November 14, 2024

"Kamala Harris’s campaign was predicated on the dominance and continuance of the alleged monoculture..."

"... an appearance from Oprah Winfrey, a rally endorsement from Beyoncé, Instagram support from Taylor Swift, twerking from Megan Thee Stallion. It presumed the existence of a coherent cultural tent that the targeted voters already lived under, and presented Harris’s embrace by these stars as an extension of the audience’s pre-existing fandom.... Trump, denied access to this monoculture, took an approach that was both fragmentary and more modern — and in many ways more attuned to the rhythm of a young person’s media diet. He leaned into the evanescent, the niche, the lightly scandalous...."

89 comments:

mccullough said...

Trump did a better job appealing to men than Kamala did appealing to women. Kamala did a worse job appealing to men than Trump did appealing to women.

rrsafety said...

"Manosphere" is a terrible portmanteau. Yuck.

Drago said...

Not to worry. Its just this months flavor. Like "LatinX" it won't survive. It's too dumb.

Ice Nine said...

Compare a "man's man" with not a "woman's woman." And there you have it.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Megan Thee Stallion twerking comes from "the dominance and continuance of the alleged monoculture".

Just fuck my shit up senpai. Sugoi senpai, sugoi!

RideSpaceMountain said...

Oprah Winfrey
Beyonce
Taylor Swift
Megan Thee Stallion
Call her daddy
Liz Cheney
Maria Shriver
Cardi B
Kamala Harris

It's official. The verdict is in. Women are not serious people. News after weather. Sports at 11.

Joe Bar said...

"Mano-Fear" might be a good tag.

Joe Bar said...

All of this navel-gazing, and nothing about the substance. They don't get it.

Yancey Ward said...

Really hard to explain why the Cheney endorsements didn't carry the day. Of course, the manosphere has plenty of women in it but it doesn't have women like Jon Caramanica, David French, Joe Scarborough, Bich, Freder, etal.

narciso said...

Beats me, apparently the Times knows nothing, but thats a day ending in y,

wild chicken said...

It's almost as if he's been following politics for 50 years and thinking, doesn't ANYONE know how to do this?

Leland said...

Maybe a tag to track coordination of the media in using a meaningless term to hide their misandry.

Saint Croix said...

If Hollywood ever turns this into a high school sex comedy prom queen farce...

I think Sydney Sweeney would be an outstanding Kamala.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

If anybody was supposed to be hiding in witness protection it was the second coming of Hitler.

Iman said...

Don’t forget the famous feminist, Alice Sharpton!

Saint Croix said...

Sydney Sweeney in...

Manosphere.

Marcus Bressler said...

FWB: The highway is full of smog. Let's check into a motel.
Me: "I think I'm going to portmanteau.
That's really, really where I'm going to
If I ever get out of here
That's what I'm gonna do"

Iman said...

Teh Notorious Wet Ass Gato 🐈‍⬛💩!

Marcus Bressler said...

The Left Woke "created" LatinX because they hate that the original designations were feminine and masculine. Can't have that!

john mosby said...

Or “Man-o-spear.”

Of which, I got one for all youse….

JSM

Shouting Thomas said...

As Scott Adams has been predicting, men finally got fed up with the feminist bullshit.

n.n said...

men finally got fed up with the feminist bullshit

Women, too.

PM said...

Yes, and this: "Tree marriage is a form of symbolic proxy marriage between a human and a tree that is said to be infused with supernatural life and may allow a bachelor to become a widower when the tree is felled and thus marry a human widow."

Clyde said...

"Lightly scandalous." Like that Call Her Daddy podcast?

Rabel said...

"We watched them all"

No you didn't, Jon.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

First Trump went to the rallies, and I did not - Because
I was at the right rally.
Then Trump went to the Al Smith dinner, and I did not -
Because I was not a Catholic.
Then Trump went to the manosphere, and I did not -
Because I was not a man.
Then on Election Day Trump tweeted - and there was no one left to vote for me.

Tina Trent said...

Just use “cis-men.” That is their chosen slur, and it includes gay men.

