Fish in a barrel
I feel a little bit bad picking on a publication like Teen Vogue. This is a celebrity gossip rag for little girls that, in one of the most hilariously wrong management decisions of all time, has decided that it can arrest its plummeting sales by branching out into politics and current events. So, yes: this is presently a politics and current events gossip rag… aimed at little girls. It’s like it’s scientifically designed to be the least intelligent thing ever created, so I do sort of feel bad making fun of it.
Which is actually a complete lie. I love this stuff.
Adore or despise them, GIFs are integral to the social experience of the Internet. Thanks to a range of buttons, apps, and keyboards, saying "it me" without words is easier than ever.
Your humble narrator is ashamed to admit that he is not a little girl. As such, he’s short on ability to comprehend why one would wish to say something as inane as "it me," though he is prepared to concede that it would be better to say it without using words.
So that’s fairly stupid already, and we’re still only on the first line of the article. Buckle up, kids, it’s about to get ridiculous in here.
But even a casual observer of GIFing would notice that, as with much of online culture, black people appear at the center of it all. Or images of black people, at least…
If you’ve never heard of the term before, "digital blackface" is used to describe various types of minstrel performance that become available in cyberspace. Blackface minstrelsy is a theatrical tradition dating back to the early 19th century, in which performers “blacken” themselves up with costume and behaviors to act as black caricatures. The performances put society’s most racist sensibilities on display and in turn fed them back to audiences to intensify these feelings and disperse them across culture.
If you’ve never heard of the term before, it’s because "digital blackface" is a miasma of nonsense invented by lunatics who have nothing better to do than try to sell gullible white girls a whole bellyful of useless guilt. Oh, and, also? If you’d read a friggin’ book for a change, you could potentially learn the real history of and meaning behind blackface minstrelsy. So I recommend you don’t do that, since it would interfere with your manufactured anguish.
These GIFs often enact fantasies of black women as "sassy" and extravagant, allowing nonblack users to harness and inhabit these images as an extension of themselves [sic]. GIFs with transcripts become an opportunity for those not fluent in black vernacular to safely use the language, such as in the many "[expletive deleted]," "[vapidity deleted]," and "[expletive deleted]" memes passed around. Ultimately, black people and black images are thus relied upon to perform a huge amount of emotional labor [sic] online on behalf of nonblack users. We are your sass, your nonchalance, your fury, your delight, your annoyance, your happy dance, your diva, your shade, your "yaas" moments. The weight of reaction GIFing, period, rests on our shoulders.
If you’re reading this, please call an ambulance. I think I’ve just had a stroke, since I appear to be unable to process the meaning of words anymore. The only other possibility is that none of those words actually mean anything, but how could that be? I understand what it is to have a deadline and a word count, mind, but I also understand what it is to be an editor, and I would reject a submission stocked to the gills with meaningless fantasy words. If you’re going to try that, at least go huge:
‘Twas brillig, and the shadey sass did happy dance and diva in the yaas…
I’m not sure which is funnier: the unbelievable arrogance of this article, or the absolutely pathetic non-substance Lauren Michele Jackson has elected to be so unbelievably arrogant about.
BREAKING NEWS: Russians hacked the sun!
While Teen Vogue is desperately attempting to reinvent itself as an SJW rag in the possibly vain hope of avoiding insolvency, the pathetic Boston Globe is much too far gone down both of those roads. It’s a good thing nobody reads the Globe anymore, since it means you were all spared this impossibly bad article. Which I then called to your attention and quoted extensively because I’m a bad man.
There are about 240 counties roughly along the central path of the eclipse, a 70-mile-wide trail extending across the country where people will be able to see a total eclipse, meaning the sun will appear completely obscured by the moon.
And about 92 percent of those counties swung in Trump’s favor, while fewer than two dozen counties voted for his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Journalism!
Perhaps it’s not a surprise that the solar eclipse is passing over Trump strongholds given that the president himself was born during a lunar eclipse.
