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Anthropology Art Free-For-All

I Laughed And I’m Not Sorry

October 4, 2023 47 Comments

Currently doing the rounds, The late Norman Rockwell depicts Modern America:

Oh, there’s more. Not all of it savoury.

Update, via the comments:

There’s some discussion below about the aforementioned unsavoury content – the anti-Semitism and so forth. I did wonder about whether or not to link to the full selection, or what I assume is the full selection. But on balance, better to have the wider context, I think. Regulars of this site are, after all, grown-ups and can make up their own minds without my hand-holding.

And in case it needs pointing out, the basic juxtaposition that runs throughout the series – those jarring ideals – does rather throw into relief some fashionable assumptions of our time. The Forties’ suits with pronoun pins, the applauded looting, classroom violence, transgender sports, the Pride-obsessed educators with big, phallic balloons, etc. There is, I think, a certain… resonance.

The Rockwell aesthetic and period setting invites the viewer to imagine how one’s grandparents or great-grandparents might have reacted if faced with our time’s more modish pieties. A borderless, degenerate, bug-eating dystopia in which childhood is bureaucratically sexualised, and in which sporting unfairness and feral selfishness are met, by our betters, with pretentious approval. It’s very now.

Also, open thread.

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Written by: David
Free-For-All Policing Those Poor Darling Armed Robbers

He Was Expecting Free Hits

October 3, 2023 62 Comments

Readers may recall this unhappy scene, mentioned here, part of a spree of racially targeted Seattle home invasions:

The day is coming when thugs like this will be shot by angry homeowners or neighbors, and no one will give a shit, because it would have improved life for everybody. https://t.co/lrz5KGBO81

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) August 29, 2023

In a more cheering turn of events, the perpetrators, five black men and one black teenager, were recently apprehended and charged with no fewer than fourteen similar crimes, the victims of which were all of East Asian ancestry:

KOMO News listed the names of the five men and the charges so far filed against them. The name of the teen involved in stalking, attacking, and tasing of mostly older Asian people was withheld because he’s a misunderstood and confused youth who has no idea that he’s part of a gang of thieves. Or something.

Hey, it’s an easy mistake to make. Accidentally putting on a balaclava and stalking someone, based on their race, then menacing them, and tasing them, and tugging the wedding ring from their twitching finger, and then barging into their home and taking their stuff. And then doing it all over again, and again, and again, all entirely by accident. I mean, who here hasn’t done it?

And as we’ve been told, repeatedly, from on high, the creatures who do such things are just like us.

Only more downtrodden and deserving of sympathy.

Needless to say, most of the suspects have extensive criminal histories and over a dozen prior convictions for assault, burglary and robbery, plus numerous other charges for domestic violence, animal cruelty, and driving without a licence. One suspect, a Mr Javez Tubbs, has been the subject of 30 warrants since 2006.

Fourteen firearms were found in the gang’s possession.

What catches the eye, however, is this brief exchange between the sixteen-year-old home invader and the judge:

Accused: “I can’t get house arrest?” Gesticulating: “You let people out. You let people get out…”

Judge: “I’m not letting you out.”

Accused: “Why not?”

Judge: “Why not? Maybe you should ask [your attorney].”

Or,

Consequences, for me? I thought this was a progressive city, full of enlightened people. Oh, the unfairness of it all.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, outrageously.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Anthropology His Pretty Nails Politics Pronouns Or Else

The Perils Of Panto Season

October 2, 2023 38 Comments

Further to this, and lifted from the comments:

One of my favourite things about The Age Of Stupid is that we’re expected to find a man wearing women’s clothes either:

A. Immediately absolutely hilarious, what a laugh eh
B. Not remotely funny at all, how dare you

Depending entirely on what that man wants. pic.twitter.com/Ju9wBkvqd5

— Gareth Roberts (@OldRoberts953) September 25, 2023

The New Rules Of Pretending, illustrated here, aren’t entirely coherent, even if one were willing to play along. On the one hand, fat, screeching drag queens are supposedly comedic and a kind of jolly panto, something exaggerated and silly, and suitable for children. Something to make the kiddies laugh.

But on the other hand, dysmorphic men and autogynephiles, who are often difficult to distinguish from drag queens, are supposedly Beings Of Infinite Seriousness And Validity, and even a raised eyebrow can result in finger-wagging and accusations of hatred. And so the sight of a cross-dressing man is something that we must find both absurd and amusing, and, simultaneously, not at all funny.

