October 7, 2018

What does "Come Get Your People" mean?

I had to Google that question as I struggled to understand the NYT op-ed, "White Women, Come Get Your People," by Alexis Grenell. The phrase "come get your people" does not appear in the text of the column, only in the headline. There's a subheadline, "They will defend their privilege to the death." I guess "They" is the white women, not "your people." Is coming and getting your people another way to say defending your privilege?

We see photographs of Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, so I guess they're in the set of white women Grenell is addressing. Is Grenell white? It feels creepy to Google to check someone's race, but she made race relevant. The headline makes it seem as though she is not white, because why would you address a group as if they were other than you if they were not?

I've read the column already, and I found it strange and off-putting, so I'm going to read it again to examine my reaction and I'll also see if the meaning of the headline pops into clarity and, if not, examine what turned up in my Google search of the phrase "Come Get Your People."

It begins with melodrama and careless imagery:
After a confirmation process where women all but slit their wrists, letting their stories of sexual trauma run like rivers of blood through the Capitol, the Senate still voted to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. 
I say careless because "rivers of blood" is a lot of blood to flow out of "women" — which women? how many? — and yet they only "all but slit their wrists"? So what did they do in this metaphor, to produce all that blood, if they didn't open wrist veins?
With the exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all the women in the Republican conference caved, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who held out until the bitter end.
So Murkowski counts as one of the good ones (despite the pairing with Daines). And Susan Collins, despite her beautifully brilliant speech, is deemed to have fought against the position she forthrightly took. Then, she "caved." She gave in to the men.
These women are gender traitors, to borrow a term from the dystopian TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” They’ve made standing by the patriarchy a full-time job. 
That's awfully presumptuous. The vote on Kavanaugh wasn't — at least not necessarily — a vote for or against "the patriarchy." I think this kind of overstatement and hyperventilating is repellent to a lot of women and men. "Gender traitors" is very insulting and closed-minded about what different women might be thinking. Feminists should offer women freedom, not more limitation.
The women who support them show up at the Capitol wearing “Women for Kavanaugh” T-shirts, but also probably tell their daughters to put on less revealing clothes when they go out....
Less revealing than T-shirts stating political messages, or did Grenell just flip into visualizing these women policing the display of sexuality in their offspring?
These are the kind of women who think that being falsely accused of rape is almost as bad as being raped. 
But being falsely accused is horrible! We rarely get the choice which misfortune will befall us, but it's not right to brush aside some misfortunes because we think other misfortunes are worse. But anyway, compare the least bad rape to the worst false accusations, and you will surely see an overlap. I think there are some men — you? — who would rather be raped than to have his 2 young daughters believe, falsely, that he is a rapist. Again, life doesn't work like that. You don't get that choice. But I think just the one effect, your 2 daughters believe you are a rapist, might be as painful as an actual rape, and I'm not counting all the other potential effects that Kavanaugh was looking at: loss of the Supreme Court appointment, loss of his existing judgeship, loss of his ability to teach and to coach, loss of his wife, loss of his friends, and even loss of his liberty (as some were arguing that he should go to prison for perjury). These are not trifles! And it's counterproductive to pretend that they are for the purpose of convincing people that rape is a terrible crime.
The kind of women who agree with President Trump that “it’s a very scary time for young men in America,” which he said during a news conference on Tuesday.

But the people who scare me the most are the mothers, sisters and wives of those young men, because my stupid uterus still holds out some insane hope of solidarity.
She's reduced herself and others to an internal organ. Uteri cry out to other uteri: Sisters! But every young man is here because a woman was a mother, and the solidarity within a family is the strongest solidarity of all. That scares you? It scares you that mothers love their sons? The love of mothers toward their sons makes us want to see them free from false accusations AND want them not to be rapists. It's not one or the other. The 2 desires are mutually reinforcing. And it really is, as you say, stupid to think otherwise.

Since when do people on the left think fairness to the accused should be sacrificed in the interest of fighting crime? That's traditionally what lefties call a right-wing idea.
We’re talking about white women. 
Because black men are not susceptible to false accusations?! That's a ludicrously convenient assertion.
The same 53 percent who put their racial privilege ahead of their second-class gender status in 2016 by voting to uphold a system that values only their whiteness, just as they have for decades....
The effort to inject race into the Kavanaugh problem is embarrassing. We have enough racial problems without seeing them appropriated as a makeweight in an argument about women. And it's ridiculous and contemptuous toward women to say that when we vote we're just choosing whether to vote based on race or based on sex. Stop globbing us into big groups and ordering us what to do. It's not even effective persuasion, quite apart from its being plainly factually wrong and actively destructive.

I'm cutting a few sentences that lead up to this over-the-top statement:
So it seems that white women are expected to support the patriarchy by marrying within their racial group, reproducing whiteness and even minimizing violence against their own bodies....
I think by "minimizing violence against their own bodies" she means acting as if the violence against them isn't as bad as it really is, but the language is carelessly ambiguous in a way that doesn't serve her propagandistic agenda. The phrase could also mean doing things that lessen the extent of the violence. A woman who knows self-defense and keeps alert and aware of her surroundings is "minimizing violence." Perhaps Grenell is so focused on how women feel about what other people do to them that she didn't notice the double meaning that had to do with what women can do for themselves in this world. What's important is that the Democratic Party can endlessly offer to help women with their desperate, crying needs. And if you're a woman and you don't agree, you're a gender traitor.

Look at this logic:
During the 2016 presidential election, did white women really vote with their whiteness in mind? Lorrie Frasure-Yokley, a political scientist at U.C.L.A., recently measured the effect of racial identity on white women’s willingness to support Trump in 2016 and found a positive and statistically significant relationship. So white women who voted for him did so to prop up their whiteness....
A statistically significant relationship doesn't tell us what was in the voters' mind! White women voted for Trump to prop up their whiteness? How do you know they didn't vote because they hate abortion or because they wanted better trade deals or they don't trust the Clintons or, hell, maybe they still held out some insane hope of making America great again?
This blood pact between white men and white women is at issue in the November midterms. President Trump knows it, and at that Tuesday news conference, he signaled to white women to hold the line: “The people that have complained to me about it the most about what’s happening are women. Women are very angry,” he said. “I have men that don’t like it, but I have women that are incensed at what’s going on.”

I’m sure he does “have” them; game girls will defend their privilege to the death.
Grenell is insulting women again. Because they're not on her political side, she disparages them as having no mind at all. Hypocritically, she's saying about them what she's accusing Trump of saying about them, that they're conned and witless. But that isn't what Trump is saying. He might be thinking it, but Grenell is saying it.
But apparently that doesn’t include Ms. Murkowski anymore...

Meanwhile, Senator Collins subjected us to a slow funeral dirge about due process and some other nonsense... 
Due process is nonsense
... due process and some other nonsense I couldn’t even hear through my rage headache....
Grenell is presenting herself as a lunatic. She's doing that openly and intentionally. She's less aware, it seems, that she's also betraying the most treasured liberal values.
... as she announced on Friday she would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Her mostly male colleagues applauded her.

The question for white women in November is: Which one of these two women are you?

I fear we already know the answer.
So it ends. Awful. She should fear that her histrionics and stark illiberalism will drive voters, female and male, into voting against Democrats. I don't like rivers-of-blood melodrama and race jammed in anywhere you can think of anything to say about it and contempt for the intelligence and independence of women. What an awful opinion piece! And I still don't know what "come get your people" means!

