Category: Pecksniffery

The use of “only”

June 21, 2025 • 11:20 am

Unless English grammar has changed in the last few years, then the placement of the word “only” in sentences is one of the biggest grammatical mistakes people make. The proper usage requires that the word restricted by “only” must be perfectly clear.  For example, here is an incorrect usage:

“I only ate one donut.”

That’s wrong because the word modified by “only” here is “ate”.  The sentence is wrong because it implies that the speaker could have done something else with that donut besides eating it, like throwing it at another person or stomping on it.  What the sentence is supposed to mean is that the speaker could have eaten more donuts, but did not (perhaps he was on a diet). If you want to say what you actually mean here, you must move the “only”, making this sentence:

“I ate only one donut.” 

Here “only” modifies “one”, giving the correct meaning.

That example should suffice, but I’ll give one more. If a student is accused of cheating by copying prose from a bot on a term paper, they may try to exculpate themselves by saying “I only copied one sentence.” But that’s wrong because it implies the student could have done something else with the sentence besides copying it. And that makes no sense. Again, the proper usage is “I copied only one sentence.”

When some of my friend misplace “only” this way, I correct them, saying that they must remember where to put the word. More important, if they do remember that forever, it will be a legacy from me: something that makes people think of Jerry when they use the word “only.”  Only Ceiling Cat knows that I have almost no legacies! (Note the proper use of “only” in the preceding sentence.)

Which brings us to two flagrant misuses of the term in popular culture. The first is in a song I’ve written about recently: one of the greatest rock songs and surely the best one from Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: “God Only Knows.” Here are a few lyrics (you can hear the original release here); the bolding is mine.

I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it

[Refrain: Carl Wilson]
God only knows what I’d be without you

You can see the problem here. As written, the lyrics imply that God could have done other things than know how the singer would be. (For example, he could be “guessing” or “intuiting” rather than “knowing.”  The correct phrasing would be this: “Only God knows what I’d be without you.”  But of course that’s awkward: try singing the song using those words instead. The phrasing is ungrammatical but musically more felicitious—by far.  I have no beef with that.

This one I do. It is in every ad for Liberty Mutual Insurance, including this clever ad:

But at the end there’s this, which is Liberty Mutual’s slogan:

 

No, no, no! That implies that you could do other things besides paying to get what you need. (You could, for example, steal what you need.)  What it’s trying to say is that the viewer should pay only for the aspects of insurance that he needs. You don’t need flood insurance, for example, if you live in Death Valley.

Of course the correct usage here is this:  “Pay only for what you need.”  It bothers me that they can’t use proper grammar!

Now of course this is Pecksniffery: hardly a worldshaking issue.  But what would life be if we didn’t have little things like this to grouse about?

And surely you have phrases like this that bother you. I welcome them, so please put them in the comments.

Why we can’t say “pipeline” any longer

July 9, 2023 • 1:15 pm

Here’s a short piece from the Journal of the American Medical Association Open that explains why we can no longer use the word “pipeline” when referring to the progress of human beings from birth until adulthood. The word is often used when discussing ethnic diversity, referring to a pipeline from birth to adulthood and its concomitants: college, jobs, and so on. If the pipeline is meant to include college and one’s achievements there, as well as jobs based on those achievements, the people who leave that career path are said to instantiate a “leaky pipeline.”

Now we are told that we can no longer use the “pipeline” simile, because it’s not inclusive. But on the other hand “American Indian” is a term that’s okay again!

Click to read:

I’m just going to quote from the short piece and make one or two brief remarks.

For many years, the term pipeline has been used metaphorically by researchers and policy makers to refer to the progression of students advancing toward a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degree or a career in medicine. Past criticisms of the term pipeline highlight how students, especially those from historically excluded backgrounds, such as American Indian, Black, and Latino/a individuals, “leak” out of the “pipeline” for a variety of personal, social, financial (economic), or cultural reasons. For American Indian and Alaska Native individuals, the term pipeline is especially offensive. More specifically, this term is pejorative for communities where pipeline projects in the US threaten sacred homelands and water supplies. Many people will recall the resistance of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Recently, a new pipeline project impacting racially marginalized residents, including Black and low-income residents, living in the Southwest Crossings neighborhood of Houston, Texas, highlighted the continuing practice of divestment and displacement faced by these communities.

