Category Archives: Pseudoscience

UPDATED: Blade Runner Still Walking On Water

Celebrity, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, Pseudoscience, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, South-Africa, Sport

A high-profile murder involving a class of people whose role in South Africa’s endemic crime is statistically insignificant occurred last week. The two wealthy white South Africans involved, however, will become a perfect foil for the hypocritical tele-twits of the West. The latter have said nothing about the carnage of crime in that country—and they’ll continue to say nothing meaningful at all.

Crime in South Africa should have been making news headlines across the world throughout South Africa’s overnight transition from minority to majority rule. It hasn’t. Blade runner Oscar Pistorius’ run-in with the law has occasioned the first such mention that I can recall by anchor-personality Megyn Kelly of Fox News, and her colleagues in the industry. (The killing fields of South Africa are dissected in “Crime, The Beloved Country,” a chapter in my book).

A statistical outlier, an anomaly—the murder of a (white) South African celebrity (Reeva Steenkamp) by another (Olympian Oscar Pistorius), allegedly—has newsmen in the West mentioning a subject they’ve so far submerged.

Steenkamp was a South African model. Pistorius is also a celebrity whose fame comes from being a tenacious (and talented) track-and-field annoyance. An annoyance, because most hardcore track-and-field fans want able and disabled Olympians segregated. (Yes, this is an intentional play on “loaded” words. Call the PC police!) The separation why? So as to allow fans (me) to enjoy the sport without the accoutrements of technology and the incontinent gushing that accompanies Pistorius whenever he makes a run for it.

In any event, how PC and TV perfect is this crime? (This or any other crime should never be called “a tragic circumstance,” as such vague language implies that bad deeds are invariably caused—never committed. And that they are caused by factors outside the perpetrators. (See “Rah-Rah For Rioters.”)

I wager that next, Anderson Cooper or Piers Morgan will call on the actress Charlize Theron to comment about the relevance of her pet campaign to stop violence against women in our former homeland, and its relevance to this case.

There is no relevance. Violence in the “Rambo Nation” is unidirectional: black on black and black on white. Violence against women—at least the kind that causes more than hurt feelings—follows the same pattern.

Meanwhile, the blade runner is still walking on water. Oscar Pistorius is receiving “overwhelming support” from his fans. Or so his agent informs the fans and the press.

UPDATE: FROM the Facebook thread. It’s just as I said. The Guardian is turning a statistical anomaly in this group (well-to-do whites) into a generic statement about violence against women in South Africa.

Diagnosed With … Gun Incompatibility Disorder

GUNS, Individual Rights, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Regulation

Scarcely had the cowardly attack on kids in Newtown, Con., transpired than forces on the left and right began clamoring to restrain “predisposed” individuals before they transgressed.

Any sweeping prior-restraint legal efforts will have “unintended” consequences. Since undesirable outcomes will follow such laws as night follows day—one wonders why they’re considered “unintended” or unforeseeable.

Expect a reduction in the use of counseling services among gun owners. If he thinks that his doctor is likely to pass on information about his mental state to federal or state authorities, how likely is a gun owner to seek help for psychological/marital/familial problems?

Not very likely.

The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the Rosetta Stone of the profession, has grown since its inception in the 1950s from 60 categories of abnormal behavior to over 410 diagnostic labels and counting. Many of the disorders described in it are more about trend and niche than science.

In the late 1990s, I told readers of my Calgary Herald column about one Dr. John Ratey, a Harvard associate professor and a well-respected, prominent psychiatrist, who claimed, in his 1997 book Shadow Syndromes, that quirky behaviors were actually mild mental illnesses resulting from brain dysfunction.

The lout who is appropriately obsequious with the boss because he knows where his bread is buttered, but who is less dainty with the wife, even thumping her occasionally, would be a candidate for compassion. He is after all doing battle with what Dr. Ratey terms “Intermittent Rage Disorder”. And the dad who dotes on his children while they are with him, but fails to mail them child support money as soon as they are out of sight, is simply afflicted with “Environmental Dependency Disorder”: He remembers his kids only when they are around. Is there proof for these sub-rosa disease categories? None whatsoever, although this has not prevented Ratey and many like him from coating their pronouncements with a patina of scientific respectability—and then cashing in.

