May 30, 2023

"... No cultural moment lasts forever. Yesterday's fanatics realise they joined the wrong mob. ..."


I think we can assume that J.K. Rowling will live out her days as a brilliant writer.

Though she might still do typos: "plant Zorb"? Probably, planet Zorb.

58 comments:

John henry said...

If not brilliant at least very, very, wealthy. And good on her for creating it.

John LGKTQ Henry

RideSpaceMountain said...

Being anti-hetero is becoming a religion and transgenders are its Jesuits…the most ardent defenders of the faith and dedicated to its holiness spiral. Notice I didn't say homosexuality is becoming a religion. That would imply that it has a revealed mystery for which the uninitiated are invited. No. It is a religion of hate, a religion who revealed mystery is the hatred of anything representing the traditional, sexuality or otherwise. That's all it is.

The LGB part of the movement can’t get rid of the T anymore than the church could choose to ignore the protestant reformation.

Hey homos, newsflash...the "T" in your movement is going to sink you. Because you'll screw anything that moves and thrice on Sunday you've let some really toxic people into your movement and now they essentially own it, complete with Papal Bulls and condemnations of heresy. You think you're safe but you're not...they're already going after the G and L pretty hardcore, aren't they.

Gator said...

The western hard left chose transgenderism the hill to die on. And die they will. Even Democrats are sick of it. They have children as well and don’t want men invading their girls’ spaces. The huge backlash to Dylan Mulvaney’s antics evidences this.

Sebastian said...

"J.K. Rowling will live out her days as a brilliant writer"

Indeed. Lots of good lines on Twitter as well. "They say karma's a bitch, but I hear she's a TERF."

She recognizes the cruelty and absurdity of the prog vanguard but not yet the causes.

The prog moment may not last forever but unless the JKRs join with us deplorables it will last a long time.

RideSpaceMountain said...

There is absolutely nothing "gay" about gays anymore. Nothing. They are just as bad as the stuffy gradeschool nuns they said they hated growing up, if not worse. They cancel people worse than any cancellation they say they've ever suffered, more often, and with more social pressure and invective.

stlcdr said...

Like this response, too: "They say karma's a bitch, but I hear she's a TERF"

Krumhorn said...

Reading her Twitter exchanges is fun. Masterful command of tone and humor.

- Krumhorn

Gusty Winds said...

There is a certain spiritual comfort knowing you are despised and hated by pedophiles and Satan worshipers.

Goldenpause said...

At the very least we can assume that Rowling will live out her days as a fabulously wealthy and successful woman who doesn’t have to worry about being cancelled for not bowing to a crazed mob.

Virgil Hilts said...

GMTA. I saw that this morning and thought it was powerful. Also really liked "If the left's ever scored a bigger own goal than saying child safeguarding, women's rights and free speech are far-right issues, I've never seen it. The idiots pushing this line are going to find it takes a lot of living down."

Pianoman said...

She probably dictated it into her phone, and then didn't fix the misspelling.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Having to compare someone or something to the Nazis is a red flag. I mean I don’t think there’s anybody advocating for the systematic extermination of trans people.

rhhardin said...

Public virtue is the only warning when you're into fanaticism.

Virtue that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil. (Hannah Arendt)

Jupiter said...

"I think we can assume that J.K. Rowling will live out her days as a brilliant writer."

Oh, come on. Is the silly ditz who wrote "Fifty Shades of Grey" a "brilliant writer"? I guess so, if the purpose of writing is to sell paper.

takirks said...

"I think we can assume that J.K. Rowling will live out her days as a brilliant writer."

Substitute "popular" for "brilliant", and this sentence would be perfectly correct. Rowling is a super-successful, very popular writer. She hit the zeitgeist at just the right moment, and did very well out of it.

She is, however, absolutely not "brilliant". Her writing is pedestrian, at best, her plotting inconsistent, and she can't keep track of details down the trail of her series. People love her books, but the sad reality is, she's really not all that good. I suspect that she's this generations Edward Bulwer-Lytton, destined to be forgotten years from now, and likely the object of literary mockery in future generations.

