Category: Media and Culture,

Video: 6-year-old cries for help as Orlando police arrest her

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Modern Parenting,, Race,, Schools,Leave a comment

The body camera footage still upsets her, Kirkland said, especially when Turner “callously” talks about arresting children.

“You’re discussing traumatizing a 6- and 7-year-old — and that’s a boasting right for you?” she said. “These are babies.”

Kirkland said her granddaughter had sleep apnea, which could cause her to act out in school — a condition that Kirkland had repeatedly worked with the school to manage, she said.

Kaia was completely processed at the county Juvenile Assessment Center, where the girl’s mugshot and fingerprints were taken, Kirkland said, adding that employees at the center had to use a step stool so Kaia could reach the camera for the mugshot.

Kaia has since re-enrolled in a private school, after refusing to attend a school with an officer on campus, Kirkland said. She said she worries about how the trauma from the arrest will affect her granddaughter in years to come.

Video: 6-year-old cries for help as Orlando police arrest her – Orlando Sentinel

The family needs to sue the school system and the city of Orlando into the ground. Consequences are the only thing that would induce people without souls to change their approach to issues like this.

Doctors Have a Name for Separating Kids from Their Parents at the Border: It’s Torture. – VICE

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Modern Parenting,, Race,, Science and Stuff,1 Comment

A 39-year-old Honduran mother had her 9-year-old child taken from her when she fled to the U.S. to seek asylum. It was three weeks before she was even able to speak to him, and though they were reunited two months later, she experienced depression and post-traumatic stress. She sometimes wondered whether she’d be better off dead.

Physicians for Human Rights has a name for what she endured. They say it’s torture.

…It was common for separated children to show regressive behaviors like bed-wetting or loss of language, according to the report.

…Some said their children disappeared when the parents were in court or at a doctor’s appointment or had their kids ripped from their arms. Others said they weren’t given clear answers when asked where their kids had gone, and that they were mocked by immigration authorities. They reported poor conditions at the detention centers where they were held, without any idea of how their kids were doing.

“What was a gut-punch for me — as I was reading one report, and another, and another — was the depth of the trauma, the depth of the cruelty of the agents; how they talked to some of the clients, how they misled them, how they lied to them and told them they would never see their children again,” said Dr. Ranit Mishori, co-author of the report and senior medical advisor for Physicians for Human Rights.

…All of the parents interviewed by the medical-advocacy group reported that they came to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras shouldering a good deal of trauma already, only to see that agony and guilt compounded by separation from their children. Fifteen of the 17 adults interviewed had received death threats, for example; 14 reported that they were targeted by gang or cartels. Many had already taken other measures to protect their families before coming to the U.S., like going to local authorities or moving internally within their own country.

Doctors Have a Name for Separating Kids from Their Parents at the Border: It’s Torture. – VICE

Aggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

One chart shows the dire state of America’s middle class

On By peanutgallerynhIn Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

In 1985, the typical male worker needed 30 weeks’ pay to cover the $13,227 required for a family of four’s major living costs: housing, healthcare, transportation, and education. As of 2018, those expenditures had risen to $54,441, and the typical male worker has to work 53 weeks to get there (shown in the chart below). “This is a problem, as there are only 52 weeks in a year,” Oren Cass, the report’s lead author, wrote.

…Cass formulated the index on male earnings because men are historically considered the family breadwinners. His findings for a female breadwinner are even more telling: In 1985, she needed to work 45 weeks to afford the four annual expenses, compared with 66 weeks in 2018.

…The increase in so many disparate costs shows that middle-class Americans carry several financial burdens — they’re behind on homeownership, lagging in retirement savings, and have debt to pay off.

One chart shows the dire state of America’s middle class – Business Insider

yup.

Sanders’s New Hampshire Visit Alarmed 2012 Obama Aides – The Atlantic

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Granite State,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Bernie Sanders has insisted he was not on the verge of a primary run against Barack Obama during the summer of 2011—but that would have been news to activists in New Hampshire at the time, who were watching his schedule in the first primary state and listening to his speeches criticizing the president then running for reelection.

…Sanders said that people could ask Reid or fellow Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, and that they’d deny that Sanders had talked about running. But I did ask Reid and Leahy about this last week in reporting the story, and neither of them denied it.

