Differing views on Millie Lovelock’s legacy
I AM a male of European descent on the far side of 60. I daresay that makes me an (old) white man. However, this OWM has actually enjoyed reading Millie Lovelock’s columns over the last couple of years. I have not read them all, or necessarily agreed with some or all of the content in the ones I have read.
However, that is no big deal. I doubt there is another person on the planet that I would agree with all they say or do, such is human nature. Although disagreeing on various issues, I still respect her opinion and she may well have been right at times, and I was wrong; the important thing is having a free press where such opinions can be aired. If we don’t take note of other points of view, how can we learn and mature?
So, having got all that off my old white chest, all that remains is to thank Millie for her entertaining and sometimes thoughtprovoking articles and wish her all the best for the future.
So long, it’s been good to know you. Mike Howell
Lawrence
YOU would have thought that after two and ahalf years Millie Lovelock would had learned something. But no. Her obsession with ‘‘older white men’’ got the better of her final words (ODT, 4.3.17). She evidently did not learn to judge people by the content of their character. Instead, she judged them by the colour of their skin, their age or what genitalia they were born with. Her methodology, if it can be called that, was to fight a supposed injustice with her own brand of bigotry.
I for one was never ‘‘upset’’ about what she wrote. On the contrary, I was rather bemused in the realisation that Zits in the comic section wasn’t the only confounding piece of blather in the ODT. Her rants and raves about all things masculine and occidental were symptomatic of a certain university quarter, of what we should hesitantly call ‘‘academia’’, that unquestionably trades in counterfeit arguments and factoids.
Like what holy water and sunlight is to vampires, the broad day of true academic rigor and reason would have destroyed her false alarmist assertions in an instant. This is why Lovelock was afraid to actually engage with the public. My criticism isn’t about Millie the person, but rather Millie the ideologue. So nevertheless, let this letter be an epitaph to the tiresome tragedy which is modern day social justice identity politics.
Irian Scott Port Chalmers