Tag: racism

Being an orange guy supporter fan is basically a meme

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On my way to the office, there’s this house that I’ve noticed.  It was an obvious tear-down and flip, because it’s a home that sticks out that it looks absolutely nothing like the aesthetic of all the other properties in the vicinity.  It’s hard to describe it, but it almost seems fortress-like, because there’s almost no landscaping other than fresh sod, there are high fences that flank the sides of the property, and the only vehicles in the driveway have been two giant fuck-you trucks.  The trucks are black and white respectively, and for the matter so is the house, with it being primarily white with black shutters, doors and accents.

I don’t really know why, but I had this hunch that the people that lived there were probably the types of people who supported the orange guy that tanked ruled ‘Murica.  But recently, on my latest commute in, I noticed that they had two signs in their yard, in support of Bubba Kemp, the orange-guy worshipping incumbent governor who is up for reelection in November, and it basically validated everything I theorized about the residents of this property.

But then it got me thinking, how easy it’s become to pick out orange guy supporters, even if they’re not so flagrantly broadcasting their fealty.  And that they’ve basically become living breathing memes of human beings with their brainless worship of a clown.

Sure, there are the very obvious sheep out there who have Make America Great Again hats, bumper stickers, and other orange guy paraphernalia, and those guys are sad and disappointing in their own right, but at least they’re honest and straightforward with their allegiance.  But it’s the people that want you to know without making it obvious that I’m more fascinated in and frankly, these are the people out there that I think are worse, because it’s like they want to enjoy the luxuries of America, while being in support of ‘Murica.

Not to mention, that a lot of these types have unfortunately co-opted all sorts of brands, IPs and other forms of symbolism, and ruined it for everyone else by claiming that they’re symbols of their hatred of modern society.

So anyway, here’s what I’ve observed as being signs of more subtle orange guy fanaticism:

  • Don’t Tread On Me stickers, flags or decals
  • The Punisher logo decals
  • Salt Life stickers
  • Really loves firearms
  • Very large trucks with lift kits, usually black
  • American flags hanging off of said trucks
  • Properties that look like they are somewhat defensible in an apocalyptic scenario

I’m sure there are lots of other things that could be on this list, but these are the things that come immediately to mind when I think about things I see that instantly make me very confident that a person is an obvious patriot.  And the more bullets they check off, the more I’m curious what they were doing or where they were on January 6th.

The point is, people don’t really need to be brandishing the very obvious stuff to make it obvious where their general allegiances and temperaments lie.  Whether they care to realize it or not, there’s plenty of other things that have manifested and been nurtured throughout the last few years that make it pretty obvious to what type of person a random stranger on the street is, just by their behaviors and preferences, which to me, is what makes something meme-worthy. 

What’s sad, aside from the people who are brainwashed by all this bullshit, are the poor identities and IPs that have been bastardized by their being co-opted by the extreme right.  I feel bad for any intelligent Marines who have to see the Gadsden flag being used by idiots who have never even thought about serving the country, flying it without knowing any bit of its history.  I feel bad for Marvel Comics and any writer who ever was involved with The Punisher, seeing all these morons using the skull emblem and claiming it to be “for them.” 

And worst off, I feel saddest for the American flag, which is so often being flown with almost a malicious intent, by people who want to throw their extreme patriotism in the faces of normal, regular Americans who might not feel the need to have to throw the flag up everywhere they go to represent the country we live in.

The behavior of the mindless and ignorant have taken a lot of historic elements and respectable  symbols and turned them into memes by how flagrantly misused they’ve been, but at least in doing so, they’re making it very easy to identify people that I really have no interest in associating with, because ain’t nobody need this kind of stupidity anchoring down my little world.

Lol Alabama: who do you think you’re fooling?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Uh sure, my bad – Lawrence County, Alabama Old White Guys’ Club Republican group “mistakenly” uses GOP elephant logo featuring hooded Klansmen in it

East Side Elementary in Marietta, Georgia must breathe a sigh of relief every time some other group out there “accidentally” co-opts racist shit and puts it out there and expects to get away with it and never does.  Since their own stint using the Nazi eagle, it didn’t take long before Hanover County, Virginia basically used a swastika for some team within the government, which probably took the immediate heat off of them. 

