Tag: political correctness

40 Years Ago, Monty Python Predicted (and Mocked) Wokeness

Monty Python’s Life of Brian is the most prescient movie ever made, predicting exactly in 1979 the cultural madness you see around you today.

Despite that, the flick was wrongly derided four decades ago by the very people who might find it gob-smackingly funny today.

Life of Brian was vigorously protested during its U.S. release by various groups who believed — apparently without having seen the movie — that it was anti-Christian.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There are only two appearances by Jesus in the movie, one of which is off-screen. The first is the night of Jesus’ birth (Brian’s, too) and what little we see is true to the Bible.

Well, except for the part where the Three Wise Men first tried to deliver their gifts to baby Brian in the manger next door.

In the other scene, years later, we briefly see Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount. No mockery is made of Jesus or His message.

Of all the jokes, gags, and barbs thrown in every direction, Jesus is the only figure shown respect. Monty Python trouper Eric Idle later said of Jesus, “What he’s saying isn’t mockable, it’s very decent stuff.”

For a non-believing, take-no-prisoners comedian like Idle, that’s practically a whole-hearted endorsement.

Instead, the film — Python’s only real film, the others were basically collections of sketches, even Holy Grail — is anti-authoritarian, anti-fanaticism, anti-nihilism, and anti-humorless prigs.

Life of Brian is, however, very pro-funny.

The Pythons even saved their sharpest barbs for political extremists and self-deluded lefties.

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Who Nu?

They’re now trying to shut down everything again and make the world safe again for private jet-flying elites to escape from voters. This time they claim there’s a super-spreading, super-scary new variant of the Wuhan (pardon me, COVID-19) virus from Africa. As far as I’m able to discover there is no test for it, it has actually been around since July and it doesn’t seem particularly fatal. So far it has produced only mild cases. But the taste of totalitarian control has only whetted the desire for more, with the thought of destroying those “deplorable” productive citizens of the middle class as an added bonus.

How it got its name (Omicron) is another sign of the political nature of the thing.

Paul Nuki, the senior editor for Global Health Security and Campaigns at the UK Telegraph tweets the answer:

A WHO source confirmed the letters Nu and Xi of the Greek alphabet had been deliberately avoided. Nu had been skipped to avoid confusion with the word “new” and Xi [the name of the Chinese Communist boss] had been slipped to avoid stigmatising a region,” they said .

The NY Sun’s editors had fun with that excuse:  

As for Xi, the World Health Organization explains the omission as a move meant to avoid offending a whole “region.” That, to the uninitiated, implies that it feels an entire region would feel slighted were a virus given the same name as the surname of the Communist Chinese party boss, Xi Jinping. On that the sardonic Leo Rosten would probably mutter nu nu — as in “oh, come on.”

In the meantime, President Biden has sharply restricted travel to the U.S. from Africa which reminded people of how he accused President Trump of racism when he restricted travel from China and later from Africa to limit the Wuhan virus’s spread here.

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Canadian School District Cancels Speech by ISIS Rape Survivor, Nobel Winner Due to ‘Islamophobia’ Fears

A woman who lived through kidnapping and sexual slavery at the hands of ISIS had an event cancelled by a Canadian school board due to fears of “Islamophobia.”

Twenty-eight-year-old Nadia Murad was scheduled to visit with students from 600 different schools to speak about her upcoming book, “The Last Girl: My Story Of Captivity,” which documents the horrific treatment she suffered from ISIS but was told by the Toronto School District that her event could not be held because it could “foster Islamophobia”, according to the Telegraph.

The decision to cancel the event was made by Toronto School Board Superintendent Helen Fisher, who argued that the book could be viewed as offensive to Muslims. The Toronto District School Board is Canada’s largest, and the fourth largest in North America.

Murad’s book tells how she escaped the Islamic State after being taken from her home and sold into sexual slavery where she was raped and tortured at the age of 14.

