Althouse |
- At The Saturday Night Cafe...
- "Black nerds unsettle the myth of a monolithic Blackness."
- Elizabeth Warren tells a joke... tells the truth...
- "I don’t like struggle sessions; I think critical race theory as it developed in the academy is intellectually rich, but some of the ways it’s been adapted by workplace diversity trainers..."
- "I had a producer bring me to his office, where he had malted milk balls in a little milk-carton-type container under his arm with the spout open."
- Sharon Osbourne, cancelled at "The Talk."
- At the Sunrise Café...
| Posted: 27 Mar 2021 05:46 PM PDT ... you can talk about whatever you want.  |
| "Black nerds unsettle the myth of a monolithic Blackness." Posted: 27 Mar 2021 07:10 AM PDT "In an American imagination that has historically stereotyped Black people as alternately ignorant and emotional or sexualized and cool, the nerd — smart and cerebral, unsexy and decidedly uncool — creates cognitive dissonance. Not only do Black nerds confound racist stereotypes, they also pierce the protective orthodoxy of Blackness passed down in the United States across generations. Under slavery and Jim Crow, Black people maintaining — or at least projecting — unity proved a necessary protective practice. Strength came in numbers, as did political influence and economic clout. What would happen if we all announced publicly that we were going to start doing our own human thing without regard to the group? Few considered it worth the risk to find out. But who in 2021 benefits from thinking of Black people as just one thing? Certainly not Black individuals, who, like all individuals, are complex amalgams of shifting affinities, of inherited and chosen identities. And certainly not Black nerds, whose very existence is often rendered invisible because they present an inconvenient complication to a straightforward story of Blackness in America..." From "The Black Nerds Redefining the Culture/By pushing back against centuries-old stereotypes, a historically overlooked community is claiming space it was long denied" by Adam Bradley (NYT). I learned the slang term: "blerd."  |
| Elizabeth Warren tells a joke... tells the truth... Posted: 27 Mar 2021 07:08 AM PDT
How much do powerful people enjoy their power? Ah! I have crushed my enemies!! How much of that sort of thing goes on in their head? I feel rather certain that they must get emotional thrills, because — unless they came into their power by birth — they have to go through so much struggle to get their power. I would never do it, and I know I don't get pleasure from exerting power. I have a distaste for it. I know these people who pursue it are emotionally different from me, and I wonder how does it feel? I'm saying this on the occasion of Elizabeth Warren's tweet because I'm certain that if I were a U.S. Senator — if somehow that awful role were foisted on me — and I thought of that wisecrack, I would never write it out and publish. But Warren thought it was good — openly triumphing at power. I think of this:  |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2021 05:26 AM PDT "... and education consultants seem risible.... The right-wing caricature of progressive public schools as pampered re-education camps is extremely far from my own family's experience, but if any kids are being bullied and shamed for refusing to espouse social justice principles, even principles I agree with, that's wrong. However, the claim that the right's war on critical race theory doesn't threaten academic freedom is also wrong. Consider what just happened in Idaho, where last week Boise State University suspended dozens of classes, online and in person, dealing with different aspects of diversity. This week, they were reinstated, but online only and 'asynchronously,' without any live discussions.... Some of the facts behind the class suspensions are unclear. In an email to the campus, university leaders described 'a series of concerns, culminating in allegations that a student or students have been humiliated and degraded in class on our campus for their beliefs and values.' An English professor at the university tweeted that the allegation concerned a taped Zoom discussion of white privilege that had been handed over to the Legislature, but so far it hasn't emerged publicly. (The tweets have since been deleted.) It's obviously impossible to evaluate the allegations without knowing what they are. If a student was humiliated, that's serious and should be addressed. But it's hard to see how whatever happened implicated 52 different classes, and the political pressure the university is under is undeniable." Michelle Goldberg writes carefully in a column with the inflammatory headline "The Social Justice Purge at Idaho Colleges/Republican lawmakers try to cancel diversity programs" (NYT). We can't "Consider what just happened in Idaho" unless we know just what happened, and Goldberg acknowledges that. She's also right that CRT has some intellectual value and that it shouldn't be foisted on people. Those who want to teach and learn about it should be free to pursue their intellectual interests, but even if they decide — in their freedom — that they believe it's something that they must compel others to believe, they don't have the right to act on that belief and apply coercion within a government institution. I don't know what, exactly, happened in Idaho, but seems as though the CRT believers adopted oppressive educational techniques, the legislature responded in an effort to protect students from coercion, the colleges took steps to follow the legislation, and the CRT believers now feel intimidated about pursuing their intellectual interests. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that this is an intellectual field that entails deep beliefs about how other people think, critiques the freedom of others, and demands action to restructure their minds. From the comments at the NYT: "The best proof that CRT is legitimate is the enraged reaction it engenders among white people." But here's the highest-rated comment (by a lot): "The right likes to pretend that social justice-inflected academic disciplines are full of ideological commissars browbeating conservative students." Oh come on. I'm a center-left academic and it's as obvious as dirt that academic environments, including my RI university, are tilted against conservative perspectives, especially for students in the classroom, and that the problem has gotten intensely worse in the last few years. Surely MG must know this is not something "the right likes to pretend." It's a fact that is helping to drive social and political polarization, and that needs to be honestly reckoned with by people on the center/left, not pooh-poohed and dismissed. And I like this comment, which is very straightforward: The backlash was/is inevitable. Proponents of CRT and social justice inquisitors have overplayed their hand. I for one am happy to see the push back.  |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2021 04:46 AM PDT "He walked back and forth in his office with the balls falling out of the spout and rolling all over the wood floor as he explained to me why I should fuck my co-star so that we could have onscreen chemistry. Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational! Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause. I watched the chocolate balls rolling around, thinking, You guys insisted on this actor when he couldn't get one whole scene out in the test … Now you think if I fuck him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody's that good in bed. I felt they could have just hired a co-star with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could fuck him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act, and I said so. This was not a popular response. I was considered difficult." From "Sharon Stone Says Producer Pressured Her to Sleep With Male Co-Star to Create 'Onscreen Chemistry'" (The Vulture).  |
| Sharon Osbourne, cancelled at "The Talk." Posted: 27 Mar 2021 04:40 AM PDT It's a complicated story, so read the whole thing at "Sharon Osbourne Is Out at 'The Talk'" (Hollywood Reporter). I'll just excerpt some highlights, which I don't expect you to understand if you don't know the context. From the statement by CBS: "As part of our review, we concluded that Sharon's behavior toward her co-hosts during the March 10 episode did not align with our values for a respectful workplace." From Hollywood Reporter: "The news came two weeks after the March 10 dustup, one that was followed by multiple allegations of racist comments from Osbourne being levied by former co-stars Leah Remini and Holly Robinson Peete.... After Robinson Peete... alleg[ed] Osbourne had referred to her as 'too ghetto,' Remini... claimed that Osbourne had made racist comments about former colleague (and Chinese American woman) Julie Chen, homophobic remarks about The Talk creator and then-moderator Sara Gilbert and made anti-Italian slurs toward Remini herself.... [Osbourne] gave interviews to both Variety and Entertainment Tonight, claiming that she had been 'set up' by the producers and was offered up as a 'sacrificial lamb.' Her publicist also issued a doozy of a statement, alluding to Remini and Robinson Peete's comments by noting 'The only thing worse than a disgruntled former employee is a disgruntled former talk show host.'" Now, Osbourne is the "disgruntled former talk show host." So we'll see what else she has to say.  |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2021 05:34 PM PDT
... you can talk about whatever you want.  |
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