DUMB AND DUMB: Everyone knows what "Wokeness" means!

FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2023

From there, it's dumb all the way down: In full fairness, George Will's column got off to a pretty good start.

The column appeared last week, on Wednesday, March 8. The Stanford Law School hecklefest hadn't happened yet.

Having said that, how prophetic! In the Washington Post, Will's new column, headline included, started at Stanford, as shown:

Woke word-policing is now beyond satire

Sometimes in politics, which currently saturates everything, worse is better. When a political craze based on a bad idea achieves a critical mass, one wants it to be undone by ridiculous excess. Consider the movement to scrub from the English language and the rest of life everything that anyone might consider harmful or otherwise retrograde.

Worse really is better in today’s America (if you will pardon that noun; some at Stanford University will not; read on) as the fever of foolishness denoted by the word “woke” now defies satire. At Stanford, a full-service, broad-spectrum educational institution, an “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” several months ago listed words to avoid lest they make someone feel sad, unsafe, disrespected or something. Problematic words include “American,” which suggests that America (this column enjoys being transgressive) is the most important country in North and South America. The list was quickly drenched by an acid rain of derision, and Stanford distanced itself from itself: The university’s chief information officer said the list was not a mandate. 

The puzzling word "Woke" was right there in the headline. Meanwhile, out in Palo Alto, a certain pattern had perhaps begun to emerge:

In the matter under review, one branch of Stanford had perhaps gone a bit rogue. In response, the university’s chief information officer had jumped in with a disclaimer. 

One day after Will's column appeared, the hecklefest happened at Stanford Law School. The dean of the law school—and the university's president—soon offered a formal apology, rejecting the behavior of the heckling students and of an associate dean.

The headline which sat above Will's column began with the puzzling word "Woke." Nor had some editor taken liberties with the columnist's intentions. 

In the column under review, Will quickly offered this assessment of Stanford's (now defunct) “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative”—and yes, that's its actual name: 

"[T]he fever of foolishness denoted by the word 'woke' now defies satire."  

No one is required to agree with Will's assessment. In our view, decent people should try to avoid using language which conveys undesired meanings or implications, or which makes people feel disrespected.

We'll guess that Will would agree with that general stance. At any rate, he soon moved on from Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” to another aspect of life on The Farm—to the school's “Protected Identity Harm” system:

WILL: Back at Stanford, more than 75 professors are opposing the university’s snitching apparatus. The “Protected Identity Harm” system enables—actually, by its existence, it encourages—students to anonymously report allegations against other students, from whom they have experienced what the system calls “harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.”

The PIH website breathlessly greets visitors: “If you are on this website, we recognize that you might have experienced something traumatic. Take a sip of water. Take a deep breath.” PIH recently made national news when someone reported the trauma of seeing a student reading Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

Will seems to disapprove of this initiative too. No one is forced to agree with him, but surely everyone knows that this is the sort of thing people frequently have in mind when they tag systems or people as "Woke" or excessively Woke.

Back to the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, to which Will provides this link. When we clicked, we found an expansive document.

We found thirteen pages of words and terms which might qualify as harmful. At the very top of page one, students were offered a warning they should consider before venturing into the woods:

Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.

We scrolled through the whole thing, marveling at many of the terms we were advised to avoid. For example: 

Did you know that it might be offensive or harmful to say "Hip hip hooray," or even "Hip-hip hurray?"

We didn't know that either! But there the terms sat, on the endless list, with the alleged offense explained.

No one is forced to agree with Will's view—with the view that this document takes "Wokeness" past the point of satire. Our own reaction was a bit different, and we'll describe it below.

That said, one of Will's statements was factually accurate. In late December, Stanford's Chief Information Officer did issue a "clarification," saying this in part:

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

[...]

We have particularly heard concerns about the guide’s treatment of the term “American.” We understand and appreciate those concerns. To be very clear, not only is the use of the term “American” not banned at Stanford, it is absolutely welcomed. The intent of this particular entry on the EHLI website was to provide perspective on how the term may be imprecise in some specific uses, and to show that in some cases the alternate term “US citizen” may be more precise and appropriate. But, we clearly missed the mark in this presentation.

