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Post by robeiae on Apr 8, 2019 8:43:19 GMT -5
Let's get back to the topic of this thread because it's not Melania Trump. What does where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lived as a kid have to do with anything? Why does a silly video she made in college have to do with anything? Why does where she live, how much she pays her staff, what she eats and drink or whether or not she smiles while Trump is boring the shit out the nation during a State of the Union address have to do with anything? In my view, none of those issues are particularly significant in any way. In contrast, stuff Occasio-Cortez says on current events, positions she takes, policy she supports, those all do matter. So...if someone criticizes Occasio-Cortez for, say, pushing the Green New Deal, or for not understanding how the unemployment rate is figured, how does dwelling on her appearance/sex/race counter such criticisms? If you want to argue that there'd be less negative attention on her comments/positions if she was an old unattractive white male, you might have a point (though Bernie catches plenty of heat), but I'd argue that the reverse could also be argued: she'd be getting less positive attention, as well. Which brings us back full circle. She's a public figure who gets lots of attention for a number of reasons, hence the thread... Want to start a thread about Steve King's overt racism? Knock yourself out.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 8, 2019 10:15:16 GMT -5
Let's get back to the topic of this thread because it's not Melania Trump. What does where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lived as a kid have to do with anything? Why does a silly video she made in college have to do with anything? Why does where she live, how much she pays her staff, what she eats and drink or whether or not she smiles while Trump is boring the shit out the nation during a State of the Union address have to do with anything? In my view, none of those issues are particularly significant in any way. In contrast, stuff Occasio-Cortez says on current events, positions she takes, policy she supports, those all do matter. So...if someone criticizes Occasio-Cortez for, say, pushing the Green New Deal, or for not understanding how the unemployment rate is figured, how does dwelling on her appearance/sex/race counter such criticisms? If you want to argue that there'd be less negative attention on her comments/positions if she was an old unattractive white male, you might have a point (though Bernie catches plenty of heat), but I'd argue that the reverse could also be argued: she'd be getting less positive attention, as well. Which brings us back full circle. She's a public figure who gets lots of attention for a number of reasons, hence the thread...
Yeah, I kinda figured that's why this thread. How does dwelling referencing on Ocasio-Cortez's appearance/sex/race counter such criticisms? Quite easily, actually.
AOC is a star. King is a slug. Who wants to talk about slugs?
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Post by Vince524 on Apr 8, 2019 13:41:42 GMT -5
Look, her appearance has, or should have, nothing to do with our assessment, but sometimes this is a chicken and egg sort of thing, isn't it?
Nobody on this board except CE is a fan of Trump, and if we searched all our posts here or elsewhere, I'd bet many of us have taken a few shots of his looks. Should we? No, but we do and it's really hard to feel bad about it. So with AOC I could read her green new deal, think she's an idiot without ever knowing what she looks like, and then when I see her, disparage her based on her looks because I've decided I don't like her. (I haven't because I think there's nothing to disparage there, but theoretically people do that.) People might not make fun of Trump if they loved his politics. People sometimes made fun of Romney's hair. We should be above that, but we often aren't.
Doesn't make it right, but I think that happens.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 9, 2019 11:27:03 GMT -5
Look, her appearance has, or should have, nothing to do with our assessment, but sometimes this is a chicken and egg sort of thing, isn't it? Nobody on this board except CE is a fan of Trump, and if we searched all our posts here or elsewhere, I'd bet many of us have taken a few shots of his looks. Should we? No, but we do and it's really hard to feel bad about it.
Our supposed "leaders" have always been called out for their looks. Every last one. If Trump thought he was the right man for the job when he ran for president, he should be man enough to take all the slings and arrows directed at him. He isn't.
Trump, like some posters in this thread, have dismissed AOC as nothing more than " a young bartender" suffering from delusions of grandeur. She's shallow. She's unfocused. She's batshit crazy. She doesn't understand economics. She's dreaming. Then they say it has nothing to do with her race or gender, only her out-of-touch politics. That's plausible. So is this.
Pretty much this. Women in general are victimized by men. Women of color get it even worse. That's not even a question and to even attempt to say, " Well, men are too" is false equivalency at its worst.
How dare Ocasio-Cortez and other women like her enter into what has always been a bastion of White patriarchy, power and privilege and refuse to play along and be nice girls. Why, it's almost as if they think they're equal or something!
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Post by Vince524 on Apr 9, 2019 14:31:30 GMT -5
My point wasn't that it's okay, but that it's not always rooted in misogyny, or racism. Sometimes it is. We tend to be meaner to people who we disagree with.
Be honest, if Trump were a nice guy, who you liked, and agreed with 99.9 % of the time, and thought was the USA's greatest president ever, would you take cheap shots at his looks if he physically looked the same way? If I'm being honest, I wouldn't. I might say something here or there in a good natured jest, but I wouldn't go to town on him.
Or the opposite. If Trump was easily the best looking example of a male in the history of mankind, made George Clooney or Brad Pitt in their primes look like Andre the Giant's ugly cousin, but he spoke the same, thought the same, and used the same divisive politics as does the real life orange buffoon in the White House (See, I just did it) would you be any nicer to him?
I doubt it, and neither would I.
