So yesterday comedian Jen Kirkman posted a little joke on Twitter, as comedians are wont to do.
Before we look at what happened after she posted this Tweet (which has now been deleted), let me just say a couple of things about the Tweet itself.
Jen Kirkman does not actually “LIKE that Hillary has murdered a lot of people,” in part because she (Kirkman) does not LIKE murder and in part because she does not believe that Hillary has, in fact, murdered a lot of people.
The joke is a clear reference to the right-wing Clinton-haters who have been trying their best, for the last quarter century, to convince the world that Bill and Hillary have been secretly knocking off their political enemies, mob style, racking up a CLINTON BODY COUNT that is now said to number 48.
In other words, the joke is not actually a joke about murder. It s a joke about the right-wing idiots who think that Hillary goes around offing people like some pastel-pantsuited Tony Soprano.
[UPDATE 8/5 Kirkman herself made clear that’s what she meant in a Tweet today.]
Unfortunately, many of those who encountered Kirkman’s Tweet on Twitter — a large number of whom seem to be former Bernie Sanders supporters who’ve gone over the Green Party’s Jill Stein — have kind of missed the point just a little, misreading it as some sort of creepy celebration of drones murdering children in Afghanistan, or something.
And instead of stopping for a second to ask themselves, “wait, is this comedian lady who does those hilarious yet disarmingly earnest segments on Drunk History really mocking or even advocating the murder of children, why would she do that, that can’t be right” many of these people decided to advocate the murder of her.
Here are a small fraction of the Tweets sent to her.
After Kirkman noted that she would be handing the operation of her Twitter account to someone else because she was tired of reading all the death threats, some of her Twitter, er, critics, did little victory dances of sorts.
And yes, that last dude is using a photo of a young Josef Stalin as his avatar. You know, the Russian dictator whose actual non-fictional not-a-joke STALIN BODY COUNT added up to something close to 20 million.
Someone even took the anti-Kirkman struggle to Wikipedia.
https://twitter.com/lastlivingrose/status/761283232260362240
The people bombarding Kirkman with threats and abuse aren’t Trump fans. They aren’t Trump fans pretending to be BernieBros. If you don’t believe me, go look at the accounts of the people whose Tweets I quoted above, or go directly to @JenKirkman’s mentions now, where you can find hundreds if not thousands more Tweets like this.
These are people who, in many instances, consider themselves progressives, radicals, anarchists, “revolutionaries.” These are, in more than a few cases, proud supporters of Jill Stein, a woman whose presence in the race makes it all that much harder to defeat the unhinged Muslim-hating racist Donald Trump. That strikes me as something of an irony.
In Milan Kundera’s The Joke, set in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, a young Czech intellectual and Communist Party member is tossed from the party and sent to work in the mines after he jokingly writes “long live Trotsky” on a postcard.
These days, we’ve got Twitter for that.
NOTE 8/5: Just a reminder for new commenters: defending or excusing harassment is against the comment policy here. I’ve been lax on bans in this thread so far but that’s over now.
@cabezoney
@David Futrelle
Cabezoney:
Any time you start out a phrase with “I’m not ___ but…” you’re about to be whatever you just claimed you weren’t and you should stop. This is a textbook case. I would hope you feel bad about it, but I won’t hold my breath.
Nothing says someone arguing in good faith like mocking the need for safety. Bye, Felicia.
@Lea
And to what extent does a dozen or so idiots on twitter, reflect the totality of the divide among non-republicans on the matter of presidential candidates?
@Viscaria:
Do I add the Woman Card or subtract it? I guess this proves what they say about women not being able to do math!
(note: I am also a fan of sarcasm)
I don’t think I’ve seen this big an influx of trolls in such a short span of time since the early days of gamergate.
Funny how the harassment and threatening of women seems to draw so much apologia and victim blaming.
Memo to confused drive by trolls:
Nobody here is actually mad if someone is offended by Kirkman’s jokes. I personally have a high tolerance for dark gallows type of humor and in fact find it cathartic (big Todd Solondz movie fan here), but understand that others feel differently.
The thing we have a problem with is the harassment, the threats, and the misogynistic slurs. None of those thing exemplify progressive ideals and I would love if everyone who engages or apologizes for this behavior would get the fuck out the movement because you are not helping.
@Grogepi
I have now read every comment Lea has left in this thread 3 times, and I have absolutely no clue what you’re referring to.
You know, this sentence makes me feel a little bit better because it indicates 4/8 chan trollery. All cabezoney needs now is an anime avatar and zie’s good to go!
Viscaria,
And was it really only a dozen people on twitter harassing Kirkman? Because there’s a dozen that have come here just to defend it.
