coronavirus
SD Gov. Kristi Noem Will Not Be Social Distancing For Mt. Rushmore Fart-Lighting Party With Trump
A good bleeding was good enough for the Founders.
June 30, 2020 02:25 PM
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has actively resisted promoting public health in her state, made clear that this Friday's Independence Eve event at Mt. Rushmore will not indulge in the anti-American practice of socialist distancing, because whether one chooses to spread a deadly virus is a matter of individual choice. As NBC News reports, Noem says if anyone thinks infectious diseases are infectious, they can just miss all the fun. On Monday's edition of the "Laura Ingraham Caucasian Butthurt Hour" on Fox News, Noem explained,
We will have a large event at July 3rd. We told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home, but those who want to come and join us, we'll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we will not be social distancing.
State officials have told the people of South Dakota "to focus on personal responsibility," said Noem, adding, "Every one of them has the opportunity to make a decision that they're comfortable with."
It's a pretty weird take on "personal responsibility," since in this case if people make bad choices, it's other people who suffer, but freedom to spread respiratory droplets is what America is all about, isn't it?
<p>Donald Trump Himself is scheduled to be at the event, where he'll deliver remarks in front of the <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/south-dakota-gov-kristi-noem-vows-no-rioters-shall-pull-down-mt-rushmore" target="_blank">massive desecration of Lakota Sioux holy ground</a>. The festivities, to include a fireworks show in the evening, are limited to 7,500 winners of a lucky lottery drawing that was held in June, according to the <a href="https://www.travelsouthdakota.com/mount-rushmore-fireworks" target="_blank">event website,</a> which doesn't say dick about social distancing, masks, or hand sanitizer, because this is America, damn it. But the site <em>does </em>have lots of details about parking and what if it rains, so really, that covers all you need. </p><p>If you bother going to the larger <a href="https://www.nps.gov/moru/index.htm" target="_blank">Mt. Rushmore site</a> run by the National Park Service, and <em>then </em>follow a link to the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/news/public-health-update.htm" target="_blank">Park Service's coronavirus page,</a> you'll eventually get to a message where you're informed, "We ask the public to be our partner in adopting social distancing practices when visiting parks," so how's that for keeping visitors safe? </p><p>Last week, you'll be glad to know, Noem took a far more active stance on a different matter involving the monument, promising that as long as she's governor, nobody's going to <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/south-dakota-gov-kristi-noem-vows-no-rioters-shall-pull-down-mt-rushmore" target="_blank">get away with blowing up the big sculptures</a> of dead presidents, although nobody's actually threatening to attack the site with explosives. It's certainly reassuring to see Noem promise she'll keep the granite safe. </p><p>As for the health and safety of people coming to the Independence Day party, they're on their own, because nobody ever said government had any obligation to do that. </p><p>[<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/s-dakota-gov-noem-says-we-will-not-be-social-n1232507" target="_blank">NBC News</a>]</p><p>Yr Wonkette is entirely supported by reader donations. Help us stay AD FREE by sending us some money, or maybe even by ordering the lovely (and <strong>on sale!)</strong> <a href="https://wonkettebazaar.com/collections/clothes/products/copy-of-obama-forever-womens-t-shirts" target="_blank">Obama Rushmore t-shirt</a> up top.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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Media/Entertainment
Trump And Internet Nazis Got No More Free Speach
After years of complaints and warnings, they came for the racists ...
June 30, 2020 12:35 PM
Several social media companies took action against a bunch of rightwing hate-vomiters Monday, including a temporary ban on content from Donald Trump on the video streaming service Twitch, YouTube's removal of several white supremacist channels, and Reddit's finally lowering the boom on the subreddit r/the_donald and a bunch of other subreddits that had repeatedly violated the service's content rules, including — both sides! — a forum for the "dirtbag left" outlet Chapo Trap House. That led to another round of whining that Big Tech is censoring "conservative" speech. You might think that good decent conservatives wouldn't want to be associated with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but that just means you are a social justice warrior who doesn't appreciate Free Speach and you want to set up gulags for all who will not conform to your fascistic insistence on "basic decency" and "not advocating white power."
