Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

By your logic

lol at using this particular phrase in an argument about felix

Are you giving him money to insult people, Simon?

yes, sure, absolutely. that is definitely what I meant.

Well are you? Are you still helping Felix 'insult people for a living', even though you seem unsurprised he would then go off and do shit like this? Are you knowingly enabling this behaviour?

http://i.imgur.com/0hQyd5L.gif

Actually, flappy bird, I want to ask you as well. You've written repeatedly that politics should be 'visceral and libidinal'. Are homophobia and rape jokes an acceptable part of libidinal politics?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HQfzwFloVqA/maxresdefault.jpg

Fred, why do you get so pissed?

sigh

the "insult" comment was only to say that CTH is approximately 50-60% a delivery device for insulting the pundit class + riffing on inside left twitter beef (though less of the latter of late). so no I don't think it's fair to say he gets paid to be a misogynist or whatever; he gets paid to help make a popular podcast which I do not believe to be misogynist. I was not referring to social media/outside-the-show stuff beyond that I imagine having a podcast like that be your principal job is bound to screw with your perceptions of Being Online and what's acceptable behavior and that's why I'm not super surprised something like this happened. did I enable the bad tweet by sending them five dollars? in a roundabout way, sure. I hope he is mortified by what happened and thinks more about who he's going off on online, but I still enjoy the podcast, albeit more for his co-hosts and their guests.

yeah it was a shitty tweet but what else can you expect from edgelords but edgelord tweeting?

if someone wants to setup a patreon so they can fly over and shit in fred's mouth i will happily contribute

Tommy Vietor describing McCain as "9 parts hero, 1 part troll" on the live Pod Save America ep(feat. Joy Ann Reid!) makes me wonder if Beltway thinking exists in powder form that political staffers just snork down rails of for 4-8 years.

― Bio-Digital Jezza (kingfish), Monday, July 31, 2017 4:48 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this wasn't his characterization, he was relating how McCain campaign staffers viewed Johnny Maverick.

Oh okay, that's a better read then

my mom started listening to chapo pic.twitter.com/UgCP5P7M2B

— Davestar.fm Bot ✨ (@davidmeirrobot) August 1, 2017

sadly, this thought has also occurred to me

Stylin' & profilin' in Chicago:

When you dress like an actual baby (photo & caption credit: Amber A'Lee Frost) pic.twitter.com/82aE6ZXmzR

— Chapo Trap House (@CHAPOTRAPHOUSE) August 4, 2017

lol amber

finally listened to the Dollop's Uber episode, that is some essential listening right there

the Uber, the Enron, and the Opioid eps make me want to murder

I'm with everybody who considers this a comedy podcast aimed at left prog dorks with expendable cash

anybody who thinks otherwise, like this is a movement thing, or anything more meaningful than The Daily Show circa 2004+, is a goddamned imbecile

I will also note, The Daily Show c. 2004 and on, did promulgate some worthwhile ideas, for worthwhile causes

It was still a talk show on late at night that catered to an audience, and nobody voted for it

I don't think anyone worth taking seriously thinks it's any more than an entertainment. (To keep the comparison going, just as Stewart always protested that he was doing a comedy show, these guys have repeatedly disavowed that listening/subscribing is a political act in any way). It has spurred some people to join DSA but that's about it.

since I'm on mobile and can't dig up the activism thread, I was heartened to see this making the rounds in lefty circles today

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we build socialism in a place like White Sulphur Springs, MT, population: 939.

— Erin G. 👩🏼‍🌾 (@ErinGoudreau) August 3, 2017

Part of that question is the extent to which socialists/leftists would have to engage with evangelical Christianity as it is today and how to do so without giving in on core issues like LGBTQ rights and abortion. Can you slip past it without engaging on those social issues until they've already begun to open up? Do you seek to use the leftist organizing as an alternative to the community of the church?

There are obvious models for this (Catholic Worker, etc.) but white, rural Protestantism is so far right it's a big hurdle.

(that town has five churches for 930 people and the surrounding area, four Protestant + 1 Catholic)

As both a lapsed Catholic and a Marxist I definitely feel how complex that hurdle is, hopefully the Catholic left (a small but real thing) can help out with messaging when it comes to communities like these

I don't think anyone worth taking seriously thinks it's any more than an entertainment. (To keep the comparison going, just as Stewart always protested that he was doing a comedy show, these guys have repeatedly disavowed that listening/subscribing is a political act in any way). It has spurred some people to join DSA but that's about it.