My computer changed that to “Ken-men,” if that’s not proof enough.

Tina Trent said...

More women voted for Trump than Kamama.

Tina Trent said...

So I, who have dome thousands of hours getting people like Trump elected, don’t count because I have a vagina? Maybe if you had one, you’d work harder offline, asshole.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Asshole? Thank's a bunch Tina!

Yancey Ward said...

Exactly- he didn't even watch 20 minutes of what he claimed to have watched. He almost surely took various internet quotes of what people on the Left were saying about the interviews and wove them into a "story" for publication.

Dave Begley said...

Monoculture? Maybe on the coasts. I was at Game 2 of the World Series and before the first pitch a rapper (later determined to be Mr. Ice T) does his pimp roll (h/t Tom Wolfe) from center field "singing" a rap song that was indecipherable by me. But many people nearby knew the words and were rapping along.

We were then insulted with a Black guy on the video screen doing a tribal scream, "We not like that." Huh? I guess it was a West Coast v. East Coast thing.

All of this went straight over my head and I found it to be very distracting.

But the game was great. Baseball doesn't need stuff like that to attract people.

Dixcus said...

Kamala Harris lost the second someone approved the creation of the #BelieveAllWomen hashtag.

Other signposts were:

* Melissa Heinershtupid getting the Bud Light account.

* A Supreme Court nominee so dumb she cannot define the word woman.

* Doctors cutting kids genitals off.

* Joe Biden hiring Leni Reifenstahl to design his speech sets.

* The dude getting drilled up the keister on the Senate floor.

* US "nuclear scientists" stealing women's clothing from airport carousels.

* Then they tried ... much much too late ... to "accuse the other side of what you're doing" by claiming Republicans are "weird."

Mickey said...

No, you do not need a new tag to combine them. Do you have a tag for obsolete words or words that make people sound old? Because that’s what “manosphere” is. Their gendering of social media is just them fumbling around thinking they still matter. They are fighting an age battle, not a gender one.

Dave Begley said...

Correction. Mr. Ice Cube; not Ice I. The song was "Today was a Good Day."

"Plus, nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A.
Today was a good day

Left my homie's house paid (word)
Picked up a girl been tryna dig since the 12th grade
It's ironic, I had the brew, she had the chronic
The Lakers beat the Supersonics
Felt on the big fat fanny
Pulled out the jammy and killed the punani
And my jimmy runs deep, so deep
So deep put her butt to sleep"

wendybar said...

Better the manosphere, than the trannyphere.....

Jaq said...

AOC just removed her pronouns from her Twitter bio. I think she is planning to be president some day. At least she will have earned it.

traditionalguy said...

That’s actually pretty good Political Science after action report.

The podcast world has restored common sense and rational thought to politics. Bye bye propaganda Media. Hello Trump/Musk.

JaimeRoberto said...

Monoculture is another word for bubble.

R C Belaire said...

Like Ted Bundy said : "Women understand other women, and they hate each other." Or something like that.

mccullough said...

More women voted for Kamala than Trump. More white women voted for Trump than Kamala.

Butkus51 said...

No worries. She's the front runner for Cali Governor.

It will be called Kamalalala land.

People will heal.

Jaq said...

Bob Dylan hates women because he wrote Idiot Wind. Shakespeare hated women because he wrote The Taming of the Shrew. The rule is that you can't say anything bad about any particular woman because that means you hate all women.

I wonder, if you listened to all of Bob Dylan's songs, how many "problem songs" would you find?

Jaq said...

Hemingway hated women because he wrote The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.

Joe Bar said...

I heard she's pregnant.

gilbar said...

hmmm.
an appearance from Oprah Winfrey, a rally endorsement from Beyoncé,..
Trump, denied access to this monoculture, took an approach that was both fragmentary and more modern — and in many ways more attuned to the rhythm of a young person’s media diet.

okay, Serious Question:
Who, THE HELL? thinks that "a young person's media diet" would include "Oprah Winfrey or "Beyoncé"?
I had to look these people up. Beyoncé is a FORTY THREE YEAR OLD , who was apparently 'popular' back around THE TURN OF THE CENTURY..
I couldn't even find any listings for this "Oprah Winfrey".. What THE HELL was she? some SEVENTY year old, or something??

gilbar said...

nah! Sydney as Melania..

mikee said...

