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Mike's avatar

Saudi Arabia is making lots of progress in equal rights! For example, Saudi women no longer require their husband’s permission to beat their slaves.

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Greg's avatar

An admirable society!

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Klondike's avatar

Its almost like Israel might not be the most monstrous nation in the middle east by far and there’s a curious silence from the woke-nut gallery on the horrors from the House of Saud.

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Tristan's avatar

As a supporter of Israel, I still find this comment annoying. People are allowed to criticize Israeli policy without having to say "also these other countries are bad."

This line of reasoning is used elsewhere to shut down discussion. Does anyone know the term for it? Like, when people say we shouldn't fight climate change because the real issue is poverty, or vice versa.

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Klondike's avatar

The term you're looking for is “what-aboutism” or the tu quoque fallacy more generally.

I respect your right to be annoyed of course. Me? I’m annoyed by accusations of whataboutism.

While, of course people can say that Israel is bad but if they hold Israel to a standard that no other middle eastern nation lives up to (let alone the world) and have nothing to say when the other nations commit atrocities then they are hypocrites and that hypocrisy I find much more damaging to good faith discussion than demanding that the hypocrites hold everyone to the standard they are setting for those they dislike.

Because while they *can* care about more than one thing at a time, they usually don’t. As we see with the timing and focus of their hypocrisy.

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Rachel's avatar

I spend a fair amount of time criticizing Gulf countries, mostly due to my experiences living there throughout my life. I think one reason conversation about Israel is so much heavier than Saudi Arabia or Qatar or UAE is that literally no one challenges me when I say Saudi Arabia is a corrupt slave state. I’m preaching to the choir. The conversation is over.

Conversations about Israel and the conflict in Gaza bring about a hefty amount of debate and pushback, even among those with otherwise similar political views. Naturally we’re going to debate the issues we disagree on. for those of us who do find there are fair criticisms of Israeli politics and society, it always feels a but disingenuous to be hit with accusations of hypocrisy because we’re debating one issue rather than nodding our heads in agreement over another. I’ve spent a decent amount of time visiting Israel. I think there’s a lot to celebrate there, especially in comparison to the GCC. At the same time, there are troubling aspects of society and their prevailing politics that shouldn’t be so controversial to point out. We say the same of plenty of right wing western leaders. These situations are fluid and always bound to change, particularly in a democracy, but it’s not hypocrisy to voice an opinion on a heavily debated topic

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Klondike's avatar

Well, you might not hold Israel to double standard but that isn’t true of most. Hell, in 2022 the UN had more critical resolutions of Israel than *all other nations combined*. This is a hypocrisy thats mirrored in our public debate on Israel. In a world with nations like SA, DPRK, Syria & Russia, its not disingenuous to call out a double standard for what it is.

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Greg's avatar

“What about people who engage in whataboutism??”

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Raging Centrist's avatar

I think what's interesting in this case, in the broader sense, is that Saudi Arabia and the rest of the old Arab League (and now even the Persians are getting in on the fun!) have historically used Palestinians as pawns/cannon fodder. And they have managed to dodge any responsibility in recent times for not only failing to help resolve the conflict, or take refugees, but also have poured gasoline on the fire. So in this case, I'll allow the whataboutism. 😉

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Martin Blank's avatar

I think it is less “what aboutism” when that is the exact alternate possibility. People say Israel is bad so it should be replaced. What would it be relaxed by? Well something like Syria or SA or Egypt, all much much worse countries.

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Kathleen's avatar

Queers for Assad!

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Greg's avatar

Bro, get your eyes checked. MBS is a brown person. He is a marginalized bipoc and I won’t have him slandered on this or any substack comment section.

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MA's avatar

ik this comment is several days old but wanted to note that at several major research universities there has been a student-led effort to end projects affiliated with the saudi government and saudi companies on the basis of their human rights record and fossil fuel wealth. so, while not as loud or controversial or generative of major news coverage as young progressive reactions to the current conflict, i don't think it's fair to say that progressives have been silent on saudi arabia as a whole. obviously there's a fair bit of hypocrisy and mess with the simultaneous cultural engagement with the kingdom etc but - as usual - it's complicated

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Klondike's avatar

And that sounds admirable but really just strikes me as lip-service and virtue signaling. These students entire lives are built on fossil fuels and ending these projects impacts their oil based quality of life, not one iota.

