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Gay Talese, now 84, was one of the New Journalists of the 1960s. He excelled in stories about Italian American male subjects such as the Mafia, Frank Sinatra, and Joe DiMaggio, the last of which includes the anecdote in which Marilyn Monroe returns home from a USO tour of Army bases and the movie star exults over the novelty of having ten thousand people cheer for her:
“Joe,” said Marilyn Monroe, just back from Korea, “you never heard such cheering.”
“Yes I have,” Joe DiMaggio answered.
His mother was a department store buyer and Talese is a famously snazzy dresser. I suspect Tom Wolfe was always jealous of Talese’s clothes: Wolfe’s 1970s short story “Maude Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine” appears to be modeled upon Talese and his taste in shoes. (Although Talese grew up in New Jersey, he was a U. of Alabama fraternity boy, so he and Wolfe, of Washington and Lee College in Virginia, were on the same sartorial wavelength.)
Talese went to some kind of seminar in Boston recently. When asked which women journalists inspired him in his pioneering New Journalism in the 1960s, he answered: “None.”
Talese’s honesty caused Twitter to freak out.
Of course, the reason was that everybody knows, deep down, that women tend not to be pioneers. But that just makes it more scandalous for an old man to mention it.
Looking in Wolfe’s canonical 1973 anthology, T he New Journalism, I see that women writers made 2 of the 23 contributions. The most famous female New Journalist is Joan Didion, but the less well-known Barbara Goldsmith is also represented. Male New Journalists, besides Wolfe and Talese, include Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joe McGinnis, George Plimpton, Terry Southern, and Michael Herr.
With pioneering New Journalist Gay Talese being excoriated for being unable to cite any female New Journalists who came ahead of him, it’s time for other male pioneers to prepare their list of the women who preceded them. For example, Bill James should have tattooed on his knuckles the names of all the female baseball statistics gurus who inspired him when he was starting out in in the early 1970s so he won’t ever get caught short by such a question.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
I had no idea Talese was still alive until I heard about this kerfuffle.
OT
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.
Assuming the Intel thing isn't rigged/affirmative-action, she sounds legit. No doubt her applications got some bonus for being black, but she doesn't seem like a poster child for the worst affirmative action stupidity.Replies: @snorlax
It suddenly occurs to me that this is the winning strategy for colleges! Just as they search Africa for really tall guys to play on their sports teams, they should be combing Nigeria for bright Igbo boys and girls, which they could then recruit as "black" students to fill their PC quota.Replies: @Jonathan Silber
Her other achievements are easy enough to find in the various reportage on her: her being valedictorian, her GPA, her Intel Science Search performance. But no mention anywhere that I can see of her SAT scores.
Last year another student of Nigerian background from the same school, Harold Ekeh, got into all 8 ivies, and his combined SAT scores were mentioned: 2270. This is almost the precise median score for Harvard (2260). Yet he did not, apparently, get a National Merit Scholarship, which is almost certainly due to a too low PSAT score (obviously, everything else in his background would make the National Merit Scholarship people salivate over handing him an award). So no doubt his PSAT was the regression to his mean, and his SAT a deviation against it.
The predictable never seems to stop being predictable.Replies: @reiner Tor
What are the chances of that angle being reported?
Gavin McInnes was talking about the musical Hamilton on his podcast. What surprised me was when he said he does not consider the actor who plays Alexander Hamilton to be a Person Of Color. Gavin sees Lin Manuel Miranda as White. I wonder if his broad definition of White is a side effect of living in New York City for too long.
https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-JG774_NYDIGG_J_20150707143722.jpg
As for Miranda, I could see him fitting in in, say, Sardinia or Corsica:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/producers-kevin-mccollum-and-jill-furman-and-actor-composer-news-photo/81376934
Off-topic,
Miranda is doing pretty well for himself:http://fortune.com/2016/04/06/hamilton-lin-manuel-miranda-royalties/Replies: @Jefferson
Talese might have batted down the question in a way less likely to attract this shitstorm: “None. No journalist inspired me: that’s why it was New.”
Anyway, I used to see Talese a lot at Gino’s, the late, zebra-walled Italian dinosaur restaurant down by Bloomingdale’s. He went well with the wallpaper:
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/01/gino.html
Gino’s has since become a cupcake store.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
>Ms Uwamanzu-Nna, however, had a lot going for her – a better-than-perfect grade point average, made possible by taking the hardest classes, and the distinctions of being both valedictorian of her class and a finalist in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search.
Assuming the Intel thing isn’t rigged/affirmative-action, she sounds legit. No doubt her applications got some bonus for being black, but she doesn’t seem like a poster child for the worst affirmative action stupidity.
Following the link to the Times article, I scrolled down to the comments. Most of the comments I read were siding with Mr Talese and against the Times. It’s becoming evident to most how forced this whole shtick is.
Is he supposed to be black? From Wiki he looks sort of Mexican to me.
People Of Color = all Nonwhite people, not just Blacks. The Guatemalan lady who cleans the rooms at your local Comfort Suites sees herself as a Person Of Color. The Korean family who owns the laundromat in your neighborhood see themselves as People Of Color.Replies: @neon2
Miranda has a relatively Caucasian phenotype but it’s clear he does not identify as white. Whiteness is passé.
This is funny. Like he cares about what people say on Twitter.
this is extremely significant, but no one is talking about it:
http://mrctv.org/blog/obama-jokes-about-scotus-pick-yeah-hes-white-guy-sorry
Obama said in speech or QandA session that he’s sorry the newly appointed supreme court justice is a white guy, and that even though he is white, he is a good jurist.
Isn’t that indictable? How is that not hate speech?
Gay Talese.
Talese published recently a brilliant piece about a voyeur motel owner who spied on his guests.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/gay-talese-the-voyeurs-motel
His approach is far too solemn for my taste. What would someone like Evelyn Waugh have made of this...
Talese admits that the voyeur's journal reads like a schoolboy fantasy (the voyeurism might be real but the associated incidents feel fake) yet expects us to be keenly interested.
This is typical of today's New Yorker writers who wade pompously and poe-faced through stories that are not really nearly as important as the magazine thinks they are.
I think he was supposed to say Nelly Bly, who actually did pioneer his style of journalism.
Nowadays, Bly is best known for having bettered Phileas Fogg's time. Interestingly, although Fogg is British in the novel, one of his prototypes was American:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Francis_Train
Doesn’t he get any points for his given name?
Old liberals are going to have to stop writing articles or giving interviews if they want to stay out of trouble. The politically correct line changes so quickly it’s impossible for them to keep up. For example, on yesterday’s All Things Considered I learned that the stalwart liberal Calvin Trillin, 80, wrote a humorous poem about the cuisine of different Chinese provinces. It was published in the New Yorker, gatekeeper of the pc line. Nevertheless, it offended some Chinese. Timothy Yu, associate professor of English and Asian-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said, “The major feeling I was getting from people was exasperation, like, can you believe this is happening again? . . . What’s bothersome to a lot of Asian-American readers about it is not the satire; it’s the fact that Chinese things are kind of being used as the punch line or the prop.”
feministsChinese restauranteurs does it take to change a light bulb?""That's not funny!"
Most lefty GEN X comics have have this internal struggle as well. They love the racial and ethnic humor that cracked them in their youth along with the boundary/button pushing comedy of Carlin and Bruce, but have trouble squaring this with the New Left heterodoxy. Patton Oswalt touched on this starting at the 19:00 minute mark of the TMOS podcast. He alluded to a certain HBD blogger and commented on calculated outrage.
http://mikeomearashow.com/2015/11/1417-patton-oswalt-in-studio/
Yet, Paula Deen says a single comment 40 years ago about a black man who put a gun to her face in a robbery, and she was paraded around for a public two minute hate.
What's even more messed up is that if gays and liberals do bring up media depictions, it gets twisted around so that at the end of it, they blame the straight white man.Replies: @Jefferson
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
This highlights a couple things: immigrant Blacks out doing the natives; “brain drain”– Nigeria’s loss is our gain; utter thirst for POC that can do science.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
Probably an Igbo, which is a classic market-dominant minority.
Out of touch old white man says something stupid. Film at 11.
There is an insatiable Orwellian urge among the modern Left to retcon the past. “The past is a different country” and they just can’t accept that in that country, women, blacks, etc. figured prominently in very few areas. So there is a constant urge to dig up some obscure figure – a black scientist, a female journalist, and retroactively promote him/her to the pinnacle of their profession. And young people are constantly bombarded with the images of these Heroes of Socialism to the point where they begin to think that ALL of the prominent people of the past must have been colorful/female. So when a lying liar like Talese who was actually there tells the truth, it is shocking.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
I’m sure she’s that. But judging from the names and her picture both Miss Uwamanzu-Nna and her predecessor, Mr. Ekeh, are probably also Ibo. Migration patterns might go a long way towards explaining why they both wound up in the same town. This is a news worthy bit of the picture that I’m sure NYT reporters and editors will instinctively avoid as a career-ending move.
“How many
feministsChinese restauranteurs does it take to change a light bulb?”“That’s not funny!”
Hillary Clinton was thought unstoppable but was beaten by a man. While it is true Obama is black, a fact that is rarely brought up is that such men had the vote, could sit on juries and own property many decades before white women could. A black woman could not have beaten her. A man with Palin’s credentials (or less like Quale ) would not have been so vulnerable. No one is going to mention she is a woman, but it will affect the outcome. Look for the Republican candidate to pick a female to run with (like a top attorney having a black lawyer sit at his team’s table in court when cross examining a black expert witness).
Women lack bone density and have 40% more fat. They are just less robust in every way, and lack the rhino skin arrogance of every man (who wants to be a hero). Women are not made for battle and Clinton is none the worse for being a feminine woman who has less testosterone than Bernie Sanders.
Martin Van Creveld on Israeli women combat soldiers http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/?p=602
Mauve gloves. It’s a color.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
Black but not Afro-American. Just what an admissions officer wants. That she may well be very bright is an added bonus.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
The high school girl accepted by all eight Ivies is indeed black, but she isn’t African-American in the sense of being the descendant of U.S. slaves.
The article continues:
In case you were wondering who ‘they’ do and don’t care about.
At least if that upper-middle-class white student is from Boise or Omaha.
I tend to ignore people like Talese who are so much a part of the NYC literary establishment.
