Clowns Ousted, Conspiracies Invoked
The progressive San Francisco school-board president recalled by voters earlier this week claimed her ousting was a “consequence” of fighting for racial justice, and represents a victory for “white supremacists.”
Yes, those “white supremacists” for which San Francisco is famed – i.e., local parents, including hundreds of “non-citizen immigrants,” who happen to have skin of many different colours.
More than 70 percent of voters elected to recall [board president, Gabriela] López and two other progressive board members, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.
The trio’s history of mismanagement and self-indulgence is pretty much what you’d expect of leftist monomaniacs given power and a seemingly endless supply of other people’s money, with a budget deficit of $125 million, and two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.
One of the ousted ladies, Ms Alison Collins, has of course been mentioned here before, when disdaining pupils of Chinese or Korean ancestry as “white” or white-adjacent, and therefore suspect, and when insisting that a parental preference for academic rigour is “racist,” and that the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.
An educator, you see.
two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.
Victimhood poker can’t be played quickly.
1. is incompetent.
2. is racist.
3. gets fired.
4. blames racism.
1. is incompetent.
2. is racist.
3. gets fired.
4. blames racism.
Ah, but admitting incompetence is tough if you’re a narcissistic mediocrity with obnoxious, rather primitive racial preoccupations, and accustomed to getting away with it. Indeed, being rewarded for those same obnoxious, rather primitive racial preoccupations.
Consider, one doesn’t need to be smart, to succeed in America… just learn how to be victim … whine about it and voila … before you know it you have a government gig with zero responsibility, and very little pretend work to do.
This doesn’t work for whit people, so don’t bother.
two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.
I always assumed it was a myth that theologians in Constantinople debated how many angels could dance on the head on a pin, while the Turks besieged the city. Future historians will likewise wonder about the our priestly caste’s current preoccupations.
PS: another article discussing this here
This doesn’t work for whit people, so don’t bother.
Sure it does. Especially if you profess to be whining for the “benefit” of PoC’s. Especially if you are a white woman. Especially of a certain age. Hell, they’re the ones primarily responsible for weaponizing whining.
WTP: ’ Hell, they’re the ones primarily responsible for weaponizing whining.’
While the supposed ‘oppressed minorities’ get on with their lives, too busy to worry about such nonsense.
another article discussing this here
Thanks. Link added to post.
I’m sure many Asians would be surprised to learn that philosophies dating back thousands of years relating to merit, discipline, achievement and personal responsibility are the sole province of white western culture. Nothing exists outside this sphere…apparently.
I’m sure many Asians would be surprised to learn that philosophies dating back thousands of years relating to merit, discipline, achievement and personal responsibility are the sole province of white western culture.
They’re honorary wypipo. Or should I say honkies? Polar bears to be hunted.
One of the recurring black complaints about Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants is that they don’t “give back to the community”. That is, they come to America with virtually nothing, work like Hell, and save every penny. Then they open little shops which they staff entirely with family members who work long hours while continuing to save every dollar they can to invest in the business and save for the future. The local black ghetto residents resent this, expecting to be given well-paying jobs, just because (as black people who don’t *always* shoplift from those stores) they deserve such jobs. Their sense of entitlement deserves ridicule and contempt, but note also the things they seem to be unaware of: The family members working in those shops are, when you tally up the hours they work, and the resulting spending money they have, doing it for below minimum wage. And furthermore, this is how it has always been: If you look at the stories of immigrants from a century ago you will see that they too staffed their little shops solely with family labor. In the meantime, the local black ghetto residents continue to be uninterested in the habits of hard work and deferred gratification that enable the immigrants to succeed and move into the middle class.
Speaking of leftist monomaniacs, conspiratorial clowns, etc., Brendan O’Neill reviews Laurie Penny’s latest offering.
Brendan O’Neill reviews Laurie Penny’s latest offering.
The link is subtitled “All hail Laurie Penny, brave spokeswoman for the downtrodden bourgeoisie.”
