Two White Males, Mansplaining
If you think of communication as an exercise in respect for the other, you don’t repeat yourself. Repeating yourself suggests that you’re either demented or that you just don’t care about the other person’s response; you’re prepared to override it and say the same thing again and again. There’s no way in which a chanted slogan invites an answer.
Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton discuss the future of conservatism, why the left wins the culture war, architecture, Twitter mobs, the importance of apologies, and the “institutionalised fraudulence” of woke academia.
Also, open thread.
‘Literally crying right now’.
https://twitter.com/shoe0nhead/status/1128146621026402304
‘Literally crying right now’.
Theatrical trauma is the new strappy black dress.
Quite a few feminists are currently banging on about the latest episode being “obviously sexist” and hinging on a “lazy, sexist trope.” Though I’m not clear why this is suddenly an issue. The recent plotting was rushed and bumpy, functional at best, but Daenerys’ turn to the dark side was foreshadowed several times, from season two onwards, and burning shit hardcore has pretty much been her go-to solution. Perhaps it’s no longer permissible for a fantasy drama to show that claims of righteousness can mask unsavoury impulses – at least, not if the character is female and popular among feminists.
It’s become, within the past decade or so, that at least popular (with feminists) female characters must either be laughable Mary Sues (where MY willing suspension of disbelief completely burns to the ground, Hindenburg-like) or totally virtuous, whose only flaw is that she’s just not perfect enough. And any human flaws she may have (anger, vengeance, resentment, etc.) has to be in service of the grander narrative of “Grrl Pwr!”
Oh, and never again think about killing off a lesbian character anymore. You will be dealt with thusly.
Feminism: Insufficient experience with the typical imperial wife syndrome of the average straight married normie household. Worldwide. For emphasis, insert ‘fucking’ into that as many times as you wish, just to make the point and lend it a certain 2019 comprehensibility. Intellectuals operate at a higher level.
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll jiggle the spam filter, which is once again being capricious.
David (if I may be so informal), thank you for the link to the Scruton/Murray discussion. Most enjoyable. I listened to the whole thing (whilst getting ready for work and children for school).
Thanks again.
My pleasure.
Actually I quite agree with the shrieking harpie that Dany’s character turned on a dime – I just find it hilarious!
I mean, people were naming their kids “Khaleesi”, Elizabeth Warren identified with “the breaker of chains”, the character was a stand-in for the [current year] basic bitch feminist and became an icon because of it…just for the incompetent writers to rush her arc and pull the rug out from these loons. Their rape survivor benevolent dictator girl power icon just Hiroshima’d untold thousands of innocents in what amounts to a post-breakup hissy fit. Delicious.
I mean, people were naming their kids “Khaleesi”,
And Daenerys, apparently. I have to confess, in light of this week’s episode, that made me laugh quite indecently. I suppose the moral of the story is that it’s probably best to get to the end of the saga before chav-naming your child.
it’s probably best to get to the end of the saga before chav-naming your child
Well, Mrs. Gump made it work:
Their rape survivor benevolent dictator girl power icon just Hiroshima’d untold thousands of innocents in what amounts to a post-breakup hissy fit. Delicious.
Or, “Needy woman with enormous sense of entitlement turns out to be colossal bitch.”
I mean, people were naming their kids “Khaleesi”
Generally, those are the same people who were name “Kunta” after Roots aired in 1976 and their parents decided to take inspiration from a television show for moral guidance.
Honk! Honk!
https://twitter.com/JarvisBoatOwner/status/1127919685121585153
The previous poet’s comment section’s too long, and this one is a wee bit moribund, so twinkle-plink-23-skidoo, or whatever the hell. Have one on me.
Post’s, not poet’s, dammit.
Stupid Germans.
Have one on me.
Bless you, sir. May your shoes be waterproofed in time for the first snow.
To help Mate’s boredom I’ll force some conversation.
For as long as I can remember people have been insisting I watch Top Gear on BBC, but it didn’t seem my cup of tea. After hearing about the controversy around Jeremy Clarkson’s firing I decided to check out the new iteration on Amazon – Grand Tour. Holy hell it’s a fun show and I’m kicking myself for not watching years ago.
