fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Lesley Arfin: World’s Evillest Person

You have to go to Steve Sailer’s site to learn about the latest p.c. bonfire, this time surrounding a comedy writer for an HBO show. There has been some discussion that the show, which sounds like a Millennial Sex and the City, is about four white girls, which means it is non-diverse. Arfin snarked via […]

You have to go to Steve Sailer’s site to learn about the latest p.c. bonfire, this time surrounding a comedy writer for an HBO show. There has been some discussion that the show, which sounds like a Millennial Sex and the City, is about four white girls, which means it is non-diverse. Arfin snarked via Twitter:

What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.

Which is a pretty funny retort making fun of this asinine, narcissistic idea that there is some sort of moral fault in particularity when it comes to storytelling. The sting is in Arfin’s absolutely accurate complaint (implied by her witty tweet) that the diversity prisspots never complain when a film or TV show taking place in a non-white social milieu fails to include white people in the mix. Who cares? A good story is a good story. I don’t care if explores the hidden lives of paraplegic Tibetan lesbians. If it’s a well-told story, we all see ourselves in the characters and the lives they lead, no matter what their race, what their class, what their culture. What kind of parochial nitwit reads Tolstoy and complains that they don’t see themselves in the story? Arfin is right: is Precious less of a film because it contains no representations of upper middle class white people? The question is ridiculous — but so, it seems to me, are the racialist complaints about Arfin’s show (which I’ve never seen, because I don’t have HBO, and from what I can tell about the program, doesn’t interest me in the least). I mean, I think Sex and the City was a pretty awful series — I’ve seen several episodes — but it was awful because it was dull, vulgar, and morally empty, not because it failed to include representations of white Southern right-wing Christian men. You know? From the descriptions, I probably couldn’t find half a sentence to say in favor of Girls, Arfin’s show, but the idea that it ought to be faulted for being about whitey is risible.

Anyway, boy, have the knives come out for Lesley Arfin. Sailer’s on it. 

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now