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.
I’m so glad that someone with oh so charming name of “chop my head off please” is here to tell us what we’ll do and say. I’m sure a troll who came here one day ago and doesn’t know any of us is well qualified to pontificate about what our opinions are.
So, someone named “CHOP MY HEAD OFF PLEASE” (I wonder what that could be a reference to) is complaining that the largely pacifist commentariat here is entirely OK with another Persian Gulf War. They also think that Clinton will seek to undo Obama’s ‘peace deal’ (wouldn’t call it actual peace, but it’s a start) and start war with Iran. Ignoring, course, that the Republicans were the ones who sent a letter to Iran, specifically urging them not to accept the terms. And that Trump has been antagonizing the deal and Iran’s leadership openly since his campaign started. But Clinton is the danger to Amero-Iranian relations…
Sure
I’m tempted to click on their name but am afraid it will be gore pics.
No. First of all, I don’t say “yass slay queen,” because I’m white, and stealing AAVE is incredibly shitty. Second of all, “war is bad” and “targeted misogynistic harassment is bad” are not incompatible positions.
@Kevin : and yet, Obama wasn’t attacked with that level of rabid, obsessive, single minded criticism.
So yeah, your claim that Clinton isn’t singled out by virtue of being a woman is disingenuous.
I’ll believe my own lying eyes, thanks.
ETA: This is in response to Kevin. There’s definitely something odd going on with the posting order.
“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.”
I’m not defending any of the harassment, but this seems…like a poor comparison.
Kevin
I don’t think anyone cares about your opinions on misogyny or race for that matter. Just a guess.
harassment is not OK. but the “not what she meant!” thing misses the point of an actual legit critique, which is that its easy and common for white Americans and indeed most Americans to forget that our government is committing atrocities and our politicians are complicit in that. i dont think most if any of her harassers truly care about that though. The people I see regularly discussing these issues on twitter dont harass people like that.
@kale:
Which of the tweets highlighted above is a legitimate critique and not harassment?
@Tegiminis you said everything I wanted to say, way better than I was probably going to say it. I also saw another deleted, screen-capped tweet where she said, something similar about African Americans. I’ll try to find it.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
If he were bombing American civilians with drones, would you make the same argument?
I acknowledge that he’s done some very good things (I don’t know any progressives who don’t believe that). But the argument “well yeah. I mean he’s killed thousands of civillians and deeply traumatized many more, but look at all the good he’s done” is abhorrent.
Either the lives of foreigners are trivial and disposable, or murder is murder wherever it happens.
OK, imma ramble a bit. Get some drone related thoughts off my chest…
What is it with drones? Everyone goes on and on about drones. Like, I also don’t like drones. But why? Is it cos their scary? They fuckin are, but why do I talk about them as a philosophical thing if it’s just fear? Do I just not like the War on Terror, so I’ve chosen the Bad Thing du jour to be indignant about? Drones, demonstrably haven’t killed that many people, and, speaking relative to ground fighting, haven’t killed that many civilian people. It’s all bad, but why do I feel viscerally bad about drones in a way I don’t about ‘conventional warfare’?
Is it shared cultural trauma from nukes? Death from above with no warning, ya know? Or is it the fact that operators fly the things from halfway around the world? Is the safety of the operators bad? Do I want them hurt, or do I just want them to be in a situation where they can be hurt? Do I think they’ll be better people if they’re under direct attack? Will it make them less likely to kill? Wasn’t a problem for the Abu Ghraib fuckers or that guy who shot up the village in Kandahar. Stopping drones won’t stop wars, so why do I hate drones specifically?
I honestly don’t know why…
I do not trust some of the ‘tweets’ they keep reposting, if I can’t see it. And given that they are recycling that one tweet, I would’ve imagined they would have archived it, no?
My dad thinks the Clintons are personally ordering the deaths of people, please help.
