The Mouse That Roared, The Bigotry Roseanne Perpetrated and Ignorant Racism Of Trump
Tonight, the ABC network, obviously owned and controlled by the Disney Mouse, has fired Roseanne Barr. It is a fine step. The better question is why they ever rebooted her ignorant racist act. The answer is, like the relentless quest of the New York Times to connect with “real America Trump Country voters”, they were more concerned about selling shit and getting eyeballs than they were about morality and truth.
Yeah, it is that simple.
ABC knew exactly what kind of ignorant racist bigot Roseanne Barr was, but they rolled the dice on the crap table of television because they cravenly thought there was a market for low brow bigotry in the age of Donald Trump.
For a bit, it seemed they were right. Heck, maybe they still are, maybe this country has fallen that far.
But when the pet star of ABC and Donald Trump, Roseanne, compared an accomplished woman like Valerie Jarrett to things I will not even cite here, even the Disney Mouse of ABC canceled her on the spot. How heroic.
It is fine to harsh on Roseanne. She has earned it for a long time. A long enough time that ABC and the oh so socially responsible “Disney Mouse” completely understood and, still, signed up to renew the platform for gross bigotry that Roseanne Barr represented in a heartbeat when they though they could catch the wave of Trumpian bigotry and racism.
It was like candy for the media monsters, much like the acceptance of the New York Times and other major media, although to a less obviously crass extent. Make no mistake though, it is all of the same cloth of go along to get along “let’s get maximum eyeballs” theory by major media that feeds the message fed to the United States and world. They know better, and they owe better. And, yes, I am talking to you Maggie Haberman. She is certainly not the only one, just a common and un-rehabiltated symbol at this point. But Mag Habs and the Times “political team” have come to this point the old fashioned way: They have earned it.
But, hey, the Times are not alone, CNN is similarly still sending out Salena Zito to interact with revanchist bigotry in “real America” like that bunk should be celebrated and normalized, not scorned and attempted to be informed.
This country should not celebrate ignorance, bigotry and stupidity. We should fight and overcome that.
ABC and the Disney Mouse may be unconscionably late to this game as to the attempt to ride the ignorance and bigotry of Roseanne Barr, but maybe there is a better day ahead.
Today, Howard Schultz and Starbucks took the step back to rethink and do better. ABC and the Mouse made a late, but needed step.
One step at a time. It is better than the original knee jerk reaction of the ABC network to piggyback on the bigotry of Roseanne Barr.
Belated Update: The title to this post was not meant just to be descriptive of the Disney action as to Roseanne, it was also an homage to the thoroughly wonderful classic movie “The Mouse That Roared”. If you have not seen it, you should. I think it is occasionally on TCM, but not sure. It is a wonderfully subtle early tour de force by the great Peter Sellers.
Lord Mouse (h/t Gore Vidal) is not pleased when the blunders of even high-ranking servants reduce his profits.
Now that Disney owns Star Wars, I have this vision of Mickey Mouse saying, in his high-pitched voice, “She has failed me for the last time”–and Force-choking Roseanne.
I end up thinking about Lee Atwater and the process of creating euphemisms for KKK-grade racism. And I see Rosanne down the Qanon sewer, and the frog-fascists doing their brand of trolling, and I think about how the national conversation right now is gross, but it hides a grosser one: that the white people who really want a cathartic scream of “f–k n—s and s—s and c—s and etc” aren’t getting that, but they’re getting something close enough.
And I think that’s what Salena Zito and Jenna Johnson and the other reporters miss when they’re sitting at the Buttered Biscuit Diner: that the people they talk to know what they can’t say, but they know what they can say to say that they mean the same thing.
I don’t think the reporters miss it, to be honest. I think it ends up being deleted. Salena Zito is a propagandist, and she and the CNN producers are curating a product that shows what they want to show.
The Daily Show’s remote segments have shown over and over that if you leave the cameras rolling, many people lose their inhibitions. This isn’t James O’Keefe level stuff, it’s just giving people time to say what’s on their minds.
And to be fair, open racism isn’t a factor in the majority of Trump supporters. But the percentage of open racists is vastly higher than what Zito shows, and the sympathy is even higher, and corporate media is doing its part to breed it by giving it cover.
Yeah, I think you’re right: it’s the stuff that American news media has decided not to print or broadcast because it attracts complaints of being offensive and also somehow unfair to the bigots saying those things.
So when the NYT does its “meet the dapper suburban white nationalist” there’s an assumption that the reader knows what the subject really thinks about non-whites. But when it doesn’t quote that stuff, it sustains the pretense that it doesn’t exist.
If ABC or Disney made a public statement about this, I didn’t see it.
Gotta give Roseanne some credit, though – no one else could make Valerie Jarret, no friend to the 99%, into a sympathetic character.
Do you know of a good critique of Maggie’s efforts at the NYT you could link to.
I have had a gut reaction that she had changed the rules and lowered the bar just for Trump but would like more meat on those bones.
Yes … the op-ed pages can be execrable but I was more interested in Maggie H.
Can we use “craven” correctly? It means cowardly, not cynical.
Naw, I think it works just fine right there.
craven does indeed mean cowardly* but perhaps not misused here, as the decision represents an unwillingness or incapacity to face down the demands of a larger bottom line.
*”… cowardly, weak-hearted, abjectly pusillanimous.” –OED
There was another side to this. Sara Gilbert, aka Darlene and married in real life to Linda Perry/4 Non-Blondes along w very successful actress, seemed to be the brains and real producer behind the reboot. I surmise it was supposed to turn out like Archie Bunker – a show about bigotry that was really mocking it and supporting anti-bigotry. But Carroll O’Connor’s a real liberal; Roseanne’s a real rightwing nutcase, even though her 1st husband who raised the kids as housespouse claims her private persona’s much different. Anyway, looks like Gilbert couldn’t control her star enough to make it to season #2. Strange that a sleeping pill keeps you awake to tweet racist crap. Perhaps Roseanne should switch to opioids and cheap likker like her fan base.
As an exercise in examing the cynical reasoning of the intellectual right and its relationship to all things Trumpian it is instructive to read the latest post from Josh Blackman at Lawfare:
“Conservative and Libertarian Lawyers in the era of Trump”
He concludes by stating:
“…. I view most constitutional debates through the same prism. It is largely futile to try and persuade one side or the other to shift. We are all guilty of motivated reasoning – all we can do is be cognisant of how and why the other side believes what it believes”
Of particular note is his emphatic approval of this dictum from the Scalia dissent :
“A system of separate and coordinate powers necessarily involves an acceptance that exclusive power can theoretically be abused”
What Blackman fails to pay heed to is the actual abuses of power being actually coordinated accross the three branches of government.
And though he dresses up his arguments with the clothes of reason and superficially reasonable nods to the rationality of his intellectual opponents his intellectualising is deeply dangerous.
He affects patrician disdain for :”[Trump’s many actions] that are beneath the honor and dignity of the Presidency” but the kicker is ” I do not fault my colleagues on the right who view Trump as championing a constitutional principle…. even if he has no concern for the principle he is advancing”
This is very dangerous thinking.
Pretzel logic.
I know Josh, and he is an imminently nice and likable guy. He is also a complete Federalist Society toady who, at every turn, shills for and supports the worst Trump attacks on the rule of law and common decency. It is sickening.
If only it were just failing to pay heed. It is far more aggressive and affirmative than that. And it is very much to the discredit of Lawfare that they continue to give him an elevated platform for the Trumpism in the false guise of Federalist Society pseudo intellectualism.
I just read the article. It definitely falls into the category of intellectualizing behavior; behavior which, on its face, is objectively terrible. The problem with the relativist viewpoint is that it often falls into the “moral equivalence” trap: that those who believe differently are on equal ground morally- they just see things from a different angle. That equivocation of viewpoints is dangerous because some viewpoints are inherently wrong, and when compared to higher moral standards (which are often harder to adhere to), the less moral path (for lack of a better term- it’s late at night currently and my words are failing me) can win out if we’re not careful. It’s human nature, unfortunately, and summed up by Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance- that an infinitely tolerant society will eventually tilt towards less tolerant views as a result of the rise of intolerance itself.
