Zack Beauchamp at Vox had no intention of reviewing hard-right impresario Christopher Rufo’s new book, the operatically titled “America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.” Familiar with Rufo’s work and public persona, Beauchamp had correctly concluded Rufo is a dishonest political hack.
But when Rufo reached out to offer an advance copy of the book and on-the-record interview, Beauchamp agreed. Rufo seems to want to be taken seriously as an intellectual and to gain wider exposure for his polemics, which is probably why he engages with people on the left sometimes. But he can’t resist overt political stunts.
For example, Rufo strutted alongside Ron DeSantis in smug conqueror mode as they triumphantly marched into tiny New College of Florida. The school, which was previously known as an affordable and welcoming place where students — including free-thinkers and queer people — could achieve academic excellence. It is now rapidly devolving into a second-rate, edu-grift dump for evangelical jocks and anti-education political operatives turned highly-paid administrators.
Unsurprisingly, Beauchamp found that Rufo’s latest book is riddled with falsehoods and unsupported assertions and that Rufo is a dishonest hack in person too. A few excerpts from Beauchamp’s piece:
(Rufo claims) government “no longer exists to secure natural rights, but to achieve ‘social justice.’” Even business “no longer exists to maximize profit, but to manage ‘diversity and inclusion.’”
This last line, in particular, struck me as absurd — even he couldn’t possibly think corporations cared more about their DEI departments than profits. When I pressed him, Rufo said the passage was intended to describe the ultimate objectives of (philosopher Herbert) Marcuse and his ideological heirs, not to depict reality.
“This is the movement toward which they’re fighting. They’re seeking to change the telos [purpose] of the institution,” he told me.
But in his book, just before his line about corporations putting diversity over profits, Rufo asserted that “the victory of the critical theories has displaced the original ends, or telos, of America’s institutions” — a statement about what he thinks the critical theorists have already accomplished.
“Telos” — good gourd. You know what’s worse than a bald-faced liar? A bald-faced liar who is also a pretentious jackass. A hypocrite as well, Rufo frequently decries “elitism” while simultaneously lying about having a master’s degree from Harvard.
In his review, Beauchamp recounts how Rufo casually lies in conversation too:
Rufo’s slipperiness in our conversation didn’t just extend to his book or underlying source material. When I suggested that racial affinity groups for minority students weren’t always bad, he asked me if I thought sometimes segregation could be good. I told him those groups were not the same as segregation, and he responded, “I think it is.” When I elaborated — that giving Black students a private space to discuss racism was nothing like a systematically unequal division of resources along racial lines — he said, “I didn’t say it’s akin to Jim Crow segregation” and that the groups were “segregating.”
When his hyperbolic claim was no longer defensible, he denied less than a minute later that he ever made it in the first place.
These distortions appear endemic to Rufo’s work.
Acadia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, whom Beauchamp cites as an expert on campus free speech issues, said, “Rufo is not a skilled rhetorician. He’s good at deception. He is not a deep intellectual. He’s a deep fake.”
That’s exactly right. Fortunately, Rufo’s project seems to be a flop outside of Florida. I fervently hope that continues to be the case and that Rufo is eventually obligated to return to the Pacific Northwestern socialist utopia in which he resides due to lack of interest in his bullshit elsewhere. Let him superintend his own children’s schooling rather than monetizing ignorance and hate in other states.
Open thread.
Old School
This will come as a surprise to the Radical Left.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Grateful for this blessing. Makes sense, though. Florida skews old and this propaganda won’t will be immediately debunked for non-bigots with school age children once they take even a cursory look at the curriculum.
hueyplong
Where’s my damn cake?
I don’t even know what day has been set aside to celebrate our victory. Or even what year. How is FoxNews going to have anniversary shows lamenting the right’s abject subjugation to the radical left?
Something seems fishy about this.
Alison Rose
Like TIFG insisting he barely even knows someone he has worked with and been seen in countless photos and videos with once that person is in trouble. I’m surprised he hasn’t yet claimed he’s never met Meadows or Rudy.
Rufo is such a slimy tool. I liked John Oliver’s assessment of him: “a fear-mongering troll who looks like what would happen if someone made the recipe for Ryan Gosling but forgot to add the hotness”. Accurate.
Alison Rose
@Old School: “The Radical Left conquered everything and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”
UncleEbeneezer
So Rufo is basically admitting what he (and most Republicans) believe: “Natural” rights only refer to color/gender-blind (Defaulting to White, Male…) ones. Schools should only care about making sure white people (especially boys and cisgender people) are comfortable, protected, represented etc.
Another Scott
@Old School: “How 3-toed sloths took over the world.”
It’s all tribalism – facts and truth don’t matter. Mouth noises that get attention, matters.
Grr…,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I would ordinarily ignore fools like Rufo, but DeSantis is throwing the power of the state behind him.
Baud
Oh Marcuse, why you always gotta be revealing our secret plans?
Also too, who?
The Up and Up
You can have Rufo. He apparently lives “here” in a gated community near Gig Harbor. I don’t think anyone in the PNW is fond of him except for maybe eastern counties that want to join Idaho and an obnoxious blowhard on the air in Portland.
Hoodie
@Baud: Couldn’t he find someone more exotic and alliterative, like Frantz Fanon? Wingnut intellectuals are truly weird.
Jamey
@Old School: Guilty admission: I lie awake at night sometimes wishing “Teh Left” was as violent and angry as the right paints us out to be.
JoyceH
@Dorothy A. Winsor: And don’t forget his incredible crackpot of a surgeon general. Honestly, what surprises me most about this generation’s conservatives isn’t their corruption, I expected that, it’s their incompetence.
Brachiator
I didn’t know anything about this Rufo person. That he is associated with DeSantis in any way says much about both men. Twin deplorables.
NutmegAgain
What a jackass! Sadly, a jackass with some political lift. Also, too, in addition, I am just so sure that a typical MAGAt sits around reading Marcuse of an evening. (Although it does seem that one role of these activated turds is to read social theory of an earlier generation, and throw the names of theorists around in an effort to confuse the rubes.) My eyeballs are rolling around so hard I’m getting a headache.
Scout211
Thank you Betty, for highlighting this for us. I would never choose to read a story about Rufo. But I will read any of your front page posts because the way you present the information makes it much easy to read. And knowing your enemy is always a good strategy. And I also must admit, even though I’d like to, we can’t pretend that deep fake grifters like Rufo are not out there. And we do have to acknowledge that they now have become powerful as politicians and lawmakers are embracing them.
From a social psychology perspective, though, it’s really scary to me to see how easy it is for the big players on the right (like Rufo) to turn so much that we know is good into an extreme version of a scary straw man and then claim they are only there to protect us all from that scary straw man. Ugh.
ETA: edited for clarity.
Roger Moore
This is typical of people who argue in bad faith. They will admit when they’re wrong, but only as a gambit to continue the discussion. They will never admit they’re wrong to the extent of giving up the claims permanently; they’ll start from the debunked claim in their next argument as though this one never happened. When someone does this, you can discount them as anyone worth talking to. They only argue in public to get their points into the public consciousness, not to have an honest sharing of ideas.
moonbat
The bit of the post mentioning Rufo lying about having an Ivy League degree reminds me of Silverman’s post on Musk’s intellectual achievement dishonesty from the other night. Seems like these right-wing nutjob mover and shakers all have a serious case of elite higher education envy. Except none of them have the intellect or work ethic to, you know, actually earn a degree.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Herbert Marcuse was big among some leftist types in the 60s and 70s. He was also a Marxist and so scared conservatives.
I haven’t heard his name mentioned since my college days. He died in 1979.
eversor
There’s a reason Rufo used telos and natural rights, Christianity. Christian thinkers like Dreher, Ahmari, Douthat, Deenan, and the rest have been using the hell out of those words for years. If you are actively monitoring the leading Christian thinkers those words are air raid sirens waving bibles and carrying a cross. He’s not trying to sound smart, he’s using code language to rally Christians to the GOP.
Rufo knows this. He cut his teeth stirring up issues over intelligent design!
Rufo is not a GOP whisperer he’s a Christian whisperer. I know people here choose to ignore the cross in the room but you can’t afford to. If you follow and track these assholes these code words are blatant and it’s all about one religion.
Jamey
@moonbat: So, wait, the Harvard Extension School scam is the real “Project Veritas”?
p.a.
