Monthly Archives: August 2020

Caroline Cox – courageous

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Christian Union invited Baroness Caroline Cox to be the plenary speaker at their 2019 Nexus.

A bald opening!

I want to cry “Hallelujah”, just as she cries it but for different reasons. A speech that does not faff about with meaningless preambles conveys immediate confidence in its message. It is also a wonderful “humpbuster” for reasons with which I will not bore you here. Yes you certainly do need to introduce yourself, but you don’t need to do it right away. Do it once you are on a roll, just as she does.

It’s a wonderful self-introduction. “I am a nurse, and a social scientist by intention […] a baroness by astonishment […] I was the first baroness I had ever met.” I am sure that she has used this introduction routine often, because it has all the hallmarks of repeated road-testing to make it as good as it is. So much the better.

I already expect to enjoy this speech, because I feel that I am in very secure hands.

Meanwhile, wearing my rhetor hat, I am briefly concerned about the device she is holding. She looks at it often. Surely that thing is too small to contain a screen prompting her. I quickly realise that it’s the remote control for her slides which we never see. Later, watching her eyes makes me suspect that she’s prompted by an autocue of some sort, and then I conclude that it’s a slave screen showing her the slide that the audience sees. She occasionally uses it to read out mainly things others have said. She’s a proper speaker, shooting the speech from the hip.

It’s refreshing to see someone wearing their Christian faith so openly. The conference theme is Courageous in the ways of the Lord and she repeatedly commends the courage of brutally oppressed, war-torn churches. She produces a stream of jaw-dropping examples of courage through Christian faith around the world; and while marvelling at them you find a less-obvious common theme dawning on you. Story after story is so graphically described, because she bears eye-witness. She was there.

Caroline Cox talks the talk so well because she has tirelessly and fearlessly walked the walk, and continues to do so.

Because we don’t see the screen we don’t see the video clip that concludes her talk. Though that’s a pity, I have to say that her message of courage through faith had already come across loud and clear.

Dr Thomas Sowell thinks

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Yes, I know: Sowell was on this blog only ten weeks ago but in the mean time he has celebrated his 90th birthday. I think that’s worth marking.

But I have to admit that there’s also a far more prosaic reason for today’s posting. My computer is in hospital. If they can’t fix it, I’ll replace it. Meanwhile I am hobbling along on a tablet.

To post one of my speech critiques, I need a screenful of many windows and tabs from which I lift references, precise timings, URLs for hyperlinks, etc. It goes against the grain to have a week without a blog post, but robbed of my normal work environment I feel I just want to put a video here, and let it speak for itself. I cannot think of anyone better to do that than Dr Thomas Sowell.

By way of introduction I offer you a comment published below this video on YouTube –

As a black man I just want to say … this man changed my life and taught me how to think. I’ve never felt so free.

 

 

Ricky Gervais has big boots.

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The Golden Globes Awards in January of this year were greeted by press headlines about how the host, Ricky Gervais, had torn into the celebrities. He always does, so why the headlines? Or rather he always did, because he made the point several times in his opening speech that this was the last time.

Unless there’s a very good reason of topicality I tend not to be led by headlines, preferring to allow the dust to settle before I comment. Seven months is enough.

Up to 7:50 is Gervais’ opening speech, and the rest is a series of chained-together snippets from between awards.

The “Roast” is a very American custom, with usually a single guest/target. I have watched very many, but seldom, (if ever) covered them in the blog. They are usually very good, very funny, but so steeped in in-jokes that there’s nothing for me to say. This is different. Gervais is roasting a large room full of over-paid performing fleas, and holding little back. Any viewer who watches movies understands the jokes, as does anyone who is abreast of the news.

Consider his available ammunition: the reputation that Hollywood – indeed California – has for being absurdly over-woke and addicted to virtue signalling, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the private-jetting around the world to preach about the environment, the list is endless. Gervais overlooks nothing.

‘Cancel culture’ has too many tiptoeing around the truth. The problem with tiptoeing is that you are easily knocked over. Gervais has big boots on, is unapologetic, and doesn’t care – even says so repeatedly.

He also understands something else that is particularly crucial. Actors as a general rule are not very bright. There are a few honourable exceptions, but they tend to be the ones that restrict their activities to the arts pages and keep their own counsel over other matters. They allow their professional performances to do their speaking for them. They tend to rise above, and stay away from, gatherings like this. Actors tend also to be desperately insecure, needing to be oft seen and photographed lest they be forgotten. So they clamour to be allowed to come here and be insulted.

Gervais is pretty skilled and holds his audience where he wants it, but he’s not infallible. I advise my trainees never to pause on a punchline, and he almost never does. Watch at 4:20, where he has a little routine ending at 4:27. He pauses at the end of it, and dies just a little. Compare that to 7:10 –

Most of you spent less time at school than Greta Thunberg

He piles straight on, and is rewarded with a nice little laugh which he ignores and goes for the big one which is bleeped, but we already know what’s coming. So does the audience which goes wild.

Are we sure that was really the last time? How much are they going to offer him to insult them again?

America’s Frontline Doctors heard

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On 27 July, on the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington DC, a group of white-coated people gathered to conduct a press conference. They called themselves America’s Frontline Doctors, and their videoed presentation was introduced by Congressman Ralph Norman from South Carolina. Within a handful of hours the video had gone viral, and within twenty-four hours it had been banned by social media companies.

Have the cretins who order these bans never heard of the Streisand Effect? The immediate impact of the banning is to invite the question “why?”, and in searching for an answer to “why” far more people go out of their way to listen than would otherwise have done. I am one of them.

Mark Zuckerberg, in answer to a question at a Congressional hearing, said

We do prohibit content that will lead to imminent risk of harm…

Sounds reasonable, but who decides? I am prepared to believe that there is a Facebook medical panel. I am unable to list any of its members, but I am able to list the doctors in this video.


Ralph Norman hands over to Dr Simone Gold. We later hear from Dr Bob Hamilton, Dr Stella Immanuel, Dr James Todaro, and Dr Joseph Ladapo. They are worth hearing, making “why?” even more of a conundrum.

I spent a little time searching for doctors who had arguments to gainsay the ones in this video, and merely found several people targeting these doctors with argumentum ad hominem. I also found several more doctors saying very much the same thing as these.

Furthermore, I found this short video concerning the infamous article in The Lancet which was pulled only a few days after publication.

Nothing that I found proved that the doctors in the video (shooting all their speeches from the hip by the way) are right or that they are wrong, but it did suggest that there is an important debate to be had on the matter. It is always foolish not to pay close attention to information coming to you from the coalface, and even more foolish to act to silence it.

So finding myself still asking “why?” I ask myself Cui Bono? – who benefits? The only answer I can find is anyone who stands to gain from extending the crisis or from producing another prevention or cure and, in view of the medical, social and economic costs of this pandemic in the mean time, there are no pretty answers to that.

P.S. On 6 August it emerged that both Facebook and Twitter had censored the following video on the grounds that it contained “false claims”. Again, who decides? Is their information superior to that available to POTUS?