San Francisco’s annual Great Dickens Christmas Fair for people who like dressing up in Victorian costumes as characters from A Christmas Carol was founded a half century ago by the Patterson family who’d earlier launched the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in the San Fernando Valley. (I’d guess that Burning Man is a spinoff of the same urge among those looking for a hipper alternative.) It has 1,400 volunteers.
But this being 2021, several black ladies who enjoying dressing up like Queen Victoria or Scarlett O’Hara are having a meltdown which Must Be Taken Seriously. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Erin Feher December 4, 2021Updated: December 10, 2021, 10:04 am
For her first Great Dickens Christmas Fair in 2015, LaToya Tooles fashioned a gown out of dollar-store hula hoops and a tablecloth. A friend had invited her to the annual event, a festive re-creation of 19th century London inspired by the works of Charles Dickens that has been running in San Francisco for nearly 40 years.
Almost as soon as she arrived at the antique winter wonderland, she joined the revelers on Fezziwig’s dance floor and didn’t stop waltzing for hours.
“I met some of my greatest friends at the Dickens Fair,” says Tooles, who went on to join the event’s volunteer cast, taking on bigger roles and more responsibility each year.
Her history with the tight-knit fair community is what makes the past two years so heartbreaking for Tooles, who is one of a small number of Black cast members at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. What started as a goodwill effort to help rectify what is seen as the event’s failure to protect its volunteers and guests from racist and sexist behavior has turned ugly. Now, more than 200 cast members and thousands of guests have pledged to boycott this year’s fair, which is set to return to the Cow Palace on Saturday, Dec. 4, in a scaled-down, drive-through experience for the next three weekends.
“I want people to recognize what their values are and decide if the Dickens Fair aligns with them,” says Tooles, founder of an affinity group for the fair’s Black performers called Londoners of the African Diaspora, or LoAD.
Organizers of the boycott, a group of Dickens Fair cast and crew dubbed the London Solidarity Network, won’t support a return to the fair until a list of safety requirements is met.
Blacks have been shooting blacks in huge numbers since the Racial Reckoning Riots began in May 2020, but the real problem is black safety at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair.
… But now, after months in which nearly every corner of public and corporate life has faced a racial reckoning, this year the fair is facing its own opposition.
While less has been said about equity issues in hobby and play spaces, the fight against discrimination in those spaces can be more complex. Americans dedicate an average of five hours a day to leisure and sports activities, but these arenas often lack formal organizational structures for initiating or carrying out substantive change.
I.e., hobbyists often don’t employ HR and DIE staffers.
For Black people, the harm can be multiplied when they find themselves facing discrimination in spaces where they are going for rest and relaxation — especially when their hobby involves pretending to exist centuries ago, in places where equality and safety for marginalized people were even further out of reach.
“Every member of LoAD has been called a slave,” says Anastasia Elizondo, an Afro-Chicana actor and comedian from Oakland who has been performing at the Dickens Fair for nearly 20 years. She adds that fairgoers’ limited knowledge of Black history can lead to offensive generalizations and assumptions. “One of us has been called Aunt Jemima, another Sally Hemings.”
Angel Dotts, who is biracial and calls herself a Dickens “Fair brat,” started attending with her parents when she was a toddler. She says she’s used to being one of the few brown faces at the fair, but when her husband, a Black man, started attending, she began to understand what the situation was like for attendees of color. Despite having a cast member pass, she says he was stopped at every security gate — not just by hired security officers, but also by fellow fair participants, and looked at with suspicion by vendors.
“His experiences started to make me recognize that this was not a safe space,” Dotts says.
Looks can kill.
It’s striking that behaviors that actually can make spaces safer, such as checking passes and eyeballing males who look out of place, are now considered proof positive that the space is unsafe for The Only People Who Matter.
According to others in the world of historical costuming and re-enactments, what’s playing out in the Bay Area is not an anomaly.
“Dickens is one great example of what’s been going on in these places for a while,” says Bianca Hernandez-Knight, a lifetime member of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
Hernandez-Knight recently resigned from all her roles on the society’s national board after months of a back-and-forth with the group’s leadership over a proposed (and ultimately rejected) diversity statement.
“This all relates to a bigger conversation around how people view history,” she said. “The issues we are facing in historical costuming spaces and the backlash to critical race theory — I genuinely think those things are very similar. There are people who just really need their history to be as whitewashed and as comfortable for them as possible.”
… For Ari Yovel, who is autistic and transgender, the current conflict LoAD members are facing parallels [to] their own struggle to advocate for marginalized communities within the fair. For years, Yovel advocated as a representative of the Order of the Golden Needle, a neurodivergent advocacy group, for a de-stimulation space within the fair, or “de-stim” room. “Each time, I was met with the sentiment that even though they took my requests very seriously, they just couldn’t possibly do anything about them. All the while, I was being paraded out as a poster child for how progressive and cooperative RBP (Red Barn Productions) were,” says Yovel, who is boycotting this year’s fair and is unsure if they will ever return.
In June 2020, when Red Barn Productions released an emphatic statement of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, LoAD saw an opportunity to ensure the company’s actions aligned with its words.
At Red Barn’s request, LoAD members spent weeks researching and crafting a meticulous 53-point plan that addressed developing a standardized method for reporting harassment and discrimination, ensuring increased representation of Black, Indigenous and people of color at the fair, conducting mandatory antidiscrimination training and hiring HR and diversity and inclusion professionals. It also asked that Red Barn discontinue a tradition of portraiture casting, a practice that casts only people with an aesthetic resemblance to a historic character.
Why shouldn’t black ladies be cast as, say, Florence Nightingale, Prime Minister Disraeli or Charles Darwin just because it would be confusing to the audience? But, of course, Frederick Douglass must never be played by a non-black.
But after LoAD submitted the initiative in August of last year, Tooles and others said, Red Barn continually refused to engage with the document or complete the requested review steps. What LoAD felt were requests for simple acts of solidarity — such as making a public statement to condemn a racist post by a longtime fair vendor — were met with resistance. …
… For LoAD member Leandra Darden, however, the moment brought a revelation.
“The community proved to me that it was unwilling to protect itself, not just me,” she said. “I really believe that if white women don’t demand things, Black women cannot get them.”
At the scheduled May 6 meeting, [LoAD] issued a statement of no confidence in Red Barn Productions to manage the Dickens Fair. It also demanded the formation of a supervisory board and the hiring of a qualified HR consultant and a diversity and inclusion professional. The group set a deadline of May 14 for Red Barn to agree to those terms or face public exposure and a possible boycott.
“Our trust had been broken too many times,” says Tooles.
In the months since, Red Barn has made a human resources hire, launched a “Red Flag Reporting System” for people to anonymously report any improper activity, and engaged a diversity and inclusion firm, Hummingbird Humanity. It has a new single-page DEI Commitment statement that “encourages” BIPOC representation rather than requiring it, and is asking that all Dickens cast, crew and vendors sign it and pledge to be better.
Red Barn says its full statement on diversity and inclusion should be finished early next year. …
Red Barn, however, has declined to create a supervisory board, something LoAD members see as non-negotiable.
“We’re a privately held company, not a nonprofit organization, we’re not going to be governed by a board,” says Patterson. …
The contentious negotiations with the fair’s administration has soured many former devotees on an event that once seemed magical.
“I love making old dresses. I love dancing. But I do not love them more than the safety and well-being of myself and others who are marginalized,” says Tooles.
More than 200 former participants, including members of LoAD and other affinity groups, will be boycotting the event with Tooles. In solidarity, several of its traditional performing groups — including Jeremy’s Escort Service, Fezziwigs, the Royals and the Fairies — have declared that they will not participate. More than 3,000 cast and crew members, vendors and guests have also committed to boycott. …
“But that’s our history, though, isn’t it, as Black people in America? People love to say, ‘Look at these amazing Black women. Look what they’ve done’ — until it no longer benefits them. Then they’re gonna push us to the front and let us take the bullets.”
About this story
This story was produced in partnership with Represent Collaborative, a San Francisco media initiative focused on issues of racial and social justice that works to produce stories about Black and brown communities. Learn more at www.representcollaborative.com.Erin Feher
Erin Feher is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist and the co-founder of Represent Collaborative. Instagram: @representcollaborative
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Yovel is a special snowflake and deserves his own room.
I have an idea a de-stimulation space – stay home and don’t go to a noisy crowded fair. There were no de-stimulation places in Victorian England (unless maybe you count gaols).
Untrue. Don’t forget the (with)drawing room for the ladies, as well as the fainting couch.
We need an updated list of all businesses and events non-whites are boycotting….so we can, uh, also not go to them.
I say make it BIPOX; A pox on both their houses.
Earlier I watched a few minutes of Inside Edition for the first time in a while.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg’s ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie’s dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. “Covid kept the audience away!”
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it’s called) doesn’t have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: “Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead.”
Accused sex pest in a leading role, sections in Spanish with NO English subtitles, a producer hollering "latinx" every other word, unaware most real Latinos find it insulting... Hey, what could go wrong?
Get woke go broke started before covid emptied most of the screens, but they keep at it. Death wish for real or do they have a funding secret we don't know about?Replies: @tyrone
Maybe people noticed who's naughty and who's nice.
Thanks for clarifying that Urgent meant what I suspected, Stan.
Okay so it was started not by popular acclaim for Dickens but by the whim of some rich person, so IF YOU THINK THAT I’M THAT KIND OF GIR-IRL so really there is a consistency now that all rich people think about is erasing THIS IS NOT A SONG FOR YOU. History.
——
OT Detroit mainstream rightwing news/politics radio down for days, down in the car, down on vintage Sony products, must be the weather, down also on radio over data, down on their own site stream, down on their own app. But when you lob on you do successfully hear Gretchin Whitmer’s child actors admonishing you to get vaccinated. And then silence. And on Sunday the Town Hall Review was a re-re-run of the overcelebratory episode where MacAuliffe handed Youngkin a victory. Here I am listening to a London, England radio station dedicated to modern soul with perfect clarity, and a station less than fifty miles away is inaudible by any means and there is no explanation on their site. YEAH YEAH YEAH.
I once was dragged along to the Dickens Fair. Yet another left-wing subculture, but then I was never into Halloween, either.
Do you have to have a vaccine certification to enter the Dickens Christmas Fair this year?
Is there going to ever again be a big Burning Man at Blackrock on Labor Day?
It will be one giant size Roman Candle burning to symbolize the suffering of all those African Americans whose syphilis went untreated by Whitey.
Here is the Google Doc with their 53 demands. Obviously they are impossible to meet and designed to be ‘rejected’ so they could start some drama and a fight. It’s worth reading. While the media and blueticks have ruined the phrase ‘playbook’ this is a clear example, this is now a cookie-cutter form of activism with a specific nature.
Did any of the articles deign to explain the insane and excessive demands or the fact that the targets did actually try to accede to their demands as best they could? No, of course not.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dbLDqYUopei4kvTPc5hm7Mk4r31VLhe-/view
And the one that simplifies things most. I also like how most of their ‘citations’ are just hectoring articles in the Atlantic and such.
Establish a clear policy that allows for non-traditional casting in regard to race, gender, and ability for ALL ROLES.
○ This includes titular characters such as Mr. Scrooge, Little Dorrit, Father Christmas, and historical figures such as Charles Dickens, royal children, Queen Victoria, etc.
○ This policy would be clear that historical BIPOC characters WILL NOT be played by anyone other than a person of their original ethnicity.
○ Please see further reading on color-conscious casting:
■ There’s No Business Like Show Business: Abandoning Color-Blind Casting and
Embracing Color-Conscious Casting in American Theatre | The Journal of Sports and
Entertainment Law
■ Colour conscious casting should be prioritized | The Broad
■ Stop Blaming History for Your All-White, All-Male Movie | The New York Times
And somewhere in America, a young White boy, wearing a football uniform, walks into a D-1 college locker room and declares…”I’m goimg to be a cornerback.” Fantasy role playing should probably end in your teens. The story is a black thing, join an established majority White organization and demand changes to suit you.
What the essay describes is what happens in San Francisco, and does not surprise me. But meanwhile, the rural, Red-State chunks of the country continue to have their “frontier days” etc. – – unmolested. At least I THINK they are unmolested by racial-reckoning trouble-makers who want to ruin it for everyone. Do the racial-reckoning troublemakers dare to try to ruin it? If so, when they do, are they told to take a hike? How does it work in “Frontier days!” places?
Think about your little red town in Nebraska or Utah or Tennessee. Chances there are a few Ph.D.'s who have NPR pre-tuned in every channel in their cars, and even more Karens who see nothing redeeming in John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies. You're solidly red--that's six or seven out of ten people! But walk through most major urban cities in this country and you'd be hard pressed to find a sane centrist Democrat, let alone a milquetoast Republican. It won't be long before the Californias of the world use their influence to force the 60% in rural reddish places to completely knuckle under.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @magilla, @Beach Jim
JULY 29 - AUGUST 1
The Annual Loyalsock Valley Antique Machinery Show is a yearly event enjoyed by all. There will be tractor pulls, garden tractors, lumberjack events, live music, and more.https://www.lvamassoc.org/Every year the cable companies show the PA Farm Show on their PA News Channel. One popular event is tractor square dancing with its male and "lady" (complete with old fashioned dresses and sun bonnets) drivers. I do not know what is more amazing: that they can still find "ladies" or that nobody has gotten the "ladies" drummed out of their seats.https://youtu.be/RmvhCpEKAjY
Yet here we are: The Racism Drama Unraveling the Knitting World.
