davidthompson

The Giant Testicles Told Me

Jonathan Kay shares the, um, joys of fully intersectional Canadian television:

The taxpayer-funded media colossus known as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has unveiled a new show called Lido TV, in which a pair of talking tomatoes (they look like testicles, but apparently they’re supposed to be vegetables) deliver woke sermons to whoever is so unfortunate as to hit the play button… After video clips from this self-parodic mess went viral, it emerged that Lido’s production company has been bankrolled in the high-five figures (at least) by public funds. Your (Canadian) tax dollars at work.

Viewers of pallor will doubtless be entranced by 20-minute episodes titled Colonialism and Privilege, and stern lectures - delivered by the host, singer Lido Pimienta, and two giant, talking testicles - on just how bigoted and generally awful their collective ancestors were, and how this historical beastliness is, “like, affecting all of us, all of the time, on every level.” Likewise, viewers unpolluted by pallor will be empowered and destined to flourish, armed with the knowledge that any failure or shortcoming in their lives, almost any resentment, can be traced back to, and promptly blamed on, the aforementioned colonialism, privilege, and pale devilry.

The boggling awfulness of the project - applauded by Maclean’s as “subversive” and “surrealist political edutainment,” the work of a “polymath” - isn’t easy to convey in words. Happily, clips are available. And yes, an entire episode. If your idea of a good time includes pretentious displays of indigenous authenticity, rambling, barely relevant interviews, and excruciating sketches about land acknowledgement, this is the one for you.

Update, via the comments:

Unknowable Bodies

Time for an open thread, I think. In which to share links and bicker.

Oh, and over on the shopping channel QVC, the conversation turns to higher matters. 

Transporter Malfunction (2)

Via Mr William Shatner, I’ll just leave this here. 

What was I saying? Oh yes, open thread. Share links and bicker.

Not Entirely Inspiring

I don’t often comment on the particulars of party politics, but it seemed unfair to deprive you of a chance to witness this 30-minute BBC interview, in which the leader of the Labour Party has a spot of bother. Of particular interest is the final question, around 25 minutes in.  

Those seeking reassurance can of course turn to the words of Laurie Penny. 

Elsewhere (292)

David Solway on the feminist enthusiasm for fatness: 

In a speech on the topic of “radical fat liberation” jointly sponsored by the Women and Gender Studies Department and the Centre for Equity and Inclusion at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, the prodigiously overweight Sonalee Rashatwar, a self-proclaimed Fat Sex Therapist, compared fitness trainers to Nazis, defined child dieting as sexual assault, attributed the Christchurch shooting to ‘thin” white supremacism, and condemned science as “fataphobic” for “promoting the idea that certain bodies are fit, able and desirable.” She wonders, rhetorically, “is it my fatness that causes my high blood pressure, or is it my experience of weight stigma?” She goes on to blame the Reagan administration for having refused to provide “social supports that also help me to subsidise my food costs.” 

When not equating routine health advice with eugenics and “Nazi science,” Ms Rashatwar claims that “diet culture and fat phobia are forms of sexual violence.” Mr Solway is the husband of Janice Fiamengo, whose own probing of feminist pathology has been mentioned here before.

Heather Mac Donald on cooking the books for “diversity”: 

The average white score on the SAT (1,123 out of a possible 1,600) is 177 points higher than the average black score (946), approximately a standard deviation of difference. This gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels... 

Those who rail against “white privilege” as a determinant of academic achievement have a nagging problem: Asians. Asian students outscore white students on the SAT by 100 points; they outscore blacks by 277 points. It is not Asian families’ economic capital that vaults them to the top of the academic totem pole; it is their emphasis on scholarly effort and self-discipline. Every year in New York City, Asian elementary school students vastly outperform every other racial and ethnic group on the admissions test for the city’s competitive public high schools, even though a disproportionate number of them come from poor immigrant families.

Somewhat related, on racism as an excuse. And related to that, on the absurd and rather sinister Implicit Association Test.

Disgruntlement Detected

This made me chuckle. I’m not sure whether Nancy Pelosi has much control over her face, so her expressions can be quite difficult to read; though I’m guessing her applause was not entirely enthusiastic. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, was less inscrutable.

No Peeking

When they’re not looking, set the parental controls on the TVs of your family members to block Fox News. 

Quick quiz. Pretentious teenager or sociology professor?

Laurie Has A Sister

And so, 

Lifted from the comments, where Jen asks an inevitable question, 

Does she think Israel is ‘whiter’ than Estonia?

Geographically and demographically, it’s all rather confusing. What with the violent logic of whiteness. But like so many others, the above isn’t a load-bearing statement; it’s just there for effect. To alert us to an eruption of wokeness, and therefore superiority. Eleanor Penny, by the way, is not only an editor for Red Pepper, but also a senior editor for Novara Media. Where socialists and feminists, and socialist feminists, rub their throbbing brains until something oozes out.

Via Obnoxio. 