"...predicated on the dominance and continuance of the alleged monoculture..."
In other words, they believed their own propaganda, both about Trump and even worse about themselves.

Drug dealers know you don't use the product you sell, it'll kill you. Politicians should also know not to believe their spewings about the opposition, and even more not to behave as if their own lies about themselves are true.

Jupiter said...

Yeah. If only Pete Buttigieg had gone on Joe Rogan, I'd have been delighted to vote for the Party of Castration.

n.n said...

The monotonic culture of affectations and reductions is real and progressive.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Shouldn't that be "Manospheres"?

Democrats Love Waste Fraud Abuse/ Rachel Maddow = Lying Psycho said...

The Biden administration destroyed our nation in 4 short years.

Try that one.

Big Mike said...

There are women and then there are women. The blunder that the Left has been making for decades is thinking that women are a single identity group. Imagine! Fifty-one percent of the American voters supposedly think alike, act alike, have the same concerns, and therefore vote alike. Oh, and their number one issue is abortion.

In my opinion far too many Republican candidates fell into the trap of implicitly agreeing with this foolishness. Trump didn’t. And now he’s President-elect.

Kathryn51 said...

She also went from "Representative" to "Congresswoman". And Joe Bar is right - she is obviously pregnant. I noticed it several weeks ago when she was sitting for an interview and her tummy area was not tightly cinched in as usual - something loose and definitely not her usual edgy stuff.

Democrats Love Waste Fraud Abuse/ Rachel Maddow = Lying Psycho said...

The entire Leftist Democrat-Soviet Media Industrial Complex banned Trump. Ignored Trump. Trashed Trump.

Rogan talks to people. Democrats cannot control Joe Rogan. Democrats upset.

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

Do I need a tag for this post-election hand-wringing about the "manosphere"?

@Althouse, I don’t think so. This is a made up word for a made up, nonexistent, phenomena. Men don’t behave as a single voting block any more than women do.

Democrats Love Waste Fraud Abuse/ Rachel Maddow = Lying Psycho said...

Maga in NYC
It's not just dudes.

Former Illinois resident said...

Harris intolerable progressive Insufferables, as opposed to Clinton's Republican Deplorables.

Former Illinois resident said...

Women who actually watched the Rogan-Trump podcast voted for Trump. Guy's a mensch, also appealed to nearly half the Jewish-American population of voter-age.

Dixcus said...

In the New York Post today (TODAY!)

New poll reveals climate change top concern of Americans.

They just CANNOT. QUIT. GASLIGHTING.

https://nypost.com/2024/11/14/lifestyle/climate-change-is-americans-biggest-concern-for-their-children-not-the-economy-new-survey-reveals/

Former Illinois resident said...

Cheney endorsement was a poison pill. Maybe Harris secretly didn't want to be elected president, only wants to serve for next two months for the "1st ever" nod.

JK Brown said...

The change is here is. Watch for more Republicans switch to the Democrat party and more working people of all colors move to the New Republican party Trump/Vance have created.


Donald Trump's dominant 2024 election win was only a shock to the smug elites
Henry Olsen, NY Post, Nov 6

“Donald Trump’s dominant 2024 election win was only a shock to the smug elites”
The American people see no contradiction between traditional norms and human liberty and diversity.
They want freedom and responsibility.

The American people want a government that respects all Americans’ livelihoods, not one that showers favored classes with tax breaks and subsidies and overloads people who don’t graduate from college with taxes, regulations and sneering.

Most of all, the American people are tired of those with high incomes and secure lives telling them their lives are inferior.

“All men are created equal” means equal opportunity, equal treatment under the law and equal respect.

The American people know Trump, for all his faults, shares their values.

And they know that for all their learning and power, the media, government and academic classes largely don’t.

