Are you upset that a Silicon Valley giant pulled six books by children's artist Dr. Seuss? Don't be! There are plenty of other edifying books you can still buy
I mean, the real problem is that almost every single book or author before our present time (literally our present, as in today) harbored some kind of socially objectionable thought or content in their lives or work. Not a hyperbole - literally everyone in the past was imperfect: abusive, ethnocentric, homophobic, transphobic, religious, crude, sexist, racist, ableist, or exclusionary in some way. Don't worry if you can't make the connection easily, just keep reading harder and the problematicness will reveal itself (e.g. JRR Tolkien is antisemitic because his dwarves are secretly a veiled commentary on Jews).
Right now, the only thing preventing every author and book pre-2021 from being cancelled and pulled off shelves is simply... effort. It takes a whole campaign - you've got to be motivated enough to deploy some big wet victim tears, get a crowd of loud people to high-step behind you, and gain enough critical mass to explode into the media mainstream, like this Suess thing did. But just imagine if cancelling a book were an easy frictionless process, like say if every activist had access to an app that let you pull a book or author from circulation by selecting a reason and tapping a button... most of the world's literature (from the classics to the harlequins) would disappear overnight. All we'd be left with is wordless baby books and impenetrable postmodern academic doorstops.
I follow a bunch of these people on Twitter, and they are implacable. If they had that magical button, they'd push it for every single book above and all the others. Because the world is spinning off its axis and everything's going to shit and nobody with a conscience can do anything substantial to materially improve it anymore, so whining to get our overlords to cancel some financially unimportant villain of the day is the closest they'll ever feel to having power. And each of them will cheer for it until it finally turns on them.
People think that religion is the cause of historical wars. It's not religion that's the problem, it's moral certainty. When a group is so convinced they are correct that they act against others, that's when we have problems. Islam as practiced by nearly two billion is not a problem; the moral certainty of a small number of its practitioners that infidels must be judged and punished is the problem.
Many on the left have the same moral certainty today. The penetration of this thinking hasn't peaked yet and is growing stronger because of how we educate in the US. You can see from France's reaction to this as an American phenomenon that it's not universal, though it benefits greatly from modern tech platforms.
But the reason this is all so scary is that the younger generations are coming out of school with thinking consistent with this, and it's stronger all the time. McNeil's detailed account of the discussions with youth on the NYT school trips he's been fired for (the account can be found on Medium) are instructive. These kids are less and less able to consider alternate views and more and more certain in their thinking. At this point we essentially have American Madrasas. So I'm less and less certain every day that this is McCarthyism that will pass. It feels more and more like a cultural revolution that will succeed.
The difference in the two McNeil field trips was extreme. The first, a year earlier, was a hit. The kids were getting the same schooling. One year should not have made that big of a difference, except, maybe, that the second trip was closer to the election and the kids might have had more parental pressure that made them especially attuned to the “wrongs” of white privilege. I think it boils down to the gender make-up of the two trips. He never said, smart choice, what the gender make-up of the first group was, but I would say it had more males, possibly a majority of males. Girls are much more apt to be judgement when surrounded by other females. The mean girl gene likes reinforcement, in other words. Does that make me a sexist?
I like women and people of all colors and want to see them succeed and enjoy fulfilling lives. IMO the -ist shit has gotten out of control. I suggest pushing back by accepting the -ist label.
You may be right, but then gender would have to be a dominant part of all the college craziness we see today. Which it may well be - the data is likely out there for one to test the hypothesis as there have been plenty of incidents. But given that it's at colleges and among the youth it's at least generational even if it's intersecting with gender specifically as you note.
Sure. I was making an observation about that specific event. But if one wanted to investigate, don't females make up the majority of degrees in education and social sciences, both fields that are mostly laser focused on CRT? I'm not a researcher. I don't know. All I can say is that there is a mean girl gene in females that is brought out when they are the dominate group and that McNeil seems to have been unlucky when his group consisted of twenty females and only two males. Again, he never said what the mix was for the first trip, so my hypothesis could be 100% incorrect.
This is one hundred percent true. But don't worry, the movement doing all this cancelling just happen to have their own children's books for sale, so throw out the racist baby books and buy theirs!
Your list of objectionable traits that tainted nearly every human being alive during the 20th century might also be said of many of the authors, politicians, and academics who promote such oxymoronic terms as cancel culture.
Unless we become better people, the prevailing views of young men and women will be scrutinized with as much malice and we now rain down upon long gone members of our race.
<<most of the world's literature (from the classics to the harlequins) would disappear overnight>>
My comment here is an absurd digression, but I think Harlequins serve some kind of valuable social purpose. My grandmother had multiple bookshelves of them when she died. Old ladies get horny too.
If you'd told me 20 years ago that the Democratic party would be militarizing the Capitol and their progressive allies banning Dr. Suess' books, I wouldn't have laughed, I'd have looked at you very strangely, thinking you were off your rockers. The Republicans circa 2000, with the evangelical wing, perhaps, yes, I could have seen that.
I really don't have much more to say beyond that it's sad and tragic. It's not funny, it's not humorous, it's tragic.
The soft-banning of classic children’s books isn’t zany or hilarious. Neither was Russiagate. Neither is the normalization of vicious racism as “anti-racism.” Neither is the smirking indifference of college-educated liberals to the indignity of working-class life in this country. It’s all so sad, honestly.
In another thread somewhere on this platform, I rebelled against the concept of "college-educated." Graduated from College, yes. Attended College, yes... College-Educated? Not in the past 25 years.
I grew up in a super conservative house in the 90s. I would hear those around me constantly preaching about freedom, and how freedom of religion and speech were paramount to our great republic. They would then turn around and talk about how gay marriage must be banned because, you know, the Bible and stuff. Porn needed banned, and piss Christ, whatever was the bullshit outrage of the day. Nothing was
more important than school prayer and creationism after all! While I was religious at the time, even as a 12 year old I didn’t understand. How could we think freedom of religion is a wonderful, important part of our democratic republic, and then push for the government to ban things based on our religion? These ridiculous internal contradictions caused me to lose my religious faith.
Now we have a supposedly liberal wing who seems to apply the same to freedom of speech. Freedom is great for my speech, but yours is dangerous because postmodernist skepticism tells that I am 100% correct and have a monopoly on truth. Is something racist because it disproportionately effects a minority? It could be, or it could be an entirely different factor. But in today’s “liberal” world saying that makes me a nazi. It makes no sense - of course freedom applies to ideas you don’t like. Of course there is nuance. The same freedom of speech they want to cancel now, is what got me out of the far-right evangelical frame of mind - I was genuinely curious about the truth, and always engaged in debate and conversation. Progressives are hurting their own cause tremendously now.
I still don't understand what "progressivism," in the modern context as opposed to the Woodrow Wilson-era context, is supposed to mean exactly. It seems to me like a vague and malleable concept that both its supporters and detractors can make it mean whatever they want it to.
