Friday, September 10, 2010


What have we come to when middle-class girls see whoring as a career choice?

Bel Mooney bemoans modern Britain where "There is no such thing as right and wrong". While Left-dominated schools preach that, the sort of thing she deplores below will be encouraged. Unlike the USA, few people are churchgoers in Britain so they hear very little that counters the nihilistic gospel of Leftism. In fact they are much more likely to hear Christianity mocked by the BBC and other Left-dominated media



When it comes to human failings, I always try to be understanding. In fact, readers of my Saturday advice column in the Mail will know that it’s my stock-in-trade. But there are times, I’m afraid, when sympathy fails me and I am left nursing a deep anger which needs putting into words.

Sometimes, even those words fail me. How else to respond to this week’s story of well-educated girls — brought up in decent homes with every privilege — choosing to sell their bodies for a fast buck, not caring how many footballers use them in one week?

Frankly, I am dumbstruck at their stupidity, their vulgarity and their degradation of what it means to be a woman today, in a world where sexual equality was won through great courage and at great cost by the generations who came before them.

I think of all those who fought hard for women’s equality, and I can hear them turning in their graves at the sleazy stories of Jennifer Thompson and Helen Wood — the two young women who earned £1,200 each for threesomes with Wayne Rooney.

Of course, in one sense we read of Rooney’s tawdry transactions with these young women and feel little surprise. The man is a rough, over-paid, self-indulgent fool who doesn’t deserve a loyal wife and the gift of an innocent child.

The only shock is that he wanted to pay for sex, since so many foolish girls seem willing to offer it to footballers for free. (Even ones who are as ugly on the outside as they are inside.) but what of the girls themselves? To read the detail of their stories is to realise, with utter disbelief, that no amount of education can prevent a greedy and deluded young woman from choosing prostitution.

Having intelligent, well-heeled parents, a stable home, moral guidance, a private education, and all the opportunities that modern life can offer a girl with brains, is no guarantee against them wanting to sell their bodies, it seems. What sort of world do we live in when middle-class girls see whoring as a viable career choice?

The beaten and abused women (often children) who are trafficked for sex all over the world have no choice about what happens to them. The abject females who stand on street corners in the red-light areas of our major cities, peddling sex (and risking their lives) to feed savage drug habits, do, at least, have some sort of ‘excuse’.

In the UK alone, 75 per cent of prostitutes started when still under-age, nearly three-quarters of all British prostitutes were at some point in care, and nearly half have suffered sexual abuse — with far more than that having suffered physical abuse within their families.

Yet the ‘happy hooker’ myth (think Pretty Woman and Belle de Jour) continues to persist, and it seems that an increasing number of middle-class teenage girls find it exciting, rather than shocking or dangerous. They fantasise about the glitzy world of overpaid sportsmen who will, as Rooney did, fork out £200 for a pack of cigarettes — and six times that for a fumble — and they want a piece of it.

Now, let’s face it; there have always been ‘groupies’ — dim girls willing to sleep with famous men for the thrill of it. But what of those from stable, respectable homes who actively rebel against their upbringing and enter the oldest profession? These girls will sleep with any stranger for cash, whether a famous footballer or a sleazy businessman on an overnight work trip. They are something different; something very, very troubling.

To be honest, I’ve grown tired of feminists who defend so-called ‘sex workers’ on the grounds that what they do is somehow ‘empowering’. It is not.

When intelligent women make a free choice to shame themselves, and boast about bedding half a football team, they betray everything that women of my generation hold dear. Their behaviour pollutes the lives of younger girls they will never meet — by setting a terrible example.

Twenty-one-year-old Jennifer Thompson (or ‘Juicy Jeni’ as she chooses to style herself) was once a churchgoing teenager who went to a private school. Her father was an oil executive, her mother a PA.

Jennifer’s fellow prostitute (and alleged enthusiastic participant in lesbian scenarios) is 23-year-old Helen Wood — also from a middle-class home. Her mother is a primary school teacher, for heaven’s sake, and her father a university lecturer. I have no doubt the parents of both girls are asking themselves: ‘What went wrong?’

Of course, no outsider can answer that. But we can look at the world those girls have grown up in, and perhaps find some clues.

As a children’s author, I have found myself in many schools over the past 25 years and noticed one significant change — nowadays, girls of ten and over seem to have grown up far too quickly.

So many aspects of popular culture — from fashion, to pop lyrics and videos, to advertising, through to TV programmes like Big Brother and The X Factor — peddle a combined message of sleaze and greed.

This corrupting influence is very hard to avoid. Once, a little girl might have wanted to be a teacher or a doctor (and of course, many still do), but now, sadly, she is likely to say she wants to be a model, a pop star or a WAG.

The most frequent answer I get, when I ask little girls what their ambitions are, is: ‘I want to be famous.’

