Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This fight is for everything.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Republicans don’t trust women.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Let there be snark.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

The words do not have to be perfect.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Racial Justice / Kiss My Black Ass / Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Crystal Flute Flaunt, Doubling Down On the ‘Disrespect’

Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Crystal Flute Flaunt, Doubling Down On the ‘Disrespect’

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Somewhere, a Very Serious Cultural Guardian started bleeding from every orifice, and they didn’t know why.

As a proud Irish-American, I have been accused of not knowing when to let go, but there are levels here.



From a (very good!) longer thread:

it reminds me of when I used to work at the ballet and there were always kind of veiled things said about how doing cheap or free tickets for young people and students meant “audiences who don’t know how to dress or behave appropriately” that always felt . . . coded

anyway i would bet all the money in my checking account that if everyone freaking out today about Lizzo playing James Madison’s flute were polled in two weeks and asked to name, without googling, which president’s flute it actually was, not one of them would remember

how DARE anyone interfere with the legacy of our most cherished founding father *checks notes* the dude from “hamilton” who didn’t have a solo

they also did “giselle” that year and i was in charge of social media so i put together a playable march madness style bracket of iconic ingenues vs femme fatales from pop culture and it was the most engagement they ever got on social but the artistic director was LIVID about it

i still stand behind “the carmen vs giselle tragic heroine throwdown” as my single greatest professional accomplishment (3500% increase in facebook traffic at a time when that meant something and like $10k in ticket sales) but we were told “throwdown” was a “tacky” word

and like clockwork, here come the white men in my replies saying “um actually not all white men are like this so stop stereotyping”

shan’t, but thank you

*whispers quietly into the void* i actually do know a lot of white men who aren’t shitty, and none of them feel the need to scream in my face about how not shitty they are

they just go about their day not being shitty and that’s how i know

life hack worth considering…

Quality DougJ content:

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    My favorite factoid about Our Sacred Constitutional Relic, James Madison’s crystal flute (which I had of course never heard of), was that his wastrel step-son sold it off to pay off a debt. Kind of surprised it’s survived.

    How much do you think the guys who did those Nicholas Cage National Treasure movies are they didn’t know about Jemmy’s Magic Crystal Flute? or the cable knock-off with the guy from ER

  9. 9.

    Baud

    Y’all scoff, but when Trump wins again, you don’t even want to know what instrument Kidd Rock gets to play.

  12. 12.

    Cacti

    I had no idea that the Library of Congress had a 200 year old crystal flute that belonged to James Madison.

    Just like 100 % of the white wing racist whiners who are complaining that its memory has been besmirched.

  16. 16.

    pluky

    Don’t know about crystal flutes, but  any wooden instrument (especially violins, cellos, and the like) need to be played periodically to stay in good condition.

  17. 17.

    germy shoemangler

    Are we really on day 3 of Flutegate.

    James Madison enslaved people. Not even a mildly repentant slaver. He never freed a single person. So it’s fuck him for me.

    Lizzo should’ve thrown that glass flute into the audience. Or sold it for weed

    — 👻Imani Gandy Corn👻 (@AngryBlackLady) September 30, 2022

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @Cacti: Yeah, why does the LOC have musical instruments? Did someone copyright them?

    (Trying to work in everyone’s favorite myths about why the LOC exists and how copyright works )

  21. 21.

    Steeplejack

    I think Marjorie Taylor Greene should own the libs by playing Dwight Eisenhower’s Tonette.

    (Lauren Boebert had to bow out because she’s certified only on the kazoo.)

  22. 22.

    FlyingToaster

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    or the cable knock-off with the guy from ER

    Oddly enough, they were not related, even one as a knock-off of the other.  “National Treasure” was released theatrically Nov 19, 2004; “The Librarian: Quest for the Spear” was released on cable (TNT) Dec 5, 2004.   Details (as usual) via Wikipedia.

    Both projects were being shopped around Hollywood for years.

  23. 23.

    germy shoemangler

    The crystal flute Lizzo handled so carefully was for some time in the care of Dolley Madison’s son from her first marriage, John Payne Todd: “the bad boy … known for gambling, womanizing & drinking – he was jailed several times for disturbing the peace” https://t.co/6l4RtxhRng

    — Chris Steller (@chris_steller) September 28, 2022

  25. 25.

