Guilty white liberals are their own parody 

Posted on August 18, 2018 by

New York Times gets pranked!

‘I’m riddled with shame. White shame. …
I feel like my literal existence hurts people …’ — Whitey

This is a letter to an actual advice column published August 14, 2018 by the terminally Trump-deranged New York Times. The actual advice column is called “The Sweet Spot.” This exercise in journalistic masochism is managed by two white people — themselves suffused with race shame — who call themselves “The Sugars.” They specialize in incredibly “woke” advice to the liberal-progressive-socialist in need of a weekend at the re-education camp.

The letter, on the other hand, is without question a splendid hoax, on a par with Piltdown Man and the Hitler Diaries. A savage send-up of the cult of white privilege, implicit bias, and intersectionality, exposed by a cisgendered white woman with a wicked sense of humor.

(We get this via Ann of Althouse who channels Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute. That’s how social media works.)

As it appears in the New York Times:

 

Sweet Spot

By Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond, aka: The Sugars

 

Dear Sugars,

I’m riddled with shame. White shame. This isn’t helpful to me or to anyone, especially people of color. I feel like there is no “me” outside of my white/upper middle class/cisgender identity. I feel like my literal existence hurts people, like I’m always taking up space that should belong to someone else.

I consider myself an ally. I research proper etiquette, read writers of color, vote in a way that will not harm P.O.C. (and other vulnerable people). I engage in conversations about privilege with other white people. I take courses that will further educate me. I donated to Black Lives Matter. Yet I fear that nothing is enough. Part of my fear comes from the fact that privilege is invisible to itself. What if I’m doing or saying insensitive things without realizing it?

Another part of it is that I’m currently immersed in the whitest environment I’ve ever been in. … I don’t talk about my feelings because it’s hard to justify doing so while people of color are dying due to systemic racism and making this conversation about me would be again centering whiteness. … Instead of harnessing my privilege for greater good, I’m curled up in a ball of shame. How can I be more than my heritage?

— Whitey

Maguire asks “Is this for real, or has the NY Times flipped the keys to The Onion? You know what? Go with your gut and bet ‘The Onion’. As best I can tell, the Times writers and editors are serious.”

Up steps someone named Titania McGrath to respond that she is the “Whitey” who wrote the letter and warned, “Do not deny my lived experience!” Ms. McGrath’s social media identifies her as “Activist. Healer. Radical intersectionist poet.” That only fuels speculation that she is the merriest prankster since the late comedian Andy Kaufman. From Ms. McGrath’s Twitter feed:

Period Poverty

Indisputably, Titania McGrath is a live-wire, anti-P.C. whoopie cushion. But Sweet Spot columnists Strayed and Almond are (we think!) playing right into the trolling farceur’s game:  

Almond: Your letter describes your place as a kind of prison cell of privilege. What you really feel is trapped within an identity that marks you, inescapably, as an oppressor. This feeling is especially acute right now, I suspect, because you’re suddenly immersed in a milieu that reflects your privilege back to you. We do live in a culture steeped in white supremacy and class bigotry, as well as patriarchal values. ….

Strayed: You don’t have to relinquish your heritage to be an ally to people of color, Whitey. You have to relinquish your privilege. And part of learning how to do that is accepting that feelings of shame, anger and the sense that people are perceiving you in ways that you believe aren’t accurate or fair are part of the process that you and I and all white people must endure in order to dismantle a toxic system that has perpetuated white supremacy for centuries. …

GOODFELLAS-PESCI laugh

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Ms. McGrath (if THAT is your real name), we hear there is an opening for principal at Madison’s Sherman Middle School. Hellz Bellz, run for school board! You would be a cisgendered cinch!

 

 

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Posted in identity politics, Progressives, Race | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Madison justice is one big joke: ‘Joking, laughing teens arrested for auto theft’

Posted on August 17, 2018 by

Quick, more Restorative Justice!

Q. Why did 4 teenagers steal a car? A. It beats walking

Excerpting freely from this week’s Capital Newspapers account headlined: “Joking, laughing teens arrested for auto theft.”

Four Madison teens — two 14-year-old girls, a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl — were arrested Wednesday afternoon for driving recklessly around town in a stolen car, Madison police said. …

“One of the 14-year-old girls said her arrest “Didn’t matter,” and the GPS bracelet she was wearing because of a previous stolen car arrest didn’t mean anything, said police spokesman Joel DeSpain.

“She said she would be released soon without any consequences.”

An officer told the juveniles during the booking process at the Juvenile Reception Center they should seek employment so someday a car could be purchased.

“The other 14-year-old girl said they don’t steal cars due to the lack of money, they just don’t like to walk,” DeSpain said.

