tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38792288551358505872024-03-14T00:44:38.566-07:00Through the MillCornily earnest views on culture, language and life.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.comBlogger100125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-51247482066960909182019-02-07T06:30:00.002-08:002019-02-07T07:10:50.693-08:00Women in white<img alt="Image result for women in white, sotu" class="irc_mi" height="385" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vau3mv3SrW2bdwihyi1t70vf6pA=/0x0:5568x3712/1200x800/filters:focal(2339x1411:3229x2301)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63004516/GettyImages_1094199890.0.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="578" /><br />
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The women wore white at the State of the Union Address, allegedly in honour of the Suffragettes and early feminists generally, who are referred to (eg. by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) as the 'mothers of the movement'. The picture above sums up their reaction to President Trump's call for a ban on late-term abortion (i.e. when the baby is fully sentient and in many cases could survive outside the womb). They were unmoved, shall we say, except for those who actively shook their head in a 'no' response. They stolidly sat on the solid fact that early feminists were <i>against abortion</i>.<br />
Here is the women in white's reaction to being Congresswomen:<br />
<img alt="Image result for women in white, sotu" class="irc_mi" height="385" src="https://s.abcnews.com/images/Politics/sotu-34-gty-jc-190205_hpMain_4x3_992.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="513" /><br />
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Yay us, who have cushy indoor jobs that allow for perfect grooming, glossy hair and the symbolic wearing of white! Yay us, who are in no way going down sewers or mines, up scaffolding or electricity masts, or breaking up concrete on roads or being exposed to all weathers in a multitude of other jobs done by men to keep everything going, including our ability to stand here and high five each other in our specialness! No doubt the wearing of white was meant as a celebration of political progress. But morally and spiritually speaking there seems precious little to celebrate. Of what movement are these women the mothers? What are they pushing for except for numerical parity in only the 'tippy tops' of white-collar jobs - and at the expense of motherhood? Sadly, what they most look like in such photos is an illustration of Philippians 3:19: "their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things." An image of frivolity where seriousness should be.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-10768158610306485832019-01-27T14:07:00.003-08:002019-01-28T01:28:53.481-08:0012 Reasons why Nick Sandmann should be a Gillette poster boyWhy isn't Nick Sandmann a poster boy for Gillette? Tagline: The Best A Teen Can Be. He deserves it for:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Caring about the very weakest and voiceless among us.</li>
<li>Taking an over 1,000 miles road trip to attend a peaceful demonstration in honour of all life.</li>
<li>Enduring sustained verbal abuse, of the vilest sort, hurled at him (and his friends) by a group of adult strangers, for no reason except for the colour of his skin and his baseball cap.</li>
<li>Holding his ground when confronted by another group of adult strangers, who invaded his personal space to challenge him in a sustained way, again for no reason except for the colour of his skin and his baseball cap.</li>
<li>Doing what he could, in the moment, to prevent the situation from getting worse, though acutely fearing that it would. </li>
<li>Accepting the leadership role foisted on him by the situation.</li>
<li>Helping his peers to remain calm and respectful against the onslaught of hostility from two groups of adult men. </li>
<li>Enduring with meekness the multiple cameras focused on him, recording his every facial expression. </li>
<li>Trying different facial expressions to cope with the weirdness of the in-your-face challenge of a much older man and his constant drum-beating.</li>
<li>Having to withstand merciless abuse, threats, prejudice, hatred and calls to violence from news media, celebrities, politicians and everybody else who claims to be against those very things.</li>
<li>Keeping his cool during a shameful interview - by a star journalist on national television - in which he was portrayed as responsible for the initial situation and the subsequent vitriol.</li>
<li>Refusing to be bullied into apologising for existing.</li>
</ol>
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So why isn't he a poster boy? Because the Gillette ad was about politics not behaviour. And the colour of his skin, his baseball cap and, as it also happened, his religion, were enough to bring the wrath of Social Justice down on Nick Sandmann, making a mockery of his commendable behaviour. Just a reminder, people: tests of character don't often come in the low-grade scenarios of the infamous Gillette ad. The most truthful tests come in situations of chaos and bewilderment, when things don't make sense anymore and you lose most of your reference points. All you disgraceful adults who piled onto this poor kid because he stood and because he smiled awkwardly, if you think you would have done any better at 16 or 17, on a visit from Kentucky to D.C, confronted with unprovoked street hostility of this magnitude, with cameras and drum-beating in your face, you are lying to yourselves. To others of course too, but firstly to yourselves. Humble introspection and honest remembering of what it's like to be a teenager are strongly advised.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-68836382545748555682019-01-22T10:39:00.001-08:002019-01-22T10:39:30.557-08:00Respect for Elders?It's lovely to see public opinion commenting about the respect due to an 'elderly' man, Nathan Phillips, who is 64. On the subject of an older elder, the President of the United States, aged 72, the reverse is true: the more disrespect, calumnies, slander and outright hatred, the better.