I’m enjoying the thought of Rufo interviewed on Fox and the Fox viewership then asking the nursing home aides to google Marcuse, Fanon, and Foucault for them.
Kay
It’s all such cheap junk. REALLY lowqualiuty public intellectuals.
Racist misogynist Richard Hanania “an intellectual muse of the Silicon Valley right” is currently promoting his learned theories about how the Black character in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is an ugly woman because that’s a plot to brainwash young people.
This is the level of “scholarship” that the NYTimes and The Atlantic swallowed as Great Thinkers on the Right. Weirdo racist incels ranting about a kids movie.
It’s crap. You can read better and smarter Right wingers in the you tube comments section. The only thing dumber than these “intellectuals” is the dopes who fall for their con.
Hoodie
@moonbat: Given some recent products of the Ivies (Cruz, Hawley, Ramaswamy), hard to feel there’s inherently a lot of value in that anyway. Rufo’s fake effete credentialing is particularly odd when a lot of these GOP Ivy products want to pass themselves off as beer-swilling good ol’ boys or manly men.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
It comes from having abandoned objective reality as their measure of anything. Back in the good old days, conservatives actually dared to compete with liberals in policy. This was mostly an attempt to water down liberal policies, but at least they tried to come up with something that looked like it would achieve some desirable end. Now they don’t even try to come up with counter-proposals that water down liberal plans; they just object to the very concept of government achieving anything. When you’ve given up governing as a desirable goal, competence is unnecessary, and maybe even a sign of secret liberal thoughts. You have to be incompetent to prove your commitment to conservative obstructionism.
Kay
How many anti cancel culture books can these people possibly churn out? There is one of these books a week.
Who buys them other than other anti cancel culture warriors, who also all have books? They’re just sending the same 25 dollars around in a circle buying each others books.
Geminid
@Brachiator: If you did want to know more about Chris Rufo, Politico Magazine published a long piece about Rufo and DeSantis about 4 months ago.
moonbat
@Jamey: So it would seem.
I’m guessing at least part of the scam (in their tiny brains) goes like this: I come to make dishonest anti-intellectualism the new fad in education, but Look, I’m super smart Ivy League educated so I know what I’m talking about!
My eyes would get stuck if I rolled them as hard as this deserves.
Sister Golden Bear
Rufo may be a flop outside of Florida, but he was one of the architects of the moral panic driving the current trans genocide. Specifically pushing the idea that LGB, and especially T, folks are child sex predators.
Anoniminous
Ignorant hick bigoted White Person writes ignorant hick bigoted bullshit for ignorant hick bigoted White People.
Brachiator
@UncleEbeneezer:
RE: (Rufo claims) government “no longer exists to secure natural rights
Yep. Also, natural rights are typically a big deal to libertarians, who tend to hate government, so Rufo is lying about his supposed core beliefs.
ETA. A woman’s reproductive rights rarely qualifies as a natural right for these dopes.
mrmoshpotato
Hot damn! We have universal healthcare now?! – including dental and vision?!
Millionaires and billionaires are paying their fair share of taxes?!
Tax loopholes closed?!
Federal gun control so other countries don’t have to issue travel advisories against coming to the United States?!
Treating women, and their bodies, and their medical decisions as equal to men?!
Damn you, Radical Left!
Roger Moore
@Kay:
The books are there to achieve two goals:
Marmot
This reminds me a lot of the review of God and Man at Yale on Michael Hobbs’s podcast If Books Could Kill.
I always liked the title of that book, and I was always told that William F. Buckley was some sort of intellectual and a towering figure on the right, who had single-handedly ousted the Birchers from the mainstream conservative movement.
But the review was scathing. So many, many vapid arguments. So much stupidity. So little objectivity or self-awareness.
They have always been this way. No wonder they’re so desperate to tear us down. No wonder they try so hard for recognition of their intellectual stature. They’re desperately jealous, but only know how to flimflam.
Geminid
There may have been good news concerning the 10 month long blockade of Artsakh, the Armenian enclave in western Azerbaijan. According to Los Angeles-based Armenian news site Aberan News, Artsakh authorities allowed a truck with humanitarian supplies from Russia to enter Artsakh by way of the Azerbaijani town of Adghdan. They expect in return that the Lachin corridor from Armenia proper to be opened as well.
Artsakh has balked at receiving supplies through Aghdan because they consider the Lachin corridor essential to their independence and, they argue, their safety.
moonbat
@Hoodie: True enough. But when your particular scam is destroying higher education, I guess it helps to at least seem credentialed.
eclare
Corporations don’t want to make money? That is news to me.
Also, what on earth is a telo?
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: Competence is also a barrier to corruption and nihilism, which are at the heart of most of the current conservative project. Conservatives basically lost the battle of ideas when the New Deal and WWII – both massive Keynesian projects – ushered in the era of the US as a global superpower and foretold the eventual death of white supremacy, xenophobia and related conservative structures because all of those things stand in the way of a stronger country. Once you realize you lost that battle, you settle for plain old corruption and nihilism.
Anoniminous
@eclare: They want to make money but the Radical Leftists and Jews are preventing it. Now all the money US corporations make are given to black bucks to buy steaks and Caddies.
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
LOL! Do you remember when John Oliver said this? (Presumably on Last Week Tonight)
Jim Appleton
We don’t want him either.
Not socialist enough, and a fraud to boot.
Alison Rose
@mrmoshpotato: Yeah, it was in the Critical Race Theory episode, which was terrific.
cain
Y’all – John Kennedy reading erotic fiction on the Senate floor. Between this and MTG showing dick pics – I can’t imagine a more unserious bunch of maroons.
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1701626938882756693
ETA – he’s really trolling late night tv hosts with that – with the writing strike – it’s probably unbearable. :D
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose: Thanks.
taumaturgo
I feel horrible for Biden, the quintessential bipartisan democrat because all he gets in return for his bipartisan efforts is an impeachment inquiry. In the face of an opposition divorced from reality, the era of bipartisanship as come and gone.
mrmoshpotato
@cain: Dinosaur erotica or GTFO!
mrmoshpotato
@taumaturgo:
Obama was also told to go fuck himself by these bastards for 8 years.
Alison Rose
@Alison Rose: Oops, wait…not that one. It was in an episode about trans rights. Sorry! But both are excellent.
Alison Rose
@mrmoshpotato: I misremembered — see my comment above. I watch the videos so often that I mix them up in my head :P
cain
@mrmoshpotato: haha –
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1701627715248398600
It’s disturbing alright! :D
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: I must have really overslept.
Chris
Getting people to write off each other’s natural rights by reframing them as “social justice,” “political correctness,” “wokeness,” “intersectionalism,” and “special interests” is the right-wing propaganda coup that keeps on giving.
(Well, maybe not “coup.” It’s hard to imagine any idea not getting a lot of traction if it were constantly bleated from every news outlet for years and decades on end).
eclare
@Alison Rose:
That episode was very well done.
...now I try to be amused
@taumaturgo: I think of Biden as a cross between the Road Runner and Bugs Bunny, and the Republicans as a cross between Wile E. Coyote (only not as clever) and Elmer Fudd. Their frustration shows.
Bill Arnold
For Rufo-loathers, Zack Beauchamp’s Vox piece is worth a full read. A seriously deceitful hack. At least he is obvious about it.
I’ve had that guy in my Rogues’ Gallery (window of browser tabs of loathed people) for over a year. Mostly it’s higher-profile/international, but Christopher Rufo got included as an indulgence.
Sasha
Unfortunately, his damage will take years, if not decades, to repair.
Baud
@cain:
Is it to much to ask for him to be reading from one of Mnemosyne’s books?
Soprano2
@Kay: I just shake my head at the things they get upset about. A company changed the label on a pancake mix, and they about lost their minds. The Potato head toy allows you to make two “males” or two “females”, and they lost their shit. And on and on, losing their shit about things the average person cares nothing about. “OMG, some stores don’t have ‘boy toy’ and ‘girl toy’ aisIes, however will I figure out what toy my kid will like?” I wonder how crazy some of them sound to “normies” when they start ranting about Mr. Potato Head and Bud Light and whatever else they’re butthurt about today. It sounds nutty to me, and I know what they’re talking about! (most of the time)
eclare
@cain:
So true, writers must be kicking themselves that they are missing this.
