Jaden and Willow Smith, the alien space children of Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, have been interviewed by the New York Times. It is a phantasmagorical journey into the minds of two people who have never had to deal with reality, and spend all their time dwelling on shallow deepities. They croon about quantum physics, and how time doesn’t actually exist, because I can make it go slow or fast, however I please,
and they dismiss other people’s books because There’re no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.
I kept reading to get to the part where their narcissism balloons to enormous size, and then gets sucked into their navels, and they disappear in a burst of solipsism, but it never happened, sadly.
I did get to read about their interpretation of development, though.
WILLOW: Breathing is meditation; life is a meditation. You have to breathe in order to live, so breathing is how you get in touch with the sacred space of your heart.
JADEN: When babies are born, their soft spots bump: It has, like, a heartbeat in it. That’s because energy is coming through their body, up and down.
WILLOW: Prana energy.
JADEN: It’s prana energy because they still breathe through their stomach. They remember. Babies remember.
WILLOW: When they’re in the stomach, they’re so aware, putting all their bones together, putting all their ligaments together. But they’re shocked by this harsh world.
JADEN: By the chemicals and things, and then slowly…
WILLOW: As they grow up, they start losing.
JADEN: You know, they become just like us.
NO! NOT LIKE YOU! ANYTHING BUT THAT!
Jaden and Willow, that throbbing in the baby’s soft spot? It’s not “prana energy,” whatever the hell that is. It’s called a pulse. You can feel it in your throat, your wrists, lots of places.
Nobody literally breathes through their stomach. You can flatten your diaphragm with little expansion of the rib cage, causing a displacement of the gut, but you’re actually drawing air into your lungs. Your lungs, Willow and Jaden. Babies and adults breathe with their lungs.
Babies don’t remember. They don’t consciously assemble their bones and ligaments. An acephalic fetus can build perfectly normal limbs, you know.
I have no idea why you’re dismayed by the chemicals
. You are made of chemicals. You are exposed to chemicals in the womb. Chemicals are what you are.
What a perfect picture of two blissfully ignorant, wealthy people who spent their childhood being constantly reassured that their every fart was perfume, and now they believe it. How sad.
I wonder if it’s too late to save these kids from becoming the spectacularly disconnected and privileged asshats they are well on their way to becoming. Obviously the parents have done nothing to stop it. My only goals as a parent were to try to turn out a kid who thought cruelty was wrong and should be called out, and to keep her from feeling too much entitlement (some is okay – entitlement to justice, dignity, survival, etc.). These poor kids are on a very bad road.
No, they’re on a very nice road: soft, cushy, easy, no work to propel themselves along it. And they don’t ever have to get off it, because they’re terribly, terribly rich and well insulated.
Jaden and Willow are 16 and 14, respectively. They aren’t getting this stuff out of thin air, it’s probably coming from their parents. Or the internet. Sad, either way.
I thought nobody owed one anything.
(Except unquestioning, unceasing support if one decides to dive headfirst into a bottle, regardless of the cost to the supporter, I guess.) >.>
Um. They are just children.
Children always explore naive ideas and philosophies (or they should; the fundies seem scared to and it was an eye-opener when I realized the literally did not). Admittedly these children at 14 and 16 years old seem particularly *dumb*. And, really, children should not be given interviews by the New York Times.
How right you are, PZ. It’s even worse than I initially thought, then. Worse for anyone who has to work with them in the future.
It’s a shame when parents think they are helping their kids by protecting them from everything. I would love to ask them if they have been vaccinated, and what they think about it.
I told my kids I wanted them to be their community’s ‘wise person’ , the one people turn to for thoughtful advice. To that end, we made a point of exposing them to people and cultures of as many different groups and people as we could.
I also taught them to look for logical links between things, like how gravity plus water can make electricity (tidal and dams), something not directly predictable from either concept in isolation, but only when they’re linked.
I also focused on finding ways to make reasoning both explicit and fun, which worked well with two of them (the third’s extensive learning difficulties made it too difficult for her to follow orally).
The only upside for these two poor wee bairns is that they’ll be rich enough not to be badly harmed by the goofy woowissenschaft they’ve grown up with.
Yeah, all I see are two marks for the grifters.
Grifters gotta grift someone, you know.
Oh come on folks, they’re 14 and 16, and it’s not their fault that they’re young and rich. Please don’t visit the sins of the parents upon the children. Do you know how vapid and pompous most of us would have sounded at age 16 (I was WAY into ghosts and telepathy in 8th grade)??? The problem is that the New York Times thought it was worth interviewing too silly adolescents. They may well turn into interesting productive adults with fulfilling lives.
As for their parents’ choices, sure, fire away. But give the young innocents some leeway — I read the interview, and they don’t seem the least bit mean-spirited. Compared to say, the various pearls of wisdom dropped by Romney and Palin and Cheney children.
A friend once told me “oh man, you have to read the shit that comes out of Will Smith’s son’s mouth, you are going to piss yourself”. He showed me, i read it, and i nearly did. Then it sunk…this isn’t funny, this is fucking tragic…O_o
Keven Kehres@#9:
And now you see part of why all of the ‘important people’ Scientology says they have turn out to be Hollywood stars and the like…
I just looked up Will Smith. Did you know he founded an elementary school?
So, they were home schooled or what?
And what’s Will Smith’s excuse for this? He does remember that he kind of got started on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, right? And I feel like he must remember that he’s from the real word. Or no?
I didn’t.
Okay…
I admit I was a bit pissed-off at PZ’s placement of Gumby blockquotes for these *children*. But I’m much, much, MUCH more pissed off and the New York Times interviewer interviewing these boring, uninteresting, unintelligent and vapidly *AVERAGE* children as though they are “accomplished artists”. They are children and very very dull ones at that. You can’t interview them about their “work” because they don’t *have* any work. To actually pretend they have ideas or work that are of interest or relevance to anyone other than their parents almost borders on child abuse. Seriously, I almost feel that an interviewer hearing a 14-year old say something insipid such as “I can make [time] go slow or fast, however I please” should have an obligation to say “Yes, everybody thinks about that now and then”.
@12…I agree completely. Because of where they are and what they do, it’s quite likely their young adulthood will either be spent in $cientology or in rehab.
