By A California Reader
Sun, Dec 5, 2021 1:39 p.m.
Why We Can't Have Nice Things Anymore
From the San Francisco Chronicle Dec. 4, 2021
|
ACR: My initial response to the headline: great news! Please stay away if you're so sensitive to imagined slights that when others do not bend themselves into pretzels to accommodate your paranoia, you throw a fit.
For me, the pièce de résistance was this little gem further down in the story:
For Ari Yovel, who is autistic and transgender, the current conflict LoAD members are facing parallels their own struggle to advocate for marginalized communities within the fair. For years, Yovel advocated as a representative of the Order of the Golden Needle, a neurodivergent advocacy group, for a de-stimulation space within the fair, or "de-stim" room. "Each time, I was met with the sentiment that even though they took my requests very seriously, they just couldn't possibly do anything about them. All the while, I was being paraded out as a poster child for how progressive and cooperative RBP (Red Barn Productions) were," says Yovel, who is boycotting this year's fair and is unsure if they will ever return.
ACR: Is The Order of the Golden Needle a one-person organization?
But before you chime along with The Mikado's song that "they never would be missed," note that other groups are said to have joined the boycott by LoAD (load of what?).
According to the SF Chronicle,
More than 200 former participants, including members of LoAD and other affinity groups, will be boycotting the event with Tooles. In solidarity, several of its traditional performing groups — including Jeremy's Escort Service, Fezziwigs, the Royals and the Fairies — have declared that they will not participate. More than 3,000 cast and crew members, vendors and guests have also committed to boycott.
In the event of a paywall for this article, I have attached it below, complete with its many photographs. The effusive coverage sounds like a parody from the Onion, but it is apparently serious. (Or am I wrong? Surely, it's not April 1.)
.
>For Ari Yovel, who is autistic and transgender
ReplyDeleteWhat else is Ari Yovel? -- asking for a curious friend.
link
>(Or am I wrong? Surely, it's not April 1.)
ReplyDeleteNo, you're not wrong: I'm sure it's totally serious.
For why it's serious and why regime media pushes such content, review the Theodore Dalrymple quote about political correctness:
link
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
"My initial response to the headline: great news! Please stay away if you're so sensitive to imagined slights"
ReplyDeleteMy exact sentiments and instantaneous.