So after Dizzy Gillespie did as he does and wrote something stupid, I knew what to say. Which is as follows.
If you’re like me, you occasionally have friends ask why some of us are so hard on libertarians, what with libertarianism being a perhaps misguided but principled ideology and those principled libertarians out there. And I have to explain that libertarianism is not a principled ideology, but a naked pretense for greed, and while I certainly don’t doubt that there are libertarians who believe their own narratives, those people have been bamboozled by perfectly unprincipled people. Queue Radley Balko weeping softly.
If you want proof, look no further than this post by Nick Gillespie, pater familias at Reason, in which he defends Naomi Schaefer Riley, the racetroll and budding conservative star. Gillespie actually lays out a pretty damning case against Schaefer Riley. After all, the issue itself is precisely as he puts it: attacking an entire field on the basis of brief synopses of in-progress doctoral dissertations is, well, beyond absurd. Now, me, I think if you’re a journalist– if you keep defending yourself by talking about your qualifications as a journalist– and you go out of your way to make arguments on pitifully little evidence, and because your argument is so monumentally spurious and your defense of your conduct so weak you alienate essentially your entire audience, then yeah. You can be fired. That’s the free market for you.
So having said all that needs to be said about Schaefer Riley’s pitiful post and her total rejection by readers– her market failure— Gillespie complains that, were the field in question English or art history or whatever, Schaefer Riley wouldn’t have been fired. He then says that the firing was a matter of political correctness, and there’s where he gives the game away: were the field in question English or art history, he would make no argument about political correctness, and the whole thing would fall to pieces. There would be no argument. The lurking idea, which people know better than to say explicitly, is that these grad students are necessarily unserious because of what they study, and probably undeserving. That’s what animates this whole discussion, this fucking “PC” dog whistle that means nothing else than “black people complaining.” For Nick Gillespie and Naomi Schaefer Riley and all the rest of them, “politically correct” is just an arrow they can pull out of their quiver whenever they choose. For the grad students whose work was criticized, and every other black scholar, it’ll be a shadow that hangs over their entire career, some asshole whispering “they’re just here because it’s PC. It’s all affirmative action.”
I think Gillespie knows all that. I think he’s more convinced by his own criticisms of Schaefer Riley than by his defense of her. But he’s got a career to build and a spot in the public eye to defend and money to make. And he works for an organization that’s funded by self-interested plutocrats whose philosophy says the best people are self-interested plutocrats. So he does the dance and participates in the smears of three people who make no money and enjoy no cultural prestige, and all because his lone professional commitment is to bashing lefties.
That’s why I don’t take libertarians seriously: because there is no good instinct and no intelligent observation that can’t be thrown away, if the situation’s right.
That’s what I was going to write. But it gets much worse. Kevin Drum says that, apparently, intellectual freedom means that professional journalists have no standards to meet. He, like Gillespie, doesn’t bother to defend the actual argument. He just waves at the idea that the marketplace of ideas is tough. That he does so in a case where the appeal to conservative race baiting is so plain is just damned discouraging. And it’s also discouraging that he considers the fact that, yes, we are a little more sensitive when it comes to black studies, precisely because of hundreds of years of slavery and racism, but dismisses it with the wave of a hand
At heart there’s a very basic question here, about what the standards should be for professional opinion writing and when a publication should listen to the complaints of its readership. For me, it’s pretty fucking basic: Naomi Schaefer Riley invoked her role as a journalist as the reason why she didn’t have to defend her opinion with evidence. I can’t think of a more obvious reason to dismiss someone from a professional blogging gig. That Nick Gillespie is too busy gently massaging David Koch’s shoulders to understand that is of no surprise. That Kevin Drum can’t see beyond the bezels of his MacBook– that he can’t see this story in the context of a conservative movement that is throwing every once of effort into delegitimizing the enterprise of antiracism– just baffles me. Baffles and disappoints me.
Oh, by the way– Schaefer Riley is opposed to tenure. Apparently, she thinks protections for people with unpopular opinions keeps them from being accountable, so they should be done away with. What do you think about that, Kevin?
Freddie deBoer
(capitalized post title courtesy of certain loyal BJ readers)
liberal
That is almost right, but not quite. Rather, libertarianism is a naked pretense for theft.
dadanarchist
Schaefer Riley played this perfectly. The fact the Chronicle fell for it is typical if sad. That useless idiots (Gillespie) and useful idiots (Drum) defend her is just gravy on a perfectly executed con. I have to tip my hat to her for that, if nothing else.
