Some time ago I became fatally suspicious of the word trope. Technically there's nothing wrong with it, but in practice it's used exclusively to imply someone has said something vaguely offensive without having the receipts. Here's the latest:
Three Columbia University administrators have been removed from their posts after sending text messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May, according to a letter sent by Columbia officials to the university community on Monday.
Touched on! And not just tropes, but ancient tropes! Needless to say, these alleged tropes go undefined.
I took a look at these text messages a couple of weeks ago and came away believing there wasn't much there. Since then the entire text conversation has been released, but it doesn't change things. During a panel discussion about antisemitism, the three deans in question shared private texts that you could fairly describe as snarky or irreverent. But that's about it.
To the Columbia administration, however, which was under siege from outraged alumni demanding that the three deans (plus a fourth) be fired immediately, the texts conveyed "a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community."
This is precisely backward. What the deans did was fail to show unconditional earnestness and obeisance toward every last grievance lodged by a particular community, no matter how ridiculous or overstated. This is apparently the price of admission to progressive society these days.
This whole thing is bonkers. The grievances of specific communities deserve to be given fair consideration, but they don't automatically demand absolute deference. In this case, the deans privately exhibited moderate skepticism toward a few of the claims from the panelists, some of it expressed a little bit caustically. None of it could reasonably be called antisemitic, and at most they deserve a verbal reprimand. Instead they're all out of jobs.
After 37 years as a college prof, my observation is that if you're fired as an Ivy League admin, you'll land on your feet somewhere else.
They got caught mocking major donors. Don’t bite the hand that feeds ????????♂️
They did not do that.
Kevin, how dare you comment on ancient grievance tropes!
I could count on my thumbs the number of times I have seen the word “trope” used outside of the context of one small group of people. Why is that?
There ain't no mope without the trope!
You'll see the word a lot more if you go down a rabbit hole on https://tvtropes.org/
If you think tropes only apply to Jews, then it's not a problem with the word or how it's used. It's more a matter of you not doing much, if any, reading in your life. Thankfully, there is an easy solution to make you less of a bigoted moron.
Follow me for more tips!
I read a hundred books a year, mostly non-fiction.
What I do not read is entertainment “news”, which is the othe context this word is usually used.
How can you say you read so much but not anything that uses the word “trope”? I guess if you’re reading picture books or something.
I’d expect anybody with half a brain to be able to use that word in a sentence with zero hesitation.
You have never heard trope before?
They're used when discussing movies and stories all the time, They're used for character acting guides. And they're in acceptable use policies 'harmful tropes' etc.
He's saying that tropes only apply to "Tha Jooz" as if there's a cabal of Jewish people controlling words. As if he's never heard of tropes about Black people being on welfare, or being prone to crime, or being depicted in physically insulting ways in media. Or tropes about Asian women driving. Or tropes about women being emotional. It's a neat way to slip in a little bigotry while "just asking questions"
I just ran a Google check: five pages in, and everything that came up was either entertainment news or about Jews/Israel, in about equal proportions.
You are being silly if you are trying to pretend that this word isn’t a core ADL strategy and lexicon.
I just did the same. Not a single link Google returned referred to Jews.
You do know that your search history has a strong influence over the results Google presents, don't you?
I think you just powned yourself.
Deans getting fired for offending rich donors should not be blamed on progressives.
+1
Kevin lost the plot by now.
Also, Jews are not a group to which progressives are sympathetic. If someone's getting fired for offending Jews, it's not progressives driving it. in this case it looks like conservatives turning progressive weapons against them.
What? That's nonsensical.
Jewish people make up a larger portion of the progressive and communist groups in the US. Of course Jewish people get progressives' sympathy.
What they don't get is obeisance to conservative tropes aligning Israeli political and military aims to the Jewish identity.
You're conflating the state of Israel with the Jewish people
I guess if something bad happens anywhere, for any reason, progressives are to blame.
+1
"progressive society" != "Colombia University Administration"
Weren't the messages in this case private? In which case, there is an invasion of privacy involved. This is an unfortunate artifact of our time. People should be allowed to have private opinions.
Not private if they were using university computers. All employers are allowed to monitor staff computers. Also, as I recall, one of these perps was holding up her phone and it was captured on the phone camera of the person behind her. Her lack of interest in the conference or meeting she was attending attracted the notice of others as being disrespectful. None of these academics are owed a fat administrator salary.
They were using personal phones.
has the fireorg come to their defense, or are they too busy revelling in the wokes getting what they deserved?
