“Leaving the house was my first mistake.”
That’s an old running gag on my blog (along with “Apartheid: Was it all bad?” and “Journalists: Your moral and intellectual superiors!”). It’s not just that I’m a demi-agoraphobic introvert with palsied social skills. It’s that when I do go out, the “out” I go into is Toronto.
Although maybe your city is no different, especially if it has too many universities (that is, more than zero). Quiz: Are you outnumbered by spindly, bike-riding beta males sporting skinny pants, fake “distressed” “vintage” shirts, and giant purses? Do over half the women possess tattoos on their ill-advisedly visible upper arms, along with Manic Panic hair and what the Château calls “problem glasses”?
The prospect of being trapped in a building with thousands of them curdled my stomach, but the reason for doing so was irresistible: I’d been given a batch of VIP tickets to see welterweight right-wingers Mark Steyn and Nigel Farage at a glamorous-by-Toronto-standards downtown “do.”
“As I write this, 48 hours later, I have finally calmed down.”
Unfortunately, said event was a “debate”(?!) about the Muslim “refugee” “crisis,” and the “cons’” (in both senses) pro-invasion opponents were two smug, speakers-circuit windbags: historian and apparently inoperable BBC tumor Simon Schama—imagine Dr. Pretorious from The Bride of Frankenstein impersonating a gay epileptic rooster traversing hot asphalt—and Louise Arbour, one of those dim, dumpy “world-famous in Canada” sorts who are especially unimpressive whenever they happen to be, as in her case, “Kay-BECK-erz.” This human chafing dish for received liberal wisdom has received so many “honors” and “awards” that one friend I’d brought along said he half expected that, mid-debate, someone would walk out on stage and hand her a new one.
Worse, the Toronto audience—those beta males, above, and their “problem glasses” “partners”—would overwhelmingly represent the Schama/Arbour side: modern Mrs. Jellybys, those “refugee”-loving, “rape me first, kill me last” types who reflexively favor foreigners over their own.
Now, I’m forever blasting such smug snobs for never exposing themselves to even the mildest of opposing ideas, or to individuals outside their class and cohort, except to mock them. Yet how, I asked myself, was I any better, unless I too occasionally dared to venture beyond my own ideological comfort zone?
Well, hell.
rest of this beauty column:
An Evening With the “Rape Me First, Kill Me Last� Crowd - Taki's Magazine
That’s an old running gag on my blog (along with “Apartheid: Was it all bad?” and “Journalists: Your moral and intellectual superiors!”). It’s not just that I’m a demi-agoraphobic introvert with palsied social skills. It’s that when I do go out, the “out” I go into is Toronto.
Although maybe your city is no different, especially if it has too many universities (that is, more than zero). Quiz: Are you outnumbered by spindly, bike-riding beta males sporting skinny pants, fake “distressed” “vintage” shirts, and giant purses? Do over half the women possess tattoos on their ill-advisedly visible upper arms, along with Manic Panic hair and what the Château calls “problem glasses”?
The prospect of being trapped in a building with thousands of them curdled my stomach, but the reason for doing so was irresistible: I’d been given a batch of VIP tickets to see welterweight right-wingers Mark Steyn and Nigel Farage at a glamorous-by-Toronto-standards downtown “do.”
“As I write this, 48 hours later, I have finally calmed down.”
Unfortunately, said event was a “debate”(?!) about the Muslim “refugee” “crisis,” and the “cons’” (in both senses) pro-invasion opponents were two smug, speakers-circuit windbags: historian and apparently inoperable BBC tumor Simon Schama—imagine Dr. Pretorious from The Bride of Frankenstein impersonating a gay epileptic rooster traversing hot asphalt—and Louise Arbour, one of those dim, dumpy “world-famous in Canada” sorts who are especially unimpressive whenever they happen to be, as in her case, “Kay-BECK-erz.” This human chafing dish for received liberal wisdom has received so many “honors” and “awards” that one friend I’d brought along said he half expected that, mid-debate, someone would walk out on stage and hand her a new one.
Worse, the Toronto audience—those beta males, above, and their “problem glasses” “partners”—would overwhelmingly represent the Schama/Arbour side: modern Mrs. Jellybys, those “refugee”-loving, “rape me first, kill me last” types who reflexively favor foreigners over their own.
Now, I’m forever blasting such smug snobs for never exposing themselves to even the mildest of opposing ideas, or to individuals outside their class and cohort, except to mock them. Yet how, I asked myself, was I any better, unless I too occasionally dared to venture beyond my own ideological comfort zone?
Well, hell.
rest of this beauty column:
An Evening With the “Rape Me First, Kill Me Last� Crowd - Taki's Magazine
