I think we’ve reached event horizon on this topic. Opinion vs fact vs projection = hyperbolic motion?
My experience so far of politics can be summed up in Swift’s:
Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…
My experience so far of the internet would be a dumbed-down/shortened version of a misquote that has also been wrongly attributed. Algorithms will place this in top results. ie
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/winston_churchill_103564
Easily, that's cool, I have more respect for that, than people who pretend otherwise...
Sorry Bill but interest in the arts was encouraged by the Sonia Boyce piece, evidenced by the City Art Gallery getting more exposure than for any other recent show they've put on. You may not like it but the consequent increased exposure and engagement is just a fact. It engages both those who have an interest in the politics of representation in art and those that can't be arsed to go to an art gallery but will happily let us know what they think via the Daily Mail comments page. (Not accusing you of this though)
As for the Satanic Verses reference, nobody is calling for the death of Waterhouse, though I think you'll find that threats of violence were directed rhetorically towards the artist and the gallery staff. You've made a hyperbolic false equivalence and might want to take a look at that.
It's the same mistake that conservatives make when seeking to characterise those campaigning for social justice as a violent Marxist mob. The 'conservative' philosopher John Gray pointed out that Leninist Marxism justifies violence as a means to an end, where as for the likes of Antifa, violence is merely cathartic and performative.
Did you see the toppling of Coulston as the act of a violent dangerous mob, or a self conscious piece of performance Art? Would you have actually been scared for your safety had you accidentally found yourself amongst the proceedings whist out shopping? Perhaps you'd have felt safer if you were protected by upholders of truth and virtue like the football lads alliance?
TL:DR
In response to the OP’s question, this forum over recent years has been a prime example.
As far as we can tell, Waterhouse was all sorts of things, but he wasn't a Bristol slave trader. I don't watch football but if you want to get a wider (ie working class) audience then it's a splendid idea to portray them as a drunk racists. Take down Waterhouse and you really need to think about all those Greek statues with the big willies in the V and A, completely naked cherubs, damned pornography on the INSIDE of roman houses and that's before I start on that Bacon. Most days I am a violent Marxist mob.
Take down Waterhouse and you really need to think about all those Greek statues with the big willies
Well, Yes and No. I think in the west we really do need to re-adjust our view of what art is and what it's for. Those Greek and Roman remains have a huge influence over all of our lives still, at least in part due to a bunch of stuffy old men about 150 years ago who pretty much ranked the entire world by aligning "worth of culture" directly with what they consider outside or inside of either the Greek or Roman influence, from Art all the way to Writing.
Waterhouse painted the way he did directly as a response to that influence. I can't blame him (as a man) to want to paint what interested him - young women and their bodies - but he wasn't honest or brave enough to be a bit more Gustav Courbet* about the whole thing. Flabby soft porn is about the least offensive thing I can think to say about Waterhouse, and there are a hundred Victorian painters just like him. You could place any number of them up on a gallery wall, and the response of everyone looking at them would be similar. It's mostly "How come all these young women seem to have ice cream cones where their breasts should be..." followed by "How come a piece of see through silk seems to be all that they like to wear when all the men seemed to be fully clothed" and finally "How come, if he's interested in naked bodies do none of them seem to have public hair" And that's pretty much the Victorians all over...
That we still think they're relevant is a pretty sad indictment of the priorities of most of the art world.
* Look up Origin de la monde
There's a bit too much missing here. Consider the impact of Millais' 'Christ in the House of His Parents' as reflected by Dickens' condemnation. Holman Hunt depicts a feisty and proactive woman in 'The Hireling Shepherd'. Burne-Jones showed the grace and power of women in 'The Wheel of Fortune' (a much better picture in the D'Orsay). The Marxist politics of William Morris (and Madox Browne) and the evolving suffragist movement and De Morgan's 'The Worship of Mammon' and 'The Gilded Cage'. The Pre-Raphaelite influence on 'rational dress' which became a feminist protest around clothing and bicycling. You need to contextualise (all of) this stuff to fully grasp its motivations and impact.
Cancelling culture (and people) was popular with Stalin, Mao and Hitler, even Trotsky wrote a favourable review of the antisemite fascist LF Celine's 'Le Mort a Credit', he didn't call for it to be cancelled.
BillMC, am I correct in my interpretation of your claims, ie:
1. Waterhouse’s ‘Hylas and the Nymphs’ wasn’t a painting that was carefully/specifically chosen as part of the performance/event, it was chosen because it was physically easier to lift?
2. They (MAG) weren’t planning to return it to the wall (at least anytime soon)?
3. It was only re-displayed because of the subsequent public outcry prompting Manchester City Council to ‘make’ (curator) Clare Gannaway put it back on the wall?
I ask because all the above seem to be at odds with what I can verify online from any sources. This is quite a serious business as it casts huge doubt on the veracity and intellectual honesty of all the staff and artists involved.
Here are Boyce’s afterthoughts at the time:
Though the neatest somethingion I can offhand is from a different interview where she says:
The decision to take down Hylas and the Nymphs emerged from the discussions. “It wasn’t unilateral,” Boyce says. “There was a lot of ambivalence, but the consensus was that as one of the acts that would take place on the night of the takeover, this painting should come down.” She adds: “My role is to say: ‘If that’s what you want to do, let’s make that happen.’” The work was taken down and visitors were invited to write their comments where the painting had hung.
The takeover programme had never attracted much attention in the press, and so there was “no anticipation that this was going to have such far-reaching impact, or even be taken to the media”, Boyce says. But the artist Michael Browne, famous for his paintings of Manchester United footballers, saw the event, and posted on Twitter that it culminated in “the permanent removal of Pre-Raphaelite painting Hylas and the Nymphs, because the female staff view it as negative, bad taste, out of date. Is artists [sic] freedom in danger?”
