Let's not spike the football yet on this. Maybe another few years of the most unsettling Ivy League goblins ever hatched mewling about it nonstop will turn things around. https://t.co/CgUBt1y8ov
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) March 8, 2023
Because almost nobody cares about that crap. They care about jobs, prescription drugs, higher ed costs & debt, democracy, climate change, etc. Let them talk about that crap, Dems should talk about what’s important. https://t.co/dOmRAoG2GX
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 3, 2023
NEW: Biden budget proposes 25% tax on billionaires + nearly doubling capital gains rate to 39.6%
Income tax over $400k would rise to 39.6%, corp tax up to 28%
also closes crypto, oil, real estate tax breaks for $3t deficit reduction
w @laurapdavison https://t.co/QX6OQfPssE
— Justin Sink (@justinsink) March 9, 2023
it's all signaling with a GOP House but tbf it's good shit regardless https://t.co/D56IA27a0R
— the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) ?? (@merovingians) March 9, 2023
Elsewhere…
The @RepublicanStudy Committee — which represents a majority of House Republicans — proposed a budget that would slash Medicare by almost a quarter.
That’s the MAGA Republican “agenda.” pic.twitter.com/wuiYVHjxKl
— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) March 6, 2023
Pundits: Dems don't talk about kitchen table issues facing real americans
GOP led states: We're cutting your WIC benefits because you have two 10 year olds who can go to work. Shouldn't be a problem since we closed all the public schools around you.
— Maid of New Orleans (@BourbonDienasty) March 8, 2023
Even if they're not true populists, they're true believers in crushing egalitarian liberal democracy. The rest is just decor.
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) March 8, 2023
On The Road – lashonharangue – Namibia – Part 6
Baud
Can Joe Biden be both sleepy and woke?
Baud
People will never understand that some battles are beneath the president.
Kay
The poll doesn’t indicate that people “don’t care about that”- the poll instead said most people consider “woke” a compliment. They might care about it a lot and even if they don’t Democrats have no problem at all running on both cultural issues and economic issues- look at any of the Dem governors who ran and won in 2022. No one has to choose and no one has to go under the bus. They can (and do) easily do both.
Book bans are really hated – 70% oppose according to that poll. I saw DeSantis has launched a campaign denying he banned books in schools so he must be worried about it.
mrmoshpotato
I’m liking those budget proposals. Tax the rich, and tell big oil to suck a horse’s ass.
Baud
@Kay:
A lot of the liberal Internet has a bad habit of assuming that normies automatically support Republicans when they do something outrageous.
It does happen too often, but it’s not a rule.
The bigger problem we have is people often don’t vote their values, or stated differently, they underprioritize liberal values.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Somewhere in the back of my political brain it will always be 1984. That’s when my instincts coalesced about how politics works and what normal people believe. And they tell me that normal people don’t like us at all.
Kay
@Baud:
I agree with you that the President doesn’t have to lead every Dem political campaign- I think it’s a real misunderstanding of how politics works – but this stupid bickering between “kitchen table issues” and “cultural issues” should end on the Dem side. Democrats can and have always run on both. The division between the two is a media/pundit invention. It doesn’t exist in the real world.
That idiot pundits think they have to “warn” Democrats to run on health care is ridiculous. Of course they’ll run on health care. They can run on health care and womens rights. They can run on health care and civil rights. It’s not a scarcity issue, where they “use up” rhetoric so can’t allocate some to civil rights. They have more.
Matt McIrvin
Mentioning the other side’s buzzwords to refute them is a mug’s game–you’re fighting on the other side’s territory! Biden’s tactic there has been to make “MAGA Republican” his own derisive buzzphrase. Notice how often he repeats it? To the point that it annoys me, but I’m not the target audience. It’s the kind of people who respond to that shit, which is most people.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Kay: People can see the empty shelves in their local libraries because librarians are afraid of being jailed. He can’t hide that. Libraries are popular.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
It has. I don’t hear it from anybody but the tiny minority of Professional Contrarians, like Sanders and Manchin, and even Sanders supports cultural stuff, he just whines.
Absolutely true, and by God will they pretend there is a huge split in the Democratic Party over it. No, there are a few rump assholes* with outsize power because the GOP are universally evil.
*I should say ‘on the National level’ because local politicians always work their specific audience’s unique needs.
Geminid
It’s a “Day of Disruption” in Israel, as citizens protesting the Netanyahu coalition’s judicial power grab are trying to tie up traffic in major cities. This has already caused a change in US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s planned visit. He flew in from Egypt this morning, but Israeli officials including the PM will meet him for discussions at a factory near Ben Gurion Airport instead of Jerusalem..
