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From PLOS One:
Do book consumers discriminate against Black, female, or young authors?
Dana B. Weinberg, Adam Kapelner
Published: June 13, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267537
The researchers posed as a book publisher conducting market research on potential titles and showed covers and marketing materials including made-up authors’ photos with names (e.g., Alexander Williams) that could be white or black for the made-up books with the authors randomly switched around. They hired 9000 Mechanical Turk people to rate their interest in the phony books and how impressed they were by the authors’ qualifications.
These made-up books lack the sesquipedalian subtitles that are a major feature of the last few decades of book publishing, but otherwise they look realistic one-by-one, although after looking at a number of these generic covers you might start guessing that something else is really going on.
Across all three response variables, consistent with our hypothesis, we do not find evidence of discrimination against Black or female authors. Rather, we find a robust result of significant taste-based preference in favor of Black authors. Though significant (all coefficients have p < 0.001), the differences related to evaluation are clinically small: less than a tenth of a point on the 4-point purchase interest measure and 0.11 of a point across all models on the 5-point author credentials measure. In contrast, respondents showed a substantial difference in willingness to pay of between \$0.47 and \$0.51 more for books by Black authors. This difference in willingness to pay translates to about 3.5% of the mean book price of \$14.19.
Contrary to our hypothesis of no discrimination based on age, we do find significant (p < 0.001) favorable differences in the evaluations of Boomer and GenX authors’ credentials compared to Millennials. Again, however, these differences are clinically insubstantial, between 0.04 and 0.06 points on a 5-point scale. Moreover, they do not translate into differences in interest in purchasing the books or in what respondents are willing to pay. …
While our respondents noted the race and gender of the authors presented to them, an author’s gender seemed to have no negative significant bearing on their interest in a book, their evaluation of the author as qualified, or the price they were willing to pay for the book. Respondents also tended to see Millennial authors as having less expertise than older authors. The difference was very small and did not translate into any difference in either interest in purchasing the book or in the price they were willing to pay. Moreover, contrary to the author demographics in publishing, our respondents showed a slight but marked preference for Black authors that translated into a willingness to pay about \$0.50 more for their books, or 3.5% more than average. This seemingly small difference in book price may translate into a substantial difference in profitability over a book’s sales lifecycle. This result represents the strongest effect in our experimental findings. Moreover, this preference for Black authors was robust, seemingly unaffected by genre or by the race of the respondent—although Black respondents had a marginally more favorable view of Black authors’ credentials than did others. Thus, in our experiment, consumers showed a willingness to pay more for books by Black authors, a finding that suggests the potential for enhanced profitability across a wide range of genres and not only those related specifically to race and ethnicity, the traditional topics to which Black authors have often been relegated.
Our study has several limitations. First, this is a study of stated preferences and not of actual purchasing behavior. Despite reporting greater interest in books by Black authors and a willingness to pay slightly more for their books, we do not know to what extent these reports would accurately reflect either actual behavior of our respondents or patterns of buying in the book market more broadly. Second, data collection occurred at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020. These protests highlighted the grim history and current situation of racial inequality in the U.S. In relation to this experiment, the ongoing national conversation on these issues may have sensitized respondents to issues of race and racism and may have increased conscious or unconscious bias in favor of Black authors and their books. …
Also, people doing Mechanical Turk to make a few bucks tend to be more liberal because they are broke, younger, and more conscientious.
While we find no evidence of discrimination against groups based on age, gender, or race, there is nonetheless the possibility we might find biases against groups at the intersection of these characteristics, for example, against Black women or against older White men. We tested for these interactions (and the data and code are available in our supplemental materials). (We ran random effects models for (a) race × gender, (b) age × gender, (c) race × age, and (d) race × gender × age with and without demographic control variables. No interaction effect was significant at α = 5%. Moreover, observed effect sizes even at α = 10% were tiny—1/16th of a point on the Likert scale for the responses “Author Credentials” and “Purchase Interest”—and not present at all for the response “Willingness to Pay”.) …
My guess is that being a working author is a more arduous and less lucrative way to monetize America’s pro-black bias as opposed to being on TV, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, with selling books a sideline of your TV celebrityhood.
An interesting question, though, is why there aren’t more Neil deGrasse Tysons who make use of America’s pro-black bias by becoming television experts on non-race subjects. For example, here’s a gig that might pay: be a black military historian who is the go-to guy for hosting shows about World War II. Sure, blacks didn’t do much in WWII, but so what? You be the guy who is on TV talking about the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Nobody else drawing a paycheck from TV was there either, so why not you?
It’s probably just too hard an entry barrier. One of our commenters was a fellow grad student with Tyson, and while Tyson isn’t a genius astronomer, he does know a whole lot about the subject relative to the public to go along with his big showman personality.
English
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Persian
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Tyson is an atypical affirmative action hire: he’s actually competent at the subject for which he’s declared a “genius.” But competency is not genius. And, like other affirmative action hires, he’s wildly overrated.
Tyson’s competency has allowed him to become an independent contractor in the realm of fame. Unlike the incompetent Tennessee Coates, who has disappeared into obscurity the moment he left the big Marxist plantations, Tyson’s competency allows him to be a free agent, portraying black Bill Nye or Mr. Wizard, running a travelling road show where he gives lefty talking points/stories mixed in with basic facts about science as well some dubious out-on-a-limb Marxist-based science speculations.
It’s a pretty good gig. Tyson keeps almost all of the profits whenever he gives a talk, lecture, or gets interviewed; gets to be a named guest on national shows; gets to bang a bunch of Marxist groupies and have the trappings of fame, such as cutting the line and getting free meals; doesn’t have to do any real research work, only repeating undergrad-level textbook stuff; and yet also avoids being caught up in the red tape #MeToo nonsense of modern universities or modern Hollywood.
