It has been said that The New York Times is beyond parody. I believe that. The reality though is much broader: our entire culture now is a miasma of absurdity. That’s why it really doesn’t matter who’s elected president in 2016 –the rot is too pervasive.
That doesn’t mean however that we can’t have fun. Mockery is one of the few arrows left in the quiver of traditionalists and conservatives. So we might as well use it whenever we can. Consider the case of Rachel Dolezal, African-American and president of the Spokane, WA chapter of the NAACP.
Miss Dolezal, a white woman (person of pallor?) is of Czech and German ancestry. That’s it –nothing else. You don’t get much whiter than that. Yet for years she’s been scamming the system pretending to be an African-American. In order to affect this, she permed her hair and adopted an “attitude” based on racial grievance. (To me she looks like Sideshow Bob Terwilliger of The Simpsons.)
P J O’Rourke once said that Northern liberals, in all their white-guilt mode like nothing better than black people, especially when they don’t look like black people. Dolezal fit the bill perfectly. Thanks to the “one-drop rule” she was able to guilt white benefactors into giving her cush jobs and other tertiary sinecures that exist only because there’s a surplus of capital in most Western societies. You know, things like “coordinators” or “facilitators” or even “community organizers.” People that don’t really do anything but work with their mouths essentially.
The trouble was, she didn’t even have one drop of negro blood. Nada, nil, zilch. She’s as white as the wind-driven snow. Her entire life story was a fabrication. To enhance her street cred, she said she was born in a tee-pee and hunted with bow and arrow as a child to make ends meet. And that she had been the victim of “hate crimes.” Liberals, even with their relatively high IQs, fell for it hook, line and sinker. And thanks to the US not being a Third World hellhole, she was able to snag several positions essentially doing nothing but working with her mouth.
Before she became Grand Poo-bah of the Spokane NAACP chapter, she taught some idiotic “studies” course at Eastern State University. There, she had the temerity to tell a Hispanic student that she didn’t “look Hispanic enough.” Talk about chutzpah. (Hey, if you’re going to strike a pose you might as well milk it for all its worth.)
Anyway, her parents couldn’t put up with the lies anymore and called her out on it. The truth, as they say, will always out. I’m curious though as to what will be the fallout. According to most reports, she actually did a bang-up job as president of the NAACP.
Which of course leads to a whole lot of other questions. But we’ll save that for another day.
Jenner, although male, “courageously” identifies as female, and is widely applauded. Dolezal, although white, identifies as black, and is widely condemned. Pure hypocrisy. Don’t they realize Dolezal is simply suffering from “racial dysphoria”?
Precisely why one should shun the media. It’s a complete circus.
I’m sure she “feels” black therefore she must be. White on the outside, black on the inside. The racial Bruce Jenner. Is there a surgery for that?
Race, sex, religion: reality no longer matters.
Actually, yes. If Michael Jackson was still in this life he could probably recommend her to his plastic surgeon.
Its worth ridiculing, but if men can call themselves women and vice versa then why shouldn’t race be a matter of choice too?
As a currently coming-out Italian, George, I deplore your lack of imagination.
That’s only because Fr, that the Italians got the jump on us Greeks here in the States.
Hey, my grandfather lived for a short time in Alexandria before coming to America…does that mean I’m African?
I fell like an idiot even responding to the subject of this post being a sincere bible student for most of my life. So, I need to humiliate myself once in a while to increase my scorn. This would undoubtedly sound like something the liberals might find compelling because it seems to have no good reason for doing it. Coursiiouser and coursiourer
Say what???
A UK paper reports she is:
“…facing a city ethics investigation after identifying herself as black in an application to serve on a local police ombudsman commission”
Interesting, as I understand it federal law is such that you define your race, so you can claim your race as anything you want on (at least federal) forms.
I once worked at a state university in the human resources department, and the universities HR system kept track of the race of every applicant/employee. I intentionally left my race blank when I applied for the job. I was hired, and because I worked in HR I could see that my race had been marked as “white” in the HR system. I would go in and delete it (leaving it blank). Someone else I worked with in HR would go in and make me white. I did this about a dozen times, and I have no doubt that when I left the person made sure I was “white”. Racialists are nothing if not persistent 😉
I believe in a color blind society. The race grievance peddlers don’t of course…
I am dating myself, but I remember when race was available aa a fill in the blank. I would detail my European ancestry. Then it became multiple choice and I, like so many others, chose “other” instead of white. Later, the multiple choice changed to “white or other” — and I note in recent years that even that has disappeared and one must choose “white” or leave it blank or lie. I have often left it blank in those settings, but now you’ve told me what happens then.
