Category: Bullshit explained

Media ‘woke bots’ weigh in on Meghan Daum’s The Problem With Everything

The reaction to Meghan Daum’s new book The Problem With Everything has been entirely predictable.  So predictable, in fact, that most of the takes seem to have required no human effort, and could just as easily have been written by a media ‘woke bot’.  I’m not entirely sure that much of what passes for print journalism today isn’t written by some form of AI. Any one of Daum’s critics, exercising even the slightest bit of judgement or self-reflection, could have recognized that their reviews, far from dismissing Daum’s conclusions, actually come off in service of making her point. 

The ‘snark bot’ take appears under the byline Scott Indrisek writing for The Observer.  This guy has a serious obsession with Bret Easton Ellis and can’t string together a couple of sentences without bringing him into the conversation.  Anyway, amidst Indrisek’s many criticisms of The Problem With Everything, he does concede, “There should be room for uncomfortable conversations about whether the #MeToo movement has overstepped itself, or whether we need to tap the brakes on certain aspects of woke culture.”  This is not an uncommon sentiment among journalists and cultural critics. The problem arises when an individual or group decides to engage in these uncomfortable conversations in books, podcasts, or public discussions broadcast on YouTube.  People like Indrisek attack these writers and thinkers with charges of being racists and phobes. The ‘woke bots’ always talk about the need for uncomfortable conversations, but rarely care to engage in or with them.

On the “personal is political” front, Indrisek reacts to Daum’s admission that, “there’s no one I’d rather blame for my misfortunes than myself,” by snarking down with an asshole comment that Daum is “stumping for a keynote gig with Turning Point USA.”  How far out in the wilderness of leftist political ideology do you have to be to think that a concept like “personal responsibility” is the sole purview of right-wing political conventions? I hope the next time Scott Indrisek tries to hold anyone in his life personally accountable for anything, they tell him, “Get thee to a CPAC convention!”     

Another gem comes from Elisabeth Donnelly writing for Buzzfeed.  This writer is a long-time fan of Daum, but has found her recent flirtations with nuanced ideas and criticism of left-wing extremism troubling.  Of the “Free Speech YouTube” crowd, Donnelly says their “values of ‘reason’ …can easily be interpreted as hate speech….” To view Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, or Sam Harris as promoters of hate speech requires a monumental act of willful self-delusion so great that one would have to sequester oneself in an impenetrable fortress of political correctness, effectively shutting out 90% of the country’s ideas and opinions.  Of course, is there any doubt that the Buzzfeed newsroom leases space in such a fortress of wokeness?       

Getting to the heart of her problem with The Problem With Everything, Donnelly writes, “instead of documenting her life experiences, something at which she excels, Daum spends far more time arguing over simplified conservative and liberal talking points.”  But hold on a second, baby snark bot Scott Indrisek says, “The Problem With Everything is at its weakest when it gets personal….” Jesus, both Indrisek and Donnelly write so forcefully, with such conviction, and such an air of authority that I couldn’t help but think that they’re professional critics and probably know what they’re talking about.  Could it be that one or both are wrong? Not being able to agree on the problem with The Problem With Everything reminds me of religious leaders who can’t agree on the most fundamental tenets of their faith, but nonetheless exhibit not a shred of doubt and are one hundred percent convinced they are correct. 

The New Yorker’s Emily Witt weighs in to provide a confused and exasperating slice of context.  Self-identifying as a Gen Xer because Witt’s only eleven years younger than Daum (okay?), Witt sets about writing a parallel take to The Problem With Everything where the nineties weren’t all that less politically correct than today, and the nihilism of the 2000’s necessitated the woke course correction we’re currently experiencing.  “It was people unburdened by Daum’s ideas about “nuance” who took to the streets after police shootings, and named the men responsible for serial sexual assault and harrassment….It is telling that Daum ignores the positive benefits of these movements, or the real risks to safety and reputation taken by the people who initiated them….Didion and Daum may have preferred the status quo of their respective eras, but those who were inclined toward change were always going to be accused of overreach, of making a big deal out of nothing, of refusing to take responsibility for their own problems.”  What is telling are statements like this that make you wonder if the reviewer even bothered to read the book. How could a writer for The New Yorker so completely fail to grasp the explicit message contained in the book she’s reviewing? Daum is fully supportive of outing the worst offenders of #MeToo and bringing them to justice. At no time does she ignore the positive benefits of the movement. To make this claim is to willfully mischaracterize Daum’s writing. And by the way, accusations of overreach are not just being leveled by a bunch of defenders of the status quo, they’re being leveled by female Harvard Law professors and increasing numbers of supporters of #MeToo.

