Elsewhere (296)
Robert Murphy on the pathologies of the leftist campus:
This is not a matter of “Oh, gee, there’s a bunch of people who have different views about whether health insurance should be provided by the government.” That’s not what I’m talking about. [These are people whose reaction is,] “Oh, there’s a speaker coming to campus and we don’t like that person’s views. We are going to credibly threaten that we will break stuff and hurt people, we will set things on fire and smash windows.” And so, then the school has to cancel because of security concerns. And then that gets spun as “Oh yeah, the reason that speaker couldn’t come here is because he would incite violence.” The kind of mindset that would do that and would see nothing weird about that. “Yeah, the reason the speaker can’t come here is because he promotes violence – by us, his enemies.”
Which rather calls to mind the tenderly whispered wife-beater’s lament: “Don’t make me hurt you, baby.”
Needless to say, examples abound. And do note the role of their academic enablers.
Cathy Young on Lenin and his admirers:
Many leftists in places like Jacobin magazine see Lenin as the “good communist” to Joseph Stalin’s “bad communist” — the revolutionary wrongly maligned as an authoritarian. Indeed, Lenin’s birthday this year was marked on Twitter by New York State Senator Julia Salazar, a member of the new crop of young progressive politicians. The “Lenin good, Stalin bad” formula was also popular among Soviet reformers, both in the late 1950s-early 1960s and in the late 1980s. It was wrong then; it is wrong now… As independent Russian historian Nikita Sokolov recently told Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, Lenin’s only consistent position throughout his political career was that “he was a fundamental believer in violence as the solution to any problem.”
Based on history, and their own writings, it seems entirely possible that devotees of Marxoid fantasy typically start with the ideal of violence and coercion, the titillating rewards of having power over others, and then work backwards in search of a pretext.
Oh, and Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.
Ownership of Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve is, it turns out, a basis for scolding, like so much else. Readers may recall that the mob that physically menaced Charles Murray at Middlebury College included students, would-be intellectuals, who boasted of never having read his books and who consequently knew almost nothing about their victim’s actual views and actual research. None of which inhibited their self-satisfied enthusiasm for assaulting people and making polite elderly scholars fear for their safety.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.
Now she’s back pedalling – ‘taken out of context’ LOL.
Now she’s back pedalling – ‘taken out of context’ LOL.
Ah, so now we’re allowed to own books that our politics lecturer disagrees with (though without explaining why she disagrees with them). However, we must ensure that they’re hidden away somewhere. To prevent them being seen by people such as Ms Cassidy. And presumably, those she teaches.
Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.
She compares Charles Murray to David Icke. Classy.
*David Irving.
Classy.
As illustrated repeatedly in the Turf War thread, the people who most vehemently denounce Murray’s research, and who aggressively sabotage his attempts to speak to an audience, are usually – almost always – people who haven’t actually read anything he’s written. To the extent that, at Middlebury, some dolt was even holding a sign implying that Murray is somehow in favour of eugenics, which, given his actual writing, his actual concerns, is about as perverse as you can get.
“Based on history, and their own writings, it seems entirely possible that devotees of Marxoid fantasy typically start with the ideal of violence and coercion, the titillating rewards of having power over others, and then work backwards in search of a pretext.”
Possible? I’d say the weight of evidence points to it being highly probable.
“She compares Charles Murray to David Irving. Classy.”
That line of thinking is what makes this kind of thing so terrifying:
So you’re running a library with a copy of Mein Kampf. Presumably you have to restrict borrowing on it. Well, okay. 10-1 you were doing that already. Also maybe Irving’s stuff. Inconvenient, but whatever. But if Charles Murray is the same as Irving, then his work has to go into quarantine as well. And if he’s that bad, then what about…
The SNP is always at pains to point out that any similarity to other nationalist parties professing socialism which happened to be prominent at the time of its founding in the 1930s are purely coincidental and absolutely nothing to worry about. It’s all rather embarrassing, really, ha-ha.
But it keeps pulling stunts like this.
Oh, and Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.
What’s the betting she hasn’t read The Bell Curve?
Kudos to Sir David Evans, who has done more than anyone to expose David Irving, standing up for the right to own Irving’s books in that Twitter thread. “Freedom of inquiry” means exactly what it says. Some very few academics still understand that.