    JoyceH

    What I am unable to determine is – did James Madison even play the flute? Not that flute in particular, but any flute? Did he know how to play a flute? From what I’ve gathered, this fellow who was a flute maker made it and sent it to him as a gift, mainly because that was the sort of thing the guy knew how to make – and having one in the possession of a president was probably good PR.

    Though I suspect he had some musical training of some sort – most men of standing did in those days. We all know that Jefferson played the violin, but did you know that Washington did too?

  26. 26.

    Tony G

    @James E Powell: I’m “white” (although my Italian ancestors a hundred years ago hadn’t yet been accepted into the  “white” club).  From my perspective, “white” people are pretty easy to understand.  Most people live sad, miserable lives — the human condition — and many of those miserable people find joy in making other people miserable.  In “western society” the belief that a low level of melanin makes a person better than others continues to persist after all these centuries.  If a person with a higher level of melanin (e.g., Lizzo) gains some fame and wealth, that is perceived as a threat by people whose only advantage in life is their low level of melanin.  Hence the whining and the hatred.  For many “white” people, that hatred is their only joy in life.  I have to confess that, as an old boomer, I knew nothing about Lizzo until last week, but her Chrystal Flute performance (and the reaction that it’s provoked from assholes) is pretty cool.

  27. 27.

    Cameron

    I guess I’ve been trapped under a rock, because this is the first I’ve heard of what appears to be a well-publicized fit of gassy outrage from wingnuts who have their testicles reversed because a Person of Unwhiteness presumed to handle a Sacred American Historical Artifact That Was Completely Unknown A Week Ago.  And the only flute Ben Shapiro’s ever played is the skin flute, and he gets all the notes wrong.

  28. 28.

    Suzanne

    none of them feel the need to scream in my face about how not shitty they are

    they just go about their day not being shitty and that’s how i know

    Words to fucken live by.

    I love Lizzo, I love triggering/owning the fascists, I love historical artifacts, and ergo I love this whole deal.

    Die mad about it, morans.

  29. 29.

    Dan B

    As a white guy in an 80% minority / immigrant community there’s a lot of covert and overt discrimination.  It’s very everyday background noise.  I don’t like talking about it much.  It’s more enjoyable to talk about the great people in the neighborhood.  There are some great (and some weird) stories.

  30. 30.

    Tony G

    @MomSense: My own half-baked theory is that European racism was basically invented more than 500 years ago as a justification for the enslavement of Africans.  The motive for slavery was economic — free labor meant higher profits!  However, in order for white people causing and benefiting from slavery to continue to think of themselves as “good Christians”, it was necessary to believe that the Africans were not really human.  People in any era believe what they want to believe, so that belief — racism — became a widespread foundation of “western civilization”.  That belief persists to this day.

  32. 32.

    Major Major Major Major

    We still doing crystal flute discourse? Sort of surprised the outrage cycle is this long. Maybe it was a slow outrage week.

    I’m very slowly getting back into writing more, after a very exhausting several months… wanting to sit down and really develop some theses… one being a firmed up opinion on AI and the future of art. So I set up the hip new open-source image generator on my laptop (previous tools have been invite-only and the processing power fairly expensive) and it’s really interesting to play with. Here’s a thread of a few things I got it to make

    Nothing worth a full post yet. I’ve been playing around with making a balloon man, and I have one I like but not enough to brag about. I dunno, what are some other things it would be fun to try?

  34. 34.

    Tony G

    @Tony G: It’s probably noteworthy that Europeans and Africans had some limited contact with each other for hundreds of years before the 15th century, when the Portuguese started establishing colonies and the slave trade in West Africa, but the dogma of racism didn’t really gain steam until the slave trade began.  Racism was the necessary dogma for the new economic system of the slave trade.

  38. 38.

    Cameron

    @Tony G: And to the extent that racism wasn’t completely baked into the cake, Bacon’s Rebellion got the ruling class to make it policy.

  42. 42.

    germy shoemangler

    The moment you say non-white, you have made white people the norm and everyone else a deviation, mutation, or variation of white people and the characteristics associated with whiteness. For those who want to get technical, white people and whiteness were not the original norm in America. In fact, the original people on this land were and are Native Americans (who outnumbered European immigrants upon their arrival) so if we ever needed to establish a norm, there you have it. The norm should have been based on the fact that Native Americans predated the arrival of European immigrants. In that case, might it have been more accurate to call all of us non-Native American or non-indigenous? Even that would be wrong.