“The son of the car’s owner showed up to get the car, and he wanted to know if there had been any arrests,” DeSpain said. “He was told yes, and that some of those involved had been arrested in the past for the exact same offense.

“The son indicated he didn’t like how people were just let go by the system.”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: If sonny boy don’t watch it, he just might be called a white supremacist. Paging district attorney Ismael Ozanne!

Posted in Madison city government, Progressives, War on Police | 22 Comments

Socialist Marxist-Leninists are driving Madison’s war on police

Posted on August 17, 2018 by

Who will be the first Democrat to denounce them?

More silence from Mayor Soglin, Joe Parisi, et al

Time to connect the dots.

From Derail the Jail, through No Cops in Schools, on to disinviting police from this Sunday’s Gay Pride parade in Madison, the War on Cops is waged on behalf of imposing socialism. 

By weaponizing identity politics, the socialists have pre-empted the Democrat(ic) Party. The good Madison liberal fears nothing more than being called a racist, sexist homophobe. No matter that an anti-democratic revolutionary outfit is doing the name calling.

Madison Pride

The Degenderettes describe themselves as “a coalition of trans- and queer-identified activists on the radical left which exists to provide both aid and mutual-care, and to fight for the liberation of all marginalized people.”

Driving much of the harassment and intimidation of this movement are the cadres of the International Socialist Organization, Madison chapter.

When the social justice warriors demand “community control of the police” they want their control of the police. When that day comes, the mother of the West H.S. student would be charged with assault, not the Freedom Inc. Youth Squad thug who smashed her smart phone.

ISO Lenin

“We stand in the Marxist tradition, founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and continued by V.I. Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky.”

Socialism is all about coercion. The socialist knows for absolute certain who has too much and who has not enough. Not enough/too much house, not enough/too much money, and — most dangerously — not enough/too much speech.

‘The power to bring the system to a halt.’
— chapter heading of the International Socialist Organization creed.

In order to redistribute, the socialist must expropriate. To expropriate they must intimidate. Police, as currently constituted, stand in the way of their organized theft. (No, Denmark is NOT a socialist country. It has a capitalist economy supporting generous social services. Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea are socialist.)

ISO Ocasio

The victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Bronx of New York is the most glaring example. Like Bernie Sanders, she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose platform, former Senator Joe Lieberman laments, “is more socialist than Democrat(ic).”

Once his party’s vice presidential nominee, Lieberman warned: “Her dreams of new federal spending would bankrupt the country or require very large tax increases, including on the working class. Her approach foresees government ownership of many private companies, which would decimate the economy and put millions out of work.”

JOB OF COPS.png

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Kudos to the Madison Fire Department for refusing to kow-tow to the socialist War on Police. The Stately Manor is reaching out to Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan to determine whether they, too, are willing to throw Madison’s police under the bus or whether they will be a profile in courage and boycott Sunday’s parade.

Lisa Subeck? Chris Taylor? Mo Cheeks? Marsha Rummel? Paul Soglin? Joe Parisi? Anybody home?

ISO Cop haters

In other words, the only good cop is a …

[ UPDATE: Open Madison, an “Out Professional Engagement Network,” issued a statement disapproving of the cop ban that concludes:

Over the past several years, our Pride Parade has become a source of joy, love, and kinship. As such, we feel withdrawing support from OutReach or the Pride Parade is unproductive in furthering the goal of improving the relationship between our community and police officers. Our community deserves the joy of Pride, and the work that needs to be done will last long beyond this upcoming Pride Parade.

We need longer tables, not higher fences. We’re ready to get to work. ]

A communique from Community Pride, a front group for the International Socialists and the Degenderettes:

Fellow community members and organizations,

The Community Pride coalition, formerly known as Alternate Pride, would like to share its appreciation and thanks with OutReach LGBT Community Center for their decision to not allow police contingents at this year’s Pride.

Through their newly released statement, OutReach has chosen to take this important, first step to give a meaningful apology, a promise to repair harm done to the most marginalized in our community, and an effort to engage in concrete actions that foster full inclusion and liberation for all LGBTQ+ individuals.

To our friends, supporters, collaborators, and comrades, we want to make it crystal clear that we have earned an important victory. We took a stand and demanded that OutReach rescind their invitation to the Madison Police Department, the University of Wisconsin Police Department, and Dane County Sheriff Mahoney, and we won.

In light of OutReach’s decision, Community Pride will march as a contingent in this year’s parade. We will continue our call to oppose police at Pride in future years and across the nation. We also will schedule an organizing meeting for all who want to join us next week. We know there will be backlash to this decision, and that is part of why it is important to march in the parade and defend this victory.

