F**king Mondays: Raising Cash To Kill Jews, Britain's Dickensian Schools, And RFK Jr. Loves Vaccines!
The kids really aren't OK.
Welcome to the first “F**king Mondays” column of 2024! In the roundup today:
Not so cheerio
As a product of the British education system, this piece from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian on why so many children in the UK are skipping school resonated deeply:
It is reasonable to conclude that children avoid school because they find it hostile, disturbing and largely pointless. From the age of 11 – by when they should have acquired essential literacy and numeracy – they are afflicted with what is at root an archaic academic traditionalism. They must devote fixed blocs of time to memorising material of minimal future use, and on which they are constantly tested – as if data digitisation and computing had never been invented. Maths professor Hugh Burkhardt says British classrooms are the only places people still do “heavy arithmetic by hand”.
It is almost unbelievable that the secondary curriculum and teaching methods have changed little since Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. Educational research now stresses the need to prepare young people in creativity and teamwork, in physical and mental fitness, and in skills relevant to the modern world of work – and play.
My memories from school in the UK begin mostly in the early 90’s, and they are overwhelmingly negative. From 11 onwards we were subjected to almost prison like discipline — from the strict dress code (shirt tucked in, tie done properly, shoes shined) to the standing to attention when teachers entered the room, school was not so much about learning, but conforming. There was no creative thinking, no exploratory learning, just rote memorization from lines written on a blackboard, and constant testing. There was no collaboration either — students were forced to compete with each other, and the discipline was needless and relentless. You could get a detention for having your shirt untucked, or not standing up quickly enough when the teacher came in.
I have several teachers in my family so I know that the modern system isn’t quite as Dickensian as Jenkins makes it out to be, but there is something clearly very wrong if so many kids don’t think it is worth showing up.
RFK Jr. doubles down
According to RFK Jr. he is definitely not an anti-vaxxer. During a House Judiciary Committee meeting last year, Kennedy claimed he has “never been anti-vax” and was up to date on his vaccinations. Kennedy also claimed he had “never told the public, ‘Avoid vaccination.’”
As any good vaccine proponent would do, Kennedy just hired one of the most notorious anti-vax conspiracy theorists in America to become his new communications directorReported MSNBC:
Since 2016, [Del] Bigtree has run the Informed Consent Action Network, the second-best-funded anti-vaccine organization in the country. In a letter announcing his new job, he boasts about growing up as an unvaccinated child who only consulted chiropractors for medical needs. He co-produced the 2016 documentary “Vaxxed,” which made the widely debunked claim that childhood vaccines have caused an autism epidemic that was subsequently covered up by the government. Bigtree has offensively compared vaccine mandates to Nazism, wearing a yellow Star of David at anti-vaxxer rallies and promising to hold Nuremberg trial-esque proceedings for Covid policy architects.
In discussing his new gig with Kennedy, Bigtree describes his new boss not as a politician with compelling views on a wide variety of issues, but as a warrior for his extremist movement.
There are two explanations for this insane choice:
RFK. Jr was genuinely unaware of Del Bigtree’s storied history of anti-vax conspiracy theories and disinformation, despite Del Bigtree writing the foreword to Kennedy’s debunked antivax book ‘Vax-Unvax’.
RFK. Jr is an anti-vax conspiracy theorist and a dangerous liar.
It’s a tough one I know...
Claudine Gay continued
John McWhorter has an interesting piece in the Times on whether there was a racial component to Claudine Gay’s departure from Harvard. McWhorter argues there is no evidence the right wing billionaire funded campaign to mine through her academic record was because Gay is black. Instead, McWhorter says it was Christopher Rufo and Harvard donor Bill Ackman’s militant opposition to Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) philosophy. “Opposing D.E.I., in part or in whole, does not make one racist,” says McWhorter.
As I argued on the the podcast yesterday, I believe there was a racial component to the campaign against Gay, although perhaps not consciously, and not necessarily from Rufo and Ackman. The right has a very long history of going after black women, a lot of which is just undisguised racism. A lot of it however is probably unconscious where people feel threatened by successful black women (and men) because it upends their sense of superiority. This isn’t exclusive to white people either — I’ve seen extraordinary racism towards black people from Asian and Latinos too (proponents of DEI of course will blame this on the “internalization of white supremacy” because in their schema only white people can be racist).
McWhorter’s piece is more persuasive when it comes to the hypocrisy of DEI initiatives:
D.E.I. advocates may see their worldview and modus operandi as so wise and just that opposition can only come from racists and the otherwise morally compromised. But this is shortsighted. One can be very committed to the advancement of Black people while also seeing a certain ominous and prosecutorial groupthink in much of what has come to operate under the D.E.I. label. Not to mention an unwitting condescension to Black people.
Of course it is impossible to prove definitively that Ackman and Rufo were motivated by Gay’s race, but there is no doubt Gay has faced greater scrutiny than the presidents of MIT and U-Penn — at least thus far.
I also don’t think it is anyone’s place to tell black women (or anyone else) what they do and don’t experience. Gay and other black women have spoken out about the extraordinary racism they face, and there is no reason to doubt them. I have argued that Gay should have resigned due to her disastrous handling of antisemitism and her issues with plagiarism. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t experienced racism or that her departure wasn’t at least in part racially motivated.
Listen to the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast!:
The rot is deep
If you have any doubt that antisemitism is a very, very serious problem on college campuses across America, take a moment to watch filmmaker Ami Horowitz asking students at San Francisco State University for donations to kill Jews:
These students no doubt think of themselves as brave warriors fighting against the “colonizers,” so shelling out a few bucks to kill innocent Jews is no big deal. Most of the students Horowitz asked supported his mission, and half actually gave him money.
Antisemitism isn’t just back, it’s a new religion.
See you next week!
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The Loss Of Nuance
by Ben Cohen Take a moment and evaluate these two sentences: Claudine Gay is an inept college president and guilty of plagiarism. The right in America despises Claudine Gay because she is a successful black woman. In today’s political climate these statements would be considered highly inflammatory…
That last story about killing Jews just depressed me beyond belief.
As I stated in a comment last week, nowhere in any conversation or coverage so far has it been discussed: what does a college president do, and was Gay any good at the job? I read that wretched NYT op-ed this morning -- one thing he never does is offer proof to any of his DEI Agenda theories. Plagiarism is to outing college leaders what tax evasion was to imprisoning mob bosses or roadside sobriety tests are to placing anyone in jail (drunk or not). It's easy to accomplish and never resolves the issue at hand. Finally, to address Gay's horrible answers on that panel -- have you ever been "media trained"? Especially when legal counsel drafts much of your core messages to bridge answers back to? Whether with malice or over-caution to prevent litigation, they boxed Gay in -- likely insinuating if she veered off course, she would be liable for the countless free speech lawsuits that would likely be filed by Nazis and other extremists. Most likely the training was "they're gonna throw a bunch of hypotheticals at you, so always use 'it depends on context' as your core rebuttal." She should have looked up from her notes and given an honest answer to the question.