For awhile now I’ve counseled leftists to apply the inverse of Gandhi’s famous dictum: think of the most privileged person you have ever seen, and ask if your next act will be of any threat to him. I call this the Rich Uncle Pennybags test, after the guy from Monopoly. The question is, does your next […]
Continue reading →It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I am predisposed to not agree with Matt Novak’s argument that The Anti-Vaccine Movement Should Be Ridiculed Because Shame Works. I’m a big fan of Novak’s work in general, but I don’t find his argument remotely convincing, and the KKK analogy strikes me as a positively addled. […]
Continue reading →I’ve gotten all kinds of responses to my recent series on political correctness, but one kind stands out for its seeming attempt to exemplify irony. I’m on the record as saying that, unlike some, I think that language policing and political correctness do exist, and occasionally, they are unfair and unhelpful to the left-wing cause. […]
Continue reading →Some confusing responses to my thoughts on “political correctness.” A remarkable number of people are choosing to frame their response as if I’m saying boohoo, woe is me. But that’s the opposite of what I’m saying. Me, personally? I’m fine. I have been involved in vicious left-wing infighting since I was 17 years old, and I […]
Continue reading →So this is deeply related to the post yesterday, but it reflects on the online version of things. It’s complex and so I have to write at length, so if you don’t feel like reading a couple thousand words, please exercise your privilege not to read it. As with my post yesterday, I want to take a […]
Continue reading →So, to state the obvious: Jon Chait is a jerk who somehow manages to be both condescending and wounded in his piece on political correctness. He gets the basic nature of language policing wrong, and his solutions are wrong, and he’s a centrist Democrat scold who is just as eager to shut people out of […]
Continue reading →Here’s a really interesting conversation on the Remix with Dr. James Peterson with Dr. Adolph Reed, one of the most prescient, brilliant commentators on left-wing politics, race, and activism. I highly recommend you listen to it; it’s less than a half hour. I don’t agree with Dr. Reed on everything. In particular, I’m much less […]
Continue reading →Seriously: is there a more worthless cliche in our well-stocked bag of worthless cliches? It’s made a non-ironic comeback with The Interview and Charlie Hebdo, and it’s such a ponderous, self-important method for achieving profundity. It’s especially egregious given that the topic of terrorism would seem to have enough intrinsic seriousness that it doesn’t require that kind […]
Continue reading →So here’s this Gawker piece about Fred Armisen that accuses him of being a bad boyfriend. (A point he readily concedes, as it happens.) I don’t want to get into some useless, wearying discussion of celebrity and privacy. I don’t get why this is news; of course Gawker has the right to run unsubstantiated rumors. […]
Continue reading →One of my basic beliefs about politics is that, over a long enough time frame, all political movements become indistinguishable from the parodies their opponents make of them. So in the world of conservatism, you see things like rolling coal, a kind of performative idiocy in which the other side’s exaggerated definition of what you […]
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