say that!

this is too real

Yikes

I mean, but it’s both things

It is both.

In this case Both Is Worst

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have done more to make our generation crueler than nearly anyone else, because they can get away with it under the guise of “this is satire, duh”, not realizing that poorly-done satire only reinforces the cultural forces it is meant to mock. When 13 year-old-kids are watching South Park, they aren’t tuning in to the little infinitesimally small lessons supposedly being taught, they’re laughing at Timmy being severely disabled, they’re laughing at sexual harassment, they’re laughing at child abuse, they’re laughing at anti-semitism, they’re laughing at people who have had sex reassignment surgery.

And the “satire” is so often pathetically weak. There isn’t a single nativist in this entire country who can’t laugh at a “der takin er jerbs” joke, because those jokes don’t actually rebut or mock the arguments made by people opposed to immigration. It’s just saying a common political phrase in a funny voice. Is that how low the bar for “satire” has been set? There’s occasionally more effective satire on the show, but not nearly enough for it to be defended on the basis of its value as satire.

But if you try to explain any of this to die-hard South Park fans, they’ll completely blow it off. They think that the fact the show upsets me simply means that the show has accomplished its purpose, never actually questioning whether or not that purpose is a worthy one. That’s why the show is so insidious: it wraps itself in this cynical layer of self-containment that prevents it from ever being pointed out for what it is: a detriment to the type of society that any decent person wants to see. South Park is far more dangerous than the Westboro Baptist Church, because South Park is something that people accept and defend.

I worked with a guy who would yell “derka derka jihad!” out of his truck at Middle Eastern people.  Or refer to them as “derka-derkas.”

“Derka derka jihad” is a joke from Stone & Parker’s Team America: World Police, and it’s (in a generous interpretation) a satire on “this is what narrow-minded Americans think Arabic sounds like, silly Americans!”

But about 95% of the audience thought the joke was “Arabic sounds ridiculous, it’s not even a real language!”  The movie does extremely little to discourage this.  [click here if you are prepared to experience a full-body cringe]  The level of satire is somewhere between “extremely subtle” and “alibi.”

I know satire is subjective and the public is hard to predict and all that, but I think an easy way to tell that the thing you’re participating in isn’t satire is when you’re inventing new racial slurs and they’re catching on.

South Park is the opposite of satire.

Here’s how South Park fans think Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal happened. Swift wondered, “what’s the most offensive, politically incorrect thing I could write about? I know! Eating babies!” He wrote an essay saying everyone should eat babies. People were very offended by this essay, which makes it funny. People thought Swift was serious but he wasn’t, kek, he was just being satirical! He fooled them!

Here’s how Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal actually happened. Swift lived in Ireland, a colonial property of England. He was enraged by the ways the English government, Irish puppet government, and Irish wealthy oppressed the poor of Ireland, causing poverty and famine. He wrote a bitterly sarcastic screed carrying their callous dehumanization to its logical extreme–with your cruelty, you might as well just eat their babies! Swift sarcastically included a long paragraph of his actual policy proposals in the essay: “Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients,” strengthening his accusation that to pretend it was impossible to help the poor was viciousness at the level of baby-eating.

The cruel English politicians Swift was satirizing didn’t misread the satire as agreeing with them, because he didn’t just say the same things as them in a snotty voice, because that’s not what satire means. Nobody said, “Yeah, Swift, that’s a great idea, let’s go eat us some babies!” The targets of satire aren’t supposed to agree with it.

The late great Terry Pratchet was a master satirist. His works are fucking hillarious. His friend and co-writer Neil Gaiman explains what made him such a great satirist: “There is a fury to Terry Pratchett’s writing: it’s the fury that was the engine that powered Discworld.” And “anger is the engine that drives him.” Anger at what? “ Against so many things: stupidity, injustice, human foolishness and shortsightedness.” That is satire: a white-hot righteous fury at injustice, channeled into humor. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

Nihilistic apathy and opposition to any and all political opinions and “waaahhh, those buzzkills are telling me not to call people retarded, but that’s hard and I like calling people retarded” is not a basis for satire. If you were to take every distinguishing characteristic true satire has and do exactly the opposite, you’d wind up with something like the genre South Park popularized.

“THE TARGETS OF SATIRE AREN’T SUPPOSED TO AGREE WITH IT.”

Drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.

The thing that is getting to me the most about news of Carrie Fisher’s autopsy report is not the results themselves, but the way the media is handling it. Like it’s a Gotcha moment—like somehow we were tricked into thinking she was a better person than she actually was.

And that is profoundly bullshit.

Carrie was open about being an addict. Her opening line from her iconic stand up show (and book by the same name) “Wishful Drinking” was quite literally, “Hi, I’m Carrie Fisher, and I’m an alcoholic.”

