The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

YPD Lieutenant Brian Logan said his department’s investigation of the incident is ongoing and declined to provide further information, but the self-described comedy group “Million Dollar Extreme” — which, according to its Facebook page, consists of three men who produce “alternative comedy” for the Internet — posted a picture of two men holding the signs in question. Multiple students said they had seen these men carrying the signs on campus earlier in the day.

million dollar extreme was associated with a stunt "satirizing" gamergate by harassing and threatening Brianna Wu

http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/gamergates-archvillain-is-really-a-trolling-sketch-comedian

yup. real alt-right andy kaufmans

i'm looking at one of the papers right now and it is very embarrassing from the pov of having come from an academic producing scholarship at the university level. the link between the politics of the author, and the insubstantial nature of the scholarship, is that the former - an emphasis in the academy on activism - allowed the latter - scholarship w/ minimal redeeming qualities. it's indicative of an emphasis on left-wing activism in the university at the expense of the traditional purvey of academic study.

In response to any other kind of comment on god's green earth I would never bother to mention this, but you mean "purview"

thank u

god for a minute i was convinced amateurist was finally getting his pedant's comeuppance before i went back to attribute the quote

I think that's jumping to conclusions just a little.
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 3:30 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, Click didn’t have a tenure-track job b/c of her "activism."
there’s tons of crappy academic work on popular culture, and a lot of the people who write it get good jobs, completely apart from whether they are particularly politically active.

(of course, there’s certainly an issue with scholars making their work seem more substantial and credible by casting it in what are often unearned political terms, whether that means uncovering the putative "subversiveness" of a popular TV show, generating a by-the-numbers Frankfurt School critique of Rihanna, or whatever. but I think this stuff is only related in the most tenuous sense to what Professor Click did in the heat of the moment in the Mizzou quad.)

really she could have made it all better if rather than taking down her twitter account, she just posted this to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpxsMyoXUZQ

what did Adorno have to say about John Wetton's bass playing

god for a minute i was convinced amateurist was finally getting his pedant's comeuppance before i went back to attribute the quote

― j., Wednesday, November 11, 2015 5:20 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd work on establishing a cartoonish caricature of you, too, if i had any fucking idea who you were or what your opinions were. so may i humbly suggest you go fuck yourself instead?

...mr. internet-mensch.

you can try

lol i could not even interpret what yr argument was and it certainly had nothing to do w/ what i was writing so i can't really respond. if u'd like to view that as a concession (to what? idk) then go right ahead

― Mordy, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 12:46 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It specifically addresses what you wrote, idk what's difficult to understand

god for a minute i was convinced amateurist was finally getting his pedant's comeuppance before i went back to attribute the quote

― j., Wednesday, November 11, 2015 4:20 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

senile broken records don't need comeuppance

http://humor.gunaxin.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/grampa05.gif

^ proper

http://fusion.net/story/231089/safe-space-history/

You are all liberals. You all believe in the same principles. This fight is not even high school, it's fucking grade school. I hate this thread and I wish you would all go back to paying attention to the composition of our state legislatures and federal courts and STOP FUCKING PRETENDING WE HATE EACH OTHER WE'RE ON THE FUCKING LEFT

oh wait that would require behaving like adults and having a conversation, which is something extremists have never been capable of, even before the Internet. I'm an idiot and I've just wasted a lot of my own time. Fuck everyone.

In TWENTY FUCKING FIFTEEN the left in America has still not arrived at the necessary degree of self-awareness to realize when it is becoming its own stereotype - "Oh, the left always eats itself" YOU'D THINK WE COULD FUCKING LEARN, WE'VE SURE ALL BEEN TO A LOT OF SCHOOL! This bitter self-hating nonsense is why people turn. Learn to prioritize.

