Reheated (46)
For newcomers, more items from the archives:
Living in Glasgow for a year is art, says taxpayer-funded artist who lives in Glasgow.
Writing in the Guardian, Liam Hainey rushes to defend Ms Harrison’s low-effort art project, denouncing “budget butchers” and asking his readers to “look at the bigger picture.” All while carefully ignoring anything that might trouble the assumptions of the freeloading arts community. Mr Hainey, a former Green councillor, dismisses the widespread mockery of Ms Harrison’s hustle as “predictable.” But he doesn’t seem to grasp that much of the mockery occurs because hustles of this type are themselves so predictable – that what we’re seeing, yet again, is a display of arrogant presumption, one that’s routine among a socially and politically narrow subsidy-seeking caste. And so Mr Hainey tells us, triumphantly, that the money isn’t in fact being wasted because it was already earmarked for art that would probably be unpopular and which nobody asked for.
Feminist “creative” Katherine Garcia attempts to justify her sub-optimal life choices. Things go badly wrong.
In financial terms, the lifetime return on an arts degree is very often negative and there’s something to be said for practicality, especially if your background is a modest one. Social mobility presupposes a certain realism, a pragmatism, and making choices accordingly – say, with regard to the costs and benefits of tertiary education, which is for most an expensive one-time opportunity. I’m inclined to suggest that getting into further debt for a grad school degree in Women and Gender Studies, as Ms Garcia did, is possibly not an ideal way to help one’s family economically, or indeed oneself.
Riyad A Shahjahan says we must “disrupt Eurocentric notions of time.” Because punctuality is racist and oppressive.
As the exact nature of Dr Shahjahan’s problem has been buried under rhetorical rubble, I’ll translate as best I can. You see, being expected to keep up with the pace of lessons and deliver course work on time can induce feelings of discomfort and inferiority in those less able and conscientious, thereby resulting in “exclusionary effects,” which, it turns out, are oppressive and unjust. However, armed with postcolonial theorising, and by stressing the mystical exoticness of people with browner skin, we shall set the people free from the “dominant culture of disembodiment” and the “temporal colonisation of our bodies” – i.e., expectations of punctuality, attentiveness and general competence. Yes, we must “contest the insertion of the body into the market.”
There’s more to poke at in the updated greatest hits. And tickling the tip jar makes my phone go ping. Which is nice.
Ping!
Ping!
May your laundry remain fragrant for many, many days.
I’m inclined to suggest that getting into further debt for a grad school degree in Women and Gender Studies, as Ms Garcia did, is possibly not an ideal way to help one’s family economically, or indeed oneself.
These people are incredible. I thought selfishness wasn’t supposed to be a virtue?
These people are incredible.
Ms Garcia’s assumptions do rather jar with those of my upbringing and, I suspect, of many others from modest backgrounds.
There’s a remarkable imperviousness to reality, or responsibility. But I think there’s a lot of pernicious encouragement to that end, not least from the left. And so we get mediocre students feeling unequivocally entitled to spend large amounts of money that other people had to earn on degree courses of severely limited, or negative, market value – and entitled to then complain about how much debt they’ve accumulated because of their own poor choices, and about how they feel unrecognised as an intellectual, a visionary, a bringer of wisdom.
I can’t offhand think of much that’s more frivolous, wasteful and self-indulgent than spending money you don’t have, and are unlikely to repay, on a Masters degree in Women and Gender studies – a disreputable, vacuous pseudo-qualification that’s practically a shorthand for “chippy mediocrity: do not employ” – and which has no obvious practical bearing on earning a living, but makes you feel radical and therefore important. And therefore cruelly undervalued. As you say, the vanity is quite striking.
[ Edited. ]
“…a disreputable, vacuous pseudo-qualification […] which has no obvious practical bearing…”
All they’re really qualified for is spreading the infection and malcontentery.
I suspect that Ms. Garcia really doesn’t even want to engage in any kind of competition whatsoever in any regard, as that would require effort. It’s so much better to just be thought of as a creative. And yet, even in the idiot’s market of “what people do in their spare time to goof off” it’s trivially easy to offer the world more than hand-wringings on Everyday Feminism. Why, with her debt I’d already be into and out of restoring an antique Packard or something like, and that would have employed more people and brought joy to more people than any piece she could hope to write. Plus which, I’d have a fancy nob car to drive and she’d have only her tears. I think I’d have won.
