Predict The Next Social Crime
I think Jonah Goldberg is onto something, with his notion that male actors who dressed in drag are next on the "social justice" chopping block. It started with a tweet:
What particularly annoyed me is the use of the word "scandal." A scandal is "an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage." The actions by Tina Fey and Jimmy Kimmel were not scandals when they happened. They were comedy bits on television that went, to my knowledge, unremarked upon at the time. If unremarkable events of the past--not secret events, not unknown events, but simply run-of-the-mill events of daily life--can retroactively be turned into scandals by a mob of moral scolds, we're in store for some rough times.Think of it this way, men dressing as women for comedic effect is a very old staple. Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Flip Wilson, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx: The list goes on and on. It is not unimaginable, given the role of transgenderism in our culture today, that in the years--or days--ahead, we'll have a similar moral panic over dressing in drag (at least by cis-men) and be told that this is--and was--some kind of hate crime. Will Dustin Hoffman ask AFI to take Tootsie off its 100 best films list? Will Tom Hanks get embroiled in a "scandal" because someone dug up an old VHS of Bosom Buddies? Will Mrs. Doubtfire go the way of Gone with the Wind or Birth of a Nation?
It's one thing to say, "We should stop doing X." It's quite another to say the people who did X when X was entirely normal are now pariahs.
There is something vaguely Maoist about the mood out there. During the Cultural Revolution the young firebrands attacked and humiliated older Communist leaders for the sin of not being sufficiently imbued with the spirit of revolution, or something. The "Black Line" theory of artistic interpretation--which led to the deaths and imprisonment of countless artists and intellectuals --basically held that if you once wrote or painted something "wrong" by the current revolutionary standard, you should be forcibly reeducated, even though what you wrote or painted wasn't wrong when you painted it. Indeed, most of the victims of the Black Line were Communists in good standing who simply got screwed when the revolutionary game of musical chairs changed its tune.
Blackface was not totally normal and cool when 30 Rock was being filmed.
That said, the reason it passed was because of context... they were making fun of blackface and of racists.
NicoleK at June 28, 2020 10:32 PM
Did you know that Hulu (?) have removed some episodes of the Golden Girls because of "blackface"? It appears that the young generation is unfamiliar with the concept of mud masks, particularly as applied in the days of yore.
They're uneducated, and unwilling to learn about other people's culture.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 29, 2020 7:24 AM
That said, Kimmel and Fey need to be canceled. I didn't make the rule, and I didn't champion it, but those who choose to live by that rule for others need to suck it up and die by it.
Remember: there's no forgiveness in the Church of the Sufficiently Woke.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 29, 2020 7:26 AM
As for drag, those people live at the intersection of Stunning and Brave. You simply can not criticize transwomen.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 29, 2020 7:30 AM
Men dressing as women actually goes back hundreds of years in plays and musicals. Madame butterfly for example. One could argue that this trope eventually led to more acceptance of trans people...hahahaha just kidding. All of the past is evil and does not meet our current standards.
Why did sports teams name themselves after Indians? Because they admired them for their bravery. Why would you name your team after something to be derogatory? The Atlanta Sewer Rats? The Boston Cockroaches? No. So past admiration is still "racist" today. got it.
cc at June 29, 2020 8:20 AM
I believe one of Alinsky's rules for radicals is make your enemy follow their own rules. I'm with IRA, fuck em. Maybe there will be self reflection but I'm sure when the next designated baddy comes around all the usual suspects will hop on the cancel bus.
Shtetl G at June 29, 2020 8:38 AM
Drag queens are criticized by radical feminists and transactivists alike. So... yes.
NicoleK at June 29, 2020 9:48 AM
Vaguely Maoist? No, full-blown Maoist/Stalinist, complete with public confessions, e.g., Jenny Slate for providing a voice for a biracial character on some Netflix series:
“I acknowledge how my original reasoning was flawed, that it existed as an example of white privilege and unjust allowances made within a system of societal white supremacy, and that in me playing ‘Missy,’ I was engaging in an act of erasure of Black people. Ending my portrayal of ‘Missy’ is one step in a life-long process of uncovering the racism in my actions.”
