I will add one thing, though. Here's Henninger's kicker:
If it's possible for the left to have its John Birch moment, we're in it.I speak a smattering of wingnut, and suppose Henninger is referring to the pride old-time conservatives take at Buckley's rebuke of the John Birch Society back in the day. They sure showed those extremists 50 years ago, didn't they? Not like Obama! But it seems to me that conservatives have reconciled with the Birchers since then. After all, what did the Birchers believe? That a moderate U.S. President was a communist tool who was helping the U.N. and meddling scientists destroy America. Swap out the keywords "Eisenhower," "One-Worlders," and "fluoridation" for "Obama," "gun-grabbers," and "global warming," and it's clear that what used to be noxious Bircherism is now mainstream Republican thought.
Since I like to think the best of my fellow man, I'll assume Henninger brought the Birchers up on a bet, or out of chutzpah -- it would be too depressing to imagine he actually believes this shit.
UPDATE. In comments, Jeffrey_Kramer:
So: the decision by a Republican judge in Montana about what steps a university there had to take in order to compensate for a pattern of neglecting serious charges of sexual harassment and assault, was, in reality, a coded signal by the Obama administration that Brandeis students now had an official mandate to protest the appearance of Condoleezza Rice, thus fulfilling the maximalist dreams of liberal fascists everywhere.
The DaVinci Code was Euclid compared to this crap.
Daniel Henninger needs to practice the philosophy of "America love it or leave it!" Hey Daniel do not like it here go to Russia you would love it there.
ReplyDeleteA student is a customer and the customer is always right. They rejected the faulty product in favor of a better one. Free markets!
ReplyDeleteTruly, there is no offense to liberty greater than a group refusing to pay a white supremacist to lecture them.
ReplyDeleteAnd here I thought the Kochs are the Birchers.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I love about the conservative movement: A university gets caught concealing sexual assaults on campus, resulting in an investigation and a new set of reporting guidelines, and it's the guidelines that are the outrageous part.
ReplyDeletePriorities, guys.
"How did this happen? Who let the dogs out?"
ReplyDeleteOh boy, I know what's gonna be the new #1 on the list of most conservative rock songs.
"All of this detailed writ is called "guidance." As in missile."
Also in "counselor". As in, "talk to one and get some fucking help, dude." Also, as in Proverbs 11:14: "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety."
get back cruffy, get back scruffy, get back u flea infested liberal
ReplyDeleteAnother entry in today's WTF file is Reason's list of Video Games Every Libertarian Should Play.
ReplyDelete(no credit given for "All of them, Katie"). Particularly hilarious is the inclusion of Bioshock, which is structured around a complete and utter trashing of Ayn Rand-ism.
Have you seen how those guidelines are dressed?!
ReplyDeleteI speak a smattering of wingnut
ReplyDeleteWhich dialects? Authentic-frontier-gibberish wingnut? Libertarianese? Hoch-dorksch? Cracker?
How uncouth of the students and faculty at Rutgers to be upset by the choice of commencement speakers. After all, who among us has never embroidered the truth? And when we did that didn't it lead to trillion dollar wars, the de facto legalization of torture, thousands of dead American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis? So aren't we all just a little like Condoleeza Rice? Aren't campaigns to un-invite her to speak at university commencements just a little too much like *some mutually agreed on atrocity* for red blooded Americans to be comfortable with? Shouldn't we forgive this rich and powerful person and pay her $30000 or $40000 for an hour's speech?
ReplyDeleteHoch-dorksch? Koch-dorksch?
ReplyDeleteOkay, two things I noticed right away.
ReplyDelete1.) I am shocked, truly shocked, that this was written by Peter Suderman.
2.) Is it wrong that the part that offends me most is that it mixes up Deus Ex with its prequel? Shit Suderman, what kind of geek are you?
On second examination, half of these entries he doesn't try to justify at all. It looks like he was playing on the PS3, glanced over at his game library, and thought "Well, my wife gets away with it..."
Do I detect a bit of shirt tucking at the end of that Henninger column?
ReplyDeleteOberlin College earlier this year proposed that its teachers "be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression." ...
ReplyDeleteJesus, really? Someone finally invited Oberlin into the 1980's? Since Henniger is a total fucking moron, he can take it from someone who grew up in Northampton, MA and went to college at the absolute zenith of the actual PC era (plus AIDS! Oh, it was a time to be young!), this did not, at all, happen "earlier this year".
I mean shit, Allan Bloom died 22 years ago, where the fuck has this mook been?
The cover art for that issue is a sight to behold as well:
ReplyDeletehttp://cloudfront-assets.reason.com/assets/db/13993227674251.jpg
Yeah, noticed that they were going heavy on the "up with video games" articles. It's hardly the first time a political publication has made a cheap attempt to appeal to the youth market, but they're rarely this insulting.
ReplyDeleteThen again, the entire electronic entertainment industry treats its fans like they were a bunch of self-indulgent, undersexed man-children, so maybe this is perfectly appropriate.