    Every time I hear a someone verbally group people by calling them non-white, I bristle because they should know better. What message are we sending (in a country that was never wholly white and is increasingly black and brown) when we continue to perpetuate whiteness as the norm when we speak about one another and ourselves?

    https://natalie4health.medium.com/the-end-of-non-whites-bcb702b0045e

  43. 43.

    Dan B

    @Major Major Major Major: In case I wasn’t clear I was talking about racism against the non white people on our neighborhood.  I don’t feel my partner and I are discriminated against by our neighbors.  There are a few assholes who are equal opportunity assholes.

  44. 44.

    Captain C

    @germy shoemangler: I appreciate the sentiment and that post made me giggle, but I don’t think we should punish that poor flute for the (awful) sins of its owner from long ago, especially when it probably was delighted to finally be played and almost certainly loved that it was Lizzo.

  45. 45.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Geminid: I haven’t figured out quite how to get what I want for specific stuff. For example I have a carnival barker in striped pants looking at a striped hot air balloon, black and white line drawing, holding a cane, but trying to add a megaphone sends the composition off the deep end.

    But a mermaid playing the flute seems doable, and I think with some more advanced prompt ‘engineering’ I could get her to be black. It’s a matter of saying “once you’ve sketched the composition, start filling in these other details”

  46. 46.

    Hoosierspud

    I have to agree with the people on Twitter who talk about wanting to expand classical art forms (music, ballet, opera) to a larger audience. The typical audience for these performances is older, white, and fairly prosperous. The arts community in Spokane has realized this and has come up with some novel ways to increase exposure: the opera truck which gives free concerts in the parks, free or extremely cheap symphony tickets to people with no electricity after a windstorm which left many without electricity for weeks, performances by groups like Black Violin who want their concerts to be like a baseball game where people of all ages and backgrounds have a good time. Take some risks or die along with your audience. Lizzo rocks!

  47. 47.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Dan B: interesting, you’d think they’d live somewhere else!

    I mostly see (overt) racism from POC against other POC, sometimes to a level of granularity I wouldn’t even think of. I think the (overt) racism has been mostly removed from my sample of the cohort of white coastal-urban millennials. Just speaking of my own peer group obviously.

  49. 49.

    Quiltingfool

    Greengoblin, if you’re hanging around, I’d like you to look at a photo of 2 blocks – you requested #18, and I have 2 of them.

    Would you like the top block (cat backs are made of different fabrics) or the bottom block (cat backs are made of just one fabric)?

    Thanks!

    https://pin.it/10xUwsZ

  50. 50.

    germy shoemangler

    @Hoosierspud:

    Classical music concerts were raucous back in the day:

    A contemporary caricature of a Liszt concert in Berlin in 1842 depicts an audience of frenzied women variously screaming, swooning, trying to storm the stage, observing him through binoculars (from the front row) and throwing flowers at him. Heine once consulted a specialist in womens’ diseases about ‘Lisztomania’; the specialist smiled knowingly and talked at length about the mass hysteria caused by a musical aphrodisiac in a confined space.

    Opera singers were heckled, people ate food at symphony concerts, etc.

  51. 51.

    apocalipstick

    @MattF: And if Lizzo’s music isn’t your thing, just walk on by. These peckerheads need to just learn how to ignore what they don’t like.

  55. 55.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy shoemangler: I read a book by Alex Ross (the music writer, not the comics artist) that argued that one of the things that put classical music on a road to mass-culture irrelevance was adopting stick-up-ass standards of audience etiquette in the 20th century. Suddenly it was High Art for an elevated clientele and you couldn’t be too enthusiastic about it.

  57. 57.

    Starfish

    Someone sent me this Daily Show clip where Fox News was mad at Obama for wearing a bike helmet. They really do get mad at Black folks just for living their lives. This was so many made up controversies ago that I did not even remember it.

  58. 58.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I was just thinking I’d like to find a good scary movie now that it’s October, but not one of the Halloweens…

    Akilah Hughes @AkilahObviously 2h
    Now I would watch that movie

    Trey @treydayway. 18h
    They’re acting like Lizzo playing the flute will resurrect dead slaves for revenge

  60. 60.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    On this day in history:

    – Roger Maris breaks Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961.

