Damned If You Do
Being a “queer feminist poet” schooled in “critical race theory,” Ms Alison Whittaker is, of course, unhappy:
We’re in the midst of a renaissance in First Nations literature. I should be elated… So why do I feel this restlessness?
Appearing as a headline guest at Australia’s recent Stella Prize longlist party, “a celebration of women’s writing,” Ms Whittaker felt a need to air her “itching discontent” and “confront” the “majority white audience” for the sin of pretentious enthusiasm – namely, their enthusiasm for works by people such as herself:
I talked about the “endless, patronising praise” I got from white audiences, and how I salve it with the frank reading of Indigenous women who “do you the dignity of taking you seriously.”
Fun night. We must do this again.
We’re told that being a “coloured” or “Indigenous” writer is fraught with “structural oppression,” on account of being “marginalised” – as when being invited to literary award parties and then swooned over by pretentious pale-skinned lefties. “Whiteness” and “white men” are particular burdens to Ms Whittaker and her peers, whose suffering – their “collective plight” – is seemingly endless and endlessly fascinating, at least among those for whom such woes are currency. As Ms Whittaker’s world is one of practised self-involvement, her point is at times unobvious. However, our unhappy poet appears to be annoyed both by “underwhelming responses” to her own writing and by insufficiently convincing displays of approval. All that “endless patronising praise.”
At which point, the words high maintenance spring to mind.
Having bemoaned the “culture of infantilisation that meets our work,” Ms Whittaker promptly makes demands regarding which races of humankind would be suited to review said work, as if the ability to tell how bad a play or poem is were dependent on one’s physiognomy and melanin levels. Other peeves include a “hollow white anxiety about a Blak literary golden age.” The term Blak is seemingly steeped in significance and deployed repeatedly, yet pointedly unexplained, and the “hollow white anxiety” about which we’re expected to care is similarly mysterious. And while Ms Whittaker’s disdain for “white reviews” and the “mostly white Stella longlist audience” is pretty obvious, the largely melanin-deficient readership of the Guardian, in which her irritations are aired, passes without comment.
Instead, we’re told,
Blak literature is in a golden age. Our white audiences, who are majorities in both literary industry and buying power, are deep in an unseen crisis of how to deal with it. It’s taboo for us to acknowledge this crisis; instead Blak writers are expected to meekly show gratitude for the small white gestures that get us onto the page or stage where we belong.
Readers who were unaware of any such “crisis” – perhaps on account of having negligible interest in racially-fixated feminist poetry and overwrought essays on “Aboriginality and queerness” – should note that the upheaval in question “permeates the whole industry” of niche literature:
White audiences move quickly between what they do publicly and what they do privately. Their response becomes its own performance, where reading Blak literature or watching a Blak play makes a good reconciliatory act. White middle-class readers, not all of them but enough, love to touch us and heap praise on us when someone’s watching. Without invitation, they grasp our arms at writers’ festivals. They tell us about their Aboriginal friends or how much they hated the latest racist gaffe,
In short, when white lefties enthuse, or feign enthusiasm, it’s all very tiresome.
Well, such is the world of identity politics and playing Browner Than Thou. And if you base your written output and literary persona, and your claim of artistic importance, on being Brown And Therefore Fascinating™ – or as Ms Whittaker puts it, “Blak literature” by “Indigenous creatives” – this will happen. To complain about pretension – “white fawning” – while in the very same paragraph demanding race-fixated, self-agonised appraisals – “criticism that is responsible for the race of its giver” – is incoherent and faintly ludicrous. To bemoan woke piety as insincere and unsatisfying, which it is by definition, while simultaneously milking it for all it’s worth and encouraging those same pretensions, is unlikely to evoke much in the way of sympathy. At least not sympathy that’s sincere.
Via Franklin, who adds, “One rather detects an effort to remain in a permanent state of grievance.”
In terms of psychology, somewhat related.
There are a lot of Princess Bitchwhines in the 2nd Estate.
Re: Coca-Cola Blak.
I actually liked it
I might have drunk it too, except that by then I was eliminating carbs and sugars.
Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law. Dean’s scholar. What are y’all relative ignoramouses’ credentials for criticizing her?
the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law
Not worth the paper it’s written on.
As we’ve just witnesses by the bribery scandal, “elite” university degrees in anything but the hard sciences is not a signifier of mastery of knowledge but one of social standing.
It is noted that not one of the actresses, CEOs or other beautiful, now indicted, people were trying to bribe their darling munchkins into MIT or CalTech.
It is noted that not one of the actresses, CEOs or other beautiful, now indicted, people were trying to bribe their darling munchkins into MIT or CalTech.
This.
Re the Socktrocity: I do that to myself a lot. Although he’d be willing to, Son does not do my laundry, because, manlike, he can never remember what can go in the dryer and what has to be line-dried.
Maybe you could give the offending party a rolled-sock alarm for his next birthday. Of course that’s a long time to go with wet socks. Maybe give it to him for the equinox, a few days hence.
Or have Jock do the laundry.