I’m sure he could make more money and get a boost in his Q ratings if he got a science show on PBS or Discovery or Nickelodeon. But that would mean a lot more overhead, he wouldn’t be in control, he couldn’t control his schedule, and then some sort risk of sex scandal would break–Tyson’s had one or two typical Black Celebrity sex demand stories come out, but since he’s not in a “system” that punishes such behavior nothing’s come of it.
It’s a good thing they didn’t survey me, as unless I can make a positive ID on Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams, I’m biased against them. That’s too bad, because if most of them hadn’t been pushing the blackety-black stuff in their writing for years, I wouldn’t have this bias. Nice going, Blackie! (or however that goes …)
I agree that if I KNOW a black guy is just good at popularizing subjects without a particular racial angle, I’d probably have a slight bias to give him some listening time. I’m not buying a book, though … there’s no telling …
Conscientiousness is more common in conservatives is it not? Do you mean openness?
The idea of someone publishing a fantasy novel baldly titled “The Dark Saga” makes me laugh.
I am seeing more of this. They do tend to be flagrantly or ambiguously homosexual though.
Of course, these are all supposed to be political experts, which in the current year can arguably nevermore be a “non-race subject”. And most mainstream political commentary nowadays consists of little more than blackity-black-Demtalkingpoint-wordsalad-black.
“Has Neil DeGrasse Tyson Done Any Real Science?”
https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=91127
“Heckuva job, Brownie!”
I remember being fascinated by Carl Sagan’s series, “Cosmos.” I went on to purchase a few of his books as a teen, and they changed my way of thinking forever.
When The “Family Guy” dude announced he had hired Tyson to host a reboot of the same program, my heart died a little. Not that Carl Sagan was particularly brilliant as a scientist, but he understood the rules of the game very well, and he was a bright man.
Tyson, to me, was… a bullshitter. A people pleaser. A player. Just more of my generation’s riff-raff, who couldn’t measure up the the generation prior. I thought, this new “Cosmos” was not going to inspire a sense of wonder amongst the viewers. It was going to bore them. It would be like Trump’s Pillow Guy trying to interest us in science. It wouldn’t be what he said that would necessarily be wrong. Just the way he said it. He would explain “black holes” like he was trying to sell a blender from a booth at Costco. “Yeah, it’s a great blender, of hey, I gotta go. Maybe next time.”
And… that’s exactly what happened. The show, beginning with much fanfare, died a sad boring death.
I guess being somewhat black had a lot to do with Family Guy dude’s casting choice.
That’s a shame, but it wound up costing FM dude some decent money, so… there’s that.
I was happy to read that Tyson got his media wings clipped a bit due to fucking around with a graduate student, or secretary or whatever. It got the job done in that I don’t have to keep running into him via talk shows, news opinion shows, etc. Being somewhat black aside, he was an arrogant fucking asshole. The polar opposite of Sagan.
It’s like, “Dude… you watered down the wonder of the natural sciences amongst the teeming masses for a generation. Time to sit down. Take a long rest. Reflect. Learn how to bring some kind of value to the world. You don’t have to die a parasite.”
Thank you! That was on one of the 1st posts I read of iSteve on this site.
This would be a dead giveaway if you were trying to pawn off a non-fiction mock-up as real. Any list of current non-fiction is a near-total colonfest.
I can remember reading an interview in 1976 in Popular Science about the Mars lander and thinking, “This guy’s great. What’s his name? Sagan, Carl Sagan. I’ll remember that.”
The authors say preferring whites and males is “discrimination,” but when they found a black and female bias they call it a “taste-based preference.”
“monetize America’s pro-black bias”
In other words, he’s got a good thing going as the go-to “rent-a-black” in popular science. But hey, you can’t blame a brother for making easy money when they serve him the opportunity on a silver platter. I’m only surprised there isn’t more competition for amiable black “experts” (“Blaxsperts”?).
I know Tyson has the right credentials, but if he actually has any deep understanding of scientific concepts he does a piss-poor job of communicating them. There have to be some black guys that could do that job better.
He does fine, just as Bill Nye or Beakman or Mr. Wizard or the guys from Mythbusters did. I mean, those guys were hit and miss, and some kids got them, others didn’t.
“Popular” science guys tend to be much more celebrated and popular in the media than IRL. Whenever a new one comes out and he gets some decent ratings, the corporate press will be all, “He’s changing how kids view science! He’s making them get into it!” when really the same kids who would’ve become engineers or biological researchers become engineers or bio researchers, but happened to have watched their shows as kids because, well, that’s the stuff they liked anyway.
Pop Sci guys tend to be filling a need rather than expanding the culture. Nothing wrong with it, but its far less than what the hype portrays.
The Family Guy (Seth MacFarlane) is one of those Hollywood anti-Christian atheists, and during that time period the New Atheist morons (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) were all over pop culture with their tired, staid, already rebutted arguments and logical fallacies.
One of those lies/stupidities the New Atheist tards pushed was “Christianity is anti-science”, and so the fedora-wearing set started putting out bumper stickers with “I have faith in science, not religion” themes. The New Atheists were sure that if everyone just got into “science” like them and “trusted the science”, religion (meaning Christianity) would go away.
So anti-Christian MacFarlane decided to use his power to re-push and re-do the old “science” series with the “coolest scientist” around, namely Tyson. The zeitgest would carry the show!
As you’ve implied, it did not take off in the ratings. And now the New Atheists have largely disappeared from the culture, either being cancelled for wrongthink (Dawkins), death (Hitchens), or babbling conspiracy hysteria (Harris). The fedora-wearing internet atheist is largely mocked, much like a male feminist.
At o:40. National debate champions.
It’s “how you say it.” Lord Fauci, with his “Jewish doctor” persona, is the poster boy.