Brachiator
@eclare:
Telos is the ancient Greek term for an end, fulfilment, completion, goal or aim; it is the source of the modern word ‘teleology’. For example.
I haven’t seen this term used outside a philosophy class or religious studies lecture.
This Rufo clown is sparking flashbacks to my student days, the last time that any of this stuff was ever discussed. I don’t know. Maybe people like Jordan Peterson make a big deal of this stuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@taumaturgo: Oh, you’re back.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Thanks.
Geminid
@taumaturgo: Biden did not wait for a bipartisan coalition when the American Rescue Act and IRA bill passed Congress on party-line votes. On the other hand, the Infrastructure, CHIPS+ and Burnpits bill were passed with Republican support. It seems to me that Joe Biden has been flexible in his pursuit of bipartisanship.
jonas
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s right. Asking that anyone but white men be entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is woke special pleading.
Baud
I would describe people like Rufo as anti-Cartesian: I don’t think, therefore I am.
Soprano2
@Old School: Not everything, but the majority of people do agree with us about abortion and women’s reproductive rights, about common sense gun laws, about climate change, about gay marriage, and a host of other issues. I think that’s what he’s talking about when he says the “radical left” conquered everything. Conservative Christians don’t control the culture anymore, and it drives them absolutely crazy! They want to control everyone’s personal behavior so that they are never uncomfortable.
eclare
@Brachiator:
Thanks!
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose: Too late! Already rewatching the CRT episode! 😁
cain
@eclare: It’s probably no picnic for the writers either!
They probably are all writing stuff down for when the writing strike finally gets resolved. But lawd. I can imagine all the attack ads or just tic tok stuff that would show up mocking him reading that stuff.
“Sen. Kennedy – can you tell us what happened last night?”
Baud
@Geminid:
Yes, but the commenter you’re replying to is not flexible in his hate of Dems and Biden.
Tony Jay
@eversor:
I will pray for you. 😇
Citizen Alan
@Hoodie: The two are not mutually exclusive if neither of them is true. It is perfectly possible to simultaneously claim that you are an elite because of your education but also “one of the good ones” because you “saw through the liberal lies” that same education tried to foist on you. That much as been clear since Dubya came along. An absolute cretin who would never have been able to get into an Ivy League school absent family wealth and influence but who went on to pass himself off as a Texas rancher despite his apparent fear of horses.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Agree. We’ve had a lot of social and cultural success we should be proud of. But it’s not really the Radical Left or Everything.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: Rip Van Trollhattan? Is that you?
Villago Delenda Est
“Natural rights” = reactionary bullshit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: It’s all dorm BS sessions.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jamey: I don’t. The Left has shown incredible blind spots and there are a non-trivial amount of people who I suspect would be happy to use violence towards already marginalized groups that they don’t like. The Left embracing violence would result in attracting even more Nazis pretending to be part of The Left to get their violent-fantasy jollies at Racial Justice protests. It’s already a problem with people who claim to be AntiFa doing bad and dangerous shit and helping give the Bill Barr’s of the world even more license to weaponize the police against us.
Baud
Senator Kennedy should consider reading for audiobooks.
mrmoshpotato
@Soprano2:
And never any outrage about their faces being in their butts!
Soprano2
@jonas: They think the natural order is white men on top, then white women, and then everyone else.
John S.
@The Up and Up:
My thoughts exactly!
Part of the reason I left Florida for the PNW was to escape cretins like Rufo, in favor of decent folks such as you and Dan B. 🙂
Baud
@Soprano2:
I bet Senator Kennedy could make that sound hot.
Alison Rose
@mrmoshpotato: Haha, never a bad idea. I really appreciate what a substantive look he gives at the topic.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: I saw a clip of it, and it was like Foghorn Leghorn reading from Penthouse letters.
eversor
@Soprano2:
No it has a very Christian meaning that they are using. And it is backed by both testaments and Christ. Rufo is just echoing shit that’s been going on in Christianity for decades to get them out to vote. Ignore that at your peril.
mrmoshpotato
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thanks for the laugh.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
“I say, boy, do you mind if I borrow some lube? I’ve got a hot date tonight with a little chickadee from the barn next door.”
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato: Friends call me Van, which gets confusing when shoe shopping.
eversor
@Citizen Alan:
Wasn’t aware of the fear of horses part of that saga. But that’s kinda sad for a rancher, a Texan, or even a human. They’ve been domesticated for a long ass time now.
brantl
@eversor: When did Douche-Hat become a thinker?
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh god, now I want this to happen for real.
“Ah say, ah say, I nevah thoaht this would happen, ah say happen to me, until ah went into mah condo’s laundrah room that naht.”
eversor
@Baud:
There was a Republican politician, from Georgia I think, who defended horse fucking as when you are rural it’s just a thing you do as a kid.
satby
@The Up and Up: Man of the people lives in a gated community??!
Color me not at all surprised.
Bex
@eversor: The “Christian thinkers” you mentioned ain’t.
laura
Just my .02 cents, but the metric shit-ton of reich wing money sloshing around attracts the Ruso’s to offer their “thoughts” and enrich themselves on the grift. Then the “thought leaders” rely on the baseless claims to apply their “solutions” to the made up or non existent problems a viola- America is made great again and the marginalized target is crushed. The MSM seems to always have a green room and a seat at the tv table for these hucksters but never ever offer a critical voice or the voices of the marginalized.
Funny old world.
Baud
@laura:
I agree. They’ve formed their own market with their own supply and demand.
Scout211
wording!
🤣
Baud
@eversor:
I honestly don’t even know how a kid would physically be able to do that.
Geminid
@eversor: If you think that’s bad, I heard of a guy who’d walk a mile for a camel!
Chris
@Kay:
One of the side effects of the current hysterics about wokeness in pop culture is that I’m endlessly going back to shows and movies from my childhood (or, oftentimes, well before my childhood) and thinking “man, people would freak the fuck out if this was ever released today.”
I mean, Gargoyles from the nineties having a main human character who’s half-black, half-Hopi, a woman, and nevertheless a police detective who’s enough of a badass to keep pace with a crowd of supernatural creatures? Can you imagine the online backlash if that came out today? “Mary Sue,” “Get Woke Go Broke,” all the big hits.
Independence Day would be torn to shreds as The Woke Remake of War of the Worlds (and everything else Will Smith did would be getting some version of that). Buffy and Charmed and Xena: Warrior Princess did actually get backlash at the time for all the icky cooties, but it’d be massive amplified today. Aladdin: “oh God, Disney is exposing our children to Islamo-Fascist culture!” Antonio Banderas’ turn playing Zorro: “OH MY GOD, THEY MADE ZORRO HISPANIC! IS NOTHING SACRED! WHY CAN’T THE MEXICANS GET THEIR OWN HEROES!”
And so forth.
Baud
@Chris:
You mentioned the wrong Zorro. Zorro: The Gay Blade would drive them up the wall!
...now I try to be amused
@Soprano2:
They’re the people who aren’t satisfied to be free to like what they like. They aren’t happy unless everyone likes what they like.
I believe that what they call the culture war is basically all the square pegs refusing to stay in the round holes the conservatives had consigned them to, and it freaks them out.
Geminid
@Baud: I know. I guess I argue because I have a soft spot for the person. They remind me of the Ailanthus in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, perservering in a hostile environment.
Suzanne
EVEN WORSER: A bald-faced liar and pretentious jackass who doesn’t know what words mean.
narya
The thing is, I don’t think they EVER controlled the culture–cable tv and the internet has made it clear just how much they don’t. Sure, they were able to police at the top and prevent distribution of images and ideas in some spheres–Hays Code, I’m looking at you–but there is always space at the margins when you have cities of any size, or when you can move elsewhere and it’s hard for people to know what you did in your last place. (One of the more fascinating books I stumbled across was “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life . . .” by Lillian Faderman: basically, queer/lesbian culture as we know it is in part a product of city life.) Yes, absolutely there was and is danger–but the last 50 years have enabled people to find each other much more easily, and band together, and to say to younger people, you’re not alone.
At the same time, that same internet/cable space allows a lot of room for jagoffs like Rufo to just spew bullshit.
eversor
@Baud:
From what I remember of that sad saga some kid was caught on a stool fucking a horse. Which made the news. At which point the GOP critter went live defending horse fucking as how kids lose their virginity round these parts don’t judge.
