Category Archives: The Culture

Through white-privilege sunglasses

Posted on December 30, 2014 | 3 comments

Hey, it’s what college students and their professors do these days: scoping out white privilege. Especially the ones who got poor grades in science and math.

“It’s important to remember that ‘white’ doesn’t mean ‘white’ any more than The Patriarchy refers to biological males, of which there is no such thing. Whiteness, like Maleness is modified by ideology, party affiliation and above all their place in the Narrative.  Spotting  social oppressors requires knowledge acquired in courses like Gender or Racial studies the same way people needed special sunglasses to see the aliens among us in the movie They Live….

“…one of the dangers to reality being all in the mind is you can think you’ve been a good guy all your life and suddenly realize you’re Darth Vader. Like Franz Kafka’s narrator in Metamorphosis, you may wake up one day to find yourself transformed into a gigantic cockroach. It’s a shocking realization but one you should be open to.”

Because if you’re not willing to play the culprit, they don’t get to play the victim and all those gender, race and class professors would be out of work and that would be one more example of white privilege. See how it works?

Via Richard Fernandez.

3 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Obsessions, The Culture

Tagged , , ,

Image

Rule 5: Sophie Shepard

ac03

1 Comment

Posted on December 29, 2014 in Rule 5, The Culture

Tagged , ,

Robocops

Posted on December 27, 2014 | 4 comments

A sad affair, the burial of the ambushed and murdered New York police officer (his partner is to be buried later when family arrives from elsewhere in the world) but, really, the turning-of-the-backs on Mayor de Blasio is more than a little pathetic.

Not because of what he said, speaking aloud of warning his person-of-color son to be careful around the police, which wasn’t very politic of a politician, though it hardly seems worth all the angst it provoked. Nay, it’s pathetic because it makes the officers look like unthinking robots, ticky-tacky and all in a row.

Unions do demand such behavior from their, uh, rank-n-file. But you might expect the police to be somewhat more individual and less robotic. Or maybe not. They do seem infinitely less human these days. Much more inclined to kill when other options to subduing a protesting arrestee such as Garner are available. Mace, for instance.

Killing is much more characteristic of police states. As is robotic behavior.

UPDATE:  NYC police commissioner Bratton condemned the turn-their-backs behavior, but added that they feel under siege not just from the mayuh but the “justice” department and the White House. I wish it was about more than race.

4 Comments

Posted in Scribbles, The Culture

Tagged , ,

Rule 5: Cheesecake

Posted on December 25, 2014 | 2 comments

christmas_eve_waiting_for_santa-756x1024

Kind of thing I’d see in my grandfather’s petroleum engineering office back in 1954 when I was ten and only vaguely aware that it was naughty. But fun to look at anyhow.

Via Andy at MyOldRV.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Rule 5, Texana, The Culture

Tagged , ,

Mellow Yellow

Posted on December 25, 2014 | 6 comments

Okay, I razzed Mr. B. for being a dope and now it’s my turn. Remember Donovan? The hippy-dippy singer whose 1967 song Mellow Yellow was about getting high off bananas? Somehow, either in the lyrics or just scuttlebutt, word got around that you were supposed to bake the skins. So I did.

As J.D. recalls:  “His ‘Mellow Yellow’ set off a panic among the establishment about kids getting high from smoking bananas. ‘Electrical bananas, gonna be a sudden craze, electrical bananas, gonna be the very next phase.’ The ‘establishment’ was on a continual freak about anybody being able to get high from something” other than alcohol.

Yep. So I baked it and then I scraped some of the baked part off and then I ate it. Awful, really awful. And waited for the buzz to begin. And waited and waited. And waited some more. And I was a senior in college at the time. And really dumb.

Via Mouth of the Brazos.

6 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Evolution, Mr. Boy, Obsessions, The Culture

Tagged , , ,

PC Cult News: Gender Idiocy

Posted on December 24, 2014 | Comments Off on PC Cult News: Gender Idiocy

141117-germany-traffic-light-6a_f98841c94f974e311123f67acae701c3.nbcnews-ux-720-520

Germans of the PC Cult are discussing how to change “male” stick figures on broken cross-walk lights to “gender equality.” “She” looks pretty porky to me. Maybe it’s about weight equality, too. Har. Figures it would be Democrat NBC with this snooze.

Via Simply Jews.

Comments Off on PC Cult News: Gender Idiocy

Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, The Culture

Tagged ,

Cop killers

Posted on December 22, 2014 | 4 comments

For all the criticisms I have posted about killer cops, I will have no truck with cop killers. That should go without saying, but in case it doesn’t…

The problems I’m concerned about are fixable politically if the pols have the cahones to take on the police unions and police chiefs, the ersatz little generals wearing four and five stars. Who have now, after the NYC cop ambush killings, apparently encouraged police across the country to make no arrests that are not “absolutely necessary.” I would have thought that’s what they were doing already, but I guess not.

Instead of working the obvious problems, the pols are now using the NYC killings as an excuse to continue doing nothing, and some of them are trying to make it a left-right issue. And that would be a pity that might well lead to more ambushes of police officers. I hope not. It will only make them more agitated.

That the NYC killer Brinsley suicided will make no difference. Whatever he had to say wouldn’t have meant much to the issue at hand, the issue I see, of cops treating too many of us, white and black, as combatants in a war. The drug war, as the pols have dubbed it, arming the cops to the teeth with Pentagon castoffs. And then slunk back into the shadows to take no responsibility for the outcome. Damn their eyes.

I hope the killings stop—on both sides. But the way things are going I wouldn’t count on it.

UPDATE:  The legit complaints are being lumped with the radical b.s. and the usual flag wavers and cop apologists are lining up on the other side. At this rate we will never get rid of the militarized police and their armored cars and bayonets.

MORE:  There’s reason to believe things will get worse, because they already have: “There’s evidence that aggressive policing in the NYPD is intensifying, according to data from the New York City Comptroller. Police misconduct claims – including lawsuits against police for using the kind of excessive force that killed Garner – have risen 214 percent since 2000, while the amount the city paid out has risen 75 percent in the same period, to $64.4 million in fiscal year 2012, the last year for which data is available.”

4 Comments

Posted in The Culture, The Drug War

Tagged , , ,