Friday, February 2, 2018

Amy Schumer's Prejudice

Let's take apart a quote by Amy Schumer because it's rather instructive of what is wrong with liberal "thinking." Read this from the New York Post:

Amy Schumer says she “really feel[s] for the woman” who recently accused her friend and fellow comic, Aziz Ansari, of sexual misconduct. “I identify with all the women in these situations,” the Trainwreck writer and star told Katie Couric on the February 1 episode of the latter’s podcast. “Even if it’s my friend, I don’t go, ‘Oh, but he’s a good guy.’ I think, ‘What would it feel like to have been her?’”
Do you notice anything wrong with this? How about this: it's pure sexism. Schumer says straight up that she will always identify with the women in a sexual harassment situation. Stick in the word "man" and she would be screaming that this is unholy sexism of the worst order. Stick in "white person" and it becomes pure, evil racism Yet, she doesn't even blink to admit that she will take the side of the woman.

This reminds me of several female attorneys I've met who claimed with no sense of irony at all, "I want to handle divorces, but I only want to work with women clients because men are sexist." So not self-aware! That's unethical, by the way, but they don't care. Indeed, this is one problem with the victim mentality, it lets liberals pretend that they aren't acting in ways they demonize others for doing. In fact, they become quite proud of doing things they otherwise call evil.

Back to Schumer, notice that her method of judging an allegation of wrongdoing runs contrary to classic Western thought. Western thought says to examine the evidence as dispassionately as possible. Counsel may be biased in presenting the case, but the judge may not biased in deciding it. Bias is wrong, prejudice evil. In fact, the people who tried to change the system away from the two thousand year march toward rational consideration to appeals based on identity fill history's books as villains... Nazis, Jim Crow juries, rigged local courthouses, Soviet show trials, etc.

Yet, Schumer proudly tells us that her method for evaluating such claims involves identifying with the women and trying to "feel" it from the woman's perspective. Again, how would she react if a juror said, "I always look at it from the white guy's perspective." She would be howling. Yet, here she's not even aware of how f*cked up she's acting. Rather than judging this situation on the facts and some rational basis, she is admitting that she has prejudged the situation by deciding which party she will believe and then she examines any evidence presented through the eyes of whatever woman was involved. That's called prejudice. What's more, she tries to feel the situation rather than examine it rationally. Hence, things like logic and standards of evidence vanish into the ephemeral "this is how I want this to end."

And let me suggest that this is the common way liberals approach pretty much anything. They pick a side and then try to decide how they would feel if they had been in that person's place. There do not weigh facts. They do not consider multiple perspectives. They use emotion rather than logic. The result is the crazy, biased, hysterical judgments that liberals issue on all matters. They pick a favorite and then feel their way through a decision... and, like Schumer, they are completely oblivious to how biased they are.

Thoughts?

9 comments:

  1. While I agree I think your overall premise, I am not sure she actually stated it to the degree of prejudice of which you accuse her. If I were Schumer, and was debating you, I would say "no, I'm not saying I would not examine the evidence objectively. My statement simply means, I can identify with what women go through in the area of sexual harassment, and it often is hard to prove beyond he said she said. My other point was, I am not a person who would excuse harassment just ecause it is my friend and I would have trouble believing him capable of it." In other words, my statement was rather brief, and you are interpreting what I say differently than what I meant

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  2. Posting with a small gadget. First sentence meant to say "while I agree with your premise in general" I am not sure this is the best case to highlight it.

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  3. Jed, I think you're right insofar as, if confronted, Schumer and the rest of the #MeToo set would deny being prejudicial. But that's if they were confronted. And even then, I doubt you'd get anything resembling a full-throated defense of due process.

    Truth be told, I think there's much less thinking behind Schumer's statement than we're giving credit for. Schumer is merely expressing the knee-jerk that everyone had been told is the proper one, namely, believe women. How else do you jump straight to putting yourself into the (alleged) shoes of a person you don't know over a supposed friend?

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  4. Looking at the article (it's not behind a paywall or anything) Schumer's thinking is very confused. At one point she states the woman should have just left, at another she states the woman was coerced, and at a third she states no crime was committed.

    https://pagesix.com/2018/02/01/amy-schumer-speaks-out-about-aziz-ansari-allegations/?_ga=2.235014468.412767283.1517564376-313479885.1517175940

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  5. Hi Jed!

    It's always easy to say "that wasn't how I meant it," but the left doesn't cut such slack, so I won't either. Indeed, ask yourself if Schumer would give you the benefit of the doubt if you had said "man" or "white". Doubt it. So as far as I'm concerned, she said and I will take it that she meant it as said.

    Moreover, this statement is hardly unique. You see similar ideas all the time from leftists. They have subscribed to identity politics and they view the world through it.

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  6. tryanmax, It's when leftists aren't "thinking" (i.e. repeating talking points) that they sit out these interesting moments. Schumer's comment, like the "believe women" stuff results in sexism and prejudice.

    Or consider whenever Matt Damon opens his mouth and says things like "I just chose the best ones" (when he ended up with an all-white, all male set of directors for his new project), or "but the script called for it" (when he justified being the white guy who saves China) or even "you have to look at each allegation individually" (when he tried to slow the #metoo witch hunt. Those are defenses he wouldn't allow a rightist to make, but he reaches for them.

    There are similar examples everywhere of leftists saying things their ideology does not allow or damning their own ideology when they are left to opine for themselves.

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  7. Anthony, That's because she has no principled way to get to where she wants to get, which is (1) claiming that all women are victims who need to be believed automatically, (2) still being able to date, and (3) not burning her friend to the ground in defending victimhood. Hence, she struggles to walk on both sides of contradictory opinion.

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  8. tryanmax - I don't disagree. I had not even heard about this, and simply basing my comment on the quote. It is the toughest of crimes sine there is usually no witnesses. It is all well and good to believe the victim, but you cannot convict without proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I can identify with the woman's frustration, but can also wasily imagine people being wrongfully accused

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  9. Is she related to Crying Chuck? Nobody I know of has asked that question and I know that your blog has Bev - who might know. There seems to be a genetic continuity between the two - may be blood, or may be karmic.

    These days the Democrat Party's big tent is on fire. Some feel that Trump is stealing their issues and making them his own - thus stealing working class people in the rust belt. Others want to cling to identity and grievance politics as a strategy and to hell with the working class. That schism will only get worse as the Dems find it increasingly hard to make common cause with each other. “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views”. - William F. Buckley, Jr

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