Category Archives: Political Correctness

I learned the same things during the pandemic that many of you readers have learned quiet time is valuable, simple hugging is underrated, we need our service industries, church services indoors, and being sick can take on new meaning.

Then I learned more:

I missed having my dog who died before COVID. She would have been underfoot, being tail-wagging-happy that we were always home, and I recalled how much her eyes melted my soul.

I missed the experience of the library and the attentive staff, and that dropping books into a shoot was impersonal and awful.

I missed the chit-chat of the local store employees and seeing whole faces. Indeed, we resembled designer bank robbers, and I found myself ordering glittery masks, animal masks and matching them to my clothing.

I missed Thanksgiving with my extended, noisy family and cooking for them, too.

I missed family-room time with friends and decided that snowflakes are often identical, regardless of what science says. I had hours in which to study this.

I found out vinyl records are joyful things, and listening to 60s folk music made me real with memories of hippies, peasant dresses, long-haired male singers, and clanging bracelets.

Pedaling on the recumbent bike (birthday gift, courtesy of sweet family) to Born to be Wild was the exciting highlight of Monday-Friday. The excitement of Saturday? Eating a dessert I had earned.

I found that we all changed and everything familiar seemed upside down except for one great man Jesus. He remained the same, always seeking my heart, always caring and kind, always a friend I could chat with and even hear back from.

It was humbling to know that through the ravages of sickness to the eventual healing, and then the great restlessness, Jesus remained steady. In the past, I read many Scriptures that spoke these truths, but living them gave me clearer insight.

It has been a long road back from COVID. I am one of those folks with some lingering side effects including breathlessness in the wee hours. It is that lonely time when I must sit upright and take deep inhalations and try not to be frightened.

I called on Jesus many a night and when I concentrated on his I will never leave you nor forsake you message I relaxed, and breathing was not as labored.

There have been several plus sides of COVID: people will work from home regularly (and not be tense due to bad driving weather), we have explored cooking together more, and many have done new charitable works. I found contentment in the sunset and in hearing different bird calls and taking on more faith-based volunteer work and being with people again is wonderful.

We have learned so much from this plague, and though we will be grateful when its totally eradicated, the lessons gained are priceless. I am less interested in political correctness, and far more inspired to please God.

I hope we can be sensitive to one another, not because of popular beliefs, but because we are in this brief time here, together.

Would we see this without COVID? Perhaps. But it certainly shed light in a few dim places for me and for some of you, too.

Happy next phase to all of us.

Jeannie Croyle is an area freelance writer and author who resides in Central City.

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Jeannie Croyle is an area freelance writer and author who resides in Central City.

Continued here:

Jeannie Croyle | What I learned from the pandemic - TribDem.com

Austin (KXAN) A 416-page book released just a month ago is causing waves in Texas and beyond.

The Texas-sized drama about Penguin Random Houses Forget Alamo: The Rise and Fall of American Myths begins on Friday after Austins Bob Block Texas State History Museum withdrew from discussions just hours before the book was set up. Start.

The museum has decided to stop discussions by the board, including conservative Governor Greg Abbott, Speaker of the House of Texas Dade Phelan, and Vice-Governor Dan Patrick, who reported 300 attendance confirmations. Explained that it was behind.

Later on Friday, Patrick publicly acknowledged that the event had been cancelled. The event investigated a review of a book of historical stories about the Battle of the Alamo. In particular, the hero is not necessarily a good man, and maintaining slavery is a motivating factor in the fight against Mexico.

As a member of the Conservation Committee, I told the staff to cancel as soon as I learned of this event, Patrick wrote. Friday tweets.. There is no such fact-free rewrite of Texas history at the Bobbrock Museum, like the effort I quit to move The Cenotaph.

Brian Burrow, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, authors of Forget Alamo, claim they havent advertised. Oblivion San Antonios landmarks and their battles, to contextualize what happened to the Americans and how the story turned into a story about a heroic white man.

According to Penguin Random House, the book How the story over time, due to the contribution of Tejanos from Mexico, who fought with the Anglo rebels, and the origin of the Mexican conflict, which was removed from the record. Im looking for a twist. Push to abolish slavery written on paper.

In a statement, the publisher explained that the Brock Museum is facing great pressure on social media regarding the event, in addition to pressure from the board. Abbott is one of them. Texas Tribune Report.

In a Friday interview with KXAN, Tom Linson explained:

I think its politics. They distort what critical racial theory means, just as they distorted the political correctness and multiculturalism of the past. Its just part of the publicity.

Chris Tomlinson, author

As of Saturday, Governor Abbott has not responded to requests for comment.

I think the nature of the Block Museum has changed forever, Tomlinson added.

Nationally, Texas Republicans, especially Patrick, were pointed out for being said to be hypocrisy and authoritarian.

Read the explanation to find out why the Texas Republicans are working hard to kill a well-studied book about Alamo and how the story has turned into a myth. Its slavery, racism. Includes racism, and many other ugly things that pretend that Republicans never existed, writes the New York Times best-selling author. Kurt Eichenwald..

Many have pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of cultural cancellation. This is a GOP issue regarding the tendency of people and content to be publicly censored, banned, or cancelled by actions or statements.

journalist Judd Legum A prominent opponent ofcancellation culturehas taken advantage of his political position to cancel the discussion of history books on Alamo, he directly called on Patrick.

Cancellation of the event occurs in an ongoing discussion of the alleged teachings Critical race theory In public school even though it is very unlikely that you will encounter a doctrine outside of law school Where they were born.. The CRT is not a single lesson, but it examines American history and its unfair legal treatment of black and brown Americans.

Texas legislators Focused on the asserted teachings of critical racial theory, Abbott says they might be Go further In a special session that will start soon.

Meanwhile, the conversation about forgetting the Alamo continues nationwide as authors, publishers, and supporters continue to move their mission forward. Prank is not intended..

The canceled Forget Alamo book event ignites criticism of the Texas Republicans behind it

Source link The canceled Forget Alamo book event ignites criticism of the Texas Republicans behind it

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The canceled Forget Alamo book event ignites criticism of the Texas Republicans behind it - Illinoisnewstoday.com

What have been the all-time game-changing TV comedies? I Love Lucy in the 1950s definitely; the social realism of Till Death Us Do Part in the 1960s perhaps; and then onwards through the decades by way of the absurdist humour of Monty Python and the long character story arcs of Cheers. And then on a Monday evening early in the new millennium the 9 July 2001 to be precise a sitcom by first-time writer-directors and set in the Slough offices of fictional paper merchants arrived completely unheralded on BBC Two. The Office would go on to change TV comedy for the next 20 years.

With no laughter track and borrowing the style of the then ubiquitous docu-soap, a genre kick-started by the 1997 fly-on-the-wall series Driving School and often coming with similar blandly descriptive titles like Airport and Vets in Practice, an urban myth has grown up that there were those who initially didnt even recognise The Office as comedy.

