johnrossbowie

[johnrossbowie]

[johnrossbowie]

LEAVING TWITTER

I wrote this earlier in the fall, before the election, after dissolving my Twitter account. I wasn’t sure where to put it (“try up your ass!” – someone, I’m sure) and then I remembered I have a tumblr I never use. Anyway, here tis.

How do you shame someone who thinks Trumps’ half-baked policies and quarter-baked messaging put him in the pantheon of great Presidents? How do you shame someone so lacking in introspection that they will call Obama arrogant while praising Trump’s decisiveness and yet at the same time vehemently deny that they’re racist? How do you shame someone for whom that racism is endearing and maybe long overdue?

You don’t. It’s silly to think otherwise.

Twitter is an addiction of mine, and true to form, my dependence on it grew more serious after I quit drinking in 2010. At first it was a chance to mouth off, make jokes both stupid and erudite and occasionally stick my foot in my mouth (I owe New Yorker writer Tad Friend an apology. He knows why, or (God willing) he’s forgotten. Either way. Sorry.) I blew off steam, steam that was accumulating without booze to dampen the flames. Not always constructive venting, but I also met new friends, and connected with people whose work I’ve admired for literal decades and ended up seeing plays with Lin-Manuel Miranda and hanging backstage with Jane Wiedlin after a Go-Go’s show and exchanging sober thoughts with Mike Doughty. When my mom passed in 2018, a lot of people reached out to tell me they were thinking of me. This was nice. For a while, Twitter was a huge help when I needed it.

I used to hate going to parties and really hated dancing and mingling, but a couple of drinks would fix that. Point is, for a while, booze was a huge help, too.

But my engagement with Twitter changed, and I started calling people my ‘friends’ even though I’d never once met them or even heard their voices. These weren’t even penpals, these were people whose jokes or stances I enjoyed, so with Arthurian benevolence I clicked on a little heart icon, liked their tweet, and assumed therefore that we had signed some sort of blood oath.

We had not. I got glib, and cheap, and a little lazy. And then to make matters much worse, Trump came along and extended his reach with the medium.

There was a while there where I thought I could be a sort of voice for the voiceless, and I thought I was doing that. I tried very hard to only contribute things that I felt were not being said – It wasn’t accomplishing anything to notice “Haha Trump looks like he’s bullshitting his way through an oral report” – such things were self-evident. I tried to point out very specific inconsistencies in his policies, like the Muslim ban meant to curb terrorism that still favored the country that brought forth 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. Like his full-throated cries against media bias performed while he suckled at Roger Ailes’ wrinkly teat.  Like his fondness for evangelical votes that coincided with a scriptural knowledge that lagged far behind mine, even though I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, and there is no one less religiously observant than a lapsed Episcopalian. But that eventually gave way to unleashing ad hominem attacks against his higher profile supporters, who I felt weren’t being questioned enough, who I felt were in turn being fawned over by theirdim supporters. If you’re one of these guys, and you think I’m talking about you, you’re probably right, but don’t mistake this for an apology. You suck, and you support someone who sucks, and your idolatry is hurting our country and its standing in the world. Fuck you entirely, but that’s not the point. The point is that me screaming into the toilet of Twitter helps no one – it doesn’t help a family stuck at the border because they’re trying to secure a better life for their kids. It doesn’t help a poor teenager who can’t get an abortion because the party of ‘small government’ has squeezed their tiny jurisdiction into her uterus. It doesn’t help the coal miner who’s staking all his hopes on a dying industry and a President’s empty promises to resurrect it. I was born in New York City, and I currently live in Los Angeles. Those are the only two places I’ve ever lived, if you don’t count the 4 years I spent in Ithaca[1]. So, yes, I live in a liberal bubble, and while I’ve driven across the country a couple of times and did a few weeks in a touring band and am as crushed as any heartlander about the demise of Waffle House, you have me dead to rights if you call me a coastal elitist. And with that in mind, I offer few surprises. A guy who grew up in the theater district and was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage or felt you should own an AR-15? THAT would be newsworthy. I am not newsworthy. I can preach to the choir, I can confirm people’s biases, but I will likely not sway anyone who is eager to dismiss a Native New Yorker who lives in Hollywood. I grew up in the New York of the 1970s, and that part of my identity did shape my politics. My mom’s boss was gay and the Son of Sam posed a realistic threat. As such, gays are job creators[2] and guns are used for homicide much more often than they are used for self-defense[3]. I have found this to be generally true over the years, and there’s even data to back it up.

“But Mr. Bowie,” you might say, though I insist you call me John - “those studies are conducted by elitist institutions and those institutions suck!” And again, I am not going to reason with people who will dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their limited world view as elitist or, God Help Us, fake news. But the studies above are peer-reviewed, convincing, and there are more where those came from.