So if you're out there in Frontier Country growing wool and spinning/knitting your own clothing, then consider yourself on notice from the blacks who hate but want your White America.
In an organic society that could continue--this here, that there.
But under minoritarianism, it's minority interest uber alles. And the super-state's primary job--screw protection from invasion or rule-of-law--is to be out there busybodying every human-interaction to harass normal white people for minority "benefit". Anything that remains whitebreadish will eventually be ferreted out and subject to abuse.
I wonder how safe a blue eyed blonde woman would feel at a Kwanzaa festival wearing this?
https://images.app.goo.gl/PYhZE2R26WLXyKSb7
All this discrimination must’ve hurt like the Dickens.
Holy shit. I care so little about white LARP’ers, how little do I care about bl…
Shorter Black response to lack of DIE in Renaissance faires:
Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me ………
After all, nothing that starts in California ever gets to anywhere else.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-lives-matter-s-betrayal-of-black-life-opinion/ar-AARLQv5?ocid=msedgntp
"Jussie Smollett's conviction last week for inventing a hate crime should have led to some soul-searching among the many who quickly accepted his hoax, not only as true but as evidence of the persistence and pervasiveness of white supremacy in America. It should have—but didn't."Replies: @Captain Tripps
1 -- Grant them secession (cf the constitutional scholarship of Barack Obama and John Roberts, in which one-time violations are okay as long as you audibly shout the word "mulligan").
2 -- Discover that they are oppressing a local minority, developing weapons of mass destruction, and threatening democracy.
3 -- Invade and occupy.
4 -- Retain California as a possession and -- and this one is critical -- never again allow statehood.
Spoon clink.
This, as well as Hamilton, Bridgerton, & the new Anne Boleyn TV series, proves that POC, especially black POC, consider white culture far more interesting than their own. Ergo, they engage in cultural appropriation, with a possible end goal of rewriting white history in their own image.
I would say these diversity officers are a Trojan horse who exist solely to extort the company that hires them, but at the same time if you don’t hire them your company comes under risks of civil rights lawsuits anyways. Richard Hanania wrote a good article about how these “officers” (reminds me of commissars, not a middle manager type) are hired to cover the asses of companies in any sort of civil rights litigation, because that’s all civil rights is. My recommendation would be to not bother with them, but then you get federal lawyers banging down your door. It pretty much acts as an incentive to not expand your company and stay small with tiny margins, because a prosperous business is a ripe target for the Commissariat
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
anyone not seen the Christian Walker videos?
Tweets by ChristianWVids
He has the stuff to be a conservative rock star.
We're not even allowed to advocate for our own self interest without being labeled supremacists and domestic terrorists. We have to use someone from the favored races as a proxy just to plead for our continued existence.
Erin FeHER:
When have rural Red state areas ever been insulated from this? The diversity monster has the full backing of the federal government and every capitalist institution. If you think they’re safe from this, let me know how Branch Davidian is faring
This is San Francisco. Does anyone believe that?
At least, we cisnormative, heterosexual white males can claim that it wasn’t mainly us!
After all, this is San Francisco!
Anyone want to guess the orientation of most of the males who get their kicks out of dressing up in Victorian costumes in San Francisco?
(I love the Bay Area: at least I used to before they allowed people to relieve themselves on the sidewalks. But still…)
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hey-hey-hey-this-is-library
I am in a fairly red area and have lived briefly in redder areas and there are Dickens festivals here around Christmas too. Have never heard of Frontier Days, though we have Renaissance Fairs and a Civil War battle re-enactment day.
I haven’t heard of any incidents/complaints about them yet but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. The civil war reenactment day is way less popular and deliberately scaled down compared to the 90s and 2000s.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Screen-Shot-2021-12-13-at-4.08.14-PM.pngReplies: @CCZ
https://i.ibb.co/gTWt9nm/FGf-BVl-HXMAEBfhg.jpg
The alternative can be worse. Consider this rather pathetic grovel ‘n cringe from one of my favorite recipe sites, the perfectly innoffensive Elise Brauer’s ‘Simply Recipes.’ She has the misfortune of being based in California…
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/our-anti-racism-pledge-5186469
It sounds like they were bought out recently by a larger organization, Dotdash, and along with Dotdash's millions came a Diversity Commissar whose job it is to impose the Diversity Gleichschaltung over all the subsidiary companies. Dotdash is in turn owned by IAC, an even bigger media conglomerate.
https://www.iac.com/brands
You may think that you are dealing with some nice white lady who set up a website to share recipes but in fact you are dealing with a media conglomerate.
Nothing may escape the Diversity Gleichschaltung . Google best cookbooks 2021 and see what you get. It's almost as bad as googling American inventors. They like to rotate the portraits but as of now, Edison and Bell are #1 and #2 and then after that the next 5 are black including Madam C.J. Walker the inventor of hair straightener which certainly ranks up there with the light bulb and the telephone (at least if you are a black woman).Replies: @Colin Wright
Coalition of the Fringes
Whinge
Cringe
Jeremy’s Escort Service?
Or is it Ron Jeremy’s Escort Service?
Robert Cherry is one brave White man. We need more of this.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-lives-matter-s-betrayal-of-black-life-opinion/ar-AARLQv5?ocid=msedgntp
“Jussie Smollett’s conviction last week for inventing a hate crime should have led to some soul-searching among the many who quickly accepted his hoax, not only as true but as evidence of the persistence and pervasiveness of white supremacy in America. It should have—but didn’t.”
https://i.cbc.ca/1.5354836.1573393385!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/cherry.jpg
Don Cherry is about the whiteiest White Man I've ever seen. He makes Burl Ives look like a native of Papua New Guinea. Of course, he is Canadian, which is farther north. They get the low angle sunshine there.
He seems to have run afoul of the cult; they are looking to cancel him over some remark they deemed highly offensive.
https://www.inquirer.com/flyers/don-cherry-sportsnet-cbc-fired-racism-immigrants-nhl-ron-maclean-20191112.html
Remember Waukesha. OK, it’s near Milwaukee however Milwaukee’s suburbs are not nearly as liberal as Ney York’s, Chicago’s, etc.
Pretty soon they’ll be limited to Union musters, parades, training exercises, etc.
NBC, during the hours-long run-up to the annual Kentucky Derby, cannot show enough black men in attendance in the genteel southern garb. I do not recall if the lyrics in the traditional pre-race performance of “My Old Kentucky Home” (… “darkies are gay” …) are edited.
“I long to hear them darkies play those old melodies
Swanee River, and Old Black Joe….”
And, while you can still find Take Me Back to Tulsa”, modern versions exclude the line
“little bee sucks the blossom, big bee gets the honey
Darkie raise the cotton, white man get the money…”
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/our-anti-racism-pledge-5186469Replies: @usNthem, @Jack D, @LP5
Well, they better ramp up jogger recipes involving chitlins, black-eyed peas, watermelon and fried chicken…
I have an idea a de-stimulation space - stay home and don't go to a noisy crowded fair. There were no de-stimulation places in Victorian England (unless maybe you count gaols).Replies: @Ghost of Bull Moose, @Catdog, @James J. O'Meara, @Pheasant
“They” should just go and sit in a port-a-potty when it all gets to be too much.
…and Jewish
For years, Yovel advocated as a representative of the Order of the Golden Needle, a neurodivergent advocacy group, for a de-stimulation space within the fair, or “de-stim” room. “Each time, I was met with the sentiment that even though they took my requests very seriously, they just couldn’t possibly do anything about them. All the while, I was being paraded out as a poster child for how progressive and cooperative RBP (Red Barn Productions) were,” says Yovel, who is boycotting this year’s fair and is unsure if they will ever return.
Basically a hyper-aggressive attentive whore who added two layers of infallibility to theyself as a part of their inflated personal strategy for world-domination. Credit where credit is due, though: lamenting about "being paraded out as a poster child" --now that's what I call chutzpah!Replies: @fish
You sure that’s not The Beast?
This is a LoAD of 💩. In a 🌍 of 💩.
And by ‘people love to say,’ you mean other black women love to say. Everyone else is forced to say it.
By the way, what have they done? Madam CJ Walker’s amazing accomplishments getting that unruly wool to behave notwithstanding.
One of the reasons that “Gone With the Wind” has so far survived complete cancellation is because it is wildly popular with black Southern women. They identify STRONGLY with Scarlett O’Hara, who they see as a Strong Black Woman who happens to be white. And of course they see Rhett Butler as a Strong Black Man who also happens to be white; he even does the black man thing by walking out at the end.
I am not kidding. I grew up in the South and it’s a whole thing. There are black women who dress up as Plantation belles and everything.
To the wild cheers of the mostly black-female studio audience.
For some reason, while black women seem to love acting like "strong independent, I don't need no man", they flock to stories where a pig-headed woman ruins her chances with a perfect man, who walks out on her and stomps all over her heart.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
Personally I prefer Mammie.
I still wonder if the video wanted to show a fake "Wonderland" or if there is something more in it.
But now, after months in which nearly every corner of public and corporate life has faced a racial reckoning.
Can’t some anonymous unwoke wit come up with a catchy substitute to use in place of that nauseating loaded lie of a phrase? The Racial Weaponing? The Racial Armageddoning? The Racial Shakedowning?
Run a contest at 8-Chain or something.
Steve pointed out that “conservative” organizations–such as the U.S. Marines–perhaps record 55 or 60% donations to Republicans, whereas “liberal” organizations like Google tilt something like 99% the other way. Indeed the tech industries suffer from a solid core of rabid lefties who threaten to derail attempts to turn a profit in the name of diversity insanity.
Think about your little red town in Nebraska or Utah or Tennessee. Chances there are a few Ph.D.’s who have NPR pre-tuned in every channel in their cars, and even more Karens who see nothing redeeming in John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies. You’re solidly red–that’s six or seven out of ten people! But walk through most major urban cities in this country and you’d be hard pressed to find a sane centrist Democrat, let alone a milquetoast Republican. It won’t be long before the Californias of the world use their influence to force the 60% in rural reddish places to completely knuckle under.
The elite exist only because those who do the hard, grinding, dirty work in this country put up with it.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
I wonder if West Side Story lyricist Steven Sondheim died a couple weeks back because Spielberg let him attend a preview of the movie.
The whole thing is rotten from the core and reveals again the depths of racist depravity in the English language — and in the minds of the fairer speakers of that suspect language.
Fair (festive gathering) = Fair (just, equitable) = Fair (light in complexion)
And “fair brat”! Has history seen a more underhanded, demeaning, and contemptuous mocking microagression against a person of color?
The author of that article should be flogged and imprisoned for that slyly mocking insult alone.
Erin Feher into the stockades! Now!
Yeah, and how fucking autistic are they, really?
For years, Yovel advocated as a representative of the Order of the Golden Needle, a neurodivergent advocacy group, for a de-stimulation space within the fair, or “de-stim” room. “Each time, I was met with the sentiment that even though they took my requests very seriously, they just couldn’t possibly do anything about them. All the while, I was being paraded out as a poster child for how progressive and cooperative RBP (Red Barn Productions) were,” says Yovel, who is boycotting this year’s fair and is unsure if they will ever return.
Basically a hyper-aggressive attentive whore who added two layers of infallibility to theyself as a part of their inflated personal strategy for world-domination. Credit where credit is due, though: lamenting about “being paraded out as a poster child” –now that’s what I call chutzpah!
........FOR THE WIN!
That’s a great Twitter site, thanks for linking. It’s the black Titania McGrath.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/our-anti-racism-pledge-5186469Replies: @usNthem, @Jack D, @LP5
I guess it’s not Simply Recipes anymore. It’s Recipes with a Side Order of Not-So-Simple Anti-Racism mandates.
It sounds like they were bought out recently by a larger organization, Dotdash, and along with Dotdash’s millions came a Diversity Commissar whose job it is to impose the Diversity Gleichschaltung over all the subsidiary companies. Dotdash is in turn owned by IAC, an even bigger media conglomerate.
https://www.iac.com/brands
You may think that you are dealing with some nice white lady who set up a website to share recipes but in fact you are dealing with a media conglomerate.
Nothing may escape the Diversity Gleichschaltung . Google best cookbooks 2021 and see what you get. It’s almost as bad as googling American inventors. They like to rotate the portraits but as of now, Edison and Bell are #1 and #2 and then after that the next 5 are black including Madam C.J. Walker the inventor of hair straightener which certainly ranks up there with the light bulb and the telephone (at least if you are a black woman).
That really is apt. The only thing is that it's all worse, in a sense.
Nazism, Communism, Anarchism, Catholicism...whatever. Literally every 'ism' to come down the pike before now has had a more or less coherent ideology -- a game plan, however ultimately unpleasant or unworkable.
These lunatics don't. It's a 'coalition' of mutually exclusive causes and of groups that hate each other. It all can't go anywhere. It's just a road to chaos.
...and ultimately, the rest of us are going to have to put them down and then try to pick up the pieces. And I fear we won't do a very good job of it. We'll come out of our version of the Third Century Crisis alright -- but as with our predecessors, what emerges won't be as nice as what preceded it.Replies: @Jack D, @The Wild Geese Howard
The affinity group for the fair’s Black performers called Londoners of the African Diaspora, or LoAD, has an offshoot comprised of body positive transsexuals who complain they have repeatedly been the victims of literal violence.
