Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[The Minsky Moment]

Let's think this through:  NASCAR, hardly a liberal college on the woke scale, feels enough pressure to do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an example where context and nuance matters.  If say a stand-up comedian wants to crack some stereotypical jokes I don't see a huge problem; if you choose to attend a Don Rickles show or the living equivalent you know what you're getting. But I easily see why NASCAR as an institution - and one that is increasingly focusing on international expansion - might think it's a bad look for their drivers to be cracking stupid Asian driver jokes.  That's just common sense business. It's not like the driver was "cancelled", he has to spend a couple of hours watching videos.

[grumbler]

It's amazing how hard people will work to not understand something they don't want to understand.

The cartoon is not trying to say something about the right, it is saying something about the left. That can be true even while the right has ran off into crazy land itself (and then kept right on going).

Yes, a lie. That's what it is saying. A lie.

All good cartoons are lies.  An honest series of drawings is just a series of drawings.

[DGuller]

Let's think this through:  NASCAR, hardly a liberal college on the woke scale, feels enough pressure to do something incredibly stupid.

Here's an example where context and nuance matters.  If say a stand-up comedian wants to crack some stereotypical jokes I don't see a huge problem; if you choose to attend a Don Rickles show or the living equivalent you know what you're getting. But I easily see why NASCAR as an institution - and one that is increasingly focusing on international expansion - might think it's a bad look for their drivers to be cracking stupid Asian driver jokes.  That's just common sense business. It's not like the driver was "cancelled", he has to spend a couple of hours watching videos.

The fact that you're factually stating in passing that Denny Hamlin was cracking stupid Asian driver jokes is another indication of the general mindset.  It seems like once someone is accused of using stereotypes, speaking about it as anything other than a proven fact feels inappropriate.  In actuality it's highly unlikely that the Asian part was on the minds of anyone involved, until professional complainers started complaining.

[grumbler]

Here is the thing, I have functionally no respect for Berkut's position because Berkut isn't a pod person. I think basically everyone is in agreement that there's an annoying, whiny element to the far left, particularly amongst the "very online" crowd, university campuses etc that do annoying and censorious things. By the way, that element was always there, it was definitely there on campuses in the 90s, 80s, 70s and 60s.

To me, that isn't actually the meat of the issue. The meat is that the actual elected Democratic party hasn't moved toward being a far left party, it is basically still a centrist party. The areas where the Democratic party has actually moved left, are basically policy areas where the whole country has moved left. Basically the entire Dem party supports gay marriage now--as does a big majority of the country, as one example. The Democrats are not meaningfully more far left versus the "national baseline" than they were in 2005 or 1995.

The Republican party absolutely is.

Because Berkut is not a pod person, and Languish is not a Twitter battle, I would think this is a place where we could be honest--the whiny, stupid lefties who do whiny stupid things are being deliberately weaponized by far right propaganda, they are "Flooding the zone." They are making the Democrats pay the price for "having a far left", when that is something intrinsic to the nature of big tent parties, and largely unavoidable it also largely has nothing to do with the policies Democrats promote or how they impact people's lives.

Back when I was a Republican, it would be the equivalent of trying to hold me accountable for like, Pat Buchanan or David Duke. Those guys were extremists who happened to also run as Republicans, something I had no control over. Back in 2010, I would completely genuinely have said the same thing about the Tea Party--that they are nutty extremists, but don't represent the party. I left the party because the extreme became the party, I could no longer say "in the two party system we will both have a stupid fringe, that fringe isn't my whole party", the fringe did become the whole party in the GOP.

This simply did not happen with the left. The fringe of the right, that now controls the party, wants you to think so. Because Berkut isn't a pod person, I expect him to be smart enough to realize this, but instead he is repeating pod person lines straight out of Ben Shapiro's ass. It's unbecoming.

Please skip the bloviation in your ad hom argument.  It's unbecoming.

[The Minsky Moment]

The fact that you're factually stating in passing that Denny Hamlin was cracking stupid Asian driver jokes is another indication of the general mindset. 

I'm stating it as fact because after looking at (and listening to) the tweet, I don't see any other reasonable interpretation.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Public figures whose wealth is based on their public persona have had to play Kabuki theater on all kinds of shit for my entire life. It's not new. Some of the topics are new, which maybe that's what scares this group of graying whites in this forum to death, dunno.

The normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.

Then explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.

What is the reason I should be losing sleep over them today? When I see that behavior, I have to question, what changed. Is it the racial justice shit? If so then yeah, I think discomfort with that does speak to racism. But again, I don't actually know why so many middle aged white dudes appear to be literally shaking in fear at the thought of AOC Tweeting things they don't like, or some bastion of far leftism like UC-Berkeley canceling an appearance by Milo or Shapiro.

Particularly when any sane person sees we're literally in the midst of an assault on our democracy fueled massively by right wing propaganda, and a chief concern of yours is...the things right wing propaganda wants you to be concerned about? Nah, fuck that. I'm not letting them set my narrative.

[OttoVonBismarck]

You cannot see attachments on this board.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm stating it as fact because after looking at (and listening to) the tweet, I don't see any other reasonable interpretation.

A reasonable interpretation to me is that the culprit was just talking smack.  I've enjoyed friendly smack most of my life.  That's one way the world has become less pleasant for me.

However I'm just going off what has been posted here.  Haven't seen the tweet.