Lost among all the rightwing cries of tyranny is the fact that once Rutgers ditched the former Republican Secretary of State, they replaced her with… the former Republican Governor of New Jersey. Why, it's tyranny of the worst sort!
ReplyDeleteUh, yeah, that cover would suggest so. Doesn't everyone's hot girlfriend hang out around the house in skimpy spandex and Uggs? Of course, because they style themselves as conservatives, at least in economic terms, the prototypical gamer on their cover is a 30-something in business attire, which I understand is how most men get comfortable for marathon gaming sessions.
ReplyDeleteAs I noted elsewhere, given that the average Rutgers grad probably is something on the order of $50K in debt for their education, I can't imagine why they would find it objectionable for the school to blow over half that amount on hiring a liar and war criminal to come speak at graduation to a bunch of folks who know she's a liar and war criminal.
ReplyDeleteIt just doesn't make sense.
Actually, I think a lot of right wingers WOULD love it there. "That Putin is so cool! The way he picks up crappy little countries (and ethnicitys and religions and homos and feminists and liberals and anybody who looks at him cross-eyed) and throws against the wall is just dreamy and he looks fantastic without a shirt."
ReplyDeletethey're just asking for it.
ReplyDeleteI've been fortunate to have never encountered that stupid cis term up until a couple of months ago. I don't know why it bugs me, but I hate that term and think it's just dumb as shit.
ReplyDeleteShorter Henninger (and other poutraged conservatives): Anything that might interfere with our ability to harass, oppress, or make inferior people feel inferior is just too much of an imposition on freedom!
ReplyDeleteWho let the dogs out? [...] The answer is that the Obama administration let the dogs out.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell the Baha men. They've been looking for an answer for YEARS
Yeah, the bong is a nice touch too. But isn't he holding up the wrong finger?
ReplyDelete"Make me a sammich, and *then* maybe I'll drive you to the Electric Daisy Carnival, cupcake."
ReplyDeleteSo, he's equating "lets try and not have so many rapes on campuses" and "maybe the students who are graduating MIGHT have a right to decide their commencement speaker" and "business leaders should be removed by their boards if they become a liability" to the extremism of the John Birch worldview AND saying that in order to be fair, The Left should repudiate those ideas.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds fair. They, after all, have given up so much, it's only reasonable that we should abandon everything we stand for.
"Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew as Rutgers's speaker after two months of protests over Iraq, the left's long-sought replacement for the Vietnam War."
ReplyDeleteWhat? I mean it. Just what in the fuck is THAT supposed to mean?
"An online protest tried to kill Condi Rice's appointment to the Dropbox board of directors over Internet surveillance."
"When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying
oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue."
"The agreement orders the school to retain an "Equity Consultant" (yes,
there is such a thing) to advise it indefinitely on compliance. The
school must, with the equity consultant, conduct "annual climate
surveys."
Oh the Brutality! Truly, Obama is the modern Robespierre, the Stalin of the new century, the Kenyon Kim Il Sung! I can only weep for his victims.
Actually, I think a lot of right wingers WOULD love it there.
ReplyDeleteWell, then, I wish they'd get a fucking move on, before they finish drowning this country in pig shit.
Sadly true - part of why I left that business. There is a bit of more enlightened work around the edges, like this: http://thatgamecompany.com/games/ but for the most part it's dudebro dickery even still, sounds like.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well I don't disagree.
ReplyDeleteEh, you say "to-MAY-to," I say "The Kochs' daddy was one of the goddamned founders of the John Birch Society." Let's call democracy off.
ReplyDeleteBut where are the Cheetohs?
ReplyDeleteWait, that's an "adbusters" style parody right?
ReplyDeleteThat is why I chose Russia it is a great place for the GOP !
ReplyDeleteYeah, sucks that you don't get to be "normal" anymore.
ReplyDelete"Equity Consultant" is a difficult concept to understand? Jeez, I'm austistic and that makes complete sense to me. You think every contract ever written hasn't had an implicity "Equity Consultant" from the get-go? And that knowledge of hidden/total costs wouldn't apply in a social situation?
ReplyDeleteThe war on words part gets me. Maybe it's just me, but what in the Hell is so weird about that concept?
Kinda like "death panels". Yeah, they're called actuaries. Been around long enough that Obama time travel will be a prerequisite for blaming same. Goddammit, is the concept of insurance totally alien to these people?
(Answer came immediately: "no, because it all has to be done for them")
I'm me, same as I've ever been. I don't need a new word to describe who or how I am, especially not one that seems, from my blessedly brief experience of its usage, to be used mostly as a cudgel to signal liberal bona fides or "more liberal than thou" status.
ReplyDeleteDamn.
ReplyDeleteJesus Wept.
Well, mine certainly do not!
ReplyDeleteWaist-nipper and heels are mandatory and exclusive attire in my game room...
ach ja, Bündi-putsch
ReplyDeleteDuuude, there's a bong and the cover is like, recursive. It just reasons into like infinity, man. The reasoning is for reasonable reasons. Whoa. (bubbles)
ReplyDeleteIs the can of FourLoko (which was a conservative Shiny Object a while back for some reason that I have mercifully forgotten) good enough as a substitute?