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Kay
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
They are. And the supporters of libraries (and I imagine the opponents of book bans) VOTE. I worked on a library levy campaign about 10 years ago and the pro-library people really came out. This is a very conservative area and it was during the Tea Party fad on the Right so we ran it as a “stealth campaign” where the focus was reaching supporters and not agitating and alerting the Right. It worked. They are high propensity voters and they pay attention.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Yeah, he didn’t *ban* them, he just had every last book removed from the Florida public schools until his committee of ideologues decided which ones are OK to let back in.
Good luck with that argument, Ron DeFascist.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
MisterDancer
I’ve been thinking about the history of Backlash a lot of late — I’ve got a post in the hopper somewhere about how “Disco Sucks” was a Backlash to how Disco was a Gay and Brown/Black hybrid musical form that was hugely influential, including culturally. Specifically: The “Disco Demolition Night” that I barely recall as a kid, was a lot more white, and a lot more homophobic, than I was told for most of my life.
The trick is in how to break the cycle. The historical equivalent of Pundits — in every cycle I can think of, offhand — just want to ignore it, which does not help.
Meanwhile, a lot of good people and institutions are harmed. But as long as the Pundits’ kids can go to their fancy schools and have their fancy parties, it must not be all that bad.
Princess
In the name of focusing on policy — really good news from Michigan on legislative movement against “right to work,” and guns, and for gay rights.
zhena gogolia
I really enjoyed Empire of Light (HBO) despite the lukewarm reviews in NYT and New Yorker. Wonderful acting and cinematography.
Baud
@Princess:
Elections have consequences. Sometimes good ones.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
I would love it if the War On Woke was just a Right wing thing but it’s not. There are a lot of centrist and Leftist pundits who natter on and on about it endlessly – Nate Silver, Matthew Yglesias, Jonathan Chait, Jesse Singal, all the ninnies who signed the pompous and self aggrandizing “Harpers Letter”, every editorialist at the NYTimes and The Atlantic, every divorced and bitter male stand up comic….
Baud
@Kay:
A lot of right wing themes get their start from centrist or left wing venture capital.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
The most disappointing of the War On Woke soldiers are not the Leftists – I don’t give a shit about Chomsky or what he says- the most disappointing to me are the feminists. That Gloria Steinham and Margaret Atwood amd Randy Weingarten (teachers union president) thought the most pressing issue in this country was what the Oberlin Student Council and Yale law students were up to is just so depressing. This may explain why womens rights have lurched backward 70 years. “Feminists” have their heads up their asses.
Geminid
@MisterDancer: This sounds like it would be a very interesting post. I wonder if there are parallels with the crackdown on Swing music in the late 1940s.
MisterDancer
Dr. King was frustrated as fuck with the so-called “White Moderate” in 1963. And he kept that frustration till the day he died.
Those asshats have not gotten better with time, and they protect a LOT of the worse aspects of what people like DeSantis do, if only via silence.
Kay
@Baud:
I’ve said this before but I researched the child sex abuse/satanic panic of the 1980s for a law school project and “centrist” and (especially) media support of the panic was essential. It would not have spread and mainstreamed without them- the Right wing (and Left wing) nuts alone could not have done it. I think the same is true of the woke panic.
Princess
@MisterDancer: I’m really looking forward to your revisionist post on Disco. I was a pretty little kid but I remember all of us going along with it without a clue of what lay behind it. That’s when a boy calling something “gay” was the worst insult he could make. I had no idea what “gay” meant but I knew it was bad.
Baud
@Geminid:
“We need to do something about the Swing. Let’s try this new Rock N Roll fas that the kids seem to like.”
JPL
@lowtechcyclist: Ron’s a coward for not defending the laws he passed. He also mentioned that FL law states you must teach black history and he supports that. He just wants the nice parts taught.
Baud
@Kay:
Antivaxxism also has some left of center roots.
Baud
@JPL:
Nicer than Roberto Clemente?
Kay
@Baud:
It does. My daughter is in a “moms group” in the very liberal enclave where she lives and she sometimes has to leave events because the anti vaxx stuff makes her crazy.
I expected better of Gloria Steinhem, who grew up lower income in Toledo with a mentally ill mother and a father who took off and left them. She essentially raised herself. One would think she wouldn’t fall for this stupid shit.
Baud
@Baud:
Fas = fad
Princess
@Kay: I know a lot of very liberal academics who are gung ho with the “Oberlin free speech threat “ nonsense. They’re all retirement age and they see themselves as continuing the bold legacy of the Berkeley free speech movement. They don’t realize how essentially conservative they have become. The kids scare them because they’re different. I’m so glad Biden seems to be going more left and more open to new views as he grows older, contrary to so many in his cohort.
