All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Mecegirl]

80 years ago they would not have been saying it was bad. SO the point of the movie is a problem.. But again that is looked at through are eyes because again 70 80 years ago no one was going on like they are today about how bad the topics in movie was.

Who is no one tho? Are we talking about all people, or just white film critics? Hattie McDaniel couldn't attend the movie premiere because it was aired in a white only theater. She had to sit at a segregated area during the Oscars. At the same time McDaniel did garner criticism for not being involved in civil rights and politics enough. As well as taking stereotypical roles.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Gone with the wind isn't even an especially good movie. It's way too long and slow for one thing. The performances are great as is the set design but the film lacks real direction (not surprisingly because multiple people directed got hired and got fired) and it's very much anchored in fairly dated psychology.

I don't have a problem with long movies necessarily, like Lawrence of Arabia is long but I've seen that movie 4 or 5 times (Once in a 70mm print, and believe me if cinema dies in the pandemic, best believe I'm gonna torment my grandkids with that "Back in my day" story) and it really moves and edits well. Lawrence has problems too, i.e. in that you have Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal but at the very least Omar Sharif, an Egyptian actor, plays a complex, multi-faceted character who is also the emotional center of the movie. It also portrays a homosexual without inserting a female lead (there aren't any women in fact) and you have a real interesting look at psychology, war trauma, and tragedy and how little individuals can do to change and affect history. And where GWTW is simply well decorated, Lawrence of Arabia is very much what motion picture cinematography is all about. It's also a movie that criticizes British Imperialism and its tinkering in the Middle East, i.e. the Sykes-Picot Treaty that's still f--king up politics there.

The problem with GWTW is that you just know for a fact that Scarlett O'Hara would become part of the "united daughters of the Confederacy" and that the movie played as a nostalgia piece for old women who were Scarlett at the time of the movie's release. So it's a reprehensible movie on that level.

[Adam Allen]

People were absolutely protesting Gone with the Wind back then, even when the the book was released before the movie even started filming. Then all through filming, after it was released, and during it's many rereleases. People don't really think about things like this, but everything in the past that people have a problem with today, there were people having the same problems at the time.

True! This is where even the argument that we can't judge the people from past generations back as far as the founding fathers for their racism falls apart; the argument is that they didn't know better, that's just how everybody saw things back then, but that's not true. The fact is that there were people who were saying slavery was a moral and spiritual wrong even during the colonial period, before it was ever an institution. I think one of the many ways the internet has changed the world is that it is somewhat harder to pretend everybody is in agreement with one narrative, because today, even relatively a relatively small number of dissenting voices can make a lot of an outsized impact, online.

Related, though -- one thing that has always really bothered me, about the whole idea that people in the old days didn't know slavery was wrong, is that the suggestion relies on the idea that it's somehow possible or reasonable for a white person to look at a black person and not realize this is a person.

Like, it just shows how incredibly, insanely deeply the white supremacy goes, that I need to emphasize the insanity of that, at all. You can recognize a human being as human. I do not believe, on any level, that it is some magic of our very evolved society that makes that obvious. I think you have to choose to tell yourself that different skin tones or hair texture or facial features could mean someone is not human; to the point, I think our ancestors very clearly chose to tell themselves that, because it benefitted them. And it's letting them off the hook in a very major way, to pretend it was anything besides a deliberate moral choice.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The other thing about Gone With the Wind and treating it as a cultural document is that people just forget the reasons why the movie business worked the way they did.

For one thing GWTW was made in the time of the Hays production code. The reason you had a censorship organization like that was because before each state had its own censorship and the Southern States were by far the most active and censorious. So Hollywood driven by profit basically had a censorship system dedicated to ensuring Southern values and ideas would hegemonically be enforced over all US states.

GWTW became a success as book and movie because the South much like North Korea or Stalin's USSR had propagandistic control over textbooks, over the universities, over the news media and the movie business. America's #1 in a lot of things, one of them is the strength of propaganda. None of Stalin's lies lasted as long or was believed as widely as the "lost cause of the confederacy".

It's important that we see Golden Age Hollywood from which it emerged as being a quasi-totalitarian industry where people were simply not allowed to speak the truth.