Did it ping?
Did it ping?
It pinged good and hard, thank you.
Mr Hainey tells us, triumphantly, that the money isn’t in fact being wasted because it was already earmarked for art that would probably be unpopular and which nobody asked for.
#GuardianLogic
#GuardianLogic
Like a good Guardianista, Mr Hainey disdains “those who have forced artistic endeavour into the marketplace,” which is beastly and unfair, apparently. As opposed to quangos, cronyism and coerced public subsidy – in which the public has no say on whom their money is spent – and which are somehow much more fair, more democratic.
Mr Hainey concludes by bemoaning the finite sums available to such Giant Throbbing Talents™ and calls for the confiscation of even more of people’s earnings to fling at those who call themselves artists but fail to attract customers, or any positive public attention, and who may not even produce anything one might recognise as art. “The fact that so many artists find little to no financial remuneration for their work” upsets him, you see; though no connection is made with the possible inadequacy of the artists in question, as if it could have no bearing whatsoever on the lack of public interest or voluntary support.
“Living in Glasgow for a year is art, says taxpayer-funded artist who lives in Glasgow.”
Well, I know that as an anti-EU market libertarian Unionist – who can’t stand football – living in Glasgow is an art…
ping
as if it could have no bearing whatsoever on the lack of public interest or voluntary support.
Yes, but you see, as we have been told by all the bien-pensant media over the past few days, the public is nothing but a bunch of racist and bigoted troglodytes who, if left to their own devices, might actually spend their money on things they actually want. We can’t have that.
Oh, and ping. Which, from your end, should sound more like ka-ching.
ping
Oh, and ping.
I’m feeling a warm rush of fondness for my fellow man.
Don’t worry, it won’t last.
I dropped a few pounds in the jar. I do enjoy the cheery good humour of this place; it takes some of the curse off the slow collapse of Western civilization.
it takes some of the curse off the slow collapse of Western civilization.
I should put that on the packaging.
Ooh. Ping.
I should put that on the packaging.
Come for the comedy, stay for the analytical psychiatry.
I do enjoy the cheery good humour of this place;
I’ve often been heartened by the rarity of screaming and block capitals. No small feat, all things considered.
Oh dear. I see the Labour Party’s on fire again.
I see the Labour Party’s on fire again.
I’m shocked to see that dear old Jeremy is a supporter of the “one man, one vote, one time” proposition. Who would have thought that? From a leftist, no less. The mind reels.
David, have you seen this little agony over at Tim Blair?
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_alresford_flogger/
I had no idea the Grauniad had revisited the menace of cupcakes, but apparently they did, and now the revisiter (of Cupcake Fascism, no less) has a death scream of a Brexit article in the NYT. Because small villages are hell and owning a car would be submitting to the Man, man. Or something.
Because small villages are hell and owning a car would be submitting to the Man, man.
Heh. I don’t have much to add to Tim’s comments, which I chuckled at this morning, but Mr Whyman does seem to have a few issues to work on. And to think, years ago someone asked why I had a tag named ‘psychodrama’.
I think chiefly that it should be pointed out to Mr. Whyneman that Ignatius Reilly was a *joke*. Not a positive archetype, and certainly nothing to aspire to. Then again, if he’d had his mother drive him in a ’40s Plymouth, maybe he wouldn’t have tragically, painfully missed the referendum vote. That’s right – Ignatius Reilly achieves his goals more reliably than this twerp.
David, have you seen this little agony over at Tim Blair ?
Well that was something, I am just not sure what. I am a bit puzzled by this though:
OK, I get he can’t drive, but help me if I am missing something, but if all y’all over there managed to create an empire upon which the sun never set without benefit of motor vehicles, ships powered other than by wind (and a bit of coal later), or airplanes, why then are there now fewer opportunities, and what is his main malfunction that he (or “we”) cannot go walkabout and explore the world today ?
The manifest benefits of the cultural enrichment caused by curry or kabob shops is a separate issue, but I think the UK could have muddled on without them.
Found this comment most amusing at the NYT posting of Mr. Whyneman’s article:
The man has earned an advanced degree. And yet he managed to get sucker punched by a malfunctioning public transit system. What are the odds? Fate’s fickle hand has had her way once again. The bitch.
