Dear @Clementine_Ford …

Posted on Comments

 

Let’s play a game, you and me. Call it, “Yours and Mine.”

You are in Australia (yours) and I am in America (mine).

You are female (yours) and I am male (mine).

You are a “progressive” (yours) and I am conservative (mine).

It would be a simple gambit, as an opening move in Yours and Mine, for me to say that Australia’s progressive women are all idiots, sluts, dykes, fat, ugly, etc. In response, your move would be to say that American conservative men are all racist, sexist, homophobic theocrats, etc. Let’s skip that, eh? I stipulate, arguendo, that you can out-hate me, and that you excel in accusing anyone who disagrees with you of mala fides. Never has anyone directly criticized Clementine Ford who was not presumed guilty of “misogyny” or some other such Thought Crime.

This mode of discourse — whereby feminists seek to discredit and thus effectively silence all opposition by encouraging the belief that anyone who opposes feminist ideology is not merely wrong, but also evil — is rhetorically dishonest. It is a propaganda tactic, a method of sophistry, and if schools still taught basic logic and rhetoric, I daresay you would be the target of much more effective and devastating criticism than having Michale Nolan call you a “slut”:

A SYDNEY man as been fired from his job as a hotel manager after calling popular feminist writer and commentator Clementine Ford a ‘sl**’ on Facebook.
On Friday, Ms Ford shared a screenshot of her interaction with Michael Nolan with her 80,000 Facebook followers and tagged Mr Nolan’s employer Meriton Apartments in the post.
“I wonder if the folks over at Meriton Apartments are aware that a man listing himself as a supervisor for their business likes to leave comments on women’s Facebook pages calling them sl**s. I wonder if they are also aware that he is a racist,” she wrote. Mr Nolan has posted several racist jokes and memes on his personal Facebook page.
In a statement to Ms Ford, Meriton Apartments said they do not condone Mr Nolan’s behaviour and he has since been let go from his job.
“Michael Nolan was removed from the Meriton site on Saturday 28th November pending an investigation, and as of 2:30pm today 30th November 2015, he no longer works for the Meriton Group,” the statement read. . . .
Ms Ford says she hopes speaking out against online misogyny will reduce the chance of other women receiving abuse online.
“These men don’t get to just go around leaving these kinds of comments and attempting to degrade women just for the hell of it,” she wrote on Facbook last week.
“Why should they get away with it? Why should there be no consequences at all for them? Why should I put up with that?
“There are basically no consequences for men who behave like this, so we have to start making consequences for them.” . . .

Well, you have now defended yourself at some length, but can you answer this: How is the identity-politics mentality of feminism not merely a species of special pleading? Many years ago, to amuse myself, I had fun with idiots on Usenet groups who supposed that a Civil War history forum was a suitable place to impugn the Sacred Honor of Our Fallen Heroes. To choose one side of an argument, and then to unload upon one’s antagonist all the rhetorical ammunition at hand, is a fine sport. Pompously serious fellows like Mark Pitcavage, Ph.D., did not enjoy the way I played the game, but it is not my purpose here to refight those arguments, Ms. Ford. Rather, I recount that ancient Usenet quarrel to explain to you that special pleading in the War of Ideas — arguing vociferously on behalf of one’s own particular tribe — is a phenomenon quite familiar to me. And the problem of our age is this: Certain special pleaders have succeeded in convincing the intelligentsia that their special pleading is synonymous with social justice.

There in Australia, for example, I suppose that Aboriginal Rights is considered by your intelligentsia to be a Holy Crusade. Considering that I have never visited Australia and know next to nothing about your aborigines, I’m sure I could not be fairly accused of hating them. Maybe the aborigines are all fine upstanding citizens, and maybe progressives like yourself are correct to suspect prejudice lurks in the hearts of those ordinary working-class people in Australia who roll their eyes when the media Down Under begin lecturing them (as I imagine the media is prone to do) about the Tragic Plight of the Oppressed Aborigines. Or perhaps, on other occasions, the eye-rolling of ordinary Australians is in reaction to the latest iteration of another theme, the Aboriginal Success Story: “Look here at this fine fellow who, having overcome poverty and prejudice, now has achieved some wonderful thing.”