ReplyDeleteYou little shits should just sit tight and listen to who we decide to put in front of you, dammit. And congratulations!
ReplyDeleteSigh. cis and trans always meant to me which side of the double-bond carbon you're on, so it is very out-of-place for me. I am trying to learn ("I am only an egg" - sci fi reference, look it up :-) ).
ReplyDeleteI don't get the big deal anyway. If I am not a potential sex partner (and Mrs. LittlePig tells me I am *NOT* a potential sex partner), then what the hell do I possibly care? Because of my lack of that brand of social circuitry, I now find, decades after the fact, that a lot of folks in high school though I was gay. I'm not, but the fact they totally missed the boat taught me a lesson - some folks gay-dar ain't worth a damn.
Do you ever get the feeling that a lot of "progressive" thought these days is coming up with lists of proper words so that bloggers can get a cheap sense of moral superiority by wagging their fingers at people who fail to use those words?
ReplyDeleteOkay, I've had a little time to think about that "Fallout 3 as libertarian masterpiece" argument, and I've finally pinned down why it's so dumb. Suderman didn't go any deeper than "Washington, AMIRITE?" so he seemed to have missed the parts that don't really click with his claimed ideology.
ReplyDelete(Yes, this is going to be long and dorky. Fair warning)
So here's the basic plot: There's this researcher (who happens to be the protagonist's father) who wants to activate a machine to clean all of the pollution and radiation out of the Potomac, providing potable water to everyone in the region. The bad guys want to do the same thing, except they plan to spike the purified water with a retrovirus that will eliminate anyone who's "impure" - essentially, anyone born outside of a Vault.
Here's the first problem: Dear ol' dad is not a libertarian hero. If anything, he's an objectivist villain. At no time does he indicate any desire to profit off of his project, despite the massive risk and investment that went into it. In the DLC that follows the main game there are people who sell it, but there's no indication that this was ever the plan. I'm reminded of the fine scumbags who decided to exploit Hurricane Katrina by selling bottled water at a 1000% markup. The libertarians rushed to their defense, even heralding them as heroes ("They're not entitled to make a profit? What kind of charity is that?"). In Ayn Rand's view, the hero here is a chump. To make matters worse, he ends up sacrificing himself to keep the bad guys out of his project, even before anyone is aware of their genocidal plans. Self-sacrifice? Charity? How objectivist.
And then there are the other good guys, the Brotherhood of Steel. Nothing quite says "liberty" like a pack of xenophobic elitists who have a command structure inspired by a chivalrous order and enforce "traditional values" among their ranks (Insert your own glibertarian joke here). Granted, the East Coast BoS is a kindler, gentler version of the faction - they're hardly the gun-fondling technofascists that they are in the core regions. Nevertheless, we are talking about an authoritarian, quasi-religious order with plans to enforce their beliefs through military might. And they are the designated good guys - unlike the follow-up New Vegas, which has a range of morally ambiguous factions to select from, in F3 you're stuck with the Brotherhood of Steel.
Hell, why didn't he go with New Vegas? That game gives you the option to work for a billionaire with grandiose political schemes. A Reason staffer would feel right at home.
I do long for those halcyon days when were fighting the gooks in the jungles of SE Asia and napalming the place to smithereens. Good times.
ReplyDeleteIn the U.S., the politics of the left versus the right rolls on with the predictability of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's an interesting choice of metaphor.
This may be extreme of me.
ReplyDeleteLiberal extremism hurts your feelings. (Okay, maybe, maybe your pocketbook...but not really because you're an idiot and let's talk at you later about your educational deficiencies.)
Right-wing extremism kills.
Barack Obama: Born 1961.
ReplyDeleteThe Sixties.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
Now we know what that birth certificate really had to disappear.
ReplyDelete"An online protest tried to kill Condi Rice's appointment to the Dropbox board of directors over Internet surveillance."
ReplyDeleteI remember people people abandoning their use of Dropbox in response to the evidence that the company is untrustworthy... but trying to "kill her appointment"? Bollocks. We don't get a vote.
Kinda like "death panels". Yeah, they're called actuaries.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I cannot find an on-line version of James Blish's story "Statisticians' Day".
Randguage
ReplyDelete(I saw "CEOs getting canned for bigotry" as "CEOs getting caned for bigotry" and thought, "If only. . .")
ReplyDeleteI like to think she's not the hot girlfriend, she's the landlord yelling at him to pay the fucking rent.
ReplyDeleteOr his sister, yelling that Mom wants him the fuck out of the basement.
"Mother why do you bitch at me in the basement, do you not understand my videogames make me billions of dollars?"
ReplyDeleteIs that supposed to be a tiny American flag pin on his left lapel?
ReplyDeleteFor true libertarianism, that should be 'make me billions of bitcoins'.
