RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/12/25/of-course-wishing-people-a-merry-christmas-is-white-supremacy-n2582127

I mean, we shouldn’t be shocked that people like this exist. Ever since ‘wokeness’ latched onto the political Left like a barnacle, the hot takes have grown more insane. Whatever you thought was ‘too extreme’ quickly was turned on its head with these people. Since Obama, the ‘woke’ Left has thrust scores of pseudo-intellectual talking points into the social media universe in the hopes of making it mainstream. Yet, the most common is making everything into a vehicle for white supremacy and then bashing it. Ladies and gentlemen, these people think that a man who holds the door for a woman is a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. Are we shocked that they decided to put Christmas on the white supremacy list? 

Even now, we can’t say Merry Christmas on certain platforms, who have opted for the more politically correct ‘happy holidays’ send off. But as Jen Bokoff of the Disability Rights Fund reminded all of us today, a lot of people don’t celebrate Christmas, so please be cognizant of that because “the default Merry Christmas as a normal greeting is also white supremacy culture at work.” Yeah, we’re not all mentally defective, Jenny. If I see someone with a yarmulke on, I’m not going to say, “Merry Christmas.” Also, this isn’t some random holiday. It’s not something where only half the nation celebrates. The vast majority celebrate Christmas. In fact, billions do. And not all Christians are white people. I guess it would shock Jen that a lot of people of color are—gasp—Christian. 

The added idiocy with this ‘wishing merry Christmas is white supremacy culture’ take is that it carries this connotation that all holidays are relatively equal with regards to participation. Sorry, given the numbers, no one really celebrates Kwanzaa. I think more people attend ComicCon than those who celebrate Kwanzaa. We’re also the most religious industrialized nation. It’s not even close. The United States has a population of 331 million; 205 million are Christians.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/22/the-gender-heretics-are-finally-winning-the-terf-wars/

At this most magical time of year, I hope you’re sitting uncomfortably – perhaps listening to the problematic lyrics of your favourite banned carol, settling in for socially distanced merriment and bemoaning the impact of climate change on the chances of a white Christmas. Most people will agree that 2020 has been a stinker of a year, but for those of us on the front lines of the ‘TERF wars’ there have been some huge gains against the joyless gender fascists. It seems the green shoots of reason are finally visible.

At the close of 2019, JK Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a tax consultant who lost her job at a think tank after she expressed the view on social media that human beings can’t change sex. The woke witch-finders had long been pointing at JK Rowling, though previously she had dismissed her signal of support for women’s sex-based rights as a ‘middle-aged moment’.

By June 2020, it seems the best-selling author had had enough. Needing neither the money nor the approval of the spotty urchins who had vowed to burn her books, Rowling responded to accusations of ‘transphobia’ in essay form. In 3,600 words Rowling explained why, as a woman who has suffered domestic violence, she wasn’t that keen on the idea of men being able to change legal sex with the magic words ‘I identify as’. Despite threats to cancel her and considerable harassment, Rowling emerged from the nightmare fantasy world of trolls and gender dementors as a real-world heroine.

https://www.city-journal.org/sniffing-out-racism-and-white-supremacy-at-the-ballet

The New York Times has published the latest installment in its running tally of alleged racism in the high arts: the Staatsballett Berlin (Berlin State Ballet) treated a black ballerina differently because of the color of her skin. Oh, wait! That was yesterday’s template. Today’s is that a black ballerina was treated the same as white ballerinas. The search for racism requires just such rhetorical nimbleness.

Since the nineteenth century, dancers in a corps de ballet often applied white body paint in works, such as Giselle or Les Sylphides, that feature a supernatural element. The intent was to create an impression of ghostly creatures from beyond the grave who might doom any red-blooded prince who crosses them. The use of white makeup was not a statement about white supremacy: there were virtually no black dancers in Russian or Parisian ballet troupes at the time against which a statement about skin color might be made. If one is looking for slurs, the body paint could be seen as anti-white, in its association of whiteness with death.

In 2018, the Staatsballett Berlin mounted Swan Lake, another ballet where white body paint has traditionally been used, in this case to increase the illusion that the dancers were swans. One of the company’s ballet mistresses told the company’s one black dancer, Chloé Lopes Gomes, to use the paint as well. Gomes says she told the ballet mistress, “I’ll never look white,” to which the mistress responded: “well, you will have to put on more than the other girls.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/monumental-misdirection-at-the-mellon-foundation/

Hundreds of millions for woke public art aimed to stoke victimologies.