Biden now either shouts, or whispers, in an effort to capture this.
Poor Ted Cruz, poor DeSantis, very smart guys, no con style.
I think there is a certain kind of passion for science that can only be communicated by someone who truly understands the subject matter. The authentic sense of curiosity and awe that comes from true understanding is presumably something that is hard to fake.
Sagan certainly had that authentic quality as a popular science explainer. (Richard Attenborough is another that comes to mind in biology). Of course Feynman was great as well.
Below is one of my favorite Feynman clips where some BBC reporter asks him to give a superficial explanation of “why” magnets work like they do. In answering (as to why he can’t answer), he gives a very profound, yet simple to understand, mini-lecture on the philosophical issues of causation and epistemology. If Tyson had been asked the same question, he would have said “because magnets act like invisible rubber bands . . . ” Or similar nonsense.
Dragons of Eden was a great pop science book about evolution. I read it in 1977.
If I can find the ebook I’m going to read it again.
I think with the advent of Amazon and the former big box booksellers, any Tom, Dick, Jack or Jill could become an author with a venue to sell their wares. There are literally millions of no names out there. As a consequence, it could be argued that it has been a boon for any AA black with enough ambition to pen (or have ghostwritten) a tome. If they’re not selling, they could always blame okrah, I mean harpo. But in the end it’ll always come down to Whitey, as usual.
Only African Americans are biased in favor of black authors. I used to be in New York publishing. Trust me: nobody reads black writers, except perhaps James Baldwin (and he’s overrated and boring). Liberal publishing types, however, pretend to love all black writers, especially Toni Morrison. If you want to have fun with these phonies at a cocktail party, ask them which Toni Morrison novel is their favorite–and why.
Negro-worship, which first took off in a big way in the Jazz Age, climbs to new heights in each Current Year and women (with and without nuts) lead and drive the “culture”.
Thanks for that. Suspected this sort of thing but just never checked.
Never really had to. I gave up on Tyson at the start of Covid when he went on a talk show and said, “Let’s trust the science.” I realized he didn’t even know how science works.
Excellent post, Steve.
Mechanical Turk is a great reference (Poe!) but is it appropriate to “flunkies who filled out a survey for pizza money”?
Family Guy is kind of aberrant in that they did an episode briefly acknowledging that other views exist. For the most part the theme of all globohomo media is that if you disagree, you’re a Russian.
I deal with lots of hard-left grad students daily, and their best trait by far is conscientiousness. Their beliefs are stupid and their goals demonic, but you shouldn’t kid yourself that they are lazy.
Agreed. I once employed a gardener from Jamaica, an old hardworking fellow named Tyson. If I saw a spot that needed weeding, I would put on the patois and point to the ground, “Kneel de grass, Tyson. Area lookin clatty, mon.”
All of these look like AI or Indian “content” (ACT LIKE A FOOL THINK LIKE A BRILLIANT). But, they also work. Book covers peaked in the mid to late eighties through early nineties, now book covers look like vomit or something less than corporate logo-s, and when you see something you know not to be garbage, it’s because you recognize the author, which wouldn’t work here.
Agreed Almost Missouri. Blacks have been completely “ghettoized” in terms of just exclusively talking about race and grievance and nothing more (and I’m using ghettoized as in the original Italian definition of a small-limited segregated space, as opposed to actually being the “hood.” Something tells me that Don lemon has never seen the hood other than when he has had to do a news report from there). Unless it’s within a black or racial context, blacks “experts” really don’t have anything intelligent to say.
To reference something that Steve said in his post, any black military historian that they would get to talk about World War II could probably really only reference the Tuskegee airmen or the African-American involvement in some capacity in the war, but beyond that, zilch. Blacks are overwhelmingly and primarily interested in their own history and culture (such as it is) and really have no concerns about any others. Sad.
I assumed this was roughly the role Malcolm Nance was being groomed for. If he survives Ukraine!
“Unputdownable”?
As in “This summer’s unputdownable age-gap interracial LGBTQ+ torrid mechanical engineering love story.”
My company used Mechanical Turk way back to hire people to enter data from product packages for items that they had purchased. The thing that shocked me was how cheaply American workers would do the jobs for us. I suppose because they’re able to take a minute here and a minute there to do a little tiny tasks, it makes up for the sub-Third World rates we were paying.
I’m not sure how representative a sample a Mechanical Turk group would be, but author Eric Kauffman, author of Whiteshift, uses mechanical Turk to do spot surveys on political issues.
Edgar Allan Poe became fascinated by the real Mechanical Turk, and when it visited his city he went to every performance and wrote articles on how we thought the Mechanical Turk actually worked.
No, he hasn’t exhibited competence in the subject of astrophysics. He’s never been a practicing astrophysicist. And he seems to have been awarded his PhD in the field under dubious circumstances.
You could say he’s a competent TV presenter or science journalist/communicator, like Bill Nye the Science Guy.
‘I assumed this was roughly the role Malcolm Nance was being groomed for. If he survives Ukraine!’
How is he doing in combat, by the way? Must be there by now…
I was always confident he was bullshitting, but then, I’m racist, and tend to assume all blacks are bullshitters.
Maybe I’m wrong. Could be.
I deal with lots of hard-left grad students daily, and their best trait by far is conscientiousness. Their beliefs are stupid and their goals demonic, but you shouldn’t kid yourself that they are lazy.
All of them, because reasons?
Mind telling us who these people are? I recognize #1 but have no idea about the rest.
Agreed. I’ve mentioned before, their level of industry and self-discipline (as opposed to their intelligence) is the one thing that intimidated me a bit when I arrived at ‘famous grad school’.
Now whose post am I responding to, exactly??
Last time I listened to NPR Radio (maybe 5-6 years ago?) they had a black woman commenting about the economy. Nothing about rights or racism, just straight talk about interest rates and prices and Fed policy.