Its like the code pink anti-war morons who are always disrupting foreign policy hearings, just as they are this week. Virtue signalling by people who can only hold such luxury beliefs because they are defended by advanced militaries.

So, while the students may appear to be engaging, it strikes me as just more of the same hypocrisy.

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MA's avatar

sure, i get that you're not into progressive activism. a lot of the pushback to saudi-affiliated projects has also been due to their poor human rights record, which also doesn't ultimately affect the quality of life of the protesting students but is an opposition based on principle. my point was simply that the 'curious silence' about saudi human rights abuses from progressive corners you mentioned isn't a fair characterization. seems like you disagree with their protests against saudi arabia as well -- just worth acknowledging that they're there, is all.

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Klondike's avatar

First it is largely silent, that you had to dig up some obscure cases to justify the idea that the left isn’t *totally* silent on SA, just proves my point.

Second, it’s not that I oppose peaceful protest of any kind. It’s that lefty protest is so often protesting the very things that guarantee their ability to be openly lefty and indeed protest (military, free speech, etc.) that the act itself is made clownish.

I suppose opposing SA rights on human rights grounds is *something* but it just strikes me as the same old slacktivism.

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MoonDog's avatar

Truly a bastion of equality!

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Tyler's avatar

I know Jordan is not Saudi Arabia but same general idea: equality is letting Queen Rania appear by herself on live television and spout some anti-Semitism. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12672025/Fury-Queen-Rania-Jordans-grotesque-interview-attacking-Israel-Gaza-strikes-questioning-Hamas-killed-babies.html

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Midwest Molly's avatar

Just shut it Queen.

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TheNuclearBlonde's avatar

She's less "slay queen" and more "slay the Jews". Lest we forget the Jordanian massacred the Palestinians

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FirstName's avatar

Nothing is worse than more discussion about Jesse wiping his account. If he hasn't yet then just stop waffling.

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MoonDog's avatar

It really is annoying. This is like the fourth or fifth time bringing it up? For once I’d like them to keep this discussion off mic. Both of them are dumb.

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Sascha's avatar

Agreed. Just wipe it already. No one cares, and it's insufferable listening to Katie moan about it.

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Magic Wade's avatar

I *care* in the sense that I sincerely think Jesse should delete his Twitter and move on. I think it's a psychological necessity for him. It's not like hiding the empties, it's like removing all the booze from the house.

It's actually more like deleting all your drunk texts so you can pretend you didn't send them. It might not change the past but it sure made me feel better about a lot of my texting behavior in my 20s.

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Greg's avatar

I’ve never been on Twitter and find the whole discussion around it very odd.

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Chris's avatar

It is a bit like listening to an old married couple bicker over some issue that will never be truly resolved.

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Jane's avatar

Heh, sorry, I made the same characterization before I saw your comment. Spot on!

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Hobo Bird's avatar

It definitely feels like listening to a divorce mediation.

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anon5412's avatar

We need at least timestamps so we can easily skip it

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FrigidWind's avatar

Along with housekeeping and the starting banter

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Bored Nihilist's avatar

I like starting banter, but could definitely do without housekeeping (AT LEAST on the primo eps. Like, c'mon were all subscribed already!)

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FrigidWind's avatar

Just put in podcast bookmarks so that I can skip it.

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Jane's avatar

OMG, yes, listeners who enjoy this argument can turn to the archives. >20 minutes of old-married-couple bickering on the same old topic were way too many for me.

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Kathleen's avatar

Cheryl Hines was in Curb Your Enthusiasm, not Arrested Development. COME ON. You people need to watch more television.

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That TERF Owl's avatar

And if they get THIS wrong, what else are they wrong about? ;)

(Isn't that what Katie's always saying in reference to incorrect things she hears on NPR?)

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Dan Ward's avatar

Just listening to the podcast now and immediately stopped to correct this massive injustice. Thank you for helping to restore order to my stupid universe.

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Dan Ward's avatar

Also: COME ON!

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Kathleen's avatar

Thank you

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David's avatar

Immediately paused the ep when I heard that to make sure I wasn't in a "Sinbad's 'Shazaam'" scenario

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Krissa's avatar

Yes! Less twitter, more good television!