Geminid
@Baud: There was a lull between the suppression of Swing music and the advent of rock and roll later in the 1950s. And Swing music really was suppressed, by music and radio industry executives. I’ve read that they saw the mixing of young White and Black people at LA Swing dance events as very alarming, something that needed to be nipped in the bud.
MisterDancer
I was a kid, too! That’s what makes this all kind of surreal. Kay mentioned the Satanic Panic, and I remember all that better; she’s 100% right that that “panic”, and the Disco Backlash, were fueled by utterly credulous and inflammatory media coverage.
EarthWindFire
So we go from Black History Month to Black History Day. Stellar.
Kay
One of the good “woke” things is the “body positivity” theme among younger women. I see it with my daughter and her friends – she thirty. She’s also a PA and she brings the stuff she learns into work – there’s a recognition among (good) medical professionals that they treat overweight people poorly, don’t listen to them, attribute every symptom or issue they report to their weight, etc. so they’re trying to change so they’ll be better at their jobs and better for patients.
It’s a very positive thing! Progress.
Baud
@Princess:
Yeah, I can see criticizing it because nothing is perfect. But obsessing over it and treating it like it’s the end of the world is ridiculous.
Reminds me a little of EMAILS!
JPL
@Baud: Ron’s response was no one meant Roberto Clemente. The woke mob is just trying to embarrass him.
What a joke, the woke mob doesn’t need to embarrass him, since he does that himself.
Baud
@Geminid:
I did not know that. Thanks!
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
The whole point of that Think Of The Children period in American culture and politics was that evangelicals thought they could sell abusive control of your children to the mainstream as necessary. It worked.
p.a.
Got the call from my accountant Monday; nice tax return this year.
Went “down cellar” Tuesday… hmmmm… water? Hot water tank 😵
And so it goes…
To be honest, it was due to go. Got 12 yrs 2 mos out of it, a 12 year warranty model. And there’ll still be some return money to play with, but jeeez…
Kay
@Princess:
Can the stand up comics not hear themselves? It’s just middle aged people whining about young people. That they somehow think this is “new” or “bold” amazes me. You’re REALLY going to trot out the pronoun joke again? Don’t take out your nasty divorce on us- we had nothing to do with it.
It’s so GRASPING to me. Holding tight to what they think belongs to them, forever. They don’t get to set youth culture because they’re not young. I mean, Jesus Christ, Make SOME attempt to age gracefully.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see Sarah Sanders and her collaborating legislature have removed a number of requirements for child labor protections. The GOP, the party that loves children so much they ban books and send those kids off to work
Amir Khalid
Some news from Malaysia, not concerning a cat with an Irish name: former PM Muhyiddin Yassin was arrested today by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission pursuant to an investigation into corruption at a government programme that he started. He’s out on bail, but must attend court tomorrow to be formally charged.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The chickens aren’t going to slaughter themselves.
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well, there was a lot going on with it. A big piece was a backlash against feminism. The idea was that women should be blamed for using daycares, which were “dangerous”.
A big part of the anti woke screeds are a backlash to Me Too. They’re PISSED that some of these celebrity men were called to account for their behavior. They won’t stand for it.
Princess
You know, once upon a time the GOP would have been organized enough to poll and audience-test their anti- woke book-burning message before they went all in with it. Now they’re all so in their tiny bubble they think everyone agrees with them. Where’s Karl Rove when they need him?
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
“I never thought the leopards would eat my face.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: I thought of that when a guy at my gym complained about how awful the Super Bowl halftime show was. It obviously wasn’t designed for him, but not everything has to be designed for him. Take a break. Go to the bathroom. Eat some nachos.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Not sure how this was a response to my comment about Rhonda Sandtits, but:
As the poll shows, all that heavy MSM artillery doesn’t seem to have moved the numbers much. So yeah, too bad that those bullshit centrists have the platforms they do, but in this case it apparently hasn’t translated into influence.
After all, this whole ‘anti-woke’ crusade has been going on since at least 2020; if they haven’t gotten the normies to be anti-woke by now, it’s hard to see what more they can do.
MisterDancer
That makes sense. I think back of what makes it hard to fight against backlashes is that we don’t document these artisitic backlashes well. When something like Swing Music, or Disco, or Punk, or Heavy Metal (the latter tied closely, of course, to the Satanic Panic bullshit) gets attacked, we tend to think of it as “entertainment trends,” not as political action.