I used to have that article bookmarked but computer upgrades and do not attempt to google this as your results will be worse than the gagging issue from the other day.
eversor
@Suzanne:
Except that’s not even remotely true. We went through gagging the other day where one twitter person didn’t know it in the context it was mean, then some smart ass explained what it was and said it dates back to the 1980s. On this very site I called it a sex act, someone called it wretching, and we all came up with different answers about what gagging actually means.
That’s the kicker. Rufo is a Christian whisperer and telos/natural order have very defined meanings there that flew over the heads over anyone that isn’t part of that ideology or watching it like a hawk. If you monitor it than you see that telos, enchantment, natural order, natural law, tradition, are fucking air raid sirens. The people the message was intended for got it, and will then vote for the cross in the room people here refuse to admit exists.
So Rufo won, because Jesus.
Chris
@narya:
They certainly don’t think they ever controlled the culture. Or more precisely, there’s never been a time when conservative Christians felt “yes, right now we are in charge and this is our world;” that blessed era is always in the past, no matter what present you’re looking back from.
To some extent that’s because the past has never been as conservative as they’d want you to believe. But it’s also just because American conservative Christians stake their identity on feeling like oppressed disenfranchised outsiders crushed by a godless secular culture. As much as people today think the fifties were the last golden age of social conservatism, listen to the right-wing preachers from back then and they have exactly the same terror, persecution complex, and general sense that the world has passed them by as they do today. (Godlessness in all our government institutions, Jews and Papists climbing the ranks everywhere, blacks wanting rights, not to mention all those Reds under the bed).
E.
@Brachiator: Richard Spencer was always talking about Adorno and the Frankfurt School but it seems he believed they were pro-nazi, which is a remarkable and very original conclusion to draw from their writings.
Betty Cracker
@John S.: Well, he lives there while selling his reactionary bullshit here, which seems unfair. Pick a fucking side, Rufo. If the South is so great, raise your own family here or GTFO.
eversor
@narya:
Even before social media Rufo was part of the Christian orientated Discovery Institute and pushed Intelligent Design. He’s not new to this, or his target audience.
Old School
Say what?
Kay
@Chris:
It’s just that so much of what they care about are products. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a childrens toy.
I would just suggest not wrapping your whole adult identity around products. That seems unfullfilling to me. Maybe they are so angry and feel so ripped off because they have really fucking shallow and empty lives? Because their “intellectuals” churn out such dumb crap? Because they never really think about anything but instead do these ridiculous “I went to a record store in the 1990s and here’s what the means for America”. It doesn’t mean anything for America. It’s just their dumb teenage nostalgia- everyone has it. If it were even nostalgia for something like “when neighbors got along” or “when streets were safe” or “when manly man molded steel”- as facile as THOSE are at least they aren’t nostalgia for particular 1990s and early aught products.
M and Ms! Target! Disney characters! Bud Light! They mistake a fondness for established consumer brands with “a childhood” or “young adulthood”. Is that all they had? No wonder they’re so angry.
When I was a little kid we would go to a pop machine and buy the little glass bottles of Mountain Dew. It was green. But that bottle or brand isn’t “my childhood”. Mountain Dew can change the bottle and my childhood is still intact. The thing was GOING there with my wild little friends. It wasn’t buying that brand of pop.
...now I try to be amused
@Chris:
Conservatives believe that Western civilization is always on the verge of collapse and only their efforts can stop it happening.
wjca
Or, perhaps cogitas, ergo non es (you think, therefore you are not). They do seem more focused on putting down others than anything else.
MisterDancer
Now that I’ve pie’d a certain other commentator here, it is funny how some people love to throw bombs.
I mean, y’all know I’m hard headed as hell, and willin’ to throw (rhetorical) hands, but I at least try to listen when someone says I got facts wrong :)
catclub
@Kay:
Billionaires with ‘ thinktanks ‘ pushing this crap. It raises the ratings at NYT and Amazon.
Brachiator
@Chris:
Of course , Zorro was always Hispanic, both in the movies and in the old Disney TV series starring Guy Williams. And “Zorro, the Gay Blade” would have driven them crazy.
Great mention of “Gargoyles.”
Chris
@Betty Cracker:
Mmmm…
I’ve always thought one of the most revealing things about which culture is really the more dysfunctional ones is that rich Republicans who could live anywhere they want tend not to live in deep red areas; they always live in or close to a big blue “godless” “socialist” city. Tucker Carlson lives in San Francisco, for God’s sake. And Bill O’Reilly lives in New York. And so forth.
Tony Jay
Fixed.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Brachiator: Rod Dreher has used telos a lot. His ideas really have been echoed by right wing pseudo intellectuals. Tucker Carlson repeated a lot of what Dreher would say.
narya
@Chris: Completely agree. If you think Real True Values are the ones in red states, why aren’t you living in rural Idaho?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chris: Tucker Carlson moved to rural Maine. Bluish state, red area.
lowtechcyclist
And just in case you had any doubts about the intellectual integrity of Hillsdale College, they had Rufo there as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism earlier this year.
wjca
If memory serves (which it well may not), it was sheep rather than horses. Which is at least far more physically feasible.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Yeah, that last one might have been me straying a little into parody territory. But then again, you know there’s somebody somewhere out there who had exactly that reaction unironically.
(Before my time, but apparently when the movie Oh God! came out in the seventies, it caught some flak for the fact that God was portrayed by an actor who was… a Jew.
Yes, really).
Roger Moore
@narya:
Nobody has ever had complete control of the culture to the point they could force everyone to behave according to their rules. There have always been people willing to do their own thing and damn the consequences. But you mention “space at the margins” for people like that, and that’s the real key. The scolds used to have enough control over the culture that they could marginalize people and ideas they didn’t like. They couldn’t stop people from being gay, but they could and did make gay sex illegal and force gay people to live in the closet if they wanted to be part of respectable society. They couldn’t get rid of women, but they denied them the vote for a long time and even after they got the vote they successfully kept women from holding positions of real political power.
That’s what the scolds are mourning. They no longer have the power to throw gay people in prison and ensure any media portrayal of a gay person had to be a villain. They can’t keep women from the pinnacles of power. Yes, they were able to stop Hillary, but they know another woman will be elected president sooner or later, more likely sooner than later. They’re even getting substantial pushback in their attempts to marginalize trans people.
catclub
red states on average have higher divorce rates and much higher murder rates than blue states. Values indeed.
trollhattan
Here’s a headline you don’t see every day.
Maybe don’t farm crocs? Just a thought.
Tony Jay
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I’ve never watched a second of Fox News, but I’d quite like to see Carlson’s “Please don’t kick me out, darling. I really have no idea how all those Sweaty Magyar Men Wrestling in Mud videos got on my phone.” episode.
catclub
@Chris:
in the bible, shortly after the Creation of the world, God sews clothes for Adam and Eve. A Jewish tailor.
Chris
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I recline corrected! Last I heard he was still in Frisco. Good on him for moving somewhat in the direction of his stated values. Still not the norm among such people, but good for him anyway.
Jay
@wjca:
I thought true red blooded “Murkins” hated sheep “herders”?
Alison Rose
@trollhattan:
Sounds like Mad Libs. “Dozens of [plural noun] in [geographic location] escape during [event]”
brantl
@trollhattan: Rotating tag line!
brantl
@trollhattan: Rotating tag line!
MisterDancer
@Tony Jay: What’s sad is that Transphobia and broader LBGTQIA+ hate is starting to take serious root in a number of Canadian provinces, from anecdotal information I’m getting online. Yes, the same Canada who’s government just warned about traveling to the US while Queer.
From an article posted yesterday:
There’s also a “Think of the Children”-style hate protest being organized for Canada in a couple of weeks.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It’s very hard to know how much of this is conservatives not living up to their values and how much is people responding to negative cultural trends by becoming more conservative.
narya
@Roger Moore: Now I’m hearkening back to the Medium Cool thread the other night, but that was definitely one of the things that emerged for me from reading Dorothy Dunnett’s novels. Yes, I know it’s all fiction, even if some of the characters are real people, but the emergence of her heroes really relies on that marginal space. There was also a podcast I heard about the Hays Code, and the movies that were made before it was put in place–the podcast was specifically discussing erasure of homosexuality in the movies, which functioned to erase it from “acceptable” culture for nearly a century. Those liminal spaces are fascinating, and, humans being human, you gotta figure they’ve always existed. Tangentially related: Native American cultures are reclaiming their non-binary language for discussing sex/gender, apparently. That is, many of the languages had multiple ways for people to identify and be; Europeans imposed the binary. That is, even in smaller societies, it’s possible for liminality to exist (and even be celebrated).
