Tag: political correctness

Defund The Speech Police

San Francisco has had enough. The city’s mayor recently declared that “the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” and she promised to “take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement.”

Her get-tough pledge is, of course, shameless — if only there had been a municipal leader who could have done something before now! — but when wokeness has lost the mayor of San Francisco, it has a public-relations problem.

Following electoral defeats in Virginia, and facing a likely wipeout in next year’s midterm elections, many Democrats are scrambling away from identity politics. From crime to education to the workplace, it poisons everything, and Americans are sick of it.

Thus, we may hope that Scott McConnell is correct in predicting that wokeness “will be rolled back, its practitioners and cultural preferences first widely mocked and then ignored, its victims rehabilitated and in some cases honored.” But we should not be too sure; even if wokeness is politically toxic now, it might nonetheless win in the long run.

Identity politics’ likely resilience was highlighted in a response by Ed West as well as in a Reason article by Greg Lukianoff chronicling how the first wave of political correctness in the 1990s persisted despite its unpopularity. Put simply, identity politics holds power in key institutions, especially in tech, academia, education, the media, and Big Business. While voter anger might spook politicians on issues such as crime, wokeness in all its forms will be hard to root out of its institutional fortresses.

Thus, identity politics will remain as a powerful force in American life even if Democratic politicians avoid and downplay its more unpopular ideas (and they aren’t all giving up yet). Like a weed, snicking the head off wokeness will not kill it. Unless it is actively uprooted, wokeness will continue to embed itself within powerful institutions, just as it was doing before it broke into public view over the last few years.

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Man running for Texas Lt. Governor drops out of race to make room for non-white candidates

Matthew Dowd has ended his campaign to become Lieutenant Governor of Texas in order to “step back” and make room for non-white candidates. Dowd, who is a white man, appears to believe that his presence in the race would make it harder for candidates of color to win the race.

In a December 7 statement, Dowd referenced a 2018 column of his entitled “Us white male Christians need to step back and give others room to lead.”

In a justification for his dropping out of the race, he quoted the column, saying “We as white male Christians should do what real leadership demands and practice a level of humility which demonstrates strength by stepping back from the center of the room and begin to give up our seats at the table. We should make this move not because we feel threatened, but because we know it is morally right and it is what would help America in this troubling time.”

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Britain may outlaw catcalling

Pestering women on the street and in bars could soon become an offense as part of an overhaul of laws to protect women against violence.

Loopholes in current laws mean there is no specific offense for sexually harassing women verbally in the street.

Now a Government-commissioned review will next week call for public sexual harassment and inciting hatred against women to be made criminal offences, reports The Telegraph.

The proposed change is part of a push to outlaw “public sexual harassment”.

However, calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime will be rejected — as it’s thought it be ineffective, according to sources.

A Whitehall source told the paper: “The Law Commission is not going to class misogyny as a hate crime because it would be ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.

“But it will call for a public sexual harassment offence which doesn’t currently exist.

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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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