What’s the betting she hasn’t read The Bell Curve?
Hard to say. But Ms Cassidy’s attitude, and the implied equivalence with Holocaust denial, casts some doubt.
As leftism is in large part a neurotic status game, it’s par for the course to find players who prioritise in-group status-seeking over facts and reality. Say, for instance, what a book is actually about and what its authors take great care to explain. (Given the contortions required by the game, someone with a preference for realism and factual accuracy would find it hard to play successfully. Posturing on Twitter, though, and then waiting for applause from other players, is much, much easier.)
See also the James Damore / Google memo saga, which brought to light the remarkably widespread dishonesty of self-styled ‘activists’ and left-leaning journalists – two fingers of the same hand – and whose lies and lack of probity were eerily uniform, quite blatant, and seemingly without cost. To them, at least.
Sam:
So I take it that showing up at Ibrox with a placard denouncing ‘Gers fans as a lot of Prod shite wha couldnae find their ane ba’s would be legally (as well as physically) hazardous?
G’aun Hibs.
Many leftists in places like Jacobin magazine—
‘k, got the whole idea in just five words.
I did have to look things up to confirm the general memory, and yes, the Jacobins were a part of the French Revolution who most insistently announced that we don’t like particular people, so we must have them thrown from a helicopter.—except, of course the helicopter hadn’t been invented yet, so they had to make do with the guillotine instead. In time, the Jacobin leaders were quite naturally thrown from their own helicopter—errr, executed by their own guillotine.
From what I can see, a difference between Robespierre and Lenin is that even when ill and dying, Lenin didn’t get sloppy and get outmaneuvered. But rather a few others around him did.
So yes, around a century later, and a bit over two, when a NPC does the chant that I don’t like particular people, so we must have them thrown from a helicopter., the rather obvious thought is to note that once anyone would be stupid enough to do something that pointlessly stupid, any such NPC is guaranteed to also go into a guillotine—err, helicopter—because, well, as the Jacobins and the communists and the helicopter chanting NPCs rather demonstrate, being the same thing and getting shot with their own Tokarev is what they do . . . .
I feel you’re being unnecessarily harsh on the idea of helicopters, here.
I feel you’re being unnecessarily harsh on the idea of helicopters, here.
Well, noting economy, Tokarevs are cheaper and just as traditional.
Cassidy reminds me of the apocryphal Oxbridge Don who announced that “I am the Master of this College. What I know not is not knowledge!”
I will wager that Cassidy also does not have any books on statistics on her shelf. She is probably incapable of understanding the data and arguments of Murray and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve. I’ll go a step farther and venture that Cassidy has not read 1/10 of the books on her shelf.
When in doubt, the fall-back is “Figgers lie, and liars figger.”
The Jacobins and the communists are the NPC’s. That’s how they found themselves being executed by their own guillotines. The threats of violence and such against those who think differently have an origin and that origin is overwhelmingly on the political left. Specifically in the context we are discussing here today. It is the left that wants to organize people’s lives against their will. People resist. Out come the guillotines. If everyone would just leave everyone else alone, no need for guillotines. It’s all in the history books and such. If only the left wasn’t so eager to burn them.
Regarding the Lenin good / Stalin bad school, this article from The New Criterion is a good starting point for re-examining that bit of dogma.
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me, top left, and I’ll rattle the spam filter.
People resist. Out come the guillotines.
“No man, no problem.”—some guy in Soviet Russia.
You have to admit, there is a certain expediency to it. Especially for those in a rush.
I’ll go a step farther and venture that Cassidy has not read 1/10 of the books on her shelf
Well, TBF I myself haven’t read 1/10 of the books on my shelf. The other 9/10, yes. But then again, considering what I have come to learn over the years about the quality of the academics and similar who wrote most of these books I wonder if that’s necessarily a good thing.
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me, top left, and I’ll rattle the spam filter.
Oh, my comments are appearing. No problem there. But in triplicate?
[ Quietly deletes teetering pile of duplicates, resumes wiping bar. ]
I will wager that Cassidy also does not have any books on statistics on her shelf.