Yeah, I don’t find the joke particularly funny. But then, when I’m reading social media and I see someone say s joke that I don’t find funny, I keep scrolling. If I see someone say something awful and I don’t think it’s a joke, I might call them out on it and I might even get angry. But I’m not going to wish or threaten violence because that’s a terrible thing to do no matter who it is or what they said. That’s the difference.
@Viscaria
I made a comment regarding the contentious shouting-match between non-republicans and how poorly the level of discourse is among those divided on the issue of the probable HRC presidency.
Lea responded with something tangentially related.
I returned to my original topic with a question.
It’s called discourse.
I don’t see how Hilary specifically is responsible for those deaths? I mean, she’s a part of the system that caused those deaths, and by that measure is indeed complicit in it, but with my admittedly limited grasp on American politics, I’m fairly sure that Hilary was never in a position to approve a war or military action? That’s more the realm of the president and the defense department, isn’t it?
Why is it that Hilary, specifically, is heaped with all the blame for those deaths, instead of Obama and the rest of the US government/military complex? I’m honestly asking, as I said before, I’m not really boned up on American politics (I’m only marginally more aware of Canadian politics, and that’s my own country’s stuff.)
Changing gears!
For a moment I was under the impression that this post was intended to evoke MORE sympathy for Jen Kirkman, not to be a dumbass attempt at a gotcha of “hah! Of course these feminists will find the harassment and sending of rape threats to a MAN to be a joke!”. (We really, really don’t, this site and its members greatly disprove of threats of all stripes, against people of any gender.)
Because, really, I’ve never seen a dude on twitter endure the same volume, intensity, and vitriolic-ness of harassment that women like Anita Sarkeesian have had to put up with. I’m under the impression that if it did happen, the dude would be taken more seriousy than a woman would, since people seem to be predisposed to thinking that we silly wimmens are just blowing things out of proportion when we talk about the issues we face, even when we have reams and reams of evidence proving otherwise.
I thought the original joke was hilarious, because I’m constantly tweeted at by people like Lilly who take it as an undisputed article of faith that Hillary personally droned people when she was Secretary of State, and is a “war hawk” who will start a war immediately after taking office, because she just can’t get enough of it. I imagine Ms. Kirkman has also met these folks and was responding to that general trend, and it cracked me up.
@Dave (not you, Futrelle)
When you get misogynistic bile and death threats aimed at you, yes, you are completely innocent. There’s a ‘good guy’ and a ‘bad guy’. The sexist murderjerkers are the ‘bad guys’, PERIOD
It is quite telling that you all seem to believe that only American death toll counts. Apart from conspiracy theories, yes, Hillary Clinton and policies she endorsed and helped implement, and the last US government, like the one before, has a huge number of murders of innocent civilians, often children, on their hands and heads. They just call them potential terrorists, and that’s that.
How telling that you didn’t even consider that perhaps the murders Clinton – and Obama, by the way – is accused of might be of us brown folks outside of the US! One of the tweets references children. Do you think that refers to political opponents, or children in the Middle-East and parts of Asia?
Oh, nothing justifies death threats to somebody who voices an opinion, stupid and shitty though the opinion is, uninformed as the opinion is, but the Twit who tweeted that deserves to be roundly condemned for not considering our lives real lives.
And so do all of you.
Have fun in your safe and secure little bubbles – we face all the problems you do, plus the threat of being bombed while going for a damn funeral caused by your drones in the first place. But no, that’s not murder, and the Secretary of State is not complicit, right?
You need a lesson in compassion that doesn’t require the victims to be close to home to be considered real.
Quoting: “These are people who, in many instances, consider themselves progressives, radicals, anarchists, “revolutionaries.” These are, in more than a few cases, proud supporters of Jill Stein, a woman whose presence in the race makes it all that much harder to defeat the unhinged Muslim-hating racist Donald Trump. That strikes me as something of an irony.”
Here’s the irony.
Democrats get to legitimately whine about third parties in the race taking their votes the minute the Democratic Party’s platform, approved at convention, includes a plank calling for strong, real electoral reform. Not a minute sooner. No plank, just zip it, because the Democrats and GOP are both complicit in continuing our awful voting system that leads to this even being an issue.
That means no first-past-the-post elections, anywhere, nationwide, certainly not federally. It means the House of Representatives and state legislatures elected by proportional representation, so everyone’s vote counts. And the President, Senate, governors, by IRV or some similar scheme to avoid “spoilers” being a fact of life.
You don’t get to whine about “spoiler” votes when your party platform does not do anything about the glaring, obvious mathematical problem that leads to votes for third parties being “spoilers”. I can’t vote Green and transfer my vote to a Democrat who could win, even if I wanted to.
