I'm reading about him this morning.
Here's something he said about his wife: "I often feel sorry for her. She is a strange woman but I don't mind her—remember she is my wife—and let it go at that. If she gets cranky, just laugh at it, she can't help it." He tried to divorce her after almost 40 years of marriage. He said that when he was away and she was at their ranch [in North Platte, Nebraska], she would "feed the men too much and talk violently about Cody and his alleged sweethearts ... and that she was seen putting something into his coffee." To deal with her, he said he needed to "get drunk and stay drunk." The judge and the public sided with the wife.
Here's a nice picture of the couple:
The reason I'm reading about Cody this morning is that I got served an ad for this book:
That's a great cover — whether you find it offensive or not. I decided to read some reviews of it and found "In America, Is Power in the Hands of Too Many 'Mediocre' Men?" in The New York Times.
Here's where I got distracted into the story of Buffalo Bill:Beginning with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the 19th-century showman whose slaughter of American buffaloes was a mere prelude for hunting and killing Indigenous people, Oluo historicizes the creation of a violent and profane American white masculinity. Rooted in “muscular Christianity,” this conception of manliness, she ably demonstrates, also gave us American football, a sport so violent in its early iterations that dozens of the exclusively white men who played it were killed....
The book review has a nice photo of Oluo with the caption: "'White manhood is on a suicide mission,' Ijeoma Oluo writes. It is our job, she argues, to pull these men, and the country they are so ready to take with them, back from the precipice.'"
By the way, sometimes buffalo, following their own natural predilections, go over the precipice what might look like a mass suicide:
When bison travel, they typically form a narrow line in a follow-the-leader type of fashion, particularly when untrammeled winter snows impose high energetic costs to bison venturing off packed trails. To add to the issue, bison can run up to 35 mph. If these two aspects are combined, it would be extremely difficult for a large herd running at top speed to stop quickly before reaching eminent danger, for one would run right into the next. There is record that in 1867, a herd of 4,000 bison attempted to cross the Platte River in Nebraska and ran into loose quicksand near the river, one right after the other because they were simply following the herd.
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146 comments:
I’ve been to Buffalo Bill’s Scout’s Rest Ranch in North Platte. Not really that great by today’s standards.
Are those chase-scene horses deaf after people shoot pistols inches away from their ears?
Buffalo Bill = mediocre?
Anyway, if mediocre white men so easily maintained the patriarchy and white supremacy for so long, what does that make women and blacks?
Grew up by where Cody is buried, on top of Lookout Mountain, west of Golden. His funeral entourage supposedly stretched all the way up the Lariat Trail on the front of the mountain. In HS, I would occasionally ride up the back (Mt Vernan Canyon, now I-70), ride by his grave site, then down the front. The Lariat Trail really lived up to its name. I would also sometimes bring my kid up there on the 4th of July for the view of the fireworks over Denver. Nice little exhibit there about him. Apparently, there was a heated debate after he died, between Denver/Golden and Cody, WY, for burial rights. At one point, CO put a tank on top of his grave site to keep the residents of Cody from stealing his body. This need was ultimately obviated by pouring a bunch of concrete on top of his casket.
At the NYT, is power in the hands of too many mediocre men, women, children, dogs, lizards and petromorphs?
If the New York Times is pushing Mediocre White Man articles, Biden better watch his ass!
Spare me the self reflection Boomers. We know, we know.
Are those chase-scene horses deaf after people shoot pistols inches away from their ears?
How about this guy:Hector, the gun horse in the band of the Household Cavalry
Bill was Phil Sheridan's favorite scout and Little Phil was no fool.
As for Louisa, psycho chick.
I feel revolted every time when I see a mediocre white person lecture us, and a mediocre white liberal elected to Congress or the governorship. The hypocrites should give up their damned seats to well deserved persons of color.
Incredible men built this country. The mediocre men are the ones in the establishment today. They have all the correct credentials, can spout the proper theories, but have no guts for the hard fights, no creativity or initiative, and no ability to think quickly on their feet.
By the way, sometimes buffalo, following their own natural predilections, go over the precipice what might look like a mass suicide:
No they don't.
If these two aspects are combined, it would be extremely difficult for a large herd running at top speed to stop quickly before reaching eminent danger, for one would run right into the next.
If only they had an example of that actually happening, which walking into quicksand isn't.
Amerindians would kill herds of bison by chasing them off cliffs, but that's a different issue.
And the nyt's consistent anti-white-male racism and sexism is as enlightening as always.
If the covet’s offensive, can it be ‘great”? In any case, I don’t see anything clever or original about. In fact it’s—what’s that word?—mediocre.
But, oh, the irony: the New York Times asks if a few mediocre white males have too much power!
What happened to the Indian scouts who played an essential role in hunting down and killing (other) indigenous people?
Back to the Obama era of "you didn't build that", and "America was never exceptional"
Biden isn't even "President Elect" yet.
The self proclaimed 'experts', aren't. Somebody tamed the west. (everything west of St Louis) and it wasn't scribes contemplating their navels like this piece. White man tamed the west. Calling them mediocre is only an attempt by the author to elevate themselves from their deserved obscurity.
the WHITE LEFT are strangely except.
By the way, professor, does 76th out of 85 at Syracuse Law School qualify as "mediocre"?
The one guaranteed result of this kind of thing is that some white men who otherwise would be fully supportive of women and non-whites are going to join the us-against-them battle, and not on her side. I wonder if those women and non-whites who are less radicalized than this nitwit appreciate her prodding.
"whose slaughter of American buffaloes was a mere prelude for hunting and killing Indigenous people"
Hmmm. A mere prelude, huh? Is she dismissing all that went on before 1867? Time to cancel her.
BTW, it should be noted that Cody wasn't killing these buffalo for fun and sport. He was feeding railroad construction workers.
exempt
But, oh, the irony: the New York Times asks if a few mediocre white males have too much power!
That was accomplished through feral trickery and exploitation of their betters.
Again, so much to say. But I'll try to keep it short.
These small minds who have been pumped with an almost religious belief in collectivism with White Men as the peak form of evil existence, are a danger to themselves and the rest of society. That is clear.