I’m not sure which one’s preferable. At least with rehab you had to have some fun leading up to it. $cientology seems like nothing but a crashing, hyper-expensive bore.
I don’t understand the sentiment, anbheal. I read/hear the interviews with teens here in Toronto on local news (too often following a tragic event) and they don’t reveal themselves to be vapid and pompous, but often thoughtful and considerate of the issues they comment on. Nothing so stupid and revealing of an apparent lack of basic education as is seen in these Smith children.
But, then, I’m talking about teens in Toronto, who are being interviewed, most often, at the public high schools they’re attending …so perhaps that’s still not a fair comparison to the two obscenely rich (and apparently ignorant) youth we’re talking about here.
To whom would you compare them, anbheal, and to what extent do you think their extreme wealth and apparent isolation from reality has to do with the inane stuff they spouted?
Oh, PZ. You did too sound vapid and pompous at age 16.
You just didn’t have indulgentfamous parents and reporters from the New York times giving you attention and credence you hadn’t actually earned. Eventually you and anbheal realized you had to produce ideas of *merit*; and had to *listen* to ideas from others.
Another version of what I’m trying to say:
Even in Toronto where some plurality of adults can be expected to say something as utterly dumb as, ‘I can slow time by thinking.’ and ‘Prana energy …’ no teen could be expected to spout off new age crap about meditation with an air of authority and knowing. They’re interests lie in the real world, the politics that affect them, their school lives and learning, where they’ll go to university and the friend they lost who was shot.
Criticism of the Smith children’s narcissism and extreme wealth, not to mention their utter ignorance and lofting above the real world, is apt, even if the causes of those things lie without of them.
They can read about quantum mechanics but can’t read some fucking bbc news for at least basic information about real world.
Privileged little assholes.
That’s because they are being asked about important and interesting things. Interview these same children about the bad poetry in their journals, which rock lyrics speak directly to them (“it’s like singer X can see into my soul!”), what teenage angsty novel moves them, and stand back.
Of course these children aren’t *indulged* in every bit of tripe coming out of their mouths being treated as deep philosophical gold. And at 16 (high-school senior age; not 8th grade) he is *way* too old for such idiocy. But at 14 “Gee, maybe the universe is one big consciousness but we’re too materialist to hear it any more; animals hear it” is just the right age.
However the proper response from an adult should be a disinterested nod and a “yeah, we all come up with that idea at one point or another”.
No, woozy. I reject those assumptions. Believe it or not, I recall being 16 (it wasn’t even half my life ago) and having friends who were also 16. And we thought, said and did some very stupid and irrational things. Same as when we were 14.
No, the difference between the Smiths and these kids I’m talking about isn’t the questions they’re being asked or the answers they might give to some other questions and the stupidity of youth is really their only similarity. The difference is the lived experience and the thing that puts the Smiths so far out of connection is their obscene wealth and what I can only guess was, as you say, ‘indulgence’ of their every thought and desire. But they didn’t come up with prana energy and meditation on their own. That came from somewhere else and it’s definitely not the kind of shit that a teen is very likely to encounter this side of obscene wealth in a way that they can talk confidently about it. That kind of thing is from the world of the obscenely rich adults that their parents inhabit and pass onto them.
If you think all teens are just like the Smith’s, you’re terribly mistaken. And before you have another thought, it’s also more than a matter of degree. There is a lifestyle those two are inculcated into and it is not anything like typical, except perhaps for their peers of obscene wealth.
Just an interesting factoid to throw out there.
IIRC, the throbbing on a baby’s soft spot on the head (ie fontanelle) is mostly the CSF pressure wave transmitted through the skin (because, you now, no skull there yet).
The CSF pressure wave is mostly a combination of a venous pulse wave with respiratory variability, and not as much the classical arterial pulse that most people think about when they say “pulse”.
The waveform is actually quite a bit more complex and interesting than the standard arterial pulse…
The book thing makes me sad. I mean, I write as a hobby, so I read what I write, and occasionally I get the ‘I was ON FIRE!’ intermixed with the ‘meh’, the ‘this is all garbage’ and the ‘typo, typo, how many times did I use ‘actually’ in this paragraph’.
But reading what I’ve written doesn’t have the suspense of not knowing what will happen.
Then add in that the books that stuck with me were the ones that taught me something. I was noting that To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the most memorable things I read in middle school I probably couldn’t ever write that, but definitely couldn’t write that without making connections between myself and people who might have different circumstances of their lives. If I wrote without reading, the only well-developed characters would be myself, and maybe people based on family and friends. I can learn the facts from non-fiction (I read that, too), but emotion usually requires some narrative, even if it’s a non-fiction narrative.
Thomathy #23 wrote:
No, they didn’t come up with it on their own. ‘Prana energy,’ meditation, and all the woo woo ideas (quaaantuuuum) came from modern liberal American culture, along with “I’m spiritual but not religious” and “everything happens for a reason.” From what I’ve seen it has little to do with income or being privileged, though education does seem to correlate with a greater tendency to talk New Age gibberish instead of fundamentalist gibberish.
There are plenty of low income people who believe this nonsense. I don’t think these particular teenagers sound very different than many others. The odd thing, of course, is that they are being interviewed. That is, interviewed and asked such questions, since Tiger Beat is more likely to want to know about favorite foods and most embarrassing moment.
I went to a Southern Baptist Church and hated gay people when I was 16. So they’re a step ahead of me. What concerns me is that our media elevate such children to pontificate on the pages of Newspapers merely by the accident of their birth circumstances, and that I’ve no faith they will be raised in conditions conducive to growing into mature adults. Will Smith says he’s not a Scientologist, but that Scientology is wonderful…..
Sastra, do low income people get to spend their time believing in that stuff without consequence to their well-being or their pocket books? Because that’s a significant difference. I’m not saying that there are no other people who believe this stuff. Or that there aren’t parallels on the other end of the class and wealth scales (there are). I just find these two in particular exemplary examples of the ‘Hollywood elitist’ lifestyle.
Thomathy #29 wrote:
Depends on how sincerely they believe. A lot of storefront “psychics” make their money off of people who can ill afford to lose it. The same goes for so-called alternative medicine: money down the drain. The rich don’t have any lock on an ability or propensity to believe in magic.
