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vaspider · 2 years

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Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.

It's very important to me that younger queers understand this: to the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things like neopronouns set the trans movement back or you're why the cishets don't accept us or including [aces/bi people with the 'wrong kind' of partners/non-binary people/kinksters/non-passing trans ppl/furries/polyam people] just hurts us, can't you wait until we get all our rights before we talk about some of yours? -- to those people? Pete Buttigieg is just a fag.

On Sunday at Pride Northwest, some kids -- late teens, early 20s -- asked what our button I survived Reagan for this? meant. All of the queer adults at the tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emet and another adult started to explain the way that the Reagan Administration handled -- or didn't handle -- the beginning of the AIDS crisis. How many people died. How much we were ignored. The Ashes Action. The Time Magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic to the cishet community, playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit. The way that even when the CDC started paying attention, they were so focused on gay men that they ignored AIDS in the lesbian community, leading to the "women don't get AIDS, they just die from it" poster. And so on.

I finished counting out change and passed the last Bear Pride raised fist pin over to a bear a little older than me, then turned my head and interjected, "they didn't care until it started infecting more than just the fags." I turned my head back and handed him his change. He laughed bitterly and said, "remember when they called it 'gay cancer?'"

That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.

Never.

These are people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock room, and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it, because of your lifestyle. If they speak of you at all it will be by the wrong name, with the pictures you hate the most. They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it and they'll say Jesus loves you! while they do it. They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.

And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister. For them, you disavow your sibling. For their sake, you trim away bits of your heart and lace yourself up tight. Never too loud. Never too queer. Never inconvenient or embarrassing, never asking for too much.

Pete Buttigieg is what happens when your Boomer dad turns out gay. Middle America. Parents still married. Suburban-sprouted. Valedictorian. Harvard-educated. Rhodes Scholarship. Military service. More power to him: I hope he and Chasten are very happy together. Genuinely, I do.

You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.

But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.

That's the part you don't seem to get: when they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us. Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals. Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.

It was 1985, 4 years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV/AIDS and 7 years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2. Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.

Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.

Yes, there will be people who genuinely love and accept you. Those people are worth all the frustration of the rest, thankfully, and they're the ones who love you in a pup mask or a leather harness and a neon jock like the ones sold by the men up the row from us last weekend. They're the ones who laugh out loud when you tell them you hid the word "dyke" in your company name, the ones who love you in all your messiness and uncertainty and the way you don't fit into neat boxes all scrubbed up and clean.

Most cishets, though... well, they don't actively mean you specifically any harm, at least not when they have to look at you. Not when you're right there in front of them. Maybe they'll be okay with you, personally, especially if you're the kind of gay who makes a good rhetorical device, and as long as you remain a good rhetorical device.

They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.

But they call you by your deadname when you're not around, and they put the wrong pronouns in your medical record even though they met you years after you came out, and they won't put themselves out to save you. Not one little bit.

I didn't want to be here again. The year I graduated from high school was the worst year of the AIDS crisis. The world into which I became an adult was a world in which an advisor and friend to Reagan, William F. Buckley, openly advocated for forcibly tattooing the HIV status of HIV+ gay men on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their forearms), and in which my father not only told me that when I was 14 or so, but when was told me that he'd advocated for that tattoo being "over their assholes."

(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.

Fucker.)

But yeah. I didn't want to be here again. I wanted my daughter to inherit a better world. I wanted Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas and Hope & Change to really mean something. I work for it, today and all days. I haven't given up.

I need you to know that, too. This isn't a white flag. I'm not surrendering. This isn't over. To misquote Henry Rollins, this is what Marsha and Sylvia and Stormé and Leslie and Brenda and Auntie Sugar trained us for. This is punk rock time.

But I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, mayo and Oscar Meyer bologna sandwich is not respectable enough for them -- and he's not -- then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community, not even if the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence vanish into the ether, not even if we sacrifice the five elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity: we can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.

The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves. The only other option is solidarity. The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it just the way we did 30 years ago. It's revolutionary, complete and total acceptance of our entire community, not just the ones the cishets can pretend to be comfortable with as long as we don't challenge them too much, or it's conceding the shoreline inch by inch to the rising waters of fascism until we've got nowhere left to stand and some of us start drowning.

That's it. Either it's all of us or it's none of us, because if we leave the answer up to the Reagans of the world and all the people who enabled him in the name of lower taxes and Democrats who wring their hands, weeping oh I don't agree with it but we'll lose the election if we fight it right now, the answer is none of us.

The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.

#long post #uncensored slurs #slurs #homophobic slurs #ronald reagan's grave is a gender neutral toilet #lgbtq #queer #trans #transgender #fag #dyke #lgbt

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bilbosmom-belladonna · 4 months

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Can I also ask about Big Gay Roadtrip and Wax On, Wax Off? :D

Of course! Always happy to talk more about writing!

Big Gay Roadtrip is actually a Stranger Things Steddie fic, which has been sitting in my WIP folder for several months now. I opened it to answer this and was surprised to find I had actually started writing it, who knew! 😝 Briefly, Eddie joins Steve, Robin, and Vickie on their monthly "big gay roadtrip" to Indianapolis to visit a gay nightclub there and live life to their small-town-queer-teen-in-the-80s fullest. Miscommunication and shenanigans ensue! Anyway, here is a snippet:

It was endless. It was exhausting. He had never been a loner, per se, but this was on another level. He was seeing these people practically every day, it was absurd. But he kept saying yes, because the kids were persistent and Robin was merciless and Nancy lifted her eyebrow at him and Steve would get this puppy dog look in his eyes. Eddie was a weak man and he knew it. Plus there was something inside him—something that he thought he had squashed a long time ago—that thrilled at being included. Maybe Nancy Reagan was right about peer pressure, the bitch.

Wax On, Wax Off, as you might have guessed, is another WIP for @waxerboilmonth! The mustache puns prompt didn't make it through voting, so I am shoehorning this one into the non-sexual intimacy prompt instead 😂 No snippet yet, but the premise is: Boil has an incident while trying to wax his mustache. He goes to Waxer for help, thinking he knows all about waxing because that's how he got his name. Spoiler alert: that is not how Waxer got his name. But he thinks Boil is pretty cute so he's going to try and help anyway!

#bella replies #wip tag game #steddie #steddie fic #snippet #my writing #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #clone trooper waxer #clone trooper boil #waxer/boil #clone shipping #star wars

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n0thingiscool · 2 years

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Hot Takes From Troll Accounts - re: Breaking Bad and the MSM's General Influence on Populous Beliefs/Behaviors

Exhibit A) absurdly-“useful”

Except mainstream anything has an immediate influence on the masses hence why electing a pro Nazi rapist to office was fucking BAD for the population and the safety for women, POC, queer folk, and people with disabilities… ya goofy misdirecting troll account see you next tuesday. 😂

Exhibit B) wackweeder, grimeclown, and cactusseeds

No, to answer your question - grimeclown. But that’s kinda not really the focus.

*eyes rolling at cactusseeds* - tell me you work for media without telling me you work for media.

For wackweeder - you say “media illiterate” like that’s a bad thing. Lmfao. I prefer to put my limited time in reading published studies, reading historical books, interacting with people who value educational content (not you), taking STEM classes, and beating my ass up in fitness arenas than working on my “media literacy.” I have all my social media feeds to tell me shit I don’t care about in relation to mainstream television now, anyway. It’s not like I get to bury my head away from any of it as much as I would love to. But why the hell would I want to watch brain rot with what limited time I have on this planet. I rhetorically ask. Here’s the key response to your overall population influence illiteracy - media influences everything including drug usage. This is why most developed governments are so sensitive about tobacco and alcohol ads in the presence of children. It doesn’t generally matter how the shit is portrayed. If it did then Nancy Reagan’s “War on Drugs” TV specials would’ve had some positive effect on the masses. Hint… it didn’t.

https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/44/3/229/178279

Now - you can go ahead and make the argument that BB the show, itself, could’ve turned people away from using because there are zero studies to counter that argument but that’s disingenuous claim to make at best. Personally, I feel more comfortable looking at all the other numerous studies looking at drug and alcohol usage influenced through media, in general, and applying that data to the picture at hand because that is a rational thing to do.

For a lay example - why don’t news outlets publish suicide rates? Because it increases suicide. Just because it looks bad in the broad scheme doesn’t mean it has none or an anti-influence. That’s not how this works. I can think of other media influencing mob behavior: Flash mobs. The increase of street takeovers in a post Fast and Furious world. How little girls think they need to look like some twig on the runway. How little boys think they have to hide their emotions because the machismo men on their favorite shows do so. How Bhutan’s GNH (presumably - the documentation has all but vanished from online sources I had read from in the aughts - shoulda saved it back in the day…) fell after the introduction of Western Media. And so on…

People are easily influenced, man. They teach in journalism school (yes, I went) the average American reading and comprehension level is at the equivalent of the third grade. When you see mofos out there believing Q-Anon conspiracies without second guessing you know that fact isn’t far off. We’re not anywhere near as evolved a you want to believe.

Exhibit C) roadkillbuffet

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not but Breaking Bad was not the first gay kiss on television…

But also… if the comment isn’t sarcasm or a troll then - “but Breaking Bad was the first gay kiss on tv therefore if you’re calling a meth based television show out you are homophobic” - is a piss poor argument to make for the queer community. Of which I am in, btw.

If that were actually true and BB was the first show to validate queer relationships then how homophobic is Hollywood to take that first dive into validating queer lives in a show about meth? I’m going to guess this is a sarcasm response though. No one can be that off base… can they?

Exhibit D) "I can't read this" Cool. Go back to your basic memes.

#ask response #influence #influencer #media #behavior #mob rule

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elcomfortador · 7 months

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I want everyone to know about Terry Sweeney, the first openly gay person to perform in the cast of Saturday Night Live.

Terry was hired in season 11, which is the 1985-1986 season — the first one where Lorne Michaels was in charge again after a five-year absence. Considering that it took until 2012 to have another openly gay person in the cast, this strikes me as being more progressive on SNL's part than I would have guessed. What's more, Terry is bringing a distinct gay flavor to his performances, which is notable considering that a more frequent face of gay America at the time was the AIDS epidemic. Take this sketch, from a Dec. 8, 1985, episode hosted by John Lithgow. Not only is the First Lady being portrayed by a drag performance, but also his version of Nancy Reagan works differently than, say, Phil Hartman as Barbara Bush, because Terry is bringing a distinct gay flair to the role that a straight performer probably wouldn't.