Somebody should point out to Mx. MShea that anyone who writes Marxist articles on how cupcakes are fascist cannot be considered a success at anything other than wasting other people’s time and money. It cheapens the thousand attacks the ‘man’ deserves to claim they all boil down to an accusation of laziness.
Also, does discounting that a lazy person could complete an advanced degree seem a tad begged to anyone else?
Neither is it lazy to notice the grinding mediocrity of one’s hometown after experiencing the wider world. It’s one of the consequences of a good education.
Boston, but of course; the condescension is palpable. I have two advanced degrees, lived in Europe, and spent considerable time on every continent except Australia and Antarctica and by choice live in a tiny town in darkest South Flyoverlandia precisely because of “the grinding mediocrity” which means I don’t have to put up with preening, pretentious assholes who think anything outside of a big leftist city is by default “mediocre” without ever having experienced it.
Also, does discounting that a lazy person could complete an advanced degree seem a tad begged to anyone else ?
The pages that have been filled here with “artists”, SJWs, philosophy teaching assistants and other riffraff all of whom have advanced degrees in various Useless Studies (minimum grade given, A-) proves the lazy can complete advanced degrees without even breathing hard.
That a “philosopher” is baffled by a railroad timetable, and cannot figure out how to hire a taxi, take a bus, or stick out a thumb is hardly surprising.
This deserves a post of its own, as noted by Herr Sporkatus, Cupcake Fascism.
A sickly sweet movement expresses the desire of an infantilised populace to hide from the world while imposing bourgeois values
It goes on in this vein. Bear in mind the chap railing about infantilization lives with his parents every summer. Introspection appears to be an alien concept to our erstwhile philosopher.
More Deep Thoughts™, if by deep you mean deep as an oil drop on pavement in a monsoon.
Yes, yes, of course. The Dialectic, of course you peasants didn’t think of that. Marx and cupcakes fit like socks on a rooster.
No, this is not parody.
And bad as it is as text … you should hear it as a dramatic reading (made my drive home on the freeway amusing)
…you should hear it as a dramatic reading…
The music was an excellent touch.
Meanwhile, Special Snowflake Interns 0 : Real World 1.
Bear in mind the chap railing about infantilization lives with his parents every summer.
So pajama boy isn’t a phenomenon that only afflicts the US. Good to know. Trust the New York Times to find one in the UK, though. Good for them.
What I can’t for the life of me comprehend is why this kind of loser is given a platform, and even more why, given the availability of the loser platform, the loser would actually seize the opportunity to broadcast to the entire world* that he’s 27 years old and has to stay at his parents over the summer because he can’t find a shag, that he can’t drive and therefore has to take public transportation to go pretty much anywhere (might be causally related to the fact that he can’t get a shag – there’s not too many birds who relish the idea of getting picked up on the M27 bus to Bromswich for a date), and that because of his general incompetence he wasn’t actually able to even, like, vote to influence this hugely important decision about the future of Britain.
Did I mention he was a loser?
*Well, ok, the entire world may be an overstatement. The Upper West Side, maybe, given the readership of the New York Times. But once Tim Blair got a hold of it, it did get disseminated a bit more widely.
Farnsworth,
The money line:
I have never had a job before …
and I bet her parents made sure her self-esteem was the highest possible. o_O
The reality is our philosopher cannot work outside the English sphere. Continental philosophy being a different beast entirely, and I doubt he has another language in enough depth to get a job at a European university specialising in it.
So he is a man who has chosen a career path wedded totally to English speaking, who is then mortified when the English speakers turn their backs on non-English speakers.
The prick’s chances of working in Europe in his chosen field are not changed one iota by Brexit.
Have you noticed that a good percentage of the people whinging about the selfish anti-immigrant bias of Leave are basing it on how they personally are affected by it. Their narcissism is so strong they think that the world should fulfill their wishes. So we have people who want to live in the UK being berated by people who want to leave the UK about what is good for the UK. I can’t even …
Oh dear. I see the Labour Party’s on fire again.
Andy Burnham checks on the #jexit news
Jeremy Corbyn responds after 172 Labour MPs back a no confidence vote in him #jexit
The prick’s chances of working in Europe in his chosen field are not changed one iota by Brexit.
