Howard Roark, about to brandish the sweet lust-club of PURE REASON on that ass.
Photo: fortinbras
Hey there. Anything happen while I was away?
I count one or two little things here or there, yes. One or two really fucking horrible atrocities, I suppose. I am not worrying about them, because I am trusting to the expert class in all distressing matters from now on. It’s just easier, you know?
And it saves so much time. Now, instead of worrying about what to do when someone harasses me online, I can just make any old decision I want to with complete confidence that it will be judged the stupidest decision I could possibly have made. I can let go of anxiety and fear now, and rest easy, knowing that I am completely fucked from the start, before I even have to do anything. That’s efficiency! And greater efficiency means greater productivity. I’m going to get so much more laundry done.
I don’t have to worry about what could happen to me if some guy on campus loses his shit and opens fire, because really, it just doesn’t matter. It’s my fault. I should have fucked him before he went Rambo on the student body. At the very least, I shouldn’t have been fucking anyone else because think, just think how heartbreaking that would be for a man who felt lonely, to know that other people were getting some. Honestly? If I behaved as selfishly as that, I think I might deserve to die in a hail of bullets.
And I can quit agonizing over that abortion at last! No matter what reason I offer for having it–even “I was unable to consent so my husband made the best decision he could under the circumstances“–it will be inadequate. Silly husband! Women’s lives are expendable, no matter how fond you are of them. I am fond of my cat, for example, but you can bet if it were between her life and the lives of her soon-to-be adorable, fluffy kittens, it’d be so long, Sally.
White Guy Knowledge Passports can be issued to anyone–you don’t have to be white, or a guy. You just have to approach the world from the two founding principles of White Guyness:
1. Everything is knowable.
2. Nothing is unknowable, but some things are not worth knowing, and may even have been made up by lying bitches just to fuck with you.
That’s how you get instant experts who know how Kathy Sierra should have handled her stalkers. That’s how you get instant experts who know how to prevent future Virginia Techs. That’s how you get instant experts who know what really happened to Crystal Mangum the night of the Duke lacrosse team’s party, instant experts who know what to do when the life of a loved one is on the line, and instant experts who know how mad you should get at Don Imus (you shouldn’t get mad at him at all, actually, because Free Speech). You have instant experts who know what’s best on the macro level, who know what’s best for the U.S., Iraq, Mexico, Zimbabwe, China, and even the whole world–and you have instant experts on the micro level, who know exactly how your life should play out for the best possible outcome in every conceivable circumstance.
And the internet allows all these instant experts to convene their instant-expert panels at a moment’s notice 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so you can see how a person could get a mite tired of so much expertise and have to take a quick break just to clear her head, especially if her head’s a little crowded with nonsense to begin with.
“[You] cannot know until you are in it,” said the husband who had to decide what to do about his wife’s life-threatening pregnancy, and that is the thing to remember about a lot of human experience. We devise tools to bridge the gap, we write and we paint and we sing and we translate and we try, occasionally, to fathom strange things, but the big difference between the people who responded with compassion and grace to all the rottenness this last month, and the people who responded with instant expertise, is that the compassionate are able to accept not knowing everything, and are willing to listen on the off-chance they might learn something, but the instant experts never are. If you’re born knowing everything, you never have to learn.
Also, I am especially sorry to report this other difference: The compassionate and graceful will never be given their own shows on cable television. Never.
It’s been made especially plain throughout April that the most insulting thing you can tell a fundie, a men’s rights activist, a libertarian, a pro-life absolutist, or a bigot, is simply “You don’t know.” You don’t know because you weren’t there. You don’t know because you aren’t me. You don’t know because you are this and this but I am that and that, although if you would shut up a minute, just one minute, I could try to tell you a little what it’s like. But of course that is not okay, because they know everything, these experts, and how dare you? Who do you think they are? Are you calling them stupid or something? Don’t call them stupid, whatever you do. That’s uncivil. Sure, I know there’s an entire message board out there full of future lawyers who don’t comprehend the First Amendment, or even know roughly what it says, but don’t you dare call them stupid. They are not stupid; they are elite and prestigious. Get it right.
May. I’m really looking forward to May, when perhaps a few of these instant experts will use their White Guy Passports to take a nice vacation somewhere, somewhere without any internet. I can dream, can’t I?
