Know Your Place, Underling

Well, I think that counts as unwell.
That’s fair enough. I might use the term “not well-adjusted” rather than unwell, which I tend to associate with diagnosable mental illness. This woman simply comes across as spoiled and indulged. So far, it appears she’s gotten away with this; if she were summarily fired for shockingly unprofessional behaviour and found herself scraping for grocery money, I expect she’d refrain from doing this kind of thing right quick.

Doctor Gopal does not like the help to display attitude, which is what the porter was doing. It is one of the small perks of the job that you are Lord of a small bit of territory and rule it any way you like. A Porter is a not a servant of those who enter and exit. He is the Master of the Door.

Daring someone to have a reaction to her naked display
Well, she certainly picked a venue free of the dreaded male gaze in that case.

Re Dr Gopal and her manufactured woes, an update from King’s College, Cambridge:

We have investigated the incident and found no wrongdoing on the part of our staff. Every visitor was asked to show their card during the course of that day, as the College was closed to everyone except King’s members. Non-members such as Dr Gopal were asked to take alternatives routes, around the College. This was a matter of procedure, not discrimination… We categorically deny that the incident referred to was in any way racist.

See also the Telegraph article here, which has some additional background on Dr Gopal and her various, often baffling pronouncements.

I think you’re all far too harsh on Dr Bateman. I see her as an exemplar of Oxbridge traditions of idiosyncracy which extend back at least as far as the 17th century. She does no-one any harm and we would all be the poorer without people like her. Her articles about her specialist field of economics seem accessible, relevant and sensible. Her answer to the question of whether capitalism is immoral is a resounding “no”, for example, which isn’t true of many academics who feature here: https://www.piqd.com/boom-bust/is-capitalism-immoral?r=homepage

She does no-one any harm…
Except for people who take her rantings and cloddery seriously, and those whose eyesight has been ruined. There is a difference between being idiosyncratic and an egocentric nitwit.

She’s lucky it wasn’t the porter Skullion, from Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe. He might have given her something real to complain about!

Dr. Who.

I must be missing something because it looks like she’s admitting to being a bitch and suffering consequences therefrom.
What’s funny, or sort-of funny, is the obliviousness to how the complaint might seem to anyone outside Dr Gopal’s tiny bubble of intersectional howler monkeys. Even her own telling of events, which you’d think would present her position in the best possible light, still makes her sound obnoxious, petty, vain and paranoid. But then this is someone who claims that vandalism, thuggery and setting fire to occupied buildings isn’t “real” violence when leftwing people do it, and is no more objectionable than “hypocritical language.”

I am not a Marxist, but I’m beginning to think that when it comes to class, he might have had a point. This blog documents many examples of well-to-do middle class people, some of them (and I’m quoting Dr. Gopal’s words here) “brown”, who’ve been berating members of the working class for some imagined racial/sexist/homophobic/whatever slight or other, trying to get them fired. And, like the two ladies in the Portland bakery, occasionally succeeding. But note in all the examples that it’s always the middle class professional who’s the (imagined) victim.

I like the irony in David’s previous blog post being called ‘know your readership’ and then in the next post: bang! Tits.
I’d lay out the tip jar now, if I were you, Mr Thompson.

Dr Gopal’s psychodrama rumbles on.
Apparently, being addressed by a porter as “madam” is “outright racist treatment” – and “history will come for a reckoning one of these days.”
The words that come to mind are: Get over yourself, love.

An awful lot of what passes for left-wing behaviour these days is dripping with snobbery. Anti-Brexit sentiment is full of contempt for the working class, and so much of the opposition to Trump is focused on how vulgar he is rather than any of his policies. Jordan Peterson is attacked on the basis of the supposed low character of the audience he attracts. And the less said about #MeToo the better.
When Jeremy Clarkson had his “don’t you know who I am” tantrum, he lost his job, and he didn’t double down – he realised he’d been a dick and kept his head down. At least Madam hasn’t thumped anybody. But when you have less self-awareness than Jeremy Clarkson, that probably ought to give you pause.

Sorry, one PS: the arrogant, dismissive denialist attitude of King’s Officers, including & especially its Provost who was hostile, bullish & loud at me during our phonecall–is far worse than anything Porters might do.
If it so hellish for Miss Dr. Bhopal, sorry, Gopal, at King’s she could always leave and find “work” at a place she finds more salubrious for her tender feels and suitable for her alleged skills.
Of course then she would have to find something else about which to kvetch, and Starbucks is closing 150 stores.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t ma’am the correct address for the Queen, after an initial “your majesty”?
She’s higher status than the Queen?

I don’t see what was wrong with being called Hangtown . . . !

I live in Slaughterville. PETA tried to get us to change it one time. We told them to go play in traffic.

So much attention has naturally been paid to the ‘call me Dr’ part of this that the ‘racial profiling’ complaint at the root of it has been slightly overlooked. The complaint seems to be based on the fact that she was asked to show her ID to enter the college. Like everybody else.