Among the demands of that group, Frequently Attacked Transexual Londoners of the African Diaspora, is that people use their acronym without giggling.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
That • Thanks is especially for the “I turned the TV off…” part, Stan. I hope you will KEEP it off.
Today I spent most of the day at the hospital. (My mother is sick. I won’t go into details. It’s not terminal and it’s not COVID.)
In-between my usual Monday Zoom meetings, I sat and watched TV with her. We switched back and forth between the tornado coverage on the Weather Channel and the news on 7. I avoid national news like the plague, but 7 is all-local. Except for Inside Edition.
During the noon news, 7 broadcast a live police chase on I-95. It ended with the perp - a black female(!) - being taken into custody without incident.
I remember watching a chase years ago - probably when I was in high school - that ended with the muscular shirtless black perp jumping out of the car and running into someone’s back yard. He jumped a fence or two and gave the cops a literal run for their money.
A big white cop finally caught up with him, wrestled him to the ground, and kicked him in the head multiple times while the news anchor muttered, “This is not good.” Finally he was subdued. He wasn’t grievously injured, because they were able to cuff him, haul him onto his feet, and march him over to the patrol car.
Nothing came of it. I never heard about the incident ever again.
Today such an occurrence would spark a major national crisis.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @magilla
I do watch stuff on YouTube. Yesterday, I rewatched the 1979 series, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". It was excellent. Literate, well acted by a cast of white men, with white women in supporting roles and a blessed absence of the usual defects. I started rewatching "The Lady of Shanghai" tonight. A couple of blacks as servants and lots of Chinese for local color. White-bread Wisconsinite Welles liked that sort of vibrance, which is alright. It has its place.Replies: @anon, @Paul Jolliffe, @Tony massey
Beauty Is The Beast
At least, we cisnormative, heterosexual white males can claim that it wasn't mainly us!
After all, this is San Francisco!
Anyone want to guess the orientation of most of the males who get their kicks out of dressing up in Victorian costumes in San Francisco?
(I love the Bay Area: at least I used to before they allowed people to relieve themselves on the sidewalks. But still...)Replies: @Wilkey, @LP5
Yes. Leftists are usually the worst when it comes to violating the norms they impose on everyone else. They think their status as a leftist gives them a pass.
Whoa, wait a minute. How’d she do that? Maybe he thought she asked him to go to Charles’ Chicken with her.
And “LoAD” – what’s that, “Luck off and die”?
Finally, anyone with a hyphenated last name who talks about “space” without meaning storage units or outside earth’s atmosphere is someone that I don’t need to hear anything more from.
It turns out they became even worse snowflakes than their feminazi parents.Replies: @LP5
How come POC doing Dickens this is not cultural appropiation?
Ethics of the Fathers 5:10 "[One who says:] “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine” is a wicked person.
And "LoAD" - what's that, "Luck off and die"?
Finally, anyone with a hyphenated last name who talks about "space" without meaning storage units or outside earth's atmosphere is someone that I don't need to hear anything more from.Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Jim Don Bob
We all wondered back in the 90s what the kids with then-new hyphenated last names would do when they got older and it became awkward to use.
It turns out they became even worse snowflakes than their feminazi parents.
Alternatively, there could be some old-timey Spanish approach with many names strung out and each separated by 'y'. Is that safe to suggest, with fewer appropriation Pokémon demerits, than that other Continental example using 'und'? Of course, Anglophile examples with hyphens are excluded.
Would you rather follow along with Ortega y Gasset or von Thurn und Taxis? Don't mention anyone named with a variation of Xyz-Jones.Replies: @HammerJack
I do not know about the rest of the country. I can share a bit of what goes on some places in PA Pennsylvania.
I haven’t heard about of any protests or list of demands in connection with any of the rural summer fairs and activities in the boonies of northeastern and central PA. I do not know how aware and/or interest minority newcomers have in these things, which are often connected with agriculture.
Here’s one annual event that doesn’t have any conroversy surrounding it:
Loyalsock Valley Antique Machinery Show
JULY 29 – AUGUST 1
The Annual Loyalsock Valley Antique Machinery Show is a yearly event enjoyed by all. There will be tractor pulls, garden tractors, lumberjack events, live music, and more.
https://www.lvamassoc.org/
Every year the cable companies show the PA Farm Show on their PA News Channel. One popular event is tractor square dancing with its male and “lady” (complete with old fashioned dresses and sun bonnets) drivers. I do not know what is more amazing: that they can still find “ladies” or that nobody has gotten the “ladies” drummed out of their seats.
Yes, when my dad was in the hospital, we were watching “Gone With the Wind” and the black nurse told us it was her favorite movie.
"A new form of McCarthyism is taking cancerous root...." [opposition to teaching critical race theory in public schools] "If you want to see a despicable manifestation of... [racism], just read the book and watch the 1930s movie, “Gone with the Wind.” This contemptible vile production was an apologia for the racial oppression of the Antebellum and Postbellum South in the same fashion that the films of Leni Riefenstahl, particularly “Triumph of the Will,” served as propaganda for the Nazis during the same time period."
"The teaching of Critical Race Theory in our public schools is an essential antidote to the racial poison...."
Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
https://www.nj.com/opinion/2021/11/a-new-form-of-mccarthyism-is-taking-cancerous-root-in-the-new-jersey-body-politic-opinion.html
The 90s black Fox sitcom Living Single had a similar male -female dynamic to Gone With the Wind, where an entitled black woman (Max) kept being too headstrong for the handsome black lead (Kyle)who loved her. I believe he ended up walking out on her.
To the wild cheers of the mostly black-female studio audience.
For some reason, while black women seem to love acting like “strong independent, I don’t need no man”, they flock to stories where a pig-headed woman ruins her chances with a perfect man, who walks out on her and stomps all over her heart.
It would be a good idea.
Today I spent most of the day at the hospital. (My mother is sick. I won’t go into details. It’s not terminal and it’s not COVID.)
In-between my usual Monday Zoom meetings, I sat and watched TV with her. We switched back and forth between the tornado coverage on the Weather Channel and the news on 7. I avoid national news like the plague, but 7 is all-local. Except for Inside Edition.
During the noon news, 7 broadcast a live police chase on I-95. It ended with the perp – a black female(!) – being taken into custody without incident.
I remember watching a chase years ago – probably when I was in high school – that ended with the muscular shirtless black perp jumping out of the car and running into someone’s back yard. He jumped a fence or two and gave the cops a literal run for their money.
A big white cop finally caught up with him, wrestled him to the ground, and kicked him in the head multiple times while the news anchor muttered, “This is not good.” Finally he was subdued. He wasn’t grievously injured, because they were able to cuff him, haul him onto his feet, and march him over to the patrol car.
Nothing came of it. I never heard about the incident ever again.
Today such an occurrence would spark a major national crisis.
Oh, it’s a LOAD all right.
Where’s Mr. Rodgers when we need him?
Can you say cultural appropriation, boys and girls?
Sure, you can.
Think about your little red town in Nebraska or Utah or Tennessee. Chances there are a few Ph.D.'s who have NPR pre-tuned in every channel in their cars, and even more Karens who see nothing redeeming in John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies. You're solidly red--that's six or seven out of ten people! But walk through most major urban cities in this country and you'd be hard pressed to find a sane centrist Democrat, let alone a milquetoast Republican. It won't be long before the Californias of the world use their influence to force the 60% in rural reddish places to completely knuckle under.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @magilla, @Beach Jim
Until people in red-state America start treating them the way that the Californians treated the Oakies in The Grapes of Wrath
We don’t want no Calies here! Go back to where y’all came from.
Mr. Steinberg has a contrary opinion. “Gone With The Wind” equals Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will”!!!! And that is why the teaching of critical race theory must be mandated for public schools.
“A new form of McCarthyism is taking cancerous root….” [opposition to teaching critical race theory in public schools] “If you want to see a despicable manifestation of… [racism], just read the book and watch the 1930s movie, “Gone with the Wind.” This contemptible vile production was an apologia for the racial oppression of the Antebellum and Postbellum South in the same fashion that the films of Leni Riefenstahl, particularly “Triumph of the Will,” served as propaganda for the Nazis during the same time period.”
“The teaching of Critical Race Theory in our public schools is an essential antidote to the racial poison….”
Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
https://www.nj.com/opinion/2021/11/a-new-form-of-mccarthyism-is-taking-cancerous-root-in-the-new-jersey-body-politic-opinion.html
Is there anything more SWPL than the Renaissance or Dickens Faire? And yet most of the people who are into those things are s**t-libs who invite in the very forces that would destroy everything they love. The same way that Garrison Keillor endorsed the very things that destroyed the Minnesota he obviously loved. Or that Bruce Springsteen endorses the very things that destroy the blue-collar milieu he – well, probably doesn’t love – but has successfully exploited for fame and profit.
White liberals need to get this straight in their heads – nothing you love will be left to you. You are nothing to them. They hate you.
○ This includes titular characters such as Mr. Scrooge, Little Dorrit, Father Christmas, and historical figures such as Charles Dickens, royal children, Queen Victoria, etc.
○ This policy would be clear that historical BIPOC characters WILL NOT be played by anyone other than a person of their original ethnicity.
○ Please see further reading on color-conscious casting:
■ There’s No Business Like Show Business: Abandoning Color-Blind Casting and
Embracing Color-Conscious Casting in American Theatre | The Journal of Sports and
Entertainment Law
■ Colour conscious casting should be prioritized | The Broad
■ Stop Blaming History for Your All-White, All-Male Movie | The New York TimesReplies: @HammerJack, @Hhsiii, @Captain Tripps
In microcosm, simply, another version of Asian countries for Asians, African countries for Africans, White Countries for Everyone!
(Latin countries for Latinos, Arab countries for Arabs, etc etc.)
Knitting is not a thing that ‘happens in San Francisco’.
Yet here we are: The Racism Drama Unraveling the Knitting World.
So if you’re out there in Frontier Country growing wool and spinning/knitting your own clothing, then consider yourself on notice from the blacks who hate but want your White America.
Despite the lack of acknowledgement from Dickens, perhaps there is some way to introduce black transatlantic slave dealers into a Dickens party event. I think historically correct, “Boss Ni**ers” of Africa, who essentially made the transatlantic slave trade possible by selling off their own people, have been criminally underrepresented in Western European literature in general, and by popular black historians in particular.
We all know of Abraham Lincoln as an historic figure, but do any of the readers know the name of a black King of the slave trade of ANY given era of the Transatlantic slave trade?
Get my point now?!
Why can’t one of them be depicted at a Dickens-themed party sporting a grass skirt and nose bone of the correct size and placement for that era?
We, as Americans, must clear the table of this collective nonsense.
Is this cultural treasure sponsored by Froot Loops?
Wouldn’t a High Victorian Director of this extravaganza sternly banish disobedient members of the ensemble and ensure that they’d never play in this town again?
Close call but I liked this one even better than Negro Hitler
By the way, what have they done? Madam CJ Walker's amazing accomplishments getting that unruly wool to behave notwithstanding.Replies: @HammerJack, @kaganovitch, @magilla
From the looks of it, they’ve competed in more than a few “all you can eat” contests. And like all BBBW, what they set out to achieve, they achieve!
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
Gee I wonder how.
Accused sex pest in a leading role, sections in Spanish with NO English subtitles, a producer hollering “latinx” every other word, unaware most real Latinos find it insulting… Hey, what could go wrong?
Get woke go broke started before covid emptied most of the screens, but they keep at it. Death wish for real or do they have a funding secret we don’t know about?
I’ve been cable- and network-TV free since 2010. I not only don’t miss it, I feel better without it. The content is either ruinously vapid or toxically leftwing. Mere moments in someone else’s home while their TV is on literally make me queasy. I don’t know how anyone with half a brain stands it.
I do watch stuff on YouTube. Yesterday, I rewatched the 1979 series, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”. It was excellent. Literate, well acted by a cast of white men, with white women in supporting roles and a blessed absence of the usual defects. I started rewatching “The Lady of Shanghai” tonight. A couple of blacks as servants and lots of Chinese for local color. White-bread Wisconsinite Welles liked that sort of vibrance, which is alright. It has its place.
I too recently watched the 1979 BBC version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and yes, I found it so inspiring that I listened to all 26 hours on tape of LeCarre’s sequel “The Honorable Schoolboy.”
I finished with the BBC’s 1981 version of “Smiley’s People.”
Terrifically entertaining for those of us who read the novels long ago (in a galaxy far, far away. . .)
On a side note, in his novel “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, LeCarre had a throwaway line which revealed his true feelings about a particular U. S. President. (I will save my full comment for the next time Steve posts about either David Cornwall or Cornwall’s fantastically entertaining cad of a father.)Replies: @Kylie
Micheal keaton was fantasic i thought.
I tink it was the best cold war series/movie I've seen.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
There seem to be as many blacks in the movie as Whites. And that Hattie McDaniels black actress is in almost every scene. So I can see why blacks like it. Plus the endless sneering at the poor White trash. Whose trashiest contrasts with the wonderfulness of the blacks. That’s why I don’t like GOTW at all. Might as well watch a Morgan Freeman movie.
