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antiloreolympus · 2 years

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10 Anti LO Asks

(Note: All of these asks are before episode 206 (Season 2 finale) so some may be dated.) 1. do RS defenders realize the issue is in the fact that, despite being a woman who claims to be a progressive feminist marketing herself to be making a progressive, feminist "reclaiming" of mythology, her work and actions being indistinguishable from awful male writers is?? really bad?? the "if the roles were reversed" argument is to point out her and her work is really no different from the same misogynistic, bigoted men and their stories that she and her fans claim she and LO are better then.

2. The thing is an age gap isn't the actual issue, the issue is the fact Persephone was made A TEENAGER who looks/acts even younger and even in comic it was found gross, THAT's why people were and still are grossed out by it and find Rachel's insistences "subverting it" questionable at best, and an outright lie at worse. This especially is more pointed with the timeskip, because Persephone still looks/acts the same as she did at 19, so it just makes you wonder WHY Rachel made her 19 to begin with.

3. Ok but it IS important to point out how the double standards within LO and RS and especially the fact she is a rich white woman who wants the praise of being progressive and feminist yet her actual actions and story do not show that. We also have to point this out because of how she and her fans weaponize this to say any legitimate criticism is merely "hating women", over the fact she DOES promote and do harmful things other creators (like queer and BIPOC creators) dont get to "grow" from

4. I'm sorry if this comes across as racist. That is not my intention. I hate the human skin colors Rachel Smythe uses. They look unnatural. Like paper grocery bags or potato wedges from KFC.

5. If 10 years passed, shouldn't Dionysus already be born? Semele died? I feel like RS forgot about a whole Olympian God. 🤨

6. I'm reading the comments on Rachel's insta, with the fast pass showing the pink nymth, and the comments speak volumes. Everyone's questioning if it's another lover, or someone is trying to seduce Hades, or Kronos is possessing him (??), Some fans even talk about getting anxiety/blood pressure spikes. Wow... It's almost as if a trama bonded relationship isn't stable. It's almost as if Hades has been unfaithful to past lovers. As if there's a pattern here that makes the readers want to blame the nymth (who has NO voice lines yet, btw. Their attacking her for putting her hand out (smug) and showing side boob (telling her to cover up? That's ironic)) rather than Hades himself. You know. The other person in their relationship. And don't even tell me they're not official yet, I'm tired of beating around the bush, Persephone is literally the queen of the underworld.

7. Do LO fans know that flipping out over even potential other women in Hades' life, despite the fact the whole selling point is knowing Hades and Persephone ends up together, only gives the impression they're not confident in their relationship to begin with? Like yall know they end up together, there's absolutely no reason to flip out at the inclusion of a random woman other than they knowingly or not think the couple is too weak too stand on their own (also misogyny but that's a different convo)

8. Not to be a nerd or anything, but I think LO completely mixed up Kronos and Chronos. The former is the titan of harvest and leader of said titans, while the latter is the personification of time. Similar names, but distinctly separate entities.

-----SA Discussion Below-----

9. Yeah it's hard to say RS is a staunch supporter of SA victims and takes the topic seriously/handles it with care when she made Arion and the result of his birth a child support "joke" when the actual mythology is Demeter being violently r*ped. It's honestly disgusting the fans defend it as "just a joke' while claiming the series stands up for victims. No, it stands up for CERTAIN victims, the rest, what, "deserved" it? Especially Demeter because she's not their "precious cinnamon roll"?

10. The issue with the SA plot too is she uses it to push P towards Hades, but then also can’t just have them jump into bed because of the obvious barriers there from the assault, so she’s basically stuck in this bizarre juggling act where she wants to be praised as this “serious writer who tackles serious issues” yet does nothing because she just wants to draw them boning but can’t because she doesn’t know how to handle SA & its trauma without ignoring it outright, so she doesn’t tackle it anyway!

#anti lore olympus #anti lo #lore olympus critical #lo critical

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bellasredchevy · 5 years

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I just found out that Kristen Stewart supports Woody Allen. I’m so upset right now, I really liked her

