A Rare Moment of Praise for The Owl, (but zeroed out.)

 I respect what she said about that racist movie, made by racists, called, "Am I Racist?"

They are racists because, only a racist would think it would be a good idea to make a movie making fun of racism.  To start a project to belittle anti racism, is to support actual racism, actually.  Sometimes life is that simple!  Sure, they would say they were going after some hustlers  and well meaning but wrong minded people who just happen to see racism everywhere  (it is, actually.  Said broadly without going on a tangent.)

So I criticize her for putting money in those racist's pockets!  Bad Owl.  Very bad!

"That sums up what bothered me about the movie. The filmmaker had an agenda, so I couldn't trust him to be fair to the people he was tricking. And of course, tricking them itself is unfair. The fact that he lured them by paying the fees they demanded — including $50,000 for one women — might make some people think they deserved what they got."

But her take is sort of  . . .  objective and reasoned:  But anyone could have come to tat conclusion with out watching the movie after paying money for a ticket and thereby supporting the racists who made it.

So the financial support for the project cancels out any props for her take on it.

Confession.   I am someone who was talking about the need for antiracism, more than three decades ago.  I do not appreciate the mission of attacking DEI and all of the anti racist endeavors.  Some people might think I am being unfair in calling the idea and motivation behind this movie to have been and remains,  mostly to "publish" racist propaganda.  But there is more to it than that.  They are making some money on it.  Come to think of it.  This is the major takeaway from the project.

On group of grifters set out to "expose" another alleged group of alleged grifters. 

But the targets are in it at least partly, if not greatly, for a higher purpose.  After all.  If the anti racists succeed.  Then they are going to have to find something else to do.  But the actual efforts by the people behind this project show, there still are way the fuck too many racists in America.  Accuse them of being in it for the money all ya like.  But the anti racists are not going to run out of racism to fight, any time soon.

So the movie ultimately proves the need for anti racists.  

I am not endorsing Marxism, but

 Way I like to say it is.  During the hey day of Atlantic Caribbean piracy, the main difference between Royal Navy and the pirates was, the RN had better clothes and hygiene. 

Not to just pick on the RN.  Colonialism was the longest time of the greatest extent, crime against humanity.  Actually.

She is a Bespoke Car Wreck. On to "The Crisis of Culture."

 I am only a couple weeks into detox from Glenn Loury and his side kick, John McWhorter's sometimes joint video chats. I call them both Black white supremacist sympathizers, enablers.  Because any Black man who buys into  the baseless, infantile, and ignorant lies about "western" cultural superiority is behaving exactly like white supremacist sympathizers, enablers would. And therefore have earned that description.  But wait.  There is more coming about idiots who don't really understand culture to come!

One of the reasons I go to the Owl's blog is, she is one of those on-paper smart people, who often says such unintentionally funny shit, I want to see  how she is embarrassing herself, nearly daily, but I do take breaks from her shit.  But usually, it is like back in the day when I used to read a daily tabloid newspaper, and had to check my favorite funnies.  But oftentimes, she is just tiresome.  Like today.  Not so much because of the article that caught her eye and posted about.  But tiresome because she went into grammar/syntax Nazi mode.  And the only thing more tiresome than a spelling Nazi  could be a grammar/syntax Nazi.  Anyway . . .

It was some review of sorts about some social commentary book, by some guy called,"The Crisis of Culture."  He's French.  That flavor of French.  The kind of tiresome Frenchman who has the time and inclination to bemoan the mash up of cultures.  

I have an earned degree in Theatre.  That is a variant of an academic program in culture, as Theatre even more that lit, is the original human storytelling tradition.  Our stories are greatly a reflection of and a record of our cultures.  So I call bullshit on the hypothesis.  All cultures we pay any attention to, have been mashed up with other cultures, going back thousands of years. That is an easily verifiable fact.   And you need not earn a degree in Theatre, World Lit, ot World History to learn that factoid! Anyone who denies that is a practiced, ignorant fool.   Now let me really digress.

I have been seeing reports that the "posh" British accent is actually a modern recent thing.  And as well, that the Elizabethan era accent should have sounded more like American English than the posh one.  Marvellous!  Just another fine example of the stupid shit people think they know, but is flat out wrong!

Anyway, I skipped the article she posted, and googled the scholar, Oliver Roy.  and found a critique.

From that:  

"The Crisis of Culture is therefore best read as an insightful and often brilliant theoretical framework that can fall apart when applied to the specific human actions it is meant to explain. To understand why old systems and cultures have become pathologized, it does not suffice to claim that they have simply disappeared, or exist only as innocuous folklorème. They are still with us, even if only in the guise of radicalism—calling for performative action."

