New to PJ Media:
Who needs the Babylon Bee when we have the Washington Post? Could The Bee, as brilliant as it is, give us a more precise and devastating dismantling of aroused victimhood than the Bezos Bulletin gave us on Monday, in a story that is actually and without irony titled “‘Shark Week’ Lacks Diversity, Overrepresents Men Named Mike, Scientists Say”?
If I had seen that at the Babylon Bee, I would have laughed and maybe thought it was a bit of a stretch. But Mailin all his smug “Democracy dies in darkness” glory, I’d be quick to call him a racist right-wing extremist if he dared crack a smile.
And really, it’s true, when you think about it. You’ve heard of great white sharks, but when was the last time you heard about a great black shark? A great hammerhead shark? And Shark Week itself demonstrates an unforgivable lack of diversity. Why not Dolphin Week? Squid week? Pufferfish week? Gaia’s aquatic depths are wonderfully diverse, and all we have on Discovery are sharks?
Of course, the lack of diversity of the Mail He doesn’t care which of the sea creatures gets a starring role on reality TV, but the unforgivable masculinity, whiteness and yes, Mikeness of those who bring us the shark stories. Tea MailThe article started with a victimization story that is even more ridiculous than these stories usually are. Cue the violins: “Lisa Whitenack loved sharks when she was a child. She spent rainy days flipping through a guide to sharks in Reader’s Digest. Every summer, she watched ‘Shark Week,’ Discovery’s annual television event spotlighting the oceanic predator with seven days of dedicated programming.” What could interfere with this idyllic image of avid intellectual curiosity? Men, of course: “But when scientists appeared on her TV screen, she rarely saw women she could look up to.”
Whitenack (hey, that name sounds a bit racist) then explains: “Why would I know I could do that? I don’t come from a family of scientists. I didn’t see many people who looked like me on TV.” Lisa Whitenack was right: if she was discouraged from becoming a scientist because she didn’t see any scientists who looked like her on TV, then she was too stupid to become a scientist in the first place and would have been better off limiting herself. “Welcome to Wendy’s, can I take her order please?” After all, Wendy is a woman, so Whitenack could have been safe knowing that people who looked like her could do her job.
Obviously, though, Whitenack somehow got over the hurdle of his unrepresentation among TV scientists and became one anyway: the Mail tells us that “she is now a professor of biology at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.” And, she’ll be glad to know, she “found her way into shark research anyway.”
There is more. Read the rest here.