Great TGIF column! The bestest since Nellie left on Maternity leave. I wish I could disagree on something so that I could write a longer comment, but you were spot on. Thanks.
As an aside, liberals call everybody they disagree with a fascist or if the can't spell that, a Nazi.
It’s a mystery why everyone seems to think Fascism is a right wing construct. Mussolini was a Socialist as was Hitler. In Germany the name Nazi stems from The National Socialist German Workers' Party. Italy is a Socialist country. It’s an undefinable term, neither right wing nor left wing.
And in case anyone wants to see how an accusation of racism can be manufactured and hyped on twitter, it is worth reading this leaked letter to the Society of Authors from Kate Clanchy who was accused of racism and lost a great proportion of her livelihood. Sir Philip Pullman ended up resigning as president of the SoA because of the same sorts of accusations. Clanchy hired a team of private investigators to forensically go through the tweets -- it turns out that it was not her or Pullman (or indeed anyone connected to them) who was responsible for the tweet but a far right bot who picked up on the word 'whiteness' in the main accuser's tweet. Rather jaw-dropping. https://esoterichistrionics.substack.com/p/the-soa-is-not-okay
Just asking: why is it 'far-right' to want to remain masters in your own country? Most of us have doors on our living spaces do we not? And we lock them and we decide who may enter and who may not, is that not so? Is that 'far-right'? Same with one's country -- every country has the right to control who enters it, and who is welcome and who is not. This is not 'far-right' it's just ... common sense.
Word salad Kamala is a true bubblehead in every sense of the word.
Lizzo is talented, but she is obese and won’t live too long, reality doesn’t give a crap about being “body positive”.
Was in Denver for 5 days for a technical conference, first time since 2005. I had looked forward to it but the place has fallen apart, after a short period most ended up staying in the hotel or taking an Uber everywhere.
Not sanfrancisco but catching up I think. It’s likely because Colorado led in decriminalization, they pulled in all these types from surrounding states.
But there is no downside to drug availability, I hear.
Mohela somehow wound up as my student loan servicer, which is something I still don’t understand many years later. When I first tried to pay them off online, they showed up as “paused” for a couple of weeks before being restarted and accruing interest. When I emailed to ask why, they gave some nonsense about how my routing number was wrong, even though I had somehow been paying electronically through that account for years. It took threatening to sue to get my payoff to go through. Just a dumb game that got them an extra couple of dollars in interest.
This, by the way, is my way of humblebragging about paying my student loans off within 5 years of graduation. Can’t say it’s as simple as that, though. I spent a semester student teaching in a low income school, which got me two education awards from Americorps totaling about $2500, then spent five years teaching in low income schools, which gave me $5k forgiveness through the public service loan forgiveness program. Didn’t do it on my own. But mohela is shady as hell.
Yup. Just as silly. Iirc, weren't those pins and razors supposed to have been put there by the Moonies? My home town offered to X-ray halloween candy. Pretty sure nothing was ever found. Anyway, the DEA's "they're marketing this to kids" shows just how out of touch they are.
1) Kids would be one time customers.
2) Dead kids are a spectacular way to draw attention to an illicit business.
3) Colors are branding efforts like Mitsubishi symbols stamped on E tabs twenty years ago.
I have a distinct memory of halloween in, like 2003 where we were eating candy while my mom had a news special on the needles and razorblades playing ! And I was shoving mini snickers in my face like nobody's business. I don't remember anyone mentioning the moonies, but I was trick or treating in SC and they haven't really made an appearance there so far. I don't have kids but good god this has got to be a crazy time to try and raise them- and I'm sure there's a bit of truth in this somewhere and I get that people want to be safe but I overwhelmingly don't think drug dealers are slipping fentanyl to kids across the country
Say what you will about "icky woke socialist lefty" New York Times, it was the only mainstream medium to publish a story deeply critical of the killer drones the Left launched to destroy the film UnRedacted. Because of the NYT's efforts, I will seek out the film to watch; it sounds remarkable.
