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John Cleese Warns Campus Political Correctness Leading Towards 1984 (washingtonexaminer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Ashe Schow writes at the Washington Examiner that, "The Monty Python co-founder, in a video for Internet forum Big Think, railed against the current wave of hypersensitivity on college campuses, saying he has been warned against performing on campuses. "[Psychiatrist Robin Skynner] said: 'If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behavior,'" Cleese said. "And when you're around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what's going to upset them next." Cleese said that it's one thing to be "mean" to "people who are not able to look after themselves very well," but it was another to take it to "the point where any kind of criticism of any individual or group could be labeled cruel." Cleese added that "comedy is critical," and if society starts telling people "we mustn't criticize or offend them," then humor goes out the window. "With humor goes a sense of proportion," Cleese said. "And then, as far as I'm concerned, you're living in 1984." Cleese is just the latest comedian to lecture college students about being so sensitive.
Jimmy Carr replaced his previously shortest joke: "Venison's dear, isn't it?" (which doesn't work as well for Americans, because it relies on the British expression for "expensive" . . .) with the even shorter: "Dwarf Shortage". He followed up with "If you’re a dwarf and you’re offended by that, grow up.” Complaints have been filed with the broadcast regulators about his "discriminatory" "hate speech".
rape epidemic moral panic... campus sexual assault kangaroo courts
The term rape culture accurately sums up these things.
Here's the thing. This is sort of my bigot detector kit. Criticize a rape culture for creating a hostile environment, and somebody will fly out of the woodwork and leap to the conclusion that one is:
#1 Male
#2 Heterosexual
#3 Sexually abusive towards women
That's how one knows one has a bigot on one's hands. Apparently if the environment is hostile towards trans women and men, who are informed by university policy that they are already considered guilty of rape, that the task campus officials have is one of actively trying to catching you in the act, that they have their eye on you are are trying to find some excuse to expel you after taking your money, it doesn't count.
It's telling that expulsions and suspensions because of rape cultures don't lead to criminal prosecutions.
Another way to use the bigot detector kit is to ping on someone completely misinterpreting what Cleese is saying here to conclude he's an asshole. He might be an asshole. I find him to be funny as hell.
Basically, if somebody who is not of the correct demographic raises a concern about wrongful pro/persecution or notes that they feel they are in a hostile environment with unfair policies, and that's the basis for somebody else to conclude that the person raising the concern not only has never been on the receiving end of sexism but acts unethically or rudely on a daily basis, that somebody else, not the person raising the concern who's of the wrong demographic, is a bigot, plain and simple.
But hey, I'll never have the privilege of being unaware of what it's like on the receiving end of sexism and sexual harassment!
You correctly pointed out that there is a strong motivator, but I think you missed the mark that it is money via lawsuits. After all, only tiny minority of such cases ever go that far, and it is typically against college administrators overreach and overreaction.
I think real motivator is that victimized is a coveted social status. When group concept of privilege mutated and misapplied to become highly socially disadvantageous label applied to an individual, it is natural that maintaining social standing now demands negation or qualifiers of such label privilege. How you do that? You invent slights, blow trivial offenses out of proportion and proceed to claim to be oppressed by this or that -ism based on these.
I blame Social Sciences for creating this monster. They invented and promoted the idea that in order to have a valid opinion, one must necessary experience things first-hand. If you didn't, then you are privileged, and should just act as you told. Nobody likes doing that, so everyone suddenly jumps on the victimhood bandwagon just to not get silenced at every turn.
Fortunately one of the requirements is that you not be a member of a criminal organization.
That's not true, they allow political parties. If ever there was a band of thieves they qualify.
And now those same christians are the ones yelling loudest about "PC Culture!"
See, the whole thing comes down to whose ox is being gored. As long as it's those people then of course political correctness is bad. But when it's you, it's "WE'RE BEING OPPRESSED BECAUSE A CASHIER DIDN'T WISH ME MERRY CHRISTMAS". Their feels are hurting because there's not enough baby jesus on their coffee cups and by god, that means war!
Really, a charge of "political correctness" is just a lazy way to say you don't have a better argument.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It featured a fantastic, humorous episode written by Darin Morgan about a monster who is bitten by a man and turns into one. Its a beautiful satire about an alien trying to make sense of human behavior (working 9 to 5, lying about sexual prowess, our love for fast food) and, at one point, he gets hit by a transgender which leads to an hilarious exchange with Duchovny trying to explain transgenderism to Darby.
So i've just found out that Slate actually run a story on their LGBTQ section titiled Did The X-Files use a transgender character for cheap laughs?. Why, yes. Yes they did. It doesn't matter that the treatment wasn't offensive at all, or that the entire episode was making fun of the human race as a whole, or even that it actually was in line with the transition theme that was the entire point of the episode. Some people got their panties in a bunch because a transgender character threw a punch.
Cleese is absolutely right here. Then again, he usually always is.
It used to be that you'd have asshole gym teachers treating you like shit because you weren't on one of their teams. That pretty much ruined high school gym class for me, and I wasn't even out of shape, just not in a competitive sport. I happily took up working out and weight lifting when I was in college and out on my own because I considered being healthy valuable.
However, now I think it has swung too far in the other direction. You can't tell someone they will be healthier if they make certain lifestyle changes or try and maintain a lower weight, and then help them do so. You have to "accept" them as overweight or even obese. In a country where we are edging our way more towards making everyone responsible for the health care of others, this will seriously screw our health care system.
I think we should be setting a standard and then having professionals who assist people in getting there. While there are always going to be people who end up larger or with a higher body fat than others, there are very few conditions which condemn you to being automatically obese no matter what. And even those conditions need to be fought against aggressively because being obese is dangerous by itself.
What cannot happen is the asshole gym teacher factor where you're shit if you don't come genetically programmed as the captain of the football/track/baseball/swimming team. I wouldn't think that setting that sort of standard in teaching should be all that difficult to manage. I have to admit, I sort of blame the intense focus on competitive sports in schools for that, because instead of working to ensure the health of the whole population of a school, they're instead focusing time, money, and interest into a small group of stand-outs who probably don't need the extra effort to begin with.