#like they don't believe that their work at 14 is representative of their current status

[adr-n-sketchy]

I wish we were shown more about the Palisman carving process. I've wondered whether Flapjack's scarred eye was due to an injury when he was with Evelyn, during his time abandoned, or whether it was just a quirk/mishap of his carving. It'd also be cool if it was from a knot or a scar in the palistrom wood piece. If the bumps and scars from carving are carried over to when the palisman bonds to a witch and is animated, I feel like we would see more palismen with bumps, knots, and scars -- which is awesome. Woo!! Normalizing imperfections and quirks of beginning carvers

#it also sounds like it's pretty common to go through a trained carver #like Dell or Hunter #but I like the idea of there being young school age witches carving their own palismen #and getting asked throughout their careers about their partner's wonky leg or slightly crooked ear #i just feel like it'd help give the palismen personality #and also serve as little reminders of where the witch started #no matter how successful or powerful they get #but also on the flipside #what if that's why some palismen are abandoned #like they don't believe that their work at 14 is representative of their current status #so they replace their partner with another that will better fit their current view and opinion of themselves #and now i'm sad #clearly ive thought about this too much #palisman #toh palismen #flapjack toh #flapjack #the owl house #toh #toh theory #my unhinged thoughts

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Not in our name: Ethnic minorities don't care about your Proms culture war

By Sunder Katwala

The debate over the last night of the Proms appears a hardy perennial.  It is half a century since the BBC made a proposal to ditch the patriotic anthems in 1969 – in the hope of making the event "more attractive to 40 million viewers in Europe". That decision was reversed in response to media, political and public opposition. Even the liberal Guardian newspaper editorialised against the change. "The point about this famous Albert Hall occasion was that it was an unblushing piece of English nonsense," it wrote. "Are we now going to be ashamed of our national eccentricities?"

In 2020, there are two different reasons suggested for a change. One is practical: there will be no audience in the Royal Albert Hall this year and a much smaller orchestra. The BBC says that this is the reason to propose an instrumental version of the anthems for this year, with the singing returning when the audience does in 2021. But much more attention has been paid to the idea that the move is a response to the Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests. This appears to be because a handful of well-wishers and a larger number of opponents have been happy to assume that this is the sort of thing that the movement must want.

It was Richard Morrison, the long-standing art critic of The Times, who began this year's debate with a magazine piece. His article suggests two motivations. Firstly, that he has personally never liked the Last Night of the Proms and would love to ditch what he called the "unholy trinity" of Land of Hope of Glory, Rule Britannia and Jerusalem. Secondly, that the Black Lives Matter protests appeared to offer the opportunity and the moment to pursue this long-standing preference.

Morrison is entitled to his view. But his language, that it would be "insensitive, even incendiary" to continue, was clumsy. His premise – that supporters of Black Lives Matter would be hurt and upset by the continuation of the last night of the Proms – is an assumption for which the evidence is scant. So the use of "incendiary" was a hyperbolic claim, bringing to mind hackneyed images of rioting and violence about something that few people care about at all.

The debate then continued when Sunday newspaper reports suggested that the Finnish conductor of this year's proms shared the view that it was a good opportunity to ditch the patriotic songs. She has since stated that the reports were inaccurate.

So what do ethnic minorities actually think about the last night of the Proms? The most plausible answer is: Not much and not often. The important and necessary caveat is that there is no unified view of this issue, held by two million black people, nor among eight million people who are not white.

The polls on the last night of the Proms are typical of most polling in the country. Ethnic minorities are a bigger share of the population than the under-24s but are not a standard break in opinion polling. Generally, there is considerably less information on the views of the one-in-six people in Britain who are not white than on just about every other demographic. Pollsters have recently begun to step up their efforts to fill this gap.

Overall, support for ditching the patriotic anthems runs at about a quarter of the support of the Black Lives Matter protests. Clearly, only a minority of supporters of the Black Lives Matter protests oppose the last night of the Proms – reflecting the fact that this is not something that campaigners or protestors have called for or prioritised.

In July, YouGov found that 11% would drop the songs while 69% would keep them. In the same poll, 42% of people described themselves as supporters of the Black Lives Matter protests. Support for ditching the proms is somewhat higher among sections of the population who are most supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. For example, 71% of Labour voters are supportive of the Black Lives Matter protests, while 21% would ditch the songs from the Proms. Keir Starmer reflects the views of most Labour voters in believing that keeping the songs as a "staple of the British summer" is compatible with a critical interrogation of British history. Similarly, just 14% of Liberal Democrat voters polled would ditch the anthems while more than six out of ten support Black Lives Matter.

Recent polling suggests that support among ethnic minorities for the Black Lives Matter protests is around seven out of ten people. Two-thirds of ethnic minorities say that their concerns about racism appear well reflected by the protests – and about a quarter of ethnic minority respondents say that they participated in or actively supported the protests in some way.

This pattern makes it plausible to estimate that between one-in-ten to one-in-five ethnic minorities would support ditching the Proms anthems. It is very unlikely to have majority support among non-white Britons. Attitudes towards the last night of the Proms differ by age and social class, by education, by geography and by politics. Those demographic drivers of attitudes will have some influence among black and Asian Britain too.

The issue may well matter more to ethnic minority musicians than to the public at large. Chi-Chi Nwanoku revealed that she had been lobbying the BBC to ditch the songs. As the founder of Chineke, the largest BAME-led orchestra in Britain or Europe, she has a good claim to be the most influential black British classical musician today. Nwanoku also wrote a public letter emphasising a broader set of changes for the classical music sector.