WTP: Our credentials are that she’s an educated fool and such have destroyed America and are working on everywhere else.
I honestly believe that if colleges required tests of native intelligence, which can be administered to the illiterate and to people of every and any background, we could turn this around in a generation.
Don’t schools like MIT or Caltech require that students show they can actually do the work, that they can actually dazzle ‘em with brilliance instead of just baffling ‘em with bullshit?
Ms Whittaker promptly makes demands regarding which races of humankind would be suited to review said work, as if the ability to tell how bad a play or poem is were dependent on one’s physiognomy and melanin levels.
Would the Groan publish an article by a white woman saying only white critics should review her poetry? Or would *that* be racist?
Or would *that* be racist?
Ah, but this is the kind of sweeping and brazen racial animosity that the Guardian is happy to sanction. It’s the right kind of racism, which is a thing that exists, apparently.
What are y’all relative ignoramouses’ credentials for criticizing her?
Just in case this was in earnest, I too am a Fulbright scholar. That said, one doesn’t need credentials to criticize this sort of claptrap. One just needs a bit of sense.
“I honestly believe that if colleges required tests of native intelligence, which can be administered to the illiterate and to people of every and any background, we could turn this around in a generation.”
A rather naive belief IMHO.
Consider:
Intellectuals tilt left.
Or if you prefer read H’s Willing Executioners (I call Godwin so you don’t have to).
We are not talking about stupid people but rather clever people who can believe in stupid ideas. To quote Orwell There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them
So sorry a test won’t help.
Yes, but these are mostly people who are too stupid to manage their own lives (Tim Newman runs this type of story all the time if you are looking for examples, and David has some too). So I still think my idea’s worth testing.
Two Poems by Alison Whittaker
She has dazzling command of the Tab Key and the Align Text Right feature. I’ll give her that.
Now may I fawn over her?
Now may I fawn over her?
I suspect that rather depends on what colour your skin is.
[…] where we belong.
Really?
At risk of sounding unkind, I suspect that if Ms Whittaker were a better poet, as opposed to the kind of poet she is, she might be less inclined to push the pretence of racial victimhood, according to which any shortcomings of her poetry, and there are quite a few, are by implication someone else’s fault. Or something to overlook because Magic Brownness™.
Put another way, if you have obvious talent, there tends to be less need for Woke Victimhood Marketing, which is typically an attempt to compensate for artistic inadequacy.
the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law
I vaguely recall a time when a Dean was a person who performed a somewhat useful function. That seems like ancient history now.
Here’s a good example of the damage educated fools can wreak:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/electronic-health-records-death-thousand-clicks.html
At no point, or at least none that I have seen reported, did any of the EF’s who forced EHR upon Americans ask even the most obvious questions: “So, what happens when there are a zillion EHR systems out there that are programmed not to talk to each other? And if a doctor is busy typing, typing, typing, how’s he going to focus on the patient?”
That latter problem has reached such proportions that American doctors are now hiring scribes. Literal scribes. The scribe follows the doctor around and types what he says into the computer. Educated fools have sent the U. S., once the most advanced society in the world, back to the Age of Hammurabi.
And if a doctor is busy typing, typing, typing, how’s he going to focus on the patient?
He’s not. The main problem with EHRs is that there isn’t one that was written by, with, or beta tested by anyone who actually lays hands on patients, it is all about generating the right IDC codes which in turn has created another generation of generally worthless functionaries, the “coders” whose function is to check codes and raises health care costs to cover their salaries. The worst part is you can’t always enter what you actually think, for example, even if you are observing someone, you can’t enter “Rule out appendicitis” which used to be a perfectly comulent impression to enter into a medical record as you are evaluating someone, instead, you have to tag the poor sap with “appendicitis” even though he gets to keep it – changing the diagnosis to whatever was actually wrong and getting rid of the “appendicitis” in an EHR is a nigh Augean task.
Meanwhile, enjoy what millenials find stressful.
“Yes, but these are mostly people who are too stupid to manage their own lives”
Well we agree to a point, but these are the outliers who don’t concern me too much. The main problem is that the cancer has spread to ordinary middle classes who now endorse much of the bullshit and act as the enforcers.
What would your test be. Every person on a wimmins study course has passed exams but they don’t concern me. The people I am worried about have got into Oxbridge to study PPE, Law, English, History and so on – all competitive subjects where the university can select the higher grades. And all imbued with the latest inter-sectional nonsense. And why are they competitive – because their graduates command the best paid jobs whether in industry, the civil service or wherever. Let’s look at one sector – Audit and Consultants – KPMG, PWC, Ernst Young, Accenture – the bulk of their graduate intake does not come from from people who can’t pass tests. These people are competent, they do manage their own lives and run successful companies. And pertinently – they buy into Identity Politics wholesale.
That’s where the battle lies and that’s why tests are irrelevant.
OK, how do we solve this? (No helicopters, somebody already brought that up.
)
That’s where the battle lies and that’s why tests are irrelevant.
Word. Though I say the battle lies in the culture specifically, and attempt to use laws, rules, etc. will not work. They are downstream from the culture.