I wonder if the NYT is reporting about the Icelandic banker who were put in jail for fraud and are now being released after just serving a fifth of their sentences.
https://www.rt.com/news/338869-iceland-imprisoned-bankers-free/
“They would rather have the Latino kid from the Bronx who has overcome something significant in his life, rather than the upper-middle-class or more affluent white student.”
At least if that upper-middle-class white student is from Boise or Omaha.
The Chinese Way- assume a meek position and then make everyone around them meeker.
One of the ironies of affirmative action is that while affirmative action was intended as a sort of crude reparations for the ill treatment that descendants of American black slaves endured, many of the current beneficiaries of affirmative action for blacks have, like Obama himself, ZERO American black slave ancestry because their parents are recent immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean, or else they are mulattoes who were raised by their white mothers and have little if any contact with their black fathers or talented tenth octoroons who pass the paper bag test or children of black professionals who are not really in need of reparations. Once you eliminate those categories and blacks who are recruited because of their athletic talent, the number of actual brothas at elite schools is vanishingly small. For those with STEM majors, you would need a microscope to find them. Even though standards for blacks are relaxed somewhat, most American ghetto blacks are so far behind academically that they could not survive in a challenging academic environment even sheltered inside an AA studies dept let alone as a physics or math major.
Their problem is not getting into a university; it's getting a high school diploma, even under today's lax standards. Drugs and gangs are more attractive than sitting in a classroom, so many drop out.
Affirmative action in college admissions has never been about uplifting the black underclass. It is a benefit for the children of black professionals and businessmen who might have no other reason to sympathize with the agenda of the left.
So the irony of the ironies is that the descendants of (African) slave traders might get preferential treatment over the descendants of Union soldiers who gave or at least risked their lives to end slavery.
“Of course, the reason was that everybody knows, deep down, that women tend not to be pioneers.”
Ayn Rand cult is big.
Pauline Kael dominated film criticism.
Susan Sontag.
I will give her and two other female novelists, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabella Patterson, credit for being early to libertarian party. But I can't abide calling them the "founding mothers of American libertarianism," as I've heard. Nevermind the old agrarians, like Jefferson, Randolph, and Taylor. Also forget relatively obscure middle figures like Spooner, Tucker, and Sumner. I'll be fair and deal only with the modern libertarian movement. Also, nevermind the Austrians, as Mises and Hayek didn't come over til later. This is the modern American libertarian movement. (Are those enough qualifiers?)
What about the pre-Rand Old Right? Garet Garrett had a novel with a businessman character named Halt; I wonder if he influenced Rand. There were H.L. Mencken and Albert J. Nock, a favorite of mine. It's hard for me to place the interwar revisionists and other sorts of then liberals, like Harry Elmer Barnes, but some of them would've been libertarians in all but name.Replies: @Former Darfur
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html"A little delirious and definitely skewed." - Pauline Kael on King Vidor's film of The Fountainhead (1949), starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey, and scripted by Rand herself
Sontag, like Rand and Kael, was Jewish.
Talese’s recent article in Vanity Fair about the motel voyeur in Colorado was downright creepy. But good for him for saying he had zero female role models. What are the SJWs gonna do — ruin his prospects?
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
Whenever you see a story like this about African immigrant children, you want to search for “igbo” in addition to the child’s name. The result:
She is not a “black girl” in the sense of an African-American child. She is a member of a group sometimes called the [Ashkenazi] Jews of Africa. Smart, overachieving, entrepreneurial.
It suddenly occurs to me that this is the winning strategy for colleges! Just as they search Africa for really tall guys to play on their sports teams, they should be combing Nigeria for bright Igbo boys and girls, which they could then recruit as “black” students to fill their PC quota.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
If only they would publish the SAT scores of these kids.
http://www.greatschools.org/new-york/elmont/3605-Elmont-Memorial-High-School/details/#Students
Frankly, I think the jury is still out on this Igbos-as-the-Ashkenazi-Jews-of-Africa thing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @neon2
OT, but does this mean Trump has given up on ingratiating himself to the tribe? http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cruz-builds-support-among-gop-jews-as-trump-skips-event/ar-BBrvxC9?li=BBnbcA1&OCID=DELLDHP
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
Yeah, but she is nothing compared to that female soccer player who’s scored the most goals in the history of the sport. I hear about her every four years the women’s World Cup rolls around. Most goals ever scored in the sport, which means more than any man soccer player either! I bet when you take the number of goals Pele scored, homeruns Babe Ruth hit, and baskets Michael Jordan sunk and add them together, the goals she’s scored are still an order of magnitude greater than that! She must be the most amazing figure in sports history! Not to mention inspiring, brave, smart, funny, passionate, kind, and cute. I hope she gets a big endorsement deal, like with GoDaddy or something, four years from now when we’re reminded she’s scored the most goals ever!
But then, most people don't really care all that much about women's soccer.
And when the Latino kid from the Bronx flunks out in the first semester, because he is overwhelm by the academic work, what are they going to do?
I don’t know why Talese couldn’t say Brenda Starr.
Anyway, I used to see Talese a lot at Gino's, the late, zebra-walled Italian dinosaur restaurant down by Bloomingdale's. He went well with the wallpaper:
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/01/gino.html
Gino's has since become a cupcake store.Replies: @Forbes, @Thea, @Reg Cæsar
Gino’s was well kept secret–almost like a club, popular with loads of regulars, but you nearly had to be introduced to the place as you’d never just stumble into it.
Anyway, I used to see Talese a lot at Gino's, the late, zebra-walled Italian dinosaur restaurant down by Bloomingdale's. He went well with the wallpaper:
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/01/gino.html
Gino's has since become a cupcake store.Replies: @Forbes, @Thea, @Reg Cæsar
The existence of cupcake stores is a microcosm of all our current societal ills.
I second that sentiment.
“Even though standards for blacks are relaxed somewhat, most American ghetto blacks are so far behind academically that they could not survive in a challenging academic environment even sheltered inside an AA studies dept let alone as a physics or math major.”
Their problem is not getting into a university; it’s getting a high school diploma, even under today’s lax standards. Drugs and gangs are more attractive than sitting in a classroom, so many drop out.
Affirmative action in college admissions has never been about uplifting the black underclass. It is a benefit for the children of black professionals and businessmen who might have no other reason to sympathize with the agenda of the left.
Dunno. Compared to the guy who plays Thomas Jefferson, he looks pretty White:
As for Miranda, I could see him fitting in in, say, Sardinia or Corsica:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/producers-kevin-mccollum-and-jill-furman-and-actor-composer-news-photo/81376934
Off-topic,
Miranda is doing pretty well for himself:
http://fortune.com/2016/04/06/hamilton-lin-manuel-miranda-royalties/
If Lin Manuel lived in Germany he would be mistaken for a Syrian or Iraqi refugee, but not an ethnic indigeneous German or European in general.Replies: @syonredux
Eh, let them suffer. They were staunch lefties, leading the crusades, fighitng to the barricades, attacking patriotism, Christianity, nuclear family, long-term marriage, heterosexuality, whites, etc.
Now we’re supposed to feel sad that the very monsters are turning on one another? Pshaw. Like Stalin’s Purges and Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives and Mao’s Red Guard, the ones suffering were the same ones doing the torturing and oppression previously. Not a tear will be shed.
As for the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), estimates on the total number of deaths go from a low of around 400,000 to a high of around 2-3 million. Red Guards did not account for all of those deaths. Lots of ordinary people died.
The Night of the Long Knives is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as the Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution. The highest estimates on the death toll are in the low hundreds. Hitler's mass killing starts in 1939.Replies: @reiner Tor, @whorefinder, @Jack D, @Anonymous
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
The detail I always look for in these stories is: what is the student’s SAT score?
Her other achievements are easy enough to find in the various reportage on her: her being valedictorian, her GPA, her Intel Science Search performance. But no mention anywhere that I can see of her SAT scores.
Last year another student of Nigerian background from the same school, Harold Ekeh, got into all 8 ivies, and his combined SAT scores were mentioned: 2270. This is almost the precise median score for Harvard (2260). Yet he did not, apparently, get a National Merit Scholarship, which is almost certainly due to a too low PSAT score (obviously, everything else in his background would make the National Merit Scholarship people salivate over handing him an award). So no doubt his PSAT was the regression to his mean, and his SAT a deviation against it.
The predictable never seems to stop being predictable.
It's obvious why blacks are the only ones for whom they all make exceptions. I'd be surprised if a similar student wasn't found next year (and each year from now on) either.Replies: @candid_observer, @bomag, @ben tillman
“Old liberals are going to have to stop writing articles or giving interviews if they want to stay out of trouble”.
Most lefty GEN X comics have have this internal struggle as well. They love the racial and ethnic humor that cracked them in their youth along with the boundary/button pushing comedy of Carlin and Bruce, but have trouble squaring this with the New Left heterodoxy. Patton Oswalt touched on this starting at the 19:00 minute mark of the TMOS podcast. He alluded to a certain HBD blogger and commented on calculated outrage.
http://mikeomearashow.com/2015/11/1417-patton-oswalt-in-studio/
Nothing. Colleges publish acceptance statistics to show how much they care about diversity. Publishing completion/graduation statistics might be too embarrassing.
“The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of The Party will change. How can you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the whole concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
– Syme to Winston in the Minitru cafeteria, 1984
Some of the ancestors of some of the Nigerian immigrants might actually have sold some of the ancestors of today’s African American to white slave traders. While most whites probably never had slave-owning ancestors, and many whites had ancestors who actually fought against slavery.
So the irony of the ironies is that the descendants of (African) slave traders might get preferential treatment over the descendants of Union soldiers who gave or at least risked their lives to end slavery.
Her other achievements are easy enough to find in the various reportage on her: her being valedictorian, her GPA, her Intel Science Search performance. But no mention anywhere that I can see of her SAT scores.
Last year another student of Nigerian background from the same school, Harold Ekeh, got into all 8 ivies, and his combined SAT scores were mentioned: 2270. This is almost the precise median score for Harvard (2260). Yet he did not, apparently, get a National Merit Scholarship, which is almost certainly due to a too low PSAT score (obviously, everything else in his background would make the National Merit Scholarship people salivate over handing him an award). So no doubt his PSAT was the regression to his mean, and his SAT a deviation against it.
