The Other McCain

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‘The Hard-Hitting Social Commentary We’re Trying to Get Across’

Posted on | September 27, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘The Hard-Hitting Social Commentary We’re Trying to Get Across’

Olivia Wilde and Florence Pugh in ‘Don’t Worry Darling’

Because my 19-year-old daughter is a Harry Styles fan, I have a built-in bias against Olivia Wilde, the 38-year-old ex-girlfriend of Jason Sudekis, whom Styles is currently dating. Also, it should be pointed out, Wilde’s grandfather was an infamous Commie, which is all the more reason to hate her. Now, as the cherry on top of this hot fudge sundae of hate, we have the revelation that a villainous character in Wilde’s new movie is based on Jordan Peterson — or, to put it more accurately, the character is based on an ignorant stereotype of Peterson:

Katie Silberman: [Heavy sigh, more scrolling] Last major point, I guess, is the Jordan Peterson thing.
Shane Van Dyke: The what?
Olivia Wilde: Frank the cult leader. Chris Pine? Katie and I thought the version you pitched us was a bit one-note, so we put our heads together and figured out a way to really bind all the hard-hitting social commentary we’re trying to get across. WB thought we should let you know, just so there’s no surprises when the movie comes out.
Carey Van Dyke: And what does Frank have to do with Jordan Peterson?
Olivia Wilde: You know…white male pseudo-intellectual. Leader of the incels. Spouts weird shit about chaos and lobsters?
Katie Silberman: That’s Frank all over.
Shane Van Dyke: No disrespect, gang, but have you read Jordan Peterson or listened to any of his lectures?
Olivia Wilde: Um, eww! I’ve never drank bleach before but I know it’s poison!

Perhaps most offensive here is Wilde’s assertion that Peterson — a professor of clinical psychology, who produced important research while on the faculty of Harvard in the 1990s — is a “pseudo-intellectual,” No, ma’am. Whatever your disagreements with the professor may be, he is a genuine intellectual, and there is nothing “pseudo” about it. Apparently, Wilde’s opinion of Peterson is not based on direct knowledge of his work, but rather is based on feminist criticism of his work. And her idea that Peterson is “Leader of the incels” — where did she get that? Isn’t that misbegotten notion also likely traceable to something Wilde got by reading Amanda Marcotte, Jessica Valenti and other feminists?

There is a paranoid pattern of belief on the Left where everything they hate is somehow related to every other thing they hate. For example, liberals hate Trump and they hate racism, therefore Trump is a racist, and anyone who writes something that liberals consider racist must be connected to Trump. The whole thing about “incels” sprang into public consciousness in 2014 when Elliot Rodger went on a murder spree in Santa Barbara, California. Feminist writers like Marcotte and Valenti became rather obsessed with this massacre as some kind of symbol of the fatal menace of “misogyny,” of which “incels” like Elliot Rodger were the violent tip of the hateful iceberg. A few months after the Santa Barbara massacre, “GamerGate” zoomed into prominence and, in the minds of many feminists, was instantly connected to the “incel” phenomenon. It was around the same time that Jordan Peterson began to become popular on YouTube, and I can only conjecture that his temporal proximity to these events caused feminists to associate him with the whole “incel”/“misogyny” phenomenon. Of course, there is the fact that Peterson looks at human differences from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology (dismissed by Wilde as “weird shit about chaos and lobsters”) which feminists insist is inherently sexist. That is to say, any man who suggests there are natural differences between men and women is guilty of “misogyny,” according to feminists and — to follow this everything-is-connected belief pattern to its irrational conclusion — because “incels” are also misogynists, then it is fair to view Jordan Peterson as a “leader of the incels.” In the same way, the Soviet Union imposed Lysenkoism and condemned basic agricultural science as “bourgeois.”

If the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And if the only ideology you have is feminism, every problem looks like misogyny. Because of the unipolar dynamic of feminist ideology, everything they consider problematic is lumped together as part of an oppressive system, and therefore Professor Peterson gets dumped into the same “basket of deplorables” as Donald Trump and “incels.”

Such is the “hard-hitting social commentary” Olivia Wilde wedged into her new movie, and really, Harry Styles needs to dump that bitch.

By the way, Harry — my daughter loves you. And she’s cute.

 

She doesn’t like lobsters, though.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

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