Elsewhere (214)
Via dicentra, the Z-Man on the ongoing disappearance of mainstream media comment sections:
The reason news sites are killing off comment sections is two-fold. One, it is usually where you get the bits of the news story our betters edited out in order to maintain the narrative. The “Minnesota man” in the story is identified in the comments as Jorge Gonzalez, an illegal from Guadalajara. It’s where the “suspect wearing a red shirt” is identified as a black guy named T’Q’ull Ferguson with a Facebook page full of pics of him holding a handgun and a bong. The comment sections have become a leak in the system. The other problem, especially for opinion sites like the Spectator, is the comments have become the place that makes the writers cry. Sure, there’s lots of inane chatter, but it is also where some smart people post corrections and point out the many glaring logical errors. [Opinion writers] have fragile psyches, so seeing their mistakes highlighted for everyone to see, right under their posts, is a source of constant distress.
Ed Driscoll has more. See also this.
Somewhat related, Christopher Snowdon on Oxfam’s dishonesties:
If you look at the BBC’s inequality report you will find no challenge, no rebuttal and no response from anybody who disagrees with Oxfam’s warped interpretation of the data. Whether it knows it or not, the BBC is complicit in the fabrication.
Thomas Sowell suggests some election year reading:
If you are concerned about issues involved when some people want to expand the welfare state and others want to contract it, then one of the most relevant and insightful books is Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple. What makes Life at the Bottom especially relevant and valuable is that it is about the actual consequences of the welfare state in England — which are remarkably similar to the consequences in the United States. Many Americans may find it easier to think straight about what happens, when it is in a country where the welfare recipients are overwhelmingly whites, so that their behaviour cannot be explained away by “a legacy of slavery” or “institutional racism,” or other such evasions of facts in the United States. As Dr Dalrymple says: “It will come as a surprise to American readers, perhaps, to learn that the majority of the British underclass is white, and that it demonstrates all the same social pathology as the black underclass in America — for very similar reasons, of course.” That reason is the welfare state, and the attitudes and behaviour it promotes and subsidises.
And Katherine Timpf on that quality education you’re spending so much money on:
[University of Colorado political science sophomore] Peyton Smith reported that the professor… decided to begin the semester by shaming the United States military, and saying that the outcome of the Brexit vote is going to destroy the future for young people. The professor also attributed the (supposed) gender wage gap to the fact that the Constitution fails to mention women. “I was then baffled when he even called American patriotism ‘foolish,’” Smith writes.
Somewhat related to that, readers may recall Michigan State’s tenured professor of creative writing, William Penn, whose first lesson of the year was caught on camera in eye-widening detail.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Ima repeat the last paragraph of that first article, plus my comment from the previous thread:
I want to write that wonderful insult, obsequious rumpswab, on the fleshy tables of my heart, to remember it evermore and to recall it when needed.
And definitely add it to my browser’s spell-check dictionary.
How much of a psychopath are you?
Take the test.
The comment sections have become a leak in the system.
That.
It shouldn’t. We have the exact same problem in lilly white Appalachia. No one likes to talk about it though. Especially fly-over country conservatives.
Incidentally, if anyone buys Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom via these links to Amazon US and Amazon UK, your host gets a fee. Which helps keep this place afloat.
Just done it. 🙂
Comments sections are always up for a little sanitary policing, in even the most humble and civil of places.
It shouldn’t. We have the exact same problem in lily white Appalachia. No one likes to talk about it though. Especially fly-over country conservatives.
Why wouldn’t we want to talk about it? The reason the inner cities get so much popular coverage is that obsequious rumpswabs live in the cities, so they’re exposed to the scary black people with guns.
The pathological white folks are hidden in the mountains, ensconced in suburban trailer parks, or spread out along country roads (lone double-wide trailer by the side of the road, broken toys and appliances scattered all over the yard), where obsequious rumpswabs don’t see them.
And being incurious dolts, they never bother to find out.
Most of us conservatives object to welfare dependence based on the pathological whites we know about, not on urban woes.
In time I came to understand that most big foot journalists are no different from beauty pageant contestants in that a blithe dimness is an asset.
If anyone recalls the old Mary Tyler Moore Show – the newsroom’s Ted Baxter was silver haired, silver voiced and dumber than a box of rocks.
He was modeled after Los Angeles’ own Jerry Dunphy (just as addlepated as Baxter) … and Jerry hated Ted Knight with a passion over his performance of Baxter.
