Joseph Goebbels didn’t die. He just got a job at Hallmark. https://t.co/oKKOyYxXa6— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 26, 2019
ADDED: The linked article at Salon is "Hallmark movies are fascist propaganda/Forget 'Triumph of the Will' — the most insidious authoritarian propaganda comes in the form of schmaltz" by Amanda Marcotte. Isn't this like what Jonah Goldberg did — from the right — in his book "Liberal Fascism"? Goldberg wrote:
For generations our primary vision of a dystopian future has been that of Orwell’s 1984. This was a fundamentally “masculine” nightmare of fascist brutality. But with the demise of the Soviet Union and the vanishing memory of the great twentieth-century fascist and communist dictatorships, the nightmare vision of 1984 is slowly fading away. In its place, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is emerging as the more prophetic book. As we unravel the human genome and master the ability to make people happy with televised entertainment and psychoactive drugs, politics is increasingly a vehicle for delivering prepackaged joy. America’s political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered....Make people happy with televised entertainment... sounds like the Hallmark channel. So let's read the Amanda Marcotte thing, published jollily on Christmas at Salon:
The history of totalitarianism is the history of the quest to transcend the human condition and create a society where our deepest meaning and destiny are realized simply by virtue of the fact that we live in it. It cannot be done, and even if, as often in the case of liberal fascism, the effort is very careful to be humane and decent, it will still result in a kind of benign tyranny where some people get to impose their ideas of goodness and happiness on those who may not share them...
When most of us think about fascistically propagandistic movies, we think of the grotesque grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl's films celebrating the Third Reich... even in Nazi Germany, the majority of movies approved by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were escapist and feather-light, with a Hallmark movie-style emphasis on the importance of "normality."Both Marcotte and Goldberg are afraid of oppressive government and think cheap televised entertainment is softening the people up to accept it.
There's plenty of reason that empty-headed kitsch fits neatly in the authoritarian worldview. It's storytelling that imitates the gestures of emotion without actually engaging with real feeling... Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world, which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive white nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.
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151 comments:
Hallmark is Tyler Perry movies for white people.
I see what I did there.
I am Laslo.
Democrats here in Virginia want to ban guns and single family homes. But banning Hallmark movies?!? They must seriously want civil war.
You know, that Michelle Goldberg is nuts. Isn't she some ironic humor creation like Titania McGrath? Oh wait...you mean JONAH Goldberg?
Same thing.
I put them on this year because no politics.
The Urban Elite Class seems to be really P.O.’d that they’re either not popular or being recognized as the masses’ superiors; the rest of us aren’t bending our knees in supplication.
Marcotte and Goldberg want an oppressive government with themselves as powers behind the throne.
... fascistically propagandistic ...
Oy vey!!
How come Howard, Inga, Chuck, readering, etc. haven't shown up yet? Do you think they are on the clock at Soros, Inc.? They haven't punched in yet?
When they start yammering about pay for clean-up time, you'll know that unionization efforts are underway at the House of Soros.
Seeing Red said it all:
"The Urban Elite Class seems to be really P.O.’d that they’re either not popular or being recognized as the masses’ superiors; the rest of us aren’t bending our knees in supplication."
It's too bad you know. They should realize that being a deplorable is so much fun. Humor, friendship, families, liberty. It's all a blast.
Being a dour scold means never getting to say "I'm Happy!"
Sad.
Both Marcotte and Goldberg are afraid of oppressive government and think cheap televised entertainment is softening the people up to accept it.
Actually, they see these movies as providing a counter narrative to the ones from Hollywood where the good and smart people reject small-town life to leave their families and live in the big city.
In doing so, they sleep with powerful people they just met, suffer pregnancy scares and abortions, learn to master sexual harassment as a career tool, and ultimately find a new "family" of like-minded people while climbing the corporate ladder to jobs where they take charge and "make a difference".
Winston Churchill : [to Lt. Hicox] You say [Hallmark] wants to take on the Jews, at their own game? Well, compared to, say, Louis B. Mayer... how are they doing?
Lt. Archie Hicox : Quite well, actually. Since Goebbels has taken over, film attendance has steadily risen [on cable] over the last eight years. But, Louis B. Mayer wouldn't be Goebbels proper opposite number. I believe Goebbels sees himself as closer to David O. Selznick.
[long pause, Churchill takes deep draw on his cigar then exhales slowly]
Winston Churchill : [satisfied, to General Fenech] Brief him.
Hallmark is the 21st century Hee-Haw.
I was just talking to a few people about the Hallmark Channel the other day after visiting my 90 year old mom who sits and watches that all day long. They told me they know people who also sit and watch it whenever they can- and not just old people. The answer to those calling themselves progressive people are that many, many, many, many, many, many, many people are sick and tired of their view of the world. They are tired of the misuse of the words Hitler, fascist, racist, homophobe, xenophobe, sexist, Islamophobe, etc. They are tired of being told they must obey the rapidly changing regressive thinking coming out of our 18 year old college students who know literally nothing. They are tired of miserable, bitter, hateful liberals deciding what can and cannot be watched, said, spoken, or observed.
They are done. And Hallmark, in a genius move, said- "Fuck it. We're going to put on fantasy programming that is so simple, comforting, and benign, people will simply enjoy the stories." It is programming that does not attack, belittle, or point fingers at anyone. It is anti-prog programming.
Attack it if you will. It is a glimpse of the future starting to punch back at you and the miserable world you live in and want to make the rest of us live in.
As I've often said: Democrats/Liberals/So-called Progressive people, are the least progressive, and most miserable people on earth. The push-back continues...
Yeah, I’m not happy unless I save the Planet from global warming by forcing everyone to buy electric cars.
****
Seriously, as a former liberal I’m much happier. Liberals are so unhappy; worrying about stuff they can’t control.
Serious question: how popular is the Hallmark Channel?
How many people watch it compared to cnn, tmc or the golf chsnnel?
Do a lot of people watch it? My impression has always been that it is a niche channel with relatively few viewers.
If few people watch, does it matter if it is propaganda? It will not be very effective.
John Henry
The coastal liberal elites just can’t get over the fact that all sorts of people disagree with them. That’s why they constantly call us names.
