Tag: woke cancel culture mob

Forget Pete Davidson, When is Taylor Swift Dating Cara Delevingne?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m enjoying some whiskey this quiet Sunday evening and so, lulz, I find my inebriated mind pondering the question of the ages: so, is Tay-Tay going to date Cara Delevingne now?

The thing about Tay-Tay is she is the exact center of modern white heteronormative pop culture. An entire generation of (white) (liberal) women have projected all their hopes, dreams and aspirations onto Tay-Tay to a ridiculous degree.

As such, there is a lot to unpack about what Tay-Tay might do next with her romantic life. I’m fond of Tay-Tay because from her lyrics — she’s obviously sex-positive and loves to drink — just like me! So, obviously, she’s just another human being like all of us.

So, all things equal, she should be allowed to go through a “slut era” like Emrata. But, alas, because of all those liberal white women feeling broody it may be that Tay-Tay just doesn’t feel she can go around banging a series of high profile men like Emrata.

If she did something which would be perfectly understandable, the Wall Street Journal (or The New Yorker) would be writing long tirades about how the woke cancel culture mob and feminism is turning even Tay-Tay into a slut. What does it all mean? The headlines would scream if Tay-Tay was seen conspicuously bouncing from man to man for a few months.

But, wait, it gets worse.

If Tay-Tay decide to make her long-rumored “queer” side official, the amount of verbiage written by “thinkers” in the mass media would be astonishing. It is very easy for center-Right people to assume Tay-Tay is one of them because of, well, the way she looks. This is true to the point that Tay-Tay has to go way, way, way out of her way to MAGA fascists they have it all wrong.

So, but for how MAGA fascists would freak the fuck out, I could totally see Tay-Tay dating someone like Cara Delevingne. I think it would be sweet and fun if she did, and given how many songs St. Vincent wrote about Delevingne, maybe we might get some music out of the whole thing. And, what’s more the two women are already pretty close — Delevingne was a member of Tay-Tay’s “squad” back in the day.

I still don’t know what might — or might not — have happened between Tay-Tay and Karli Koss. There was a moment there when it definitely SEEMED like they were fucking. But at the same time, whatever they were doing, they did in a way that gave them the plausible deniability of just being “good friends.”

And, remember, the idea of a same-sex relationship between two women being something to even notice is a construct of we Poors. Within the elite worlds of fashion and Hollywood to even raise an eyebrow about two women dating is considered extremely gouache and low class.

Anyway, the point is — while it would be cool and all if Tay-Tay went a little nuts and bed hopped with both men and women, I suspect that’s just not going to happen. The poor woman can’t even get married and drop a few kids without it being THE CENTER OF DEBATE on editorial pages across the world.

Anyway. Thankfully, no one cares what I think.

Jesus Christ, Do I Hate Orthodoxy Of Any Kind

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about the forces tearing America apart at the moment is how convoluted and easily conflated all of it can be. Unlikely what was going on in the late 1850s, the centrifugal forces tearing America apart today are far more muddled.

Now, let me be clear — as long as everyone is of age and it’s consensual, I don’t care what you do with your body. What bothers me about the Trans movement is not that people are Trans, but, rather the secondary issues associated with the Leftist media narrative on the subject.

Either you embrace the most extreme possible take on the Trans movement, or you risk having your life destroyed by the “woke cancel culture mob.” I try to be as open minded and empathetic as possible on this issue, but even I find the conspicuous embrace of Trans “influencers” by beer companies….odd? Why poke the bear of all those Traditionalist beer drinkers if you don’t have to? What purpose does it serve to add another rhetorical bow in the quiver of bonkers MAGA people who want Trantionalists to embrace their fascism?

As an aside, some of the Trans “influencers” have an eerie nature to them that seems like the gender equivalent of the Uncanny Valley. Something about their appearance just seems a bit…off. This is just a few of them. I’ve seen some Trans women who are so natural looking that I wouldn’t know they weren’t born women unless you specifically told me.

Anyway. Whatever. Again, the issue isn’t Trans people, it’s the meta elements of the orthodoxy associated with the movement. I just want to live in a functioning liberal democracy and if you push conservative Traditionalists into the arms of MAGA fascists, my God have mercy on all our souls.

