Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (13⧸09⧸2015)

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Sept. 13, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

25:41

This Week in Stupid (13⧸09⧸2015)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 13th of September 2015.
	Starting off this week, gay marriage is for queers.
	Heroic Christian anti-gay marriage activist Kim Davis speaks after release from jail.
	Kim Davis is of course the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and she was released from jail on September the 8th.
	District Judge David Bunning ordered Davis to be released after six days, directing her to not interfere in any way with marriage licenses now being issued by her deputy clerks.
	Davis attorney Matt Steever would not specifically say what Davis will do when she returns to work.
	Steven maintains that Davis will not violate her conscience and that licenses issued by the deputies are not valid.
	Well, I don't think she's the one who gets to make that call.
	I think it's actually out of her hands.
	And in fact, I think it may be the sort of thing she might end up going to jail for.
	Oh wait, that already happened.
	Davis was introduced by Huckabee with Eye of the Tiger blaring on the speakers as she took to the stage.
	I think we should probably watch the footage.
	He is...
	His people have rallied and you are a strong people!
	We serve a living God who knows exactly where each and every one of us is at.
	Just keep on pressing.
	Don't let down.
	Because he is here.
	He's worthy.
	He's worthy.
	I love you guys.
	Thank you so much.
	And let's hear it for her husband, Joe, who has been a faithful, strong supporter at her side.
	Oh my god, that was ridiculous.
	The Supreme Court is the new ISIS.
	That sign was amazing.
	You were a strong people.
	Oh, fuck me.
	I think my spine is about to escape from my back with all the cringing.
	Come on.
	For fuck's sake, that was stupid.
	You're not being persecuted.
	Nothing is actually happening to you.
	What you are doing is issuing marriage licenses to gay people.
	That doesn't actually affect you in any way, shape or form.
	Unlike Andrew Garfield advocating for a pansexual Spider-Man, he says, I'm excited to the point where we don't have to have this conversation, where we can have a pansexual Spider-Man.
	What are we so scared of?
	Why are we so, no, it has to be this way, a man and a woman.
	Why is it even a conversation?
	Well, Andrew, it's a conversation because you're trying to make it different.
	Peter Parker happens to be a white man who is also straight.
	This is what you are trying to change.
	Therefore, you are trying to change the fundamental characteristics of the character of Peter Parker.
	This is what we call fucking around with the canon.
	We're scared of things that aren't us.
	Love is love, skin is skin, flesh is flesh.
	We're all wrapped in the same thing.
	I have no preference.
	And you know what, I'm really happy that Andrew Garfield has absolutely no sexual preferences.
	I think that's great for him.
	Garfield has pushed for a gay Spider-Man before, telling Entertainment Weekly in 2013 that he pitched the idea to producer Mats Tolmack.
	I was like, what if the love interest MJ is a dude?
	It's hardly even groundbreaking.
	Why can't he be gay?
	Why can't he be into boys?
	Andrew, it's alright if you're into boys and you just want to hide this by saying you're pansexual or something.
	You don't need to live in the closet.
	But the thing is, Mary Jane isn't a dude.
	She's an established character who is a woman.
	I'm completely on Stanley's side with this issue.
	Creator Stanley first made Spider-Man 53 years ago and sees no reason to change the original.
	I think the world has a place for gay superheroes certainly.
	It has nothing to do with being anti-gay, anti-black, or anti-Latino, or anything like that.
	Latino characters should stay Latino.
	The Blank Panther should certainly not be Swiss.
	I see no reason to change that which has already been established when it's so easy to add new characters.
	I say create new characters in the way you want to.
	Hell, I'll do it myself.
	Well, you know what, Stan, I'll do it.
	I've actually created a gay superhero specifically for Andrew Garfield, much in the same vein as Spider-Man, so he can have what is effectively a gay Spider-Man and he can be okay with it, and we can have the existing Spider-Man as the character already is, and everyone can be happy.
