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.
When the ostensible reasoning is so contrived and unrealistic, and so morally perverse, as for instance here, it’s fair to ask whether other, non-rational motives may be in play.
From that link: “in what way will those “black lives” be improved by the destruction of local infrastructure, local businesses, and the subsequent, perhaps dramatic, reduction in trust and goodwill?”
One could write an essay–or a book–unpacking that one sentence. For instance, what fraction of the black population is inclined to such criminality, what larger fraction condones it? What still larger fraction condemns it but hates whites anyway? How about the black politicians who excuse and justify it? And the fact that such politicians are easily reelected time after time? And then there are the black professors who foment racial hatred, and the white liberals who hire them.
And speaking of that, David, didn’t you post an item some time back about blacks who complain about whites who smile at them? Thirty years ago there were extremely few black people in my neighborhood. There are more now. When I go for a walk I smile or nod at the people I pass. But I have noticed that a significant fraction of the new black residents make no acknowledgement in return–no smile, no nod, nothing. Their eyes do not even meet mine. Stony facial expression. It’s as if I’m not there or I am not a human being. Clearly the message they broadcast is that although they reside in the neighborhood they will never be our neighbors and prefer to see us as enemies. Once again, such behavior will result in a reduction in trust and goodwill.
Also: Although they behave as if we are enemies, they must know that we can be trusted to never do them harm, or they would not have chosen to live in this rather quiet peaceful suburb. This leads to the linguistic clarification that although we are not their enemies, they are ours. The reductions in trust keep piling up.
Replace “linguistic” with “terminological”. The thesaurus in my head only runs on three cylinders.
David, didn’t you post an item some time back…
Perhaps you mean this one? It’s actually about neurotic white lefties who feel compelled to smile ostentatiously and in a racially condescending way. Though resenting being smiled at does ring a bell. I’ve read something along those lines somewhere.
Perhaps you mean this one?…
Thanks, David. That was a darkly amusing item–as is anything that begins “Dear fellow white people”.
…Though resenting being smiled at does ring a bell.
I was indeed thinking of that. Must have read it elsewhere.
And one doesn’t have to actually put on a big smile: It’s a very male thing to just make brief eye contact and nod, a nonverbal message that says “I see you, I respect you, we are not enemies, we may become acquainted and become friends but in the meantime we are mutually good intentions.” When that goes out the window good citizens start thinking about avoidance and exclusion.
The entire dialog from the woke and BLM is as if lynchings are still going on, when in reality the biggest risk to a young black male is another young black male (oh I know some how this is magically caused by “oppression”). I have black friends who say they have never been bothered or discriminated against in their entire lives. The black middle class has been growing. Black women have the same median income as white women. Black married couples do pretty well. It is a manufactured crisis.
as is anything that begins “Dear fellow white people”
The racial neuroticism among white lefties can be quite funny, in a twisted sort of way.
“I see you, I respect you, we are not enemies, we may become acquainted and become friends but in the meantime we are mutually good intentions.” When that goes out the window good citizens start thinking about avoidance and exclusion.
Mmm…that’s pretty much all teenagers of the last 40 years (or more?). Also applies to many of my white neighbors but none of my (very few) black neighbors, in central FL anyway. Though those white neighbors who behave this way are mostly the same ones who wear/wore masks outside. So…Similar root causes?
Mmm…that’s pretty much all teenagers of the last 40 years (or more?). Also applies to many of my white neighbors but none of my (very few) black neighbors, in central FL anyway.
Regional differences? And around here in the soon-to-be-Frozen-North teens are often oblivious (off in their own worlds) but rarely ostentatiously rude and hostile…at least in this neighborhood.
“The cancelling committee presented no evidence of unfairness in the nomination process, apart from the unacceptable result.”
“The cancelling committee presented no evidence of unfairness in the nomination process, apart from the unacceptable result.”
Our enemies are laughing at us.
The racial neuroticism among white lefties can be quite funny, in a twisted sort of way.
