One persons asshole is anothers fountain of truth, so let’s not put too much effort into denouncing people doing shitty stuff – hate the game, not the player – even though some stuff might not just be stuff stuff, but stuff which indicates a genuine commitment to being a shit person. And other times it’s just a sign of the times – times which ought to get with the new times, but nonetheless people taking advantage of situations knowing they probaby shouldn’t
By even the least charitable interpretation, no laws were broken. Legally speaking, he seems to be in the clear. Even West has said: this wasn’t them being abusive, it was a man abusing his power. But the fact that it was legal doesn’t mean that harm wasn’t done. It doesn’t mean that people weren’t taken advantage of, had their trust abused by someone they respected or — in many cases — idolized and who leveraged their trust against them.
Dr. Nerdlove: On Finding Out Your Heroes are Monsters (Or: Detoxifying A Culture)
Goddammit Warren.
He then utters his infamous words. The interlocutors go on to kibitz about Huey Long and barbecue. Then Atwater, apparently satisfied that he’d absolved the Southern Republican Party of racism once and for all, follows up with a prediction based on a study he claims demonstrates that Strom Thurmond won 38 percent of South Carolina’s middle-class black vote in his 1978 Senate campaign (run by Atwater).
The Nation, Rick Perlstein: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
Marclay “had the spark,” as he put it, but he was daunted: how many clips would be required to fill up twenty-four hours? In most film sequences, the camera lingers on a clock for a few seconds. “I didn’t have the courage to get started, because I knew it would be an endless struggle,” he said. But now, in London, he decided to see if he could build the defining monument of the remix age.
New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski: The Hours – How Christian Marclay created the ultimate digital mosaic.
At its core are lurid claims that an elite cabal of child-trafficking paedophiles, comprising, among others, Hollywood A-listers, leading philanthropists, Jewish financiers and Democrat politicians, covertly rule the world. Only President Trump can bring them to justice with his secret plan that will deliver what QAnon’s disciples refer to as “The Storm” or “The Great Awakening”.
The Guardian, Jamie Doward: ‘Quite frankly terrifying’: How the QAnon conspiracy theory is taking root in the UK
The idea that “at first they ignore you, then they laugh at you…” etc goes both ways, and pretty soon the conspiracies might be even less amusing. I remember laughing nervously when an aquaintance at work was talking about chemtrails a while back – I couldn’t believe that what I’d previously only seen as ironic memes actually popped up in real life.