Such media exercises are not truly journalism, but rather evangelism. This kind of “reporting” is didactic and tendentious and, despite the supposed ignorance of the ordinary Australian at whom such journalistic sermons are preached, the truck driver in Brisbane who sees these Morality Tales of Aboriginal Oppression recognizes he is being lectured, guilt-tripped by well-educated media types who think they are better than him. These moralistic media preachers, in Australia as everywhere else, presume themselves fit to tell the rest of us what to think.

Whatever the Controversial Issue may be this week — immigration or education, poverty or disease, climate change or sexual harassment — it’s always the same thing. Our Moral Superiors™ feel a constant duty to instruct us in the Correct Attitude, as if we are unruly schoolchildren who need to be told for the umpteenth time How to Play Well With Others.

Damn you. Damn you all, and damn your smug sense of superiority.

This, I think, is what Michael Nolan was attempting to express when he went on Facebook to call you a “slut,” Ms. Ford.

What are the everyday problems of Michael Nolan’s life? I don’t know, any more than I know anything about the plight of the Australian aborigines. At a distance of 10,000 miles from Sydney, I cannot hope to inquire among Mr. Nolan’s family, friends and acquaintances to ascertain his general character and reputation, nor to learn what sort of difficulties and hardships he might be dealing with.

What I do know is this: No one amongst Australia’s intellectual class — a class to which you, Clementine Ford, quite prominently belong — gives a damn about Mr. Nolan or anyone like him. The ordinary Australian, who works all day to pay his or her bills, rates so low in the estimation of elitists like yourself that you cannot even be bothered to notice that such people exist, except in those cases where your sadistic impulses compel you to publicly shame and humiliate some fellow like Mr. Nolan whose existence offends you: “Who is this despicable slob who thinks he can say rude things to us and get away with it?” Feminism is always a lecture and never a dialogue. So it is with any other issue that attracts the enthusiasm of the intellectual elite. Our Moral Superiors™ will tell us what to think, and we are expected to praise them for this.

Damn you, and damn your expectations. Damn you all to Hell.

So, Ms. Ford, this is how we play the game of Yours and Mine. Here on my blog, I accuse you of arrogance and sophistry, and you are free to answer this accusation however and wherever you wish.

But you won’t, will you? No, it is beneath the dignity of Clementine Ford to address such an accusation as this from a lowly peon like me. You will pretend that there is no one on the planet who has seen through your transparent charade of superiority. For to acknowledge me — someone who has spotted your intellectual hustle as the shabby trick it is — would call attention to the general question of your own authority as an Arbiter of Correct Thinking. Who are you, ma’am, to tell us what we are allowed to think? What makes you so much better than the rest of us? Where is the proof of your extraordinary virtue, that qualifies you to stand in the pulpit, to condemn everyone else as sinners, and demand that we accept the Gospel of Progressive Salvation?

Damn you, Clementine Ford, and damn your claim to “journalism.” You are selfish and dishonest and, more importantly, you are a vengeful sadist who craves power to punish and humiliate others.

You are a very bad person — you are wicked, evil, corrupt, consumed by your own depravity — and anyone who admires you is a deluded fool. But though I publish this accusation in hope that the whole world will read it, so that they may condemn you as a cruel bully and a cunning liar, I do not expect any answer from you, because that is not how people like you play the game. No, what you seek to do is to dictate the rules of the game, and to decide who is allowed to play, so that You always win and They always lose, and then you and your buddies gather around to congratulate yourselves on how fabulously clever you are.

Damn you, Clementine Ford, and damn all your friends, too.

Game over. Thanks for playing Yours and Mine.

— Robert Stacy McCain

 

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69 comments

  1. Our esteemed host errs:

    Considering that I have never visited Australia and know next to nothing about your aborigines, I’m sure I could not be fairly accused of hating them.

    Why, of course you could. The aborigines — I s’pose that’s probably a racist term too; how ’bout “Native Australians”? — are not white, but their land was conquered by white people, and since you, as a famous h8er, are also white, you just naturally hate anyone who isn’t white.

    Please make a note of this.

