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judesaves · 4 years

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it’s the middle of the night, but i’ll just plop down and say hello anyways! this here is my star-of-his-high-school-hockey-team-but-not-his-ahl-team, formally big fish in a huge ass pond, still-kinda-under-the-oppressive-influence-of-his-evangelical-dad hockey playing Good Boi Jude.

judah ‘jude’ ames (casey cott) who works as a cashier at the armory. he’s from thunder bay, ontario and lives in east vale. they’re ardent and optimistic but can also be vacuous and prudish. sometimes, they’re known as the sanctimonious.

my bio is super long so i apologize in advance, but here’s all you need to know abt judie the prudie!

full name / nicknames: Judah Seth Ames / Jude, Judie, J, the Bae From Thunder Bay age / date of birth: 27 / July 30th, 1992 place of birth: Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada previous residences / current residence: Sarnia, Ontario, Canada; Kitchener, Ontario, Canada; London, Ontario, Canada; Hershey, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa / Kingscrest, Colorado citizenship / ethnicity: Canadian (on a sports visa) / White (English, Danish, Dutch, German) religion: Lutheran socioeconomic status / political affiliation: Upper Class / Unaffiliated, but liberal leaning martial status: Single sexual & romantic orientation: heterosexual, hetero-romantic (he’s not questioned it, at the very least) education / occupation: high school graduate / cashier at The Armory

former teams / current team: Hershey Bears, Chicago Wolves, Iowa Wild / Kingscrest Knights position / shoots: Center / Right jersey number: #41 NHL draft: 79th overall, Washington Capitals professional playing career: 2010 – 2018

parents: Teresa Ames (mother), David Ames (father) siblings: Jared Ames (older brother by two years), Jacob Ames (younger brother by eleven years), Julianne Ames (younger sister by eleven years) offspring: none pets: family dog named Gretsky (German Shepherd), though he’s back in Thunder Bay

faceclaim: Casey Cott hair color / eye color: brown / pale green height / build: 5′11″ / athletic, muscular tattoos / piercings: none / none distinguishable features / scars: big lips, strong jawline / various bodily scars from hockey injuries over his lifetime dexterity: right handed known allergies: none visual impairment / hearing impairment: none / none nicotine use / drug use / alcohol use: no / no / socially

traits: confident, brawny, optimistic, playful, prudish, vacuous, arrogant, disapproving temperament: choleric alignment: lawful good enneagram: type one, the reformer mbti: ESTJ hogwarts house: gryffindor vice / virtue: pride / chastity likes / dislikes: hockey, the feeling of skates gliding on smooth ice, exercising, sleeping, cheesecake, snow, comedies, rules / montreal canadiens, partying, breaking his diet, the fear of never making it to the nhl, broccoli, phone calls from his father, westerns, soccer favorite media: to kill a mockingbird by harper lee (book), planes, trains, and automobiles (film), bob’s burgers (television show), tell her about it by billy joel (song) favorite color: blue

hockey has been a part of judah’s life for longer than he can remember. his first memories include the freezing solidness of the ice, the snug feeling of skates on his feet, the weight of a helmet upon his head. jude grew up believing he was born to play hockey, and really, he wasn’t wrong. a complete natural, despite hating it the first time his parents put him on the ice. a tantrum ensued, even though jared, his older brother and jude’s personal childhood hero, promised him it wasn’t scary and he was safe; he wanted to do everything jared did, but he wasn’t ready yet.

hockey wasn’t the only thing he was scared of. his father, david, taught his sons about hell before they were old enough to understand the concept. he taught them about sins. how fornication would damn you, how adultery would greet you with the devil, how doing anything wrong would leave you burning in hell forever. the list of things that were wrong to do, however, got longer and longer as his children grew, until doing anything but praying or playing a sport would condemn his soul. jude never heard his father say it, but he felt he was doing something wrong, something sinful when he cried and plopped down on the ice that day, begging for his brother to pick him up and bring him off the slippery ice.

his soul was saved after he turned five, when he got tired of watching jared play and wanted to join his older brother in the rink. the second time he laced up a pair of skates, at the tender age of five, jude fell in love. he finally fulfilled his purpose, or rather realized it. still so young, the local mini mite league not much more than toddlers standing around on the ice as the coaches uselessly tried to direct them on wobbly skates, little jude became fascinated with the sport. watching it constantly on the television, attending all of his older brother’s games, wearing all the leafs apparel his parents bought for him. their summers spent on roller blades playing with a toy goal set in the driveway, their winters spent freezing in the stands or skating on razor sharp blades.

as the minor leagues started raising up with age, so did the level of skills needed to play, and jude quickly proved to be a natural. the way he glided effortlessly, the way he turned on the hairpin edge of blades with ease, the way he listened and adhered to direction like a loyal solider. judah had memorized the rule book from front to back by the time he was nine, could spout off any definition or recall the minutiae details of a rule his own coaches had mostly forgotten, to the point of annoyance for his teammates and coaching staff. anyone could see that jude was going places, they could tell jude was going to make it.

but he wasn’t going to go as far as jared. jude paled in comparison to his older brother. for every rule he could recite like a sermon or puck he could hit squarely into the net, jared was faster, harder, stronger, better. he lived in jared’s shadow and what a well-lived in shadow it was. it didn’t matter how good jude was when jared was there, it didn’t matter if jude was a good player when jared was great… for a time.

the ames family added two more children, a pair of twins. jacob and julianne came into the world when jude and jared were eleven and fourteen respectively. even with two new babies in the house, the two older ames brothers were never distracted from their shared sport. their mother the focus of the childrearing, their father focused on rearing his two sons into hockey prodigies. loyal servants to the church of god and gretzky, the ames boys were good, they were righteous, they were perfect. perfect, how that word seemed to follow them. perfect, that was the ultimate praise from their father, when they followed the letter of jesus or their coaches. the fear of disappointing their father was the fear of going to hell. they had to be the best, they had to be perfect, they had to be righteous if they were going to make it.

the foundation of their perfect little family started to crack once jude was headed into peewee. the pressure from their father a fixture that had known for their entire lives, the pressure that kept them perfect, jared finally bent underneath that weight. his playing, while always more fast-paced and fierce than jude’s, got sloppier and less dignified. his hits were less than clean, his gloves dropped more than they didn’t, his pucks still landed in the goals but their passes to get there were dangerous. if that didn’t piss off their father enough, jared would stay out later, would go to parties on school nights, would refuse to go to church. i’m the bad one now, judie, so you don’t have to be, jared whispered to him once on a drive back from practice but jude didn’t understand what his brother meant.

jude was never in danger of being the bad one. the meek one, yes, the quiet one or the shy one, but he was never bad. his behavior, his playing, it was barely less than perfect. as jared’s star started to diminish (in their father’s eyes, at least, since jared only got more popular at school the more he partied), focus started to turn on jude. david’s focus, namely. david started taking jude out for hot chocolate after practices, ice cream parlors after winning a game. david wouldn’t let jude end up like jared, he wouldn’t let jude go down the same road of sin his older brother walked down. jared was still a good player, yes, or rather he still played well, but he wasn’t perfect anymore. jared was getting worse, jude was only getting better.

even if jared proclaimed that he was willingly taking the heat off of jude, a rift started to grow between the two. people were starting to praise jude more, talk about him more, talk about how good he was getting. the shadow that jude lived in was starting to shift, others were starting to notice him. judah ames, just a boy of fourteen, was the one the parents of his teammates would point out, the one they’d beg their children to hang out with in case his discipline and skill would rub off on them. his thoughts were only occupied with hockey, every dream he had was just reliving old games or planning for future ones. everything related to it, no matter if he was looking for a connection or not. hockey was the only personality he had.

who could blame him, though? with the way his father yelled from the stands, often yelling louder than the coach. with the way his father dropped him off promptly before practice began and picked up him not a second after it ended. as the reins on jared were forcibly loosened, the reins tightened on jude and david promised himself and god that he’d never let judah seth ames go. they moved across ontario with every minor team jared or judah joined, though they always considered thunder bay to be their home. as jude became more disciplined, more refined in his playing, jared got worse, got messier, to the point that he was considered the goon of their team. the two ames boys, once both considered perfect, once identified by the order of their birth, were now classified by good or bad, clean or dirty, pure or sinful.

seventeen, the year in every hockey player’s life that things start to change. the nhl just a dream for them, it becomes more realized as the draft starts to tick down and loom over them. jared, playing badly and antics getting more dramatic as their father focused more on jude, felt his dream slipping from him fast. the scouts eyes, once glued to him at every game they attended, drifted to his little brother now. not even old enough to drink, jared ames was quickly becoming a has-been, before he ever really was something. the boy everyone thought was going to make it didn’t even make it to the draft. jared ames quit playing hockey at the age of nineteen.

judah wouldn’t end up like that, though. david ames promised that to his son and any other parent in the stands that still bothered to listen to his ramblings. judah ames was going to make it. he was perfection, on the ice and off it. most boys, even boys on the same team, were interested in girls, lots even had girlfriends. jude was interested, but he wasn’t allowed to be. boys like that were sinful, they were wrong, they were bad. jude wasn’t allowed a girlfriend, wasn’t even really allowed a friend. everything in his life revolved around hockey, even church as david led prayers for victory before every game. there wasn’t time to think about girls, to think about anything else. even studying was secondary, his grades were only required to be strong enough to let him play every game; the only part of his life that didn’t require perfection.

while jared struggled underneath the pressure, jude endured it, even flourished underneath it. an amazing player, not just in the way he shot and hit and skated, but in his attention to detail and rules. some even said he’d be the next sidney crosby, but jude wouldn’t let himself get intimidated by the comparison. he was good, but he wasn’t that good. he wasn’t perfect, not yet. the comparison he hated was the one to his brother, the older boys on the team that had played with jared before his retirement called jude ‘the replacement’. he hated that word, replacement, even more than the word perfect. his father didn’t help, telling him how he’s so much better than jared ever was, how jude was going to be the one to make it all the way to the top, like it was guaranteed.

