Of Law Revue Girls & Thorny – Privilege & the New Puritanism; Blog Inequality; Identity Politics; Quotas.

Next time you seek to silence an individual who has offended you in some way with words, especially one sworn to an ethic of do no harm, and you seek to silence them with their privilege, then wonder if you’re not simply reinforcing it. That’s privilege as a wall of your making, over which two people can no longer even shake hands to explore the differences that make life the celebration it should be, rather than each left to guard their side of the wall, wallowing in a morass of ignorance, and too often, fear.

[The first section below was originally this post’s ending; I’ve rearranged the order as the initial two sections were only ever about getting to this …]

Identity Politics and Privilege – Law Revue Girls & Context of Comedy:

On Twitter, Saturday night, identity politics got itself into its usual abject mess. Though of all its victims, I wouldn’t have put my money on the Law Revue Girls, clever makers of that  feminist parody of Robin Thicke’s execrable Blurred Lines:

Saturday night the Law Revue Girls Twitter account tweeted the following, defending feminist Lily Allen’s music video from being racist:

I would put calling @lilyallen racist up there with calling Macklemore privileged,  in the stakes of no purpose. Missing the message.
— Law Revue Girls (@LawRevueGirls) November 16, 2013

You can imagine what ensured. Let me show you:

For all those who don't understand why we make fun of #WhiteFeminists, the @lawrevuegirls multi part tweet defence of Lily Allen sums it up.
— Aunty Haurangi  (@_surlymermaid) November 16, 2013

And:

@LawRevueGirls yes, how nice for you #privilege
— Gina Rangi (@mokai77) November 16, 2013

Despite one of the Law Revue Girls described herself as a racial 'fruit salad', they belatedly attempted to extract themselves from the shit-pond they’d unwittingly dived head first into:

Not trying to start a war, I *just* think the world's a bit screwy if the only thing you notice when watching a music video is skin colour
— Law Revue Girls (@LawRevueGirls) November 16, 2013

They should’ve known better; the Left aren’t forgiving, and they’re hardest on their own, and so it on went all night. I suspect the Law Revue Girls will now do what all wise people should do – I’m not a wise man - when their privilege is stuffed into in their mouths: shut up. Even Left stalwart, Chris Trotter, admits this mainstay of Left politics, on the silencing of Willie Jackson and John Tamihere:

Rather than korero, the left-wing social media’s first instinct was to condemn, threaten, punish and shut down.

Because the Left typically, arrogantly, are not interested in interacting with differing opinion: they simply seek to shut that opinion down. (For Libertarians reading, that’s an interesting link).

Was Lily Allen’s music video racist? Here’s her defence: you decide.

That’s not the point for me anymore; which is this new linguistic puritanism stalking the land through our fellow citizens, sifting every word for privilege and thought crimes. Giovanni Tiso used this new puritanism of language (hence thought) to take down Willie and JT: I’ve written why I’m not comfortable with that. I wonder if Giovanni understands he’s put himself in the same moral arbiter role of ‘the people’ as Whaleoil has, who would shut down, I suspect, much of the comedy I love: I’ve written on that, also – can a rape joke be defended. About the time radshitzy, neo-Marxist feminist Thorny put herself so humourlessly in my life, checking my privilege for daring to enter her Tweet timeline – that’s all I did, I chipped in on a tweet – I noticed she was also attacking comedian Raybon Kan; I have no idea why, it would be some joke or other she thought he should be shut down for.

I love comedy. Read this link. I love comedy; ‘it lights a fire that warms the coldest nights of my mind’. I record the stand-up on the comedy channel to watch on Friday night: so let’s not kid ourselves where this leads. I suspect less than fifty percent of the stand-up acts on Apollo Live, et al, would survive this new citizen policed thought-crime puritanism. Of home-grown shows, I can guarantee you 7 Days, and Jono and Ben at Ten, two great shows, will very soon not pass muster.