My liberal brother lectured me on Facebook about how he is so healthy now that he’s a vegan. When he first moved to San Francisco, he claimed to have developed a corn allergy despite having grown up in the Cornhusker State.
I told him to eat what he wants but I like beef.
Marcotte is one of the craziest loons out there.
Her shtick is fantasizing that the hicks care that she's spent her adult life fucking around like a whore. She's a Joan of Arc of the perverts.
I'm grew up in redneck, small town Illinois.
The residents of that town don't care who, where or what Marcotte fucks. They aren't even aware of her existence.
The left is full up with these martyrs who like to imagine themselves in a great battle with a nation of bigots determined to stop them from fucking like pigs in the mud.
Ground control to Major Marcotte: Nobody cares! Whore away to your heart's content!
"Both Marcotte and Goldberg are afraid of oppressive government"
Yep, along with the framers of the 1777 Articles of Confederation and the 1787 Constitution and me.
Those white people sure are bad.
“ ‘ “even in Nazi Germany, the majority of movies approved by the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, were escapist and feather-light, with a Hallmark movie-style emphasis on the importance of “normality.” ’ ”
Ms. Marcotte is missing the point.
There is no US Secretary of Propaganda telling the Hallmark channel what movies it’s allowed to make.
Hallmark? I just re-watched the mid 1960's Grenada BBC series on tbe Spanish Civil War. Now THAT will put the fear of God in you - right and left.
I think Goldberg's book is more about how kooks like Marcotte, if given the chance, would ban Hallmark and other TV networks they don't like, but do so for allegedly good reasons like stopping white nationalism dead in its tracks - who could be against that.
Television commercials are even worse. The very Platonic Ideal of "gaslighting", designed to make us believe in an alternate, Leftist, and false, reality. Just look at the marriage/relationships. Grossly over-represented as inter-racial, when in fact in the real world those are statistical rounding errors. And the wealth and success exhibited by imaginary family units! Not in this reality. Shameless and despicable gaslighting.
I can't wait until that nice Lori Loughlin comes back to Hallmark.
Maybe they can do some upbeat fantasy shows about prison romances, something like "Christmas in the Big House".
"Now more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered." Goldberg (Jonah not Michelle)
Oh and I do, I so want happiness delivered. I have Amazon* Prime, but they don't deliver sunrises
.
Sunrises don't get much later than this, drop your cocks and grab your socks, it's daylight in the swamp.
*althouse portal
I think it interesting that they don’t see that 1984 is still very relevant and, indeed, seems to be being used by a “how to” manual on the left. Throw in Animal Farm and Brave New World, and you can see why the rest of the country so distrusts the left.
Part of why the left here hates on Hallmark is that so often in their movies, some big city girl is forced to go to some small town. Tries to hate it. Meets some guy there who is everything her BF back in the big city isn’t. And ends up staying in the small town in flyover country. Unless the guy is a foreign prince. In any case, pretty much always, in Hallmark movies, the girl always gets her guy, even though for most of the movie she doesn’t think that she wants him. But his kindness, small town virtues, and overall hotness invariably wins her over. And they live happily ever after.
Hallmark has gone interracial, but when they cross the color line, the actors with black blood most often have more white blood than black - which, to me is silly, that people with less than half African ancestry are considered Black. In any case, I think that they were toying with homosexual and maybe even transvestite couples this last month. That isn’t going to work. Most of their audience isn’t the least bit interested in pretending to believe that homosexual relations are the same as heterosexual relationships. And almost none believe that relationships with transvestites can even approach normality.
It has been a long time since Marcotte turned up in the news. She hasn't lost her touch.
All my life reality has done nothing but give me a hard time. I welcome fantasy, but Hallmark is not my brand. I don't fantasize about the healing power of Christmas cheer. I don't think I've ever watched a Hallmark or Lifetime movie. My fantasy life runs more toward superpowers and naked women.....I was a big fan of GOT until it ran off the rails in its last season. Marvel Movies are pretty good. They don't have any naked women, but the girls wear latex and gravity has no dominion in the Marvel universe....The new series Witcher is well worth the trouble of watching. It doesn't have the subtlety and sophistication of GOT, but the sword fights are better. The arterial blood spurts are especially well done and realistic. There are some naked women but none with the impact of Emilia Clarke. Still, in this era of "metoo", we have to take boobs where we find them......I don't think watching GOT or Witcher made me a better person, but it helped to pass the time which is the ultimate aim of entertainment. An escape from gravity, boredom, and death. The impeachment hearings, by contrast, are a full immersion in gravity, boredom and the inescapability of death.
These people are filled with hatred that poisons everything in their lives and makes them despise anything that is not debased, degraded and hideous. I'm not a fan of these movies but Amanda Marcotte and her ilk want to destroy anything that lifts the spirit and opens your soul to the experience of beauty and love. I feel like her appearance hides her true Visage which is a foul troll that lives in it's own filth under a rock.
They fail to see the similarity between what they say Hallmark Channel is and what their article about Hallmark Channel is.
To quote the bumper sticker “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention”
I’m not paying attention
Last I heard Hallmark isn't owned by the government. Goldberg's version has us stopping the government controlling what is delivered to us. Marcotte's version has the government controlling what private enterprise delivers to us. Very different.
You know a leftist by the fact that they just have to be ugly when they see you having fun. Christmas is one of their worst times - so many children and parents reconciling, so many questioning what they've been doing all year and whether they really liked sitting silently by while that conservative student was trashed, while that Trump-supporting worker lost their job, while that older Christian was demeaned. And parties - so many parties to condemn. And movies - Scrooge, John McClane, embedding in young minds like a splinter working its way in. And this year - just when it's necessary to gin up hate for the endless impeachment, here comes Christmas - singing and laughing. Gah!! And the two Reports - Mueller and the IG - which have fallen like heavy stones into people's minds and are stirring up huge turbid flows which must be countered with ... something. But then, there it is again, just when we need to keep the hatred going, Christmas, interfering. Well, when we get their attention again, we'll get even, we'll, well, we'll, anyhow, something, something as ugly as the star and the child is beautiful. Angels and shepherds and kings? Herod had the right idea. We'll show 'em reporters and Federal agents and we'll seek out the child and destroy him and as many innocents like him as we can get at the same time.