The predictable never seems to stop being predictable.Replies: @reiner Tor
Also as far as I know, the Ivies coordinate with each other not to fight for the same student, and only make exceptions for the most exceptional applicants. In other words, normally nobody gets admitted to all eight Ivies, even if one applies to all of them, because once one of them accepted you, the others will turn you down so that you will not be in a position to turn them down.
It’s obvious why blacks are the only ones for whom they all make exceptions. I’d be surprised if a similar student wasn’t found next year (and each year from now on) either.
Blame you.
She’s also the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being he’s ever known in his life.
It's obvious why blacks are the only ones for whom they all make exceptions. I'd be surprised if a similar student wasn't found next year (and each year from now on) either.Replies: @candid_observer, @bomag, @ben tillman
My guess is that the Ivies don’t so much coordinate with each other as they anticipate the moves of their competitors. If a student looks like he’s a very likely choice for Harvard — say perfect SAT scores, top HS, top grades at that school, and that school regularly places such students at Harvard — then other Ivies will turn the student down, because they are very concerned about their “yield” — the percentage of students they accept who choose to go to the school. The yield is regarded as perhaps the single most distinguishing measure among the tippy-top of the Ivies.
But if they accept an outstanding black student, it’s all to the good, even if that student goes elsewhere. They can still trot out impressive numbers showing how many black students they have accepted.
And imagine the scandal if 7 of the Ivies accept a black student and the 8th one doesn’t. What kind of racists are they?
Stalin executed 682,691 people during the Great Terror of 1937-38. The overwhelming majority were not Party officials or high ranking military officers. They were “ordinary” people. Indeed, large numbers of them were “Kulaks” who had managed to survive both the “dekulakization” campaign and the ’32-’33 Ukraine Terror Famine.
As for the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), estimates on the total number of deaths go from a low of around 400,000 to a high of around 2-3 million. Red Guards did not account for all of those deaths. Lots of ordinary people died.
The Night of the Long Knives is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as the Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution. The highest estimates on the death toll are in the low hundreds. Hitler’s mass killing starts in 1939.
As with all leftists, they eat their own. Pass the popcorn.Replies: @syonredux
"Hitler's mass killing," such as it was, did not begin before 1942.Replies: @syonredux
Ayn Rand cult is big.
Pauline Kael dominated film criticism.
Susan Sontag.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar, @neon2, @guest, @Stan Adams
In the small pond that is Objectivism.
Compared to the Cahiers du Cinéma gang?
Well, she certainly was fashionable……
In 20-30 years I'm sure some SJW android will interrogate Elon Musk about HIS female influences, once commercial space flight is booming and has changed our world, and we'll all dutifully pretend there weren't dozens of female billionaires around (Oprah, the Walton heiresses, Sheryl Sandberg) who could have done the exact same thing if they had just been ambitious enough and not afraid of being stigmatized for pursuing what was then an out-there, "geek" hobby.Replies: @njguy73
Anyway, given Talese's generation, I'm not surprised that he didn't have female 'role models'.
But I think most male writers of later generation must have learned something from prominent female writers, fiction or non-fiction.Replies: @syonredux
But still she is the exception that proves the rule.Replies: @syonredux, @snorlax, @Reg Cæsar, @guest
Helen Lawrenson wrote the classic “Latins Make Lousy Lovers” for Esquire about 1929. One of my favorite essays as a teen. (No, not when it came out. In a retrospective issue.)
Of course, the uproar would have been louder even, had he cited Miss Lawrenson. Jorge Ramos leading the charge.
Then again, Ricardo Montalban told Johnny Carson that his father was the greatest Latin lover he ever knew– married to Ricardo’s mother for 55 years.
As for the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), estimates on the total number of deaths go from a low of around 400,000 to a high of around 2-3 million. Red Guards did not account for all of those deaths. Lots of ordinary people died.
The Night of the Long Knives is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as the Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution. The highest estimates on the death toll are in the low hundreds. Hitler's mass killing starts in 1939.Replies: @reiner Tor, @whorefinder, @Jack D, @Anonymous
Talese could hyperbolically be compared to the most visible, well-known victims of all three purges, which includes people like Bukharin, Zinoviev, Liu Shaoqi, or Röhm. These prominent victims deserved what they got.
RE: Hitler and the Night of the Long Knives,
As I noted upthread, it just doesn't measure up to what Mao and Stalin did.
*As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs —
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs —
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat —
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that —
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-á-têtes insist —
They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!Replies: @reiner Tor
Ayn Rand cult is big.
Pauline Kael dominated film criticism.
Susan Sontag.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar, @neon2, @guest, @Stan Adams
“The white race is the cancer of human history.”
You know, whenever I read of “same-sex marriage” sweeping the Western world– and pushing it on the rest, cf. Cameron, Obama, etc–I wonder if the old dyke didn’t have a point.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
(pronounced oo-wah-man-ZOO-nah)
Or Nancy Drew.
Best not to mention Nancy these days. She's in bad odor:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew#1930.E2.80.931959http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/156323/nancy-drewReplies: @Pericles
I wonder if our friend Ben, grad student at UW Madison, is still around. Does Dr Yu count as a political act? Does he count as a humanities professor? Is the the only one at UW Madison?
Assuming the Intel thing isn't rigged/affirmative-action, she sounds legit. No doubt her applications got some bonus for being black, but she doesn't seem like a poster child for the worst affirmative action stupidity.Replies: @snorlax
Yeah, that is genuinely impressive.
They might’ve changed it but to my recollection the Intel Science Search finalists tend to be a group of extremely nerdy males of white (mostly Jewish or Eastern European), Indian or East Asian extraction. The winner (chosen by the Intel execs) is the jock among nerds—the most presentable-looking and well-spoken of the group.
“I think he was supposed to say Nelly Bly, who actually did pioneer his style of journalism.”
Nowadays, Bly is best known for having bettered Phileas Fogg’s time. Interestingly, although Fogg is British in the novel, one of his prototypes was American:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Francis_Train
“Or Nancy Drew.”
Best not to mention Nancy these days. She’s in bad odor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew#1930.E2.80.931959
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/156323/nancy-drew
As for the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), estimates on the total number of deaths go from a low of around 400,000 to a high of around 2-3 million. Red Guards did not account for all of those deaths. Lots of ordinary people died.
The Night of the Long Knives is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as the Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution. The highest estimates on the death toll are in the low hundreds. Hitler's mass killing starts in 1939.Replies: @reiner Tor, @whorefinder, @Jack D, @Anonymous
Yeah, what reinrer Tor said. The mass of people being attacked these days are the alt-right, the cucks, and non-partisans, but the big names being scalped are becoming more and more of the Old Left, as with Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.
As with all leftists, they eat their own. Pass the popcorn.
A rather dismal ratio....Replies: @whorefinder
Ayn Rand cult is big.
Pauline Kael dominated film criticism.
Susan Sontag.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar, @neon2, @guest, @Stan Adams
None of the three are of lasting importance, and all three have one thing in common,which explains everything about their otherwise puzzling prominence.
Sure. Stalin and Mao’s death-tolls certainly did include people “who never would be missed*”. But the vast majority were ordinary people.
RE: Hitler and the Night of the Long Knives,
As I noted upthread, it just doesn’t measure up to what Mao and Stalin did.
*As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs —
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs —
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with ’em flat —
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that —
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-á-têtes insist —
They’d none of ’em be missed — they’d none of ’em be missed!
Aside from Tom Wolfe I tend to find that I like the idea of ‘New Journalism’ more than its actuality.
I finally gave up on Hunter S. years ago when he briefly quoted Coleridge; showing up his own prose for the drab thing (by that time) it was.
A while ago I searched for some Gay Talese only to be underwhelmed; it was efficient but simply not dazzling. I am thinking particularly of the Sinatra piece.
Or is it that that style of writing has become the standard fare of so much magazine, feature journalism that it is not exceptional any more?
Talese should have said, “Henrietta Stackpole.”
Thank you. And compared to Kael, who briefly tried MAKING films before running back to New York with her tail between her legs, Truffaut, Godard, etc. actually got off their butts and put their theories into practice and became some of the most influential directors ever.
In 20-30 years I’m sure some SJW android will interrogate Elon Musk about HIS female influences, once commercial space flight is booming and has changed our world, and we’ll all dutifully pretend there weren’t dozens of female billionaires around (Oprah, the Walton heiresses, Sheryl Sandberg) who could have done the exact same thing if they had just been ambitious enough and not afraid of being stigmatized for pursuing what was then an out-there, “geek” hobby.
Helen Thomas.
That said, the male and female models of achievement are vaguely like white first world societies and third world societies: one produces great geniuses but mainly creates a fat competent middle, the other cranks out basic geniuses who are light years away from a mass of peones. Just as the Game critique of feminism notes that it is a war on beauty on behalf of ugliness, the effect of this undeserved worship is to disrespect true female achievement so that everyone can have a trophy.
(If you think it’s unfair, listen to NPR for five minutes, especially their recent report on how rape is a result of advertising from the Seventies and anyone ever feeling “less than.” I’m not cutting the quote off early, they’re literally saying “less than” itself and not making a proper comparison. The consequence of that habit of saying that “one is so effected” instead of “so effected that …” I suppose.)
Yes, her SAT score is conspicuously absent. She’s the best student at a school that’s 78% black:
http://www.greatschools.org/new-york/elmont/3605-Elmont-Memorial-High-School/details/#Students
Frankly, I think the jury is still out on this Igbos-as-the-Ashkenazi-Jews-of-Africa thing.
More power to them I say, but I do wish that they would demonstrate their talents at home.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
Just to add something: I agree she is probably not undeserving, and may do well — many of the kids who do not get into one of these schools could no doubt also be called “not undeserving”, and (with a bit more doubt) may also do well — what struck me was that she was admitted to all of them — which speaks to their collective desperation to find and enroll Blacks who can also be seen as “not undeserving”, and who have a chance to ‘stick’ — for that reason I find the story disturbing — just another episode of racial bean-counting — but good luck to her.
Mary McCarthy, Camille Paglia, Simone De Beaver, Simone Weil, Edna Ferber, Margaret Mitchell, etc.
Anyway, given Talese’s generation, I’m not surprised that he didn’t have female ‘role models’.
