Tag: political correctness

“Sensitivity readers” to proofread books so they don’t offend cancel mobs

New, widespread phenomena inevitably create new economies, and new job titles; the strong push to align content, including books, with what can be summed up as “woke values” is no different.

The Spectator writes about a new brand of copy editors – “sensitivity readers.” The term is appropriately Orwellian in itself, given what these people get hired by publishers to do: make sure that stories that don’t represent a writer’s “lived experience” are “corrected” to better reflect that.

And the “sensitivity authority” who decides what is authentic is the freelancer given the job. It sounds fairly arbitrary, like many other things happening in society these days that flirt with some form of censorship or suppression of content.

And it continues to sound arbitrary even when it is explained that in order to “qualify” for a “sensitivity reader” you have to advertise your status as a member of an ethnic or cultural group, somebody who has experienced trauma or abuse, or just be a self-declared expert in a hobby.

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The Entomological Society is renaming a moth species and an ant species to avoid a word deemed to be a “racial slur”

The Entomological Society of America is removing the names for a moth and an ant from its Common Names of Insects and Related Organisms List because they include a word deemed a racial slur.  Those are the “gypsy moth” and the “gypsy ant.” The decision is a part of an effort by the ESA to identify and change traditional names that include negative ethnic or racial stereotypes.

“The purpose of common names is to make communication easier between scientists and the public audiences they serve,” explained ESA president Michelle S. Smith in a statement on Wednesday. “By and large, ESA’s list of recognized insect common names succeeds in this regard, but names that are unwelcoming to marginalized communities run directly counter to that goal,” she added.

“That’s why we’re working to ensure all ESA-approved insect common names meet our standards for diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The ESA Governing Board voted in June to remove the common names of the moth Lymantria dispar and the ant Aphaenogaster araneoides because the word “gypsy” is considered a racial slur against Romani people.

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Why Saving Comedy Is So Crucial To Saving America

Conan O’Brien did his final late night show last week, after 28 years on air. He’s stepping away at the right time. Whether you liked his comedic style or not, he really was trying to make people laugh.

When was the last time you watched “The Late Show” in order to laugh? That’s a trick question — nobody who watches Stephen Colbert is laughing. Laughter is entirely beside the point; Colbert’s show is political catechism in nightly hour-long installments.

One of Colbert’s masterworks in June was a song “parody” titled “500 Vials,” which didn’t even have a joke — it was just telling everyone to get the vaccine. It may be the least funny video ever created, and after the female-empowerment version of “Ghostbusters,” that can’t be said lightly (but remember: Anyone who didn’t laugh is sexist).

Increasingly, though, Colbert is the norm for late-night shows. For four years, limited big-tent political comedy got replaced by an aggressive churn of anti-Donald Trump “Resistance” theater barely papered over by jokes.

Some have just about given up the ghost entirely: John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” is pretty much nothing but lectures on what a liberal is supposed to be mad about this week.

And remember “The Daily Show”? While certainly steeped in sarcastic vitriol, it’s impossible to say it’s been relevant since Trevor Noah took the reins nearly six years ago.

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Troops were forced to wear IDs during ‘diversity training’ listing ‘race and social class’

Someone…anyone please explain how any of this builds unity, teamwork, mission, and esprit de corps.

Anyone? Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who lost an eye to an IED in Afghanistan, reported this week several instances where members of the military were coerced to classify themselves by race and socio-economic status during so-called diversity and inclusion training.

Apparently, we have been transported back to the 1950s. 

Breitbart reported that according to Crenshaw, soldiers at Fort Bliss in Texas were forced to wear identification badges which listed their race, ethnicity, social class and other demographics during a training class.

Crenshaw slammed the training, saying the badges put labels and characteristics on the soldiers which have “nothing to do with their service or their training or the content of their character.” He continued:

“Most soldiers do not believe they are the sum of identity groups and its absurd that our military is instructing people to view themselves and others that way.

In the SEAL teams, our bond is forged in large part by our common history, our ethos and our trial by fire training. We never asked each other for our social class or other identity groups, because that would be ridiculous.

“The only thing that should be on a soldier’s uniform is their name, their rank, and most importantly, the American flag. Yes, we are all individuals and we’re all different.

The military requires us to put aside those differences and focus on one mission as one team, not highlight differences; this type of woke training doesn’t help strengthen a unit and weakens it severely and it must stop.”

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The Descent Into (Utter) Madness

Little wonder that here and there sanity nostalgia is gripping the Western world, at least those isolated portions of it that are not internalising the sinister “new normal.” But it is seemingly to no avail. All commanding positions are firmly in the hands of lunatics, who are determined to turn a once great and exemplary civilisation into an asylum.

As George Orwell has taught us, language manipulation is at the frontline (yes, I have just broken one of the cardinal rules of his “Politics and the English Language,” but not his final injunction to “break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous”) of politicised mind-bending. The sort of language we are permitted to use circumscribes the thinking that we shall be allowed to engage in. The assault on language is, therefore, an integral component of the unrelenting warfare being waged for the conquest and control of the mind. Word elimination and reassignment of meaning, as Orwell also presciently noted, are essential elements of the campaign to reformat the mind and eventually to subjugate it.

