#joe berkowitz

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[bookandbeer]

Book: Away with Words: An Irreverent Tour Through the World of Pun Competitions by Joe Berkowitz

Beer: Corn Dog Ale by Revolver Brewing

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Books Read in 2019

Away With Words: An Irreverent Tour Through The World Of Pun Competitions

By Joe Berkowitz

I don’t remember any quotes I’m sorry

(If you like what I do, consider buying me a coffee?)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

How Right-Wingers Avoid Dealing With Reality

Conservatives seem to fret over the “slippery slopes” of their culture-war outrages du jour, all to avoid dealing with the avalanches crashi

Joe Berkowitz for The Daily Beast:

One day during last month’s Pride festivities, the White House flew a trans-inclusive flag and conservatives predictably lost their minds about it. The very idea of the government telling trans people they are welcome in America rubbed some in the media and in the U.S. Senate the wrong way. Trump’s former top adviser Stephen Miller called it “a warning about how civilizations unravel from within.” “Where does it end?” critics of trans visibility often ask, as though each act of tolerance only hastens the hand basket ferrying us all to hell. If something as egregious as a flag is possible, where does it end? Meanwhile, back in reality, the only real progress made with regards to the LGBT community this past June was in the existential war against it. Toward the end of an already-brutal Pride Month, the Supreme Court ruled that businesses may discriminate against LGBT customers, but only in circumstances that go against their religious beliefs, like a same-sex wedding.

Unlike the right’s fears about what untold evils a flag may portend, though, the dire consequences that critics of this ruling were afraid of did not remain hypothetical for long. Within days of the decision, a salon owner in Michigan declared on Facebook: “If a human identifies as anything other than a man/woman, please seek services at a local pet groomer. You are not welcome at this salon. Period.” So much for special circumstances.

[...]

It’s an all-too-familiar pattern. While conservatives often perform their fear of a mythical, militantly progressive future, they refuse to engage with the many briskly accelerating catastrophes in our actual present. They are terrified of Americans falling down slippery slopes, even as several cascading avalanches crash down all around them. (Considering that climate change is one of the catastrophes they’re ignoring, though, even as the Florida coast becomes an endurance-challenge jacuzzi, maybe just pretend both those slopes and that avalanche are made of lava.) Contrary to what that hysteria suggests, when Democrats are in power, they don’t descend these slopes nearly fast enough. Barack Obama likes to talk about the glacial pace of progress, and Dems have largely internalized this idea. They’re careful not to demand too much too fast; essentially strapping on traction cleats with ice spikes to safeguard against slippery slopes. To the frequent frustration of progressives, Dems often use means-testing to ensure only the most practical, incremental measures toward radical change, no matter how morally urgent. This is perhaps why the opposition tends to fear-monger around what might happen, or what could conceivably happen, rather than what is well and truly happening.

[...] And when they’re not engaging with an imagined future, they’re mad about a fantasy present—say, the one in which trans youth have paved the way for students who identify as cats to demand litter boxes in classrooms.

Unfortunately for them and everyone else, conservatives have a long track record of fighting against feared future events that never come to pass. They claimed that tearing down statues of racist Confederate war heroes would lead to removing statues of problematic faves like George Washington, which it didn’t. They’ve screamed about trans people attacking kids in public bathrooms for ages, without it ever emerging as a real issue. (Imagine the years-long meal they would have made out of even one single incident!)

And in perhaps the biggest parallel to the trans community’s current civil-rights struggle, conservatives for years predicted that same-sex marriage would open the door to bestiality, polygamy, and in the case of then-Rep. Steve King, marrying one’s lawnmower—none of which saw any uptick in the near-decade since Obergefell v. Hodges. Conservatives aren’t even arguing otherwise. They’ve just surrendered to the demonstrated will of the majority they’d been fighting, allowing hindsight to reveal how ridiculous and cruel their positions were all along.

[...]

The left has warned against environmental, structural and financial deregulation—just to name a few issues—and now our buildings are collapsing, our trains are derailing, and banks keep failing. They’ve been warning about climate change for decades and now the sky just occasionally turns red, and earlier this month Earth reached the hottest day ever recorded on four consecutive days and now July appears to be the planet’s hottest month on record. The left warned that lax gun control would lead to more mass shootings and rage killings—which it continues to do—while the right thinks the real long-term threat is that the shootings will result in any gun-control measures whatsoever. (“Where does it end?”, asked Fox News’ Mark Levin about the response to the Parkland massacre in 2018.) And then there’s the long line of liberal doomsaying around Roe v. Wade, which conservatives swore was settled law and whose removal last summer resulted in an ongoing human-rights crisis that threatens to get even worse.

Joe Berkowitz wrote an opinion column for The Daily Beast how the conservatives are obsessed with culture war issues in order to avoid reality.

[ahah1127]

The epic emptiness of Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Breakfast Club’ appearance

On Monday, Rush Limbaugh went on Breakfast Club for an “uncomfortable” conversation. It turned out to be an illustration of our current ideological stalemate.

I listened to this interview yesterday - rewinding in a few parts to make sure I heard everything right.  I give The Breakfast Club HUGE props for having this conversation - and for intro’ing the way they did talking about how important it is to talk to people who are outside of our thinking.  And you know - I have to give Rush Limbaugh credit for participating in this discussion as well.

I generally agree with Joe Berkowitz summary of the interview - that in general nothing big came of it. But there is thing Berkowitz doesn’t mention that i think was of value.  In his conduct in the interview, Rush Limbaugh did a lot to clearly illustrate white privilege.  When it started, he was the first one to talk.  I won’t call that wholly arrogant since the discussion was used on BOTH shows.  But given the reason for the two coming together, it would have been wise for him to have let the other show take the lead in starting the conversation. Then throughout the conversation, Rush kept pushing and pushing his way of seeing things instead of stopping to think about and directly respond to the points being made by the people he was talking to.  He talked at them - not with them.  That’s white privilege.

I’ve been toying with this idea that maybe we need an ear wax remover to partner with a group that works to address white privilege to drive home the point that it’s a thing that keeps people from seeing the world as others see it. It’s an insistence that the white perspective on life  is the perspective everyone lives by ... being oblivious to anything but the most glaring problems of racism because of never of truly hearing and understanding another perspective.

So it says a lot this interview ran on a day that was set aside for white people to listen.  Rush didn’t get that message. And it crytalizes the failings of many to talk and talk and talk and not bother to listen to the stories we have not experienced.  That to me is the greatest value this offered.  And the hosts of the Breakfast Club respect listeners enough to let us recognize that ourselves.

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24h news - Joe Berkowitz Urges Everyone with Pro Trump Family to Ruin Theirs Thanksgiving ⭐ Learn more about news on Youtube: https://goo.gl/kiu0PB ⭐ DONATE: https://goo.gl/fPTuj2

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This Guy Spent A Year Exploring The Subculture Of Competitive Punning

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