This, says Boyce, “is how things in some ways unravelled and spiralled”.
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/sonia-boyce-hylas-and-the-nymphs
It wasn't the first one chosen. I've no idea what their long term intentions were apart perhaps from decolonising the room (that had been flagged up in the gallery).
By far the most thorough independent research/analysis I could find on the event is this source. (postgrad research on the planned event and response to event)
It does seem to partially address the MCC claim/misunderstanding linking it to a BBC Report? Bill may be able to verify further?
One actor that is ‘silent’ from this online space and narrative is the Manchester City Council (MCC), the local government entity that ‘sets the budget for the Art Galleries and is involved in major decisions about the city’s galleries’.22 It can be assumed, then, that MCC is a very inuential actor in their relationship to the Gallery and one that plays an operational role in the Gallery’s brand network. MCC, however, is not active in the Nymphgate conversation and so their inactivity may be construed as absence. Alternatively, MCC appears in users’ demands to dismiss Gannaway and the Gallery’s leadership, as well as to reconsider their allotment of public funds. More importantly, MCC is brought into the conversation in a BBC report stating that they ‘announced that the painting would return to the wall’,23 leading users to believe that the Gallery was mandated to reinstate the painting (Figure 13).
The conclusion:
7. Discussion and ConclusionThe takeover at the Manchester Art Gallery was supposed to be a business-as-usual event, but then the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan giving way for an online community to take shape with a narrative that effectively left the Gallery out of the picture. In this article, I have explored how the Nymphgate community and conversation were inuenced by a series of human and non-human actors, as well as by the technological affordances of the platform. I have illustrated how, although the Nymphgate network was instigated by the Gallery, the narrative created by the community was shaped in the continuous performances of other actors. In other words, although the Gallery set out to organize a community around their takeover and to create a discourse stemming from this event, they effectively ‘deleted’ (or ‘silenced’) themselves from the conversation.
Which leads me to ask. Exactly who is the ‘censor’ in this? Were Gannaway and artists ‘testing the ground’ for some mass authoritarian Nazi Feminist culling of naked pubescent white-boobs to replace them with old black ladyboobs? Or was it what they claimed it was, at face value. And the real censors in the whole debate are the ‘PC CROWD GONE TOO FAR’, er, CROWD’ - who effectively silence ****ing everything by framing every contemporary art event as ‘literally Black Gay Hitler with a vagina’?
To answer my own rhetorical question, I would say ‘the mob’ most commonly get to silence and censor. From what I see - ‘the mob‘ can be played by a number of actors. The mob can be the silent majority, or the ‘in group’, or ‘the mob’ can be a minority group of noisy activists. The other type of censor is the authoritarian executive? The one who has the legal power to remove or censor something.
Who has actual power and influence?: Is a curator a dictator?
Who has actual power and influence?: Is a patron a puritan?
Who has actual power and influence?: Is a twit a Twitterer?
Who has actual power and influence?: Is real news the ‘fake’ news, or is fake news the ‘real‘ news?
Sorry to resurrect this thread but the video below was lobbed at me by the Al-Gore-Rhythm and sort of managed to summarise my own thoughts on "cancel culture" (i.e: it doesn't exist, people just don't like being challenged when they espouse bad ideas out loud)
Enjoy:
Here we are again.
Is the BBC committing suicide or is it being openly murdered? It’s so weird at the moment that I can’t rule out both.
This reporter/report from the BBC reporting on ‘reports‘ about the BBC removing lyrics for the Proms. The youtube comments are depressingly predictable.
But what’s the story? Even (especially) Bozo has chimed in to ‘defend’ Britain from the BBC’s supposed PC ‘wetness’. Can anyone identify what is going on here?
"The BBC had earlier confirmed that both songs were to be performed as instrumentals, clarifying that the decision to exclude the lyrics was driven by physical distancing restrictions limiting the number of musicians in the Royal Albert Hall."
Absolutely nothing to do with BLM and Boris is a **** stirrer, trying to create a culture war.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/aug/27/bbc-conductor-issues-statement-over-proms-controversy
^. From that article:
The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, said Rule Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory were highlights of the Last Night of the Proms and he had shared his concern about their possible removal with the BBC.
So...our culture secretary (who is on record saying the BBC is needed to guard against ‘fake news’) is now himself spreading fake news in order to ‘guard‘ us from what? From his fake version of the BBC‘s decision to not have the choir this year?
So let me get this right, the Culture Secretary Tweets these ‘not quite outright lies, just glaring distortions of the trith, and here are the lines to read between, nudge, nudge...’ directly to the Twits, and there we have The Ministry Of Propaganda ensuring a narrative of lies now gets underway before the truth ever gets it’s boots on...? How exactly is such morally-bankrupt dead-cat-slinging from a ‘culture secretary‘ either preserving and/enriching our ‘culture’?
https://twitter.com/OliverDowden/status/1297876295381065728
They were never cancelling it you can’t have choirs due yo Covid. That’s it nothing else to it.
If I had a penny everytime someone posted a Guardian link on here...
Why could they not have a solo or recording. Or a zoom choir!?
And the 'Oh we just meant this year' thing is not fooling anyone. Fire up the helicopters.
nothing else to it
There is now. Death threats included. Not to mention a huge surge in ‘defund/cancel the BBC’ sentiment across the country.
That’s it nothing else to it.
