Boner Candidate #1: WE WENT TOO FAR BUT IT’S DONE
DARWIN, Australia — The caves, set deep in a desert gorge, had yielded a treasure trove of artifacts tracing Aboriginal people’s long history in Australia: a 28,000-year-old kangaroo bone sharpened into a blade; a 4,000-year-old plait of human hair believed to have been worn as a belt. Underneath the caverns sat millions of dollars’ worth of high-grade iron ore, in a country where mining is king. In May, the minerals giant Rio Tinto decided to blow up the caves to get at the riches below. But on Friday, it became clear that Australia’s most powerful export industry had met a force it could not bulldoze: the global movement for racial justice. The company announced that its chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, would step down after a shareholder revolt over its destruction of the prehistoric rock shelters in the Juukan Gorge, which are sacred to two Australian Aboriginal groups. Two other top executives, Chris Salisbury and Simone Niven, will also leave the company, which is based in Britain and Australia. The three executives had part of their 2020 bonuses docked last month, but shareholders, arguing that the measure failed to hold the individuals responsible, called for harsher punishment.
Boner Candidate #2: MIKE LEE ATTACKS THE LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT IN UTAH
Sen. Mike Lee has become something of a media critic in recent weeks. On his personal Facebook page, Lee has repeatedly criticized KSL.com and The Associated Press, attacking them for “bias” and inaccurate reporting. He has gone so far as to call for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to sell the news website, creating the hashtag #sellKSL. It appears the sustained campaign began Aug. 15, when the Utah Republican ripped into KSL.com for a tweet about an AP story. The tweet read “President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement.” That tweet comes almost verbatim from the AP story. That story also supported that statement with quotes from the president, including this paragraph: “Donald Trump once described his younger brother as ‘much quieter and easygoing than I am.’” Lee called the KSL tweet “appalling” and said KSL was “spiking some sort of political football.” He finished the Facebook post calling for the church to sell KSL. “Sen. Lee did question the civility of KSL.com’s tweet about the death of President Trump’s brother, and he did call for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to sell KSL.com if they continued to allow that kind of behavior,” said Lee’s spokesperson Conn Carroll. He noted that KSL.com has since deleted the tweet and apologized for it.
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