But a question for anyone who has watched for a while: what are their politics? They take the piss on environmentalists and global warming, but that might be their “petrol head” agenda. Clarkson makes fun of Labor and Corbyn, is generally un-PC and very opinionated, so I doubt he’s simply a centrist. James May is made out to be the lefty of the group but keeps quiet about politics for the most part. Hammond strikes me as the basic, safe lefty type.
(I know I shouldn’t obsess about politics and that all this is super banal but hopefully reading this saved Boatswain 20 seconds of boredom.)
Ah, snow in May. Would that it could be. Not so down here, alas.
It’s a fun show and I’m kicking myself for not watching years ago.
The season 3 episode Survival of the Fattest, filmed in Mongolia, is good fun.
FWIW–the Scruton-Murray conversation was excellent. How anyone can consider themselves conservative (and/or educated) and kick Roger Scruton off anything is bewildering.
I wish feminists would stop forcing their religion on everyone. You don’t see articles whining that some movie or TV show is not Christian and therefore badthink. I am also tired of the fannish burblings of SAPs being treated as news. The same thing happened w/the Mad Men TV show, which I never watched. Grumble. Smithers! Release the “eggs”!
I never watched the Game of Thrones TV show. In the last book (“last” in both senses of the word) Dany was parked firmly in Meereen, in love with a boring merc, who would probably have turned out to be the last betrayal if Martin hadn’t lost interest.
Thanks, David, I hadn’t seen this one yet.
I never watched the Game of Thrones TV show.
Nor I (I won’t shell out what funds I have left each month for premium propaganda channels). And I could only manage mid-way through the first half of Season (that’s “Series” to y’all o’vair) 7 of “The Walking Dead” before I completely lost interest. And I tried to give “Breaking Bad” a good-faith shake, and I thought the first few episodes were OK, but against, it couldn’t hold my interest (maybe I just have ADD, I don’t know).
The last of these long-form, multi-season dramas I watched all the way through was “The Sopranos,” which, ironically, was the springboard for all that has come since.
OK, I just lost the point. Bugger. OK, carry on.
“Literally crying right now…”
I’ll give credit where it’s due. She didn’t tell us she was lying on the floor sobbing.
If it weren’t that we need it for bad weather alerts, which are frequent in the central U. S., blizzards, derechos, tornadoes, “severe thunderstorms,” etc. I wouldn’t even have a TV. I just don’t have the patience for it any more. Also the shows do not seem to be written for my demographic (old grouches). The comedies all seem to be written for 12-14-year-olds; I’d have found them hilarious at that age. And the dramas all seem to be written by and for SAPs. I would not even have liked them in my youth.
This is something quite new. Up till about 25 years ago, TV shows were written to draw the broadest possible audience. You may not have particularly liked space shows, for example, but an episode of, say, Deep Space Nine would still have a plot involving themes and emotions that everyone would understand, so that if it happened to come on while you were watching, you might find it sufficiently engaging that you wouldn’t bother switching channels. Then—and it seemed to happen almost overnight—sponsors suddenly wanted no one’s money except that of SAPs. It was like what you’d encounter if all stores other than Target suddenly vanished. If you needed hardware of some sort, you’d be just shit out of luck, because Target doesn’t sell hardware and now you live in a world where it would never occur to anyone that people might want to buy hardware. I notice the surreality of the situation every time I’m trapped in a waiting room with a TV.
A “severe thunderstorm” is one that’s ambitiously trying to prove it can do just as much damage as a tornado. I can’t figure out how to put it up here using a touch screen, but I have a picture of a tree knocked down by a severe thunderstorm right where I used to park when we lived in the apt. in Ohio. If anyone wants to see the picture, I’ll send it to David so he can post it. The crushed car in the picture is in my old parking space.
the fannish burblings of SAPs
SAP?
Their rape survivor benevolent dictator girl power icon just Hiroshima’d untold thousands of innocents in what amounts to a post-breakup hissy fit.
It has been a while since I’ve found an opportunity to bang on about BPD, hasn’t it.
Up till about 25 years ago, TV shows were written to draw the broadest possible audience.