Vox clamantis in deserto
It’s like going to a steampunk convention and meeting someone who has mocked up a steampunk czar managing a steam-driven Zyklon B van, complete with elegant brass knobs and dials and a hissing sound.
To the wild cheers of the mostly black-female studio audience.
For some reason, while black women seem to love acting like "strong independent, I don't need no man", they flock to stories where a pig-headed woman ruins her chances with a perfect man, who walks out on her and stomps all over her heart.Replies: @Bardon Kaldian
Maybe they just were on the guy’s side ….
My office once had a diversity training session where the consultant was a chubby, bubbly, black woman who made us guess her favorite movie. Gone With the Wind. Big Scarlett fan.
Personally I prefer Mammie.
I do watch stuff on YouTube. Yesterday, I rewatched the 1979 series, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". It was excellent. Literate, well acted by a cast of white men, with white women in supporting roles and a blessed absence of the usual defects. I started rewatching "The Lady of Shanghai" tonight. A couple of blacks as servants and lots of Chinese for local color. White-bread Wisconsinite Welles liked that sort of vibrance, which is alright. It has its place.Replies: @anon, @Paul Jolliffe, @Tony massey
What the hell is wrong with you people.
OT but right in the iSteve lane.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/dec/13/brain-surgeon-or-rocket-scientist-study-tries-to-find-out-who-is-smarter
That “necessarily” in the first line is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Now this sounds to me as if Nicola K S Davis, Guardian Science! Correspondent, is a complete imbecile, an impression reinforced by her twutter feed where she retweets stuff like this:
https://twitter.com/aaronhoyland/status/1470120367695876098
which, vaxxed and masked as I am, makes me want to tear off the mask and start haranguing strangers on public transport. How far up one’s own backside can one man be?
Back to the tests. First of all, until at least very recently, there was no way low-IQ people could get into med school in the UK. And in the medical world, neurosurgeons are pretty near the top (didn’t a commenter here say that her daughter had been discouraged from entering the field unless she didn’t want kids, as the work is all-consuming?). Aerospace is another field which doesn’t encourage low-IQ entrants.
Secondly, what is the likelihood of the 18,000 people who have taken the GBIT being in any way representative of the British (still less the world) population? The sort of people who take intelligence tests for fun tend to be pretty bright.
Be interesting for the clever-clogs here to take it and report back.
Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil think in another ten years they are going to get a surgically implanted brain expansion pack and have a 280 IQ.Replies: @Jack D
There are both qualitative and a quantitative issues raised here .
The real problem is that White Culture is just so much more interesting and there is just so much of it
Today I spent most of the day at the hospital. (My mother is sick. I won’t go into details. It’s not terminal and it’s not COVID.)
In-between my usual Monday Zoom meetings, I sat and watched TV with her. We switched back and forth between the tornado coverage on the Weather Channel and the news on 7. I avoid national news like the plague, but 7 is all-local. Except for Inside Edition.
During the noon news, 7 broadcast a live police chase on I-95. It ended with the perp - a black female(!) - being taken into custody without incident.
I remember watching a chase years ago - probably when I was in high school - that ended with the muscular shirtless black perp jumping out of the car and running into someone’s back yard. He jumped a fence or two and gave the cops a literal run for their money.
A big white cop finally caught up with him, wrestled him to the ground, and kicked him in the head multiple times while the news anchor muttered, “This is not good.” Finally he was subdued. He wasn’t grievously injured, because they were able to cuff him, haul him onto his feet, and march him over to the patrol car.
Nothing came of it. I never heard about the incident ever again.
Today such an occurrence would spark a major national crisis.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @magilla
A girl I worked with had a brother who was a bit of a lad. I forget what he’d done, but he was being chased on foot by the police at night, and jumped over a wall to escape. The wall had a narrow ledge on the other side (which our lad knew about) then a fifteen foot drop into a small river (which the police didn’t know about).
The first officer over the wall dropped the fifteen feet into the darkness and broke his leg. When the police finally caught him they were so angry they gave him a beating/kicking which resulted in him being hospitalised and losing a testicle.
All actors in this drama were white. I’m not sure it even made the paper. No pro bono lawyers for the lad, even his sister wasn’t that sympathetic. This happened in the early 1980s.
Just imagine if our lad had been black. We’d be reading about it to this day.
○ This includes titular characters such as Mr. Scrooge, Little Dorrit, Father Christmas, and historical figures such as Charles Dickens, royal children, Queen Victoria, etc.
○ This policy would be clear that historical BIPOC characters WILL NOT be played by anyone other than a person of their original ethnicity.
○ Please see further reading on color-conscious casting:
■ There’s No Business Like Show Business: Abandoning Color-Blind Casting and
Embracing Color-Conscious Casting in American Theatre | The Journal of Sports and
Entertainment Law
■ Colour conscious casting should be prioritized | The Broad
■ Stop Blaming History for Your All-White, All-Male Movie | The New York TimesReplies: @HammerJack, @Hhsiii, @Captain Tripps
I like the part about how the company should not use the word family, because families have toxic, predatory racist uncles. I like to think of the iSteve commentariat as a family of toxic uncles. And some aunts.
These illiterate, thin-skinned (any colour) killjoys should be force-read an essay by Orwell on Dickens written in 1939 (and in volume 1 of his Essays, Journalism and Letters). This from no natural supporter of Dickens’ world-view: “He is always preaching a sermon and that is the final secret of his inventiveness. For you can only create if you care.” And “Dickens is able to go on being funny because he is in revolt against authority, and authority is always to be laughed at. There is always room for one more custard pie.” His works, a mere mortal might say, are therefore among the ‘safest places’ on earth for sentient beings of any hue. This humbug community would presumably ace a portrayal of Scrooge.
Henry Miller: “Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang’s feeble imagination.”
I do watch stuff on YouTube. Yesterday, I rewatched the 1979 series, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". It was excellent. Literate, well acted by a cast of white men, with white women in supporting roles and a blessed absence of the usual defects. I started rewatching "The Lady of Shanghai" tonight. A couple of blacks as servants and lots of Chinese for local color. White-bread Wisconsinite Welles liked that sort of vibrance, which is alright. It has its place.Replies: @anon, @Paul Jolliffe, @Tony massey
Kylie,
I too recently watched the 1979 BBC version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and yes, I found it so inspiring that I listened to all 26 hours on tape of LeCarre’s sequel “The Honorable Schoolboy.”
I finished with the BBC’s 1981 version of “Smiley’s People.”
Terrifically entertaining for those of us who read the novels long ago (in a galaxy far, far away. . .)
On a side note, in his novel “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, LeCarre had a throwaway line which revealed his true feelings about a particular U. S. President. (I will save my full comment for the next time Steve posts about either David Cornwall or Cornwall’s fantastically entertaining cad of a father.)
There is a treasure trove of TV series and old movies on YouTube, all blessedly unwoke. I'm surprised the left hasn't found a way to remove or ruin it. Actually I think they'd prefer to ruin it. They could interrupt a movie with a caption explaining why a line of dialogue or plot is racist, sexist, etc. or even delete an entire scene with a caption explaining that the scene in question was triggering, non-inclusive, etc.
I've taken precautions against such eventualities. Most of the books, CDs or DVDs I really cherish I have already bought. No Kindle, no streaming. I also bought a small CD/DVD player that plugs in or can be used with batteries. I still think the left will resort to shutting down the internet occasionally as a means of control.
I ask anyone who thinks I should take off my tin foil hat to remove his rose-colored glasses and think back 20 or 30 years. Would the outrages we suffer daily from the left today have seemed plausible back then as anything other than dystopian ravings?
○ This includes titular characters such as Mr. Scrooge, Little Dorrit, Father Christmas, and historical figures such as Charles Dickens, royal children, Queen Victoria, etc.
○ This policy would be clear that historical BIPOC characters WILL NOT be played by anyone other than a person of their original ethnicity.
○ Please see further reading on color-conscious casting:
■ There’s No Business Like Show Business: Abandoning Color-Blind Casting and
Embracing Color-Conscious Casting in American Theatre | The Journal of Sports and
Entertainment Law
■ Colour conscious casting should be prioritized | The Broad
■ Stop Blaming History for Your All-White, All-Male Movie | The New York TimesReplies: @HammerJack, @Hhsiii, @Captain Tripps
As I see more of these confrontations occurring, I sense a mini replay of the Austro-Hungarian government sending a list of insane demands to the Serbian government to compensate for Archduke Ferdinand’s (and his wife Sophie’s) assassination. And we all know how that turned out.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-lives-matter-s-betrayal-of-black-life-opinion/ar-AARLQv5?ocid=msedgntp
"Jussie Smollett's conviction last week for inventing a hate crime should have led to some soul-searching among the many who quickly accepted his hoax, not only as true but as evidence of the persistence and pervasiveness of white supremacy in America. It should have—but didn't."Replies: @Captain Tripps
Is he related to Don Cherry?
Don Cherry is about the whiteiest White Man I’ve ever seen. He makes Burl Ives look like a native of Papua New Guinea. Of course, he is Canadian, which is farther north. They get the low angle sunshine there.
He seems to have run afoul of the cult; they are looking to cancel him over some remark they deemed highly offensive.
https://www.inquirer.com/flyers/don-cherry-sportsnet-cbc-fired-racism-immigrants-nhl-ron-maclean-20191112.html
I don’t much get this “adults dressing-up as fictional characters” stuff, be it Dickens or Comic Con. If it’s once a year or in special events like Mardi Gras or Halloween or New Years’ Eve, I understand, but today there seem to be a lot of these type of LARPing festivals catering for all tastes. I guess it’s a reflection that most people don’t really like the modern world, and do anything to escape it, either into the past or into fictional universes.
Can't some anonymous unwoke wit come up with a catchy substitute to use in place of that nauseating loaded lie of a phrase? The Racial Weaponing? The Racial Armageddoning? The Racial Shakedowning?
Run a contest at 8-Chain or something.Replies: @Captain Tripps
I like Ray’Shal Wreckoning
Miller, the old-line pornographer, could sometimes hit it out of the park. He also once said that future avant guard generations would be the most close-minded in history!
What a LoAD !
I recognize that the point of these semantic games is to make it all the more confusing to the reader but the newspaper editor should be ashamed of his/her/itself. It shouldn’t have to be read twice.
It literally reads as if the tormentors of the aggrieved party are also boycotting.
It sounds like they were bought out recently by a larger organization, Dotdash, and along with Dotdash's millions came a Diversity Commissar whose job it is to impose the Diversity Gleichschaltung over all the subsidiary companies. Dotdash is in turn owned by IAC, an even bigger media conglomerate.
https://www.iac.com/brands
You may think that you are dealing with some nice white lady who set up a website to share recipes but in fact you are dealing with a media conglomerate.
Nothing may escape the Diversity Gleichschaltung . Google best cookbooks 2021 and see what you get. It's almost as bad as googling American inventors. They like to rotate the portraits but as of now, Edison and Bell are #1 and #2 and then after that the next 5 are black including Madam C.J. Walker the inventor of hair straightener which certainly ranks up there with the light bulb and the telephone (at least if you are a black woman).Replies: @Colin Wright
‘Nothing may escape the Diversity Gleichschaltung . ‘
That really is apt. The only thing is that it’s all worse, in a sense.
Nazism, Communism, Anarchism, Catholicism…whatever. Literally every ‘ism’ to come down the pike before now has had a more or less coherent ideology — a game plan, however ultimately unpleasant or unworkable.
These lunatics don’t. It’s a ‘coalition’ of mutually exclusive causes and of groups that hate each other. It all can’t go anywhere. It’s just a road to chaos.
…and ultimately, the rest of us are going to have to put them down and then try to pick up the pieces. And I fear we won’t do a very good job of it. We’ll come out of our version of the Third Century Crisis alright — but as with our predecessors, what emerges won’t be as nice as what preceded it.
There’s your answer, YAA. You just redefine what “intelligent” means. If you make this “emotion processing abilities” part 3/4 of the tests, you can get your paper to conclude whatever you want it to conclude, depending on how you feel about it.
I do watch stuff on YouTube. Yesterday, I rewatched the 1979 series, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy". It was excellent. Literate, well acted by a cast of white men, with white women in supporting roles and a blessed absence of the usual defects. I started rewatching "The Lady of Shanghai" tonight. A couple of blacks as servants and lots of Chinese for local color. White-bread Wisconsinite Welles liked that sort of vibrance, which is alright. It has its place.Replies: @anon, @Paul Jolliffe, @Tony massey
Hey Kylie you should check out The Company. I’m not a tv or movie person but i really enjoyed that.
Micheal keaton was fantasic i thought.
I tink it was the best cold war series/movie I’ve seen.
Keaton played James Jesus Angleton, one of the godfathers of the Twentieth Century.
Official website and list of demands:
Londoners of the African Diaspora
Anti-Racism Initiative
Introduction
Every single one of our black cast members has been called a slave. From ladies of the highest class to men at Sal’s. And if not a slave, then “surprisingly elegant.”
The black experience at Dickens Fair is simply different from the white experience. Racism is present and felt every weekend by the actions of uneducated and sometimes well-intentioned patrons and workers. In the past, we have set aside these harmful experiences and in doing so, some of the integrity of our blackness, in order to step into a role that our white cast members can seamlessly inhabit.
https://blackatdickens.wixsite.com/load
Steve Sailer Mall Cop.
