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American Politics Thread

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A Wild Luxray said:
They cancelled former NFL star Colin Kapernick over his national anthem protests, and I'm sorry, but I never wanna hear another Republican bitch about that and boast about how patriotic they are after January 6th and seeing the American flag being used to smash open the windows of the US Capitol in a violent coup attempt, which I find far more offensive than I found watching a man peacefully kneeling during the National Anthem in protest of police brutality.
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Speaking of which, Tennessee GOP lawmakers urge universities to restrict protests during anthem after ETSU uproar
 
Every time I see Marjorie Taylor Greene trending, I just know its gonna be bad. Surely enough, it makes me hate her even more. She is an outright horrid bitch and she has no right to be in congress. She DELIBERATLEY goes out of her way to piss off people and I think its just one of the things that makes her worse than she already is.

For context, Congresswoman Marie Newman has a daughter who is transgendered, and Congresswoman Newman was in support of the Equality Act that Congress just passed. Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to show how transphobic she is by quote retweeting her post about her daughter, saying you mean your son, and then proceeding to use the transphobic excuse about the whole bathroom issue. To make things worse, Marie Newman put up a trans pride flag and in response, Marjorie Taylor Green put up an anti trans sign outside her office to deliberately piss off people.

She's only been in congress a month and I already hate her more than Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Devin Nunes, Lauren Boebert, and Mitch McConnell. She is an outright evil QAnon bitch and she has no right to even be in congress.
 
My favorite part is the "trust the science" part on her shitty banner. Like, it was already an awful argument when there's actually science showing transitioning is better for trans people, but someone who believes in QAnon and a dozen other conspiracies is telling people to trust science? Just fuck off already lmao.
 
More of the Republican Party's hypocrisy when it comes to "cancel culture"


View: https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1367470576256897031


Here we see one Republican bitching about Mr. Potato Head's branding change, acting as if the toy was "cancelled". Here he is complaining about Dr. Seuss being "cancelled", despite them not ending publication of the book he mentions. Only the ones with truly racist imagery. Yet here is the same person calling for a boycott of Target because they mandated masks. There's no end to their hypocrisy over "cancel culture".
 
Okay, as an outsider, please explain to me the whole Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss situations? I can kinda understand the second one since that's something he regretted IIRC, but not the first one
 
prog rocker said:
Okay, as an outsider, please explain to me the whole Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss situations? I can kinda understand the second one since that's something he regretted IIRC, but not the first one
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I'm pretty sure they just took out the "Mr." in potato head. And they are going to stop publishing some Suess books for being racist and other offensive stuff people don't want their kids to learn
 
prog rocker said:
Okay, as an outsider, please explain to me the whole Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss situations? I can kinda understand the second one since that's something he regretted IIRC, but not the first one
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Basically, Hasbro is dropping the Mr. from the official branding of Mr. Potato Head because they think it would allow for a more inclusive brand, though they have made it certain there is still a Mr. Potato Head.

With Dr. Seuss, some of his old books had some rather racist imagery and they decided to end publication of the books that had them, which was like 6 books I think, though it didn't include his more famous works such as The Cat In The Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, or The Lorax.

In the minds of Republicans, it means they're "cancelled". I seriously get so tired of all the "Grrrrr damn liberals at it again! Liberalism is a disease." because of events such as these.
 
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I know I’m showing my age here, but does anyone else remember when Republicans canceled French fries? Because that’s something they should never be allowed to forget.
 
prog rocker said:
Okay, as an outsider, please explain to me the whole Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss situations? I can kinda understand the second one since that's something he regretted IIRC, but not the first one
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Skywaffles and Luxray already summed it up but I want to go into a little more detail just because of how wild it is.

Hasbro did not change the name of the character Mr. Potato Head. They changed the brand name of this line of toys. I think there's some mention of it being a goal to be more inclusive on their twitter, but really to me it just seems like a logical technicality. Mr. and Mrs. Potato head are from the Potato Head line of toys, instead of being from the Mr. Potato Head line of toys. I probably would have just called it the Potato Head brand, had it ever come up in conversation.

With the Dr. Seuss stuff, it's pretty much like you said- Dr. Seuss used to hold disparaging views of specific races, and some of that did end up being present in his books, with some caricatures of Asian men and African men. So the Seuss Estate, the group that handles licensing of his work, deciding to stop publishing six of his books, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer.(Mind you, that's not even 10% of Seuss' work, he published over 60 books) You can see the statement here. The books aren't banned or taken out of libraries or anything, the estate just isn't publishing new ones. Personally, I think it would have been better to have someone make new lines and illustrations, but at the same time, the estate's goal is to preserve Seuss' work, so I can get why they wouldn't want to have someone new edit.

I think this also got some more legs because the Biden administration had a message about Reading Across America, and it didn't mention Seuss like past administrations did, but honestly, I think there'd still be this much talk about it even if they had.

What's so fascinating to me about both situations is that neither of these are actions based on any kind of activist pressure or government mandate. They're just done by Hasbro and the Dr. Seuss estate making a change to the properties they own. But they keep talking about how "they" want to "cancel" these things, or even outright ban/take them, because they add it to this strawman political opponent they've made. It's not just this rando congressional candidate, either. Ted Cruz even brought it up at the Conservative Political Action Committee, as if a) this is something that could be handled with political action, and b) as if a Texas senator doesn't have more important issues to talk about as Texas deals with its power outages and weather during a pandemic. Fox has articles saying stuff like "Psaki won’t say why Dr. Seuss was dropped from Biden reading proclamation" and ran several segments about it.

