Jonathan Chait, who I do not support, is right to defend Bethany Mandel, who I do not support, for faltering under the brutally tough questioning of drone-loving M$DNC shitlib Briahna Joy Gray.
by Glenn Greenwald
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) March 15, 2023
It’s all about performance for these chickenshites. Either they’ll shout you down with a Gish gallop of lies and lurid phantasies, or they’ll whine bitterly about how meeeaaann you are (and probably use deceptively edited clips to fundraise from their followers).
Senator Sanders’ former press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, currently making what I’m told is a nice living from her own podcast, invited preeminent right-wing victimology performer Bethany Mandel to ‘discuss’ Mandel’s new book on wokeness. Despite her recent research, when pressed on-air, Mandel proved incapable of defining wokeness… because she knew better than to say ‘Anything that makes me uncomfortable, especially anything that suggests Those People might hold opinions at odds with the revered shibboleths of my deeply conservative ideology’, and she hadn’t bothered to prepare anything less offensive to normie book-buyers.
I was discussing this clip with Kay in the comments last night:
I’ve written posts about Bethany Mandel before; she’s the ‘point person’ for testing the latest terrible right-wing ideas before her bigger-megaphone comrades start using them. If they flop (she was responsible for the ‘If it means I can take my kids to the park, call me a grandma-killer’ tweet at the start of lockdowns in 2020), she can take a year or two off, because her husband is a high-dollar think tank official and she’s technically ‘a full-time, stay-at-home mommy’.
For the same reason, anyone who contradicts her wildly dishonest narratives… is being mean to a mother, which just goes to show all lie-berals hate kids, also the flag and probably apple pie.
My personal suspicion, cuz I’m a Cynic, is that BrieBrie’s ‘takedown’ has already been snipped & circulated by the right-wing wurlitzer as an example of how those nasty leftist colored ladies will attack decent God-fearing conservatives…
Sure enough, just a few hours later:
Including a newborn! Brutally attacking the mother of a newborn! Oh, the inhumanity!
“she’s not an idiot”: pic.twitter.com/1SizQUgszy
— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) March 15, 2023
She’s not an idiot, she’s just a self-centered monster. But a very well-compensated monster, so who are we to judge her?
Sometimes when people say "woke" they mean "liberals being self-righteous and vicious about trivial things" and sometimes they mean "integration," or "civil rights laws" or "black people on television" and it's convenient not to have to explain what you actually mean.
— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) March 15, 2023
schrodingers_cat
Miss the days when DougJ used to post here. Also too, if argue with a professional wingnut it is not to persuade him but people in his audience open to persuasion.
Baud
I’m out of the media loop. How does Mandel end up on Gray’s program in the first place?
schrodingers_cat
Woke = aware and considerate
Not woke = Cruel and ignorant.
These RWNJs and sometimes white tankie bros want to be cruel and ignorant but don’t want to be called on it.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Horseshoe. Red roses think that they have more in common with Red hats rather than Ds. This is the pet theory of many in the BS orbit. It has no basis in reality but that doesn’t matter much to ideologues.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I didn’t listen to this podcast. Did they talk about hating Dems too?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Neither did I. Cheez Cheez is always hating on Ds, check her Twitter timeline. So its an educated guess.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I prefer my Twitter screened by Anne Laurie.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Good choice, I have Bree Bree blocked since 2020.
UncleEbeneezer
I refuse to cheer for Brie Brie. You can’t make me.
Frankensteinbeck
The ‘trivial things’ are all variations of tolerance of diversity. Serwer is exactly right that ‘woke’ lets them use a word they think sounds insulting and not have to say it’s opposition to bigotry they hate. Admitting they are opposed to opposing bigotry sounds like a weak position even in their ears.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Nothing new. They used to use “family values” to mean “hating gay people.”
UncleEbeneezer
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Yep. It’s ‘family values’ plus ‘let’s go Brandon’. ‘Woke’ is a silly sounding word, so they get their elementary school bully laugh. It’s so… pathetic.
pat
I saw some of that ..MSNBC?
How on earth can you write an entire “book” about WOKE and not be able to define it??
Jeez. Here’s my definition: If you are “woke” you are accepting of others.
Woke= acceptance.
Raoul Paste
@schrodingers_cat: Succinct and well put
Baud
Out: Woke
In: Wakey-wakey!
pat
@schrodingers_cat:
That too.