@axecalibur
Well there are two reasons to dislike drones. The first is that Drones have been used to commit arguable war crimes. For instance there’s the charming “double tap” method where a Drone is sent in, bombs the crap out of a cluster of possible terrorists, and then drops a second bomb on the people that scurry out to help. Unsurprisingly this is a good way to kill innocent civilians and make enemies needlessly and hatefully. Additionally Drones, by virtue of the fact you can send them off and operate them remotely can fly around killing people in places we really technically shouldn’t be killing people like Pakistan.
The second more visceral reason is that they feel too easy. Drone warfare is dehumanized, the actual attack is done by a flying robot whose controller hundreds of miles away. Previously you had to actually commit a human life to the mission when you went out to take another human life, but drones allow for you to casually end lives without worrying about losing soldiers of your own. The casual mechanization of war hits a lot of the warning bells ingrained in popular culture because there are a lot of cautionary tales about the rise of the machines and the dangers of sacrificing humanity and human action on the road to convenience. These fears are reinforced by the fact that Drones are being used in other situations. The overall fear of dehumanizing mechanization is furthered by things like surveillance drones and that time Amazon started talking about its desire to have its own fleet of delivery drones.
If you want to know why culture finds Drones scary look at some of our cautionary tales against drones and robotics. Consider movies like the Terminator and Matrix franchises, games like Metal Gear Solid, and shows like Gundam Wing. All of them have warnings that apply in varying degrees to the proliferation of Drones and drone technology.
@Omnicrom
I’ve heard that, occasionally, they triple tap. Fucked up doesn’t even begin to describe it. Still, heinous shit like that is entirely possible with ‘manned’ aircraft. Nothing we’ve done with drones comes remotely close to actual humans, in planes, lighting Dresden on fire, so what’s going on here?
Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. Any specific objections I’d have to bombing there are gone. Drone strike in Japan, India, Egypt, something like that, I have a problem. Pakistan, not so much. Killing people is bad, but, on that visceral level I mentioned, killing them in Pakistan ain’t any different than doing so in Iraq
That’s probably true, and it brings me no comfort. It’s not meant to or anything, I just wish the reason were less… I dunno, paranoid? Do people have a problem with the mechanization of labor from an econ standpoint? Or is it mostly being scared of the T800? Likely both, I suppose. And how much of all of that is base, human conservatism? Do I object to drones, at least partly, out of a general fear of change?
Anyway, there’s some more rambling nonsense. Thanks, Omnicrom, for taking the time. That was an incisive post. I have a lot to think about…
Dr. Jill Stein isn’t an anti-vaxxer. She spoke about corporate involvement in healthcare and her words were taken out of context, and the smear was happily gobbled up and regurgitated by angry Dems. But then she’s ruining the presidential race for Clinton and is practically handing the election to Trump so who cares about her, right?
@Axecalibur:
As people have mentioned, drones feel too easy. But I think the real reason they’re scary is that they’re a warning of what’s to come, when we get ground-based robots, and the more militarily advanced countries do their fighting via controllers hundreds of miles away.
The reason that’s scary, of course, is that suddenly gamergaters will have job options. Because at a guess, the sort of skills you acquire playing shooting games are just the sort of skills a military-at-a-distance would need.
So drones are terrifying because they’re the first signs of a world where gamerbros have a purpose. And God knows whether there will be enough safeguards to keep them from aiming a drone at Anita Sarkeesian for lulz.
@Rabbit
Couldn’t find a gif good enough to fully express how perfect your comment is. I just want you to know that I tried…
@authorialAlchemy
*Solemn sigh of sympathy*
On what authority are they ordering assassinations? Who are they ordering to carry them out? Who are they having killed? Why? If these most ingenious, secret murderers are, in fact, ingenious, secret murderers, how does your dad know about it? I’m guessing he’s not a top CIA operative or anything, so how did he, specifically, come into this information?
PS David gets all the feminism points for implying that a female presidential candidate should drop out because she’s making things difficult. A+ feminism.