47 Responses to “Your White Guy Passport to Expertland”
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Sweet! Will my “White Guy Knowledge Passport” be framable? That’s definitely the kind of thing I would want to proudly diplay in my home.
Wow, that cat was not expecting to have her picture taken right then.
Huh. I was arguing with one of these experts the other day (stupid comments at Alternet). I think his expertise trumps mine, since he was definitely all over both points enumerated.
I have that exact same photo of my now-late cat Natasha, except that she’s slightly more contorted, and looks even more indignant, if possible.
Oh, and the movie version of The Fountainhead is an absolute laugh riot. Roark’s “extreme” designs all look like really bad rip-offs of Frank Lloyd Wright — you know, the most famous architect in the whole country at the time?
This whole post is absolutely awesome. I’ve been thinking something like this for a while now, but you’ve put it beautifully. Thank you.
Yep. Once you start even vaguely trying to see the world from someone else’s point of view, it makes it tough to be a wingnut. That’s the why it was for me, anyhow.
Beautiful. I so want to make a bingo card out of this post.
You really shouldn’t call them stupid because for the most part they aren’t What they are is willfully ignorant. If these instant experts actually knew anything about these situations or had any knowledge of other peoples lives they would actually have to think and maybe change their opinion on something. The horror, the horror. So it is much easier to just ignore any inconvenient facts and proclaim away. Add to this the necessity of maintaining the threadbare justification for their own privileged status and you come up with the willfully ignorant, entitled jerkwads that pass for experts.
You really shouldn’t call them jerkwads. What they really are is “willful fuckwads.”
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
I’m really bothered by the fact that you published her name. I mean, I’m not surprised when Faux News does it, but here?
Other than that, great post!
That’s the problem–I can’t put the cat back in the bag or give her her anonymity back.
I can do a little bit to tilt the Google search results away from Faux News’ portrayal of her as a lying slut criminal, though. That’s the tiny speck of power I have, not letting the wingnut machine monopolize the story and have it all their way.
WOW! I’m all knowing and didn’t even know it. Now, how can that happen when I’m all knowing? Ah, paradox, I know you well. Or not.
I guess I most have lost my all-knowingness when I professed to like women and want them to be treated as humans. Oops, or should I make that men? Makes me not-good WM. Anyone know where I’m supposed to turn in the all-knowingness certificate. I think I’m having an Emily Latella moment here so - “Never mind.”
Fair enough. I hadn’t considered it from that angle.
How did you make the conclusion that libertarians are know-it-alls? I thought the purpose of Libertarianism was to employ a live-and-let-live idealogy, to promote and champion individualism and freedom?
I’m more than prepared to offer a reply of “I Don’t Know” to many queries because I have no interest in them.
Great piece, Ilyka. But take heart that some of us small-l, soft-core libertarians
got your back.
blucas! I stand corrected, “willful fuckwads.� it is.
I always strive to learn for those around me.
Roark’s “extreme� designs all look like really bad rip-offs of Frank Lloyd Wright
It’s been 37 years since I read the book (hey, I was 15 and foolish, okay?) but my recollection is that Roark was Frank Lloyd Wright, in Rand’s conception . . .
That’s the problem–I can’t put the cat back in the bag or give her her anonymity back.
Don’t tell Vox Day.
Just for synergy’s sake, I’ll point out that it was Tom Leykis who was, if not the very first, among the first to publicize Ms. Mangum’s name.
Bravo! Bravo!
The right wing doesn’t have a lockhold on this phenomenon by any means (note commenter on the blog describing the emergency abortion who smugly takes the blogger to task for not loving his wife enough to act more quickly), but they sure have a plurality.
There are also women who don’t like *receiving* because of abuse. I don’t really have a point, just throwing that out there.
If that’s the case, I get to mock her even harder for deciding that the country’s most famous and influential architect was secretly oppressed — oppressed! — by the unfeeling masses.
Seriously, Wright was designing all of the residential projects for Adler & Sullivan three years after dropping out of college, and that shows that he was an oppressed genius? Explains a lot about Randians.
(Reading up about Wright in Wikipedia, I never realized he had such a fucked-up personal life. Sheesh.)
And I posted that in the wrong thread sorry.