Given the tenuous ties between psychiatry and science, how likely is it that “evidence” for new diagnoses will be marshaled in order to keep more people from being able to defend their lives and loved ones with guns?

Very likely.

The Managerial State’s Media and Medical Lapdogs

GUNS, Individual Rights, Propaganda, Pseudo-intellectualism, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Regulation, The Zeitgeist

I had feared that the reaction to this week’s column on the pornography of public grief, now on LewRockwell.com, would be as angry as the reaction to my “Bullied ‘Jail Bus’ Lady: Fearful Fatty, Not A Hero.” Was I in for a happy surprise!

The letters have been overwhelmingly full of gratitude and relief for my having expressed what readers were thinking.

Here is a smattering:

Sent: Friday, December 21, 2012 10:42 AM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: RE: The pornography of public grief

You are a Modern Prophet. You have identified the real affliction that humanity is either willingly blind to, or naively blinkered.

Regards,
JT

Friday, December 21, 2012 1:42 PM
To: ‘imercer@wnd.com’
Subject: Public Grief!

All I can say about your article on public grief is…”AMEN”. … Thanks for your articles. I have always appreciated them, I should have said so before this.

JB, Texas

Friday, December 21, 2012 4:28 PM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: The pornography of public grief

Very good piece.

Interested in you book “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

Having lived in SA for five months.

John

Friday, December 21, 2012 4:38 PM
To: imercer@wnd.com
Subject: EXCELLENT!!! (THE PORNOGRAPHY OF PUBLIC GRIEF)

Hello Ilana,
It has been several years since we exchanged emails, and it has been some time since I’ve caught back up with your intellectually masterful musings.

Your piece said what I, and I think many others, have been thinking since the awful news broke last week. And nobody has said it better than you with this:
“At the root of it all is the rejection of the existence of unadulterated evil. Rather than accept the reality of evil – s–t happens, live with it and be prepared to proceed against it – misconduct has been medicalized.”

Thank you so very much for your strength to stay true to your moral and intellectual compass.

Wishing you peace and prosperity,

CB, OH

Friday, December 21, 2012 10:00 PM
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject: Thank you

Your article brought clarity to me of the feeling I have had about the circus and exploitation of the grieving process of the families and friends of the victims. The national media avoids the issues, use any excuse not to make news and create entertainment ghoulish at the least.
Sincerely,
HS

*************

Needless to say, the media as master of ceremonies is sustaining the puke factor. And the ostensible defenders of our sacred right to defend our lives are looking like clobbered seals on ice floes.

The Pornography of Public Grief

Crime, Ethics, Etiquette, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Reason

The following is from “The Pornography of Public Grief,” the current column, now on WND.COM:

“A headline on the Huffington Post blared: ‘Comfort Dogs Sent To Newtown From Chicago Area To Help Community After Sandy Hook Shooting.’ CNN’s top dog Anderson Cooper followed—or led the pack; who cares?—with a similar segment about insourcing dogs to comfort the afflicted community of Newtown, Conn.

One day after the massacre of 20 children and seven adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, ‘a group of golden retrievers from the Chicago area made a cross-country journey to … Newtown.’

Woof, woof, or barf, barf?

Are there no companion dogs in Newtown, Conn.? Must expert dogs be brought in to properly minister to the mourners? Apparently so. Even the neighborhood dog is now unqualified for the big time.

The pornography of public grief in our country is almost as warped as the evil (not ill), mother-slaying, mass murderer responsible for the Sandy Hook carnage. There is very little dignity in the freaky spectacle of mass contagion—where members of the public turn professional mourners, flock to memorial happenings for victims they never knew, and mill about for hours in the hope of being discovered by the master of ceremonies, the journalist.

These ritualistic displays are symptomatic of our festering cultural commons.

At the center of this festering culture that turns victims into a backdrop and prop to the state’s army of experts is the journalist. …”

Read the complete column, “The Pornography of Public Grief,” now on WND.COM.

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