Steve Gallagher / Chief Information Officer

The use of the term "American" is absolutely welcomed at Stanford? 

At that point, we have to sign on with Will. The silliness of that clarification does seem to take us somewhere we have never traveled, beyond the reach of satire. 

Two weeks later, Gallagher posted a second statement, noting that the 13 pages of recommendations had been eliminated altogether. The “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative” site had been canceled—taken down.

Was something "wrong" with that initiative at Stanford? No one is required to think so. 

That said, everyone knows that this is the sort of thing people will criticize as "Woke." Except when clowns perform on blue cable, there's no great mystery about this.

It's also true that criticism of this sort of endeavor isn't restricted to conservatives or right-wingers. Six days before Will's column appeared, George Packer—and no, he isn't a conservative—had published a longer essay for The Atlantic on this very same topic.

Packer never used the word "Woke." But here's the way his essay started, dual headlines included

THE MORAL CASE AGAINST EQUITY LANGUAGE
What’s a “justice-involved person”?

The Sierra Club’s Equity Language Guide discourages using the words stand, Americans, blind, and crazy. The first two fail at inclusion, because not everyone can stand and not everyone living in this country is a citizen. The third and fourth, even as figures of speech (“Legislators are blind to climate change”), are insulting to the disabled. The guide also rejects the disabled in favor of people living with disabilities, for the same reason that enslaved person has generally replaced slave: to affirm, by the tenets of what’s called “people-first language,” that “everyone is first and foremost a person, not their disability or other identity.”

The guide’s purpose is not just to make sure that the Sierra Club avoids obviously derogatory terms, such as welfare queen. It seeks to cleanse language of any trace of privilege, hierarchy, bias, or exclusion. In its zeal, the Sierra Club has clear-cut a whole national park of words. Urban, vibrant, hardworking, and brown bag all crash to earth for subtle racism. Y’all supplants the patriarchal you guys, and elevate voices replaces empower, which used to be uplifting but is now condescending. The poor is classist; battle and minefield disrespect veterans; depressing appropriates a disability; migrant—no explanation, it just has to go.

For the record, we're very glad that "enslaved person" has generally replaced "slave."  We recall how pleased were the first time we saw a major figure—the novelist Alice Walker—use the longer, less dehumanizing term in a major public forum.

That said, we're inclined to agree with Packer's assessment of these sweeping language guides, which he voiced in this passage:

PACKER: The project of the guides is utopian, but they’re a symptom of deep pessimism. They belong to a fractured culture in which symbolic gestures are preferable to concrete actions, argument is no longer desirable, each viewpoint has its own impenetrable dialect, and only the most fluent insiders possess the power to say what is real. What I’ve described is not just a problem of the progressive left. The far right has a different vocabulary, but it, too, relies on authoritarian shibboleths to enforce orthodoxy. It will be a sign of political renewal if Americans can say maddening things to one another in a common language that doesn’t require any guide.

At this site, we're not in favor of people "say[ing] maddening things to one another." But we agree with Packer's assessment of the harm of "a fractured culture," and we're inclined to agree with the claim that these lists of forbidden / permitted words reflect a culture, even here in our own blue world, in which we like to perform symbolic gestures at the expense of taking concrete actions and exploring real daily concerns.

Our own reaction to Stanford's 13 pages went a great deal like this:

We wondered who had actually spent their time assembling this braindead, voluminous list of words we paragons mustn't say.  We wondered who could possibly have that much time on their hands. We wondered about the discussions in which these high-end scriveners weren't engaged as they listed the many words you can't say on TV, or for that matter anywhere else.

We shouldn't use the term "peanut gallery?" We shouldn't use the term "rule of thumb" for all the harm it might cause? 

We should stay away from brown bag, gangbusters, grandfather, master (as a noun and as a verb), immigrant, trigger warning? We'll offer two thoughts as you scroll through the endless list:

The people who compiled the list seem to be monumentally clueless. Also, they may be the kinds of people who engage in these moral panics while refusing to discuss what goes on in low-income schools, or the reasons for our nation's astonishing medical spending, or what we should do at the Southern border, or what might be the best way for our own inept blue tribe to peel voters away from Trump.

