Bette Midler not a WV fan (1 Viewer)

[Sinn Fein]

I'm not willing to put a number on it, but I think there is a significant number of people in this country who look down on rural white America. 

I think that is true.  And, I think the reverse is true - a significant number of people in this country look down on urban living, or even suburban living.

That, to me, is the biggest divide in the country.

 

[timschochet]

Yeah he got beaten up pretty badly on this one.   Can't blame him for trying to end it. 

Lol. I was “beaten up” by people who won’t accept that institutionalized racism exists all throughout our society. 

 

[timschochet]

Agree completely.

Most conservatives believe this. That’s not a big shocker. I feel the same way about the conservative approach to immigration, and climate change, and gun rights. 

 

[timschochet]

I'm definitely of the belief that privilege exists and life is much better for whites than non-whites in this country. I also believe that it's not a huge deal, in my own personal life experiences, to just put up with the double standards.

But, demographics are changing. We are becoming less white and that's going to continue. I think if these attitudes towards white people continue, at some point that's going to result in things that are a bit more serious than whining. I worry that once the day comes that large portions of white people have had enough, we won't be able to just flip the switch and change those attitudes towards them.

So, either all these efforts to get white people to change better work or I think it might be good to find a different way to approach all of this.

This is where I believe DiAngelo is wrong. White people ARE changing. We are becoming a more woke society. This is a good thing. 
A lot of people don’t like it. They point at the excesses that are inevitable with every cultural change, and they complain. Sometimes the complaints become very strong and then politicians like Donald Trump, who express white resentment, can get elected. But their time are always short-lived. In the end we always move forward. 

 

[shadrap]

That is true. I believe in a double standard where  race is concerned, as I wrote. I think it’s highly unusual, almost impossible, for racism to occur against white people in this country. 

ask Joy Reid & Don Lemon.  They are both in the limelight & both get away with blatant racism because they are black.

 

[FairWarning]

And I think this is a problem...equating followers to power or even influence.

Are there some who have some power with that...that people will follow them in a more profound way than clicking a blue link?  Sure...but I don't believe Bette Midler is one of them.

If she wasn’t that important to her followers, she should remove her verified checkmark.    I think you and I can see thru these people, but too many hang on every word they say.  
 

a very good link that Joe Bryant posted, really hits home here, living on the Mich-Ind border.  

 

[ekbeats]

Lol. I was “beaten up” by people who won’t accept that institutionalized racism exists all throughout our society. 

I think most people agree that institutional racism exists.  Calling white people racists isn’t a good solution.  All that does is put up walls and further divide people.

 

[FairWarning]

I think that is true.  And, I think the reverse is true - a significant number of people in this country look down on urban living, or even suburban living.

That, to me, is the biggest divide in the country.

I see it every day, you are correct.  I’m not sure how much of the divide is caused by this, but it’s a lot more than people realize.

 

[KarmaPolice]

The Democrats’ whole approach to racism is twisted.  I actually think it is worsening race relations,  not improving it.

@ekbeats - I know you've been posting less, but I am interested in hearing you unpacking the first part a bit and what you are talking about.  

 

[Summer Wheat]

This is where I believe DiAngelo is wrong. White people ARE changing. We are becoming a more woke society. This is a good thing. 
A lot of people don’t like it. They point at the excesses that are inevitable with every cultural change, and they complain. Sometimes the complaints become very strong and then politicians like Donald Trump, who express white resentment, can get elected. But their time are always short-lived. In the end we always move forward. 

Watching DeAngelo she seems like a guilt ridden old white woman trying to make up for her own racist past.

Anyway this was the Midler thread.  Bette is old too, only a couple years younger than Biden but she is a good singer. Like Me and Bobby Mcgee.

 

[Joe Bryant]

Where I am left-leaning with mostly left people around me in small town WI, and don't hear that aspect of the "sides" battle at all.  

That can be comfortable. But also has disadvantages of being in the bubble. I see that in the South as well. 

 

[FairWarning]

That can be comfortable. But also has disadvantages of being in the bubble. I see that in the South as well. 

I’ve wondered how much is racism vs When in Rome…?  Both are totally different ways of life.

 

[supermike80]

Lol. I was “beaten up” by people who won’t accept that institutionalized racism exists all throughout our society. 

