UPDATE II: My Oppression Is Bigger Than Yours (Postmodernisms)

Education,English,Journalism,Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim,Media,Multiculturalism,Pop-Culture,The Zeitgeist

            

“Self-anointed Jewish leadership,” I wrote “has managed to cast Jews as a mere faction among a multicultural mob, a position Jews (being liberals) love.”

That describes Jon Stewart—who is a member of the liberal, Jewish glitterati—and his fight with a CNN reptilian brain by the name of Rick Sanchez.

FoxNews:

Sanchez said that Stewart is bigoted toward “everybody else that’s not like him.” He said Stewart “can’t relate to what I grew up with,” saying his family had been poor and he had seen prejudice directed at his father.
Sanchez dismisses it when Dominick points out that Stewart, who is Jewish, is also a minority.
“I’m telling you that everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority?” Sanchez said, adding a sarcastic “yeah.”
“I can’t see someone not getting a job these days because they’re Jewish,” he said.

I stopped watching Stewart long ago. However, I have never heard him refer to himself in other than a self-deprecating tone. In fact when, in 2005, the barbarians of the banlieusard were rioting in France, Stewart mocked his status as an “alienated” minority thus: “Do you know what it’s like to be sent to a Christian school every Passover with a hardboiled egg?” (Italians would have similar stories of “survival.”)

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe: whose side am I on here? I’ll go with the the Jew, just because he’s brainier than the other oaf. I’m glad Rick is gone, but look who the dog dragged in instead: “Put evil and supercilious together and what do you get? ‘Parker Spitzer.'”

YAWN.

UPDATE (Oct. 2): THE STEWART INSTITUTION. I’ve changed my mind about this weighty matter (NOT) currently occupying the debtor nation’s news headlines: I’m now on the side of Sanchez. I believe that the ratings for his “Ricks’ List” show were good (for CNN, at least). Why fire him if this is the case? Besides, a slight against Jon Stewart: Is that enough to get you fired? Perhaps I’ll change my mind again, as is my wont when such a hugely important issue is at hand.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?!

UPDATE II (Oct. 3): ALEX AND THE POSTMODERNISTS. Young Alex is a long-time friend of BAB and contributor to my blog. His trials and tribulations are familiar to this writer. I have known Alex to be brash, on occasion. But he is nothing like the typical millennial I’ve described in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable,” and who I encounter in my professional dealings. These are horrible, hubristic youths, egged on to heights of narcissistic grandiosity by their infatuated, errant and idiotic (naturally) elders. In another age, in another time, Alex would be a leader. I find his plucky attitude towards his cretinous tutors to be inspiring. Older men participating on this blog should support this young man, and any like him.

For heaven’s sake Alex, when do you complete your interminable degree? The sooner you qualify and go out and do what the dead wood can’t do; the better you’ll be. You’re mired in an intellectual cesspool.

Alex asked about critical race theory, an artificial, political construct with which the postmodernists in the academy rape reality, art, literature and music and roger western culture, in general. We’ve discussed these matters before, so I am reproducing an earlier blog post titled “Avoid The American English Department”:

It is old news that the academy has been contaminated by postmodernism.

For example, academic historians and their acolytes have worked overtime to replace the impartial, non-ideological study of American history and its heroic figures with “history from below.” This postmodern tradition regularly produces works the topics of which include, “Quilting Midwives during the Revolution.” Or, “Hermaphrodites and the Clitoris in Early America.”

As you well imagine, the libidinized annals of the “Hermaphrodites and the Clitoris in Early America” is not flying off the printing presses.

The deconstruction of fields of study has engulfed universities, not sparing the hard sciences. Women’s Studies courses and English departments are most likely to be littered with the ideology’s lumpen jargon. There, text is routinely deconstructed and shred. Subjected to this “academic” acid, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and T. S. Eliot are whittled down to no more than ruling class oppressors, their artistry reduced to the bare bones of alleged power relationships in society.

Easily the worst offender is the American English Department. Phyllis Schlafly wrote the following in “Advice To College Students: Don’t Major in English”:

“In the decades before ‘progressive’ education became the vogue, English majors were required to study Shakespeare, the pre-eminent author of English literature. The premise was that students should be introduced to the best that has been thought and said.”

