#anti tom keen

[ace-of-spaders]

"We've decided to keep the baby."

[kiss-my-freckle]

2 of 2: The Pretty Loner

Not the prom, but her birthday. Not punch, but wine.

[darth-rainbow]

Rewatching the Blacklist and dayum. Season 1, Episode 5 Tom Keen is the original Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss. Like sir, you will always be an icon. He lied through his TEETH. With such talent and aplomb woah, I am shooketh. He was out there telling Elizabeth that all that is bad and evil was brought into their home by her, that he'd never used a gun or a fake passport in his life, shook about the amount of money in a box because he'd never seen that much, that he is her husband and that this is a big misunderstanding. Wow. Yikes, but wow.

I don't even know if this is pro or anti Tom Keen ptdrrrrrr just sharing random thoughts.

[justforbooks]

Although there was never any such phenomenon as Whittakermania, Roger Whittaker, who has died aged 87, built a huge international following in a career that spanned six decades. As the Boston Globe noted of his stage performances: “No one gets high. No one gets hysterical with excitement. And yet Roger Whittaker is one of the most popular entertainers in the world.”

Whittaker’s smooth baritone voice and songs of love, loss and yearning endeared him to audiences worldwide. His best known songs, where his voice was invariably accompanied by keening strings, included 1969’s Durham Town (the Leavin’), I Don’t Believe in If Anymore (1970), which reached No 8 in the UK, The Last Farewell (1971, reissued in 1975 to become a Top 20 hit in the US and a chart-topper in 11 countries), and Wind Beneath My Wings (1982).

He also had a trademark whistling ability, which he used to perform The Skye Boat Song in a duet with Des O’Connor, reaching the UK Top 10 in 1986.

Though he did not rack up chart hits as prolifically as the Beatles or Abba, his frequent TV and live appearances made him a household name in many countries. In the mid-1980s, he was acknowledged as Germany’s most successful recording artist. He made several recordings in German, singing the lyrics phonetically since he could not speak the language.

He was never fashionable, but never out of fashion with his audience. When he recorded a song such as Green, Green Grass of Home, it lacked the drama of Tom Jones’s version and his treatment of Song Sung Blue was homelier and more avuncular than Neil Diamond’s original, but it all became Whittaker music.

He liked to say he represented the “silent majority”. He defined this as “the kind of person who when he marries becomes a parent and a taxpayer and devotes himself to bringing up his children properly – all in all, a pretty straight-down-the-line guy”.

In the 70s, when rock music was dominating the record industry, Whittaker was dropped by his label, RCA, despite the fact that he had sold several million discs. He decided to market his 1977 album, All My Best, on TV. “I was the first act to go on TV with records,” he said. All My Best sold nearly 1m copies.

Born in Nairobi, Kenya, he was the son of Vi (nee Showan) and Edward Whittaker, who had owned a grocery shop in Staffordshire, but moved to a farm near Thika after Edward sustained serious injuries in a motorcycle accident and had been advised that a hot, dry climate would aid his recuperation.

Edward developed a new grocery business, while Vi worked as a teacher. Roger, who could speak Swahili before he learned English, attended the Prince of Wales school (now Nairobi school). He had begun learning the guitar at seven.

After school, where he had sung in the choir, he was called up for national service. He was posted to the Kenya Regiment, and for two years was involved in fighting the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebels. He subsequently attended the University of Cape Town to study medicine, but after 18 months he left and trained to be a teacher.

In 1959 he moved to Britain and enrolled at Bangor University in north Wales, where he studied zoology, biochemistry and marine biology. He also began to make his first moves into music, playing gigs to earn some cash and recording songs on flexi discs distributed with the university newspaper.

These provoked interest from Fontana records, and in 1962 his first single releases were The Charge of the Light Brigade and Steel Men.

He played concerts in Northern Ireland and appeared on the Ulster TV show This and That, and his career developed with constant touring around Britain.

“I learned how to entertain in the clubs of the north-east of England, the working men’s clubs where the miners go,” he said. In 1964 he married Natalie O’Brien.

By 1968 he was touring internationally and even had a TV showcase in the Soviet Union. At the 1968 Knokke song contest in Belgium, Whittaker performed If I Were a Rich Man, from the musical Fiddler on the Roof, and his own whistling composition, Mexican Whistler, helping Britain to win the competition, and both tunes were hits in France, the Netherlands and Belgium. In 1969 he scored his first UK Top 20 hit with Durham Town (the Leavin’), which reached No 12. Its easy-listening mixture of sentimentality and nostalgia, with its mournful references to war and bereavement, was typical of Whittaker’s work.

