Kevin D Williamson on fellating dictators: 

Celebrities came to sit at [Hugo Chávez’s] feet, with Sean Penn calling him a “champion” of the world’s poor, Oliver Stone celebrating him as “a great hero,” Antonio Banderas citing his seizure of private businesses as a model to be emulated in the rest of the world, Michael Moore praising his use of oil for political purposes, and Danny Glover celebrating him as a “champion of democracy.” His successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued in the Chávez vein, and even as basics such as food and toilet paper disappeared the American left hailed him as a hero, with Jesse Myerson, Rolling Stone’s fashionable uptown communist, calling his economic programme “basically terrific.” Some of the more old-fashioned liberals at The New Republic voiced concern about Venezuela’s sham democracy, its unlimited executive authority, political repression, the hunting down of government critics, the stacking of elections and the government’s perpetrating violence inside polling places — but Myerson insisted that Venezuela’s “electoral system’s integrity puts the U.S.’s to abject shame.” Never mind that opposition leaders there are hauled off to military prison after midnight raids.

The ludicrous Mr Myerson has been mentioned here before. 

From the comments following this: 

In another world she would be a feminist icon. Instead we have Lena Dunham.

Franklin Einspruch implores his fellow artists to try a little maths: 

This article is my call for artists, art writers, and the like, to the extent that they feel inclined to comment upon capitalism and related economic phenomena, to either learn how these things work or do the rest of us a mercy and zip it… If you can’t explain how prices are determined then you have no business complaining about neoliberalism.

And Jim Goad on “social justice education” and the shaping of young minds: 

I’ve looked over the [dictionary] definition [of racism] many times and still haven’t seen an addendum that says, “….but only when white people are doing it.” So for the time being, the official definition of racism does not contain any such “whites only” clause. But according to Luke Visconti, a white man who is the CEO of something called Diversity Inc, such dictionary definitions of racism are indeed “too white.” From a cursory glance of his website, I suspect that everything may be “too white” for Visconti — possibly even himself. If he were offered the magical ability to moult his skin like a snake and emerge as a coal-black Haitian, I tend to believe he’d accept the offer, provided there was no salary cut.

Regarding Mr Visconti’s conceit that only white people can be racist (and always, always are), don’t forget the moral boneyard to which such posturing leads. 

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

Heather Mac Donald on pretentious students and their enablers: 

This proliferation of in-your-face sexual identities [among students] is all posturing, just part of the dance between students desperate to find one last means of being transgressive and college bureaucrats eager to show their sensitivity and to justify their six-figure salaries. Students who should be studying European history and the roots of the novel — would that such subjects were still taught — are instead combing the farthest reaches of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Manual for ways to distinguish themselves. By posing what they hope will be rejected demands on their administrations, they seek only to prove that they are living a life of oppression.

And on the remarkable elasticity of “queer theory”: 

Today’s identity-based theorising represents a worldview and righteous self-definition that precede facts and analysis.

Not entirely unrelated, Kevin D Williamson on the misplaced moral glamour of defaulting on student loans: 

The students… took out loans and used their credit to purchase a defective product, no different from putting a bucket of magic beans on a MasterCard. They made poor decisions with other people’s money, which is not entirely surprising: Access to other people’s money is an invitation to making poor decisions… But just as MasterCard is not responsible if you put a lemon on your credit card (you’d be shocked how many people purchase cars with credit cards), Bank of McNasty and Uncle Stupid are not responsible for legal adults who borrow money to buy sub-par educational services.

Somewhat related. 

And don’t forget the self-described “bacon-eating vegan” who was left shocked and tearful upon discovering that her degrees in “social justice studies” and “gender studies” have zero value in the job market. “My degrees mean NOTHING,” tweeted she. “I don’t even know how to process the reality that is my life now.” 

Oh my. The Green Party’s Natalie Bennett has had yet another car crash interview. Your reaction to Ms Bennett’s performance and grasp of the particulars may answer the question asked recently in this Green Party poster campaign.

Previously. And previous to that. 

As I’m sure you all know, watching people eat online is now a thing in South Korea. 

“Whenever I’m a bit lonely it feels like I’m eating with someone else.”

The following is from a letter by Tony Clark of the Communist Party Alliance, as featured on the letters page of the Weekly Worker, “a paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity”:  

I never claimed that the future of humanity “may rest on the beneficence of extra-terrestrial reptiles.” I… referred to the reptilian control theory, which argues that for thousands of years humanity has been controlled by a reptilian race, using their mixed reptile-human genetic bloodlines, who have oppressed and exploited humans, while claiming descent from the ‘gods’ and the divine right to rule by bloodline. Ancient and modern society is obsessed with reptilian, serpent and dragon themes, possibly due to this heritage. Even the flag of Wales has a dragon on it. 