Sure buddy. Thsts why

 

[ekbeats]

@ekbeats - I know you've been posting less, but I am interested in hearing you unpacking the first part a bit and what you are talking about.  

I don’t like identity politics.  I was raised not to see color and that’s how I’ve always tried to treat people.  

 

[crackattack]

Most conservatives believe this. That’s not a big shocker. I feel the same way about the conservative approach to immigration, and climate change, and gun rights. 

You keep labeling me a conservative. I don't think I am. 

1. Immigration should be fixed. I'm all for making legal Immigration easier. Finding a pathway to citizenship for those here now who don't have criminal records. 

2. Climate change is real and we should lead in innovation towards helping make clean energy etc etc.

3. Pro choice

4. Gun culture is a problem in America. We're an extremely violent country with guns being to accessible. Believe it or not, I'm not a "big" 2nd amendment guy.

5. Race. I do not  believe in the white privilege nonsense and whites are inherently racist. I do believe there is systemic racism in policies and laws. I do not like affirmative action. I have multiple different views on race. But current forms of segregation and calling everything and everyone racist or white supremacists is not the answer.

Anything else you wanna know? As I've told you before, I could easily vote for a Democratic candidate. I would've voted for Klobuchar over Biden and Trump. 

Eta. If we don't get health care costs under control, I'm leaning towards single payer. And quite possibly something that drastic towards education costs.

 

[timschochet]

You keep labeling me a conservative. I don't think I am. 

1. Immigration should be fixed. I'm all for making legal Immigration easier. Finding a pathway to citizenship for those here now who don't have criminal records. 

2. Climate change is real and we should lead in innovation towards helping make clean energy etc etc.

3. Pro choice

4. Gun culture is a problem in America. We're an extremely violent country with guns being to accessible. Believe it or not, I'm not a "big" 2nd amendment guy.

5. Race. I do not  believe in the white privilege nonsense and whites are inherently racist. I do believe there is systemic racism in policies and laws. I do not like affirmative action. I have multiple different views on race. But current forms of segregation and calling everything and everyone racist or white supremacists is not the answer.

Anything else you wanna know? As I've told you before, I could easily vote for a Democratic candidate. I would've voted for Klobuchar over Biden and Trump. 

Eta. If we don't get health care costs under control, I'm leaning towards single payer. And quite possibly something that drastic towards education costs.

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t trying to pigeonhole you and I apologize if it came off that way. I realize that I was responding to your post but my comment about conservatives rejecting the concept of white privilege was more of a general statement. 
We’re not that far apart on a lot of issues. 

 

[parasaurolophus]

2. She does not believe that all white Americans (of which she is one) are racist. 

Just want to point out again that this is completely wrong since Tim is now on misdirection watch. Her own words declare over and over white people are racist. It is like the core of her whole scam. Not sure why you are trying to take that away from her. 

This is very much like when people tried to argue that the people booing the mayor out of the crowd in MN because he wouldn't commit to getting rid of the police department really just wanted some social workers in addition to the police. 

It's like they want to still support the message even though they know the message is insane, so they then act as if we just don't understand what they are really saying and put new words in their mouths. 

 

[Ghost Rider]

I don’t like identity politics.  I was raised not to see color and that’s how I’ve always tried to treat people.  

 

The people who play identity politics are the people who generally make things worse, not better, but they will never see it that way. 

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

This is where I believe DiAngelo is wrong. White people ARE changing. We are becoming a more woke society. This is a good thing. 
A lot of people don’t like it. They point at the excesses that are inevitable with every cultural change, and they complain. Sometimes the complaints become very strong and then politicians like Donald Trump, who express white resentment, can get elected. But their time are always short-lived. In the end we always move forward. 

"Forward" is an illusion.  It presupposes that the arbitrary direction of movement has one preferred direction and one attainable goal.  Movement itself may be illusory.  The Buddha sits, and waits, uncertain.  Tim percieves the ultimate good and seeks it out.

As for Ms. DiAngelo, how rare she must be to have percieved this ultimate truth though shackled in perception by her own whiteness, if her truth is true. She saw through the veil, she cast aside the illusions captivativing lesser intellects.  How glorious to be her. How she must elevate her own perceptions. How she must glorify her intellect to have arrived where few or none have before her.  I would venture to guess she thinks very highly of herself as do those who can also see this truth.