The Looming Crisis: Everything Is So Conflated in Modern American Political Debate

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The issue when it comes to modern American political debate is it’s almost like we’ve given up. All the conditions are there for autocracy or civil war and it literally could break either way at this point. I say this because the two sides of Red and Blue are receding from each other at an astonishing rate.

Either we turn into a MAGA themed autocracy or we have a secession crisis in late 2024, early 2025 because one side or the other gives up and decides they can no longer being in the same nation with a political worldview that they hate.

Take, for instance, the Great Gay Scare that we are currently living through. Everything so fucking conflated. First, let me be clear — I generally support Trans rights and generally don’t care what someone does with their body as long as everyone involved is of age and it’s consensual.

And, yet, as I keep saying the Trans is doing itself no favors by being so overwrought and touchy. There are some very well-meaning, God-fearing people who believe just being gay is a “sin” and they are aghast at there are people who have to pause for 10 minutes before they can answer, “What is a woman?” These very sincere people can’t be blamed if they have begun to think that Trans people are some sort of “protected class” and the “woke” narrative about Trans people can never been questioned. Throw in the wedge issue of Trans kids and….Jesus Christ.

The issue is — if we were a functioning democracy, there would be some give and take between Red and Blue to the point that gradually there would be some consensus as to what to do with the Trans movement and then we would move on to the next pressing issue.

But because of the “Gay Scare” on the Right and the total fucking freak out about when it comes the established Trans orthodoxy on the “woke” Left the whole thing is totally fucked up. The controversy over the Trans issue is yet another corrosive element in our politics which is drive the two sides away from each other and making the United States increasingly unstable on a political basis.

I’m always wrong, and, yet just doing a back-of-the-envelope projection out to late 2024, early 2025 and definitely seem as though we’re either going to collapse into civil war or we’re going to become a MAGA-themed autocracy.

Day 4: Dark & Spicy

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Editor: You have to forgive me, I’m in something of a bad mood.

While I am trying to follow in pop literary footsteps of Stieg Larsson, he had a tendency to write far, far darker than I am inclined to do. And, yet, there is something to be said for being…provocative…in the name of keeping the audience interested and stimulated.

But anytime you start getting into going dark (and spicy) you bump up against the woke cancel culture mob’s rage over denying your female characters “agency.” My response to this is, ok, I get it, and yet, it’s that very lack of agency that keeps people reading because your natural inclination is when something bad happens — especially to a woman — that you feel for them and want to know what happens next.

I suppose only transgender women can write from a female point of view as a (born) male, so, lulz, just by writing ANYTHING from a female point of view as a man is enough to enraged the woke cancel culture mob. As such, I know my vision for this story and that’s what I’m going to, come what may.

I say all of this because the second chapter is going to get dark and spicy. Our heroine goes on a bender because she fears she’s failed in her objective for the first part of the story and, as such, she engages in some self-destructive behavior. She is “saved” by the male romantic lead, so, I suppose she doesn’t have “agency” and I should just give up and stare at the ceiling with the lights off until I decide to become transgender. (Wink.)

Needless to say — fuck that.

I have a really good story on my hands and to tell the story I want to tell, I’m going to have to bend the “your heroine absolutely must always have agency” law that the woke cancel culture mob seems to believe writers have to follow when they’re not plastering their works with “trigger warnings.”

Anyway, I have written the scene summaries for all of the scenes in Chapter 2 that I haven’t written out yet. So, all I have to do now is get wasted, fire up Spotify and get to writing. Writing dark spicy scenes are a real challenge for me because I hate conflict and I’m not thrilled with the idea of putting my characters through hell, but that’s what you have to do tell a great story. Put your characters up a tree then throw rocks at them.

So, that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m either going to write these dark and spicy scenes tonight or sometime early tomorrow morning. I’ve come up with a really interesting series of events that I feel will both engage readers and be provocative enough that they might actually want to finish the Goddamn novel instead of ghosting me when I give the finished second draft to them for the Beta Reader process.

Three Intractable Issues Tearing America Apart

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

If I was normal and had, like, a career and shit, I would write a tome about these three issues facing America and how we might solve them. But, alas, I’m just a drunk crank working on my first novel, so you get a few hundred words in a blog post.

Guns
The two sides are growing more and more hardened on this issue. There is just no wiggle room. By definition, either you essentially want no gun control or you want sensible gun control that will never happen. The two sides are receding from each other at an alarming rate that I agree with #NeverTrumper David French that it’s easy to imagine a scenario where a huge mass killing in a Blue State might be, unto itself, enough to spark a civil war.

