October 31, 2007

A brilliant parody in Slate.com

For Halloween, Slate publishes the most hilarious parody of egomaniacal lesbian-feminist self-righteousness and general tiresomeness I've seen in awhile: "The Invisible Lesbian: Challenging the Myth of Merit-Based Publishing." It's attributed to "Sarah Schulman," who I assume is probably actually some guy who writes for The Simpsons or Letterman's Top Ten lists.

Update: Wow, this is a really elaborate hoax. There's a whole Wikipedia page (almost as funny) devoted to this obvious nom de plume.

Hats off to Slate for going to all this trouble to amuse us!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

17 comments:

  1. It gets even better! The prankster even went so far as to actually publish these ridiculous books! Witness:

    http://tinyurl.com/2osmsy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Slate even put up an Amazon page, complete with hilarious descriptions of "the novel" wink wink!

    http://www.amazon.com/Child-Novel-Sarah-Schulman/dp/0786718668/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4128308-8181668?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193869993&sr=1-1

    ReplyDelete
  3. That must have set a Wikipedia record for "citation needed."

    ReplyDelete
  4. He or she has even managed to fool the New York Times: "Who's Afraid of Sarah Schulman?" What an amazing amount of work this person has put into this. It's almost foolish.

    They might have instead asked "Who's Sick to Death of the Insipid, Laughably Unfunny Writings of Judeo-Lesbian Deconstructionist Sontag Wannabes?" Better yet, "Who Isn't Sick to Death of the Insipid, Laughably Unfunny Writings of Judeo-Lesbian Deconstructionist Sontag Wannabes?"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ha ha ha! I will admit that i was on paragraph 4 or 5 before I realized the little prank. I mean,come on! The relationship between Stewie and David:"I did not come out 'against' the relationship."(Between a 15 yr old male and 40 yr old man)That sounds like Steve Colbert! (Or Chris Farley's "political commentator" character:I may not be "handsome" or "intelligent"...) Or this gem:The reviews have been rhapsodic,but-only the gay press has reviewed it. Hmmm...why would the gay press enjoy a book about a 15 and a 40 year old? Shucks. I wish it was real...I mean really fake!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Short version:

    Some might argue that my novel just isn't very good. I, however, believe in all this otherwise irrelevant literary deconstructionist shit. And publishers just hate us lesbians.

    Do you remember The Golden Age of Intellectual Discourse? You know, the Clinton years? Today publishers just hate us lesbians. Oh, and the ideas in my books are important.

    Best part:

    There were many times when I felt that I could not hear truthful or complex ideas in public. I could hear them only in private.

    Paging Dr. Watson....

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is weird. I reproduced a news article on my blog last Saturday quoting a professor cited as the author of something called the "Myth of Merit."

    http://dennisdale.blogspot.com/2007/10/racial-incident-in-seattle.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. "I, however, have always believed that individual experience is dynamic with its social context."

    This is a reference to the Cavemen Geico commercial:

    Geico woman: " We live in a society where the individual ego and the group dynamic is in constant struggle."

    ReplyDelete
  9. Kinky Friedman actually thought one of this non-author's non-books was funny.

    I guess it's easy to take in a prankster.c

    ReplyDelete
  10. I don't understand.

    There are 233 hits at Google when you search for the ISBN of this book:

    http://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=0786718668

    ReplyDelete
  11. Geico woman: " We live in a society where the individual ego and the group dynamic is in constant struggle."

    Ah! This must be the one Geico caveman commercial I've never seen. I think I've found it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. You jerk! You had me going!

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is too rich:

    It's quite strange to live as two such different people at the same time every day. On one hand, I am someone who is creating literature that is needed, wanted, praised, and often adored by people whose representation is usually stopped by the kinds of obstacles I managed to overcome through sheer will. On the other hand, I don't exist.

    However does she manage? Tell us, Sarah! Tell us in detail!

    ReplyDelete
  14. As far as I can see, Sarah Schulman actually exists. Those Amazon listings can't be faked, can they? According to Amazon there's not only "The Child," but
    "Shimmer," "GIrl, Visions, and Everything: A Novel," "Empathy," "People in Trouble," "Stagestruck: Theater, AIDs, and the Marketing of Gay America," and (whew!) "My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years." So clearly it *isn't* a parody.

    ReplyDelete
  15. So clearly it *isn't* a parody.

    Shhhhhh...you're supposed to pretend it's parody. In a better world it would be.

    ReplyDelete
  16. http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/text.asp?pid=1658
    Here is another entertaining event, from UC Santa Cruz.

    ReplyDelete
  17. :::It's quite strange to live as two such different people at the same time every day. On one hand, I am someone who is creating literature that is needed, wanted, praised, and often adored by people whose representation is usually stopped by the kinds of obstacles I managed to overcome through sheer will. On the other hand, I don't exist.:::

    I wanted, righteously, to protest the laughability of this individual, but giving that paragraph a good, hard 5 reads, it is difficult. "On the one hand, a few people wrote good reviews after reading 1/4 of the novel [standard critical practice], and on the other hand, I make no money at all, because nobody buys my books." The author is indeed invisible, lesbian or no. And she...she only probably got published at all because she had a lesbian gimmick, the exact opposite of...touche, Mr Sailer.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated, at whim.