the time for jude’s draft started nearing quickly as he entered his senior year of high school. the pressure from his father and his coaches got heavier as the date neared, even his brother (now living in an apartment back in thunder bay) contributing to the worry and excitement. always a dream of his, to make it to the majors, jude finally felt the cracking his brother before him felt. calm and collected on the ice, jude only felt anxiety when he left it every night. his dreams, usually filled with scenes of play, now only showed him a future where he’d end up exactly like jared. he had to make it to the nhl, he needed to make it there, he needed to be good, he needed to be perfect.

the draft finally only days away, jude worked tirelessly in the rink to keep his mind off of it. what if he didn’t get picked? what if he ended up like jared, not even making it to the draft? what if he hated the team he got picked for? oh god, what if he was drafted to montreal! his worries not helped by his father that only ever wanted to talk about the draft, jude spent those last few days wishing he never laced up his skates again that one winter day when he was five.

the draft came in a bubble of excitement and fear. finally the one thing he’d been waiting for his whole life was here. feeling like his stomach was going to cave in on itself, he nearly missed it when his name was finally called. the hershey bears, the ahl affliate of the washington capitals. not exactly what he wanted, preferring something in canada, but not too far from home and not too warm. in the end, jude was just excited to play the sport he loves. he was excited to make it to the draft, unlike his older brother. he was excited to be one step closer to the nhl. most of all, he was excited to be away from his father.

the excitement didn’t last long, however. well, it didn’t last forever. traded from the bears after a year, jude ended up being traded to the chicago wolves at the age of twenty two, settling in for most of his career in the minors. he was still a great player, but the professional leagues are all filled with great players, and he was already beginning to feel like an adult among children when his new teammates after every draft seemed to be getting younger and younger. by the time he was twenty five, jude knew he would likely never make it to the nhl, but he refused to acknowledge it. his father half-held belief in his son, and half-berated him for not yet making his nhl debut; every time they needed a spot filled for a game or two, they called someone else up, and jude had to explain to his father why exactly he wasn’t the best on his team, why the coaches didn’t notice him like they should’ve. the love of the game only carried him so far, and the yearning to be on a major professional team slowly turned to bitter regret. he couldn’t wonder why the ahl wasn’t enough for his father, why it’s not perfect, when he’s convinced of the same.

jude knew that if he wasn’t going to make it by now, he’d never make it to the nhl. traded after a few good years with the wolves, jude moved to iowa and played with the wild for only a season before he decided it was time to retire professionally. he was a star that had diminished, he was just another good player on an okay team, and soon he wouldn’t even be remembered by anyone. deciding not to renew his one year contract with the wild, jude went back to thunder bay, and quickly regretted moving back in with his parents on two fronts: he missed hockey, and he did not miss his father’s rants.

while his father’s influence lessened from distance and time apart, it was back in full force once he was under their roof again. while he was no longer concerned about staying pure and righteous (partying with hockey players barely out of their teens tends to do that), the thoughts that he was wrong, dirty, sinful started to creep back in. he was not just dirty from the sin of the outside world, he was dirty, stained, a failure. jude was not perfect, never was. just another failure, like his brother jared before him, it was a different sensation to be jealous when he was moping on the couch and watching as his younger brother jacob gathered his equipment in his bag and their father lectured jake about his sloppy skating last practice. he has never missed the pressure from his father before, and he can only hope that jake doesn’t crack underneath the weight now that their father’s hopes and dreams are on him.

after six months of tolerating his father and drifting aimlessly, missing his sport and hating it at the same time, he began to wonder if it was too late to sign that contract with the wild again. he called his own coaches when he knew his father was at his brother’s practices, begged to be signed again, but they told him what they already knew: he was twenty six years old, practically geriatric. there likely wouldn’t be a professional team to sign him, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t still play his beloved (and loathed) sport, and maybe keep a bit of hope alive in his heart that he might, one day, still make it. everyone in the hockey community knows about kingscrest, colorado. it practically generated out ice sports stars as quickly as thunder bay did, and if there was any way he could possibly be scouted for one more final time, it was there. barely letting his parents in on his plan, lest they try to talk him out of it (or worse, support with oppressive enthusiasm), jude made his way to colorado, where he’s been for a year now.

joining the knights, jude’s a mature player, and any hopes of being noticed or signed to any sort of professional team (god, how much he hated being in the minors, only to be begging christ to let him back on any team, even laval rocket) are kept secret and close to his heart. as far as his teammates know, he’s just an old guy enjoying the ice, reliving his glory days and being a stickler for the rules just as he did in peewee. the desire for perfection is something that he still feels, even if he tries everything in his power to avoid his father’s calls—lest he have to hear his father’s thoughts on the political landscape of america, despite being canadian, but jude already knows he’s not perfect. he knows that this is the end of the line, so he should milk it for everything it’s worth, but the thought of the future is even scarier. once he’s too old to play, his many injuries over the years finally catching up with his body, what else is there to do? once hockey’s gone, what will jude have left?

he’s not perfect, he’s not righteous, he’s not the next gretzky or crosby. but he did make it, even if it was not the nhl. he made it farther than his father or his older brother ever did. he’s free from his father, living by himself and by his own rules, playing the game he’s loved for twenty two years. shouldn’t that be good enough for him? shouldn’t that be perfect?

like every hockey player ever, hockey’s all he talks about. all he thinks about, really. like... constantly. i mean constantly. he really doesn’t have much of a personality outside of it, but it’s not really his fault bc he was taught to be like that by his father.

speaking of his dad. phew. major dad issues for this kid. the voice in his head is his father’s, not his own. has a lot of weird shame about the most random things, and some not-so-random things.

isn’t a virgin, but he acts like one, because he doesn’t want to seem dirty and #sinful, but he’s also just weird and awkward around women... and guys too. just everyone.

sweet but angsty. has a lot of regrets, but doesn’t like to talk about it much. hates being one of the older guys on the team, but he put himself there, and it’s like either be old af or not be on the team at all. doesn’t want to end up like his brother that quit just to sell cars back in the bay.

not actively religious, but still seems like a conservative good ol’ boy because he wears sweaters tucked in WITH a belt. not as innocent as he seems, but still pretty innocent and a little weird. wasn’t homeschooled but kinda seems like he was?

an encyclopedia of hockey rules and super annoying about it. will tattletale on you to the refs if he sees you Being Naughty on the ice, no matter what team you’re on. he’s good to have around if you wanna get an opposing player into the penalty box because if you alert him to it, he’ll go snitch immediately. love my goody two shoes!!

a sales associate at the armory, like half of the team. thinks it may make him look better to the coaches, but also just needs a job. his dad will only pay half, that’s right HALF!!, of his rent so jude works to catch up with that and have very little money on the side. whatever, he still gets to skate, so he should be happy. right? right?!

somewhat dumb, just because he was never encouraged to be smart by his father, just an obedient follower and an obsessive hockey player. can do simple math, but ask him about algebra and he’ll just get annoyed and walk away.

wanted connections:

fellow teammates: jude plays for the knights, so gimme good friends and better enemies! people he’s competitive with, people he helps/mentors, people he straight up can’t stand or people that can’t stand him.

figure skating friends (and enemies): jude has never been the figure skating type, but he thinks its pretty cool that they can do spins and stuff. he respects the artistry, but still feels a sort of competitiveness with them just from the nature of being two ice sports. so give me friends that he can cheer on, enemies he can roll his eyes at, etc!

just friends in general: he’s a pretty sad boi and very earnest, so he needs someone to chat with! either it can be superficial or maybe they’re close confidants, up to you. :)

roommates: jude rents an apartment in east vale, and while he’s used to being such a canadian WASP, he’s somewhat cut off financially from his parents and needs someone around to help pay the bills. plus he gets lonely at night! can’t sleep in an empty house!!

ex-girlfriend(s): jude’s only been in town for a year and a few months, but that’s enough time to date around. likely this relationship didn’t work out because jude has a lot of hangups about relationships and shame, and his body/sex in general, but there are probably other factors such as that he’s really obsessive about hockey and actually really, really bitter deep down. 22+

#fro: intro #hold your horses honey. i’ve got coupons for the pringles. ( ooc. )#i didn't proofread this bc it's almost 4 am and i've been working on this for three hours lol #so i apologize for any typos!!

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aureyix-blog · 4 years

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Jason Lumsden is the Director of IT at Boston Red Sox

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ultralullstuff · 5 years

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Is Paris Burning?

There was a time in my life when I liked to dress up as a male and go out into the world. It was a form of ritual, of play. It was also about power. To cross-dress as a woman in patriarchy -then, more so than now - was also to symbolically cross from the world of powerlessness into a world of privilege. It was the ultimate, intimate, voyeuristic gesture. Searching old journals for passages documenting that time, I found this paragraph:

She pleaded with him, “Just once, well every now and then, I just want to be boys together. I want to dress like you and go out and make the world look at us differently, make them wonder about us, make them stare and ask those silly questions like is he a woman dressed up like a man, is he an older black gay man with his effeminate boy/girl lover flaunting same-sex love out in the open. Don’t worry I’ll take it very seriously, I want to let them laugh at you. I’ll make it real, keep them guessing, do it in such a way that they will never know for sure. Don’t worry when we come home I will be a girl for you again but for now I want us to be boys together.”

Cross-dressing, appearing in drag, transvestism, and transsexualism emerge in a contex where the notion of subjectivity is challenged, where identity is always perceived as capable of construction, invention, change. Long before there was ever a contemporary feminist movement, the sites of these experiences were subverisve places where gender norms were questioned and challenged.

Within the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy the experience of men dressing as women, appearing in drag, has always been regarded by the dominant heterosexist cultural gaze as a sign that one is symbolically crossing over from a realm of power into a realm of powerlessness. Just to look at the many negative ways the word “drag” is defined reconnects this label to an experience that is seen as burdensome, as retrograe and retrogressive. To choose to appear as “female” when one is “male” is always constructed in the patriarchal mindset as a loss, as a choice worthy only of ridicule. Given this cultural backdrop, it is not surprising that many black comediants appearing on television screens for the first time included as part of their acts impersonations of black women. The black woman depicted was usually held up as an object of ridicules, scorn, hatred (representing the “female” image everyone was allowed to laugh at and show contempt for). Often the moment when a black male comedian appeared in drag was the most succesful segment of a given comedian’s act (for example, Flip Wilson, Redd Foxx, or Eddie Murphy).

