Elsewhere (231)
Katherine Timpf on the latest cause of campus outrage:
According to an article in the University of California–Los Angeles publication The Rival, people who are kind of into activism but not totally into activism are guilty of “activist appropriation.”
Katie Clancy and Justin Haskins on fake education at Butler University:
In the course’s description, students are told they’ll be taught the real reason Trump won the 2016 election and they’ll be provided “strategies for resistance” to the Trump administration’s evil agenda. “Donald J. Trump won the U.S. Presidency despite perpetuating sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nationalism, nativism, and imperialism,” the course description reads. “This course explores why and how this happened, how Trump’s rhetoric is contrary to the foundation of the U.S. democracy, and what his win means for the future. The course will also discuss, and potentially engage in, strategies for resistance.”
Malhar Mali on the dogmatic rot of the humanities:
Activist professors incapable of surviving in the more arduous disciplines… are the most vociferous in limiting the academic freedom of others.
Related: The Heterodox Academy Guide to Colleges.
And Kevin Williamson on the psychology of the feckless and chronically disorganised:
The passivity and subjectlessness of these narratives is striking, and strikingly consistent. Domestic events happen. Cheques come or don’t come. (Mostly they don’t.) Husbands are sent to jail, children are taken away by the clipboard-toting minions of Authority, disease descends. The money isn’t there. And, in the end, they are evicted. Bad things just happen, and, today, I am the bad thing that is just happening to one of these luckless and unhappy children of God… They’d had years and years to prepare for this moment, and, of course, they hadn’t… They very much wanted to stay in the house, though not enough to offer to rent it or buy it. But certainly enough to sit tight and hope that the situation would somehow just resolve itself in their favour.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
R.Sherman
Dust-up at Duke Divinity.
From the email that got the heretic Paul Griffiths “burnt at the stake”:
As we have all seen, and especially those of us you’ve had to attend “voluntary” Diversity (Re)Training, everything he wrote is the honest truth. Power-mad bureaucrats cannot tolerate such cheek.
There is Spanish, and then apparently there is Cubano.
To a Spaniard, and especially to an Argentine, Mexican Spanish is something akin to Ebonics.
(So I was told by a lovely young lady from Argentina.)
The Journal of Feminist Geography turns its attention to a matter of pressing importance:
Fake hate, fake news.
The ZMan has posted a rather different take on Williamson’s piece, which may be of interest.
The ZMan has posted a rather different take on Williamson’s piece, which may be of interest.
I can’t speak to the particulars of Williamson’s background, or Z-Man’s broader speculations. I don’t follow Williamson’s output closely enough to judge. But to say that he “put a lot of effort into letting the reader know he took pleasure in… evicting his wayward tenants” is a bit of a stretch. I think Williamson’s piece is interesting in that it can be a revelation to find oneself the notional bad guy in the reckoning of such people, and one’s view of the feckless and chronically disorganised, who are often excused as oppressed or vulnerable, may change, perhaps dramatically, when faced with them first-hand and entangled in their dramas.
What comes to mind is the Guardian’s Zoe Williams pretending to feel sorry for “problem families” who blast out loud music at 3am and throw pets from tower block windows, and whom she claims are more deserving of our sympathy than their non-dysfunctional (and equally poor) neighbours. The kind of nightmare households that Zoe would very much not like to see moving in next door.
one’s view of the feckless and chronically disorganised, who are often excused as oppressed or vulnerable, may change, perhaps dramatically, when faced with them first-hand and entangled in their dramas.
If Williamson did take pleasure in the proceedings, so what? As I mentioned above, when you spend a lot of time among these people, you very quickly learn that their “vulnerability” is an act. It is a weapon deployed against good-hearted people in order to fleece them of as much as possible before moving on to the next sucker. The attitude is this: “You, Landlord, are privileged to own something I do not. You should feel guilty about it and therefore support me, while I spend my own resources on beer and cigarettes.”
@Spiny
Power-mad bureaucrats cannot tolerate such cheek.
Griffiths was essentially arguing that the faculty at Duke Divinity School did not need diversity/inclusion training given that its brief was to ponder and teach Christianity, a faith which postulates radical human equality. (“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”–Romans 3:23) Denying the necessity of the training and refusing to admit complicity in the various sins to be discussed, in finest Kafkatrap tradition, becomes evidence of Griffiths’s guilt.
The amusing thing is it is now easier to dissent from two millenia of established Christian doctrine than it is to contest the modern social justice agenda.
Today’s Language Discussion began when Dom asked: “David, why did you change the spelling of ‘check’ in a cut and paste of Williamson’s article?”
David replied: “As a Brit, I generally opt for the British spelling to keep things tidy.”