  2. Being the descendant of more than one Conquered Nation, I suppose the progressives are full of sympathy for my plight? No? Can I not expect anyone at Harvard or Yale to speak piteously of me, the Confederate-American? Or my more distant ancestors, the Scots? What about those remote savages, the Picts, whose unique culture so confounded Romans in the age of Hadrian?

    Ah, but all white people are so damned by our privilege that I, whose grandfather plowed the red clay of East Alabama behind a mule team, can say nothing in my own defense because, RAAAAACIST!

  3. Since my mother’s family is from Maine, does that mean I am the conqueror of your family? 🙂

    Of course, my mother is a Mayflower descendant, which means she participated in the conquering of the noble Indians native Americans, so I’m a horrible person.

  4. Well, let’s see: on my mother’s side, I’m of English descent, and the English were conquerors, but the family reached these shore in 1620, the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, and they were persecuted religious refugees. Nevertheless, they helped start the wave of white conquerors who so greatly abused the Indians.

    But, on my father’s side, well they were migrant farm workers, Portuguese immigrants on Maui.

    I think that it’s time that His Wombatness worked up some sort of White Privilege scoreboard, because this gets so very complicated. I grew up poor, but I’m not poor anymore, and I just don’t know how strongly I should self-flagellate?

    All denunciations will be humbly accepted.

  5. I’ve determined that “white privilege” is the progressive version of original sin. Which is sadly ironic because the board where the discussion took place consisted of pagans who don’t believe in original sin.

    Anyway, to “wash away the sin,” you have to humble yourself and acknowledge the sins of your skin color (if you don’t have any specific sins, some will be assigned to you). You have to abase yourself before the designated victim of the week.

    And this is the most important thing. If you can draw enough attention to the “victim’s plight,” you are granted instant forgiveness for any of your sins up to this point. You don’t have to do anything else or give anything else.

    Until there’s a new victim of the week…

  6. Mr Wayland wrote:

    If you can draw enough attention to the “victim’s plight,” you are
    granted instant forgiveness for any of your sins up to this point.

    Uhhh, no, not at all, as we have learned from the University of Missouri — RS must be so ashamed! — even those very liberal white students must be sent off, to provide a Safe Space™ for Students of Colour®. Clearly, this indicates that no matter how much sympathy you have, nor how much attention you draw to their plight, you will not only not be forgiven, but only barely, if at all, tolerated.

    Original sin can be forgiven; white privilege cannot.

  7. Why are liberals so powerful that they can do things like this? If I were this guy I’d hunt that Nazionale down and silence her forever

  8. The Left counts on the fact that people like Mr. Nolan are Civilized, believe in The Rule Of Law. So they feel no compunction in slandering, harassing and harming them.

    Thing is: if the Left keeps this up, some of us Civilized folk may be pushed over the edge one day. A Man can only take so much.

  9. Wish I was a fly on the wall when his boss called him in to fire him. I would’ve gone the F off on the guy and been dragged out by the police after beating him senseless and giving him a real reason to fire me.

  10. I once had a black friend … who volunteered to me that he thought Aborigines were the ugliest race of people in the entire world.

  11. Gentlemen, be ye of good cheer!

    All that is necessary to defeat feminism is to tell the truth about feminism.

    I am concerned by the implication of violence in your comments, even though I am sure you are both law-abiding men. We ought to scrupulously avoid appearing as the dangerous stereotype of what feminists say their antagonists are.

  12. We are angry because this could happen to any of us. I have this guy’s job and it’s frightening I have to watch what I say or someone could get me fired. It’s dangerous and needs to be stopped. The truth doesn’t help that guy get his job back. He may never get another job again because of this stain. The comments in the article are basically “Tough luck dude, be nice on the Internet or else.” WTF?

  13. Let’s be honest here: anyone who comments on the internet and says anything that isn’t wholly innocuous runs the risk of being fired for it.

    Our host is, in effect, self-employed, so he’s safe, and I can retire at any time I choose, so I’m pretty much immune as well, but most people are not.

  14. Why?

    Oh, to be sure, I do understand why you;d be angry in such a situation, even why you might be enraged at his craven hypocrisy. That’s not the “why?” I’m asking.

    What I’m asking is why you’d want to continue working for such a craven hypocrite? Why would you see a craven hypocrite’s sniffing that “We don’t need your kind around here” as a reflection on (and insult of) you, rather than the self-revelation it is?