I used to wonder if the sexual stereotype of black men as overly sexual, manly, as “rapists”, allowed black males to cross this gendered boundary more easily than white men without having to fear that they would be seen as possibly gay or transvestites. As a young black female, I found these images to be disempowering. Thay seemed to bothallow black males to give public expression to a general misogyny, as well as to a more specific hatred and contempt toward black woman. Growing up in a world where black women wer, and still are, the objects of extreme abuse, scorn, and ridicule, I felt these impersonations were aimed at reinforcing everyone’s power over us. In retrospect, I can see that the black male in drag was also a disempowering image of black masculinity. Appearing as a “woman” within sexist, racist media was a way to become in “play” that “castrated” silly childlike black male that racist white patriarchy was comfortable having as an image in their homes. These televised images of black men in drag were never subversive; thay helped sustain sexism and racism.

It came as no surprise to me that Catherine Clement in her book, Opera, or the Undoing of Women would include a section about black men and the way their representation in opera did not allow her to neatly separate the world into gendered polarities where men and women occupied distintcly different social spaces and were “two antagonistic halves, one persecuting the other since before the dawn of time.” Looking critically at images of black men in operas she found that they were most often portrayed as victims:

Eve is undone as a woman, endlesslyy bruised, endelessly dying and coming back to life to die even better. But now I begin to remember hearing figures of betrayed, wounded men; men who ham; men who have women’s troubles happen to them; men who have the status of Eve, as if they had lost their innate Adam. These men die like heroines; down on the ground they cry and moan, they lament. And like heroines they are surrounded by real men, veritable Adams who have cast them down. Thay partake of feminity: excluded, marked by some initial strangeness. Thay are doomed to their undoing.

Many heterosexual black men in white supremacist patriarchal culture have acted as though the primary “evil” of racism has been the refusal of the dominant culture to allow them full access to patriarchal power, so that in sexist terms thay are compelled to inhabit a sphere of powerlessness, deemed “feminine”, hence thay have perceived themselves as emasculated. To the extent that black men accept a white supremacist sexist representation of themselves as castrated, without phallic power, and therfore pseudo-females, thay will need to overly assert a phallic misogynist masculinity, one rooted in contempt for the female. Much black male homophobia is rooted in the desire to eschew connection with all things deemed “feminine” and that would, of course, include black gay men. A contemporary black comedian like Eddie Murphy “proves” his phallic power by daring to publicly ridicule women and gays. His days of appearing in drag are over. Indeed it is the drag queen of his misogynist imagination that is most often the image of black gay culture he evokes and subjects to comic homophobic assault -one that audiences collude in perpetuating.

For black males to take appearing in drag seriously, be they gay or straight, is to oppose a heterosexist representation of black manhood. Gender bending and blending on the part of black males has always been a critique of phalocentric masculinity in traditional black experience. Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the “feminine” that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to idealization of white womanhood. This is brutally evident in Jennie Livingston’s new film Paris is burning. Within the world of the black drag ball culture she deicts, the idea of womanness as feminity is totally personified by whiteness. What viewers witness is not black men longing to impersonate or even to become like “real” black women but their obsession with an idealized fetishized vision of feminity that is white. Called out in the film by Dorian Carey, who names it by saying no black drag queen of his day wanted to be Lena Horne, he makes it clear that the feminity most sought after, most adored, was that perceived to be the exclusive property of whte womanhood. When we see visual representations of womanhood in the film (images torn from magazines and posted on walls in living space) they are, with rare exceptions, of white women. Significantly, the fixation on becoming as much like a white female as possible implicitly evokes a connection to a figure never visible in this film: that of the white male patriarch. And yet if the class, race, and gender aspirations expressed by the drag queens who share their deepest dreams is always longing to be in the position of the ruling-class woman then that means there is also thedesire to act in partnership with the ruling-class white male.

This combination of class and race longing that privileges the “feminity” of the ruling-class white woman, adored and kept, shrouded in luxury, does not imply a critique of patriarchy. Often it is assumed that the gay male, and most specifically the “queen”, is both anti-phallocentric and anti-patriarchal. Marilyn Frye’s essay, “Lesbian feminism and Gay Rights”, remains one of the most useful critical debunkings of this myth. Writing in The Politics of Reality, Frye comments:

One of thing which persuades the straight world that gay men are not really men is the effeminacy of style of some gay men and the gay institution of the impersonation of women, both of which are associated in the popular mind with male homosexuality. But as I read it, gay men’s effeminacy and donning of feminine apparel displays no love of or identification with women or the womanly. For the most part, this femininity is affected and is characterized by thatrical exaggeration. It is a casual and cynical mockery of women, for whom feminity is the trapping of oppresion, but it is also a kind of play, a toying with that which is taboo.. What gay male affectation of femininity seems to be is a serious sport in which men may exercise their power and control over the feminine, much as in other sports... But the mastery of the feminine is not feminine. It is masculine..

Any viewer of Paris is Burning can neither deny the way in which its contemporary drag balls have the aura of sports events, aggressive competitions, one team (in this case “house”) competing another etc., nor ignore the way in which the male “gaze” in the audience is directed at participants in a manner akin to the objectifying phallic stare straight men direct at “feminine” women daily in public spaces. Paris is Burning is a film that many audiences assume is inherently oppositional because of its subject matter and the identity of the filmmaker. Yet the film’s politics of race, gender, and class are played out in ways that are both progressive and reactionary.

When I first heard that there was this new documentary film about black gay men, drag queens, and drag balls I was fascinated by the title. It evoked images of the real Paris on fire, of the death and destruction of a dominating white western civilization and culture, an end to oppressive Eurocentrism and white supremacy. This fantasy not only gave me a sustained sense of plearure, it stood between me and the unlikely reality that a young white filmmaker, offering a progresssive vision of “blackness” from the standpoint of “whiteness”, would receive the positive press accorded Livingston and her film. Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates “whiteness”. These folks left the film saying it was “amazing”, “marvelous”, “incredibly funny”, worthy of statements like, “Didn’t you just love it?” And no, I didn’t just love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The “we” evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that ther is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness.

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What would be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfracnhised black folks might rise any day now and make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a doumentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited, black folks are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power, and pleasure. Indeed it is the very “pleasure” that so many white viewers with class privilege experience when watching this film that has acted to censor dissenting voices who find the film and its reception critically problematic.

In Vincent Canby’s review of the film in the New York Times he begins by quoting the words of a black father to his homosexual son. The father shares that it is difficult for black men to survive in a racist society and that “if you’re black and male and gay, you have to be stronger that you can imagine”. Beginning his overwhelmingly positive review with the words of a straight black father, Canby implies that the film in some way documents such strenght, is a portrait of black gay pride. Yet he in no way indicates ways this pride and power are evident in the work. Like most reviewers of the film, what he finds most compelling is the pageantry of the drag balls. He uses no language identifying race and class perspectives when suggesting at the end of his piece that behind the role-playing “there is also a terrible sadness in the testimony”. This makes it appear that the politics of ruling-class white culture are solely social and not political, solely “aesthetic” questions of choice and desire rather that expressions of power and privilege. Canby does not tell readers that much of the tragedy and sadness of this film is evoked by the willingness of black gay men to knock themselves out imitating a ruling-class culture and power elite that is one of the primary agents of their oppression and exploitation. Ironically, the very “fantasies” evoked emerge from the colonizing context, and while marginalized people often appropriate and subvert aspects of the dominant culture, Paris is Burning does not forcefully suggest that such a process is taking place.

Livingston’s film is presented as though it is a politically neutral documentary providing a candid, even celebratory, look at black drag balls. And it is precisely the mood of celebration that masks the extent to which the balls are not necessarily radical expresssions of subverive imagination at work undemining and challenging the status quo. Much of the film’s focus on pageantry takes the ritual of the black drag ball and makes it spectacle. Ritual is that ceremonial act that carries with it meaning and significance beyond what appears, while spectacle functions primarily as entertaining dramatic display. Those of us who have grown up in a segregated black setting where we participated in diverse pageants and rituals know that those elements of a given ritual that are empowering and subversive may not be readily visible to an outsider looking in. Hence it is easy for white obsevers to depict black rituals as spectacle.

Jennie Livingston approaches her subject matter as an outsider looking in. Since her presence as white woman/lesbian filmmaker is “absent” from Paris is Burning it is easy for viewers to imagine that they are watching an ethnographic film doumenting the life of black gay “natives” and not recognize that they are watching a work shaped and formed bya a perspective and standpoint specific to Livingston. By cinematically masking this reality (we hear her ask questions but never see her), Livingston does not oppose the way hegemonic whiteness “represents” blackness, but rather assumes an imperial overseeing position that is in no way progressive or counter-hegemonic. By shooting the film using a conventional approach to documentary and not making clear how her standpoint breaks with this tradition, Livingston assumes a privileged location of “innocence”. She is represented both in interviews and reviews tender-hearte, mild-mannered, virtuous white woman daring to venture into a contemporaty “heart of darkness” to bring back knowledge of the natives.

A review in the New Yorker declares (with no argument to substatiate the assertion) that “the movie is a sympathetic observation of a specialized, private world”. An interview with Livingston in Outweek is titled “Pose, She Said” and we are told in the preface that she “discovered the Ball world by chance”. Livingston does not discuss her interest and fascination with black gay subculture. She is not asked to speak about what knowledge, information, or lived understanding of black culture and history she possessed that provided a background for her work or to explain what vision of black life she hoped to convey and to whom. Can anyone imagine that a black woman lesbian would make a film about whete gay subculture and not be asked these questions? Livingston is asked in the Outweek interview, “How did you build up the kind of trust where people are so open to talking about their personal experiences?” She never answers this question. Instead she suggests that she gains her “credibility” by the intensity of her spectatoship, adding, “I also targeted people who wer articulate, who had stuff they wanted to say and were very happy that anyone wanted to listen”. Avoiding the difficult questions undelying what it means to be a white person in a white supremacist society creating a film about any aspect of black life. Livingston responds to the question, “Didn’t the fact that you’re a white lesbian going into a world of Black queens and street kids make that [the interview process] difficult?” by implicitly evoking a shallow sense of universal connection. She responds, “If you know someone over a period of two years, and thay still retain their sex and their race, you’ve got to be a pretty sexist, racist person”. Yet it is precisely the race, sex, and sexual practices of black men who are filmed that is the exploited subject matter.