Really we should all just lie on these forms.
I think the best way to deal with racism and sexism is to remove those check boxes from all forms. Stop classifying/segregating and just let the humans apply as humans.
It’s funny how the vaudeville acts of 70 to 100 years ago, such as Al Jolson and others, used to go on stage in black face and pretend to BE black, and be accepted by both races. But everyone knew who and what Jolson was and he never tried to actually fake being black in real life like this woman. If you know anything about Al Jolson, he was NOT making a mockery of black people…quite the contrary. But this woman, by being an outright fraud, has. BTW, where’s the outcry and the reaction from the NAACP and the rest of the black community? There hasn’t been an outcry to my knowledge and I doubt if there will be one. Why? Because she’s a liberal. If this were a conservative, Christian Republican doing the same, they’d be crucified by the media.
Who knows why? I honestly don’t care what her issue is.
But, hypothetically, what if she was turned away from that coveted university (because there were too many admissions and she was white), found she had no job security (because there were layoffs and she was white), and did not qualify for this grant or that subsidy (because her special interest group, the “Barbie Dolls,” was white)?
Maybe posing as black is not the stupidest thing one could do to level the playing field. Not saying this is the case with her (quite sure it isn’t), but just thinking out loud.
Why do we continue to give preferential treatment to people who believe the past is the present? Yes, blacks were treated, poorly. Yes, it is regrettable, but when is enough, enough?
Women have also been treated poorly. They didn’t get the vote until 1920 and they STILL make less money on the dollar than men. They continue to take primary responsibility for (childbearing &) child rearing and comprise 47% of the workforce. Do women expect preferential treatment? No. Other than lactation rooms, women just want what’s fair.
Why can’t blacks want what’s fair? If they did, maybe no one would pose as “black.”
I know, I know. . . not PC, but when have you ever known me to be PC?
Gail, you hit the nail right on the head as to why women “still” make less than men: because they view themselves as primary care-givers for children. On a job-by-job basis, women make the same as men it’s just that they work lesser hours, hence an apparent disparity in pay. Freud was wrong about a lot of things but when he was right, he was 100% right: anatomy is destiny.
You’re right, George. Raising our children is first and foremost, but we don’t work less hours.
When my daughter was very small, she’d like to sit on my lap when she woke up. I would be dressed for work by 7:00 and would let her sit on my lap as long as she wanted. There were many days I’d go into the office at 11:00 and work until 11:00 PM just to get the job done. Then I would get up the next day and do it all over again. Because I delivered, my boss allowed it.
I was a pretty decent mother. Just ask my daughter, Jessica; the daughter who graduated with honors, got a job as an admissions counselor with an online university for 40K, with benefits and a 401K, within 3 months of graduating. She is a very warm, engaging girl and was employee of the month for the last 4 months and counting. I am incredibly proud of her. Clearly, I wasn’t a slacker mother because I worked. See for yourself.
http://tinyurl.com/qguhomn
It is ridiculous to think that women can’t do the same job as men AND TAKE CARE OF OUR FAMILIES when we have to. In many cases we do it so well, our employers make accommodations. Not because we’re women, but because we are THAT good.
Men get maternity leave, just like women. No one pays them less.
Women should be compensated for what they bring to the table. I am. Sadly, many women are not.
Gail, you’re an exceptional woman. I don’t doubt for a minute that you gave more time and effort to raising your children than some stay-at-home moms. As a general rule though, it’s hard for me to see how one can do both –work and raise kids–and give the same amount of mothering as a stay-at-home mom. Not impossible, just hard to see it. That’s all.
I for one am glad that women still take the primary responsibility for childbearing. I’m afraid I would have made a mess of it.
Or it of me…..
“Tim,”just wait. In this brave new world, they’ll figure out a way for men to share this glorious experience. Talk about separating the men from the boys. LOL
Brace yourselves:
http://www.malepregnancy.com/science/
This appears to be a hoax. Google ‘RYT Hospital’ and see what you get.
Men who want to appear to be women have long fantasized about this on the model of the occasionally encountered abnormal female ectopic pregnancy, which usually doesn’t end well. It’s a bad model for a freakish, frankensteinish experiment which exceeds the limits of ethical medical practice.