I believe I will sit, and watch, and maybe from time to time share a smile or a laugh.  Who knows what may come to me before I am gone.  The unexpected, I expect.

 

[timschochet]

"Forward" is an illusion.  It presupposes that the arbitrary direction of movement has one preferred direction and one attainable goal.  Movement itself may be illusory.  The Buddha sits, and waits, uncertain.  Tim percieves the ultimate good and seeks it out.

As for Ms. DiAngelo, how rare she must be to have percieved this ultimate truth though shackled in perception by her own whiteness, if her truth is true. She saw through the veil, she cast aside the illusions captivativing lesser intellects.  How glorious to be her. How she must elevate her own perceptions. How she must glorify her intellect to have arrived where few or none have before her.  I would venture to guess she thinks very highly of herself as do those who can also see this truth.

I believe I will sit, and watch, and maybe from time to time share a smile or a laugh.  Who knows what may come to me before I am gone.  The unexpected, I expect.

So good to have you back DW. Your sarcasm and wit is far more compelling than many of the more direct arguments made against my position. 

 

[Ramblin Wreck]

So good to have you back DW. Your sarcasm and wit is far more compelling than many of the more direct arguments made against my position. 

You should just write a blog if you don't want people to respond

 

[Roger Sterling]

Couldn't care less about Bette Midler's anything. I've been to WV many times. Decidedly NOT almost heaven.

 

[Da Guru]

So good to have you back DW. Your sarcasm and wit is far more compelling than many of the more direct arguments made against my position. 

Sarcasm with some truths mixed in for good measure.

 

[rockaction]

Award  winning blackwriter Danzy Senna on Robin DeAngelo`s books:

 How we have wished that white people would leave us out of their self-preoccupied, ham-fisted, kindergarten-level discussions of race. But be careful what you wish for. To anyone who has been conscious of race for a lifetime, these books can’t help feeling less brave than curiously backward.

The idea of bravery gets performed a lot in DiAngelo’s book, as she time and again steps in as savior to her Black friends, who apparently need a bold white person like her to take over the wearisome task of educating unselfaware, well-meaning white people.

In a curated space and for an ample fee, she heroically takes on a job that Black people have been doing for free in workplaces and at schools and in relationships over the centuries. As she acknowledges, she also “could not articulate the dynamics of white fragility without … reading the work of Black writers who came before my time.” Indeed, everything she notices about whiteness has been noticed by Black writers long before her.

DiAngelo’s lilly whiteness is her not-so-secret sauce, giving her crucial entrée to audiences who, as she puts it, “are more likely to be open to initial challenges to racial positions … from a fellow white person.”

Thank God he or she is award-winning. Then he might not have changed the language to suit his own ends when he coined the neologism of "lilly." 

Was it an award given at a DEI department, or actual literary organization? 

It's "lily-white." That's how he or she is looking to express what they're trying to say through the use of idiom. 

Jeepers Cornstalks. Also, this seems more a criticism leveled by a radical black nationalist than anything else. Much as I hate DiAngelo, me and Senna here find no common cause. He or she seems to disqualify DiAngelo solely on the basis of her whiteness, and I don't agree with that line of argument. 

They're out! 

 

[Navin Johnson]

TIL: West Virginia has a higher literacy rate than California or New York.

If you're from NY or CA: The literacy rate is the total number of literate persons (people able to both read and write) in a given group, expressed as the percentage of that group. 

You oddly left FL off that list.

 

[Philo Beddoe]

You oddly left FL off that list.

I’d venture to guess it was left off because most of the folks thumbing their noses at WV are from NY and CA and not FL.

 

[Navin Johnson]

I’d venture to guess it was left off because most of the folks thumbing their noses at WV are from NY and CA and not FL.

Or because the OP is from FL? 

 

[parasaurolophus]

FL is talked about enough. 

 

[ekbeats]

 

The people who play identity politics are the people who generally make things worse, not better, but they will never see it that way. 

I think there was a time and a place for it - when blacks didn’t have equal protection under law and affirmative action was needed to force change.  But those days are over.  Now it’s doing more harm than good.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

I am quite sure that there is at least one person somewhere in West Virginia who is poor, illiterate, and strung out.

I am also quite sure that there is at least one liberal Hollywood celebrity who thinks said junkie is representative of West Virginians more generally.

