American Media is Dying

Too often we fall under the presumption that the pearl-clutching market has been cornered by conservative blowhards, eager to shriek at the sight of nipples, vulgarity and (gasp) Holiday Parades excluding Baby Jesus. But it's worth remembering that even left-leaning so-called progressives still retain the capacity for fanning themselves and falling over at the sight of a stray "fuck."

In case you aren't up to date on media gossip (I suspect you aren't), former Politico contributor and fuck-slinger, Julia Ioffe, has been relieved of her position for a tweet she sent containing the words "fucking" and "Donald Trump's daughter" in them. You can guess where this is going. The tweet was deleted, but because this is the internet, not really.

@juliaioffe @ErikWemple So @TheAtlantic Do you stand by your new employee tweet? pic.twitter.com/keIvLCyTxs

— nymjr7 (@nymjr7) December 14, 2016

Yikes. But also, as Ioffe later notes, doesn't Trump imply the same thing fairly regularly? Sure, it's not...great. But is it a fireable offense? Politico seems to think so.

Scolding message from Politico's leadership on Julia Ioffe's Trump tweet from today: Contract terminated immediately. pic.twitter.com/Zz8fGfmukr

— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) December 14, 201 

It's worth pointing out that Ioffe was already ending her tenure with Politico and moving on to The Atlantic, a publication who, like your cool parents, will let you cuss so long as you don't do it in front of your grandmother. This sort of renders Politico's cutting of ties as more of a "you're not breaking up with us; we're breaking up with YOU!" than anything else.

Of course, I'm being glib. I suspect the real reason Politico broke ties with Ioffe has less to do with the word "fuck" (though that plays a part) and more to do with her insinuation that Donald Trump would have sexual relations with his daughter. They say as much when they note that:

Gratuitous opinion has no place, anywhere, at any time - not on you Facebook feed, your Twitter feed or any place else. It has absolutely zero value for our readers and should have zero place in our work.

Okay, sure. That last point I can get on board with. Politico should probably not run a headline that asks, "Is Donald Trump Fucking His Daughter?" because they are not the National Enquirer. But let's not forget that the National Enquirer was once nominated for a Pulitzer. Also, gratuitous opinion is certainly of value to your readers. In an age where everyone and his brother can blog about what happened, the cold hard facts have become less of a commodity and more of a free-flowing river. Everyone can take a dip. It's what people say about the river that matters these days. And true, Ioffe's opinion was worded in a way seemingly unbecoming of someone who calls herself a professional, but "professionalism" more and more these days reeks heavily of being unoffensive for the sake of preserving readership.

The notion that writers and contributors for Politico shouldn't share their "gratuitous" opinions on Donald Trump ANYWHERE is fucking ridiculous. Namely because it's an impossible wink-nudge sort of request that the editors have to know is neither possible nor probable. But also because it undermines the spirit of journalism. As Gawker once reported (in response to Trump's criticism of Politico no less), media is bias. Reporting the news is only half the job. Disseminating and, yes, offering opinion on the news is the other half. And lest you fall under the spell of Politico's strategically worded criticism that Ioffe's opinion are "gratuitous," remember that this is, in and of itself, an opinion.

What qualifies as gratuitous really depends on the beholder, as it were. That Ivanka Trump is getting her own office in the White House (the fact that started all of this) IS worthy of speculation of nepotism. The inclusion that it might also be because she's fucking her dad is, while incendiary, also a point of speculation. Is it true? Probably not. But to dismiss it because it's vulgar is to subvert the entire notion of journalism. And one has to wonder how much of a part the wording of Ioffe's tweet played in Politico's opinion of it. Would she have been fired if she asked "Does Donald Trump have a 'special relationship' with his daughter?" The whole thing is remarkably arbitrary and centers a whole lot around old ideas of public decency and respect, two things the President-elect has quite thoroughly quashed all on his own.

I want to be clear. I'm not advocating for a fuck-frenzy revolution amongst old guard media outlets, speculating wildly left and right about the proximity of Trump's tiny hands to his daughter's nether regions. What I am saying is that the minute we start firing our reporters and writers for offering gratuitous opinions, we lose some of the power that journalism holds. We erode the confidence in the idea people have on the free market of opinion, and we give power to people who once feared being exposed for the monsters they are. Firing Ioffe does nothing but play right into Trump's pleas that the media be nicer to him. Rather than give him what he wants, it's important, now more than ever, to reject that.