We've often noted the way our elite blue tribe orgs avoid such real-world discussions. We've often suggested one obvious possible reason:

At bottom, they simply don't care. They don't care about kids in our low-income schools. They have very good health care themselves, and they don't much care about you.

Then sure enough, last Friday night, there they sat, hard at work, the corporate Disciples of Dumb. They sat on Stephanie Ruhle's "cable news" show, peopling her "Friday Nightcap" time-killer and pretending they had no idea what the word "Woke" even means.

At this site, we don't believe in terrible people. We'd advise you to follow our leadership on this point of concern.

We don't believe in terrible people! But if we did, that's what those cable stooges would be. 

They aggressively dumbnify our blue tribe every single day. You aren't allowed to know how much they're paid to engage in this stupidified conduct.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but at the highest cultural levels, our vastly self-impressed blue tribe just isn't especially sharp. On cable, the bosses hire gangs of stooges who will feed us the pleasing gruel which sends us off to sleep.

As a group, we've been too dumb to see through this decades-old process. The truly dumb people, we feel quite sure, are the bad people found Over There!

Our tribe is profoundly self-impressed, but also perhaps a bit clueless. Despondent anthropologists keep insisting that is the hard-wired way of the world. 

These experts say that these reactions are deeply bred in the bone. They say that, anthropologically speaking, there will be no getting beyond this.

It can get very dumb on red tribe cable. It can get very faux Over Here.


69 comments:

  1. Did you not notice that a right wing hack who wrote a book about woke could not define it when asked to?

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    1. anon 10:43, I noticed it - it's a big talking point for woke defenders - but it's an example of how libs obfuscate the issue. That the right-wing hack couldn't give much of an answer to the question doesn't prove anything. I notice you yourself don't address the actual point of TDH's post, which gives us a prime example of how weird woke is getting.

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    2. AC/ MA.
      Do you also blame Liberals because the Right doesn't understand how taxes, economics, or basic arithmetic works?

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    3. anon 5:50. that's a nonsensical question.

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    4. AC/MA-How can you be against something that you admit you don't know what it is?

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    5. 5:59,
      Well, you were on a roll.

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    6. "How can you be against something that you admit you don't know what it is?"

      It's the entire modern Conservative movement wrapped-up in a single question.

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  2. tl;dr

    Wokeness is you, dear Bob; modern-times liberalism: garden variety brain-dead idiocy. Yawn.

    "In our view, decent people should try to avoid using language which conveys undesired meanings or implications, or which makes people feel disrespected."

    Oh, dear. It's odd, then, that you, dear Bob, unquestionably a good-decent person, are so accustomed to calling Others 'crazy', 'insane' and what-not.

    ...it's almost as if Others aren't "people", as far as you brain-dead liberals are concerned...

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    1. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant to arrest Vladimir Putin.

      Delete
  3. "It can get very dumb on red tribe cable."
    They're playing stupid, in support of fascism.

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  4. “here in our own blue world, in which we like to perform symbolic gestures at the expense of taking concrete actions and exploring real daily concerns.”

    This is beyond ridiculous.

    The Sierra Club, for example, founded in 1892, has a specific mission, which is environmental activism. They do concrete, specific things in this area. Their focus is not simply policing language or making symbolic gestures. That language guide was merely a guidebook for people who write or communicate officially for the sierra club. And “In our view, decent people should try to avoid using language which conveys undesired meanings or implications, or which makes people feel disrespected.”, says Somerby. So what’s the harm in putting together an official guide book for this sort of thing?

    As an example, what is the objection to the word “Americans”? It is that the word “American” can refer to someone that lives in the United States, someone who lives in Central America, or someone who lives in South America. The sierra club guide is merely pointing out this fact and saying that if you specifically mean people who live in the United States, then you should say “United States residents” or “United States citizens.”

    Furthermore, I would dispute the notion that using careful language is merely performative, or a symbolic gesture. If that’s the case, then I’d like to know what Bob Somerby thinks he’s doing writing a blog. Is he merely performing, making symbolic gestures by using words and not taking concrete actions? Words are important. Obviously they are important to Somerby. After all, ‘we're very glad that "enslaved person" has generally replaced "slave."’

