From that organ of Our Betters – the New York Times Magazine – a question of throbbing import:

Because intimate relationships, even love, must, it seems, have political utility. It’s like dating, but For The Cause.

However,

Again, note the subordination of attraction, love, a lifelong bond, to a predetermined political goal. Readers are welcome to speculate as to how a sufficiently brown and exotic mate might regard her supposed utility as a tool to “combat racism.” Being a component of someone else’s strategy.

Oh, there’s more:

I know, ladies. He’s such a catch. You’re ovulating as I type.

One might call that neuroticism. Or a warning sign.

And so, the language of amour now includes the terms implicit bias and kyriarchy. Oh silver-tongued charmer. If readers sense the presence of an elaborate, rather contrived sorting fetish, well, hold that thought.

And what woman wouldn’t be charmed by the comparison with sprouts, kale, and other bitter foods? You see, ladies, if he can overcome the initial revulsion, and if he can suppress the gag reflex for long enough, he may, in time, find you palatable. You’d be the fibre in his diet.

Update:

If the contortions above sound familiar, you may be thinking of this item here. In which, Melissa Fabello, a “community educator” and former editor of Everyday Feminism, insists that “when you’re a white person in an interracial relationship, there’s this whole – ohhh, ya know – white supremacy thing hanging in the air.” A “white supremacy thing” that “has to be acknowledged – and dealt with – constantly.”

Ms Fabello’s ideal interracial relationship is, it turns out, one based on mutual awkwardness and regular confessions of “whiteness,” and in which any sexual activity “should be considered in relation to social power.” Which, again, does rather suggest an elaborate fetish. A weird, neurotic kink.

Oh, and according to Ms Fabello, if your partner-of-colour’s family-of-colour don’t want to meet you, a person of pallor, or have you in their home, then, obviously, this is all your fault. Because “you represent an oppressive system” by “virtue of your privileges.”

Such are the agonies of the pious.

From the realm of the tightly-wound and twitchy, how to eat out while being a needy, neurotic, self-dramatising pinhead:

You can go into any restaurant and ask to be served by an ally or trans positive person.

And you can leave if the restaurant is playing Fox News. Most importantly, you can smugly eat chips while you make a video. pic.twitter.com/lq3lcmy5LS

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) February 11, 2025

So far as I can make out, the rules are as follows.

First, you should expect the restaurant’s serving staff to be conveniently categorised by their sexual inclinations or some other “ally” attribute, as if that weren’t presumptuous and intrusive – and, you know, weird. And should a pleasingly downtrodden identity be available – and said person dragged into your luminous presence – then you can bestow upon them your glorious and not-at-all-self-serving affirmation.

Naturally, you should make sure everyone sees. And hey, who wouldn’t want to be wheeled out as a prop, an accessory, for someone else’s attention-seeking project?

Oh, and then – but of course – you video yourself talking, with a mouth full of food, about how morally superior you are, before uploading this proof of your own magnificence to social media. Where applause will surely follow.

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Also, open thread.

Behold the latest milestone in fearless resistance:

Tiktoker says she will ruin your car if you support Trump and eat at a Mexican restaurant pic.twitter.com/DTqrVcAQdj

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 26, 2025

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

As Mr Trump unboxes his kettle in the White House, I’m going to offer this reminder of the meltdowns and moon-howling that greeted his election victory. Such were the feats of pretension and competitive neuroticism, some kind of historical document seems in order. 

Among those traumatised was the novelist and Guardian contributor Francine Prose, whose mental health took a catastrophic turn, complete with hair loss and sudden-onset eye-twitching. Symptoms that were accompanied by agitated ramblings about Hitler, Stalin, dictatorship, people thrown from helicopters, and “the imprisonment and execution of those who disagree.”

Of course, Ms Prose was far from alone in her weird theatre of distress, and social media was ablaze with performative convulsion. Among the titans of the fabulist resistance was this tightly wound progressive chap, who envisioned internment camps for those like himself, i.e., tightly wound progressives, with the streets being patrolled by some Trumpian Sturmabteilung.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Ohio high-school teacher Danielle Mann, whose post-election demands, issued from her classroom, included a list of the addresses of likeminded progressives, all of them, everywhere, and the mandatory wearing of identifying bracelets. So that she would know how everyone else voted.

At which point, readers may wish to imagine an alternative timeline, in which society has been customised to accommodate the fevered twitching of our self-imagined betters. A world they would find congenial, shaped in their image, according to their compulsions.

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

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

Oh, and in travel news, I bring you this:

maybe maybe maybe
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