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

[Mister Mets]

The Gibbes Museum of Art in South Carolina has cancelled a jewelry line using shattered glass from store windows, including items named after Trayvon Martin and Breonna Taylor.

The Gibbes Museum of Art has decided to cancel the upcoming sale of a controversial jewelry line that was scheduled to launch in the museum’s store next week.

The line, called “Wear Their Names,” was designed by Paul Chelmis and Jing Wen, a Charleston-area couple who founded a nonprofit group called Shan Shui. Their jewelry line, which includes earrings, bracelets and necklaces, features pieces of shattered glass from store windows that were broken during the May 30 King Street rioting.

Items in the line were named after Black people who have died at the hands of injustice and police brutality, such as The Trayvon (Martin) and The Breonna (Taylor). Proceeds are being donated to a nonprofit organization called “From Privilege to Progress,” a national movement desegregating the conversation about race on social media.

Initially, The Gibbes supported the line of jewelry and planned to offer pieces for sale in the museum shop.

But after Tamika Gadsden of the Charleston Activist Network spoke out against the idea when The Post and Courier published an article about the jewelry line, The Gibbes decided to pull the upcoming collection from its shop.

Gadsden, along with other community members, said that even though proceeds are being donated to a worthy cause, the jewelry line is commodifying Black trauma and pain.

It's fascinating in the tonedeafness, and the ability to piss off everybody.

[Tami]

White House lawn, Rose Garden being re-sod after damage from GOP convention

President Trump’s reelection campaign is paying to replace sod on the White House South Lawn and Rose Garden after damage to the greenery late last month from large crowds and heavy equipment used for Republican National Convention festivities, White House and campaign officials said Tuesday.

Trump’s unprecedented decision to stage overtly political events on public property — which drew complaints that the Trumps were overtly using “the people’s house” for personal gain — continues to reverberate nearly two weeks later, as work crews re-sod grass and make other repairs.

On Aug. 27, Trump delivered his address formally accepting the Republican nomination on the South Lawn before an estimated 1,500 supporters seated on chairs. The president spoke from an enormous stage built in front of the South Portico of the White House. It was flanked by massive television screens and illuminated by scores of hulking spotlights — all particularly heavy equipment to position on grass.

"The sod is being replaced at no cost to taxpayers,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. “Additionally, there has been other planned infrastructure work taking place on the south grounds.”

A Trump campaign official confirmed that the sod replacement was being paid for with campaign funds.

Another example of how Trump keeps wasting his campaign funds, while destroying everything he touches.

[Tami]

“She could never be the first woman president. That would be an insult to our country,” says @realDonaldTrump - escalating his attacks on @KamalaHarris in North Carolina.

Twitter Link

The only insult to our country is the guy currently pretending to be president.

[Tami]

This weekend “Proud Boys” (MAGA in Masks) chased down a white BLM protester, beat him up, and pepper sprayed him.

Trump’s “agitators”. Smh.

Twitter Link

[Jackalope89]

In a bit of lighter news; Eric Trump once again makes a fool of himself on twitter.

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/eric-...213325042.html

[BeastieRunner]

I gave my first state-sponsored COVID-19 training today, created by my state of residence.

The opening lines included, "This training is based on reality and science ..."

[Gray Lensman]

I mean, I know he says some really stupid stuff but if you can't see that this is obvious satire then I don't know what to say.

He's already said some stuff that would otherwise be dismissed as obvious satire already.

[Mister Mets]

Jessica Krug, A George Washington University professor, resigned after it turned out that she was pretending to be African-American. She posted a confession on Medium (after others had learned the truth about her) describing herself as a culture vulture who cancels herself.

Intention never matters more than impact. To say that I clearly have been battling some unaddressed mental health demons for my entire life, as both an adult and child, is obvious. Mental health issues likely explain why I assumed a false identity initially, as a youth, and why I continued and developed it for so long; the mental health professionals from whom I have been so belatedly seeking help assure me that this is a common response to some of the severe trauma that marked my early childhood and teen years.
But mental health issues can never, will never, neither explain nor justify, neither condone nor excuse, that, in spite of knowing and regularly critiquing any and every non-Black person who appropriates from Black people, my false identity was crafted entirely from the fabric of Black lives. That I claimed belonging with living people and ancestors to whom and for whom my being is always a threat at best and a death sentence at worst.
I am not a culture vulture. I am a culture leech.
***
I have thought about ending these lies many times over many years, but my cowardice was always more powerful than my ethics. I know right from wrong. I know history. I know power.
I am a coward.
***
I am a coward.
There is no ignorance, no innocence, nothing to claim, nothing to defend. I have moved wrong in every way for years.
***
I believe in restorative justice, where possible, even when and where I don’t know what that means or how it could work. I believe in accountability. And I believe in cancel culture as a necessary and righteous tool for those with less structural power to wield against those with more power.
I should absolutely be cancelled. No. I don’t write in passive voice, ever, because I believe we must name power. So. You should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself.

Writing for CNN, Ed Morales discussed her work and why the betrayal was so weird.

Hunter College professor Yarimar Bonilla, who was a fellow at New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with Krug, said on Twitter that Krug employed gross racial stereotypes to build her claim to authenticity, "claiming to be a child of addicts from the hood," and harangued colleagues through a "woker-than-thou" rhetoric that made Bonilla feel like she was "trafficking in respectability politics when I cringed at her MINSTREL SHOW."