Trump and his vice president-elect, JD Vance, have the opportunity to usher in a fifth Great Realignment, one that will take the new Republican plurality among voters — the first since 1932! — and make it a new American majority.

The renewal of the American dream.

Michael said...

These NYT writers are suffering from an inability to reorient, as shown by their insistence that pods are a deficient form of campaigning, compared to the sit down with 60 Minutes, a Meet The Press installment, or a 5,000 word piece in The New Republic. The writers attitude comes thru in the last paragraph:

...these shows’ true intent: creating a generation of young men who view politics primarily as lighthearted smack talk. The replacement of decorum and ethics with backslapping and flickers of vulnerability. A clear path to wide-scale public recognition without checks and balances.

Quaestor said...

Althouse could contribute more to human achievement by cooking up a batch of liver-flavored pudding pops.

narciso said...

They cant stop lying fullstop

Democrats Love Waste Fraud Abuse/ Rachel Maddow = Lying Psycho said...

Trump exaggerates... you know like "biggest ever" totally inconsequential

Democrats lie about letting millions of illegals thru their open border. Nancy is still out there lying about it. Of massive consequence. Only morons think Taylor Swift matters.

Dr Weevil said...

This is at least the third or fourth time I've seen the word 'manosphere' on this site, and I still misread it every time as 'nanosphere'. Seems appropriate. Hamlet said "I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space." These lefties are not so self-aware: they think the minuscule spheres containing what they and their friends know about the world are coextensive with the world. Not even close. As Hamlet also said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Rusty said...

Hmmmm. I don't think Althouse cooks. Unless it's cookies or something.

Democrats Love Waste Fraud Abuse/ Rachel Maddow = Lying Psycho said...

AOC washes clean her WOKE X profile. Phonies and frauds and liars. Democrat Party usa.

She removed her pronouns!

ron winkleheimer said...

The leadership of the Democrat party is oooooooooollllllllllllllllllldddddddddddd. Very, very, very old. I know the Donald is old, but he seems to understand that the world has changed. And there are plenty of up and comers in the Republican party.

Mason G said...

Not the unborn ones.

Skeptical Voter said...

Our host needs to add a "gender politics bullshit" tag to her collection. Believe it or not folks there are mostly just two sexes of people out there--men--and women. And you have to make a pitch to both sexes--they both vote.

And yes there are some alphabet people out there sex wise LGBTQQQQQ and on and on. And a candidate needs to appeal to them as well, but first you have to win the larger dominant groups--men, women.

Disparity of Cult said...

Screenshots with the pronouned profile live on in the archived interwebs.
Is it true that her net worth is $29 million?

Jaq said...

I noticed something about her face, pregnancy explains it.

Saint Croix said...

ha ha ha

Saint Croix said...

She could do ice queen! But playing a crazy drunk psycho baby is way more fun.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

This is an over-simplification, but not by much.

First, look at Congress. On average, Democrats are a *generation* older than Republicans. Republicans have a dynamic, strong, and rising "bench". What younger Democrats there are seem to be prevailingly extremist, wokesters, and weirdos.

In biology we call it a "moribund" population. The future belongs to those who show up, and for 50 years Democrats have been killing their babies in the tens of millions. Go figure.

Eventually, it had to catch up with them. Little surprise to me, and anyone else paying attention, that somehow, "unexpectedly", youth, especially males, are trending more and more conservative. It all reminds me of the Whigs.

They were a loose coalition of diverse-but-unrelated interests —Anti-Masons [meaning Evangelicals], National Republicans, disillusioned Democrats, and people hating fiscal and monetary responsibility — united by a shared hatred of President Andrew Jackson, who actually eliminated the national debt. To the Whigs, Jackson was “King Andrew the First,” a despot who usurped power from Congress to serve his own populist ideals.

In the end, the northern Whigs defected to the Republicans, and pro-slavery Whigs to the Democrats. I now wonder what's going to happen to the remaining sane Democrats? Probably follow Tulsi Gabbard, if they have any sense.

rehajm said...

Kamala’s Kalamata Olives. Sold exclusively at Barbara’s Rhubarb Bar…

Howard said...

