#low rent | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grits-galraisedinthesouth · 11 months

Text

Worldwide Privacy Tour Part 2, it seems, is well underway.

"Yes, the night was pure Meghan Markle: A manufactured build-up of anticipation, a highly dramatic entrance afforded no other actual activist — Meghan climbed on stage to the Alicia Keys she-ro anthem ‘Girl on Fire’ — and then... a whole lot of nothing...This crowd was checking their watches."

"If anything, as the night dragged on and the event slipped an hour behind schedule – a sudden break announced so we could finally have dinner – the crowd bristled...Notably, not one person I spoke to nor one speaker or honoree mentioned Meghan. Not one said how exciting it was to have her there. Not one expressed the slightest curiosity at what she’d have to say."

"And this image, our renegade duchess without a palace-worthy advance team to prevent such cheap optics as the Hertz hiccup, set the tone for the evening: Fatuous, irrelevant, high on its own self-regard, all sense of purpose lost. Gloria Steinem, once the face of women’s rights, reduced to star-f***ery. It was a bizarre night."

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Meghan's word-salad Manhattan gala appearance

She so badly wants to be the Queen of Hearts.

But, as she arrived on Tuesday night, making her grand entrance in Midtown Manhattan, sauntering past that rental-car backdrop, it was more like the Queen of Hertz.

Of course, as the world is now all too aware, Meghan Markle capped off winning a meaningless award with what we’re told was a ‘near catastrophic’, ‘two-hour’ car chase through the streets of Manhattan.

Yes, according to a spokesperson, Meghan, along with hapless Harry and mom Doria, were the subjects of a wild, impassioned hunt by the paparazzi.

Some sympathetic commentators have already made the gruesome comparisons to Princess Diana’s tragic final fate.

But to echo the statements made by New York City’s own mayor Eric Adams and the police department: Perhaps it didn’t quite happen the way it was painted.

Recollections may vary.

Naturally, their mouthpiece Omid Scobie is whining that no one from the Palace has yet reached out.

Wonder why?

One also wonders what Gloria Steinem, the 89-year-old feminist icon who chose to honor Meghan as a ‘Woman of Vision’ at Tuesday night’s Ms. Foundation Gala, must be thinking now.

After all, the car ‘chase’ debacle soon stole all the thunder from her event, which I was lucky enough to witness first-hand.

Now, it was hardly the red carpet one might expect. Hardly the pomp and circumstance of, say, a coronation.

Yet Meghan forged ahead as she always does, as if this were her crowning moment, sheathed in gold as if to symbolize a crown.

Or an Oscar statuette.

Same difference, really, if your only goal is fame. That’s our Meghan, none too subtle as ever, literally going for the gold as Harry and Doria took their positions three steps behind.

Harry may be a prince of the blood, but never forget — Meghan is The Star. Her Norma Desmond-ing is among the great spectacles of our modern age.

And this image, our renegade duchess without a palace-worthy advance team to prevent such cheap optics as the Hertz hiccup, set the tone for the evening: Fatuous, irrelevant, high on its own self-regard, all sense of purpose lost. Gloria Steinem, once the face of women’s rights, reduced to star-f***ery. It was a bizarre night.

Upon entering the Zeigfeld Ballroom, guests were asked whether they were ‘VIP’ — seems even feminist movements have their echelons — and turfed to the lobby.

My $1,500 entry-level ticket got me a hard seat with a front-row view of coat check.

After ten minutes, circumstances having changed inexplicably, the riff-raff were allowed up to the second floor.

Here were two open bars serving top-shelf liquor and the shock of post-pandemic dress code slovenliness. One unkempt guest was wearing sparkly Birkenstock sandals and a black stretchy minidress under a pink puffer jacket.

These were the VIPs?

The only recognizable person I saw was Peloton instructor Ally Love, and that’s saying something. Where were the stars? Where were the notables of the movement? The Malalas? The Fondas? The Beyoncés?

Perhaps no one was meant to outshine Meghan. Only one feminist icon was going to enter via rental car office!

Down in the ballroom, the plated salads on our banquet tables were ready waiting for us – dry, unsightly, stringy greens that resembled nothing so much as regurgitated hairballs. Notably, not one person I spoke to nor one speaker or honoree mentioned Meghan.

