Category Archives: The Zeitgeist

Me, Myself And I = Michelle O

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Britain, Education, Etiquette, Feminism, Race, The Zeitgeist

“Being smart is cooler than anything in the world,” America’s first lady told a gaggle of squealing, high-fiving, weeping girls at a North London school. And Michelle Obama should know, no?

“If you want to know the reason why I am standing here, it’s because of education,” she told them.

“I never cut class. I loved getting As, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler [should be “was cooler”] than anything in the world. You, too, with these values, can control your own destiny. You, too, can pave the way.” She urged them to believe in their dreams.

“For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady [There she goes again]. I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago — that’s the real part of Chicago.”

Cut the cr-p.

Michelle Obama was raised in a country where affirmative action saw to it that mediocrities like herself usurped the real meritocracy. That pesky detail the first wife forgot.

I read Michelle’s university thesis; it’s the product of a banal, third-rate mind. I grant that her meteoric rise had to do with some hard work and pushy grit, but, more than anything, Michelle is a product of affirmative action—a product of a society where, as Joseph Farah put it “black [is] the new color of privilege.”

Updated: It Takes A Jew To Tell It Like It Is

Israel, Judaism & Jews, Political Correctness, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, Race, Racism, The Zeitgeist

“If it’s a racist society, the white people are the ones being persecuted because they have to defend themselves” against ‘professional racists’ like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.”

So said the feisty Jewish comedian Jackie Mason, after causing an uproar by referring to Obama as a “schwartza” during a stand-up routine.

“I’m an old Jew. I was raised in a Jewish family where ‘schwartza’ was used. It’s not a demeaning word and I’m not going to defend myself.”

My grandfather, RIP, was an innocent, sweet man. He too used that particular Yiddish word and meant nothing bad by it.

“And there was this parting shot [from Mason]: ‘I’m more talented than Oprah Winfrey and look at how much she makes. I can’t even make a living.'”

Don’t we know how he feels. (But the market doesn’t adjudicate quality.)

We also know of white men who’ve lived to rue the day they’ve spoken the politically unpalatable. Imus was lynched by the mob Mason mentioned. They were joined by willing conservatives executioners.

Here’s hoping Mason doesn’t back down.

Update (March 16): In response to Gunjam, and about the line, “the marketplace doesn’t adjudicate quality.” I wrote this concept in 2003, in the article “MUCH ADO ABOUT CONSERVATIVES AND POP CULTURE“:

“More often than not, the marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture. … The market does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences enacted by consumers. Aguilera (Christina) probably sells more than Ashkenazy (Vladimir) ever did. Britney outdoes Borodin. For some, this will be faith inspiring, for others deeply distressing.”

[Snip]

The concept can be found in its succinct version under “Pop Culture & Populism,” in the “Quotables” section.

On The Sadness Of Diminishing Things

Aesthetics, America, English, The West, The Zeitgeist

The soul can seek and find solace in an achingly beautiful (and sad) thing. (We’ve gone there before, with “The Magic Of MacNeice.”)

The sadness? For our fading country.

The Judge Who Always Knows What’s Right has sent this along:

The Oven Bird By Robert Frost

THERE is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Updated: Manliness (Not A Miracle) On The Hudson

Barack Obama, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, Media, The Zeitgeist

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Manliness (Not A Miracle) On The Hudson“:

“Missed by the perennial purveyors of pop culture and political correctness was a story about the value of an endangered, and vital, virtue: manliness.” …

“The ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ was less about the supernatural than about a superman—a man made from the right stuff.” …

“Silent, short-on-words and ego, big on humility, ability, and reliability: This is the traditional meaning of manly; this is the kind of guy who’s the best at what he does and almost always comes through for you.” …

The complete column is “Manliness (Not A Miracle) On The Hudson.”

Update (Jan. 13): Not all men are macho; that’s both true and fine.

The reference in my article was more to a mindset that is male in an absolute, unadulterated way. A mindset that is being slowly educated and medicated out of existence. Does this mindset often correlate with secondary characteristics such as a deep voice and a swagger? Indeed it does.

Is manliness mediated by hormonal/physiological realities? Damn straight it is.

The waning of manliness has coincided with reported lower testosterone levels in younger men. Correlation is not causation. Still, men, through no fault of their own, are being feminized, shaped socially to be more like girls: sensitive, emotional, irrational, feeling, cooperative, not competitive. If they reject this designation, they may be diagnosed with ADHD (at the behest of a female teacher, as most teachers are) and medicated.

The assault on manhood as we know it continues throughout a man’s career (don’t flirt, don’t flatter, walk softly, tread lightly, give a group hug, learn anger management, celebrate diversity), and permeates societal institutions—media, the workplace.

Young men who wake up one day and find that my description of the Man in the Supermarket is them—they aren’t to blame. A regulatory society that bans “bang-bang you’re dead,” and forces boys to hack their way through a page-turner like One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads, rather than The Dangerous Book For Boys: that’s what has happened to men.