A breath-taking example of how this process works was recently unveiled by the thoroughly brain-washed students of the once prestigious Brandeis University who, this time without prompting from their faculty elders and betters, voted to ban from their campus such odious words and phrases as “picnic” and “you guys,” for being “oppressive”. “Picnic” is prohibited because it allegedly evokes the lynching of Blacks.

The precocious young intellectuals took pains to produce an entire list of objectionable words and phrases, shocking award-winning novelist Joyce Carol Oates who tweeted in bewilderment: “What sort of punishment is doled out for a faculty member who utters the word ‘picnic’ at Brandeis? Or the phrase [also proscribed – S.K.] ‘trigger warning’? Loss of tenure, public flogging, self-flagellation?”

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National Archives ‘Task Force’ Suggests Racism “Trigger Warnings” For Constitution, Bill Of Rights

A National Archives ‘task force’ on racism has suggested placing trigger warnings around the building housing founding documents including the U.S. constitution, as well as declaring that the historical portrayal of the founding fathers has previously been “too positive”.

Fox News reports that the group has proclaimed the National Archives’ Rotunda building, which houses the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as an example of “structural racism”.

The task force has decreed that the building lauds “wealthy White men in the nation’s founding” and that documents on display contain “legacy descriptions that use racial slurs and harmful language to describe BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and other People of Color] communities,” as well as other offensive terms including “elderly,” “handicapped” and “illegal alien.”

The group wants new descriptions added to exhibits to “contextualize the records,” and notes placed to “forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms.”

It also suggests creating “safe spaces” where those who cannot handle the exhibits dedicated to the nation’s founding can retreat and mentally stabilise themselves.

The report also states that events should be staged such as “dance or performance art in the space that invites dialogue about the ways that the United States has mythologized the founding era.”

The task force had a particular suggestion for how to portray the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, noting that he is “described in this sample lesson plan as a ‘visionary’ who took ‘vigorous action’ to strengthen the ‘will of the nation to expand westward.”

It continues, “The plan does not mention that his policy of westward expansion forced Native Americans off their ancestral land, encouraged ongoing colonial violence, and laid the groundwork for further atrocities like the Trail of Tears.”

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Now ‘trigger warning’ is banned by Brandeis University along with the ‘offensive’ phrases ‘picnic’, ‘rule of thumb’ and ‘take a shot at it’

A liberal arts college in Massachusetts has warned its students and faculty against using ‘violent language’ – even banning the phrase ‘trigger warning’ for its association with guns.

Brandeis University in Waltham has created an anti-violence resource called the Prevention, Advocacy & Resource Center which provides information and advice to students and staff. 

It lists words and idioms, including ‘picnic’ and ‘rule of thumb,’ which it claims are ‘violent’ and suggests dreary alternatives such as ‘outdoor eating’ for the former and ‘general rule’ for the latter.

The college claims that ‘picnic is often associated with lynchings of black people in the United States, during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics or other terms involving racial slurs against black people.’

Picnic is derived from the French ‘pique-nique,’ originally used to describe the taking of one’s own wine to a meal, which later evolved to encompass the sharing of food outdoors and started being used in England in the 18th century. 

Lynchings were often public spectacles and could be described as taking place in a picnic-like setting. A project by the Equal Justice Initiative entitled ‘Lynching in America’ notes that during the late 1800s and early 1900s, ‘white men, women, and children present watched the horrific murders while enjoying deviled eggs, lemonade, and whiskey in a picnic-like atmosphere.’

However, the word picnic itself is not derogatory and has no intrinsic links to slavery, lynchings or racism.  

Brandeis also disagrees with ‘rule of thumb’ which it claims ‘comes from an old British law allowing men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.’

But this is another spurious etymological interpretation which has been wrongly attached to the phrase by myth and rumour.

The precise origins of the phrase are unclear but it is meant in the sense of approximating something using the thumb rather than a specific tool – there is no evidence of a legal application to wife beating.

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Portland Discovered Black People Commit More Minor Traffic Offences – So It Decided to Stop Enforcing Them

If there’s one thing the past five years have underscored, it’s that leftists embrace selective enforcement of the law.

They’ll go scorched-earth against Republicans and white people who commit the slightest infraction, but they routinely downplay or ignore egregious transgressions committed by Democrats or certain people of color.

One glaring example is the dropping of charges against Black Lives Matter rioters and looters who terrorized New York City last summer to “protest” George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody.

Another example is the left’s ongoing encouragement of mass illegal immigration, which has unleashed an unprecedented border crisis.

The hypocrisy continued on Tuesday, as the Democrat-controlled city of Portland, Oregon, announced it no longer will enforce certain traffic laws — such as expired plates and broken headlights — after discovering that black people disproportionately violate them.

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Oxford Alumni Warn Woke Mob Wants ‘Sensitivity Readers’ To Vet And Edit University’s Oldest Newspaper

Oxford University alumni have slammed attempts by the Student Union there to employ “sensitivity readers” to vet, edit and place ‘trigger warnings’ on the institution’s oldest newspaper in order to resolve ‘problematic’ articles.

As the London Telegraph reports, ‘Student Consultancy of Sensitivity Readers’ are to be paid by Oxford Student Union to address “high incidences of insensitive material being published” by the Cherwell newspaper.

The SU has received complaints from some offended students that “problematic articles” are being published that contain “implicitly racist or sexist” or “just generally inaccurate and insensitive” opinions.

The newspaper has been in circulation for over 100 years and has always remained independent of the Student Union.

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