[Berkut]

Public figures whose wealth is based on their public persona have had to play Kabuki theater on all kinds of shit for my entire life. It's not new. Some of the topics are new, which maybe that's what scares this group of graying whites in this forum to death, dunno.

The normalization of "you think that because you're white" argument is another irritant that makes people perceive the influence of extreme left.  Not only is that a horrible argument when it comes to the power of convincing people, but it's also racist.

Then explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.

What is the reason I should be losing sleep over them today? When I see that behavior, I have to question, what changed. Is it the racial justice shit? If so then yeah, I think discomfort with that does speak to racism. But again, I don't actually know why so many middle aged white dudes appear to be literally shaking in fear at the thought of AOC Tweeting things they don't like, or some bastion of far leftism like UC-Berkeley canceling an appearance by Milo or Shapiro.

Particularly when any sane person sees we're literally in the midst of an assault on our democracy fueled massively by right wing propaganda, and a chief concern of yours is...the things right wing propaganda wants you to be concerned about? Nah, fuck that. I'm not letting them set my narrative.

That assault came about because a lot of people on the right said things like "...you are worried about tax pledges and the christians taking over the party while Clinton lets people die in Libya?????".

The "right wing propaganda" was always there. The fact that they leveraged their bullshit into a political movement that absolutely and primarily targeted anyone in their own party not deemed sufficiently loyal to be excised as public enemy #1 is not a coincidence to what came afterwards. 

Just ditch the bullshit ad homs. Nobody is quaking in fear, we are just having a discussion. Your inability to do so without layering in insults doesn't help your argument.

And I am perfectly fine acknowledging your point. I made *the exact same point* myself when I steelmanned the lefty argument for them. How much we should pay attention to the left wing nutjobs is a very valid point. There is room to disagree without accusing people who disagree with you of being secret members of the radical right Shapiro Fan Club.

[DGuller]

Then explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.

The simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Here's the thing right, NASCAR is a business that wants desperately to not be racing of the Confederacy. Formula 1 is growing massively in the United States and among all the demographics NASCAR can't pull in no matter how hard it tries. Formula 1's somewhat dramatized documentary series on American Netflix has been hugely popular.

NASCAR thus has a series of desires for itself as a business, and whatever the intent, due to the public reaction, one of their drivers was being hit with unsavory allegations. They just chose a very fluff, non-meaningful way to try and deal with it to get it off the news. I don't think this is materially different from face saving business decisions shows have been running with for as long as we've had shows. You can literally read about shit like this as far back as the Silent movie era.

[The Minsky Moment]

https://twitter.com/heebygeebies/status/1518949693644062721

[DGuller]

I'm stating it as fact because after looking at (and listening to) the tweet, I don't see any other reasonable interpretation.

A reasonable interpretation to me is that the culprit was just talking smack.  I've enjoyed friendly smack most of my life.  That's one way the world has become less pleasant for me.

However I'm just going off what has been posted here.  Haven't seen the tweet.

I saw the tweet before it was deleted, and before I was aware of the controversy.  It didn't even occur to me that the character was Asian (though admittedly when I watched it the second time after the controversy, it does seem clear if you start off knowing that). 

However, the second part of the necessary connection is Kyle Larson.  Simply put, while most people know that he has Japanese ancestry, that knowledge is really a biographical detail as far as his public image is concerned.  I don't think anyone thinks of him as an Asian driver, and NASCAR never heavily promoted him as that (and certainly not after the N word incident made him a problematic symbol of diversity).  It's just not part of his public image or identity.  I would think that in order for a joke on someone to be stereotypical, it has to be on people's minds that the target of the joke belongs to the stereotyped race, and I really don't think that's the case with Larson.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Then explain it to me, I think we're mostly middle age white dudes here, other than maybe Yi who is Chinese and grumbler who is a senior citizen, I didn't cry myself to sleep (as a conservative white man) about the far left during the Clinton or Obama Presidencies, largely because they were powerless idiots. They appear to still be powerless idiots.

The simplest explanation is that they're not powerless idiots now.  They're very powerful on a corporate level.  I'm sure the CEOs golfing in their private clubs are not themselves woke, but they know they may have problems if they don't pay the right kind of lip service.

They are not nearly as powerful as say, Christians, or even far right Christians. It probably isn't the healthiest thing, but corporations deciding your "group" matters enough to engage in their kabuki theater to assuage your angst is probably a sign that a group now "matters" enough to be played to--which frankly I have no issue with for marginalized people. A healthier world might be one in which corporations don't act so stupid, but look at how many times corporations have caved to far right religious interests in our lifetimes alone, the stuff being done to quiet down the anti-racists and such is very small in comparison, and when I don't remember much talk about the many, many ways corporations have caved to right-cultural influences being posted about on these forums but it's "problematic" when they do it to left-cultural influences...that shows that you're choosing to care about it for some reason over other similar things.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean I dunno dude, after watching Minsky's clip do you not see that the woman is speaking in the stereotypical "first generation Asian immigrant" voice? And even I'm aware that "Asians are awful drivers" is a pretty huge cultural meme.

I feel like that was what he was playing off of, in a way that I certainly wouldn't find very offensive and mostly funny. But it definitely was making a joke about ethnicity, which again--I'm fine with, particularly when IMO it isn't really mean-spirited, but I don't think you can credibly say the dude had no idea it was making fun of Asianness.