A cursory glance at the history of the world- all peoples in all regions- will show that humans have been incredibly violent everywhere in all places for all of time. From Africa (which continues today) through Asia, the Eurasian Steppes, all of Europe, North America (before and after white men), South America, Central America, and Australia. From the roving Old Norse tribes of women and men to the tropical Mali in Africa.
To conveniently shine a light on white men, while excluding the entirety of the human race, both men and women of ALL colors, sizes, languages, and religions, is a declaration of your lack of intellect. It is dogma at best. A proclamation of idiocy. And at worst, an instigation to drive a wedge and hate between people that already seem to need little prompting.
With regard to her using the word Mediocre, well, we live in the age of Mediocrity. When our colleges and universities are filled with mediocre administrators, professors, instructors. Where are leaders are perhaps the worst in history and without question, among the least extraordinary crop in history. Barack Obama is one of the more mediocre people you'll ever get to listen to, and he is considered God-like to people like Oluo, the author of the NYT best selling book "So you want to talk about race". No...I don't. I'm over it. It's a red herring and nothing more.
We live in a world of mediocrity. We are told by mediocre people who or what to praise, and who or what to take down. And with the flick of a send button, mobs of mediocre people will follow an extremely mediocre person on Twitter, while refusing to actually look at the information they are sending. Just follow and 'LIKE'. Retweet the mediocre info and become a part of the growing mediocre mob.
The author is a mediocre thinker. Her premises are mediocre. Her backer (NYT) is a leader among the mediocrities.
I am, thankfully, just a small mediocre man living in a time of great upheaval. Which is, if you know any history, the permanent state of humankind.
Buffalo Bill was a tawdry showman. So is Ijeoma Oluo. Showwoman, rather - whatever.
Just two grifters telling people what they want to hear.
From an interviewer:
A recurring theme in this book is the fact that white male mediocrity is itself a recurring theme throughout history.
Face it, mediocrity is a recurring theme in human life and history. In country that's 88% white where men hold all the responsible positions, a lot of mediocre people with power will be White men. Overthrow them and you'll just get empowered mediocrities who are neither White nor male. I doubt things are any better run or more spectacular in Nigeria or ever were.
But Ijeoma Oluo is riding the current wave and getting all she can out of it, not unlike the White male mediocrities she disparages.
So we should hand the country over to mediocre women?
Silly women create an environment conducive to the proliferation of mediocre white men and then points out the downside of mediocre white men.
It’s an old tactic of people without principles. Create a negative condition then seek to profit by it. It reminds me of defense attorneys who fought to delay the execution of their murderous clients for years then claimed the offenders should be spared because the delays denied them the right to “timely justice.”
Seemingly off topic but very relevant. I watched a section of an episode of “Firing Line” (here: https://youtu.be/nO44vzTLa7g) wth Maggie Thatcher (pre-prime minister) yesterday. (Motivated by season 4 of the “The Crown”). Very impressive, such an intelligent, feisty and clearly well read woman.
Why do I bring it up? The NYT is at the epicenter of the leftward, urbane “intelligentsia” universe. Of course it reviews books that discuss the mediocrity of white males. So tiresome. I can see all the NYT readers knowingly nodding their heads in unison.”Yes, that’s it exactly.” And not seeing the “white mediocrity” in they’re very reading and agreement.
GET OUT OF NYC AND SEE “THE WORLD” SUCH AS RURAL WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA , NOT TUSCANY AND BROADEN YOUR PERSPECTIVE!!!
I appreciate the open and honest racist and sexist attack on white males.
You People are going to be really upset when white males start treating you like you are treating them.
And that is the capitalized You People.
The Sulzbergers are mediocre White Men. That’s why The NY Times flails.
New York Times asks if a few mediocre white males have too much power!
serious question
Can ANY of you think of a more mediocre white male than Jo Biden?
Would you consider Rene Magritte to be mediocre?
The way those white males kill and torture each other, it must be awful what they do to people who aren't white or male. Well yes, sometimes. But it is not easy to beat what they do to each other. Partly to establish who is and who is not mediocre.
True Western cowboy types who went into show business and saw their whole world change. Surely the most amazing example is Wyatt Earp. Few people could have had the dangerous authentic Western adventures he had. He lived to 80 in Los Angeles--as Ben Mankiewicz pointed out regularly, living at a regular address on a planned street. In his last years he was technical adviser to people working on Western movies, and he was pitching scripts like a lot of other people. Hoping to be a bigger deal in the movies than he actually was. You can imagine his agent saying: no one turns around a high quality screenplay like Earp!. He has a unique ability to convey pathos and drama in a few words. A man's man among Hollywood writers living in their little bungalows.
Temujin said...
To conveniently shine a light on white men, while excluding the entirety of the human race, both men and women of ALL colors, sizes, languages, and religions, is a declaration of your lack of intellect. It is dogma at best. A proclamation of idiocy. And at worst, an instigation to drive a wedge and hate between people that already seem to need little prompting.
It is exactly what the National Socialist party in Germany did. Corporate censorship and alliances with government to make it unmissable.
Regarding the film's opening words, I noticed that I (a mediocre white male) was able to read the second placard about "Buffalo Bill" easily in about 8 seconds, yet it remained visible for 11 seconds - more than twice my reading time - beyond that. Did people just read slower back in the day?
Also, I had to laugh at the next placard where is was stated "These films were made years before moving pictures were the perfect art of today." Wow - I guess we didn't need all those extras like color, high frame rate, 4K resolution, sound etc. It was already "perfect" back then!
Another book by another intellectual denigrating white men. Talk about followin the herd.
I'm tired of this way of talking in America. It's poison.
Let's try this: A white man writes a book about mediocre black women and their role in harming our society. How would people respond?
Exactly.
This isn't cute.
Wait a minute, my understanding was that part of the reason for slaughtering the buffaloes was to deprive the Amerindians of the Plains of a vital food source. Or at least that was a consequence of the slaughter. Why should I listen to someone who has such an incomplete understanding of the history of oppression?