	I'd like to introduce you to Blank Slate.
	He's a young male-assigned person who's about to go to college.
	Everything's going great for Blank Slate, when one day he's bitten by a radioactive faggot.
	Turning young Blank Slate into the superhero Homo McFaggartson, a genderqueer, polyamorous trans lesbian with the superpower of being able to get gay married not once, but twice, and shooting sticky strands of white goo everywhere.
	All of this while being very dedicated to social justice and praying for a revolution against the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy which will eventually abolish whiteness and maleness and bring us into the social justice utopia that everyone so clearly desires.
	I think Homo McFaggartson's eventually going to replace James Bond in the 007 franchise because the new James Bond is getting a live-in girlfriend and an outspoken gay friend.
	Because the new James Bond is going to be an early 2000 sitcom.
	So James Bond will be getting a new dose of modern morality as author Anthony Horowitz reveals the tricks he used to drag the spy kicking and screaming into the era of political correctness.
	Oh I can't fucking wait.
	He has introduced a cast of new characters to point out the error of Bond's chauvinistic ways, including messages about smoking causing cancer, a woman who gave him a run for his money, and an outspoken gay friend.
	Fucking brilliant.
	Finally we get the soccer mum version of James Bond.
	Among the surprises for fans includes the return of Pussy Galore, who has moved in with Bond in London and spends the morning squabbling in quite the opposite of domestic bliss.
	Well that sounds amazing.
	As does the new couple living in 1957 Chelsea and irritating one another over their boiled eggs with an uneasy silence full of dark thoughts and words unsaid.
	That's James Bond to a T. Fucking dark, brooding, passive aggressiveness over the kitchen table.
	And not like, you know, international spy adventures or anything.
	On the challenges of making Bond work for modern readers, Horowitz has said that he realises there's an issue with the original plot, in which Pussy Galore is a lesbian who is overcome with lust for Bond.
	Yeah, that strikes me as rather problematic.
	One of the challenges of writing the book was the attitude that a heterosexual man can change a woman's life and make her go weak at the knees.
	Yes, that does strike me as the sort of thing that progressive men might think is impossible.
	If you read Trigger Mortis, you'll see there's actually a little twist to the tale in that particular story, which I think sort of pays him off for his slightly patronising attitude.
	And that's exactly what I think James Bond readers want.
	Is the author of James Bond's books telling off James Bond for his attitude?
	That's, I think, what everyone who reads James Bond absolutely desires.
	Of course, Ian Fleming's novels were of their time, and he added, I think the answer is that in the book, I remain true to every one of Bond's things.
	Okay?
	Such as, he does smoke cigarettes, he smokes many, many cigarettes.
	But then what I do is nudge him with a little reference to a newspaper article he happens to glance at, which reminds him that these things will give him cancer.
	Fucking brilliant, and I suppose you're like, well, alcoholism will give you cirrhosis of the liver as well.
	Why don't you just try Buddhism?
	With women, he has this sort of patronizing carnal attitude with them, which is absolutely accurate to the Bond of the books.
	But then, by creating a very strong woman, he is given quite a run for his money, and his attitudes are challenged.
	That's great, but why does he have to be living with her and having passive, aggressive, non-arguments over breakfast?
	I also gave him a very outspoken gay friend who chides him and says, come on, Bond, you're living in the 20th century now, not the Middle Ages.
	Yeah, why not?
	Because why the fuck not?
	Horowitz added, my first duty, my first responsibility, was to be as true to the original feel of the book, to be as true to Ian Fleming, his creation, his world, and his ideas.
	What I was trying to do is wrap myself in his mantle and write a book that would be worthy of him.
	Yeah, because what you have to understand is that Jaws was in there not because he was a terrifying bad guy, he was an interesting character, but because of the lack of representation of people with metal teeth.
	So arguing over fiction is fun, but we should really talk about things that actually exist in the real world, such as training doctors to spot their own racial biases.