So I think the question here emerges - how do we get to this post-postmodern anti-fragile society? The reasoning you presented sounds similar to my own musings about the causes of the culture war. I have come to the conclusion that the conservatives are correct that we need small government, but that the “states rights” thing still leaves us with too big of organizational bodies. It feels like something more on the size and scope of Murray Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism gets us to the correct scale, and that some form of federation for trade and an open borders policy so dissidents can live in the society they want makes sense. Strict commitment to communism (as bookchin has) as the economic system will only work for the mythics and drive us rationals insane, so some form of currency will be required for those of us who function in a market. The hard part to getting there seems threefold: 1. We have to convince the globalists, neoliberals, neocons, and marxists that giant authoritarian government isn’t the only the way to run society. 2. We have to convince the irrational factions that there isn’t a moral superiority and every other group than themself is not committing human rights violations by default 3. We have bastions of existing power that demand massive scale, and refuse to be drawn down.
I question how possible this future is without bloody conflict, it almost feels doomed. I’m curious if you have resources that specifically address the problem of how to get there? Maybe something specific by Robert Kegan?
I’m probably trapped in existing paradigms and not thinking deeply enough; there is certainly a lot of overlap between many kinds of thinking, as we witness with how similar old school leftists and libertarians think just by being active in the comment sections of Taibbi or greenwald. Maybe it’s possible to integrate as one large society; but at this point it seems unlikely. Most people can barely think rationally, much less transcend rationality to consider postmodernism without devolving into quackery and developing new absolutes. The concept of a grey area is ever decreasing, and that’s what worries me the most.
I never would have imagined that I’d feel as much contempt for mainstream Democrats as I once did for the homophobic, racist religious fascists who surrounded me while I was growing up... and I definitely never thought I’d feel angry and depressed about, of all things, Dr. Seuss... but here we are.
Among the (many) gross, depressing points that Very Smart People are making in defense of the memory-holing of Dr. Seuss, these are two that aren’t getting enough pushback:
1) “It’s a shame that the trashy MAGAtards have nothing better to do than pretend to get upset about racist children’s toys.”
Art—even art for young people that becomes hugely commercially successful—is not a “toy” or merely a “product.” Dr. Seuss was an author and artist, a figure of major cultural importance and massive influence. He was not a manufacturer of racist water guns.
In some ways, the reduction of art to “content,” and the elevation of advertising executives to “creatives,” was a necessary preamble to the coming wave of cultural destruction and censorship.
2) “I’ve never heard of these books, and I’m willing to bet that none of you had ever heard of them before this week.”
If I Ran the Zoo is not an obscure book.
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street is a major work of children’s literature. It wasn’t just Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book; it’s also one of his finest, which means it’s one of the most beautiful and delightful children’s picture books of all time. (I fucking LOVED that book when I was a little kid. After this ugly cancellation, I looked at a PDF to see whether it was actually any good. In other words: I read it for the first time since I was four or five years old. It’s a beautiful book about the imagination of children, and the weirdness of the world as seen by a child. It’s a sweet, joyous, humane book.
True “unchecked privilege” is shrugging off cultural losses like this, pretending that they are meaningless, or using this frightening moment in the progression of corporate censorship as an opportunity to be aloof on social media for the likes and retweets.
The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s moderation. The opposite of religious fundamentalism isn’t woke true believerism/aggressive atheism, it’s agnosticism-religious and social.
We are barreling through 1858. It could be Russia 1915 with COVID taking the place of WWI. Either way, those of you who study history have, I suppose, pondered the 3-5 years before first shots were in a major conflict, “how did the people allow that to happen?” “How did decent human beings sit idle as crazy took over?”
The United States is in “crazy”. I don’t know if it’s the 2nd inning, the 7th inning stretch, or the top of the 9th. I suspect we haven’t hit the half life on the insanity this nation is putting itself through.
But I know where it’s going and it’s not going to end well for millions.
Interesting point. As a history geek, I’d say our current moment domestically is kinda like 1938 or so-Ds/progressives control all 3 branches and right populist types are yapping louder than their electoral weight. I don’t see a foreign threat/distraction acting as a pressure release valve for the current tension, though. Joe Mancin is acting as a valuable safety break in DC, and it wouldn’t shock me if the GOP takes back the House in 22’.
I think we're at the beginning of a bad Ray Bradbury novel. This is 21st Century book burning, no fire trucks required. Beaning Dr. Seuss really frosted me, as did neutering Mr. Potato Head. In an oddly American twist, messing with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head managed to get through to some people when nothing else had. This isn't minority rule, it's fringe rule, and it's insane.
I don't disagree with this comment, but what's Ray Bradbury's worst novel? He never made any secret of the fact that he typed shit out as fast as he could for money and he and his wife subsisted on horse meat.
You're right-- it was confusing. I meant bad as in bad things, ominous --Farenheit 451. He also hated to fly, though I don't know what that's got to do with it. Awful about the horses (or cows, or pigs, it turkeys).
I notice a tendency of some people on the left to cherry-pick the worst argument from ignoramus's on the right to argue against. It's always something like, "look at these free-market conservatives idiots whining about cancel culture these are private companies they can do what they want..." As if the estate of Theodore Giesel woke up one day and thought "ya know some of these books are racist lets stop publishing them." I think it's more from the outside pressure of CRT activist psychos exerting their newfound power on our culture. Maybe a re-imaging of Matt's famous Goldman Sachs vampire squid analogy is in order:
The world's most powerful critical race theorists act as a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of American culture, relentlessly jamming their blood funnels into anything that smells like racism.
There are a lot of so-called "leftists" that sound like a bunch of Libertarians now. It is funny to hear a "socialist" or a "communist" talk about the rights of private platforms.
The rich, white and woke are pandering in ways we've never seen just because they can. What a repellent second act for companies I watch rise beginning in 2000. The goal here is not antiracism by now. It's finding ways to punish and humiliate to set an example. The bigger the target the better. What better target than Dr. Seuss. Now his books and his name are a shameful thing. The name will be associated with either racism or those who bowed to cancel culture hysteria. Neither is good.
As long as Democrats can point at a group of people and call them racist, they can distract the world from noticing that their policies are actively harming the very groups they allegedly aim to protect. In reality they offer nothing but divisive, frivolous bullshit like this, taking a hard stance on aesthetics and enabling their supporters to feel morally superior while they legislate the middle class into poverty and the poor into homelessness. It might not be a “plan” with a dedicated PowerPoint presentation, but I think it’s well understood, tacit PR by the party’s cynical, mercenary leaders and spokesmen.
Nice work Matt, but as plenty of reply guys on Twitter have been declaring, eBay should take this opportunity to pull these books too, as well as those by the likes of Trump; the likes of Jordan Peterson; the likes of Bari Weiss... and maybe even Matt Taibbi!
Seriously though, there's been PDFs of said books going around, and most of them don't even seem to have anything questionable in them, like the aforementioned outdated stereotypes in a couple of them. Leighton Woodhouse posted what he could come up with as the offensive elements of one, and he came up with nothing. Seeing sniveling, anti-comedian brown-nosers like Stephen Colbert declare to his cult "we're just fixing the culture!" is dismaying.
It's no longer surprising to see #resistance-libs come out as free-market libertarians when it comes to eBay's decision, or try to paint the whole thing as a nebulous right-wing talking point, or point to the fact that the books "were pulled by the publisher," as if a team of "sensitivity readers," spurred on by several years of "wrong-think" presumed to be in Seuss's work weren't involved. Ugh.
That is where I'm at on this nonsense. The depiction of Orientals having slanted eyes and the term "Eskimos", and their depictions as well, have been used forever. They are still everywhere because they are accurate.
