(1) CHANGING OF THE GUARDIAN. Lisa Tuttle has taken the handoff from The Guardian’s SF/Fantasy reviewer Eric Brown who ended his fifteen-year run in January. Tuttle’s first genre round-up will appear in The Guardian’s books section on Saturday, February 13.
(2) MANDALORIAN ACTRESS OUT. Deadline reports “Gina Carano Off ‘The Mandalorian’ After Social Media Comments”. Their article quotes from the posts she made immediately following this excerpt:
In the wake of Gina Carano’s controversial social media posts, Lucasfilm has released a statement Wednesday night, with a spokesperson saying “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano played bounty hunter Cara Dune on the first two seasons Lucasfilm and Disney+’s The Mandalorian, and it looked like we’d be seeing more of her. It appears not….
(3) ROBORIGHTS. A film based on the short story “Dolly” by Elizabeth Bear is in development: “Apple TV+ Lands Hot Package ‘Dolly’ With Florence Pugh On Board To Star” at Deadline.
Following competitive bidding war, Apple Studios has landed Dolly, a new feature film with Academy Award-nominee Florence Pugh attached to star with Vanessa Taylor and Drew Pearce Penning the script. Insiders close to the project stress the project is not greenlit at this time as the script still needs to penned and a director still needs to be attached. Insiders go on to add that the package caught the interest of a total of four bidders that included multiple studios and another streamer with Apple TV+ emerging as the winner earlier this week.
The film is a sci-fi courtroom drama in which a robotic “companion doll” kills its owner and then shocks the world by claiming that she is not guilty and asking for a lawyer. The film, which is inspired by Elizabeth Bear’s short story of the same name, has elements of both classic courtroom drama and sci-fi….
(4) FOURTH COMING. In “The Four Types of Time Travel (And What They Say About Ourselves and the World Around Us)” at CrimeReads, Dan Frey looks at whether time travel novels have characters going forwards or backwards in time and whether they retrieve objects.
Time travel is a genre unto itself, one that spans sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, history and more. But there are distinct categories of time travel narratives, each with its own set of rules—and each with a different baked-in outlook.
Getting to a taxonomy of time travel stories, the first question is—who or what is actually time-traveling? Because while the first stories we think of involve spaceships and Deloreans, the oldest time travel stories are stories about…
1. SEEING THE FUTURE
In these stories, it is actually INFORMATION that travels through time. And this might be the most scientifically plausible form of time travel, one that is already happening all the time on the quantum level….
(5) WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. Robert J. Sawyer tells Facebook readers that 26 years ago Ace Science Fiction thought they were going to land a contract with Lucasfilm to produce a trilogy of novels outlining the origins of the alien races from the Star Wars universe:
Ace editor Ginjer Buchanan approached me to write those books, and before the license was finalized I produced an 11,000-word outline and also the first 11,000 words of the manuscript of volume one. But the deal fell apart — yes, they’d get a Lucasfilm license, but, no, I couldn’t use any of the actual STAR WARS races, and so I walked away. Since I was never paid for the work, I posted the material on my website as fan fiction.
Sawyer mentioned this because the Yub Nub podcast episode “Hollywood Dinners and Alien Exodus”, which dropped today, discusses that project beginning at the 36:30 mark.
Sawyer reminds fans that the outline for the whole book is here: “Alien Exodus Outline”. And his opening chapters are here: “Alien Exodus Chapters”.
(6) THE WORDS OF SFF. In the February 6 Financial Times, book columnist Nilanjana Roy discusses the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction website.
Skipping from ‘ecotopia’ (first used back in 1975) to ‘Frankenstein complex ‘(coined by Isaac Asimov in 1947 to describe the anxiety and distrust held by humans towards robots), a living history of science fiction began to take shape in my mind. The HDSF records language coined by eminent figures from the realms of literature and science, but also long-forgotten hacks who wrote stories for the pulps…
…The HDSF is full of surprises, even to an unabashed sf fan. Many entries are older than I imagined: ‘teleport’ might seem like a word dreamt up in the 1950s, for instance, but the first recorded instance comes from an 1878 mention in the Times Of India: ‘The teleport,.an apparatus by which men can be reduced to infinitessimal (sic) atoms, transmitted through the wire, and reproduced safe and sound on the other end!’ While “infodump” was first used in a 1978 conference on science.