And depending on how seriously the kids take and continue to take some of this nonsense, their wealth probably won’t protect their personal well-being.
A part of me would like to think that whole wearing a reverse batman suit to a wedding was part of a publicity stunt dreamed up by a publicist. Now, I’m starting to think that Jaden is just woefully immature, because he doesn’t get the verbal butt kicking from time to time, that we all need as teenagers. Or adults for that matter.
I wonder, Sastra. I mean, it’s obviously true that people across the socio-economic spectrum lose money to woo and we all know the harm of a person of low wealth being bilked by such things and those believers are particularly vulnerable.
I dunno. There just seems to be something exceptional about the Smiths and those in their positions of wealth. Perhaps I just can’t articulate it well.
Clearly you don’t appreciate the great labor that went into the opus “Why My Hair”.
Sastra:
But you won’t find many low-income children spending money on storefront psychics and alt-med products. (Of course, as you said, however many of them there might be, they also aren’t being interviewed by the NYT about it. I’m not sure if their point is to embarrass these kids or to take them seriously, but either way it’s a shitty thing to do.)
Also, they might have some wooish ideas here and there, but they generally aren’t absolutely steeped in the stuff, as if they’ve had the opportunity for practically everything in their lives to be centered around one piece of nonsensical bullshit after another. Occasionally, whether they like it or not, they’ll have moments when reality is slapping them in the face and waking them the fuck up. That becomes part of their mental model of the world, not just whatever mystical things they discovered while navel-gazing and being told hold very special they are. The super-wealthy simply don’t have as much reason to be grounded in this way, because they never get these kinds of “normal” experiences and interactions with the world and other people, which we might take for granted.
When Shadowling was young (around 4 or 5) and was stringing together sentences, xe would run around saying “you’re a chemical, I’m a chemical, we’re all chemicals” — not bad for a kid that age. We had a friend who thought little kids should use (and know the meaning of) big words.
Xe also kept pointing to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park as the hero (he kills the velociraptors and eats the blood sucking lawyer).
@Thomathy:
I’m not so sure the problem is wealth, but over-confidence. Supreme over-confidence, given that they’re not just proclaiming what the universe is about, but how they will change it.
Low self-esteem doesn’t seem to be much of an issue here. As Church Lady says, “We like ourselves, don’t we?”
I don’t think you and I are in the disagreement you think we are. The Smiths’ position of wealth rewards vapidity and entitles them to an audience and a presumed sagacity for utter pablum. They have absolutely no challenge for intelligent thought and huge comfort for being indulged. I don’t care that they are talking about parna meditation, fundamental christianity, or rational atheism. (what do I care what a 14-year knows about any of those subjects; if I cared about any of the subjects I’d seek out the source where they learned it from; I wouldn’t sit enrapt in the wisdom of babes). There is simply *no* challenge or impetus for *any* thought in the famous lifestyle. For the rest of us we might fail at the challenge or refuse to rise to it, but for the famous vapidity is actually *rewarded* and is safe.
Okay, but that can’t go unanalyzed. If you want to call it that, then where did the over-confidence come from here? There’s some kind of a connection between it and their fantastically privileged wealthy life, isn’t there?
consciousness razor #34 wrote:
Maybe. My own view may be too influenced by some very indigent, very woo-soaked, very off-the-land off-the-grid home school families I’ve encountered. The New Age community is remarkably insular, and they have a strong tendency to treat real problems — even the sort of problems which a more rational person would probably have avoided — as valuable “learning opportunities” sent from Spirit or Universal Mind. The children seem to be steeped in it from birth. I’ve met Jadens and Willows who were NOT wealthy.
I think the New Age mindset — despite its pretended focus on “humility” and “growth” — tends towards narcissism and stasis. They work very hard at losing the capacity to differentiate between the inner world of thought and feeling and the outer world of object and event. Making that distinction is judgmental. It comes from a “duality consciousness.” They want to be holistic. Hologram universe.
I see these kids running through the same old tropes you can find in garden-variety Spirituality dressed in clothes bought at Good Will (and not to be “ironic” but to “save money.”).
Sastra:
I believe that. I know similar people.
It’s hard to make any definite generalizations when we get this abstract, but I would say that, whatever absurd lessons these people make up about their life experiences, they are a little more tied to reality by virtue of their circumstances — in lots of ways, which may not be directly and immediately about their economic situation itself. Their poor lives are a closer reflection of the way the world actually is than the cheap (excuse the pun) simulation of reality that the Smiths live in. Their heads are in the clouds, yes, but something (every now and then) still makes a little bit of contact with the ground. Sure, you can insulate yourself and your community, but not completely, so we have to be willing to think of some kinds of limits which prevent total insulation. Things that really are important, like your health and wealth and so on, are where people find it easiest to notice what’s going on (and trick themselves with way-too-easy-to-tell stories), but even if they come up with bizarre and confused ideas about it there is at least something real underlying it which has caught their attention.
Will who?
Actually, one has a top-selling album and the other has a (for now at least) successful film and music career. This is more, commercially speaking, than most artists achieve over a lifetime. Of course, their success is due entirely to their dad. And one day, they’ll probably wake up and discover that the novelty of being Will Smith’s kids has worn off among the pop culture-consuming public, and no one cares anymore to see them in movies or on album covers. Or maybe not. But it’s not as if they are completely unworthy subjects of an interview.
Good for you, PZ! You picked the right parents and right situation to get born into. If only Jaden and Willow had made the pre-life choices you did.
Area Man:
Their success “commercially speaking” isn’t a way to measure how much they worked, not to mention whether the work they did is any good. As you said, the vast majority of artists are working their entire lives, with nothing remotely like this to show for it. So, some measure of success in terms of sales or popularity simply doesn’t correspond to work (or quality of work), whether or not the person’s dad is famous and got them in the door.
Anthony K:
As I see it, it would probably be better if this post were called “Them interviewers ain’t right.” PZ’s weird choice to focus so much criticism on the kids is of course due to conditions at the Big Bang.
At least they know how to chose a fucking shirt for an interview.