Most of us certainly wouldnt have recognised the cast the now very well-known likes of Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davies and of course Ricky Gervais, who wrote and directed The Office alongside Stephen Merchant. The title sequence featuring the drab, brutalist exteriors of Slough the roundabout, bus station and office blocks set to the wistful Mike DAbo song Handbags and Gladrags (as sung by Scottish rocker Fin Muir) also didnt offer many clues that a sitcom revolution was afoot.

The interior setting (actually an unused office at the BBCs Teddington Studios) was instantly recognisable as somewhere we might all have worked at one time or another a beige universe of trilling phones, paper being shuffled and (this being 2001) the occasional churning of a fax machine. Watching today, over a year into mass working-from-home, The Office might either induce wistful longing for a lost communal way of being or wonderment at how we ever spent our lives in such crummy environments.

The manager David Brent (Gervais) sees himself as an entertainer and all-round brilliant boss even when making grossly unsuitable remarks to receptionist Dawn (Davies); equally self-deceiving is bored sales-rep Tim (Freeman), who tells himself that this isnt his destiny as he bickers over the stapler with desk-sharing creep Gareth (Crook).

It captured that particularly modern form of the office that late-capitalist, neo-liberal mixture of ennui and anxiety, says Ben Walters, who wrote about the show in a book for the British Film Institutes TV Classics series. The double bind of being stuck in this god-awful situation that might be taken away from you at any time.

The naturalistic depiction of mundane everyday life at Wernham Hogg was helped by the absence of a laughter track but was chiefly enhanced by the then-innovative mockumentary format, the characters acknowledging the cameras with a sly glance or (in Brents case) a full-on cheesy grin. Although the mockumentary form had been around for a while, most notably in the films of Christopher This Is Spinal Tap Guest The Office was the first time many television viewers had experienced it.

The characters acknowledgement of the camera really upped the cringe factor, says Walters. When you had them looking into the lens, looking right at you, that really pulls you into the situation in a really uncomfortable way.

The Office launched the career of Mackenzie Crook, pictured here with Gervais

(BBC)

Indeed, along with Steve Coogans Alan Partridge and Garry Shandlings Larry Sanders, The Office marked the genesis of a whole new genre that came to be known as cringe comedy, and nowhere was this more cringey of course than when Brent was tying himself into knots of political correctness when faced with non-white or disabled characters. We thought it was interesting to write about the hypocrisy of people who think theyre politically correct, and the resultant awkwardness when they try too hard, as Gervais put it at the time.

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Brent may have been what Walters calls a pathetic ogre in the tradition of Captain Mainwaring and Basil Fawlty, but over the course of two series and a brace of Christmas specials, he went on a redemptive journey the tragic clown getting a reprieve. Importantly, there was compassion here as well as cringe. But if you were looking for the real heart of The Office, it was to be found in the romance between Tim and Dawn.

The traditional sitcom storytelling mode is circular, says Walters. By the end of the episode everyone is back where they started. But in terms of David Brents career and Tim and Dawns romance, it does develop. Indeed, Richard Curtis, whose sitcoms include Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley, has said of The Office: It got better in ways I hadnt expected that it would have proper tragic and romantic dimensions was a shock.

Office romance: Tim (Martin Freeman) and Dawn (Lucy Davis)

(BBC)

We intended the show to have a happy ending, but we wanted it to be moving and uplifting without being mawkish, Gervais has said, and Walters reckons the Tim-and-Dawn romance was innovative in British sitcoms. There had been these big US sitcoms Friends especially where the romantic plotting had become as important as the comedy, he says. And having the presence of the cameras being acknowledged added another layer to the office flirtation, with cameras picking up every little glance and touch on the shoulder. It upped the ante and made it more suspenseful and affecting.

With a total of just 14 episodes two more than the similarly self-truncated Fawlty Towers The Office has been far more influential than John Cleeses comedy classic. This is partly down to the huge success of the American remake, which ran for nine seasons and made a star of Steve Carrell, while four failed attempts were made at transporting Fawlty Towers to an American setting.

Arguments have raged ever since about which of the two versions of The Office is the better, a pointless dispute that Gervais deflated in a recent podcast when asked about how he felt about claims that the US version were bigger and better. F***ing rich, he responded (Gervais and Merchant were executive producers of the American remake and therefore earned a considerable payday from it).

Steve Carell leads the cast of The Office US

(NBC)

But its The Offices mockumentary approach that has proved most influential a style now so ubiquitous in both British (This Country, Pls Like, People Just Do Nothing, Twenty Twelve, Come Fly with Me and so on) and American sitcoms (Modern Family, What We Do in the Shadows, Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, etc) that David Baddiel was once driven to complain about this idiot idea that this is the only sort of sitcom we should have.

But if the likes of Miranda and Mrs Browns Boys have since clawed back some of the demand for traditional studio-audience sitcoms, the mockumentary goes from strength to meta-strength one episode of Disney+s WandaVision even being a pastiche of Modern Family and The Office.

And all this has its roots in a goatee-bearded middle manager with a talent for self-deception. If there is another reason that The Office has stood the test of time, reckons Walters, its because its chief protagonist, with half an eye on the camera and in constant need of affirmation, anticipated social-media culture. David Brent was very much an early adopter who took very seriously creating a narrative and self-image though being filmed, he says.

Here was this pathetic micro-celebrity but David Brent loved it and was all over it, and while he was not very good at it, actually that was the future and we all live in it now. To a greater or lesser degree, we all keep an eye open for where the camera is. Pathetic as he was, unfortunately these days most of us are David Brent.

See the article here:

The Office at 20: Why were all David Brent now - The Independent

An MSNBC anchor,who will remain nameless,recently called the new book by Ben Rhodes, who served as Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, "dark" inits descriptionof where our nation's democracy finds itself today. Rhodes's book, "After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made," is actually not dark.It's just a brutally honest look at where our nation is heading. Everything Rhodes writes, and everything he sharedin our Salon Talks conversation, should be seen both a warning and a clarion call to action for those who believe in our republic.

In defense of that MSNBC anchor, many people still don't fully grasp the nature of thethreat democracyfaces today. Not just from Donald Trump, but more broadly from today's Republican Party,which, as Rhodes and other experts have documented, have been embracing the autocratic playbook long before Trump slithered down that famous goldenescalator to launch his 2016 campaign. It's just that Trump made it impossible to ignore, especially given the Jan6 act of "domestic terrorism," as the FBI has defined it, andwhich himself Trump incited.

As experts on democracy noted in the fall of 2020, the GOP now lessresembledan American political party than it does theauthoritarian ruling party in Hungary headed by Viktor Orbn.Indeed, in his book, Rhodes lays out how Orbn's right-wing party and today's Republicans utilizesimilar methods to attract support, from culture wars to the rejection of political correctness to an overt embrace of a right-wing interpretation of Christianity.As Rhodes explains, "None of this happened because of Donald Trump."