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    1. mh, did you even go to the link for the Stanford "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative?" (E.g.,one shouldn't use the words "he" or "she" - unless you ask permission of the subject of the pronoun first if it's ok). It's not just Stanford and the Sierra Club, but it's been adopted in a wide range of places. I think you miss TDH's point though, that it's disingenuous to claim that you don't know what "woke" means.

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    2. This was perfection:

      “In its zeal, the Sierra Club has clear-cut a whole national park of words.”

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    3. Except it isn’t true. It only takes a moment to make word choices that are not hurtful and communicate better. I learned about using the word America more precisely in 3rd grade, long before woke, more than 50 years ago. Odd that Somerby is arguing against being nicer to others.

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    4. anon 3:54, I don't suppose you looked at the list of newly tabooed words - they include, for example: brown bag, user, victim, you guys, landlord, tribe, convict, beating a dead horse, rule of thumb, grandfather, etc etc -you might want to go to the link so you can learn to avoid these and all the other hurtful words and phrases, and can be nicer to others.

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    5. Except you all seem to be missing that Somerby himself has defined what woke truly means, at least in the context of language: “ decent people should try to avoid using language which conveys undesired meanings or implications, or which makes people feel disrespected.” You can argue that some may be going to far with their list of words to think about or to avoid using or whatever. But that isn’t the same thing as what woke language actually means, which is exactly how Somerby has defined it here. He says that he’s glad that we use the term “enslaved person” instead of “slave” now. That this came to be is the result of “wokeness”. It doesn’t mean every single word on these lists is going to end up in the dustbin of history.

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    6. And none of you complainers about wokeness ever have to go be a spokesman or a writer for the sierra club. Call me when the sierra club comes with its police force to your house to enforce the language guidelines that they’ve implemented for their organization mmmk?

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  5. “We don’t believe in terrible people!
    But if we did that’s what those cable
    stooges would be.”
    Ladies and Gentlemen, that’s the
    level of reason and self reflection a
    diploma from Harvard gets you.
    ( qualified apologies if Bob was a
    legacy).
    Here’s what you mean Bob:
    I get to hate people, selectively and
    irrationally, by attaching a dumb
    disclaimer. Other liberals, however,
    don’t enjoy the privilege. After all
    I am me.

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  6. It seems to me that these language policies that currently exist are merely an extension of the discussion and the debate that has gone on for a long time. The changes that, for example, resulted in the gradual abandonment of the use of the N-word, or changing “slave” to “enslaved person”. ( has that really happened though?) To my knowledge, these changes in language were never enforced by any kind of federal statute, but people had to deliberately point out the problems with these words and these terms and try to get people to think differently about the language that they use. It seems to me that that is what’s going on still today with these language guides.

    One of the terms that was disallowed in the Stanford list was “jewed”, from “to Jew”, meaning to lower the price, to haggle. It comes from the racist idea that Jews were cheap, miserly, money grubbers. Surely, Somerby would have no problem with the suggestion that we not use that term.

    Another example is the word “lame”. It used to mean someone who is unable to walk, therefore disabled. It was taken from that and extended to mean weak or worthless, as in a “lame argument”. You can see why that might be hurtful to someone who is actually lame. (Although the word “lame” has also fallen out of common usage to refer to a disabled person.) Or the word “retarded” used to have a clinical meeting and then it was taken to just mean stupid or dumb. Or if a disabled person really doesn’t like being called “disabled”, then perhaps I should listen to that person and not refer to them as disabled.

    Ultimately, Packer and Will are not bound by the language guide book for the sierra club when they write their columns in prominent publications such as the Atlantic. The way we use language changes based upon what people decide to use and decide not to use and these suggestions are trying to get people to think differently about the language that they use. Ultimately the people are going to decide what works best.

    But dismissing all of this as just hyperbolic liberal “wokeness” is not really contributing to the debate, because it is a circular argument.

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    1. No, mh, it really is “hyperbolic liberal wokeness” and it’s always couched in the motivation of not offending (or actually harming) some victim or another…and no this isn’t an argument for calling someone with a limp a “gimp”.

      It starts with good intentions and ends up with people being thrown off social media for using the term “groomer” when that is what these people feel is happening in our society.

