Buzzfeed UK has compared various newspapers’ stories about Meghan Markle with the same papers’ stories about Kate Middleton. The differences are striking.
Author: Carrie
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Stewart Lee on Ricky Gervais
My favourite comedian isn’t pulling any punches.
[Jeremy Clarkson’s and Boris Johnson’s] careers have flourished by exploiting the notion that they are lone voices of sanity against a politically correct snowflake cabal intent on silencing normal blokes like them. Their comedy counterpart Ricky Gervais has managed to monetise this notion spectacularly, saying the things that he is apparently not allowed to say, on a variety of global media platforms, for millions of dollars, with the full co-operation and approval of the legal representatives of the institutions on which, and about which, he says the things he is not allowed to say, his functionally adequate standup act having been overpromoted worldwide off the back of his pitch-perfect contribution to the ground-breaking Office sitcom two decades ago.
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Satan
The New York Times has published a detailed investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s empire, arguing that “Murdoch and his children have topped governments on two continents and destabilised the most important democracy on Earth.”It’s a long read but here are some key claims:
Fox News has long exerted a gravitational pull on the Republican Party in the United States, where it most recently amplified the nativist revolt that has fueled the rise of the far right and the election of President Trump.
Mr. Murdoch’s newspaper The Sun spent years demonizing the European Union to its readers in Britain, where it helped lead the Brexit campaign that persuaded a slim majority of voters in a 2016 referendum to endorse pulling out of the bloc. Political havoc has reigned in Britain ever since.
And in Australia, where his hold over the media is most extensive, Mr. Murdoch’s outlets pushed for the repeal of the country’s carbon tax and helped topple a series of prime ministers whose agenda he disliked, including Malcolm Turnbull last year.
While Australia burns, Murdoch’s media outlets continue to spread climate denial; across the world his columnists and talking heads have fuelled far-right, anti-islamic, anti-semitic and anti-LGBT+ hatred; and his networks have enthusiastically spread white nationalism.
Murdoch isn’t in the news business. He’s in the propaganda business.
NYT:
A March study by Navigation Research, a Democratic firm, found that 12 percent of Fox News viewers believe that climate change is mostly caused by humans, compared with 62 percent of all other Americans. At the same time, 78 percent of Fox viewers believe that Trump has accomplished more than any president in American history, compared with 17 percent of other Americans.
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Broadcasting a joyful noise
This the astonishing Ndlovu Youth Choir performing the MOR hit Africa on America’s Got Talent. As someone who doesn’t watch TV, it had passed me by – so when I heard it in a Radio 4 programme this morning, it hit me like a truck full of sunshine and flowers. I like the song anyway, but the Choir elevate it into something utterly joyous and beautiful by bringing traditional African call and response to the main riff and chorus.
I heard the song on Radio 4’s Soul Music, which devoted an entire episode to Africa – not just the version above but versions by acoustic performers and versions played in a 24-hour charity marathon. It’s a wonderful episode, a little ray of light in a very dreich day.
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What you call others says a lot about you
Cartoon by – I think – SamWitch13 on Tumblr (Click for bigger) Owl Stefania writes in the i Paper about the singular “they” pronoun, voted word of the year and word of the decade, and pronouns more generally.
Pronouns themselves might not seem important to people who’ve always been comfortable with theirs, but for non-binary people (and transgender people in general), pronouns carry a lot of weight.
Owl mentions something many trans and non-binary people know very well: some people are very mindful of the pronouns they use for dogs but won’t extend the same courtesy to human beings.
Most people will assume and use the pronoun ‘she’ to refer to my dog, and then profusely apologise when I tell them his name is Soldier and refer to him as ‘he’ and never make the mistake again.
The same can be said about academic or professional titles and other honorifics, the possessors of which can be awfully huffy. Here’s one of them, Alan Sugar, on people asking to be called “they” a few months ago:
They need to pack it in, it’s nonsense. The people promoting it need to be shipped off to Mongolia. Send them away, get them out the country. Go away. It always boils down to a small bunch of people that promote it.
Unlike, say, the similarly small bunch of people swanning around demanding people call them Sir this or Lord that. Eh, Alan?