Don’t oppress me with your white supremacist phallocentric math!
You have to admit, there is a certain expediency to it. Especially for those in a rush.
And liberals have a longstanding tendency to excuse communists as merely “liberals in a hurry”.
My apologies. I lurk here frequently, but comment very rarely… and the first comment I’ve made in quite some time contains an embarrassing error. I said Sir David Evans was instrumental in exposing David Irving’s lies about the Holocaust. I meant, of course, the eminent historian Richard Evans, the author of Lying about Hitler. As I think Sir Walter Raleigh once said, it’s better to remain silent and let them think you’re a fool, than etc. I’ll go back to my dark corner now.
apocryphal Oxbridge Don
That was non-apocryphal Benjamin Jowett, “if it’s knowledge, I know it,” Master of bally old Balliol College, and the rest of the verse as you quoted. Waggish license, I shouldn’t have to say, but do, to warn off literalists who will think he really said it, or that I said he said it.
On the bet that she hasn’t read all those books: not particularly in defense of Cassidy whom I never heard of before and will soon forget — but in general, the point of having a personal library is not that you’ve read all those books, but that you need all those books for your work.
I will wager that Cassidy also does not have any books on statistics on her shelf.
Others have already pointed out obvious objections to Ms Cassidy’s pissy, juvenile attitude – say, that people sometimes read books by authors they don’t agree with. I have a few tomes by morally deranged communists, for instance. There’s also her implied and rather casual conceit that bookshelves are not merely for storage, but for signalling political conformity.
[ Added: ]
And then there’s the conceit that a man shouldn’t own a book by a Holocaust denier, even to be familiar with their conspiracies and thereby rebut them, and even if he sat on a commission for educating the public about the Holocaust, part of which entailed dealing with said denial and conspiracies. And further, the conceit that a man working from home should rearrange his bookshelves, vetting them carefully, with precognition, lest his wife share a photo in which said bookshelves appear and which subsequently presents a dogmatic prodnose with an opportunity for some disingenuous recreational scolding.
My apologies. I lurk here frequently, but comment very rarely… and the first comment I’ve made in quite some time contains an embarrassing error.
Hey, at least you have trousers on, which is more than I can say for…
[ Glances around room.]
Some people.
…but for signalling political conformity.
Too many people think being taught and learning are the same thing. When one is being taught there is no need for reading; political conformity results.
Others have already pointed out obvious objections to Ms Cassidy’s pissy, juvenile attitude – say, that people sometimes read books by authors they don’t agree with.
And then there is the converse: As I understand it, Lenin made a practice of not reading the books he criticized. Hence his book-length evisceration of Ernst Mach which completely misrepresented what Mach had said.
I’ll go back to my dark corner now.
I have a high regard for people who make a point of correcting their errors. I wish more “thinkers” would do that.
“So I take it that showing up at Ibrox with a placard denouncing ‘Gers fans as a lot of Prod shite wha couldnae find their ane ba’s would be legally (as well as physically) hazardous?”
Presumably so. They tried jailing people for singing songs at or near football matches a few years back. Sadly, they were persuaded to repeal that nonsense on the grounds of unworkability rather than principle.
“I feel you’re being unnecessarily harsh on the idea of helicopters, here.”
I’ve always liked James May’s take on helicopters: planes work with the air, gliding elegantly through it, while ‘copters just thrash around wildly until gravity gets sick of the noise and gives up.
Pst314,
Your description of Lenin’s critical technique brought to my mind the climate scientist infamous for saying (paraphrased)
Why should I give [other scientist] my data? He’s just going to try to poke holes in it.
Anybody know the guy? A quick Google does not turn up anybody.
I’ll go back to my dark corner now.
Barman, a drink for the new guy.
ping
Lenin’s only consistent position throughout his political career was that “he was a fundamental believer in violence as the solution to any problem.”
A buddy I used to work with is married to a lovely Russian girl. The only time I’ve ever even heard of her getting into a serious* political discussion was when, at a dinner gathering, mention of Lenin brought out from her a lengthy and impassioned speech on what an absolutely evil bastard he was.
…. a general crime of doing anything, or communicating any material, which is threatening or abusive and is intended or likely to engender hatred based on age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender or intersex identity.