ReplyDeleteIraq, the left's long-sought replacement for the Vietnam War
ReplyDeleteTrue enough, the invasion of Iraq was a replacement for the Vietnam War, but it takes a high level of dishonesty to blame the left for choosing it.
"Iraq, the left's long-sought replacement for the Vietnam War".
ReplyDeleteReally? That's the proto-meme-du-jour? That "The Left" wanted the Iraq war, so we could protest about it? Really?
Oh well, I guess it shows, if nothing else, that RWNJs have reached the bottom of the ideas barrel and are now scrabbling their bloodied, ragged fingernails across its bottom to see if any juicy woodworms remain.
.
Farce-y.
ReplyDeleteReading a Wall Street Journalop-ed now is like reading one of those Edgar Allen Poe tales where the narrator starts by describing this disturbing pattern of facts he's observed, and you're nodding along until you realize that it's leading to the part where the narrator tells you why he had to hack the old man to bits because of the way his dead eye was looking at him. Give Henninger
ReplyDeleteClivinese?
ReplyDeleteSo: the decision by a Republican judge in Montana about what steps a university there had to take in order to compensate for a pattern of neglecting serious charges of sexual harassment and assault, was, in reality, a coded signal by the Obama administration that Brandeis students now had an official mandate to protest the appearance of Condoleeza Rice, thus fulfilling the maximalist dreams of liberal fascists everywhere
ReplyDeleteBy badmouthing the Birchers, he's going to make Chuck and Dave real mad. That's an insult to their daddy!
ReplyDeleteA variation of Poes's Law, if you will.
ReplyDeleteOh, I will; I most definitely will.
ReplyDeleteIs that supposed to be Al Gore?
ReplyDeleteIt finally clicked with me when I recalled Cisalpine Gaul, and now I find it a clever neologism.
ReplyDeleteFuck, you're really going to make me click, aren't you?
ReplyDeleteA once obscure dialect of Klaverian, which is gaining popularity in the western United States...
ReplyDeleteIt's part of the Finko-Ugric family of languages.
ReplyDeleteSprechen Sie Douche?
ReplyDeleteI'd argue that Valve doesn't deserve to be lumped with the rest. I can't afford a lot of new games, since the price has gone through the roof, but when I do shell out the bucks, it's mostly to Valve. Their games are just so much better that others I've played, and there seems to be no sexism to speak of. Alyx Vance is cute, but there zero sex involved, unless it's in the filthy mind of the player. The main (only Human) character of their extremely popular Portal series is female, but again, with zero "fanservice". What I've read of the company tells me there never was a gang of nerds this nerdy, so maybe Newell just rides herd on that aspect of it. "No T&A, guys, no bouncy-bouncy, put clothes on 'em, OK? Just give us a good game." Something like that. As successful as they are, maybe other studios will take the hint...
ReplyDeleteIf it's possible for the left to have its John Birch moment, we're in it.
ReplyDeleteI doubt he's seeing the left as the moderates kicking out the birchers (because for Republicans, kicking out the crazies is a losing proposition) so much as thinking that the moderates are the birchers. People who don't want to work for a homophobe or listen to a war criminal speak are just the same as people who believe that the global Jewish conspiracy is using the civil rights movement as a front for communism.
It seems to me like to a lot of baby boomer conservatives it's always 1968, the Democratic Party is always being taken over by hippies (which didn't even happen back then, but never mind), and the Republicans are somehow still the responsible adults looking on and shaking their heads instead of the political equivalent of a slow-motion losing battle with schizophrenia. Glad to see they're passing that tradition on, I guess. In the media, the Democrats will forever be the party of dirty hippies until the last person who remembers the 60's (spoiler: It's Keith Richards) is in the ground.
All this and still no one's pointed out the copy of Reason on the floor. (Not that I blame you; there's so much to laugh at.) "We're so totally radical that the idealized alpha-male beefcake we invented for our magazine reads our magazine, because that's just how cool he would be if he existed!" The graphic design room must have been just covered in spooge after they finished that one.
ReplyDelete"For God's sake!—quick!—quick!—put me to
ReplyDeletesleep—or, quick!—waken me!—quick!—I say to you
that I am dead!"
I'm a non-gamer, so my perceptions are probably skewed, but it seems like hardcore gaming requires bigger commitments of time, energy and money than similar hobbies, and I hear gamers complaining more than any other group about dickish companies, poorly made games, other gamers, etc. They don't seem liberated, and they sure don't sound like they're having fun.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, Henninger's 'writ' is called "shitty." As in defecation.
ReplyDeleteAnd Vera? Has she no feelings?
ReplyDeleteThe DaVinci Code was crap compared to crap. And the movie was worse. I actually started to wonder if Hanks was on something.
ReplyDeleteIf we're in a liberal era - big if, I'll grant - it falls short for me because there's been too little social spending and too much lexical policing.
ReplyDeletePlay with the sound down and you can listen to John Miller's Top 50 Conservative Rock songs at the same time.
