What a huge fucking relief. Thank you, black voters of Alabama, for sending Roy Moore packing.
Screw you, Roy Moore, but not that poor horse you rode in on.
Roy Moore rides away on his horse after voting in the Alabama Senate election.
Here's what to watch in today's hotly contested race: https://t.co/iONlmtfGJd #alsen pic.twitter.com/WI2xoJbi6s
— POLITICO (@politico) December 12, 2017
Why would you ride to the polls on a horse if you CAN’T FUCKING RIDE A HORSE PROPERLY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE YOU FAKE COWBOY ASSHOLE PREDATOR?
Here are some more Tweets and an open thread. CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES COME ON.
Woke up from a nap. Turned on MSNBC, expecting the worst, then … pic.twitter.com/EIvDkseYMH
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) December 13, 2017
Shouts to Steve Bannon, MASTER STRATEGIST, who managed to lose a Republican election in fucking Alabama. pic.twitter.com/fWT4AhFzGW
— shauna (@goldengateblond) December 13, 2017
Black folks elected Doug Jones. FYI. #AlabamaSenateElection pic.twitter.com/CErgK6eOeI
— deray (@deray) December 13, 2017
https://twitter.com/owillis/status/940798680214458370
https://twitter.com/pattymo/status/940787884285718528
Roy Moore not conceding is very very on-brand for a son of the confederacy.
— AT (@primediscussion) December 13, 2017
donald trump is hog tied in a bathroom somewhere desperately chewing trying to chew through the door https://t.co/Y70TmLXOdN
— Ashley Feinberg (ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social) (@ashleyfeinberg) December 13, 2017
hell yeah dude, it would be my PLEASURE pic.twitter.com/ugWregfJ3X
— Rafi Schwartz (@TheJewishDream) December 13, 2017
https://twitter.com/DIorioNathaniel/status/940797919833329666
https://twitter.com/notwokieleaks/status/940797646846988295
Big night for the Republican party https://t.co/NxhbbVF9g4
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) December 13, 2017
One more dancing dog because why not?
@Kevin:
I’ve only seen Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. So, it’s really not fair for me to judge the entire saga without having seen them. Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, I think, I would have been 15 or 16 at the time. For me, it was kid stuff. I thought of myself as waaayyy too sophisticated for it?.
I remember the fuss some media people made about the character, Jar Jar Binks, supposedly being a racist caricature, of what I do not know.
WRT Mueller:
The comments on the CBC Metro Morning show this morning were about how the conservative media is already spinning this to undermine the credibility of anything Mueller is going to report. Basically, Trump’s people (many of whom are more competent than him) know that things are going to be bad, and rather than stop it they’re trying to heighten the ‘oppressed martyr’ side of things so that Trump’s devoted fanbase won’t believe it. Which a lot of them probably wouldn’t anyway.
The bit about the agents who were working on the report who tweeted about how horrible Trump was being spun to make it look like the whole thing is purely a partisan attack, for example.
It may be that somebody has managed to convince Trump (at least for now) that firing Mueller is a bad idea, and to wait while they try to make sure Mueller won’t be believed. Whether or not that actually lasts until the report comes out is another question; Trump is notoriously fickle.
Yet more work in deliberately undermining the concept of consensus reality for partisan gain.
Everyone,
My apologies for the minor TLJ spoilers. Thought I was vague enough in my wording to avoid doing that, but clearly I wasn’t. Sorry about that. 🙁
@Dormousing_it,
My understanding at the time (haven’t refreshed my memory recently about what was said then) was that the racist charges were made over how Binks was speaking. He was, as I understand it (have yet to see Phantom Menace:( ), the only character who was speaking with a Caribbean accent/patois(?). That, and his role as Comedy Relief cemented in certain peoples’ minds that Binks was a reincarnation of the old Steppin Fetchet caricatures from the 1930’s.