Jaden & Willow Smith: 1
Rocket Scientists: 0
Really not keen on the appropriation of AAVE for the title of an OP criticizing black kids. And it would be nice if people could take their race into account when evaluating things like their attitude toward novels. A lot of kids of color do not find the vast majority of literature offered to them to be relatable. Maybe the Smith kids’ problem is entitlement and narcissism, but even then it could still be coming from a different place than it would for a white kid.
Also, the spirituality stuff is what a hell of a lot of California in general and Hollywood in particular believes. (Like, even if you know that, you might not realize the extent of its saturation.) Adults, being adults, just tend to edit what they share with a general audience. The kids probably hear that nonsense (insufferable smugness included) from a majority of the people they and their parents work with.
@45 CR:
Ah, this isn’t the first time PZ has shit on 16-year-olds. Remember the Eagle Scout kid who sucked shit because he didn’t set his facebook privacy settings correctly and got away with a shitty Eagle Scout project that he didn’t even walk uphill both ways to make?
The world fucking hates rich kids. Probably because it’s such a meritocracy everywhere else and rich kids are the only ones who use their parents resources to do the things they want to do. When I was 16, I made damn sure to refuse the opportunities my parents gave me, because at that age, like all kids, I was completely aware of how fame and money and privilege and celebrity interact. Anyway, fuck these teenagers for forcing the New York Times to interview them. How fucking dare they to think their opinions, no matter how ill-informed, deserve an audience? Who do they think they are, straight white males?
@47 A. Noyd:
Nope, nope, nope! Nofair pointing out context. They made bad choices, and they deserve to pay for them!
So? That these are people whose lives and work are of interest to the audience is a perfectly sound reason to interview them. Your personal tastes are not an objective standard that must first be met.
Area Man:
So go back and read the comment you were ostensibly responding to.
There’s a perfectly sound reason to interview them about any topic whatsoever, because their unrelated work is interesting to some people? Also, we shouldn’t consider whether these views are good or right or useful or anything of the sort, only whether someone somewhere will eat that shit up and give us money for it?
If you’re not making claims like that, what are you doing and what is the point of doing it?
Since it has nothing to do with my personal tastes, and you’d be posing a false dichotomy even if I had said anything like that, I’ll just ignore this.
I wasn’t vapid or pompous. I was preparing to graduate high school, prepping for college, and making plans to move out, which I promptly did upon my 17th birthday. Teenagers aren’t monolith, and a good many of them aren’t vapid, pompous, or stupid.
Rey Fox
*eyeroll*
Fuck you. Get intersectional. Where are all the people standing up for Beyonce that understood intersectionality and how femininity, especially hair, is policed by whites? We you that huffing when Beyonce first started out?
What the fuck happened to this place?
Area Man
Wow, fuck you for “due entirely to their dad” for one, dismissing Willow as a black feminist and her good work, and two, dismissing Jada fucking Pinkett Smith.
As for those dismissing Willow’s music, check this about Whip My Hair and hair police while White Feminists continue to fail on intersectionality as well as this. Here’s her rocking a black feminist shirt. She’s also come out as bisexual last I heard.
I don’t know much about Jayden because I’m less into movies but much of the same still applies.
I’m all for correcting their ignorance, fighting woo, classism, and such but don’t forget these are young black children and all that entails.
A. Noyd
Agreed. This is one case where I’d highly prefer just sticking to destroying their claims than attacking the people. Jayden is a black role model and Willow’s a black woman role model so it’s important to critique them but it’s also important how because of that.
The bit about books was sad to hear since I love reading and the first place I learned about social justice was through reading. However, I know the challenge of finding diverse books for my mixed child. Even rich to buy them all, there isn’t much to find still.
(Because I have to plug this awesome campaign and on their tumblr are great recommendations for diverse books. I’ve read their recommended Black Dog by Rachel Neumeier and fucking loved it. We Need Divserve Books.
Why don’t you try reading it? Let me spell it out:
“You can’t interview them about their “work” because they don’t *have* any work. To actually pretend they have ideas or work that are of interest or relevance to anyone other than their parents almost borders on child abuse.”
This claim is objectively untrue, and I corrected it. Not only do they *have* a body of work, we know that their work is of interest and relevance to a vast number of people other than their parents, because lots of them have paid good money for it. Platinum album money.
Now, maybe what he meant to say is that their work is vacuous and just bunch of pop fodder. And I’d probably agree if I ever bothered listening to it. But aside from the fact that it would still be of interest and relevance to lots of people, it’s meaningless as a metric for who deserves an interview. It comes down to, “You shouldn’t interview anyone whose work I think sucks”.
Maybe you’ve never read an interview with an artist before, but it’s commonplace to ask them about their lives and their views of the broader world. Because that’s what people make art about. Just because they gave stupid answers doesn’t mean it was wrong to even ask them about it.
What do you mean, “we”? The NYT can interview whomever they want. Last I checked, editors and interviewers don’t say, “Let’s make sure these people’s views are good, right, and useful first, otherwise, no story.” Whether someone is a valid subject for an interview depends on who they are and what they’ve done, not whether you like their answers.
What the hell? I didn’t say a single word about Willow being a black feminist, nor a single word about Jada “fucking” Pinkett Smith. (Do people here even read comments before responding, or is it just all unfocused rage?)
I did credit the children’s success to their dad, and I guess maybe that’s “dissing” Jada by omission, but no offense was intended. Will is personally responsible for Jaden’s two biggest film roles, so I just assumed he’s the driving force behind their promotion. And I think it’s rather obvious that if you took the parents out of the equation, they’d be unknown. This can be true even if their work is great.
Or they just make it. That’s what I do. It’s not about something else. But you didn’t need to explain this to me.
Interviewing children complicates things, doesn’t it? They can’t be well-informed about the broader world. You’re expecting to get crap from them and taking part in something which will have consequences for them they can’t know or consent to. Or you believe the crap and are part of the machine which churns it out in different formats. Or you’re simply expecting to get paid to print the crap and did not stop to think about what your own responsibilities are. I don’t know what you think is happening in this case, but all of those are some flavor of what I’d call “wrong.”
