Elsewhere (217)
Niall Gooch on free speech and its enemies:
Free speech, like the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, is a procedural virtue, which is why fanatics and revolutionaries hate it… Defenders of free speech are arguing not only for free speech as an abstraction, but a wider culture of honest debate, factual argument, respectful disagreement, and civilised co-existence with people who see the world very differently from us. Complaints about attacks on free speech can be seen as proxies for concerns about the maintenance of this culture, particularly in the context of the university. So in a sense, free speech isn’t one thing. It’s many things. It’s a whole network of overlapping norms about the exchange of ideas. One thing that people commonly mean when they say “free speech” is “if I’m invited to give a talk somewhere I should be allowed to do so without intimidation, interruption or threat, and people who want to come and listen to me should be able to do so.”
Well, obviously, we can’t have that.
Ed West on things you mustn’t laugh about:
There are plenty of subjects that merit satire today – the diversity industry, with its shakedowns and professional bullshit artists is a rich seam, as is the transgender movement. But these areas really are too edgy for satirists, most of whom – like the vast majority of influential people in the arts – hold quite uncontroversial (left-liberal) political views and also fear the next wave of revolutionaries more than they do the ancien régime. That’s why they make jokes about the ancien régime. In fact there is plenty of edgy comedy these days – but it tends to be told in private.
Jonah Goldberg on the leftist leanings of the establishment media:
According to a just-released study [by the Centre for Public Integrity], more than 96 percent of donations from media figures to either of the two major-party presidential candidates went to Hillary Clinton… Anyone who has spent a moment around elite reporters or studied their output knows that they tend to be left of centre. In 1981, S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman surveyed 240 leading journalists and found that 94 percent of them voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, 81 percent voted for George McGovern in 1972, and 81 percent voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Only 19 percent placed themselves on the right side of the political spectrum. Does anyone think the media have become less liberal since then? None of this means liberals — or conservatives — can’t be good reporters, but the idea that media bias is non-existent is ludicrous.
And Mark Steyn on campus psychodrama and competitive indignation:
[University of Wisconsin at Whitewater president] Beverly Kopper blamed the students for “failing to think about the implications” – of having a facial. Because we live in a world where a facial is one step away from a minstrel show… What this college president, Beverly Kopper, means when she says these students “failed to think about the implications” of their racist exfoliating is that professional grievance mongers like her have so incentivised the taking of offence that there are now far more people who need to be offended than the number of people willing to offend them: Demand far outstrips supply. So in ten years’ time these two students will be applying for jobs and their potential employer will Google them and the first 200 pages that come up will be about how racey-racey-racist they are.
But when there isn’t nearly enough racism to justify the “social justice” contingent’s pre-booked outrage, on which their status depends, what are they supposed to do? Well, being pious, righteous beings, they make some up. And by some, I mean lots. And so we find student “activists,” self-imagined heroes, whose preferred form of heroism entails sending anonymous racial threats to their equally brown classmates and making their own nooses, and educators who daub racial slurs on their own cars, before slashing their own tyres, much to the bewilderment of onlookers.
As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Beverly Kopper blamed the students for “failing to think about the implications” – of having a facial.
I just Googled “student getting a facial”. Oh boy. University has changed since my day.
Defining ‘corrupt’ as betraying the primary function of a profession, which is the most corrupt institution in contemporary society: education or journalism?
Defining ‘corrupt’ as betraying the primary function of a profession, which is the most corrupt institution in contemporary society: education or journalism?
Close call.
Close call.
Embrace the power of “and.”
Somewhat related, Janice Fiamengo on academics and the mob.
Hullo David.
Ed West says:
What so many comedians and other artists find so unsettling about the New Wave of Social Justice Warriors is that their condemnations and anathemas are so arbitrary; no one knows whether a routine or joke will pass without comment or bring upon them thousands of hateful tweets, comment piece-attacks and demands for their resignation. This is the very epitome of tyranny.
Which is true, intit? Even 20 years ago, Till Death Do Us Part (and to a lesser extent Rising Damp) had become politically incorrect – amusingly, since the jokes were always on Alf Garnett and Rupert Rigsby as unfashionable white males.
And nowadays the Loretta jokes in Life of Brian are upsetting to transformers, and Midsomer Murders is offensive because if its lack of black lesbian pingusexuals*, and even Peter Pan is un-PC because it depicts a gang of at-risk youth taunting a disabled entrepreneur.
