The American feminist author, commentator and political consultant (she "helped" both Clinton and Al Gore's presidential campaigns) Namoi Wolf is someone I've tried to avoid reading until now. I've read dismissive comments by American right-wing columnists and decided to accept their overwhelmingly negative evaluation of the woman. But I just read one of her articles, published in The Guardian several days ago. It's about the recent action by American police to break up the various ridiculous "Occupy" protests across the country.Naomi Wolfe was arrested in New York last month due to her behaviour at the "Occupy Wall Street" protest, and held for an hour. A whole hour! This appears to have utterly unhinged her (but I'm guessing she was a few tampons short of a full handbag before her brutalisation at the hands of New York's Nazi attack-dogs):
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.(If you really feel the need to read the whole article, it's available here.)
Close textual analysis would be superfluous. Suffice it to say that anyone irrational enough to describe a collection of spoiled, featherbedded, workshy middle class American brats in severe need of a stern talking-to and a swift kick up the arse as the "true brothers and sisters" of people who've spent decades living under one of the Middle East's many fascist dictatorships (albeit, in this instance, one of the more benign examples) is morally insane.
I wouldn't have thought it possible, but I'm beginning to suspect that the shrieking banshees of America's Liberal Left are even more irrational and repellent than the home-grown variety.
Ms Wolf is a graduate of both Yale and New College, Oxford. Her lecturers and tutors should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
I'll end with one of Ann Coulter's typically trenchant observations: "Naomi Wolfe...cranks out one failed, moronic book after another. If you have no talent but you want to become a successful writer, be a liberal!"
I went back for inspiration to the 19 October Guardian article that started it all, the US civil war, followed by the emergence of a new liberal and benevolent order – Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street:
ReplyDeleteWe [Naomi Wolf and her partner] were taken in a van to the seventh precinct – the scary part about that is that the protesters and lawyers marched to the first precinct, which handles Hudson Street, but in the van the police got the message to avoid them by rerouting me. I understood later that the protesters were lied to about our whereabouts, which seemed to me to be a trickle-down of the Bush-era detention practice of unaccountable detentions.
Can she name the current president? Of course she can, Naomi Wolf is regarded as something of an elder statesman in the Guardian and you can see why. Here she is on 6 November, How to Occupy the moral and political high ground:
• Protesters in democracies should create email lists locally ...
• Protests should be scenes not of clashes but instead should model the kind of civil society this emerging human family wants to live in. In Zuccotti Park, in Manhattan, for instance, there is a kitchen ...
• ... we should understand that it is not a "list of demands" that is so profound about any of these protest movements; it is the very infrastructure of a common humanity that is being created ...
Sound advice there, from the elder statesman who went on to file this article on 25 November from the bleeding heart of the gulag, The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy:
US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week ...
That is the third rail article that so caught Scott's imagination. He is not alone. The article earned the highest accolade the Guardian can award, an article about the article, Naomi Wolf: reception, responses, critics, in which Matt Seaton almost even-handedly includes this dissenting comment from a reader:
Naomi Wolf needs to stop looking for the black helicopters and take the tinfoil hat off. I, too, think some police departments have gone overboard on this. But it's not some vast coordinated conspiracy. One man at UC Davis pepper-spraying a row of sitting students is a dreadful image to watch. But he's not a 'phalanx' and he's now on leave and likely to be fired ...
There is a higher truth, though, without wishing in any way to sound religious. And the higher truth is that that one man is, indeed, a phalanx.
The elder statesman bravely vouchsafes these truths to us in the largest doses she thinks we can manage. For example, did you know that We are all torturers in America (The sudden clamour to prosecute the CIA operatives who carried out waterboarding is the height of hypocrisy, 28 April 2009)?
What is it like to be an elder statesman? When an elder statesman looks in the mirror, what does she see? You don't know, do you. Luckily, Naomi Wolf wrote What I see in the mirror on 10 February 2007, so now you can find out the answer.
Oh dear. It seems that "the very infrastructure of a common humanity that is being created" and bestowed on us by a bountiful Naomi Wolf is remarkably like the old infrastructure of common humanity.
ReplyDeleteAccording to this morning's Times, St Paul’s Cathedral protest turns Animal Farm, the Occupiers at St Paul's have a first aid team (who have asked for £1,200 for "walkie-talkies and trauma kits for treating stab and gunshot wounds") and a tranquility team and a finance committee.
Make that two finance committees, because now there are schisms in the first finance committee and an interim finance committee has been formed.
Ms Jones, who did a master’s degree in sociology at the London School of Economics, ... said that the maximum balance ever held by the camp was £17,000, but an anonymous whistleblower said:
“About two weeks ago we had £21,000 in donations and there must have been more now but they said there would be no more money for the food tent or the tranquillity tent and that the legal team couldn’t use taxis or buy stationery.
“We want to know where all the money has gone. The people who made the donations thought it was going to feed us but one younger mother has had to leave because they said there was not enough food.
“It is becoming a nightmare and people are starting to leave. It is becoming intimidating. If you don’t agree with what the leaders say they shout at you and can be quite aggressive. We are now being ruled by an elite inner circle. They are telling us what to think.”
Your post reminds me of the the comment made about another loopy feminist Camille Paglia. "The G in Paglia is silent, about the only thing about her that is."
ReplyDeleteThank you for the Naomi Wolf links. I particularly enjoued the following quote: "I see a paradox about time. By a trick of some kind of subjective filter, I always, reflexively, expect to see the face I had at 19" - and, apparently, the same reasoning power she had when she five.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's this: "...curiosity always trumps fear." But evidently not when a big cop is spraying pepper in your face!
The St Paul's stuff is good too. There was a documentary on the BBC last year which looked at what happened to all the hippy communes that sprang up in the US in the early 1970s. They all broke down because of one simple fact: left-wingers are fascists who only applaud diversity when it is annoys their enemies - when they themselves represent authority, they cannot handle dissent, and it all gets very ugly very quickly.
Ms Wolf is a graduate of both Yale and New College, Oxford. Her lecturers and tutors should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
ReplyDeleteHere we are, 7½ years more insane, Ms Wolf has gone back to Oxford and done a PhD on the introduction of anti-homosexual law in mid-nineteenth century England ...
... a PhD which requires debate on ...
... BBC Radio 3, the classical music programme ...
a debate which you can enjoy here. All goes smoothly for the first 20 minutes or so.
Then Matthew Sweet, Ms Wolf's interviewer, points out that she has misinterpreted the evidence of people being executed for consensual homosexual sex.
"Death recorded" in the Old Bailey records of the time did not require anyone to die. It was a masterly piece of sophistry, or hypocrisy if you like, a nod to the law and a practical recognition of the facts of life. Mr Sweet notes that "Death recorded" is written against the name of one defendant followed immediately by the details of his release.
Mr Sweet also accuses Ms Wolf of over-interpreting the evidence. Some of the people counted by Ms Wolf were sent to gaol in the UK or transported overseas for acts of bestiality or for assault, including assault on minors. They aren't all wronged loving couples.
Dr Wolf?
Ms Wolf is a graduate of both Yale and New College, Oxford. Her lecturers and tutors should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
This Matthew Sweet chap who kindly corrected Dr Wolf's misapprehensions is also the primum mobile of an old documentary re-shown last night on BBC Four, The Rules of Film Noir.
DeleteThe documentary was succeeded by a showing of On Dangerous Ground, which follows most of the rules except for a dusting of redemption at the end.