Rhodes also detailed how other authoritarian regimes,such as Russia and China,mandate teaching students not the accurate history of their nation but a mythology that helps them remain in power.This should sound familiar, since Republicans haverecently been enacting laws to ban"critical race theory," but what they're truly doing is copying the Chinese Communist Party tactic of only allowing the teaching of "history" that helps them politically.

Rhodes said something that has stayed with me since our talk:For the first time in his life he had "to consider what it meant to be an American while living in a country that no longer made sense to me." I share that sentiment. Neither of us isbeing "dark."We are simply being direct about where our nation finds itself.

Watch my Salon Talks episode with Ben Rhodeshere, or read a transcriptof our conversation below, lightly edited for length and clarity.

"After the Fall." It's intense. You went to several continents to write this, and it was written over four years, up until the pandemic. Share a little bit about that.

Yeah.Well, it's not enjoyable. The subject matter is why things are moving in the wrong direction in the world. But I hope what's enjoyable is it's told through the stories of other people. It's not just analysis. And the root of it for me essentially was, I was kind of knocked on my back after the 2016 election. I wanted tomake sense of what's happening in America, what's happening around the world. And I started to travel and meet people. I ended up going to Hong Kong and immersing myself with the Hong Kong protest movement there, talking to Alexei Navalny and opponents of Putin in Russia, talking to democracy activists in places like Hungary. And through their stories, trying to understand: Whyis the world all moving in this direction, and how is America connected to it?

The jumping off point for me was when I was meeting with a young anti-corruption activist from Hungary. Hungary has gone from being a democracy to a single-party autocracy in a decade. And I said, "Hey, how did this happen? How did Viktor Orbn, your prime minister, do this in 10 years?" And he said, "Well, it's simple. He got elected on a right-wing populist backlash to the financial crisis. He redrew the parliamentary districts to entrench his party in power. He changed the voting laws to make it easier for his supporters to vote. He packed the court with far-right judges. He enriched some cronies who then bought up the media and turned it into a right wing propaganda machine. And he wrapped it up in a national us vs. them message. Us, the real Hungarians, against them Muslims, immigrants, liberal leaders, George Soros."

And I'm listening and I'm thinking, "Well, he's describing America." So what I realized is, by traveling to all these places and kind of inhabiting all these stories, I can understand not just why democracy is threatened globally, but why it's threatened in the United States, what we may have done to contribute to that, and what people aredoing to fight back?

You have a great line, "In 2017, I was forced for the first time to consider what it meant to be an American while living in a country that no longer made sense to me." From your point of view, why didn't Americamake sense to you at that moment?

It's interesting because I mean, for me, that line also speaks to the fact that I've known people who live in countries where they're repulsed by their own government. They don't see themselves in the power that represents them. But even though I didn't agree with the Bush administration, it wasn't the same kind of visceral reaction that you have to someone like Trump, where you're like, "This person stands for the opposite of everything I believe in, and he's in the highest office." Apart of what I had to realize in writing this book is thatI came of age around the end of the Cold War. That's where my first political consciousness happened. And the narrative was that everything was moving in one direction. The history was settled that freedom and democracy and open markets were going to kind of continue to spread.

What we've experienced since then is the recognition that, "Well, no. History never ends." And the same conflicts over nationalism versus democracy, authoritarianism versus the capacity of people to have individual rights, those things are constantly playing themselves out through history. We're fighting those battles today, just like people have had to do in the past. While America doesn't offer the promise that that's all settled, it at least gives us the opportunity to have the fight. But it speaks to why we can't be complacent, given the threats to our democracy around us.

Your former boss and your good friendBarack Obamawas on CNNtalking about how democracy is not self-executing, and informing us you can't take things for granted. Oddly enough, thatconjured up Ronald Reagan's famous line, "Freedom is just one generation away." The idea we'll be telling our children one day what freedom was like.

And if Ronald Reagan were alive today, might say the same things, if he was not part of TrumpWorld. Freedom House says Hungary is no longer a democracy.At one point it was. Where do you think we're sliding, objectively as a nation and in terms of our government now? Not so muchunder Biden, but when you look at the Republican states and their continuing effort to make it harder to vote, to suppress peaceful protests, to ban what kids can learn in school unless it fits their mythology, which I can't believe. If you read about it in another country, you'd go, "That's not a democracy. That's some kind of authoritarian and fascist state." What is going on?

One of the things I did was to tracehow the Chinese government has gotten even more authoritarian over the last several decades. And one of the principalways was beginning tocontrol the curriculum in the schools. We have to recognize these kind of common tactics of authoritarianism in different places. You mentioned Obama. He's kind of a character in this book. He comes in and out of these conversations we've been having. And I relayed the eerie timing. He gave a speech to the Democratic convention, as people may remember, where he said, "Don't let them take your power away. Democracy is on the line here." I describe watching that speech and then I'm looking at my phone and getting the news thatAlexei Navalny, the opponent to Putin inRussia, has been poisoned. And in a way, that kind of drove home the stakes, that the extreme darkness where this strain can lead was evident in what happened to Navalny.

I think the takeaway from this book is, you've got people like Orbn, who kind of represent how nationalism has gotten a foothold again all over the world. People like Putin, who represent the lengths that autocrats are going to in the world today, the kind of steadily escalating behavior that we see on a regular basis from authoritarians. And then you look at China, and they have an alternative way of organizing society. That's kind of where the future is going, where youblend together capitalism and technology with this reallytotalitarian and intrusive government. America was the one force that was supposed to figure this out, to set an example of multiracial, multiethnic democracy.

And when you talk to people in all these other places and ask,"What do you need from America?" It's less our foreign policy and more like, what are we modeling at home? What are we doing?When you see people methodically passing laws, trying to prevent people from voting, whenyou see peoplemethodically trying to set the premise that elected officials could actually overturn a democratic election.

If America can't get it right, then I don't think anybody else can. Not because we're perfect, not because we're so much better than everybody, but because we're supposed to be the place that, again, figured out how to do this. And we're the country made up of people from everywhere. So I think the stakes are incredibly high and they're going to stay high. Joe Biden's election obviously didn't end this. The stakes are going to stay high for a few years here.

Florida just banned critical race theory, even though they don't use that term. We've seen more than20 Republican states introduce legislation to ban a topic because they don't like it. You touched briefly on China and authoritarianism and education. How was that intertwined? Why should people be concerned this is not just culture-war stuff, where you can roll your eyes at it?

Here's why, Dean. I wrote about Viktor Orbn in Hungary, and his efforts to control the past. I mean, autocrats always want to determine how people understand the past to suit their politics and the present. And what Orbn did, on everything from statues to curriculum Hungary in the20th centuryhad a bad right-wing history and a left-wing history. On the left, we had the excesses of the communist regime after World War II. But you also had Nazi collaborators. You had a far-right movement in Hungary. They collaborated with the Holocaust. Orbnhas slowly been whitewashing that history and he's been elevating the nationalist history of Hungary. And what does that do? It whitewashes understanding where certain kinds of politics go.