So the Koran is right out, along with the Life of Muhammad and collections of Hadith. Right?
…Dr Jennifer Cassidy is an Oxford University politics lecturer who has thoughts on what kind of books you’re allowed to have on your shelves.
I can speak from experience on how easy it can be to pass off as Ghandi quotes things that were uttered by Adolf Hitler.
* – Not counting her curious views on American missions to the moon. Said buddy has accepted that, as part of his marriage, he may only watch Apollo 13 without interruption when his bride is out of town.
Barman, a drink for the new guy.
[ Slides large glass of Night Nurse along bar. ]
ping
Bless you, sir. May keys never wear a small hole in the pocket of your second-favourite trousers.
OT, but the laughter is too good not to share.
Anybody know the guy?
I think it was Dr. Phil Jones from East Anglia University. He was talking about Stephen McIntyre of ClimateAudit to science writer Fred Pearce, he said:
Why should I give [other scientist] my data? He’s just going to try to poke holes in it.
Anybody know the guy? A quick Google does not turn up anybody.
That may have been the Mr. Hockey Stick, Michael Mann.
I’ll try to remember to return here later when I have more time.
[…] the laughter is too good not to share.
She’s sporting a lovely pearl necklace. I wonder if he gave it to her?
[ Bad Steve E, Bad ]
Ah, East Anglia. The release of their emails, to me, was a torpedo below the waterline to my belief about global
coolingwarmingclimate change.In particular, they had tasked a computer geek with compiling the temperature data they had collected into one grand array of numbers, recorded through the years; data that would surely prove their case.
In email after email, said geek kept asking for better data, because the ones he were given simply could not be correlated. As I recall, they seemed to take on a more desperate tone as he realized just how much of a dog’s dinner the data were.
[ Bad Steve E, Bad ]
[ Reaches under bar for spray-bottle of hamster urine. ]
There is a “shoot the Gestapo agent to prove you’re not one” paradigm that has been used endlessly to establish credibility on the left. The argument runs “See, I condemn the evil of this evil evil-doer within my particular world view over here, thus establishing that I’m an objective, thoughtful observer and not a mindless ideologue. Now when I defend this other atrocious excuse for a human being, you are obligated to believe me”.
So I take it that showing up at Ibrox with a placard denouncing ‘Gers fans as a lot of Prod shite wha couldnae find their ane ba’s would be legally (as well as physically) hazardous?
G’aun Hibs.
Um, are you having a stroke?
The ammount of resources needed to support various academics range from physicists, who require the whole world down to mathematicians who only need paper, pencils, erasers and a wastebasket.
Then there are philosphers who dispense with the eraser and the wastebasket.
Lastly the Whiny Studies folk who need only a bad attitude and a chip for their shoulder, both of which are self installed.
I have a long-standing interest in the Russian Civil War, focusing on the war part of it. But politics necessarily intrudes from time to time. I’ve never had much time for Communism, but the brutality of all the core Bosheviks (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky etc) was uniform.
What gets me is how many modern Anarchists have a love of Nestor Makhno. A man who managed to combine the utter brutality of Lenin without even the superficial charm or intelligence. A man who happily murdered people based on race (especially Germans), wealth and birth. A man whose concept of economics — which was literally to plunder and murder those who had more, with no concept of what the end game of that would be — makes Lenin’s look positively sensible. He would rank with Pol Pot as one of the worst humans to ever live.
And yet quite educated people will happily admit to Makhno being one of their heroes. Well, “educated”.
What’s the betting she hasn’t read The Bell Curve?
I’ve read it. I have it on my bookshelf, too. It is one of the three treatises on sociology I’ve read for which I have any regard whatsoever. (The other two were written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and E. Franklin Frazier.)
Maybe I’ll reread now with the motivation supplied by this “politics” lecturer.
I denounce myself, of course.
. . .’Gers fans as a lot of Prod shite wha couldnae find their ane ba’s . . . G’aun Hibs.
. . .
Um, are you having a stroke?
Well, given the ranGERS and the HIBernianS, the local accents do get just a bit involved.
. . .three treatises on sociology . . . The other two were written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and E. Franklin Frazier.
