Mediocrity Chic: Party At Bari’s

Guest Post by The Zman

Contrary to most opinion, a society’s ruling class attains its position by being cleverer and more determined than the rest of society. The first generation to rise to the top of society and establish itself as a ruling class, or at least an important faction of the ruling class, earned their way to the position. They may not be smarter or more virtuous, but their combination of talents is what put them at the top. Luck played a role, but otherwise, they earned their way into the position.

Decay is a feature of the universe. Even black holes lose mass over time, a process known as “Hawking Radiation.” The first generation to set themselves up at the top of a new order are more ruthless and intelligent than the rest of society. The generations that come after them are another matter. Decay sets in with the subsequent generations, as positions of power are taken up by people who did nothing to attain their position, other than have the right parents.

An example of this process is in this story about a Manhattan book party for the New York Times columnist Bari Weiss. According to the Jerusalem Post, Weiss is one of the 50 most influential Jews. In fact, they have her listed as number seven, which would qualifier as being something of a super Jew. The veracity of such a claim is disputable, but Mx. Weiss is no doubt an influential person among the ruling elite. She is treated as an opinion setter and spokesman for her generation of elites.

Mx. Weiss is also remarkably mediocre. In fact, mediocre in this case is probably a slander against the honestly mediocre. She was famously outfoxed by YouTube personality Joe Rogan, a man who spends his free time smoking weed, taking blows to the head and watching cartoons. She went on his show repeating Zionist talking points, but proved incapable of explaining any of what she was saying. She was revealed to be a dingbat with no grasp of the basics.

The fact that this was not disqualifying is a sign that the Jewish ruling elite of today is a significant downgrade from those who made the last century the Jewish century. Further proof of this is the fact that people still pretend she is an intellectual. Her participation in the entirely synthetic Intellectual Dark Web is a sad commentary on the decline of Jewish intellectuals in America. If the Tribe is counting on people like Weiss to lead them, they best have the bug-out bags ready.

The career path of Mx. Weiss is what you see in a decaying ruling class. Her reason to have an exalted position in the media is she was willing to slander BDS activists while a college student at Columbia. Her hard work as a skirmisher in that never-ending Bronze Age conflict landed her a spot at the Jewish Forward. Two years later she is at the Wall Street Journal and then a few years later the New York Times. That’s quite remarkable for someone who cannot outwit Joe Rogan.

Of course, Mx. Weiss is not where she is because of her intellect. She is where she is because she can be relied upon to repeat the talking points popular with an ossified ruling elite. She has been assigned to the department charged with repeating the blood libel against white Americans with regards to Jews. Her first book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, is a collection of talking points Max Boot threw away, because he thought they would make him look deranged.

Mx. Weiss is not an outlier. She is just an amusing example of the low-quality harpy that is taking up positions in the ruling class. Her robotic recitation of Zionist talking points makes for good parody, but her lack of intelligence is emblematic of the emergent woke intellectual class. As Steve Sailer recently noted, it is impossible to find a bright and curious person in the woke intellectual class. They are not even clever in how they present the tired dogmas of multiculturalism and intersectionality.

In addition to the overall decline in intelligence of Western society, another factor plays a role in the rise of a dingbat class. The intellectual elite that won their positions in the last century selected proteges who supported their position. They were not selecting people who would challenge their newly won status. Instead, they selected people, who agreed with and extended their opinions and ideas. In short order, flattering the master became the fast track to fame and fortune in the intellectual set.

Half a century ago, Tom Wolfe described the Manhattan intellectual set as bourgeois urbanite poseurs, who decorated their language with radical language in order to affect worldliness and prestige. These were the sorts of people who liked being seen with radicals and terrorists, but lived in safe comfortable neighborhoods, made possible by the sorts of people, who made sure the radicals never won. It was a contrived radicalism to disguise a timid adherence to conventional bourgeois norms.

Today, the heirs of those radicals, lampooned by Wolfe, are bourgeois urbanite poseurs spending their time pretending to be free thinkers and skeptics. They decorate their language with words and phrases borrowed from books they never read, in order to affect erudition and sophistication. Instead of posing as radicals, they pretend to be thoughtful intellectuals questioning elite opinion. It is a contrived intellectualism to decorate banal recitations of managerial class dogma.

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25 Comments
Hyperborean
Hyperborean
January 24, 2020 9:51 am

The best movie I’ve seen about the structure of society today is “Snow Piercer”. The philosopher king at the front of the train, surrounded by the warrior class devoid of empathy and morality, then everyone else in a progression from the useless elite to the Malthusian useless eaters.

Highly recommended.

MTD
MTD
  Hyperborean
January 24, 2020 10:55 am

Agreed. Fantastic movie.

cz
cz
  MTD
January 24, 2020 11:53 am

agreed. i don’t watch many movies, but this one’s entertaining.

