The Big Stupid Elephant in the Room

The Federal Department of Education is investigating states which are prohibiting mask mandates in schools on the grounds that this may be endangering disabled schoolchildren.

I'm glad the Biden administration is doing something. The problem is that anti-mask measures are an attack on all children, and all adults, and science, and sanity, etc. 

We (by "we" I mean the non-stupid majority) have been much too nice about this. 

There's a time and place to be considerate of idiots' feelings. This is not the time and place. When a house is on fire, and a maniac is pouring gasoline on the fire and raving about how this is the correct way to put out fires, we don't stand off to one side and try to reason with the maniac, being careful not to insult him. For some time now, the deadliest enemy in the US, the one killing the most people, is no longer COVID. It's human stupidity. It's yahoos refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated or let their kids wear masks or get vaccinated, and comparing masks and vaccines to Nazism, trying their damnedest to make it impossible for any of us to have any masked, vaccinated place we can go. 

It's idiots. It's morons. It's stupidity.

Since long before COVID appeared, since long before Trump ran for Persidunt, I've maintained that mankind's deadliest enemy is human stupidity. First Trump, and now COVID have made this point increasingly clear.

And yet, we refuse to say it. For fear of hurting stupid people's feelings, we are greatly endangering their lives by coming right out and saying that they are stupid. For the sake of political correctness and misplaced librul over-sensitivity, we are greatly hindering our own efforts to end a plague.

If ever there were a perfect example of the uselessness of political correctness, we are living in it now. And dying for the sake of it.

Things actually could be worse. They have been worse. During the flu epidemic in 1918 and 1919, public officials thought it was a good idea not to let the public know there was an epidemic. We learned from that disaster that it's better to talk openly and publicly about disasters.

We partly learned it. Hopefully we're still learning. We've got a long way to go.

I Agree With John Cleese And DL Hughley That PC Speech Rules Are Bad

Cleese says that political correctness "began as a good idea." I disagree, I don't think it was ever a good idea. I think that the GOAL of political correctness is good: greater power and autonomy for people who historically have been abused and exploited. I'm 100% in agreement with that goal. I just think restrictions on speech are a particularly stupid and useless way to go about achieving that goal. You can use politically correct speech and still be a horrible, evil, hateful person. You can break every PC language rule and still be a good, loving person who enriches the lives of all those around him.

Cleese says you can't have comedy with political correctness. He's right. Well -- at the very least, you can't have comedy which is very funny at all.

Over and over on this blog I've praised Bob Fosse's movie Lenny, released in 1974, about Lenny Bruce, a stand-up comedian who broke every PC language rule and was a good, loving person who enriched the lives of all those around him, and about his fight for freedom of speech, and wondered whether that movie could even have been made after decades of political correctness.

Another comedian opposed to PC language rules is DL Hughley. Hughley and I are far from agreeing about everything, but, as he puts it: "Either you believe in freedom of speech or you don't," and we both do.

Some time during the last few years Hughley did a stand-up special for cable TV, on which he talked about the word "(n-word)" and how white people like me aren't supposed to use it. He said that the white people in the audience were getting all tense, because he, Hughley, was saying "nigger," and because everybody knew that Hughley and all the other black people were allowed to say it, but they weren't.

And then Hughley said something like, "But as soon as those white people are in their cars going home tonight, they're going to be all, 'Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]'"

And I was offended when I saw that. I was all: I've never talked that way in my entire life. And it's true, I never had. Until then. But since I saw that comedy show, many times, when I've been alone, I've said, "Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]" And laughed, and laughed.

And it's all DL Hughley's fault.

Anyway, when DL Hughley said that stuff on his comedy show, it seemed to have the same effect on the audience as when Dustin Hoffmann, playing Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse's movie, intentionally and pointedly used every offensive ethnic slur he could think of in the space of 30 seconds or so: both times the audiences laughed hard, and seemed to relax. It seemed to lessen inter-racial tensions, not increase them. It seemed to get people to look at each other and think, Wow, what silly things make barriers between us! Smashing the barriers is exactly what PC-speech advocates are trying to do by trying to get everybody to stop saying certain words. Bruce and Hughley go 180 degrees the other way: the smash the barriers by using those very same words. They use the words in a way that takes the hurt out of them.

In the video above, John Cleese says he's been advised not to perform on college campuses, because the political correctness there has become so extreme that he's bound to cause a controversy. And when I heard him say that, I thought: All the more reason for you to perform there. If we're against PC rules, we should confront them. But I don't know whether Cleese in fact does disregard that advise, and perform on college campuses, in order to confront the political correctness with which he disagrees.

I should not neglect to mention that I don't know whether or not it's true that political correctness is particularly extreme on college campuses.