    – Nearly 38 years old, The Sultan of Swat hits two home runs, including the “Called Shot” in game three of 1932 World Series.

    “Ruth did point to the center-field scoreboard. And he did hit the ball out of the park after he pointed with his bat. So it really happened.”

    ~ future Justice John Paul Stevens, then age 12, sitting behind home plate during the game

  61. 61.

    Suzanne

    I have to say….a girl could get hooked on this owning-the-conservatives shit. It’s really fun.

  63. 63.

    Redshift

    @MattF:

    Lizzo is what she is and is so good at what she does. How can anyone not see that?

    Because the first rule of racism is that Black people are inherently inferior and only come close to being equal if they are given special treatment, so they have no inclination to look at what she actually is.

  64. 64.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Tony G:

    My own half-baked theory is that European racism was basically invented more than 500 years ago

    Alas, racism is physically hard-wired into the human brain, and has been present in all eras and all cultures.  If you mean ‘white vs black’ as the major  axis, is it even the major axis now, anywhere but the US?  European countries have their favorite prejudices, often against each other.  Those ‘lazy immigrants’ the Brits wanted to get rid of in Brexit are stereotypically Slavs and Poles, aren’t they?  And even when Britain was openly ‘Africans are animals’ they tacked on ‘but the Irish are worse.’

    It is certainly true that a thousand years ago Africans in Northern Europe were not a big deal.  Might be because they were from far enough away to not be ‘Those effeminate Germans ruining Denmark with their twice-cooked sausages.’

  65. 65.

    topclimber

    Since we are rapidly approaching flute fatigue, let me do what I do best: Kill a thread.

    I always thought that the Magic Flute was a Mozart opera where the instrument turned sorrow into joy.

    Now we have another magic flute: the crystal one gifted to  James Madison. When played by a black musician, it turns MAGA assholes into even bigger assholes.

    Not a unique trick, I grant you. But you expect something great out of the 459th comment on this subject?

    Let’s forget about it and stick to Mozart.

  68. 68.

    Tehanu

    Ben Shapiro, that well-known shanda to the goyim, apparently thinks that Lizzo accepting the Library of Congress’ invitation to play the flute was a “deliberately controversial … attempt to draw attention.”  I’m just gobsmacked by the depth of bigotry and hatred that could generate such a mind-blowingly stupid statement.

  70. 70.

    Shana

    @Steeplejack: You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a class of 30 4th graders in a midwest elementary school play Twinkle Twinkle on their tonetttes. As my parents had to do.

  71. 71.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Brown Muslims, I know.  Typical of racists, I don’t think the xenophobic Swedes in question distinguish subsets of ‘brown Muslim’ and most of them have a hazy idea of skin color and religion that they assume are the same thing.  That is certainly common in America.

    Meanwhile, the Turks sure as Hell distinguish themselves from, say, Kurds, and have their own racism against people those Swedes see as identical to Turks.

  72. 72.

    gwangung

    @Matt McIrvin: Same thing with theatre.

    Instead of the raucous, free wheeling rowdy crowds of the Bard (audiences roaming freely), it became this uptight, snooty endeavor where norms are strictly enforced (audiences stay seated throughout the performance) and where you get shushed if you laugh too loud (particularly if you’re not pale and pasty).

  73. 73.

    MomSense

    @Starfish:

    I believe he committed the double sin of wearing a bike helmet and mom jeans at the same outing – in Bah Hahbah, Maine btw.

  76. 76.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Major Major Major Major:

    The whole Psalamanzar hoax and how he was treated in Britain really shows off how convoluted historical racism can be.

    @Baud:

    I hear non-jackals wear pants all the time, even when using the computer. Of course, I would never claim it’s genetic.  They’ve just grown up in a perverted culture.

  77. 77.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gwangung: I think it’s interesting that musical theater still has a different, more pop etiquette–not quite “rock concert” where just about anything still goes, but you’re allowed to cheer and clap during a musical number. And there are some shows like, say, “Six” where they really try to amp up the party atmosphere.

  78. 78.

    Redshift

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I read a book by Alex Ross (the music writer, not the comics artist) that argued that one of the things that put classical music on a road to mass-culture irrelevance was adopting stick-up-ass standards of audience etiquette in the 20th century. Suddenly it was High Art for an elevated clientele and you couldn’t be too enthusiastic about it.

