Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

Rectenwald alleged that a May email thread sent to more than 100 NYU staffers included “malicious” statements -- and that NYU didn’t prevent the “nasty screed,” the Post reported. The emails reportedly called him an “Adderall-filled bully” and “right-wing misogynist,” among other things.

Frost responded to Fox News briefly in an email: "lol."

ahahahaha

I doubt she bothered with the punctuation

here are plenty of good reasons to criticize bernie but if you think he "mostly sucks" because he's not far-left enough it is fair to say you will not ever be even slightly satisfied w/ any development in american politics. this is a perfectly respectable position but i'm not sure how you can square having such high standards w/ support for celebrity stunt campaigns like the one currently being run by chelsea manning, whose collected public statements to date are 50 percent emojis.

I'm intrigued by the concept of true outsider candidates with different sorts of experiences and backgrounds from the norm, I would love for her campaign to live up to her heroism but that seems, uh, unlikely at this point. she's fallen short recently but I don't think that's because people like her running is inherently a "celebrity stunt" and tbh the emoji complaint is stupid. (the nazi complaint is fine lol)

if I was unduly uncritical of her initial moves chalk it up to earnest admiration I guess

i don't think it's stupid to ask that a candidate for the u.s. senate have more public statements on record than chelsea manning has. yes, she's undoubtedly got a different perspective than any other candidate. we still have no idea what many of her actual political positions are. america doesn't have a great track record w/ the "true outsider candidate" thing. if she started running a real campaign, i might change my mind: as it is, this looks like a stunt.

fwiw i like chelsea, think she acted heroically, and am reluctant to be harsh on someone who went through such a horrific experience. i even find her twitter presence kinda sweet. but this fiasco makes it clear that she wasn't ready for this.

I'm intrigued by the concept of true outsider candidates with different sorts of experiences and backgrounds from the norm, I would love for her campaign to live up to her heroism but that seems, uh, unlikely at this point.

she is very empathetic not only from her mistreatment by the surveillance state but from her background serving her country. the latter is kind of a rarity among politicians these days. i could see a lot of veteran support going her way.

i also like how she is not a millionaire or politician or anything. the more regular people that aren't insane narcissistic billionaires running for office the better. im very interested in hearing her policy positions tbh.

uh you may want to be careful imagining any kind of wide support for Manning based on her being a veteran. I'd be willing to bet that a non-trivial majority of both active duty and retired service members consider her a traitor.

See e.g. https://today.yougov.com/news/2017/01/23/chelsea-manning/ and consider that the military is more conservative than the US population as a whole.

uh, yeah. You might as well run bowe berghdal

ppl still hate jane fonda for protesting a war most americans barely remember the details of, there is no way chelsea manning is getting significant support from veterans

Barack Hussein Obama turned out to be a better president than I expected in 2009, overcoming many of my initial suspicions (gay marriage, repealing DADT), affirming others (boy, he loved drone bombing; I've no idea what the administration envisaged about its support of the Arab Spring), and signing legislation that saved a couple friends' lives. But many of his flaws stemmed from his preternatural self-confidence. He really had little experience with legislating and none governing, but in 2006 and 2007 he seemed erudite and understood the shittiness of the Iraq War, even if he and I had different ideas about what constitutes a stupid war.

My history suggests I'm apt to give Chelsea Manning the benefit of the doubt. But I remember how the GOP revered John McCain a long time for Sacrificing Himself for His Country; his patriotism absolved his (mild) iconoclasm. At this point in my political thinking, I want someone who, yes, runs for a House seat before a statewide or national race.

In short, speaking as someone who teaches a college course reliant on those initial Wikileaks stories, Manning's invaluable service to the Constitution doesn't adduce her readiness to be a politician. That video inspired no confidence either.

In the abstract I think "movement campaigns," that is, campaigns whose true purpose is to activate a sector of the population as activists and force incumbents more wedded to the status quo to sit up and take notice that they ought to straighten out their positions or they'll be under meaningful electoral threat from their constitutents, are a good idea. Chelsea Manning could, in theory, run a powerful movement campaign that altered Cardin's political calculus and opened the field for a more politically experienced challenger in the future with stronger positions on campaign finance, or clean energy, or privacy & civil liberties.

But I don't think Manning is gonna run a good movement campaign. I'd hoped she might, but she doesn't know what she's doing and hasn't sought out people that do--she seems to think her band of rebels can make enough media noise to elevate emoji anarchy & empathy as politics into a position you can take in public discourse. I appreciate her spirit, but obviously it's not that simple.