The kind of far-right turn Orbn's taken, history should teach us that leads to bad places. That leads to repression, that leads to conflict. Here in the United States, it's so important to understand the full dimensions of our history. In part, so that you understand just how dark a place white supremacy can lead, or an us vs,themxenophobic politics can lead. If you're whitewashing that stuff, then the expressions of white nationalism we see around us, people have not had the context for why that's so damaging and so dangerous. Obviously, it shouldn't happen anyway, but part of this is the guardrails. So what do you learn from history about what not to do? Partof that is learning the history of how people overcome those things and how you better a society.

And where I end this book is saying that American identity is supposed to be,not that we were born perfect, but that in America we do the work. It's about trying to live up to the story that we tell about ourselves. So in every way, shapeor form, banning critical race theory and trying to look away from the darkest parts of our past, that makes it more likely to happen again in the future. And it actually negates what I think is the better American story, which is that those things happened and people tried to make it better.

I find it alarming that we're seeing the people who claim they want academic freedom, who say they despise "cancel culture," have no problem literally defunding school. The Idaho law is to defundschools if they teach you about systemic racism. I find this deeplydistressing.

I mean, this is why I ended up having the subtitle of this book "Being American in the World We've Made." What the "Being American" refers to is thatwe have to figure out what our national identity is. That's not settled. I think the reason why you see such intensity in our politics right now isthat people can sensethat's kind of what's being debated right now. And by the way,thistoois something that's happening everywhere. It's a common political trend. But the reality is, when you hear, "Make America Great Again" when only certain people were in certain rooms and had certain amounts of power and thenthey're looking at a future where this is going to be a majority nonwhite nation, unless they arrest immigration entirely.

Which is part of what Donald Trump was trying to do, in the relatively near future. Is it a coincidence that the Republican Party is trying to entrench itself through minority rule, essentiallyleveraging the courts and the Senate and voting laws and other things, right when that demographic shift is taking place? I'm not sure that's a coincidence.One of the points I make in the book is that, in a way, we've always lived this competition.And Trump and Obama kind of represent them perfectly in opposition to one another. Is America's story of progress and greater inclusivity and extension more rights to more people? Or is it "We want to wind back the clock," and this is an exclusively white Christian nation that is only for some?

We've been living these two lives throughout our history. I mean, the Declaration of Independence says that"All men are created equal," bit it was written by a guy who owned slaves. At every step of progress, there's been a reaction. So I think that is happening right now, and that speaks to onereasonwhy the political debate is so intense right now.

Initially, President Biden kept talking about, "America's always been a push and pull between these two forces." He's right. We're seeing it now. Maybe it's not that new, what's going on, it just seems more intense because I'm living through it as an adult who follows politics closely.

Yeah,I think the stakes are higher right now. Again, part of why I wrote this book is because one reasonwhy the stakes are higher is that this is happening all around the world right now,and things are moving in the wrong direction. I mean, while I'm writing this book, the Hong Kong protest movement that I was kind of profiling, gets swallowed up essentiallyby the Chinese Communist Party. Alexei Navalnygets poisoned and put in prison. America has Jan.6.This is happening and it's not a coincidence. It's happening because there is this kind of drift towards nationalism and authoritarianism, for a lot of reasons that I described in the book.

I focus on the 30-year period after the Cold War. I feel like the Cold War was one particular period where America wasn't perfect, but we were for freedom and the Soviets were for the other thing, for communism and dictatorship. Then you have this 30-year period of American dominance. Trump clearly was a bit of a pivot point. Now we have to decide who we're going to be next. I think that's a very hotly contested question right now.

You write about the way the GOP became the one we see today, and you say,"None of this happened because of Donald Trump."Share a little bit more aboutthat idea.

Well, it's kind of the mirror image of that story I told about Hungary. I know people can go back and look at Newt Gingrich and look atthe things that Bush did. But this particular virulent strain of the Republican Party, I'd have the starting point be the Tea Party. And if you make it the mirror image of what happened in Hungary, the collapse of the financial system in 2008 generated a lot of anger and a sense of grievance,like, "Hey, this whole system is just kind of rigged." People, I think, were open to different kinds of appeals than they might've listened to in the past. You get all this anger and then you compound thapwith the fact that there's a Black President, and there's clearly a racialized component.

The Tea Party demonstrations, they're chanting, "Take our country back," and we're being told that it's about deficit spending. I'm not sure you "take your country back" because you're concerned about the deficit. But it breeds this kind of new andmuch more belligerent Republican Party, the people who got elected there. And at the same time, you have Citizens United, which takes away any guardrails on dark money in politics. So this kind of bottom-up anger is being fueled by a lot of top-down money from people like the Koch brothers, who are just dumping money into politics,at the same time that you have Republicans getting much more aggressive in passing voter suppression laws. I talkabout this in the book, there were like 25 passed at the state level while Barack Obama was president. The Supreme Court that the Republicans had designed guts the voting rights legislation, which allows those sorts of suppression laws to go forward and have a greater impact.

At every turn, the Republicans are busting norms and not even confirming a Supreme Court justiceif they'renominated by a Democrat. And by the time Trump rides down the escalator at Trump tower, he was the logical nominee. Of course he was the nominee. He was the frontrunner from the time he came down. Because the other thing that happened in this period was that with the collapse of traditional media, you have not just Fox Newsbut the explosion of Facebook and people getting fed, just on talk radio and online, more and moreconspiracy theory-based garbage about what's happening in the world, about Barack Obama, about Democrats.

So by the time Trump comes down the escalator, he's like the product of that. It's like suddenlythe Fox News viewer is the head of the party. And ever since then, at every turn, people are surprised when the Republicans take the dark path. "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that they still believe the Big Lie. They won't even have a commission." Well, of course. Who do you think these people are? They've been telling you who they are for the last decade.

What do we do? Near the end of your book, you write, "We live in a time when the world is emerging into a single history, and we can feel the currents of that history moving in thewrong direction." So how do we move this in the right direction?

I have lessons that I took away from all these people I talked to around the world.What are people doing that is working in different places? One thing for instance, in Hungary, is for the first time there's an election next year. They do have elections. Orbn dominates the media. It makes it hard for people but the opposition has their first real chance of beating him. And one of the reasons why is they've completely united. They've said, "Look, we have differences, but everything is on the line here. We're just going to put a big tent over all of our differences and we have to win this election." And I profile a young person who started a political party, but it's a very strange kind of polyglot coalition. But that's one lesson for us too, because part of what autocrats need to do is keep the opposition divided,apathetic or cynical.

I think we have to stay, despite all our differences, from the center to the left in our country. On the core things, particularly when it comes time to vote, people need to be absolutely united because there are more of us than them. If we vote and don't give up and don't get apathetic and stay with this, we will win. So one of those things is unity. Another is, if you look at even failed movements, like the Hong Kong protest movement, movements fail and fail and fail until they succeed. And they usually succeed in a big waywhen they do. They create a kind of culture around democratic participation and a culture around standing up for your rights. This can't be leftjust to politicians. Joe Biden alone can't fix this.