Au contraire, there’s a lot of money to be made from sales to book clubs, and book club ladies are much more pronouncedly negrophilic than is the general population.
And whoever said you have to write the book yourself?
I read your comment, pulled out a few books from the bookshelf nearest me (which has books going back to the 1970s). You’re right, of course. Most of the time, book covers weren’t just eye-catching, they were truly creative and intelligent.
https://lithub.com/the-25-most-iconic-book-covers-in-history/
MacFarlane actually became good friends with…..Rush Limbaugh.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2010/10/02/limbaugh-responds-to-critics-of-his-family-guy-appearance/
Apparently, the story goes that they invited Limbaugh as a joke to voice Darth Vader during Family Guy‘s parody/tribute to Star Wars (don’t ask). To their surprise, Limbaugh agreed, and not only showed up and gamely did the material, but was a complete gentlemen and charmed everyone. On the DVD commentary for those shows, the writers/voice actors/ MacFarlane even agree that Limbaugh was a good dude. It led to MacFarlane giving Rush a whole episode where he played himself and the two got along after disagreeing on politics.
It was actually a turning point for Family Guy, because, after the show’s revival success, MacFarlane’s uber-leftism had infected the show so much that many people were started to turn it off (the character of the dog Brian, a MacFarlane stand-in, had become insufferably preachy with Marxist politics). After Limbaugh, MacFarlane toned down his shrill didacticism and got back to comedy, which drew more fans back and made them loyal.
.
That’s all he needs.
“Sir, we just wanted the invisible rubber bands.”
Reading black authors, a long time ago- Richard Wright, James Baldwin, … – I have noticed that they (especially Wright) frequently have an alien ethical stance. For instance, in his major novel “Native Son”, Wright vividly depicts his anti-hero Bigger Thomas as a psycho; yet, at the ending of the novel, Wright was explicit that Bigger Thomas was just a victim of a racist society.
That struck me as very strange. Evidently, the guy was a psycho (sadistic murder, almost cannibalism,..); true, he was a victim, too, but not simply an almost deterministic product of an anti-black society. Wright implies that his psychotic anti-hero would be basically a rather good fellow in a color-blind society.
I am well aware that one should not generalize too much from literature (there is tons of anti-French rubbish in English literature or anti-Polish nonsense in Russian), but black American authors seem to live in a different moral universe. And if this is so for the best among them, what can one expect from others?
Very, very few blacks are free of that racial psychopathology – Ralph Ellison, Thomas Sowell & a few others …
True.
OT – Guardian – yoga practitioners in London tend to be white and female shock horror.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jun/21/women-of-colour-challenge-white-uk-yoga-racism
Competent presenters can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/QuantaScienceChannel
https://www.youtube.com/c/WorldScienceFestival
https://www.youtube.com/c/SabineHossenfelder
https://www.youtube.com/sciencechannelclips
https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV (with a caveat)
https://www.youtube.com/c/ThomasSowellTV (social sciences & history)
…………………
More like “the sesquipedalian subtitles that are a major feature of the last few centuries of book publishing”:
“The best lack all conviction; the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
I forget who said that.
Family Guy gets a bad rap. It can be stupid but it can also be very funny.
Brian once unknowingly slept with a MtF tranny. Despite his leftism, he reacted with horror when he learned the truth:
be a black military historian who is the go-to guy for hosting shows about World War II
Malcolm Gladwell seems to be positioning himself for that gig, although I am never sure how many people read him as “black”.
Well, I had to look up sesquipedalian.
apparently.
So sesquipedalian is sesquipedalian.
That’s a very selective sample. If they weren’t conscientious would they’ve gotten the grades that let them into grad school in the first place?
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness#Political_attitudes
Not that the correlation is necessarily super-strong either way.
It wasn’t a sadistic murder. If I’m remembering correctly, killing the girl was almost an accident, certainly no more than a byproduct of his desire to shut her up so that she doesn’t give him away – with all the consequences that would entail – a position he was only in because the stupid bimbo thoughtlessly insisted on involving him in her furtive escapades. After she was dead, the way he disposed of the body was gruesome, but at that point it was all about ensuring his survival.
Wright, of course, would like his readers to believe that every aspect of Bigger’s life was all-but-determined by the racist society he lived in, but without the murder, that would not have been particularly believable. Bigger’s life, as portrayed up till the murder, was about as much a result of his own bad attitude as it was the strictures placed on him by racism.
Gotta remember that classic piece of doublethink.
I’m exhausted by ‘merican infatuation with negroes. I’m tired of it.
So many White dead slaughtered in world wars just so ‘merican negroes can drink from a bubbler while they’re slaughtering a White family.
I get that Churchill said something about beaches and Germans nude bathing, along with their women’s hairy armpits but, surely, Yanks, turn it up and give it in.
When will you be ok with darker than White people not being worshipped?
You want a friend you can rely on
One who will never fade away
And if you’re searching for an answer
He’s White, I say
OT
Elon Musk’s just-turned-18 son, uh, make that trans M2F daughter, is officially changing sex and dropping the patriarchal surname. I first assumed this was a ROGD F2M thing.
Don Lemon
Marc Lamont Hill
Jonathan Capehart
Yamiche Alcindor
If you hover your mouse over the image, your browser should show you the URL, which has the name embedded within it. (Or tap & hold the image on a smart phone.)
An interesting question, though, is why there aren’t more Neil deGrasse Tysons who make use of America’s pro-black bias by becoming television experts on non-race subjects.
It’s fascinating to see in action an hbd enthusiast urging on ethnicitiies not of his type to supplant him and his.
Maybe I didn’t get the pronouns right in which case, xers and xis.
It’s fascinating to witness the last days of chez nous.