Whatever, Trevor.  And by saying that, I am being deliberately, partially dismissive of that guy, too.  In this critique, as well as the book, the multi headed beast called appropriation, rears up.  I am not going long on that shit.  But since I approach these matters from the POV, that before America was a melting pot, Western Europe was.  And before Western Europe was. the Mid East was.  I will move on to the really important question, where the international version of culture wars are concerned.

Which faction is the most tiresome?  Cultural purists who bemoan the  mashing up of cultural shit, or the other kind, who lose their shit when ever some minor facet of "their" culture gets used by other humans?

I think both are insufferable.   Actually.   But I am a big fan of The Silk Road Ensemble, and Rhiannon Giddens is my Musical Warrior Goddess.

rhiannongiddens.com

silkroad.org

 

Like A Toddler Playing With It's Own Poo

 I don't get the appeal of Joe Rogan. Like the text on the image says.  Some people find him curious, apparently in an admirable way.  Now me?  I see his curiousity like an absent-minded toddler playing with it's own poo.  It's not an "intellectual" kind of curiousity.  It's more about not knowing anything about anything.  Toddlers know nothing about anything.

We know his podcast is popular.  And he is is rich beyond reason, given his thin talent.  And he is younger and more fit than I am.  But.  I just don't get it.  But my curiosity had me reading the NY Times starting in sixth grade.  And as well, digging in on the 18th century philosophers.

I don't say that as a brag.  I am one of those nerds.  I can talk at length about Age of Enlightenment theory, and pivot to reciting, or at least remarking about my favorite Monty Python sketches.

Oh.  The reason for visiting this subject?  There is some untrustworthy article on the Atlantic, written by some transphobic Brit chick, worshipping Rogan and how, allegedly he is remaking Austin because he has a new comedy club there?

I tend to distrust on line reports about trends, unless being reported by known cool kids with a track record of being ahead of the culture curve.  I am not saying there is not some retro resurgence of 70s style misogynistic, unfunny content bubbling up, hither and yon.    I am calling bullshit on the pedestal placing, here.

My long, by now, time remark is.  There is a market for that.  I am not that market.  And just because someone on the interwebnetubes says something is the new shit, doesn't mean it really is the shit.  It likely is just shit.

Rare edit to add:

I have read the whole article.  She never got to interview Rogan.  He don't do that.  She was less worshipful than I thought, based on the chunks I saw this morning. But ya know . . . 

Admitting my bias.  Some thing she did not do.  I have issues with normalizing conspiracy theories, and or the loons who spew that kind of shit.  But to be a little fair.  She did highlight that the Rogan bros are more likely to trust individuals than institutions.  Sure. We should not put total faith in institutions.  But we should put no faith at all in what inexperienced, un credentialed bros have to say.  Fuck that.

And speaking of bros.  I really dislike people as a baseline.  But I really dislike "bros." 

I will end there, but to say.  It's not that human stupidity is greater planet-wide now, than in the past.  But some idiot bros or babes can get fame and fortune, on line.  Without having any appreciable draw.  But for others thinking:

They think like I do.  They are like me.  Let me give that person my time, and money, and support.

What a fucked up species!

A large chunk of it, seems.

 

How Best To Succinctly Describe What Is Wrong With America's Government.

It's an anachronistic inadequacy.

I meant to go short here. But that new line of mine comes from a post I made last night, on my FB wall. Where most of my output goes. I started off with the following observation:

Our government is too bespoke for a certain time and place. The late 18th early 19th century, for the slave economy of the victorious former Brit North American colonies. And here I add. Yes. They did set up a government that in theory, was capable of reform, to avoid the kinds of repetitive civil and other domestic wars, that plagued the British Islands for centuries. And less than 80 years in, the US had a major, ugly, bloody civil war of it's own.

And back then after the war, and ever since. The nation has failed to fix the shitty government, that was designed for a specific time and place, where slave owning and anti slave states could agree to a framework for a functioning national government. Which arguably yet functions. But in lots of ways, badly. And seems to, if not makes something close to another civil war inevitable? Could lead to a dictatorship. A mean, ugly and stupid, government led by a figurehead who sees all there is as believing to them. Like a nightmarish, cartoonish version of the monarchy the colonies rebelled against. Never mind, that by the time of the Hanoverian kings, the divine rights of kings was a thing of the past, in Britain, at least.

Now I Fucking Get it! (Again!)

 I accidentally looked at the Owl's about page, for her blog.  Maybe not for the first time, but read what she says about herself:

"Please note that Althouse has an aversion to politics."

