The Perils of Jogging
For want of anything better to do, we turn to the pages of the Guardian, where columnist Zoe Williams is once again unhappy and resentful:
The tweeting began before 6am, as healthy, responsible people announced to the world that they were going to the gym for their 6am workout, and might go for a run later… By 7am, someone had posted a picture of themselves doing a complicated yoga posture on a log, and I was as angry as a bull. The problem wasn’t the hashtagging; the problem is with fitness itself.
Ms Williams, it seems, spends every dawn monitoring Twitter hashtags of which she disapproves and raging at the thought of strangers exercising. And she does this while writing an ostensible fitness column for the Guardian, the details of which she struggles to retain:
I have been writing a fitness column for a year and in this time I’ve digested very little about what exercise does for your body.
Or as the headline puts it,
I’m not sure what exercise does for your body.
This appears, incidentally, inches above a reminder of the importance of supporting the paper’s relentless professionalism. However, there are some things Ms Williams does know:
I know everything about what [fitness] does to your personality, and none of it is pretty.
You see,
Start doing something new, and you can’t stop talking about it… It’s not really talking, though, is it? It’s boasting.
And so,
Unavoidably, over time, this makes you more rightwing, as you descend into an aerobics-powered moral universe where only the weak need each other.
So there we are. According to Zoe, if you visit a gym, or cycle, or merely take the occasional brisk walk with a dog in tow – or presumably have any kind of goals, however modest, and then achieve them – you’ll become boastful, consumed with “self-love” and wicked delusions of “self-sufficiency,” a gateway to the greatest sin of all: not being leftwing. Because leftwing people, like Zoe, are free of vanity and unblemished by urges to signal superiority of one kind or another. Say, by telling us, quite often, that they’re not at all rightwing.
Still, it’s strange just how readily Zoe leaps from ‘people can be a bit tedious when banging on about their enthusiasms’ – the word blogging comes to mind – to ‘regular jogging will make you vote Conservative because feelings of achievement and capability are politically corrupting’. Presumably, leftist piety is arrived at via indolence, whining and half-arsed flummery. Though it’s not, perhaps, as strange as declaring one’s own piety and compassion – as opposed to all those dreadful rightwing people – while sneering at a cancer charity because its most direct beneficiaries are men.
Which Zoe then does, with an obligatory misandrist jab, by dismissing the Movember Foundation, an independent charity that raises money for research into treating and preventing testicular cancer, along with efforts at suicide prevention, as an excuse to “grow a moustache to celebrate your prostate.” No doubt Ms Williams would be just as keen to describe as irksome any of the numerous charities catering to women’s health issues, with those little pink ribbons being worn merely to “celebrate your tits.”
Previously. Via Ben.
over time, this makes you more rightwing
This bit, she actually gets right. For men, at least, being fitter and stronger results in higher testosterone levels; and high-T (or, toxic masculinity, as they call it these days) does associate with self-reliance and other wrongthink
You misspelt ‘clits,’ David…
Being self-sufficient is bad, mkay?
I have been writing a fitness column for a year and in this time I’ve digested very little about what exercise does for your body.
Same as her political articles then.
About that word …
Lancelot: We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril.
Galahad: I don’t think I was.
Lancelot: Yes, you were. You were in terrible peril.
Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and face the peril.
Lancelot: No, it’s far too perilous.
Galahad: Look, it’s my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can.
Start doing something new, and you can’t stop talking about it… It’s not really talking, though, is it? It’s boasting.
I see, sort of an odd attitude for someone whose income is dependent on that, then.
These are the same people who want government-mandated price gouging on alcohol for health reasons, right?
So, not being a failure makes you right wing (and, therefore, a sinner) and pride in you accomplishments is a bad thing. But, if you become a perfect failure, have you not succeeded in failing?
Readers may recall that feelings of achievement and self-reliance have caused umbrage at the Guardian before.
For those who missed Zoe’s earlier appearances here, let’s not forget her belief that giving money away “creates inequality,” and her delight in devising elaborate humiliations for parents who can no longer afford to give their children an education as comfortable as Zoe’s own. In which, extracurricular activities included visits to Rome and Morocco and an eight-day tour of Barbados.