I mean, how the hell was Seuss supposed to depict them in cartoon form? during the 1930's, no less?
Uh, I don't know that I'd put it that way... I'm far from a language enforcer, but I don't really see a reason to intentionally use outdated terms and ideas for Asian people to ridicule this silliness. It feeds into the idea that the controversy here is solely "right wing" people who want to keep using slurs. I'm in every way old school, anti-censorship "left wing," although I really don't know if that really has much meaning in today's bizarre world.
I will admit that I've never heard that the term Eskimo is considered offensive by some until this dust-up, and a single instance of that word being written being the only reason that one of these books was pulled is wild to me. (Again, I haven't fully gone through all of these titles, but it appears that at least a couple of them don't even have that level of "offense," and it leaves most thinking people scratching their heads. There's no mystery as to why 99% of the news stories about this affair don't actually present any of the offensive "evidence.")
In the last day or two we've seen a professed-liberal-but-very-reactionary NYT journalist add Pepe Le Pew to children's characters to be possibly be banned for outdated ideas; one of the few conservative-coded NYT journalists write a thoughtful, dare I say liberal, piece about the salient and important points of the Seuss censorship; and now a widely-viewed video of a Canadian journalist wondering why world libraries are taking so long to follow suit with the banning of these books.
At this point - because of these absurd and dumb culture wars - we'll probably see plenty of blue state school districts and indie bookstores remove Seuss from the libraries/the shelves/the curricula totally - we have to remember that claims that Seuss's entire oeuvre is filled with outdated ideas, not in line with today's "anti-racism" are what started the Seuss estate's self-denouncement. Could we be too far off from the pseudo-liberal forces who've been trying to take down Huck Finn and Mockingbird take another shot at it - and for it to work this time - and to see Colbert gleefully defend removing Twain from the internet on his TV show?
I agree we should be mad about these illiberal forces, and we should fight it, but let's keep the discussion honest.
Kind of surprised that they haven't gotten to Pepe Le Pew already. Pretty rapey. The whole bit is pretty much sexually harassing a cat. I'm not offended, obviously, but he seems like an obvious target.
There was a great Twitter thread today about this. A man (a Frenchman even, who says that they made Le Pew Italian in France!) basically pointing out that Le Pew is in no way meant to be a role model, and none of the Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies characters are meant to be paragons of moral character at all: they're supposed to be funny and they're all just awful as people.
I watched a truly excessive amount of Looney Tunes as a child and I never once wanted to ape the behavior of an obnoxious skunk Lothario. It's the same argument as kids playing violent video games leading to real world violence ; a false argument made by opportunistic adults. Four-year-olds are smart enough to understand that Pepe Le Pew is not a role model to be emulated. The only people dumb enough to think this are New York Times opinion writers, apparently.
I think I would enjoy that thread. I may as well make a confession here: I stole a Pepe Le Pew line and have used it to get a laugh in multiple relationships and when describing behavior in a relationship to other people. Usually as a follow up when I’ve said something stupid. “I whisper ze sweet nothings, I whisper ze sweet *somethings*”. If this be offensive, make the most of it. :)
This is that Twitter thread that makes way, way more sense than the New York Times.
Really, if we're at a place in our culture that a French cartoon skunk - that quixotically thinks he's the world's greatest ladies man, and is played totally for laughs - can be called a pillar of "rape culture" in what once was a great newspaper, there is something seriously wrong with our culture. Someone (or a really big collective of "someones") needs to learn to lighten up and take a damn joke, the way a child can.
"The whole bit is pretty much sexually harassing a cat." He thinks she's a skunk like himself --hence the comedy -- so there's some kind of intersectional angle.
Real Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Clintons and Jeffrey Epsteins run around for decades suffering no penalties. The bill comes due for some of them eventually, but not for all of them. None of them is a cartoon skunk.
I deleted my question to you because this format doesn't really support question and answer time.
I asked: "Would you agree that many people of far east see themselves as culturally different than western Europeans?"
Of course I already knew the answer. The far east sees themselves as culturally different to W Europeans/Americans. But they're not black, not brown, so they either have to be depicted, like with emojis or cartoons, as yellow or with slanted eyes. I don't know, man, but if I were Chinese I think I'd prefer slanted eyes to yellow skin. I mean, they're not yellow people, for christ's sake.
Colbert is an interesting example of how we've degenerated. I thought his long-running spoof of Bill O'Reilly in The Colbert Report was hilarious but also, in its way, affectionate and respectful. You didn't get the impression he hated him. Now Colbert just spews bile and hate.
I loved him on the early Daily Show and especially on Strangers with Candy, a piece of brutally unflinching comedy that would never in a million years exist now. I never thought his faux-neocon bit was that funny, but I got why people liked it, and to be fair, I'd left the world of cable TV by then.
Fast forward to today: Colbert is pouring out literal (crocodile) tears on cue about how bad Trump is - and more tears about how great Biden is. I've tried to watch a couple of bits, and he is not even attempting something resembling comedy at this point. You could move his show to MSNBC without changing the format one iota. Something tells me that this is all a preamble to his inevitable entry into boring, middle-of-the-road, politics of the NIMBY-authoritarian variety. (Get ready for the Maddow/Colbert presidential ticket America!)
If anything about the Trump era - which seems to continue to ramp up despite his absence - infuriates me, it's the absolute destruction of comedy, art, music; seemingly all fine arts and their lower-brow media arts cousins have degenerated into a lazy commentary on the orange man (i.e., "he's bad"). Reagan and Bush had this feature too, but not to this level, and certainly not with the mainstream of the democratic party simultaneously coming out against due process (and sex in general really), free speech, objective journalism and press freedoms, intellectual inquiry, unimpeded free expression, many aspects of hard science, and honest intellectual discussion. I can't even wrap my head around it, so I'll just blame Colbert.
"the mainstream of the democratic party simultaneously coming out against due process (and sex in general really)"
What's with the new-(ish) puritanism? Now the media messaging says sex is something that requires a corporate mediator, not something two people do together consensually because they like each other.
I don't know that I fully understand it, but I'll take a swing: this behavior was all already in the air on college campuses, but had spilled out to the most liberal enclaves of the big cities and art spaces pre-Trump (and I happened to be in both of those things, so I got to see it up close early). It was readily adopted by the mainstream of the democratic party as a presumed way to take down Trump. It failed miserably, but they are unable to put the genie back in the bottle. See: the way they used these ideas of anti-due process to take down Franken in hopes of getting to Trump, but are now calling for due process for Cuomo.
I honestly think (or maybe just hope) that some of the earlier proponents of some of this ideology were really doing it because they truly thought it was right and just, but the media and governmental apparatchiks who adopted it were only interested in using it as way to gather power. "We may destablize and destroy the very fabric of this country, but at least we got, uh, Joe Biden elected!"
It's been fashionable to trash Woody Allen for a few decades, but I argue that you can't effectively satirize a degenerate society without having participated in it.
Just more woke silliness. Good thing it's taking so much attention away from other things like vaccine availability, the lack of min wage increases, Uighars being tortured, Hong Kongers having their basic rights stripped away by the CCP. Why worry about real problems when we can squander our time talking about this?
I always interpreted this song as 1) pro-peace, 2) pro-Inuit, and 3) the usual cryptic Dylan bullshit. I could be wrong. Not being from Canada or Alaska, I know exactly 0 Inuit people.