“But John,” you might say, and I am soothed that we’re one a first name basis - “Can’t you just stay on Twitter for the jokes?” Ugh. A) apparently not and B) the jokes are few and far between, and I am 100% part of that problem.

I have stuff to offer, but Twitter is not the place from which to offer it.

After years of academically understanding that Twitter is not the real world, Super Tuesday 2020 made the abstract pretty fucking concrete. If you had looked at my feed on the Monday beforehand – my feed which is admittedly curated towards the left, but not monolithic (Hi, Rich Lowry!) – you’d have felt that a solid Bernie surge was imminent, but also that your candidate was going surprise her more vocal critics. When the Biden sweep swept, when Bernie was diminished and when Warren was defeated, I realized that Twitter is not only not the real world, it’s almost some sort of Phillip K. Dickian alternate timeline, untethered to anything we’re actually experiencing in our day to day life. This is both good news and bad news – one, we’re not heading towards a utopia of single payer health care and the eradication of American medical debt any time soon, but two, we’re also not being increasingly governed by diaper-clad jungen like Charlie Kirk. Clouds and their linings. Leaving Twitter may look like ceding ground to the assclowns but get this – the ground. Is not. There.

It’s just air.

There are tangible things I can do with my time - volunteer with a local organization called Food On Foot, who provide food and job training for people experiencing homelessness here in my adopted Los Angeles. I can give money to candidates and causes I support, and I can occasionally even drop by social media to boost a project or an issue and then vanish, like a sort of Caucasian Zorro who doesn’t read his mentions. I can also model good behavior for my kids (ages 10 and 13) who don’t need to see their father glued to his phone, arguing about Trumps incompetence with Constitutional scholars who have a misspelled Bible verse in their bio (three s’ in Ecclesiastes, folks).

So farewell Twitter. I’ll miss a lot of you. Perhaps not as badly as I miss Simon Maloy and Roger Ebert and Harris Wittels and others whose deaths created an unfillable void on the platform. But I won’t miss the yelling, and the lionization of poor grammar, and anonymous trolls telling my Jewish friends that they were gonna leave the country “via chimney.” I will not miss people who think Trump is a stable genius calling me a “fucktard.” I will not miss transphobia or cancelling but I will miss hashtag games, particularly my stellar work during #mypunkmusical (Probably should have quit after that surge, I was on fire that night, real blaze of glory stuff I mean, Christ, Sunday in the Park with the Germs? Husker Du I Hear A Waltz? Fiddler on the Roof (keeping an eye out for the cops)? These are Pulitzer contenders.). Twitter makes me feel lousy, even when I’m right, and I’m often right. There’s just no point in barking bumperstickers at each other, and there are people who are speaking truth to power and doing a cleaner job of it – Aaron Rupar, Steven Pasquale, Louise Mensch, Imani Gandy and Ijeoma Oluo to name five solid mostly politically based accounts (Yes, Pasquale is a Broadway tenor. He’s also a tenacious lefty with good points and research and a dreamy voice. You think you’re straight and then you hear him sing anything from Bridges of Madison County and you want him to spoon you.). You’re probably already following those mentioned, but on the off chance you’re not, get to it. You’ll thank me, but you won’t be able to unless you actually have my email.

_______

[1] And Jesus, that’s worse – Ithaca is such a lefty enclave that they had an actual socialist mayor FOR WHOM I VOTED while I was there. And not socialist the way some people think all Democrats are socialist – I mean Ben Nichols actually ran on the socialist ticket and was re-elected twice for a total of six years.

[2] The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, “America’s LGBT Economy” Jan 20th, 2017

[3] The Violence Policy Institute, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use, July 2019.

[johnrossbowie]

Found this talk I gave right before the election of 2012 on the history of political advertisements.

wanna see me criticize Al Gore and defend George W. Bush?

You’re curious, right? Here’s a pretty bipartisan take on political campaigns from a talk I gave back in 2012. Political campaigns are a casual hobby of mine - I find messaging and graphics and narratives really interesting, and I love the sort of predictive psychology involved. It’s about a half an hour. There’s no policy, its just about the campaigns themselves. Enjoy!

[johnrossbowie]

People with guns have involved themselves in a legislative dispute while the officials of one of the political parties was rooting them on, and one session of a state legislature was cancelled because of it. Roll that around in your head for a while and see where you end up. Something is building in our politics and now I wish I hadn’t watched that series about Chernobyl. We may be exceeding the tolerances of all our systems.

