Today in Cultural Appropriation

This isn’t appropriation. It’s an abomination.

 

Isn’t that the line where it becomes exploitative?

 

The girl is enriching herself socially. Bayless is enriching himself, at least partly, financially. Why is the latter less acceptable than the former?

 

Better than an Albanian restaurant.

And, many of the Albanians who immigrated to America first lived as refugees in Italy, and settled in Italian neighborhoods when they arrived here.

To make a buck, they cooked dishes that were popular with Americans.

 

Hypothetical:

Here's a guy headed to his Prom.

Worthy of mockery, yes?

 

I still have those nunchucks.

 

Yeah. Most Americans don’t know what good Italian food is, either.

 

My sense is it makes millennials too easily vulnerable to emotional pleas. Not necessarily vulgar ones, like Trump, but seductive bullshit from the political right and political left wrapped in a relational bow.

I grew up in an era and a family where people pretty much said whatever pinged from their brain - not unlike Trump. And so I'm used to that. But future generations bathe their messages in symbolism and snark and half-meant lines that need a decoder ring to figure out. Straight talk is almost like a trigger; I can see it, too, in the ways millennials will shut down in frank conversations, preferring to head off to Facebook or Twitter for the heavy stuff. A fascinating switch has occurred: Interpersonal currency in millennial circles is rooted in the ability to talk about everything but what matters, for your character to be set to the back while the more superficial elements of your persona - what you wear, the music you like, the ninth Star Wars movie you saw - come to the front. In social settings, it's about (way too much) drinking and getting stoned and talking about tattoos and wrap dresses and eyeglasses and haircuts and the latest street taco and the ninth Star Wars movie and then the nine Marvel movie. Then, real feelings are revealed in DMs and texts, sometimes with people halfway across the country, who they've barely met in person. Or, worse, people are drawn to online ideologies that millennials can try on as their identity.

The effect is more profound in men. Tough-talking academics like Jordan Peterson - whose 15 minutes really needs to be up, but I fear they've only started - make headway in millennial culture because they offer the opposite message of what men have learned in school, college and culture at large: That silence is strength, that snark is wisdom, that making literally anyone laugh is better than shaping someone into a better person. Peterson talks about lobster backs and men saying what they want like it's profound, and it's not, but it runs so counter the message boys get. The messages boys get is: All love, no hate, never confront, always back down, don't take the lead, don't judge, don't succeed, don't push. Women are being raised with, at this point, much better messages of solidarity and purpose and hope than men are. Men are being raised as individuals who should try as make as little of a footprint on the world as possible, lest they open themselves up to criticism.

It's all very safe, and very dangerous. Into the vacuum tend to walk demagogues.

 

It's really odd to me how thoughtful people can be about "Infinity War," while at the same time utterly banal about politics and policy.

 

Their sauce base is ketchup - good stuff!!

-SpeedTchr

 

Speaking of Washington, D.C. . . .