No books or poetry could protect it.
Twelve thousand years ago, a melting glacier deposited a boulder between two lakes it created during last continental ice age.
On 08-06-21, the University of Wisconsin loaded that 42-ton rock on a flatbed truck because a smattering of grievance studies students demanded it. Why? Because someone in 1925 used a racial epithet to describe it. (More here.)
Babylon Bee could not parody Woke cancel culture more mercilessly. Banishing a big dumb rock from campus? Too outrageous for Mel Brooks! Never mind Animal House, this comedy is its own real-life satire.
Chamberlin Rock being hauled away
Creator: Bryce Richter | Credit: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Copyright: Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Cowardice in motion
It took academic John McWhorter in the New York Times (of all places!) to pull back the curtain on snowflake culture. (The Columbia U prof describes himself as” a cranky liberal Democrat.”) Perhaps because McWhorter is “a man of color.” All praise Ann of Althouse for pointing to McWhorter’s essay: “The performative anti-racism of blackstudents at the U. of Wisconsin:”
The Wisconsin rock episode was a textbook demonstration of the difference between sincere activism and play acting…
The true fault here lies with the school’s administration, whose deer tails popped up as they bolted into the forest, out of a fear of going against the commandments of what we today call anti-racism, which apparently includes treating Black people as simpletons and thinking of it as reckoning.
True wokeness would have been to awaken to the tricky but urgent civic responsibility of, when necessary, calling out Black people on nonsense. Yes, even Black people can be wrong…. Likely: the authorities caved in so that students wouldn’t call them racists on social media. This entailed a basic dismissal of these students’ mental and moral capacity.”
‘The students are fashioning their take on the rock as a kind of sophistication or higher awareness. But what they are really demanding is that we all dumb ourselves down.’
— Prof. McWhorter
Blaska’s Bottom Line: In other words, it was a teachable moment. We get the impression that Chancellor Blank would sing I’m a little tea cup short and stout at half-time at Camp Randall if the Black Student Union demanded. Credit Phil Hands’ editorial cartoon in the Wisconsin State Journal, but where are the other thought leader in Madison WI?
Blaska Policy Werkes 
18 responses to “It was a rock (for gawdsakes)!”
Also noted: McWhorter used “the word” in his piece. The whole word. The head, the tail, the whole damn thing. The guy refused to self-censor.
Watch for his upcoming book “The Elect”.
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Rock? A big rock? What about a big rock?
Hunter’s ears just perked up.
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Another example of how the sane are yanked around by the insane.
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If we can get someone to refer to Chancellor Blank as an n-head in the Wisconsin State Journal, I am wondering whether the University will also haul her out to Stoughton on a flat bed?
Perhaps a Blaska letter to the editor is in order?
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UW-Madtown Chancellor Rebecca Blank pockets $606,154/yr plus bennies to make the really really tough decisions that less gritty individuals tend to shy away from.
Blank is tough, smart, and making her mark. You go girl!
Word on the street is plans are underway for some kind award to signify advanced wokeness for a low melanin count female person in power.
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Batman, Chancellor Rebecca is a steal at $606,154 per year. Otherwise UW might have lost her to Berkeley.
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(Wet, wash, rinse, repeat)
ROCK OF RAGES
Rock of rages,
A legacy,
Of racist white
Supremacy.
So raise the fist,
And take the knee.
Remove this stone
And make us free.
Then find more things,
We can delete.
So make some signs,
Let’s hit the street.
( source – The Wokist Snowflake Hymnal/Hermnal/Xermnal)
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As I daily watch the Biden administration as they negotiate the terms of our surrender to the Taliban, I’m struck by the similarities between Madison and Kabul Airport.
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You can’t fix the kind of blind stupidity it took to protest the rock being there and then the blatant virtue signaling stupidity of the UW-Madison in their efforts to remove the rock to pacify the stupid fools that protested it’s existence there.
Enabling stupid people never turns out well.