    Also illustrates again what bullshit conservatism is. “We must follow the original intent of the words of the Constitution, but you must sit quietly and reverently for classical music, even though at the time it was written, people behaved like they do at modern pop music concerts (talking over it, whooping and cheering, etc.)”

  80. 80.

    M31

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    They’re acting like Lizzo playing the flute will resurrect dead slaves for revenge

    Then right at (what you think is) the end, when the tiny remaining colony of white people think they are safe, Lizzo hands the flute over to a Native American

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck: The way I think of it is that bigotry, us vs. them hatred, is hard-wired but the specific categories people go wild over are very culturally bound. “Race” as we know it in the West today is an early modern invention to justify colonialism and slavery. But they had other stuff before, religion being one of the big ones.

  83. 83.

    jackmac

    Nobody screamed when one of my high school teachers played a piece on Chopin’s piano (yes, THE Chopin) while on a class trip to Chicago’s Polish Museum of America back in the dark ages of the early 1970s. He was a pretty good pianist and I thought it was  cool he has a chance to touch history. I was reminded of him this week as Lizzo also brought history to life and that the Library of Congress was willing to share such treasures. The right wing whiners can go fuck themselves with a faulty slide whistle.

  84. 84.

    RSA

    Wikipedia on Madison—nothing unexpected:

    Madison is widely regarded as one of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States. Historian J. C. A. Stagg writes that “in some ways—because he was on the winning side of every important issue facing the young nation from 1776 to 1816—Madison was the most successful and possibly the most influential of all the Founding Fathers.” Though he helped found a major political party and served as the fourth president, his legacy has largely been defined by his contributions to the Constitution; even in his own life he was hailed as the “Father of the Constitution”. Law professor Noah Feldman writes that Madison “invented and theorized the modern ideal of an expanded, federal constitution that combines local self-government with an overarching national order”. Feldman adds that Madison’s “model of liberty-protecting constitutional government” is “the most influential American idea in global political history”.

    No mention of a flute, crystal or otherwise. Someone had better get on that.

  85. 85.

    Gin & Tonic

    @gwangung: Funny, in Ukraine, if you’re at a concert or opera, and somebody in front of you has their cell phone ring, they will absolutely answer it. No, of course they don’t turn the ringer off.

  87. 87.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Matt McIrvin: ​

    “Race” as we know it in the West today is an early modern invention to justify colonialism and slavery.

    Oh, no. Definitely not. If anything, the modern invention is race being less granular. The Romans very solidly viewed themselves as a different stock from, say, Gauls or Greeks, and those as different from each other. Skin and hair color were things Romans definitely cared about. The definitions of who counts as what race and which are the worst and so on and so on change a lot over time, so you absolutely get a big change associated with the African slave trade becoming a thing.

  88. 88.

    gwangung

    @Matt McIrvin: Yeah (though the conflict between white audiences and black audiences at things like the Temptations musical can be amusing to watch) (in fact, the experience for black oriented shows with a white audience and the same show with a black audience can be VASTLY different).

    A friend of mine really tries to encourage rowdy behavior at his shows, and has written a meta-thing in his shows lampooning the stuffy upright behavior of upper crust audiences.

    (I remember, early in my theatre career, audiences for shows I was involved with were very community based, with kids running around, and people getting up to get something to eat during shows. I sorta miss that free and easy atmosphere….)

    @Gin & Tonic: You know, I’m gonna be honest and say I’m getting a lot less uptight about that. As long as they don’t distract from the performance (easier for some types of art than others), I’m starting not to care.

  89. 89.

    Anyway

    Capital hateshateshates to pay for Labor. They’ll go to great lengths to eliminate/reduce labor costs.

    That’s the history of the last 600 years.

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @Shana:

    As I had to do, probably. Grade school in Illinois in the early ’60s. I remember playing a Tonette, don’t remember our set list. 😹

  91. 91.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Starfish: ​  You mean you don’t remember the national crisis when Obama drank …. [checks notes]…. orange juice?

    Weep for the republic as you read MSNBC talking heads analyzing Barack Obama’s choice of beverage at an Indiana diner:

    On Hardball, while remarking on Sen. Barack Obama’s reported request for orange juice after being offered coffee at an Indiana diner, David Shuster asserted: “[I]t’s just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, ‘Here, have some coffee,’ you say, ‘Yes, thank you,’ and, ‘Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?’ You don’t just say, ‘No, I’ll take orange juice,’ and then turn away and start shaking hands.” Host Chris Matthews agreed, “You don’t ask for a substitute on the menu.”