She’s back, and she’s mad…
When I go for a walk I smile or nod at the people I pass.
I live in a city just outside of Toronto. I have a regular morning run on trails in the local greenspace and make a point of saying “good morning” to everyone I encounter. I usually get a response around 70% of the time. The outliers fall into two groups – the first, Asians are invariably polite and respond to my greetings – I would say 99% of the time. At the other end of the scale are ‘white’ middle aged women … perhaps 10% will respond, mostly they just pretend not to see me.
Jacobus: Curious. I do not get that response from white middle aged women. A regional thing?
She’s back, and she’s mad…
What’s with the stick of butter emoji next to the virtue signal mask emoji? That last one fits with the hashtag stayinpodcast, but the butter? She signalling she’s up for some Marlin Brando style backdoor action while she’s masked up and staying in?
To her new twit message – when Trum said it about Illhan Omar to go back to her home district, which she represents, the media had a fit for weeks that he had told her to go back home to Somalia. This person, Diversity hashtags and pronouns in bio, actually says immigrant go back home to home country and crickets.
What’s with the stick of butter emoji next to the virtue signal mask emoji?
Online sources say it’s about cooking. Like Julia Child said, sometimes a stick of butter is just a stick of butter.
I live in a city just outside of Toronto. I have a regular morning run on trails in the local greenspace and make a point of saying “good morning” to everyone I encounter. I usually get a response around 70% of the time.
Ah, but this raises an observation that is (probably) boring as hell to other people but I have always found interesting…fascinating even. There is a certain sidewalk/crowd population density at which, even in he most polite gatherings, even church or such, where smiling or saying hello or even the meeting of eyes drops off. What that density is for any locale/community is anyone’s guess but at some point, even leaving church, even on Christmas Eve, most people stop acknowledging every single person that they encounter. It gets awkward and creepy at some point.
But two people passing each other when neither has seen another person for…what…45 seconds? A minute? At some point even walking the neighborhood it drops off.
There is a certain sidewalk/crowd population density at which, even in he most polite gatherings…
Very good point. Important to remember.
In the case of my neighborhood walks, it’s a quiet suburban neighborhood, so on average it is about 2 minutes between encounters.
sometimes a stick of butter is just a stick of butter.
Not when it’s being brandished by a wokester. [ Crosses arms. Juts out chin defiantly. ]
Another factor, I’m a fairly tall guy. I generally don’t walk by myself, usually with my wife, but when it’s just me and my small 20 lb dog, I find a good number of people will cross the street long before I approach them. Especially women. And especially if they have their own dog, but that’s generally another factor. What is interesting to me about that is, how far ahead of me they will cross. Not so close as (I think they think) it’s obvious that their afraid/avoiding me but still close enough that I notice. If I were a black man, I could certainly read racism into the situation. Yet it’s definitely not a factor.
Some people–mostly women–will step well away from me when I approach, but at least in my case that is clearly a post-COVID thing.
If it was true for you even before COVID, I’d wonder how muscular you are, whether you dress to accentuate this, how you carry yourself, how naturally hard your face looks, and so on. And then there’s Resting Bitchy Face or even Resting Grim Retired Gunny Face. 😉
Meanwhile, here’s another example of Forbidden Evil Hate Speech, in the U.K.
“It’s okay to be white” is so 2018. The latest “problematic” slogan is “Islam is right about women“, which despite openly supporting Islam is somehow Islamophobic hate speech and sexist against women, while concurrently claiming that Islam is very female friendly.
The logical contortions abound.
The latest amusement is the Eternals movie, which “despite” having a female of colour as a director and the first sex scene in a Marvel movie, is not very popular with moviegoing audiences. Surprisingly, it’s also not popular with critics, either. It’s all quite amusing seeing every film critic that accused critics of the Ghostbusters remake, or the Charlie’s Angels movie of being misogynistic incels suddenly try to criticize a female led movie. The first half of most of the reviews start off by claiming that it actually is possible to criticize a female without being a sexist.
