Firstly, please enjoy this casually lacerating analysis of Stewart Lee by Simon Evans. The indie mentality is bad enough, but attach it to a man who is so deeply envious of more successful comedians that he can’t help putting them in his act and you have a recipe for
"aligning himself with a fashionable backlash against feminism that will age as well as the Cultural Revolution"
How did all these left-wingers (Stewart Lee, Billy Bragg, Owen Jones et al) end up as the "useful idiots" of a misogynistic, homophobic movement funded by US billionaires and strategised by an international law firm?
And when the day arrives when they eventually figure out that they got played, will they be able to admit it? I doubt it.
I have been invited to write something about antifa by a leftist who thinks transgenderism may very well be psyops. The problem is that it is very difficult to find antifa information. I know I can look for the Star Wars memorabilia store and Wi Spa on this site, but their attacks on elderly lesbians in San Francisco was wiped out when wordpress took down gendertrender. If anyone knows of any sources for information, please respond to this comment.
I think they already know but they dare not countenance a public mea culpa. They've made a decision to double down on the rhetoric for career preservation/resurgence.
Which makes their conduct even more despicable than if they were hoodwinked simpletons.
That last paragraph hits the nail on the head for me. People with the education, the privilege, and the TIME... to think critically... instead blow with the prevailing wind, and rabbit the jaded and false tropes of their woke lefty friends. No excuses...
Hang on, what's he got against Nimco Ali? A woman who campaigns against FGM, a horrific practice, and Lee puts HER in the bin? What is the guy's problem?
I'm afraid I'm not one of those disappointed by Stewart Lee; I've long thought there was an unpleasant streak of nastiness and smug superiority there.
Perhaps Lee has a number of prejudices he can conceal behind the guise of trans rights advocacy. He'd find putting all those women in his bin more difficult if he wasn't pretending to be so passionate about supporting everything trans and exposing hate, etc. He's built his career on his white middle class wokey, faux progressive, faux left wing credentials. It's why the Guardian has had its tongue stuck up his arse for years, he mirrors what it is and vice versa.
Neither are the authoritarianism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, rightist free zones they've worked hard to pass themselves off as. He, and people like him frequently expose the dirt under their fingernails when they delve into trans issues and hold up victims and perpetrators.
Ugh yes misogynist men and their misplaced superiority and nastiness etc it oozes out of their pores like slime. Women feel dirty in their presence like being slimed on. Yuk yuk yuk.
Nimco is godmother to Boris and Carrie’s child. Carrie is a supporter of ‘trans rights’ and Nimco has said that Trans Women Are Women (see tweet here and nutmeg’s comment on it https://twitter.com/nimkoali/status/1202901756184801281?s=21 ) However she has been through a lot in her life and believes in protected spaces for women and girls. I think the reason Lee wants her in the bin is her friendship with Boris, breaking the lockdown, refusal to condemn Boris’s use of a homophobic slur.
A la française! Magnifique! Dresses up the Germanic core of our native tongue. Being broque certainly must be better than being broke? Like shabby chic! 😜
Yes, isn't English an amazing language? I love it even though I totally get Zimmerer's point about its objectifying quality. Not "It's an apple" but "An apple being is" in her family's native language which she is struggling mightily to learn. No living being is ever called "it." A table can be an it, but not a tree or an apple.
And here's a good joque. Back when my idiot sister had a sense of humor, she presented a paper at an SDS conference about English being oppressive and our need to learn an indigenous language (which one?) in order to liberate ourselves. The paper was taken very seriously.
Ah, I too used to think it sort of backward, until I found out why. Since English is Germanic, French is Latinate and both are Indo-European, I wonder how they ended up with objects gendered differently in the first place? Lately, I was wondering if that’s why I for one am so deeply disturbed by a man being referred to as “she” and vice versa? That’s a subject (opposed to object) and there’s only a binary, so…? 🤔 It’s an utter reversal of black and white, literally speaking. Perhaps a question for Exulansic that I will submit.
I’m actually finding woke-bros more rage inducing than TRAs atm - they have no skin in the game, and zero fucking clue, how dare they define women or what our risks and rights are?
But I think many if not most of the TRAs are woke-bros. Certainly the majority don't identify as trans unless it's handy at the moment (I put on a dress, oh look I'm trans). They're just straight mostly white dudes who want to bully women and didn't require much of an excuse.
Oh yes. Went to a gig of his a couple of years ago. Said Gervais was 'punching down' on Trans people. Yawn. I left some Fairplay for Women leaflets in the Ladies loo, after I'd queued there for 20 minutes while the men all went and had their G&T's in the bar
I think my favourite thing about Lee’s “900,000,000 things you absolutely must know about me” was him listing a disappointing luke-warm pasty from a Greggs at a Railway Station...