I agree with this. The tough rule that universities don't seem able to put into force is, private conversations that are made public by eavesdroppers will not be considered for any kind of disciplinary action against those having the private conversation.
"The grievances of specific communities deserve to be given fair consideration, but they don't automatically demand absolute deference."
Unfortunately, large portions of the Left act as if they do and/or are perceived to act that way, and I think it costs Democrats lots of votes.
bob kraft's hand is strong enough to smack offending admins at his alma mater, but not strong enough to jackhisowndick.
also, speaking of perpetuating ancient tropes, bobby's conduct at south florida massage parlors perpetuates tropes about east asian women.
Citation not supplied for 'act that way'. Perceptions are, of course, what propaganda is about.
What kind of citation are you after? Do you use citations? Are you expecting me to do a research paper on something before posting?
It's like you toss that in there seemingly every time that you disagree with something rather than just saying you disagree with it.
On the one hand, yes, hypersensitivity about possible racial/ethnic insults is a thing, and "tropes" points toward it.
On the other hand - comparing a black person to a monkey, or talking about child sacrifice in a context of hostility to (some/specific) Jews, will reasonably raise the question of "are you intending to reference the stereotype?"
Oh really? Kevin, let me introduce you to TV Tropes. There's nothing there offensive, vaguely or otherwise, and you can get lost in there for hours, I guarantee. This site was introduced to me by my daughter going on two decades ago and I think this is the first one she pointed me to.
This. Exactly.
"What the deans did was fail to show unconditional earnestness and obeisance toward every last grievance lodged by a particular community, no matter how ridiculous or overstated. This is apparently the price of admission to progressive society these days."
No, it's the price exacted in large part by right-wing media driven witch hunts designed to characterize liberals and university staff in particular as the REAL antisemites to deflect attention from their own support for and ties to neo-nazis and white supremacists. sadly the university administrations are bowing to this pressure, but they are not the source of it.
This too.
Which is why 'abortion', 'fascism', 'nazi' and 'cisgender' are banned on platforms but 'libtards', 'retards', 'thugs' are not.
What the fuck is that, Kevin? Are you really trying to blame the hippies for elite university admins punishing the faculty to placate the monied class?
If so, you may want to apply to the NYT. You'd fit right in with this schtick.
Nice job completely dismissing the concerns and actual experiences of Jewish students at Columbia. If only those damn Jews would just suck it up, right?????
Nice job failing to actually show any concerns related to these instructors.
The deserve no empathy when they showed none at the event where this occured. They can pound salt.
du-te la dracul nenoricitul.
This has nothing to do with "concerns and actual experiences." Rather, it had to do with accepting every claim and interpretation offered, no matter how unlikely and far-fatehed. Some of the "offending" messages said things like "did that actually happen?" ZOMG!!!!
Tropes = cliches
Outraged alumni: When I watched "The Male Animal" from 1940 on Nite Owl Movie, it didn't realize it would all come back.
Rob : "You're a total paranoid."
Alvy Singer : "Well, how am I a para-? I pick up on those kind of things. You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, uh, "Did you eat yet or what?" and Tom Christie said, "No, didjew?" Not, "did you", "didjew eat?" Jew? No, not "did you eat", but "Jew eat"? Jew. You get it? Jew eat?"
How much of a problem can antisemitism be when Jewish identity is so readily used as a shield against criticism?
When criticisms of Israel -- especially unfair criticisms -- get little or no push back, I will worry about my Jewish friends and acquaintances.
From the linked article.
>>Dr. Patashnick texted that one panelist was “taking full advantage of this moment.”
>>“Huge fundraising potential,” he wrote.
>>“Amazing what $$$ can do,” one of the Columbia administrators texted.
If you don’t like tropes, how about anti-semitic cartoons? The caption on this cartoon is “The god of the Jew is Money”. Germany, 1938. You do the math.
https://www.granger.com/results.asp?image=0035984
And if you are paying attention, you see this same theme in other places. More often about controlling the world banking system, or Jews are greedy/usurious, or cheapskates. But joking about Jews controlling things with money is what anti-semites do. The deans who did that may not be anti-semites, but it is not a good look to have them text things that mostly anti-semites text.
As far as “How much of a problem can antisemitism be when Jewish identity is so readily used as a shield against criticism?”
Do you know how many hundreds of percent antisemitic incidents have gone up in since October 7? Clearly the answer is no, or you would not post that comment. Maybe do some research.
