The idea that Sweeney would be expected to disavow her family for the crime of not being left wing is an absolute indictment of this country's political state.
I'm not surprised by such reactions anymore. Sad to say, but I am not. I just shake my head and laugh that people have the time to be bothered by a hot girl wearing jeans in an advertisement.
If your family supports an aspiring fascist, you should disavow your family. If you fail to do so, people will intuit you also support that aspiring fascist.
Considering her failure to disavow her fascistphile family and the fact she registered as a Republican AFTER the rise of the would-be fascist, I think it’s safe to assume Sweeney supports the aspiring fascist.
Given all this, she forfeited the benefit of the doubt. That’s why people justly assume her dogwhistle jeans commercial is in fact of dogwhistle.
"Should" is doing alot of work here to get you to fascist dogwhistle in a jeans commercial. You don't get to intuit what someone believes based on who they didn't disavow that you think they should have. You're inventing a test and deciding what the result of it tells you. Most people probably rightly value their families over this totally narcissistic need to be fully politically aligned with everyone they have a relationship with.
Or she’s a shit person in full alignment with her wanna-be fascist shit family. That seems the more parsimonious explanation. But let assholes tell it, right-wing assholes are never what they appear to be. Assholes in this group argued for months Elon didn’t do a Nazi salute.
Haha. Yeah, okay. Maybe. In this case, if you already knew she registered Republican post-Trump being elected, then your first point is kinda moot anyways. You don't need to intuit. But I'm saying, moving through the world more generally, assuming what people believe based on who they don't disavow in their lives definitely isn't an accurate approach considering it's all predicated on pretending that family and other close relationships don't hinge on much more than political alignment for most people. And I can't imagine that you'd ever wanna go around mislabeling people as fascists.
This is the full line of reasoning as far as I understand it: because she doesn't disavow her Republican family for being shit people (even though she herself is a registered Republican), and because she was in a jeans commercial that made a pun about her good genes (aka being hot. Which everyone agreed with until they phrased it this way. Aka the obvious and only way to make the dumb pun work in a jeans commercial), it is just and obvious to assume that she is doing a fascist dogwhistle. And that is literally the extent of the logic here. Or rather the completely paranoid, internet-deranged attempt at logic here.
"This marks Sweeney's second political controversy. In 2022, the actress faced criticism for posting photos from her mother's 60th birthday party where guests wore MAGA-style hats and "Blue Lives Matter" apparel. At the time, she stated the celebration was misinterpreted as a political statement."
So there were *guests* at her mom's birthday party wearing mainstream Republican clothing. And Sweeney shared photos that she took at this birthday party on social media. Sweeney claimed that she shared these photos to celebrate her mother, rather than to celebrate the mainstream Republican political clothing worn by certain people in attendance.
Yeah, I can totally see why that doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
This absurdly liberal use of "fascist" has consequences. The word loses its power. For example, Donald Trump blacklisting law firms who employ any attorneys who have ever opposed him becomes equivalent to Sydney Sweeney not disowning her family for letting guests wear MAGA hats to a birthday party. Both, after all, count as "fascist". Nice work.
(Also, of course she registered to vote AFTER the rise of Trump. She's 27, it's not like she had the option of registering in the Romney era.)
Yep. Of course, you and I might think this is a highly relevant fact, but I get a feeling that folks like Noah will be unmoved. Those on high alert for fascists and fascist sympathizers are almost certainly also on high alert fascism-minimizers. Those people wearing the "Make 60 Great Again" hats might even be more contemptable than the regular MAGA hat wearers- making an uncritical *joke* that invokes an evil symbol of fascism will have the effect of making fascism seem socially acceptable! Or something along those lines.
If anything it seems like Trump likes to borrow ideas from dictators he likes. He's definitely authoritarian, of that I have no doubt. Simplifying it to "fascism" is just too simplistic an argument for me. And yes, I agree the word has lost any and all of its meaning in online discourse. I think for the majority who are not online, the word still has some meaning but they probably care little for political discourse as it is.
Oh yeah, Trump is a vile piece of shit who craves power and vengence and has no respect for the rule of law. The sooner he croaks the better for all of us.
My problem is with this transitive connect-the-dots game, where Trump = fascist, therefore Trump supporter = fascist, therefore being friends with a Trump supporter = fascist, therefore failing to disown a family member who is friends with Trump supporters = fascist, etc. Play this game long enough and we can whittle the non-fascist population of US citizens down to a few thousand.
I'm not responding to the first line just out of a general rule of not wishing anyone dead for my own moral sensibilities.
Agree with the 2nd paragraph. Kind of hoped we were past this (and maybe we are moving in that direction), but supporting a political party like the Republicans makes no one more a fascist than a Democrat being labeled a communist.
What do you mean by "disavow?" Dissociate herself from them? That's ridiculous. I hang out with my right-wing family members a little less and prefer to avoid talking about politics with them, but I still consider them family.
If Sweeney was a decent person, she wouldn’t amply that support by sharing photos of her family in fascist paraphernalia with her millions of social media followers. But she did because she also supports the fascist president.
Sweeney supports the fascist president and her fascistphile family because Sweeney is a garbage human being.
Trump isn't competent enough to be a fascist. He's a boob with authoritarian tendencies. She probably does agree with her family, but who cares? The people who follow her on social media are 80% men who beat off to her. They don't give a crap about her political opinions, to them she's just a walking pair of boobs. The other 20% are hate-follows. Do you genuinely think either of those groups of people are going to see some pictures of her with her trashy family and go, "welp, I guess I'm going to vote for Trump now."
I'm amazed that someone in the Barpod comments section of all places is making arguments like "don't platform [x]" and "cut off/disavow everyone who thinks [y]". This parochial mindset only makes political polarization worse and further entrenched.
His aspirations and his competence are relevant to each other. John Bolton, who also used to work for Trump, said the exact same thing I did, which is that he's too stupid to be a fascist. He aspires to be a dictator and makes gestures in that direction, but he's stymied by his own stupidity and the fact that the U.S. has a number of characteristics that make it considerably more difficult to turn into a dictatorial state. Not impossible, but difficult. Someone would have to have way better political acumen than Trump to pull it off.
Does it suck that Americans are so fucking retarded that they were willing to stick an aspiring dictator in office based on empty promises and xenophobia? Absolutely. But there's really not much use in getting angry at idiots. Sometimes, you just have to meet them where they are. Republican criticisms of Biden were just true enough that dumb people could be fooled into thinking Trump was somehow the better option. That's not a problem you can resolve by running screaming in the opposite direction. We need to be willing to actually engage with people, because that's the key to deradicalizing them.
Also, is the theory here that all of Sydney's politically undecided followers are going to see her family rocking that sweet Trump merch and be swayed towards supporting him? Is that the source of the paranoia over "amplifying support"?
I'm going to concede every single thing you just said for the sake of argument. So what? She clearly is not motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic factors to act in accordance with your wishes. Just like countless other human beings in the US of A she is close enough to whatever whatever to be whatever whatever according to your heuristic. She would almost certainly experience more guilt to disavow her family members than to be your version of a fascist and it's not like it's taking a dollar out of her pocket to do what she already wants to do in accordance with the way she was raised. What now? Do you feel like calling her a fascist achieves something in itself or is it a stepping stone to the actual achievement or actual point? Where there are plenty of famous and hot young women in Hollywood who vote blue, what's the relevance there? Do you feel like they have a positive impact the way that she has a negative one? Also, you remember when Taylor Swift was getting called a fascist or like KKK Barbie or something? Do you feel like this is the same as that or different? No pressure to answer all of these but if you could shed some light on how you see the utility of naming her as a fascist I would be genuinely curious. PS I appreciate you speaking your mind in a way that puts you in a minority in this space. Even though I don't see it your way I thank you for adding to the conversation. Generally there are a lot of people with your POV in my life but in this space it kind of keeps it fresh so thanks for that.
I’m not sure what’s so exotic about my point-of-view. I don’t like fascists or the people who support them. Not sure why this is controversial.
As far as my willingness to take unpopular positions, I try to take whatever position is based in reality. I suppose this because fraught when people deny the reality the Trump administration is proto-fascist.
But — as I said elsewhere — many of these people also deny Elon did a Nazi salute. Some people are full of shit, I suppose. I’m trying to make peace with that.
I mean I concur that Trump and the MAGA movement is actually fascist, and the only reason they don't call themselves that is the post-war cultural consensus that "fascism" can only refer to an enemy, not an ideology.
To be clear, fascism is a hyper-nationalist ideology classically marked by anti-communism, anti-internationalism, racism(anti-minority-ism), and a sort of anti-feminist and anti-gay pro-natalism. It's not without positive definition (nation! volk!), but it's more defined by what it's against (humanism, "them" in various manifestations), so it's sometimes a little hard to identify distinct from other conservatisms. (Also it's certainly easy to see why German fascism was easy for everyone outside it to condemn.) It's also not any one of its markers.
That said, I disagree that disavowals are good or useful. Liberal society has overestimated/misunderstood the power of relationships to change ideologies, assuming that it's always a net good to split. I think generally think the culture of disavowal has run amok in this way, in large part to the collapse of the private life. So I'm glad that this celebrity and actress chooses not to publicly gesture a change in her relationship with her family (her actual, real relationships) in order to satisfy the desires, (ph/f)antasies, or expectations of parasocial chatterers.
Also, that article is trash. "What we know" is that Sydney Sweeney registered as a Republican. That's all, and it's in the headline. It's a tweet's worth of data, padded out with other tweets (some from libs, at least one from a probably White supremacist lol) that add nothing to that one tiny nugget of info.