(7) BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. Someone who dismissed the Locus Recommended Reading List as “useless” was pointed at the “Tangent Online 2020 Recommended Reading List” which contains these introductory remarks by Dave Truesdale:
… Looking at short fiction over at least the past 10 years, a general observation can be made. It would appear that Woke Culture is as pervasive and cancerous as it has ever been for at least the past 10 years. The dearth of true originality when it comes to political or socially themed short fiction is becoming more and more apparent to those of us who have observed and studied the field for decades. Political Correctness has now infiltrated the field like a metastazing cancer, to the point where long time readers are beginning to voice complaints. The complaints arise not from what is published in the magazines or some of the original anthologies, but what is not being published. Identity Politics and the Cancel Culture have inserted themselves into the field to the extent that not only magazine fiction editors, but other areas of the SF field are bowing to intimidation and peer pressure to conform to the total obeisance the Woke doctrine demands….
(8) PRESENT AT THE CREATION. The documentary Marvel’s Behind the Mask premieres tomorrow on Disney+. Variety has an exclusive clip, and homes in on one topic — how the “Black Panther’s ‘Perfect’ Marvel Comic Book Launch Had One Major Flaw”.
When Marvel Comics first launched the character of Black Panther, it was in the July 1966 issue of “Fantastic Four.” As explained in this exclusive clip from the upcoming Disney Plus documentary “Marvel’s Behind the Mask,” premiering Feb. 12, the character of T’Challa, the King of Wakanda, was presented just like any other Marvel superhero — attention wasn’t paid to the color of his skin, but rather to the supreme quality of his abilities.
“The first Black superhero, Black Panther, comes out perfect,” says writer-director Reginald Hudlin, who wrote a run of Black Panther comics in the 2000s. “He’s this cool, elegant, handsome guy who’s just got it on lock.”
But as the clip also demonstrates, there’s one essential element of Black Panther that was glaringly incorrect: His skin is grey, not brown.
…Rather than shy away from its less than admirable history, the “Behind the Mask” filmmakers say Marvel’s executives were on board with a warts-and-all look at the company’s efforts with representation. “They were complete partners,” says Gary. “They accepted the fact that we were going to make some things uncomfortable.” The company even opened up its vault so the filmmakers could access the full range of its history.
“There were certain things that we needed to scan that weren’t part of the digital history, that were important to the storytelling,” says Simon. “We needed to get that older imagery out of the vault.”…
(9) NYT JAMES GUNN OBITUARY. The New York Times paid their respects today: “James Gunn, Prizewinning Science Fiction Author, Dies at 97”.
(10) MEMORY LANE.
