"The Washington Post used DiAngelo and others to exacerbate racial hate and stoke the fires of a year long riot, equivalent in damage and death to a Category 2 Hurricane, and now that there’s no more money in wokeness they’re throwing DiAngelo out with the trash."
This movie was about 3 years too late to have a real impact/generate any real controversy. That’s because the Daily Wire didn’t have the courage to put their money and reputation on the line 3 years ago. Like most conservative slop merchants, they cross risky streets only after braver pioneers have already safely crossed or been clobbered by a bus (usually after a Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro has thrown them under it).
Agree. Same might be said of Bill Maher. He kept his "politically incorrect" head very low from 2016 to 2021 and only started saying antiwoke stuff after there were enough bodies on the cancellation pile that he could take cover behind it.
That's not exactly a fair or even remotely accurate take, especially when considering reality. To make films or anything media, it requires capital and lots of it. DW didn't even start its audio/video media portion until 2021, as evidenced by the reporting and facts. And, since you can't just spring something out of nothing, building capital to make the stuff you want, takes time. It's not that they didn't have the courage, it's more likely than not, they didn't have the funding to go after THIS particular topic, with other topics taking the forefront. Run Hide Fight was their first foray into the media space, IIRC. Never mind that any significant media endeavor takes a year or years to come to fruition, it's more likely than not, it took this long to get the movie produced, especially since just 3-4 years ago was when this particular subject was at its peak with the Summer of Love 2020. Is your expectation that they come out with a movie, with no funding (or funding that's prioritized to other things or dealing in a resource-constrained environment), all so they could... what? appease you? Holy smokes, talk about not having any legitimate expectations based in reality. Take a step back and realize, everything takes time and resources, a movie isn't a blog, it's not a meme, and it certainly isn't a blog reply. And, please explain who has highlighted the fringe element that's being mentioned in this article/blog, and done so with as much widespread recognition and acknowledgement (like being talked about in a major news outlet like WashPo)? I'll wait for a relevant response, but I don't there will be a cogent example provided, because that's WHY it's being discussed at WashPo, because it hasn't been addressed yet.
This movie is slop for conservative consumers and nothing more. DW has had the money and resources (i.e. $3M and a shoulder camera) to make it since at least 2019, but they made movies about girls with guns and men playing women’s sports instead. DEI is on its way out, not because of DW, but because it’s starting to really hurt bottom lines at big companies, especially big tech. Bezos is tired of DEI too, and is signaling to other companies that it’s ok to start rolling this stuff back now. That’s WHY it’s being talked about in WashPo.
It's a fair question, but while I have a lot of criticisms of Matt Walsh, I think the simple explanation is that he is more personally animated by transgender discourse.
I think giving Normies some better talking points can really help. There are so many people working for mid-tier law firms, tech, nursing, fitness, finance companies that have to take trainings steeped in these ideas who don't care to pay attention to the cutting edge of the culture war. Those people can benefit from something like this, and I think that's cool.
I'm most annoyed that it made me like Matt Walsh because he seems to be the exact same kind of culture war demagogue that he's criticizing. He might make good points about how silly Rao and DiAngelo are, but that doesn't mean his worldview any more accurate than theirs.
"The human instinct for avoiding confrontation is exploitable if you’re sufficiently willing to violate the social contract." - that might be the smartest thing WaPo has ever written.
Oh, and as for the notion that DiAngelo and others at the epicenter of "antiracism" are an unrepresentative "fringe", I'm reminded of an old quote of mine:
"QAnon is the right-wing version of the Democrat Party".
To be fair, the movie didn't lampoon Wilfred Reilly. It lampooned the "anti-racist" ideology by exposing it to Reilly's knowledge about hate crime hoaxes, which is a topic that Walsh has been very vocal about.
I saw the movie last night with family members who are too-online and their children. One of the adults thought it was the greatest thing ever and cheered when Thanos... I mean Robin DiAngelo was "got;" the other adult thought it was funny and was surprised at how much they enjoyed it; kids thought it was pretty funny and asked why the people in the movie were behaving so dumbly.
I think there is value in the movie for Normies who just happen to work at companies that make people do these silly, non-catastrophic-but-not-really-helpful DEI trainings. The screening was in one of the small 50-70 person theatres and it was full of mostly 30-60 year olds plus the two kids we brought. I think there is a huge appetite for pushback on silly things and I couldn't help but think of old Michael Moore documentaries which pointed out absurdities and how much we liked those.
The movie wasn't really *good*, but it was surprisingly funny. Some parts were a bit dull, as if they had extended a 60 minute, long-form youtube skit into a movie, but the meat of it was highly entertaining. I'm not that invested in the end of wokeness at this point, but it's still nice to see some of the bad actors get a bit of come-uppance for once.