In Arizona, "Papago" has been largely phased out of existence -- Tohono O'odham people generally prefer to be referred to as Tohono O'odham. Nde people wear "Apache" --the Zuni word for "enemy" -- as a badge of honor. Most refer to themselves as Apache. Go to a T-shirt shop in Globe, AZ if you don't believe me.
Tribes -- and their sensitivity to language -- differ.
Anyone can SAY "Tohono O'odham"- but how many are able to pronounce the name correctly? How many times does a foreigner have to get the pronunciation wrong before the indigene being addressed steps in to reply "I'm good with 'Papago'"?
speaking of which: while some people nowadays think that that dialect jokes about FOB Chinese trying and failing to pronounce English phonemes properly are proof of an intolerable level of White supremacism, my hunch is that Chinese people indulge in much the same jesting about Anglo whiteys and other foreigners who attempt to converse in Mandarin or Cantonese. Although their jokes have to be much, much funnier.
The real problem with mocking those non-fluent speakers of English who are unable to express the difference between the "r" and "l" sounds of the language is that the joke gets old quick, and as a result it isn't very funny. Whereas botching the pitches in a tone language can lead to a linguistic trainwreck of epic proportions, and must therefore contain inherently much more potential for hilarity. I mean, I'm practically jealous of anyone with that much additional access to linguistic humor. The puns must be off the wall.
re: Bob Dylan and "Quinn the Eskimo"-- it's a reference to an Anthony Quinn movie. Perhaps nothing more than an aside, a tangential image that Dylan took and then ran with as inspiration-- he does a lot of that. As for Anthony Quinn playing Nanook of the North, or whoever, in a Hollywood movie- well, that's another can of worms.
Speaking of which- did you know that some cognoscenti of Film regard the word "movie" as a pejorative, a term that diminishes the cinematic accomplishment?
Anthony Quinn was a Mexican...make of that what you will. As much of it as you Feel like, these days. Evidently or not.
Quite enjoyable, even though I know that no one who needs to understand the point of the joke here will get it.
The complete and utter inconsistency of Cancel/SJW Culture was evident to me right from when I saw it starting, probably 10 years ago. When they're shouting constantly I suppose they can't hear any reasoning against their hypocrisy. At some point I've realized that the only way things will ever shift is when the mainstream media decides the market for the backlash is lucrative enough to shift over to at which point all the current shit stirrers will then claim the opposing side, as they've done already.
Was for me and my own awareness, but I'm a bit slow on the uptake. I'm sure I heard but didn't' listen to warnings prior to it. Then I had a bit of a hard lesson in what the "Left" had then already become.
I still consider myself vaguely Left -- insofar as: racism is a thing that exists; if the government is going to make us pay taxes, it has an obligation to redistribute some of that money to the poorest and least fortunate in our society -- but I find I have more and more in common with Trumpistas all the time.
Same. I of being a Leftist now as like being a fan of a really great musician (or any artist) who you then find out has a really terrible dedicated fanbase that seems to reflect the opposite of every value you'd expect. Unlikeable, unfunny, loyal to the cult of personality instead of the principles, and vocally dedicated to their own alleged principles with no regard for practicing any of them especially if it means taking a minor L in order to stick to them.
Optimistically, though, I still believe it's just the vocal minority along with many psyops and bots sowing discord. But, yeah, I relate more to the populist Right now than I used to. I think there was a column a couple weeks back here where people were going back and forth about how they relate more to regular people with opposing political views which gave me some hope.
Question: Knowing that the R's have probably been working in their think tanks for the last 4 years attempting to find or develop a "Trump but if he Strategically Intelligent" politician - which would be a dominant political monster - do you think that they'll actually be able to synthesize this or do you think they'll just have to go back to Trumpacola Classic in four years or later?
I've been thinking about this and I just don't know if the R's can ever pull this off. I don't know if you can marry a strategic mind with Trump's brand of strangely charismatic semi-anarchic comedy. I think of those old videos of youngish Donald talking about wanting to pursue happiness instead of wealth (and seeming genuine to me, even though he was *arguably* unsuccessful at this path) and I can't imagine any politician since maybe Carter even being capable of thinking this way at any point in their lives.
Time to ban The Stones. I believe many of their songs could be construed as racist and especially sexist, insofar as they convey the message that sex is an enjoyable activity.
Maybe eBay could really help the culture and pull all self-help books, all autobiographies by reality show stars, as well as novelizations of movies already based on novels.
Do you remember a few years ago when some fast food burgers or something similar were not legally allowed to advertise as “meat”? Maybe the “literature” you refer to should be subject to the same legal judgment!!
The Dr. Seuss banning is the woke equivalent of strike breakers evicting families from company housing-every cubicle drone and millenial voice of social media engagement is familiar with Dr. Seuss and is thus receiving the message full force-they remember from elementary school and can relate. Hammer of the Witches, Historical Dialecticism, PoZ-that’s for Gen X and older nerds-people on this substack like me!!!!!
I mean, the real problem is that almost every single book or author before our present time (literally our present, as in today) harbored some kind of socially objectionable thought or content in their lives or work. Not a hyperbole - literally everyone in the past was imperfect: abusive, ethnocentric, homophobic, transphobic, religious, crude, sexist, racist, ableist, or exclusionary in some way. Don't worry if you can't make the connection easily, just keep reading harder and the problematicness will reveal itself (e.g. JRR Tolkien is antisemitic because his dwarves are secretly a veiled commentary on Jews).
Right now, the only thing preventing every author and book pre-2021 from being cancelled and pulled off shelves is simply... effort. It takes a whole campaign - you've got to be motivated enough to deploy some big wet victim tears, get a crowd of loud people to high-step behind you, and gain enough critical mass to explode into the media mainstream, like this Suess thing did. But just imagine if cancelling a book were an easy frictionless process, like say if every activist had access to an app that let you pull a book or author from circulation by selecting a reason and tapping a button... most of the world's literature (from the classics to the harlequins) would disappear overnight. All we'd be left with is wordless baby books and impenetrable postmodern academic doorstops.
I follow a bunch of these people on Twitter, and they are implacable. If they had that magical button, they'd push it for every single book above and all the others. Because the world is spinning off its axis and everything's going to shit and nobody with a conscience can do anything substantial to materially improve it anymore, so whining to get our overlords to cancel some financially unimportant villain of the day is the closest they'll ever feel to having power. And each of them will cheer for it until it finally turns on them.
"literally everyone in the past was imperfect"
Literally everyone in the present is imperfect. To your point, I think.
Attempting to create and enforce systems of human "perfectibility" is bad juju. We're crooked timber.
This is utterly irrelevant, but I always read Tolkien's portrayal of the Dwarves as positive!
People think that religion is the cause of historical wars. It's not religion that's the problem, it's moral certainty. When a group is so convinced they are correct that they act against others, that's when we have problems. Islam as practiced by nearly two billion is not a problem; the moral certainty of a small number of its practitioners that infidels must be judged and punished is the problem.
Many on the left have the same moral certainty today. The penetration of this thinking hasn't peaked yet and is growing stronger because of how we educate in the US. You can see from France's reaction to this as an American phenomenon that it's not universal, though it benefits greatly from modern tech platforms.
