Elsewhere (256)
Heather Mac Donald on a certain newspaper of record:
The day after the New York Times informed its readers about the “professional” world of astrology, it ran a front-page story about ICE agents’ alleged reign of terror in Atlanta, Ga., under the Trump administration. This reign of terror consists in targeted enforcement raids against individuals like an illegal Mexican who has been deported twice, served time in prison, convicted of two domestic-violence incidents, and charged with rape which he plea-bargained down to a lesser crime. The number of illegal alien law-breakers in Atlanta is so high that one is booked into a county jail every few hours, reports the Times. The Times notes with dismay that illegal aliens are being arrested for driving without insurance and without a licence. Apparently Times reporters would not mind if their car were totalled by an uninsured driver. A reporter for the Spanish-language newspaper Mundo Hispanico sends out Facebook alerts of sightings of ICE agents so that illegal aliens can evade the law. Yet we are supposed to believe that it is the Trump administration that poses a threat to the rule of law.
Apparently, readers of the New York Times are expected to concern themselves with the violation of their borders by illegal aliens only insofar as illegal alien status is to be construed as excusing other criminal activity.
Peter Wood on perverse art and its admirers:
Take the elevator to the sixth-floor offices of the college president, however, and… you will find… a celebratory exhibit of art created by the friends and allies of the 9-11 terrorists… The paintings and the models in the show are unremarkable as art. They display no special skill or aesthetic sensibility. That has not stopped Erin Thompson and her two fellow curators from attempting to squeeze whatever portentous meaning they can from the paintings. For example, in reference to a painting of a glass vase, a bottle, and two cups, by Ahmed Rabbani (a member of Al Qaida who trained as a terrorist in Afghanistan), the curators observe in the exhibition notes, that the “empty vessels also serve as an oblique reference both to Rabbani’s absent family and to his acts of self-denial and resistance.” What you won’t find in these paintings is any trace of repentance. These artworks are by terrorists and their accomplices who seem untouched by the monstrousness of their actions. They can wax sentimental about their own families and can draft images of hearts and flowers, but pity for the victims of their jihad is beyond their imagination — at least their visual imagination.
Curiously, or perhaps not curiously at all, the reasons for detention are downplayed or entirely absent. Nor is there any mention of released detainees’ recidivism rates. And despite the claims of artistic and sociological heft, there is, as Peter Wood notes, a baser motive in play – the wearying, juvenile need to be seen as transgressing bourgeois proprieties: “What better way to rile people than to celebrate terrorist art at a college that educates students for careers in law enforcement?” In New York City, no less.
Somewhat related, this video here, in which students share their views of the exhibit, and of course this somewhat revealing faculty profile.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
What might happen if enough of us stood up together and refused to spend another second watching rich old white men do whatever the fuck they want to our bodies and call it freedom?
Rich old white men? Riiight.
John Conyers:
Harvey Weinstein:
Bill Cosby:
Matt Lauer:
Mark Halperin:
James Toback:
It’s almost as if it’s not old white men who’re the guilty ones…..Nah, that’s just crazy talk.
“What might happen to us as a society — hell, as a species — if enough of us begin to take consent seriously”
Leftists would abandon leftism for political philosophies that value liberty.
Today, from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy:”I think your identity thing is just too facile.”
The man summed up all this “woke” nonsense in 9 words. He, unlike Laurie, is not paid by the word.
I waded through half her article, and as God and the henchlesbians are my witnesses, I could not extract whatever her ultimate point was. Maybe if I’d gone on to the end… As it was, all I clearly understood was: 1). “I hate white men [I hope her dad doesn’t read that article]”. 2). “I’m not thrilled with all you non-white guys either, but I’ll tolerate you when I’m in the mood for some dick, and you better be willing, ready, and able to service me 24/7.”
Nice lady, huh?
R. Sherman,
Makes me wonder what Joanne Whalley and Bridget Fonda were subjected to in the “casting process”. (-_-)
pst314,
Or her cousin the family doesn’t like to talk about, Moonshine McJugs?
Nikw211,
I am of the belief that any competent coder could create a bot that could instantly churn out Penny Dreadful columns that would be indistinguishable from her own keyboard stomping; something similar to the Postmodernism Generator.
We don’t talk about Moonshine McJugs.
But Stupifyin Jones asked me to remember her to you, David.
Oh… now even washing human feces off the sidewalk is racist …
I.can’t.even.
Power washing the sidewalks is too reminiscent of civil rights activists being hosed down, he said.
I’m not sure which is the bigger indicator of cultural decline – the fact that a courthouse in a first-world city is being rendered unusable because of the risk of jurors being spat at and assaulted, combined with a round-the-clock stench of human excrement, or the fact that efforts to solve the latter issue – hosing human shit from the pavements – is deemed racially insensitive.
Sounds like King County is hosed.
there must be people out there who are paying her to write this anxious teenage doggerel and still others who are reading this shit.
