever it leads it, so long as the Jews aren’t props in the show.”

From the right: How To Blunt Legal Pot

“For the first time on record,” notes Charles Fain Lehman at The Free Press, “more Americans consume marijuana every day than smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol every day” — but that doesn’t make pot legalization politically irreversible, because daily users account for 80% of all pot consumption. That makes marijuana more like “cigarettes: something mostly consumed by a small number of chronically dependent users,” not a drug “widely consumed by infrequent, recreational consumers.” So, as the public sees “the rise in cannabis use disorder and other negative health outcomes,” hard-core “users may find themselves at an increasing political disadvantage.” We can start on “the moderate path of taxing, regulating, and stigmatizing” pot; just as with cigs, that “doesn’t preclude an eventual ban — it lays the groundwork for one.”

Lawyer: Fauci Can’t Have His Cake & Eat It, Too

After Anthony Fauci “invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination” 111 times in Senate testimony, Jay Town asks at The Federalist if “Fauci’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment was proper, especially given his pardon from President Biden.” Refusing to answer questions about his activities during the pardon-covered period “could constitute criminal contempt” of Congress. Per past Supreme Court rulings, Fauci can’t have the protection of both “a pardon and the Fifth Amendment for questioning specifically related to his prior congressional testimony during the covered period.” He may be “charged for criminal contempt of Congress because he improperly [pleaded] the Fifth.” Either way, his legacy is that “of a mendacious ‘megalomaniac,’ starved for fame, and dripping in self-interest.”

Libertarian: Kagan Warns the Court-Packers

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, “the progressive opposition’s greatest legal champion,” has “sharply dissented” on key conservative legal victories and is “widely seen as the intellectual leader” of the Court’s liberal bloc, observes Reason’s Damon Root, yet she’s also wisely “working hard to distance herself from the Court’s harshest progressive critics.” Kagan rejects the premise that the high court’s “conservative majority is in President Donald Trump’s corner,” noting its rejection of Trump’s tariffs among other rulings. She’s plainly “worried about where the left’s political winds are blowing,” risking “the future independence of the judiciary.” Leftist plans to pack the court would wind up undermining the Supremes’ “ability to ever act as any kind of meaningful check against an overreaching president” ever again.

Labor beat: The Latest Threat to Workers

“Massachusetts certified the first American ride-share drivers union in May,” allowing a “newly minted” one to rep its 70,000 ride-share drivers, laments C. Jarrett Dieterle at The Wall Street Journal. Such “sectoral bargaining” began with California’s Fast Food Accountability and Standards Act and could “change union politics for decades to come” — with workers paying the price. “Hundreds of thousands of workers could become union-represented” even if they don’t join, leading to labor negotiations that yield “one-size-fits-all rules” that harm some workers. The economy deserves “flexible policies that help both workers and companies.” Sectoral bargaining doesn’t — but it’s “on the rise.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board