That makes the machinations less worthy of research, the documentation treated as more ephemeral. And when it’s Art that directly speaks about a marginalized group/culture, having that backlash wash away that art without even a second glance is shattering to our understanding of how our culture evolves.
hueyplong
When you’re talking about the “suppression” of Swing, it’s best not to forget that the big driver was the record companies pushing for singers over bandleaders because the bandleaders were, in a fairly organized way, trying to get paid more. Note how, from the mid-30s through the end of WWII, it’s all about bands. Then after that, it’s all about the lead singers until the rockabilly/R&R stuff gets going.
The only actual “suppression” of Swing I’m aware of is the Nazis’ hatred of it and how “rebellious” German youth were totally into it circa 1938 or so. If you watch the underrated Jojo Rabbit again (or for the first time), watch the scene in which Jojo’s mom puts on a 1938 swing record (“The Dipsy Doodle”) in that dinner scene. Kind of magical if you’re vaguely aware of the issue
ETA: An added bonus to the shift to lead singers is that they were largely female and therefore, in the context of the time, easier to push around and pay off cheaply.
Kay
@Princess:
Chris Cuomo is now interviewing Scott Adams about how they were “cancelled”. It’s pathetic. These INCREDIBLY privileged people whining incessantly about how they are being silenced.
I WISH they were silenced. In fact, they never shut up. They are the loudest and whiniest “silenced” people in the history of the world.
MazeDancer
Just want to mention that Dominion suing for $1.6 Billion is not enough.
May the punitive damages equal DNN. As in “Here’s the keys, it’s Dominion News Network now”.
Remember, there is no cap to punitive damages in NY.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s why I don’t watch much news anymore. At best, it’s boring.
JML
@Princess: unfortunately a lot of academics think they’re the only ones who see the whole picture, when in fact they have a very narrow, blinkered, and sheltered view of the world. (I have a crew of them on my campus trying to get everyone on their side over what they’re calling academic freedom and the rest of us are like “you’re asking to support a loss of millions of dollars in state aid because you won’t put course outcomes on your syllabus”) Anything that might change their status quo is the potential end of the world. They very often see the world through a rather privileged lens and get very angry when challenged. And I say this as someone who loves higher education.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
And now that they’re doing their best to keep our country safe from the undocumented immigrants who used to do it, guess what kids, it’s time for you to step up.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
They are the offocial arbiters of culture and norms, goddammit. Whatever the dumb pop culture was when that guy was 22 must remain pop culture, forever. It’s sacred.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Certainly in the mix. Republicans were outraged that Democrats thought being a rapist was somehow a disqualifier for Kavenaugh. Even the women. Their threats to do it back read like they found it impossible that anyone could honestly believe that wasn’t a universal practice and a successful young man’s god-given right.
Conservatives are fanatically into assigned gender roles, including ‘men are rapists, women are victims’. It’s an assumption in their discourse and boy, do you hear it in their arguments against trans women. (They have trouble grasping trans men exist)
MisterDancer
@hueyplong: Although I’ve not see it, Swing Kids (1993) is a whole movie about Nazi attacks on Swing.
That said, I acknowledge Swing is not an era I’ve dug into the history of, so you may be correct.
Baud
@Kay:
Rotating tag.
hueyplong
@MisterDancer: Thanks for IDing that movie. I knew it existed but forgot its name. I haven’t seen it, either.
.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: In Southern California it was about Latinos as well. Zoot suits in particular were associated with minorities. (Vz. the historical documentary movie “1941” which somewhat accurately depicts an actual riot in LA at a dance club, though apparently it happened in 1943.) I remember my father said he bought a zoot suit as a teen in Arkansas (this would have been around 1939) and his father wouldn’t let him wear it.
MazeDancer
While I loathe Mika, wanted to support Hillary, so I watched Morning Joe, yesterday, as they broadcast a discussion with Hilliary, Billie Jean King, Gloria Steinam, and Madam Zelensky..
They discussed equal pay and other issues.
Felt the same way Gloria must have: 55 years, same old shit.
Why? Men won’t do housework, so women clean up after them. That’s it. That’s the issue. Gloria mentioned it briefly.
When they figure out how to fully, completely, emotionally, and physically equalize parenting, elder care, and housework, the rest will take care of itself.
Not “I’ll mow the lawn so you do everything else”. Especially for people who don’t have lawns. Fully, emotionally equal.
In related news: 52% of women are unmarried according to WaPo.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: They fear irrelevancy.
BellyCat
@Kay: Interesting. And that was in pre-internet times. Nowadays, creating panic is trivially easy.
