Gyneocracy: the new style of Western leadership and where it is tending

Have you just run into a neighbor at the corner deli who barely had time to pull some clothes on before rushing out to buy a bagel and coffee? Actually, no, you’ve just run into Ruth Kelly, the British cabinet minister for multiculturalism, whose current task it is to manage relations between Muslims and the rest of British society.

Speaking of the new generation of Western (woman) leaders, and in particular of how they deal with the Muslim challenge, could the inane looking individual pictured below possibly be Tsipi “Sniffly” Livni, the foreign minister and deputy prime minister of Israel? Actually, no, it’s Amy Gutmann, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, at a Halloween party at her home, posing with someone dressed as a suicide bomber, which she evidently thinks is a very cute thing to do.

Women are cute. But do we want the major institutions of our civilization being led by cute people?

As we can see from the further photos of Amy’s Halloween Bash, however, the cuteness didn’t end with friendly poses next to the “suicide bomber.” There are other set shots, of people dressed as terrorists preparing to execute people who are standing or kneeling in front of them, their heads bent in willing submission to the blow. The people who acted as the victims in these playlets, and their fellow party-goers who watched and found it fun, were rehearsing for their actual submission to Islam, which, I have written, “is the true end toward which Western liberals are moving.”

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Jacob M. writes:

Amy Guttman has released a statement about that photo of her with the suicide bomber. Notice that she doesn’t apologize or say she was wrong, but rather ends by bringing up the subject of rights, and says that she has the right to criticize the costume, but doesn’t actually do so except by saying that it was “offensive.”

LA replies:

Also, I don’t believe her statement that she didn’t notice the terror paraphernalia on the “student” prior to posing for the photograph with him. The guy is wearing brightly colored “dynamite sticks” prominently placed in front of his chest. She’s rather short, and the dynamite is no more than a foot below her eye level. For her not to have seen it would require that she did not even look in his direction before she stood next to him and smiled for the camera. I don’t believe it. She’s a leftist liar, like her colleague and fellow “citizen of the world,” Martha Nussbaum.

However, let’s give Gutmann the benefit of the doubt and assume that she is telling the truth when she says she did not initially notice the terrorist get-up (just as, in the discussion about Sen. Kerry’s gaffe, I assumed for the sake of argument that he was telling the truth when he said he did not intend to insult the troops). Gutmann’s statement about the terrorist outfit, that it is “offensive,” and that she has the “right” to criticize it, though the student also has the “right” to wear it, amounts to practical acceptance of the terrorist outfit (just as Kerry’s refusal to apologize suggests that he inwardly believes the troops are boobs, even though it wasn’t his intention to say so). So, whether Gutmann chose to pose for the terrorist photo, or didn’t see the dynamite until after the photo was taken, the bottom line is that she would not exclude a student dressed as a suicide bomber from her party, let alone from her university, since he has the “right” to dress that way.

Further, Gutmann’s statement does not even mention the other terrorist enactments that took place at her party. Where was Amy when the “execution” photos were shot? Evidently no one in that house, from the university president on down, noticed what was happening, expressed horror at it, and tried to stop it. A sick and evil thing happened here, and the perpetrators can’t deny it.

Stephen T. writes:

Re the Brit Head of Multiculturalism, what jumps out at me is the softness of her features, the doughy face, the benign, benevolent smile. Her eyes display a warm affection, much like a friendly breed of dog that wags it tail and likes everyone without discernment. Yet when I see photos of Muslim immigrants in Europe, they always look very stern into the lens, their expression is grim and hard, and there is often a certain amount of menace communicated with their eyes. The photo showing the impotent simper on the face of the university president right next to the menacing, no-nonsense glare from the middle eastern youth dressed as a violent terrorist, is a perfect example of the contrast.

Another example, interestingly, are the Mestizo Mexican immigrants here in California, particularly males. They will reflexively strike an intimidating scowl and posture for the camera when photographed by Anglos, even at casual events, weddings, parties, etc.

It seems that only Brits and Americans have some innate need to look warm and fuzzy (and receptive and non-threatening) by keeping a happy-face smile plastered on their face at all times, even while they are being invaded.

Tom S. writes:

Just looked at those pictures…. For the love of God… to think that these people see nothing offensive in this. For once, I’m actually at a loss for words….

