Category Archives: English

Katherine Fenton’s Typical Whining Womanhood

Aesthetics, Economy, Elections, English, Feminism, Gender, Labor, Republicans

Ridiculous is the imprecision with which conservatives have lashed out at the repulsive Katherine Fenton. She is the “young woman” who questioned the president and his rival, during the second presidential debate, about a non-existent construct: Pay “inequalities in the workplace.” “Specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn.”

Attack her as the specimen of whining womanhood she is, will you? Don’t call her vague names (“”Feminazi,” “Tool”).

Also, go for the execution: Without exception, the clones that keep stepping into the limelight stud their conversation with the same mind-numbing commonplaces and humbugs, delivered in grating, staccato, tart tones of speech and a truncated vocabulary.

“I feel like” is how these women—endearingly called “young women”—preface every utterance; for they feel a lot, but don’t think much.

Yuk.

Is any conservative going to point out how off-putting America’s “young women” sound, irrespective of how pretty they look?

No, because The Thing I’ve described fits most young conservative commentators too. Remember how Laura Ingraham was forced to grovel for lampooning the dense Meghan McCain’s unmistakable moronity and Valley-Girl inflection?

In any event, implicit in Fenton’s question is that the wage discrepancy reported speaks to a widely accepted conspiracy to suppress women’s wages; and that the length of time a woman has been in the work force, her age, experience, education; whether she has put her career on hold to marry and mother—do not factor into the wage equation.

Incapable as these women are of analytical thinking, they cannot comprehend how certain realities factor into the wage equation. To wit, women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory and to opt for part-time and lower-paying professions—education instead of engineering, for example.

If your average Republican galvanized economic logic to dispel distaff America’s claims of disadvantage, this is what he’d have said:

“If women with the same skills as men were getting only 72 cents for every dollar a man earns, men as a group would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. The fact that entrepreneurs don’t ditch men for women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.” (From “Guys Do Double Duty For Feminist Delusions.”)

Enoch Powell At 100

America, Britain, English, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Race

Enoch Powell’s famous, much-maligned “rivers of blood” speech has devolved over the years to suit Powell’s adversaries. Delivered in Birmingham, in April 1968, notes The Times Literary Supplement, the famous segment read as follows:

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. . . . To see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

The TLS’s welcome, if marginal, mention of Powell is on the occasion of the publication of Tom Bower’s “balanced critique of Powell’s rhetoric”: Enoch at 100: A revaluation of the life, politics and philosophy.

Helped along by oodles of ignorance, the “foaming Tiber mutated over the years to ‘rivers of blood’, notionally streaming through British cities as the tide of immigration rose unchecked.” (TLS)

As Bower points out, “the official figure for immigrants at the time was relatively small”:

“only 7,000 males every year”, but “the government did not announce that annually a further 50,000 dependants of established immigrants were also entering Britain”.
Powell’s fear was less of immigrants as such (though his “Rivers of Blood” speech contains passages about “negroes” which might land him in [a British] court today) than of a breakdown in “social cohesion”.

“Repeatedly,” it is observed in this TLS editorial, Powell “pointed to rioting in American cities, then at a fearful pitch. Why was Britain inviting the ‘tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence’ of the country?”

Stupidly, the TLS editor joins in blaming Powell’s “oratory” for making “immigration a taboo subject by silencing even reasoned opponents of immigration and multiculturalism who feared being tarnished as racists.”

From the fact that “plain talk about the topic is rare, even dangerous,” the TLS concludes that Powell is at fault.

Oh my!

I do like what Saul Bellow said about the “intractable phenomenon” in the US: “we lack a language in which to talk about it.”

IT being unfettered immigration, also known as “The Suicide of the West.”

Still, I’m pleasantly surprised that the TLS (July 6, 2012) made even marginal mention of Enoch at 100. Surprised because the TLS, once so objective and rigorous, is tilting to tinny, lefty, obscurantist postmodernism. (To modify a Joan Rivers witticism, Why would you want to reproduce a rash?)

That’s one way to reduce circulation, and suck the joy out of English literature (“the English-speaking people” is a concept TLS reviewers now routinely mock or “deconstruct”).

We Know “What Kind of ‘Skeeza’ is a Condoleeza [sic]”

Bush, English, History, Iraq, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Terrorism

“Skeeza” was the moniker that Brother Amiri Baraka attached to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose VP candidacy many conservatives are pushing.

Via RT:

The latest reports out of the Republican Party’s inner circle suggest that Rice, the Secretary of State under former President George W. Bush, is a viable option for Mr. Romney as he comes close to selecting a vice presidential candidate. Drudge Report, the heated political website overseen by conservative pundit Matt Drudge, alleged that Rice was among Romney’s top picks in a posting made this Thursday.

Just this once, I must agree with New Jersey’s awful, inartful poet laureate.

Let us take a romp down memory lane (via the Mercer Archives) with Ms. Rice:

FROM “HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE!”, dated May 29, 2002:

Condoleezza Rice [head of the National Security Council] was unblushing as she justified her dismissive treatment of the critical mass of intelligence pertaining to impending terrorist attacks. Her distinction between analytical reports and specific intelligence information was especially specious. …Is Rice claiming that the mental capacity for deduction is not part of her job description? (President Bush might get away with that.) Can’t Americans expect the thousands of agents they employ to possess the rudimental capability for drawing inferences from data and moving to verify or refute information? Can Rice not be expected to execute a simple algorithm, like instruct her subordinates to screen and canvass certain targeted suspects?