Calling a Spade a Nazi

There's been a recent and inexplicable resurgence in media dilly-dallying as writers/news commentators across the land have heralded the age of the new "alt-right" movement. First of all: you're late to the party. When you have a room full of people "sig heil"-ing to Donald "Don't Call Me Responsible" Trump, it's pretty clear that whatever white nationalism is currently boiling to the surface, has been around for some time now, festering in a collective and racist hatred for Barack Obama and his ilk.

But instead of calling it what it is, media outlets have resorted to mumbling "alt-right," in lieu of the more incendiary (but accurate) titles: white nationalists, Nazis, racists, bigots and Hitler fanboys. Granted, there is a movement currently happening to change that, led in part by ThinkProgress who has publicly denounced the use of the term alt-right and will no longer refer to it on their site, except in quotation.

The point here is not to call people names, but simply to describe them as they are. We won’t do racists’ public relations work for them. Nor should other news outlets.

 This is good. Phenomenal, actually. Because they're right, of course. In the article they cite Richard Spencer, leader of the white nationalist think tank, National Policy Institute, as coiner of the term "alt-right," essentially saying that we've all been duped by a guy who still thinks Hitler may have had a point.

It took a video of a bunch of these assholes (accompanied by Tila Tequila??) all throwing up Nazi salutes in a hotel in D.C. for Donald Trump to disavow them, and even then it was a pretty soft disavowal.

Trump gets asked again about the alt-right conference. 'Boy you are really into" this issue, Trump replies. Then disavows again.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016

Trump on alt-right supporters: "It's not a group I want to energize. And if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why."

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016

Ok. But this is also the guy that apparently slept next to a book of Hitler speeches and whose slogan "Make America Great Again" has drawn comparison to his equally follicularly ridiculous counterpart's insistence that his countrymen needed to "Make Germany Great Again." This is the guy who was endorsed by the aforementioned Richard Spencer and assembled Nazi bretheren and David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK and member of, you guessed it, the Nazi Party of America

I hesitate slightly to attribute Trump's rise to power solely to white nationalists, but only slightly. Perhaps I'm being optimistic, but I'd like to believe there are at least fewer than 50 million white nationalists living in the United States. But that's not to say that their existence and being provided a media platform is not still harmful and dangerous. Because they did, in some part, contribute to the slow march that led us here, the terrifying world we live in today where a man with recorded evidence of bragging about sexual assault is our next President.

The problem lies in our response to racism and our weirdly prideful insistence that it is less prevalent than is often noted by the people experiencing it. Most people responsible for the dissemination of news and information are, in fact, middle to upper-middle class white people, for whom racism is a fun buzz word to drop whenever you want to seem #edgy. It's not a real threat and it's something more akin to a tsunami in Japan. Horrible, but not personally threatening. And so it's pawned off by well-meaning (arguable) white folks who, because they are not racist themselves (also arguable), insist that racism must not exist. It's a thing of the past, typically seen depicted in history textbooks as a bygone product of the 1800s.

But it is still here, and our depictions and descriptions of it have softened to a flimsy description that gives racists the benefit of the doubt and allows for a narrative that this is all some sort of harmless nostalgia. Nazis were from Germany and they were defeated in the 1940s! We had a trial and everything! But they miss the fundamental point: Nazism and white nationalism are not stuck in one point in time any more than capitalism, communism or hare krishna is. They are part of an ideology that propagates racism, no matter what age of history it exists in.

Attempting to sideline these people as fanatics and allowing them to define themselves is bad news for a country already heading into a time of unprecedented (or maybe precedented) division and hatred. There's a lot to be said for ignoring and refusing to give them a stage, but it would do us no good to dismiss them and pretend that they don't exist. Especially for those particularly affected by their rhetoric and, eventually, actions.

So, please, when you see someone use the term "alt-right," correct them and make sure they're aware that although Nazis are no longer goose stepping through Berlin, they're certainly not gone, and racism is by no means dead.

Most of You Need to Fuck Off

Well that was a clusterfuck. There's not much that hasn't already been said, and far better than I could ever say it myself. So let's just jump right into it.

