Writes Thomas Chatterton Williams, in "You Can’t Define Woke/The word is not a viable descriptor for anyone who is critical of the many serious excesses of the left yet remains invested in reaching beyond their own echo chamber" (The Atlantic).
I watched the viral clip of the conservative writer Bethany Mandel...
We watched and talked about that 2 days ago, here.
Chatterton Williams recommends "limiting our reliance on in-group shorthand, and embracing clear, honest, precise, and original thought and communication."
I wonder if Chatterton Williams was named after the poet Thomas Chatterton. Ah! Yes, he was.
Do you know the amazing life story of Thomas Chatterton?
Posts
80 comments:
Noted. Now do “racist”.
Critics of "fascist" politics should not use the word "fascism" because one should never rely on language one cannot hope to control or even fully explain.
When everyone you don't like is a fascist, no one is.
Okay. I'm against vicious loser bigots. Is that clear enough?
Brits are very fond of this death pose (Death of George Villiers - 2nd Duke of Buckingham. It's very British. Very alone. Very dramatic. Very 'stiff upper lip'.
One of my favorite all time poems was written about Buckingham:
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long
But, in the course of one revolving moon
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon..
..Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, but they had his estate.
I disagree. The Left is trying desperately to end the use of the term "woke" precisely because everybody knows exactly what it means, and it's not favorable to Progressives.
Republicans cannot define "woke." Democrats cannot define "woman" (and get it wrong when they try).
You want an anechoic chamber.
Kudos to The Atlantic for publishing this article.
We used to have proud Liberals and proud Conservatives serving in office. Then lefties cried about “liberal” being used as a pejorative. We used to have proud Progressives and proud Conservatives serving in office. Then lefties cried about “progressive” being used as a pejorative. So Progressives created “politically correct” as a way to control their opponents speech but it was so ham-handed Proud Liberal Bill Maher named his show “Politically Incorrect.” So for a while lefties simply labeled everything their opponents said as hate speech. Because the supply of hate is far less than the demand for it as a foil, except among their own hateful leftists, that fizzled out. Eventually the marxists couldn’t help but rebrand their ideology as socialism because it was finally time. But Americans in general hate socialism and except for Bernie that tack was a loser too. So they ripped off black people, as Democrats have a long long history of doing, and branded themselves Woke. The caché of that label outdated quickly with Liberals like James Carville blaming the Woke for making lefty ideas unpopular. So we point and laugh at them and their natural reaction is to blame us for ruining their latest lane branding campaign. They are still selling marxist dogshit under a new name.
Saved ->
Born Again ->
Enlightened ->
Righteous ->
Progressive ->
Conscious ->
Compassionate ->
Politically Correct ->
Sensitive ->
Woke
It's just another word in a long history of often political, often competitive, and often passive-aggressive phrases: "I'm better now. I'm a better person. I'm better than those who don't agree with me because my decisions are the best decisions. Don't make me feel bad or threaten my worldview."
I took "woke" to mean the ideological state of mind where the scales finally fall from one's eyes and one awakens to a fuller awareness of all of society's inequities.
In other words, initially used by people to describe mostly themselves, and certainly not a pejorative.
The negative connotation only came as a result of how the self-proclaimed "woke" people behaved.
"Woke" is what happens when your white wife divorces you and decides to fight for civil rights through the NewAge Movement
By the way, the best explanation of the gay's rainbow flag is in the comedy special "Jew" available on YouTube
Thomas Chatterton. Very sad, think of all the great work he could've done.
Conservatives using the word 'woke" is like their using "Crt" Or "DEI". Its all part of their compulsion to lose. CRT/DEI are anti-white. Woke is just leftism. Properly naming things is the first step in fighting them. But of course, Conservatives (and even more so Republicans) don't want to fight, they want to pretend fight. Because its all just a show.
That's also why you get these meaningless powder-puff attacks on the Left. Like: "Democrats are the real racists". Or Liberals are the real "Homophobes" or "Antisemites". The Left just laughs at these absurdities.