There is an entire literature like this complaining about the white men who built civilization and it is read exclusively by white people who live in an ant hill like NYC. It does not occur to them that life would be nasty brutish and short without those white men.
Sounds like a proud modern racist making fun of older mediocre racism.
It's come full circle and now open racism is acceptable again. That's called progressivism.
Actually Iejoma Oluo is nonsense on steroids. I looked her up on Wikipedia. She identifies as Nigerian American--Daddy was apparently a Nigerian married to (presumably) a white woman in Denton Texas where Ijeoma was born in 1980. She was married from 2001-2005--probably to a "mediocre man" of whatever color. Graduate of Western Washington University in Bellingham Washington. She got started writing writing a food blog.
She's now based in Seattle. In 2015 she was named one of the most influential people in Seattle. By 2018 she got a promotion to "one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle".
And now by gad she's written a book that gets reviewed or mentioned in the NYT. Be still my beating heart! What this woman has to say is important! Or so she thinks. Sorry Babe, not getting off at your stop. I'll keep going the line until I get off at the station at Mediocreville. I'll be okay.
Muscular Christianity gave us American football? Cool. I now want to purchase her retcon SciFi/Fantasy novel.
“Eminent danger” is so bad it’s good. But the editor must be mediocre (unless they are diverse, of course).
She should come talk to the Nigerian immigrants in my church about which color males they feel are more dangerous.
Ijeoma Oluo got a whole book out of the closing scene in “Amadeus”? Whatever.
Cover art on that book looks pretty mediocre to me.
After the media hysteria over the shooting of Trayvon Martin by a hispanic male Iejoma Oluo apparently realized there was way more $$$ in writing about fake racial problems than food.Her children both present as white based on photos (they do only have one black grandparent), yet she constantly expresses fear of police killing them for being black.
I'm too tired of this bullshit to be mad about it. But bullshit it is.
If you are worried about mediocre white men, try spending a few hours with the women who comprise 70% of the HR workforce in the modern corporation. But there is no point in worrying about mediocrity - if we define "mediocre" as Webster does, we might include people who fall within a standard deviation above or below average - in other words, most people. And guess what folks? There are a LOT more of them than there are very good or superior people, and, mercifully, idiots.
You can call me mediocre, but "white man", well, them's fighting words. "Fill yur hand, you son of a bitch"!
This case, as do the comments, demonstrates the power of the principle of "the regression to the mean." The overwhelming tendency for all actions, no matter how noble their origins, tend over time to regress to the middle state of the normal distribution.
Given this, it should be no surprise that the NYT, which used to considered very insightful, ground-breaking even, has become with time just another mediocre shock journal of National Enquirer proportions.
Regression to the Mean is common when the business office takes the place of quality editorial policy. CLICKS over BICS as my departed father would say.
It certainly is true in regarding a mediocre white male dominance. David Halberstam wrote about it 50 years ago in the best and the brightest.
This brings me back to our previous discussion on the IQ fallacy. Many men with above average IQs are in fact mediocre. The major malfunction is to think that you are not mediocre and so therefore ipso facto are more inclined to make mistakes and not believe that your behavior produced mistakes. Then that gets amplified in a non-linear fashion when amongst your matrix of feller mediocre men are covering for each other.
We could use a lot more illiterate genius level roughnecks and heavy equipment operators making big picture decisions and running hard over mediocre men.
However even as mediocre as we are we seem to have accomplished quite a lot more than any other brand of human being this planet has seen except for maybe Genghis Khan.
The great Promise of the Women's Movement got trashed by reality. It's not the Men us Americans were counting on for the New Century of Success. It was supposed to the women that were fish and didn't even need a bicycle, or something.
The spun-up ladies were chomping at the bit, ready to prove their chops, and how has that worked out?
Remember those Obama women, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett, Loretta Lynch? They were going to prove they were as tough as men, but instead made a bloody mess of everything they touched.
Not just the middle East, their massive abuse of fed surveillance of American citizens, & tossing our individual rights to the dogs left a sordid record.{#MollyNorris, #Nakoula}
And the hideous attempt to hoist "Hillary!" onto our Presidency, oof! what a sad compromise with mediocrity, and a gloomy future if such a derelict represents successful Woman Power.
But Wait! There's also the dreadful abdication of Due Process and basic Order of Law by our Worst Women's Movement Leadership Ever: Sen. Gillibrand starring in #MeToo against men of all levels of success; and Kamala, the heels-up Ho, relieving herself of all norms on Kavanaugh. Etc. Etc.
And here the feckless women are again, in this book apparently, whining as usual.
Jesus guys we run the World we're at the top we have tons of machinery equipment and armies of men at our disposal to do our bidding and yet you are so weak-minded sensitive and insecure that you can't bear the least bit of criticism from people outside of our powerful group.
Your behavior smacks of white fragility
"In America, Is Power in the Hands of Too Many 'Mediocre' Men?"
The New York Times certainly is.
Howard said...
Jesus guys we run the World we're at the top we have tons of machinery equipment and armies of men at our disposal to do our bidding and yet you are so weak-minded sensitive and insecure that you can't bear the least bit of criticism from people outside of our powerful group.
I'm not a guy. So I still get to have an opinion about this.
That’s pretty goddamned funny coming from the NYT.
Blogger Howard said...
We could use a lot more illiterate genius level roughnecks and heavy equipment operators making big picture decisions and running hard over mediocre men.
However even as mediocre as we are we seem to have accomplished quite a lot more than any other brand of human being this planet has seen except for maybe Genghis Khan.
I think this is my favorite thing you've ever posted, Howard. YES! I would prefer that the COVID policy were set by, say, a hundred refinery workers than our "finest" epidemiologists. YES! Most of the work is done by average people, and our average hasn't been so bad.
The author seems to have not noticed pishkun, used by Blackfeet hunters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump
The author's Wikipedia photo shows she is about 80 lbs overweight. And maybe she can go back to her father's country, Nigeria, if America is so bad.
Cover art on that book looks pretty mediocre to me.
I'd call it an example of an outdated fashion. Cover art has fashions and this one reminds me of 50's kitchens.
