The Year Reheated
In which we reflect on the woes of the Guardianista class, on the great thinkers of academia, and on the mind-shattering wonders of contemporary art.
In January we marvelled at the modesty of the novelist Brigid Delaney, who told Guardian readers that her lifestyle and living arrangements should be determined not by her budget, as is generally the custom, but by her self-estimated importance as a creative person. And therefore taxpayers should pay for her to live in a much nicer flat in a more happening part of town. On the same day in the same paper, fellow creative person Amien Essif bemoaned the fact that “there’s not much money in writing these days.” And so, again, the taxpayer must be made to “subsidise creativity” – including Mr Essif’s own writing on “consumerism, gentrification and hegemony.” For which, it turns out, there isn’t much of a market.
February brought us other elevated sensibilities, among them those of David Dennis, a man who regards the word “serve” as sexist and who, at home, frets about how food is put on plates. For him, meal times are a theatre of patriarchal oppression and fraught with complication. Gender politics also inspired the radical ladies of Columbia University to combat “male-centricity” by making all-girl pornography that is “hard to masturbate to.” Because thwarting masturbation with badly-made erotica is both a “guerrilla action” and “a feminist statement.”
In March the Guardian unveiled its roster of trainee journalists, thereby offering a glimpse of Guardians-yet-to-come. These hothouse talents, for whom lifestyle and pop culture are areas of expertise, promised to tackle “the issues that matter” to an entire generation, from students’ bedrooms and “canoeing to work” to an extended critique of drop-crotch meggings. Meanwhile, the paper’s Leo Hickman looked back on ten years of struggling with ethical purity and the “pangs of consumer guilt” brought on by buying Kenyan mangetout. Being so globally sensitive, Mr Hickman believes that the way to make Kenyan pea farmers richer is to not buy their goods. Despite his displays of piety, Mr Hickman was assailed by his even more pious readers, who pointed out that our fretful Guardianista “cannot be living ethically” or be “environmentally sound” while also having mains power and three healthy children.
April drew to our attention the talents of Ms Keeley Haftner, a taxpayer-funded artist and self-styled educator of the masses, who, in the name of art, deposited garbage on the streets of Saskatoon and was subsequently bewildered by said taxpayers’ lack of gratitude. Oh, and Guardian contributor Paul Krugman was paid $25,000 per month to think about the wickedness of economic inequality.
In May we beheld the fearsome intellect of Ms Lierre Keith, a radical eco-socialist and “gender abolitionist” whose interests include “sabotaging infrastructure” and cutting power lines, on grounds that leaving tens of thousands of people without light and heat will somehow encourage “class consciousness” and the end of capitalism.
Urban Studies lecturer Peter Matthews was a highlight of June, thanks to his concern for litter inequality, though with no apparent interest in how litter actually materialises, and his idea for defending the “poor and marginalised” with a “physically radical intervention” – i.e., demolishing homes nicer than his own. Another June notable was Ms Silvia Murray Wakefield, a “London-based feminist and mother of two,” who finds the World Cup distressing and oppressive, due to her belief that all of womanhood is being “erased” by a sporting event that occurs once every four years.
In July we encountered the transgressively artistic Ms Jane Wang, whose “guerrilla performance piece” on a bridge in Cambridge, Massachusetts had no discernible impact on passers-by. And the Guardian’s Tracy Van Slyke detected an egregious racial subtext in the smoke emitted by cartoon trains.
Academic matters came to the fore in August, thanks to Dr Ben Pitcher, a sociology lecturer, who revealed to the world secrets hitherto unguessed. Specifically, that your furniture choices are informed by the “crisis in white identity,” and that the apparently innocuous Gardeners’ Question Time is in fact “saturated with racial meanings.” When not finding racism in discussions of soil acidity, Dr Pitcher busies himself by pondering “the relationship between race and neoliberal capitalism.” Meanwhile, Canadian performance artist Martine Viale, whose body is “a place of research,” staged a daringly intellectual “infiltration in public space” by flailing about randomly and wrapping her head in yarn. And the performance art duo Mothergirl created “a strategic refraction” by standing on a roadside and bashing themselves with pillows for 90 minutes. Despite appearing unhinged, the ladies were in fact challenging the public “to think critically about their own relationships with feminism, consumerism, and representational visuality.”
