Elsewhere (262)
Mary Katharine Ham on woke scolds and public pushback:
Here’s how the removal of the [painting, Hylas and the Nymphs] went down — in the most eye-rollingly woke, modern-art-professor way possible. A professor and five members of a “drag collective” walk into an art gallery to talk about viewing art in a non-binary way. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Amy Wax on sinking standards and The New Unsayable:
An open letter published in the Daily Pennsylvanian and signed by 33 of my colleagues… condemned and categorically rejected all of my views [on the importance of bourgeois values]. It then invited students, in effect, to monitor me and to report any “stereotyping and bias” they might experience or perceive. This letter contained no argument, no substance, no reasoning, no explanation whatsoever as to how our op-ed was in error… To students and citizens alike I say: Don’t follow their lead by condemning people for their views without providing a reasoned argument. Reject their example. Not only are they failing to teach you the practice of civil discourse —the sine qua non of liberal education and democracy— they are sending the message that civil discourse is unnecessary.
This, remember, is the University of Pennsylvania Law School. For background, see the first items here and here.
And Andy Ngo on the “social justice” Sturmabteilung:
On Saturday we’re hosting a panel [at Portland State University] featuring James Damore, the Google employee who was fired last July for writing a memo expressing heterodox views about sex disparities in the company’s workforce… The left-wing newspaper Willamette Week published an article with a false and inflammatory headline: “Tech Bro Fired from Google for Saying Women Are Biologically Unfit to Be Engineers Will Speak at PSU Next Month.” The sub-headline inaccurately attributed to Mr Damore the view that “women can’t do math.” Campus activists called us misogynists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis. A person claiming to work for campus audio-visual services tweeted that he could break into our event through a back entrance and “literally turn the whole building off.” There were threats of violence. A Facebook user—it’s not clear if he’s connected to PSU—suggested he’d throw “active grenades” at Mr Damore onstage.
One local feminist group declared itself “appalled” that a discussion touching on statistical gender differences should be permitted without the involvement of enlightened beings such as themselves. The aggrieved ladies were seemingly unaware that the organisers had approached every tenured and tenure-track Women’s Studies professor on campus and had been rebuffed by all of them, presumably of grounds of heresy. Having failed to prevent the discussion occurring by hoarding and destroying tickets, other self-styled “activists” attacked the venue’s audio system in an attempt to prevent the speakers being heard, before being escorted out by police. One of the “activists” – this charming young lady here – subsequently berated the police for failing to see how “oppressed” she is.
Update, via the comments:
It turns out that the blue-haired vision of loveliness, Heather Clark, the one claiming to be “oppressed” while vandalising other people’s property, isn’t even a student at PSU. Yet she feels entitled to determine, forcibly, who gets to speak there – who is “absolutely not welcome,” as she puts it – and to determine what people on campus may or may not talk about. Which is quite a conceit, really. The word megalomaniacal comes to mind. And consider Ms Clark’s associates. Imagine being the kind of self-styled intellectual who demands to know whether a speaker is even “qualified” to talk about matters deemed “intersectional,” as if intersectional voodoo were on a par with quantum chromodynamics. The kind of person who delights in vandalism and stealing other people’s tickets, and who threatens to cut power to an entire building because someone might say something, or ask something, that they don’t want people to think about.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Is there a parallel custom of mothers warning sons about avoiding demented harpies?
The only thing I can recall was “If you don’t feel you can bring her home to meet your father and me, she’s going to be more trouble than she’s worth”.
The more frank mothers tend to mimic a fathers’ advice: “Don’t stick your dick in crazy.”
Darleen,
by all that’s holy, please let this be Poe’s Law
I wonder if there were any such gullible rubes who thought the super-smurf blue people in Avatar, and their islands in the sky, were actually real.
BTW, I’m 99% certain “Shanita” is kidding, but trying to make a political “gotcha” at the same time.
Since discomfort is now sufficient grounds for banning art, and its removal is a stimulant to conversation, how about we ban the woke performance collective and then talk about it?
Whatever happened to belaying pins and Cat o’Nines? Don’t they have a brig on these things?
I think she means selfish and spoiled.
It turns out that the blue-haired vision of loveliness, Heather Clark, the one claiming to be “oppressed” while vandalising other people’s property, isn’t even a student at PSU. Yet she feels entitled to determine, forcibly, who gets to speak there – who is “absolutely not welcome” – and to determine what people on campus may or may not talk about. Which is quite a conceit, really. The word megalomaniacal comes to mind.
And consider Ms Clark’s associates. Imagine being the kind of self-styled intellectual who demands to know whether a speaker is even “qualified” to talk about matters deemed “intersectional,” as if intersectional voodoo were on a par with quantum chromodynamics. The kind of person who delights in vandalism and stealing other people’s tickets, and who threatens to cut power to an entire building because someone might say something, or ask something, that they don’t want people to think about.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
Yeah, but that’s what makes you an intellectual. Eliminating the competition. And intellectuals like these have got a lot of work yet to be done.
“The word megalomaniacal comes to mind.”
For most of history the world’s village idiots did not have access to near-light-speed communications with each other, organization and support from their fellow enstupided peers nor political entities able to coordinate and weaponize their particular “abilities”.
(Not to mention 24-hour/day “news” desperate for novel/compelling/over-the-top/conflict-inducing content)
For most of history the world’s village idiots…
It occurs to me that there would generally have been pushback to such behaviour – mockery, disapproval, actual consequences of some kind. But in the Clown Quarter, the left’s fiefdom, such things are not only spared the normal repercussions but are actively encouraged by woke educators. In the name of progress.
Yes, a self-imagined intellectual who doesn’t want people to think.
Well, obviously. Because they might end up holding a different view. And these ‘intellectuals’ can’t have that. I mean, people disagreeing with our [their] lofty pronouncements. It simply won’t do, you know.
One of my old mentors used to say “Being stupid has to hurt. If it doesn’t hurt, people won’t stop being stupid.” He meant it metaphorically, in the sense that there had to be onerous consequences for making easily preventable engineering and design mistakes.
In this case, and the one with the woman who stole the MAGA hat, and so many others, what’s needed is swift, stoic, merciless justice. Charged, no plea bargain, convicted, publicly branded a criminal and rendered unhirable. These miscreants need to feel the full consequences for their behaviour, and onlookers need to see those consequences meted out pour encourager les autres.