Punching back against PC lies – punching back “twice as hard” – is advice instapundit likes to offer. I wish I had a pound for all the times we instead push back half as hard, conceding one absurdity to a woke idiot in the very act of gently suggesting they tone down another.
The famous picture of a sailor kissing a nurse on WWII victory day is the latest target of the wokescolds. A US lecturer describes how a crybully in his class said
“That is the photo of an assault. That man should have gone to jail.”
after which a gay (who “could never get get to the end of a sentence without mentioning it”) asked why celebrate “colonialism”. The lecturer raised a laugh against the gay by reminding him that our soldiers went to France to free it from Nazi colonialism, but in doing so he effectively let the crybully off with a remark that implied she was merely overemphasising a valid point.
Let us consider some other celebratory moments from the end of that war.
The men flinched from the kisses of the ecstatic, filthy, stinking girls who tried to swarm all over them. (Kitty Hart, ‘Return to Auschwitz’)
The only unusual part of this end-WWII description is Kitty’s clear statement that these unannounced female kisses were not only unwarned but unwanted by the US soldiers on whom they were showered. After two years in Auschwitz and months of slave-labourer-trudge westward across the dying Nazi state, Kitty and her tragically-few fellow Jewish survivors were not looking their prettiest at the liberation of Salzwedel concentration camp – and they were looking pretty aggressive. (Kitty’s memoirs describe frankly how she took an aggressive personality into Auschwitz and a more aggressive one out of it. Jews who did not, did not survive, though you also needed a lot of what Kitty Hart’s maiden name – Kitty Felix – is Latin for.)
There are many other examples. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, a great many Parisiennes threw themselves on the soldiers and kissed them without the least hint of, “Excusez-moi, monsieur, voulez-vous que je vous embrasse” beforehand – but it is not recorded that the men of General Leclerc’s French 2nd armoured division ‘flinched’ under this onslaught.
The mad logic of the woke crybully says Kitty and friends should have been jailed. After all, the nurse in the iconic protograph became friends with the sailor, met him often thereafter, posed with him for an anniversary photo, always spoke of it in positively glowing terms – in short, gave every possible proof of her willing acceptance of the kiss – whereas Kitty shamelessly admits the men her cohort kissed were anything but eager. And since those women in Paris have no better excuse than the sailor – “Les hommes ne nous résistent pas” is clearly not enough for the crybully – they must belong in jail too.
Burke said that while falsehood and deceit were allowed in no cause whatever, “a certain economy of the truth may be practiced; a man speaks the truth by measure that he be allowed to speak it longer.” He has a point – sometimes one must pick the points to make to be able to go on talking – but I think we should try to do less of it. That crybully girl merited mockery, not the PC cringe.
Oh dear, I hope these delicate flowers never find themselves standing at the foot of one of these statues:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276366/Times-Square-kiss-Statue-famous-moment-end-World-War-II-installed-San-Diego.html
The photo in that article does not do justice to the massive size of this statue. I’ve kissed my own wife at the base of another one installed in New Jersey.
The snowflakes for whom this kiss was a crime would likely melt if ever faced with hardships comparable to what their great-grandparents probably faced between 1929 and 1945. They do know that other humans lived before them, and that the world was once very different, do they not?
Discussions around the proper tactical response to the latest fauxrage are moot until we can manage to separate the taxpayers’ money from the education industrial complex’s grubby hands – at every level.
Vandals defaced a life sized version of that statue in New Jersey, US. Sprayed “Sexual Assault”, “#MeToo” and other such, right after this story was reported. Undoubtedly to show solidarity with The Narrative. These people are insane. They have no intention of understanding context, or history or other viewpoints. For them, there is only NOW and what they’re told to believe NOW. They will viciously destroy what they praised and marched for last week without blinking or the slightest introspection.
I doubt that they can ever be functioning members of a normal society. Perhaps there is a island where they can be isolated after being sterilized. I’m open to suggestions.