Okay, I'll look at the stuff Google found for me. First, there's "Picking Up the Trash of White Supremacy," by Abby Norman in something called SheLoves:
Recently my friend Danielle has been tagging me in posts on Facebook about white people making unfortunate missteps, whether blatantly or accidentally, in the realm of racial reconciliation.

“Abby Norman, you better come get your people.”

At first I laughed. What do you mean my people? I do not know these people. They do not speak for me. Why do you think every dumb white girl is my people, what are you trying to say?

What Danielle was trying to say was that as a white woman, with white privilege, it is my responsibility to educate other white people so everyone can live in a better world. Too often white women, and specifically I, have depended on black women to educate white communities about their lived experiences....

White Ladies, the white community is our space and our responsibility....
Second, there's a tweet from Brittney Cooper (AKA ProfessorCrunk) that says:
White feminists, when we say come get your people, we mean come get your girl, #PermitPatty, out here harassing little Black girls. This kind of thing makes me feel the opposite of non-violent.
So there's this specifically racial meaning, it seems, that comes from black people who are tired of getting stuck fighting racism on their own and want white people to see it and to take the lead disciplining other white people. But Grenell isn't black, and though she tries, she's not really talking about race. She's a white woman demanding that other white women discipline white women, and not about race but about getting tripped up in the nonsense of due process rather than just automatically and uncritically believing a woman's accusations.

If it's some specifically black slang, why not let black people have it? Speaking of white privilege. Do you think everything is yours?

192 comments:

Bad Lieutenant said...

I hate to say this as I have some black friends who I love, but most of these AA tropes that gain lefty or broader white adoption are hot garbage.

Lucien said...

Ann, you triggered me! Abby Norman drove me to think of Abby Normal, whose brain was used in Young Frankenstein.

Darrell said...

I don't hate Progressives. I just want to bio engineer the return of the dinosaur and dinosaurs have to eat.

Shouting Thomas said...

I really appreciate your work and your analysis, prof. It's great.

Feminists should offer women freedom, not more limitation.

Might be time to dump this nonsense. Feminism is what it is in practice, not some ideal. You keep denying that the outcome of feminism is the intended result.

Marxism was supposed to lead to Utopia but it didn't. It led to genocide.

You're blinders here are astonishing. When are you going to give up?

Amadeus 48 said...

I saw that, but reading it gave me a rage headache. Thanks for finishing it off--so to speak.

JAORE said...

Raise your hands if you want to vote for the party that rejects due process...

Anyone, anyone, Beuller?

Sure, you can say I'm generalizing. Let's list the Democrats that said we MUST uphold due process for Kavenaugh s more than lip service.

Lets see there's..... and, uh.....

Nope, straight R for the first time in my life, but not the last until the left grows up.

Christopher Hitchens once said that to make discussion of Islamic terrorism off limits is to succumb to the whims of "Rage Boy".

Amen.

And let me add Rage Girl and Rage Gay and rage BLM and Rage Booker and so many, many more.

Jim Gust said...

Thanks for the fisking so I didn't have to use up one of my 10 free NYTimes articles for October.

We need to give this column as much publicity as possible.

hombre said...

It is a defect in my discernment, my character, or both, that I am still surprised and disappointed to see drivel like this in the NYT.

tim in vermont said...

So what did they do in this metaphor, to produce all that blood, if they didn't open wrist veins?

It's obviously flowing out of their "whatevers."

Amadeus 48 said...

Can we throw Alexis Grenell into jail without due process of law, or some other nonsense?
I'm just asking--it sounds like it might be OK with her.

Shouting Thomas said...

As I said, your analysis, prof, is superb.

And, then you keep insisting that there is some kind of good, necessary feminism.

Where is it? Why does feminism keep producing this outcome, that its the denial of due process, the suppression of free speech and the insistence upon an end to the presumption of innocence?

I think a reasonable person would come to the conclusion that there is no good, necessary feminism. I'm waiting for you to get there. Why do you keep resisting the obvious?

Your own life is the proof that there are no obstacles to women achieving whatever they want to achieve. I don't see myself allied with men in any kind of political cause because I'm male. I'm confounded by why you consider yourself allied with women because you're female.

Kevin said...

And Susan Collins, despite her beautifully brilliant speech, is deemed to have fought against the position she forthrightly took. Then, she "caved." She gave in to the men.

Left-wing orthodoxy states that all people know the correct thing in every situation. Those who don’t admit or act that way only do so to protect their advantage or to “cave” to more powerful people on their lives.

Thus, white women caved to their husbands in voting for Trump, and Collins and others caved in voting to confirm Kavanaugh.

That’s why there is so little debate and so much hatred on the left. It’s why there aren’t lessons learned when things go wrong, only further affirmations of the “struggle” faced.

tim in vermont said...

During the 2016 presidential election, did white women really vote with their whiteness in mind? Lorrie Frasure-Yokley, a political scientist at U.C.L.A., recently measured the effect of racial identity on white women’s willingness to support Trump in 2016 and found a positive and statistically significant relationship.

Contrary to what we all thought we knew, a political "scientist" tells us correlation IS causation!

So white women who voted for him did so to prop up their whiteness....

Wow, we just jumped from "statistically significant," which, granting arguendo the premise, is likely a very small number just above noise, to "white women" as a whole.

The White Peril must be confronted and extinguished people!

rhhardin said...

Women do best criticizing male logic when they add small corrective details to point out mistakes in assumptions, needed things that were abstracted away. Mistakes with things that follow from them are tricky things, Vicki Hearne tactfully puts it when she does it.

Wholesale dismissal fits well within men's stereotypical model of a woman's mind.

Wince said...

To shore up the minority vote the left want these dreaded “white women” to be viewed as Republican women for electoral purposes.

Problem is in the case of Kavanaugh the affluent white ladies seeking to end the presumption of innocence are of the left.

The risk is a number of minorities appreciate the implication of that and may react accordingly.

So the left has to revert to stoking this amorphous racial animus based on “traditional” ideological lines.

rhhardin said...

Women must hang together or they'll hang with men.

David Duffy said...

At least they are expanding their hatred against white men to include white women. If they can expand a few groups more they will become a bigger minority, which is good for victim/minority status, but a smaller voting block.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The leftwing machine is a cult.
Want proof?

Watch this.

(hat-tip: the almighty Chip)(amen)

rhhardin said...

Do a black "Cambridge Ladies."

walter said...

"With the exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all the women in the Republican conference caved"
--
Alexis never considered the spine necessary to "cave" like this.

buwaya said...

This is not an original opinion, nor is it a strange point of view.

Look, out here this is typical of nice lady high school teachers, of community college instructors, of State Ed Schools, of College administrators, of HR departments. You will get the massed vice-presidential ranks of major corporations in pious (public) agreement. In public agencies pushing yet another proposal in this direction is a winning move in bureaucratic promotion games.

It is not just some mad woman.

Jupiter said...

"These are the kind of women who think that being falsely accused of rape is almost as bad as being raped."

Well, yeah. Arguably worse, in the long term.

tim in vermont said...

The New York Times has really become pathetic. Lumpenintelligensia indeed. I only went to a SUNY college, not Yale or anything, or even Cornell School of Agriculture, like Keith Olberman, but I can tell you that that kind of sloppy reasoning would have almost earned me a slap from a prof.