A Gay feminine Filipino named Jose De Vega played a Straight Heterosexual alphamale thug Puerto Rican in 1961’s West Side Story. That’s cultural appropriation that no Democrat ever complains about.
Not only that but he was the least believable Non Puerto Rican to be cast as a Puerto Rican in West Side Story. I’ve never seen a Puerto Rican in my life who can pass for a Filipino. There is no phenotype overlap between the 2 whatsoever.
I dislike the use of ‘family’ by companies and organisations too because to me it’s more that, “no, you’re not a family, you’re a community perhaps but not a family”. And I keep seeing this obsession by Twitter etc about ‘found family’. It really strikes home how to me these people are just the extended phenotype of borderlines and other cluster Bs creating explicit communities for themselves online from which they have constructed insane histrionic and internet drama that is now being taken seriously by the media.
‘Found family’ is wrong and anti-social because it’s composed only of people you are inclined to associate. Family is pro-social because you didn’t chose it and you don’t get to leave it.
Somebody put a link when I mentioned that I think most of what ‘wokeness’ is is just adolescent girls and young women being sucked into the world and histrionics of their peers who have BPD or other cluster B disorders who are the core power users of social media and for whom this is the ultimate game. Most adolescent girls don’t really have a political agenda, for the cluster B nut-cases on Tumblr, they need a ideology which justifies themselves or which gives them an outlet for their rage at the world. But the guy who had a podcast on a similar premise himself admitted to be histrionic as an adolescent and is obsessed with the abuse from mothers with BPD and the way he talks and acts clearly has himself some sort of cluster B disorder. This is similar to a lot of other places where ‘NPDParents’ subreddits etc are always people who themselves show serious signs of a cluster B disorder raging at their parents years later.
For me I just looked at social media and kept seeing a recurring pattern of woke activists just exhibiting cluster B traits, prominently in their appearance and how they liked to decorate their pages online. (The septum piercing is so diagnostic it ought to be in the DSM. I’m not joking.) Even years ago before I had a name for this, I kept seeing the same surface level traits and fashions. Unlike a lot of people who go on about this I don’t have any relatives or past relationships with people like this, I just observed it from afar and find it amazing it’s not looked more deeply into since it’s all online, all these people bare themselves online, you can see it. It’s not hidden.
I think they hate family because they and their relatives are just difficult toxic people who have a blind spot for personal responsibility making the many disagreements that come up into deep festering feuds. These traits are highly heritable.
This why we can’t have nice things.
Their war against J.K. Rowling, a nice lady who put a huge amount of work into making something that children would enjoy, is revealing.
From all accounts the primary reason for the success of the movies was the savageness with which she attacked anybody who strayed from her vision.
I have enjoyed her fuck you approach to all of parasites in the publishing world who have created nothing.
Accused sex pest in a leading role, sections in Spanish with NO English subtitles, a producer hollering "latinx" every other word, unaware most real Latinos find it insulting... Hey, what could go wrong?
Get woke go broke started before covid emptied most of the screens, but they keep at it. Death wish for real or do they have a funding secret we don't know about?Replies: @tyrone
……the seed corn of a once dynamic and creative culture?
Over the last couple years there's been more than a few movies costing over a HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS that went straight to the tube, and they'll make a tiny percentage of what they cost.
Whatever the trick is, they should let us all in on it.
…….. tell me, have you ever heard of Richard Jewell?…how many lives do you think he saved?
Indeed it’s a shame there was no diversity officer there to help teenaged me in the 1970s when I was building and flying radio-controlled model airplanes.
It there had been, I would have put little, Black! dolls in the cockpits.
(To honor all the massive Black! contributions to aviation.)
Perhaps our digital world now will facilitate such “organizational structures” to monitor our activity.
KdF also was tasked with creating an automobile that was affordable to the common working man, called the KdF-Wagen. After the war, this car was given a new name - the Volkswagen (Beetle).
We need an American KdF to oversee the Diversity Gleichschaltung and its application to all hobbies and recreational activities. It needs to have an ironic title like Safety through Further Umoja (StFU) so that whitey understands we're not taking any lip from him no mo'.Replies: @Alden
Well said. Thanks.
Can you say cultural appropriation, boys and girls?
Sure, you can.Replies: @Cortes
Where’s Mr Baldwin when you need him?
We all know of Abraham Lincoln as an historic figure, but do any of the readers know the name of a black King of the slave trade of ANY given era of the Transatlantic slave trade?
Get my point now?!
Why can’t one of them be depicted at a Dickens-themed party sporting a grass skirt and nose bone of the correct size and placement for that era?
We, as Americans, must clear the table of this collective nonsense.
https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/1470610805506912258?s=20Replies: @Cortes
Terrific idea about incorporating a little Dahomey interest into the Fair (to max out on the twee factor it should be “Fayre”, or perhaps, for SF, “Feyre”). The Wikipedia article has a colourful story about the name:
“Name:
The Kingdom of Dahomey was referred to by many different names and has been written in a variety of ways, including Danxome, Danhome, and Fon. The name Fon relates to the dominant ethnic and language group, the Fon people, of the royal families of the kingdom and is how the kingdom first became known to Europeans. The names Dahomey, Danxome, and Danhome all have a similar origin story, which historian Edna Bay says may be a false etymology.[8]
The story goes that Dakodonu, considered the second king in modern kings lists, was granted permission by the Gedevi chiefs, the local rulers, to settle in the Abomey plateau. Dakodonu requested additional land from a prominent chief named Dan (or Da) to which the chief responded sarcastically “Should I open up my belly and build you a house in it?” For this insult, Dakodonu killed Dan and began the construction of his palace on the spot. The name of the kingdom was derived from the incident: Dan meaning “chief”, xo meaning “Belly” and me meaning “Inside of”.[9”
The Fayre, see, that’s much better, might be rendered more vibrant by the inclusion of sundry nabobs, maharajahs, sultans and emirs in “London” on business plus a bunch of monarchs in exile and pretenders to the throne of Poland. Oh, wouldn’t it be luvverly!
Londoners of the African Diaspora
Anti-Racism Initiative
Introduction
Every single one of our black cast members has been called a slave. From ladies of the highest class to men at Sal’s. And if not a slave, then “surprisingly elegant.”
The black experience at Dickens Fair is simply different from the white experience. Racism is present and felt every weekend by the actions of uneducated and sometimes well-intentioned patrons and workers. In the past, we have set aside these harmful experiences and in doing so, some of the integrity of our blackness, in order to step into a role that our white cast members can seamlessly inhabit.
https://blackatdickens.wixsite.com/loadReplies: @The Alarmist, @Jack D
The problem with a Dickens Fair is that it gives black folk unrealistic expectations. It would be more appropriate for them to participate in GWTW Fairs to gain proper historical perspective.
Why is everyone complaining…….she’s twice….okay, maybe two and a half times the original Belle.
For years, Yovel advocated as a representative of the Order of the Golden Needle, a neurodivergent advocacy group, for a de-stimulation space within the fair, or “de-stim” room. “Each time, I was met with the sentiment that even though they took my requests very seriously, they just couldn’t possibly do anything about them. All the while, I was being paraded out as a poster child for how progressive and cooperative RBP (Red Barn Productions) were,” says Yovel, who is boycotting this year’s fair and is unsure if they will ever return.
Basically a hyper-aggressive attentive whore who added two layers of infallibility to theyself as a part of their inflated personal strategy for world-domination. Credit where credit is due, though: lamenting about "being paraded out as a poster child" --now that's what I call chutzpah!Replies: @fish
All the while, I was being paraded out as a poster child for how progressive and cooperative RBP (Red Barn Productions) were,” says Yovel, who is boycotting this year’s fair and is unsure if they will ever return.
……..FOR THE WIN!
If I go the Dicken’s event and I see Aunt Jemima I better get some decent pancakes while I sit in my “de-stim’ room!
Is there going to ever again be a big Burning Man at Blackrock on Labor Day?Replies: @Bill Jones
Burning Man is going to be updated and down sized.
It will be one giant size Roman Candle burning to symbolize the suffering of all those African Americans whose syphilis went untreated by Whitey.
“…the real problem is black safety at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair.”
And they wonder why so many whites don’t take them seriously! The “I’m A Victim” bit gets old after a while.
I am guessing Scrooge is still White.
By the way, what have they done? Madam CJ Walker's amazing accomplishments getting that unruly wool to behave notwithstanding.Replies: @HammerJack, @kaganovitch, @magilla
By the way, what have they done? Madam CJ Walker’s amazing accomplishments getting that unruly wool to behave notwithstanding.
You appear to have entirely forgotten that they got us to the Moon! For shame. They even made a – long overdue – movie about it a few years back.
You perhaps know the video for “Karma Karma Chamaleon”? I was astonished that there were a lot of black ladies dressed up as Southern Belles in it. And of course there was no separation of races. (Costumes definitely before the First World War.)
I still wonder if the video wanted to show a fake “Wonderland” or if there is something more in it.
How come POC doing Dickens this is not cultural appropiation?
Ethics of the Fathers 5:10 “[One who says:] “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is mine” is a wicked person.
“Hernandez-Knight recently resigned…over a proposed (and ultimately rejected) diversity statement.”
When all you know is diversity statements, everything looks like a diversity problem.
The energies of her generation have been channeled into finding racism, just like earlier religions battled sin.
Bob Wills’ old classic “Mississippi Delta Blues has been memory-holed- the offending line is
“I long to hear them darkies play those old melodies
Swanee River, and Old Black Joe….”
And, while you can still find Take Me Back to Tulsa”, modern versions exclude the line
“little bee sucks the blossom, big bee gets the honey
Darkie raise the cotton, white man get the money…”
It is beyond bizarre to see black people in the costly clothes of the nineteenth century elite. This is revisionism at its most fantastical and patronizing, whew. There were some, but they were very few and far between. And the singular weakness of this assault on memory is that these people are still judging themselves by the yardstick of white culture – see, my ancestors were just like the best of yours! – while denouncing “whiteness” in the bitterest of terms.
I contrast this to a book I am reading by a Yale paleontologist, who notes that one of his ancestors, a poor Irish “sandhog,” was a digger at the first excavation of a mastodon. But he has the humility to acknowledge that while his forebear had a role in the great discovery, it was by no means equivalent to the accomplishment of the scholars who directed the dig and studied the remains.
When it comes to historic accuracy, most white people did not have ancestors who were part of the educated and well to do classes who are so often the main characters of the classics of English literature. I come from farmers and factory workers but I feel the classics (both English language and otherwise), are my own and I wish nonwhites in America would feel the same.
That we do not present Western culture and history as available to all is a shame and that people go even farther and teach non- Anglo kids to feel separate from their cultural identity as Americans is a big mistake. We need as many Americans to buy into the overall legacy of America as possible. That parts of that legacy are regrettable cannot be allowed to blind us to the many positive things we have done and can continue to do by building on our past accomplishments.
Let me add that as for actual revisionism where people try to claim unfactual things such as members of the European aristocracy looking and being black hundreds of years ago, I have no use for it at all. It is one thing for nonwhite actors to play white people in Shakespeare and quite another to claim there were lots of blacks in England during Shakespeare's time.Replies: @AndrewR
Please elaborate on your last claim
“rest and relaxation”
Racist black ladies who raise monsters seek safe spaces to relax because they are tired from all of their havoc-causing and monster-raising.
“… Black and brown communities.”
Latinx afterthoughts.
The Dickens fair is tacky assault on good taste. The costuming is crummy, the performance area is dirty, and I doubt many of the participants have actually read a Charles Dickens novel. But one thing is for certain. It’s a safe space for white families because there are few to no people of color (or their out of control children). Maybe that’s why blacks have taken such an interest in wrecking it. Whats next: are blacks going to protest the annual Wizard of Oz conference in Monterrey? The Gilroy Garlic festival? How about demanding every Halloween pumpkin patch get an anti-racism certificate to open for business.
What a LOaD.
Micheal keaton was fantasic i thought.
I tink it was the best cold war series/movie I've seen.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb
“check out The Company … Michael keaton [sic] was fantastic i [sic] thought.”
Keaton played James Jesus Angleton, one of the godfathers of the Twentieth Century.
Some people couldn’t tell you what their brother does for a living, but they could give you a full recap of the entire run of the HBO series Succession.
That’s racis’!
See this is the problem – if you are not allowed to call the wicked on their wickedness, then the wickedness only increases.
Autistic boys usually hate blacks!
Nobody but me noticed the parallel with NATO’s ultimatum to Yugoslavia in 1999.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
Mark Simone notes that the “Happy Days gangs” of West Side Story may be just a little too quaint for current audiences when today’s real gangs are going around chopping off heads
I’m trying in vain to chop my way through the dense foliage of this article to determine who did what to who, if anything. It seems to be just another largely female-driven enterprise where even the slightest real or imagined personal slight just torpedoes the whole thing.
This type of trivial kerfuffle did not previously take up yards and yards of print-media space when the print media itself was not female-driven, but add a little race and voila!
https://twitter.com/ChristianWVids
He has the stuff to be a conservative rock star.Replies: @Anon
You know we have lost any influence in our own society when that all it takes to be a conservative rockstar is to be a black man willing to repeat lukewarm Republican talking points.
