I always thought the Greatest Generation stuff was overstated until the last five years when I noticed we can’t even get Nazis off twitter and facebook.
I Am Very Worried About This
Children are being awakened in the middle of the night so that they can be moved with minimum public notice to a concentration camp near Tornillo, Texas. They have no school and minimal access to legal aid. Although this latest article has no overall numbers, what I have seen is in the range of 13,000, spread across who knows how many “shelters.”
It’s pretty clear that the administration has no plans for dealing with these children, only an intention to make people who try to cross the border miserable. Accommodations have been ad hoc from the start.
What happens as more children are collected and those in custody stay there? This is a large number of people to take care of. They are emotionally traumatized. They are not receiving schooling. There will be sexual and other assaults.
What happens as there is no provision to get them back to family? What happens as the numbers grow?
There are two relatively recent historical answers to the questions. During World War II, between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese were extracted from their homes and made to live in camps in the interior of the country. Most of them made it back to something like normal lives, although many lost most of their property. The children were interned with their families.
The other historical example does not end even that well.
Sing It, Piano Man
This part of the Vulture Billy Joel interview was pretty fire:
Wearing the Star of David wasn’t about politics. To me, what happened in Charlottesville was like war. When Trump said there were good people on both sides — there are no good Nazis. There are no good Ku Klux Klan people. Don’t equivocate that shit. I think about my old man:Most of his family was murdered in Auschwitz.The story of the Joel family’s experience with Nazi Germany is told in full in the 2001 German documentary The Joel Files. He was able to get out but then got drafted and went in the U.S. Army. He risked his life in Europe to defeat Nazism. A lot of men from his generation did the same thing. So when those guys see punks walking around with swastikas, how do they keep from taking a baseball bat and bashing those crypto-Nazis over the head? Those creeps are going to march through the streets of my country? Uh-uh. I was personally offended. That’s why I wore that yellow star. I had to do something, and I didn’t think speaking about it was going to be as impactful.
The whole interview is interesting because he discusses the people who hate them and he seems pretty grounded and at peace with things. Sounds like an interesting guy, actually.
Today in Your Failed Corporate Media
CNN, circa 1943: “Germans Divided on Use of Gas Chambers: Opponents claim it is monstrous, proponents say ‘Hitler just following laws created by Hindenberg'”
Roseanne Barr Dressed As Hitler Baking Burnt Jew Cookies – I Did NAZI That Coming: So Much For That Roseanne Reboot!
Well that should just about do it for the Roseanne reboot! I can’t imagine ABC’s parent company Disney is going to be too thrilled that these pictures have resurfaced.
1. This is so horrible, I have trouble believing it is real. Everything I find says it is. @therealroseanne: If u did this, one of your "cookies" can represent my great-aunt. She was stripped naked, sent to a gas chamber and burned. @RoseanneOnABC: If this is real, get canceled.. pic.twitter.com/MLXOXFUtxQ
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) March 29, 2018
Apparently these have been bouncing around since 2009! From Jewish Journal:
Not too many people are laughing at Roseanne Barr’s portrayal of Hitler on the cover of Heeb magazine this month. Yet there she is: a real-life Jewish grandmother dressed as a “Nazi domestic goddess.” She even figured in the trademark Hitler mustache and swastika armband, and bakes a batch of “burnt Jew cookies,” you know, for emphasis. Extra TV did a segment on the cover last week calling it “not funny” and shaming the controversial choice. But Heeb publisher Josh Neuman defended it, saying the cover was meant as “satire” and not done for “shock value.”
OK, you mean to tell me putting a Jewish woman on the cover of a Jewish magazine costumed as the man who burnt Jews in ovens (while she burns things in ovens) has no shock value? Since we’re being a wee bit insensitive to the remaining Holocaust survivors and their children, let’s at least call a spade a spade here, folks.
But if you’re mad, don’t blame Heeb. It was Roseanne who wanted to be photographed as Hitler. According to the magazine, she has a theory “that she may in fact be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler,” and thus requested to create a kind of Jewish Halloween nightmare in order to make a personal statement. Writer Oliver Noble accompanied Roseanne at the photo shoot and wrote about the strange atmosphere on set:
Noble wisely decided to go with the flow. He writes that he greeted Roseanne with a “Sieg Heil,” in honor of the shoot.
As the “Domestic Goddess” dons the famous moustache, transforming into “Domestic Goddess Hitler,” I notice that she’s beginning to have fun. She nails the Fuehrer’s facial expressions with twisted glee, and as she takes the burnt gingerbread “Jew Cookies” out of the oven it occurs to me that Barr may be the last celebrity utterly incapable of giving a fuck.
I’ve got a very dark and morbid sense of humor. And I don’t get all wrapped around the axle about things being tasteful or tasteless – to each their own. I’m all for ridiculing Hitler and the actual NAZIs, but that’s not what this is.Even with the context they’re still disgusting! I’ve got nothing…
Stay frosty!
Open thread.
Unilever Threatens Boycott of Facebook and Google
I find this encouraging. I have curtailed my Facebook and Twitter interactions dramatically since the election, but I’m not naive, these services are not going away anytime soon. They are fun, keep you in touch with family and friends, can assist in a revolution, and let you interact with politicians, businesses and celebrities – but at the moment their dark side is pretty damn dark.
Unilever has threatened to boycott Facebook and Google if the tech giants fail to efficiently police extremist and illegal content.
“We need to redefine what is responsible business in the digital age because for all of the good the tech companies are doing, there’s some unintended consequences that now need addressing,” Keith Weed, chief marketing officer at Unilever, said Monday.
In a speech delivered at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting in Palm Desert, California, Weed said tech companies were to blame for creating a “swamp” in which fake news and criminal content were being circulated.
Unilever, which makes Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Dove soap, said the tech space needed to review transparency measures and improve consumer trust in an era of illegal content.
The whole thing is worth a read.
Roger McNamee seems to be a controversial subject lately, but I saw an interview with him and that lead me to read this article at the Washington Post.
I don’t know if any of this will make a difference, but the more light shined on extremist groups and bots on these platforms, the less likely they’ll be able to continue to ignore them.
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Yes: You’re Crazy. What? You Want A Second Opinion? OK. You’re Ugly Too*
*Old shrink joke that applies with a depressingly tight fit to Trump’s Republican Party.
Update: I just noticed I bigfooted Anne Laurie below. Ordinarily, I’d delete this and reschedule it. But my reschedule function has been verklempt lately so I don’t trust that, and I’m about to pass out, so I’ll leave this here on the assumption that the jackals can multitask.
———————
So here’s the thing. I heard that the Trump-Pence folks were fundraising w. a push poll on immigration.
I decided to respond, as below:
- is an astonishingly stupid idea that both won’t work and apes the worst of our adversaries in the Cold War. It’s unAmerican, and idiocy to boot.
A truly responsible immigration bill is one that does not begin from a premise of ethnic cleansing. Hatred of folks who talk funny and don’t look like you is no way to go through life.
I’m not going to suggest that any jackals should swamp such a poll — and in fact, it’s pointless to do for this one, as it’s just another iteration of crappy digital age fundraising. But if you want to tell some of the worst people on earthy how shitty they are, here’s the link.
File this one under completely futile gestures that are still, somehow satisfying.
And, more seriously, if anyone doubted that the Republicans are going all in as the party of ethnic cleansing, doubt no more.
This thread? It is open.
Image: Pigsty and Latrines, earthenware, probably Henan Province, Han Dynasty, between 1st c. BCE. and 1st c. CE.
Yes: You’re Crazy. What? You Want A Second Opinion? OK. You’re Ugly Too*Post + Comments (99)