Following the parade, we will be celebrating our victory and pride at an after party at the Goodman Community Center from 6 pm – 8 pm. We invite all in our community to join in on this Community Pride celebration. But there is so much more work to be done.

… The police drove a divisive wedge into our vulnerable community. Now is the time for celebration of our victory, pride, and moving towards collective community healing. 

In solidarity, Community Pride

 

Posted in identity politics, Socialism, War on Police | Tagged , , , , , | 42 Comments

A Vietnamese woman was too diverse for Madison

Posted on August 15, 2018 by

Ald. Thuy Pham-Remmele checked the wrong box: conservative

Who knew inclusionary would be so exclusionary?

We have been saying that identity politics divides and separates — unlike the Maidenform brassiere — without lifting.

Madison is seeing that play out with the Gay Pride Parade this weekend. (Soon to be renamed the Gay Paranoia Parade.) The group governing the parade disinvited the police from the march, bowing to the insistence of the Most Woke among the identity politicians that police are using LBGTQs for target practice (or something). So now the Madison fire department says count us out, too. 

In light of the disappointing decision by OutReach to rescind the invitation to the Madison Police Department to participate in this years’s Pride Parade, the Madison Fire Department, in solidarity with our women and men in blue, must respectfully and regretfully decline to participate in this year’s parade.  

This is the Madison Fire Department in which Mahlon Mitchell serves — he being a person of color and second-place finisher out of eight candidates in Tuesday’s Democrat(ic) gubernatorial primary.

The conformity of diversity

CIMG0109small

Ald. Thuy Pham-Remmele

In his last prize-worthy blogge, your Squire praised former mayor Dave Cieslewicz for breaking from Democrat(ic) party dogma on identity politics, for questioning its slavish devotion to Capital D Diversity in such ephemera as skin color and gender while demanding lock-step uniformity in political thought.

 

At his current roadside stand, the former mayor wrote:

The essence of being a liberal is to be open to different ideas and perspectives — ironically, even conservative ones. So, I would like to see at least one strong, articulate classic conservative in the [mayoral] race. Someone who would make a principled and impassioned case for smaller government, less regulation and more personal freedom.

In Mr. C’s eight years at the helm of The Emerald City, however, we could recall no conservative appointed to any commission, committee, task force, or special panel. We had forgotten, in fact, the May 2009 defenestration of the Stately Manor’s former alder, Thuy Pham-Remmele. (H/T to Cornie Gotchberg for reminding us of “The Exile of Thuy Pham-Remmele.”)

Now here is a woman and Vietnamese, to boot. Sadly, she is happily heterosexual but no one is perfect. But she is also conservative!

Mayor Dave had booted this diminutive spit fire from the consequential Community Development Block Grant Commission. That’s the body that doles out dollars to experiments like the “wet” homeless apartments at Tree Lane and Rethke Avenue. Knowing Thuy (the Squire was a principal in her campaigns) she would have pulled the emergency brake on that one.

Thuy’s defenestration was payback for forcing Cieslewicz to abandon his folly with trollies. With the mayor and police chief Noble Wray in attendance, Thuy had packed a parochial school auditorium with 900 angry constituents demanding more police instead.

Thuy was exiled to the food cart committee. Vietnamese, y’know.

A totalitarian ‘us versus them’

The white lab coats in the Research Department stumbled upon the delightful byline of Froma Harrop, a syndicated columnist who captures this point of light in the great beer bottle of truth:

The problem with left-wing movements isn’t so much “the left-wing” as it is the “movements.” Movements sometimes have a totalitarian edge that cannot abide dissent, or even a hint of it. They’re “us” versus “them.” In the case of left-wing movements, the “them” is often fellow Democrats.

Harrop (harrumph!) recalls Ralph “Recall” Nader and his ilk siphoning enough votes from Al Gore to elect George W. Bush.

… Here is how Barbara Ehrenreich put it in The Nation: “What I fear most about a Gore victory — yes, I said victory — is its almost certainly debilitating effect on progressives and their organizations.” Celebrity agitator Michael Moore was bouncing on and off stages in liberal cities urging audiences to vote for Nader. “A vote for Gore is a vote for Bush,” he bellowed. He BELLOWED! ♥♥♥

33303255_1775615112499814_4573063069751574528_o_640x345_acf_cropped

Vermont’s visionary progressive

That’s why Stately Blaska Manor encourages socialist provocateur John Nichols in his work  of purging moderates like congressman Ron Kind, D-La Crosse. On the Pages of The Nation, our Comrade salivates over the ultimate prize of identity politics:

 

Christine Hallquist Isn’t Just the First Transgender Candidate for Governor — She’s Also a Visionary Progressive!

