Ilana Mercer
Critical Race Theory Transcends Reality
by Ilana Mercer
Inciting racial hatred against whites is all in a day’s work on CNN. It devolves into a more festive affair when a celebrity like DL Hughley joins the network’s conga-line of cretins. In a July segment, the comedian, author of Surrender, White People, regaled those CNN viewers with a masochistic mindset, by comparing “racism” to COVID19. Whitey, belched Hughley—who used to be witty and is now a drag—can be an asymptomatic carrier of racism. Just because you haven’t done anything racist, doesn’t mean you aren’t racist.
Pay no attention to the COVID-race comparison. It’s the Left’s lowbrow idea of an intellectual quip. Be mindful, however, of the “guilty if you do, guilty if you don’t” pop-jurisprudence. Collectively convicting an entire racial group for metaphysical crimes is the cornerstone of the Critical Race Theory (CRT). Flouting Western judicial philosophy, Critical Race Theory says that you are a racist without having committed racism, which is like being a murderer, robber or rapist without having murdered, robbed or raped. How does that jurisprudence strike you? It strikes the reasonable, fair-minded member of society as “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”
Deconstructed, racism, as deployed by Critical Race theorists, is purely a metaphysical affair. It doesn’t survive contact with reality, relying for its validation on a loose relationship with the real world. You might say Critical Race Theory is anchored in symbolism and not realism. Ditto Critical Race Feminism (CRF), a subspecies of CRT, the symbolic nature of which this writer had traced in a 2001, Ottawa Citizen column. Continue reading
Tricoteurs Occupy Bowes Museum
Bowes Museum, credit Wikipedia
Tricoteurs Occupy Bowes Museum
by Bill Hartley
Barnard Castle has an earlier claim to fame. It’s the home of the Bowes Museum, incongruously perched on a valley side in what looks like a huge French chateau. In the nineteenth century, local landowner John Bowes and his wife used their great wealth to amass a large collection of paintings, furniture and fine art. A significant amount of the Bowes wealth came from Durham coal mining royalties.
Exhibitions and events can be the lifeblood of a museum and the Bowes currently has two. It might be expected that this venerable institution would stage exhibitions which dovetail with its role as the repository of so many artistic treasures. These days though the Bowes is prepared to take in some peculiar lodgers. Perhaps in a building groaning with artistic treasures, many originally designed to fit the grandest rooms, there is a need to dispel any notion of elitism and ensure a connection with modern society. Imagine then entering one of the museum’s galleries, the walls adorned with 18th and 19th century pictures, many hung in massive gilt frames. In the midst of this, a collection of female mannequins have been placed, each wearing a denim jacket onto which have been sewn numerous identical patches. An awful realisation strikes the visitor. He must forget the quiet contemplation of artworks painted in an age when draughtsmanship was prized. Now he is confronted by an attempt to be relevant. Continue reading →
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