Frankensteinbeck
@pat:
That’s why they can’t define it. It’s not that they don’t know what it means. Defining it out loud makes it clear they’re asshole bigots.
Anoniminous
“Woke” implies rectifying historic and current wrongs which implies change and all change is for the worse to Right Wing Authoritarians.
UncleEbeneezer
@Frankensteinbeck: Every term of derision they choose, you can bet your house that it actually refers to: any/all effort to make life better for those people (Black people, Women, LGBTQ, Immigrants etc.)
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: As I’ve said, democrats and republicans have one thing in common: republicans hate democrats, and so do democrats.
pat
@Frankensteinbeck:
yep.
different-church-lady
Whom among us has not written an entire book about a subject one cannot define?
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Not wrong in general, but I don’t think Gray consideres herself a Democrat.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Are you counting autobiographies?
Frankensteinbeck
@different-church-lady:
That’s pretty much what I do for a living. Good? Bad? Hero? Villain? Life? Humanity? Love? Adulthood? The right thing to do? Shit’s complicated, man. Here’s a bunch of edge case examples, good luck.
different-church-lady
@Baud: only the ones you write about yourself.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: You and me both. Even a broken clock..
Shalimar
Ok, how come when I follow a link to Twitter, most of the other tweets it thinks I will be interested in are porn? I don’t follow anyone making porn or look at porn anywhere in at least several years.
pat
@different-church-lady:
@different-church-lady:
sorry for the double reply. I was planning to diagram that sentence and then thought oh what the heck.
Jeez then I lost my first reply: It’s WHO not WHOM.
different-church-lady
@pat: ALL INTERNET TRADITIONS, BUSTER!
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Inscrutable: A Memoir by Baud.
Baud
@Shalimar:
Elon has to make money somehow.
Old Man Shadow
It’s not sometimes, Dude. It’s all of the time.
These folks have a real hard-on for the 1600’s when the “world” was white, conservative Christian, more authoritarian, and male. They have no love for civil rights, democracy, or America as it is. They yearn for a “pure” America where rich, white, male aristocrats run society and are catered to by everyone: politics, culture, entertainment, etc.
UncleEbeneezer
Here is a really excellent interview with Michelle Nickerson, author of Mothers Of Conservatism:
“which explores the lives and political activism of conservative women in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike many other conversations on the show, this one is less about intellectuals and ideas than it is about social history—a description of how, as Nickerson puts it, housewife activists worked to “protect the nation from aliens, internationalism, and power-hungry bureaucrats in Washington.” Topics include: the Great Depression and the rise of “housewife populism,” conservative bookstores and “Americanism” centers run by women, the networks of activism that conservative women built and deployed, fierce battles over public education, the menace of psychiatry and the social sciences in shaping education policy, and more.”
My interest is mainly because they discuss The Pasadena Affair and how that became the right-wing template for these school fights over curriculum that we are still seeing today and because I want to possibly read the book.
Dangerman
Arizona goes down. SC should go down. This is a lovely Round of 64.
eversor
Woke is not a thing in reality. It’s just random slang from the past packaged up and resold as whatever.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Woke is the new secularists.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Ever since I saw that weird video Briahnn Joy Gray made, where she wobbled around gloating “That’s right, I voted for Jill fu*king Stein,” I call her Cray-Cray.
UncleEbeneezer
@Shalimar: Do you have an account? Or are you viewing it without an account? I use my Indivisible group’s Twitter account that someone else set up before I joined and I think she set the controls very tight so I never see p*rn suggestions, but I’ve heard from others that there’s tons of it on Twitter. Most people like p*rn, even though they won’t admit it, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Elon’s Freeze Peach Twitter now just shovels dirty links towards anyone who doesn’t have barriers already set up to block them.
Geminid
Marcy Wheeler sure had fun dragging Glem Greenwalt through a dozen tweets. She likes to call him Area Sub Stacker, but after a couple entries she referred to him by the acronym “ASS.”
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: It fits!
chopper
wow, bethany, briahna was saying mean things about parents? hoo boy, it must really suck to have people demean your identity and your lifestyle i wonder what it must be like
Joseph Patrick Lurker
No, Bethany Mandel is an idiot and her excuse that she was rattled by Briahna Joy Gray’s hot mic comments is absolute bullshit. Briahna Joy Gray is a far better interviewer and has a much more pleasant personality than her Hill Rising predecessor Krystal Ball who is deeply repulsive.