Cheap shots aside, I wouldn’t call Lord Sugar “Alan” to his face any more than I’d call my doctor “David” or refuse to address anybody else using their professional title: it’s inappropriate and profoundly disrespectful.
Whether it’s professor, lord, lady, baron, he, she or they, calling people what they prefer to be called isn’t difficult. It’s just basic politeness. If you choose not to do it for particular groups of people, that says much more about you than it does about them.
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This is the future liberals want
What’s in this picture? Is it (a) a tasty-looking meal? Or is it (b), an Orwellian nightmare pushed by sinister “vegan extremists”?
Let’s ask Sun columnist Dan Wooton, who tweeted the picture and wrote:
This is the plant based meal being given to all guests at the Golden Globe Awards this year. No option with meat at all. No choice. Welcome to Hollywood in 2020 where vegan extremists rule. 🤮🤮🤮
It’s worth pointing out that Wooton wasn’t even at the Golden Globes, so what we’re seeing here is a grown man getting upset about somebody else eating vegetables on the other side of the planet.
There’s a lot of it about: last week we had various middle-aged men whingeing about Greggs introducing a vegan version of its steak bake (a version which, I’m told, tastes like a bridie; if it does then it may well be the best snack-related news I’ve heard this year so far).
This outrage is entirely predictable, so much so that it’s become a PR strategy: as PR Week reported this time last year, upsetting florid-faced middle aged media figures is a key part of many food firms’ PR strategies. But it’s still pathetic that in 2020, “real men don’t eat vegetables” is still seen by some as being edgy and sticking it to the libs – particularly when the people so outraged about vegetables are so quick to damn people who care about considerably more serious things.
As comedy writer James Felton put it:
Hi I’m a boomer. You may remember me from such hits as “aww does the widdle millennial snowflake need a safe space because he’s so offended”. Today I’ll be losing my shit because a shop I don’t visit is selling a vegan steak bake I am under no obligation to buy.
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“Forgive yourself. Every goddamn day.”
Over at Ask Polly, Heather Havrilesky responds to a reader who’s finding it hard to find joy any more.Â
Engage with this crisis instead of trying to cut it off. Let these feelings in instead of blaming yourself for them. Be more patient with your own sadness. And look for joy everywhere you can, every day, from the first hour you’re awake until the moment you fall asleep. Stop torturing yourself and make joy the first priority of every single day. I know I’m a broken record on that front, but it’s honestly the one clear and solid contribution I feel I have to make to this world: reminding people that just enjoying yourself is important. It matters.
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“Biology” as a cover for bigotry
Katelyn Burns writes about the Maya Forstater case for The New Republic.
Cases like this—which pit the actual lives of trans people against the beliefs of somebody who decided to test her colleagues’ patience by posting over 150 anti-trans tweets in a single week—are a win-win for anti-trans activists. If they prevail, they have a new legal basis to treat trans people like garbage without reprisal. If they lose, they can bang on about how trans people are spreading a totalitarian belief system that crushes anyone who might disagree.
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Dropping the props
Last night I performed at a small open mic night, doing something I’ve never done before: I sang and played to a small audience without amplification. There was a PA there, but I didn’t use it.
It wasn’t planned: the battery in my guitar was flat so its pickups weren’t sending any signal to the PA system. But given the choice between trying to get a single microphone to pick up my voice and my guitar (something that never works particularly well) Â or just doing three songs completely unamplified, I chose the latter, scarier option and stood in the middle of the room as I played three really, really good songs really, really well.
There’s something particularly frightening about doing that. On a stage, there are props you can hide behind. The stage may be raised slightly to elevate you above the audience. There’s a physical distance between the performer and the listeners. On stage there’s a mic stand, and more than anything there’s volume. If people aren’t interested in what you’re doing, if they talk instead of greeting you with the reverential silence you want, Â you can just turn it up and drown them out. That’s as true in a tiny basement as it is in a big venue.
But if you step out from behind the mic, if you climb off the raised stage, you can’t rely on those things any more. Your voice and your guitar can’t drown out chat. There’s no reverb to flatter your voice. You’re not elevated or separated from the people in the room. It feels very much like those dreams where you’re standing up in front of an audience and you’re not wearing any pants.