ReplyDeleteGood point - they do act like it's still the freaks vs. the straights. I wonder if Nixon and McGovern were somehow magically reincarnated and on the ballot in 2016, if Nixon would still win?
ReplyDelete"What say of it? What say of CONSCIENCE grim, that spectre in my path?" (Epigraph to Poe's classic tale, "William Kristol".)
ReplyDeleteYeah, doesn't that Droste image just blow your mind?
ReplyDeleteFailing that, doesn't it just blow?
Particularly hilarious is the inclusion of Bioshock, which is structured around a complete and utter trashing of Ayn Rand-ism.
ReplyDeleteThat's the problem with social commentary through art. If your criticism of Movement X is any more subtle and nuanced than having your characters yell "Movement X sucks! Movement X sucks!" on every other page (or... every five minutes of playtime, in this case, I guess) then you can be sure that you will acquire a fandom among Movement X who are sure that you're on their side because, hey, you talked about them without immediately condemning them! What more do you need?
So I'm entirely unsurprised, really. Bioshock does a really good job at showing why Objectivism can be attractive in theory as well as showing why it won't ever work in practice, so real-life libertarians can happily enjoy the first part while ignoring the second. There is also the fact that a large theme in the game is showing the contrast between Andrew Ryan's high-minded philosophy and the fallible human beings who have to implement it, which extends to the reasons for Rapture's fall. That gives libertarian fans the opportunity to go, "it was all going great until Fontaine showed up and Ryan turned hypocrite against his own principles!" This completely ignores the point - that Rapture was practically designed to be the optimal environment for a clever con artist like Fontaine, that Ryan's principles are so self-contradicting that there is no way they were not going to lead him to hypocrisy the first time they were seriously tested - but when has that ever stopped anyone?
Yes, I have thought way too much about this. :P
The right wanted it, but the left wanted it to be a quagmire. It's our stupid fault that the Iraqis didn't greet us with flowers and oral sex.
ReplyDeleteOh yes. I dream of a world where it would not be the case that even the relatively "smart" games keep going "look! Boobs! You like that sort of thing, right? Of course you do, you horny adolescent moron you! Be sure to pick up our next game!" at me.
ReplyDeleteLook, I am no enemy of fanservice, as long as it doesn't get to the point where it distracts from the game/story itself, but could we at least pretend to make it equal? When I feel unfairly pandered to, it makes me feel guilty, and guilt turns me off, thereby ruining the whole point!
Even if it has become an annoyingly trendy term on the left, it is basically just a way to describe people whose gender identity agrees with their socially recognized gender. It is a useful term so we will probably hear more of it in the years to come.
ReplyDeleteFantastic way to sum up the current era of liberalism.
ReplyDelete*sighs* Preach it. And I don't think I even am cisgendered. I think I'm "agender" or something like that.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I feel like a cane-shaking old man. (okay, I almost always feel like a can-shaking old man, but especially much so when it comes to this) "You damn spoiled kids today with your twenty-odd genders! Back in my day, we had to make do with two! If we were lucky!"
It's gotten better, though. For the last few years, we have actually started talking about what we might do, as a society, to make things better. But for most of my life, the assumption among liberals seemed to be that all the problems of the world would be solved by us individually showing more RESPECT for this, that or the other group.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a mentally disabled person, I have found disability compensation to be of far more use to me than any self-conscious RESPECT I might have gotten. Just saying. :P
Booman Tribune awarded this "comment of the day," by the way.
ReplyDeleteI'd read it this way: In their fantasies, Reason subscribers are wealthy executives who have scantily-clad younger women ready to service them. But even in those fantasies, their alters actually prefer interacting with fantasy-squared video sluts rather than with the 'actual' women who (in their fantasies) live with them. In fact, what they really get off on most isn't actual sex, or fantasy sex, or fantasy-within-fantasy sex: it's the fantasy of holding up that fingeer to the imaginary woman, saying "just wait for it, slut; I'll get to you after I've finished with this really hot woman in my video game."
ReplyDeleteOh, the fucking "death panels". Do you know what those really were? The idea was to have a couple doctors and nurses sit down with someone who was getting close to the end of their life and have a chat about what technological interventions they wanted, and how invasive they should get. Pacemaker? Artificial respirator? Feeding tube? A standing DNR order? 'Cause the first three meant you were going to die in a hospital with a shit-ton of tubes stuck in your body. Your choice.
ReplyDelete40% of Medicare dollars get spent on people in their last month of life. ICU beds cost. And let's face it, they're sucky places to be. Most people would trade a few weeks of life in exchange for dying at home, or at least in hospice care with some shred of comfort, instead of just being treated as 157 lbs of flesh that needs to be kept breathing so the room can be billed at $160/hour. Some people would choose to extract every minute of life, and that's their choice. But it should be their choice, not left up to a hospital with its eye on the bottom line.
