Chronicles of the Crazy Time (13)

Left craziness is coming so fast and thick on an hourly basis that it is tempting just to turn this mini-series into a real time Twitter feed. So we’re reserving compilations for the most notable insanities.

And here is a doozy from The Guardian, beyond even the olympian satirical capacities of the Babylon Bee:

Glass ceilings and phallic towers. Mean streets and dark alleys. Road names and statues of men. From the physical to the metaphorical, the city is filled with reminders of masculine power. And yet we rarely talk of the urban landscape as an active participant in gender inequality. A building, no matter how phallic, isn’t actually misogynist, is it? Surely a skyscraper isn’t responsible for sexual harassment, the wage gap, or even the glass ceiling, whether it has a literal one up top or not?

That said, our built environments can still reflect patterns of gender-based discrimination. To imagine the city and its structures as neutral places where complicated human social relations are staged is to ignore the simple fact that people built these places. As the feminist geographer Jane Darke has said: “Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete.” In other words, cities reflect the norms of the societies that build them. And sexism is a deep-rooted norm.

Of course, this piece is really quite behind the times. Because we nowadays know that some women have penises, how do we know all these skyscrapers identify as male? I think this whole article is transphobic.

Also, if you don’t build buildings up, then you have to build them out. But that’s called sprawl, and I was told sprawl is bad. Can’t the left keep their story straight?

As you may know, the Disney+ streaming service has debuted its movie version of Hamilton, the blockbuster Broadway musical that features a mostly black cast saying nice things about the founders and the great country they launched. The left wasn’t happy about it, as I noted in an item here back in 2016. Here’s one part of my commentary:

One of the delicious and predictable spectacles that has come out of the runaway success of the Broadway rap musical Hamilton is the identity politics left losing their lunch over it. Even though Hamilton was created by and stars a minority cast, you just knew the Left would call it racist anyway. Because racism. And stupidity: the identity politics Left hasn’t got much else to say. . .

Sure enough, the campus leftist rabble is turning its guns on Hamilton. The biggest sin of Hamilton is the less than subtle suggestion that the legacy of the Founding belongs to everyone regardless of skin color and status, which is what you might expect from a country whose founding document begins with the principle that “all men are created equal.” So naturally Slate complains that “It’s still white history. And no amount of casting people of color disguises the fact that they’re erasing people of color from the actual narrative.”

Well, in the current moment, Hamilton is back on the chopping block. Prediction: when Broadway finally reopens some time next year, there is going to be pressure for Hamilton not to be brought back, despite its huge box office.

The left’s paranoia is consistently displayed whenever a Republican president is in office. Back in 1971, there was a lot of new left chatter about how Nixon was going to declare martial law and cancel the 1972 election. And lots of lefties right now are saying Trump is going to do the same thing, unlike George W. Bush and those “more responsible” Republican presidents in the past. Except, er:

Will Bush Cancel the 2008 Election?

It is time to think about the “unthinkable.” The Bush Administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.

The GOP strategy for another electoral theft in 2008 has taken clear shape, though we must assume there is much more we don’t know. But we must also assume that if it appears to Team Bush/Cheney/Rove that the GOP will lose the 2008 election anyway (as it lost in Ohio 2006) we cannot ignore the possibility that they would simply cancel the election. Those who think this crew will quietly walk away from power are simply not paying attention.

For some amusement, it is hard to beat this item from the good people at Retraction Watch:

As promised, Biological Conservation has replaced a controversial paper on feral cats in China whose cringeworthy title — “Where there are girls, there are cats” — prompted an outcry on social media that resulted in a temporary retraction.

The new article boasts a different, non-gendered title: “Understanding how free-ranging cats interact with humans: A case study in China with management implications.”

And here’s the relevant part of the abstract:

More interestingly, the density of male students versus female students seemed to be non-randomly associated with the distribution of cats among universities. An online questionnaire confirmed that women were more concerned about the living conditions of free-ranging cats than men in China. Finally, a socialization test focusing on 27 free-ranging cats conducted by female and male observers suggests that cats may have the ability to adopt a friendlier behavior with female students.

If you have time, there’s much more comedy available at the full link above.

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