…Attending these sorts of events is one thing that potential candidates for president do to test the waters, get their names out there, and try out their stump speeches.

…“People in NH sure knew what it looked like, and sometimes what it looks like and what you’re really doing is a distinction without a difference.”

…“It seemed like he had an objective,” Kilchenstein said. “He wasn’t there as a courtesy as much as he showed up with a message.”

…When Sanders arrived at the barbecue on August 21, he ripped into Obama.

…Sanders last Thursday called Obama an “icon” in an interview with CNN, but has not explained what changed over the nine years from that summer of 2011, when he spoke of “deep disappointment” with Obama in an interview on a progressive radio show.

Sanders’s New Hampshire Visit Alarmed 2012 Obama Aides – The Atlantic

Bernie dun’ give a f*ck. He’d burn everything else down, including the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, if he thought it would advance his own agenda.

…And, rather like his about-face on the nomination rules he himself helped to create, he sure as sh*t has no problems revising history to suit his own goals. You don’t come to NH at that point in the cycle and criticize the presumptive nominee unless you are running. His denials don’t change that simple fact.

…And for what it is worth, rumor has it that he was dismissive and stand-offish to the attendees at the county picnic in question.

How Women Are Changing Mardi Gras

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Gulf Coast Region,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Historically, Mardi Gras krewes were secretive organizations characterized by exclusivity, based on race, gender, and class. Women didn’t actually parade in New Orleans until 1941, over a century after the first float-based parade was recorded. Members of the krewe of Venus recall men throwing rotten tomatoes and eggs at them. And though more female krewes formed in the late 20th century, their parades were dismissed as inferior.

…In a matter of months, Muses acquired more than double the riders needed for an official parade.“There was a lot of skepticism about our ability to succeed,” says Rosenberg. But Muses did more than succeed as a parade; it created countless new opportunities for women to participate in Mardi Gras.

…Krewes like Muses, Nyx, and Femme Fatale have placed an emphasis on sustainable, reusable throws, like scrunchies, scarves, bike bells, tote bags, and tumblers. They have led the way in diminishing waste, prioritizing quality over quantity.

How Women Are Changing Mardi Gras | Vogue

hmmmm

Florida Officer Who Detained a 6-Year-Old for Throwing a Tantrum Caught on BodyCam Bragging About Arrest

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Florida Officer Who Detained a 6-Year-Old for Throwing a Tantrum Caught on BodyCam Bragging About Arrest

So much for the officers had no choice and went along with this unwillingly….

The school official who sanctioned the call to the police (and any policy makers who created protocols to do so) need to be fired and banned from working with children.

The officers involved? Cuff, court, conviction, and then into general population imprisonment they go.

Anything less is lawlessness and child abuse.

Democratic Leaders Not Willing to Break the Rules to Accommodate Bernie Sander’s Whims

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Mr. Sanders argued that he should become the nominee at the convention with a plurality of delegates, to reflect the will of voters, and that denying him the nomination would enrage his supporters and split the party for years to come.

“Bernie wants to redefine the rules and just say he just needs a plurality,” Mr. Jacobs said. “I don’t think we buy that. I don’t think the mainstream of the Democratic Party buys that. If he doesn’t have a majority, it stands to reason that he may not become the nominee.”

…The argument of Mr. Sanders and his allies — that a plurality of delegates should be sufficient to clinch the nomination — is a different standard than the one laid out in party rules that his team helped draft two years ago. It’s also a reversal of their stance in 2016, when Mr. Sanders encouraged superdelegates to support him over Mrs. Clinton, who secured the majority of pledged delegates.

…“Bernie had a big hand in writing these rules,” Ms. Warren said during a CNN forum on Wednesday night. “I don’t see how he thinks he gets to change them now that he thinks there’s an advantage for him.”

…There is no widespread public effort underway to undercut Mr. Sanders  [despite what outlets and rumor mongers like the New York Times are fanning the flames of division with.]

….[Despite the fear-mongering and innuendo spread by outlets like the New York Times the truth is that] historically, superdelegates had always [emphasis: peanut gallery] supported the candidate who won the most pledged delegates, which accrue from primary and caucus wins.

Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders – The New York Times

There NYTimes, fix ed your shitty headline for you. (STOP fueling the fires of division with misleading commentary and outright misinformation you irresponsible hacks!!!)

Maui Telescope Protestor Battles Over Hawaiian Language Use in Court

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Hawaii,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

There’s a court case that’s drawing a lot of attention and not just for the reason the defendant is on trial but because he is insisting on defending himself in his native Hawaiian language.

…There is only one Hawaiian interpreter registered with the state, and demand for that interpreter is relatively low – accounting for less than one percent of the interpreter program’s caseload. But Kaho’okahi Kanuha says it’s not the Hawaiian language speakers who need interpreters.

…“The issue is when I speak to her she wasn’t able to comprehend that,” says Kanuha, “And so my demand to her was it’s on you, it’s your kuleana, it’s your responsibility to find an interpreter for yourself so that you as a judge can competently make a ruling in this case, in this trial.”

Maui Telescope Protestor Battles Over Hawaiian Language Use in Court | Hawaii Public Radio

(Not noted above) Legally speaking the state of Hawaii has two official languages: English & Hawaiian.

Millennial Women Made LuLaRoe Billions. Then They Paid The Price.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,1 Comment

Elbert helped out in the family candy business and eventually ran a catering company, and Maurine opened a bridal shop — but the couple also had an interesting side hustle. In 1945, the couple founded the American Family and Femininity Institute, dedicated to teaching women that their place was in the home. In 1969 Maurine Startup published a book called The Secret Power of Femininity, which instructs women to, among other things, practice saying “I am just a helpless woman at the mercy of you big, strong men” to catch a guy. The couple turned this work into $300 “Femininity Forums,” sessions where they would teach women how to find a husband. Eventually, Maurine became the California chair of an organization dedicated to fighting the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. (The campaign, led by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, was eventually successful — the ERA still has never been ratified by Congress.)

…The lawsuit filed on behalf of 190 consultants in late 2019, Belinda Hibbard v. LulaRoe LLC, detailed what they allege was the ideal LuLaRoe consultant: “Defendants targeted women, stay at home mothers, spouses of active military members, and other groups who had working capacity and some access to credit or savings, but also, generally, a lack of formal business or finance training.”

…According to Derryl Trujillo, a former employee who had been hired in February 2016 for LuLaRoe’s retailer services email team in the company’s Corona warehouse, this massive growth along with ineptitude of their mostly family executive team created a disaster. Instead of scaling back though, he told me, the Stidhams kept “growing and growing” the company.

“It was like somebody stuffing their face too much at a Thanksgiving Day table, but they couldn’t stop eating,” Trujillo said.

…She lost friends because she was working 60 hours a week, desperate to make her business succeed.

“I was just in my house, seven days a week,” she said. “And I didn’t want to leave because I always had shipping to do or I always had pictures to take.”

According to Katie, working nonstop was part of the LuLaRoe culture, because your business was what you made it. To her, the implication was clear: If you couldn’t make your business work, you just weren’t trying hard enough. And there was no time for slacking off.

“If you did stop, your [Facebook] group just tanked,” Katie said. “If you stopped for 24 hours, your group, then you had to work that much harder to build it back up again.” The grind was also hard on her family. Her kids complained that she was always in her room or on the phone.

…But while consultants can place orders for styles and sizes of clothes, they never know which prints they will get until they open the box, and no two consultants get the same mix. Shoppers, therefore, will usually join multiple LuLaRoe groups on Facebook to try and find the piece they want because some styles or colors of clothes are popular or rare.

…Because each shipment is a mixed bag, with some pieces highly valued by “unicorn hunters” that sell quickly, and others — because of their size, pattern, or color — that might be really hard to sell, consultants take a risk with each order.

“Which is how LuLaRoe is making money,” Katie said. “You sell 40% of the prints, you keep buying more inventory, but the sell-through just isn’t there. … But you’re still stuck with all the ugly stuff. You buy another box, you sell 10 out of the 30 pieces, you’re still left with 20, you go in and order more. It’s just a constant cycle.”

In addition to this cycle, many LuLaRoe sponsors, according to Katie and other consultants, encouraged their consultants to buy more clothes if their sales were dropping. After all, the more options in size and color, the more potential customers.