I tend to think of Laurie Penny as a member of the wealthy upper-class ruling class, not the bourgeoisie.
The link is subtitled “All hail Laurie Penny, brave spokeswoman for the downtrodden bourgeoisie.”
I think that’s intentional, and is another not-so-subtle dig. Penny isn’t actually upper-class; that echelon of British society is pretty much occupied by the aristocracy and a scant few who are not themselves nobles (for example, the exceedingly wealthy Canadian dynasty the Westons, who live in England and are friendly with the royal family).
I’d say that Laurie is upper middle-class; her parents are/were lawyers (in England that could mean they were either members of the Bar, or practised as solicitors) and they must have been fairly wealthy because for all her pretensions and protestations to the contrary (lurking around Brighton seafront in a hoody, smoking “spliffs”, etc.) she was privately educated and read for a degree at Oxford. She is therefore very much part of the British bourgeoisie.
Trying to explain how our class system works is nigh-on impossible; my suggestion would be to watch something like Dad’s Army (particularly the interplay between Captain Mainwaring and Sgt. Wilson, the latter being the former’s social superior), or Fawlty Towers, where Basil Fawlty’s attitudes to others are class-driven and in his case mean either fawning or disdain and sneering.
Or you could use this as a sort of quick reference guide.
they open little shops which they staff entirely with family members who work long hours
My great great grandfather, a son of tenant farmers, opened a country store, juggled the money enough for his sons to become Dickensian articled clerks in higher-class establishments, and that generation juggled its own money enough to send some of their sons to college. Path to the middle class right there. If any of those generations had been competing with Asians, would they have nailed the landing to get their sons to the next social level? Maybe, given that they were hard men who lived in hard times, but would they have chosen to make the task even harder?
My generation of whites has trouble competing with Asians. We’re the “privileged” inheritors of two centuries of progressive reform. We think that kids should have time to be out playing and not spend 20 hours a week in test prep. We believe in work life balance. When we see a family business where a loyal retainer or a poor relation is working undocumented hours, we consider it to be dysfunctional at best, and we have other names for it too.
To me it argues for letting each race run their own corner stores, according to their own tastes in work-life balance. Asians will probably have the longest opening hours, followed by whites, and followed by blacks – if you don’t like it, take it up with your co-ethnics. Blacks in Africa or in pre-1965 Harlem can run corner stores. Importing Asians has damaged their self-reliance and cut off a path into the middle class that they especially need because they’re not exactly diamond-in-the-rough academic stars.
On the other side, the children of Asian immigrant storekeepers have become a hostile, resentful overclass. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the only entirely likeable character in the Simpsons, the character whose dignity and moral integrity are a constant reproof of useless heritage Americans, has been recast as a racist stereotype, his relatively low status in a service occupation regarded as being below the rightful place of his people.
Or you could use this as a sort of quick reference guide.
That is a classic. Haven’t seen it in years. There is also this Year 2000 version of that sketch, which is pretty good.
two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee
I suspect a man of any stripe would have difficulty being deemed “qualified” to join.
There is also this Year 2000 version of that sketch, which is pretty good.
Which of course lost me at the end. Also, you do get why the joke “I’m New Labor. So I don’t believe in anything.” is funny to that audience, yes?
Which of course lost me at the end.
And me, too. I’ve grown used to that.
Also, you do get why the joke “I’m New Labor. So I don’t believe in anything.” is funny to that audience, yes?
Yes. In fact I just ran across a dig at the Labour Party last night which encapsulates that:
“…a socialist party that has discarded the socialist agenda while acquiring no other to replace it…”
–Roger Scruton, “The Blair Legacy” (Salisbury Review, 1997) in Against the Tide
But I could quip that the true agenda of Labour–and of any socialist party–is not so much socialism itself as the acquisition of total power.
I am imagining the New York Times without its leftist staff.
I am imagining the New York Times without its leftist staff.