That's straight-up American Maoism.
szoszolo at June 29, 2020 11:08 AM
Hate to double-post, but I found this on literally the very next blog I went to after posting the comment above.
Alison Brie, who did a voice role on the animated show "Bojack Horseman," writes:
"I now understand that people of color should always voice people of color. We missed a great opportunity to represent the Vietnamese-American community ... accurately and respectfully, and for that I am truly sorry. I applaud all those who stepped away from their voiceover roles in recent days. I have learned a lot from them. In hindsight, I wish that I didn’t voice the character of Diane Nguyen."
szoszolo at June 29, 2020 11:12 AM
szoszolo, when these folks start giving all the money they made voicing those characters they might earn a little respect. Great essay today at American Thinker by an Iranian-American law professor who challenges all his white liberal colleagues to put up or shut up with the virtue signaling unless they quit their cushy jobs so persons of color can take them over. Even agrees to quit himself if nine accept the challenge. I think his job is safe.
RickC at June 29, 2020 11:28 AM
Inchoate but continually-grinding theory of this century:
Social media are revealing, on a global scale, the mundane, ill-informed and often counter-productive thinking of an enormous number of everyday people with the same (literally electric) excitement which — for a century heretofore — had been provided by those in front of broadcast microphones and lenses.
In "Why Democratic Leaders Still Misunderstand The Politics Of Social Class," Thomas Geoghegan explained Trump's victory with brilliant concision: This is a high school nation.
But to be a registered voter in 2020 is a piddling thing compared to the superpower of social media presence. The people who are now running the show, perhaps globally, are a lot dimmer than typical High Schoolers.
And the problem isn't just the sheer lack of candlepower, although that's part of it.
The people calling the shots in our culture have never done anything. They've never even met anyone who's done something. They don't know the humility that comes from sitting in the presence of an accomplished soldier, or surgeon, or industrialist, or even a mere athlete or musician. They don't know what it's like to sit quietly as such a person speaks and think "I could never have done what this person has done."
Crid at June 29, 2020 11:33 AM
Man, I wish I could edit that first paragraph.
Everybody on Facebook thinks they're Edward R. Murrow, and all their friends agree.
Crid at June 29, 2020 11:44 AM
Very interesting article, but I think the author missed a point or two.
For instance, the author claims that working class people in downstate Illinois are "acting as the instruments of their own oppression" by voting down a "progressive" income tax.
He misses the point. People in downstate Illinois are not begging the rich of Chicago to rescue them with funds. They're asking for a system the would enable them to make enough money to do for themselves by their own efforts; that would reward them for working in the factory, the shop, or the job site. In other words, they want respect -- social, economic, political, and cultural -- not charity or condescension.
How many politicians today, Republicans or Democrats, have working class friends or family, folks with a high school diploma or less? How many of them who know a career military person know and regularly interact with a career NCO?
"The hordes of immigrants were not drawn to America by the misapprehension that this country's millionaires would soon be dissolving their estates and passing out the proceeds to all comers. What lured our ancestors here was the chance to build a better, freer life through their own efforts." ~ Louis Rukeyser
Conan the Grammarian at June 29, 2020 1:06 PM
"The actions by Tina Fey and Jimmy Kimmel were not scandals when they happened. They were comedy bits on television that went, to my knowledge, unremarked upon at the time."
I'm not sure about this as I don't watch either one; but, is it possible that their blackface wasn't considered a "scandal" at the time because of their liberal politics?
Would someone else doing the same skit, but with conservative politics, have been given the same free pass at the time?
Or is it as NicoleK says: it was the context?
If folks want to go after them for their blackface; then they had better also go after Whoopi Goldberg for her whiteface when she played Queen Elizabeth as host of the Oscars and for her culturally appropriating another culture's name (Goldberg)!
If they want to have these rules they had better make everyone follow them equally.
charles at June 29, 2020 3:17 PM
> He misses the point.