First of all, I'm going to go ahead and redact my previous blog post. This election definitely deserves to be discussed further. I originally wrote that post with the expectation (along with many others) that this election would go to Hillary. Quite unfortunately, I was wrong. Silly me.

The election, instead, went to recycled pile of old leather wallets doused with liquified orange peels brought to life by necromantic means, Donald Trump. Excuse me, President-Elect.

But fuck that. The refrain of "not my President" rings true today as Americans (roughly half, but likely more) find themselves staring at their hands in the hopes that they'll become robotic spiders and crawl away, ensuring that this is all some sort of horrible dystopian nightmare. But it's time to dispense with our coping and begin the process of moving forward, I guess. This post isn't really about that yet, though. Because honestly I'm still coping.

I don't know what to say. This blog is typically reserved for measured thought and calm reflection, but I'm beginning to think that I might be full of shit and that maybe we should just say fuck it and yell at the top of our lungs for a few months. Or four years. Which brings me to some of you on Facebook. A lot of you, actually.

There have been several variations of people in the wake of the news of Donald Trump's victory, with many leaning towards awful fuckwits hellbent on lording Trump's victory over the rest of us. To you, I have little to say, as I imagine not much will change you mind. The insults are mainly for my own self-satisfaction.

It's those of you taking a sort of passé apathetic approach to the whole thing that are so irksome. Congratu-fucking-lations on being born into a situation where you can afford a lack of feeling about the whole ordeal. The rest of the country is meanwhile scrambling to figure out how to proceed with their lives from here. If you are still saying that this is just as bad as if Hillary had won, then you're actually a fucking moron. Because you fail to recognize, as is wont to happen among the portion of the population most prone to self-advertised apathy (white dudes), that it's not just about how you fucking feel about things. It's also about how the others (women, PoC, LGBTQ+, Muslims, etc.) live and breathe. Which is decidedly not well, after last night.

And those of you who are still blaming the Democratic Party or Hillary's voice or whatever the fuck dumbass shit you've conjured up to delude yourself out of responsibility: well, also fuck you. We did this, together. Men and boys. White guys who hold social issues at arm's length in order to keep everything as abstract as possible. Living by an ideology is fine, but separating yourself from it is, frankly, cowardly.

I am to blame for this. In some part, at least. And to my fellow Americans (and, let's face it, citizens of the world) who will be far more affected by this than I: Um....sorry doesn't cut it. I owe you far more than an apology. I don't know what I'll do yet, but I'm not going to sit back and pretend like this is happening without my input. All I can do at the moment is urge my fellow fuckwits to try and do the same.

And that's it. No clever sign-off. This really isn't fun nor funny. If you wrote Harambe in, please jump into a gorilla cage and join your chosen candidate's brethren. That's it. G'night.

What Will We Talk About?

So, it's almost all over, thank GOD. Tomorrow we'll found out who gets to sleep with the nuclear codes and we can go back to just being existentially angry. Problem is: what the hell will we talk about? Up until now, we've spent the past >year (Jesus...) filling dead air with inane openers designed to steer conversation towards "So this election, huh?" But when it's all said, done and bitched about, what will we do?

Okay, well first: Let's dispense with the idea that discussion of the election will immediately dissipate post-tomorrow. I give it a good several months more of think pieces and unbearably long essays contemplating the notions of power before we finally settle back into our normal state of mind. What is that again? I can't remember a time before this election, can you? We can be glib and pawn it off as a sort of post-election mindset shift, but that's probably horseshit. As unique as this election was, it certainly didn't awaken a portion of ourselves that wasn't already there. And to say otherwise is to be remarkably narcissistic. Who really cares how you feel about this election? Don't worry, the question is directed right back at me too.

No, we're still the same self-absorbed, morality-hawking, human Bluetooth speakers connected to our subconscious that we were pre-election. We've just had a convenient and relevant vessel to distribute our anger through for the past year. But after? I don't know, I guess we'll complain about Game of Thrones spoilers and the occasional hour-long bump in social justice interest on Twitter. That's fine, I guess. Here are several other things you could talk about, though:

• California's drought 
• The Rock's movie career 
• Millennials 
• Westworld season 2 
• How cool Obama was
• A new Drake record, probably 
• Something Kanye did 
• Ken Bone (it'll be retro by then) 
• Whether you should buy a dog 
• Yourself 
• The North Dakota Access Pipeline (this is the right answer, btw) 
• This blog (this is the wrong answer) 
• Me (???) 
• Where your keys are 

And if none of those tickle your fancy, you could always just talk about nothing. In fact, that might be preferable.