I think we need that kind of whole-of-society commitment to democracyas well. If you look at Navalny, the reason he was such a sore spot for Putin, the reason he's in prison, is that he'd found this huge vulnerability in exposing Putin's corruption. I think corruption is a common thread between all these autocratic movements, includingthe Republican Party.Because a lot of those voters that supported Trump are angry at a corrupt system. This is why Trump always talks about the "deep state."

Trump always talks about the system being rigged, but he is the ultimate beneficiary of the system. He's a white guy, a fake billionairewho can do whatever he wants, who's fabulously corrupt. We need to continue to drive home the message to some of those Obama-Trump voters about the absolute corruption of a political party that speaks one language and then just shovels tax cuts to corporations and breaks the rules themselves all the time. I thinkthat's the most potent argument we have to make.The last thing I'd say, though,is that the bigger structural problem is that the reason people are having an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan.6, the reason people believe in QAnon, is because of the radicalization that's happening online. We have to get our arms around that in this country, social media and disinformation.I'd like to see the Biden team take that on more. Because so long as our entire media is structured to mainline rage and conspiracy theories to people, we're going to be in this spot.

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Obama aide Ben Rhodes on the global crisis of democracy: It's real, and we have to fight back - Salon

We all know the phrases: Trojan Horse, Fox watching the hen house, Wolf in sheeps clothing, Spinning straw into gold, with the warning that if it looks too good to be true, it is.

These phrases are meant to educate and prevent the next generation from repeating mistakes. We learn by either making a mistake or observing others making them. We wonder why so many people still touch a hot stove before remembering it will burn them.

There is new phrase added to the cautionary list: Multinational Corporations are not Capitalistic. This wolf in sheeps clothing syndrome has infected multinational companies as they hate capitalism. This sheeps wool, disguises corporatism to look like businesses friendly to capitalism.

Technology has rapidly transformed the world, into a game of us vs them, with survival of the fittest a proverbial arms race. Their incentive is to marginalize, vilify and eradicate any and all mention of God and standards of civilization based on a Christian moral foundation.

The rationale behind this new me first culture is we must prioritize our own survival, at the expense of others. Altruism has morphed into apathy. The desire to do good has been preempted by an instinct toward greed. Recognition for true effort has been eclipsed by meaningless platitudes of achievement with participation trophy type awards and Critical Race Theory. The result is a plague of entitlement, indifference and mediocrity.

Multinationals want control over financial outcomes, where capitalism does not allow control over markets. Multinationals use lobbyists to generate legislative regulations that stifles competition. They are, by nature, anti-capitalist, but disguise their message with marketing platitudes that confuses the gullible masses. Capitalism is based on the principles of a free market which breeds competition. Multinationals abhor competition. Their totalitarian ideology wants to control everything under an empire.

The regulations on climate, race relations, energy, healthcare, birth and death, vaccines, abortion and euthanasia are all examples of manipulation for maximum profit and population control. These are all spawned by lobbying effort from multinational corporations.

The multinationals, which includes social and national media as well as communist countries, are funding mechanisms for the Uni-Party which both Democrats and Republicans benefit. The payment process by the multinationals for control of legislative outcomes, is the purpose of K-Street. In third-world countries, this bribery of elected officials is corruption. In the United States the bribery of elected officials is lobbying, but the process is exactly the same.

Because of these realizations, there is now a rapid growth of conservatism. There is hope! The mask hiding the difference between corporatism and capitalism must be removed. It violates all of our core values. It is based on failed agendas of political correctness that advances principles that lets multinationals erode capitalism, hijacking a message of harmony and good will. This explains Bidens passive interactions with Russia and China, the antithesis of those of Reagan and Trump. Peace through appeasement and surrender to intimidation, instead of peace through strength. Bidens policies are letting Russia and China take charge and call all the shots.

Keith has a regular commentary on WJAG 780 radio at 7:40 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

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Point Of View: What is Corporatism? | Editorials - Yankton Daily Press

Recently, there was a small political storm in Kerala over the controversial remarks of M.C. Josephine, the chairperson of the Kerala Womens Commission, who later resigned. In a live interaction on a television phone-in show, a caller mentioned being subjected to domestic violence and not having told anybody, including the police. To this, Josephine responded: Enna pinne anubhavicho! (Oh, then you suffer!).

News of this incident spread quickly across traditional and social media in Kerala and outside it. Josephine has made controversial and callous remarks in the past as well. Opposition political parties particularly the Congress and the BJP and many outside of party politics have condemned the remarks. Faced with this backlash, at a time when the state government led by the CPI(M) is set to embark on an ambitious gender outreach programme, she resigned under pressure.

Unfortunately and alas inevitably, the incident was soon constructed in party political terms and in terms of political correctness. There is little discussion of the extent and nature of domestic violence and the patterns of reporting and silence around it. Meanwhile, other recent prominent cases of gendered violence continue to be reported in Kerala and there have been recent imaginative and subtle attempts to sustain discussions around patriarchy. In the past, political classes and their constituencies have been more comfortable with discourses and interventions around development and womens economic rights more than issues of sexual harassment and violence. We seek to contextualise Josephines intemperate remarks as considerable evidence already exists that even ignorant remarks reflect a dismissive attitude towards marital violence that is common within a patriarchal context.

People at a protest demanding an end to violence against women. Photo: cathredfern/Flickr CC BY NC 2.0

Insights from the National Family Health Survey

The only credible large scale data source for domestic violence and reporting in India is the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), which surveyed a large representative sample of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) using sophisticated sampling and questions consistent with the Demographic and Health Survey conducted in many parts of the world. The NFHS covers sexual and emotional violence as well, but here we focus on physical violence including pushing, shaking, slapping, punching, kicking, dragging, twisting arm, pulling hair, strangling and burning.

The latest available NFHS data for all Indian states are from 2015-16 (NFHS-4). In that year, Keralas incidence of domestic violence was 13.3%. Of the women in Kerala reporting domestic violence on the survey, the vast majority 76% had not shared this information with anyone. In India as a whole, the incidence of domestic physical violence was far worse (29.8%) and the overall silence was also worse: 86% of women did not report it to anyone. Clearly, the victims of domestic violence rarely come forward or seek help. When speaking of abuse, it is the silence that is resounding.

Reporting of domestic violence

The figure below shows that in Kerala, expectedly, of those who did reach out, most often it was to their natal families (parents or siblings) and yet only a sixth of them did so. Less than a tenth shared with their husbands family and only 2% shared with neighbours and friends. Of relevance for Josephines controversial remarks, only 3% of women reporting domestic violence on the survey had approached the police. Other institutional possibilities social organisations, lawyers, religious leaders are used even less. The real question is why three-quarters of women who faced domestic physical violence in Kerala did not report this to anyone and why only 16% reported it to even their own natal families and only 3% reported it to the police.