- 1971 — Fifty years ago at Noreascon I, Fritz Leiber wins the Hugo for Best Novella with “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, one of his Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser tales. It was originally published in the April issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The other nominees were “The Thing in the Stone” by Clifford D. Simak, “The Region Between” by Harlan Ellison. “The World Outside” by Robert Silverberg and “Beastchild” by Dean R. Koontz.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
- Born February 11, 1898 – Leo Szilard. Vital in the Manhattan Project; first to connect thermodynamics and information theory; filed earliest known patent applications for the electron microscope, the linear accelerator, and the cyclotron (but did not build all these, nor publish in scientific journals, so credit went to others; Lawrence had the Nobel Prize for the cyclotron, Ruska for the electron microscope). Present when the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved in the first nuclear reactor; shook Fermi’s hand. Credited with coining the term “breeder reactor”. Half a dozen short stories for us. To him is attributed “We are among you. We call ourselves Hungarians.” (Died 1964) [JH]
- Born February 11, 1910 — L. T. C. Rolt. English writer whose enthusiasm for heritage railways is writ large in his 1948 Sleep No More collection of supernatural horror stories which tend to be set in rural railways. (Simon R. Green may be influenced by him in his Ghost Finders series which often uses these railways as a setting.) Some of these stories were adapted as radio dramas. Sleep No More isavailable from the usual digital suspects. (Died 1974.) (CE)
- Born February 11, 1915 – Mabel Allan. Four novels, one shorter story for us; a hundred seventy books all told, some under other names; some in series e.g. a dozen about Drina Adams who at age 10 wants to be a ballerina and finally is. Here is the Mabel Project for reading MA’s books in chronological order. (Died 1998) [JH]
- Born February 11, 1920 – Daniel Galouye. (“Ga-lou-ey”) Navy pilot during World War II; journalist; New Orleans fan who developed a pro career. Half a dozen novels, five dozen shorter stories. Guest of Honor at Consolacon, DeepSouthCon 6. Interviewed in Speculation. Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. (Died 1976) [JH]
- Born February 11, 1926 — Leslie Nielsen. I know the comic, bumbling fool who delighted generations of film goers. But his first starring role was as Commander John J. Adams in one of the finest SF films of all time Forbidden Planet. I am most decidedly not a fan of his later films but I think he’s brilliant here. (Died 2010.) (CE)
- Born February 11, 1939 — Jane Yolen, 82. She loves dark chocolate so I send her some from time to time. She wrote me into a novel as a character, an ethnomusicologist in One-Armed Queen to be precise in exchange for finding her a fairytale collection she wanted. Don’t remember now what it was other than it was very old and very rare. My favorite book by her is The Wild Hunt which she’s signing a copy for me now, and I love that she financed the production of Boiled of Lead’s Antler Dance which her son Adam Stemple was lead vocalist on. (CE)
- Born February 11, 1948 — Robert Reginald. He’s here because of two Phantom Detective novels he wrote late in his career which are most popcorn literature. (The Phantom Detective series started in 1936 so he used the Robert Wallace house name.) He has two series of some length, the Nova Europa Fantasy Saga and War of Two Worlds. Much of what he wrote is available from the usual digital sources. (Died 2013.) (CE)
- Born February 11, 1950 — Alain Bergeron, 70. He received an Aurora Award for Best Short Story for “Les Crabes de Vénus regardent le ciel” published In Solaris number 73, and a Sideways Award for Alternate History for “Le huitième registre” (translated in English as “The Eighth Register” by Howard Scott). (CE)
- Born February 11, 1953 — Wayne Hammond, 68. He’s married to fellow Tolkien scholar Christina Scull. Together they’ve done some of the finest work on him that’s been done including J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book and The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. (CE)
- Born February 11, 1965 – John Zeleznik, age 56. A dozen covers, a score of interiors. Here is Find Your Own Truth. Here is The Heart of Sparrill. Here is his Rifts Coloring Book. Here is a Magic: the Gathering card. Ten years in Spectrum anthologies. Website. [JH]
- Born February 11, 1970 – Reinhard Kleist, age 51. Half a dozen covers, as many interiors. Here is Asimov’s collection Azazel. Here is Das Böse kommt auf leisen Sohlen (German, “Evil comes on quiet feet” – more literally Sohlen are soles – tr. Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes). [JH]
- Born February 11, 1975 – Kathy McMillan, age 46. Two novels for us, four others (one got an Indies Award); eight resource books for educators, librarians, parents. ASL (American Sign Language) Interpreter. Website says Author & Language Geek. [JH]
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Carpe Diem has a space exploration joke.
(13) UNFORGOTTEN LORE. Gene Luen Yang fills readers in “On the Connection Between Chinese Folktales and American Comic Book Heroes” at Literary Hub.
I first heard about the monkey king from my mom.
When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me Chinese folktales before bedtime. My mother is an immigrant. She was born in mainland China and eventually made her way to the United States for graduate school.
She told me those stories so that I wouldn’t forget the culture that she had left. Even though I hadn’t ever experienced that culture firsthand, she wanted me to remember it.