My dad had met Dunphy on several occasions and even was around the news room at KNXT where weatherman Bill Keene was the wit who made fun of Dunphy like the character Murray Slaughter did of Baxter.
The problem with the good doctor’s books is that they are like Stones albums, some new stuff and some stuff you have already seen. Having said that, Life at the Bottom is pretty much required reading.
A point I like to make is that Pravda was free. Even Communist Russians wouldn’t pay two kopecs to be propagandized at. If that’s your desired business model, well then, just keep going as you are.
How much of a psychopath are you?
Or, you could go with this one.
I got a 12, and Hare as referred to is this guy and his book . . . . which alone might work as a band name, but I have no idea what they’d play . . . .
“The comment sections have become a leak in the system.”
Cherish them while you have them!
Laurie Penny is fondly remembering Occupy:
Laurie was particularly moved by “the consciousness-raising that took place in the toilet queue in the local McDonalds.”
For a less, um, romantic view, readers can poke through the archives, starting here.
Laurie Penny is fondly remembering Occupy
No comments/corrections allowed. 🙂
No comments/corrections allowed. 🙂
Well, comments sections haven’t generally been to Laurie’s advantage. When you claim to speak for The People, as a “chronicler of popular protest,” the last thing you want is The People speaking back or falling about laughing.
In related news, CNN’s Sally Kohn refuses to let basic factual errors get in the way of her authoritarian tendencies:
Previously.
…was about an acre of freshly-baked future.
Is it wrong that I first read that as, “…an acre of freshly-baked manure ?
Sowell also mentions The New Trail of Tears by Naomi Schaefer Riley about life in those socialist utopias known as American Indian reservations. I’m sure the book is accurate, but one need only drive through any number of reservations in the American West to see first hand how crappy they are. (The Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeastern Montana springs immediately to mind.) Those of us of a certain age will recall Ronald Reagan pointing out the problems during his administration. Of course, he was despised for it.
And if professors tried to prevent people of Kohn’s ilk from expressing their views, the response would be outrage.
I was, and am, a journalist,
Let me stop you right there, Laurie…
When Powers argued that speech should be protected because by itself it is never dangerous, Kohn countered by saying Powers failed to recognize her white privilege. Speech that seems harmless to middle or upper-class whites, she said, could be deeply threatening to poor and non-white communities. If somebody claims to feel certain speech is unsafe, Kohn said, they should be believed.
Because infantilizing entire ethnicities is ever so progressive.
Kohn ignores the fact that many who fall left-of-center, including the founder of FIRE, the “Koch funded” organization she smears, have serious reservations about the environment on college campuses.
In fact, I wonder how one people can legitimately call themselves progressives when they defend ultra-conservative cultures in the name of multiculturalism.
I think Z-Man is a little unfair to Damian Thompson, attacking him for making certain observations and then making the same points himself and running with them, as though Thompson had never made them (e.g. that commentators have fragile egos). As well, having a PhD in the sociology of theology is a bit more useful than a degree in sitting still if, like Thompson, you derive a large part of your income writing for publications such as The Catholic Herald.
Is Z-Man a Yank? If so, he probably doesn’t appreciate that for the big UK news sites, at least, moderating the Comments is a high-maintenance, costly but essential job, given the strictness of the UK libel laws.
Rather than attacking Thompson, who I think is a slightly more sophisticated and intelligent columnist than Z-Man gives him credit for, a juicier and more appropriate target would have been Polly Toynbee, the High Priestess of Spite.
There were so many dreams trying to grow in these little hothouse spaces that they almost crowded each other out. People made so many different demands.
Laurie almost realises there that all political goals are not compatible or commensurable, which means that her anarcho-feminist utopia is an impossible fantasy. But then she veers away, following her next liberationist feeling.
No comments/corrections allowed. 🙂
Incidentally, back when the New Statesman actually allowed its readers to reply to its articles, Laurie repeatedly refused to read them. Apparently, even readers of the New Statesman are insufficiently pure and compliant.
the outcome of the Brexit vote is going to destroy the future for young people.
Maybe the good professor could try asking the people of Greece, where youth unemployment is currently just shy of 48%.
the British student uprisings of 2010
So sitting around in a park getting progressively (ha) dirtier counts as an “uprising” now?
@Farnsworth:
Is it wrong that I first read that as, “…an acre of freshly-baked manure ?
I read it as “an acre of freshly-baked furniture”, which makes even less sense.