This particular sketch is interesting to me because Terry is essentially using his Nancy impersonation — and his platform on this TV show with a national reach — to make everyone watch him do a song and dance number with sexy back-up dancers, which is kind of a little gay boy's dream? There's not that much of a "joke" to this sketch, really, other than Nancy dreaming that she would have ever been the most famous performer in all of show business. The "joke" is that he got NBC to sign off on him doing this very gay thing on network TV.

What I especially love about this performance, however, is that it's not a pre-tape, which I feel a lot of performers would prefer, because choreographed dancing is hard enough, much less doing it while you're singing. Instead, you can see that Nancy is wearing her stage dress when she appears at the beginning next to Ronald. She's just throwing off her blazer and running to the second stage while the establishment shot of the theater is running onscreen. When she's done, she's disappearing behind her dancers and running back to the first set, to the point that Terry a little out of breath because dancing while singing is a lot of work, it turns out.

He really gave it his all.

This is all something I talk about in the newest Gayest Episode Ever, which is the first part of an in-depth look into how SNL has portrayed LGBTQ characters and themes over its nearly fifty years on the air.

Of all the eras this show has had, I feel like this one is the most off-limits to people today, just because it wasn't frequently run in syndication, it often is not included in SNL's own retrospectives of its own history, and it's under-represented in what's streaming on Peacock. But I really think there's some interesting stuff from this era, that can help us understand how mainstream audiences came to understand LGBTQ humor the way it does.

And yes, season 11 also featured Danitra Vance, who was both the first black woman to be hired into the main cast and also a gay person herself, but she was not out at the time. I'll be profiling Danitra's work as we move through the series run of SNL.

#snl #saturday night live #terry sweeney #lgbtq #nancy reagan #my podcasts

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mariacallous · 7 months

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After six months of shooting, six months in postproduction, and nine months of concentrated editing, Dune was ready to be unleashed onto 1,700 screens worldwide simultaneously, a rarity then. There were four gala premieres scheduled for the film: Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Miami; and London.

The DC premiere at the Kennedy Center took place on December 4 and included Dune author Frank Herbert, Kyle MacLachlan (“Paul Atreides”), Francesca Annis (“Lady Jessica”), Dean Stockwell (“Doctor Wellington Yueh”), Raffaella De Laurentiis (producer), and, of course, Dino De Laurentiis (executive producer). The latter wrangled Herbert and David Lynch (along with his wife, Mary Fisk) invites to a White House state dinner to meet President Ronald Reagan, whom Lynch admired. Supposedly the President and First Lady Nancy Reagan told Herbert they enjoyed the film, though official records show Dune wasn't screened for the president until December 22, at Camp David.

“It is an important town for an important movie,” Dino told The Washington Post. “The Kennedy Center is the most important in the United States. That is why we have the premiere of Dune here.”

MacLachlan, smiling between book signings at the premiere, told a reporter: “I don’t feel like a God Emperor, just an actor. Actually, the process of filming was boring and tedious. The fun came in seeing it in its final form. This is the second time for me, I saw it once before in New York. Yes, I do hope there’s a sequel. I’d like to be in lots more. I’d read all the Dune books years before the movie, but once I was cast in it, I began to read them voraciously.”

“I think the movie captures the book,” Herbert opined. “Of course, it leaves out scenes, but it would have to, otherwise we’d be here 14 hours.”

However, negativity around Dune was already circulating. Lynch tried to quell the bad buzz (Variety had dubbed it a “Dune-boggle”) to the Los Angeles Times shortly after this premiere, saying: “I don’t know how the rumors got started, but they aren’t based on truth … that the picture was in trouble, it wasn’t going over well and that we had a bad preview. Well, I was at the Los Angeles preview, and the feeling I got was that we had a successful preview. The feeling I got at the premiere was an awful lot better. Dune is a film built for a big screen with big sound, and they had that at the Kennedy Center.”

Lynch later admitted in Greg Olsen's Beautiful Dark: “I said that I liked the film. I convinced myself that I did. But I was a very sick person at the time. I was dying inside.”

Herbert was also banging the drum for the movie and its planned follow-up, bragging to Philadelphia Daily News: “The principals of the cast and the director, David Lynch, have all been optioned for two more films. We have enough outtakes from this one to make a four-hour TV miniseries. We’re already plotting the screenplay of the sequel.”

A copy of the script for Dune II was even seen in Herbert’s office when he was interviewed for Prevue magazine in December 1984: “That’s David’s rough draft of Dune Messiah. Now that we speak the same ‘language,’ it’s much easier for both of us to make progress, especially with the screenplays.”

Lynch elaborated even further on his plans to shoot Dune II and Dune III back-to-back in Starburst #78:

Raffaella will be the producer again, and hopefully a lot of the same team will come back. Right now, I’m writing the script for Dune II. Dune II is totally Dune Messiah, with variations on the theme. Dune III is the one that’s going to be trouble for me. I’m not wild about Children of Dune, and I want to read it again and see what kind of ideas I get. I want to get to the point where I’m really dying to do it. Dune Messiah is a very short book, and a lot of people don’t like it, but in there are some really nifty ideas. I’m real excited about that, and I think it could make a really good film. It starts 12 years later, and this creates a whole new set of problems. It’s a kind of thing unto itself. The whole place where the characters live is now different. It’s the same location, but everything has changed. And it should have a different mood … it should be 12 strange years later.

At the Royal London Charity Premiere benefiting the National Association for Mental Health on December 13 were Lynch, MacLachlan, Annis, Sting (“Feyd-Rautha”), Patrick Stewart (“Gurney Halleck”), Siân Phillips (“Gaius Helen Mohiam”), and Raffaella partying at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square alongside special celebrity guests like Prince Andrew (Duke of York), Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland (The Police), Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael (Wham!), Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet), Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Roger Taylor (Queen), Grace Jones (Conan the Destroyer), Julie Walters (Educating Rita), Danny Huston (Wonder Woman), Billy Connolly (The Hobbit), and the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

There is even a photograph of Annis and Sting smiling as they cut a large (truthfully, disgusting-looking) Dune cake with a chocolate sandworm suggestively placed between fondant representations of Arrakis’ two moons.

One last premiere was held concurrently the night of the London event at the Dadeland Triple Theater in South Miami, Florida, to benefit the Coconut Grove Playhouse, where José Ferrer (“Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV”) was artistic director. Ferrer attended the public event alongside actor Brad Dourif (“Piter De Vries”), with tickets available for $20 for the film (with preshow champagne reception) or $50 for the film and a gala party with the stars. A critics’ screening and press conference with Ferrer and Dourif were also arranged, attended by John Sayles and Maggie Renzi, who had intended to screen The Brother from Another Planet in Cuba but were denied visas, so they settled for watching Dune. The reception by the press at the conference was reportedly icy.

During a London press conference in January 1985 (once writing was on the wall regarding Dune failing), Raffaella made a bold and not inaccurate prediction (via Space Voyager #14): “No, it won’t flop. It’s too original. It doesn’t look like anything that’s been on the screen before. I think it’s going to become a big cult movie.”

What follows are recollections of the cast and crew of Dune on their premiere experiences.

IAN WOOLF (Directors Guild of America [DGA] Trainee): I went to the premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington with my wife and a friend of ours. After the two hours and 20 minutes, you could hear a pin drop in the theater. It’s like, “What the fuck was this?” It wasn’t good.

VIRGINIA MADSEN (Actor, “Princess Irulan”): I didn’t go to that one. I went to the premiere at the Chinese, or maybe it was Westwood? They handed out this little dictionary. I saw that and I thought, “Oh no, this movie is in trouble … you need a dictionary.”

ERIC SWENSON (Visual Effects, Motion Control): I don’t remember everybody being bummed or super excited. It was like, “Hey, that’s pretty cool.” Everybody hates their own stuff, and thinks they could do it better. I’m looking at Rambaldi’s creatures and the forced perspective miniatures. Some of those sets, like the Emperor’s palace, were still left over when I got there, and to see them up on the big screen was phenomenal.

ALICIA WITT (Actor, “Alia”): I loved it! I loved it. I also missed a lot of the scenes that were missing. It was amazing to have that first experience of having watched something being filmed and then seeing it made into a real-life movie. That’s always magical, and it never stops being magical. No matter how many times I’ve done it now, you watch a scene being filmed over and over again from all the different angles and then you see it turned into a story. I also remember being confused by the feedback that I heard after the movie that people didn’t understand it, because obviously I knew the story backward and forward and it made perfect sense to me, but I can see now how it might have been confusing to people who hadn’t already read the book.

VIRGINIA MADSEN (Actor, “Princess Irulan”): It was kind of hard for me to recover from the fact that my face was 25 feet tall in the theater. That was the coolest thing I could have ever dreamt of as a little girl. There it was. I might not have been Barbara Stanwyck, but there I was. To me, everything about the movie was perfect because I was so proud to be a part of something that big when I was such a sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan. It was very exciting and very beautiful. I wanted to see it again immediately. [Laughs.]

PENELOPE SHAW SYLVESTER (Assistant Editor): They were all very complimentary at the Royal premiere in London. We all went out and partied afterward. I remember going into the ladies’ room, and Sting’s wife’s dress had come apart and she was in a panic. I said, “Don’t worry!” Being a Girl Scout, I had my safety pins; we pinned her up and back she went.

SEAN YOUNG (Actor, “Chani”): I was never at a screening when that movie came out because I was in Africa doing a movie called Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. It was a long shoot. I never even saw the picture at all until 18 years later when I watched Dune on TV one day. I didn’t have a whole lot of thought about it, but I do remember the reshoot scene at the end that we shot day for night. I thought that was pretty good.

Young harbors no ill will toward the filmmakers for reducing her role of Chani almost to the point of haiku.

SEAN YOUNG (Actor, “Chani”): This is going to sound ridiculous, but I couldn’t have cared less. It didn’t matter to me. That’s show business. That’s what I mean about practicality. When you take stuff personally in show business, it makes life harder. How many people put their money in to make this movie? They paid you, right? They don’t owe you a storyline unless you put it in your contract: “I must have a storyline that takes up a half-hour of this picture at least.” Nobody will do that. If I could do one thing differently, it would be nice to appear in one of the gowns. Francesca got to wear nice gowns and she was also in the stillsuit, so she had both. Chani only had the stillsuit. That was it. Well, I had a little ropey see-through thing for the love scenes. It would have been nice to have a spiffed-up My Fair Lady moment. [Laughs.]

Molly Wryn did not discover that her major character of Harah—along with her entire storyline—had been almost completely excised from the finished film until she attended the premiere in Los Angeles.