Does any of that mean that AOC deserves to be mocked for her looks? No. We should all rise above it. But many don't. Especially once they decide they don't like a politician.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2019 14:55:02 GMT -5
Okay. I've mostly stayed out of this, just because I'm mega busy at the moment and dealing with enough contentious stuff! But I do have to throw in my two cents as someone who has been a young, attractive female in a hard-core job. In my experience, people very rarely, if ever, deride an obviously smart guy with stellar credentials and an accomplished resume as ditsy, not-so-bright, or not particularly capable. Rarely does a good-looking man have to work harder than a homely man to get credit for brains. And this happens to pretty young women All. The Fucking. Time. A man who garners a reputation in the office for sleeping around (assuming it is consensual -- I'm not talking MeToo) does not pay a professional price of people assuming he is therefore not to be taken seriously. And this happens to women, still, All. The Fucking. Time. When you take a woman who is a professional being professional, and you jeer at and demean her by sexualizing her, you are doing something to her that I'm sorry, really doesn't happen to a man. Mitt Romney is a hunk with great though somewhat overstyled hair. No one (or at the very least, very few) take him less seriously because of it. The same, I'm sorry, is not true for AOC. I'm trying to think the last time I saw a cartoon making fun of Mitt Romney's political stances by showing him in a highly sexualized cartoon. That would be...oh, right, never. ETA: I'll bet markesq has been propositioned in the course of doing his job. I wonder, though, if he's been propositioned as often as I have when he's acting purely professionally and has not been flirting, and had it create issues in a professional situation. Charming as he is, I'm betting no.)
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 9, 2019 23:05:56 GMT -5
Hating AOC does not diminish AOC. Do not fool yourself that it does. She drinks the tears of your bitter hate like granny's sun made tea and it is sweet. AOC does not simply thrive off of your actual conservative and faux "liberal" hate. You do not weaken her. To the contrary the more you hate her the more you only make her even stronger. There's a possibility AOC will disappoint. That she will be exposed as dishonest, completely unprincipled, bought and paid for or simply today's celebrity and tomorrow's reality show has-been. Just another Lefty with no staying power
OR...there's a chance AOC won't sell-out for a book deal. Doesn't make nice with the other side because she sees compromising with the Enemy no different from siding with the Enemy. Maybe she's authentic. Maybe she can be the transcendent figure that motivates other young free-thinkers to deviate from the norm, subvert the dominant paradigm and just generally raises hell and fucks shit up. God help us, maybe Ocasio-Cortez is that bad-ass Latina Change Agent she's advertised as being.
But not with you. Never with you. That's okay. You were never the target demographic to be receptive of an AOC message. You are a lost cause. Settled in your ways like concrete and full of dread and fear of a foreboding future whether you are no longer the biggest and baddest of bad asses and probably doesn't include you because you're teetering and tottering, if not on the edge of extinction, to at least irrelevance in how the world works. There is nothing White patriarchal,supremacist,racist elites fear more than the loss of their stranglehold on access, influence,control and power. The fact that they are in total freak-out mode over a first-term Congresswoman speaks volume on how tenuous their hold is. The Left can have AOC. The Right can have Southern Strategy Disbeliever/Hitler Was A Nationalist Like Me Candace Owens and they are welcome to this thoroughly wretched woman. It's a win-win. Except one person talks it while the other talks it and walks it as well. I'd take Ocasio-Cortez over Owens in the 2019 Racial Draft any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 10, 2019 21:57:15 GMT -5
Hey, now here's a solution to everyone's AOC's problem. Brand her a "domestic terrorist." Maybe then someone will kill her.
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Post by Optimus on Apr 12, 2019 16:21:27 GMT -5
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Post by mikey on Apr 12, 2019 18:00:21 GMT -5
It's a fact that Russian Canadian bots influenced the outcome of the game.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2019 18:18:59 GMT -5
Sigh. The latest thing people on the right are sneering at AOC for:
Okay, I realize this may seem odd to those of you who live in other areas of the country, but garbage disposals are incredibly rare here. I've never had one -- that includes in a very high end luxury building -- and I don't know anyone who has one. Actually, I've never, ever lived in a place that had one -- not in Buffalo or Boston or New Haven or any other place I've lived. I'm quite certain someone from a reasonably humble background who has only lived in NYC would never have had one.
In fact, the only time I've seen one in action is in my friend's house in Florida (that was a couple of years ago). I find them scary, too, and ridiculously noisy and not particularly useful. Just throw your scraps in the garbage or in a compost heap. Why the fuck would you throw them into the drain to get chopped up? Isn't it one more thing to break and possibly injure you or damage your silverware and stink up your place? WTF? Why would anyone want one.
And no, I wouldn't think it's good for the environment to throw all your scraps down the drain. Hello, fatburgs in the sewer system.
Team AOC on this one, and fuck those sneering at her for it. Really, it's fucking dumb. If you were inclined to think she was being faux-humble before, I have now educated you. I never saw one in action either until I was much older than AOC. It's a regional thing, apparently.
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Post by prozyan on May 7, 2019 20:20:32 GMT -5
That left out my favorite quote of hers in this whole thing:
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2019 20:25:04 GMT -5
That left out my favorite quote of hers in this whole thing: My apologies. I was feeling all pissy (having seen a barrage of "oh she's such an idiot and so phony because eeeeveryone has a garbage disposal" tweets) and overlooked the funny. Inexcusable!
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Post by prozyan on May 7, 2019 20:38:40 GMT -5
I avoid Twitter like it is the Black Death these days. I've been much happier.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2019 20:53:18 GMT -5
I've found that by having approximately half the accounts I follow be ones that only post adorable animal pics, and by extremely liberal use of the block button, I can usually get along okay.
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