The woke’s erroneous moral certitude that brooks no dissent and fanatical adherence to the cause sees them increasingly resemble Islamist terrorists hell-bent on purging the world of all who don’t support their world views. Being enabled by the sacrosanct teachings of academic mullahs, supported by corporate and public policy panjandrums and surrounded by only the faithful hasn’t done anything for their senses of humour or appreciation of satire, either. At least the terrorists think that a bevy of virgins in the afterlife will be the reward for their ‘virtue’. The woke? They seem to be motivated by likes and retweets on Twitter. Go figure. 

When is a homonym not a synonym… or a racial slur?

The case of Professor Greg Patton from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business had a resolution of sorts this week. Patton is an internationally-respected professor of long standing. In case you didn’t hear the original story, he was asked to “take a short-term pause” from teaching when a controversy erupted after an online class in late August. His crime?  Patton warned his students against using filler words like ‘um’ and ‘er’ in business discussions. He also referred to repetitious use of the Mandarin word for ‘that’ —  nèi ge  — as a filler in Mandarin.     

Patton was toast from the moment the word was uttered, but if you’re from the non-snowflake school of reasonable reactions, you’re probably wondering why. Nèi ge sounds a bit like the dreaded N-word, the one that only bad-ass rap artists can use with impunity. 

The black students of the MBA class didn’t talk to Patton but, in an email to the school’s dean, Geoffrey Garrett, threatened to boycott the remaining semester classes because of the harm to their fragile mental health. It included pearls such as: 

There are over 10,000 characters in the Chinese written language and to use this phrase, a clear synonym with this derogatory N-Word term, is hurtful and unacceptable to our USC Marshall community.

One would hope that MBA students might actually know the difference between a synonym and a near-homonym but no matter. Reaction was swift from Garrett who capitulated immediately, throwing Patton under the woke bus and removing him from teaching the class:   

Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students.

This week, because even the university EEO office’s investigation found that Patton had done nothing wrong, Garrett issued an obsequious non-apology that included: 

[T]his incident has led many faculty to question whether they will be supported if they ‘make an honest mistake’ in the classroom. 

So, even though he did nothing wrong it was still a ‘mistake’.  I wish Garrett luck when the woke mob comes for him as they undoubtedly will.  

Remember Robespierre. 

Toilet humour

Last week Barb Byron, the Democratic clerk of Ingham County, Michigan, filed a complaint with police over a ‘potential election violation’ in her area. While this conjures up images of nefarious actions like the cash-for-ballots allegations currently levelled against Minneapolis Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, this story is a little more prosaic — and way funnier.  

Everyone else had a good belly laugh at a local resident who, with tongue firmly in cheek, placed a toilet on her front lawn accompanied by a sandwich-board sign that read “Place mail in ballots here!”.  But not Byron. According to an Associated Press story she was ‘concerned that the display could mislead people not familiar with the voting process’.  

I’m not sure what this says about the local voters but I think we can draw some conclusions about what it says about Barb. Flushed with her own importance she warned anyone else who might be contemplating engaging in a little toilet humour: 

It is a felony to take illegal possession of an absentee ballot (voted or unvoted) according to Michigan Compiled Law 168.932(f). Felonies of this kind are punishable by a fine of $1,000.00 or 5 years in prison. 

A man walked in to a humour-free autonomous zone…

Many studies have determined that humour is probably more influenced by environment than heredity and wokeworld is the proof we had to have that an utter lack of humour is similarly determined. Surround yourself with people who take themselves way too seriously and the results are predictable. 

You’ve probably heard the one that says the woke can’t do memes. Well, they don’t do satire either.  

The Babylon Bee has been a thorn in the side of the woke for quite a while, especially their impartial, non-partisan, fact-checking websites. Their article last week about reactions from NBA players to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a satirical classic. It suggested that in honour of Ginsburg NBA players would wear the cute little lace collars favoured by RBG “until Trump is removed from office, or until angry rioters burn their basketball arenas down, whichever comes first.” It was accompanied by a doctored picture of woke NBA firebrands for the BLM cause, LeBron James and Anthony Davis wearing Ginsburg-esque lace collars. And very fetching they looked, too. 

Guffaws all around, right? 

Wrong. A horde of Twitterati wokesters shared the image and link unironically with their woke friends, heaping plaudits on the NBA for its ‘beyond awesome’ gesture.  I kid you not.  

In another story, instead of fact-checking obvious candidates for fake news, serious (and painfully virtuous) news outlet USA Today used up a lot of time and resources addressing the Bee’s story ‘Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’ which included obviously satirical statements such as:  

In a landmark ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In a close decision, the judges on the court have ruled RBG’s death unconstitutional and will block Trump from nominating a replacement.

Thank God for zealous fact-checker Chelsey Cox who set the record straight for all those who waited with bated breath for Judge Kim Wardlaw to figure out a way to ”resurrect her or maybe clone her”. She wrote: 

There is no record of any Wardlaw opinion on Ginsburg’s death on the website for the 9th Circuit, but she participated in a panel discussion Friday about Ginsburg’s life produced by the UCLA School of Law. There was no mention of “reviving” Ginsburg during the discussion.

And it only took 15 separate sources to come up with that. No jokes please, we’re wokesters.