SHEETCAKES, COMEDY, MONUMENTS, HISTORY AND OTHER LIBERAL CONSPIRACIES
A few bits and bobs in the aftermath of the Charlottesville Massacree:
1. I enjoyed Tina Fey’s sheetcaking bit. I especially enjoyed it because it offended conservatives (because you know, Teh Liberal Hollywoods) and liberals who thought she was giving bad advice by telling people to respond to Evil Conservative Fascism by staying home and binge-eating cake.
My own thought is: it wasn’t advice, it was a comedy sketch.
Yes, racism is terrible and Nazis suck, but it’s not Tina Fey’s job to tell us that or to mobilize us all into action to fight Nazis. It’s her job to use comedy as a satirical commentary of current events, ideally to provoke discussion of the topic in question. You could easily interpret the bit as a satire of people who respond to the spectacle of Charlottesville by eating cake - there’s so much metaphor to work with there. Or you can interpret it the way I did - a humorous way of expressing the frustration we all feel that the NaziS and KKK etc feel empowered by the current POTUS and most of us hate to be put in position where we have to scream and yell at such people. And I think that’s a valid a thing to say because believe it or not, some of are just sick of people screaming and yelling at each other in lieu of rational discussion with no end in sight.
You can argue that her message is an example of white-girl privilege, being able to opt out of a debate that non-whites can’t because they have more at stake, etc. That’s a valid point, and look - it’s now a discussion point thanks to Tina Fey and her comedy sheetcake!
Which is fine by me, because political comedy has always been better at provoking discussion and getting people to question things than it is at providing answers to the questions it raises.
2. That said, sometimes comedy can be a solution in itself, or at least a tool. As this article points out, if you are going to show up at the Alt.Right™ Nazi KKKoalition rally, yr best weapon is humor and satire - it's arguably way more effective than punching Nazis or getting into a pointless atavistic screaming match. A lot of the Nazi KKK guys welcome violence and screaming - they’d be more than pleased for you to start something (though yes, many of them apparently welcome it more when they outnumber you and Open Carry is legal). Make fun of them and refuse to take them seriously, and they will go ballistic. And they’ll come away looking far worse than you.
3. On the bright side, the Boston protests were a lot more peaceful than Charlottesville, and evidently more effective - not only were the Alt.Right™ embarrassingly outnumbered, the same organizers decided to cancel 67 planned rallies in 36 states and take them online instead.
Result! Chalk one for the “you gotta show up” camp.
4. Naturally, the Alt.Right™ and people who defend them are complaining that their free speech rights were violated by all the counterprotesters raining on their parade. I don’t see how. No one prevented them from having their rally or saying whatever they wanted to say. I suppose you can argue an intimidation factor, but that seems to be more the product of the Alt.Right™ apparently buying the meme that all counterprotesters are literally violent ISIS terrorists out to beat them up. Which is of course not true (mostly).
5. Regarding all the dithering over Confederate statues, I think it’s mostly a debate recycled from the same dithering over flying Confederate flags.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, most of these statues were only erected in the 20th Century, and it wasn’t just about celebrating Southern heritage. Unless by “heritage” you mean “slavery” and “racism”.
Which, to be fair, many Confederate flag/statue defenders don’t mean, because they don’t know their own history that they claim to celebrate. A lot of people still roll out the old chestnut that the Civil War was about economics and states’ rights. Sorry, but it wasn’t. It was about preserving slavery and - in the event that more states joined the CFA - forcing new member states to drop abolition laws. The CFA constitution was pretty explicit about that.
So many of today’s Confederate flag/statue defenders may not be pro-slavery racists in the strictest sense, but they’re arguably ignorant about their own “heritage”. The problem, as I’ve said before, is that their current reality bubble allows them to dismiss any facts contrary to their beliefs as Fake News.
Some people argue the statues should stay up as a reminder that a bunch of states committed treason against the US over slavery. Maybe. I like the idea from one person that we take down the statues but leave the pedestals.
Otherwise there’s no real reason to keep them up. And the argument that taking them down is revising or erasing history is nonsense - as if we would have no idea there was ever such a thing as slavery in America or a Civil War fought over it unless there was a statue of Robert E Lee in the local city park.