Regarding Laurie’s bewildering career, in which she travels the world telling audiences how terribly oppressed she is, it’s perhaps worth rehashing some earlier comments on the subject.
Firstly, there’s the practical matter that Laurie’s output is quite prodigious, if only in the sense that there’s an awful lot of it. Related to which is the fact that she seems to have sudden and passionate opinions on practically any subject, for the most part unhindered by knowledge, consistency, or any trace of equivocation. It’s almost as if there’s a predetermined worldview that she can plug into and immediately get upset about, as if she’s always been secretly furious about whatever it is, even if said subject has never been mentioned before, and even if her current assertions are at odds with other assertions made weeks or days earlier. And I suppose that’s a skill.
And so we have someone anointed by Harvard University as a “leader in journalism” and who has no discernible interest in factual accuracy or establishing whether a premise is credible or not. And who shows no appetite whatsoever for the basics of the subjects on which she opinionates, leading to moments of inadvertent comedy, something close to surrealism. For instance, I suspect that few of us would be comfortable insisting, emphatically and in public, that high wages are easy to pay because it doesn’t matter whether your business is competitive or not. But Laurie is. And again, I suppose that’s a skill.
It’s also important to remember that Laurie tends to flatter her readership of credulous teenagers and arrested adolescents, on whose behalf she pretends to speak. If you consider Laurie’s key messages – the ones she repeats – it’s easy to see the appeal for a certain demographic. She tells her readers that they are wronged, oppressed, and endlessly entitled – and that drastic, even violent, measures are called for. Laurie’s readers must therefore be radical heroes, like her. Radical and brave. Their Clown Quarter degrees should be paid for by someone else, even if those degrees are obviously worthless. They should demand more of other people’s earnings because that’s what brave, heroic, radical people do, apparently. And being so brave and heroic, so unassailably righteous, they’re entitled to obstruct, threaten and intimidate, because those who disagree with them are evil right-wingers.
And if someone else’s stuff gets smashed, burned or ‘occupied’… well, that’s just too bad. In fact, according to Laurie, it isn’t even violence.
Theodore Dalrymple’s interview on political correctness
Excellent article. I did a proper cartoon double-take when I realised it was written in 2005.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/117/1921/1600/leunig.0.jpg
Not sure if the cartoon showed but the above reminded me of Leunig. This is one of his more shitty works, which is saying something because he is poor overall.
The spam filter’s being bolshie. If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll shake them free.
Always respect the media.
Rather amusingly, Spiked, once a mildly entertaining website that subsequently went full-SJW, seems to have laid a load of people off – ostensibly due to lack of popularity. It would be nice if ordinary people (as opposed to shitlords like us) slowly got pissed off with being preached at by various other outlets as well.
It is almost as if they have something to hide.
As if it isn’t possible to record a class with a phone placed on a desktop or in a pocket. I suppose it’s nice to know that corrupt academics will be easy to dupe.
As if it isn’t possible to record a class with a phone placed on a desktop or in a pocket.
Lecture pen, don’t go to class without it.
there must be people out there who are paying her to write this anxious teenage doggerel
She’s being paid, but not very much I suspect. From what I can tell from her Twitter feed, she lives in a dank basement studio apartment in Brighton: hardly the choice of someone pulling in the big bucks like Polly Toynbee does. And I’ve noticed she’s appearing in more and more obscure journals. Recently she was in Wired, hardly the organ of choice for feminist SJWs, and she’s not been in the Guardian for a while. Her most recent pieces, such as the one linked to here, have been published on Longreads which is pretty much a blog. And her pieces are becoming more rambling and more deranged. Her book seems to have done well, but how much money she made from it is questionable.
My guess is it’s becoming harder and harder for someone like Penny to make a living reeling off boilerplate feminist outrage, and the amount people are willing to pay for such articles is plummeting. There are also a thousands other deranged women writing exactly the same articles, so it’s not like Penny is providing a premium product. I suspect this is why she’s shifted to Longreads – nobody else is interested in this rubbish. She has enough followers and fans that she could probably make money by making them subscribe to read her stuff, but there are two problems with this:
1. She’d be accused of selling out to capitalism.
2. Her readers strike me as the kind of people who steal the salt and pepper sachets at Little Chef.
Her readers strike me as the kind of people who steal the salt and pepper sachets at Little Chef.
Heh.
@Darleen
Given your prior posted videos of homeless encampments in L.A. and this article via Drudge, I got a kick out of L.A.’s mayor blaming the Federal government for not providing more resources to solve Cali’s problem. Of course, he ignores the Left Coast’s idiotic, progressive (BIRM) housing policies which drive the cost of new construction and consequently rental prices into the stratosphere. Seattle, Portland and of course San Francisco/Silicon Valley have the same issues.
Bugger. HTML fail because I got a damn phone call and hit “post” instead of “preview.”
