I think that Hamilton was a nice thing and the shitting on it is just bitterness that we don't get to have nice things anymore.
I really liked it. I've seen it twice. I was hoping the second act would be less sad the second time.
Still, the best musical ever was Urinetown.
Remember how Obama used to be president? That was so nice.
I bet if you go read the archives here from 2008-2016, it's mostly a lot of quiet contentment and savoring of the momentary calm period. Very little grumbling.
I mean, when it comes to 3 hour long through-sung musicals, about a revolution, with rotating stages, featuring two longtime enemies one of whom dies at the end, a love triangle with a famous showstopping number on unrequited love, and a song in a bar about drinking with your revolutionary compatriots, I do prefer Les Mis. But I also think the anti-Hamilton backlash was mostly dumb. Normy Democrats are good! Inclusive patriotism is good! Immigrants do, in fact, get the job done!
I think I started here in 2008 or 2009.
I've only seen the movie of Les Mis. It turns out Russell Crowe wasn't hiding some unexpected talent as a singer.
Out of a sense of needing someone to talk to at work.
I was unsupervised and in a little room where no one could see my screen.
The casting notes are fun, unsurprisingly Aaron Burr is "Javert meets Mos Def" per my 6 (and Wait for It is absolutely LMM going for Stars vibes, and honestly succeeding pretty damn well), but my favorite is George Washington "John Legend meets Mufasa." (Sorry for the X link, the only other things I can find are just articles quoting the tweet.)
https://x.com/nycsouthpaw/status/704382971218939904
13: And now you're unsupervisable, wherever you are?
I don't use my work computer for this now.
I don't remember a lot of shitting on Hamilton. I remember a fair amount of weariness about hearing about it after a while. Also, later, Mike Pence was sad.
I happened to Google Lin-Manuel Miranda just to refresh my memory, and this was a surprisingly high hit.
Ugh. I was able to read the whole article at one point, but when I refresh the page, I hit a paywall. So I'll have to refer to it from memory. There was one key paragraph in particular about how Hamilton is a lot less progressive than it seems: majority-POC cast, but it glosses over how many of the founding fathers were slave-owners, it leaves out the work of historical POCs, etc. I feel like all that's true, but leaves Hamilton no worse than literally a hundred other hagiographies. Some people were calling Miranda out for being inadequately progressive, but I'm not sure how much of that was a strawman to start. Miranda's a singer/writer first, a businessman second (it's amazing just how often I saw/heard him when Atossa was in her Disney musical phase), and an activist a distant third.
All I really have to say about this is that I hope jms shows up to reprise (mm-hmm) her comments on Hamilton from a few years ago, not only because the fucking archives are still fucking unsearchable.
18: A co-worker of mine with a young child arranged a bug "mental health" weekend in NYC and ended up at the Pence showing of Hamilton.
19: He's still alive, which is better than his old boss wanted.
Has someone published a book with a title like Obama, Hamilton, and the Death of the Post-Racial Dream?
I feel like the title in 24 should incorporate the word "woke" in a maximally painful pun.
When people talk about how horrified our forefathers would have been at Trump - that he was so much the kind of leader that they feared. But who would they have voted for between Trump and a black woman? I like a think a couple might have voted for Harris, but that seems charitable.
Post-racial isn't happening, but I feel like anyone who has looked at the last ten years and is still a white supremacist is really not paying attention.
14: It would have been a whole different show if it had been "Javert meets Yasiin Bey".
The Rise and Fall of the Wokeocracy
Woke Until It Broke
I like a think a couple might have voted for Harris, but that seems charitable.
Like Lin-Manuel Miranda, they (with a small number of exceptions) were businessmen first and activists second, and their businesses depended on being able to own and run forced labour camps. Harris might have disagreed with the idea that forced labour camps are OK. This, I think, would have been a red line for them.
The Wake of the Woke: Weakened for the Weekend
31.2: Yeah, maybe it depends on how the time travel is working. I was picturing it like this was taking place in 2024 and the dead white guys have somehow come back to life and have had the situation explained to them.
28: White supremacist can have different meanings. There's thinking white people are smarter, but there's also just thinking white people should be in charge, just because as a white person you like it that way.
The soft bigotry of low expectations.
35: Bill and Ted's Excellent Electoral Experiment: Woke or Joke?
Woke, woke bo-boke
Bonana-fanna fo-foke
Fee fi mo-moke
Woke!
I find I am having a weird revulsion to almost any item of US popular culture from the last 15 years or so. They are all part of the culturescape that brought us T and His Barbarians. Too hard to sort out which helped and which hurt or which did nothing; they are all just Weimar-era flotsam and always will be.
OK, that was brought to you by depressive, overwrought JP. Sadly, the most prescient JP of late.
Were the Flotsams neighbors to the Jestons?
Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, DE-DE-DEI
With the boogie, da trans jump the boogie
My name is Kiiiiiiiiiiid...
Kid Woke!
What I'm actually doing is very effectively procrastinating on making our lodging reservations for a trip to Newfoundland in July. Air, car rental, and first week locked in with birding group. But just not having stomach to make calls for 2nd week on our own lodging. (Bird trip is St. John's area, we then go north and erst.)
It's stupid, but it just is feeling like it will be unpleasant.
We're doing a family trip to Ireland in July; Alaska had a really good deal to Dublin (on Aer Lingus) using miles. Thankfully I'm not managing most of the logistics though.
I think that most of the Founding era politicians would see the US political system as the province of white people first and the problems of a white demagogue as secondary. So vote for Trump to send the message that only white people should make decisions, then within the context of only white people having political power, work against him.
Pride and Wokeness
Middlewoke
The Brothers Awoken
A Tale of Woke Cities
Innocents Awoken
Finnigans Woke
I find it about three times as hypothetical than the average hypothetical to talk about how the Founders would have voted. You can say "How would the Founders react to X situation?", sure, and brew up a paragraph or two from your mental model. But voting is an act presupposing/embedded in living in society as an adult. If the Founders magically got enough experience with our world to be voting--they would be extremely different people! Mental models break down.
The Brothers Karawokeoff
The Wokeiad
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Wokeist
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Woke
and over in non-fiction
The House of Wokement
The Woke of Other Suns
We Were Woke Years in Power
The Republic for Woke it Stands
South America; Awoken Giant at our Doorstep
46: I am actually very well-organized for me. I have a spreadsheet with mileage, stops, restaurants, and where to stay. It just wants pulling the trigger and inflicting my Americanness on Canadians.
We're going to Lossiemouth in Scotland for 10 days for our vacation. Certainly not the most exotic location in Scotland, but we wanted a beach and restaurants within walking distance of a hotel, and since it's July wanted to avoid places with too many midges and too many tourists.
Unnütziger Wokeismus/Und vergebliches Wokesein
49 is right. It's not a serious hypothetical, it's just addressing the question of who is being more true to the legacy of the Founding Fathers -- Obama, Lin Manuel Miranda, and the Wokesters, or Donald Trump?