The problem with asking complicated questions or presenting nuanced ideas or opinions is that they inevitably get smacked down with snark, willfully misinterpreted and misrepresented, and unfairly taken apart.  The title of Emily Witt’s New Yorker piece is “Meghan Daum to Millennials: Get Off My Lawn.” Whether Witt came up with that title or not, it’s clearly how she and the rest of the wokescenti care to engage with Daum’s work.  To them, Daum’s just an old, cranky, out of touch Gen Xer who doesn’t recognize the egalitarian utopian dream as it shapes itself right before her eyes.

Can you blame the media woke bots for missing the point?  After all, what is an intelligence rooted in identity politics to think of this passage from Daum’s book.  “Labels tamp down contradictions. They leave no room for cognitive dissonance. They deny us our basic human right to be conflicted …If you’re not conflicted, you’re either lying or not very smart.”  No doubt, the previously mentioned, unconflicted authors view this statement as a personal attack on them. They are sooo not conflicted. In these times of moral certainty, they’ve never felt more sure about anything than their woke programming that allows them to group ideas and arguments into distinct binaries: those that reinforce their faith and those that fall outside its boundaries.

Nuance, doubt and uncertainty are qualities not easily attained by a media ‘woke bot.’  They are mostly incompatible with politically correct ideology. Scott Indrisek writes that in The Problem With Everything Meghan Daum is “exposing her blind spots to the current issues that color our experience: race, gender, capitalism, the internet, and power.”  Because these are the issues that preoccupy most Americans, right? Perhaps these issues color the experience of media ‘woke bots’ and their devoted followers, but most Americans could give a shit about the left’s obsession with playing intersectional gymnastics.  Polling shows that nearly 80% of Americans, regardless of age, sex, ethnicity or race, think that political correctness goes too far. Is it any wonder that public confidence in the media is waning, and woke media outlets are struggling?             

Daum writes, “I’m convinced the culture is effectively being held hostage by its own hyperbole.  So enthralled with our outrage at the extremes, we’ve forgotten that most of the world exists in the mostly unobjectionable middle.  So seduced by the half-truths propagated by our own side, we have no interest in the half-truths roaming in distant pastures. So weary from trying to manage cognitive dissonance kicked up by our own gospel, we forgot to have empathy for the confusion of those grappling with their own doctrines.  We forget that in the end to be human is to be confused.” A statement like this could potentially get Daum in trouble on Twitter – a place where no one at either extreme is ever wrong about anything, and in the rare instance someone is shown to be incorrect, the offender simply deletes their Tweet, thus maintaining a spotless record of habitual truthfulness. 

“In the ensuing year, the feeling of irrelevance became a near constant companion.  It clouded my vision like the membrane on the eye of a lizard, shielding me from what I couldn’t comprehend, sparing me the mortification of my own cluelessness.  It had me both staring at myself in mirrors and avoiding mirrors. It had me lying awake at night contemplating the end of the world, or maybe just the end of my world.”  Throughout the book, Daum is her own harshest critic. She anticipates the criticism each line, each thought could potentially receive, which is why nothing the previously mentioned critics have written comes off as at all original.  The ‘woke bot’ algorithm is easily adopted by Daum, rendering their predictable responses a part of the larger point of The Problem With Everything.                     

Having put forth that nuanced thought is a debilitating burden that tethers one to the status quo, that reasoned argument is often just a euphemism for hate speech, and that personal responsibility is a value reserved for right-wingers, it isn’t hard to see why these critics completely miss the point of this work.  Incapable of any sort of self-reflection, for them the problem with everything is entirely focused outward on the nonbelievers, the unwoke. How dare someone lay the problem with anything at their feet.  

“Oh the irrelevance, the obsolescence, the creak of aging out before you even get old.”  There is a lot of great writing in this book, and a lot of thoughtful and illuminating introspection that all of us who are a part of the problem with everything should take a moment to consider.  Being a couple years older than Daum, I can appreciate the sentiment of aging out before you get old. However, I intend to fully embrace my obsolescence. I can think of nothing more liberating than being completely irrelevant, brimming with contradictions, conflicted and unsure.  Gen X lived mostly in the shadow of the Baby Boomers, perhaps enjoying a brief bit of relevance in the nineties and 2000s. Now the Millenials, a generation as formidable and narcissistic as their Boomer parents, have taken the reigns with a clear plan for establishing peace and equality, prosperity and sustainability for all on earth.  Not unlike the utopian dreams that drove their parent’s generation back to the earth and into communal living, this generation will probably save the world with political activism and tech. Maybe I’ll live long enough to enjoy it.

