#everything feels like jersey no matter what it's actually made of. nothing has substance or structure | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

junker-town · 4 years

Text

The shooting of Jacob Blake is bigger than sports

Photo by David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images

Police violence in Kenosha has athletes questioning everything.

Jacob Blake will likely never walk again after police shot him seven times in the back in front of his children over the weekend. It’s another in a shockingly predictable cycle of violence against Black citizens, with little information being offered by police on how, or why these events happen.

Kenosha, Wisconsin police were responding to an unrelated domestic violence call shortly after 5 p.m. on Sunday when they came into contact with Blake. State investigators are currently examining the shooting, meaning little has been said publicly on the part of police — even as a video has been circulating showing the conclusion. (WARNING: This video is graphic, and shows the shooting itself).

In it, Blake can be seen walking away from officers with his back turned, with officers following him with their guns drawn. Blake attempted to enter the driver’s seat of an SUV, before officers at close range began shooting their weapons into Blake’s back, with stunned bystanders screaming. Shortly before shooting, one bystander yelled, “Don’t you do it! Don’t you do it!” Police have not explained why officers chose to use lethal force, why they decided to discharge their weapons into someone who wasn’t acting aggressively toward them, or how officers involved will be disciplined for their actions. While we wait for answers, Kenosha has become another hotspot for protests after being the latest location involted in a soul-crushing pattern of violence towards Black people.

It was unclear if a return to sports would even occur. Numerous players were concerned that leaving their communities and returning to play would take away from the activism being done at home. Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics decided to opt out due to this very issue. However, since the return of sports the NBA and WNBA committed to recognizing victims of violence and the Black Lives Matter movement on jerseys, via pre-game solidarity, and in post-game interviews. Now with the shooting of Jacob Blake, players are questioning whether returning to play in Orlando was worth it.

It’s been particularly difficult for George Hill of the Bucks, who desperately wants to be back in Milwaukee on the front lines of protests, not trapped in the bubble.

“We can’t do anything [from Orlando],” Hill said Monday. “First of all, we shouldn’t have even came to this damn place, to be honest. I think coming here just took all the focal points off what the issues are.”

Hill’s feelings are being echoed by numerous players in the NBA, who are starting to feel like returning to play took some of the most noticeable national voices in the Black Lives Matter movement away from the protests themselves, and transplanted them into an artificial environment.

Fred VanVleet of the Raptors wants players to do more, even while in Orlando:

“At the end of the day, if we’re gonna sit here and talk about making change then at some point we’re gonna have to put our nuts on the line and actually put something up to lose, rather than just money or visibility.”

How this will materialize is unknown at this time, but there is a possibility players will boycott games to make a statement. Thursday’s game between the Celtics and Raptors is currently one being mentioned for potential cancellation, while others are being could be cancelled as well.

Jaylen Brown has publicly revealed how difficult the shooting has been on him. The Celtics star said he can’t look at his No. 7 jersey anymore without thinking of the seven times Blake was shot. Brown made a powerful statement about how Blake’s past and the attempts to characterize him in a negative light should have no bearing on the reaction to the shooting.

“I don’t care if he did something 10 years ago, 10 days ago, 10 minutes ago. If he served his sentence and he was released back into society, he still deserves to be treated like a human and does not deserve to be shot in the back seven times with the intent to kill. His kids will never unsee that, his family will never unsee that, and, frankly, I will never unsee it. People post my jersey all the time, No. 7. Every time I look at my jersey now, what I see is a Black man being shot seven times. All America sees is his background or his background report. It’s easier to see that than it is to see the truth.”

This isn’t a message being carried by the NBA alone. The Detroit Lions cancelled practice on Tuesday due to the shooting, but it wasn’t planned action. The Lions held a team talk about Jacob Blake, with head coach Matt Patricia opening a dialogue with his players to hear about their experiences, their struggles with police and injustice. During those talks it became apparent that what was happening in Kenosha was far more important than a football practice on a Tuesday afternoon. So players decided to use their time to leave the pads behind and take a stand.

#OnePride pic.twitter.com/8qZvoQHHdr

— Danny Shelton (@Danny_Shelton55) August 25, 2020

Some of the most poignant remarks on the situation came from Clippers coach Doc Rivers. The son of a police officer, Rivers broke down in his postgame press conference with his frustration and anguish at seeing yet another shooting of a Black person. Calling for collective outrage, Rivers questioned why Black Americans should continue to love a country that doesn’t love them back.