Dan B
OT but about a wingnut. Milo Yiannopolis just posted the most misogynistic rant I’ve ever read. He was “studying” women per his therapist’s suggestion and decided that they want to kill you a couple days each month and he blamed his mother for making him gay. And those were just a couple of highlights. JoeMyGod blog has it if you want to punish yourself.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Geminid:
There are few things more pleasing than seeing Marcy Wheeler wipe the floor with that insufferable asshole Glenn Greenwald.
Baud
@Dan B:
So you’re saying he’s not woke.
narya
@Baud: Or wake-and-bake, at least going by the clouds through which I walk some mornings . . .
Kay
The “natalist” thing on the Right is creepy and they’re going to foist it on all women- don’t say I didn’t warn you. Women who don’t have children are the next Enemies of America.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s like the Chinese new year. They just cycle through different Enemies rather than animals.
Dan B
@Baud: You got that! He needs thorazine as well.
Anoniminous
@Dan B:
THANK YOU!
I was looking for his blog earlier today and simply couldn’t pull the name out of memory.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dan B:
Wow. That was an experience. The text was bad enough. The subtext that he has no concept of a romantic relationship that involves emotional bonds or equality was even worse.
different-church-lady
@Dan B: let’s be fair: women probably do want to kill him at least a few days a month.
different-church-lady
Someone ought to also ask them to define the opposite of woke.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: The opposite is “Volk.”
As in “They’re Woke, and We’re Volk.”
Sure Lurkalot
After getting trolled on Twitter, Bethany came up with this definition:
ANGRY MOB, I’M MOTHER OF SIX VICTIM OF AN ANGRY MOB CRAMMING COURTESY AND CIVILITY DOWN MY THROAT!
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
Pfft. All our mobs are happy and gay.
Llelldorin
@Baud: Well, they had to pretend it had always meant only “gay people” after using it to mean “working mothers” became utterly radioactive.
Kay
Shalimar
@UncleEbeneezer: I do have a Twitter account and am logged in, but I have tweeted maybe 5 times total and go weeks without getting bored enough to look at the people I follow.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We just watched Ari Melber, who reported on a proposed Florida textbook that told the story of Rosa Parks without mentioning her race. She was just a woman who was told to move to a different bus seat and didn’t want to. I have trouble taking this in. It’s so blatantly racist. Also stupid. Now I’m depressed.
BlueGuitarist
Saw today a large sign – “Trump: the Great Awakening”
wondered for a moment if these trumpers were
waking up to cognitive dissonance.
But instead of thinking about
what goes on in their minds,
thought of “you may be awoken” in
The Beatles “And your bird can sing,”
the contagious giggling version
https://youtu.be/bf22VR71ags
the guitar parts and the sound of The Beatles.
https://youtu.be/9g2eU9YGwWQ
UncleEbeneezer
@Sure Lurkalot: What US institution wasn’t built around the discrimination, exploitation, subjugation of people who were Black, Indigenous, Women, Poor, Immigrants etc? I can’t think of any.
Brachiator
@UncleEbeneezer:
I remember watching some of the documentary film footage of cigar-chomping housewives carrying a cross and a statue of the Baby Jesus as they engaged in vicious hand-to-hand combat with their enemies during the Battle of Van Nuys Blvd.
Their opponents would toss flaming copies of Dr Spock’s “Baby and Child Care” over the trenches.
Jeffro
I highly recommend Jason Stanley’s “How Fascism Works” and think that reporters & commentators should keep it handy at all times.
Gray, for instance, could have just pulled it out and said to Mandel, “Oh…so you need to brush up on your #2” for the tv appearance and then just responded “See, here’s some serious #6!” to Mandel’s tweet.
(Propaganda techniques and victimhood, respectively)
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
They identified her as a woman? Isn’t that illegal?
Dan B
@different-church-lady: Reportedly GOP women don’t want to marry ex-gays. Who knew?
Murder them… hmmm…
Baud
@Brachiator:
“The story about how white men defeated woke segregation.”
Sherparick
@UncleEbeneezer: It was completely unintentional in my opinion. Brie thought she was giving Bethany a softball in my opinion. And she whiffed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator: Probably.