What gets me about that crowd is what assholes they can be. Like to the level of negating their stated belief in tolerance and acceptance. The jargon is annoying, but a lot of these people are in high school or college and lots of people go through a phase where they latch onto an established philosophy and think it can explain the whole world. These people, however, way too often use it as an excuse to be complete dicks to whoever doesn't meet their standards and think they're entirely justified because their beliefs are so righteous. Yes, a lot like tea partiers in other words, and yes, the two deserve each other.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the era, but the impression I get is that the right took over the world in the 80's and 90's while the left was editing the dictionary. If that's happening again it's all the more shameful because no one's learning from their mistakes.
ReplyDeleteThe one that leaves me baffled are people who say that their gender identity changes, sometimes from day to day, and you'd better keep track or else you're a -phobe.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who thinks that if you're inventing a whole new gender identity because sometimes you act/feel more feminine or more masculine, you're kind of playing into the hands of people who not only want to cast you out as a freak but who think that 'feminine' and 'masculine' are concrete categories with their own sets of behaviors? Aren't you helping your cause more by saying, e.g. "I'm a straight woman who likes acting more masculine sometimes"? I don't get it.
Having that said, though, it looks like a great policy to me. I can see no harm in teachers being extra-special-careful not to favouritise anyone or hurt anyone's feelings. Which is just one more way in which I support any and all efforts from liberals to change the institutions of the world, even though I'm always complaining about liberal jerks lecturing me on my personal life.
ReplyDeleteYou know... I guess that I regard political correctness (for lack of a better phrase) kind of like I regard a gun? I have no objection to seeing it in the hands of a duly appointed authority figure who has been trained in using it responsibly. In fact, I am even willing to admit that in that case, it is probably a useful tool for maintaining the social order. It's seeing it wielded by a self-righteous amateur who's just itching to whip it out and use it to put others in their place that makes me antsy! :P
Hey, possibly we should have some sort of licence exam? "Sir/Ma'am, before we give you free use of the term 'heteronormativity,' we'll need you to read through these descriptions of complex social situations between men and women and check the ones where it can be reasonably assumed that the man is completely at fault and probably a wife-beater." It wouldn't be a trick question, please note - in some of the descriptions, there really would be no reasonable excuse for the man to be anything but a total jerk. And, ooooh, if you failed to check those, you would not only fail the exam, but you would also be legally forbidden from complaining that women were "oversensitive"! Everyone wins!
Oh, and how about this? All higher education would have to feature a mandatory class on the many ways in which the world can and will screw you over for not being a straight while male. And running side by side with it, there would be another mandatory class on the many ways in which the world can and will screw you over no matter the shape, colour and inclination of your genitals. I really think that that would help just about everyone - the conservative morons would get a clue, and the liberal zealots would get some perspective.
... no, sometimes I'm not even sure myself whether I am imagining means of social improvement or performing some sort of bizarre stand-up comedy routine. :P
There simply must be some sort of "in Soviet Russia, noun verbs YOU!" joke to be made from the fact that US conservatives are now looking to Russia as a beacon of conservatism to compare their own country unfavourably to. I just can't quite think of one.
ReplyDeleteSee, this is why I am not too impressed with freedom as a social goal. "Bad things not happening to people very much" always struck me as a much more sensible thing to strive for.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, "give me bad things not happening to people very much or give me death!" doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well...
Yeah. I don't get it either. I mean, I am open to the possibility that there is something to get and that it's just me who can't wrap my head around it (it wouldn't be the first time; my head is strange and hard to wrap around things), but... I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteIn Soviet Russia, Ivan Sech Rozgamis you!
ReplyDeleteTimecube was Euclid compared to this crap.
ReplyDelete"Was it over when the liberals bombed the USS Maddox?"
ReplyDeleteAh, the cover features a Responsible Gun Owner. Note the 3D-printed gun by his foot.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't learnt yer history, man. The Left invaded Vietnam, secretly bombed the shit out of neighboring nations, covered up atrocities, secretly used chemical weapons on battlefields, and notoriously clamped down on protestors (like the Young Republicans at Kent State--fired upon by long-haired National Guardsmen merely for questioning the war they were dying in.
ReplyDeleteThen the Left spent decades defending that war and denying it was an abject failure by every possible definition, practically driven crazy by the obsession to "prove" they were right, until the gift of Iraq fell into their laps, and they could start pointing their fingers at someone else on the hot seat for a change.
Read a book once in a while, libtard.
The LEFT did not clap loudly enough!
ReplyDelete~
You might forget that wingers are terrified of death, by definition. It's why the religion, gun-toting, and anger at anybody "different" to them (potential threat).
ReplyDeleteOf course they are going to cling to every last sucky, painful, dehumanizing breath. Their only concept of "dying with dignity" is someone getting killed in a foreign land protecting Billionaires investments.
Someone's gotta convince them that they are going in the Big Pool anyway, whether they do a joyful, shouting leap from the High Dive, waving to their friends and families all the way down, or whether they ultimately get shoved into the water by frustrated Dad, who had to spend his day off dragging the whiny brat to the pool instead of playing golf.
So, they might as well suck it up and get in the fucking water.
An unconscious acknowledgement that many of those traffic jams are intentional?
