Mel Gibson and Conservatives-in-Thrall-to-Liberal-Shibboleths ... and Lawrence Auster

I've been meaning to write this little item for a couple of days (and once again not updating and completing the post I'd promised 'Crude').

Originally, the intended post was in no way about Lawrence Auster. Rather, his connection to what I mean to say is that I was going to expand upon his comments/criticisms of something posted by Ed Morrissey on 'Hot Air'. But, in the meantime, Auster has written another post on the matter -- and has fallen into exactly the same "liberal" shibboleth for which I was going to criticize Morressey. This is rather odd, because Auster himself is forever criticizing that particular false mentality.

I suppose -- lest any "liberal" who may encounter these words gets the vapors -- I ought to first say a few words about my relationship, or lack thereof, with Mr Auster: we don't get along, and there are a number of things about him, both personally and philosophically, to which I strongly object. OK, maybe only one thing on the personal side -- he's not much better than "Vox Day" at accepting criticism, especially when it's correct (but, even there, "Vox Day" is worse). Philosophically? Several things, beginning with his near-obsession about race, when the problem is not biological race, but rather culture.

And that's really all I wish to say directly about Mr Auster on that particular account. Should the reader *really* care about a fuller exploration of my opinion on the matter, months ago at the 'What's Wrong With the World' blog, in a thread that was about "The Trouble with Larry," I explained (and documented) my view of what the trouble is. Since I've already done it, even though it's not posted on my blog, I feel no particular urge to revisit the matter. And, indirectly, the reaction of a different member (that is, different from the one who ask the question) of 'What's Wrong With the World' is why I no longer bother with that blog.

Nevertheless, and whatever "The Trouble with Larry" is, when he's right, he's right.

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So, I wish first to draw the reader's attention to this post by Auster touching on the most recent self-immolation by Mel Gibson. Specifically, Auster's point is about the absurdity of conservatives reacting like "precious little Victorian ladies, ready to faint dead away at the sound of the "N" word, even when uttered in a private conversation by a man who was obviously drunk."

Auster is criticizing the lamentable fact that very few who consider themselves to be conservative have ever put forth the intellectual effort necessary to de-program themselves from the leftist orthodoxies to which we all have been inculcated in the public indoctrination centers ... er, public schools. The main purpose of public "education," once the Progressive got control of it, was to train up the citizenry as Pavlovian dogs ... and far too many who think themselves conservative automatically react with the "proper" unthinking responses.

Next up is Morrissey's post on 'Hot Air' -- on which Auster was commenting, and to which my comments had originally been solely directed:

... Here’s the transcript:

“You go out in public and it’s a f*cking embarrassment to me. You look like a f*cking bitch in heat. And if you get raped by a pack of ni**ers it will be your fault. Alright? Because you provoked it. You are provocatively dressed all the time with your fake boobs that you feel you have to show off. I don’t like it. I don’t want that woman. I don’t want you. I don’t trust you. I don’t love you.”

In the previous post, commenters debated the use of the N-word in the context of the entertainment industry, but this isn’t a shout out to his peeps. Assuming this is Gibson, the actor uses the term in an extremely derogatory sense, as if rape necessarily follows from skin color. For that matter, says that rape comes from dressing provocatively, as if it’s a rational response to tight clothing, which is hardly true and perpetuates the notion that rape is a woman’s fault.

While the Pavlovian hyperventilation about the infamous "N-word" is absurd enough, what I wish to draw the reader's attention to is the further absurdity of a supposed conservative channeling some whacked-out man-hating bull-dyke feminist.

Gibson didn't say *anything* that can reasonably be construed as even implying that "rape necessarily follows from skin color." Rather, he made a reference to a sad fact of life in contemporary America, of which everyone is supposed to pretend to be wholly ignorant: black rapists rape white women (and men) *because* they are white, and they frequently do it in packs. And they frequently viciously maul and murder their victims.

Nor did Gibson didn't say *anything* that can reasonably be construed as even implying that rape is "a rational response to tight clothing" or that a woman who is raped deserves it (while 'deserve' is not the word Morressey uses, for he echoes Gibson's use of "your fault," that is what he is getting at).

Had Ms Grigorieva, Mr Gibson's erstwhile slut, been in the habit of teetering in her stiletto heels on the railing of a 13th floor balcony, and Gibson had "ranted" at her that "if you fall off there an kill yourself, it will be your own fault!" would any rational man imagine there was any flaw in what he had said, or that he had meant that she would *deserved* the very predictable result of he freely chosen behavior?

Of course not. A rational man understands that in the hypothetical Gibson means that Grigorieva's behavior greatly increases her chance of an unpleasant and untimely death. Likewise with what he did say: a rational man understands that Gibson means that Grigorieva's behavior greatly increases her chance of an unpleasant and unwanted, and possibly fatal, sexual encounter.


Lastly, there is another post by Auster, in which he echoes Moressey's unthinking Pavlovian recitation of "liberal" and feminist cant:

Again, Gibson said any number of extremely offensive things in his surreptitiously recorded private phone conversation with his former girl friend, including telling her that with the way she dressed she deserved to be gang raped. ...

Let me be perfectly clear (to coin a phrase), whatever Gibson may have been thinking, according to the transcripts, he did *not* tell his former slut that she deserves to be gang raped; rather, he told her a simple truth: her freely chosen behavior -- her insistence on living the fantasy of Grrl Power -- increases the odds that she will become a target of some of the predators amongst us.

Really, Mr Auster! This is one of your persistent (and correct!) themes: that leftism requires human sacrifice, in one form or another, and that the contemporary "liberal" edition of leftism gets those sacrifices by training up the people to be Eloi for the Morlocks who walk among us.

========= Update: 2010/07/14
Mr Auster has posted an update: I contradicted myself on Gibson -- which begins with this fully-expected Austerism:

The blogger Ilion--one of an entire sub-population of commenters in the right-wing blogosphere who falsely and obsessively accuse me of not replying to criticisms of myself, when the fact is that I refuse to reply to rude, irrational, and hostile statements about myself ...

That is *so* rich, coming from Lawrence Auster! Anyone who has spent much time reading him knows that he's a veritable one-man cottage industry of "falsely and obsessively accus[ing]" right-wing commentators of all manner of perfidy -- mostly involving their failure to echo him on certain matters.

And, lest anyone's memory of what I actually said be subborned by having read Mr Auster's claim that I accused him of "not replying to criticisms of [him]self" -- what I said (you can look it up!) is: " OK, maybe [I have] only one [strong objection to him] on the personal side -- he's not much better than "Vox Day" at accepting criticism, especially when it's correct (but, even there, "Vox Day" is worse)."


Steve Burton (on the 'What's Wrong With The World' blog) 'The Trouble With Larry' -- among the comments are mine, of which I had spoken above.


Updated: 2010/07/14