Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/1/19
I totally missed last week because I was driving to a show. So I have some items from last week I’ve carried over. Because they still piss me off.
Captain Marvel Being Panned Pre-Release by People Who Haven’t Seen the Film
In the grand and glorious tapestry that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there hasn’t been one film featuring a Woman as the lead character. Until March 8th when Captain Marvel will be released.
Yes, yes, Ant Man & The Wasp technically had The Wasp as a lead/title character but that was a shared lead and Ant Man came first and it was a sequel and it didn’t seem to piss off Men’s Rights douchebags so let’s try to avoid being pedantic for just a moment, OK?
When it comes to pissing off Men’s Rights douchebags, nothing works better than a movie (any movie) about a woman. Mad Max Fury Road was awesome but why did it have to have a woman in it? The worst thing about The Last Jedi was all those girls getting in the way of the story that should be about whiny emo dudes just like them.
Holy shit! That’s why they hate Kylo Ren so much!
“Look at that whiner! He has all the power but he’s still not happy with it so he’s going to take power away from everyone around him who doesn’t have it just so he can feel better about himself even though he still doesn’t. That is so unrealistic!”
The scene is a lot more interesting if you imagine this guy eating Funyuns and crying.
I’m a nice guy! Why aren’t girls interested in nice guys?
Anyway – the reviews are already pouring in for Captain Marvel and many of them are by guys who haven’t actually seen the film!
That’s right! They are already posting negative reviews with their major complaint being “I don’t like that Marvel has, after three Captain America Movies, three Iron Man movies, a couple of Ant Man movies, and so on, decided to bow to the pressure of Social Justice Warriors by making ONE MOVIE with a girl in the lead!”
Some are even gloating that they are going to kill the box office for Captain Marvel just like they did for The Last Jedi.
Whatever, guys. If you didn’t notice that nearly every woman and person of color was dusted at the end of Infinity War, maybe you need to realize that women have a bigger representation gap than you.
So go back to your meditation chamber, Kylo, and feel sorry for yourself. Because the rest of us don’t.
Alabama Newspaper Editorial Says it is Time for the KKK to “Night Ride Again”
The Democrat-Reporter in Lindon, Alabama, has about 3000 subscribers. It is edited by Goodloe Sutton who, at one time, was honored on the US House of Representatives Floor for his work in exposing a corrupt Sheriff. When he did that, he was probably a racist.
I bring it up because he’s definitely a racist now. In a February 14th editorial, he suggested that the Klan should raid the gated communities of Democrats who want to raise taxes in Alabama. Later, when asked for comment, he stood by his writing and even suggested that the Klan “wasn’t violent until they needed to be” and didn’t kill “but a few people.”
In spite of the fact that Sutton writes for a newspaper in rural Alabama, he resigned this week and handed the paper over to a black woman who had just started working for him six weeks ago. I shall note he did not apologize when he did so and he still owns the paper.
There are probably a lot of people in rural Alabama who secretly think he’s a hero for “saying what needed to be said.” I’m guessing they are a lot of the same people who are relieved BlaKKKLansman didn’t win Best Picture.
Meme that Pissed the Off
As is frequently the case, the reason this Meme pisses me off is not so much about the target as it is about the ignorance inherent in sharing it.
The intent here, by the way, is to say “look at this young woman of color with power and influence, isn’t she stupid? Ha ha ha ha ha! Stupid girl.”
The stupid is on the other foot, though, when you do about five seconds of research to discover the quote isn’t from her. And whoever created the meme didn’t care.
They just like making fun of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez because she is strong willed and opinionated and they just don’t like her opinion. What better way to assail her opinion than to pretend she said something stupid?
If you search for the original quote, by the way, it wasn’t stupid because the person saying it was completely aware that they were making a joke. It’s only stupid if you assume the person had no idea what they were saying.
Which, in itself, is sexist. Because I could create about six thousand memes like this using quotes from Donald Trump, who says stupid and incomprehensible shit every day of his life, and the same assholes who shared this meme would be upset because I was attacking the poor billionaire leader of the free world. They would argue he didn’t say it even if I showed them a video in which he said it.
But they’ll laugh at Ocasio-Cortez because it’s a lot easier than listening to her.
Japan Nominated Trump for a Peace Prize Because Someone Asked them To
Our favorite narcissist President held a press conference about his National Emergency declaration and in between talking about how it wasn’t really an emergency but he was going to call it that anyway and his regular insults directed at CNN, he said he’d been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Trump made sure to mention how nice the letter was because there’s nothing he likes more than people saying nice things. About him.
Turns out that even though the names of individuals submitting nominations are supposed to be secret, it’s been confirmed Abe did, indeed, nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
After someone from the White House asked him to do it.
So yeah, folks in Japan are super pleased that Trump is talking to Kim Jong Un and keeping us out of a war with North Korea and I get it. Because Japan is at a much higher risk of being nuked by North Korea than the United States.