Good luck, America. 

Making a Meme

At this point, it should be obvious that presidential debates fall more on the side of theater than they do actual policy talk. They aren't really interviews, and they certainly aren't conversations. They're an exercise in talking in circles until one person either concedes (highly unlikely) or slips up (unlikely, but fun to watch).

Last night, both candidates literally walked and talked in circles in an awkward town hall-style debate wherein audience members and moderators asked them questions and gave them two minutes (or however long they needed to fit in their campaign slogan) to talk. Included in this bit of theater was an on-camera studio audience that sat mere feet away from the two candidates the whole time, holding back sneezes and really debating on whether that butt itch is worth it. Naturally, the internet latched on to these people. One guy in particular stoked their fire.

Ken Bone is a guy from Missouri who wore a red sweater on national television. He also asked a pretty contentious question about energy. This would turn out to be the least compelling bit about him. The internet à la Twitter would go on to immortalize Ken Bone the only way they know how: by pointlessly and inexplicably collating around him in some strange cult ritual of fame-making.

Tweets lauding Ken Bone as the debate's winner began flooding the Internet and pictures of his affable face nestled in his comfy red sweater became instant Facebook fodder. Why? Why does this ever happen? More importantly: why does this always happen?

Since the dawn of televised anything, people have magnetized to strange things, often exclusive from the intended draw. In sitcoms and television dramas, they're called breakout characters (see: Frasier and Barney Stinson). In the news, they're granted an archetype, indicative of something larger in the universe (see: Joe the Plumber). But what about the middle-ground? Where news and drama meets?

This is the place the internet occupies. A self-professed, but oft-unspoken ironic indifference to the goings-on of the world, save for the strange pockets of humanity that sometimes seep through the television. Ken Bone, for better or worse, hitched a ride on one of these moments and came to life quite dramatically over the course of a single night. He became a breakout star and an archetype for the people simultaneously. He's been featured on almost every single major news site.

What is it? Is it the sweater? The question? The name? (It's most certainly the name) It's a bit of everything, I suspect. That last article I linked is a New York Times article seriously speculating on Ken Bone's indecision. And perhaps this is what the media is trying to turn Ken Bone into: the model of the undecided voter, trapped in between two sordid candidates. Undoubtedly, they will say this. But Ken Bone is far more than that. Ken Bone is the model of American popular culture. Our ability to pluck galvanizing inspiration from normalcy and create a star, if only for a moment.

The internet in particular has become a jumping off point for fame, its own chaotic Hollywood system, producing without regard for camera-friendliness or perpetuity. It has allowed society to create a consensus machine, sending odd bits and ends through the grinder, and resulting in strange unfathomable creations. Such as Ken Bone's newfound media attention.

So what is it? What isn't it? It's America. It's the internet. It's fame, poverty, suffering and confusion. It's the media. It's the people. But, really, it's just Ken Bone.

The Problem With the Free Hugs Guy

God, I feel like the guy who shit in the Christmas stocking. I say "the guy" like there's a designated dude who does this. Did he not visit you? Maybe this year. It certainly wouldn't be out of line for 2016. In that particular theme of shittiness, I'm here to take away something you love. The Free Hugs guy. Or me, if you really aren't convinced, I suppose.

The Free Hugs Project was started by Ken Nwadike. It was a direct response to the tragedy that was the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Wearing a black t-shirt that says "Free Hugs" and accompanied by a cameraman, Nwadike goes all over the country giving out free hugs. It's a fairly simple premise that hopefully doesn't require any more explanation than that.

Long story short, this guy grows more and more famous as time goes on, netting all sorts of media attention and countless YouTube views. Everyone, for the most part, loves this guy. He's giving out free hugs! He's promoting peace! What's not to like there? It's a pretty neutral message, when you come right down to it. Not really something that anyone in good conscience can say they disagree with. The notion that everyone deserves love is a hard thing to sneer at, even for the most ardent of cynics.

