If Mort Divine ruled the world

I just figured I could eliminate 3 paragraphs of mental gymnastics to state the approved opinion concisely in one sentence. You could do that as well. This is why French intellectuals after Bastiat are so passé.
 
Maybe a bit naive, but I don’t always think instances where children are modeling or whatever (in pageants or in parades) to be sexual unless they are dressed in a provocative way or something.

Yeah I don't think all instances of kids modelling are sexual, usually just when it's done provocatively like you say here.

I'll just say that beauty pageants are far more guilty of sexualizing children than pride parades are.

I agree. Just on number of years both things have existed alone, beauty pageants are worse for it. Especially if you consider that the type of "beauty" these kids are being measured by, and are conforming to in their attire, is entirely an adult one.

I'm not talking here about the young trans child who dances in clubs. That's a more complicated scenario and more difficult to dissociate from sexuality, for sure.

They're not complicated, they're just disgusting.
 
Just on number of years both things have existed alone, beauty pageants are worse for it. Especially if you consider that the type of "beauty" these kids are being measured by, and are conforming to in their attire, is entirely an adult one.

What is the consistent kid version of beauty? (And who cares what kids fucking think?)

https://www.takimag.com/article/ta_nehisi_coates_all_is_fog_steve_sailer/#.XQrNef11TE0.twitter

What exactly is the secret of Ta-Nehisi’s success? Why has he vaulted over more talented black intellectuals such as John McWhorter and Thomas Chatterton Williams (who have both been unloading on Coates lately)?

It’s definitely not his erudition. McWhorter scoffed recently:

The elevation of that dorm-lounge performance art as serious thought is a kind of soft bigotry, which is as nauseating as it is unintended.

Pat is, unless I'm somehow mistaken, a TNC apologist, while I have consistently agreed with McWhorter.
 
I just figured I could eliminate 3 paragraphs of mental gymnastics to state the approved opinion concisely in one sentence. You could do that as well. This is why French intellectuals after Bastiat are so passé.

Haha, wow so passive aggressive...

Pat is, unless I'm somehow mistaken, a TNC apologist, while I have consistently agreed with McWhorter.

xmnit.jpg
 
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Maybe not, but I think I've been pretty straight forward as to my perspective that African Americans were wrongfully brought to the US/treated, but that also the victim mentality won't help them move forward and neither will "reparations" or "ethnic masochism" or any other liberal feelgood political panacea. Apologies don't fix the past and have little informative value on the future.
 
Maybe not, but I think I've been pretty straight forward as to my perspective that African Americans were wrongfully brought to the US/treated, but that also the victim mentality won't help them move forward and neither will "reparations" or "ethnic masochism" or any other liberal feelgood political panacea. Apologies don't fix the past and have little informative value on the future.

Yes, you have been.

I find Coates's writing to be provocative and brilliant, and his interpretations compelling. I also find McWhorter to be measured, perceptive, and an enviable intellectual. I think the difference between us is that I don't see these two things as mutually exclusive.
 
I find Coates's writing to be provocative and brilliant, and his interpretations compelling. I also find McWhorter to be measured, perceptive, and an enviable intellectual. I think the difference between us is that I don't see these two things as mutually exclusive.

I see being an intellectual and not being an intellectual as being mutually exclusive, and Coates isn't even remotely approaching intellectual status. Coates is certainly "provocative", but there's no special talent required for provocation (in fact, a lack of talent is often necessary). McWhorter has been called an Uncle Tom for years; Coates is in no danger of such a label. These two are about as mutually exclusive outside of their race and sex as they could be.
 
I see being an intellectual and not being an intellectual as being mutually exclusive, and Coates isn't even remotely approaching intellectual status.

I don't personally agree, but I also don't read Coates as an argument source, as we say in composition. In other words, I wouldn't appeal to him in the way I would to McWhorter, or Henry Louis Gates, or Louis Chude-Sokei, or bell hooks, etc. I would appeal to Coates the same way I would to Frederick Douglass, or Harriet Jacobs, or Olaudah Equiano, or James Baldwin, or Ralph Ellison--that is, as an exhibit source. His writing exhibits something about black experience, whether we take that experience to be local or national, and he expresses it in a particularly thoughtful way.
 
the school district in San Francisco used to teach the difference between gay people and straight people as part of the curriculum for kindergarten

i'm not sure if i agree or disagree with this being right or wrong
just pointing it out as a thing that was happening
 
I would appeal to Coates ....... as an exhibit source. His writing exhibits something about black experience, whether we take that experience to be local or national, and he expresses it in a particularly thoughtful way.

Well he's necessarily an exhibit source. But while he has the right to presenting his slant and perspective on his experiences, he also opens himself up to scrutiny on those perspectives and slant. I won't argue whether he is or isn't thoughtful, but he is incredibly wrong-headed, and even many black liberals agreed on this, to say nothing about men like Thomas Sowell.
 
he also opens himself up to scrutiny on those perspectives and slant.

Was this ever in question?

To respond to your original comment about our respective alliances, I don't own any of Coates's books. I do own a copy of The Language Hoax, though. I think you misinterpret my fondness or interest in certain writings as support for the content of those writings. I'm interested in Philip Roth, but I don't think one should live one's life according to Portnoy's Complaint. Literary studies don't unconditionally or uncompromisingly champion their texts of choice. It's more complicated than right or wrong.
 
Was this ever in question?

To respond to your original comment about our respective alliances, I don't own any of Coates's books. I do own a copy of The Language Hoax, though. I think you misinterpret my fondness or interest in certain writings as support for the content of those writings. I'm interested in Philip Roth, but I don't think one should live one's life according to Portnoy's Complaint. Literary studies don't unconditionally or uncompromisingly champion their texts of choice. It's more complicated than right or wrong.

Well I can distinguish between an intellectual curiosity in some component of a thing, and endorsing a political/social/psychological/philosophical position. But at the same time Coates is typically not read or recommended in that way, and his opinion is not alone and it is damaging real lives in its pathological paranoid externalizing (even while Coates does quite well for himself). While Coates is gladhanded and lives life on easy street, I deal with black demented (clinically) schizophrenics (who were IVCd by their own family) who refuse to take their medicines because somehow they are in an inpatient psych ward because racism (one particular current patient is in mind). That's one extreme individual anecdote, but the worse ones are the neighborhoods upon neighborhoods in places like Baltimore. How are the adherents of Coatsian rhetoric doing:

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1141670149424123910

America's worst run cities vs how many years since they had a Republican mayor:
D.C.—109
Detroit—57
NYC—12
San Francisco—55
Oakland—58
Flint, MI—44
Cleveland—30
Hartford, CT—48
Chicago—88
Los Angeles—18
Atlanta—140
St. Louis—70
Philadelphia—67 See a correlation?

Also Baltimore: 57 years. Also NYC is not technically accurate - Bloomberg wasn't listed as a Democrat even though he should be.