Chyron HR
@Frankensteinbeck:
When Kavanaugh first oozed out of his crack I saw news reports that “women voters are concerned that this could happen to their children” and assumed they meant “Someone could sexually assault my child,” and a few hours later realized it was actually “My baby boy could suffer consequences from his actions.”
Frankensteinbeck
@BellyCat:
But the panics die fast, and don’t take over the culture well. Too many alternate voices to fact check, too many people normalized to diversity and not flailing for an excuse to vent bigotry.
EDIT – @Chyron HR:
I’d like to order a barrel of brain bleach, please.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Your Andy Rooney comparison the other day was perfect. I am keeping that barbed tucked away for the next time a fellow middle-aged person complains about kids today. It will definitely sting because people our age remember rolling our eyes at Rooney’s whiny old fart shtick. ;-)
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Agree. Thing of beauty.
AM in NC
@Kay: I just responded to a comment at the NYT making this point. It was an “I’m a Democrat because of the economics, we don’t need all this woke stuff” comment, and I agreed that I’m a democrat because of economics, BUT I’m also a democrat because I believe women deserve bodily autonomy like men do, I want racial equality and recognize our often ugly history, I don’t want anyone’s religion made into laws that govern me, and I don’t want a government regulating anyone’s sexual identity. There are all important things, and the GOP is on the bad side of every single one of them.
Frankensteinbeck
@AM in NC:
“Stop paying attention to problems that don’t affect me!”
Tony Jay
@MisterDancer:
Oh, hell yeah. I saw a documentary about Disco a few years back. They pulled no punches whatsoever in describing the very obvious racism and homophobia oozing out of every pore of the DiscoSux mob.
When they held their record-burning rally and invited the Denim and Leather septs of Klan Paleskin to come trash ‘those people’, it was noted and noticeable that a hell of a lot of the records being destroyed weren’t Disco, but they all had black faces on their sleeves.
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
They sure do. A guy I’m friends with is trans. And women would certainly be uncomfortable if he went into the ladies’ restroom, which is what the Rethugs seem to want to require him to do.
Baud
@AM in NC:
Maybe there are some people who are Dems for the woke stuff and not the economics. People could firm am alliance if sorts for mutual gaIn.
anitamargarita
@MisterDancer: The HBO documentary on The Bee Gees has a bit on the Disco demolition night. It was organized by a Chicago dj and took place at a White Sox game on the same night that The Bee Gees were playing a sold out concert in LA. It was something along the lines of “bring you disco albums to get crushed on the infield.” It turned into a riot, the crowd stormed the field with albums by random Black and Brown artists. They tore the place up and think the White Sox had to forfeit.
This happened when The Bee Gees were dominating the charts, and the dj hated them especially, and spent a lot of air time mocking them.
lowtechcyclist
@AM in NC:
Preach!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What the MSM punditry and MAGAs call woke stuff and economics are inextricably linked for anyone who is not a white male
If a young woman is forced to have a baby, that she didn’t want that is going to affect her economic decisions for at least 18 years if not more
Tony Jay
That crank Trot Biden better wind his neck in with all that extremist sixth-form protest-party dogma or he’ll find himself being dismissed as unelectable by creepy ‘Labour Party’ spokeshits like Wes ‘Facepeel’ Streeting, and that would be devastating /s.
Also, too, Dana Houle sounds just like the ‘centrist adults’ over here pushing for the Nu-Lab corporate franchise opportunity to steer clear of all that ‘Woke’ stuff in pursuit of ‘culturally conservative’ votes. They’re a bunch of cringing wankers too.
Tony Jay
@anitamargarita:
That’s the documentary I saw!
Damn, but the Bee Gees knew how to make music. One of the best things about Glastonbury a few years back was seeing the expression on Barry Gibb’s face when it slowly dawned on him that the absolute ocean of teens and twenty-somethings singing along to his solo set weren’t taking the piss, they genuinely knew and loved every track.
Matt McIrvin
@JPL: DeSantis’s method in these things has been strategic vagueness–he doesn’t specifically ban the harmless books, or ban black people from voting, or any such thing, he just says that everything is going to be under strict scrutiny and you’ll go to jail if you cross the line, and he cracks down on a few people as examples. Everyone else gets the message that they need to work toward the Führer or they’ll be at great risk.
Then if there’s pushback, he can say he never said X or Y.
Layer8Problem
@Frankensteinbeck: “Why aren’t people only caring about the stuff I care about!”
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s always what they see as “men” adopting what they see as “woman” behavior that freaks them out the most. So: gay men, trans women, drag shows, men wearing skirts. The reverse is just an irrelevancy though they can work up some disapproval if you press them.
