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Fifth Column
Steyn: Punching Back Twice as Hard (Oz version)
2016-10-23
I believe our headline was first coined by the Instapundit, who was kind enough to apply it to my book "A Disgrace to the Profession". But I'm glad to see, following the latest attempt to use Australia's disgraceful Section 18C to throttle freedom of speech Down Under, that The Australian's Bill Leak is introducing the concept to the Antipodes. His latest cartoon features Tim Soutphommasane, the totalitarian hack who trousers a third of a million a year as Oz's "Racial Discrimination" Commissar. Mr Leak invites Commissar Tim Jong-Un to sue him for "facial discrimination".

As for "facial discrimination", in my column on Mr Leak I mentioned Commissar Soutphommasane's thuggish bullying of a young basketball player, who made the mistake of going to a fancy-dress party as her fave pop star, Kanye West. When I spoke in Sydney a little while back, I brought up a similar and even nuttier outbreak of hysteria from one of America's many loony campuses:

Two Australian basketball players, Alice Kunek and Tess Madgen, went to a fancy-dress party – one in blackface, one in whiteface. The one in blackface was meant to be Kanye West, the one in whiteface was meant to be ...I dunno, nobody cares ...Heath Ledger as the Joker? But Australia's race discrimination commissioner has weighed in and said he's deeply disturbed. This young lady is 25, and the state – the Government of Australia – is weighing in on how she went to a fancy-dress party.

But there's a lot of blackface about. A couple of days ago, Beverly Kopper, President of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, released a very serious statement:

'Last night a disturbing racist post that was made to social media was brought to my attention... This post was hurtful and destructive to our campus community." The Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Dr Tom Rios, has formed a group that has already begun meeting with students, researching these issues, and working on the development of an action plan for moving forward. The group will meet next week to plan a series of events across campus "to capture the student voice and develop a collective response to these issues... You have my promise that these steps are only the starting points and together, we will determine actions that will ultimately create a long-term cultural change.'

This was because of a racially-charged picture that two female students had posted of themselves in 'blackface'. In fact, they weren't in blackface. They were getting a facial. So they had that gunk all over their face and a couple of cucumbers or whatever on their eyes – and when they took the cucumbers off they had a giggle about how funny they looked and took a selfie. And Beverly Kopper, a complete bloody moron who happens to be a university president, is perfectly happy to destroy their lives over this. The girls are not guilty of racial discrimination; the university is guilty of facial discrimination.

This chump has now announced that, although the great big express train of outreach committees and working groups is rumbling down the track and can't be stopped, the two young ladies will not be 'disciplined'. Disciplined? For what? Beverly Kopper blamed the students for 'failing to think about the implications' – of having a facial. Because we live in a world where a facial is one step away from a minstrel show.

I'm an effete nancy-boy, and I get a facial from time to time, because I want my skin to look good for brutal close-ups on nights like this, and it's well known that 'Can I get a seaweed wrap?' is code for 'I'm a big redneck southern bigot who wants to look good under my Klan hood'. If you go to any luxury spa in Sydney right now and kick open the door there'll be whole roomfuls of people covered in algae coconut moisturizing exfoliant capering around going 'Oh, my darling little mammy, down in Alabammy...'

Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. What this college president, Beverly Kopper, means when she says these students 'failed to think about the implications' of their racist exfoliating is that professional grievance mongers like her have so incentivized the taking of offence that there are now far more people who need to be offended than the number of people willing to offend them: Demand far outstrips supply. So in ten years' time these two students will be applying for jobs and their potential employer will Google them and the first 200 pages that come up will be about how racey-racey-racist they are.

The problem is not these young ladies in either Wisconsin or Australia. The problem is the likes of Beverly Kopper and Tim Soutphommasane. Because they're bonkers, and they're totalitarian. Which is a dangerous combination. Hence, that Kim Jong-Un cartoon.
Posted by:Pappy

#3  Steyn will probably get criticized for being "anti-Africansympathetic" and told to go to his "safe space" which I'm certain he doesn't give a fig about. Thank goodness for Steyn and his efforts to destroy this silliness of PC which has infected our culture.
Posted by: JohnQC   2016-10-23 09:05  

#2  Tim Soutphommosane took to the stage at the Sydney Writer's Festival and said Charlie Hebdo cartoons were offensive and there was a survivor on the stage.

when asked if he was going to support free speech or support the Islamist push to reclassify "religion" as "race" so they can sue their enemies into silence, he told the questioner they must be with the bigots and racists.
Posted by: anon1   2016-10-23 06:34  

#1  Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive.

Edward Gibbon couldn't be reached for a comment.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2016-10-23 04:44  

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