Lies are the weapon used against the whole country now… and most people don’t know they are lies, a reasonable number know but don’t care they are lies, and those of us that don’t fall into either category play the conman’s game for them if we vocally challenge the lies… they need people who care about the truth to be their pantomime villain for the conned and conniving to boo and laugh at (and in some cases fear and hate). Challenge the lies and you just fuel the anger, or you can just shrug and ignore the world around you as it descends into a throng of easily manipulated mass anger. Either way, few people will thank you for pointing out the con, we’re past the point of no return in the UK now. I’ve even stopped try trying to help family members see behind the lies now… it does no good.
^ How/why did a country become so accepting of tabloid lies though? Of dishonesty and distortion in general? The ‘post-truth’ situation I’ve heard about. Tell me about that?
Is it like a game of two sides? Say football, except where the ball is public opinion and ‘facts/truth‘ are simply what one wishes to believe according to what colour/bias/prejudice you prefer? The team that has the best most lies wins and gets to call it ‘truth’?
tinribz, you have a better source? You say the BBC is lying? Do you support the Sun and Mail’s account of the reasons for Proms not having a choir for the finale this year? If so, what’s your fact-checking process and do you have link/s please?
I worry for the likes of trinibz, easily manipulated by the RW spin & culture war shit-stirring
We are deep in a Culture War and that isn't going to change for the foreseeable future. As much as we can berate the RW for twisting everything to try and exacerbate cultural divisions the fact is there's very little we can do to stop it, we have to fight it. If were calling it a culture war then surely the more 'cultured' side will win?
The RW will only succeed if they manage to escalate that culture war to an actual war. They are on this precipice in the US, encouraging terrorism in the form of police helping a child with an assault rifle murder people by giving him water and high fives then letting him go home for a cup of tea after the deed is done. So far in the UK the RW are relying on a few pissed up football hooligans so we're not there yet.
Further divisions are coming down the pipeline, as much as we complain about the gutter press (telegraph now included in that im affraid) its going to go down the sewer when fox style faux news outlets are set up here, there's two of them about to launch in the UK very soon.
A couple of weeks ago it was Dawn Butler, this week its the proms and Sky sending a few geriatric pundits to the knackers yard. It'll be something else next week, buckle up for the faster ride, it's a culture war not a political one, the Right wingers will be culturally marginalised by virtue of them cancelling themselves.
The RW assumes that when black faces appear on the TV screens as presenters or in advertising it is not because of political correctness it is because of commerce. Racism might get you elected but it's not good for business and culture is tied more closely to business than to politics.
… as much as we complain about the gutter press (telegraph now included in that im affraid) its going to go down the sewer when fox style faux news outlets are set up here…
https://twitter.com/flying_rodent/status/1299832197826969600?s=21
We are deep in a Culture War and that isn’t going to change for the foreseeable future. As much as we can berate the RW for twisting everything to try and exacerbate cultural divisions
I don’t see it so neatly as that. Right vs Left? Or maybe I see it more neatly? ie bullshit vs not bullshit.
The ‘Left vs Right‘ pantomime will hang us. Probably has. Past tense? Read the papers, read the interwebs. Read this thread?
Somehow we (as a whole) are increasingly buying the view that ‘opinion trumps fact‘. This view is objectively false yet popularly ‘correct‘.
Once a majority opts to buy lies then those lies become ‘true’ and a culture transmutes with dishonesty (at best) as a foundation.
When the only ‘facts’ we accept are those that comport with our existing opinions. When the only story we seek is that which confirms our bias.
‘Facts don’t care about your feelings’ is a recent (ironically self-owning) encapsulation of the manufacturing (or misusing) of facts to massage feelings/bias/prejudices and so feed and a partisan gravytrain.
Neither do I see/sell it nearly as neatly as does the ‘Jonathan Pie’ character. Or is he really a character? As much as I like (and even require) Pie (as a refreshing comedy centrist) he’s yet still enjoying his cake both ways – and I don’t mean as a ‘centrist’, but as a celebrity indulging in hyperbole and unfiltered, generalised partisan prattle. In effect he’s feeding the same fire that he’s wholesale blaming on ‘the left/you/we/a tiny minority’ (a moving target, but always ‘the left’?
No whataboutery there.
Yet he’s a bit all over the show in that video, and as short on the very ‘nuance’ (and as uneven-handed) as any tabloid (even as he grieves for ‘nuance’). The problem with satire today is that it reads now as a script from Inception. Meta-morphing. Jonathan Poe.
I do feel at least a sense of self-flagellation from Pie. Useless? No. I do share his frustration in that ‘we* should be better than this’. Yes. For that alone I am one of his biggest fans. Agreed. But then here he blames only ‘the left’ for today’s cultural shitshow.
So he/his character is also the pantomime. And he knows it. ‘**** in the street for coins’, as he put it. His character seems more widely accepted as a truth-teller of uncomfortable truths and I applaud him for that.
The pantomime must go on.
the Right wingers will be culturally marginalised by virtue of them cancelling themselves.
Yet Punch says exactly the same about you, Judy. You ‘woke’ feminist nazi soyboy Black Broadcasting Communist’s Cuck. Your buddies just cancelled Land Of Hope And Glory so what do you have to say about marginalisation now you just marginalised the majority of Britain’s Own People? It came back to bite you didn’t it? (I am being half-sarcastic here)
And on it goes. Out there in unwokeland vs wokeland.
Er..
Yes so eat your own shit
You only PROVE that you racistgammobs are LITERALLY Auschwitz!
No, YOU only prove that gayblackwokemobs are LITERALLY Solovetsky!
Etc.
It seems the pantomime must go on. People need the coins. Manufacturing is increasingly automated. Manufacturing consent is increasingly an alt career.
An emerging narrative manufactured from opinion over facts. And when actual facts emerge? They are too often enjoyed as an open door to further abuse the truth/fee partisan prattle – rather than a door to close on the whole sorry trend.
*Itself already akin to an ‘arsehole‘ even before it chooses how best to inform itself.