But I think most male writers of later generation must have learned something from prominent female writers, fiction or non-fiction.
In contrast, here are some genuinely first-rank women:
Lady Murasaki
Marie Curie
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans)
Emily Dickinson
The Brontes
Virginia WoolfReplies: @Harry Baldwin, @dcite, @Anon
Ann Landers
Erma Bombast
It's obvious why blacks are the only ones for whom they all make exceptions. I'd be surprised if a similar student wasn't found next year (and each year from now on) either.Replies: @candid_observer, @bomag, @ben tillman
Good point. I was wondering how they got around the coordination factor.
This looks like an inexpensive way to beat the AA drum.
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
somebody from India, China or France with the same test scores would probably not got that much media coverage, they would be no news story at all
Black high school girl accepted by all eight Ivy League schools.
She must be a genius.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @prosa123, @Jus' Sayin'..., @dearieme, @ic1000, @Anon7, @MC, @Abe, @candid_observer, @Anonymous, @eah, @Erik Sieven, @jimmyriddle
Well, she’s a conservatively and stylishly dressed young lady, well brought up by her two married parents.
What are the chances of that angle being reported?
RE: Hitler and the Night of the Long Knives,
As I noted upthread, it just doesn't measure up to what Mao and Stalin did.
*As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs —
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs —
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat —
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that —
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-á-têtes insist —
They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!Replies: @reiner Tor
True, but the same is true of SJWs’ most victims. On the other hand, the most prominent victims are often formerly fierce SJWs themselves.
I didn’t argue with that.
http://www.greatschools.org/new-york/elmont/3605-Elmont-Memorial-High-School/details/#Students
Frankly, I think the jury is still out on this Igbos-as-the-Ashkenazi-Jews-of-Africa thing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @neon2
I’m quite certain they are the Ashkenazi Jews of Africa. Relative to the, so to say, gentiles of Africa. It’s just that these gentiles of Africa are, well, that much worse than the gentiles of Europe.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/gay-talese-the-voyeurs-motelReplies: @Bill B.
I didn’t like it much: for me Talese stumbles across a promising vein of eccentricity that he then squishes into something odd but also rather dull.
His approach is far too solemn for my taste. What would someone like Evelyn Waugh have made of this…
Talese admits that the voyeur’s journal reads like a schoolboy fantasy (the voyeurism might be real but the associated incidents feel fake) yet expects us to be keenly interested.
This is typical of today’s New Yorker writers who wade pompously and poe-faced through stories that are not really nearly as important as the magazine thinks they are.
To be fair, there are white/mostly white Puerto Ricans, and Miranda fits that bill. He’s whiter than Ben Shapiro.
The Ivies and some other colleges use to get together in a hotel each year to rig who would accept whom. Google “overlap.”
Ayn Rand is a legit example. Who is the father of non-Randian libertarianism? You can’t point to a single figure.
But still she is the exception that proves the rule.
Outside of the Objectivist cult, no one cares about her.She simply cannot be compared to Kant, Hegel, William James, Russell, etcReplies: @Anonym, @Anonym
Although (allow me to channel Moldbug) it is indeed hard to point to any one single figure, given libertarianism's fundamental incoherence. As an attempt to adapt 19th-century British leftism to present-day concerns, it's an ideological cargo cult that's simultaneously reactionary and leftist.Replies: @Anonym, @guest
Etienne de La Boetie
John Locke
Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
Luther Martin
William von Humboldt
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Taylor of Caroline
Max Stirner
Herbert Spencer
Lysander Spooner
Benjamin Tucker
William Graham Sumner
John Henry Mackay
H.L. Mencken
Albert J. Nock
Ludwig von Mises
F.A. Hayek
Garet Garrett
John T. Flynn
That's off the top of my head.Replies: @Anonym
Anyway, given Talese's generation, I'm not surprised that he didn't have female 'role models'.
But I think most male writers of later generation must have learned something from prominent female writers, fiction or non-fiction.Replies: @syonredux
Not an innovator
Interesting one hit wonder
Just took Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and gave it a feminist spin
What did she do that was innovative?
Middlebrow
Middlebrow
In contrast, here are some genuinely first-rank women:
Lady Murasaki
Marie Curie
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans)
Emily Dickinson
The Brontes
Virginia Woolf
Spell check run amok, I'll wager.Replies: @syonredux
And Gertrude Stein, a rose is a rose is a roseThe best writing does not have to be pioneering. Shakespeare recycled tales shamelessly. Brothers Grimm admitted to ripping off old ladies in the Black Forest.Replies: @syonredux, @guest
As with all leftists, they eat their own. Pass the popcorn.Replies: @syonredux
So, 1 Leftist gets it for every 100 conservatives/moderates?
A rather dismal ratio….
And are always shocked they are getting it.
Hey, we tried to stem the tide. The Left won. And now it shall reap the reward it thought it reserved just for us.
Again, screw Talese, he's getting what he deserves.Replies: @syonredux
Well, a quick look-see tells me that the Ivies purported to be doing nothing more than settling on a common approach to offering need-based scholarships, so that they weren’t competing with each other using money. This makes sense as a monopolistic, money saving practice even if they compete in every other way for students, and don’t tell each other who’s accepting whom.
What really went on in those meetings is of course anybody’s guess.
“To be fair, there are white/mostly white Puerto Ricans, and Miranda fits that bill. He’s whiter than Ben Shapiro.”
How is Lin Manuel Miranda Whiter than Ben Shapiro both phenotype and DNA wise? Lin does not have lighter eyes and lighter hair than Ben. Lin being Puerto Rican has Sub Saharan African admixture in his family tree, while Ben being Ashkenazi has none.
As for the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), estimates on the total number of deaths go from a low of around 400,000 to a high of around 2-3 million. Red Guards did not account for all of those deaths. Lots of ordinary people died.
The Night of the Long Knives is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as the Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution. The highest estimates on the death toll are in the low hundreds. Hitler's mass killing starts in 1939.Replies: @reiner Tor, @whorefinder, @Jack D, @Anonymous
Ya know, maybe that Hitler fellow wasn’t so bad after all.
Hitler's mass killing starts from late '39 on, and really gets into high gear with the invasion of the USSR. Cf the mass starvation of around two million Soviet POWs in the Winter of '41-'42 and the murder of several hundred thousand Jews by the Einsatzgruppen.Replies: @reiner Tor
But still she is the exception that proves the rule.Replies: @syonredux, @snorlax, @Reg Cæsar, @guest
Queen of Frogpondium.
Outside of the Objectivist cult, no one cares about her.She simply cannot be compared to Kant, Hegel, William James, Russell, etc
Rand is currently of only historical relevance because communism has run its course, for now. The old left did provide a check on capitalism, as did Christianity and now we are seeing the unrestrained excesses of capitalism with the immigration policy of the West. And so, the criticisms and prescriptions of the alt-right are now the most relevant.Replies: @syonredux
Outside of a philosophy program, who is more influential? I can count 5 people I've known who have read Rand and like her work, and more who have read her but dislike her. The same cannot be said of any of the examples you list. When a AAA videogame is created to explicitly deconstruct the philosophy of Kant, James or Russell, let me know. Reagan was influenced by Rand, which is worth noting as the back of communism was broken under the term of Reagan.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153454/how_ayn_rand_seduced_generations_of_young_men_and_helped_make_the_u.s._into_a_selfish,_greedy_nationReplies: @syonredux, @Former Darfur
“Is he supposed to be black? From Wiki he looks sort of Mexican to me”
People Of Color = all Nonwhite people, not just Blacks. The Guatemalan lady who cleans the rooms at your local Comfort Suites sees herself as a Person Of Color. The Korean family who owns the laundromat in your neighborhood see themselves as People Of Color.
The Japanese in particular are probably still far more likely to think of themselves as honorary Aryans than as anything approaching black.
And they would be right.
https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-JG774_NYDIGG_J_20150707143722.jpg
As for Miranda, I could see him fitting in in, say, Sardinia or Corsica:
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/producers-kevin-mccollum-and-jill-furman-and-actor-composer-news-photo/81376934
Off-topic,
Miranda is doing pretty well for himself:http://fortune.com/2016/04/06/hamilton-lin-manuel-miranda-royalties/Replies: @Jefferson
“As for Miranda, I could see him fitting in in, say, Sardinia or Corsica:”
If Lin Manuel lived in Germany he would be mistaken for a Syrian or Iraqi refugee, but not an ethnic indigeneous German or European in general.
I disagree. To the young, inexperienced sperg, especially one from a wealthy family, Rand makes a great, readable case… like Jesus or Mohammed.
The politics of class envy are a fairly distant memory now. However, Rand does have a point. When capitalism works, it does so because a business owner has built up enough money to produce something of worth to others that costs less to produce than what people will buy it for, necessarily being perceived as more valuable than the cost of the components. This allows capital itself to be built in the form of retained earnings.
This retained earnings can then be invested… in new equipment that will do the job better, in training staff to better do their job, and in creating new businesses or sidelines that will employ others and create something of use to society. Another great alternate use of retained earnings is in philanthropy. Even when the retained earnings are passed to the children, reversion to the mean doesn’t always happen. When it does, the children may not be on the level of the founder but still above the rest of the population. And when they successfully corporatize, the same basic vehicle is there if not too much in the way of retained earnings sucked out to pay for luxury.
When in aggregate, there are enough of these business owners, society will be pretty good. When greed has no moral bounds, there can be problems, but to some extent capitalism is the worst system except for all the others that have been tried.
There is an envious subgroup of the old left who would take out every “kulak” and shoot them. And who see that x business generates y profit, and theoretically you could take y and divide it up amongst the so-called needy and their lives would be so much better. This can be done, but when it does, society suffers. The reason for that is that there is an art and a science to running a business, i.e. producing something of value for less resources than it is worth. If you kill off the class who are frugal enough to do this successfully (and if you read something like the Millionaire Next Door, you will realize that spending less than you earn is the only path to wealth), then you are left with ventures to run that will need subsidy to run, i.e. negative net profit. When this is the norm, where do you procure the subsidy from? Who do you tax? Because no one is generating a surplus. This may not be obvious, but keeping a business “in the black” is not easy. It takes both skill and discipline.
