Douglas Murray on mass immigration and Simon Schama’s Question Time slip-up:

In that use of [the intended put-down] ‘suburban’, Schama showed something a lot of us had suspected – which is that for a certain type of globe-trotting international celebrity, any concern for borders, national identity and cultural continuity are not just beneath them, but actively ‘common’.

Of course, like so many other advocates of mass immigration, Simon Schama can live pretty much where he wants. And if the area around him goes somewhat downhill because the neighbours all start to come from the rougher corners of Eritrea then Simon Schama can move. And he will probably move to a very nice area.

But not everybody has that choice. And one thing we can all be certain of is that Simon Schama will never choose to live in Bradford, Malmo or any of the (dare I say it) ‘suburbs’ outside Paris. Yet all the time he will urge other peoples’ neighbourhoods to more closely resemble those great success stories, and look down at people from an ever-loftier height when they dare to object.

Mr Schama currently lives in Briarcliff Manor, an affluent, very white village in Westchester County, New York. The kind of neighbourhood that has genteel regulations regarding alcoholic beverages and the public use of amusement devices.

Jim Goad on the Great Rape Migration:

In Norway, the Aftenposten newspaper once notoriously changed a headline from “Foreigners over-represented in rape statistics” to “New sexual culture shapes attacks.” And when Lars Hedegaard, President of the Danish Free Press Society, dared to note Muslims’ over-representation in rape statistics, he was convicted of “hate speech” under Denmark’s penal code rather than being cheered by the country’s rape-obsessed feminists.

And Christopher Caldwell on Angela Merkel’s colossal gamble:

Citizens of all the tiny countries that lie between the Middle East and Germany were witnessing a migration far too big for Germany to handle. They knew Germany would eventually realise this, too. Once Germany lost its nerve, the huge human chain of testosterone and poverty would be stuck where it was. And if your country was smaller than Germany — Austria, for instance, is a tenth Germany’s size — you could wind up in a situation where the majority of fighting-age men in your country were foreigners with a grievance.

Hm. I hadn’t planned one, but it seems there’s a theme of sorts. Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

From the New York Times, Jennifer Medina on sex education for teenagers:

Consent from the person you are kissing — or more — is not merely silence or a lack of protest, Shafia Zaloom, a health educator at the Urban School of San Francisco, told the students. They listened raptly, but several did not disguise how puzzled they felt. “What does that mean — you have to say ‘yes’ every 10 minutes?” asked Aidan Ryan, 16, who sat near the front of the room. “Pretty much,” Ms. Zaloom answered. “It’s not a timing thing, but whoever initiates things to another level has to ask.

So what I’m wondering is, how do you combine “making sure each step is met” with “oral assent” in advance – a kind of self-conscious box-tickery – with a sense of, well, wild abandon? “I’m planning to reach for your bra strap, my volcanic love muffin. Is that okay?” 

FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff talks with the Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas: 

Not only is the situation on campus bad for freedom of speech, I think we’re teaching students to engage in cognitive distortion. We’re teaching them to magnify problems, we’re teaching them to personalise problems, we’re teaching them to engage in all-or-nothing thinking. All things, research indicates, that if you adopt them as mental habits are going to make you miserable. 

“Censorship is like taking Xanax for syphilis. Essentially, it just makes you feel a little better, calms you down, but it sure isn’t doing anything for your disease.”

Kevin D Williamson on New York City Council’s perverse choice of heroes: 

The Communist movement worldwide murdered some 100 million people over the course of the 20th century. The Soviet enterprise specifically, to which Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were fiercely committed — they are described as “devoted” in the Soviet literature — had at the time of the Rosenbergs’ recruiting already intentionally starved to death some 8 million people in Ukraine for the purposes of political terror. I do not wish to include them here, but put “Holodomor” into Google images if you want a visual indicator of this. 

Janice Fiamengo on toxic feminism: 

Repeating the [‘male privilege’] mantra is a hazard to your mental and emotional health. If you come to believe it, it requires your shame as a man.

John Galt on leftist thuggery and tantrums: 

So inured are we to the childish, yet violent behaviour of the left, that for the most part we are more disgusted than surprised, but could you imagine the opposite happening? A bunch of sneering Young Conservatives turning up to protest at the Labour Party conference? No – me neither. This is the fundamental problem at the heart of the left – that when their arguments are rejected by the electorate, they don’t seek better arguments, they just reach into their grab-bag of socialist solutions for what has worked in the past and try and apply that. The problem being that strikes and sit-ins and the rest of the panoply of student union politics seldom works in the real world for the simple fact that the real world is not made up of 20-somethings who’ve never had a job and have too much time on their hands. As the left crumbles, expect more intimidation and “Direct Action,” but the more they do it, the more the general populace will become alienated by it and contemptuous of those who practice it.

Regarding the above, our dear friend Laurie Penny offers her wisdom. 

And added via the comments, Matthew Hennessey on “progressive” priorities: 

How else to explain the decision earlier this year to allow 33-year-old Rebecca Wax to graduate from the Fire Academy despite having failed the Functional Skills Test five times? The FST was designed to mimic the conditions of an actual fire. Probationary fire-fighters are required to complete a gruelling six-floor obstacle course while hauling 50 pounds of gear and breathing through an oxygen tank. Wax succeeded in completing the course on her sixth try but took nearly four minutes longer to do so than is typically permitted. Nevertheless, she was allowed to graduate and was assigned to Engine 259 in Sunnyside, Queens. FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro admitted at a city council hearing in December that the department had lowered the fitness bar to allow more women to pass the test.

Dramatically lowering standards of competence puts lives at risk, both of fire-fighters and the public, but apparently what matters is that we mustn’t have a fire department that’s mostly male.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

Sweat-shaming is when someone points out your sweatiness as a way to signal disapproval. Like its counterparts, slut-shaming and fat-shaming, sweat-shaming is aimed mainly at women, who are actually not supposed to sweat at all.

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a classic Guardian sentence, let alone a reminder of just how many brickbats and indignities our brave feminists must endure. The sentences above are courtesy of Ms Amy Roe, who, as you’ll see, has been terribly violated (and is therefore heroic and righteous in her ire). 

Let the full horror of the episode wash over you:

I was ordering coffee when I noticed a well-dressed woman staring at me. “You look like you just did a class,” she said, giving me the once-over. I had no idea what she meant so I said nothing. “Or swimming?” she offered, with a tight smile.

Well-dressed. Tight smile. The bitch.

I’d just run 12 miles and the hair sticking out from under my hat was wet. It took me a moment to formulate an answer. “Um, running,” I mumbled finally… Rather than challenge sweat-shaming, I played right into it, conceding that I “sweat a lot.”

Tight-smiling woman is obviously a hired goon of The Patriarchy. Her mission, to stamp on the self-esteem of hitherto fearless Guardian columnists. 

And so,

I took the paper cup of drip coffee and hustled past the condiment bar. Screw the half-and-half; I’d drink it black. Once safely inside my car, I threw off my damp running cap and flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt in embarrassment.

Harrowing stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. Ms Roe is what we must henceforth refer to as a sweat-shame survivor.

Happily, however  - and despite the misogynist violence of having one’s copious perspiration acknowledged by someone standing next to you, possibly closer than they might wish – Ms Roe’s drama ends on a note of empowerment and feminist defiance:

I’ve got another long run this weekend and afterward, I’m going to sit down with my coffee, all sweaty and transgressive. The stigmas surrounding women’s bodies are powerful, but they’re no match for how powerful I feel after running.

Hear her roar. And fetch towels.