Barron convince his Dad to go on the Theo Von podcast which as it turns out was one prerequisite, along with Lex Friedman to warm up for Joe Rogan.

Rocco said...

Jon Caramanica writes...
"Where to Find the Avuncular Donald Trump?"

Can we coin a new word? Atrumpular?

walter said...

Except it's been around far longer. Just recently pulled into news cycle.

Jerry said...

I'm thinking she was actually willing to blow it. (So to speak.) The last few days she was flippin' HORRIBLE. Goes to talk to a Muslim influencer and he couldn't get anything sensible out of her - to the point where she was saying bacon was a spice.

Bacon - a forbidden meat for Jews and Muslims. And she was recommending it?

Yeah, I'm thinking towards the end she liked the 'party atmosphere' of running, but knew that the job was NOT something she wanted. But how to bail without telling people she didn't want it?

Jerry said...

People will put up with a lot, especially if it doesn't really affect them. But when it does, and you're really, really pushing the envelope to force people to 'care' in the way you want them to, and to support your causes because if they don't you're going to come down on them with the full force of social media - don't be at all surprised if they go "Enough's enough, dammit. Don't make me 'care', don't come to my attention, don't think that if you only get into my face enough I'll do what you want, because you won't like it when I do."

doctrev said...

"Perhaps Jews are the best of all Democrats, a reliable constituency in a time when even Black and Hispanic voters are either drifting rightward or staying home altogether."

It's interesting what American Jews say to each other, as opposed to when they want to Hello Fellow you.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/jewish-vote-elections-2024

jaydub said...

There is too much navel gazing involved in answering the question of why Kamala lost. It's not that complicated: she's totally vapid and picked a gesticulating doofus for a running mate. But, mark my words, she's going to be governor of California because California.

Big Mike said...

@Althouse, and then again I might be wrong — a strange position for a mathematician to be in. This morning I read a very interesting article by Bridget Phetasy at thespectator.com entitled “How the Democrats Bud Lighted their brand.” Here’s an excerpt:

Men were demonized. Emasculated. Blamed for all society’s ills. Men were told to take a seat and shut up. It was socially acceptable and encouraged to be vicious to anyone with a penis — unless they were a “woman” with a “penis”

that vacuum blossomed the “manosphere,” an online subculture of websites, forums and communities focused on men’s issues, gender relations and often on antifeminist perspectives. Gen Z males who had lived in the matriarchal “longhouse,” as they termed it, flocked to this space where they felt validated and free of the incessant hectoring.

In October, in a last-ditch effort to reach men while Donald Trump was doing the podcast-bro circuit, the left-wing PAC Vote Save America put out a cringe-inducing video called “Man Enough.” It featured various men, mostly white men dressed like cowboys with one black man in a weight room. It was roundly mocked and satirized.


And then, to turn a phrase, she writes:

Reality remains undefeated and suddenly it reasserted itself. Yet in order to appeal to one of the two genders which now apparently exist again, Democratic organizers ended up falling back on clichéd stereotypes of what men are… because they actually have no idea.

So, bottom line, “manosphere” is not just a term invented by disgruntled Democrats as an excuse for their failure, but it’s actually a term of art for people proudly inside the manosphere. Always good to start a day learning something new.

Lazarus said...

Yes, Trump went to new media to carry his message across, but Harris was trying to do the same. "Call Me Daddy" isn't exactly Walter Cronkite. It's a weird world if Howard Stern is lumped in with "Meet the Press." Paying scores of TikTok influencers for endorsements isn't something Truman or Eisenhower would have done. And all that is aside from the question of whether the traditional or legacy media is what it used to be. Harris was trying to reach youngish and non-traditional audiences. She made lousy picks, and people didn't want what she was selling.

Lazarus said...

"First, look at Congress. On average, Democrats are a *generation* older than Republicans."

Not in terms of the rank and file. The Democrat leadership is older, but the average ages of representatives aren't different. I suppose the Democrats' white men are on average older than the Republicans'. Notable younger Democrat representatives tend to be women and/or non-white.