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.
Jonah Goldberg on the leftist leanings of the establishment media:
As an aside, I’d go for Jonah Goldberg on the incoherent partisan leanings of the establishment NRO, certainly including Jonah Goldberg. The guy is proof that being born into something isn’t the same as being good at it.
To further confirm Goldberg’s limitations we have Goldberg:
None of this means liberals — or conservatives — can’t be good reporters…
The hell. Apparently what it means is that Goldberg is a crappy reporter because this cycle has revealed an order of magnitude more media bias and corruption than any other.
You’d think he’d know that and prefer saying so to cozying up to a non-statement like that.
Evidence here:
Slight typo in Champ’s link – Brick house.
However, lest we be accused of being rayciss even while we are denouncing ourselves, let it be noted that Jean Francois Kerry plays football similarly.
In US football, in case anyone is wondering, where the ball actually is is not supposed to be a guessing game.
I must remark that JFK-not-that-JFK looks like the Farscape villain T’raltixx (from Crackers Don’t Matter) with his eyes closed. Something about the pointy chin and odd cast of the teeth.
http://www.nexusroute.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/farscapecrackers1.jpg
I will now go do penance in the Nerd Box.
It’s amazing how the reddit “terrible offensive jokes” thread is destined for eternal and endless expansion because so many areas of life and culture are now off limits to comedians.
Ever notice how people at a party will laugh very hard and then quickly exclaim – to cover their asses just in case – that’s soooooo bad.
If so many things weren’t just off limits, but a possible facebook video of you laughing at the joke was career threatening, comedy would be even less stale – if you know what I mean.
For those willing to take some risks, there could be some very new popular comedians on the rise. We need another Bill Burr.
“Crackers Don’t Matter”
Racist!
On the upside, disdainful references to “white men” do alert the rest of us to the proximity of a tosser.
On the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the term “cuckservative” performs the same function.
Most of those using it are well aware that it originated at the unabashed neo-nazi forum “Storm front” and don’t care.
(Note: I added the space so, hopefully, search engines won’t bring them here.)
We just lost den Beste.
Pack it up, folks, it’s over…
Crackers Don’t Matter
We prefer the term “Saltine-Americans”.
Chester,
As a man of approximately Barrack Obama’s age, that’s how we throw.
I’m about 4 months younger than he is, and also throw like that – but I have a legitimate excuse: I tore cartilage in my shoulder (the “rotator cuff”) while actually playing baseball.
Kick the spam queue for me, David, would you? An important link got swallowed twice.
As a man of approximately Barrack Obama’s age, that’s how we throw.
92 year old begs to differ…
On the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the term “cuckservative” performs the same function.
Most of those using it are well aware that it originated at the unabashed neo-nazi forum “Storm front” and don’t care.
As with most things related to being completely and justly fed up with the usual, codependent right, “cuckservative” is at least as much trolling as it is literal derision. Remember that these are the folks that got the left to jump over a cliff chasing a cartoon frog.
Given how spectacularly wrong that overly-sensitive ostensible right has been and is, and on so many levels, it’s the least they can do. Both uses work.
Meanwhile
Kick the spam queue for me, David, would you?
Done. The spam filter is capricious. It follows no rules that I can fathom.
Does it have to be atached?
Feminist nursery rhyme gets predictable reaction.
Oh gawd, she was the fishwife that was on the BBC with Milo and – just like in this video – her refrain was “Why is he allowed to say these awful things? Why can we silence him?” She calls herself a comedian. Watch the video again: imagine being married to that?
Re: Ed West’s article – or rather the Guardian article linked therein – all the comedians quoted are still more worried about the Daily Mail busting their balls than anything else.
(Good to see, in a way, that the BBC suits are such cowards that they can at least be responsive to some normal-person pushback, even if it is scattershot bullshit from the papers.)
