John Oliver on Critical Race Theory

His show Last Week Tonight did an excellent job deconstructing what Critical Race Theory is and how the right wing, by means of massive distortions funneled through their echo chambers like Fox News, has managed to persuade some white people that it is part of a widespread campaign to demonize them as evil. They are not evil. But these people are snowflakes who get really bent out of shape by any suggestion that the history of the US has resulted in racist policies that favor white people being embedded in its political and legal structures. They also do not want their children to engage with issues of race at all, never mind the fact that children of color have no such choice since they have to engage with issues of race pretty much every day.

Oliver says that the laws to ban the teaching of CRT in schools (something that rarely happens since CRT is an academic discipline usually taught in graduate schools, especially law schools) are really being pushed by those who want public funds can be given to allow parents to pay for their children to attend private schools, a movement that goes by the name of ‘school choice’.

Jordan Klepper visits the Canada trucker protesters

As part of his ongoing series of videos where he talks to those who are part of the anti-vax, right-wing, QAnon, Trump-supporting movement, he went to Ottawa in Canada and finds that the people who are blockading the city center say pretty much the same things that people who attend the Trump rallies in the US say, which is mostly nonsense veiled in rhetoric of freedom.


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Samantha Bee talks to three religious women about abortion

She brings together three women who are followers of Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism to ask them how well what their religious books actually say about abortion aligns with what we are told about by the anti-choice movement. Very little, it turns out. In fact, they suggest that the current proposed restrictions on abortion actually violate the tenets of their religion.

Social norms

(Pearls Before Swine)

I like to think that I interact online the same way that I do face-to-face. It seems natural to me to be consistent. In fact, I once asked a good friend of mine who reads my blog whether I came across online as the same person that she knew personally and she said that I did. Of course, since we had the conversation face-to-face, she may have been being polite but I don’t think so because we are good enough friends that she could be honest. In addition, she is tactful enough to tell me the truth sensitively.

So it is a mystery to me that some people seem to adopt such different personas in the two spaces. Or are people who are so gratuitously rude on the internet that way in real life too and I am just fortunate in not knowing them personally?

NFTs (not) explained

In a recent post, I tried to explain what NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) were. This is another of crazes that arise (and sometimes disappear) so rapidly in the internet age. Reader David sent me a link to this (non) explanation by Julie Nolke that I found pretty funny. I wonder how many people try to bluff their way into looking like they know what they are talking about when it comes to NFTs.

I was impressed with how she played both roles and then spliced the footage. It is not easy to do reaction shots that look genuine. She must be a professional actor that I have not heard of before.

Among the Trumpists

I have to admit that hearing Trump supporters say the most clueless things seems to never get old. I am impressed by Jordan Klepper’s ability to find among them people who can be made to say the most absurd things.

Fellow Daily Show correspondent Michael Kosta seems to be developing his chops in this area as well as he asks them what they think of Trump’s Space Force.

(WuMo)

A fun John Oliver rant

I did not read the best-selling book The Da Vinci Code, suspecting right from the beginning that, despite its extraordinary success, it would be a waste of time. However, I did see the film based on it and it supported my decision because the plot was incredibly stupid.

So I was totally sympathetic to Oliver’s rant.