Elsewhere (142)
Via Mr X, Charles Cooke is entertained by a circus of competitive indignation:
As it has grown in popularity, the [anti-catcalling] video has been transformed into a blank canvas, onto which America’s brave advocates of hyphenated-justice have sought to project their favoured social theories. Evidently unwilling to let the spot stand on its own, Purdue’s Roxanne Gay wrote sadly that “it’s difficult and uncomfortable to admit that we have to talk about race / class / gender / sexuality / ability / etc., all at once.” Alas, she was not alone. Soon, the claims of “sexism” had been joined by accusations of “racism” and of “classism,” Hollaback had been forced to acknowledge that it had upset the more delicate among us, and those who had celebrated the video [for its feminist stance] had been denounced as unreconstructed bigots.
Jim Goad on the same:
A video that shows a Jewish woman being sexually harassed while walking on New York City streets has engendered tremendous outrage — not so much for the fact that she was sexually harassed, but because there weren’t enough white guys doing it.
Statistics ensue.
Lenore Skenazy notes an everyday hazard of modern schooling:
Da’von Shaw, a Bedford, Ohio high school student, brought apples and craisins to school for a “healthy eating” presentation he was giving to his speech class. He took out a knife to slice an apple, and I’m sure you can all guess what happened next.
And Ed Driscoll reflects on how the New York Times became a (bad) student newspaper:
In the summer of 1992, the Times published a piece co-written by two seniors at Columbia who claimed to find all sorts of “disturbing” anti-Semitic allegories in the Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer film Batman Returns. “The biblical allusions and historical references woven into the plot of Batman Returns betray a hidden conflict between gentile and Jew,” they wrote. “Denied his own birthright, the Penguin intends to obliterate the Christian birth, and eventually the whole town. His army of mindless followers, a flock of ineffectual birds who cannot fly, is eventually converted to the side of Christian morality.” It’s some piece of work, and a reminder that calling for the banning of elections might actually not be the craziest thing that the Times has published by a college journalist eager for his first national byline.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
As for the NY street harassment incident, this video made me chuckle:
http://tinyurl.com/oeof7pd
For the feminists, however, I’m sure that there’s no equivalence: just shut up and do what we say, you patriarchal oppressor…
the superintendent suggested that Da’von’s punishment could actually have been much worse: an entire year’s suspension.
See how moderate they are? Not crazy at all. Apple cutting must be punished!
Poor Da’von Shaw clearly knew not what a risk he might have run when he said: “When I took out the knife the teacher then told me that I couldn’t use it, so I didn’t hesitate I just gave it to her”.
From Wikipedia: (Lord Chief Justice Goddard) sentenced Bentley to death based on an interpretation of the phrase “Let him have it” (Bentley’s alleged instruction to Craig), describing Bentley as “mentally aiding the murder of Police Constable Sidney Miles”.
Zero tolerance, see. It’s all in the tone of voice……
Apple cutting must be punished!
I’m trying to imagine how else you can chop an apple into slices. Can you tear an apple into neat bite-size sections? Anyway, thank goodness it wasn’t a partly-nibbled pastry. That shit can get heavy, dude.
A teacher dumb enough to regard a fruit knife (or for that matter, a plastic cake slice) as an offensive weapon is dumb enough to be replaced by a machine. So there’s that.
I always have my penknife in my pocket. Well, almost always – it goes in checked baggage when flying. It’s expressly excluded from S139 of the Criminal Justice Act by virtue of having no lock on the blade and a blade edge less than 76mm; I need no reason to carry it. It’s a nice wee thing, handy to have for all sorts of trivial reasons – apples too. In the terrified UK, though, the looks of horror when I open and use it in public are something to see; braver souls will ask if I know “it’s illegal!” and many will argue that it is even after I’ve explained that it isn’t. People who apparently thought I was a reasonable-enough bloke suddenly find subjects of absorbing interest elsewhere.
What a sad, pathetic society we’ve become.
In the Game of Victimhood, you win or you die:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/when-women-become-men-at-wellesley-college.html?_r=1
Can you tear an apple into neat bite-size sections?