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. The medical and legal parts of the "sexual revolution" are barely over (and the reactionaries are trying to stuff them back in the box they popped out of, in case you hadn't noticed) but the cultural part has scarcely started. For most of us, we don't need any language to describe our roles and orientation because we're boring vanilla heterosexuals. Any field has arcane terms once you get into the obscure details--the only reason I know what the word "brunoise" means is because I encountered in an Anthony Bourdain book and looked it up.
ReplyDeleteThat said, its very obscurity can make it a handy tool for badgerment; see also veganism, differently abled, and South African divestiture. Even good ideas can be wielded by tedious bores.
In a couple centuries I suspect a lot more people will be able to say things like, "I think you're cute. Should my genitalia get their hopes up?" in semi-casual conversation...and not get bent out of shape if the answer isn't the one they were hoping for.
Hey, who turned the knob back to 2002?
ReplyDeleteHelping relatives die when they want to? You are so triggering me.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Syed. This is a blog that's mostly about boats. We only appreciate boat-related spam.
ReplyDeleteNo, because Tea Partiers would be pissed that the magical reincarnation had been wasted on Nixon rather than used on all-seeing all-knowing Ronald Reagan.
ReplyDeleteHey, Tom Hanks has to eat. He's got bills, same as the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteNot Jefferson Davis?
ReplyDeleteI regard political correctness (for lack of a better phrase) kind of like I regard a gun
ReplyDeleteInteresting metaphor.
Yes, because Davis could actually win a Republican primary these days, whereas Nixon with his EPA and OSHA and Reagan with his amnesty for immigrants would not.
ReplyDeleteThey'd do it to piss off the left, if nothing else.
ReplyDeleteCisalpine Gaul would be a good name for a burlesque performer.
ReplyDeleteProbably made sure Audrey Tautou would never be in another Hollywood English-language flick.
ReplyDeleteStill-tapping keyboard.
ReplyDeleteAND YET, STILL SHE BLOGS.
It was called the Chomsky Doctrine.
ReplyDelete'Lexical policing' is very nearly free. Social spending is an enduring nationwide wide commitment to the health and well being of even its most marginalized or reviled members. Which do you think is easier to implement?
ReplyDeleteBut I won't even grant that much. 'Lexical policing' as you call it, just means acknowledgement of differences and referring to people as they wish to be referred. It's important too. Developing a vocabulary to talk about, for example trans- people as if they were actual people instead of freaks, is a good start.
Cisalpine Gal?
ReplyDelete[Looks up guiltily from control panel]
ReplyDeleteWell, if the Left are supposed to be genuinely responsible for the Iraq clusterfuck, someone has to.
To the dismay of some on the left.
ReplyDeleteStill, mere protest doesn't always work.
ReplyDeleteGuest, 'twas I.
ReplyDeleteStart the playlist right when you start the game, and everything syncs up.
ReplyDeleteSays you.
ReplyDeleteLol is the Laugh out of Laugh
Yes. YES. Bow before Lol, the very Laugh out of Laugh
Itself! Lol dispenseth cheeseburgers upon the faithful. Lol afflicteth the unworthy with fits of ROFL, yea, even unto LTAO. All praise be to Lol.
the Kenyon Kim Il Sung!
ReplyDeleteI see what you did there.
It's always "facism" to the wingnuts, especially the males whom are never ever wrong about anything because they breathe, when people just don't want to see/hear their asshattery. It never dawns them that maybe if they weren't such assholes people would not reject them so often.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about that phrase for a few Friedman Units.
ReplyDeleteFor decades a woman in NY and I worked with the same people on similar stuff but never met. Finally we did and we're good friends. She introduced me to her son about 3 years ago. I saw him in his room, at his desk, for 30 seconds. Two years later she announced on FB (proudly, happily) that he was now a she.
ReplyDeleteShe used the term "cis" on FB and I had to look it up. But why not? A lot of us grew up thinking that boys were always boys and girls were always girls. If part of expanding our understanding of the world requires learning some new vocab, that's not asking too much.
...of, at best, predictable platitudes, but probably revisionist bullshit and GOP agitprop and predictable platitudes?
ReplyDeleteThis. Note, too, that he's sitting on the edge of a mattress covered with a sheet. If it were any more uncomfortable it would count as yoga. What, no La-Z-Boy command module in your man cave?
ReplyDeleteNow you're in Glenn Reynolds territory!
ReplyDelete...and we all had a feeling of dismay, this May.
ReplyDeleteCissy Paycheck?
ReplyDeletePoe's Law? I want Cole's law!
ReplyDeleteIn the good old Sumnertime, in the good old Sumnertime...
ReplyDeleteYour contracts may have "Equity Consultants" but there is no Sanity Clause!
ReplyDeleteI get it, Cole. See if it wasn't for the Left's tendency to protest wars, we wouldn't need to have them. But how else can we figure out who the bad guys are, if we don't attack another country and see who is traitorous enough to protest?
ReplyDeleteIf the Left would stop protesting wars, we could stop having them!