I said: “If I quote a Brit, the British spelling remains. If I quote an American, the American spelling remains.”
Chester characterized it as “Translating from American to English.”
To which I replied: “No translation needed; it’s a spelling variance.”
What began as a question about spelling then veered off into a broad-ranging discussion about differences of pronunciation, vocabulary, and other things within and between English and other languages.
What began as a question about spelling then veered off into a broad-ranging discussion about differences of pronunciation, vocabulary, and other things within and between English and other languages.
Yes, but let us endeavoure to remember our common enemy. The French.
Yes, but let us endeavour to remember our common enemy. The French.
[ Glares across Channel. Shakes fist. ]
Yes, but let us endeavoure to remember our common enemy. The French.
Related slide show because I’m all about bringing people together.
As an aside, English is my wife’s third (of six) language. She learned (learnt) the British variant and still veers in that direction after 30+ years in the U.S. Part of the editing process for her Ph.D. dissertation was eliminating British spelling conventions in favor (favour) of American ones.
Tweet of the day #2
https://twitter.com/peterjhasson/status/861807044118097924
The original Mr. X
From your quote:
Feminist academics are nuttier than squirrel shit. No surprise there.
And in other not-at-all-unhinged feminist news…
Six tranquilliser darts should do it.
David,
I can’t speak to the particulars of Williamson’s background, or Z-Man’s broader speculations. I don’t follow Williamson’s output closely enough to judge. But to say that he “put a lot of effort into letting the reader know he took pleasure in… evicting his wayward tenants” is a bit of a stretch.
As a “#NeverTrump” conservative, Kevin Williamson has been declared a heretic and blasphemer, and everything he writes must be vigorously denounced, no matter how much of a “stretch” is required.
R. Sherman, enjoyed the link. A couple items seemed to be reversed, but wth. Also was reminded of the phrase, “Must be jelly, ’cause jam don’t shake like that”.
Meanwhile in the Arts…
Also was reminded of the phrase, “Must be jelly, ’cause jam don’t shake like that”.
An actual conversation in Chez Sherman some decades ago:
Spouse: I like that jumper.
Me, attempting to enjoy a post prandial whiskey while perusing a selection of Montaigne’s essays: I’m not jumping. It’s called a “sweater,” thank you.
As a “#NeverTrump” conservative, Kevin Williamson has been declared a heretic and blasphemer,
Again, I haven’t followed that particular drama so I can’t speak to that point. But on Twitter and in the comments at NR, he seems to be copping it from all sides. From readers who assume that he’s sneering at poor white people (though so far as I can see, he doesn’t mention the race of the people in question). And from ‘progressives’ for daring to note the lack of personal agency and that the subsequent pile of misfortune is to a significant extent self-inflicted.
As Fred Z mentioned upthread, Theodore Dalrymple has noted the same cultivated passivity, whereby things just happen and nothing is ever to be learned from this supposedly inexplicable happening. No behaviour ever need change. And as Dalrymple and others have pointed out, this lack of responsibility, of self-possession, is often encouraged by those whose job is, ostensibly, to help such people.
Which in turn reminded me of this farcical research into “inequalities” in littering, which studiously avoids any mention at all of how litter gets there in the first place, for fear of saying the unsayable and assigning agency to certain types of people in certain neighbourhoods. Thereby leaving the reader to guess, coyly, why it is that some estates are much more trash-strewn than others, despite local councils spending up to five times more cleaning rough neighbourhoods than on more respectable parts of town.
Also was reminded of the phrase, “Must be jelly, ’cause jam don’t shake like that”.
Me too.
this farcical research into “inequalities” in littering,
Admitting some people are just scumbags saves a lot of time. 🙂
Admitting some people are just scumbags saves a lot of time. 🙂
Heh. Well, yes – that was basically the unmentionable detail around which the report was dancing. And which enabled a fatuous Guardian columnist to give the impression that this supposedly grievous inequality in litter distribution was the fault of ‘society’ or capitalism or something, and nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of people who drop their food-smeared detritus in the street with no thought for anyone else, even their immediate neighbours. And so the reader was encouraged to fret about how to “narrow the gap” in litter and how to “achieve fairer outcomes in street cleanliness,” while paying no attention – none at all – to who was creating the mess in the first place. As if behaviour were irrelevant.
As excuses go, it was quite remarkable.
Is it the end of Everyday Feminism?
Incidentally, in return for a 2000-word article, the assorted ladies and ungendered beings at Everyday Feminism pay the whopping sum of $25.
In addition, as a bonus, they also offer critiques and feedback on whether or not your article is racist, ableist and patriarchally oppressive.
Is it the end of Everyday Feminism?
Isn’t most of their traffic from people laughing at how bad their articles are (e.g. our host)?