Who here remembers the works of Bulwer-Lytton, let alone read them?

His works were popular enough, once upon a time, that they led to the very first iteration of the sort of convention we know today as comic-con, filled with cosplay and other things we think we invented. He's forgotten, today, remembered only as the guy who wrote Snoopy's famous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night...", which is memorialized in an annual contest for "bad writing" to this day. Oh, and "Bovril".

I wish Ms. Rowling success, but the most she should be described as is "successful". Dozens of authors have worked over the ground she has, and they mostly did it much, much better. Terry Pratchett comes to mind...

minnesota farm guy said...

Single most important line: "Robespierre ended on the guillotine." A nice addendum from Santayana: "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it”. Unfortunately our current crop of students and politicians apparently never learned history in the first place.

n.n said...

The Nazis were a proud leftist (i.e. authoritarian) civilization with a progressive liberal (i.e. monotonically divergent) ideology, Pro-Choice ethical religion, and indulged politically congruent ("=") constructs that enabled them to endorse slavery, abortion (i.e. life deemed unworthy of life), and diversity (SAD), and ethnic Springs (i.e. wars without borders). Now, Dezis share Herr Mengele's dreams of medical progress through surgical, medical, and psychiatric mutilation. They send people deemed deplorable to prison, deny civil rights, deny human rights for having the audacity of supporting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without color judgments and class-based bigotry. So, we are at the penumbra of the American Republic, progressing with the leftists' emanations from their religious utopia.

Oh, lose the albinophobic symbols and rhetoric. There is no pride in prejudice. Civil unions for all consenting adults. Trans/homosexuals et al were always tolerated in America; but, as with all socially liberal orientations, they were socially distanced from the public domain to where they would not disturb the horses.

cubanbob said...

Reality doesn't need acceptance. So to those who deny reality I say keep jumping until the one time you don't go down. Unfortunately I can't ask the good doctor to take me in his TARDIS to the end of time to see if someone was able to defy gravity.

While people can indulge themselves in their own personal realities that reality does not replace objective reality. I'm waiting to see the first chick with a dick flap her wings and fly.

Candide said...

Excellent Robespierre image. We don’t really have any real Hitler wannabes nowadays, but we certainly have a whole bunch of “The Incorruptible” ones, virtually sentencing people.

Esteban said...

oh no, not a typo!

n.n said...

Andrea or Sarah have a green bias. Beware SteeringAI.

Feminists hitched their wagon to progressivism in order to abort the "burden" of evidence.

Trans/homosexuals hitched their wagon to liberalism (i.e. divergence) in order to force a politically congruent ("=") construct.

Democrats are still the traditional cult of Slavery, Abortion, and Diversity (SAD).

That said, men, women, and our Posterity are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.

Leland said...

Does this make you a typing nazi?

If they keep throwing around the term nazi to mean anything; it will devalue the actual horror of the real Nazi's.

BarrySanders20 said...

Rowling is not just a brilliant writer. Her ability to explain how she came to her opinions on this issue is remarkable. If you haven't done so, consider listening to the 6-part podcast The Witch Trials of JK Rowling

Political Junkie said...

I know she is center left, but I love her because of all the hell she has put up with from the crazy left.

Big Mike said...

That’s funny. I read it as “planet Zorb” the first time. Goes some way to explaining why I’m such a poor proofreader, esp. of my own writing.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

"Robespierre ended on the guillotine."

I suspect many of the people vilifying Rowling have no idea who Robespierre was.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

Our nation's handlers are now trying to sell us on the idea that BIPOC Nazis (white supremacists) are not only real, but the greatest threat to democracy ever!

mikee said...

Finding typos in the work of successful authors is a delight exceeded only by not finding any.

Quaestor said...

I read right through planet Zorb without noticing the typo until I read Althouse's closing comment. I then re-read Rowling's tweet and became unable to unsee the error. I think this is further evidence of the limits and extensibility of literacy. For most people, the word mutant is so enclosed within the context of sci-fi in all its cultural manifestations that the letter e is almost superfluous in planet. Couple mutant to lizard and reading plant as planet in the same passage as mutant lizard is virtually inevitable.