Funny how that didn’t apply two years ago.
Child’s mother claimed to have no knowledge of her husband’s whereabouts, and also said the large hole she had been digging in the backyard was for a garden.
She’s back, and she’s mad…
This is the lady who recommended ‘Black twitter’? I followed her advice at the time and did find it a learning experience….
Have to say, I was not expecting her shift to “Send ’em back to where they came from!” The malignant insanity of progressive America is beyond my ken.
Leftists project. To a leftist, “the coloreds” are their tools and pets. They’re not supposed to get airs above their station.
The first half of most of the reviews start off by claiming that it actually is possible to criticize a female without being a sexist.
Heh, Again, a whiff of the neurotic.
Skimming the reviews, it was quite funny to watch the fairly sudden shift from strained, rather unconvincing displays of approval, and endless references to the sex of the director and the racial diversity of the cast, to an admission that, actually, it’s a bit shit. Even Reason’s reviewer hailed the “progressive representation” and “assertive diversity” of the film – and spent a paragraph listing the apparently important race and nationality of practically every actor – before acknowledging that the film itself is poorly lit and an “unintriguing muddle.” There seemed to be a tipping point, at which the pretence became unsustainable. I think it was Mark Kermode who felt obliged to stress that the wokeness, as he put it, had nothing whatsoever to do with why it’s a bad film.
Well. I haven’t seen the thing, and don’t plan to, but it occurs to me that if you promote a film with endless, often ludicrous hyperbole about “diversity” and “representation” – as if no woman has ever directed a film before, and no non-white person has ever appeared on screen in any capacity – and if you do this practically to the exclusion of all else, such that almost every feature and interview lists exactly the same menu of identitarian pieties – then it doesn’t leave much room for any other reason to be interested. And it does raise the question of whether the people making the film, shaping its priorities, have taken their eye off the ball.
It’s remarkable how quickly Marvel have gone from a kind of superhero-movie Motown, kings of crowd-pleasing confection, to “Oh dear, we shat the bed again.” And wokeness is very much a part of that.
A very painful story. Other dads – don’t be like this one. .
if you do this practically to the exclusion of all else, such that almost every feature and interview lists exactly the same menu of identitarian pieties – then it doesn’t leave much room for any other reason to be interested. And it does raise the question of whether the people making the film, shaping its priorities, have taken their eye off the ball.
That.
That.
Marvel has of late been hiring head writers who are ostentatiously woke – Jac Schaeffer, Malcolm Spellman, etc – and who make all the fashionable political noises. But few of them seem especially gifted as writers. Indeed, they seem quite cack-handed. Whether it’s the moral tone-deafness of the WandaVision finale, and the half-arsed tedium that preceded it, or the incongruous and cringeworthy BLM posturing of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which undermined any suspension of disbelief and resulted in widespread mockery. It’s not just the dubious politics and obnoxious assumptions; it’s the fact it’s so badly done.
Now, I suppose it’s possible that this is merely a coincidence, or an ongoing series of coincidences. But in my experience, the kinds of people who feel compelled to insert woke politics into the stories, and who think that an audience should be fascinated by the race and sex and sexuality of superheroes, tend not to be great talents. They tend to be mediocrities for whom stories are rarely ends in themselves, but vehicles for propagating a political worldview. The woke “creatives” to whom Marvel has recently entrusted formerly lucrative properties, in cinemas, in comics, and on Disney+, have, I think, borne this out.
And so, instead of delivering engaging characters or a compelling premise, or some elaborate multi-film narrative, or even just a promise of escapist fun, we’re now expected to enthuse about the fact that an otherwise dull film has a deaf actress in it, a gay person, and several brown people. And none of those things strike me as great reasons for spending £50 and half a day travelling across town to the local IMAX multiplex.
endless references to the sex of the director and the racial diversity of the cast,
Indeed. Noticed advert the other day that broadcast details about the director and the “cast diversity”. Nary a word on plot, story, or why I should care.
