In his recently published article in New York Magazine, titled “Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say,” Jonathan Chait speaks for all those that are disenfranchised by today’s politically correct culture. That’s right, white, straight men! No longer will you have to sit in silence and be sensitive to the blacks or the browns or the gays or the womens! Get over yourselves already! But as the clip above with CUNY Professor Angus Johnston (who is a white, straight guy, but not one of THOSE white straight guys) shows, sometimes it can be just as problematic to be understood as misunderstood.
Team Blackness discussed Chait’s article in great detail and then closed things off with a little misogyny from Anthony Mackie.
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GregB
It is telling that there is never any real pushback by pointing out the conservatives are chock full of their own brand of political correctness.
Everything from trying to change the term suicide bomber to homicide bomber to demanding that people use the words terror, terrorism in a manner they deem appropriate.
That and of course they are the arbiters of what family values mean, they are the determiners of what marriage is and who gets married.
They get to claim the mantle of being pro life while supporting the death penalty, stand your ground homicides, and of course every war and military action this side of Kabul.
They get to tell us all that the scientific community is divided on climate change when it is actually almost a statistical fart in favor of casting doubt.
There’s plenty more but their dogma never gets the same treatment.
kc
God damn it, not again.
I’m no Chait fan, but that’s a pretty egregious misrepresentation of what he wrote.
I’m getting tired of this BS. We ought to be smarter than this.
kc
@GregB:
Shit, who wants to talk about that, when we can spend time purity-policing the left?
Cacti
Deja vu.
Once again though, “political correctness” is a reactionary term used by members of privileged groups as a lament about the erosion of their privilege in the public sphere.
Alesis
The concepts of “Political Correctness” and I’ll throw in “White Guilt” have alway seemed strange. I’m a black man raised in Alabama so suffer It to say these concepts are at once entirely alien and yet on the tips of aggrieved tounges everywhere.
It is more than a bit jarring to hear people say, without apparent irony, that society has become too wary of offending the historically marginalized. I notice Chait struggles to come up with concrete examples of this phenomenon. Is this an actual thing?
lol
@kc:
What exactly was his point?
lol
@Alesis:
Well, you see the thing is that you can say n*gger and I can’t and yet the PC Police want us to believe that this isn’t racist. Shouldn’t language be open to everyone *equally*?
scav
@GregB: You forgot the Evangelicals complaining about lifestyle recruitment. Those wandering bands of the dreaded ghey, dragging their children along, handing out leaflets door to door are well known enough to be a trite joke on Late-Night TV. Telling random people on the street they’re damned for all eternity if they don’t believe as you do is polite conversation to be protected and cherished as foundational of the culture, but calling one homophobic is utterly beyond the social pale!
lol
@Alesis:
Also, I’ve generally never seen a context where “white guilt” wasn’t used as code for “n*gger-lover”.
Cacti
@Alesis:
Sadly, yes.
It’s something that gives the most privileged group on planet earth (wealthy white males), something to feel aggrieved about.
Another Holocene Human
This is who Chait is, he’s done this before, except that usually he writes his essays more carefully and less emotionally and incoherent. Chait’s twitter meltdown was funny. Daveweigel delivered the burn. When even Amanda Marcotte, who’s had her own terrible history with feminists of color is telling you you’re wrong … you’re wrong.
Somebody yesterday said that Jon Chait is proof that the New Republic never died. He does seem desperate to carve some “reasonable, respectable” spot to the right of twitter, tumblr, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Which, idk, I don’t see TNC as being on the left, that kind of puts Chait in a booth with George Will and Brooksie doesn’t it? David Brooks has a sweeeeet gig with public television and Chait must be panting after it.
Another Holocene Human
Chait mostly rants about stuff that happened on campus … the “intellectual” conservatives did nothing but bitch about campus and academia all through the 1980s.
Tells you something about Chait. Tells me he needs therapy.
