Naomi Wolf was once an icon of feminism. Now she’s devolved into a crackpot, railing “skeptically” against masks and vaccines on Twitter and declaring that COVID lockdowns could well turn out to be the “worst policy decision outside of perhaps the Vietnam War, wars, of the 20th and 21st centuries.”
She’s especially cranky about masks. While she admits to wearing a mask in certain circumstances herself, she doesn’t like them on kids; indeed, she seems to think that making kids wear masks outdoors is a form of child abuse. (She at least retweeted someone making that claim.)
In one recent tweet she suggested that kids wearing masks are literally forgetting how to smile.
Hey kids, Naomi Wolf thinks you’d be so much prettier if you smiled.
Her “skeptical” stance on all things COVID-related is a bit weird, coming from someone who used to be at least mostly rational. But just wait until she starts going on about clouds.
When you or I look at the sky on a typical day, we see clouds and maybe contrails; Wolf sees a “geoengineered” nightmare of fake clouds with square edges and discolored rainbows generated by secret weather-manipulating machines funded by Bill Gates and others.
She festoons her tweets with photos that might look to you like unexceptional snapshots of perfectly ordinary clouds but that she sees as PROOF that someone is fiddling with our skies.
Yeah, get right on that, Governor Cuomo.
You too, DiBlasio!
But it’s not just New York city that has the weird clouds. The perpathetic Dr. Wollf wants you to know that the clouds in Gettysburg, PA, are also real pieces of shit.
She’s so obsessed with this cloud stuff that she’s finds herself pondering artificial weather while at the beauty salon: If little lasers can tighten your skin just imagine what big lasers could do in the sky!
Some of her friends seem to be telling her to op-stay ith-way e-they oud-clay ictures-pay.
Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why you had to hide away.
The following tweets, suggesting that there are stationary clouds that don’t move with the wind makes me wonder if perhaps Dr. Wolf is on acid.
Apparently all this cloud-fiddling makes Dr. Wolf depressed. And possibly the rest of us too?
Well, we didn’t evolve to have cars and skyscrapers either, but evidently it’s the sky here that’s bad.
MORE SQUARE CLOUDS:
Stay safe, folks! don’t accidentally poke yourself on that cloud’s sharp corners.
H/T — @Caulimovirus on Twitter
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I don’t think Naomi Wolf has ever been respected by either feminists or the community at large.
Also I can’t get this song out of my head, so now you must suffer (not really it’s a good song) as well.
https://youtu.be/pllRW9wETzw
I have very complicated feelings about the unravelling of Naomi Wolf. I’m worried about her mental health and emotional wellbeing. I hate the way she’s running to the right wing for validation because no one else is biting. I’m pissed off that one of the most notable feminist writers of my generation turned out to be, well, this. I resent that she still has an academic career and this platform, when I don’t, and I don’t even believe in chemtrails.
Also: I still haven’t gotten over that interview where it turned out she didn’t know what ‘death recorded’ meant.
@Podkayne : most peoples are various shade of flawed. It’s important to remember the good and the bad, and never be surprised when someone show its bad side.
For Naomi, I suspect she’s too far gone to do good things now. But who know ? Stranger thing have happened.
Completely off topic (the open threads don’t seem appropriate for this): I got my first COVID shot today. \\o/
@ POM
Me too! I must say, they were most efficient. I turned up at my appointed time and it was literally book in, walk down corridor, have shot, leave. I was in and out in ten minutes, and half of that was me gassing with the doctor.
@Alan
Mine was a little more involved. It is a drive-through vaccination site at the state fairgrounds. I spent about 10 minutes just driving around the fairgrounds looking for the right parking lot and then drove into the arena for the shot. I heard there was a 3 to 5 hour wait time earlier but they seem to have hammered out their scheduling problems and I only waited about 20 minutes.
@ POM
As someone who knows about planning, you may be amused, but probably not surprised, that when the first drive through McDonalds was opened here, they nearly built it the wrong way round. They used the plans from McDonalds, but luckily someone remembered we have right hand drive cars here.
As a rule, I am automatically suspicious of anyone who uses their doctoral title outside of professional environments. Hell, (at the risk of humble bragging), it took me years to stick “PhD” after my name on LinkedIn because if felt pretentious and an appeal to authority.
That vibration you just felt was me facepalming hard enough to knock over a small building.
On a more serious note, I’m glad to see David back in action.
@Podkayne Lives
I am slightly worried about her running off to the right wing, but my bigger fear is that she still has at least name recognition in some progressive spaces and as such might be a useful tool for the right wing to recruit with.
