Dumb Political Correctness

People seem to think only in dichotomy these days. It's depressing, really.

 

ABC canceled Tim Allen's show because he told a few jokes at the expense of Hillary and Obama
FOX is bringing it back

 

I thought Trump said the dumbest thing this week in Helsinki. Then the Atlantic decided they had to outdo him. Link.

 

As long as they're consistent and inform transgenders that they can no longer play non-trans men and women, I'm cool with it.

 

Why stop with trans? Should gay actors like David Hyde Pierce and Neil Patrick Harris be allowed to play straight characters? I think those guys are great talents, but we have to be true to the characters.

 

Well you know, you can't really understand a person unless you've experienced what that person is experienced. It's gay-splaining to pretend that you as a straight man can understand a gay person's life, so you could never truly portray that person. And you would think the reverse would also be true - although I've found that there are is a long line of women who are more than ready to explain to me why I am what I am as a man and what motivates me to do what I do. So who knows, I feel like there may be some inconsistency in this whole discussion...

 

Dropping this bomb here:

https://quillette.com/2018/07/19/black-american-culture-and-the-racial-wealth-gap/

 

“and whites are more than three times as likely as blacks to inherit money from their families. In the public debate on racial inequality, the wealth gap is among the sharpest arrows in the progressive quiver. When conservative commentators argue that America is a meritocracy, or that blacks lag due to cultural factors, progressives can retaliate with a single statistic that seems to prove the reality of white privilege beyond the possibility of doubt”

If you are a white person that is not inheriting tiddlywinks, have no wealth, actually have negative “wealth” with student loans, and are working to create your own wealth, “the wealth gap” is an extremely ineffective arrow. Other white people inheriting wealth does not magically help those that are not inheriting anything through white privilege magic.

Great article @mchammer with facts and statistics, as opposed to “magic and fantasy” which is the base of the “white privilege” narrative.

 

Thomas Sowell's fingerprints are all over that. Excellent information that Libs just want to ignore. Discordant facts are a cast iron b itch.

 

psst...you DO realize that the Babylon Bee is a parody site, right?

 

I'm not sure how many are following this story about Trevor Noah locking horns with the French ambassador. It's actually getting some play here. What started off as lame and somewhat racist joke by a mediocre comedian has become a serious controversy about nationality, citizenship, and identity politics.

Needless to say, Trevor Noah's view is idiotic and destructive. The French ambassador's view is unifying and what all should aspire to. (Interesting, he's a liberal, gay Trump hater.)

 

The problem with the Noah joke is, if a white dude made the same joke, they would be fired and ridiculued by the PC outrage police.

 

I disagree. Inclusion does not mean ignoring our roots. I learned German in HS because half of my family originated from Germany. When I went to England I visited a town where my namesake originated.

My wife is 50% Filipino and thus has traditions from her Mom who immigrated to the US as a young girl. Can she not root for Manny Paquiao feeling some sort of affiliation with that part of her?

That melting pot aspect of America is our source of greatest strength. This idea that one must completely give up parts of their identity after immigration is the danger.

 

I would say Mr. Deez probably gets what you are saying. The argument is on two levels. Take my Cuban roots. Inside our house it was very Cuban. But the flag (if we had put one up) would have been the US Flag. My Dad was very patriotic and grateful to the US. But he loved his Cuban roots. He lived there the first 25 years of his life. It was in his blood. It's normal to feel it and to never lose it. I love the culture he introduced to me but in reality the culture was social: Food, drink music (Mambo) and merriment (the Cuban way). It sure wasn't political as he abhorred Batista, Castro and Che. They weren't his role models. So I never felt a conflict. I know who I stand with and I know what I love.

It's interesting that he didn't stay behind. He did not grow up as a hater of US imperialism. He knew all about it (United Fruit; supposedly the company that radicalized Che) but he also knew the local culture and that was separate from the US culture. He made his choice. And the knowledge of the local culture is key. This is the part we are not allowed to talk about. This is where the ****-hole comments live. This is where we are to impute 100% white imperialist culpability. We cannot blame them for anything. But talk to my mother about it sometime. That island has a distinct culture in how they think and act and it has nothing to do with the US. The machismo is real. The male-centric culture is misogynistic and homophobic. That's the Cuba I know. What about the rest of Latin America?

When can we be honest? The demographic is hated by the American Left. We all know it. But that is ignored in a cynical attempt to regain power. It's so obvious to me.

By the way, Castro would call my Dad a traitor.

 

Trevor Noah makes angry political statements and tries to pass them off as jokes. Can't believe people enjoy that.

 

He's just following his predecessor's example. Say something inflammatory and either inappropriate, false, or both. When someone calls you on it, you hide behind the comedic facade and ridicule that person. "I'm just a comic. Can't you take a joke? Pull the stick out of you ***."

Of course, if a critic dismisses these guys' significance by calling them "comedians" who aren't serious thinkers, they'd quickly bring up the size of their audience (especially amoung young people). "You better not dismiss us, because your kids take us very seriously and let us shape their politics."

The bottom line is that they ultimately want to be taken seriously (especially Noah who's very sanctimonious) but don't have the balls or the intellect to deal with the level of criticism that normally comes with being taken seriously.