. . . . . . . Well, Do give the titles, so we can go find ’em too . . .
Unfortunately this is nothing new. 40 years ago I tried to attend a lecture by Hans Eysenck at Melbourne Uni. Wilson hall was filled with shouting screeching agitators who blew whistles and yelled as soon as he stood up. The irony (and shame) of this in front of the “Search for Truth” https://www.flickr.com/photos/adonline/2262842563 behind the stage was extreme. These people are presumably the teachers and university academics of today. It’s very satisfying to see them complaining now as university funds dry up.
. . . . . . . Well, Do give the titles, so we can go find ’em too . . .
You got it.
Moynihan’s Report can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/y7qax43e
Frazier wrote a number of books, but I think the best was his doctoral thesis, “The Negro Family in the United States.” available free at Archive.org: https://tinyurl.com/yaw4cnvg
I recommend using Calibre, an ebook management application, with which you can download the latter directly.
HTH!
This Middlebury thing I find disturbing. I have/had a good friend back in my old neighborhood growing up who went there, met her husband there, and her oldest daughter is supposed to graduate from there once they figure out the COVID-19 logistics. I always thought of it as a benign little lib-arts ski country school. Never thought the place was some sort of hotbed of radicalism. I am FB friends with my friend’s mom as my friend herself is a tad more introverted. Every time I see her mom post something about Middlebury I just shake my head, though it’s never anything radical. But what does grandma really know? And now my friend’s son is heading to college to…wait for it…Oberlin. These were normal, middle class people. Granted, normal people whose grandparents left them a good bit of money…I think. A good bit but not a fortune. I think the son is going on a music scholarship but still, it’s creepy to me. These are people I spent a great deal of time with. That I (thought I) knew real well. We spent hours riding around town together, swimming, tennis, beach, church. Nearly dated. Her twin brother and I were best friends as youngsters, though after high school he got animal-lover weird and failed to launch. If I see her at the reunion we are still expecting to have later in the year, I think it’s going to be really, really weird.
WTP:
Weird, then? No hauf sae muckle as ma stroke. Couldna move doon ane side. An whaes wi the sudden rule aboot trews inna bar, Davie?
An whaes wi the sudden rule aboot trews inna bar, Davie?
Ehn, lower half in general, I think, so the kilt will be fine . . .
That was non-apocryphal Benjamin Jowett, “if it’s knowledge, I know it,” Master of bally old Balliol College
Via Wikiquote, apparently it’s from the opening verse of “The Masque of B-ll–l” https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/masque-b-ll-l :
First come I. My name is J-W-TT.
There’s no knowledge but I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
Fascinating.
And yet it needs to be said.
so the kilt will be fine . . .
Perhaps in preference to the more modern Scottish attire- the jobbie catcher?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pub-accused-snobbery-after-banning-21390893
Today’s word is premium.
Perhaps in preference to the more modern Scottish attire- the jobbie catcher?
—Or definitely also the society of sunburnt and frozen ankles, which was rather more likely the main target given that the pub is clearly not being the least bit “snobbish” . . . .
Totally in parallel, in the greater SF bay area and nearby Nevada, the exact same has occurred for the exact same reasons.
—The background is:
A) Yea back awhile, local actual artists do transient art pieces on an SF beach.
B) Given lack of room, Etc, the event moves out into Nevada, and becomes Burning Man.
C) After some bit, a great majority of the Burning Man founders and artists move on to Other Stuff—whatever, by inclination—but by that point, the hipsters and other wannabees have found out about Burning Man and have crashed the party in the futile hope that they might get mistaken for resembling any actual artists, the ones not even showing up any more.
D) Oh, By The Way, the main way in and out of the Burning Man desert location is through Reno and the Lake Tahoe area, and that would be how the hipsters started congealing there as well.
D1) That area has always has a major interest in and support of tourism, come spend money in the just over the border Nevada casinos and their hotels, come see Lake Tahoe, did we mention those casinos with attached hotels, Etc.
. . . . . That area has always has a major interest in and support of tourism . . . . where hipsters and that ilk don’t go in as tourists, and have rather demonstrated zero interest in supporting the local environment/being as the locals do, Etc.
And it all boiled over in 2018.