All we know about Sweeney is that she has Republican family and registered as Republican in a Republican state. Also she has "good genes" (aka was born pretty) and is in a denim (aka "jeans") ad campaign. That's what we can actually see, and the rest is projection.
I guess it's easier to try to sus out a crypto-conservative celeb on Twitter than reverse the destructive policies of the current administration.
I disagree with almost everything the trump administration is doing and I am seriously worried if this is the beginning of the end of our country.
However, over half of the people who voted in 2024 voted for him, and the Republicans also control the house and the senate.
The left lost. We got our ass handed to us. Trump and the republicans are more popular at least electorally than the democrats and the left. The left can try to unperson or kick out of polite society anyone who voted for trump or who still supports what he is doing to this country, but the left are in the minority and doesn't seem to have the power to do that. Also, Sidney Fucking Sweeny is not what is wrong with this country. Why are we reading in the fucking tea leaves to decide if she is fascist when the people running the country are doing fascism? If she was in an ad that said fascism is bad, there would be the same result - nothing.
I don’t think you can have real fascism without the “engage the entire population in militarist national expansionism”. One bomber raid on Iran doesn’t really count, and I think Trump is actually fine with most of the country being politically unengaged as long as he wins.
I think militarist national expansionism is one of those things that acts as a sign of fascism, but isn't an essential feature. Not that we haven't rattled some sabers, even towards Greenland and Canada. But America is a really big country, and has traditionally been able to get what it wants without explicit conquest.
How is fascism inherently racial? The only true fascist State, the Italian Fascists, never even cared about race until 1938 because their much stronger ally, Hitler, insisted on it. Mussolini expressly said he didn't think race was real. Fascism is about members of the State and its culture, not about race.
I believe I said it’s marked by “racism(anti-minority-ism)“ (among other things), and then contextualized that as being for an us and against a them. One way that can manifest is as a belief in biological races and a hierarchy against them, but that’s not even the only way racism manifests. We say people can be racist against Muslims, but Islam is a religion. We say people can be racist against Hispanics, but Hispanic people aren’t a traditional race and in fact are themselves racially diverse. We have a special word for racism against Jewish people, antisemitism, but the people who are targets of antisemitism may or may not be considered Jewish by the larger Jewish community (e.g. only Jewish on dad’s side) or by themselves (e.g. Christian converts). I mean, props to Mussolini (words that should never be written) for not buying into the antisemitism or biological racism of the Third Reich, but the cultural/spiritual forms of racism from Italian fascism are sufficient for typological purposes. Indeed, MAGA doesn’t demand “racial” purity per se, which makes the Sweeney-swooning more silly, but it does have its hated minorities.
Btw, did you know that a person can be a registered Republican or Democrat and yet not vote in that year's election?!? I know, it's CRAZY. I guess not everyone is obsessed with their party registration 😂.
You’re full of shit. But that’s what I expect from people who deny Elon Musk did a Nazi salute. There’s video of that, and you assholes say otherwise.
If you’re going to bullshit us about that, you’re definitely going to bullshit us about the more abstract concept of who deserves censure for supporting a proto-fascist regime.
Anyone comparing having a pet to being an actual parent is a ####ing idiot. I've had and lost pets, loved them very much, cried real tears at their deaths. It is *nothing* like parenting. Honestly, it's borderline offensive to assert any kind of equivalency, and I am not easily offended.
Once I was out having coffee with a childless friend, who had three dogs. He claimed that having pets was “exactly like having kids.” I looked around. “Wait, where are your dogs? I don’t see them.” He looked confused. “They’re at home, like always.” “Oh, so you got a babysitter?” I asked. Now he looked at me like I was crazy. “No, they are home alone.” “Then having pets is not exactly like having kids,” I replied triumphantly. (My own two kids were in school at the time, but if it hadn’t been a school day I would have had to get a babysitter or take them along.)
Your friend should tell my friends whose kids had pediatric cancer that having a dog is the exactly the same.
Here's the thing: if you haven't had kids, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO HAVE KIDS. Admit your ignorance. Have a little epistemic ####ing humility.
Sorry to get so worked up about this, but having experienced some of the highs and lows of parenting, and seen others in my friend and family group go through the same, I am beyond tired of the "pet parent" trope. You're not a ####ing parent, stop pretending that you are.
I think the great majority of people who have pets and don't have kids understand that it's very different. Those that use that term, with or without kids, tend to understand this most of the time. We live in a world full of hyperbole and black and white thinking so some people feel the need to express that this animal is not just a personal possession but a being with some variation of mind and soul and they feel a sense of obligation to treat this being with love. Other people feel the need to incorporate and express more tenuous propositions such as, raising the next generation is just a lifestyle choice that serves no purpose beyond my own emotional experience and therefore whatever I think will give me a similar emotional experience must be the same in every way. I feel like the former reasonable option is more likely to be where people are coming from most of the time. I personally don't use that term but most of the people that I know who use it are more or less in touch with reality. The position espoused by this friend sounds like the kind of thing that if someone were to say it most people would probably interpret it as either this person is having a hard time and we should just try to be sympathetic because clearly they're not doing well or you're an eccentric person with very strange perspectives, but I don't think that most people would feel like this person is rowing with both oars in the water.
Totally agree. I have had dogs for my whole life. I adore dogs more than almost anyone I have ever met. But I am also a mom of two wonderful young adults. Our love for our pets is in a different universe from our love for our kids. It’s not in any way comparable.
I hope your friends’ kids are ok. I can’t imagine the agony of going through that.
I do think it's very helpful for potential parents to own a dog first. Dogs are light year's easier. But there's a shocking amount of similarity as well. After all, we're both social animals.
The process of effective behavioral shaping is the same. Positive reward, consistency, practice.
It's easier for us to see this with dogs since they're just alien enough to let us focus on those parts. With little humans, they're so clever and similar to, well...us, we often get bogged down in the emotional interaction part of it. Like what do they mean or want or am I offended, etc.
But if you can remind yourself...what you need is consistent, positive reward and consequences it really helps.
Having a dog (and attending dog training classes and such) help build that muscle memory I think.
Course, if you're the kind of dog owner that just yells over and over at your dog randomly for bad behavior expecting them to stop.....well, that probably tells you something about your future child rearing skills too lol
When I first got a dog, my mother, who has four children, told me dogs were more difficult than kids, which I found sort of baffling. I think it’s just that she likes kids and dislikes dogs.
I want to compare Katie losing Moose to me getting a really good videogame save corrupted. Because that is about how much the equivalence works with Pets vs kids.
Frankly anyone who says "fur baby" and means it seriously is a good 3/4 of the way to mentally ill.
Nah I think it is a useful diagnostic tool. What expressions people use is a guide to how their minds work. And people who think their pets are children often have one or more screws loose.
Are you familiar with the Kathy cartoons that used to run in the paper? Have you ever shopped a sale at an outlet mall or TJ Maxx? Like, do you know any normie women of the middle-aged mayonnaisesapien vaguely sappy variety? The kind of lady who brings a tater tot casserole to the office potluck and you think, eh, doesn't look great, but at least she made something and that is more than I can say for the rest of us?These ladies use that kind of lingo, even if they have actual kids and understand implicitly and or explicitly that it's not the same.
Having kids is kind of weird. It triggers these really, really deep changes in your psyche on a fundamental biological level.
The only thing even comparable I can think of is puberty. Like there's two yous: pre-pubescent and post-pubescent. Where it's almost like over night that this entire new way of being and interacting with the world just opens up.
Just like a pre-pubescent child cannot even conceive of the experience of a mature adult with relationships, a pre-parent simply cannot conceive of anything comparable in their lives.
Does it delegitimize your struggles as a parent if I say I literally gave birth to my Italian greyhound baby and that I have lost sleep in the past year of having her bc I take my responsibility seriously?? No. At most it makes me seem like a lunatic with an adorable Italian greyhound daughter.
I am a cat owner. Man, I love my little guys, but I would never recover from the loss of one of my kids, but I might cry for one month when my kitties go. But suing the government over a sick, dying elderly cat with labored breathing from an airshow is PEAK 21st C. AMERICAN. Kooky. Gotta love us!!!
About the Sydney Sweeney ad... In addition to the race component, I have to imagine that a lot of people are also butthurt about the fact that the ad kinda signals to everyone (most importantly other companies that sell their merch with models) that the beauty standard is moving back towards what qualified as conventionally attractive up until a few years ago. Or rather that it's okay to stop pretending that half naked obese women with shaved heads are marketable to the majority, as opposed to just a penance paid to a trend that every corporation was terrified of defying until now. Hopefully.
AE has also specifically been the corporate sponsor of body positivity - publicly announcing they’d stop using photoshop for their sister brand Aerie, which also had extremely diverse models. They’re also big practitioners of vanity sizing to an extent which makes me wonder what size would even fit Sydney Sweeney. In a way, I think they’re bookending their own original publicity campaign of “Everyone is beautiful <3”
See but that nudity was odd, unattractively lit, and everyone involved seemed extremely uninterested to be there. It’s okay to sell with sex as long as anyone who gets aroused is slightly creeped out about it.
Do you have an example of "half naked obese women with shaved heads" being marketed to the majority? Surely there's a middle ground between that and presenting Barbie as the gold-standard of beauty. Obesity is unhealthy, so I'm generally in favor of rejecting the push for that to be considered beautiful, but aside from that, I fail to see what the problem is with offering up more variance in mass media when it comes to female beauty, especially because peoples' actual tastes vary, too.
I mean, just walking through a Target over the last few years and looking at the models plastered on the walls is a good example. And it's not that there's a problem with it in theory, it's that the whole campaign was never about social justice or empowerment, but exploiting trendy ideas to sell clothes. And of course baked into that whole thing is the idea that you're a bigot if you don't find all bodies attractive. And I don't believe most people do. They basically swapped out sex for phony ideology to promote their clothes. Which I hope a lot of social justice warriors are hip to and jaded by.