Abortion
Of the three issues I’m going to address, abortion is the one that is, at its heart, economic and, as such, might start a civil war. Abortion requires a subtle, nuanced policy and….well, that’s never going to happen. As such, it could be that the first ping from a civil war will be when all Red States totally bad abortion, while all Blue states keep it legal — then SCOTUS upholds a national abortion ban…then comes after birth control, even for married people.

Trans
It’s not so much the Trans movement itself that is of concern as it is the absolute illiberal groupthink that liberal-progressives have surrounding the issue. I generally support Trans rights, but I also know of people in my personal life who are being driven into the arms of fascism because they don’t believe in anyone being Transgender for religious reasons and this causes the “woke cancel culture mob” to freak the fuck out. If our politics was working at all, there would be a gradual move towards some sort of middle ground on the subject that didn’t involve alienating everyone possible in either political direction.

The Illiberal Left Is Real & A Real Fucking Problem

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. I was dumb and waded into the Trans movement issue on Tik-Tok and now I have people doing heated video stiches to a post I felt was rather equatable. The Left’s Trans orthodox is so absolute, so inflexible that I really worry about our future.

I’m generally supportive of Trans rights and that isn’t really the issue.

What IS the issue is how the Left has such an absolute fixed orthodoxy on the issue that a lot of Traditionalists who are coming at the situation in good faith are being driven into the arms of fucking MAGA Nazi fascists because of the Left’s freak out.

This is a real possibility, if my conversations with my Traditionalists relatives are any indication. Our small-d democratic politics collapses if one side wants to destroy or “cancel” you if you don’t tow their orthodoxy. I hate orthodoxy of any sort and so the idea that even by trying to approach the Trans issue as a pluralist will get me in trouble is really fucking annoying.

Now, something I think a lot about is contrasting and comparing the Trans movement with the African American civil rights movement. I freely admit that some of the arguments that are used against Trans people have, in the past, been used against African Americans demanding more rights.

And yet.

There is the moral element. For your typical Christian conservative, the very idea of being gay is really loaded — a sin, even — so to take this to the next level where you struggle to answer the question of “What is a woman” is a bit much for them.

We can’t just destroy Christian Traditionalists for thinking this way. Even at the height of the Civil Rights Era, there was a certain amount of give and take on what was going on.

It serves no one in a functioning democracy if you are so absolute in your orthodoxy on a subject that people who disagree with you have a credible fear of being publicly shamed.

So, to be clear — I generally support Trans rights. I just think maybe Trans right advocates could be a LITTLE BIT more flexible in their ideology.

Of ‘Wokeness:’ A Tale Of Two Dresses

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It occured to me, if you want to know what “woke” means, the following situation pretty much sums it up. On one hand, we have Emily Ratajkowski wearing a sheer — but tasteful — dress to the Vanity Fair Oscar after party and getting a lot of hate for it. Meanwhile, trans icon Hunter Schafer wears what what is demonstrably a more provocative dress to the same event and she’s heaped with praise.

Now, to me, what happened is Emrata suffered at the hands of Internet misogyny culture while Schafer’s fan base is so ecstatic that she’s living her best life as a woman that she gets praise.

Or something like that.

There has been something of a kerfuffle over some Right-wing “thought leader” not being able to give a cogent explanation of what being “woke” is on a TV show. Obviously, being “woke” at this point pretty much means “whatever goes against the MAGA fascist agenda.”

But upon giving it some thought, here is what the woman came up with later, after the show.

Looking closely at this new explanation she gave, it looks like total bullshit to me. If I was forced to give a non-silly, non-partisan definition of being “woke” I would use terms “systemic racism” and “transgender rights” in it somewhere.

Let me be absolutely clear — I generally support transgender rights. What I *DON’T* support is when the “woke cancel culture mob” freaks the fuck out about people like Dave Chappelle simply expressing their disagreement with the ideological conventions of the Trans movement.

I say this because, you can yell at me all you like about how Trans people are dying and, as such, we have to protect them to the point that even free speech is limited — but you’re missing something very important by saying that.