"...the nightmare vision of 1984 is slowly fading away. In its place, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is emerging as the more prophetic book."
That's a silly statement in light of the well documented history of socialism. Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba and Pol Pot's Cambodia were the embodiment of 1984. If you listen to the Democrat debates you hear about how the candidates will enforce changes for the greater good.
The last piece I read by Marcotte had her very upset over men oppressing women by not spending enough on their own clothes. Bush being president was somehow responsible. That dates it as well over ten years ago. She hasn't changed at all.
The important fact about Goering and you and me is that we are human. Hannah Arendt's essay of 1945, "Collective Guilt and Universal Responsibility," notes that understanding the horror of the Reich is "not aided by speculations about German history and the so-called German national character. [The murder machine] relies entirely on the normality of jobholders and family-men." This normality consisted in decencies - care for the security of one's family, compassion for animals. Thus, for all that I am in the middle of a book in which there are from my point of view villains, I keep returning to the discovery that if I want to understand human villainy, one place to look - not the only place, but one place - is myself, and not to look there for my hatreds, but rather for my loves and loyalties...Virtue cannot be innocent.
- Vicki Hearne _Bandit_ p.106
Levinas:
It is impossible to be stinting in our admiration for the intellectual vigor of "Sein und Zeit," particularly in light of the immense output this extraordinary book of 1927 inspired. Its supreme steadfastness will mark it forever. Can we be assured, however, that there was never any echo of Evil in it? The diabolical is not limited to the wickedness popular wisdom ascribes to it and whose malice, based on guile, is familiar and predictable in an adult culture. The diabolical is endowed with intelligence and enters where it will. To reject it, it is first necessary to refute it. Intellectual effort is needed to recognize it. Who can boast of having done so? Say what you will, the diabolical gives food for thought.
Ah arendt always excusing, eichmann had a methodical plan to annihilate the jews,
Pssssssst--Nazis were Socialists. Just not the kind the USSR approved of--the kind where the USSR was always on top of the chain letter list.
“I don't think I've ever watched a Hallmark or Lifetime movie.”
Lifetime movies are sometimes similar to Hallmark movies, but Hallmark movies tend to be more saccharin. But Lifetime, on weekends tends to run what we call their “cra cra” movies. They may have a romantic component, but almost inevitably revolve around a crazy serial killer, who almost always kills 3 inconvenient people during the movie, ending after a violent confrontation where the serial killer is either killed, or knocked out and arrested, after a violent struggle. Sometimes the serial killer is male, and sometimes female, but always, as with Hallmark, the movies are female oriented. One of my partner’s favorites is a series starring Julia Roberts’ brother as a murderous doctor. One interesting aspect is that they often seem to star CBS soap opera actors. I almost never recognize them, because almost invariably they have changed their hair color, often to something closer to their natural hair color, than the blond they wear on the soap operas.
Ion has schmaltzier less murdery holiday block
Arendt learned to relativize from heidelberg as did marcuse. Who made it into the councils of the oss.
Lifetime is like face hugger eggs on the psyche.
I'd like to see a Lifetime movie about the romance between Hannah Arendt and that Nazi stud muffin, Martin Heidegger. Here's the pitch: over Christmas, Martin, softened and inspired by his love for Hannah, sees how badly the Nazis are treating Jewish orphans. With her help,he conspires to smuggle them through Tyrolean villages until they reach safety in Austria. Final scene, they all sing xmas carols while lighting the menorah lamp.
Blogger gspencer said...
Yep, along with the framers of the 1777 Articles of Confederation and the 1787 Constitution and me.
Any particular reason for using "framers" GS?
It is not a wrong usage, just don't hear it much. Until the last couple weeks. Then we heard it all the time.
John C (where the C stands for Constitution) Dvorak, on last Thursday's No Agenda Show www.noagendashow.com pointed this out.
He posited that it is a subconscious recognition that what the politicians were doing was "framing" president Trump. He didn't use the term but I think it is called a "Kinsley gaffe"
I doubt it is what you are doing here. I suspect that you, like so many of us, are merely using a term that has recently come to the public fore.
"Framers" is certainly a good term. Just not often used.
John Henry
grotesque grandeur of Leni Riefenstahl's films
See how much grotesque grandeur you can put up with before you get bored:
Leni Riefenstahl: Olympia - Festival of Nations
For me it was about 2 seconds because it starts out black, then I wanted to skip ahead after about 10 or 15 seconds of scantily clad guys, who look too flabby to be athletes, slowly turning and squirming.
Yes i might have brought that angle, but i chose to omit it, tyrol was the exit point into italy for the ratlines like mengele and eichmann
Re "Triumph of the Will" I wonder how many here have seen it? I wonder if Marcotte and Goldberg have seen it?
I wonder how many even know what the movie is about?
I have seen it and I think everyone should.
I think this is the full version. 1:44 minutes with English subtitles.
John Henry
It's hard for me to tell whether it's fair to equate Jonah Goldberg on entertainment to what Marcotte says. Maybe, but perhaps he means something broader by "entertainment" than she does. I find this by her something I would hope Goldberg would laugh at, but who knows?
"There's plenty of reason that empty-headed kitsch fits neatly in the authoritarian worldview. It's storytelling that imitates the gestures of emotion without actually engaging with real feeling."
I think of those amusing YouTubes combining all the CNN and other news people saying over and over with that same horrified or furrow-browed stare that "the walls are closing in," or "it's a bombshell." If those are not "gestures of emotion without engaging with real feeling," I guess I don't know what would be.
Blogger Heartless Aztec said...
Hallmark? I just re-watched the mid 1960's Grenada BBC series on tbe Spanish Civil War. Now THAT will put the fear of God in you - right and left.
Downloaded that from YouTube last year and still have it on my hard drive unwatched. I keep wanting to but, knowing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War from books, have not felt in a sufficiently black mood to actually do so.
I understand it is really good.
John Henry
@William 7:50
The banality of evil indeed:)
Too bad for Jonah Goldberg that Trump cane along. All his nice sentences and ideas, lined up like toy trucks in front of an order-obsessed little boy, got kicked out of place. And what was formerly insightful to me now reads as a child’s journal.