He didn't list his favourite dinosaurs though. I'm so disappointed. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the Terfasaurus? I thought people grew out of listing their favourite likes and dislikes?
Julie Birchill wrote a great article saying how delighted she had put her in his bin she clearly did not rate him. written as ever beautifully by Bard Julie!!
Hear hear. Why a sad sack Lee is. Pompous, pathetic and morally broke. Taints Bridget Christie for me too. Curious to know her take. Did love her, seen her loads; but sadly assume she’s on board with this BS. Into the bin with them.
She made a comment in a recent Guardian interview saying ‘let people use the fucking toilet’ or similar so it’s off to the bin with her (wheelie so I can cram them both in with my broom) 🧹
Stewart Lee's routines are so tiresome. He spends twenty minutes whispering his words over and over and always pads out his patter with 'ladies and gentlemen', which he repeats every few minutes like some kind of tic. I wonder whether he'll start getting more inclusive with 'ladies and gentlemen, and intersex, and non-binary, etc...' that should enable him to slim down his thin routine even more.
Oh thank God. I can carry on loving Simon Evans, unlike most of the comedians I used to, until they came out with the old "TWAW" shite. Plus - I've just booked myself a ticket to his show! :-D
Graham, I've been a big fan of both you and Stewart Lee since watching both Father Ted and Fist of Fun as a teenager - and both have had a great influence on me and given me many moments of joy. I still quote Father Ted on at least a weekly basis!!
I wouldn't take Stewart Lee's pedal bin list too much to heart. I think he may have created a dilemma for himself, and it may be that others can help him to resolve it. One thing I've learned about Stewart Lee is that he integrates everything into his comedy clown or 'persona' - no matter how unconventional a clown he might appear. I think I remember Richard Herring one time saying that if you told Stewart that his suit was a little bit too big for him, he would respond that it is part of his comedy persona to have a slightly ill-fitting suit - but that it was probably that he just hadn't realised that the suit was too big.
Certainly a big part of Stewart Lee's persona has always been that he is more PC than thou. So once woke came along, he naturally incorporated wokeness into his persona. The problem is that although wokeness may appear superficially to be just the latest incarnation of the left wing values of non-discrimination and equality, on a more detailed look, it is a sharp turn away from those principles. These lists he puts up also stem from his persona of pedantic self-importance.
And despite (or, perhaps, because of) Stewart Lee's more intellectual style of comedy, I can see that it could be a real challenge for him to distance himself from wokeness as it shoots off on a frolic of its own. The dilemma - how to maintain his persona but eviscerate the wokeness that threatens to take it in a dark direction.
But there is a way. Another big part of Stewart Lee's comedy 'persona' is that he is a marginalised figure who is never quite in step with the times.
I can see a pathway out of this for him, if he were to take up the mantle of Mark Fisher's Exiting the Vampire's Castle - wokeness succeeds because it is deeply useful for a capitalist system to keep ordinary people fighting amongst themselves instead of focussing on the real structures of control. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/ (a brilliant analysis by the way)
This would enable him to maintain his adherence to more PC than thou, continue with his persona of being a marginalised figure out of step with the new form of dominant wokeism, and pin point the fault as being with the capitalist system itself, rather than being seen as 'punching down' on trans people. Potentially, he could make a lot of people think again about things - rather than becoming an aging supporter of the new regime.
Interesting. I tend to agree with the first part. But! He's betraying a friend, and he's gutless. There are many and better ways of taking the pee out of the wokeness. Or he could just leave this alone completely. He's having it all ways by using the ambiguity. Also, I find it tedious now, and not funny.
And I said this in the other thread: there is a lot of risk for him in challenging the whole transideology. He lives in a woke Borough. His kids are teens in this woke Borough, at a school where there are a handful of 'trans' kids in every year group. So what does he choose to do? Nothing that will put him in any danger of social ostracisation. But something that can be interpreted as putting the boot in to a friend.
Ok, ok, Stewart doesn’t get it, but you surely can’t argue with his scooby doo thatcher routine. So funny.
You know it doesn’t matter that Nimco is black. She’s great because she speaks up about FGM. I believe she’s from the Somaliland Elite isn’t she? The woman of colour thing just sounds quite patronising.
"aligning himself with a fashionable backlash against feminism that will age as well as the Cultural Revolution"
How did all these left-wingers (Stewart Lee, Billy Bragg, Owen Jones et al) end up as the "useful idiots" of a misogynistic, homophobic movement funded by US billionaires and strategised by an international law firm?
And when the day arrives when they eventually figure out that they got played, will they be able to admit it? I doubt it.
I have been invited to write something about antifa by a leftist who thinks transgenderism may very well be psyops. The problem is that it is very difficult to find antifa information. I know I can look for the Star Wars memorabilia store and Wi Spa on this site, but their attacks on elderly lesbians in San Francisco was wiped out when wordpress took down gendertrender. If anyone knows of any sources for information, please respond to this comment.