    Yes, there was a discussion on national television about the appropriate way to ask for orange juice at a diner. This kind of coverage is all too remiscent of the way Matthews and other members of the press made up bizarre narratives about the color of Al Gore’s clothing, his choice of shoes, the way he claps, and the number of buttons on his suit (among many other things).​

  92. 92.

    randy khan

    I’m always kind of amused by people who don’t get that, back in the day, opera and ballet were not hoity-toity entertainment; they were pop culture.  Carmen and Giselle and La Boheme and Swan Lake and Don Giovanni and the like succeeded because of the music, but also because they were a bit risqué (in various ways) and entertaining.  So, sure, tell people about the music, but there’s nothing wrong with telling them that Carmen is a firecracker, too.

  93. 93.

    SFBayAreaGal

    @gwangung: I saw a Shakespeare play at the Globe in London. It was loud and the audience (me) and the cast interacted with each other. It was a fun evening.

  94. 94.

    ian

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Skin and hair color were things Romans definitely cared about.

    They may have cared about them, but they did not use them to define who was Roman.  Who was Roman were people who wore togas.  The Gauls were despised because they wore pants (and no Baud, that is not a joke at you, they really thought that).  The Greeks were devious because they were hidden under cloaks and hoods.  As food for thought that many ethnic groups and skin colors were Roman, I give you these items to mull over.

    Bret Devereaux Who were the Romans?

    Frescoes at Pompeii via Wiki

    The Emperor of Rome who was Black, Septimius Severus

  95. 95.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Anyway:

    That’s the history of the last 600 years.

    The pre-Roman Greeks were a slave-based economy that made the pre-Civil War American South look like pikers.  Truly, everything old is new again.

  96. 96.

    gwangung

    I think there’s been a dawning realization in the theatre world that so much of the so-called audience etiquette has been used to keep out audiences who don’t look “right”, both from staff and from other audience members. The “norms” are a method of keeping the “wrong” people in their place (behaviorally or even banished from the viewing space).

    I also think that changing this will mean a drop in attendance, as white people’s unconscious bias will impel them to flee any area where there’s a growing number of “wrong” people in attendance.

  97. 97.

    pajaro

    The Library of Congress has other, even more valuable, instruments.  There is a matching set of Stradivarius violins, viola and Cello.  I assume that the set is worth millions.  They are there to be played.  For probably 50 years they have scheduled concerts where internationally known quartets come to play on the instruments.  I don’t know how they do it now, but back in the day, tickets were close to free.  Of course, Ben Shapiro doesn’t know enough about musical instruments to understand that they are there to be played, but it’s hardly the most notable area of inquiry where he comes up short.

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gwangung: There can be accessibility issues, depending the venue–my wife has problems at concerts where everyone stands up, unless she’s staked out very particular spots, simply because she can’t see over tall people.

  99. 99.

    Leto

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    If you mean ‘white vs black’ as the major axis, is it even the major axis now, anywhere but the US?

    When I was stationed in the UK, my boss was an amazing black woman. Her husband was just as amazing. Was working on his PhD, was also a senior enlisted figure in the AF Reserve who would be flown around the world to specifically oversee complex repair problems on aircraft because he was the guy. She spoke to me about him trying to find work in the UK. He had a “white” sounding first/last name. So that and his resume impressed to no end. She spoke about the fact that when he finally met people, their non-verbal reactions spoke volumes. I’m just going to say that he didn’t get work there and they were very glad to leave the country.

    Is it as overt/bad as the US? No, but it’s still there and it’s still some part of peoples daily lives. I mean if you pay attention to sports, specifically soccer, you’ll see that most of the major international leagues had ongoing “Fight Against Racism” campaigns because the fans continually harassed the black players, even on the teams they “supported”. I think it was in Italy that one team had all fans banned from their matches for two years because of it.

  101. 101.

    gwangung

    @Matt McIrvin: Oh yeah, and accessability is an issue I still haven’t internalized as much as I have other issues. I think having streaming options for my show helps with that to an extend, but it’s something I’m still learning about.

  102. 102.

