* Glad someone has the stones to call out TNC’s overly celebrated one-note writing…although I did watch Glen Loury and John McWhorter discuss him on Blogginghead (and McWhorter basically put his thoughts down in print in the Daily Beast earlier this week) and basically trash his work. As McWhorter says, TNC is basically the high priest of a religion, not a serious intellectual. He has an almost childish belief in a racial boogeyman that explains literally everything – his words, not mine – that plagues black society, never mind that to accept this view one must consider whites to be unbelievably cunning and far-sighted and blacks to be uniquely incapable of surmounting the challenges posed by life in a first world country.
* Serena Williams’ black body is celebrated in the New Adam Sandler film, at least if you’re a dwarf.
In 1985, Tina Turner had a star turn in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I remember my then-teenage self finding her black legs to be rather fetching. Rae Dawn Chong was in Commando with Arnold in the same year. Holly Robinson (then Holly Robinson Peete) was on 21 Jump Street in the late 80s, early 90s. I particularly liked the episode when she went undercover in Catholic school. There we have it, black bodies celebrated
Anyhow, my real question: do liberals actually believe this crap? Destroying Coates intellectually feels a bit unsporting, like beating up the aforementioned dwarf. The flaws in his reasoning, such as it is are so glaringly obvious that anybody should see them. When he doesn’t skip the whole “reasoning” thing altogether.
Are liberals just pretending to believe what he says, as a form of status display? A kind of weird peacocking, where they pretend to believe obvious nonsense? Or do they actually manage to brainwash themselves into believing his crap? If the latter, does it interfere with their cognitive functioning in other areas?
* Vanessa Williams won Miss America in 1984.
I remember the rush to get the next months issue of Penthouse , was hard to get due to the publicity of having Vanessa Williams spreading her legs for the camera, and having lesbian sex with her friend.
Suzette Charles, another Black body, was given the Miss America Crown when Williams was dethroned.
* I remember the late 80s-early 90s as a time when black achievement was celebrated in the culture. Steve mentions Michael Jordan (I want to be like Mike was a major advertising slogan); but I would add Cosby, Oprah, and Gen. Powell as public figures for whom the general public had admiration and trust–power of attorney levels of trust in some cases. In many ways, this period laid the groundwork for Pres. Bush’s appointments of Powell and Rice, and the election of Obama to the senate and presidency.
* What could the mean IQ of the Whites and Asians who opine for the NYT, the WaPo, the Atlantic, etc. be? Let’s say it’s 130 to 140. That would be roughly 2 to 2.5 SDs above the mean. The US Black distribution has a mean of 85 and an SD of 12, so perhaps we should expect 110 to 115 for people like Coates.
* There are a lot of rumors about Jordan and his supposedly less-than-wholesome true character, some of which venture off into conspiracy theory land. Like that his gambling problem got his father murdered by organized crime. Or that his two-year baseball sojourn was actually a suspension he served for betting on NBA games, which the league kept secret so as not to damage its reputation.