Reminds me of an eccentric jazz aficionado named Mezz Mezzrow (born : Milton Mesirow).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezz_Mezzrow#Personal_life
In his autobiography “Really the Blues”, Mezzrow writes that from the moment he heard jazz he “was going to be a Negro musician, hipping [teaching] the world about the blues the way only Negroes can.” Mezzrow married a black woman, Mae , moved to Harlem, New York, and declared himself a “voluntary Negro.” In 1940 he was caught by the police to be in possession of sixty joints trying to enter a jazz club at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, with intent to distribute.
When he was sent to jail, he insisted to the guards that he was black and was transferred to the segregated prison’s black section. He wrote (in “Really the Blues”):
Fellow jazz musician Eddie Condon said of him (in “We Called It Music”, London; Peter Davis 1948): “When he fell through the Mason-Dixon line he just kept going”.
Another famous Jazz musician, Johnny Otis was actually a Greek-American who affected black mannerisms, dress and what-not. He was pretty good.
He also started a Protestant church. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Johnny_Otis
I wonder if he was baptized Greek Orthodox.
When asked to identify myself by ‘race’ on various forms, I used to check the ‘other’ box and write human on the blank line.
Eventually it was pointed out to me that an indication of ‘race’ was somehow helpful in medical contexts. As a European-American, then, I suppose sickle-cell anemia wouldn’t be on the list of my possible ailments….
Sorry, Monk James but Greeks from the coast are occasionally diagnosed with Sickle-cell anemia and they are European.
Sickle cell? that’s news to me. I thought Greeks were particular susceptible to the genetic disorder Thalessemia. Is that what you meant? It’s possible though that sickling might be hereditary as well as it arose in populations wherein malaria is endemic.
Mr. Michalopulos,
Hemoglobin Sβ-thalassemia, to which Greeks are susceptible, is a sickle-cell disease.
Greeks are European-Caucasian, this doesn’t mean you have light skin since Caucasians are also in Asia as well. The Minoans an ancient Greek people DNA was similar to Greece and not Northern Africa. Anicent Egyptians were Hamitics while some might have been blacks if they had ancestor in neighboring Nubia. Berbers were in Africa for centuries also and are not black.
Thank you for bringing this up: the Berbers were of Germanic/Vandal origin.
Is that the “new anthropology”, George?
I think they’re one of the Ten Lost Tribes, myself, personally.
Cynthia, it might not be so simple as you make it out to be. One should realize that many scholars/anthropologists consider that there are few, if any, Greeks of Hellenic ancestry in mainlnd Greece today, but mostly Slavic settlers and colonists with a measurable admixture of Spaiards, Italians, Tutks, etc, while the MAIN area of Hellenic settlement was, historically ASIA, i.e. Ionia, etc. Pontic Greeks. Even today in modern Persian and Arabic, Greeks are called Ionians and Greece IOnia . A teacher I had for Modern Greek at Wayne State used to remind us that Grreks usually speak of travelling TO Europe.
Anybody know where George got the notion that Berbersw were not a Semitic people?
It seems that the Berbers ancient home is North Africa where the have lived since about 10000 BC. They have absolutely no connection with ANY Germanic peoples, George. By the way, Saint Augustine of Hippo was born Berber.
So what happened to the Vandals? And why do the Berbers maintain that they are “not Arab”?
As a distinct ethnic group in north Africa, the Vandals disappeared after the Byzantine reconquest of the province. The cream of the Vandal troops were formed by the Byzantines into the crack cavalry units known as the Vandali Justiniani, and stationed on the Persian frontier. The remainder intermarried and mingled with the local Byzantine and Berber population. So the modern day Berbers probably have some Vandal blood in them, but as a whole they predate the Vandals, Byzantines, and Romans, as well as the later Arab invaders.
Because they aren’t Arabs. I don’t think anybody ever said they were, seriously. There wasn’t any Arab presence at all in North Africa until the Islamic conquest, and the Berbers have since maintained a non-Arab identity within Islam.
“Arab” is of course a slippery term. Sometimes it’s said to be ethnic, sometimes primarily linguistic. Arabic-speaking Christian Syrians and Lebanese call themselves Arabs. Arabic-speaking Copts do not. And many other like examples.