and you’re entitled to your unlike of her. woody allen is a piece of shit. but if you’re gonna dislike her, you gotta also dislike anjelica houston and zach braff and john cusack and diane wiest and helena bonham carter and michael rapaport and natasha lyonne and drew barrymore and goldie hawn and edward norton and natalie portman and julia roberts and tim roth and billy chrystal and tobey maguire and jennifer garner and paul giamatti and stanley tucci and julia louise-dreyfus and robin williams and demi moore and winona ryder and leonardo dicaprio and melanie griffith and charlize theron and ian somerhalder and steve buscemi and gene hackman and sharon stone and sylvester stallone and jennifer lopez and christopher walken and danny glover and dan aykroyd and sean penn and uma thurman and denis o’hare and alan cumming and sigourney weaver and bill murray and hugh grant and micheal rapaport and jon lovitz and david schwimmer and elliott gould and keifer sutherland and joseph gordon-levitt and fran drescher and helen hunt and teá leoni and debra messing and jason biggs and christina ricci and danny devito and jimmy fallon and chloe sevigny and will farrell and josh brolin and steve carell and scarlett johansson and hugh jackman and mike meyers and liam neeson and susan sarandon and colin farrell and ewan mcgregor and hayley atwell and sally hawkins and penelope cruz and larry david and ed begley jr. and henry cavill and evan rachel wood and antonio bandares and anthony hopkins and naomi watts and theo james and owen wilson and rachel mcadams and michael sheen and tom hiddleston and kathy bates and alec baldwin and jesse eisenberg and greta gerwig and ellen page and care blanchett and louis ck (i mean.. dislike louis ck anyway) and sofia vergara and colin firth and emma stone and joaquin phoenix and blake lively and jim belushi and justin timberlake and kate winslet and timothée chalamet and elle fanning and jude law and micheal j. fox and sarah jessica parker and whoopi goldberg and edie falco and miley cyrus and lewis black and david harbour and the countless other people associated with his movies, and don’t forget david bowie and billy crystal and jay-z and bon jovi and mark wahlberg and martin scorsese and beyoncé and kelly rowland and michelle williams and harrison ford and adam sandler and meg ryan and david spade and halle berry and spike lee and john cusack and mike meyers and mick jagger and keith richards and julia stiles and howard stern and bill and hillary clinton and jerry seinfeld and kevin smith and john mellencamp and hillary swank and janet jackson and elton john and jim carey and paul mccartney who participated in other projects of his after the allegations came out in 1992

#her defense of him.. is understandable #not right but understandable #huge parts of her life were RUINED by the media circus and false speculation #a girl traumatized by that would probably readily jump to the defense of someone she percieves to be in the same situation #she is a staunch defender of women and has said that she almost attacked a guy who leered at a girl once #she knows the issues. shes wrong for this one but #idk. should it negate everything else shes done for women #twilight #kristen stewart #woody allen #ask #anon #100

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sinsbymanka · 3 years

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Rubatosis from fun word prompt for any Anders-centric ship of your choosing?

Hello! For the @dadrunkwriting challenge. I wanted to do a little bit more for this but I’m trying to stay short. I may come back and add to it.

Rubatosis: The Unsettling Awareness of Your Own Heartbeat

Pairing: Anders & Merrill

Rated: M to be safe

CW: Blood Magic

Two weeks passed since they left Kirkwall, and Anders still hadn’t gotten used to Merrill’s neverending chatter.

Maybe it was because he, for the first time, found himself alone with the woman. There was no Hawke to redirect her inane questions to, no Varric to engage her in friendly banter. It was just two of them and Anders has never felt less talkative in his life. In fact, he could use some good, proper silence to plan. To think. To try and come to terms with his new life.

“What do you think that cloud looks like?” Merrill asked.

Anders looked up at the blue sky and the white, puffy clouds drifting lazily across it. He didn’t scream. Barely.

“Hawke’s drooling mabari,” he answered sarcastically. “And a big, juicy steak.”

“Really?” Merrill looked over her slim shoulder, eyes wide. “I thought it looked like a fennec myself.”

She turned that bright gaze back to the sky and squinted into the clouds. “I suppose I could see the steak, though.”

Anders barely repressed a hysterical laugh. How had he ended up trekking across the countryside with Merrill of all people?

Easy question. He blew up the Chantry, and everyone that was unlucky enough to be in it, before Hawke sent him packing just before Templar reinforcements showed up. Anders was a fugitive now, and he couldn’t afford to be picky when Merrill was sent alongside him to help him get as far from Kirkwall as he could. One companion was about as good as any other.

“I really don’t see the mabari at all. Are we looking at the same cloud?” Merrill asked.

Maybe the Templars would have been preferable.

Before he could summon the proper retort about Merrill and her ridiculous games, non stop talking, or any of the other things that had done nothing but annoy him since their escape from Kirkwall, he heard the clatter of hooves on the dirt road behind him.

Merrill froze and Anders followed her lead. They both looked over their shoulders at the sound of thundering hooves just in time to hear the accompanying shouts of men and women. Angry men and women.

“I knew that innkeeper was looking at us strangely,” Merrill murmured.

Anders barely heard her over the roar of blood in his ears. The fear always came back like this, sudden and intense, causing his stomach to turn and bile to rise up his throat. The sound brought back memories, metal armor and stone walls too high to climb, a lake separating him from the world outside…

“Run!” he yelled.

Merrill didn’t need to be told twice. They both sprinted from the road just as the figures of men and horses came into view. Anders heard the triumphant shout as they were spotted, felt the sucking drain of their powers around him, the popping of his ears.

