It's a Broken Clock Day. Ann Althouse Get's It Right For a Change.

 First the context.  Disney Corp in FL has been at war with the Republican Nazis, who are at war with the idea of gender inclusivity. The Republican Nazis passed a law which  I have no problem flat out saying, is an attack on the very idea of gender inclusivity. 

Now there is some vid making the rounds which shows, allegedly, some Disney exe talking about a plan to add queerness and drop the traditional gender greetings and shit, at their parks. 

Enter NY Post opinion writer Karol Markowitz, who announced she is,

"Quitting Disney after seeing it boast about pushing ‘gender theory.’"

I am not reading the article  as I don't have the minutes to spare. I assume at core of her revulsion is the idea people have the audacity to think differently about shit than she does. That is what makes Republican Nazis livid.  Non conformity to their biases.

Enter Ann Althouse for posting about this shit, but also for getting it right, if only partly.  She says:

"Markowicz pretends that the theme park never delivered a gender-identity lesson, but of course it did. You can deny it by restricting the meaning of gender-identity lesson, but that's a con. Cinderella, Snow White... etc. etc.... that was always delivering a gender message. It was indoctrination, just the indoctrination that was traditional and conventional. The princess idea didn't come straight from your little daughter's head. It's a meme that she was infected with. And it's pretty shallow and inane."

And I agree with her.  Now too bad Althouse did not go off on the tangent I touched on.  How Republican Nazis get livid about and over non conformity to their biases.

To my mind she has too much sympathy to the core idea of conservatism (Republican Nazism.)  I have never seen her go off on that whole . . . our way of the highway, mindset that is the core of conservatism (Republican Nazism.)  Now the counter argument is something like "wokeism" and liberal ideology is as stubborn and blind as conservatism (Republican Nazism.)  There is a genuine, if not huge difference.  At its core, liberal ideology is about increasing inclusion, and by that I mean a rejection of the idea of blanket conformity.  Giving people shit for being a bigot is not the same as being a bigot yourself.  The bigot wants people to be more like them in the ways they claim to think and the ways they seem to act.  What liberals want is for the bigots to stop being bigots, and allow for people of different thoughts and not actually harmful to others actions the dignity to be free to be exactly that.

So much not the same thing.  Even if some of the liberals do go over the top.  But that is a minority of them, and more a matter of using bad tactics, than a failure of the core ideology.

Half on Fire

Jon Stewart and friends dog walk Andrew Sullivan over White Supremacy.

Over the years I have swiped at "Sully," over and over.  For being a white supremacist, and defending that shit, over and over.  He is one of the worst of the worst of Pro Nazi white supremacists because he manages to still pretend to not be a racist no matter how many times he is told it.  Like at the end of this vid.   Spoiler alert (almost.) Make sure you watch all the way to the end.  "Sully" goes all whiny at that accusation, and Jon puts this rabid bitch down in monumental fashion.

If I could, I would strip him of his US Citizenship, stick him on a slow boat back to the UK, with a message to Boris:  "Take back your trash!"

He doesn't exactly make the argument directly but it's there. It's the lame assed . . . but things are better now than 200 years ago, argument.  I think of that as a "glass is half full now" argument.  That totally misses the point.

Here is my argument.  Imagine you walk in a room.  There is a table with a box labeled  Fire Blanket, and a person totally on fire.  Most reasonable people would not over analyze the situation, but instead  run to the box, grab the fire blanket, and try to help  the person on fire.   

Now imagine if the person was only half on fire?  You should still run for the fire blanket and try to smother the flames.  You should not say, "Hey you are only half on fire.  No biggie."  And  walk away.

And that is why I have no problem at all calling those trashy people white supremacists, who directly or in context make the things are better now, argument.  Half on fire is too much on fire!  Ya fucking moron!

Related to the current SCOTUS hearings.

 Watching GOP senators throw tantrums, have melt downs, giving biased policy based speeches, and actually dismissing the importance of judges to hear cases and impose criminal sentences based on rationality (instead of emotionally driven excess?)

I am well reminded of the difference between us and them.  

And while I am on it, Judge Jackson is an exemplar of competence and patience.  I think Cruz got close to getting to her. I don't want to make this a black thing, but at one point I got the vibe I recognize as the son of a black momma, that . . .  she had enough of that nonsense.  I will leave it there.

I am actually enjoying a Loury vid.