While the very low level of reporting domestic violence not only to the police but even within networks of family and friends is of immense concern, it is hardly shocking for those working on gender issues. Previous rounds of NFHS presented similar patterns of silence, as have qualitative studies. Framed against this background, Josephines remarks are all the more troubling.

In fact, much is known about the silences of those facing violence. Surveys such as the NFHS reveal that in some Indian states, more than half the women justify the use of physical violence. Women are often silenced by social norms that legitimise domestic violence if they fail in their duties as good wives and daughters-in-law, making them believe that somehow they are responsible for the violence they face.

Where community members believe that a woman is a worthy victim and is blameless, they are more likely to intervene. Women often do not report violence to institutions because of fear of being disbelieved or humiliated or worse still, blamed for the violence. Police officials often view marital violence as a private matter, preferring that couples compromise rather than file a police complaint, even in all-women police stations.

When domestic violence is precipitated by alcohol abuse, victims feel humiliated because of the violence as well as having a spouse who is an alcoholic. Studies indicate that dowry demands and alcoholism are among the major causes of domestic violence in Kerala.

Research also reveals that when domestic violence is accompanied by dowry-related violence, women are less likely to be silenced and more likely to be supported. Thanks to feminist activism over several decades, dowry-related violence is penalised and considered an unacceptable form of violence against wives. Dowry harassment is seen as true oppression, but non-dowry related domestic violence has not invited a similar degree of social censure. In fact, in recent years mens rights groups have successfully fought to dilute the legal protections for those facing domestic violence.

Resounding as the silence around domestic violence is for Kerala, it is still larger for many other parts of the country. The figure below shows that for India as a whole, the percentage of women in domestic violence situations who reach out to family and friends is only between half and two-thirds of the corresponding numbers for Kerala. Reporting to institutional sources, including the police, is far worse still, reaching only between a tenth and a fifth of Keralas already low levels.

This reality is consistent with research suggesting a pyramid of reporting (see figure below): among the few who share their experience of violence, most often it is shared first with the natal family, less often with in-laws, and still less with acquaintances. Reporting to institutions, such as the police or womens organisations, is far less. An even smaller fraction of this gets to the court, and only a sliver gets convicted although there is a civil law (Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, PWDVA) and a criminal law (Section 498A) under which women can seek redress from courts.

Changes in reporting of violence over time

What has been the trend over time? When we compare data from two successive rounds of NFHS (2005-06 and 2015-16), the incidence of domestic physical violence in Kerala reduced only slightly over that decade, from 15.3% to 13.3%. But despite this, there were large changes in the patterns of reporting violence over the decade. The figure below plots reporting to family and friends (left graph) and institutions (right graph) in 2005-06 versus 2015-16. The 45-degrees line helps to gauge the extent of change over time: dots below the line indicate a higher value in 2015-16 and dots above the line indicate a higher value in 2005-06. The figure shows that incidence of reporting to family halved in Kerala over the decade from 32% to only 16% for natal family and from 17% to only 8% for husbands family.

And yet the figure shows the opposite trend for institutional reporting (right graph). Although the incidence of reporting to police is extremely low, it more than doubled in Kerala from 1.3% to 3.1%. Similarly, there is an upward trend for reporting to the other institutional sources as well. The opposing time trends in the two sets of graphs call for greater research and understanding of underlying dynamics. The pyramid of reporting is changing considerably in Kerala.

What is disturbing but not unexpected is that rather than view Josephines remarks as a trigger for deeper understanding of the situation, political expediency and casual outrage have marked the response. Presumably, the storm will unfortunately be relegated to this chaaya-cup and politics and social media will move on to other matters to get outraged about. There is little evidence that political leaders of the Congress or the BJP who successfully called for Josephines resignation, are particularly aware of the extent and nature of domestic violence reporting or the deeper causes of silence. In fact, it would not have been surprising if Josephines remarks had actually come from any one of a number of political leaders of the CPI(M), Congress or other parties or for that matter, from senior bureaucrats, religious leaders, and so forth. We find the expressions of outrage to be insincere.

Leadership whether political, institutional or social should be backed by a greater understanding of the situation, in this case, the understanding that women overwhelmingly do not approach the police, or for that matter even their own families and friends. Leadership should also be about acknowledging the problem rather than being self-righteous without sufficiently engaging with the problem. In todays aggressive and uber-masculine models of leadership whether from the prime minister, chief minister or opposition leaders there is little appetite for self-reflection. Ironically, those aggressive models belie a lack of self-confidence and a lack of ambition towards truly transformative politics.

If a Gandhi were around today, would he not respond by not only questioning Josephines remarks but also, in the same breath, acknowledging that most of us are cut from the same cloth as her? Rather than cast stones at Josephine or the government that appointed her, would we not be better served by Gibrans well-known words: And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Aye, and he falls for those ahead of him, who, though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.

Is it too much to dream that this deplorable incident can become an opportunity to acknowledge the depredations of patriarchal power and our own individual and collective complicity in it and through that process, transcend the everyday jostling for power to attempt a more compassionate politics? If we cant even hope for such a possibility, what are we really left with?

Suraj Jacob teaches at the Azim Premji University. Sreeparna Chattopadhyay is an independent researcher based in Bangalore.

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When It Comes To Dismissing Marital Violence, Aren't We All Josephines? - The Wire

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Ive spent the last couple of weeks reporting on both ivermectin as a COVID cure and the newest wave of dangerous anti-vaccination nonsense (spoiler: the two are deeply related). Since then, my email has been a non-stop neurotic cabaret of screwballs, but a lot of the anger comes from the fact that I dared to call podcaster and professor in exile Bret Weinstein, a key figure in both promoting ivermectin and debunked ideas about the dangers of widespread vaccination, a far right grifter. Weinstein often identifies himself as left leaning or a lifelong Democrat, much as Canadian professor, author, and YouTube personality likes to call himself a classical British liberal. How can such men be right wing if they reject the label?

Its a question worth exploring, and it involves a long, deep dive into what even counts as the American right wing anymore. Lets dig through the entrails of Weinstein and see if we cant find an answer.

The political right wing is supposedly a collection of various positions such as a weak federal government, low taxes, deregulation of private enterprise, and a large police state and armed forces, and personal freedom. On top of these are a host of moral or social issues generally perceived as right wing even when they directly contradict the previous list. These include interference with or restrictions of the rights of marginalized people, strict limits on reproductive choice, silencing political opinions that speak out against state force or white supremacy, and voting impediments.

However, I would argue that since around 2010, the right wing in practice is none of these things save perhaps low taxes meant to preserve the wealthiest class of Americans at the expense of everyone else. Especially since the election of former president Donald Trump, the one consistent right-wing position is whatever owns the libs. One side of the political spectrum, especially at the regular citizen level, has firmly committed itself to eternal opposition for oppositions sake. What is the right? Its whatever the left is not no matter how ridiculous it may be. Even the protection of the upper class has a vaguely trollish feel to it these days. Its not just that those people are rich, its that you, socialist with a weird haircut who thinks people should be able to doctor for free, are poor and miserable.