In September we felt the pain and hardship of the modern student, many of whom are denied such basic amenities as $13,000 vibrating nap machines. The same month also brought us the deep thinking of the Guardian’s Yomi Adegoke, a specialist in “race, popular culture and intersectional feminism,” and whose racial sin detector was triggered by a pair of prosthetic comedy buttocks.
In October the Guardian’s Felicity Lawrence and Deborah Orr explained to us how we are “in revolt” against supermarkets, which are “horribly antisocial” and the cause of all modern ills. You see, “people don’t have as much money to spend” and therefore – yes, therefore – “we” are turning en masse to “farmers markets, box schemes, bread clubs and food co-ops,” where shopping is less convenient and more expensive. Days later, millionaire socialist Dame Vivien Westwood, whose PVC handbags can occasionally be found marked down to a mere £400, railed against food being much too affordable.
November was enriched by the artistic feats of Mr Joseph Ravens, who regurgitates chewed carrot onto a bird table, and Ms Marilyn Arsem, whose dislike of insufficiently leftwing people, and also democracy, prompted her to crush fruit in protest. Political passion was also at the forefront of a Guardian piece by transgender punk musician Alyssa Kai, who was shocked to discover that punk music may not actually be “the ultimate anti-establishment scene.” There was also another instalment of our ongoing series of tweeted agonies, and we learned that beards are harmful and oppressive on account of their “glorifying behaviours typical of people in white hegemonies.”
The year drew to a close with another harrowing drama on campus, in which students claimed to feel “unsafe” and “traumatised,” and were deemed in need of counselling, due to the fleeting presence of some substandard art. This nightmare scenario was, however, surpassed by an even more traumatic experience, when freshman activist Della Kurzer-Zlotnick was emotionally devastated by a two-letter word that was apparently unknown to her, and which she later described as “violent and triggering language.” Other items of note included the world’s slowest hit-and-run and the development of bionic lingerie, which “automatically tightens in response to breast movement.”
I think it’s safe to say this was a year in which we all learned something.
I fear this will all seem tame compared to the righteous progress awaiting us in 2015.
I think it’s safe to say this was a year in which we all learned something.
It’s been an education all right. Thanks, David.
Consider your tip jar hit.
I fear this will all seem tame compared to the righteous progress awaiting us in 2015.
And after the 2015 British major governmental election year, there will be the 2016 American major governmental election year.
Because thwarting masturbation with badly-made erotica is both a “guerrilla action” and “a feminist statement.”
*chokes on coffee*
Have a great new year, David.
*chokes on coffee*
To give the ladies their due, watching feminist bints pissing about with eggs and then pawing at the floor in a half-hearted manner didn’t leave me feeling at all aroused.
But then I’m strong that way.
I think it’s safe to say this was a year in which we all learned something.
That’s the thing about your blog, David. It’s funny *and* depressing. Don’t stop. 🙂
It’s funny *and* depressing.
Well, I suppose you could take comfort in the fact that the mindset being mocked is, for now, a minority one. Albeit a minority that’s actively encouraged by many of our institutions, and is influential out of all proportion to its credibility.
I think it’s safe to say this was a year in which we all learned something.
Until today I had no idea what ‘drop-crotch meggings’ were. Wiser now.
I don’t think you’ll run out of material any time soon.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/29/russell-brand-comedian-turned-activist
These are the sorts of things that happen when the severely disturbed are taken seriously.
I don’t think you’ll run out of material any time soon.