ETA: typo fix, plus an apology for random wordiness today . . .
Jay
@MisterDancer:
New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Alberta soon, then Quebec.
Out Reichwing “Con’s” use the same “advisors, stinktanks and playbooks” as your ReThugs do.
And of course the “PCP” party federally is going all in.
With any luck, it will leave them a Minority Party in the next election.
satby
@Geminid: or an invasive species difficult to eradicate?
Another Scott
Meanwhile, there’s always a tweet…
*scratches head*
(Images of earlier tweets by McCarthy)
Cheers,
Scott.
laura
@Chris: Tucker Carlson lives in San Francisco so he can snatch up the latest edition of the BAR in person. Prove me wrong
I mean that’s why he came back to SF to eulogize Sunny Barger on the same weekend as the Folsom Street Fair.
Scout211
Waaay off topic, but open thread.
The FDA has determined that the on-the-shelf versions of Sudafed and other decongestants don’t work to relieve congestion. (No shit, Sherlock!). So all of us who rely on pseudoephedrine and have to submit our driver’s licenses each time to get our decongestants don’t have to feel embarrassed anymore. We can now feel smug. I know I do. LOL
Ramalama
@Marmot: All of a sudden, and for some reason, I’m feeling a need to finally read Al Franken’s book (from the early 20000000s):
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
BethanyAnne
Skipping down in reading to say that the Foghorn Leghorn bit sounds totally like a topic for the sadly defunct Shipwreck. It was an erotic fan-fiction contest in San Francisco. The book or literary series would be named before, and folk would come up to the mic and read their erotic story based on that story. At least sometimes, the stories were read by the voice actor that is the radio host on Welcome to Night Vale.
I love their description of the event.
dm
@Roger Moore:
There’s another rhetorical trick going on with the “black student discussionstudent groups = segregation”/“oh, i didn’t mean Jim Crow, I just meant going off by themselves” maneuver. You make a hyperbolic statement, if not challenged, it’s left to stand; if challenged, you have a plausible innocuous reading to trot out. Bonus if you can then claim your opponent is opposed to a yet further watering down of the meaning.
catclub
@Scout211: my pseudoephedrine connection was my daughter who lived in a slightly saner state. My state was so bad you needed a prescription for the stuff. Mississippi goddam.
I have since moved.
ETA: I was never embarassed by the ID stuff. I was annoyed.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
White evangelical Protestants have been a diminishing share of the population for a few decades now. They have been turning out at higher rates to make up for it, but it won’t be too long before they’d have to increase their turnout rate past 100% to keep doing so.
Brachiator
@Chris:
Wow. I can’t imagine anyone having a problem with the movie.
UncleEbeneezer
@Scout211: Yup. I’ve suspected this forever. Pseudoephedrine (like Claritin) definitely helps my nasal congestion, phenylephrine definitely does not.
Tony Jay
@MisterDancer:
It’s common amongst almost all the Rightwing parties. The Global Kulturkampf against The Other is being fed on a rich diet of billionaire funding, and it seems that all of the national conservative parties are swelling up with the poison they imbibe from each suckle on that diseased teat.
You can see it with the Tories here. Rhetorically and ideologically there’s not a sliver of difference between them and the US Republicans. Same enemies, same hysteria, with the only differences being in country-specific terminology. They’re all mixing at the same conferences and visiting the same wingnut sites.
The last great surge of fascism was heavily nationalist in aspect, but it’s a global village now, and all the angry boys will be buying their blackshirts from the same seller on Amazon.
Chris
@lowtechcyclist:
The flip side of this is that white supremacy is still going strong, but it increasingly doesn’t require the trappings of evangelical Christianity to justify it. (Much of the growth of fundiegelicalism that took off in the seventies was just disaffected segregationists looking for a new label now that segregation was increasingly frowned upon, and a new institution to colonize now that the Democratic Party was increasingly unhelpful).
One of the most interesting things I noticed about the breakdown in support for Trump was that his strongest support wasn’t just “white evangelicals,” but “white evangelicals who rarely go to church.” A lot of the appeal of Trump rallies, and some of the more blatant Nazi groups that’ve grown in the last ten years, is that they can get all the white supremacy they used to get in church, without risking any tedious moralism about how pornography and masturbation make Jesus sad.
Jay
@Chris:
I guess you never heard about one of the “rules’ of being a “Proud Boy”?
Chris
@Tony Jay:
The impression I get is that a lot of modern fascists are at the stage where they’re more interested in purifying their homelands than going abroad looking for Others to kill, and that really helps with the global fascist solidarity.
You really see this with the Israeli far-right and its happy alliance with European and North American fascists despite the fact that these guys have been getting louder and louder (and more murderous) about the anti-Semitism. Yeah, those two groups don’t like each other, per se, but what they hate even more at the moment is the non-Israeli Jewish diaspora: Israeli fascists see them as traitors, Western fascists see them as a foreign contaminant, both sides basically agree that they’re, to coin a phrase, “rootless cosmopolitans” who make a mockery of the sacred tradition that says that Nation-State = Race.
Naturally it never stays that way forever, and I’m sure that all the world’s fascists figure they’ll get around to beating each other up eventually, but in the meantime, the priority is beating the shit out of those icky transnational populations. Immigrants, dual citizens, people whose religion/culture doesn’t reflect the majority’s, institutions like the UN and EU that are seeing as blurring the lines… etc.
Tony Jay
@Chris:
We all take different lessons from the Raising of Lazarus.
cain
@lowtechcyclist:
Yeah, that’s gonna suck for them ain’t it? Overall church attendance has been steadily going down because what htey are practicing is actually nothing like the religion as defined. It’s just mammonism.
Chris
@Jay:
Yeah. Fascist groups that still do the puritan values aren’t hard to find either. But it’s less and less of a requirement these days, and if that’s not your thing, it’s not hard to find other groups.
Jay
@Chris:
it wasn’t a “puritan thing” with the PB’s, it was full on Dr. Strangelove “manly essence” thing,………
UncleEbeneezer
@Brachiator: Well yes and no. I loved ZTGB as a kid, but I’m pretty sure looking back on it from a 2023 perspective, it wouldn’t look nearly so funny seeing as it relied heavily on gay stereotypes of the times. So Conservatives probably still love that movie because it reinforces the notion that being gay is abnormal and they get to laugh at the stereotypes. It’s when fictional characters start actually mentioning Homophobia (openly or just subtlety referencing it) or actually fighting it on screen, that Conservatives lose their shit.
Tony Jay
@Chris:
Yup. That’s just it. They’ve got a global infrastructure and ‘intellectual resources’ network to draw on, flooding the market with road-tested propaganda and social media memes, leaving them free to get on with the fun work of overthrowing their local democracies and replacing them with cookie-cutter fascist states ‘with national characteristics’.
It’s going to be a bloody big job pushing all that back into the box, and currently it’s hard to see anyone of prominence taking the threat seriously.
Bill Arnold
@cain:
Pretty much. If said mammonite trash were really fundamentalists, they would not be hating their neighbors like they hate themselves, they’d forgo wealth and pursuit of wealth (or transactionally demanding that g_d make them financially rich in return for proselytizing) , they’d seriously consider not eating shrimp, they’d be regularly putting railings on the roofs of their houses, never divorcing, and etc.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris:
Tru dat. I was just trying to point out to eversore that evangelical Christianity, at least, is at the limit of its political influence.
Speaking as someone who was around a lot of these people back then, it really was a movement that happened more or less organically. Now the segregation/antiabortion switcheroo that got the evangelicals into the GOP camp was a good deal less so, and that may be what you have in mind.
Chris
@Tony Jay:
The irony is that once you’ve pruned away all the things they think are impure and unpatriotic, the “national characteristics” that are left are completely indistinguishable.
No matter where you go, the values for these people are all the same. Keep your women in the kitchen. Keep your children under your thumb. Keep your gays in the closet, and if they won’t stay there, put them in the ground. Obey the rich and powerful. Obey the guys with the guns, sticks, and shiny uniforms. Don’t trust anybody who thinks and writes for a living. And make sure any community that doesn’t conform to the dominant ethnicity/culture is either taken out of the picture or, if they’re staying, then permanently under your thumb.