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer
January 24, 2020 9:51 am

I enjoy the way he writes and the premises he selects, but I always feel like he just suddenly got up from the desk to attend to an emergency and never came back to finish the piece. They’re great starts, but they don’t feel like finished pieces.

Author and Finisher
Author and Finisher
  Hardscrabble Farmer
January 24, 2020 10:29 am

Are there any real finished pieces?

Unfinished
Unfinished
  Hardscrabble Farmer
January 24, 2020 10:29 am

It could be he is typing burgeoning perspectives in order to see what the ether delivers back?

But, as for me right now, I’m attempting to tie “Zionist talking points” to the “tired dogmas of multiculturalism and intersectionality“.

Hyperborean
Hyperborean
  Unfinished
January 24, 2020 10:32 am

Franz Kafka never finished anything either.

~L
~L
January 24, 2020 10:05 am

That 3rd from the end paragraph is pure grass fed meat, well marbled, but without a lot of fat. Juicy.

That last sentence about dingbats-come-lately flattering the master to gain fortune and fame
is spot on, and can be applied to libprogs in the entertainment industry, beside the group and individual he focused on here.
In fact they are intertwined.

M G
M G
  ~L
January 24, 2020 10:55 am

Zman refers to a group of people who control the thinking about what is chic and trendy and after reading the linked article and grabbing a couple of “soundbites” that are intriguing, I think I see the direction after reading that linked article.

Asked what Weiss had contributed to the opinion pages, section editor James Bennet parried, “Is that a party question?” before offering that “she’s got a lot of guts and ambition, and it’s been a privilege to watch her become the writer she’s meant to be.” Asked a party question — what he thought of the party — he said, “I’m not an expert,” and wished me luck.

Plepler told me Weiss’s book is “smart, timely, necessary.” In a longish toast a while later, flanked by mirrors and sepia skyline photos, he said she “genuinely contributes to tikkun olam,” the Jewish concept of repairing the world. But when I asked Plep­ler, a Democratic donor, about Weiss’s tendency to anger some members of his party — she has equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, written sympathetically about the “Intellectual Dark Web,” and critiqued #MeToo — he went off the record.

I pulled out this pullout to try to explain what I mean.

“she’s got a lot of guts and ambition, and it’s been a privilege to watch her become the writer she’s meant to be.”

That is a direct quote from Weiss’s editor at the Times, where she has “become the writer she is” according to him. What does that mean?

This Weiss woman is the seventh most influential Jew in the world and her girlfriend, by the way, and there is reference to a dispute with Jordan Petersen which might be worth a review, as well.

I think Zman is reminding us all of these intellectual people get put into the role of influential intellectual by Contrived Intellectualism, which I mentioned above.

“The status here at the Lambs Club was of a more traditional variety. Frank Bruni, the liberal Times columnist, defended the need for intellectual diversity at the “paper of record.” Looking around the room — the beige banquettes and velvet curtains and atomic-chic chandeliers — he played with the idea that it might resemble reality more than the internet does.”

“Contrived intellectualism to decorate banal recitations of managerial class dogma” also fill the minds of the masses with trash instead of treasure.

mike
mike
  M G
January 24, 2020 1:24 pm

What reference to a Jordan Peterson dispute?
(The only thing I see somewhat linked to JBP is “entirely synthetic Intellectual Dark Web” – where I’m not sure if Zman uses that derogatory clause to denounce its members, or to indicate that nobody became a member by choice [as Eric Weinstein invented that term on his own])

Oh, I think you mean Bari’s partner Nellie Bowles wrote that hit piece on Jordan Peterson here.
-> Please try not to be too bashful here in expressing what you really mean.

M G
M G
  mike
January 24, 2020 8:31 pm

Bowles, 31, who spent the evening bouncing among the guests in a highly excited state, is exhibit A in Weiss’s social eclecticism. Last year, Bowles wrote a harsh profile of the right-wing pull-your-pants-up guru Jordan Peterson just days after Weiss’s sympathetic piece on the dark web (including Peterson). Weiss was once married to a man, but before that, at Columbia — where she was known for leading a student campaign against anti-Zionist professors — she dated SNL comedian Kate McKinnon. McKinnon was also at the party; Weiss greeted her with a long hug. In April, Weiss told Vanity Fair, “I don’t trade on my sexual identity in that way for political points.”

From the linked piece…

Smaller govt now!
Smaller govt now!
  ~L
January 25, 2020 7:44 am

Like John Cusack. Who used to be right leaning gun loving and now because he is getting old and washed up and has moved far left anti gun to prove to Hollywood his wokeness, usefulness, and loyalty to getting a paycheck because these libprogs have no understanding of budgeting and always go gutter bankrupt.

anarchyst
anarchyst
January 24, 2020 10:09 am

The jewish century??
Yes, by deception, dishonesty and outright fraud and corruption.
We are paying for this “jewish century” to this very day.
It is long overdue to end this “jewish century”…and recognize the damage that this “tribe” has wrought.