I’m just not able to do that. This is the same paper that published Walter Duranty and defended him even when his lying propaganda was exposed.
I’m imagining a world where J.K. Rowling didn’t plagiarize Jill Murphy and then try to curry favour with the alphabet mob by retroactively declaring Dumbledore gay.
Whenever this topic comes up no one ever mentions Nora Roberts, P.D. James, Ellis Peters, Lindsey Davis, Sara Peretsky or Sue Grafton.
Or Ursula K. Le Guin.
Whenever this topic comes up no one ever mentions Nora Roberts, P.D. James, Ellis Peters, Lindsey Davis, Sara Peretsky or Sue Grafton.
Could you explain? The topic here are the attacks on Rowling, not them.
In one of Sowell’s books, he points out that Algerian shop-keepers in central Africa work long hours etc and the locals call it unfair. Same with the Chinese in Malaysia. But to the US and UK woke, there is no history and there is no relevant experience from other cultures.
Could you explain? The topic here are the attacks on Rowling, not them.
Read the linked essay.
Nora Roberts did in fact publish her crime fiction as “J.D. Robb” for precisely that reason, but everybody knows who she is now and no one cares. None of the other writers ever hid the fact that they were female while writing in a very male-dominated genre (hardboiled PI fiction) and they’ve all been massive successes (Sue Grafton has run out of letters in the alphabet to title her books with).
The goalpost shifting (Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters would be surprised at the notion that they’d struggled with being read – oh wait “chick lit” doesn’t count apparently), the historical ignorance (everyone knew Mary Shelley and Baroness Orczy were women) and the baldfaced gaslighting – does Agatha Christie count as “chick lit” now? – all lead up to this gem:
No, J.K. Rowling is being targeted because she demonstrated that she would bend the knee to the alphabet mob and corrupt her own work to please them. And once you’ve paid the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.
In one of Sowell’s books, he points out…
Probably Migrations and Cultures and a few others too.
No, J.K. Rowling is being targeted because she demonstrated that she would [not] bend the knee to the alphabet mob and corrupt her own work to please them.
Exactly. It’s…strange that anyone would claim she is being targeted because she is a woman. Where were all those attacks before the trans wars erupted?
Public schools have really become the enemies of parents.
Huh, I’d never heard of Jill Murphy.
And there you have it! A female author being unrecognized!
strange that anyone would claim she is being targeted because she is a woman.
Well, there is a kernel of truth to that claim … you don’t see the level of insane outrage from FtM trans towards males like you do from MtF trans towards women.
OT-ish to the Canadian thing…Not sure how this feels in other Anglosphere countries but as an American, I find it absolutely surreal and borderline hilarious to hear cops talk tough-guy/fascist in a Canadian accent. This world cannot be real.
Meant to add…On top of that the fascist cops are arresting people but not really arresting them but kidnapping them but not really kidnapping them, just taking them down the road apiece and let free. It’s like a simulation written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Just as a bit of tiny minded lit hist nit-picking, Charlotte Bronte published under the name Currer Bell, not Cutter Bell
just taking them down the road apiece and let free.
But if they have their names, none of them will have any access to their bank accounts or credit cards tomorrow.
J.K. Rowling is being targeted because she demonstrated that she would bend the knee to the alphabet mob and corrupt her own work to please them. And once you’ve paid the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.
I’d have thought that Ms Rowling’s ongoing dramas would have served as a warning to other softish leftists of what happens when you give an inch to lefties less soft. Endorsing seemingly unconditional immigration into the neighbourhoods of people much poorer than herself hasn’t spared her from the bizarrely heated ire, which rumbles on year after year, and nor has retconning her own characters to fit their niche demands. She’s somehow become a central hate-figure in woke theology.
And regarding Harry Potter, I remembered this from an earlier thread:
Again, if I’ve missed some detail that’s in the books, by all means correct me.