On a related note- Another example of this is Jordan Peterson, a distinguished researcher from the University of Toronto, who has legitimized many of the alt-right’s viewpoints through similar arguments. These intellectuals are not always wrong, making their biases even harder to spot or refute. They are so comfortable with their well-reasoned arguments that they often fail to acknowledge they even have any blind spots at all. A dangerous combo.
I like Lawfare because they are usually fairly impartial. This article definitely falls short of that description- the writer almost seems like a Trump sympathizer based on this piece. Thanks for pointing it out!
I read that Wanda Sykes had been associated with this show. She’s pretty smart and funny, I have to wonder why she took this on. Maybe it was intended as an “All in the Family” template, like Desider said. It sure didn’t work out that way. I never saw the show and had no intentions of watching.
The aftermath was typical, I suppose. Lots of yelling back and forth. I never watch his show, but happened to yesterday: Chuck Todd had on a panel, with conservative Christie Todd Whitman doppelganger, Danielle Pletka who was bemoaning how Trump made conservatives “Look like Racists”. (An aside, she had once been an aide to Jesse freakin’ Helms~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms). Kimberly Atkins’ side-eye to this statement (when the camera panned out) was a sight to see, and one for the ages. Just because Trump uses a megaphone instead of a dog-whistle, well, anyway…. Is Chuck Todd’s entire platform to soften the reputation of Republicans? He seemed to spend the rest of the show carefully walking on eggshells not to offend conservatives or to imply that they were racists in any small manner. Yes, when a white person says something blatantly racist, be sure not to offend or hurt the white people’s feelings on your panel! That’s what’s important.
Meanwhile, 4K+ people died in Puerto Rico during/after the hurricane, not 64-ish. *Crickets* Where is the old Kanye to say that Trump doesn’t care about brown and black people? Oh wait, never mind, someone is craving the spotlight, like an addict, and will do anything to get it now. Why isn’t this splattered across the networks and cable shows and analyzed to death, like the Roseanne situation?
Actions speak even louder than words. Nearly every action and policy of this administration demonstrates racism, bias, prejudice, etcetera, etcetera. There are a handful of conservatives pushing back. But for most; if the words are convincing enough for them to front/cover that’s it’s all about “balanced budgets”, “Law and order” principles, then it’s all good.
I forgot the “National Security” excuse…(But of course, white supremacists are not on that list. I guess Russian and assorted international spies and bad actors being ignored goes without saying, too).
The national security point is a good one. When mixed with “law and order”- we get ridiculous policy, everything from the travel ban, to the border wall, to separating children from their parents because their parents are “lawbreakers”. As if their desire to flee their own country and try to change their circumstances somehow “justifies” the removal of their children. Don’t forget that about 1500 are now unaccounted for, and the ORR has no responsibility to keep track of them, apparently. I guess that’s somehow okay too, because their parents broke the law and if their kids are missing, well then, that’s some sort of karmic retribution for their law-breaking.
The whole rationale of all of this is sickening. I try to not get fired up about it because I can’t change any of it, but just when I think it can’t get any worse, the US goes ahead and enshrines something even more barbaric into policy. Past presidents had their flaws, but never before have I seen any that I thought were actually sadistic in their treatment of people. I hope that once the Trump era is over, things can go back to normal, but I worry that there is now a “new normal”- which involves people like Roseanne and memes about Pepe the Frog. I know I’m being cynical right now, and I would be very happy to be proven wrong on this one. I know the US is full of good people, just like many on this site. It would be great if good people ended up steering the ship once again.
Owning racial injustice
“The country is prey to nostalgia, which is the ultimate, backward –looking unreality. And also prey to a kind of preservation of a status quo that is also based on a fantasy of the past: a moment in time in which you could keep your factory job forever, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and life was all baseball and Cracker Jacks. Well that was never the reality of America, certainly never for all Americans. But we move forward, politically, and psychically, as though that nostalgic unreality was in fact real.
All of this exacerbated by our refusal to even admit that we’re operating in an unreality. We say things like, “We’re not really racist,” or we don’t have a problem with xenophobia,” or “There is no poverty on or midst.” We pretend these things are not informing every aspect of our society. And because we refuse to admit that they’re there, we can’t correct them. And so our worst impulses continue, entirely unexamined and unchecked. What has happened? The refusal to believe in death has condemned us, as a nation, to death, and has condemned us also, as a nation, to an utterly corrupt and corrupting mode of moving through our lives and through our nationhood.”
Ayana Mathis
Conservatives were intellectualizing their racism long before Nixon adopted his Southern dog whistle Strategy. Capitalism seems to need an underclass. America’s was ready made with slaves and Native Americans. After Post-WWII, with the decline of Jim Crow, racism reinvented itself, concurrently with the development of neoliberalism. It did so under the auspices southerner and Nobel economist James Buchanan.
Buchanan was a white, male, chauvinist, anti-democratic, neoliberal trained at the University of Chicago. (Mr. Rockefeller continues to have much to answer for.) He developed and weaponized many of the tropes the Right still uses.
The media has a liberal bias, despite much research and evidence to the contrary, not least Herman and Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Universities are home to leftist radicals who, in Reagan’s description of hippies, look like Tarzan, walk like Jane, and smell like Cheetah. Nixon’s “war on drugs” was tailor-made to neuter the political and cultural power of students and African Americans, as was Nixon’s immigration war against John Lennon, who could move millions with one song.
In Buchanan’s world view, it is not the Negro, in 1950s terminology, who has been discriminated against and held in chains for centuries. The real victims are conservatives of all stripes, especially poor white males. Social Security, FDR’s great social achievement, is a “failure” that needs to be ended or privatized. (In Buchanan’s mind, the same outcome.) Conservative mega-donors, such as Charles and David Koch, were the saviors of all “we” hold dear. The odd progressive mega-donor, such as George Soros, is the anti-Christ.
Buchanan saved his best for last. His so-called public choice theory holds that the market – meaning large corporate actors, who most influence its priorities – is autonomous and “infallible”. Government – charged with furthering the general welfare – can only screw it up. That is, interfere with or stifle corporate priorities.
Nancy MacLean’s, Democracy in Chains, lays out Buchanan’s strategy, which is very much with us today. He launched it in response to 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. His movement brought neoliberalism, corporatism, racism, and states rights under a single tent.
If the S.Ct. mandated integrating state schools, the South would privatize them. Government, when it pursues social justice goals, is the problem, not the solution. Its only roles should be preserving the existing social order through control of the law. “National defense” – meaning the government’s ability to use force to obtain consent – means using the army against commies and not using the national guard to enforce school desegregation.
Buchanan’s racist, anti-democratic agenda, like Friedman’s neoliberalism in Chile and Argentina, could not be brought about through democratic majoritarian rule. Theirs are not policies that those not members of the Business Roundtable voluntarily submit to. In Chile and Argentina, neoliberalism was brought about at the point of a gun.
Buchanan brought about his through stealth. One method was billionaire funding of ultra-conservative think tanks (Heritage, AEI) and university departments. Fitting, then, that Buchanan spent so much of his career at the heavily Koch-funded and influenced George Mason University.
Jane Mayer’s, Dark Money, lays out much of the stealth campaign. Kim Phillips-Fein, in Invisible Hands, describes the funding, nurturing and development of neoliberalsim. Naomi Klein’s Disaster Capitalism, describes its many successes and the costs others have been made to bear for them. Nancy MacLean describes a major intellectual figure behind neoliberalism and racism’s modern face.
This is a perfect synopsis. And exactly why I gag every time the “good conservatives” carp about Trump. He is the living epitome and perfect front man for the decades long evolution of the Republican party and “Conservatism”. He IS them.
