♆ The Macho Response ♆: August 2013

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Saturday Night Adventures In Toe-Tapping & Forgetting

1st Mistake: Letting The Liberal Point A Camera At Him

Trailer for Errol Morris' The Unknown Known, starring Donald Rumsfeld

You Go From Cold To Hawt But Getting All Hawt Is Best

I remember something about standing astride history yelling "Stop!" but all I see is confusion:

Where to even begin? Ms. Karasik relates her experiences being a 14 year old girl, saying that she and her classmates thought about sex just as much as the boys. She also goes on to claim that girls were having sex with teachers in high school and college and nobody really got hurt. She generously allows that teachers who are caught “having sex with” (i.e. raping) their students “should be removed from their jobs” but only until they complete “rehabilitation.”

I remain puzzled as to how this managed to make its way onto the pages of the Washington Post, but it has.

Here's someone else from the same article:

How is society “damaged” by protecting children from predatory teachers? Karasik doesn’t actually say, other than to imply that Morales might not have committed suicide had the criminal case not been pending. Despicable. Oh, and maybe students would be more likely to discuss sexual issues with school counselors.

I repeat, this was published in the Washington Post. How low can we go? I am afraid we are going to find out.

Does any of this sound like "Stop!" to you?

Why's about the only thing I haven't figured out yet,...

Acting? Who Said Anything About Acting? Fuck Acting

Whew Boy. The Dallas Buyer's Club. Slate's talking Matthew McConaughey Oscar bait, while Slant knows - having been here before - that can only mean one thing:

"One could argue that the AMA and Big Pharma, with their endless pockets and insurmountable lobbying power, have fought their battle against natural medicine, chiropractors, and any other voices of marginal dissent so unfairly for so long that the most effective response is necessarily one-sided. But if you're appealing to the reason of the consumer, and if you intend to respect the intelligence of your audience, sacrificing intelligent debate for the sake of impassioned delivery reduces the intellectual substance of your arguments drastically."

Discuss amongst yourselves - Slate even admits the lie:

"In reality, though the FDA did warn AIDS patients about one of Woodroof’s drugs in particular, they seem to have largely taken a 'look the other way' approach with Woodroof and his club."

Like Milk - which really should've mentioned Jim Jones and The People's Temple - for some reason, somebody's trying to feed us a line, here, again. Why do they keep doing that?

I don't know who all is in on it, or probably what's-what, even - no name on it like "Lee Daniels' 'The Butler'" - all I know, for sure, is this much:

Slant opens with "new-age-y" and that's good enough for me,...

This Might Be How The Whole "I'm Ghost" Thing Started

It begins like we're into your typical witch or werewolf story:

"Within the Anthroposophical Society, I was a member of the School of Spiritual Science — that is to say, I was included in the special category of Anthroposophists having access to higher occult truths that are withheld from regular members of the Anthroposophical Society. I participated in esoteric lessons, which is to say I participated in the secret cult of the School of Spiritual Science. This cult also held meetings even within the school premises of Steiner Verrières-le-Buisson.

Today, with hindsight, it is clear to me that what led me to become an active and prominent member of this sectarian organization began with my enrollment in a Waldorf school at the age of nine years. The rest of my course in life was only the logical result of the indoctrination I had been subjected to.

I. An Insidious Indoctrination

1. Hiding Anthroposophy in the Subjects Taught

Based on my experience as a former student, a teacher at my old school, and an Anthroposophist, I would like to describe the subtlety of indoctrination that students in Waldorf schools are subjected to. In fact, its chief characteristic is its nonidentifiable form,..."

Oooh - See the problem?

If only the "chief characteristic" coulda been it's obvious educational abilities and attributes:

Mighta beena winna for the GZA or the RZA to promote.

As it stands, tonight, I'm gonna go howl hippie anthems at the Moon:

"So close - so close, and yet so faaaar,..."

I Was "Nigger Rich" (As My White Friends Like To Say)

I had just driven cross-country - to two separate locations - recovering my recording equipment, only to get injured and now find myself mostly staring at it. So, to say I've wondered about this a lot lately, is an understatement:

"Past research has often blamed [poverty] on the personal failings of the poor. They don’t work hard enough; they’re not focused enough. What we’re arguing is it’s not about the individual. It’s about the situation."

In other words, I could barely "win" for losing. Sure, I got my stuff, but since I had nothing for a "rainy day," when it poured - an ulcer followed by two separate bulging disk incidents - I got soaked. How much effort, or talent, I was putting into making my project happen (and I was already giving it everything) didn't matter, when my first prescription (of three) was $800.00 out of pocket. And I couldn't work?

Do the math.

I put my first piece of recording equipment up for sale today.

That IS "the situation."

And yeah, conservative or not, I can't help but wonder if my party's given it any serious thought,...

Friday, August 30, 2013

THE CHOIR: New Online Black Religious Comedy Series

It's got to become a hit:

No one has had so much material to work with,...

Dave Chappelle Is Obviously "Racially Vulnerable" And His Fans Are Obviously (And Actively) Driving Him Nuts

This is cruel.

Sorry but, other than Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, I don't hear about a lot of comics dealing with this and the man is too important to let it slide:

“I'm watching Dave Chappelle quit stand up,” tweeted Lesli-Ann Lewis. “He's tired of White people treating him like he should shuck and jive.” Writing for Ebony, she expanded upon her use of that historically loaded phrase:

Being in that crowd, a sea of drunk White male faces and seeing Chappelle sit there and be jeered at made me uncomfortable. Heckling isn’t uncommon for comedians but often when a comedian as famous as Chappelle puts their foot down, it is usually respected.

While the racial makeup of the crowd was incidental, the way they treated Chappelle is not. It speaks to a long complicated history: the relationship between the White audience and the Black entertainer. This is a relationship you can easily trace to early minstrel shows, to archetypes of Blacks that still define the roles we’re offered today.

One of the reasons Chappelle abandoned his sketch comedy series at its peak of popularity was that he grew uncomfortable with the response to his racially charged humor from white audiences. During the taping of an ill-fated sketch in which he donned blackface as a “black-pixie” who prodded black people to perform as stereotypes, Chappelle noticed that one white male audience member seemed to find it a little too funny. “When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable,” he said. “As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take fucking time out after this. Because my head almost exploded.” Lewis’ reading of last night’s performance seems plausible given this history.

Why was the crowd so rowdy to begin with? Splitsider reports that fans were yelling well-known catchphrases from Chappelle’s Show “right off the bat,” and that it went downhill from there. (By most accounts, there was plenty of alcohol flowing as well.) Chappelle did a riff about Damon Wayans performing stand-up to a crowd that only wanted to see him do Homey the Clown—one of his signature characters from In Living Color—an apparent analogue to his own experience onstage last night.

I'm not too concerned for Chappelle - he's married, with a child, and has a good head on his shoulders - but he might need to re-think his relationship with America from here-on-out:

He's no longer the *blind* KKK leader they thought he was,...