She talked at length and in often brutal depth about her problems with substance abuse, her compulsive self destructive tendencies, and her dependencies to both illegal and prescription drugs. She wrote about it in her books, she talked about it on talk shows. She made an entire comedic stand up performance out of it, detailing the lengths she went to in order to try and regain some semblance of safety and normalcy in her life. 

She was brutally honest that every single day was a struggle for sanity after years and years of attempting to self medicate a mental illness that for most of her life was mistaken for feckless lack of self control. 

She was bright, and beautiful and bold about it. And she didn’t have to be.

Carrie Fisher didn’t have to stand there and take the shitstorm of criticism people launched at her for decades, let alone turn it into humor. She didn’t. She didn’t owe anyone outwith her immediate family an explanation for her erratic behavior over the years, nor the flack she caught for it. (Think of all the male actors in Hollywood who are in and out of rehab centers so quickly they could harness the revolving doors as a wind turbine. Then tell me the media press about her life and now her death are fair.)

But she did it anyway, because she knew it was important. And she took those bright lights of Hollywood shining down on her like a ruthless, malevolent child holding a magnifying glass under the sun—and she turned that merciless heat and pointed it at things that mattered, often at the expense of herself, opening herself up to ridicule and the severe cruelty of others who lambasted her for everything, ranging from her weight, her mental illness or her audacity to simply grow old.

Is it tragic that her addiction likely cost her her life? Yes, of course it is. Does it invalidate any of her achievements? The strength and vibrancy with which she lived her life and touched the lives of millions around her for the better? 

Carrie Fisher mattered, her voice mattered. The things that she said and did, mattered. They still matter. And they are no less true and poignant in the light of these revelations.

Addiction is a disease. It’s a dysfunction of the brain’s reward system which requires constant management and care and often goes hand in hand with other mental health disorders. It is not simply a question of willpower or the perceived lack thereof. And while sobriety is to be praised and encouraged—of course it is, of course it absolutely unquestionably is—you cannot possibly know what may cause a person to slip or to feel like they can’t cope without that crutch. And shame on anyone who says it was therefore deserved. 

Shame and my heartfelt wishes that you never go through the things that can lead to serious addiction. Or that you are ever abandoned, derided and regarded as less than human because of it and your death turned into a smear campaign against your memory for the sake of a sensationalist headline.

Yes. Carrie Fisher was an addict, she had drug dependency problems related to her mental health. There was a time she kept it hidden, but after she made the decision to come out about it, she stuck by that decision and became a champion, for her and everyone like her who struggles. Because she never wanted anyone to suffer like she did in order to get help. And she did it with as much grace and humility as she could manage—and a whole lot more indignity, immodesty, crass humor and love as well. Because that’s who she was and she cared. 

And that’s a hell of a lot more than can be said for those crowing over her death like it’s just deserts.

Fuck you.

People do not exist to stand up to your demands of a perfect ideal of humanity. You do not get to place that burden on the shoulders of someone then tear them apart when they fall under that weight—famous or otherwise.

Fuck you and your whole pretense at moral piety and the horse you rode in on.

Carrie Fisher was not your unproblematic fave. She was in fact extremely problematic, and no one knew that better than she did. 

“I heard someone say once that many of us only seem able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And while the place that I’ve arrived at in my life may not precisely be everyone’s idea of heaven, I could swear sometimes—if I’m quiet enough—I can hear the angels sing. Either that or I fucked up my medication again.” 

-Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking.

Reblog if you can’t wait for Star Trek: Feminist Lesbian Edition.

Please

Woman: *exists* Dudebro: WGAT IS THIS SJW BULLSHIT

Source for more facts on your dash follow NowYouKno

That was super nice of them.

And now I’m mad that nobody told us we were given cows. Cause that’s really f*cking nice and nobody mentioned it at all.

American media tends to disregard that anyone donates to the US. And then Amurricans complain about money going abroad because “nobody helped the US in our disasters.”

>.>

Also, do you know how much a cow costs? O.O

It isn’t just a matter of how much a cow costs, its a matter of considering that Masai life is based around their cattle. Its their wealth, their food, and a significant part of their religion. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man’s wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.[37] A Maasai religious belief relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, leading to the belief that rustling cattle from other tribes is a matter of taking back what is rightfully theirs, a practice that has become much less common.[38]”

So its not just “they gave us 14 cows”, its that they gave us something that is very important and significant to them, it is more than just a kind gesture that definitely deserves to be known and its a genuine shame that more people don’t know about it.

Wait, you guys DON’T KNOW that we offer help to the US when you have disasters???????