It goes hand-in-hand with labeling the likes of George Will, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks et al as the “intellectuals” of the GOP (proving only that words have lost all meaning). These are people for whom the amiable, plutocratic buffoonery of Reagan was the epitome of “conservatism”, and for whom being poor, off-white and, of course, liberal was a moral failing. The only thing that bothers them about the current administration is its in-your-face Fuck y’all! ethos, not the political / economic substance its inflicting on the country. So it’s a bit rich for them to criticize after they spent decades pouring gasoline on the place to now say, Gee, I wonder why the house is on fire?
Nicely done @ earl.
Thanks: very illuminating
A few books I am reading that follow from this historical line: How Democracies Die (Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt), Sh*tshow!: The Country’s Collapsing . . . and the Ratings Are Great (Charlie LeDuff), Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (David Graeber) and to a lesser extent, Why Liberalism Failed (Patrick J. Deneen).
Graeber is great. He’s an example of the American Academy not wanting someone as critical as C. Wright Mills into the Ivy League fold. He’s doing quite well in the UK though.
Indeed. USA loss is UK gain. His book, Debt: The First 5000 Years is similarly great. Cheers!
worshipfully remembered conservative wordsmith (a. k. a, intellectual) and wealthy man-about-town william buckley had much the same message, but delivered it in a much more charming* way :)
*as justice antonin scalia delivered his silly logic on originalism accompanied by much personal charm.
When I think of WFB’s idiosyncratic personal charm, I’m reminded of a National Review weekly magazine cover story of his the week after Ayn Rand’s death, a sort of obituditorial titled “Ayn Rand, R.I.P.” (which sadly seems to be lost to teh internets).
What sticks in my memory is the way WFB chose to use his perch and the occasion not to sing faint praise of the camaraderie of their mutual years of Buchananesque proselytizing but to condemn Rand’s atheism from his perch as a Good Catholic conservative. Charming, indeed.
…
(Obligatory link to famous WFB teevee moment of personal charm:
https://youtu.be/nYymnxoQnf8?t=35)
“Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a cryptonazi, or I’ll sock you in the goddamned face and you’ll stay plastered.”
james buchanan was an academic economist. i doubt his academic writings had much to do with republican/rightwing politics or policy. in terms of who affects public thinking it makes a lot more sense to focus on wealth (koch, walton, et al) and politicians (reagan, atwater, et al) than academics. this is an argument i have made here before. i think it is foolish to equate serious academic writing with public policy or practical politics. at best, academic works are an intellectual fig leaf cited more in the breech than the observance. policy is invariably made by those who stand to benefit the most from it.
buchan had no public political persona like say, mick mulvaney, ajit pai, or stephen miller. to the extent he was known and remembered at all, buchanan was known to other academics until nancy mclean did her recent research, then, as with woodrow wilson, we discovered a personal, racist side of buchanan that had been hidden.
despite this unveiling, buchanan’s work is not easily pidgeon-holed.
here is a set of paragraph’s from miss wiki that show there’s more to buchanan’s thought than his racial bias. note in particular the comment from amartya sen:
“… Buchanan was largely responsible for the rebirth of political economy as a scholarly pursuit.[11] He emphasized that public policy cannot be considered solely in terms of distribution, but is instead always a matter of setting the rules of the game that engender a pattern of exchange and distribution. His work in public choice theory is often interpreted as the quintessential instance of economics imperialism;[12]however, Amartya Sen has argued that Buchanan should not be identified with economics imperialism, since he has done more than most to introduce ethics, legal political thinking, and indeed social thinking into economics.[13] Crucial to understanding Buchanan’s system of thought is the distinction he made between politics and policy. Politics is about the rules of the game, where policy is focused on strategies that players adopt within a given set of rules. “Questions about what are good rules of the game are in the domain of social philosophy, whereas questions about the strategies that players will adopt given those rules is the domain of economics, and it is the play between the rules (social philosophy) and the strategies (economics) that constitutes what Buchanan refers to as constitutional political economy”.[14]
Buchanan supported a 100% marginal tax rate on all inheritances above a certain amount.[15]
Buchanan’s important contribution to constitutionalism is his development of the sub-discipline of constitutional economics.[16]
According to Buchanan the ethic of constitutionalism is a key for constitutional order and “may be called the idealized Kantian world” where the individual “who is making the ordering, along with substantially all of his fellows, adopts the moral law as a general rule for behaviour”.[17] Buchanan rejects “any organic conception of the state as superior in wisdom to the citizens of this state”. This philosophical position forms the basis of constitutional economics. Buchanan believed that every constitution is created for at least several generations of citizens. Therefore, it must be able to balance the interests of the state, society, and each individual.[18]… ”
sometimes a person’s deep thinking takes them beyond their worst selves. :)
oATL,Buchanan championed economic philosophy of unencumbering governmental spending by intelectually seperating economic goals from means. buchanan as noted by nancy mclean’s book Democracy in Chains operationalized segregationist educational policy against S. Ct. Brown v Board of Education. Buchanan’s position in academic setting encouraged deconstructing conventional ethical principle like beneficence in favor of unencumbered economics of distribution. Generally and over simplifying Buchanan: Why spend Gov. money for desegregating schools based on hairbrained principles of beneficence. If Gov. monies are to be spent-spend it in neigborhoods who earned it.
you need
to read
more than nancy mclean.
buchanan is a lot like the engineers and accountants one reads in our contemporary and well-funded rationalist movement and ann rand apostles. they are missing a part of theirvbrain 8nvolving empathym
2nd point: attacking academics because you don’t like what theyvwrote (or what you think they wrote) is a dangerous game in any society. there are plenty of culpable politicians, policy makers, and policing organizations to attack.
a) karl marx is one of the most important european sociologist/economists in our intellectual history, yet you could lose your job praising him in the u. s. in the 40’s and 50’s. of course you would never make the mistake of piling on a karl marx appreciator, right?
2) in the u. s. from the 1830’s to the civil war, protestant evangelical ministers spread the word about the evils of slavery. the further south they went (into s. carolina, florida, georgia, alabama, missippi, louisianna) the more they had to be very careful about what they said, to the point their message lost much of its punch.
3) in the u. s. in the 2000’s, some muslim-american and muslims-in-america scholars were attacked by the u. s. doj under the “material support for terrorism” statute. others unknown were intimidated into relative or complete silence.
4) one of the admirable qualities of this website is its tolerance for some commenters we call (often wrongly) trolls. their comments are irritating; they are fun to knock. nonetheless, the important thing is that the moderators tolerate their commentary. it is good leavening for the discussion., though i can’t say it is proof against group think.
Did anyone on here actually watch the show? I didn’t, because I was well aware of the fact that Roseanne Barr is a racist nutcase. It doesn’t surprise me that this ended the way it did. But the involvement of Sara Gilbert and Wanda Sykes (both of whom are mentioned above) both perplexed and intrigued me. Both of them had to know what they were getting when they signed on to work with Roseanne Barr. Gilbert was a producer as well as a star of the show, and Sykes was a high-level writer (if not LEAD writer–I’m not clear on that yet). Perhaps both thought that they could contain the craziness and turn out an Archie Bunker-type show. But even if they had succeeded, I STILL don’t understand why either would associate with Barr. You can’t really separate the artist from the art when the show is called “Roseanne”. What were they thinking?
Let me admit here that if I HADN’T known that Barr was a racist nutcase, I probably would’ve watched the show. The original wasn’t “appointment viewing” for me, but I still probably watched dozens of episodes, and I always thought it was a good show. Barr as the central character was hilarious, and John Goodman and Sara Gilbert could both hold their own. Curiosity would have drawn me to the reboot.