And it is not only the frugal (to varying extents – the key is a determination to not go broke rather than to be a Scrooge) nature that makes a business owner but also a lot of specific knowledge about how to run that business that takes many years to build and also unique talents suited to that business. You kill these people off en masse, and then it makes it very difficult to make a country with a good standard of living and even the resources to defend itself and stay solvent. It’s like taking von Braun and his cohort out and shooting them and then trying to build an ICBM or moon shot rocket.
This takes some intelligence to understand. Which is why the (mostly communist) members of the old left who wanted to murder the Kulaks were mostly of the useful idiot type. There was definitely an intelligent subset, but as to whether they knew the downside to what they were doing, it’s questionable. The fact Stalin purged his best generals before realizing he would need them is an indication of the general attitude perhaps amongst his cohort.
Of course, capitalism has its excesses and greed needs to be channelled to benefit society. That is why we have company and income tax. It is a good compromise, as it doesn’t kill the golden goose. And of course there are numerous works of art pertaining to the excesses of capitalism or businesses. I really like Bioshock. That is an outstanding game. The tragic hero/villain of the piece is Andrew Ryan, a near-anagram of Ayn Rand. It mercilessly skewers libertarianism taken too far.
However, as Steve says there is a time for different ideas and various ideas reach diminishing returns. Rand has her place when the homicidal old left (i.e. communists) have the upper hand, and her works are well worth reading if you want to understand why the Soviet Union went broke. The Soviet Union was something like Islam in that respect… a society whose prime concern was to make war on outside nations and take their stuff, while not attending to their own business of how to run their own civilization.
From 1933 to September, 1939, Stalin (Approx 6 million by famine, nearly 700,000 by execution, etc, etc, ) was way ahead Hitler.
Hitler’s mass killing starts from late ’39 on, and really gets into high gear with the invasion of the USSR. Cf the mass starvation of around two million Soviet POWs in the Winter of ’41-’42 and the murder of several hundred thousand Jews by the Einsatzgruppen.
It suddenly occurs to me that this is the winning strategy for colleges! Just as they search Africa for really tall guys to play on their sports teams, they should be combing Nigeria for bright Igbo boys and girls, which they could then recruit as "black" students to fill their PC quota.Replies: @Jonathan Silber
All these “Smart, overachieving, entrepreneurial” Igbos who’ve immigrated to America: what are their achievements here?
Outside of the Objectivist cult, no one cares about her.She simply cannot be compared to Kant, Hegel, William James, Russell, etcReplies: @Anonym, @Anonym
It’s a bit like saying outside of Christianity, no one cares about St Paul. And outside of the mass of Muslims, no one cares about Mohammed. Rand deserves credit for packaging relatively complex ideas in a way that less intelligent people can understand, and creating a hate of communism for basically the right reasons. And even though in so doing she has created something of a cult, she got to the heart of the issue of what is wrong with communism.
Rand is currently of only historical relevance because communism has run its course, for now. The old left did provide a check on capitalism, as did Christianity and now we are seeing the unrestrained excesses of capitalism with the immigration policy of the West. And so, the criticisms and prescriptions of the alt-right are now the most relevant.
Hell, yeah. Don’t ya know that the Tuskegee airmen won World War II all by themselves? And Crispus Attucks was the first to die for American freedom? Oh, yeah, and the Founders stole the Constitution from the Iroquois.
(Oddly enough, they usually fail to mention the role of slave trader Judah Benjamin as Jefferson Davis’s right-hand-man in the Confederacy… wonder why that is??)
What are the noteworthy accomplishments of the Igbos–those “Jews of Africa”– in their native Nigeria?
I sent him my banking information a little while ago. I'm still waiting for him to deposit the funds.
In contrast, here are some genuinely first-rank women:
Lady Murasaki
Marie Curie
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans)
Emily Dickinson
The Brontes
Virginia WoolfReplies: @Harry Baldwin, @dcite, @Anon
“Simone De Beaver”? Earlier, “Erma Bombast”?
Spell check run amok, I’ll wager.
A rather dismal ratio....Replies: @whorefinder
…except that the leftists who get it are the loudest ones who previously were in the vanguard.
And are always shocked they are getting it.
Hey, we tried to stem the tide. The Left won. And now it shall reap the reward it thought it reserved just for us.
Again, screw Talese, he’s getting what he deserves.
If he failed to give credit to Vagina-Americans is he still at least a racist for having the unmitigated gall to be White? Certainly spending his life writing articles must have blinded him to all those Estrogen empowered pens exposing the injustice of American Freedom with its ignorant high standard of living and oppressive safe communities.
Who can forget or at least remember that great contribution Gloria Steinem made when she discarded the eternal victimhood of feminism to spend grueling months as a Playboy Bunny Girl to expose the dastardly exploitation of women in men’s sex clubs? Why who could have guessed that Men’s sex clubs might be exploiting women? I’m surprised she hasn’t won a Pulitzer or at least a Grammy for that stunning unexpected expose. Just imagine the horror of wearing a revealing costume and enduring all those pinches on her ass to get that story before the public? That bunny costume must have been somewhat chilly in the Summer with Air Conditioning. We all know how ignorant and oppressive air conditioning is don’t we? All those racist BTUs!
But still she is the exception that proves the rule.Replies: @syonredux, @snorlax, @Reg Cæsar, @guest
John Locke?
Although (allow me to channel Moldbug) it is indeed hard to point to any one single figure, given libertarianism’s fundamental incoherence. As an attempt to adapt 19th-century British leftism to present-day concerns, it’s an ideological cargo cult that’s simultaneously reactionary and leftist.
In contrast, here are some genuinely first-rank women:
Lady Murasaki
Marie Curie
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans)
Emily Dickinson
The Brontes
Virginia WoolfReplies: @Harry Baldwin, @dcite, @Anon
Why would Gay Talese be expected to have female role models? Doesn’t he write about organized crime? Why would anyone worry about his lack of female inspiration? It would be more puzzling if he had any. I don’t know much about him, but his Wiki bio does say his mom inspired his interviewing techniques, so there’s that, if moms count as female inspiration.
One nearly forgotten author of incomparable style is Mary Webb (Precious Bane); she is among the most underrated of writers, only resurrected from oblivion by the voluble admiration of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in 1925. She is sort of the Thomas Hardy of Shropshire.
And Gertrude Stein, a rose is a rose is a rose
The best writing does not have to be pioneering. Shakespeare recycled tales shamelessly. Brothers Grimm admitted to ripping off old ladies in the Black Forest.
Male pioneers are inspired by women all the time, just in a different way. They drive themselves to succeed by thinking of all the women who would be attracted to them if they do.
Although (allow me to channel Moldbug) it is indeed hard to point to any one single figure, given libertarianism's fundamental incoherence. As an attempt to adapt 19th-century British leftism to present-day concerns, it's an ideological cargo cult that's simultaneously reactionary and leftist.Replies: @Anonym, @guest
John Locke?
Although (allow me to channel Moldbug) it is indeed hard to point to any one single figure, given libertarianism’s fundamental incoherence. As an attempt to adapt 19th-century British leftism to present-day concerns, it’s an ideological cargo cult that’s simultaneously reactionary and leftist.
I am not sure who of the various pretenders can lay claim to that throne. I have not read Locke. During the libertarian phase of my youth I was aware of two basic types of libertarianism – (l/L)ibertarianism, which enveloped the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, and thinking of Milton Freedman, Rothbard, Von Mises, and the various others. And on the other side, the Objectivists who had found the one true god of libertarianism. In that milieu, everyone of any seriousness outside the Rand camp had at least read something from Rand, and probably had varying degrees of fondness for her. And say what you will about them, the Randites had passion. There are a lot of very smart people who love Rand. I knew a guy who was smarter than me in a lot of ways and maybe raw IQ, who was a devotee of Rand. So I say credit where it is due.
And libertarianism was definitely relevant through most of the 20th century as well, as an antidote to Communism, and somewhat after the Soviet Union ran down. Remember Andrew Sullivan and the South Park Republicans? Thank God that’s over. But while the USSR had relevance, so too did libertarianism.
Abby Wambach just retired and will most likely end up coaching women’s pro soccer somewhere before being hired to coach the US Women’s National Team. She actually didn’t make all that much compared to Jordan, Eldrick, and other top one percenters in their respective sports.
But then, most people don’t really care all that much about women’s soccer.
But still she is the exception that proves the rule.Replies: @syonredux, @snorlax, @Reg Cæsar, @guest
All libertarianism is non-Randian. She hated libertarians for allowing for other sources for their ideas.
Murray Rothbard was far more open-minded. He didn’t care why you loved freedom, as long as you did.
Rand hated libertarianism, but declaring that Objectivism isn't a type of libertarianism is like saying that The Whopper is not a kind of hamburger. I would say that Rand's influence includes her cultists but her larger influence resides in those who have read her works and are not explicitly members of The One True Philosophy, Objectivism.
So way wait. Gay Talese wasn’t inspired by new journalist Barbara Ehrenreich? Really, seriously? I mean, who isn’t inspired by Barbara Ehrenreich? I mean, come on now.
If Lin Manuel lived in Germany he would be mistaken for a Syrian or Iraqi refugee, but not an ethnic indigeneous German or European in general.Replies: @syonredux
Which tells me that Germans need to travel more in Southern Europe…..
And Gertrude Stein, a rose is a rose is a roseThe best writing does not have to be pioneering. Shakespeare recycled tales shamelessly. Brothers Grimm admitted to ripping off old ladies in the Black Forest.Replies: @syonredux, @guest
Actually, Shakespeare was quite innovatory/experimental in terms of form.
And are always shocked they are getting it.
Hey, we tried to stem the tide. The Left won. And now it shall reap the reward it thought it reserved just for us.
Again, screw Talese, he's getting what he deserves.Replies: @syonredux
Which does nothing to mitigate the previously discussed ratio. So, yes , the Revolution, like Saturn, devours its children…..that might be cause for some degree of Schadenfreude, were it not for the fact that conservatives are being devoured at a far faster rate.
Spell check run amok, I'll wager.Replies: @syonredux
I just assumed that they were trying to be clever….
Rand is currently of only historical relevance because communism has run its course, for now. The old left did provide a check on capitalism, as did Christianity and now we are seeing the unrestrained excesses of capitalism with the immigration policy of the West. And so, the criticisms and prescriptions of the alt-right are now the most relevant.Replies: @syonredux
Poor examples, I’m afraid. Christianity and Islam are very, very big ponds, while Objectivism is a very, very, very, very small pond.