Chappelle causes wokest of woke media to go wokeshit crazy

If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought Dave Chappelle penned a controversial op-ed in the New York Times on Monday, or maybe he appeared on CNN where he launched into a misogyny laden, transphobic rant to the horror of panelists and viewers at home.  Nope, he released a Netflix comedy special Monday, and while the special was generally well received by the public and most media outlets, predictably, the wokest of woke media went wokeshit.    

Vice tried to get out ahead of the special by confidently announcing, “You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle’s New Netflix Special ‘Sticks & Stones.’”  If Vice thought their “nothing to see here, folks, move along” review was going to limit viewership, my guess is they’re sorely disappointed. It would be interesting to know the ratio of people who heeded Vice’s warning versus those who tuned in because of it.  You can definitely put me in the latter camp.

For the woke millennial crowd who may never have heard of comedy, or who aren’t all that familiar with comedy or Dave Chappelle, Vox weighs in with its explainer piece, delivering fact-checks and unimportant backstory to many of Chappelle’s bits.  “Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special targets Michael Jackson’s accusers, #MeToo, and cancel culture” by Aja Romano reads like a critique of some author or intellect who’s on tour promoting a serious work of social commentary. Referring to Chappelle’s bits about Michael Jackson, R. Kelly and Kevin Hart, Romano says, “whether he framed those events fairly or not in order to mine them for comedy has become a contentious talking point.”  Why is Chappelle expected to frame events fairly for a stand-up comedy routine? Why does Romano take Chappelle’s hour-long monologue so literally and so seriously? People who enjoy comedy don’t care if the work has been thoroughly fact-checked, and don’t expect to get the comedians true convictions and most deeply held beliefs. Comedians talk shit, they embellish and they make shit up. That’s what makes it funny. Who gives a fuck if Chappelle’s account of his interactions with the director of Surviving R. Kelly differ slightly from hers?  A humorless writer for Vox, I guess. 

The consistent criticism levelled by the Vox piece and pieces in Slate and Buzzfeed is that Chappelle is punching down.  Okay, so I’ve never read the stand-up comedy handbook. I don’t know what the rules are when it comes to putting together a stand-up routine.  All I can go by are my decades of watching stand-up comedians, starting with George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and moving through to the present.  If there is a rule against punching down in stand-up, this is the first I’m hearing of it. I thought comedians could punch whatever the hell direction they wanted.  Sure, comedians often go after celebrities, politicians and the rich and powerful because we’re all familiar with these folks, so they make good targets. But comedians also caricature ordinary people: a pimp, a drug dealer, a strict father, a strict grandmother, a sweet grandmother, bratty children, a classmate, a redneck, a convenience store clerk, a taxi driver, a co-worker, a person in line at Starbucks, a stoner, a fitness freak, a church lady, security guards…  There is almost no limit to the number and kind of individuals who have been caricatured over the years in sketch comedies, movies and stand-up routines.       

In Tomi Obaro’s piece for Buzzfeed entitled “Dave Chappelle Doesn’t Need To Punch Down,” the author takes particular offense at Chappelle’s characterization of “the alphabet people.”  Frustrated at Chappelle’s lack of thoughtfulness, the author at one point suggests, “It’s enough to make you want to tie Chappelle to a chair and force him to binge-watch episodes of Pose.”  Whatever that might accomplish, I seriously doubt it would improve Chappelle’s comedy, at least not in the way Obaro thinks it would. Towards the end of the piece, Obaro complains about Chappelle’s lack of maturity and asks, “why not strive to be more interesting, more original, more thoughtful?”  It should go without saying that Chappelle is not submitting an essay on LGBTQ culture for publication in The New Yorker. That Chappelle is “not a little boy. He’s a grown-ass man.” is true enough. However, my understanding of comedy is that many comedians, to a degree, suffer from a form of permanent adolescence.  It’s kind of what makes them funny. Comedians say the things many in society are thinking, but don’t say, because they’re too busy being respectful and acting like mature adults. Which isn’t to say everyone is privately a bigot and a phobe, it’s to say that we are all flawed and we like to laugh at how ignorant and irrational and immature we can all be sometimes.  And no one should get a pass. Because the minute we start handing out Comedy Exemptions is the minute we start taking ourselves way too seriously and cease to be able to joke about anything at all.