Citizen Alan
Schaefer Riley is opposed to tenure.
Oh that is just hilarious! Her philosophy really is “I’ve got mine. Fuck you.”
kindness
Sometimes I get the feeling Kevin Drum wants in on Sally Quinn’s parties….if only Sally would move to Orange County.
Still, he too often gives his political opposition far too much credit and doesn’t account for the simple answer. That some people are scum.
gaz
Fucking excellent post Freddie. I really hope Kevin Drum reads it. You mugged him with reason. Naomi herself is beyond help, so she probably won’t even get it. Kevin might, but he’ll dodge. Hopefully though, he’ll spend at least some time in the wee hours of the evening, lying there in bed, wondering if maybe he’s a bit of an asshat. And that my friend, is progress.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Why are you insulting Dizzy Gillespie by using his name in a post about that Reasonoid twit?
Gotta say, though, Drum’s reaction is also stupid.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Fix’t that for ya.
It’s that view in the Walled Garden; it’s so captivating that he can’t take his eyes from it. ;p
kth
She has a “book length” version of her argument against tenure. I put “book length” in quotes because the body is less than 200 pages. No doubt it is a very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.
Alison
@Freddie deBoer: I LOVE THIS NEW POWER.
I wonder what else I can get you all to do…
burnspbesq
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
x2. Freddie owes all of John Birks Gillespie’s surviving relatives a huge apology. That was totally fucked up.
JoeCommenter
Nick Gillespie, along with Rod Dreher are trying to make the case that writers should never be fired for writing shit, even though this sort of brazen incompetence is the sort of thing that would get you fired at any other job.
I think we now see a lot of the reason that right wing writers hate academia– it’s jealousy. They believe that writers such as themselves should have the same level of security and deference granted to tenured professors.
Had Ms. Riley been an anonymous warehouse employee at Amazon fired for calling her managers incompetent nitwits in print, Gillespie and Dreher would be rushing to the defense of management.
Merp
Dizzy Gillespie is good. Although tarnishing a great man by associating him with a douchebag intellectual fraud in a leather jacket is not ideal.
This whole NSR thing is beyond insane. Everyone knows what NSR did and why she did it, but this stupid shadow play gets put on so that Fox News can fill thirty five minutes of air time across six shows and NPR and PBS can have segments where Neil Conan invites people to share their thoughts on the increased polarization of our times and Brooks and Shields can talk about a hyperpartisan media atmosphere where both sides are too quick to accuse people of bad faith and newspaper opinion writers can throw this on the pile of pre-digested events that they can insert into any random column any time they’re 200 words short and George Stephenagogpoopolis can ask George Will and Peggy Noonan when did things start to get so nasty.
And this was all completely predictable from the moment NSR’s piece was posted.
Kafka’s descriptions of institutions completely divorced from rationality and comprehensibility can’t do this justice. Hunter S. Thompson’s drug-fueled rages at politico-corporate media wouldn’t be able to do it justice. I’m not sure J R, the greatest satirical novel of the past forty years, and it’s depiction of the complete breakdown of language and destruction of meaning from the manipulation of capitalist institutions adequately captures what’s going on.
Everyone’s intentionally dancing around the truth but without a purpose for doing so. Not because everyone else is doing so. Not because it fits a partisan goal. Not because they are covering up for not understanding what’s really going on. Just because.
And somehow with all this blather reaching millions of people no-one is informed by it, because everyone who actually read what NSR wrote knew everything everyone was going to say as soon as they read it, and nobody who didn’t read it themselves is going to be informed because everyone telling them about it will be deliberately dancing around the furthest edges of the truth.
Ugh. Buy stock in whiskey. Imma create a create a market bubble in a short period of time.
Steve
Someone needs to spell this out for me, a bit more slowly. I didn’t follow that argument at all.
dadanarchist
Yep. I opposed firing her for that reason and that reason alone. The denouement was completely predictable from the moment she shit out the initial blogpost.
Another reason I fucking hate right-wingers: they’ve turned me utterly Machiavellian when it comes to politics.
John X.
The winners are the readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education, because they showed they won’t put up with this shit. Moreover, they showed that they are willing to get their institutions to – in tight budget times – reconsider their advertising and subscription to the CHE.