 Mainly because the guest is a former Bernie advisor.  And let's just say he isn't the greatest fan of capitalism, and all the corny, conservative idiotic bullshit Loury pimps these days.

It's like watching someone with dead accurate aim, throwing hand grenades.

Boom!  Boom!  Boom!

I suppose I will link it in a follow up below.  Eventually.  

I am back.  Here is the link:  Duck!

And spoiler alert. Glenn  Glenn  Glenn!  You are too impressed with the underserved status  of your precious ivy league.  And you are too married to your conservative talking points.  Daniel totally owned you about education, among other topics.  In getting you to admit  that charter schools  do not improve much he pretty  much got you to admit to the scam.  It's privatization as an example of some bitches getting rich, and a few peeps getting  a perhaps smaller better education for their own kids.  But it does fucking nothing for most of the people who want and need better for their kids.  Capitalism allows for a few to win, and causes most to lose.  That is how it was designed, and how it is meant to work!

Glenn Loury & John McWhorter getting shit all wrong, yet again.

The video starts with shit . . . who cares?  Moving on to the actual convo.  They discuss the story about the white supremacist motherfucker (JMO) who tweeted about how some blue black Sudanese model was so dark he called her freak of nature.

His career went poof.  I am ok with that.  I seriously doubt he would describe some English Rose with Snow White complexion as a freak of nature.  I call white supremacist bullshit!

But yo yo yo!  Professor Linguist!  You got the 411 about that phrase freak of nature way the fuck wrong. Didn't you google that shit?  Apparently not, as I got 411 from some legit sources saying that was a negative thing, not a positive.

You might actually, in you wrong headed heart, believe what you said.  You are/were wrong.  Embarrassingly so.  You need a vacation from the public.  And I suggest you meditate on why you can't seem to believe you can be wrong in your opinions about any the fuck thing?   I repeat; you are fucking up in public on shit you are supposed to be an expert at! Never mind that shit you really don't know dick about  (more on that later.)

And other professor.  You do say some rachetly stupid shit, sometimes.  Like drunk uncle at the bar after five hours of pounding beers, rachetly stupid.  For example?  Your argument that sports casters should be the standard for what is proper public comment?  Ya, sportscasters are known to never say racist, ignorant, otherwise ugly shit, right?  Oh snap! They are actually known for that, for saying racist, ignorant, otherwise ugly shit.

After that, they mourned the fate of the word 'Negro,'  as some are trying to make push it out of fashion. The professors' weak assed argument was that its fall from permissibly valid use was like the loss of some dignified term of days gone by.  Now the word doesn't bother me at all, as I am too old to follow each and every trend the youngsters follow.  But the argument again, was drunk uncle at the bar after five hours of pounding beers, rachetly stupid. 

Shit falls out of fashion. Deal.

Oh.  And Professor Linguist should know the argument, the term is what white people decided was the more polite word, not we Black and brown folk.  You don't have to like the argument but don't play dumb unless you mean to look dumb!  And other Professor is older than me.  He lived through the right to self name ourselves fight, just like I did.

And both you negros!  Yes!  Other "identity groups"  freak out about their terms.  Do you live under rocks?  Are you the only Ivy League professors  who have managed to never have had to sit through the sensitivity training?  Do you manage to have no the fuck idea what is happening on your own campuses?

I endured less than 23 minutes of that shit.  My brain literally hurts from it.  And apparently, according to some of the comments below the vid, they got off on some Ukraine topics.  And that is what was meant about shit you really don't know dick about.

I need an hour at the local bar.  Way the fuck away from drunk uncle, though.

I Can Sort of Understand Why a Child Doesn't Get it

 That there never has been a golden age of viewpoint diversity on college campuses.  But that is the truth.

I just zipped through some tiresome guest Ed. at The Times from some student singing that tired old song about cancel culture.

Excuse me?  I went to a liberal state U.  in the early 80s, and a liberal law school in the late 80s.  We would routinely shred conservatives for breakfast, and again later in the day, for a mid afternoon snack. Good times.  Good memories.

The idea this is something entirely new is delusional.  Sure.  The interwebnetubes means your social standing could be in tatters at the speed of light.  But there is nothing new about losing your rep.

 I am of the punk generation.  We had as an anthem, Joan Jett growling about not giving a damn about her bad reputation.  We had Chrissie Hynde singing, not me baby I'm too precious, so fuck off.

That is a good place to end.

Stop Asking Black People If They Want To Time Travel | The Amber Ruffin ...

