Reheated (138)
Because some things bear repeating, a few items from the archives:
When your status depends on being impossible to please.
We’re told that being a “coloured” or “Indigenous” writer is fraught with “structural oppression,” on account of being “marginalised” – as when being invited to literary award parties and then swooned over by pretentious pale-skinned lefties.
“Whiteness” and “white men” are particular burdens to Ms Whittaker and her peers, whose suffering – their “collective plight” – is seemingly endless and endlessly fascinating, at least among those for whom such woes are currency.
As Ms Whittaker’s world is one of practised self-involvement, her point is at times unobvious. However, our unhappy poet appears to be annoyed both by “underwhelming responses” to her own writing and by insufficiently convincing displays of approval. All that “endless patronising praise.”
At which point, the words high maintenance spring to mind.
Such is the world of identity politics and playing Browner Than Thou. And if you base your written output and literary persona, and your claim of artistic importance, on being Brown And Therefore Fascinating™ – or as Ms Whittaker puts it, “Blak literature” by “Indigenous creatives” – this will happen.
To complain about pretension – “white fawning” – while in the very same paragraph demanding race-fixated, self-agonised appraisals – “criticism that is responsible for the race of its giver” – is incoherent and faintly ludicrous.
To bemoan woke piety as insincere and unsatisfying, which it is by definition, while simultaneously milking it for all it’s worth and encouraging those same pretensions, is unlikely to evoke much in the way of sympathy.
At least not sympathy that’s sincere.
On supposedly racist traffic cameras. Convolutions ensue.
Nor, it seems, was there room to consider the possible effect of endless, widespread excuse-making for antisocial behaviour, and its role in making such behaviour more likely, not less.
It seems we’re supposed to believe – emphatically and indignantly – that Mr Perry and Mr Olatunji Oboi Reed, our candidates for victimhood, are being induced to break the law and to drive in ways that are dangerous to others, including repeatedly running red lights, because of “fewer pedestrians and more vacant lots.”
Cyclists and dog walkers are also invoked as possible factors, along with the claim that a black person may have to drive to the nearest grocery store, a feat rarely undertaken by people of pallor, obviously.
And all of this is presented as if the gentlemen’s behaviour, their choices, could only have external causes. Other variables apparently being unworthy of consideration.
And so, Mr Reed, an “activist for racial equity,” expects city officials to “eliminate any racial… disparities in camera ticketing,” while avoiding any mention whatsoever of behaviour and personal responsibility. “The root cause of traffic violence in our society that is disproportionately impacting Black and brown people is structural racism,” says he.
As a result, the default narrative, the woke conceit, is just a little odd. Namely, if black people are being injured or killed as a result of reckless driving, very often by other black people, this is “traffic violence” and “structural racism.” But attempts to enforce the law and reduce the number of such incidents are also “structural racism” and must therefore be done away with.
Our Betters Victorious, And Still Unhappy.
On the not-at-all-spiteful psychology of the well-heeled progressive woman.
Exactly how Ms Heffernan’s neighbours were being aggressive is unclear, but it seems that we, the reader, are expected to dislike them, quite intensely, on account of their being insufficiently leftist.
As readers may be a little confused by the air of displeasure, I should point out that no history of neighbourly rancour is offered as an excuse – no disputes over hedges or noisy pets. Nothing of that sort is mentioned at all. Ms Heffernan’s neighbours are, it seems, to be frowned upon, indeed despised, in print, in a newspaper they may well read, simply for failing to vote for Mr Biden.
When They Won’t Keep On Saying Just How Special You Are.
On “non-binary” motherhood and making others mouth absurdities.
You don’t get to control how others perceive you. Emotional blackmail based on demands that others must use fabulist pronouns, even out of earshot, will not change that fact. It may, however, make you look obnoxious and deranged.
‘Every time you refer to me, whether I’m present or not, you first have to clap your hands three times.’
Same vibe.
Even if it were the case that Ms Meghan feels “misgendered” – which would be assuming quite a lot – she has not in fact been “misgendered” by use of the words she and her, or by any recognition of the fact that she’s obviously a woman. She has been referred to accurately, in accord with physical reality. Her mental health problems – any feelings of being “misgendered” – are not the arbiter of what is.
We can see what is.