“Duck!”

Merrill hit the ground just in time as the smite flew over their heads. She scrambled up in a moment, staff in hand. Her eyes flashed, deadly and sharp as the blade at her hip. She hollered something in Elvhen as Anders shoved himself up off the ground before it burst into a tangled forest of thorns.

Then her fingers closed around his arm and she pulled him onwards into the cover of the trees. He twisted around as a male scream pierced the air just in time to see a templar dragged to the dirt in his shiny armor.

That meant he wasn’t looking forward when Merrill dragged him right into a low-hanging branch. It whacked against his head with a worryingly hollow hunk that almost drove a laugh from his lips.

Irving always said his head was empty.

“Ooops!” Merrill chirped. “Sorry! Humans are just so tall.”

“I’ll be a lot shorter if you take my head off,” he huffed breathlessly as she dragged him onwards. Despite his height advantage, he very much felt like he needed to keep up with her as they raced into the forest.

Branches hit unprotected skin with the same sharp bite as a whip, snagged at his cloak and shirt. He barely had time to regret the mending he was going to have to do before Merrill bit off a sharp Elvhen oath and skidded to a stop.

The forest floor in front of them abruptly ended in the jagged edge of a cliff. Below them, nothing but a rocky ravine. Anders stood on the edge of the precipice, Merrill’s hand still latched on his arm, and the sound of clanking coming closer.

“There’s a way around.” She sounded so determined, so sure. “We need to-”

Her eyes blazed green as the ivy climbing up the ledges, reminded him of the brightness of the soft grass beneath his feet on the days they left Kirwall behind. The freedom of being out from behind the city walls, the blue sky above. Knowing he’d never be back in the circle again. There was some peace in that, even if the alternative was death for being an abomination.

In the grim tip of her pink lips, Anders could see the same grim reality on Merrill’s face. No matter what happened, she’d not be taken alive either. No use for a blood mage in a proper, respectable circle.

“No.” His tongue darted out to lick at his lips and he felt Justice’s power crackle beneath his skin. “I think we’re trapped like nugs in a sewer.”

“I do like nugs,” Merrill murmured, already sliding into a stance prepared to attack and defend. “And you do like sewers.”

“I do not!” he protested quickly.

It was the last thing he said before the templars burst into view and they had no choice but to fight for their lives. A blast of energy from him sent them skittering backwards like iron-clad beetles into Merrill’s vines, but they kept coming like roaches ready to feed on their corpses.

Sweat dripped down his forehead and burned in his eyes. Lightning sizzled, ozone around him crackled. Beside him he heard Merrill’s staff thunk against metal, heard the distant scream of another templar being toppled over the cliff behind them.

Then a blade appeared in the corner of his vision and he lashed out with his staff, catching it in the enchanted wood. He grunted, forcing the other man back with all his wiry strength.

He never saw the silence coming.

It hit him like a fist, dropped him like a punch in the stomach. His vision swam, his ears popped. Anders scrambled to reach for the last vestiges of his mana, but it was gone, gone. Justice, his magic, the noise of battle, everything was fading.

Above him a blade shimmered in the afternoon sun, piercing the clouds. Anders’ heartbeat thudded in his throat, his fingertips. He counted the remaining beats, wondered how long it would take to count the very last one.

Would he even feel the very last one?

A shrill scream. Then something sizzling. The smell of iron and the splash of something warm against his face.

Then screams. So many screams. His heart thudded uncomfortably and he looked around as men began to drop. They clawed at their eyes and began to utter prayers to Andraste, the Maker, anyone to save them. But their Maker went silent long ago and there’s nobody to save them from the blood bubbling over their lips.

A blood mage, after all, can’t be silenced. Maybe that’s the real reason the templars killed them on sight.

Merrill’s hand dug into his shoulder, pulling a fistful of feathers from his coat. “Anders! Anders get up!”

He staggered to his feet and reached blindly for Merrill’s hand. Their fingers twisted together and she pulled him upwards. He caught sight of blood dripping down her pale skin, the bright fury of her gaze.

And then they ran.

It took him far too long to realize there was too much blood. It slid down to where their fingers were entwined, dripped onto the ground. Merrill started to weave and stagger before she slumped against him.

Only then did he notice the horrific gash in her thigh, through the thin leggings she wore. He caught her in his arms and held her to his chest as her eyes fluttered closed over her pale cheeks, vallaslin stark on her cheekbones.

“Oh don’t you dare,” Anders rasped, slowly lowering her to the ground. “I swear on Andraste’s dirtiest knickers, if you make me go tell Hawke I got you killed…”

“It… it’s not so bad,” Merrill insisted, a bold statement considering the sheer amount of blood soaking her clothes. Anders tried to summon mana to his fingertips, only to come up heart wrenchingly short.

