Althouse |
- "It doesn’t matter which of these jokes is intended, because Gervais has already rejected the counterargument that a hateful joke is only 'ironic' when everyone is in on it..."
- "And if we dare to protest, if we dare to express our rage, if we dare to say enough, we are lectured about the importance of civility."
- "Black smokers prefer menthol products, and the Biden administration's decision to ban menthol cigarettes will inevitably fuel an already well-established, lucrative, and violent illicit market."
- Who started this use of "cis-" as the opposite of "trans-"? In English, it seems to be Thomas Jefferson!
- "You don’t often hear people referring to their Date Lab outings as 'normal.'..."
- "We don’t often hear abortion stories from cisgender men like Mr. Lavallee, even though they are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the world’s unplanned pregnancies, and so often benefit when an abortion occurs...."
- Vulture ranks the stools in stand-up comedy.
- At the Star-Flowered Café...
- I've assembled 10 TikToks for your delectation. Let me know what you like best.
| Posted: 26 May 2022 09:15 AM PDT "... and when no one is secretly having their actual bigotry reinforced by the cruelty at the center of said irony. Toward the end of the show, he drags out an appalling sketch full of racist Sinophobic stereotypes, which he insists isn't racist because it's 'ironic.' Doesn't matter that this kind of 'irony' is what allows white supremacists to operate in plain sight. Doesn't matter that five minutes into SuperNature an audience member audibly laughs at a mention of rape, which might indicate that perhaps Gervais's audience isn't as ironically humorous as he wants them to be. No, Gervais seems to have decided that because words aren't literal physical violence, nothing he says can cause harm.... We're expected to speak his lingua franca of bad jokes and meet him halfway by agreeing that 'identity politics' should be just as susceptible to mockery as everything else...." Writes Aja Romano in "With Ricky Gervais's new special, Netflix yet again suffers transphobic fools/Does Netflix even care that Ricky Gervais's SuperNature is rife with transphobic TERF ideology?" (Vox). I love Ricky Gervais, but I have to agree with some of what Romana is saying here. In his new show, Gervais relies too heavily on just saying what he knows are terrible things to say and topping it off with a reminder that it's a joke. It's like something an unfunny uncle might do at an unbearable family gathering. He's taking license to say all the transgressive things, but ha ha doncha know it's a joke. I found that repetitive and tiresome, and at some point you really do wonder whether the laughter is based on a different understanding — not that we all know it's untrue but that we secretly think it is true. That's an especially nagging concern when the topic is transgender people. |
| Posted: 26 May 2022 08:59 AM PDT "We are told to stay calm and vote as an outlet for our anger. Incivility runs through the history of this country, founded on stolen land, built with the labor of stolen lives. The document that governs our lives effectively denied more than half of the population the right to vote. It counted only three-fifths of the enslaved population when determining representation. If you want to talk about incivility, let us be clear about how deep those roots reach. The United States has become ungovernable not because of political differences or protest or a lack of civility but because this is a country unwilling to protect and care for its citizens.... When politicians talk about civility and public discourse, what they're really saying is that they would prefer for people to remain silent in the face of injustice.... The Washington Post editorial board [called] for civility, but the definition of civility is malleable and ever-changing. Civility is whatever enables them to wield power without question or challenge...." Writes Roxane Gay, in "These Are Desperately Uncivil Times. We Are Disgracing America" (NYT). I've edited this down to exclude the particular issue about which she does not want to be civil so that it will stand as a general statement that is in accord with my position that calls for civility are always bullshit. I'm not going to try to look up whether there are other occasions where she has been the one calling for civility. She's not calling for it here. This post gets the "civility bullshit" tag because she's talking about calls for civility, and she, like me, is rejecting them. |
| Posted: 26 May 2022 06:48 AM PDT "This will criminalize the behavior of Black communities and lead to more interactions with law enforcement, not less." Said Richard Marianos, a former senior official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, quoted in "How Biden's Menthol Ban Endangers Black Bodies" (Washington Free Beacon).