You're absolutely right! Spot on. Geoghegan is presumably an exemplary & unreconstructed Lefty. Essentially nobody of the Left, possibly excepting Haidt and Carville, has taken the deeper meaning from Trump's election... When thinking of him at all, they're distracted by their impulse to claim social elevation from him, which I find telling. (Trump hasn't learned anything since eighth grade, but he knows the shit out of eighth grade, while the surrounding political class has forgotten its lessons. He dances naked in front of them, but they can't see the steps.)
And I've cited this in earlier comments, but Geoghegan flies past another of his own remarkable insights about Trump.
(Looking it up on the internet: How much time from Tuesday, November 8, 2016, to January 20, 2020?)
I had to wait 1,168 days for a convincing explanation for how so many women — often deeply Christian woman, but modern in their sensibilities and sincerely devoted to the bonds of loving marriage and sexual propriety — could seemingly disregard Trump's comments about abortion[!] and 'grabbing the pussy'[!!]:
(Emphasis mine.)
That's just a brilliant thing to write… But the "as if" suggests he can't quite take his own point.
Geoghegan's subsequent thoughts about integrating everyone into the knowledge economy seem similarly destined to rinse off the existing political machinery, which disregards and often belittles those with lower IQ scores.
But those voters have made it clear that they aren't going away. Geoghegan's correct that the high and low slopes of the bell curve don't know how to communicate or trade with each other... They literally do not know anyone from the other side.
Hmm? Me, personally? Well, I feel somewhat insulated from the typical passions of each side, for at least three reasons.
[1.] I'm not that bright, m'self. But I grew up on a college campus and received a pompously embossed certificate from the Governor (as did tens of thousands of graduating High Schoolers) affirming that I was the kind of spud who could benefit from higher education. It was a lie, even though I'd walk away with a BS four years later. I was not of their tribe, but was "welcomed" by academe at a cost of many, many thousands of dollars. So far as they were concerned, the machine was working perfectly. (Groucho: the club that would accept me as a member, etc.)
[2.] Because I'm not bright, I paid a lot of attention to pop culture in younger days. So I knew that the actor garnering insane wealth and shimmering girlfriends as a wacky neighbor on a sitcom was probably a doofus, and unlikely to save the money and build a pleasant life. See also, presumably, music (the bass player for Foghat, the drummer for the Raspberries) and sports (the defensive line for '73 Oilers), etc. By the time Trump started showing up in national media and on Letterman in the 80's, it was pretty obvious he wasn't even a Kennedy or a Bush, from some heritage of bankable public service. He was a sitcom neighbor with a catchphrase.
[3.] I went to church in childhood, wherein the abiding lesson was that Our Heavenly Father was not impressed. He wasn't impressed by your brains, your looks, your wealth or the company you kept, and in fact felt particular affection for the dim, the plain, the poor and the lonely. Those are market sectors which both the ascendant Left and the crumbling Right in government would prefer to ignore.
From this chair, very near the center, it seems like neither side of the intelligence divide wants to engage the other. And both are deluded in certainty that they'll never have to.
Crid at June 29, 2020 3:24 PM
For the record: The only thing which the bass player for Foghat, the drummer for the Raspberries, and the Oilers front line have in common is that I don't know who they were, and accordingly, for purposes of that comment, presume their careers fell apart. But I sincerely hope not, and fondly want them to have lived rich lives of achievement, affection and fecundity.
Crid at June 29, 2020 3:29 PM
Blackface should not be a scandal even now. It is simply one color of clown makeup.
Black people are not so sacred that nobody should ever make fun of them. Neither is anyone else.
jdgalt at June 29, 2020 4:36 PM
"Blackface should not be a scandal even now. It is simply one color of clown makeup. Black people are not so sacred that nobody should ever make fun of them. Neither is anyone else."
Amazing that smearing clay on your face is so important? You can make money hustling race. DILLIGAF about whiteface? Nope. You can see real equality when what you get called doesn't matter.
By the way... compare photos of Ariana Grande, ~10 years ago to today. You may still relish shouting Orange Man Bad, but she's definitely in the spray tan and supplements to look... dark. Whence the "cultural appropriation" people? Oh. It's OK because she's hot.
Oh, wow, did somebody say, "people of color"? I guess you gotta include Indian and Asian in the race war, even though they are legendary workers compared to "urban" American blacks, who are by no means the whole story even as they claim they're being completely dominated and held back.
