Onward Cultural Warriors, slipping on banana peels!

 In this week’s entry in Right Wing Insanity, we have…Dr. Seuss.

I shit you not. This one has been amazing in its dishonesty and stupidity all at the same time. Here’s the summary I put up on Facebook:

1. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the private entity that owns the copyrights to Dr. Seuss’s books, makes a decision to remove six books from the market, because the books contain racist imagery typical of their time.

2. The FOX News crowd freaks out about “cancellation”, even though, once more for the people in back, this was a market decision made by a private entity. (These are the people who usually claim to love “freedom” and “the market”, but invariably lose their shit when “the market” uses its “freedom” to recognize realities they don’t like.)

Now the funny part:

3. FOX News fans buy Seuss books en masse, thinking apparently to show support for the cancellation-in-progress author, thus giving buckets of THEIR OWN MONEY to the very private entity that made the market decision in the first place.

Let’s not forget that these are the same people who think the election was stolen, that masks are useless, that climate isn’t changing, that tax cuts raise revenue, that trickle-down works, and so on.

That’s about it. “We’re so mad about this thing that we’re gonna shovel money at the people who did the thing we’re pretending to be mad about!” It’s like deciding to prank the people down the street by ordering a dozen pizzas to be delivered to their house…but paying for the pizzas with your own credit card.

And why do I say “pretending”?

Because nobody in the media, no matter what Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro or any of the other talking heads on FOX News, is actually upset by this. It’s just pretend nonsense, as cynical an attempt to whip up the base as anything I’ve ever seen. FOX News, for all its beating of the drum, won’t even show the offending images on teevee; and here you see a Republican MAGA weirdo Congressional candidate spouting a staggering amount of lying for a single tweet:

Note that Ms. Bish is pretending that some cherry-picked random thing from Dr. Seuss is what is actually the issue, and also note her mention of President Biden as if he has the first thing to do with any of this. Hey, Ms. Bish! Want to show the offending pictures of African or Chinese people, and tell us why you think they’re perfectly fine? No? Didn’t think so.

The rubes have got to stop falling for this shit, and what’s more, it would be helpful if they’d start to ask themselves: If they’re being this dishonest in trying to fire me up, what else are they lying through their teeth about? That, friends, would be a far more profitable rabbit hole to explore than whatever nonsense the QAnon people are floating on any given day.

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Tone Poem Tuesday

 Florence Price, who was one of my major musical discoveries (maybe “revelations” is a better term?) of 2020, wrote this wonderful String Quartet in G Major in 1929, and…that’s just about all the information I can find about it. It’s worth remembering that some of Price’s music was lost after her death, and more would have remained forgotten had a cache of her papers and manuscripts not been found in a dilapidated house in Illinois many years after her passing.

This quartet opens with a beautifully lyrical allegro, sunny and cheerful. But it’s the second movement where the quartet really shines: combining a slow tune that is redolent of old spirituals with a more bouncy section that’s almost jazzlike, it’s in the second movement that you can really feel Price’s Black heritage.

This is the website for Laena Batchelder, that quartet’s lead violinist, by the way. She seems very talented and with a good taste for eclectic music.

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February Struggles

 Last month was not a great month for writing, for a number of reasons. The major reason is that sometimes when you write by the seat of your pants, you reach a spot where you’re sitting at the computer thinking, “Gosh, I have no idea what happens here.” (Now, you might be asking, “Why don’t you plan out the story before you start writing it? My eloquent answer to that is, “Because shut up, that’s why.” Moving on….)

But things are possibly looking up! Here we go, March! (I hope….)

Not a great month, for a number of reasons. Planning for a better March! #amwriting #writersofinstagram #WritingCommunity

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