I read to day where Jeff Bezos wants to send one trillion human beings into space. Well, maybe we can suggest who the first few hundred thousand should be: snowflakes don’t melt in space and you can’t hear their screams!
“the nurse in the iconic photograph became friends with the sailor, met him often thereafter, posed with him for an anniversary photo, always spoke of it in positively glowing terms – in short, gave every possible proof of her willing acceptance of the kiss…”
According to Wikipedia that is not quite correct: V. J. Day in Times Square
It’s worth reading the whole article, because its not even clear who the individuals involved were. However the most likely woman in the photo is called Greta Zimmer Friedman. This is her recollection of the event from 2005:
“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and grabbed! That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me. I did not see him approaching, and before I know it I was in this tight grip,”
It’s very clear from that that she did not give “every possible proof of her willing acceptance of the kiss”.
The photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s recollections are also worth considering:
“I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make a difference. … Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse.”
It’s pretty clear that both of those statements are describing what today would be considered a sexual assault. Even if it wasn’t considered sexual assault in 1945, I think the behaviour of the sailor is very clearly wrong. If someone did that today, even in comparable circumstances, they should certainly be punished by the law.
The descriptions that Niall gives of the woman kissing the soldiers is also a clear example of something that today would be considered sexual assault. If someone did that today, even in comparable circumstances, they should certainly be punished by the law.
I have no idea what the law in the relevant countries was in 1945, but even if the actions described were not illegal, I think they were all still very clearly wrong.
In the American Conservative article that Niall links to it also describes how the female student thinks that the photo should be censored. Niall doesn’t mention this, but I think it is actually the most interesting bit in the story. Yes what the photo shows is an assault and is wrong, but the photo should not be censored. It is possible to have a nuanced view of the past where you understand the different moral attitudes but also simultaneously acknowledge that some of the things done were wrong. The “kiss” photo shows a moment of joy -the war is won – and we can celebrate that, while also understanding that it also shows one person assaulting another. The title of the sculpture Unconditional Surrender actually captures this ambiguity quite well.
American society in the 1940s was imperfect (perfection is not given to human beings) – but it was a lot better than now.
Strong families, and strong mutual aid fraternal organisations – people even dressed better and looked better.
The left attack New York in the 1940s – but even they must know that it was a lot better than modern society.
Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B is already being planned is it?
“Jolly Good! Jynnan tonnyx all round! Put some hot water in the tub number one, there’s a good chap!”
JG, please pass on to Mr. Adams that I like a bit o’ limey wit me Jynnan tonnyx.
I am curious of your analysis of this event Niall. If I go up to some random woman and kiss her then that is in fact battery (not assault.) Does it become less battery if, post hoc, he says she liked it and wants to do a bit more kissing? If some random ugly, smelly douche walked up and grabbed and frenched your mother or your sister (or, come to that, you) would you be equally “its not a big deal” about it? Does the fact that the sailor was good looking and a war hero change the circumstances? If battery is touching without consent, does post hoc consent, or the likelihood or post hoc consent based on the handsomeness or heroic-ness of the potential assailant matter?
My initial reaction is “what’s the big deal”, but if the nurse had not been happy with the kiss, post hoc, would that change it from “adorable” to “assault and battery”?
Crybullies may well be unpleasant, whiny hypocrites, but it is worth considering the point. Standards of acceptable touching have changed. It wasn’t long ago that a woman had to just put up with a bit of grab ass at work (or on the flip side, two guys could get in a LOT of trouble for kissing in public.) Those standards have changed, and I think for the better.
On the one hand you must judge people by the standards of the time they lived in, but on the other you can judge people in light of a more enlightened morality (I have no problem, for example, condemning Jefferson for owning slaves, perfunctory and commonplace though it might have been in his time.) So I think it is a mistake to laugh unreflectively at the snowflakes. Just because they are asses, hypocritical, whiny and bullying, doesn’t mean that they are entirely wrong.