He had nothing. Nothing. And Merrill… Merrill needed healing. Merrill needed healing or else…

“Anders-” she whispered.

He tugged his cloak from his shoulders. “Where’s your knife?”

“Anders, it’s okay. Hardly hurts at all.”

“That’s cause you’re going into shock.” He pried her blade from her hand and sliced a long strip from his cloak. “You’re not stupid enough to cut into your own artery are you?”

“Templar,” she murmured quietly.

A templar blade to her unguarded leg, probably at the same time he got hit with the silence. And yet she used that blood to bring them all to their knees. Anders didn’t know whether he really disapproved.

Merrill’s eyes shut, her chest rose and fell shallowly. He quickly tied the makeshift tourniquet around her thigh, watching her face. “Merrill! Merrill, you gotta stay with me. Talk to me.”

They fluttered open one last time, fixed on the clouds above them. A small, soft smile graced her lips just before unconsciousness claimed her.

Anders thought he knew all the iterations of silence, the way it settled in your bones and drove you slowly insane. The way it haunted you, the way it comforted you. But he had never heard silence like this before. Silence so pristine he heard his own heart begin to fracture as his fingers flew to try and staunch the bleeding that continued with each faint beat of Merrill’s own.

If she survived, he would never complain about her talking ever again.

#manka writes #dadrunkwriting #anders #merrill #templars #blood magic

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desbianherstory · 5 years

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In a coffee shop in Mumbai I waited nervously to meet 'the community'. I had just moved back to the city after years abroad and begun the search for other lesbians. Already I had been warned by Sakshi, who had come to make contact with me and make sure that I was not a reporter, that levels of trust were low. This was not only because of the need for confidentiality but also because women from The Outside, she told me tactfully, tended to take up so much space; tended 'to assume that their priorities are ours'. We were sitting by the cash register. When the phone rang and the server asked for Sakshi, I was close enough to hear the voice on the other end, demanding: 'Well? Shall I come to meet her? Is she Us?'

When I first started working as a reporter at the Times of India, the breaches of trust I engaged in while trying to promote lesbian visibility were multiple and unthinking, unprepared as I was for the difficulties of being both Us and Not-Us. When the group in Mumbai began working towards the first nationwide retreat for 'women who love women' I helped organize it, participated in it and then wrote about it. It was a conflict on many levels: between organizing collectively and yet representing 'Us' as an individual; between what I knew readers needed to hear and what I didn't know that lesbians were unwilling to share.

I also had to think about Us and Not-Us on many levels when I began the work of compiling Facing the Mirror, a collection of writings by lesbians in India. As soon as word of the project spread, I started receiving letters from men, offering to write about lesbian fantasies, about threesomes, about wishing to be lesbians for a day, about their lesbian wives. I had never expected this.

Some Indian lesbians themselves objected to the Facing the Mirror project on political grounds. One told me that there was no purpose to putting the existence of Indian lesbians into words, since it would just cement and make public the divisions between lesbians and women at large - divisions which we should be working to erase.

'Militant lesbians aren't aware of the existing spaces,' she said. 'Think about the ladies' compartment of the trains, you see women together there all the time. They hold hands, and from their faces you know that it is bliss.'

I tried to persuade her to change her mind - after all, that very week there had been an article in a women's magazine talking about the scourge of lesbians in train compartments. Such single-sex spaces of safety were increasingly rare, increasingly threatened. But she merely shook her head, told me that both the verbalizing of same-sex desire and the violent reactions against that desire were marginal to the vast reality of an Indian tolerance.

'All this - it has nothing to do with India,' she said.

Us and Not-Us. these words took on a new valence for me after Deepa Mehta's film Fire came out in India, at the end of 1998, and was immediately attacked by the Hindu right for its depiction of lesbianism. Fire, a tale of two women married to two brothers, developing a relationship with each other in the congested streets of middle-class New Delhi, was not a film made for Indian audiences. The symbolism was pureed like baby food, the metaphors of fire (Sita's trial by fire from the Ramayana. the evil custom of bride-burning. home-fires and hearth-fires.) so deliberately labelled 'For Export Only'. The film had even less to offer Indian lesbians. In its portrayal of two married women falling painlessly in love, there was, as the lesbian writer VS pointed out, no attempt to take on the 'anarchic and threatening emotions that accompany sexual practices generally considered perverted, criminal and taboo'.

Nevertheless, lesbians watched with alarm as the attacks on the film gathered intensity. Even though the Censor Board had, to everyone's surprise, cleared the film without cuts, right-wing groups like the Shiv Sena and Rashtriya Seva Sangh were in no mood to accept that verdict. On 1 December, Pramod Navalkar, Minister of Culture for the state of Maharashtra and no stranger to controversy - he would often claim that he enjoyed driving around Mumbai wearing a long blonde wig 'just to see what kinds of men will try to chase a white woman' - told newspapers that lesbianism was 'a pseudo-feminist trend from the West and no part of Indian womanhood'. The next day movie theatres in Mumbai that were screening Fire were attacked by mobs of men and women from the Shiv Sena. Ticket windows were smashed, hoardings were torn down, and audiences beaten up. The day after that theatres in Delhi were targeted.