So far I have read no interviews where Livingston discusses the issue of appropriation. And even though she is openly critical of Madonna, she does not convey how her work differs from Madonna’s apropriation of black experience. To some extent it is precisely the recognition by mass culture that aspects of black life, like “voguing”, fscinate white audiences that creates a market for both Madonna’s product and Livingston’s. Unfortunately, Livingston’s comments about Paris is Burning do not convey serious thought about either the political and aesthetic implications of her choice as a white woman focusing on an aspect of black life and culture or the way racism might shape and inform how she would interpret black experience on the screen. Reviewers like Georgia Brown in the Village Voice who suggest that Livingston’s whiteness is “a fact of nature that didn’t hinder her research” collude in the denial of the way whiteness informs her perspective and standpoint. To say, as Livingston does, “I certainly don’t have the final word on the gay black experience. I’d love for a black director to have made this film” is to oversimplify the issue and to absolve her of responsibility and accountability for progressive critical reflection and it implicitly suggests that there would be no difference between her work and that of a black director. Undrlying this apparently self-effacing comment is cultural arrogance, for she implies not only that she has cornered the market on the subject matter but that being able to make films is a question of personal choice, like she just “discovered” the “raw material” before a black director did. Her comments are disturbing because thay reveal so little awareness of the politics that undergird any commodification of “blackness” in this society.

Had Livingston approached her subject with greater awareness of the way white supremacy shapes cultural production -determining not only what representations of blackness are deemed acceptable, marketable, as well worthy of seeing- perhaps the film would not so easily have turned the black drag ball into a spectacle for the entertainment of those presumed to be on the outside of this experience looking in. So much of what is expressed in the film has to do with questions of power and privilege and the way racism impedes black progresss (and certainly the class aspirations of the black gay subculture depicted do not differ from those of other poor and underclass black communities). Here, the supposedly “outsider” position is primarily located in the experience of whiteness. Livingston appears unwilling to interrogate the way assuming the position of outsider looking in, as well as interpreter, can, and often does, pervert and distort one’s pespective. Her ability to assume such a position without rigorous interrogation of intent is rooted in the politics of race and racism. Patricia Williams critiques the white assumption of a”neutral” gaze in her essay “Teleology on the Rocks” included in her new book The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Describing taking a walking tour of Harlem with a group of white folks, she recalls the guide telling them they might “get to see some services” since “Easter Sunday in Harlem is quite a show”. William’s critical observations are relevant to any discussion of Paris is Burning:

What astonished me was that no one had asked the churches if they wanted to be sared at like living museums. I wondered what would happen if a group of blue-jeaned blacks were to walk uninvited into a synagogue on Passover or St. Anthony’s of Padua during high mass -just to peer, not pray. My feeling is that such activity would be seen as disresectful, at the very least. Yet the aspect of disrespect, intrusion, seemed irrelevant to this well-educated, affable group of people. They deflected my observation with comments like “We just want to look”, “No one will mind”, and “There’s no harm intended”. As well-intentioned as they were, I was left with the impression that no one existed for them who could not be governed by their intentions. While acknowledging the lack of apparent malice in this behavior, I can’t help thinking that it is a liability as much as a luxury to live without interaction. To live so completely impervious to one’s own impact on others is a fragile privilege, which over time relies not simply on the willingness but on the inability of others -in this case blacks- to make their displeasure heard.

This insightful critique came to mind as I reflected on why whites could so outspokenly make their pleasure in this film heard and the many black viewers express discontent, raising critical questions about how the film was made, is seen, and is talked about, who have not named their displearure publicly. Too many reviewers and interviewers assume not only that there is no need to raise pressing critical questions about Livingston’s film, but act as though she somehow did this marginalized black gay subculture a favor by bringing their experience to a wider public. Such a stance obscures the substantial rewards she has received for this work. Since so many of the black gay men in the film express the desire to be big stars, it is easy to place Livingston in the role of benefactor, offering these “poor black souls! a way to realize their dreams. But it is this current trend in producing colorful ethnicity for the white consumer appetite that makes it possible for blackness to be commodified in unprecedented ways, and for whites to appropriate black culture without interrogating whiteness or showing concern for the displeasure of blacks. Just as white cultural imperialism informed and affirmed the adventurous journeys of colonizing whites into the countries and cultures of “dark others”, it allows white audiences to applaud representations of black culture, if they are satisfied with the images and habits of being represented.

Watching the film with a black woman friend, we were disturbed by the extent to which white folks around us were “entertained” and “pleasured” by scenes we viewed as sad and at times tragic. Often individuals laughed at personal testimony about hardship, pain, loneliness. Several times I yelled out in the dark: “What is so funny about this scene? Why are you laughing?” The laughter was never innocent. Instead it undermined the seriousness of the film, keeping it always on the level of spectacle. And much of the film helped make this possible. Moments of pain and sadness were quickly covered up by dramatic scenes from drag balls, as though there were two competing cinematic narratives, one displaying the pageantry of the drag ball and the other reflecting on the lives of participants and value of the fantasy. This second narrative was literally hard to hear because the laughter often drowned it out, just as the sustained focus on elaborate displays at balls diffused the power of the more serious narrative. Any audience hoping to be entertained would not be as interested in the true life stories and testimonies narrated. Much of that individual testimony makes it appear that the characters are estranged from any community beyond themselves. Families, friends, etc. are not shown, which adds to the representation of these black gay men as cut off, living on the edge.

It is useful to compare the portraits of their lives in Paris is Burning with those depicted in Marlon Riggs’ compelling film Tongues Untied. At no point in Livingston’s film are the men asked to speak about their connections to a world of family and community beyond the drag ball. The cinematic narrative makes the ball center of their lives. And yet who determines this? Is this the way the black men view their reality or is this the reality Livingston constructs? Certainly the degree to which black men in this gay subculture are portrayed as cut off from a “real” world heightens the emphasis on fantasy, and indeed gives Paris is burning its tragic edge. That tragedy is made explicit when we are told that the fair-skinned Venus has been murdered, and yet there is no mourning of him/her in the film, no intense focus on the sadness of this murder. Having served the purpose of “spectacle” the film abandons him/her. The audience does not see Venus after the murder. There are no scenes of grief. To put it crassly, her dying is upstaged by spectacle. Death is not entertaining.

For those of us who did not come to this film as voyeurs of black gay subculture, it is Dorian Carey’s moving testimony throughout the film that makes Paris is Burning a memorable experience. Cary is both historian and cultural critic in the film. He explains how the balls enabled marginalized black gay queens to empower both participants and audience. It is Carey who talks about the significance of the “star” in the life of gay black men who are queens. In a manner similar to critic Richar Dyer in his work Heavenly Bodies, Carey tells viewers that the desire for stardom is an expression of the longing to realize the dream of autonomous stellar individualism. Reminding readers that the idea of the individual continues to be a major image of what it means to live in a democratic world, Dyer writes:

Capitalism justifies itself on the basis of freedom (separateness) of anyone to make money, sell their labour how they will, to be able to express opinions and get them heard (regardless of wealth and social position). The openness of society is assumed by the way that we are addressed as individuals -as consumers (each freely choosing to buy, or watch, what we want), as legal subjects (equally responsible before the law), as political subjects (able to make up our minds who is to run society). Thus even while the notion of the individual is assailed on all sides, it is a necessary fiction for the reproduction of the kind of society we live in... Stars articulate these ideas of personhood.

This is precisely the notion of stardom Carey articulates. He emphasizes the way consumer capitalism undermines the subversive power of the drag balls, subordinating ritual to spectacle, removing the will to display unique imaginative costumes an the purchased image. Carey speaks profoundly about the redemptive power of the imagination in black life, that drag balls were traditionally a place wher the aesthetics of the image in relation to black gay life could be explored with complexity and grace.

Carey extols the significance of fantasy even as he critiques the use of fantasy to escape reality. Analyzing the place of fantasy in black gay subculture, he links that experience to the longing for stardom that is so pervasive in this society. Refusing to allow the “queen” to be Othered, he conveys the message that in all of us resides that longing to transcend the boundaries of self, to be glorified. Speaking about the importance of drag queens in a recent interview in Afterimage, Marlon Riggs suggests that the queen personifies the longing everyone has for love and recognition. Seeing in drag queens “a desire, a very visceral need to be loved, as well as a sense of the abject loneliness of life where nobody loves you”, Riggs contends “this image is real for anybody who has been in the bottom spot where they’ve been rejected by everybody and loved by nobody”. Echoing Carey, Riggs declares: “What’s real for them is the realization that you have to learn to love yourself”. Carey stresses that one can only learn to love the self when one breaks through illusion and faces reality, not by escaping into fantasy. Emphasizing that the point is not to give us fantasy but to recognize its limitations, he acknowledges that one must distinguish the place of fantasy in ritualized play from the use of fantasy as a means of escape. Unlike Pepper Labeija who constructs a mythic world to inhabit, making this his private reality, Carey encourages using the imagination creatively to enhance one’s capacity to live more fully in a world beyond fantasy.

Despite the profound impact he makes, what Riggs would call “a visual icon of the drag queen with a very dignified humanity”, Carey’s message, if often muted, is overshadowed by spectacle. It is hard for viewers to really hear this message. By critiquing absorption in fantasy and naming the myriad ways pain and suffering inform any process of self-actualization, Carey’s message mediates between the viewer who longs to voyeruristicly escape into the film, to vicariously inhabit that lived space on the edge, by exposing the sham, by challenging all of us to confront reality. James Baldwin makes the point in The Fire Next Time that “people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are”. Without being sentimental about suffering, Dorian Carey urges all of us to break through denial, through the longing for an illusory star identity, so that we can confront and accept ourselves as we really are -only then can fantasy, ritual, be a site of seduction, passion, and play where the self is truly recognized, loved, and never abandoned or betrayed.