As for the Vandals; some probably stayed in NA, some probably went back to Europe. And one finds something interesting when one delves into the Berbers: some DNA like the Samis, a non-Indoeuropean white group like the Finns, Estonians, and Hungarians. Most interesting.
George asks what happened to the Vandals? I believe you’ll find that the Vandals settled in what is now Spain: Andalusia, originally VANDALUSIA.
As for the TOTALLY NON-GERMANIC Berbers, they do not have their own language, but speak West Arabic for centuries. Augustine, though, learned Latin growing up.
The Vandals migrated from Northern Europe to Spain and then onward to North Africa. Spain was simply a stepping stone in a multi-generational migration southward.
Probably true. Mainland Greece was overrun several times by several different peoples, including the French, the Spaniards (look up the name Roger de Flor aka Roger Blum and how he was doublecrossed), the Serbs, et al. and also the islands were heavily influenced by Genoese and Venetian merchants. So there had to be some intermarriage and mingling. I recall reading one historian mention that even in late Byzantine times some historians who lived THEN wondered if there were any TRUE Greeks left. Even (suuposedly) they lamented that the pronunciation of the language changed.
The argument is a specious argument as it has certain fallacies that must be dispelled. First, racial purity was never priced above culture, language, religion and education. Thus even in ancient times, as well as in Hellenistic times there are racial mixing, especially if you are a sea faring people like the Greeks that also had several Empires under the Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians, etc.
Thus, racial purity was not strictly maintained even in ancient times, but what occurred in ancient times and throughout Greek history is an absorption of various people that have come into contact with Greeks. Remember Greeks were never absorbed by anyone it was the Greeks that absorbed them and made them Greek after a few generation or shorter. This is why Greek Culture, Greek Education, Greek Religion (Pagan and Christian) and the Greek language has always been maintained and have never disappeared.
Remember the words of the poet Horace: “Captive Greece took captive her rude conqueror?” This is a reference to Rome. By the time of the Second Sophistic Age Greek Culture and the Greek Language were paramount and exclusively used.
Further, if the Greek people were to disappear their language would disappear, their culture would disappear, everything Greek would disappear and this never happened. Was there transformation, was there reformation? Absolutely, but never a disappearance. That is the Key.
So yes, genetically the Greek share genetic markers with the Serbs, the Albanians, Bulgarians, Turks, etc., but we absorbed them they never absorbed us. Again that is the crucial difference. The reverse worked for them where there was an abundance of Albanians, Serbs, etc., compared to Greeks. Thus, Greek Culture, the Greek language and even the Hellenization of Christianity remain to this day never disappearing.
A good book on this subject is “Not out of Africa” by Mary Lefkowitz, and who I had the privilege to talk to personally about this subject, as it related to Afrocentrism saying that it created Greek Culture, many years ago.
Also the book “Modern Greece” by C.M Woodhouse also discusses this subject and does find that racial mixing has occured over the centures, but that it was the Greek Culture, Religion and Language that have endured that clearly show the continuation of a people as opposed to their disappearance.
The very same thing can be said and has been said about the differences among Germans. Those who lived during the time of Tacitus are very different from the Germans that live today. Further Eastern Germans are racially different then Western Germans and so forth, but Germans, no matter how much Polish blood or other blood lines they have today never stopped being German but absorbed them into the German culture.
So the core of a people will always exist and has existed for all different racial groups, even if there has been, and there has been, racial mixing. So what? Culture, Language and Religion are what matter and create the distinctive marks of difference between one people from another.
Because racially we are all the same, the human race, but culture, language and religion separate people into vastly different people. Racial purity belongs to the stupidity of the Nazis. The truth belongs to God and God alone.
I would stick to the truth.
Peter A. Papoutsis
Very well put, Peter! An excellent summation of Hellenism. My only quibble is the last statement: while I agree with you that in the theological sense mankind is indistinct before God, from an anthropological perspective, anthropology has proven that distinctions exist on the biological level between the races.
Yes I agree there are genetic differences.
Peter
Agreed, Peter. I was merely sharing what I had read.
No worries. I would recommend to you and to everybody to watch the documentary “The Genetic Journey of man” By Geneticist Spencer Wells. He also wrote a book on this subject with the same title. You can catch it on You Tube if you want to watch it or you can buy his book from Amazon and others if you want to read it.
Take care.