.@DocRivers from the heart. pic.twitter.com/Qp7St7kZ1k

— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) August 26, 2020

Enough is enough. Players are understandably questioning why they are playing when awful things are happening in their communities. Coaches are finding it difficult to focus when shootings keep occurring to people of Black people. Sports are secondary to everything else that’s happening, and it remains to be seen if the NBA postseason will continue is planned after the Jacob Blake shooting and the protests that follow it.

One thing is clear: If games are cancelled and everything falls apart, don’t blame the players for taking action. Blame the fact that it’s been three months since George Floyd was killed and despite hundreds of thousands of protesters, and millions of hours calling for police reform and plans to deal with systemic racism — still nothing of substance has been done.

If the NBA season ends over the shooting of Jacob Blake, then the only people to blame are those who were in a position of power to effect change, and chose not to.

0 notes

oocodee-blog · 7 years

Text

Floating Hearts

@eltoromagico (TW: alcohol abuse, vomit.)

When Alex drank, things tended to happen. Good things, bad things, weird things - just… things. There was never a dull moment with an inebriated Alex in the room, and this often led to strange situations in which he woke up. There was a morning he woke up in a dumpster in just his boxers and a party hat for “Meredith’s 50th” something or other. He never remembered exactly who Meredith was, but he was pretty damn sure she was one hell of a lady. Then there was that time he had thought he’d woken up to the captain of the football team laying in bed beside him. It turned out to be a goat in a jersey instead. (No one could remember who brought the goat.)

But this… this far outweighed anything he had yet to wake up to, grandmothers and goats included. Because this was impossible. What was happening was impossible. And as his bleary mind slowly began to turn the gears of his cognitive function, several lethargic thoughts hit him in succession. What was he kissing? This wasn’t human… or alive. Or in his bed. This was… plaster?

Carefully - oh, so carefully - he pried his face away from the solid, moist substance. His breath and strange lip stains had left a semi-permanent booze hickey on the flat plane. His cheek stuck to it and peeled away slowly, making anti-suction noises as he came away. Ew. And ouch.

Alex groaned. The pounding in his head grew the second he made the sound, and he groaned again. He lifted his hands to cradle his aching hangover. Fingers traveled up the flat, cool plane to reach his head. Huh. He was pressed up against something. Had he fallen out of bed? Landed on the floor? Why were his feet tingling?

He blinked and squinted half-dilated eyes into the blinding lights that peeked around the closed blinds in his dorm. Damn. His head hurt. Wait. What was the window doing catercornered to him like that?

He lifted his face slightly and tried to focus bleary vision on what was in front of him. White… stubbly…. Ha. Stubble. The ceiling had stubble like his chin did. ………….Ceiling?!

His eyes widened and he jerked backward, immediately regretting the action when pain shot down his spine like a knife digging into his brain stem and cutting down his spinal chord to filet his insides. He cried out and squeezed his eyes against the pain, but opened them immediately after because where the fuck was he?

Panic set in. Disorientation swam through his hungover mind as he began to tense and flail madly, only to realize that he was, in fact, stuck to the ceiling, and he was not going to fall. Even if he tried to. Which he did. He pushed away from the ceiling, only to float back up and clonk his forehead against it. Swearing under his breath in a mixture of Spanish and English - half of which were not even swear words - he attempted to turn around, only to feel his backside suction against the ceiling.

Now he was staring down at his bed and the floor where he vaguely remembered passing out the previous night, still clothed. How the hell had he gotten up here?!

“¡Deja de atormentarme, diablo!” He shouted at no one in particular. Who was going to hear him? He was alone, just like he always was… unless he was waking up with goats. His breaths came in quick, short bursts, flowering in his chest like fire exploding through his veins only to be snuffed out just as quickly as he choked on the smoke of trepidation. His brain was still drugged, still heavy from drink, and spinning. He couldn’t make heads or tails of this. Big, flashing letters, “DOES NOT COMPUTE”, would be situated above his head if reality were more glamorous than it really was.

But reality wasn’t glamorous. Reality was managing to unlock the door to your dorm successfully while smashed only to trip over a pile of dirty laundry and lie in your own failure until sleep took you under. Reality was apparently floating eight feet above your floor and thinking about vomiting onto that same pile of clothes. Oh no… oh God. ¡Dios mio, no!