“That’s how you get instant experts who know what really happened to Crystal Mangum the night of the Duke lacrosse team’s party”
No, everything else in your post described “how” to do something, or what people “should” have done. What happened in the Duke lacrosse case is a matter of fact, not advice, and all the facts–not accusations–are pointing to the conclusion that nothing happened (in fact, the latest newsflash is that two of the three people she positively identified now have airtight alibis based on video and cell phone records). You can make judgments based on facts, even imperfect ones, with some deference to presumption of innocence for those facing charges. You have to. Advice is a different story.
Also, it does no good to say only conservatives think they know everything. Liberals also love pointing out that they know the exact solutions for race relations, abortion, poverty, men who dare hire strippers, women’s choices to be stay-at-home moms (not good, according to some at the NYTimes), domestic abuse, war, sexual assault, hate speech, STD’s, global warming, religion in schools, and so on. And if conservatives challenge them, that means they’re evil, ignorant, or dishonest. This site’s posts are laced with that line of thinking. I don’t get it that all of a sudden liberals don’t make judgments about people or situations, or that somehow experts are bad even though tons of fields are filled with liberal experts “on the macro level.â€?
I mean, your post is basically an advertisement for libertarianism. You can’t know, so just let people be free and decide, including what to do with their money. But then again, you mention libertarians in a negative light, so I’m not sure you’re making a coherent point at all.
I had no expertise on instant experts, until I read this blog entry.
Now, of course, having read it, I can opine for hours on the topic
What happened in the Duke lacrosse case is a matter of fact, not advice, and all the facts–not accusations–are pointing to the conclusion that nothing happened (in fact, the latest newsflash is that two of the three people she positively identified now have airtight alibis based on video and cell phone records).
So, just checking — when, say, Jennifer Thompson misidentified her rapist, that clearly meant that she’s a lying whore who was never raped at all, right?
Ever talk to one? Particularly the devotees of Ayn Rand’s so-called “Objectivism” act as though they have the singular answer to all the world’s problems, and if you disagree, you are stupid and wrong and evil.
Ostensibly. But its real purpose is to justify corporatism and racism under the cover of “freedom”. Libertarians are mostly just Republicans who like to smoke pot.
Reading up about Wright in Wikipedia, I never realized he had such a fucked-up personal life. Sheesh
We just toured Wright’s home and studio last week in Chicago. They were pretty up front about it, although they didn’t get into the tawdry specifics of the sexual scandals and the whole brutal Taliesin incident (that was available in the bookstore). They did point out that he left his wife and children, and that his mother was always seen in photographs positioned somewhere between wright and his wife for reasons unknown but eminently guessable.
Tortured and messed up? Yep, no denial there. Oppressed? Not.
That’s how you get instant experts who know what really happened to Crystal Mangum the night of the Duke lacrosse team’s party
It hardly gives the boys any credibility when one of them emails others detailing specific plans to hire her and skin her alive while ejaculating in team spandex.
Did that email just create itself? Really.
So, XVVO, do you now consider yourself an instant expert on what *all* liberals think and do?
Thanks, Flewellyn. Appreciate the ad hominem.
FDL points to Boiling Over, it puts a pretty sharp point on the evil of this SCotUS
http://www.mikhaela.net/weblog/2006/02/new-cartoon-on-federal-abortion-ban-dr.html
I mean Alito must be an expert among experts.
I love the Duke Lacrosse case. It reminds me of the old saying:
-Opinions are like a**holes: everyone has one and no one thinks theirs stinks-
XVVO, actually ilyka’s first example of a ‘willful fuckwad’ is Kos, a prominent liberal bloger. Nor did I take her point as denying the value of real expertise. Rather she was going after the people, predominantly white men, who are quick to style themselves ‘experts’ on everything rather they have any knowledge of the subject or not, People who are often quick to state knowledge of ‘facts’ well before they have been or could be established.
You are quite correct that liberals can be as guilty of being willful fuckwads as conservatives. It is something we should all guard against. I try to weigh the evidence before supporting or opposing a given policy. Abstinence only education for instance, I did not think it seemed like a good policy but withheld judgment until we had some facts to work with. Now we know it doesn’t work at all so discard it and move on. A willful fuckwad will ignore the evidnce and continue to push for it. More importantly and more to the point of the post a willful fuckwad will push for a policy in the absence of any facts just because they ‘know’ it’s right.