We’re not even allowed to advocate for our own self interest without being labeled supremacists and domestic terrorists. We have to use someone from the favored races as a proxy just to plead for our continued existence.
Because shut up, racist.
As I mentioned before, this is in accordance with the Fascist principle of Gleichschaltung – Everything with the State, nothing without the State. (And State is synonymous with Party or in the case of the US the Diversity Borg). So in Nazi Germany, there was nothing too small to escape the Gleichschaltung – you couldn’t have a chess club or a model airplane club or anything like that unless it was organized along Nazi principles.
(From the wiki)
KdF also was tasked with creating an automobile that was affordable to the common working man, called the KdF-Wagen. After the war, this car was given a new name – the Volkswagen (Beetle).
We need an American KdF to oversee the Diversity Gleichschaltung and its application to all hobbies and recreational activities. It needs to have an ironic title like Safety through Further Umoja (StFU) so that whitey understands we’re not taking any lip from him no mo’.
By the way, what have they done? Madam CJ Walker's amazing accomplishments getting that unruly wool to behave notwithstanding.Replies: @HammerJack, @kaganovitch, @magilla
Yeah, OK. The only truly amazing black woman in my life was on a syrup bottle and you freaks managed to blast her out of existence.
Think about your little red town in Nebraska or Utah or Tennessee. Chances there are a few Ph.D.'s who have NPR pre-tuned in every channel in their cars, and even more Karens who see nothing redeeming in John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies. You're solidly red--that's six or seven out of ten people! But walk through most major urban cities in this country and you'd be hard pressed to find a sane centrist Democrat, let alone a milquetoast Republican. It won't be long before the Californias of the world use their influence to force the 60% in rural reddish places to completely knuckle under.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @magilla, @Beach Jim
Let’s hope they can eat their good intentions and light their homes with proper thoughts.
The elite exist only because those who do the hard, grinding, dirty work in this country put up with it.
Today I spent most of the day at the hospital. (My mother is sick. I won’t go into details. It’s not terminal and it’s not COVID.)
In-between my usual Monday Zoom meetings, I sat and watched TV with her. We switched back and forth between the tornado coverage on the Weather Channel and the news on 7. I avoid national news like the plague, but 7 is all-local. Except for Inside Edition.
During the noon news, 7 broadcast a live police chase on I-95. It ended with the perp - a black female(!) - being taken into custody without incident.
I remember watching a chase years ago - probably when I was in high school - that ended with the muscular shirtless black perp jumping out of the car and running into someone’s back yard. He jumped a fence or two and gave the cops a literal run for their money.
A big white cop finally caught up with him, wrestled him to the ground, and kicked him in the head multiple times while the news anchor muttered, “This is not good.” Finally he was subdued. He wasn’t grievously injured, because they were able to cuff him, haul him onto his feet, and march him over to the patrol car.
Nothing came of it. I never heard about the incident ever again.
Today such an occurrence would spark a major national crisis.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @magilla
The old-timers used to tell us never to hit them in the head as it does nothing. This is real-world proof the old ones knew what they were doing.
I don’t think that is true. At least he was brownish and had a Hispanic name. Puerto Ricans have a considerable Amerindian component and Amerindians are (for genetic purposes) Asiatic.
TBH, de Vega was a lot more believable as a PR than the pure Russian Natalie Wood. Hilariously, the one actual PR in the 1961 cast, Rita Moreno, is very fair skinned and they made her wear brown makeup:
Anyway, this is why the profession is called “acting” – you don’t actually have to go to medical school in order to play a doctor in a movie and you don’t have to have an actual Party card in order to play a Nazi.
Natalie Wood is more believable playing a Puerto Rican than the Pinoy because Natalie Wood has a Mediterranean appearance and Mediterranean appearances do not stick out like a sore thumb in Puerto Rico an island that was colonized by the Spaniards.
Natalie Wood is more believable playing a Puerto Rican than the Pinoy because Natalie Wood has a Mediterranean appearance and Mediterranean appearances do not stick out like a sore thumb in Puerto Rico an island that was colonized by the Spaniards.Replies: @Alden
So… These hefty black babes are members of LoAD… and convening in the Cow Palace…?
(No coment)
What is ultimately interesting about this kind of foolishness is to see how the pecking gets ordered. Will the white trannies get kicked to curb so the blacks can have their safe space? How will the dark horse candidate’s request for gender-whack-autist-safe-space fare?
If trannies come in blackface, will that make it better?
(Asking for a friend)
This is a fair about Victorian England, why would there be non-white cast members to begin with? Can anyone imagine having Asian cast members? Latino? It’d be as contrived as having blacks. At some point the fair loses its authenticity.
If this were a fair about Egypt or some African civilization, you can be sure there would be no white cast members or complaints would go through the roof. Similarly for ancient China/India/Mayan fair etc.
Why is it always the blacks that are complaining, not just about this but about anything and everything? And if it isn’t them it’s the Jews. No one else does this. It’s not anyone else’s fault that they can’t come up with a single worthy civilization to celebrate.
At least, we cisnormative, heterosexual white males can claim that it wasn't mainly us!
After all, this is San Francisco!
Anyone want to guess the orientation of most of the males who get their kicks out of dressing up in Victorian costumes in San Francisco?
(I love the Bay Area: at least I used to before they allowed people to relieve themselves on the sidewalks. But still...)Replies: @Wilkey, @LP5
Will that join the meme pantheon alongside This is Library?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hey-hey-hey-this-is-library
I too recently watched the 1979 BBC version of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and yes, I found it so inspiring that I listened to all 26 hours on tape of LeCarre’s sequel “The Honorable Schoolboy.”
I finished with the BBC’s 1981 version of “Smiley’s People.”
Terrifically entertaining for those of us who read the novels long ago (in a galaxy far, far away. . .)
On a side note, in his novel “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, LeCarre had a throwaway line which revealed his true feelings about a particular U. S. President. (I will save my full comment for the next time Steve posts about either David Cornwall or Cornwall’s fantastically entertaining cad of a father.)Replies: @Kylie
Thanks for reminding me I want to watch “Smiley’s People” next.
There is a treasure trove of TV series and old movies on YouTube, all blessedly unwoke. I’m surprised the left hasn’t found a way to remove or ruin it. Actually I think they’d prefer to ruin it. They could interrupt a movie with a caption explaining why a line of dialogue or plot is racist, sexist, etc. or even delete an entire scene with a caption explaining that the scene in question was triggering, non-inclusive, etc.
I’ve taken precautions against such eventualities. Most of the books, CDs or DVDs I really cherish I have already bought. No Kindle, no streaming. I also bought a small CD/DVD player that plugs in or can be used with batteries. I still think the left will resort to shutting down the internet occasionally as a means of control.
I ask anyone who thinks I should take off my tin foil hat to remove his rose-colored glasses and think back 20 or 30 years. Would the outrages we suffer daily from the left today have seemed plausible back then as anything other than dystopian ravings?
Londoners of the African Diaspora
Anti-Racism Initiative
Introduction
Every single one of our black cast members has been called a slave. From ladies of the highest class to men at Sal’s. And if not a slave, then “surprisingly elegant.”
The black experience at Dickens Fair is simply different from the white experience. Racism is present and felt every weekend by the actions of uneducated and sometimes well-intentioned patrons and workers. In the past, we have set aside these harmful experiences and in doing so, some of the integrity of our blackness, in order to step into a role that our white cast members can seamlessly inhabit.
https://blackatdickens.wixsite.com/loadReplies: @The Alarmist, @Jack D
Of course, if white people try to step into a role that black cast members can seamlessly inhabit (say putting on blackface and pretending to be Frederick Douglas) that would be racis’ and is strictly verboten.
So here we have blacks retconning themselves into a place (the London of Dicken’s time) where they really did not exist, and when unwoke white people try to make sense of what they are seeing (“What is a black person doing in Victorian London – perhaps you are a slave that some visiting Confederate has brought?”) this is a “harmful experience” to the high self esteem of blacks. Forget about that slave stuff, don’t you know we wuz Kangs? I am here as the visiting Queen of Wakanda!
Aside from the demand for Moar Blackness, I don’t understand how they are supposed to fix this – should they put up a sign at the entrance to the Fair warning people not to refer to black people as slaves?
For the same reason that Ralph Lauren (aka Lifshitz) developing his uber-WASP fashion line isn’t. Appropriation is a one-way street.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/our-anti-racism-pledge-5186469Replies: @usNthem, @Jack D, @LP5
Steve’s column ticks the boxes.
Coalition of the Fringes
Whinge
Cringe
It turns out they became even worse snowflakes than their feminazi parents.Replies: @LP5
There would have been some awkward conversations about which names would make the cut. How would a Woke person approach that with sensitivity and inclusion? Would dice be involved, or lots, or Tarot cards? Nah, too chancy. Whom to consult?
Alternatively, there could be some old-timey Spanish approach with many names strung out and each separated by ‘y’. Is that safe to suggest, with fewer appropriation Pokémon demerits, than that other Continental example using ‘und’? Of course, Anglophile examples with hyphens are excluded.
Would you rather follow along with Ortega y Gasset or von Thurn und Taxis? Don’t mention anyone named with a variation of Xyz-Jones.
Weird. Its almost like people use leisure for leisure, and so don’t have “formal organizational structures” and don’t want to go through “substantive change”.
By “every member” she means “none”.
Video or it didn’t happen.
“he was stopped at
everymaybe one security gate”. There, fixed it.Why would this be construed as some kind of insult?
When you are a racist bigot, every word directed at you is an insult.Replies: @Old Prude
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
So Covid is keeping people away from what is essentially a foreign language film for 75% of the population yet a crowd funded film “Christmas with the Chosen” did very well.
Maybe people noticed who’s naughty and who’s nice.
Think about your little red town in Nebraska or Utah or Tennessee. Chances there are a few Ph.D.'s who have NPR pre-tuned in every channel in their cars, and even more Karens who see nothing redeeming in John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies. You're solidly red--that's six or seven out of ten people! But walk through most major urban cities in this country and you'd be hard pressed to find a sane centrist Democrat, let alone a milquetoast Republican. It won't be long before the Californias of the world use their influence to force the 60% in rural reddish places to completely knuckle under.Replies: @Mr. Anon, @magilla, @Beach Jim
While your point is well taken, I often wonder if the 99% liberal skew isn’t, to use an old Steve-ism, punching above their weight. Liberals are definitely a majority in major metropolitan areas, but, through daily interactions, it leaves me unconvinced that these areas are as liberal as proclaimed. The politicians are rotten to the core and beyond the pale of the liberal label. But, sadly, I get the impression that too many people are just “go along to get along” folks that hope to weather the storm or, at the least, be eaten last (to mix my metaphors). If one is sitting in a business meeting and the consultant of the day is spouting whatever new ism or ideology that everyone is supposed to get on board with, most take the tactic of simply quietly listening and then going back to their tasks. The consultant takes the silence for assent, management smiles because a box has been ticked, and the employees quietly bitch about how stupid things are when they go out for a beer after work (if that…only among trusted co-workers, and that list grows smaller by the day). I’m not suggesting that things aren’t bad and that we desperately need to go on offense and put a stop to the totalitarianism. I’m just not sure the true numbers skew as badly as you state.
What I said I’d true. No Puerto Rican looks Filipino, not even the ones with heavy Amerindian DNA. Puerto Ricans with heavy Amerindian DNA just look like Mexicans not Filipinos.
Natalie Wood is more believable playing a Puerto Rican than the Pinoy because Natalie Wood has a Mediterranean appearance and Mediterranean appearances do not stick out like a sore thumb in Puerto Rico an island that was colonized by the Spaniards.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
The movie’s debut was front page of the Sunday paper’s Enterainment section. The colored photo was compelling: Lots of attractive Latinas dancing. The head line started out great: New West Side Story is Spectacular…then it went downhill… and Urgent. Uh, oh.
Thanks for clarifying that Urgent meant what I suspected, Stan.
What I said is true. No Puerto Rican looks Filipino, not even the ones with heavy Amerindian DNA. Puerto Ricans with heavy Amerindian DNA just look like Mexicans not Filipinos.
Natalie Wood is more believable playing a Puerto Rican than the Pinoy because Natalie Wood has a Mediterranean appearance and Mediterranean appearances do not stick out like a sore thumb in Puerto Rico an island that was colonized by the Spaniards.
She’s pure Russian. Northern Europe. She had the same coloring as Dianne Feinstein and many of the 1920s Russian refugees who ended up in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Richmond District around the Russian Cathedral they built on Geary st used to be full of Russians with fine features, pale white skin and often but not always black or dark brown hair.
I see what Mark Twain called Walter Scott disease is alive and well.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I have an idea a de-stimulation space - stay home and don't go to a noisy crowded fair. There were no de-stimulation places in Victorian England (unless maybe you count gaols).Replies: @Ghost of Bull Moose, @Catdog, @James J. O'Meara, @Pheasant
They had one of these rooms at a convention I went to a few years ago. It was quiet, the lights were off and there were cushioned seats. It was actually nice to get out of the noise for a while. It’s a good idea, despite the creatures pushing for it.
Crapification of the K. Derby broadcast started during the Gay triumphalism of 2015. They had a homosexual male wearing a lady’s spring bonnet doing part of the broadcast. I shut it off and have never watched the race again. Hell, what is the point anyway when some rich Egyptian buys his way into the trophy by doping horses.
