The headlines are hilarious in their own way. AOL writes, “MSG posts questionable image of New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin”. And this from CBS local: “Is Knicks Sensation Jeremy Lin The New Tim Tebow?”
And of course there’s ESPN’s tagline, the “Chink in the Armor”.
“Chink in the Armor” is a great line, but ESPN outdid themselves in followup interview asking whether Lin now intends to date Kim Kardashian. The question was no doubt sincerely intended to flatter, but …
It may all seem exceedingly infantile and stupid, but there’s a deadly serious point to all of it. Maybe all new ‘celebrities’ have got to be oriented into the right attitudes; shown into the narrative mold. Otherwise they will be out of place. The nudge will come in a hundred different insidious ways. But it won’t stop until the new entrant into the limelight emerges in the approved fashion.
The rules apparently say that in order to become normal one has to become the standard kind of freak; some caricature of piety, an ethnic ready to take offense at remarks he might not care less about; readily living a lifestyle that is nothing short of crazy. Until this is accomplished, the public figure will literally not compute to the media mind. He will be unrepresentable, impossible to portray as a signal that does not pass their signal gates.
Why won’t the media won’t stop until they have a person buttonholed into a category they can finally understand? Why won’t they quit until they have an oriental Jesse Jackson, who whenever he isn’t blowing all his money on dope, is busy being dating the starlet du jour?
The reason of course is because that is how their mind operates. There are some indications that the poor Lin doesn’t want play the media’s game. But the pressure to conform is surely on.
“I don’t think it was on purpose or whatever, but (at) the same time they have apologized. And so from my end I don’t care anymore,” Lin said after leading the Knicks to a 104-97 win over Dallas on Sunday. “Have to learn to forgive, and I don’t even think that was intentional. Or hopefully not.”
As an expression of the collective consciousness of the cultural elite, the media’s memes are nothing less than a kind of insanity; a window into an dreamscape in which everything is inverted; where ordinary people are seen as freaks and freaks are seen as paragons of sanity. This is sometimes called alienation; the average person is alien to them and they are alien to the average person.
Someone observed that the system of political correctness was really a process of encryption. It created code words for everything so the public discourse could be sanitized while allowing every hatred to fester unseen in the settings that were, by common consent, to be left unmonitored. After all, the only way you can keep a plantation system going is to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Within unmonitored settings people could speak their minds provided they knew how to shut their mouths when entering the public space. If you weren’t already on a plantation then you had to join one quick. Otherwise the system might leak truth.
Thus public obsession with “racism” or the recent inordinate sensitivity to “religion” does not actually reflect some deep desire to show respect or a rooted sense of shared piety. Instead, it represented an outrage that the hypocrisy is not maintained; that the supports holding up the facade are showing.
When former press secretary Robert Gibbs said that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum was “well over the line” for questioning President Obama’s Christian faith, was it because ‘faith’ was so important in the White House? Or was it just one more little prop to beat the other guy over the head with?
“It’s wrong, it’s destructive and it makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems we face together as Americans,” Gibbs told me in an exclusive interview Sunday on “This Week.” “It’s just time to get rid of this mindset in our politics that if we disagree we have to question character and faith.”
Nobody can talk about national, religion, patriotism or a personal life unless you happen to truly take it unseriously, otherwise you’re a bigot or worse, a hypocrite. But we’ll all pretend as if we cared.
In today’s world the most oppressive regimes in the world chair UN committees on human rights, theocracies claim to be “persecuted”; racial supremacists can cry ‘discrimination’ at every turn; and billionaires proclaim themselves champions of the poor. But nobody thinks these absurdities are in the least bit strange; the focus is on what they say. For as long as they deviate not a jot or tittle from the prescribed narrative, then all is well. But once they depart the language of political correctness it is time to break out the tar and feathers. The real offense in the world today is not to tell the lie, but to refuse to talk in code.
“I don’t even think that was intentional,” Lin said. Probably not. By now it is all second nature.
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“…oriented into the right attitudes; ” Oriented? You meant that, right?
Kim is too old for him.
Would a Chinese guy be racist if he found “Chink in the Armor” funny? I think a fair number would find it hilarious, though maybe not everyone would, but a fair number, because truth to tell some people like to laugh at themselves. Back in the day we could always tell who was from the Communist Party because they were “G&D”. That was our code for “grim and determined”. Nothing was ever funny to them.
They were a species of religious fanatic. They would be looking for the slightest sign of moral weakness, or more accurate, deviation from the Party Line. You could easily imagine how such people could operate a concentration camp. There is something horribly disturbing about this “oh no! ‘a chink in the armor’ — racism!” business; not to mention slightly insane.
