Presumably the quake was OK really because it just got rid of a bagel-less (LIES) "spreading stain" that nobody important likes anyway. RAGE.
I was actually filled with uncontrollable fury tonight when I read a comment on one of those "Lorde is a big racist" blog, where someone reacted dismissively to the comments by some Kiwis about a kind of larger US cultural imperialism that they felt she was reacting to, which used the phrase "so-called NZers". Like, NZers have no right to name themselves. My head nearly exploded. I don't quite know why, but the complete dismissal not only of their argument but of their very identity, and knowing that it is MY identity too and that we do actually know about US imperialism both latent and overt... well, it was too bloody much.
I read through that big Lorde rant, too. And the writer's later response to all the people telling her that she didn't know anything about New Zealand and New Zealanders. Her response being largely "well she should know about how it is here!". In the end I just found myself sighing deeply and resisting the urge to respond, because it simply wouldn't have done any good.
It is quite disappointing to see some of the people who spend so much time discussing gender, race and class privilege (and their intersections) so completely and utterly fail to recognise their national privilege.
Still, on that topic, when I visited Ruth Curry's wahhvelogue I got a link at the top to this article about her, which was surprisingly not bad.
It is quite disappointing to see some of the people who spend so much time discussing gender, race and class privilege (and their intersections) so completely and utterly fail to recognise their national privilege.
*engraves this in my memory so as to not be one of those people*
I think many of those people have no concept of a world outside America, really. American cultural norms are so deeply embedded in their world view that they cannot conceive of what it's like being in an English-speaking former colony that consumes other places' media in part because it cannot afford (and for a long time did not feel "good enough" to) create enough of its own. I mean we weren't going to shut our doors to foreign music and television, because we're not North Korea.
I remember trying to explain this subtle colonisation of our language that occurs via media to someone online once, and it actually worked when I pointed out that nearly everybody who sings rock or post-rock music in English does so with an approximation of an American accent. They remembered meeting a non-American at summer camp who had done so and thought that it was just now people sang... (which it is)... but the penny dropped.
If she was that self-involved, entitled and angst-ridden while she was here, it's little wonder no one cared to tell her where the good bagels were.
Any city is terrible when viewed through the lens of a failing relationship. But yes, this goes down about as well as, say, rounding off your account of a disappointing love affair that made you hate New York with something like "...and then the World Trade Center was destroyed in a tragic terrorist attack and the city I knew was irrevocably changed."
Sorry, but you simply don't get to make that kind of tragedy all about you.
I could rant in support, but really, as a New Yorker I wish I could 1) smack her upside the head and tell her not to be such a provincial snot and 2) apologize for her idiocy. I am sorry.
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Presumably the quake was OK really because it just got rid of a bagel-less (LIES) "spreading stain" that nobody important likes anyway. RAGE.
I was actually filled with uncontrollable fury tonight when I read a comment on one of those "Lorde is a big racist" blog, where someone reacted dismissively to the comments by some Kiwis about a kind of larger US cultural imperialism that they felt she was reacting to, which used the phrase "so-called NZers". Like, NZers have no right to name themselves. My head nearly exploded. I don't quite know why, but the complete dismissal not only of their argument but of their very identity, and knowing that it is MY identity too and that we do actually know about US imperialism both latent and overt... well, it was too bloody much.
Reply
It is quite disappointing to see some of the people who spend so much time discussing gender, race and class privilege (and their intersections) so completely and utterly fail to recognise their national privilege.
Still, on that topic, when I visited Ruth Curry's wahhvelogue I got a link at the top to this article about her, which was surprisingly not bad.
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*engraves this in my memory so as to not be one of those people*
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I think many of those people have no concept of a world outside America, really. American cultural norms are so deeply embedded in their world view that they cannot conceive of what it's like being in an English-speaking former colony that consumes other places' media in part because it cannot afford (and for a long time did not feel "good enough" to) create enough of its own. I mean we weren't going to shut our doors to foreign music and television, because we're not North Korea.
I remember trying to explain this subtle colonisation of our language that occurs via media to someone online once, and it actually worked when I pointed out that nearly everybody who sings rock or post-rock music in English does so with an approximation of an American accent. They remembered meeting a non-American at summer camp who had done so and thought that it was just now people sang... (which it is)... but the penny dropped.
Reply
Any city is terrible when viewed through the lens of a failing relationship. But yes, this goes down about as well as, say, rounding off your account of a disappointing love affair that made you hate New York with something like "...and then the World Trade Center was destroyed in a tragic terrorist attack and the city I knew was irrevocably changed."
Sorry, but you simply don't get to make that kind of tragedy all about you.
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