"I think of Chatterton the marvelous boy
The sleepless soul Who perished in his pride;
And him who walked in glory and joy
Following his plough along the hillside,
We poets in our youth begin in gladness
But thereof in the end come melancholy and madness.
Chatterton pretended to have found a lost epic but wrote it himself in his teens. The epic had enormous sales and popularity but then was exposed and Chatterton killed himself. He maybe was twenty.
However Wordsworth, author of the above lines, did not end in melancholy and madness but rather in wealth, fame and fake depth of meaning.
If you combined Chatterton and Wordsworth, you might get a wokie. A wokie is all about fake concern for real social issues and a flair for self-promotion. The concern is faked for career advancement, e.g., no Milwaukee wokie is concerned that BLM/Soros reforms resulted in 100 extra murders a year in the black community and no increase in the white community.
Won't the right wing please please please stop using this word that is rhetorically successful because [reason]
I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit, not just on William's argument, but on any reputation he might think he has as a thought leader.
"limiting our reliance on in-group shorthand, and embracing clear, honest, precise, and original thought and communication."
Right, because long complicated nuanced arguments really are the best way to get your ideas out there.
diversitist... DIEversitism... woke and morally broke.
albinophobic
misogynistic
misandristic
transhumane
politically congruent
ethical religious zealot
twilight fringe
progressive liberal
Humpty Dumpty
As a replacement for "woke" I prefer the term "fucking insane."
The political actors who are described by “woke” don’t want anyone to use that word or any other word to describe them. They want to be hidden, they want to be stealthy shape shifters. Wokeness is best done undercover in the darkness. If you want to teach kids about anal sex, it’s best if you do it in a way where parents don’t know about it. If you have training sessions telling white people they are evil, it’s best if it is not in the paper. The word woke allows your opponents to target you.
The revolutionary subversive needs to stay hidden.
This just sounds like another rhetorical shell game the left loves to play. As soon as conservative/normie opposition coalesces around some leftist endeavor, and that endeavor acquires a handy label, the left finds some way to disparage the label as inaccurate/offensive/whatever (even if, as here, the left contrived the label in the first place!). And this is accompanied by intellectual handwringing over the inability of any label to capture the subtle nuances of what the left is actually trying to do -- so conservatives/normies are invited not to talk about it at all.
Bob B said...Republicans cannot define "woke."
It's not the Republicans' job to define woke. It's not their word. The left, the wokesters themselves, cannot define woke. Putting it on the Republicans is a rhetorical trick. A dodge. A game we should not play.
You should read what Jeff Goldstein has to say on the matter. About the use of language and hijacking meaning to brow beat opponents.
Woke requires three definitions, just like you find in the dictionary. 1. Values equity more than equality. 2. Regards ones membership in a splinter group as much more important than ones membership in society at large. 3. Considers their opinion to be fact and regards anything, including reality, which contradicts that opinion to be an actual physical assault on them.
It's a weird choice to name your own kid after someone who committed suicide.
"It's a weird choice to name your own kid after someone who committed suicide."
I thought about that. Maybe he's written about it.
If I had to explain it, I'd say that the suicide has long been mourned as a terrible, terrible mistake that robbed the world of the untold works of genius. So you want your child to be a great genius, and this time, Chatterton will do what we wish he'd done the first time, live out his life.
I see three truisms aggregated in this topic:
1. Progressives continuously change their vocabulary to avoid being properly labeled.
2. Conservatives and Republicans have kept the same self-referencing terms because we don't run away from who we are.
3. Policing speech is always and forever civility bullshit.
And one core truth: One party is working to subvert the Bill of Rights and the other holds them as sacred. Both assume the other is doing it. Hint: The people restricting speech are not the constitutionalists.
committed suicide
is politically incongruent. Rather, self-aborted in the modern model.