Cacti
I’ll also add that the most insidious form of “political correctness” is practiced when the country is in a fit of national bloodlust and preparing to get its war on, and someone dares to question its wisdom.
Ask one of the journalists who was canned for not loving Dubya’s excellent Iraq invasion.
Another Holocene Human
Also, good on Brandeis students for uninviting Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Brandeis has a bad record vis a vis its Muslim students so at least they can draw a fucking line somewhere. (They used to make them worship in an electrical closet while Jews, Catholics, and Protestants got dedicated above-ground “chapels”. And they used one of their nicest buildings, the same one they use for symposia and impressing the donors for the Friday night supper.)
And if Millennials are finally ditching “Vagina Monologues”–GOOD! This old queer thought it was retrograde horseshit from day one. Yes, back when it was new. It IS transphobic, not to mention ignorant about anatomy and essentialist in the worst way (in a way that I think is psychologically toxic for anyone). Let that stupid fad die.
I’m pretty sure it only lasted as long as it did because of cleek’s law–that is, the misogynists on campus hated it sooooooo much the feminist groups figured they must be on to something.
glocksman
This isn’t an open thread, but i’m going to add this anyway.
I’m an alcoholic, and have been for several years.
Monday, I called for an ambulance because I once again succumbed and went on a bender with 5 quarts of vodka over a 3-4 day period, and once I quit drinking I was shaking so bad I couldn’t dial 911 and had to use voice dial to call for help.
Once I got to the ER, all they did was give me a banana bag and hold me until my BAC had dropped to .22 and released me.
In other words, I still had to deal with withdrawal, and that is no fun and can be life threatening.
All that did was encourage me to drink the rest of the booze in the house in order to ease the withdrawal.
According to several respected online medsites, they should have held me until the BAC dropped to nothing and dosed me with benzodiazipines until the shakes and other symptoms stopped.
As it is, I’m still shaking bad enough that I had to type thia one finger at a time and hope that other alcoholics don’t have to deal with it.
Another Holocene Human
@Alesis: It’s the realization that they have to inhibit their mouth or suffer the consequences (a lost job, conflict with others, etc). This is very offensive to lazy people.
Another Holocene Human
@lol: I’m not sure Chait knew quite what he was trying to say because what he was trying to say was stupid.
“Mommmyyyyy! The Millennials have taken over the campuses! I’m old and fuddy duddy now. They’ve changed all the words! Make it stop, Mommy! Make it stop!”
Another Holocene Human
@GregB: GregB you are 100% spot on.
I gotta tell ya, though, Obama has proven remarkably … insensitive … to their whining.
Heaven help us when another one of them gets placed in the Oval Office, though.
Mike Spence, IN, announced plans to create his own press organ, bypassing all those so-called journalists.
Alesis
@Another Holocene Human:
That makes perfect sense. It’s sort of like certain areas of offense speech had natural immunity because it was directed people who couldn’t speak back. Now they can and the backlash is an attempt to shut that barn door.
Darkrose
@glocksman: How are you doing now? That’s fucked up that the ER didn’t know the procedure.
Starfish
@glocksman: That is terrible. Do you have a regular doctor who could help?
Betty Cracker
@glocksman: I hope you are okay. It sounds like you need to see a doctor pronto. Best of luck to you!
glocksman
@Darkrose:
Sipping the rest of the booze (not much) here and hoping to survive (I have an artificial heart valve and a pacemaker) the inevitable withdrawal.
The ER doc just told me to ‘taper off’.
kc
@Alesis:
He opens the article with one . .
OzarkHillbilly
@lol:
Why sure, and it is, and I say to any and all white people who feel so inclined to go ahead and call some random black person “ni**er”. I won’t mind in the least. You know what else I won’t mind?
Watching said black person exercise their “free speech rights” by beating that idiot’s a$$ to a bloody pulp. I might step in at some point short of death. Or I might just get bored with the whole thing and leave.
Stupidity is it’s own reward.
OzarkHillbilly
@glocksman: Look on the bright side: If you survive you can sue their a$$es off for malpractice. If you don’t, I hope you have children who can sue them.
