WCS 70: Please stop acting bewildered
w/: Musk vs Wikipedia + ESPN knee-bending + Plum jersey hang
Before a throng of Inauguration Day right-wingers, the anti-diversity billionaire gave what could be mistaken for something other than a Hitler salute, but only if you tried hard. And America’s bought media tried really, really hard. Look at when Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) guested on cable news in the wake of that historic gesture.
“What could Musk’s intention have been?” asked Sen. Cantwell, standing in the Senate hall, before CNN cameras. There was a time when such a vapid answer would have prompted a follow-up and a subsequent audience reaction commiserate to the deplorable footage.
That’s not what we’re doing now. Not for the foreseeable future. We’ve entered the portion of the historical narrative where horrible events transpire and reporting on them is gonna be marginal. The guests who aren’t invited into what’s left of America’s narrowing mainstream who will be the voices worth following.
Art by @acetroy
“You want to think it’s not happening, because otherwise you might have to do something.”
That quote comes from “When Tyranny Begins,” a short New York Times doc featuring people who watched their countries slide into dictatorship. The ways these Earthlings lost their nations hold some common threads. Hungary’s a fun one.
At as-yet-indiscernible point, the story of fascism stops being political and can only be personal.
Slowly and with plenty of rewinding, this week I’ve been watching Bernardo Bertolucci’s iconic film set in fascist Italy, The Conformist. Essays both video and print have been part of my study. And among the greatest attributes of this visually overwhelming cinematic art work is its way of playing differently for every viewer.
Having not seen The Conformist in a decade, I see its queerness far more clearly than before. The film is unchanged. I am not; I have seen some things.
This video essay from Adequate Emily helped augment my understanding of the sexual conformity aspect as explored by Bertolucci.
(Emily also adequately explains the Bertolucci’s completely unconscionable abuse on the set of Last Tango in Paris, a episode that’s kept me at a distance from his films.)
Some days I think that so many decades of White hicks listening to rap music and not having the release of saying “nigger” in front of others propelled America toward the MAGA explosion. Nigger is our most combustible word, and the Rural Christian states have accrued enough power to become a force of manipulation.
All my life this country has been split. Only the stakes and terms of expressing that division have changed. Our political future is disheartening.
Lucky for you, I’ve been marginalized for decades and still see just about all of the humor in America’s cultural margins. When Reagan was most like a king, simply having a subscription to the Village Voice or Mother Jones felt like enough to warrant federal monitoring. Consider the known criminals I’d covered and spent time with, I only could laugh. In hard times, humor will get you through. Let’s test it!
The Executive Order that freed the January 6 marauders begins by calling out 14 leaders of the Capitol takeover. “Fourteen Words” is also a White supremacy motto about saving the future for White babies.
Isn’t it hilarious that the President of the United States just did this, in front of cameras, and the, um… coincidence isn’t a big conversation topic?
The darkest of humor.
Scenes from a Tacoma
weight-loss walking month
Congrats to Fearless-Night8553 for documenting the city during his winter weight-loss strolls.
Like what I’m doing? Feel free to contribute to my travel budget.
The Full Herb Caen
Let’s face it, Senator Joanie Ernst might be the resistance’s leading edge right now…
FD Signifier’s assertion that Drake sued Universal to keep Kendrick from performing “Not Like Us” at The Super Bowl rings true…
Vallejo’s CC Sabathia was voted into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame on Tuesday, along with the great Mariner Ichiro Suzuki and Astros reliever Billy Wagoner…
This week Paul Scheer said that The Social Network can be viewed as a horror genre origin film, and the idea has posted up in the lane that is my mind…
An IRS account searched my LinkedIn page last week. I’m concerned…
You never hear about college athletes being declared academically ineligible anymore. Guess we’re past pretending…
Americans won’t know to miss the free press because most never understood journalism and its function…
The rapists are running the asylum…
10 ESPN’s Megacast foists 4547 onto national championship game viewers
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