Radwaste at June 29, 2020 5:02 PM
"...with his notion that male actors who dressed in drag are next on the "social justice" chopping block."
Police are already there, even though they are Hispanic, black and female, sometimes all three. That, the misery of widespread drug use and the tent cities in California must be concealed at all costs. A&E canceled the most profitable show they've ever had to hide this.
Radwaste at June 29, 2020 5:06 PM
Talking with some former co-workers recently about current events etc. It was pointed out that in the old group there was all sorts of people...East Indian, German, Mexican, Chinese, Russian, some island in the pacific I have never heard of, someone from Barbados and two African Americans...oops, no African Americans ... two African Africans. Born and raised in Africa. Yes dark skin.
The Former Banker at June 29, 2020 10:46 PM
Alison Brie did a good job in that role. It's a shame she's felt the need to renounce it.
And I have to wonder if she's trying to get ahead of the mob in case they go after Community ( the show ), being that the show liked to address impolitic subjects ironically.
But it should be apparent to everyone that targets are being justified opportunistically - they'll find something.
norah at June 29, 2020 11:30 PM
Exactly. He is a working class oaf. He's Stanley Kowalski with money.
He was never going to be considered an intellectual. He's not a policy wonk. He's no cultured patron of the arts. His predilections run toward professional wrestling, fast food, and beauty pageants; toward spectacle and style over substance.
Unlike John F. Kennedy, he's not the type to marry upward in social class, but to marry a stripper and delude himself that every other man is jealous of him. Of course he has sordid affairs with strippers and Playmates; he doesn't want a mistress who can look down upon him.
Does this mean he was not a better choice than Hillary Clinton? Not necessarily. Imagine if the people leading the riots today had been in charge yesterday, where we'd be today. The SJWs would have a four-year head start on taking over with President Hillary. With the current rise of identity politics, the SJWs will be empowered with the election of Joe Biden and his "woman of color" veep.
The rise to power of Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) concerns me just a bit more than four more years of the current buffoon. If ever the Libertarians had an opportunity, this would have been it, but in keeping with the spirit of the times and their own incompetence, they blew it.
Read a bit about revolutions and activist movements throughout history and you'll see that revolutionary takeovers follow the same process everywhere. The radicals join with the moderates to demonize the existing regime, deservedly or not. Then, the radicals start hitting the less-zealous moderates with charges of insufficient revolutionary zeal or counter-revolutionary sentiments - i.e., social crimes.
To appease the fanatics, the moderates move to be more in line with the fanatics, lest they be associated with the demonized current regime. Once the movement is sufficiently energized and purged of its weaker elements, the revolution can begin. And that is why the current incarnation of the SJW movement concerns me. The SJWs are in the purge stage; cancel culture is their purge.
Conan the Grammarian at June 30, 2020 5:53 AM
Madame Butterfly? I thought that was written after castratis stopped being a thing... the notes in One Fine Day seem awful high for a non-castrati male....
NicoleK at June 30, 2020 12:13 PM
> He was never going to be
> considered an intellectual.
Too romantic. This isn't about 'the wrong side of the tracks.' He was never going to be considered a gifted businessman or effective manager by anyone who considered him without the inebriating charms of scripted and pro-wrestling theatrics.
As a protest vote, fine. But nothing from his outsider heritage will be recorded as more than a happenstance blessing in his, ahem, service to his country. Broken clocks, while correct twice a day, are useless for their intended purpose.
Crid at June 30, 2020 1:42 PM
I'm amused at movies from say the 50s with disclaimers that say "this film may contain dated cultural norms." Yeah, like married parents, in tact families, appropriately dressed characters, etc.
That is not to say I defend certain "norms" from that time, for example racial barriers definitely needed to go. However, I think it is a tragedy that we threw out the bad with the good.
Trust at June 30, 2020 3:49 PM
Madam Butterfly made its debut at La Scala in 1904. The Papal States, the last outlaw the castrati, did so in 1870.
Conan the Grammarian at July 1, 2020 5:56 AM
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