Well, over the years the Guardian has shown us that obliviousness and narcissism are inexhaustible commodities. Still, it’s good to know that Mr Monbiot finds Brand’s incoherence “refreshing” and a sign of a “good leader.” Presumably, Joyless George™ is also invigorated by the man’s staggering hypocrisy, his disregard for basic facts, and his near-total ignorance of whatever he feels entitled to flap his face about.
He’s the best thing that has happened to the left in years.
Indeed. The left has found its perfect physical manifestation – a narcissistic, loudmouthed manchild who flips out and gets shouty at the merest hint of criticism.
The left has found its perfect physical manifestation – a narcissistic, loudmouthed manchild who flips out and gets shouty at the merest hint of criticism.
Quite. But then George isn’t exactly known for his self-awareness.
Or his modesty.
Which as a disorder, it should be noted, possesses dishonesty and appearances-centrism as its, er, foundational characteristics. Ethics, if you prefer.
2015 will therefore bring us more envy, covetousness, theft, intellectual hijackings, projections, indignation, preemptive moral striking, ad hoc rules, and so forth.
The best heroes the left has had in years, in other words. At least there Monbiot’s broken clock-honest.
Meanwhile, Laurie has just dumped some narcissistic psychobabble on the readers of the New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/on-nerd-entitlement-rebel-alliance-empire
I’m surprised that someone with a degree in English from Oxford writes quite so badly. Perhaps she thinks it makes her sound authentic rather than phoney. I’m not sure it succeeds.
I’m not sure it succeeds.
Laurie does, however, find time to describe herself as “very clever” and “a writer and scholar.”
I think she means student.
All the best to you in the new year, Mr. Thompson. Keep on blogging.
Is it too late to nominate someone else as the fool of 2014? There’s this guy, Male_Feminist, on twitter. Instapundit quotes him a lot. High-larious. Highly high-larious. He once threatened to report a follower for violating his civil rights for using a twitter handle of “Merry Christmas” — he was violating church-state separation, you see. Now there this, about the recent Doonesbury cartoon:
https://twitter.com/Warden_AoS/status/549621874683297792
I love this comment from one of his followers: “Don’t even get me started on the “straight man” in a comedy duo – homophobic and femophobic in one proper noun”
I have to wonder if Male Feminist is a parody account. Maybe I’ve been had.
Dom, I’m assuming it’s a parody. Though of course it’s often hard to tell.
Dom, I’m assuming it’s a parody.
I’ve always assumed that “_AoS” referred to “Ace of Spades,” meaning that one of the AoSHQ morons runs the account.
Jonah Goldberg observed that today’s Fretting Class behaves similarly to an immune system that has run out of invaders to fight: it turns against its own self, degrading the organs and nervous system until it collapses after a slow, agonizing death.
Total, worldwide economic collapse would result in many deaths and other painful tragedies, but the upside is that most of the current nonsense would no longer find purchase.
I’m almost to the point where I think it’s worth it, even if I’m one of the people who starves to death.
Thanks, Bo.
Likewise, Sean.
In the meantime, Obama continues to give the American Public a big middle finger, and he doesn’t care who knows.
Wotta guy.
Blimey, dicentra. I hadn’t quite realised just how thorough your Pinterest collection is.
I assumed that Male_Feminist was a parody because of the avatar, that’s “pajama boy”, the lad who was used to promote (as I recall) discussing Obamacare with ones relatives at Thanksgiving. Smarmy little git in onesys (onesies, oh the agonies) holding a cup of hot chocolate. Typical lefty, white, hipster glasses, clueless…
Oh, and we all learn something all the time it seems. Thanks to you David my horizons are wider, if not always more magnificent. Thanks and all the best for the next year, to all and sundry.
That New Statesman piece by Laurie Penny is really poorly written. I think what she’s trying to say is that the problems of being a nerd are orthogonal to those of male privilege – and since female Laurie claims to have also been a nerd, she got a double dealing of bad stuff. Characteristically, the article is mostly about Laurie.