…“If I would have a slow month, there was always ‘Well, did you order this many pieces? You know if you order this many pieces you’ll sell this much.’ And it was, ‘Well you only have five in each size. You should really have 10 so your customers have more of a variety to choose from,’” Katie said.

Still, she blames herself for continuing to spend more and more money, and takes full responsibility for her financial choices. But she said she was drawn in by the possibility that her mentors could be right, that she just needed to buy a little more or try a little harder.

…Katie’s popular mentor kept being trailed by other consultants who seemed to just want to be near her. Katie said the leadership conference was empowering and her association with the brand made her feel special.

“I was being independent. I had constantly depended on others for a long time, and here I was, doing something by myself,” she writes.

…Katie said around this same time, the products were becoming harder to sell. Not only was the market saturated with LuLaRoe consultants, the quality of the clothes became hit or miss. Some of the leggings arrived with holes in them, some had a moldy or mildew smell. Sometimes she would open her box of inventory and realize some of the items were completely ruined. When she tried to report the damages to the company, she said she was given the runaround by customer service.

…LuLaRoe was knowingly selling defective products to consultants, and then refusing to refund them. 

…She felt gaslit by promises that she would be getting great new inventory during LuLaRoe webinars, and then none would arrive in her boxes.

“I often compared it to a cycle of abuse,” she said. “Especially with the owners. The launch would go bad…they’d kind of place the blame on us, and we’d all be really, really mad and upset with them. And then Mark would come on [the webinar and] apologize and give this whole teary-eyed speech about how sorry he was, how he did it wrong. And everyone would be like, ‘Oh, that made me cry. It’s so good that they care so much about us.’ And then the next month he’d turn around and do the same thing.”

…The loss of her 401(k) hurt, but her husband has his own and has supported her both financially and emotionally. For those without safety nets, getting out of LuLaRoe could be much worse.

Karyn, the consultant in California, said her debt from LuLaRoe led her to bankruptcy. She was only able to sell around $1,100 worth of product, she said, nowhere close to the initial investment she’d made. She filed for bankruptcy when it was clear she had dug herself into a hole she couldn’t get out of.

…“The amount of guilt I have over the shit I used to sell makes me sick.” “I have learned my lesson and I’m ashamed.” “I felt sick last night working on my taxes. So. Much. Money. I am so embarrassed and ashamed I let myself be so blind.”

Karyn thinks LuLaRoe came into her life at a time when she was the perfect target, and that’s how many women got sucked in.

“I was in a vulnerable place because I wasn’t happy,” she said, explaining she had been frustrated with her career and was looking for a distraction. “There’s a lot of guilt.”

Millennial Women Made LuLaRoe Billions. Then They Paid The Price.

From a shady as F*ck family, a shady scheme preying on isolated and vulnerable women.

Bernie Sanders told Russia is trying to help his campaign

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Sanders confirmed that his campaign was briefed about the Kremlin’s efforts about a month ago and condemned Russia’s attempts to interfere in US elections.

…”And what they are doing, by the way, the ugly thing that they are doing, and I’ve seen some of their tweets and stuff, is they try to divide us up. That’s what they did in 2016 and that is the ugliest thing they are doing — is they are trying to cause chaos, they are trying to cause hatred in America.”

…”All of us remember 2016, and what we remember is efforts by Russians and others to try to interfere in our elections and divide us up. I’m not saying that’s happening, but it would not shock me.”

Asked Friday by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” why the Sanders campaign didn’t disclose Russia’s involvement, Ro Khanna, a national co-chair of the campaign, said the Vermont senator didn’t want to publicly reveal sensitive information.

Bernie Sanders told Russia is trying to help his campaign – CNNPolitics

hmmmm

Mike Bloomberg Once Said He Could ‘Teach Anyone to Be a Farmer’ Because Farming Needs Less ‘Gray Matter’ Than Modern Work

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Science and Stuff,Leave a comment

In a clip from his November 2016 talk at the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford in England, Bloomberg said: “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”

“Now comes the information economy, and the information economy is fundamentally different, because it’s built around replacing people with technology,” Bloomberg added. “And the skillsets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze.