How true that really was, I don’t know. As I said before, I have yet to see the first trilogy to judge that stuff for myself. I do know Binks’ actor was a Black guy who was raised by radical parents, and who was extremely unlikely to have taken that role to start with if it really was as racist as later charged. What that may be worth as a comment on Binks as a character, is something I can’t judge at this time.
Off-topic, but I thought this was fun: At Casa di Katamount, we did Christmas week early because my brother was going to be at his girlfriend’s family’s place out of town. Mama Katamount got possibly one of the best gifts ever: the Ravensburger Puzzle Store. Me mum’s a huge jigsaw puzzle fanatic, so when she saw it at Scholar’s Choice, she knew it was what she needed. And it really does hold the puzzle in place when its closed and allows you to sort out the pieces in the four trays it comes with. With its aid, the four of us were able to assemble a 1000 piece puzzle in less than 24 hours.
It had been so long since I did a jigsaw puzzle that I forgot how much fun it could be. What made it all the more fun was that the puzzle that we had was a Nancy Drew book cover collage puzzle. I’ll be up front: the elementary school gender divide meant I never read Nancy Drew myself; boys had to read the Hardy Boys instead. But remembering Kate Beaton’s hilarious riffs on the old Nancy Drew covers kept it plenty amusing. After we finished it, I had to go out and get the Hardy Boys version.
I’m curious how many other Mammotheers A) do puzzles and B) read Nancy Drew when they were kids? I ask because I bought the Nancy Drew puzzle thinking me mum had read them when she was a girl, but imagine my shock when she actually read Hardy Boys instead (as she thought Nancy Drew too girly). I did trigger nostalgia in my brother’s girlfriend though; she had read all the Nancy Drews when she was in grade school. Posed an interesting question regarding gender essentialism… and an urge to read some Carolyn Keene….
Yes to both. Although I was more of a Christopher Pike/Fear Street/Point Horror girl. I didn’t read all the Nancy Drews but I did probably read quite a few.
@Dormousing it @Redsilkphoenix
That was the rub of it. No shade thrown on Ahmed Best (the voice of Jar Jar) who does have the kind of distinctive voice that lends itself well to animation. He does have the kind of manic intensity that suits comic relief characters (I remember seeing him in a dub of Armitage back in the day). The problem was really two-fold:
1. The Gungans (Jar Jar’s race) spoke this incredibly offensive broken English that really was reminiscent of anti-black stereotyping from the turn of the century. (“We-sa no liken da Naboo! Dey tink deir brains so beeg!”) The Gungans were contained to only a handful of scenes, but Jar Jar was crowbarred into every scene of the film under the flimiest of pretenses (the Jedi need a “guide”, he owes them his life, he’s made a General(!)).
2. Jar Jar didn’t really add anything to the story. He takes the Jedi to the underwater city which gives them a transport they need at the start of the movie and he’s used to contact the Gungans for the final battle at the end. Other than that, he only gets in the way and annoys the everloving piss out of the audience. And without a compelling reason to be in the story at all, it results in the overwhelming hate we see.
I wasn’t the biggest 3P0 fan, but he had a point and actually served his purpose by doing some translating here and there. In small doses, he works well (“Help, I think I’m melting! This is all your fault!” at the end of the TIE Fighter skirmish in the original film still makes me laugh). But his head-swapping shtick in Attack of the Clones was just grating for me.
About Spoilers
You are lucky enough to be home to see this movie. I must to wait until March when I am home again to see it.
So please don’t say this is just the fact of internet. Less than one week after this film is released? please this is not a fair argument. And don’t say not to use internet- for me internet is one thing which stops me from being lonely when I am at sea.
It is not so difficult to wrote ‘spoiler alert’ before you post.
@WWTH
Yeah, even as a Hardy Boys reader, I didn’t read more than a few. I did have my Goosebumps collection, but I was actually much more into Matt Christopher’s sports books than mystery or horror when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I got older that I got more into Christie and Doyle.