I’m over it. And remember no surveillance Big Brother state can survive for long without an acquiescent people: the secret police usually only ended up on your door when your neighbour potted you in. So though this post doesn’t initially impact on the coercive state, you can bet it ultimately does: hate speech laws, cyber bullying laws, will be the legislative manifestation.

The ethic of this blog is individualism. It is only a classical liberal individualist ethic that will ultimately heal the –isms: sexism, racism, et al. I’ve written further on collectivist identity politics on my post regarding that radshitzy clique of neo-Marxist feminism, but for the record:

In some enlightened age we will meet each other as individuals, representing only ourselves,.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) November 16, 2013

Next time you seek to silence an individual who has offended you in some way with words, especially one sworn to an ethic of do no harm, and you seek to silence them with their privilege, then wonder if you’re not simply reinforcing it. That’s privilege as a wall of your making, over which two people can no longer even shake hands to examine the differences that make life the celebration it should be, rather than each left to guard their side of the wall, wallowing in a morass of ignorance, and too often, fear.

[Following, is how this blog post started …]

Gender Quotas:

I’ve been meaning to get back to the Labour Party’s gender quota again: passed, at last, in their annual conference some weeks ago, they'll be running a quota to ensure women comprise 50% of their caucus. This weekend, my loquacious slanderer, Thorny, has kindly provided me with the impetus to make a comment, albeit vicariously. By showing the logic hole, or at the least, missing piece, in her latest post, Ladies, Step Up To The Platform, - Just Not The Mic - nice title Thorny - I wish to keep a promise I made to the Labour women MP’s in this old post of mine concerning this year’s Labour Party leadership contest, which ultimately no woman MP contested (link below):

… all I’m saying is a Labour woman MP must have a tilt [for the Labour Party leadership]. Because this will become my business if, when Labour ever gains that sandpit in the Fortress of Legislation, it then attempts to implement not just a gender quota within the party - which I couldn’t care less about, that’s Labour Party business - but also force it on the private sector, making gender quotas an issue of the voluntary, free society, versus the coerced one again. If no woman contests this [leadership], I'll be pointing out the double standard here. [Why should you demand, by force, what you’re not prepared to do the hard yards for?]

I would love to put the below questions to Thorny by posting on her site, but like so many Left blogs, she lacks professionalism, either deleting comments, or worse, over-writing and mis-representing them, so here we go. Thorny is opining the representation of women in Martyn Bradbury’s Lefty diatribe, The Daily Blog:

Just one question.

How the fuck are you going to do any of that when you’ve already got a roster which is 38% women …

But those women only provide 6% of the posts?

I have done this math.  I have a goddamned spreadsheet.  Because I’ve seen so many people comment about the fucking flood of chaff which covers the TDB front page.

38% women posters.  6% of the total posts.

Trouble is, the accuracy of her conclusion of misogyny, or certainly larceny, can only be proven by a second series of related questions, namely:

Have more women that those 38% approached Bradbury about contributing content, and has he turned those women down?

If this is the case, Thorny has a valid point, given Daily Blog’s Left-Liberal-quota agenda nonsense. Unfortunately Thorny provides no evidence of this; so I’d be interested to know from Bradbury’s point of view what the answer is. Perhaps someone might ask him for me: while I read widely amongst the cross section of blogs, my experience has been very few of the Left have any interest outside their own bullying world view, and if I'm not mistaken, that walking ego, Martyn Bradbury, has blocked me, also.

Further, of the 38% of female contributors providing only 6% of content, are they actually producing an equivalent 38% content which Bradbury is then refusing to publish? Is their productivity that of the men on the site? Bradbury can only publish what he’s been furnished with.

Again, if that is the case, Thorny has a point, but no evidence is provided of same. It’s just the accusation not backed up with detail, and the smear against a Bradbury it's postulated is concerned only with his ‘liberal cred’- (on which Thorny may well be right).