Not one said how exciting it was to have her there. Not one expressed the slightest curiosity at what she’d have to say.

If anything, as the night dragged on and the event slipped an hour behind schedule – a sudden break announced so we could finally have dinner – the crowd bristled.

It says something when a table of size-6 women tear into their heavily glazed steak and buttery mashed potatoes with abandon.

Yes, the night was pure Meghan Markle: A manufactured build-up of anticipation, a highly dramatic entrance afforded no other actual activist — Meghan climbed on stage to the Alicia Keys she-ro anthem ‘Girl on Fire’ — and then... a whole lot of nothing.

Verbiage and word salad that were content-free, except when speaking on her favorite subject: herself.

Here, in real time, we observed Meghan’s inability to read a room. She thanked the ‘other honorees’ without naming them.

‘Congratulations,’ she said, ‘and frankly, well deserved.’

It was all so smug and supercilious, this glorified podcaster telling these boots-on-the-ground activists — no matter what one thinks of their politics — that they had, in fact, earned their place on the same stage as the great Meghan Markle. That ‘frankly’ was so typical. It was meant to redound to Meghan’s benefit, as the lone wolf daring to speak the unspeakable.

There was the cringe-inducing humblebrag, calling her new friend Gloria ‘Glo’.

It brought to mind the forced intimacy of meeting Kate Middleton barefoot and insisting that the pair share lip gloss.

It's 'Glo' to Meghan, but Meghan is 'Duchess' to us.

‘We all bear witness,’ Meghan continued of her fellow honorees, ‘to you standing in elegance and the power of your strength.’

Huh?

This crowd was not convinced. This crowd was checking their watches. There were trains to catch, children to kiss goodnight. Alas, we were stuck with the vapidity of La Markle.

Her speech didn’t even deliver fresh content! She repeated the story, as told on her podcast, of poor little Meghan coming home from school to her TV dinner, cat collars and copies of Ms. Magazine strewn about courtesy of her mother — even though it’s well-documented that her father primarily raised her.

‘Having these pages in our home,’ she went on, ‘. . . signaled to me that there was so much more than the dolled-up covers and those images that you would see on the grocery store covers. It signaled to me that substance mattered.’

Says the former D-list actress and former briefcase game-show girl who used her looks to get ahead. Who has posed for those very same magazine covers.This warmed-over speech, less heated than our steaks, was Meghan’s greatest hits:

‘Change is just one action away.’

‘You can be the visionary of your own life.’

‘Daily acts of service, in kindness, in advocacy, in grace and in fairness.’

‘The imprints that were forged in my mind — I can now connect the dots in a much better way to understand how I became a young feminist and evolved into a grown activist.’

A feminist who, let us not forget, has publicly demonized her famous sister-in-law — ‘Waity Katie’ to Oprah and an audience of millions.

Kate made me cry! WAAAGH!

In truth, Meghan's a self-identified 'grown activist' who has done nothing. The pontification, her sing-song-y cadence as she luxuriated in her own praise, was as insufferable as it was revealing.

‘Ms.’ she said, ‘was formative in [my] cocooning. It piqued my curiosity, and it became the chrysalis for the woman that I would become and that I am today.’

Right: The woman who vilified the institution headed-up by Queen Elizabeth II in her final years. The woman who heavily alleged institutional racism until her husband finally backed away from that terrible smear.

A woman with no substance and no accomplishments as a feminist. A woman who is still trying to one-up the royals, even from a car-park adjacent ballroom with no red carpet. Meghan is the personification of Ms. as an organization that has lost its way.

Indeed, most of the night was spent advocating not for women but for trans rights and Critical Race Theory.

‘Abortion is racist,’ we were told.

Beware the ‘the white supremacist patriarchal system.’

Yes, even the Ms. Foundation – established for biological women out of a deep, and enduring, necessity – has been subsumed by men who identify as women.

How fitting then that the night was overshadowed by a grasping phony whose empty platitudes on stage failed to make headlines, whose spokesperson told a wild story of a high-stakes car chase.