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-32105727565479598842019-01-16T05:19:00.000-08:002019-01-16T05:19:05.284-08:00Januhairy for menThe best response to Gillette's morally incoherent ad for razor blades would be for as many men as possible to stop shaving. Men of the Western world, get bushy. Go full bearded, rediscover the patriarchal look; flaunt the one masculine advantage you have that women will never want to claim for themselves. Before the Gillette ad sucked up all the attention, we had 'Januhairy', whereby a pretty young female student challenged other women to grow out their armpit and leg hair as a form of liberation. But, as in the previous hairy-is-free feminist expression of the 1970s, this call does not seem to extend to growing out a good haircut (or indeed, getting rid of extensions). Nor, as far as I can tell, does it encourage women to let their facial hair proliferate annoyingly, or random nose hairs to dangle, or mole hairs to sprout unimpeded, or brows to recolonise the upper slopes every which way. It's a stunt that conveniently allows for feminine grooming where feminine grooming is most visible and looks good in photographs. For men to reclaim their maleness in the form of facial hair would be a far more honest protest.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-53834994744038071512018-10-18T22:19:00.004-07:002018-10-18T22:22:43.795-07:00Horsefaces UniteEvery woman whose face is longer than it's wide has been likened to a horse at some point, either to her horseface or behind her back. Every man too, for all I know. Children see the joke and so do other women. Though a horseface myself I was always distracted by the face length of Anna Gunn (Skyler White) in "Breaking Bad", however good an actress she is. As a horseface myself I find President Trump's use of the term in a tweet about Stormy Daniels hilarious. Almost predictably by now, Trump's use of the nickname has caused yet more complaints about lack of chivalry. How can a man publicly say such a thing about a woman? He's hardly the first, which everybody seems to forget, but granted he is the most prominent. How can he? Simple: he's giving as good as he gets, if not better. That's what he does when attacked, whether by a man or woman. He's an equal opportunity offender. So what's the problem with that, when feminism says women should be treated the same as men? Ah but there's the rub, so to speak. Because the aggrieved woman in question, Ms Daniels, gets naked in public, has sex onscreen for money, had consensual sex with a married man for potential career advancement, accepts a lot of money to keep quiet about her tryst years later when he emerges as a politician, dishonours her contract by talking about him very publicly indeed, and accusing him of intimidation by proxy, then publishes a book about him in which his genitalia, the genitalia of the President of the United States of America mind you, is described with such imaginative detail that it is discussed at length, so to speak, in all the major news outlets - and this woman gets touted up and down as a heroine of feminism, an empowered woman, a working woman, a single mom doing the best for herself and her daughter. Again, ladies and your male feminist allies, you can't have it both ways. If every woman is a heroine no matter what she does with her life, then why can't she weather an uncomplimentary nickname in retaliation to her own lack of good manners? Chivalry is all to do with horses, etymologically speaking. I like horses, and embrace my likeness to them. Hurray for horsefaces, I say.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-53985832336870386652018-10-15T12:57:00.002-07:002018-10-15T12:57:34.682-07:00The worst thing was the laughterMore proof that feminism is backtracking to the most chivalrous notions of how women should be treated. Did anyone notice the role of laughter in statements from Kavanaugh accusers? The woman who alleged that someone exposed himself (or was it a fake?) to her at a drinking party mentioned that the worst thing about the evening was the hilarity among the boys. In the recent 'Sixty Minutes' interview with Donald Trump, Lesley Stahl chided Trump for making fun of Christine Blasey Ford's many memory lapses because, she appealed to him, Christine had claimed to be most distressed by the laughter of the boys as they left the room of her alleged assault. So how could he, big bad Trump, make use of humour in criticising her 'I don't knows'? Laughter, especially if it feels derisive, can be mortifying yes, but to anyone, not just to women. The idea that it is worse when directed at women is one that used to be common currency, however - until it got laughed out of town - derisively - by feminism. On what grounds does feminism resort to it now?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-75780242621755285892018-10-05T13:22:00.001-07:002018-10-06T16:03:50.273-07:00Kavanaugh feministsWomen using emotional manipulation in the Brett Kavanaugh situation - a bit rich, isn't it? Christine Blasey Ford herself kicked this off in grand style during her statement to the senate judiciary committee. Her little-girl tone, cutesy gestures and facial expressions and, especially, the expertly delivered tremor in her voice at key moments were quite astonishing, all the more so that she turns out to have been a pussy-hat marching, Trump-hating feminist before emerging on the national scene so recently. Then there were the women who ambushed Jeff Flake, one of whom displayed the same tremulous voice as Blasey Ford as she tried to shame Flake for being rational, claiming that she, as a 'survivor', was invalidated by his masculine judiciousness. This woman was later interviewed on a news programme and her forthright tone against men was distinctly lacking its earlier pathos. Another woman tried to shame Orrin Hatch and, upon being urged by him to 'grow up', wailed: 'You can't talk to women like that!' Now, I'm all for appealing to the better nature of men. I think it's a wonderful thing for men to be caring and protective towards women. The chivalric code is one of the most amazing inventions of Western society, not only in itself but in giving us gentlemanliness, its direct descendent. But then I'm not a feminist. I have watched in utter dismay for the last few decades as feminism has derided paternalism, chivalry, basic good manners, and oh dear, anything patriarchal. From childhood and youth in the 1960s and 1970s (I'm the same generation as Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford) I have lived through the ever-coarsening interactions between men and women, driven by the sexual revolution and women's insistence that there is no difference between the sexes. Yet now feminists are marching in the streets, clad in black to emphasise victimhood, clamouring for women to be 'protected'. Ladies, you can't do this. You don't get to be hell-bent on 'equality', and then, when things don't go your way, turn around and demand that men - the men you previously said should treat you like men - lay themselves in the mud for you to walk over. The archetypal courteous gesture of a man laying his cloak down for his lady's feet to be kept clean and dry doesn't begin to satisfy you now. Though you would have spat on the cloak five minutes ago, men must now lay down their very selves, their careers, their lives and families, everything they have tried to build. How can this be?