  15. The truly sad thing is that a few idiots–students, faculty and administration–have tarnished the degrees which many of us earned years ago at Mizzou. Trust me when I say, the alumni backlash is there and growing. By allowing the radicals in the College of Arts & Science to suck all the air from the room, the rest of the university is suffering. The alumni are not happy and it will take awhile for that trust to be restored.

  17. I don’t disagree with your thesis, but I note Mr. Nolan played into the hand of the SJWs by responding in kind on social media and using impolitic, course language. He invited his own destruction.

    I realize that is a harsh judgment, but the fact of the matter remains, in this day of cyber lynch mobs, one must engage the enemy in ways which cannot be used against one outside of the engagement. Social media is a battlefield and the SJWs know this. It’s one thing if a person is self-employed; it’s another when one’s livelihood is controlled by others who would rather avoid controversy than support an employee.

  19. “Ever heard the sound a feminist makes when confronted with facts that
    don’t fit her rigid ideology? Kind of like … crickets chirping.”

    My experience is that they screech louder.

  20. I certainly do not disagree with the sentiment, but we also have to realize that when one is employed by another, there exists trade-offs. Yes, employees have private lives. By the same token, when those private lives begin to adversely affect an employer’s business, the employer’s interests take over. I write as a business owner. I don’t want my employees overtly evangelizing for anything controversial because my business has clients from all walks of life. I don’t want to lose clients because of some cause employees are supporting which client’s may wrongly attribute to me.

  21. You realize that means almost no one in the private sector may engage in any form of political activism then and therefore is nothing better than socially enforced tyranny right?

    That is completely unacceptable to me. How am I supposed to advocate my cause under these conditions? Basically that strips the working class of a prime civil right.

  23. I don’t think it’s as drastic as you make it sound. It’s not about being a member of political party or advocating for a position. Rather, it is about the method in which it’s done. I don’t want political signs in my office. I don’t want religious materials in my office. If one’s beliefs are outside my office, I don’t care. If one’s activities outside my office are within the bounds of propriety, I don’t care.

    Where Mr. Nolan made his mistake was a) having a lot of personal information–including his employer–splashed over social media and b) using social media to post intemperate remarks about someone else. That’s why he got fired. He set himself up to be attacked via his employer. It was a stupid, amateur move. If one of my employees were to have done such a thing, s/he’d be gone, too, regardless of whether I agreed with him/her. It’s not about the position being advocated; it’s about calling someone a “slut.” Why should I have defend that? I’m in the business of making money and making sure my employees get paid.

    Make no mistake. I don’t police what my employees believe, where they go to church, whom they vote for, or anything else. I don’t care. I only care, when their activities adversely affect me. If they don’t like that, they can invest their own capital and open their own businesses and do what they want.

  26. Most of us here support the concept of employment at will, which means that your employer can choose to end your employment for any reason he wishes . . . and if your private life results in adverse business for your employer, yes, he’s going to suggest you find other employment.

    None of us would think anything wrong with that if an employee started showing up to work with blue hair or filthy: those things would hurt customer service. If you post stuff about [Insert derogatory slang word for Negroes here], and it reaches your employer, you will find yourself without a job, and rightly so, because this will cost him business.

    Most employers wouldn’t fire someone for supporting Hillary Clinton — though such certainly should be a firing offense! — but some things are going to get you canned.

  27. Ummm, hate to tell you this, but she was forced out of the Association when she insisted all pagans had to wear pointy hats.

    She didn’t make exceptions for Greek fisherman caps or fedoras. I was so put out at her, I almost denounced her there and then.

    I had to settle for denouncing her spouse.

  28. But the thing is this woman is a nobody with absolutely no power to damage the business in any way. She isn’t a customer and she isn’t a celebrity or a head of state. She’s just some twit and to quake in fear of her is galling. These crusades do not damage businesses ever and it all blows over.

    You give the guy 30 days off and bring him back. You ignore the mob it goes away. That is the proper response to this stupidity.

  29. Spot on. The problem is implying that an employee’s opinions are those of the employer. Obviously, it’s ludicrous for someone to think that if “Dana” lists his employer on Facebook and posts something, that his him employer agrees with it. Nonetheless, such is the world we live in.