See e.g. https://today.yougov.com/news/2017/01/23/chelsea-manning/

eh, that's a highly politicized question, phrased as "Obama has announced he is commuting her sentence do you agree?" of course a Republican will say no to that, it's asking if they approve of something Obama is doing. they spent his entire presidency acting in bad faith, they would have thrown away a winning lottery ticket if it had his name on it.

i think Vietnam and Jane Fonda and all that are a bad comparison. we are talking vastly different circumstances. there was a draft lottery. people were spitting on returning veterans, this was a common thing during protests at the time. Jane Fonda was the public face of these protests for a number of years. Manning in comparison performed a single act of civil disobedience at great personal risk. Jane Fonda was a world famous movie star not an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army. Jane Fonda was arrested at an airport for smuggling drugs. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in maximum security for leaking proof that we were killing civilians.

as far as veterans being conservative, hey, maybe not all of them are. i guess we will never know if we just say they are and ignore the ones that aren't. it doesn't seem insane to think there would be veterans coming back from the war on terror who feel they have been given a bum deal or maybe lied to by their government. fwiw https://www.veteransforpeace.org/ links to the Chelsea Manning Support Network

i don't want to knock veterans for peace, but i think it's safe to say they are not representative of the current culture of the u.s. military.

btw, ppl did not spit on returning vietnam veterans.

I also seem to have missed where "killing civilians" is bothersome to the American military.

Veterans voted for Trump by 2:1 or something, so not all of them are assholes but as a whole they're a very conservative group and I have my serious doubts that more than a relative handful would support Manning or anyone like Manning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk4EIVgEe5U

people were spitting on returning veterans, this was a common thing during protests at the time.

lol no

that jordan peterson thing is great
the show is SO GOOD when it's dunking on right wing dickheads

guys come on some vets probably got spit on even if a thorough NYT investigation couldn't find any photographic evidence of it, god knows hippies got spit on by the straights too, that doesn't mean All The Hardhat Urban Legends Are True & that there were spit-gauntlets at SFO, there's a middle ground here

Sounds like something that started out as figurative language- "longhaired war protestors are 'spitting on' brave soldiers and veterans"- became accepted as a literal thing, "longhaired war protestors are spitting on brave soldiers and veterans" after the people using such language were not exactly scrupulous about clarifying that they were speaking figuratively.

Obviously a hugely useful myth if you want to drive an atmosphere of military worship and make anti-war positions look vaguely discreditable. Cos no-one likes spitting, right?

Virgil was great in the shutdown ep. He often coasts through shows so it was good to hear him bring it.

the thing with virgil is he's not funny but he's good when it comes to wonk shit. he should really just be their policy wonk correspondent, or something.

Was that the ep with only three of them? When it's a full house- or even worse, plus a guest!- he just gets talked over because the others are loudmouths and he isn't. Not surprised he gives up most episodes and watches football streams instead.

the thing with virgil is he's not funny

virgil can be really dryly funny imo, but i appreciate he's kinda hamstrung by having the nerdiest-sounding voice out of a team comprised entirely of different strains of nerd voice

imo he's better suited to writing

amber is def the worst chapo though, this is canon now

felix was really good on chelsea manning in the most recent ep #teamfelix

I agree. I was concerned cause the events were so fresh but it was really the most considered take I'd heard up to that point

would listen to a wonk chapo pod with bruenig, virgil, tim tbh

They announced some live West Coast shows.

$25 +s/c for the Portland show, and amusingly enough the same that Slate’s Cultural Gabfest is in town

whenever a podcast comes to town I always notice they've crazy overpriced

ps matt you didn't need to spend a full hour to get to your "can of pringles" metaphor lol

Loved that one. Came pretty close to laying out the historical foundation of Christmanist pessimism.

So how did Adam Friedland end up on Israeli TV anyway? He came across fairly well also somehow

where's the tour dates at?

adam friedland on israeli tv was hilarious. "comedian and activist". i think he went to one DSA meeting or something haha.

I haven’t found a collected listing yet. Some events are on Ticketmaster, some on Ticketfly

oh i just had a little google - also can't find collected dates - but found what i need to know: that they're doing seattle on march 30th. might catch the show, I'm overdue a seattle visit in any case

the irony of conservative owned crocodile in seattle presenting the chapo show in town

Their tour will probably be run about as well as their merch efforts, and similarly overcharged.

buying merch of a podcast just doesn't compute for me

chapo brand maximization is sort of offputting.

like I can't fault them for the fact that people keep throwing money at them for the podcast itself, but the book, shirts etc just feel crass

podcast merch is cool if you wanna look like the biggest fuckin loser

enh, I'd cash in too, it's not like any aspect of their enterprise is built to last

I agree that podcast merch is dumb though

yeah, I guess I can see wanting to build a nest-egg off it, none of them are probably destined to springboard to greater stardom, will probably just fizzle out in a few years and then maybe they do some journalism/writing.

hey now i like my uhh yeah dude t