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-56492343217328215842018-10-01T01:49:00.000-07:002018-10-01T13:15:53.322-07:00Blasey Ford's after partyHow did Christine Blasey Ford get home? She refers to a sexual "attack", allegedly at the hands of a teenage Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge. She says she was pushed into a room, pinned down, groped and, most traumatically, prevented from screaming and <i>almost of breathing</i> by a hand over her mouth. This "attack" is now routinely described in commentaries as an 'attempted rape', even though the boys were, by her own admission, drunk and laughing, and it seems they gave up on her very easily after they all toppled off the bed and she made her escape. Victims of genuine attempted rapes, as opposed to drunken gropings, might not be convinced by this description of the alleged crime. But more importantly, if this 'attack' had been as traumatic as she claims, with lifelong repercussions, there would have been something to show for it afterwards. Fifteen year-old Christine Blasey would have been visibly shaken. She would have been dishevelled. Her clothes would have been a mess. Her face would bear the marks of the strong pressure from the assailant's hand. The person who drove her home would have noticed something very wrong, both in her physical appearance and in her demeanour. Her obvious distress would have prompted at least some discussion of what had just happened. And yet this mystery driver has not been named. No one has come forward claiming to be that driver. So far, all is silence. I don't doubt that something happened to Blasey Ford when she was younger, but her claim that, whatever it was, happened how and when she described it at the hearing is highly suspicious.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-80047126568304432322018-09-25T06:04:00.003-07:002018-09-26T03:46:07.380-07:00Bodyguard blokesFinally, a scene I could thoroughly enjoy after the disappointing demise of Julia Montague in "Bodyguard". Without the interplay between Keeley Hawes and the titular bodyguard David Budd (Richard Madden), there was hardly anything that rang true in episodes four to six until the scene where Budd, his boss Deepak Sharma and Expo expert Daniel Chung work together to defuse the bomb strapped to Budd's manly torso. Finally, blokes being blokes! And not a woman in sight! Finally, men being the best of what they can be, relying on each other and uttering things like "a man whose word is his bond"! This triggered an actual physical release of tension in me, humble viewer, catching up on iPlayer the day after the finale. "Bodyguard" has been irritating from the start in its insistence on casting women in every possible traditionally male occupation or career. Montague herself was compelling and played by Hawes with great aplomb, but the other high-ranking women, Craddock and Sampson, were unbelievable and terribly dull. The character of Anne Sampson was especially tedious, as portrayed with a bored drawl and an expression of permanent lemon-sucking distaste by Gina McKee, an otherwise good actress, I think, who was presumably either miscast or misdirected. Worse, most of the main women, from top brass to Budd's wife Vicky, were laden with the same huge blotches of rust-coloured blusher, for some reason. The white women, that is: Louise was exempted from the blush brush. Ominously, Nadia was spared any visible make-up at all. Maybe that was an important clue? That and the fact that the estranged but still caring Mrs Budd rejected her husband's attempt at intimacy after he'd performed an overwhelmingly heroic service to society, and saved their children in the process, at the start of episode 1. That's a bit harsh, I thought. But her instincts were clearly more refined. By the end of episode 6, when Nadia is truly defused, Vicky becomes all friendly again at last. And why not? Her husband is a hero, his face is back to normal, he's gorgeous, he loves her, he loves their children, and he's finally gelled his hair again. What's more, he's apparently well on the way to being healed mentally. This last point is an excellent advertisement for the power of Occupational Health, to which Budd is compassionately sent in the end by the McKee character. We see Budd entering the room (M18, perhaps a joke on MI5 and MI6?) and being greeted by the therapist: a woman, of course, with curly, indie locks and a flowing patterned scarf. Do we believe that this woman can help a man who has seen horrors in Afghanistan with his comrades and been through the further traumas of episodes 1 to 6? I don't. But I love happy endings, and if that's what it takes for the Budd family to drive off happily in a shiny Qashqai in the final scene, then I can try very hard to chalk up the therapist to merely the obtrusive feminism of the series as a whole.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-22543419848923716462018-05-22T04:01:00.000-07:002018-05-22T04:01:04.016-07:00Can it, MeghanBy virtue of her marriage to Prince Harry, Ms Megan Markle is now Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex, also the Countess of Dumbarton and Baroness Kilkeel. Good for her, I'm all for it. Long live the monarchy and the patriarchy. But she needs to drop her battle cry of "I am proud to be a woman and a feminist", which takes pride of place on her new royal website page. (<a href="https://www.royal.uk/duchess-sussex">https://www.royal.uk/duchess-sussex</a>) You can't have both the perks of patriarchy and the self-righteous claim to independence. It's either/or. She's chosen the patriarchy (hurrays all around) and should abide by her choice. She should also, by the bye, honour her marital vows this time. And as for the 'gender equality' she is apparently still committed to: could Prince Harry have a bold-letter quote on <i>his</i> page, declaring "I am proud to be a man and a Men's Rights Activist"? Of course not.