And now to distance themselves even further, we’ve got some Republican club out in Alabama using artwork from an extreme left-wing news source to represent their right-wing bullshit, that had pretty obvious KKK imagery in it, and then saying “whoops, my bad” when they got caught.  Make no mistake, this is pretty obviously one of those instances where there would be no apology had they not gotten caught, but it’s hard to imagine that in this day where people are actively looking for racism that anyone would think they’d get away with it.

It’s funny, because I googled Lawrence County, Alabama, to see where on the map it was, so that I could then go onto the Southern Poverty Law site, and search where in Alabama where there was reported KKK activity, and see just how accurate it checked out.  But hilariously (ironically), when you click on Alabama, it says that not only is there KKK activity in Alabama, unlike most of the other hate groups in the state, there’s no specific dots to signify where, but it just says statewide.  So obviously Lawrence County falls into that category.

I mean, it’s no surprise how much of a layup such is, seeing as how Alabama is well, Alabama.  A state that other than college football isn’t really known for anything else other than Forrest Gump and racism.  It’s about as surprising as the NFL slapping Deshaun Watson on the wrist for sexual harassment while suspending indefinitely Calvin Ridley for gambling that Alabama has KKK on the brain, and it manifests itself in their Republican clubs.

Sometimes, I proclaim that one of the biggest flaws of the political field is the Democrats’ complete lack of respect for the collective intelligence of the Republican party; that it’s their liberal arrogance that thinks technology, creativity and solidarity amongst minority groups can actually overcome sheer force of numbers and mindless hero worship of a bunch of old white folks.  That this shit didn’t just manifest out of nowhere in 2016, but was the result of an extremely lengthy and tactical long game that is bearing tremendous fruit in advantage and a seemingly endlessly stacked deck against all opposition to this very day.  Tactics like this don’t come from idiots and brainless followers that so many people love to associate your stereotypical Republicans to be.  Somewhere in the party are some really, really intelligent and cunning minds, and this is why America is ‘Murica, and why it never seems like it will ever end.

But then we do actually have idiots and brainless sheep of ‘Muricans who make up other parts of the Republican party, who think they can flagrantly use graphics featuring Klansmen in them and actually think they’ll get away with it, and it’s like well shit, why the fuck are these dipshits’ votes actually counting?

Either way, I don’t think anyone with a brain will actually believe Lawrence County, Alabama, is actually apologetic for using their KKK artwork, and that the only thing they’re really sorry about, is that they got caught.

I am all in for Gus Fring as Professor X

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Giancarlo Esposito reveals that he has had meetings with Marvel people for a future role, expresses desire to be Professor X

My knee-jerk reaction to the idea of Gus Fring being Professor X, was absolutely all aboard the train.  I get that aside from Captain Picard, the role of Charles Xavier was basically designed to be for Patrick Stewart, but in the age and in light of pursuing change and pursuing the future, I’m hard pressed to imagine anyone more succinctly qualified for the role of Professor X than Giancarlo Esposito.

Like many, my first real exposure to Esposito was him playing Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, and as far as characters go, he’s easily up there as some of my all-time favorites, because I love characters that are cerebral, command respect, and play the long game like a chess grandmaster.  I get that throughout his career since, he’s basically been bad guy after bad guy after bad guy, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be capable of playing the cerebral, respect commanding, long game-player like Professor X, plus it’s not like Xavier didn’t make some fucked up choices in his life either.

Esposito is polished, annunciates intelligently and in the manner you’d expect to hear from Professor X, and has been entrenched in sci-fi/comics long enough to where it probably wouldn’t feel inorganic or phony on his part when playing the role.  There is absolutely zero reason why he wouldn’t make an excellent Professor X.

Unfortunately, to no surprise, there are plenty of people out there that don’t agree with my enthusiasm for the idea of Gus Fring as Professor X.  And the funny-not-really-funny thing about the internet and social media and how we’re spoon-fed occasional comments, is when you see the remarks from people you know, and you’re reading words that don’t really sound that intelligent or, in the case of what I saw, were good examples of peoples’ white privilege soaking through the sponge.