The disturbing truth is that many teenage girls will read the lurid stories about £1,200-a-night sex and think it sounds a very easy way of making a living. Better than studying; more interesting than a nine-to-five job; even ‘glamorous’. They do not realise that the line between wannabe WAG and girl-on-the-game is very fine indeed.

Just as bad — many teenage boys will think that what they learn from internet porn is clearly right and all girls are cheap slappers, up for anything if the price is right. Little by little, the gutter has become the cultural main street — and morality be damned.

How can women have changed so much in the space of less than a century? On the one hand, you have the noble history of active suffragettes and other brave women who took on the establishment and were punished most severely for merely demanding the right to vote. You have the women who played a vital role at home and as nurses at the Front in the two World Wars. You have the women who challenged institutionalised sexism in the workplace — and bequeathed us a world where equality is no longer an aspiration but a reality. We owe them all so much.

By sickeningly depressing contrast, just a few decades later, we have Juicy Jeni and Helen Wood, who have taken that precious inheritance and wiped their hookers’ stilettos all over it.

They are not the only ones, of course. Less than a year ago I wrote about the famous call girl known as Belle de Jour who was revealed to be Dr Brooke Magnanti, a high-powered scientist casually unabashed about her secret life as a hooker. She boasted of being ‘unbelievably fortunate’ because she enjoyed her horizontal job and had never had a bad experience with a client.

Everything she said proved that you can be blessed with a brain and a privileged life — and still be very, very stupid.

I wonder if ‘Juicy Jeni’ and Helen Wood read Belle de Jour’s lurid, self-serving ramblings as once they might have read fairytales. Or watched the sanitised TV series starring Billie Piper?

They are deluded indeed to believe that there is anything glamorous about this life of vice, well-paid though it is — for a while. The day will come, all too quickly, when they are raddled, used up and unwanted — and wondering what happened to the happy-ever-after they dreamed of, back when they were little girls.

And — you know what? It will be nobody’s fault but their own. They think they are selling their bodies. They end up selling their souls.

SOURCE





Outspoken German banker squeezed out

He had a lot of support for his views from the German public but Germany is a very stratified society and the elite did not approve -- so out he goes

For more background, see here


A BOARD member of Germany's central bank dramatically resigned overnight after causing weeks of uproar with inflammatory comments on immigrants and Jews. "The Bundesbank board and its member Thilo Sarrazin are aware of their responsibilities to the institution of the Bundesbank," the bank said in a surprise statement posted on its website. "Given the public debate, the parties concerned are going, of mutual accord, to end their cooperation at the end of the month."

The Frankfurt-based Bundesbank had previously wanted the German president to fire him, as it was unable to do so itself, and Mr Sarrazin had been refusing to go quietly. But on Thursday the bank said it had "withdrawn its request" and that the 65-year-old had asked President Christian Wulff to relieve him of his duties. It even thanked Mr Sarrazin "for the work he has done".

The furore followed the publication of a new book by Mr Sarrazin, "Germany Does Itself In", and controversial remarks saw him branded racist and anti-Semitic and earned him sharp criticism from top politicians.

In the book, he says Europe's top economy is being undermined, overwhelmed and made "more stupid" by poorly educated, fast-breeding, badly integrated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their offspring. "If I want to hear the muezzin's call to prayer, then I'll go to the Orient," he says in the book, saying that allowing in millions of "guest workers" in the 1960s and 1970s was a "gigantic error".

He also says that Turkish and Kurdish "clans" have a "long tradition of inbreeding", leading to higher rates of birth defects, and ponders whether this might be one reason for immigrants' poor school performance. He also told a newspaper that "all Jews share a certain gene", a property he said was shared by the Basques.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called the remarks "completely unacceptable" but surveys have indicated that Sarrazin enjoys considerable sympathy among the population at large. Backing for Sarrazin is so strong that a survey published on Sunday indicated that if he set up his own new political party, almost one in five (18 per cent) would vote for him.

Sarrazin has no intention of starting a political party, but the survey raised fears that a charismatic right-wing populist in Germany, like anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, could win considerable political support.

The German Government admits that its record on integrating immigrants into society has been less than perfect. According to official figures, nearly one in five young people without German nationality, which many second and third generation immigrants do not have, leave school with no qualifications.

Other figures show that people in Germany of Turkish origin, who number around three million and make up the largest minority, are significantly more likely to be living below the poverty line.

This week, the Government published a national integration programme with a focus on improving immigrants' German language skills.

SOURCE





Completely mad at Microsoft

You've just signed up for Xbox LIVE. You're entering your personal information, and when you get to the city and state fields, you tap in 'Intercourse, Pennsylvania'. A couple days later you get an email from Microsoft notifying you that your account's been suspended. Why? Because you violated the online gaming service's code of conduct by using a term with overtly sexual connotations.

