rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Albini himself also is white diminutive so ... fitting name lol

Not so much "Is this racist" as "Look at this fuckin' racist," but Scott Adams has just had Dilbert dropped by a bunch of papers because of this

Scott Adams going full racist.

Wonder how many newspapers will be running Dilbert comics on Sunday? pic.twitter.com/E0ZZMbmRTv

— AskAubry 🦝 (@ask_aubry) February 25, 2023

good riddance

getting dropped by USA Today seems big, I hope it hurts him right in his bank account, the only thing that matters to him

Nothing but hate for this cunt

I noticed Dilbert went missing from the local paper today. Made me glad, even though the replacement strip was lousy. I stopped reading Dilbert some time last year as a conscious choice to stop exposing myself to Adams' rotted brain.

Argh I am pretty sure I have said this before but: I came from a newspapering family and I studied journalism and I worked at many newspapers (including being responsible for comic selection) and I married a very skilled journalist, etc. I spent four fifths of my life understanding the universe mainly through the funnies.

But even I have let most of my print subscriptions lapse or go digital. As a result, I do not know which comic strips are published and which are not.

Admittedly, Dilbert occasionally made me chuckle a few times during the previous century. But Adams now is one of the most garbagey of garbage humans. I don't even want to give him the satisfaction of canceling him so that he can whine about being canceled. Just, no. For me he no longer exists and I will no longer even bother to excoriate him because that would require acknowledging him and his racist sludge.

Like he isn't even smart enough to just dog whistle, he just said racist shit, and then offered the hilarious defense that he had offered a message of respect earlier

Emil.y OTM about Eskimo. It's pointedly critical of ethnography as a discipline- how ethnographers insist on establishing a living context only to construct a virtual one in its place; how they adopt analytical perspectives at odds with the people of another culture's outlook. It's very, very smart. It is conceptually complex and its presentation is quite detailed.

And yet for all that, it ultimately belongs to the same tradition of pop-orientalism as the Tiki Room at Disneyland. It's racist for sure. It takes an uncritical interest in that stuff and def 'codes white' along these lines.

OTOH Cochin Moon does something similar (and also makes a similar connection between the otherness of electronic sounds and an exotic landscape).

Holy shit @ Scott Adams

Just saw that the LA Times is dropping Dilbert.

The Los Angeles Times has decided to cease publication of “Dilbert.” Cartoonist Scott Adams made racist comments in a YouTube livestream Feb. 22, offensive remarks that The Times rejects. It will be discontinued effective Monday in most editions.

lol cancelled

He's going to write a new comic called Wokebert

He’ll end up at the Daily Wire or somewhere, and in an interview with Ben Shapiro or whoever he’ll explain with some exasperation that he was making a satirical response to a poll he found disturbing. The word “Swiftian” will be used.

Eat Scott Adams

As much dumb sh1t Adams has said over the past 20 years, it took a while for him to finally completely self-immolate his career. Coming next exclusive to Fox Nation most likely…

He'll be fine financially so he's just playing to the chud audience now. Every denunciation he gets from sane people means he raises his profile amongst troglodytes.

So long as he wears our scorn as a badge of honor, and a sign that he's "over the target," I want to give him as little notice as possible, and yet every word I type about him is more fuel and alkjfsd;qoih3gggg!#@%^

I was at the top of the hidden posts section thinking “phew, this wasn’t bumped for Scott Adams” and then I got to the most recent posts

There is also an Adams thread, also on fire lately. He's so horrible in so many ways but being racist is is most horrible horribleness so I guess it fits

** Re: Rema-Rema cover photo, this page says it's a "George Rodger photo of Korongo Nuba tribesmen."

** Re: Sun City Girls' "Soi Cowboy" - the original is from Nok Lae (นกแล) (Discogs link) from the late '80s. Sublime Frequencies included most of it on "Radio Thailand" on the first half of the track titled "Rubber of High Quality" (on Bandcamp here). And here's a YouTube video of a lip-sync performance of that song (which is actually pretty adorable). The YouTube video that Bongo Jongus posted above is the same band, ~30 years later! I asked Alan Bishop about "Soi Cowboy" before a SCG show in 2004, and I remember him saying that they indeed just did a phonetic approximation of the lyrics.

SCG pre formation band featured Moe Tucker. Paris 1942.
Do hope their politics diverge quite heavily.

soy cowboy wojak

Mark: The title Wheel In The Roses was Max's, the sleeve was Mick's. He owned The Last Of The Nuba [a photographic book by Leni Riefenstahl']. The image was intense, there was something in those eyes, an energy, that fitted.