Part of it also is the sexual culture that is deliberately left ambiguous for all sorts of anachronistic and psychological reasons. “Yes means yes” laws, for example, are the sort of things designed in theoretical labs that don’t bear any real resemblance to how sexual congress actually takes place in the real world beyond the boring world of philosophy professors boinking each other.
I mean one might well ask if consent is even quite so binary, so bifurcated, as these people seem to think it is. Sometimes consent kind of is post hoc, sometimes it is kind of half consent, sometimes it is “suspended decision till later” kind of consent. Sometimes consent is kind of assumed unless denied (in couples for example) and sometimes it is denied unless stated, in strangers for example, and sometimes it moves unpredictable from the latter to the former. Sometimes consent is difficult to say because circumstances apply pressure to consent, even though those circumstances inform the consent. This is always true, of course. Her love of shoes and the luxury lifestyle made her like rich guys so she consented — that is acceptable — her love of shoes and paying her mortgage made her want to keep her job so she consented — that is not acceptable. And I don’t say that to denigrate the reason women have relationships, men do so for equally trivial reasons like “she has a nice ass”. In fact, for most people, the reasons they engage in sex and relationships are generally remarkably shallow, for the most part.
Like I say, consent is not a simple concept.
John Galt
Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B is already being planned is it?
Yeah, well if we do that, just remember to wipe down your phone with a sanitizing wipe.
I fear that your “more enlightened” means nothing more than “most recent”, and you end up merely begging the question. A couple of scenarios:
– Throughout history until recently, transgendered people were viewed as being mentally ill. Today, in our “more enlightened” times, they are more commonly viewed as experiencing a true sexual dysphoria – that someone can indeed have been born in the wrong body.
But more and more often, “the professionals” are coming to the conclusion that the majority of today’s transgendered are suffering from some mental or psychological disorder unrelated to having been born in the wrong body. The “more enlightened view” in twenty years may well be that the transgendered masses have not been well-served by today’s mental health professionals, and that, while true sexual dysphoria does exist, it is exceedingly rare.
– Abortion has been roundly reviled throughout history. It has only been recently that societies view a woman’s physical sovereignty as trumping the right to life of a ______ (fill in the blank with your word of choice – I’m not looking for an abortion discussion. 😐 ) This new outlook is generally accepted as a “more enlightened” view.
But what if – and don’t fight the hypothesis here, for the sake of argument – what if, in fifty years, some scientific discovery is made that makes us all whack ourselves on the side of the head and say “but of course a viable fetus’s right to live trumps a woman’s right to not be pregnant”? At that point, the “more enlightened view” changes. Again.
In both of these examples, what we today call our “more enlightened view” turns out to merely be our “most recent view”. Were we good people to hold a view deemed moral in our own times, but then become bad people when that view changes? Or . . . what?
@bobby I wasn’t saying all modern morality is more enlightened, I was referring to modern attitudes to slavery, the right of women not to be molested at work, and the right of people of what ever gender to kiss their loved ones without fear of the morality police.
But I agree, there is plenty of “enlightened morality” that is more regressive, and more recent isn’t necessarily the same as better. However, I would say that the general trend of human history is toward a more enlightened morality for sure. There are certainly some things that are not good today, but we live in a much more morally enlightened time than the time of widespread slavery, serfdom, inequality before the law, the vile treatment of women and gay people, the absence of freedom of thought and freedom of conscience where the supremacy of the church overrode the freedom to think etc.
Not that everything is perfect, but broadly speaking everything is better (not withstanding some peaks, valleys and outliers.)
The two issues you raise are really far to complicated to allow simple answers, and in fact the very nature of what morality might mean is a complex and rather subjective matter. But that is a very long discussion. If you are ever in Chicago area, stop by, I’ll buy you a couple of beers and we can really go at it. Sounds fun!!
Hey, you two, can I come too? :>))))
Well, of course! We could convene the Upper Midwest Branch of the Semi-Samizdata Society.
