Selwyn Duke
Cultural Marxism: Nobel scientist sacked for making innocent joke about women
By Selwyn Duke
We just heard about the Miami high-school principal fired for soberly disagreeing on social media with the McKinney narrative. Now comes an even more outrageous story involving what's usually called political correctness, but should really be labeled what it is: evil.
Sir Tim Hunt is a darn good scientist. So good, apparently, that he won the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology. But none of this matters to the University College London, which just forced this esteemed mind to resign over a joke he made at a conference on women in science in South Korea. The quip has been called "sexist," you see.
And what was his trespass? Did he take the podium drunken and make lewd comments about women's anatomy? Was it a remark about wife-battery? It must be just awful, as the 39 words uttered have now ended his career. Here's the joke he told attendees:
"Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry."
No, I'm not joking. That's it. Nothing more. Yet it inspired social-media campaigners to hunt for Hunt, and the 72-year-old was ousted from his research position. Is this shell of Western civilization we're living in for real?
Hunt's wife, Professor Mary Collins, whom The Guardian describes as "one of Britain's most senior immunologists," was not immune to the fallout. She said that her "relations with University College have been badly tarnished"; I guess this was for the sin of marrying a man who'd one day make a joke to which the evil ones would take exception.
This could remind one of the babies born in North Korean prison camps, who remain in those camps, sometimes being tortured, for having the temerity to be born to a female political prisoner. And it didn't matter that Hunt and Collins quite sincerely did the requisite groveling. Writes The Guardian, "'I stood up and went mad,' he [Hunt] admits. 'I was very nervous and a bit confused but, yes, I made those remarks – which were inexcusable – but I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way'. ...Collins clutches her head as Hunt talks. 'It was an unbelievably stupid thing to say,' she says."
Actually, no, we live in an unbelievably stupid civilization. That the couple is so sincerely contrite only proves again that great scientists are often social morons. After all, what reflected in Hunt's joke is untrue? Men have, I understand, fallen in love with female co-workers; it has even been rumored that women sometimes fall in love with male co-workers. And everyone knows that, as a general rule, women are far more apt to cry than are men – including when being criticized. So what's the problem?
It's that we live in an age of cultural despots who subordinate Truth to the "party line."
Note that one hallmark of tyranny is that it compels people to deny what they know is true.
The reality is that Hunt has been a good little liberal boy, but it didn't save him. His wife proclaimed her feminism, and his, saying that he did all the cooking and chores around the house. Female scientists came forward and said he was "immensely supportive" of efforts at sexual equality and advanced the careers of both men and women researchers. But no deviation from the party line is allowed by leftist tyrannies. It's no different from when Joseph Stalin said he would destroy even the Old Bolshevik, and "his kin, his family. Anyone who by his actions or thoughts encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we shall destroy relentlessly." You must be a new Bolshevik, comrade – and make sure that nothing you said yesterday was "old."
But the "new school" people, as another great mind, Rachel Jeantel (remember her?), put it, are in like Flynn. Black Boston University professor Saida Grundy tweeted that white males are a "problem population" and viciously taunted a white rape victim on Facebook, and she will still be assuming her BU position July 1. Professor Jacqueline Warwick of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia said at a panel discussion that men should not be "allowed to speak first" in class, and she still has a job. Profane anti-Christian bigot and sex columnist Dan Savage once told high-school age kids to "ignore the bull[**]*t in the Bible" and called some of them "pansy-a**ed" when they took exception to his remarks, and he still gets paid to peddle perversion to students ($24,000 for one speech). But Hunt? He had to acknowledge, reports The Guardian, "I am finished. I had hoped to do a lot more to help promote science in this country and in Europe, but I cannot see how that can happen. I have become toxic."
So let's get this straight. While I'm not acquainted with Hunt's work on cell division, I'm assuming that Nobel Prizes in science aren't like the peace prizes, which can be awarded simply because you're a "mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," as Joe Biden put it (Crazy Joe still has his job, too). This means that Western institutions will now choose ideological "purity" over a brilliant scientist. Is this not reminiscent of Marxist nations, which would often replace qualified doctors and researchers with goose-stepping incompetents?
The sad part of this submission to evil is that leftists are abject cowards and pack animals; stand up to them en masse, and they'll scatter like the capons and clucking hens they are. Instead, legitimate freedom is being lost. Of course, there certainly are those in the hierarchy above Hunt who subscribe to the politically correct nonsense. But there no doubt are others who realize his joke was no big deal yet are making a calculation: "If I don't fire the man, the guns could be turned on me and I'll be next on the chopping block." It could remind one of Ben Franklin's words, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
And we are hanging separately, as sane people are picked off one by one and an iron muzzle descends across the West. It has already touched you, no doubt, as everyone is watching what he says. And barring a revolution, it's only a matter of time before the effecting of oppression moves from the social to the governmental sphere, as we transition from the gag to the gulag.