I have noticed that most of the people on Facebook bewailing the leave vote and howling that we are turning our back on the world speak no foreign language and never worked abroad. In other words, their “engagement with the world” consists of going abroad on holiday. One was complaining about how her children’s future was ruined as they would not have the same options for travel as she had. Yes, rather than teaching their kids a foreign language to aid them in working and traveling abroad, it’s better to belong to an EU superstate run by the French. It confuses some of my friends that I, being a French resident, having lived in 7 countries in the last 13 years, speaking two foreign languages and working in probably the most international industry there is, don’t think Brexit is a disaster.
Separately, I’m glad the Lithuanians in 1990 showed more balls than 48% of the British population of 2016.
I am assuming the sniveling Mr Whyneman refers to New Alresford in Hampshire.
So I wander over to Wikipedia to look it up. My, what a charming, quirky little town. “The Nation’s Capital of Watercress” sounds like a lot of equally charming, quirky little rural towns in the US. I was raised in a (popular) little tourist town, this one , and I still feel genuine fondness for such places.
Mr Whyneman (in American vernacular, his name is certainly fitting) has revealed himself to be a pretentious poseur, and his “virtue signalling” impresses me not at all.
Darleen,
you should hear it as a dramatic reading
John and Ken, of course. Ha!
Yes, yes, of course. The Dialectic, of course you peasants didn’t think of that. Marx and cupcakes fit like socks on a rooster.
As I said at the time, what strikes me is that he’s so desperate to let us know how clever he is, or thinks he is, how terribly radical and superior, because of all that Marxism. Woo. Yeah. And so he piles high the jargon and needless, enormous words, hoping no-one will notice the bad joins, begged questions, the lazy, leftist assumptions, the carefully avoided facts, and the habitual, often comical self-flattery.
And this is presented by the Guardian as “critical thinking.”
And again, note how often Marxism and its variants seem to captivate people who are psychologically unpleasant.
…the bad joins, begged questions, the lazy, leftist assumptions, the carefully avoided facts, and the habitual, often comical self-flattery.
Gavin McInnes does a good job of poking a metaphorical finger in the eye of these sorts of clowns in this fisking of a Buzzfeed video about what Canadians think of Trump.
fisking of a Buzzfeed video about what Canadians think of Trump.
He’s right about glib leftism as a kind of social positioning, an assertion of class. You’d think the bright young things of the left, who are prone to telling us how clever they are, might notice this occasionally.
My apologies to anyone who thought Whyneman and not Whyman was the man(?)’s actual surname. I was being juvenile – nay, accusing him of whining! – though I suppose that’s his name now by popular assent.
ping
You’d think the bright young things of the left, who are prone to telling us how clever they are, might notice this occasionally.
They lack any sort of introspective abilities as they have, from their earliest days, never been told and shown they are flat out wrong about anything. This sort of failure of introspection is noted in the link above about the Special Snowflakes fired en masse, “But instead, you assumed you knew better (despite being in a position where the whole point is that you don’t have experience and are there to learn)…”
Tim Blair points it out yet again, “Stephanie has never been so insulted.”
QED; Stephanie,
2112, wise beyond her years in the way of the world, is aghast that anyone doesn’t think as she does, fails to notice that she does that she accuses others of, and refuses to hear counter-argument because she, of course, is right.Whyman’s Complaint™ reads like a diary entry of an angst-ridden 15-year-old girl. Such unrequited yearnings. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh out loud, to paraphrase someone who most certainly would be chuckling over this. Maybe the Man-Boy Philosopher should give young adult fiction a go?
If I may revise and extend an earlier remark in reference to this:
Neither is it lazy to notice the grinding mediocrity of one’s hometown after experiencing the wider world. It’s one of the consequences of a good education.
Grinding mediocrity: Sitting in your kitchen, having a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal with milk and fruit bought at the local Piggly Wiggly.
Worldly consequences of a “good education”: Paying $10.50 for the same thing in a cereal restaurant in Times Square.
Speaking of lazy, quite the bargain just not to have to clean the bowl.
A foolAn intellectual and his money are soon parted.Re the consequences of a good education, I should think that a rather more important one than denigrating one’s hometown ought to be to be able to provide for oneself and not to squat at one’s parents in the summer when one is 27 years old. Or, dare I say it, be able to afford a car.
I think Julie Burchill defines the divide between grinding mediocrity and self-satisfied cosmopolitanism rather well here.