MOLLY WRYN (Actor, “Harah”): Imagine? My heart crushed. Broke. It hurt. David had said to me not long before that, “You know, some of your stuff has been cut.” Something very gentle. I said, “Okay.” But I had no idea I was completely cut. They even shot me for the credits, when they show everybody’s face, but didn’t use it, which was sad. I remember how shocked I was. And then at the end, not even my face that they filmed. It took a while, they film from all directions and then pick out what they want to use and … gosh, I’m getting teary about it.

Harlan Ellison wrote articles at the time alleging that Frank Price of Universal thought Dune was “a dog” and was deliberately withholding it from the press.

FRANK PRICE (President of Universal Pictures, 1983–86): Not a dog. It was not bad. David Lynch does good work. Harlan Ellison was always around with a chip on his shoulder.

PAUL M. SAMMON (Universal Pictures Publicity Executive): Prior to its release, there was a great deal of journalistic interest in Dune. Fan interest was somewhat split prior to the film’s opening, though. There was the inevitable skepticism of, “Isn’t this the same producer who gave us that mediocre remake of King Kong?” That was balanced by Frank Herbert’s very vocal enthusiasm about how faithfully David Lynch was “doing” his book. In fact, I included some footage of Frank heartily (and genuinely) endorsing Dune in my “Destination Dune” convention featurette, but then the release date kept being pushed back and audience/press interest began waning. CRAIG CAMPOBASSO (Production Office Assistant): They didn’t do any press screenings. That’s where all that anger came from the press. People started writing bad stuff because of that.

FRANK PRICE (President of Universal Pictures, 1983–86): Oh yeah. You don’t want to give critics time to destroy you. I had a picture at Columbia that is a good example, called Neighbors. It had John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. When we test-screened it, audiences hated it. I told the marketing head, “Get every theater you can get, every seat, because we’ve got to get everything out in a week.” We did great business for a week, and then it collapsed. Word of mouth destroyed it. But with Dune, you can’t get your money back in a week.

CRAIG CAMPOBASSO (Production Office Assistant): They didn’t want anybody to knock it down before it was released, but not letting them see it had the opposite effect. Then the movie came out, and it just didn’t do well.

THOM MOUNT (President of Universal Pictures, 1976–83): The real problem was people didn’t show up. It’s hard to know. When we did The Deer Hunter, I was told by everybody repeatedly that the picture would be a total failure, that no one wants to see this long exegesis on our painful exit from Vietnam. Six Academy Awards and hundreds of millions of dollars in income later, they were wrong. But on the other hand, you’re talking to the guy who gave Xanadu the go-ahead. I know what it is to lose every dime.

Despite the wild reactions, much of the cast and crew weren’t blaming Lynch.

FREDERICK ELMES (Additional Unit Cinematographer): What’s on the screen isn’t really David’s film. It’s a different edit. It’s a different version of the film, and that made me very sad.

TERRI HARDIN (Stillsuit Fabrication, Stunt Double): People would say, “Oh, that movie was so terrible.” What you don’t realize is there’s like seven hours on the cutting room floor. Frank Herbert at the screening was devastated, so sad that he had to show us this movie. I think he had seen it before, but he was heartbroken by the movie. So many people were disappointed by the results. The De Laurentiises weren’t at our screening, mostly the builders and below-the-line people. It was supposed to be two films, and it became one, really short and really not very comprehensible.

KENNETH GEORGE GODWIN (Production Documentarian): I knew there was stuff that would have made a stronger film. You’re 45 minutes into it before the Harkonnens attack, and mostly what we’ve got is just setting up all these royal families. You’ve got this huge exposition at the beginning, then a pretty rushed midsection. After he’s with the Fremen, they start to follow him and attack … That’s all compressed into a couple of montages. There was way more shot. Then you’ve got the ending, a big battle scene. A huge chunk of the meat of the story got ditched.

GILES MASTERS (Art Department): The stories of what David went through are well-documented, and it wasn’t the film that he wanted. It wasn’t the film most of us expected to see when we went to the premiere. Everybody was a little like, “Oh, what happened?”

LUIGI ROCCHETTI (Makeup Artist): In addition to the human side of Lynch, I admire his vision of things. The film could have been better. It’s a very complicated and difficult story to tell, and surely David’s version was better when it was uncut.

KENNETH GEORGE GODWIN (Production Documentarian): If David had been left alone with the editor, it would have been better, had more coherence. The emphasis was never so much on the story as on creating four different worlds with all their architecture, the sense that these places all have different histories, different societies. That kind of world-building appealed to him more than the story of this kid who becomes a god.

JANE JENKINS (Casting Director): I don’t know that I ever understood it any better than when I struggled through the book. I think that the movie was not as successful as David could have made it. He had a vision to do it in black and white. He didn’t want to do it in color. I think that it had the potential if David had been left entirely to his own devices to make it a stronger movie. There was a lot of interference in his version, but [he] was not a powerful enough director at that point in his career to say, “All right, everybody back off,” and have final cut. Even though I found Eraserhead very odd, to say the least, all his films have been very interesting. Dune is probably the least successful [of his films] because he didn’t have enough control to do what he wanted.

RAFFAELLA DE LAURENTIIS (Producer): Look, it’s not an easy adaptation. If you have not read the book and you’re not familiar with the book, you’ll get lost easily. One of the mistakes—and I’ll take responsibility for that—was David would have probably been a lot more esoteric, but I was concerned about people being able to follow the story. Sometimes I was pushing to explain things, to remain close to the book, to be faithful to the book. I’m not sure that was always the right decision to make.

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designaday · 12 days

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Ultimate Playlist: Women’s Names

I enjoy creating thematic playlists to listen to on long road trips. My son-in-law suggested that I create one that was all songs containing women’s names. I decided the criteria would be:

The song must mention a woman’s name in the title or lyrics.

The song must be one that I enjoy listening to. Fair warning: that immediately rules out most country, rap, opera, and heavy metal. Sorry.

I did accept suggestions from my daughter, so there are a number of songs in the list that wouldn't have been included just due to the fact that I wasn’t aware of them. You can thank her for any songs by Taylor Swift, for example. I decided that the natural order for the songs in such a playlist is alphabetical. It contains 131 songs with a play time of eight and a half hours. In a series of posts, I’ll share the entire playlist.

Wrap Her Up by Elton John This song wraps up with a long list of female celebrities, from Marilyn Monroe to Nancy Reagan. I felt that was a fitting way to kick off the playlist.

Adeline by John-Robert A lovely little love song sung to acoustic guitar.

The Downeaster “Alexa” by Billy Joel This song is actually named after a boat named after a woman, but following my criteria, that counts.

All the Girls Love Alice by Elton John Elton John has a lot of songs about women. This one is the tragic story of a young lesbian who dies in the streets—the first song Elton sang about a gay character.

Cándido & América by Eddie from Ohio This song is based on the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle, which is about Cándido Rincón and his pregnant wife América, two Mexicans who enter the U.S. illegally.

Amoreena by Elton John One of the more unusual names in the list, this is a “bawdy love song” about a lusty country girl.

Angela by The Lumineers Named after the lead singer’s ex-girlfriend, this song is about “a small town success story struggling to escape her past.”

Annie by Charles Strouse & Martin Charnin Oh yes, I’m including songs from broadway musicals.

Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson Only in the Women’s Names playlist will you find Annie immediately followed by Smooth Criminal. Are you okay, Annie?

Alrighty Aphrodite by Peach Pit This song uses the metaphor of the goddess Aphrodite to talk about a possibly unfaithful girl.

That covers the A’s. I’ll list the B’s next week.

#music #Ultimate Playlist

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the-firebird69 · 2 months

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Thomas Shelby WhatsApp status #peakyblinders

He's on going through this emotional stuff himself asking what to do no sense is could you stop asking a child what to do is sound like Nancy Reagan telling Reagan s**t from a soothsayer. It is as well as pretty good hey it's going around like this character trying to have people afraid of him this is you should have your proof of what you're doing wrong I don't know how I thought of this would have worked pretty good as Trump you're walking around doing that and nobody wants you around as the character in town you're doing it and nobody wants you around and as this character you can see the reaction that's not really respect it's more like what are you doing here how come you're not character what can we do to stop you and it doesn't sound like they're asking you anything else and he says well what do I do about that any paused says I kind of see what I'm saying I looked at it and said nobody likes those stupid s*** I'm doing. So he said I have a game and I'm going around telling him what to do so you're going around in public with crowns of different groups and you're telling them what to do and they're saying f*** you some of them and they're pretty big and it's not the way it used to be in the 30s and he says oh yeah you're really old yeah well yes you want and I told you what and a much bigger than your busy little group which is going to dissolve real soon because of this kind of nonsense and nonsense with me once again don't f****** do this s*** to me or I'm going to mangle your entire group into nothing sound like a mob guy just a lot bigger and much more powerful so he says I'm kind of sick of this kid telling me what to do it's not going to take that JD bottle I'm going to break it I'm going to have someone jam it in your f****** neck and you can blame me you stupid c*** I was going to take the rest of it having to swallow it and let you on f****** fire so you understand what you're doing wrong so we sort of get what you're saying he's trying to threaten to tell communications and he's doing it again so we're going to do that to him so if you don't get it I'm going to jam it into your heart and train your heart and you're trying to fill it with blood it'll drain out and he started yelling I don't think I'm getting the same but I can have all those things happen to you with precision. Is just talking about talking to a man and all this s*** so he sent down some of our thugs I said we don't want you talking to our son that way and we pull the sand out and we stamped it with a brand and it burned it in and he says what's this he says it's a mark it's one that they use so he's walking around with it for days and it won't go away and he's going to be stuck with it and that's what we're doing what are putz. Threatenong me and I'm having a rippedapart and you shouldn't be threatening me cuz you're stupid

And you get threatened back and you end up dead every time yes sorry huh you're tired stupid a****** try to keep me up I started wasting you trying to bother me I started having your head and you're going to keep getting hit and as a matter of fact I should thank you for being super than you usually are this is a great outfit for you to be in and go there with any group and toast you with any excuse including Valentine's Day he said :-) they said boy this is Tom and we used it as an excuse he shows up and he gets shot with tommy guns he's a fool and we're going to hit him

Thor Freya

Olympus

Zues Hera he says with every breath I get angry and I get frustrated and it's Trump saying it about my husband and my husband says that's good that's a compliment

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alldrinkingaside · 2 years

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The PERVASIVE MYTH of HITTING BOTTOM First

"I survived the alcohol and now I must survive myself." - ALL DRINKING ASIDE, p. 113

My alcohol consumption seemed to have reached a tipping point shortly after my first full decade of Substance Use. For most Alcoholics, the Progressive Downward Trajectory is Slow & Torturous, unlike the fast and furious descent of many other addictions. My whole life had become a textbook case of alcohol's destructive forces.