“What happened? To borrow words from Hamlet: ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.’ Universities deliberately replaced courses in the great authors of English literature with what professors openly call ‘fresh concerns,’ ‘under-represented cultures,’ and ‘ethnic or non-Western literature.’ When the classics are assigned, they are victims of the academic fad called deconstructionism. That means: pay no mind to what the author wrote or meant; deconstruct him and construct your own interpretation, as in a Vanderbilt University course called ‘Shakespearean Sexuality,’ or ‘Chaucer: Gender and Genre’ at Hamilton College. …”

“Twenty years ago, University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom achieved best-seller lists and fame with his book The Closing of the American Mind. He dated the change in academic curricula from the 1960s when universities began to abandon the classic works of literature and instead adopt multicultural readings written by untalented, unimportant women and minorities.”

“Bloom’s book showed how the Western canon of what educated Americans should know – from Socrates to Shakespeare – was replaced with relativism and the goals of opposing racism, sexism and elitism. Current works promoting multiculturalism written by women and minorities replaced the classics of Western civilization written by the DWEMs, Dead White European Males.”

“Left-wing academics, often called tenured radicals, eagerly spread the message, and students at Stanford in 1988 chanted ‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western civ has got to go.’ The classicists were cowed into silence, and it’s now clear that the multiculturalists won the canon wars.”

“Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton have been replaced by living authors who toe the line of multicultural political correctness, i.e., view everything through the lens of race, gender and class based on the assumption that America is a discriminatory and unjust racist and patriarchal society. The only good news is that students seldom read books any more and use Cliffs Notes for books they might be assigned.”

[SNIP]

In its December 12, 2008 issue, the Times Literary Supplement has some fun at the expense of a pompous graduate of this pathetic tradition. The incomprehensibility factor, as they call it:

“Once the habit of writing comprehensible English has been unlearned, it can be difficult to reacquire the knack. Here is an example of a sentence which purports to be written in English, but which, we propose, is incomprehensible to all but a few. It is taken from Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting time and space in narrative fiction by Hilary P. Dannenberg”:

Historical counterfactuals in narrative fiction frequently take an ontologically different form in which the counterfactual premise engenders a whole narrative world instead of being limited to hypothetical inserts embedded in the main actual world of the narrative text.

About Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park Dannenberg the dolt writes that it “undertakes a more concerted form of counterfactualizing, in which both the character and the narrator separately map out counterfactual versions of the concluding phase of the novel’s love plot.”

In studied contempt, the TLS marvels that Coincidence and Counterfactuality “is published by the University of Nebraska Press. Just think: someone read the book and endorsed its publication, someone edited it, someone else set it in type, designed a cover, compiled an index, read the proofs—yet hardly anyone can understands what’s in it.”

Now that’s good, clear English everyone gets.

A good friend of mine, also a fine and successful novelist, relates this amusing incident:

“I once got hired by the U of Chicago to edit their academic press. The manuscripts were atrocious. I could not understand what was written, and used a red pen heavily in the margins of the manuscripts. After my corrections arrived, I was fired immediately. They told me I was not ‘intellectually sophisticated’ enough for the job. To which I replied: ‘You’re right: Fuck you.'”

Would I have, like my friend, responded so confidently and cleverly, as our reader suggests? I don’t think so. I’d probably become defensive, and return an analytical evisceration, which would have been wasted on the these literary offenders. My friend’s repartee is much more effective: it’s economical and intellectually apt, given its targets.

21 thoughts on “UPDATE II: My Oppression Is Bigger Than Yours (Postmodernisms)

  1. james huggins

    I grew up in a section of Memphis with a prety large Jewish presence. But they were not treated as minorities. In fact we gentiles were accorded a sort of monority status by the decidedly more affluent Jews. I, of course, knew about the holocaust and the discrimination against the Jews from earlier years but I could see these things were a thing of the past. All ethnic groups suffer biases and bigotry. It’s part of the human experience. If you’re a Jew in the middle East or Eastern Europe I will listen to your story. If you’re an over paid New York media type I’ve got no time to listen to you cry.

  2. Alex

    Ilana, we are going over ‘white privilege’ and race theory right now in minority studies.

    They are teaching us that race is a social construct, and that whites are a privileged group in our society; that blacks and minorites are kept under a subliminal, deeply ingrained psychological racial bias that stops them from achieving equality.

    We are listening to speeches from Tim Wise, a white liberal to makes these speeches on racism.

    Have you heard of race theory and white privilege? What are your thoughts on this stuff Ilana?

  3. John McNeill

    It wouldn’t surprise me if minorities who feel oppressed by the white man would also regard Jews as part of the evil white man, and leftist Jews, like leftist gentile whites, are just useful idiots to be discarded when they are no longer needed. The Abe Foxmans of the world should tread carefully.