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cannavists · 3 years

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Pump the brakes before cannabinoids become the next Ivermectin. The Haymaker is Leafly Senior Editor Bruce Barcott’s opinion column on cannabis politics and culture. A scientific study published on Monday in the Journal of Natural Products sent shockwaves through the cannabis industry—and in the space of 48 hours went from miracle cure to late-night comedy fodder. #mrmauiwaui #cannavist #letOurPeopleGrow #FreedomOfSpeech #SweetIslandSativa #420 #710 #cannabis #Apparel #t_shirts #tshirts #hoodies #hoodiegang #cannabiscommunity #TheOriginal820 #growflowers #savethebees #cannavist™️ #CannaFam #CovidFacts (at United States) https://www.instagram.com/p/CYwYkDqrIDB/?utm_medium=tumblr

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rancim · 3 years

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7/13/21

Today while depositing checks I saw again the political vendor that parks itself near the 7-11 that has a reputation of selling the lotto ticket that won a very handsome amount of money. When it comes time to buy lotto tickets, lines within the store spool out onto the street as people wish on an iota of a chance to hit it big. People are there, and so it makes sense that a vendor specializing in the purview of anti-Democrat apparel would make its home there. Surely, someone would buy a Fuck Biden shirt eventually.

I had seen them the last time I had deposited checks (shortly after getting my second vaccine), and had dismissed them as a one-off thing. However, I saw them again today, surprisingly. I tried to see if I could recognize the faces of the people at the vending stand, but no sense of recognition came to mind. For those as overt in their political views, whether I agree with them or not, I simply shuffle pass, head down, refusing any kind of contact. In the same way I tend to ignore the most malignant parts of my body and persona and so often spend nights thinking how do I fix the really shitty parts of my life.

I kind of want to tell them hey man, don’t be a sore winner. But that would imply politics is a game, which it surely isn’t. I’m in an economic bubble. The tidings of the world at large, shifting left and right, hardly make an impression on my life. I can watch comedies about the government decrying the idiocy of our caricatured politicians and laugh freely, without any sense of sadness or fear of how things are going along.

I was surprised to see the same sense of practiced indifference by the other drivers around me as we passed the stand, as we stood at the stoplight, refusing to make eye contact with the man waving placards in the air, telecasting our doomed morals and our collapse as a society. I truly believe in a silent majority, but not the kind that is politicized, the secret passionate voter who makes waves at the polls. Rather, it’s all of us locked in our cars, in our toil, just trying to get through the mundanity of a stoplight so we can go back to our homes and feed our kids, tend to our dogs, watch our shows, gently accepting that even if everything is veering out of control, our indifference or our passion, little would be likely to stop it.

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orbemnews · 3 years

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It’s All a Blur: Chinese Shows Censor Western Brands Over Xinjiang Dispute HONG KONG — Viewers of some of China’s most popular online variety shows were recently greeted by a curious sight: a blur of pixels obscuring the brands on sneakers and T-shirts worn by contestants. As far as viewers could tell, the censored apparel showed no hints of obscenity or indecency. Instead, the problem lay with the foreign brands that made them. Since late March, streaming platforms in China have diligently censored the logos and symbols of brands like Adidas that adorn contestants performing dance, singing and standup-comedy routines. The phenomenon followed a feud between the government and big-name international companies that said they would avoid using cotton produced in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where the authorities are accused of mounting a wide-reaching campaign of repression against ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs. While the anger in China against Western brands has been palpable and enduring on social media, the sight of performers turned into rapidly moving blobs of censored shoes and clothing has provided rare, albeit unintentional, comic relief for Chinese viewers amid a heated global dispute. It has also exposed the unexpected political tripwires confronting apolitical entertainment platforms as the government continues to weaponize the Chinese consumer in its political disputes with the West. Most of the brands were not discernible, but some could be identified. Chinese brands did not appear to be blurred. It’s not clear if Chinese government officials explicitly ordered the shows to obscure the brands. But experts said that the video streaming sites apparently felt pressured or obliged to publicly distance themselves from Western brands amid the feud. Ying Zhu, a media scholar based in New York and Hong Kong, suggested that the censorship was a response to both state and grass-roots patriotism, especially as the opinions of nationalistic viewers become more prominent and loud. “The pressure is both top down and bottom up,” said Professor Zhu. “There is no need for the state to issue a directive for the companies to rally behind. Nationalistic sentiment runs high and mighty, and it drowns all other voices.” The censorship campaign can be traced to a dispute that erupted last month, when the Swedish clothing giant H&M was suddenly scrubbed from Chinese online shopping sites. The move came after the Communist Youth League and state news media resurfaced a statement H&M made months ago expressing concerns about forced labor in Xinjiang. Other Western clothing brands had also said they would avoid using Xinjiang cotton, and one after another, many Chinese celebrities severed ties with them. Since then, the loyalty test seems to have spread to streaming shows. Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies media and politics, said he believed that the platforms most likely censored the brands to pre-empt a backlash from viewers. “If anyone is not happy with those brands appearing in the shows, they could start a social media campaign attacking the producers, which could attract attention from the government and eventually lead to punishment,” he said by email on Thursday. As the blurring spread across apparel brands, it led to some hiccups on shows. The video platform iQiyi announced that it would delay the release of an episode of “Youth With You 3,” a reality show for aspiring pop idols. It did not disclose the reason, but internet users surmised that it had to do with Adidas, which had supplied T-shirts and sneakers for the contestants to wear as a sort of team uniform. Some internet users made mocking predictions about how the upcoming episode would look, photoshopping images to flip the contestants vertically so that their Adidas T-shirts read, “Sabiba” instead. When the episode streamed two days later, pixelated rectangles obscured the T-shirts and sports jackets of dozens of dancers and the distinguishing triple stripes on their Adidas sneakers. Internet users observed mirthfully that none of the shirts had been spared, save for the one contestant who had worn his shirt backward. Many extended condolences to video editors for their lost sleep and labor blurring the T-shirts. Other shows executed similar blurring feats in postproduction. Contestants on another reality show for entertainers, “Sisters Who Make Waves,” practiced cartwheels in sneakers blitzed into indiscernible blurs. So many shoes were erased in the stand-up comedy series, “Roast” that when a group gathered on a podium, the space between the floor and their long hems appeared to melt into a fog. A representative for Tencent Video, which hosts “Roast,” declined to comment on why some brands were censored. The streaming platforms iQiyi and Mango TV, which respectively host “Youth With You 3” and “Sisters Who Make Waves,” did not respond to requests for comment. Adidas did not respond to emailed questions. The onscreen blur or crop is hardly novel in China. The earlobes of male pop stars have been airbrushed to hide earrings deemed too effeminate. A period drama featuring décolletage distinctive to the Tang Dynasty was pulled off the air in 2015, only to be replaced with a version that cropped out much of the costumes and awkwardly zoomed in on the talking heads of the performers. Soccer players have been ordered to cover arm tattoos with long sleeves. The onscreen censorship illustrates the difficult line that the online video platforms, which are regulated by the National Radio and Television Administration, need to tread. “The blurring is likely the platforms’ self-censorship in order to be safe than sorry,” said Haifeng Huang, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at Merced and a scholar of authoritarianism and public opinion in China. “But it nevertheless implies the power of the state and the nationalistic segment of the society, which is also likely the message that the audience gets: These big platforms have to censor themselves even without being explicitly told so.” The blurring episodes also show how the platforms seem to be willing to sacrifice the quality of the viewing experience to avoid political fallout, even when they become the butt of audience jokes. “In a social environment where censorship is commonplace, people are desensitized and even treat it as another form of entertainment,” Professor Huang said. Albee Zhang and Joy Dong contributed research. Source link Orbem News #Blur #brands #Censor #Chinese #dispute #Shows #Western #Xinjiang

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noisycowboyglitter · 2 months

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Revisiting Kamala Harris’ Iconic “I’m Speaking” Lines from the Debate

The phrase "I'm Speaking Kamala Harris Funny Vice Presidential Debate" refers to a memorable moment from the 2020 U.S. Vice Presidential debate between then-Senator Kamala Harris and incumbent Vice President Mike Pence. This event became a significant cultural touchstone, blending political discourse with viral internet humor.

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During the debate, Harris repeatedly used variations of the phrase "I'm speaking" or "Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking" when Pence attempted to interrupt her. This assertive yet composed response quickly resonated with viewers, particularly women who have experienced similar interruptions in professional settings. The moment encapsulated broader discussions about gender dynamics in politics and workplaces.

The "funny" aspect of this keyword likely refers to the internet's rapid transformation of this serious moment into memes, jokes, and comedic content. Social media platforms were flooded with witty takes, clever edits, and humorous interpretations of Harris's remarks. This online reaction demonstrated how modern political events often become fodder for instant, widespread humor.

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Some of the funny elements that emerged included:

Memes featuring Harris's facial expressions during the debate

Remixes of her "I'm speaking" moments set to music

Parody videos reenacting the scene in various contexts

Comedic merchandise like t-shirts and mugs with the phrase

Jokes about how the phrase could be used in everyday situations

The humor surrounding this moment served multiple purposes. For some, it was a way to celebrate Harris's composure and assertiveness. For others, it provided comic relief during a tense political season. The memes and jokes also helped spread awareness of the interaction to a broader audience, sparking conversations about debate etiquette and gender equality.

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However, the transformation of this moment into humor also raised questions about the trivialization of serious political discourse. Some critics argued that focusing on viral moments and witty comebacks detracted from substantive policy discussions.

The debate itself covered crucial topics like the COVID-19 pandemic, economic policy, and climate change. Yet, it was this brief exchange that captured the public's imagination and dominated post-debate discussions.

This phenomenon illustrates how modern political events are processed and shared in the age of social media. A single phrase or moment can overshadow hours of debate, becoming a shorthand for larger issues or character assessments.

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In essence, "I'm Speaking Kamala Harris Funny Vice Presidential Debate" encapsulates a complex intersection of politics, gender dynamics, internet culture, and humor. It demonstrates how a brief moment in a formal political setting can evolve into a multifaceted cultural reference, spurring both serious discussions and lighthearted entertainment.

