I think actually they're paeans to peonage.
That wasn't mansplaining or anything because you said you don't know anything right there in the post.
a distraction
On the one hand, meh. Most people are capable of keeping more than one thought in their heads at a time.
On the other hand, sure, a lot of people are going to become distracted from complex policy fights, including the one over voter suppression, no matter what, because most people don't care all that much about politics. Given that, I'd rather they be distracted by an issue, like this one, that seems to matter to key constituencies within the Democratic coalition, rather than by whatever happened on Game of Thrones last night or by Ivanka's fashion-forward back-to-school styles.
Anyway, I can't talk now. I have to drive 700 miles to get a slightly better view of a huge shadow. Priorities!
I actually think this is an opportunity. That is, I think continued offhanded "Aw, the Confederacy was just all adorable and noble" has been a powerful political force for right-wing shitheads, largely through appealing to people who aren't willing to commit to full-scale Klan/Nazi party membership, but like tweaking liberals. When we've got literal Nazis killing people to preserve the statues, then it stops being adorable nostalgia, and I think the disgusting middle-of-the-road "I'm not a white supremacist, I just think Nathan Bedford Forrest was a military genius" position gets much harder to hold.
Voter suppression is the key to the whole game and the fight that must be won. That said, the statue fight needs to be won too because it prevents fascism from becoming normal in public spaces.
Is somebody trying to register voters at the counter protests?
2nd 4. My concern right now is that with Kelly in and Bannon out this administration will start to become effective to do serious damage.
What spawned this is that I saw a never-ever political person, one of the xfit trainers who is ex-military, post the following meme, more or less: right-wingers were looking left and saying "All I see is communists". Left-wingers were looking right and saying, "All I see is nazis". Below was a picture of Fight Club Brad Pitt calling both sides morons.
It took me a sec to figure out how to respond, because of the accuracy of the first half: rightwingers do in fact fear communism and see it everywhere, lefties are in fact terrified of the fucking Nazis and I do see the Republican party as being a bunch of white supremecists. But the meme still irritated the shit out of me because of the false equivalence. Eventually I wrote something like, "One is fucking white supremecism and the other is an economic theory. Don't be the idiot in the middle."
That said, it gave me insight into his perception of Charlottesville.
I would want to respond to that with a contrast between Charlottesville and Boston. When a couple of hundred white-supremacist Nazis march, they kill people and beat them with pipes (or whatever that guy got hit with). When tens of thousands of anti-Nazis march, they peacefully carry amusing signs.
9: And the Nazis run the fuck away, which I think is the more salient point.
Yeah, I don't know. I definitely saw people wrapping themselves in a cloak of fuzzy good thoughts when Nazis were overwhelmed 1000:1 in Boston, and the same is likely this weekend in Berk. Which could lead them to the notion that the fight against overt emotional animus is the whole fight, when in fact, if you magic-wanded away all people with such animus, you'd still have tremendous structural racism of all sorts to contend with, fighting which requires the Tina Feys of the world to be a lot more willing to go out of their political comfort zone (e.g., reparations).
On the other hand, it feels like the center-left are getting better at identifying faux-neutrality for what it is, which might be parlayable.
Reactions to the Tina Fey sheetcaking bit are interesting. There's a really subtle distinction between comedy that shows an appealing person who's easy to identify with doing something kind of awful for the purpose of saying the appealing person turns out to not be that appealing, or the awful thing isn't so awful.
That is, for a nice middle-class white person like Fey to suggest that the appropriate response to white supremacists is to huddle at home eating cake while other people actually do something about it is kind of gross. If she was doing a character making fun of middle-class white ladies being dismissive and avoidant of dealing with important political issues, and the point was that you came out of it not thinking much of the character Fey was playing, that'd be, I think, totally inoffensive. If, on the other hand, she were building solidarity for being dismissive and avoidant ("Yes, Tina Fey is adorable and charming, and she can't cope with this shit, so it's completely fine for me not to do anything useful at all either") that kind of sucks.
