83 Comments

Wow! Didn't expect iy at the start, but the Maestro pulled it off.

Bravo!

Expand full comment

when I read this:

"When Biden speaks they hear the voice of Mao."

I knew he'd found the sweet spot.

Expand full comment

Did Mao say "Here's the deal" a lot?

Expand full comment

That and "C'mon guys" as in "Here's the deal: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, so c'mon guys!"

Expand full comment

"The fact of the matter is that the guerilla must move among the people as a fish swims in the sea."

Expand full comment

"C'mon, guys – take small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first; take big cities later."

Expand full comment

We're onto something here: "The Sayings of Chairman Joe."

Expand full comment

I really think there is a love-hate, push-pull relationship between the high-brow, “intellectual” racists/fascists, like Wax and also Rod Dreher et. al., and the shock jock types who are more belligerent and aggressively open about it.

On one hand, the highbrows are deeply offended by the shock jocks because they try to convince themselves there are valid scientific and socio-economic reasons for their own positions which aren’t the same as mere vulgar bigotry. But on the other hand, I can see the highbrows thoroughly enjoying the freeing aspect of getting to say the quiet part out loud.

Expand full comment

"Deeply offended by the shock jocks?" Hardly. It's the only American culture that counts for that crowd. Who needs Walt Whitman or Henry James or even Wes Anderson when you have Dennis Prager and Mark Levin?

Expand full comment

Uhmm...ya got me there, pal...

Expand full comment

Don't forget Michael Medved!

Expand full comment

I think that gets more true all the time.

Expand full comment

Of course there is, the intellectuals give credibility to the ugly -- and the media & other intellectuals are trained to give respect to these views as a critical conversation or in fawning credulity to academic lustre.

Expand full comment

Considering that "Just asking questions" is their main line of defense, who better to pull off that schtick than an academic?

Expand full comment

Can we all just agree to blame their parents for not giving them a proper fetchin's up?

Expand full comment

Alarmingly plausible, Roy!

Expand full comment

I meant, anyone who approvingly quotes Enoch Powell can be safely dismissed as an outright Nazi.

Expand full comment

Hey, the guy was just "asking questions"! What do you libs have against questions, anyway?

Expand full comment

"-vintage films-" heh

It took me a minute to figure out the long quote you started the article with was an actual quote and not deadly pointed satire. She's an ugly piece of work.

Her transformation at the end there was entirely believable.

She will be with us forever. Righties love it when a minority joins Team White Racist.

She could be the Asian Candace Owens . (How fucked up is that?)Diamond and Silk could get some real Silk.

Great gig. Much better than tenure.

Expand full comment

Is Wax Asian? I didn't think, but it wouldn't surprise me. They love the "oh yeah well he's BLACK" switcheroo.

Expand full comment

Jesus, evidently not. I'm trying to lower my blood pressure by ignoring the news more and this is what I get. Public embarrassment. Oh well, like that never happened before.

She is Jewish....

Expand full comment

Then I'm sure she's got a Frankfurt School rap all lined up.

Expand full comment

You'd think she'd therefore tell George Lee to get fucked, but those were the bad we had to let in some bad Marxist Jews and Einstein so the good Jews who whelped Wax could come open a bagel shop or something.

Expand full comment

No you see, she blames the Jews for wokeness in academia. Seriously. https://twitter.com/kfgpnz/status/1477813776024014852?s=20

Expand full comment

Folks of the Jewish

persusion, as well as the Asians are known for Ethnic food!

Expand full comment

She's Eastern European Jewish

Expand full comment

Holy fucking shit! I clicked to that Glenn Loury piece and now I have to go wash my brain with Nazi-Be-Gone. Two assholes trying to outdo each other with racism. I don’t know George Lee from Adam, but I’ll bet his ancestors didn’t arrive here overland from Siberia during the last Ice Age. Anti-Asian racism might not be consistent with the Bill of Rights? Hey, George, the guys who wrote that were ok with enslaving Africans, and it didn’t stop 19th and 20th century anti-Asian laws. I also never heard of Professor She-Wolf of the SS, but anyone worried about their precious conservative child being exposed to collegiate Marxists can ship them off to Penn secure in the knowledge they’ll be in the hands of a dyed in the wool full racist fascist (“If they will become Democrats, let’s keep them out!”) This is the state of the intellectual wing of the Racistfascist Party. Jesus wept (btw, he was a Jew and probably should have been kept out along with those other Jewish socialists Lee regrets).