We are rapidly being replaced yet all the supposedly pro-White sites are engrossed with minutia of inconsequence
Ethnic succession vs white flight
https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceb7hy5k5l6t27dxq3jznabwe6k2ps37j572h63k4bwja6gtx2c3ou?filename=Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Dragons%20of%20Eden_%20Speculations%20on%20the%20Evolution%20of%20Human%20Intelligence-Ballantine%20Books%20%281986%29.pdf
Good ol’ horrible times …
Bardon,
Interesting point. The critic Hilton Als touches on that in this fantastic article on James Baldwin, who was influenced by Wright, then turned against him later. Als gives a fine analysis of Baldwin’s literary strengths and failings, including why he was a crappy novelist. A must-read.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/02/16/the-enemy-within-hilton-als?fbclid=IwAR3LFd8aHrvEvMoCpcR92dd7alFc3n128x4TZ0gsOUu3eCdiyX0yU-ATq98
There’s a Robert Anton Wilson book about philosophy I’ve considered buying because I saw it praised very highly (apparently it was his final work), and the cover of the edition which came up honestly looks like vomit. I still remember the new Vintage Classics paperbacks I bought in the 90s because they were so classically and neatly designed.
His latest tweets are all retweets of others, so he’s not creating content but he’s somewhere with good comms and spare time. So not the front and probably not the East. My guess is he never left Kiev.
Why does Don Lemon’s suit look so horrible? Are those pyjamas?
I agree that Fauci’s “Jewish doctor” persona is a thing, and even more remarkable given that he went to Regis High School, a deservedly very highly regarded Jesuit school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. You still have to be Roman Catholic to go there, and you still have to be a boy…whatever that means lol rotfl.
I’d guess that Fauci’s persona stems in part from having grown up a nerdy Italian American in Brooklyn and in part from having spent a lot of time around Jewish doctors.
At least one habitual commenter here went to Regis, and I know a bunch of formidably smart people who went there.
I was paging through one of his books recently, and I was struck by how truly grotesque some of the illustrations are. I’m not sure I could bring myself to buy a book with such repulsive illustrations today, no matter how interested I might be in the text. I don’t understand what they were going for, but looking like vomit seemed to be the house style for Falcon Press (where he generally published), most of the time anyway.
In NASCAR at least one of the team owners (or part owners) is black. He is Brad Dougherty who was the No 1 pick in the NBA draft around 1990. He played center for North Carolina and if I recall correctly had a pretty long NBA career.
I always thought he would become the face of NASCAR but he seems content to sit in the pit box doing whatever they do there. He seems level headed and may have saved his money so he does not want the hassle.
Books have purchasers and readers, not consumers.
However, even if you call them consumers, they are a tiny minority of the total US population these days, so they can’t really be considered as indicative of the American people as a whole.
I still occasionally buy books, but the criterion I use most of all in selecting purchases is a thorough scan of professional and amateur reviews of the book, plus any prior knowledge I have available books by the same author.
I read about the exodus of junior editors and assistants at the major publishing houses back in March. It seemed like a case of underlings overworked and underpaid while those in senior positions coasted on past glory. Boomer vs. Millenial, lack of promotion, technological illiteracy, status quo, etc. It made me think about the degrading quality of literary output over the years. Poor editing, typos, etc. When editors get overwhelmed with extra responsibilities that have nothing to do with their titles, then it makes sense that quality control would slip.
I used to hold publishers in high esteem. I thought it was littered with old school editors. You know the type—a cranky old man or a woman with sharp eyes for any grammatical error. The Ivy League, the financial institutions, media, publishers—they’ve all lost any shred of respect I had for them.
What gets published and promoted as literature these days is laughable. It seriously makes me wonder if people working in publishing are retarded. All these cutesy titles written by women praised to hell, all these mouthy, solipsistic pieces published as short stories in The New Yorker, the circle jerk among the so-called literary elite is nauseating.
Great writers are absent in publishing and Hollywood. And it really limits my entertainment options to works from the past. I don’t mind that, but it’d be nice to see something new and great come along once in a while.
Where do you see publishing going based on this trend? How does one get published these days?
Neil DeGrasse Tyson types seem to be fairly rare – most blacks that have a lot of personality and want to really dig into a given subject seem to be almost exclusively into sports and music. To be fair, that’s probably the case for most whites as well, but with only 1/4th as may of the former as the latter, that’s pretty slim pickings for charismatic black nerds interested in something other than those two items (or black history, of course). The only other subject I can think of where there may be similar levels of racial interest would be cars, but that’s a smaller audience than sports or music. I would also say that no group is under more social pressure to conform to a particular archetype than black men, so that might also squelch budding interests elsewhere.
Apparently it’s what Very Important People wear to pick up their Pulitzer Prizes.
Probably the next phase will everybody wearing green t-shirts to public events to Show Solidarity with Zelenskyyyy.
Students need not be Catholic to attend St. Regis School. All students are expected to exhibit Christian actions and strive to model the teaching of Jesus Christ in their everyday lives.
The reason I know this is because I was accepted at Regis but decided to go to the hipper Brooklyn Prep (also Jesuit and closer to my house on Long Island)
I also liked that the cover girl for her self-titled magazine was always her – no ‘imposter syndrome’ for that women.
Malcolm Nance looks 68 years old and doesn’t have the kind of look that white boomers would be comfortable with-he looks neither like a nerd or a wishbone quarterback like the original GOP brutha JC Watts.
For instance someone like Sheriff Clarke adopted the cowboy hat because without it he’d look a lot like a Theo Huxtable/ Ben Carson type and that wouldn’t work for a Sheriff.
Nance looks like the kind of guy that used fist fight a couple of his nephews at a cookout arguing over who had better handles AI or Kyrie but now can’t because he’s on three types of heart medication.