Of all her stories, my favorites by far were about Sun Wukong, the monkey king. Here was a monkey who was so good at kung fu that his fighting skills leveled up to superpowers. He could call a cloud down from the sky and ride it like a surfboard. He could change his shape into anything he wanted. He could grow and shrink with the slightest thought. And he could clone himself by plucking hairs from his head and then breathing on them. How cool was that?…
…Turns out, my mother was pretty faithful. As I read it, I realized that American superheroes hadn’t replaced Sun Wukong in my heart after all. Superman, Spider?Man, and Captain America were simply Western expressions of everything I loved about the monkey king….
(14) THE MILLENNIUM HAS ARRIVED. The thousandth book by a woman reviewed on James Nicoll Reviews: “Just Keep Listening”.
K.B. Spangler’s 2021 coming-of-age space opera The Blackwing War is the first book in her Deep Witches Trilogy. It is set in the same universe as Spangler’s 2017 Stoneskin .
Tembi Stoneskin was rescued from abject poverty when the Deep, the vast, enigmatic entity that facilitates transgalactic teleportation, took a shine to her. As long as the Deep retains its affection for Tembi, she will be an ageless Witch, stepping from world to world as it pleases her. There is little chance Tembi will alienate the Deep.
There is, however, every chance she will alienate her superiors in the Witch hierarchy. Youthful Tembi is that most dreaded of beings, an idealist….
(15) YOU DON’T HAVE TO DIAL M ANYMORE. In “The Rise of the Digital Gothic” on CrimeReads, Katie Lowe says many of today’s Gothic novelists are coming up with plots that involve apparitions or other supernatural phenomena coming out of characters’ smartphones.
…But for all that this new technology gives, there’s also the sense of our personal spaces—the physical homes we inhabit—seeming always invaded by others, both strangers and not. They wander through, startling us with questions as we brew our morning coffee; scanning our living rooms while we’re on Zoom; liking our family photos as we crawl into bed. Our daily lives are interrupted constantly by apparitions: by the voices and figures of people who simply are not there.
This is not, however, a state of being sprung entirely from the pandemic—nor is it unique to fiction. In her 2014 essay “Return of the Gothic: Digital Anxiety in the Domestic Sphere,” critic Melissa Gronlund observed similarities between recent work in the visual arts. She suggests that artists using “the Gothic tropes of the uncanny, the undead, and intrusions into the home” in their work are searching for “a way to wrestle with daunting, ongoing questions prompted by current technological shifts: How has the internet affected our sense of self? Our interaction with others? The structures of family and kinship?”
(16) MARS MERCH. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum told people on its mailing list that the limited edition Mars Perseverance merchandise collection will only be available until February 21. (Click for larger images.)
(17) MR. SCOTT’S SECRET STUFF. Say, we just mentioned this substance the other day: “The Science Behind Transparent Aluminum on ‘Star Trek’” at Heavy.
… Forbes reports that there are two methods of creating transparent aluminum in common use today. The first method involves taking a powdered aluminum-magnesium compound that is subjected to high pressure and heated, a method used by the US Military, specifically the US Naval Laboratory. This method produces a somewhat cloudy material that needs to be polished prior to use. An alternative method, which creates a slightly stronger and much clearer material, also exists. This end-product is called aluminium oxynitride, sold under the name ALON.
(18) UNBELIEVABLE TAZ. MeTV remembers how “Taz was so crazy, he convinced the world that Tasmanian devils didn’t exist”. And the iconic character has been used to help the real ones avoid extinction.
People accept that fantasy creatures like unicorns and dragons do not really exist, and it was that kind of categorical thinking that led many Looney Tunes fans around the world to assume that a Tasmanian devil is not a real animal.
They’d never seen one before. They’d never heard of one before. It must be a made-up animal!
When the cartoon devil called “Taz” was introduced in cartoons in the 1950s, creator Robert McKinson had no idea he would be creating so much confusion with his brand-new character, which he never foresaw becoming such an icon….