Now I agree that it’s just as lame for the Daily Mail to shout down comedians as any pro-PC mob, but it’s not the mobs that are the problem here: it’s the incestuous, insidious normalising, among comedians and BBC commissioning editors and the like, of PC nonsense. That’s the real censorship, the real death of satire. And they can’t even see it – or at least if they can, the Guardian doesn’t print it.
Oh gawd, she was the fishwife that was on the BBC with Milo and – just like in this video – her refrain was “Why is he allowed to say these awful things? Why can we silence him?
Yes indeed – Ms Smurthwaite started that show by expostulating at great length (making countless dubious statements and assumptions) while everyone politely listened. When Milo got his turn to speak, she interrupted – on average – every 10 seconds.
For some reason this particularly annoyed me. There was the same catty sniping and self-righteous insistence that she had a right to speak, and a mere man had none.
So it pleases me somewhat when this chap gets the better of her. You can see the wicked smile on his face when she kicks off, thinking “that was so easy”
Oh gawd, she was the fishwife that was on the BBC with Milo and – just like in this video – her refrain was “Why is he allowed to say these awful things? Why can’t we silence him?”
The lady in question, Ms Kate Smurthwaite, a “comedian and activist,” does seem humourless and easily baited, even by the standards of her feminist peers. I also loved her threat to never again accept an invitation to appear on Sky News, thereby depriving us of her wit and insight, unless she was given the last word.
And I can’t help feeling she might benefit from an acquaintance with conditioner.
And I can’t help feeling she might benefit from an acquaintance with conditioner.
And a Bic razor judging by a photo I once saw of her in a singlet which still has me dry heaving when I think of it.
It seems to me Ms Smurthwaite can be added to the list of ladies whose behaviour supports the speculation that feminism, at least as she conceives it, has little to do with injustice and quite a lot to do with a convergence of obnoxious personality traits.
…imagine being married to that?
Actually, she is married. Poor fella. But that gets me thinking: for someone who’s always billed as a comedian, I’ve never heard her say anything funny, nor have I ever seen her outside her capacity as Angry Feminist on various TV panel shows. I’ve never even heard of her in connection to comedy, except for her billing on those shows, i.e. nobody’s gone “check out Smurthwaite’s new hour – 5 stars at the Fringe!”, or linked me a video of her stand-up. (And with good reason!)
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she is not managing to pay the bills through comedy, which leads me to speculate that this modern independent woman is actually totally dependent on her husband, who is presumably out there 9-5 winning the bread. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but in this case it might go some way towards explaining why she’s so vehemently feminist.
(Note: I added the space so, hopefully, search engines won’t bring them here.)
Nah, you’ll just attract a bunch of Billy Joel fans.
And I can’t help feeling she might benefit from an acquaintance with conditioner.
I feel compelled to mitigate your uncharacteristic lack of gallantry by sending her a nice present. I’ve something in my cupboard that would be ideal. I can’t quite recall what it’s called, but it brought my chip pan up lovely.
…judging by a photo I once saw of her in a singlet…
Damn my curiosity.
If you’d like to get a more rounded picture of Kate Smurthwaite‘s character, she picketed the funeral of the artist Sebastian Horsley because he had written about having sex with prostitutes. She’s a Westboro Feminist.
“Does it have to be atached?”
Well, yes. You can’t just carry around a dildo in your pocket and call yourself a “new man” (or post-op trans – sorry, I’m not up on my terminology).
I’ll trundle off for re-grooving now…
I’ve never even heard of her in connection to comedy
Feminist comedy is like granny-porn: a very unlikely combination filling a very particular niche.
I’m left wondering which I’d rather sit through an hour of. :-/
“Or in other words, what used to be known as a normal well-adjusted little boy”.
Indeed. Although I do like the phrase patriarchal shitlord. It has a nice ring to it.
Evey Friday I play football with a group of friends. We think we play like Messi.
Everyone else thinks we look like old men running around slowly after a ball.
The Vagina Monologues is “antiquated” . . .
‘k, so do an update . . .