If I needed any wake up call to see that "body positivity" is detrimental to our health, it came in the form of a Buccee's I stopped at in Georgia. Very nearly everybody, and I'm not exaggerating, was morbidly obese including the kids. It was jarring and sad.
I think target has chonky models because most target shoppers are chonky and will feel better about buying clothes at target if someone with a similar body type to them is modeling the clothes.
Haha. That's a theory. I guess them changing out the skinny wall models with chonky ones coincidentally coincided with the broader cultural push for chonky representation then..
I think Jesse is right about there being a lot of unresolved issues in feminist circles that has brought about this left-wing puritanism. On the one hand, the 2010s pushed hookup culture and sleeping around as much as men. On the other hand, the Me Too movement, though it rightly exposed many dirtbags, also caused men to second-guess any potential flirting for fear of coming off as creepy. Now it's all about the "male gaze" and not being "male-centered". Some feminists really are the male equivalents of incels in how much they truly stereotype and hate all men. I used to believe the misandry charge against feminists was fake until I was exposed to TikTok. Also, calling a woman "male-centered" is just the PC way of saying she's a slut. I'm exhausted 😩
Lol no it refers to women who do something for the approval of or to attract men. Which is most straight women. Shocker: people want to attract the gender they are into. Who would have thought?
I disagree. It's taking the male POV in highly charged issues like when they talk about whores and their body count, or chant "your body our choice" and other BS incels repeat ad nauseum. That's not like flirting to attract the opposite sex.
Women have always "slept around" about as much as men, they're just more likely to lie about it. Dating apps just make that information harder to conceal. As far as straight people are concerned, it's mathematically impossible for one sex to be "sluttier" than the other, because who would they be slutty with?
Now, gay and bisexual people are a separate issue, because in those instances, SSA men tend to be more promiscuous than SSA women due to behavioral differences that become more prominent in single-sex contexts. Women are generally choosier and more risk-averse than men, which puts a natural limit on how slutty the average straight guy can be. When both parties are male, there's going to be an overall lower level of selectiveness and risk aversion. But SSA people run up into a different limiting factor, which is that they have a smaller dating pool overall.
These are all generalizations and averages, obviously. But research has consistently found that men exaggerate their number of sexual partners/encounters, while women downplay it.
That actually makes so much sense, because if I was less risk-averse, I would definitely hook up a lot more. But the risk assessment differs between the sexes. For men, it ranges from "she gives bad head" all the way to being accused of SA. But for me, I have to assume he's a good guy who won't cut me up and throw me in a body bag or sell me into sexual slavery.
I randomly came across something on IG to the effect that if you're a woman, 6 is the magic number where you're normal but not a slut. It also happens to be my number, so I guess I can't have anybody else, yikes.
I've seen the term "femcel" before. It does exist but is usually applied to those girls who are like "why can't I find a great guy" and then they swipe left on every single available guy.
I suppose it could be involuntary. Well, the term itself I have an issue with. As someone who has been single most of his adult life, the problem wasn't some grand scheme of women wanting me to be single. The problem has been my failure to commit to a woman.
The real hate crime is Sydney Sweeney’s voice. She sounds like a dead Valley girl.
More seriously, Katie and Jesse missed the real reason why people were so upset: jealousy. The anti-beauty discourse exists because beauty can’t be democratized. It’s not something that everyone can have, even in an age where there are products and procedures that can change your appearance. In this case, people know they can’t compete with her, so they’ll have to settle for destroying her.
I agree with you in general but it's funny to me that Sweeney in particular is being held up as an example of inescapable, un-hideable beauty, given that she spent her early career playing The Less Hot Girl. No one even remembers her in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood despite being featured in multiple scenes.
I honestly think she is pretty average (for a young trim hot woman) other than the tits. Expensive hair and makeup and skin care will do a lot for a person.
Not at all that I would throw her out of bed or anything, but the "OMG so gorgeous, goddess walking the earth" schtick from people just rings totally hollow to me. She seems like your typical cute girl from anywhere with much bigger than normal big boobs.
Which yeah that is great, but she ain't Helen of Troy.
I immediately assumed the whole jeans pun was just about her chest, no further implications necessary. I can't imagine getting that worked up over a marking pun about tits.
Am I living in total crazyland in that saying someone has "good genes" just means that they're attractive? Like I don't even understand where the eugenics interpretation came from.
Her team has been fantastic. I would love to see the marketing/segmenting documents they drew up before the rollout of this campaign because they've threaded the needle perfectly.
I was trying to think of who I would consider the most beautiful actress out there, and I think it would probably be Megan Fox ca. 2007, before she got all that plastic surgery. (Ironically, I think Megan is Appalachian, which was historically the part of the country that eugenicists wanted to wipe out.) I also love red hair, so I’m partial to redheads.
Meg's current life trajectory has been...certainly a thing that has happened. I find her whole thing with MGK to be kind of fascinating in a "two dump trucks colliding" sort of way.
Probably because it doesn't matter how big your tits are when you have zero charisma or screen presence. People can literally Google boobs and see a million women who look like Sweeney. In the age of the internet, an actor has to do a lot more to stand out, which is probably why she had to resort to doing all these dumb ads instead of films or TV shows.
I'm not "knocking" her, I'm pointing out that she's part of a much larger problem; "while she can" is the core of it. Reducing women to their looks downplays their actual skills, and forces them to participate in a deeply unhealthy pursuit of permanent youth. While the problem is gradually getting better, it's much, much easier to be an aging man in Hollywood than it is to be an aging woman, and part of that is because of how actresses' looks are given more weight than their skills early in the selection process.
She might benefit from this system in the short term, but she's likely to get screwed by it later, as many women have.
She is so boring looking to me. She has big boobs, but the rest of her is so….. lacking in personality. Even her acting is so aggravating. In that particular movie, I think Margaret Qualley was the standout of the sort of Manson groupies
Since the heterodox online space trends kind of older, my hunch is that not many here are familiar with her filmography. I knew very little about her prior to SNL
I'm gonna be 40 this week so I don't know about the age limitations, but her notable filmography includes the first season of White Lotus, where she played the Less Hot Girl; Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, where she played the Less Hot Girl; Euphoria, a younger skewing HBO show I didn't watch but Zendaya and Hunter Schafer were also in it and it's about high schoolers doing sex and drugs so that's fun; Madame Web, a film that exists; and a recent romantic comedy co-starring Glen Powell whom I despise so I didn't see it, but it was a hit relative to its budget.
Her BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS SEX SEX SEX BATHWATER UNGGGGH ALSO BASED CONSERVATIVE???? turn seems to be a recent marketing project from her team, probably in response to the buzz from her Euphoria role.
Not only is she in the movie, she has multiple lines! To be fair to her there's a lot of "What, what?" casting if you watch it with 2025 eyes. You've got Mikey Madison and Austin Butler in there too, but they leave far more of an impression than Sweeney does in her somnolent reading of "He's driving a bitchin' yellow Coup de Ville."
Absolutely idiotic article in scientific American, showing how utterly worthless and ideologically captured that magazine became in the dark times, and presumably still is. Did quite the rounds on the heterodox media, can't remember if it made it to blocked and reported.
Worth reading the whole thing, but the highlight is "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against".
I feel like I have to be That Guy and point out that 30 miles south of Seattle and very much on the west side of the mountains is Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an unending traffic nightmare that conducts regular nighttime artillery and helicopter training that can be heard for 20 miles around, and which is surrounded by military housing containing many, many tried and true American patriots of all races, colors, and creeds. Evergreen students shop at the same Fred Meyer as 3-generation Lacey military families!
I know Katie is well-traveled, but it never fails to crack me up how, for so many Seattleites, western Washington ends in Renton and the conservative wonderland to the south of them just kind of counts as “Yakima” in their minds 😂
“Eugenics” is practiced all the time. Iceland has almost no children with Down Syndrome not because they figured something out - it’s a random genetic mutation that can happen to anyone - they abort them. Maybe you oppose that, maybe you don’t, but that is a eugenics in practice. Testing parents before marriage for being carriers of Tay-Sachs, an absolutely terrible disease that is almost only seen in Ashkenazi Jews, is eugenics. You are trying to influence, in a positive direction, the genetic makeup of future generations.
If this was peak crazy - 2020 through 2022 - the ad would have been pulled, American Eagle would have denounced it, and Sweeney would issue tearful apologies that would do nothing.
Also- the red hats at her mother’s birthday said “make 60 great again.” It was not a MAGA hat.
Even if they did who cares? You cannot survive as a social movement/political party if people merely associating with those of the other political party is grounds for wailing and gnashing of teeth.
People like this (on both sides, but it is bigger on the left) are absolutely religious crazies and should be outed as such.
I agree 100%. I was just pointing out a factual error, which bugs me.
About half the country voted for the guy. The fact that some rather loud people think that support for the candidate of one of our 2 major parties is a reason for wailing says there is someone wrong with their movement, or your movement just attracts mentally ill people. Many such cases!
Everything in the ad was 100% deliberate to get a backlash from annoying online people, and obviously they took the bate. No "accidental" implications. The way every fashion ad in the 80s and 90s was designed to get backlash and attention from conservative religious organizations who always loved to do their part and get attention for their outrage to it.
Just don't react. Like Milo back in the day, lazily bating college kids into action by saying "omg omg I'm going to come to your school and say feminists are fat and trans people ugly!" and then Berkeley has a multi week meltdown and a riot.
It's so transparent and I don't understand why people aren't getting it. Do we really think it's a complete accident that Sweeney's voter registration just appeared a few days ago, and today we're suddenly hit with "viral" video of her at a shooting range?