But not necessarily in style and of course, most of his histories and tragedies weren’t entirely original as he borrowed from Holinshed’s Histories and other sources.
Ponds? Uh, more like vast oceans, old sport.
The pond business comes from an old saying, dear fellow.
To the contrary. Shakespeare was very experimental in terms of style. Simply take a gander at Antony and Cleopatra
Yes, as noted earlier, Shakespeare lifted the matter of his plays from others.
“Which tells me that Germans need to travel more in Southern Europe…..”
So if Lin Manuel Miranda was not famous and you bumped into him on a New York City subway train, you would assume he was Italian and not Puerto Rican?
Since there are lots and lots of PRs in NY, I would assume that he was probably PR. If, on the other hand, I bumped into him in Sicily, where there are very few PRs, I would assume that he was a fairly swarthy Sicilian.
Outside of the Objectivist cult, no one cares about her.She simply cannot be compared to Kant, Hegel, William James, Russell, etcReplies: @Anonym, @Anonym
Outside of the Objectivist cult, no one cares about her.She simply cannot be compared to Kant, Hegel, William James, Russell, etc
Outside of a philosophy program, who is more influential? I can count 5 people I’ve known who have read Rand and like her work, and more who have read her but dislike her. The same cannot be said of any of the examples you list. When a AAA videogame is created to explicitly deconstruct the philosophy of Kant, James or Russell, let me know. Reagan was influenced by Rand, which is worth noting as the back of communism was broken under the term of Reagan.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153454/how_ayn_rand_seduced_generations_of_young_men_and_helped_make_the_u.s._into_a_selfish,_greedy_nation
I'm afraid that I'm on the side of quality.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonym
“Since there are lots and lots of PRs in NY, I would assume that he was probably PR.”
There are also lots and lots of Italians in New York City as well, especially in Staten Island. The fact that you still would not mistake Lin Manuel for an Italian or any other European in NYC, means he is not as White as Gavin says he is. He looks like a New World Hispanic to you, which is what he is.
All libertarianism is non-Randian. She hated libertarians for allowing for other sources for their ideas.
Rand hated libertarianism, but declaring that Objectivism isn’t a type of libertarianism is like saying that The Whopper is not a kind of hamburger. I would say that Rand’s influence includes her cultists but her larger influence resides in those who have read her works and are not explicitly members of The One True Philosophy, Objectivism.
Outside of a philosophy program, who is more influential? I can count 5 people I've known who have read Rand and like her work, and more who have read her but dislike her. The same cannot be said of any of the examples you list. When a AAA videogame is created to explicitly deconstruct the philosophy of Kant, James or Russell, let me know. Reagan was influenced by Rand, which is worth noting as the back of communism was broken under the term of Reagan.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153454/how_ayn_rand_seduced_generations_of_young_men_and_helped_make_the_u.s._into_a_selfish,_greedy_nationReplies: @syonredux, @Former Darfur
And more people have read Dianetics than have read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Quantity vs Quality.
I’m afraid that I’m on the side of quality.
I’m afraid that I’m on the side of quality.
No argument from me that Dianetics is garbage. There are many, many people who have read a page or two, myself among them. I would hazard a guess that more people have made it through Kant than have made it through to the end of Dianetics.
But basically what you are saying is that you are on the side of puddles of great quality. As a pond, Rand is hated by the left, which may be why the university set don't like her. If you think my example of Christianity overstates my case, then your example of Dianetics overstates yours by just as much. And maybe Rand is more of a popularizer than a pioneer. But popularizers have their uses too. We are conversing on the blog of a great popularizer.Replies: @syonredux
Please note that I said that I would assume that ” he was probably PR.” If I met him under the conditions that you describe, I could not be certain that he was not Sicilian.
In 20-30 years I'm sure some SJW android will interrogate Elon Musk about HIS female influences, once commercial space flight is booming and has changed our world, and we'll all dutifully pretend there weren't dozens of female billionaires around (Oprah, the Walton heiresses, Sheryl Sandberg) who could have done the exact same thing if they had just been ambitious enough and not afraid of being stigmatized for pursuing what was then an out-there, "geek" hobby.Replies: @njguy73
Unless Elon Musk is a total schmuck, which I doubt he is, he’ll say how he has always stood on the shoulders of giants like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper.
I'm afraid that I'm on the side of quality.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonym
“Please note that I said that I would assume that ” he was probably PR.”
Would you assume Steve Sailer was Puerto Rican as well if you saw him on a New York City subway train and you didn’t know who he was?
Also if you bumped into Lin Manuel Miranda in a flyover country city like Lincoln, Nebraska, what would you assume he was?
ot, possibly of cursory interest:
http://nypost.com/2013/11/23/i-was-in-shock-they-were-all-laughing-knockout-game-victim-speaks-out
the nypost in 2013 on “knockout game”/“polar bear hunting” targeting jews in ny.
I'm afraid that I'm on the side of quality.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonym
And more people have read Dianetics than have read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Quantity vs Quality.
I’m afraid that I’m on the side of quality.
No argument from me that Dianetics is garbage. There are many, many people who have read a page or two, myself among them. I would hazard a guess that more people have made it through Kant than have made it through to the end of Dianetics.
But basically what you are saying is that you are on the side of puddles of great quality. As a pond, Rand is hated by the left, which may be why the university set don’t like her. If you think my example of Christianity overstates my case, then your example of Dianetics overstates yours by just as much. And maybe Rand is more of a popularizer than a pioneer. But popularizers have their uses too. We are conversing on the blog of a great popularizer.
No. But I also wouldn’t assume that he was Italian, either
Nebraska…….Not sure what my guess would be….
I’m afraid that I’m on the side of quality.
No argument from me that Dianetics is garbage. There are many, many people who have read a page or two, myself among them. I would hazard a guess that more people have made it through Kant than have made it through to the end of Dianetics.
But basically what you are saying is that you are on the side of puddles of great quality. As a pond, Rand is hated by the left, which may be why the university set don't like her. If you think my example of Christianity overstates my case, then your example of Dianetics overstates yours by just as much. And maybe Rand is more of a popularizer than a pioneer. But popularizers have their uses too. We are conversing on the blog of a great popularizer.Replies: @syonredux
Dunno. Objectivism and Dianetics seem pretty comparable.
And I don’t think that Steve would ever suggest that he’s equal to, say, WD Hamilton…..
“Nebraska…….Not sure what my guess would be….”
In Nebraska you would guess he is not a White Southern European. In Nebraska you would likely assume Lin Manuel is a Nonwhite Mexican, because there are not a lot of Puerto Ricans in flyover country.
“No. But I also wouldn’t assume that he was Italian, either”
For Steve Sailer what about a New York Jew or Irishman?
Have you made it all the way to the end of Dianetics?
On the other hand, I have made it through Kant's Critique of Pure ReasonReplies: @Anonym
Syon you contradict yourself. First you say Lin Manuel looks Southern European. But than you would not mistake Lin Manuel for being White in any of the 50 U.S states, not even the U.S states with a high percentage of Southern Europeans like New York and New Jersey.
In states like NY or NJ, however, I would guess Puerto Rican. Even then, though, I wouldn't feel absolutely certain.Replies: @Jefferson
“Like, duh.” * **
* The phrase comes from middle Americana and generally believed to have originated post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era, (the mid./late 1970s/early 1980s) though some have retroactively attempted to fix the exact origin of the phrase to a much later time and prefer to place it to around 1987.
** Apparently the tendency to insert an expletive, notably the F word in between both words for added emphasis did make a later appearance, and is generally traced to the early/mid. 1980s.
You know, that wasn’t a half bad Fred Reed imitation, come to think of it.
And it's a whole lot older than the 1970s. If you paid less attention to your professors, you'd know that.
I could imagine Manuel playing John Turturro’s brother, but Turturro can play almost as many ethnicities as Cliff Curtis.
“I could imagine Manuel playing John Turturro’s brother, but Turturro can play almost as many ethnicities as Cliff Curtis.”
The most common non Italian roles that John Turturro has played is a Jew, which has has done several times. He also played a Palestinian 1 time, a White Southerner twice, and a Latino 1 time.
The only roles left for John Turturro to play which he has not yet done is a Sub Saharan, Razib Khan, and an Oriental.
Lois Lane
Steve is a modest guy. But has Trump ever heard of Wilson? I bet he’s heard of Sailer.
I doubt it.
Hi, Ann! Thanks for referencing Steve's work in your latest book and for giving it to Trump to read. Who knows, perhaps he or at least his staff is reading up on the various Immigration Patriots re: Immigration, Steve included, and of course VDARE's own Peter Brimelow. In your own way, you've helped the ideas, (originated here and at VDARE) by bringing them before Trump, who has now brought them into the mainstream at large during this lengthy campaign season.
Keep up the good work, Ann!
If Trump doesn't read your site, this is a coincidence. I suspect someone on his team does. Trump, like Reagan, is influenced by Ayn Rand. We just had a lengthy discussion about her in comments. Trump, Reagan, all us middlebrow pop philosophy people influenced by that totally non-pioneering rip-off artist Rosenbaum, justly left out of academia's most influential philosopher lists.
Dioretix: The Science of Matter over Mind? That book will change your life. I found it in a Maserati in Beverly Hills. Know what I mean?
Hitler's mass killing starts from late '39 on, and really gets into high gear with the invasion of the USSR. Cf the mass starvation of around two million Soviet POWs in the Winter of '41-'42 and the murder of several hundred thousand Jews by the Einsatzgruppen.Replies: @reiner Tor
The vast majority of Hitler’s victims died 1941-45. Almost all of them died after September 1939.
Stop being spergy. You brought up ratios, not me. So congrats, you won a game only you were playing.
Now I’m going to savor the Left eating it’s own tail in its hunger to destroy. Talese is getting what he deserves, as will all leftists until we are left with a Stalin, Mao, or Hitler.
I'm just not that nihilistic.
In contrast, here are some genuinely first-rank women:
Lady Murasaki
Marie Curie
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans)
Emily Dickinson
The Brontes
Virginia WoolfReplies: @Harry Baldwin, @dcite, @Anon
Sappher
And for greatest female film director: Leni Riefenstahl.Replies: @Anon
As for the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), estimates on the total number of deaths go from a low of around 400,000 to a high of around 2-3 million. Red Guards did not account for all of those deaths. Lots of ordinary people died.