. . . .In place of pipeline, the term pathways has come into favor by many, including the AMA and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Pipeline implies that there is only 1 entry point and 1 exit, and frames career development as a passive process in which individuals are commodified as a resource to be delivered as a final result. Pipeline leaves out the contexts, complexities, and variations of the myriad pathways students may take in education from elementary and secondary school, through higher education, and on to a STEM or health professions field. Pipeline connotes extraction, transport, and removal from community, rather than investment in and nurturing of people and resources in place. Since many historically marginalized or minoritized racial and ethnic groups of students may take nontraditional or divergent career pathways, it remains critically important to use the more inclusive, accurate term of pathways. Use of pathways for this purpose communicates respect for students’ choices, agency, and career exploration.

Note first that the term “American Indian” is used. More on that in a second. What I am wondering here are two things. First, has anybody besides these three privileged authors ever objected to the use of the term “pipeline”—which is reserved for intellectual discussion of academic and social achievement—as insulting to their community? If so—and I do follow these things—I’ve never heard it.  Second, do the authors seriously believe that replacing “pipeline” with “pathway” is going to improve society? How, exactly, will that happen?  Are some “American Indian” and “Alaska Native” individuals who previously refused to discuss career achievement because the discussion involved the p-word, now going to participate eagerly with the new, improved word “pathway.”

I don’t believe it. what we have here is exactly what the authors decry in the next paragraph: “performative allyship”!

Equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts have been challenged by performative allyship and the persistent lack of commitment to equitable access from institutional leadership. Proclaiming representative diversity as the end goal establishes dominant cultural norms of tokenism, deficit framing, and devaluation of historically excluded students and their communities. The messaging must evolve to value diversity as a shared value that benefits individuals, communities, institutions, and ultimately, patients. Using pathways terminology can help move beyond representation to inclusive excellence. Medicine as a profession must decommodify the language around workforce development challenges and focus on the power of diversity and inclusion to enhance and improve medicine, primary health care and health equity.

But the authors’ entire article is an example of useless language policing—”performative allyship” from three privileged academics and physicians.  As for the rest of the paragraph above, it is so badly written that I am not sure what they are trying to say except that they are in favor of more diversity and less oppression.  Oh, and that medicine will improve when we substitute “pathways” for “pipeline”.  If you believe that, well, all I can say is, “Show me the data.”

One more point. For years now, the term “Indian” or “American Indian” has been considered pejorative itself, like saying “Negro” instead of “African American” or “black”.  Now it’s apparently back again:

Allies who do not identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, including influential medical educators, researchers, clinicians, authors, and journal editors in the US, should update their language with preference for the terms American Indian or Alaska Native.

The updating by the Language Police happens so fast that I can’t keep up with it.

Everything must now produce social progress: Jennifer Lopez demonized by strippers for her Superbowl halftime poledance

February 6, 2020 • 11:00 am

I haven’t seen the new movie Hustler, but have read that it’s about a group of strippers who get empowered and bilk rich guys; and it’s supposed to be pretty good. Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez have been singled out for their performances, and Lopez reprised her Hustler performance in the Superbowl halftime show, in which she did a bit of pole dancing. I’ve put it below. I think it’s pretty good, and the contentious pole dance, see below, begins at 8:25.

 

JLo isn’t the only star who’s done pole-dancing in movies. I found a list of actresses who played strippers here; they include Marisa Tomei, Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston, Natalie Portman, Demi Moore, Mena Suvari, and Constance Wu. Sandra Oh also played one, and did pole-dancing, along with about half of the stars I’ve just listed.

I have no issue with strippers, pole dancers, or prostitutes, though I don’t patronize them or their clubs; and I do think that sex work should be legalized for the safety of everyone. Nor do I recall anybody—save, perhaps, right wingers—raising the alarum when these well-known actors played strippers or did salacious dances in movies.

No, the objections now come from the Offense Brigade, in this case, from strippers themselves, who object to the “vocational appropriation” of people like Lopez and Wu portraying them in movies and the Superbowl performance—and without helping strippers! The temerity of it!

You can read this Pecksniffery in (of course) HuffPo, in an article written by a stripper, sex worker, and pornographic actress (click on the screenshot)

Here’s a scene from Hustlers in which Lopez shows the neophyte Constance Wu how to use the pole:

Stanger and some of her fellow strippers, who apparently didn’t object to the movie “Hustlers”, did object to Lopez’s performance in the video I linked to above. Why? Because they expropriated pole-dancing for their own selfish purposes, without ever thinking about the pole-dancers who labor in clubs. (Yes, these women often have a hard life, as the environment is seedy and can be dangerous.) Here’s Elle Stanger’s beef:

The halftime pole performance referenced the 2019 movie ”Hustlers,” in which Lopez played a fictionalized character loosely based on a former stripper. JLo’s brief pole performance came just days after Dua Lipa was criticized as “exploitative” and “unfeminist” for tipping real working strippers at a Grammys afterparty, although I’ll argue that tipping a highly stigmatized working woman is the most feminist thing you can do.