And because they nominated Trump for a peace prize at his request (only it wasn’t really him – it was someone from the White House who totally didn’t do it at his insistence), he gets to humblebrag about it forever. It’s supposed to be a secret. But the only kinds of secrets Trump likes are the ones about women he’s sleeping with who aren’t his wife.
Another Meme that Pissed me Off
This was a good couple of weeks for annoying memes. Maybe I should call this a joke that pissed me off.
This was shared in a theater group I follow. A few things you may not know about people in theater:
- A lot of them are liberal
- A lot of them (at least half) are women
So when you share something in a group consisting of a lot of liberal women (and I think liberal women are great so please don’t misunderstand my point here), they are likely going to be offended. And why wouldn’t they be when the data tells us there are fewer roles for women in theater and, overall, they have fewer lines. The dichotomy is even worse if you look at film.
And in the real world where most of us live, statistics show us that women in business are given fewer opportunities to speak and are frequently ignored when they do. In the home, women are more likely to suffer abuse at the hands of their spouse or significant other. Women are more likely to experience sexual assault and harassment.
And given all that, somebody thought this joke was hilarious enough to share.
In a theater group.
And a Third Meme That Pissed me Off
You will note that the meme in question already includes a fairly detailed takedown.
Now if you choose to read all of this and don’t dismiss the response by noting that the veteran on the right is receiving a Congressional Medal of Honor and not a Presidential Medal of Honor (yes I saw someone actually do that), you will see that the original meme is a gigantic load of misleading bullshit.
However, let’s look at some deeper issues.
The person on the left is a woman.
The person on the left is a lesbian.
The person on the left has a kind of dorky expression on her face.
The person on the left is characterized as a talk show host and the person on the right is characterized as a “war hero.”
This meme ignores the fact that Ellen Degeneres, in addition to being a talk show host, was one of the first A-List celebrities to come out of the closet. And she did so loudly and publicly.
She donates millions of dollars to charities. She’s helped a lot of people. Are her contributions as valuable as a war hero?
Here’s where I might lose some people – no. They are probably more valuable.
I’m not saying I don’t value the contributions of our military. But Vietnam was a bad war. Our soldiers died over there for no good reason. We didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. So this guy is a hero because he either saved a bunch of his buddies from dying in a bad war or killed a bunch of people protecting their homes in a bad war. Or maybe both.
That’s valuable. And if he saved a bunch of lives, the families of those men owe him huge debt of gratitude. So don’t let it be said I don’t appreciate what he did (whatever it was).
But Ellen DeGeneres was a pioneer for the GLBTQIA+ community. She opened herself up to ridicule and death threats simply by saying out loud “I’m a lesbian.” The difference that made in the lives of that community are incalculable. Add to that the philanthropic work she’s done and it just isn’t even close.
The biggest problem I have with this meme isn’t even that it is factually wrong (even though it is). It is that it devalues the contributions of a “talk show host” because she is a woman.
Holy shit pretty much everything that was said.
But what drives me nuts is the Republican narrative. The one that defends Trump by saying, essentially, “Cohen is a liar and because I know he lied about something, I can’t believe anything else he says.”
That’s a load of crap because Trump lies constantly and they don’t care. They know he lies. He does it so easily and often, we ought to question if his real name is Donald and if those are actually his children. Yet when Michael Cohen admits to lying and then says he’s telling the truth, they say “now that you admitted you lied, we can’t believe you.”
Thing is, all you need to do is look at Trump’s behavior his entire life and ask yourself “is anything Cohen is saying out of line with who he has presented himself to be his entire life?”
If you are honest with yourself, you should realize that Trump is exactly the guy Cohen is describing. You shouldn’t need to be a liberal to see it. You shouldn’t even need to be particularly smart.
If Donald Trump was a used car salesman, you wouldn’t buy a moped from him. If he worked at Best Buy, you’d decide to skip the extended warranty. He is the least honest man on the entire planet.
And Republicans know that. It’s why they attack Cohen’s credibility or keep talking about Hilary’s e-mails or say “Obama did this irrelevant thing so why are you so upset with Trump?” They know that Trump is a narcissist, a bully, a racist, and incompetent. They know he can’t string three sentences together without lying.
But he’s a Republican. And since he’s a Republican, the rest doesn’t matter. They have to stand up for him.
It’s shameful. It should be embarrassing. When they get home having attacked Cohen for telling what was almost certainly the truth, they probably feel dirty knowing the kind of man they have protected. If they only do that in the privacy of their own home, though, they are useless and they are worse than him because they have the power to stand up to him and they won’t.
Seriously – don’t you think the Republican party would look stronger if they all looked at Trump and said “no – fuck you – we are not like you and we deserve better than you.”
Someday, I hope that the people who have stood up for Trump all suffer the kind of downfall that awaits those who are complicit in the face of this kind of man. They have put their own desires in front of the needs of their country and convinced themselves that the ends justify the means.
They don’t.
Grail Diary 