Blech.

~~~~~~~~~~~

He hated today. He hated everything about today. Today could go fuck itself in the ass down a shady alley and get shanked for showing off its bits to the wrong person. Alex had much preferred yesterday, or the day before, or - hell - six months before all this shit began. He was sick of it.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

He wasn’t sure how he did it, but then again, that seemed to be the theme of his morning. Somehow, some way, he had managed to get here, though, and that’s all that mattered. He was here. He had rinsed out his mouth with Listerine, and he was here. Never mind the stain of haphazardly cleaned rejected-booze on his carpet because he couldn’t fucking reach it well enough. That was a problem for another time. Right now, he had much crazier things to worry about.

Seriously. Crazy. Things.

Like the fact that he was waiting outside of Jude’s flat, knocking on the door… and hanging upside down. Hanging upside down from nothing - as in, he was floating upside down for no particular reason, and for the last fifteen minutes, he had not been able to get himself upright for longer than a few minutes at a time - just enough to keep him from passing out from the way the blood rushed into his scowling face and darkened his olive toned skin with an unnatural redness.

He stood there - no, he floated there - with his arms crossed, which he was certain looked doubly as ridiculous as it would if he were just hanging there, letting gravity do its thing with his arms, but he didn’t care. He was pissed. And he didn’t know what to do. And he had no one else to turn to….

He swallowed back the fear that wanted to burn through the anger. Anger was easy to show off. Jude had seen him angry. Jude had never seen him afraid…. And Alex didn’t want that to change today. There were only a select few in this damn school he even trusted at all, but none of the others would be able to help. Not like Jude could. Alex had no idea if the boy could physically get him down or not, but that wasn’t the real reason he was here. Alex was creative. He was sure he could find a way to stop himself from floating eventually… or he’d just let himself pass out from blood rush and wait until his unconscious body dropped to the floor. Either way.

But Jude could offer something no one else could - reaffirmation that Alex wasn’t some sort of freak of nature, that they could get through this if only they stuck together. Wasn’t that something Jude was always saying? That the twelve of them… they were all in this together whether they liked it or not? Alex had nowhere else to turn to because who could handle him at his wit’s end? No one had the patience, or cared enough to try and help. Others might pull him to the ground, and that would be great…. But who could take away the utter terror building in his heart, his lungs, his throat, threatening to release itself at any given moment if he dropped his defenses even just the tiniest bit? No one could.

No one but Jude.

Alex didn’t know why. He didn’t know if he wanted to know why… but Jude made him feel… so much more centered. Anchored. Safe. As if Alex could orbit around forever, always knowing there was a place for him to come back to.

He fucking hated it.

He hated feeling this way, knowing there was another person outside of himself that he could actually rely on - someone that had wiggled their way into his trust without him realizing it until it was too late. Jude was the trojan horse. He was beyond enemy lines without knowing it, the walls Alex put up defending against infantry but not having been built to keep out someone who might dig under them.

Alex swallowed again, and knocked again. He waited. There wasn’t much left to do but wait and hate himself. And float.

#[ floating hearts ]#Judex #12signsrp #Alex starter #we all float down here

9 notes · View notes

news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

Text

8 pre-internet political moments that would have spawned huge memes

Believe it or not, there's a storied history of presidential blunders that stretch back years and years, all the way to before they could become instant memes — because there was no internet.

Shocking, but true.

These moments were "viral" in that they were everywhere — TV, radio, newspapers — but there was no widespread internet to give them a second life as pure meme bliss, like just about everything that happens in the Trump White House these days.

SEE ALSO: Trump insider who wrote anonymous op-ed inspires glorious memes

So what moments would go super viral, saturating our culture to the point you can't get away, if they happened today? You know, like the "Dean scream" or when Dick Cheney shot a friend in the face?

History is rife with political screw-ups, all the way back to the country's founding, but we combed through the last 40 years or so to find the stand outs from modern political history.

Here goes.

Ronald Reagan's mic drop (1980)

Ronald Reagan was known for being quick with a quip, but the one that really signaled his ascendency on the way to the White House came at the GOP's New Hampshire primary debate in February 1980.