After my first solid decade of drinking, my consumption control loosened... and unloosened. Alcohol went from being a series of periodic binges to a daily necessity. Life hardly seemed worth living without it and barely seemed worth living with it.

Love of alcohol slowly had turned into a love-hate relationship buffered by thick layers of denial. I craved alcohol above all else and could not stop, even if and when I occasionally considered it. In hindsight, my addiction seems to have hijacked the survival part of my brain. Survival would have to include alcohol above all else. My instinct to survive was twisted, distorted, sabotaged under the influence. I had come to believe that survival would be unthinkable without it. Consequences be damned, I needed a drink, and I wanted it now, now, Now and NOW.

It only seemed that losing everything was a necessary precondition to finding recovery and finding my place in it. Simply put, addiction was the only world I knew.

The world shames us and so we live in shame, not seeking help to find a clean and sober life. Addiction erodes the user's mental health such that when treatment is finally sought, they have deteriorated, erosion of self and destruction of a clear perspective... dissolved.

Discrimination and exclusion perpetuate addiction. "By the time I had a reason to stop drinking, reason no longer had anything to do with it."

Even today, the Myth of Hitting Bottom First is Pervasive. The willingness to find help may already have been eclipsed by the thoughts of having not yet hit bottom. Sadly, Harm Reduction isn't even in the equation here for many. Thoughts of being able to control my addiction and to drink less were Grand Illusions. Failure, almost a certainty.

My Bottom seemed to have been Death. Nothing short of death could stop me from drinking. At every point in my slow Descent into the Maelstrom, my brain always seemed to want more alcohol than my increasing levels of tolerance could sustain.

I went from being a regular at many-a-bar to a regular in emergency rooms and detoxes. The thought still entered my head that perhaps I had not hit my bottom yet.

Help was always there but denial captured my belief in hope and change. I would die with a drink in my hand and that would be that. Would things have to get worse before they could possibly get better?

Instead of the disaster produced by Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No!" campaign, I eventually learned to FLIP THE SCRIPT to "Just Say Yes!" to Treatment and Recovery. SAVE what's left while there's still something left to save and BEFORE things get inevitably worse.

Hit Bottom First, BE DAMNED!

Just say "Yes!" to seeking help for any and all substance use disorders.

As they say in Recovery Meetings Everywhere, "It works if you work it, so work it, you're worth it!"

*****

#Enjoy my first book, the Autobiographical Fiction titled ALL DRINKING ASIDE: The Destruction, Deconstruction & Reconstruction of an Alcoholic Animal. Find it on Amazon. Book it here: http://amzn.to/1bX6JyO

My NEW, Non-Fiction, BECOMING UNBROKEN: Reflections on Addiction and Recovery, is also on Amazon and may be found here: https://lnkd.in/dkF767RT

Both books are available in Print and Kindle editions.

7,400+ Recovery Tweets here: https://twitter.com/jimanders4

#alcoholism #addiction #recovery #books

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sparrowpharoh · 2 years

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PETE BUTTIGIEG IS JUST A FAGGOT

A repost of an essay by @vaspider

Thanks to Twitter user @fondantfiend for preserving the text

Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.

That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.

Never.

You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.

But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.

Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.

They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.

(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.

Fucker.)

The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.

All credit for this essay belongs to @vaspider

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americanredragger · 3 years

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A Letter to My Mother (That I am too scared to send)

Okay. We’re having this talk now. I have been putting it off because there��s never been a way for me to keep my cool long enough to say it straight. I’ve been nice, I’ve been polite. I’ve walked away from conversations rather than address this directly because I don’t want to lose my mom.

Yesterday was unlike anything in American history. There is no both-sides-ism to be taken here. There is no even vaguely similar violence unleashed by the Left. This isn’t to say that NO violence has ever been unleashed by the left, it can and does happen. But nothing like this. This is unprecedented in both it's scope and audacity.

Unless you can point to an instance in which a Democrat president (or Senator, or Governor) whipped up a riot and unleashed those rioters on the Seat of Government of the United States of America, causing it to be breached and overrun by a hostile force for the first time in 207 years, the things don’t equate at all.

Unless you can point to a riot held by alt-right wingers in which the police cracked down on them HARD to the level of being condemned by the International Criminal Court as bordering on war crimes, the things don’t equate at all.

This was a direct assault on our government by a crowd whipped up by a sitting president. This has never happened before.

The Capitol Police removed the barricades and guided the insurrectionists in.

They chatted and took selfies with them. Exchanged fist bumps with them.

The seditionists were allowed to leave with few arrests, just… gently guided out once the barbarian hordes had their fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPTjQZBLhQ

And yes, Trump (eventually) told them to go home, but refused to condemn what they'd done and finished his speech with "We love you. You're very special." and continued to refer to his political opponents as "evil".

This is quite literally unprecedented in American history. As in, nothing comes close. That's what "unprecedented" means.

If this had been BLM, the response would have been entirely different. DC would be on lockdown. The police would be bringing WAR to the streets. There would be helicopters, APCs, and beat cops dressed like the US Army rolling into Baghdad in 2003. The DC area hospitals would be overwhelmed with rioters suffering from horrific head and spine injuries from trigger-happy use of rubber bullets and night-sticks. Hell, Trump tear-gassed ACTUAL peaceful protesters last summer just so he could stage an awkward photo op in front of a church, which even the Clergy called him out on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhYhu7NYI

Don't you DARE equate the two.

I'm tired of the whataboutisms. I'm tired of ignoring the evidence right in front of you. Donald Trump is the single most corrupt, evil man America has ever elected to the presidency. He has worked hard to transform the Republican party into something that actual Holocaust survivors and experts have called "Neofascist" and even less flattering terms.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2020/10/25/holocaust-survivor-fears-rising-tide-ugliness-blames-trump-opinion/3740781001/

https://forward.com/scribe/455507/100-year-old-holocaust-survivor-compares-trump-to-hitler/

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article223718330.html

Historians and victims of fascism the world over point to what Trump and his transformed Republican party have been doing as president when asked how the Weimar Republic fell and the Nazi regime rose.

The overwhelming amount of terrorist attacks in the last five years have been Trump supporters (Well over half stemming from that singular cause, with the rest divvied among a MASSIVE swathe of motives), but none more so overwhelmingly so than yesterday's.

There is no left wing equivalent for this in America until you go all the way back to the Weather Underground bombings, and even they were not goaded on by the incumbent politicians of a party.

Your party has been STOLEN from you. The Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is no more. And now it’s stealing you from your children as we have watched you and dad drift further and further into the Hannity-Limbaugh-Carlson echo chamber.

88 years ago next month, right wing extremists set fire to the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. Over the next few days, they seeded reports that it was actually the communists, maybe socialists, no, it was definitely anarchists… or was it trade unionists? Either way, it HAD to have been The Left who burned down the Reichstag.

This was used to expand and hold onto the power of the Chancellor, a man who need not be named. The next few years proved to be sorrowful for everyone.

That same blame-shifting is already happening again, but it's not in some far away country, it's happening here, where we all thought it couldn't.

This sort of event is unprecedented in the United States, or it was until yesterday. It is not so unprecedented elsewhere.

The only difference is that this attempt failed.

The attempt was made because Trump’s own administration found that this was the most secure election in American history, and Trump’s lawsuits to the contrary were laughed out of court by Trump-appointed judges, including his Supreme Court justices, and his exceedingly incompetent and well-documented attempts to get state officials to overturn a legitimate election all failed.

I still believe you and dad are good, honest people. Patriots who want America to do well in the world.

You can not-like Nancy Pelosi, or Obama, or Biden, or Hilary Clinton. That’s your prerogative, and we’ll agree on plenty in that regard. You’re well within your rights to believe that my preferred economics don’t work. We’ll disagree heartily, but that’s normal for families, especially between parents and their kids.

But your party has been hijacked by neofascists, malignant narcissists, and white supremacists.

I am on my knees BEGGING you to see what so many experts and victims have been warning you about for years.

The Left did not do this.

Trump did.

You have been led astray by an vain, selfish, greedy demagogue, a well documented honorless grifter who embodies everything Christ opposed, and uses people until they have nothing more to give him and discards them. He has cloaked this latest grift in the American flag and set a cross upon it, the only way Fascism ever COULD take root in America, as we saw with Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare.

It’s changing you. You can’t see it because it’s happening to you, but those around you can, and it’s scaring us.

Please, finally, truly see this. I want my parents back. You’re going down a path I can’t follow and it’s breaking my heart.

In 2016, I broke from the Republican Party because I saw calamity coming in the nomination of Donald Trump. Only 4 years later, and history has soberingly showed me that I was more right than I could have ever guessed, and my world view has never been the same since. I have looked back at the political opinions I wrote and posted then, and they were so selfish and hateful that it was physically painful for me to put myself through that review. I was a puppet. I couldn’t have seen it at the time because I was at the center of it, and I still live in dread of the monster I would have become if I’d kept to that path. I see that same kind of speech coming from you now - the jingoism, the recycled talking points, the Orwellian denials, and the near-unquestioning loyalty to the stars of the Republican Party and their mouthpieces at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and the AM Radio circuit. I see the most selfish parts of who I used to be, and I know that deep down, you are not that person because I still see you constantly striving to be a good mother, a good Christian, and a model human being.

I’m imploring you to finally look at the evidence, the boundless clear and present evidence, and see what men like Gingrich, McConnell, and Trump have turned your party into. What they are turning you into, the same as they tried with me.

I know you wouldn’t be happy as a Democrat - I myself am only begrudgingly a Democrat because the system doesn’t allow for a viable alternative (and that’s a whole different issue that deserves it’s own library of articles). I’m not trying to convert you. I just need to know that you can look at the evidence with your own eyes like I did and see that you’ve been played for a sucker by men who cry wolf and distract you by having you chase shadows while they line their pockets with money and power. Please stop listening to these monsters, stop swallowing their poison. I know how easy it is to be in that world because I myself have lived in it for most of my life. I fully understand the appeal: there are easy answers for everything, you always know who the enemy is and who your supposed allies and benefactors are. But I also left that behind, and yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot, and frequently. But despite the pain, I know I am better off for having done it.

Yes, I have to question the people who claim to represent me more. I have to question EVERYTHING more because I now know that nothing is as clear cut as I thought it was - once removed from Plato’s Cave, I no longer had the luxury of a simple world. And yet I am still happier because I am so much more my own person now. Yes I falter, and worse still, some days I fall back into the old ways of thinking, but now I recognize that for what it is and it is easier to deal with.