They probably thought they were being provocative about the unabashed sexiness. I don’t think the “fascist dog whistle” was intentional. Sometimes a pun is just a pun.
I think all people of good conscience should “backlash” against a fascist dogwhistle when there is a would-be fascist in the White House. But that’s just me. I don’t like fascist stuff.
It's an issue of proportionality. Trump just fired the BLS commissioner for reporting data that made him look bad, a transparently corrupt move. There's no excuse to be wasting this much time and energy on a stupid ad campaign when the government is growing more authoritarian every day. Every second we waste on this attention-seeking woman and her stupid ad is a second that could be spent doing literally anything else more productive.
If ‘people of good conscience’ (i.e. self-obsessed media types) had spent the last 8 years less interested in denouncing pop culture trivialities and more interested in the actual political centre of gravity, they might at least *understand* why Trump has gotten consistently more popular in every demographic except the college educated whites who dominate the media class, and maybe even find a way to do something about it. But fine, you want to keep telling everyone it’s their duty to denounce Sydney Sweeney or they’re sympathetic to fascism. You might as well stick pins into a Trump voodoo doll for all the good it’ll do.
I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s pointless and a waste of effort. You don’t have to care about Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ad at all; the voters certainly don’t.
The funny thing about this ad is that I never would have heard about it if not for the outrage, it’s a classic case of the Streisand effect. Even if I had seen the ad before the controversy, it just looks like any other overproduced fashion commercial, and I wouldn’t have noticed any so-called dog whistle.
It reminds me of a continuing legal education class I took last year that focused on "problematic" language. One example the instructor gave was the word "brainstorm," which they claimed could be upsetting to people with epilepsy. There were two issues with that. First, none of us would have ever thought twice about the word if the instructor hadn’t brought it up. Second, when I actually looked into it, epilepsy advocacy groups didn’t find it offensive at all.
Well, like you I was born and raised in Detroit so I am far from "esteemed". I am of middle eastern descent and there were no dog whistles, just plain old racist name calling. But I guess from my era (I am 59) I would some dog whistles were phrases like "welfare queen" or "inner city".
That little "drop it and move on" tidbit significantly lowered my sympathy meter for his loss of go fund me money.
Too bad his kids didn't get a go fund me. It also made me wonder about "the rest of the story". Like are his in-laws just shit people too or did they funnel some of that to his kids? Or using it to take care of the parents or something.
Anyone else feel like this story was missing something? Like, Katie, was essentially just aggregating news reports, there was nothing new here. I kept waiting for an "aha" moment that never came.
It is not healthy to treat pets like children. No dog or cat will have a lifespan that matches yours. Elderly pets will die, sometimes in horrible circumstances, and it is sad and upsetting. I think the lawsuit is ridiculous.
The subscription program is one of the many reasons I love this informative and very entertaining podcast.
I would not have been able to listen to all the archived content and track how the podcast has developed.
I'm old (65) on minimal disability funds and going blind so sound is my main option. I often cannot afford food so $6 a month just can't happen for me.
The fact Katie keeps up with all the admin stuff and also researches her stories is astounding! That's a lot of work! They have an audience of thousands! Katie, a sincere thanks for all you do!
Yes! And I wish K&J had also mentioned that the commercial above is a reference to this old Brooke Shields jeans commercial, which Brooke Shields has described as being distressing at the time because she was only 15 and felt that she had been groomed by the people who handled her career. https://youtu.be/AXzR5b6HoIA?si=qU6a5rMxvWMv50FU
Noah is a good example of the Ezra Klein-ification of leftists: extreme psychological projection. Clearly coming in bad faith, he preempts the accusation by accusing others of bad faith.
An actual newspaper decrying a clothing ad being sexually suggestive feels to me, as a former tumblr user, like yet more tumblr brain leak into the offline world.
“It’s ’Alice In Wonderland’ for a new generation. When she finds that amazing toke, she unexpectedly shrinks to the size of a mushroom. This summer, watch Sydney Sweeney in ‘High, Littler.”
"You've seen Sydney Sweeney as Robin Phelps, a dentist helping correct the teeth of vampires who just want to be able to eat eggs boiled or scrambled. This summer she returns to star in her biggest challenge yet, Our Bite Mark: Fried"
“It’s the heart wrenching tale of a young woman’s battle against debilitating narcolepsy and sleep paralysis. This summer, Sydney Sweeney stars in ANTI-WOKE”
Abbie grew up poor and lonely in a fancy coastal resort, only happy when she could steal time on the water after dark. One day, Cinderella gets to go to the ball, at the annual town regatta in front of the Prince she secretly adores…this Summer, see Sydney Sweeney in “You Boat?”
Dani White was a normal teenage girl until a long lost great uncle died and left her his small town electric company in the midst of a hostile takeover over by a multi-national corporation. This summer, watch as Sydney Sweeney protects what her family has built, the community around it and learns a little about herself in “White Power.”
“Despite being a girl in a boy’s sport, all she ever wanted to do was to call balls and strikes. But when an industrial accident caused her to move beyond the sight of her friends and family, she took the game to a higher level. This summer, watch as Sydney Sweeney teaches others the rules of the game in ‘Invisible Umpire.’”
We originally posted the wrong audio of the commercial everyone got mad at, but this has been fixed!
The idea that Sweeney would be expected to disavow her family for the crime of not being left wing is an absolute indictment of this country's political state.
And people wonder how on earth Trump could win?
How could people not want to get with the right side of history?!?!?!?!
I'm not surprised by such reactions anymore. Sad to say, but I am not. I just shake my head and laugh that people have the time to be bothered by a hot girl wearing jeans in an advertisement.
Let's be honest: a large percent of the people claiming to be mad are gross chicks.
The same thing with Chappel Roan
If your family supports an aspiring fascist, you should disavow your family. If you fail to do so, people will intuit you also support that aspiring fascist.
Considering her failure to disavow her fascistphile family and the fact she registered as a Republican AFTER the rise of the would-be fascist, I think it’s safe to assume Sweeney supports the aspiring fascist.
Given all this, she forfeited the benefit of the doubt. That’s why people justly assume her dogwhistle jeans commercial is in fact of dogwhistle.
https://www.newsweek.com/sydney-sweeney-registered-republican-what-we-know-jeans-american-eagle-2108101
"Should" is doing alot of work here to get you to fascist dogwhistle in a jeans commercial. You don't get to intuit what someone believes based on who they didn't disavow that you think they should have. You're inventing a test and deciding what the result of it tells you. Most people probably rightly value their families over this totally narcissistic need to be fully politically aligned with everyone they have a relationship with.
Or she’s a shit person in full alignment with her wanna-be fascist shit family. That seems the more parsimonious explanation. But let assholes tell it, right-wing assholes are never what they appear to be. Assholes in this group argued for months Elon didn’t do a Nazi salute.
Haha. Yeah, okay. Maybe. In this case, if you already knew she registered Republican post-Trump being elected, then your first point is kinda moot anyways. You don't need to intuit. But I'm saying, moving through the world more generally, assuming what people believe based on who they don't disavow in their lives definitely isn't an accurate approach considering it's all predicated on pretending that family and other close relationships don't hinge on much more than political alignment for most people. And I can't imagine that you'd ever wanna go around mislabeling people as fascists.
Wow, her FAMILY are wannabe fascists?? Somebody should tell someone! They're aspiring!
This is the full line of reasoning as far as I understand it: because she doesn't disavow her Republican family for being shit people (even though she herself is a registered Republican), and because she was in a jeans commercial that made a pun about her good genes (aka being hot. Which everyone agreed with until they phrased it this way. Aka the obvious and only way to make the dumb pun work in a jeans commercial), it is just and obvious to assume that she is doing a fascist dogwhistle. And that is literally the extent of the logic here. Or rather the completely paranoid, internet-deranged attempt at logic here.
From the article you linked to:
"This marks Sweeney's second political controversy. In 2022, the actress faced criticism for posting photos from her mother's 60th birthday party where guests wore MAGA-style hats and "Blue Lives Matter" apparel. At the time, she stated the celebration was misinterpreted as a political statement."
So there were *guests* at her mom's birthday party wearing mainstream Republican clothing. And Sweeney shared photos that she took at this birthday party on social media. Sweeney claimed that she shared these photos to celebrate her mother, rather than to celebrate the mainstream Republican political clothing worn by certain people in attendance.
Yeah, I can totally see why that doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
This absurdly liberal use of "fascist" has consequences. The word loses its power. For example, Donald Trump blacklisting law firms who employ any attorneys who have ever opposed him becomes equivalent to Sydney Sweeney not disowning her family for letting guests wear MAGA hats to a birthday party. Both, after all, count as "fascist". Nice work.
(Also, of course she registered to vote AFTER the rise of Trump. She's 27, it's not like she had the option of registering in the Romney era.)
Btw, the hats said "Make 60 Great Again," so they weren't even actual Trump hats.
Yep. Of course, you and I might think this is a highly relevant fact, but I get a feeling that folks like Noah will be unmoved. Those on high alert for fascists and fascist sympathizers are almost certainly also on high alert fascism-minimizers. Those people wearing the "Make 60 Great Again" hats might even be more contemptable than the regular MAGA hat wearers- making an uncritical *joke* that invokes an evil symbol of fascism will have the effect of making fascism seem socially acceptable! Or something along those lines.
If anything it seems like Trump likes to borrow ideas from dictators he likes. He's definitely authoritarian, of that I have no doubt. Simplifying it to "fascism" is just too simplistic an argument for me. And yes, I agree the word has lost any and all of its meaning in online discourse. I think for the majority who are not online, the word still has some meaning but they probably care little for political discourse as it is.