Yes, we are very sad about all of it, so very sad.
<p>Donald Trump's channel on Twitch, the video service that's mostly known for livestreams of video games, was<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/technology/twitch-trump.html" target="_blank"> temporarily suspended </a>Monday for "hateful conduct," which appears to be the first time the Great Man has been given a timeout on any social media platform. It was probably his smallest outlet, too, since the account had something like 125,000 followers, compared to the 83 million Trump has on Twitter. The <em>New York Times</em> has the deets: </p><blockquote>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/technology/amazon-nears-a-deal-for-twitch.html" target="_blank" title="">site, which is owned by Amazon, </a>said two recent streams on Mr. Trump's channel violated its rules. One stream was of a rebroadcasted 2015 campaign event in which Mr. Trump made comments about Mexico sending drugs, crime and rapists over the border. The other was of his recent rally in Tulsa, Okla., where he talked about a "very tough hombre" breaking into a woman's house at 1 a.m. <br><br>"Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch," a Twitch spokeswoman said in a statement. "In line with our policies, President Trump's channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed."</blockquote><p>The site didn't say how long Trump's channel would be down, so there's no telling when people will once again have the chance to see stuff that's readily available elsewhere. Twitch has also been under pressure to clean up its act, since video game voice chat is notoriously full of racist and misogynist speech. How the gaming industry is supposed to survive if 14-year-olds can't scream the n-word every three seconds has not yet been determined. </p><p>YouTube also swung the banhammer yesterday, <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/youtube-%e2%80%8bbans-six-big-white-nationalist-channels/" target="_blank">permanently banning multiple far-Right channels</a> including those for the white nationalist outfits American Renaissance and Radix Journal, as well as poor David Duke and Richard Spencer. In addition, YouTube axed American Renaissance's podcast channel. The biggest idiot to get the banhammer was wingnut manosphere asshole Stephan Molyneux, who liked to say that women wearing lipstick was exactly like men going around <a href="https://www.wonkette.com/the-week-in-garbage-men-why-are-ladies-allowed-to-wear-lipstick-to-work-huh" target="_blank">with a great big simulated boner in their pants.</a> </p><p>Youtube <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21307303/youtube-bans-molyneux-duke-richard-spencer-conduct-hate-speech" target="_blank">said </a>it had removed the channels for repeated violations of rules prohibiting "videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status," which it says have led to the deletion of over 25,000 channels since the rules went into effect in 2019. </p><p>Molyneux is somehow still on Twitter, where he <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21307303/youtube-bans-molyneux-duke-richard-spencer-conduct-hate-speech" target="_blank">cried </a>that YouTube had "just suspended the largest philosophy conversation the world has ever known." The immortal shade of Aristotle replied by giving Molyneux the finger and farting in his general direction. </p><p>Reddit also <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subreddits-the-donald-chapo-trap-house-new-content-policy-rules" target="_blank">did its part to end freedom as we know it</a> by banning "r/The_Donald, r/ChapoTrapHouse, and about 2,000 other communities," although the vast majority of removed subreddits were already inactive or had fewer than 10 subscribers. The biggest to go was the Trump-fan site, which had no official connection to Trump or his campaign, but was a constant source of the greatest, most brilliant memes for triggering libs. Since Reddit managers "quarantined" the subreddit last year, many users had been leaving for more welcoming online sewers anyway. </p><p>Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said yesterday in a conference call with reporters that the move represented a change from Reddit's early, damn-near-anything-goes days:</p><blockquote>I have to admit that I've struggled with balancing my values as an American, and around free speech and free expression, with my values and the company's values around common human decency.</blockquote><p>Or to put it a bit more bluntly, as the Verge's Casey Newton did, that's a "major reversal" for a company that used to define "free expression" so broadly "that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/8/6121363/reddit-is-a-failed-state" target="_blank">it once allowed users to distribute stolen nude photos freely on the site</a>."<span style="background-color: initial;"></span></p><p>Get ready for lots of sad denunciations of how awful these moves are, from people who are certain that if you don't let Nazis shit in the punchbowl, then John Stuart Mill will roll over in his grave. </p><p>[<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/us/politics/russian-bounty-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank">NYT </a>/ <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21304947/reddit-ban-subreddits-the-donald-chapo-trap-house-new-content-policy-rules" target="_blank">The Verge</a> / <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/youtube-%e2%80%8bbans-six-big-white-nationalist-channels/" target="_blank">RightWingWatch </a>/ <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21307303/youtube-bans-molyneux-duke-richard-spencer-conduct-hate-speech" target="_blank">The Verge</a>]</p><p>Yr Wonkette is supported entirely by reader donations, which keeps us AD FREE! Please donate if you can!</p><p></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/33mKzZe" target="_blank">Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons</a>.</p><p></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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Media/Entertainment
Weird Dilbert Guy Claims 'Dilbert' TV Show Got Canceled Because He's White
This appears to not be the case.