@Kettle
DOCTOR Jill Stein has said:
That vaccines “in general have made a huge contribution to public health”. Emphasis mine
That people have “real questions” about vaccines, and that, “not all the issues were addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed”. Right…
That “toxic substances like Mercury” were “rampant in vaccines”. Wrong kinda Mercury, doc
That she is against “mandatory vaccinations”, cos it excludes medical exemptions. Except it doesn’t
That autism is “an epidemic” and a “public health calamity”. Most increase in autism diagnosis is due to a broader definition than before and more docs looking for it
That “people do not trust” the FDA or CDC. This within the same breath as talking about vaccines
Stein’s the vaccine equivalent of ‘I’m not racist, but…’ She can say she supports vaccination all she wants, but so long as she’s discouraging, directly or not, people getting their kids’ shots, she’s antivax
Not me. Should I? Other than the base level connection I have for her as a human, why should I care about her? To what end? Are you saying that, if I cared about her, I wouldn’t call her antivax? Nah, folk, that ain’t how shit works. Besides, Stein’s not really hurting Clinton’s chance at the presidency. So…
There are dead possums with better reading comprehension than you.
THIS. SO THIS. MUCH THIS.
A friend of mine, a fellow working class leftist, told me about this great political science teacher she had who explained you want to be careful of any politician who agreed with you about everything. They have identified your demographic and are telling you exactly what you want to hear. OTOH a politician who has a competent record doing things and following through, who you only agree with 90% of the time, or your disagreements are about how to do things, well, that’s as good as it gets.
Besides, citizen participation doesn’t stop at election day. If you don’t think your winner is following through, organize and put pressure on them to do the job they promised.
GIANT SIGH.
Orac’s in-depth analysis of Jill Stein’s antivaccine dog whistles is here and it is worth a read.
@ Viscaria and Kootiepatra
Thank you! I’ve liked and agreed with your comments here, as well. The last couple of threads have been exhausting to read, so I’m going on another hiatus after this post. Back in the spring, there were the same discussions about drones, Clinton, and so on. The feeling of repeating the same conversations and talking points (e.g. Sanders supports Obama-style drone use, something others and I have pointed out for months here) ad nauseam means I’ve nothing substantial left to add to that discussion. Except to say I co-sign (to use Genius.com’s lingo) Scented Fucking Hard Chairs, nparker, Loquora, MissEB47, and Marinerachel’s statements.
@ booburry
That’s a really excellent point. Getting fired from your job is justified to the manosphere types when the person fired is a woman who said a shitty thing. But it’s a tragedy of “political correctness” if a white man is fired from his job over saying a shitty thing publicly on Twitter. Not supporting people getting fired from work over tweets, necessarily, but there is a double-standard in attitude.
It’s similar to what you see from people who like to wave the Confederate flag: “it’s a part of history we can’t forget, now get the hell over slavery would you please!?”
@ Pol
True, but they already reached a pretty low point when they nominated a 9/11 Truther.
@ leftwingfox
Yeah. In my state, in 2014, you had exactly one person from the Green party running for a State Senate seat. There are zero Green candidates running this year in any State Senate race. For the State House, you had zero Green candidates running in 2014. There are also zero running this year (tbf, there were 4 in 2012).
Federal elections tend to be better though. As in, a non-zero number of candidates; e.g., 2 who ran for US House Rep seats from my state in 2014 and 5 who ran in 2012. There are zero running for US House in my state this year, it appears.
Although, in 2012, they did run someone for the US Senate who beat the Libertarian candidate by about 18,000 votes and by the Constitution Party’s candidate by about 20,000 votes. Yay?
I guess they figure that the presidential election is the time to get the most (or any) publicity? But, as you and others have pointed out in this thread and in the other thread, it doesn’t produce real change. Oh well, because of the anti-science policies and conspiracy theorists, as per the discussions on this site, I’m done with the Greens.
@ Falconer
QFT.
@ Axecalbiur
Funny how that works, isn’t it? Better a villain than a problematic fave?
@ Howard
It looks like all of the comments have been deleted. Ah well. GamerGhazi has thousands of users with diverse opinions. In one thread, the Redditors hate the terms SWERF and TERF and dislike the support for sex-workers some feminists have, for example. In another, the Redditors who comment hate SWERFs and TERFs and unashamedly support sex-workers. The comments can frequently be awful or thoughtful. So, I guess my only response is: oh well.