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 “The biblical allusions and historical references woven into the plot of Batman Returns betray a hidden conflict between gentile and Jew,” they wrote.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.
In defence of Russell Brand, where Ioan Marc Jones applauds the actor/comedian/whatever because he “…has undoubtedly empowered some of the politically apathetic young to criticize and question – like Tony Benn did (on ‘Da Ali G Show’) – and such an achievement shouldn’t be denigrated simply because one man doesn’t have all the answers”.
Mr. Jones appears not to have noticed that, whilst Ali G was a fictional construct, Brand is real and apparently sincere, and not only does he not “have all the answers”, he doesn’t even have any decent questions beyond “Why can’t we just all be nice to each other?”.
Nevertheless, that may indeed appeal to “some of the politically apathetic young”- those in the 7-9 age group perhaps, and one of the more astute members of which might well respond by saying “Nice? What, like you were being when you left those disgusting messages on Andrew Sachs’ answerphone?”.
MrX:
So, the hysteria is not because an argument is being contradicted – but because if the illusion is shattered, they are in freefall…
This is not unrelated.
http://pjmedia/tatler/2014/1104/lena-dunham-says-her-use-of-sexual-predator-was-comic/
Nope. And definitely not at work.
This. When I worked in Russia I witnessed appalling behaviour on the part of wrinkly old expats trying to get stuck into their much younger and prettier female Russian colleagues, most of which went unremarked by the expat management. It was an utter disgrace. Then I move to France, and I find my Russian female colleague being pestered by wrinkly old men on the internal messenger system.
As you say, if a woman is in a bar or club then (within the limits of politeness and good manners) she is fair game for an approach. But at work they’re there to work, not be chatted up. I imagine it must be pretty unpleasant to be in the office and having unwanted attentions from somebody you have to work with, particularly somebody senior.
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.
I don’t think meeting at work is a problem, half a graduate intake pair off with one another in large firms. It’s all in the approach. Women have a habit of getting the attention of a man in whom they are interested, so if a woman in the office is not giving you any interest then it is a near certainty she is not interested. And I think a skillful man can easily find a method of discovering whether a woman is interested without her even knowing what he’s doing: simply read the body language.
The problem is idiots who either cannot read the “not interested” signals, or believe they don’t need to heed them. And those who lack the skill to probe the question subtly and put the woman in a very uncomfortable position.
all-time great oxymorons such as
Socialist worker
‘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’.
That’s Ian McEwan’s Atonement banned, then. And To Kill a Mockingbird!
“The illusion is shattered”.
So cocksure (oops! *snork*) is Dunham, it appears not to have occurred to her that:
(a) actually, she is “that kind of girl”;
(b) despite their impeccable prog credentials her family are actually bat-shit crazy;
(c) because of her upbringing (see(b)) she lacks the kind of moral compass which usually means that, on the whole, people tend to shy away from revealing disturbing episodes of child sex abuse involving other members of one’s family because of the effect such revelations have upon the victim. It’s why we have anonymity in court proceedings, duh;
(d) arrogance, stupidity, sheer moral vacuity or a combination of all three meant she could not see the “backlash”* coming.
*”Backlash”- known in most households around the world as “being aware of the natural consequences of your actions”.
This headline made me chuckle. Note the order of words.
So we can’t watch ‘A Passage to India’ anymore?
Ewwwwwww.
We couldn’t watch See The Posturing Hipsters, Err, Yuppies/Preppies/Sloanes At That Time even when it first got decanted.
Remember, that was the depths of the Nineteen Empties, and the first of this latest round of what’s now being called the hipsters, and the accompanying fantasy that making some declaration means that there is no assessment of the declaration, just blind and deaf adulation of obvious crap . . .
I’m not up on Russell Brand, but apparently from what I read he’s doing much of the same . . .
So, no, no, no, one does not waste one’s time with A Passage Though India With The Result On Screen.
Instead, the actual movie that Passage and any of its partisans would like to imagine that someday there might, maybe, be a resemblance for being nearby is Heat And Dust.
“Heat And Dust”- now you’re talking.
‘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’.
In the typically-bad BBC SciFi drama ‘Outcasts’ (cancelled due to poor viewing figures), one of the female cast sanctimoniously declares that women had never ordered genocides or built WMD.
With the advantage of my memory and tinterweb I found the examples of Agatha Kanziga, the wife of the former Rwandan President and one of the key instigators of the 1994 genocide, and two Iraqi scientists integral to Saddam’s bio-war programme, Rihab Taha and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash.
Three women, none of whom are white. Enough to make a Guardianista’s head explode.