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-90157540512346995852018-03-02T13:32:00.001-08:002018-03-02T13:32:21.502-08:00Gun control celebsHow about this: all of those actors who have ever made money - some of them truckloads of money - by playing someone who uses firearms don't get to lecture regular citizens about gun control. Or at least not until they give to charity all the income they've earned that way in the past, and pledge never again to portray a character who uses a firearm. As for politicians, journalists etc: anyone who has the privilege of personal or workplace armed protection doesn't get to lecture either.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-66755614701399091002018-02-08T10:51:00.002-08:002018-02-12T09:34:51.762-08:00'Peoplekind': they couldn't agree more<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Everyone has been mocking Justin Trudeau for interrupting a young woman at an event in Edmonton by telling her to say 'peoplekind' rather than 'mankind'. He's trying to get out of this spot of bother by claiming his comment was a joke. Fine, let's say it was a joke. Donald Trump says lots of jokes that people get all upset about because they misunderstand his sense of humour. However, the big difference here is that the young woman herself was very happy with Trudeau's correction, as were all the young people surrounding her. They cheered! They clapped! They thanked him! Arguably, Trudeau could have resorted to interrupting the young woman because her question was so long-winded and had by then veered into nutcase territory, with her claim that: 'maternal love is the love that's going to change the future of mankind.' And Trudeau might have been intent, also, on avoiding or delaying having to answer the question, which was about restrictions against religious organisations - and that would have been a good question. But the organisation the young woman was speaking for is crackpot in itself. It calls itself the World Mission Society Church of God and aims to be 'Spreading the love of the Mother' i.e. God the Mother (<a href="http://wmscog.com/">wmscog.com</a>). It claims that the plural 'Elohim' in the Old Testament refers to God as Father and Mother. It proclaims the new name of Jesus, necessary for salvation, as Christ Ahnsahnghong, with reference, apparently, to someone in South Korea who founded the church in 1964. In short, it's full of heresies. As the video clip shows, the young missionary advocates of this church are fully on board with Trudeau's woke agenda in terms of eradicating maleness. That is a far more disturbing snapshot of Canada at the moment that any of the stupidities Trudeau regularly utters.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-70737105020764900932017-11-15T03:48:00.002-08:002017-11-15T03:48:33.221-08:00Misgendering and authorityA local incident here in Oxford has caught the attention of the world. Joshua Sutcliffe, a maths teacher at the state secondary school just down the road, has been suspended and faces disciplinary action for 'misgendering' a pupil - a 'student', as they are now called, apparently. Calling schoolchildren 'students' as if they were at University and of majority age confuses the fact that they are still minors. This is not a trivial point, in context. For essentially, the context is one of authority. Here we have a biologically female minor who is offended by being referred to as a girl by a teacher ("Well done, girls!", as the poor chap merely said) and this turns into a parental complaint several weeks later. The minor is then given the authority by the school's action on the complaint to utterly rule over the teacher, a responsible adult, who should by the nature of his position be in authority over the minor. This is a very strange state of affairs. The case has made waves, yet the reality is that it's only a small manifestation of a rampaging problem: the destabilising effect the push for transgender children is already causing, and will increasingly cause, to the social fabric. How about we regain some sense and proportion by using this simple method: minors, school-children, those who are not yet legally adult and who participate in whatever way in primary and secondary level education, do not get to dictate to adults on the subject of their sexual identity. That's it. And here's why: for one thing, it's unfair to the teachers, who have too many social engineering burdens to deal with already. For another, it's just rude. Kids are not entitled to boss grown-ups around, let alone get them disciplined or possibly fired for not blinding themselves to the scientific reality of sex differentiation. Once out of school, at university, in work: knock yourselves out. Until then, where adults and children interact on daily basis, where the rational education of minors is at stake, the adults are in charge. If parents rebel against this they can educate their children at home and stop tripping up the teachers who are trying to do their best for all the pupils in their care. <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-21135484273993218172017-08-31T03:44:00.000-07:002017-08-31T03:44:42.746-07:00Are you Charlie?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The response from French weekly magazine "Charlie Hebdo" to hurricane Harvey's devastation in Houston and elsewhere in Texas: a cover, portraying a bunch of Nazi flags and saluting hands going down in the flood, with the caption: "God exists! He has drowned all the neo nazis of Texas!" Sweet. Last week the magazine published this cover in response to the murderous attack in Barcelona.<br />