Peter
Check it out, George.
https://www.clinicalkey.com/topics/hematology/sickle-cell-disease.html
thank you. And thank you Dr S as well. I knew Thalessemia was a genetic anemia I didn’t know that it was caused by sickling. Learn something new every day.
Thalassemia, sickle-cell, bad debt–It’s all Greek to me!!
Right, it’s Thalessemia. The Italians have it too. . . .
Thalassemia and sickle cell disease are both sickling diseases that affect the red blood cells, and both probably arose because of protective effects in malaria endemic areas — but as far as I am aware, they are completely unrelated diseases genetically. So it is not really accurate to say that “Greeks are diagnosed with sickle cell anemia” — not in the sense that the vast majority of people mean when they talk about “sickle cell anemia.”
That’s my understanding as well. I am a carrier of Thalassemia, my grandmother had several blood transfusions because she had the disease. The hospital where I had my son is used to dealing with sickle cell-although they saw I had funny blood, they never said I had a sickle cell condition. They correctly said I had Thalessemia.
George, I’ve learned through observation that you have a policy of delaying the approval, as moderator, of some posts until you’ve been able to formulayrte areply–that YOUR posts are never delayed by moderation but appear immediately and are therefore ALWAYS displayed, while otherss , when finally (and grudgingly) never make it to a display cilumn? Perhaps, as owner, you’ll consider appointing someone else to moderate, thus protecting your sself from suspicion of unfairness…
Your Grace,
Your observation is accurate as far as it goes, but have you considered that when one works a full time job, (as our host does, plus more traveling than the average pharmacist) that his moderating and commenting occur in the same time slots?
Some folks team up on blogs just because there is a bit of work involved in monitoring (you should see what shows up in unmonitored comments!) not to mention that some pressure exists in delivering material on a regular basis. But I don’t think that George is delaying posts just so he can develop pithy comments in reply, I suspect that all of his blog activity occurs in limited free time.
Thank you for your understanding.
Well, yes, that’s one obvious explanation among the possiblities.
When I was a child in the 1950s, in Chicago people of northern and eastern European extraction considered those from Sicily and Greece as non-white
Yes, that’s right! My mother (who is Italian) was called non-white and I was told my parents (my father is N. European) had a “mixed marriage” by older folk.
Race is a pernicious and unsubstantial creation of man used to separate rather than unite. We are all human, we are all sinners. We are all equal before the Lord and His judgment even if we are different in the world. The only hierarchy that ultimately matters is closer union with Christ. Identifying ideologically as this, that or the other is a mechanism that keeps us from that union because Christ calls us to be who He knows us to be. Nothing less, nothing else.
I should not be amazed but the media and “intellectual elites” are taking the “identification as black” and running with it ad absurdum but it is not absurd to them.
To them all I have to do is “identify myself” as a young black female (being an old white man) and I can reasonably expect everyone else to fall in line. Even in that most of my own self-identity is false as it does not describe my noetic reality–the person Christ knows me as.
The Emperor has no clothes.
From a Biblical, Orthodox perspective, racism is a sin because we were all created in the image of God. Therefore, race hatred is like hating God since we are all his “eikona” (image or icon). BTW, this is one reason why the priest, during the Cherubic Hymn and at other times, censes the altar, the iconostasis, and then the congregation, because in that sense, we are all icons just as much as those on the iconostasis.
That kid who commented on the Emperor’s wardrobe has been expelled from school and is in juvie hall, and his folks are under investigation by Child Protective Services.
That’s why we haven’t heard from him lately. We’ve all been wondering…..
Well, George. You’ve hit the nail on the head. This culture has definitely become a “miasma of absurdity.” And the “rot” you have so eloquently mentioned is so extensive and pervasive that we might as well elect Bozo the Clown in 2016. The media have greatly aided and abetted this pop culture carnival of chaos, along with the minstrel shows on the country and rap music channels. Is it me or did anyone else see a close resemblance to Sideshow Bob (from The Simpsons) in this liar, Rachel Dolezal? I think it’s the hair. In the immortal words of George Costanza’s father (from Seinfeld), “Serenity Now!”
I do not usually esteem George Will, but he states the problem compactly:
If everything is a social construct that is created by the promptings of society, then if a sufficient number of extremely clever progressives can take charge of regulating in the most minute way the promptings of society they can produce almost anything they want. They can turn white into black and black into white. She is a symptom and not an encouraging one. Link