I agree the problem today is mediocrity, but it's not a race or sex thing except when you put those things ahead of merit. That's a formula for mediocrity. We've been at it for while now.
I agree Oso. The mediocre Covid response seems to be a white people problem not left versus right because look at how bad Europe is doing as well.
That said I'm sure glad those idiotic book smart people have been able to bang out those vaccines pretty quick.
yet you are so weak-minded sensitive and insecure that you can't bear the least bit of criticism from people outside of our powerful group.
Says the guy who constantly whines here about us deplorables.
By the way, Howard, Trump put the military germ war people in the middle of "Warp Speed." They had been working on messenger rna vaccines for a while. The distribution program, if Biden doesn't fuck it up, is also planned by a general who does logistics.
It's refreshing to know that we have intellectuals with the courage to see and write about such daring perspectives. These are ideas which deserve some attention. And then be promptly dismissed for the baseless crap that it is.
What if the earth really is flat?!
A Newsweek video quoting from Mediocre. The video is itself mediocre (did white men make it?). Among other things, it puts long quotes, presumably from the book, on screen but takes them down before you have a chance to read them.
Not that we're missing much. It's clear Ms Oluo has a very deep, personal understanding of mediocrity.
this conception of manliness, she ably demonstrates, also gave us American football, a sport so violent in its early iterations that dozens of the exclusively white men who played it were killed....
Only one player has actually died on the field, and he died of a heart attack sustained while jogging back to the huddle (Chuck Hughes of the Detroit Lions in 1971).
Wikipedia has a list of players who died during their playing careers. 17 joined the military mid-career and were killed in combat. 6 arena league players died mid-career, but only one of injuries sustained during a game (and he was not white). 5 CFL players died mid-career, none of causes related to their playing football (homicides, car accidents, etc.) although one died of suicide, which some will argue is at least partially caused by brain trauma from the hits. In the NFL, 67 players died mid-career in addition to those killed in military action. Of these, five were suicides, 24 were car or motorcycle accidents and 19 from medical causes such as heart attacks or cancers. Only two are identified as dying from injuries sustained during a game (both neck injuries) - as many were killed in plane crashes, fewer than resulted from homicide, and fewer than those who drowned. Oh, and one of the two killed by in-game injuries was black.
Oluo got this wrong, and the NYT uncritically repeated it as though it were true. Perhaps the Times should no longer be a primary news source for you.
Buffalo Bill: 'I got your toxic masculinity right here.' : )
As for the whole shitting on white guys industry, 90% of the world as you know it wouldn't be here if not for us pesky paleface dudes.
You want to live in eternal darkness and abject poverty?
Easy; destroy everything that white men invented.
Blogger Howard said...
Jesus guys we run the World we're at the top we have tons of machinery equipment and armies of men at our disposal to do our bidding and yet you are so weak-minded sensitive and insecure that you can't bear the least bit of criticism from people outside of our powerful group.
Your behavior smacks of white fragility.
Bad news for Howeeee. I’ve just read there is an impending shortage of Jergen’s Hand n’ Body Lotion forecast along with tissue paper.
Her father be absent and her mother be white: (sound familiar?)
"My father moved back to Nigeria one month after I was born. Neither I nor my sister Ijeoma, who is a year and a half my elder, have any recollection of him."
What if the [true] role of the intellectual (a term I assume refers to individuals who are gifted with increased capacity for insight) is to explore the mediocre parts of the human condition without passion (or, arrogance)?
Of course, this would require some dispassion and insight into the mechanics of social process; or, more colloquially, balance. Our intellectual betters would have to take seriously how the mediocre think and search for cogent explanation rather than scoffing and ridicule.
This is difficult to do without banality, which is far below mediocrity.
An old man can dream.
If not for the legacy of white men Ijeoma Uleo would be living in an unelectrified hut somewhere in Africa, with his (?) transportation options being horseback or walking. He (?) also wouldn’t have access to the most excellent English language. Perhaps all that would be for the best. I’m sick and tired of whiny ingrates who don’t know how shitty their lives would be without the contributions of white men.
Oops, botched Oluo’s last name by not checking back on the post. Not intentionally, but truthfully I don’t care about her (?) opinion.
Down and out person on street: “hey, buddy... can you help me out with a sandwich?”
Louie Anderson: “Sure! Where is it?”
"Somebody tamed the west. (everything west of St Louis) and it wasn't scribes contemplating their navels like this piece. White man tamed the west."
A self-flattering way of saying "white man" spread ever westward into territories where other peoples were living, and "white man" killed the majority of the indigenous populations and consigned those not killed to government prison camps.
Who needs to buy a book on mediocre white men in America when you can read their dopey comments here for free?
Be definition, the majority of everything and everyone is mediocre.
A self-flattering way of saying "white man" spread ever westward into territories where other peoples were living, and "white man" killed the majority of the indigenous populations and consigned those not killed to government prison camps.
Yes, all those Siberian refugees had first dibs. You don't even know who came before.
Some of us read history, like about the IndoEuropeans that domesticated the horse and invented the wheel. When their descendants invaded north America, they found a hundred thousand Siberians who had eaten their horses and never got the idea of the wheel.
Some, like you, wash dishes and stew in envy.
"My father moved back to Nigeria one month after I was born. Neither I nor my sister Ijeoma, who is a year and a half my elder, have any recollection of him."
Obama ?
Robert Cook said...
"Somebody tamed the west. (everything west of St Louis) and it wasn't scribes contemplating their navels like this piece. White man tamed the west."
A self-flattering way of saying "white man" spread ever westward into territories where other peoples were living, and "white man" killed the majority of the indigenous populations and consigned those not killed to government prison camps.
******************
More Zinn-ish idiocy. There were fewer than five million Indians all across North America and Canada, ALL stone-age peoples destined to be swept aside by more advanced civilizations, as happened through history everywhere else on the Earth, or to be absorbed and assimilated as most did.
White people did it, yellow people did it, black people did it......and in terms of race they did it to each other.
(and btw, Indians enslaved other Indians after capturing them during their very frequent wars for territory.)
