Piety Detected
Via Ben Sixsmith, a new forbidden word. Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly:
When not publicly threatening to assault people who use the word woke, and being pleased about it, having wilfully construed the term as somehow racist, Mr Anderson writes for Slate, where he tells the world how things really are. Some of the comments by Mr Anderson’s Twitter followers, and their endorsements of his sentiments, are also worthy of note.
Ah. I see a theme developing.
Perhaps Mr Anderson is titillated by the idea of assaulting people and spends his time searching for some convoluted pretext. And having attracted the like-minded, we see people wrapped in a drag of progressive piety – with pronouns gratuitously stipulated, rumblings of opposing some unspecified “fascism,” and the word “ally” in their bios – who thrill to the prospect of white people being walloped simply for using the word woke. It’s a strange kind of righteousness.
Readers may recall former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger denouncing the word woke as a “meaningless sneer,” one “designed to stand in the way of thought or discussion.” That the word in question – which was deployed unironically in his own paper – is often used to denote a particular kind of contrivance, censoriousness – and above all, self-flattery – was apparently lost on Mr Rusbridger and his Twitter followers, who promptly equated wokeness, and thereby themselves, with “people who are thinking outward and forwards rather than inward and backwards.”
Update, via the comments:
Not that the term has anything at all to do with practised, insufferable, self-flattering pretension, you understand.
Over at Instapundit, regarding Mr Anderson, Glenn Reynolds adds,
Guys who work for big media corporations telling people what’s racist and encouraging violence is the very definition of “woke” in 2021. And because people understand that, the word carries a lot of baggage that guys like Joel don’t like. But the problem is, they are the baggage.
And Damian Counsell has some thoughts:
You can tell when a label is embarrassing to the media class when they start claiming it’s “racist” or “sexist.” They were fine with “Karen” when they were using it against less-well-off white women. When posh gals started being on the receiving end, it was suddenly “misogynist.” “Woke” was first co-opted from black people by white “progressives.” Then, non-progressives started calling exactly the same people who called themselves woke “woke” too. It was only because the behaviour of the woke was so appalling that it acquired such negative connotations.
Oh, and on Twitter, Mr Anderson has subsequently urged his followers to “not engage” with people who may disagree with Mr Anderson. His tweets, he boasts, have “stirred up a nest of racists,” by which he seems to mean people who dislike threats of racially-motivated violence. He’s also used the term “sons of Stormfront,” which appears to be directed at readers of this item in The Federalist, a characterisation that is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Look back into Victorian/Edwardian fiction (and probably earlier) and ladies were always swooning in a faint at the slightest upset, imagined or real, and implicitly demanding a liberal nasal application of smelling salts to aid their recovery.
Consider much of this behavior as a means of testing and taking account of their own social value to any males who are present.
See also children crying not when they fall down, but only when they become aware of an adult having witnessed them falling down.
ladies were always swooning
Ladies were expected to have narrow waists and full hips. The only way to get that without surgery to remove a rib is through corsets. Dresses in the mid-Victorian era for middle and upper-class ladies could be as heavy as 25 pounds (there was a society formed in England to get manufacturers to sell dresses in the nine pound range).
Given homes that could be stifingly hot from fireplaces, and it’s not surprising that you get a few swoons.
Contemporary actresses thrust into Jane Austen-era dresses have remarked on how they had to adjust how to walk, sit, and behave. Forcing your back into the posture of a Marine Corp drill sergeant can have an amazing effect on your emotional state. (cf. Jordan Peterson’s first rule)
I’ve read a few pre-20th c novels where the swooning happens, but can’t recall the smelling salts ever being used. I think they might be a 20th c myth.
TimT
They’re real — ammonium carbonate has a way of punching through the fog.
Meanwhile…
From a student’s self-introduction in an online class:
“…starting with my grandma from her home town before I was born and heritage from what she left behind from her husband and herself, my grandma and granddad may they rest in God,s kingdom above in the heavens even the pillow clouds sigh at the work of glory that they have worked for to secure and still have what the rest is for their undivided generations reaped cared and sewed we even prepare the gift of love and joy so much over over and over ponpoderously so heartily I could just the invisible and the just of how to refrain from evil, so the promise to everyone is that when kingdom comes the reunion to christ savior let me once again hold my peace forever more with these who stand by me to introduce the longevity of merciful matrimony between these two people that made it possible in every way for our family to just know we are all we ever need to be if we believe the in the grounds we built this city on, however my food is to let knowledge and wisdom be my daily bread until I am able to feel prosperous….”
James Joyce was not available for comment.
