Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 7/27/2023
Fifth Place: Elon Musk
Remember back in 2017 when shaky evidence of ads appearing on neo-Nazi and racist content caused YouTube to have take a much stronger stance on who they do and don't monetize? Well it looks like Twitter could reach the same problem soon, given Media Matters posted an article today with the headline "Twitter placed ads for USA Today, National Women’s Soccer League, and other major brands on a terrorism-linked neo-Nazi account." One such group is quite literally called the National Socialist Network, a play on the National Socialist German Workers Party, or the Nazi Party. This is especially notable because Musk has had a hard time getting advertisers to invest in the platform ever since he bought, even resigning as CEO specifically in hopes of making the process of finding advertisers easier.
Fourth Place: Isaac Schorr
Hey Isaac, how has selling your soul to Ron DeSantis been? Today, our old buddy Isaac published an article with the headline "AP African American History Includes Similar Lesson to Controversial Florida Curriculum Blasted by Kamala Harris." The article parrots a claim by DeSantis's Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern showing a line from the AP African American History course that Florida opposed--which I guess makes it okay in the mind of these two.
Of course, just because this AP class does something, that fails to make it okay--especially when, again, this same group of people opposed said AP class in the first place. Academics can hold racist views and pass said ideas down to their students--eugenics was an idea supported largely by academics, remember.
Also, what's with that headline? If your citation for this is a tweet from the Press Secretary, shouldn't it be something like "DeSantis Press Secretary Fires Back Against Kamala Harris's Claims, Points Out AP African American History Course Includes Similar Material." Or do you not want to admit that somebody else is DeSantis's Press Secretary given your desire to turn Mediaite into nothing more than his biggest supporter website?
Third Place: Allie Beth Stuckey
I would like to thank Justin Horowitz on Twitter for finding these tweets from Stuckey, regarding the aforementioned controversy of DeSantis's history courses:
The argument boils down to "It wasn't a good thing, but a lot of people did benefit from it." But wait--if so many people benefitted from this or that event, why exactly was it a bad thing?
Also, I love the use of the phrase "skills learned there," as if Japanese-American Internment Camps had free sewing classes or something along those lines.
Second Place: Pamela Paul
Yes, the famously transphobic New York Times columnist gets an entry today through her article "Don’t Call Her ‘Karen.'" Most of the article is fine, correctly pointing out that misleading video is what led to the campaign of Sarah Comrie, but instead of blaming this on people being too damn willing to believe short videos about interactions they weren't present for, she blames the word Karen or something.
And there’s something else I know for sure: Once publicly labeled a “Karen,” Comrie was placed in a no-win situation. There is no doubt that the violent history of white people making false accusations against Black people should give anyone pause when making an accusation against a group of Black teenagers. But it cannot be the case, morally or logically, that it’s impossible for a white woman to have a justifiable complaint and impermissible for her to speak up if she thinks she’s been wronged. Yet that is what the term “Karen” implies: that if you are a white woman, your relative privilege renders suspect any complaint you might have; if you try to defend yourself, you thereby prove the case against you.
For the record, I have never seen the word "Karen" used in this racially charged context like Paul claims. It's describing the behavior of a certain strain of white women through comedic hyperbole, and although the term did originate among black people, it has since been used rather race neutrally in reference to who somebody labeled it can effect. The term is often used in reference to people who ask to speak to the manager at a store at the slightest provocation, but that has nothing to do with the race of the people involved.
I also found this part of the article rather interesting:
The Karen trope reflects a pervasive strain of misogyny in our culture. “Karen has become synonymous with woman among those who consider woman an insult,” Helen Lewis wrote in The Atlantic in a detailed anatomy of the slur. The journalist Nina Burleigh has also observed the term’s distinct tilt toward white women over 40, long a punching bag in popular culture: “White middle-class women of a certain age are among the last groups one can hurl targeted abuse online without being canceled.”
Can somebody--anybody--tell me what separates this from the vaguely white nationalist writings you find on most conservative websites across the internet? Declaring any group of white people "the last group you can make fun of" (which is utterly nonsensical for a number of reasons) is the basis of the vast majority of white victim complex pieces in existence, and that is the basis for modern western white nationalist thought. Although I am not going so far as to say that Paul and these two other women are white nationalists, I am saying they are publishing their talking points and they--along with The New York Times--should be fucking ashamed of themselves for allowing this to go unchallenged.
Winner: Chip Roy
I'll just allow this Mediaite headline to say it all: "Chip Roy Condemns Fellow GOP House Members Not Wanting To Impeach Mayorkas: They’re ‘Hiding Behind The Constitution.’" You mean the document they're sworn to uphold as members of Congress?
Chip Roy, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.