"you are so weak-minded sensitive and insecure that you can't bear the least bit of criticism from people outside of our powerful group."
I'll suspect the Jews in Germany heard the same argument in the 1930s. Most likely from Howard's grandfather.
Fernandinande: "My father moved back to Nigeria one month after I was born...."
Yeah, it sure seems like the contempt she and Obama have for the "mediocre" whites who actually raised and educated them is the flip side of the reverence for the manly Black (upper case!) men who conceived and abandoned them. And, given that so many whites snap up their best-sellers (and can't wait to vote them President), who is to say their judgement of whites is entirely wrong-headed?
"Surely the most amazing example is Wyatt Earp."
Earp is a distant relative on my mother's side...my great-grandmother (who I knew when I was very little) was a cousin of Wyatt...
Re: Cody, WY...a really nice little town. Nothing flashy. They have a Western museum there with one of the world's greatest collections of firearms. Definitely worth a visit.
"A self-flattering way of saying "white man" spread ever westward into territories where other peoples were living, and "white man" killed the majority of the indigenous populations and consigned those not killed to government prison camps."
Fuck you. It's called the history of the world. There are winners and losers.
The indigenous people of the Americas were a stone-age culture who hadn't invented the wheel yet. They were going to lose.
As for prison camps, tell that to FDR, your socialist god-hero.
Did I say fuck you? Fuck you.
Ironic isn't it, that the Progs think that they and their children are all "above average".
She's not wrong that we've got a society today that elevates mediocrity and worse, although I'd bet we disagree on why. Also she's a racist asshole, but then, that seems to be a prerequisite for a well reviewed piece of agitprop.
Who's got the stuff that made the Wild West wild?
Who pleases ev'ry woman, man and child?
Who does his best to give the customers a thrill?
-Who? Colonel Buff'lo Bill
Yes, vigorous and creative peoples, especially those far more numerous than the indigenes, have a tendency to take over land masses. If the indigenous people of north America needed 100 acres of land to support one person, and the newcomers could support 10 on the same patch, well, that's life. One might almost call it majority rule.
Cook maximizes his self-regard by deploring in one group what has been the practice of all peoples, including the very indigenous people he's so concerned about from NYC. His math is bad too, unless he can clarify how he arrives at the conclusion that "the majority" of indigenous populations were killed by Westward expansion.
As for Ms Ululate, the mediocre honky Michael Moore beat her to the concept by years.
Narr
If History teaches us anything, it's that White Men think White Men can do no wrong
At least Malvina Reynolds made a catchy ticky-tacky little tune out of her contemptuous angst.
Never mind the quote from the book about Buffalo Bill. And besides, he's defunct, as e.e. cummings told us:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47244/buffalo-bill-s
What has Nigeria given the world aside from hundreds of Princes and Princesses generously willing to cut you in on their investment and inheritance scams?
And who is this person lecturing us coming from a country that only fifty years ago engaged in the slaughter and starvation of millions of its own citizens in the Biafran Civil (and Tribal) War?
STFU
The NYT and its readership has toiled ceaselessly and shamelessly to defame, demean, slander, oppose and vilify a president who, whatever else might be said about him, is hardly mediocre. They seek to replace him with a man for whom the word mediocre was coined.
WTH?
"and in terms of race they did it to each other."
Early and often and with great enthusiasm.
Blogger Robert Cook said...
Be definition, the majority of everything and everyone is mediocre.
Agreed but that is what the Bell Curve is about.
I think it's funny when mediocrities whine about mediocrity. You know who you are.
"If you are worried about mediocre white men, try spending a few hours with the women who comprise 70% of the HR workforce in the modern corporation." Exactly and America's descent into mediocrity from greatness follows the empowerment of these self satisfied parasites.
Oh and these White bashing books sound more and more like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I think the white guy who delivers pizza to me would be surprised to hear that he was privileged.
"Can ANY of you think of a more mediocre white male than Jo Biden?"
Joe Biden aspires to be mediocre.
"Cook maximizes his self-regard by deploring in one group what has been the practice of all peoples, including the very indigenous people he's so concerned about from NYC."
My comment is in no way related to my self-regard, and, of course, it goes without saying (which is why I didn't bother saying it) that all peoples who grow numerous and capable enough will spread out and clash with others in fights over possession of land and resources. This does not make this gruesome commonplace of human history any less abhorrent or deplorable. My comment is more in the way of taking issue with American self-regard about our "taming of the west." I merely repeat the uncontroversial truth (so often still denied) that our "taming of the west" was a concerted campaign of murder, pillage, and rapine.
All peoples have done it, and all peoples wrap their butchery and plunder in self-glorifying culture myths of greatness and god-driven destiny. What's deplorable is how many people so persistently hold fast to their respective cultural creation myths as truth. In short, we are not "exceptional" in any way but just like all who have come before us or who coexist with us presently.
Hey, what about Buffalo Bob?
"In short, we are not "exceptional" in any way but just like all who have come before us or who coexist with us presently."
If we're not exceptional, why does the entire fucking world want to come here?
It can't just be all of the free stuff.
I already know your answer, and no--the Guatemalans and Nigerians aren't content to live in their thatched huts (if they're lucky) and spend all day filtering the human feces out of their water supplies.
At least they're 'noble savages,' so they have that going for them.
Lefties can never admit it, but some cultures are, indeed, better than others.
Cook you’re ignoring the truth. White European men were centuries ahead of Serbian nomads of the American west. Centuries ahead. As pointed out above, they never figured out the Wheel. The were destiny was pre determined. Keep judging the past by today’s standards. It’s meaningless. Civilization overtook the nomads. Thankfully.
The attacks on men today tell us we are in a cultural decline. What if there were attacks on women, blacks, gays, etc?
Transportation to coastal markets was 100% a mediocre white men inventions. Erie Canal and Union Pacific railroads were created by white male gamblers. And then Eisenhower ordered Interstate highways for Tractor Trailer Trucks. And the women just go to nearby stores that have everything. No wonder men seem worthless to the women . They can get everything needed in stores.