Until those points are answered factually, then based on the fact that ultimately no Labour woman MP did put their hand up to contest the Labour Party leadership, preferring, instead, an enforced quota, I’m going to fantastically – don’t you dare take this out of context – put myself on Bradbury’s side of the equation, until the numbers are given one way or the other.

Mind you, the Left continuing to pull itself apart: what a shame. I guess the bright side is the more time they spend being vicious to each other, the less time they have visiting viciousness on the rest of us.

Blog Inequality:

By the bye, Thorny’s statement in her piece that her blog is ranked in Ken Perrot’s Open Parachute blog rankings, led me to do the irresistible: checking her ranking against mine. Damn: she’s above me in the blog rankings :) Over October she was placed fortieth, I – ahem, low posting month – was way down at eighty fifth.

That's hardly fair; surely my viewpoint is being stifled here? In the worthy cause of combating blog inequality, shouldn’t her readers be forced to read mine to give equal weight to our views? Just as I am forced by that ruthless mechanism of state, the tax department, to share my income with all and sundry, and supporting Thorny's tax surveillance state I have no agreement with, then why shouldn’t Thorny be forced to share her readership with me?

… The answer is obvious: because such a notion is stupid. More than that: unjust. But that’s exactly what the Left advocate with my income, and if you speak up against them, then as is their modus operandi, they will simply seek to beat you into silence with your privilege.

Albeit, before leaving this topic, I would like to take the time to sooth my sore ego, almost the size of Thorny’s, who the odd time I’ve ‘interrupted’ her on Twitter since she first falsely foot tripped me, has - pot/kettle - laid the charge against me of attention seeking; ironically in the exact manner Edwardian gentlemen sought to side-line the suffragettes by condescendingly calling them attention seekers, as if they were but truculent little children.  It seems Thorny has gone full circle.

But of course my readership is minute: my central ethic, unfettered freedom of an individual human being to do and say as they like so long as they harm no one, is an ethic not shared anymore in the West. The battle I fight was lost a long time ago, and I'm just filling in time between drinks, while they remain legal. And I’m not overlooking the seeming illogic that Libertarian NotPC gets something like thirty thousand visits a month, way more than me also: people who believe in freedom tend to be working people, with little time for reading, and what is happening here is that over more than twenty years of hard grafting, Peter Cresswell has formed for himself a monopoly for that time – bastard. I’m working on my complaint to that oxymoronic Commerce Commission right after this missive, to see if I can get them to pare him down to my size: my recommendation will be that he only be allowed to post once a fortnight until his visits are reduced to my level. I don’t plan to do anything different, such as be more productive or more creative: I don’t need to so long as the state will intervene to take the share he has won in the market of blogs, and give it to me under the sanction of fairness.

Related Posts:

GenderPolitics / Rape Culture: The Unbearable Silencing of Willie Jackson and JohnTamihere.

Radshitzy Feminism, Police Investigative Technique:Identity Politics Deconstructing Law and Sense

This is None of My Business, but … Labour LeadershipQua Women & Maori MPs

Rape Culture: The Roast Busters

Of Comedy, Whaleoil, Kim Dotcom Freedom of Speech and Bounded Liberty.

Is Campbell Live Racist? ... That Al Nisbet Cartoon.

Update 1 follows after post ... the answer. No, of course Campbell Live is not racist, albeit, I don't know that is the final point to take from the debate over the cartoon.

Re the comments, and a couple of emails, of course I believe in unfettered free speech: I never took this as a free speech issue, no one has been asking for a law change to ban cartoons! The issue here was is this cartoon racist. For me the further issue is the breakfast in schools program that is growing dependence and the welfare/surveillance state.

As a classical liberal, I can talk about racism because I can’t, by definition, be racist (or sexist, etc) ;) I deal with people on the level of the individual, thus not as stereotypes, or insentient representatives of a group - as, for example, this Marxist feminist ironically deals in.