But the reason this is all so scary is that the younger generations are coming out of school with thinking consistent with this, and it's stronger all the time. McNeil's detailed account of the discussions with youth on the NYT school trips he's been fired for (the account can be found on Medium) are instructive. These kids are less and less able to consider alternate views and more and more certain in their thinking. At this point we essentially have American Madrasas. So I'm less and less certain every day that this is McCarthyism that will pass. It feels more and more like a cultural revolution that will succeed.
The difference in the two McNeil field trips was extreme. The first, a year earlier, was a hit. The kids were getting the same schooling. One year should not have made that big of a difference, except, maybe, that the second trip was closer to the election and the kids might have had more parental pressure that made them especially attuned to the “wrongs” of white privilege. I think it boils down to the gender make-up of the two trips. He never said, smart choice, what the gender make-up of the first group was, but I would say it had more males, possibly a majority of males. Girls are much more apt to be judgement when surrounded by other females. The mean girl gene likes reinforcement, in other words. Does that make me a sexist?
<<Does that make me a sexist?>>
Probably. Go ahead and be a sexist.
I like women and people of all colors and want to see them succeed and enjoy fulfilling lives. IMO the -ist shit has gotten out of control. I suggest pushing back by accepting the -ist label.
You may be right, but then gender would have to be a dominant part of all the college craziness we see today. Which it may well be - the data is likely out there for one to test the hypothesis as there have been plenty of incidents. But given that it's at colleges and among the youth it's at least generational even if it's intersecting with gender specifically as you note.
Sure. I was making an observation about that specific event. But if one wanted to investigate, don't females make up the majority of degrees in education and social sciences, both fields that are mostly laser focused on CRT? I'm not a researcher. I don't know. All I can say is that there is a mean girl gene in females that is brought out when they are the dominate group and that McNeil seems to have been unlucky when his group consisted of twenty females and only two males. Again, he never said what the mix was for the first trip, so my hypothesis could be 100% incorrect.
That is a very good point about certainty. I would add tribalism.
Don't forget that current authors would prefer to have less competition from the past.
Yep and books by Seuss are still top sellers.
I can't wait until the future judges us for what we do. Eating meat, maybe?
I'm so glad I will be dead when the future happens.
Same here and I often share that with my 2 woke kids, replacing "the" with "your".
That is the best example I've heard: Obama statues will one day be taken down because he ate meat.
Possibly abortion.
they can rename "albino cannibalism" to "culturally significant medicinal gastronimic transplant"
This is one hundred percent true. But don't worry, the movement doing all this cancelling just happen to have their own children's books for sale, so throw out the racist baby books and buy theirs!
Your list of objectionable traits that tainted nearly every human being alive during the 20th century might also be said of many of the authors, politicians, and academics who promote such oxymoronic terms as cancel culture.
Unless we become better people, the prevailing views of young men and women will be scrutinized with as much malice and we now rain down upon long gone members of our race.
<<most of the world's literature (from the classics to the harlequins) would disappear overnight>>
My comment here is an absurd digression, but I think Harlequins serve some kind of valuable social purpose. My grandmother had multiple bookshelves of them when she died. Old ladies get horny too.
Agreed
If you'd told me 20 years ago that the Democratic party would be militarizing the Capitol and their progressive allies banning Dr. Suess' books, I wouldn't have laughed, I'd have looked at you very strangely, thinking you were off your rockers. The Republicans circa 2000, with the evangelical wing, perhaps, yes, I could have seen that.
I really don't have much more to say beyond that it's sad and tragic. It's not funny, it's not humorous, it's tragic.
Seconding this.
The soft-banning of classic children’s books isn’t zany or hilarious. Neither was Russiagate. Neither is the normalization of vicious racism as “anti-racism.” Neither is the smirking indifference of college-educated liberals to the indignity of working-class life in this country. It’s all so sad, honestly.
"It’s all so sad, honestly."
While not desiring to further contribute to the now-normalized mood of mass hysteria, I personally find it scary as well as sad.
Seconding "scary"
In another thread somewhere on this platform, I rebelled against the concept of "college-educated." Graduated from College, yes. Attended College, yes... College-Educated? Not in the past 25 years.
I grew up in a super conservative house in the 90s. I would hear those around me constantly preaching about freedom, and how freedom of religion and speech were paramount to our great republic. They would then turn around and talk about how gay marriage must be banned because, you know, the Bible and stuff. Porn needed banned, and piss Christ, whatever was the bullshit outrage of the day. Nothing was
more important than school prayer and creationism after all! While I was religious at the time, even as a 12 year old I didn’t understand. How could we think freedom of religion is a wonderful, important part of our democratic republic, and then push for the government to ban things based on our religion? These ridiculous internal contradictions caused me to lose my religious faith.
Now we have a supposedly liberal wing who seems to apply the same to freedom of speech. Freedom is great for my speech, but yours is dangerous because postmodernist skepticism tells that I am 100% correct and have a monopoly on truth. Is something racist because it disproportionately effects a minority? It could be, or it could be an entirely different factor. But in today’s “liberal” world saying that makes me a nazi. It makes no sense - of course freedom applies to ideas you don’t like. Of course there is nuance. The same freedom of speech they want to cancel now, is what got me out of the far-right evangelical frame of mind - I was genuinely curious about the truth, and always engaged in debate and conversation. Progressives are hurting their own cause tremendously now.
Great comment. But what, exactly, is their cause?
Good point... who the hell knows anymore. I thought it was tolerance, empathy and empowering the powerless. That is certainly not the case today.
I still don't understand what "progressivism," in the modern context as opposed to the Woodrow Wilson-era context, is supposed to mean exactly. It seems to me like a vague and malleable concept that both its supporters and detractors can make it mean whatever they want it to.
Time for the Bull Moose.
Good comment. Just sending you some good vibes.
It's the people who haven't been in extreme situations who tend not to question the ideology with which they've been indoctrinated.
"Speech for me but not for thee."
So I think the question here emerges - how do we get to this post-postmodern anti-fragile society? The reasoning you presented sounds similar to my own musings about the causes of the culture war. I have come to the conclusion that the conservatives are correct that we need small government, but that the “states rights” thing still leaves us with too big of organizational bodies. It feels like something more on the size and scope of Murray Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism gets us to the correct scale, and that some form of federation for trade and an open borders policy so dissidents can live in the society they want makes sense. Strict commitment to communism (as bookchin has) as the economic system will only work for the mythics and drive us rationals insane, so some form of currency will be required for those of us who function in a market. The hard part to getting there seems threefold: 1. We have to convince the globalists, neoliberals, neocons, and marxists that giant authoritarian government isn’t the only the way to run society. 2. We have to convince the irrational factions that there isn’t a moral superiority and every other group than themself is not committing human rights violations by default 3. We have bastions of existing power that demand massive scale, and refuse to be drawn down.
I question how possible this future is without bloody conflict, it almost feels doomed. I’m curious if you have resources that specifically address the problem of how to get there? Maybe something specific by Robert Kegan?
I’m probably trapped in existing paradigms and not thinking deeply enough; there is certainly a lot of overlap between many kinds of thinking, as we witness with how similar old school leftists and libertarians think just by being active in the comment sections of Taibbi or greenwald. Maybe it’s possible to integrate as one large society; but at this point it seems unlikely. Most people can barely think rationally, much less transcend rationality to consider postmodernism without devolving into quackery and developing new absolutes. The concept of a grey area is ever decreasing, and that’s what worries me the most.