That being said, I’ve rethought a lot of my entertainment choices in light of the #metoo movement. I’m not watching Master of None until Aziz Ansari at least gives a coherent response to the story that came out about him. I would love to be listening to old episodes of The Writer’s Almanac, but I feel the same way about Garrison Keillor. If you can’t talk because your lawyer has told you to keep your mouth shut, then you need to just go away until you CAN talk. Bruce Weber and Bryan Singer both appear to have dropped off the map. If Bryan Singer is still listed as a producer of Dark Phoenix when the movie comes out, I won’t be seeing it unless Singer can explain the allegations against him. And so on.
I skipped Ender’s Game several years ago due to Orson Scott Card’s involvement in the anti-gay marriage movement. His response to the criticisms leveled against him was, in my opinion, not good enough to convince me to give the man my money (as he was listed as a producer of the movie). I’ll have no problem continuing to make similar choices about what media I decide to consume.
As you say, Ms. Barr’s eponymous show was never Archie Bunker. Jewison and O’Connor were only two of the many liberals who worked on that show. They crafted Archie and his environment to throw stones at real Archies and to demonstrate to many how else life could be lived and why that was important.
Ms. Barr is and seems happy to be Archie. She just wants to keep doing it while being paid a lot of money.
She’s doing a Trump, natch. Ambien made me do it. Forget about those decades of similar behavior. It was a long night and I had a prescription narcotic. Uh, huh. Ms. Barr should just turn around, tail between her legs, go away and enjoy her money. She’s just helped several dozen of her peers on both sides of the camera lose a lot of theirs.
The maker of Ambien says that many people of all races, colors, creeds and incomes use prescription Ambien. Any drug might have potential side effects. Racism is not one of them.
….and bad comedy. Even if you were to hold your nose, squint your eyes, and cover your ears somewhat, there was still nothing remotely funny about what she said. She just spewed cult pejoratives. That’s not a ‘joke’.
Great point, Earl. (and excellent commentary above). Oh, and I like your comment re “Madonna of Trump Tower” i.e., reference to the Ivanka teutonic braid and Lani Riefenstahl.
(Geez, you’re a creative writer– your undergrad papers must have been a hoot to grade!)
Also, Laurie Metcalf. She is great. Don’t know if you all have caught the move Lady Bird yet, but Metcalf is absolutely great in it. Do see it if you have not yet.
I don’t know why Goodman went back. He’s had a pretty consistent career (I’ve enjoyed him in Indies), and I read that he was killed off the first show anyway.
@ Bmaz 8:26
Your correction of my “fails to pay heed” understatement of Jackmans arguments, is a good point well made and gratefully accepted.
It is interesting to note your personal contact and impressions of him. He certainly presents as aimiable and civilised in podcasts I have listened to and in his writing style ( if not its content, properly understood). That underscores the point I was attempting to bring out: the batshit crazies like Roseanne, KellyAnne, Gaetz, Cotton etc are easy to spot and easy to confront.
And it is absolutely correct to lambast eg CNN, NYT etc for shilly shallying under the guise of balanced reporting, thus failing to hold to account Trump his enablers and the political forces he embodies and is the expression of.
But when a supposedly sober intellectual Constitutionalist is saying to others of his ilk : its now just picking sides, and I choose Trump as a champion of “The ConstitutionThat Ought To Be” then the gloves are coming off everywhere.
Many of the would be Great Men, have thrived by managing to benefit from strategic alliances across disparate class fractions, due only in part if at all to a political programme but more by dint of proclamations “He Is The Embodiment of Our Cause”.
**See also Dershowitz who twists and turns himself into a contortionist, in order to support Trump as a “Constitutional Scholar”.
Dershowitz disgraces himself daily. But he is much more obviously a gun-for-hire table thumper, whose main role is to disconcert the libs during the little local difficulty of the Mueller probe, rather than solidify conservative intellectual support for ProjectTrump.
His “I worry about Trumps civil rights too” schtick appeals to the right mainly for its left baiting ,
Don’t get me wrong, all the suck ups have merit in Trumps eyes. But to my mind, the more Trump garners support from beyond his batshit base and in the broader sections of conservative opinion, the more worrying it is.
Dershowitz acts as an unregistered (as far as I know) lobbyist for Israel. However, he is presented as a neutral constitutional scholar. Just because he is acting batshit, doesn’t mean that hard right Zionists or people with business interests there, aren’t going to nod and agree with the contortions. All kinds of people like rationalizations to suit positions. He’s not out there just to give a noogie to the left and high five the base (cult).
dershhowitz has said he had a religous conversion about a decade ago. it is clear to me he became a fanatical zionist. that explains to me his current contemptible behavior as a major hypocrite with respect to first amendment free speech, which he spent most of his professional life defending. now its – the first amendment for everyone but critics of the israeli government.
republicans have been pandering to american zionist for years. hence dershowitz’ contemporary politics. alas, like evangelicals zionists will find themselves dropped when they are no longer useful to the party.
No, SteveB, not meant as a correction in the least, just me expressing the same thought and frustration. It is a conundrum that bugs me quite a bit (if that is not obvious).
The Guardian has a great piece up by Richard Madeley, who has been filling in on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” in the UK. When interviewing the UK Defence Minister about some poor language he used two month ago in a previous interview about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, things kind of went sideways. An initial question asking if he regretted his choice of words was batted aside with thanks for all the first responders. A second attempt at an answer was met with blather about the attack, rather than his own words. Finally, came this:
And he pulled the plug on the incredulous minister. Video at the link.
Until journalists take their role more seriously in getting to the truth rather than seeking “balanced reporting” in the best he said/she said form, journalists will continue to be enablers of folks like Trump.
And when it comes to Meet The Press Daily, I find that it is much much better on Mondays when Katy Tur runs the show, rather than Tuesday through Friday when it’s Chuck Todd’s gig. Maybe she gets how important calling things what they are (like lies, a smokescreen, or both) because she went from being a foreign correspondent to the designated NBC reporter on Trump’s campaign where things got to the point that the Secret Service needed to escort her out of Trump rallies for her own safety.
a journalist after my own heart. that plug needs to be pulled far more often on far more interviewees who insist on dodging questioning.
Mr. Trump does not want to get rid of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. He is playing Br’er Rabbit, pleading not to be thrown into his own briar patch.
Trump has been complaining about Sessions’s recusal for over a year. As the great and powerful
Wizard of OzPresident, with a GOP Senate at his disposal, he could hire a new AG in a New York minute.No, Trump wants his whipping boy. He needs an object for his complaints, a human face that will explain to his base why Trump and they are victims, why Trump’s DoJ and FBI are corrupt and illegitimate, and so are the indictments, prosecutions and plea deals they might extract from their victims.
Maybe it was on Chuck Todd’s show, (which I won’t watch again), but someone mentioned that supposedly there is a small cabal of GOP who quietly threaten Trump that if he fires Sessions, they won’t approve another AG. I don’t know if that’s true. It could be, because other than being the firewall for the Mueller investigation, he has delivered on draconian and racist policy, which I’m sure they like.
I’m imagine Jeff does have fans in the Senate (they don’t seem to object much to his yearlong mistreatment), and others there who would object to his replacement for the purpose of interfering with the Mueller investigation.
That said, Trump could replace Sessions in a heartbeat. Whether he could find someone more willing to do his bidding, and to take his shit, is another matter. Trump is also a coward, who needs others to blame for his many failures. Sessions is better for that purpose than anyone else I can think of.
Roseanne’s tweet was inexcusable, and ABC did right in canceling the show. Roseanne said the one millionth ignorant and stupid thing that she has said, and she cost a lot of people a good job and a great opportunity to make real bank in potential future seasons of a top-rated show. Ignorant, stupid, right result.
That said, I think we lost something of value here. The show was mediocre in parts, but it did a better job of fleshing out modern characters than most shows. After the first episode, I think they completely avoided saying the name of he-who-must-not-be-named. Instead, the show focused on Roseanne as a “supporter” and her disagreements with her family, similar to the old show. Most of the issues were related to poverty, lack of good jobs, racism, etc. This time around, the fact that Roseanne was a supporter was used as a device to introduce these issues, but it was really the same character as the old show.