But folks rarely inquire how actual strippers feel.

When I saw JLo slowly climb a stripper pole, I felt annoyed, frustrated and angry. Here we go again, I thought, another celebrity using the “shock value” of sex work to boost her career and the media once again using stripper imagery for ad revenue. I got texts from a few stripper friends who felt similarly.

. . .It is not progress to see a celebrity briefly doing a pole dance on television when real middle-aged strippers struggling to make ends meet in the post-FOSTA-SESTA era is a much more common reality. (Yes, there are women hustling at that age, and some with better pole work.)

“She took stripper culture for her personal gain, to look cool by doing one pole trick, and she has not contributed to strippers in any way,” said stripper and social media creator @womenswhork on Instagram.

. . . I appreciate what being a stripping has done for me and I believe in the value of safer adult entertainment and consensual contact work. With education and destigmatization, I believe we will someday value our sacred whore entertainers. In the meantime, I disagree that a celebrity actor using a pole as a prop is paving the way for any of us.

First, remember that neither Shakira nor Lopez were paid above union scale for their performances, as Superbowl halftime acts are always paid virtually nothing (except for expenses). (The performances do, of course, boost their careers.)

But . . the movie “Hustlers” (which of course was supposed to enhance every participating actors’ career), is said to have been empowering, as a bunch of savvy strippers take control of their lives and use their positions to bilk a bunch of gullible men. Lopez’s performance at the Superbowl was simply meant to refer back to that movie. Why on earth should she be remiss in not asking how “actual strippers feel”, or feel obligated to to “contribute to strippers”? There are any number of comparable beefs that could be made; readers can think of many. The idea is that if you play a character in a movie it then becomes your obligation of the actor to help some of the real-life people you’re portraying. But that’s ridiculous. You can help if you wish, of course, and that would be a nice gesture, but you’re under no obligation, nor should you be called out if you just move on. But it’s still unclear to me what Jennifer Lopez is not supposed to do for strippers.

But Lopez was not exploiting strippers, nor was she really engaged in “occupational appropriation,” for her movie actions hurt nobody. In fact, if they did anything, they helped strippers. Elle Stanger is just using the Superbowl performance to get her membership card in the Outrage Brigade. For the life of me, I can’t see any merit in her complaint.

But it gets worse, and I’ll let you read the article below for yourself, which actually comes from NBC News (click on screenshot). Constance Wu, bless her, is now doubly damned: she was not only appropriating stripper culture, but is acting out a “model minority” (Asian) redemption narrative. That is, all ends well for Constance Wu’s character. And that’s “problematic.” If you want to read how the Woke can torture a movie into submission because it doesn’t conform perfectly to their ideology, this is the article for you:

Evergreen State flaunts its virtue once again by policing language

December 7, 2018 • 9:15 am

UPDATE: According to reader Benjamin (see comments below), the motion didn’t come up for a vote, contrary to what some websites say. This may have been due to public pressure/embarrassment.

________

This time it’s the word “covenant”, which apparently conjures up—for some of the Outrage Brigade—images of “cultural genocide”, the European-settler elimination, oppression, and ill treatment of Native Americans, a wrong that’s not in question. The connection is a bit oblique: settlers made “covenants” with Native Americans; I can’t speak about the history of that of what it led to, nor did the College in its resolution below. But you can’t rewrite any wrongs of this sort by redacting a single word,  especially a word that almost never has anything to do with Native Americans. One university, however, disagrees.

Two days ago, the The faculty of The Evergreen State College (TESC, also known as the University of Antifa) voted on a motion to replace the word “covenant” in all College documents. Apparently, as some websites suggest, the motion passed, and so “covenant” is gone, expired, singing with the choir invisible. Here’s the motion and a snarky response:

The word “covenant” was used in the faculty handbook in numerous senses, most of them agreeing with the first definition given in the Oxford English Dictionary (below)—simply a solemn agreement:

This is a new level of language policing, as the “covenant” that’s the subject of the resolution is only one of many uses—and not the most frequent use—of the word. But TESC says it has has a “nation-to-nation agreement” with the Tribes of Washington, and perhaps someone on one end got offended.