I am quite sure again that there is at least one conservative who thinks said bigoted celebrity is representative of most liberals in that regard.

I don't find any of those banalities very interesting.

 

[Joe Bryant]

Or because the OP is from FL? 

 

[Navin Johnson]

Not you, the guy who made the post we are referring to

 

[Joe Bryant]

Not you, the guy who made the post we are referring to

Probably better to quote the post you're referring to then. Most people assume Original Post is the first post in the thread. 

 

[Navin Johnson]

Probably better to quote the post you're talking about then. Most people assume Original Post is the first post in the thread. 

Would probably be even better to thread the responses

 

[Joe Bryant]

Would probably be even better to thread the responses

Would be if the board software allowed that but it doesn't.

Until then, better to quote the post you're referring to as people have for years here. Thanks.

 

[Navin Johnson]

Would be if the board software allowed that but it doesn't.

Until then, better to quote the post you're referring to as people have for years here. Thanks.

This rarely happens.  If you are confused about the context of a particular post you can always backtrack the conversation like everyone else does.  

 

[Joe Bryant]

This rarely happens.  If you are confused about the context of a particular post you can always backtrack the conversation like everyone else does.  

Sorry but no. Calling something the "original post" when it's not the original post in the thread is just bad form and makes for poor discussion. 

You can obviously continue to do that if you insist. I'd ask that folks be more clear. That's about all the time I have on this one. Happy Holidays to you and yours. 

 

[DocHolliday]

Couldn't care less about Bette Midler's anything. I've been to WV many times. Decidedly NOT almost heaven.

Many of us probably haven’t thought about Midler in many years.  Be nice if she shuts up and stops spewing hatred for the few remaining years of her life.  

 

[Philo Beddoe]

Many of us probably haven’t thought about Midler in many years.  Be nice if she shuts up and stops spewing hatred for the few remaining years of her life.  

The View is viewed by over 2.5 million people daily. That is more than MSNBC and CNN primetime combined. 

 

[Joe Bryant]

The View is viewed by over 2.5 million people daily. That is more than MSNBC and CNN primetime combined. 

I did not know that. That's a lot of views. Is Midler connected to the View somehow?

 

[timschochet]

I did not know that. That's a lot of views. Is Midler connected to the View somehow?

I suspect people get her confused with Joy Behar. 

 

[Chaz McNulty]

Sorry but no. Calling something the "original post" when it's not the original post in the thread is just bad form and makes for poor discussion. 

You can obviously continue to do that if you insist. I'd ask that folks be more clear. That's about all the time I have on this one. Happy Holidays to you and yours. 

I agree.  in fact, I still think you're from Florida.

 

[Chaz McNulty]

The View is viewed by over 2.5 million people daily. That is more than MSNBC and CNN primetime combined. 

Man, just because she's an older Liberal lady, doesn't mean she's on The View.

 

[Philo Beddoe]

Man, just because she's an older Liberal lady, doesn't mean she's on The View.

yup confused her with the other insufferable woman

 

[timschochet]

yup confused her with the other insufferable woman

They do look very much alike…never really thought of it. 

 

[The Future Champs]

Just a drive-by post to say that if I had to choose between Middler or WV I’d take WV, and that I think the Dems are nuts for giving Manchin a hard time.

 

[KarmaPolice]

And @timschochet I don't mean to keep at you on this. I just thought the laughing it off was odd and tried to better understand.

And for the bigger picture, this to me was way less about Midler and way more about the article about rural folks and how they fit with the Trump candidacy and how I think it's different than many see it. I know a lot of "those people" and I think that article was spot on. Plus I still think it's perfect the most insightful article into the 2016 election came from cracked.com. 

Back to work here. 

It's been up on my browser for a few days, and I finally got around to reading this one - thanks for linking that article, @Joe Bryant.   Good stuff.  

 

[Summer Wheat]

I suspect people get her confused with Joy Behar. 

Yes, they are both old, bitter geezers. Have not heard from Midler in years but the few times I have seen Behar she always seems so miserable and angry. If she is married I feel bad for her husband.

 

[AAABatteries]

To protest, I’m giving away my Rochelle Rochelle tickets.

 

[NorvilleBarnes]

To protest, I’m giving away my Rochelle Rochelle tickets.

I'll take them. To protest I'll attend but pretend not to like it.