The argument about whether or Chapo is just entertainment or not strikes me as a symptom of general lunkheadedness among political types. (As an aside, I saw Ralph Nader talk at a college back in the 90s and he turned off the crowd by a tone deaf attack on Beavis and Butthead.) People are led to political consciousness in a myriad of ways. Surely there were teens who read an anti-war novel and ended up joining the Vietnam protest movement. That's not to say that writing a novel is a kind of "political organizing" just that anything can be political and influential. And I'm going to guess that cracking asshole jokes on Twitter and podcasts is going to reach more people than most actual protests will.

On a very related note, the DSA convention is livestreaming: http://www.dsausa.org/live

Also Simon thank you for that twitter link. That's a good thread.

Liking what I'm hearing from the DSA stage, good diversity of perspectives as well (not just in terms of race but ideological inspirations / focuses)

new premium ep is pretty great, i haven't actually read the Trump phone call transcripts yet so i'm enjoying this insanity ("the local milk people")

any ilx0rs go to DSA in person?

I've asked around before and got a few positive replies, don't think anyone is at the convention tho

since I guess this is the de facto DSA thread, I liked this set of interviews w/ POC members (including a couple in slates/committees)

http://splinternews.com/forget-bernie-bros-meet-the-young-people-of-color-lead-1797710340

Electing a guy who worked for a cop union to the NPC and the ensuing shit storm is just an amazingly 'American leftist' turn of events.

Yes, though tbf he seemingly deliberately concealed that aspect of his work history and they seem to be doing a decent job of dealing with it

Oh, he should definitely go, it's just the whole chain of events feels like yet another repeat of the way leftist groups shoot themselves and each other in the foot.

Between the steering committee to examine Fetonte and all the convention talk on this episode and a couple of other podcasts, all I can envision in my head is the SPUSA convention from Reds.

Only instead of Warren Beatty yelling in a smoke filled room it's an avatar threatening to quit the DSA on Twitter.

Any organization that tries to be "multi-tendency" is going to have hiccups, and this is a pretty small one in the grand scheme of things. I was sort of amused that for all the talk beforehand about the BDS resolution, only one member that I saw ended up making a fuss and leaving over it.

I think Chapo has a use to the left beyond "entertainment" (for that matter I think Stewart was very useful to mainstream liberalism). It's not organizing, but it's a sort of reassurance or reinforcement. For me a weekly dose of Chapo is a reminder, like "it's ok, you don't have to read the Times op ed page and pretend to give a shit what it says. Your instincts are correct, trust them."

OTM - it's separate from 'doing politics' (which they seem to accept way more than Stewart did - they actively support the DSA and progressive causes) but not just comedy.

jfc they've more than doubled their monthly take since I started this thread, I keep thinking they'll stall out but nah

https://graphtreon.com/creator/chapotraphouse

i don't see it plateauing anytime soon, i think they'll hit 100k in a couple months, & for sure by the end of the year.

So ridiculous, bringing in that much cash would be grounds for a purity test witch hunt if it were anyone else on the "left"

yeah that's ridiculous, it's a decent podcast but truly not good enough to have all the attention + cash it has

So ridiculous, bringing in that much cash would be grounds for a purity test witch hunt if it were anyone else on the "left"

― Dan I., Friday, August 11, 2017 10:06 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, you are a dork

literally the only purity test aspect of it is that they're making money for sv vc slime as patreon takes a cut

yeah that's ridiculous, it's a decent podcast but truly not good enough to have all the attention + cash it has

― global tetrahedron, Friday, August 11, 2017 1:10 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wah

it's worth whatever ppl are willing to pay for it... aka the free market works

They have thousands of people - most of them giving just $5 a month - giving them all that money. What's the issue? Where's the damage? It got popular. I love how so many writers & podcast people are so pissy about how much money CTH is making, it's just jealousy. Patreon is a great model for artists to support themselves - I like what CTH does, I pay $5 a month, and get a lot of content for a pretty low price relative to most other subscription services. Again, what's the problem? I've heard lots of fans talk about how much money they're making with this kind of suspicious/disdainful tone - I really don't understand it. They're not being bankrolled by anyone but their fans. That fucking rules.

Uh yeah I wasn't clear. I'm not against them making money, I'm against purity tests and witch hunts, and especially hypocrisy regarding who on the left is allowed to seek/obtain/possess money without automatically becoming a Bad Guy