But try not to gag on the last paragraph:
And on that note I shall return to what I was doing before I read this post, which was drinking sweet tea and weeping about how boys don’t seem to want to kiss short-haired lady nerds, and trying not to blame the whole world for my broken heart, which is becoming more complex and interesting in the healing but still stings like a boiling ball of papercuts. I’ll let you know how that goes.
JL – it’s a striking omission that Laurie got through her little piece without explicitly drawing on the concept of “intersectionality”, that well-known parlour game for elective victims. Even so the poor little short-haired lady nerd makes it clear that she has suffered a great deal – but without comparing her sufferings to, say, those of a woman who underwent FGM, or has to do a ten-mile round trip to collect water, or is deprived of all education; any of which might have provided a context for her bleating. Her feminism, if that is what it is, has a very narrow focus. Why she imagines that her broken heart should be of wider interest I don’t know – except that it is, her self-promotional whimsy having garnered 292 comments at the moment of typing this.
Blimey, dicentra. I hadn’t quite realised just how thorough your Pinterest collection is.
Well, for some people it’s first-person shooter games, only for me the result of the obsession is visible to God and everyone.
I try to keep the total number of pins below 100K, even though the per-account limit is double that. I’ve even culled hundreds of pins to keep each board manageable.
David, maybe you should write about some sane people next year for a change?
Comments would almost certainly be less fun to read though.
I thought Laurie was “gender freed”? Shouldn’t she be worrying about girls not wanting to kiss nerdy girls? Or is it, once more, just posturing? Sorry, positioning?
David, this post and its links have kept me entertained on a long and otherwise boring train journey. Your tip jar has been hit.
AS,
Happy to relieve tedium. And thanks.
I try to keep the total number of pins below 100K… to keep each board manageable.
Well, um, obviously. I’m sending your Guild of Evil™ membership card and amulet by first class post.
Maybe boys wont kiss Laurie because she’s a pretentious, self-righteous twat.
I’ll let you know how that goes….
Alas, she intends to inflict more of her tortured needy nerdy anguished tripe on anyone daft enough to click on it. I wonder when she will reach such maturity that she looks back and cringes at how utterly negatively she views the world and pretty much everyone in it?
“(S)tings like a boiling ball of papercuts….”
I just…
No. I have to be strong.
(S)tings like a boiling ball of papercuts….
I stopped reading after she whined about “the disaster of heterosexuality”. She’s a bigoted little cow, isn’t she?
“Maybe boys wont kiss Laurie because she’s a pretentious, self-righteous twat.”
Indeed. And she could always try looking a little more feminine – or at least female. I find her as attractive as I would a Thai lady-boy, which means not at all.
Hope I die before they grow old.
Unbelievably, there is a Part 2.
Oh joy.
@ Nik
That gem was included in this list:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-top-10-feminist-fiascoes-of-2014-20141219-story.html#page=1
It’s quite a stroll down memory lane, indeed! The laughs never end with this crowd.
This post reminds me why I enjoy your writing talents and your blog so much. (*dusts off wallet, hits Paypal link*) I also appreciate the genuinely impressive art, music, photography, and video that you often link to, if only to remind me that true creative talent still exists in the world and much of it is amazing. Thanks for all your efforts.
@RY
That must have been a tough time trying to whittle that down to just 10. I mean, Amanda Marcotte alone must be responsible for at least that number.
And here, surely, is No. 11 and we’re not even in 2015 yet.
Meanwhile, George Monbiot’s witterings seem to have had an influence here.
Meanwhile, George Monbiot’s witterings seem to have had an influence here.
At which point, comment seems unnecessary.
To be poor in India wasn’t so bad as to be on benefits in Britain
There’s a Channel 4 documentary in there somewhere. They could get White Dee off Benefits Street and send her to live under a sheet of tarpaulin in Jaipur for a month.
Episode 1. Dee contracts scabies after being bitten a feral stray dog as she demands nicotine patches at an Indian government hospital. But I’d rather be surrounded by scabby dogs and lepers than let the Tories privatise our NHS, she concludes.