Nobody talks about the farmers of the constitution. America was highly agricultural.
Forgot the link to Triumph of the Will
https://youtu.be/4NGjuNNcvPE
John Henry
“Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world, which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive white nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.”
Far too much dishonest mind-reading going on there.
1984 is fading, she says? Alexa, order 1984... also refill my Cymbalta prescription.
The framers today would be building houses.
The trouble with Hallmark movies is the same as the trouble with romcoms - you soon get the formula and start framing what you're watching like a screenwriter. You don't see a plot turn but rather a bad choice for a plot turn. Metamovies.
Hallmark just has a simpler formula than romcoms.
In a Day (2006) does a twist which makes it good; and Stranger than Fiction (2006) makes the romcom a subplot of something more entertaining. 2006 apparently a good year.
Speaking of National Socialists and feel good movies, I wonder if Pied Piper would qualify as a Hallmark style movie?
Based on Nevil Shute's 1942 novel, starring Roddy McDowell, Monty Wooley and Ann Baxter.
It also has Otto Preminger playing a particularly evil National Socialist colonel.
A key plot point is that he has cousins in Milwaukee and wants Monty Wooley to smuggle his kids out to live with the cousin.
It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Monty Woolley), Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Picture.
It's a pretty good book, too. All of Shute's books are pretty good. And still in print available via the portal.
John Henry
DavidD said...
Ms. Marcotte is missing the point.
There is no US Secretary of Propaganda telling the Hallmark channel what movies it’s allowed to make.
Mumble mumble Obama something mumble Netflix
There seem be readily discernible difference between the obvious consequences of liberal fascism and of Hallmark shmaltz. Of course, such distinctions are of no consequence to the fabulist extrapolators of the left as they pursue their totalitarian ends.
Both Marcotte and Goldberg are afraid of oppressive government and think cheap televised entertainment is softening the people up to accept it.
Iirc Goldberg is a huge fan of cheesy popular entertainment. And Marcotte's writing serves the same function as Hallmark programs, for a different (equally dumbed-down and schmaltz-addicted, but with delusions of intellectuality) audience.
Not to go all Chuck on you, Prof (as in, "Why don't you post about writers or topics *I* find interesting!"), but I remain mystified as to why you give writers like Marcotte the time of day. She's a dullard hired to assemble pre-fab prog-chow components for sale to an ignorant and incurious audience.
Nichevo,
I wonder what Netflix exec Obama thinks of Peaky Blinders?
Watching the 5th season now on my daughters NF account.
Definitely not a Hallmark or Lifetime movie.
Excellent series though.
John Henry
Hallmark channel has consistently been in the top 10 basic cable channels by viewership the last 3-4 years. It usually is in the top 5 from October-February.
"Framers" is certainly a good term
Can't have "Founding Fathers," or firemen.
In defense of Amanda, the traditional family is an inherently conservative institution. Therefore, any popular entertainment portraying the traditional family in a positive light can be said to be conservative programming.
Of course, some of us consider that to be a good thing!
The Threat is communism and always has been. Fascism is a distraction. It died in 1945. "Liberal Fascism" was a clever attack by Goldberg on the Liberal nationalists of the the early 20th Century. Wilson, Sanger, TR, etc. He didn't like their support for immigration restriction, America First, and pacifism. They were bad from Goldberg's Neo-Con Globalist perspective.
Slate should just be honest, and pin a sign on their website: "We're the website for people who hate average Americans". If Joe Six-pack likes it, they hate it. No matter what.
Goebbels was former Communist, who found National Socialism more to his liking then International socialism. He was definitely one of the smarter Nazis and its lucky that Hitler didn't give him more power. Who was Stalin's "Goebbels"? We don't know, because no one cares. Its like the "Gestapo" the evil secret police that everyone uses and knows about, even thuogh the Gestapo was modeled on the NKVD, aka Chekka, aka KGB, that had been in place for almost 18 years when Himmler came by. The Concentration camps were modeled on the Gulag. But no one cared about the Gulag, and so Dachau is represented as the ultimate horror, even though the Gulag had been killing people for 18 years.
Everyone loves a happy ending!
...unless you've been trained to think some unknown person(s) must have been oppressed along the way to achieve it.
'I'm not happy therefor I am oppressed, and demand authorities use their power to crush this oppression by the Authoritarians.'
-every lib
I find Hallmark movies to be totally unwatchable : dull and lifeless, with 3rd rate acting and dialogue that is banal in the extreme. They are relentlessly secular, such that they hardly make decent right wing propaganda. Hallmark's sole intent is to make a quick buck at Christmas, unlike the deeply malign designs behind Riefenstahl's work.
CNN and MSNBC have continuously running "2 minute hate" segments where Emmanuel Goldstein has been replaced by Donald Trump.
My daughters were raised in an urban/suburban environment but their favorite television show was Little House on the Prairie.
Sometimes a movie is just a movie.
Oh, finally saw Joker last night. That was a surprise. I highly recommend it to Althouse.
Agree with rcocean for the Slate website creed.
>> deeply malign designs behind Riefenstahl's work. <<
Riefenstahl wasn't malign by design, she was progressive and idealistic, an artist. Even the Soviets ripped off "Triumph of the Will" in some propaganda clips starring Stalin in place of Hitler.
Most of their audience isn’t the least bit interested in pretending to believe that homosexual relations are the same as heterosexual relationships.
I've read that about 60% of the market for gay romance novels consists of straight women. So, there is that.
I prefer Tubby Riefenstahl's films.
"I think this is the full version. 1:44 minutes with English subtitles."
Get the Criterion Collection edition with commentary.
And watch the great documentary "The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl."
People need to know about the great female artists and their unreliable and sometimes monumentally dangerous politics.
“Both Marcotte and Goldberg are afraid of oppressive government and think cheap televised entertainment is softening the people up to accept it.”
Eh, I guess... kind of a stretch because to reach that point of agreement you have to abstract away so many specific details that actually make their two viewpoints very divergent from each other... seems to me it renders the conclusion rather useless.
Also, Marcotte is guilty of the aforementioned dishonest mind-reading while Goldberg’s larger point about liberal fascists is literally on the news every day now.