Prioritize as in:

1. Sustainable environment
2. Sustainable economy (work conditions, wages)
3. More equitable wealth distribution
4. Respect for all people of all identities and kinds

But let's fucking bitch at EACH OTHER about the fucking details of free expression and safe spaces. It's not like the fucking planet is burning up, or we're selling everyone a fucking FBI wire to carry around with themselves everywhere they go

I fucking HATE this stupid shit. These arguments are STUPID. FUCKING INSIPID SHIT from otherwise intelligent people. The earth is about to die. My kid is quite possibly never going to be able to eat fresh seafood when she's an adult. Our civilization is being wired to become one giant espionage / surveillance machine. Any millionaires gonna stop eating over that?

glad all this got sorted out then

I think quite a lot of people disagree with your priorities, El Tomboto...

hope they like swimming

If you want to enlist people's help in ~vague but catastrophic crisis coming in the near future~ perhaps "it's a disaster that my kids will never get to consume luxury food products" is not a great way of attracting the attention of protesters who are concerned about the perhaps less ~worthwhile~ but more immediately pressing concerns of "our kids are getting shot by racist police officers while walking down the street."

I think quite a lot of people disagree with your priorities, El Tomboto...

― Frederik B, T

they're the ones voting for state legislators who want textbooks to mention Noah's ark.

Frederik and Branwell, you have to vote for men and women who don't countenance this shit, and that means tossing out the legislators who believe there is no race problem. It's the same argument.

Branwell Bell Luxury Food Products - "From the ocean to your safe space."

Tombot seems skeptical about the fight against insensitive Halloween costumes, not the one against state sponsored murder. He didn't say the latter wasn't worthwhile.

This is a disastrous series of events for liberalism and leftism in this country.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, November 11, 2015 3:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This kind of defeatist talk is just as "damaging" as whatever you think is a disaster for the left about these events. The media, or certain segments of it, love the "coddled college students" narrative because it's an easy distraction from the underlying issues. It's an excuse. Sure, Click fucked up, the "safe space" protesters fucked up. We hopefully have learned that you can't expect to stage a protest in a commons and then say "no cameras." You want safe space, go somewhere off to the side, go into a conference room. But making that what the story is about is a very convenient way of once again ignoring the bigger problem. It's the box of cigarillos.

Thinking about media perception is important and should always be part of strategy. But there's always an extent to which the neoliberal media will be neoliberal. All things being equal, it will always prefer order, police, football, authority, whiteness. It will seize on any slip up. Anything "activist" has to be 3x as pure and clean and careful in order not to get trashed or ignored.

I might feel more passionate about this if I didn't think that a lot of college degrees* were utter garbage.

*probably doesn't apply to Yale

we are building something big here, people!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/racial-discrimination-protests-ignite-at-colleges-across-the-us.html?_r=1

coddle this, bitches!

even smith college is getting into the act. good old smith.

kind of dreaming about SEC football teams going on strike for voting rights legislation.

TS coddling vs swaddling
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-swaddled-generation/2015/05/19/162ea17a-fe6a-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html

the messaging for the yale march is interesting

http://blavity.com/8-photos-from-yales-historic-march-of-resilience/

college administrators love to talk about 'resilience' and 'grit' these days

Thankfully football has gotten involved so people will start to take things seriously now. /s

does the involvement of football teams devalue these protests?

i would say the opposite

Devalue them in the eyes of sports-hating lefty snobs*? Probably. Devalue them in the eyes of business-minded university administrators? Exactly the opposite.

*"sports-hating lefty snobs" may be a strictly rhetorical construct not actually found in reality

http://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article44046114.html

SC paper, 'Why the last few days at Mizzou have college administrators everywhere scared'

(bc college sports)

hit them where it hurts, the wallet

I think it's brilliant that the football players have gotten involved -- they have ridiculously outsized leverage based on the very fact that they are exploited.

their leverage doesn't come from being exploited, their leverage comes from the fact that more people care about mizzou's football record than about who is chancellor

yes but they only care about that because of the way the athletes have been being exploited

they'd probably still care more about it even if schools just fielded modest little extracurricular teams, OR if schools paid their athletes

but still

Their leverage comes from the fact that they are hugely valuable to the university and yet given little in return, so the U has much more to lose than they do if they strike.

yeah, that's millions of dollars lost if a team doesn't play. it's a billion dollar business. probably. i just made that up. sounds right.

okay, NEARLY a billion.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2015/03/11/ncaa-financial-statement-2014-1-billion-revenue/70161386/

if schools paid the athletes and the team threatened to boycott, the effect would be the same. for most people their state universities are football teams w/ some classes attached. more people would be able to tell you who their state school's quarterback is than their state school's chancellor.