February 07, 2005
FROM THE “HUMANS ARE SCUM” FILES
Police chief splashes out on new logo because the old one 'discriminated against short-sighted people' (Daniel Foggo, The Telegraph, February, 6th, 2005)
Sir Ian Blair, the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has ordered that the force's motto be changed, at a cost of many thousands of pounds, because the old one featured joined-up writing that "discriminated against short-sighted people".Sir Ian, who took over as the most powerful police officer in the country last week, made the decision to change the design of the logo as one of his first orders. The motto had previously read "Working for a safer London", depicted in slightly italicised, joined-up handwriting. It now reads "Working together for a safer London", printed in a simple, bland typeface.
Sir Ian, who has a reputation for being "relentlessly politically correct", insisted on adding "together" to the new logo, saying that it was an important word for him. "The word you'll hear a lot from me is 'together'," he said.
Sir Ian may just be a buffoon, but the odds are better he is an autocrat who brooks no challenges to his decisions, which he makes alone. Having no statistics or scientific studies to back me up, I must break the self-reference prohibition to ask: Why do I keep running into people whose behaviour completely belies the politically correct newspeak in which they seem to believe so fervently and which clearly drives their self-images? Life seems more and more to resemble Rumpole’s daily frantic efforts to dodge the financial disaster threatened coldly and almost gleefully by the bloodless manager at his “Caring Bank.”
Yesterday at my son’s ski club, the several dozen parents were treated to a very long but impassioned speech from one of the directors on how he and his colleagues were completely committed to ongoing, regular, fruitful, productive communication and dialogue with us, their partners-in-slalom. We were assured repeatedly this was their priority above all else, perhaps even skiing. I detected no insincerity, in fact I feared we were all on the verge of a group hug, but then he abruptly stunned the room by announcing that the racing coach was being changed and all the directors were solidly, completely, unequivocally, irrevocably behind the decision. Any questions? There were none.
I am constantly struck by how mediators, psychologists and others in the field of “conflict resolution” are prone to the most bitter, take-no-prisoners litigation when their marriages or business partnerships fall apart. A modern employee would be well-advised to update his c.v. when he hears his new boss wax poetically on how the staff are the company’s most important resource. Divorcing Hollywood couples who insist they are determined to remain “good friends” almost guarantee us weeks of salacious scandal.
The secular left likes nothing more than to throw allegations of hypocrisy at conservatives, especially the religious. Since Strachey’s Emminent Victorians, they have dined out on tales of adulterous pastors, shoplifting church elders and alcoholic moralists. The usual rejoinder is that it is easy for them to do so as they don’t believe in principles that bind their actions, but is that true? Has not modern secularism and psychobabble given the left a whole new set of virtues and sins against which their actions are to be measured. It is time to turn the tables. We invite you to share your experiences of modern progressive individuals or institutions behaving contrary to their declared principles and beliefs. The one proviso is that the hypocrisy be unconscious in the sense that they appear completely unaware of the inconsistency or extremely indignant when challenged.
One of the classic experiences in Cambridge, Massachusetts: a driver in a car plastered with peace&love bumper stickers, screaming obscenities at a pedestrian because her gaggle of small children are slow clearing the crosswalk.
And we must never forget the Brattle Street Day School. When it began admitting minority students, the fine people of Cambridge, including Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, tried to get it shut down. The mayor of Cambridge said the effort appeared to be racist. (Some feel that this incident ruined Tribe's chances of ever being seated on the Supreme Court, hence the nickname "Lost" Tribe.)
> The one proviso is that the hypocrisy be unconscious in the sense that they appear completely unaware of the inconsistency or extremely indignant when challenged.
So, we could look for, say, emphatic moral judgments issuing forth from people who assert that values are relative and that nothing can be known? Well, I'd like to help, but I already have a full-time job...
Posted by: Guy T. at February 7, 2005 09:43 AMIs there anything scarier than a human being armed with a moral code that he can live up to without being a hypocrite?
Posted by: David Cohen at February 7, 2005 10:07 AMMy Con Law I professor was the director of the law school's "International Human Rights Institute," and a ferverent evangelist for all the "right" causes: diversity, affirmative action, redistribution of wealth, the Sandanistas, nuclear disarmament, hanging President Reagan from the nearest lamp-post, etc. He also chaired the admissions committee.
You should've heard him go on a rant the day that a disappointed applicant sued the law school, alleging discrimination on the basis of her visual handicap.
Posted by: Mike Morley at February 7, 2005 10:08 AMMy attorney represented a deaf woman who sued Rutgers Law School-Newark, probably America's foremost leftwing law school, when they wouldn't let her sit in on special tutoring classes for minority group members to help them keep up.
Rutgers Law School is truly special. The Dean, Ronald K Chen, is a counsel for the ACLU, who, as a young attorney at Cravath helped defend Time Magazine when it libelled Ariel Sharon. Later on, as counsel to the NJ ACLU, he sued the State of New Jersey when its Consumer Affairs people fined merchants who labelled non-kosher goods as kosher. Dean Chen, tribune of the masses that he is, will also regale dinner companions as to how he loved Exeter and Dartmouth and how his great-grandfather was the first Anglican priest of Chinese extraction.
The Department of Mathematics at RU is hardly any better. Its longtime chairman is the son of Earl Browder the Communist Party candidate for President hand-picked by Stalin after William Z Foster proved to be too independent. He was disappointed that faculty meetings weren't more Stakhanovite.
Posted by: Bart at February 7, 2005 10:30 AMCurrently, in Houston....
Progressive-technocrat former Texas Dem party chair who is now Houston's mayor enacts draconian towing program to keep Houston freeways clear, under the guise of "public safety" (when in reality the program creates exclusive tow zones and nets about $1 million in new revenues for the city from wreckers cos who bid for those zones).
Local news media figures out that a large number of wrecker drivers who forcibly remove the cars (and give people a ride) even for minor trouble like running out of gas or a flat tire have criminal records -- some violent -- and it's unclear if city has the authority to get those people out of the program.
The mayor will not back down, because he likes the "new revenue stream." Public safety be damned!
State lege is now considering removing the city's power effectively to "lease" segments of state roads to wrecker companies, causing local liberals to bellow about local control!
How's all of that?! :)
Posted by: kevin whited at February 7, 2005 11:11 AMWell, that's easily solved, turn over the roads to the city. Let the city take care of them.
Tolls for all!
Posted by: Sandy P at February 7, 2005 11:47 AMtoo easy. As Phil Vesher of Veggie Tales fame recently said, it's the world acting woldly kinda the point?
- Peace
I've always liked the story about the lecturer who discussed whether free speech extended to violent radicals. Afterwards one student came up to him and said "You're advocating censorship. You shouldn't be allowed to say things like that."
Posted by: Mike Hobart at February 15, 2005 08:59 PMgreat page...im sure i'll come back...best regards
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