(19) THAT’S CAT. They’re everywhere – on these altered versions of book covers – like the ferocious feline on the front of Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Mask Up America” on YouTube is a PSA from WarnerMedia in which Wonder Woman, Harry Potter, and Humphrey Bogart urge you to wear masks.
[Thanks to Joel Zakem, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Danny Sichel, Iphinome, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, JJ, John Hertz, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
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If you think that Carano is being persecuted for being “conservative”, then that suggests you think that conservatism has racism, transphobia, and anti-semitism as part of its politics.
Gina Carano trivializing the Holocaust wasn’t an isolated incident. It was the latest in a series of posts on social media that included mocking transgender pronouns, pushing false claims of election fraud, and spreading anti-mask memes.
Disney is not the only employer that would tire of having somebody on the payroll who keeps dragging the company into political controversies on social media with her behavior. Curt Schilling did the same thing, over and over, until giant media corporations had enough and put him on waivers.
Ironically, the conservatives making Carano a free speech martyr are also the people who love at-will employment, which makes it perfectly legal to fire somebody because you’re sick of their shit.
I meant 50% of voters, but yes that’s 30% of Americans.
Pedro Pascal shared a grotesque meme comparing America’s imprisonment of illegal immigrants with the incarceration of Jews in death camps. Carano’s comment pales into insignificance in comparison with Pascal’s witless diminishment of the horrors of the death camps & his use of the Nazis’ factories.
Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke about the Capitol riot in the same breath as Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish pogrom of 1938 which led to the deaths of almost 100 Jews and the internment in concentration camps of 30,000 more and which is widely considered to be the starting point of the Holocaust. Was Schwarzenegger harried, condemned and sacked from everything for his hysterical comparison of a riot with the start of the greatest crime in history? No, he was idolised.
That’s hypocrisy. The very brazenness of the double standards, the fact that one person can be cheered and another denounced for doing the exact same thing, Disney and its backers are essentially saying that their cultural power is such that they now own the historical memory of the Holocaust itself. It now falls to them, these cultural supremacists, to decide who may use the Holocaust to make a political point and who may not. Pascal may; A.S. may, Carano may not.
Trump supporters as a group are being singled out for hate, not just those who are white supremacists. I’ll ask you again, cause you conveniently leave out, are the black people, the LatinX people, the Asian people who voted in greater numbers for Trump than first time white supremacists? Ridiculous.. they don’t fit the narrative do they?
Even if we don’t agree Trump’s supporters are being dehumanised and hated as a group, it’s clear as day Holocaust parallels at best or trivialisation at worst is ok when done by one side but not by the other..
Val: Trump supporters as a group are being singled out for hate, not just those who are white supremacists. I’ll ask you again, cause you conveniently leave out, are the black people, the LatinX people, the Asian people who voted in greater numbers for Trump than first time white supremacists? Ridiculous.. they don’t fit the narrative do they?
What do you mean, “singled out for hate”?
Singled out for hate in the way that people of color in the U.S. have been systematically singled out for hate, beat up, murdered, had their property destroyed and stolen from them? Who has done that to Tr∗mp supporters?
Singled out for hate in the way that people of color who have come to the U.S. border in hope of escaping horrendous violence and living conditions have had their children ripped from their arms and thrown into cages where they have suffered debilitating health conditions, been exposed to coronavirus, sexually abused, subjected to lifelong trauma, and died? Who has done that to Tr∗mp supporters?
Here’s the thing. In 2016, the people who voted for Tr∗mp could at least claim plausible deniability — though I would argue that even before that election Tr∗mp had made it very clear what he stood for and what his agenda was, there are people who claim that when they voted for him in 2016, they just thought he was “joking” and didn’t really mean it. So suppose that the 2016 voters for Tr∗mp are given a “gimme”.
In 2020, there was no plausible deniability. There was 4 years of very clear demonstration of what Tr∗mp stood for and what his agenda was. They knew that they were voting for racism. They knew that they were voting for sexism and misogyny. They knew that they were voting for white supremacy.