    Ohio Mom

    When Ohio Son was in fourth grade, he also learned how to play the recorder — recorder, tonette, it’s all the same.

    It was thrilling to me that this tradition lives on, just as I had learned to play simple tunes, he was too. Well, thrilling until I had to start listening to the screeching noise.

  103. 103.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Leto:

    Is it as overt/bad as the US? No, but it’s still there and it’s still some part of peoples daily lives.

    Oh, no, I don’t mean it isn’t there.  I mean that the racism we’re used to in America is a pretty simple ‘here is a chart of skin colors, it’s lighter vs darker’.  Other racisms that aren’t defined by simple color and in particular focus less on ‘white vs black’ as the biggest deal are common in Europe.

  105. 105.

    Ohio Mom

    @Starfish: I hope everyone watches that clip to the end. Which to spoil it, caps off many clips of Fox personalities complaining that Obama looks like a wuss in comparison to the shirtless Putin on horseback, he has humiliated our country, etc., with a shot of GW peddling away with a helmet firmly attached.

    The end of the Daily Show in its current incarnation will be a great loss.

  107. 107.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Frankensteinbeck: Racism with color was invented by the British to justify their obscene empire while pretending they were doing everone concerned a favor by “civilizing the heathens”

    No one beats the Brits when it comes to PR. I had to turn off the fucking TV after the paeans to the figure head of the same obscene empire whose crown was full of stolen jewels. And who to my recollection never once apologized for the atrocities carried out in the name of that crown. Even the ones when she was the Queen.

  109. 109.

    RaflW

    Just gotta give ♥ to Claire Willett. What an epic, gorgeous thread. And how infuriating that an artistic director can’t see the artist in their midst, doing fine work on social media.

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: Not minimizing the evils of the British Empire, but I don’t think that they invented skin-based racism.

    The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity – by Benjamin Isaac:

    There was racism in the ancient world, after all. This groundbreaking book refutes the common belief that the ancient Greeks and Romans harbored “ethnic and cultural,” but not racial, prejudice. It does so by comprehensively tracing the intellectual origins of racism back to classical antiquity. Benjamin Isaac’s systematic analysis of ancient social prejudices and stereotypes reveals that some of those represent prototypes of racism — or proto-racism — which in turn inspired the early modern authors who developed the more familiar racist ideas. He considers the literature from classical Greece to late antiquity in a quest for the various forms of the discriminatory stereotypes and social hatred that have played such an important role in recent history and continue to do so in modern society.

    Magisterial in scope and scholarship, and engagingly written, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity further suggests that an understanding of ancient attitudes toward other peoples sheds light not only on Greco-Roman imperialism and the ideology of enslavement (and the concomitant integration or non-integration) of foreigners in those societies, but also on the disintegration of the Roman Empire and on more recent imperialism as well. The first part considers general themes in the history of discrimination; the second provides a detailed analysis of proto-racism and prejudices toward particular groups of foreigners in the Greco-Roman world. The last chapter concerns Jews in the ancient world, thus placing anti-Semitism in a broader context.

    Or more directly, Blackness and Heathenism. Color, Theology, and Race in the Portuguese World, c. 1450-1600:

    Abstract

    The coexistence of a process of hierarchy and discrimination among human groups alongside dynamics of cultural and social hybridization in the Portuguese world in the early modern age has led to an intense historiographical debate. This article aims to contribute to extending our perspectives, focusing on the circulation of two global categories of classification: negro (Black) and gentio (Heathen) between the mid-fifteenth and late-sixteenth century. In particular, it explores the intersections between the perception of skin color and the reworking of theological concepts in a biologizing direction, which ran parallel to the development of an anti-Jewish theory based on blood purity. The line of enquiry leads from the coasts of West Africa, where it immediately meets the problem of slavery, to Brazil, via South Asia. The intense cross-fertilization of the categories of negro and gentio in the Portuguese world provides us with an alternative geography and institutional process of racialization to that of the Spanish Empire.

    The Belgians were extremely nasty in Congo, also too.

    The UK has a notorious history that is still with us, but they are far from alone, and I’m not sure that they were even the worst (though I’m no expert).

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Another Scott: If you add the number of people they killed through their  genocide by starvation policies they are clearly the worst.

    The death count in British India alone was close to 50 million over 90 years of the Crown rule.