(Why? I think this is what most threatens everything they believe about masculinity being superior and precious. Someone is voluntarily choosing not to do man things? And it’s serious, not a joke? It’s an inversion of values.)
Marmot
@MisterDancer: There’s an episode of You’re Wrong About that you’d love!
lowtechcyclist
@MazeDancer:
I’d like to see that broken down by age group. At one extreme, most women in their 20s, plus the 18-19 year old cohort, are unmarried because most people in that age group are unmarried. People are waiting later to get married, which is probably a good thing.
And at the other end of the demographics, women outlive men by several years on the average. So you have a lot of widows in the 80+ age group.
James E Powell
@MisterDancer:
I recall that time quite clearly. It was definitely homophobic, racist, and anti-urban. It was part of huge backlash against everything liberating that happened in the 60s & early 70s.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: This is nothing new. The problems of white feminists with intersectionality are well documented.
So many of the suffragette leaders were as stone cold racist as the men in their lives.
cmorenc
Across-the-board increases in cap gains tax will impact the retirement savings of not just billiionaires, but reach down into the retirement investment accounts of many more middling income folks vwho saved nest eggs beyond just counting on social security in the form of stocks or mutual funds. Hopefully the proposal is targeted more carefully to avoid that.
Ken
For a moment I thought you meant the Republican committee’s proposals. Though there is a lot for Democrats to like there, at least as source material for ads. Cuts to Social Security and Medicare, for heaven’s sake — they’ve been in that bubble for so long all the oxygen is used up.
Ken
Also the kids have small fingers, perfect for polishing the insides of shell casings.
cmorenc
@Baud:
You are politically how you vote, not how you talk.
Thor Heyerdahl
And intertwined with the racism, also strong supporters of eugenics
Ken
They’ve got a solution for that. They’re installing bins at hospitals and fire stations for drop-off of unwanted babies.
James E Powell
@AM in NC:
My “I’m an independent” tote-bagger friends ask me, “Why are you a Democrat?” I tell them it’s because I am not an asshole.
anitamargarita
@Tony Jay: They were really good, and for a long time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see Mitch McConnell was hospitalized after a fall.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “Go to the bathroom. Eat some nachos.”
At the same time, preferably… :)
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I have thoughts and prayers about this, none Mitch would like.
schrodingers_cat
@Thor Heyerdahl: Yeah. I organize programs for our local woman’s club. And for one of the programs during the hundredth anniversary of women getting the right to vote I was looking for a poem/inspirational passage written by the one of the leading suffragettes and it was really hard to find a suffragette who was not a reactionary racist.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Oklahoma. The measure passed 35-10. This is obviously disgusting all the way around, but I couldn’t help thinking that the romance novelists are gonna be seriously ticked
schrodingers_cat
@Ken: They are also bringing child labor back. Its like being in a Dickens novel.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@schrodingers_cat: When I was at Iowa State, there was a controversy over a building named Catt Hall, after Carrie Chapman Catt, an activist for women’s suffrage. She was clearly racist, so how to balance the good work on suffrage against the harm of her racism? As it happened, the people donating the money to renovate the building wanted it named after Catt, and money speaks loudly, so it stayed Catt Hall.
hueyplong
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Out of a window?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@hueyplong: Not that the report says!
Soprano2
@Kay: What’s the most hilarious about it is that they act like they’re being forced to change the way they talk and think. No one is forcing them to do anything – they’re being presented with a choice! They act like someone correcting or criticizing them is the absolute end of the world. That’s what it’s really about, someone who they think is beneath them (a woman or non-white person, or someone who’s not straight) told them they are doing something wrong, and they absolutely can’t get over it.
NotMax
@Ken
Also too.
:)
delphinium
Succinct and on point.
delphinium
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Also the folks who read bibles, cause those would fall into this category.
SW
Democrats and other human being aught to go on the offensive over “WOKE”. I think they have just assumed it is an effective pejorative. This poll shows that most people would react positively to its defense. “WOKE means “self aware”. By blindly attacking the concept of being woke you are revealing yourself as someone without self-awareness.