New York Times runs Antifa PR piece

In case anyone has been operating under the misconception that a journalist was violently assaulted by Antifa protesters in Portland on Saturday, the New York Times’ Mike Baker is here to set the record straight.  Or, rather, he’s here to fill your head with enough extraneous nonsense to give those in denial about left-wing extremism and violence any number of paths to continue believing there is no problem here. His piece in Monday’s edition, “In Portland, a Punch and a Milkshake Rumor Feed a Fresh Round of Police Criticism,” reads like a release from Antifa’s public relations department.  In it he essentially asserts that the journalist assaulted basically had it coming, that the incident is only of interest to conservative politicians and media outlets, that the Portland Police are in cahoots with right-wing groups, and left-wing protesters were really only interested in having a milkshake dance party.

What are we to make of protesters who show up for a demonstration clad in makeshift riot gear?  That these are individuals who were just sitting at home one Saturday and decided to head downtown to protest the fascists.  They’re not an organized group itching for a fight or anything. Everybody has black helmets and body armor hanging in their closet.  Give credit to the NYT for running the photo of the anti-fascist fascists, but their caption reads “Multiple groups demonstrated in downtown Portland, Ore., on Saturday.”  Not only does the NYT not identify these demonstrators as Antifa, but not once does Baker mention the group’s name in the entire piece. The only time they are identified is in a quote of Andy Ngo’s attorney. 

Baker does concede that Ngo was struck by a black-clad activist, going beyond what a lot of mainstream outlets reported.  Many MSM reports preferred to let it seem like the journalist was just heavily milkshaked. Amazing that the word “milkshake” is now a verb and accepted by many on the mainstream left as a perfectly acceptable thing to do to someone.  Baker, however, avoids using “milkshake” as a verb in his article and instead writes that Ngo was “slimed” with “vegan coconut milkshakes”. Very considerate of him to point out that the milkshakes were vegan, in case Ngo happens to be vegan himself.  It takes a little bit of the sting out of being milkshaked when you know that the projectile doesn’t contain any animal products. Although, one wonders how Baker knew that the specific milkshakes that struck Ngo were vegan coconut. Did the New York Times thoroughly fact check all those milkshakes?

Baker does seem pretty confident, however, in claiming that the milkshakes did not contain quick drying concrete.  He describes as “questionable” the Portland Police warning that the milkshakes contained cement, and that this claim fueled “conservative alarm” and “dramatically fueled the furor”.  Nothing to see here folks, Baker seems to be reassuring NYT readers. This is just a bunch of conservatives getting their panties all in a bunch.  

Baker goes on to question Ngo’s work as a journalist, dropping hints that he and the publications he works for produce racist content.  Also, he spends a couple paragraphs making the case that the Portland Police have a history of colluding with right-wing extremists. At this point, if I’m a leftist frequent reader of the New York Times even the slightest bit concerned about groups and elements at the extreme of my political ideology, I’m beginning to drift back into my comfort zone.  I’m thinking, okay, this is all a manufactured crisis and Ngo is just getting what’s coming to him. After all, as Baker writes, “He (Ngo) has a history of battling with anti-fascist groups” and “has built a prominent presence in part by going into situations where there may be conflict and then publicizing the results.”  

Okay, so he’s not really a journalist, he’s a right wing provocateur.  Well, that explains it. Because that’s what they said about Jamal Kashoggi, right?  He had a history of battling with the Saudi Royal family. And that’s what they say about correspondents in conflict zones.  They’re just publicity hounds, right?

After trashing a journalist and totally discrediting the police, Mr. Baker would like Times readers to know that anti-fascist activists are just a bunch of fun-loving, peaceful party people who want to drink milkshakes and dance.  While reserving a healthy amount of skepticism for the police account of the incident, Baker seems to accept on faith information gathered from the Rose City Antifa affiliated group, PopMob.  According to one member of the group, they were simply “having an entertaining counterprotest building off Pride month.”  And those milkshakes: “they were vegan milkshakes made not of cement, but of coconut ice cream, cashew milk and some sprinkles.”  A credulous Baker barely even addresses the glaring reality that milkshakes are currently the preferred method of humiliating conservatives and right-wingers. They were clearly dispensed with the intent of hurling them at their opponents, including Mr. Ngo who was targeted with a barrage of them.

It is one thing to write a piece that avoids leaping to conclusions and reporting unverified facts.  It is quite another to omit facts, engage in irrelevant personal and professional attacks, and deliberately mislead.  Is Baker really so beholden to ideology and obligated to protect the left and readers of the NYT that it extends all the way to doing public relations for a group of violent thugs?  Perhaps, or maybe he just wants to stay on Antifa’s good side. Hmm, wonder why?