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Amid Criticisms A Sex Crimes Registry Is ‘Overly Harsh,’ Colorado Rebrands The Term ‘Sex Offender’

The Sex Offender Management Board of the State of Colorado has voted to rebrand the term “sex offender,” replacing it with the euphemistic phrase, “adults who commit sexual offenses.” 

The board’s decision passed following a 10-6 vote on Nov. 19 will not change the language used in criminal justice proceedings, the Colorado Sex Offender registry, or the name of the Colorado Sex Offender Management Board itself. It does, however, apply to the “Standards and Guidelines for the Assessment, Evaluation, Treatment and Behavioral Monitoring of Adult Sex Offenders.” Some on the board argued this new phrasing will aid rehabilitation efforts.

The SOMB reportedly considered a number of other terms to replace the phrase “sex offender,” including people who are “in treatment for engaging in sexually abusive behaviors” and those “who have committed sexual offenses.” Following this vote, the proposed change will be open for public comment for 20 days, and then the board will vote again on whether to alter the decision and make it final.

The rationale for the language shift is reducing stigma against those convicted of sex crimes, with the Denver Post claiming “many attorneys, people on the sex offender registry and even some victims have criticized Colorado’s management of this population as overly harsh and counterproductive to the goal of rehabilitation.”

This argument is also being used in Colorado to criticize the sex crimes registry that requires those convicted of sexual crimes to publicly report their residence and reside away from places children congregate such as schools and playgrounds. Earlier this year in relation to this public discussion, the Denver Post sympathetically portrayed the story of a man convicted of sexually assaulting a minor being removed from volunteer positions after he served his time because people found him on the registry.

The SOMB’s language decision has been met with backlash, with Sexual Assault Resource Prosecutor Jessica Dotter telling KOAA that such a change “minimizes victim experiences and trauma,” continuing to note that “If the self-image of sex offenders is prioritized over the devastating impact on victims’ lives, we are concerned that would negatively impact public trust.”

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New alarm system is triggered when “offensive” language is detected

During the Dubai Design Week, a new alarm system was unveiled. The device sounds an alarm when it detects potentially “offensive” language.

The device is named after Themis, the Greek goddess of social order and justice. Themis is a lamp-sized device created for the purpose of moderating discussions in educational settings and “manifest political correctness.”

The device can also be used to police language at family gatherings and dinner parties. The designer of Themis, Zinah Issa, hopes it will help with “self-critique.”

Speaking to The Telegraph, Issa said: “Through the use of speech recognition and sound sensors we were able to program Themis to detect offensive terms – racial slurs, offensive jokes – through the microphone.

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Leftist Hack Claims That If Any White Person Is Using The Word ‘Woke’, It’s A “Racial Slur”

A writer with Slate has declared that the word ‘woke’ when used by a white person should be treated as a racial slur because it was “shoplifted” from the “black community”.

It’s the latest narrative in the debate over cancel culture.

It is no longer credible to declare that cancel culture doesn’t exist, and so the left has reverted to what it knows best, baseless accusations of racism and bigotry.

Along with a tacit threat, Slate hack Joel Anderson tweeted “If you’re not black and started using ‘woke’ pejoratively sometime post-2018 or so (or worse, don’t know anything about the earlier iteration of the term), I think it’s fair to consider it a racial slur.”

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Team Woke is Ruining Halloween, Rolls Out List of Cancelled Costumes and Activities

Earlier this month, the Benjamin Franklin Day Elementary School in Seattle caved to team woke and cancelled their annual Halloween celebration. When asked for the reason the school ruined the joy of so many children, the school responded by claiming that Halloween is not inclusive to all children.

The elementary school released a statement to KTTH Radio suggesting that the holiday is distracting and “uncomfortable for kids” and it “marginalizes students of color who do not celebrate the holiday.”