[JackDaw]

True! This is where even the argument that we can't judge the people from past generations back as far as the founding fathers for their racism falls apart; the argument is that they didn't know better, that's just how everybody saw things back then, but that's not true. The fact is that there were people who were saying slavery was a moral and spiritual wrong even during the colonial period, before it was ever an institution. I think one of the many ways the internet has changed the world is that it is somewhat harder to pretend everybody is in agreement with one narrative, because today, even relatively a relatively small number of dissenting voices can make a lot of an outsized impact, online.

Related, though -- one thing that has always really bothered me, about the whole idea that people in the old days didn't know slavery was wrong, is that the suggestion relies on the idea that it's somehow possible or reasonable for a white person to look at a black person and not realize this is a person.

Like, it just shows how incredibly, insanely deeply the white supremacy goes, that I need to emphasize the insanity of that, at all. You can recognize a human being as human. I do not believe, on any level, that it is some magic of our very evolved society that makes that obvious. I think you have to choose to tell yourself that different skin tones or hair texture or facial features could mean someone is not human; to the point, I think our ancestors very clearly chose to tell themselves that, because it benefitted them. And it's letting them off the hook in a very major way, to pretend it was anything besides a deliberate moral choice.

Do looks matter at all? Does some one have to look human to be regarded as eligible for brotherhood?

Sometime in near future we are going to be facing profound ethical questions in regard to AI.

[Adam Allen]

Do looks matter at all? Does some one have to look human to be regarded as eligible for brotherhood?

Sometime in near future we are going to be facing profound ethical questions in regard to AI.

Well, very much to the point, supposedly there was a divine mandate for mankind to dominate all other life on the planet. It might occur to the cynical to wonder about the source, at hearing you'd gotten such instruction. "Oh ... well, if God wants me to act like I'm the only one that matters..."

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” ran its profile of Jean Schmidt, who on the floor of the House in 2005, called House Rep. John Murtha, a 38 year career veteran of the Marine Corps a coward for calling for troops to be removed from Iraq, getting Democrats riled up enough to drown her out with boos. While she claimed she was just quoting a Marine who she spoke to at Arlington National Cemetery about Murtha, the Marine she named denied ever making such a statement. Among her other charming moments include denying that the Armenian genocide occurred, agreeing with constituents who were Birthers, and going to an elementary school where she went ahead and took it upon herself to teach a room full of six-year olds about the word abortion. Schmidt also voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act, voted against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", voted against the Zadroga Act, falsely claimed "32 of 33 women who go to Planned Parenthood get an abortion", and when she misheard the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act and thought it was overturned, gleefully squealed in delight on the steps of the court. She truly earned her sobriquet. Schmidt's career fell apart in 2012 after voters in her district finally realized she was utterly heartless.

It was in both 2016, and in 2017, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted profiles about Janet Porter, a longtime anti-gay, anti-choice activist from Ohio who is an old pal of Michelle Bachmann who has written articles for the madhouse that is WorldNetDaily, (including the time where she discussed the Birther controversy surrounding President Obama). In the 2016 elections, Janet Porter decided to take a crack at running for the Ohio State Senate, to challenge incumbent GOP State Senator Larry Obhof because he refused to sponsor a fetal heartbeat abortion ban bill (because it's highly unconstitutional and the courts would overturn it anyway) and lost in the primary after only garnering 35% of the vote. Her qualifications for the job were few, she was a former conservative media personality who would present insane conspiracy theories (like the one where she warned of President Obama using FEMA to “stifle dissent” or that there will be a criminal ban placed on Christianity, focusing in particular on finding ways to do so to protect gay rights, which she relates to being a “Pedophile Protection Act”. That last bit of paranoia also led her to work to create the documentary “Light Wins”, featuring several sitting Republican members of Congress.

