EMMYdiocracy
Mediocracy is a situation which can occur in a democracy in which mediocre people prevail. The society is then subordinated to a quasi-egalitarian ideology in which words and ideas are redefined by mediocre people, to be convenient for mediocre people. Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a frequent critic of mediocracy in contemporary Western countries. || This where the tag cloud goes if the tag cloud loads:
Oops: Conservative group photoshops out minorities in mailer opposing pro-voting legislation.
(via paxamericana)
From Tim Keown’s excellent profile of Sergio Romo:
PUNK. THE WORD still haunts him. He saw it in the faces of the cops in Arizona who pulled him over “a handful of times” as he drove his new BMW back and forth from his home to spring training in 2012. Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the controversial immigration bill, had gone into effect around the same time.As Romo tells it, the first question was always the same: “Is this your car?”
Not, “License and registration, please.”
Not, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
But, Is this your car?
When Romo said it was, the next question was always: What do you do for a living?
“Why is that any of their business?” Romo asks. “I told him, ‘You’re only pulling me over because you see a guy with a big beard driving (a nice car and the state gives you the authority to discriminate.’
” And so, after the season, during the World Series parade in San Francisco, Romo wore a T-shirt that said, I just look illegal. There was a little something for everyone in the message. There was the prankster and the defiant guy whose stubbornness will never allow him to ignore a slight.
“Part of it was me being silly and goofy — look what I’ve got on,” he says. “Another part of it, legitimately, was that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished in life, people get treated the same. I know what it feels like to be discriminated against.”
Go read the whole thing.
(via badonktos)
Wondering what movie to see this weekend? Look no further than the film about North Korean terrorists invading the White House, Olympus Has Fallen!
What’s that you say? Oh, you’re one of those people who need to hear some reviews first? Not to worry! These fellow movie goers’ tweets are sure to sell you on the film:
Whenever I see someone use that specific slur, I wonder how old could they possibly be.
“Good Mercian movie.” Mitt Romney gives it two thumbs up.
(P.S. The villains in the movie are North Korean.)
There are a ton of these “now I hate all Asians” tweets on Twitter now…
…but that above tweet specifically led to this amazing conversation:
“Typical Asians.”
At least she knows what she is, I guess?
Wait a minute…take a close look at who “favorited” that last tweet.
(via paxamericana)
[…] The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion."
(Source: paterpeccavi, via drunkpomeranian)
Beyond this, everything that’s been going on in this city for the past 2 months and a week is making me extremely nervous for the summer. Things are wild.
(via quisevadet)
Austin’s geographic divide has a specific legal past. As I came to learn, African Americans had been living throughout the city in the early 1900’s, until a 1928 city plan proposed concentrating all services for black residents—parks, libraries, schools—on the East Side to avoid duplicating them elsewhere (this was in the time of “separate but equal”). Racial zoning was unconstitutional, but this policy accomplished the same thing. By 1940, most black Austinites were living between Seventh and Twelfth streets, while the growing Mexican American population was consolidating just south of that.
For years Austin has held the dubious distinction of being the only major city in the country clinging to an outmoded model of elective representation that all but ensured its racial exclusivity would persist. Since 1953, members of the city council have been elected on an at-large basis, which means that residents vote for individuals to represent the city as a whole, not their own neighborhoods. Because levels of voter participation, not to mention money, are unequal from neighborhood to neighborhood, this has perpetuated a serious imbalance in who holds and influences power. In the past forty years, half the city council members and fifteen of seventeen mayors have been from four zip codes west of I-35, an area that is home to just a tenth of the city’s population. The few have been governing the many.
The roots of this system are shameful. Until 1950, the system was straightforward: the top five vote-getters on a single ballot would become council members and select the mayor themselves. In 1951, a black candidate, Arthur DeWitty, then president of Austin’s NAACP chapter, came in sixth, which alarmed the city’s white business establishment. The system was rejiggered to create designated seats, or “places,” requiring more than 50 percent of the vote to win, a majority no ethnic candidate could achieve at the time. Not until twenty years later, in 1971, was an African American elected to the council, followed by the first Latino in 1975.
"(via bluepeets)
“Birth Control Program” as a euphemism for forced sterilization to maintain a national racial profile is particularly maddening.
didn’t I fucking say
didn’t I fucking say this was going to happen
fuck israel and their fucking eugenics and ethnic cleansing
ahahaha the worst country on earth
that’s not even a joke this is some early 20th century shit
(via paxamericana)
Roger ShimomuraClassmates #1, 1997Acrylic on canvas
From the National Portrait Gallery’s website:“Since 1969, Roger Shimomura (born 1939) has lived in Lawrence, Kansas, where he has served as an art professor at the University of Kansas. As a painter, printmaker, and performance artist, Shimomura has focused particular attention on the experiences of Asian Americans and the challenges of being “different” in America.
“He knows well the pain and embarrassment associated with xenophobia. As a small child during World War II, he and his family were relocated from their home in Seattle to a Japanese American internment camp in Idaho. Having trained as an artist at the University of Washington and Syracuse University, Shimomura creates work that often pivots on the racist stereotypes that have been used to characterize Asian Americans.”
From Traditional Fine Arts Organization’s website:“Toku Shimomura, the artist’s grandmother, used her diary to document her expulsion from a comfortable, middle-class home in Seattle, first into a temporary assembly center, and then into a bleak relocation center, Camp Minidoka in Idaho … Like his grandmother’s diaries, Roger Shimomura’s paintings are simple and emotionally objective. The artist abandoned the appropriation of traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints he had used in earlier work to adopt a graphically strong style that reflects his interest in American comic books. The simplified forms, stark black outlines, and brilliant colors all make reference to Shimomura’s interest in Pop Art. Comic icons like Superman coexist with Sumo wrestlers, brick walls reveal shoji screens, and chopsticks are used to eat bologna — all conveying the experience of living in two cultural worlds.”
Notable Asian American artist whose work needs to be shown more often!
(via silversolicitor)