Those working for race equality in classical music have expressed a range of different views of whether changing the proms would help or hinder this broader agenda. Saxophonist Nate Holder would rather see more understanding of the context than the removal of the songs. Oboist and researcher Uchenna Ngwe said she wanted to see bigger issues dealt with. "We don't need any more pointless symbolic moves," she tweeted. There does not seem to have been any structured attempt to assess where the overall balance of views among musicians from minority backgrounds currently lies.

Outside of classical music, my own anecdotal effort to assess ethnic minority opinion on Twitter resulted in a broad landslide for indifference. Only a handful supported ditching the anthems. And similarly only a few people cared about and enjoyed the proms. Most were indifferent to them. A number of those who found the spectacle a bit "cringey" didn't think the issue was worth the argument, while others thought it was wrong to remove something that other people enjoyed. There was an overwhelming frustration at the level of profile of the debate and concern at how divisive it could become.

A recent Hope Not Hate poll, of 1,000 ethnic minority respondents, illuminates some of the reasons why ethnic minority opinion will be ambivalent and sceptical about the proposal to ditch the proms.

There is a broad majority among ethnic minorities - around two-thirds - who support the removal of the statues of slavers. Yet most respondents also expressed scepticism about the focus on statues: a very wide majority of 60% to 15% feel that this has become a distraction from substantive issues of race equality.

History matters. The strongest consensus - across ethnic minorities and the white majority - is for teaching the history of Empire, including its controversies, in schools. That is a much higher priority for most ethnic minority Britons than changing the Proms would be.

Asked about removing negative portrayals of ethnic minorities on films and television, opinion divides. 'It's complicated' would sum up the median view - context matters, with a significant difference between egregious and trivial examples.

A majority of ethnic minority respondents agreed with the idea that the statues debate represented "political correctness" going too far – by 52% to 22% - showing a concern to differentiate between the most egregious examples and a sweeping 'year zero' idea of interrogating every historical figure by contemporary standards.

Here, people often welcome the social moves against name-calling and slurs against ethnic minorities, while remaining sceptical about arguments over Easter Eggs, nativity plays and symbols like the proms.

Individual views of the Last Night of the Proms will, of course, differ. But the general view of ethnic minority Britons could be summed up as one of frustration that these polarising culture wars misrepresent and trivialise ethnic minority concerns about race equality.

In other words: Have your silly season media culture war over the Proms if you really must. But not in our name, thank you very much.

#culture war

[ramrodd]

Why don't the other nations involved in wars embrace Remembrance Day as much as we do?

For Republican Senators and Representatives up for election, war is the quid for the quo of their campaign support via Citizens United and the Koch brothers' Dark Money.

COMMENTARY:

First of all, it isn’t a contest.

Secondly, how do you measure that sort of thing? America is feeling sorry for itself because of all these wars we are in and believe America are the only people who hurt from war and we currently have a President and a presiding majority who are historically, and presently, incompentent when it comes to avoiding wars and in cleaning up after the wars they start.

Trump is hopeless, operationally. That has never been his forte. The only act P.T. Barnum ever routinely participated in was signing new talent for his show. Bailey apparently ran it. That’s a complimentary partnership. Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. Trump had a very creative partnership with his female project manager in the Trump Tower project.

Trump is flying solo right now and he and the Conservative majority have been doing for the global economy what they have been doing for Puerto Rico and what is happening to Puerto Rico is exactly what happened when the neo-cons pulled up in Tommy Franks’ vanguard and began to really fuck up Baghdad from a total lack of planning and the incompetent implementation of what came next.

And the idea that Tr ump et al embrace Armistice Day any lessw than you embrace Remembrance is probably accurate, because the people like Trump ultimately phone in their embrace of Armistice Day or Memorial Day: thoughts of the military still send little shivers up their backs and it pisses them off to being paying for all those guys playing soldier and then getting paid to sit on their asses after 30 years on their, the Trump people’s, nickel, that $350 billion we spend in Korea every year when we could just bulldoze North Korea into denuclearization by Christmas and bring everyone home in time to defend white folks in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico from the 4th Chalupa Horde heading north at 300 miles a day.

Right now, it is clear that the next round of entitlement slashing includes all $180 billion for the VA, which Wilkies’ mission is to privatize, This is how “starving the beast” has been working: the active military is being manuevered by Trump, McConnell and Ryan into choosing between readiness versus paying for the last war.

It’s not that Trump and the GOP Deep State don’t understand Armistice Day or the poppies of Remembrance Day: they don’t care. It’s all Ebeneazer Scrooge before Marley’s Ghost, Industrial England before Disraeli. These assholes are the same assholes that thought slave ownership conveyed naturally with John Locke and Federalist 10. These people don’t care: money isn’t everything with these people. It’s the only thing. Trump will go to Paris for Armistice Day because it helps keep his hotels full.

And that’s what the issue is tomorrow: whether we re-embrace the Democratic Socialism of Wilson’s 14 Points or to remain enslaved by the Tory Socialism of Reaganomics and the class war of the Koch brothers’ Dark Money of the GOP Deep State.

The question between the future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the status quo with Tucker Carlson. Remember, Liberty is leading the people forward while William F. Buckley is shouting “STOP!”

For me, a vote for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a vote for a time when we stop burying people at Arlington because it if filled with the Greatest Generation and military deaths are a result of accidents and normal mortality. It was incompetent neo-con assholes like Tucker Carlson and John Bolton that has created 15 years of high cycle deployments needlessly by the invasion of Iraq and their direct administrative incompetence that manufactured ISIS out of whole cloth.

And the same people who can’t pick up the pieces in wuerto Rico and are forcing Mattis to choose between putting troops on the boarders or the Veterans Administration.

Think: Puerto Rico. That’s how the Republican majority in the Senate embraces the poppies of Flanders Field and the House Freedom Caucus thanks veterans for their service.

#transformingamericafirst