Oh, and gender equity? Guess where there are more women in parliament than almost anywhere in the world. That’s right, Sweden. They don’t even have gender quotas by law. Guess what they do have. It’s proportional representation. The parties had to ensure equity on their own in order to compete for women’s votes because no party owns anyone’s vote in Sweden. There is no “lesser of two evils”.
Parts of the left infested with misogyny? Who could even imagine such a thing? [Loosens corset]
Progressives have had huge problems with women for decades – I’ve personally watched so many young radical women driven out of left wing politics by the tolerance of rampant sexism that I’m surprised anyone tries to deny it. A big cause is the bizarre belief that if you’re on the ‘good’ side of political issues then you can’t be doing anything wrong along any other axis. Sexism is something conservatives do, not us!
In this case, though, I’m too lazy to distinguish between those who walk and quack like chan ops from actual chan ops. Try elsewhere, centipedes.
I find it very hard to believe that the hardcore Hillary haters aren’t aware of the conspiracy theories against her. They’re not misunderstanding the joke, they’re just being obtuse so they have an excuse to rail away on their favorite topic.
Ah, well, it’s not the best joke, even in context. It’s not funny in a ha-ha way, or funny in an ironic way, or anything like that. Not that she deserves the harassment, it’s just, you know, a shitty joke.
That is…my two cents for this thread. I’ll be going now. Peace.
A stern note to the CIA and State Department informing them of this will correct their misunderstanding.
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/10/fbi_criminal_investigation_emails_clinton_approved_cia_drone_assassinations_with_her_cellphone_report_says/
She’s clarified the comments to explicitly included dead Afghans (in tweets later deleted), so it’s hard not to see this “joke”, and subsequent op-ed as centring white womanhood over the bodies of PoC.
I mean, if we want to talk about historical progressive misogyny we wouldn’t really want to leave out historical progressive racism, concerned as it is with strategic deployment of white woman as bearer of the race’s vitality.
But that’s just my priorities: when faced with “WoC who are taking umbrage at a particularly terrible joke that seems to be explicitly mocking their pain and casting their pain as solely the domain of berniebros” vs. “a white comedian has been rude to online”, I chose the former.
I mean, if you’re willing to give the white comedian the “this is obviously just sarcasm” defence in response to WoC calling them out on it, I don’t really see how you are centring victims at all, but you do you
You made a comment that was dismissive towards the reality of online abuse.
Lea called you out.
You tried to dismiss this.
Its called being disingenuous.
@Lilly
I’m not sure I see what the problem is meant to be. Warnings of drone strikes, that had already been ordered, were sent to diplomats on the ground (Clinton was in charge of diplomats, so of course she’d be briefed). Presumably, if those diplomats and/or Clinton told the strikers to abort the mission, they would’ve, seeing as aiding and protecting diplomats is a major objective for the military. The story doesn’t say she ordered the strikes, just that she allowed them to happen. So the problem is that she didn’t overrule the President or the military enough, after they’d already decided to strike? I mean, sure, if that’s your hill. Unless I missed something…
Also Ben Norton is one of those ‘system is rigged’ idiots, so grain of salt on all that
@Jack
1st time ever, clicked your name. Is that Matthew Gray Gubler!? I adore him! Criminal minds marathons are the bestest
I’m a long-time reader of this blog and have always enjoyed David’s scathing and witty takedowns of online misogyny. However, when it comes to his comments on the US presidential election he’s so often miles off target that it’s becoming hard to justify continuing to read this otherwise excellent blog. Donald Trump is a vile fascist, no doubt. Unlike Hilary Clinton, Donald Trump has yet to launch a war that leaves thousands maimed and dead.
I find it shocking that Muslim and Arab lives seem so worthless to some of those commenting here. As someone resident in Palestine/Israel, I am confronted every day by the consequences of HC’s tenure as Sec. of State. Trump’s racism is not an good enough excuse to support the enormous amount of human suffering HC has already caused, and will continue to cause as president. Clinton’s complete disregard for the lives of Arabs and Muslims is on par, if not greater than Trump’s and has been followed through with shrapnel, high explosives, bombs and bullets.
No one should be threatened with rape or death, but anyone who finds Clinton’s string of war crimes even remotely amusing should taking a long hard look at themselves, and maybe even spend some time in the Middle East. Ask people here if they find the prospect of the next rain of death being sent by a woman to be empowering or historic.
http://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/08/02/hillary-clinton-embodiment-liberalism-not-feminism/
Both cabezoney and the drive-by commenter known as “Dave” have used the phrase “getting owned” (in reference to Jen Kirkman’s Twitter behavior). I vote that this automatically disqualifies them from any grown-up discourse, please.
the humorless, faux-outraged lefty-fascists on this thread see lack all self-awareness and serve only to underscore the point of the article.