I dunno what’ll be verboten next, but my money’s on Pat Sharp’s Fun House being retrospectively condemned as a Running Man style gauntlet of hate where helpless children were forced to slide down slippery slides and drop into gunge tanks for the amusement of the mulletted fuhrer and his Aryan sex twins.
However, there’s two things I fear Ed (his friends call him “Rosemary”) West misses:
1) Professional satirists don’t want to mock the Left, because you don’t get to become a professional satirist without being a lefty. Godfrey Elfwick is funnier than ninety-nine-point-jimmy-saville percent of BBC radio and TV comedians.
But the Beeb aren’t going to hire Godders in this life or the next. They’d rather pay good money for yet another neotenous, sneering, flarey-nostrilled ex-public-schoolboy to bray “DAILY MAIL!” at us as a punchline.
2) I like a joke myself, but it’s increasingly difficult to poke fun at lefty identity politics, because they’re already more ridiculous than anything I can dream up.
Astrologists say the universe is expanding faster than the speed of sound. But if that’s true, the parody horizon of leftwingery is moving faster than Diane Abbott at a free buffet.
Take that rich seam of mental hilariousness you’ve been mining at EVERYDAY FEMINISM.
It’s funny, yes. But funny in the way of a clown car careening over a cliffside. Satire is redundant when the would-be objects of one’s mirth are already more absurd than any fine mess Laurel and/or Hardy got into.
*people who are sexually attracted to penguins. Because it’s 2016, bigot!
I’ve pointed out before how artists claim art is supposed to be “transgressive” and “challenging”. But it’s only supposed to be those things towards certain people. Try challenging the artists themselves, or transgressing against one of their shibboleths, and watch what happens.
“…ideas, social customs and cultural artefacts should be understood primarily in terms of the power relations supposedly embedded in them, rather than as claims to reflect objective truth or reality.” – Goosh
A friend of mine recently stated that voting Hillary was the only acceptable vote, because he, as a white male, loses no power by voting one way or the other. But women (read: ‘his wife’) would be Harmed if he voted third-party, which he wanted to do based on the set of principles he held.
Goosh’s insight here describes an eventual outcome: accepting no objective truth or reality, terms become exclusively about power relations. Taken to its endpoint, my friend shouldn’t vote except by how his wife, or “Women,” tell him to. Otherwise, he is perpetuating a moral wrong, essentially being “anti-woman.”
I marvel at how diabolical the Left’s assertions have become: rights become Privilege and privilege become Rights.
…no one knows whether a routine or joke will pass without comment or bring upon them thousands of hateful tweets, comment piece-attacks and demands for their resignation…
Very NSFW compilation of comedians addressing the issue.
So I’m at my local Vue last night watching a live in HD transmission from the NY Met of Simon Keenlyside giving his usual extremely competent performance as Don Giovanni and when the Act 1 finale is over we cut to backstage where Joyce DiDonato is waiting to grab the performers and interview them,
First up is our Simon and I should point out that the Act 1 finale of this opera is pretty lively so Simon is obviously very pumped up and it is also true that part of the ensemble consists of Don Giovanni leading the players in singing ‘Viva la liberta!’
Before Joyce can get a question in, Simon goes off on a long peroration on the subject of liberty which includes mention of the Bill of Rights, the French revolution and the whole enlightenment thing, by way of sexual liberty, (Cosi fan tutte), class, (Le Nozze di Figaro) and religion, (Don Giovanni).
Then he mentions multiculturalism which he avows is a wonderful thing, but…
Yes, he said ‘but…’ In fact he said, paraphrasing, ‘but Western Civilisation needs to be careful about bringing in a different culture with ways that may be anathema to the ways of Western Civilisation’. Yes folks, a luvvie defending Western Civilisation.
He didn’t say ‘build the damn wall!’ nor did he mention ‘extreme vetting’, and he certainly didn’t shout ‘Vote Trump!’ but he did say we – Western Civ representing Enlightenment values – need to think carefully about things.
I wonder what the reaction might be.
What so many… find so unsettling about the New Wave of Social Justice Warriors is that their condemnations and anathemas are so arbitrary… This is the very epitome of tyranny.
Quite. They’ve long since wandered off the map of remotely credible grievance. We’re now in the realm of psychodrama and dominance games. And so we have opportunist browbeaters and outright thugs who simply don’t care that their own behaviour – and subsequent impunity – refutes their protestations of being oppressed. They’re rightly confident that, however badly they behave and however blatant the inversion of reality, they won’t face any of the normal consequences. At least not within the borders of the Clown Quarter.