He revisited his African background in the documentary film Roger Whittaker in Kenya: A Musical Safari (1982), and in 1986 he published his autobiography (written with his wife), So Far, So Good. Three years later, he received the news that his parents had been attacked by a gang of robbers in Kenya, leaving his father dead and his mother brutally beaten. She subsequently moved back to Britain.

Outside music, Whittaker had a shrewd eye for antiques. His collection of paintings, furniture and works of art was auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1999 for more than £1m, at the same time as he sold his Herefordshire home and moved to Essex. Latterly he lived in the south of France.

He is survived by Natalie and by their five children, Emily, Lauren, Jessica, Guy and Alexander, 12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and his sister, Betty.

🔔 Roger Henry Brough Whittaker, singer and songwriter, born 22 March 1936; died 13 September 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[nerianasims]

A central Florida district flipped to Democrats. https://www.floridadems.org/2024/01/16/florida-democrats-flip-house-seat-elect-tom-keen-to-florida-house-district-35/

District 35 is not a panhandle district, so not hugely right-wing. It's very swingy; if you're looking for "undecided" voters, there they are. It used to be DeSantis' district at one point. Keen really hammered on abortion access, the environment, and opposition to book bans. Despite what so many major media outlets claim, voters do care about our rights and principles.

(My district is blue blue blue and also blue, and yet not terribly left wing. People here are NOT HAPPY about abortion bans, book bans, anti-queer bullshit, etc. But they're not going to be receptive to the "tear it all down" crap from the far left either.)

[destinyc1020]

'And I think Tom already gets enough of that as is. So, forgive some of us as fans if some of us are just sick and tired of the nitpicking.'

yessss destiny!! also i just am a little sus that some of your anons pretending to be 'concerned' fans might be antis (or that one JE fan, which lmao it's totally fine to like him!! but just dont put tom down to be a fan of him cause that is silly and vice versa!), so it is just pretty exhausting when anons come in wanting to condemn him for something that hasn't even happened yet. like sure if we get more info, then make judgements, but nitpicking stuff from so little information is just kind of tiring.

Thanks Anon for your input. 😊

Yea, I'm just not really too keen on judging a film TOO harshly before we've even seen a trailer yet....before the film has even started FILMING yet! Like GEEZ! 🥴 Can we please not?

We don't even know all of the facts with the FA biopic, and some "experts" can't even agree on whether or not he actually had that clause in his will.

I say we just all chill and wait until we at least get more info about this movie. So many fans were foaming at the mouth and jumping at Tom's neck to berate him for taking the TCR project, and it ended up being so TOTALLY DIFFERENT from what they originally assumed it to be. 😏

So I just think it's always better to wait until we have more facts before judging a project so harshly.

RE: JE....

Yea, I mean people can go ahead and like JE if they want. It's not a big deal to me lol. I'm not the "fandom police". 😅 Like who/whatever you want to like! Why would I care?? 🤷🏾‍♀️ But we don't need to put down Tom in order to lift up JE.....and vice versa.

[folansstuff]

So I'm not caught up what's going on with illyana and realm of x that you seem frustrated about

So, my issues with Realm of X is not really based on Illyana specifically, but more an issue with the book as a whole?

The TLDR is like; the books massively disconnected from the main FoX plot, but also doesn't follow up on plot threads from previous books, and gives it's characters little to do despite telling us things are happening. I'll slap the rest under the read more cause it might get long.

So the book has a really interesting set up (the gals are stuck in Vanheim, Curse has brought them there, etc etc) and feels like it's going to follow up on some of the plot threads from Vita Ayala's New Mutants run + X of Swords (eg, Illyana no longer being bonded to Limbo, Satyurne no longer having control of Otherworld) + the post-Hellfire Gala thing.

The issue is that it's none of these things? It's techincally connected to FoX since they mention mutants being stuck there other than them, but we never see them and it never seems to really matter outside the first issue. Illyana's lack of magic has nothing to do with being separated from Limbo, but is instead because Vanheim is anti-magic and it only rarely touches on her thoughts about that than "she's sad". And we so far don't really understand what Saturyne is doing at all other than some really 'power' with Vanheim and... aliens? Some sort of cosmic thing? Who knows.