The Night of the Long Knives is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as the Great Terror and the Cultural Revolution. The highest estimates on the death toll are in the low hundreds. Hitler's mass killing starts in 1939.Replies: @reiner Tor, @whorefinder, @Jack D, @Anonymous
Hitler’s mass killing starts in 1939.
“Hitler’s mass killing,” such as it was, did not begin before 1942.
Of course; Shakespeare (or whoever wrote Shakespear) was unique, using a larger and more inventive vocabulary than anyone else ever, before or since. But he took many stories from old sources. Othello was a tale from 13th century Venice (I think that was the city-state), or so I read in one study.
Might also think that he was slightly Metis….
Probably neither.
Sappho. Sure.
And for greatest female film director: Leni Riefenstahl.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-chicago-international-film-festival-week-2-simon-says/Content?oid=888749
This is hilarious. RosenBUM bitches about Wertmuller. This jerk is a champion of Chantal Akerman, surely the worst filmmaker of all time.
Being concerned with ordinary people is “spergy?”
It’s the game that we are all playing.
So, getting few thousand Party Officials and top ranking military officers is worth the deaths of millions of peasants?
I’m just not that nihilistic.
Yeah, that’s what I said.
Indeed.
Yes, but Trump has definitely heard of Ann Coulter. In point of fact, he read Ann’s latest book Adios, America! before officially announcing his candidacy. Ann’s book makes mention of some points you’ve had over the years regarding immigration. So its entirely possible that Trump has heard of you since reading Ann’s book. Is he well up to date on all the latest blogs and articles? Of course not. But, Trump + Coulter = [paves the wave toward] Sailer is apt enough.
Hi, Ann! Thanks for referencing Steve’s work in your latest book and for giving it to Trump to read. Who knows, perhaps he or at least his staff is reading up on the various Immigration Patriots re: Immigration, Steve included, and of course VDARE’s own Peter Brimelow. In your own way, you’ve helped the ideas, (originated here and at VDARE) by bringing them before Trump, who has now brought them into the mainstream at large during this lengthy campaign season.
Keep up the good work, Ann!
Not sure how I’m contradicting myself. I simply noted that Miranda would not look out of place in Southern Europe (Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, etc).Hence, if I saw him in, say, southern Spain, I would assume that he was a rather swarthy Spaniard.
In states like NY or NJ, however, I would guess Puerto Rican. Even then, though, I wouldn’t feel absolutely certain.
Nope. Never made it to the end of Atlas Shrugged, either.
On the other hand, I have made it through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Is Rand flawed? Yes. But no more so than Marx, and certainly less dangerously so. Marx resulted in the deaths of on the order of a hundred million people, and the destruction of culture. Without Marx, there would be no Hitler. Without Marx, there would be no Cultural Marxism and race replacement.
I would posit that the prime reason that Rand is not discussed in academia is because of the pervasiveness of Marxism within the humanities, not through lack of merit. Basically, for the same reasons that HBD is deep sixed in academia.
I suspect that The Conservative Treehouse must be reading this thread, as they just posted a quote from Rand.
In states like NY or NJ, however, I would guess Puerto Rican. Even then, though, I wouldn't feel absolutely certain.Replies: @Jefferson
“Not sure how I’m contradicting myself. I simply noted that Miranda would not look out of place in Southern Europe (Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, etc).Hence, if I saw him in, say, southern Spain, I would assume that he was a rather swarthy Spaniard.
In states like NY or NJ, however, I would guess Puerto Rican. Even then, though, I wouldn’t feel absolutely certain.”
Would most people in Southern Europe look Puerto Rican to you if you dropped them off in New Jersey or New York?
“Not sure how I’m contradicting myself. I simply noted that Miranda would not look out of place in Southern Europe”
But Lin Manuel would look out of place among Italians in New York and Portuguese in Rhode Island correct? If yes, than Lin Manuel does not look Southern European does he?
And for greatest female film director: Leni Riefenstahl.Replies: @Anon
No, Lina Wertmuller is the greatest.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-chicago-international-film-festival-week-2-simon-says/Content?oid=888749
This is hilarious. RosenBUM bitches about Wertmuller. This jerk is a champion of Chantal Akerman, surely the worst filmmaker of all time.
http://www.greatschools.org/new-york/elmont/3605-Elmont-Memorial-High-School/details/#Students
Frankly, I think the jury is still out on this Igbos-as-the-Ashkenazi-Jews-of-Africa thing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @neon2
Are we genetic determinists or not? Of course some African tribes will be more intelligent on average than the others, and there is an abundance of evidence that the Ibo is one of them.
More power to them I say, but I do wish that they would demonstrate their talents at home.
People concatenate Objectivism/Rand and Scientology/Hubbard all the time, just as with “Libertarian” and “LaRouche”.
Syon if you were in Bucharest and you saw Lin Manuel walking the streets, would you assume he was a Gypsy or just a swarthy ethnic Romanian?
People Of Color = all Nonwhite people, not just Blacks. The Guatemalan lady who cleans the rooms at your local Comfort Suites sees herself as a Person Of Color. The Korean family who owns the laundromat in your neighborhood see themselves as People Of Color.Replies: @neon2
Careful. I doubt very strongly that any East Asian thinks of himself as part of something called “people of color”.
The Japanese in particular are probably still far more likely to think of themselves as honorary Aryans than as anything approaching black.
And they would be right.
Ayn Rand cult is big.
Pauline Kael dominated film criticism.
Susan Sontag.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar, @neon2, @guest, @Stan Adams
Rand was influential and popular, but that does not a pioneer make. I know she acted as if she conjured her philosophy out of thin air, and the only forerunner she would admit to was Aristotle. She wouldn’t dare mention Nietzsche, though everyone and his mother could see the influence.
I will give her and two other female novelists, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabella Patterson, credit for being early to libertarian party. But I can’t abide calling them the “founding mothers of American libertarianism,” as I’ve heard. Nevermind the old agrarians, like Jefferson, Randolph, and Taylor. Also forget relatively obscure middle figures like Spooner, Tucker, and Sumner. I’ll be fair and deal only with the modern libertarian movement. Also, nevermind the Austrians, as Mises and Hayek didn’t come over til later. This is the modern American libertarian movement. (Are those enough qualifiers?)
What about the pre-Rand Old Right? Garet Garrett had a novel with a businessman character named Halt; I wonder if he influenced Rand. There were H.L. Mencken and Albert J. Nock, a favorite of mine. It’s hard for me to place the interwar revisionists and other sorts of then liberals, like Harry Elmer Barnes, but some of them would’ve been libertarians in all but name.
Rand was not especially original: she was a synthesizer of existing ideas. That in itself does not make those ideas wrong. Where she fails is in her belief that man is not a foundationally biocentric creature, that cognitive ability is not a property or set of properties that are both wildly variant between individuals and beyond much changing, and in her belief that societies can be constructed on a pure basis of rational self interest.
Outside of a philosophy program, who is more influential? I can count 5 people I've known who have read Rand and like her work, and more who have read her but dislike her. The same cannot be said of any of the examples you list. When a AAA videogame is created to explicitly deconstruct the philosophy of Kant, James or Russell, let me know. Reagan was influenced by Rand, which is worth noting as the back of communism was broken under the term of Reagan.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153454/how_ayn_rand_seduced_generations_of_young_men_and_helped_make_the_u.s._into_a_selfish,_greedy_nationReplies: @syonredux, @Former Darfur
Rand, like Hubbard, was quite well known on a pop intelligentsia level in her own time, and was the subject of a biopic in which she was played by Helen Mirren. Eric Stoltz plays Nathanial “Ben Rand” Branden a/k/a Blumenthal, and his character repeatedly gives Mirren’s a right round rogering.
Although her work was never in the highest esteem of mainstream media thinking, cartoons and quips referring to her work abounded, and several of her acolytes went on to positions of considerable influence and power, such as Alan Greenspan , who is married to the substantially younger newsbunny Andrea Mitchell.
I have to admit I always thought ((Mitchell)) was somewhat appealing to me, although I’m sure she’s had a lot of work done, and also whenever I hear her name, I always think “Porn Star”, because although she is not, ANDREA True and Sharon MITCHELL sure enough were. I know that’s unfair, but I don’t care, because Libertarian Larouche.
But still she is the exception that proves the rule.Replies: @syonredux, @snorlax, @Reg Cæsar, @guest
Rand deserves eminence in the narrow category of the “modern American libertarian movement.” And it has been a real, self-identified movement since the early 1940s, when she, Rose Wilder Lane, and Isabella Patterson were out in front of the menfolk. But as soon as you start talking about libertarism in general Rand is awash in a sea of names of men who got there first:
Etienne de La Boetie
John Locke
Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
Luther Martin
William von Humboldt
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Taylor of Caroline
Max Stirner
Herbert Spencer
Lysander Spooner
Benjamin Tucker
William Graham Sumner
John Henry Mackay
H.L. Mencken
Albert J. Nock
Ludwig von Mises
F.A. Hayek
Garet Garrett
John T. Flynn
That’s off the top of my head.
Although (allow me to channel Moldbug) it is indeed hard to point to any one single figure, given libertarianism's fundamental incoherence. As an attempt to adapt 19th-century British leftism to present-day concerns, it's an ideological cargo cult that's simultaneously reactionary and leftist.Replies: @Anonym, @guest
People have really run wild with that cargo cult metaphor. Might I ask, what ideology isn’t a cargo cult? Except perhaps yours, if you have one.
Even though Cliff Curtis is a New Zealand Maori, they cast an Italian to play his son on Fear The Walking Dead. Although on the show the actor who plays his son is playing a Mexican and not his real life ethnicity.
And Gertrude Stein, a rose is a rose is a roseThe best writing does not have to be pioneering. Shakespeare recycled tales shamelessly. Brothers Grimm admitted to ripping off old ladies in the Black Forest.Replies: @syonredux, @guest
Shakespeare recycled subject matter, but that is not where art lies. Which is why you’re not a novelist or screenwriter just because you had an idea for a book or movie once. Shakespeare’s art lay in arranging unoriginal stories his way, and constructing plots, characters, themes, and all that writerly stuff. Which isn’t to say he was a pioneer. I just get tired of people accentuating what is probably the least important aspect of fiction.