…the National Security Council … is an office created by the National Security Act of 1947 to advise the president on “integration of domestic, foreign and military policies relating to national security and to facilitate interagency cooperation.” If suspicion existed – analytic, synthetic, prosaic or poetic – Rice should have put the squeeze on the system she oversees.

Don’t go away. There is much more to come from the Mercer vault to counter the GOP ditto-heads’ historic Alzheimer’s.

Later.

UPDATE IV: What’s One More Extra-Constitutional Power Grab? (‘Meanwhile, At The Border . . .’)

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Democrats, English, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Private Property, Republicans, Welfare

As measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, the president’s speeches are written at an eighth-grade level. (And we’re not talking simple as in straightforward, precise and concise; but simple as in laden with emotion, and full of hot air and appeals to feelings.)

Read his “Remarks on Immigration.”

As an example of Obama’s eighth-grade writing, take this run-on ramble—a paragraph with the most awful syntax. BHO just adds clauses as he goes. This man’s mind is every bit as disorganized as was Bush’s.

As I said in my speech on the economy yesterday, it makes no sense to expel talented young people, who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans — they’ve been raised as Americans; understand themselves to be part of this country — to expel these young people who want to staff our labs, or start new businesses, or defend our country simply because of the actions of their parents — or because of the inaction of politicians.

What a dreadful cur!

It is, of course, incongruous to profess libertarianism, while supporting free-for-all immigration, affirmative action, anti-private property Civil-Rights laws, and public education extended to all trespassers—these are policies that violate private property, which is the cornerstone of libertarianism.

Most illegal aliens do not come to the U.S. to wage war, but the reality is that, once in the country, almost all wage welfare. Would that the American Welfare State did not exist. But since it does and is, unfortunately, likely to persist for some time to come, it must stop at the Rio Grande.

UPDATE I: Van Esser at NumbersUSA writes the following:

Perhaps I’m missing something but I can’t find a provision of the US Constitution that authorizes a president to act because he/she just can’t wait for Congress. The Obama Administration must have found the language. Otherwise, the new administrative amnesty-in-place for illegal aliens under the age of 31 would be considered an extra-constitutional directive by fiat.

As far as his Orwellian overreach, Strongman Obama is no different than “The Decider” when it comes to flouting our Constitution. Republicans fuss a lot when Democrats sidestep a Constitution that has long been a dead-letter. Democrat do the same.

It’s a meaningless dance.

Big Man Obama gave the great, late, Democratic Senator, Robert Byrd, palpitations. Byrd, RIP, was “a stern constitutional scholar who always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House.” According to Politico.com, this old Southern gentleman, after whom Republicans were always chasing for his past indiscretions, warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab. Chief Obama created a number of new, extra-constitutional White-House fiefdoms: one on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change.

AND now on immigration.

Ditto “The Decider.” He habitually sidestepped the chain of command in the military and winked at the Constitutional scheme. Under The Decider’s dictatorship, matters that ought to have been the business of the people or their representatives were routinely consigned to the executive branch.

So quit the posturing, Republicans. The Obama “Get-Out-Of-Deportation-Free-Card” is business as usual in the republic, RIP.

UPDATE II (June 17): BHO claimed that deportation of criminal aliens was up 80 percent. Bush did close to nothing to defend against the invasion from the south. Compared to that standard, it is probably true that Obama has bested Bush in enforcement. But when the numbers are so miniscule, percentage increases are huge. So, if Bush deported 50 illegal aliens, to exaggerate; then at 90, Obama can boast of kicking out 80 percent more.

UPDATE III: DAVID FRUM via VDARE.COM:

Every serious economic study of immigration has found that the net benefits of present policy are exceedingly small. But that small net is an aggregate of very large effects that cancel each other out. The immigrants get higher wages than they would have earned in their former country. The affluent gain lower prices for in-person services. Lower-skilled native-born Americans face downward wage pressure. In any other policy area, people who consider themselves progressive might be expected to revile a policy whose benefits went to foreigners and the rich, and whose costs were born by the American poor. Immigration policy baffles that expectation.

UPDATE IV (June 18): ‘Meanwhile, At The Border . . .’ via The Center for Immigration Studies:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with guarding the U.S. borders, has written a secret draft policy that would let its agents catch and release low-priority illegal immigrants rather than bring them in for processing and prosecution. The policy, which has not been signed off on, would be the latest move by the Obama administration to set new priorities for the nation’s immigration services, and would bring CBP in line with other Homeland Security Department agencies that already use such “prosecutorial discretion.”
The policy was detailed in an internal memo obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith and reviewed by The Washington Times, which confirmed the document.
According to the memo, the draft policy “provides circumstances when to pursue enforcement actions … and includes detailed discussion of several factors CBP personnel should consider when exercising discretion.”
Opponents say it amounts to another “backdoor amnesty” for illegal immigrants and could give the administration a tool to pressure Border Patrol agents not to pursue some people.

To continue the theme of this blog post, how is this different from policy under Bush? On this front it isn’t.

…the underlying reason why America’s deportation system remains inexplicably paralyzed by federal litigation and rigged in favor of relief from removal:
Internationalists in the Bush and Clinton Administrations have decided to confine immigration enforcement only to the U.S. borderlands…until there’s no enforcement at all, because the U.S., Mexico and Canada will have been merged into one unit behind a new “North American security perimeter.”
This shared Canada-U.S-Mexico “security perimeter” is exactly what the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America has in mind for America someday.

[VDARE.COM]