I do wonder if Sturgeon’s Law applies to comments sections . . . but the 5% can be *really* good.
I’m fairly sure that whatever Zucotti Park reeked of, it wasn’t paint. An eye-watering mixture of shit and sanctimony would be my guess.
“I was, and am, a journalist,”
No, you are a booger-eating beotch…
I do wonder if Sturgeon’s Law applies to comments sections
Sturgeon’s Law applies to *everything*.
This WAPO “parenting” op-ed has been noted at various places in the last couple of days. I know it’s bad form to go “Godwin,” but reading this, I was reminded of Magda Goebbels’s forcing the death cocktail down her resistant children’s throats because she preferred them dead to alive in a world without Hitler. Consider these words:
“And in this broken system, anyone who isn’t with us is against us. Particularly, and especially, men. Even my own sons — even yours. It’s not enough to teach our sons about consent; we have to encourage them to have the courage to speak out against rape culture, too.”
There be some scary, scary shit.*
*Comment posted by one of my third under-butlers, so it’s not my fault if it’s part of the 90% which is crap.
anyone who isn’t with us is against us. Particularly, and especially, men. Even my own sons
What an appalling woman. I suspect she’ll be experiencing quite a few Christmases alone.
What an appalling woman. I suspect she’ll be experiencing quite a few Christmases alone.
. . . Xmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays . . . weddings, I suspect . . . .
Aaahhh, Yeaaah, I have a mother, but if we invite her, she’ll demand a soapbox for herself instead of the ceremony . . ..
Grendel’s mother was more devoted. And more rational.
anyone who isn’t with us is against us. Particularly, and especially, men. Even my own sons
And in entirely unrelated news.
Laurie Penny is fondly remembering Occupy
Wow. She’s blaming Occupy fizzling out on “psychic violence that killed dreams”.
She’s off her rocker.
Wow. She’s blaming Occupy fizzling out on “psychic violence that killed dreams”.
Well, it’s all rather fanciful and self-flattering. But that’s what Laurie does. And much of the Occupy movement-cum-gap-year, for which she was a relentless, quite shameless hagiographer, was made up of people prone to unrealism and habitual self-flattery, much like Laurie, in fact. (For dozens of examples, some quite striking, poke through the archives.)
It’s telling that a majority of those involved were students or graduates from comfortably middle-class backgrounds – hardly “the 99%” – many of whom had wasted large amounts of money on fashionably politicised and ultimately worthless degree courses and who then, predictably, found themselves falling short of the social status they’d assumed they were entitled to, seemingly regardless of practicality and economics. People who then signalled their righteousness by demanding that someone else be forced to pay for the degrees that the protestors had chosen but now didn’t wish to pay for. But if they, the supposed beneficiaries, didn’t regard their own degrees as a worthwhile investment, why should random strangers?
Wow. She’s blaming Occupy fizzling out on “psychic violence that killed dreams”.
Oh, well played, madam.
People who then signalled their righteousness by demanding that someone else be forced to pay for the degrees that the protestors had chosen but now didn’t wish to pay for
That video is hilarious.
R. Sherman – Holy Dworkin!
“Oh boy,” my son said, rolling his eyes. “Not rape culture again.”
We were sitting around the dinner table talking about the news. As soon as I mentioned the Stanford sexual assault case, my sons looked at each other. They knew what was coming.
They’d probably rather play their Nintendos than be subjected to a good old-fashioned Maoist self-criticism session about how they’re potential rapists. By their own Mum. At the dinner table.
Kids these days, eh?
They’ve been listening to me talk about consent, misogyny and rape culture since they were tweens. They listened to me then,
“Mommy, can I have ice cream?”
“NOT UNTIL YOU AGREE THAT ALL MEN ARE PIGS, YOU LITTLE RAPIST!”
but they are 16 and 18 now and they roll their eyes and argue when I talk to them about sexism and misogyny.
So naturally she does what any sweet, loving, and definitely-not-mentally-ill mother would do: shame them in a national newspaper.
“There’s no such thing as rape culture,” my other son said. “You say everything is about rape culture or sexism.”
I never imagined I would raise boys who would become men like these. Men who deny rape culture, or who turn a blind eye to sexism. Men who tell me I’m being too sensitive or that I don’t understand what teenage boys are like. “You don’t speak out about this stuff, mom,” they tell me with a sigh. “It’s just not what teenagers do.”