Yes, I’m aware the NYT is not committed to printing the truth or even what a reasonably well-informed person could plausibly believe is the truth. They can and do print all sorts of garbage. The question is whether they should, but your answer to that seems incoherent to me.
You’re confused or being dishonest. I’ll say again that it’s not about me or about me liking their answers. There is no prana energy — that kind of statement isn’t comparable to me personally liking chocolate or disliking it.
And I don’t know what a “valid subject” is. Isn’t any conscious human being a valid subject for an interview? Or perhaps you’d want to interview a gorilla, for instance. Is this supposed to sound like only the rich and famous are “valid”?
Area Man
[1] That’s the goddamn point!
[2] Fuck you, of course I read it.
[3] Well, duh. Because she’s accomplished and famous in her own right.
[4] Doesn’t matter if that it was intended, you admittedly purposefully omitted her, when black women have a problem being acknowledged by others.
[5] You know what they say about assumptions, don’t you?
[6] Because racism, sexism, homophobia, and since we’re talking their parents’ fortunes that came from fame out of the equation, classism. But then they’d be completely different people so it’s rather pointless to even go this route and think such things.
PZ and Ilyeska, I used the adjective “most”. I was a nebbishy little dork in a NASA-sponsored program to identify and cultivate young scientists from shitty cities, I was picked on remorselessly, and I certainly wasn’t vapid or pompous. I’m glad neither of you two were either. I never mentioned anything about monoliths. My point was that picking on a couple of rich kids for saying silly things, none of which were the sort of really shitty things lots of rich kids say and think and do nowadays, seems below the target range of most essays on FtB. That they are black makes me cringe even more. These kids seem a lot nicer than your average country club shit in the leafy lanes of fashionable suburbs. Their privilege is clear. Their smugness is clear. That’s a dime a dozen among rich kids. You would never have thought to shit on them had not the Times, foolishly, chosen them to chat with. So shit on the Times. Those kids never did anything to you except answer questions in a manner you don’t care for.
anbheal
…which is incongruent with reality. That I’m perfectly okay with people pointing out and correcting. But they are black role models, so I disagree that they shouldn’t be interviewed. They clearly wanted to, have careers to promote and messages to spread, even if I don’t agree with contaminating others with woo, so why not? The best way to protect them from racists is to change the racists, not restrict their movement. Do ya’ll feel this way about young white celebrities? And pah-lease, they get shit on plenty by people as famous black people as it is, no Times necessary. They are targets and not just from “racist rednecks” and such, but by liberals and white feminists.
I’d take a world full of them over a world full of Richard Dawkins any day. Frankly, if I was ever a fan of his I’d be way too fucking ashamed of myself to criticize any vacuous celebrity.
They shouldn’t be, if it means it’s going to be done in a completely irresponsible way. Again: they’re children. Not just black people. Not just role models. Not just any old interview about any old “message to spread.” Aren’t those reasons, when you fit them all together? If they are, then what is the point of asking “why not”?
But racism is not the only issue in this case. There’s also the woo, the classism, and the pathetic excuse for journalism. That’s how you’d have to look at it intersectionally, isn’t it?
If you’re worried that the interview was somehow harmful to them or that they did not give informed consent, that’s at least a valid issue, but it’s not relevant to anything I said. For what it’s worth, I’m quite certain that the NYT has strict guidelines about interviewing minors, that there was parental consent given, and that the kids are old enough to accept any remaining responsibility.
Once we get the kids’ welfare out of the way, anger at the NYT for having interviewed them is silly.
Oh come on, surely you know what the purpose of an interview is? It’s not the same as “reporting”. You’re trying to get people of interest to express their views, even if they’re wacky. Printing them does not imply editorial agreement.
You’re not seriously saying that because there’s no prana energy, the NYT should not have printed the interview? Or should the interviewer have interrupted at that point and explained to Jaden the error of his ways? Maybe added a disclaimer?
In case you’re being confused or dishonest, at no point have I defended the answers the kids gave as somehow true or even intelligible. Only the choice to interview them and print the interview, which is perfectly reasonable. Banal even.
Back in my day adults weren’t allowed to make fun of kids over basic foolishness. The preferred response was to pat them on the head and say, “That’s nice”. (Or “That’s nice, but…” if you were in a good mood.) For example:
Statement: “There’re no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.”
Response: “That’s nice, but what if you’re at a fancy cocktail party and someone mentions “Silas Marner” and you don’t know what they’re talking about? Imagine how embarrassed you’d be! It’s better to read other people’s novels every once in a while as a character-building exercise.”
Anyway, back in my day, if we publicly mocked children, then we’d get socially sanctioned, and then we’d get socially sanctioned a second time when their parents found out. I have to say that I liked the old way better, but I guess you can’t stop progress…
Well, what you said originally was almost entirely irrelevant to the comment, for the reasons I pointed out. Just so we’re clear, your reasoning leading up to this…
… doesn’t seem problematic, and I agree with you on that point. But it isn’t what you had said before. I was only responding to that.
Well, I would take this interview as evidence that they don’t have very good guidelines, and I don’t know what would make you so certain in spite of it. Should I just take your word for it?
No, it doesn’t imply agreement. I gave other options, besides “believing the crap.” You haven’t provided any alternatives to the ones I gave. So, I figure you think it’s one of others. Okay. Since the sincere true-believer is arguably the least-bad actor in the bunch, you think they’re one of the worse options. If that were the case, how is this supposed to be an argument for your position that it isn’t bad at all?
Indeed, I’m not. I was saying that fact has fuck-all to do with me liking something or not liking something, because it’s a fact. One step at a time here. Get your strawmen out of the way, then maybe we’ll actually resolve a few of our differences.
anbheal @ 10
woozy @ 19
Sigh. Could you possibly find a way to defend young people without declaring them to be pompous idiots? If you want to discount people’s own recollections, it’s easy enough to point to some very young commenters we’ve had in the past. You could say “they’re young and have a lot to learn” without blanketing insults on all teenagers everywhere.
JAL @ 52
I agree with all of this. A young Black girl only reading her own books might have more complex reasons behind that decision than ego, if people stopped to think about it for a minute.
I know Scientologists don’t believe in psychiatric medicine, but maybe they could make an exception for these two.
