In shocking news, it seems the concerns of Oxbridge PPE graduates living in Islington aren’t the same as an electrician from Essex.

From the comments following this. 

And which perhaps explains why the Guardian, the foremost national organ of the British left, publishes so many articles like this one, in which the author openly sneers at his proletarian inferiors and their “ugly” recreational habits. Specifically, working class barbecues, with their “blokey chat” and “low-grade sausage meat,” and where heteronormativity “really drains the joy from the summer breeze.” Heavens, how ghastly:   

If there is anything… more oppressively penetrating than the conversation of four suburban men discussing how to light and then operate a barbecue, I have yet to hear it.

And as we’ve seen, many times, such lofty thoughts – and the subsequent self-congratulation, in which rebuttals and factual corrections are construed as validation – are not random anomalies but standard fare.

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. 

Roger Kimball on the unacknowledged charms of Swedish multiculturalism: 

In 1975, the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the formerly homogeneous Sweden into a multicultural country. Forty years later the dramatic consequences of this experiment emerge: violent crime has increased by 300%. If one looks at the number of rapes, however, the increase is even worse. In 1975, 421 rapes were reported to the police; in 2014, it was 6,620. That is an increase of 1,472%.

Christopher Snowdon on why BBC documentaries aren’t always to be trusted: 

To be clear, nobody is snaffling anybody’s cake. The cake has been getting bigger for all, including those in the rest of the top [income] decile. But whilst inequality has not risen in the nation as a whole, it has risen sharply within the upper echelons. It is not the richest ten per cent who have “pulled away from the pack.” It is the very rich who have pulled away from the rest of the top 10 per cent. It is, then, the upper-middle classes who may feel that they are having their cake scoffed. If so, it may explain why there is currently such a sense of resentment and antipathy from the wealthy (a group that includes politicians, professors, television presenters and BBC editors) towards the very rich.

And Mark Steyn on the blatherings of the Most Clever President Ever: 

“Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding,” says the President. You might think that Islam has been entirely irrelevant to “the fabric of our country” for its first two centuries, and you might further think that Islam, being self-segregating, tends not to weave itself into anybody’s fabric, but instead tends to unravel it – as it’s doing in, say, Copenhagen, where 500 mourners turned up for the funeral of an ISIS-supporting Jew-hating anti-free-speech murderer.

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

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.

Speaking, as we were, of dramas that must never end…

Note that Laurie, who likes to remind us she’s a Journalism Fellow at Harvard, apparently thinks newspapers have an odd number of pages.