There's something about a political documentary like this being "artistically true" but not entirely grounded in reality... it's like Michael Moore exposed some stupid crap, but he was also a political actor who was pushing a biased view of the subject matter. I feel similarly here. Walsh might just be the slightly-less-funny Moore of the now.
Nice article, btw! I really appreciate this point about Bandwagons. It's so annoying to constantly have to tell people that they're just on another bandwagon and maybe they should be careful about where this new one is headed.
I mean I get the pendulum reference but we have evidence over the last couple hundred years that the overarching pendulum is still swinging in the direction away from individual freedom. Will that one ever see a reversal?
The overall freedom pendulum will continue to swing towards "less" until the dollar collapses, a bunch of politicians have very bad things happen to them, the country divides itself up into smaller more manageable pieces, and then each piece starts to build its own version of what it thinks freedom looks like.
Although not inevitable I think this scenario is a whole lot more likely to happen in 10-20 years than us being in essentially the same (but more broke) place we are today. The elites in our country still have no idea how much they have contributed to the delegitimization of the institutions they lead or prize, and where that naturally leads once a critical mass of the public has checked out on our present system being salvageable.
I generally assume that nothing ever happens, but I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll be looking at a fundamentally different political arrangement a decade from now.
The Boomers are the last generation holding onto some vestigial attachment to the old institutions. They’re fully illegitimate in the eyes of half of Gen X and Millennials, and basically all of Gen Z. I think the increasingly desperate attempts of those institutions to assert their legitimacy will only accelerate their demise.
The impending bankruptcy of entitlement programs will play a key role here. The decision will boil down to “let the dollar collapse” or “break the social contract in place for the last 100 years”. Either way, it’s going to lead to a critical mass of people giving up on the federal government.
Agree with everything you said. Although I am sure some of the elites recognize this and are planning accordingly, it still seems to me (possibly naively) that many are going to be caught almost entirely by surprise.
"The Washington Post used DiAngelo and others to exacerbate racial hate and stoke the fires of a year long riot, equivalent in damage and death to a Category 2 Hurricane, and now that there’s no more money in wokeness they’re throwing DiAngelo out with the trash."
Brutal.
I have to live up to the AI's impression of me. :)
Fitting. Accurate. Justified. :D
This movie was about 3 years too late to have a real impact/generate any real controversy. That’s because the Daily Wire didn’t have the courage to put their money and reputation on the line 3 years ago. Like most conservative slop merchants, they cross risky streets only after braver pioneers have already safely crossed or been clobbered by a bus (usually after a Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro has thrown them under it).
Agree. Same might be said of Bill Maher. He kept his "politically incorrect" head very low from 2016 to 2021 and only started saying antiwoke stuff after there were enough bodies on the cancellation pile that he could take cover behind it.
That's not exactly a fair or even remotely accurate take, especially when considering reality. To make films or anything media, it requires capital and lots of it. DW didn't even start its audio/video media portion until 2021, as evidenced by the reporting and facts. And, since you can't just spring something out of nothing, building capital to make the stuff you want, takes time. It's not that they didn't have the courage, it's more likely than not, they didn't have the funding to go after THIS particular topic, with other topics taking the forefront. Run Hide Fight was their first foray into the media space, IIRC. Never mind that any significant media endeavor takes a year or years to come to fruition, it's more likely than not, it took this long to get the movie produced, especially since just 3-4 years ago was when this particular subject was at its peak with the Summer of Love 2020. Is your expectation that they come out with a movie, with no funding (or funding that's prioritized to other things or dealing in a resource-constrained environment), all so they could... what? appease you? Holy smokes, talk about not having any legitimate expectations based in reality. Take a step back and realize, everything takes time and resources, a movie isn't a blog, it's not a meme, and it certainly isn't a blog reply. And, please explain who has highlighted the fringe element that's being mentioned in this article/blog, and done so with as much widespread recognition and acknowledgement (like being talked about in a major news outlet like WashPo)? I'll wait for a relevant response, but I don't there will be a cogent example provided, because that's WHY it's being discussed at WashPo, because it hasn't been addressed yet.
This movie is slop for conservative consumers and nothing more. DW has had the money and resources (i.e. $3M and a shoulder camera) to make it since at least 2019, but they made movies about girls with guns and men playing women’s sports instead. DEI is on its way out, not because of DW, but because it’s starting to really hurt bottom lines at big companies, especially big tech. Bezos is tired of DEI too, and is signaling to other companies that it’s ok to start rolling this stuff back now. That’s WHY it’s being talked about in WashPo.