Skepticat
I doubt the president’s tax goals will be realized, but we can hope. Long ago—I think it was in the early ’60s—my father paid a tax rate of something like 85 percent, IIRC. I can guarantee you he was not a billionaire. However, though he was a hidebound Republican, he didn’t whine about it. When I had my own business, he always told me I should be happy to pay taxes because it meant I was making money. I never was all that enthused, but now I’m considerably less than happy probably to be paying more on my pittance than some very wealthy people are on their vast fortunes.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
True tale. Very first book one grandmother read after learning to read English later in life was Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: I wonder if Lady Chatterley would be banned. Or Ulysses.
kalakal
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Well there goes the Bible & Shakespeare
narya
@MazeDancer: Yup. I’ve lived alone for the vast majority of my adult life. On one hand, I somewhat regret not having had children, but I also knew that I had no desire to be a single parent (emotionally speaking). I knew it would engender nothing but anger to have a co-parent who didn’t do his share without me organizing everything and telling him what to do. Current partner (17 years and counting. . .) live separately, and we often talk about how nice that is. There are downsides–it’s twice as expensive–but there are a lot of upsides, too.
MisterDancer
I don’t need someone defending woke.It’s just a work, and the Black folx they stole it from? We gotta lotta words. :)
Instead: I need someone ensuring that books and discussions on Being Gay, on Being Trans, on the actual history of Black folx don’t get pulled from schools. That Women be made fully First Class citizens, and to point out where that isn’t the case, today.
I need someone advocating for people to get the right Repoductive Care, and point out how laws that remove Abortion Rights do so much more harm, to so many.
We need to remember that real people, right now, are being hurt and killed by the “war on woke.” And we need to bring that pain to the forefront of the discussion, to stop allowing the GOP and their haters-on to hide before performative lies and shifty rhetoric.
You don’t fight a bullshit war, by learning into the bullshit framing.
NotMax
@NotMax
Didn’t intend to convey the impression she was illiterate prior to that. She was one smart cookie, having been the first female in her village in what was then a part of Poland to go all the way through and graduate high school shortly after the turn of the 20th century.
MisterDancer
YES. Book bans are a kind of endorphin jolt, a cheap way to show you’re part of a tribe. It’s why we see them used, over and again, when Authoritarian regimes try to get their claws into a society — it’s easy to “outsource” the hate to petty fuckers who will just ban more and more as time goes on.
Bex
The Guardian (I know) says Mitch tripped and fractured his shoulder.
BC in Illinois
@MisterDancer: @hueyplong:
On “Swing Kids” (1993). I *have* seen the movie, and I recommend it highly. It may have been part of what Wikipedia (from which all knowledge flows) calls the “Swing Revival” of 1989 to the mid-to-late ’90s.
ETA: In the movie, the slogan of the rebellious (anti-Nazi) German kids was ” Swing Heil ! ”
It was during this time that I went to a concert at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale with my son and daughter, to see a concert of the Brian Setzer Orchestra, opening for Bob Dylan. [ !!! ] This was notable for two pieces of social education.
— I told my [high-school-age] son not to make any further comments about what somebody nearby was smoking.
— I learned [in my 50s] that when you buy tickets at a college concert event for “floor seating,” that means you will be *standing* for the entire concert.
AM in NC
@Frankensteinbeck: Bingo!
Timill
@kalakal: Shipped off to the Desert Island, no doubt…
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The fundamental value is “I get to tell YOU what to do, but YOU don’t get to tell ME what to do.” Violate that ordering of priorities and they figure it’ll be the guillotine next.
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: There’s a 1619 Project episode on Black Music that briefly covers the backlash to disco (and later hip-hop/rap) in exactly that way.
It is also briefly covered in one of the episodes of Fight The Power, the PBS documentary on hip hop, which was, imo, good but could’ve been much better if had been longer and went into greater detail and included way more artists. Surprisingly the series didn’t even mention Kanye (who no matter how we all feel about him, was a huge part of the genre), only showed Beyonce in passing (or in reference to Jay Z), gave MeganTheeStallion/CardiB/Nikki about two nano-seconds and completely ignored acts like Outkast. Even the focus on Kendrick was just a minute or two about the cultural importance of “All Right” (with that being the only lyric you actually get to hear). Even as someone who only has a passing knowledge of hip hop/rap, it seems to me like EP Chuck D made very some strange choices.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Not just college. My wife and I went to an indoor venue to hear a performer she really likes whose demographic looked mostly older than college-aged. After being rousted enough times from sitting even for a minute on those all-so-tempting chairs, and being unwilling to pay the price to legally sit in the chairs, we left during the main event before his first set was over.
(Wasn’t just the standing. We kind of liked the warm-up acts better than the headliner. Somehow his live show wasn’t all that great. But the standing definitely helped us make our decision.)
Steve in the ATL
@MisterDancer: next you’re going to tell us that the Village People were gay.
@Tony Jay: I watched Disco Demolition night on tv at our cottage in Michigan (hi, Kay!). We normally wouldn’t watch a White Sox game but the tv out in the sticks couldn’t pick up the Cubs.