    My job is to make money to support my family and to make sure my employees have jobs and get paid. It is not to try to justify or distance myself from every opinion my employees have. As I said, I don’t care. Just don’t bring me into it. If someone asks me my opinion, I will tell them. But being forced to defend an employee’s advocacy which becomes connected to me is not worth my time.

    By the same token, if someone were to come to my office and say, “I say Jane Doe at a prayer vigil outside an abortion clinic” under circumstances where Jane Doe was not officially representing me, I would do nothing. Ditto, if Jane Doe were supporting Planned Parenthood but not connecting her support to me. It’s none of my business.

    It only becomes my business, if my employee deliberately or inadvertently drags me into it.

  30. How bout just ignoring the twit mob until they go away? Twit mobs do not destroy businesses or even affect sales. To can someone over a twit mob complaint is cowardly and unfair.

  31. I don’t disagree necessarily. My opinion is based upon my own experience as a business owner in a small community. The results of such behavior would magnified because of the small pond in which I make my living.

    Again, the question is not about expressing disagreement with Feminism. It is about the manner in which the disagreement was done and the fact that Mr. Roland listed his employer on his Facebook page. Had he disagreed in a more rational, less aggressive manner, i.e. not using the word “slut,” things might have been different. Had he not listed his employer, things might have been different.

    The problem in this day and age is that social media provides means for attack. It’s stupid for people to put themselves in that position. It doesn’t have to be about politics or social issues. For heaven’s sake, I’m a conservative, Christian capitalist. The fights are worthy to have, but one must engage smartly. Inflammatory rhetoric without reason does not advance the cause. Giving your opponent a means to attack you independent of reason and logic is not the way to win.

    Do I wish it were otherwise? Sure. But we have to play the hand we’re dealt, and that’s the way I see it.

  32. Why do you think I’ve been using an alias on the Internet for 25+ years now? So someone googling my real name won’t find any political comments I’ve made ever.

    It’s also the reason I do not use Facebook for anything.

  34. And of course it is not “women” who are being harassed online but Third Wave Feminists. While claiming to be experts on understanding how damaging group defamation is against non-whites, women and gays, TWFs endlessly defame all straight white men as an entire group. When the inevitable pushback occurs they have the “proof” of misogyny, racism and homophobia they knew was there all along. It’s a self-replicating industry of stupid.

    This moronic women is too stupid and unprincipled to understand this comparison but you don’t fire Jews and blacks for insulting members of the KKK or a neo-Nazi. Are the KKK and neo-Nazis being “harassed” by Jews and blacks? Most likely they are. Are other whites? No. Just as normal women aren’t being harassed compared to this dizzy dame down under.

    The truth is TWFs and gay and black activists use their very identities and fake statistics showing their “oppressions” as a shield to indulge in what a normal person would call hate speech. It would’ve been nice had the hotel said we don’t condone this employee’s language in normal cases but seeing how it was done against a woman who’s made a career indulging in group defamation and hate speech we’ll make an exception.

  38. What’s frightening about it? There used to be no internet. Just stay off of it. I have never for one minute wished there was an internet before there actually was one. It is the nature of social media itself that is the danger, but social media for the vast majority is as necessary as 6 ft tall salt shakers. If you want to use one, fine. But don’t blame others if you wreck your back. There’s always double standards in life. Take it like a man.

  39. I agree. What’s the difference between telling an employee to wear a suit and tie and don’t attract attention as a clown on social media?

  41. That’s kind of like asking, “Why do feminists (of both chromosomal dispositions) tend to be advocates of sluttery?”

    Perhaps a more important question is, “Why do most supposedly normal men automatically/unthinkingly join the feminists in pearl-clutching shrieking whenever some mere man dares to state a truth the feminists don’t want people to know or think about?”

  42. “…presume themselves fit to tell the rest of us what to think.”
    Mx. Ford doesn’t look very fit, judging by Xer picture above.

  43. “Feminists claim their movement is about ’empowering’ women…”
    But they always rely on someone else to do their dirty work. Maybe we should be attacking the white knights out there too.

  49. It’s about empowering lesbianism. They’re just too stupid to understand where their own cult came from.

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