Young people often feel a need to be activists, to make a difference, to tackle injustice. It gives meaning and importance to their lives.
Today, however, many of the great causes have diminished. For the most part we live in an affluent, just society that recognizes the need for opportunities for all regardless of race and gender. We often fall short, but the intentions and effort are there.
With few great causes, this restless energy has been funneled into outrage over trivial or misguided causes, often lacking factual foundations. And shepherding all of this are professors whose careers depend on the continuation of activism.
‘Things we mustn’t laugh about’. We got a bit of grief for this little romp around the wilder extremities of the transgender community (ahem), but oddly non of it came from gay sources who, by-and-large, get the joke: http://bit.ly/28JffHd
On the other hand, this piece on free speech was dumped upon by exactly the kind of people who simply cannot countenance ‘civilised co-existence with people who see the world very differently from us’: http://bit.ly/2cvLtsR (I’ll leave it to you to guess who they are…)
A tiny glimmer of common sense?
Via Breitbart
“Does anyone think the media have become less liberal since then?”
Actually, I suspect that a lot of people on the left do. They’ll point at Fox News with a withering look. But that doesn’t really alter the approximate 1-in-5/1-in-10 ratio of the Lichter & Rothman report; it just consolidates the non-Left-leaning element into one channel.
“I marvel at how diabolical the Left’s assertions have become: rights become Privilege and privilege become Rights.”
See also, “{Insert demand for economic good here} is a right, not a privilege!”. I long ago came to the conclusion that Leftists don’t know what the words mean.
“Does anyone think the media have become less liberal since then?”
The problem, of course, being that as they live in their self referential cliques, they think they actually are the center.
Meanwhile, nothing is to trivial to stage a protest about.
“There, the character’s ’70s TV embodiment, Lynda Carter, pleaded with protesters, ‘Please, embrace her.’
Oh, Lynda… I’ve been dreaming about that since 1981.
Jonathan —
Social fads have consequences … I only hope the boy is not permanently damaged.
From someone who grew up under the mullahs in Iran
If you ever find yourself wondering why nothing stirs inside you when you encounter contemporary art,
Being acclaimed and rewarded for thwarting the preferences of the people who are forced to bankroll such posturing, openly disdaining them, at their expense, year after year, sounds like a pretty good definition of “privilege” – no?
I dunno what’ll be verboten next, but my money’s on Pat Sharp’s Fun House being retrospectively condemned as a Running Man style gauntlet of hate where helpless children were forced to slide down slippery slides and drop into gunge tanks for the amusement of the mulletted fuhrer and his Aryan sex twins.
I was eight when Fun House ended in 1999, and at the time I thought it was brilliant. It’s one of the few TV shows I watched as a child I wanted to appear on. Climbing ladders, sliding down poles, getting completely covered from head-to-toe in thick gloopy gunge for a prize of a holiday AND whatever else it was if you won, looked (as per the title) damned good fun. Plus you got to appear on television, so even if you lost you’d have had a badge of status among your friends. Little did I realise this meant I was actually a potential patriarchal shitlord in training.
“It is a strangely embarrassing time to be a man,” says novelist Matt Haig, writing in the Guardian. “You only have to watch the news, or log on to Twitter, or just open your eyes,” he writes, “and you will see a man doing something atrocious.” Donald Trump, he informs us, “is just the most visible example of the toxic masculinity on offer.”
Mr Haig is reviewing a book by the tragically untalented artist Grayson Perry, whose own disdain for masculinity has been mentioned here before, and who tells us, with equal confidence, that being “a white man [is] a rather tarnished badge to wear these days, weighted with guilt and shame at the behaviour of one’s fellows.” Happily, Mr Haig assures us that Mr Perry, a man famed chiefly for his transvestism, has a solution and “points to a new model of manhood, a more tender model,” one that’s “embodied by Barack Obama.”
How many SJWs does it take to change a lightbulb?
One.
But only after a public apology from the lightbulb.
Little did I realise this meant I was actually a potential patriarchal shitlord in training.
Or in other words, what used to be known as a normal well-adjusted little boy.
“It is a strangely embarrassing time to be a man,” says novelist Matt Haig, writing in the Guardian. “You only have to watch the news, or log on to Twitter, or just open your eyes,” he writes, “and you will see a man doing something atrocious.”
Haig’s suggestions for how to know about contemporary male behavior are stupid.