But it's really hard to tell the difference between those two routines -- it's really subtle.
It doesn't help that Tina Fey is kinda racist.
Well, right. I mean, I kind of lean toward the opinion that the bit was bullshit. But I can sympathize with someone who read it the other way and doesn't get how it could be offensive.
It just needed a different ending to keep it from being appalling. The urge to eat sheetcake - and even go for it! the eating of the sheetcake! - can all be humorous and great. Or end by recommending that we take the fucking sheetcake to the protest and show up. The ending should have been showing up, despite the urge to stay home.
I probably spelled humorous like the bone or the fluid and not like the funny, but unfortunately there's no way to know for sure.
I didn't think the Tina Fey bit was all that interesting, but I feel like the reaction was pretty much all that was wrong with liberalism, and why we are going to lose. (I'm super-pessimistic lately.) Fey uses her platform on national television to mock white supremacists, and the important thing is that she didn't take the exact right tone, or recommend the right tactics. Liberals are just not capable of participating in a mass movement. We're going to point to the early days of the Trump administration, perhaps even the events of this week, as the peak moment of liberalism. After this it all falls apart.
Even without the sheetcake thing. I'm thinking of the extraordinarily ill-advised UKS episode dedicated to the point that POC being assertive about demeaning media portrayals are just looking for ways to be offended.
But yes, we totally need to be able to put arguments on pause and link arms, and that's hard in all sorts of ways.
Personally, I think you attack racists and Republicans without ceasing and let the rest handle itself.
Fey uses her platform on national television to mock white supremacists, and the important thing is that she didn't take the exact right tone, or recommend the right tactics.
The thing is, being formally opposed to white supremacy is the absolutely lowest bar. It is a bar resting on the ground. There is no possible lower bar. So she cleared that one, but that's not a terribly big deal.
If she's out there stumping for the proposition that middle class white people are okay if they're doing absolutely nothing but sitting at home and eating cake? I wish she wouldn't. She's not the worst person in the world, but I think it's possible to have a unified political movement and still point out that it'd be better if people weren't doing that sort of thing.
12,15,17
My initial reaction was 12.2, but then I realized that Tina Fey has probably heard of Marie Antoinette. I watched again, and I have decided that the sketch is self-lacerating irony, NOT a recommendation.
Though, irony in the key of Andy Kaufmann might not be the most reasonable foundation for a public conversation right now.
23. Marie Antoinette was a woman, and is definitely not alive.
I find Tina Fey's ventures into politics very pick-apart-able on the level of cultural criticism, but I'm simultaneously not sure sketches like this should be regarded as political advice.
I think it was clearly the latter of the options in 12.2 - doesn't she explicitly say at the end that we all need to ignore these jackasses because you don't want to give them the attention they desire?
doesn't she explicitly say
Her or a character wearing a UVA sweatshirt and smearing herself with cake? As with AK, there's some ambiguity. I don't know that much about TF's standup as opposed to written work, I mostly know 30 rock and the Palin imitation, which again, costume and script.
I see one of the characters in the dismayed white people waching the election returns in that skit; I could be wrong. I think not TF personally who I think is pretty private.
I don't think the debate about the statues is a red herring, but I'm pretty sure the debate about Fey's sketch on the statues is.
26 is right. The ending was earnest and not even an attempt to tell a joke
To the OP, I think more people need to argue more forcefully that the confederate statues need to come down because we're still gutting voting rights and locking African Americans in jail and shooting them in the streets and segregating them in the schools and otherwise perpetuating inequality. These issues are alive and real and harmful and hurtful and unjust. And of course these issues are all more important than the statues. But we need to fight institutional (and interpersonal) racism, and one of the ways to do that is to stop publicly celebrating it. Confederate statues aren't a distraction, they're just an easy target.
Right. If racial injustice were a thing of the past, and the white supremacist social movement that put up the statues was dead, they'd be unimportant street furniture, and they could stay or go no problem. Leaving them up implies either that white supremacy isn't a current issue, or it is but you're for it, and that's why they have to come down.