I started to write a post defending Jonah Goldberg from what seems like a misreading of his thesis here, but I thought to myself "would Jonah Goldberg defend me from such a misreading?" The answer, today, is probably no.
So, screw it. I spent a long time supporting and defending National Review types, and taking grief for it, only to have them now decide I'm exactly the kind of racist/sexist/homophobic/xenophobic deplorable the Left always said we all were. Oh and suddenly deciding that "tribalism" is bad despite having benefited from it their entire lives.
So yeah; Jonah Goldberg's argument seems like basically a mirror image of Amanda Marcotte's and should be given no more consideration.
"Oh, finally saw Joker last night. That was a surprise. I highly recommend it to Althouse."
I've been told that you have to sit there and watch a man committing murders. I don't do that.
People need to know about the great female artists and their unreliable and sometimes monumentally dangerous politics.
Could it be? Is Althouse coming around?
Repeal the 19th!
What group of people, circa now, say the kinds of things that would inspire mass hatred of Jews?
I've been told that you have to sit there and watch a man committing murders. I don't do that.
You've never seen Hamlet? Julius Caesar? Psycho?
Laslo Spatula said...
Hallmark is Tyler Perry movies for white people.
Years ago MadTV featured the white Madea in That's My White Mama
But I'm not Laslo.
In terms of unreality/fantasy, which is closer to the truth:
1.)the Hallmark world of small towns, intact families, old fashioned ideas of true love, etc
2.)the dominant Media world where a quarter to a third of the population is homosexual, another ten to twenty percent is transsexual, corporations exist only to do evil and create pollution, white people structure their lives so as to do the most possible harm to non-white people and think of little else, few people want to get and to stay married (much less have and raise children), etc?
They're both not accurate representations of the real world, certainly. You'll find 1.) on the Hallmark channel and you'll find 2.) on, you know, every other channel and movie screen.
But yeah, 1.) is a big problem and "something ought to be done!"
Riefenstahl wasn't malign by design, she was progressive and idealistic, an artist. Even the Soviets ripped off "Triumph of the Will" in some propaganda clips starring Stalin in place of Hitler.
This is an interesting comment. Is the fact that the Soviets used her techniques supposed to make her seem less malign? It has the opposite effect on me.
Without Hallmark Alicia Witt would be out of work, and then where would we all be?
Marcotte is playing the old Adorno gambit: mindless popular culture softens people up for fascism, maybe it is fascism (Clement Greenberg came up the same idea on this side of the Atlantic, perhaps independently). But most people know that Hallmark movies are fantasies. They don't think it's a representation of how the world is or could be or even how it should be.
Hallmark movies are admittedly more conservative culturally than the rest of the entertainment media, but I wouldn't assume that their viewers overwhelmingly vote Republican. Most of them after all are women and women vote Democrat more than men do. There is still a lot of heartland resentment of Wall Street that hasn't been co-opted by Republicans. Sanders and Warren wouldn't necessarily be displeased by a scenario where an arrogant Wall Street fiance is sent packing. This is a point where economic leftism and lifestyle leftism part ways.
There's always talk about the right-wing and left-wing components in fascism and about the relevance of the right-left spectrum to understanding extremist movements. Jonah Goldberg wants to simplify and weaponize the discussion. If you were upset about Goldwater being psychoanalyzed from afar and called a fascist why would you want to use the same shoddy tactics against your own opponents?
Surely heterosexual marriage is fascist. By it's nature, it is the most basic form of oppression due to the physical and economic inequality involved in the male-female relationship. It should be banned. /s
And the contention that we are living more in Brave New World than in Nineteen eighty-four discounts the most deliberately invasive and propagandist period in our history.
a real non-facist life would be one where our leftwing fascist betters purge all the filthy halmark channels from our lives and fill it all with Colbert and CNN.
I'm with rightguy. Hallmark bores the hell outta me. The husband used to binge on it, and he's the lefty! It seems like everytime I look up, the love interests are flirting in a Christmas tree lot.
I feel like a freak for wanting to watch the Irishman or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Yet then I realize how dark those entertainments are, too. That's my problem.
I've been told that you have to sit there and watch a man committing murders. I don't do that.
I guess you'll never be a great female artist.
"I've read that about 60% of the market for gay romance novels consists of straight women. So, there is that."
No freaking way. As a child of the 70s and a teenager of the 80's I grew up hearing that women were bisexual by nature which was very confusing to me and all the other girls. When I was relatively young I realized that only men figured in my fantasies and I was not bisexual at all. I have also helped other confused young women by asking them what they fantasize about. The clouds dissipate immediately and they know what they are. These narratives are very confusing to people but you can sweep them away
Goebbels' propaganda was mostly to motivate Germans to invade Poland, so to speak.
Hitler was big on the German family... as long as they were Aryan enough. That was part of it.
So, Hitler supported families in some sense, therefore anyone who supports families is Hitler?
Just because you don't like it, doesn't make it Hitler. He was also a vegetarian who like dogs and Wagnerian opera (the last, for his own reasons, not all artistic).
Where and when does this ahistorical idiocy ever end? If you want to criticize programs on the Hallmark Channel, be up front and say what are your problems and why. Don't hide behind "HITLER!!!"
Marcotte is not at all afraid of oppressive government, she's a huge fan of it. She just wants her particular brand of oppression. She'll caterwaul occassionally about something stupid like how requiring abortion providers to have medical licenses is the same as sending women to concentration camps, but she wants your behavior regulated according to her preferences.
Late night chat hosts have been blasting Hallmark all Xmas season. It's a target as big and soft as a diabetic in a Hoveround at Lane Bryant. Marcotte calling H-Mark fascistic is the Left's way of punishing white women for letting their husbands vote for Trump.
>> supposed to make her seem less malign <<
The key phrase is "by design". I talked to old Nazis in Germany in the 60's. They weren't malign "by design", they joined up as young idealists. The Nazi program might have been malign, but what motivated young people, artists, and philosophers wasn't "evil", they thought they were doing good.
More evidence that modern day liberalism is a mental illness. What a bunch of nasty, miserable people.