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Autumn's avatar

Is BARPod going to do an episode on this? It’s arguably bigger than Rachel Dolezal: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/buffy-sainte-marie

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Martin Blank's avatar

I grew up in an area where there are a lot of reservations and the number of people who suddenly discover they are 1/8th native between 16-22 was striking.

That’s funny you last name is Anderson, your dad is the chief of police, and you look like a Hitler youth. But sure I bet you are 1/8th Ojibwe!

Like a girlfriend at that other HS two districts away! I met her at the mall.

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FirstName's avatar

My tribe lives in Canada, you wouldn't know them.

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Autumn's avatar

Where I come from, all the model girlfriends live in Canada.

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Martin Blank's avatar

When I was in 8th? grade I was at a series of parties ~150 miles from where I lived and really hitting it off with this hot ~40 year old (who probably just thought I reminded her of her son when he was younger or something). We spent a bunch of time talking that weekend, but my family was at these parties and she was married...they were not romantic interactions.

You can bet at school the next week I used her name when describing the girl I had kissed while I was out of town. God 8th graders are embarrassing. Around that age I also literally thought I was going to kill myself if I didn't get a sports car before I was 20. Of course, at 16 I bought a Plymouth Sundance and at 18 a Ford Escort like a responsible pseudo-adult.

Part of me wonders if this whole insane movement would have just evaporated if we turned back the clock to 2007 and somehow magically had a machine that stopped anyone under the age of 18 (19?) from posting anything online.

A lot of it was driven from the colleges, but I kind of feel they needed the numbers and validation they got from a bunch of 12-14 year old acolytes ready to latch onto anything.

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Walker's avatar

To be fair, don’t a lot of Natives have European last names because of *waves arms wildly at history*?

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Martin Blank's avatar

I mean sure sometimes, but if you look like Alexander Skarsgård and your last name is Anderson you probably aren't a native. There were plenty of real natives around.

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Walker's avatar

This was a wild read. I was trying to get more info and I found a Reddit post where people (allegedly native) were essentially saying LEAVE BUFFY ALOOOOOONE and criticizing people who were calling her out and…I am so confused. Is it a subreddit full of pretendians or is finding frauds actually controversial among Natives? I know among some tribes it’s less about blood quantum and more about acceptance within the community and being claimed as a member, but the Buffy stuff seems like a pretty open and shut case of “white person made a living out of pretending to be Native, and lied, and lied, and lied some more.”

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Autumn's avatar

The irony is that, assuming this investigation is correct, she’s even less indigenous than Elizabeth Warren.

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Walker's avatar

I was thinking about that! At least Warren has some ancestry. But it’s different depending on the tribes - sometimes it’s not about blood at all. Buffy’s defenders are saying a Cree family adopted her in adulthood so she counts as native, but long before that, she was lying about being Mi’kmaq and Algonquin. She had already cashed in on supposedly being Indian long before she technically “became” Indian via that adoption.

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Martin Blank's avatar

The story really highlights why it is so important to #beleiveallwomen.

Especially when this serial liar almost certainly falsely accuses her brother of being an abuser to stop the truth from getting out...

But women never lie!

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Hobo Bird's avatar

"believe all women" was never the slogan

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Martin Blank's avatar

Well now you are just gaslighting. After a while some feminists and others started to push back and suggest alternate slogans, but the first big push and for a while a significant portion of the sloganeering was indeed "believe all women".

Otherwise there wouldn't be approximately 8 million articles out there saying "#believeallwomen is a bad slogan", or "we never meant #believeallwomen".

For example:

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/961277626986868736

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/24/rape-conviction-figures-uk

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/consider-the-consequences-of-believeallwomen

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-tambors-messy-transparent-exit-how-should-we-handle-these-scandals?via=twitter_page

https://twitter.com/RepMaloney/status/1045005759728234497?s=20

https://twitter.com/ERACoalition/status/1055947933085036545

https://jezebel.com/in-this-election-believe-women-means-nothing-1787926657

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Hobo Bird's avatar

No, you're gaslighting if anyone is. The original slogan was "believe women."

Not "believe all women," which is sociopathically stupid on its face and used by aggrieved leftist men and conservative blowhards to undermine the notion that sexual assault allegations should be taken seriously.

The fact that you keep insisting on using the term "believe all women" because you enjoy going after that ridiculous straw man is telling.