      It’s Orwellian in its attempt to reign in unacceptable thinking.

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    2. People who call others “Groomer” don’t know what groomng is, or they are saying something deeply offensive to the point of libelous about others that they shouldn’t be permitted to say. This right wing normalization of the term is wrong. Just like calling someone a pedo because you dislike him can be harmful, such as costing someone their job. People who do that should be thrown off social media.

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    3. Cecelia, there's a difference between an opinion on a political issue and libel and slander. There's a reason so many of Putin's enemies find themselves accused of having sex with minors. Who the fuck cares what your Chistofascist theocrats "feel is happening".

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    4. Anonymouse 3:46 pm, they believe that these people are groomers in the way that so many anonymices believe that conservative pols and other public entities are actually complicit with Putin in undermining the country.

      You know, the way Bob is said to be a stealth political operative for the undermining of democracy?

      Funny thing about speech is that the people who like to see it stifled are generally the people who use the most pejoratives.

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    5. mh - I have mixed feelings about the stereotype of Jews being frugal and good at managing money. On the one hand, some say that all group stereotypes are bad things.

      OTOH the stereotype is somewhat true IMO. On average, Jews do pay more attention to money. Consider that a traditional Hanukah gift is Hanukah gelt -- which is chocolate filled fake coins.

      Furthermore, it's not necessarily a negative. Concern about money made me a better actuary. Being frugal is better than being profligate or thriftless.

      My sister and her friends treated it like a joke. They called her, "The Jew who pays retail."

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    6. ...watched, a few days ago, Chris Rock’s Selective Outrage, where he quipped that words hurt only when they are written on a brick...

      ...he's right, obviously; 'nuff said...

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    7. My attitude toward Jewish people is very positive.

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    8. Those are not political issues at all. They are personal issues and government should not be intruding on personal privacy this way. Those who are trying to tell others what to do (how to dress, which bathroom to use) and transgressing on people's rights. Calling those who want to live their lives without being interfered with by bigots and fascists are not groomers or pervs. No one is forced to go to a drag performance or library story hour (which most children attend with a parent or caretaker). Clothing doesn't make anyone a pervert or a groomer.

      A groomer is a pedophile who befriends a lonely or neglected neighborhood child in order to gain his trust and later engage in sexual behavior with that child. No drag queen or library storyteller is doing anything like that in public places (with parents present), and certainly not doing anything like that with the adults at drag shows, which are largely costume parties with food and music. Using that term in such contexts is ridiculous and a propagandistic misuse of language. A perv is a misused word applied to someone you dislike because you think they might be having sex differently than yourself. It is nobody's business how someone you are not involved with has sex. It is between consenting adults and not a political matter at all. It is wrong to misuse these loaded emotional words in the wrong contexts just to score political points, as YOU Cecelia and the right-wing has been doing.

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    9. A groomer is also someone who exposes and introduces children to adult sexuality. A child doesn’t have to be touched in order to be groomed.

      What happens in public libraries and schools is the business of society. If you want to band together with your friends and likeminded neighbors and have drag queens reading to and strutting their stuff at play dates and birthday parties, go for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that set off an investigation or two. You wouldn’t be surprised at that either. That’s why you want little kids inured to alternative experiences of sexuality within the context of schools and libraries.

      This is utterly a political matter and despite all your illogical protestations, you know that’s the only sphere that will make a difference in the changes you want to bring about for kids at a very early age.

      Anything else would be just you, kids, and your creepy friends.

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    10. No, your redefinition of the word groomer is incorrect. By your definition, Donald Trump would be a groomer because he ran teen beauty contests (the ones where he bragged about walking into the dressing room while the girls were getting dressed being one of his perks). And by your definition, a parent who tells his or her child about sex (i.e., the facts of life) is also a groomer. The notion that all kids should be shielded from facts about sex until they become adults is about as perverted as anything I've ever heard. And what about kids who grow up on farms? They learn about sex early because they witness animal behavior. Is that grooming or is it agriculture?

