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.
The people saying that she deserves harassment because of her jokes should really think about being quiet. Ridiculous.
You can point out that she acted horribly (because she did) and point out that she was harassed horribly (because she was) without saying that one deserves the other. That is disgusting and needs to stop.
I’d also like to point out that the harassment is way, way worse than stupid jokes. Anyone who thinks otherwise also needs to back off from progressive movements.
Let’s also stop with the claims that Hillary is evil, or a war monger, or whatever. It is no better to do this than the BernieBros. She’s left wing and progressive and better than Trump.
I wish I could dig far enough back in my own posting history elsewhere to find some of the snarky comments I made. Mostly they’ve been about Hillary Clinton personally booting soldiers off planes over Iraq, taking the helmets off their heads so they would be more vulnerable and how she personally overthrew the entire US congress and subsequently appointed herself Queen of the Military in order to personally see to it she would kill as many US soldiers in foreign wars as possible. You know, like people do.
Or maybe, just maybe, she’s a single human being who was in a tough situation and did what she thought was best. And maybe, MAYBE, there are other human beings who had a lot more personal hand in American and foreign deaths than a single senator and secretary of state ever could. But then I remember that she’s a WOMAN who wants to be PRESIDENT and therefore every terrible thing she was in any kind of power anywhere at any time for is her fault.
But you know what the worst part is? Even if every single hyperbolic comment I made up was 100% factual it still wouldn’t justify leveling threats of harm, death or rape at her or her supporters.
Actually, I’d like to emphasise if I may, make it shorter:
Nothing Jem does makes it acceptable to harass her. Nothing. No joke could possibly make it acceptable.
I’d also like to add that I’m surprised that there are a few people here and elsewhere who, while claiming to be left wing and liberal, believe the lies, falsehoods and twisting of facts about Hillary Clinton. People saying she’s responsible for tonnes of deaths is disgusting and betrays an utter lack of understanding of actual politics.
I agree that Jen’s jokes should never have been made as they are horrible and link in to societal pressures. Harrassment because of these jokes is still very evil. I liked what kupo said particularly too.
Also, mocking the concept of safe spaces? Cabezoney has to be a 4channer or something, right?
I suppose that comment didn’t turn out to be shorter after all…
Welp, if I hadn’t already quit the Green Party and re-joined the DP, this would have been what pushed me out. Jen Kirkman is a national fucking treasure. “My CHEESY BREAD… that I BROUGHT” gets quoted on the reg in my circle.
@nparker : are you french or have french as a maternal language by any chance ?
“Alcoholism is a mental illness, and alcoholics are more violent than average, so mentally ill people are more violent”.
Sometime I have actual hatred to ignorant know-it-all that I know IRL.
I hear the baying of the hounds. They pass under my window, and their call echoes back to me from over the hill.
In the morning, the news comes, affirming what I know implicitly to be the cause of the midnight baying: A woman opened her mouth on Twitter.
Well I’m a Green voter. Although, I must admit that I don’t know much about the American greens. But I can’t help but thinkings that there is a bit of irrational hate against the greens because of rigid old ideas.
Can any US nationals, or even anyone with some knowledge on the subject, tell me why they either object to or perhaps even support the greens?
This whole thing reminds me of a woman I followed on twitter who made a kind of shitty comment when that kid got attacked by the alligator at Disney. It was a week with a lot of black death in the news and she basically was saying she didn’t have the spoons to be outraged over the kid when there was all this other shit happening. It was a bit crass, but she was threatened, doxxed, chased off twitter, and fired from her job. I see dudebros saying shit much worse than what she said, what this comedian said in a daily basis…and they are not even joking! Rarely if ever done see them get dragged like women do. So sick of the bullshit.
@Pol
Wrong thread, and we’ve already answered that in the right thread*.
Short version: I don’t have any problem with the Greens as a whole, but Stein specifically is a ridiculous crackpot. She’s an anti-vaxxer who thinks wifi signals eat brains like a friggin’ zombie.
*I’m generously assuming that you’re not just trying to derail despite your history of trolling.
@ Ohlmann
I’m afraid not. I speak a little French from doing French for my GCSEs, but I’m not very good!
@boobury
Uh, that’s horrible. It also goes to show that these harassers don’t really care about the boy in your example at all, they just want an excuse to unleash their bile.
Also it proves once again that it seems to be one rule for women and one rule for men- men are allowed to make mistakes and we’re supposed to fawn over them if they do, but when a woman makes a mistake they get subjected to horrible stuff that no circumstances could justify.
@Pol : the article is about the antics of some american green supporters.