And yet.

Nwadike, presumably upon hearing of the recent protests in response to the police shooting of a black man in Charlotte, NC, donned the black shirt and headed to North Carolina. He was not received well.

In case you skipped watching the video, because you're a lazy piece of shit with something BETTER to do with your Friday night (you fucking animal), Nwadike hugs a police officer and the crowd of protesters immediately turn on him, calling him a "pussy nigga."

The semantics of that particular phrase aside, the crowd sort of had a point. What the fuck was this guy doing? Granted, the facts surrounding the shooting are still foggy. Mainly because we have a justice system that likes to keep it that way for the sake of anti-transparency and shrouding any and all police activity in mystery. But still. Should we hate these particular cops for the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott? Maybe not.

But also, maybe we shouldn't be hugging cops and espousing their humanity in the face of tragedy carried out....by the cops. It's a fine line between respect and adoration, and Nwadike's embracing of the police officers as part of an attempt to "humanize" them is giving them far more of a benefit of the doubt than has ever been given to the protesters, who have been called any number of racist and dehumanizing things. It's hard to say that we shouldn't respect the idea of peace and humanity in all people, regardless of station. But it's also irresponsible to attempt to elevate people who are already on the top floor looking down.

What Nwadike misses in his uplifting diatribe about the humanity in all of us, is that he's literally preaching to the choir. The entire point of the protests are to establish, in the face of widespread ignorance and hatred, that black men and women are human beings, worthy of the same respect and consideration granted to other, less marginalized people. And one could argue that Nwadike is attempting to educate his own community of black men and women on the inherent decency that should be granted to all of us, regardless of position. One could argue this, perhaps, if Nwadike's primary audience was black men and women. But, by my count (and this is admittedly flawed), people who are absorbing Nwadike's message the most, are white people who don't want to feel guilty about being complicit in systemic racism.

Indeed, much of the problem with Nwadike's video is less about him (although he is problematic) and more about the people sharing it. It allows a certain creeping sleeper-racism in the form of pseudo-acceptance. It really says something that when presented with the tragic death of a black man, white people are sharing a video of a black man hugging the cops. You can almost feel "one of the good ones" on the very tip of each of their tongues. It's that same "All Lives Matter" rhetoric that has so thoroughly already been proven as racist bullshit.

So the Free Hugs Guy, while seemingly nice, is problematic. It's a hard pill to swallow. No one will blame you for having trouble with it. But it's important to note that just because the package comes in a nicely wrapped, beautifully worded peace offering, doesn't mean it isn't still full of shit.

Pat McCrory Stands Amongst Crushed Beer Cans

Complex amalgamation of reanimated human parts, Pat McCrory, took time off his busy bathroom inspection schedule to toss around the ol' pigskin in Boone this past Saturday. Under the guise of being there to watch the football game, McCrory bravely met with his most critical constituents: football fans.

McCrory managed to net a few pictures with nondescript white folks while he was there, prompting anyone nearby to scatter for fear they might be roped in next. Here are a few embarrassing pictures of McCrory with several people he later consumed for energy.

"Help ussssss"

"Please. He's....growing...too...powerful..."

But the picture that really says it all is the above shot of McCrory posing with a football amongst a field of crushed beer cans. The beer cans, in this case, are a metaphor for North Carolina. First of all, though, who decided that THIS was the shot? You have the governor, presumably the most respectable office in the land, and you take a picture of him weakly holding a football in between emptied cans of Miller and PBR?

I guess it isn't particularly surprising that a guy made famous for opening his mouth and releasing a pound of bullshit every time doesn't really take PR into account. After all, McCrory is a man of the people. He wears a yellow polo! He doesn't need your stinkin' advice on relating to the public.

I don't know if McCrory stayed for the game, but if he did, I imagine it involved a big cheesy smile and diving for the microphone whenever it was up for grabs. The reality is that McCrory's primary directive has only ever been to make himself look good, at the expense of having to answer for his own assclown-ery. One need look no further than...last Thursday. McCrory, answering questions at an event, decided that journalists were too mean and instead fielded questions from the much nicer members of his staff.

We'll see how well this goes in his concession speech in November.