Catechism

"In the shadow of the big screen

Everybody begs to be redeemed"

 

Metric - Synthetica

 

 

I confess to an occasional guilty pleasure in comedy news television like the Daily Show knock-offs featuring Jon Stewart's old coterie. Pleasure, because modern culture's rampant anti-intellectualism has deprived us of urbane, educated public voices and it's always refreshing to hear a popular speaker who does not affect yokel mannerisms for mass appeal. Guilty, because they do require mass appeal of some sort, as well as financier appeal, and they pay their bills by servicing the Democratic Party's voting blocs. Which, again, is a damn sight better than the alternative, but still entails constant prostration before some altar or another. Feminism, as the most obvious and widespread placeholder religion of our age, demands the lion's share of such debasement. Take for instance Last Week Tonight's segment from July on coronavirus conspiracy theories:

The show's writers threw that image in your face, seemingly out of context as a throwaway gag, shortly before criticizing Mikovits, a female conspiracy theorist from the anti-medicine screed Plandemic. Purely by coincidence, Oliver immediately segued to a quote from the film's male producer questioning the disbelief of Mikovits' anti-facemask nonsense in light of the #MeToo corollary slogan to always believe all women. To which Oliver retorted: "the phrase is 'believe women' not 'believe all women'" and "the point of that movement is not 'well, I guess we'll just all have to take Rachel Dolezal at her word now!'"

A dishonest rebuke (of an otherwise valid target) on multiple points. Dolezal really was taken at her word when she started masquerading as African, for about five years from a cursory glance. One wonders how much that timespan was lengthened by our communal presumption of women as entitled, unquestionable, pristine martyrs, or how long a white man in blackface would've lasted in her place, as a public speaker and activist no less, lacking the neotenized features to lower everyone's guard, or how heavily the same expectation of sympathy featured in Plandemic's choice of interviewee. From that baseline of credulity, if we're to proceed under the umbrella of "believe women" we could easily expect these same two-faced females' credibility to skyrocket if making sexual misconduct accusations against men. The social "justice" warriors who parrot the phrase absolutely mean it as an absolute statement to ALWAYS believe ALL women in inter-sexual conflict - just try finding examples where feminists have disbelieved a female accusing a man of breaking some taboo. Over the past few years we've seen men accused of literal or figurative rape by every woman who's ever been in a room with them, and neither politicians nor media figures dare to so much as clear their throats at the sheer logistic absurdity of these claims.

However, it was the very next statement from Last Week Tonight's segment which prompted me to bookmark it for a blog post: "a common trait of conspiracy theories that they're inherently self-sealing, with any criticism just becoming evidence that the whole thing is just bigger than anyone could've imagined." Oft noted, and consistently true. As a side-note, such recursive self-justification most obviously shows in religious dogma. There's always a pervasive source of evil, and anyone who denies the influence of The Devil must be an agent of The Evil One Himself! Every absolutist belief will construe lack of evidence as evidence in itself, as exemplified by a witch-hunter's quote from shortly before the Salem trials: “If any are Scandalized, that New England, a place of as serious Piety, as any I can hear of, under Heaven, should be troubled so much with Witches; I think, 'tis no wonder: Where will the Devil show most Malice but where he is hated, and hateth most?”

 

I quoted that bit once before, in the context of accusations of racism. Oliver aligns himself just as desperately to the winning side of a witch hunt when he sandwiches even the lightest criticism of a female spouting conspiratorial gibberish between a gratuitous slam against men in general and an attempt to shift his audience's rage onto the movie's producer as being anti-woman. Reaffirmations of one's faith in the superiority of those born the correct sex have only grown more farcical over the past decade. Much like religious incantations, that statement in the screenshot doesn't need to make sense. It might in fact be interpreted as the opposite of feminism, declaring that the failings of individual men do not reflect on all... but we know damn well that's not the case. Just as when you hear a skinhead muttering something about "the jews" you know he's probably not expressing a love of matzo, when the audience of Last Week Tonight sees the words "man failing miserably" you can expect them to interpret it as Blame All Men. For Everything. Always.

 

Want a bigger conspiracy theory? Try the core feminist assertion that the category "Men" has colluded to oppress the category "Women" for all of history, everywhere, no other explanations admitted no way no how no ma'am. It comes complete with "criticism just becoming evidence that the whole thing is just bigger than anyone could've imagined" as feminists ignore or shift the goal-posts away from every new piece of disconfirming evidence, redefining it as "patriarchy hurts men too" parroting the "stop hitting yourself" schoolyard bully's catchphrase.

Finally, I must note the multimillion-dollar writing team behind the show felt the need to correct the phrasing "believe all women" even though it's a fucking Twit-tag and not a mathematical law. You can hear the same desperation for legitimacy when religious crackpots correct anyone making fun of Jonah living inside a whale, because the Bible doesn't say "whale" but only "big fish". Oh, you didn't specifically say "all" women? My mistake. That must make me so wrong about you promoting a bigoted worldview in which those born the wrong sex are pre-condemned as inherent criminals. Let none dispute the scriptural perfection of the holy trinity of Steinem, Koss and Dworkin!

 

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edit 2021/03/16:

 

Last Week Tonight laid the icing on this particular cake about nine months later (or wait, would that just be the afterbirth?) when they attacked another political show host, Tucker Carlson, as racist. Because of course, everyone's racist and sexist except for Last Week Tonight, the show which inserts at least three gratuitous slams against whites and/or men into every segment. Because those people born the wrong sex and race deserve abuse.

They dismissed Carlson's defense against this all-purpose witch's mark of the modern age by claiming he defined racism too narrowly. Quoth Oliver: "'I don't burn crosses or lynch people, so I can't be a white supremacist' is a pretty weak argument."

ORLY?

Yet the exact words defense is somehow perfectly valid for Last Week Tonight, because you can't be promoting anti-male propaganda if you didn't specifically pass a law defining all women as angels and all men as demons... right Johnny?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly inclined to defend Tucker Carlson or anyone else on Fox, but do note Oliver's hypocrisy of accusing others of bigotry while constantly promoting a social movement which values mens' lives less than one-eighth that of a woman... but not in those exact words.

I will not accept the presumption that black supremacism is somehow morally superior to white supremacism, or that female chauvinism is justified by male chauvinism.