by liberal japonicus
The last post was about Vance’s response about his wife’s faith, which has gotten various takes, the most interesting of which for me are with Indian press (such as these from the Times of India here, here, here or the Hindustan Times here, here and here) and everyone is welcome to talk about this. A little research about the two outlets is that The Times of India is older (1838), with links to the colonial era while the Hindustan time is newer(1924) and associated with Gandhi and the independence movement.
But I (and I post this risking Novakant’s ire about Alastair Campbell) was listening to the Rest is Politics interview of Michael Gove. While they represent two different varieties of greasiness, Gove’s background has some similar points to Vance’s, filtered thru the gauze of British classism. It’s the Goldwater rule that a psychiatrist should not publicly diagnose a public figure they have not personally examined. Fortunately, I’m not a psychiatrist, so there you go.
Open-y thread for things you want to talk about.
All cleaned up…
But cleaned up kinda misses the point, doesn’t it?
Vance strikes me as a person who has no values beyond self-promotion and no sincerity. He’ll say or do what is convenient at the time. He might decide to dump the Hindo wife to marry the wife of the martyred Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Have just started to shift to teaching my students about speculative journalism (reporting of things like climate change that frame parts of the story using the tools [extrapolation, cognitive estrangement] of science fiction). I have them read a few Spec J pieces from High Country News based on the Fourth National Climate Assessment from 2018 with the stories set in 2068. In past quarters I have pulled up a copy of the Assessment to show the what and the how of the extrapolation.
All of the governmental links to the study are broken. The Ancient Orange One and his gibbering minions have taken down those sites. This despite the fact that it was his previous administration that published them in the first place.
And now I am torn as to whether the university will have my back if I simply point this out to my students. We’ve all been warned not to engage in anything that could be taken as political activism, and they are drawing a very risk-averse line in the sand for what counts as activism.
This is not sustainable.