Never liked Lizzo

The "Rich Men of Richmond" song going viral is about how he's a victim who's problems are cause rich guys are exploiting people like him for no pay ... If you squint hard enough, is it that far off from the Berniebros? Horseshoe theory at work.

Last month, one of my conservative friends said the words "liberals are like dogs who obey their masters."

And then two weeks later walked into a booth and chose to reduce their own voting power in favor of the government. (thankfully Issue 1 failed.)

So yeah there's a big disconnect between republican voters and republicans in power right now. They just don't see it because they've been conditioned to view the world in black and white, and that the socialists, transgenders, etc... Must be on the evil side.

Figured this could go here.

So, a somewhat local radio station has a petition going to try and get Trans-Siberian Orchestra to add the city to their 2023-2024 tour schedule. They haven't been there since 2018. They've been pushing it pretty hard, hoping to get enough signatures to send to them before it gets too late. Cool idea, right?

Well, I haven't looked into the specifics, but after a couple weeks of hearing them talk about it on the radio every day, one day they suddenly began adding "it's a family-friendly show" to their pitch, and I have to believe it's because they probably got some (ignorant) people calling in about "Trans" being in the name. "Are you trying to get a show with Trans people brought here!?" No proof, but I don't see why they suddenly began pushing the "family-friendly" thing.

I'm not even sure why the word "trans" needs to be in terms such as transatlantic, trans-siberian, etc. It just means across, so surely the same meaning is there with or without it. They can just be called the Siberian Orchestra, and nothing about them or their origin will change.

Carlos Santana

Guitar or baseball?

So Mila and Ashton put out an apology video after being ripped through the coals for writing a letter to the judge on Danny's sentencing. This is getting really messy on social media and the only one who seems to be getting out of this looking better is Topher Grace who apparently was kept out of the core group when they filmed.

Since the recent transgender trend, you don't hear the terms transvestites or hermaphrodites anymore.

Hermaphrodite/intersex gets brought up by activists sometimes in arguments to claim that aren’t just 2 sexes. Transvestite seems pretty dead though. It got replaced by cross dresser, however that’s a lighter term as a guy who dresses up like a woman every once in a while on the weekend can be called a cross dresser, whereas a word like transvestite would be useful to describe someone who doesn’t think they're born in the wrong body but dresses as woman permanently anyway. But that this is even possible is not acknowledged much anymore as I don’t think it'd be friendly to trans activists message.

Kutcher was already disliked and a poor actor so I’d say that’s a wrap for him.

There is no possible apology that wouldn’t lead them to be piled on by the mob more, so I appreciated how much they mailed in their video, Kunis was especially in “bad acting” mode.

Kutcher makes probably 1000X more from his tech investments (ex. Airbnb, Uber, Robinhood) so don't think he needs to act much at all. But the public persona piece for endorsements and companies wanting to associate with you is the bigger issue.

They were both probably more looking to be in a bad mood because they didn't expect the letters to be released to the public?

Russell Brand’s feels like it’s getting a lot of attention for mostly a has-been, I guess people are bored right now, or maybe it’s that he’s more of a political commentator these days that made it a lightning rod.

You can tell just by looking at him he’s into weird sex stuff, so it might be plausible that he went too far and thought it was consensually rough and they didn’t or something.

Russell Brand is the usual grifter. Had a decent career for a number of years, things started drying up, he knew he could snag right-wing viewers and started playing up to them for a few more years of "relevancy". The Rob Schneider Effect.

Dude can talk fast and that's about it. I'm never impressed by someone who can talk a lot and talk fast because it just sounds like they're trying to talk a circle around you and confuse you instead of having genuinely valid arguments.

I could see all the Happy Madison guys including Sandler being closet Hollywood Republicans with Schneider’s views, he’s just the most open with no more career to lose. I can see Brand being a grifter though and his comedy career was nothing special.

Michael Bay's leaked take on Ashton Kutcher's Pearl Harbor audition stated that he was "annoying and off-putting" in comparisons to Josh Hartnett's earnest and sincere vibe & I have never shaken that description of him. Never found him funny, always found him phony when trying to push these social causes.

Brand had one funny movie and that was it. Good riddance if he is indeed guilty.

I heard a theory woke will be buried cause they don’t want to be soldiers as much as the more nationalistic conservative boys, not to mention masculine guys are probably better at it than non binary person. But you would have to subscribe to the belief everything is coordinated by the government and they can flip it on and off, which I’m not sure has ever been the case instead of the government being the one influenced by the woke.

Noah Schnapp (and rightfully so).

I've been thinking about something lately. Christianity basically had a lockdown on censorship, but art was eventually able to get around it via things like the R rating and Parental Advisory sticker. I wonder if there's any way to apply this to woke censorship... Like can we retroactively give Gone With The Wind an R rating?

I mean I see why not

I think for anti-woke people superhero movies taking an arrow to the knee in 2023 is a positive sign because it shows culture can change, trends can get old, and the 2020 generation's taste in political views may very well end up with a different identity than 2010s, much like it looks like they’re going to form a new movie taste identity.

Diddy from Cassie

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/arts ... wsuit.html

Diddy being a scumbag is one of those that just makes sense

Melissa Barrera dropped from Scream sequel due to her social media posts:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235669458/

This whole thing is tough. There are a lot of social media posts or likes/shares of others' that I wouldn't consider controversial let alone wrong that are landing people in hot water.

Many opinions that criticize the Israeli government for example, just the government, are being labeled as anti-sematic. I don't think that's fair. Criticizing the actions of a government or its leaders doesn't mean someone is being hateful towards its people, race, religion, etc. As are many comments or statements that voice support for civilians in Gaza with no mention of Hamas. I don't see a problem there.

It's become, as basically everything has this day and age, a pick-and-choose a side topic. Any opinion that doesn't choose a side gets attacked by both sides, and any opinion that does pick a side gets attacked by the other side. No matter where you stand on this (and just about anything now) gets you attacked.

Taking a stance along the lines of Hamas = evil and Israel has the right to defend itself but to also consider the safety of innocents, children, in Gaza as well shouldn't be considered controversial to me? The videos of little kids being in the middle of this are always the worst. The dead ones, of course, but the ones where we see them being shaken and unable to comprehend what's happening around them. There's no easy solution here, none that's going to keep every innocent human out of harms way. But choosing to take this sort of stance shouldn't be getting people labeled Hamas sympathizers or anti-sematic.

Even if violence in the name of defense can be justified to eliminate a threat, it's still going to breed more future violence. The kids we see caught in the middle of these wars are going to grow up wondering why their parents and friends were blown up. They're going to question how adults, a country or government could do such things, regardless of justification, to them. Many will grow up homeless, parentless, and get absorbed by hate and terrorists because they were forgotten with nowhere else to turn because this is just what happens in war.