Seems to me that we are skirting close to cultural suicide. I can hear the nods. ‘Yes, because of THEM’
Each one of us diminishes ‘the whole’ every time we choose opinion over fact. Conspiracy over evidence. Every time we prop up lies/hyperbole/stereotypes as if they are ladders to ‘rightness’ because ‘wrong’ is a now a label rather than an unsubstantiated report.
This is not to say there are not bad-faith actors in all of this. There are. Many. Yet worse (IMO) are the legions of ‘bad fact‘ actors. And that is my take from this latest meme. The ‘bad fact actor’ could quite easily be all of us. Getting easier every day. Unless we demand better.
Additionally, useful idiots come in all flavours and colours. Dunning & Kruger don’t discriminate along party lines.
It’s an arsehole eating us all. A human centipede where each unhappy diner is happily convinced that ‘in front vs behind‘ somehow tastes better if framed: ‘us vs them’.
FYI one of the earlier writers of the Jonathan Pie character writes for Spiked magazine and almost every article is about the terrors of 'woke' culture.
https://libcom.org/blog/unsurprising-reason-jonathan-pie-rants-sound-straight-out-spiked-06022018
(Edit)
An emerging narrative manufactured from opinion (already often akin to an ‘arsehole‘ even before it chooses how best to inform itself) over facts.
And, when the actual facts emerge? They are all too-often misused. Misused to further abuse the truth. To feed yet more partisan prattle in the court of public opinion.
Seems to me that we are skirting closer to cultural suicide while ALSO ignoring the hands behind the curtain. I can hear the nods:
‘Yes, because of THEM’
Cultural changes arise out of practical experience. To paraphrase Ralph Miliband, 'to over-emphasize the gap between culture and the economy reduces politics to a puff of smoke.' A cultural war would be a shouting match to no avail. What is needed is people who can articulate and explain the nature of the circumstances in which we find ourselves at work, at home, in debt, etc and help organise ways forward ie theory and action.
Thanks for that grum. I’d long ago stopped watching Pie, because of the content not because I knew anything about the writers. That link comes as no surprise.
Thanks for that grum. I’d long ago stopped watching Pie
Novelty wore off after about his third video!
Just to throw in one inescapable fact: All other things being equal, the huge increase in life expectancy over the last 20 years has seen the make up of the electorate proportionally skew towards tha right. Never in history have the futures of the young been so dictated by the old. It might be that we as a society have changed less than we think, it's just that the younger half of the electorate have less of an influence proportionally speaking than society has been accustomed to.
The irony in the phrase "cancel culture' is that it is nothing new. What has actually been happening over the last few years is that those whose voices have always been cancelled have begun to speak up. I had quite an emotional conversation with my partner yesterday where she was describing 20 years freelancing where her viewpoint was often cancelled owing to her being non white. Some of the treatment dished out was absolutely disgusting and this was at international advertising agencies where everyone presumed they were liberal and non racist.
Back to the idea that the RW will cancell themselves in the cultural / economic sphere. Look at sport and the example of the SKY sackings, we might get polarised news media but we won't get polarised cultural media. There just isn't the market for a RW sports channel. Sports personalities are being pushed to show where they stand.
Look at the F1 drivers, of course it's the choice of the individual to kneel in support of Lewis or not, if they don't then it doesn't mean they're racist but it does make them a 'legend' in the eyes of the alt right. Stick to your principles by all means, but there's a price to pay with regards your image. It makes you less attractive to advertisers.
Businesses that have come out in support of BLM have been described as cynical, paying nothing but lip service but lip service is better than no service. Unless you own a gun shop or a news outlet racism just isn't good for business, pressure applied to the business sector has more affect than pressure applied to politicians as most businesses will always pivot towards the young with their advertising and messaging.
Algorithms seem to be working
Life expectancy improved from 78 to 81 since 2000, I can't see what cultural difference that would make. Most of the key players in this debacle are middle aged or younger. Life expectancy has wide disparities, it wobbled and experienced a decline and Cummings is doing his best. Adele's now getting it for 'cultural appropriation' for her hair-do. Blimey, will Michelle Obama get it for straightening hers (like many black women)? This really is quite a clever distraction to follow on from Brittania Waves the Rules and clearly people bite. If we all have a thoroughly good calling out we will show what perfect specimens we are and be absolutely no threat to anyone apart from a few fragile egos. And things rumble on unchanged.
I presume this isn’t “cancel culture”…?
https://twitter.com/imincorrigible/status/1300689479364153344?s=21
Just remembered I never used to stand for God save the Queen at boxing matches, including York Hall. Not sure how that would go down these days.
Not sure how that would go down these days.
I don’t know what the rules are but after a week on and off of reading about it seems to go like this:
‘Some people were said to have refused to stand for our Country’s National anthem. The woke left have gone too far this time even more than yesterday and we have it on good authority that they will go too far again tomorrow.’
BBC News:
This current ‘Billshevik’ scandal is raging across social media prompting some pundits to ask ‘what is the point of having a country if it doesn’t represent the woke left’. Doris from Macclesfield says ‘I don’t know who these Billsheviks are, but I’m proud of my country and all these people want to do is to spoil it for everyone else. They take freedom too far and now they want to stop everyone else including God and the Queen. Well that’s so typical of the left.