Yes, the Reno/Tahoe area is interested in and completely supportive of Tourists . . . . . . . . . . . . Or if one wants to move in and be as a local, do that too . . . . . . . . .
If the society of mildewface, combover, and sunburnt and frozen ankles learns to grow up and be seen with the adults and other functioning people, then they too can blend in with everyone else because they will completely and unobtrusively blend in with the adults . . . .
If.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TumblrInAction/comments/gdwde0/they_forced_us_to_learn_neopronouns_in_health/
Meanwhile, in the Prime Minstrel’s Canada.
Come here for the (incredulous) laughs, leave pondering the logistics of harvesting hamster urine…
disingenuous recreational scolding.
That.
pondering the logistics of harvesting hamster urine…
It’s an art more than a science.
[ Pause. ]
Can I freshen your drink?
That.
Well, it’s so contrived and dishonest, and gleeful, and invariably self-flattering. And they think we won’t notice.
“And they think we won’t notice”
Their allies in the “news” and media don’t seem to notice, and as we all know they are the ones who define reality. So what if it’s not a reality shared by rational people?
There’s something uniquely obnoxious about professions of concern, supposedly for others, that are, in reality, just self-exaltation and petty malice. And again, it’s the assumption that, being credulous, you won’t cotton on. Or, being complicit, you won’t give the game away.
[ Edited. ]
So what if it’s not a reality shared by rational people?
Ah, but perception IS reality.
Mebbe there are tapeworms involved and being included out of politeness.
“Perhaps in preference to the more modern Scottish attire- the jobbie catcher?“
Never heard them called that. Keech*-catchers is how I’ve always known them. It goes back to the days of plus-fours, actually.
*Pronounced with the usual Scotch “ch”, of course. Many cheap “quiche”/“keech” jokes are to be had here in Jockland. Assuming you can find anyone who eats quiche.
“Meanwhile, in the Prime Minstrel’s Canada.”
Ooh, I’d have marked that down. Zie always has blue hair.
Never heard them called that. Keech*-catchers is how I’ve always known them.
As so often, I understand barely half of what goes on here.
And they think we won’t notice.
As Theodore Dalrymple observed, the purpose of communist propaganda was not to deceive the people; it was to humiliate them.
Keech*-catchers is how I’ve always known them.
Round my way, we call them Kecks.
the people who most vehemently denounce Murray’s research, and who aggressively sabotage his attempts to speak to an audience, are usually – almost always – people who haven’t actually read anything he’s written.
Eleanor Penny, “writer, journalist, editor, poet, broadcaster and teacher”, has decided to weigh in on the debate, kicking off with this summary of The Bell Curve:
[T]he authors argue that blood will out, that biology always claims the day. This is the myth of meritocracy filtered through a vicious kind of social darwinism to retroactively excuse the fact that wealth and power are both hoarded in the lairs of a slim minority of people; those who have it must surely derserve [sic] it, else biology’s destiny would have conspired to fling them on the trash heap with the rest of the unfortunates. It is, of course, screamingly racist. The chronic entanglement of race and class, warped through the skull-fondling obsessions of a neo-eugenicist ends with an argument that a) Black people are genetically distinct from their white counterparts and b) that they are less intelligent. Its not hard to recognise the familiar reheated cadences of the race scientist, attempting to carve out scientific foundations for a system of social dominance.
Not really a betting man, but I think even I’d favour the odds that she’s never even seen a copy of The Bell Curve leave alone read it – and that’s to say nothing of her actually coming close to understanding it.
Hey, at least you have trousers on, which is more than I can say for…
[ Glances around room.]
Some people.
These mustard yellow Y-fronts have been in the family since 1973 I’ll have you know!
Eleanor Penny, “writer, journalist, editor, poet, broadcaster and teacher”, has decided to weigh in on the debate,
I tend to think that one should raise an eyebrow at purported book reviews, or, God help us, critiques, that don’t actually quote any of the book in question – not one sentence – thereby leaving plenty of room for straw, wild misconstrual and breathlessly perverse assertions. And more to the point, I think one should be suspicious of the person who presumes to write in such a way, while audibly applauding themselves, and clearly expecting to get away with it because they generally do.