I recall they did the same thing that year with the Wesminster Dog Show: Some in-your face homosexual commentator boasting “See: They’re born that way. Tee hee.”
As if the faggification of TV wasn’t bad enough, now it’s combined with blackification which makes in totally unwatchable. Movies are coming up close behind.
How to be an ally, got it.
That would really help, like “Black-owned business.”
Was he the guy who did all the aerobics videos?
The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.
Funny thing is, the PR’s I know could have stepped off the flight from Madrid, or Rome, for that matter.
KdF also was tasked with creating an automobile that was affordable to the common working man, called the KdF-Wagen. After the war, this car was given a new name - the Volkswagen (Beetle).
We need an American KdF to oversee the Diversity Gleichschaltung and its application to all hobbies and recreational activities. It needs to have an ironic title like Safety through Further Umoja (StFU) so that whitey understands we're not taking any lip from him no mo'.Replies: @Alden
Meanwhile several hundred miles east, Soviet Russia was organized the same way.
It's states that are not organized this way that are the historical anomaly.
Natalie Wood is more believable playing a Puerto Rican than the Pinoy because Natalie Wood has a Mediterranean appearance and Mediterranean appearances do not stick out like a sore thumb in Puerto Rico an island that was colonized by the Spaniards.Replies: @Alden
Natalie Wood does not have a Mediterranean appearance. Unless you think every White person in the world with black or dark brown hair ( like most of the British and Scandinavian royals of Europe) has a Mediterranean appearance.
She’s pure Russian. Northern Europe. She had the same coloring as Dianne Feinstein and many of the 1920s Russian refugees who ended up in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Richmond District around the Russian Cathedral they built on Geary st used to be full of Russians with fine features, pale white skin and often but not always black or dark brown hair.
I see what Mark Twain called Walter Scott disease is alive and well.
https://live.staticflickr.com/2428/4040206361_4ff09d9766_b.jpg
So how is a red headed freckle faced family from Iowa going to be received at the next Juneteenth Festival?
Really, if blacks need to be coddled when they are at events created by and for White people to celebrate a literary work or historic era, they should just stay home.
They want to pretend to be outraged when non blacks require special security measures for them, while the nightly news is full of black block party or “life celebrations” being shot to pieces by fellow blacks or mobs of their cousins are smashing and looting downtown stores. White people haven’t done that.
And their favorite music genre (rap) is replete with Tough Guy menacing and braggadocio by snarling black rappers about how many rivals they’ve killed, “beefs” settled and other violent themes. What other musical genre does that?
So you can’t endorse and glorify thuggish violence and rampant theft and at the same time protest that others require groups of blacks (seldom, older or family groups) to be subject to enhanced security.
It is the real “black tax” that most ordinary innocent blacks pay for their tacit endorsement of the black criminal underclass. They know this too. Who among them are brave enough to own or work at their own neighborhood liquor stores? Even black gangsters don’t do that.
Just my guess, but if this whole farrago of nonsense isn’t inspired by finding some excuse to camp it up in period outfits and have a gay old time parading around and mugging for special friends, then I’d be astonished. Is there a vast number of people dressed up in stinking rags doing all the disgusting trades described by Henry Mayhew, often said to have influenced Dickens
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Mayhew
One of those trades - the pure finders - could certainly be confident of a plentiful supply of their raw material in San Francisco these days.Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
everymaybe one security gate". There, fixed it.Replies: @MugglesYou mean black women who were admired by white people?
Why would this be construed as some kind of insult?
When you are a racist bigot, every word directed at you is an insult.
Is there anything blacks DON’T ruin?
That really is apt. The only thing is that it's all worse, in a sense.
Nazism, Communism, Anarchism, Catholicism...whatever. Literally every 'ism' to come down the pike before now has had a more or less coherent ideology -- a game plan, however ultimately unpleasant or unworkable.
These lunatics don't. It's a 'coalition' of mutually exclusive causes and of groups that hate each other. It all can't go anywhere. It's just a road to chaos.
...and ultimately, the rest of us are going to have to put them down and then try to pick up the pieces. And I fear we won't do a very good job of it. We'll come out of our version of the Third Century Crisis alright -- but as with our predecessors, what emerges won't be as nice as what preceded it.Replies: @Jack D, @The Wild Geese Howard
The parallels to the Crisis of the Third Century are (unfortunately) uncanny. You had plague, severe weather, immigrant invasion, inflation, disruption of trade routes, succession crises and (just like many are predicting here) Rome (temporarily) broke into Separate Countries.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
I’ll watch new Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, A123 and Kaiju/Monsterverse movies. That’s all.
And the Monsterverse is a Burger King Kid’s Club of nauseating diversity, unless the fight is raging. I can’t help it. Giant Monkey vs Stegasaurus on 2 legs is too good to pass up.
Oh, and I’m a sucker for the Texas Chainsaw movies. Not really sure why.
You think this is bad??Read the linked article on knitting.
I have an idea a de-stimulation space - stay home and don't go to a noisy crowded fair. There were no de-stimulation places in Victorian England (unless maybe you count gaols).Replies: @Ghost of Bull Moose, @Catdog, @James J. O'Meara, @Pheasant
“There were no de-stimulation places in Victorian England)”
Untrue. Don’t forget the (with)drawing room for the ladies, as well as the fainting couch.
Really, if blacks need to be coddled when they are at events created by and for White people to celebrate a literary work or historic era, they should just stay home.
They want to pretend to be outraged when non blacks require special security measures for them, while the nightly news is full of black block party or "life celebrations" being shot to pieces by fellow blacks or mobs of their cousins are smashing and looting downtown stores. White people haven't done that.
And their favorite music genre (rap) is replete with Tough Guy menacing and braggadocio by snarling black rappers about how many rivals they've killed, "beefs" settled and other violent themes. What other musical genre does that?
So you can't endorse and glorify thuggish violence and rampant theft and at the same time protest that others require groups of blacks (seldom, older or family groups) to be subject to enhanced security.
It is the real "black tax" that most ordinary innocent blacks pay for their tacit endorsement of the black criminal underclass. They know this too. Who among them are brave enough to own or work at their own neighborhood liquor stores? Even black gangsters don't do that.Replies: @Cortes
“ events created by and for White people to celebrate a literary work or historic era”
Just my guess, but if this whole farrago of nonsense isn’t inspired by finding some excuse to camp it up in period outfits and have a gay old time parading around and mugging for special friends, then I’d be astonished. Is there a vast number of people dressed up in stinking rags doing all the disgusting trades described by Henry Mayhew, often said to have influenced Dickens
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Mayhew
One of those trades – the pure finders – could certainly be confident of a plentiful supply of their raw material in San Francisco these days.
That's N=1 but for 9 or 10 years or so. As for vast numbers I don't know.
I'm not seeing anyone with his disposition in the US or the Western World.Replies: @nebulafox
And "LoAD" - what's that, "Luck off and die"?
Finally, anyone with a hyphenated last name who talks about "space" without meaning storage units or outside earth's atmosphere is someone that I don't need to hear anything more from.Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Jim Don Bob
Well said, Achmed.
A search engine entry for him showed that he died at 56. Curiosity got the better of me – I figured drugs or alcohol. Sure enough – it was AIDS.
I remind everyone of the Styx Plan for California.
1 — Grant them secession (cf the constitutional scholarship of Barack Obama and John Roberts, in which one-time violations are okay as long as you audibly shout the word “mulligan”).
2 — Discover that they are oppressing a local minority, developing weapons of mass destruction, and threatening democracy.
3 — Invade and occupy.
4 — Retain California as a possession and — and this one is critical — never again allow statehood.
Spoon clink.
A long time ago I read a memoir of a surgeon, not a brain surgeon; he was very dismissive of the job of brain surgeon. Almost all of your patients are very messed up. Usually they die during, immediately after, or within a short time of surgery. He said they have a saying, “you’ll never be the same once air hits your brain”.
Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil think in another ten years they are going to get a surgically implanted brain expansion pack and have a 280 IQ.
That really is apt. The only thing is that it's all worse, in a sense.
Nazism, Communism, Anarchism, Catholicism...whatever. Literally every 'ism' to come down the pike before now has had a more or less coherent ideology -- a game plan, however ultimately unpleasant or unworkable.
These lunatics don't. It's a 'coalition' of mutually exclusive causes and of groups that hate each other. It all can't go anywhere. It's just a road to chaos.
...and ultimately, the rest of us are going to have to put them down and then try to pick up the pieces. And I fear we won't do a very good job of it. We'll come out of our version of the Third Century Crisis alright -- but as with our predecessors, what emerges won't be as nice as what preceded it.Replies: @Jack D, @The Wild Geese Howard
Maybe call it the, “Cthulhu Coalition?”
I’m struggling to see anyone in the West analogous to the Roman, “Barracks Emperors,” who ascended from the military to the purple and put enough things right so the Western Empire lasted until the late 5th century.
Yeah -- but to continue the analogy, would you have been able to discern such individuals in the Rome of 230 ad, or would you have still been hoping Humpty-Dumpty was going to somehow get put back together again?
We've got a ways to go yet. The fun's could be just getting started...
I read recently that after the USSR collapsed and he returned from Dresden, Putin worked for a while as a cab driver.
I’m willing to believe anything.
Over the last couple years there’s been more than a few movies costing over a HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS that went straight to the tube, and they’ll make a tiny percentage of what they cost.
Whatever the trick is, they should let us all in on it.
Probably my favorite Roman emperor.
I’m not seeing anyone with his disposition in the US or the Western World.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
Watching Spielberg’s Prince of Egypt. Seems like if you try to expell these Habiru they bring down ww2 on your head and kill your sons. If you insist they stay like PHAROAH then they bring down plagues on you and kill your sons. Avoid them. Shun them.
We wuz Europeans…Egyptians…Hebrews…Moors! We wuz… everything but sub-Saharan Africans.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
Gringo Unchained.
Jews have been designing and selling clothing to upscale Brits for centuries.
Ralph Lauren clothes were very Americana incorporating some prairie cowboyish themes as well as standard east coast wealthy WASP Bergdoff Goodman Brooks Brothers J Press etc
San Francisco, don’t they realize that Oscar Wilde considered Dickens to be highly overrated?
Why would this be construed as some kind of insult?
When you are a racist bigot, every word directed at you is an insult.Replies: @Old Prude
I learned today that Aunt Jemima isn’t real maple syrup. WTF
They have no idea that Charles Dickens was a passionate supporter of The Confederacy.
“The Northern onslaught against Southern slavery is a specious piece of humbug designed to mask their desire for the economic control of the Southern states . . . Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils.”
Dickens was evidently a rabid free-trader, whose viewpoint was anything but disinterested. "Who's going to buy our goods if they make things themselves?"
What did he have to say about his own country's abolitionists who, like their later suffragettes, were way more radical than ours?Replies: @Right_On
I do not think we can or should assume that nonwhites who take part in things like this are trying to make any kind of special point(s) beyond the fact that they find it interesting and enjoyable and they want participate, too. That the people in this article are looking to make all kinds of points does not mean everybody is like that.
When it comes to historic accuracy, most white people did not have ancestors who were part of the educated and well to do classes who are so often the main characters of the classics of English literature. I come from farmers and factory workers but I feel the classics (both English language and otherwise), are my own and I wish nonwhites in America would feel the same.
That we do not present Western culture and history as available to all is a shame and that people go even farther and teach non- Anglo kids to feel separate from their cultural identity as Americans is a big mistake. We need as many Americans to buy into the overall legacy of America as possible. That parts of that legacy are regrettable cannot be allowed to blind us to the many positive things we have done and can continue to do by building on our past accomplishments.
Let me add that as for actual revisionism where people try to claim unfactual things such as members of the European aristocracy looking and being black hundreds of years ago, I have no use for it at all. It is one thing for nonwhite actors to play white people in Shakespeare and quite another to claim there were lots of blacks in England during Shakespeare’s time.
A small town relatively close to where I grew up was the site of a famous civil war battle. There used to be a weekend of elaborate re-enactment activities where many adult attendees wore period costumes and tour guides set up arts and crafts stations geared towards kids. Also lots of antique/art vendors selling stuff on site along with food and music. Today they still open the battle re-enactment to the public but there is no dressing up other than male soldiers. It’s still a fairly big event, but not as many people go as 20 years ago. It also isn’t advertised beforehand on the local news or in the paper (I suspect deliberately so they won’t be bothered?).
Indeed, fagginess now permeates the popular culture to an enormous degree; it is disgusting and loathsome. In the closet, homosexuals can be valuable contributors to society. Out of it, they wreck everything they touch.
America – fake and gay.
She’s pure Russian. Northern Europe. She had the same coloring as Dianne Feinstein and many of the 1920s Russian refugees who ended up in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Richmond District around the Russian Cathedral they built on Geary st used to be full of Russians with fine features, pale white skin and often but not always black or dark brown hair.
I see what Mark Twain called Walter Scott disease is alive and well.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Natalie Wood has a subterranean appearance.
What was worth retaining in these states? Certainly not a workforce.
Dickens was evidently a rabid free-trader, whose viewpoint was anything but disinterested. “Who’s going to buy our goods if they make things themselves?”
What did he have to say about his own country’s abolitionists who, like their later suffragettes, were way more radical than ours?