While Porter had a lot more sway back in say, 2007, her media profile diminished in 2010 after she became an obsessive Dominionist who would pray for God to take control of America’s media. That got her show cancelled on mainstream radio, so instead, she organizes wacky rallies and stunts like calling upon fetuses to testify in the Ohio House to try to get legislation as levelheaded as a fetal heartbeat bills passed, or work towards defunding Planned Parenthood, when she’s not also advocating for gay conversion therapy to be more widely utilized. Within the past FEW years, has compared the current “plight” of Christians in the United States to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany, likened gay marriage to slavery, compared fighting ISIS to trying to have abortion outlawed, claimed the End Times were upon us and the Great Flood was caused by God being angry about gay marriage a couple thousand years ago, and suggested that anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis should be considered as TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” In August in 2016, told her fellow Christians that "God would hold them accountable" if they did not vote for Donald Trump for president and predictably declared the candidate who lost the popular vote by 3 million votes but won the electoral college was due to "the mercy of God", and "a door of opportunity" to fulfill her dream of ending abortion. She then set back to work pissing off Ohio Republicans with her unconstitutional fetal heartbeat bill, saying she hoped it would pass so it would "outlaw abortion before the mother even knows she's pregnant". Because that doesn't sound like a fanatical or inherently manipulative of a motivation, at all. If there were any doubt Janet Porter was more of a hindrance than a help to the GOP, we’ll note that she spent much 2019 and 2020 serving as the spokeswoman for noted theocratic fanatic and pedophile Roy Moore in his quest to get elected to the U.S. Senate. She continues to stump for Republican candidates, but has temporarily ceased her own efforts at getting elected to office.



On this date in 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled South Dakota State Senator Wayne Steinhauer, the embodiment of Mr. Kotter upon reaching retirement, and a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives to represent District 9 who was first appointed to that position by Governor Dennis Daugaard in 2015, before winning re-election for the first time in 2016. In 2018, he managed to jump to the South Dakota State Senate with 56% of the vote. Steinhauer replaced Steve Hickey, the CSGOPOTD alumni who made himself infamous as an anti-LGBTQ bigot who had to resign in disgrace after being accused of forging signatures to get his name on the ballot in the first place. For as homophobic as Hickey was, Steinhauer is apparently just as much of a misogynist.

This became apparent in early 2017, when during discussions in the South Dakota state legislature about workplace protections for pregnant women that Steinhauer was one of eight Republican men who voted to block it and opined:

"It’s not prison. You can quit. You’ve got a choice every day. You make a choice whether you come to work,” he went on. “And I’m here to tell you, if a person’s not allowing you to breastfeed at work or making appropriate accommodations at work, we can pass this law, but you don’t want to work for that guy. Get the heck out of there."

Why, if we didn’t know any better, we might think that Steinhauer and his GOP pals are disingenuous and utterly full of s*** when they tout their opposition to abortion as proof that they are concerned about the unborn. And wouldn’t you know it, South Dakota Right to Life gives him a 100% rating, partially because he also co-sponsored a ban on abortion at 19 weeks that is unlikely to hold up in courts.
https://votesmart.org/bill/22585/586...regnancy#58688
Gotta love the hypocrisy there.

Steinhauer also has consistently shown himself to be contemptuous of workers’ rights, regardless of if that worker is pregnant or not, like when he co-sponsored legislation to prevent collective bargaining at public universities in South Dakota. His ”smaller government” principles also have shown him wanting to make the state hands-off enough to co-sponsor transphobic bathroom legislation for the state’s schools. This in spite of there being zero reports nationwide of men impersonating women or transgender citizens attacking women in restrooms.

Wayne Steinhauer was re-elected in 2020 with 58% of the vote. He has made it a point to focus on the Covid-19 pand- HAHAHA just kidding, this ***hole sponsored legislation to redefine abortion as the intentional termination of any fetus or zygote from FERTILIZATION. Yup, that’s right, straight up Personhood insanity that would outlaw birth control, because overturning Roe v. Wade isn’t even the beginning of to how far he would go.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

On Bloody Sunday Anniversary, Biden Signs Executive Order To Promote Voting Rights

But the order shows the limits of the president’s power to directly combat GOP attacks on voting rights. And that frustrates me no end.

**********

George Floyd’s Friends Reflect On His Life As Ex-Cop’s Trial Looms: ‘A Martyr For Us’

“The whole neighborhood knew he would make history, but we didn’t want it to be this way,” said one of Floyd’s longtime friends.

