Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Some extremely intoxicated slob of a redneck attacked a gay man in line at the Dallas airport, and was immediately subdued by a crowd including a very burly man in a cowboy hat, until two black cops arrested the jackass. At that point, with two serious looking cops kneeling on his handcuffed self, he went full metal Klan. Not the sharpest bulb, this guy:
The crowd response was rather heartening, and the “interview” afterwards was cute.
Kevin Drum has multiple myeloma. My thoughts, and I am sure the readers here, are with you.
Damnit.
I’ve not bothered with Andrew Sullivan for a long time. His schtick — the reasonable man, “of no clique or party”– just doesn’t work for me. I’ve seen too much of his thumb on the scale in his sweet reason, for one thing, and for another, the real value he had as an aggregator of random interesting stuff around the internet has been outpaced by smarter, more focused and much more disciplined thinkers I follow with much more pleasure.
So it’s been months at least since I’ve wandered over to the Dish, until today, when I recklessly followed a link in a tweet that suggested that Sully had found — well, an interesting line to take on #GamerGate.
Nah, I thought. If nothing else, Sullivan’s solipsism would weigh in, and recall in the stigmatization and real violence wrought against gay men who dared be present in a homophobic majority culture some kinship with the women under attack by the stalwart defenders of purity in gaming.
But, of course, I forgot that there is ample reason we list Dr. Sullivan among the blogs we monitor (not much) and mock as needed.
That would be because if there’s one thing we can rely on, it is that while Sully will always succumb to the urge to reduce any moral circumstance to a “good for Sullivan” — or not — calculus, his contrarian urge and his greater love for cleverness than rigor would lead him astray.
And so it has.
The TL:DR version of Sullivan’s attempt to balance the rights and wrongs of GamerGate is that having weighed the evidence, Sully concludes that though it’s a bad thing to threaten women who speak out about gaming culture with violence, both sides do it, and the GamerGate folks have suffered longer. Really. I’m not making that up. Here’s his conclusion:
Look: whatever case the gamergate peeps have, they have botched it with their tactics. Those tactics have been repellent in every sense of the word. But bullying has occurred on both sides, and only one side was bullied before.
So it’s just “tactics” that are at fault. Those pesky choices of action.
The suggestion that anonymous harassment on the ‘net combined with plausible threats of physical harm is somehow dangerous and (literally) reactionary becomes, to Sullivan:
…pure vitriol, resting on an unspoken, hard left view of culture that is more disturbing because it presents itself as snark and analysis, rather than tired, easy agit-prop.
So much assumption not in evidence there, of course. (“Tired, easy agit-prop!” It’s what’s for dinner!)
But worse — much worse — is Sullivan’s pure, unadulterated inability to take seriously the real danger and constant pressure experienced by women in any form of public life. Who is the victim here? Sullivan leaps right to it. The “tone” of the condemnation f harassment and threats
smacked of bullying and dismissal. When you’re telling people they don’t even deserve to be in a debate, and associate them with segregationists and every other entity good liberals have been taught to despise, “dismissive” is the least of it.
Uhhhh — so it’s only that obviously ridiculous person, a “good liberal” who would find despicable either segregationists or anonymous claquesters harassing women on the internet, trying to damage their making a living, hoping to evoke suicides and all the rest.
Good to know.
Ultimately, it’s all about Sullivan, and his own sense of self, historically and now. In GamerGaters he sees his sembables, his frères:
Yes, I wouldn’t trade our freedom for the closeted, marginalized past; at the same time, it’s impossible not to feel some regret at the close-knit, marginalized, very distinctive solidarity gays have lost as a group, and some affection for a world, built defiantly to defend itself against outsiders, that is dissipating before our eyes and on our apps.
…many gamers were the bullied in high school; this was their safe space; it was a place they could call home. They now feel it slipping away, and it has unhinged some and disconcerted many, as a lot of mainstream culture has heaped scorn and ridicule on them at the same time. And I’m sorry, but I feel some sympathy here.