Expand full comment

What gets me is how they smooth the way for one another by pretending to have *small* objections -- like racist immigration policies are reasonable but it's just saying the racism out loud that's a sub-optimal choice (though intelligent people can disagree!).

It's part of the cancelculture shtick too -- if you get upset that Wax is not only spouting racist shit but celebrating old-school racists like Enoch Powell, the problem is not the racism but your intolerance.

Expand full comment

Yeah, anybody who thinks an Ivy League education is an indoctrination to Marxism is seriously deluded. I'm a Princeton PhD -- alma mater to Donald Rumsfeld, among others. UG population largely the scions of American capital.

Expand full comment

Begging the question of just how well them scion UGs are really getting educated. Not that it matters…

Expand full comment

I've always assumed that the real value of an Ivy League education isn't what happens in the class room, but the chance to hold Future Mark Zuckerberg's head over a toilet while he vomited his guts out, thus paving your way to future success. "Hey, Future Mark! Remember me?"

Expand full comment

In case you missed it, she actually did an interview with Isaac Chotiner for the New Yorker. She wouldn't even agree that such a thing called racism even exists!

My favorite excerpts:

>>IC: Enoch Powell, who you call a “prophet without honor.” You said he is an “outcast—unjustly I think.” And you added that “I think this is the only conference in the continental United States where Enoch Powell gets two honorable mentions,” and someone answered, “Might make it the last.” You replied, “I hope not.” Do you think Powell was a racist?

AW: There you go again. Can you define racism for me? Is so-and-so a racist? Where are we getting with that? Define racist. I have no idea what you mean. It is a bludgeon that is a promiscuous term. You define what a racist is, and I will spend two seconds addressing that question because it is sterile.

IC: You think that in the U.S. today that’s a sterile question?

AW: Yes, I do, because it prevents us from dealing with real, down-to-earth, concrete problems. I don’t go on Twitter. I don’t have a smartphone, but the stuff the people send me. Is he a racist? Is she a racist? Is this person a racist?

IC: Well, let me answer your question. Powell himself famously stated, “What is wrong with racism? Racism is the basis of nationality.”

AW: Who said that?

IC: Enoch Powell, who you were talking about.<<

>>IC: Is it a question that doesn’t interest you one way or the other? Or you think it’s obvious that (Trump)'s not racist, and so why are we discussing it? Those are two different things.

AW: Well, I guess, until I see a definition of racist that I think is reasonably precise, no, it does bore me, because I think it just becomes a weapon that anybody can use to blast him, to bludgeon him.

IC: But I’m sure you think that Hitler or the K.K.K. were racially bigoted, right? So you have some definition in your head. It’s not that you don’t think anything is racist. I assume you think the K.K.K. is racist?

AW: Well, I certainly think that somebody who advocates violence, genocide, and killing people of a certain group is—do we even need the word racist? That person is evil. That’s an evil philosophy.

IC: What about saying, “I don’t like the way black people look, and so I don’t want this black person marrying my daughter?” Is that racist?

AW: Well, I don’t know. I guess it’s racist, but I think people are entitled to have preferences about who they marry. It’s on a basis of race, and it’s a broad generalization on the basis of race.

IC: So it is racism?

AW: Once again, I don’t think every generalization on the basis of race is racist. I really don’t. So we can argue about these niceties.<<

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-penn-law-professor-wants-to-make-america-white-again

Expand full comment

AW: Who said that?

IC: Enoch Powell, who you were talking about.

I LOL'ed and LOL'ed

Expand full comment

I have to look that up. Only the most blind, egotist would agree to be interviewed by Isaac Chotiner. He destroys assholes and they don't even realize it. Another interviewer (*spit* Chuck Todd) would blink at that refusal to admit racism and move on, but Chotiner worries it like a terrier with your favorite sock until the asshole looks not just racist but willfully stupid. If they ever catch on, he'll be out of a job. Fortunately, because they're blind egotists, they'll never catch on.