Pity Meghan, but recognize her strength. Admire her, but never laugh at her. And never, ever question her veracity.

Worldwide Privacy Tour Part 2, it seems, is well underway.

#worldwide privacy tour #waaagh #megxit #fraud and fraudess #jussie smollett #maureen callahan #ms #gloria steinem #hertz #hertz dress #hertz so bad #sparry #word salad #low rent #participation trophies #participation awards #south park

85 notes · View notes

graffitibible · 2 years

Note

genuinely confused wdym by gerard way white saviorism

you asked me this about 3 weeks ago, and i'm sorry it took me so long to get to it. i had to think very hard about how i was going to answer this one, because i want to be transparent in just how frustrating i find this issue without drawing a lot of fire from really pissed off my chem fans who hate the idea of my daring to speak up against their perfect white fav (which has happened often, and continues to happen often. fortunately i'm pretty immune to this by now but i do find it very annoying)

i want to be very transparent in that i think that pretty much everyone can benefit from the idea that their favs are flawed. i'm very aware of the flaws and missteps that people i admire, both personally and professionally, have committed in their lives, and it is down to my own sense of morality over whether that's a dealbreaker for me. i don't like the idea of calling out bad behavior for the sake of clout or whatever. but i do care about not people being spoken over when they point out a legitimate criticism, and that is the bottom line here.

below the cut, i'm going to be discussing some very heavy topics: racism of all flavors is the most prevalent one, but i'm also going to touch (briefly) on topics such as antisemitism, incest, and abuse.

and i am also, in general, going to be saying a lot of very unkind things.

when it comes to criticisms of the scene, of narrative writing, of mistakes that people make...my chemical romance, and gerard way in particular, are consistently rendered immune. when we discuss misogyny in the scene in the early and mid aughts, my chem's name never comes up (despite the fact that bullets, their first album, most certainly has lyrics that certainly evoke the same violent misogyny present in a lot of works from that era). when we discuss racism within the scene, my chem is never really discussed at length except perhaps to point out that ray toro is a latino man who is either ignored or sexualized (or both) by a deeply racist fanbase. there is a tendency, within these spaces, to give my chem the benefit of the doubt where the same grace is not extended to others.

this is what i mean by "white saviorism." because gerard way's whiteness in particular protects them from a lot of this. and i say this because of all the things that has made it deeply uncomfortable to interact with broad swathes of my chem's fanbase, the racism has unquestionably been the number one deterrent. there is a very unique brand of racism present within my chem spaces - and i know i am not the only person of color who feels this way, because i've spoken to many who can say the same - that is particularly violent, particularly virulent, and particularly ingrained. experiences with this, along with my own growing distaste for gerard way as a writer, has soured my experience with the music so tremendously that i can no longer really interact with it at length.

i am not, however, above citing my sources. so. let’s talk about racism in gerard way’s writing, shall we?

i have always been up front about the fact that i do not find gerard way to be a particularly inspired, interesting, or good writer. i find most of their work to be aggressively mediocre and highly derivative. but my own personal opinion of their work has very little bearing on the extremely racist rhetoric that upholds a distressing amount of it. here is where i'm going to link a pretty informative twitter thread that outlines a lot of these instances in detail, but it is by no means exhaustive.

it's in the umbrella academy comics, wherein the main characters are all white despite being children taken from "all over the world." it's in the orientalist racist caricatures of the vampire viet cong group that the heroes square up against. it's in the casual instances of slurs that have cropped up several times in their works without any understanding of the impact those words have (an anti-indigenous slur in the umbrella academy comics, an anti-romani slur in the killjoys national anthem comics - which, i should state, came out in 2020). it's in the appalling writing decision to, in national anthem, make the sole black character the character with "animal powers" who rips out adversary's throats on all fours. it's in the frequent and persistent sexualization of women of color, particularly asian women. it's in the colorism involved in the interplay between mike milligram (a white man), code blue (a latina woman), and jaime ramirez (their mixed child), wherein jaime's skin tone shifts at the drop of a hat depending on which of his parental figures is in the frame (code blue is dead by the time the story picks up properly, but her sister, code red, effectively raises him...and he ends up staying with his father).