#I’m Speaking Kamala Harris #Kamala Harris Debate Shirt #Funny Vice Presidential Debate Tee #Political Humor Apparel #Kamala Harris Quote Shirt #Vice Presidential Humor #Kamala Harris Meme #Political Satire Clothing #Kamala Harris Joke Tee #Debate Humor Shirt #Kamala Harris Comedy #View all AUTISM GIFTS products: https://zizzlez.com/trending-topics/hobbies/autism-spectrum-awareness-month/#All products of the store: https://zizzlez.com/

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moretalk · 4 years

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emily-echolls · 7 years

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QUOTE

“The true opposite of depression isn’t gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.” -Alice Miller

BASIC

NAME: Emilia Eleanore Echolls NICKNAMES: Emily, Em, Emmy AGE: 22 BIRTHDAY: November 21st, 1995 GENDER: Female PRONOUNS: She/Her

FAMILY

MOTHER: Evelyn Echolls (Maiden Name: Montgomery) FATHER: Edgar Echolls LEGAL GUARDIAN (?): N/A SIBLINGS: Elisha Macdonald, (Maiden Name: Echolls) Elizabeth Echolls PETS: Jett, a female black longhair cat IMPORTANT EXTENDED FAMILY MEMBERS: N/A

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES

FACE CLAIM: Kristen Stewart RACE/ETHNICITY: English, Scottish, Irish… Your typical American mutt. NATIONALITY: American HEIGHT: 5′5” WEIGHT: 113 (Waaay too skinny) HAIR COLOR: Naturally dirty blonde, dyed dark brown EYE COLOR: Light green SKIN COLOR: Pale DOMINANT HAND: Right ANOMALIES: To list Emily’s tattoos would take up too much space on this- there’s a post here for those interested, but suffice to say she’s seriously inked. Her ears are pierced three times on each ear, including two cartilage piercings on the left side. Her belly button and right nipple are pierced. (The latter done on a dare during her freshman year) She has a mess of raised self harm scars on both thighs, starting as high as her hips and going down halfway down her femurs, covering the front of them and going all the way over to the sides of her legs. Some of the scars are pale and faded out, but a good number of them are discolored and may never completely go away. One of her front teeth has a barely noticeable crack across the front of it where she into a fight during high school and someone hit her in the face with a textbook and broke it. SCENT: Eucalyptus and spearmint from her shampoo and conditioner, Kat Von D Saint perfume, a clean herbal smell from her lotion. An undertone of cigarette smoke or pot. ALLERGIES: Cherries and strawberries, acetaminophen FASHION: Emily puts just as much thought and care into her clothes as her sister, in her own way. Her clothes aren’t designer, but they are carefully purchased from alternative kinds of clothing brands like Banned Apparel, Killstar, and Aderlass, and kept as carefully as Emily keeps anything. Her fashion sense is tomboy meets former scene kid meets punk meets greaser meets tattoo model. It’s dually a look meant to draw stares and a costume for Emily to hide behind, though she wouldn’t admit to it. NERVOUS TICS: Running a hand through her hair, picking at her cuticles, pulling out her cigarette pack and hitting it against her palm, pulling out her zippo lighter and flicking it open and shut, biting her cheek.

LIFESTYLE

HOME ADDRESS: 9430 East Cove Lane #1F, Seacrest Cove, CA RESIDES: Seacrest Cove, CA BORN: Beverly Hills, California RAISED: Beverly Hills, California VEHICLE: A fully restored 1971 Buick Regal, black with dark red seats and a top rated stereo system PHONE: iPhone 7 with this phone case LAPTOP/COMPUTER: A cheaper alienware model HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION: (A private high school in Beverly Hills- will update once I collab with Brand) COLLEGE EDUCATION: Seacrest Cove University MAJOR: Psychology / Social Work MINOR: N/A JOB: N/A POLITICAL AFFILIATION: Left leaning but she doesn’t really give a shit. RELIGION: Atheist BELIEFS: Karma MISDEMEANORS: A count of indecent exposure, an underage drinking charge, and a public intoxication charge- all of which were issued when she was seventeen and were sealed when she turned eighteen FELONIES: N/A TICKETS AND/OR VIOLATIONS: A handful of speeding tickets, a disturbing the peace charge. DRUGS: Weed, (regularly) cocaine, (a few times) xanax, (occasionally) ecstasy, (a few times) oxy, (was abusing to control pain before her last ER visit) acid, (a few times) SMOKES: Yes ALCOHOL: Yes. DIET: Whatever’s easy. Emily tends to dislike anything deep fried or overly processed. She has a love/hate relationship with frozen food. She likes fresh fruit but hasn’t ever been a huge vegetable person, and she tends to dislike red meats in most everything. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual with a preference towards women. RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single CHILDREN: N/A LOOKING FOR: Not looking for anything. At all. BEST FRIEND(S): Julian Lowell, Stella Belmonte LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English PHOBIAS: Lizards HOBBIES: Mobile games, skateboarding, going to concerts, sketching, TRAITS: Aggressive, bold, protective, depressed, sarcastic SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr

FAVORITE

LOCATION: The beach at night, any old place. SPORTS TEAM: The only time Emily gives a shit about sports is during the Olympics, and even then only kind of. GAME: Alto’s Adventure, Blyss, Miracle Merchant, Plants Vs. Zombies, horror PC games MUSIC: The Runaways, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, other pioneering girl rock bands, My Chemical Romance, Pop Evil, Nine Inch Nails, System of a Down, Slipknot, Iron Maiden. SHOWS: American Horror Story, Bob’s Burgers, Black Mirror, Rick and Morty, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, Lost Girl, Salem, Orange is the New Black, Sense 8 MOVIES: Horror movies, light hearted comedies, crime movies, the kind of mind fuck movies with twist endings that make you think, thrillers. RADIO STATION: N/A FOOD: Peaches and cream, baked salmon with wild rice, salt and vinegar chips, pomegranates, peanut butter and honey sandwich, pickles, grilled chicken sandwich with ranch and tomato, blueberry muffins, mashed potatoes PROFESSOR: Emily feels like she’s honor bound to say Macdonald BEVERAGE: Sweet tea, sprite, vanilla coke with rum, orange juice, almond milk. COLOR: Ash gray and dark teal

CHARACTER

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Good/True Neutral MBTI: ESFJ ENNEAGRAM: Type 5 - The Investigator TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic and Choleric WESTERN ZODIAC: Scorpio CHINESE ZODIAC: Pig PRIMAL SIGN: Squid HOGWARTS HOUSE: Gryffindor SONG: Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene - Hozier IDEOLOGIES: That people are inherently selfish, and have to put effort into not being selfish pieces of shit, so when you find someone that’s a good person- they deserve twice your respect than they would otherwise.

#Emily's Tasks #sccu; task21 #I did all my characters someone validate me

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2dizzle · 7 years

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gay?

Gay is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term was originally used to mean “carefree”, “happy”, or “bright and showy”.

The term’s use as a reference to homosexuality may date as early as the late 19th century, but its use gradually increased in the 20th century.[1] In modern English, gay has come to be used as an adjective, and as a noun, referring to the people, especially to gay males, and the practices and cultures associated with homosexuality. By the end of the 20th century, the word gay was recommended by major LGBT groups and style guides to describe people attracted to members of the same sex.[2][3]

At about the same time, a new, pejorative use became prevalent in some parts of the world. Among younger speakers, the word has a meaning ranging from derision (e.g., equivalent to rubbish or stupid) to a light-hearted mockery or ridicule (e.g., equivalent to weak, unmanly, or lame). In this use, the word rarely means “homosexual”, as it is often used, for example, to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept of which one disapproves. The extent to which these usages still retain connotations of homosexuality has been debated and harshly criticized.[4][5]

The word gay arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French gai, most likely deriving ultimately from a Germanicsource.[1] In English, the word’s primary meaning was “joyful”, “carefree”, “bright and showy”, and the word was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. For example, the optimistic 1890s are still often referred to as the Gay Nineties. The title of the 1938 French ballet Gaîté Parisienne (“Parisian Gaiety”), which became the 1941 Warner Brothers movie, The Gay Parisian,[7] also illustrates this connotation. It was apparently not until the 20th century that the word began to be used to mean specifically “homosexual”, although it had earlier acquired sexual connotations.[1]

The derived abstract noun gaiety remains largely free of sexual connotations and has, in the past, been used in the names of places of entertainment; for example W.B. Yeats heard Oscar Wilde lecture at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.[8]

Sexualization

The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century, but had certainly acquired them by the 17th.[1] By the late 17th century it had acquired the specific meaning of “addicted to pleasures and dissipations”,[9] an extension of its primary meaning of “carefree” implying “uninhibited by moral constraints”. A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer, and a gay house a brothel.[1] The use of gay to mean “homosexual” was often an extension of its application to prostitution: a gay boy was a young man or boy serving male clients.[10] Similarly, a gay cat was a young male apprenticed to an older hobo, commonly exchanging sex and other services for protection and tutelage.[1] The application to homosexuality was also an extension of the word’s sexualized connotation of “carefree and uninhibited”, which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage, documented as early as the 1920s, was likely present before the 20th century,[1] although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as in the once-common phrase “gay Lothario”,[11] or in the title of the book and film The Gay Falcon (1941), which concerns a womanizing detective whose first name is “Gay”. Similarly, Fred Gilbert and G. H. MacDermott’s music hall song of the 1880s, “Charlie Dilke Upset the Milk” – “Master Dilke upset the milk/When taking it home to Chelsea;/ The papers say that Charlie’s gay/Rather a wilful wag!” – referred to Sir Charles Dilke’s alleged heterosexual impropriety.[12] Giving testimony in court in 1889, the rentboy John Saul stated: “I occasionally do odd-jobs for different gay people.”[13] Well into the mid 20th century a middle-aged bachelor could be described as “gay”, indicating that he was unattached and therefore free, without any implication of homosexuality. This usage could apply to women too. The British comic strip Jane, first published in the 1930s, described the adventures of Jane Gay. Far from implying homosexuality, it referred to her free-wheeling lifestyle with plenty of boyfriends (while also punning on Lady Jane Grey).