In the ensuing debate in the upper house of Parliament only detractors of the film could actually bring themselves to say the word 'lesbian'. 'Do we have lesbian culture in our families?' one Member of Parliament demanded, defending the attacks. 'The Mahabharat and the Ramayana don't contain any lesbianism,' agreed another. On the other hand, the MPs insisting that Fire should not have been attacked would do so only in the most general terms: it was as though lesbians were purely symbolic, unnamable markers of the director's right to creative freedom, of the audience's democratic rights to watch what it chose, or of the Shiv Sena mob's fascist intolerance.

So some lesbians in Delhi gathered on a tidal wave of despair, unable to believe that years of discreet organizing had culminated in such intense and unwelcome visibility. It was almost incredible that we should have come together at all for we were a dispersed, fragmented lot, rent by dissension over who 'we' were - a national lesbian conference had recently disintegrated over the issue of whether white women were welcome in a space designated Indian. Even more disturbingly, over the span of a very few years the community had divided itself neatly into lesbian archives, sexuality help-lines, education and outreach groups. The informal networks we had fostered in our homes splintered gradually by ideology, particularly disagreement over funding.

Some of us believed that funding would only help us, giving us the resources to reach beyond our largely middle-class, English-speaking circles. Others of us were apt to quote the staunch activist who maintained that a foreign donor supporting any radical effort was about as plausible as Oxfam nurturing the Quit India movement 50-odd years ago.

But, in spite of our histories of disagreement, lesbians in Delhi joined forces in the wake of the attacks on Fire. We worked with desperate energy to plan a protest rally, scheduled to take place within 48 hours of the Shiv Sena's violence, and reached out to all our old allies from secular groups and from the women's movement. To our dismay we encountered that same unwillingness to name the issue a lesbian one - again, it seemed, our concerns were to be subsumed in favour of the 'bigger picture'. The word 'lesbian' was not to be used in the press release, one women's group insisted. Instead, we needed to highlight our support for the film's theme of 'the hypocrisy and tyranny of the patriarchal family'. After all, we could not possibly expect groups at large to champion a 'narrow' concern like lesbianism.

We gave in and the protest went ahead. Hundreds of people showed up outside Regal Cinema - the theatre that had been ransacked by the mobs - holding candles, chanting, raising placards. But for the first time ever in India, lesbians were visible among the other groups marking the specific nature of their anger. In the sea of placards about human rights, secularism, women's autonomy, freedom of speech, was a sign painted in the colours of the national flag: 'Indian and Lesbian'. Who would have thought that staking that saucy claim to our share of national pride would result in such a furore? You are not Us, we were reminded at once, by a chorus of voices. The deputy editor of the national weekly magazine India Today expressed particular dismay that 'the militant gay movement, which has hitherto operated as website extensions of a disagreeable trend in the West, could now come out into the open and flaunt banners in Delhi suggesting that "lesbianism is part of our heritage".' He went on to announce: 'Thievery, deceit, murder and other... [criminal] offences have a long history. That doesn't elevate them to the level of heritage.'

But that same searing moment of visibility and defiance threw together a small group of activists - a varied lot, from trade unionists to professional blood donors, men and women, heterosexual, homosexual and other. What we had in common was a sense that we should take the energy of the protest forward in the form of a campaign for lesbian rights. Why the emphasis on lesbian rights? 'To articulate the troubled connections of lesbians in and with the women's movement,' we declared in our mandate. 'To talk about the social suppression of women's sexuality in general, and to address the aspects of lesbians' lives that make this struggle distinct from the gay men's movement.'

The Campaign for Lesbian Rights was a revelation for me. For the first time, lesbian issues were occupying public space - we met in the Indian Coffee House in the centre of Delhi, a hotbed of anti-establishment politics with a permanent Home Ministry spy, and we sipped six-rupee coffee and strategized aloud. We handed out thousands of leaflets on 'Myths and Realities about Lesbianism' in parts of Delhi that were commonly considered hostile to activists - industrial areas housing hundreds of factories, a Muslim university, outside the headquarters of Delhi Police. We attended public meetings organized by women's groups, human-rights groups, student groups. We wrote a street play, the familiar rhythms and gestures of that form inscribing the experiences of grassroots activists among us who had listened to women in villages all over rural North India talking about saheli-rishte - intimate bonds between women.