I believe the proper term here is “cray-cray”. What is known in sci-fi circles as “the brain eater” seems to have gotten her. Another problem with her running to the right wing is that if she does have a genuine mental illness, the RW generally doesn’t support seeking help for it.
ObSimpsons: Old(ish) Woman Yelling At Clouds!
I love how the first sentence of her Wikipedia entry ends with “conspiracy theorist”.
@Alan: you’ve made me LOL several times in this thread.
Lenticular clouds form regularly over Mt. Shasta, which other crackpots claim (for nearly a century) has hidden Lemurians, just look at that UFO!
It only reminds me of budget-priced soda.
I have not noticed any lack of smiles in the children I’ve seen the past year. Maybe when they look at her they sense she’s weird and go slack-faced so they don’t encourage her to talk to them. “Don’t make eye contact with the crazy grownups” is a thing lots of kids learn. IOW: it’s not them, it’s her.
Kids I’ve seen tend to make more exaggerated facial expressions with masks on, so they can be seen, and when they come off, because who doesn’t wiggle their face when you get in private and can take the thing off?
You mean that’s the ableist term. A term you would never actually suggest using yourself, right?
what exactly is she a doctor of again? it’s clearly not biology, chemistry or meteorology… it’s philosophy, isn’t it? maybe she should stick to that subject instead so she doesn’t sound like a tinfoil-hatter.
@GSS ex-noob
Can we not?
@Seth S
Her doctorate is in English literature. And with all due respect to people who have degrees in literature, this is yet another case of “a degree in one subject doesn’t make one an expert in all the others;” and a literature degree does not make one a meteorologist, or virologist, or immunologist, or any of the other fields she thinks herself an expert in.
Another thing that makes it a bit surprising that she’s a conspiracy theorist is that since she’s Jewish, she should realize how the vast majority of conspiracy theories tie back to antisemitism.
@ Seth S
Almost everyone who receives a doctorate and calls themselves “Doctor” in an academic field has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D. or D. Phil). This is the case whether your area of expertise was Environmental Chemistry (I have a family member with one), Sociology, English, or whatever. The only exceptions would be certain Christian theology disciplines (Doctor of Divinity, although one can also have a Ph.D. in this area) and the Law. And then, there are the “professional” doctors: physicians, veterinarians, and dentists. IOW, having a doctorate that is a “Doctor of Philosophy” doesn’t reflect anyone’s scientific knowledge, or lack thereof. You have to know what the person’s doctoral subject was before you know about their area of expertise. And even then, a doctorate in a scientific field wouldn’t be expected to know about fields outside their own.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/synthetic-mrna-covid-vaccines-a-risk-benefit-analysis/
She has some serious issues. But honestly, her collection of pictures of really stunning and beautiful clouds is amazing. Like, I can look at some of those in awe.
Kinda sad she doesn’t feel wonder and instead gets paranoid.
What exactly is a cloud nozzle, and where did Bill Gates get one?
@Naglfar
You don’t actually need the qualifier. Literally all conspiracy theories present in the Anglosphere are rooted in antisemitism. Also all conspiracy theories in Europe, Russia, North Africa and Latin America. It’s possible that East and South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have some conspiracy theories that aren’t rooted in antisemitism, but I’ve never heard of them if so.
I live in NY, so I can speak to this. From the description, I think she’s seeing mashed potatoes, a local delicacy. She might be outside a sidewalk cafe.
@ChaosEngineer,
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs?
That’s excellent, @Alan; All hail Luke Howard, Namer of Clouds!
Have just been reading around the interwebs about him, very interesting stuff, I especially enjoyed the impact of his classifications on the art world. A site called Hyperallergic.com has some of his paintings, for other interested mammotheers.
@ Lizzie
Thank you for that link! Although I may be cursing you if that site turns out to be the time sink I think it will be 😀
Some really good articles about Mr H too.
We need a term that *doesn’t* mean “has a mental illness” but *does* mean “has lost touch with consensus reality for no good reason”.
I mean, other than “conservative”, “conspiracy theorist”, “manospherist”, “MAGA”, etc.
Some general 1-3 word term that covers it all, regardless of gender presentation, national origin, political beliefs.
(There are 3 mammals in this house with chemical imbalances requiring medication. Only 2 of them are primates.)
To be fair, she is correct that those are not organic clouds.
They’re water vapour clouds. Organic clouds wouldn’t last long until they burned up violently.