And now Adams has been dropped by his distributor.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/media/dilbert-distributor-scott-adams/index.html

And by his agent and publisher for non-Dilbert stuff...

My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist. Still no disagreement about my point of view. My book agent canceled me too.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 27, 2023

he could just fuck off to a mansion on a private beach and invite a couple friends over and say dumb things to them for the rest of his life in peace

sorry, just realized i made the thread worse by talking about him

I love the "Still no disagreement about my point of view" as if "we are washing our hands of you because of the thing you said" doesn't count as disagreeing

Well, no one has expressed an interest in *voice coming from a yawning open grave* debating him, so clearly he's right.

Uh ...

GEMTECH innovation, Smith & Wesson manufacturing. pic.twitter.com/BuXFvvU1WP

— Smith & Wesson Inc. (@Smith_WessonInc) February 27, 2023

xp - What's amazing is that the supportive responses to his tweet are, almost without exception, from idiots that pay for twitter.

Adams' whole thing is so stupid because it all hinges on the "text vs. subtext" thing that even 3rd graders can understand. it was the same stupid argument that came about when "All Lives Matter" was a thing, or when white supremacists kept flashing the "OK" sign, they clearly do know how this works but I guess you have to be as dense as Scott Adams to think that nobody else in the world does. no wonder he fancies himself a "master persuader"

S&W+PB thing is pretty fucked btw, though tbh I have no idea if that's abnormal for gun manufacturers

S&W tweet has been deleted (tho of course easily findable). Surprised they actually care enough to delete it tbh. I feel like "arming you for the coming race war" has been part of the Big Gun marketing pitch for decades.

PB is a designated terrorist group in Canada fwiw

Noodle Vague wrote:

Mark: The title Wheel In The Roses was Max's, the sleeve was Mick's. He owned The Last Of The Nuba [a photographic book by Leni Riefenstahl']. The image was intense, there was something in those eyes, an energy, that fitted.

Thanks for the quote. I did some digging, and it gets interesting, as the photo in question was indeed included in Riefenstahl's 1973 book, but she didn't take the photo, George Rodger did in 1949. (Plenty of sources on the web - here's one, here's another. Aside: I just realized that the first photo on the 1st linked site was used for the 1st Guadalcanal Diary album cover...)

This page says: ...a note on the dustjacket of Riefenstahl’s first book, The Last of The Nuba (1973) credits Rodger’s work for inspiring her: “The author was so fascinated by this photograph taken by the famous English photographer George Rodger [he was a Scot] that for years she tried to find the Nuba in order to study the life of these primitive people.”

Also: For a film project she was planning, Riefenstahl had offered Rodger £1,000 to tell her where he had found the Nuba. With the memories of Belsen-Bergen still fresh in his mind, Rodger refused, but she embarked on the project anyway, which left Rodger extremely bitter.

So regarding the subject of the photo itself: In Korongo Nuba wrestling, the champion is carried on the shoulders of the defeated party in what's known as "the chairing of the victor."

they PUT IT BACK UP

GEMTECH® innovation, Smith & Wesson® manufacturing.
Perce|eption Brand creates apparel + goods for the tactical athlete. https://t.co/1RDzgMQ6uz pic.twitter.com/7rQ4s478Zl

— Smith & Wesson Inc. (@Smith_WessonInc) February 27, 2023

Purseeeepshun brand?

"Veteran owned" Perceeption Brand is definitely not a nudge-wink-nod to the Proud Boys AT ALL, why is it always about race with you people.

apart from the guns, the dude in the pic doesn't seem to be packing much below the belt ... idk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV2Aj45WxRA

Aldows Hooxlay's Dours of Perceeption

Another for the "This IS Racist" files:

https://heartlandsignal.com/2023/04/17/fbi-investigating-gop-okla-officials-caught-on-tape-talking-about-lynching-black-people-murdering-newspaper-reporters/

Using spoiler tags here because it is very blatant and disgusting:

GOP officials from McCurtain County, Okla. are being investigated by the FBI after they were caught on tape expressing their frustration about it not being socially acceptable beat up and hang Black people, as well as their desires to hire hitmen to kill newspaper reporters.

Fuck. I forgot about the paragraph spoiler tag issue.

Apologies, I've only just realised this Tweet dropped the R/T so will make no sense to some of you. s pic.twitter.com/Ru5oMqllz8

— Ally Fogg (@AllyFogg) June 17, 2023

I think we are way beyond the Tebbit test now, thankfully. People of Indian origin (my children included) can support India and are no less English on account of it. Anyone who thinks this impulse is Tebbit-like has misunderstood.