and it is unquestionably, overwhelmingly present in danger days. this is a danger days blog so this is the area in which i have the most research, so i want to be very clear when i say this:

racism is an insidious, incontrovertible, and inextricable foundation of the very conceptual underpinnings behind danger days and all its associated works.

the orientalism is baked into the very aesthetic of the album. better living industries is a japanese mega-company that takes everything over, the big bad of the franchise. the asian "aesthetic" is all over the canon in the music videos and comics: non-asian characters are seen wearing it, it's in all the marketing and even present on the album itself, wherein a woman is clearly heard speaking japanese on the "party poison" track. there was also the baffling inclusion of the "clown monk" character that was cut from the music videos back in 2010, wherein a white man is wandering around wearing buddhist robes (they inexplicably liked this concept so much that they brought it back for the national anthem comics which, again, i will reiterate: came out in 2020).

this is not surprising. danger days is deeply derivative in concept (up to and including the name itself), and because most of its influences come from cyberpunk dystopia fiction from the 80s, most obviously the 1980s film blade runner. works of fiction in that vein frequently draw from the idea of "yellow peril," and are rooted in the extremely racist and xenophobic rhetoric that western civilization will be invaded and dismantled by the evil, scary asians. the end result is a concept of a "dystopia" that is mired in the very stereotypical fears of the time: fears of an east asian surveillance state invading the west, fears of the all-powerful homogenized "other," and so on.

this did not stop gerard way from exotifying and fetishizing the fUCK out of all their asian characters though!!! the director of better living industries gets to be the primary major asian character in the killjoys california comics, and she spends a good chunk of it in dominatrix gear, with a whip to boot - both villain and sex object. the comic’s sex workers, referred to as “pornodroids,” are all asian-coded and, although we get one of the comic’s two same-sex pairings (3/4 of the characters involved in said pairings are dead by the comics’ end), the characters of red and blue spend the entirety of their screen time in the highly sexualized apparel of their occupations. there’s also the character of korse’s boyfriend, who does not get a name and spends all of his screen time lounging around shirtless in korse’s apartment. nice of gway to reduce the only asian dude to eye candy fridged for korse’s manpain. i guess.

also, i should not fail to mention - the killjoys california and danger days sections of canon are INCREDIBLY white for pieces of fiction that take place in california, which is one of the most racially diverse areas in the states. in terms of latino characters, we get jet star (by virtue of being played by ray toro in the music video, though i should point out that there is no guarantee that this is actually reflective of jet star’s true appearance, since none of the killjoy appearances are necessarily 1:1 with those of the band in the comics), and we get...POSSIBLY vaya and vamos, who are ambiguously brown and have names in spanish which implies they might be latine (but given that this is california and most of the population speaks spanish, is not necessarily a given). we also get volume, the sole black character, who gets a handful of lines before being unceremoniously killed off within moments of meeting him. the girl’s mother is definitely drawn as a woman of color, but she gets one line, no name, and the girl herself is drawn as very straightforwardly white and considered to have a “fair complexion” in the comics.

this trend unfortunately continues into national anthem, wherein there’s certainly a more diverse cast, but unfortunately, very little of that cast actually gets concrete development. mike milligram is our central protagonist, our sole white character (gerard way basically only ever commits to writing white protagonists)...and he’s also the only one of them who gets an arc of any kind. code blue (a latina woman, and his girlfriend) is fridged for his manpain. code red, blue’s sister, does not get nearly as much focus on her grief despite losing someone she knew for much longer than mike ever did. jaime, mike and blue’s child, resents red for raising him and chooses to stay with his birth father once the events of the comics are over. i’ve touched on how animax, our sole black character, is given “animal powers” and is pictured several times brutally ripping apart his enemies, but i should also point out that his big character motivation is - no joke - rosa parks. as in, rosa parks being erased from history, and he wants to stop it (these comics were weird, and also incredibly bad). everyone else has a deeply personal motivation save for animax, whose motivation is basically that he wants people to not forget that the civil rights movement like, happened.