“That is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skillset, you have to have a lot more grey matter.”

Mike Bloomberg Once Said He Could ‘Teach Anyone to Be a Farmer’ Because Farming Needs Less ‘Gray Matter’ Than Modern Work

Maybe the idea that farming is more complicated than that requires more grey matter to wrap one’s mind around than Mike has access to?

Earth to the Vapid Echo Chamber: Slow results are not ‘rigged’ results

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

The practice of nonprofessionals administering caucuses adds another reason to question the entire caucus system, which is generally undemocratic and unrepresentative to begin with.

…The other problem is our impatience to know the outcome. Regardless of who is running an election, the news media and the public should let the process play out without demanding immediate results. Spending several days to determine an election winner is a feature, not a bug, of election administration. [Telling the public otherwise is an unforgivably irresponsible falsehood.]

…The danger here is that media frenzies over late or even less than immediate results can undermine public faith in our elections.

…Let’s remember election night 2018, when some pundits did not wait for West Coast results before deeming Democrats’ hoped-for blue wave a bust. Eventually, but not immediately, results from California and other states made the wave a reality. But the normal delay in processing ballots still opened the door for Republicans to speculate about irregularities and plant doubts about the count.

…Delays should not undermine the public’s faith in our election system. Campaigns should not use this media narrative to plant unfounded ideas of electoral shenanigans. Election officials should not rush their processes due to media pressure.

Nevada, South Carolina Democratic contests: Counting votes takes time

hmmm

Clyburn on Russian election meddling: ‘There is something going wrong’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

“Something went wrong in this primary. People dismissed it,” he said. “I say again, there is something going wrong not just in these presidentials, but there’s some things happening in these primaries all over the country.”

…“We have the most productive, the most admired democracy in the world, and it is getting under a lot of countries’ skins, and they are doing whatever they can to disrupt, to sow discord, to do whatever they can to make it look as if democracy cannot work,” said Clyburn. “And for me as a descendant of slaves to sit here and say this democracy is worth preserving.”

Clyburn on Russian election meddling: ‘There is something going wrong’ | TheHill

hmmm

The Great Google Revolt

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

From its earliest days, Google urged employees to “act like owners” and pipe up in all manner of forums, from mailing lists to its meme generator to open-ended question-and-answer sessions with top executives, known as T.G.I.F. It was part of what it meant to be “Googley,” one of the company’s most common compliments.

…Over the past year, however, Google has appeared to clamp down. It has gradually scaled back opportunities for employees to grill their bosses and imposed a set of workplace guidelines that forbid “a raging debate over politics or the latest news story.” It has tried to prevent workers from discussing their labor rights with outsiders at a Google facility and even hired a consulting firm that specializes in blocking unions. Then, in November, came the firing of the four activists. The escalation sent tremors through the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., and its offices in cities like New York and Seattle, prompting many employees — whether or not they had openly supported the activists — to wonder if the company’s culture of friendly debate was now gone for good.

…With social media swallowing up the public square, it was hard not to notice that Google and Facebook had become an advertising duopoly with an unsettling grip on the entire world’s attention. And after the 2016 presidential election, the consequences of the social media revolution came to seem dystopian. Many engineers felt deeply anguished at the news that foreign governments had exploited their technology in an attempt to influence domestic politics. “It showed that pretty much any system large enough and complex enough can be co-opted for nefarious purposes,” Rivers said.

Others became increasingly concerned that the Trump administration might now use their tools in service of policies they found immoral. Unknown to them, Google was at work on a project that would bring these anxieties right to their own work spaces. In September 2017, the company quietly entered into a contract to help the U.S. Department of Defense track people and vehicles in video footage captured by drones. During a meeting that December, Google presented initial results that showed its artifical-intelligence software was more successful than human data labelers at identifying vehicles, according to an internal Google document we reviewed. By February, the effort, known as Project Maven, was slotted into a launch calendar for soon-to-be-deployed products.

…The discovery that their employer was working hand in hand with the Defense Department to bolster drone warfare “was a watershed moment,” said Meredith Whittaker, an A.I. researcher based in New York who led Google’s Open Research Group. “If they were able to do that without any internal backlash, dissent, we would have crossed a significant line.”

