Even in the modern Hollywood landscape, where it's de rigueur for celebrities to also be authors, activists, and lifestyle gurus, Mayim Bialik's offscreen resume stands out from the rest of the red carpet crowd. Yes, she's best known for her…
remembering being blown away when I first had Shakshouka, and my israeli (at the time) friend getting weirdly possessive of the dish when I started making it at home.
nationalists and not knowing anything about their actual culture, name a more iconic duo.
Wouldn't be surprised if this was egged on by higher ups in israel. States using influential people like sports and tv figures is not exactly an unusual thing. It even comes off as an attempt to get zionism into the "left", which was Israel's strategy up until they radically changed direction to focus on generational age differences instead of left/right differences in the last year or two.
What’s worse is that she’s an actual scientist with a PhD, not some random crunchy Facebook mom. She should know better, but then again, a lot of credentialed people aren’t actually very smart, just good at test taking.
it's even worse than that. they aren't smart or good at test taking, but they have the support of a partner or family to just keep showing up and covering tuition. because many programs are worried about austerity, they have to keep their matriculation:graduation rates up to attract applicants and not become the focus of The Chop. i have had friends tell me horror stories of being forced to pass literal already-warned-once plagarizing idiots in graduate school by a department chair and the director of the program, because a fail/removal "doesn't look good."
working in The Academy with/for PhDs to meet grant obligations in research and service (while picking up my own graduate degree) absolutely obliterated any default level of respect i used to have for the highly credentialed in the US. some of most uncritical, unthinking, and brain dead fuckers on the planet. it is certainly not all of them, but in my experience credentials and critical thinking skills are not correlated.
when i read about the cultural revolution in china and its reforms of higher education, all i could think was, "i can think of a dozen 'public intellectuals' that need to be publicly humiliated."
One of the things I'm looking forward to post-revolution is the restructuring and redesign of all academic institutions. I think its really the only time such a thing could happen since society as it exists now is so codependent on universities to provide credentialed professionals and neither sees anything wrong with the other.
she had her own popular, title character TV show when she was a teenager (roughly aged 15-20) on NBC back when being on broadcast TV meant you were on every TV because a lot of people only had NBC, CBS, and ABC. though FOX was definitely a thing in a lot of broadcast markets. she was a dress up trend icon. nobody who receives that kind of attention and cash during those developmental years is gonna be OK without a lot of work. obviously, she steered into the crazy skid.
it would not surprise me at all if she went like Heaven's Gate, track suit, "i am a living god" suicide cult by her 70s.
If I remember correctly, she implies that sexual abuse is the result of pretty privilege and not, ya know, misogyny and power imbalances and all of that. Basically, she blames Weinstein’s predation on the physical attractiveness of his (known) victims. She then goes on to mourn her own career, which she thinks isn’t as fruitful because her contemporaries are more conventionally attractive.
Not saying that Hollywood isn’t superficial, but it’s fucked to use someone else’s rape as an opportunity to whine about petty body insecurities. Also, people who don’t fit the standard are assaulted all the time, it’s just that they don’t come forward because society fucking hates them.