Critics of "woke" politics should not use the word "woke" because "one should never rely on language one cannot hope to control or even fully explain."
Everyone knows The Hippocratic Oath.
I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.
h/t birthplace of democracy
demos-cracy is aborted at The Twilight Fringe
This is when TCW should appear in the comments and say "Yes, I have written about that! Here" (and supply a link!)
"Critics of "woke" politics should not use the word "woke" because "one should never rely on language one cannot hope to control or even fully explain."
Under prog hegemony, righties can never "hope to control" any language, so that's no argument. No one needs to "fully explain" woke, which serves as a useful shorthand for prog insanity. Partially explain is good enough, provided righties don't accept the burden of proof or get trapped by prog interviewers.
"The word is not a viable descriptor"
Oh? Since when did political discourse require "viable descriptors"? What prog descriptors of the right are unviable--insurrectionists? deplorables? misogynists? racists? islamophobes? Of course, since prog pet causes change from month to month, no descriptor could be permanently "viable" anyway. Woke will do for now.
"remains invested in reaching beyond their own echo chamber"
Seems like the lefty irritation, if that's what it is, indicates that at least DeSantis's use has gone well beyond the "echo chamber." Righty appropriation of woke signals that some people are fighting back some of the time. Achieving unity in the echo chamber, at least against a common target, is a benefit in itself. You could call it fusion.
Funny how the left is always demanding that people behave as they desire. What a bunch of woke idiots. To paraphrase "I may not be able to define "woke", but I know it when I see it". We live in astonishingly evil times.
What is a woman? : )
Is anti-wokeness a form of discrimination against people with mental illness?
Millennials and zoomers have extremely high rates of ADHD and ASD diagnoses. And, big surprise, these kids are overwhelmingly woke. (The normal kids are more concerned about kid stuff.) The woke's lack of logical reasoning and inability to see nuance is a symptom of their mental illness. The drugs they are being prescribed also impact cognition. So, I think, mental illness produces wokeness. And, if that's the case, aren't we being a little bit rough on them?
Example -- Have you seen libs of tik tok? That website is filled with crazy people and egotistical (insecure) buttheads poking fun at them. This sort of stuff is not nice. We need to help these people not terrorize them.
TCW has written some worthwhile things but this isn't among them. The side which gets to define words, prohibit the use of some words by some people and demand the use of some words, but only by some people, is the side which gets their way.
If we want our ideas to win, we have to defend them and use any word which is useful to that end.
Again ..
Woke:
"It is an attempt at cultural domination exploiting the most extremely deviant of society, specifically their numerous triggers, psychoses, and grievances, to impose intentionally destructive and artificial standards of speech, behavior, and beliefs upon society as a whole, thereby establishing themselves in a position of unassailable power and control. "
-Bart Hall
To my point, Instapundit just linked:
Dear Wokesters, You Named Yourselves by Abe Greenwald
It’s time to let America’s amnesiac wokesters in on a secret: They embraced the term “woke.” They defined it, wrapped themselves in it, screamed it from the rooftops, and invested it with religious passion. The rest of us merely responded.
The woke, having forgotten all this, are now charging conservatives with inventing or distorting the word and using it as a semi-racist right-wing bogeyman term...
That’s right. Back then, both sides understood that wokeness had become a leftist catch-all term. Conservatives still do, but the Left decided to erase its own role in this history. Why? Because soon after 2020, wokeness became an embarrassment and a political liability. The country started to reject the widespread radical project. In November 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of Virginia. At the time, Democratic strategist James Carville was asked what went wrong. “Well, what went wrong is this stupid wokeness,” he said. “Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something.”
Hard to be "... clear, honest, precise, and original [in] thought and communication..." when your side frequently changes definitions, uses nebulous terms and picks adhominin attacks as the weapon of choice.
But this is a time-honored tactic, one that is oft-used. When the narrative tides begin to shift and you are starting to lose the argument with the crowd, the best thing to do is eliminate the lexicon. Stop the crowd from talking on the subject, attempt to pull the plug on the debate. It's just another form of attempted censorship.