Lookin’ forward to it, guys. bobby, don’t forget to bring the mead!
Sounds like a fun time! And of course you are always welcome Julie. Anyone who shares my obsession with Yes Minster sounds like a hoot.
LOL! ;>)
Backatcha, Fraser!
Fraser Orr (February 28, 2019 at 6:00 pm), on the one hand, you avoid the reductio ad absurdum trap that the crybully for sure would (and ‘Robert’ does) fall into with comical speed:
It is so obvious (to the PC) that after freeing Kitty and friends from the last of the various Nazi concentration camps they survived, their liberators should have straightway put them “in jail” (the crybully) or ensured they were “punished by the law” (Robert). 🙂
On the other hand – well, let me offer another, hopefully clarifying, example. On VE day, Princess Elizabeth (now our glorious Queen) and Princess Margaret joined (incognito) the crowds celebrating in London. As the Queen recalled (I quote her words from memory):
If I ridicule (as I do! 🙂 ) the idea of Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth being charged in the matter of theft of a cap, would you write a comment reminding me that we on this blog do not think that property is theft, or that stealing is OK, so should support the right of visiting Dutchmen to retain their caps? (Because that does seem to me analogous to what you wrote.)
Obviously, if the nurse had instead chosen to slap the sailor’s face while remarking, “I can retaliate against a surprise attack as well as our country did after Pearl Harbour”, then the crowd would have been just as much her friend as when she instead behaved in a manner that the strait-laced 1940s, on a normal day, would not have thought as resentful of his behaviour as the customs of the time expected – and very likely the sailor would have held his hands up and laughed with the rest. Nor were the laws formally suspended on Victory day. The strait-laced 1940s were decades before the 1970s, as we are decades after. If the nurse had pursued legal avenues, the crybully’s wish that the sailor be jailed would surely have failed; firstly, I doubt a single stolen kiss, since circumstances showed nothing further happened or could have rationally been apprehended, would have led to jail anyway; secondly, his plea “the emotions of that day overwhelmed me” would very likely have received mercy and merely a mild admonishment. But had the nurse ever wanted an injunction (e.g. against the sailor’s approaching within some-number yards of her), I assume (I am not a lawyer) it would have been within the bounds of legal feasibility.
I do not see a single word of the above paragraph as conflicting in the slightest with my belief that the crybully is absurd, and that your comment did not really engage my post.
@Niall Kilmartin
When Elizabeth stole the Dutchman’s cap are you saying she didn’t commit a crime? I mean obviously it isn’t a particularly serious crime, I am not suggesting they throw her in the pokey for a year. With these types of trivial crime the solution is usually to return the stolen goods with a smile and an apology, something I am sure she would have done willingly. However, had Elizabeth stolen the guy’s wallet instead would you feel equally charitable about it? Perhaps Elizabeth gets a pass because she was young and beautiful and part of a powerful rich family?
However, grabbing someone and kissing them is a far more serious type of assault/battery. And for sure perhaps the lady could have done what ladies have done throughout history, used some clever remark to de-escalate the situation and reduce the threat to her, much as the secretary in the 1950s might reduce the incidence of her boss grabbing her ass every day by saying “Mr. Smith you are a naughty boy but if you don’t keep your hands to yourself I’m going to have a cup of tea with your wife.”
But that doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Smith is a lecherous old bastard that deserves retribution of some kind.
Again, the simple question is — how would you feel is some nasty slimey dude walked up and frenched your sister, your mother or, for that matter, you? Would you be equally comfortable dismissing this as a trivial, “whats-the-big-deal” attitude? And if not, why not?
and now you have fallen headlong into reductio ad absurdum. 🙂 I can see the headlines now: ‘Princess Elizabeth, petty thief; Royal betrays no remorse at action, Describes day on the town with shameless Happiness’
If you think really, really hard, you may be able to imagine another, somewhat more immediately relevant, reason why, as you phrased it, she ‘got a pass’. Hint: it has something to do with the date of the ‘offence’. 🙂
What I actually suggested (in penultimate para of Niall Kilmartin, March 2, 2019 at 2:17 pm) was the nurse striking the sailor, and I also discussed her legal options. The ‘clever’ remark was secondary – and was highly related to the date.
