“White Privilege” has been all over the news this last couple of years.

 It’s been there because the Big Left has ordained that it should be.  My theory;  in a nation full of “privilege” – class, racial, academic, social and, let’s be honest, the privilege of being born here rather than Russia or Nigeria or Burma – Big Left needed to focus on racial, “white” privilege to whip up black votes for Hillary Clinton, a geriatric white plutocrat.  As a result, all discussion of other “privilege” is off the table.

Terms, Terms, Everywhere Are Terms: White privilege exists, of course.  It goes hand in hand with the idea of “we-ism” – the idea that everyone on earth is more comfortable around, and accomodating of, people more like them than less.

Beyond that?  In my more sardonic and less cautious days, I defined it as being a descendant of a society from a harsh, lethally inhospitable place that had zero words for “hakuna matata” but more words for “stab him!” than Eskimos have for “snow”; a dour, patriarchal warrior culture that killed everyone that had designs on enslaving them.  As a result, my culture has no commonly-held concept of being enslaved.  We  operate from the standpoint of people who’ve been free (or at least subjects of generally benign monarchs) as far back as our cultural memory goes.  On behalf of all my cultural cousins, I am sorry for those of you who are descended from matriarchal hunter gatherer societies that couldn’t effectively resist the slave merchants, but I can’t change history any more than you can.  Just the present – a present I and my cultural cousins have been trying to change for 240-odd years, now.

More soberly, and after interviewing a representative of Black Lives Matter on my show, I arrived at the idea that “white privilege” is the ability to walk into a room and not have everyone wondering if you’re “one of the good ones”.   It was a little after that that I first encountered the academic paper in which the term “white privilege” was coined, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.   It supplied fifty definitions of white (also male) privilege.

Every one of which, by the way ,translates to “freedom”, “justice” and “being accorded the dignity of being treated as an autonomous individual rather than a member of a group” – all of which are supposed to be values near and dear to our Republic and Western Civilization itself, and all of them things we should be working tirelessly to spread to everyone.

And when some mindless Social Justice Warrior jabbers about “smashing white/male privilege”, the proper response is “so – you want to smash freedom, justice and individual dignity?  See you at the barricades”.

Discussion of all other privileges – academic, social, class – were drowned out.  As they were intended to be.

But with the complete subsumation of the left by identity politics, it’s time to return the favor Peggy McIntosh did us; it’s time to define Urban Progressive Privilege.

Unpacking The Invisible NPR Tote Bag:  I’m going to borrow McIntosh’s format – which I suspect was actually tacitly borrowed from Jeff Foxworthy – of the simple list of attributes of Urban Progressive Privilege.

To wit:

Urban Progressive Privilege; Unpacking the Invisible NPR Tote Bag

Mitch Berg

“You were taught to see Urban Progressive Privilege as a bit of talk show rhetoric – not in terms of a very vislble system conferring dominance on my group via a meritless meritocracy”.   

As an urban progressive, you have been taught about “privilege” by others who have that privilege.  Being able to caterwaul about privilege is a prerogative of the privileged.

Like the concept of “white privilege” (which, conventional wisdom tells us, that “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege”), the first rule of Urban Progressive Privilege is “I don’t believe there is such a thing”; it’s the water in which the Urban Progressive swims.  So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have Urban Progressive Privilege. I have come to seeUrban Progressive Privilege as an invisible and group package of unearned assets that I can count on using daily, but about which it’s hard to be anything but oblivious.

Urban Progressive Privilege is like an invisible weightless NPR tote bag of special permissions, immunities, secret handshakes, Whole Foods gift cards, a virtual echo chamber accompanying everyone who has that privilege, filtering out almost all cognitive dissonance about political, social or moral questions, and a virtual “cone of silence” immunizing them from liability for anything they say or do that contradicts the group’s stated principles.  As we in Human studies work to reveal Urban Progressive Privilege and ask urban progressives to become aware of their power, so one who writes about havingUrban Progressive Privilege must ask, “having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”

So – when assessing Urban  Progressive Privilege, can you say any of the following?:

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people who believe exactly as I do about politics, society, philosophy, morality and the like, all or nearly all of the time.
2. I was educated from my earliest years through post-secondary education by people whose political and social beliefs mirrored mine, and who didn’t challenge any of mypolitical, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
3. My progressive beliefs were never challenged through four or more years of higher education – indeed, they were reinforced, while competing views were shamed and shouted down.
4. When I went into the working world, my politics, social background or philosophy were never adversarially questioned.
5. I work, very likely, in an environment staffed with people who agree with and never challenge my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
6. My social life is made up of people who share, pretty much to a fault, my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptins.
7. I can avoid, during my daily life, spending time around anyone who will challenge my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
8. My neighbors – the people in my physical community in which I live – share, almost without exception, my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
9. If someone in  my social or professional life does express a point of view discordant with my and my group’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions intrudes into my sphere, I can count on overwhelming support from the rest of my personal, social, professional circles to defend me.  Those who don’t share our beliefs thus either keep quiet, or are shamed into silence.  Thus, their beliefs have no impact in my life. .
10. My informational world – my news media, my online social circle, my institutional associations (churches/synagogues, my social groups – will not contradict my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
11. I can count on the news media I listen to – my community’s newspapers, TV stations, as well as stereotypical outlets like NPR, PBS and the like – to reinforce my political and social assumptions.
12. I can count on as the entertainment media not to contradict my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
13. I can count on the education system in my community not to undercut the political, social, philosophical and moral I’ve tried to pass on to my family.
14. My kids’ schools give them textbooks, lectures and other materials that reinforce, never undercut, my political, social, philosophical and moral worldview and that which I’ve tried to teach them.
15. I can be fairly certain that when I go to my kids’ school, the principle will not condescend to me based on my perceived academic or social background.
16. I have never had anyone laugh at the accent or vocabulary of my native spoken English.
17. I can rest fairly certain that no “well-meaning” pundit or scholar will ever paternalistically castigate me for “voting against my interests” (as determined by the pundit’s / scholar’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions) for voting in accordance with my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
18. I can choose to ignore the parts of our society outside the East Coast, West Coast, and selected “progressive” archipelagos in between, and express not only ignorance but mockery of the rest of the country, without being seen, shamed, and scorned as a provincialist.
19. I can express scorn for individuals, groups, religions and social classes that don’t share my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs, accents and worldviews, entirely based on those beliefs, and not be shamed and labeled as a bigot.
20. I can make racist, sexist and classist statements about people who do not share my community’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions, and rest assured I will not be castigated for violating community standards.
21. I have never been treated as a foreign culture in my own country; I have never had journalists, academics or pundits dispatch a special group to research, analyze and report on why my social circle believes and votes as they do – because the media, academics and punditry are from my class, and share my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions; the more aware ones would be offended by being subjected to such a condescending, patriarchal bit of cultural chauvinism.
22. My children and family are safe, almost entirely, from the economic, social and criminological  consequences of my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs; indeed, I personally am almost entirely insulated from them.
23. I can simultaneously say “I believe in science, and have a fact-based worldview” – while never being corrected, much less called out or scorned, for expressing beliefs that have no scientific basis (belief that there are no evolutionary differences between men and women, believe a human isn’t a human until it emerges from the birth canal, believe that there’s scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic).
24. I can simultaneously eschew racism and racists, even as I gang up with others like me to oppress black, latino, asian and females who disagree with my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.  I can say things like “That’s not a real, authentic (Black, Latino, Asian) person!” and not get scorned as a racist and patriarch.
25. I can exhibit ghastly contradictions in my world view and be reasonable sure that nobody in my regular social circle is going to say or do anything about it; if I call someone I disagree with a “fascist” or “patriarch” or “1 percenter” while displaying Che Guevara memorabilia or studiously intoning approval for “Chavezism”, nobody in my social or professional life is going to castigate me for it.
26. I tut-tut about the virtues of Western civilization and praise Multiculturalism – but do so entirely from a perspective that could not exist outside of Western civilization.  Nobody in my personal or profession or social circles ever brings this up, because they all believe the same thing.

I’m looking for more examples.  Keep ’em generic – not related to any specific issue.   .

One of the primary tenets of conservatism is that we sit on the shoulders of giants, and th burden of proof for “improving” a good idea is necessarily and justifiably high.