I relearned the lesson that a movement is accountable only to the people, and, to that end, that rejection is only the beginning of dialogue rather than the end. We fielded questions like 'What have lesbians done for society that we should support you?' and stood our ground and continued the conversation, our commitment spurred by the knowledge that, as a group opposed to external funding, our work depended on our ability to persuade fellow activists, fellow citizens, that they should contribute a rupee or two to our cause.

Progressive groups, who addressed all kinds of dispossession and oppression through the lens of human rights, would tell us that lesbian rights was no fit realm for them to enter because sexuality was about 'personal choice'. And so we walked a curious double line, saying: 'All choices involving consenting adults deserve respect, and in the face of compulsory heterosexuality, human rights means making that choice real', and 'Lesbianism is not necessarily a choice'. It's hard to describe what it meant to us, then, to receive a letter from the Human Rights Trust acknowledging our work as 'part and parcel of the broader human-rights movement'. It was the recognition that lesbians were part of a larger group of people, attacked and discriminated against in a panoply of ways, but with this in common - that we could give a name to the violations and to the rights we were seeking.

Most importantly, though, the Campaign reshaped what I thought of when I said 'we'. I have in front of me a citizens' report on the suicides of a lesbian couple in an Orissa village, brought out by aids Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan, one of the Campaign's constituent groups. Written by two heterosexual men, the report is titled, touchingly, For People Like Us.

—Ashwini Sukthankar is a Mumbai-based writer and activist. Her book Facing the Mirror: Lesbian writing from India was published in 1999 by Penguin India.

#Ashwini Sukthankar #fire #indian lesbians #history #writing #caleri

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marxistthoughts101 · 7 years

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The Baltimore Sun sides with Charm City’s capitalist class

Adapted from the original post on the Charm City Radical Tumblr.

The Baltimore Sun recently declared blatantly that it was not on the side of the city’s proletariat (the working class), which is concentrated in healthcare and social assistance, education services, food services, scientific & technical services, and many more sectors. In a front page story below the fold by Lorraine Mirabella, the Sun‘s business reporter, titled “increased minimum wage worries city businesses” (and “businesses bulk at Baltimore’s minimum wage bill” online) attacked the $15 an hour minimum wage, almost a living wage for a family of three, with two adults (one working part-time) and a child, which passed the Baltimore City Council 12-3 and sits at Mayor Catherine Pugh’s desk. Mirabella’s article quotes three complaining, pathetic small business people, small capitalists or more accurately called the petty bourgeoisie, who say that the wage increase will result in them losing money: Russ Causey of CMD Outsourcing Solutions Inc., CEO Jay Steinmetz of Barcoding Inc., and Ann Costlow of Sofi’s Crepes. For Ms. Costlow, she shouldn’t even be included since the legislation, if signed, wouldn’t take effect until July 1, 2022, affecting businesses with 50 or more employees, and those with less than 50 workers in 2016. Hence, Castlow’s business, which employs 30 workers, wouldn’t be effected until 2026, giving her NINE years to adapt! So, why is she complaining?

It gets worse. Even the economist quoted in the article, Stephen K. Walters, who focuses on declines of American cities apparently, complains about the wage increase hurting the “healthy city economy,” a classic right-wing canard pushed by the Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, and American Enterprise Institute, among others. The $15 wage is arguably only given fair treatment in 4 paragraphs of the article, not including a part of a paragraph about the bill, quoting Mary Pat Clarke as saying that the bill will help low-wage workers by tackling outstanding inequality and some businesses who are part of the petty bourgeoisie applauded the move, such as Andrew Buerger‘s B’More Organic and others who are part of Business for A Fair Wage, a nationwide group that supports higher minimum wages. The rest of the article quotes the complaining and rabid sect of the petty bourgeoisie who hate the wage increase, even claiming (without evidence?) that Mayor Pugh had said that the bill would force “her to close her clothing boutique another day each week.” The horrendous article is only the start.

In an editorial by the Baltimore Sun‘s editorial board, in an editorial right above another focused on the good-for-nothing “Russia conspiracy”/”Trump-Russia connection,” they denounce a higher minimum wage. In a horribly argued editorial, titled “Veto $15 an hour,” they argue that because the city is facing an “economic crisis,” Pugh should “take a stand and veto this bill,” which seems veto-proof. They go on to claim that the bill doesn’t make the city “competitive” and discourages service jobs. Seriously, that’s the economic model they want for Charm City (Baltimore)? Yikes! Anyway, after going through a couple more paragraphs about other efforts to raise the wage across the state, the Sun declares that Pugh should use her budget to expand “economic opportunities in Baltimore, not put…[the city] at a competitive disadvantage.” They seriously sound like business conservatives and taking the same line as the Charm City Capitalist Class, which could be called the CCCC for short.