Typhoid Mary is around, Marrow does even less, Dust gets to do some cool stuff, but she's still sidelined, Illyana's general headstrongness that defines her character, even in the Krakoan era is gone (which is still wild even with the concept that she's struggling without her powers, she would still be throwing hands! Instead Typhoid Mary just calls her useless and she instantly cowers to that assessment.) And Dani, poor fucking Dani, is cut off from her Valkyrie powers for reasons we may only find out 4 issues in. (And that's only if Sif being in the preview means anything). We don't see Curse develop either, even though this should really be her star showing post-Nature Girl stuff.

So things are just sort of happening. And the narration tells us things are happening kinda aimlessly? And that's wild since this is supposedly a four issue miniseries, but even the preview from the last issue doesn't seem to be interested in plot progression at all.

The only, like, truly nice thing I can say is that issues 1, 2 and 4 look nice. The art is cool, the characters have neat outfits, and any book that makes Illyana this pretty looking is a positive to me. But then there's issue 3, which looks Not Great, but with comics I understand that can happen sometimes.

Now I'm not editorial, obviously, but I can only assume the book is like this because of some sort of strange circumstances. This does feel like a book that is only in the FoX line because of like, a release date change or something? Or scheduling? Cause even with the other FoX books, which I've generally thought were okay on average, they at least felt like they were meant to be there.

And I want to clarify, this new issue could completely 180 my opinion! We've only seen previews, and stranger things have certainly happened, but I am not optimistic about it. Ultimately don't know where this goes. My old theory was that they were going to kill/seal off Dani and Yana, but Dani is heading a Unlimited book and Yana is so popular that only Tom Breevort's weird hatred of her could get in the way. So I'm just sorta lost. Maybe they'll all just stick around and have magic adventures until the House of X stuff.

Either way I'm not keen.

[187days]

Day Sixty-Three

So, if you’ve been reading my last few entries, you’ll know that I’ve been teaching some pretty dark parts of US history in order to explain the origins of the US white supremacist movement. Today I turned my class over to Tom White, a brilliant lecturer from Keene State College and, as long time readers know, my AP Euro teacher in twelfth grade. He explained the connections between the KKK, the anti-immigration movement, and the eugenics movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Then he explained the connections between policies enacted in the US and policies enacted in Nazi Germany. It gave my students a taste of what a college lecture is like, and took them through some really heavy, shocking stuff. The one thing they said over and over afterwards was, “I didn’t know...” 

So now they do know, and they’ll understand how significant the activism and policy changes that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement really were. That’s what I’ll pick up with tomorrow. 

It’s all about connecting historical dots!

I did that in World, too, albeit with a different time period. I’d ended last class on the fact that one of the longterm effects of the Cold War was the proliferation of weapons. I picked up today with two conflicts in which some of those weapons were used: the Ugandan and Somali civil wars. I had students research topics related to those wars (and get a bit of citation practice in the process), and used their research to compile a set of board notes to explain what happened in each. It went really well Block 2, and mostly well Block 3 (more questions, predictions of what I was going to say next, etc... in Block 2), and afterwards we had just enough time to read an article about another civil war: the one in Rwanda. 

Ultimately, I’m going to be teaching about the Rwandan Genocide. It’s easier to do that if students have a little background knowledge about Uganda (because the RPF was trained and armed there), and Somalia (because the deaths of 18 Army Rangers in Mogadishu definitely impacted the American decision not to intervene), so that’s why I tackled those two conflicts, as well. The article we summarized Rwanda’s history from the colonial era through the war, and concluded with a paragraph about the night the genocide started. 

Several of my Block 2 students yelled, “Cliffhanger!” as the bell rang.

They’ve learned how I roll.

[xtruss]

With An Espionage Fever, UK Politicians Are Keen On Defaming China

— Mark Blacklock | April 24, 2024

Illustration: Chen Xia/Global Times

When certain types of events or topics become a regular part of the news cycle, they are almost guaranteed to receive extensive coverage in the British media. These subjects typically include the weather, the Royal Family, cute animals and children, corrupt politicians, and espionage. Britain has a particular fondness for spy stories.

The peak of espionage narratives in the UK, as well as in the wider Western world, was likely during the Cold War era, when hardly a year went by without news of a spy ring being uncovered, or covert operatives being arrested, tried, jailed or expelled from the country. This reality was mirrored in popular culture at the time, with James Bond standing out as perhaps the most well-known fictional British spy in novels, television and film.