The endgame really is exactly what Orwell predicted, just with a couple hundred identical balkanized mini-states instead of three big space-filling empires.
Sister Golden Bear
@narya:
the podcast was specifically discussing erasure of homosexuality in the movies, which functioned to erase it from “acceptable” culture for nearly a century. Those liminal spaces are fascinating, and, humans being human, you gotta figure they’ve always existed.
George Chauncey’s “Gay New York” is a fascinating look a look at gay (mostly male) life pre-WWII. He aptly refers to it as the demiworld — generally out of public view but definitely not necessarily completely isolated and closeted. In fact one of the annual Harlem drag balls was widely attended by straight people in the 1930s(?). Interesting people of earlier eras had more flexible ideas about sexuality and gender than we do. For example, there was an immigrant community where men were plentiful and women were scarce. So while men would prefer a cis woman as a girlfriend of wife, they were pretty open to have an trans woman instead, and it was considered respectable to do so.
In Los Angeles, Hollywood provided a similar liminal space for LGBTQ+ people. It was acceptable within those circles as long as you weren’t too public about it, albeit much more for those working behind the camera. Stars had purported hetero lives that were carefully constructed by the studios for the general public. Although within the industry it was often an open secret.
Likewise, with San Francisco, albeit for different reasons — mainly SF being a port city with the diversity that comes with that. Although several gay nightclubs operated openly, and where seen as local tourist attractions.
I’ll defer to any Native American jackals, but
generally this falls under the “Two Spirit” umbrella, which has a number of nuances (both in general and by tribe) non-Natives generally don’t get. At least that’s the tl;dr version I’ve gotten from two acquaintances who identify as Two Spirit.
Tony Jay
@Chris: Yup. There’s no deep thought behind it, however much all the fascists promote whichever terribly chintzy ‘myth of our special nation’ romance best fits their stereotypes, when it comes down to it it’s all just bully boys looking for faces to punch and things to steal.
Just organised barbarism, basically.
lowtechcyclist
@Bill Arnold:
Holy shit, I’m not the only one who remembers that verse? I’m looking forward to asking to see a pic of their house, the next time someone tells me that the Bible is inerrant.
Eyeroller
@wjca: I hate that I remember this incident, but it was a mule, and he was talking about what he did as a teenager.
He was Neal Horsley (a fitting name), a fringe candidate for Georgia governor from the “Creators’ Rights Party,” and he told Alan Colmes during a 2005 interview that
“…I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule.”
(I did have to google the details, but clearly recalled that the victim was a mule.) Horsley was a militant anti-abortion near-terrorist.
Gravenstone
@lowtechcyclist: *sigh* every time I see this I lament the decline of Hillsdale. My final HS English (and yes, Journalism) teacher was a fresh Hillsdale graduate in 1979. She evinced no signs of the bat shittery the place is now infamous for.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: White evangelicals, yes. But I am concerned about the inroads the fundies are making among Latinos. It’s like “Yes, we don’t like how brown your skin is, but we’ll overlook it if you hate the same people we do and vote accordingly.”
wjca
Fixed that for you.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: I hope you don’t mind if I pass along your observations here to my publisher. We are watching our Board of County Commissioners now, thanks to the recall vote engineered by the hard-right lunatic fringe in my county, devolve even further into Three Stooges territory than it was to begin with, and I think he’ll laugh to see that you’ve nailed the dynamic so succinctly. Thank you!
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Star Trek fandom is full of people complaining that the current shows are full of wokeness and forced diversity and progressive moral messages.
It’s not lost on many that in the original series, they had an episode where Frank Gorshin and that other guy played aliens who were black on one side and white on the other and they hated each other because they were mirror images and racism is bad.
narya
@Sister Golden Bear: Ooooh, thanks for the book rec! I wish I could remember where I saw the thing about Native languages–it was just in the last week. The folks quoted were from several different language groups/tribes.
Chris
@wjca:
Well, it’s not easy to find jobs where you can just think for a living. Most of them expect you to show proof of your thoughts through writing, at any rate. Although these days you may sometimes be able to just record yourself talking instead.
wjca
@Eyeroller: The mind boggles.
AWOL
@Chris: I think Carlson primarily lives a few miles away from Bar Harbor, Maine, which is generally very wealthy, getting wealthier with more millionaires relocating there, and most nourishing for his racist ass, 99.999 percent white.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I remember when I started exploring the Internet circa 2000, often for pop culture reasons. Back then, “real” Trekkies accepted TOS only, and the shows they hated were the eighties and nineties shows, especially TNG. And for exactly the same reasons, although “wokeness” was called “political correctness” back then. My God, the amount of butthurt when TNG dared to say “where no one has gone before” instead of “where no man has gone before” was unbelievable.
It’s just that in those days they didn’t have nearly the megaphones that they do now, and studios felt less constrained to humor their tantrums.
(Say, I wonder if the “Top Infinite Reasons Why Kirk Is Better Than Picard” website is still active… Nope, doesn’t look like it. What a loss to our collective intellect).
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: Don’t forget the kiss between Kirk and Uhuru, supposedly the first interracial kiss televised in the US. The executives made it be “forced” to try to placate the racists.
There was quite a bit of heavy-handed “wokeness” in TOS (along with possibly even more heavy-handed hippie punching.) I have not seen a lot of TNG episodes but I think it got even “woker.”
wjca
@Chris: You’ll notice I didn’t just strike out “or write.” They hate anyone who thinks. Period. Whether for a living, or as a hobby, or just as part of life.
Chris
@wjca:
Ah, reasonable.
rikyrah
@Jamey:
It’s ALWAYS PROJECTION with these muthaphuckas.
wjca
I can remember when Star Trek first came out. Conservatives then were horrified, shocked, and appalled at the mixed race case, the liberal values and storylines, etc. And, to be fair, the show did break new (at the time) ground.
Kids these days have no appreciation of what the past was really like! :-)
Miss Bianca
@Gravenstone: Yeah, I had a friend from high school who went to Hillsdale, and altho’ she ended up hating it there and transferring out as soon as she possibly could, I don’t remember getting the impression that it was nothing but a hive of wretched scum and RW bat-shittery – just that it ended up being too isolated and parochial for her tastes.
(this would have been the early 80s, just for context.)
cain
@Matt McIrvin:
ST:TNG was probably the first woke show – where they were moralizing about all kinds of things. Literally the very first episode “Encounter at Endpoint” was a trial of humanity
Season 1: Episode 1 for clarity
NotMax
@Uncle Ebeneezer
So old can fondly recall buying off the shelf bottles of capsules at the druggist which contained real ephedrine. No pseudo wannabes, no flashing an ID.
That stuff worked to kayo congestion like a champ.
MisterDancer
Hilariously, it’s not even the 1st interracial kiss in Star Trek! In a prior episode, “What are Little Girls Made Of?,” no less than Uhura and Nurse Chapel kiss, in the background, as the latter is leaving the Bridge.
So yeah, the actual 1st kiss in Trek is also a same-sex kiss. And yeah, it’s not a “romantic” kiss, but no less that Nancy Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. caused a stink with a cheek kiss, around the same time.
rikyrah
@Sister Golden Bear:
indeed. He absolutely has. They all attach to the hate
Matt McIrvin
@wjca: Basically, there are a whole lot of people out there who are fine with the progressive moralizing of the time when they were small children, but the rough equivalent for today pisses them off. Because the goalposts are never supposed to move!
Jinchi
@Kay: “Cancel culture” is the greatest fear of the political pundit. The idea that they might face consequences when their words or actions are offensive.
Their view of free speech is one where the rest of us stay silent.
These books will never go out of style as long as a select few control access to the media.
MisterDancer
TNG tried. And I love it.
But even when they first aired, episodes like “Angel One” and especially “Code of Honor” got flack for some poorly thought-out racial and gender themes. Then there’s the episode that’s full of Irish stereotypes (UGH.) Not to mention the behind-the-scenes misogyny that led to both Crosby and McFadden being pushed out after the 1st season.
It took a while for TNG to find it’s way, and that includes being inclusive. Even with that, there’s still stuff in later seasons that did not age well (LaForge’s “relationships,” the early stuff with Barclay, the utter lack of clear gay/lesbian characters…)
Brachiator
@UncleEbeneezer:
“Zorro, the Gay Blade” (George Hamilton), and “Dracula, Dead and Loving It” (Leslie Nielsen) were broad parodies. I don’t recall that there was a lot of controversy over the Zorro film when it was released. Even from a 2023 perspective, there might be room for positive appraisals.