While this may loose another conservative pundit and pseudo-scandal on the world, there’s no shortage of those, so it’s no great loss. But it also preserves one little spot on the Interent where the agit-prop isn’t welcome anymore. That’s a nice little victory.
Jack Burton
Why, other than the obvious, is this going on so intensely now? I was watching They Live the other day and Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David just hang out, two blue collar guys, no race jokes, no slipped niggers blurted out. They were just friends and allies who also happened to have a 50 minute fistfight. This was from 1988. Later I was watching Die Hard 3 with Samuel L. and Bruce Willis. Basically the whole movie is a riff on what a racist McClain is or isn’t. This is in 1995. And now…. It just seemed like in the 80’s we were more harmonious (Full disclosure, I was an 80’s kid)? What happened? Anyone says PC Thugs gets bad karma forever. And I am sorry for using such a tortured reach of an analogy.
Merp
@Jack Burton:
I get what you’re throwing down. I think on the demand side it’s partly an effect of the economy collapsing, and on the supply side partly the result of the interaction between instantaneous communication and forty years’ investment in an ideological media structure that can ensure these kinds of insane rantings can get to an audience.
But obviously no one will ever be able to fully answer that kind of question.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Jack Burton: They Live is a great movie. John Carpenter really has produced some good stuff over the years. How’s the Pork Chop Express?
Jack Burton
@Merp: I guess the internet gives every racist Uncle a voice so it is super amplified. It just seems strange to me that so many are jumping on that train. I truly believe a ton of it is fear of being treated the way they wanted to and did treat minorities what with the demographics changing and all of that.
KS in MA
@John X.: This.
Jack Burton
@The prophet Nostradumbass: When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.” John Carpenter is by far my favorite director, too bad he seems to have fallen to the same issues that have plagued Ridley Scott lately. We will see with Prometheus though. I am excited. And the old lady just went over 400,000 miles last week. Oh, you weren’t asking about Gracie?
Adolphus
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
What he said. I really don’t like the conflation of one of this country’s greatest cultural products with Nick Gillespie. Dizzy was a legend and deservedly so. Is it too late to ask you to stop this now? Especially given the amount of racism Dizzy endured and his outspoken nature on such issues as world peace and civil rights. Your use of that name as a childish pejorative in this context is a little unseemly and imprecise.
Mnemosyne
@Jack Burton:
Well, it was PC Thugs, but not the ones you’re thinking of — the Thugs were the right-wingers who started screaming “PC!” whenever anyone tried to point out an instance of racism or bigotry. In retrospect, it was the first manifestation of the right wing’s “nuh-uh!” style of argumentation that has now also brought us things like climate change denial, where the person who screams the loudest wins the argument no matter what the facts say.
To use another example, compare the two versions of “Battlestar Galactica” and count the number of background characters who are POC. Not the leads, just the people wandering past in the background. It’s pretty fucking embarrassing to the updated version.
Jack Burton
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne: Yeah, I always thought the conservative aversion to political correctness was that they could no longer walk down the street yelling, “Nigger!!!” and it has pissed them off ever since. About Battlestar, I had a years long interruption of cable so I stopped watching after season two. Were there a lot of POC in the background of the updated version? I can’t remember and someone, I think here, was saying there were not much?
greennotGreen
I don’t even see the point of mentioning the field of study or the race of the graduate students (and I don’t actually know their race.) NSR wrote an article in which she presented a prescription based on three in-progress dissertations that *she did not even read.* Full stop. A synopsis is not a dissertation. A committee meeting is not a defense. An unsupported opinion is not the product of real journalism.
Joey Maloney
I beg to differ. Radley Balko doesn’t do ANYTHING softly.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Oy. Sorry to be using this as a trampoline for bitching about BSG, but I’m on Season 2 of that (only started watching recently). Early on in the season (or late last season, can’t remember) the military overthrows the president over a disagreement, declares martial law, and several people are killed by soldiers during a riot resulting from that.
Later on, you have an episode I just watched, where they finally “deal with” the fallout of that by having the Liberal Media TV crew that’s been hounding Adama come on board Galactica, have an epiphany that soldiers are nice people just like us, only they’re all absolutely heroic, and everyone should just get off their backs. Suitably shamed, the media finally releases a “balanced” video (e.g. a military recruitment commercial) and the entire matter of the shooting is just forgotten as the triviality it is.