This is so 1984
Anne Laurie
I read it; it’s just marketing. There isn’t a phrase in Milo’s ‘rant’ that hasn’t been circulating on ‘mens rights / men going their own way’ forums since blogs were state-of-the-art social media. Milo is no more likely to give up being gay than I am to give up eating dark chocolate, but publicly complaining about Ick, women!!! will (he believes) make his ongoing life-grift more attractive to resentful straight men looking for affirmation. See, even the queers can’t stand how chicks act!
It’s a pretty desperate new low, even for Milo, but it’s not as though he’s got the capacity to come up with anything original.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
My OT rant for the benefit of my lawyer brethren here at the Juice:
After over 30 years of lawyering, I represent a nice 75 year old woman whose physically frail and tiny 90-something mother had contracted an independent home caregiver a few months before she died. The caregiver (and I use the word loosely) was generally troublemaking, rooted through mail, and stopped working. Several months later and (after the death of the patient) the caregiver claimed that the immobilized old woman had bumped her leg with her transport chair a few days before the caregiver stopped coming over. The caregiver opened a comp claim through a lawyer I like a lot, and of course, there was no WC coverage.
First lawyer pulls the ripcord, and the case is dismissed.
The caregiver then goes out and finds an old shitbag shyster who has a whore of an ”expert”. Reopens the case. I’m pissed, but make it work – my client is cooperative with info, you name it. I’m invariably thoughtful on deposition dates and expansions/extensions when needed.
Then we come to the stuff surrounding now.
A deposition of my expert was set by Claimant’s lawyer unilaterally for a date which crashed into my own physical therapy for the end of January. I grumpily rearranged my PT, but that date fell apart due to Claimant’s lawyer having COVID the day before, which I have no problem with. He next tries – unilaterally – to set it for 4 pm on Valentine’s Day. I said “you’re kidding – I’m not doing a doc depo until 6-6:30 when I have dinner plans”.
I hear nothing despite multiple emails about rescheduling and assume that he’s decided to save his money after I’d sent over the records his client’s lengthy history with pain management that had been omitted by his reopening filing.
This past Monday afternoon (3/13) I get an email from a court reporter with a zoom link for my expert’s depo set for 4 pm on 3/14. I send a “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me” email to shitbag shyster; he responds by telling me that it was arranged by his staff with my staff. I point out in reply that I haven’t had a dedicated assistant since the start of COVID and I’m the only person who has ever done my scheduling and opened mail, and that no notice of deposition was efiled, mailed or present in the Worker’s Comp system.
Got crickets.
Yesterday, I got a “Motion to Consolidate” – he’d had her file another claim after I’d objected to (and gotten a favorable ruling denying) his request to join the closed estate to the original claim. The Workers Comp system doesn’t allow you to see a claim until it has been served and a party opts in – I assumed it was about a claim on the closed estate, and noticed that assface STILL hadn’t made any move to reopen the estate to make a claim. I emailed and asked him to copy me on the new 101 filing; crickets. I finally got him on the phone, and in a really gross conversation, he was defensive about the absence of notice on the deposition, acted like I was disagreeable to expect courtesy on calendar coordination, and then in the most stunning part of all, refused to send me the revised 101 because “he did what he was supposed to, and that I have to take that up with the people at Workers Comp” even though he filed it against a dead person at an address that has been sold. He even said that I’m clearly not reasonable to work with on his arbitrarily picked dates.
I told him that I was going to have to try and forget that the conversation had ever happened, but that it was doubtful. Frankly, I’d be sitting in jail on an assault charge if he was in the same room with me at that point.
Anyway, thanks for listening. I have got to get out of this fucking business just so I don’t have to beat someone into a coma for my own sanity.
Roger Moore
@pat:
Jonah Goldberg wrote a whole book about “Liberal Fascism”, and he got tripped up when someone brought up Benito Mussolini. The literal founder of the Fascist party, and Doughy Pantload couldn’t figure out why someone might want to call him a fascist.
Princess
@Sure Lurkalot: This is actually a perfect definition of the White Supremacists and Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville those years ago and murdered Heather Heyer. Way to project, Bethany.
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
It’s amazing to me that these supposed “Leftist populists” who are keening and moaning about the “working class” ignore state level Democrats and state law. Michigan Democrats repealed Right to Work! One would think “Leftists” would notice that. There’s like this whole world of actual labor news and actual populist economics that tv and internet Leftists are just not part of. It’s bizarre, really. They’re oddly irrelevant to real world activism and organizing and there’s no real interest on their part! They NEVER discuss any of these things. They’re terrible advocates.