>That Black Plague was totally bitchin.
Like totally, dude.
>I mean it was like “Die! Right now!” So rude! Innit
Innit
> And back then you know they didn’t even have telly to like warn people and stuff.
Total BS. Like that’s a violation of human rights and everything.
> Innit
They’re real
Of course, I was suggesting they’re an anachronism in that they’re not in 19th c literature as far as I’m aware, though they are frequently mentioned as being in these novels. I can’t think of a single novel where they can be found.
Though come to think of it I’m not sure how much the 19th c romantics were bullshitting when they had their women swooning all the time either – did women *really* behave like that? The act seems to be used more for dramatic and novelistic convenience than for accurate presentation of reality.
Smelling salts, also known as sal volatile, spirits of hartshorn, and just plain ammonia inhalants have been around since the 1600s and quite likely earlier — supposedly mentioned in Chaucer, tho where I cannot say. Dickens referred to them, as did other19th c. writers (Collins, LeFanu) and they were an emergency resort in sports (like boxing) to revive someone knocked out, though the practice is pretty well over now. We actually still carried the ammonia capsules on our ambulances as late as 2010 though we never used them. Cops supposedly used them to bring drunks around when they didn’t feel like carrying them to transport; heard a few tales, but always second or third-hand so I can’t vouch for their truth. Still, as I said, they were part of the truck equipment for a long time. A survival from tougher times, I dare say.
It is not the ladies swooning that troubles us these days. It is the sight of fully grown men swooning because some wrote a banned word online.
I presume their version of smelling salts is a tearful apology. Also online.
It’s a perennial theme. Occurs in plenty of myths, which tend to have a lot of just so stories – ‘how does the world end?’
Yeah. I get that. The point was the tiresome oversell with multiple trailers one after the other. Especially when the main attraction that you’ve come to see is something less “OMG, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”
A “highly educated” progressive, and some fellow travellers, are stunned.
A “highly educated” progressive, and some fellow travellers, are stunned.
I recently saw a re-tweet of something said recently by a female member of the Young Turks left-wing news group. It seems she (and the rest of the Young Turks?) had been loudly condemning Kyle Rittenhouse as a cold blooded murderer but had never actually seen any of the evidence (including those videos which were on the internet shortly after the Kenosha riots.) She was shocked when she saw the video which clearly showed that Kyle Rittenhouse shot in self defense when pursued and assaulted by a mob bent on murder.
In other words, these leftist news people were posing as authorities but never actually made any effort to ascertain the facts of the case.
I would not be surprised to learn that the overwhelming majority of leftist journalists and “opinion leaders” never bother with facts but concentrate entirely on propaganda. Which leads to some logical conclusions about how good citizens should see them and treat them.
During the late 1960s, I was a ‘prommer’ (stop sniggering at the back, there): that is, someone who spent her summer holidays at the Royal Albert Hall attending the Promenade Concerts. The major Proms (Viennese Night, Gilbert and Sullivan Night and, of course, the Last Night of the Proms) would be marked by real crushes in the arena, and frequently someone would faint. We had a bottle of smelling salts that would be passed along the front row; the high point of one of those nights was when I was standing next to a fainter, and got to wave the bottle under her nose. It was like sticking a pin in her.
stop sniggering at the back, there
Honey, that bridge is now a speck in the rear-view mirror.
I, of course, have no embarrassing secrets.
I did note the sports connection with smelling salts — would be remiss to overlook the military + public ceremonial association as well. Honor guards are regularly cautioned not to lock their knees when at attention; fainting is a very real risk. Possibly a similar warning might have prevented female swoons of the past as well, which were probably a combination of tight lacing, dragging around pounds of excess garmenture and rigid posture. And the physiological phenomenon called “vagaling down”, a sudden drop in blood pressure due to vagus nerve stimulation.
A “highly educated” progressive, and some fellow travellers, are stunned
As much as I find those tweets very likely to be true, they’re so NPC I can still think they may be faked. Again, this world cannot be real. But to pst’s point about the Young Turks being just as clueless, I have encountered such with a (probably former ) friend regarding the Zimmerman/Martin case. We were email-discussing the specific issue regarding Florida’s Stand Your Ground law which I was trying to get across to him had no basis in Z’s defense either way. He then sends me a link to a 30 page or so law student’s paper that clearly stated what I had been saying. When I then also pointed out that it was TM himself who failed to retreat and disengage as even that law would have required, he had a meltdown and used the “white fragility” line with me.