With that in mind:  James Bond is getting a 21st-century update:

In a new book, however, James Bond will be getting a 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.
Horowitz, the writer of new Bond novel Trigger Mortis, said he had worked carefully to preserve Ian Fleming’s original character and ensuring his 1950s attitudes remained in tact.
But he has introduced a cast of new characters to point out the error of his chauvinistic ways, including messages about smoking causing cancer, women who give him a run for his money, and an “outspoken” gay friend.

…my commentary about Pope Francis is largely irrelevant.  While we’re all on the Jesus Team, he’s not in my chain of command.

And I know, I know – is “infallability” is, doctrinally, entirely a matter of theology.

All I know, goy that I am, is that many more remarks like this and people are going to start mistaking him for Joe Biden.

Katie Kieffer on Obama’s feminist face in bringing Wall Street to heel:

There are three women on Wall Street who have literally gone wild. No, they didn’t strip off their matronly suits on a GGW spring break tour bus. Rather, they are on a mission to strip Congress, small businesses and individual Americans of proper authority, rights and freedoms and replace these with their own rules and regulations for how to play the financial game on both Wall Street and Main Street.

These three women, who graced the May 24 cover of TIME Magazine and were touted as the “Sheriffs of Wall Street,” are an embarrassment to my sex. Rather than advancing equality between the sexes, their self-centered political agendas do the following:

1. Send the message that women do not understand finance or business, and this makes them insecure. So, they use their authority to control and regulate finance and business.
2. Reinforce the notion that the only way men will take women seriously is if they exert “control” over men.
3. Teach young women to prioritize power over finding solutions.
4. Dismiss equality entirely and send the message that women should referee men and dole out red cards – not play the soccer game with them.

Let me introduce you to these women, one by one. You can decide if they are on a mission to “protect consumers” or if they are on a quest to disprove an imagined bureaucracy of male chauvinists on Wall Street. If the latter is their goal, then the bigger question is whether cracking down on business and the financial industry is a good way to achieve this goal.

Read the whole thing.

I commute via bike. I do it because I enjoy it, because I’ve lost 2-4 pants sizes in the past five months, and because it’s a just-plan-good time.

Although I just started biking seriously again in June of 2007, I had a ton of experience as an urban and distance biker. I’m pretty defensive (and I write that knowing that in doing so I’ve very likely written something that can be used as an ironic coda by some jagoff in the event of a mishap in the future), because when biking in the city, everything you do can kill you, and everything you don’t do can kill you, and everything someone else does or doesn’t do can kill you.

Which was what I worried about last spring, when I saw hordes of new bicyclists joining us out on the road. You could tell lots of them were newbies; I saw lots of telltale signs of the less-experienced biker; innocuous ones like coasting down long hills (better to keep pedalling, even if it’s just freewheeling, to keep your muscles from cooling off), and serious ones, like zoning out on busy streets. I joked with a few other bikers that we could expect a heavy toll of accidents among all those newbies out there.

Sadly but inevitably, that’s pretty much what happened.

Being a conservative and a biker, I get plenty of flak from both sides; some conservatives take the car culture as a matter of pride (as do I – or as would I, if I had a cooler car) and take a lot of really dumb rhetorical swats at bikers; many bikers are pretty chauvinistic about their left-centeredness.

There’s a big, important story in there; bikes are different than cars. Some cities – like Boise, Idaho – recognize that bikes are not just spindlier looking cars, and have changed their laws (bikes can regard stop signs as “Yields”, and stop lights as signs). The changes will do doubt piss off drivers – although they shouldn’t, since people who follow the laws will never run afoul of each other anyway. There are good, health and safety-related reasons for these changes. Which doesn’t change the fact that some bikers are just plain dumb and/or inexperienced (above and beyond the whole “Democrat” thing), and some conservatives say really dumb things about bikers.

No big surprise there, right?

Of course, given a choice between a real story and a dumb sideshow, the local alt-media knows what to cover.

Emily Kaiser caught Anti-Strib being un-PC:

The latest from the Anti-Strib blog is sure to get hardcore bikers and Sen. Barack Obama fans riled up. After recent reports of deaths and injuries due to the increasing numbers of commuters taking to their bikes for a primary mode of transportation, the Anti-Strib blog says it might help Sen. John McCain win the election.

Gosh. Hyperbole. Hardly new at Anti-Strib – or the City Pages, for that matter.

Not that it matters; I haven’t read a dead-tree edition of the CP in years, and doubt I’ve willingly patronized one of their advertisers in even longer.