On the more serious side… Good luck.
kc
I don’t think Omar Mahmood, Carol Jacobson, and Aayan Hirsi Ali are “straight white men.”
Amir Khalid
@glocksman:
My goodness, that’s rough. How are you now? Do you have someone you can call, some friend or family who can take you in, at least until you can get help that’s more professional than you got yesterday?
kc
@glocksman:
They released you at .22 BAC? Unbelievable.
Wait,I do believe it. I used to work in an ER. I remember the personnel having a distinct lack of . . . caring for anyone dealing with addiction issues.
Betty Cracker
@glocksman: Please call a non-quack at your earliest opportunity. Your existing health issues make it even more urgent.
Roger Moore
@Alesis:
I think there’s some technical erosion of privilege as well as social erosion. It used to be that the elites controlled the most important media, so they could shut out voices they didn’t want to hear. Now the media environment is a lot more diverse simply because anyone can set up a blog and get an audience. Old-media types have a hell of a time dealing with it.
glocksman
I have both, but I am too ashamed to call then for help.
Amir Khalid
@glocksman:
Furthermore: I don’t think sipping more alcohol is helping you at all. You might want to consider pouring what you’ve still got down the sink.
Cacti
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hence the rise of “thug” as a substitute word for what the speaker would really like to say.
It’s not that they’re trying to be politically correct, so much as it is their fear of a punch in the mouth for using their preferred epithet in real time.
PurpleGirl
@glocksman: That sounds terrible. Do you remember what JC went through while trying to find a program for getting sober? Can you research detoxification programs in your area? You probably shouldn’t drink the last of the booze yet. I hope you find help soon and start feeling better.
Betty Cracker
@glocksman: If you were my family member or close friend and you didn’t call me under these circumstances, I’d be upset about that. I’d feel like you didn’t trust me enough to reach out. This is what friends and family are for. You have a disease, which is nothing to be ashamed of, and you need help. Please consider calling someone.
kc
Twitter has moved on from Chait anyway. Apparently wingnuts are all pissed off at Marshawn Lynch for NOT speaking.
mattminus
@kc:
Oh really? Why don’t you whitesplain to us what they are, huh?
Your privilege is showing, check it.
Cacti
@kc:
Loved Lynch’s reply to everything:
“I’m just here so I don’t get fined”.
Alesis
@kc:
Yes, one. Could you imagine if the “black lives matter” protests only had one suspicious shooting to back their concerns?
This is a nation of 300 million people. I’m pretty sure you can find one example of anything.
scav
@PurpleGirl: Based on a set of two then, there also sounds like there needs to be some sort of public mapping and identification of institutions that are likely to actually help and those that are going to go through the motions, juggle the minimal amount of paperwork the maximum amount of time and pass the buck and tell the person to detox their own bootstraps. The amount of institutional hurdles and time-wastage apparently facing people trying to get help is working against them. Need to find ways to ease that burden.
Another Holocene Human
@glocksman: They are so heartless these days it’s not even funny.
I am so grateful when my wife had a burst hemorrhoid when we were out of town in an airport that everybody–I mean everybody, including the airline–took care of us. It was shocking because usually hospitals are assholes. The local hospital near me believes in the mushroom system. They’ve also killed people with incorrect doses and nearly killed two people I know with too many drugs that interfered with each other, followed up with a no information chaser. And they nearly killed another colleague who had cancer, not directing her to their world class cancer treatment group but referring her to the doc’s personal friend/kickback buddy at another hospital who told her it was hopeless and she was going to die. After firing her docs she found out there was a treatment group at the original hospital. Crazy making!
Where is the oversight and why isn’t it working? And who thought it was a good idea to make hospitals for profit cruelty factories? Jesus!
Another Holocene Human
@glocksman: How does one get home with .22 BAC, btw? (Very carefully, amirite?) WTFbbq.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly: Wrong example. What they ought to do (and what pains them so very, very much) is call their boss a n****** and the boss’s wife a Lesbian and follow it up by taunting the freshly minted Latina intern and calling her a Muslim.