But hey, at least she’s not rightwing.
Unavoidably, over time, this makes you more rightwing, as you descend into an aerobics-powered moral universe where only the weak need each other.
Why did this make me think of sleek North Korean leader, Kim Jung-un, I wonder?
And why did thinking of Kim Jung-un remind me of this epic piece of debauchery?
Maduro under fire for dining on steak cut by Salt Bae in lavish Turkish restaurant while Venezuelans starve
This is impressive… even for the Guardian. They’re outright admitting that weakness makes you left-wing, and the strength to stand on your own two feet make you right-wing. They’re admitting that they’re children who need the state to care for them.
All on top of the article mentioning that she’s a fitness writer for the Guardian, while TWICE mentioning that she doesn’t know anything about fitness, and then actively dissuading you from becoming fit.
It’s not the most repugnant thing the Guardian has ever written, but it’s writing requires a level of lack of self-awareness not usually seen in the living.
“This is especially a problem for cyclists, who come to think of themselves as an off-grid warrior class, having performed their commute drawing on no more resources than their own glutes, and maybe a sports drink.”
Even environmentalists who cycle instead of drive and consume only a little of the world’s limited resources are not free from her scoulding eye.
She’s built the better Kafkatrap.
What particularly saddens me about Our Modern Life who can cheerfully confess their incompetence, venality, and even criminal behavior without suffering any blowback, and even in some quarters be praised for it.
Presumably, leftist piety is arrived at via indolence, whining and half-arsed flummery.
I thought it was.
devising elaborate humiliations for parents who can no longer afford to give their children an education as comfortable as Zoe’s own. In which, extracurricular activities included visits to Rome and Morocco and an eight-day tour of Barbados.
“As for vindictive, ha! Good”.
Lefties are so caring.
Lefties are so caring.
Watching Ms Williams perform this manoeuvre is quite a thing, as is the sheer transparency of the ruse. Presumably, she thinks no-one will see. And so, having failed to mention that she went to an exclusive school beloved by well-heeled socialists – a school that costs £7,000 a term, and which bears no resemblance to the state comprehensives that she deems good enough for the rest of us – Zoe then parrots the class-war policies of the Soviet Union and sneers at those who can no longer afford the kind of education and social connections that she herself enjoyed, but doesn’t disclose, and which likely enabled her career as a Guardian columnist.
And she does this while declaring herself more caring, simply better, than the conscientious parents she wishes to humiliate.
Not entirely unrelated.
New coinage: doruphobia. (The ancient Greeks didn’t have a concept of a political left-right continuum, but δὀρυ was the right flank of an army.)
New coinage: doruphobia.
How about aritephobia (hatred of virtue)?
Kanonikophobia (hatred of normality)?
Or kakiphilia (love of what is worst)?
I’ve almost certainly gotten the Greek a bit wrong, and would be pleased if someone wth a Classical education were to correct it.
failed to mention that she went to an exclusive school beloved by well-heeled socialists – a school that bears no resemblance to the state comprehensives that she deems good enough for the rest of us
I couldn’t cut it as a lefty. I couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance.
I couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance.
Maybe the dishonesties get easier with practice.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Zoe Williams will not be truly happy until everyone is as miserable as she is.
1. Says “I’m not sure what fitness does for your body”.
2. Is hired by Guardian to write fitness column.
1. Says “I’m not sure what fitness does for your body”.
2. Is hired by Guardian to write fitness column.
And over a year of writing said column appears to have made little difference to the depth and breadth of Ms Williams’ knowledge of the subject. But as Joan noted upthread, Zoe has been holding forth on other subjects too, for well over a decade, with much the same level of expertise.
“I’ve almost certainly gotten the Greek a bit wrong, and would be pleased if someone wth a Classical education were to correct it.”
Hey, I had a classical education, and I’m not sure I’ve got it right myself. Funnily enough, ancient Greek doesn’t come up very often. 🙂
But my point really was that this is now clearly an irrational fear of anything that can be labelled “rightwing” (which is apparently a word now), not hatred or even rational disagreement.
