Apparently, sexual harassment these days consists of making “unsupportive comments” aboyt one’s work (see penultimate post). I’m waiting to see when the word “uncaring” makes it into the definition. 

I detest, simply detest how these days “sexual harassment” has come to be used whenever one is unhappy about anything whatsoever. “My coffee is too cold. I’m sexually harassed! The weather sucks. That’s major sexual harassment! And you are the perpetrator because you weren’t compassionate enough about my coffee troubles and didn’t validate my feelings about weather.”

Here’s a good definition of neoliberalism from Ventura’s Neoliberal Culture:

Neoliberalism at one level is a set of economic and political policies and ideologies favoring corporatism, privatization of public enterprises, and the reduction of state power and intervention. But neoliberalism is also a governmentality—that is, the way subjects think about the collection of practices, techniques, and rationalities used to govern them and which they use to govern themselves. Neoliberal government represents the population’s wellbeing as intimately tied to individuals’ abilities to make market principles the guiding values of their lives, to see themselves as products to create, sell, and optimize.

Bluntly put, neoliberalism is the withdrawal of government from most spheres it used to control and the attendant belief among citizens that it’s a good thing.

Most people don’t believe that it’s great for the government to withdraw from all spheres of life. It’s a selective thing that is based on individual political preferences. Some folks think it’s great that the government withdraws from regulating business. Others, that the government should retreat from enforcing state borders. The really funny thing is that a free-marketeer and a free-borderist think they are politically opposed when in reality they are both adepts of neoliberalism.

But that’s how neoliberalism acts. It kills politics by erasing real political differences and putting fake ones in their place. No government, no political solidarity, just the freedom to sell and be sold that knows no physical or symbolic borders or constraints. Why, for instance, do liberals so eagerly attack their own for imaginary transgressions of speech codes? Because you need to be punished for being an imperfect product. Products in the same brand need to be identical, so off with you, freak, if your packaging is a bit faulty.

As I keep saying, spousal hires are a huge mistake. This is what happens when you do it. In case you read the link, you need to know that it’s all egregious, insane lies spread by a spurned spousal hire.

This is a really great article demonstrating that emigration is SO not for everybody. Many people will end up deeply miserable as a result, just like the linked author. 

It takes great courage to realize you made a mistake and go back instead of seething with rage that the new country is not the Kingdom of God you wanted it to be  

So a fellow came over to check our roof for hail damage. I emerged from the house and stood next to the huge bush we have growing in front of the door. The fellow came up to me and literally jumped. 

“OMG, OMG,” he panted. “I didn’t see you there. You really blended in with those bushes in your green dress. God, I almost had a heart attack. Oh my! Let me catch my breath.”

The guy is in his twenties, so I’m sure he wasn’t about to have a real heart attack. 

Of course, I wanted to blend in here in Illinois but not in a way that makes people jump, you know?

Revenge of the perverted little tarts. 

I really, really want to read the book on the political history of literary criticism. I’m an ideological critic, and I stand by this kind of literary criticism proudly. 

I laugh at people who fret over “the liberal bias” of secondary education. I went to a Soviet school where there was nothing but hard-core Soviet propaganda. As far as I know, not a single person who graduated from it ended up being a Leninist. Everybody ends up making up their own mind, so let’s relax already. 

And the folks who are worried by what they see as the transformation in the vision of perfect masculinity should similarly unclench. If they weren’t as grievously uneducated, they’d know that world literature since ancient times is filled with female fantasies about gentle, sensitive, tender masculinity. If you tried pizza for the first time today, that doesn’t mean pizza didn’t exist last year. Things exist even if you don’t know about them. 

Naked Capitalism is still busily fellating Putin.

Another gay cake debacle? Seriously? Have you noticed how it’s only the entirely superfluous, whimsical consumer desires of the wealthy that get this kind of attention? It’s never about, say, a trans woman who has been fired from her job and needs to prostitute to buy food. 

[In Spanish] How well do you know Spain’s architectural landmarks? I’m ashamed to say, I only got 50% right, and 2 of the questions I missed, I should have really been able to get. 
Kenan Malik on cultural appropriation. Please make sure you read the two long quotes. They are fantastic. 

As I keep saying, Canada has a brilliant immigration policy that, for instance, brought you me. The US, the UK, Germany, etc would have never taken me. Or any of my very successful and brilliant family members who love Canada and contribute to its economy. If we are not an immigrant success story, I don’t know who is.

I really respect this person for getting bariatric surgery. I like people who are not in denial about their weight. Of course, there are also many people who need it but can’t get coverage under thrir sucky insurance. And that’s a crying shame. 

I was once finishing a conference talk on the night before the conference. And the moment after I wrote the last sentence, my hard drive crashed. Of course, I had to rewrite the whole thing in two hours, and it predictably bombed. The presentation was so bad that people stared. It was beyond embarrassing. 

Since then, I always write directly into Dropbox and then save to the hard drive and to the external hard drive. 

What do you, folks, do to avoid losing your stuff?

A really good Facebooker writes:

“If I were to stand up in a faculty meeting and say “The really good students are the ones who read Dickens [or the equivalent in whatever language you were educated in] for pleasure when they were young” I’d be called elitist. Maybe even racist.  American anti-intellectualism spans the spectrum from (literal) know-nothing conservatives to touchy-feely egalitarian leftists.”

Is that true? I need to know because I agree with the statement and am likely to say something like this. Are there crazy people who disagree and would get huffy?

Folks, I’m sorry for the flurry of posts but a lot is happening. 

Today, Illinois Democrats broke down the two-year-long stalemate and forced a budget down Rauner’s wrinkly throat. 

What I love about the whole thing is that there was no spinelessness, no whining, no dithering on the part of the state Democrats. They were principled, strong, and finally – FINALLY! – smart and strategic. That’s the Democrats I want to see and support. 

I know everybody is tired of my budget posts but believe me, I’m even more done with them than you are. I’m happy that we won.

I’m so tired of the hand-wringing over the Twitter reaction to the Declaration of Independence quotes. What, like everybody knows the entire text by heart? And nobody would have mistaken the quote for a neurotic dig on Obama had this happened in July of 2012? 

It’s good to feel superior but how justified is this feeling?