Oh, on the subject, the Muppets was another one getting this treatment. Disney+ included a warning on a few episodes of the Muppets that they "include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures," which played before certain episodes that used racial stereotypes. (These articles go into some more detail on some examples) None of them got taken off the air, save for one episode that had legal troubles with music rights and another episode that was hosted by a man later arrested for downloading child porn. But this was important enough for Fox to talk to a US senator about it.
swiftfox said:
I know I’m showing my age here, but does anyone else remember when Republicans canceled French fries? Because that’s something they should never be allowed to forget.
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DASFDGS I'D NEVER HEARD OF IT BEFORE BUT I JUST LOOKED IT UP THAT'S SO FUNNY
 
It's pretty telling that they're labeling the changed branding of (Mr.) Potato Head as "cancel culture". Do you know why? Because absolutely nothing has been "cancelled" in terms of the toy. Nothing at all. The toy is still being produced and being sold, and to the very same audience as before. No warning labels, no nothing. All they did was remove "Mr." from the general branding.

If you ever thought "cancel culture" had any kind of logic, well, just take a look at this. Whatever it meant before, it now means "brand did something that conservatives didn't like". In fact, there are probably conservatives that will refuse to buy this product for their children now because of this minor branding change, and that... is... well... "cancelling" it. But of course, when the conservatives do it, it's all fine and dandy.
 
TechSkylander1518 said:
Oh, on the subject, the Muppets was another one getting this treatment. Disney+ included a warning on a few episodes of the Muppets that they "include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures," which played before certain episodes that used racial stereotypes. (These articles go into some more detail on some examples) None of them got taken off the air, save for one episode that had legal troubles with music rights and another episode that was hosted by a man later arrested for downloading child porn. But this was important enough for Fox to talk to a US senator about it.
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This reminds me how they did something similar when it came to old Disney movies such as Dumbo and Peter Pan. They did put disclaimers up due to racist depictions and other negative stereotypes. They didn't pull the movies or erase them from existence.
Aulos said:
If you ever thought "cancel culture" had any kind of logic, well, just take a look at this. Whatever it meant before, it now means "brand did something that conservatives didn't like". In fact, there are probably conservatives that will refuse to buy this product for their children now because of this minor branding change, and that... is... well... "cancelling" it. But of course, when the conservatives do it, it's all fine and dandy.
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This is essentially how it feels. Any time a brand changes something they don’t like, they cry "cancel culture". It feels at times like conservatives can't accept the fact that society is changing, as in its no longer tolerant of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ect like many of them are.
 
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A Wild Luxray said:
More of the Republican Party's hypocrisy when it comes to "cancel culture".
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Also they have a tendency to have a rose tinted look at past entertainment suggesting that politics had never been present or heavy handed until now.

Looking at superhero fare for example let me show how wrong that is:

1. Cover to Captain America Comics #1 in 1939 showing the hero in a flag costume punching the head of Nazis (Hitler). And no compromises on the evil of Nazis as they are treated as the worst.

Heck a Batman/Captain America crossover from the 90s had The Joker showing distaste for working with a Nazi like the Red Skull, an 89/90 crossover from Marvel showed Magneto (a Holocaust survivor) having a grudge against The Red Skull as well.

2. Radio show from the 50s where Superman fought the Ku Klux Klan.

3. Silver Surfer #5 from 69 had a man named Al Harper who's black trying to help the title character. When asked why he'd help someone like him, Harper mentions knowing what it's like to get pushed around. Yep acknowledgement of racism.

4. Many people take issue with the Netflix She-Ra for being a shameless cash in on the original 80s cartoon and forcing in representation.

First off the original was more like the majority of 80s animation not being that good (fun mind you).

Also it made more of an attempt to have more girls/women in the cast. Plus Erika Scheimer (original She-Ra cast member daughter of one of Filmation's founders Lou Scheimer) came out in the 2000s and mentioned Filmation being the gayest place in town. So yeah the gay overtones that both OG She-Ra and He-Man were known for was intentional:-D.


I think the best way to sum it up is Linkara's voicing of Superboy-Prime while saying "Everything was better on my Earth".
 
TechSkylander1518 said:
six of his books, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer.(Mind you, that's not even 10% of Seuss' work, he published over 60 books)
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I've literally never heard of any of these ones and I doubt most of the people who are mad about it have either lmao
 
Antiyonder said:
1. Cover to Captain America Comics #1 in 1939 showing the hero in a flag costume punching the head of Nazis (Hitler). And no compromises on the evil of Nazis as they are treated as the worst.
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Don't forget the fathomless war propaganda toons produced by all animation companies at the time. Slogans like "slap a Jap" were commonplace at the time.
 
RileyXY1 said:
And Alabama voted to make it a felony to provide hormone treatments to trans youth.
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(I don't know why I chose that reaction, I'm not shocked. This forum needs a sad reaction.)

How frustrating. Transgender children already have to go through so many hoops to even get the chance of taking hormone blockers. Hormone blockers temporarily block their birth sex's puberty. When a child gets older after they've had more years to determine whether or not they are transgender, then they can choose to either go to hormones or go back to their birth puberty if they realized that they're not trans.

But of course, the conservative disinformation campaign is in full play. Very frustrating. All this does is harm transgender childrens' mental health and safety.
 
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