Quaestor said...

Perhaps now we can begin an international conversation around the concept Nazi is as nazi does, which may, in turn, make progress against the ongoing collapse of our major cities into barbarism.

Fascism and fascistic tactics and methods were and remain overwhelmingly aspects of the left. From the sans-culottes of the 1790s to Mussolini to Antifa, the pattern of violence, intimidation, persecution, silencing, and isolation is always repeated by leftists when circumstances empower them.

The Vault Dweller said...

I clicked though and in response to someone else saying "i.e. What goes around comes around." J.K Rowling responded with, "They say Karma's a bitch, but I hear she's a TERF." I got a pretty good chuckle out of that.

Kai Akker said...

Wait -- who's Robespierre? Is he one of the super-heroes? Or - ?

JK Brown said...

So who are the race-based socialists? That's what the Nazis (National Socialists) were. In contrast to the class-based socialism of the Soviet Union and the nationality-based socialism of the actual Fascists.

What I see from Democrats today is the promotion of race-based socialism, they haven't even discard the Jews as the "other" but have just added non-college credentialed white working class to those they believe are a threat to civilization.

gilbar said...

total number of men, women and whatevers with More money than her could fit in a smallish room.
And that's AFTER all the money she's already given away.

She's sold about 600 MILLION books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors
PLUS her screen writing.
If SHE isn't a brilliant writer.. I'm not sure i'd care what your definition of one it

gilbar said...

that's What? one book for every 10 people ON THE MOTHERF*CKING PLANET??

tcrosse said...

In the UK Prof. Kathleen Stock is taking a lot of flack for noticing that the T agenda is antithetical to that of the LGB. Her recent talk at Oxford was heavily protested (the more so because she is an L) but also heavily supported.

Jamie said...

In defense of Rowling's writing - I think it's pretty tight, actually. She doesn't make me cringe the way whatshername who wrote The Yellow Wife did by having a pre-Civil War woman declare that her cook is "amazing," for instance. Indeed there are some plot inconsistencies and the whole Hallows vs Horcruxes thing is pretty incomprehensible, but George Herbert spent HOW many years writing Dune and still had such inconsistencies and incomprehensibles?

The fact is that she got a generation, maybe a couple or three, to read a pretty sizeable series - and kept a lot of their parents entertained too. I see her as more Heinlein-y: he had no illusions that he was a Great Writer (and didn't want to be, he said; considered their efforts at making people stop and admire their language or tone-painting or whatever to be masturbatory), but he wanted to tell a story that people would read to the end, and by and large they did.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Right now...

Trending
The Nazis
27.7K Tweets

Gahrie said...

Wait -- who's Robespierre? Is he one of the super-heroes? Or - ?

He's the fifth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

wildswan said...

JK Rowling isn't a brilliant writer of one liners and cheap sneers, she's a brilliant writer of long books and these long books are parts of a series. She's more like Dickens than Virginia Woolf. She's really presenting a portrait of the welfare state as it is in practice and this is why the left hates her. They like their dreams of helping and, immersed in dreams, they have no idea at all of how to reform the consequences of their policies. They aren't even capable of noticing consequences. See Covid, lockdowns, school closings, inflation, blackouts, grooming, crime, fentanyl from the border, mentally defective political leaders, Chinese bribery.
Her two main series are Harry Potter - children's books, and Cormoran Strike - a detective series.

Gahrie said...

Finding typos in the work of successful authors .

Is a post on Twitter really an example of an author's work? I thought the general idea was that Twitter was more conversational in nature, and not really requiring proper spelling and punctuation.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

In a world without God, where would it be without the Nazis?

At some point the question may need to be asked, are the Nazis the only force for good left in the persuasion arsenal of humanity?

It’s grotesque beyond comprehension.

Or, maybe I’m missing something.

n.n said...

I don’t think there’s anybody advocating for the systematic extermination of trans people.