June 29, 2020 12:55 PM
On Sunday night, Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert" and a total dillhole himself, announced on Twitter that he had been fired not once, not twice, but three times in his life for being a white man — one of those times being the time UPN canceled "Dilbert" the animated series we all forgot ever existed.
@ahmedbest I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience. That… https://t.co/LS5lcl0nm0— Scott Adams (@Scott Adams)1593393715.0
Curiously, that is not what Adams said in a 2006 interview with Ground Report.
It was on UPN, a network that few people watch. And because of some management screw-ups between the first and second seasons the time slot kept changing and we lost our viewers. We were also scheduled to follow the worst TV show ever made: Shasta McNasty. On TV, your viewership is 75% determined by how many people watched the show before yours. That killed us.
Seeing as "Shasta McNasty" was a show about a rap-rock band starring Gary Busey's son, that seems plausible. A lot more plausible, frankly, than "Dilbert" getting canceled because Scott Adams was white. I won't discount that perhaps he was told that, by someone, to spare his feelings, but as an actual fact? Seems dubious!
<p>Particularly since after "Dilbert" was canceled, UPN picked up both "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Roswell," both of which were <em>very</em> white shows. I love "Buffy," but how many seasons did it take to get a regular character (Principal Robin Wood) on there who wasn't white? I mean, they killed off poor Kendra the Vampire Slayer after what? Three episodes? Where on earth poor Kendra was from that she had that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFhkKOLbo5Y" target="_blank">Irish-Jamaican accent</a> remains a mystery to this very day. </p><p>But I digress. </p><p>I watched the first episode of this show, for research purposes, and I gotta tell you, it was <em>not</em> good. It was cringey. Not because it was particularly outdated or "not PC," but because the jokes were just painfully overwrought and not funny. Am I saying this because I do not like Scott Adams as a person and was invested in it being terrible? No, because I also knew that the voice of Alice, a lady at Dilbert's office, is done by Kathy Griffin, whom I like and want good things for. Also, Dilbert and Dogbert were played, respectively, by Daniel Stern and Chris Elliott, which I think is a very bold and fascinating choice, what with them being the same guy and all. According to Wikipedia, Andy Dick, who is <em>also</em> that same guy, had a guest appearance. I am not mad at that. <br></p><p>It just wasn't good. The gist of the episode was that the company where Dilbert works had to come up with a new product, and his boss, who is stupid, wants them to come up with the name of the product first and then figure out what it does later. For some reason, this falls on Dilbert rather than any of the marketing people, who are too busy banging?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQyMzc3Mi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5Njk4OTgwNn0.BtjR2GSr7x1iRk30JwgYH-K_0ve0Bc8wP8MBADkNgZ0/img.png?width=980" id="a25f4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="655cbaee2a7259e7a4c08cac411be860" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p>If all of the episodes of this series were that excruciating, it's not hard to see why it was canceled. </p><p>Additionally, it ran for two seasons. You know what else ran for only two seasons? "The Critic." I know. It seems like there were more seasons, on account of how it was rerun forever on Comedy Central and elsewhere, but there were only two. There were fewer episodes, total, than there were "Dilbert" episodes. "The Critic," however, is <a href="https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/01/the-critic-25th-anniversary/" target="_blank">still a cult classic</a>, because of how it was actually funny. </p><p>In the comments on that tweet, there are myriad white men complaining that they, too, were fired or not hired for being white men, and that they were told as much by bosses who clearly did not care that