The words bad faith are apt more often than not. Also, in this case, fatuous bint.
I tend to think that one should raise an eyebrow at purported book reviews, or, God help us, critiques, that don’t actually quote any of the book in question
A milestone in my political education was the realization that most of the book reviews in the “best” newspapers were little more than hatchet jobs that misrepresented what the books actually said.
One for the ‘alarming-yet-adorable’ file.
Hmm. I read most of The Bell Curve. Found it heavy going. Dense.
But then I was laboring under the handicap of a resume only including three years Physics and Math at Berkeley, two years computer science and software engineering, and thirty years technical product development in Silly Valley.
Stupid, really. I’m sure I’d have a better grasp of Murray’s arguments if I just trusted the words of a poet.
I left it lying around, hoping to get a reaction from my very liberal daughter. But she merely raised one eyebrow. I’ve noticed she’s handicapped in her radicalism by her Bio degree from that School Down the River in Boston.
David, it’s not necessary to understand what goes on here, as long as the patrons pay their tabs. You DO make them pay, at least eventually, don’t you?
I myself intend to honor that fistful of IOUs as soon as my investments pay off. You have a nice spot near the front of the queue, right behind my bookie, my three ex-wives, and the IRS. Oh, I almost forgot the California tax guys. They’re in there somewhere, but I tend to forget about them because they have this great trick where they just take whatever they think you owe them, right from your bank account, and make you negotiate to get some of it back.
You should look into that, I’m sure they run seminars or something. So no worries, right?
You DO make them pay, at least eventually, don’t you?
[ Slams fist into palm of hand. ]
Then they’ll pay. Then they’ll all pay.
[ Stares into middle distance. ]
I’m sorry, what was I saying…?
One for the ‘alarming-yet-adorable’ file.
From the link…
Oh please. Can there be nothing which elicits a “thank god everyone is ok, let’s laugh now and move on” from society and its government? The kid is FIVE for chrissake!
I’m sorry, what was I saying…?
Uh oh, he’s finally breaking everyone! Someone find a black market hairdresser and make a double Night Nurse STAT! Put Bosch on the TV and K-Pop on the radio – NOW! – before he looks at the Scold-O-Matic and dusty sausage in the corner and gets any ideas!
Gene Wolfe (PBUH) once remarked that it was a mistaken assumption that those who wished to be writers should invariably be encouraged, and not discouraged. That Laurie Penny is but one prominent example of a well established species weighs in favor of his argument.
We are going to credibly threaten that we will break stuff and hurt people, we will set things on fire and smash windows.
This is asymmetric | unconventional | insurgent warfare 101. It demonstrates that the government is incapable of protecting the population (or the administration cannot protect the regular students from the a$$holes). Therefore the existing government (administration) should be thrown out and you should let us run things. Otherwise, there will be additional demonstrations that the government (administration) cannot protect you – from us. The bombings will continue until morale improves.
Bosch, accompanied by K-Pop.
Now there’s a thought.
– Seinfeld + Beethoven late quartets
– The Wire + Taylor Swift
– Dr. Who (Tom Baker) + Queen
– Gov. Newsom’s covid briefings + Ravel’s Bolero
[squealing sounds of mental synchromesh failing]
I’m thinking of making a library of tweets like this titled ‘Why the left lose’. They just don’t get it.
I seem to recall architecture like this featuring in a few Friday linkfests:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/06/toilet-kitchen-sydney-studio-apartment-rent-surry-hills-australia
I tend to think that one should raise an eyebrow at purported book reviews, or, God help us, critiques, that don’t actually quote any of the book in question – not one sentence …
Just so.
And yet while such a common sense rule might seem like a sound basis for major news outlets to weed out emotionally overwrought bloggers with fringe political leanings from others who can actually lay a more credible claim to being a writer, a journalist, an editor, a poet, a broadcaster or a teacher, apparently this is not the case.
Here is Eleanor Penny reviewing the Political Week and again commenting on politics here, both for Sky News, and here on Politics Live for the BBC.
They would no doubt argue that she is both a journalist and editor – which, I suppose, is the case. Except it’s only for Novara Media. And that simply begs the question as to why they think such an obviously amateurish outfit as NM should be taken any more seriously than your average student’s union committee.