Oregon Republican Senators Partner With Anti-Government Militias, Which Are Armed Extremist Groups

The series that I thought of was Genius Season One, when we saw what it was like in Berlin during the 1930s.

(via wilwheaton)

[johnrossbowie]

Loved this moment.

So you needed a little help getting up here. Everyone needs help sometimes. You should see me ice skate. You should see me ice skate. And he’s funny?

Speechless 3x21

[johnrossbowie]

My job:

I don’t know a lot of ways to matter, but I know how to pick you up when you’re down. You are Maya freaking DiMeo. You are the strongest, sexiest woman I have ever met.

Speechless 3x13

[johnrossbowie]

H. P. LOVECRAFT WRITES ONE OF THOSE CRAIGSLIST CASUAL ENCOUNTERS ADS

My genitals, if they can even be called such, are a murky conundrum that nearly defy description by Western tongues. The shaft of my daemon paenis is scaled like an alligator, yet bears fur, like the most unnatural wolf, plucked from a laudanum-besotted nightmare. Inscribed on its side are glyphs written in a perverse, savage dialect spoken only by thick-lipped ancients who knew no law. The testicles are a rotund horror of forgotten mystics and long extinct beasts, seemingly designed to tear a scream from the throat of the most hardened sailor.  Interested? Please be D/D free and in the Thousand Oaks/Agoura Hills area.

///

found this on an old hard drive and it made me laugh

#lovecraft #horror #sexy

[johnrossbowie]

Thank you, Stan. For everything.

[johnrossbowie]

Revisit those salad days where Mason looked like my son and not my mean older brother. Also – en Español!!!

Speechless (Season 1)

[johnrossbowie]

WATCH: Chris Gethard’s Cruelest Twitter Trolls

[johnrossbowie]

Scenes from a #Speechless marriage

[johnrossbowie]

Fun #Speechless gif from the SHIPPING Episode!

Speechless 2x06 - Finger guns

[johnrossbowie]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gusd_6n77Rk) Chances are #StarWars fans have already found this - but just in case they haven’t ...

[johnrossbowie]

‘Speechless’ Star John Ross Bowie Talks TV That Addresses Family Health Care in the Age of Trump… https://t.co/bXA0LzmU0n

Embed code not available

http://twitter.com/lamovingcompny/status/883387943217487874

[johnrossbowie]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ix5Hn_NaTM)

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!

[johnrossbowie]

I identify as straight, but Colin Farrell, you–Here’s what happens. You say publicly ‘I identify as straight’ and then you meet Colin Farrell and you say ‘You know, what are labels?’.

John Ross Bowie during his five solid minutes of gushing about Colin Farrell and how handsome he is. (Pardcast-A-Thon 2017, Hour 11)

I remember saying this, and I stand by it.

#never not funny #pardcast #sexuality

[johnrossbowie]

White Presidents Playing Golf

“Well, I think two things,” Spicer replied. “One is I think you saw him utilize this as an opportunity with Prime Minister Abe to help foster deeper relationships in Southeast Asia — in Asia, rather, and have a growing relationship that’s going to help U.S. interests. How you use the game of golf is something that he’s talked about.”

-Washington Post, 3/20/17

Nobody likes being called a racist and it’s silly and reductive to say or imply that EVERYONE on the right is racist - I honestly don’t believe that, and it lowers the discourse to toss the word around casually.  That said, we probably all have some deepseated latent prejudices that we tuck aside like unaffordable bills, hoping they will evaporate magically. And sometimes we need to pull out those envelopes and start writing checks. So I’m offering a couple easy tips for you to discover if you’re carrying around some baggage, and I’ve framed it in a way you might find palatable, it having been borrowed from Jeff Foxworthy:

If you ever called Obama ‘arrogant’ and then voted for Trump, you might be a racist.

If you complained about Obama’s use of executive orders, and then cheered when the very first thing Trump did was sign one and then a couple dozen, EVEN THOUGH he’s got a majority in congress and could go through traditional legislative channels, you might be a racist.

If you were suddenly, magically concerned about the national debt on or around January 20th, 2009, you might be a racist.

If you think Obama was divisive but Trump was inclusive, despite the fact that he called for a registry of all members of a particular religion, you might be a racist.

If you called Obama a “disheveled thug” (looking at you, D’Souza) but voted for a man who refuses to button his suit jacket over an overlong tie and a widening gut, you might be a racist.

If you had a problem with Obama occasionally going to visit his home state on vacation but are just peachy with Trump vacationing 3 times in a month at his private country club where members get course times, free breakfast and access to national security policy, all while lining Trumps pockets, who are we kidding you’re fucking racist and you need to own that shit.

#trump #obama #hypocrisy #spicer