I heard Marilyn Arsem did some valuable research into that.
I work for a defense contractor. I have to keep the butter knife in my desk a deep dark secret. Last week or so they had an “active shooter” seminar as a lunch-and-learn. Some people might question why we would need such a seminar if even butter knives are prohibited. I’m trying to learn not to think like that. I’m trying real hard. Much like this guy. No not Ringo, the other guy.
http://youtu.be/vMN5uQhF-Ro
Nick Cohen on the feminist critics of Gone Girl:
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/5775
[ Link fixed, DT. ]
Behold, the best and brightest from our university system.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/students-aim-to-raise-6m-to-buy-a-castle-for-asylum-seekers-9832094.html
It would be almost worth seeing this come to fruition just to see how quickly a left-wing radical community living in a gentrified commune called Comrades of the Glen would descend into a Jonestown-style cult.
the level of stupid continues to expand exponentially.
to see how quickly a left-wing radical community living in a gentrified commune called Comrades of the Glen would descend into a Jonestown-style cult.
Apparently the place has its own laboratory. The screenplay writes itself.
Does someone wish to explain to me how the Bedord, Ohio school system teaches home economics or shop classes without the use of sharp objects? Or hammers? Suffice it to say, every day brings new affirmation to my decision years ago to send my children to private parochial schools.
As soon as he gave the knife to the teacher he should have called the police and had her arrested for possession of a knife
those who had celebrated the video [for its feminist stance] had been denounced as unreconstructed bigots.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
Well, as Mr Cooke says, “so reflexive has the search for complexity become” – and with it, higher moral ground from which to scold others – “that even the most straightforward of questions are now twisted and bent into more pleasingly distressing shapes.” Shapes more useful to bizarre identitarian fixations. And so several commentators insisted that the video should have been re-edited to show fewer black and Hispanic men either saying hello or acting like creepy jerks (regardless of who was actually acting like a jerk, or most like a jerk, during the filming). And after much contortion, Salon’s Emily Gould wanted us to believe that catcalling random white women is a way for “marginalised groups” to “talk back” to “white gentrifiers.”
…catcalling random white women is a way for “marginalised groups” to “talk back” to “white gentrifiers.”
I’m surprised the Guardian hasn’t applied this buckled logic to the issue of Asian grooming gangs.
Something along the lines of:
Tabloid-fuelled Islamophobia, the rise of Nigel Farage and an uncaring Tory government – is it any wonder that our young Muslims are turning to child rape to make their voices heard?
I’m surprised the Guardian hasn’t applied this buckled logic to the issue of Asian grooming gangs.
Vikram Dodd has an explanation.
Re: Vikram Dodd’s article – and professional commentators on NYC video
What I still cannot fathom is, whether they are *knowingly* trying to avoid some kind of ‘uncomfortable’ truth? Or whether they are so fixed into an ideological position, that they believe what they write?
the level of stupid continues to expand exponentially.
A few days ago an associate and I compared notes in passing regarding separate sections of the assorted collective occurrences that we wind up encountering.
Our assessment is that we’re having to deal with dedicated, demanded, deliberate, and ongoing practices of those who are blind doing sight reading on behalf of the deaf.
I certainly look forward to returning to working with the sane, I rather expect my associate does as well.
“One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you are obliged to act like one.”
there weren’t enough white guys doing it.
News flash: In Latinoamérica, “catcalling” is a time-honored tradition. Called echando piropos (tossing rubies), it happens much more than twice an hour on the Latino city streets, and it isn’t just young women who get it: it’s every woman, and sometimes you even get it from children.
I was horribly insulted by it at first. Latin culture is most definitely saturated in machismo — men feel entitled to react to women howsoever they see fit, whether that means muttering something explicit under their breath at a passing babe or setting up another household with a common-law wife that they keep secret from la legítima.
Lucky for me, my Spanish never was good enough to understand all the catcalls, some of which made my Colombian companions turn green with embarrassment. And then after I got used to it, I started feeling insulted when we didn’t get the mutter-mutter as we passed a fella or two.
That said, I prefer a culture without the catcalls. On Jerry Doyle’s radio show, he asked “So how do you let a woman know you think she’s got it going on without being a pig?”