What got to me most about the Krug "performance" was a video that surfaced of a talk she did at Harlem's Studio Museum about her involvement with a community-led police monitoring group called Harlem Cop Watch. As someone who actually grew up in the Bronx and actively reported on police violence in the 1990s, I was repulsed when I watched her self-righteous rant about her youth in the Bronx constantly witnessing acts of police brutality, describing one against her brother, and even alluding to the horrific police shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, which she claimed happened "around the corner from my home."

A number of local New York activists like Andrew J. Padilla and Ed García Conde shared their brief, puzzling encounters with Krug online and traces of her involvement with Revolutionary Fitness, a left-oriented fitness center, emerged. Shawn Garcia, founder of Revolutionary Fitness, told me in an email message that Krug tried to "gain some clout by affiliating herself with us and other community organizations like Harlem Cop Watch," but stopped hanging around "because she claimed we weren't hard enough on gentrifiers."

Apart from all the self-searching of this moment, there is a danger that conservatives might use this to discredit ethnic and Black studies as an invalid field to research. Just Saturday, as the New York Post plastered a mocking headline alongside a photo of Krug on its cover the Trump administration released a memo blocking some race-related training sessions for federal agencies, with Trump himself attacking "critical race theory" as a "sickness" on Twitter.

Still, the question remains, does this 21st-century race-anxiety horror show invalidate Krug's work? Her book, "Fugitive Modernities," was published by the prestigious Duke University Press and had been a 2019 finalist for the Harriet Tubman Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Even Professor Figueroa admits that it was considered an "amazing," "field-changing" book.

"Fugitive Modernities" focuses on the 16th-century history of the Kisama region of Angola, whose status as a refugee site for Africans escaping Portuguese slave traders influenced the creation of escaped slave towns in New World countries like Colombia and Brazil. Historian Toby Green, who teaches at King's College in London, wrote a review of it in the Hispanic American Historical Review, praising Krug for "moving beyond Eurocentric concepts to ideas derived from African languages."
In an email, Green told me that he had a few exchanges with Krug because "there are not many historians of precolonial West/West Central Africa out there!" He insisted the book was "based on solid research," and that he "found it one of the best kinds of history, taking a sledgehammer to state power of all kinds... So for many reasons, I found the revelations (about Krug) saddening."

Perhaps a clue to Krug's motivation could be seen as an overzealous interpretation on her research on Latin America and Africa. In "Fugitive Modernities," she cites an article called "The Jíbaro Masquerade and the Subaltern Politics of Creole Identity Formation in Puerto Rico 1745-1823," written by University of Wisconsin Professor Francisco Scarano. In the article, Scarano describes how elite Puerto Rican intellectuals used to disguise themselves by writing in the coarse language of rural peasants to make more effective political arguments against Spanish colonialism without endangering their own privileges.

In the aftermath of the shitshow, earlier statements have gained greater attention, like when she defends the murder of a teenager in a bodega because of his association with the police.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S6pH8RPKBA

By all accounts, Lesandro Guzman Feliz was stabbed to death based on the belief that he was having an affair with the girlfriend of someone in the Trinitarios gang.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/n...s-verdict.html

[ed2962]

The hypocrisy of conservatives going after African American performers non-stop on censorship regarding their lyrics for the past decade (Beyonce, Jay-Z, Common, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B have been targets of their ire) while they can herald Kid Rock or say, Ted Nugent's pedophilic nature and singing songs about contracting STDs for decades is revolting racism, full stop.

To be fair, conservatives/parent groups back in the day went after everybody Metal guys, rap, Playboy, He-man cartoons and I think the majority of them were probably sincere. There was no internet back in the 80's-90's so you had to put some serious leg work into organizing a boycott or press conference etc. It's literally how we ended up with warning labels on records.

However, what kills me is seeing like Tucker Carlson and others pretending to care about "the children" as if they weren't aware that raunchy rap lyrics have been a thing for decades. And then try to turn it into an attack on feminists. They really don't give a crap but they know they can get clicks. It's just guys doing vids about how terrible the Capt Marvel movie was before seeing it.

[Robotman]

I think people focus so much on the racist aspects of Trump that they often forget that he also appeals to the toxic masculinity in many Americans. This facade that Trump is a “tough guy who doesn’t care about being PC” really draws in a lot of men who are terrified of strong women, gay marriage, and empathy in general. Obviously we know that Trump is one of the biggest whiny toddlers of all time and an absolute coward.

Comedian Patton Oswalt said on the night of the 2016 election, “tonight we found out that America is way more sexist than it is racist. And America is really fucking racist!”

[SUPERECWFAN1]

In a bit of lighter news; Eric Trump once again makes a fool of himself on twitter.

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/eric-...213325042.html

Eric is that SNL sketch brought to life . I mean it has to make the cast laugh hard thinking , damn he makes our job so easy.

[Malvolio]

I mean, I know he says some really stupid stuff but if you can't see that this is obvious satire then I don't know what to say.

Trump has become such a caricature of himself that he has blurred the line between satire and reality.

[InformationGeek]

Well that's suspicious and probably illegal.

Breaking: The Justice Dept just moved to take over Trump’s defense in the E. Jean Carroll rape lawsuit, even though the alleged incident occurred in the 1990’s and had nothing to do with the presidency.

[numberthirty]

Well...

Cohen just said that Falwell endorsed Trump based on his(Falwell's) friendship with Cohen.

Guess Mulder can take that one out of the X-Files.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Well...

Cohen just said that Falwell endorsed Trump based on his(Falwell's) friendship with Cohen.

Guess Mulder can take that one out of the X-Files.

Or Cohen knows he's in enough trouble and won't admit to blackmail.

Back into the deck, Mulder!