“This does not make this gruesome commonplace of human history any less abhorrent or deplorable. “
You focus on a few ‘favored’, humans, in some stupid attempt to minimize something the was extraordinary. What about all the other insurmountable obstacles that these great men met, and by shear strength of character overcame tp prosper? Geography, climate, resources,(lack of). You are ignorant of history. Instead you think you would have had an answer that would have left the inhabitants better off. Guess what? Nobody has ever offered a better way, because it doesn’t exist. 20,000 years of history inform that you are clueless.
I’ve listened to two of Michners works. Hawaii, and Centennial. Guess what?. They are chock full of exceptional white males.
"What about all the other insurmountable obstacles that these great men met, and by shear strength of character overcame tp prosper? Geography, climate, resources,(lack of)."
That (toxic, white) Shackleton was just a guy who got lost in some ice and got lucky.
Talk about mediocre...
tommyesq:
I viewed the term "early iterations of American football" as referring to college games in the 19th century, but don't know whether the "dozens of deaths" assertion is defensible.
There is only one large human culture, that of the WEIRD, that creates the ground for judging the conquest of North America as "deplorable." The capacity for self-loathing, for doubting the myths of Manifest Destiny, is unique to the West (why it is the only culture that hasn't completely wiped out its competitors).
Ironically, that might be the basis for claiming moral exceptionalism of that culture. I read Robert Cook as basically asserting the superiority of cultures that wipe out competitors without qualm.
Mediocrity has been baked into the culture since at least WW2. We lost so much of the superior gene pool (those who sought new frontiers despite the odds) when our men marched off to war. This has meant that all those now in positions of power are literally the 4Fs - the losers who couldn't cut it.
but just like all who have come before us or who coexist with us presently.
Human sacrifice and cannibalism, once common, are mostly gone except in Africa. Slavery persists in larger areas. Torture, being useful, always returns. I don't think all cultures are equal in those regards.
"The capacity for self-loathing, for doubting the myths of Manifest Destiny, is unique to the West (why it is the only culture that hasn't completely wiped out its competitors)."
Except for the Germans mid-20th century ('Don't say anything about the war!) the 'West' is pretty weak on conquer and hold. Although the Russians don't mind keeping stuff either...
The U.S. has won battles over a lot of the earth's surface, and we always (with minor exceptions) give it all back, with reparations to boot.
"Beginning with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the 19th-century showman whose slaughter of American buffaloes was a mere prelude for hunting and killing Indigenous people,"
Somewhat akin to saying, "The Jewish killing of Fish off Israeli coast was a prelude for their slaughter of the Palestinians and stealing their land".
Those "mediocre" men built the transcontinental railroad in 4 years. By hand with shovels, pick axes, sledge hammers, hand saws, black power and nitroglycerine. Those same mediocre men fought in the Civil War, killing about 700,000 men, on both sides. The work force was a combination of freed slaves, Confederate and Union army men and Chinese. Ijeoma Oluo isn't worth a bucket of warm piss.
Or what about:
"The murder of Swine, was a prelude for Africans killing other tribes and selling them into slavery to the white man".
Its a phrase that can be used in all kinds of ways!
"In 2015 [Iejoma Oluo] was named one of the most influential people in Seattle." Who knew? I've lived in King County since 1977 and I've never heard of her. She must be really, really influential. I bet with a smile, she could get a cup of coffee at Starbucks, provided she also had $2.00.
Mediocrity has been baked into the culture since at least WW2. We lost so much of the superior gene pool (those who sought new frontiers despite the odds) when our men marched off to war. This has meant that all those now in positions of power are literally the 4Fs - the losers who couldn't cut it.
Similar thing in the UK. They lost so many of their quality men in WWII and what passes for their country now is a testosterone-free utter embarrassment.
"I read Robert Cook as basically asserting the superiority of cultures that wipe out competitors without qualm."
You should learn how to read.
Blogger KellyM said...
Mediocrity has been baked into the culture since at least WW2. We lost so much of the superior gene pool (those who sought new frontiers despite the odds) when our men marched off to war. This has meant that all those now in positions of power are literally the 4Fs - the losers who couldn't cut it.
That may well be true of Germany and Britain since they fought two massive wars and Japan lost a large share of its male population, partly due to the Shinto thing about surrender. The US had much smaller casualties in WWII and WWI. In WWI we were only in combat a year. In WWII the casualties in both theaters were much less than UK and Germany and Japan.
Watch Robert Cook walk it back:
First it was "white man".
Then "all peoples have done it".
As for "murder, pillage and rapine", he seems to think Amerinds populated the entire continent in every direction, and were mercilessly displaced each and every day, when vast areas of the land had no one, or almost no one, living on them. He also neglects to acknowledge that Indians and Europeans lived in close and peaceful proximity in some parts of America, particularly the Northeast.
Then there's the wee problem of how those Stone-Age people themselves behaved. Cook treats them as if they were all smiling, happy people living in a blessed State of Nature---when they were often brutal savages who killed and enslaved other tribes, some of whom they were in perpetual wars with.
He's obviously swallowed everything in Howard Zinn's wretched books.
"Similar thing in the UK. They lost so many of their quality men in WWII and what passes for their country now is a testosterone-free utter embarrassment."
Not really...those Muslims in England have plenty of testosterone and make plenty of babies.
Not really...those Muslims in England have plenty of testosterone and make plenty of babies.
You are right, of course. I was thinking but didn't say that the only men left in England want to outbreed and replace the mediocre white ones.
I merely repeat the uncontroversial truth (so often still denied) that our "taming of the west" was a concerted campaign of murder, pillage, and rapine.
"Uncontroversial" only among your communist left brethren. Zinn mis-History.
My daughter, in her first year at U of A was taught that the Plains Indians taught the white settlers how to farm. That is the level of Cook's understanding of history. The Plains Indians were hunter gatherers. A few Indian tribes in the west knew about farming but not much. The Iroquois missed a chance to integrate as they and the Cherokees were quite advanced. They just chose the wrong side in the frontier wars. The Plains Indians were the most primitive, probably because they were the last wave of migration.