@Katamount Yes to both. I got Nancy Drew books, and then I read my brother’s Hardy Boys books. Then I read my friends’ Bobsy Twins books… (I’m sensing a trend. :D)
@Buttercup:
I hope so. Then maybe he’ll be dragged off in handcuffs around spring. And perp-walked on CNN from a courtroom to a Department of Corrections bus in an orange jumpsuit the eve of the midterm elections.
@Katamount:
I read both. Of course, Nancy Drew doing detective work, rather than kitchen chores or relationship drama stuff, was probably fairly progressive for the time. May have been one influence on me.
Mish—
I have to share that Adams quote! See, my kid is at that age where they’re just discovering basic philosophy, of the “whoa— is the blue I see the same as the blue you see?” bent.
So last night, at bedtime, I got hit with this mind-blowing statement: “Everything in the world either is a potato…or isn’t a potato. Think about it. Think about it!”
I’m very excited to be able to tell my kid that they aren’t the only one who’s been having deep thoughts about potatoes.
Regarding TLJ, sans spoilers— I’ll just say that as a lifelong SW fan I was really pleasantly surprised. (Aside from the one grumpy person down in front who kept loudly shushing everyone. On opening night. For cheering and applauding and such. WTF?! Who goes to a cult movie franchise opening and does that?) I was prepared to be let down, but I’ll surely be checking it out again when it hits the $1.50 theatre.
I’m gonna show my age here. I was too old for Goosebumps when those started coming up. It was all about Fear Street and R.L. Stine’s Point Horror books.
Did anyone read The Cheerleader?
http://geekening.com/books/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/thecheerleader-cover.jpg
This one was probably my favorite YA horror tied with Remember Me by Christopher Pike.
Not the scariest vampire in the whole world, his victims don’t even die, they just basically come down with chronic fatigue syndrome. But, it was nice to have a socially awkward and shy female protagonist for a change. I related to Althea a bit too much. As a bonus, unlike stories with socially awkward male protagonists, she isn’t rewarded with her love interest’s affections when she does the right thing in the end. Despite the purple prose and lack of any real scares, I’d recommend it for a middle school aged kid today because it has decent morals.
Not just Jar-Jar. The slave-master who owned young Anakin was basically the “Happy Merchant” meme with bat-wings tacked on, while the movie’s Big Bad Guys are a cross between Fu Manchu, and every single ’80s stereotype about the Japanese. ‘(Insert “Yellow Menace” reference here.) And I’m sure there’s something else I’ve missed. It was baaaaaaaaad.
I was about 12 when the first prequel came out, and even so, I can’t believe how much of that stuff just flew over my head.
Another reader of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins when I was a kid. Loved ’em. My mom made me give them away during one of our many moves. Still resent that.
Not many of the Nancy Drews or Hardy Boys (they didn’t really make it across the pond very much). Did read all the Enid Blytons, including the boarding school ones though.
Sorry for the DP
Further on the Twitter cracking down on hate speech starting today:
Can’t seem to find a list yet though.
And therein lies the problem. Twitter always suspends these people and always lets them post again. On the rare occasions they do ban, they don’t seem to crack down on sock accounts too much.
What the fuck good is suspending Nazi accounts for a little bit going to do?
Dimmy—
Yes. So much yes.
As someone with both Ashkenazic Jewish and Middle Eastern family, Watto just made my skin crawl, in about a dozen different directions. He certainly felt, to me at least, like an unabashedly blatant grab-bag o’ ugly Semitic stereotypes, cobbled together with the thinnest possible veneer of, “Oh, he’s an alien, long long ago, far far away and all that…any resemblance to vile, damaging stereotypes is purely a matter of coincidence. And look, he has literal flies buzzing ’round! Now laugh.”
Watto + Jar Jar= an uncomfortable viewing experience for me, even initially, as a relative youngster.