Reply if you wish, but then I suggest we let readers (such as bother to get this far in the thread) decide for themselves whose penny is resolutely refusing to drop.
Niall Kilmartin
Hint: it has something to do with the date of the ‘offence’.
So you think that on days of big celebrations, on days when wars end, when crowds gather to celebrate that somehow the normal laws are suspended? Such events are in fact a festival for pickpockets. By my lights, that is a day to be a bit more forceful in enforcing the law since the nasty people are taking advantage of a great thing happening. I mean, this is the day on which they were celebrating the end of a war fought to preserve the very system or laws and decency that you seem to want to suspend for the day. I don’t get that AT ALL.
Of course grabbing someone’s hat isn’t really a big deal, but it is still stealing, and the sailor would have had every right to be a bit miffed, and could quite rightly demand it back with an apology, just like I said. But you know maybe it was a big deal. What do you or I know. Maybe it was given to him by his dead mother at the beginning of the war and it stayed with him safe through the conflict. Maybe it belonged to his mate who saved him by sacrificing himself and he kept it to honor him. Maybe if he returned his uniform to the Quartermaster missing a piece he’d be fined. And maybe it was completely unimportant. But, for sure, it was his, his to control, his to dispose of as he saw fit, and she had no right to take it. It wasn’t the crime of the century, but she still had no right to take it.
But you didn’t answer my question about some random guy kissing your sister, your mother or you. I mean that is really the heart of the question. I can assure you I’d be a lot more pissed if some random dude kissed my daughter than if he stole my hat.
I feel this thread is a bit of a “the good old days were great, before the days of snowflakes”, and in some ways the good old days were better, but in lots of ways they were worse, in some ways much worse. The snowflakes are complaining about ridiculous edge cases because their predecessors have won some amazing victories, and those are worth celebrating and acknowledging.
Fraser & Niall: interesting discussion of what-ifs, but the solid facts are that the girl, judging by her account in Wikipedia: (1) was not stalked or even approached by that sailor, or any other, afterwords; (2) was not physically harmed (well, maybe bruised lips?), nor was she in any danger of serious battery at the time, much less any further sexual assault; and (3) was given a lifetime of iconic fame in return for a less-than-60-second moment of (most likely) very little trauma (she has not gone on record as having required counseling or medical care).
As a random “sister, mother, or you” — I would take that trade.
@AesopFan, imagine this scenario with me if you will. Guy running a business working 80 hours a week, if he keeps going he’ll be dead of a heart attack in a couple of years. His competitor has had enough so burns the guy’s business to the ground. Guy takes the insurance money, says “the hell with it” and retires on a beach house in Florida, and spends the rest of his joy filled days, fishing, hanging with friends and doing the stuff he loved.
Here a crime was committed, but the victim of the crime actually ended up being better off (let’s put aside the loss suffered by the insurance company for now.) However, the fact that “guy” was better off in the end doesn’t make it any less arson.
Consider this — a non trivial number of women, usually religious in character, have this idea that they want to save themselves for marriage, and imagine that their first kiss would be with their husband at the altar. Now I think that is nuts, verging on the insane, but it is not uncommon, and was considerably more common in the 1940s. Had the nurse been such a person this man would have robbed that of her, and that is a dreadful theft.
Maybe in the end, as you suggest, the nurse was better off, but that doesn’t make it any less a battery. Now I am not so foolish to ignore the fact that there are lots of women who think that the idea of some tall dark handsome stranger sweeping them off their feet with a romantic kiss isn’t a great fantasy. But it doesn’t change the nature of the thing. And there is no woman who, perhaps though she might want that, doesn’t want to define for herself how tall dark and handsome he must be. And to allow this to pass without comment does, quite simply, give license to others who aren’t sufficiently tall, dark or handsome to force themselves on some unwilling victim.