Babies... fetal-babies, yes, under the Pro-Choice ethical religion, the failure to recognize babies as human life with human rights, the performance of human rites for social, redistributive, clinical, political, criminal, and fair weather progress.

Trans/homosexuals et al, no. As for trans/neo, John Hopkins established that the majority will unpredictable suffer from "gender-affirming care", including progressive ideation of self-abortive intent, mutilated bodies, corrupted minds, and barren male and female sexes. This is why there is compelling cause to wait until children pass through puberty, reach the age of consent, and perhaps later, so that they can avoid making an irreconcilable and lifelong mistake.

hpudding said...

JK Rowling imagining herself being threatened with beheading is quite kooky and imaginative. But then, that head in which she lives is a world dominated by child wizards casting spells. So there’s that.

I’m not sure about the Africa Korps, but the Nazi collaborationist Vichy regime certainly deployed recruits from all over West Africa - including Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and Mauritania, as well as Benin, Gambia, Burkina Faso and Morocco and Algeria.

And then of course just beyond the Suez Canal they were driving at was the famous Palestinian Hitler ally Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. So there’s that as well.

How exhausting it must be to be a right-winger. I’m trying to imagine what it’s like being motivated solely by finding different groups to hate and demand enhanced conformity from, but it’s just not seeming as appealing to me as it must be to our right-wing friends. I guess it really is that hard for them to work toward making the world a better place with acceptance and toleration for all, including anyone who wishes to express themselves in any manner they choose. To find no other purpose in life but to suppress that must be quite a burden, but probably not as debilitating as whatever it is that they’re suppressing within themselves to motivate them in this way.

hpudding said...

It kind of makes sense that the typical right-wing figurehead is a children’s author who lives in a world of underage sorcerers casting spells that they learned at wizard school.

JK Rowling shares with the right-wing a mutual aversion to reality.

Bruce Hayden said...

I liked Rowling‘s work. Partially it was because of the effect that she and her books had on my daughter. The first book came out when my daughter was 6. She read it in about 3 days (I did it overnight, but was 40 years older). Each book that came out was longer, and more complex. By the last book, my daughter was in high school, and probably enjoyed it as much as the first one. They got progressively longer, more complex, and a bit darker, book by book. Yet, if anything, her reading speed increased even more quickly. It seemed like every summer, she and her friends would avidly anticipate the upcoming book. I had to make sure that we got it the first day it was on sale, so that she could be one of the first in her circle to have finished it. As you can guess, this helped turn her into a voracious reader. Between Harry Potter and her mother being a Trekkie fan, her taste ended in books tended to parallel mine - Sci-Fi and fantasy. Her voracious reading likely helped her academically - graduating Summa Cum Laude as an undergrad, and a STEM PhD 5 years later. And some of that, at least, I think I can attribute to Rowling and her Harry Potter series.

I Use Computers to Write Words said...

I have a pattern I believe I've repeated four times now. Any time online criticism of JK Rowling gets me particularly peeved I buy what they criticize. I believe I own every one of her works besides The Casual Vacancy. The Cormoran Strike novels aren't Harry Potter, but they're still page turners.

wendybar said...

"How exhausting it must be to be a right-winger. I’m trying to imagine what it’s like being motivated solely by finding different groups to hate and demand enhanced conformity from, but it’s just not seeming as appealing to me as it must be to our right-wing friends. I guess it really is that hard for them to work toward making the world a better place with acceptance and toleration for all, including anyone who wishes to express themselves in any manner they choose"

YOU people START hpudding. I have never seen such intense hate as what comes from Progressives from ANYBODY who has a different opinion than THEY do. The division in this country started when Obama was elected and everybody who didn't like his politics were all labeled RACISTS. From there, we became Nazis, Fascists, White Supremacists (even if they were black conservatives) ect..ectt..ect... The left put the hate out there, and expect us to bow down. Well, FUCK THEM. They did this. Enjoy the downfall that Obama started when he fundamentally changed America into the cesspool it is today.

stlcdr said...

What is a typo, anyway?

