The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Where Will All This Canceling Take Us?

    By Orion on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 12:37am |

    I'm not sure how much of what is on social media is relevant to real life but, apparently, according to what is showing up in my feed, the United States government is pushing Spotify to let go of Joe Rogan. Rogan has been a critic of Covid-19 measures and that criticism grew in to saying that the guy is, predictably, a racist:

     

     

    It's easy to get in to what they're talking about regarding Joe Rogan but, at this same time, Whoopi Goldberg, who is very much black, got cancelled. She made comments about the Holocaust! Let's see what she said:

    If you missed Goldberg’s comments, here is the gist: On Monday, while discussing the Tennessee school board that voted to remove Art Spiegelman’s serialized graphic novel “Maus” from its eighth-grade curriculum, Goldberg claimed that the Holocaust “was not about race” and, in a subsequent appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” said that “the Nazis were white people, and most of the people they were attacking were white people.”

    I usually don't use profanity, but this is fucking ridiculous. One of my favorite books, Civilization by Niall Ferguson, comes with the thesis that World War II was the result of Western Europe applying the logic that drove colonialism and exploitation around the world on itself. The Nazis invaded much of Europe and Eurasia and even enlisted black and Arab Africans in a special, segregated unit. Their main target was other white people they deemed inferior.

    That is basically a more complex way of saying what Goldberg said. I'm left wondering if, to avoid trouble, Goldberg should have just stayed quiet about the topic or maybe not shown up for work at all.

    What is happening with all this social alienation and disruption of professional and personal reputations is not as extreme as Stalin's show trials, since the people being canceled are not being taken out and shot (although that may come later). However, the rationale is basically the same. 

    Powerful and influential people want this society to quiet down and mind its Ps and Qs. As Americans, we are accustomed to the idea that there are few, if no, boundaries on speech, but that's not what whoever is bringing all this canceling wants.

    I grew up when Tipper Gore was pushing for Parental Advisory stickers and Bill O'Reilly was lecturing everyone from Jenna Jameson to Marilyn Manson about how degraded they were. Those two were simply annoyances for those they saw as offensive and may have actually helped their careers with free publicity. Cancel culture, on the other hand, doesn't lecture but goes right for the employment and social connections that keep people afloat.

    What would a canceled culture be like? What would media be like if lewd rap music was deemed by authorities as misogynist, any talk of controversial issues by anyone outside of government was deemed offensive, and the few approved entertainers were people like Trevor Noah, who clearly toe the line of those in power? 

    It would be a whole lot like Soviet radio, which largely broadcasted classical music, along with government broadcasts:

     

     

    Also, while traveling in an authoritarian country a few years back, I found that the many channels available on their satellite TV were carefully selected to be pleasant - a cartoon/anime channel, travel shows, action movies, and absolutely no cable news. 

    To be honest about it, both sound a whole lot more pleasant than Joe Rogan's 3 to 5 hour conversational workouts, in which he is generally determined more than anything to relate whatever he can to psychedelic drugs. Maybe Big Brother isn't so bad. surprise

    Comments

    We've gotten dumber - obviously "race" isn't just skin color. Slavic, gypsy/Roma, Jewish races stick out, but there were Kashubians and Silesians and who else. "White" from Ashkenazi vs Sephardic to the different socio-economic entitlements and sub-categorizing that shifted over a century to make Jews both finally "white" with the assigned privileges and quite a bit less discrimination, but also bifurcated Mideast Israeli Jews with American and what's left of European Jews.

    So Whoopi's thing dips into both "no, Jews weren't really considered 'white' the way we might think if it today" as well as 'the racial theories used for discrimination and mass murder weren't based so much on skin color" - scientific parsing of nose sizes and other supposed and sometimes actual features were and are part of racial typing, and would actually be useful in defining traits between Hispanic blacks and African blacks and then whether west, east or south Africa... There's not an inherent moral superiority to looking up your heritage via "23 & me" genotyping vs traditional family trees and analyzing characteristics - just differences in accuracy. But people like to know where they come from, not just for diabolical reasons - the "Roots" craze/fad in the 80s and all that. Certainly Jews being dispersed in various ways through the years have some justifiable reasons to want to parse that reproductive and ethnic journey.