I’ve mostly enjoyed the show so far, but that may be the single most nauseating episode of science fiction I’ve ever watched. Yeah, I know most shows like to fluff the military and gasp at the appallingly liberal media, but it was just so blatant in this case – “yes, the military totally just overthrew their government and then shot up a ship, but don’t you DARE ask for any kind of accountability here because if you do, you’re a BAD PERSON and you should FEEL bad.”
Vixen Strangely
The market rejected NSR. Her work-product wasn’t rejected because of political correctness, but because of the forces exerted by other individuals who looked at her standards and judged them against their own value system–full stop. Libertarians blaming political correctness for anything is a massive cop-out: what standard should individuals employ if not one of their own choosing? If they adopt a standard that also is deemed less-harmful to the peace of society-at-large, isn’t that the mechanism that shows personal freedom can be self-regulating? In other words, if people self-select and encourage others to also adopt less assholish behaviors, isn’t that the proof that sustainable societies can develop on individualistic grounds, where success or failure depend on one’s own merits?
Her behavior met with the disapprobation of many who found her work substandard. It’s unfortunate that she produced substandard work, but it’s her responsibility to determine how to proceed from there. Either she develops standards commensurate with the demands of her audience, (this does not mean she needs to adopt their bias, only the standards of work in terms of evidence-production, and logical conclusion) or she can’t. If she can’t, maybe another avenue of productivity awaits her.
Principled Democrat
Renowned goofball Nick Gillespie is the most powerful man in America.
There are many libertarians dominating American politics. They should be stopped before they do anything ultra-destructive, like codifying the suspension of habeas corpus and pursuing a campaign of mass murder overseas.
Also: as a progressive, I’d like to praise the CIA and the Saudi regime for foiling those towelheads.
rb
@kth: No doubt it is a very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.
I have to say, this is perhaps the greatest of all internet traditions, second only to the fabled reference to awareness of all internet traditions itself. It makes me giggle like a little kid every time.
sophronia
It’s true, everyone knows exactly what she was doing and nobody will say it. Because it is apparently taboo to talk about trolling in our glorious liberal media, even though every human being who reads this crap can spot it immediately. That’s why our national discourse is so absurd. Because no one can bring up trolling, we are forced to listen to media people discussing obvious garbage writing as if it actually had a serious point.
See “Liberal Fascism.” Once it became clear that the media would be forced to act as though that pile of nonsense was a serious argument, it was clear that political discourse in this country was DOA.
Mark S.
@rb:
Those are immortals, along with:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
Sly
Maybe we can remodel Martin Niemholler’s famous quartet of “First they came for the X” for douchebag racists:
First they came for Charles Murray and I didn’t speak out because I can’t spout psuedoscientific bullshit to justify my racism.
Then they came for John Derbyshire and I didn’t speak out because I’m smart enough to keep the vilest of my prejudices hidden.
Then they came for Naomi Shaeffer Riley and I didn’t speak out because I never even heard of the Chronicle of Higher Education (and it sounds like something liberals read).
Then they came for me and there were no douchebag racists left willing to speak out.
Progress is a process of generational attrition, made possible through an ever-decreasing net total of assholes in the general population due to the current generation of assholes (slowly) dying off and fewer assholes rising to take their place.
So I always smile when I hear caterwauling against political correctness, because all I’m hearing is the lament of an asshole about how he or she can’t be an asshole in public anymore without getting the tacit endorsement of the majority through its complicit silence. I’m hearing progress in motion.
Mark S.
@sophronia:
And a racist troll at that. The entire subtext of her post was that black people just blame whitey for the fact that they’re stupid and lazy. I’m actually surprised she didn’t ask why there weren’t any White Studies Departments.
Mnemosyne
@Jack Burton:
Virtually none in the updated version. But watch any random episode of the 70s version and there are LOTS of African-American extras and one-off parts. Going backwards, we are.
@Chris:
I’m biting my tongue because I’ve seen the whole series and, well, spoilers. That episode will have some very interesting retrospective nuances once you get to the end of the season.
Jack Burton
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, that is what I thought. But, but Girls is THE VOICE OF A GENERATION!!!