The public personas of the characters who were secretly Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel and similar characters were sometimes depicted as fops, with hints of being effeminate. There seemed to be room to view this as a critique of false assumptions about who could be a hero. Bruce Wayne, by contrast, was a more traditional heterosexual playboy. And the Batman is clearly a descendant of Zorro. At least a distant cousin.
I don’t know. I think conservatives would have problems with the fact that the Gay Zorro is still clearly the hero. And the whole fop persona aspect is brought out of the closet and openly and proudly displayed.
RevRick
Way off topic, but in today’s latest episode of “climate change has nothing to do with it,” a massive storm hit Eastern Libya, causing two dams to fail and the city of Derna to be inundated. At least 3000 are dead, and about 10,000 are reported missing.
Dan B
@Soprano2: My partners right wing siblings are completely mortified by left wing folks criticize them. They bray like they are being oppressed. They have no clue that minorities in this country face existential threats. Being impolite is, to them, the most awful thing that can be done to elite people like them.
Eyeroller
@MisterDancer: They must have done a really good job of sneaking it past the censors. All those scripts and I assume the preliminary episodes were reviewed by the networks for fear of offending bigots and prudes in the audience and/or advertisers. The woman who played Andrea said that her costume was carefully monitored.
Dan B
@John S.: Thanks. You’re good people.
Jinchi
@rikyrah: The fact that they always go to accusations of child sex predators is a tell on the weakness of their argument.
They know there isn’t enough support for their agenda as long as LGBT relationships are just thought of as between consenting adults.
They’re often quite forgiving of actual predators.
Alison Rose
@Dan B: God, I can’t stand that shit. The whole “calling me a racist is as bad or even worse than experiencing racism” thing. And it’s weird to me how thirsty they are to be fake-victimized. OPPRESS ME HARDER, DADDY!!
Chris
@Alison Rose:
“Flyover Country” is still my favorite example of this. It’s a term that I have literally never heard used unironically. Nobody has, as far as I can tell. It’s always used in the context of someone describing the way they think Coastal Elites talk.
Red-state white conservatives are so desperate to feel oppressed that they literally went out and invented an N-word for themselves, just so they’d have something to bitch about.
Brachiator
@Eyeroller:
Twilight Zone got away with stories about bigotry and political issues because the series was viewed as fantasy. Star Trek got a similar pass because some studio executives and advertisers assumed that science fiction was just stuff for kids.
Geminid
Virginia Senator L. Louise Lucas correctly believes that the best defense is a good offense. After the news of House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson’s sex tapes came out last night, Lucas tweeted at 9:57 pm:
Then Lucas called for donations:
And at 10:23 pm:
Can Senator Lucas prove that it was a Youngkin operative who leaked the tapes? Probably not. But if someone were to reproach her for “hitting below the belt,” Lucas might respond: “Belt? What belt?
I think of 78 year-old Senator Lucas when I hear people complain about “the gerontocracy.”
Alison Rose
@Chris: Yeah, they want to believe that blue-state liberals sit around all day doing nothing but shit-talking the midwest and south. It’s all projection because THEY spend so much time shit-talking US.
Roger Moore
@Citizen Alan:
I think there’s a lot more to it than just “we’ll let you join if you hate the same people we do”. Evangelicalism is growing really rapidly throughout Latin America as a result of both proselytizing by USA evangelicals and dissatisfaction with the Catholic church. A fair number of the Latino evangelicals are people who converted to evangelicalism before immigrating and who attend services in Spanish at Spanish-language churches. I wouldn’t necessarily assume they’re political allies of White evangelicals.
wjca
So then why do they have wheels on them? Inquiring minds want to know.
pacem appellant
@MisterDancer: Professor Linus has assembled a video catalog of on-screen interracial kisses that pre-date Uhura and Kirk.
https://www.tiktok.com/@10secondfilm/video/7229044400238742830
There were many!
MisterDancer
I don’t think it’s that. If it was, Roddenberry — not known to be shy about bragging about every bit of the show, including the many bits he didn’t come up with — would have talked that kiss up at every con for a decade+.
Given no one, cast or crew, seemingly has mentioned it (and I’ve read my share of “behind the scenes” works on TOS), I think it was:
I’m a huge Trek fan, and it wasn’t until someone from the queer community on Tumblr mentioned it in a post that it clicked with me!
But it tracks — there’s a LOT of media content like that that we just generally forgot about (the gay reoccurring characters in BARNEY MILLER) or just never even started to notice (the likely 1st gay wedding on TV was also interracial! It was on the show ROC in flippin 1991, y’all).
It’s telling about the hollowness of these right-wing fights that they, too, miss a lot of these situations. They really don’t care until they are programmed to care (c.f. the Forced Birth movement didn’t start until years after Roe), until someone raises a ruckus. That’s a depressing thought on multiple levels.
Miss Bianca
@RevRick: OMG. Horrible.
Michael Bersin
@eclare:
If I recall correctly, it was one of those non-corporeal lifeform advanced civilization planets on the original Star Trek series. Or not.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
I don’t mind in the slightest. The thoughts aren’t the slightest bit original, even if the exact expression is.
Bill Arnold
@wjca:
The Yangs vs the Kohms was pretty cringe.
Sister Golden Bear
@narya: There’s a similar book about Los Angeles, and a somewhat academic book regarding SF. Unfortunately I don’t remember the titles for either.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: “What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”, etc etc
Eyeroller
@Brachiator: The networks were still extremely careful about overt sexual and racial “triggers” like too much sideboob or suggestions of interracial sex. But there were some things that sneaked past the censors (or they let slide).
Jeffro
I hate it when I jump in at comment #213
(sigh)
I guess I’ve got some reading to catch up on upthread…
(deep, deep sigh)
MisterDancer
@pacem appellant: Hunh. That source says there’s an interracial kiss in the Trek episode “Mirror Mirror,” as well. I don’t recall that one, but checking sources, it seems Suku kisses Uhuru on the neck, so sure!
They don’t have the one I mentioned, though. :(
But in general, I agree there’s interracial kissing on TV before the Uhura/Kirk one; that Sinatra/Davis kiss I referenced was also prior, as I recall.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Not sure if it’s the one you’re thinking of, but re: queer SF history, I recently read Wide Open Town and it was really fascinating.
wjca
Love that it was on Fox as well.
Jay
Does no one remember the Kirk/Gorn kiss in Episode 27 of OST?
Michael Bersin
If there are no copyright issues in using the cartoon character and the voice characterization there could be serious money, I say, I say, made right there.
pacem appellant
@eclare: “Telos” is a word that Rufo took from Greek philosophy in order to give his word vomit underserving gravitas.
τέλος – purpose, result, goal
We get the word ‘teleology’ in English from τέλος, which is a branch of philosophy interested in goals, purposes, and intentions.
RevRick
@Miss Bianca: Absolutely horrifying.
I think one of the best rejoinders against climate-deniers is to ask them: “ why do you hate your grandchildren?”
pacem appellant
@MisterDancer: I’m sure there are even more. I can ask Linus to add yours. He’s a film buff. He loves this stuff.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Not particularly distant. IIRC, the canon is that Thomas and Martha Wayne were shot outside a showing of The Mark of Zorro.
Eyeroller
@pacem appellant: Some of those were movies, which didn’t have as many constraints as ratings-obsessed, advertiser-fearing network execs. We were talking about what might be the first televised Black/white kiss. Others in that list must have been white/Asian, or maybe white/Hispanic, which was much more acceptable. But it’s interesting that Sammy Davis Jr. was there since he was among the pioneers of many things on TV.
RevRick
@Eyeroller: Boy, the series, “Shameless “ would make heads explode.
Eyeroller
@MisterDancer: He wasn’t white so it would have been OK, or at least Okayish. The taboo was Black/white.
tybee
@Baud:
stand on a stump?
Old School
@Michael Bersin:
Then you could just say it’s Senator Claghorn.
MisterDancer
@Eyeroller: For Movies, the Hays Code was in effect until ~1967/68, as a check check notes. That would have banned any interracial affection for mainstream productions, under it’s miscegenation rules.