Shit, down here in Brazil we not only offered to send tracking units and doctors to help in 9/11 but we wanted to send a whole lot of donations to help with Katrina (we have experience with floods down here so we knew what kind of medicine to send to prevent outbreaks). 

We alone had like 2 army airplanes full of medicine and non-perishables like baby formula, diapers, bottled water, mosquito nets and other stuff that’s needed to fight opportunistic diseases that hit flooded areas, enough to assist a good few thousand people at least, ready to go the day after it hit, but your government refused the donations. 

The same thing happened to the Canadians and Europeans who offered help, the US embassies around the world told us all to give money to Red Cross.

And so we did, we all gave hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and then this happened:

Red Cross scandals tarnish relief efforts

‘Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

So please, don’t you go spreading misinformation and prejudice against the rest of the world, WE DID OFFER HELP AND ORGANIZED IT EVEN FASTER THAN BUSH DID, BUT Y’ALL REFUSED IT. 

Oh wow I had no idea this happened it’s really not talked about in media at all wow this is something good to know about wow

I’m so angry.

I didn’t know that other countries tried to help after 9/11 or Katrina. Like, that’s something we, the people, should hear about and we don’t.

Please don’t blame us for the shitty decisions our government makes. We don’t have as much control over our government as we would like to think and they keep a lot from us.

Spread this shit. 

After Katrina, Cuba donated several hundred blankets. Think about that. A country that is suffering economically due directly to the US embargo offered to help us when we needed it by sending what they could. And once again, it was refused. We have a government that is so self-righteous that we refuse to accept disaster aid in order to maintain this facade that we are the most generous nation on earth.

Okay, Katrina thing. Only Texans really knows this? and even then it’s not wide spread. Mexico sent their army. They sent their army for relief efforts. Didn’t call ahead, they drove all the way to San Antonio with doctors and food and all sorts of supplies. When people actually got a call from them saying “Hey, we’re sending people up.” The people who answered said “What? We can’t…” “Too late, already there.” This was while the government was turning down help. So yeah, other countries send relief. Forest fires up in Washington last year? Firefighters from Australia came up to assist. Like… we don’t hear about this shit. At all.

I can second the above with the fires. 

Most the time, when people say “oh FEMA or something sent people right?” re: fires, its actually people from other countries showing up and kinda ignoring the government telling them to fuck off and staying on behalf of local departments because we REALLY need them. 

If there’s a huge ass disaster, and the government is sitting there with a thumb up it’s ass, help is offered and most the time– shit, it gets there! But then the feds do something really fucking dirty. They insist they were the help, if it’s talked about at all. 

They insist those people putting out fires were federal people, because to most people a fireman’s a fireman. The people handing out water and food, a relief worker is a relief worker. So on and so forth. 

We had people come up when the fires were so bad a while ago– not the Australians, but i think there was like a German group of like 3 guys that flew themselves over? They came out of sheer “this is horrible and we’re helping” and my dad [local fire chief] had them working with our guys and the feds lost no time telling every news outlet that it was THEIR people doing all the fire knockdowns and structure work when these guys were running into buildings and grabbing people, pets, and people’s important documents because they knew papers were a pain in the ass to replace. 

What you gotta understand is that our government is very intent on selling us and the rest of the world [as much as possible] the idea of a powerful and self reliant country. All our reporting on disasters, starts with the scaremongering and then moves to “but our people can handle it because we’re the best at handling things” and then they move on before the idea it’s out of control comes to mind. The average person outside of the disaster has no idea, if they have never been around such an event or met someone who regularly deals with these things, they will kinda probably nod along with that. Because we have no real scope on the scale and impact– by design. Our media intake is very controlled to slant everything to the “eh, we can handle it and everyone else out there– they need our help because they’re not so good at handling disasters like we are.” People who know better, reading international news, interacting with international social groups, looking outside their sphere of community– we know better but that kinda slant is really hard to break from because of that grip American media has on information. So, taking that knowledge, we further have restricted reporting on certain disasters because they’re considered unimportant.  Hurricanes are considered important, earthquakes are only considered important if it wrecks something the government cares about or somewhere a couple million people live that they’ll upset the national money flow/they can throw money at someone to make the news care, floods are only important if it’s in a similar manner to earthquakes but since they occur annually they’re rarely reported on nationally, mudslides that kill people or leave hundreds homeless aren’t important to the government even through they happen constantly, wildfires that consume most of the nation/continent each year generally are unimportant until they consume a town or threaten a government interest/money flow location. Terrorist attacks are always important because people will talk about them.