As for the nattering nabobs of Wokeland who jumped all over this filmmaker because she's white, they are contemptible. Abigail Disney should be ashamed of her groveling--she loved the film until the "critics" landed? Real profile in courage, huh? She has the guts of a mouse, and not the one that Walt built.
And this gem: “When I, a practicing Muslim woman, say that this film is problematic,” wrote Jude Chehab, a Lebanese American documentarian, “my voice should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isn’t. Point blank.”
What a racist pile of crap, Jude Chehab. Your voice counts more only if you did the job better, and vice versa; any other standard is racist. The story, not the skin tone of the person who told it, is the only thing that matters. In this case, you're not even in the horse race; that documentarian you so haughtily dismiss as a mere "white woman" invested years of her life and most of her money winning access to those jihadist prisoners, earning their trust, filming their stories, making a film that was so good it won plaudits at Sundance . . . well, until Identity Warriors launched their Wokefire missiles at the documentarian and Sundance ran like a sissypants . . . and doing journalism right.
She did nothing wrong. Nothing. I don't have to be a serial killer to write crime novels--I'm not and I do--and this filmmaker did not have to be a Marginalized Womyx Of Color (tm) to report and tell her story.
Woke critics who insist they could have done a better job? You didn't. Shut up.
Author: "For mainstream American commentators, the main point of debate seems to be whether or not Meloni is a fascist. (For much of this crowd, everything and everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders is a fascist.)"
The parenthetical comment would be funny if it wasn't so sadly true.
TGIF could reasonably be relabeled TGIO, thank God it's over. That's how I felt about after reading the week's TGIF edition. The strained attempt to sound conventional came off to me as scatterbrained.
Great TGIF column! The bestest since Nellie left on Maternity leave. I wish I could disagree on something so that I could write a longer comment, but you were spot on. Thanks.
As an aside, liberals call everybody they disagree with a fascist or if the can't spell that, a Nazi.
It’s a mystery why everyone seems to think Fascism is a right wing construct. Mussolini was a Socialist as was Hitler. In Germany the name Nazi stems from The National Socialist German Workers' Party. Italy is a Socialist country. It’s an undefinable term, neither right wing nor left wing.
Oh, and anyone know when Nellie is back?
And in case anyone wants to see how an accusation of racism can be manufactured and hyped on twitter, it is worth reading this leaked letter to the Society of Authors from Kate Clanchy who was accused of racism and lost a great proportion of her livelihood. Sir Philip Pullman ended up resigning as president of the SoA because of the same sorts of accusations. Clanchy hired a team of private investigators to forensically go through the tweets -- it turns out that it was not her or Pullman (or indeed anyone connected to them) who was responsible for the tweet but a far right bot who picked up on the word 'whiteness' in the main accuser's tweet. Rather jaw-dropping. https://esoterichistrionics.substack.com/p/the-soa-is-not-okay
Well done, Kat. You did Nellie proud. Great round-up.
"for the far-right Sweden Democrats"
Just asking: why is it 'far-right' to want to remain masters in your own country? Most of us have doors on our living spaces do we not? And we lock them and we decide who may enter and who may not, is that not so? Is that 'far-right'? Same with one's country -- every country has the right to control who enters it, and who is welcome and who is not. This is not 'far-right' it's just ... common sense.
Excellent post!!
Word salad Kamala is a true bubblehead in every sense of the word.
Lizzo is talented, but she is obese and won’t live too long, reality doesn’t give a crap about being “body positive”.
Was in Denver for 5 days for a technical conference, first time since 2005. I had looked forward to it but the place has fallen apart, after a short period most ended up staying in the hotel or taking an Uber everywhere.
Not sanfrancisco but catching up I think. It’s likely because Colorado led in decriminalization, they pulled in all these types from surrounding states.
But there is no downside to drug availability, I hear.