Nepotism and wealth combined with being immersed in a circle of fawning ‘yes men’ often produces great individuals, just look at George Bush & Luke Russert.
Jaden and Willow
Go make us all a meal.
That room over there is the kitchen.
I don’t think you did. Not to keep going to the mat on this, but again, let me point out what I had a beef with:
“But I’m much, much, MUCH more pissed off and the New York Times interviewer interviewing these boring, uninteresting, unintelligent and vapidly *AVERAGE* children as though they are “accomplished artists”. They are children and very very dull ones at that. You can’t interview them about their “work” because they don’t *have* any work. To actually pretend they have ideas or work that are of interest or relevance to anyone other than their parents almost borders on child abuse.”
So, 1) anger that the NYT interviewed these horrible children, because 2) they have done no work at all, and 3) their work, to the extent it even exists, is of no interest or relevance to anyone other than mom and dad. Again, if you want, you can replace #2 with something far less literal, as in “they have done work… but they didn’t work hard enough or make good shit!”… which seemed to be your argument. But I’m bending over backward here and trying to presume as little as possible.
As I pointed out, #2 and #3 are empirically untrue, and #1 is ridiculous because not only is it based on false premises, it’s also not as if there’s something untoward about interviewing people who are famous, commercially successful, and who are of interest to the public. (If you want to question why the public likes them, or the worthiness of their art, you are necessarily dragging it into the realm of personal taste).
If further discussion about is going to be fruitful, it needs to be about the above and not other things you want it to be about. Other things are fine! But they’re tangential to what I originally made an issue of, so let’s be clear about that.
But your “other options” appear to be based on false premises about what an interview is intended to be. Or perhaps you think that no one could publish an interview in which the subjects say outlandish things for reasons other than greed, in which case the problem isn’t this interview. It’s with the very concept of interviews.
Let’s just say “famous people get to say what they believe, however smart or foolish” is not, in my opinion, an immoral way in which to conduct an interview. In fact, it’s kinda the whole point.
And I should take your word that the kids were somehow wronged? Absent evidence to the contrary, I’m going to assume that their own parents — who whatever their faults can hardly be accused of negligence — not to mention their army of lawyers and PR agents — know way better than you and I about what kind of media exposure is good or bad for them. As crazy as that sounds.
Again, I take their welfare seriously, but it’s not relevant to my original point is as enumerated above. Convince me their well-being has been violated, and I’ll agree the interview was wrong. But because the kids are “vapid”, “unintelligent”, or whatever is a truly awful reason.
Jesus Christ, really? Now we’re into ableism too? Fuck you. These kids don’t need psychiatric care, there’s nothing to suggest that. They’re teenagers. Yes, they grew up richer and cushier than most other kids, but that doesn’t make it OK to shit all over them for their beliefs. They’re still forming those beliefs! At that age, you mostly accept what your parents had taught you and think yourself very deep and philosophical when you’re asking questions that others have asked before, because they’re new to you.
These kids may be priviledged on one axis (class), but they’re still black children living in Hollywood. Does that mean they were indulged? Maybe. But nothing quoted here says that they were indulged or that they were told that their “farts smell like perfume”, and that’s a pretty hostile and unreasonable conclusion to make.
Neither the fact that they are teenagers nor the fact that they are black changes the fact that what they said was outright wrong. Magical thinking deserves to be called out, regardless of who says it.
Also, Anthony K in 59, nice use of the “Dear Muslima” argument. Just because Dawkins is more reprehensible than these two woo-peddlers doesn’t mean PZ can’t criticize both.
All I saw in that interview were two friendly kids who have a lot of self-confidence and a rather unstructured way of communicating their thoughts. Of course time flies when you are having fun. Of course you want to do great things if you have been told all of your life that you can.
Yes, I could have done without the woo talk, but I cannot understand the hate. They are kids, for fuck’s sake.
And because I could not find the words for it, I ‘d like to gratefully second everything that JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness said.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and try to defend them — isn’t it possible that what they’re talking about here is a baby that is still in the womb, receiving oxygen through the umbilical chord?
The rest of this is all pretty silly, but this is the sort of thing you hear in meditation classes all the time to help you focus your visualizations. And meditation can be a useful ability.
Excerpts from an unguided interview with 16 year old FP Jerome would have sounded like the synopsis to a really good, if a bit rambling, episode of The X Files.
19 to 23 year old me would have been rants about the shadow government and how I narrowly avoided brainwashing in college.
My recent interviews have all gone quite well, though the reporter failed to convey anything at all I was going on about.
These kids should team up with Russell Brand and write another best seller. This could oversaturate the market, finally, and people might just instantly identifying your bullshit when you said something like “oh, I’m sucking prana energies in through my crown shakra” or it’s associated apolitical apathy.
Though this does reinforce my belief that the best thing about the New York Times is that it is made out of useful newsprint, which can be repurporsed for many things that actually make your life better, like paper mache, compost, and pet cage lining.
brucegee1962 @ 72
They are almost assuredly talking about breathing from your diaphragm, which is also called “belly breathing” and people frequently describe it using woo. Even with woo, they still know they’re using their lungs.
Just when I was beginning to despair of all comment threads, even some of the ones on Pharyngula, this one comes along.
I love this thread.
–begin sarcasm
Clearly what we have here is yet another example of the FtB hive mind always agreeing with PZ
–end sarcasm
Seriously, what a great job of pointing out some of the issues with PZ’s post, as well as some of the issues with those taking issue with it. I still think there’s a problem with these kids being in the media spotlight, and I still believe nepotism is involved to some extent, but I’m trying to look at that in a different way thanks to a lot of the comments above. Above all, I feel bad for these kids that their every move is publicized and analyzed endlessly by the media and forever cemented in the public record. If the entire world knew about and judged me on every idea I’d have happily pontificated on if I’d been in a position to be interviewed from the time I was 14 through to about, I don’t know, 30, I’d be horrified.
Area Man:
The evidence is already in front of you in the interview. That is not my word or what I like. So just look at it. I’m not sure what to tell you if you’re claiming you can’t see any problems in there.