We asked popular pantomime patriot and National Anthem Singer Christopeher Biggins for his thoughts on this latest (As he descrbes it) ‘War on Britain’
- Helloooooooo, Well David, I’m fine thankyou for asking. Well I say fine, I WOULD be fine if it wasn’t for these latterday Lenins casually removing all of our freedoms. Taking away the freedoms of normal Brits (laughter) like CANDY FROM BABIES because WE HAVE BEEN TOO KIND AND PASSIVE FOR TOO LONG. They take advantage of the National Character, David. We are known across the world for our generosity towards people of colour, and towards those of shall we say ‘different’ bents (chuckles), but take away my Queen? Heavens NO! Take away my GOD? STOP RIGHT NOW. RED LIGHT. They are so absolutely insane DAVID,! The Left believe they can cancel God. You can’t make this stuff up. Well you can. But because it’s TRUE!
- So Christopher, how did this latest debacle begin?
- Well David, it turns out a reporter traced Billshevik’s social media electronicpapertrail to a popular far-left cycling group where MAMILS high-five each other’s ‘wokeness’ as they ride their little toys through red lights, IMAGINE OUR SURPRISE!? Which is sort of confusing isn’t it David? Because those Leftist Lycra Loons seem to enjoy the colour Red, so why are they CANCELLING traffic lights? They are a rule unto themselves. But now they want to RULE OVER BRITAIN! It’s no secret that I’d be glad to see them gone from the roads for good, but they’re everywhere these days aren’t they David? Yes. I was walking my little dog last week and one of these LYCRA LOONS jumped, no, LEAPT from the bushes!!! Didn’t even ring his little bell! I thought he was trying to skewer my little FrouFrou! I was about to let him have it with BOTH BARRELS but then I saw that he had a beard and he wasn’t singing Rule Britannia. But then it sank in. The awful truth David. The awful truth is that we celebrities are walking a fine line between being canceled and being popular. But I have to stand up to this Billshevik Bicycle Brigade, even if the cancel me. I will go down singing. I always did (chuckleCHUCKLE). Which is why I’m here. My career is in tatters because of these Billsheviks.
- Thank-you, that was Christopher Biggins on the BBC 9 O Clock News sharing his concerns about so-called ‘cancel culture’ and the emerging ‘Billshevik’ row.
- And now for the 78th time, we have influential patriot Nigel Farage graciously taking advantage of his ‘essential travel’ waiver - visiting us from the USA as our esteemed guest in the BBC studio. Nigel will be telling us how one-sided and unforgivingly biased we are. The question this week is how The Left are trying to cancel the union and cancel Brexit. Joining Nigel on the panel is a white woman who identifies as a black man. Marxist Activist Reverend Bakari Blackperson from Speaker’s Corner who we chose to represent ‘the left’ to give Nigel a proper ratings-ready bunfight represents The Left.
- Over to you Nigel...
unless you own a gun shop or a news outlet racism just isn’t good for business
Why's that?
Adele’s now getting it for ‘cultural appropriation’ for her hair-do. Blimey, will Michelle Obama get it for straightening hers (like many black women)?
The two aren't comparable, black women have had to adopt Western styles as their natural hair is seen as unprofessional and unruly. There's a huge amount of pressure on black women to lighten their skin too, all to fit in to a western ideal of what's considered beautiful and wholesome. Adele's received a lot of support from Jamaicans and black people in Britain and they recognise that difference between appropriation and celebration.
Adele’s now getting it for ‘cultural appropriation’ for her hair-do
Really. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that you’ve not looked very far into it.
I checked the Sky channel. Briefly
One Twitter user wrote: "If 2020 couldn't get any more bizarre, Adele is giving us Bantu knots and cultural appropriation that nobody asked for
We are living in an age where the alleged thoughts of ‘one Twitter user’ is global news and even shaping our destiny as a culture. Or is it shaping the ‘careers‘ of ‘reporters‘?
It can be both?. Strike that. It ****ing well is both.
Am letting that sink in. Are you? Or do you have some serious evidence that Adele is under real fire from a lot of ‘influencers’? Meanwhile the economy is in shitsville, we are floating alone, rudderless in a sea of resentment, stupidity, abject cultural impoverishment, resentful division and an almost worshipful attitude towards dumbed-down bullshit.
What’s that Christopher?
Fear not fair people! Boris plans to rule the second wave. He will not be Covid’s slave. The left will not win this battle for our shores. We People Of Britain will go down singing before we let them win!
(At this point I want the long crook for my own neck). Play nice. Factcheck thrice.
They take advantage of the National Character, David
That's an interesting choice of words, David Hume wrote a paper "Of National Characters". He said of the English "We may often remark a wonderful mixture of manners and characters in the same nation, speaking the same language, and subject to the same government: And in this particular the ENGLISH are the most remarkable of any people, that perhaps ever were in the world."
To which he added the footnote "I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites"
And in this particular the ENGLISH are the most remarkable of any people, that perhaps ever were in the world.”
Hence the satire. I hoped obvious? TBF I did misuse old Biggins a bit, but I’ll never forget his attempt to cancel cyclists on National TV (back in the day before random tweets were National News)
Let us also not forget the English Character as noted in Elgar’s Land Of Hope And Glory:
Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide:
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride;
Irony. Which reminds me, today I’m going to make like Elgar and go ride my bike on the Hills. Clear the mind a little. This social media lark is arduous.
I’ve also heard (and felt) a little too much (especially this last 19 years) of that ‘stern and silent pride’ and it’s beginning to affect my mood.
Okay, you two are making me laugh, cry and think... all at the same time. Don't stop.
BillMC.
Thanks for providing some accurate statistics. If you do the maths using your own statistics you'll find that an age increase of 3 years from the age of 78 to 81 expressed as a percentage means that there's a 4 % increase in life expectancy over the last 20 years. Then consider that people only get to vote for 50 or 60 years of that life cycle so let's make that 8 %. Then factor in the fact that older people are far more likely to vote and it's quite easy to see that the age factor has an influence of 10 % or more.