Reheated (52)

For newcomers, more items from the archives:

He’s Being Rugged, And We Can’t Have That. 

Transvestite potter says Bear Grylls is a bad influence, denounces masculinity as “useless” and “counter-productive.” 

It’s true that rafting skills and urine-drinking may be niche concerns and of obvious practical use only to explorers, hardy outdoors types, and people whose package holidays have gone catastrophically wrong. But – and it’s quite a big one - there’s something to be said for seeing people in unfamiliar and rather trying circumstances achieving more – sometimes much more - than they thought they ever could. Which is both the premise and appeal of Mr Grylls’ various, quite popular TV programmes. However, showing people that they may be much more capable than they previously believed, resulting in a sense of great personal satisfaction, is apparently unimportant, a mere “hangover” from more primitive, less Guardian-friendly times.

She’s Seething With Empowerment. 

Polite man holds door open for woman. Woman starts screaming.

No amount of public speaking or articles in the Guardian is likely to have much effect on how people in general may view the eye-catchingly rotund in terms of physical attractiveness. It’s a pointless endeavour, like shouting at rain. The more practical alternative, the one over which a person might exert some actual leverage, is losing weight, such that one can breathe properly and is not in continual discomfort, as the author admits, or not becoming quite so huge in the first place. Thereby avoiding the mental and emotional complications exhibited above, such as acting like a mad woman and bullying a stranger for being nice to you.  

Flatter, Mythologize, Rinse, Repeat. 

According to the New York Times, Laurie Penny is oppressed, and also a cyborg.

By all means take a moment to realign your mind with the notion of Ms Penny as a “cyborg” writer and in some way marginalised - “marked as other” – and struggling against the pressures of not being heard. Except of course when she’s on TV, or Five Live, or Radio 4, or when airing her various and bewildering concerns in the pages of the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Independent.

There’s more, should you want it, in the greatest hits. And tickling the tip jar is what keeps this place afloat. 

Sisterhood, You Say?

I don’t, as a feminist, want to undermine your earning capacity, but…

Tim Newman finds plenty to poke at in a clip from This Morning, about feminism and glamour models in televised darts competitions. Do note who condescends and does the interrupting.

Elsewhere (261)

Further to the recent, eye-widening exchange between Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman, Conor Friedersdorf on scandalous paraphrasing: 

In the interview, Newman relies on this technique [of perverse rephrasing] to a remarkable extent, making it a useful illustration of a much broader pernicious trend. Peterson was not evasive or unwilling to be clear about his meaning. And Newman’s exaggerated restatements of his views mostly led viewers astray, not closer to the truth… One of the most important things this interview illustrates — one reason it is worth noting at length — is how Newman repeatedly poses as if she is holding a controversialist accountable, when in fact, for the duration of the interview, it is she that is “stirring things up” and “whipping people into a state of anger.”

Fabian Tassano on “critical thinking”: 

It is interesting that the scholars feel able to announce in advance, on behalf of their own students, and the students of other history tutors at Oxford, a decision on whether students will engage with the [Ethics and Empire] project. One might think that the ability to “think critically” would include openness to ideas from heterodox perspectives, as well as the capacity to decide for oneself, independently of one’s tutors, whether a source of information is worthy of consideration. One has to remember, however, that the word “critical” may have a special technical meaning in the context of the humanities.

Via Claire Lehmann, Kerryn Pholi on Aboriginal taboos: 

Those who mourn the demise of Aboriginal culture almost always regard things from the viewpoint of the men, who were indeed dispossessed of their land, and subsequently their traditions and status. Land wasn’t the only item of property they lost, however. They also lost or traded their women to the settlers, and this absorption – along with frontier warfare and disease – rapidly eroded tribal structures and doomed Aboriginal traditions to obsolescence. The settlers arrived with a wealth of goods and a shortage of females, and they were generally less enthusiastic about beating women than was customary in Aboriginal culture… The men lost a lot in the invasion, while the women had little to lose and plenty to gain.

And Joe Katzman on leftism as a never-ending status game: 

Do you have any doubt about the left’s hatred for those who will not stay in their assigned status? Have you noticed their quickness to turn on their own allies? Fail to follow the latest fad, and your status is demoted. Perhaps you’ve noticed that endlessly callous virtue signalling is the identifying badge of our modern try-hard Striver Class. Maybe that’s because American public education is now a 20-year Milgram Experiment, where the meta-message inside political correctness is to override your own judgement, in favour of deliberately-shifting judgements from people with higher status. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues.

Very much related, the second item here. 

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

At All Costs, Paraphrase

Or, A Demonstration Of Patience.

“You’re saying we should organise our societies along the lines of the lobsters…”

In this largely unedited video, Channel 4’s Cathy Newman interviews Jordan Peterson. 

I use the word interview quite loosely. In fact, I propose a drinking game, in which you take a shot of tequila every time Ms Newman somehow misses the point entirely and interrupts with the words, “You’re saying…”