TerryC
@SW: If you’re not WOKE then you’re aSleeple.
dnfree
@Kay: Different topic, but related, we have a daughter in her 40s who is a teacher, and her training was seemingly entirely different from that of older teachers. I remember going to school conferences and some (never all) of the teachers just whining about “kids these days”, too much TV, etc.
Our daughter and many peers are laser-focused on where kids are and what they need to learn. Their job is to teach the kids they have in their classrooms, not the kids they wish they had.
Soprano2
@Kay: This is one of the things Maher particularly hates. He has a thing about fat people, especially fat women. He thinks most of the Covid deaths were caused by people already being unhealthy.
Tony Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
Two for one offer, White Sox + White Riot.
MisterDancer
Actually, not all the OG Village People were gay:
Actual sexual orientation aside, it was certainly a group coming from the gay subculture, and helping to mainstream it.
Kathleen
@Geminid: And the crusaders against Elvis, Bill Haley, and early white rock and roll artists. I believe racism underlies each and every one of these “protests”, including Disco. Amazing how the fascists keep repeating the same tired racist tropes (Family Values, etc.) decade after decade, judging from film clips from the 50’s I’ve seen where Elvis was berated.
Uncle Cosmo
And woke up in the hospital bed to find a note c&p’d together from words in old Nooseweak deadtree editions to the effect that
Soprano2
@Kay: I think if you substitute the word “criticized” for “cancelled” you can see the true issue in their minds. Someone criticized them oh the horror!!
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I bet that’ll be challenged on First Amendment grounds.
SFAW
In “The Republican Study Committee Plan,” I notice that they’re proposing a 60 percent cut in “Other mandatory spending.” The sub-heading says that covers “Food assistance, farm subsidies, military retirement and anti-poverty programs.”
Gee, I wonder which ones they’ll go after first.
topclimber
@SFAW: Buying Eggo waffles yesterday I saw they have a program where you can get $5 coupon to help feed a kid by buying $5 worth of product.
Being on autopilot I grabbed the goods because charity that does not cost me anything is my favorite kind. Ten seconds later I said to myself: “This is nuts. This is not how we should be feeding hungry kids.”
Thor Heyerdahl
@schrodingers_cat: I remember reading about the Canadian Famous Five suffragists. Some of them were stone cold racists.
japa21
@MisterDancer:
Interestingly, that choice of words shows a definite bias, like surprised that the straight would support the gay?
gvg
@Kay: I have to point out that these days I don’t see a division between healthcare, civil rights, and women’s issues. And economics is really mixed into all of them too with some of it’s own mix that isn’t quite those but a lot of economics is weaponized around the other issues too. Nobody can keep them apart these days though some like to pretend they aren’t the same.
Paul in KY
@Baud: I had never thought of that. Of course, you had…
Paul in KY
@Kay: Maybe she’s getting paid to fall for it?
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Wish I’d been there for that one, Tony. Always wanted to do Glastonbury.
Paul in KY
@SW: I’m the most woking woke who ever woked the woke, MAGA choad loser. How’s that?
Paul in KY
@Skepticat: Your father was a smart man: You should be glad to pay taxes, means you are making money. That is the best way of looking at it, IMO.
Paul in KY
@MisterDancer: ‘Woke’ should not be a pejorative. It should be celebrated. I see your point though, about a whole lot more pressing matters than this term.
Paul in KY
@BC in Illinois: Only if you want to actually see the set. You could sit down & just listen to it :-)
kalakal
@Timill: Well played 😀
dww44
@Betty Cracker: what post was it in? I missed it.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Geminid: So I checked out Google to back up my assertion about swing music, and struck out. I don’t think I dreamed it, but right now I have to rate the assertion as “questionable.”
Splitting Image
@Geminid:
I don’t think you dreamt it, but the backlash was a little earlier and more specifically against “jazz”. I believe that ragtime also had its opponents, and for the same reason. Maybe the word “swing” got appropriated quickly enough by white musicians that the backlash didn’t take as strong a root.
Library of Congress research guide
Geminid
@Splitting Image: I thought I read something describing a specific decision by radio executives to exclude music that was bringing young White and Black people together at Southern California venues, and to play more innocuous music. But I cannot track it down. I found plenty of other explanations for the decline of Swing music, though.
The growth of Jazz as widely popular music in the 1930s represented an unusual irruption of Black culture into the broader, White dominated society. And the late 1940s and the 1950s were reactionary in areas of politics, society and culture. So I could see radio executives deciding collectively to replace popular jazz with less threatening, “whiter” music. I cannot find reporting on this though, but now I’m curious and will keep looking.
SW
The only thing worse than being self aware is being empathetic.