But if you try to find that agreement, you won’t (or at least I couldn’t). What you’ll find is a list of TESC covenants (click on screenshot) that have nothing to do with “cultural genocide”:

What’s next: should they ban the word “solution” because it was used by the Nazis as the “Final Solution”, a reference to the extermination of European Jews?

I can’t add much to the video on the kerfuffle made by TESC graduate Benjamin Boyce. Be sure to watch till the end, because there’s something awesome at 7:36.

TESC is slowly circling the drain, and will go down even faster if nonsense like this gets publicized. Yet they don’t even try to remedy the kind of oppressive and authoritarian ideology that is responsible for the College’s declining enrollment.

Annual Christmas Grinch-ery: “Baby It’s Cold Outside” once again gets the thumbs down from the Outrage Brigade

December 3, 2018 • 10:30 am

Yes, it’s that time of year: holly, mistletoe, fruitcakes, eggnog, premature Christmas music—and the carping of Authoritarian Leftists who want to ban the song “Baby it’s cold outside” for its supposed lack of affirmative sexual consent.

Here are two older articles from the Washington Post and Vox explaining why the outrage brigade demonizes the song. In short, “Baby it’s cold outside” is rape-y and sexually malevolent, and even implies that a woman’s drink was spiked (it wasn’t). Click on the screenshot to read more—if you don’t already know the story.

From that Post report:

The piano notes, the crooning voice — it’s unmistakably “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” And how does that make you feel?

Icky, we’re guessing. The Christmas song that has been a romantic classic for decades is becoming notorious for being creepy at best, encouraging of date rape at worst. The lyrics haven’t changed; the female role in the duet has always been singing “the answer is no” as the man pressures her to stay. But society’s evolving views on the prevalence of rape, especially between non-strangers, has pushed criticism of a Christmas classic into the mainstream.

Vox, surprisingly, gives a more balanced take, giving the pro and con arguments for considering the song misogynistic and even dangerous:

But this controversy continues yearly, for social-justice outrage is ever busy and needs feeding, and won’t rest until everything considered ideologically impure is banned.

Below is a piece from Entertainment Weekly reporting that station WDOK in Cleveland, Ohio just banned the song from its week-long 24-7 Christmas rotation (who can stand incessant Christmas music?) because, as radio host Desiray emphasized, “People might say, ‘oh, enough with that #MeToo,’ but if you really put that aside and listen to the lyrics, it’s not something I would want my daughter to be in that kind of a situation. The tune might be catchy, but let’s maybe not promote that sort of an idea.” (Another announcer echoes those sentiments in the station’s blog post.)

Eleven months ago, I examined the controversy brewing at that time, and posted the entire song. You should listen to the whole thing (the roles get reversed) and read the Persephone Magazine piece below before you pass judgment. As I said before posting the original movie version and the new sanitized version:

Here’s the original version of the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. The first half shows Betty Grable and Ricardo “Corinthian Leather” Montalban; the second Red Skelton and Red Skelton and Betty Garrett. The song was written by Frank Loesser in 1944, was sung by him and his wife at parties, and first appeared in this movie: “Neptune’s Daughter” (1949):

As you probably know, this song has been strongly criticized for showing sexual malfeasance, though people apparently haven’t seen the role reversal that starts at 2:27. Well, women can be domineering too, but I can see why this song would raise a lot of hackles were it recorded today. (Lady Gaga is apparently complicit.) Given the symmetry of roles, and the fact that it’s older than I am, I can’t get very worked up about it, though.

Why doesn’t the second part, showing sexual symmetry, ever get mentioned in the ubiquitous calls for banning? I don’t think it’s because women are seen as rape-y. But read on about the mores of the time.

The humorless earnestness and heavy-handedness of the Control-Left is absolutely evident from the revised and bowdlerized version published by The Current. As I wrote:

The consent-friendly version below, however, is the response of 2018. Rather than just pointing out the difficulty of negotiating an acceptable sexual relationship in these fraught times, people go back and rewrite the past.  This rewrite makes me absolutely cringe, not because of the need for “affirmative consent”, with which I agree, but because it’s so heavy-handed with the virtue—and not humorous to boot. Yes, we get it! We don’t need to be beat over the head with a ball peen Virtue Hammer. (Note: the site says a portion of the proceeds will be donated to good causes; I think they should donate all the proceeds.)