Not to mention mythics constantly want to wage war on everyone else, so peace seems very hard here
Interesting. I have never before heard it as mythic and rational, but that makes sense.
It gives me Capgras Delusion just watching them. But I think I'm right! They are possessed.
You have shit in your head.
You have clay in your shoes.
You can steer yourself toward any lobbyist you choose.
You're on your own...er's bidding.
And you know WHO you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide which hardened bunker to go...
- Dr. Zooss, "Oh, the Places You'll Go! (for Democrats)"
I never would have imagined that I’d feel as much contempt for mainstream Democrats as I once did for the homophobic, racist religious fascists who surrounded me while I was growing up... and I definitely never thought I’d feel angry and depressed about, of all things, Dr. Seuss... but here we are.
Among the (many) gross, depressing points that Very Smart People are making in defense of the memory-holing of Dr. Seuss, these are two that aren’t getting enough pushback:
1) “It’s a shame that the trashy MAGAtards have nothing better to do than pretend to get upset about racist children’s toys.”
Art—even art for young people that becomes hugely commercially successful—is not a “toy” or merely a “product.” Dr. Seuss was an author and artist, a figure of major cultural importance and massive influence. He was not a manufacturer of racist water guns.
In some ways, the reduction of art to “content,” and the elevation of advertising executives to “creatives,” was a necessary preamble to the coming wave of cultural destruction and censorship.
2) “I’ve never heard of these books, and I’m willing to bet that none of you had ever heard of them before this week.”
If I Ran the Zoo is not an obscure book.
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street is a major work of children’s literature. It wasn’t just Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book; it’s also one of his finest, which means it’s one of the most beautiful and delightful children’s picture books of all time. (I fucking LOVED that book when I was a little kid. After this ugly cancellation, I looked at a PDF to see whether it was actually any good. In other words: I read it for the first time since I was four or five years old. It’s a beautiful book about the imagination of children, and the weirdness of the world as seen by a child. It’s a sweet, joyous, humane book.
True “unchecked privilege” is shrugging off cultural losses like this, pretending that they are meaningless, or using this frightening moment in the progression of corporate censorship as an opportunity to be aloof on social media for the likes and retweets.
The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s moderation. The opposite of religious fundamentalism isn’t woke true believerism/aggressive atheism, it’s agnosticism-religious and social.
"He was not a manufacturer of racist water guns."
I might steal this one too.
We are barreling through 1858. It could be Russia 1915 with COVID taking the place of WWI. Either way, those of you who study history have, I suppose, pondered the 3-5 years before first shots were in a major conflict, “how did the people allow that to happen?” “How did decent human beings sit idle as crazy took over?”
The United States is in “crazy”. I don’t know if it’s the 2nd inning, the 7th inning stretch, or the top of the 9th. I suspect we haven’t hit the half life on the insanity this nation is putting itself through.
But I know where it’s going and it’s not going to end well for millions.
Interesting point. As a history geek, I’d say our current moment domestically is kinda like 1938 or so-Ds/progressives control all 3 branches and right populist types are yapping louder than their electoral weight. I don’t see a foreign threat/distraction acting as a pressure release valve for the current tension, though. Joe Mancin is acting as a valuable safety break in DC, and it wouldn’t shock me if the GOP takes back the House in 22’.
I think we're at the beginning of a bad Ray Bradbury novel. This is 21st Century book burning, no fire trucks required. Beaning Dr. Seuss really frosted me, as did neutering Mr. Potato Head. In an oddly American twist, messing with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head managed to get through to some people when nothing else had. This isn't minority rule, it's fringe rule, and it's insane.
I don't disagree with this comment, but what's Ray Bradbury's worst novel? He never made any secret of the fact that he typed shit out as fast as he could for money and he and his wife subsisted on horse meat.
You're right-- it was confusing. I meant bad as in bad things, ominous --Farenheit 451. He also hated to fly, though I don't know what that's got to do with it. Awful about the horses (or cows, or pigs, it turkeys).
I don't disagree with your comment, but what does it have to do with anything that their house was built on top of horse meat?
"Fringe rule" well put
I notice a tendency of some people on the left to cherry-pick the worst argument from ignoramus's on the right to argue against. It's always something like, "look at these free-market conservatives idiots whining about cancel culture these are private companies they can do what they want..." As if the estate of Theodore Giesel woke up one day and thought "ya know some of these books are racist lets stop publishing them." I think it's more from the outside pressure of CRT activist psychos exerting their newfound power on our culture. Maybe a re-imaging of Matt's famous Goldman Sachs vampire squid analogy is in order:
The world's most powerful critical race theorists act as a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of American culture, relentlessly jamming their blood funnels into anything that smells like racism.
There are a lot of so-called "leftists" that sound like a bunch of Libertarians now. It is funny to hear a "socialist" or a "communist" talk about the rights of private platforms.
The private platforms have speech rights now. You don't.
It's a brave new world.
Corporate personhood was a huge no no for leftists 10 years ago....
Citizen's United helps the Dems more than the GOP. Look at all the fundraising totals...
The rich, white and woke are pandering in ways we've never seen just because they can. What a repellent second act for companies I watch rise beginning in 2000. The goal here is not antiracism by now. It's finding ways to punish and humiliate to set an example. The bigger the target the better. What better target than Dr. Seuss. Now his books and his name are a shameful thing. The name will be associated with either racism or those who bowed to cancel culture hysteria. Neither is good.
Liberals are trying to create reactionaries at this point, right?
Within my paranoid rat's nest of a brain, I believe this must be the plan.
The mistake, I think, is believing they are competent enough to develop a coherent, executable plan.
As long as Democrats can point at a group of people and call them racist, they can distract the world from noticing that their policies are actively harming the very groups they allegedly aim to protect. In reality they offer nothing but divisive, frivolous bullshit like this, taking a hard stance on aesthetics and enabling their supporters to feel morally superior while they legislate the middle class into poverty and the poor into homelessness. It might not be a “plan” with a dedicated PowerPoint presentation, but I think it’s well understood, tacit PR by the party’s cynical, mercenary leaders and spokesmen.
"taking a hard stance on aesthetics"
I'm gonna steal this one.
Nice work Matt, but as plenty of reply guys on Twitter have been declaring, eBay should take this opportunity to pull these books too, as well as those by the likes of Trump; the likes of Jordan Peterson; the likes of Bari Weiss... and maybe even Matt Taibbi!
Seriously though, there's been PDFs of said books going around, and most of them don't even seem to have anything questionable in them, like the aforementioned outdated stereotypes in a couple of them. Leighton Woodhouse posted what he could come up with as the offensive elements of one, and he came up with nothing. Seeing sniveling, anti-comedian brown-nosers like Stephen Colbert declare to his cult "we're just fixing the culture!" is dismaying.
It's no longer surprising to see #resistance-libs come out as free-market libertarians when it comes to eBay's decision, or try to paint the whole thing as a nebulous right-wing talking point, or point to the fact that the books "were pulled by the publisher," as if a team of "sensitivity readers," spurred on by several years of "wrong-think" presumed to be in Seuss's work weren't involved. Ugh.
