“This piece which is meant to make the listener engage with the world around them is good except for when I don’t want to engage with what’s going on in the world around me”

beyond this being just a stupid take, wouldn't having protestors audible made a more interesting version of 4'33'' than fucking birds or people walking or whatever

Gee, I wonder if sometimes an artistic piece that encourages contemplation might actually require you to fuckin contemplate!

The OG piece also didn't have birds singing you loser.

being a liberal "academic" sounds so goddamn exhausting. how on earth do you spend so much time looking high minded, writing so many words to explain the reality of the world around you just to never actually come up with a single ounce of something profound to say. Self assured idiots who are only concerned with presenting as smart and rational whole not having a single original or subversive thought ever even have the chance to grace their sterile minds?

I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans, or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to.

when you make an analogy, the analogy is supposed to hold. protesting against genocide is not the same as yelling sieg heil, actually.

Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?

because the zionist entity shouldn’t exist.

Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it.

such as? the actions of israel have definitely legitimized antisemitism but let’s not pretend it is in any way characteristic of the protests.

However, the relentless assault of this current protest — daily, loud, louder, into the night and using ever-angrier rhetoric — is beyond what any people should be expected to bear up under, regardless of their whiteness, privilege or power.

israel’s bombing — daily, loud, louder, into the night and using ever-angrier rhetoric — is beyond what any people should be expected to bear under, you whiny fuck.

Today’s protesters don’t hate Israel’s government any more than yesterday’s hated South Africa’s. But they have pursued their goals with a markedly different tenor — in part because of the single-mindedness of antiracist academic culture and in part because of the influence of iPhones and social media, which inherently encourage a more heightened degree of performance. It is part of the warp and woof of today’s protests that they are being recorded from many angles for the world to see. One speaks up.

gen z iphone tiktok trend bad

a large number of protesters, including those in the fucking cover image are wearing masks, protesters don’t have their phones out like they’re at a taylor swift concert. idiot

What in the actual fuck is this take, this dumbass should be fired for incompetence

The entire point of 4'33 is to listen to the audience. This is exactly the kind of thing that 4'33 is about.

I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans, or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence. I’d wager that most of the student protesters against the Gaza War would view them that way, in fact. Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?

because Isn'trael is an apartheid colonial proxy state committing genocide against Palestinians as we speak, you literal shit-for-brains. no professor should be able to write a paragraph like that, ending in a question like that, and not sit there for a few minutes and rethink their entire existence to that point.

Liberal academics keep posting L's

music humanities class

lol, lmao

I remember believing that Ivy League schools like Columbia only had the smartest people working and attending there. People like this prove how untrue that it.

this is the guy who regularly fights against affirmative action policies, for some additional context

That's the fucking point of 4'33"

I remember listening to a linguistics podcast this guy put out. There was some interesting content, but hooooooly shit, he was so far up his own ass that it could be hard to listen to, and as soon as he gave a political take I realized just what a dumbass he was. The fact that he wrote a book called Woke Racism should tell you all you need to know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter#Political_views