Speaking of cupcakes: https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/1768995033353138/
Meanwhile in the world of ‘hate crime’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/30/youtube-personality-in-gay-hate-crime-attack-charged-with-making/
Meanwhile in the world of ‘hate crime’
And to think, we’ve arrived at a point where this level of psychodrama is barely surprising, if at all. It’s practically a fashion statement.
In WTF news:
“Man Violently Shoves Feces-Filled Bag Down Woman’s Pants on Upper East Side: NYPD”
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Man-Shoves-Bag-Feces-Down-Woman-Pants-Upper-East-Side-New-York-City-Video-384950011.html
Man Violently Shoves Faeces-Filled Bag Down Woman’s Pants on Upper East Side: NYPD
I can’t help noticing that the description of the man, which is presumably intended to warn the public or solicit help in his capture, omits a certain detail.
David – is this a Comment Type 43 situation?
I can’t help noticing that the description of the man (…) omits a certain detail.
Well, yes, but the US population is by now well-trained and fills in the blanks. The lack of specificity about a given characteristic is a dead give-away to what the characteristic actually is.
is this a Comment Type 43 situation?
It would seem so, yes. I was told about this phenomenon months before I took it seriously. Now it’s hard not to see it on an almost daily basis.
The lack of specificity about a given characteristic is a dead give-away to what the characteristic actually is.
I’ve been repeatedly told that political correctness is “just about politeness.” But clearly it’s not. It’s about a practised unrealism, learning to pretend.
learning to pretend.
And then pretending that you’re not pretending.
Doublethink.
a practised unrealism, learning to pretend
Doublethink
Yes, but notwithstanding the best efforts of the authorities and of the SJWs, the approach has its limitations. Let me put it this way: if a crime gets committed in Uganda, the police, when putting out the description of the perpetrator, don’t usually find it necessary to mention that he was black. It’s Uganda, so you’d expect that. In the US, given that 95% or thereabouts of the crime is perpetrated by black males, it’s also not strictly speaking necessary to mention the race of the perpetrator, unless he isn’t black. So the omission of any mention of race only serves to underscore that the perpetrator is, what else, a black male.
Doublethink
Somewhat relevant. Ben Shapiro tries to shoehorn some realism into the mind of Sally Kohn.
Based on what I’ve seen of her, it’s very likely that Ms Kohn will refuse to process the information she’s being given, all of which is readily available, and will refuse to rethink her assumptions, sweeping as they are, and instead will go on shouting the same boilerplate next month and the month after that and the year after that – while knowing, or at least suspecting, that the facts don’t entirely support it. That’s the real doublethink.
Based on what I’ve seen of her, it’s very likely that Ms Kohn will refuse to process the information she’s being given…
She will refuse to process it, she is a raving leftist which in her “mind” means she is automatically right.
Anyone who reads these pages and hasn’t read Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy needs to hit David’s Amazon thing and buy it to get more insight into these intellectual four-flushers.
Signs of Ms Kohn’s brain fever have been noted here previously. Because when you’re in a jam and a stranger does you a favour, the first thing you should do is publicly insult them by implying – based on nothing – that they’re racist and wouldn’t have done the same if Ms Kohn had happened to be black.
Ms Kohn tells us she’s “one of the leading progressive voices in America” and “a thorn in the side of the status quo.”
In the meantime a Cambridge academic economist who doesn’t like the way her fellow citizens vote attends a faculty meeting naked with writing all over her breasts.
http://m.cambridge-news.co.uk/cambridge-academic-attends-university-meeting-naked-to-protest-over-brexit/story-29466081-detail/story.html
And nothing says “take me seriously” like incongruous nudity and scribbled-on boobs.
Wonder if she attended her PhD viva like that?
In the meantime a Cambridge academic economist who doesn’t like the way her fellow citizens vote attends a faculty meeting naked…
Having seen the Page 3 girls, no, you most definitely are not better.
“…a
thornpain in theside of the status quo[lower and towards the rear].”A drama student writes:
https://twitter.com/chlosha_wilson/status/749158923144458240
Dr. (Heh) Bateman has quite the come-hither look, yes? Pity we have no Michaelangelos to chisel her more solidly into history.
The likes of Bateman often make the point that you do not need to look like a Page 3 model to be attractive and sexy. Which is obviously true, but they say it to imply that they are attractive. The problem is, the likes of Bateman are usually deeply unattractive, if not physically then in the “whole package” sense which is so very important. As somebody said on here recently, beauty is only skin deep but ugliness penetrates to the bone.