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The caption reads: "Islam, religion of peace...eternal" a pun on 'peace eternal' as a way of referring to the after-life. This got them into all sorts of trouble for daring to equate the actions of the jihadis with their avowed motive i.e. Islam's call to jihad against infidels (us) and hypocrites (insufficiently Islamic muslims). They got into trouble for making fun of the truth about the perpetrators. The Texas cover, on the other hand, is an outright slur. And it's a slur against the victims of a natural disaster. Worse, it's a rejoicing over the deaths of the victims of a natural disaster, with a damnable slur thrown on top of it. I wonder if that's the kind of joy the magazine describes itself as having on its website. "Charlie Hebdo", it tells us, is a magazine that is "satirical, secular, political and joyous". But then , in English, it also says it is "a punch in the face" and "an angry magazine"; that life is too short to not be "laughing it up a storm", because "very nearly everything" is "ridiculous", "absurd or preposterous". Well, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say "Charlie Hebdo", shame on you for not sticking to your own motives. There is nothing satirical, secular, political and certainly nothing joyous about the Texas cover because there is no truth in it. And there has to be at least a drop of truth in a provocative stance to make it interesting. <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-75887857087356524172017-08-30T09:49:00.000-07:002017-08-30T10:08:02.327-07:00"Bake Off" on Channel 4<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's much to worry about in the world at the moment, so what better object to focus on than a baking show? The big move of "The Great British Bake Off" from the state-run, advertisement-free, BBC to commercial Channel 4 has finally materialised, with the first episode of the new series broadcast last night. A lot of fans took to social media to express their views on the added 15 minutes or so of commercials, viewing this development as either a good or a bad one. Good because it allows for tea/wine/cake breaks, or bad because it interrupts the flow of the show. I care more about the change in staff. Three out the four original presenters didn't make the move to Channel 4: baking judge Mary Berry, and the comedy duo of Mel and Sue as the jolly compères. They have been replaced with Prue Leith as judge, and an ill-assorted twosome of Sandi Toksvig and someone called Noel Fielding as the supposedly comic relief. Who - or indeed what - Fielding is I couldn't tell you. Transgender? Just a man who likes to wear weird clothes and lots of make-up? He is apparently a comedian, but is so tall and lugubrious, as well as strange looking, I had to check the impulse to hide behind a sofa every time he sloped onto the screen. He and Toksvig had no discernible chemistry. They both have unpleasant voices, and further grate on aesthetic sensibilities by being visual opposites (tall, thin, dark vs short, dumpy, blonde). There is no way of satisfyingly framing them in a screen shot. Neither seems remotely interested in baking. Channel 4 are perhaps trying to reel in a younger audience with this Fielding fellow (?). I have no idea who Toksvig's audience might be. She is a well-known 'out' lesbian, so maybe the thinking behind the new line-up is simply one of Political Correctness. (Of course Sue was also a well-known lesbian, but she and best-friend Mel balanced each other out very sweetly.) This is Channel 4, after all, and it would hardly be surprising if their take on the Great British Family Show was to make an in-your-face PC point from the start. One of the very first of the twelve bakers to be introduced last night was a female contestant who said that the sight of the famous tent had made her all giddy (or something), just like at her wedding. Then after a well-timed pause: 'Except that my wife isn't here". Well, that's us told. Of Prue Leith, all I can remember is heavy-framed dark glasses. She and her fellow-judge, BBC original Paul Hollywood, had no chemistry either. I mean, come on, baking is all about chemistry! The cakes were pretty amazing, especially for a series opener. It would be a Great Shame if the series continued as it started last night, by undermining the talented contestants with dud presenters. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-48716158303509368542017-07-31T05:19:00.001-07:002017-07-31T05:19:50.458-07:00Not Greening but burning<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wouldn't it be nice if Justine Greening, UK Secretary of State for Education, lived up to her name and sought to implement measures promoting natural wholesomeness? But no. Her proposal to bypass the gender dysphoria diagnosis and allow people to officially choose their gender merely on their own say-so is anything but natural and wholesome. It is a further assault on the basic facts of society and civilisation, as well as an assault on sanity, particularly on the well-being of children and young people. It is like wanting to make things easier for one or two smaller or overshadowed trees by burning down the rest of the forest around them. We know the Conservative party is no longer conservative. This announcement by Greening of a reform to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act to overthrow objective reality is so anarchic and destructive I can't think what it should be called. Peter Hitchens had a good line on this in yesterday's <i>Mail on Sunday</i>:</span><br />
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<strong><i>Let's change the Tories name - to Doris</i></strong></div>
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<i>I suspect the whole ‘Trans’ issue has been cooked up so that nobody can ever say anything about it (including here) without being somehow in the wrong, and open to attack by the Thought Police. Now that there’s no more mileage in homosexuality, it’s the best way of making conservatives look like bigots.<br />But those of you who have clung to the Tory Party through thick and thin must have wondered a bit last week when it endorsed the idea that anyone can be whatever sex, sorry ‘gender’, that they want to be.<br />Here’s the simple explanation. The Tory Party itself has changed sex, from Right to Left. It is a ‘Trans’ party. I’m puzzled that it has yet to change its name. How about ‘Doris’? And it now feels free to come out. Yet still you vote for it.</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the best tactic if, as Mark Twain </span>apparently<span style="font-family: inherit;"> said, 'Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand'. Maybe we can laugh this </span>scorched-earth<span style="font-family: inherit;"> proposal out of existence. There has to come a point when turning basic, healthy reality on its head becomes too absurd and we can no longer go along with it for the sake of the feelings of a tiny minority. Tiny minorities are to be loved and cared for within the realm of sanity, not to be used as a flaming torch on the very structures which allow them to exist in the first place. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-21703094950367237792017-07-26T10:38:00.003-07:002017-07-28T02:53:10.450-07:00Doctor Who cares? and female women<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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People seem interested in "Doctor Who". Certainly it gets a lot of publicity, year in year out. I've lived in the UK for a total of about 23 years without ever <i>not</i> hearing about it - but without ever watching it either. So basically I don't care. "The Week" describes "Doctor Who" as "a children's show that has only five million viewers". Yet the promotion for the upcoming series has been particularly unavoidable, to the point of being irritatingly sneaked into the Wimbledon coverage by the BBC (who make the show). And why the fuss? Because the new, 13th actor to play the title character is not an actor but, for the first time, an actress. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of adults fans. They don't like the evermore PC direction the series has been taking, and who (so to speak) can blame them. Cue also the cover-clogs commentators who make out those dissenting fans to be knuckle-draggers. This tweet in particular, from the singer Mark Hoppus (I'd never heard of him - is that bad?) was taken as representative of the counter-backlash against the traditionalists: </div>
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However, anyone inclined to see it as a slam-dunk should think again. Female doctors, pilots, scientists we already have. I don't hear anyone clamouring for more women in the dirty, dangerous, depressing jobs that only men do (as many others have pointed out (e.g. "Independent Man' <a href="https://youtu.be/kLvw-qEv044">https://youtu.be/kLvw-qEv044</a>) and which keep us all in the comfort, cleanliness, security and satiety we've come to expect. A hollow argument. The next part of the tweet is already a non-argument. I have seen an article in 'The Times' which I could swear pointedly referred to sisters as 'siblings' to avoid gendering them. I didn't keep a record of the article, unfortunately, but no doubt there will be other instances of such neutering. In the meantime, we have pushes to make the word 'mother' disappear from birth certificates and presumably other official documents. We have the new concept that it's not only women who give birth: transgender 'men' do also. That is to say, women who identify as men, while retaining their female reproductive organs or retaining them long enough to give birth then having them removed. We have the now firmly entrenched concept that a man who says he's a woman is as much a woman as a 'cis' woman. Woe betide anyone who questions this malarkey, as once-fêted feminists have found out. The time when a woman needs to be specified as female is upon us. This recent piece in The Huffington Post is a good example. Look at the picture (trigger warning: menstrual blood).<br />
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cass-clemmer-trans-periods_us_597101bce4b0aa14ea78a251">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cass-clemmer-trans-periods_us_597101bce4b0aa14ea78a251</a><br />
Read the 'poem' that accompanies the picture. By all means have compassion for the predicament of the person who wrote it, angry, confused, clearly trapped in a hell-pit of rebellion. But also consider that this person is a communicator on the subject (new to me) of 'menstrual health'. The 'What next?' in the Hoppus tweet is not clever-clever. It's already out of date.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-37973700761408369452017-07-22T08:37:00.001-07:002017-07-22T22:15:28.597-07:00O.J.Simpson againHe's in the news again, for being granted parole nine years into a thirty-three year sentence for a robbery attempt in Las Vegas in 2007. Naturally, the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her young friend Ron Goldman in 1994 get mentioned in reports or discussions of this latest chapter in Simpson's life. Those murders were gruesome and ferociously violent, impossible to forget. Simpson's criminal trial for the murders - the 'trial of the century' - resulted in a 1995 'not guilty' verdict which was infamously celebrated on one side of the racial divide and deplored on the other. Simpson was deemed liable for the deaths in a 1997 civil trial, however, and ordered to pay over $30 million in reparation to the bereaved families - as a matter of principle (the money has not yet materialised and presumably never will). It remains that, criminally speaking, the murders are considered to be 'case closed'. Simpson obtained custody of his two children with Nicole, and off he went on his not-merry way, a hero to some, a disgrace to most. The striking thing to me about any mention of Simpson since then is how it is taken for granted he committed those murders. It's as if it would be heresy to accept the 'not guilty' verdict. Yes, I know, there was a huge amount of racial tension in L.A. at the time, and the trial became a political hot potato. But it's also true that the prosecution bungled its case, quite spectacularly. It's arguable, furthermore, that the evidence was not entirely convincing. The murder weapon was never found, for example. And as I wrote previously on this blog ("O.J. Simpson: too dim to do it?") there was a remarkable lack of blood connected to Simpson. Or rather, an unremarked-upon lack of blood. That the blood evidence was spelled out in mere drops, in a crime of such sheer bloodiness, is bizarre at best. From a psychological point of view, I've never understood why it's assumed, as if it went without saying, that a man who pleads 'no contest' to spousal abuse (as he did in 1989) can go on to butcher two people in what must have been a frenzy of rage. One does not seamlessly lead to the other. If it did, wouldn't the criminal landscape be very different? Previous to the murders, a volatile marriage with incidents of physical abuse; after the murders, an idiotic attempt to recover sports memorabilia. In the middle of these two relatively low-grade transgressions we are to believe without question that a man leaped into the monstrous crime category for about ten minutes then came out of it again with enough composure to finish his packing and fly off to Chicago. And this from someone who based his whole life and career(s) on being a 'pleaser', someone who courted approval from the dominant culture at all times. Even his eligibility for parole came up because he behaved as a model prisoner. Of course he did. There is a narrative that does see O.J. Simpson as innocent, and his son from his first marriage as the potential culprit. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/is-oj-innocent-missing-evidence-experts-dig-oj-simpson-son-theory-964534). Simpson did not help his own cause by penning an unpublished book entitled <i>If I Did It</i>, apparently featuring an imaginary person named Charlie and a convenient blackout when the murders occurred. One way or another I'm not arguing for Simpson's guilt or innocence, simply saying that on several levels the assumption of his unquestioned guilt is problematic.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-787716187815431422017-07-19T10:59:00.000-07:002017-07-21T06:22:21.102-07:00'Ladies and Gentlemen'One of the texts for an online course I did recently was a transcript of lectures given more than a hundred years ago to undergraduate students of English at Oxford. The text had often triggered previous participants of the course therefore it came with caveats from the course leader about the sexism involved. For the terrible truth is that the lecturer addressed the students as 'Gentlemen'. They were all young men, so it made sense for him to address them that way. Furthermore, (gentle)manliness was the main theme of the lecturer's teaching: writing like a man, with purpose and clarity and so on. There was perhaps also a class element underlying the disapproval of 21st century students: those young men were almost certainly gentlemen in the socio-economic sense as well, and therefore privileged. This was Oxford, after all. The young men would soon be sent to fight, die or be maimed in the trenches of World War I, and consider it their duty to society to do so, but let's gloss over that. What grated on contemporary ears was that it was 'Gentlemen' and not 'Ladies and Gentlemen'. Since those benighted times, I think it's fair to say that 'Ladies and Gentlemen' has become such a normal, polite and inclusive form of address that we have ceased to see how courteous and progressive it is. How else to explain the recent decision by Transport for London to axe 'Ladies and Gentlemen'? It must now be perceived as a non-inclusive form of public address because it apparently leaves out the non-binary who didn't exist until about ten minutes ago. In its public announcements, TfL will replace the gracious "Ladies and Gentlemen' with an infantile 'Hello Everyone'. It is worth pausing to reflect how the Ladies have disappeared from this particular public discourse, and with not a peep of outrage from anyone, least of all from feminists.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-45886537171811380062017-07-17T10:31:00.001-07:002017-07-18T02:14:49.501-07:00Love is not illegalThe BBC promises to teach us, yokel payers of the license fee, all about "Gay Britannia". In their own words, this is to be a season of "Bold and provocative stories exploring how far we've come since being gay was a crime". The 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act (the decriminalisation of homosexual acts) is this year, and evidently the BBC does not want to let this milestone go unnoticed. Although why the title they chose is not deemed to show an offensive disregard for L, B, T, Q, etc etc people is unclear. I guess BBC writers are as fallible as others in not being able to resist a neat pun, in this case a pun on 'Cool Britannia'. Now, it should go without saying that the Sexual Offences Act was quite right. The fewer aspects of private behaviour that come under the purview of the law, the better. Hurray for that. Two anomalies have developed since then, however. The first one is that the notion of private behaviour has disappeared. Everyone's sexuality is now everybody else's business. And if you're not interested in celebrating the sexual acts of total strangers, you are on the wrong side of history. This is how decriminalisation has turned into 'Pride'. This is why all manner of activities, and indeed identities, are being pushed on children at ever younger ages. Decriminalisation was only the starting point, as it turns out, not an end. The goal has turned into the constantly receding rainbow end of 'exploring' not just 'how far we've come' but how far we can go - or at least how far we can go until the children thus educated murder and dismember their parents, as James Woods recently tweeted. The other anomaly that has developed in the last fifty years is the total equation of sex with love and love with sex. So for example there is the advert for "Gay Britannia", (shown immediately after Wimbledon and thus guaranteed a large viewership). This advert asks us to imagine a situation where being in love is illegal (or some such) while showing a couple of heterosexual old dears blamelessly waiting in a bus shelter together, but photographed as if they are on some incriminating CCTV footage. Or, another example, the cover of "The Week Junior" which I saw today in the supermarket. "The Week" for adults (the one I know) always has brilliant caricatures on its covers. I don't know what The 'Junior' edition usually depicts, but certainly the one in the stands right now is nothing to laugh about. It is a photo of wholesome-looking adults (and children, I believe) at a parade and wearing t-shirts of a recognisable Mickey Mouse shape rendered in rainbow colours. The title proclaims 'PRIDE' in big letters over the caption: "Londoners celebrate love for all". But in the words of the song, what's love got to do with it? Love has never been illegal, nor can it be criminalised. To think love and sex mean the same thing is to hold an unbelievably reductionist and false view of love. To teach this to children should make the responsible adults (using the terms loosely) feel ashamed of themselves. If sex and love are interchangeable then there is no disinterested love, no familial love, no Christian <i>agape</i>, and no Godly love that makes any sense except for the randy goings on of ancient gods, and the kinds of worship they demand including the associated delights of 'religious' prostitution, child sacrifice and what not. As I think I've written somewhere else, seeing how far we can go, as garden-variety sinful human beings, usually means ending up in the very same messes our predecessors worked so hard to get us out of.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-36966955271104675432017-07-14T10:39:00.001-07:002017-07-14T10:39:05.000-07:00Pink dresses and patriarchy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Oh dear, Ivanka Trump was on trend, fashion-wise, at the G20 Summit, working the colour of the season (pink) and 'statement' sleeves. But that was bad. Bad! Joan Walsh of MSNBC did not approve.<br />