Use the words, preferably twice as much.
This is terrible, non-sensical advice. Using words that do not have clear definitions, especially words that the target coined themselves, is an excellent propaganda tactic. Perhaps we should introduce the author to the "motte and bailey" fallacy, which, while illogical, can be very effective and has been used very effectively by the left for decades.
I suppose the author could be very concerned about the logical quality of our discourse, but if so, this is a very strange place to start.
The lesson is do not come unprepared for interviews, especially if you expect the interviewer to be hostile. See Jonah Goldberg when he went on The Daily Show and didn't seem to understand how to defend his own book. Also, reading the Atlantic is not a good use of time, though that truism goes well beyond this article.
I follow Chatterton on social media. Sometimes I'm not quite sure what to make of him. Most of the time he sides with James Lindsay and others in their ongoing critique of neo-Marxism and the communist project. But he sometimes sides with progressives and/or does *not* side with conservatives. And to be honest sometimes I'm annoyed with him over that.
"Dude, they're the enemy, why are you siding with them?"
But that probably means he's a very principled classic liberal. And I'm a mix of classic liberal and yes conservative.
On this occasion I think he's half wrong. Just because the movement we're critiquing tries to play fast and loose with rhetoric doesn't mean we let up.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas, affirmative discrimination.
The women of Lesbos were not transgender. Neither were the men.
Gay is full of joy, merry, light-hearted, carefree.
Gender refers to sex-correlated attributes.
Trans- is a state or process of divergence.
The Rainbow banner and rhetoric in a human context is albinophobic, and black and brown exclusive.
Pride refers a parade of lions, lionesses, and their [unPlanned] cubs playing in gay revelry.
Liberalism is a philosophy of divergence. Classical liberalism is a principled realization.
Progress is an [unqualified] monotonic process.
Conservative is a state of self-moderation.
Fetus is a technical term of art and a sociopolitical construct for social distance, baby.
“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable"
Orwell wrote this in 1948. True then, still true today.
But unlike "woke", fascism, or more properly "Fascism" is very well defined. It was an political socialist ideology, developed by Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. He does an excellent job of explaining it in his pamphlet "The Doctrine of Fascism"
Available here https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf
I wonder how many people who try to tell us that Fascism is not a socialist doctrine have ever read this? I wonder how many people who bandy the word about have ever read it? It's not that hard, it is only 10 pages long.
Orwell also said:
...In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”
I think I have heard the word "democracy" bandied about in reference to the United States more in the past 2-3 years than all the rest of my 75 trips around the sun. The way it is mostly used seems contrary to the definition in most cases.
The USA is not a democracy and was never meant to be a democracy. States may be democracies, but not the US. The US, as originally conceived, was often called a republic. I am wondering if it was even that. Any more than the European Union is a republic. There is a reason we call ourselves the United States and not the united provinces or some such.
John Henry
Orwell covered this topic well in Politics and the English Language because this is how progressives have always treated language. Look at them trying to change Spanish words to their stupid woke terms. Rust and progressivism never sleep.
"“Woke” now refers to the panoply of leftism to which the left themselves applied it. If conservatives find it politically useful to use “woke” as mockery, it’s because the left has applied it to mock-worthy notions. The left could rebrand themselves “superhero’s” but within three years people would associate “superhero’s” with overreaching socialists and so it would become a term of derision"
https://theaspenbeat.com/2021/11/13/woke-is-now-a-term-of-mockery-and-the-left-has-only-itself-to-blame/
Funny how the left is always demanding that people behave as they desire.
Ironic anyway. That's been my question about Stanford all week long: Why can't we demand that they conform to our rules at our events? Why does Althouse only demand that the invited speaker adapt to the mob? Why can't the mob acquiesce to our demands?
[crickets]
jaydub said...
As a replacement for "woke" I prefer the term "fucking insane."