Mea Culpa.
Apparently, readers of the New York Times are expected to concern themselves with the violation of their borders by illegal aliens only insofar as illegal alien status is to be construed as excusing other criminal activity.
“92% of all aliens arrested by ICE this year had criminal convictions, pending criminal charges, were an immigration fugitive, or were an illegal reentrant”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/282609/
NOT IF KING COUNTY HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT!!!
“Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit!”
There’s a phrase that has been used before.
Meanwhile, back in the world of art, the same people who think this is great, have their panties in a wad over a 1938 painting hanging in the Met.
It would be nice if these clowns could at least once be consistent.
“being preached at by various other outlets as well”
As in sewer pipe or posterior body orifice, perhaps?
…[A]nd even if her current assertions are at odds with other assertions made weeks or days earlier.
Abbie Hoffman did that first, and did it better. He was a man who could contradict himself within seconds, but that was all part of his act. And the only people who would be confounded by it were those what actually tried to take him seriously. Hoffman played his antagonists like a Stradivarius with his shtick. And it was just all an act with him. As I said, he did it much better than Penny Dreadful, bless her heart.
Mea Culpa.
It’s a good thing I dug out the old chastising ottoman.
It’s best not to ask how it works.
David, where can we get one of those for our annual employee performance reviews?
It’s a good thing I dug out the old chastising ottoman.
It’s a good thing you had the fundraiser last week.
He also wound up killing himself in a converted turkey coop (per Wikipedia), not a future I’d wish on even the dreadful Penny.
Oh, mercy, no. I think we’d all much rather her just be whomped upside the head with a clue-by-4.
Chastising Ottomans.
Ottoman being chastised.
I’m skeptical of any All-Explaining Theory Of Everything
I think there’s some useful bits in it, and Anonymous Conservative’s comments about the amygdala do dovetail nicely with my own observations of people with Complex PTSD. But yes, they do get rather reductionist about the whole thing.
Chastising Ottomans.
Vlad Tepes is best Ottoman chastiser:
A lot of these alt-right guys are young, and very unhappy about being smothered by bossy, masculine American women; since they’re young, those are the only American women they know about. So theories they think are likely to infuriate bossy, masculine American women find favor with those guys. As they mature they’ll probably come up with better ideas.
It’s not hard to draw equivalencies between the unhappy lads on the one side, and the hopeless harpies on the other. That being said, I definitely know which group I’d rather share a pitcher of beer with.
If the unhappy lads drink enough beer, they’ll be happy for a time!
There are probably happy feminists out there, but I’ve never met one.
Vlad Tepes is best Ottoman chastiser
Considering how diabolically cruel the Sultans were to their captives, mass impalement seems rather unimaginative.
BTW, nice Habsburg Lip ol’ Vlad’s got there.
There are probably happy feminists out there, but I’ve never met one.
To paraphrase P G Wodehouse: ” It has never been difficult to tell the difference between a feminist and a ray of sunshine.”
By Spiked, I meant Cracked. Oh well.
An educator speaks.
Note that while our fearless sociology lecturer won’t debate Ben Shapiro, he does like the idea of dislocating his arms.
I used to read Cracked till they crammed in even more ads; it became more trouble than it was worth.
I was once a feminist, until overwhelming evidence piled up that it just didn’t work. I refer here to modern feminism, not the earlier feminist movements addressing real problems. Modern feminism seemed to be making things worse, not better, for men and children as well as women. Also, once you’ve grown a baby from scratch, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that they’re not human. So I decamped and eventually wound up here at Chez Deplorable.
I think modern feminism went wrong when the movement’s leaders put their weight behind no-fault divorce and abortion at whim. Not sure when Chez Deplorable went wrong; probably on that fateful day when David set out the pickled egg “jar.”
Oops. I meant, pickled “egg” jar. The jar is unquestionably a jar.
… he does like the idea of dislocating his arms.
Ben should deputise his friend Joe Rogan to take his place in the ring:
Ben should deputise his friend Joe Rogan to take his place in the ring
In a saner world, and whatever you make of Shapiro’s views on any given topic, claiming in class that he’s an “asshole white supremacist” whose arms should be dislocated, and that any students who wish to hear him speak or ask him questions are themselves “fascists” and “white supremacists,” should be an employment-jeopardising move.
In a saner world.
I could be wrong but isn’t Shapiro well versed in wrestling and martial arts?
I could be wrong but isn’t Shapiro well versed in wrestling and martial arts?
I wouldn’t know about that one way or the other. One thing that I would bet every last dime I had on, if it were so and Shapiro were to kick this clown’s teeth in, is that the response would be that such was simply proof of what a fascist Shapiro is. Kafka Trapping and Gaslighting are their reliable fall back tactics.
Taking these leftists on thinking you can argue via reason is folly from the start. This clown’s challenge is yet another example of that.