In writing this blog post, I debated with myself whether to write, as I ended up doing, "Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]" or if I should write out the n-word. I don't know whether it's cowardly for me to praise Lenny Bruce and Cleese and Hughley for sticking their necks out, and then not stick my own neck out.

On the other hand, I don't know how funny this post is, and the positive effect that those comedians have had has been in large part because they've been so funny.

I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand I feel like a (p-word for female genitalia) for not sticking my neck out, for not putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak; and on the other hand I don't want to increase tensions instead of lessening them because I went about things in an unskilled manner. I know that good intentions by no means always equal good results. I've done a little bit of stand-up comedy myself, and I wasn't very good at it at all.

The Terms "Dark Ages" And "Renaissance"

In this post, and on this blog in general, I use (and fully intend to continue to use) the term "Dark Ages" to denote the period between AD 476 and 800 in Western, Latin-Speaking Europe -- the period between the abdication of the Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus and the crowning of the Western Emperor Charlemagne. I use the term "Middle Ages" to designate the entire period between the Christianization of the Roman Empire and the (for lack of a better term. See below) "Renaissance."

But apparently, if I were taking an exam or writing a dissertation, my grade might suffer if I were to use the term "Dark Ages" instead of "Early Middle Ages," and I might be accused of Eurocentrism.

PC academic fashion be damned, I think it's ridiculous to call the term "Dark Ages" Eurocentric. The term isn't used to refer to any region except Latin Europe, and doesn't imply that darkness had sunk upon any other parts of the world.

Now the term "Renaissance" is quite Eurocentric, and centered not even on all of Europe but only Western Europe. Saying that Classical Greek culture was "reborn" because it was noticed again in Western Europe ignores the fact that it was never forgotten by the Greeks themselves, and also flourished in parts of the Islamic world. That's the height of Eurocentricism, which one also sees whenever someone says "Christendom" and is referring only to the Catholic/Protestant part of Christendom, as if Orthodox and Coptic and Armenian and Syriac and Ethiopic and other branches of Christianity had never existed.

Typically, Western historians somehow manage to continue to ignore the direct impetus given to the Western re-discovery of Greece by Greek scholars fleeing to Italy from the Ottoman conquest of Byzantium. Reading histories of Renaissance Europe, it seems as if Greek were somehow revived entirely by Westerners from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Erasmus, and the contributions of Greeks like Demetrius Chalcondyles and John Argyropoulos are rarely mentioned. It's utterly (Western-)Eurocentric, and downright rude.

One doesn't frequently encounter an outcry, here at the Western world, against such usage of terms like "Renaissance" and "Christendom," unless one reads top-notch stuff like the works of Runciman, and this blog.

So far I haven't heard of any trends toward abolishing or improving upon the term "Renaissance" in academia.

But then, I haven't attended grad school since 1992. (There are times when I'm very glad I haven't.)

PC Language Rules Are Wrong

American Congregationalist church communities tend today to be very liberal. Which is very good. It may surprise some people -- perhaps even some Congregationalists -- to learn that the 17th century English Puritans were Congregationalists. Including the Pilgrims. Including the authorities who presided over the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and 1693. As far as I know, no Congregationalists today will try to kill you for being a witch. But many of them are strong advocates of PC speech, which to my thinking demonstrates an unfortunate persistence of self-righteousness and the desire to control the actions and speech and, yes, thought of their neighbors. Yes, there has been definite improvement in the progress from killing witches to advocating PC speech, but, yes, there is significant room for improvement still.

What got me thinking about this today is that I have been attempting to debate against a pronounced advocate of PC speech in the Readers' Comments at Huffington Post. I say "attempting," because, ironically, it seems to me, HP, whose moderation is very PC, has no intention of publishing anywhere near all of my comments about PC speech, even though I carefully avoided all non-PC terminology in those comments.

But, of course, if PC is not actually about avoiding bad words, but is an attempt to restrict the free exchange of ideas, then there's nothing ironic about it at all. It's not about being kind or caring, because, as we all know, PC speech can be thoroughly unkind and prejudiced, while spectacularly un-PC speech can be thoroughly kind and bravely loving. If we don't actually all know this yet, that's what this movie is for, which I very frequently recommend: Bob Fosse's Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffmann as Lenny Bruce. Watch it while you still can.

PC Speech

Someone mentioned that using the term "Moslem" instead of "Muslim" tends to correspond to less enlightened and more bigoted attitudes toward Muslims. I don't doubt that it generally does, because language usage and beliefs generally tend to be group phenomena. On the other hand, I may sometimes write "Moslem" because I've read a lot of books written in the mid-20th century and earlier, and the current preferred usage has slipped my mind. I apologize if I've caused offense in this way.