I used to listen to a podcast of people watching other people watch Hallmark movies. Turns out it was just a psychological experiment to determine how passive and schmaltzy people can be under the right conditions. Listeners were the subjects and it was published and the media ran with it, but even that turned out to be bad statistics and junk science.
Turns out you can’t solve for schmaltz, even with the tchotchke-index.
Real-time comments, though.
It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel.
"Yup," she said.
"What about?" he said.
"I forget," she said. "Something real sad on television."
"What was it?" he said.
"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.
"Forget sad things," said George.
"I always do," said Hazel.
"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head.
"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel.
"You can say that again," said George.
"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."
Something that bothered me about Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron was that Diana Moon Glompers wasn't bound by the legal handicapping she imposed on everyone else. Something that bothers me about the current Democrat Party is that Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, Schumer, Biden, Obama, Clinton and all the rest aren't bound by the legal constraints they impose on everyone else.
Odd, that.
chuck: Yeah, of course everyone thinks they're doing the right thing. That's true, but also boring and relativistic. Like, who's to say what's right and what's wrong, maaaan.
OBL thought he was doing the right thing - and a lot of people in the Muslim world agreed with what he was doing - but so what?
I think that a number of years ago, Ann got into a dust-up with Marcotte over a photo where, given her pose, Marcotte appeared to be trying to send a message to some politician that she would really like to get to know him better.
"Luke, I am your father/mother/whatever". Embrace the blackface. h/t Northam et al
The empire strikes back.
Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. Imputed perceptions notwithstanding, principles matter.
That said, watch a Hallmark movie once a week, a month, and nothing else, then live, work, play, share, think, and rest.
If the old Nazis in the 1960s had read Mein Kampf and subscribed to it, I would hardly call them "idealists." They sound as brain-dead as modern day liberals taking their marching orders from the New York Times or Washington Post
So if Hallmark are like the Nazis, then the Nazis aren't really as bad as we had thought?
Huh.
Okay then: Nazis are just folks who made a bad decision or two, but we need to understand they felt they were being persecuted because of their gender and sexual orientation and hence we need to feel more compassion for them than for their "victims."
Look what the 1930s Marcottes made the Nazis do is the theme.
(Sorry for the previous extra apostrophes, grammar Nazis.)
I think that a number of years ago, Ann got into a dust-up with Marcotte over a photo where, given her pose, Marcotte appeared to be trying to send a message to some politician that she would really like to get to know him better.
"Let's take a closer look at those breasts." Was that Marcotte or Jessica Valenti? Marcotte worked for John Edwards briefly.
I haven’t watched the Hallmark channel. I don’t have anything against it but for the last twenty years if it didn’t involve sports, explosions, or gangsters it wasn’t on tv. I don’t sit and watch tv, I listen to it while I do other things. So I let my boys choose.
Since Thanksgiving I have come across people (ok, they are women - they were all women) that were nearly giddy about the Hallmark Christmas specials. The ages of these women spanned 20 to 50. That’s pretty good coverage of the key age demographics for a tv.
I grew up hearing that women were bisexual by nature
You're always sizing each other's appearance up--much more thoroughly than guys do.
My mistake. It was Jessica Valenti who was later defended by Amanda Marcotte.
In an ideal world, to Marcotte, the government would require us to read her columns and would ban Goldberg's. In an ideal world, to Goldberg, the government wouldn't do either. That's not a small difference. But Goldberg works for an institution that was founded on banning huge swaths of conservatives from "the movement" based on false and pernicious attacks on their characters. Goldberg is just into more artisnal, curated censorship. And they wonder why beltway conservatism is small beer.
My most dogmatically liberal friend is addicted to Hallmark Christmas movies. So I just watched one for the first time this year, called "Christmas in Rome." It was actually shot in Rome, which I was impressed by. I assumed they were low-budget productions.
In any case, I can see why the leftwing nut jobs would consider these movies dangerous. First, with my friend as exhibit A, they reveal that even the socialists have a yearning to see simple, straightforward male-female relationships that don't start with sex, relegating love an afterthought. Jane Austen and Downton Abbey scratch the same itch at a higher level. People sense deep down that sexual mores and attitudes of the past were better for the human soul. Hallmark takes that and puts it in the modern era, displacing temporal differences into spatial ones by locating everything in a small town that seems to be from a bygone era. (Though Rome hardly qualifies as a small town — but it is quaint and old-fashioned in the movie.)
The second reason these Hallmark movies are dangerous to the leftwing project is that they didn't portray corporations or white men as irredeemably evil, as any good Hollywood movie should. The story revolves around a pretty stereotypical romcom element — the person who's way too committed to work and business. But in most modern romcoms, that's a woman who's obsessed with her career at the expense of her love life. Here, it was a man who followed the pattern. But, while he was myopically focused on acquiring a business located in Rome for his big American company, he also wasn't evil or dumb or a walking stock ticker. He was just a pleasant guy doing his job. How could a white businessman not be evil? This is a dangerous message to send in a movie.
The main flaw was that it almost completely lacked conflict. I kept expecting it to go to the predictable places — he upsets the girl by being insufficiently warmhearted or something — but it never risked anything like that. There were no frustrating misunderstandings based on lack of communication or any of the usual plot contrivances. In a strange way, it was almost *more* realistic than most movies, because it lacked drama. Which, of course, also made it more boring.
>> Like, who's to say what's right and what's wrong, maaaan. <<
If you want to deal with evil you will need to account for that. I don't think idealism has any particular moral tendency apart from tribalism, the desire to belong to a group. It is a stage of life like pimples in teenagers.
As I've often said: Democrats/Liberals/So-called Progressive people, are the least progressive, and most miserable people on earth. The push-back continues...
My Bernie-bro daughter has a new baby and is not at all miserable. We are in CA to spend time with her and her husband, who is a young artist whose work is getting popular. She mentioned that her baby, four months old, will not be taken into public places until she has had her MMR vaccine at 6 months. We mentioned that this was wise as Santa Monica is a center of anti-vaccine sentiment and there are probably lots of unvaccinated young people around public places.
She simply could not believe this is true. Her mother and I mentioned the "Whole Foods Syndrome" and she could not believe that, either. She lives and works in the art world but is living a very middle class life.
My wife showed her husband a small piece from a major magazine advertising very similar sculpture to her husband's work. His reaction was "I have to raise my prices." His stuff is backordered for months and he has to ramp up production.