3/17/23, 9:01 AM
*****THIS^^^^
For anyone having difficulty figuring out what "woke" means:
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2023/03/16/so-damn-good-wokal-distance-owns-justice-warriors-claiming-others-cant-define-woke-in-epic-thread/
Thomas Chatterton Williams is a worthless loser. Which is why he's writing in The Atlantic, calling on conservatives to stop doing that thing that is successful against the Left
News flash: actual conservatives don't have conversations with actual conservatives in the pages of The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The NYT, WaPo, or MSNBC.com
The history is pretty consistent: The Left comes up with a new name for themselves, their actions cause the new name to have a vile taint, so they switch to a new name and demand that every stop using the old one.
Both liberal and progressive got established as scummy, so they switched to woke. No it stinks just as much as the others, and they have to come up with a new one.
The reality doesn't change: the polices of the Left are uniformly evil and destructive to any sort of functioning society. For them that's a feature, for normal people it's a bug. So when they get caught, they change their name and try to pretend that means they're different
Rick67 said...
"Dude, they're the enemy, why are you siding with them?"
But that probably means he's a very principled classic liberal. And I'm a mix of classic liberal and yes conservative.
No actually principled classic liberal demands that people stop using a word to describe the other side, that was created by the other side and then applied to themselves.
Chatterton is at best a "house classic liberal", which is to say he will claim to be a classic liberal, but only when it doesn't really upset his masters on the Left.
When it's important to his masters, he falls into line like a good boy.
Which is why he gets to write in The Atlantic.
He's an eager loser
Can you really "control" how the terms you use are understood? Aren't they always up for grabs? Attempts to "control" the meanings of words can be manipulative or totalitarian.
"Woke" means "politically correct." If we want to get another definition we have to use a lot more words. Users and listeners can get lost on the way to a definition. "Politically correct" is a much clearer term, but it's become stale over decades of use. "Woke" was a fresher, more "impactful" term, and like pornography, reasonably intelligent and honest people recognize it when they the see it. But yes, asking people who use the word to define it has proved to be a good tactic for defenders of wokeness.
I disagree. Woke can be defined. But not in a soundbite. There are too many offshoots, divisions, layers, and evolutions yet to come in Woke, Inc. I'm thinking it might be time to lay it all out. I'll do that...but not here.
Interestingly, the people who enforced the usage of 'woke' as we know it today, are now using the passive/aggressive approach of requiring anyone else to define it. Screw that. It's now evolved to become so many things so that a simple sound bite definition is not doable. Also- it's not required.
Now- define 'fascist' for me.
Wilfred Reilly, a political scientist at Kentucky State University, has proposed a pretty good working definition of "wokism":
Wokism is the belief that (1) all of society is currently and intentionally structured to oppress, (2) all gaps in performance between large groups illustrate this, and (3) the solution is 'equity' - proportional representation w/o regard to performance.
As is true with most definitions, it's not exhaustive and may miss nuances, but it seems like a good place to start.
The "conservative brand" being what it is, Williams, like a lot of socially conservative African-Americans, probably wouldn't call himself a "conservative," but like John McWhorter, he is more conservative than the rest of the Atlantic's contributors and willing to tell readers things they don't want to hear.
Williams parents naming him after a suicide, when he was already saddled with the "tragic mulatto" thing, was strange.
As a first approximation those who use “woke” as a pejorative see as a desire to reduce everything to relationships of oppressed and oppressor, with all such oppression “intersecting”. In discussion woke people exalt the subjective over the objective, often saying that a member of some oppressed group has “their truth” based in “lived experience” (“We believe in truth over facts.”)
Woke rhetoric also commonly includes power inversion in which one seeks to achieve a position of moral superiority by the mere claim that the mysterious “power dynamic” has made their target inherently powerful and therefore rhetorically powerless. Inversion or perversion of other concepts such as violence and harm is also common.