Oh yeah, Trump is a vile piece of shit who craves power and vengence and has no respect for the rule of law. The sooner he croaks the better for all of us.
My problem is with this transitive connect-the-dots game, where Trump = fascist, therefore Trump supporter = fascist, therefore being friends with a Trump supporter = fascist, therefore failing to disown a family member who is friends with Trump supporters = fascist, etc. Play this game long enough and we can whittle the non-fascist population of US citizens down to a few thousand.
I'm not responding to the first line just out of a general rule of not wishing anyone dead for my own moral sensibilities.
Agree with the 2nd paragraph. Kind of hoped we were past this (and maybe we are moving in that direction), but supporting a political party like the Republicans makes no one more a fascist than a Democrat being labeled a communist.
I understand regarding the first line, and totally agree on the 2nd. Thanks for the reply.
Trump is a fascist. People who support Trump support a fascist. I’m not sure why you don’t understand why this connection is valid.
You sound like Katie from The Way We Were in her college days.
Most of us assuming you're kidding. The rest just assume you're retarded.
What do you mean by "disavow?" Dissociate herself from them? That's ridiculous. I hang out with my right-wing family members a little less and prefer to avoid talking about politics with them, but I still consider them family.
I guess you’re also a fascist then.
The only way you can come back from this is to murder your family.
Only way
😂 👌
Sorry fam.....BTW where do y'all keep your guns??
Guns kill people and are a tool of fascist white supremacy. Every gun made will kill on average 28 American school children.
I do not own guns.
I recommend you run over your family with a large commercial vehicle or use a suicide vest or simply stab them.
These are the preferred methods of the Religion of Peace.
I think there's a struggle session at Griffith Observatory the first Friday of every month. Usually right after the NPR World Music concert.
That'd probably be a good place to stone some fascists.
Duely noted 🫡
Sweeney’s family supports a fascist president.
If Sweeney was a decent person, she wouldn’t amply that support by sharing photos of her family in fascist paraphernalia with her millions of social media followers. But she did because she also supports the fascist president.
Sweeney supports the fascist president and her fascistphile family because Sweeney is a garbage human being.
I think the fascist key is stuck on your keyboard.
Trump isn't competent enough to be a fascist. He's a boob with authoritarian tendencies. She probably does agree with her family, but who cares? The people who follow her on social media are 80% men who beat off to her. They don't give a crap about her political opinions, to them she's just a walking pair of boobs. The other 20% are hate-follows. Do you genuinely think either of those groups of people are going to see some pictures of her with her trashy family and go, "welp, I guess I'm going to vote for Trump now."
I'm amazed that someone in the Barpod comments section of all places is making arguments like "don't platform [x]" and "cut off/disavow everyone who thinks [y]". This parochial mindset only makes political polarization worse and further entrenched.
> to them she's just a walking pair of books.
ITT I learned that Sweeney fans are literary fetishists.
This isn't an imageboard.
His goal is fascism. His former chief of staff even said so: Whether he is able to successfully execute his goal is a separate question.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/what-john-kelly-said-about-trumps-praise-of-hitler-and-fascist-tendencies
His aspirations and his competence are relevant to each other. John Bolton, who also used to work for Trump, said the exact same thing I did, which is that he's too stupid to be a fascist. He aspires to be a dictator and makes gestures in that direction, but he's stymied by his own stupidity and the fact that the U.S. has a number of characteristics that make it considerably more difficult to turn into a dictatorial state. Not impossible, but difficult. Someone would have to have way better political acumen than Trump to pull it off.
Does it suck that Americans are so fucking retarded that they were willing to stick an aspiring dictator in office based on empty promises and xenophobia? Absolutely. But there's really not much use in getting angry at idiots. Sometimes, you just have to meet them where they are. Republican criticisms of Biden were just true enough that dumb people could be fooled into thinking Trump was somehow the better option. That's not a problem you can resolve by running screaming in the opposite direction. We need to be willing to actually engage with people, because that's the key to deradicalizing them.
Also, is the theory here that all of Sydney's politically undecided followers are going to see her family rocking that sweet Trump merch and be swayed towards supporting him? Is that the source of the paranoia over "amplifying support"?
I'm going to concede every single thing you just said for the sake of argument. So what? She clearly is not motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic factors to act in accordance with your wishes. Just like countless other human beings in the US of A she is close enough to whatever whatever to be whatever whatever according to your heuristic. She would almost certainly experience more guilt to disavow her family members than to be your version of a fascist and it's not like it's taking a dollar out of her pocket to do what she already wants to do in accordance with the way she was raised. What now? Do you feel like calling her a fascist achieves something in itself or is it a stepping stone to the actual achievement or actual point? Where there are plenty of famous and hot young women in Hollywood who vote blue, what's the relevance there? Do you feel like they have a positive impact the way that she has a negative one? Also, you remember when Taylor Swift was getting called a fascist or like KKK Barbie or something? Do you feel like this is the same as that or different? No pressure to answer all of these but if you could shed some light on how you see the utility of naming her as a fascist I would be genuinely curious. PS I appreciate you speaking your mind in a way that puts you in a minority in this space. Even though I don't see it your way I thank you for adding to the conversation. Generally there are a lot of people with your POV in my life but in this space it kind of keeps it fresh so thanks for that.
I’m not sure what’s so exotic about my point-of-view. I don’t like fascists or the people who support them. Not sure why this is controversial.
As far as my willingness to take unpopular positions, I try to take whatever position is based in reality. I suppose this because fraught when people deny the reality the Trump administration is proto-fascist.
But — as I said elsewhere — many of these people also deny Elon did a Nazi salute. Some people are full of shit, I suppose. I’m trying to make peace with that.
It's not exotic in general, just here.
I mean I concur that Trump and the MAGA movement is actually fascist, and the only reason they don't call themselves that is the post-war cultural consensus that "fascism" can only refer to an enemy, not an ideology.
To be clear, fascism is a hyper-nationalist ideology classically marked by anti-communism, anti-internationalism, racism(anti-minority-ism), and a sort of anti-feminist and anti-gay pro-natalism. It's not without positive definition (nation! volk!), but it's more defined by what it's against (humanism, "them" in various manifestations), so it's sometimes a little hard to identify distinct from other conservatisms. (Also it's certainly easy to see why German fascism was easy for everyone outside it to condemn.) It's also not any one of its markers.
That said, I disagree that disavowals are good or useful. Liberal society has overestimated/misunderstood the power of relationships to change ideologies, assuming that it's always a net good to split. I think generally think the culture of disavowal has run amok in this way, in large part to the collapse of the private life. So I'm glad that this celebrity and actress chooses not to publicly gesture a change in her relationship with her family (her actual, real relationships) in order to satisfy the desires, (ph/f)antasies, or expectations of parasocial chatterers.
Also, that article is trash. "What we know" is that Sydney Sweeney registered as a Republican. That's all, and it's in the headline. It's a tweet's worth of data, padded out with other tweets (some from libs, at least one from a probably White supremacist lol) that add nothing to that one tiny nugget of info.
All we know about Sweeney is that she has Republican family and registered as Republican in a Republican state. Also she has "good genes" (aka was born pretty) and is in a denim (aka "jeans") ad campaign. That's what we can actually see, and the rest is projection.
I guess it's easier to try to sus out a crypto-conservative celeb on Twitter than reverse the destructive policies of the current administration.
I disagree with almost everything the trump administration is doing and I am seriously worried if this is the beginning of the end of our country.
However, over half of the people who voted in 2024 voted for him, and the Republicans also control the house and the senate.
The left lost. We got our ass handed to us. Trump and the republicans are more popular at least electorally than the democrats and the left. The left can try to unperson or kick out of polite society anyone who voted for trump or who still supports what he is doing to this country, but the left are in the minority and doesn't seem to have the power to do that. Also, Sidney Fucking Sweeny is not what is wrong with this country. Why are we reading in the fucking tea leaves to decide if she is fascist when the people running the country are doing fascism? If she was in an ad that said fascism is bad, there would be the same result - nothing.
I don’t think you can have real fascism without the “engage the entire population in militarist national expansionism”. One bomber raid on Iran doesn’t really count, and I think Trump is actually fine with most of the country being politically unengaged as long as he wins.
I think militarist national expansionism is one of those things that acts as a sign of fascism, but isn't an essential feature. Not that we haven't rattled some sabers, even towards Greenland and Canada. But America is a really big country, and has traditionally been able to get what it wants without explicit conquest.
How is fascism inherently racial? The only true fascist State, the Italian Fascists, never even cared about race until 1938 because their much stronger ally, Hitler, insisted on it. Mussolini expressly said he didn't think race was real. Fascism is about members of the State and its culture, not about race.
I believe I said it’s marked by “racism(anti-minority-ism)“ (among other things), and then contextualized that as being for an us and against a them. One way that can manifest is as a belief in biological races and a hierarchy against them, but that’s not even the only way racism manifests. We say people can be racist against Muslims, but Islam is a religion. We say people can be racist against Hispanics, but Hispanic people aren’t a traditional race and in fact are themselves racially diverse. We have a special word for racism against Jewish people, antisemitism, but the people who are targets of antisemitism may or may not be considered Jewish by the larger Jewish community (e.g. only Jewish on dad’s side) or by themselves (e.g. Christian converts). I mean, props to Mussolini (words that should never be written) for not buying into the antisemitism or biological racism of the Third Reich, but the cultural/spiritual forms of racism from Italian fascism are sufficient for typological purposes. Indeed, MAGA doesn’t demand “racial” purity per se, which makes the Sweeney-swooning more silly, but it does have its hated minorities.
The BARPod community should disavow you.