I moved some heavy furniture today. Man do I feel right-wing now!
while sneering at a cancer charity because its most direct beneficiaries are men.
A little thought might make Williams realise that when a man dies from cancer the people around him – many of whom are women: mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters etc – are devastated by grief.
That is, when a man dies, women feel pain, too.
Or at least nice ones do.
A few years back, I just tipped the scales at the low end of obese. So, I made an effort to address the issue.
No, I didn’t survive on salads and kale; I simply made some moderate changes to my diet (cutting down on carbs, mostly, things like replacing some of the rice with more fibrous vegetables in dishes when cooking), and made an effort to walk more, setting a goal of 10,000 steps a day.
The result was fairly dramatic, as I lost 35 pounds in about six months, which for the most part stayed off (I’ve regained 5 of the 35 in the four years since).
The point? One need not be an obsessive gym rat, and live a life of privation, in order to remain, or become, healthier.
Zoe Williams contempt for, if not outright hatred of, people who are making an effort to better themselves is perfectly aligned with her political stance of being a socialist, commonly referred to as “the politics of envy”.
Other people better themselves through effort and perseverance. She’s too unmotivated, indolent, and lazy to do the same, and so they will be successful, and she will fail.
The only thing that people who fail at life hate more than people who succeed without merit, it’s those those who become successful through merit. Because they are the “could have been” examples that put the lie to the socialist’s excuses for their failures.
As for why someone who hates fitness writes a fitness column, I am reminded of a line from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, regarding the principal of the school, which I am no doubt not getting exactly right:
“Have you ever given thought to the fact that given your visceral loathing of, and outright hatred for children, perhaps high school principle might not have been the ideal choice for you as a vocation?”
Corrections to the above quote are welcomed; I remember the gist, but not the text.
I was going to ask for comments on a lefty piece called “Down”>https://www.unz.com/article/down-with-the-working-classes/>”Down with the Working Classes,” which seemed like a peculiar stance coming from the author. Further researches down the rabbit hole led to his website, and CounterPunch magazine, with whom he’s having a tiff over non-publication of his articles. That’s when I learned that The Unz Review (which posted the author’s essays) is apparently a tool of the Right (according to CounterPunch), and that there’s a thing called the “Red-Brown” conspiracy in which the far left and the far right are finding common ground to, I don’t know, take over the world?
Anyway, this all gave me a migrane and a weird buzzing noise behind one ear, and I’m wondering if I’ve been infected by Black Oil (which I’m sure has nothing to do with binging on X-Files recently), so I’m going to have a liedown.
And I screwed the pooch on the “Down with the Working Classes” link, so here it is in the raw:
https://www.unz.com/article/down-with-the-working-classes/
Sam Duncan: I liked your doruphobia and only wanted to add to the fun with more suggestions.
I myself had a non classical education but have forgotten how to derive Maxwell’s equations.
That’s fine, Pst. I realised what I said might have come across as a bit arrogant, that’s why I added the smiley. My Latin’s so rusty it’s just a pile of dust these days, and I never was much good at Greek. (We did it as an extra-curricular thing, at lunchtimes. The only things I remember with any certainty are that there’s no letter “H”, and they used the definite article for people’s names.)
It’s a humor column.
I venture this opinion after seeing just two samples of “Fit in my 40s.” Not that it’s actually funny but it follows a recognizable pattern for the sort of thing.
The author wants to be funny, and appeal to left-wingers at the same time. It’s no use saying she isn’t funny, that just makes you a right-winger.
These Leftist/Progressives really do want to destroy—excuse me, “deconstruct”—everything which is good and decent no matter how pedestrian or prosaic it might be. And not only do they wish to destroy it . . .just for fun. . , but they wish to elevate the exact opposite into something worth virtuous celebrating. Now, not only must be applaud “fat positivity,” but we must shame those who exercise by simply conjuring up ex nihilo some nefarious political motivation for their personal responsibility which harms no one else. These people are truly sick and evil.
“half-arsed flummery”
Paraphrasing the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “but she was using her whole arse!”
He seems nice.
