Author: David

Where Doing The Obvious Is Out Of The Question

Forward! You Might Be A Liberal 3 Comments

On radical flouncing; on the self-induced panic attacks of an empowered feminist; on being bare-arsed in a terribly radical way; and how to deter muggers with tiny bits of cardboard:

The cards, we’re assured, are “a concrete way to deal with an unsafe situation.” Perhaps we can look forward to the issuing of “I am being stabbed” cards. And some “The man next to me is masturbating” cards. It does have the makings of an unhappy board game.

You see, by issuing little cards, they’re creating “new social norms.” To supposedly address the problem of having created other “new social norms” in which punishing criminals is deemed unjust, racist, and terribly old-fashioned.

All this, and other progressive wonders.

On The Difficulties Of Satisfying Progressive Women

If Women Ran The World 2 Comments

Before we go further, it’s perhaps worth pondering how the conceit of “emotional labour” is typically deployed by a certain type of woman. Say, the kind who complains, in print and at great length, about the “emotional labour” of hiring a servant to clean her multiple bathrooms. Or writing a shopping list. Or brushing her daughter’s hair.

The kind of woman who would moan about the chore of choosing a holiday that her husband is paying for. And for whom explaining to her husband the concept of “emotional labour” is itself bemoaned as “emotional labour.” The final indignity.

One of these.

A Restaurant Review, The Progressive Way

The Tolerant Left 11 Comments

In which, Ms Lily Kaplan bravely mouths the conceits of her peers and educators.

And so, not knowing or caring, Ms Kaplan felt entitled to smear a local business, for likes and online clout, with a pre-emptively “unfriendly review,” in which she somehow associates the selling of tacos and carrot cake with “racism, misogyny and paedophilia,” and while describing the opening of a restaurant by two white men as representing “centuries of patriarchy,” and “such a bummer.”

As you might imagine, she’s a real charmer.

Debate, But Not As We Know It

Media 1 Comment

Yes, a series in which the entire breadth of conceivable political thought – as imagined by the Guardian‘s intellectual powerhouse Zoe Williams – is given an airing. And where left-leaning teachers, left-leaning writers and left-leaning university administrators discuss just how awful and stupid those non-leftwing people are, and whether Net Zero is super-imperative or just really, really important.

A series in which totally random Guardian readers – sorry, totally random members of the public – encounter “the opposite point of view,” while chewing on kale and butternut squash. Except that they both vote Green and are named Tamsin and Matilda.

I’m reading the Guardian to spare you the pain.

We Mustn’t Let Them See The Facts

Forward! Media 7 Comments

On attempts by Flemish state TV to hide unsavoury migrant attitudes:

The seemingly routine attempt to deceive does rather invalidate the ostensible core function of this publicly funded organisation. It throws everything they do into question. How could one possibly trust them? It quite literally wipes out their credibility as a broadcaster. And by extension, any claim to public funding or favoured status.

In a saner world, it would be the end of them.

I say ostensible function because it’s not altogether obvious – to say the least – how one could reconcile some supposed broadcaster’s mission to convey the facts, and to bring into being an informed citizenry, with doing everything possible to prevent precisely that.

But remember, dear citizen, we must pretend even harder.

 

The Pulling Of Faces

If Women Ran The World 3 Comments

It’s the facial theatre – the ‘eww’ face – the seeming incredulity that an obvious variable should be considered as an obvious variable. A thing one might need to address in order to solve the problem being discussed. As if considering such things – even suggesting that one might consider them – were beyond the pale, somehow scandalous or beneath rebuttal.

I’ve seen this same facial theatre many times, not least among left-leaning women who’ve been appointed to positions for which they are clearly ill-suited. An observation that would itself most likely result in the ‘eww’ face.

It seems very much related to niceness, or some desire for the appearance of niceness. As if niceness, so conceived, should be the sole measure of rightness. And so, any suggestion that one might have to consider a course of action at odds with that niceness is met with theatrical disbelief, as if one had belched very loudly during a wedding ceremony.

On facial theatre in a progressive age.

Literary World Unveils Doomsday Machine

Forward! The Arts 5 Comments

Fintan O’Toole, literary editor of the Irish Times, calls for a “national arts strike” to extort further cash from the taxpayer. “The public has to be reminded that it really does care,” says he. And until more wallets land on the bonfire of publicly funded art, the nation’s creative titans should “close the arts centres” and “hold no poetry readings.”

One of these.

When Your Country Is Just A Hotel

Forward! 6 Comments

Or some holiday resort:

Because, says Mr Gold, our pronoun-stipulating essayist, a sense of connection with one’s home, one’s territory, one’s ancestry and how one came to be, is “utterly arbitrary.” A thing of no importance, unworthy of consideration. Says he, or he/him, “The only sensible form of government is one-world government.”

You see, becoming even less important, even smaller in relation to the steering of the ship, one of billions instead of millions, is a good thing, it turns out. And that irrelevance is sensible, a thing to which the rest of us should apparently aspire. Star Trek, I fear, has much to answer for.

A glimpse into the mind of the scrupulously progressive.

 

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