When the FEC told the Nashua Telegraph, a local newspaper, that paying for a two-man debate between Reagan and then-frontrunner George H.W. Bush would violate regulations by showing favor to those two candidates over several others that were also running (and amount to a contribution to Reagan and Bush), Reagan offered to pay for it and invited those other candidates to participate. (These types of situations would eventually be remedied in 1987 by the formation of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which would sponsor all debates beginning with the 1988 election cycle.)

Meanwhile, both the Telegraph and Bush held firm in their insistence on a one-on-one debate between Bush and Reagan during a long, protracted process of negotiations.

This led to a heated argument at the beginning of the debate, during which Telegraph editor Jon Breen asked for Reagan's microphone to be cut. An angered Reagan answered with a red-hot one-liner about the microphones that doubled as a Grade A Alpha Dog moment.

youtube

High drama followed in which no one appeared to back down. Eventually, after Bush used his opening statement to stand his ground for a one-on-one debate, the other candidates begrudgingly left the stage and the debate became just Bush versus Reagan.

More important: That thunderous Reagan line reverberated with voters, portraying Reagan as someone standing up for his Republican comrades/competitors while painting Bush in an unfavorable light. It all came to a head with a blowout Reagan win in New Hampshire that launched him to the front of the pack and an on to an eventual White House win in November over incumbent Jimmy Carter.

Walter Mondale asks "Where's The Beef?" (1984)

Reagan was always the king of the one-liner, but it was Walter Mondale who laid down the best quip of the 1984 campaign during a Democratic primary debate against Gary Hart. Mondale's zinger harnessed the pop culture zeitgeist of 1984 by lifting the line from an incredibly popular Wendy's ad.

youtube

"Where's the beef?" was ripe for leveraging in a political campaign as a question begging for substance. And Mondale did so, beautifully.

youtube

The two candidates remained locked in a battle throughout the campaign, with Mondale winning the nomination. But "win" is a relative term. He was later steamrolled by Reagan in the general election, proving that the beef is relative.

Dukakis tanks (1988)

Nearly 30 years before the Trump campaign there was the completely bonkers 1988 campaign. It was filled with so much drama, intrigue, and a succession of moments that would have crashed Twitter a few times over. The legendary Richard Ben Cramer book What It Takes is a must-read for absorbing it all from beginning to end.

There was the Gary Hart scandal that involved a boat called "Monkey Business" (that's the subject of the upcoming Hugh Jackman film The Frontrunner), the Joe Biden plagiarism scandal, George H.W. Bush's "Read my lips: no new taxes" promise (that he wound up breaking), and one of the great debate burns in U.S. history when Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic VP candidate, slammed Republican VP candidate Dan Quayle.

youtube

But perhaps the most would-be viral moment of the 1988 campaign was a September photo-op gone awry. It was a moment that had nothing to do with politics or qualifications and everything to do with optics: when Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis rode around in a tank.

The story behind the infamous incident is now legend, but here's a quick recap. The visit to a General Dynamics facility in Michigan was meant to make Dukakis seem strong on defense. Part of that trip wound up being a ride in an M1A1 tank, but the General Dynamics team insisted Dukakis wear a helmet for safety. The helmet dwarfed the diminutive candidate, making him look like a child and prompting guffaws from reporters covering the event.

It was such a disaster that video of Dukakis riding around in the tank was used in an attack ad by the Bush campaign.

youtube

It wasn't the only reason Dukakis' early campaign poll leads evaporated — effective attack ads by the Bush team (Roger Ailes!) and poor debate performances by Dukakis and Bentsen (burn aside) also contributed — but it was a major misstep that definitely played a part.

A grocery list of campaign mishaps (1992)

While not quite as crazy as the 1988 election, the 1992 election had plenty of memorable moments — Bill Clinton's sax-tastic appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show, those Clinton and Al Gore jogging photos, Bill's love of McDonald's (which spawned a classic SNL sketch), and the entrance of third party candidate Ross Perot, who turned things upside down for a few months.

But three particular moments perfectly show what an appetite voters had (and still have) for political stumbles, and how much they were willing to overlook the quiet truth of what actually happened.

Bush's first misstep, in January 1992, was a messy one. Fighting a vicious case of the flu while on a diplomatic trip to Japan, The incumbent Bush became ill at dinner and wound up vomiting on Japan's prime minister.

youtube

Vomiting on a head of state, no matter the circumstances, is, well, not great. That said, it's not like Bush chose to vomit on Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. As the story goes, Bush had already toughed out a full slate of diplomatic duties, including a game of tennis with the emperor of Japan.