It’s a tricky manoeuvre. I mean, do we chuckle or not?

And what about this sinewy nymph?

Answers on a postcard, please.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (694)

September 29, 2023 99 Comments

The secret life of cats. || I’ll be back. || About bordellos. (h/t, o4p1) || The thrill of barrel relocation. || Pair of 1960s Star Trek Tribbles, $2,000. (h/t, Things) || Her thighs are too powerful, you see. || Some gentle sponging may be needed. || Today’s word is influencer. || Question asked. || Dining scenes. || Adornment. || Fair point. A reply in the comments. || Plot twist. || Caption competition. || Spraying scenes. More to come, I suspect. || The progressive retail experience, parts 505(a), 505(b), 505(c), 505(d), and 505(e). || “The modern university is the primary laboratory for the Cluster B pathologies.” See also. || Telling obvious lies. || Meanwhile, in women’s gaming and e-sports news. || How to make Worcestershire Sauce. (h/t, Mark) || Today’s other word is focus. || And finally, fashionably, the thrill of early Eighties hair.

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Written by: David
Academia Art Free-For-All

And In Machete-Wielding-Educator News

September 27, 2023 40 Comments

Readers may recall this item from four months ago:

Curious how when you hear of yet another educator being intolerant, childish, or wildly unhinged, you don’t need to ask what their politics might be.

I was of course referring to Ms Shellyne Rodriguez, an art teacher at Hunter College, New York, and whose activities include menacing students whose views diverge from her own, shouting profanities at said students, vandalising their property, and chasing people down the street armed with a machete.

A liveliness subsequently blamed on “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.”

In a turn of events unlikely to surprise regulars of this parish, it seems that Ms Rodriguez, our self-styled “black Marxist” and “public intellectual,” has a new position, this time at the Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan. Where students will apparently be treated to our gentle maiden’s insights on,

The depiction and archiving of spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation. 

Oh, and,

the ways in which the diverse social fabric of a place is rewoven as people and cultures coexist.

A coexistence achieved, one assumes, via screamed profanities, fits of physical intimidation, and holding machetes to people’s necks.

Readers are invited to speculate as to what it might take for a progressive educator to become unemployable.

Update, via the comments:

Our art instructor’s list of professed woes – supposedly mitigating circumstances – is of course extensive, and the relevance of many items escapes me, even allowing for the usual contrivance. Apparently, if you think a professional educator should behave like an adult, and not, say, threaten to decapitate people who ask questions about her childish and aggressive behaviour, then this is part of an “attack” on “women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond.”

A boldness that suggests Ms Rodriguez is very much accustomed to indulgence and being exempt from normal academic proprieties, and indeed civilisational basics. Rather than, as she pretends, being downtrodden at every turn.

Rafi adds, drily,

It was the machete of coexistence.

Indeed. What catches the eye isn’t Ms Rodriguez’s meagre scholarship – in which “critical studies,” i.e., Marxoid question-begging, seems more prominent than any aesthetic discernment – or even her equally meagre artistic abilities, which call to mind the daubing of a B-minus student, aged maybe 15:

Given the progressive chokehold on academia, and the neurotic racial imperatives consequently in play, corruption and rotting standards are to be expected. It’s the standard trajectory of ideological capture. This is the utopian path chosen by our self-imagined betters.

But it is, I think, interesting just how unhinged – and threatening – a progressive educator can be without having to consider an entirely different line of work.

Update 2:

Being a supposedly “marginalised” individual, maybe Ms Rodriguez was merely heeding the deep, deep wisdom of fellow “educator” Ms Shellene Drakes-Tull, mentioned here previously, and who informs us that expectations of workplace professionalism are scandalously racist, and that brown-skinned employees must be allowed to “bring their whole selves to work.” A wholeness of self that includes behaving in ways likely to be “interpreted as violent or aggressive.”

It turns out that a dislike of being bullied by the childish and emotionally incontinent is merely evidence of “deep, inherent bias and deeply inherent systemic racism.”

How terribly convenient.

Should further examples of suboptimal educators be required, see also this and this, and, well, any number of posts here tagged academia. The political leanings of the individuals in question will not be entirely surprising.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.