I like this ad but I think spotted some marble countertops in the background.
Open Thread: Shakespeare in the KULCHA! Wars
Huh. Woman who rushed the stage at Shakespeare in the Park doesn't SEEM starved for attention or anything. pic.twitter.com/XvroAsRgPJ
— Schooley (@Rschooley) June 17, 2017
As reported in the Washington Post:
Two right-wing activists interrupted the Friday evening performance of a controversial production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in New York’s Central Park, causing a stir on social media — where numerous videos of the protest proliferated — and resulting in one woman’s arrest.
In the videos, a woman identified as Laura Loomer, an employee of the far-right website Rebel Media, can be seen storming the stage during the scene of the title character’s assassination, shouting “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right! This is unacceptable!”…
Within the commotion, a second pro-Trump protester, Jack Posobiec, can be seen standing and yelling in the audience, “You are all Goebbels!” and “The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands!”…
In a string of tweets, the Public Theater confirmed the interruption at its Friday show and said it had been “part of a paid strategy driven by social media.”…
Posobiec, a Washington-based Trump supporter who formerly also worked for Rebel Media, told The Washington Post on Saturday that, contrary to some media reports, he and Loomer did not coordinate their protests. Rather, he had attended the performance at the encouragement of alt-right personality Mike Cernovich, who posted a “challenge” on Periscope last week offering a $1,000 prize for anyone who could get tickets to the play and interrupt the show….
Cash Rules Everything Around Them — dolla-dolla, get tha monee…
America: people are calling & emailing theaters called "Shakespeare" across the country complaining about their play https://t.co/a0yxHpbfHh
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) June 17, 2017
First they came after the Shakespearean production companies and I said nothing because … wait a minute, what the hell?!? https://t.co/xARQcUCmtk
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) June 17, 2017
To be fair, there is a very old American tradition of interrupting plays. pic.twitter.com/hYEpY693X1
— Schooley (@Rschooley) June 17, 2017
Open Thread: Shakespeare in the KULCHA! WarsPost + Comments (104)
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Rain Dancing
Peerless garden commentor & photographer Marvel:
Hereabuts it’s all fits-n-starts, weatherwise. We had a modest warm-up last week, then yesterday, a bit of rain. This mild weather has apparently done wonders to the turf grass growth — the Willamette Valley is the Grass Seed Capitol of the World & I tell you what: lately it’s also the Grass Pollen Capitol of the world. The past several days have see pollen counts above 750 parts per cubic meter (200 ppcm is considered very high).
With rain in the forecast, I considered harvesting the garlic a week early (at this point, the bulbs can’t take any additional moisture), but since the stalks were still pretty green and unlikely to close/dry properly, we decided to re-cover the bed with 6-mil plastic and wait it out.
Last year I accidentally let some dill go to seed in one of the raised beds (I was holding out for one more run of pickle-making). This year, the baby dill grew up peacefully amongst the carrots & beets we planted several weeks ago. Since I didn’t want any extra moisture to complicated drying the feathery weed, I harvested it and set it to dry in the breezeway.
With all the pollen wafting about (even folks without allergies are sneezing & rubbing their poor watery eyes), it was nice to have a little rain to rinse things off yesterday. The ornamental garden [top pic] pretty much takes care of itself this time of year (thank goodness!), but it always appreciates a shower or two.
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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Rain DancingPost + Comments (93)
The Navy Hymn
Horrible news — Bodies of missing sailors found pic.twitter.com/FdXMa5tTQF
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 18, 2017
Open Thread: White “Progressive” Broflakes, THEEE WURST WORST
And by ‘Progressive Broflakes’, tonight, I mean “Bret Weinstein”.
Although I first encountered the species back in the mid-1970s, on a midwestern state university campus, where an earlier generation of More Feminist Than You Ladies men decided to “liberate” the women’s lounge in the Student Union, a room with some battered couches and tables adjacent to the bathroom, which had for many years been a place where female students could study, talk, or even nap without getting harassed. Like newly-politicized college students, aging “progressive” men attempting to show off their leadership skills are an endlessly renewable resource.
Some context to Cole’s post below, from Inside Higher Ed:
… For many years at Evergreen State, minority students and faculty members have observed a Day of Absence in which they meet off campus to discuss campus issues and how to make the college more supportive of all students. Later a Day of Presence reunites various campus groups. Weinstein said he’s been aware of the tradition for some time, and never objected to it. But this year, organizers said that on the Day of Absence, they wanted white people to stay off campus. Weinstein opposed this shift, and he posted a message on a campus email list in which he objected to the proposal to ask white people to stay off campus.
“There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women’s Day walkout), and a group encouraging another group to go away,” Weinstein wrote. “The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.”
Weinstein went on to say he would be on campus on the Day of Absence and would encourage a similar stance by white people being asked to stay away. People should “put phenotype aside,” he said. “On a college campus, one’s right to speak — or to be — must never be based on skin color.”
That email is one of the reasons Weinstein is being called racist, with students saying his tone belittled the people behind the idea of having a Day of Absence without white people on campus. The other reason cited against Weinstein is that he has come out against a recommendation on faculty hiring by the college’s Equity and Inclusion Council. That recommendation, currently under consideration by college leaders, would require an “equity justification/explanation” for all faculty hires…
In other words, Weinstein was perfectly okay with those pesky “inclusive” groups as long as they stayed on the margins and didn’t affect his daily life in any way, shape or form. The instant the argument went from “We should let some of those people in, if it’s not too much trouble” to “We should proactively demonstrate what actually having a ‘minority’ group as the standard would look like”, Professor Weinstein’s all BUT WHAT ABOUT *MY* RIGHTS?!?
Open Thread: White “Progressive” Broflakes, THEEE <del>WURST</del> WORSTPost + Comments (121)
Open Thread
We need one.
Trying to watch Animal Kingdom but they are all such douchebags I don’t know if I can finish even the first episode.
Hopefully They Will Grow Out of This
The only thing you can do when you see things like this is A.) wonder where the rest of the faculty are and B.) hope they grow out of it.
It does raise some interesting questions, though. Do the kids not realize they are also white, and should probably not be there because they are de facto violating the rules via their whiteness? And why are they mostly only interviewing only white kids. And third, when did snapping take the place of clapping, or is that just something else I missed?
At any rate, they are kids, and college is where they are supposed to do stupid things, so they are at least in the right place. This made me laugh, though:
I guess if you are a Republican, and this is the face of the left to you, it could be problematic. I think the best lesson they could learn from this is not the message they are trying to send, but the organizational skills that can be later put to use rallying around more solid causes and discovering that when it comes to change, showing up is 90% of the battle. As long as they are not violent or actually get someone fired for no reason, just let them be, I say.
Which automatically gives them a leg up for me, because protests = crowds = lots of people and that shit ain’t happening for me. Also related:
There is going to be a long hot night because of the Castile verdict, which has even right-wingers scratching their heads.
*** Update ***
Good piece here.