Hah! You even mentioned the wings! For some reason the wings struck me when I first saw it. I recall telling a friend back then how that character disturbed me, because rumors of leathery wings & flight ability were actually one of the more bizarre ways that Jews were Othered in medieval Europe. (As well as it being a handy means to categorize Jews semiotically with both witches and demons.)
I doubt that the character designers actually knew any of that, but still…it struck me. And made me wonder how much the symbolism of stereotypes & Othering makes it into any of our unconscious?
@Katamount
My wife and I recently tried to do a jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately it didn’t capture our attention the way we thought it would. Otherwise we puzzle over Happy Dungeons.
I like the puzzles made by the Hana Yama company. The Enigma took me two months to figure out. I got a dozen of them and used them to reward the kids I worked with (fun and behavioral reinforcement).
I have not read those, I did read my Dad’s Tom Swift books though.
@Shadowplay
I’ve been thinking about “……10% who will never change their mind, no matter what.” Combing it over for some of the contents of that group and how that would look in a post on /pol/. I have some ideas. Let me know if any of this is useful.
*Some “won’t with an out-group member”. This is not precisely your group but are worth mentioning. On /pol/ that would be people who simply don’t interact with the substance of other people’s comments, ignore evidence placed right in front of them, or choose superficial characterizations, or insults. But if enough other people around them changed their minds that whole process would affect some that might not when interacting with the percieved out-group(s).
I’m one of those in some ways because I actively try to change society in ways that would require the in-put from someone from the group in question before changing the way I behave politically. An example would be how I act with respect to abortion when it comes up on Facebook. It’s intrinsic to the fact that I don’t have a vagina, or womb, and want to help. Running things by the people with the relevant perspective is a fundamental necessity.
*If you mean a person resistant or unable to change their minds even with intervention from percieved peers, who may end up a conspiracy theorist living in the woods … I hope they still have people trying. On /pol/ they are a political strategic reality. With this type in arguments I’m talking to the crowd as much as I am the person I’m communicating with. I always take the argument seriously, but I don’t want anyone else thinking it would be good to believe what they do, or say what they said.
Some of these are like the aggressive misogynistic trolls that show up here. Why they won’t change their mind doesn’t matter, they do damage to the social structure here.
@Manecki
A massive amount, anecdote says. Scildfreja probably has the numbers though.
Sticking with Star Wars – Diner owner (and waitress) in Attack of the Clones. Not offensive stereotypes, as such – but total stereotypes nonetheless. (That scene takes me back to any one of a dozen dives in NY/NJ 😛 )
Not sure if those were put in to defuse the criticism of Watto and Jar-Jar and the Trade Federation – or if they were put in because Lucas reaaallly sucks at writing.
Manecki: Jews having wings? And I thought the medieval anti-Semitic rumor that Jewish men were cursed to menstruate was weird…
@Manecki Neckbeard
That’s even weirder than the “Jews have horns” thing.
Off topic, but the Senate Intelligence Committee has started investigating Jill Stein’s campaign.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/365497-senate-intel-committee-requests-documents-from-jill-stein
@Redsilkphoenix:
Oh, yes, that was the issue with Jar Jar. I remember now.
@Katamount:
I read the Nancy Drew books from about age 9 through 13. I had so many of those little hardcover books! Probably over 30 of them. It was such a thrill to see a new book come out! By the time I aged out of them, there were something like 55 titles in the series.
@Victorious Parasol:
I can commiserate. My mother gave my Nancy Drews to a younger stepcousin of mine. We were forced to rent for awhile, and she had to jettison some of our possessions. Naturally, the first to go were her children’s belongings ?. Including my beloved cat, which I’ve never forgiven her for.
I think I’m going to have to leave my cats alone in my house for a few days over the holidays. I don’t want to do this, because the older cat, Terri, has separation anxiety something fierce. The younger one, Sassy, is semi-tame. They don’t get along with each other.
I was thinking about getting a neighbor or an acquaintance to look in on them, but I’m too embarrassed about the mess my house is in, and there’s no time to clean it up.