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| Posted: 26 May 2022 06:16 AM PDT I doubt if I am the first person to point this out, but I am arriving at this observation independently — independently, with access to the Oxford English Dictionary. The Latin root is clear — "cis" was the opposite of "trans" — notably used to refer to the landscape. You could refer to this side of the mountains — cis-montānus — or the other side of the mountains — beyond or across the mountains — trans-montānus. The oldest recorded use in English is in Jefferson's 1785 "Notes on Virginian": Before we condemn the Indians of this continent as wanting genius, we must consider that letters have not yet been introduced among them. Were we to compare them in their present state with the Europeans, North of the Alps, when the Roman arms and arts first crossed those mountains, the comparison would be unequal, because, at that time, those parts of Europe were swarming with numbers; because numbers produce emulation, and multiply the chances of improvement, and one improvement begets another. Yet I may safely ask, how many good poets, how many able mathematicians, how many great inventors in arts or sciences, had Europe, North of the Alps, then produced? And it was sixteen centuries after this before a Newton could be formed. I do not mean to deny, that there are varieties in the race of man, distinguished by their powers both of body and mind. I believe there are, as I see to be the case in the races of other animals. I only mean to suggest a doubt, whether the bulk and faculties of animals depend on the side of the Atlantic on which their food happens to grow, or which furnishes the elements of which they are compounded? Whether nature has enlisted herself as a Cis or Trans-Atlantic partisan? I am induced to suspect, there has been more eloquence than sound reasoning displayed in support of this theory; that it is one of those cases where the judgment has been seduced by a glowing pen: and whilst I render every tribute of honour and esteem to the celebrated zoologist, who has added, and is still adding, so many precious things to the treasures of science, I must doubt whether in this instance he has not cherished error also, by lending her for a moment his vivid imagination and bewitching language. So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side the Atlantic. Its application to the race of whites, transplanted from Europe, remained for the Abbé Raynal. On doit etre etonné (he says) que l'Amerique n'ait pas encore produit un bon poëte, un habile mathematicien, un homme de genie dans un seul art, ou une seule science.I lifted the whole long passage from a Word Histories account that's not about "cis" at all, but "belittle." Did you notice belittle? Jefferson was mocked for that: Belittle!—What an expression!—It may be an elegant one in Virginia, and even perfectly intelligible; but for our part, all we can do is, to guess at its meaning.—For shame, Mr. Jefferson!—Why, after trampling upon the honour of our country, and representing it as little better than a land of barbarism—why, we say, perpetually trample also upon the very grammar of our language, and make that appear as Gothic as, from your description, our manners are rude?—Freely, good sir, will we forgive all you attacks, impotent as they are illiberal, upon our national character; but for the future, spare—O spare, we beseech you, our mother-tongue! |
| "You don’t often hear people referring to their Date Lab outings as 'normal.'..." Posted: 26 May 2022 08:21 AM PDT "[I]n the dozens of interviews spanning the years that I've written for this column, only about three people have called their dates 'normal'.... You... might say that it is, in fact, abnormal to describe your time meeting someone completely blind while knowing that anything you say can and will be printed in The Washington Post as 'normal.' 'It was just … normal,' said Ethan Hovanic, 27, of his meal at Farmers & Distillers in Mount Vernon Square with 28-year-old Stacy Fleming. Her assessment that she arrived at independently: 'It was kind of normal, maybe?'" From "Date Lab: He put his number in her phone. It was one digit off" (WaPo).
"It really wasn't intentional." |
| Posted: 26 May 2022 05:08 AM PDT "What's the effect on men who co-conceive and then the pregnancy ends in abortion? And who even are these men?... A man might not necessarily know he helped cause an abortion. Moreover, amid continuous attacks on abortion rights, the urgency among researchers has logically been to demonstrate the benefits of abortion access for those who can become pregnant. Despite this gap in the literature, the data we do have on male abortion beneficiaries indicates that the benefits extend well beyond the person having the abortion." Writes Andréa Becker, a medical sociologist, "Men Benefit From Abortion. Why Do We Mostly Study Women?" (NYT). Becker is intent on using the words "benefit" and "beneficiaries." But when a woman gets an abortion, it's because she's chosen it, which probably almost surely means she believes she will benefit. What's the basis for assuming that the man benefits? But Becker hammers "benefit" and "beneficiaries":
And the lack of benefit for the unborn can be even more invisible — so invisible that the medical sociologist doesn't notice that she's talking about it. Back to the men:
It's not just the benefit to men that Becker cares about, it's the benefit to the pro-abortion side of the argument that can be derived from highlighting the way abortion benefits men. But stressing the benefit to men makes abortion rights sound like part of the patriarchy! How much are men pushing abortion out of their own self-interest? Hugh Hefner and Playboy Magazine were early and big supporters of abortion. And sometimes an abortion is the opposite of a benefit for men. What about the man who believes the abortion murdered his child? I think there is good reason — both in principle and as a matter of politics — for those who favor abortion rights to downplay the benefits to men. You know, sometimes when you see what you think is a great argument and wonder why it isn't getting used, it's because it unleashes even better arguments on the other side. It may not be that you're extra good at noticing arguments. It may be that you're bad! |
| Vulture ranks the stools in stand-up comedy. Posted: 26 May 2022 04:14 AM PDT "The 100 Greatest Stools in Stand-up Special History." There are photos — in one case a video — with explanations, e.g.:
The one example is the last-place Joe Rogan. You can go directly to the NSFW video at YouTube, here. That is declared the least-funny thing not just among stools, but in comedy generally. What ended up at the top? There's Marc Maron at #4: Marc Maron explores the fusion of man and stool. Both lead to equally mind-bending results. Maron treats his stool like a performance-enhancing body-mod; when he sits on it, slouched and confessional toward his audience, knees pulled up to his chest like a wise cartoon toad, his neuroses and humor fold in on themselves. The stool closes up his posture and opens him up to the audience. Maron is a philosopher king, and the stool is his throne. And Paula Poundstone at #3:
That happened in 1989, and I saw it back then and always remembered it. She worked that stool. They only have a still photo at the link, but this one deserves video, so I found it for you: |
| Posted: 25 May 2022 04:41 PM PDT
... you don't have to be a star to comment on this blog. *** The flower in the photo, photographed on May 17th, is, I believe, "Maianthemum stellatum (star-flowered, starry, or little false Solomon's seal, or simply false Solomon's seal; star-flowered lily-of-the-valley or starry false lily of the valley; syn. Smilacina stellata)... a species of flowering plant, native across North America." |
| I've assembled 10 TikToks for your delectation. Let me know what you like best. Posted: 25 May 2022 03:48 PM PDT 1. What Ricky Gervais said that got some tweeters calling him transphobic. 2. And Ricky Gervais explaining cancel culture. 4. A man imitates his introverted wife (she's filming and laughing). 5. What's really going on this painting? 6. One too many turtles. 7. "The frog is not available...." 8. When The Band was The Crackers. 9. That nod! |
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