M ost monuments are boringly bad, aesthetically mediocre, and engaging mostly when pigeons, unimpressed by great causes or men, do what pigeons do to outdoor art. Their judgments are ecumenical and evacuational.

Pigeons also would probably disagree with me on one point. We have too many monuments. You’d think the tortured, 20-year path of the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington would put people off monuments for a while. It’s not as ugly as it might have been. Oddly, it’s best seen at night, when the big mesh screen makes sense, though who’s walking around the Washington Mall these days after dark?

The Mellon Foundation thinks we need new and improved monuments. Lost in the COVID catastrophe is last month’s big news that the Mellon Foundation has committed $250 million over five years to pay for new monuments or historic storytelling spaces, freshen existing ones with context relevant to today, and remove monuments no one wants because they are bad art or they no longer edify.

That’s a huge amount of money and the primary commitment of the country’s biggest arts and humanities foundation. It’s to be taken seriously and followed closely. This is the foundation’s first step in implementing a strategic shift announced in June. For years, it supported blue-chip arts-and-humanities projects. Now, it’s in the social-justice business. It’s focusing its money on “building just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking where ideas and imagination can thrive.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/29/pregnant-emily-ratajkowski-fears-giving-birth-to-a-white-male-unaware-of-his-privilege/

In her recent Vogue essay, model Emily Ratajkowski signals her most progressive beliefs, only to find herself wrestling with the pesky reality that is biology.

Model, actress, and radical feminist Emily Ratajkowski announced her pregnancy in this month’s Vogue Magazine, writing an essay reflecting on the sex of her child.

As is the case with many far-left causes and feminists, Ratajkowski signals her most progressive beliefs, only to find herself wrestling with the pesky reality that is biology. Like Tampax claiming men can have periods, or school districts ruling it fair for boys to compete in girls’ sports, leftist causes often come down to arguments over semantics rather than science.

Ratajkowski finds herself in a similar trap, claiming to not really know her child’s sex until he is 18, and assuring readers she wants to avoid gender stereotypes, only to admit that finding out the sex of her child in utero is “the first real opportunity to glimpse who they might be.”

“I’m terrified of inadvertently cultivating the carelessness and the lack of awareness that are so convenient for men. It feels much more daunting to create an understanding of privilege in a child than to teach simple black-and-white morality. How do I raise a child who learns to like themself while also teaching them about their position of power in the world?”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/conservatives_need_to_defend_high_culture.html

It is no secret that art, sacred art, and beauty more generally, are under assault. New “multicultural” guidelines are dictating how art is to be constructed and rewarded. Artistic talent is shunned in favor of diversity quotas. The way to be an artist and art critic, nowadays, is to cry racism or sexism.

Theogonis of Megara divided mankind into two classes of people, the base and the noble. As he said, living through a revolutionary period in ancient Greek society during the rise of democracy, “The deckhands are in control, and the base have the upper hand over the noble.” The outlook of Theogonis is inherently conflictual and violent, not to mention truly classist.

While it is true that much of Theogonis’ poetry reflects his own concerns about Greek societal transformation, his general attitude is often attacked by critics of high culture for its supposed “whiteness,” inegalitarianism, and gendered supremacism. Such assaults on high culture fail to appreciate the real defense of high culture—the belief that all should strive for excellence, nobility, and beauty (even if not all will come to imitate and inculcate that excellence, nobility, and beauty in their own lives).

This emphasis on excellence, indeed, perfection, is what Matthew Arnold understood as the defining characteristic of high culture in “Culture and Anarchy.” Arnold even stated that the emphasis and promotion of high culture was something universal: high culture “seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light.” The point of high culture is to lift everyone to the good things the heavens hold.

The constant attack on high culture, however, is part of the broader rejection of tradition, hierarchy, and heritage that necessarily accompanies high culture. High culture is the product of tradition as much as it is individual genius, one cannot marvel at Michelangelo’s “David” and be so blind to its blending of classical humanist and biblical traditions some two millennia after the fact. The genius of Michelangelo, likewise, would be impossible if not for the Catholic and Platonic traditions which informed his spirit. But one need not be Catholic or Platonic to look in awe and wonder at Michelangelo’s handiwork.