TV shows have always been written to appeal primarily to women, because that’s who watches them. Men watch sports or movies. Broadcast television only exists to sell ad time, and advertisers want to target women because that’s who controls the household finances.
SAP = Spoiled American Princess. A while back the subject was coming up a lot and I got tired of typing it out, so I abbreviated it.
SAP = Spoiled American Princess
Ah, got it.
Aye, I have the same question. What’s a SAP?
Feminism: Insufficient experience with the typical imperial wife syndrome of the average straight married normie household.
Imperial wife syndrome – that perfectly describes so many friends’ marriages. I feel bad for the men, but it’s their choice I guess.
Daniel, you must be too young to remember the Western and private-eye genres. There was plenty of TV slightly slanted towards men, though most of it, as I said, tried to draw in everybody. The early private-eye shows, such as Mike Hammer and Peter Gunn, were strongly slanted towards men. By the 80’s, the formula had been fine tuned towards handsome and tough-but-sensitive PI’s like Thomas Magnum that drew lots of eyeballs of both sexes.
The original Star Trek, created by the Bill Clinton of entertainment, Gene Roddenberry, had a masculine slant, what with the mini-skirts and Captain Kirk tomcatting his way across the universe, but ended up with an overwhelmingly female and feminist fanbase. I guess that goes to prove that a sponsor could never be sure of what he was buying! But Star Trek sponsors have done all right for themselves.
Speaking of TV, Tim Conway has died at 85. If you Brits, and young Americans, never saw The Carol Burnett Show, seek out specimens on Youtube, Mr. Conway was a funny, funny man. There are numerous examples of Youtube of him causing his co-stars to laugh in the middle of a sketch. He was also in a couple of Disney movies.
I have just been reminded that there was an ‘80’s rehash of Mike Hammer who wasn’t nearly as violent as the original. Eyeballs for, and from, everybody!
Not a joke.
Well, OK, it is in the sense that most modern architecture is, but with the level of stupidity they are coming up with these days, I am starting to think that architecture schools are now taking only those students who couldn’t cut it in education programs.
Not a joke.
They got people to notice them, which I think was the purpose: “Look how clever and transgressive we are! We can think way outside the box!”
Speaking of TV, Tim Conway has died at 85.
You sure that little asshole’s through?
Y’all know you can look these things up? That’s how I knew it meant Socially Awkward Penguin. Of course, as you’ve demonstrated, it is always better to ask…
https://www.acronymfinder.com/Slang/SAP.html
From today’s Nakedcapitalism.com:
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/killer-rabbits-in-medieval-manuscripts-why-so-many-drawings-in-the-margins-depict-bunnies-going-bad.html
If nothing else, this is a testament to the strength of their elastic.
If nothing else, this is a testament to the strength of their elastic.
That’s eons away from Brooke Shields.
Sam | May 14, 2019 at 20:46
On Clarkson, May and Hammond a good read on the trio is:
And On That Bombshell: Inside the Madness and Genius of TOP GEAR by Richard Porter.
Which is a book written just after (and as a consequence of) the Rosé incident.
Young Richard was the script editor on Top Gear and now works on Grand Tour.
If you do read it you will probably come away impressed with just how hard the relatively small team worked on this programme.
(If you search for it using David’s Amazon search link he might get some coin if you actually do buy something)
I mean, people were naming their kids “Khaleesi”,
It has been a while since I’ve found an opportunity to bang on about BPD, hasn’t it.
To regard Daenerys as the obvious heroine of the saga – someone to name your children after – always struck me as a little odd. Her oft-professed concern for the downtrodden is repeatedly shown as superficial or self-flattering, something to be abandoned when things prove difficult, and of much less importance than her own thirst for power and delusions of destiny. That feminists in particular seem to have identified with this character possibly tells us something.
Apparently, the word blackbirds is racist and offensive.
Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
Actually I quite agree with the shrieking harpie that Dany’s character turned on a dime – I just find it hilarious!
You could certainly grumble about the execution of the arc and its lack of finesse – the plotting and characterisation have gone downhill quite noticeably in recent seasons – but the arc itself, the descent into disaster, has been hinted at quite strongly, at least as a possibility, several times. Way back in season two, in Qarth, Daenerys has a vision of herself in the throne room, now wrecked, roofless and covered with either snow or ash. She touches the throne, briefly, but doesn’t sit on it.