Also regarding same topic, does anyone know of any black or otherwise POC named Rosenbaum or Grosskreutz? Or is it racist to even pose such a question? Again. World. Not real.
On copy desk of the newspaper I worked for was a fellow editor who loathed Bush Jr. One evening, while he was railing about Shrub rejecting the Paris Climate Accords, I reminded him that the Senate had voted 99-0 on a resolution rejecting the accords (this, IIRR, was a “sense of the Senate” vote. They were giving their opinions, not an actual up-or-down vote.)
Said copy editor made it very clear that he didn’t care that Bush wasn’t alone in this, which gives you some idea how entrenched people’s opinions can be.
Another time, someone passed around one of those “what are your political beliefs” questionnaires, where everyone’s score is plotted on a 2-D graf (liberal-conservative and I can’t remember what the Y-axis represented).
Of the 15 results — the whole of the copy desk and some of the city editors — I was dead center. Everyone else was more liberal than I was.
A very good article by the sometimes cringy but often excellent Sarah Hoyt regarding feminism and its effects on our society. The comments are also very good. Specifically…
And others..
Nary a word on plot, story, or why I should care.
One of the great attractions for superhero movies – or licensed adaptations generally – for studios is “pre-awareness”. The audience already knows everything about the property, so you don’t have to spend a lot of money on marketing. Part of the problem is Marvel has exhausted all the heroes anyone has ever heard of and they’re now down to the C-list.
Go on. Tell me anything at all about the Eternals.
Denzel Washington is in a movie twice a year
I am a huge detective noir fan going back 30 years and Devil in a Blue Dress is one of the best such books/films in the genre. Not because Walter Moseley and Denzel Washington are black, but because they are both phenomenally talented and understand the genre.
“Come look at the brown people!” doesn’t really cut it.
There’s a Harambe joke in there somewhere.
We must, right now at this moment, even though Parnell denies all of it, take into deep consideration what suburban women might now feel about him
Repeal the 19th and this shit stops overnight.
How many times can dear old planet Earth be saved, or indeed how many times can the universe be saved?
This is one of the big problems with the serial nature of comic books and why most long-running titles eventually devolve into soap opera. One of the things that made Ant-Man such a surprise success is that it’s not really about Saving the World, it’s about a divorced dad trying to prove he’s still his daughter’s hero. The MCU started small and built rising tension across 20+ movies and ended with … well, some kind of bang. They should have let the franchise sit for a year or so, planned out the next rising tension cycle and reset. This is fiction 101.
Though there was an issue of Doctor Strange in which he basically just walks to and from the shops.
Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is essentially about the quotidian lives of heroes and everyday people in a sort of ersatz DC/Marvel fusion universe. It’s excellent reading because rather than deconstructing the genre, Busiek fleshes it out and humanizes it. His ersatz Superman spends literally every minute of every day speeding off to save the day, and at night when he sleeps, he dreams of flying just for the sake of enjoying the experience.
just the invisible
Band name.
The point was the tiresome oversell
Hero movies are, by definition, about something threatening the status quo and a hero arising to protect and preserve it. Superhero milieux are particularly prone to a runaway arms race between threats and superpowers. That’s why it’s so important to manage the rising and falling tension/stakes across the franchise to keep it all from becoming self-parody (“World’s in danger. Must be Thursday.”)
I know, I know. I really should get my own blog.
Kurt Busiek’s Astro City
A couple of volumes of which are still on my bookshelves somewhere.
Go on. Tell me anything at all about the Eternals
Heh. I remember picking up a couple of issues as a child on holiday, from one of those rotating racks that used to be outside trashy seaside novelty shops, but only because I’d read pretty much everything else. Apart from Jack Kirby’s artwork, it was utterly unremarkable, an F-list title, and very much inferior to his New Gods saga for DC.
Which reminds me that WB announced, then promptly cancelled, a big-budget New Gods adaptation to be directed by… Ava DuVernay. I mean, the prospect was almost funny.
I welcome Marvel movie fans to the club that includes those of us ill served by Conan and Solomon Kane adaptations.
Still, could be worse… cough.. DC.. cough
Meanwhile in Wolkenkuckucksheim, a Don King doppleganger* decries yte supremacy at play in trial of yte guy who shot three wypipo.
Right. Neutral.
Alignment: Neutral Good
There is nothing more cringey than anyone over the age of 16 playing D&D.
I was dead center. Everyone else was more liberal than I was.
Which made you “right wing”, right?
Right. Neutral.