Which brings us to someone like Weinstein, who has long since abandoned his academic past to become a professional troll. His new life started when he resigned from Evergreen State College following a dustup on campus. The whole story is long and muddy, and no one comes out of it looking good. The tl:dr is that Weinstein called a program that asked white students to stay off campus for a day to learn about racial issues an act of oppression, and when protests and threats followed he doubled down. Weinstein sued the college for failing to protect him, and a settlement was eventually reached where he resigned.

Whoever was in the right at Evergreen (if anyone), the post-collegiate work of Weinstein is a perfect example of how a liberal can still become radicalized to the right. His story is actually very common.

Many people called Weinstein racist for his actions at the college. He undoubtable got threats and having been the subject of multiple organized online harassment campaigns I can attest that is something very traumatizing. Unfortunately, its also a kind of alt-right gateway drug because it leaves you emotionally vulnerable.

YouTuber Laci Green was famous for her sex education videos with a feminist bent, but at one point she used some language that resulted in a pretty vicious dragging on Twitter from trans people. Since then, shes morphed into a member of the red pill crowd, a loose confederation of misogynists and transphobes (read: "gender critical") that serve as the respectable face of gender-based fascism.

Or consider conservative political commentator Candace Owens. At one point, she ran a mostly liberal blog site, and said she wanted to start a website where people could name and shame harassers. This was during GamerGate, and prominent harassment targets like Zoe Quinn and Randi Lee Harper reached out to Owens to tell her how badly a system like that could be gamed by trolls. Owens interpreted the advice as a vicious harassment from the left, and shes been the far rights best Black friend ever since.

That happens because when the left pushes back against errors in judgment or morality, a lot of people flee in the opposite direction where the far right waits with open arms and love bombs. Thats what happened with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. As people began to call out her transphobia on Twitter, she was championed and comforted by the far right. The spiral continued, leaving her to detach even from the child actors she had watched grow up in order to hang with her new, far right friends. If it sounds like cult recruitment, thats because it is.

This is sort of the position that Weinstein finds himself in. His actions at Evergreen are seen as a solid blow against college campus political correctness and it makes him a martyr for the white people are actually the most oppressed crowd. Figures like FOX pundit Tucker Carlson and talk show host Dave Rubin praise him, and the king of all alt-right apologia, Joe Rogan, has him on as a guest.

Consequently, Weinstein begins to respond to this increasingly right-wing audience. He says he wrote in Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) for president in 2016, yet opposes signature positions like universal healthcare and free college unless America has a massive surplus, essentially negating the idea of such services as a right or entitlement for all people. He claims to support equality for Black people, but never fails to paint Black Lives Matter as an insidious Communist organization that is trying to force climate change justice down our throats.

All of these sorts of positions give him the plausible deniability of being liberal while still annoying the left and winning the admiration of the right for supposed hard truths. The trollish nature of Weinsteins output is best shown by his call for a unity ticket for president made up of Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). His idea of someone the left would appreciate is a woman who goes on FOX News to scream about cancel culture, which she compares to Islamic extremism.

Coming to that conclusion requires a potent combination of obliviousness, bad faith argument, and self-deception. This is probably not helped by the fact that Bret Weinstein often doesnt know what hes bloody talking about anyway. A former colleague of his at Evergreen, Prof. Nancy Koppelman, laid out a rather blistering condemnation of Weinsteins time as a teacher that makes his seduction to the right much more understandable. She taught with him twice, and noted his lack of interest in any work he was not personally invested in. This included texts Koppelman was teaching with, to the point he flat out faked reading them. That attitude extended to his students assignments.

Weinstein lacks a commitment to students work, she wrote. He flat out refused to read their writing because what he really cared about was students engagement with him. Thats not the best use of my time, he once told me.

Koppelmans essay paints the picture of a man who is charismatic and intelligent, but who cares more about his own ego rather than seeking for the truth. She says she rarely heard him concede a point another had made, and his refusal to listen to criticism over the incident that led to his resignation is partially why the whole thing escalated in the first place.

Even the ivermectin and anti-vaccination promotion ties into that. Weinstein might say hes pro-vaccine, but hes happy to build interest in an anti-authority, anti-intellectualism movement because that is what his right-wing audience likes. Truth is less important than asserting ones entitlement to disagree, even when the disagreement is fatally dangerous.

Weinstein, Owens, Rowling, Green these are people who really love to hear themselves speak. No judgment there, so do I. However, they are more marked by their inability to listen at the expense of their own spotlight. As voices raise to try and reach them, they retreat into the ranks of conservatives who will happily defend their right to be wrong to the death.

Because the right no longer has any creed but make the left mad and is comfortable with hypocrisy, the self-image of people like Weinstein as a progressive or liberal is easy to maintain. He can vote for Biden as he says he did, and still be firmly part of the right-wing machine. The content he creates now is right wing content, and if thats not who he is in his heart then the effect on the world is still exactly the same.

In the end, Weinstein is radicalized by his audience. They are eager to swallow a self-identified progressive and regurgitate him as a shield for their own views. Is Weinstein a liberal as he says? I cant know and dont care. What I can measure is his worth to the right wing army of habitual malcontents and bullshit artists, which is very, very high. Someone that useful to the alt-right is not a progressive. They just arent.

Keep the Houston Press Free... Since we started the Houston Press, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Houston, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Houston with no paywalls.

Jef Rouner is a contributing writer who covers politics, pop culture, social justice, video games, and online behavior. He is often a professional annoyance to the ignorant and hurtful.

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Why Bret Weinstein is Part of the Right, Even if He Says He Isn't - Houston Press

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When the skilled dramatic actor Caroll OConnor took a comedic turn as Archie Bunker in All in the Family in 1971, critics noticed the layered performance. Looking back decades later, Ronald Brownstein wrote in The Atlantic: All in the Family commanded national attention to a degree almost impossible to imagine in todays fractionated entertainment landscape. Archie Bunkers catchwords stifle, meathead, and dingbat all became national shorthand. Scholars earnestly debated whether the show punctured or promoted bigotry.

A Smithsonian Magazine article by Sascha Cohen stated that the fictional working-class TV dad was retrograde, incapable of dealing with the modern world, a simpleton left behind by the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, a pathetically displaced historical loser. (Producer Norman Lear) used him as a device to make racism and sexism look foolish and unhip, but liberals protested that as a loveable bigot, Archie actually made intolerance acceptable. Lear had intended to create a satirical and exaggerated figure, what one TV critic called hardhat hyperbole, but not everyone got the joke. Archie was relatable to audience members who felt stuck in dead-end jobs with little hope of upward mobility, and who were similarly bewildered by the new rules of political correctness.

The television archetype of a flawed but likable character continued through the following decades.