Oh, here’s one more trope from the entire wikipedia article about anti-semitic tropes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_trope#Provoking_or_fabricating_antisemitism
So claiming anti-semitism is not really a problem is a typical action of anti-semites. Not a good look.
See? Not a serious problem.
I have cousins who didn't know their grandmother was Jewish until her funeral.
When you're afraid even to complain about arguably -- arguably; Columbia really was faced with major donors threatening to withhold funding over the "failure adequately to respond to rampant antisemitism on campus;" maybe do some research yourself? -- antisemitic tropes, get back to me.
Until then, maybe you should worry more about how bad a look it is for so many Jews around the world to celebrate all the dead kids in Gaza: if that's Judaism, antisemitism is just about a moral imperative.
Show me evidence of "so many Jews around the world celebrating all the dead kids in Gaza". If you can't then that says an awful lot about you.
You don't even know how much antisemitism has increased since October, but you still insist it is not a problem. Also very revealing.
Your second paragraph is incomprehensible - exactly what research do you want me to do?
(This forum software sucks)
**(Deleted a bunch of links that this forum didn't like. Will try to post separately.)
When "antisemitism" is redefined to include protests against Israel's genocide in Gaza -- as it broadly has been -- then of course "antisemitism" has increased.
And "it" should.
You moaned about the antisemitic trope of Jews using money to control things. But I believe if you look at the texts that got these administrators fired, they only noted that alumni were demanding action and threatening to withhold donations ... which in fact was happening.
YOU are the one who drew the link between this use of money to influence and people being Jewish -- are they even all Jewish? The trope is yours, dude.
And I note how readily you used Jewishness -- even, I suspect, without knowing that the people involved were all Jewish -- as a reason that this very real use of money to influence policy should not be criticized.
If you were really worried about people being targeted for being Jewish, would you slap that label on them so lazily?
Youtube videos (Google search or search in Youtube should bring them up):
g25sEMRq4q0
eZfmo6Hjmdg
FkXJwErm8DM
nbkm2v5Hjos
Another search item for the evidence you asked for:
middleeasteye Israelis Celebrate Rafah Massacre
I googled the term you listed. It said two journalists made brief inappropriate remarks which were removed.
It then listed three or four right wingers, or anonymous Israelis with vile comments.
Conclusion: There are at least 4 horrible Israelis who mocked the attack in Rafah which was exacerbated by the flammable weapons being stored in the "civilian" encampment where Hamas military leadership was targeted.
"So many Jews celebrating" you claim, but the best you have is a few Israelis making vile posts.
I looked at the first video. It has pictures of bonfires, and claims it is Jews celebrating the attack in Rafah. But there is no evidence to support that connection.
The next two videos are each 8 minutes long. The summary is some Jewish woman accosting an Orthodox man, the other is an interview with a settler. I did not bother with the fourth.
If you have specific points in the videos that support your claim that "so Many Jews around the world are celebrating dead kids" then give me the time stamps where they say that. Otherwise you got nothing.
You can't be bothered to find out what the actual anti-semitic incidents are before assuming every last one is just criticism of Israel.
Here's the truth.
3,291 antisemitic incidents since October 7 break down into the following categories:
56 incidents of physical assault.
554 incidents of vandalism.
1,347 incidents of verbal or written harassment.
1,307 rallies, including antisemitic rhetoric, expressions of support for terrorism against the state of Israel and/or anti-Zionism.
Violent antisemitism is increasing, and has nothing to do with peaceful protest of Israel. I expect you will point out that "anti-semitic rhetoric" is meaningless, and utterly ignore the rest of the data.
"You moaned about the antisemitic trope of Jews using money to control things. But I believe if you look at the texts that got these administrators fired, they only noted that alumni were demanding action and threatening to withhold donations ... which in fact was happening."
I moaned about nothing. Why do you feel compelled to make up stuff like that? If you have no points to make, just try to make your opponent look bad?
I quoted the texts in my original post. They do not say what you claim.
The people they were commenting on were all Jewish. It's in the article.
Since you seem to just make stuff up and ignore evidence, I am done with this discussion.
lol
Found a video of Steve C: QgV-BGfIbtQ
Google and see the "Woman called police, claiming pro-Palestinian protesters surrounded her" Youtube video.
I think it is universally acknowledged that when all you have to say is a generalized mocking of your opponent without any basis, then you have lost the argument.
And this might be his mother:
nbkm2v5Hjos