	So this begins with an anecdote about how a woman is waiting for her son to come out of knee surgery, waiting for the anesthetic to wear off.
	So the son Kari had come out of anesthesia violently, flashing and flailing about, or at least this is what the surgeon has said.
	And apparently they said that their son is so large and powerful, they were worried he might injure the medical staff.
	So they sent him back under anesthesia.
	But she's not convinced.
	She thinks that despite her son being six feet tall, but being what she describes as slim, she doesn't believe that he could be strong and she doesn't believe that the doctor's telling the truth when he says that the son came out of anesthesia violently attacking people.
	The only logical conclusion, of course, is that the doctor is racist.
	But like most white people, she doesn't think that he was conscious of it at all.
	He was just an unconscious racist.
	So due to disparities in treatment, a growing body of research suggests that doctors' unconscious behaviour plays a role in these statistics and the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences has called for more studies looking at discrimination and prejudice in healthcare.
	For example, several studies show that African American patients are often prescribed less pain medication than white patients, with the same complaints.
	Black patients with chest pain are referred to advanced cardiac care less often than white patients with identical symptoms.
	Now, it could well be that doctors across the United States just have an innate bias against black people, a prejudice they're just not aware of.
	And I in no way want to discount that as a possibility.
	But I think there are also other possibilities.
	I mean, my first question is, do they have to pay extra for the services they are being referred to?
	Because call me a cynic, but when you say doctors, nurses, and other health workers don't need to treat people differently, says Howard Ross, co-founder of management's consulting firm Cook Ross, who has worked with many groups on diversity issues.
	I kind of wonder if I'm not speaking to a snake oil salesman who has a vested financial interest in making sure that I buy what he's selling.
	A lot of folks come to San Francisco thinking, oh, this is such an open-minded place.
	There are no biases here.
	I actually think they think it's just going to be that there are the right kind of biases here.
	Before the class, students were asked to take an implicit association test, which I'll leave a link to in the description or a video of me doing it in the description.
	A series of timed computer tests that measure unconscious attitudes around race, gender, age, weight, and other categories.
	Well, maybe.
	I mean, the universities that run these tests have said that they make no claim for the validity of these interpretations that are taken from these tests.
	So it might be that you're not actually testing for a racial bias, unconscious or not.
	It might be simply what you're testing is how quickly people can process information they're unfamiliar with.
	Of course, the universities that run this test, disavowing themselves of the results and the conclusions and the interpretations, means nothing.
	Research shows that 75% of people who take the race test show an automatic preference for whites.
	I can't help but wonder if that's in the same sort of vein that 75% of people who take a Scientology test test positive for the presence of high thetan levels.
	This is the bit I found interesting though.
	A student named Amanda raised her hand.
	She asked that we not use her last name because she's afraid that what she learned about herself could harm her career.
	What she's just learned of course is that she's converted to the modern day version of Catholicism and has discovered some kind of original sin she didn't know she had before.
	So it turns out that Amanda is a Muslim from Iran whose parents moved to Marin County north of San Francisco.
	She took the version of the test that measures bias against Muslims and another on light and dark skin tone.
	The test of course told her that she's biased and didn't like brown people and she doesn't like Muslims, which she says is interesting for her because that's kind of the two things that I am.
	But I'm sure that all of this unconscious racial bias testing isn't pseudo-scientific hogwash.
	Because there is actually an implicit racial bias in a lot of people.
	And I think that it is important that we remember that there are people who are genuinely biased against black people or brown people or whoever.
	But I think it's also important to remember that there are also people who are self-admittedly biased against white people.
	Which is what Michael learned until he became Yi Fen Chao.
	Sherman Alexi reads hundreds, maybe thousands of poems last year while editing the 2015 edition of Best American Poetry, an annual anthology that comes out Tuesday.
	Just over six dozen of them made the final cuts, including The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve by Yi Fen Chow, 20 brief cynical lines on the absurdity of desire.