saying this directly would open them up to a lawsuit. Amazing! And yet, I bet if you asked all of those poor, put upon, discriminated-against white men if they thought at-will employment should be replaced with just cause terminations, so that people could only be fired for doing a bad job, they would think that was a terrible idea. </p><p>In reality, it turns out, the belief among white men that they are better at things but are unfairly losing out to minorities is deeply unfounded. Including in Dilbert's specialty, engineering. The fact is, women are outperforming men in school, particularly in STEM fields, and companies are <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/that-google-engineer-isnt-alone-other-white-men-say-theyre-discriminated-against-2018-01-09" target="_blank">hiring less-qualified men</a> in order to have some amount of gender balance. Whoops.</p><p>[<a href="https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1277411944459153408" target="_blank">Scott Adams Twitter</a>]</p><p><strong>Wonkette is independent and fully funded by readers like you. Click below to tip us! Also if you are buying stuff on Amazon, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl2&tag=wonkette0f-20&linkId=e6057399a4696aad6e79c000ca483f54&language=en_US" target="_blank">click this link</a>!</strong></p><p></p><form name="donation" method="post" class="donation-form"><p class="subheadline">How often would you like to donate?</p><div class="form-row row--plan"><label class="plan-type__label"><input type="radio" name="plan_type" value="once" class="plan-type" required="" checked> Just once
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News
The 27 Worst Things You'll Eat At A Wedding! Tabs, Mon. June 29
A new week of Tabs starts now!
June 29, 2020 08:00 AM
Working class white women are tired of Donald Trump's sorry ass. (LA Times)
The European Union is scheduled to reopen its borders on July 1, but Americans' COVID-19-infected selves will probably not be welcome. (CNN)
Bartenders and wait staff are struggling in a restaurant industry that's now primarily either delivery/take-out only or reduced capacity dining. (Eater)
Vandalizing businesses in a historically Black Northeast Portland neighborhood is not how you demonstrate that Black Lives Matter. (The Oregonian)
Artist Milton Glaser died Friday on his 91st birthday. A co-founder of New York Magazine, Glaser put the heart in the famous “I (Heart) New York" logo. His work inspired the playbill for Tony Kushner's Angels in America. He also designed the DC bullet, the greatest comic book logo ever. (CBR)
RIP to Milton Glaser. Designer of the iconic “I ❤️ NY” campaign, the art for the final season of Mad Men and the ic… https://t.co/WOCzpiAOyA— Devon Sanders (@Devon Sanders)1593272527.0
Some activists are suggesting that John Lennon's "Imagine" should become the new National Anthem. They also probably think R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" or The Police's “Every Breath You Take" are solid wedding songs. Listen to the lyrics, guys. (New York Post)
Seattle's swanky Canlis has responded creatively to the end times. It's now turned its parking lot into a drive-in theater where you safely watch a movie while enjoy some darn good burgers and fries. Proceeds benefit the Black Farmers Collective. (Seattle Times)
Minnesota is more segregated than its "nice" reputation implies. (Time)
The rest of the nation also hasn't entirely shaken off
GOP Senate incumbents in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are in varying degrees of serious trouble. (Newsweek)
Trump spent Saturday golfing in Virginia. He didn't even have the decency to at least practice fiddling. (The Guardian)
George and Martha Washington enslaved 300 Black human beings. Do you know their names? (Washington Post)
Some good news for a change: Scientists believe the coronavirus doesn't mutate so quickly that a vaccine wouldn't prove effective. (NPR)
COVID-19 is making people in their early 60s feel old. It is hard to accept that Sharon Stone, Colin Firth, Jennifer Grey, and Julianne Moore are in the "at-risk" group. (Washington Post)
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