Does having a good position on the immigration bill make The Corner ok?

Spencer Warren writes:

Here is a particularly stupid entry by John Derbyshire at the Corner:

ScandiCaBlinAsian? [John Derbyshire]
The only place getting more hits than the Senate switchboard this morning is Tiger Woods’ official website, where the great golfer has posted pictures of his week-old daughter, Sam Alexis Woods. Note what a class act Tiger continues to be: he could have sold these pics for a million per, instead of putting them on his website for free.

NR may be doing a good job on the immigration bill, but it remains so bad I’m staying away from the whole place. Woods is a “class act” because he’s not prostituting his baby to add to his mega-millions?

Mr. Warren is right. Derbyshire perfectly expresses the degraded American ethos of our time, according to which anyone who behaves better than the most vulgar and degraded, is a “class-act.”

Another evident motivation for Derbyshire’s inordinate and ridiculous praise for Woods for posting photos of his “ScandiCaBlinAsian” child free on the Web (wow, he displays pictures of his infant daughter to millions of strangers! what a man!) is that Derbyshire’s own children are bi-racial.

- end of initial entry -

Spencer Warren writes:

Though it may not be worth our time. Woods’ posting of his new baby’s photos on his website (indeed having a personal website) is another manifestation of the self-absorption and egotism, as well as the pathetic hunger of the public for celebrity information, which is so rampant in our degenerating society.

Also, Woods is a massive egomaniac. His belligerent fist pumping and carrying on when he makes a big putt is bad sportsmanship by the standards of golf. No one else does this on a regular basis as he does. His garb of a red shirt (for the “tiger”) for his final round on Sundays also is egotistical and perhaps part of an effort at psychological intimidation of his opponents, which, again, is bad sportsmanship in golf. Arnold Palmer in the fifties, sixties and seventies and, before him, Ben Hogan in the forties and fifties (indeed all golfers then), dressed plainly because to do otherwise in those days just was showy and thus bad form.

Rachael S. writes:

And another thing: Sam Alexis Woods? I went to the Woods’ website and nowhere is there an indication that Sam is short for Samantha.

They gave their daughter a boy’s shortened name.

Our culture would benefit from more formality and gender-specificity, not less.

Where are the people saying what most of us are thinking, “What the hell kind of a name is Sam for a girl?”

LA replies:

Look at it this way. Brangelina with their multiracial adopted family said that they would never get married so long as same sex-couples can’t get married. In other words, marriage between a man and a woman is an unfair form of privilege. Well, Woods and his wife were living up to the multiracial side of the Brangelina Standard because they are a multiracial couple with a race-mixed baby; but they were failing to live up to the pro-homosexual side of the Brangelina Standard in that they are a married heterosexual couple. So they made up for their heterosexual privilege by giving their new-born daughter a boy’s nick-name, introducing gender ambiguity as well as racial ambiguity into their family. Now the Woods family has a multiracial daughter named Sam, and so is Brangelinically Correct.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 26, 2007 11:14 AM | Send