Reverse skydiving.
While our betters are fending off micro-aggressions and literally crying about Dany, here’s some privileged white guy mansplaining his petty problem:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nebraska-farmer-kurt-kaser-recounts-sawing-off-leg/story?id=63026761&cid=clicksource_4380645_null_card_related
All kidding aside, the old habit of never working alone with dangerous machinery is falling into disuse as people rely on being able to call for help with their cell phones. Buddying up should be revived. May God bless Mr. Kaser and grant him a speedy recovery (and an available buddy next time he has to work with that machine).
And David, the next time we see you alone with that flamethrower, we’re telling your mom.
Reverse skydiving.
Not unlike blogging.
What?
Apparently, the word blackbirds is racist and offensive.
Stone the crows !
And David, the next time we see you alone with that flamethrower…
Speaking of which, along with rusty spoons and sharpening steels, the Regents Park Rozzers will be after those next. When chef’s knives are outlawed, only outlaw chefs will have knives, or summat.
‘Was I Right to Call the Cops on a Black Man Breaking into a Car?’
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/magazine/was-i-right-to-call-the-cops-on-a-black-man-breaking-into-a-car.html
To regard Daenerys as the obvious heroine of the saga – someone to name your children after – always struck me as a little odd…
As I recall, George RR Martin said that his intent was to tell. Medieval romance in which, one by one, *all* the heroes are shown to be evil—because he wanted to destroy the idea that there could be or ever was a nobility that was noble.
Did these fans not hear that? Or did they forget?
Caveat: my knowledge is very limited because I don’t watch the show (loathe it) and haven’t read Martin since the early 80’s.
Did these fans not hear that? Or did they forget?
I couldn’t say. I don’t follow his interviews and haven’t read the novels. But Mr Martin has certainly enjoyed subverting genre tropes – the demise of Ned Stark being an obvious example. Seeing the ostensible main protagonist, the nearest thing to a good guy, being killed off at the end of season one was quite surprising. Ditto, the Red Wedding, etc. Benioff and Weiss take similar pleasure in subverting – or at least thwarting – expectations. It’s a question of who does it with more flair.
And of course, a question of whether such thwarting is ultimately satisfying and sufficient compensation for shunning the kinds of conclusions that readers and viewers otherwise tend to expect.
Can I keep my pink-handled For The Cure chef’s knife? How many virtue points is the pink handle good for?
I got the pink-handled knife some years ago at Target, no surprise, but what WAS a surprise was it was marked down from $20 to $5 after the For The Cure promotion ended. You’d think if anyplace would sell virtue points at full price 24/7/365, it’d be Target.
I don’t want to give the impression I’m picking on Target. They’re the best place to stock up on laundry supplies, and the knife’s a fine knife. It’s just that, well, Target’s funny!
Haven’t watch any of GoT but this Daenerys thing amuses me. Especially people who have named their children after her. Imagine some of those little girls are now about 7 year old. Old enough to be aware of the show and now this plot twist. And I’m sure Mommy told them all about where their unusual name came from.
This somewhat reminds me of something I’ve brought up here before regarding Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. If in that story, with sufficient politicization (my copy has a blurb from Vladimir Lenin) along with repeated “educational instruction” at our fine colleges and universities over the last 100 years or so, the general “truth” about Anna can be turned from a pitiful, fallen woman (as Tolstoy insisted) into a feminist heroine, why can’t the same be done for Daenerys? For the sake of the children, of course. There could be other useful applications as well.
And in another 20 years Game of Thrones will be forgotten, condeming little Daenerys to a lifetime of hearing “How do you spell that?”
Khaleesi, on the other hand, will probably stick around as it looks and sounds like a typical American-black name.
Ah, so kinda like in the 1970’s naming your son Rudolph Jordache.
*chortle*
“The fact that the criminal actors are students, and that the criminal acts occurred on a college campus, should not alter the basic principles creating legal liability for engaging in a criminal act,”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/330500/
…should not alter the basic principles creating legal liability for engaging in a criminal act
“It’s not criminal when we do it!”