Andy Ngo
Andy Ngô is your man for all things Antifa. Find him on Twitter.
jinx
Please let me know when it's available to read
I think they already know but they dare not countenance a public mea culpa. They've made a decision to double down on the rhetoric for career preservation/resurgence.
Which makes their conduct even more despicable than if they were hoodwinked simpletons.
That last paragraph hits the nail on the head for me. People with the education, the privilege, and the TIME... to think critically... instead blow with the prevailing wind, and rabbit the jaded and false tropes of their woke lefty friends. No excuses...
Hang on, what's he got against Nimco Ali? A woman who campaigns against FGM, a horrific practice, and Lee puts HER in the bin? What is the guy's problem?
I'm afraid I'm not one of those disappointed by Stewart Lee; I've long thought there was an unpleasant streak of nastiness and smug superiority there.
Perhaps Lee has a number of prejudices he can conceal behind the guise of trans rights advocacy. He'd find putting all those women in his bin more difficult if he wasn't pretending to be so passionate about supporting everything trans and exposing hate, etc. He's built his career on his white middle class wokey, faux progressive, faux left wing credentials. It's why the Guardian has had its tongue stuck up his arse for years, he mirrors what it is and vice versa.
Neither are the authoritarianism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, rightist free zones they've worked hard to pass themselves off as. He, and people like him frequently expose the dirt under their fingernails when they delve into trans issues and hold up victims and perpetrators.
Years ago a radical feminist referred to it as "sucking it out someone's butthole." I guess the Guardian prefers licking.
Ugh yes misogynist men and their misplaced superiority and nastiness etc it oozes out of their pores like slime. Women feel dirty in their presence like being slimed on. Yuk yuk yuk.
Very well said.
Come to think of it I’ve NEVER seen in any media how men truly speak to or treat women accurately portrayed.
Nimco is godmother to Boris and Carrie’s child. Carrie is a supporter of ‘trans rights’ and Nimco has said that Trans Women Are Women (see tweet here and nutmeg’s comment on it https://twitter.com/nimkoali/status/1202901756184801281?s=21 ) However she has been through a lot in her life and believes in protected spaces for women and girls. I think the reason Lee wants her in the bin is her friendship with Boris, breaking the lockdown, refusal to condemn Boris’s use of a homophobic slur.
So for Lee, her not binning her association with Johnson trumps the work she does fighting FGM. Makes sense...
Which one can always hear if one listens closely.
"WoqueBros"
™️
So much classier (must be that goddess energy) than woke.
Kind of like the term Lady Dique. 🤮🤣
Why does "qu" make everything sound fancier? I'm broque!
A la française! Magnifique! Dresses up the Germanic core of our native tongue. Being broque certainly must be better than being broke? Like shabby chic! 😜
Yes, isn't English an amazing language? I love it even though I totally get Zimmerer's point about its objectifying quality. Not "It's an apple" but "An apple being is" in her family's native language which she is struggling mightily to learn. No living being is ever called "it." A table can be an it, but not a tree or an apple.
And here's a good joque. Back when my idiot sister had a sense of humor, she presented a paper at an SDS conference about English being oppressive and our need to learn an indigenous language (which one?) in order to liberate ourselves. The paper was taken very seriously.
Ah, I too used to think it sort of backward, until I found out why. Since English is Germanic, French is Latinate and both are Indo-European, I wonder how they ended up with objects gendered differently in the first place? Lately, I was wondering if that’s why I for one am so deeply disturbed by a man being referred to as “she” and vice versa? That’s a subject (opposed to object) and there’s only a binary, so…? 🤔 It’s an utter reversal of black and white, literally speaking. Perhaps a question for Exulansic that I will submit.
I’m actually finding woke-bros more rage inducing than TRAs atm - they have no skin in the game, and zero fucking clue, how dare they define women or what our risks and rights are?
But I think many if not most of the TRAs are woke-bros. Certainly the majority don't identify as trans unless it's handy at the moment (I put on a dress, oh look I'm trans). They're just straight mostly white dudes who want to bully women and didn't require much of an excuse.
Yes you’re quite right!
I read the Andy/Aaron letter exchange in full last night and couldn’t sleep I was so livid!
James Acaster is also one of those pricks. Can't even bear to look at those bastards.
Oh yes. Went to a gig of his a couple of years ago. Said Gervais was 'punching down' on Trans people. Yawn. I left some Fairplay for Women leaflets in the Ladies loo, after I'd queued there for 20 minutes while the men all went and had their G&T's in the bar
Ethical pipsqueaks failing bigly.
I think my favourite thing about Lee’s “900,000,000 things you absolutely must know about me” was him listing a disappointing luke-warm pasty from a Greggs at a Railway Station...