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Hobo Bird's avatar

Also, if it's worth anything, a bit of advice.

Any dude who has a habit of finding examples of women lying and then guffawing out a "but I thought women never lied!" is truly telling on himself. I don't know whether it was a bad divorce, or she cheated on you or what, but stop self snitching with this shit.

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Martin Blank's avatar

What a tremendously convincing response to a pile of evidence I was able to find in 3 minutes of internet searching.

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Promachos's avatar

When I was a teenager, I was regularly cat called by random men and it was intimidating and upsetting, but I was also regularly told I was exaggerating, or making it up, or needed to not be upset and take the very public comments about my breasts as a compliment.

This is what #believewomen referred to, the idea that it even now almost automatic to dismiss and minimise women’s experiences of sexual aggression. Just be grateful you have no idea what I’m talking about. (And I am doing you the genuine compliment of assuming you have never been one of those aggressors, because I am perfectly aware it isn’t all men.)

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Human Being's avatar

I’ve sent them an email about this and I might not be the only one. I’d really like to see them cover it because it’s the pretendian story to end all pretendian stories and I’ve been surprised to see how many people don’t believe the (very in-depth) reporting and are choosing to stand by her story.

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Walker's avatar

I can understand why people, including Natives, are still claiming she’s Native - it’s not about blood, it’s about acceptance in the community, she did a lot of good things for Natives, etc…and I’m sure it’s hard to come to terms with how the person you held up as the pinnacle of your culture was a complete liar. It has to be traumatic. I can’t excuse her, though, because that only shows that if you lie for long enough and get away with it, then it’s no big deal. I’m not Native so it doesn’t matter, but this is so fascinating.

Also, I think some of the lack of anger at Pretendians is due to hatred of Jacqueline Keeler, the actually-Indian woman who put together the big list of Pretendians. She did screw up a few times, but by and large she’s done a good service. Some people must just think that if Jacqueline Keeler calls you out, then you must be a good person.

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That TERF Owl's avatar

Wow. That's one crazy story!

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Blink's avatar

It was SO well researched, I wish CBC would look into my background the way they look into pretendians!

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Bjork's swan dress's avatar

I learned a lot about the recordkeeping practices of the vital records office in Stoneham, MA! The part about the BCs being numbered in sequential order really made this a slam-dunk.

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Klondike's avatar

“You larped as someone who renovates houses?”

Got the laugh.

EDIT: Also, “then WWII didn’t go far enough”

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Thia's avatar

Jesse is always low-key funny. Very snort worthy!

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James Thomas's avatar

Please no more of this Twitter shit

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Tizzy's avatar

Couldn’t agree more! It’s called X now. Folx need to get on board.

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Bjork's swan dress's avatar

I'm deadnaming it forever.

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James Thomas's avatar

That's not exactly what I meant, but fair enough.

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Michael's avatar

Look idk how many liked listening to K&J's bickering over his Twitter history (queue parasocial lovers rushing to say they were joking they love each other forever and ever and us too), or how serious the "we are right and our critics are wrong for disliking us forcing unwanted content on them in an age of content overload" bit was, but this episode suuuuuucked.

Uninformative and nasty, this episode made me feel like I was at a break room at some Brooklyn poverty law nonprofit.

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Human Being's avatar

I really enjoyed the segment about Saudi Arabia and cosplay, but the debate about Jesse’s twitter went on for way too long and could’ve taken place off mic.

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Anonymous's avatar

It was half the episode!

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Greg's avatar

It was way too much about Jesse’s Twitter use.

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Kathleen's avatar

There wasn’t much to the cosplay story and Jesse obviously is sick and exhausted and didn’t have much to contribute. If they’d just done the mini-episode about the cosplay convention and then had Katie introduce the Braver Angels episode and roll into that, no one would be complaining. Okay, someone would complain. But I think almost everyone would have been pretty content with that arrangement.

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Shaftoe's avatar

Katie is 100% right Jesse. Do not cancel your account.

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Thia's avatar

Jesse sounded terrible. Poor Jesse, feel better! Even the BARPod commenters are grouchy. It really has been a rotten and depressing news week. Thank goodness it’s over. Here’s to a better next week!