A passage from Gertrude Stein’s Miss Furr & Miss Skeene (1922) is possibly the first traceable published use of the word to refer to a homosexual relationship. According to Linda Wagner-Martin (Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and her Family (1995)) the portrait “featured the sly repetition of the word gay, used with sexual intent for one of the first times in linguistic history,” and Edmund Wilson (1951, quoted by James Mellow in Charmed Circle (1974)) agreed.[14] For example:

They were … gay, they learned little things that are things in being gay, … they were quite regularly gay.

The word continued to be used with the dominant meaning of “carefree”, as evidenced by the title of The Gay Divorcee (1934), a musical film about a heterosexual couple.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) was the first film to use the word gay in apparent reference to homosexuality. In a scene in which the Cary Grant character’s clothes have been sent to the cleaners, he is forced to wear a woman’s feather-trimmed robe. When another character asks about his robe, he responds, “Because I just went gay all of a sudden!” Since this was a mainstream film at a time when the use of the word to refer to cross-dressing (and, by extension, homosexuality) would still be unfamiliar to most film-goers, the line can also be interpreted to mean, “I just decided to do something frivolous.”[15]

In 1950, the earliest reference found to date for the word gay as a self-described name for homosexuals comes from Alfred A. Gross, executive secretary for the George W. Henry Foundation, who said in the June 1950 issue of SIR magazine: “I have yet to meet a happy homosexual. They have a way of describing themselves as gay but the term is a misnomer. Those who are habitues of the bars frequented by others of the kind, are about the saddest people I’ve ever seen.”[16]

Shift to specifically homosexual

By the mid-20th century, gay was well established in reference to hedonistic and uninhibited lifestyles[9] and its antonym straight, which had long had connotations of seriousness, respectability, and conventionality, had now acquired specific connotations of heterosexuality.[17] In the case of gay, other connotations of frivolousness and showiness in dress (“gay apparel”) led to association with camp and effeminacy. This association no doubt helped the gradual narrowing in scope of the term towards its current dominant meaning, which was at first confined to subcultures. Gay was the preferred term since other terms, such as queer, were felt to be derogatory.[18]Homosexual is perceived as excessively clinical,[19][20][21] since the sexual orientation now commonly referred to as “homosexuality” was at that time a mental illness diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

In mid-20th century Britain, where male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act 1967, to openly identify someone as homosexual was considered very offensive and an accusation of serious criminal activity. Additionally, none of the words describing any aspect of homosexuality were considered suitable for polite society. Consequently, a number of euphemisms were used to hint at suspected homosexuality. Examples include “sporty” girls and “artistic” boys,[22] all with the stress deliberately on the otherwise completely innocent adjective.

The sixties marked the transition in the predominant meaning of the word gay from that of “carefree” to the current “homosexual”.

In the British comedy-drama film Light Up the Sky! (1960), directed by Lewis Gilbert, about the antics of a British Army searchlight squad during World War II, there is a scene in the mess hut where the character played by Benny Hill proposes an after-dinner toast. He begins, “I’d like to propose…” at which point a fellow diner, played by Sidney Tafler, interjects “Who to?”, suggesting a proposal of marriage. The Benny Hill character responds, “Not to you for start, you ain’t my type”. He then adds in mock doubt, “Oh, I don’t know, you’re rather gay on the quiet.”

By 1963, a new sense of the word gay was known well enough to be used by Albert Ellis in his book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Man-Hunting. Similarly, Hubert Selby, Jr. in his 1964 novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, could write that a character “took pride in being a homosexual by feeling intellectually and esthetically superior to those (especially women) who weren’t gay….”[23] Later examples of the original meaning of the word being used in popular culture include the theme song to the 1960–1966 animated TV series The Flintstones, whereby viewers are assured that they will “have a gay old time.” Similarly, the 1966 Herman’s Hermits song “No Milk Today”, which became a Top 10 hit in the UK and a Top 40 hit in the U.S., included the lyric “No milk today, it was not always so / The company was gay, we’d turn night into day.”[24] In June 1967, the headline of the review of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in the British daily newspaper The Times stated, “The Beatles revive hopes of progress in pop music with their gay new LP”.[25] Yet in the same year, The Kinks recorded “David Watts”.[26] Ostensibly about schoolboy envy, the song also operated as an in-joke, as related in Jon Savage’s “The Kinks: The Official Biography”, because the song took its name from a homosexual promoter they’d encountered who’d had romantic designs on songwriter Ray Davies’ teenage brother; and the lines “he is so gay and fancy free” attest to the ambiguity of the word’s meaning at that time, with the second meaning evident only for those in the know.[27] As late as 1970, the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show has the demonstrably straight Mary Richards’ downstairs neighbor, Phyllis, breezily declaiming that Mary is, at age 30, still “young and gay.”

There is little doubt that the homosexual sense is a development of the word’s traditional meaning, as described above. It has nevertheless been claimed that gay stands for “Good As You”, but there is no evidence for this: it is a backronym created as popular etymology.[28]

Sexual orientation, identity, behaviour

The American Psychological Association defines sexual orientation as “an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes,” ranging “along a continuum, from exclusive attraction to the other sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex.”[29] Sexual orientation can also be “discussed in terms of three categories: heterosexual (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to members of the other sex), gay/lesbian (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to members of one’s own sex), and bisexual (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to both men and women).”[29]

According to Rosario, Schrimshaw, Hunter, Braun (2006), “the development of a lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) sexual identity is a complex and often difficult process. Unlike members of other minority groups (e.g., ethnic and racial minorities), most LGB individuals are not raised in a community of similar others from whom they learn about their identity and who reinforce and support that identity. Rather, LGB individuals are often raised in communities that are either ignorant of or openly hostile toward homosexuality.”[30]

The British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell has argued that the term gay is merely a cultural expression which reflects the current status of homosexuality within a given society, and claiming that “Queer, gay, homosexual … in the long view, they are all just temporary identities. One day, we will not need them at all.”[31]

If a person engages in sexual activity with a partner of the same sex but does not self-identify as gay, terms such as ’closeted’, ‘discreet’, or ’bi-curious’ may apply. Conversely, a person may identify as gay without having had sex with a same-sex partner. Possible choices include identifying as gay socially while choosing to be celibate or while anticipating a first homosexual experience. Further, a bisexual person might also identify as “gay” but others may consider gay and bisexual to be mutually exclusive. There are some who are drawn to the same sex but neither engage in sexual activity nor identify as gay; these could have the term asexual applied, even though asexual generally can mean no attraction or involve heterosexual attraction but no sexual activity.

TerminologyMain article:

Terminology of homosexuality

Some reject the term homosexual as an identity-label because they find it too clinical-sounding;[20][21][32] they believe it is too focused on physical acts rather than romance or attraction, or too reminiscent of the era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Conversely, some reject term gay as an identity-label because they perceive the cultural connotations to be undesirable or because of the negative connotations of the slang usage of the word.

Style guides, like the following from the Associated Press, call for gay over homosexual:

Gay: Used to describe men and women attracted to the same sex, though lesbian is the more common term for women. Preferred over homosexual except in clinical contexts or references to sexual activity.[33]

There are those who reject the gay label for reasons other than shame or negative connotations. Writer Alan Bennett[34] and fashion icon André Leon Talley[35] are like others in such as fashion and the arts, out and open gay men who yet reject being labeled gay, finding it too limiting, slotting them into label boxes.

Gay community vs. LGBT communityMain article:

LGBT community

Starting in the mid-1980s in the United States, a conscious effort was under way within what was then only called the gay community, to add the term lesbianto the name of all gay organizations that catered to both male and female homosexuals, and to use the terminology of gay and lesbian, or lesbian/gay when referring to that community. So, organizations like the National Gay Task Force became the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. For many ardent feminist lesbians, it was also important that the L come first, lest an L following a G become another symbol of male dominance over women,[36] although other women prefer the usage gay woman. In the 1990s, this was followed by another equally concerted push to include the terminology specifically pointing out the inclusion of bisexual, transgender, intersex, and other people, reflecting the intra-community debate as to whether these other sexual minorities were part of the same human rights movement. Most news organizations have formally adopted variations of this use, following the example and preference of the organizations, as reflected in their press releases and public communications.

#hope that helps to clear up any questions!

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nvmztina · 7 years

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🚨🚨🚨New Episode Alert🚨🚨🚨 Special Thanks to @darienjgmc @imduggie , @ipod_junky for coming through and chopping it up with us.... You can find all your @capitalhill_ apparel @www.capitalhillgoldleaf.com ...... Like Share and subscribe on SoundCloud and Itunes @SexynSavage..... Questions comments email us at [email protected]... #podcast sex #podcast #soundcloud #podcasting #podcastlife #podcasters #podcastersofinstagram #podcastersunite #podcastersofig #chicago #chicagopulse #radio #entertainment #comedy #culture #community #socialawareness #politics #believethat #litty #linkinbio #sexynsavage #sexualconfessions #podcasting #podcult #pod #podcastjunkie

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kaylynncriticalpractice · 8 years

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Blog Assignment #3

Rich Chigga- Dat $tick

In this music video, Brian Imanuel, also known as Rich Chigga, debuts with his first viral hit ‘Dat $tick’. Throughout the video, Brian and his crew dance along to the song in the streets and in lavish homes whilst holding guns and liquor- a cliche found in many rap music videos. However, instead of flaunting expensive jewelry and designer clothing, he is dressed in a pink polo, khaki shorts, and a fanny pack.

Dat $tick is essentially postmodern, as it is a pastiche of rap videos as a whole. In the first scene, Brian is seen pouring out liquor- a move often made by rap artists to ‘pour one out for the dead homies’. He and his crew are then shown in different shots dancing and dabbing in front of expensive cars and in expensive houses. This is an example of simulacrum, as he copies the cliches already made in so many other rap music videos. He begins to rap, and to the audience’s surprise, his voice is deep and is rapping over a trap beat. The image that Rich Chigga decides to illustrate to his audience of himself is humorous, as he is neither an adult, or an African-American man. In fact, he is quite the opposite. He is a 16 (now 17) year old Asian boy from Jakarta, Indonesia. He confuses his audience in this way, as his demeanor and attitude is very American, causing many to believe that he was an Asian American boy from the suburbs. Dat $tick is a representation of the creation of a mass culture, shared by people all over the world via the internet.