(Note that people fighting passionately for the side that 'White supremacy isn't a current issue, so it's okay to leave them up, so they MUST stay up' don't have a terribly good explanation for why they give a fuck. I'm proud of the New Yorkers who fought in the Civil War, although I probably am not related to any of them, but if someone had an even mildly justifiable reason why taking the statues at Grand Army Plaza down would be a good thing, I wouldn't mind in the slightest.)
I thought her advice was sincere and stupid, but had nothing to do with why the skit went viral. The skit was a long joke a big sight gag of Tina Fey eating her feelings combined with her calling out Trump, Ryan, and people who try to "both sides" Charlottesville. We don't need political perfection from our comedy skits.
I also feel like there's some weird need to shit on white feminists. Like, "Haha, you are everything that's wrong with the world because you're making sheetcaking jokes. Everything you say and do represents your unreflective privilege, even when you are engaging in direct political action."
There are quite a lot of "GAR" markers in the cemeteries back home. Much of the area was populated with Irish veterans getting land for their service (one of my ancestors) or simply looking to go back to farming.
I also feel like there's some weird need to shit on white feminists. Like, "Haha, you are everything that's wrong with the world because you're making sheetcaking jokes. Everything you say and do represents your unreflective privilege, even when you are engaging in direct political action."
This is definitely true. It's not something I want to point out when the (straight, middle-class) white feminist in question is doing something I, as another of her ilk, wish she hadn't done, but you're not wrong that Tina Fey is the easiest target there is.
Irish veterans getting land for their service (one of my ancestors)
Huh. I knew the Homestead Act passed thanks to Republican control of Congress during the Civil War, but I didn't know it gave U.S. veterans preference as a programmatic matter. Makes sense in hindsight.
I think we can all agree Tina Fey's core sin is elevating cake over pie, and sheet cake at that.
Re: red herrings, I've heard a lot of "X is just a distraction from Y" over the past year and rarely believe it, but I have my doubts now and then. As far as I can tell, no one has talked about the Russia connections since Charlottesville. It's probably just because there's no news at the moment, but who knows.
I think the following statements often get conflated but the differences between them are important.
1. The mess at Charlottesville was engineered by Trump and/or Republicans deliberately to distract the public from some scandal that would make them look bad.
2. The mainstream media is hyping and ginning up neo-Confederate protests and counter-protests to distract the public from substantive issues that actually matter a lot more to government policy and/or daily life, to further an ideological agenda.
3. The mainstream media is hyping and ginning up neo-Confederate protests and counter-protests to make money, with the side effect of distracting the public from substantive issues that actually matter a lot more to government policy and/or daily life.
4. You personally, well-meaning-but-flighty liberal, have only so much time and energy to go around, and something else would be a better use of it than the latest controversial news story.
1 and 2 are conspiracy theories and almost self-discrediting. In addition to all the usual problems with conspiracy theories, they assume an unreasonable amount of discipline and planning by Trump and Republicans, and also, it seems kind of pointless to distract from a scandal by creating a different scandal that's still pretty bad. 3 is true in some sense, and is banal and obvious in some sense, but doesn't apply to most political controversies nearly so much as to overt entertainment, "if it bleeds, it leads" coverage of disasters, celebrity deaths, etc. 4 could be true of some people, but I'm not sure time and energy work that way, and even if they do it would be a case-by-case thing.
I also feel like there's some weird need to shit on white feminists.
Yes, and THAT is a red herring. Holy shit.
Driving around this weekend, my dad said the outlook in Wisconsin is grim going into 2018: Walker is "running essentially unopposed" (no term limits, btw) because all available state Democrats have been left to wither on the vine. There are eager people with little political experience running, but he thinks the GOP will have a downhill battle targeting Tammy Baldwin, for instance. His take, as just one liberal (ex-)Madisonian, is that the GOP's grassroots efforts since the second Clinton term have paid off spectacularly, and the Democrats face a similar existential challenge now, but he's seen no sign that they're willing to invest in downticket races in lost-cause states like his. The Foxconn plant, he thinks, probably won't pay off: Ryan was determined to site (? is that a word?) it in his district even though they would have found far more skilled workers in more liberal districts, so there's a good chance it will be a boondoggle, but that won't matter.