You’ll always be a Conservative, Mom, but I see you on the path that I was on, a path that nearly robbed me of my critical thinking and objectivity, and one which would have weaponized my sense of patriotism to benefit people who are not me. You have kept that course far longer than I. Please put aside the whataboutisms, the both-sides-isms, and finally see the evil, ravenous monster that killed your party from the inside and now wears its skin to deceive you into feeding it further.

I don’t ask that you agree with my politics or economics. I AM begging you though to split from this political machine which is changing you into something I no longer recognize. I want the parents I used to have, the ones who could look at things objectively and form their own opinions instead of repeating talk show buzz lines.

Please, recognize the shadows on the wall of the cave that wicked men are showing you are NOT reality. Please, join me in the truth of the world outside.

#I very nearly sent it #but she's already having tremendous issues between her and my sister and I didn't want to compound those and split the family apart #more than it already has #at any rate #if she doesn't start cooling down by fall #well #at least I have it written down here for easy access #politics #family #trump #republicans #democrats #echo chamber #republican #mitch mcconnell #conservative #conservatives #family issues

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middletonmarkle · 4 years

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I’m gonna ask you random numbers. GO NUTS. 3, 8, 14, 23, 37, 38, 45, 50, 53, 56

YOU ARE SUCH A QUEEN THANK YOU SFM

3. Funniest historical kerfuffle?

the 1525 incident where henry viii tried to vault a ditch with a pole and it snapped omg i know he almost drowned cause of it but it will always be my fave cause i imagine it happening how it was depicted in the tudors lmaoooo

A Very Henry Moment™

8. Favorite tv show based on historical events, but not really faithful to real life?

i mean it has to be the tudors. they do get a lot right, but they also get a lot wrong but idc haha. it’s the show that piqued my interest in anne boleyn, and without anne i would never have fallen in love with history

14. Favorite female monarch?

i mulled over this question long and hard cause there are many amazing female monarchs, but i’m gonna go with my first gut instinct and say elizabeth ii. her story is not only super interesting (and the journey to her ascension to the throne has all the makings of a shakespearean tragedy) but i respect her so much as a reasonable, constant, and steady leader that’s handled a position she never wanted with grace and an unwavering (but benevolent) hand

23. John Wilkes Booth: crazy or crazy with a cause?

okay i don’t know enough about american history, but i’ll include a link to the video that exposes what REALLY happened to abe lincoln (pls tell me someone remembers this vid!!!)

undefined

youtube

37. Have you ever been known as the history person?

lmaoooooooo yes in my family and friend group i am definitely the history person!!!

38. Least favorite president?

i’m really not as well versed in american history bc it doesn’t really interest me as much so i’m sure there are lots of bad eggs i could’ve chosen from but FUCK RONALD REAGAN SPECIFICALLY. people loooove to think he was such a good president cause he embraced trickle down economics but that mfer tripled the national debt, funded the taliban w billions, was an enemy to the LGBTQ+ community, abandoned americans during the aids crisis, deinstitutionalized mentally ill patients and did nothing to help them which left many of them homeless, etc etc etc. just another example of a tv star that has no place being any sort of leader. fuck nancy too btw

45. Candidate that you think should’ve been president(or leader of the country of your choice)?

i personally think if al gore had won over george w. bush, we wouldn’t have invaded iraq. but at the same time we’ll never know and i could definitely stand to be more informed

50. Favorite army story from a relative or friend?

both my grandfathers served in WWII but one of them is no longer alive and the other is suffering from dementia so i can’t ask, but i know he kept journals so i’ll have to find those! idk any stories off the top of my head tho

53. Favorite old political film?

i’m gonna have to pass on this one as i don’t really watch old political films!

56. Opinion on Richard III?

way more nuanced than how he’s remembered. i don’t think he had his nephews killed (and i don’t think it was margaret beaufort either—looking at you, TWP). i think he’s been cast as a villain from 500+ years of tudor propaganda (re: shakespeare lol) which is responsible for how we perceive him today, but i also don’t think he falls to the other extreme of being perfect. i think he’s a historical figure that needs to be evaluated in a more balanced way. but tbh, i’m more interested in his wife!

#faslaidir #answered #ask game

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toongrrl-blog · 4 years

Video

youtube

Part One of Barb Series: Why Barb Died (Character Device Talk)

*Please watch the Betty Draper Francis video first, for extra credit, check out the channel’s vid on Jack Dawson and come with knowledge of Beth March*

Happy end of the 2010s! Before I discuss what Barb could have brought to the Party in Stranger Things I need to discuss how as a character she needed to die.

1. Beth March

In one scene in Little Women, the girls and Laurie discuss their ambitions for adult life. Oldest sister Meg wants to marry and have kids, oldest middle sis Jo wants to become a known and successful writer, youngest sister Amy wants to become rich and famous as an artist and maybe a socialite, and middle child Beth wants things to stay the way they are for her, with her loving family at her side. What’s wrong with this? What the other three sisters have in common is that they are hoping for adult lives which include a lot of change, responsibility, independence (either as a career woman or running a household with little kids underfoot), new experiences, and even new people in their lives (Meg would need to meet a guy to marry and have kids with him, Jo would need to meet people in her professional life, Amy would entertain guests and appeal to patrons). Shy Beth is a talented pianist, vet, and doll collector and is very charitable but she doesn’t seem to want to take the risks it would take to grow as a person and thrive and mature or be noticed for her own merits aside from “Angel of the House” and the future looks pretty hostile; so by the end of the novel, Beth has died in her early 20s while sisters lives have changed (Meg married and had children in a cottage while gaining confidence as a homemaker, wife, and mom; Jo sells her writing and meets a professor who wants to start a school where she becomes headmistress after they marry; Amy goes on a Grand Tour of Europe and marries wealthy and happy).

The series Stranger Things, on a whole, is a coming-of-age series that borrows from the John Hughes and Steven Spielberg films of that era that captured the joys and pains of growing up, while Joyce’s and Hop’s storylines borrow from conspiracy thrillers around that era and somewhat from Hitchcock films. All these films captured ordinary people undergoing extraordinary (E.T., North By Northwest, The Goonies, The Stepford Wives) and life altering events (Jaws, The Breakfast Club, Silkwood) that force them to encounter challenges and make decisions they wouldn’t normally make in their mundane lives. Joyce ends up facing a monster with an axe and even makes demands of people who could wipe her off the Earth, the boys have to ride their bikes to evade murderous men in vans and hide a young traumatized girl, Nancy has to learn to create and use deadly weapons and use her skills of sneaking out for something besides sex, Jonathon has to cut his and another girl’s hand to lure a monster to their trap, Hop sneaks into a morgue just to slit a dead boy’s corpse and find cotton stuffing, Will has to use what knowledge and skills he has to survive another world filled with creatures out to kill him, most of the kids throughout the series have to lie and break laws to save their town.

While the official guide does list Barb as being a varsity softball player and a mathlete and Shannon Purser concurs that Barb would have been the Velma of the group if she lived, there is one big thing that separates the Velmas from the Barbs and Beth’s of the world: Velma takes risks, she would trespass private looking property and dilapidated buildings to solve a mystery. Barb is a loyal friend and honest and studious and smart, but she’s ultimately the good girl archetype: cautious, obedient to her elders, predictable, conservatively and femininely dressed, chaste. An archetype that Nancy is trying to flee (not that the alternative of being a girl who sneaks out with her boyfriend to makeout is going to help Nancy at all) to avoid ending up like her mother. Barb has the fangs (talent and means) to be a Party member, she just lacks the nerve to jump and sink those fangs.

2. Commentary on the Patriarchy and the Tyranny of Beauty Standards

Most of the female characters in the series don’t fit the strict criteria of their Reagan era Indiana small town regarding what makes a good woman. Joyce is a single mother who doesn’t come with well-coiffed hair and she appears to be hysterical and is a working mother in a time and place where all these factors would label her a “bad mother”, Nancy is a frank young woman who takes risks and even asserts her sexuality and herself when plenty of people (like the shitheads at Hawkins Post) would prefer her to be a delicate virgin in pastels, El is physically stronger than the boys with her powers and she is very direct in her manner despite her soft-spoken demeanor, Max is a girl who is interested in arcade video games and skateboarding and brightly colored summer clothing and reads her Mom’s Cosmo cover to cover and is assertive, Erica is an assertive young girl who can talk truth (and shade) to adults and has a knowledge of My Little Pony and Cold War Politics, Robin is snarky and has a style that makes her stand out from most girls in Hawkins and is a teen genius, Kali’s rage and Joan Jett-esque appearance would make the preppy and pastel and autumnal tone wearing residents of Hawkins in Cardiac Care, Suzie has defied notions about girls in science and math and even the Mormon beliefs of her parents by french kissing and dating a non-Mormon boy like Dustin, and Karen despite her appearance of hot housewife perfection is dissatisfied with her marriage and comes close to cheating on her husband.

In contrast Barb is pretty much the most conventional character: she dresses conservatively in ruffles and pink, she is seemingly chaste, follows the rules diligently and worries about getting punished by the Holland and Wheeler parents, and has a more common body type found in cis-gender women (correct me if I’m wrong, hopefully I don’t offend trans pear shaped women) and not often found in the older members of the female cast. But despite Barb’s body being common among women in general and specific to her region (the American Midwest is noted for starchy and creamy and fried foods and is historically farming country, where pioneers would find her strong for work in and out of the log cabin and give birth to the necessary amount of children i.e. extra hands for work), the delicate and slender builds of Joyce and Nancy, the classic proportionate and slender grace of Robin, and the leggy and toned image of Karen are closer to the female standard of beauty in the 1980s. In Barb’s lifetime (1967-1983), the image of beauty was dominated by leggy, toned, slim, busty women or lean women with minimal breasts: no room for tall, broad, pear shapes like herself. And in 1983, Molly Ringwald wasn’t yet a household name that freckled redheads with dry wit and atypical images could look on with pride. Hell I remember reading a copy of Color Me Beautiful where they recommend that women with heavy hips and small waists (similar features of Christina Hendricks and Shannon Purser) shouldn’t cinch their waistlines, the celebration of Marilyn Monroe pinups with round hips, pillowy thighs and tummies, rounded tushes were long gone by then. Basically Barb being her natural self, was not seen as “feminine enough” and combined with her glasses and style (any plus sized or early developing gal can tell you that it is hell to find junior styles that suit your body size and shape) have ruled her as “uncool”.