No way (unspecified, seriously deranged black Republican) negro!  We ain't all Americans.  Equally.  

Race isn't going away. And that is mainly because being white is so fucking important to white Republicans.  Ok.  I will specify the negro in question. Within the past hour or so  I saw Glenn Loury on a taped segment where he took the delusional side about the CRT in schools, debate.  And he started singing that Lawrence Welk song about how the "narrative" is the thing the conservatives are really upset about, and how the American Project is being distorted, in their and his view.  

Negro please!   I ended up bathing in the more factually based views in Amber Ruffin's skit comedy, to rid myself of the toxic stench of that white supremacist bullshit Loury was spewing.

So Professor.  You wanna  do what Amber, Tarik, and I do not want to do ever?  Go back in time to earlier America?  Go back to the time of Geo. Wash.?  Then you can tell them kindly slave catchers and slave drivers how committed to the American Project you are.  And when they work you to death, the only people who will take the time to bury your earthly remains  will be the other slaves.  After their dawn till dusk labor is done.  Until then, the dogs can have at ya!

I Don't Really Know If She Hates Black Ballerinas, But I Have Read Her White Supremacist Bullshit. So . . .

 I would not be surprised if Heather MacDonald is one of those conservatives who think Black ballerinas mess up the traditional way ballet looks.  

(The Black ballerina here is India Bradley.  Corps de Ballet of NYCB.  And she looks fabulous where ever I see her in a performance.  She is one to watch!  But I digress.)

But since I just assume Republicans and or Conservatives hate Black people (including the Black Republicans and or Conservatives,) until I have been adequately convinced otherwise?  I feel it is not unfair to assume Heather MacDonald prefers all white ballet.  It is up to her to convince me otherwise.  But there is the part I will say is truly warranted, considering the asinine bullshit I have seen her write about arts and culture.  

Fuck tradition.  Fuck her.  I am sure she would have a lot to complain about the brilliant show I just saw.  Particularly as Tiler Peck was mixing styles.  No regard for purity!  I love that!  I assume Heather MacDonald hates that shit. If she lost her shit over fixed art curation abandoning traditional ways of doing, and taking on a 21st Century, diversity minded bent?  I have to assume seeing that sort of thing on stage gets on her hag, nag traditionalist nerves.

Tiler Peck, NYCB Principal Mixes It Up In Her Own Program.

Read the review to get a well written take on the performance.  Less well written, from me:

Particularly  "Time Spell" was exquisite, complicated, and deserved the standing ovation the audience gladly offered.  Not only was tap, classical, street, and modern done on the same stage during the piece.  They mashed it up.  You had tap and classical at the same time.  You had dancers (see that pic) going on pointe, and switching to street moves in the same sub routine.  You had classical dancers and tap dancers doing dance offs.  You had ballerinas doing tap in their pointe shoes!

It was fucking mind blowing!  And traditionalist tend to hate that shit.  But they can all fuck off.  Because the ballet dancers currently at the top of the ballet world and the youngsters just  working their way up in the art, love that shit.  

Expect more of it.  Glory be!

Loury, McWhorter, and Heather-Karen

 Ok.  So some time after my last post, I tried to watch some of the latest "Black Guys of Blogging Heads," vid.  I watched just the first cut, which had to do with people slamming the new movie version of West Side Story.  I agreed with them negros, to a point.  I agreed that dismissing things that were made by white people just because they were made by white people, is stupid.  I repeat.  I am a Priest of the Theatre.  Crossover of the arts is my jam.

And I agreed with John, who had watched it, that it is smarter movie.  And that the updating of the script to show the Bouricas as more fully as people, was a good thing.  And I agree with him (he teaches a music appreciation class, and has some musical talent himself) that the Bernstein score is complicated. There are lots and lots of tricky things going on there.

But shit just had to go sideways.  Loury had to start quoting Heather-Karen in sum, but not directly.  He went off on a tangent about how she has been, in a small series of more shit digital farts at cityjournal, decrying the way arts curation is changing the way she likes her shit; the same old way.  (Conservatives are so fucking tiresome!)  