I don't know what kept Wisconsin blue for so long. It wasn't hard for the Kochs to tip it. I find myself running a Thomas Frank-style "What's the Matter with Wisconsin?" bullshit monologue in my head. The last week was intense: I've never felt such a potent combination of pure burrowing homesickness and angry alienation in my life.
On second thought, since it's the first week of the semester and this is a lot of reading, let's plan to discuss only Cyrus' comment for next session and you can read mine for next week Monday.
What? Poli Sci only gave us two Tweets to read.
Left to wither on the vine
Is a construction that bugs me. That money some marginal candidate wants to spend came from somewhere, and if it's spent on that race can't be spent on another. Candidates have two jobs in the year before the election: prove they can build a following and prove they can raise money. No one else can do this for them.
I'm all for 50 states, but candidates still have to carry most of the load.
The Tina Fey backlash thing reminds me of how whenever the police shoot some unarmed black kid we hear a million stories about how he or she is no angel.
There's no such thing as angels.
If Tina Fey shot a black kid, I think she should be charged.
41: Fair enough, and I have no way to assign blame for the state of affairs -- it's a collective action problem. A lot of my feelings stem from self-recrimination over moving away and not giving a shit for years, fwiw. I am to blame! But I don't know how to fix things.
A lot of my feelings stem from self-recrimination over moving away and not giving a shit for years, fwiw. I am to blame! But I don't know how to fix things.
As a tangential response, I've been depressed since I read this 538 article. Subliminally, I'd been thinking of the GOP coalition as one which might collapse on its own -- it feels fragile and like it depends on things like voter suppression to sustain itself. But the final map in that piece made me realize that it won't happen quickly.
In 2016 there were 26 states in which Trump got at least 5% more of the vote than he did in the nation as a whole (AK, ID, MT, ND, WY, SD, IA, IN, OH, UT, NE, MO, KY, WV, AZ, KS, AR, TN, NC, SC, OK, LA, MS, AL, GA, TX). Right now there are 6 Democratic Senators from those states, but if they were entirely GOP, that would be a bloc of 52 Senators. Going along with that it notes that, "In 2016, Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points and the median Senate seat by 3.6 points"
There's no path towards a sustainable Democratic majority which doesn't include making in those states.
38: Unions? But that's just my guess because my relatives there were heavily into that scene.
And guys, sorry, but I still don't think my senators are going away any time soon even though they're the worst. We'll keep trying! But maybe count on some of the other states before us.
When the debate reaches the point of arguing over whether SNL sketches are sufficiently woke and present valid strategy for political resistance, the debate has sunk into absurdity.
Did Trump give Afghanistan back to the Russians? I can't stand to watch him on the TV, so I don't know what he said.
You are talking to the denizens of the Mineshaft, Apo. The debate has been absurd.
When the debate reaches the point of arguing over whether SNL sketches are sufficiently woke and present valid strategy for political resistance, the debate has sunk into absurdity.
I think this depends a bit on what you mean by "arguing over." There's nothing absurd about people observing that an SNL sketch is racially tone-deaf.
Fine, Nick. Undercut my authority.
Nothing says "authority" like a corset.
On the internet, nobody knows you're in fetish gear.
Come to think of it, that's probably a fetish.
53 you spoiled my (mediocre) joke earlier. . .
That was supposed to be a response to 51 but is much funnier in the incorrect version.
Guardian reports 54% of the populace opposes removing Confederate memorials, so that's a worrying sign that Heebie may be on to something.
59 Link here. Also 31% think both sides equally to blame at Charlotteville.
Anyone who gets their news from Fox will think that.
Given that the conservative "elite"* haven't, as a class, reversed course on Trump or marching racists, there's no chance of even reaching those people.
* Used in the public opinion/poli sci technical sense of "people who pay enough attention that they have no excuse for not knowing better".