There is also that Barb does a lot of things that the boys do: being slightly geeky, a loyal friend, has innocent and wholesome interests, chaste, and is quiet (like Will) but she still gets killed. One can sense that #JusticeForBarb came out of an anger with misogyny in media and society that tells women to be a certain way and punishes them whether they fit a mold or not. Women are still underpaid in the workplace, underrepresented in government, still deal with unequal and toxic relationships, are shamed for being virgins or for having sexual experience (Carol pokes fun at the idea of Barb finding the sex sounds too much and yet contributes to the slut shaming graffiti of Nancy), are told on one hand to look a certain way to attract the male gaze and shamed when they indulge in sexual desire (something Nancy can attest to with her glamorous mother who offers to lend her black heels and focuses on Nancy’s beauty before a funeral, the same mom who was angry her daughter had sex), they are either too fat/skinny/busty/flat/frizzy/straight haired/pale/slutty/prudish/dark/feminine/masculine/full-butt-ed/quiet/loud/naive/cynical/smart/dumb/angry/happy, and they deal with a media that sells a very narrow standard of beauty to the point that when they see a drop dead gorgeous actress or model with similar features they feel seen.

Oh Bondage, Up Yours!

*Read this is not a “Barb is a slut shamer!” piece yes that was shitty but she was a teen girl in a small 1980s town and she ISN’T starting a (paraphrasing Kimberly Nicole Foster quote) “no whores allowed campaign” OR trying to pass a law that demands women keep their ectopic pregnancies to full term*

3. End of Innocence

When Barb died, it marked the end of Nancy’s childhood and her needing to grow up. That was the night Nancy went straight from childhood (Barb), teenager (sex with Steve), and then shortly became an adult when she realized that Barb had disappeared. For many women (like myself at ages 9 and 10), the moment they get their period or grow breasts or reach a certain age, marks a dramatic end of their childhood. Suddenly many are told to police their behavior and language around boys, even policing the food they eat or their bodies. There is also extra responsibility and stress, demogorgans being one of them. Nancy is now having to deal with the sorts of issues that adult women dealt with on Mad Men along with scary monsters threatening her town and the fact her parents are not as happy as they look to the world, there is a gap between the experiences of her and Mike, she has a baby sister who probably was conceived to save the marriage, and Nancy can’t confide or trust either of her parents (who are absorbed with their own issues). Now Nancy is making big decisions that Barb, with the sheltering and seemingly close parents, will likely never deal with. Nancy is even taking fashion risks with clothes that are more functional, stylish, show off her figure, and can even withstand flayer blood and exorcising her boyfriend’s little brother.

4. A Huge Threat

Barb was intended to be a character that we connected with, someone to be built up somehow. There was a character like this in a movie: her name was Marion Crane. She was a secretary who has been supporting herself and her little sis since their parents died, patiently waiting for her boyfriend to make more money at his job so they can marry and stop sneaking around sleeping with one another, in desperation she steals a lot of money from her workplace, drives to California where she meets a mild-mannered but strange young man who manages a distant motel in the vicinity of a Victorian house where an older woman is croaking about promiscuity, after talking with him over a dinner of sandwiches in his taxidermy themed office, she goes to take a shower and has decided to return to Phoenix to return the money, then a strange figure comes with a large butcher knife in horribly out of date clothes and starts stabbing her to death.

This was from the Hitchcock film Psycho, the forerunner of the slasher genre that dominated the earlier half of the 1980s, and it premiered to shocked audiences in 1960. The meaning of the grisly murder of Marion, a character the audience was following from the beginning of the film, was that Norman Bates was a huge threat and intensified the need for Marion’s killer to be brought to justice.

The same thing can be said about the deaths of Benny and Barb, to show how much a threat the demogorgan and Hawkins National Lab were to the townspeople of Hawkins (and the world as a whole), basically such big threats that a little boy can be kidnapped from the safety of his home, a young teenage girl could be snatched up and killed from a suburban swimming pool, and a kindly cook and owner of a local diner would be executed for knowing about a runaway child.

5. The future of Women in Stranger Things

Not all is lost, Barb’s death forced the Duffer Bros to take a look at how women were written and treated in their series, and even helped spurred tv viewers (who ordinarily wouldn’t pay attention to social issues) to take a deeper look and interest in how people especially women are treated. For some reason I like to think: Max, Robin, Erica, and Suzie are a way of recognizing Barb’s potential within the series and even what viewers saw.

Now stay tuned to where I figure out how Barb could have been beneficial to the party.

#barb holland #justice for barb #StrangerThings #womeninmedia #beth march #betty draper #1980s women #messy #Not A Space For Character Bashing #Role of Women

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kiss-my-freckle · 5 years

Text

Dialogues for @thesweetkeenlife

1x1

Red: Evidently someone with the authority to make decisions has arrived. I think I smell the stench of your cologne, Agent Cooper. Smells like hubris.

Red: You got rid of your highlights. You look much less Baltimore.

1x3

Red: So you went with the gray?

1x4

Red: That’s a pretty blouse.

1x7

Red: Agent Keen, I have a tip. You’re a winter, not an autumn. Stop wearing olive.

Red: You’d look positively radiant in a Guayabera dress. I know a little shop in Reston. We could stop before our flight.

Red: I brought you a souvenir. What’s your feeling about guava? Liz: Anxiety. Red: Oh, you’re in for a treat.

1x8

Red: I don’t know how you do it. I had that done once. I couldn’t bear the tickling.

Maltz: Ray, look at you. You look great. I mean, the elasticity is amazing. You been juicing? Red: Beets, mostly. Some celery, carrots, a lot of ginger. The kale makes me dyspeptic.

Red: I find it so reassuring - the movie stars, the pop singers. They really are just like the rest of us.

1x9

Red: Donald, never let it be said that I valued a Zegna Venticinque tie over a human life, even yours.

1x11

Red: Janice, my sincerest apologies. I’ll take a rain check on the Stroganoff. It smells delicious.

1x12

Red: We brought a little something for Julian - a care package. It’s a Tibetan singing bowl. What do we have here? Some jackfruit, vitamin D, kola nuts. But we’ve got to get him to eat more protein. He looks like hell. He isn’t vegan, is he? Anyway, I’ve also included a couple of my favorite Richard Pryor records. I want to try and inject a little levity into the proceedings. I mean, Julian looks so crabby all the time. House arrest can be grueling. Borakove: Didn’t you spend, like, four months - in Phonthong? Red: Seven. Borakove: How did you survive? Red: Naps. Occasional calisthenics.

Red: If I tell you, you have to promise me you’ll try the fertilized duck eggs. It’s a daring and unique dining experience. You’ll think you’ve died and gone to hell.

1x14

Red: Who decided on this paneling?

Red: You smell nice. Something new?

Red: Wow! And I like your clutch.

1x17

Red: This piroshki is delicious.

1x18

Red: I come bearing gifts - pimento cheese sandwiches, toasted with the crusts cut off. Eartha Kitt’s recipe. It’s a fantastic story.

2x1

Red: It looks so soft. Shea butter?

2x2

Red: Lizzy! I’d like to introduce you to my manicurist, Rosa Heredia. She’s the one I was telling you about, who was dating that nine-fingered bullfighter from Juarez. This woman is an artist, trained at the Latin-American school of medicine in Havana.

2x11

Red: Oh, that’s a shame. She’s gonna miss the most tantalizingly delicious khorem baklava.

2x12

Red: Oh, that’s a shame. Dendrobium? Ruth: My own hybrid. I call them “Snows of Everest.” Red: Lovely.

2x14

Red: You've changed your hair.

Red: Come on. I got to be worth as much as that fake Xuande Ming vessel was. Yaabari: 18. Red: Sorry, Santos, but those cat’s eye Chrysoberyls are brown, not green. An expensive forgery, but a forgery nonetheless. 20!

3x1

Red: I must say, your hair, the way it frames your face is very becoming.

3x2

Red: You have no idea what I’ve offered Chui to divulge the secret of this recipe. He won’t say. I suspect it has something to do with how he beats his eggs.

3x6

Red: I love mauve, but a soft creamy yellow will just open up the entire room.

3x8

Red: You didn’t find anything. Jilly found it ’cause you’re too dense to even look for it. No wonder Cash doesn’t trust you with anything more important than babysitting. T-bone: That’s big talk coming from a g-guy who’s -

3x12

Red: Yeah. Oh, I should probably mention, I booked a pregnancy massage for you. She’ll be here at 9:00. Her name’s Edwina, she’s a registered nurse, and she smells absolutely divine. I hope it goes with the rest of your stuff. I’m told it pulls out.

3x13

Red: I se your new home is a work in progress. What colors are you considering?

3x17

Red: Came together rather nicely. They went with ruby fringe tulips and pink peonies.

3x20

Red: I was just imagining young Katarina covered in glitter. As an adult, it’s easy to dismiss this stuff as girlish frivolity. You forget the wonder it creates, the light captured, secret wishes evoked. It renders even the darkest days sparkly. Never underestimate the power of glitter.

3x21

Red: They say gifting a bouquet of daffodils ensures happiness, while presenting just one means bad luck is on the horizon.

4x7

Red: You looked absolutely ravishing the other night. What do you do to stay in such incredible shape? Calisthenics? Or Jazzercise? Maybe we should be workout partners. I’ll see you in dance class, Samar.

4x18

Red: So I get a babysitter now? I haven’t had a babysitter since Brenda Gilroy. My God, pot pies, Lawrence Welk, bath time with Brenda. Still my perfect Saturday night.

5x1

Smokey: Sorry it took so long. Once I knew Humberto had your African friend and his chums in transpo, I stopped for some Bengay ointment. Think I overdid it with my back. Red: I use Epsom salt baths.

5x2

Red: Oh, my goodness. Look at those Guan vases. And that flatware. Did you know Nancy Reagan - She could dress a table specifically for that night’s guest at a moment’s notice. Russian Silver for a tea with Gorbachev, Italian silver stag-head stirrup cups for a last-minute supper with Sinatra. Can you imagine?

Liz: What color is that, pumpkin? It looks like a pumpkin. Red: His wife says it’s Tuscan Sunset.

5x10

Red: Paris, I’d like you to meet Elizabeth. Paris and I first met when he was a saucier at La Bernadin. Liz: Pleasure to meet you. Paris: Shall I set a third place for lunch? Liz: No, thank you. Red: You may want to think twice. He’s making a turbot with a matsutake mushroom broth.

5x12

Red: What makes her happy? Does she like a good foot massage?

5x15

Red: Maybe a massage parlor. The athletes would love it!