They are actually quite conventional but don't realize it.
Lurker21: Marcotte is playing the old Adorno gambit: mindless popular culture softens people up for fascism, maybe it is fascism...
I don't think there's that much of a conscious, logical thought process in Marcotte's case. As somebody said, contemporary leftist "thought" is essentially a game of Mad-Libs played with a limited set of buzzwords. (Or the remedial version of the Po-Mo Generator, if you will.)
But all can play. "Wow, LBGTQXYZ pride parades sure look awfully Weimar-ian sometimes, don't they? And we all know what Weimar was softening people up for, don't we? Ergo pride-paraders are Nazis..."
Fun for all ages.
Random thoughts in search of a thesis: I've never made it through Being and Time. It's my understanding that it's to philosophy what Finnegan's Wake is to literature--an indigestible glop of gibberish that helps to give meaning to the lives of graduate students. I may be wrong about that, but it's fair to say that if Heidegger was a Nazi supporter his critical thinking skills were not all that they could be. However, one takes not that in his relations with Hannah Arendt, he was not especially exploitative or abusive. When you compare him in this regard to Sartre or Edmund Wilson, he doesn't look so bad.....Edmund Wilson when, in his cups, would occasionally slap around Mary McCarthy. Sartre used De Beauvoir to bird dog women. Wilson's book To the Finland Station was a fanboi appreciation of Lenin, and Sartre found more to despise in DeGaulle than Stalin......So ponder this: if you wish to mistreat the women in your life and be totally wrong about the great men and causes of your era, it is far better for your legacy to a left wing asshole than a right wing one.
Titania McGrath
@TitaniaMcGrath
Santa is a symbol of white patriarchy. He enters the home (womb) via the chimney (vaginal canal) to deposit his gifts (sperm).
Santa is a rapist.
Christmas is violence.
#HappyKwanzaa
I don't think I've ever intentionally watched a Hallmark channel movie but I've overheard snippets of the dialogue often enough, since that and fake courtroom television is what the landlady mostly watches. Insipid dreck.
There were references to 'fascist Hallmark' earlier on Twitter and I had no idea what was being mocked until opening up this page. Thanks, Althouse.
What has most amused me today, thus far, is the fact that the English barrister Jolyon Maugham QC, who has most tiresomely prosecuted the campaign against 'Brexit' etc, tweeted about killing a fox (tangled in netting that he, JM, had hung around his chicken coop) with a baseball bat whilst clothed in his wife's green kimono, while hungover. He seemed to think-- one of the funniest aspects of it all-- that people would sympathize with him; he was very, very wrong. At first, I thought the headline in the Guardian meant that he had been out on a fox hunt. #JolyonTheFoxKiller.
Behind every Hallmark movie is a gulag full of minorities. It's how they keep their set-building costs low.
(I know gulags are communist instead of fascist, it's just more fun to say.)
Chuck ; the "malign designs" behind Reifenstahl's work were those of Joseph Goebells. And she was quite an artist- multiple scenes from Triumph of the Will are unforgettable. One would hate to use the word "masterpiece" in association with such overtly evil propaganda, but
I just did.
Having read Goldberg's book, it is a thought-crime to liken him to Marcotte, in my opinion.
However, like Hoodlum above, it is increasingly difficult to rise to the defense of some people on the Never-Trump right. One suspects that Goldberg would write that book a lot differently if he were doing it today.
"One suspects that Goldberg would write that book a lot differently if he were doing it today."
Goldberg's #nevertrumpism has led him into folly. On a recent edition of his podcast, he stated that, in contrast to the Trump presidency, the constitutional order could survive a Hillary presidency. This is insanity, the "constitutional order," especially the rule of law, and the first and second amendments, have been under attack by Clinton and her allies for two decades. Under a Clinton judiciary, federal agencies would be increasingly above the law, elections would mean less (since the judiciary would shape them by shaping the electorate, and choosing what may be voted on), freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the right to bear arms would be restricted or eliminated.
I first became aware of Ms. Marcotte through this blog, back when John Edwards hired her for his presidential campaign. I am perversely pleased that she still has an outlet for her writing. Her perspective is the antithesis of that which I hold dear. Many of the successful institutions of our society/culture are flawed and, as such, are easily criticized. Tearing down those institutions may seem a desirable goal to her cohort, but who will benefit from those changes? She is a childless woman (I believe); "the future belongs to those who show up".
The changes that she advocates are personal indulgences.
You people misunderstand Goldberg.
He had a part to play and he played it. Now his mask has been removed and he is a sham for all to see.
He is mad at Trump for removing the mask is all.
Oikophobes like Marcotte think that bourgeois normality is bad, and their political imagination and vocabulary are so stunted that the only pejorative that comes to their tiny little minds is "fascist". This sort of thing demonstrates why the vanguard of progressive thought is hitting a wall. They're not in favor of anything that they can achieve, and the things they are against are so pedestrian that their true (boringly dull) nature must be re-imagined as an ideology of calculated oppression. Good luck with that, Amanda, and God help anyone who has to deal with you.
On the Remnant podcast issued by Goldberg today, he notes that the greatest cost inflation in the US has been confined to three sectors of the economy: health care, housing, and education. Goldberg does this w/o noting that these are three sectors with high barriers to foreign price competition.
Niall Ferguson has looked at the same problem, and claims that this is because free trade, especially with China, has pushed inflation into areas of the economy with high barriers to price competition. As a "Classical liberal" and free trader, Goldberg simply cannot understand that increased free trade can have dire effects on politics or on the economy.
increased free trade can have dire effects
Free trade combined with labor, environmental, regulatory, and monetary arbitrage, and, invariably, monopolies and practices.
I've been told that you have to sit there and watch a man committing murders. I don't do that.
They're simulated.
I wouldn't know what Marcotte and Goldberg are thinking if I didn't come here to find out what you think of what they think. I think.
I've read and enjoyed some of Goldberg's work, and if I see him on CSpan I generally will listen to him, but I don't even much like political commentators that I like; as for Never Trump, Always Trump, Whatever Trump, IDGMOAS. Trump Is, and likely will be for a while.