Also, consider many of the problems with the millennials’ great hero Nikola Tesla. A brilliant man who many people who met him found fascinating. Yet he couldn’t manage his own finances, claimed that he was already in communication using his own device with Mars (the planet) when Marconi unveiled his wireless, and made claims to having built an earthquake machine that, darn the luck, he had to destroy when the cops showed up. Yet he wasn’t a complete charlatan. And he has a car company named after him owned by…
The two supremacists who attacked Chelsea Clinton blaming her for the New Zealand massacre? They’ve doubled down
Here’s a guy with a highly unfortunate name:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/anders-carlson-wee-book-the-low-passions-shifting-landscape-midwest/
No wonder he looks so sad in his picture.
NURSE: Mr. Carlson-Wee!
VOICE FROM BEHIND CLOSED BATHROOM DOOR: I’m trying, I’m trying!
Wow.
Chelsea Clinton always seemed to me to be the female Bertie Wooster: an amiable dunce, shielded by her wealth, bumbling along bothering no one. Why pick on her?
I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve read here and there that Einstein flunked a lot in school.
. . . these are mostly people who are too stupid to manage their own lives
A friend’s observation is that hipsters are walking proof of the autonomic nervous system. How else does one explain the continuing existence of someone too stupid to remember to breathe?
the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law
I vaguely recall a time when a Dean was a person who performed a somewhat useful function
Perhaps, in her case, that’s Jimmy Dean.
NURSE: Mr. Carlson-Wee!
Can, can I go wee now?
Perhaps, in her case, that’s Jimmy Dean.
Well you get what you pay for.
Perhaps, in her case, that’s Jimmy Dean.
Well you get what you pay for.
CMOT Dibbler, in her case.
Every time I hear the name Carlson I think of this clip from Season 2 Episode 9.
“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.” – Robert Heinlein
“Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off…
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.”
I’m not sure where in this hierarchy to place Alison Whittaker and her ilk.
Yet [Tesla] wasn’t a complete charlatan.
Relevant Slate Star Codex.
Relevant Slate Star Codex.
Well, exactly. I’ve been thinking about these sorts of things a lot lately. It’s far more obvious in the arts and politics and such but the sciences suffer from personality cultism as well. The good idea, the good song, the solid policy, should stand on its own. Just because Tesla…wtf he do again…oh yeah, AC power and stuff…did the AC power thing didn’t mean he had a better radio than Marconi or balance a checkbook. But that latter is what I was really getting at. Smart can be measured any number of ways and some really smart people are useless outside their area of expertise. Which of course doesn’t mean that they are useless, but just because Einstein was good at physics is no reason to give greater weight to his opinion of socialism or Joseph Stalin. Don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not but supposedly the only thing Newton is recorded to have said in the House of Lords is to ask that a window be opened. Seems Newton was smart that way.
I’m not sure where in this hierarchy to place Alison Whittaker and her ilk.
I submit, as I believe I have done so here before, the great Canadian poet James McIntyre:
I seriously doubt Alison Whittaker shall ever rise above Mr. McIntyre.
Perhaps, in her case, that’s Jimmy Dean.
Well you get what you pay for.
My favorite proclamation of Dean’s: Bert Saxby??!?!!
I seriously doubt Alison Whittaker shall ever rise above Mr. McIntyre.
Amanda McKittrick Ros
This thread requires a mention of the comically bad William McGonagall:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
…
I liked his poem about the Queen of Cheese.
No helicopters, somebody already brought that up.
Sooner or later, everyone comes around to the idea of helicopters.
Hilarious. the problem for Aboriginal people in Australia – they’re not indigenous because only rocks, soil and plants are indigenous – we’re talking people here – is that in the arts, they receive gushing praise for anything or nothing. The arts luvvies are so terrified to critique anything that 100% of all output gets 100% uncritical praise. And this ends exactly where you expect it to. Aboriginal art, writing, theatre and dance is circling the drain creatively. It’s universally awful. Nobody outside “the bubble” goes near any of it. Rich virtue-signallers buy that art for the purposes of being seen as worthy. Governments give arts grants by the tsunami to them and never follow up to see how badly they’re spent. Schoolkids are dragooned by their Lefty teachers, pinching their ears and dragging them into watching unimaginably bad dance shows; the same teachers compel the school library to buy books that spell “black” without a “c”. The PC crowd has done what the most terrible white supremacist wouldn’t have even though of – killed off any chance of Aboriginal creativity from thriving by lavishing praise on it no matter how crap it is. What a topsy-turvy world.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! What if virtue, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if virtue…perhaps…means a little bit more!
As Bob above noted, it’s universally awful. Some “music” for your listening pleasure.
Some “music” for your listening pleasure.
Oh dear. That didn’t go well. Still, everyone’s pretending, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
Pogonip.
Einstein went to ETH Zurich. Because it translates as “high school” people think he failed high school.
In fact his school grades were, unsurprisingly, good.
He was a university near failure, because it was out of date and useless to him. Rather like Bill Gates, say.