That is where I'm at on this nonsense. The depiction of Orientals having slanted eyes and the term "Eskimos", and their depictions as well, have been used forever. They are still everywhere because they are accurate.
I mean, how the hell was Seuss supposed to depict them in cartoon form? during the 1930's, no less?
Uh, I don't know that I'd put it that way... I'm far from a language enforcer, but I don't really see a reason to intentionally use outdated terms and ideas for Asian people to ridicule this silliness. It feeds into the idea that the controversy here is solely "right wing" people who want to keep using slurs. I'm in every way old school, anti-censorship "left wing," although I really don't know if that really has much meaning in today's bizarre world.
I will admit that I've never heard that the term Eskimo is considered offensive by some until this dust-up, and a single instance of that word being written being the only reason that one of these books was pulled is wild to me. (Again, I haven't fully gone through all of these titles, but it appears that at least a couple of them don't even have that level of "offense," and it leaves most thinking people scratching their heads. There's no mystery as to why 99% of the news stories about this affair don't actually present any of the offensive "evidence.")
In the last day or two we've seen a professed-liberal-but-very-reactionary NYT journalist add Pepe Le Pew to children's characters to be possibly be banned for outdated ideas; one of the few conservative-coded NYT journalists write a thoughtful, dare I say liberal, piece about the salient and important points of the Seuss censorship; and now a widely-viewed video of a Canadian journalist wondering why world libraries are taking so long to follow suit with the banning of these books.
At this point - because of these absurd and dumb culture wars - we'll probably see plenty of blue state school districts and indie bookstores remove Seuss from the libraries/the shelves/the curricula totally - we have to remember that claims that Seuss's entire oeuvre is filled with outdated ideas, not in line with today's "anti-racism" are what started the Seuss estate's self-denouncement. Could we be too far off from the pseudo-liberal forces who've been trying to take down Huck Finn and Mockingbird take another shot at it - and for it to work this time - and to see Colbert gleefully defend removing Twain from the internet on his TV show?
I agree we should be mad about these illiberal forces, and we should fight it, but let's keep the discussion honest.
Kind of surprised that they haven't gotten to Pepe Le Pew already. Pretty rapey. The whole bit is pretty much sexually harassing a cat. I'm not offended, obviously, but he seems like an obvious target.
There was a great Twitter thread today about this. A man (a Frenchman even, who says that they made Le Pew Italian in France!) basically pointing out that Le Pew is in no way meant to be a role model, and none of the Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies characters are meant to be paragons of moral character at all: they're supposed to be funny and they're all just awful as people.
I watched a truly excessive amount of Looney Tunes as a child and I never once wanted to ape the behavior of an obnoxious skunk Lothario. It's the same argument as kids playing violent video games leading to real world violence ; a false argument made by opportunistic adults. Four-year-olds are smart enough to understand that Pepe Le Pew is not a role model to be emulated. The only people dumb enough to think this are New York Times opinion writers, apparently.
I think I would enjoy that thread. I may as well make a confession here: I stole a Pepe Le Pew line and have used it to get a laugh in multiple relationships and when describing behavior in a relationship to other people. Usually as a follow up when I’ve said something stupid. “I whisper ze sweet nothings, I whisper ze sweet *somethings*”. If this be offensive, make the most of it. :)
https://twitter.com/timsoret/status/1368431063597465601
This is that Twitter thread that makes way, way more sense than the New York Times.
Really, if we're at a place in our culture that a French cartoon skunk - that quixotically thinks he's the world's greatest ladies man, and is played totally for laughs - can be called a pillar of "rape culture" in what once was a great newspaper, there is something seriously wrong with our culture. Someone (or a really big collective of "someones") needs to learn to lighten up and take a damn joke, the way a child can.
Oh, they've gotten to Pepe Le Pew. https://deadline.com/2021/03/new-york-times-columnist-raises-a-stink-about-pepe-le-pew-1234708479/
"The whole bit is pretty much sexually harassing a cat." He thinks she's a skunk like himself --hence the comedy -- so there's some kind of intersectional angle.
Real Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Clintons and Jeffrey Epsteins run around for decades suffering no penalties. The bill comes due for some of them eventually, but not for all of them. None of them is a cartoon skunk.
Me, I just stan Slowpoke Rodriguez. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtkCRn8F3zE
I deleted my question to you because this format doesn't really support question and answer time.
I asked: "Would you agree that many people of far east see themselves as culturally different than western Europeans?"
Of course I already knew the answer. The far east sees themselves as culturally different to W Europeans/Americans. But they're not black, not brown, so they either have to be depicted, like with emojis or cartoons, as yellow or with slanted eyes. I don't know, man, but if I were Chinese I think I'd prefer slanted eyes to yellow skin. I mean, they're not yellow people, for christ's sake.
Colbert is an interesting example of how we've degenerated. I thought his long-running spoof of Bill O'Reilly in The Colbert Report was hilarious but also, in its way, affectionate and respectful. You didn't get the impression he hated him. Now Colbert just spews bile and hate.
I loved him on the early Daily Show and especially on Strangers with Candy, a piece of brutally unflinching comedy that would never in a million years exist now. I never thought his faux-neocon bit was that funny, but I got why people liked it, and to be fair, I'd left the world of cable TV by then.
Fast forward to today: Colbert is pouring out literal (crocodile) tears on cue about how bad Trump is - and more tears about how great Biden is. I've tried to watch a couple of bits, and he is not even attempting something resembling comedy at this point. You could move his show to MSNBC without changing the format one iota. Something tells me that this is all a preamble to his inevitable entry into boring, middle-of-the-road, politics of the NIMBY-authoritarian variety. (Get ready for the Maddow/Colbert presidential ticket America!)
If anything about the Trump era - which seems to continue to ramp up despite his absence - infuriates me, it's the absolute destruction of comedy, art, music; seemingly all fine arts and their lower-brow media arts cousins have degenerated into a lazy commentary on the orange man (i.e., "he's bad"). Reagan and Bush had this feature too, but not to this level, and certainly not with the mainstream of the democratic party simultaneously coming out against due process (and sex in general really), free speech, objective journalism and press freedoms, intellectual inquiry, unimpeded free expression, many aspects of hard science, and honest intellectual discussion. I can't even wrap my head around it, so I'll just blame Colbert.
"the mainstream of the democratic party simultaneously coming out against due process (and sex in general really)"
What's with the new-(ish) puritanism? Now the media messaging says sex is something that requires a corporate mediator, not something two people do together consensually because they like each other.
I don't know that I fully understand it, but I'll take a swing: this behavior was all already in the air on college campuses, but had spilled out to the most liberal enclaves of the big cities and art spaces pre-Trump (and I happened to be in both of those things, so I got to see it up close early). It was readily adopted by the mainstream of the democratic party as a presumed way to take down Trump. It failed miserably, but they are unable to put the genie back in the bottle. See: the way they used these ideas of anti-due process to take down Franken in hopes of getting to Trump, but are now calling for due process for Cuomo.
I honestly think (or maybe just hope) that some of the earlier proponents of some of this ideology were really doing it because they truly thought it was right and just, but the media and governmental apparatchiks who adopted it were only interested in using it as way to gather power. "We may destablize and destroy the very fabric of this country, but at least we got, uh, Joe Biden elected!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k80UQWWUIYs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oDEe2PNsJU
It's been fashionable to trash Woody Allen for a few decades, but I argue that you can't effectively satirize a degenerate society without having participated in it.