Then, watch the firing, the denial of unemployment benefits, and the fruitless litigation including the delicious deposition of all the witnesses to the meltdown … “Oh, I thought it was okay to talk about the boss with coworkers. That’s just ‘shop talk’. Besides, he is an n-word, I should be able to call him an n-word.”
Followed by unhinged Youtube videos, new, shittier job, and feeble attempts at grifting summadat wingnut welfare.
Hob
@Amir Khalid: That’s not good advice. Coming off such a heavy bender and going cold turkey without medication is, as glocksman said, physically dangerous. If medical supervision isn’t available, the next best thing really is to take small amounts of alcohol so that the shakes don’t proceed to seizures.
Of course an even better approach would be to get medical help that isn’t the ER, shame or no shame. Good luck, glocksman – I know this is really hard.
Another Holocene Human
@Another Holocene Human: And the worst part about all of this shit is that you can probably get away with using all the slurs once. You get fired when you’re told to stop and persist.
Yup!
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti:
Calling Blacks knee-grows or worse makes the wingnut welfare and the attention go away.
Using “thug” is still right as white.
Amir Khalid
@Hob:
Ah. As a lifelong teetotaler, I was not aware of that. Sorry.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore:
Yes. This. Until they find a way to “shut the whole thing down” which I guess is what pay-to-play internet is about.
Fuck that.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
I doubt it. There are some slurs that are so widely recognized as slurs that nobody could plausibly claim they didn’t know there was anything wrong about using them. The N-word is certainly one of them. And they’d better hope that they don’t work in an at-will position, or they can get fired at any time for any reason.
Another Holocene Human
@kc:
Offensive is as offensive does. Pam Gellar, that police chief out of Milwaukee giving off the Cosby vibes on Fox and Fiends, Allen West, Gay Patriot and the rest of his evil GOP buddies aren’t straight white males either. They all say hateful (and untrue) things in the public sphere. Don’t we all have a right–if not a duty–to call them out for it?
kc
@mattminus:
I could be wrong. Maybe they are all straight white men.
Davebo
@glocksman:
Don’t be ashamed. If they make you feel that way you’ve got the wrong quacks.
I’m with you man. Been there more than once and what keeps me dry now is the love of my life and the knowledge of what detoxing will be like should I ever fall off the wagon.
I can’t help you with the first and you already know about the second, but I understand what a challenge it can be.
kc
@Alesis:
There are more in there. You could read it.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: I know people at will who got THE TALK about their racist jokes. Usually even at will (depends on the sort of job, of course) even the worst offender is given a chance to straighten up and fly right.
I would imagine at a small family business it might be insta-firing especially if your work wasn’t that valuable. I was thinking of organizations over 50 members. Everything gets more bureaucratic (unless there’s an arrest or dirty pee test).
Plus you have the case law of what judges will go for on “hostile workplace” claims. So that is part of what is driving this “go and sin no more” policy.
I know someone who was telling “funny” racist jokes at the fucking state attorney’s office and was sooooooo depressed when he got THE TALK.
Peale
@kc: and then he reaches back to Kathleen McKinnon. Then drops around a few more protests of people like Condi and Lagrande and wonders if the late 80s are coming back. Then starts to go after social media which he assumes is millenials because reasons.
(You know, this here politically incorrect blog has all of one millennial who regularly posts here. So maybe the twitterati who he’s worried about are the same people from the 80s…his own cohort).
I don’t see the harm in what he is writing against. I really don’t. It’s like complaining about, I don’t know, walkmans. There isn’t any new urgency.
There is no “reemergence” of PC.
Kylroy
@mattminus: Please explain to me how “check your privilege” differs from “please shut up.” Everything I hear about privilege tells me that people who have it aren’t aware of it, that it’s invisible, and that you can only rely on other people who don’t have it to tell you what’s really happening.