They endorsed all of these things by voting for Tr∗mp. There’s no plausible deniability here. And now they’re whining like babies about being held accountable for endorsing it.
The flip side of “freedom of speech” is that it does not mean “freedom from the consequences of that speech”. Their fellow Americans are holding them accountable for their actions in supporting racism, sexism, misogyny, and white supremacy.
Oh, those poor Tr∗mp-voting babies. They’re being held accountable for the vile human-rights oppressions they’ve supported. How terribly unfair that is… oh wait, no, it’s not. Choices have consequences, and when people choose to support dehumanization, assault, and killing of other people, then they can hardly complain about having to face the consequences of those choices.
They’re not being herded into gas chambers and killed. They’re not being imprisoned in gulags.
They’re facing public condemnation and consequences to their employability. And that’s how a real, functional society is supposed to work.
Val says Even if we don’t agree Trump’s supporters are being dehumanised and hated as a group, it’s clear as day Holocaust parallels at best or trivialisation at worst is ok when done by one side but not by the other.
Want to talk about dehumanisation? My personal care assistant is from Somalia. Because of the Trump administration, she has not seen her relatives in that country in four years because he declared the country a terrorist threat and banned travel to and from that country. That’s dehumanising people. Fortunately Biden immediately reversed that ban so they’ll be free to travel here.
You’re in a parallel universe if you think the black people, Asian etc who voted for trump are “white supremacists”. And you have no intention to understand your fellow citizens. You use people of colour and bring them out in conversation only when it’s convenient for you, like the immigrants at the border, or the other’s Somali friends…
And using Holocaust to make a point while engaging in trivialisation is fine for the Dems and evil when the R do it? Yeah? Total silence on this point…
The thought of Trump voters being viewed negatively for voting Trump has me typing through my tears.
Val: You’re in a parallel universe if you think the black people, Asian etc who voted for trump are “white supremacists”.
That isn’t what I said. I said that they endorsed white supremacy by voting for Tr∗mp, because by the 2020 election it was very clear that’s what Tr∗mp stood for. They can’t pretend they didn’t know that’s what they were voting for.
Val: And using Holocaust to make a point while engaging in trivialisation is fine for the Dems and evil when the R do it? Yeah? Total silence on this point…
Do I think the reference to Kristallnacht was extreme? Yes, but there is no question that many of Tr∗mp’s tactics have mirrored those of Hitler. The man deliberately incited an attempted overthrow of the U.S. government, for god’s sake. And Schwarzenegger, who grew up in the immediate aftermath of Nazism, is certainly in a position to speak to that. Pedro Pascal, who has watched many of his Latin American counterparts subjected to the hellscape of the U.S. border imprisonments, is certainly in a position to speak to that.
Carano thinks condemnation for white supremacy is equivalent to being sent to the gas chamber. There is is a big difference — and you’re being disingenuous if you’re not willing to acknowledge that.
Millions of people of colour “endorsed” white supremacy… really?
Even the ones that are college educated? (Or that’s hard to come by in poor people of colour? Infantilising black people in your world is actually an ok thing to do (!), but even you can’t discount American Asians are better educated than white people…)
Have you actually talked to any of them? No, but it’s all good to stir up hatred against them..
If only white people would have voted for trump, your little theory would stand.
Like it is, it doesn’t.
And Carano was not referring to the condemnation of white supremacy. That’s you conflating being a Republican or a Trump voter with white supremacy. Theory that doesn’t stand bc millions..
Your hatred of 30 so million of people is exactly what she was referring to. And this is what is dangerous about it, you hate everyone indiscriminately.
Same as the Germans who hated the Jews and allowed their police to beat them and round them up in camps, it all started with the Germans pointing out misdeeds or whatever of some Jews and then conflating this with all Jewish population. How is that not happening now?
You’re only hating 30 million or so of Americans.. including millions of those your heart supposedly aches for… the irony..
Not 30 millions sorry 74 or so.. :))
Now you’re trivializing the Holocaust just like Carano. Isn’t there a Facebook group where you’d be happier — something with a name like AK47-Toting Jesus Patriots for the Confederacy?