      Public libraries and schools exist to educate people on all aspects of life. What people wear while reading has nothing to do with sex. Drag queens wear the same clothing as adult women. Are those women "strutting their stuff"? Why not? And it really does sound like you think kids should be encouraged to hate not accept people who are different. Drag queens are not pedophiles. Why would they want to "groom" children when they are not sexually interested in them (although The Donald plainly was interested in those teen girls)?

      Banning things because you don't like them is not the same as proving in any way that those experiences are hamful for children. Do you not know that young children do things like shower with daddy or have mommy bathe them, at very young ages? Is that creepy and perverted to you. Men typically teach their sons how to pee standing up by showing them how to do it. Is that creepy too?

      You are mostly revealing what a creepy perverted imagination you yourself have, since you imagine sexuality where it doesn't exist and believe that any exposure to sex or gender at all is going to warp young kids, as if they were that fragile. You cannot force a young boy to become a girl (or vice versa) no matter how hard you try, but you think that the way other people, adults, express their own gender is going to disrupt something that is set by hormones early on. That's because you are ignorant and stupid and haven't done any reading on the subject at all. You maybe feel icky when you see a drag queen and you think that makes such a person wrong or bad or "a groomer" (using your personal made up definition) who will subvert kids, when there is no evidence whatsoever that any drag queen has caused any trauma to a toddler in the history of drag. And for heaven's sake, don't let little kids know that in Scotland men wear skirts (called kilts) especially on special occasions when they haul out the bagpipes and celebrate past battles and honor the fallen.

      What a piece of work you are Cecelia.

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    11. Anonymouse 9:54 pm, I would put beauty pageants and fathers teaching their sons to how to pee as being in purview of the private sector rather than the public one. The same area of life where and your friends can invite drag queens over to your houses to expand the thinking of your children.



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    12. Tell that to all your conservative friends.

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    13. Anonymices 11:01pm, they don’t want to control your house guest list.

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    14. House guest lists are different than women's wombs, in this way.

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  7. I guess Bob’s definition of Woke would
    be : I don’t want to talk about Trump’s
    phone calls trying to fix the election and
    make him dictator for like.

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  8. If you're a reporter for AXIOS, don't you dare call a racist propaganda "press release" from Ron DeFascist propaganda or you're be out on your ass faster than you can say Rosa Parks.

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  9. Today's cherry-picking 2.0 lesson.

    Up next: TDH's "Poor, Poor Bethany" series.

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  10. Somerby’s complaint is that liberals are do-nothings. He is obviously wrong about that. His language complaint is in service of calling liberals do-nothings who only care about words. So this is just another attack on liberals, who are the only ones doing anything on the issues liberals care about.

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  11. “ It’s Orwellian in its attempt to reign in unacceptable thinking.”

    That must be why DeSantis and his followers love doing it, via legislation, no less.

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    1. mh, it’s the role of legislators to guide the standards in public schools. They can be voted out of office.

      Parents are captive to public schools if they can’t afford private ones and can’t homeschool. Local and state officials will hear from them; one side or the other.

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    2. Any parent can exempt their kids from assignments they disapprove of. They shouldn't be asking to ban books for other people's kids, especially when those other parents want their kids to be reading them.

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    3. Anonymouse 8:35pm, there is an Amazon and there are libraries and parents who are motivated to talk and to read to their children.

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    4. No, Cecelia, there are public schools and public libraries that should be for ALL of the people, not just conservatives.

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    5. Anonymouse 9:41pm, last I heard, drag queens can check out books at public libraries and their kids can attend public schools.

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    6. Cecelia,
      Last I heard, Conservative feelings were hurt because drag queens can check out books at public libraries and their kids can attend public schools.
      Also, Conservatives believe peoples feelings shouldn't matter when it comes to politics.
      I know, it sounds like those two things are at odds, but once you realize Conservatives only care about bigotry and white supremacy, you understand their confusion about things that don't mean that much to them.

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    7. “Last I heard, Conservative feelings were hurt because drag queens can check out books at public libraries and their kids can attend public schools.”

      Dude, you’re for shouting down the “wrong” federal judges giving speeches at freaking Stanford.

      You’ve never heard of what you say you’ve heard of You’ve merely nade it up.

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    8. there is an Amazon and there are libraries and parents who are motivated to talk and to read to their children.