Drago said...

"Christopher Hitchens once said that to make discussion of Islamic terrorism off limits is to succumb to the whims of "Rage Boy"."

Ouch.

Inga hardest hit.

The Crack Emcee said...

Ann Althouse said...

"If it's some specifically black slang, why not let black people have it?"

It is black slang, and I agree we should keep it (that article sounds insane) but it's not racial:

The phrase "Come get your people" is usually the first half of the warning "Before they get hurt." They're fighting words, indicating an unfamiliar aggressor doesn't understand the depth of shit they've started, so whoever might be concerned for them had better step in. You know, The Macho Response.

I said it (and heard it) a lot as a kid, when bullies from another block stopped by, thinking me and mine were push-overs.

rhhardin said...

I favor thinking of "caved" as a sexual reference. New life for cliches.

Yancey Ward said...

I will just write it- believing anyone's story without some evidence is cretinous. Now, most of the time, the truth of a story isn't important enough to waste time trying determine whether or not it is the truth, but this idea that women won't lie about sexual assaults is about the biggest steaming pile of shit I have smelled this year. Human beings will lie if it benefits them to do so, and when they think they can get away with it.

If Ford and Kavanaugh were total non-entities who didn't have any history together, I might be inclined to believe Ford's tale more than Kavanaugh's denial, because finding a motive to lie in that case is much more difficult. However, with the politics involved with this situation, the motive for her to lie is right out there in the open, and only the ignorant and dishonest refuse to acknowledge it. Both have a motive to lie in this situation, and when you look at the evidence, it weighs in Kavanaugh's favor in every instance.

Quaestor said...

And I still don't know what "come get your people" means!

As Althouse has stipulated, the phrase "come get your people" is only in the headline. It's what some NYT junior staff editor substituted for Grenell's own title: FUCK WHITE WOMEN! FUCK THEM TO DEATH! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

Why white women in particular? And why does Grenell, a lily-white recipient of upper-middle class coddling, think black women necessarily agree with her? Could it be that many black women can name a male relation who faced prison or a noose because some lily-white chick made an evidence-free accusation against him in the style of Mayella Ewell?

Ralph L said...

We should wish for more soap opera women and no more like these two.

Breezy said...

Are there no white men in her life that she loves - father grandfather brother son? Would she sacrifice them? How can one have no empathy for the wrongly accused? Unfathomable.

bleh said...

That was a disgusting column. People like that aren’t American. They may have US citizenship, but they’re only American by accident or twist of fate. Unfortunately they’re dangerously close to “fundamentally transforming” this country, to borrow language from one of their very prominent and inspiring leaders.

rhhardin said...

Famous people are very likely to be falsely accused. There's a huge pool of accusers.

Quaestor said...

Ann, you triggered me!

Abby Normal comments here regularly. Stay tuned, Lucien.

Narayanan said...

Amazingly obtuse for law professor to say ...
***Feminists should offer women freedom, not more limitation.***

For parallelism say it with "Democrat" , "minorities"

chickelit said...

How many (more) divisions does Grenell have?

The Crack Emcee said...

Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...

"The leftwing machine is a cult....(hat-tip: the almighty Chip)(amen)"

Oh yeah, Chip's on top of that shit. A real go-getter. (Kidding): Thanks. I might use that for a future installment.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

Plenty of fruit cakes like this in my neck of the woods. So I've become a gun owner.

tim in vermont said...

One need not look past the '90s to see that "feminism" has long been co-opted by Democrats as another branch of the party apparatus.

rehajm said...

Jeez. Thanks for parsing this. Just reject it and be done.

Shouting Thomas said...

Althouse committed herself to Marxist feminism as a kid.

And now, she can't bring herself to say: "I just made a mistake. A childish mistake."

I made stupid mistakes when I was a kid, too, professor. I'll forgive you.

rhhardin said...

Feminists should offer women freedom, not more limitation.

The right criticism of this goes much deeper.

"If freedom has wings," taught Reb Idrash, "it also has eyes, a forehead, genitals. Each time it takes wing, it transfigures a bit of both the world and man in the excitement of its flowering."

And Reb Lima: "In the beginning, freedom was ten times engraved on the tables of the Law. But we so little deserved it that the Prophet broke them in his anger."

"Any coercion is a ferment of freedom," Reb Idrash taught further. "How can you hope to be free if you are not bound with all our blood to your God and to man?"

And Reb Lima: "Freedom awakens gradually as we become conscious of our ties, like the sleeper of his senses. Then, finally, our actions have a name."

A teaching which Reb Zale translated into this image: "You think it is the bird which is free. Wrong: it is the flower."

And Reb Elat into this motto: "Love your ties to their last splendor, and you will be free."

Jabes, Book of Questions

Rick67 said...

But every young man is here because a woman was a mother, and the solidarity within a family is the strongest solidarity of all. That scares you?

I think this is one of the less obvious items on the "progressive" agenda, antipathy toward biological family. And "family" increasingly being redefined to something other than "bound by biology". It's ubiquitous in entertainment. What I haven't fully figured out is why, why this slow, relentless campaign against relationships based on procreation and biological relationship.

Narayanan said...

More to the point ...

Freedom is to be taken if it is to count at all.

Darrell said...

Grenell's suggested headline was The Only Thing Worse Than A White Man Is.

Balfegor said...

Rivers of blood?

Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood . . .

Not quite the same context, but one can.imagine a similar outcome once women go around calling each others traitors to their gender.

pious agnostic said...

Feminism is descriptive not prescriptive.

Rob said...

These are terrible people. I know that the political pendulum swings and that Democrats will control the federal government again, and it frightens me. Not all Democrats are terrible, obviously, but they have chosen to accept as intellectual leaders people like Grenell and to adopt their perverse ideology. And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Crack - I now have a computer speaker that works.
Your "message to Kanye" is hilarious. Well done.

Krumhorn said...

Excellent post. Wish my head worked this well.

- Krumhorn

tim in vermont said...

"A man without a woman is like a bicycle without a fish." - stolen shamelessly

Dave Begley said...

Ann, I'm telling you the Dems want to start a real battle of the sexes. Men vs. Women.

All authentic women will vote Dem. It is the duty to their gender.

Lesbians will lead the way. Women don't need men for anything. Just use AI to get prego like the lawyer Debra Katz.

Ken B said...

Aside from anything else this exposes a standard left wing lie. When pressed they say “whiteness” is not actually about ethnicity/race/skin. But here she says whites breeding together is what perpetuates “whiteness”. I mean the whole thing is a wonderful display of twisted, hated added thinking, but I want to note this one point because they lie about it all the time.

The Crack Emcee said...

tim in vermont said...

One need not look past the '90s to see that "feminism" has long been co-opted by NewAge as another branch of the Democrat party apparatus.

FIFY.

You've got to remember the modern Democrat party began by trying to levitate the Pentagon, and they've kept that "spiritual" Mumbo-Jumbo in their politics ever since, never realizing "garbage in/garbage out" is more powerful than "you can believe what you want to believe."

Actually, I think they just may be figuring it out, right about now.

n.n said...

White women come get "your people", the "white girls next door", and your little white boys, too.

The veil is off diversity or color judgments. The bigotry is profound and progressive.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger Rick67 said...
. . . .
What I haven't fully figured out is why, why this slow, relentless campaign against relationships based on procreation and biological relationship.