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Steve,
You raise a really good point there. It is a kind of “blind stupidity” that made them remove the rock. I wonder if it was the same kind of “blind stupidity” that has most liberal news organizations ignoring the fact that in today’s L.A. Times a columnist referred to Larry Elder, who is a Black Republican Man, who is running for the Governor’s seat that Gavin Newsom, a white Democrat now holds as: “The Black Face of White Supremacy”.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-candidate-larry-elder-is-a-threat-to-black-californians
Now the columnist who wrote this is a Black woman but the question should be: Should she be allowed to attack a Black man like this?
More importantly, the question should be: Why did the L.A. Times Editorial Board allow one of their columnists to attack a Black man?
Perhaps if we examine the make up of the L.A. Times Editorial Board we can determine for ourselves why they did.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/about-the-times-editorial-board
Don’t see a lot of faces of color in that group do you?
Don’t see too many faces of color in the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents
https://www.wisconsin.edu/regents/about-the-regents/ do you?
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Larry Elder is not “authentically black” meaning that he does not view himself as an angry victim.
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That “Black Face of White Supremacy” is a typical ad hominem from another bigoted totalitarian racist. Yes I just called Erika D. Smith a racist.
Larry Elder doesn’t follow the left’s purely bigoted* and racist version of a declared victimized black man that needs to be coddled by the government and votes only for Democrats so he is only considered a “skin deep black man and therefore fair game to attack with ad hominems, innuendo and lies. Remember, to progressives and social justice warriors their perceived ideology overrides absolutely everything (think cultish) and their ends always justifies their means.
*BIGOTED: obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
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Here’s the complete list of demands: Removing the rock was better than removing Old Abe. The UW caved.
1.) Remove the Abraham Lincoln monument located at the top of Bascom Hill and replace it with someone who stands for the justice of all people.
2.) Remove the Chamberlain Rock, formally known as “N*ggerhead Rock”, located on Observatory drive.
3.) Enact a “Moral Restart”— not a “Smart Restart”. (https://taa-madison.org/safe-restart-for-fall-2020/
4.) Defund and subsequently abolish the University of Wisconsin Police Department.
5.) Reopen discussion on how the University can meet the 1969 / 2020 demands with student groups such as the Student Inclusion Coalition and the Wisconsin Black Student Union.
6.) Recognize the educational value of marginalized identity-based student affinity groups.
7.) Implement a permanent funding structure for the student organizations that primarily serve and include predominantly marginalized groups, with funding allocated through the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs or Deputy Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Inclusion.
8.) Improve the support system for marginalized students on campus.
9.) Create a coordinated infrastructure to respond to acts of structural oppression.
10.) Further action from Chancellor Rebecca Blank regarding the meetings between leaders and the general body of the Wisconsin Black Student Union regarding their experiences and recommendations in making this a truly diverse and inclusive campus.
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Was this graded for grammar and spelling? Number 2 should be “formerly” not formally as if the rock was going to the prom.
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Also, Phil Hands of the WI State Journal did do an editorial about the Rock. “But it’s a Rock.” https://madison.com/wsj/opinion/cartoon/hands-on-wisconsin-much-ado-about-a-rock/article_3e01bf19-45ad-5717-9937-4483d8cc39cb.html
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That qualifies as an “editorial??” Way to climb out on a limb there Phil.
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Phil is obviously a gifted artist, but like most in mainstream media, he’s to the left and reports & editorializes mostly from that POV.
The Journal has missed so many opportunities to deliver good reporting. Not sure if it’s a case of fear, bias, or being short on staff, but I’ve long ago come not to expect any real journalism from them.
They recently added 3 new editorialists supposedly for diversity of thought, but from what I’ve read so far, it’s more of the same. If they really wanted diversity, they’d hire conservative voices.
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So where exactly did they move it? I’d like to go see it in it’s lonely confines. James Lindsay highlighted this on a recent podcast too.
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