If you can't see the difference that a double digit shift would make then perhaps you are wearing your face mask over your eyes and not your mouth. I'm not questioning the statistic that you provided just your ability to interpret it in any useful way. You've literally just furnished me with a fact which proves my point to a greater degree than even I initially thought. If you were looking to cancel me then you'd have done better to keep quiet.
You mention black women straightening their hair. I mentioned that my partner had shared with me some of her experiences in the workplace over the last 20 years. She straightened her hair for that entire period, knowing that turning up to an interview with an afro hairstyle would not have improved her chances. Likewise she adopted her English first name rather than her African name when filling out the job application. Luckily for her her surname sounds French and seeing as advertising agencies recruit from a young, cosmopolitan, international crowd beeing perceived French was not a disadvantage.
Over the last 20 years the UK may have seemed a lovely tollerant place to you but for others they were having to conform against their wishes They were fearfull that some of the progress that had been made since the 80's could be rolled back.
Well. Brexit, Windrush and over policing during covid have rolled things back to the 80's so maybe black people feel they no longer have anything to lose and are prepared to voice that which they have bottled up over the last 2 decades.
Imagine yourself making that comment about black women's hair in a room full of black women and then imagine the death stares you would be receiving. Now imagine yourself saying the same thing on a cycling forum. Perhaps you are saying those things here because you find it a safe space that you know is overwhelmingly white male? Then consider how welcome a black woman might feel if she was into cycling and decided to join said forum.
You might not like what I say Bill but I would be happy to repeat any comment I post on here in any company. I think you and some others on here would be wise to do the same.
Squirelking,
Apologies, I've done the same thing as I did last time, posting a quote without context to be a little provocative.
The quote comes from Lindsay Graham, the famous Republican Senator from South Carolina. He was being asked about Nascar banning the Confederate flag from Race meets. The full quote goes something like this:
" Nascar is a business that's trying to expand their fan base and the truth is, the Confederate flag just isn't good for business."
Dear forum. As an aspiring journalist I could do with a few easy gigs. I’ve been informed that should I ‘find’ a woke-tweet that is somehow critical of a white celebrity then I could theoretically break a BIG story. A snowball of an avalanche sort of thing.
Anyway, I was wondering is possible to have one or even multiple Twitter accounts under assumed name/s? Not because I’d do such a thing...but because, well just because. Because right now I’m calculating that just four or five ‘woketweets’ will convince Good Honest Unwoke People that the overwhelming mindset of ‘the left’ (currently anything between 76% to a whopping 98% of the Left according to a now-deleted Tweet allegedly originating from the US) is certifiably insane and will believe anything as long as it suits their agenda.
Malvern Rider,
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a re-tweet.
Its the "Some Arsehole on Twitter" phenomenon.
Actual journalism is hard, all that tracing and verifying sources, I mean who can be bothered?
Fact checking? Nah sod it.
Examining sources from both sides of an argument? Eh! come again!
Understanding statistics and only using peer reviewed sources? WTF are you on about man we've got papers to sell and clicks to generate!!
So Adele "under fire for cultural appropriation". From who? Oh right SOME ARSEHOLE ON TWITTER!
Ah, well played Malvern Rider. Thanks for pointing it out, I'm autistic so the humour went over my head initially. In response to the above question here's a checklist:
1. Do you know a minor celebrity or government official?
2. Pick a letter of the alphabet to use as a user name, Q is taken.
3. Join a proud boys or bois club.
4. Pick a minority to blame.
5. Create a story that's neither provable or unprovable.
6. Hashtag simple meaningless acronym that's no longer than two syllables.
So Adele “under fire for cultural appropriation”. From who?
The tombliboos. That's who.
Hair is an affordable art form. I visited a mate in Tafara township and the Eastern highlands, Zimbabwe, there was no white people for miles. Hair and clothes took all sorts of styles and colours. Every time I see my pal's daughters' snaps on FB from Gaborone I see something different: straight, afro, corn rows, blonde with a purple patch, I don't think they're thinking colonialism but unrestrained self-expression.
Reggae is linked to military marching band music, skinheads borrowed from bluebeat and reggae, Red, Red Wine was written by Neill Diamond but was a hit for Toots et al. Culture is a melange and getting tied up in knots about authenticity and cancellations is exactly the sort of divisive waste of time that the system prefers people to pursue in times like these.
Red, Red Wine was written by Neill Diamond
I never knew that! Every day's a school day.
My two Van Morrison 'Celtic' favourites and his least (Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece) was performed largely by black jazz musicians. Tickles me no end. Increasing life expectancy can only be meaningfully understood in the context of age distributions in a population ie in a stable population it might be significant, in a growing population (migrants tend to be young) less so plus there are wide regional disparities in life expectancy and that needs to be factored in.
Apologies, I’ve done the same thing as I did last time, posting a quote without context to be a little provocative.
The quote comes from Lindsay Graham, the famous Republican Senator from South Carolina. He was being asked about Nascar banning the Confederate flag from Race meets. The full quote goes something like this:
” Nascar is a business that’s trying to expand their fan base and the truth is, the Confederate flag just isn’t good for business.”
I get that.
I just don't understand why owning a gun shop makes racism good for oh wait I get it now.
Never mind, I got there in the end!
(I assume you're not implying gun owners are inherently racist but rather that section of society are more likely to be arming themselves to the teeth)
Squirelking,
I thought that Lindsay Graham quote was rather clever, pivoting the argument away from cancel culture towards the very American culture of business. You have to give him credit for trying to defuse rather than inflame a situation.
And you're right about the gun shop analogy, I'm not accusing gun shop owners of being racist, just that they stand to gain if others stoke up the fear.
Whilst were on the gun question, I'd like to pull up another quote, this time from Condoleezza Rice. She said she supported gun ownership because she remembers her father and his friends standing on their porches, holding shotguns as the KKK rolled through the neighbourhood in their pick up trucks.