Some may be wondering why the “progressive” Baltimore Sun would do this. Let us not forget that the Sun‘s “editorial policies and business practices” determined the city’s racial development, as they supported the first racial segregation law in the United States in 1910, albeit while liking the “romantically planned” all-white Roland Park suburb. Beyond this, the Sun‘s editor, Charles H. Grasty, was the “godfather” of Roland Park, with the paper running an editorial in 1910 supporting white racial domination, along with ignoring “important but uncomfortable stories” during the Civil War when the city was under occupation of the Union Army and anti-Semitism permeating the paper from the 1910s to the 1940s.

Some may easily dismiss this as past history and say that “the Sun isn’t like that anymore.” That may be true. However, let us not forget what the Sun has done in the past. It had an article honoring women of Charm City (and Maryland’s) political and entertainment scene as “women worth watching” despite their varied problems. It spun a story on Maryland’s healthcare and it ignored a story that “one of Baltimore’s biggest owners of video gambling machines is the subject of a wide-spreading investigation.” Apart from the corporate parent of the Sun, Tronc, having their own business-friendly interests of course, they dropped Bill Griffth’s Zippy and Sun reporters complained when people criticized them for coverage of Sheila Dixon’s trial, perhaps rightly. While some may defend the actions of the Sun, it is worth noting that apart from the “massive layoffs of veteran staffers” in 2009 and 2010 by former Sun editor J. Montgomery “Monty” Cook, the same person who said that the Sun is “no longer a newspaper company.” Additionally, any form of protest among Sun staffers, when it was proposed that the paper be sold to the Koch Brothers in 2013, seemed to be non-existent according to Sun reporter, Lorraine Mirabella (yet again!) on the scene of the protest outside the Sun‘s building.

Admittedly this is only some of the highlights of the reporting of the Baltimore Brew, an independent Baltimore media outlet, meaning that they could be missing something. Looking at the editorial page now, nothing sticks out that is apart from a bourgeois progressive/liberal viewpoint, including defending city schools, criticizing President Trump, talking about segregation in Baltimore County, and immigration raids, among other subjects. They even argued for redistricting reform on a progressive basis!

The Sun seems to be going down a dark path with this editorial slamming the $15 minimum wage, showing that they are on the same side as annoyed petty bourgeoisie, the Greater Baltimore Committee, and other business interests (incl. Restaurant Association of Maryland, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore, and "local manufacturing firms"). Maybe the Sun likes those on their “business and civic hall of fame” and annoyed Baltimore area residents, as noted in letters here and here, more than those that care about justice. With Mayor Pugh recently vetoing the $15 minimum wage bill to make sure Charm City is not "the hole in the doughnut,” and saying that sticking with a $10.10 state minimum wage with no increase is sufficient, she is also siding with the business interests, the capitalist class of the city.

It is shameful that the Baltimore Sun wrote this editorial and an effectively one-sided anti-wage raise article, siding with the staunch conservative interests of Charm City’s capitalist class (big capitalists) and petty bourgeoisie represented by small businesses. Instead of waiting for the Sun to do better, we should support better media outlets and create our own news outlets that promote the proletariat.

#Anti-Capitalism #submission

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charmctyradical-blog · 7 years

Text

The Baltimore Sun sides with Charm City’s capitalist class

Reposted from our sister blog on WordPress.

In an editorial by the Baltimore Sun‘s editorial board, in an editorial right above another focused on the good-for-nothing “Russia conspiracy”/”Trump-Russia connection,” they denounce a higher minimum wage. In a horribly argued editorial, titled “Veto $15 an hour,” they argue that because the city is facing an “economic crisis,” Pugh should “take a stand and veto this bill,” which seems veto-proof. They go on to claim that the bill doesn’t make the city “competitive” and discourages service jobs. Seriously, that’s the economic model they want for Charm City? Yikes! Anyway, after going through a couple more paragraphs about other efforts to raise the wage across the state, the Sun declares that Pugh should use her budget to expand “economic opportunities in Baltimore, not put…[the city] at a competitive disadvantage.” They seriously sound like business conservatives and taking the same line as the Charm City Capitalist Class, which could be called the CCCC for short.

The Sun seems to be going down a dark path with this editorial slamming the $15 minimum wage, showing that they are on the same side as annoyed petty bourgeoisie, the Greater Baltimore Committee, and other business interests. Maybe the Sun likes those on their “business and civic hall of fame” and annoyed Baltimore area residents, as noted in letters here and here, more than those that care about justice.

To read more articles like this, check out our WordPress and Twitter account.

#baltimore #capitalism #anti-capitalism #anti capitalism #catherine pugh #petty bourgeoisie #small business #charm city #radical #living wage #minimum wage #wages #maryland

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mdye · 7 years

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Kathy Griffin has had quite a week.

After posing for a photo with a rubber dime store Donald Trump mask dripping in corn syrup blood, which was inspired by Trump’s “blood coming out of her wherever” comments about former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, the comedian suddenly found her own head on a platter.

