My kid scored in the 98th percentile on reading and vocabulary and the 99th on writing on the Iowa Standardized Tests. Her reading and writing are at 9th grade level.
This is not surprising given how much we talk. We went to the kids’ gym today, and we talked so much, my jaw almost fell off. And of course, when I talk, I use all of my normal professorial vocabulary, such as, “I admonished the lab worker for her unseemly conduct and implored her to abstain from such behavior henceforth.”
Forget 9th grade, I think she’d beat most of my college students in vocabulary skills.
Of course, it’s all funny until you remember how many people watched the Candace Owens’ series and thought what she said made sense. Many watched for entertainment purposes, like I did. But there were hundreds of thousands of sincere viewers who took it all completely seriously and nodded sagely when Owens said that Marie Claude was a suspicious name.
These people can’t help it. They were born this way. The intellect is a physical characteristic, like height. You can’t change it by any amount of exertion. And height doesn’t change your life in a fundamental way, not like intelligence does, unless you suffer from actual dwarfism. These are people who are very confused by things that you and I don’t even notice. The world is getting more complicated. There’s now AI that will require increasing levels of discernment. The whole structure of life is changing to benefit those who are better cognitively organized and can exert the greatest self-control. This leaves many people – good, well-meaning people – out in the cold. And it’s not their fault. They were simply born this way.
This is why I laugh at Candace who is rich and will be fine. But for her sincere viewers I feel nothing but kindness and compassion. We accept that “born this way” is real in everything but intelligence. But that’s wrong. It’s unfair and it hurts people. It hurts all of us because we engage with a falsified picture of reality.
Americans are very lovely people. They smile at strangers all the time. Because of my dental procedure, I currently can’t smile. People stand there, beaming at me, while I look at them morosely.
As a result, I have had to explain about my dental surgery to several strangers today. It’s nice, everybody is supportive and shares their own story of dental woe.
OK, people, I absolutely have to share this one because it’s too delicious. I hope we have French readers on the blog because they will truly appreciate this.
In the epilogue to her series about Brigitte Macron, Candace Owens tells the viewers that Brigitte’s family has been acting suspiciously since the mid-1800. For instance, they gave all of the boys in the family names that had “Jean” in them. Jean François, Jean Michel, Jean-Georges. What other reason could there be for this if not to try to confuse people, asks Candace.
Truly priceless stuff.
But wait. This isn’t the worst.
Brigitte’s middle name, says Candace, is Marie-Claude. Claude! It’s a male name! This got to mean… something nefarious.
Every Francophone reader has at this point died of laughter because Marie-Claude is a very normal French female name. This reminded me of how when I taught at a language school many years ago, a student from Guatemala found the name Jessica to be hysterically funny. “Yessica!” he’d snort. “”Like she always say yes! Yessica! Gringo names funny!”
Brigitte’s brother Jean-Claude married a woman called Brigitte. Like his sister. “Very convenient!” exclaims Candace. Seriously, she says “very convenient.” “Is this confusion intentional?” she asks. Because it totally makes sense that Jean-Claude would choose his bride with the express purpose of confusing Candace.
This show is comedic gold. It’s no surprise late night comedy is dead. This is so much better.
No, it’s not me. It’s the Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset. When I placed these photos on FB a while ago, people who had known me my whole life, including my own mother, thought it was me.
I even used to wear this hairstyle back then. A writer, too. A Nobel Prize winner. And I’m an identically looking literary critic.
Clearly, somebody in my family line was Norwegian. It feels kind of likelier than somebody in Undset’s family tree being Ukrainian, although who knows?
This is why it’s ridiculous that Candace Owens finds it suspicious that Macron looks similar to Brigitte’s nephew. Yes, French people have a phenotype. A look. My friend married a Frenchman, and he also bears a great similarity to Macron. When that friend first saw N, she said, “Eeww, you are dating your cousin? I didn’t know this was a thing in your culture.” N is obviously not my cousin but our Slavic ethnicity does make us look alike to people from other cultures. I would think that an African American like Owens would be a bit more conscious of the “all of you people look the same” approach.
My father, by the way, looked so similar to the French actor Pierre Richard that once, when we were watching a comedy with Richard at an outdoor movie theater, the whole audience heaved with laughter, seeing my father’s very Richardian shadow.
This is Pierre Richard:
My father’s goofy, shy, endearing personality was also identical to the image Richard projected in many of his comedies. You could create a delicious conspiracy about my family based on these facts.
Interestingly, my parents and sister have jet black hair while I’m naturally blonde. I grew up amidst tiresome jokes about “have you ever wondered whether there was a neighbor who looked like you and your mom liked?”
Nobody seems interested in discussing my deep plunge into Candace Owens’ conspiracy theorizing but I’ll continue. My jaw doesn’t hurt anymore but I still can’t smile without pain. I walk around looking grim, and I need the most bizarre forms of entertainment to avoid feeling like a total sourpuss.
Owens finds it suspicious that one of Brigitte’s daughters didn’t know the date of her dad’s funeral. When I heard it, I realized that I couldn’t name the date of my father’s funeral either. I know when he died but even though my sister and I organized the funeral, I can’t say what the date was. I was crushed by his death, and everything was a blur. That a person would be fuzzy on the details of painful events is the opposite of suspicious. It’s the most normal thing of all.
Overall, Owens’ suspicions are awakened by the fact that people’s stories of their own lives aren’t consistent and clean. This is how all conspiracists think. They are deeply anxious people with low cognitive skills. They can’t accept that there are no easy, clean narratives. Life is messy and complicated. It’s not evidence of anybody’s evil design. It’s simply the nature of human existence. But for a high-anxiety person, it’s easier to believe that there is an all-powerful human agency that controls everything. Because of there isn’t, life becomes too scary.