Same thing, different side.
The key isn't more guns, it's obviously less racists.
Yeah I like that NASCAR quote for that as well.
Go on then Bill, factor all those factors in, what answers do you find? I think I've laid out a pretty clear argument that an increasingly ageing population will result in an electorate that is skewed proporrionally towards the old.
I think Malvern Rider and Faerie explained for us the most likely route the Adele story took before it hit the front page. A piece of news that was neither attributable or provable that was 'designed' to cause division and outrage was hung out there like a piece of bait for us all to nibble on. And you bit.
Consequently you've enlightened us all with a treatise on African hairstyles. Very informative but it doesn't cancell the fact that many women have had to conform to white norms whilst operating in the workplace over the last 20 years. Things have changed over the past 3 years because many black women have simply said f*** it, I am who I am and I'm not playing these silly games anymore.
The tombliboos. That’s who.
Just gone on twitter, all I'm seeing is people outraged by the percieved outrage of other people who seemingly don't seem to exist, not in any real numbers anyway.
There’s a huge amount of pressure on black women to lighten their skin too, all to fit in to a western ideal of what’s considered beautiful and wholesome.
In India, there is very much a trend for celebrities, particularly women in cinema, to lighten their skin, for cultural reasons, ie cast, because lower-cast people, peasants, who do manual labour outdoors have darker skin, naturally, so to be seen with light skin shows they’re a better, higher cast/class of people. Also in China and Japan, for similar reasons.
This was also true of Europeans as well, it wasn’t seemly to have a suntan, that was for poor people; the advent of foreign holidays turned that around, a nice tan showed that one had enough time and disposable income to travel and lounge around and get a tan, unlike those poor shlubs slaving* away in offices and factories.
*And I did consider the use of that word, white people were slaves too, at least a million or so.
Where does the great orange one fit into all of this? The Victorians so abhorred proletarian sun tans they took arsenic tablets to make their faces white. In a wealthy area with a Tory MP if life expectancy increases it will not mean more Tory MPs but maybe a greater majority, an area with more immigrants is likely to have a lower life expectancy but be more likely to vote Labour. Question is how do the ratios stack up.
A bespoke tailor around here reckons Trevor Macdonald is the best dressed bloke on telly. Does he have to be better to be equal or has he just got a taste for good clothes and he can afford them?
Joyce uses the N-word in Ulysses he is also known to be a socialist and a nationalist (not a national socialist). Should we employ contemporary definitions of prejudicial language to ban the book or re-write it, or not?
Joyce uses the N-word in Ulysses he is also known to be a socialist and a nationalist (not a national socialist). Should we employ contemporary definitions of prejudicial language to ban the book or re-write it, or not?
What would you like to happen with Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, BillMC? You brought it up? Maybe Tweet about it? It might find an ornery, non-too-bright, militant righter-of-wrongs or two who will retweet and demand for the book to be banned.
Then hungry journos can write an op-ed for, say ten newspapers and I dunno about 40 altright youtube videos whining how ‘the left’ have gone to the dogs utterly barking and want all of our babies to be black while white people go live in gulags? With any luck this will ensure the country swings further right and further towards some kind of civil/race war. Or at least far right enough to begin sacking comedians who criticise Trump. Meanwhile nothing will have nor ever was going to ever happen to Ulysses, but you might be left feeling pretty special about it all!? Effectively ‘cancelling the left‘ and ‘black people‘ in an all-too-perfect and meta-ironic masterstroke.
Or at least far right enough to begin sacking comedians who criticise Trump.
> standing ovation <
You're on fire. Keep going!
Countzero, I'm wondering what aspects you considered when writing your post. Whilst the caste system is an ancient social structure it was the British who formalised it and made it central to our administration there. Between 1860 and 1920 we segregated Indians by caste, giving the better jobs to christians and whiter looking people. We changed the policy after social unrest and protests to give lower castes some work in the government, which became illegal in 1948... When India became independent. British successive governments still use divide and rule, and blame BAME people for all our woes.
Like you said, it is unfashionable to have brown skin, even here in Britain unless you've paid at least a month's salary for it.
As for slavery; yes even Europeans were enslaved along the Barbery coast, although the figures were estimated using an unorthodox manner previous academics have put it in the 10s of thousands at the most. If it were around a million, European slavery is still a small, small fraction of the Atlantic slavery committed by the British which a conservative estimate puts at about 12 million.
Pro-government comedy on it’s way. See! The Left again. And the foreigners. Always go too far. Spoil it for the rest of us. Now it’s bitten them in their anti-white, anti-male, marxist, racist arses </satire>
Tim Davie, the box-fresh director of the BBC, wants an overhaul of comedy shows which are deemed to have too much left-wing bias. Good news because, dammit, pro-government comedy has been stifled for too long. Where are all the jokes about how annoying it is tripping up over homeless people when you’re on your way to Soho House?
And my goodness I cannot wait for a comedy show which really tells it like it is about refugees paddling over and living in Windsor Castle with the Queen, forcing her and Philip to camp under the gazebo.
What’s that? Such comedians don’t exist? What tosh! We had that nice Jim Davidson with his hilarious **** jokes, do you remember? Only he got “cancelled” because we all went too far to the left, political correctness went mad and we weren’t allowed to point at LGBTQ+ people and laugh anymore.
Bernard Manning should be given his own prime-time show. The left bang on about “prejudice”, yet for years they banned Manning from having his own show merely because he is dead.
BBC news are getting all excited about the “no audience and no choirs” last night of the proms again. At least they mentioned in passing the Coronavirus element of this (no audience and no choirs) but still sold the “U Turn” to find some convoluted way to have a singer blasting their droplets into an empty area of the hall as some kind of political shift towards the real people of the UK.