"You are right, of course. I was thinking but didn't say that the only men left in England want to outbreed and replace the mediocre white ones."
And outvote them too.
Hence Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London...
Someday soon they will get a Muslim PM, who will no doubt refuse to bow to the Queen because she's a woman, and therefore just another man's property...
Mrs. Cody looks quite censorious and formidable. If I were Wild Bill, I'd consider lighting out for the territories. Those corsets had a negative effect on a woman's disposition back then. Women are so much nicer nowadays.
“Mediocrity has been baked into the culture since at least WW2. We lost so much of the superior gene pool (those who sought new frontiers despite the odds) when our men marched off to war. This has meant that all those now in positions of power are literally the 4Fs - the losers who couldn't cut it.”
Plenty of the Greatest Generation came home after being heroes, of sorts, in WW II. Plenty of former Navy and Army pilots in the neighborhood. Also (partly due to the skiing) a number of survivors in the 10th Mt Division. Not the ones, like Bob Doe, slotted in as replacements, but who trained at Camp Hale, between Mintern and Leadville. Who then participated throughout the slog up the mountains In the center of Italy. (A lot of the ski runs on Vail Mountain are named by the survivors for the battles they fought there). Neighbor to the west was a former P51 jock, was then the 1st pilot for Aspen Airways, and ultimately retired from Continental as a Sr Captain, while the guy to the east had left Dartmouth for the 10th Mtn. Etc. You didn’t hear the stories when the women were around, but occasionally on Boy Scout backpacking trips. Otherwise they were pretty quiet about their experiences. It was weird - it seemed like every father who came along on the trips had fought, and those, like my father, who had served, but never saw combat, never did (he missed being sent to Europe in time for the Battle of the Bulge, by getting sick, and graduating with the next class - so was sent to rural China instead).
Regarding football, I'm guessing the author didn't spend much time contemplating the exceptional and adored, Jim Thorpe, who was of mixed Indian and European heritage. Professional football might not have become a beloved American sport without him.
Sometime back I read an account by a missionary on his life in what is now present day Uganda. This was in the 1880's, and the territory had not been colonized. It was governed by a king. The king had several hundred wives. I guess if you're wife #233, you don't have much of a sex life. Anyway, as it happened, the wife had an affair with one of the king's warriors. The king found out about it. The warrior had his arms and legs broken and was left by the shores of a lake to be eaten by the crocodiles. The wife was sent back to her family. The account doesn't say what happened to her after that.....On the plus side, she didn't have to wear a corset.
“ A few Indian tribes in the west knew about farming but not much. The Iroquois missed a chance to integrate as they and the Cherokees were quite advanced. They just chose the wrong side in the frontier wars.”
Te story I got from a descendant of the Cherokees who survived the Trail of Tears is that they were good farmers and encaustic of that owned the best land, ad so sold the lesser land to the Whites moving in, and it was to grab their land that they were kicked off their farms by Andrew Jackson and his cronies, and shipped to Oklahoma, by the military.
But, yes, the Plains and Mountain Indians lived very sparsely, as stone aged hunter /gatherers. Up until they got their hades (again) on horses, they moved around mostly on foot, in tribes of maybe 3k, and maybe a half dozen or fewer covering an entire state like CO. Maybe 15k Indians at the tie of our founding, in a state that now hosts over 4 million people.
Why are the offspring of mixed marriages, so militantly Black and aggressively anti-white. More often than not, it is the Black father who behaves badly and the white mother who holds things together, but the misdeeds of the father are held to be caused by the racist society in which he lives and he gets off easy. Maybe mixed race children who don't become writers, movie stars, or politicians have a more balanced reaction to an unhappy childhood, but you never hear of them. I'd like to read something where the father is portrayed as Daddy Dearest and the mother is the hero of the saga.
The people of the horse--the Huns, Parthians, Arabs, Ottomans, Mongols--were militarily superior to more civilized people. Whenever the find enough forage to mass sufficient horses, they won their battles. They were not notably kind to the people they conquered. The Mongols murdered every last living soul they could find in Baghdad. Roman and Spanish conquests were considerably tamer.....If the Plains Indians had invented the tommy gun or the Claymore mine, we'd all be in a fine pickle right about now, but women wouldn't have to wear foundation garments.
From the post:
"In America, Is Power in the Hands of Too Many 'Mediocre' Men?"
This, from the folks who are promoting what I call "Mediocre for All."
Yes, the assertion was about early football, an Ivy League pastime. I don't know about the casualty figures, but the games were so dangerous that TR-- IIRC-- had to step in.
Whatever is wrong with modern American males, it makes no sense to attribute the shortcomings to losses in WWII, which by the standards of the other belligerents were mild.
And the guys who came back had had enough (most of them) of destruction and just wanted to build stuff and make money and have kids. The WWII experience had to a large degree nationalized, federalized, and given confidence to almost all groups of males who had participated, and Black veterans in particular-- I see the Civil Rights movement of the 40s and 50s as directly and inextricably linked to the war.
On my block of 1960s 3/2 1500-1700sf houses, 17 or 18 out of 20 fathers had been in the service in WWII, the late 40s, or Korea, as had a few moms. One of the 'non-veterans' was a scrawny little cracker from around Pontotoc who had been too small for a uniform and ended up in the Merchant Marine--and as has been mentioned they were in more danger than almost anyone. (Not that we knew at the time.)
My own father was a bomber pilot (who was flying over the 10th Mountain no doubt), the dentist across the street had been a paratrooper in the Bulge, one friend's father (who died a few weeks ago pushing 98) had been an infantry medic in Europe, another a crewman on a heavy cruiser in the Pacific . . . that's just the ones who got overseas and into action, that I can recall offhand.
I'll be the first to say their sons were not as tough or capable.
Narr
Second of four sons
What Oluo has written, of course, cannot be true or untrue, anymore than writing "Those birthday candles remind me of a starry sky" can be said to be true or untrue.
She's a racist. Why read a racist? What's the point?
Racism is stupid. Dividing humanity into races is stupid. It's been nothing but poison.