Which is to say it’s a picture perfect inversion of what people without privilege face in the world at large. So it’s a nice exercise in empathy for people who have it, and thus completely useless when talking to conservatives (and let’s face it, most people).
Davebo
@Another Holocene Human:
I tell jokes. A lot. And I know some really, really racist ones.
But the only joke I’ll tell that’s even remotely racist is this.
“What do you call a black astronaut?”
…
“AN ASTRONAUT YOU FUCKING RACIST!!!”
;0)
Lee
I’m sure the post has been discussed at length already but I find it interesting.
lurker dean
@Betty Cracker: this. please get some help, there’s no shame in it. you may even possibly find that people are happy that you are seeking help, i know i would be happy if my family member who has alcohol issues reached out for help.
Davebo
@Kylroy:
That is one of the silliest statements I’ve heard this year but it’s early.
mai naem mobile
I’m expecting Jonathan Chait to become this decade’s Mickey Kaus any moment. Douche.
kc
@Another Holocene Human:
I don’t have a problem with “calling out” abusive or offensive speech, esp. when it’s coming from people in power (the police chief, Allen West . . . at least he used to be), but there are times when the volume and vehemence of the “call outs” are disproportionate to the offense and the power of the speaker. Getting that kid canned by the student newspaper for example, for a column spoofing people being hypersensitive to speech, or as some people call it, “pc” – that was over the top. In my opinion.
Plus, frankly, most of what I see these days by way of “call outs” amounts to a circular firing squad amongst lefties. Meanwhile the Republicans have overtaken state legislatures, governorships, and the entire U.S. Congress.
But, having bitched about it, I’m going to be quiet now. I just personally don’t want to waste any more time on Chait OR his multitudes of detractors. I wish everyone else involved in this national discussion the best. :)
Alesis
@kc:
I did. That’s why I said he struggles
geg6
@kc:
Um, I read the whole article and that’s a pretty good representation of what I took from it. And no, I have no reading comprehension problems. In fact, I got what are considered perfect scores on the reading/verbal sections of both the SAT and GRE. It’s about as good an example of middle-aged-white-mansplaining as I’ve ever seen.
kc
@Peale:
Yes. That’s a much more fair criticism than “Straight white guy wants to say the N word!”
kc
@geg6:
Congrats, so did I.
ETA: Not that it matters. The biggest dumbest right wing blowhard I ever encountered used to brag loudly about his perfect SAT scores . . .
Kylroy
@Davebo: Okay, so Peggy McIntosh, The Hathor Legacy, and everything else that comes up on the first page of searching google for “invisible privilege” is silly. Got it.
kc
@Alesis:
Okay, I saw other examples, but I agree that the piece was a bit labored.
I think I see what Chait is trying to say, but unfortunately for him he’s not the person to say it. At least no one is going to take him seriously.
kc
Mm hmm.
kc
@glocksman:
Aw, man. I feel for you. I hope you do reach out to someone; that’s a lot to go through alone.
kc
@Cacti:
Yeah . . . makes me wonder why they kept asking him questions. Just for fun, I guess.
jl
@Cacti:
“I’m just here so I don’t get fined”.
I like an honest person. Give that man a bonus.
I heard a clip of some of his presser. I liked his tone too.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
wasn’t he fined anyway?
GregB
Chait also goes into the horrible speech squashing potential of some college flunky tearing up an anti-abortion poster but doesn’t seem to address the freedom of speech repercussions of the stalking, harassing and repeated murdering women’s health care givers.
Kylroy
@kc: Put it this way – I think it’s a legitimate beef but it applies in such a tiny portion of the culture that complaining about it isn’t worth the effort.
buddy h
@glocksman: Excess alcohol can cause serious dehydration problems. Drink fresh water. Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed (like insensitive ER personnel).
It’s amazing to me that alcohol is celebrated, socially acceptable, consumed on morning talk shows and joked about, and it can kill you. Meanwhile, pot is seen (in some places) as something horrible.
buddy h
Nobody ever went through the DTs from pot withdrawal.