Anyway, it’s not only about what’s wrong for them, but for everyone. After all, this is a form of public communication we’re talking about. The interview is one relatively insignificant way this kind of bullshit spreads itself in our culture. We apparently both agree there’s a whole lot of bullshit in there to be spread around. Can you honestly say it has no negative consequences whatsoever? If you look at it as if these are adult artists (not specifically children) who are doing an ordinary bit of self-promotion which is in some way relevant to their work, and the NYT is just making an honest dollar by providing an outlet to do that, I can see how this could be viewed as neutral or maybe even good in some small way. This is just capitalism, and we all know how wonderful that is. But you’d have to be ignoring a whole lot of the facts to get there.
We shouldn’t be satisfied with bullshit. Right? We also shouldn’t assume their parents always have their best interests in mind in every decision they make, and clearly not the interviewers and editors involved in publishing it. Frankly, it’s just mind-boggling to think anybody could have any coherent defense of this shit. And you evidently don’t want to defend it which is good, so what do you do instead of simply not talking? Change the subject, ignore, evade, deflect, confuse, strawman…. Those aren’t so good. That’s what I’m seeing. If it’s supposed to look like something else, then I’m going to need somebody to explain that to me.
Is this grammar limited to AAVE nowadays?
Doug Hudson (#70)
No one said it did. Try again.
A lot of people aren’t just sticking with criticizing the kids’ ideas, though. They are speculating on a good deal more, such as the kids’ intelligence, motivations, and mental health, which is extremely distasteful when it’s adults doing that to children and distasteful to full on racist when it’s white people doing that to black people.
You want to go after their magical thinking? Maybe choose a white adult with the same beliefs to focus your critique on. This is Hollywood we’re talking about, so you could practically pick someone at random.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
David Marjanović
Maybe not 100% exclusive to it, but that would be the first dialect its use suggests to pretty much any American, especially in this context. Also, non-native speakers of AAVE¹ often use whatever they think is AAVE when criticizing or mocking black people, even if it’s wrong. Don’t get hung up on the grammar itself; think about what it means for a white person to use it or try using it against black people.
……….
¹ Disclaimer: I’m white and not a native speaker of AAVE, but I’ve seen this written about quite a bit.
A.Noyd @70, then what the hell are people complaining about? Two kids get quoted as saying something incredibly stupid in a national newspaper, PZ calls them out for it.
Just because they are teens (or black) doesn’t give them a pass to blather on about woo without criticism.
@Doug Hudson (#80)
Did you happen to skip paragraphs 2 and 3 of what I wrote to you in #79? Because the answer is right there.
Or to put it another way, what exactly are y’all fighting for, here? The right of two black teenagers to talk about woo in a national newspaper without being criticized?
A.Noyd @81, Oops, cross-posted.
I despise magical thinking, I consider it one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) problems facing humanity, and I am infuriated that anyone would defend these two poorly educated twits just because they are black (or young–a 13 year old should certainly know better).
Surely you have studies to back this feeling up? Of course you don’t, it’s just your feeling.
You’re mad at people for defending them because their education was poor and they ‘should’ know better (somehow, perhaps due to education) but don’t?
Atheism: all the social savvy of a Mensa meeting, but without all those annoying “you can’t be a fucking moron” entrance requirements.
No wonder Dawkins made such money off of the rubes.
As for me, I despise platonism, I consider it one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) problems facing humanity.
Doug Hudson’s ‘should’ statement in 83 is a good example of what I’m talking about.
It’s simply personal and cultural preference dressed up as objective prescriptive imperatives. Everybody should think like me, but they don’t and the world is fucked as a result.
You know what 13-year-old kids should know? How to skin and gut a deer. (Cultural and situational context may make this more or less true.) Of course, since 13-year-old kids aren’t usually put in charge of curriculum design, the fact that they don’t suggests the fingers should point elsewhere. I don’t expect the twits to comprehend this, though.
No, this grammar is a common AV phrase. I can imagine it being said by cranky old people of any race when criticizing teens.
Actually, it didn’t even cross my mind until someone brought it up in the comments. It reminds me more of old white rural people more than anything else, but I grew up in a rural area in the Midwest, where I suppose there might be a wider variety of people who use it than in other areas. You might not be wrong that most people in the US would consider it AAVE, but I would still dial back your certainty here a bit.
The criticism of the kids stories is too much. I’m sure plenty of authors were bored with everything and basically said “I can do better than this!”.
However…
@woozy 5
@woozy 16
@anbheal 10
Celebrity children of celebrity adults who are watched by other peoples children.
That matters. Reality dictates that their ideas are threats. Criticizing them is fair game because of the reach their message has.
@ Anthony K 48
It’s called criticism. Hyperbole is not an argument.
Doug Hudson (#83)
Yeah, well, prioritizing that concern over racism and adopting the pretense of color blindness is basically the sexy shirt of skepticism: a marker to many PoC that they aren’t welcome. At least, I’ve heard that from plenty of black people who aren’t shy about criticizing all kinds of flawed thinking.
You need to consider the Smiths’ race because, as black kids, their wealth and fame does little to shield them from the general racist culture of denigrating black people’s intelligence and academic accomplishments. Black scholars and celebrities talk about this all the time.
Think about jackasses who say they “hate everyone equally.” They pretend they’re being fair, but it’s not actually fair to pile hate on a person who already receives many, many times the hate of the next person. In actuality, it works like piling bricks on someone’s chest. The first or second brick isn’t going to do the damage that a tenth or twelfth would.
You want to scrutinize people who are scrutinized far more often than most. You want to question the education of people whose education is questioned more often the most. That requires a great deal of caution—enough that, if you’re white, you should assume you’re not the right person to even try. Especially since, if it’s truly their ideas that you are concerned with, then you have no shortage of alternative targets. The kids’ ideas will still get criticized, but without increasing the burden of racism on them.
~*~*~*~*~*~
@consciousness razoe (#88)
Okay, maybe not most. Maybe. It’s still a phenomenon that whites (and other non-black people) will affect that dialect (or their approximation of it) specifically when criticizing (or even just talking to/about) black people. Hell, I’ve been guilty of it, myself.
Whoops, sorry I fucked up your name there, consciousness razor.
@Brony, 89:
I remain unconvinced by your assertion.
Another assertion. Thanks for the lesson.