Who gives a damn?
Some people just want to get on with life. To be just another human being the street. This may seem absurd to those who can’t imagine that people don’t walk around the whole day thinking, “I’m Chinese” or whatever you happen to be.
In one of these interviews Lin says he was genuinely perplexed by the things he read in the media. “Look, he can run!” or “See, he is deceptively atheletic!” He says, why would they think I couldn’t run? Indeed why? Or is that an insensitive question to ask? Here’s a proposition: let’s forget insensitive and bury it in a deep hole.
The best thing the media could do about this whole damn thing is to forget everything except the fact that he’s a human being. But they can’t do that, can they?
The MSM always wants a little dog shit in the brownie mix – they can’t stand purity.
I’m not saying what ingredient Kim would be – let you decide.
Richard, “Thus public obsession with “racism” or the recent inordinate sensitivity to “religion” does not actually reflect some deep desire to show respect or a rooted sense of shared piety. Instead, it represented an outrage that the hypocrisy is not maintained; that the supports holding up the facade are showing.” Absolutely correct. One of my favorites this week was the interview with the Frosty Freeze founder speaking of the old days’ birth control – a woman would put as asprin between her knees… so many things wrong with that image and drug – made me laugh for quite a while!
Do you want to date (code for have sex with) Kim Kardashian?
The locker room answer to that question should be, “I wouldn’t **** her with your ****.”
“It’s just time to get rid of this mindset in our politics that if we disagree we have to question character and faith.”
What arguments do the Donks use other than questioning people’s character and faith? If Republicans used an air horn every time some Donk resorted to that the Democrats would be reduced to holding up placards that say, “Think of the children.” We could respond by just waving signs labeled “They Lie” or “They are Hypocrites” with suitable arrows. This would cut the interviews/debates down to three minutes, leaving more time for commercials. The networks should love it.
Lin is of a generation that is supposed to be truly blind to racism, so the suggestion that he should not be able to run because he is not black, is not supposed to ever cross his mind. Though as an “Asian” who has been playing basketball since he was two I’m sure he’s heard it a million times already. It must be hard, to be expected to do such doublethink.
Part of being PC is also being G&D, it seems, if you laugh it’s for transcendental joy at rainbows and butterflies and the flaying of conservatives. But a generation ago I suspect the Chinese guys I knew would give a laugh at the “chink in the armor” jokes, or make it themselves. Though it’s a pretty lame excuse for a joke anyway. Let’s see how Spike Lee handles it when he does the Lin biopic.
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k @ 5: One of my favorites this week was the interview with the Frosty Freeze founder speaking of the old days’ birth control – a woman would put as asprin between her knees… so many things wrong with that image and drug – made me laugh for quite a while!
Those of us of Frosty’s generation all know the (lame) joke, but the “shocked!” official Democratic response that this shows Republicans want to roll back the clock those 50 years, is unfortunately effective for the younger folks, I’m afraid. So much culture is lost, like tears in the rain, …
If anyone is really serious about stopping “racism” the very first step has to be to stop playing the media’s game. Whatever else might be the cure, that ain’t it. The more of that elixir one imbibes, the worse off one is.
In the first place, it provides a pretext for being a loser. If you buy into the MSM narrative you must tactitly accept in the stereotype they surreptitiously peddle which amounts to this: Chinese guys can’t run and Black guys can’t do anything but steal. Isn’t that what the plaintext really says under the encryption?
Know your place. Step out of line and you’re racist. Observe that to step out of line is racist and you’re racist. Say that the MSM is really racist and you’re racist.
You have to put people into bins because otherwise, how would you manipulate them? Get them into groups. Then you have voting blocs. Then you can dangle things like Green Cards and Affirmative Action in front of one or the other. Heck, you can even dangle media acceptance in front of a freak from Harvard to make him normal. Get them into cattle chutes and you can lead them anywhere you like. This is called class warfare. It is also known as achieving “authenticity”. I think it should also be known by the word “scam”.
The absolute first place to start is to quit repeating all this politically correct stuff because underneath its pious garb PC is really some kind of supremacist ideology, though no one dares to call it that. Maybe you can’t oppose it openly, but at least you have to recognize it for what it is.
Josh @7
“Tears in the Rain.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw
Of cattle chutes: “Get them into cattle chutes and you can lead them anywhere you like.(W)”
Burke foresaw:
“In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.”