You forgot to put the /s at the end there
Blah blah blah...unhinged shit...blah blah blah.
Btw, did you know that a person can be a registered Republican or Democrat and yet not vote in that year's election?!? I know, it's CRAZY. I guess not everyone is obsessed with their party registration 😂.
You’re full of shit. But that’s what I expect from people who deny Elon Musk did a Nazi salute. There’s video of that, and you assholes say otherwise.
If you’re going to bullshit us about that, you’re definitely going to bullshit us about the more abstract concept of who deserves censure for supporting a proto-fascist regime.
Anyone comparing having a pet to being an actual parent is a ####ing idiot. I've had and lost pets, loved them very much, cried real tears at their deaths. It is *nothing* like parenting. Honestly, it's borderline offensive to assert any kind of equivalency, and I am not easily offended.
Once I was out having coffee with a childless friend, who had three dogs. He claimed that having pets was “exactly like having kids.” I looked around. “Wait, where are your dogs? I don’t see them.” He looked confused. “They’re at home, like always.” “Oh, so you got a babysitter?” I asked. Now he looked at me like I was crazy. “No, they are home alone.” “Then having pets is not exactly like having kids,” I replied triumphantly. (My own two kids were in school at the time, but if it hadn’t been a school day I would have had to get a babysitter or take them along.)
Your friend should tell my friends whose kids had pediatric cancer that having a dog is the exactly the same.
Here's the thing: if you haven't had kids, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO HAVE KIDS. Admit your ignorance. Have a little epistemic ####ing humility.
Sorry to get so worked up about this, but having experienced some of the highs and lows of parenting, and seen others in my friend and family group go through the same, I am beyond tired of the "pet parent" trope. You're not a ####ing parent, stop pretending that you are.
No one literally thinks pets are the equivalent of human babies. Relax.
You know, you're allowed to say "fuck" here. It's safe.
I think the great majority of people who have pets and don't have kids understand that it's very different. Those that use that term, with or without kids, tend to understand this most of the time. We live in a world full of hyperbole and black and white thinking so some people feel the need to express that this animal is not just a personal possession but a being with some variation of mind and soul and they feel a sense of obligation to treat this being with love. Other people feel the need to incorporate and express more tenuous propositions such as, raising the next generation is just a lifestyle choice that serves no purpose beyond my own emotional experience and therefore whatever I think will give me a similar emotional experience must be the same in every way. I feel like the former reasonable option is more likely to be where people are coming from most of the time. I personally don't use that term but most of the people that I know who use it are more or less in touch with reality. The position espoused by this friend sounds like the kind of thing that if someone were to say it most people would probably interpret it as either this person is having a hard time and we should just try to be sympathetic because clearly they're not doing well or you're an eccentric person with very strange perspectives, but I don't think that most people would feel like this person is rowing with both oars in the water.
Totally agree. I have had dogs for my whole life. I adore dogs more than almost anyone I have ever met. But I am also a mom of two wonderful young adults. Our love for our pets is in a different universe from our love for our kids. It’s not in any way comparable.
I hope your friends’ kids are ok. I can’t imagine the agony of going through that.
The kids are OK, thankfully. But goddamn was that stressful just to witness. Going through it would be a kind of hell.
Also, kids are light years more clever and independent than dogs. For all the good and ill that brings.
I do think it's very helpful for potential parents to own a dog first. Dogs are light year's easier. But there's a shocking amount of similarity as well. After all, we're both social animals.
The process of effective behavioral shaping is the same. Positive reward, consistency, practice.
It's easier for us to see this with dogs since they're just alien enough to let us focus on those parts. With little humans, they're so clever and similar to, well...us, we often get bogged down in the emotional interaction part of it. Like what do they mean or want or am I offended, etc.
But if you can remind yourself...what you need is consistent, positive reward and consequences it really helps.
Having a dog (and attending dog training classes and such) help build that muscle memory I think.
Course, if you're the kind of dog owner that just yells over and over at your dog randomly for bad behavior expecting them to stop.....well, that probably tells you something about your future child rearing skills too lol
When I first got a dog, my mother, who has four children, told me dogs were more difficult than kids, which I found sort of baffling. I think it’s just that she likes kids and dislikes dogs.
I've had dogs and I have kids. Only one group has bitten me on purpose (hint: it's not the dogs). Both have pooped on the floor though.
Thank you for saying this. I like and take care of OK Cat but she is NOT my fur baby.
I want to compare Katie losing Moose to me getting a really good videogame save corrupted. Because that is about how much the equivalence works with Pets vs kids.
Frankly anyone who says "fur baby" and means it seriously is a good 3/4 of the way to mentally ill.
It's an expression, get over yourself.
Nah I think it is a useful diagnostic tool. What expressions people use is a guide to how their minds work. And people who think their pets are children often have one or more screws loose.
Looks like you're 4/4 of the way there
Sorry you have to deal with how you sound to others…must be uncomfortable.
Are you familiar with the Kathy cartoons that used to run in the paper? Have you ever shopped a sale at an outlet mall or TJ Maxx? Like, do you know any normie women of the middle-aged mayonnaisesapien vaguely sappy variety? The kind of lady who brings a tater tot casserole to the office potluck and you think, eh, doesn't look great, but at least she made something and that is more than I can say for the rest of us?These ladies use that kind of lingo, even if they have actual kids and understand implicitly and or explicitly that it's not the same.
Having kids is kind of weird. It triggers these really, really deep changes in your psyche on a fundamental biological level.
The only thing even comparable I can think of is puberty. Like there's two yous: pre-pubescent and post-pubescent. Where it's almost like over night that this entire new way of being and interacting with the world just opens up.
Just like a pre-pubescent child cannot even conceive of the experience of a mature adult with relationships, a pre-parent simply cannot conceive of anything comparable in their lives.
Yep. Which is why it's aggravating for parents to be told that anything other than parenting is like parenting.
Completely agree.
100% co-signed
Does it delegitimize your struggles as a parent if I say I literally gave birth to my Italian greyhound baby and that I have lost sleep in the past year of having her bc I take my responsibility seriously?? No. At most it makes me seem like a lunatic with an adorable Italian greyhound daughter.
I am a cat owner. Man, I love my little guys, but I would never recover from the loss of one of my kids, but I might cry for one month when my kitties go. But suing the government over a sick, dying elderly cat with labored breathing from an airshow is PEAK 21st C. AMERICAN. Kooky. Gotta love us!!!
About the Sydney Sweeney ad... In addition to the race component, I have to imagine that a lot of people are also butthurt about the fact that the ad kinda signals to everyone (most importantly other companies that sell their merch with models) that the beauty standard is moving back towards what qualified as conventionally attractive up until a few years ago. Or rather that it's okay to stop pretending that half naked obese women with shaved heads are marketable to the majority, as opposed to just a penance paid to a trend that every corporation was terrified of defying until now. Hopefully.
AE has also specifically been the corporate sponsor of body positivity - publicly announcing they’d stop using photoshop for their sister brand Aerie, which also had extremely diverse models. They’re also big practitioners of vanity sizing to an extent which makes me wonder what size would even fit Sydney Sweeney. In a way, I think they’re bookending their own original publicity campaign of “Everyone is beautiful <3”
I'm just realizing I confused them with American Apparel, which made it seem especially silly to get upset about an edgy ad campaign.
See but that nudity was odd, unattractively lit, and everyone involved seemed extremely uninterested to be there. It’s okay to sell with sex as long as anyone who gets aroused is slightly creeped out about it.
People are tired of being bullied into denying reality. AE was smart to take advantage of the pendulum swing.
Do you have an example of "half naked obese women with shaved heads" being marketed to the majority? Surely there's a middle ground between that and presenting Barbie as the gold-standard of beauty. Obesity is unhealthy, so I'm generally in favor of rejecting the push for that to be considered beautiful, but aside from that, I fail to see what the problem is with offering up more variance in mass media when it comes to female beauty, especially because peoples' actual tastes vary, too.
I mean, just walking through a Target over the last few years and looking at the models plastered on the walls is a good example. And it's not that there's a problem with it in theory, it's that the whole campaign was never about social justice or empowerment, but exploiting trendy ideas to sell clothes. And of course baked into that whole thing is the idea that you're a bigot if you don't find all bodies attractive. And I don't believe most people do. They basically swapped out sex for phony ideology to promote their clothes. Which I hope a lot of social justice warriors are hip to and jaded by.
If I needed any wake up call to see that "body positivity" is detrimental to our health, it came in the form of a Buccee's I stopped at in Georgia. Very nearly everybody, and I'm not exaggerating, was morbidly obese including the kids. It was jarring and sad.
Are they fat because of body positivity?
They're fat because they eat too much and the media now tells them how "not unhealthy" it is to be morbidly obese
Naw. Southern cookin.
I don't know or care where they're from, I just know how sad it was. Especially those kids
I think target has chonky models because most target shoppers are chonky and will feel better about buying clothes at target if someone with a similar body type to them is modeling the clothes.
Haha. That's a theory. I guess them changing out the skinny wall models with chonky ones coincidentally coincided with the broader cultural push for chonky representation then..
Not bald but:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7589299/Plus-size-rapper-Chika-hits-critics-slammed-Calvin-Klein-ad.html
https://nypost.com/2022/08/29/abercrombie-deletes-ad-after-fury-over-normalizing-obesity/
https://www.reddit.com/r/howardstern/comments/16prije/victoria_secret_has_really_been_declining_lately/
Sports Illustrated, etc, etc.
If there's a sliver of signal in the noise of the Sweeney nonsense I think this is it.
Jesse Singal Has Great Cargo Pants
I’d join his cargo cult
Jesse Singal has great jorts.