If you look at the stories of immigrants from a century ago you will see that they too staffed their little shops solely with family labor. In the meantime, the local black ghetto residents continue to be uninterested in the habits of hard work and deferred gratification that enable the immigrants to succeed and move into the middle class.
Well, if the family structure is destroyed and you’ve got five kids with three baby daddies, it’s difficult getting that family labor together.
She’s somehow become a central hate-figure in woke theology.
It’s not that mysterious. It’s the same kind of nerdrage we’ve had from Star Trek fans for ages (and now Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and, and, and…). You have a work of fantasy aimed at children that in many ways plays directly to the damaged and disaffected among them and presents them with a milieu much more appealing than the real world. As a work for children, moralities are simple and obvious, the problems and their solutions also simple and obvious, and the sharp edges are sanded off of everything. The milieu becomes an emotional safe space for them and as such, occupies a place of importance in their psyche all out of proportion to its real-world value. It becomes very personal and they begin developing a sense of ownership of the milieu, as if it belongs to them and not the original creator (or whatever soulless multinational currently holds the IP). The inevitable fanfic ensues, and said fanfic is always about the fan’s own inner insecurities, torments, and power fantasies. Anything that then disrupts this emotional safe space is deeply threatening to the fan’s emotional security, and nothing can disrupt it more than the original creator of the milieu, who has the absolute moral and legal authority to change it however they wish. Therefore, the original creator must march in ideological lockstep with the damaged, dysfunctional fan lest the fan suffer a catastrophic loss of emotional security.
Plus every IngSoc needs a Goldstein, so there’s that.
Voldemort inadvertently kills himself due to a wand-ownership technicality and a rebounding spell. (Even at the very end, with everything at stake, Harry is still using non-lethal magic, unlike his foes.)
I stopped reading the books at #3, or possibly 4, and I’ve seen none of the movies, but this might be an artifact of the different notions of “children’s entertainment” on either side of the pond. British children’s fiction tends more towards the practical and grim; there’s less sanding off of the rough edges for the tots. American children’s media, OTOH, has been hidebound for decades by ridiculous rules about what you can and cannot depict. The villain being hoist by his own petard due to carelessness, hubris or just plain deus ex machina so as to avoid the hero having to actually inflict violence upon his person is a ridiculously common trope in American children’s adventure fiction.
In the real world, you can’t rely on some convenience that spares you the responsibility of doing what needs to be done.
Yet that’s essentially baked into the pie with fiction written by the kinds of people who worship fiction and especially the wine mom and similar types to whom most fiction is targeted. And most especially when the author is herself a woman. Throw on top of that the incredible increase disposable income pushing productive people, mostly men, the kind of people who traditionally take on the responsibility of doing what needs to be done into the margins of society such that the writers and consumers of fiction feed on the self justification and moral superiority of non-agency (better word?). The Eloi grossly outnumber the Morlocks. And the Morlocks aren’t even getting the balancing pushback of a decent Eloi-roast.
Yes, I know HP books are for children, but you can’t really believe that the world’s children make these decisions for themselves. Women, teachers, moms, aunts are driving this. They for the most part are the ones making the financially discretionary decision. And effectively as well, children are themselves feminized in the sense of lacking effective agency in life. True they are on a transition to agency…well, hopefully…well mostly the boys anyway…hopefully.
I know I’m not presenting this point well enough to sell it but it would take months/years to flush all this out in a book or sociological study, neither of which efforts are really my forte. I’m already blowing through my personal 3-paragraph limit. So pick at my points if you wish but the underlying problem of the modern world IMNSHO is we have never in history had the ability to support soooo many people doing non-productive things yet been able to maintain the socioeconomic structures that create even more wealth. At some point, something has to give and the absurdities, especially those of the last two years, read to me as a huge tell.
Also what Daniel Ream just said. In spades. That itself could be a book. Or a course in sociology. Assuming we had anyone interested in sociology beside the sociopaths, that is.