Today, the genre appears to be making a comeback as intelligence communities seek out new foes. On Monday, two British men were charged and three German citizens arrested over separate allegations of spying for China. The German cases are at an early stage and involve allegations of sharing confidential technology intelligence with Beijing.

The British cases are at a more advanced stage, as the two accused will appear before a preliminary hearing at a lower court in London on Friday. It sounds - and is - very serious, though few people know how the strict rules controlling the release of information connected to the legal proceedings limit what can be shared. Ironically, it means that for now the secrets of the trial will remain a secret.

Chris Cash, a 29-year-old former parliamentary aide for senior British politician Alicia Kearns and close associate of security minister Tom Tugendhat - both China hawks linked to a China-critical think tank where Cash once worked - is accused under Britain's 113-year-old Official Secrets Act of providing prejudicial information to a foreign state. A colleague, Christopher Berry, 32, faces a similar charge. The allegations are framed in archaic language which claim that they obtained, recorded and published information "for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state" and which could be "directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy." In its announcement of the charges, London's Metropolitan Police force specified that the other country said to be involved was China. That is, they regard China as "an enemy." The Chinese embassy in London said the allegation that China was trying to steal British intelligence was "completely fabricated." "We firmly oppose it and urge the UK side to stop anti-China political manipulation and stop putting on such self-staged political farce," an embassy spokesperson said in a statement.

The air of intrigue and mystery that typically surrounds such stories is unintentionally intensified by the reporting restrictions which apply to court cases in England. Once charges are filed, few details of the allegations are allowed to be made public before trial. Naturally, as a matter of great public interest, there has been some speculation in public forums on social media, but the evidence against the accused will not be revealed until the matter is referred to a higher court for disposal. Even then, because this is classed as a matter of national security, legal rules allow for some evidence to be heard in secret if deemed necessary, never to be reported. So, theoretically at least, what Messrs Cash and Berry are supposed to have done may never be made public.

This situation reflects the current febrile atmosphere pervading Britain, as well as its allies in Europe and America, where anything associated with China is automatically assumed to involve espionage. The list of supposed conduits for this activity contains some ludicrous examples such as Chinese garlic, shipyard cranes, EV vehicles, TikTok, and weather balloons, to name but a few, all of which have come under suspicion. It seems that Western politicians and their lapdogs in the Western media have developed a fetish about Chinese "spying" activities every bit as febrile as existed against Russia during the Cold War.

In real-life cases within the legal system, there is a presumption of innocence, and any prosecuting authority bears the burden of proving its case against individuals accused of espionage. If this rule also applied to politics and the media, there might be less feverish defamation of China.

— The Author is a Journalist and Lecturer in Britain.

[kiss-my-freckle]

1 of 2: Between Sleep and Awake

[maidmerrymint]

SPOILER ALERT

Rewatching the Blacklist because I missed a bunch of episode. Just started season 2 and I've just got to say I don't really like Tom Keen. His whole relationship with Elizabeth in season 1 makes me feel really yucky.

And from the episodes I did see I know Liz and Tom get back together and have Agnes. But I just don't like Tom. I just can't get over how he was the first couple seasons.

I think Elizabeth and Ressler would have made such a better couple. Ressler and Liz have such a good working relationship that if Tom was out of the picture I think that they would have gotten together and Agnes would have been their child.

[alyblacklist]

Dear Aly, first of all I just wanted to say that I love your blog to pieces and it’s wonderful to see how much effort you put into your blog. I absolutely love seeing you opinions and views on the show! I was just wondering what is you opinion on Agent Park? Personally, I really dislike her character due to the fact that even though Liz has made some bad choices, she always talks about all the bad mistakes that she has made despite her own bad choices. Also I was curious as to what your opinion was towards Tom’s redemption as a character or do you believe that he would have been better having left the show earlier on?

Hi there! Thanks so much!

I've never been a fan of Agent Park. As I said in a prior post, I feel like they jammed a whole lot of boring backstory in right up front to make us think she was great, but aside from her rage issues, the character has little depth. I would rather have seen a seasoned agent like Meera or Gale take on the part (or an outsider like Frankie as they originally intended) with a more interesting backstory. Ressler obviously needed a new partner besides Aram because they knew where they were sending Liz, but I feel like Park's character still didn't get fleshed out well this season. She's basically the outsider who is supposed to question why everyone else is letting Liz get away with things, but I feel like she hasn't gotten enough substantive scenes for that to really work well. She's just kind of there most of the time (other than in that fight with Liz, which she totally should have won).

