David Rutz on the “woke eight-year-old” manoeuvre: 

The phenomenon came to my attention via @Neontaster, who discovered this trend of eight-year-olds (or children of a similar age, depending on their Woke Quotients) whose opinions, shockingly, seem to perfectly mirror those of their progressive parents… Let’s state the obvious: When pundits tweet out these little stories, all they’re doing is sending out their own opinions, but doing so in a way that (a) makes them look like great parents for raising such emotionally advanced children, and (b) shields them from criticism. Because what kind of jerk is going to attack a child, for God’s sake?

And what kind of person, I wonder, would be that preening and dishonest. And while we ponder that. 

Madeleine Kearns, a young Scottish woman, on a bewildering year at a ‘progressive’ New York university: 

It was soon obvious to my fellow students that I was not quite with the programme. In a class discussion early in my first semester, I made the mistake of mentioning that I believed in objective standards in art. Some art is great, some isn’t, I said; not all artists are equally talented. This was deemed an undemocratic opinion and I was given a nickname: the cultural fascist. I’ve tried to take it affectionately.

Tim Newman on life skills and the lack thereof: 

What isn’t normal is for a kid to run around swearing. Letting slip a swear word indicates the kid has his ears open. Running around swearing indicates his parents don’t care, and if they don’t care about his language you can be absolutely sure they don’t care about other things, some of which are essential to his development. A child who routinely uses bad language, especially in front of adults, is not going to do very well in life.

And again, entirely unrelated, of course, on polyamory and children: 

Were any of these friends shagging either or both of your parents? I ask mainly to understand how you’ve turned out.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Kyle Smith on what happens when you question the accuracy of a race-activist theatre production: 

Steppenwolf Theatre Company charged [critic Hedy Weiss] with “deep-seated bigotry.” An actor named Bear Bellinger announced that he would not perform if Weiss showed up at a workshop production he was appearing in. An ad hoc coalition that might as well have dubbed itself the Blackball Hedy Movement (but is actually called the Chicago Theatre Accountability Coalition) launched a petition via change.org to organise the theatre world of Chicago against Weiss by denying her invitations to its plays. Several theatre organisations have publicly agreed to join the blackballing effort, and dozens have offered noncommittal statements of support. The group’s broadside against Weiss reads, “Over the last few years especially, we have joined together to make it clear that inappropriate language or behaviour does not have a place within our community, and that prejudice of any kind will not stand.”

I’ll let you find out for yourselves what was deemed to constitute “bigotry” and “inappropriate language.”

Tim Newman spots a pattern: 

I suppose Nigeria and the UK are not the only countries where the wealthy and privileged get together and pretend they’re on the side of the downtrodden masses, but I am nevertheless surprised at how universal such delusions are.

Jim Goad catalogues more examples of leftist high-mindedness: 

It happened amid an insane cultural climate where the day before James Hodgkinson’s rampage, a black male shooter in Indianapolis fired at a truck that was flying a “Make America Great Again” flag. Where on June 11, the Huffington Post ran an article that openly called for Donald Trump and “everyone assisting in his agenda” to be tried for treason and publicly executed. Where a successful TV producer can encourage Trump-haters to “pick up a goddamn brick,” and he doesn’t get fired. Where a college professor says that Republicans “should be lined up and shot,” and he doesn’t get fired, either… A climate where the left is so egregiously insane and bloodthirsty — all in the name of compassion, of course — that the incomparably wormy Jesse Benn, who has previously called for “white wounding” and for violence against Trump supporters, saw no problem with a fellow traveller “shooting a racist lawmaker in the hip” last Wednesday. It’s a climate where, after the shooting, an obese New Jersey Democrat openly calls for the murder of Republicans with the hashtags #HuntRepublicans and #HuntRepublicanCongressmen.

Oh, and trans activist and self-declared “insatiable researcher” Zinnia Jones struggles to apprehend certain aspects of reality: 

Pretty sure they were trying to keep them from jumping.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Attention, lowly peasants – art is happening. Today I bring you an untitled “guerrilla performance” by “artist, healer and dancer” Shizu Homma, and an associate named aj, filmed in New York City, April 2010. Ms Homma tells us that she likes to “interrogate the human condition by searching for movement that exaggerates the behaviour of our species,” and that she’s “available for masterclasses, workshops, and choreography.” When not shaking the artistic landscape with her creative tremendousness, Ms Homma spends her time telling us, repeatedly, what kind of person she is.

Now feast ye. Gorge on that art.

Another “guerrilla performance” featuring Ms Homma, equally staggering in its scope and profundity, can be savoured here.

“As a queer artist I seek to create a temporal historical rupture,” says Texas-based performance artist Sarah Hill, while describing her – sorry, their – 2014 opus They Wonder. “During the performance,” we’re told, “I repeatedly spin around and around in circles.” The reason being that, as an artist and worker of profundity, Ms Hill is “interested in the continuous action of spinning and getting no-where, falling down and getting back up.”

Inevitably, Ms Hill tells us that she – sorry, they – disdains “the pressures of commodification,” and rejects “the populist template of art as a form of leisure or entertainment.” Yes, I know, a fearless and terribly radical decision, the effects of which may become apparent in the following video, recorded at the Waterloo Centre for the Arts, Iowa.

See, now you realise you were all starved of art and its enrichments. And indeed still are.

The joy of painting.

Via Metrolander.