there’s also the instance of kara jeong, or kara 100%. this is the one that really makes me grind my teeth, because she’s frequently praised as a cornerstone for trans representation. and i agree that having more trans women of color in comics is great! but this does not erase the fact that, like literally every other asian character gerard way has ever written, she is very much sexualized. her job as a model means that “it was essential that she was good looking” and it is not as egregious an example as, say, the director in the california comics...but it’s an unsettling addition to a constant pattern. there are a lot of shots of kara’s bare neck and shoulders and long legs, and all that on top of the fact that, like anyone who isn’t mike milligram, she gets very little characterization at all...well, it’s not a great look.

these are the issues in gerard’s writing that are the most frequently dismissed and ignored. this post is horribly long to begin with, so i don’t want to carry on (ha...ha....), but i want it on record that i very much could. this does not even begin to touch upon the bizarre inclusion of a constant incest undertone in almost everything gerard way writes (the umbrella academy is the most obvious here, but even in the killjoys canons...red and blue are lesbian lovers in california while being sisters in national anthem, and that’s kind of a little uncomfortable, all things considered), nor does it address gerard’s insistence on including very homogenous abusive backstories for no reason besides, i guess, character angst (and these abusive backstories all involve a physically abusive male figure, because i guess this is the only kind of abusive relationship gerard way can visualize).

[EDIT: just remembered, because i forgot to mention it (knew i was forgetting something) - there's also quite a bit of antisemitism present in the umbrella academy comics that is further exacerbated in the show. i'm not the best equipped person to talk about that (i've only watched the show up to s2, at which point i kinda got sick of that garbage enough to just tap out of it), and i also have only looked over the tua comics a few times as opposed to the show, which is not run or primarily written by gerard way. that being said, he's definitely a creative consultant on it, so...i think maybe they should've reconsidered making reginald hargreeves a baby-stealing lizard man and having the bad guys all speak to each other in yiddish, possibly.]

let me be the first to say...none of this surprises me. these are all pitfalls i’ve seen white writers (and writers of color with internalized issues) commit as well. and i also, as well, want to make it clear that i imagine very little of these appalling writing decisions were committed with active malice. i sincerely doubt that anyone involved in these writing processes steepled their fingers and cackled wickedly over what crimes they would commit to their many brown fans.

i want to be very, very clear here. i lay all of this out not to “shame” gerard way or write a “callout post” or anything to that effect. i want to be utterly transparent in that i think gerard way’s racism is as mediocre and unremarkable as their writing is: derivative, lazy, shallow, and incredibly commonplace.

and that is where the idea of “gerard way white saviorism” comes from. because these are all, individually, acts of horribly insensitive, damaging, and deeply racist rhetoric that would unquestionably be addressed if it were anyone else doing them. but because it’s gerard way, and the internet loves gerard way, and everyone has decided that gerard way is their white liberal fav who can do no wrong...like the case with everything else surrounding my chemical romance, they get a pass. they are exempt.

this is far from everything. it’s just what i can remember at the moment. i am not the first person of color to point this shit out. i imagine i will be ignored, much like every other fan of color who has made these points in the past. people don’t like to imagine that gerard way can be capable of these sorts of oversights. they don’t like to think about it. they want to persist in painting their very ordinary, centrist, white liberal fav as someone whose every word is deeply progressive and insightful and flawless. because, consistently, they get the benefit of the doubt where others, especially folks of color, do not.

so no one talks about it. no one talks about how gerard way’s writing is consistently racist in a very clear and distinct way that no one wants to address, making it more insidious. no one wants to talk about the mind-bogglingly racist conceptual underpinnings holding up the entire danger days album. no one wants to talk about how gerard, and all of my chemical romance accepted, or at the very least tolerated, bob bryer’s overt antiblack racism for years, for nearly a decade, and never said a word.

no one wants to talk about it. because that would mean they’d have to come to terms with their white savior not being so perfect.

so they don’t.

and shit like this is why i find the overwhelming majority of my chemical romance fan spaces to be deeply unwelcoming to someone like myself: a brown person who tries to call out racism when i see it. and i know i’m not the only one.

#ask #anon #z speaks #gerard way //#im...not going to maintag this. feel free to reblog it though.#posts that are the equivalent of firing a couple shots into the air to keep the rent low lol

3K notes · View notes