The left may have a hard time defining what an “ultra-MAGA Republican” is. But by putatively limiting their hatred to this contrived group, they can claim not to hate all Republicans.
This is similar to the dodge of “I don’t hate White people, I Just hate ‘Whiteness’”. Yeah, right.
As I said the last time this topic came up, the Right has a similar term: red-pilled. "Woke" and "red-pilled" are synonymous. But while "woke" has become an insult, "took the red pill" hasn't.
Why?
The history is pretty consistent: The Left comes up with a new name for themselves, their actions cause the new name to have a vile taint, so they switch to a new name and demand that every stop using the old one.
Yep. I'm not Marxist, I'm Socialist. I'm not Socialist, I'm Liberal. I'm not Liberal, I'm Progressive. I'm not Progressive, I'm Woke. I'm not Woke, I'm anti-Fascist. You can't define me, use my pronouns. So many different things, but they vote like a solid block.
Look at them trying to change Spanish words to their stupid woke terms.
I teach at a school that is 85% Hispanic. I talk about how English and Spanish are treated differently all of the time. To begin with, all nouns in Spanish are gendered. There are male and female nouns. Imagine that in English. In English we are unable to use the term fireman, or mankind, because they are sexist. In Spanish, the word for "parent" is "father".
"Woke" hurts them now. And they can't even as some try go to the "it's a 4Chan word/phrase" to get the chattering class to stop using it.
It is unfortunate that Bethany Mandel did not realize that they were going to hit her with it and have an answer for them. She went deer in the headlights seeking something he questioner would agree with. But "Woke" is a term that came about to show group membership on the Left as shorthand for a group of fluid policies and advocacies, but since critics picked it up the "Woke" of 2020 are rushing to deny it.
The history is pretty consistent: The Left comes up with a new name for themselves, their actions cause the new name to have a vile taint, so they switch to a new name and demand that every stop using the old one.
Yup. Oh, and by the way, BLM took in $82 billion from Woke corporations. I wonder where it went ?
Stopped reading after "The Atlantic."
What @Wince said.
This is a term they originally used for *themselves* and their project. What else should we have used to describe them? Same with "SJW."
What @Wince said.
This is a term they originally used for *themselves* and their project. What else should we have used to describe them? Same with "SJW."
Michael,
I saw that $82 billion yesterday and wondered about it. Can that be right? $82 million I could believe.
Not $82 billion.
If it is $82 with a b, I too would like to know where it went. And where it came from.
John Henry
Woke is a politically congruent (PC) construct.
gahrie said, "Why?"
Because "red-pilled" describes coming over to our side, something the left claims never happens and they studiously ignore any evidence to the contrary when they are not actively destroying those who attempt such a move. Besides, they don't read things we write, they just assume the content is offensive and stick to their own mistrusted sources. So they don't know what we do, or say or believe only what they are told that we say or do or believe by their trusted progressive misinformation experts. Look at them on here, constantly mischaracterizing what we write and believe. Ann's the only liberal I know of who reads a wide spectrum of sources.
@gahrie: " But while "woke" has become an insult, "took the red pill" hasn't.
Why?"
Red pilling remains the cultural underdog. The government, media, Hollywood, academics, billionaires, and many businesses publicly push Woke messaging. Many of these folks are bullies, dogmatic, and absolutists too "you are with me or against me and will comply." They attack bakers and bakeries who are small (or innocent) fish, they get people fired, and they routinely shame their opponents.
This message is pushed by power down and seeks to enforce one version of reality and stop alternatives from ever reaching your ears or eyes. This was also reality into the 1990s when the establishment controlled three TV networks, the NYT, and the Washington Post. Central control only started to crumble when the Drudge Report leaked a censored NBC story on Clinton, Lewinsky, and the stained blue dress. Then the Internet and social media took over.
The establishment is not the "left wing" -- they are those who set a message to persuade or hoodwink the majority into thinking they are doing good and moral things for society and the world. This became much harder in the 2000s with everyone able to publish online -- so Woke became state dogma.