“How about The Cheesecake Factory?” Really?

But if you want the definitive refutation of this song as rape-y, read the piece below, written by Slay Belle (click on screenshot) and published at Persephone Magazine.  Read it for yourself; it’s summarized below in a series of tweets by comedian and writer Jen Kirkman. 

A short excerpt:

If we look at the text of the song, the woman gives plenty of indication that she wants to stay the night. At the time period the song was written (1936), “good girls,” especially young, unmarried girls, did not spend the night at a man’s house unsupervised. The tension in the song comes from her own desire to stay and society’s expectations that she’ll go. We see this in the organization of the song — from stopping by for a visit, to deciding to push the line by staying longer, to wanting to spend the entire night, which is really pushing the bounds of acceptability.   Her beau in his repeated refrain “Baby, it’s cold outside” is offering her the excuses she needs to stay without guilt.

Let’s look at the lines. As she’s talking about leaving, she never says she doesn’t want to stay. Her words are all based around other people’s expectations of her — her mother will worry, her father will be pacing the floor, the neighbors will talk, her sister will be suspicious of her excuses and her brother will be furious, and my favorite line that I think is incredibly revealing, — “My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious.” Vicious about what? Sex. Unmarried, non-good girl having, sex.

Later in the song, she asks him for a comb (to fix her hair) and mentions that there’s going to be talk tomorrow – this is a song about sex, wanting it, having it, maybe having a long night of it by the fire, but it’s not a song about rape. It’s a song about the desires even good girls have.

. . . The song, which is a back and forth, closes with the two voices in harmony. This is important — they’ve come together. They’re happy. They’re in agreement. The music has a wonderfully dramatic upswell and ends on a high note both literally and figuratively. The song ends with the woman doing what she wants to do, not what she’s expected to do, and there’s something very encouraging about that message.

A precis in tweets:

 

 

Pecksniffery #2: “Long time no see” considered by Colorado university as racist toward Asians

November 14, 2018 • 1:45 pm

From Melissa Chen, who wrote about this issue on her Facebook page, we learn that Colorado State University has put the familiar phrase “Long time, no see” (meaning, “I haven’t seen you for a while”) onto a list of offensive “non inclusive” phrases (click on screenshot to go to the article). But below that you can read the original piece, by CSU student Katrina Leibee, who writes at the CSU student newspaper The Rocky Mountain Collegian (the piece has a disclaimer by the paper that it doesn’t represent the stand of the editorial board).

The original report:

Leibee reports that words like “freshman” is sexist and should be replaced by “first-years”. I have no problem with that, because I can see how women would take offense at the repeated use of “man” to imply “people,” as with “mankind.” Likewise, the phrase “you guys” seems a bit sexist; would anybody not see this if it were replaced with the phrase, “you girls” directed at everyone?

I try not to use such phrases myself.  But Leibee also reports more innocuous phrases that have been swept up in the Pecksniff Net:

After getting involved in residential leadership, I was told not to use the word “dorms,” and replace it with “residence halls.” Apparently, dorm refers to only a place where one sleeps, and residence hall refers to a place where we sleep, eat, study and participate in social activities.

A countless amount of words and phrases have been marked with a big, red X and defined as non-inclusive. It has gotten to the point where students should carry around a dictionary of words they cannot say.

In a meeting with Zahra Al-Saloom, the director of Diversity and Inclusion at Associated Students of Colorado State University, she showed me an entire packet of words and phrases that were deemed non-inclusive. One of these phrases was “long time, no see,” which is viewed as derogatory towards those of Asian descent.

Al-Saloom believes inclusive language is important at CSU.

Melissa, a Singaporean who speaks Mandarin, informed her Facebook friends that the “long time no see” phrase is not (as Wikipedia implies) derived from mocking Chinese or Pidgin speakers using broken English. The phrase is a literal translation of the Mandarin. It’s not like the phrase often used to mock the Chinese who ran laundries in America, “No tickee, no washee.”

As Melissa pointed out:

There must be a great deal of projection going on if you find “long time no see” racist to Asians.

It’s literally a direct translation of Mandarin syntax (好久不见) and has become a common turn of phrase.

Two other Mandarin speakers piped in:

“好 can also translate as ‘very’ so it would be ‘very long time, no see’ as well.”

and

“It’s more like “Good (好) Long-Time (久) No (不) See (见) , but that’s a negligible difference.”