5x16

Red: Mr. Garvey, might I suggest you enjoy what little time you have left - crab cakes, scalp massages, perhaps a double feature of “The 400 Blows” and “Jules and Jim” - whatever floats your boat. Do it now, because I will find those bones, and when I do, I’m gonna kill you.

5x17

Red: I hope you have indigestion. Liz: No. But if it makes you feel better, I’m in a bad mood. Red: Excellent! Dembe: He’s making fenugreek porridge. My ancestors learned that it can cure a troubled stomach and soothe aches and pains. Red: Medicinal South Sudanese cuisine. Liz: Cooking it up in their embassy’s kitchen. Aren’t you living large?

5x19

Red: This apartment. Right here. Oh. My God. To have been the proverbial fly on Clyde Tolson’s duvet. Liz: Clyde Tolson lived here? J. Edgar Hoover’s lover? Red: This was their secret hideaway. Imagine the conversations. Cooing over JFK’s lovers. Slandering Dr. King. What peignoir to wear to bed. When I saw the apartment was for sale, I couldn’t resist. Liz: You own the apartment where the homophobic head of the FBI carried on his affair with his boyfriend? Red: Allegedly. I wouldn’t admit this in mixed company, but J. Edgar and I have a surprising amount in common. For instance, we both always get our man.

Red: What’s that smell? Is that lavender? And mint. Is that your head? What kind of products do you use? I’m dying of curiosity. Garvey: Wouldn’t that be nice. Red: You smell that? Dembe: Yes. It’s lovely. Red: I’ll say. Absolutely lovely. Whatever it is, you and I need to get some.

5x22

Red: Oh. A lightweight merino. Super 120, natural stretch. I swear by it.

Waters: So, what do you think of this one? Red: Oh, John, yes. I like that. But go with the Snowy River Collection in the Glen Urquhart plaid. It worked for the Duke of Windsor. And, just my opinion, consider a vest. Waters: You think? Are vests in again? Red: Vests have never been out.

6x4

Vega: Yeah. I also got the blade that’s gonna carve you like a pumpkin. Red: Jack-o’-lantern. Vega: Huh? Red: A pumpkin is a gourd. A jack-o’-lantern is the carved pumpkin. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I knew what you meant.

6x5

Baldwin: One. I arrested that man there, in the navy-blue suit. Sima: May the record reflect the witness has identified the defendant. Red: Uh, o-objection. Judge Wilkins: Grounds? Red: The suit is actually a prunelle weave blue with a subtle overlay of red. So in the right light, it goes quite plum.

#dialogues

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

Will Republicans Take Back The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/will-republicans-take-back-the-house/

Will Republicans Take Back The House

Republicans Positive To Win Back Both Chambers

Will Republicans take back the House?

Republican Sen. Rick Scott said, “This is going to be like 2010, 2012, 2014 where we pick up seats because of Obama’s agenda.” He also added, “Now what I talk about every day is do we want open borders? No. Do we want to shut down our schools? No. Do we want men playing in women’s sports? No. Do we want to shut down the Keystone Pipeline? No. Do we want voter ID? Yes.”

He also added that the;Democratic lawmakers;and Biden Administration are on the opposite side, giving them the advantage in the upcoming midterm election.;

Big Odds For Republicans To Win Back The House Of Representatives Next Year

The internal consultation of the National Republican Congressional Committee revealed that their party has favorable conditions to retake the majority of seats in the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections to be held next year.;

Contributing to these good predictions is that voters prefer Republicans as their leaders, and the increased unfavorability of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to data provided by the NRCC website on April 26.;

Even the decennial census results are on the side of a Republican triumph because the data presented by the Census Bureau show that they gained seats in the new distribution, although it is not definitive.;

Likewise, throughout the 100 days of the Biden administration at the helm of the White House, Americans have become alerted to the convenience of changing the political course.;

In this regard, NRCC spokesman Mike Berg commented in a statement, The Democrats dangerous socialist agenda is providing the perfect roadmap for Republicans to regain the majority.

Among voters most pressing considerations are the border crisis and the rampant illegal immigration that the Biden and the Democrat open border policies have fostered.;

At least 75% of voters see the border situation as a crisis or significant problem, while 23% say the border is a minor problem or not a problem at all.

Thus, 57% of voters do not believe that the CCP Virus stimulus approved by Biden is helping them and their families.

Pelosi Tells Republicans To ‘take Back’ Party From ‘extreme Right’

Nancy Pelosi has urged her Republican colleagues to “take back” their party from those at on the extreme right.

Accepting an honorary degree from Smith College in Massachusetts, the Speaker of the House said that the “country needs a big, strong Republican party” so that politicians can compete ideas for governance. Ms Pelosi urged members to prevent the party from being “a cult of personality on the extreme, extreme, extreme right”.

“This isn’t about liberal or conservative, they don’t believe in governance” she added, “Take back your party, which has done so much for the country”.

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House And Senate Odds: Final Thoughts

There is less than 1% equity on the notion that Democrats will win the House and lose the Senate, because while New Hampshire could move in a weird, contradictory manner, if Democrats win the House, the nation will be sufficiently blue that they hold all three of Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, and they will gain Pennsylvania too.

Races are too nationalized and partisanship too entrenched for the Senate GOP to outrun a national environment blue enough to win the House, which means you can get a Democratic Congress for another term at $0.21. Its a better value than the House outright market for almost no extra risk, and thats the best kind of value.

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Poll: 78% Of Capitol Hill Staffers Believe Gop Will Take Back The House In 2022

78% of Capitol Hill staffers believe that House Republicans are on track to reclaim the house majority in 2022, according to a new poll.

Capitol Hill staffers were asked a series of questions, gauging congressional support for President Bidens agenda and individual issues such as gun control in a new Punchbowl News poll.;While responses to individual issue questions fell down partisan lines, 78% of respondents indicated they believe the GOP will control the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections.

Seventy-eight percent of senior Capitol Hill aides believe the Republicans will regain the House in 2022, according to a poll from Punchbowl#RepublicanParty#HouseOfRepresentatives#Nrcc#NancyPelosi#PunchbowlNews

H24 News US

The poll surveyed 158 staffers serving as chiefs of staff, legislative directors, press secretaries and communications directors to members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The partisan breakdown of the survey was fairly even with 80 respondents identifying as Democratic staffers and 78 respondents identifying as Republican staffers, according to Punchbowl.

Respondents also gave their predictions on which party will control the Senate, with 70% of respondents indicating their belief that Democrats will control the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections.

Punchbowls poll was conducted between May 11 and May 28.

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For further information, please visit AGF.com.

Democrats Odds Of Keeping The House Are Slimming Fast

The Democratic House majority emerged from the 2020 election so bruised and emaciated that experts gave it less than three years to live.

In defiance of polling and pundit expectations, Republicans netted 11 House seats in 2020, leaving Nancy Pelosis caucus perilously thin. Since World War II, the presidents party has lost an average of 27 House seats in midterm elections. If Democrats lose more than four in 2022, they will forfeit congressional control.

If the headwinds facing House Democrats have been clear since November, the preconditions for overcoming those headwinds have also been discernible: The party needed Joe Biden to stay popular, the Democratic base to stay mobilized and, above all, for Congressional Democrats to level the playing field by banning partisan redistricting.

A little over 100 days into Bidens presidency, Democrats are hitting only one of those three marks.

Historically, theres been a strong correlation between the sitting presidents approval rating and his partys midterm performance. Only twice in the last three decades has the presidents party gained seats in a midterm election; in both cases, their approval ratings exceeded 60 percent.

The party that controls the presidency tends to gets less popular as time goes on, and future declines are surprisingly correlated with first quarter polling.Many reasons that this cycle might be different, but so far public polling points to Dems getting 48% on election day.

It didnt.

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National View: Republican Resurgence In 2022 Already On The Horizon

Reading the political tea leaves 18 months in advance is as tricky as making a weather forecast for the same timeframe. But every so often, circumstances combine to increase the odds in the forecasters favor. Looking ahead to next years midterms is one of them. Because if things continue on their current course, Nov. 8, 2022, will be a very good night for Republicans around the country.

For starters, history is on the GOPs side going into the campaign. Theres a long track record of the incumbent presidents party losing seats during a midterm election. In fact, since 1934, only two presidents have enjoyed an increase in their partys numbers in the House and Senate: Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 and George W. Bush in 2002.

Excluding those two exceptions, losses are big for the party that occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Especially for first-term presidents and particularly in the House. Consider Presidents Donald Trump , Barack Obama , Bill Clinton , Ronald Reagan , and Gerald Ford . All were shellacked at the ballot box, resulting in significantly fewer members of their party in the House of Representatives.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the GOP also has a turnout advantage in midterms. Under Republican presidents since 1978, the GOP has enjoyed a plus-one shift toward party identification for those who vote in midterm elections. That margin swells to plus-five under Democratic presidents.

A Zombie Republican Party Will Overwhelm Joe Biden In The 2022 Midterms

Representative Kevin McCarthy discusses if Republicans can take back the House in 2020

President Biden promised he will restore the soul of America. Hes already running out of time. The commander-in-chief is 78 and unlikely to see out more than one term in office. By the time the pandemic crisis passes mid-2021, inshallah Biden could find his administration has run out of gas before it ever really got started. A week is a long time in politics. Two years can whizz by.

For now, Biden appears to hold the aces. He has a Democratic majority in the House Of Representatives and his vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast the deciding vote in a split Senate. The economy, stimulated to its guts, is expected to roar as this year goes on. His opposition, the Republican Party, looks prone wrecked by its calamitous marriage to Donald Trump. The Republican base still hates the Republican establishment and vice versa. The infamous storming of the Capitol on 6 January, we are told, has tarnished the American right for a generation or more.

The Republican Party, for all its problems, remains the strong favourite to win the House in the 2022 midterms, possibly by a large margin, and they may even take back the Senate

Trump or no Trump, the Grand Old Party marches on. The mistake pundits make is to confuse Republicanism with a normal democratic movement. It is more like the political equivalent of the undead a zombie army that horrifies every sane voter but somehow always wins because people hate the Democrats more.

Recommended Reading: Are Democrats Red And Republicans Blue

Mcconnell: House Senate Gop Wins In 2022 Would Check Biden

Addison Mitchell McConnellHouse approves John Lewis voting rights measureThe Hills 12:30 Report Presented by AT&T Pelosis negotiates with centrists to keep Bidens agenda afloatMcConnell urges Biden to ignore Aug. 31 Afghanistan deadlineMORE on Thursday pledged that if Republicans win back control of Congress next year they could be a check against the Biden administration, forcing it into the political center.