Except Intercourse, PA really exists, an unincorporated hub where "many Amish and local folks do their business." Sound like an honest mistake? Change the city name to Fort Gay and the state to West Virginia--an actual place situated between the Tug Fork and Big Sandy Rivers with a population of around 800--and you wind up with Microsoft, egg on its face, apologizing for banning Josh Moore, a proud resident of the perfectly real West Virginia city.

The 26-year-old simply typed in the name of his city, but was subsequently accused of violating Microsoft's LIVE Code of Conduct. Among other things, the code stipulates that you shouldn't "create a gamertag, profile content, or in-game content that other users may be offended by, this includes comments that look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate any of the following: profane words/phrases, topics or content of a sexual nature, hate speech (including but not limited to racial, ethnic, or religious slurs), illegal drugs/controlled substances, or illegal activities."

Apparently someone spied Moore's city name, was offended (or assumed Moore was trying to offend), and reported it to Microsoft.

Instead of verifying whether the town's name was real by, you know, taking five seconds to Google it, Microsoft suspended Moore from LIVE for several days--until he managed to convince them Fort Gay was really a town in Wayne County, West Virginia, near the state's border with Kentucky.

"I was mad. ... It makes me feel like they hate gay people," Moore told AP News. "I'm not even gay, and it makes me feel like they were discriminating."

Moore attempted to resolve the situation by contacting customer service, but was warned off using the name--even after asking the rep to Google Fort Gay's zip code. The town's major David Thompson got involved, but was reportedly told by Microsoft that the veracity of the city's name didn't matter, and that the word "gay" was inappropriate regardless.

By the time the issue was escalated to LIVE policy and enforcement director Stephen Toulouse's attention, the damage was done. Toulouse acknowledged it as an unfortunate mistake, and says he'll be contacting Moore to apologize.

Weirder still, Microsoft recently updated its Xbox LIVE code of conduct policy to allow gamers to use sexual orientation identifiers like lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, and straight in their Gamertag or profile.

SOURCE. Also here






Racial Stupidity and Malevolence

Walter E. Williams

The white liberal's agenda, coupled with that of black race hustlers, has had and continues to have a devastating impact on ordinary black people. Perhaps the most debilitating aspect of this liberal malevolence is in the area of education.

Recently, I spoke with a Midwestern university engineering professor who was trying to help an inner-city black student who was admitted to the university's electrical engineering program. The student was sure that he was well prepared for an engineering curriculum; his high school had convinced him of that and the university recruiters supported that notion. His poor performance on the university's math placement exam required that he take remedial math courses. He's failed them and is now on academic probation after two semesters of earning less than a 2.0 grade point average.

The young man and his parents were sure of his preparedness. After all, he had good high school grades, but those grades only meant that he was well behaved. The college recruiters probably knew this youngster didn't have the academic preparation for an electrical engineering curriculum. They were more concerned with racial diversity.

This young man's background is far from unique. Public schools give most black students fraudulent diplomas that certify a 12th-grade achievement level. According to a report by Abigail Thernstrom, "The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement," black students in 12th grade dealt with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade; they wrote about as well as whites in the eighth grade. The average black high school senior had math skills on a par with a typical white student in the middle of ninth grade. The average 17-year-old black student could only read as well as the typical white child who had not yet reached age 13.

Black youngsters who take the SAT exam earn an average score that's 70 to 80 percent of the score of white students, and keep in mind, the achievement level of white students is nothing to write home about.

Under misguided diversity pressures, colleges recruit many black students who are academically ill equipped. Very often, these students become quickly disillusioned, embarrassed and flunk out, or they're steered into curricula that have little or no academic content, or professors practice affirmative-action grading. In any case, the 12 years of poor academic preparation is not repaired in four or five years of college. This is seen by the huge performance gap between blacks and whites on exams for graduate school admittance such as the GRE, MCAT and LSAT.

Is poor academic performance among blacks something immutable or pre-ordained? There is no evidence for such a claim. Let's sample some evidence from earlier periods. In "Assumptions Versus History in Ethnic Education," in Teachers College Record (1981), Dr. Thomas Sowell reports on academic achievement in some of New York city's public schools. He compares test scores for sixth graders in Harlem schools with those in the predominantly white Lower East Side for April 1941 and December 1941.

In paragraph and word meaning, Harlem students, compared to Lower East Side students, scored equally or higher. In 1947 and 1951, Harlem third-graders in paragraph and word meaning, and arithmetic reasoning and computation scored about the same as -- and in some cases, slightly higher, and in others, slightly lower than -- their white Lower East Side counterparts.

Going back to an earlier era, Washington, D.C.'s Dunbar High School's black students scored higher in citywide tests than any of the city's white schools. In fact, from its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of Dunbar's graduates went off to college.

Let's return to the tale of the youngster at the Midwestern college. Recruiting this youngster to be a failure is cruel, psychologically damaging and an embarrassment for his family. But the campus hustlers might come to the aid of the student by convincing him that his academic failure is a result of white racism and Eurocentric values.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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