Tyson pit da phizzc ho in jeez playse nomsayin
He used to do commentary on ESPN’s NASCAR shows.
I’m not sure NASCAR really has any dedicated shows anymore that would support a high profile commentator.
“You have to write the book yourself.” — James Patterson, as told to Mala Yousafzai
This shows what I knew already: blacks cannot escape blackness, which is their whole narrow & frustrating cosmos.
True, minority authors depict their frequently suffocating & provincial world, but the best among them can transcend it. Subject-matter may be a sort of strait-jacket, but there is more to it in their creations (at least for the best among them).
I don’t see anything similar for blacks. Perhaps it’s because they are so visually different from others, so they’re always reduced to race; also, they don’t possess a high historical culture to identify with.
And there is no hope- Asian authors know they have rich histories & their co-racials can achieve & will achieve much in the modern world. Blacks know that they are a failure as a race & cannot function in the modern world. Others, not just whites, are always better in what matters. And when they’re culturally successful, they drag others to their level which is chaos, immorality, garbage, … in other words, jungle invariably turning into a morass & rot.
When did their representatives condemn black criminality, dysfunction and violence? When did they say that South Africa was functioning only when ruled by whites?
As I see it, two and a half big groups lack even a small amount of universal morality: blacks, Muslims & Chinese. Israel, Tibet,….
Nothing.
Generally speaking, TV host, actor and politician are perfect jobs for midwit Talented Tenth blacks. The jobs mainly consist of reading from a teleprompter and/or memorizing a script so high level intellect is not required. You can’t be a total idiot but you can be close (this doesn’t apply just to blacks – watch Wolf Blitzer playing Jeopardy – the man knows nothing. Take away his teleprompter and he is lost). You just have to look and speak in a presentable, non-ghetto fashion, like Obama. Even the former is going by the wayside – Ketanji looks pretty ghetto with her dreadlocks or whatever they are.
Interesting to know that Baldwin’s worst work was a play about Emmett Till.
Sesquipedalius, the Roman God of Big Words.
At the base of his statue in the little known Italian town of Verbosa reads his motto:
“Big Words mean Big Thoughts”
Is “F**k you, Dad” a gender? If so, does it have its own flag?
Didn’t Tyson get #metoo’d?
It’s cheating to use Defoe twice.
Especially during Pride Month. Or Year.
Wow, there is someone who has the courage of his (her?) convictions. If my dad was one of the richest men in the world, I would think twice before renouncing my inheritance. Maybe the former Xavier already has FU money in his trust funds.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/miracles-fucking-magnets-how-do-they-work
Make that one: blacks, With blacks it is always blackety black black.
Muslims and Chinese have plenty of universal morality, even if it differs from the Western. Islam is literally a global religion and has (or had) serious thinkers (mainly not Arab but nevertheless Islamic). Ibn Sina was writing serious commentaries on Aristotle at a time when most Western scholars were busy debating whether the Virgin Mary was herself immaculately conceived. Chinese philosophy, while different than Western, also has universal application – Confucius, Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu, Mencius, etc. are worth reading and are indeed read and taken seriously by non-Chinese.
There are no comparable black figures.
There were actually two murders: first, when he’s in the basement for some reason, he’s surprised by the old, blind grandmother popping up all white and ghosty in the dark, and he kinda kills her in a panic, but of course knows that as a black man it’s the chair for sure, so he goes on the run. The killing you refer to was indeed somewhat accidental, but then that’s always the killer’s story — “I just wanted her to be quiet and strangled her, I guess.” The first murder is with an axe, and the whole think is likely “inspired” by Crime and Punishment. Our esteemed colleague was likely thinking of the first, axe, murder as being sadistic, but arguably it’s only gruesome, apart from motive. Unless I’m misremembering.
Watching this compared to Tyson is like watching a lightning strike compared to a lit match. But I wonder, for how many people would the two be indistinguishable or, shudder, Tyson come off as the one with more depth?
I like to talk about baseball but this doesn’t mean that I can play baseball.
It’s possible that that lady does a decent job but was she really the person who was best qualified to talk about the economy or did her black femaleness give her a leg up on getting the job over perhaps better qualified white males?
Falcon Press has published or republished some excellent books (e.g. Israel Regardie’s Romance of Metaphysics or whatever they retitled it as), but it seems to be a a Crowleyite/Chaos Magick outfit, hence the “edgy” artwork, covers, etc.
RAW of course was a spook; see Miles Mathis or Banned Hipster. So I’d reconsider exposing yourself to any of his “writings”. They’re either disinfo or Crowleyite mind control. (Is there a difference?)
I am so sorry! I copied your comment to reply to it, then decided to do so later so I closed the page. Or so I thought
Here is your comment:
“I deal with lots of hard-left grad students daily, and their best trait by far is conscientiousness. Their beliefs are stupid and their goals demonic, but you shouldn’t kid yourself that they are lazy.”
Here is my intended but belated reply:
I agree they are conscientious but I wouldn’t call that their best trait. To my way of thinking, the hard-left is a truly evil force bent on destruction. To call them “conscientious” is like calling the creators of the Nazi concentration camps “efficient”.
Sorry to all for the mix-up.
You don’t conduct successful revolutions by sleeping late and ordering delivery.
Sounds like I should start a business.
I’m going to call it the, “Rimz & Grillz Discount Warehouse.”
I hope to co-locate it in a strip mall with a payday loan shop and a liquor store.
If you’re not familiar with Mark Rober he’s somewhat charismatic, fun, and doing something for kids, though he’s a white engineer rather than a black “astrophysicist”. Here’s his latest:
I think you may be misremembering. (We’re talking about “Native Son,” right?) I just checked wikipedia and it’s as I thought: only one murder. He first unintentionally suffocates the girl, and then decides to burn the body but has to cut off the head to make it fit in the furnace. He doesn’t kill the blind woman.