Principal Skinner: Why, there are no children here at the 4H club, either! Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.
And notice how “lived experience” is considered indisputable proof by feminists, and how dare you say any different?!?
Until it’s the wrong sort of lived experience from people with wrong chromosomes, in which case the only logical explanation is the Rape Culture Pod People must’ve got them.
My sons are right about that much. Teenage boys, by and large, don’t speak out about slut-shaming or rape culture. They don’t call each other out when they make sexist jokes or objectify women. It’s too uncomfortable to separate themselves from the pack so they continue to at least dip their toes into toxic masculinity. In their discomfort with action, they remain passive, and their passivity perpetuates the same broken system that sentenced Brock Turner to only six months in jail.
That’s right folks. Because teenage boys generally aren’t self-hating feminist manginas, the Santa Clara County Superior Court handed down a sentence of 6 months imprisonment, 3 years of probation and a lifetime on the sex offenders register to Brock Turner.
That’s just how the law works under Patriarchy. The judge probably had a copy of Rape Culture Aficionado hidden between his court documents, and no doubt consulted spotty teenagers on Minecraft Forum for sentencing advice.
When I first talked to my sons about enthusiastic consent, they laughed at me. “No one is going to ask a girl before having sex with her,” they said. It’s too awkward and uncomfortable. Besides, they reassured me, you can tell whether a girl is consenting without having to ask her. But then one of my sons texted his sexually active friend to ask him whether he got consent from his girlfriend before they had sex. His friend quickly replied that he had to “encourage” her to do it a lot before she finally agreed.
My son didn’t call out his friend. He didn’t remind him that lack of enthusiastic consent means there is no consent.
Unless you have sexual consent forms signed in triplicate – with an enthusiastic signature and smiley faces and lovehearts – then notarised by a triumverate of independent arbiters with postgraduate degrees in Womens Studies, it’s rape.
And what kind of a teenager doesn’t accuse his friends – on the basis of text messages – of being rapists?
I’m starting to suspect this Rape Culture rabbithole goes deeper than we know!
My sons who hate hearing about their own privilege nestle inside it like a blanket and accuse me of making up its existence.
My sons are part of the problem.
This. So much this. It’s also amazing how many perfectly sane people are held against their will in secure mental hospitals. Just ask them.
I’m a survivor of rape and sexual abuse.
Aren’t they all?
So naturally she does what any sweet, loving, and definitely-not-mentally-ill mother would do: shame them in a national newspaper.
Heh. Quite.
That video is hilarious.
It’s the fact that Smiley Guy is sufficiently self-assured to turn up and wave about a placard demanding other people’s earnings, but when asked why other people should be forced to pay for his tuition, of which he will be the primary beneficiary, he looks genuinely puzzled, as if the question had never before crossed his mind. Instead, he gulps water and looks faintly panicked. His conception of “fairness” – of “social justice” – apparently goes no further than believing that he should get free stuff because, well, he likes free stuff. That’s ‘free’ in the sense that someone else will have to work longer or do without to pay for it instead.
His friend quickly replied that he had to “encourage” her to do it a lot before she finally agreed.
Without wanting to belittle this subject – there are a lot of young women being persuaded to have sex which they probably shouldn’t, and indeed this is in some way part of growing up – most of the time this “reluctance” is actually a sign of behaviour that the feminists hate.
Few women, when thinking about whether to sleep with somebody or not, state openly that they want to have sex. To do so, in most normal societies, would show that the girl lacked standards and class, and so they feign reluctance and make the potential partner put some damned effort in, which may or may not include a couple of nice dates, some decent conversation, and a demonstration you’re not a complete oaf. The French women are experts at this: you’re not going to be able to pick one up in a club and take her home and have sex, regardless of how much they want to have sex. But (so I’m told) they will be swinging from the chandeliers after a third date, and in the meantime they will show both interest and reluctance. Personally, I consider this a better way of going about things than what the feminists encourage: either scream rape or allow yourself to be willingly fucked behind a dumpster by a complete stranger, with nothing in between.
“We must eliminate Birthplace Privilege by overthrowing the nation-state.”
A paraphrasing of this.
Via Ben Sixsmith.
John Derbyshire predicted the demise of pundit’s comment threads three years ago: http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-says-if-there-is-hope-it-lies-in-the-comment-threads.
He’s also a strong proponent of reading the comments first, to find out what their not telling you, then reading the article for the spin.