For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
It touches on what I was going on about in the previous thread. Specifically, that when reading pretty much any ostentatiously progressive publication, it isn’t just a matter of registering differing priorities or shades of emphasis one doesn’t entirely share. It isn’t just a case of, “Oh, we don’t quite agree on how much weight should be given to X as opposed to some other variable.”
There’s often a sense of perversity, of contrivance.
Another example being the “racist” traffic cameras article in ProPublica – this one here. In which the authors tie themselves in knots trying to avoid the obvious. In order to maintain the racial victimhood angle – seemingly, the only one permitted in their world – they have to dispense with realism, logic and any number of obvious facts, to say nothing of everyday moral norms.
The mental convolutions are almost funny.
The authors of the article, both expensively educated professional journalists, and both being ladies with pronouns in their bios, choose not to challenge even the most obvious bullshit. The most bare-faced lies.
For instance, Mr Perry, one of the habitual lawbreakers, claims that he “takes responsibility” for his habit of dangerous driving – eleven offences in one year – including repeatedly running red lights. Yet his entire contribution to the article is geared towards doing precisely the opposite – externalising responsibility, and blaming racism, while fishing for sympathy he doesn’t deserve.
And none of this is challenged in the article, even in the softest terms. Instead, a conclusion is simply assumed from the very start.
And this, we’re told, is “investigative journalism.”
You’ll note there’s no link to an actual story with names.
MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/two-men-suffer-homophobic-attack-after-german-unity-day-celebrations/ar-AA2dwD1n
The original wire story is from DPA, the German Press Association.
Tweets (Xits?) with external links get suppressed.
They do indeed. Which strikes me as rather antisocial.
Lovely. Although there is a lesson there in that at least one I would have considered a “throw away” if I had taken it, and yet here it is a winner (the one with the lionesses).
Just a few more days and they would have invented radio astronomy.
The endless fawning – based solely on race – does rather chafe. Along with the absurd elevation of aboriginal achievements, such as they were, to the status of profundity and wonder. Feats of “wisdom” and “knowledge” whose particulars are, for some reason, rarely specified.
As I said in the linked post,
I mean, one doesn’t wish to be unkind, but the relentless distortion – the utter disrespect for the readers’ or viewers’ intelligence and any expectation of factual rigour – is, frankly, offensive.
I like that you put “astronomy” in scare quotes, as should be done: Never miss an opportunity to point out the left’s absurd lies.
Well, it is rather straining the definition. Aboriginal astronomy, so-called, resulted in a rudimentary calendar, used as a reminder to go hunting emu eggs, and some blather about sky canoes. Campfire stories.
Secchi’s painstaking observations were an entirely different thing, with boggling implications about the scale of the observable universe.
Implying some equivalence, some parity of intellectual heft, is bizarre. And yet.
Good way to cause people to associate emus with stupid and annoying things.
As I said in the original thread, I’m not sure what’s achieved, scientifically, by gushing at great length over the fact that what we now know as the constellation of Orion was referred to as a canoe by an arrested Stone Age foraging culture. It doesn’t really add much to our understanding of the cosmos.
Not much of a basis for going “Ooh.”
I’m glad we cleared that up so as not to confuse the foreigners.
Note how these Progressive Minded People simultaneously gush over the superstitions of dark skinned Persons of Diversity while sneering at Christianity.
I suppose one might note aboriginal ‘astronomy’ as an anthropological footnote. But despite supposedly being practised for many thousands of years, this “ancient wisdom” – hushed tones, please – doesn’t appear to have achieved a great deal. Little follows from it. Say, in terms of new information about the heavens.
Calling a vague pattern in the sky a canoe doesn’t tell you much about what that pattern actually is – the component stars, their properties, relative motions, or their distances from Earth.
For that, you need, you know, astronomy.
Here you go.
Highly commended, but not a winner.
They won’t be happy ’til all communication is reduced to grunts and expletives.
[ Looks at comments sections of certain blogs. ]
Don’t forget the clicks.
And in thing-that-never-happens news.
Liberals have adopted so many groups as mascots that it’s impossible to guess which impossible thing has happened again.
Are cannibals an oversight?
How Swiftian.
And in another category of thing-that-never-happens news….
Heh. Like insurance. Well mostly.
Ugg.
Also, band name. Surprisingly still not taken.
Not really. It’s just something that has slipped into the pineapple-on-pizza territory. Or eggs. Some people have a hangup about eggs. Even when they’re not on a pizza. Meh.