I ask, “why do you need to?” Men going after women is predatory enough that the catcalls, rather than feeling like compliments, seem more like the appreciative licking of chops. There’s a reason it’s called a “wolf whistle,” and that catcallers are portrayed in cartoons as literal wolves.
Regardez that dude that kept pestering her for not saying hi. Since when is a woman obligated to pay any degree of attention to a man on the street? She doesn’t owe him jack, not even an acknowledging nod. And yet there’s this idea among non-housebroken men that they do?
Time and place, gents. At a party, in a bar or nightclub, on the boardwalk where people are there to see and be seen — that’s when you can go on the hunt. Walking down the street, going about one’s business, not dressed in a way to attract male attention?
Nope. And definitely not at work.
Is child grooming and sexual abuse a race issue?
No, it’s a cultural one, moron.
And avoiding the fact that most of the Ummah is extremely screwed up, sexually, is a national sport in the West.
Where else do you think that murderous rage comes from, if not child sexual abuse? Poverty? Guatemala is poor. Burkina Faso is poor. The Navajo are poor. None of them are beheading their enemies.
Poverty is more likely to engender despair, helplessness, and resignation. Sexual molestation affects the most intimate, sensitive, and core aspect of our selves, and when it’s accepted and ingrained in the culture and family, the people can’t turn their rage at Self so they turn it against Other.
The back of this vile culture must be broken for no other reason than this: the Q’uran and Hadith aren’t the problem: buggering their kids is.
two seniors at Columbia … claimed to find all sorts of “disturbing” anti-Semitic allegories in … Batman Returns.
Frozen is also The Shining, ICYMI.
@dicentra
“Nope. And definitely not at work.”
I met my wife at work. Plus I was in a position of authority over her, too. Still together seventeen years later, and thoroughly happy, though the authority thing has switched round a bit.
Come to think of it, most of my friends met their wives or husbands at work.
Russell Brand shares his wisdom.
The Nick Cohen Standpoint thing is interesting. People have noted “stereotypes” in popular culture for some time, sometimes no doubt with more than a grain of truth.
Sometimes films, books or TV shows are made to counter perceived prejudice. The motive is a noble one, but fiction that is constrained by philosophical ideas is likely to be moving further away from reality of people and real relationships.
As I repeatedly stress, the BBC’s journalism is tainted by
a) the fear of offending certain ‘groups’, and
b) the fear of stirring up prejudice in certain other groups, whose members are too stupid to be given the facts straight.
Similar constraints work on it’s drama. Too much BS has been said about creating eg: “Strong female characters” and too much attention paid to the BS. Viewers of shows like Borgen or the film Hannibal (or a thousand other examples) will know that this is hardly confined to the Beeb
I think that this is the background to the feminist control-freaks who now demand that any negative depictions of women (especially on the subject of rape/sexual assault) be banned, as someone might view the drama and accidentally think a thought of which they disapprove.
They think they’re fighting prejudice. In fact they’re trying to control what you see, hear, think and say.
Sometimes films, books or TV shows are made to counter perceived prejudice.
And sometimes the attempt to play against expectations (and statistics) can be quite jarring and disrupt the suspension of disbelief. As noted before, the Joan Smith piece in the Guardian was basically arguing that no thriller should ever be permitted to depict a female character lying about rape or physical abuse without a big Guardian-approved disclaimer onscreen. Because non-Guardian readers lack the necessary subtlety of mind. And by extension, no film should ever be made in which a woman is the perpetrator of physical abuse, and no gay character or black character should ever be depicted as less than admirable, and so on.
I am fascinated by this idea that Batman Returns is the live action version of Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
I saw Batman Returns in the pictures when it came out, and my thoughts on it, as far as I can remember, were that it was a pile of steaming guano.
Michael Keaton’s Batman seemed tired and bored with himself, even in Bruce Wayne playboy billionaire mode. Danny DiVito’s Penguin was both pitiful and disgusting. Christopher Walken played Christopher Walken.