So, I simply want to pose some questions. There is currently a furor happening over Al Nisbet’s cartoon on the breakfast in school’s scheme being racist:

Okay, but then have a look at this clip on Campbell Live last night regarding the breakfast in schools scheme: have a very close look at every single child in it. I might be wrong, but I don’t see a single pakeha child: only Maori and Islander. And even if there is a pakeha I've missed, they are a minute minority.

So my questions. Is the Campbell Live clip racist by only connecting non-pakeha children with this issue via dint of the children shown in their clip? If it's not, then what makes this cartoon racist? Note the sentiment of the cartoon might well be offensive, but the accusation is Nisbet is racist because he has only shown Maori in the cartoon.

Surely before we put good old stick John Campbell before the squash player, given the strength of the hate earned by Al Nisbet, we need to understand the contradiction here.

Regarding the breakfast in schools scheme, itself, given it sheets not one iota of responsibility onto the parents - regardless of their race - in the form of identifying those sending their children to school with no breakfast, and asking them why this is, (because in that lies the only actual fix); then this scheme is, of course, another travesty of welfare growing an already huge state by creating yet more dependency. We're not just feeding those children who are being sent to school with no breakfast, we're feeding every child in New Zealand attending a primary school: who can't see where that leads?

Then think of the further logic behind this scheme: these parents can’t, apparently, provide breakfast for their children. Okay, so why isn’t the taxpayer also providing their lunch, and packing them with tea to take home? Surely we should just be feeding these children, period? And what about clothing them? Indeed, if parents are this hopeless, then shouldn't we do away with families, and just have the state raise our children in total?

This is exactly the same issue as to the (unintended) consequences of renovating and building bigger state houses, as I have written on earlier.

Freedom and the free society. No point looking here: it’s gone, lost to rampant statism. Because what pays for all this is tax; and the tax system is Orwell’s vision of the surveillance state, my entire blog is proof of this.

To the parents, and I couldn't care less your race; if you can’t afford to feed children, then please, don’t have them. Childbirth is not mandatory.


Update 1.

That'll teach me. The answer to the first part is below: and I simply needed to rearrange the words in my first paragraph to find it. A wise man, or in this case, woman, might even conclude a bit of ... let's say a lapse, rather than rank stupidity on my behalf.

Cheers Gina.

@mokai77 @jcelaw Thank you. A valid argument, finally, that I can understand. We are all individuals, not defined by a group. 1/2
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 30, 2013

I was going to take this post down, but that would be somehow cowardly, plus across 160 posts, I'm allowed to err this once :)  And related, the way this debate was framed in the MSM, and via too many journos on Twitter, I wonder how many did in fact get it, because until Gina, I was only getting single word denunciations of my proposition, that is, no explanation? Plus the issue also stupidly devolved into another 'get Devoy' agenda on Twitter, which is counter productive as it takes the mind from the issue that matters - why, in New Zealand, 2013, is any child being sent to school hungry. Per my blog above, the second part, my answer is different to what the Left imputes (erroneously).

And anyway, that said, my post was also deliberately written to throw a second rotten egg into the debate on racism and this cartoon, but in a manner than could not put the yoke back on me, because it is deeply uncomfortable - that issue's still there, regardless of the above explanation, in those two questions, and the content of the Campbell Live Clip: but for once, I'm not going there - and no one else can, there is no data. Political commentator, Bryce Edwards, points to this again in his summation of this post on his political round-up: see update two following.

For the record, yes, this cartoon is racist. And we'll put this down to the clumsiest post I've written.


Update 2:

Marvellous: my clumsiest post to date, and I finally make Bryce Edwards Political Roundup :) The lot of a blogger.

 Libertarian blogger Mark Hubbard argues that 'the sentiment of the cartoon might well be offensive, but the accusation is Nisbet is racist because he has only shown Maori in the cartoon', and this is unwarranted because clearly many of those using food in schools are indeed non-Pakeha, as evidence by a TV clip - see: Is Campbell Live Racist? ... That Al Nisbet Cartoon.

.