There’s a wonderful takedown of Russell Brand’s book, over at Mick Hartley’s…
‘Bejeweled Bulls*it, Michael Moynihan reads Russell Brand so we don’t have to.’
http://mickhartley.typepad.com/
sackcloth and ashes – I never saw “Outcasts”, but I can picture exactly how that played out.
Sort of like the various rants against sexism and racism in “Life On Mars”, a show about a time-travelling policeman whose most implausible plot device was the idea that skinny little John Simms is hard.
Or “Survivors”, where a diverse group of achingly right-on middle class people ticking all the right racial and sexual boxes survive Fluageddon and the baddies are evil white chavs who probably eat Pot Noodles and don’t read The Guardian.
“Survivors” was also interesting because it would have us believe puffy-faced Julie Graham is some sort of badass natural leader, like Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead but a lot better fed and more emotionally incontinent.
Even the black guy from Peep Show came across as a whingeing, passive-aggressive, self-loathing pain in the backside. He should have played Johnson from Peep Show in “Survivors”, that would have been brilliant.
As you say, if a woman is in a bar or club then (within the limits of politeness and good manners) she is fair game for an approach. But at work they’re there to work, not be chatted up. I imagine it must be pretty unpleasant to be in the office and having unwanted attentions from somebody you have to work with, particularly somebody senior.
Heh, doesn’t leave much room for meeting women, does it?. Some of us would never consider a bar/club as suitable for meeting wife material.
Survivors.
I persisted with that show because I liked the premise, but it just got worse and worse. You obviously gave up before their adventures took them to some kind of military compound run by the, predictably, black Prime Minister.
predictably, black Prime Minister.
predictably, black woman Prime Minister.
There. Fixed that for you.
Well, remember everyone, Real communism has never been tried.
Basically the problem boils down to the folly of knowledge-inquiry instead of the superior wisdom-inquiry:
http://philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1213
OK, OK, I sent you money! Geez, lay off the guilting….
Quint&Jessel,
Gratuities always appreciated.
WTP- yes, but who gets to define “value”?
Why those possessed of wisdom, of course. It’s a kind of academic inquiry, donchaknow.
WTP – fascinating.
This article appears in Issue 62 of The Philosophers’ Magazine.
If I know anything about Philosophy, it’s closely aligned to magic as per “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. It’s good to see them set their sights above turning base metals into gold.
Universities around the world have, built into their intellectual/institutional structure, a seriously defective philosophy of inquiry we have inherited from the past. This holds that, in order to help promote human welfare, academia must devote itself to the pursuit of knowledge.
Stupid knowledge! What has it ever done for us?
modern industry, agriculture, medicine and hygiene
Oh.
which in turn have made possible global warming, lethal modern warfare, explosive population growth, the destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species, pollution of earth, sea and air, vast inequalities of wealth and power around the globe.
Boooo! That’s quite a densely packed charge sheet against knowledge, so it may be worth taking each in turn:
global warming – the case for which is getting shakier every day, even as global warmers grow more desperate in their rhetoric. I can’t even remember how many days we have left to “save the planet”. Or to “claim my PPI”. They sound very similar.
lethal modern warfare
Sure, but Ghengis Khan wasn’t much less lethal, and I seem to recall some unpleasantness in Rwanda that had nothing to do with modern arms.
And do you know what the most lethal weapon on the planet is, by body count? It’s not super-duper high-tech cruise missiles, or MOABs, or the B-2 Stealth Bomber, or even the ICBM. It’s the humble and relatively primitive AK-47.
explosive population growth
An essay titled “Does Philosophy Betray Both Reason and Humanity?” is asserting that more humans is a Bad Thing. I’m obviously not clever and philosophy enough to work that one out.
the destruction of natural habitats and rapid extinction of species
See also: global warming. The rapid extinction of species meme is a similar sort of Ehrlichian myth. As for protecting natural spaces, it’s the more knowledge-intensive societies that do it best. The USA protects wild habitats better than Uzbekistan does.
pollution of earth, sea and air
See above. Is London more or less polluted now than it was 100 or 200 years ago? Answers on a lump of coal or some dried horse poo, please.
vast inequalities of wealth and power around the globe
Because inequality wasn’t a thing in Caesar’s day. Or Pharoah’s time. Or whatever.
And what’s wrong with inequality? Are people in China – who can now reasonably expect three square meals a day, electricity, clean clothes and consumer trinkets – supposed to be pissed off because they’re not one bad harvest away from starvation, like their ancestors were?
Would they prefer medieval serfdom, as long as it meant Russell Brand had all his money taken off him too?
What we need is a kind of academic inquiry that puts problems of living at the heart of the enterprise, and is rationally designed and devoted to helping humanity learn how to make progress towards as good and wise a world as possible.
A sort of… scientific socialism. If only somebody had tried that before so we’d have some idea of how it’s likely to pan out!