Funny, that.
Politics ruins art. Think back to Soviet “art” which was all propaganda. It was awful, stilted, phony, and bad art. The Soviets called all western art “decadent” because it did not serve the needs of the state. This is where we are headed.
In art and business you cannot take your eye off the ball, as David put it. And they have. Marvel made nothing but hits for 20 yrs and now are fumbling the ball since bought by disney. And why exactly is it so novel to have women and gay characters? Movies and TV have been full of them for decades. POC too. It is actually more unusual to see asians in a movie. Some black actors are in the top tier of salaries. Women directors are not new. It is like hollywood just discovered the internal combustion engine. meh
Further: Tyler Perry has his own studio in Atlanta producing mostly black films. Denzel Washington is in a movie twice a year. They don’t advertise their work as “diverse” but as good films. These people are insecure mediocre talents.
It is like hollywood just discovered the internal combustion engine.
I generally expect Marvel films to promise to keep me entertained for two hours, or wow me with special effects and clever fight choreography. To relive the pleasure of being a wide-eyed six-year-old reading The Mighty World of Marvel. That kind of thing.
“Come look at the brown people!” doesn’t really cut it.
OK, I’m gonna get ugly now (again?) and maybe it’s just old age, yet a part of me, a part deep down inside that I don’t like to admit has existed even in my younger days, but…I’m sick of women. I’m sick of having to spend soooo much mental energy being concerned about WTF this week, this day, this minute that they’re all whipped up into being concerned about. Which is soooo often, is something specific to themselves. I’m sick of the pretending that their supposed greater sense of empathy is not most of the time just a form of virtue signaling and thus really just passive aggression.
I just read an article via Insty, linked to by Glenn himself, by Allahpundit (spit) promoting Dr. Oz (of all f**** people) for the GOP candidacy for the PA US senate seat over Army war veteran Captain Sean Parnell because of Parnell’s estranged (or ex, whatever) wife claiming he beat her and the kids. 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, regardless as to whether these charges have any substance to them. Because womens gots the feels and mens are all eeeevil. Because women feel that way. Not that 75% of worthless POS men aren’t willing to jump on that bandwagon if it gets them a very remote shot at just a chance at some p***y. We as a society are f****d unless we develop some f’n backbone. Women, in general..there are exceptions…just like with…say…muslims, should not be taken seriously. They are weak, their threats lack any serious gravity, and we put ourselves in serious jeopardy by tolerating their crap. That is all. Well, I actually do have more but…it might upset some people.
WTP: you aren’t wrong. It can be seen in everyday life where if you walk into a room and a women jumps, “you scared me” is supposed to be taken seriously. Or the party I was at where a woman was freaking out about an object on the floor–claiming it was a spider. It was a grape. Yet we were supposed to take her seriously. A minor incident can send women to the fainting couch for the rest of the day. They then take this psychology to the broader world and claim that a campus talk with which they disagree (or were told is bad without even checking) is “actual violence” that threatens to “erase them”. Some rude tweets (funny though) by Trump became the end of the world. They were unable to reason about the crazy russia conspiracy thing and see it for being nonsense (Putin sure got a bad deal from trump if they were in cahoots). Woke men then have adopted this language and tone.
WTP: I think today’s women have been trained to be what they are. The women who were born in the first decades of the 20th Century were quite different.
I am personally acquainted with pussy-hat-wearing believe-all-women women and with the pussy-fied and semi-pussy-fied men who married them. Not sure what to do besides confront them on their lies and hypocrisy.
And it’s not all that rare for estranged wives and girlfriends to tell lies. Speaking of which, I recently saw a short clip taken from a Jordan Peterson interview in which he remarked that where men will get physical, women will engage in reputation destruction.
How many times can dear old planet Earth be saved, or indeed how many times can the universe be saved? According to Marvel, it seems to about once a month. Maybe more if it’s a leap year.