    Anyway, a more interesting panel on how and to what extent Jews became "white" over the years - perhaps more white in America in the 2nd half of the 1800s than early 1990s.

    https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/publications-research/advent...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 2:42am

    Doing other stuff, I just stopped by for a quickie to plop this on my Bill Maher thread. But I see now that you've conveniently furnished an even better place:

    THIS. ALL OF THIS. https://t.co/vJh8NzweeH

    — TrippyLiberty (@TrippyLiberty) February 6, 2022

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 4:23am

    And I'm really not hurt by being called a "cracker", Eric Adams or anyone else. I'm truly amazed how comfort with playing the dozens in the 80s/90s ("you/yo mama is so dumb...") casual roasting for humor & sharpening one's wit has devolved into over-sensitivity over the most "sticks and stones..." kind of insults. There's a great scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest where McMurphy & a black orderly square off to fight out long brewing tensions, and *of course* they reach for the racial epithets as part of the fight - that's *human* - gender, race, religion, place of origin, height, weight, ugly, babyface, disabilities or disfigurements... anything for an advantage, or in a more social situation, just to put someone down *a bit*, assume rank. I'm sure David shouted "you g_dd_mn ugly overbloated Philistine", to which Goliath responded "you pathetic tiny dweeb of a Hebe..." A CEO walks into a board room - he/she's not CEO just from the title - he/she has to do something to maintain that aura. Same with a cop in front of a bunch of street punks or average citizens, or a teacher in front of a rowdy class - we use words, mannerisms, displays.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 5:31am

    Proud Boy's *not* cancelled


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 11:01am

    Andrew Yang speaks:

    I don’t think Joe Rogan is a racist - the man interacts with and works with black people literally all of the time.

    — Andrew Yang(@AndrewYang) February 7, 2022


    Do I know black friends of Joe’s who would swear by him? Yes I do.

    — Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) February 7, 2022

    Ah but an important reminder: he is avoiding the initial issue that got musical artists boycotting Spotify: Rogan's supposed support of the anti-vaxxer crew NOT race.

    It wasn't initially about race!!! 

    Ridiculous how everything seems to get co-opted or diverted by the racial maximalists. And I would argue not just ridiculous but racist in fact!


    by artappraiser on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 8:35pm

    and here's a good one taking it back to topic:


    by artappraiser on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 8:37pm

    Hotez & Bottazzi's Corbevax vaccine finally goes live Feb 15 under Emergency Used Authorization in India with 300 million doses ordered (how fast people get shot up is another question).

    Very time consuming to get through the approval bureaucracy even in time of pandemic.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/07/2022 - 3:31am


    by Orion on Wed, 02/09/2022 - 1:08am

    Well, if Glenn Becks says it it must be true.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/09/2022 - 4:07am


    by artappraiser on Sun, 02/06/2022 - 11:36pm

    again the initial movement against Rogan was about his covid info. or disinto, whatever, the movement so quickly to change the topic, or cancellation, to racism and the n word is so very odd wnen it wasn't a question before, it's like certain people just have a need to go there, are drawn to it like moths to a flame. You don't even have to watch this video, all you have to do is see these two shake their heads

    Is a bizarre thing, is what a lot of what these mob actions are. They do the same thing as a physical mob, lose all rationality, it's all id. 

    Again, it started out as a rational boycott action about behavior-agree or disagree - but that turned into a mob: i.e., let's hang him!

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 02/08/2022 - 3:50am

    More a disinfo boycott - which depending on the types of lie can be a significant public danger, and with the internet it becomes too hard to disprove fast enough. Look at how quick Barr's lies in introducing the Mueller Reports took hold - basically a 10 minute speech, but that put the misdirect in concrete for a high percent of Americans, so by the time the Mueller Reports were released, people were fixed on the disinfo summary, not the print before their lying eyes.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 02/08/2022 - 7:59am

    Obviously edited for bias confirmation, still, he found enough people for it to be funny:


    by artappraiser on Tue, 02/08/2022 - 2:25pm

    Me, I didn't even like it when a lot of people at TPMCafe replaced their avatars with pitchforks,  but I'm real indie that way. I didn't even think it cool reading about the "off with their heads" riots of the French revolution in high school. Bloodthirsty mobs, real or metaphorical:ugh.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 02/08/2022 - 9:35pm

    Don't know why I didn't think about him sooner; he talks about this all the time...


    by artappraiser on Tue, 02/08/2022 - 9:50pm

    The race thing about Rogan, that IS a lefty hit  job to rile up a mob, here's proof:

    Now keep in mind that the initial Neil Young thing was an actual stand on a question of conscience. This latter is just bogus political witch hunting, no different than what dirty political operatives do.