In 1998, Will & Grace brought viewers the incorrigible, drunken snob Karen Walker, played by Megan Mullally. A review in The Sydney Morning Herald by Michael Idato later called the fictional Walker brilliantly selfish. The couture-wearing socialite seemed to insult a loyal friend each episode, be it her housekeeper Rosario or her friend Grace. Karen Walkers one-liners often criticized her friends race, appearance or sexual orientation. The role won Mullally an Emmy Award in 2000 and 2006 for Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series.

Story continues

In 2006, 30 Rock debuted and Alec Baldwins career was revived by playing Jack Donaghy, a talented but blunt and arrogant executive. In The Hollywood Reporter, Erin Carlson later described Donaghy as a cutthroat corporate blowhard and apparent misogynist with a strong sense of purpose; Alpha-level ambition; dark humor; an anxiety propelled by fear of failure and loss of control. Mr. Baldwin balanced the Donaghy character with touches of charm, warmth and handsome style. For his skilled portrayal, Baldwin won the Emmy Award in 2008 and 2009 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

All of these rich television roles came before cancel culture. Now, it seems as though any insensitive comment or perceived slight can easily lead to the end of an actors career or their television role, even if said character is fictional.

In 2021, the CBS sitcom United States of Al was criticized for having an actor play a character whose ethnicity was not his own. The Hollywood Reporter stated in an article by James Hibberd: The Big Bang Theory producer Chuck Lorres latest midseason series United States of Al is being criticized for casting a non-Afghan actor in its titular role, and for the characters depiction in general The shows plot centers around two friends who met in Afghanistan while one of them was a soldier and the other was his Afghan interpreter. The two buddies give each other advice and hang out. They are kind people trying their best. Apparently, some critics and Twitter users are not familiar with the definitions of acting and fiction. Besides, I know of nothing in United States of Al worth opposing. And if a viewer doesnt like the program, they can always change the channel. Why ruin an entire enterprise because your sensitivities were damaged?

I hope my remarks do not make me sound like Archie Bunker. But there are worse things than being an American who makes mistakes and does their best to adapt to a changing world.

Thomas Jefferson once called America an experiment in democracy. As we live and work together, we enjoy many rights, including the freedom of speech.

Yes, you are allowed to complain about mild, fictional television characters. But if you cancel them, what are you going to do about Shakespeares plotting, wicked Lady Macbeth or the tyrannical Henry VIII?

Read original story Will Cancel Culture Lead to the End of Insensitive TV Characters? (Guest Blog) At TheWrap

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Will Cancel Culture Lead to the End of Insensitive TV Characters? (Guest Blog) - Yahoo Entertainment

Hmmm, what can we do with Tom Brady following his admission that what he says seldom aligns with how he really feels?

Someone must have posed something approximating that question. And then someone else chimed in and suggested making the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback the celebrity pitchman for a fast-food chain.

Yes, sir. Thats some smooth thinking by executives at Subway right there.

Brady appeared on an episode of the HBO productionThe Shopand took part in a free-wheeling discussion with a panel including Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green, LeBron James business manager Maverick Carter, and comedian Chelsea Handler.

When the conversation turned to political correctness, Brady all but admitted he lies constantly. (Unless, of course, that was a lie.)

What I say vs. what I think are two totally different things, the winner of seven Super Bowls said. I would say 90% of what I say is probably not what Im thinking. Which is challenging, you know? I think theres part of me that doesnt like conflict. So, in the end, I just always try to play it super flat.

Brady gave an example of dealing with reporters, a never-ending task for a starting quarterback:

From a strategic standpoint, I never want to give away like what were doing, you know what Im saying? he explained. Like, I usually say the opposite. Like, if theyve got a s corner, Ill be like, That guys unbelievable. I dont know how they even complete balls over there.

Meanwhile, in the back of his mind, Brady is formulating how hes going to conduct 60 minutes of air-raid drills on that cornerback on Sunday.

The timing of Bradys HBO appearance roughly coincided with the revelation that he is the new celebrity pitchman for the Subway sandwich chain, a role that Bill Belichick, his former NFL coach, undertook not long ago.

The gig doesnt sync with the quarterbacks much-discussed TB12 diet, which understandably poses something of a credibility problem right off the bat. Sports Business Journal reported that Brady doesnt hold a Subway sandwich in the first ad. By contrast, Belichicks ad showed him devouring a sandwich.

Outkick.com dug up a Brady interview in which he railed against processed foods.

We keep eating what they sell us and then wondering why the rates of disease and obesity are so high, he said. Our bodies become toxic when we ingest toxic chemicals. When I think about food, I picture an avocado, a banana, a salad, a handful of nuts, or a piece of fish. I dont picture a box of cereal, a tub of margarine, a box of doughnuts, a bag of potato chips, or anything else manufactured using salt, sugar, fat, etc.

That has the making of a public relations problem for Subway when the ad campaign starts and the media harps on the seeming contradiction.

Perhaps the only positive come from Seth Wickersham. The ESPN writer pointed out that, contrary to reports about the relationship between Brady and Subway, he did used to eat there more than 20 years ago.

Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo created international news early in the Euro 2020 tournament for something other than his brilliance on the field.

Taking a seat at a news conference ahead of Portugals match against Hungary, Ronaldo saw two Coca-Cola bottles on the table. Well known for his strict diet to stay in optimal condition, Ronaldo shuns soft drinks. He moved the bottles out of photo range, obviously disassociating himself from both a tournament sponsor and one of the most famous brands on the planet.

The move triggered stories in financial and advertising industry publications, not to mention discussions on social media. Though its a reach to attribute it all to Ronaldos action, Coke stock sold off in the financial markets, dropping its market cap by $4 billion. Three weeks later, the market cap has declined by another $4 billion.

Brady re-tweeted the image of Ronaldo moving the bottles, commenting, Its almost like the veterans know what theyre doing. @Cristiano @TB12sports.

In case youre wondering, Subway sells Coke products at its nearly 22,000 U.S. locations, making for one more reason that having Brady as a celebrity spokesperson is awkward at best for the chain.

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RELATED: Bitcoin Is Doing to Tom Brady What 521 NFL Defenders Previously Accomplished

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Tom Brady Has Really Stuck His Foot-Long in It This Time - Sportscasting

Thank you, Rev. Marvin McMickle, for speaking the truth, and freeing others to expand their understanding of what critical race theory is, and is not ('Critical Race Theory hyperbole is just an attempt at misdirection, July 2).

CRT, as framed by Republican legislators at the local, state, and national level, is viewed as liberal indoctrination a la political correctness and cancel culture. Their dual intent is to spread misinformation, fear, and distrust to an already underinformed base of supporters and to prevent teachers from teaching and students from learning the truth about how systemic racism is integrated into the history of the United States.

McMickles column is powerful because it is simple, honest, and evidence-based -- the trifecta for encouraging one to rethink assumptions and open ones eyes and mind to a new understanding. Too bad the media would rather give more coverage to the political propaganda of partisans than the informative and insightful commentary of leaders like the Rev. McMickle.

Tony DiBiasio,

Westlake

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Rev. McMickle spelled it out on whats really driving GOP critical race theory campaign - cleveland.com