But the comment section was where things got interesting mildly loathsome. “Scottsdale Woman”, proprietor of local deranged-nutbar hangout “Mercury Rising”, wrote:

Oh, and by the way: A heavy-duty cyclist of my acquaintance [I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that “heavy-duty cyclist” bit, picturing a 400 pound guy on a recumbent – Ed.] wants you to know two (2) [Two (2)? You mean deux (II)? Please be more specific – Ed.] things:

1) Your comments are being reported as terroristic threats to the Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments, and:

Oh, goody.

This is, of course, the same whinging crone who responded to my call for vigilance of anti-RNC protestors by calling me a “provocateur”. But let Tracy Eberly take a joking swipe at her 400-pound friends, and suddenly she’s Ms. (?) Law and Order?

(And if there’s anyone at the metro police departments would could pass this “forwarding” on, that’d be much appreciated).

And I loved this bit:

2) A growing number of cyclists now carry handguns.

Wow.

I’d go to Mercury Rising to see how Scottsdale Woman stood on the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, but that’d involve…well, going to Mercury Rising. That’s just crazy talk.

But it’s ironic, isn’t it, that Wes Skoglund was partly right? That there are people out there who will turn traffic accidents into shootouts? Of course, like Scottsdale Woman, they are lefties and Obama groupies, not actual gunnies. Not that that’s a surprise.

And while as a long-time carry-permit-reform activist I would never dream of confirming or denying anyone actually carries anything, and stipulating that it’s very hard to find a good carry rig for biking (yet another reason to eschew that skin-tight lycra crap), I have to ask – how in-freaking-credibly stupid is this “woman?”

She’s taking it on herself to remind the car-driving public – even the a**holes who don’t like bikers – that some of us might be carrying?

Thanks for nothing!

“She” also does a drive-by outing of Tracy Eberly’s place of employment. Which brings us to a modest proposal.

This city is clogged with anonymous bloggers, invariably lefties, who make scabrous claims and gutless ad-hominem attacks from behind pseudonyms, taking big, brave (and usually fact-challenged) swats at peoples’ ethics, personalities and histories. Some of these attacks – like “Scottsdale Woman’s” in the City Pages – are direct attacks on peoples’ livelihoods.

I can’t help but think that some of these people would be a lot more polite if they – like most of us conservative bloggers, Hinderaker and Johnson, Morrissey, Brodkorb, Banaian, Eberly, Tucci and, er, yours truly – had their real names out there.

So maybe it’s time to abolish the anonymous leftyblog; to find, and “out”, the most egregiously gutless, the ones that attack from cover and skitter away behind their anonymity.

Not to say it’d be easy; it’s not that hard to cover your tracks in the world of blogs.

But if there’s one thing conservative bloggers are good at, it’s finding things we’re not supposed to find. And if there’s one thing anonymous leftybloggers are good at, it’s having stuff we’re not supposed to find.

No, I have no idea how. Just saying.

With the news that journalist nonpareil Eric Black has apparently changed his mind about the place of overt bias in the media by joining the “progressive” Minnesota Monitor, I figured – if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.  Sorta like Black apparently did.

Of course, conservative bloggers are swooping in like vultures:

We understand that if Lileks hadn’t found a new bucket at the Strib, there was an agreement in principle for him to sign on at Nihilist In Golf Pants. And then there’s our open offer–made at JB’s behest–for Doug Grow to join the staff here at Fraters Libertas.

In the interest of smoothing the paths of the recent buy-out-ees (and possible future buyout-ees) into non-monastic life, I figured I’d provide a clearinghouse of blogs that’d be perfect in the same sense that MinMoneyitor was perfect for Erik Black [1]:

• DFL Shill Lori Sturdevant goes to Minnesota Democrats Exposed: Sturdevant’s pollyannaish faith in the eternal rightness of the DFL will play nicely against Michael Brodkorb’s invincible wall of facts the same way Eric Black’s ethos of objectivity will play against some of his new colleagues’ comically-overwrought partisan chauvinism.
• Doug Grow joins Kool Aid Report: Sane, predictable, sober, workadaddy-huggamommy mushy-lefty Grow would make a great match for the insane, unpredictable, high, non-mushy-non-lefty staff at KAR. 
• Katherine Kersten joins Blog of the Moderate Left: Talented writer meets the real guy who stands astride the forces of history in his basement in his underwear screaming “Pwned!”
• Nick Coleman starts writing for Anti-Strib: Firm believer in the holy priesthood of “journalism” and relentless faux-populist dramaturge (emphasis on “turge”) meets congenitally-irreverent plate-throwers.
• Minnesota Observer signs on Doug Tice: The always-comically-overwrought and under-informed M “MNob” Nob engages an employee who actually knows something.
• Powerline hires Jim Boyd: Conservative bloggers whom the intellectually ungifted on the left call “hacks”, meet a real intellectually-ungifted hack who hates conservatives!

That is all.

(more…)

Amir Taheri on the stakes in Iraq:

Those familiar with al Qaeda’s literature in the past four years know that all jihadi groups regard new Iraq as the principal battlefield between Osama bin Laden’s version of Islam and modernity.The new Iraq also has determined enemies within:

* The Shiite sectarians, often linked to the Khomeinist regime in Tehran, have done all in their power to destabilize the country and undermine the democratically elected institutions.

* Sunni sectarians, often supported by governments or groups in Arab states, have pursued similar objectives.

* The Saddamite regime’s remnants, especially the 200,000 or so members of the Ba’athist Republican Guard, provide the backbone of rival Shiite and Sunni insurgent groups and death squads.

And then, the chase – emphasis mine:

The struggle for Iraq is so bloody and bitter because the stakes are extremely high. The success of the democratic forces and their allies, notably America, in preserving the above achievements could have as dramatic an impact in the Middle East as the Soviet Union’s fall had in Europe.

Preserving the victory achieved in Iraq means delivering a deathblow to all the Middle East’s demons: the pan-Arab chauvinists, the Khomeinists, al Qaeda and other jihadis, Shiite and Sunni sectarians, and reactionary autocrats.

To the left:  Terrorists flock to Iraq because we’re the great satan and they hate us.

To the right:  Terrorists flock to Iraq because they realize that this is Terrorism’s Stalingrad.

(Via Jeff Kouba at TvM)

The City Pages’ review of Borat takes an all-too-predictable turn – which sparked an idea.

More on the idea in a bit; first, the drearily-predictable turn. Apparently, Sacha Baren-Cohen does what is in Hollywood nearly unthinkable – satirizes conservative caricatures!:

That both Barr and Keyes are right-wing moralizers suggests something about the Baron Cohen agenda. It’s hardly coincidental that the antique store he trashes specializes in Confederate memorabilia. Interviewing “veteran feminists” or Atlanta homies, Borat baffles them with his chauvinist stupidity. But picked up by a van of South Carolina frat boys or chatting with the owner of the Imperial Rodeo, he has alarmingly little difficulty getting them to articulate the idea of reinstituting slavery or making homosexuality a capital offense.

Wow. I guess rednecks and fratboys are stupid! Especially after their japes, y’know, get through an editing process!

Baron Cohen has gleefully involved the government of Kazakhstan in a campaign against Borat—showing up at the White House on the day President Bush hosted Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. But his target isn’t really an imaginary version of Nazerbayev’s nation (nor its enemies, the “evil nitwits” of Uzbekistan); it is rather the domain of the “great warlord Premier Bush,” red states in particular. “I think the cultural differences are just vast,” the Mississippi matron hosting Borat for dinner at her Magnolia Mansion (on Secession Drive) confides to the camera while her guest is away from the table. Those differences become unbridgeable when Borat returns with a stool sample, and then with the arrival of his indescribably inappropriate date—recruited from the back-page ads of the local alt-weekly.

The City Pages have managed to make Borat sound as interesting as a poli-sci masters dissertation.

The review makes much of Baren-Cohen’s “agenda” – and how eagerly many conveniently-lampoonable right-wing middle Americans queue up to serve as comic fodder for it.

But I have to wonder – given that:

• Americans love to be on TV, and
• there’s nobody in the world as smug and personally-overweening as a Twin Cities’ liberal,

…I think that if a film crew from “People’s Television of Berkeley” (or perhaps a French TV documentary crew) showed up at Macalester or Nordeast or in Merriam Park, you’d get at least as much comic fodder.

Hmmmm.

I say again – Hmmmm.

Anyone got a camera?