“Halloween is a very complex issue for schools. Yes, I agree this event marginalized our students of color. Several of our students historically opted for an alternate activity in the library while the Pumpkin Parade took place. This was an isolating situation and not consistent with our values of being an inclusive and safe place for all our students — especially students of color and those with a sensitivity to all the noise and excitement of the parade,” said School principal Stanley Jaskot.

Instead of Halloween fun, kids at Ben Franklin Elementary will partake in “fall events,” like “thematic units of study about the fall” and reviewing “autumnal artwork,” according to the school’s newsletter put out on October 8.

Ironically enough, the cancelling of Halloween by school officials is being called an act of “white privilege” by the anti-woke crowd, and they are right. Vivek Ramaswamy, author of “Woke Inc.” referred to the school’s decision as an exercise in “white privilege” by blaming the holiday instead of the school’s failed policies of including all students.

Parents of children at the school also agree. David Malkin, whose 7-year-old son attends the school called the decision an “exercise in affluent white vanity that is wokeism.”

“I don’t see any way in which this actually addresses any inequities to the extent that there are any inequities,” Malkin told Jason Rantz, host of the show on KTTH Radio. “You know, this just seems like grandstanding on behalf of the principal and the staff who are predominantly white.”

Malkin, who is Asian, said parents weren’t involved in the decision.

Unfortunately, it seems that this wokeism is spreading and people like principal Stanley Jaskot cannot help but act as the great white saviors of folks they claim are oppressed. All the while they remain entirely oblivious to the fact that they are further perpetuating racism by claiming that their actions and their actions alone, are the only thing that can save minorities from their ostensible constant plight.

The great white savior role only serves to further the victimization of minorities by constantly telling them they are victims and that they need woke white principals to come to their aid or else they’ll continue to be persecuted. It’s an endless loop of negative feedback that has no end in sight and is beginning to grow into a leviathan of mass censorship and divide.

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Don’t Call People ‘Americans’: Leading Parks Group Debuts Woke Guide

The nation’s leading parks nonprofit on Tuesday released a lengthy guide on how to speak in woke terms, including tips like avoiding using the term “Americans” and making sure the term “white” is lowercase while “Black” may be capitalized.

The National Recreation And Park Association’s (NRPA) exhaustive 17-page “Equity Language Guide” for parks and recreation professionals includes meticulous instructions on what words are acceptable or unacceptable in speaking about race, age, gender, sexual orientation, and ability.

One member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board in Edmond, Oklahoma, told The Daily Wire that he was apparently automatically signed up for NRPA emails, so he received the guide in his inbox. He said he plans to complain about the manual at the next board meeting.

Just days after President Joe Biden took office, the NRPA touted that it had spoken with the Biden administration about reversing Trump administration decisions.

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We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage

A lot of people want to convince you that you need a Ph.D. or a law degree or dozens of hours of free time to read dense texts about critical theory to understand the woke movement and its worldview. You do not. You simply need to believe your own eyes and ears. 

Let me offer the briefest overview of the core beliefs of the Woke Revolution, which are abundantly clear to anyone willing to look past the hashtags and the jargon.

It begins by stipulating that the forces of justice and progress are in a war against backwardness and tyranny. And in a war, the normal rules of the game must be suspended. Indeed, this ideology would argue that those rules are not just obstacles to justice, but tools of oppression. They are the master’s tools.  And the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house.

So the tools themselves are not just replaced but repudiated. And in so doing, persuasion—the purpose of argument—is replaced with public shaming. Moral complexity is replaced with moral certainty. Facts are replaced with feelings.

Ideas are replaced with identity. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Debate is replaced with de-platforming. Diversity is replaced with homogeneity of thought. Inclusion, with exclusion.

In this ideology, speech is violence. But violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all. In this ideology, bullying is wrong, unless you are bullying the right people, in which case it’s very, very good. In this ideology, education is not about teaching people how to think, it’s about reeducating them in what to think. In this ideology, the need to feel safe trumps the need to speak truthfully. 

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