— Philip Collins (@PhilipJCollins1) June 17, 2023

I kind of want to defend Collins here, a little bit? In that this is obviously an unwise and insensitive thing for him to tweet, but part of this is that a joke might read one way when shared between Collins and his British-Indian kids at home reads differently when put on twitter by a white political journalist without any additional context, and that's what has happened here, rather than Collins revealing his personal bigotry (and indirectly the bigotry of Keir Starmer's Labour party), which is how most of twitter seems to be interpreting it.

Collins said elsewhere that he counts himself as a fan of the Indian cricket team - the way I read his original tweet is that him and his family are all supporters of the Indian cricket team, and see themselves as part of a community of 'supporters of the Indian cricket team in Britain' which Collins is conflating with 'the British Indian community' (maybe presumptuously/insensitively, but there has to be a lot of overlap on the Venn diagram), Collins identifies Sunak as a fellow member of this community due to his Indian heritage (I think Sunak's wife is Indian also, as in 'born and raised in India' Indian) and is jokingly chiding him for being insufficiently fanatical about the Indian cricket team by showing an interest in the ashes, a contest that India is not involved in (people on twitter objecting that there's no contradiction between supporting England in the ashes and also supporting the Indian cricket team, yes of course, that's the joke, he jokingly ribbing him for not meeting a level of Indian cricket team support that he knows himself is ridiculous - he does actually think Sunak is a disgrace)

Obviously a white men telling a South Asian man that that he's a disgrace for supporting/not supporting a particular national team on the basis of his ethnic background is going to get people's backs up, regardless of whether or not it is done in a joking way, and it was a stupid mistake for Collins to post that to twitter, but people are reading it as him saying that Sunak is not "one of us", when I think in context he actually means the opposite, the joke relies on Collins seeing himself and Sunak as part of the same community in a way. Is there such a thing as a 'British-Indian community' that includes Philip Collins as a white man who is married to a British-Indian woman and has kids with Indian heritage? There's maybe not a clear-cut yes or no answer to that question, but a blanket 'no' has depressing implications. I know there's a left-wing critique of sentimentality about multiculturalism - that it obscures real injustices and power relations behind mushy feel-good images of people of different colours and creeds being nice to each other etc - but I do find something quite sweet about the image of Collins and his kids all cheering for India together, bonding over both being part of a wider group together. But I think this is what Collins was trying to get at, that he's a white guy who supports India and Sunak is a brown guy who supports England, and this is maybe the opposite of what someone might initially assume at first glance, and isn't all this rather wonderful, that we're in a mixed modern Britain where these boundaries and allegiances are no so clear cut etc - this is possibly more mushiness that obscures the real power relations and possibly my own complacent white sentimentality, idk. But it's the opposite of the 'English are English and Indians are Indian, and these colours don't run, and that's how it should be' attitude that people are attributing to him.

that's fair, up to a point, but Collins has had all day to make a similar argument and looks too stupid/partisan to make it

I don't care much for Collins, but I think it's reasonable to think that defending yourself on twitter is a doomed venture, particularly when there are a lot of people who are very much not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, and the best move is maybe to switch your phone of and wait for the hubbub to die down a bit

Is there such a thing as a 'British-Indian community' that includes Philip Collins as a white man who is married to a British-Indian woman and has kids with Indian heritage?

i don't think correcting yourself when you've said something offensive is about winning over people who don't like you, it's about going on record as saying "i fucked up". so i don't see "not worth arguing with the angry mob" as an excuse for not publicly acknowledging your offence and trying to apologise

kind of similar situation with the Margaret Hodge racism speech that's been revived this week - people saying "oh you've taken her words out of context" but refusing to think about whether context gets you off the hook for repeating racist tropes

I am married to someone who is British Asian and I would never consider myself part of the community in a speaking of it sense, what the fuck is this post
― half the population ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (gyac), Saturday, 17 June 2023 18:31 (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what do you mean 'in a speaking of it sense'? If you mean that being a white person married to British Asian doesn't mean that it's a good idea to go on twitter and start posting stuff with an implicit 'as a member of the British Asian community' then I agree, that would be crass and offensive, and something to apologise for (and I think Collins should apologise, if that wasn't clear), if you're white you are obviously in a different position than someone who is British Asian themselves, and should remember that and keep it in mind when speaking in public. But someone has married into a British Asian family, it seems inaccurate to say that they are in no way part of a British Asian community, a semi-detached part maybe, but still a part

But he’s not. I’m not. And it absolutely does matter that he feels comfortable making a joke like that. Sunak’s a cunt but his background is his, and regardless of how Collins feels about how close he is to the community, he’s never had to have his citizenship or commitment to the country questioned just because of his background. He’s never had to think about that for a second. That’s why he made the joke he did.