Jesse is trying to make Cargo Pants Great Again
Only Nazis need that many pockets.
Cargo SHORTS, Bigot!
They’d be pants on mere mortals, but have you seen how tall Jesse is?
I think Jesse is right about there being a lot of unresolved issues in feminist circles that has brought about this left-wing puritanism. On the one hand, the 2010s pushed hookup culture and sleeping around as much as men. On the other hand, the Me Too movement, though it rightly exposed many dirtbags, also caused men to second-guess any potential flirting for fear of coming off as creepy. Now it's all about the "male gaze" and not being "male-centered". Some feminists really are the male equivalents of incels in how much they truly stereotype and hate all men. I used to believe the misandry charge against feminists was fake until I was exposed to TikTok. Also, calling a woman "male-centered" is just the PC way of saying she's a slut. I'm exhausted 😩
Is “male-centered” a euphemism for being spitroasted?
Lol no it refers to women who do something for the approval of or to attract men. Which is most straight women. Shocker: people want to attract the gender they are into. Who would have thought?
I could keep this going by pointing out that many men approve of and are attracted to spitroasting….
But, yeah. I know. I was joking ;)
I disagree. It's taking the male POV in highly charged issues like when they talk about whores and their body count, or chant "your body our choice" and other BS incels repeat ad nauseum. That's not like flirting to attract the opposite sex.
I thought those were "pick me's?" Or what's the other term....it's a girl name...
Is that a Becky?
😂
Women have always "slept around" about as much as men, they're just more likely to lie about it. Dating apps just make that information harder to conceal. As far as straight people are concerned, it's mathematically impossible for one sex to be "sluttier" than the other, because who would they be slutty with?
Now, gay and bisexual people are a separate issue, because in those instances, SSA men tend to be more promiscuous than SSA women due to behavioral differences that become more prominent in single-sex contexts. Women are generally choosier and more risk-averse than men, which puts a natural limit on how slutty the average straight guy can be. When both parties are male, there's going to be an overall lower level of selectiveness and risk aversion. But SSA people run up into a different limiting factor, which is that they have a smaller dating pool overall.
These are all generalizations and averages, obviously. But research has consistently found that men exaggerate their number of sexual partners/encounters, while women downplay it.
Take a look at the difference between gay and lesbian hook up cultures. There are important gender differences here.
That actually makes so much sense, because if I was less risk-averse, I would definitely hook up a lot more. But the risk assessment differs between the sexes. For men, it ranges from "she gives bad head" all the way to being accused of SA. But for me, I have to assume he's a good guy who won't cut me up and throw me in a body bag or sell me into sexual slavery.
I randomly came across something on IG to the effect that if you're a woman, 6 is the magic number where you're normal but not a slut. It also happens to be my number, so I guess I can't have anybody else, yikes.
Incels or maybe just cels?
I've seen the term "femcel" before. It does exist but is usually applied to those girls who are like "why can't I find a great guy" and then they swipe left on every single available guy.
But it's likely not involuntary, right? I used to be one for few years in my 20s!
I suppose it could be involuntary. Well, the term itself I have an issue with. As someone who has been single most of his adult life, the problem wasn't some grand scheme of women wanting me to be single. The problem has been my failure to commit to a woman.
The real hate crime is Sydney Sweeney’s voice. She sounds like a dead Valley girl.
More seriously, Katie and Jesse missed the real reason why people were so upset: jealousy. The anti-beauty discourse exists because beauty can’t be democratized. It’s not something that everyone can have, even in an age where there are products and procedures that can change your appearance. In this case, people know they can’t compete with her, so they’ll have to settle for destroying her.
I agree with you in general but it's funny to me that Sweeney in particular is being held up as an example of inescapable, un-hideable beauty, given that she spent her early career playing The Less Hot Girl. No one even remembers her in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood despite being featured in multiple scenes.
I honestly think she is pretty average (for a young trim hot woman) other than the tits. Expensive hair and makeup and skin care will do a lot for a person.
Not at all that I would throw her out of bed or anything, but the "OMG so gorgeous, goddess walking the earth" schtick from people just rings totally hollow to me. She seems like your typical cute girl from anywhere with much bigger than normal big boobs.
Which yeah that is great, but she ain't Helen of Troy.
I immediately assumed the whole jeans pun was just about her chest, no further implications necessary. I can't imagine getting that worked up over a marking pun about tits.
Am I living in total crazyland in that saying someone has "good genes" just means that they're attractive? Like I don't even understand where the eugenics interpretation came from.
That is the only way in which I've ever heard that phrase used. The eugenics thing strikes me as either looking for offense or just deranged
That’s exactly what I thought.
Her team has been fantastic. I would love to see the marketing/segmenting documents they drew up before the rollout of this campaign because they've threaded the needle perfectly.
I was trying to think of who I would consider the most beautiful actress out there, and I think it would probably be Megan Fox ca. 2007, before she got all that plastic surgery. (Ironically, I think Megan is Appalachian, which was historically the part of the country that eugenicists wanted to wipe out.) I also love red hair, so I’m partial to redheads.
Meg's current life trajectory has been...certainly a thing that has happened. I find her whole thing with MGK to be kind of fascinating in a "two dump trucks colliding" sort of way.
Agreed.
Probably because it doesn't matter how big your tits are when you have zero charisma or screen presence. People can literally Google boobs and see a million women who look like Sweeney. In the age of the internet, an actor has to do a lot more to stand out, which is probably why she had to resort to doing all these dumb ads instead of films or TV shows.
I don’t know if she can act or not. That vocal fry though 😵💫
She’s consistently working for years in co-starring and lead roles
TBF I haven't seen a lot of her acting work but she's quite good in Reality, the HBO movie about Reality Winner.
I second that.
Sounds like you have some thoughts on Sydney Sweeney!
That's pretty much the sum of my thoughts on her. She's far from the first actress to be in the situation I described.
Not gonna knock a girl for knowing her worth and getting paid while she can.
I'm not "knocking" her, I'm pointing out that she's part of a much larger problem; "while she can" is the core of it. Reducing women to their looks downplays their actual skills, and forces them to participate in a deeply unhealthy pursuit of permanent youth. While the problem is gradually getting better, it's much, much easier to be an aging man in Hollywood than it is to be an aging woman, and part of that is because of how actresses' looks are given more weight than their skills early in the selection process.
She might benefit from this system in the short term, but she's likely to get screwed by it later, as many women have.
You should watch sunset boulevard
She is so boring looking to me. She has big boobs, but the rest of her is so….. lacking in personality. Even her acting is so aggravating. In that particular movie, I think Margaret Qualley was the standout of the sort of Manson groupies
Since the heterodox online space trends kind of older, my hunch is that not many here are familiar with her filmography. I knew very little about her prior to SNL
I'm gonna be 40 this week so I don't know about the age limitations, but her notable filmography includes the first season of White Lotus, where she played the Less Hot Girl; Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, where she played the Less Hot Girl; Euphoria, a younger skewing HBO show I didn't watch but Zendaya and Hunter Schafer were also in it and it's about high schoolers doing sex and drugs so that's fun; Madame Web, a film that exists; and a recent romantic comedy co-starring Glen Powell whom I despise so I didn't see it, but it was a hit relative to its budget.
Her BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS SEX SEX SEX BATHWATER UNGGGGH ALSO BASED CONSERVATIVE???? turn seems to be a recent marketing project from her team, probably in response to the buzz from her Euphoria role.
Why do you hate Glen Powell?
Face, personality, energy, thought Hit Man absolutely sucked and it was entirely his vanity project which makes me think has a prematurely big ego.
I didn’t even know she was in that movie haha. I only saw it once, when it first came out.
Not only is she in the movie, she has multiple lines! To be fair to her there's a lot of "What, what?" casting if you watch it with 2025 eyes. You've got Mikey Madison and Austin Butler in there too, but they leave far more of an impression than Sweeney does in her somnolent reading of "He's driving a bitchin' yellow Coup de Ville."
They want to flatten all of the bell curves, and reality just doesn't work like that.
I bet there is somewhere a progressive has complained that they're called "normal" distributions!
Yep! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complicated-legacy-of-e-o-wilson/
Absolutely idiotic article in scientific American, showing how utterly worthless and ideologically captured that magazine became in the dark times, and presumably still is. Did quite the rounds on the heterodox media, can't remember if it made it to blocked and reported.
Worth reading the whole thing, but the highlight is "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against".
I feel like I have to be That Guy and point out that 30 miles south of Seattle and very much on the west side of the mountains is Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an unending traffic nightmare that conducts regular nighttime artillery and helicopter training that can be heard for 20 miles around, and which is surrounded by military housing containing many, many tried and true American patriots of all races, colors, and creeds. Evergreen students shop at the same Fred Meyer as 3-generation Lacey military families!
I know Katie is well-traveled, but it never fails to crack me up how, for so many Seattleites, western Washington ends in Renton and the conservative wonderland to the south of them just kind of counts as “Yakima” in their minds 😂
If anyone wants to learn more about the cities of Washington, I recommend this educational video:
https://youtu.be/nMwqZwdFz1U?si=3NAZBZjPyEgu_4p5
Perfect 😂
“Eugenics” is practiced all the time. Iceland has almost no children with Down Syndrome not because they figured something out - it’s a random genetic mutation that can happen to anyone - they abort them. Maybe you oppose that, maybe you don’t, but that is a eugenics in practice. Testing parents before marriage for being carriers of Tay-Sachs, an absolutely terrible disease that is almost only seen in Ashkenazi Jews, is eugenics. You are trying to influence, in a positive direction, the genetic makeup of future generations.
If this was peak crazy - 2020 through 2022 - the ad would have been pulled, American Eagle would have denounced it, and Sweeney would issue tearful apologies that would do nothing.