And a breath mint, too! This particular Chris is also expected to lose to the Republican incumbent. In Vermont, possibly the bluest state in the Union. To a Republican.

Party of crazy, your table is ready

Under the pen name of “David Blaska,” your Squire writes in the upcoming September issue of InBusiness magazine  that “Republicans would be their own worst enemies if it were not for Democrats.”

We had in mind the upset victory earlier this year of socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over an incumbent Democratic centrist in NYC.  The party of JFK, Bill Proxmire, and Clem Zablocki is now the party of Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, and Tammy Baldwin. More Comrade Nichols:

The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Effect:
The Democratic party’s new rock star is storming the country
on behalf of insurgent populists.

We quote Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, as lamenting his party’s “relentless race to the left.” So Mark Pocan moves to abolish immigration enforcement. Wisconsin Democrats vow to empty out half the penitentiaries.

“If the next two years is just a race to offer increasingly unrealistic proposals … it’ll be difficult for us to make a credible case we should be allowed to govern again,” Coons cried.

 

Posted in identity politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 58 Comments

Madison WI marches in lockstep to identity politics

Posted on August 13, 2018 by

Just ask a guilty white Madison liberal to apologize.
They will before asking “what for?”

A fiery meteor is headed for Earth. The Washington Post headlines, “Sources say world to end; Congress to recess.” The Wall Street Journal: “World to End; Stock Market Plunges.” USA Today: “IT’S OVER! (No weather map today).” New York Times: “World to end; women and minorities hardest hit.”

A foolish Madison liberal named Beth Harper unwittingly recycled that old joke in her letter in the current Isthmus weekly newspaper:

Every time Dave Cieslewicz complains about “identity politics,” I wonder what political topics he thinks are NOT affected by one’s race, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, or other important aspects of identity. Economics? Environment? Public safety? Tell that to … communities of color who are disproportionately hurt by air pollution and toxic waste.

Huh? More air pollution in Meadowood than in Orchard Ridge? No garbage pick-up on Badger Road? Fast forward to an arresting essay on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times opinion section. Author Kwame Anthony Appiah gives dispensation to the worried liberal trapped in the congealing amber of identity politics.

Not every opinion needs to be underwritten by your race or gender or other social identity. — “Go Ahead, Speak For Yourself.”

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a professor of philosophy who is coming out with a book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. He writes:

The very word “identity” points toward the trouble: It comes from the Latin idem, meaning “the same.” Because members of a given identity group have experiences that depend on a host of other social factors, they’re not the same. …

Here’s Chris Rock, talking about his life in an affluent New Jersey suburb: “As a black man, I’m against the cops, but as a man with property, well, I need the cops. If someone steals something, I can’t call the Crips!”

 

A close encounter of the liberal kind
All White People are alike

The school to stupidity pipeline

Our Madison school board is living the lie of identity politics. Because a noisy group billing itself as the Freedom Inc. Youth Squad claims that police in schools creates something called the “school to prison pipeline” the guilty white liberals dominating the ad hoc committee on EROs kowtows to the race shaming. 

Does Freedom Inc. speak for all minority families? Not even for the Urban League or the NAACP.  Where is the ad hoc committee’s empirical evidence that students of color are being disciplined for chewing gym in the hallway while white students are given a free pass to beat on minorities? That evidence does not exist.

Or the Gay Pride Parade disinviting the cops. For the identity politician, every day is the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, or the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, or Diary of a Mad Housewife.

“Our community is facing complex, unprecedented times, where power is a fleeting commodity for our most vulnerable members, especially queer and transgender persons of color,” OutReach board president Michael Ruiz said. …

“Those whose voices are silenced due to gender and sexual orientation, as well as the intersections of race, class, ethnicity, gender, ability, immigration status, age, and lack of institutional power, need us to amplify their voices,” Ruiz continued.

Disinviting the cops is going to amplify voices? He doesn’t think there are any women, LBGTs, or racial minorities on the cop squad?

Appoint a token conservative, be amazed!

Back to Cieslewicz. He is one of the very few Democrats who has taken on identity politics (while, lamentably, holding his tongue on cops in schools).  The former mayor writes:

The essence of being a liberal is to be open to different ideas and perspectives — ironically, even conservative ones. So, I would like to see at least one strong, articulate classic conservative in the [mayoral] race. Someone who would make a principled and impassioned case for smaller government, less regulation and more personal freedom.

ExplodingHeadSmallSo would we, not that such a dream candidate could get elected in The Emerald City. But Dave C. was mayor for two terms; don’t recall him appointing any conservatives to the myriad citizen commissions that clutter city government. 