Sample episode: Roseanne is suspicious of her Muslim neighbors. Then they help her late one night, and she later ends up defending the woman and dressing down a racist grocery clerk. Basically, Roseanne (the character) acts like a jerk most of the time, then gets into a dilemma in which she inevitably defends the weak, gives to the poor, or helps those in need, against everything she says. I wouldn’t say she’s Archie Bunker exactly, but she was clearly set up as the odd-woman-out on the show . . . the one that has to learn the lesson.
Another sample: Dan is a union drywall contractor who is repeatedly under-bid by competitors using undocumented labor. He won’t do it, until he needs money for his wife’s knee surgery, after which he hopes she’ll be able to quit her triple doses of pain meds. So he lies to his best friend to do what it takes to win the next job. (Great example of residential construction bidding in much of America, where the options are: cheat the system or find another business.)
Also, the character has a black granddaughter and a gender-fluid grandson. Roseanne (the character) is not tolerant, but of course she would defend them, because they’re family. Dan’s best friend is also black. Meanwhile Roseanne (the person) has a black grandson too. It’s not uncommon for people with mixed families to say racist things, but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense to me. I have minority family members that are Trump supporters, which makes even less sense. Still, they’re family.
Finally getting to the point, we need cultural bridges to understand the almost-half of voters that chose Trump. Some have admitted it was a mistake. Many (most?) still can’t. Why not? Just because the economy hasn’t tanked? Is that the standard? I think there’s something else going on that transcends politics and maybe even class.
To me, the two ends of the spectrum are this:
1) Treat people well. Have integrity. We’ll all be better off.
2) Don’t be a fool. Most people are out for themselves. Life isn’t fair. Take what you can get.
Pope Francis, from a very damaged soapbox, promotes the first approach. Trump, by words and example from a podium emblazoned with the seal of the U.S. President, promotes the second.
Roseanne (the character) promoted the second by words, but better angels usually prevailed on her deeds (i.e., a sitcom). Roseanne (the person) wasn’t good enough to cure her mistakes before her 22 minutes were up.
Thanks for that. I never watched. “Art” (In quotes because I don’t know if this show was art) is a medium to make people think or feel, and sometimes it changes hearts and minds. Sadly, it would seem the real Roseanne learned nothing from the situations or the character Roseanne that she played.
Belated Update: The title to this post was not meant just to be descriptive of the Disney action as to Roseanne, it was also an homage to the thoroughly wonderful classic movie “The Mouse That Roared”. If you have not seen it, you should. I think it is occasionally on TCM, but not sure. It is a wonderfully subtle early tour de force by Peter Sellers.
Heck, I have already plugged Lady Bird today, might as well the wonderful Mouse That Roared.
Quite the menagerie you’re promoting, BMaz, what other critters you got in your media stable?
They’re baaaaack.
i was thinking to compliment you on that title :)
Enjoyable film. Good Peter Sellers vehicle. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick, Europe and Cold War protagonists in microcosm. Rebirth of satire after coldly enforced McCarthyite conformity.
The book it came from was pretty good as well.
OT, though, like many of you I’m appalled by the constant MSM fixation on so-called “good” republicans. After all, even Senator Flake (make up your own Freudian slip joke here) voted for Trump’s priorities (and judges) over 84% of the time. I’ll be impressed when they actually stand up and vote against the palace, but they see what has happened to McCain (another bog-standard GOP in the vast majority of cases, though we do thank him for torpedoing the Obamacare repeal) and run scared.
walt disney, inc. decided to get rid of the barr show after the fatal tweet. iger himself was involved directly with the head of abc (which disney owns – how’s that for monopolistic opportunity?).
the reasoning was that disney had corporate opportunities in areas that demanded no hint of america’s notable racism. this decision particularly involved their highly successful film “black panther”, but also other successful media products. disney saw more opportunity in non-racist products outside the u. s. than in race-baiting inside the u. s. market. i guess that’s the success of globalism :)
Maggie Habs, followed by CNN and even the Toronto Star, for example, went out of her way to defend not calling Mr. Trump’s lies lies. The NYT’s editors chimed in, saying, in part, that if they called all of his lies lies, the word would lose all meaning. Instead, the editors handed out a thesaurus and said, “find another word.”
The NYT misses the story. That Trump lies so often the NYT needs a thesaurus to describe them is the story, not his individual lies. Lying about his baldness, his weight and health, could be dismissed as vanity and a personal failing. Trump lies so often about consequential and inconsequential that the WaPo and other media keep a running tab of them.
Trump lying about disclosing his wealth and taxes is more consequential. Lying about his appointments, the effects and purposes of his tax “reform”, his priorities, his racism, his persistent involvement with Vladimir Putin and his richest confidantes, his repeated lies about the DoJ and FBI. All are more consequential still, and vital stories in and of themselves.
The consequences of Trump’s lies are also a story. One of those is the way Trump’s lies damage the presidency, the government, the people it governs, the rule of law itself. Then there are specifics, Trump’s relationship with Russia being high among them.
The NYT makes its home in the Naked City, famously home to “eight million stories.” It’s Trump’s home town, too. He may not have said eight million lies, but he’s working on it. Perhaps the NYT could put the thesaurus back on the shelf and spend more time on some of them.
CNN has to be the worst. They call the lies “strategy” and then say “It’s working”. That reads as a promotion. Then they have apologists on like Stelter, who I’ve only recently become familiar with, whose entire shtick seems to be softening up the story about Trump supporters, or playing devil’s advocate for the administration…the poor, poor people on the right who are misunderstood. And Hew Hewitt on MSNBC blatantly lies about…everything. Liberal bias, my ass.
The NYT should know about lies, at least in the context of defamation. A seminal case in the law of defamation is New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. It set the standard for what statements by a news publication about a public official could be deemed a libel – a written defamatory statement – for which the publisher could be liable.
In 1964, the Sullivan court ruled unanimously that for a news publication’s statement about a public official to be libelous, the publisher had to have actual malice. It was not sufficient that the statement be incorrect or false. The publisher needed to know it was false or to have a reckless disregard for whether the statement was true or false.
The stakes were high. In Sullivan, southern states had sued the NYT for libel, citing minor factual errors in its critical coverage of civil rights in the South. Several plaintiffs, acting in concert, were attempting through those suits to suppress critical press coverage. Had the NYT lost, the already limited press coverage would have ground to a halt. No other paper had the resources of the NYT and none could have risked a series of expensive losses, were its coverage deemed libelous for even minor factual errors.
The NYT won. In 2014, the NYT’s board celebrated the 50th anniversary of that victory in defense of press freedom. It might reconsider what it owes in return.
Donald Trump, for example, demonstrates a reckless disregard for the truth in almost every statement he makes. He reads little, understands less, and cares only that his statement be useful to him the moment he makes it. The issue is not whether Trump is liable for defamation. But his reckless disregard for the truth – and all the consequences that follow from that reckless behavior – needs to be called out, not hidden in euphemism.
well said. very interesting history.
tx
@12:14 –
what the nytimes is really missing in its typical prissy dance about words that won’t offend, is not the lies, but the reason trump is lying.
trumps’ lies serve a purpose. he is disgiusing the truth when he lies. the truth he is diguising and the likely motives and consequences need to be discussed, e. g., lies about trade, about the iran pact, about the osc investigation, etc., etc., etc. that the reality is being hiddden has serious consequences for the nation, not least because this lies-only focus leaves voters ignorant of all but the quality of being a liar.
On the aches and pains of Michael Cohen’s lawyers, moving heaven and earth to timely review the discovery relating to materials seized from Cohen in April, “we’ve even got lawyers sleeping on couches….” Gimme a break. As EW says, the special master and two lawyers made the first cut of these same materials in less time than it’s taking Cohen’s 15+ lawyer team.