Politicians condemned her. Venues canceled her shows. Trump lashed out at her on Twitter and a “Trump family source” claimed Barron Trump believed the image was real. CNN, the home of her New Year’s Eve special for nearly a decade, gave her the boot. Even Griffin’s beloved gay BFF, Anderson Cooper, distanced himself and tweeted his disapproval of her actions.

For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate. — Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) May 31, 2017

After originally defending the image as “an expression of art” in reaction to the “tremendous damage to the country and the world” she believes Trump is responsible for, Griffin quickly realized there was no way for her to successfully weather this storm, so she apologized.

A post shared by Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) on May 30, 2017 at 4:53pm PDT

In some ways, the backlash is understandable. You can’t stage a photo like Griffin’s without freaking people out. It’s grisly, gruesome, provocative and, sure, distasteful and even disrespectful. But that’s the point.

The photo is the latest ― and, yes, arguably the most disturbing ― in a long line of recent political and artistic presidential protest pieces ranging from a grotesque statue of Trump’s naked body to murals of Trump making out with Vladamir Putin.

These pieces are meant to shock ― to shake American citizens from their sleepwalking in hopes of inspiring them to not only recognize the terrifying direction in which our country is being led by Trump and his administration, but also to fight it.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and it’s ridiculous to pretend that anything that is going on right now is “normal.” At a time when the most dangerous policies and actions ― from the “Muslim ban” to cutting access to women’s reproductive health to rolling back pro-transgender directives, not to mention that whole alleged Russian collusion mess ― are being touted as just another day at the (Oval) office, pieces like Griffin’s, which intend to offend in order to highlight the offenses we’re experiencing, shouldn’t be silenced. Because when we silence art, when we tell creative people to stop pushing boundaries, we miss the opportunity to healthy, difficult conversations around what it means to be an American and how and why we should participate in how our country operates, especially at this dire moment in our history.

Griffin was not calling for Trump’s assassination. Earlier this week she said that she “does not condone any violence, that provocative art should remain just that: art” and that “does not want life to imitate art.” Rather, she was drawing attention to the violence ― literal and figurative ― that the Trump administration is responsible for and capable of.

It’s also important to realize that there aren’t violent consequences to Griffin’s image. When she shows Donald Trump’s severed head, she isn’t putting all men like Donald Trump in danger of beheading. On the other hand, while the president hasn’t ever posted gruesome images like the aforementioned, the hateful language he uses to describe certain groups absolutely has consequences.

And while I can understand conservatives lashing out at Griffin (though, it’s rich that staunch supposed supporters of freedom of speech like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos and even Mike Pence didn’t have Griffin’s back, isn’t it?) I was most disappointed in liberals and progressives who were quick to attack her without nuance or context.

Over the last 36 hours, though, something curious has happened: people started to realize that what Griffin did might not have been as unforgivable as once believed. And as the initial hysteria begins to wear off, more and more people are coming to her defense.

“I think it is the job of a comedian to cross the line at all times — because that line is not real,” Jim Carrey said in an “Entertainment Tonight” interview Wednesday. “If you step out into that spotlight and you’re doing the crazy things that [Trump] is doing, we’re the last line of defense. And, really, the comedians are the last voice of truth in this whole thing.”

Others like Ricky Gervais and Jamie Foxx defended Griffin and Larry King said she shouldn’t have been fired from CNN.

Even more intriguing to me was that, my own Facebook feed, which three days ago was filled with angry posts about Griffin’s photo, has suddenly flipped in the other direction.

For many, it seems Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement was the turning point. Memes parodying Griffin’s photo and showing Trump holding the a bleeding Earth began appearing almost instantly and suddenly people realized that maybe, just maybe, Griffin’s political statement ― however crassly executed ― wasn’t entirely inappropriate when compared to the devastation we’re now facing.

In a country that has officially told me that it does not care about my well-being as a gay man ― or, worse and probably more accurately, is actively working in opposition to my existence and survival ― I have been longing for statements of outrage to disrupt the normalization, and even glamorizing, of the destruction of America as a humane, empathetic, progressive nation.

Ultimately, I saw Griffin doing the tricky, difficult work of calling out her own government in an era ― like so many before in our history ― when dissent is labeled as poisonous, if not treasonous. No, we don’t have to like what she did. We can think and say it is tacky or gross or juvenile, but we can also defend her right to do it and attempt to understand her reasoning.

So, I think it’s time we accept her heartfelt apology and move on. In these confusing, panic-inducing times, I want to be challenged. I want to be forced to reconsider what I think is “right” and what’s “wrong.” I want an outlet for my anger and I want the chance ― however rare ― to laugh. Kathy Griffin has offered me opportunities to experience all of this and as problematic and provocative as she can be, I want her to stick around for at least another 30 years in hopes I’ll experience more of the same.

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