We know because your intrepid Squire donated $1 to Mayor Dave’s re-election campaign with the expected quid pro quo that this David would be appointed to something juicy. Our $1 bribe (“more where that came from”) was refunded in the return mail.

In any case, we’ve added “appoint philosophical diversity” to The Policy Werkes’ recommendations to the Task Force on Government Structure.  Don’t worry, they won’t prevail but shouldn’t policy makers at least be exposed to a different viewpoint? An opinion the majority here in The Emerald City likely has never heard expressed? 

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Can you think of anything more racist than assuming that all black/Asians/hispanics/whites/disabled/LBGT think alike? 

Posted in identity politics | Tagged , , , | 59 Comments

It’s Leah, Tony & Shabnam this Tuesday

Posted on August 10, 2018 by

The Stately Manor will enhance your reality
whether you like it or not

The white lab coats trekked out to the garden shed to attach jumper cables to Ol’ Sparky, the Eisenhower-era mainframe computer here at the Policy Werkes, for some election prognostication duty. Yep, next Tuesday, August 14, is the partisan primary. Place yer bets at the window.

We fed Ol’ Sparky a carton of gluten-free, recycled paper punch cards, then stood well back holding fire extinguishers at the ready. The ancient tabulator shuddered and groaned before putting on a light show rivaling July 4 Rhythm and Booms.

Ol' Sparky

The marquee race on the Democrat(ic) side is for governor.

The clinking, clanking, clattering, collection of caliginous junk spit out a single sheet of dot matrix predictions. Guess what? The polls aren’t lying: Tony Evers will face Scott Walker in November. At the finish line, in order: Evers, Kelda Roys, Mahlon Mitchell, Kathleen Vinehout, Mike McCabe, Matt Flynn, Paul Soglin, and (last and very least) Josh Pade. Unless the track is muddy, then flip Flynn and McCabe. 

On the Republican side for the right to challenge U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin it’s Leah Vukmir 56% to Kevin Nicholson 44% — well beyond the Marquette Law School polling. Everyone at Stately Blaska Manor — the indentured servants, the unlettered field hands, the white lab coats at the Policy Werkes, the Lovely Lisa and the Squire his own self proudly support Leah Vukmir.

Vote icon

Tuesday, August 14

Which of the four Democrats wins the 77th Assembly District and thus a seat in the Assembly? A few weeks ago we would have said Shelia Stubbs: county board supervisor, African-American, endorsed by scads of office-holders including the incumbent, Terese Berceau, who is retiring. But now Ol Sparky is blinking the name of Shabnam Lofti. (Who? Shabnam. Oh!)

 

Platinum Subscriber Bonus Pick for lieutenant governor: It’s the Democrat(ic) primary, folks. Mandela Barnes, D-Milwaukee, over some white guy from Sheboygan.

Quick update on Cops in Schools: That infernal committee concedes that they’re not going to get police out of Madison’s four high schools but they were busy Wednesday evening applying handcuffs, one of which would forbid police from enforcing city ordinances. Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot!

Folks, in most cases, city ordinances mimic statutory criminal misdemeanors with the major difference: fines only, no jail time. Ask yourselves this: Why oh why would a Madison school board want to prohibit city police from enforcing city ordinance? Broken Windows: ignore the small stuff and you will harvest the big stuff soon enough. Mark 6 p.m. Monday, August 27 for the full Madison Board of Education meeting.

Belated congratulations to the WI State Journal for a wonderful series on the Yahara Lakes: Giants Among Us series. Love the photography and the graphics and some of the best writing we’ve seen. Special credit to Steven Verburg. Interesting that Kegonsa holds much more water than Waubesa although the surface area is nearly identical. And the proportion of muck, gravel, sand and stone comprising each lake bed. The sunken treasures, the underground/over ground paths precipitation takes to find the lakes.

Anyone notice how the national news media seized on the shooting at WORT radio last weekend and speculated whether Donald Trump had caused his crazed supporters to fire upon America’s worst enemy, the news media? Notice how quickly they dropped the story when it turned out to be yet another casualty of hip hop “music” and its culture of violence?  

mike-baron-sons-of-ps.pngFormer Madison Isthmus artist Mike Baron is making a name for himself from his aerie in Denver. Frontpage is up with the thought-provoking “Comics, Culture and Conservatives,” an interview with Mr. Baron. Mike Baron is going to be at the Mighty Con show at Monona Terrace from 10 to 5 this Sunday, 8-12-18. 

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Remember, you can only vote in one party’s primary. That should limit the mischief, Tuesday. Dammit!

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 76 Comments