As an aside, and reference to my previous post.  A lot of the old timers of the Met Opera audience reliably and predictably lose their shit when a Zeffirelli production gets retired and replaced.  Bitches please! Performing art, particularly, is dynamic.  Bu even if all art is derivative?  The disciplines of the arts are dynamic forces.  We do not have a rule that says we have to do the same fucking shit, the same fucking way, over and over. Praise Goddess for that!  Prais Jah too while we are at it!  And the Orsihas, and the orders of gods for the Egyptians, and Greeks, and Romans, and Nortmen!  There is this old Chinese line I first learned over 40 years ago.  Praise all gods, curse all devils!

And to anyone who does not get that that is at least possible?  We do not have to do the same fucking shit, the same fucking way, over and over?  I say  to them, "Go see a psychiatrist!  They have pills for that now!"

Even when we are talking about art in fixed medium.  You don't have to show the pieces in the same fucking way every fucking time. For a moment let me channel my favorite TV Historian, Lucy Worsley.  She says, "The story of our past is open to interpretation."  Likewise, the arts.  And even more reliably, open to reinterpretation.    

Now Heather-Karen has, to my mind, a lot of delusional if not plain assed wrong ideas in her head.  But her belligerent and wrong instance that we never change shit is just fucking delusional.

And speaking of delusions.  Glenn and John.  You should not obsess so much over the people who want to make all art theory and practice about race.  They are a minority, within a minority, within yet another minority.  Or as the character Borachio in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing," says:  "The fashion is the fashion!"

And as I say, fashions change,  and shit.  As a Priest of the Theatre, I can say, fashions in Theatre change.  And I am very glad some of the experimental shit that popped up in the 60s and 70s fell out of fashion.  Oh. And I wonder if I can find an easy to copy past list of the "isms."

I did!  Very nice!  And I am willing to end on that list.  But hey!  Fucking conservatives!  Get the fuck over what you think is the right way to do shit.  More people disagree with your static tastes than do!  So fuck off!

Table of Content [Ausblenden]

• 1 Art Eras: Where to Begin?
• 2 A Brief Overview of the Art Periods Timeline
• 3 A Comprehensive Art Movement Timeline
  • 3.1 The Romanesque Period (1000-1300): Sharing Information Through Art
  • 3.2 The Gothic Era (1100-1500): Freedom and Fear Come Together
  • 3.3 The Renaissance Era (1420-1520): The Reawakening of an Art Era That Never Really Existed
  • 3.4 Mannerism (1520-1600): A Window into the Future of Kitsch
  • 3.5 The Baroque Era (1590-1760): The Glorification of Power and the Deception of the Eye
  • 3.6 The Rococo Art Period (1725-1780): Light and Airy, a French Fancy
  • 3.7 Classicism (1770-1840): Throwing It Back to Classic Times
  • 3.8 Romanticism (1790-1850): A Break from the Severity of it All
  • 3.9 Realism (1850-1925): Objectivity over Subjectivity
  • 3.10 Impressionism (1850-1895): Heralding the Era of Modern Art
  • 3.11 Symbolism (1890-1920): There is Always More Than Meets the Eye
  • 3.12 Art Nouveau (1890-1910): The Pure Gold of Gustav Klimt
  • 3.13 Expressionism (1890-1914): Bringing a Political Edge to the Debate
  • 3.14 Cubism (1906-1914): Breaking Things Apart and Putting Them Back Together Again
  • 3.15 Futurism (1909-1945): Artistic Anarchism
  • 3.16 Dadaism (1912-1920): The True Reality That Life is Nonsense
  • 3.17 Surrealism (1920-1930): Things Just Get More Bizzare
  • 3.18 The New Objectivity (1925-1965): Cold and Technical
  • 3.19 Abstract Expressionism (1948-1962): Stepping Away from Europe
  • 3.20 Pop-Art (1955-1969): Art is Everything
  • 3.21 Neo-Expressionism (1980-1989): Modern Art

https://artincontext.org/art-periods/

So I Googled: "Heather MacDonald is White Trash,"

 As not a day goes by with out me thinking about white supremacists.  And she is well known at least in Faux Academic Republican white supremacist circles as the (dare I say it?)  Great White Hope  (or more accurately, hype.)  Her area of  (throws up a little in my mouth to say) 'expertise' is how black people are inferior to white people.  That is how I read her.  But she cranks and cranks on how there is a war on cops, and systemic racism is according to her a myth, and how BLM  and just about any pro Black social thing the majority of Blacks like is wrong. Ya know.  Shit like that.