McConnell, speaking at an event in Kentucky, said that American voters have a big decision to make in 2022, when control of both the House and Senate are up for grabs.

Do they really want a moderate administration or not? If the House and Senate were to return to Republican hands that doesnt mean nothing happens, McConnell said.

What I want you to know is if I become the majority leader again its not for stopping everything. Its for stopping the worst. Its for stopping things that fundamentally push the country into a direction that at least my party feels is not a good idea for the country, he added. And I could make sure Biden makes his promise to be a moderate.

Democrats are trying to keep their majorities in both the House, where they have a nine-seat advantage, and the Senate, which is evenly split but where they have the majority since Vice President Harris is able to break ties.

The Cook Political Report rates both the Pennsylvania and North Carolina seats as toss-ups, and Johnsons seat as lean R.

‘the Beast Is Growing’: Republicans Follow A Winning At All Costs Strategy Into The Midterms

Much remains uncertain about the midterm elections more than a year away including the congressional districts themselves, thanks to the delayed redistricting process. The Senate, meanwhile, looks like more of a toss-up.

House Democrats think voters will reward them for advancing President Joe Biden’s generally popular agenda, which involves showering infrastructure money on virtually every district in the country and sending checks directly to millions of parents. And they think voters will punish Republicans for their rhetoric about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

“Democrats are delivering results, bringing back the economy, getting people back to work, passing the largest middle-class tax cut in history, while Republicans are engaged in frankly violent conspiracy theory rhetoric around lies in service of Donald Trump,” said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the challenges Democrats face are real and numerous.

They knew they would face a tough 2022 immediately after 2020, when massive, unexpected GOP gains whittled the Democratic majority to just a handful of seats.

“House Republicans are in a great position to retake the majority,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, “but we are taking nothing for granted.”

His rural district had been trending Republican for years. Kind won re-election last year by just about 10,000 votes.

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Republicans Are In An Excellent Position To Weasel Their Way Back To House Control

When the Democrats took control of all three branches of the federal government following the 2020 election, they did so with the slimmest margin possible â a 50/50 split in the Senate and an 11-seat advantage in the House of Representatives, which has already slipped to a margin of just eight votes, thanks to special elections and run-offs. The first test of how well that razor-thin Democratic advantage will hold will come in 2022, and it may be decided before a single vote is cast. A new study conducted by Democratic data firm TargetSmart and published by Mother Jones found that Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country could effectively take back control of Congress simply through the shady and dubious practice of gerrymandering.

Here’s the problem that faces Democrats with the 2022 election season approaching: Despite having control of the federal government, the left has lost ground at the state level. Republicans control 61 total chambers of state governments, including holding a trifecta in 23 states. In many of these states, the party with legislative control gets to re-draw the lines for congressional districts, allowing them to create bizarre borders that serve only to set up a favorable outcome. According to TargetSmart, Republicans will have the ability to re-draw 187 congressional districts, while Democrats will only control 75.

I Ultimately Decided Against Running For Congress In A Red District But My Research Found A Way For Democrats To Make Inroads In Such Places

Political pundits seem united in their belief that Democrats will struggle to hold the House of Representatives in 2022.

The historical precedent that the party out of power in the White House always gains in the midterms and the likely impact of partisan and racial gerrymandering has fostered a consensus that Democrats will lose seats.

Theyre wrong. Democrats have the opportunity to widen the playing field in 2022 with the right candidates, a message focused on economic growth anda surprise to somea clear pro-democracy appeal designed to woo the one-quarter to one-third of Trump voters who are Liz Cheney Republicans.

My opinion is based on nearly 40 years in government and politicsbut more importantly, it is based on the last eight months that I spent actively exploring a race for Tennessees 3rd congressional district.

I recently decided for personal and professional reasons that I cannot run in 2022. But through the testing the waters process, I discovered a path to possible victory in my east Tennessee district that should be replicable in many other similar districts around the nation.

The remainder of Hamilton County, suburban and rural areas outside of Chattanooga, accounts for another one-quarter of the district population: It is Republican turf and the home to the districts five-term incumbent, Chuck Fleischmann. And half of the district vote comes from all or parts of 10 other counties, the largest being Anderson County, home to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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Renewable Energy And Health Care Among The Sectors That Could Get Shakeup Due To Midterms

The 2022 midterm elections are already affecting Washington, and the results could shake up sectors such as renewable energy, health care and finance.

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As Democrats in Washington work to deliver on infrastructure spending and other priorities, theyre trying to make progress in large part because of a key event thats still more than a year away.

That event is the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans will aim to take back control of the House and Senate and become a more powerful check on the priorities of President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

What leaders are thinking about, particularly since we have unified party control, is that these midterm elections are inevitably a referendum on the governing party, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in;governance studies;at the Brookings Institution and a professor of;political science;at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In that sense, shrinking time coupled with What is it that Democrats want to run on? it adds pressure on Democrats to get their priorities through the door.

Time is growing short, Binder said, because party leaders often avoid making their members vote on tough issues in the same calendar year as an election, since that can hurt incumbents in tight races. Party leaders often think primarily about what they can get done in the first year of a Congress, as opposed to counting on the second year, she said.

Sectors that could win or lose

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marcjampole · 6 years

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Now for the latest installment of the mainstream media’s favorite game: Blame the Democrats!

It wouldn’t be a Sunday New York Times opinion section without a couple of articles blaming liberals for their supposed inability to capture the hearts and minds of mainstream America. It’s always the liberals fault for putting up the wrong candidate, being self-righteous, being too smart or wonky, focusing too much on identity politics, not articulating the message in bold terms, or not understanding the soul of middle America. In going through this list of Democratic “failures,” note how many descriptions could be coded language for “not being racist enough.” Then there are the special criticisms leveled at Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi’s political liabilities, which have always struck me as patently misogynistic.

This week’s edition of “Beat the Liberal” featured a piece by Gerald Alexander, an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia whose research suggests a right-wing bent. In “Liberals, You’re Not As Smart as You Think” the not-so-good professor claims that liberals “may be more effective at causing resentment than in getting people to come their way.” Alexander never proves his point. He doesn’t even bother to offer up one study or survey to demonstrate that when liberals talk, they turn off large numbers of people. Interestingly enough, his article is a mild revision of a piece he wrote for theWashington Post eight years ago. Bashing liberals is never out of style!

And what does Alexander think liberals do that piss people off so much? They publicly call racist behavior racist. What’s more, they do so self-righteously, with an “I’m better than you are” tone. Earth to Alexander: People who call out racism are better than the racists. That is, assuming you buy into Alexander’s shoddy premise that Democrats are self-righteous about their morality. Now maybe it’s my self-righteousness coming through, but as parent, I found that shame works wonders in getting people to do the right thing.

Frank Bruni joined in the “Beat the Liberal” game, too, this week, with another of a long line of columns by mainstream media pundits advocating that the Democratic Party can win if they become more like Republicans. The headline says it all: “Renounce Pelosi, Ignore Trump—and Win?” Bruni advocates for Democratic candidates who are less strident and project a less partisan image. In particular, Bruni touts the Democratic nominee for the seat in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District, white male Dan McCready, who claims to have center-right political views. Of course he never gives examples of Democratic candidates who are too strident or too partisan, leaving us to guess who they are. I sincerely hope Bruni means something other than the coded message I receive from his article—that he wants more white males and fewer women and minority candidates. It would help if one of the candidates he lauds in his article was not all white male.

Bruni’s article quotes Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, as saying “If we actually want to be a majority party, then we better embrace more Americans.”

What is he talking about? Democrats won way more votes than Republicans in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Clinton wiped out Trump in the popular voting. Survey after survey on education, healthcare, aid to dependent children, criminal justice reform, environmental policy, abortion and yes, even gun control, show that majorities of American—and sometimes overwhelming majorities—support the views of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and other liberal Democrats.

The game of blaming Democrats for their failure to take the reins of government conceals the real reasons Republicans today control the presidency, both Houses of Congress and most state governments:

The current shape of Congressional districts, gerrymandered to structurally favor Republicans after the 2010 census.

The raft of voter suppression laws that have swept the country, also since 2010.

The natural electoral bias in states and nationally in favor of rural areas, built into our system by the Electoral College and geographic representation.

The influx of money to support right-wing candidates and think tanks, especially since the Citizens United

The constant anti-Democrat slant of the mainstream and rightwing media, which includes covering Republican primaries more closely than Democratic ones, using Republican premises when formulating coverage, conflating real scandals of Republicans with Democratic non-scandals and issuing a constant stream of these silly articles about Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

Of these five factors, only one can be remotely blamed on the Democrats: the gerrymandering of Congress. Democrats assumed they were going to lose seats in 2010, since a new president usually sees his majority eroded in midterm elections. They therefore did not aggressively spend money on 2010 mid-term elections, while the Koch brothers and their billionaire buddies saw the historic opportunity created by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that freed corporate spending on elections and ramped up their support of not just Republican, but ultra-right candidates. The news media helped out the Republicans in 2010 to be sure by ignoring Democratic primaries, focusing most political coverage on the new “Tea Party” movement, ignoring the progressive alternatives to the Tea Party, and providing inaccurate and misleading coverage of the key issue of the day, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. There was certainly a lot going against the Democrats in 2010, but by not aggressively contesting the election, they did a pretty good imitation of a pro basketball team tanking the season to get a high draft pick.

We can find no fault with the Democrats in the development of the other four factors leading to Republican control of an ostensibly democratic country in which a majority of citizens support the views of the party out of power. The voter suppression laws have come in states controlled by Republicans. The rich white men who founded the country established the rural bias in the Constitution more than 200 years ago to placate the many slave owners among them.

In one way or another, Ronald Reagan is responsible for the other two factors. Reagan started the movement to allow single companies to own many media outlets in the same town and nationally and ended the Fairness Doctrine, which made all broadcast stations air the views of the other side when they gave an editorial. These moves more than anything else enabled the fringe right-wing media like mega-giants FOX, Clear Channel and Sinclair Broadcasting to emerge as powerful voices in the marketplace of ideas. And it was Reagan who nominated two of the five justices who voted that the constitution prohibited Congress from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations in Citizens United; he also gave important career promotions to the other three voting to unleash the Koch money machine on the political system.

But pundits will continue to blame Democrats for their current status in state and federal governments. It’s easier than doing real analysis and telling the truth: our country has been taken over by a small but very well-heeled minority who have used their money to manipulate our political system to their own end and to pursue their own interests, even to the detriment of overwhelming numbers of their fellow citizens.

#democrats #republican #koch

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