Note that he’s at the far left The Nation magazine, where they still long for the return of Joseph Stalin. Myy liberal “friends” say the magazine is “liberal”–of course. [ Shakes head ]
She must be a low-IQ Nation of Islam member: Woke black woman says all white people should kill themselves because all whites are collectively guilty of thousands of years of oppression.
She has not yet asked herself what fools like her will do when all the white people are gone:
If whites are guilty of thousands of years of slavery (during most of which the enslaved were also white–like Ireland & Britain back and forth) do we get collective guilt for black murderers? If you buy into hereditary guilt, there is no path forward but genocide.
Zimbabwe did indeed kick out all the white farmers and those productive lands are now shit. Locals say they wish the white farmers would come back. ha Uganda kicked out all the Indians (from india) and it did not help their economy.
Hero movies are, by definition, about something threatening the status quo and a hero arising to protect and preserve it.
Well, yeah. But one can have hero movies, even superhero movies with plots in the infinite slices of realty before the ultimate end game of The End Of The World (OMFG!). A onesy-twosy thing no big deal, but every time we’d go to the movies, which granted back then was already becoming less and less, the theme was just so f’n tiresome. And they all seemed to have a PC angle to them as well that was obvious (to me) even in the trailers. The whole thing felt like some form of grooming. But bah…I guess that’s just me. Again. O-blah-dee-o-blah-dah. Perhaps.
one can have hero movies, even superhero movies with plots in the infinite slices of realty before the ultimate end game of The End Of The World
Oh, obviously. I already mentioned Ant-Man, and all of the Batman movies tend to be limited in scope to Gotham City. And the Netflix Defenders series-es were similarly local.
Modern superhero movies have become the union of James Bond films, action movie blockbusters and buddy cop movies. The stakes have to higher and higher every iteration, until you reach Brosnan Bond levels of cheesery. We don’t mind the Bond films’ excesses so much because we don’t get 2-3 of them a freaking year and they periodically reset back to Cold War-levels of personal scope. The MCU hasn’t learned that lesson yet.
“Which made you “right wing”, right?
In that newsroom I was. I was a social liberal (support gay marriage, abortion, pot legalization) and a financial conservative (limited govt regulation mostly). Of course, these tests don’t let you accurately state your position. It’s got these boxes and you have to decide which ones fit best. I won’t say I’m conservative — who the hell knows what that means nowadays — so I’ll claim I’m a patriot and a constitutionalist and wait for them to call the cancel bus.
…because all whites are collectively guilty of thousands of years of oppression.
Why she stealing our hair?
To be fair, Black Widow wasn’t about saving the world from destruction, merely from being taken over…
Well, yeah. But one can have hero movies, even superhero movies, with plots in the infinite slices of realty before the ultimate end game
For instance: One of the things I like about Heinlein’s “juveniles” is that they tend to be about someone’s adventures in their own tiny part of a larger story. The protagonist does not Save Humanity From The Alien Menace but plays their own small but valuable part in the events. Starship Troopers is about one young man and his small part in the Bug War. Revolt in 2100 is about a young man’s adventure in a revolution. Farmer in the Sky is about one youth and his family on their small farm on Ganymede. And so on. Gregory Benford has dome something similar in his homage to Farmer in the Sky.
A while back I realized I hadn’t read any of Heinlein’s “juveniles” other than Starship Troopers so I purchased Farmer in the Sky, Space Cadet, and Red Planet. I think the last of those may be my favorite, but all were good. The scene from the beginning of Space Cadet (published 1948) sticks with me because of the casual manner in which the main character takes out his pocket-sized telephone to answer a call from his worried father in the middle of a conversation.
…the casual manner in which the main character takes out his pocket-sized telephone…
That was one of Heinlein’s innovations, which greatly influenced sf writing: details which contain reveal the nature of the imagined world, but which are mentioned so casually and so naturally that they are far more believable than they would be if conveyed in the old clunky pulp-era prose style. For instance, “the door dilated” versus a paragraph of the protagonists talking about how superior dilating doors are to those silly things people used in the 20th Century. Or an indication of the protagonist’s dark skin color which is delivered so casually that it is clear that it does not matter to anyone in the story.
Or an indication of the protagonist’s dark skin color which is delivered so casually that it is clear that it does not matter to anyone in the story.
It amuses me to imagine a wokeling completely losing their suspension of disbelief and throwing down their Kindle in a huff after reading such a banal detail.
It amuses me to imagine a wokeling completely losing their suspension of disbelief…
As a matter of fact, Heinlein reportedly got pushback from a liberal editor who told him, roughly, “The fact that he is black is important! It should be on page one!” (At least that’s what I remember from articles I read 40 years ago.)