New Racist Word of the Day? "Hoodie"

Yes, a hooded sweatshirt. It's a racial codeword, ya know.

I guess the white racial codeword -- to let you know I'm talking about "one of us" -- is slacks.

This is actually from some bint in the British press, which is about 80% goofier than our own press, if you can imagine such a thing.

A critic writes:

Zoe inhabits a particular corner of London media life so insulated from the real world that she has to project all her own experiences onto the rest of us as a substitute for actually knowing what she’s talking about. A glance at any daily front page in the Independent gives you an idea what I mean. Mm, yes. Plastic bags. Something must be done. Food miles. Absolutely. A Chilean glacier retreating? Terrible. Terrible. Shit, we’re out of tapenade.

In a sense it’s classic Guardianista handwringing - Zoe hates herself for the slightly jittery feeling she gets when she sees a group of black youths on a street corner, and if her spider sense can detect lurking racism inside even herself, then it stands to reason that the rest of us, whose liberal credentials are far less impeccable, must be far, far worse, surely?

I don't think it's the latter. It's the former. Lefties and liberals suffer from an overweening moral vanity and they just never get tired of saying "I'm/We're better!" But one can't just come right out and say that; it's a bit unclassy. So instead it's the neverending parade of concerns and worries and outrage which serves notice that the speaker or writer is in fact Very Conscientious and anyone who is Very Conscientious should immediately agree and in fact attempt to one-up the original statement by saying something even stupider.

My friend Boston Irish used to go to parties and attempt this one-upsmanship with liberals. If someone made a liberal statement, especially one involving a "study" or a "fact" that "everyone knows," he would immediately deadpan, "And even worse, a study says that by 2010 the entire state of California will be homeless."

"I know!" came the inevitable, thrilled chirp of agreement.

No matter how jackass a "fact" he threw out there, no one would disagree. To disagree with a "fact" like that would be not play the game of We're-So-Special and to be a total buzzkill.

I'm not sure if the left and liberals have functioning bullshit detectors anymore. Perhaps years of actually swallowing such tripe has dulled them. Or perhaps they still sort of know this stuff is horseshit, but they are observing a social code that says you can never express a hint of skepticism over a purported "fact" which seems to advance The Cause.

posted by Ace at 11:29 AM

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