Just more woke silliness. Good thing it's taking so much attention away from other things like vaccine availability, the lack of min wage increases, Uighars being tortured, Hong Kongers having their basic rights stripped away by the CCP. Why worry about real problems when we can squander our time talking about this?
All missing the point.
The comment has nothing to do with Seuss or eBay. It’s a criticism of Matt’s conceit. Point being that he is comparing apples and oranges.
Bob Dylan
Quinn the Eskimo
(The Mighty Quinn)
Everybody’s building the big ships and the boats
Some are building monuments
Others, jotting down notes
Ev’rybody’s in despair
Every girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna jump for joy
Come all without, come all within
You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn
BAN IT!
I always interpreted this song as 1) pro-peace, 2) pro-Inuit, and 3) the usual cryptic Dylan bullshit. I could be wrong. Not being from Canada or Alaska, I know exactly 0 Inuit people.
In Arizona, "Papago" has been largely phased out of existence -- Tohono O'odham people generally prefer to be referred to as Tohono O'odham. Nde people wear "Apache" --the Zuni word for "enemy" -- as a badge of honor. Most refer to themselves as Apache. Go to a T-shirt shop in Globe, AZ if you don't believe me.
Tribes -- and their sensitivity to language -- differ.
Anyone can SAY "Tohono O'odham"- but how many are able to pronounce the name correctly? How many times does a foreigner have to get the pronunciation wrong before the indigene being addressed steps in to reply "I'm good with 'Papago'"?
speaking of which: while some people nowadays think that that dialect jokes about FOB Chinese trying and failing to pronounce English phonemes properly are proof of an intolerable level of White supremacism, my hunch is that Chinese people indulge in much the same jesting about Anglo whiteys and other foreigners who attempt to converse in Mandarin or Cantonese. Although their jokes have to be much, much funnier.
The real problem with mocking those non-fluent speakers of English who are unable to express the difference between the "r" and "l" sounds of the language is that the joke gets old quick, and as a result it isn't very funny. Whereas botching the pitches in a tone language can lead to a linguistic trainwreck of epic proportions, and must therefore contain inherently much more potential for hilarity. I mean, I'm practically jealous of anyone with that much additional access to linguistic humor. The puns must be off the wall.
re: Bob Dylan and "Quinn the Eskimo"-- it's a reference to an Anthony Quinn movie. Perhaps nothing more than an aside, a tangential image that Dylan took and then ran with as inspiration-- he does a lot of that. As for Anthony Quinn playing Nanook of the North, or whoever, in a Hollywood movie- well, that's another can of worms.
Speaking of which- did you know that some cognoscenti of Film regard the word "movie" as a pejorative, a term that diminishes the cinematic accomplishment?
Anthony Quinn was a Mexican...make of that what you will. As much of it as you Feel like, these days. Evidently or not.
I have a rattlesnake-shaped refrigerator magnet that says "WHY, AZ" on it.
I went to Nothing, AZ around 15 years ago. I am led to believe that there is now nothing there.
I guess I haven't paid proper attention as I still don't know how else to refer to Eskimos. Alaskan Indians? no clue..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit
You may also be interested to learn that Nunavut exists.
Ouch!
Quite enjoyable, even though I know that no one who needs to understand the point of the joke here will get it.
The complete and utter inconsistency of Cancel/SJW Culture was evident to me right from when I saw it starting, probably 10 years ago. When they're shouting constantly I suppose they can't hear any reasoning against their hypocrisy. At some point I've realized that the only way things will ever shift is when the mainstream media decides the market for the backlash is lucrative enough to shift over to at which point all the current shit stirrers will then claim the opposing side, as they've done already.
Was it only 10 years ago? It feels like it's been a fucking lifetime.
Was for me and my own awareness, but I'm a bit slow on the uptake. I'm sure I heard but didn't' listen to warnings prior to it. Then I had a bit of a hard lesson in what the "Left" had then already become.
I still consider myself vaguely Left -- insofar as: racism is a thing that exists; if the government is going to make us pay taxes, it has an obligation to redistribute some of that money to the poorest and least fortunate in our society -- but I find I have more and more in common with Trumpistas all the time.
Same. I of being a Leftist now as like being a fan of a really great musician (or any artist) who you then find out has a really terrible dedicated fanbase that seems to reflect the opposite of every value you'd expect. Unlikeable, unfunny, loyal to the cult of personality instead of the principles, and vocally dedicated to their own alleged principles with no regard for practicing any of them especially if it means taking a minor L in order to stick to them.
Optimistically, though, I still believe it's just the vocal minority along with many psyops and bots sowing discord. But, yeah, I relate more to the populist Right now than I used to. I think there was a column a couple weeks back here where people were going back and forth about how they relate more to regular people with opposing political views which gave me some hope.
Question: Knowing that the R's have probably been working in their think tanks for the last 4 years attempting to find or develop a "Trump but if he Strategically Intelligent" politician - which would be a dominant political monster - do you think that they'll actually be able to synthesize this or do you think they'll just have to go back to Trumpacola Classic in four years or later?
I've been thinking about this and I just don't know if the R's can ever pull this off. I don't know if you can marry a strategic mind with Trump's brand of strangely charismatic semi-anarchic comedy. I think of those old videos of youngish Donald talking about wanting to pursue happiness instead of wealth (and seeming genuine to me, even though he was *arguably* unsuccessful at this path) and I can't imagine any politician since maybe Carter even being capable of thinking this way at any point in their lives.
Oh c'mon, no one ever expects that.
Time to ban Brown Sugar by the Stones.
Time to ban The Stones. I believe many of their songs could be construed as racist and especially sexist, insofar as they convey the message that sex is an enjoyable activity.
Is Tipper Gore running this country now?
On the other hand what do we do with Jelly Roll Morton and all the blues songs where there is a ryder by my side?
I attended a Trump rally in 18’ where that was the warmup music!! “God Bless Kanye West” was the line of the night.
I would have thought the theme would have been It's All About the Bass.
You forgot Mein Kampf. https://www.ebay.com/itm/MEIN-KAMPF-1939-Complete-Unabridged-Annotated-Reynal-Hitchcock/373479460581?hash=item56f51c4ee5:g:NMUAAOSwrAFgPBn3
Maybe eBay could really help the culture and pull all self-help books, all autobiographies by reality show stars, as well as novelizations of movies already based on novels.
Do you remember a few years ago when some fast food burgers or something similar were not legally allowed to advertise as “meat”? Maybe the “literature” you refer to should be subject to the same legal judgment!!
I noticed it was absent as well, but I respect Matt for the restraint. I imagine it being like Matt's own personal struggle.
Thank youuuuu. Tip your waitress.
Lack of reading concerns me more than this.... I put this story in same category as the "THE WAR on CHRISTMAS"
The Dr. Seuss banning is the woke equivalent of strike breakers evicting families from company housing-every cubicle drone and millenial voice of social media engagement is familiar with Dr. Seuss and is thus receiving the message full force-they remember from elementary school and can relate. Hammer of the Witches, Historical Dialecticism, PoZ-that’s for Gen X and older nerds-people on this substack like me!!!!!