She didn’t notice… you betcha. The kid had fake dynamite sticking out of his pockets, and staged fake executions—how do you not notice that? I’ll bet if the kid had been dressed as a Confederate soldier she would have certainly noticed. Heck, I’ll bet that if someone had comes dressed as a U.S. Marine she would have refused to pose with him. Guttman was certainly lucky that the guy was only a fake terrorist—according to that Imam in Australia, she was “uncovered meat”, after all…

LA replies:

What if he had been dressed as a Nazi? Would she not have noticed?

And what about the very idea of the president of a university having a Halloween costume party in her home? How long has that been a “tradition” at U of P? Is that a good thing, for students to socialize with the university president, seeing her dressed in some silly costume? The point is, they are already far gone in self-esteem and silliness, a world without standards. Given that context, their lack of reaction to a person dressed as a suicide bomber is no big deal, it’s almost to be expected.

LA writes:

From Amy Gutmann’s “apology:

The costume is clearly offensive and I was offended by it. As soon as I realized what his costume was, I refused to take any more pictures with him, as he requested. The student had the right to wear the costume just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it.

Taking this statement at face value, what Gutmann is saying is, I am not a nihilist, I have values, there are certain things that are offensive to me. At the same time, who am I to impose my values on others? All people have the right to dress as they please. The student had the right to come to my home dressed as a terrorist. Of course, I also had the right not to be photographed with him, since that is an expression of my freedom, but I did not have the right to tell him to leave my home, since that would be an imposition on his freedom.

What this makes clear is that relativism is nihilism. If you believe that all people can do what they like and that you don’t have the right to impose your values on them, then all things are permitted, including murder, terrorism, and the Nazi Holocaust.

LA continues:

Along similar lines, Winfield Myers, the blogger who posted the photos, writes (quoted at Michelle Malkin’s site):

Claiming that the student had the right to wear the costume is, I believe, a dodge and a moral cave-in to the very forces that made possible his entrance into the party and her subsequent acceptance (at least initially) of his costume. This is not a question of rights, after all, as Penn is a private university and can regulate what its students wear. No one is allowed to attend class or stroll across campus in the nude because such actions would be universally seen as morally unacceptable (or, at the least, socially disruptive). It would violate agreed-upon norms of public behavior. I also doubt students would be welcomed if they wore transparent clothing or pants with the crotch cut out.

What’s missing from President Gutmann’s statement, and from the larger academic community of which she is a part, are moral parameters within which every member of the community must act, short of the prohibition of criminal acts, which this of course is not. This applies particularly to statements or actions concerning terrorism, the war on Islamism, and the representations of those actions.

Had Mr. Saadi, or anyone else, shown up dressed in as Hitler, Pol Pot, David Duke wearing his Klan garb, Bull Conner, Sirhan Sirhan, John Wilkes Booth, a slave trader with a whip, a rapist, or any such person, he would have been identified immediately as representing someone, and perhaps some force, that is evil. Neither Ms. Gutmann nor anyone else would have objected to having him barred from her home and party; indeed, to have failed to act in such a way would have invited opprobrium.

But in the modern university, especially in anything relating to Middle East studies, the guardrails are down. After years of scholarship that consistently fails to investigate thoroughly, much less condemn, terrorism or jihadism, or which misrepresents both these historical actors and the consequences of their actions, can we be surprised at President Gutmann’s lack of shock? With moral equivalency between bombers and the bombed, especially regarding suicide bombers, a mainstay of modern scholarship and pedagogy in Middle East studies, why wouldn’t a young man presenting himself as a killer of innocents be laughed at rather than set straight by his intellectual and moral superiors—i.e., women like Amy Gutmann?

Apologias for terrorism and extremist politics breeds an atmosphere in which the intolerable becomes the everyday. I shudder to think where this will take us.

This is a good statement, except for Myers’s idea that the university community would have found a Hitler, a rapist, or a Pol Pot, to be “evil,” while, because of a liberal double standard, they don’t consider terrorists to be evil. I don’t agree. The university community doesn’t consider Hitler and a rapist to be evil, they consider them to be non-liberal, because they supposedly exploited positions of power to oppress people. But terrorists are not non-liberal, because they are fighting against the oppressive power of the Israelis and the Americans. So terrorists are ok, while Hitler and a rapist are bad (unless he is black, in which case he is a victim and good). There is no liberal double standard. There is a liberal single standard, in which everything associated with the West is oppressive and deserves to be destroyed, while everything associated with the Third-world in its resistance to the West is victimized and deserves moral support. The left has a single standard: kill the West.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 03, 2006 06:30 PM | Send