Big time Manhattan lawyers work ridiculous hours all the time. They always have junior lawyers sleeping on couches, tables the floors, working every weekend – gasp, even holiday weekends. They also helicopter documents to the Hamptons so that partners can read them by the beach without waiting. They take limos home every night because everything else is shut down or less safe. At firms like this, every waking moment, every meal, every other expense is on the client’s dime. No wonder Mickey Medallions sold two houses to increase his cash horde. As for Cohen’s lawyers’ claims about Avenatti’s behavior and public statements lacking “propriety,” I applaud any lawyer in the courtroom who heard that and kept a straight face.
Judge Wood and the government’s lawyers know the of the land. They’re bending over backwards to give Cohen’s lawyers room to maneuver, and to hang themselves if they take that route.
I’m sure it’s taking the SDNY way longer to reconstruct the shredded documents that Cohen attempted to destroy.
Oh, yea, but the surveillance state now has a lot of good tools to do that.
I’m also sure that Cohen was a bit sloppy in his shredding policies. I see that Avenatti was called out in Woods’ court by Cohen’s team for leaking, never mind that those bozos started it by calling Avenatti a liar (in so many words) in the public record. What did they expect to happen, noting that the WSJ emails themselves weren’t challenged? Mr. Pot, it’s Kettle…
They may have far more documents to reconstruct than you think. The initial assumption was that they only had shredded documents that were seized in the raid(s), but one of the legal analysts on TV pointed out that they wouldn’t need a warrant to pick through Cohen’s trash, which they may have been doing for a long time before the raids. I doubt this is true, but it’s an interesting possibility, and it seems to make more sense to me than just reconstructing the documents from the raid(s). A few days’ worth of shredded documents probably won’t amount to much. A few months, on the other hand, is likely to turn up a few interesting tidbits. Food for thought.
In British Parliamentary procedure it is a breach of parliamentary etiquette and the rules of both chambers to accuse another member of the chamber of lying to the House.
Consequently various formulations are adopted to avoid ‘using unparliamentary language’ but are well understood to mean lying eg “uttering demonstrable falsehoods”.
This of course is the very phrase MaggieH used which sparked the twitterspat.
Her usage was of course not a convenient euphemism dictated by convention, nor as is it as now explained a reasonable means to enhance the linguist richness of NYT coverage of Trump.
Her first explanation, as stated on CNN was that Trump often believes things which are false, thus on any number of occassions when he has uttered a falsehood, that is not necessarily a lie because he may not know it is untrue.
The difficulty with that reasoning is that it adopts an unduly restrictive (and favorable to Trump) definition of a lie.
A lie is a willfull statement which the speaker knows to be false or does not believe to be true.
Willfull, knows and believes are all important aspects of the mental state.
It is only a good faith belief in the truth of a factually false statement that prevents the utterance from being classified as a lie.
Where the utterer makes a false statement
1 without caring whether it is true or not,
2 especially where the maker is in a position to check the facts before the utterance
3 where the speaker expects the utterance to be treated as authoritative by virtue of their position and/or the subject matter
then the statement is a lie, albeit a reckless one: it is a false statement made with a consciousness of its falsity.
Hence, written witness statements in England and Wales have the declaration :
This statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that if I have willfully stated anything I know to be false or do not believe to be true…..
An old parliamentary hand once used, “terminological inexactitude,” to deal with the problem, although he used it in an attempt to recharacterize a critique of one of his own statements.
steveb –
a very nice layout of what “the best raised” in our society used to call, daintily, “prevarication”.
“… in Church Latin, “to transgress,” from prae “before” (see pre-) + varicare “to straddle,” from varicus”straddling,” from varus “bowlegged, knock-kneed” (see varus). Meaning “evasion, quibbling” is attested from 1650s…. “* :))
tx
*dictionary. com
Thank you for writing this.
May 30, 2018 at 10:17 am
SteveB, sure we know he “certainly presents as aimiable and civilised”. But trouble is the “civilized” world has always been notably racist. American “sober intellectual Constitutionalists” voice centuries of civilized folk who never considered the word “Man” as a universal word for humankind. Aimiable is as aimiable does. The most abominble behavior is called civilization. The Dawn of Humans that includes Race & Gender is a long time coming. Manners is the barest of minimum.
@ EoH 410pm
Winston Churchill that one.
“Economical with the truth”
“Economical with the veritè”
“A profound departure from the actualitè”
“Customary simulacritude to veracity”
Are among my favorites.
some numbers for the roseanne barr show. we can be sure walt disney, inc. has more and better numbers than these from foxnews online:
ABC’s pro-Trump ‘Roseanne’ loses viewers but show is still going strong
By Brian Flood | Fox News
“… ABC’s rebooted “Roseanne” seems to be losing some of its shine, as the comedy took a significant hit in the ratings department on Tuesday night. Still, the pro-Trump comedy appears to be just fine in the grand scheme of things.
“Roseanne” picked up 10.3 million viewers and a 2.5 rating among the key demo of adults age 18-49 – down 23 and 26 percent from its last new episode on April 17, according toThe Hollywood Reporter…. ”
Wait a minute…
How can a reference of someone to “Planet of the Apes” be racist, or insult?
The Apes in “Planet of the Apes” were intelligent
The Humans in “Planet of the Apes were regular everyday American pseudo-intellectuals, like you meet in the mall, on the street, in law offices, in politics, in the United States Presidential Suites and in Congress, and, of course driving police cars and on this blog.
And, I suppose you would have to be a “Planet of the Apes” Ape to notice, the Apes of “Planet of the Apes” recognized the over-average-intelligence humans to be ‘precocious’— And they were not terrified of them for that.
Or is there some kind of psychological fear-or-reason triggering being exhibited here? In the hysteria, I mean…
Evangelista,
I agree with a lot of what you wrote. Planet of the Apes was a great movie (Rod Serling’s Screenplay was great!), but you’re forgetting one thing.
….do you honestly think Roseanne put even a fraction of that thought into her tweet? Or was she even able to, with all the Ambien? Context matters. It’s not ‘hysteria’ if it was said with malicious intent.
I’m assuming you’re not just the average troll and were trying to actually contribute to the discussion.
No, this was already in the alt-right cosmos. Tweeted out and removed, because even the author of it knew how insanely ridiculous it was.
If Roseanne wanted to complement someone, why wouldn’t she call Trump, who she supports, an ape instead? There is no separating the history of that usage from racist tropes. No matter how many ways you attempt to justify the indefensible.
Conclusion: Average Troll. Probably racist average troll.
* compliment
The idiot who first tweeted this nonsense deleted it, in very short order. At least he realized how stupid it was.
https://twitter.com/ChrisStephensMD/status/1001544196136747010
Yeah, Ape is good. Just don’t call her a porch monkey, right Evangelista? Chingate cabron!
:)
about that ambien defense:
this is tweet is too funny.
the damned emptywheel citation maker is refusing to work again, so go enter this tweet series in your browser (borrowed from the 5/30/18 guardian):
Jason O. Gilbert
@gilbertjasono
12h
(Chanting) WE! JUST! TOOK! AMBIEN!
WE! JUST! TOOK! AMBIEN!
WE! JUST! TOOK! AMBIEN!
WE! JUST! TOOK! AMBIEN!
Barr’s tweet led to Ambien quickly becoming a meme on social media. Many people suggested that other heinous acts in history were the result of taking the drug.
Barr did not say whether her decade-long history of racially charged tweets and promotion of conspiracy theories also occurred under the influence of Ambien.
this one’s for you, evangelista, you religous sophist and moral dimwit.!
Scrooge McDuck is President, Mickey Mouse “burms” his own and the muppets ejeculate. Annette Funicello’s tears fall . . like rain.
Like Marx observed “A capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.” The mouse is no exception, he has been on a long strange trip since his rise in the days of the New Deal. His daddy Walt was an anti-labor neo-lib and Lil Mickey hasn’t fallen far from that tree. Puts a fine point on the Mouse pandering to people who have suffered from the collapse of labor and the working class.