That’s probably true, but it misses the point. People BUY black writers. There are thousands of middle aged Jewish women in Park Slope alone who will buy the latest hot novel of capital-B Blackness to display prominently on their coffee table or to hold up on the subway. Or the latest Tennessee Coates drivel. They really do buy these books.
This kind of sums up the whole thing in 30 seconds, only today the roles would be reversed.
300 words and no mention of Tyson’s Star Trek sideburns. That’s his most interesting feature.
Publishers are even more biased.
I suspect that the wide variety of made up book titles and names is one of the major reasons for this pro Black! result, albeit very tiny favorable bias.
How many published Blacks! write that range of random selection of books? A few but most seem to be fairly focused on semi autobiographical novels or fake histories of Blacks! and their struggles, etc.
Not many Blacks! have the expertise to delve into serious non fiction, history, and even novels which aren’t about mainly Black! characters. So if you invent books about non Black! centric subjects, some random selection of non existent books will push those preferences up.
As others noted on another iSteve essay, most publishers and staff prefer females, non Whites, gays, Jews and/or some combination of that. Not too many gay writers, even fewer Jews, who are Black!. Female Blacks! mainly write about “what they know” mainly themselves and their preoccupations.
Blacks! seldom write about Africa or its history, unless they are from Africa, Even then, not many. The “slavery was bad” trope has been done to death, usually poorly. Writing about illiterate, poor and uneducated people is practically science fiction. What famous books are there about European serfs and their “inner lives and troubles?” Not many. Poor peasants living in hovels is a tough sell.
I have read most of Walter Mosley’s LA character novels (Devil in Blue Dress, etc.) which have proven very successful. As the character progresses it is a fun and insightful read. Mosley’s black characters are not the stuff of St. Floyd, though many resemble the actual George. Mosley is black.
I’ve just started his NYC series with Leonin McGill. It is rather confusing and not as coherent as the LA books. Not finished yet. McGill is a semi retired criminal.
His black characters are not Woke fabrications or Oprah pretend blacks. The Whites aren’t depicted very kindly either, but neither is anyone else. A lot of moral ambiguity and authority dodging.
So a good writer who honestly develops his mise en scene and main characters dealing with family and friends/enemies in a high moral if not always normal context, can do great things.
No Affirmative Action required.
I like Tyson. For awhile, though, my thinking about the guy was along the lines of, “So the most high-profile, well-known astrophysicst in the US is a black guy with zero substantive contributions* to his chosed field.” Color me shocked. SWPL America’s smart, hip atheist/agnostic very own black friend. He’s just like me – but black! But as a personal matter, I can’t help but find the guy knowledgable, pleasant, not an asshole really. At least, he seems to live a life apart from the black-race left that controls black intellectual discourse. Contrast him with a clown like Malcolm Nance, a guy who pretends to be a military expert but the only thing he can talks about is the looming menace of white extremist terrorism. His PR trip to Ukraine notwithstanding. *that I’m aware of
“Great writers are absent in publishing and Hollywood. And it really limits my entertainment options to works from the past. ”
Great writers still exist in publishing and Hollywood. But excellence in corporate mediums is usually decided by the au courant wisdom which now is increasingly defined by the ESG model and the notion of representation. ESG is elite delirium and representation is affirmative action. As always, look to the margins; that’s where the best work has always been done.
I avoid black authors and filmmakers. Blackety black black bores the hell out of me. It’s not high art or popular entertainment or even a weird if enjoyable hybrid. It’s just black.
Just off the top of my head, I’ve seen English, French, Irish, Spanish, German, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Russian, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese, South Korean, Australian, Mexican movies and movies by white South Africans. Most were subtitled, set in their own countries and apparently marketed chiefly to them. I found worthwhile things in all of them and thoroughly enjoyed them. This, despite only understanding Spanish and not being well-traveled or cosmopolitan.
Then one day, I thought I should watch a movie from a country in Africa made by blacks. It was about a woman struggling to survive after catching AIDS from her husband. It was set in the jungle but might as well have been set in Detroit. It was basically a black film about black dysfunction. It was not relatable to me at all.
By contrast, the other films all drew me in, despite differences in language and culture. They dealt with (among other things) war, rape, kidnapping, child abuse, animal abuse, incest, death, infidelity, drug addiction, famine and disease. But they did so within a universal framework. I could relate to the Polish girl so lonely she kidnaps a toddler or the young servant working in a wealthy home or the sailers in a U-boat. I could even see the humor in their jokes. I, an outsider, could share in their worlds. That’s art, whether popular or high art.
The rest is just bbb.
“A lot of moral ambiguity and authority dodging.”
The materials for drama.
“No Affirmative Action required.”
AA has shape-shifted into “representation.”
“Poor peasants living in hovels is a tough sell.”
That’s because most of us are poor peasants living in hovels.
“Female Blacks! mainly write about “what they know” mainly themselves and their preoccupations.”
Which usually centers on the inorganic matter they call hair.
I know but I’d dismiss history at the moment.
What is very revealing is that there are no prominent black figures in the US who would condemn black racism, their violence, their horrible rape statistics, promiscuity, parasitism ….
Where are black preachers, intellectuals, public figures? Why are they vocally silent?
It says something about their moral maturity.
There are no great writers in publishing and Hollywood now. I don’t see the likes of Tolstoy or Chayefsky coming through the ranks. You type like you have an MFA stuck up your ass. Just call it for what it is: woke. Woke gatekeepers celebrate mediocrity. Quotas suffocate truth, which is a key ingredient to great writing.
I’ve been reading blogs for the past 15 years or so because the drivel coming out of publishing and Hollywood is horrendous. Bunch of hacks who whine about their suffering rather than transmuting it into beauty.