…Whittaker’s concerns that the technology would enable extrajudicial killings were met with platitudes, or worse.

…Over the summer, another secret program, nicknamed Dragonfly, came to light in The Intercept. The project would censor search results in China on behalf of the Chinese government, and after months of internal protest, Google appeared to back away from that program too.

…Executives had too much power over the company, and they had too little. They wanted more. They organized chat groups on encrypted apps like Signal, with innocuous names like “care package delivery” so that they wouldn’t be outed if a manager glimpsed their phones. They prepared tip sheets to help workers approach colleagues, in hopes of building a permanent organization.

Some senior Google executives spoke approvingly about the walkout, but the company also made clear there were limits to its tolerance for worker protests.

…Ross LaJeunesse, a top public-policy official at the company, had long been concerned that Google’s cloud business was drawing the company into a web of relationships with repressive foreign governments and other questionable actors. “It makes us an accessory if we are hosting their email systems or their data,” he said in an interview. 

…Sensitive material would not necessarily be labeled “need to know.” The onus would be on workers to determine whether they should look at it or not. “In my orientation, I was encouraged to read all the design documents I could find, look at anything about how decisions are made,” said Duke, the New York engineer. “Now they’re saying that’s no longer OK. That is a major shift in culture.”

…Kurian focused on hiring more sales and customer-support personnel and made clear that he was eager to do business with the government. At one point, Whittaker recalled her manager’s telling her that Kurian aspired to be “everywhere Lockheed is.” (Google said Kurian never made a direct comparison between Google’s business and Lockheed Martin’s defense work.) And in July, Kurian got an opportunity: Customs and Border Protection announced the first step toward bidding out a major information-technology contract.

…Before long, many realized that they, too, had been unwittingly working on technology that could benefit the agency.

The biggest uproar surrounded a project called Anthos, a program that allows customers to combine their existing cloud services and Google’s. According to a report in Business Insider, internal documents showed that Google had given C.B.P. a trial of Anthos. Some engineers working on the project were enraged. They had been told that Anthos was intended for banks and other businesses. Workers took to internal mailing lists to express their outrage about the project.

…Regardless of the merits of the contracts, there was the disturbing fact that the engineers working on them had been misled about the purpose of the technology they were creating. Some had decided to work on Anthos precisely because it did not appear to be destined for the national-security apparatus. “If workers aren’t told what the real purpose of their work is, they have no agency in deciding whether or not they want to help with those things,” Berland said. “They become unwittingly complicit.”

…Around the same time, employees discovered that Google officials had been meeting with a firm called IRI Consultants since at least May. The firm has done work helping to defeat organizing campaigns at hospitals and other workplaces, in one case by instructing managers to play up the history of Mafia influence on organized labor.

…. In September, the internal security team interviewed a handful of employees who had been involved in circulating the petition asking Google not to work with Customs and Border Protection and in unearthing the documents showing that Google already was.

The Great Google Revolt – The New York Times

“Don’t Be Evil.”

South Park’s Cancel Culture Moment

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Make no mistake: The people accusing South Park of ruining our culture, of being terrible because of its rough treatment of delicate subjects, think that they’re being compassionate. They think that they speak for the people who feel mocked by the show and that they are standing up for them. They fancy themselves selfless, loving heroes.

They’re not. In fact, they are the opposite: They are so self-centered that they expect the entire world’s tastes and values to conform to their own sensibilities. 

South Park’s Cancel Culture Moment | National Review

hmmm

A Royal Divorce And The Curious Slant Of Leaks To The Press

On By peanutgallerynhIn House of Windsor,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Maybe Wootton just got bad info on the reason for the Phillipses’ split. The thing is, the Sun’s sources on the divorce story were right — so right that the couple’s hand was forced to confirm it, after they had kept it hidden from the press for months. Also, as we’ve seen, Wootton and the Sun are clearly incredibly well-sourced on royal stories.

…In my opinion, the Sun made a choice. Woven within the words of the anonymous sources in Wootton’s story is a specific narrative. A second nonroyal, non-British woman married to a member of the royal family has caused a catastrophic rift — and she might have been inspired by the first.

A Royal Divorce And The Curious Slant Of Leaks To The Press

hmmm