Turns out the imp who has been ruining the world is a chap named Ben Trovato.
He is SO ripe for a doxxing, I can tell you that much right now.
. . . a chap named Ben Trovato.
Heh.
But try instead with the complete link attached . . .
That alleged Obama golf story is certainly an excellent right wing Ben Trovato story . . .
To quote the bride’s sister;
In turn, according to a childhood friend of the bride,
. . . . and those were just two of the quite a few rather handy stories commenting on how rather well the day really did go . . . .—and for fans of conservative politicians, as opposed to right or left wing extremists, the second story even has video of the call from the Golfer In Chief as well . . .
boys don’t seem to want to kiss short-haired lady nerds
Wasn’t there another occasion when Laurie was banging on about her short hair and how rebellious and counter-culture it was? I’m sure I remember because it stuck out to me, since I’m also a woman who wears my hair short and have never once considered it to be a remotely rebellious thing to do, or even uncommon. It’s as if Laurie gropes for anything to mark herself out as different and special, even when it’s something that countless other people do or have. Short hair, though? It seems to smack rather sadly of desperation.
But try instead with the complete link attached . . .
My link was this: https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2014/12/thefederalist.com/2014/12/30/my-person-of-the-year-ben-trovato/
Yours was this: http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/30/my-person-of-the-year-ben-trovato/
Mine was longer, so I don’t see how you can accuse it of being incomplete.
Also, I don’t know what to think of this except ye gods.
Dicentra, Hal’s link has the advantage of actually working. But it’s an interesting article – good find.
I guess I should stop worrying about the length of teenage Laurie’s hair, but did she think of growing it out if she thought it part of her problem? Also, as someone pointed out, short hair is not unusual among women – perhaps it was really short? Back in the day, young girls with very short hair (cropped) were generally signalling that they were lesbians, which could help explain the lack of male attention.
It’s a pity that something like e-harmony wasn’t available back then:
Insufferably pretentious short-haired lefty nerd seeks similar for long walks on the beach, Marxist discourse etc
ye gods.
See, now I’m trying to imagine the TV series featuring Emo Spock.
I guess I should stop worrying about the length of teenage Laurie’s hair,
Oh, but Laurie has given the subject of her hair a great deal of thought, along with many other aspects of her fascinating self. Like many of her peers, Laurie seems to believe that hair length is a measure of radicalism and political gravitas. But then she also tells us that she isn’t at all concerned by her appearance because “capitalist patriarchy relies on internalised sexism” and makes otherwise virtuous women “body shame each other.” And being so radical, so brave, so bravely radical, Laurie “fights constantly for her looks not to matter.”
She tells us this quite frequently. With photos, obviously.
And being so radical, so brave, so bravely radical, Laurie “fights constantly for her looks not to matter.”
Owch. 😉
See, now I’m trying to imagine the TV series featuring Emo Spock.
Actually, the Leonard Nimoy has already been done. After all, once you appear to get locked into something, auditions can be a bitch.
That New Statesman piece by Laurie Penny is really poorly written.
Yes, it is – and I suspect there might be a good reason for that.
You’ll note of course Miss Penny has a quite different explanation as to why people might find the odd flaw or two in what she wrote.
… I was also female, so when I tried to pull myself out of that hell into a life of the mind, I found sexism standing in my way. I am still punished every day by men who believe that I do not deserve my work as a writer and scholar.
I just realized that when I said ‘people might find the odd flaw or two’ I did of course naturally mean to type out ‘patriarchal straight, white cis male misogynist oppressors might find the odd flaw or two’. My mistake.
There may yet be other reasons too.