It’s curious that that phrase, whose origins really are unknown, doesn’t seem to be objectionable to any Chinese people, just as Kimono Day at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts wasn’t objectionable to many Japanese, some of whom demonstrated in its favor. And I doubt that more than 0.01% of people who use the “long time no see” phrase even know that its origins may be a direct translation from the Chinese.

All too often it’s those who aren’t ethnically “qualified” to judge the degree of offense produced by a phrase—like Zahra Al-Saloom—who make these lists. But just to be sure that Ms. Al-Saloom isn’t Chinese and has a Middle Eastern name, here’s her photo from her Linked In profile, which has mysteriously disappeared:

 

More misguided accusations of cultural appropriation

October 24, 2018 • 9:15 am

For some reason this mini-kerfuffle has gotten me quite depressed, for much of the world seems to be deliberately seeking to be offended, even when there’s nothing to be offended about. This case involves Kendall Jenner, a member of a family for whom I have no love, but who’s entitled to her vocation as a model. Unfortunately for her and the magazine, Vogue published two photos of her with highly teased hair, to wit (Instagram posts):

. . . and another

Well, look at the photos and then guess what happened next. I bet you can, and it’s summed up by the Independent article below (click on screenshot to read it):

Yes, you guessed it. The hairstyle, which is simply big teased hair, was taken by the Pecksniffs to be an Afro. And that hairstyle is worn by blacks and white models simply aren’t allowed to adopt it. The thing is, that is not an Afro! It’s most likely a wig, and if it were an Afro wig it would look like this style, as worn by the famous Angela Davis:

 

Nope, that’s simply big teased hair, and reminds me of the hairstyle you sometimes see on Helena Bonham Carter:

In fact, Vogue had no intention of making this an Afro hairstyle. As the Independent reports:

The magazine posted the images of the model on Instagram, where they sparked a wave of negative comments from people who found Jenner’s afro-like hairstyle “offensive”.

In a statement, the Condé Nast publication explained how the photos, which had been taken to promote the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund, were meant to evoke a nostalgic aesthetic reminiscent of the early 20th century.

“The image is meant to be an update of the romantic Edwardian/Gibson Girl hair which suits the period feel of the Brock Collection, and also the big hair of the ’60s and the early ’70s, that puffed-out, teased-out look of those eras,” the magazine told E! News on Tuesday.

“We apologise if it came across differently than intended, and we certainly did not mean to offend anyone by it.”

There is nothing to apologize for. If some Pecksniff is offended and thinks this is an Afro, well, too damn bad for them. And even if it were an Afro (which it is not), do only blacks get to wear their hair that way? What about Steve Pinker? And the “Jewfros” worn by Jewish guys who have naturally curly hair (see photos here)? It’s not an Afro, but if it were it wouldn’t be intended to mock black people but to adopt aspects of their culture that people like. But it’s not an Afro. Nope, not one.

It didn’t matter. The Pecksniffs emerged in force, saying that if Vogue wanted to display an Afro, they’d damn well better have a black woman underneath it. You can see some outraged people at the #kendalljenner site and in the Instagram comments , and it will depress me to show even two of them, but I’ll persist:

But Jenner has her defenders, too, and there’s some funny comments. I’ll show one.

In truth, there’s a real discussion to be had about whether black women are unjustly denigrated or subject to bigotry for wearing their hair in styles like cornrows or dreadlocks—styles that originated in the black community to take advantage of naturally curly hair. But that is not this discussion.

In the end, I want to know what the outrage accomplishes here. Does it increase racial justice or the awareness of racist bigotry? I doubt it; it just divides people, and angers those who think that this kind of manufactured outrage is either misdirected (BECAUSE THIS IS NOT AN AFRO), or those like me who think that the principle that one culture cannot admiringly borrow aspects of another is just dumb. It also serves to call attention to those who are outraged, and I’ve long thought that, for many, this is a primary motivation for cries of “cultural appropriation.” It’s a way of making yourself feel special, or calling attention to yourself.

If you want to make those cries, though, be sure that a). it is cultural appropriation, which it is not in this case (that is not an Afro), and b). it’s cultural appropriation of the disrespectful or bigoted sort, a form that’s exceedingly rare. As Davy Crockett said in real life:

I leave this rule for others when I’m dead
Be always sure you’re right — THEN GO AHEAD!

Enough, for I’ve learned from a CNN bulletin that “suspicious packages” have been sent to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (in addition to the bomb sent to George Soros), and so now we have the problem of right-wing American terrorism to deal with, too. It’s not going to be a good day.