Most people have closed minds, depending on the issues. Mention the possibility of aliens secretly manipulating humanity behind the scenes and the shutters come down.

Anyone wishing to express their solidarity with Mr Clark and the Communist Party Alliance can do so here. Members of the Alien Reptile Hegemon™ are advised to use false names and adopt a human appearance.  

Via PootBlog. 

Good news, dear reader. You too can learn to be a performance artist and thereby make the world tremble. You could, for instance, attend Sandrine Schaefer’s course in Durational Performance Art, which is run by the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art. The ripened fruits of this intense and demanding study can be witnessed in the video below. Among its gems are the vigorous crayoning works of Nicole Dube, complete with off-camera grunting and sounds of exertion; a 90-minute display of marker pen misuse and poorly choreographed wrestling by Ambar Janual and Luke Ryba; and Darien Stankowski’s haphazard scraping of a wooden door, the purpose of which remains stubbornly unobvious and hard to care about.

However, the video begins with the colossal radicalism of Elaine Thap, a woman who refers to herself as “they,” “their” and “them,” and whose talents are described thusly, if only by herself – sorry, themself:

Elaine Thap uses identity in their work to convey layers of being and relationships… Taking the form of social constructs and the irony of it, they are asking for critical communication and concocting the politics of identity. Performance allows them to fabricate situations of childhood trauma and adult responsibility. They seek intersectional meaning and memory in others by the act of othering.

Ah yes, the politics of identity, intersectional meaning and of course othering. How terribly non-conformist. Now brace yourselves, people. I don’t want anyone fainting from the daring of it all: 

Speaking, as we were, of campus intolerance and the Clown Shoe Left, here’s something that may be worth half an hour of your time. In the following short film by Steve Brulé, Professor Janice Fiamengo of the University of Ottawa talks about the assumptions and effects of doctrinaire feminism and the censorious tactics of self-imagined radicals. Tactics that are illustrated quite vividly throughout. 

Professor Fiamengo also discusses campus censorship here. Via Joan in the comments following this. 

This just in from academia, more words you mustn’t use: 

The words “angry,” “passive” and “exotic” are also strongly discouraged and will no doubt be tutted at. Please update your files accordingly.

Via The College Fix.

Jim Goad on when a “hate crime” can’t be called that: 

I can only guess that the reason you don’t hear much about black-versus-Hispanic violence in America is that you’re not supposed to hear much about it. It’s the sort of thing that swims upstream against the dominant narrative with the tenacity of a thuggish, heavily tattooed salmon.

Somewhat related.  

Heather Mac Donald on the clown-shoe circus of identity politics: 

The Centre for the Study of Sexual Culture at the University of California, Berkeley, is presenting a talk next week on “Queering Agriculture,” dedicated to the proposition that “it is absolutely crucial queer and transgender studies begin to deal more seriously with the subject of agriculture.” […] The talk’s presenter, a Ph.D. candidate in American studies at the University of Maryland, will allegedly show that “the growing popularity of sustainable food is laden with anthroheterocentric assumptions of the ‘good life’ coupled with idealised images and ideas of the American farm, and gender, radicalised and normative standards of health, family, and nation.”

And Thomas Sowell on the peculiar impunity of self-styled campus radicals: 

An all-too-familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that deal in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone, and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room — including the college president — apparently nobody had the guts to put a stop to these storm-trooper tactics. Nor is it likely that there will be any punishment of those who put their own desires above the rights of others.

On the contrary, these students went on to demand mandatory campus “teach-ins,” and the administration caved on that demand. Among their other demands are that courses on ethnic studies, and on gender and sexuality, be made a requirement for graduation. Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok? At a prestigious college like Swarthmore, every student who trampled on other people’s rights could be expelled and there would be plenty of prospective students available to take their places. 

As we’ve seen so many, many times, some children need to learn that this world has consequences. But apparently the Clown Quarter of academia isn’t the place for that. And if you’re still not convinced, don’t forget the third item here, in which Alice McLachlan, a professor of philosophy, insists that censorious mobs who shriek personal abuse and shut down discussion are in fact the very model of progressive debate. You see, Professor McLachlan is “warmed” by such behaviour and she “cares a lot about free speech.” Just not for people who might dare to disagree with her.

Spotted by dicentra: 

Any hint of laughter will trigger the alarm.

Update: Also, yes, I know, Captcha is still misbehaving. 

Update 2: Okay, tired of waiting, I’ve now disabled Captcha. What could possibly go wrong?