Melania drew well in red states, blue states not so much.
I struggle sometimes with figuring out when I am willing to separate art from artist and when I am not. The inspiration was someone posting about reading Marion Zimmer Bradley (great author, but sexually abused her daughter and pretend not to be aware that her husband was raping minors). There, and with Neil Gaiman, it’s clear to me that I don’t need to come back to their works and can move on.
But with authors with crappy political beliefs, it’s less clear cut. Racism was, and still is, so prevalent that avoiding racist authors is hard. Should I avoid Roald Dahl because of his anti-semitic beliefs? Does the fact that those beliefs don’t visibly enter into his stories matter? Actually, I didn’t fully realize how openly anti-semitic he was:
“There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity…even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason,” Dahl said in an interview in 1983. In 1990, just a few months before his death, he doubled down on his anti-Semitism, telling a journalist, “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic.”
1 Like
It is interesting… Maybe the question is-- what’s your reasoning?
Are you trying to discourage the behavior? Or disassociate yourself from it? Keep your kids from becoming racist? What exactly?
How do you account for the fact that the world as a whole was more racist, sexist, fascist, imperialist, etc. throughout history?
And do you adjust for the possibility that the author might have transformed during the course of their life? Eg. writing the great story when they were sensible, and then later were ruined by Fox News and Tweeting.
For Dahl, I think maybe most of the people in his generation were racist, and the less-racist ones just didn’t talk about it. Maybe he became more racist in his 60s, or maybe he slipped by acknowledging it. Obviously he always liked being a little inappropriate, it is part of the charm of his books.
I wonder if Instagram still has that feature that geotags all your posts if you don’t turn it off?
I know when I got an Instagram (to follow our kid), it was one of the first things she showed me - where to turn that off to prevent random stalkers being able to track you.
I’ve still never posted. Don’t see a point.
I have zero desire to use a Meta product
1 Like
1 Like
I mean, let’s be real, who wants a woke monument at Stonewall?
(Semi-serious note: the thumbnail is misleading, the Progress flag was removed from Stonewall earlier this year, the current ado is about removing a simple rainbow flag. Apparently thumbnail image is from 2022)
Get ready, the name they add to the monument won’t be Trump, it’ll be Jackson.
2 Likes
The RNC used to let GOP voters pick their man in the Republican primaries without intervention. Not this time in GA. They’ll be throwing their financial support to Burt Jones, seditionist and Trump loyalist, to try to make sure other Republicans can’t edge him out.
Georgia Republicans allow RNC to break party neutrality to support Burt Jones - POLITICO https://share.google/tk11YU5V9qmoOIz5I
It could be worse.
Trump 1.0 claimed the ability to reduce or eliminate National Monument designations by executive order. That hasn’t come up this time around…yet.
The Betwixt the Sheets Podcast recently did an episode of Dahl. He sounds like a shitty person in general. I think you can find the podcast here (possibly NSFW in terms of topics/content, but not imagery) BBC Sounds - Betwixt The Sheets or on your podcasting app or Spotify.
1 Like
This might not actually turn out to be political, but…
I hope you weren’t planning to travel to El Paso (except perhaps by car) in the next few days.
Airspace around El Paso is closed for 10 days for “special security reasons”. No advance notice was given before it took effect last night, to the extent that a Southwest Airlines pilot is in trouble because they landed at ELP a couple of minutes after this took effect.
That pretty crazy, no explanation at all
Is the US at war with Mexico now?
This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if it has something to do with the ICE deportation hub at Fort Bliss.
1 Like
One of the downsides of direct Democracy.
If you have enough extremist politicians running around the country….you get crazy things like this:
Actual instance of immigrant voter fraud, and imminent deportation, in the news:
1 Like