Another important piece of proof that Brigitte Macron is a man bravely unearthed by Candace Owens is that….
…. hold on to the edges of your seats because this will shock your sensibilities…
… Brigitte’s fashion designer uses transgendered models. It’s very unexpected that a fashion designer would go for an androgynous look. All fashion designers are completely straight and love using feminine, voluptuous models. This is what makes Brigitte’s designer such a weird exception in the world of fashion.
With this kind of proof, who can possibly doubt the revelations?
We have a cognitively challenged person reading this blog, so I will clarify that I am being sarcastic. I do not, in fact, believe that fashion designers love feminine models and prefer them to androgynous stick figures.
Of course, no conspiracy arises out of nothing. The Macrons have been weirdly reticent about Brigitte’s life before she perverted her 14-year-old student as a 39-year-old teacher. There truly seem to be no photos of her from her entire 30-year marriage with her first husband and her life with him and their children. That she is a horrible person who preyed on children in her care is not even denied by the official story of the Macrons’ marriage. Conspiracy theorists are not picking on a wholesome, innocent couple in this instance. They are picking the rotten carcass of a story that stank to the skies long before any conspiracist got involved.
I had a very long and painful dental procedure done today. I mean, the procedure itself wasn’t that bad but when the anaesthetic wore off, it was rough. I wanted to numb myself to the pain and the best thing I could come up with was to watch Candace Owens’ series about Brigitte Macron. For those who don’t know, Owens is convinced that Brigitte is a man called Jean-Michel. She’s being sued for defamation by the Macrons.
The series is, indeed, very funny. Owens unearthed a video from the 1970s of a transgender person called Veronique who mentions Chopin and Verlaine. Owens takes this as proof that Veronique is Brigitte Macron. Because guess what? Brigitte once mentioned Chopin! Surely, that can’t be a coincidence. People don’t just walk around mentioning Chopin for no reason. Plus, Macron wanted to move Verlaine to the Pantheon. Would he even know who both Chopin and Verlaine are of he weren’t part of a transgender conspiracy? It’s not a normal thing for people to know, is it?
Say what you might, but as pain remedies go, comedy is not a bad choice.
And by the way, it’s beautiful to see how entirely devoid of racism right-wing people are. They watch Candace Owens say the dumbest things and not a shadow of a racist thought passes through their heads.
What is today’s leftism if not the application of the principles of laissez-faire and markets in everything to our identities, bodies, sex lives, relationships, and emotional lives?
A rich man can buy himself the title of “the woman of the year” because he can afford to purchase many surgeries and cosmetic procedures.
An academic who claims to be very anti-neoliberal thinks that the most important goal is to “create a proliferation of genders.” Everybody needs a boutique gender identity to be able to live their own truth. Because even truth is privatized.
I can give a trillion more examples but is it necessary? UBI, defund the police, mass migration – it’s all laissez-faire and markets in everything.
The moment you abandon the strictly economic definition of neoliberalism and realize that it has spread to every area of life, it becomes self-evident that the most cherished principles of the Left are neoliberal. I mean, choice feminism, anybody? Can it possibly be any more in your face?
That neoliberalism has conquered all areas of life, by the way, is not my invention. It’s been a commonplace in the Humanities for 30 years.
So now [Tulsi Gabbard] randomly dumps this trove of 2016 “Russian interference” documents to Fox News, in a clumsily-concocted PR scheme — then she jumps on Hannity to accuse Obama of “treason” (laughable), and pretends Obama could face criminal prosecution. In other words, she takes everyone to be an absolute idiot, as she desperately implements her bogus little political diversion tactic at the behest of Trump…
But it’s just not factually accurate that Obama himself ever claimed voting systems were tampered with, or that he “suppressed intelligence” to that effect. Could it be argued that Obama should’ve been *more* proactive in tamping down on the insane proliferation of Dem conspiracies? Sure. There are plenty of legitimate critiques to be made of Obama, on the “2016 election interference” issue, or any number of other issues.
But that’s not what Tulsi Gabbard is doing. She’s doing another simpering political shtick — to appease Trump and promulgate bullshit. That’s her clear MO so far as Director of National Intelligence.
First off, two things:
I don’t like Michael Tracey.
I was saying that Russia collusion is a hoax from the first moments it was inflicted on the public notice back in 2016. I was very anti-Trump back then but, as blog long-timers will confirm, I was always adamant that Russia collusion was stupid and fake.
I do, however, agree with this analysis by Michael Tracey. The problem with Tulsi Gabbard is not that she’s a Russian agent. The obsession with Russian agents is like a disease. People need to get over it. Gabbard’s problem is that, at heart, she’s a hippie lefty bimbo. This conspiracy stuff she’s peddling is typical Boomer lefty stuff. She’s weak, that’s her main problem. And that’s Trump’s problem, too. Granted, he’s been less weak in the second term than in his extremely impotent first one. But we’ve seen some slippage into weakness recently, and that’s disturbing.
Of course, Tulsi is only doing what Trump is telling her. And so is Pam Bondi. These weak, embarrassing threats to publicize, reveal, and arrest that never get anywhere all come from the same source.
On the positive side, it’s heartening that conservatives are a lot less gullible than liberals. Leftists ate the Russia collusion hoax (and every other hoax) right up. There are, of course, stupid, low-information people on the Right. But there’s nothing like the Left’s gullibility where every outré hoax gets happily picked up and eagerly repeated. Rightist influencers bash Trump all day while I can’t think of any leftist opinion-maker who would dare to peep anything against Kamala.
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