**********

Cuomo Refuses To Step Down, Says Accuser Has ‘Political’ Motives

The New York governor said “there is no way” he would resign and claimed calls for him to do so are politically motivated. Man, this shitstorm is only going to get worse.

**********

Infectious Disease Expert Warns Next Coronavirus Surge Will Hit Younger People, Too

Michael Osterholm predicted “tough days ahead” for younger and older people alike as coronavirus variants surge.

**********

Lindsey Graham Says Trump Could Make The GOP Stronger — Or Destroy It

In an Axios interview, the Republican senator admitted the former president has a “dark side.” Like, D-UH! No ****, Sherlock!

[Gray Lensman]

On Bloody Sunday Anniversary, Biden Signs Executive Order To Promote Voting Rights

But the order shows the limits of the president’s power to directly combat GOP attacks on voting rights. And that frustrates me no end.

**********

George Floyd’s Friends Reflect On His Life As Ex-Cop’s Trial Looms: ‘A Martyr For Us’

“The whole neighborhood knew he would make history, but we didn’t want it to be this way,” said one of Floyd’s longtime friends.

**********

Cuomo Refuses To Step Down, Says Accuser Has ‘Political’ Motives

The New York governor said “there is no way” he would resign and claimed calls for him to do so are politically motivated. Man, this shitstorm is only going to get worse.

**********

Infectious Disease Expert Warns Next Coronavirus Surge Will Hit Younger People, Too

Michael Osterholm predicted “tough days ahead” for younger and older people alike as coronavirus variants surge.

**********

Lindsey Graham Says Trump Could Make The GOP Stronger — Or Destroy It

In an Axios interview, the Republican senator admitted the former president has a “dark side.” Like, D-UH! No ****, Sherlock!

Maybe we can arrange a transported accident and split Trump into his dark side and his apathetic side.

[Mister Mets]

Gone with the wind isn't even an especially good movie. It's way too long and slow for one thing. The performances are great as is the set design but the film lacks real direction (not surprisingly because multiple people directed got hired and got fired) and it's very much anchored in fairly dated psychology.

I don't have a problem with long movies necessarily, like Lawrence of Arabia is long but I've seen that movie 4 or 5 times (Once in a 70mm print, and believe me if cinema dies in the pandemic, best believe I'm gonna torment my grandkids with that "Back in my day" story) and it really moves and edits well. Lawrence has problems too, i.e. in that you have Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal but at the very least Omar Sharif, an Egyptian actor, plays a complex, multi-faceted character who is also the emotional center of the movie. It also portrays a homosexual without inserting a female lead (there aren't any women in fact) and you have a real interesting look at psychology, war trauma, and tragedy and how little individuals can do to change and affect history. And where GWTW is simply well decorated, Lawrence of Arabia is very much what motion picture cinematography is all about. It's also a movie that criticizes British Imperialism and its tinkering in the Middle East, i.e. the Sykes-Picot Treaty that's still f--king up politics there.

The problem with GWTW is that you just know for a fact that Scarlett O'Hara would become part of the "united daughters of the Confederacy" and that the movie played as a nostalgia piece for old women who were Scarlett at the time of the movie's release. So it's a reprehensible movie on that level.

What should be done about Gone With the Wind? Should it be treated the same way as If I Ran the Zoo, with Warner Brothers and Ebay delisting it? Should critics who considered it a great movie be fired?

[Tami]

Maybe we can arrange a transported accident and split Trump into his dark side and his apathetic side.

I guess the only way to tell them apart is that one dyes his hair and wears a ton of orange makeup while the other only wears a little makeup and skips the hair dye.

[babyblob]

People were absolutely protesting Gone with the Wind back then, even when the the book was released before the movie even started filming. Then all through filming, after it was released, and during it's many rereleases. People don't really think about things like this, but everything in the past that people have a problem with today, there were people having the same problems at the time.

Who is no one tho? Are we talking about all people, or just white film critics? Hattie McDaniel couldn't attend the movie premiere because it was aired in a white only theater. She had to sit at a segregated area during the Oscars. At the same time McDaniel did garner criticism for not being involved in civil rights and politics enough. As well as taking stereotypical roles.