	But of course the poem wasn't written by a Chinaman.
	It was in fact written by Michael Derek Hudson of Fort Wayne, a Neanderthal cave beast toilet seat complexion individual.
	Aquamiol.
	Hudson, who is white, wrote in his bio for the anthology that he chose the Chinese sounding nom de plume after The Bees was rejected by 40 different journals when he submitted it under his real name.
	He figured that the poem might have a better shot at publication if it was written by somebody else.
	If this is indeed one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print.
	But I'm nothing if not persistence, reads his unabashed explanation.
	Pen names are, of course, nothing new, but Hudson's critics said that the literary bait and switch was fraudulent, racist, and fundamentally different from Charlotte Bronte publishing Jane Ear under the name Cura Bell.
	Well, I don't really see why that would be the case, except that it's because he's white and he's using a name that isn't white because the person doing the publishing has a bias against names that sound as if they are white.
	Aquaman.
	When you're doing this from a position of entitlement, you're appropriating an ethnic identity that's one, imaginary, what?
	And two, doesn't have access to the literary world.
	Said the poet and Chapman University professor Victoria Chang.
	And it diminishes categorically all of our achievements.
	He sort of implies that minorities are published because we're minorities and not because of our work.
	That's just insulting because it strips everything we've worked so hard for.
	That's actually not what he implies.
	He's implying that there is a distinct bias in favour of minorities and against white people, because it looks like there might be.
	Phil Yu, the blogger better known as Angry Asian Man, wrote, if there is such a thing as employing yellowface in poetry, this has to be it.
	Well, I hate to tell you this, Phil, but there's not.
	Because you're privileged as an Asian man.
	Look at your statistics.
	You are going to earn more than a white man.
	You're going to get better grades than a white man.
	You're going to be better represented per capita at universities than a white man.
	So you don't get to be offended.
	Hashtag Asian Privilege.
	So the person who was vetting these poems has a rule that says each poem will stand or fall on its own merits.
	Except he acknowledged that he was more amenable to the poem because he thought its author was Chinese.
	And the award-winning Native American author who had been involved in the We Need Diverse Books campaign said that Yi Fen Chao benefited from a form of minority writer nepotism, just as many white male writers have long benefited from white male writer nepotism.
	I'm sensing some projection here because you haven't proven that white male writers have benefited from any kind of nepotism or cronyism or anything of the sort.
	All you've proven is that you people are racist.
	And the thing is, I actually really hate using this term nowadays because when I say it, people think, well, yeah, but you call other people racists.
	And it's because some people do operate and make accusations from a position of deep-seated racial prejudice, where there's not really any fact in objective, observable, empirical reality that makes something true.
	And the person is using untrue arguments or misinterpreting facts or studies because of an innate prejudice that they hold, and not because that anything that they're saying is actually true.
	And I think that this is true in the case of this article here, where the female author is encouraging that we try to dissuade young men from going to the gym.
	As someone who either was or is a young man, you're probably thinking, wow, that is literally the opposite of what would be beneficial for young men.
	Instead of encouraging them to be fat, greasy teenage autists who spend all of their time on GG Revolt wondering if the black guy's gonna fuck their mum.
	I personally don't think it would do any harm if they were to somehow improve their own self-esteem by, I don't know, working out and improving their own self-image or maybe being part of a community.
	Which, according to Natasha Devon, was the reason that most teenage boys joined the gym in the first place.
	And she thinks that on the surface of this, there's nothing wrong with that.
	It's incredibly difficult to be a young man in today's society.
	The increasing prevalence of mum-only one-parent families, plus the relative dearth of male teachers, has left many teenage boys without real-life role models.
	Aspects of the new wave of feminist thinking in our culture have also meant a lot of young men are struggling to find a sense of identity because feminism is directly attacking masculinity.
	These points are all true, and educational psychologists will tell you that boys tend to crave structure and routine more than girls, and like to work towards a tangible set of short-term measurable goals.