“Unavoidably, over time, this makes you more rightwing…”
Really? Wow! I take hardly any exercise beyond walking from the train station to the office. and I don’t think it’s possible for me to be any more rightwing!
Apologies if someone has already pointed this out, but of course left wing piety is closely associated with the inability to be self reliant and personal failure, we have all seen how spectacularly successful communism is after all.
Best comment over there:
“I’d say sneering about people raising money for prostate cancer is a better indicator of an unpleasant personality than doing some exercise.”
The author wants to be funny, and appeal to left-wingers at the same time.
Yes, the column is pitched as an exercise in drollery, but as you say, it isn’t actually funny, just petty and whiny, and doesn’t impart any useful information about the ostensible subject. We do, however, learn that Ms Williams is frequently annoyed by trivial things, such as protein shake packaging being “heavily gendered” and therefore problematic.
FTFY
FTFY
[ Slides cocktail along bar. ]
On the house, madam.
“I’d say sneering about people raising money for prostate cancer is a better indicator of an unpleasant personality than doing some exercise.”
Paraphrasing the immortal words of David Thompson, “It’s who they are.”
‘Related’
https://twitter.com/TheSafestSpace/status/868260185017647105
‘Related’
Heh.
Paraphrasing the immortal words of David Thompson,
I’m pretty sure I swiped that from Jeff at Protein Wisdom.
Tim Newman’s latest on the US SCOTUS idiocy:
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/8272/
Has a link to Charlie Kirk twitter post (couldn’t figure out how to capture just the one post, prolly because I’m on my ipad) of his encounters with the screeching harpy protesters somewhere in DC that demonstrates yet again …well, screeching harpies I guess. Thought it somewhat relevant to this post.
David, I think you could summarize/condense/refactor quite a few of your categories under one new one of Screeching Harpies. Just a thought…my inner engineer acting up again…
you could summarize/condense/refactor quite a few of your categories under one new one of Screeching Harpies
The number of posts with that tag would negate the sorting value of a tag, surely? It’s like how, years ago, I thought the ‘psychodrama’ tag would be an oddity, rarely used. Little did I know.
It’s like how, years ago, I thought the ‘psychodrama’ tag would be an oddity, rarely used. Little did I know.
Or ‘Giant Vaginas’.
It signals to the opposite sex (you hope) that you want a fit mate
Or ‘Giant Vaginas’.
Indeed. And who could have foreseen that one taking off?
Perhaps her outlook on life would improve if she got a better haircut.
I think it’s high time ruling-class men started to re-assert their control over the screeching harpies. This state of affairs should never have gone as far as it has.
“…just petty & whiny, & doesn’t impart any useful information about the ostensible subject.”
It fills the assigned space. I once posited that when a French columnist has nothing to say, he starts talking theory. An English columnist settles old scores. An American talks about himself.
Ms. Williams makes herself and honorary American. (You may imagine how flattered we must feel.)
“an,” not “and”—damn autocorrect!
And the Canadian columnist agrees with whoever spoke last.
Wait, aren’t we supposed to be boycotting the Guardian for being, uh, too right-wing anyway?
Wait, aren’t we supposed to be boycotting the Guardian for being, uh, too right-wing anyway?
Say whaaaa?
Say whaaaa?
Sounds like a #walkaway sort of comment … I mean, once you strip out the pretentious jargon and translate it into a real language, it does. I.E. Let’s ditch the cultural marxism but keep the original version.
Having read “The Strange Death of Europe”, I’m not surprised to see even Australia on the path to suicide.
On R4 the Today programme is reporting that CERN has just had a James Danmore moment from an Italian professor giving a talk about gender diversity. His slides have been pulled from CERN’s website. The outrage bus is pulling up now. (Sorry couldn’t find any links yet)
https://press.cern/press-releases/2018/09/statement-cern-stands-diversity
Here we are
The outrage bus is pulling up now.
What was said that so offended the gallery?