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 02/08/2022 - 10:05pm

    Astroturfing = politics by other means

    (there is a full-time, heavily financed network of conservative activists pushing for every goddamned thing to rile people up. Full bore propaganda at work. So yes, there's woke overreach, but there's a much more organized and more dishonest right wing push on this stuff. Pretty sure most leftists believe their own bullshit. The right co-opts, invents, distorts and magnifies it. Reminds me of the genius marketing suggestion for Coke: "bottle it!" And thus a conservative movement is born - "wack in a sack", delirium and raving madness to-go please.

    https://www.salon.com/2022/02/08/whats-behind-the-right-wing-book-ban-fr...


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/09/2022 - 4:17am


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 02/09/2022 - 8:31am

    More spot on Maher?
    (seems more consistent, & the choices here don't seem to sideline some important objections or caveats to *some* of the other's points)


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 02/11/2022 - 2:22pm

    Speaking of liberal pot smoker


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 02/14/2022 - 4:19pm

    Vibe shift & geriatric millennials eh?

    I feel like Mr Robot come out of a shrink session

    The Apocalypse is coming and we don't even have the script yet, not even how many episodes.

    "Easing" means the restraints are coming off? You can find me in the corner. The plague came 10 years earlier - just no one bothered to tell us.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 02/18/2022 - 7:08am

    Yeah to the vibe shift, I saw more than a few writers make much ado about the Superbowl halftime show, as that it is like an annual signifier of the pop culture, that what it shows has gone way past avant-garde and into mass market. Hence Gen X nostalgia ("Straight out of Compton" as the good old days) is being marketed to as if they are nearing retirement age, and yes, older millennials really are old boring grownups. Boomers are the really old demented guy shaking his fist and yelling "hey you kids get off of my lawn."

    (After reading so much of that shit, I looked it up - Snoop Dogg is 50, and his real soul mate, Martha Stewart, is, gasp, 80 years old!)


    by artappraiser on Fri, 02/18/2022 - 11:44am

    If u come for Eminem make sure u don't miss


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 02/18/2022 - 3:34pm

    Eminem has apparently lost quite a few fans over the years because of this.


    by Orion on Fri, 02/18/2022 - 4:47pm

    Because of which? Trashing Rudy and other Trumpers, taking a knee to support black justice,  what in particular? Guess he didn't have to take on Spotify to make his point. He should work with the Lincoln Project.

    PS - Peter Frampton feels like I do, if that makes any difference.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 6:47am

    & then Tucker being a dick (as usual)

    And AOC politely calls him a pendejo,

    by which i think she means what he always

    seems to have in his mouth, with that smug look.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 6:50am


    by artappraiser on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 6:28am

    "People who menstruate" and 

    Rowling, who had been accused of transphobia in the past, shared an article by The Times UK titled "Absurdity of police logging rapists as women". The article detailed how Scotland Police have been criticized for saying "they will record rapes by offenders with male genitalia as being committed by a woman if the attacker 'identifies as a female'." The report was tweeted by Rowling, along with the sarcastic caption - "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman."

    You might hate this, but one if the horrid things that came out of the 2008 race was fussing white women for not being intersectional so just privileged co-enablers of racism. Spin it forward and being born with a vagina is 2nd class to converting or even not converting, just "identifying"as someone who menstruates, the gender formerly known as "women".

    Of course this was supposed to be "The Root-cum-Huffpost, not the NYTimes.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 7:16am

    Here is more along the same lines, they have abandoned their longtime sales pitch of "all the news that's fit to print" for selling mostly news that fits woke ideology:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 02/19/2022 - 7:33am

    also I would like to share this horrifying video:

    (they are in Texas! Even though north Texas, imagine what's going to happen when they go out into the real Texas world...)


    by artappraiser on Wed, 03/09/2022 - 3:23pm


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/19/2022 - 2:30pm

    As someone who was there, I totally agree;


    by artappraiser on Sat, 03/19/2022 - 6:16pm