“watch the news”: Sure, CBS, NBC, WaPo, NYT, MSNBC, ESPN et alia definitely show an accurate picture of life today. Uh huh.
“Twitter”: FFS, do I really have to comment on this one?
“open your eyes”: and he sees the behavior of those around him. If he wants to condemn that, fine, but I don’t see what that has to do with me and mine.
Niall Gooch? Lolololol
No fucking way
They’re so focused on marginalising white men in the West, just so we don’t object to the ongoing race replacement program being implemented.
What?
Interesting . . . .
Meet the migrants who are helping Italians take on the Sicilian mob
Another look; The center of Sicily’s biggest city was emptied by the mafia. Now it’s being reclaimed by migrants
When criminals turn out to be . . . well, criminals . . . .
Grayson Perry, whose own disdain for masculinity has been mentioned here before… tells us, with equal confidence, that being “a white man [is] a rather tarnished badge to wear these days, weighted with guilt and shame at the behaviour of one’s fellows.”
What the hell is *wrong* with these people?
What the hell is *wrong* with these people?
It is an odd thing to proclaim – and despite the self-satisfied tone, not very convincing. I mean, are we to believe that “white men” are uniquely embarrassing and dysfunctional – say, compared with the menfolk of Eritrea or Liberia, or China, or Australian aboriginals? And why would the mere existence of a boorish stranger, someone I don’t know, and who isn’t me, in and of itself make me feel “guilt”? How on Earth does that work?
Mr Haig doesn’t elaborate, or quote Mr Perry doing so. But then, I don’t think it’s intended to convince anyone who isn’t already onside, already sympathetic to the pose. Disdaining “white men” (and “cis white men” and “straight cis white men”) is the new social marker, the fashionable way for a certain type of person to signal their imagined elevation above the masses. Ditto “toxic masculinity.” These aren’t usually good faith arguments, or sound arguments, so much as preening and social positioning.
On the upside, disdainful references to “white men” do alert the rest of us to the proximity of a tosser.
So they are coming together to take on the mafia bosses.
I imagine, given the history in other European cities, in a few years they will find that the mafia were easier to deal with than the mullahs.
“Diversity is our strength”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/247165/
Feminist nursery rhyme gets predictable reaction.
Meanwhile, in the world of nothing too small not to take the vapors over, Bike-share programs haven’t closed up the gender gap.
Why could this be ?
OK, right, yeah, that is a real issue why women don’t ride bikes for fun.
Of course, but wait that’s not all !
So we have have patriarchy and raycissism, all we need is some special LBGTBBQLSMFT bike group to complete the grievance trifecta.
Feminist nursery rhyme gets predictable reaction.
Wow. I fear comment would be superfluous.
Wow. I fear comment would be superfluous.
“Diversity is our strength”
“Vas ist!” said the Austrian judge. I thought it said “die servitude“!
[“It did,” said the mullah.]
Speaking of nothing being too trivial to protest…
If one were inclined to think of women as predisposed to fatuousness, these protesters aren’t helping. It does makes me wonder if the Wonder Woman protesters would be less miffed if she sported yoga pants.
p.s. This is my first attempt at embedding a hyperlink using HTML. I see the beauty of the preview button now.
I see the beauty of the preview button now.
It’s a glorious thing.
So her goal is to have more feminists ensconced over bike seats.
Must be cold in here. I just shuddered.
“one that’s “embodied by Barack Obama.”
Don’t know if you Brits will understand this, but here in the USA we call this “throwing like a girl.” (Oh, I must denounce myself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri8BOynRGnc
… “throwing like a girl.”
That was much butcher than you encouraged me to expect. I had envisaged a pathetically inept underarm effort.
Occasionally they have first pitches thrown by actual girls. They are generally much worse.
As a man of approximately Barrack Obama’s age, that’s how we throw. Do you expect a 55 year old who never played baseball to deliver a rocket down the middle? His basketball is much better, unsurprisingly.
That was much butcher than you encouraged me to expect.
Obama
Girl
A normal man would be embarrassed for being that far off target. HE thought he did a good job and that’s all that matters.
Notice how far to the left he went? With the ball, I mean.
A normal man would be embarrassed for being that far off target.
Particularly when a girl can throw from the rubber, and put it over the plate.
On the upside, disdainful references to “white men” do alert the rest of us to the proximity of a tosser.
That. 🙂
“His basketball is much better, unsurprisingly”
You must have missed the video from a few years back of Barky throwing up ten or eleven bricks/air balls…
Evidence here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IjDqm-JHr