Mnemosyne
@Jack Burton:
Meh. The whole Girls thing is way overblown, IMO. One staff writer did a stupid Tweet that gave people who already hated the show an in, but I went into all of this in great detail yesterday. Hopefully Lena Dunham understands what the valid complaint is (it’s ridiculous to have all-white extras for a show set in New York City) and doesn’t decide to add a token POC cast member next season … while leaving the extras snowy white (also known as the “Friends” solution).
Jack Burton
@Mnemosyne: I see that you did discuss this and I certainly do hope there is not a “token” added. Btw, that writer Arfin, also referred to a BM as, “taking Obama to the white house” and also really loves that word nigger. “Nigger is a great word, it packs so much punch.” “It makes me proud to be a writer.” Yeah, that one writer sure seems like one who is ready to live in this post-racial society.
Mnemosyne
@Jack Burton:
If I were that writer, I would not count on my contract being picked up for next season.
Just sayin’.
Jewish Steel
@Sly:
If I ever get fat enough, this is going on a t-shirt.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@burnspbesq: @Adolphus: I got to meet Gillespie many years ago, when I was in elementary school in the 70s, and he was awesome. He really was great with kids, really excellent at answering their questions in a way they’d understand without being condescending. I wish I could have played with him; I did get the opportunity to play with some other Jazz “names” though.
Jack Burton
@Mnemosyne: One hopes, but it sure seems that a lot of people are awfully invested in this show (which I have not seen, shame) and I think she is friends with Dunham so I am sure they are all waiting for this to blow over. Hey I love the idea of young women getting a chance to run a show and just do it, but a part of me seems to feel that this is the way a lot of privileged young people see the world around them. You know?
Morgan Warstler
Freddie,
My warning is simple, the more you divide the media up into liberal and conservative, the more Fox News it will become.
Without conservatives dropping a couple bombs in your favorite haunts every once and a while, the facade of moderate will fall away, and normal folk will just be turned off.
There’s a reason you have to blog here. You are only good for rallying the true believers.
You can do more Freddie, the first step is feeling less threatened by other people’s words.
What start as boycotts you like, ends up as SCOTUS allowing businessmen to fire employees who they disagree with politically.
Real men debate unflinchingly.
psycholinguist
Damn, did Kevin Drum have a stroke or something? What the fuck Kevin, she posted on a blog run by the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION you dipshit – not free fuckin republic. Professional academics and soon to be academics are the audience there. We wouldn’t let a freshman bullshit his way through a discussion class when it becomes obvious that he read the title and not the actual assigned work, why in the world would we put up with that from a person who is writing a blog attached to the chronically. Did he bother to read the comments? People had their panties in a wad because of the blatant, proud laziness her post displayed.
Morgan Warstler
@Vixen Strangely:
This is right. And super wrong.
I support boycotts, they are free expressions.
I ALSO know that sooner than later, the same argument will be used to exclude liberals from the workplace.
And I’m not against that either. All’s fair. But I do want you to think it through.
Morgan Warstler
@Sly: You are smart not to use your full name when you say that stuff, it will likely be used against you by assholes.
Of course, if you used your full name, your words would carry more weight.
Everyone has to make their own choices.
And that’s why we become more socially liberal and economically conservative.
That ying-yang thing screws up Freddie’s point though, huh?
TG Chicago
Gillespie said (and Drum approvingly quoted):
I think that argument has at least some merit. However, it’s not germane to this case. If she had just made one awful post, then had it pointed out to her, resulting in her retracting the post, then that would be one thing.
But once the tempest started brewing, she didn’t rethink her position. She just bull-headedly doubled down. That’s the kind of posting the Chronicle for Higher Education should be prepared to host?
So to Gillespie and Drum, it was not a “single blog post” that got her fired. The Chronicle gave her the chance (either explicitly or implicitly) to show that this was a momentary lapse of good sense. She declined to take that opportunity, to put it mildly.
Thus, the Chronicle learned that the blogger they hired lacks good sense. So they fired her ass. What’s the downside?
Hovercraft Full of Eels
Count me among those who wish Freddie had not besmirched the good name of John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie by using it to refer to that libertarian douchebag. That guy may be dizzy, but he could never be Dizzy.
The real Dizzy Gillespie was a great musician, person and humanitarian who practiced the Ba’hai faith, a religion based on the idea of tolerating all other religions, and, interestingly, once ran for President.
gaz
@Morgan Warstler:
If you actually followed this debacle, you’d look less like a tool. That of course, takes effort. It’s a whole lot easier to make a ham-fisted and idiotic appeal to “moderates”, like that even means anything anymore.