So, when we do get help for any of the above, it’s possible that most people may have no idea about what’s happened, let alone that help’s been sent. Or if people know something happened, the details are vague– the news don’t care to give the nitty gritty. You’ll know something happened and people are suffering and “gee, isn’t it good you’re not them” and then now the weather.

So, yeah, basically no one really knows we get help.

International response to Hurricane Katrina:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina 

We got HELLA help, but nobody really talks about it

American Media really fails regularly 

Hurricane Sandy, Quebec sends power line crews down to assist in restoring power.  California gets rid of water bombers due to budget cuts, Canada sends theirs down to help fight wild fires. Amazing what living on the border and having outside TV News does to your information flow.

After Katrina, Denmark offered to donate water purification units so people wouldn’t get sick from drinking contaminated water, but the offer was declined.

A private Danish company built a mobile satellite phone booth and drove it around the poor neighbourhoods in Mississippi and Louisiana so people could call their families and insurance companies for free (apparently there was a deadline for reporting damages but people couldn’t call in because their mobile phones were dead and landlines were down).

American propaganda is not a thing of the past, nor is it a new thing. It has been around forever, telling stories of exceptionalism and self-reliance while our government tries its hardest to refuse the help of others and offer its own to them, to try and force other nations onto their back foot and remain aggressively benevolent in international matters, so that it can lord that shit over them in negotiations and the media in general. I guarantee you America would have a less jingoistic, less xenophobic populace overall if this sort of information were actually reported to us. If we weren’t always fed the lie of helping the world without any gratitude or help in return. If the media didn’t present us as world police and instead as a part of the community, as other countries try hard to include us as, then maybe Americans would actually act like they’re part of a fucking community. But global citizens are hard to monger fear and distrust and xenophobia and nationalism with. They’re hard to control with propaganda and hate. They’re hard to keep ignorant and docile and saying “this is fine” while the empire burns. A lot of Americans wonder why our country is seen as a worldwide bully. Shit like that, my friends. Shit like that. Its hubris is seemingly limitless.

C O M M E N T A R Y

All talk no action, though. Bring Beyoncé up on stage. Give her the award. AND THEN THE MIC.

I don’t think you’ve thought that scenario thru. If Adele had asked Beyonce to join her on stage, she would actually have forced Beyonce into a terrible situation where Beyonce would be subjected to ridicule and public humiliation. 

Beyonce can’t exactly give her prepared acceptance speech to a room full of racist white people who didn’t vote for her. What’s she gonna say? “Thanks for nothing”? She’d have to make up something to say on the fly. She can’t thank Adele for the award without the media calling her a smug/conceited sore loser. She can’t criticize the voters or the organization without being lambasted by the media as both a sore loser and as a “ hysterical angry black woman.” 

Anything Beyonce said to that room would have been turned against her a thousand fold – Beyonce and Adele both knew that. Every black person in the room knew that too. In court you can’t always defend yourself. You need a character witness who’ll speak on your behalf. This may not have been a literal court, but the same principle applies to the court of public opinion.

And btw Adele did give Beyonce the award. She said “I cannot accept this award” and then she broke off the base of the grammy (the part that had Adele’s name on it) and gave the trophy part to Beyoncé. Maybe they cut that portion out of the particular broadcast you watched, but it did happen and there are articles about it.

I’m usually the first in line to criticize bad ally-ship. In this particular situation, I honestly think Adele chose the best course of action for Beyonce. She’s a good example to celebs who want to be allies – this is how it’s done.

I appreciate your thought out response but I still disagree. Adele’s response felt super performative to me (she broke the award and gave it to her a la mean girls ffs) and even if it wasn’t she doesn’t deserve cookies for doing what you’re supposed to do anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You do realize that you, a white person (I looked at you’re selfie tag) are speaking over me (a brown POC) right now in this post, telling me that you know better than me what it means to be a good POC ally?

Are you for real?

Wow.

JFC fellow white people, stay in your lane.

During the scene when Mulan decides to go to war instead of her father, she decides to do it while sitting on the foot of the Great Stone Dragon. The image of the dragon looking over Mulan is repeated several times throughout the sequence, and the bolts of lightning strike at significant times whenever the dragon is in sight. When Mulan takes her father’s scroll and when she is praying to her ancestors, the Great Stone Dragon can be seen. It is also engraved on the sword Mulan uses to cut her hair and the handles of the wardrobe containing the armor are in the shape of the dragon’s head. The dragon’s eyes glowing in the temple symbolizes Mulan’s role as protector of her family awakening, instead of the actual dragon.

The reason Mushu couldn’t wake the dragon is because the dragon was no longer there. Mulan is implied to be the Great Dragon that protects her family.

CHRIST HOW DID I MISS THAT AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

WHAT

mushu broke mulans ear off