Michelle Pffffeifer was sexy but also a little bit scary because she seemed drunk and looked like she’d claw you in places that you’d rather weren’t scratched. And she probably wouldn’t be happy to have a night in watching a video with you. She’d probably want to go to one of those night clubs where a little foreign guy lives in the toilets to guilt trip you into tipping him every time you go for a pee.
I completely missed the whole Jew-hate message, but that just shows you what a sly propagandist Tim “Leni” Burton is.
Looking back at his filmography, OF COURSE! It’s obvious he’s been up to shenanigans.
Beetlejuice was about the Jew as a trickster and the corrupting influence of dusky calypso music on our teenaged white daughters.
Edward Scissorhands was about the Jew as a freakish outsider and eternal foe of the Goy and his waterbeds.
Mars Attacks! was a blistering critique of the State of Israel.
Sweeney Todd was a cri de coeur against Hebraic hairdressers.
I’m surprised Burton hasn’t announced that his next project is Hitler’s Big Adventure. But I bet he’s working up to it. The bastard.
According to the latest research on Wikipedia:
Burton was born in 1958, in the city of Burbank, California, to Jean Burton (née Erickson), the owner of a cat-themed gift shop
I’ve never met Tim Burton’s mum but she sounds brilliant. I like to imagine her shop was called “Paws for Thought”, or perhaps “The Catwalk”. And then Tim Burton’s dad walked in one day, looking for a poster of a kitty hanging from a washing line. And their eyes met over the rack of Cat Stevens records, and it was love.
If I owned a cat-themed gift shop, I would call it “Purrecious Things”, and I would be so happy.
“Russell Brand’s wisdom” is right up there with other all-time great oxymorons such as “Microsoft Works”, “Vauxhall Frontera Sport” and “elegant combover”.
Sometimes films, books or TV shows are made to counter perceived prejudice.
And conversely there are shows like the recent iterations of Doctor Who, the scripts for which conform – one might say eerily – with many Guardianista conceits, in that commerce and military service are frequently disdained and people running successful businesses are quite likely to be evil, or at least in the service of it. Though we do get frequent and lingering reminders of the heroine’s preferred reading matter. So there’s that.
Russel Brand earns his Parklife meme.
No, it’s a cultural one, moron.
Which, I think, skewers Dodd. Disingenuous to a fault, he begins by inviting the reader to consider the issue of “race”, but then addresses the matter as though it were a cultural problem- “it’s the world of grotty takeaways and filthy minicab offices that these people inhabit which cause this” whilst simultaneously ignoring another evidently salient factor. Later, he references the case of Stuart Hazell, ignoring the fact that such instances are clearly utterly morally repugnant but nevertheless completely distinct phenomena.
So dishonest is the article that Bott trips himself up in his final paragraphs- why, if this is not a “race”(sic) issue, should the MCB et al. feel the need to take such action?
Lancastrian Oik – I agree with you 100% about the ineligance of the combover.
Combovers make me angry. They signal that the comboverer thinks he can trick you into believing he has hair. See: Arthur Scargill.
There are two good options for the folically challenged:
The wig – much maligned in popular culture, but Sean Connery and Burt Reynolds proved they can work. You just need to avoid the type William Shatner wore in the Star Trek movies, that thing looked like budget office carpeting. I kept expecting it to turn out to be some sort of alien symbiote.
The slaphead – black men have an advantage here because it usually looks good on them, unless they have a weirdly shaped head. But it can work on white men too – see Captain Picard, Moby, Ben Kingsley, and Bruce Willis. As long as your bonce doesn’t look like Humpty Dumpty or Fantasy World Dizzy, it’s fine to be bald.
The trick with being bald is to be bald like a boss. Combine it with a well-tailored suit and a bold silk tie. Use only the finest of waxes to polish your pate to a lambent gleam. Buy a luxurious-looking white Persian cat and pet it while chuckling menacingly.
‘Doctor Who’: Like ‘The Guardian’ – for the Whole Family.