I went through a period not long ago when I started drinking heavy, trying to cope with a bad living situation. Then I stopped drinking, I got the internal shakes. It was horrible.
But drinking is cute. Everybody on the sit-coms are holding beer bottles. The morning gab shows, everyone has a glass of wine.
Turgidson
I think Chait’s writing was at least trying to be more nuanced than just “white guy pissed he’s not the only one allowed to be an insensitive dick anymore,” but he mostly failed in his effort.
His harping on the chilling effect of the PC police tamping down debate conflates this with an actual First Amendment issue, which it is not. He may not have meant to make that direct connection, but he did. People being ostracized for saying inflammatory things is not the same as them being arrested for saying them. Where Chait most ostentatiously gives away that it’s his privilege talking is in suggesting that being a target for ostracism or enduring some rudeness is just as bad as being prosecuted in court.
Like I said in last night’s Chait thread, sure, if we buy into his slippery slope strawman, he has a valid point. At the logical end of his feared dystopia, a merciless posse of PC thugs will impose all sorts of limits on free speech. But a strawman it is. We’re about a million miles from such a place and it’s more likely that some right-wing reactionary asshole will take power and nullify the First Amendment and ban speech they find offensive or threatening than a bunch of angry PC activists do it.
He should stick to ridiculing GOP policy atrocities.
opiejeanne
@kc: really? This is a political issue now? Jeeze.
Denali
@glocksman,
Please check into the closest treatment center. There are day treatment programs if you are not covered or if you feel your job would be jepordized. And please call a friend to get rid of your guns, if the guns are in your home. This happened to a relative of mine when his kids were with him. Very scary.
elm
@kc: Man has doorway vandalized for writing a dickish column. Same man loses his job for standing by his dickishness.
Chait gives his game away here:
Such a “free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals” has never existed. Perhaps somebody has held it as an “ideal”, but it isn’t something that has developed into a practice.
F
Kids raised on a culture of ‘We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.’
Has anyone ever offered evidence that this actually exists?
Another Holocene Human
@kc: Yeah, but that’s basically tumblr, some academic departments, some online forums. It sucks but these are places that ultimately don’t matter that much in terms of what’s happening outside. Even when you’re talking about in the streets activism, don’t confuse their stupid facebook feeds and facebook spats with what’s going on at planning meetings, I mean those who do, do.
Yeah, I think it sucks but I remember I can avoid the fuck out of 18 year olds with chips on their shoulders.
I can’t avoid Reince Priebus and his vision for America.
Big difference.
Another Holocene Human
@kc: Chris Rock is a reactionary, and now he’s an older reactionary.
Let him keep making that sweet sweet Grownups money with reactionaries his own age. If you want to reach the young you gotta think young and that has never been Rock’s shtick from day 1.
Turgidson
@F:
I haven’t. This, and ranting about “participation awards” seems to be the Gen X update on what they heard as kids, which was something like “in my day, I walked two miles to school barefoot, uphill both ways! You pansy asses get to take a bus!”
Participation ribbons existed when I was a kid in the 80s. But the winners got real trophies and prizes or whatever. It was still quite obvious who won, who lost, and that winning was lionized while losing was unfortunate. BFD.
Another Holocene Human
@elm: Well, you see, it’s political discourse as if that messy matter of power didn’t exist. Very appealing to elitists of all stripes. The tell is talking about liberals, what does he mean, 19th century liberals? Ancestors to libertarians?
Chait just sounds like someone embarrassed by progressives, activists, the voices of people of color, and the messiness of internal disputes within academia (erm, it’s usually students vs. faculty, and Chait is identifying with the faculty), and wants to retreat to his quiet rooms.
F
@Turgidson:
Mmmhmm. I grew up in the 90s, and it was basically the same thing.
Turgidson
@Turgidson:
meant to say “I haven’t seen any evidence” this phenomenon exists.