It's very much a mirror image of the left-right dynamic of the 1950s to early 1960s.
Poll released last week shows that most Americans view "woke" as a positive, not negative.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3890296-most-in-new-poll-view-woke-as-positive-term/
"Woke" is a religious conception in which persyns are seen in their relationship with a superior law and with an objective Truth that transcends the particular individual and raises them to conscious membership of a spiritual society.
"Do you know the amazing life story of Thomas Chatterton?"
No, but I know that Thomas Chatterton Williams is an affirmative-action hire.
What is he toking (sic) about? Just rap'n around the fire.
Althouse@9:24:
Word.
Poll released last week shows that most Americans view "woke" as a positive, not negative.
When you deliberately misread the poll - and the language used - I suppose one could come up with that result.
RideSpaceMountain (4th comment):
Thanks for the wonderful deathbed picture. I already knew George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, for two things:
1. With the help of many friends, he wrote a hilarious play, The Rehearsal, which the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, VA put on ~10 years ago. It was a parody of the poet laureate Dryden's tragedies, so effective that Dryden stopped writing tragedies: many lines were quoted from Dryden and the previous laureate. But you don't need to have read Dryden's tragedies (I still haven't) to find it hilarious. How it would work on the page, I do not know, but on stage it was side-splitting.
2. In college ~50 years ago, I read that Thomas Hobbes, before he became famous as a philosopher, made a living tutoring young aristocrats. His math tutoring was so boring that one young student would quietly masturbate under the desk while pretending to listen. That young man was the eldest son of the 1st Duke of Buckingham, which means (I checked) that he was none other than the future 2nd Duke, author of The Rehearsal. Small world! I enjoyed telling the founder of the Blackfriars and the guy who played the ridiculous playwright in The Rehearsal about the connection.
If the 2nd Duke was a little weird, he had a good excuse. His father got the dukedom by being the king's 'favorite', i.e. gay lover.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Woke people are anti-civilization people, aka neobarbarians. They are fascists who cannot stand to be disagreed with. They will mob anyone who disagrees with them, often using violence explicitly or just the implied threat of violence. They want to impose their values on everyone else.
Examples:
- Climate change activists. Their goal is for everyone to live in the dark and cold
- The Stanford Law students who shutdown a lecture by a conservative judge
- The Homeless-Industrial Complex who want more homelessness, not less and don't care about the drug-addled concrete campers
- Democrat law makers who want to defund the police, release criminals and shutdown the jails
Woke is being at the forefront of virtue signalling.
There's woke on the right as well as the left, with different virtues signalled, but it's the same woke. E.g. flag etiquette, for an old standard.
Althouse does it too.
Actual virtue is not signalled.
Spell check wants only one L in signalled. I don't know why. A single L implies a verb signale.
Woke means "those joyless, humorless, vicious, leftist prigs."
Add your own invective, the word can carry a lot more.
Woke: the cluster B personality disordered using “social” “justice” as a conduit to channel their mental illness onto everyone else.
https://psychcentral.com/disorders/cluster-b-personality-disorders
Saw a vanity license plate today that read "RU AWAKE."
"No, but I know that Thomas Chatterton Williams is an affirmative-action hire."
I would encourage people here to go to Williams's web site. There are links to articles he's written. I read an essay he wrote for Harper's about the crime novelist Chester Himes. Williams's piece is a very smart and well-written piece of cultural and literary criticism.
The piece in the Atlantic is also smart and well-reasoned.
So, I don't think he's an affirmative action hire.
Blogger lonejustice said...
Poll released last week shows that most Americans view "woke" as a positive, not negative.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3890296-most-in-new-poll-view-woke-as-positive-term/
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. HL Mencken
guitar joe said...
The piece in the Atlantic is also smart and well-reasoned.
No, it's stupid and pathetic
So you've already established that your judgement is crap
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