She is to politics, what an anti-vaxxer is to the sub field of immunology, which researches and develops vaccines.

In other, meaning my words, fucking useless, and you should not pay any mind at all to what they say about the topic.

I am not  not  not   making any statement on her beliefs about vaccination.  I am making an analogy, only.

I Am Not Gonna Call Her An Anti Semite, But I Will, Tucker Carlson.

 For his platforming of that fake, meaning uncredentialled historian, who has a long history of being some kind of Nazi-worshiping Holocaust denier, minimizer, apologist.  Not only that, but Carlson lavished such praise on this Nazi lover it's way past the often dishonest, just allowing alternative views to be heard, bullshit.  There was approval.  Oh.  And JD Vance isn't distancing himself from Carlson, and will go forward with some public engagement with the Nazi lover, lover.

What does the Owl have to do with this?  Nothing.  She hasn't commented on it yet.  I am not going to do an inventory.  But she really doesn't to my mind, pay all that much attention to Republican white supremacist bullshit.  Meaning, she doesn't call that shit out in a quick and predictable, disdainful way. At a minimum, not enough to meet my decent people standards.   Just saying.

But hey.  She might catch up with the rest of the politically aware blogospehere, and comment on this.  But I am not holding my breath.

Oh.  One more thing.  Unlike Vance, I do believe in guilt by association.  After all.  You can't really know what is someone's deeply held beliefs.  All we get to judge people by is what they say, what they do, and who they choose to associate with.   And all three do not always line up.  Sometimes they do.  Like with Carlson and Vance.  And Vance did not kick Carlson to the curb.  I judge him for that, and harshly.

STAR TREK Logical Thinking #69 - Special Pleading (Selective Adherence)

Brush up on your logic skills!

The Owl, Who Has Admitted She Knows Nothing About Politics, Makes a Coo Coo Coca Puffs Prediction.

 Years ago.  When she would get invited to do bloggingheads vids.  I remember seeing her this one time.  She really said she really knows nothing about politics.  And then spent the next ten or more minutes proving it, by talking politics.  It's my favorite memory of her.   Anyway this.

I don't think anyone else has this exact scenario on their bingo cards.  We shall see, but ya know?  Only one of the two debate participants has been acting as if they don't want to do it.  And schockingly not.  It's the older one.  The orange troll who seems to be in cognitive decline.  I would go so far and say it doesn't look like ordinary pre senile dementia.  If I had to guess, there is some non age related cognitive loss of function.  As well, there could be lifetime of greater than average, physical damage due to poor lifestyle, diet, and otherwise health issues related damage.  And there is the mini stroke thing.  How many tiny mini strokes has he had over the past 30 or more years?  It could be greatly some cumulative effect.  

Let me google that.  Generally.  

Yeah.  I have a very sound theory of possible organic, neurological disease, for bozo.  

I am going to pass on directly speculating about what the Owl's brain scan's would show.  But I have a friend who is a professor of neuroscience.   I would be very interested in what he would say, evaluating her film.

But It Is About Race. Racial Privilege!

White mediocrity.  Maybe the reason so many white people are perfectly happy to have low expectations for white boys is drilled into their vapid, inferior brains so relentlessly from birth, it is just too dominant.  A white person has to be exceptionally intuitive, smart, and curious, to do the thinking, and analysis, and arrive at the correct conclusion.  America isn't a meritocracy.  What it is is a society of racist privilege, and the ruling faction has such wide and great control, they can have extremely low standards for their own.

After posting that vid about stupid orange bad man's excuse for being a barely coherent idiot, and calling out that ex law professor for (as she did on her blog) in some way shape or form, communicating the idea stupid orange bad man might be some kind of genius.  I put the two ideas together.  America has for the most part and most time, had very low standards for white boys.  And oddly enough, many think they are genetically superior.  Stupid orange bad man, is the poster child/troll for that shit, those people.

I am not going to go long here.  Google the issue.  Read the book.  But I want to take one more run at the Owl.

Yo! Lady!  When you were a law professor, how would you have graded a student's paper if the format/style was like bozo speaking at one of his rallies?  If you had to slog and suffer through 20 rambling, incoherent pages before the student finally made their point, would you reward them or penalize them?

Curious minds want to know.

 

Trump praises his own rambling as part of brilliant strategy called 'the...

It's one thing for the orange poster child for Dunning-Kruger to insist his incoherence is genius.  It's an entirely different matter when retired law professors say that.

Shame on you  Owl.  Particularly for being so shameless.  And an apologist for the dimwitted dictator,