Glenn Loury keeps hosting her and her white supremacist bullshit on his channels.  If I had the chance to interrogate him I would like to ask him:  "Professor.  If a student in one of your classes  turned in a paper where the majority of citations were either themselves weak scholarship, or being taken out of context, if not both?  Would you not flunk them?"

Anyway.  On to the return from my google query.  I ended up narrowing my search to news, as I wanted something recent, and found the following re the current season's production of  Zeffirelli's Turandot  by The Met Opera.  Which I saw this season, actually.  

Heather Disrespects Asians Too.

So I get to remark about this, sort of recent incident of Heather's letting her white supremacist freak flag fly, having attended the production in question.  Firstly, her white supremacist grounded statement:

"No sane person would think that Asians are threatened by its portrayal of the ministers or by any of the other characters."

Before I go into Priest of Theatre mode, let me say that is such a weak argument that any decent editor would say to her, after her submitting this shit (never mind the white supremacist bullshit,)  to either fuck off, or delete that bullshit.  Using what is routinely called the "No true Scotsman" fallacy as proof of one's argument is something good writers avoid, and better editors catch and 'edit.' That is according to rules we all were taught in high school,  never mind college.  Never mind law school  (and she is an embarrassment to the profession, according to me at least.) 

Anyway . . .

First things first.  I have my BA  in Theatre. Never worked at the Met.  Worked next door  for several gigs for City Opera.  I am the kind of person who goes to the opera.  That was my first "Turandot."  

Puccini's music is thrilling.  That opera has one of the most famous and performed arias for a Tenor;  "Nessun Dorma."   It is a virtuoso song, and the Tenor so nailed it  that tears are coming to my eyes  just remembering it.  It is hard to describe the feeling that is unique to a packed Met Opera crowd enthralled in a moment like that.  But the production as a production?

The story itself is more than a little fucked up.  My way of saying it, is that a good dramatic opera has to have some number of the following:  sex, lies, betrayal, evil, murder, if not rape.  But the title character is so blood thirsty that I can understand some Asians being uncomfortable with that part alone, never mind Ping, Pang, and Pong.  If you know about the now considered toxic portrayal of an Asian by Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," imagine three of them?

So no Heather.  Sane rational people who are not actually white supremacists have every reason to cringe at that shit. Never mind Asians.  Aren't we living in a time of increased hate crimes against Asians?  Her lack of sensitivity to anything other than her own POV, and what offends her and people who look and feel as she does?  There is a name for that.  White supremacy.

I try to not use the B word against individual women, but I am so tired of this bitch.  And all the other  white supremacist Karens out there.

Meta point here.  How to deal with the racist representations in great works of performing art is something ballet and opera companies are dealing with, now. Doing the evil sort of shit that Mac Donald does, in her  . . .  for lack of a better way of saying it . . .  shitty digital fart?  Really isn't the civilized way to go.  

Re "Turandot?"  Some companies are editing out the clownish parts  (I am not doing a full net search on how many companies, and how fully.)  But re ballet? I did see NYCB's  Nutcracker  just before Omicron stopped performances.  They have reformed the ethnic dances in Act II.  Way to go guys!  You don't have to rewrite the whole show, by the way.  But we Met fans know.  The Met Opera is phasing out the Zeffirelli productions.  Yes, the sets and costumes are visually spectacular.  But times do change, and so does tastes, and audiences.  

I really Want to Call Out Althouse for Continuing to Host White Supremacist Bullshit

 For example.  Commenter who took a swipe at businesses for posting BLM signs, as the real haters. The topic was businesses who still have signs up about masking up.  I accuse the fuck face of being that really special, die hard kind of white supremacist who will drop those white supremacist bombs in a convo. where that shit isn't even in play. How shitty!

But instead, I will mention the brilliance of a further down post, that was within the original parameters.  

Since I am the person who has been calling other humans self propelled bio weapons for close to if not more than 20 years, I really appreciate the sentiment:

"People are gross."

That was a 'drops mic' moment!  Of course some gross people continued to advance their grossness in that thread.  So that counts as double gross, in my book.

Here is a Rarity. I agree with Althouse so much

 I will post a link to her post.

She not only properly calls out Carlson for his blatant racism against the SCOTUS nominee. She pierces the bubble on that whole bullshit best of the best, myth.

Of course, I expect her racist minions to give her some shit later today.  But hey.  I have no guilt in saying the GOP is a patent ly obviously white supremacist party.  If it looks like a white supremacist rally, it likely is one.

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/03/patently-racist-tucker-carlson-under.html