"In hindsight, it’s not something I would have done, and I loved Oberlin, but when I got to school I was so distressed by the level of censorship. I thought, 'We all share politics here, we’re all people who are trying to urge the world forward with our liberal ideas, but there’s a thought police element here that makes me really uncomfortable.'""In hindsight, it’s not something I would have done..." — that's a tellingly awkward locution. In hindsight, it is something that you did, so how does the "would" function? She could mean: With hindsight, I see it's something I should not have done. Or: If I could have known then what I know now, I would not have done that.
And let's take apart this summary of her college-age thinking: "We all share politics here, we’re all people who are trying to urge the world forward with our liberal ideas, but there’s a thought police element here that makes me really uncomfortable." What I question about that — what makes me sad and reminds me of my law school days, circa 1980s — is the unexamined assumption that, of course, we are all liberals, we must be liberals, that's the common ground, and you would never want to get off that common ground.
Notice that Dunham still needs that assumed premise: We're all liberals here. We're all moving the world forward. We are all the good people, the liberals, and as I find out what the liberal position is on whatever we proceed to talk about, you can rest assured that I will be there, standing with all of you, on this common ground.
And then the one dissonant observation that blips through is: I'm stultified!
All that internalized restriction is stultifying... and yet, to go any deeper, to escape from that uncomfortableness is to risk losing the comfort of the common ground, the place you share with everyone you know.
Isn't it sad to look back on your school days, when you could have had all these exciting debates about everything, and to see that you missed out on all that, because everyone wanted to be good, everyone wanted to be lovable?
Oh, but you did have that Facebook group — "Political Correctness is Totally Gay" — you did let out a peep about the stultification, and instead of now saying I should have done much more, you're saying I shouldn't even have done that.
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42 comments:
The less thought about Lena the better.
I just want to let Lena know the world moves forward without liberals having to move it forward.
It's not sad that she didn't want to debate homophobic people who don't believe in evolution or raising taxes under any circumstances.
Why would she regret the name of that Facebook group? I assumed the idea of its name was to mock political correctness, not to actually insult homosexuals. Does she regret mocking political correctness?
I also like that there's no regret about not being more exposed to different points of view. You know, the sort of thing that would make an education a fulfilling expreience rather than four years of rote learning and indoctrination. Dunham seems to be happy about her ignorance and lack of worldliness.
Liberals excessively sensitive to social pressure, a.k.a. conformists, and Conservatives are people who are insufficiently sensitive to social pressure, non-conformists.
It works out to that, IMHO.
I just want to let Lena know the world moves forward without liberals having to move it forward.
The guy who opened the modern world to us, the guy who invented the transistor that made the designs for the theoretical computers people had in their heads possible, was a racist bigot.
If we had been stuck with the technology available to Alan Turing, computers would be limited to military use probably, but our guitar amps and radios would be much cooler.
It's funny to read about her self image as Eloise come alive and then to read that she is well aware of liberal thought police but she doesn't want to call them out. Originally she did but it was all too hard. So now she is a pretend free spirit insulting safe targets from within the liberal thought pen. Like those people who claim they climbed Mount Everest but who really were carried up by Sherpas. Or she is like the "hunters" who shoot from helicopters. One thing for sure - she is no Eloise.
What I question about that — what makes me sad and reminds me of my law school days, circa 1980s — is the unexamined assumption that, of course, we are all liberals, we must be liberals, that's the common ground, and you would never want to get off that common ground. . . .Isn't it sad to look back on your school days, when you could have had all these exciting debates about everything, and to see that you missed out on all that, because everyone wanted to be good, everyone wanted to be lovable?
This was, IMO, a big advantage to going to law school in a very conservative state (Tennessee). We had a lot of ideological diversity, even among the professors (see Glenn Reynolds), and there was no real reason to hide your opinions. It was a pretty open and ideologically challenging environment, compared to most schools.
The schoolmarm is trolling the Amazoners again with Gotta Pee Girl. Yawn. So predictable.
The schoolmarm is trolling the Amazoners again with Gotta Pee Girl. Yawn. So predictable.
There is always one or more members of the herd on watch to warn away the others.
The schoolmarm is trolling the Amazoners again with Gotta Pee Girl. Yawn. So predictable.
The implicit assumption here is that no fora should exist to serve those who don't worship at the alter of P.C.
"In hindsight, it’s not something I would have done..." — that's a tellingly awkward locution.
Yes. That "something [X] would have done" is the language of an editor, questioning whether a character is behaving in a way that's consistent with her motivations. Used here, it tells is that her whole life story is now so heavily fictionalized that even she can't tell where "the real Lena did this because..." ends and "the fictional Lena's motivation in that scene was..." begins.
Once you've discovered the one perfect thought that both validates and showcases your goodness, it takes a lot of policing to make sure everyone has that same thought. Even more so when next year's perfect thought becomes something else.
Political correctness is gay. Does that mean that gayness is bad?
Only thing I know about her is that she appears to have lied about being raped in college and in her autobiography, talked about sexually molesting her younger sister. Not sure what else she is known for, but with that, it is unlikely to be good.