Bobo, is that you?
gaz
@Morgan Warstler: Jesus.
Concern troll is concerned.
ChaseBears
Original battlestar was filmed in California.
New battlestar was filmed in Vancouver BC.
No social decline necessary to explain difference in skin color of extras. :P
Sgaile-beairt
@ChaseBears: You mean this Vancouver? The one that’s 50% visible minority? The one famous for its Asian arts presence?
What is necessary to explain your lack of knowledge?
brantl
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Seconded. Dizzie was a cool guy.
Keith G
Freddie this was well thought out and well written. One of the problems I have had with BJ lately is the lack of well constructed, and well considered, writing on the part of the front pagers, as well as the incessant need for name calling and chest thumbing in the comments. You have done your part, some of the comments above, not so much.
Kevin’s post is one of the most poorly thought out things I have read and his commenters are taking him to task. He gets a lot of things right, but clearly not this. I hope he will reconsider his premises and conclusion.
RSA
Gillispie seems to be quite a prat. He spreads a bit of contempt on other academic fields, with “often intellectually-vapid vocational programs such as engineering and architecture,” and elsewhere writes about “something that can be easily replicated in the workplace – say, training engineers or software programmers.” This, from an English major who defends Ayn Rand’s work because it’s popular.
Walker
@Morgan Warstler:
Nobody is talking about splitting up conservative and liberal. We are talking about booting the anti-empiricists. There is no place for that kind anywhere in media.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morgan Warstler:
Freddie has been pounding the living shit out of NSR for intellectual vacuity for a while now. Her conclusions, no matter how much one disagrees with them, were never the problem. It was the way she reached them – if she had read a representative sample of the works within the field and offered her judgment, people would have disagreed with her and moved on. Instead, she effectively skimmed the intro to the Cliff Notes of a couple of in-progress dissertations and concluded that an entire academic discipline should be wiped out. She functioned like a hack, was called out for it, doubled down on the hackery, and then suffered the consequences of being a hack. If one does like being called out for being a hack, there is an easy solution; stop being a hack.
Bob2
Dreher thinks that because NSR is married to a black man she can’t possibly have been racist.
Keith G
@Bob2: She doesn’t have to be racist to be so unserious and so lacking in intellectual probity as to be unemployable by important scholarly publications.
kc
Amen to all that.
I was really disappointed in Kevin Drum.
slippy
@Mnemosyne:
Uh . . . several of the main cast members of the new series are minorities. EJO plays the lead character, right off the top of my head two of the formerly male characters were made female (Starbuck, Boomer), one of those characters is a minority — but you’re counting extras, who have no lines.
You probably should watch the whole thing, also. The end of the show has a pretty surprising conclusion which may cause you to re-think pretty much everything you just talked about.
kindness
@slippy: This!!!
Don’t be slandering my BSG on me. Especially the newer series that our TV overlords can’t seem to recreate the same energy and vitality in a new Scifi epic.
efroh
@kc: I’ve been reading him for years and it’s par for the course for him. Just makes me sad that he gets paid for blogging and Digby doesn’t.
Mnemosyne
@slippy:
Yes, Boomer was a male character in the original series. He was also black (played by Terry Carter). So was Col. Tigh (played by Herbert Jefferson Jr.) So the substitutions on the new series were not quite the automatic improvement you seem to think.
As I said in the other thread, I did chalk the issue up to the show being shot in Canada until “Warehouse 13” started airing, which is a Canadian show that casts quite a few POC in small roles and as extras. After that, I was kind of embarrassed for “Galactica.”
ETA: Yes, I did watch the whole series. No, the ending was not some kind of huge revelation about this specific issue of casting.
robo
Agreed on every point, but must politely assert…
NEVER EVER BESMIRCH THE GOOD NAME OF DIZZY GILLESPIE!!! The man was a genius, and was as kind and generous a human being as you could ever hope to meet.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I get so sick of these losers whining about “political correctness” all the time. What they’re really whining about is, “I can’t call black people niggers or darkies anymore without somebody coming down on me and calling me a racist. Help, help, I’m being repressed! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!”
O.K., so maybe they don’t call their comrades to come see the violence inherent in the system, but they sure do feel repressed that they can’t be vile assholes without people getting pissed off about it. That’s all “political correctness” is: not being a vile asshole.