I do not believe in the idea of post hoc withdrawal of consent — morning after regret — so to speak. However, I certainly do believe in consent before the action (consent taking many different forms.)
Perhaps it is a romantic thing. Men often take risks in the pursuit of women. And this is just that. He took a risk of committing the crime of battery, hoping that she would, post hoc, have given consent. Hooray that it worked out this time, but there are plenty of times that the outcome would not be so rosy.
In spite of 70 years of technological progress, it is clear that life (society) was better in New York City in the late 1940s than it is now – just look at the schools. Or at the way people dressed and behaved.
The left with their idea of societal progress run into the rock of objective reality.
Take the town I am in right now – Kettering (England).
How can anyone say that life is better here now than it was in, say, 1960 – just look at photographs of the town and people in 1960 and compare it with now.
Clue there were no homeless junkies injected themselves in the groin with heroin here in 1960 – families were strong, as were churches and secular mutual aid societies.
@Paul, I really can’t agree. Of course somethings are worse, usually things related to the government (like homelessness and the demise of things like mutual aid societies as they are hovered up by government agencies.) But I’d remind you that 1960 is just a few years after Alan Turing killed himself because of his treatment as a homosexual. 1960 it was common for Lucy the secretary to put up with the boss’s grabbing her butt as just part of the job, and the notion that Lucy could be an engineer or a manager over men was really quite laughable.
It was a time that, when you wanted to know something you had to go to a library and look it up on ancient dusty books that were probably 50 years out of date. It was a time when the news media was owned and controlled largely by the state and there were very few deserting voices — because starting a newspaper was extremely expensive and starting a TV station was illegal.
I remember when I as a kid (after the 1960s) in my house our telephone line was a party line — the wire was shared by another house — and you had to wait until they were off the phone to make a call.
I also remember doing my final year school project in Geography, where I had to use a manual typewriter to complete the paper. There was no delete key, no bold key, not italic,and definitely no drawing program or spreadsheet to handle the masses of weather data I had to process.
In 1960 everyone smoked. In 1960 a woman who was accused on inchastity could have her reputation destroyed and her future stolen from here. In 1960 a child born out of wedlock suffered massive legal disadvantages, including the inability of the mother to get support from the father.
1960 was before the invention of vaccinations for mumps, measles, rubella, chickenpox and meningitis. In 1960 children were still dying of smallpox. It was before heart transplants and IVF.
In 1960 we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. When I was a kid I fully understood the four minute warning, and certainly expected that I wouldn’t make it out of childhood because nuclear war was inevitable. (Joan Ruddock told me so.)
We lived in that horrible world when you started working for a company at 18 and stayed their until you were 65, hoping that the company pension fund would sustain you, subject to all sorts of abuse because getting fired (against which you had little legal recourse) was possibly the end of your ability to earn a living. Moreover, in business if you wanted to communicate something in your company to someone else at a different location you had to call in your secretary, have her take down your note in shorthand, then have her go type it up, show it to you, then put it in an envelope with a stamp and send it and have it delivered five days later (because the Royal Mail was a big government agency with no competition.) Fortunately, by 1960 you didn’t have to use a quill pen and a wax seal — so progress had been made.
If you were lucky enough to have the money to invest, you had a to go through brokers that charged hundreds of dollars a trade and limited your access to information that benefited them and not you.
And worst of all, in 1960 there was no samitzdata.net. I mean that there should be the winning argument.
I could go on and on. It is easy to allow nostalgia to cloud out just how horrible the past really was, and how much better we have it today. Progress has also, I will grant you, brought a lot of crap too, but I have no doubt whether I’d want to live today rather than 1960. Hell I’d like to be living in 2060.