Mass entertainment (has anyone brought up Farenheit 451 and its reality-TV-stupefied consumer-viewers yet?) is always going to be escapist trash of one kind of another. We only
think any of this is new--either the product or the critique--because we forget how awful most stuff really was, and how awful the lives audiences needed to be distracted from.
Narr
Hallmark, Hellmarch
Goldberg's IQ seems to have dropped quite a bit because of TDS. Cozy Victoriana about the nuclear family does not lead to fascist tyranny. Who knows, it might even provide some resistance to it. It's not true that every feeling of localism, us vs. them, is so full of hate that it can't be distinguished from Hitler. It might be true that if you lack local feelings, you are easy prey for crazy totalitarian dreams. Hitler may have had more to do with cozy German domesticity than Stalin did with a Russian (or Georgian) variety, but the result wasn't very different.
Shorter Left: Anything that White people like is awful and must be condemned.
it's all part of the 'two minute hate' which has stretched 3 1/2 years, remember 1984, is not a cautionary tale for them, but a how to manual,
Lloyd W. Robertson said...
Goldberg's IQ seems to have dropped quite a bit because of TDS.
The further the topic is from Trump and Trump-oriented topics like immigration and nationalism, the more considered and rational Goldberg is.
But he has blind spots. He still enthusiastically endorses the idea of subsidiarity, where each political decision is made by the group closest to the problem, but he does not seem to understand that these subsidiary groups will have a strong parochial cast to them. People self organize along religious and ethnic lines much more easily than they do around abstract ideas such as their economic interests.
See Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" for its chapter on the notoriuous agitprop movie, "Gabriel over the White House." I suspect many "liberals" and other statists watch it pants down and with a bottle of lube close at hand.
"Ms. Marcotte is missing the point"
it would be far more interesting if you told us something we didn't already know.
Marcotte is just another virtue-signalling advocate of misery for everyone else. The sooner she can advocate for a few million to die for the good of the collective, shwe will be ecstatic. Let's hope we can limit her to frustrated fantasies for our own safety.
People need to know about the great female artists and their unreliable and sometimes monumentally dangerous politics.
True feminist that she was, Riefenstahl offered to pilot the fuehrer out of Berlin in her single-engined aircraft. Adolf turned her down. She took off and escaped the fuehrer's finale, dodging Russian bullets all the way to Berlin's suburbs.
She was also a successful aviator post-war.
@gerry That was Hanna Reitsch, not Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl was revolted by what she saw in the Nazi invasion of Poland and pretty much dropped out of sight.
So which philosophy of "comfort and normalcy as totalitarianism" was expressed by Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" in 1967?
Good catch, chuck@320. Germany produced some remarkable women, and even Hitler had to put up with some of them.
There's a whole mythology about Hitler's artistic tastes--whodathunkit?--but he and Goebbels preferred Busby Berkeley-style extravaganzas over heroic epic for the masses, and for all his widely-proclaimed love of Wagner Hitler relaxed to Lehar and 'gypsy music' [forgot the reference].
Martin van Creveld's "Hitler In Hell" is a reasonable take on the Fuehrer's notions on a lot of everyday things.
Narr
Heidegger schmeidegger
will not be taken into public places until she has had her MMR vaccine at 6 months.
I've heard a baby retains its mother's immunity to some diseases for its first months, but better safe than sorry in SoCal. That's why polio wasn't widespread until the 20th century--all children were exposed early and developed their own immunity while they still had their mothers'. Improved hygiene and cleaner water delayed exposure.
By gawd Marcotte is RIGHT! Hallmark movies MUST be stopped. Alert the 7...er...9....I mean ALL, alert ALL the Democrat Presidential candidates. Make this a cornerstone of your campaigns.
You'll garner even more suburban, white womenz votes for sures.
Quite a few Hallmark movies are made in Canada, BTW. It shows.
Marcotte’s hallmark was anal sex as a safe alternative to prevent pregnancy. Or was that someone else?
Jonah Goldberg knows ZERO about economics. His latest book makes the following moronic argument:
1-In 1700, Europeans lived in Mud Huts and ate dirt (wrong but let's go with it)
2-Today, Americans drive cars, surf the net, and have Jacuzzi's
Conclusion: Global Capitalism has made us all RICH!
12 years ago, when Trump was nowhere to be seen, Jonah was stating on BHTV, that he liked globalism, free trade, and large scale immigration because it kept down "nationalism". And he liked Capitalism and "small government" because it kept down "Socialism"".
So, he doesn't have TDS, he's going with principles.
I've seen pictures of Goering as a WW 1 fighter pilot. Even as a young guy he had that pudgy "I'm fat man just waiting to get out" look to him. If you see Marlon Brando in his mid-50s movies, its the same look. When Brando takes off his shirt in StreetCar its 26 y/o "six-pack abs" when he's 33 in "Syonara" its "Let me wear loose clothing to hide my fat belly"
Or was that someone else
That was the Anna? Marie Cox, the original Wonkette.
large scale immigration because it kept down "nationalism"
That's worked out well. Not.
Marcotte’s hallmark was anal sex as a safe alternative to prevent pregnancy.
Whaddayamean ? That's where lawyers come from.
Seriously, I have read that this is popular in Iran so girls can keep their hymens intact. Big deal in marriage there,
Just at the outbreak of WWI, Chesterton wrote an essay, collected in Utopia of the Userers, lamenting the fact that instead of banding together and fighting the war mongering capitalists and colonialists, they had put down their shovel and picked up rifles to fight for their countries.
Globalists always underestimate the importance of national identity. Nationalists overestimate the importance of national identity.
Conclusion: Global Capitalism has made us all RICH!
The one thing that has done the most to eradicate hunger and raise the standard of living worldwide is the collapse of the U.S.S.R.. Go look at charts on hunger and poverty and chart where the U.S.S.R. fell. The correlation is remarkable.
Amanda is on a streak. She's now taking on "Merry Christmas."
Stirred by years of Fox News lying to viewers and telling them that liberals are somehow trying to take Christmas away, conservatives have increasingly embraced the phrase “Merry Christmas” to mean, basically, ‘F**k you’ to anyone that they’ve deemed less than legitimate Americans.” - Amanda Marcotte
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