Holidays, Silly Internet
Messy Mimi's blog documents all the holidays people invent for themselves and their e-friends. Today was "Take Your Cat to Work Day." (I seriously thought about it, but although Silver has been clingy while recovering from last week's trauma, I think she recovered faster with niece-and-nephews therapy at home than she would have done in a busy warehouse full of strangers. I'd like to see the bruised paw shrinking faster than it is, but it is shrinking.)
Today was also "Vice Presidents Remembrance Day," an occasion to see how many vice-presidents' names and achievements you can remember. Toward this end, here's a link to a summary, more than a review, of a book called Veeps. Two changes I'd make if I were reposting this summary after pulling it down, which I might do in the future: (1) I've dropped the "Fair Trade Books" gimmick because several writers didn't want to bother with the small payments involved, and (2) I wouldn't pull down my summary of what Walter Mondale was infamous for, but I would mention that I've been challenged on the wording--at the time no one doubted that his bill was meant to make preschool programs mandatory to protect children from "conservative" influences, but that was not, of course, the way he ever said it. On the grounds that none of the summaries in Veeps is worded the way the Vice-Presidents would have written it, I rest my case. The book is all about making history memorable by making it funny.
(In view of Wednesday's post, I might as well belabor the point: in Uncle Tom's Cabin, the villain Legree's slimy private life was inspired directly by Veep Richard Johnson. It wasn't easy to be more loathsome than Martin Van Buren, and there's some room for dispute about whether anyone succeeded in that endeavor, but Johnson at least tried.)
Politics (Issues)
There's a blog dogpile on an article from the 1990s that's been rerun at the Atlantic web site.
This is one of the very worst things members of ethnic minorities can do to themselves. Because, for one thing, the expectation that people admitted to universities, or to "nice" neighborhoods, or whatever, will learn to comply with existing standards of quietness, tidiness, and politeness, is about preventing the unjust oppression of my people--Highly Sensory-Perceptive People--by haters who are also obnoxious, and although obnoxiousness is found in all ethnic groups, it is possible to present your group to outsiders as being obnoxious and thereby set up prejudice against every other member of your group.
For another thing, majority ethnic groups have our cultural traditions of obnoxiousness too. If you insist on mashing them up, the result is what my generation called a rumble. For example, if universities grant New Yorkers a cultural tradition of making noise at night (which is not an African or Spanish thing, except on special occasions; it's a Noo Yawk Cedday thing), they ought to recognize the Irish cultural tradition of making noise, our way, which involves drinking large amounts of disgusting English stuff that makes most of us sick, and the first phase of feeling sick generally feels like hostility to us, so what we do is take large heavy sticks and apply them to anyone who appears to be a minority in the vicinity. The English have a similar cultural tradition, only it tends to take more alcohol for them to get stinking drunk and their traditional weapons of choice are firearms. Do Noo Yawkuhs outside of their city really want to start this kind of thing?
For a third thing, most universities have a cultural tradition of initiating freshmen by scheduling freshman-level classes early in the morning, so if there are freshmen who want to keep up a cultural tradition of partying all night, guess which freshmen are going to flunk out. No matter how many courses in their groups' history the universities give credit for; no matter how many teachers and dorm managers look like them. Bringing Black students to big-name universities is not a waste of time, because some of them are going to be the universities' brightest and best alumni. Bringing loud, rude, sloppy students even to community colleges is a waste of time because, whatever they look like, they are not going to succeed and are only going to be an inconvenience to the people who belong at the universities for as long as they are there.
The writer being held up to ridicule in the blog posts linked below is, apparently, of Puerto Rican descent, the daughter of suburban Limousine Left types, and she knows so few other Puerto Ricans that she thinks they're all loud, rude, obnoxious bungholes. (Not true. Child, there were Puerto Ricans at my school; as a group they stand out in memory as being a lot braver about urban mission work than the White chicks were, and as doing urban mission work in their own special way, which was very quiet and courteous. And effective.) So she's not representing Puerto Ricans, as she claims. She's representing bungholes. Bump something off her and watch the rotten, filthy stuff spew out. Bungholes are global but nobody should allow them to claim that any ethnic group is represented by its bungholes.
If any students of color are reading this and planning to be at a university in September...prepare to show respect to the group, not an ethnic group but one defined by a permanent hereditary physical trait, that pretty much own any university worth attending: HSP introverts. If we say "Please be quiet," the appropriate response is to unplug your noise box instantly, say :"I'm very sorry; thank you for being so kind about it," and then note the time, and do not turn on any electric or electronic device whatsoever, nor open your mouth, at that time until you have found a room off campus. And even then, expect that your housemates are probably responsible adults who have to get up and prepare for work even earlier than your dorm mates had to get up and prepare for eight o'clock classes. Be grateful for the privilege of being allowed to keep your light on and read, at your choice of desk, bed, library, or computer center, instead of being ordered to be in bed with the lights off, your teeth cleaned, and your mouth shut by nine o'clock at night. This is not about oppressing your kind of people, even if they are native New Yorkers. It is about cultivating the skills that allow you not only to fit in socially, but to be physically competent to stay in the university and not waste your elders' time and money.
You want to party all night? Stay in the slum. Be a slacker. Live fast. Die young--and poor--and ignorant. It will be both cheaper and more fun to do that in the slum than it is to bring it to university.
(There are more, if you look for them. The Internet is dominated by people who hate noisy, sloppy bungholery. This web site has a general policy that two links on one topic are normally enough.)
Psychology, Practical
Yes, as a matter of fact, I can tell when a crossword puzzle was written by a woman or a couple, and yes, the majority are written by men. And quite a few of them are written by men who are in prison, too. There are not a lot of humans who take the time to write crossword puzzles.
Men use "words" like "td" (touchdown, score in US football) and clues like "bowling outcome" for words like "spare." Men don't use lovely "words" with excellent crossword potential like "skpo," a knitting technique, or clues like "Author Caputi" for words like "Jane."
How oppressive is this, given that the fun of crossword puzzles is feeling clever about knowing a lot of words you never use in everyday conversation?
But, due to the "reverse psychology" effect of socialist diktats, I now find myself wishing someone would write a book of Totally Politically Incorrect Crossword Puzzles, with clues like "Like socialism" for "undead" and "Clot shot pushers" for "who."
It's like that problem the would-be dictators of the world were talking about in last week's link. How do "we" persuade "people" to eat less meat? Well, you can preach at them, as people who''ve been vegan too long sometimes do, with the result that they buy meat and eat it in your face. You can create panics and shortages and inflation spirals, if you've been appointed to the right positions, with the result that the party that so appointed you will be soundly defeated in the next election. Or you can just serve food to people who dine at your house, or wait for them to invite you to dine at theirs, and simply say "I am a vegetarian."
Anyone who tries to tell me what to eat will be made to feel like a fool and a jerk. (Any informed celiac can do that, and probably more of us should.) Otoh anyone can easily persuade me to cook a vegan meal.
No comments:
Post a Comment