When I notice that the preferred name for a group has changed, I tend to change my usage. A more complete description of my situation is: I change my usage, and I resent it. I'm with most progressives on almost every issue, but I hate PC language rules. When this topic comes up I often mention Bob Fosse's movie Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce. I love that movie. In one scene, Bruce starts off a stand-up routine with a little speech containing every insulting term for ethnic groups you could think of, including an insulting term for his own ethnic group. He makes the point that they're just words, and that they hurt more when we taboo them, not less.

There's a musical from the 1970's called Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. It makes a similar point when a father remembers when he was a boy decades earlier, and he insisted on being call a negro. On the playground a white kid called him black and he hit the white boy in the eye. Then his son talks about how today, in the 1970's, he insists on being called black, and on the playground a white boy called him a negro, and he hit the white boy in the eye.

One more example of the silliness, that's right, I said silliness, of PC language rules: at the end of the 1980's you could infuriate a lot of feminists by referring to any full-grown human female as a "girl" and not a "woman." I knew one of those feminists, who happened to be a huge Sinead O'Conner fan, and in 1990 I infuriated her in that way several times without wishing to cause any offense. Her response was so angry that I changed my usage. Two years later, not only was grrrrl feminism everywhere, but Sinead O'Conner herself released an album entitled Am I Not Your Girl?

Back in 1990, after the last time I had forgotten and called my friend a girl and she became infuriated again, I apologized again and promised, again, to try to remember not to do it again, and then I asked her whether I had ever treated her disrespectfully, or as if I thought she was not an adult. She said no. I wonder if she got my point. I wonder if she thought about that conversation in 1992 when she learned the title of Sinead's next album.

Sticks and stones will break your bones, and words will hurt about as much as you allow them to.

"Lenny Bruce died for your sins"

-- that's what a friend of mine said to me back in the 1980's. I think it may have been his way of telling me that I had an amazingly dirty mouth. I did. I do. Or maybe, as I thought at the time, he was merely making a remark about freedom of speech in general. I only know Bruce through Bob Fosse's wonderful movie about him,and I suspect the same may have been true of my friend. I don't know how much the Lenny in that movie actually resembled Lenny Bruce, but the guy in the movie was pretty deep on the subject of words, given individual words and their ability to hurt. He pointed out that they hurt and shock more when they're forbidden.

He was quite right about that. But lately I've been thinking that he died for nothing. I'm thinking about the complete contrast between a beautiful scene in the movie, when Dustin Hoffman, playing Lenny Bruce, talks some sense into a crowd who came to see his stand-up comedy act, and a public-service announcement that's currently playing on TV. Both pieces have to do with certain derogatory words -- almost exactly the same list of words in both cases. Hoffman/Bruce's point about these words is: they're just words. He starts off his schtick saying, "Hey, there's some ----s here tonight!" -- using a word I'm not going to type out because, one, I don't need the aggravation, and, two, you can pretty much imagine what I'm talking about anyway, which is just one more thing which shows how silly this all is. Bruce says "----s," and some people gasp. And he goes right on, cheerfully rattling off more offensive words: "Yes, and some ----s, and some ----s, and some ----s, and some ----s! I'm a ----! I think that guy over there is a ----. I know this guy here is a ----." (I'm paraphrasing from memory.) And people in the audience start to relax and laugh. And it's not hateful laughter, it's just pure relief. Bruce ends up that routine pointing out, "Hey, nobody died because of those words, did they? And it doesn't mean that I hate any of those people. They're just words. And they only hurt if we let them." The relief of sweet reason contained in that scene is truly magnificent.

I wonder how much relief this new public-service announcement could possibly be spreading. It consists of head shots of representatives a series of oppressed groups, each one saying in turn: "It's not okay to call me a ----." Identical sentences except for the "----" at the end. Then at the end of the announcement it is solemnly declared that one more word is being added to this list of words that are not okay.

(I am not using the word "oppressed" here in a sarcastic way, not in the slightest. The groups in question most definitely are oppressed. But this chickenshit PC silliness isn't helping them. It's a waste, a waste, a waste.)

The sooner we all figure out that these words are not even the point, that a person can use each and every one of those "bad words" on a regular basis and still approach everyone he meets, representing each and every one of those oppressed groups, with love, and that someone else can scrupulously avoid all of those words, and even industriously hunt for still more words which must be forbidden, and not love anyone at all, the better off we will all be, and the more capable of addressing other problems.

It is telling that it seems to be mostly comedians who understand such things. (I myself am not a comedian, that is a talent I do not possess, as I pointed out in a recent post on this blog.) It reminds me of medieval courts where only the jester had the privilege of speaking the goddam truth! This whole nonsense with our fixation on individual words, the way we give them the power to hurt by insisting that they hurt, is a thoroughly medieval stupidity. I hope I live to see it decline and wither and die.