I cringe at the notion of "moving the world forward." It's mechanistic and linear in a way not substantiated by actual societal experience, and promotes an arrogant belief that if you are the right people with the right ideas you can pull the levers (or the strings) for everybody else in order to bring about "progress."
You can see a similar mechanistic and linear foundation in Althouse's different timelines comment yesterday.
"We all share politics here"
What about "Barry?"
Once again, the words "liberal" and "progressive" have come to refer to people who are anything but liberal or progressive.
Oberlin also used to be a top-notch institution, academicwise.
That would be until the late 60s, I guess.
I think Mark Steyn's Canada prosecution was for saying that Islam was the new gay. Canada is like a small midwestern college in that way.
That woman -- AGAIN? If I never hear/see/read her name again, that will be fine.
We're all liberals here. We're all moving the world forward. We are all the good people ...
And that, in a nutshell, sums up what's wrong with them. Are they moving the world forward? That's a pretty debatable proposition right there. The world is changing, but change is easy. Change in a positive direction is hard, very hard, and much harder than any liberal is willing to work.
"Good people"? Do they grasp how much misery they've caused in this world? Apparently not.
She's. A. Genius.
I'm beginning to think of Lena Dunham as the revenge of fat chicks on hot mess Britney Spears. In the end, though, after all the controversy, after all the genital exposure, they're still fat and she's looking better than ever.
The use of a male or female actor, (or as I was raised in the supposedly unenlightened but more clear-speaking 1960s to call them, actors or actresses), as political pundits, mistakes public celebrity with personal cognitive ability.
Don't make that mistake.
Isn't it sad to look back on your school days, when you could have had all these exciting debates about everything, and to see that you missed out on all that, because everyone wanted to be good, everyone wanted to be lovable?
Who is the "we" (or in this case, "you") kemosabe?
Yeah, Oberlin was one of my options in '82. I knew better even then.
This post does need the celebritney tag, btw.
Defining "Political Correctness"
The following is the 2007 winning entry from an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term. This year's term was 'Political Correctness'.
The winner wrote: "Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
University campuses aren't places with a diverse range of ideas, alas.
That can change.
"as political pundits, mistakes public celebrity with personal cognitive ability."
My late mother-in-law was in the movie industry for 40 years. She referred to actors and actresses as "talent" and it was not a complement.
She gets naked in that show all the time because she wants everyone to be clear she's not really just a dude in drag, right?
As Kate from www.smalldeadanimals.com is fond of saying. What is the opposite of diveristy? University.
I went to college in the early 1990s and students were all over the place politically, but maybe leaned more Republican. The professors were more liberal, but there were still a number of GI bill ones, so they were broad minded liberals.
Dunham doesn't remember the tough economic times of the late 1970s or early 1980s. Or the high crime rates in cities, the coming to terms with Viet Nam and the respect people started to show to Viet Nam veterans and to an all volunteer military.
And she grew up in Manhattan, so she had a sheltered and provincial upbringing.
It doesn't speak well about her college experience that she didn't become more broad minded.
If she wants to improve as a writer she needs to open her mind by meeting people who think differently from her and read and engage with people who think differently from her.
From Instapundit:
Berkeley Students Complain About Having To Read Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault.
In course on classic social theory. And if that makes it hard for you to focus on the course material, cupcakes, you don’t belong in college.
http://www.dailycal.org/2015/01/20/occupy-syllabus/
"The standardized canon is obsolete: Any introduction to social theory that aims to be relevant to today’s problems must, at the very least, address gender and racial oppression."
Note: This is not from The Onion.
It’s Obama's America in all its fatuity.
BTW: “Grades were based primarily on multiple-choice quizzes on assigned readings.”
This be corse fer collich stoodents?
Can Lena Dunham please shut up? Just for a little while? Even a day or two?
I think you've missunderstood Lena.
What she's saying is that her past is still in the future. She cannot be bound by the conventions of a linear timeline.
tim in vermont said...
The guy who opened the modern world to us, the guy who invented the transistor that made the designs for the theoretical computers people had in their heads possible, was a racist bigot.
If you're referring to Shockley, that's pure bullshit.
Who is Lena Dunham?
Political correctness is gay. Does that mean that gayness is bad?
that was my first thought. Where is the attack by Althouse on Dunham for using gay as an insult?
Where is the outrage from the gay community.
Can you imagine the reaction if someone on the Right had tweeted this?
Lena Dunham? After Lena wrote about how she cared for her baby sister, somebody once referred to her as an "incestuous pedophile."
But he meant no harm because it was said in the spirit of as a transgressive compliment.
Isn't it sad to look back on your school days, when you could have had all these exciting debates about everything, and to see that you missed out on all that, because everyone wanted to be good, everyone wanted to be lovable?
Isn't ironic that the same kids who bemoaned how colleges stifled their free speech turned around and stifled speech FAR more dramatically?
I am moved to song. 'How does it feel to be all alone' (like an intellectual Luke Skywalker) 'like a rolling stone' (that knocks down all the pins).' 'You probably think this song is about you.'
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