The basic intellectual aim should be to seek and promote wisdom, understood to be the capacity to realise what is of value in life, for oneself and others, thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides.
The irony of someone advocating for wisdom, when a mere paragraph ago he was uncritically regurgitating shonky climate change theories, Malthusian misanthrophy, and Marxesque bewailing of “inequality”.
The central intellectual tasks of wisdom-inquiry are (1) to articulate, and improve the articulating of, our problems of living, and (2) to propose and critically assess possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, philosophies of life. The pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how emerges out of, and feeds back into, these fundamental intellectual activities. A transformed social science, devoted to helping humanity tackle problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, is intellectually more fundamental than natural science.
Translation: all those bastards doing actual science get more prestige and better job offers than we philosophers! Get ’em!
And while we’re at it, the world needs some sort of priestly caste of… philosopher kings… to tell people what to do. For their own good, you understand.
A basic task of the university is to help people discover what is genuinely of value in life, and how it is to be realised.
None of this can be done as long as our universities are dominated by knowledge-inquiry. […]
The case for the urgent need for an academic revolution, from knowledge to wisdom, has not been taken up, criticised, proclaimed, attacked, fought over. It has been ignored.
The success of critical studies degrees tells us the opposite. Universities are retreating from knowledge, from rationalism, from empiricism. Universities are the most dogmatic, intellectually censorious environments in the western world.
The end result of this retreat from knowledge isn’t wisdom, though.
Why those possessed of wisdom, of course. It’s a kind of academic inquiry, donchaknow.
Unfortunately , I don’t share the idea as to what is valuable in life with some of those wise American academics whose doings are examined on here from time to time.
So that’s a bit of a non-starter for me, unfortunately.
I can’t even remember how many days we have left to “save the planet”.
IIRC the deadline was several years in the past, so it’s too late to worry now.
Ghengis Khan wasn’t much less lethal
Yes, Mr. Khan once put a city of 1.2 million to the sword. It was a fairly simple process really. Just assign 24 citizens to 50,000 of your soldiers and the job is done in a day. Think of all those people working all those years on the Manhattan Project and you’ll see the beauty and efficiency of the old ways. Plus no tell-tale nuclear waste to bother with.
And then there was the Khan wanna-be, Tamerlane. Wiped out 5% of the world population and he didn’t have an AK. Much gentler on the environment they both were, you’ll note.
Lancastrian Oink: I believe TPM is a UK production (hence philosophypress.co.uk) , though the more…ummm…pedestrian philosophers there do tend to be the Americans. Or perhaps that’s by design, I’m not sure.
Another milestone passed on the long march to Stupid.
Another milestone passed on the long march to Stupid.
Though I was amused by Ms Marcotte’s mugshot, with its full-on Compassionate Head Tilt™. As regular readers will know, compassion is Amanda’s defining characteristic.
full-on Compassionate Head Tilt™
Yes, it’s almost as if she’s telling you that she’s an Openly Liberal Fascist.
Speaking of marches:
“it’s alright for you, not all of us have mummies and daddies to look after us,’ and then he lunged at me”
Allegedly.
Allegedly.
Who knew the Russell Brand Brains Trust / Vivienne Westwood Tendency would attract obnoxious people?
Who indeed?
“it’s alright for you, not all of us have mummies and daddies to look after us,’ and then he lunged at me”
But it’s not only the unspeakable evil of a well spoken accent that upsets our radical friends, it’s that other symbol of capitalist oppression – the well built German car.
In one section they surrounded a man driving a new Mercedes car and sprayed the back of it with an aerosol, pushing their tubes at him as he opened windows to remonstrate with them.
http://www.london24.com/news/pictures_anonymous_million_mask_march_causes_chaos_in_central_london_1_3835410
Presumably, people with heavy east end accents driving battered 15-year-old Citroen Saxos were given safe passage.
full-on Compassionate Head Tilt™.
MSNBC: “Those old white people? They’re going to die someday.”
http://freebeacon.com/politics/msnbc-old-white-people-in-the-south-who-vote-republican-are-going-to-die-some-day/
Haven’t the aims outlined at TPM been the concerns of vast numbers of philosophers, theologians, poets, writers and psychologists for thousands of years? A lot of that sounds damned familiar.
“Thwarted sperm”….
Earlier in my “career” I had the misfortune (mine, and society’s) to have been a criminal lawyer.
At a rather bibulous lunch with ex-colleagues today (we are, fortunately, now all retired and past child-bearing age), this case was mentioned, because we are full of fun and glee and love and stuff.
Should the plaintiffs succeed then they will criminalise abortion….