He’s also a strong proponent of reading the comments first, to find out what they’re not telling you, then reading the article for the spin.
Ha. That’s not an altogether bad idea.
I’m a survivor of rape and sexual abuse
And your sons are somehow – despite your very worst efforts – survivors of you.
He’s also a strong proponent of reading the comments first, to find out what they’re not telling you
I’ve been doing that for years on LT;DR posts on certain sites. Not exactly for the reason stated but more to save time by skipping over the fluff or topics on which there is agreement to pick out the meat of the matter. Also find it useful with certain philosopher bloggers who hide behind vague language or fill their posts with various possible “outs” for their arguments. I wait for another commenter to draw him/them out to say a specific thing in answer to a specific question so we can focus on that.
Must confess, I do it with Friday Eph when I’m pressed for time but don’t want to miss out on the best stuff.
Can’t find the link now, but it was one of those clickbaity list thingies of random things random women surveyed didn’t like about what men did during sex.
Usual stuff of not wanting to re-enact frankie vaughn style money shots, engaging in certain acts that may sound like an Irish airline the morning after sex and pre-shower, and so on.
But the one that struck me most was “constantly asking ‘does that feel good? Do you like this? Do you like it when I touch you here?'”. The lady in question thought it really killed the mood, and that a competent pork swordsmith should be able to tell if his sparring partner was appreciative of his work.
However, that is the *only* type of conjugal discourse that is rapidly becoming “not rape”. Thereby reducing the act to a mechanical question-and-answer session, with all the going with the flow (and pumping up the volume along with the tempo… sorry, I’ll get my coat…) and all the, dare I say it, romance taken out of it.
It’s like sex designed by frigid left-wing schoolmarms. Which of course it is.
Must confess, I do it with Friday Eph when I’m pressed for time
[ Clutches pearls, faints with outrage. ]
[ Clutches pearls, faints with outrage. ]
. . . and then what immediately came to mind was of hipsters—or yuppys or preppys or whatever the title of the moment—instead going for clutches outrage, faints with pearls . . . .
Bill Whittle on the Clinton Lie Ratchet.
For evidence that random posts in comment sections are often superior (or at least more amusing) to the underlying work, check out the reviews on Amazon for Clinton’s and Kaine’s book “Stronger Together.” https://www.amazon.com/Stronger-Together-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton/dp/1501161733
..re-enact frankie vaughn style money shots…
Whut?
“If you see FRENCH MAN ARRESTED AFTER BOMB ATROCITY as a BBC website headline, you know that there might have been a bomb, there might have been an atrocity, and the person arrested was probably a man. But you can be quite sure he wasn’t French.”
http://www.samizdata.net/2016/09/samizdata-quote-of-the-day-754/
You almost have to admire the man’s chutzpah.
The Guardian: Wrong about everything. All the time.
https://twitter.com/NickNchlsn/status/778213268112351232
“There be some scary, scary shit”
Yep. Posted this the other day. It seems the same Jody Allard is also the author of a piece that appeared back in February explaining how one of her teenage sons was suicidal.
Some suggest that she might be encouraging self-loathing in her sons. I don’t want to suggest that I know her family, or the reasons for his depression. I have 2 sons myself, and I don’t want to imagine her distress. But really, she could think about going a bit easy on them – they can’t possibly be aided in any way by having their lives paraded (and shamed) in world famous news sites..
An oldy but goody from the charming and sagacious Melissa A. Fabello: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/playing-devils-advocate/
Whenever someone responds to my critique of the culture in which we live with what they believe to be a deep conundrum or contradiction, my first thought is, “Wow. You have absolutely no respect for me as an intellectual being.”
Now, I’ll be the first to say that I don’t think we should value intellect (and particularly the narrow definition that we allow for it) as a trait (hi, that’s ableist) – and yes, I know that you devil’s advocates out there want to argue that intellect and its associated innovation is valuable to the propagation of our species – but I do think that we should respect one another for whichever ways our smarts show up for us.
And in today’s news, free classes at Berkeley are, like intellect, deemed ableist: http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-course-content-and-accessibility/
Berkeley’s likely solution is to shut the courses down; this was brought about by a complaint filed with the Department of Justice by 2 people who were not Berkeley students.
I never read the Guardian articles, only the comments.
“the British student uprisings of 2010”
Eh? I missed that. What happened?
“the British student uprisings of 2010”
Eh? I missed that. What happened?
. . . . Apparently these, ah, discussions . . .