I don’t know why you wouldn’t understand it? It’s not anything particularly clever or high-minded… it’s just misogynistic drivel. Not much to understand there, honestly.
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For the perplexed, a summary of pretty much all of Scott Adams’ arguments:
- obvious facts, presented as something surprising and new he just thought of,
- outright lies and arrant bullshit, presented as obvious facts,
- obvious facts presented as the exact opposite of what they are because he doesn’t understand any of it and thinks he’s too smart to need to look it up
- stream of consciousness sequence of non-sequiturs and connection by poetic metaphor and “I feel like” and “it seems to me”, pretending to be an argument,
- Therefore, conclusion which is some permutation of any of all of
- racist
- sexist
- fascist
- magical thinking in the literal sense of believing in miracles and fairies
- clinically paranoid
- … and if you disagree with me then you’re a fool and a moron because I am a very smart man who is right about everything and that’s why you hate me.
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Actually, come to think of it, that summarises Jordan Bordan Peterson, and Ben Shapiro, and many others of the “Intellectual Dark Web” as well. In which case you can add “gender essentialist”, “homophobic”, “transphobic”, “xenophobic”, “classist”, and “ablist” to the pick-n-mix in item 5.
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Never trust anyone who has an explanation for everything.
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How was it again?
“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
(Attributed to H.L. Mencken, but you know how the internet is with witty sayings…)
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Only their answers aren’t either clear or simple. They’re deliberately as abstruse and complicated as possible so that you don’t notice that they’re the equivalent of a mathematical proof that introduces dozens of variables in order to cancel them out, divides by zero repeatedly, gets the order of operations wrong, makes basic mistakes of arithmetic, and doesn’t know what “seven” means.
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Add John Cleese to the list.
(excerpt) “Once you start checking everything, it’s very hard to be very creative,” the comedian said. “If you’re worried about offending people and constantly thinking about that, you’re not going to be very creative.”
(Perhaps because those comedians are limited in their creativity.)
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Every time a comedian says stuff like that I feel a need to point out that all contemporary stand-up comedy can trace its origins to minstrel shows. The entire history of modern comedy is marked by “oh wait we probably shouldn’t tell that kind of joke anymore.” Either get with the times, accept you’re gonna offend some people or get out of the game entirely.
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I don’t want to stray too much from the subject but I feel compelled to respond to that with a quote from Neil Gaiman.
I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.”
Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile.
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Adam Conover’s latest podcast episode is all about that:
He and his guest make a lot of good points:
- Comedians have been spouting the “you can’t say that anymore” complaint forever, and it’s tiresome and boring. Especially when it’s being spouted by comedians who are being paid millions of dollars to make comedy specials for the world’s largest distribution platforms.
- Until very recently American comedians faced fines, arrest and prosecution for things they said onstage. For all the folks who like to complain “you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today due to wokeness”: Richard Pryor Cleavon Little may have been able to say a lot of offensive words in that 1974 movie that was co-written by Richard Pryor but later that same year Pryor was arrested for obscenity for using those same words on stage.
- Comedians today can say whatever the hell they want with little to worry about other than not being invited back to a particular show or platform. You can’t really get totally blacklisted these days because if you have a loyal audience there are always some platforms available. We’re way beyond the days where if you couldn’t get on the big 3 tv networks you were toast.
- Society has always had taboos. At least the taboos of today are mostly about not using hurtful language against minorities and disadvantaged groups, rather than criticizing government, organized religion, or other powerful entities.
[Edited to make corrections]
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Cleavon Little. But your point remains.
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Right. Edit to correct my earlier post: Richard Pryor was a co-witer of Blazing Saddles and was originally chosen by Brooks to star in it but that decision was overturned by the studio.
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I don’t see Eric Idle or Michael Palin sharing these sentiments. Cleese had a reputation for being a bit stiff even by his buddies.
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Also, those comedians tend to have stale material that hasn’t been updated in decades. “Why don’t people like the tired joke I’ve been telling for twenty years? Waaah! Woke politically correct mob!”
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Or even new jokes that draw from an outdated formula, like the whole “boy do I hate my wife!” school of humor.
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