That’s not what they want, obviously. They will protest that they still uphold the woman’s right to choose, but once that choice is made (i.e. to go ahead to term) their case would nevertheless effectively mean that once the mother’s choice is made it becomes subject to the intervention of the state.
And what if, having made her choice to have the child, the mother-to-be who doesn’t smoke 40 a day and/or drink a bottle of vodka every night refuses to give up:
(a) extreme sports;
(b) going to live in a Latin American country where healthcare is shit because that’s where hubby has just been posted;
(c) continuing to take the existing kid(s) to school in of of those cute little trailers which sport a tiny Day-Glo flag that you tow behind a mountain-bike down a dark and dangerous country lane from November to March to that lovely little church school in that darling little village they’ve just moved to;
(d) anything else that is deemed to be hazardous to foetal health?
None of the foregoing is currently covered by “administering a noxious substance” (section 14 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861, and also unlike abortifacients which would continue to be exempt, obviously), but you get my drift, I hope.
This might be of interest to Ms Marcotte and the MSNBC crew…
http://ricochet.com/asians-new-republicans/
Those pesky Asians.
‘Sort of like the various rants against sexism and racism in “Life On Mars”, a show about a time-travelling policeman whose most implausible plot device was the idea that skinny little John Simms is hard’.
It may be just a rumour, but the story is that the Beeb’s commissars were less than happy about the public reaction to ‘Life on Mars’.
The punters were supposed to see Sam Tyler as the hero, and Gene Hunt as just some unreconstructed thug. The trouble was that it was the boozy, punchy copper who used one liners like ‘This investigation is making as much progress as a spastic in a magnet factor’ that the viewers warmed to, rather than the touchy-feely metrosexual detective from the noughties.
Heh, doesn’t leave much room for meeting women, does it?. Some of us would never consider a bar/club as suitable for meeting wife material.
Good point!
“A basic task of the university is to help people discover what is genuinely of value in life, and how it is to be realised.”
Conan, what is best in life?
Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.
I would be sad if students did not immediately think of this.
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
Response from London lass in office to seeing my penknife* “How come you’re allowed to carry that and I’m not allowed pepper spray?”
* Victorinox “Climber” – nothing mahoosive.
I felt a sudden urge to post a link to this.
Well, THAT wasn’t at all disturbing.
That’s not what they want, obviously. They will protest that they still uphold the woman’s right to choose …
Well, let’s face it, they’re not really the kind of people who set a great deal of store in the idea that actions have consequences.
Speaking of all matters legal, this is a marvellous quote:
A male student told me my insistence that individuals suspected of a crime must be fairly tried and found convincingly guilty before we ruin their lives — and being expelled from a prestigious university for rape would undoubtedly be life-ruining — was evidence that I had fallen for the “liberal paradigm” of justice, which tends to benefit white, well-off men.
More of such impeccable logic can be read here.
Sure, but Ghengis Khan wasn’t much less lethal, . . . .
and
Conan, what is best in life?
Crush your enemies.. . . .
Of course, while noting that, unsurprisingly, Conan wasn’t the original source of that one . . .
Speaking of reading the great literature of the period, my current binge read is the original 181 stories of the Doc Savage canon, where I suppose I should also get around to all of the original Conan in time, but first will be all of Nero Wolfe and Shakespeare’s plays . . .
Lancastrian Oik
Should the plaintiffs succeed then they will criminalise abortion…
Can you elaborate on how that is the case? For the ignorant like myself :). I suppose it has something to do with the legal status of the foetus?
More of such impeccable logic can be read here
‘The speeches made by students from the mattress -strewn steps leading up to the beautiful Low Library were chilling. Many focused on the need to believe women who make accusations. “I believe!” they hollered, to cheers from the crowd. This casual assertion of belief in all accusations of sexual assault mirrors the gullible fanaticism of the 17th.Century Salem trials, where, likewise, claims and denunciations were taken at face value…
…It would have been a brave student indeed who stood up at the Salem-like belief-fest at Columbia last week and said ‘We have to prove accusations, not naively accept them.’
How on Earth would you begin to go about turning this tide?
Jimmy- yes, that’s the point.
The matter was considered in Attorney-General’s Reference No. 3 of 1994, where the Law Lords affirmed that a foetus, although having certain legal protections, is not a separate entity in law until it has been born alive and the umbilical cord severed.
For this case to succeed, the foetus would have to acquire the same status as a “”a life in being”, i.e. an autonomous person. Were that to be the case, then to kill a foetus by whatever means would amount to homicide.
Also elsewhere, Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions
As I’ve noted here and there, the actuality is more right wing liberal deniers vs left wing liberal deniers, rather than conservative vs liberal, but overall, the study does rather illuminate why the right and left wing liberal extremes keep screaming so vehemently . . .