Because it competes with the relationship between the individual and the state.
It is the same reason liberals are hostile to religion. Religion competes with the state as a source of moral truth.
The totalitarian states of the 20th century always targeted the family and religion.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

The White Peril must be confronted and extinguished people!

This is the true position of yhe editorial board of the NYT. The NYT is loudly and proudly racist. Their racist ideology leads to their publishing these editorials.

I believe we should treat the NYT like any racist. They should be shunned and not accepted in polite company.

Fernandinande said...

White women voted for Trump to prop up their whiteness? How do you know they didn't vote because they hate abortion or because they wanted better trade deals or they don't trust the Clintons or, hell, maybe they still held out some insane hope of making America great again?

She "controls for" more important factors in order to get to the unimportant factors:

"An index of these measures is used to examine the extent to which ambivalent sexist attitudes influenced women’s vote choice for Donald Trump, controlling for racial resentment, partisanship, attitudes toward immigrants, economic anxiety, and socio-demographics.

So after controlling for "already being a republican" and "having rational economic and social reasons to not vote for Billary", other things might appear to be significant.

buwaya said...

The essence of feminism, as defined in its upper reaches, the university departments that deal in its theories (get Stacey McCain's "Sex Trouble", Amazon Kindle $1.99, for a survey of theorists and textbooks) is not simply anti-family but anti-biology.

These days with gender-changing thrown in (McCain limited himself to persons with long tenure and "classic" works) it is certainly even more bizarre.

It is very much a cult, in the sense meant by Crack.

Fernandinande said...

If you control for height, professional basktball players are actually slightly shorter than other people.

Ambrose said...

I think NYT knows when they are publishing a stinker and don't open it up for comments.

Spiros Pappas said...

I'd like to make a couple points. First, some types of Whites have suffered awful discrimination in this country as well. For example, during WW1, in Utah (an awful place), two Greeks narrowly avoided being lynched. One man "murdered" Jack Dempsey's brother and the other had sex with a 17 year old. All the hoopla and rage that followed was way out of proportion to the crimes committed. And in both incidents, thanks to the 2nd Amendment, armed Greek-Americans prevented terrible injustices! Of course, Jewish people had it even worse but, for some reason, they didn't take guns like my people did!

Second, how the heck are the Democrats going to build a multiracial coalition? Some of the most racist people I know are Latino (or "Latinx"!). No White guilt here. A Black kid shoots an abuelita in the head for twenty bucks and these guys are off to the races. It's unnerving! Some Asians are pretty racist too.

n.n said...

whites breeding together is what perpetuates “whiteness”

This is a fact of genetic origin of color diversity. However, it is clearly bent, grotesque, really, when attributing character or individual diversity.

Quayle said...

Hasn’t realized yet that the “A” paper in college gets and “F” in real life.

buwaya said...

Not all totalitarian states targeted family and religion.
The Franco regime in Spain was devoted to both.
The Italian Fascists were big on family (they disliked the church, but that was carried over from the often fanatically anticlerical Italian liberalism).

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

I say careless because "rivers of blood" is a lot of blood to flow out of "women" — which women? how many? — and yet they only "all but slit their wrists"? So what did they do in this metaphor, to produce all that blood, if they didn't open wrist veins?

Worse that "careless"; she's setting herself up to be compared to Enoch Powell. And his "Rivers of Blood" speech destroyed his political career.

The Crack Emcee said...

Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...

"Crack - I now have a computer speaker that works.
Your "message to Kanye" is hilarious. Well done."

Thank you. Now that we're friends and all, any chance of y'all telling someone else about it? All this madness going on - before the midterms - and it just sitting there frustrates me:

It should've been on FOX News by now. Hell, it's a FREE download - it should've been everywhere (Instapundit may dislike me but even he should like winning more than this). THAT'S what I made it for.

Anyway, it would be cool to get it out there more, is all. I thought it was alright myself...

Andrew said...

I wonder if Grenell has ever seen this story, about a white woman.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/29/mother-of-son-who-hanged-himself--after-being-accused-of/

n.n said...

Feminism was always chauvinistic, and was motivated by selective, and not actually uniform, causes. Throwing pregnant women, homemakers, babies, and human relations under the bus for political progress was myopic, at best. Female chauvinism, as male chauvinism, does not serve women, men, and certainly not babies... where the blood flows in liberal proportions and often progressive waves.

pious agnostic said...

You gotta break some eggs to make an omelette.

Quaestor said...

Spiros Pappas wrote: Second, how the heck are the Democrats going to build a multiracial coalition?

What makes you think building any sort of coalition is on the agenda of the Democratic Party? I give you permission to study the history of the Bolshevik/Menshevik schism.

Anonymous said...

I've read the column already, and I found it strange and off-putting...

Is "my, how very strange and off-putting" really a normal, healthy reaction to a demented person screeching "I HATE WHITE PEOPLE" at the top of her lungs from the editorial pages of the Paper of Record? I find that strange and off-putting.

I'd accept "off-putting" as a droll understatement, but there's nothing "strange" about it - it's all over the place these days, and approved of by the all the right people. It's time to be more than "put off".

Tina Trent said...

Somewhere in the glossy thirty pound pages of a Penguin Classic edition, Lady Macbeth is barfing.

rhhardin said...

stories of sexual trauma run like rivers of blood through the Capitol

How I'd like to see my old girl Flo again

- vaudville joke

Bay Area Guy said...

Memo to NYT:

As a proud member of the deplorables, I would re-iterate for the billionth time - we love women in general. They gave birth to us. We married We impregnated them. We love our sisters, we love, raise and protect our daughters.

We just don't like Leftwing women. That small group of women are often loud, unattractive and useless.

Paco Wové said...

"...why does Grenell, a lily-white recipient of upper-middle class coddling, think black women necessarily agree with her?"

There are American Jews who feel more kinship with American blacks than other American whites (for example). Maybe Grenell falls in that category.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Crack -
My friend...
Will do. Warning - I'm not that socially connected. (Not on facebook. not on twitter.) However, I will do my best and where-ever and whenever there is an opening- boom. I will deliver the Macho Response.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

So what did they do in this metaphor, to produce all that blood, if they didn't open wrist veins?

They were bleeding from their eyes, bleeding from their wherever...

mccullough said...

So in the 2016 election, the majority of White Women didn’t vote for The Rape Apologist Hillary.

And Grenell is slamming White Women? Perhaps, unlike Hillary, they Believed the Accusers.

Put Some Ice on It

fivewheels said...

The context where I hear, "Come get your ..." is usually not based around violence as Crack has it, though I have no doubt that's the origin. It's more like: Here's someone being stupid, whoever's in charge of them should put a stop to it.

One memorable instance was when some college football player was clumsily hitting on a porn star on Twitter, and she tweeted to his team: "Come get your man."

Otto said...

Ann is just feeding red meat to the audience while taking a sideline position on feminism. I really don't give a damn about her feminism viewpoints. But i am interested in her law viewpoint on this whole issue.
Does she think Katz did a credible job?
Does she think the CBF's testimony was credible?
Does she think that CBF was assaulted?
From her professional standpoint does she think Kavanaugh assaulted her?
Did CBF lie?
Would you have taken CBR's case ?

Rick said...

I don't know what "come get your people" means specifically. But her argument is that Americans should resolve disputes not on evidence, arguments, or facts but rather according to the conflicting identity groups' relative positions in the victim hierarchy.