Conciousness Razor
Indeed, my first thought when I read the title was Hank Hill (from the cartoon King of the Hill) and his catchphrase “That boy ain’t right”
As long as we’re being all bleep blorp proper, let me correct this part of Brony’s comment:
Is entirely the problem. Read it closely and you’ll see why. If PZ had instead engaged in:
Then this thread would in all likelihood been a lot shorter.
But that’s prolly just me and my ego talking.
I know we’re not much for evidence against assertions of something being problematic, and all, but this is a construction I’m much more familiar with in the context of white Deep South speech patterns (for instance). And that’s certainly how I intepreted it.
It was in fucking T Magazine. Even worse than Sunday Styles. With the exception of columnists whose last names rhyme with Meadman and Strew-that, these are the two worst parts of the paper. But, yeah, whatever adult thought it would be a good idea to interview these two kids should be (metaphorically) slapped upside the head.
@ Anthony K
Looks like somebody’s, perturbed.
92
You said,
48
…a piece of creative non-literal language. AKA hyperbole. You presented something literally not true to indicate how much of a bad boy PZ has been in relation to your story.
So unless PZ is literally squatting over someone, I want to see a link. That is reasonable.
Don’t forget Zrooks.
#98 – Good point. This was still far better information and less navel-gazing that (Insert String of Profanity) David Brooks.
Wha? Brony, that’s not what I understand hyperbole to be. Exaggeration as a rhetorical device. Idiomatic speech may be hyperbole, but it’s not necessarily. If I’d said, “Jim and I are just sucking back some beers; shooting the shit”, it would be extremely weird to say, ‘ha-ha! You were obviously not actually firing guns at feces, so what were you really doing?” You can look up what people mean when they say ‘someone shit on X’ idiomatically. And no, it doesn’t involve squatting. Just like ‘Goodbye’ doesn’t actually mean ‘God be with you’, even though the word is literally a contraction of that phrase.
Since you’re not the children of two wealthy black actors, I’m not going to shit on your for making me explain the fucking basics of human language to you, something you should goddamn well know if you made it through middle school, because ignorance isn’t always the fault of the ignorant.
Now I’m fucking mad.*
Fun fact: ‘mad’ doesn’t necessarily mean insane. It can also mean ‘angry’. Welcome to Earth!
“Man, I had the shittiest day at work.”
“You smell okay. Did you shower right after?”
“What? No, it’s a saying.”
“Hyperbole is like lying.”
LOL. And it’s the Smith kids who are supposedly ignorant.
Christ on a (non-fucking-literal) crutch atheism is like the Twilight Zone.
@ Anthony K 100,101
Hyperbole is non-literal rhetorical exaggeration. Rhetoric has to do with manipulating emotions for persuasive effect in a neutral sense.
That leaves room for deception, or evasion for reasonable emotional reasons. People get non-literal when tense for reasons or anger, or things more reasonable to back off from.
You chose to attach feces. Bad mistake. People fling poo when trying to stretch disgust. That alters the probabilities a bit. I have no reason to believe disgust without proof when you are characterizing what PZ did instead of quoting or some other more objective language.
You are stuttering. Link please.
Brony, quit trying to make this thread into a pissing match. I assure you that Anthony K is not trolling or attacking PZ, and he knows a thing or two about language.
Brony
what Tethys said
Back off.
@94 Anthony K
“But that’s prolly just me and my ego talking.”
+1
My apologies to everyone and Anthony K.
I did not realize that I seemed so hostile.
Thanks Tethys, and thank you Brony. I’m sorry too; I was being unnecessarily hostile. For what it’s worth, Brony, I have great respect for you, and very much appreciate your thoughtful and insightful comments, even on those rare occasions in which we disagree.
@ Anthony K
I still have places where I unconsciously let myself take an aggressive stance where it is not appropriate, or not useful and even counter productive. Curiosity can be given a hostile edge, and that is an excess that I am still figuring out how to master. I’ll try to be more careful.
@Brony, I find that being here (at FtB) triggers my hostility, these days, and it very much bothers me because I come out swinging at people I like and respect. I think there are several components to what’s happening. One is that I’m increasingly irritated by almost everything having to do with the atheist movement these days, so I’m usually already pissed off by Dawkins or some other jerkface atheist leader by the time I get to a thread of PZ’s. Secondly, this is a rude blog, and it’s too easy for me to blur the line between ‘rude’ and ‘snide, mean asshole’. I do know better, but I need to practice more self-reflection so that I’m interacting appropriately, rather than dialing it up to 11 when it’s unwarranted.
Oh and thanks to you as well, chigau. I’m didn’t mean to snub you in my #107.
The Smith kids really need to take a lesson from Jack Andraka. He’s a brilliant young man, and was doing amazing things somewhere around age 15. I’ve gotten to meet Jack and he is quick to admit when he doesn’t know something or doesn’t understand. Unlike the Smith children, who seem to just make shit up, Jack would be quick to simply say, “I don’t know”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Andraka
It’s all good.
Really. Not in a cornfield way.
I like to pretend I was never young because OH MY GAWD. I was fed shit and kept in the dark so long that I can’t believe I didn’t turn into a mushroom.
I was public schooled, btw. As are most creationist’s children.
These kids aren’t that much dorkier than kids all over. More pompous, yes. But wealth and fame seem to do that to people. Maybe they’ll be fine. Maybe they won’t. I hope they will be. I think I turned out OK. *twitch*
But this:
Goddammit. Because private and public school kids are all bastions of reason and fact and all homeschooled kids are all sheltered from reality to the point of believing in ridiculous crap. Right?
I have to get off of here because quiet reading time is over and I need to go make lunch and listen to my kids read the stories they wrote this morning after we watched Good Eats. Then they’re playing outside with all the other homeschooled kids on the block.
The poor dears. They just don’t know how stifled they are.
Maybe they’ll figure it out tonight at the library. Maybe their chess instructor will tell them.
@111 chadwickjones:
That’s a good lesson for many of us. “I don’t know.” Hmm, I like the feel of that. “I don’t know.”
I bet I could use it to get out of a lot of meetings I have no need to be in.
@ Anthony K 109
+1 again :-)