I see that CERN’s removing the slides and throwing up their hands in horror isn’t enough for this little Stalinist
https://twitter.com/BarbaraFantechi/status/1046440351534395392
Here is a post-doc who was there
https://twitter.com/jesswade/status/1046334690268008448?s=21
“Tim Newman’s latest on the US SCOTUS idiocy:
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/8272/ ”
One of the commentators on that thread makes a (I thought) pretty spot on reference to Aunt Ada Doom in Cold Comfort Farm, in the context of the Kavanaugh situation. Aunt Ada controls the family in the novel by purporting to have seen “something nasty in the woodshed”, consequently gaining sympathy and power by the suggestion that she is mentally fragile. This lasts until the heroine, Flora Poste, sees through her and stands up to her. Which is, indeed, what people have to start doing to the left’s victimhood politics.
It’s very notable that the left believes in victim’s justice in some circumstances, but not in others. We don’t hear much about how the victims of terrorism should get a say on how we treat Islamism (or in the past, the IRA).
The slides can be found here (although nothing in that link identifies them as Strumia’s):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA91Kefj/view
Link via:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/9k9mq9/a_prominent_theoretician_at_cern_alessandro/
but I thought the left said high self-esteem was good for you.
failed to mention that she went to an exclusive school beloved by well-heeled socialists – a school that bears no resemblance to the state comprehensives that she deems good enough for the rest of us
dw: I couldn’t cut it as a lefty. I couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance.
1 part leftist teachers.
1 part coddling parents, especially the father.
1 part solipsism because, yes, for most girls it is all about themselves.
Further to the Perils of Jogging, this, brought to you by Mad Magazine: http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3338230
Once upon a morning dreary,
half awake and eyesight bleary,
While I fetched the “Daily Herald”
lying there outside my door,
As I stood there, stretching, yawning,
wond’ring what the day was spawning,
Came a figure through the dawning,
fiercely running as to war;
“Who is this,” I asked myself,
“who runs as if he’s off to war?
Just a loony, nothing more.”
Striding down the street, he ran there,
trotting past each parked sedan there,
Till the air was filled with gasps
that I had not heard heretofore;
Soon I knew as he came closer,
he was not a loony, no sir,
Or some early-rising grocer
racing toward some distant store;
“You’re a Jogger,” I exclaimed,
“and not some grocer with a store!”
Quoth the Jogger, “To the core.”
I could see his Pro-Keds clearly,
and his perspiration nearly
Soaked right through the cotton sweatshirt
and the running shorts he wore;
Shorter breaths he now was taking,
and from grunts that he was making,
I felt sure the must be aching
from the labors of his chore;
“Does your body ache,” I asked,
“each time that you perform this chore?”
Quoth the Jogger, “Ev’ry pore.”
Round the block he was now veering,
then quite soon was reappearing,
Battered, scarred and bleeding
in a state most people would deplore;
Ev’ry garment he was wearing
now was either ripped or tearing;
Furthermore, his legs were bearing
signs of toothmarks by the score;
“What on earth,” I asked, “has caused these
signs of toothmarks by the score?”
Quoth the Jogger, “Dogs galore.”
Suddenly, it started raining,
and I thought he’d be complaining
Of conditions unforeseen
that Mother Nature had in store;
Drenched with rain, he soon was dripping,
and sometimes he lost his gripping
Causing him to wind up slipping
on the pavement bruised and sore;
“Give it up,” I pleaded,
as he lay there gasping, bruised and sore;
Quoth the Jogger, “Let it pour.”
On and on, he did continue,
straining ev’ry bone and sinew,
Round the block and back again
until each passing was a bore;
“Hey,” I asked him, “aren’t you done now?
Surely this can’t be much fun now;
Fifteen miles or more you’ve run now
since I’ve been here, keeping score:
Isn’t that enough?” I uttered,
as I stood there, keeping score;
Quoth the Jogger, “Just one more.”
Then it was that I did see there
just how old he seemed to be there;
Ancient was his weathered face
with wrinkles I could not ignore;
Years of running so insanely
made him look much older, plainly,
Than his age, which I felt mainly
must be fifty-five or more;
“What’s your age?” I asked, expecting
he’d say fifty-five or more;
Quoth the Jogger, “Twenty-four.”
The line between feminism and a parody of feminism seems to be fast disappearing.