  4. Alex

    It’s funny that you say that Mr McNeil. We have to read a paper in class called “how Jews became white folks”. Basically, the gist is, because of Jews intrepid resourcefulness, they were no longer seen as an ‘inferior’ race by whites; ergo, they ‘earned’ their right to be white.

    I swear I am not making this stuff up. If anyone is curious as to how base these articles are, I will gladly send you PDF files of our ‘readings’.

    The problem that I have with this particular ‘reading’ is that it basically acknowledges a minority that has earned rights to be considered on par (and mostly superior) to whites, and then denigrates the outcome by calling them the ‘new’ white folks. What total idiocy; you would think that a minorities class would be happy to see that a minority that they are supposed to champion has used it’s own resourcefulness to become immensely rich, powerful, and educated.

    Instead, they are the new ‘white folk’. I have made my opinion known to my ‘Professor’; we will see what she has to say about it this coming Thursday. Joy.

  5. Myron Pauli

    Alex – WHY why why why are you taking “minority studies”? Is that dreck required? Ironically, one of the disadvantages of being a so-called minority is being subjected to orgies of Self-Pity 101, Woe-Is-Me 221, and
    more advanced courses such as White-Men-Really-Really-Suck 337. Funny how a lot of dark skinned Hindus and “slanty-eyed” Asians take economics, medicine, computer science, electrical engineering, and even physics and seem to come out better than those immersed into the politically correct “minority studies” ghetto.

    Alex- even if the course is required, can’t you just find out what (neo-Marxist) drivel the Professor wants to hear and just give it to her? That is generally how “Liberal Arts” works in the USA. And, for God’s sake, why get into arguments with her?

    Alex – while you are at it, I expect you to apologize for the millions of slaves you have exploited, the women you have raped, the Trail of Tears, lynch mobs, the English-only signs, the Holocaust, minstrel shows, colonialism, pornography, the Frito-Bandito, and the Chinese Exclusion Act.

  6. Bob

    It never ceases to amaze me how successfull a true minority can be when he doesn’t “aks” questions. He asks them and shows up for work on time.

  7. Robert Glisson

    I read somewhere, maybe Steve Sailer’s blog that European Indians were classified as ‘white’ up til Reagan’s term when the push for more minorities gave them a racial change. Orientals to my knowledge are ‘white’ so they had to use ‘Oriental’ to create minority status for the most populous race in the world, one billion in China alone.

  8. derek

    Alex, the first naturalization act in US history, the one signed into law by George Washington in 1790, limited citizenship to free whites. Since Jews were allowed to become citizens at that time, it stands to reason that they were considered white from the very beginnings of our republic.

  9. Hugo Schmidt

    I’ll just point out that the only person to recognize the world historical role of the Jewish people and sound the alarm bell about antisemitism and nationalism when it would have made a bloody _difference_ was Niezsche.

  10. Barbara Grant

    Myron, while Alex will probably answer that his “minority” class was a requirement, I can assure you that in the mid-1970s, “ethnic studies” was required for me. I had no choice but to take this awful course. I’d suggest, to parents of high-school aged kids, that they get their kids into advanced placement (AP) classes in whatever social studies (including history) fields are offered…that way, when they pass the AP test, they will have a minimum of brain-dead instruction in college.

  11. John McNeill

    Everyone has to endure some form of white-bashing in school, so I can sympathize with Alex’s plight. For me, it was the vulnerable elementary school years where I was taught to hate myself for being a white blond-haired blue-eyed male.

    Rob, I don’t think East Asians were ever classified as white. Also what do you mean by European Indian? Do you mean the Indo-Aryans of North India who have more European-looking features? Roma?

  12. Alex

    Myron and everyone else,

    Yes, it is a requirement in order for me to graduate.

    However, I will *not* agree with my professor on damn near anything, *regardless* of how much heck she tries to raise with me. I laugh at that crap. I’ve been kicked out of a professors office over a year ago anyway… an unpleasant experience, but, in retrospect, one that I am proud of now.

    It’s too late anyway. I have turned in my ‘journal’, an account of what I think about the events in her class. In it, I called her views a ‘bunch of silly rubbish’. Oh noez. What ever am I going to do.

    I have every intention of making myself as much of a nuisance in her side as can. It can only come close to the misery that she has vomited out on countless of helpless whites in her class.