(Get an electrical inspector Katie)

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Rachel's avatar

I used to live in Qatar. National Sports Day was a national holiday we all got work off for to watch a parade, meanwhile the compound I lived on had one gym with sex segregated hours- women’s hours were from like 6-7 am (insane humidity).

There are a ton of gays there- Grindr is extremely active but the laws there are extremely selectively enforced. My gay friends would hook up and meet up with guys more often than I would. An American or European is not likely to get in trouble for premarital or gay sex (although I’m aware there have been cases), but a qatari (High up in society at that) coworker once bragged to me that her Pakistani driver and Filipina maid have been in jail for 7 years at that point for having a love affair. The maid at the time was still begging to be deported home. She also once bragged to me about getting an Egyptian architect deported for insulting their labor practices.

My best friend there (North African) recently served jail time for talking shit about an abusive ex (American) husband in a WhatsApp group chat. She called his new wife (her cousin) a snake. Him and his new wife showed the texts to a judge and she was arrested for cyber bullying the next day. She tried to present texts where he called her some of the most vile racists slurs on the planet, but the judge wasn’t very interested.

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jojoZ's avatar

That is bizarre. So men can tattle on women for mean texts and go to jail? But women can’t tattle on men? It was this because she was N African and they were Saudi?

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Rachel's avatar

Her ex was American, I think it had more to do with that than gender

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Promachos's avatar

This is the dynamic that would put me off working in the Gulf; the sense that the law is very selectively applied and your nationality, race or sex will be the reasons why that selection will be made. I would be worried I would start to rely on the blind eye being turned until BAM one day it’s decided that an example will be made and you’re going to be it.

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pond scum's avatar

The "Twitter is dead" convo could have actually segued to the cosplay part of this episode for me because although parts of twitter are definitely dying, there's huge parts of it devoted to various fandoms that are definitely very active. It's something I feel is missing from a lot of takes about twitter - there's a ton of users outside of the English speaking political circles.

Thank you for making Jesse describe anime and watch cosplay videos.

Also did BARPod ever mention that thing from a while ago about the writers strike where there was drama over whether cosplayers who dressed as characters from content impacted by the strike at a convention would be "crossing a picket line"? That was wild.

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Srdjan Garcevic's avatar

Thank you Jesse for understanding that Serbs are POC 🙏

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Bryan's avatar

Well obviously, because the Croats are white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Croats

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TheNuclearBlonde's avatar

People of Croats (pics)

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FrigidWind's avatar

Serbs have the best POC songs. I play this one to put my niece to bed

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HAwXFwtm-CY&list=RDHAwXFwtm-CY&start_radio=1

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Walker's avatar

Actually it’s about ethics in adult dress-up contests

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Promachos's avatar

You really don’t have enough upvotes for this.

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Walker's avatar

Kids today…

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B.P. Lionel's avatar

Sometimes Jesse and Katie’s bickering can seem a bit too real (about Jesse’s Twitter account of all things).

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Contra Contrarians's avatar

Katie needs to chill out and just let Jesse do the thing that'll improve his mental health....

Kill all the pigeons.

(I know, I know, but I'm tired of the horse jokes.)

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srynerson's avatar

Can I just say that I feel like there's a chicken-and-egg thing going on for Katie's Twitter engagement levels? Because I absolutely don't visit her Twitter page very often these days, but that's 100% a function of how rarely she tweets. I was a daily visitor for years, but over the past year or so her frequency of tweeting has plummeted. Like, she's tweeted twice today, but the most recent tweet before that was on October 17 -- 12 days ago. I mean, I check someone like Matt Yglesias' Twitter page several times a day because he tweets a dozen or more times a day, so there's fresh material basically every time I look. But if your tweeting frequency is closer to every other week, then I'm not going to keep checking it daily. (And I have to say, most glaringly, Katie often times doesn't even put up a tweet for new BaRpod episodes on her own page, which seems weird because it's basically a free advertising opportunity for the podcast with near zero effort needed!)

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Richard's avatar

I looked into this when she first complained about it, she has no idea what she's talking about. She's been steadily losing followers for a long time, which is understandable because she just tweets a lot less. There was one time she lost a huge amount of followers, I have no idea why, but ever since then her engagement has been a lot less.

No Katie, you did not get shadowbanned. People just don't like your tweets as much. Please stop whining about it.

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