Expand full comment

At this point it has to be sheer egoistical arrogance. "I'll show him, I'll own his ass. And if he writes something up that misquotes me or tries to make me look bad, I'll release the tape!" Of course, at this point, they also don't care about looking bad, since there are never any consequences for being racist filth, as Amy's career arc clearly shows.

Expand full comment

Quite the arc, being banned from teaching core curriculum at Penn and giving Glenn Loury sparkles in his pants.

Expand full comment

So her punishment is to be relieved from teaching the lower-level intro classes that many professors despise? Just 20 upper-level students in a seminar room instead of 300 freshmen in a lecture hall? Wow, that's really showin' her.

Expand full comment

You forgot the strongly-worded letter from Dean Wormer...er, Ruger. "That Wax’s speech may be protected does not permit this Law School to ignore the real harms such speech causes...As we have previously emphasized, Wax’s views are diametrically opposed to the policies and ethos of this institution. They serve as a persistent and tangible reminder that racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not theoretical abstractions but are real and insidious beliefs in this country and in our building."

And we will continue to emphasize this, no matter how many times she says racist things over and over and over!

Ignore? Never! Continue to allow to teach? ABSOLUTELY! If we don't allow racists to teach classes on our campus, then the racists will have...um...I guess they've won.

https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/14369-a-statement-from-dean-ruger-in-response-to-recent

Expand full comment

I'm not altogether certain that law school professors despise those intro courses (or "foundations", as they're often and not at all pretentiously called).

Law school is odd. It's back to front — the 1L year is absolutely crucial, but if you do well on the exams, the remaining two years are less so. And if you're really good, you'll have a post-graduation job offer before your future firm even knows your 3L grades.

And it's teaching the simplest, most basic subject matter — those intro courses — that are the high-prestige law school jobs. It's OK, even desirable, also to teach some upper-level courses, especially if they are more or less in the same field as your foundation course. So, say, crim pro or admin law if you teach con law, or commercial transactions if you teach contracts. But if you're a "real" law professor, you'll teach a foundations course.

If I were interested in legal academia (which, thank Cthulhu, I am not), I could possibly — possibly — get a job teaching securities regulation or banking law or investment companies to 3Ls. In a million years I'd never be hired to teach the 1L stuff — Contracts, Torts, Civ Pro etc.

Had I wanted to do that, I should have done law school at HYS, made law review, graduated at the upper end of my class, got a job clerking for a SCOTUS justice or at least a circuit court judge, and then wangled a job at a law school. Ideally, I'd never actually have practiced. If I did make the mistake of taking a BIGLAW job, I'd quit it for a teaching job long before there was even the remotest possibility of partnership coming over the horizon. (My Corporations professor had worked four years at Sullivan & Cromwell. SullCrom is high as it gets in the US law firm hierarchy, but spending a full four years there was considered rather suspect among the law faculty. Oh, he never got to teach any courses below 2L level.)

Professors with stellar CVs but de minimis or no experience practicing might be seen as desirable for foundations courses because foundations have nothing at all to do with what 99.999% of law school graduates will later do in practice (and maybe 0.01% to do with what that remaining 0.001% will be doing). But they have everything to do with, well, with teaching foundations to what you yourself were five short years earlier.

(This phenomenon might not be entirely unrelated to the fact that law journals, unlike the professional literature of basically every other academic discipline known to mankind, are not peer-reviewed. They are — hand to God I am not making this up — law student-reviewed.)

Expand full comment

Just you wait. if Penn ever lets her go, she'll be making the big bucks, co-hosting Steve Bannon's new nightly show on Fox News, "Make America White Again (But Not All Whites and Only the Good Jews)."

Expand full comment

Yeah, I remember back when I used to look at Twitter, from time to time I'd see a bunch of tweets about "Isaac Chotiner absolutely DESTROYS such-and-such", and then of course the victim of Chotiners supposed "DESTROYING" just went on to greater and greater heights in the right-wing bubble world.

Expand full comment

Begs the question whether taking a racist position means one’s a racist and, for that matter, does it even matter what kind of person is pushing a racist position?

Expand full comment

We'd be light years ahead of where we are now if most people understood racism as a system, and stopped wasting their time on attempted mind-reading of people who say and do things to support that system.