Roger Moore
@Shalimar:
The links aren’t about what it thinks you will be interested in; they’re about what Twitter wants you to pay attention to. They want to pull you in. If they know a lot about you, they’ll be able to target better, but I guess if they don’t know much about you they fall back on sex.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
It’s likely just “not good enough” to them or something. The people you’re talking about probably want to abolish capitalism itself. It’s easier to cosplay then do actual hard work in the real world
frosty
@Baud: The only Twitter I see is from AL and Adam. I like having it curated!
Roger Moore
@Sure Lurkalot:
I don’t agree with those beliefs 100%, but they’re a lot closer to the truth than the belief our society doesn’t discriminate at all.
HumboldtBlue
Here is a writer for Slate giving Mandel all the rope she heeds to hang herself.
(It is absolutely fucking NOT more revealing listening to this silly twit)
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
IANAL, and far be it from me to offer advice to act on, but the thought occurs to me that perhaps he’s trying to play you, get you to make a mistake out of anger. Of course, it may be he’s just a jerk.
You have a sympathetic audience here. Good luck.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Well, I mean if you put them in charge of the change…
Mai Naem mobile
Completely OT but how come they haven’t had any currency bills with Janet Yellen’s signature yet? Have the proofs even been done? I am excited to stop seeing my bills with Munchkin’s signature and seeing Yellen’s instead.
Scout211
@Mai Naem mobile: It happened at the end of last year.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Scout211: But will they be there to sign the first woman of color featured on the face of a bill?
Sure Lurkalot
@Roger Moore:
I take issue with “radical belief system suggesting” because there are accessible and plentiful historical records. I take issue that anyone claims that “ALL disparity is a result of that discrimination” because that’s patent bullshit.
She’s a lazy hack and it’s tiring that there’s seemingly limitless space for her ridiculous opinions and whining. I would think 6 kids would keep you busy.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
That’s not eating the rich. Their usual position is that the only legitimate solution is to destroy rich people, who are the evil enemy and source of all problems. Anything less means you’re distracting from the real problem and probably on the side of the rich.
Lapassionara
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: all I can say is you are doing the right thing for your client, and that is the best thing any lawyer can do.
Balconesfault
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: the “hot mic” take sounds like a flat out lie, doesn’t it?
Barbara
@HumboldtBlue: That interview was wild. Word salad and deflection and changing the subject from start to finish. Also lots of admitted assumptions because she hasn’t actually verified her complaints — like Scholastic books almost certainly say bad things about Churchill in the nature of information that is inappropriate for children to hear about. But she hasn’t actually read any herself.
Shalimar
@Roger Moore: I get that, and get that I’m not there much, but I did go to the trouble 4-5 years ago of following more than 100 accounts and I add another one every few months. Mostly liberal politics and reporters, with some rpg and board games, a few comic writers, and a few musicians. It isn’t everthing I like, but should be plenty to at least offer me tweets I like more than random porn.
C Stars
@Baud: why does this post make me think about bellybuttons?
NotMax
@C Stars
Member of the Navel Reserve?
:)
eclare
Watching EEAAO. So far loving it.
persistentillusion
@HumboldtBlue: How does she remember to breathe, being that stupid?
Old School
@eclare: Then you should enjoy the rest. It seems like the type of film where you know pretty early whether it’ll be for you or not.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: There is a resentful, accelerationist strain within what some people call the “Dirtbag Left.” They see a successful liberal Democratic party as blocking their own path to power. That brings the “horseshoe” dynamic into play; their posture towards the illiberal Rght is, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
These guys- and they seem to be mostly guys- are somewhat vague about the damage the illiberal Right would do if it gained power.. I guess they figure that the worse matters get, the more quickly “the Masses” will sweep them into power.
Barbara
@Old School: Most critics seem to like it but a few I trust really didn’t, although they praised individual performances.
eversor
@Frankensteinbeck:
That’s quasi true though. Case in point I’m in NOVA and while most people here are upper middle class or small rich they are vastly more vicious than the rich on economic issues. Sure they are social liberals. But the moment you propose something that hits them and works for the basic (sub 250k per person) middle class or the working class let alone might let those working class kids have a shot at a future vs their kids they will turner harder right than David Duke and the Koch brothers. They just will not allow it. Ever. This VA’s blue base. It’s all these assholes. Who are all former Republican types but don’t like the Jesus Brigade now. But they will take that over giving up their postion. They earned it! They went to college. A good college not a joke one where you should have to flip burgers.