Lancastrian Oik
Dodd’s article is phenomenally dishonest to read, but does he sit down at his laptop ( or whatever ) and actually write the piece , in the same way a barrister might make an argument, to achieve a desired effect? Does he know how illogical and mendacious the whole exercise is? Or is he ‘lost’ somewhere in his own mindset, that certain things must not be true? I see a lot of reporting, on particular issues, in which I know the reporter is being misleading and that their ‘sources’ are wholly unreliable, but also that they are deeply partisan. In which case , however untruthful they are – it may be that what they ‘want’ to be true, for them, has effectively ‘become’ true. I’m sure a lot of the time journalists are spouting complete drivel, but sometimes they may have ‘lost the plot’ perhaps…
How is one supposed to pronounce Da’von? Is the “inverted comma” a sign that the second syllable bears the stress, or is it a glottal stop?
Pendant – I believe Da’von created the Daleks on Doctor Who. He probably reads the Telegraph.
I’d get on better with Nick Cohen if he didn’t feel the need to shoe-horn a “but the Tories are just as bad” paragraph into every article. Presumably he’s trying to show that he’s independent from the editorial line of the Speccie and Standpoint, but it’s stylistically very poor.
If he wants to write a specific article about the vices of right wingers then fine, but attacking the left and adding in a non sequitur about the right is just sloppy.
David:
“And sometimes the attempt to play against expectations (and statistics) can be quite jarring and disrupt the suspension of disbelief.”
Yes indeed. It reminds me of an episode of the late and un-lamented TV show Bonekickers, in which the main antagonists were a bunch of Christian self-styled crusaders who went around beheading Muslims in order to bring about a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. Because, I suppose, the other way around would have been totally implausible…
RY:
I suspect that they’ve managed to consciously convince themselves that what they’re saying is true, but that deep down they know they’re just spouting nonsense. I also suspect that this is behind a lot of the left’s hysteria when it comes to being contradicted — can’t let their precious illusions be shattered, after all.
I’ve got to the point, where I am harbouring a sneaking desire that the Daleks ( or cyber men ) will win.
Probably treasonable.
Guardian on midterm results: “Obama didn’t lose.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/04/republicans-win-big-election-midterms
Russell Brand- “PARKLIFE!!”
‘As noted before, the Joan Smith piece in the Guardian was basically arguing that no thriller should ever be permitted to depict a female character lying about rape or physical abuse without a big Guardian-approved disclaimer onscreen’.
So we can’t watch ‘A Passage to India’ anymore?
On the topic of combovers, I saw a doozy on the tube the other day. The passage of 15 years since the rise of the Shoreditch Twat means inevitably that some of those at the vanguard of the movement have had to find ways to deal with hair loss and the consequent inability to create the obligatory fauxhawk. Nothing daunted, the chap I saw the other day had grown hair from both sides, carefully combed them up to meet in the middle, then swept them up into a luxuriant comb-o-fauxhawk atop a gleaming pate. In this case the ghastly effect was completed by the tenacious vestiges of a widow’s peak peeking out at the front. It was really quite an effort to keep from laughing openly. Fortunately my stop came quickly.
a circus of competitive indignation
I see Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is once again in urgent need of a new appendix devoted to Twitter.
This week – the Witches of Twitterwick flock together in an attempt to destroy Goody Dunham.
Can’t imagine why.
[ Link fixed, DT ]
This week – the Witches of Twitterwick flock together in an attempt to destroy Goody Dunham.
I’m not sure who to root for.
Lemon sucker in chief, Zoe Williams, dusts down her sanctimonious, wagging finger and directs it this time towards space tourism.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/02/richard-branson-space-tourists-obscene-inequality-free-market
When rich people burn huge sums of money on fun, it wakes us up to the excesses of the free market, she says.
Imagine living next door to Ms Williams. You’d never get a moment’s peace over the garden fence.
You spent money on a box of fireworks just so your children can have FUN?, she would shriek, Why can’t you quarry these insights from your own imagination?
I’m not sure who to root for.
Personally, I’m happy to sit back and watch them devour each other.
Lemon sucker in chief, Zoe Williams, dusts down her sanctimonious, wagging finger and directs it this time towards space tourism.
You have to wonder how many industries, employment options and technological conveniences would never have come into existence, and in many cases ubiquity, had people not used their money in ways that make Ms Williams suck her teeth.