But, the guillotine soon replaced the gallows; the Gulag replaced the guillotine; political correctness replaced the Gulag; the …
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/reflections.html
8. Wretchard – Know your place. Step out of line and you’re racist. Observe that to step out of line is racist and you’re racist. Say that the MSM is really racist and you’re racist.
When your only tool is a hammer…
Black teapartier Lloyd Marcus is very refreshing — he calls himself the Proudly Un-hyphenated American.
Here is an excerpt from his Black History Month post:
“While some blacks may find comfort and think it racially loyal to keep blaming “whitey” for everything, black youths are going to h— in a hand-basket. Blacks have epidemic school dropouts and 70 percent out-of-wedlock births, and half of black babies are aborted via an organization founded on racism, Planned Parenthood. Blacks are actively involved in a self-induced genocide.
This is why I do not give a hoot about what black racists and self-serving poverty-pimp politicians think of me for suggesting that my fellow blacks assume responsibility for their own lives. Lives, after all, are at stake.
Ironically, liberals claim to want black empowerment. News flash: personal responsibility is black empowerment!”
http://www.lloydmarcus.com/
Let me tell you how PC hypersensitive the sports-world has become. Back circa 1970-71 in the days before “white” and “black” playing styles had more or less merged, Esquire Magazine ran a story on NBA white and black players’ contrasting styles of play: Earl “The Pearl” Monroe of the late Baltimore Bullets was selected as representative of the black player who played “black,” (i.e., “flashy,” “selfish?”) while Pete Maravich named as the white player whose style most closely mirrored Earl’s “black” play. Conversely, Boston’s John “Hondo” Havlicek was named the white player typical of “blue-collar” “white” “team-orientated” “unselfish” play, while black teammate Paul Silas (he of the 3 inch vertical leap, yet a rebounding machine) was picked as the black player whose play was closest to that of the typical white player, i.e., hustle, good positioning and anticipation, etc., as opposed to great leaping ability and superior speed and athleticism. Forget the fact those stereo-types, while possessing a kernel of truth, were hardly all encompassing even then; today to even mention that article in polite conversation in most quarters–even in the media–and let alone discuss the underlying issues in depth–is considered “racist ” and beyond the pale (un-pc pun intended) Ah, progress in the 21st Century..
“The best thing the media could do about this whole damn thing is to forget everything except the fact that he’s a human being. But they can’t do that, can they?”
…treat him like any other white guy. You are not comfortable with someone that you have to walk around on pins and needles.
Thanks for your comments at 8. It really captures my personal sentiments. Race relations have gone downhill in the past couple of decades as popular culture sought to remedy old injuries by creating “authentic” identity groups. It has poisoned the well of human relations and set back progress towards a color blind society. It leaves one wondering if we are not regressing back to a bygone era with nothing but an inversion of roles. For those who did not take part in past injustices it is a bitter pill. We should be hesitant to tolerate hucksters and openly condemn the firebrands of social justice and civil unrest.
I confess to being a racist — I love NASCAR and Formula 1 racing!
8. Wretchard – Know your place. Step out of line and you’re racist. Observe that to step out of line is racist and you’re racist. Say that the MSM is really racist and you’re racist.
Probably demanding their definition of racism would be racist, at which time the best response would be to wonder (out loud of course) whether the person is the McCarthy of Racism. Yes, I know McCarthy was right about communists. The liberal cant I grew up with was that McCarthy had an enemies list and was using false charges of communist sympathies to rub them out. However, your liberal accuser will not believe the best of McCarthy, and so will catch the drift of your comment. Just as they accused McCarthy of exploiting a knee-jerk fear of communist infiltration for personal and party benefit, we accuse them of exploiting a knee-jerk hatred of racism for personal and party benefit.
I lead to read Mark 3 today, and realized that the social aspect of John the Baptist’s message has been overlooked. He wanted the religious leaders to repent and get right with the God that they purported to serve, the people to practice personal charity, government contractors to practice honesty (the publicans worked for the Romans to gather taxes), and the soldiers (the government) to not falsely accuse anyone, not indulge in gratuious violence, and to be content with their wages.
It seems that the process is starting to breakdown. As the MSM loses it monopoly on information a progressively larger portion of the population will realise how much of sham the whole racism ploy is. As a result a significent number of people may keep their head down but they wil not internalise the viewpoint. As a result when the controls start to crack they will quickly shatter. If we are very lucky we may get a colorblind society. If we are’t we will get a return to the overtly racist society that we had in the pre-Civil Rights era, only t6his time with a defacto aparthaid with the Afro-Americans in their areas and the Whites in their areas.