All genocides had as a first step stirring up hatred against groups of people… that’s not trivialising that’s understanding history so we don’t repeat it..
Hating tens of millions of people indiscriminately and making light and fun of it is trivialising the danger behind it.. will you stop at hate? No, now you’re “cancelling”people… what’s next for the hateful mob?
“stirring up hatred against groups of people…”
Val, look in a mirror, or did you forget the supposed horror of the “Migrant Caravans” whipped up by the former occupant of the White House and his allies?
“AK47-Toting Jesus Patriots for the Confederacy?”
Well, something amusing came out of this threadjack. Thanks, rcade.
So if Trump did it, it’s ok for you to do it too?
I’m not ok with any group hatred by the way, and you’re doing it all over again. Accusing people you know anything about.
Go on, hate 74 million of people and tell yourself there’s nothing wrong with it. Conveniently forget the tens of millions of African or Asian Americans or LatinX people among them or hate them too.
Reserve your sympathy for the ones that toe your line…
I’m not even in USA, not a conservative either, maybe the distance allows me to appreciate the irony and hypocrisy.
It’s usually a good idea to not feed trolls.
PJ Evans: Everyone’s so sure they’re going to administer the verbal coup de grace, though.
Val: Millions of people of colour “endorsed” white supremacy… really? Even the ones that are college educated? (Or that’s hard to come by in poor people of colour? Infantilising black people in your world is actually an ok thing to do (!), but even you can’t discount American Asians are better educated than white people…)
You say you’re not from the U.S. I don’t know how your government works, but in the U.S., voters have to evaluate the sum total of what presidential candidates have said and done — and what they promise they will do — and decide whether their conscience will accept voting for that whole package.
In a normal election, all the candidates will have a history which includes some not-good things. The voter has to decide if they’re willing to accept the bad parts of the candidate they vote for (and what, if anything, they’ll do to hold that person responsible for doing better if they get into office).
But in 2020, the number of bad things Tr∗mp had done was already legion, and he had not only vocalized but also demonstrated the white supremacy of his promised agenda. The people who voted for him don’t get to weasel out of taking responsibility for voting for that. They were okay with it. They were willing to vote for it.
And those who have spoken up and acted in support of racism and sexism and white supremacy and overthrowing the government are now facing public condemnation and consequences to their employability. Again, that’s how a real, functional society is supposed to work.
Val: Your hatred of 30 so million of people is exactly what she was referring to. And this is what is dangerous about it, you hate everyone indiscriminately.
I don’t know what your native language is, but you seem to have gotten a mistranslation for the word “hate”. I don’t “indiscriminately hate” the people who voted for Tr∗mp, I hold them morally accountable for choosing to endorse white supremacy. I (unlike the candidate for whom they voted) am not inciting lynch mobs against them. I (unlike the candidate for whom they voted) am not advocating that they be rounded up and imprisoned in camps or killed.
If you’re really so genuinely concerned about hatred and genocide, then you need to start by addressing Tr∗mp’s supporters, not the people here, who aren’t advocating any of the heinous behavior that Tr∗mp’s supporters have advocated.
But maybe you’ve done that. Maybe you can post links showing where you’ve called Tr∗mp supporters out for their hatred and advocacy of genocide.
Or, more likely, the dishonesty and hypocrisy of your arguments here simply demonstrate that you’re a troll who is not to be taken seriously.
Wait wait wait.
Val considers it beyond the pale to compare the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol to Kristalnacht (which is what I’ve already read several WWII historians doing in good faith and with clear examples of the parallel trajectories to back up the argument), or to compare the US’s detention of undocumented immigrants (where many were already dying through deliberate negligence even before COVID) to Nazi death camps – but then thinks it’s just fine to compare to the verbal/social censure of people who voted for a white supremacist demagogue for president to the start of the WWII genocides?
Quick, everyone, remind me what DARVO stands for?