If you scroll down to look at the cascade of unctuous commentary following the Facebook post*, you’ll see quite clearly at least one other reason why Miss Penny generally has a hard time dealing with even the mildest of challenges to her oeuvre. For instance, Ed Platt writes:
Yesyesyes! Beautifully put! Thank you so much for using this as a teachable moment rather than taking the easy way out and making fun of Scott [Aaronson]
Speaking of pennies and money, I wonder what kind of submission rate she gets from the New Statesman for recycling her Facebook posts as articles?
*To give her the benefit of the doubt, the post is actually marked ‘Edited’ so presumably the one on the Facebook thread above has evidently been updated to match the copy used in the New Statesman. At least I assume that’s why both texts are identical, but you never know.
New Annie movie is terrible, critics say, because it’s not strident enough in its politics
The guy who created Little Orphan Annie was a staunch opponent of the New Deal, mind you.
From the comments (warning: Reason commenters are a saucy lot) comes this story. The upshot is that if you have a character who’s been portrayed as white for 85 years, and you run an advertising campaign that presents her as white, that’s somehow racist because in the current movie she’s portrayed as black. Never mind that portraying her as black in the first place isn’t some kind of cultural appropriation.
Dicentra, Hal’s link has the advantage of actually working.
My sarcasm tags must have vanished again.
I don’t know how the other garbage got into the URL; I guess sometimes Typepad feels lonely and wants to assert its identity.
Happy new year, everyone.
Here are the 10 dumbest Amanda Marcotte tweets of 2014…
http://twitchy.com/2014/12/31/the-10-dumbest-amanda-marcotte-tweets-of-2014/
Must be tough to limit oneself to 10.
Happy New Year!
I take umbrage at your sarcastic observation of the two young ladies who beat themselves with pillows as roadside theatre.
I beat myself with pillows every time the Chicago Bears lose yet another game to the Green Bay Packers, with three major differences:
1)I do it in the privacy of my living room
2)I don’t expect private funding for doing it
3)I use couch throw cushions instead of pillows
… but I am splitting hairs here.
I also might add the performance could have been shortened from 90 minutes to 90 seconds if they used a pillowcase full of golf balls instead.
I also might add the performance could have been shortened from 90 minutes to 90 seconds if they used a pillowcase full of golf balls instead.
Shorter event; longer gales of laughter.
Sounds like a good trade-off to em.
OT
A great quote (among many) from Thomas Sowell:
It tells us a lot about academia that the president of Smith College quickly apologized for saying, “All lives matter.” after being criticized by those pushing the slogan, “Black lives matter.” If Science could cross breed a jellyfish with a parrot, it could create academic administrators.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395468/his-royal-glibness-thomas-sowell
I beat myself with pillows every time the Chicago Bears lose yet another game to the Green Bay Packers,
Jay Cutler doesn’t give a sh*t about you beating yourself with a pillow or the “performance artists” doing same but for different reasons.
the 10 dumbest Amanda Marcotte tweets of 2014
AmandaLand™ is a fun place to drive through, ideally at speed on the way to somewhere else. But dear God, you wouldn’t want to break down there.
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/35252/-district-9-helmer-s-new-alien-film-art
Might be of interest.
Might be of interest.
Ha. I was just looking at those over at io9.
“Well, I suppose you could take comfort in the fact that the mindset being mocked is, for now, a minority one. Albeit a minority that’s actively encouraged by many of our institutions, and is influential out of all proportion to its credibility. ”
Brilliantly said
But dear God, you wouldn’t want to break down there.
Apparently, some poor fellow did, and Amanda takes the opportunity to drop another bomb in her ongoing war against human decency. I should be shocked at her childish cruelty, but nothing she does surprises me anymore.
Ah, well. Nevermind. That last post was another article about the guy the Bad Penny was lecturing (hectoring and being applauded for it?). Sorry for not checking the already-posted links. I can’t tell if the Slate Star Codex link has been posted already, but it’s worth a read.
” L’Sean Rinique Shelton”?? “Quvenzhané Wallis”??? Am I irredeemably racist for thinking What the Effing Eff?
Seriously, are these names entirely invented or is there some sort of background to them? Were they slave names?