  113. 113.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: Dunno. There have been estimates of comparable numbers from other colonization waves elsewhere (from a lower baseline).

    ScienceDirect:

    Highlights

    • Combines multiple methods estimating pre-Columbian population numbers.

    • Estimates European arrival in 1492 lead to 56 million deaths by 1600.

    • Large population reduction led to reforestation of 55.8 Mha and 7.4 Pg C uptake.

    • 1610 atmospheric CO2 drop partly caused by indigenous depopulation of the Americas.

    • Humans contributed to Earth System changes before the Industrial Revolution.

    Jamestown in VA was established by the English in 1607 – they were late to the party. The Spanish and the Portuguese were the big European colonizers in the Americas before then.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The other thing was, IMO, the position of the arts intelligentsia (led by people like Milton Babbit) starting in the 1940s that the best, most artistic arts should have no commercial appeal whatsoever (and consequently, that the best, most artistic composers should be provided for through government grants–composures like Milton Babbitt).

    See also Babbitt’s famous essay on the subject usually referred to by its original published title: “Who Cares If You Listen?”

  115. 115.

    Citizen Alan

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:

    I remember that. I was so mad about the fucking arrogance of that. The Obama-McCain debate at Ole Miss was just a week or two later, and I was seriously tempted to go onto campus and try to track down Chris Fucking Matthews just so I could present him with a cold bottle of orange juice and then explain what it was. “This is orange juice. Ooooraaange Juiiiice. People who actually work for a living frequently drink it at breakfast in place of coffee.”

  116. 116.

    Citizen Alan

    @Citizen Alan: I just realized that when I edited that post, I accidentally ended up saying “artistic arts” for which I apologize to the English language.

  117. 117.

    West of the Rockies

    @Baud:

    I hear they’re planning on having Ted Nugent play Wango Tango on Jefferson’s Fender Stratocaster.

    The horror…

  118. 118.

    Tony G

    @Frankensteinbeck: Well, yes.  I agree that fear of/aggression toward “the other” is a basic part of human nature (most animal nature, for that matter, as my dog would attest).  Probably behavior left over from our hunter-gatherer days.  Europeans (like all other peoples) were certainly busy pillaging and killing each other long before the 15th century Portuguese “exploration” of West Africa.  But before the 15th century there was little contact between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, so the Europeans could direct their cruelty at each other.   I think that the specific ideology of “white” Europeans being superior to “non-white” Africans (Asians and others) probably didn’t become a prominent  part of European thinking until the Portuguese (soon to be followed by other Europeans) pioneered African colonization and the slave trade.   But, yeah, exploitation and murder are two of the prominent  features of the human species.  Apes with weapons.

  120. 120.

    Ruckus

    What gets me is that rethuglicans only have their hate and their grift as policy points. Not one other actual policy or seemingly even a thought about anything other than their racism and getting paid for zip, zero, nada. Not one rethuglican president in my over 7 decades other than Eisenhower has had any actual positive policy points. And it’s actually gotten worse in the last what 30 yrs. There may be a stray rethuglican governor or two who hasn’t been solely concerned with getting reelected and paid but even they are rare.

    If anyone can please name anything positive that any rethuglican president or governor has done in the last 7 decades.

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    In other news, …

    WASHINGTON (AP) — In rare swap, Venezuela has released 7 jailed Americans in exchange for the US freeing two relatives of President Maduro.

    — *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) October 1, 2022

    It’s almost like Biden’s people know how to do quiet diplomacy and stuff.

    Shocking!!

    (via BradMossEsq)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  122. 122.

    Another Scott

    In other news, …

    Russian commentators are blaming a variety of issues or commanders for the fall of Lyman, but the primary problem is that they simply don't have the forces required to hold the current front lines and Putin is telling his military leaders they can't retreat. https://t.co/dHIAAd51aU

    — Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 1, 2022

    [ rock ].[ hard place ]

    VVP’s forces are the tiny dot. [ womp, womp ]

    (via Oryx)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    Glory b

    @Tony G: I wish I could remember the book, but someone once wrote that ancient Romans had contact with Africans but considered the various tribes of Western and Northern Europe to be the uncouth barbarians.

  125. 125.

    Glory b

    @Redshift: Yes, there were twitter posts saying the thought she was pretending to play the flute and was mimicking the REAL flautist, she couldn’t possibly be that good (she’s played since she was 11 years old).

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