What awful people.

Michael said...

You go, girls! Keep it up for another 30 days.

Otto said...

Sorry
Would you have taken CBF's case?

Ken B said...

I too thought of Enoch Powell, and this is both more overtly racist and more hate-filled than his speech. But this stuff is lapped up by the Democrats.

MaxedOutMama said...

It's nice of the enlightened elements writing in that enlightened publication, the New York Times, to ensure that we ignorant troglodytes understand that the Democratic party is very much opposed to due process.

We might have missed it otherwise. We might have assumed that they just didn't mean it. But no, now we understand that due process is the problem that prevents NYT liberals from having nice things. Our insistence on it is what prevents us all from living in a truly enlightened society, according to them. We must amend our wicked ways.

Why not print up Democratic bumper stickers for the midterms to remind us? I'm thinking perhaps a big "DUE PROCESS" with a giant X, and then the slogan "Vote Democratic!" Or better yet, since the uneducated might not really understand the "due process" concept, a "The ACCUSATION IS THE CRIME!!!" and then the slogan.

Perhaps, to really communicate enlightened values properly to the morons in Kansas, a "fly-over country" version could be produced with a thumbs up next to a noose, and a thumbs down next to a judge's gavel, plus the Democratic logo. That should communicate properly to the illiterates infesting this poor lady's country. I'm thinking it will really turn out the minority vote!

The "blue-shirts" among us are such beacons of progress and hope!

Paco Wové said...

"What makes you think building any sort of coalition is on the agenda of the Democratic Party?"

I get the impression the Democrats are very much interested in building such a [multiracial] coalition; they seem to seek the votes of everybody who is not a white male. I assume the ongoing intransigence of white women in not wholeheartedly supporting the D.'s is part of what elicited this cri de coeur.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Dems seek the easily fooled.

rhhardin said...

Selina: I'll just have Gary do the tests.
Amy: How will that work?
Selina: No, not with his pee, Amy.
Amy: So so, ma'am so you're the one who's pregnant?
Selina: I might be pregnant.
Amy: So we're looking at a wedding.
Selina: Or a suicide. I haven't decided which. Look at these fantastic children!
Teacher: Madam Vice President.
Selina: Hello. I'm so sorry I'm late. I have never meant those words more.

Veep Season I

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Maybe she was hitting the sauce and listening to oldies radio when she wrote the piece!

rehajm said...

I get the impression the Democrats are very much interested in building such a [multiracial] coalition; they seem to seek the votes of everybody who is not a white male

‘Latinos’ leak out the top. Those familes who have been here a while and busted hump to achieve economic success resent others confiscating it- just like those lilly whites lefties don’t care about alienating.

Don’t tell the lefties. This week confirms the surprise on their faces is priceless!

n.n said...

There is already a bumper sticker for political congruence: "=". Due process for all... Civil unions for all consenting... oh, never mind. We are trapped in a Pro-Choice progression. Let the rivers flow red with their, our blood.

rhhardin said...

Althouse's position is that Ford is very credible and Kavanaugh is very very credible.

tim in vermont said...

When you’ve lost Spiros....

narciso said...


south of the equator, it's a little difference

https://observer.com/2018/10/brazil-elections-jair-bolsonaro-donald-trump/

he belongs to the bullet and beans caucuses, pro self defense, evangelically supported,

narciso said...

ot, when did the Turkish constabulary become an authority on what happens in Saudi consulates,

Diogenes of Sinope said...

Scary thing, Alexis believes all of this. And so do millions of others.

Ken B said...

I agree Collins's speech was brilliant, much better than I thought any senator capable of, so it's interesting to see the reaction on left wing sites. The bile over at Coyne's site, whyevolutionistrue, is breathtaking. One rather unthinking woman I know couldn’t stand hearing or reading even a moment of it — no matter what she said it must be awful.

YoungHegelian said...

Grenell's screed is yet another example of an inescapable problem that plagues modern feminism: there really doesn't seem to be any evidence of "feminine consciousness".

Bringing up this topic in public got the (then-)lefty feminist historian, Elizabeth Fox Genovese,banned from academic feminist company. She challenged feminist students to come up with one historical example where women politically opposed the men of their ethnicity/nationality, race, or class as women. She got no takers.

Freeman Hunt said...

Started reading that column earlier today but stopped after a few paragraphs because it was completely insane. (Why is something like that in the NYT? Are there no standards there at all?) Glad Althouse finished the column because it made for a great blog post.

William said...

Why is she so down on white people? I'm almost certain white people are no more inclined to rape or cover up for rapists than other people. Raping is not officially listed as a white privilege. Past history indicates that members of white fraternities are more likely to be accused of rape than other ethnic groups.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

It means, "You're responsible for what these deplorable white people do, and you're deplorable if you don't correct them."

Ken B said...

William
That is exactly what she doesn’t believe. Rape, she believes, is a *conscious tactic* chosen by white men to enforce patriarchy.

Ken B said...

Freeman Hunt
It’s in the NYT because a lot of NYT readers believe such stuff.

stevew said...

It's all about the outcome to this writer and the people that agree with her. The process and rules and conventions are all irrelevant unless they produce the desired outcome. In this/their world Murkowski is a hero, Collins is at least evil if not the devil.

-sw

Seeing Red said...


William
That is exactly what she doesn’t believe. Rape, she believes, is a *conscious tactic* chosen by white men to enforce patriarchy.



I wonder what her opinion is about UN soldiers.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"Stop acting like Trump isn’t the pinnacle and the result of America’s history and tradition of white supremacy. And again, I don’t care if you had no plans to vote for Trump or anybody, if you are white, he is your problem above all else. Simply put, white people, come get your boy.” - W. Kamau Bell

Also, from Urban Dictionary

get your boy-- When your boy has done something wrong and he needs to be gotten.

Jim at said...

Thus, white women caved to their husbands in voting for Trump, and Collins and others caved in voting to confirm Kavanaugh.

There is a certain person who comments here who explicitly states this at every opportunity. And then denies it.

I think it's a good thing they allow their arrogance to show through. It sends normal people running for the exits.

MadisonMan said...

I also saw the name "Abby Norman" and my mind jumped right to "Abby Normal"

I don't know if Abby married a Mr. Norman, or if her parents named her Abigail Norman. If the latter, they weren't thinking.

Thanks for taking the article apart. It really is lunacy. Does the Times think its readers actually deserve it?

deepelemblues said...

Leftist whines that her claimed leftist privilege was thwarted.

Yawn.

Francisco D said...

The foolishness and intellectual vacuity of the academy has overtaken Democrats, liberals and the media, but I repeat myself.

As their insanity inexorably creeps into everyday life, the Kavanaugh confirmation hysteria will be commonplace.

The Left seems to be hoping for a Mao-style cultural revolution.

The Crack Emcee said...

Char Char Binks said...

"Stop acting like Trump isn’t the pinnacle and the result of America’s history and tradition of white supremacy."

That's a new hand-me-down theology, brought to fruition by Ta-Nehisi Coates, after he went to France and lost his mind.

"And again, I don’t care if you had no plans to vote for Trump or anybody, if you are white, he is your problem above all else."

W. Kamau Bell is married to a white woman, so, her day's full.

"Simply put, white people, come get your boy.”

And please consider using rail for all your transportation needs...

Rabel said...