<a href="https://thefederalist.com/2017/07/12/msnbc-contributor-ivanka-anti-woman-wore-pink-dress-bows/">https://thefederalist.com/2017/07/12/msnbc-contributor-ivanka-anti-woman-wore-pink-dress-bows/</a><br />
This pink dress with bows was unacceptably light, lovely, self-confident, playful, feminine. But bad, I tell you! Well, Ms Walsh, and women of your ilk, how about this: Ivanka has an affirming father, supportive brothers and a loving husband. She is so loved-up by her menfolk that she has no need to make herself dour and rebarbative. If such is the case, what on earth is wrong with that? Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-17410077448638963532017-05-28T07:51:00.002-07:002017-05-28T13:11:12.636-07:00Roger Moore, Bond of Bonds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sir Roger Moore died this past week and it's very nice that commentators are now saying he was in their opinion the best Bond. This is my opinion too. He's my favourite partly because his twelve years of playing James Bond coincided with my formative pre-teen to adult years; more importantly, because he played Bond with easy humour and panache and by so doing made the rather daft character of Bond thoroughly likeable. And Moore's striking good looks and smooth and calming voice were only enhanced by the mischievous twinkle in his eye and the famous raised eyebrow(s) of his alleged limited acting skills. George Lazenby I don't remember much about, Sean Connery as Macho Bond was of course good in his way, Timothy Dalton was okay but hampered by having none of the magnetism of a movie star, Pierce Brosnan was lovely but his authority was never quite believable, and about the utterly humourless and dare I say ugly Bond of Daniel Craig the less said the better. Craig made Bond thoroughly un-likeable, to the point where it's hard to justify the continuation of the franchise except for those to whom it generates a lot of money. Moore was apparently always pleased to be told by individuals that he had been their favourite Bond, good-naturedly settling for 'favourite' where others would have wanted 'best'. Let's not forget, however, that during his life he had to make do with being constantly panned for his Bond, usually at the same time as Connery was lauded as the definitive one. This point of view was so strongly promoted and endorsed by influential writers and in the media generally that to suggest one's preference for Moore was to risk being, figuratively, tarred and feathered and driven out of town. So hurray for the 'best Bond' opinions emerging now, but what a shame they were considered an affront to the critical consensus during Moore's lifetime.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-23372170240026584202017-05-27T09:09:00.001-07:002017-05-27T09:28:04.079-07:00Manchester victims, Egyptian victimsIn the wake of the atrocity in Manchester on Monday many commentators have spoken or written movingly of the 'children' or 'little girls' who were targeted. And this is right and proper: of the twenty-two fatalities, eight were aged 18 and under: one victim under 10, seven in the 14-18 range. All were female. However the next most affected age-range was 40-60. Seven victims were in this group, six of them female. So please let us also remember the parents and step-parents and aunties who were killed in addition to the minors, and not forgetting the four men and three women in the 19-30 age range. And while we're at it, let's be equally horrified at the twenty-eight or so men, women and children who were gunned down in Egypt this week. Coptic Christians on an innocent day trip, their bus was stopped by jihadis who ordered them to recite the Islamic shahada - the profession of faith that would have turned them into muslims according to islamic law. Those who refused to do so because of their loyalty to Christ were summarily executed. These victims deserve our outrage too.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-57537510907381315972017-05-24T10:43:00.003-07:002017-05-24T10:43:58.046-07:00Melania rocks the dress code<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Melania Trump rocks. No, I don't mean for flicking her husband's hand away or fobbing off his other hand-holding attempt. I mean for declining to wear an islamic headscarf in Saudi Arabia but totally going for the traditional black dress and lace mantilla dress code when meeting the Pope. So refreshing to see this most unlikely of First Ladies prioritising the Church.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3879228855135850587.post-89861188663014440742017-05-24T07:51:00.000-07:002017-05-25T02:29:37.651-07:00Terror threat 'critical', blah blah blahSo what if Mrs May orders armed police and military personnel into British cities? It's no more effective than locking the stadium door after the jihadi has gone in and detonated the nail bomb. What next: ban every citizen from carrying a bag, backpack or briefcase? Banning all concerts, or any other free assembly of pleasure-seekers? Mrs May could have made a point, instead, of securing entry points to the country when she was Home Secretary, not weakening them by cutting border staff and introducing flimsy electronic entry. As Prime Minister, she could stop contributing to the usual blather about a religion of peace and about carrying on as before. She could risk the wrath visited on Donald Trump - or worse wrath - by enforcing without delay a severe clampdown on any Muslim British citizen seeking to return to the country after a stay in a jihadi hotspot. That's what this latest citizen did and he sailed through customs without a hitch, even though he 'was known to the authorities' before he left. So, how about protecting the borders? That would be more useful than sending out a vast number of armed respondents to sweat in the current heatwave, with nothing more to do than act as a temporary visual deterrent. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03856680557480563913noreply@blogger.com0