The reason I gave up on Sullivan — the one all the other irritations finally boiled down to — is found here. If he feels something strongly enough he stops thinking. He just grinds to a halt. I don’t really know what to say beyond that, except to note that I’ve yet to hear of the denizens of any leather bar trying to drive straight men to suicide for the vicious act of appropriation of wearing chaps. The nerve!
Enough. Sully isn’t worth the electrons. And it’s an ill-wind and all that. I’m well reminded that my missing The Dish adds up to missing nothing.
Image: Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Children’s Games, 1560
Irrationally so. Go Kiwis!
Itinerant Rove-stenographer Ron Fournier, who once emitted a squid cloud of butt-hurt so opaque that Glenn Greenwald called him out for being a petulant crybaby, has written scads of tiresome columns earnestly urging Obama to be more leader-y. But his latest is the Platonic Ideal of a Fournier column, and the header captures the tone perfectly:
If Obama would just “fire himself” — literally or figuratively, doesn’t matter — America would be saved! I don’t pretend to be an objective observer, but isn’t Fournier being a little premature here?
Did Fournier urge George W. Bush to self-impeach after he committed the worst foreign policy blunder in generations, passively watched an American city drown from Air Force One, presided over a global financial meltdown and saw his support shrink to 27%? Without Googling it, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess “no.”
Fournier suggests that Obama bring back Leon Panetta(!) and pull in some exec from Starbucks, a pair of Republican operatives and assorted others to right the ship. Check out this passage for a clinic on how to be a presumptuous, self-important prick:
Two notes: First, none of these potential replacements knew I was dropping their names; indeed, most of them are probably horrified by the thought of leaving more-comfortable jobs. Second, nobody from the White House contributed candidates for this column.
Yeah, I’m sure the West Wing and Wall Street were all abuzz over Fournier’s column this morning. Christ on a Triscuit, what a self-aggrandizing hack.
Massachusetts looks like they are about to elect another Republican governor:
Republican Charlie Baker has opened up a 9-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley, 45 percent to 36 percent, according to a new Globe poll that depicts a far more comfortable advantage than either candidate for governor has enjoyed in months.
The poll reflects an October surge in independent voters toward Baker’s column. It was independents who provided Governor Deval Patrick with his margins of victory in 2006 and 2010.
Baker’s standing has improved from last week’s poll, which showed the two candidates dead even. It can be attributed largely to the gains he has made in voters’ perceptions of who would improve the economy and manage state government, areas that already were tilting his way. At the same time, Baker has offset the deficits he faced on issues such as education and health care, where Coakley still holds an edge, but a diminished one.
First things first- is there ANYTHING that can be done to make sure she never has a chance to blow another election for Democrats? Why do voters keep rejecting her for higher office? I watched a little clip of the debate between the two of them, and there were not any superficial reasons to vote against her, she seems smart, polite, competent and focused, which is exactly what you want from your governor. Is it all about taxes as the clip suggests?
Second, what is the deal with Charlie Baker? I read his wikipedia page, checked out his website, and he seems to be not a teahadist lunatic, but really, you can make a lot of crazy stuff sound reasonable on a website. Basically, is he an insane crazy person?
Something about Baker does remind me of William Weld.
All right, Fox News, thanks for yet another gem showing how out of touch conservatives are. Don’t believe me? Watch this delightful clip from host Kimberly Guilfoyle:
That’s right. All young women are too stupid and lacking in life experience to be on juries. And they’re all on Tinder. Also, black people are all criminals. And white men are just the best. Because every group is a monolith!
Team Blackness also discussed more on Gamergate, additional updates on the Mike Brown case in Ferguson, and Indiana’s brilliant plan to cut tens of thousands off of food stamps.
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Fox News Says Young Women Shouldn’t Vote Because They’re All On TinderPost + Comments (6)