He didn't list his favourite dinosaurs though. I'm so disappointed. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the Terfasaurus? I thought people grew out of listing their favourite likes and dislikes?
Owen Jones is not a smart person at all. Don’t expect him to know better.
With regards to Stewart Lee I was never a big fan but he’s just shown he’s a self serving, keeping in with the ‘cool kids’ hack
Julie Birchill wrote a great article saying how delighted she had put her in his bin she clearly did not rate him. written as ever beautifully by Bard Julie!!
Hear hear. Why a sad sack Lee is. Pompous, pathetic and morally broke. Taints Bridget Christie for me too. Curious to know her take. Did love her, seen her loads; but sadly assume she’s on board with this BS. Into the bin with them.
She made a comment in a recent Guardian interview saying ‘let people use the fucking toilet’ or similar so it’s off to the bin with her (wheelie so I can cram them both in with my broom) 🧹
Stewart Lee's routines are so tiresome. He spends twenty minutes whispering his words over and over and always pads out his patter with 'ladies and gentlemen', which he repeats every few minutes like some kind of tic. I wonder whether he'll start getting more inclusive with 'ladies and gentlemen, and intersex, and non-binary, etc...' that should enable him to slim down his thin routine even more.
Oh thank God. I can carry on loving Simon Evans, unlike most of the comedians I used to, until they came out with the old "TWAW" shite. Plus - I've just booked myself a ticket to his show! :-D
"...the oldest teenagers in town, expensively educated men who should know better,...."
Beautifully put....
The more expensive the education, the longer they remain teenagers, some even until they die, at a very, very old age.
Graham, I've been a big fan of both you and Stewart Lee since watching both Father Ted and Fist of Fun as a teenager - and both have had a great influence on me and given me many moments of joy. I still quote Father Ted on at least a weekly basis!!
I wouldn't take Stewart Lee's pedal bin list too much to heart. I think he may have created a dilemma for himself, and it may be that others can help him to resolve it. One thing I've learned about Stewart Lee is that he integrates everything into his comedy clown or 'persona' - no matter how unconventional a clown he might appear. I think I remember Richard Herring one time saying that if you told Stewart that his suit was a little bit too big for him, he would respond that it is part of his comedy persona to have a slightly ill-fitting suit - but that it was probably that he just hadn't realised that the suit was too big.
Certainly a big part of Stewart Lee's persona has always been that he is more PC than thou. So once woke came along, he naturally incorporated wokeness into his persona. The problem is that although wokeness may appear superficially to be just the latest incarnation of the left wing values of non-discrimination and equality, on a more detailed look, it is a sharp turn away from those principles. These lists he puts up also stem from his persona of pedantic self-importance.
And despite (or, perhaps, because of) Stewart Lee's more intellectual style of comedy, I can see that it could be a real challenge for him to distance himself from wokeness as it shoots off on a frolic of its own. The dilemma - how to maintain his persona but eviscerate the wokeness that threatens to take it in a dark direction.
But there is a way. Another big part of Stewart Lee's comedy 'persona' is that he is a marginalised figure who is never quite in step with the times.
I can see a pathway out of this for him, if he were to take up the mantle of Mark Fisher's Exiting the Vampire's Castle - wokeness succeeds because it is deeply useful for a capitalist system to keep ordinary people fighting amongst themselves instead of focussing on the real structures of control. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/ (a brilliant analysis by the way)
This would enable him to maintain his adherence to more PC than thou, continue with his persona of being a marginalised figure out of step with the new form of dominant wokeism, and pin point the fault as being with the capitalist system itself, rather than being seen as 'punching down' on trans people. Potentially, he could make a lot of people think again about things - rather than becoming an aging supporter of the new regime.
Interesting. I tend to agree with the first part. But! He's betraying a friend, and he's gutless. There are many and better ways of taking the pee out of the wokeness. Or he could just leave this alone completely. He's having it all ways by using the ambiguity. Also, I find it tedious now, and not funny.
When people like Graham are being brave, and losing so much in doing so, it just highlights all the more Lee's gutlessness. IMO
And I said this in the other thread: there is a lot of risk for him in challenging the whole transideology. He lives in a woke Borough. His kids are teens in this woke Borough, at a school where there are a handful of 'trans' kids in every year group. So what does he choose to do? Nothing that will put him in any danger of social ostracisation. But something that can be interpreted as putting the boot in to a friend.
Here's something for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE1Ro_wPGIU
And now I'll check out the link you mentioned.
Ok, ok, Stewart doesn’t get it, but you surely can’t argue with his scooby doo thatcher routine. So funny.
You know it doesn’t matter that Nimco is black. She’s great because she speaks up about FGM. I believe she’s from the Somaliland Elite isn’t she? The woman of colour thing just sounds quite patronising.