"That’s because white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain."

Let's take a closer look at this boob:

1. Alexis Grenell got her start working as the Communications Director for New York State Senator Jeff Klein - a white man.

2. Next she worked as the press secretary for Richard Aborn’s campaign for Manhattan District Attorney - a white man.

3. She went back into government to serve as the Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for then Attorney General Andrew Cuomo - a white man.

4. Then Alexis "co-founded" Pythai Public Affairs with Evan Thies - a white man.

Once again:

"That’s because white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain."

Alexis leads the way!

Rabel said...

PS, "Come get your people" is not exclusively black slang.

- A Southern white boy.

rcocean said...

She is a white woman who owns a Democratic political consulting firm. She's an extremely powerful and well to do, liberal/leftist.

As shown by the NYT and WaPo - the powerful liberal establishment has gone batshit crazy - don't give them anymore political power.

rcocean said...

And I find this white liberal arrogance toward black people off-putting to say the least.

They somehow think, they can't be racist because they are Lefitst. To make it worse, they speak for black people, adopt black slang, and even call some black people "uncle tom's"

They need to be called out.

SDaly said...

So it seems that white women are expected to support the patriarchy by marrying within their racial group, reproducing whiteness ...."

Gee, has anyone noticed how a ridiculously large percentage of ads refuse to show white couples? It seems that having a white family is now verboten in liberal land. How does this square up with Althouse's view of the patriarchy?

D 2 said...

I agree w Lewis point upthread to Rick67's comment about how "anti" family certain political philosophies are, and how that antigonism is easily verifiable in both writings and actions once they are in power. Soviet and Chinese experiences noted. I am not sure of buwaya's point re Franco - I am no great expert on Spanish history, but I perceived Spain to have treaded lightly on ideology postwar as a way to stay afloat.
If, ultimately, everyone is to belong to everyone else, the essential thing you must do is break the bond between parent and child. That's usually where concept of individual property rights start - when the newborn gets passed to the mother and mom is told "you HAVE a girl!boy!" The word HAVE is the tell. Of course the little ankle biter doesn't help much with household chores those first few weeks..... but I am given to understand they serve a purpose when you are 97 and you want someone to share the cake.
It's going to be a bit tougher to take down mother-child than it is/was father-child, but that's because the State overcommitted to certain expectations in these last 50 years. Julia was told HER kid can have a FREE bus pass.
Give it another century. The article's accusations of gender betrayal - while focused on "white" - is really a shot of explicit scorn across the bow against any trust any woman might have for her son father brother or husband.
The words that Senator Collins used that have so enraged some people - I overheard a person at the store say as much today, so I presume it is already a talking point in the media somewhere - was that Collins dared to "...put herself in his shoes.."
Judas!! How dare she consider to think like an individual and express concern with due process!! Shame!

narciso said...

aborn, if memory serves, went on to head handgun control, so it's all in the left wing archipelago,

Crimso said...

Reminds me of this...

Ken B said...

The title means “You few remaining whites women who aren’t racist gender traitors come and get the ones who are because they are behaving like Hitler.”

Bob Loblaw said...

Famous people are very likely to be falsely accused. There's a huge pool of accusers.

That was the real problem with the Kavanaugh accusations. There are 340 million people in the US. Once you tally up all the the people looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, the mentally disturbed, the pathological liars, and hyper-partisans willing to do anything for political gain, you end up with quite a large pool from which you can draw false accusations.

The more contentious SCOTUS appointments get, the more of this kind of stuff we're going to see.

William said...

Ponder the example of Woody Allen. He had one credible accusation of a sex crime leveled against him. There were no further reported crimes, though he did behave in such a way as to make the underaged Ms. Hemingway nervous. He worked with many of Hollywood's leading ladies, and they all commented favorably on his professionalism and consideration.......Theres no real way of telling with absolute certainty if he did or did not sexually abuse his daughter. I would not convict him in a court of law, but his behavior was definitely suspicious........Until just recently all the leading lights in Hollywood were willing to work with Woody (heh-heh). This was particularly true of the leading ladies. (He wrote great parts for women.)........No new evidence has been presented against him, but now, all of a sudden, he is persona non grata in Hollywood......I'm not sure how to process this. Was Woody unfairly allowed to continue his moviemaking career after this one allegation was made? Woody had a fairly distinguished career. The people who heaped honors on him for many decades are noe claiming he is dishonorable and unemployable. Is this fair?...........The case of Woody Allen is not overtly political. I'd be interested in hearing how the thinking of our hostess and others here has evolved on the Woody Allen case.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

William, we've discussed Woody Allen here many times, comprehensively, and we've gotten no closer to the truth, or agreement, than anyone. It's pointless to even try.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

When Democrats want a lynching, they want a lynching now!

MayBee said...

Possibly your best ever, Althouse. I want this published everywhere.

Gahrie said...

She's asking woke White women to attack non-woke White women.

JMW Turner said...

Is it just me, or has the over-all quality of writing nose-dived in recent years?

JMW Turner said...

In the New York Times...

SDaly said...

Also, let's just ignore the fact that Alexis Grenell is Jewish. It's probably completely irrelevant to a discussion focused on identities and hostility to "whites".

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Good gag, SD!

Gahrie said...

This is the type of article I've been waiting for. When you want to, you can think reasonably and logically with the best of them.

Bob Loblaw said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bob Loblaw said...

That’s because white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain.

Jordan Peterson thinks intersectionality is ultimately self defeating as a political force, since there are an infinite number of ways to classify people. You must have an "other" for it to work, and eventually only a tiny number of people will be left in the big tent once everyone else has been other'd.

White women, particularly single white women have been the backbone of the so-called social justice movement. Once they decide they don't belong, it's done as political force that can actually accomplish anything.

Gahrie said...

So it seems that white women are expected to support the patriarchy by marrying within their racial group, reproducing whiteness ...."

1) I bet far more White women have interracial babies than Black women do.

2) White women in a relationship with Black men face open hostility from Black women.

narciso said...

btw, with 68% of the vote in, bolsanaro is at 48% nearly the threshold to avoid a runoff,

William said...

I'm not talking about Woody Allen, but about the people who supported and even honored him in the past. How, without any change on his part, is it possible to go from tribal elder to pariah in such a rapid fashion. Since the Jacobins are shaming Susan Collins for her support of Kavanaugh, shouldn't they also be shaming Kate Winslet for her willingness to give Woody the presumption of innocence in a disputed case? Or does the fact that she has now joined the mob mitigate her guilt or accepting a part in a Woody Allen picture? Is this now the new standard: one credible or even halfway plausible accusation and you're finished. Moreover, the women who come to your defense are now also finished.....I find the changing standards, elastic stanards and double standards bewildering.

Laslo Spatula said...

If we could achieve the hybridisation of rhhardin and the Crack Emcee the American Experiment will begin a truly glorious new day.

Let's get this shit started.

I am Laslo.

n.n said...

What's in a name? A color?

Bolsonaro is a member of the "Social Liberal Party" - a "far-right" group.

Burn the warlock. Come get his people, and their babies, and abort them for social progress and secular incentives.

n.n said...

The "white girls next door" are marked for social progress.

buwaya said...

Peterson assumes that elections matter.
Or will matter.

This is naive.

JaimeRoberto said...

At his next really Trump should read this oped aloud and say,"this is what they think of you. They hate you. They really hate you."

chuck said...