Because in spite of many peoples’ best attempts to try not to be racist but not doing a very good job of doing it, the seemingly number one reason for any sort of opposition of the idea of Giancarlo Esposito as Professor X, really boils down to the fact that he’s not white.  I understand that there’s an expectation set by decades of seeing a lily-white Caucasian Professor X in comics and FOX properties, but we live in a world where change is inevitable and is happening very rapidly.  But you could go back to 1963 and change the skin tone of Professor X to absolutely any color at all, and it wouldn’t have altered the course of history one bit.

He’d still have has had his legs crushed by the Shadow King.  He still would have gone toe-to-toe with Phoenix on the psychic plane.  He still would’ve gotten shot by Stryfe and been the first guy to have the Legacy Virus.  He still would’ve mind-fucked hundreds of people and become Onslaught.  And so forth and so forth.  A black Xavier, Hispanic Xavier, Asian Xavier wouldn’t have changed the course of the character’s history one bit.  Just because he was white in six decades worth of comic books doesn’t mean he couldn’t be presented as non-white in what would be at the very most, a series of films.

But seeing people take shots at his polish, his acting ability and other reasons to criticize the guy when they’re really just objecting to the fact that his skin tone doesn’t match Ben Affleck’s, is insulting and is bullshit.  When the day is over, the right performer should be the one to get the role, regardless of the color of their skin.  I mean, look at the shitty 2003 Daredevil speaking of Ben Affleck.  The film was horrendous, but one of the few things they did get right was casting a very black Michael Clarke Duncan as the role of the historically very white Kingpin.  Regardless of skin color, Duncan is a tank of a man who commands a room, has swag and is convincingly physically invincible, much like the character he portrayed.  Naturally, there was much complaints about that as well, but to its credit it still came to fruition.

Plus, Patrick Stewart isn’t getting any younger.  Y’all remember seeing his cameo in [spoiler redaction]?  Eyes all sinking in with age, not entirely sure the wheelchair was just a prop.  When he was a layup for the role of Professor X, those Bryan Singer X-Men flicks were literally two decades ago.  Stewart is 82 years old.  Eighty-two years old.  At the very most, Professor X was probably in his early fifties in the comics, in “present” canon.  Absolutely no disrespect to Picard.  He is the living embodiment of how Professor X was originally portrayed.  But my man is getting old.  He is old.  He doesn’t need to be continued to be trotted out, and then get the digital Luke Skywalker treatment.  Let the change happen.  Change.  Is.  Needed.

Hopefully the stiffs at Disney/Marvel/ESPN/FOX will be capable of not caving into their white racist brethren when it comes time to eventually start casting for the introduction of mutants into the MCU, and make the right fucking call: Giancarlo Esposito as Professor X.

Oh, Georgia #354

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

/stevecarrellwinceface.gif – Cobb County elementary school unveils new logos, immediately likened to Nazi symbolism, results predictable

Seeing as how mythical wife is an educator, I’ve become more familiar and cognizant of many schools in the Metro Atlanta area by osmosis, and I actually know of this particular school in question.  East Side Elementary is right off of GA-120 which is a pretty major thoroughfare, and I pass by it regularly, despite not knowing what the name of said school was until I read about where it was located.

But man, talk about a major, major, major fuck-up from this rebranding.  Whatever designer(s) they utilized to come up with this inflammatory design really needs to be scrutinized from a character standpoint, because either they’re some deep-repressed bigots, bigots that think they can pull the wool over the public, trolls who thought it would be a real gas to sneak in Nazi symbolism, or a little bit of all of the above.  However, seeing as how it was still government work, it can probably be safely assumed that the degree of creativity wasn’t particularly high.

When mythical wife showed me these logos, I immediately recognized the red flag, because when I was a wee lad, I played a lot of Wolfenstein on my 486, because it was about the only game it could handle, and Nazi eagles were all over the place.  Imagine my mortified and amused surprise to see something so close to Nazi symbolism, being used to represent an elementary school.