“Your side compared something to the Holocaust, so I get to do it to” is some really weak tea so far as rhetorical arguments go. It’s almost like the one I saw on Twitter, where some truly tone-deaf bigot was all “But YOUR side used ‘i can’t breathe’ as a BLM protest slogan and we’re supposed to respect it–what’s wrong with MY side saying it to protest mask-wearing mandates?” You can’t call it tit-for-tat when it’s apples and oranges.
Carano also passed on a vilely anti-Semitic cartoon. (Warning for the usual imagery).
https://twitter.com/IM_Ramble/status/1359598984428355584
Bari Weiss has some interesting thoughts on the original tweet and the image that resurfaced. And curiously enough, she took the time to speak with Gina.
Now playing God Lover Her by Toby Keith
Regards,
Dann
They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning. – Clint Eastwood
Dann665: And “[taking] time to speak with Gina” cleared things right up, didn’t it.
When she put in her Twitter bio that her pronouns are “beep/bop/boop” she “was just drawing attention to the abuse of the mob in forcing people to put pronouns in their bio”.
When she tweeted antisemitic images, “The image for me was a statement that people need to stand together and rise up, stop being so manipulated by the powers that believe they know what’s best for you and play games with our lives” — but not any “powers” that have a name.
That’s the challenge of intent. Since you can’t open people’s minds and look inside you can only compare what they say about their intent with what they do. Like mocking people’s use of pronouns, and tweeting antisemitic imagery.
@Dann
From Bari Weiss’ article, quoting Gina Carano
she “was just drawing attention to the abuse of the mob in forcing people to put pronouns in their bio”.
This is bullshit. I put “she/her” pronouns in my Twitter bio, and there was no “mob” forcing me to do any such thing. I just saw the pronouns popping up in my feed, investigated what they meant and why they were there, and thought it would be the neighborly thing to do.
A lot of “political correctness” is simple kindness and consideration for other people. It’s too bad that people lacking empathy, as Gina Carano seems to be (at least on this subject) can’t see that.
As someone who has never put her pronouns in her Twitter bio, for no particularly good reason, I’ve never experienced the least little bit of “bullying” over it. I’ve never even felt “bullied” over it in settings where it’s prevalent enough that I do it too because it’s clearly and visibly the norm, and I don’t want to be rude.
But I think that’s part of the difference. When I perceive that something might be considered rude, I try to avoid doing that rude thing, unless there’s compelling reason, rather than feeling aggrieved that “local custom” is different than what I’m accustomed to.
@Mike
Cleared things up as in “dust off our hands, nothing to see here, move along”? Probably not.
That…ummmm…denatured* image is still out there. It’s relationship to antisemitism is still there. Someone else will use it in the future; perhaps/probably for ill intended purposes precisely because of its similarity to the overtly antisemitic original.
For the moment, I think Ms. Carano’s intent has been resolved. And I think intent matters in some proportion.
I remain a steadfastly astride my hobbyhorse of expecting reasonably equal treatment for reasonably equal acts. If Ms. Carano was wrong to use the other image showing a Jewish woman being beaten by her neighbors, then so was Mr. Pascal. I’m not interested in seeing either of them fired.
Again, I’m one of those people that thinks that Nazi references are overused by everyone.
*The best I can come up with for an image that was stripped of the more overt antisemitic references, but should still be considered rhetorically toxic.
@Bonnie McDaniel
I’ve never had a mob forcing me to do any such thing either. But the last time I checked, neither one of us is media celebrity who is more likely to have a pile of random strangers say “so do this one little thing or you are a [pick a nasty adjective]”. Perhaps her experience with mobs is different from ours?
That’s a popular theory for some. When the result of any failure to adhere to every required act of “kindness and consideration” is high volume vitriol, then the presence of kindness and consideration for other people should be called into question.
Now playing Bob Seger’s “Beautiful Loser” album. Yay Spotify!
Regards,
Dann
I am the American Dream. I am the epitome of what the American Dream basically said. It said you could come from anywhere and be anything you want in this country. That’s exactly what I’ve done. – Whoopi Goldberg