As for Tom, well, I found his character interesting enough in S1 but I think his story should have ended there or, at the latest, with him sailing off on his boat at the end of S2. I totally agreed with Megan when she told The Hollywood Reporter in the middle of S2:

“I’m adamantly against Tom and Liz being together,” Boone said. “I just think it would be really bad for all of womankind.”

A season later, and the decisions to write in Megan's pregnancy and to green light a spinoff resulted in what became his supposed redemption arc. It never worked for me. I never bought it, and I think it only ruined Liz's character to have her literally crawl back to him on bended knee. I had hoped that maybe the spinoff would sell the whole "redemption" arc better (especially when they titled it as such) but instead they portrayed Tom as the already-redeemed hero of the story off saving the day while still trying to maintain ties to his wife and child at home while dealing with a ridiculous "family" plot with his parents. I think it would have been more interesting if they had written a story surrounding his work for the Major and spun him off with Gina after S1 or S2 to go do heists and other undercover operations. Either way, I'm glad they finally made the decision to end his character's story after the spinoff failed. I still wish Liz had been the one to choose to send him on his way instead of him playing the martyr, however.

[teddytonks]

I’ve been rewatching the blacklist from the beginning and I forgot how much I HATE tom keen. the way he completely gaslights liz throughout the first season,,,everything the writers did by having liz save him and then let him go and then have him come back and then have them get together again and have kid....fucking bullshit and a waste of storylines. truly can’t believe I had to put up with tom for 5 fucking seasons my god

[arkadianbellamy]

There was way too much tom content in the latest episode I did not want to see any of that

[destinyc1020]

What does them still dating after AA have to do with them still being pr? Your logic is strange. As long as it’s caught on camera it’s real to you. When if you think about it if it’s real it doesn’t need to be shown off. Once again you need to look at all the pics that come out of Cabo for multiple celebs and use your brain. I wasn’t heavy on them being pr before because honestly who fucking cares lol but the Cabo stunt sealed it and the whole pint of DM having a constant play by play of their relationship like please.

Huh? 🥴

I brought up the AAs because there are some "PR Truther" fans out there who swear they are just PR and will break up immediately after the Oscars.

It's JUST like how Tomdaya antis swore up and down that Tom and Zendaya were only dating for NWH press 🙄 Yet.... here we are, they're still going strong long after NWH, and long after they have anything to promote lol 😆 😂

MY point with Austin and Kaia was that I think some fans are gonna be in for a huge rude awakening if they are still dating each other after the AAs.

🤷🏾‍♀️

Re: Cabo....

Don't Kaia's parents own a place in Cabo? They go there like every single year IIRC. She even took JE there. It's nothing new. Just because you choose to vacation there it doesn't mean your rlshp is fake.

Are they using a REAL rlshp for PR? Idk?🤷🏾‍♀️ Maybe? Austin doesn't seem too keen on that though. I don't even think he liked Vanessa posting about them 24/7 lol, but I can't swear to that. If you look at his social media habits, he's ALWAYS been VERY private. Even when he was dating Vanessa.

And how exactly are they photographed everywhere? 🥴 This is a couple who barely were seen together for like 4 months.... and didn't even attend events together recently, to the point where some fans (INCLUDING myself) had suspected that maybe they had broken up! How is that a PR rlshp? 🥴

You're usually trying to FLAUNT a PR rlshp. Kaia hasn't even posted Austin to her social media at all.... even though there wouldn't be anything wrong with that (he's her bf). She even posted JE to her IG way more. Austin hasn't posted anything about her. They're not rubbing their rlshp in ppls faces. They're just minding their own business.

Like I've said before, I have no dog in this fight.... 🤷🏾‍♀️ But based on what I've personally observed, they don't seem to be PR to me. I hate when fans think every rlshp that they don't like in Hollywood is "PR". 🙄 It doesn't make sense to me in some cases.

But of course, you're free to believe whatever you want!

[fancycaroline]

Red Dirt

119 The Pavlovich Brothers

Liz: ...we had sex the other night. Do you have any idea how filthy that makes me feel?

Red: Unfortunately, Lizzie, you’re chest deep in filth...

210 The Decembrist

Red: It wasn’t worth it. Not if the cost was you in this...filth.

It was the shoes...

119 The Pavlovich Brothers

Liz: Say something to your wife who’s dying in front of you.

Tom: ...i remember standing in the closet half dressed reaching for my shoes when i saw that you’d drawn this little heart in the dust on my shoe.