The best part about the trio of logos that they moved forward with, the only element that remained consistent between them all, was the Nazi eagle in the middle of it.  Complete with a monogram that replaces one of the S’s in SS with an E, to suddenly stand for East Side.  Like they were very insistent that of all the elements to be concrete, it had to be the Nazi eagle.  Font, shape, dynamic, all flexible, but nah dog, we GOT to keep that Nazi eagle intact.

To add insult to this embarrassingly ironic design faux pas is the fact that East Side elementary is literally next door to a synagogue.  Like very literally; not down the street literally, or catty corner literally; the school parking lot, if you go straight out of it, you will run right into a synagogue literally. 

Furthermore, this is about one of the whitest parts of East Cobb there is, and that’s saying something considering just how white East Cobb already is.  The neighborhood has “country club” in the name and is flanked by a golf course, and I’ve driven through and picked up cheap/free shit that rich white people were peddling on Facebook marketplace, so I’ve seen first-hand how elevated white it is compared to the rest of the town.

None of it helps feed the narrative of a lily-white community being so dense and ignorant as to not notice their neighborhood elementary school adopting Nazi imagery to be a part of their logo.  In the end, I don’t think the school or community is really that Nazi, so much as the person(s) who developed these logos, probably have some explaining to do.  But what’s done is done, and the internet never forgets, so it’ll be etched in stone that there was a school in Cobb County that was almost branded with Nazi eagles.  hashtagGeorgia hashtag’Murica

Poor Randall Park

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Comedienne Ali Wong announces divorce, internet reports on it, repeatedly uses photos of Wong with Randall Park instead of her actual husband because arr rook same

At this point, there’s little else I could add to the fires of THAT’S RACIST because yo that shit is racist, and the rampantly white media continues to be just completely inept and incapable of differentiating between Asian people.

What I really wanted to write about is how much it must suck to be Randall Park, because no matter how much work he does, no matter how much exposure he gets, it doesn’t matter if he got into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in WandaVision, or gets to work with The Rock in Young Rock, or has spent six seasons doing Fresh Off the Boat; people just can’t seem to differentiate him from other Asian people in the public eye, be it getting mistaken for Raymond Lee or Ali Wong’s husband, neither of whom he looks anything like, but I’m also Asian and can tell my fellow yellow brethren apart better than white folks can.

Yeah, it’s got to get old and exasperating the fact that it keeps happening, and I’d bet it gets harder and harder for Park or any other minorities to constantly be expected to take the high road and say rhetoric about microaggressions and teachable moments, when all they really want to say is that white people can go fuck themselves for their hollow apologies and arrogance that they can continuously keep getting away with it.  Like Parade and MSN can go fuck themselves for either not fact checking or having white editors who are just as colorblind as the shitfucks writing these fluff pieces in the first place.

Sure, it’s easy to try and spin this as Randall Park being so famous that he’s the go-to Asian to be continuously be mistaken for, but that would be an excuse whiter than Duke’s lacrosse team.  Let’s stop saying ‘do better’ and start saying what we really want to say whenever this racist mistaken identity continues to happen: fuck you.

I’m sure this is going to go over very well

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a popular narrative that the National Football League is basically incapable of doing anything right.  And that the financial bulldozer that they ultimately still are, is completely in spite of the general lack of ethics, competent leadership and all of the just in general inability to not keep doing stupid shit.

Players want to celebrate touchdowns and look like they’re having fun?  Those are penalties.  A player who is on injured inactive status wants to bet on some football games?  That’s an exiling.  But multiple players who were caught, have video evidence, or were found guilty of domestic violence?  2-4 game suspension.  A Muslim player kneels after a touchdown?  Penalty.  Tim Tebow kneels after scoring a touchdown?  Hero.

I mean, the list can go on for an embarrassingly long time, regardless of the fact that the NFL is a veritable money printer.  Regardless of the fact that I don’t have the time to indulge in as much sports as I used to or liked to, the NFL doesn’t exactly make itself particularly compelling or attractive to want to pay any attention to, even if I had the capacities to.