    We are going to have a brief on women in the military, and I am going to make my voice heard on this rubbish.

    I just can’t hear this crap and be quiet everyone. You guys have to understand… what good is it voice your views on the internet..? Speak up, speak *out*.

    If I am quiet, I am no different from countless other white males who are bullied into guilt.

    I apologize if my statements on here can be a little rough sometimes, and if my thinking isn’t as concise and to the point as it was.. aside from the immense amount of math and science that I am exposed to, college has turned out to be a brainwashing experience.

    The only way you can make it is by dulling the senses.

    [Heroic, Alex. Stay strong.]

  13. Robert Glisson

    Only stating that I had read something about the Indians from India (not the US Indian) being classified as white prior to Reagan. Twas a bit of trolling the Internet, nothing more. The paragraph I skimmed was buried in another article. If important, I can search Mr. Sailer’s archives.

  14. Robert Glisson

    Re: Indians:Sorry to add so many posts.

    Indian immigrant businessmen successfully petitioned the Reagan Administration back in 1982 to be lumped in with East Asians so they could get minority business development loans. But in fact India is more or less Caucasian. Genetically, Cavalli-Sforza found that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians.
    http://vdare.com/sailer/india.htm

  15. Roger Chaillet

    Grow a pair, Alex.

    The elites despise the white race and will crush Whitey underfoot regardless.

    That’s why I always sign my name to these posts.

    I have been screwed for far too long for sins I never committed.

  16. Alex

    Not sure about what you mean when you say “grow a pair” Mr. Chaillet. I am the only person in that class who has a dissenting voice. I don’t consider myself a hero, or a ‘victim’, and I’m not complaining. I am, however, angry that a class is receiving public funds to promote a Marxist idealogy.

    I’m also offended. My grandfather, a Gordon Highland officer (before it was decomissioned), was a white soldier who fought to stop another group of whites (Germans) from eradicating a minority (Jews). He was a good man, who meant what he said, and said what he meant. He was not predisposed to the kind of flamboyant histrionics that are becoming common among men (but masculinity is a good thing when women do it; a bad thing when men do it).

    Fast forward almost seventy years, and a huge disgrace is visited on him and his dying breed. He is a member of a patriarchal, white power base that oppresses everyone, so I am told. How ironic.

    The memory of him (and guys like him currently serving) is dealt another disgraceful blow by the media and popular culture. When was the last time any news network referred to the young men who are being blown to bits going door to door (our combat troops are still all male) as men? I cannot remember the last time I heard this.

    One poster on here commented that the Armed Forces probably cant find enough good men; ergo, they need to recruit females.

    But maybe the young males who are not joining are staying away for the same reason that I am finding minority studies to be so offensive; modern society just doesn’t care much about white guys.

    Or any whites, for that matter (your ‘Jewery’ is included now apparently, Ilana).

    Thanks for hearing me out ya’ll.

  17. John McNeill

    Wow Alex, that was a really nice and inspirational post. Well said. 🙂

    If Alex were a leader, I’d support him!

  18. james huggins

    Way to go Alex. You da man! I too am a white male who has encountered the bullying about which you speak. The only thing is, I don’t feel guilt and don’t pretend to.

  19. Myron Pauli

    Alex: In one history class, I got a radical professor intrigued with the idea that Affirmative Action was being used by the “liberal power establishment” to set the white working class that had been growing too powerful against both minorities and immigrants and that this had worked throughout American history. Conservatism therefore appealed best to those whose parents had finally climbed out of the lowest rungs but who felt powerless being sandwiched by unreachable elites and even poorer people. So I read conservative literature and translated it within his radical world view and he ate it up.

    Generally, I minimized my work load in the non-science courses. I rendered to the humanities professors (Ceasar) what I needed to render and focused on the science stuff.

    Sadly, things are not that much better in “hard” sciences. He who has the gold makes the rules – or, using a phrase from the 1970’s National Lampoon: “Money Talks, Bullshit Walks”. I have numerous examples of being right on things and even being historically vindicated but it matters little. I’m writing up my work for a patent while other people are being paid to “discover” the same techniques – and I’m out of research money.

  20. Barbara Grant

    I think Alex _is_ a leader…his following may not have found him yet. People come to college from different backgrounds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some students (or maybe just one) who may not have thought through the issues as Alex has, but are very uncomfortable with what the instructor is pushing, though they can’t articulate why. I know that I always appreciated the guy who’d take on a socialist instructor.

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