	Again, I think that's very true and very relevant to the issue of what's going on with teenage boys.
	And she accurately identifies that all of these needs can be fulfilled somewhat by the gym.
	It's a testosterone-fueled space where teenage boys can find older men who will instruct and induct them into the ways of fitness culture.
	It's little wonder they're seeking gym memberships in their droves.
	And yeah, I mean, I don't really like the way she describes it because she sounds kind of condescending.
	But yeah, that's true.
	So why is it then, in my new role as the Department of Education's mental health czar, have I called for a strict and rigorously enforced age limit of 16 to be placed on gym memberships, unless accompanied by a supervising adult?
	You know this is going to be good.
	Because her reasons are numerous.
	Firstly, it's because young men are vulnerable and dangers lurk beneath the gym's friendly edifice.
	Okay, look, right.
	I was a young man.
	I wasn't really that vulnerable.
	Even when I was like 13, 14, most young men aren't as stupid as you think they might be.
	You know, and I mean, like this, less scrupulous fitness professionals upsell protein shakes, energy drinks, and even illegal steroids to impressionable gym goers.
	Well, they're already illegal, so can't we just encourage a culture that reports illegal steroid use or something like that, rather than banning kids from being able to go to the fucking gym.
	But of course, there is the potential for distorted body image.
	Over the past decade, i.e. since gyms went mainstream, you know, also i.e., since schools became predominantly run by women.
	Male hospitalisations for eating disorders have risen by 70%.
	According to excellent charity, men get eating disorders too.
	This is not, I believe, a coincidence.
	No, I don't believe the rise of gyms and the increase of single mothers and the reduction in male teachers and other male authority figures in boys' lives is a coincidence.
	But respectively, all we have here is some speculation.
	We haven't got any actual studies to show why these things might be connected.
	It might be true, it might not, we don't know, but either way, I really don't think preventing teenagers from being able to go to the gym is a wise move.
	Frankly, it seems mental to me that you think banning young men from a gym is going to improve their self-image.
	Either way, I really dislike the authoritarian attitude being displayed here.
	I mean, and seriously, preventing people from going to the gym.
	Is that really what we want to do?
	Is it?
	I mean, that doesn't strike you as being stupid at all.
	I mean, it seems difficult to get people to go to gyms.
	If they're going to go there, then let them.
	So the final article this week that really takes the crown of stupid is on the independent website.
	It was written by Daisy Benson and it's talking about the Labour leadership vote which Jeremy Corbyn won.
	If it's truly progressive, Labour will have voted in a female leader regardless of her policies.
	What a totally illiberal statement.
	Apparently the lack of a career path and successful role models are, perhaps, the two biggest hindrances to ensuring that talented women wish to enter politics.
	Isn't that amazing?
	That's not only complete speculation on the part of the author, but they're also interested in altering the way women think to fit their agenda.
	Because if women don't feel like going into politics, then how are feminists ever going to succeed in getting 50% of the world's politicians to be female?
	It's a time-consuming and expensive business, and it's no surprise that a lot of women find that they have better things to do.
	You know, most people find that they have better things to do, not just women.
	Most people don't want to be politicians, because it's a time-consuming and expensive business, and it means you have to be a politician.
	I'm going to cut through the waffle of this article to get to the end, where they say, Laura Bates, author of Everyday Sexism, last year talked about going into schools and asking kids to draw pictures of MPs.
	They all drew pictures of men.
	When my nieces are old enough to vote, I want them to see politics as women's business.
	Because if it's not one, it has to be the other.
	And I'm just going to read this paragraph verbatim because it sums up everything that is wrong with progressivism.
	I sat through a debate last year where frustrated women complained that no one listened to them and a few days later, the Women's Equality Party was formed.
	But women should not have to set up their own party to be represented.
	If we want women to succeed in politics, we need to promote them, vote for them, and elect them as our leaders in our parties too.

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