Pro-government comedy on it’s way. See! The Left again. And the foreigners. Always go too far. Spoil it for the rest of us. Now it’s bitten them in their anti-white, anti-male, marxist, racist arses </satire>
Tim Davie, the box-fresh director of the BBC, wants an overhaul of comedy shows which are deemed to have too much left-wing bias. Good news because, dammit, pro-government comedy has been stifled for too long. Where are all the jokes about how annoying it is tripping up over homeless people when you’re on your way to Soho House?
And my goodness I cannot wait for a comedy show which really tells it like it is about refugees paddling over and living in Windsor Castle with the Queen, forcing her and Philip to camp under the gazebo.
What’s that? Such comedians don’t exist? What tosh! We had that nice Jim Davidson with his hilarious **** jokes, do you remember? Only he got “cancelled” because we all went too far to the left, political correctness went mad and we weren’t allowed to point at LGBTQ+ people and laugh anymore.
Bernard Manning should be given his own prime-time show. The left bang on about “prejudice”, yet for years they banned Manning from having his own show merely because he is dead.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bbc-left-wing-comedy-tim-davie-mock-week-news-quiz-a9699511.htmlFor a bit of balance here’s James himself just last weekend scolding the BBC for (sic) censoring Land Of Hope And Glory. He also has an encouraging message for black people. (but he’s not giving them any money, before they ask)
Prepare to leave this Lycra-Leftie echo-chamber of Brush-With-Fate Billsheviks, hoary old Marxists and Cynical Cycling Communists. Prepare to enter the Balanced Broadcasting Corporation. (ok Youtube) AKA The future - today. Be sure to read the comments. Soak them up. The future, today. Relax. It’s all going to get much better once the BBC is sorted out. The Government-sanctioned comedy shows will allegedly resemble the youtube comments beneath Jim’s video.
(Jim gets pertinent @ 4mins in)
Kelvin,
The post you dropped earlier concerning Elgars' feelings about how the tune he wrote had been subverted into triumphant nationalism reminds me of how Chamberlain saw the same danger in the potential VE celebrations that were proposed back in the 50's.
When Boris talks of 'our cringing embarrassment about our history, traditions and culture he would do well to remember Elgars' words. Or maybe he just sees Elgar as a 'woke' snowflake.
In the modern context, (As it was for Elgar in 1918) the lyrics have all the charm of a crowd of football hooligans singing 'you're going home in a f***ing ambulance. Watching someone wave the union Jack whilst singing that song gives the Union Jack the appearance of the Confederate flag. Thats not me making a judgement thats the singer / waver making the conflation.
Oh, and I'm wondering what piece of whataboutery BillMC is going to throw at us next, this week its been black hair, James Joyce and Trevor McDonald's swag, It was Sonia Boyce a couple of weeks back. I suppose if I just unblock Talk Radio from my Youtube feed then that should give me a heads up.
Cheer up, it's kept you busy during a down time.
*STOP PRESS*
I know it doesn’t have the redrag/e pulling-power of some Twitter user commenting on Adele’s follicular arrangmemt... but this new one still has 9 views.
Nine.
Poor man lost his job. Just for voicing his private thoughts about using live rounds on BLM. He got gulagd. Imagine if Jo Brand had said that she wanted to cut Boris Johnson's head off with a frozen copy of The Independent? She’d just become MORE famous! The liberal left would be falling over themselves to offer her work at children’s parties, black people fetes and gulag-opening ceremonies.
9 views? If it hadn’t been for that leftist cancel-culture rat-pit known as Twitter then he’d still be in a job. And that other guy. We have become a totalitarian PC lefty multiculti shithole and we’ve been saying this every day in every way since before George Formby became Gary Coleman. When will they learn? </satire>
Still. 9 views?
rees-mogg just played some of Rule Britania in the commons
that will give his target demographic a raging semi or 2!
i wonder if all this concocted fuss will see the proms actually get decent viewing figures, its not really part ouf our culture, gets 10 million less than Im a celebrity & vast majority of viewers are 75+
the navel gazing jingoism of it all is rather depressing
Concocted yes. But now ... more real than real. More emotionally powerful than any truth
Jonathan Swift had that part pegged. Again:
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”
its not really part ouf our culture
At least all the pro-EU flag wavers won't be in the audience thanks to Coronavirus. Putting those elites in their place... worth going bankrupt just to piss off all those people traitorous scum who actually like and attend the proms.
Sorry.. I might have missed the memo about the proms no longer being about liberal elites and a waste of TV Licence fee money, and instead central to the lives of everyone who's never attended one, or even listened to one on the radio.
At least all the pro-EU flag wavers won’t be in the audience thanks to Coronavirus.
I thought there was to be no audience, and no live choir but a symphonic rendition of the Anthem, because of Covid19 distancing observance blackgaymarxistgulags
Or the patriots/royalists/promulgators could have sung in the streets and houses along to the orchestra. But nah...better to concoct/keep revving the LEFTYCANCELCULTURE narrative, send death threats to the conductor, and then bully the BBC into a
1. ‘compromise’ (strike one, a stab in the front) then
2. accuse it of doing a ‘U-Turn‘ (strike two, a stab in the back) and then demand the BBC be
3. ‘cancelled’. Strike three and on the ropes.
That Jonathan Swift fella, he's just another woke snowflake. Just like Elagar, who wrote a banger but turned into a total wuss when he saw a the audience at the proms sing the ditty with such nationalistic, jingoistic triumphalism that it made his stomach turn as he reflected on the millions slaughtered during the war that had just ended.
Seems like being 'woke' is nothing new, just a new name for common decency.