For any sort of working economic solution the rich do have to be eaten, so does the upper middle class.
We have hit the point that everyone making six figures or higher (and I’m in this range) gets the ox gored and gored hard and their kids are stripped of every advantage and are clobbered by taxes or we get a French Revolution by the Religious Right and they control life. Since we will not accept the end of meritocracy bring on the right wing death squads. People have their heads in the sand over this. But the civil war has started, it’s just slow rolling.
Barbara
@Geminid: Or maybe they don’t feel vulnerable because the right is unlikely to take away their rights.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Geminid: “… sweep them into power.” As if. And what would they do then? I seem to recall a cartoon of Obama just inaugurated, scribbling a note to himself, “we are so f***ed!”
Barbara
@eversor: Don’t any of these people have college age kids?
different-church-lady
@Sure Lurkalot:
GAME SHOW BUZZER — Oh I’m so sorry, that’s not correct.
MisterForkbeard
@Roger Moore: You can make it true by changing two words:
An evident belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that much disparity is a result of that discrimination
different-church-lady
@Mai Naem mobile:
Because the damn millennials killed physical money with their creepy little phones is why.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
The notion that the True Left® has any path to power in United States is laughable. In fact, it doesn’t even rise to the level of laughable.
Captain C
@Kay: I think in at least some cases they’re more interested in cosplaying that they’re the heroes rather than doing the work and in learning what and who is actually out there.
JaySinWA
Most of the definitions of Woke that I have seen are about situational awareness. The “talk” and general understanding of how the world works. Anti-woke seems to be an ignorance is bliss arguement.
Poe Larity
Oh, sometimes a techie knocks it out of the ballpark:
https://svbhallofshame.wordpress.com
RaflW
It’s too bad mom of a newborn Bethany Mendacious couldn’t take maternity leave. What a cruel publishing company to just force her to do a video interview.
Mai Naem mobile
@Scout211: that is fucking awesome. I had no idea the treasurer was a Native American. I can’t wait to see the RWingers burning their woke dollar bills.
Kay
Here’s a longer interview with Mandel where she isn’t rattled and answers all the questions. It’s just as bad as when she can;t answer them.
Example: the book she wrote is called “Stolen Youth” and it’s about how woke liberals enlist children in culture wars, using books. But when she’s presented with the fact that there are whole series of childrens books that glorify conservative leaders (Rush Limbaugh), trash public schools, rewrite history to remove the icky parts, and on and on and asked whether she objects to THIS, we find she does not. She approves of GOP culture warring. It’s just liberals and liberalism she opposes.
Like all of the warriors against woke, it’s a mess. There’s no coherent or consistent theory at all. Woke is whatever they disagree with.
Kay
She complains that there is no childrens book about Winston Churchill. This is proof of The Woke. Except she’s wrong, there is a childrens book about Winston Churchill. Presented with this, she invents an entire set of objections to the book about Winston Churchill – she hasn’t read the book, didn’t even know it existed until she was told, but that doesn’t stop her from describing an imaginary “woke” book:
Again- the Scholastic childrens book on Churchill exists so she doesn’t have to “trust” anything. She could read it. But she has to pretend it doesn’t exist and if it exists (it does) she has to invent what’s in it in order to make her OWN book make sense- because, remember, HER book says liberals are brainwashing children thru books.
HumboldtBlue
It’s very rare to see this blog come to a standstill. From my experience, it’s active pretty much 24 hours a day. I mean, it’s not even midnight PST and youse are already in bed.
It’s March Madness, so this is fun.
Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman to earn the Nobel Prize in literature is featured on the newest Forever stamp from the United States Postal Service.
Chris Johnson
@Geminid: No, there’s a number of women as well. They’re not really Left because imperialist doesn’t count as left: they’re just tankies. They’re working for Putin, sometimes quite literally as in Caleb Maupin the spanky tankie.
Basically the litmus test is Ukraine. If they’re on the side of Putin and running his talking points, they’re dirtbag left meaning not really Left, just Russia in a mask.
Paul in KY
@Kay: She’s just a right wing shill. A marketer of their worldview.