Mohela somehow wound up as my student loan servicer, which is something I still don’t understand many years later. When I first tried to pay them off online, they showed up as “paused” for a couple of weeks before being restarted and accruing interest. When I emailed to ask why, they gave some nonsense about how my routing number was wrong, even though I had somehow been paying electronically through that account for years. It took threatening to sue to get my payoff to go through. Just a dumb game that got them an extra couple of dollars in interest.
This, by the way, is my way of humblebragging about paying my student loans off within 5 years of graduation. Can’t say it’s as simple as that, though. I spent a semester student teaching in a low income school, which got me two education awards from Americorps totaling about $2500, then spent five years teaching in low income schools, which gave me $5k forgiveness through the public service loan forgiveness program. Didn’t do it on my own. But mohela is shady as hell.
Am I the only one who got flashbacks to "needles in candy bars, razorblades in apples" at the rainbow fentanyl bit?
Yup. Just as silly. Iirc, weren't those pins and razors supposed to have been put there by the Moonies? My home town offered to X-ray halloween candy. Pretty sure nothing was ever found. Anyway, the DEA's "they're marketing this to kids" shows just how out of touch they are.
1) Kids would be one time customers.
2) Dead kids are a spectacular way to draw attention to an illicit business.
3) Colors are branding efforts like Mitsubishi symbols stamped on E tabs twenty years ago.
I have a distinct memory of halloween in, like 2003 where we were eating candy while my mom had a news special on the needles and razorblades playing ! And I was shoving mini snickers in my face like nobody's business. I don't remember anyone mentioning the moonies, but I was trick or treating in SC and they haven't really made an appearance there so far. I don't have kids but good god this has got to be a crazy time to try and raise them- and I'm sure there's a bit of truth in this somewhere and I get that people want to be safe but I overwhelmingly don't think drug dealers are slipping fentanyl to kids across the country
The Moonies were much more of a 70s thing but probably smart enough not to go get their asses kicked in SC 😉
I like this Kat lady who did the rundown. She’s good at this.
Me, too. Good writing and subjects.
Say what you will about "icky woke socialist lefty" New York Times, it was the only mainstream medium to publish a story deeply critical of the killer drones the Left launched to destroy the film UnRedacted. Because of the NYT's efforts, I will seek out the film to watch; it sounds remarkable.
As for the nattering nabobs of Wokeland who jumped all over this filmmaker because she's white, they are contemptible. Abigail Disney should be ashamed of her groveling--she loved the film until the "critics" landed? Real profile in courage, huh? She has the guts of a mouse, and not the one that Walt built.
And this gem: “When I, a practicing Muslim woman, say that this film is problematic,” wrote Jude Chehab, a Lebanese American documentarian, “my voice should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isn’t. Point blank.”
What a racist pile of crap, Jude Chehab. Your voice counts more only if you did the job better, and vice versa; any other standard is racist. The story, not the skin tone of the person who told it, is the only thing that matters. In this case, you're not even in the horse race; that documentarian you so haughtily dismiss as a mere "white woman" invested years of her life and most of her money winning access to those jihadist prisoners, earning their trust, filming their stories, making a film that was so good it won plaudits at Sundance . . . well, until Identity Warriors launched their Wokefire missiles at the documentarian and Sundance ran like a sissypants . . . and doing journalism right.
She did nothing wrong. Nothing. I don't have to be a serial killer to write crime novels--I'm not and I do--and this filmmaker did not have to be a Marginalized Womyx Of Color (tm) to report and tell her story.
Woke critics who insist they could have done a better job? You didn't. Shut up.
Author: "For mainstream American commentators, the main point of debate seems to be whether or not Meloni is a fascist. (For much of this crowd, everything and everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders is a fascist.)"
The parenthetical comment would be funny if it wasn't so sadly true.
Good job, Kat! And I hear on The Fifth Column that Nellie and Bari's baby has arrived! Congratulations!
;-) Theses days it’s hard to tell
great work
TGIF could reasonably be relabeled TGIO, thank God it's over. That's how I felt about after reading the week's TGIF edition. The strained attempt to sound conventional came off to me as scatterbrained.