It’s an absolute blast.
To play songs you know are good and sing them not just technically well but with all your heart and soul is always a blast, but it’s particularly so when you can see people connecting with what you’re doing.
Connection is what drives me to make music. I write songs I hope will matter to people the way other people’s songs matter to me. Those songs have helped me through some really tough times: they can be the soundtrack to your greatest moments and your best friend during the worst, and sometimes music is the only voice telling you that you’re not alone. Writing songs is one way I can fulfil the motto: be the person you needed when you were younger.
I tend to be very self-deprecating about the things I do, so when I post here about being the world’s greatest living songwriter or describing myself as “Brian Wilson with tits” I’m clearly having a laugh and sending myself up. But I’ve been writing songs for a very long time, and you don’t do that without having a certain amount of belief in your own abilities. I am a good and sometimes brilliant songwriter, and I think over the years my self-deprecation and my “sorry to bother you, here’s a song, I hope you like it, I hope I’m not annoying you” has prevented some very good songs from reaching the audience they deserve.
In the year to come, I think I’m going to be considerably more annoying.
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Boobs from a burger? Now that’s a whopper
The picture above is of the Impossible Whopper, a meat-free burger from Burger King. Like many vegetable, seed and nut-based products, it contains phytoestrogens – structures that are similar, but different to, the estrogen in people.
Here comes the internet.
The above claims, and many like them, are currently circulating on social media. Let’s not get pedantic about the ignorant phrase “a standard hormone replacement therapy shot to become transgender” and focus on the big claim here: this burger will make you female!
Spoiler: no, it won’t.
The article that kicked off this particular panic is from a site called National File, which claims:
the Impossible Burger is a genetically modified organism filled with calorie-dense oils that can make a man grow breasts if eaten in sufficient quantity.
Man boobs aren’t caused by plants, nuts, seeds or soy. The main cause of gynecomastia is obesity, particularly in older men. If you have a largely burger-based diet of any kind, meaty or meat-free, it’s very easy to pack on the pounds: a Whopper is around 660 calories (630 if meat-free). Add large fries (430 calories) and a large Coke (310 calories) and that’s more than half the daily recommended calorie intake for an averagely active and healthy man.
National File:
eating four of the vegetable burgers daily would result in a human male growing breasts
Even if the claim was true, which it isn’t, if you’re eating four fast food burgers a day it’s not cleavage you need to worry about. It’s a coronary.
National File’s article is based on a piece by a doctor, but the doctor isn’t a doctor of humans and his article isn’t in a medical or scientific publication. He’s a South Dakota vet, writing for a trade publication (Tri-State Livestock News) written for and funded by the meat industry – an industry that isn’t too happy about Impossible Burgers and other meat-free products.
You can see why a meat industry magazine might want to try and discredit meat-free food. But why would a political site be so keen to run with the story too? The answer, inevitably, is that the site is connected to the lunatic fringe of the US far right, which is why this story is all across US right-wing media (and why it’s been republished here on the likes of the Daily Mail, which spent over 300 words repeating the claims before quietly admitting that there’s no evidence for any of them).
The story’s author has previously written for the far-right fantasy factory Breitbart and is a regular guest on the Alex Jones show. Yes, the same Alex Jones who famously claimed that the US government is using a magical, Pentagon-funded “gay bomb” to turn people gay:
“The reason there’s so many gay people now is because it’s a chemical warfare operation, and I have the government documents where they said they’re going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don’t have children”
That was in 2010. A few years later Jones claimed that the government was “putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin’ frogs gay… the majority of frogs in most areas of the United States are now gay.”
It’s easy to laugh at this, but gay frogs are part of a wider far-right theory called The Great Replacement: brown people and feminists and gay people and trans people are a conspiracy against Honest God-Fearing Straight White Folks to feminise the men (via the aforementioned chemicals in the water supply that turn the friggin’ frogs gay, plus soy milk and meat-free burgers and “gender ideology” and the “gay agenda”) and outbreed the women. The theory’s supporters include senior members of the Trump administration.
When you read it in that context, the Whopper Gives You Tits story isn’t so funny.