Instant experts all around, telling it like it might be.
I agree with the person above about objectivism. Their sense that they know what is right at all times as well as taking a flippant tone when engaged in discourse is very frustrating.
But, on this post. So much rage, so much sarcasm. It made me kind of hot under the collar. I love it. Fantastic post. I wholly agree with your points.
The other day, I had my father over, and I was listening to him pontificate about the shooting. I usually switch off when he pontificates, since he usually does so to disclude me from the conversation by stamping his expertise over everything once and for all. It is very much like a dog urinating to mark its spot. I don’t need to be involved in such a ritual. So, I switched off, and then suddenly I heard him say, “If I was in that situation, I would take my daughter down to the firing range and make sure she knew how to shoot a weapon.” It was a strange moment because I thought, “Wow that man over there must have a 15 year old daughter, whom he is very concerned for. What a good attitude.” Then of course, my mind jumped back into reality, and obviously, I’m his adult daughter, as is my sister, and my father has never been concerned for any aspects of my safety or well being. (Quite the opposite, in fact — he seems to have delighted in orchestrating situations which would cause me to struggle.)
So, I think that this is how the white guy experts flourish. They simply make stuff up.
And of course one of the reasons the self-appointed fuckwads get to dominate the discourse is that any real experts know that Mencken was right: “There is always an easy solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong.”
If only the fuckwads could live in the world they imagine without dragging the rest of us into it.
The right wing doesn’t have a lockhold on this phenomenon by any means (note commenter on the blog describing the emergency abortion who smugly takes the blogger to task for not loving his wife enough to act more quickly), but they sure have a plurality.
Indeedy - but at times, those of us on the Left who ARE instant expert assholes do display enough self-knowledge to poke fun at ourselves while doing it.
“It hardly gives the boys any credibility when one of them emails others detailing specific plans to hire her and skin her alive while ejaculating in team spandex.”
The player who sent that e-mail (Ryan McFadyen) was not one of the three accused, so I don’t see how it damages their credibility.
Speaking as an instant expert on instant experts, I think it important that we identify the many strands of instant expertism.
There’s the Knee-jerk Jerk, who simply reacts. Some of these are saveable, as they may reconsider their position later.
There’s also the Insufferable Know-it-All, whose instant expertise is bolstered by his ability bluff his way out of any technical discussion. (Google is such a wonderful tool!) These people can be turned if you identify them early and pander to their vanity. Though this requires the sort of subtle internet ju-jitsu that is very time-consuming. It is a rare skill.
And then there’s the Bonehead Ideologue whose ideas have been pre-formed and who will hold to his line through thick and thin. He plainly cannot be saved or turned. Your options are to ignore or to pile on him–the latter generally derailing any topic thread.
All of these guys, of course, are Eggshells Armed With Hammers, guaranteed to ’splode should you insult their knowledge or intelligence.
The other day I was driving with my fourteen year old, and he said to me, “You know, dad, I’m omniscient.”
I said, “Really? So how am I going to react to that news?”
He said, “I don’t know. Oh, wait…”
I hope I struck a blow for intellectual humility.
Seriously, though, my (incomplete) observations tend to make me believe that it’s more a matter of temperament than ideology. (What effect temperament has on a person’s choice of ideology is an imponderable here, of course.) Ever have an argument with a Stalinist?
I’ll bet we’re talking more about the authoritarian/libertarian axis of the political quadrant than the right/left axis.
There’s also the Insufferable Know-it-All, whose instant expertise is bolstered by his ability bluff his way out of any technical discussion. (Google is such a wonderful tool!)
A great definition of “librarians”, BTW…
“A great definition of “librariansâ€?, BTW…
”
Please, we [librarians] go by “Information Professionals” these days. Or, in my case, “School Library Media Specialist”–because I can operate the school’s digital camera, and set the clock on the VCR/DVD players. I also have been known to answer to “Information Queen.”
Please, we [librarians] go by “Information Professionals� these days.
I’ve tried that. HR just laughs at me.
[…] Will’s latest offering from the “No shit, Sherlock” files reminds me very much of my father’s solemnly informing me that there are nine Justices on the Supreme Court. Mind you, I was in college at the time. Poli Sci. I kinda knew that. But Dad was a white guy, and that made him an Expert. […]