Another Holocene Human
@Turgidson: Years and a dozen participation trophies later, I think school and sports were overly concerned with winning. Sports teaches cooperation but it also teaches ruthlessness. You see the crazy parents who sacrifice the team so their kid can be a star, the ruthless coaches who teach kids it’s okay to cheat if you win (even on a technicality), the miserable coaches and parents who scream at and berate kids for not being good enough at a fucking game, the games-playing before the season begins where connected people collect all the best intramural players into their own team, because whoever wins peewee softball for the year is some fucking accomplishment (and now the games are blowouts, wow we really learned something here). Plus school teaches you to compete with other students hardcore but when you’re an adult you’ll have to learn to cooperate, be likable, shit to inspire people, collaborate, listen to others, etc. Why do you think all these college kids end up so depressed? Education, learning is real, and yeah, having a test does motivate you to study, but the only person you ought to be measured against is yourself. The rest of the game is just bullshit.
I was proud of those participation trophies. They reminded me of all the fun I had playing and motivated me to keep doing it. I liked the cameraderie of being on the team, especially when we had good (not crazy) coaches. Practicing skills over and over, learning to do plays. I really hate exercising, but I loved playing soccer. The one time I was on a team that won the tournament it was fun, but there was a lot of negatives to it too. The best part about that championship was that we honed our skills to get better and managed to play up to the level of a team that had beat us before (just like a cheesy sports movie). I mean that was the positive side. The negative side was the shitty behavior of the other team’s coach, the shittiness of the parents of the other team from our school that sucked that year, the negging and the cheating by some of the players on the other team, oh and they were teasing and taunting kids on their own team, one of whom would later be one of my best friends … I mean, it was ugly. I don’t feel … happy about that trophy.
Another Holocene Human
Did Chait actually bring up Condaleeza? Shows where his loyalties really lie. New Republic indeed. When progressive college students can’t protest a war mongerer, THEN it is time to panic about freedom of expression. When college students don’t bother to protest, then you worry that a generation has lost their way.
Until then, protesting war mongerers is what college students DO. Was Chait born stroking his beard and puffing a pipe? I mean seriously.
Turgidson
@Another Holocene Human:
Seriously. I was blown away that anyone with an IQ above room temperature actually got mad at the students for speaking out against Condi being the commencement speaker. The students didn’t have any voice in who was invited (fuck, the commencement speaker at my graduation was a lame professor no one even liked. He was booed when they introduced him). How could they not be pissed that an unrepentant war criminal was chosen to speak to them, and in a sense, represent their school or its values?
Condi had, and has, all kinds of ways to exercise her free speech rights without having an ironclad right to ruin what should be a happy occasion for hundreds or thousands of newly minted college grads. And Chait is concerned about how much power the PC police projected in protesting Condi. What a tool.
Kylroy
@Another Holocene Human: Excellent point, though the typo “…you’ll have to learn to cooperate, be likable, shit to inspire people” make me laugh hysterically because I am 12.
The flipside of the kids learning win-at-all-costs ruthlessness is the rest of them learn apathy. Nothing matters if you don’t win, and everyone else has already put the fix in against you, so why try? I think a nontrivial portion of the elites misses how pre-downtrodden a lot of people were in ages past.
Ripley
@F:
You mean a white guy saying so doesn’t qualify as evidence? Yikes, don’t tell Fox News….
Paul in KY
@glocksman: Man, that sucks Glocksman. Please do whatever you can to stop that drinking (bet you’ve never heard that before).
There’s a lot of fun in this world & you’ll be missing out on it (cause you’ll be dead), if you continue drinking.
Paul in KY
@Kylroy: They know they have it, they just HATE admitting they have it.
Paul in KY
@Another Holocene Human: At HS level, winning is what counts. Certainly to the coaches, who get good money (sometimes) from their job & want to keep it & generally get fired for losing too much.
Paul in KY
@Turgidson: Excellent comment on Condosleeza Rice.