The villain being hoist by his own petard… so as to avoid the hero having to actually inflict violence upon his person is a ridiculously common trope in American children’s adventure fiction.
It does get wearying, in terms of storytelling. It also seems to reinforce the conceit that you’ll never have to get your hands too dirty, or ever have to say no.
Something not dissimilar would happen regularly in Star Trek: The Next Generation – endless stories in which some convenient third alternative, some technological fix, would spare our merry, caring crew from hard decisions. Everyone could be happy, all conflict resolved. (The obvious exception being DS9’s In the Pale Moonlight, which stands out, and is widely acclaimed, precisely because it doesn’t rely on the customary fudging. Hands get dirty, and it’s a good job they did.)
From the Spectator article
…a resolution in ‘Support of Equitable Representation and Services for Two-Spirit Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex Asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) Parents and Families
Truly, in this Brave New World, comedy is dead.
Ah, yes. Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Who the bleep would think it would be a good idea to have children on a warship? You might do that when you re-flag a merchant vessel to be in a militia or some such as an act of last resort. Even then, you’d really want the kids to be somewhere else so that the crew would pay attention to their duties.
children on a warship
What warship – The Enterprise??
Dialogue from “Yesterday’s Enterprise“:
Guinan:
Families. There should be children on this ship.
Capt. Picard:
What? Children on the Enterprise? Guinan, we’re at war!
Guinan:
No we’re not! At least we’re not… supposed to be. This is not a ship of war. This is a ship of peace.
Who the bleep would think it would be a good idea to have children on a warship?
It made some sense in the 18th Century, when nautical skills were learned on the job, but not today. But almost certainly Wesley Crusher existed merely because the series creators wanted a character that the kids could “identify with”.
American children’s media, OTOH, has been hidebound for decades by ridiculous rules about what you can and cannot depict.
The Disney film Old Yeller, where the boy shoots his own rabid dog, refusing the easier way of letting a grown-up do it, was made in 1957. I’m pretty sure that from the 80’s onwards, it would have been a regulatory process where tears are shed for the humanely euthanized dog but nobody morally pulls the trigger.
Public schools have really become the enemies of parents.
No statement from the school or indeed from the girls.
The science camp made a bland statement of the logic, if people’s belief in their stated principles is truly without reservation. Among Earthlings, custom and quaint notions of modesty demand that the dorm supervisor for young girls should be a woman, and preferably a happy normal young woman who can be a role model. SCIENCE and EQUITY tell us that an MtF qualifies on both counts. Hands up anyone who disagrees. Therefore it’s both legal and proper.
endless stories in which some convenient third alternative, some technological fix, would spare our merry, caring crew from hard decisions
The parents feel obliged to emphasize that they don’t think any law has been broken, that their interest is purely about dotting the i’s on the release form. If only this had been included among the bullet points about pocket money and food allergies and insect repellent, says the interviewed parent, then I could have made an informed decision about whether to let my child share living arrangements with a pervert who’s volunteered to share living arrangements with children. A transparent, informed process where nobody need be transparent or informative about their true reasons for taking their child out.
enemies of parents: wow. You can really see the victim hierarchy in action. Not dissent allowed. You can keep your bank account….for now.
In moral terms, it should, I think, be clearer that Harry, our hero, has to kill Voldemort. The dragon has to be slain…
–Which calls to mind an essay by G. K. Chesterton which is usually summarized as follows: “Fairytales don’t teach children that monsters exist, they already know that monsters exist. Fairy tales teach children that monsters can be killed.”
“…Harry is still using non-lethal magic, unlike his foes…as a moral parable, it stumbles at the finishing line. It’s a kind of moral squeamishness. In the real world, you can’t rely on some convenience that spares you the responsibility of doing what needs to be done.”
Indeed. And one can see that squeamishness in real life when “progressive minded” people react in horror and outrage when a thug is killed by his victim–and with even greater outrage when anyone who points out the justice of that killing.