> Feminists should offer women freedom, not more limitation.

Modern feminism isn't about women, it is about seeking prestige, position, and political power for members of the movement.

JaimeRoberto said...

Is there some sexual connotation to the phrase we can use to accuse her off rape?

CWJ said...

"The more contentious SCOTUS appointments get, the more of this kind of stuff we're going to see."

And yet, other than those put up by the porn lawyer, they essentially found only one. I'm not questioning your observation. I'm in effect expressing surprise that there weren't more. Kinda makes you think BK might just possibly be innocent of that behavior. That, or he's got the reputation of a mob boss. Don't cross BK if you know what's good for you.

The Crack Emcee said...

Rabel said...

PS, "Come get your people" is not exclusively black slang.

- A Southern white boy.

[Rolls eyes] You sound personally aggrieved, which makes sense (is anything American "exclusively" any American's?) but it's still wasted emotion: You and I both know, the NYT don't know what to do with it, and should probably keep it out they mouth. That's all I was sayin'.

Here's a little banjo to show no hard feelings:

If the South must rise again, let's give 'em reason.

Rick said...

.I find the changing standards, elastic standards and double standards bewildering.

The standard has never changed as long as you ignore what they say and consider only what they do. The standard is now and has always been "whatever helps the left".

traditionalguy said...

That's real skill. She combines white supremacy with the refusal to believe all female accusers of a man as a sexual assaulter even when the evidence is not there.

This white supremacy culture sounds better and better. Can you buy some on Amazon?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

is this blog a safe outlet for The Professor to vent about the antics of "her people"?

etbass said...

"2) White women in a relationship with Black men face open hostility from Black women."

I learned this from the way black women reacted to Nicole Brown's murder by O.J.

Rabel said...

"That's all I was sayin'."

The comment was directed at Althouse, not you.

William said...

It used to be presumption of trust had to be on the girl's part. She had to trust that the boy she was with would not rape her if she found herself alone with him. Now it is the boy who has to extend the presumption of trust. He has to hope that the girl will not later claim that he raped or attempted to rape her if they spend time alone and the date does not turn out as the girl had hoped. I suppose this is a step for equality.

Clyde said...

Alexis Grenell, I Don't Care About You! NSFW Guns N' Roses track. You have been warned!

tim in vermont said...

That was the real problem with the Kavanaugh accusations.

That's right, I would bet that 99.999 percent of the women he ever came in contact with never accused him of attempted rape. I believe all of them.

tim in vermont said...

Actually, more like 100,00% because my bet is that he never came in contact with CBF prior to her accusation.

Brad said...

Alexis Grenell is a totalitarian ... not an "authoritarian," a "totalitarian."

She's one of these people who believes there's only one "right" way to think about everything, and anyone who disagrees with her about anything does so because they are evil - there is no "good faith disagreement" with the likes of her.

Given power, she's put her opponents in Gulags, being the good little Stalinist she is.

That she believes such bigotry - yes, she's a bigot - comes as no surprise. Bigots come in all shapes and sizes, and populate both ends of the political spectrum. We can only hope they're never given the ability to ruin the lives of others.

That the New York Times published her hateful screed speaks volumes.

For two-plus years now, the left, the Democrats, and the Media have been telling the world how "awful" Donald J. Trump is.

Yet day by day, in word and deed, they act like they're reason for existence is to be MORE outrageous, MORE dishonest, MORE horrible than the man they tell us is such a "threat" to all things good.

The Democrats and the media have laid bare their hatred for much of America, for millions of their "fellow Americans."

You think we don't notice?

chickelit said...

rhhardin said...
I favor thinking of "caved" as a sexual reference. New life for cliches.

Broaden that to let "cave" refer to submitting to the caveman.

tcrosse said...

Broaden that to let "cave" refer to submitting to the caveman.

In this case, the word is Kave.

gilbar said...

Laslo Spatula said...
If we could achieve the hybridisation of rhhardin and the Crack Emcee the American Experiment will begin a truly glorious new day.

I'm hearing a morse code mashup coming!

Rabel said...

Crack ain't gonna be out in the field operating a scythe.

daskol said...

Also wondered about Alexis Grenell's background, and found this article in the times from 2001 that mentions her. She has been sour for a long time, and also attended a sister school of mine.

narciso said...

Link doesn't work.

readering said...

Strange that she picked on Conway, who chose to marry a person of color.

daskol said...

And by sour, I mean she's been alienated since she was in high school. Her alienation is old, but she seems to have found her moment being published in the NYT. Good for her, not so good for the rest of us.

CWJ said...

readering,

Good point. It's surprising to me how often face palms like this happen. But looking beyond the surface rarely matters when your doing the work of the anointed.

Jessica said...

This is some excellent Althouse.

Gunner said...

Is Grenell the resident wigga of the NY Times?

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger JMW Turner said...

Is it just me, or has the over-all quality of writing nose-dived in recent years?


Exhibit One: Vulture.com's list of 21st century literary canon
http://www.vulture.com/article/best-books-21st-century-so-far.html

Almost every book is written by a woman, or minority, or an immigrant. Most are written by people who are upper bourgeois, a lot of them are academics. Three quarters, at least, are about identity politics. If there were a Western in the bunch, the most important thing about the protagonist's battle to survive in a barren, hostile, lawless wasteland would be the protagonist's race, gender identity, or immigration status.
Vulture.com is not ot an explicitly political website.
A sample pick for a book that belongs in the 21st century canon:
Zone One, by Colson Whitehead (October 6, 2011)
In a century marked by the erosion of the high-low divide that once separated “literature” from genre fiction, Zone One is the exemplary hybrid, the paragon of what each mode offers the other. Whitehead’s post-apocalyptic experiment — a zombie novel that’s also a 9/11 meditation that’s also a cultural satire — delivers both moving psychological realism and satisfying gore. (The moment when hero Mark Spitz discovers his undead mother feasting on his dad’s corpse will stay with me until the day a zombie chows down on mine.) Whitehead has written terrific novels that more directly address the horrors of American history, but never one that more accurately portrays the horrors of the American present. —Dan Kois


Richard Dolan said...

Reading the op-ed (the parts of it fisked here), I was wondering whether the NYT was giving its newest editorial member some support. That would be the young Asian-Am lady (I forget her name) who hates men, especially white men, and detests women who disagree, that caused a ruckus a month or two ago. This screed sounds like a her kind of thing. As many said at the time, it reflects how the editors of the NYT see the world.

Lovely.

David said...

I watched the Kavanaugh vote with my mother, my wife, and my daughter (while we watched and held two granddaughters). Five college degrees amongst the women. All were in favor of the confirmation, and my guess is that all voted for Trump—one was giving birth on Election Day in 2016 so many e she didn’t have a chance to vote. The whole notion that all women believe the same is ridiculous.

David said...

I watched the Kavanaugh vote with my mother, my wife, and my daughter (while we watched and held two granddaughters). Five college degrees amongst the women. All were in favor of the confirmation, and my guess is that all voted for Trump—one was giving birth on Election Day in 2016 so many e she didn’t have a chance to vote. The whole notion that all women believe the same is ridiculous.

Aussie Pundit said...

Holy shit. I haven't seen an evisceration like this of an opinion piece for quite some time.

P Murcato said...