      That's a pretty fucking arrogant attitude, Cecelia.

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    9. Why would an across-the-board truism be arrogance?

      Because it’s inconvenient.

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    10. It's arrogant, Cecelia, because we pay taxes too. You don't get to decide what is available in the school library or school text books all by your lonesome.

      There's nothing new here though. I have been watching the Ignorati dictate to the rest of the country what can be taught and what can't be taught my whole life.

      Now your people make physical threats to school board members and public school teachers and then fucking whine to the heavens when the DOJ acts to protect these citizens.
      Rick Perlstein wrote about The Great Kanawha
      County Textbook War
      in "The Invisible Bridge"

      "The anti-textbook people of Kanawha County are confused and angry about everything from marijuana to Watergate. Feeling helpless and left out, they are looking for a scapegoat. They are eager to exorcise all this is evil and foul, cleanse or burn all this is strange and foreign. I this religious war, spiced with overtones of race and class, the books are an accessible target."

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    11. "You’ve never heard of what you say you’ve heard of You’ve merely nade (sic) it up."

      From the fool so gullible, she believes CRT is being taught in elementary schools.
      Doctor Cecelia, heal thyself.

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  12. “Funny thing about speech is that the people who like to see it stifled are generally the people who use the most pejoratives.”

    Like, see, republicans never use pejoratives. Amirite? LOL.

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    1. No, you’re never right when you reflexively jump to extreme conclusions.

      Conservative often act like tyrants when it comes to matters of speech that they don’t find “patriotic”.

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    2. Why should anyone be automatically right or wrong based on how quickly they reached a conclusion?

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    3. If a group of like-minded people rent a room at the library and put on a drag story hour, those who disapprove can stay away.

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    4. The operative wit word is “extreme”.

      Extreme as in mh’s suggestion that my claim that the speech police are usually the worse offenders, is tantamount to arguing that conservatives never use pejoratives.

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    5. Anonymouse 11:03pm, tell it to the Federalist Society.

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    6. Anonymouse 9:56am, read up.

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    7. If it's about the Federalist Society, you're reading down, not up.

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  13. Underperforming hacks in the blogosphere like to make sweeping generalizations about how much their opponents care about matters such as healthcare and poverty. Demographically what states are most well educated? Who elected the architects of the Affordable Care Act? What group populates the membership of the Sierra Club and votes with reference to environmental issues? Who raises the issue of wealth inequality and policy aimed at addressing it? Likely their time is not consumed by criticizing Einstein, feigning intellectualism by frequently name dropping dead philosophers, ranting about the movies, and pretending to belong to a group that they revel in disparaging. We will be sure to pass your criticisms on to the good people over there at Stanford, Bobby, so that they can adjust their mindset to your liking. But let me warn you: they are kind of busy over there, educating the brightest minds in this country, and will probably listen briefly and move on to other things after noting what it is you spend so much of your time stroking yourself about, and how much that contributes to society.

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  14. The Left are running from "Woke" like Vampires from a cross because it disgusts normal people. Even though it's their own word, lol

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    1. BLM popularized the word woke. As a result of their actions, police killings of unarmed black (and white) people decreased substantially. Yay woke!

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    2. Back in the good old days I was a "bleeding heart" liberal and occasionally I was a dirty hippie "tree hugger". Now today I am a crazy "woke" lefty. I am ok with that. I am usually right.

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  15. Last time I checked my feet they weren't running from anything. You must think that appropriating a term popularized by a black female artist gives you power over others. The power of words! Wow, you're powerful because of your words. You've got those libs running from them. Nice work. Do you have any other powerful words to frighten us with? You're awesome. You've got your powerful words. Did I say nice work? I meant it. You really nailed it. Brilliant would be an understatement.

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    1. "Look at me, I'm definitely Not Unstable!" he insisted....

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    2. "...popularized by a black female artist"

      What -- not a homo, not "trans"? How disappointing...

      ...but is ze at least 500lb "body-positive"?

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    3. There is nothing more fun than telling Right-wingers who complain about "illegals" at the border, that you heard them loud and clear in response to BLM.
      All Lives, Most Certainly, Do Matter.

      BTW, they aren't as in to bipartisanship, as the media would have you think.

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