© Selwyn Duke
June 18, 2015
We just heard about the Miami high-school principal fired for soberly disagreeing on social media with the McKinney narrative. Now comes an even more outrageous story involving what's usually called political correctness, but should really be labeled what it is: evil.
Sir Tim Hunt is a darn good scientist. So good, apparently, that he won the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology. But none of this matters to the University College London, which just forced this esteemed mind to resign over a joke he made at a conference on women in science in South Korea. The quip has been called "sexist," you see.
And what was his trespass? Did he take the podium drunken and make lewd comments about women's anatomy? Was it a remark about wife-battery? It must be just awful, as the 39 words uttered have now ended his career. Here's the joke he told attendees:
"Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry."
No, I'm not joking. That's it. Nothing more. Yet it inspired social-media campaigners to hunt for Hunt, and the 72-year-old was ousted from his research position. Is this shell of Western civilization we're living in for real?
Hunt's wife, Professor Mary Collins, whom The Guardian describes as "one of Britain's most senior immunologists," was not immune to the fallout. She said that her "relations with University College have been badly tarnished"; I guess this was for the sin of marrying a man who'd one day make a joke to which the evil ones would take exception.
This could remind one of the babies born in North Korean prison camps, who remain in those camps, sometimes being tortured, for having the temerity to be born to a female political prisoner. And it didn't matter that Hunt and Collins quite sincerely did the requisite groveling. Writes The Guardian, "'I stood up and went mad,' he [Hunt] admits. 'I was very nervous and a bit confused but, yes, I made those remarks – which were inexcusable – but I made them in a totally jocular, ironic way'. ...Collins clutches her head as Hunt talks. 'It was an unbelievably stupid thing to say,' she says."
Actually, no, we live in an unbelievably stupid civilization. That the couple is so sincerely contrite only proves again that great scientists are often social morons. After all, what reflected in Hunt's joke is untrue? Men have, I understand, fallen in love with female co-workers; it has even been rumored that women sometimes fall in love with male co-workers. And everyone knows that, as a general rule, women are far more apt to cry than are men – including when being criticized. So what's the problem?
It's that we live in an age of cultural despots who subordinate Truth to the "party line."
Note that one hallmark of tyranny is that it compels people to deny what they know is true.
The reality is that Hunt has been a good little liberal boy, but it didn't save him. His wife proclaimed her feminism, and his, saying that he did all the cooking and chores around the house. Female scientists came forward and said he was "immensely supportive" of efforts at sexual equality and advanced the careers of both men and women researchers. But no deviation from the party line is allowed by leftist tyrannies. It's no different from when Joseph Stalin said he would destroy even the Old Bolshevik, and "his kin, his family. Anyone who by his actions or thoughts encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we shall destroy relentlessly." You must be a new Bolshevik, comrade – and make sure that nothing you said yesterday was "old."
But the "new school" people, as another great mind, Rachel Jeantel (remember her?), put it, are in like Flynn. Black Boston University professor Saida Grundy tweeted that white males are a "problem population" and viciously taunted a white rape victim on Facebook, and she will still be assuming her BU position July 1. Professor Jacqueline Warwick of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia said at a panel discussion that men should not be "allowed to speak first" in class, and she still has a job. Profane anti-Christian bigot and sex columnist Dan Savage once told high-school age kids to "ignore the bull[**]*t in the Bible" and called some of them "pansy-a**ed" when they took exception to his remarks, and he still gets paid to peddle perversion to students ($24,000 for one speech). But Hunt? He had to acknowledge, reports The Guardian, "I am finished. I had hoped to do a lot more to help promote science in this country and in Europe, but I cannot see how that can happen. I have become toxic."
So let's get this straight. While I'm not acquainted with Hunt's work on cell division, I'm assuming that Nobel Prizes in science aren't like the peace prizes, which can be awarded simply because you're a "mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," as Joe Biden put it (Crazy Joe still has his job, too). This means that Western institutions will now choose ideological "purity" over a brilliant scientist. Is this not reminiscent of Marxist nations, which would often replace qualified doctors and researchers with goose-stepping incompetents?
The sad part of this submission to evil is that leftists are abject cowards and pack animals; stand up to them en masse, and they'll scatter like the capons and clucking hens they are. Instead, legitimate freedom is being lost. Of course, there certainly are those in the hierarchy above Hunt who subscribe to the politically correct nonsense. But there no doubt are others who realize his joke was no big deal yet are making a calculation: "If I don't fire the man, the guns could be turned on me and I'll be next on the chopping block." It could remind one of Ben Franklin's words, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
And we are hanging separately, as sane people are picked off one by one and an iron muzzle descends across the West. It has already touched you, no doubt, as everyone is watching what he says. And barring a revolution, it's only a matter of time before the effecting of oppression moves from the social to the governmental sphere, as we transition from the gag to the gulag.
© Selwyn Duke
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)