To give an example of how a “green” party can go wrong, I would tale tjhe french green party. (note that I talk of the FRENCH one, not the american one, so the issues with the american one are likely different)
It’s a party who have very intense, hateful turf wars between its numerous sub factions, and the amount of sheer vitriol that are exchanged is insane. I have personaly seen abuses similar to the one lobbed to the target of this articles in emails destined to one of the party leader. And written by other green militant, I mean.
There’s a bunch of other problems. The party often tend to more be a communist party with a green layer, which muddy its position and make some of its declaration strange in the eye of people not in the known.
It’s also one of the party who is the most infamous about trying to find cozy electoral position for its members. As in, they regulary claim several senators and/or delegate (“député”) in unloseable electoral district to secure their alliances with the Socialist party, and then use them as reward position for their top brass, who aren’t localy implanted but see their positions as they own.
@Pol
I used to support the Green party but lately they’ve been spouting a lot of anti-science nonsense. Not sure what that has to do with a woman getting death threats on twitter, though. Care to share your reasoning for asking that in this thread?
@sfhc
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll take a look at that thread.
And I do quite disagree with anti-vaxxers. So if Jill Stein is one of them, then she really needs to get a clue.
She would be bringing a bad name to The Greens if she were anti-science.
I can’t help but notice that there are no actual death threats shown in this article. Please tell me you haven’t lied or exaggerated the facts of this case to prop up your argument.
One other thing: your entire blog is devoted to calling out bad behavior, but you’ve defended Kirkman because she’s on “your team” – i.e. she’s an affluent white woman who shares your politics. It’s hypocritical to fully embrace callout culture but immediately go to “jeez, lighten up, IT’S JUST A JOKE” as soon as someone calls your team out. Isn’t that what the bigots always say? Isn’t that the kind of thing you don’t take as a valid excuse? By your own rules she has privilege over the people she is joking about, and is “punching down” instead of punching up. If you want anyone to take you seriously you need to be consistent, not just a cheerleader for your own cultural group.
My personal issue with the Greens in the US at the moment is that they’re most active when they’re least effective: during the presidential elections.
The US voting system mathematically does not support third-party candidates, and structurally opposes them. We need to change the voting system before the Green party has a chance in the federal election, and that needs to happen between election cycles, not during them.
Neither Nader nor Stein appear willing to accept this. Were they willing to accept there was zero chance of winning the presidency, they could use their campaign as a way to encourage the kind of electoral system changes that would make them viable, instead of acting as spoiler candidates to their closest ideological allies.
The drone strike programs date back to W. Obama certainly expanded them, as he drew down boots on the ground. Yet in this thread, plenty of folks have blamed it on Clinton. Well, Bush and Obama aren’t running for election.
The realistic choice is Clinton or Trump. Stein will not get elected, and she may split the vote enough that Trump wins.
There’s no reason to believe that Trump will curtail the drone programs. He couldn’t grasp why he can’t just use nukes on all the security problems, so there’s plenty of reason to believe he will ratchet up the nuclear tensions.
I can’t do anything about the drone programs, but I can do something about Armageddon, by voting for Clinton.
Fixed that for you.
Harassment being unacceptable and whether Kirkman is badly behaved appear to be separate issues to me.
I’m aware of the danger of splitting the vote and putting Trump in, and I do consider him worse than Clinton. That’s why I plan to hold my nose and vote for her — drones and all — if my state is competitive in November. But for a certain kind of Clinton supporter, voting for her as the lesser evil isn’t good enough. Being less than enthusiastic, or commenting on her horrible record as a hawk and an imperialist, is an affront even from those voting for her.
And considering I voted against Bush both times, and voted for Obama with the same mental reservations I have for Clinton, I think the “a woman — fixed that for you” thing is disingenuous as hell.
@SFHC: Thank you.
@Kevin Carson:
Far be it from me to hold out anyone as beyond criticism.
Without trying to silence SFHC, I would ask — as disingenuous as blaming military and CIA programs on the former Secretary of State?
And I think the “I, a man, am better at spotting misogyny than a feminist woman” thing is go to hell.
Uh, neither has Clinton, she’d have to be president to do that. And if you honestly believe that Trump won’t start a bunch of wars than I think your being rather willfully ignorant.
@ falconer
I don’t want to get involved in the specific debate here (FWIW I think Hillary has been a near excellent SoS and will make a fine President) but the legality of drone operations and who may or may not be liable for their use is a pretty interesting topic. You might find this interesting. It’s from a UK perspective but it does cover a bit about US policy, not least because the UK sort of is/isn’t* part of that.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201516/jtselect/jtrights/574/574.pdf
(*Whether we’re part of it in a legal sense is one of the complex issues)