Expand full comment

"grip-and-grin portraits"

Scene-setting GOLD!

Expand full comment

Nobody does the mise en scène like Roy.

Expand full comment

"Discipline and Punish" is a great title for a show. Made me think Fox should counter "The View" with a show called "Panopticon".

Expand full comment

Bingo

Expand full comment

It tracks with the general RW inability to read past the headline or cover [e.g. dumbass's issues with Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" horrors!] -- "Yah brah, 'Discipline and Punish' sounds hella tough, brah. Can we call this Frenchie 'Mike' tho, brah? Maybe 'Mike Fucc-yoo'?"

Expand full comment

Yes, the whole "anti-enlightenment, anti-reason" explanation for "Critique" was funny as hell, as is their idea that "critical race theory" means being critical of white folks and is making little white kids sad.

Expand full comment

"Live from Angola Prison, it's 'The Panopticon!'"

Expand full comment

I know white supremacists like to split it fine, but oh my, "the Anglo-Scot idea of achievement"

Expand full comment

Why, look at the fine Scotch-Irish descendants of Appalachia.

Expand full comment

Amy Wax is a precious little thing, isn't she? Always money in the "Yellow Peril" stand, isn't there? Ignore the inconvenient fact that Chinese-Americans have either been here since the late-1800's (and therefore pre-Mao) or immigrated since the Revolution and are therefore generally anti-Communist at least at first. Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Koreans, even Desi of various flavors (I know, wow are we splitting hairs here! So many types of Asians, huh?) -- mostly brought in because their anti-socialist motivations. And deomographically remained mostly conservative, despite constant marginalization & hatred.

I just have to wonder tho, Prof. Wax -- if you are worried that "Asians" are anti-GOP, do you think it might have anything to do with the fact that anti-Asian hate crimes basically went up 300-some-odd-percent since COVID, from their already-high place when DJT was elected? There used to even be laws to repress Asian immigrant poopulations -- I mean, you're a law professor, so surely laws would be sonething you might know about.

Expand full comment

Same kind of thinking that demands Blacks leave the "Democrat plantation" and join the GOP while the same GOP speed-strips away Black voting rights.

Expand full comment

So many demographics turning away from the Republican party, why do we need a special theory for each of them? Oh, Asians don't vote Republican because... and College-educated women don't vote Republican because...

I'm going to subsume the whole lot under my own Grand Unified Theory called The Republican Party is Fucking Awful.

Expand full comment

10 cryptobucks to anyone that didn't need to lookup "deshabille".

Expand full comment

At this point, if I'm not googling at least one word a day, I feel I'm not getting my money's worth out of Roy.

Expand full comment

"a Hitler speech plays quietly underneath"

With these folks, doesn't a Hitler speech ALWAYS play quietly underneath?

Expand full comment

The Perfesser's blatant racism is choice, what with stereotyping Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Malaysians, Filipinos et al as one totally homogenous group who are all...excuse me, mostly exactly the same, but what I really love is her notion that Asians should be excluded from this country, not because they are inferior to whites, but because....they tend to vote Democratic! I don't know what you call that - "meta-racist," maybe? - but clearly conservatives in academia are innovating in the way they show contempt for out-groups.

Expand full comment

Again, the interview she did with Isaac Chotiner is required reading. If there was such a thing as cancel culture, she would have been cancelled permanently after it came out.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-penn-law-professor-wants-to-make-america-white-again

Expand full comment

holy shit! that interview is so toxic that i'll have to read it in installments between detoxifying stints.

Expand full comment

Why anyone agrees to a Chotiner interview is beyond me. The conventional wisdom is once Chotiner contacts you, you move off the grid and legally change your name, lmao

Expand full comment

I kind of admire the honesty of that. "Exclude these people because they vote for the other guys!" It's really what all of them want, but you don't usually see it put so clearly.

Expand full comment

When most of your energy now goes into elaborate theories for what's wrong with the people who ain't buyin' your product, that can't be good for your long-term business prospects.

Expand full comment

Dear Amy,

Asia is a very, very big continent. If you're going to be a hateful bigot against Asians, please include us next time, ok?

Sincerely,

The 2 billion people of India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

(P.S. We aren't Republicans either, but then, who'd want to be?)

Expand full comment