Recently, the NFL made a public amendment to what has been called the Rooney Rule, which was already basically the NFL’s version of Affirmative Action, where teams are basically PR strong-armed into having minorities somewhere on the coaching staff.  And up until this amendment, just about every person of color ends up being a defensive coordinator, which depending on the reputation of the team, might either be a really important role, or a really insignificant one.

But the amendment states basically, that a minority must be added to the offensive staff, and also now includes that women can be implemented in order to fulfill these obligated positions.

So just like that, the NFL has basically admitted that defensive coordinators are mostly patsy positions, and that they’ve been stashing all of their mandatory minorities in them.  And now they’re trying to rectify it, as well as backhand placate women, by amending the Rooney Rule, to include more minorities and/or women onto the more glamorous offensive side of coaching.

Already, the public acknowledgment of all this is embarrassing enough, but because the NFL can’t do anything right, I can already see what’s going to happen: a whole lot of bogus bullshit positions are going to magically materialize, and they’re going to immediately be filled by minorities and/or women.  Or, there will be some team that’s extra ambitious, and fill them with black women, and go for that double whammy of Rooney Requirements:

  • Head Quarterback Football Asset Return Specialist (ball boy or girl)
  • Running Backs Nutrition Management Coach (personal chef)
  • Receivers’ Public Relations Coach (social media manager)

By labeling these with specific offensive positions, they’re now parts of the offensive coaching staffs, meant to fulfill the Rooney Rule.  And make no mistake, as hyperbolic and snarky as some of these things might appear for the sake of being brog material, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if we see some surreptitiously new coaching titles start to appear on the coaching staffs of teams in the very near future.

What’s the point of dress codes if they’re not enforced?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

All snide social commentary that skews towards the obvious racism that is often associated with them, it is a serious question: if a place has a dress code and nobody enforces it, what’s the point of having it in the first place?

Down in Florida, my famiry went to dinner at a supposed upscale steakhouse at one of the numerous Disney resorts.  While we were packing for the trip, I had full intentions of going full vacation mode as in packing basically nothing but shorts, t-shirts, and with the intention of wearing nothing on my feet other than my slides the whole time, but mythical wife informed me that we had reservations at a place where there was a dress code and that I should pack accordingly; as in a collared shirt, and jeans were acceptable as long as they were not ripped up. 

Only slightly begrudgingly because I do like fine dining and don’t mind cleaning up from time to time, I did pack accordingly.  But I did mention to my wife that I would wager money that we would probably see people there that were nowhere close to adhering to the dress code, be it people slumming it up or just samples of the various Florida white trash that exists in the state.

When we got to the restaurant, I was compliant to the dress code because I have respect and follow rules, but completely unsurprising, were all the people I could see inside and waiting outside of the restaurant, that most definitely were not.  In most cases, it was a bunch of Ben Afflecks who looked like they rolled right off one of Orlando’s countless golf courses, in their polo shirts, but their non-compliant khaki shorts, but there were no shortage of people slumming it up in t-shirts and modes of dress that would be better suited to a mall food court rather than an upscale resort steakhouse.

And not that I have any issues with gay guys, but there was one fabulous dude wearing a men’s denim romper, with red bandanna around his neck, as if he were deliberately trying to look like a male version of Rosie the Riveter.  All classifications aside, that wasn’t compliant to the dress code either, but that didn’t stop him from being able to get inside and dine as well.

Which brings me back to the original query, if they’re never enforced, why do places even bother advertising any sort of dress code?  At the end of the day it’s fairly meaningless to me, but as a person who can respect and adhere to simple rules, it always irks me when other people don’t.  It’s not at all difficult to do, and it makes me wonder why people don’t want to take a little pride and clean themselves up.  I’m not saying that people need to go all Harry and Lloyd, but is it really fatal to just try?

All this really makes me want, is to see a video montage of people getting turned away at restaurants for not being compliant to dress codes, but much like the disappointment I feel in person when I see those who don’t, the internet really is no different.  I can’t find any compilations, much less any decent individual videos of such humiliations occurring, and just a whole bunch of depressing and disappointing news articles of black people getting turned away at restaurants.

At this point, abolish them all, if they’re never going to be enforced and only being used to inappropriately weed out racism.