This is why GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER is framed and filmed in very specific ways, even as Loving was coming up to impact all of this BS.
Alison Rose
@Eyeroller:
True, for sure, though it is also interesting in a “wtf was wrong with people” sense to look at the film industry too. I remember when Sidney Poitier died, reading about how hesitant movie studios were to cast him as a romantic lead, even though they knew he was a big box-office draw, because he was Black. I was like…um yeah and he was also incredibly handsome, you nitwits. But too many people back then found the notion of portraying a Black man romantically or, heaven forfend, sexually to be unacceptable.
Hell, a lot of people still feel that way. Fuckers
ETA hehe semi-jinx with MisterDancer
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
It’s just a kiss on the cheek, but I guess it still counts as an interracial kiss. I have not seen this episode in years, but I don’t think I ever noticed it before.
There is a lot of happiness and romance embedded in this scene of Nurse Chapel being reunited with her great love. Also in the background are otherwise unidentified crew members, a white guy and a black woman. As Kirk speaks, these two stand closer together and appear to hold hands.
Jeffro
The U.S., oddly enough, as a multiracial democracy, owes Gene Roddenberry and Norman Lear a debt we can never repay.
Villago Delenda Est
@Matt McIrvin: Star Trek was born woke, by design, it was Roddenberry’s intention. He was constantly pushing the boundaries of Standards and Practices with social commentary. “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” was just the most out there example from TOS, but there were plenty more. Scotty, Uhura, and Sulu on the bridge was pushing the limits of American television at the time.
MisterDancer
I’d like to see some sources/citations on this. I’m not conformable at all assuming that, if it have been Takei and Nichols kissing instead of Shatner and her, the uproar would have been significantly less.
I mean, I can just call my Dad and ask him if it’d been OK for him to date an Asian woman back in the Jim Crow South. But he’s grumpy at me because I told him he needed to talk to my Brother about any issues he has with him, not pull me in. So you’ll forgive if I just ask for sourcing. :)
Chris
@Alison Rose:
“Fun” fact: as late as 2005, this was a whole thing when the movie Hitch was filmed, because they were afraid pairing off Will Smith with a white woman would offend too many bigots, and pairing off Will Smith with a black woman would relegate it to just being a movie for blacks. They cast a Latina actress because they thought it was the best compromise to guarantee a large enough audience.
Not that there was anything wrong with the two lead actors they ended up with. But it’s crazy just how much thought has to go into walking on people’s delicate racist eggshells for something like that.
Barbara
@eversor: </p These are dog whistles for donors and RWNJ think tank hiring committees. My favorite is "enchantment," which in context means ditching skepticism or reason in favor of being "open" to the "wonders" of faith based claims.
Alison Rose
@Chris: Just absurd. Will Smith in comedy roles was such a genial guy. You’d have to really stretch to find him offensive…unless you’re just a massive racist. These are the same people who complain when there’s an interracial couple in a commercial. And yet they’ll insist they aren’t racist. Sure, buddy.
MisterDancer
@Chris: Yeah, I remember that BS as well. (SIGH)
Eyeroller
@MisterDancer:
My only sourcing would be from a 1998 series (according to Memory Alpha–I was sure it was 1997…) which framed the episodes around a host segment, with interviews with the guest stars and sometimes some of the regulars. They had two sets of host segments; the first shown (but filmed second) was hosted by Shatner and the second by Nimoy. They frequently discussed the censorship and interference by the network suits. In the Kirk-Uhuru situation, they claimed the suits were afraid of the potential reaction of Southern audiences in particular. This series has never been rebroadcast and I’m not sure if it’s available anywhere. That’s really a shame because many of the interviewees are now deceased.
katdip
TL/DR (though I did):
For Repubs, every accusation is a projection, ad infinitum. “Marxists take over the culture” = our rich buddies own major media outlets; “LGBTQ groomers” = priests and evangelicals preying on kids,; “voter fraud” = actual voter fraud or election interference; etc.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterDancer: “The Outcast”, the ST:TNG episode that was trying to be a metaphor about homosexuality underneath heavy interference from the suits, came off as a frustrating collection of pulled punches (and today it could read as dissing nonbinary people, though that obviously wasn’t the intent).
That’s the one with the planet of people who are normally nongendered but one is persecuted for identifying as female, and she falls in love with Riker. Jonathan Frakes pushed hard for the love interest to be played by a male actor, but they wouldn’t let them do it.
Sister Golden Bear
@Alison Rose: Yes, that was the book on queer history in SF that I was thinking of.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: I really liked it. Like you said, it is a bit more academic so it got a little dry at times, but there was so much interesting history to learn.
Brachiator
@Eyeroller:
@MisterDancer:
@Alison Rose:
Hollywood could be very cautious about depicting interracial relationships. This even affected casting. So, for example, the 1930s production of The Good Earth.
Paul Muni was cast as a Chinese character, but even so, the producers did not want to cast an Asian actress as his wife.
There is an early 1930s film, The Barbarian, where Myrna Loy has a relationship with an Arab character. This is acceptable only because her character is specifically noted as being part Egyptian.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: I remember people noting that Beverly Hills Cop was unusual for that kind of movie in that era for just not having a romantic subplot. The character who would normally obviously be the love interest was played by Lisa Eilbacher, who is white, and, of course, Eddie Murphy was the star. Murphy was cast at the absolute last minute, and I suspect they just jettisoned the romantic subplot when that happened.
MisterDancer
@Eyeroller: I know the program, actually. In this case, yeah, the censorship was mostly about Black/White relationships. There is a lot of weight around that situation that’s worthy of a small essay, so you’ll forgive me saying me kissing White Girls is A Risk, to this day.
But that doesn’t mean someone of Asian decent could “get away with it,” back then (EDIT: ack’ing that Brachiator is saying similar!). And to be honest, finding good sourcing on the topic is hard. I’ll use this bit from the /r/AskHistorians subreddit as a summary (there is sourcing in that post):
The two situations is not something I’d separate lightly. I think, if nothing else, the massive lack of Asian actors in Hollywood at the time — much less anyone doing any work that would led to kissing — is a major sign that Asians, too, faced hurdles on screen. And that putting them in roles where they were legitimately a romantic connection for a White Woman was likely unthinkable.
So yeah, my understanding is that if Sulu had kissed Uhuru on the mouth or cheek, there would have been an uproar, as well. But much like Uhura/Chapel, what happened in “Mirror, Mirror” just was missed.
MisterDancer
Oh, I ain’t forgot “The Outcast,” my good fellow! :)
And you’re right, it is a hot mess of good intentions.
eversor
@Barbara:
Yeah that’s the doozy of them.
cain
@Chris: Today when I look at ads, tv shows and movies – it doesn’t seem as much of a concern. The age of Gen Z has begun and we should all step aside with our shit. :-)
wjca
You obviously are in a better position to know than I am. But my sense is that the bigots get far more hysterical about a black man kissing a white woman than about a white man kissing a black woman.
Perhaps a legacy of white owners having sex with black women slaves being countenanced, but never white women owners with black men slaves?
Bennett
@Brachiator and @VillagoDelendaEst and others…. I would like gently to correct some misstatements about the objects of Rufo’s dimiwitted assaults.
Herbert Marcuse is not an antique figure of the 60s. Setting aside his early work on Heidegger (which still is very important), his 1964 One Dimensional Man (which indeed everyone in college read in the 60s and 70s) remains the most acute analysis of the degradation of human well-being under the economic system of our times. His concept of “repressive desublimation” alone is enlightening. It means this: we lose the traditional taboos on, for example, sex; but sex is then quickly co-opted by market forces and turned into exploitative sexual appeals, thus losing the liberatory benefits and instead sucking people more deeply into the market rather than exploring and growing.
Telos is not merely the subject of late-night dorm bull sessions. The idea of purposiveness in nature is one of the most important concepts in all human thought for understanding the world.
Rufo, of course, has no idea at all of what Marcuse and Critical Theory really say, nor does he ave the tiniest inkling of how to talk about telos.
grandmaBear
@Bennett: Marcuse was my intro to philosophy professor. I’m clearly doomed!
Tehanu
Rufo has children? Has Child Services been notified?
Aj
@UncleEbeneezer: our government definitely exists to not secure our natural rights. Infact, it is galloping to destroy our rights in favor of Christian nationalists” theocracy.
MrKite
@Baud: Where there’s a willy, there’s a way.