Maybe they have a MeToo / Joe Biden-like fondness for Novara Media‘s young women editors or maybe they think because they’re young they will somehow appeal to other young people.
Except even amongst a Left-leaning 18-24 year old electorate, their views aren’t even close to representative of that generation as a whole. Certainly, they do not seem to be any more representative than the editors at Good News magazine would be, and I’ve never once seen them invited to take part on BBC Newsnight, Question Time.
Still, maybe it’s the spoken word poetry on climate change that first made those producers think – Now that’s exactly the kind of fatuous bint we need to book for our politics show?
they do not seem to be any more representative than the editors at Good News magazine would be, and I’ve never once seen them invited to take part on BBC Newsnight, Question Time.
Heh. Well, quite. It’s faintly hilarious how these creatures frame themselves, and each other, as heroically marginalised and struggling to be heard, while seemingly on speed-dial at the BBC and appearing in the mainstream media with remarkable ease and frequency.
A few years ago, the Today programme, one of the BBC’s flagship institutions, gave Laurie Penny – apparently the more charismatic of the Penny sisters – half an hour of airtime to read at length from her own blog and make endless, often bewildering pronouncements, essentially unchallenged, in a broadcast pitched as a “fresh, provocative and fiery debate.” Quite how one can have a debate with no contrary point of view, and no prospect of factual correction, remains something of a mystery. (Naturally, the Guardian described this uncontested airing of far-left boilerplate and random, disjointed sentences as “the best argument for the licence fee yet put forward.”)
Laurie Penny – apparently the more charismatic of the Penny sisters
Meow. 🙂
I heard there’s some new show or movie out called ‘Penny Dreadful’. Is it about Laurie and Eleanor?
…why they think such an obviously amateurish outfit as NM should be taken any more seriously than your average student’s union committee.
Given that one of the leading lights of Novara – Ash Sarkar – is an admitted communist who is regularly given a platform on national TV to espouse her extremist views, then you might have a major clue as to the political sympathies of the said media.
I’m thinking of making a library of tweets like this titled ‘Why the left lose’. They just don’t get it.
They have been making steady progress over the last many decades in their long march through the institutions. That’s why you are seeing enough of it to make a library. And they’ve even got elements of the “true” conservative right voting with them. I really don’t think the left is the one that’s not getting it.
They have been making steady progress over the last many decades in their long march through the institutions. That’s why you are seeing enough of it to make a library.
Agreed.
At the risk of your head exploding, check Imgur lately. The “most viral” is frequently full of Wuhan Flu nonsense from the right, with a chorus of monkeys applauding their bravery in the comments.
While pursuing serious covid info, I stumbled across this headline at RCP
“Dems in Top Senate Races Duck”
Which provoked some amusing man vs. bird imagery.
Sadly there were actually more words in the title, some gibberish about Biden.
Brevity, folks. Brevity.
Sadly there were actually more words in the title, some gibberish about Biden
Gibberish and Biden go together like.. like…. two things that go together really well.
*sigh*
I got nothin’
Sadly there were actually more words in the title, some gibberish about Biden.
Brevity, folks. Brevity.
Actual Boston Globe from the waning days of the Jimmy Carter administration: “More mush from the wimp”
Eleanor Penny, “writer, journalist, editor, poet, broadcaster and teacher”, has decided to weigh in on the debate,
Note how fellow Clown World inhabitant Owen Jones repeats Francis Wheen’s notoriously inaccurate summary of the book, rather than anything that’s actually in the book. Again, it seems unlikely that Dear Wee Owen has actually read the thing that he pretends offends him so much. (And indeed, when asked directly whether he has read it, no answer is forthcoming.)
And when a construal of a book’s content and intent is so removed from reality, and ignores so many pointed and repeated qualifications in the book, and its scrupulously moderate, cautious tone, I think one has to assume, not error, but motivated dishonesty.
Eleanor Penny, “writer, journalist, editor, poet, broadcaster and teacher”, has decided to weigh in on the debate, kicking off with this summary of The Bell Curve:
Having read The Bell Curve, I can summarize its thesis in one sentence: social pathologies correlate more strongly with low intelligence than with any other single variable.