CCRider
CCRider
January 24, 2020 10:12 am

Wow! That was great. Over time I’ve skipped his columns for no particular reason but that we just didn’t resonate. But here he’s spot on. Weiss is a loud and stupid establishment blow job (she’s often on bill maher’s show. How much proof do you need?) who fits neatly in with her fellow Zionist yackers who are wrong every fucking time. Kristol, Bolton, Boot, etc-they all meet the Feith test as “The dumbest fucking guy on the planet”. And so, naturally, all are possible Trump, I mean Kushner appointees.

I’m giving The Z Man another look.

M G
M G
January 24, 2020 10:25 am

These were the sorts of people who liked being seen with radicals and terrorists, but lived in safe comfortable neighborhoods, made possible by the sorts of people, who made sure the radicals never won.

and

Instead of posing as radicals, they pretend to be thoughtful intellectuals questioning elite opinion. It is a contrived intellectualism to decorate banal recitations of managerial class dogma.

Zman, I said you make us think but not comment an awful lot. These two powerful thoughts, (which is what sentences are supposed to be: a single complete thought), describe just about all of the political activists I’ve ever known. Not a whole lot, but I have rubbed elbows with a few.

This little string of pearls before swine is particularly well written.

“Contrived intellectualism to decorate banal recitations of managerial class dogma” fill the pockets of the greedy at the expense of the needy.

BB
BB
  M G
January 24, 2020 11:24 am

She or he is just another overrated Jewish jackass who got its postions through its family and going to Columbia school for would be radicals who hate white people. That’s what it is .I will be so glad when white people finally wake out from the Jewish witchcraft spell they are under from the media.Once I stopped watching tv and most movies I woke up and it didn’t take long for the scales to fall from my eyes.

Pequiste
Pequiste
January 24, 2020 11:18 am

Never have seen, heard, let alone read, any of this Bari Weiss’s pablum (or is it just plain crap?) Thank goodness.

Sound just like the dangerous nonsense that emanates out of the mouths and pages of most of the Media’s establishment, political establishment, Academic establishment: propaganda for mass consumption with strict gate-keeping and tough boundary controls (unlike the criminal invader catastrophe infecting Europe and North America.)

When Zman calls them the “dingbat class” what he really means that they are either fucking imbeciles, morons and idiots (which no one with an Ivy League education could be; could they?) or well trained and well rewarded sycophants achieving positions of importance, at places like the NYT, WAPO or CNN, precisely because of their adherence to the well defined script.

Harrington Richardson
Harrington Richardson
  Pequiste
January 24, 2020 2:00 pm

Tucker Carlson uses the term “Professional Stupid Person.” It describes most at the NYT, CNN etc.

daniel
daniel
January 24, 2020 12:20 pm

in my opinion saying they attained their wealth and power because they are somehow better in the first place is erroneous. think of it like a virus: a small concerted group with a directed focus (the virus) can bring down an organism many orders of magnitude larger and more complex (the human).

Iska Waran
Iska Waran
January 24, 2020 12:50 pm

Bari Weiss isn’t a super Jew. Jackie Mason is THE super Jew. Bari Weiss is just a dumb cunt. Point taken, though, that she only survives as an opinion maker because she has the right pro Israel opinions. She used to be in a lesbian relationship with Kate McKinnon of SNL, who is – surprisingly- often funny. Joe Rogan recently had Weiss back on. She’s still dumb as a rock, but she made sure she didn’t use any words like “toady” without being at least 60% sure she knew what it meant.

Coalclinker
Coalclinker
January 24, 2020 5:54 pm

I think that some people, who are with the exception of whom you can count on one hand, are universally against Mr. Trump and free gun ownership. These people have a problem, and there are many citizens who have caught onto this. I think they’re going to have a big problem as more wake up. Their screaming and lamentations will be deafening and nonstop. You’ll know they’ve hit their nadir of backlash when daily they start showing grainy black and white film clips from the mid-40’s showing mounds of corpses in concentration camps. The obligatory shot of black smoke pouring from a tall brick chimney will conclude the snippet. If you still have a TV it will be time to turn it off, or better yet, throw it out with the garbage.

Anonymous
Anonymous
January 24, 2020 6:21 pm

“Luck played a role, but otherwise, they earned their way into the position.”

This is hardly how their systematic nepotistic subversion of a high-trust host society should be categorized.

Steve
Steve
January 24, 2020 7:50 pm

Z,
You just described the Protestant version of the Hubble child- Chelsea Clinton who is on the board of various corporations and getting paid $250K/annum from each. The reason she gets paid these amounts is anybody’s guess.

M G
M G
January 25, 2020 6:58 am

There is always Someone in charge.

Perhaps there is also Someone who just thinks they are in charge.