I knew nothing about this. Everything I have seen when they do those Making of Gone with The Wind or movie histories I never saw anything like this. Thank you for the information.

[Tami]

As a Librarian, it is considered the worst sin to completely remove from existence any work of writing, art, media, documents, or anything similar. There was a lot of agonizing after 9/11 regarding books that discussed making explosives, but in the end, those books weren't removed,.

Smaller, public libraries tend to weed out their collections simply due to a lack of space. But, if you really are searching for something, just search WorldCat and you are bound to find it somewhere. Most library systems have access to Interlibrary Loan programs where you can borrow a book from another library if your local library does not have it.

Worse case, if you are willing to travel, most libraries are open access or by appointment so that you can travel to them to use their collections. In some cases, the librarians might be willing to photocopy a few pages from a rare book and send it to you for a small fee to cover the cost of printing.

Then there are online sources of books

• Google Books
• Google Scholar
• Internet Archive Books
• DOAB and DOAJ
• Hathi Trust
• Library of Congress Digital Collections
• Project Gutenberg

just to name a few.

That doesn't mean that rare, one-of-a-kind books, documents, to manuscripts haven't been lost forever. Wars and terrorism throughout history are notorious for destroying cultural places, including libraries.

But the current movement is to digitize as much as possible so that, even if something happens to the original print version, there will at least be a digital backup.

Bottom line, it's not the books or media themselves, it's how they are used. A book on explosives could be used to make weapons for acts of terrorism, or they can be used by people in the demolition business to legitimately take down old buildings or other structures like the recent Trump Casino implosion in AC.

You can have someone reading books on Nazi Germany in order to emulate them and march around with torches, seeking to terrorize non-whites. Or you can have someone, a historian, a student of history or political science, or a scholar in other areas, reading the books in order to create a new understanding of how movements like this evolve as a way to learn from and understand the past and how it affects the present.

Even Culturally insensitive works, especially as viewed through the modern lens, may have value. It's all in how you view it and how you use it.

[babyblob]

It is on how you few it. I understand why some people have problems with certain books and movies and symbols.

I will use an example.

I love the Civil War. I have read more about the Civil War then I have read comics and those who read my post know that is a feat. I collect books on the Civil War, I collect little figures from both sides, I collect pictures I even had a civil war era riffle in working order before I had to give it up because I was a felon. I also have several flags. both union and confederate. Not just the stars and bars that racists like to wave around. I have state flags and regiment flags all kinds of stuff. I study maps and even wrote a few papers (For myself nothing got published.) My friend jay who I share the comic collection with (i have talked about him a bunch on here) if black and knows I am a huge Civil War buff and is not upset by collection. His brother who came over saw a Confederate flag and a Robert E Lee figure and flipped out and refuses to enter my house and views me as a racist. Even though I study The Civil War he said I condone the Confederacy by having these things. Told me I need to get rid of them.

I get why he has a problem. He has family who were slaves. But that fact should not give him the right to dictate what I collect and study in my own home. I know there are huge problems with Gone With the Wind but I enjoy it anyway.

I have said I dont think there is a cancel culture movement. At least not as overblown as some people like to put out. But there are people who do tell people what they have a right to read, watch, listen to in their own homes and what they can and can not enjoy based on their views and feelings and that bugs me.

I am not upset at the whole Dr Suess thing. His estate said they dont want to put the books out thats fine. If a private business like Ebay, Amazon or Target say they dont want to sell things on their shops thats fine. They have the right. but if I already own things or find them and want to buy them from a willing person who wants to sell them I should be able to.

On the flip side no one should tell anyone they have no right to be upset about a movie or book they deem as offensive. It works both ways.

[MajorHoy]

On Bloody Sunday Anniversary, Biden Signs Executive Order To Promote Voting Rights

But the order shows the limits of the president’s power to directly combat GOP attacks on voting rights. And that frustrates me no end.

But those limits are part of the checks & balances system so that no one branch of our government can go too far off the rails without one of the other branches having a way to try and step in.

Besides, would you have liked Trump to have as much control as you wish Joe Biden had?