It's also worth noting that a lapful of vomit has not come close to doing the damage Trump has done in his behavior toward our allies.

Bush's next misstep came a month later when he appeared to be amazed by a grocery store scanner during a visit to the National Grocers Association convention. One thing led to another, a famous photo was taken, and it was assumed that Bush, who came from wealth, had been exposed as being out of touch.

youtube

The truth, though, seems far more innocuous: Bush was apparently marveling at a new feature in grocery store scanner technology that had the machine correctly read a torn and jumbled bar code, proving he wasn't quite as out of touch with grocery store behavior as a future Republican president would prove to be.

Vice President Dan Quayle's slip-up was worse. While visiting a New Jersey school in 1992, he watched a student write the word "potato" on a chalkboard and then told the student he was missing an (erroneous) 'e' at the end of the word. The confused student — who would later say, "I knew he was wrong, really. He's the Vice President and I couldn't argue with him with all the people there" — complied.

youtube

If there's a saving grace for Quayle, it's that he was reportedly reading from a school-provided cue card that had the word misspelled with the extra 'e.' But Quayle didn't catch the mistake, simply parroting it, and wound up with a scene that wouldn't have appeared out of place on Veep.

Clinton's secret signal (1998)

It's hard to think of a moment in the Lewinsky-Clinton affair that wasn't "viral," as we'd call it today. The internet was becoming a force in the United States, spreading first reports of the scandal thanks to online bomb thrower Matt Drudge.

Remember the infamous line from Clinton's grand jury testimony, in which he questioned the definition of the word "is"?

youtube

Of all the moments from the sordid affair, there's a smaller one that feels as intriguing and ripe for virality as anything else that happened: the time Bill Clinton allegedly wore a tie Lewinsky had gifted him on the day she testified before a grand jury in the Ken Starr investigation.

Clinton wearing the tie on August 6, 1998, less than 2 weeks before he would admit to having an affair.

Image: Corbis via Getty Images

It was said to be a signal of solidarity between Clinton and Lewinsky, coming at a time when Clinton still denied the affair. (He would publicly admit to it less than two weeks later.) Clinton played the whole thing off, but the story has held on for 20 years.

The sigh heard 'round the country (2000)

The 2000 presidential election would be remembered for far more important things, like a presidential election being decided by the Supreme Court, the phrase "hanging chads," and Florida being unable to get its act together.

But then-Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, didn't do himself any favors during the presidential debates against GOP nominee George W. Bush, letting his body language speak louder than anything he actually said, sighing, rolling his eyes, and even trying intimidate Bush during the town hall debate only to have that backfire.

Gore is hardly alone, as we've seen, in making debate mistakes, but his behavior made him seem aloof and irritated compared to the "folksy" Bush. It even got the SNL treatment, one surefire way to know you've transcended into the mainstream.

youtube

Gore's behavior called to mind Bush's father's watch-checking mistake in the 1992 debates, but we also saw shades of Gore during the 2016 debates when Trump infamously stalked Hillary Clinton on stage.

Trump is just creepin' around the stage now #debate pic.twitter.com/MajNvjuFZX

— Mashable GIF (@mashablegif) October 10, 2016

The latter moment exploded across the internet, an early example of the way our current digital culture came to consume things at a lightning-fast pace. While these moments got play in newspaper, on national news, and late-night comedy, they didn't become ubiquitous, ever-evolving memes the way they do now.

The 2000 election felt like the tipping point, the moment when internet shifted into something all-consuming. Then, as social media evolved in time for the 2008 election, the minute-by-minute accounts of politics and elections took on a life of their own.

It's not so much that more is happening in our hyper-connected era — though certainly politician's direct access to citizens on social media has changed the way things unfold slightly. But mostly it's that we're more aware of every single thing that occurs now and we're able to weigh in now with more speed and in more places than ever before.

Every slip-up, misquote, and awkward handshake is inescapable, occupying every conceivable nook and cranny of our lives if we let it. It's all grist for the never-ending content mill that doesn't just occupy television and the few remaining newspapers, but every platform we use, be it Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat.

Now we can both look back at the moments of the past and forward to the fresh hell of a 24-hour news cycle that awaits us as we wade further into the Trump administration and closer to the 2020 election.

WATCH: Sarah Huckabee Sanders' most ludicrous moments as press secretary

#_uuid:7b8be353-635f-344c-bdcb-1d94eaa65302 #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_author:Marcus Gilmer #_revsp:news.mashable

1 note · View note