I keep thinking that this stuff they say makes it clear that these women have a 2 class system. If you are in their crowd, you are protected. All due process applies. If you are outside their class, then no due process. It makes me think of what Weinstein said when Me Too started. He effectively said I am in the “correct” class. You are supposed to give me a super break so I can go after the NRA and give those scholarships to women. This tactic of supporting Democratic causes gave him an automatic break from being outed as a creep for all of his life. Women went along happily throwing their “sisters” to the Hollywood wolves because he was too important to their careers and Democratic causes. I love how they are always so certain that their causes are just and that there cannot be an equally strong, valid viewpoint that they must counter with changing peoples minds, not just by saying shut up and submit. The absolute joke of it all is that they quickly have made White men the women in their real life version of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Known Unknown said...

Imagine being a progressive writing for the NYT or WaPo or Slate. You can write whatever shit you want and get published.

Mary Beth said...

The NYT made a tweet promoting the op-ed. The replies are not supportive.

I don't mean there are a few dismissive remarks among the normal echo chamber that this kind of thing usually gets, there are lots of replies and I'm having trouble finding any that are positive.

Krumhorn said...

On the other hand, we must honor her rage. It’s the kindest thing we can do.

- Krumhorn

Lewis Wetzel said...

We really do have 2 languages. when conservatives and regular people refer to 9/11, it is shorthand for the cowardly, horrific attack on the United States that killed over three thousand people by Muslim zealots.
When our cultural elites refer to 9/11, it is shorthand for the day the United States embraced fascism and began to persecute innocent Muslims at home and abroad.

Amadeus 48 said...

The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards Trump.

Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Do you think Trump cares? How about Kamala Harris? Dick Durbin? Do I care if they care?

I guarantee you that Alexis Grenell doesn't care. She is too into herself.

Who cares?

Ken B said...

Andrew @4:06
She would consider both deaths a good thing: blows against the patriarchy. Who will miss a rapist and a traitor?

UserFriendlyyy said...

I agree that op-ed is horrible garbage, and even more so for completely reappropriating and completely misusing 'Come get your People.' Here is the best description of it I've come across.

In my personal experience, which is by no means exhaustive, about 1 in 6 of the feminist and anti-racist groups I’ve encountered implodes due to call outs, infighting of the oppression Olympics variety, and straight up inability to hold space for difference. One feminist group, for example, destroyed itself over taking one’s husband’s name. Some said they had no problem didn’t care, or wrote thoughtfully as to why it was liberating for them (e.g for some black women, being able to take a husband’s name, after centuries of having to take a slave owners, and in the face of high incarceration and absenteeism of black men, was very liberating. As a white woman, this was a beautiful eye opening example of the different lenses people bring to even the smallest things), others argued it was maybe not the best option, but couldn’t think of better, others felt it was abject persecution of everyone else for any woman to do it – even in another country. You can guess what happened with that one last little handful of women driving every other position out. One anti racist space implodes with doxxing and actual destruction of single work at home mother’s businesses, of all races, over the failure to universally instantaneously adopt an updated name for a style of baby carrier wrap, for Pete’s sake.
But what the 1 in 6 still around does differently is the key to actually bringing progressive, inclusive values back to public discourse:
1) call in, not call out – aka come get your cousins. This means when it’s your people – your white lady friends, your bros in the locker room, your racist Grandma, you say something, with the intention of keeping the relationship. That means slow, careful, empathic communication, not the ” I’m not a fascist like them” distancing tactic. Which leads naturally to
2) no one is disposable. You can’t throw out a whole person because they disagree on one axis during a finite period of time. People change, they have to be given the chance, that used to be an axiom of Justice. They also might not change, and you can still just tolerate their existence until they actually do harm. Most people hold racist ideas, yet almost none will actively form a lynch mob, and we have ways to get around implicit biases (e.g blind auditions, nameless resumes, even just pointing them out so people are aware when they are at risk of profiling). This also requires/aloows people to be personally responsible for messing up. You will have to make it up to your community, but once you do, you are still sorted in your community – you have *a reason* to want to reform instead of hightail it to the nearest skinhead group because you are irredeemable, might as well go for broke.
These ideas came from the black women, who knew a thing or two about hard community organizing. They were aghast at the way they saw white people in the groups treating each other. They would agree with JMG here, I think, in that we forgot how to do community. It became clear that while America has the race problem it always has, the problem at boil is all the other ways the American identity has fractured. Whichever part of your neighbors politics bother you most, you can just leave and set up with some people who have a more agreeable configuration, and the froth about how much you hate those other guys..

chickelit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chickelit said...

That is great blogpost, Althouse. I believe the NYT has made you into a conversative.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Normal people, if they are told that a lynching is happening on the next street, will be horrified. They will try to stop the lynching, or call in the authorities.
Leftists, these days, will ask the race and gender of the lynchee, and what he/or she is accused of, and then decide whether or not the lynching should be stopped.

Bob Loblaw said...

Peterson assumes that elections matter.

Yes and no. He believes, as Andrew Breitbart believed, politics is downstream from the culture.

He also places a lot more significance in symbolism than I think is reasonable. Most people don't go around wondering whether this or that inanimate object symbolizes fertility.

DEEBEE said...

So a mere shift of 4% of the white woman would make them worthwhile humans?

Paco Wové said...

"Vulture.com is not an explicitly political website."

All websites should be assumed political until proven otherwise.

What strikes me most of all is that at some point in the past decade, almost all commentary, everywhere, began to issue from very young, very inexperienced, very foolish, very liberal women. Who made that decision?

Nicholas said...

The responses on the NYT Twatter feed are quite something and give me hope that Americans outside The Bubble (thanks Ann for reminding us of that flash of SNL self-awareness)have not descended into insanity.

Craig said...

Brilliant post, Althouse. This is why I've been a loyal reader for many years. Our democracy needs independent thinkers like you.

Caligula said...

"During the 2016 presidential election, did white women really vote with their whiteness in mind?"

Voting with your femaleness in mind is laudable.
Voting with your whiteness in mind is despicable.
Yet voting with neither in mind is politically indefensible.

Because, umm, because. Because, because already? Because Progressive Stacking!

Because what you are defines who you are. Because feminism is not at all like racism.


Static Ping said...

This is tribalism in its purest form.

I'm sure the author thinks that endorsing one of the most primitive and most destructive ideas in human history is the height of intellectualism.

nmanning said...

"If Ford and Kavanaugh were total non-entities who didn't have any history together, I might be inclined to believe Ford's tale more than Kavanaugh's denial, because finding a motive to lie in that case is much more difficult. However, with the politics involved with this situation, the motive for her to lie is right out there in the open, and only the ignorant and dishonest refuse to acknowledge it. Both have a motive to lie in this situation, and when you look at the evidence, it weighs in Kavanaugh's favor in every instance."

So.... She was motivated to lie to her therapist years before K-dawg was nominated?

Good one, bro....

Bob Loblaw said...

So.... She was motivated to lie to her therapist years before K-dawg was nominated?

As I understand it she didn't mention him by name.

Did you know the FBI received, during the hearings, 1500 calls from women who claimed Justice Kavanaugh raped them?

Scott Anderson said...

Ann, The New York Times doesn’t want you as a customer. The Democratic Party doesn’t want you as a member. This is them telling you in no uncertain terms that you are their enemy.

Please vote for the party that at the very least isn’t looking to obliterate you and your family right now. Please.

Also, I’m totally not a robot