Isn’t that a brand of unattractive shoe?
This mysterious ebony being.
Erm… she’s whiter than “HRH” Me-again.
On second thought… she’s Indigenous all right, and indigenous to a land mass surrounded by water.
She looks Indigenous to the British Isles.
[ Awaits efforts by regulars to communicate via medium of shoes. ]
For instance.
A reet good kickin’ is thought an effective method of communication.
Mind, it might be thought contextual.
The possibilities are endless.
Google Translate says it cannot translate the page.
Does Stern still print enough titties to put British tabloids to shame?
Need work boots, not soyboy Ugg boots.
I may have fallen down a rabbit hole.
Grunts come from northern Europe.
Clicks come from East Africa.
Same but different. Bootsy Collins is still kicking. Boots Randolph not so much.
Try Yandex Translate: German -> English
Same place these days.
It seems … curious … Cambridge has more security checks on its online dictionary than on its hiring processes.
Except when the grunts come from Fort Benning.
I’m seeing that particular security check more and more. Chicago Boyz, for instance.
She punched a cop, so she deserved to get knocked down. Needed to be knocked down..
I speak German, so that’s not an issue. 😉
At no point were the aboriginals attempting to produce scientific knowledge. They weren’t trying to explain what stars are really made of. They weren’t trying to accumulate proto-scientific knowledge banks.
They were mythopoetic people (pretty much the default), who weren’t asking what but why, and the why addressed spiritual or philosophical dimensions.
Science is about measuring the distance between here and that star over yonder, evaluating its magnitude, color, etc. Mythopoetic people have no use for such data because it doesn’t tell them anything about the star’s spiritual place in the universe — the data is devoid of spiritual or poetic meaning.
When these modern leftist knuckleheads try to shoe-horn mythopoetic knowledge into the science bin, they’re demonstrating an immense ignorance both of the mythopoetic knowledge and of science.
We can study aboriginal lore all we want — as philosophy, literature, anthropology, religion — but as science it’s about as moronic as it comes.
That glorious multiculturalism.
Some years ago, I mentioned a supposedly serious science documentary, the title of which now escapes me. It opened with a protracted, fawning interview with a group of aboriginal people, supposedly sharing their deep insights into the Milky Way and the nature of the universe.
The actual content of the aboriginal mumblings was farcical, tedious and had zero scientific content, yet the tone was hushed and reverential, as if the very secrets of creation were being uttered.
It seemed we were expected to believe that modern astronomy, all of physics, pales in comparison with mumblings about sky emus. Mumblings rather short on detail, usefulness, or explanatory richness, even in poetic or theological terms.
And yet the presenter, the director and the programme’s writers all seemed to know what stance was expected of them, how fawning to be. How much normal discernment was to be suspended.
Again, I suppose one might find ramblings about sky emus interesting as an anthropological footnote, assuming you collect the half-baked creation myths of very primitive cultures. But the hushed and deferential tone of the documentary was comical, as if the blathering on offer were somehow profound, a lost intellectual treasure. It was absurdly indulgent of the aboriginal people and faintly insulting to the viewer.
Apparently, we weren’t supposed to notice the sudden drop in standards, the lowered expectations.
And this manoeuvre is currently being performed in supposedly reputable institutions, in the guise of science and enlightenment. With activist mediocrities shoehorning “decolonisation” into any available crevice, sucking up resources and head space, while calling for “anti-colonial training.”
As when telling us, quite boldly, that astronomy and space exploration are “a stand-in for encounters with Indigenous peoples,” and that hiring Iroquois or Pawnee people, or Australian aboriginals, is somehow imperative to the doing of modern astronomy. Because hiring people with no relevant skills – none whatsoever – and then deferring to them – “just makes sense.”
Why those who can construct orbital telescopes and land robots on distant planets should defer in matters of science to those who can’t… isn’t entirely clear. But the hustle is ongoing, complete with head-dress and drum-beating.
Hush, now. He’s wearing a magic hat.
It’s not terribly impressive as philosophy, literature, anthropology or religion either.
As noted many times, the degree to which the progressive project, the mindset, is premised on a kind of weird racial neuroticism is hard to overstate. One of its features is the kind of pretentious indulgence illustrated above, and a terror of saying, “Why are you wasting my time with his half-baked wank?”
Band name.