 

It's easy to point to this kind of stuff because it's harmless. It doesn't hurt the culture that your wife cheers Manny Paquiao or that you learn German. However, when we identify first as our ethnic heritage rather than our citizenship, it tends to foster division and separatism and yes, damage the culture. For example, it's no big deal if you and your wife know some German or Filipino. In fact, Americans should be more multilingual. However, it is a big deal if you chose to speak those languages in lieu of English. It's also a problem if the immigrant tries to promote his or her home country's core values when they are in conflict with core American values. For example, if a Cuban or North Korean emigrates to the US and tries to promote communism, that's a bad thing. It shouldn't be illegal, of course, but we should discourage it.

But the idea of the melting pot is that people embrace and become homogenous with the American culture and values. They "melt" in. Trying to retain the home country's culture in a substantial way (the so-called" salad bowl) works against that.

And we need to be careful when we associate race and ethnicity with one's identity. That's what David Duke and Richard Spencer do. They use ugly rhetoric (though no uglier than Louis Farrakhan's), but this is essentially the core of their message and the message of the alt-Right. It's the idea that ethnicity and race are inherent to one's culture and identity.

What many in the multicultural Left miss is that you can't pitch that concept selectively in the long term, though they desperately try to. You either do it or you don't. If ethnicity and solidarity are crucial to one group, they will be crucial to all. That's why the alt-Right's biggest weapon isn't Trump. It's other ethnic nationalists.

 

People want to throw up xenophobic charges in this regard because they claim that assimilation is all about what soccer team I watch, what foods I cook, and what language I speak in my home. It's not. It's about ideas. It's about a common shared vision about what the country is supposedly all about. This nation was founded on the basic idea that freedoms come from God, not from government, and that our first inclination should be to allow freedom.

When you bring in large numbers of people from cultures who do not share that viewpoint - and no, that is not related to skin color, it's related to ideology and purpose for wanting to come to America - you have a recipe for disaster if you are unwilling to make that point clear, and insist that new immigrants adhere to it. One of our problems in large part is that we get people whose only connection with American ideology is that "if I move to America, I can drive a nice car, too." Or "if I move to America, I won't have to worry about my government's violent authoritarian bent." That's all well and good, but there's a lot more to freedom than that. There's great risk, great reward, and a requirement that I be willing to be part of a society where people aren't going to always do what I want them to do.

Frankly, we've raised a generation of Americans who don't buy into that anymore, so I guess it's a lot to ask that immigrants do.

 

This is a good one. I work with a lady from the Ukraine; heavy accent and all (by the way, she said she doesn't like the Russians and her husband hates them). She is on a trip over there with her two children. She told me that her son (nine years old I believe) doesn't like going. He said, "I'm a Texan! Why do I have to go over there?" She smiled broadly when she told me. Classic.

By the way, my Father never forced Spanish on me. He spoke it often but his thing was basic: "We live in the US son. You have to understand what it takes to succeed HERE."

 

"Mansplaining" or whatever is more censorship. And the hilarious thing about it is that every female I know has a forceful personality. "Mansplaining" to me is pure and simple: "I ain't your boyfriend so you're gonna' have to hang on your own on this one."

 

Prodigal

"This nation was founded on the basic idea that freedoms come from God, not from government, and that our first inclination should be to allow freedom."

This needs to be said often and loud. WE were and are the only nation founded on an idea. And what a glorious idea.

 

Isn't that what Noah is doing here? He celebrating those players of African decent.

You may have read more into the statements than I did. I didn't get that Noah was saying celebrated Africa over France but rather Africa and France.

How do you define "homogenous with the American culture and values"? My 75yr old Filipino mother-in-law teaches ESL at a community college in Las Vegas. Not sure many want to retain their home country's culture at the expense of learning English. In the end, nearly everyone that comes to the US looking to improve their life appears to understand the importance of English, including most Latin Americans. Not sure what other parts of culture are a threat to American culture and values. We've endured hundreds of years of various waves of immigrants from all over the world and our culture is still more pervasive today around the world than nearly any other.

 

What is it with waiters and their faked tip messages on social media?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...r-faked-we-dont-tip-terrorist-note/824027002/

 

I would sue the WP for slander if I was the customer by arguing that they knew these stories are assuredly 100% false but chose to ignore it. You think WP going to win a trial jury in Odessa? Fortunately for WP the customer was never ID by the media.

 

I have to wonder if almost all of these issues are fake. It seems like every week some "stupid" white person is calling 911 to report an innocent black person for selling water, lemonade, trying to swim or mow a yard, or other innocuous incidents.
Of course, they are always in front of at least one cell phone camera, and it's reported as just one more case of how horrible white people are to black people.

I have never been one to believe in conspiracy theories, but it seems like these instances have appeared suddenly and very frequently. I can't wrap my head around people being too stupid to 1) not call 911, and 2) do it when people are filming 3) do it for a really stupid reason. Are the people in some of these incidents actors? Willing to tarnish their name for some cause?

I do know that the waiter in the case mentioned by Prodigal Horn above had people donating to a Go Fund me page...maybe all of this is a way to get some quick cash, and, while they are at it, chisel away a bit more at race relations in the US.