Better still, saved with dazzling lights and big explosions.
At this point you can tell I can’t be arsed to watch any of them.
How many times can dear old planet Earth be saved, or indeed how many times can the universe be saved? According to Marvel, it seems to about once a month.
Well, it’s sort of a tradition.
Though there was an issue of Doctor Strange in which he basically just walks to and from the shops.
By the way, I’ve started watching Midnight Mass on Netflix. Only two episodes in, but so far, so good.
How many times can dear old planet Earth be saved, or indeed how many times can the universe be saved?
My wife and I were noticing this trend, not just comic book movies where saving the world/universe is kind of a theme, where so many movies coming out were dark and depressing about world famines or diseases or comets crashing, etc. I remember joking that I wished the world would just f’n end and get over itself. Then after thinking about it for 5 seconds said that it was almost as if “the powers” were psychologically preparing people for some sort of BS to control them. I was half-joking but it fit in with how the fear and panic were being cranked up another notch every hurricane season with every hurricane or even threat of a hurricane. Again, what I saw in central Florida going into Labor Day weekend, the melt down in the grocery stores and the gas stations drying up ON WEDNESDAY when hurricane Dorian was still three or four days away…well COVID-2020 should not have been a surprise. Especially how our governments reacted to it.
That should of course be “Labor Day weekend 2019”.
And again, I blame the women. Mostly.
there has always been an idea out there that the world is going to end/catastrophe. In the far past people were not exactly wrong since a plague or war was likely at any moment. But I think it relates to our insecurity due to our knowledge of death. With media and the internet and our poor judgement of risk, the urge to do something about the crises around us (even if exaggerated) is hard to resist. The internet deludes people into thinking their personal statements are a big deal. Hence 24/7 hysteria.
I think today’s women have been trained to be what they are. The women who were born in the first decades of the 20th Century were quite different.
Whilst I agree with the first part of that statement, I’m not sure that the second part is entirely true. 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. Yes, it was largely a class thing – housemaids, dairymaids and the like were exempt and just expected to get on with life.
Today, I suspect it is just that the class distinction has been removed and the modus operandi has changed from passive to active.
there was an issue of Doctor Strange in which he basically just walks to and from the shops
I saw Doctor Strange walking up Broadway. He turned into a drugstore.
“I saw Doctor Strange walking up Broadway. He turned into a drugstore.”
“I walked into a lamp post the other day. There wasn’t much room in there, so I just walked back out again.” – Chic Murray.
Look back into Victorian/Edwardian fiction (and probably earlier) and ladies were always swooning
I don’t know much about the real lives of Victorian men and women. But I do women of my mother’s generation, born after WWI and before WWII, were not snowflakes. Not at all.
Then after thinking about it for 5 seconds said that it was almost as if “the powers” were psychologically preparing people for some sort of BS to control them.
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?’ Goes with the other myth, ‘how does the world begin’? I am very fond of a good apocalyptic tale, so as you can imagine I’m pretty disappointed by what we’re given for apocalypses these days.
It’s not like real life isn’t lacking for such events anyway. In the middle of the first few waves of the Black Plague, red hot out of Asia and sweeping its way through the European continent, it must have seemed like end times.
I have a theory that the frequent apocalypse-tales you see in which London becomes empty/devastated – from ‘Doctor Who’ to ’28 Days Later’ – are in some ways replaying the various traumas inflicted on that city (the Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz). Maybe that explains why less apocalypses end up in my home city, Melbourne, Australia. (Though there are two ‘buts’ to that – one might object that this theory ignores the devastation wreaked on the Aboriginal inhabitants of these lands during colonisation – true, but the apocalypses tend to be written by the colonisers and tend to reflect their own cultural experiences and memories. And the other ‘but’ – when they filmed ‘On the Beach’ in Melbourne, Ava Gardner did reportedly describe Melbourne as ‘A great place to make a film about the end of the world’ – heh!)
Real or satire?