I think you hit on part of what bugs me about it there - you had to look it up. I think the bit about announcing on FB that he was now a she would have covered it pretty well.
ReplyDelete"You might forget that wingers are terrified of death, by
ReplyDeletedefinition--it's why the religion, gun-toting, and anger at anybody
"different" to them (potential threat)."
Really? I would have said they're afraid of life--i.e., of (here's irony for you) freedom itself. Anything "different," "non-conformist," "weird," "artistic," Bohemian, "liberated," sexually unconventional, etc., etc.
Isn't their most motivating emotion resentment? And all their hate and disdain directed at ways of living, as opposed to the behavior of institutions? I don't know any wingers personally, but to me it looks as though they lack the imagination to fear death.
"instead of the political equivalent of a slow-motion losing battle with schizophrenia"
ReplyDelete==solid gold. I'm going back to bed (it's 8 am in LA). I can't top this.
...can you come out tonight, come out tonight?
ReplyDelete...AAAAND SCENE. Excellent thread, people. Give yourself a hand.
ReplyDeleteWow, you guys are way out there. I regard "political correctness" as simple fucking manners, and giving people the same respect I would like to get.
ReplyDeleteNothing more to it than that.
Remember how the liberals attacked Mitt Romney, even though he was a highly decorated war hero, for opposing the war when he came home?
ReplyDeleteNEVAR FERGIT!!!
Great. I'm not sure any of us here are going to be offended if no one refers to us as cisgendered, so that relieves me of the fear that I'm being rude by not using it.
ReplyDelete"an enduring nationwide wide commitment to the health and well being of even its most marginalized or reviled."
ReplyDeleteOr maybe, just a commitment to raising kids healthy enough to join the volunteer Army.
I wasn't clear. She used "cis" on FB a year later in another context--a list of characteristics one is born with, that one might take for granted. I don't expect to use it my own daily discourse but I didn't mind discovering I didn't know it.
ReplyDeleteI'd settle for that.
ReplyDeleteAll those observations seen accurate to me, but I would argue that they are inspired by an all-consuming, dreadful fear of death. It keeps them from enjoying (or even noticing) life.
ReplyDeleteNormal people find ways to accommodate the certainty of death, and so live more fully.
Not wingnuts.
That's because there ain't no... Oh, you know.
ReplyDeleteOf course you're right that "political correctness" is simply another word for manners. I think Roy has demonstrated more than once that those who claim to "defy" it are really only frustrated that they do not control it.
ReplyDeleteOh, but I do give people the same respect I would like to get.
ReplyDeleteOr more to the point, I give people the same respect I feel that I deserve. And since my self-esteem has been thoroughly smashed to pieces to the point where I don't see that I have any particular to be alive, much less to be respected, that just happens to be very little indeed.
Those oh-so-sensitive-and-polite social justice crusaders did at least half of the smashing, by the way. Since we're talking about being heartily sick of stuff.
Someone pointed out to me a while back that every single actor is a temp employee, and there's no telling when they'll become unemployable. One could get arrested for the wrong thing (DUI okay, drunken anti-semitic rants not so much) or the tastes of the public can change. Stephanie Courtney (Progressive Insurance) has an okay gig right now...but at some point it's going to end, and she 's going to be unemployable unless she changes her appearance significantly.
ReplyDeleteIf someone offers you a job, you smile and ask what time you need to show up. Even when you're Tom Hanks. I imagine it's easier when there's a seven-figure check attached.
Yep. And that's how you get things like Jaws 3 and Laurence Olivier in Clash of the Titans.
ReplyDeleteI remember an interview with Michael Caine where he said much that same thing.
Who can forget the thrilling end to Poe's "The Tell-tale Goldberg"?
ReplyDelete"IT WAS THE BLEATING OF HIS HIDEOUS FAAAAAART!"
Which is why they're so freakin' thrilled to read good scripts, like the Bale Batmen. And it shows in the film.
ReplyDeleteI want to strip the context-free grammar right off of this comment and then do naughty, naughty things with it...
ReplyDeleteJenn,
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I've seen it, but I'm happy that my Latin is still holding up.
The thing that bugs me about officialise lists like this is they look to me like some lawyer trying to delimit exactly who it is they want to discriminate against.
In a sane world you would just say "We expect you to behave decently here," and then you'd occasionally throw a very few people out.
Somewhat similarly, Canada has over the last generation drifted a long way in the American literalist/legalist direction on civil rights and public decency issues. I'm not at all sure that this is a good thing -- but I'm unsure in both directions.
Cheers,
-dlj.
PS: BTW, I used to spend my childhood summer on a farm just outside Rouen -- where Jean d'Arc was burned in the same town square that's there today.
-d.
more,that is still you may do something to expand on it.yhanks for sharing with us.I think I am going the clearness in your post is simple spectacular and I can take for granted you are an expert on the field.Well with your permission.Like your way of seeing this things. i'll be checking in on a regularly now....keep up the good work.
ReplyDelete