Objectivism’s main philosophical fault is in hand waving away all serious preceding philosophy, Aristoltle excluded. I’d like to leap over mainstream post-Hume High Philosophy, or at least most of it, because I think the “problem of induction” is a dead end, and in many cases has led to downright evil. But I wouldn’t do so by saying, “Hume, Kant, etc. are just wrong because shut up.” It would be better if Randians didn’t pretend, and just came out and said they’re not interested in epistemology.
The main general fault of objectivism is that it’s incomplete. It’s picture of humanity is a gross caricature, and has been mined for laughs on those grounds for decades. See The Simpsons and the Ayn Rand School for Tots. Her novels have fleshed out characters, but her philosophy is full of robot people.
Unlike Dianetics, however, it makes some sense, and it tries to convince you, which is something. L. Ron Hubbard was an all out and obvious conman.
I will give her and two other female novelists, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabella Patterson, credit for being early to libertarian party. But I can't abide calling them the "founding mothers of American libertarianism," as I've heard. Nevermind the old agrarians, like Jefferson, Randolph, and Taylor. Also forget relatively obscure middle figures like Spooner, Tucker, and Sumner. I'll be fair and deal only with the modern libertarian movement. Also, nevermind the Austrians, as Mises and Hayek didn't come over til later. This is the modern American libertarian movement. (Are those enough qualifiers?)
What about the pre-Rand Old Right? Garet Garrett had a novel with a businessman character named Halt; I wonder if he influenced Rand. There were H.L. Mencken and Albert J. Nock, a favorite of mine. It's hard for me to place the interwar revisionists and other sorts of then liberals, like Harry Elmer Barnes, but some of them would've been libertarians in all but name.Replies: @Former Darfur
Isabel Paterson is widely considered at least as substantial a precursor to Rand’s work-the parallels are ominous and numerous-as Alfred Korzybski and Aleister Crowley were to Hubbard.
Rand was not especially original: she was a synthesizer of existing ideas. That in itself does not make those ideas wrong. Where she fails is in her belief that man is not a foundationally biocentric creature, that cognitive ability is not a property or set of properties that are both wildly variant between individuals and beyond much changing, and in her belief that societies can be constructed on a pure basis of rational self interest.
On the other hand, I have made it through Kant's Critique of Pure ReasonReplies: @Anonym
Maybe I should read Kant. I found Atlas Shrugged very readable, even the monologue which others advised me was optional.
Is Rand flawed? Yes. But no more so than Marx, and certainly less dangerously so. Marx resulted in the deaths of on the order of a hundred million people, and the destruction of culture. Without Marx, there would be no Hitler. Without Marx, there would be no Cultural Marxism and race replacement.
I would posit that the prime reason that Rand is not discussed in academia is because of the pervasiveness of Marxism within the humanities, not through lack of merit. Basically, for the same reasons that HBD is deep sixed in academia.
I suspect that The Conservative Treehouse must be reading this thread, as they just posted a quote from Rand.
ot, donisha and ms bernstein, just plain funny:
http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/04/elsewhere-science-diversity-academic-entrepreneurship-and-more
Elsewhere in Science: Diversity, academic entrepreneurship, and more
By Donisha Adams, Rachel Bernstein
Etienne de La Boetie
John Locke
Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
Luther Martin
William von Humboldt
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Taylor of Caroline
Max Stirner
Herbert Spencer
Lysander Spooner
Benjamin Tucker
William Graham Sumner
John Henry Mackay
H.L. Mencken
Albert J. Nock
Ludwig von Mises
F.A. Hayek
Garet Garrett
John T. Flynn
That's off the top of my head.Replies: @Anonym
You do have a point. With pioneering, there is the matter of standing on the shoulders of giants, and whether you choose to attribute sources. It is hard to find new ideas spun of whole cloth. Were Henry Ford and the Wright brothers pioneers? Was Einstein?
"Hitler's mass killing," such as it was, did not begin before 1942.Replies: @syonredux
Incorrect, I’m afraid. Cf, for example, the activities of the Einsatzgruppen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4ger_Report
Dunno. I’ve seen some quite dark ethnic Romanians
No. If I saw him in an Italian/ Portuguese crowd in the states, I could see myself thinking that he was Italian/ Portuguese.
Some would, some wouldn’t.
It's obvious why blacks are the only ones for whom they all make exceptions. I'd be surprised if a similar student wasn't found next year (and each year from now on) either.Replies: @candid_observer, @bomag, @ben tillman
It doesn’t work quite like that. I applied to two and was offered by both. Surely, if you’ve been offered by Harvard or Yale, the other won’t reject you because of a presumption that the other school is more attractive.
Well, I happen to be in direct correspondence with an Igbo banker who needs my help in transferring $10 million out of his war-torn country. He’s giving me a 10% commission!
I sent him my banking information a little while ago. I’m still waiting for him to deposit the funds.
Ayn Rand cult is big.
Pauline Kael dominated film criticism.
Susan Sontag.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar, @neon2, @guest, @Stan Adams
An interesting take on the Ayn Rand cult that flourished in the ’60s:
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
“A little delirious and definitely skewed.” – Pauline Kael on King Vidor’s film of The Fountainhead (1949), starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey, and scripted by Rand herself
Sontag, like Rand and Kael, was Jewish.
“Talese went to some kind of seminar in Boston recently. When asked which women journalists inspired him in his pioneering New Journalism in the 1960s, he answered: “None.”
Talese’s honesty caused Twitter to freak out.
Of course, the reason was that everybody knows, deep down, that women tend not to be pioneers. But that just makes it more scandalous for an old man to mention it.”
-It also makes it more ridiculous for them to freak out about it. How many women journalists were even around 10-20 yrs before his 1960s journalism (so, we’re talking 1940s, 50s) to inspire/influence him? And out of that minute group, how many of them were widely enough known/famous to be inspirational to another US journalist?
It’s like asking Buzz Aldrin which female astronauts inspired him to become an astronaut.
I’ve noticed too, after the PC line changes, how rapidly liberal transgressions get flushed down the memory hole. I watched a couple of movies from 2009 this weekend, and gays were still a common punchline. Yet the liberal actors, liberal Hollywood directors, etc. who put out movie after movie ridiculing gays and trannies, even those made only a short time ago, seem to be completely off the hook.
Yet, Paula Deen says a single comment 40 years ago about a black man who put a gun to her face in a robbery, and she was paraded around for a public two minute hate.
What’s even more messed up is that if gays and liberals do bring up media depictions, it gets twisted around so that at the end of it, they blame the straight white man.
Barack Hussein Obama's son in Austin should lie and come out to publicly announce that the reason he murdered that Nonblack Eurasian female college student is because she called him the N word. That way he will get 100 percent sympathy from the Left Wing media.
In the eyes of the Left, verbal racism is a trillion times worst than murder if it is a Black person on the receiving end of that verbal racism. The Left would see her death as justified, as it is one less anti-Black racist in the world.
I am surprised Blacks who murder Whites and other Nonblacks do not use the he/she called me the N word excuse more often. The Left Wing media would be 100 percent on their side.
Anyway, I used to see Talese a lot at Gino's, the late, zebra-walled Italian dinosaur restaurant down by Bloomingdale's. He went well with the wallpaper:
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2010/01/gino.html
Gino's has since become a cupcake store.Replies: @Forbes, @Thea, @Reg Cæsar
America has since become a cupcake store.
Shakespeare would never win the Oscar for best original screenplay– because he wouldn’t qualify. All but one of his plays were adaptations. I forget the exception, but it’s among his least popular.
“The existence of cupcake stores is a microcosm of all our current societal ills.”
I second that sentiment.
Yet, Paula Deen says a single comment 40 years ago about a black man who put a gun to her face in a robbery, and she was paraded around for a public two minute hate.
What's even more messed up is that if gays and liberals do bring up media depictions, it gets twisted around so that at the end of it, they blame the straight white man.Replies: @Jefferson
“Yet, Paula Deen says a single comment 40 years ago about a black man who put a gun to her face in a robbery, and she was paraded around for a public two minute hate.”
Barack Hussein Obama’s son in Austin should lie and come out to publicly announce that the reason he murdered that Nonblack Eurasian female college student is because she called him the N word. That way he will get 100 percent sympathy from the Left Wing media.
In the eyes of the Left, verbal racism is a trillion times worst than murder if it is a Black person on the receiving end of that verbal racism. The Left would see her death as justified, as it is one less anti-Black racist in the world.
I am surprised Blacks who murder Whites and other Nonblacks do not use the he/she called me the N word excuse more often. The Left Wing media would be 100 percent on their side.
Best not to mention Nancy these days. She's in bad odor:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew#1930.E2.80.931959http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/156323/nancy-drewReplies: @Pericles
“independent Nancy Drew scholar Jennifer Fisher”
The phrase is “…a big fish in a small pond”. It refers not to being a big fish, but to being bigger than the sort of small fish that generally live in small ponds. Like being five feet tall in a town of dwarves.
And it’s a whole lot older than the 1970s. If you paid less attention to your professors, you’d know that.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/11/donald-trump-interview-elections-2016-ayn-rand-vp-pick-politics-column/82899566/
If Trump doesn’t read your site, this is a coincidence. I suspect someone on his team does. Trump, like Reagan, is influenced by Ayn Rand. We just had a lengthy discussion about her in comments. Trump, Reagan, all us middlebrow pop philosophy people influenced by that totally non-pioneering rip-off artist Rosenbaum, justly left out of academia’s most influential philosopher lists.
i guess they feminists prefer he lied if it made them feel better – rather than knowing the truth
also, when i read this:
“I hired Nikole because she is one of the most accomplished and prominent journalists of her generation. She has made it her mission to write about some of the most pressing, intractable issues in American life, particularly racial inequality in education and the re-segregation of American schools. She is a unique combination of a reporter with investigative zeal, unfailing integrity and a writer’s eye for telling, human detail. One of my proudest moments as editor was when Nikole said “yes” and agreed to come to The Times.”
it sounds like she was an affirmative action hire or someone that would help round out the diversity of the ny times staff. if she really was all that talented nobody would have to say stuff like that