Also- the red hats at her mother’s birthday said “make 60 great again.” It was not a MAGA hat.
Even if they did who cares? You cannot survive as a social movement/political party if people merely associating with those of the other political party is grounds for wailing and gnashing of teeth.
People like this (on both sides, but it is bigger on the left) are absolutely religious crazies and should be outed as such.
I agree 100%. I was just pointing out a factual error, which bugs me.
About half the country voted for the guy. The fact that some rather loud people think that support for the candidate of one of our 2 major parties is a reason for wailing says there is someone wrong with their movement, or your movement just attracts mentally ill people. Many such cases!
Did you notice the "MAGA-style hats"? The moment I heard that, I thought "There was not a single MAGA hat at the party, was there?"
Journalists are weasels, but not as smart as they think they are.
No one seems to be noting that American Eagle did in fact apologize for this ad (according to a post I saw from them on Reddit).
2020 throwback!
Everything in the ad was 100% deliberate to get a backlash from annoying online people, and obviously they took the bate. No "accidental" implications. The way every fashion ad in the 80s and 90s was designed to get backlash and attention from conservative religious organizations who always loved to do their part and get attention for their outrage to it.
Just don't react. Like Milo back in the day, lazily bating college kids into action by saying "omg omg I'm going to come to your school and say feminists are fat and trans people ugly!" and then Berkeley has a multi week meltdown and a riot.
At least the advertising industry has learned the right lessons from Bud Light - annoy the people who don’t buy your product, not the ones that do.
It's "baiting". 'bating is something different (though maybe not that different..).
It's so transparent and I don't understand why people aren't getting it. Do we really think it's a complete accident that Sweeney's voter registration just appeared a few days ago, and today we're suddenly hit with "viral" video of her at a shooting range?
I personally don't buy that the ad was designed *to* get backlash, but I think the backlash was expected (and unconcerning, if anything a boon).
I think it was designed around the pun and sex appeal and anything else that comes along with that is a happy boost.
They probably thought they were being provocative about the unabashed sexiness. I don’t think the “fascist dog whistle” was intentional. Sometimes a pun is just a pun.
I think all people of good conscience should “backlash” against a fascist dogwhistle when there is a would-be fascist in the White House. But that’s just me. I don’t like fascist stuff.
Focus your attention on the White House rather than jeans commercials, then.
What if I told you it’s possible to dislike two things at the same time? 🤯
You’re just using “bUt da WhiTe HouZe Is Bad 2!” to silence valid criticism of Sweeney and AE
It's an issue of proportionality. Trump just fired the BLS commissioner for reporting data that made him look bad, a transparently corrupt move. There's no excuse to be wasting this much time and energy on a stupid ad campaign when the government is growing more authoritarian every day. Every second we waste on this attention-seeking woman and her stupid ad is a second that could be spent doing literally anything else more productive.
If ‘people of good conscience’ (i.e. self-obsessed media types) had spent the last 8 years less interested in denouncing pop culture trivialities and more interested in the actual political centre of gravity, they might at least *understand* why Trump has gotten consistently more popular in every demographic except the college educated whites who dominate the media class, and maybe even find a way to do something about it. But fine, you want to keep telling everyone it’s their duty to denounce Sydney Sweeney or they’re sympathetic to fascism. You might as well stick pins into a Trump voodoo doll for all the good it’ll do.
You agree Trump is bad but you also think it’s bad for people to criticize Sweeney and her shitty family for being Trump supporters.
What is your point? Why are you?
I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s pointless and a waste of effort. You don’t have to care about Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ad at all; the voters certainly don’t.
The funny thing about this ad is that I never would have heard about it if not for the outrage, it’s a classic case of the Streisand effect. Even if I had seen the ad before the controversy, it just looks like any other overproduced fashion commercial, and I wouldn’t have noticed any so-called dog whistle.
It reminds me of a continuing legal education class I took last year that focused on "problematic" language. One example the instructor gave was the word "brainstorm," which they claimed could be upsetting to people with epilepsy. There were two issues with that. First, none of us would have ever thought twice about the word if the instructor hadn’t brought it up. Second, when I actually looked into it, epilepsy advocacy groups didn’t find it offensive at all.
What would an actual dog whistle look like in your esteemed opinion?
Well, like you I was born and raised in Detroit so I am far from "esteemed". I am of middle eastern descent and there were no dog whistles, just plain old racist name calling. But I guess from my era (I am 59) I would some dog whistles were phrases like "welfare queen" or "inner city".
“all the people Terry owed child support to”
Oh.
Very sad his long suffering parents had to go through this.
Right?! I’m sorry this happened to Terry but dude, seriously? I’m far more sorry for those, apparently multiple, kids.
Lol I was really sad for all of them and then that line dropped and I sobered up.
I went from 😢 to 🙄
Yeah.
That little "drop it and move on" tidbit significantly lowered my sympathy meter for his loss of go fund me money.
Too bad his kids didn't get a go fund me. It also made me wonder about "the rest of the story". Like are his in-laws just shit people too or did they funnel some of that to his kids? Or using it to take care of the parents or something.
Anyone else feel like this story was missing something? Like, Katie, was essentially just aggregating news reports, there was nothing new here. I kept waiting for an "aha" moment that never came.
It is not healthy to treat pets like children. No dog or cat will have a lifespan that matches yours. Elderly pets will die, sometimes in horrible circumstances, and it is sad and upsetting. I think the lawsuit is ridiculous.
I do too.
My dad was a great lawyer- appointed to be a Supreme Court commissioner. He hated frivolous lawsuits; he thought they were unethical.
I’m not sure on the particulars off this one, but going batshit because your elderly pet dies from what you assume is tachycardia is wrong.
I have three dogs- I adore them. I have also have three kids. My pets are not children.
What if I have a pet elephant?
Or a tortoise. She’ll be at your children’s funeral (as long as it’s not in the winter).
You've got me. Better sign it up for school and start a college (uni?) fund.
The subscription program is one of the many reasons I love this informative and very entertaining podcast.
I would not have been able to listen to all the archived content and track how the podcast has developed.
I'm old (65) on minimal disability funds and going blind so sound is my main option. I often cannot afford food so $6 a month just can't happen for me.
The fact Katie keeps up with all the admin stuff and also researches her stories is astounding! That's a lot of work! They have an audience of thousands! Katie, a sincere thanks for all you do!
Oy! I need to rest my eyes now.....
I think you guys missed one of the Sidney Sweeney ads. As far as I can tell, this is the one people are raging about. https://youtu.be/YzVYyDehMUY?si=lPOstRRYbhgrLhnq
Yes! And I wish K&J had also mentioned that the commercial above is a reference to this old Brooke Shields jeans commercial, which Brooke Shields has described as being distressing at the time because she was only 15 and felt that she had been groomed by the people who handled her career. https://youtu.be/AXzR5b6HoIA?si=qU6a5rMxvWMv50FU
here to say the same thing
Yes. And given everything we know about Sweeney, it’s safe to assume this is a dogwhistle.
Then again, Elon Musk did a Nazi salute twice on live TV and some people still pretend he didn’t.
Some people are full of shit or terminably dumb and no amount of good-faith argument will affect them.
Do you think what you’re doing here is a good faith argument?
Actually, do you know what a good faith argument is?
I’m asking in good faith, lol
I don't think they are a pervert for nuance.
Noah is a good example of the Ezra Klein-ification of leftists: extreme psychological projection. Clearly coming in bad faith, he preempts the accusation by accusing others of bad faith.
You gotta admire the audacity!
Audacious is certainly a word you could use, and probably one of the nicer ones.
But you are right. It is quite impressive.
"Safe to assume" XD
Go right ahead bud
An actual newspaper decrying a clothing ad being sexually suggestive feels to me, as a former tumblr user, like yet more tumblr brain leak into the offline world.
There is a whole generation of journalists who are like say 25-40 right now who had Tumblr/social media brain poisoning.
Honestly if you just fired every journalist under 45 the world would probably become a vastly better place.
Taylor Lorenz is a perfect example of this, plus at least a few tech reporters were “tumblr famous” before coming up
“Her genius and courage helped the Navy disguise their ships mid-ocean to save lives. This summer, watch Sydney Sweeney in ‘Sea Guile’.”
“It’s ’Alice In Wonderland’ for a new generation. When she finds that amazing toke, she unexpectedly shrinks to the size of a mushroom. This summer, watch Sydney Sweeney in ‘High, Littler.”
I approve of this mini-thread. More, please.
"You've seen Sydney Sweeney as Robin Phelps, a dentist helping correct the teeth of vampires who just want to be able to eat eggs boiled or scrambled. This summer she returns to star in her biggest challenge yet, Our Bite Mark: Fried"
“It’s the heart wrenching tale of a young woman’s battle against debilitating narcolepsy and sleep paralysis. This summer, Sydney Sweeney stars in ANTI-WOKE”
Abbie grew up poor and lonely in a fancy coastal resort, only happy when she could steal time on the water after dark. One day, Cinderella gets to go to the ball, at the annual town regatta in front of the Prince she secretly adores…this Summer, see Sydney Sweeney in “You Boat?”
Dani White was a normal teenage girl until a long lost great uncle died and left her his small town electric company in the midst of a hostile takeover over by a multi-national corporation. This summer, watch as Sydney Sweeney protects what her family has built, the community around it and learns a little about herself in “White Power.”
“Despite being a girl in a boy’s sport, all she ever wanted to do was to call balls and strikes. But when an industrial accident caused her to move beyond the sight of her friends and family, she took the game to a higher level. This summer, watch as Sydney Sweeney teaches others the rules of the game in ‘Invisible Umpire.’”