Victim mentality isn’t art. And pandering to the deranged doesn’t make it true either.
I deal with lots of hard-left grad students daily, and their best trait by far is conscientiousness. Their beliefs are stupid and their goals demonic, but you shouldn’t kid yourself that they are lazy.
I’ve also been around liberal grad students but most were in education.
I would describe their best trait as being some of the women were social and good looking.
Their worst trait would easily be complete faith in educational authority. Horrifyingly trustful of anything “the system” or “the science” tells them.
If you speak Spanish and like foreign films, a fun classic is La Belle Epoque, which is all Spanish despite the French title and features a striking teenage Penelope Cruz. It is a romantic comedy in a technical sense, but not a pure chick flick.
More recently, there was a big budget Spanish miniseries on El Cid, but starts before the famous epic poem when he’s a young squire, on Amazon Prime.
A few years before that, there was a war and costume drama from Spain, Isabel. Shockingly unwoke in that it portrays the Christians as heroes, while the Jewish and Muslim characters are more mixed. It isn’t exactly pro-Inquisition and Reconquista, but it isn’t negative either. No random black dukes, wise advisors, and medieval townsmen which English period drama is now cursed with. I watched on pirated torrents when it came out in 2011-2014, but it looks like it is on Amazon streaming too.
In Isabel they use a kind of old fashioned grammar, which I got used to and enjoyed despite not being a native speaker. It wasn’t period authentic which would be too hard to understand, but it still added to the realism.
I really enjoyed Christopher Columbus’s character in the later seasons. After many episodes I read up on the events on Wikipedia, and the show was quite accurate.
That weird birdwatcher vs Central Park Karen episode a few months back has resulted in the birdwatcher getting to host a National Geographic television series on birds. Is this a great country or what!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/central-park-birdwatcher-national-geographic-series_n_6287aa4be4b05cfc268b84c9#:~:text=Christian%20Cooper%2C%20the%20Black%20man,on%20a%20new%20professional%20endeavor.
I remember reading an article about Saul Bellow almost 30 years ago wherein he indicated that he didn’t think Toni Morrison deserved the Nobel Prize. I can’t find it anywhere now.
Atheists have higher Iq than Christians.
Yeats.
What makes some people more or less credulous than others? Tolerance for uncertainty?
Leftism is a religion. Hard-core atheism is just as dogmatic as any fundamentalist creed.
Soft agnosticism, predicated upon the notion that the complexity of the universe far exceeds our capacity to understand it, seems much more reasonable.
I have no problem professing a vague belief in a higher power.
I had some exposure to fundamentalist Christianity in my youth. I don’t see any reason to repudiate it, even though I’m not really observant. I guess I don’t want to burn my bridges completely in case it turns out that there really is a Hell where non-believers burn in eternal torment.
I don’t have enough faith in human intellect and insight to believe that we are capable of proving or disproving the existence of God. But I see nothing wrong with having an opinion. I choose to believe in something rather than nothing.
Lol, you’re right of course. I was so focused on the old blind woman who James claimed was killed that I somehow completely ignored his girlfriend even though I literally just read that passage before posting. (Or perhaps I’m so ‘racist’ I don’t notice black deaths? Haha.)
The school in question is not called St. Regis School, of which I’m sure there are many: it’s called Regis High School. Anyway, this is what the Regis High School website says about admissions:
An interesting question, though, is why there aren’t more Neil deGrasse Tysons who make use of America’s pro-black bias by becoming television experts on non-race subjects.
Perhaps because there are only about 20 jobs like that in the entire labor market. BTW, Tyson’s main job is running a planetarium; it’s conceivable he never actively pursued a career in media and just happened to meet someone.
Yes, La Belle Epoque is a fun classic. It was one of my late father’s favorite films (even if he did pronounce “Epoque” to rhyme with “barbeque”).
Thanks for the recommendations. I’ll have to look them up. You remind me of my dad in your comprehensive approach to movies. I wish he could have met you. I think you both would have enjoyed talking movies together.
I’ve concluded he’s a professional black.
lol. Of course you do, baby. Of course you do.
This is correct, although if Meretricious went to Brooklyn Prep he definitely knows which Regis you’re talking about.
…is putting lightly. The place is humbling. The Regis alumni directory is page after page of lawyers and judges, doctors and scientists including a Nobel Prize winner (an actual science Nobel — Physiology or Medicine), professors and University presidents, ex-intelligence officer/political commentator Buck Sexton, etc. The slacker wiseasses are Greg Giraldo-level smart (another alumnus), and the guys who flunk out wind up on the honor roll at other high-level schools.
What makes some people more or less credulous than others? Tolerance for uncertainty?
Yes it seems that some people have a very hard time with uncertainty. People want all the answers in a neatly written book with references that they will never check.
I don’t have enough faith in human intellect and insight to believe that we are capable of proving or disproving the existence of God.
I noticed in college that it was perfectly fine to question the existence of God and in fact the secular professors encouraged it.
However it was completely unacceptable to question liberal assumptions that were given to us. Those assumptions were based on material positions that can be tested whereas God does not exist in a beaker.
So I watched as professors mocked Christians for having faith in something that can be tested while it was completely taboo suggest that liberal positions are anything but absolutely true.
I concluded that most White people are incapable of existing without religion. Without Christianity they sign up liberalism and go as far as to mock Christians for lacking tolerance. The endless contradictions escape them.
I once had a liberal admit that leftism is mostly a religion but she said it’s different because it is based on what people want.
Got it.
Cool source, Keeb, also that study of six homosexuals concluded that homosexuals are more intelligent than heterosexuals.
Thanks, in this same vein is a miniseries on Cortes, which I have downloaded but have not yet watched.
Is that an 80s coke machine with wood panelling?