Rich Chigga appears in dorky apparel, but his image throughout the music video contrasts from the lyrics that he raps. He expresses his distaste for cops, “And berry gon' smell blood trail every minute/ Rogue wave on you niggas, no fail when I hit 'em/ Everytime I see a pig, I don't hesitate to kill 'em”. He then discusses the corruption in Indonesian politics and the ongoing drug problem in Jakarta, “People be starving/ And people be killing for food with that crack and that spoon/ But these rich mothafuckas they stay eatin' good/ Droppin' wage livin good”. This contrast alludes to intertextuality, in which he combines his ironic humor with rap music.

Brian however did not create this video in order to parody other rap music videos, but rather as an ode to them with a personal twist. Dat $tick demands some sort of respect from its audience, although it may present itself as a form of low-art, it is actually a representation of Brian Imanuel’s character as a whole, as seen through his presence on Twitter, Vine, and Snapchat. However, Dat $tick lacks a clear narrative, as many will see his music as only a joke, and others may see it as a political statement. It is up to the audience to choose who Rich Chigga is and what Dat $tick represents. The audience can decide whether Rich Chigga himself is only a comedian using music as a form of comedy, or if he is a serious artist who is just presenting himself as he truly is.

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orbemnews · 4 years

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What Warren Buffett Is Buying Warren Buffett is playing it safe Berkshire Hathaway’s latest annual results, and the accompanying letter to investors from the Oracle of Omaha, reveal a clear theme: Warren Buffett isn’t taking as many risks — or big swings at deal-making — as he used to. Berkshire is spending more of its $138 billion in cash on smaller investments, as opposed to deploying it on the huge acquisitions that he famously made in the past. The conglomerate bought back nearly $25 billion of its own shares last year, a record for a company that until recently was reluctant to spend its cash this way. Mr. Buffett admitted a big mistake in his last foray into blockbuster deal-making. He wrote that the $37 billion he paid for Precision Castparts, a maker of airplane parts, was too much. (The 2016 transaction resulted in a $10 billion write-down last year.) “No one misled me in any way,” he wrote. “I was simply too optimistic.” Berkshire’s biggest bets don’t look particularly contrarian. They include a $120 billion stake in Apple and majority stakes in the Burlington Northern railroad and Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Berkshire’s stock is up but has underperformed the S&P 500 in recent years. Mr. Buffett isn’t bullish on bonds, writing that bond investors face a “bleak future” amid signs of anxiety in the debt markets, and he warned that “risky loans” and other ways to juice fixed-income returns would lead to ruin. Investors don’t seem to mind that Mr. Buffett has put down his so-called elephant gun for big acquisitions, at least for now. “He doesn’t really have to find the elephant because he has two elephants already corralled that need to be fed,” said Thomas Russo, a Berkshire shareholder, referring to the railroad and energy companies. That suggests investors are on board with Berkshire focusing on buybacks and its existing businesses rather than bold new bets — for now. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Senate Democrats will drop a minimum wage increase from the stimulus bill. The move came after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that increasing the federal rate to $15 an hour broke the chamber’s rules, The Wall Street Journal reports. The House, which had approved the wage increase in its version of the $1.9 trillion bill, must sign off on the change. The F.D.A. approves Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine. The one-shot treatment is the latest to win emergency approval, as the decline in new coronavirus cases appears to have plateaued. But supplies of J.&J.’s vaccine will be limited at first. President Biden won’t sanction Saudi Arabia’s No. 2 leader over Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. The decision not to punish the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over his approval of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing in 2018 was the latest sign that there are limited consequences for the act. Nasdaq presses forward with its board diversity proposal. The stock exchange’s plan to require companies listed on its market to have more diverse directors has overwhelming public support, it told the S.E.C. Nasdaq is making some tweaks, including giving companies a one-year grace period and offering more flexibility to companies with smaller boards. Streaming services dominate the Golden Globes. Netflix collected 10 awards last night, while Amazon’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” was the first title from a streamer to win best motion picture comedy or musical. What’s next for WeWork? SoftBank said on Friday that it had settled its legal dispute with Adam Neumann, opening the way for WeWork to go public just 16 months after SoftBank rescued it from collapse, The Times’s Peter Eavis reports. A recap: At the time of its rescue, SoftBank offered to buy $3 billion of stock from WeWork shareholders, including the co-founder Mr. Neumann, who stepped down as C.E.O. during the company’s disastrous I.P.O. attempt in 2019. Then, as the coronavirus was emptying WeWork offices, SoftBank said in April that it wouldn’t go ahead with the purchase, prompting Mr. Neumann to sue. Who came out ahead in the settlement? SoftBank is now spending only $1.5 billion on the stock, instead of $3 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the settlement. But the lower bill is because SoftBank is cutting the number of shares it will buy in half; that means Mr. Neumann will get $480 million instead of up to $960 million. (SoftBank has invested well over $10 billion in WeWork.) Mr. Neumann also secured some concessions, according to these people. SoftBank pledged to pay $50 million for his legal fees, to extend a $430 million loan it made to him by five years and to pay the last $50 million of a $185 million consulting fee it owed him. Now what? Settling the dispute removes a big obstacle to taking WeWork public. SoftBank has been in talks to merge with BowX Acquisition, a SPAC run by Vivek Ranadivé, the founder of Tibco Software and owner of the N.B.A.’s Sacramento Kings. Such a deal would raise some crucial questions: SoftBank owns 70 percent of WeWork’s shares but has direct control over just under half of shareholder votes. Would those numbers change after an offering? Who does control WeWork? Would investors balk at WeWork’s financial performance, again? It’s not clear how the company has performed recently; it last publicly disclosed its financials some 18 months ago. And a glut of office space is coming, which might be more attractive to companies than taking WeWork space. Individuals, meanwhile, may be less likely to use a co-working space now that they’ve gotten used to working from home. The week ahead The state of consumer spending is a theme, with a wide range of retailers reporting earnings, including Kohl’s, Nordstrom and Target on Tuesday; Dollar Tree on Wednesday; and Costco and Gap on Thursday. In other earnings news, later today Zoom is expected to release another blockbuster report, but executives will be quizzed on whether the company’s growth can continue when many workers return to the office. The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress of China begins on Friday, where the country’s latest five-year economic plan will be announced, among other measures. The latest U.S. jobs report is released on Friday, with economists expecting a gain of 165,000 jobs in February, up from 49,000 the previous month. Citi may face a shareholder vote on a racial equity audit Citigroup has no legal basis for blocking an investor proposal demanding a report on how its practices affect minority communities , the S.E.C. ruled Friday. That increases the likelihood that the bank’s board will have to examine itself in the glare of the public. Citi had asked the S.E.C. for permission to keep the proposal off its annual shareholder proxy. DealBook first reported last year that two investment groups linked to unions, the CtW and SEIU, would call on the country’s six largest banks to conduct “racial equity audits.” The unions asked them to work with civil rights groups, employees and customers on examinations of practices that would then be made public. In its submission to the S.E.C., Citi said it had already “substantially implemented the essential elements” of the proposal. But Dieter Waizenegger, the executive director of CtW Investment Group, told DealBook, “It’s important to establish an independent assessment” of the banks’ practices. Citi could face a legal fight if it chooses to ignore the proposal, after the commission refused to give the firm cover. A spokeswoman for the bank noted in a statement that it has committed more than $1 billion to help Black homeowners and entrepreneurs, as well as to better diversify its work force. “Citi is acutely focused on addressing racial inequity, especially in terms of the wealth gap it creates,” she added. A warning for ‘reckless’ buyouts Until recently, those who sold companies to private equity firms were not held liable if things went awry after the sale — that, after all, was the new owner’s problem. Those days may be over, Bill Cohan writes for Times Opinion. Officers and directors can be held responsible for approving a “reckless” sale, a New York federal court judge concluded in December. Jones Group, the struggling apparel company that owned Nine West and Stuart Weitzman, sold itself to Sycamore Partners in 2013. The buyout firm later changed the terms of the deal and the company’s debt exceeded bankers’ recommendations. Nine West filed for bankruptcy in 2018 and shareholders sued the Jones Group’s former directors. There is still a trial looming, but would-be sellers “had better think twice before agreeing to sell a company to a buyout firm,” Mr. Cohan wrote. In a message to clients, the law firm Ropes & Gray wrote that the ruling was “a serious warning,” noting that even though the selling directors may not be involved after an exit, they “cannot ignore” a company’s post-exit balance sheet. If a precedent is set, private equity firms could suffer, Mr. Cohan suggested: “The days of just selling a company to the highest bidder regardless of the consequences — the legal standard on Wall Street since the Delaware Supreme Court decided the so-called Revlon case in 1986 — might just be over.” Or not: lawyers at Fried Frank believe the broader implications of the case are “overstated,” noting that the facts of this case raised specific “red flags.” For more on the prospects for private equity deal-making, Bain’s latest annual report on the state of the industry is out today. “A number of headwinds will make for a uniquely challenging recovery,” it writes. THE SPEED READ Deals Robinhood reportedly plans to file confidentially for an I.P.O. as soon as this month. (Bloomberg) Retail investors in the SPAC that plans to merge with the electric carmaker Lucid are trying to rally support for its depressed shares on Reddit forums. (Business Insider) Politics and policy Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York offered an apology for “insensitive” comments after a second former aide accused him of sexual harassment; he faces an independent investigation. (NYT) China is charging ahead with a national digital currency, rethinking how government-backed money works. (NYT) Tech Walmart hired Omer Ismail, who helped build out Goldman Sachs’s consumer finance arm, to lead a new fintech venture founded by the retail giant and Ribbit Capital. (Bloomberg) “Bias, disrespect, and demotions: Black employees say Amazon has a race problem” (Recode) Coinbase’s I.P.O. prospectus highlights how a few men control the biggest companies in cryptocurrency. (Bloomberg) Best of the rest The ousting of McKinsey’s leader underscores deep cracks in the consulting giant’s partnership. (WSJ) McDonald’s C.E.O. pledged support for women who have raised allegations of sexual discrimination and harassment at the fast-food chain. (McDonald’s, CBS News) Is Japan’s central bank a meme stock? (Bloomberg) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #Buffett #buying #Warren

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