I… suppose that’s one theory, sure. Here’s another: 84% of all counties went for Trump, as any fule kno. 92% isn’t a whole lot higher, but it is higher; what could account for the difference? Surely it’s that most of the counties Clinton did win are stacked up along the coasts… and the path of the eclipse, of course, cuts laterally across the nation. But probably it was Russians.
Next time somebody asks you why print media is dead, be sure to tell him you have no idea.
You know where print media isn’t dead?
That would be on Capitol Hill, where the battle for print editions of the Washington Post is so intense that the government has had to step in and handle the distribution itself. We can’t leave that to the unfettered workings of the market! We need wise central planners like Bernie Sanders in charge, so they can ensure a fair distribution. Specifically, so they can distribute other people’s newspapers to themselves.
In perhaps the funniest and most fitting news of the year, WMAL radio host Chris Plante told his audience of a story he heard from friends about the elderly senator. A man living next to Sanders apparently called the Post to complain that he was hardly ever receiving his subscription. After an investigation into the matter, the paying customer realized that it was his neighbor, Senator Sanders, who was stealing the paper right from under his nose.
Oh those nutty commies. Never a dull moment with those guys! When they’re not redistributing money from colleges to themselves, they’re redistributing themselves your newspaper. I suppose the senator’s anonymous neighbor should consider himself lucky that he hasn’t been kidnapped in the middle of the night and dragged to a gulag.
Last week in honest
Since we all know the sacred and inviolable elections are completely fair and honest, there must be some other explanation for this.
[A] comparison of the 2011-2015 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and the most recent California active and inactive voter registration records shows there were more total registered voters than there were adults over the age of 18 living in each of the following eleven (11) counties: Imperial (102%), Lassen (102%), Los Angeles (112%), Monterey (104%), San Diego (138%), San Francisco (114%), San Mateo (111%), Santa Cruz (109%), Solano (111%), Stanislaus (102%), and Yolo (110%). Our own research shows that the situation in these counties is, if anything, worse than the foregoing data suggest. For example, we contacted Los Angeles County directly this past June. At that time, county officials informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144% of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.
Nothing suspicious going on here! No sir! Sounds like a whole bunch of NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER to me.
We want you as a new recruit
Hey guys, you’re doing it wrong.
"Our task is to defend your right to live with whoever you want, as whoever you want, and in any way that you want, and we will go to any lengths to do it," Sweden’s army proclaimed through its Facebook page on Monday, marking the start of LGBT Pride week.
The armed forces are "prepared to go to any lengths" in its [sic] duty to "work to uphold justice and equality, and for the recognition that everyone is of equal value," added the post, which is attached to a picture of military boots adorned with rainbow coloured laces.
And here I thought the army’s task was to blow up other mans. My bad! I suppose the United States Army always has to go rescue my freedom every time it has a bit too much to drink and ends up stranded in an oilfield somewhere in the middle east. I just figured Sweden’s would be doing something similar.
Invoking the current year in one response to detractors, the army said: “It is important that the armed forces take a stand, and show that we stand up for the equal value of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender identity."
So regardless of any of those three things, then?
I’m willing to believe that somebody at Breitbart boffed transcribing this, and that the Army didn’t actually say "gender identity" twice like that. I’m also willing to believe that Swedish has two distinct terms for "gender identity," which is actually a lot funnier if you think about it.
In one comment, Kerstin Borg dismissed suggestions that there could be more useful activities for the army to involve itself in than the promotion of gay rights, arguing: "A defence force which has more tolerant personnel is one that is definitely more resistant to opinion influencing campaigns by foreign powers."
Hate to break it to you, Kerstin, but that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Intolerance by definition correlates pretty strongly with resistance to "opinion influencing." You may be in need of medical services to determine if your brains are broken or missing.
At least Kerstin is willing to admit right up front like that that she’s here to incorporate us all into the Borg.