Today, typing on a non-tactile screen, it’s easy to be slightly off, and the selected letter get autocorrected to a completely different word or combination of words.

Even words that you type correctly, get autocorrected to a different word appearing to be a typo. Definitely destroys the thought train while typing.

Kai Akker said...

--- --- Wait -- who's Robespierre? Is he one of the super-heroes? Or - ?

---He's the fifth Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

You know they don't know.

What percentage of American 20somethings could tell you the most basic fact about Robespierre? Someone involved in the French Revolution. Given the name, that should be a gimme. But I would take the under on 25% of the 20somethings knowing that.

Robert Cook said...

"Being anti-hetero is becoming a religion and transgenders are its Jesuits...."

Why is it that stupid people who are bigots always come up with ridiculous claims such as this to justify their bigotry? Just be honest and own your hate.

Old and slow said...

Hearing JK Rowling derided as a right winger is really something. Her and Glen Greenwald and Joe Rogan. Right wingers the lot of them! The left has gone stark raving mad.

Rusty said...

Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
"I liked Rowling‘s work."
I like them because it gets children to read. It fires up their imaginations and gets them involved and motivates them to read more.

Has puddin' ever been right on anything? Rowling votes labor.

Jamie said...

George Herbert spent HOW many years writing Dune

Hahahah, I just noticed my own typo! It would be truly remarkable if GEORGE Herbert had written Dune. (And it would have meant he took a REALLY REALLY long time!) I chalk it up to my preparations to join my church choir in a summer residency at the American cathedral in Dublin in August.

I remember thinking as I typed, "That doesn't sound quite right - I wonder why..." but that's as far as I went.

Bill R said...

I think Robespierre ended "under" the guillotine, rather than "on" the guillotine. He did let out a satisfactory scream at the end, so there's that satisfying thought.

Other than that. Carry on Ms. Rowling!

GRW3 said...

Trotskyites, Eric Rohm's SA, Che Guevara all ended like Robespierre. This would be the fate of the Antifa, the BLM and other Progressive Storm Troops. The KKK will verify that the Democrats have no loyalty for their militant armies.

hpudding said...

YOU people START hpudding. I have never seen such intense hate as what comes from Progressives from ANYBODY who has a different opinion than THEY do. The division in this country started when Obama was elected and everybody who didn't like his politics were all labeled RACISTS. From there, we became Nazis, Fascists, White Supremacists (even if they were black conservatives) ect..ectt..ect... The left put the hate out there, and expect us to bow down. Well, FUCK THEM. They did this. Enjoy the downfall that Obama started when he fundamentally changed America into the cesspool it is today.

Whew boy! That’s a lot of toxic negative energy from someone who blames everyone else for her HATE!

Wow.

How sad that having a black president triggered your descent into exposing all that hidden hate. Maybe next you’ll blame Obama for all the redlining, anti-busing riots, Reagan’s comment about “welfare queens” or “states’ rights” (in the Mississippi county famous for lynching civil rights workers), segregation, Bircherism and generally rich history of anti-black racial hatred that this country was so famous for until LBJ forced it underground. (Until Trump brought it bubbling back up to the surface!) Leave it to conservatives though to pretend that history forever just changes everything overnight, with the stroke of a pen signing the CRA.

Also, too bad that progressives have a hero like Teddy Roosevelt to point to on Mount Rushmore and that conservatives have no such hero to point to.* And, oh yeah, Clarence is corrupt. Which other black conservatives am I supposed to find so respectable?

*Our country was founded as a revolt against conservative, monarchists loyal to George III and the third of the country that held that position and lost have never gotten over it and have never done a useful thing for America! Conservatives are resentful and bitter that the country was founded as rebuke to them. They do not have a legitimate place in this country. Their entire political existence is a desperate strategy of demonizing and disenfranchising so many groups of Americans that they can’t even remember a single positive thing they would do or have done for anyone, ever.

Back to Albion!

Rusty said...

Puddin' has read Howard Zinn.
Most of the people you're yelling at here are classic liberals, puddin'.
What does Howard Zinn make of the 2nd amendment?