Wasn't he making "What is a Woman?" in 2019?
I think so. When AIR? came out my first thought was, “Why wasn’t this one made first?”
It's a fair question, but while I have a lot of criticisms of Matt Walsh, I think the simple explanation is that he is more personally animated by transgender discourse.
I think giving Normies some better talking points can really help. There are so many people working for mid-tier law firms, tech, nursing, fitness, finance companies that have to take trainings steeped in these ideas who don't care to pay attention to the cutting edge of the culture war. Those people can benefit from something like this, and I think that's cool.
I'm most annoyed that it made me like Matt Walsh because he seems to be the exact same kind of culture war demagogue that he's criticizing. He might make good points about how silly Rao and DiAngelo are, but that doesn't mean his worldview any more accurate than theirs.
"The human instinct for avoiding confrontation is exploitable if you’re sufficiently willing to violate the social contract." - that might be the smartest thing WaPo has ever written.
But of course, they lack introspection.
I loved the WaPo article. I thought it was fantastic. To have it come out of WaPo itself was just icing on the cake.
Oh, and as for the notion that DiAngelo and others at the epicenter of "antiracism" are an unrepresentative "fringe", I'm reminded of an old quote of mine:
"QAnon is the right-wing version of the Democrat Party".
Their "fringe" is all of them.
To be fair, the movie didn't lampoon Wilfred Reilly. It lampooned the "anti-racist" ideology by exposing it to Reilly's knowledge about hate crime hoaxes, which is a topic that Walsh has been very vocal about.
Well said Freakout.
I saw the movie last night with family members who are too-online and their children. One of the adults thought it was the greatest thing ever and cheered when Thanos... I mean Robin DiAngelo was "got;" the other adult thought it was funny and was surprised at how much they enjoyed it; kids thought it was pretty funny and asked why the people in the movie were behaving so dumbly.
I think there is value in the movie for Normies who just happen to work at companies that make people do these silly, non-catastrophic-but-not-really-helpful DEI trainings. The screening was in one of the small 50-70 person theatres and it was full of mostly 30-60 year olds plus the two kids we brought. I think there is a huge appetite for pushback on silly things and I couldn't help but think of old Michael Moore documentaries which pointed out absurdities and how much we liked those.
The movie wasn't really *good*, but it was surprisingly funny. Some parts were a bit dull, as if they had extended a 60 minute, long-form youtube skit into a movie, but the meat of it was highly entertaining. I'm not that invested in the end of wokeness at this point, but it's still nice to see some of the bad actors get a bit of come-uppance for once.
There's something about a political documentary like this being "artistically true" but not entirely grounded in reality... it's like Michael Moore exposed some stupid crap, but he was also a political actor who was pushing a biased view of the subject matter. I feel similarly here. Walsh might just be the slightly-less-funny Moore of the now.
Nice article, btw! I really appreciate this point about Bandwagons. It's so annoying to constantly have to tell people that they're just on another bandwagon and maybe they should be careful about where this new one is headed.
🙃🙃🙃🤗🤗🤗😘😘😘😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰
Good stuff as always.
I mean I get the pendulum reference but we have evidence over the last couple hundred years that the overarching pendulum is still swinging in the direction away from individual freedom. Will that one ever see a reversal?
The overall freedom pendulum will continue to swing towards "less" until the dollar collapses, a bunch of politicians have very bad things happen to them, the country divides itself up into smaller more manageable pieces, and then each piece starts to build its own version of what it thinks freedom looks like.
Although not inevitable I think this scenario is a whole lot more likely to happen in 10-20 years than us being in essentially the same (but more broke) place we are today. The elites in our country still have no idea how much they have contributed to the delegitimization of the institutions they lead or prize, and where that naturally leads once a critical mass of the public has checked out on our present system being salvageable.
I generally assume that nothing ever happens, but I think it’s more likely than not that we’ll be looking at a fundamentally different political arrangement a decade from now.
The Boomers are the last generation holding onto some vestigial attachment to the old institutions. They’re fully illegitimate in the eyes of half of Gen X and Millennials, and basically all of Gen Z. I think the increasingly desperate attempts of those institutions to assert their legitimacy will only accelerate their demise.
The impending bankruptcy of entitlement programs will play a key role here. The decision will boil down to “let the dollar collapse” or “break the social contract in place for the last 100 years”. Either way, it’s going to lead to a critical mass of people giving up on the federal government.
Agree with everything you said. Although I am sure some of the elites recognize this and are planning accordingly, it still seems to me (possibly naively) that many are going to be caught almost entirely by surprise.