We had 8 years of overt racism while Obama was in office, curious that it’s being called out now. Where were all those precious sensibilities from ’09-’16? (Not looking at you bmaz. You’ve weighed in on the subject with regularity over the years.)
Mouse that Roared was wonderful, as was everything Sellers ever did. Been a long time since I’ve seen it, but still have an image of Sellers marching through empty streets in New York.
A lot of people called it out. It was obvious. People were angry a black man was elected. Thus, you have Trump elected by those people.
Yeah, some did, but we were not doing things like cancelling TV series, so it’s not that simple. “Those people” have every reason to be ripped at NeoLibs, both Dem and Repub and to vote a pox (Trump) on both their houses. 40 years of wages for 3/4 of the country no higher than they were in 1978 is reason for despair and revolt. To write the majority of the country off as deplorable racists is itself ignorant and fodder for a wilder swing in ’20, and that’s scarier than even Trump – think a President who believes that dinosaurs and people walked the earth together, Praise the Lord.
“Majority”. You mean like when you lose the popular vote?
Hillary – 2+m vote majority of which 4m were in California. The other 49 states and territories voted for Trump by more than a million votes. That illustrates exactly why our founders apportioned Congress and the Electoral College the way they did, to avoid mob rule by large states.
Median household income is $50+k, and 3/4 of the country gets you not much above that. So yes, it is a “majority” that have been screwed. Elitist neolib Dems need to get a grip and get back to their New Deal worker majority base. It’s tough to assemble enough identity voters to vote against their own economic plight to win elections, as Hillary ineptly demonstrated. People may be poor, but they’re not dumb. ’16 was a trigger warning and there ain’t no safe space in ’20 for blue dog Dems.
The vast majority who voted for Trump were already from some wealth; at least middle class and upper middle class. The “ignored white working class” were grossly exaggerated as the Trump demographic. They are a small percentage of his supporters, and the ones who have moved into a cult mindset ARE driven by racist and hateful rhetoric. The people who were motivated to vote for Trump were largely the typical conservative anti-tax, anti-social programs, anti-regulation, religious right, and so on.
This is not an endorsement for past Dem performance. But FFS, Trump is not a populist in any policy or actions. So if the people in this disregarded working class demographic vote for him again, that is on them, with stupidity. Unless they are driven by the rhetoric of hate, then they ARE detestable.
I hear they’re working on the entry for Trump Derangement Syndrome for the DSM6. Ok if I forward them a link to you as a prime example?
Brilliant retort. /s
When you can’t dispute, attempt to insult.
White middle class educated women of the suburbs helped push Trump to victory. But that’s not a convenient fact for your diatribe.
Nah, just too much foolish crap in your post to be worth dissecting. Most demographics went for Trump or for Hillary by much smaller than expected (by her and Mookie) margins. Her fall off from the Obama vote was fatal (it was almost a half million votes in Michigan alone). A white polling behind a black is hard on your “racists, they’re all deplorable racists” fantasy. Perhaps Hillary ran a less than stellar campaign in a year when the country was fed up with being screwed by neoliberal elites, and Trump promised hope (no matter how falsely).
You’re such a lovely case study. Do I take it that it’s ok to forward you to the DSM6 staff?
Those who benefit most from social safety net (i.e. Trump supporters) are the first ones in line supporting cuts because they perceive minorities benefit more. Fact: 43% whites receive Medicaid and 36% whites receive SNAP (largest % re racial demographics). Tell me that racism doesn’t exist anymore, and I’ll tell you whites don’t bite their nose to spite their spite their face.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/30/white-americas-racial-resentment-is-the-real-impetus-for-welfare-cuts-study-says/?utm_term=.eced4695062e
Um, where did I say they are all deplorable racists? Reading comprehension must be missing; that’s why you don’t want to dissect, I suppose. The people who were racist during Obama’s administration were given carte blanche to express that racism via Trump’s campaign. So those people happily endorsed the direction and voted for him. During Obama’s campaign he never said that supremacists were good people, he didn’t go out of his way to discuss race, he should have done so more often. In fact, he tempered speaking about race at all since that was an area of attack, frequently, which made him a bit cowardly on that end, and too middle-road. But had he gone all in, the right would have cried “race-baiting”, as they do anyway.
I’m finished with you. Obvious false hope is false hope. It was obvious. People who voted for Trump knew what they were getting. And the rich people are very happy with that choice.
Clinton’s campaign sucked, she didn’t travel to places she should have. I’m not a fan of neoliberals, didn’t care for Clinton.
However, there were other factors that brought Trump to office, via multiple levels of manipulation (If you don’t believe that, why do you bother to read here?) If you don’t think that his “base”/the cult is energized by racism, then you are unreachable.
It sounds like you voted for Trump.
Nah, I voted Green. The thought of voting for either Trump or Clinton was too disgusting to contemplate. My worst fear was that one of them was going to win, and it was realized.
Funny series of posts for someone who thinks Obama is a coward and does not care for Clinton. You do such a lovely job of expressing TDS. Congrats or something.
Oh, the “pure of heart”:
What Happened to Jill Stein’s Recount Millions?
Shortly after the 2016 election, Jill Stein raised more than $7 million from shell-shocked liberals eager to pursue a swing-state recount. Nearly two years later, the U.S. Green Party’s last candidate for president is still spending that money….The last FEC filing from the Stein campaign was for the month of September 2017. And the last update from the campaign itself came in a post on April 20, in which it said it was down to $932,178 in recount funds.
“It is strange that they would just stop filing reports given they were a legitimate, professional campaign, and despite still having more than a million dollars in cash on hand,” Andrew Mayersohn, a researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics, told The Daily Beast….But the opacity surrounding the expenditure of money—combined with the fact that a good chunk of the spending has come after all efforts to recount the vote were terminated—has fed criticism that Stein was more interested in boosting her political operations than in recounting votes. It’s also drawn the ire of regulators. In a May 7, 2018 letter, the FEC warned Stein campaign treasurer Steven Welzer that he was violating federal law by not accounting for half a year of spending.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-happened-to-jill-steins-recount-millions
Yeah, and that too. The big disappointment was how the campaign disappeared after the convention. It looked like the Greens were so scared of being Naderized again that they kept a very low profile. Still a better vote than one for either who we got or almost got. The whole subsequent recount fiasco was bizarre. Amazing that it hasn’t been closed out. It’s a fine state of affairs we’ve got here in the 21st century. Think I’ll break out King Crimson and “21st Century Schitzoid Man”.
The problem is Jill Stein is/was also a grifter, not a Nader.
Thank you Trip, I have been trying to tell my “liberal” friends not to obsess about the lumpen proletariat, many former union folks, who understood where their jobs, pensions and children’s future went and who did it. These people were left with nothing but their racism and well earned anger at neo-liberals and middle class “professionals”. And when Trumpty Dumpty came calling with rhetoric that recognized their pain and stoked their bigotry there was no Bernie Sanders to lead them against the Clinton profiteers in the Democratic Party. So the pseudo-populist economic rhetoric and racial scapegoating was more than enough along with the corruption of the electoral process to give us real live fascism. I am convinced that Sanders would have beaten Trumpty by more than Clinton and in every place she did not.
Again using Michigan as an example, Sanders beat Clinton by a lot wider margin there than Trump did. Gives an idea of how wretched the Dem campaign was when a 73 year old gadfly can do that to the anointed candidate and pull 46% of the vote in a rigged primary season. Expect you’re right we’d be looking at President Bernie if the primaries had been honest.
The Dems abandoned working class America almost 50 years ago. Blaming racism denies what happened and displaces blame. People voted for Obama twice, and he helped complete their disillusion. If Dems don’t ditch elite neoliberalism and come home to their roots it’ll happen again, and worse. Can you say “President Pence, Praise the Lord and pass the Armageddon”?