This idea that now infatuates the left, that white people are the evil ones and we just need to hate on them for a while, is just as evil and insane as any other kind of racism. I have no patience for this stupidity. These people should be mocked as the morons they are.
Narr said:
The WWII experience had to a large degree nationalized, federalized, and given confidence to almost all groups of males who had participated, and Black veterans in particular-- I see the Civil Rights movement of the 40s and 50s as directly and inextricably linked to the war.
I believe that as well. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote "Brothers in Arms", about his father's experience in the 761st Tank Battalion during WWII. His father was a tanker, attached to Patton's Third Army. They went through hell fighting the Nazis, with little or no breaks. They suffered nearly 50% casualties. Coming home to Southern racists would be a walk in the park after their service.
My daughter, in her first year at U of A was taught that the Plains Indians taught the white settlers how to farm.
It's not that the Plains Indians couldn't farm, its that the settlers farmed using advanced (for the time) technology such as cast steel ploughs.
https://www.thoughtco.com/john-deere-inventor-4070937
https://homesteadcongress.blogspot.com/2011/02/from-great-american-desert-to-american.html
Some Indian tribes engaged in some subsistence farming, but wouldn't have had anything to teach the settlers who where introducing new crops that the tribes would have never seen before.
“It's not that the Plains Indians couldn't farm, its that the settlers farmed using advanced (for the time) technology such as cast steel ploughs.”
Prior to the reintroduction of horses, the Plains and Mountain tribes were more sedentary, engaging in some subsistence farming, along with whatever hunting they could do. But the animals they hunted could run away from them, hence the necessity of subsistence farming. Things changed drastically with the reintroduction of horses. They could now follow their prey, and, in particular, the massive bison herds on the plains. Hence their diet shifted to eating much more, if not mostly, meat. It also allowed their populations to expand.
Where we live in NW MT was Salish country in the early 19th Century. They were friendly to the White explorers and fur trappers. In about 1810, David Thompson, an explorer operating out of Hudson Bay, started the first fur trading fort in W MT. His team trekked in from Pend O’Reille, and came close to starving, until they ran into Salish Indians, who eagerly traded meat for tobacco and gun powder. In his notes, he tells of the Salish men rushing off every time there was evidence of Blackfoot Indian intrusions, always successfully pushing them back over the Continental Divide. But in a mere 20 years, the fur trading fort was shut down, because the much less hospitable Blackfoot had pushed the Salish out of the area. And the Blackfoot had very likely been pushed west by the Crow, in turn pushed by the Sioux, who were now able to follow the bison herds after acquiring horses, that resulting in population growth. By that time, all the tribes had horses, but the Sioux lived close to the bison, so could benefit more from having them, and thus appear to have had a faster growing population.
Essentially indistinguishable from what happened throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, when one group of people got a technological advantage over their neighbors. Much of our world history is a story about mass migrations, of one people pushing another out for their land, and that group pushing another group out.
There has always been a claim that part of the rationale for killing off most of the bison was to subdue the plains Indians. And it had to have had a dramatic effect. The plains Indians, and esp, probably, the Sioux, had rapid population growth during the first half of the 19th century, now that they could follow the great bison herds on horseback. Eliminate the bison, and their traditional ways of farming and subsistence farming weren’t going to support their increased populations. They were ultimately essentially starved into submission.
But keep in mind that their bigger problem was that the White population was growing even faster, through large farm families, as well as immigration. They bred faster than the Indians could, and their efficiency as farmers allowed much denser living. In MT, as in other places, there was a constant push for their land, as one treaty was made with them, then broken, esp when gold was discovered on the Indian land. Almost overnight, towns would spring up where they shouldn’t be, according to treaty, and the population of the new town would easily exceed the population of the nearby tribe. And another, and another.
Her father be absent and her mother be white: (sound familiar?)
"My father moved back to Nigeria one month after I was born. Neither I nor my sister Ijeoma, who is a year and a half my elder, have any recollection of him."
She's black and she doesn't know the proper phrase would be, "My momma's baby daddy..."?
BTW, this is another troll by the Hostess with the NYTimes. Piss on them.
Mrs. Cody was no Maureen O'Hara--but then, who was?
Just before all the public libraries shut down, I saw a book I told myself I would borrow from the library and read, but thanks to the Kung Flu, never did. It was about the friendship, in their later years, between Cody and Sitting Bull. It reminded me of a poignant scene in the 1940s biopic BUFFALO Bill, with Joel McCrea as Cody. In the aftermath of a big battle Cody is seen by a US Army officer wandering among the Indian dead, carrying the dead body of an Indian woman (Linda Darnell). The officer asks, "Was she your friend?" Cody answers, "They were all my friends." As a biopic the movie may be hooey, but that scene always gets to me.
Clovis man wiped out the megafauna with spears. Those guys didn't need Sharps rifles to make species extinct.
What distinguished the white settlers wasn't their intentions to kill all the bison, it was their ability to do it.
Our technology tends to outrun our morals in any age.
I enjoy the 'fisking' of self anointed betters. That's why I come here. I know that after a few trolls drop their turd in the punch bowl, commenters that actual study history, pitch in to explain how leftist only desire, is to drive an agenda. Actual history be damned. This was fun. Lets do it again soon.
"Then there's the wee problem of how those Stone-Age people themselves behaved. Cook treats them as if they were all smiling, happy people living in a blessed State of Nature---when they were often brutal savages who killed and enslaved other tribes, some of whom they were in perpetual wars with."
Almost without exception the cultural philosophies of every native tribe was warfare. The name for themselves was almost always "The People". As opposed to their neighbors who were always some soet of lesser people. The more peaceful tribes were pushed out into the margins. It's folly to think that the Innuit chose to live in the high arctic or the Anasazi wanted to live in dangerous hard to reach high rises. Unless you were part of the dominant tribe life in pre columbian North America was deadly.
Much better to live under the mediocrity of men than to be jostled monthly on the mood swings of a mediocre woman.
Imagine that as a headline and Ann because of her extreme neutrality would have to blog this crap too.
I trust nothing in the NYT.
Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death
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