You misunderstand. Dickens didn't support slavery; he was simply calling out the hypocrisy of the Union side using high-sounding rhetoric about the rights of man to disguise their lust for filthy lucre.What was worth retaining in these states?
The North had been using high tariffs on Southern goods for decades to build up Northern infrastructure to support their industries. At one point, Lincoln even offered to allow the South to keep their slaves if the tariffs continued to be paid. The South wasn't agreeable and the rest is history.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
When it comes to historic accuracy, most white people did not have ancestors who were part of the educated and well to do classes who are so often the main characters of the classics of English literature. I come from farmers and factory workers but I feel the classics (both English language and otherwise), are my own and I wish nonwhites in America would feel the same.
That we do not present Western culture and history as available to all is a shame and that people go even farther and teach non- Anglo kids to feel separate from their cultural identity as Americans is a big mistake. We need as many Americans to buy into the overall legacy of America as possible. That parts of that legacy are regrettable cannot be allowed to blind us to the many positive things we have done and can continue to do by building on our past accomplishments.
Let me add that as for actual revisionism where people try to claim unfactual things such as members of the European aristocracy looking and being black hundreds of years ago, I have no use for it at all. It is one thing for nonwhite actors to play white people in Shakespeare and quite another to claim there were lots of blacks in England during Shakespeare's time.Replies: @AndrewR
We wuz kangz
I dunno. The upper reaches of pop culture in the past, e.g., West Side Story, were not all that straight.
It made the Rogers and Hammerstein sing-fest I attended over Thanksgiving, unwatchable: The black homosexual singer chasing the tenor around stage for two hours. I watched the harpist the whole time, even though she was wearing a face-diaper.
Old Prude's mother recently attended a show of Elf and had to experience the same kind of over the top Pride.
Let's update Mr. Anon's comment: Nowadays, they wreck everything they touch.
I think that characterizing Rowling as a nice lady is a bit of a stretch.
From all accounts the primary reason for the success of the movies was the savageness with which she attacked anybody who strayed from her vision.
I have enjoyed her fuck you approach to all of parasites in the publishing world who have created nothing.
In some places, for now.
In an organic society that could continue–this here, that there.
But under minoritarianism, it’s minority interest uber alles. And the super-state’s primary job–screw protection from invasion or rule-of-law–is to be out there busybodying every human-interaction to harass normal white people for minority “benefit”. Anything that remains whitebreadish will eventually be ferreted out and subject to abuse.
I didn’t see the link Jimbo but I was definitely thinking of that knitting-world soap opera as a prime example when making my keenly insightful comment!
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristy-glass-and-the-racism-drama-unraveling-the-knitting-world
It’s popular the world over. My wife loves Margaret Mitchell’s novel. She read it, translated into Hungarian, when she was a teenager. She doesn’t care for the movie.
Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil think in another ten years they are going to get a surgically implanted brain expansion pack and have a 280 IQ.Replies: @Jack D
A long time ago is not today. Today they have tools like surgical robots and MRI and 3D models so that they can work more delicately and do less damage.
That being said, no one has brain surgery for fun. Whatever is going on there is probably going to kill you or severely disable you absent the surgery, so the question is not whether you are going to be back to 100% normal after the surgery (and some people do make very nice recoveries after a period of rehab and live a full life) but whether you are going to be better off than you would have been without the surgery. And the answer in most cases is yes (or else they would just tell you that it’s inoperable). By the time they roll you into the operating room, “being the same” is already not on the table.
Like Shakespeare, it was better in the original Hungarian. The English translation in the movie does not do it justice.
Yes, but they were closeted. At least as far as middle America was concerned. I assume a lot of people in the entertainment World knew the score.
It’s a bit like Jewish cuisine.
“Not all that straight” I wouldn’t mind. “In your face” is what we have now. Repellant.
It made the Rogers and Hammerstein sing-fest I attended over Thanksgiving, unwatchable: The black homosexual singer chasing the tenor around stage for two hours. I watched the harpist the whole time, even though she was wearing a face-diaper.
Old Prude’s mother recently attended a show of Elf and had to experience the same kind of over the top Pride.
Let’s update Mr. Anon’s comment: Nowadays, they wreck everything they touch.
I recall liking the movie GWTW. I read the book this year. Then I watched the movie again. The movie shrank to insignificance next to the novel. I don’t think I’ll watch the movie another time, not because its a bad movie, but because it is such thin gruel – such a disapointment – next to the book.
Same thing with War and Peace.
It’s a wonder Movies have taken a premier spot in our culture, when these examples demonstrate what a weak and shallow dramatic medium they actually are (compared to a well-written novel).
You are absolutely right. Jack has to focus on Nazis, you know, because he can’t admit that his own kind brought forth the same shit. No, it has to be those evil Germans, always. He even has to write me a friendly lecture to that effect, as if I don’t know the origin of the fucking Volkswagen.
Thank you, BTW. This was my wife’s entire point. The movie simply is not as good and full as the novel.
Jack D., to his fault, made fun of this.
It is a common, and generally well-agreed-upon concept that the movie is almost never as good as the book, whatever language you happen to have read the book in.
The simple fact that Gone with the Wind was even translated into Hungarian, during their communist rule, even, and that a teenager way over there (my future wife) would bother to read it, and that she would then hold it as one of her favorite books thereafter, speaks, as the saying goes, “volumes” about the book as a classic, American novel.
Simply quit watching. Or at least limit your viewing to material from before 1965. Watch without modern advertising too: a win-win.
Alternatively, there could be some old-timey Spanish approach with many names strung out and each separated by 'y'. Is that safe to suggest, with fewer appropriation Pokémon demerits, than that other Continental example using 'und'? Of course, Anglophile examples with hyphens are excluded.
Would you rather follow along with Ortega y Gasset or von Thurn und Taxis? Don't mention anyone named with a variation of Xyz-Jones.Replies: @HammerJack
Indeed. Which name to use, your father’s name or your wife’s father’s name. Such a dilemma!
Just my guess, but if this whole farrago of nonsense isn’t inspired by finding some excuse to camp it up in period outfits and have a gay old time parading around and mugging for special friends, then I’d be astonished. Is there a vast number of people dressed up in stinking rags doing all the disgusting trades described by Henry Mayhew, often said to have influenced Dickens
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Mayhew
One of those trades - the pure finders - could certainly be confident of a plentiful supply of their raw material in San Francisco these days.Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
The only person I ever knew who worked the Dickens fair played characters (beggars) who were as hideous and revolting as he could work up.
That’s N=1 but for 9 or 10 years or so. As for vast numbers I don’t know.
Ya know, Jack, I will take this opportunity to tell you what I know:
The Jewish movie business is crap. It really is carnival crap. And the American movie business is the Jewish movie business. QED.
Now, carnival fun is great fun. Even I was there. I was once a shill on the Jersey shore, where I placed a bet on a spinning wheel, and upon which I won and was awarded a big, purple, stuffed elephant.
When I brought it back to our hotel, to my 11-year-old, Seaside Heights hotel, my very-intelligent father told me, “You are are shill.”
He knew. I didn’t, because I was 12 years old.
Seaside Heights, fuck’in New Jersey.
Thank God my father’s career took us to the Rocky Mountains. Thank God!
Very-intelligent but not very-grammatical. Is this translated from Hungarian also?
I grew up not far from Seaside “Heights” ( I don’t think that the entire sandbar is more than 10 feet above sea level ). Hollywood is not like the carnival business where you have to cheat people one at a time out of their quarters, which is really hard work if you think about it. None of the carnival people I saw looked anything like Hollywood moguls, but maybe they just hid their wealth better.
Anyone can be a small time crook, but it takes real skill and talent to be a big time crook.
Seaside Heights was our last little family vacation before, thank God, we moved out of New Jersey. I took my big, purple elephant with me.
‘…I’m struggling to see anyone in the West analogous to the Roman, “Barracks Emperors,” who ascended from the military to the purple and put enough things right so the Western Empire lasted until the late 5th century.’
Yeah — but to continue the analogy, would you have been able to discern such individuals in the Rome of 230 ad, or would you have still been hoping Humpty-Dumpty was going to somehow get put back together again?
We’ve got a ways to go yet. The fun’s could be just getting started…
Dickens was evidently a rabid free-trader, whose viewpoint was anything but disinterested. "Who's going to buy our goods if they make things themselves?"
What did he have to say about his own country's abolitionists who, like their later suffragettes, were way more radical than ours?Replies: @Right_On
What did he have to say about his own country’s abolitionists?
You misunderstand. Dickens didn’t support slavery; he was simply calling out the hypocrisy of the Union side using high-sounding rhetoric about the rights of man to disguise their lust for filthy lucre.
What was worth retaining in these states?
The North had been using high tariffs on Southern goods for decades to build up Northern infrastructure to support their industries. At one point, Lincoln even offered to allow the South to keep their slaves if the tariffs continued to be paid. The South wasn’t agreeable and the rest is history.
You misunderstand. Dickens didn't support slavery; he was simply calling out the hypocrisy of the Union side using high-sounding rhetoric about the rights of man to disguise their lust for filthy lucre.What was worth retaining in these states?
The North had been using high tariffs on Southern goods for decades to build up Northern infrastructure to support their industries. At one point, Lincoln even offered to allow the South to keep their slaves if the tariffs continued to be paid. The South wasn't agreeable and the rest is history.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
So the tariffs were imposed on Negroes. What’s wrong with that? The blacker the state, the higher the cost. Fair enough.
Ralph Lauren is an American brand, not British. And English jews were banned from selling new clothes until sometime in the last half of the 19th century. Before that they could only deal in second hand clothes. Second hand clothes are discarded wealthy and middle class clothes to poorer people. So jews sold clothes to downscale British people.
Ralph Lauren clothes were very Americana incorporating some prairie cowboyish themes as well as standard east coast wealthy WASP Bergdoff Goodman Brooks Brothers J Press etc
LOL. C’mon Jack, making fun of typos is waaay beneath you.
Seaside Heights was our last little family vacation before, thank God, we moved out of New Jersey. I took my big, purple elephant with me.
A Romanian friend told me that during the Communist reign, every intellectual had a copy of GWTW. They identified with the South.
Here ya go. Worth a read if only for the WTF and LOL aspects.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristy-glass-and-the-racism-drama-unraveling-the-knitting-world
I'm not seeing anyone with his disposition in the US or the Western World.Replies: @nebulafox
You wouldn’t expect to. They were anonymous Balkan peasant-soldiers until every fabric of Roman civilization snapped in mid-200s AD. Their equivalents are probably similarly anonymous today.
Rome mixed two qualities, seemingly opposed at first glance: an unbending, fanatical tenacity, a will to overcome and succeed, and a pragmatic flexibility in doing whatever it took to keep their nation going. That’s what kept them going after disasters and crises that put an end to many a contemporary state. For all our flaws, and for all the differences between the ancient world and today, I still believe the US has both deep down. I just worry about the timing… but what can one do? You can either spend your life beating your breast with endless introspection and define yourself by your sins, or define yourself as someone who has repented, learned, come back stronger and wiser-and defined through your actions.
The top story was an apologia for the horrendous failure of Steven Spielberg's ultra-woke remake of West Side Story. After all the hype, it played to empty theaters. The vibrant reporter cheerfully assured us that the movie's dismal box-office returns were in no way a rejection of its underlying message. "Covid kept the audience away!"
Then the next piece focused on the Two-Minutes Hate campaign against the Golden Globes Awards because the International Foreign Press Association (or whatever it's called) doesn't have a single black member.
I turned the TV off after that.
Hollywood to White America: "Eat shit and die, pasty deplorables! But be sure to see our latest overhyped anti-gringo tirade masquerading as entertainment before you drop dead."Replies: @Buck Ransom, @Achmed E. Newman, @Franz, @Known Fact, @mc23, @Old Prude, @Dr. Krieger, @Wokechoke, @Wokechoke, @RadicalCenter
Good move. Now when are you going to stop paying these sick media corporations for your TV “Service”?
As comedian Dennis Miller once said, “I just got here from my home in Los Angeles, or as I like to call it The Land of Misfit Toys.”
Now that’s just not fair. Black men usually walk out on the pregnant woman at the BEGINNING.
I think the closest thing that we have now is Putin, who ascended not from the military but from the security services.
I read recently that after the USSR collapsed and he returned from Dresden, Putin worked for a while as a cab driver.
Every state in history before the Enlightenment was organized the same way. Every public meeting, association, festival, etc. began with a statement of praise for the ruler and/or the state church. Remaining non-political or non-sectarian was not an option.
It’s states that are not organized this way that are the historical anomaly.
Wat? My great grandma was born in the same year as the OK Corral incident.
Full-on Victorian. Four and less than another foot tall, could cold-cock ye and punch your lights out without drawing breath. Didn’t talk much with her, her stories were weirdly boring.
Despite NZ and the Dardanelles.
My missus still has her own g-g-ma’s wedding dress.
What is it of such importance you wish to discuss?
Lip-plates? Or neck-rings?? Never had ’em.
I have an idea a de-stimulation space - stay home and don't go to a noisy crowded fair. There were no de-stimulation places in Victorian England (unless maybe you count gaols).Replies: @Ghost of Bull Moose, @Catdog, @James J. O'Meara, @Pheasant
I dunno some of those country houses you see in sherlock holmes look pretty cosy…
As the slave owning class naturally…
if that works for you.