And that is the touchiness of the Trans movement is driving Traditionalists into the arms of MAGA Nazi fascists who if they ever gain the presidency again will definitely give the Trans movement something to cry about. Or we have a civil war and then everyone — Trans people included — will have a lot more problems on their hands than a Dave Chappelle joke.

Anyway, this is an intractable problem that is, again, probably going to only be solved with the “woke” era ends because we have a civil war or turn into an autocracy.

Woke Hollywood Is Sexless Hollywood

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the reasons why I’m so pleased with the appearance of the movie No Hard Feelings is it’s a saucy, spicy “hard comedy” like I remember back in the 1980s. With the rise of Hollywood’s bifurcation into Woke and Comic Book genre movies all the sauciness has been drained from the movie going experience.

I fucking hate this woke test.

It’s all very strange.

Most people explain it this way: with the rise of abundant online porn, the #MeToo moment and “intimacy co-ordinators” Hollywood has just given up on giving adults the type of entertainment they once had.

I definitely believe there is credence to this idea, just like there is credence to the idea that all the angry young men who might otherwise start a punk or rock band now are keyboard warriors on Reddit.

And, yet, the case could be made that if we go from the success of Cocaine Bear to an equally successful No Hard Feelings that all the quibbles that Hollywood has had about saucy, raunchy hard comedies will fade away.

Hollywood as it should be. Wink.

But the thing I’m worried about is sexless the “woke cancel culture mob” is when it comes to entertainment. Gen Z apparently wants everyone to be “realistic” (read: unattractive) in their media and they also totally “over” any sort of sexxy time in entertainment for some strange reason.

So, we have no sex and we have no rock and the only thing we have left is drugs.

It’s all very curious. But there is a market for adult-oriented, saucy entertainment like The Wolf of Wall Street, The Wedding Crashers and The Hangover.

So, there is a possibility that if No Hard Feelings is a hit that Jennifer Lawrence will join Tom Cruise as someone who “saved Hollywood’s ass.” I do wonder how much the pandemic is responsible for this New Era in Hollywood in the sense that it scared the ever living shit out of movie studio executives to the point that they decided to go back to basics.

If ‘No Hard Feelings’ Is A Hit After The Success of ‘Cocaine Bear’…Movies Are Back, Baby!

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

For what feels like an eternity, Hollywood movies have been bifurcated into two types of genres — woke and comic book. It’s still too soon to tell, but with the success of Cocaine Bear and the coming No Hard Feelings it seems as though it’s at least POSSIBLE that movies are back!

Double Dees, Double Deeze!

There is a lot to unpack.

One is, despite the rise of Netflix and Chill young people still need a socially acceptable reason to get out of the house and spend a few hours in the dark with a girl or boy that they like.

Also, movies are the background buzz of culture. Sometimes, a movie is just a movie and you go see it and don’t really think about the finer points of Critical Race Theory while you do.

And, in real terms, it’s be a very, very long term since we had raunchy hard comedies like Wedding Crashers and The Hangover in theatres. The premise of No Hard Feelings is enough to make any woke person clutch their pearls for a number of reasons.

I generally support the ideals of being “woke” but sometimes audiences just want to let off some steam watching a smoking hot chick try to seduce a 19 year old for a car.

It’s dumb and spicy and just the type of movie that was the cornerstone of the film going experience for generations until the fucking woke people began to believe there was something innately wrong about heteronormative monoculture.

Ugh.

The case could be made that the pandemic scared the shit out of Hollywood and, as such, they decided to go back to basics. Give people a movie about a bear on cocaine. Give people a movie staring a hot A-list actress trying to bang a 19 year old.

It will be interesting to see what the people on Tik-Tok think about this movie. I think, in a sense, they will make or break the movie.

My Latest Attempt To Explain The Battle Royale Over ‘Wokeness’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok. Here goes. I think, at its heart, “wokeness” is really about white Christians flipping out that America is careening towards a majority minority nation and, as such, “wokeness” is a debate about that transition.

As such, the white Christian “powers that be” scream about “wokeness” as an effort to rally other white (angry) Christian (men) in an effort to establish permanent white Christian minority rule. It’s a dog whistle for their broader fears about not being in the majority anymore.

So, ANYTHING they don’t like is considered “woke” because they need some sort of catch-all for the bad vibes that white Christians feel as a majority of the country becomes brown, secular and feminist.

That’s all I got, at least.