Then again, some people still believe the Earth is flat, so what do I know?
And so on,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1604590.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
1. I enjoyed Tina Fey’s sheetcaking bit. I especially enjoyed it because it offended conservatives (because you know, Teh Liberal Hollywoods) and liberals who thought she was giving bad advice by telling people to respond to Evil Conservative Fascism by staying home and binge-eating cake.
My own thought is: it wasn’t advice, it was a comedy sketch.
Yes, racism is terrible and Nazis suck, but it’s not Tina Fey’s job to tell us that or to mobilize us all into action to fight Nazis. It’s her job to use comedy as a satirical commentary of current events, ideally to provoke discussion of the topic in question. You could easily interpret the bit as a satire of people who respond to the spectacle of Charlottesville by eating cake - there’s so much metaphor to work with there. Or you can interpret it the way I did - a humorous way of expressing the frustration we all feel that the NaziS and KKK etc feel empowered by the current POTUS and most of us hate to be put in position where we have to scream and yell at such people. And I think that’s a valid a thing to say because believe it or not, some of are just sick of people screaming and yelling at each other in lieu of rational discussion with no end in sight.
You can argue that her message is an example of white-girl privilege, being able to opt out of a debate that non-whites can’t because they have more at stake, etc. That’s a valid point, and look - it’s now a discussion point thanks to Tina Fey and her comedy sheetcake!
Which is fine by me, because political comedy has always been better at provoking discussion and getting people to question things than it is at providing answers to the questions it raises.
2. That said, sometimes comedy can be a solution in itself, or at least a tool. As this article points out, if you are going to show up at the Alt.Right™ Nazi KKKoalition rally, yr best weapon is humor and satire - it's arguably way more effective than punching Nazis or getting into a pointless atavistic screaming match. A lot of the Nazi KKK guys welcome violence and screaming - they’d be more than pleased for you to start something (though yes, many of them apparently welcome it more when they outnumber you and Open Carry is legal). Make fun of them and refuse to take them seriously, and they will go ballistic. And they’ll come away looking far worse than you.
3. On the bright side, the Boston protests were a lot more peaceful than Charlottesville, and evidently more effective - not only were the Alt.Right™ embarrassingly outnumbered, the same organizers decided to cancel 67 planned rallies in 36 states and take them online instead.
Result! Chalk one for the “you gotta show up” camp.
4. Naturally, the Alt.Right™ and people who defend them are complaining that their free speech rights were violated by all the counterprotesters raining on their parade. I don’t see how. No one prevented them from having their rally or saying whatever they wanted to say. I suppose you can argue an intimidation factor, but that seems to be more the product of the Alt.Right™ apparently buying the meme that all counterprotesters are literally violent ISIS terrorists out to beat them up. Which is of course not true (mostly).
5. Regarding all the dithering over Confederate statues, I think it’s mostly a debate recycled from the same dithering over flying Confederate flags.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, most of these statues were only erected in the 20th Century, and it wasn’t just about celebrating Southern heritage. Unless by “heritage” you mean “slavery” and “racism”.
Which, to be fair, many Confederate flag/statue defenders don’t mean, because they don’t know their own history that they claim to celebrate. A lot of people still roll out the old chestnut that the Civil War was about economics and states’ rights. Sorry, but it wasn’t. It was about preserving slavery and - in the event that more states joined the CFA - forcing new member states to drop abolition laws. The CFA constitution was pretty explicit about that.
So many of today’s Confederate flag/statue defenders may not be pro-slavery racists in the strictest sense, but they’re arguably ignorant about their own “heritage”. The problem, as I’ve said before, is that their current reality bubble allows them to dismiss any facts contrary to their beliefs as Fake News.
Some people argue the statues should stay up as a reminder that a bunch of states committed treason against the US over slavery. Maybe. I like the idea from one person that we take down the statues but leave the pedestals.
Otherwise there’s no real reason to keep them up. And the argument that taking them down is revising or erasing history is nonsense - as if we would have no idea there was ever such a thing as slavery in America or a Civil War fought over it unless there was a statue of Robert E Lee in the local city park.
Then again, some people still believe the Earth is flat, so what do I know?
And so on,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1604590.html. Please comment there using OpenID.