Keep Trump in office. It’ll get much better. The courts are already being stacked. Voting rights will be eliminated so there’s the end of your conundrum. ALL of Pence’s and the religious rights wishes are coming true NOW. Not tomorrow. People’s rights are being shredded at breakneck speed. And for god’s sake, don’t call racists “racists”, it might hurt their feelings, they are so put upon and victimized already.
How profoundly naive.
Wow, another spectacular response.
It is evil out there. I know smart people, 5 sigma smart people if you will, who still voice the thought that Trump will drain the swamp. Don’t know if Upton Sinclair gets the credit, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”, The US got lucky this time in that Trump has been such a criminal and misogynist his whole life. A right wing populist with less baggage would endure longer and do more damage. Mark Twain is quoted “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!”
We can see the media is profit driven to cover for Trump. Those interested in the SCO Mueller activity may be very small. A lot of people think Trump gave them a tax cut. They won’t see the truth until early 2019. Most won’t understand the corporate tax cut until the wheels come off.
Yep. It was an amazing campaign, and it appears that most of the folks who bought in haven’t figured out the con yet… Dems better wake up or they’ll boot another one and we’ll have someone like Pence in ’20. It could be the Mouse that Roared, Indiana edition sequel with nuclear weapons that work.
[EW ‘reply’ function not working, as usual] — [Note to bmaz: have EW’s web-tech check for a time mark line in the ‘reply’ function code; the function appears to time out after a period in which it does work].
Sabrina,
Serling’s purpose in ‘Planet of the Apes’ was to instigate out-of-the-box thinking about “superiority” (aka “Exceptionalism”), as was his predecessor-in-genre Swift. I tend to swing a heavier hammer, so if I had done ‘Planet of the Apes’ I would have run the same all-white human cast, but given them all Uncle Remus accents. Being a smart-ass kind of troll, I would probably have thought about throwing in some half-cast ape-lattés (or whatever they would be called), thinking to rub the message in, but I would have, I am sure, been vetoed, if I had not thought better soon enough to dodge the slap-down. Of course, nowadays the veto-ing would bring a reaction, not having the apes mix with their subordinated culture creatures being, today racism, and “advocacy of racism”… (Swift dodged this bullet by having his superior ‘race’ horses, and ignoring the centaur-trap, which some ancient Greek predecessor in the genre did not do…)
As for Roseann Barr’s thoughts, and abilities to think, first, I am not a big fan of Roseann and never have been; I don’t care for the presentation type. I do recognize, however, that persons who portray characters are not necessarily (or usually), themselves, the type character they portray (or write, in cases of writers). I also recognize that large parts of the public do not recognize the distinction, and expect those they see in a character to be as they see in scenes if they meet them on the street. I think this last is manifested here, in the above threadings of bitchings about Roseann and “her” alleged “racism”. Somewhere, if I recall correctly, in the above tar-brushing of Roseann Barr, she is slammed for anti-semitism, for deprecating Soros and his activities in a tweet, or comment, the slammer failing to recognize that Roseann Barr is Jewish, herself (she once noted Utah to be the only state where a Jew can go and be a gentile — a joke on Mormon usage of ‘gentile’ to reference non-Mormons).
So, is Roseann more racist than she is anti-semitic? If she portrays a racist and anti-semite in character is she so in life? She does not seem to be, not any more than Phillip Roth ‘must have been’ an obsessive masturbator because he wrote ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’?
How would Roseann’s show put across the anti-bigotry points its point is to put across if it did not have a Roseann-bigot character to charge forward in bigotry and bang into a wall each episode?
Then there is something in the entertainment industry called “promotion”. It is a presentation of a character out of situation: The Lone Ranger wears his black-and-silver suit and mask at county fairs, James Arness wore his Marshal Dillon cowboy outfit doing meet-and-greets for charities. Simon Legree… can you imagine Simon Legree bouncing little black kids on his knee like a department store santa? Or Snydly Whiplash tweeting friendly conviviality toward Dudley and Sweet Nell? No, because Promo requires promoting the character in character.
Why would Roseann Barr, who is the character, not tweet in the character, the character’s characteristic tweet promoting the Roseann Barr show?
Of course a nice blow-up when she does is good promo, it gets the name out and conversation going that links to the show. She backs off and on everything goes, with her character more set in type, and, in character of the show, slapped down again. Good PR! Good Promo!
The jaw-dropping idiocy is the executive jackass at ABC who cancels the show. Or is that jackass really a genuine racise, who does not want to have a show in the line-up that portrays bigotry hitting walls and taking a bounce?
And that jackass is black?!! Talk about putting a stereotype up in lights!
And then there is the fact that, in film and TV, it ain’t just the star villain gets kicked into the street when an executive imbecile-idiot gets moved by the winds of hysterics hyperventilating, it is the whole cast and crew of the show. And, in the Roseann Barr Show case, the anti-bigotry message, which is that, whether or not any one, or dozen blogger or jerk-circle of hyperventilators, think it not perfect for them.
As for Ambien, it is not Ambien, it is that Ambien is connected to sleep-activity, people doing things while asleep. Minds are active in sleep, it is why there are such things as dreams. It isn’t the Ambien that does whatever it is was done, the Ambien only promotes sleep so well the actor sleeps on. Good publicity, good promo. Suddenly everyone knows Ambien. Roseann should demand a promo fee.
WTF???!!!
Evangelista, like I respectfully said before – Chingate cabron! I’m dun wit u.
evangelista @8:16pm
your sorry, slick, pseudo-literary attemp to justify your morally bankrupt planet of the apes comment supporting roseanne barr’s tweet as satire is sophistical in the extreme. you cannot get away with the typical rightwing/altright excuse for mean, hurtful, hateful language – “oh, it was just satire” – that is alex jones’ line.
jonathan swift would eat a religious hypocrite like you for lunch. i read that he wrote a tale of a tub to deal with that subject.
personally, you bring to mind another swift writing:
The Lady’s Writing and Sophistry Room
Jonathan Swift…
Five Hours, (and who can do it less in?)
By dishonest Evangelista spent in writing;
The Goddess from her Chamber issues,
Array’d in Lace, Brocades and Tissues.
Reader, who found the Room was void, [5]
And Betty otherwise employ’d;
Stole in, and took a strict Survey,
Of all the Litter as it lay;
Whereof, to make the Matter clear,
An Inventory follows here. [10]
And first a dirty Smock appear’d,
Beneath the Arm-pits well besmear’d.
Reader, the Rogue, display’d it wide,
And turn’d it round on every Side.
On such a Point few Words are best, [15]
And Reader bids us guess the rest;
But swears how damnably the Men lie,
In calling evangelista sweet and cleanly.
.
.
For which you curse the careless Wench;
So Things, which must not be exprest,
When plumpt into the reeking Chest; [110]
Send up an excremental Smell
To taint the Parts from whence they fell.
The Pettycoats and Gown perfume,
Which waft a Stink round every Room.
Thus finishing his grand Survey, [115]
Disgusted Reader stole away
Repeating in his reading Fits,
Oh! Evangelista Evangelista, Evangelista writes shit!
Otherwise titled:
“Ode To A Cruel Sophist”
i neglected to refer to swift, an irishman, by the professional and honary title by which is often referred – Dean Swift, the dean of st. patrick’s cathedral, dublin.
when he wrote of religous hypocrisy it’s fair to assume he knew whereof he wrote.
I agree that “they were more concerned about selling shit and getting eyeballs than they were about morality and truth.” But that occurs for me as dog-bites-man. They are in the business of selling audiences to advertisers.
If ABC discovered that increasing the amount of morality and truth in their content attracted more viewer-seconds of attention, no doubt there would be more. Otherwise, it’s not reasonable to expect it.
I don’t see firing Barr as a step toward better days of more morality and truth. It was just a simple cost v benefit decision. “If Disney Chairman Bob Iger spent more than 10 minutes pondering what to do, he was wasting his time. No decision could have been easier.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-roseanne-disney-20180530-story.html