Attention, puny humans. The dancefloor is mine: 

Carol of the Bells, performed by Acoustic Trench. Assisted by Maple the dog.

As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to subscribe to the blog feed, which will alert you to anything new as and when it materialises. Thanks for around 1.5 million visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea. And particular thanks to all those who’ve made PayPal donations to keep this rickety barge above water. Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the reheated series in search of entertainment.

To you and yours, a very good one. 

Christmas music is emotionally damaging and a hazard to our health.

Yes, the Guardian’s signature inversion of the festive spirit has once again started to blossom:

‘Tis the season when you can recite every single word of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year because you’ve heard it 25,671 times this morning already and, let me tell you, there is nothing remotely wonderful about the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer. It’s extremely annoying.

So writes columnist Arwa Mahdawi, who, it seems, and unlike most grown women, has yet to master the controls of a music player or radio.  

To bolster those eye-catching claims of musical health hazards, Ms Mahdawi cites a report sharing the hitherto unguessed-at news that round-the-clock exposure to in-store Christmas songs can irritate a significant minority of retail staff. Yes, I know. I’ll pause while you steady yourselves. However, these anhedonic tidings extend beyond mere in-store playlist repetition:   

The report [notes] that 43% of people who hate holiday music think it’s too repetitive and 26%, who I imagine all read the Guardian, said they the dislike the materialism of Christmas music.

Yes, people are buying their loved ones things that they might like. How ghastly.

It’s true that a lot of festive music is extremely materialistic.

It’s a “futile materialism,” apparently.

But, worse still, a lot of it is just deeply weird if not outright disturbing. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, for example, a classic of the genre… can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state and the pervasiveness of sexual predation.

This, remember, is written by a grown woman. 

Jim Goad on rappers, shootings and bullet-hole cred: 

In late October 2005, a rapper named Cam’ron took three bullets in an attempted DC carjacking. When a reporter asked him for a quote as he was leaving Howard University Hospital, Cam’ron quipped, “I got shot three times and my album comes out November 22.” […] Being shot is such a shot in the arm for the aspirant hip-hop mogul, a rapper named Gravy got shot in the buttocks outside a Brooklyn radio station in April 2006 before heading right into the studio for an interview. As it turns out, Gravy had one of his friends shoot him because he knew it would be good publicity.

Toni Airaksinen on more things you mustn’t think on campus: 

Angela Putman, who teaches public speaking at Penn State-Brandywine, designed a comprehensive three-day seminar on “white privilege” for her students, then interviewed 12 attendees on their belief in meritocracy and equal opportunity. To her dismay, Putman discovered that these “whiteness ideologies” were widely endorsed by students, many of whom agreed that “if I work hard, I can be successful.”

Believing in study, effort and diligence as positive things and broad prerequisites for success is, apparently, a harmful and racist ideology. Unlike cultivating resentment and then spending decades seething at how racist, sexist and hopelessly unfair everything is, which I’m sure is bound to pay off.

And Mark Steyn on the indignant librarian, The Cat In The Hat, and the great racist retcon: 

The piece argues that the Cat in the Hat’s bow tie is meant to be an evocation of 19th-century racist minstrel shows. Now, just off the top of my head, cartoon characters who wear bow ties: Porky Pig, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Huckleberry Hound. Yogi Bear doesn’t wear a bow, he wears a tie like me, but his boy sidekick Boo Boo the Bear wears a bow tie. Ambrosia, I think the name is, in ‘My Little Pony’ wears a bow tie. I’m not one of the many men in the western world who are obsessed with ‘My Little Pony’ and have ‘My Little Pony’ parties, but I happen to know this one character in ‘My Little Pony’ wears a bow tie. Cartoon characters wear bow ties. That has nothing to do the minstrel shows. We are making ourselves a society too stupid to survive.  

Readers are invited to speculate as to exactly when said books became so “steeped in racist propaganda,” as the librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro claims, and therefore corrupting of children. Presumably, it was at some point after Ms Phipps Soeiro was photographed proudly dressed as the aforementioned cat, at work, with children, while celebrating the birthday of one Theodor Seuss Geisel. 

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

Being, as you obviously are, a crowd with your boots on, and all collaring the jive, you’ll want to lamp Cab Calloway’s 1939 Hepster Dictionary. 

By all means slide your jib in the comments.

Via Obnoxio. 

Time, I think, for a little test of musical discernment. So, Korean or Hasidic? 

Glenn Reynolds on when crime doesn’t count: 

Black Lives Matter might more accurately be named White Killers Matter, because it only seems to care about black lives that are ended by white people. And that, of course, is because Black Lives Matter isn’t about justice, but about racial agitation.

Heather Mac Donald on the conceits and inversions of modern academia: 

If ever there were a narrative worthy of being subjected to “stubborn scepticism,” in [Yale president, Peter] Salovey’s words, the claim [by Salovey] that Yale was the home of “hatred and discrimination” is it… Yale has been obsessed with what the academy calls “diversity,” trying to admit and hire as many “underrepresented minorities” as it possibly can without totally eviscerating academic standards. There has never been a more tolerant social environment in human history than Yale (and every other American college) — at least if you don’t challenge the reigning political orthodoxies.

And utterly unrelated to anything above: 

Harvard senior submits rap album as thesis, gets an A.

It would appear that Harvard’s English department is now intersecting with the even loftier department of hip-hop racial caricatures. The thrillingly original opus in question – which can be savoured here – is “a dark and moody take on what it means to be black in America… tackling topics ranging from police violence to slavery.” But of course.

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

Dicentra thinks you should see this. And frankly, you deserve no less.

You see, Ms Rachel Bloom is dropping knowledge. With her sex junk.

Here’s yet another example of leftist student protest bearing a remarkable resemblance to opportunist spite:   

The Whiffenpoofs, “one of the most prestigious a cappella groups in the United States,” last November chose to remain exclusively male.

I’m sure you can see where this one is headed. This male-only line-up has been both a musical aesthetic and the group’s identity for over a century. Whatever the prevailing politics on campus, male and female voices are, by and large, not entirely interchangeable, and I’d imagine that, say, close-harmony work, a signature of the group, is probably easier if the voices are in the same range. However, 

As the Yale Daily News notes, this did not thwart females and “nonmales” from protesting that policy during their auditions.

Specifically,

Student Sydney Garick used her try-out time to criticise the group’s male-only tradition.

And,

A gender nonbinary student… told the News that four Whiffs walked out in the middle of the audition as the student stood in silent protest rather than performing a solo.

Well, given the imposition on others’ time, and the limited number of audition slots available, stage hogging in silent protest is fairly dull to watch, to say nothing of being selfish and insulting.

And because a cake needs icing, 

Before auditioning for the Whiffs, students are required to sign a contract committing to the group’s demanding travel schedule. The student told the News they signed the contract with the pronouns “they/them/their” rather than a name.

But of course. Because pissing about with the paperwork and refusing even to give a name shows everyone just how serious you are, how genuine in your interest, and how terribly radical. For some people it’s just politics über alles. Imagine the fun on tour. Oh, and do note that the protest, the petitions, and the hectoring about inclusivity were aimed only at the university’s all-male singing group. The university’s all-female singing group, which doesn’t admit male singers, was strangely exempt from similar fuss and umbrage.

You are moving forward in the queue.