🐱 Interesting clickbait, op-eds, fluff pieces and other smaller stories

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/caitlyn-jenner-halloween-costume-sparks-social-media-outrage-.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...een-costume-labeled-817515?utm_source=twitter

It's nowhere near October, but one ensemble is already on track to be named the most controversial Halloween costume of 2015.

Social media users were out in full force on Monday criticizing several Halloween retailers for offering a Caitlyn Jenner costume reminiscent of the former-athlete's Vanity Fair cover earlier this year.

While Jenner's supporters condemned the costume as "transphobic" and "disgusting" on Twitter, Spirit Halloween, a retailer that carries the costume, defended the getup.

"At Spirit Halloween, we create a wide range of costumes that are often based upon celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes," said Lisa Barr, senior director of marking at Spirit Halloween. "We feel that Caitlyn Jenner is all of the above and that she should be celebrated. The Caitlyn Jenner costume reflects just that."

 

[CWCissey]

So.... what exactly are they upset about with this place? He supported brexit?

I don't understand. Are we talking about real political parties, or pretend UK political parties?

The Lib Dems are very real. They're usually considered the official third party in the UK, and yep. This is a Brexit thing. The chairman of Wetherspoon's, Tim Martin was very supportive of it.

What was that shot towards Dyson Vacuums all about?

James Dyson also supported Brexit (because the EU kept trying to squash his business with environmental laws)

 

[kcbbq]

James Dyson also supported Brexit (because the EU kept trying to squash his business with environmental laws)

So did a majority of voters. Sometimes you personally don't get what you want when democracy is involved.

I mean, I got Al Franken, but luckily he got #metooed. Things work out in the end. You got Brexit, but you'll also get your freedoms quashed by people closer to home. Win-win.

 

[CWCissey]

So did a majority of voters. Sometimes you personally don't get what you want when democracy is involved.

I mean, I got Al Franken, but luckily he got #metooed. Things work out in the end. You got Brexit, but you'll also get your freedoms quashed by people closer to home. Win-win.

And yet people can't accept that.

At this point I'd argue in favour of the existence of Brexit Derangement Syndrome

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Ah ok. Well I thought it was US democrats, and I was really confused there.

Yeah, the brexit thing has a lot of parallels to trump. Popular enough to win a vote, but the media acts like it was just a couple crazies.

 

[kcbbq]

And yet people can't accept that.

At this point I'd argue in favour of the existence of Brexit Derangement Syndrome

I was visiting family over there just before the vote. No one was foaming at the mouth over the issue, but I was near Milton Keynes so no one had any passion for anything to begin with. In the end it's young urbanites thinking everyone will bow to their infinite wisdom without having to justify their position. Just like many young Americans, having grown up never being told "no", it's been quite a shock to their systems. They haven't really chosen to respond very well.

I was asked my opinion on the upcoming vote. It was really hard to answer - especially because I had spent the day in London fighting an inner voice that wanted me to make comments about the tyrant King George every time I saw a painting or statue of George III. Americans are childish, but everyone knows that.

My thought was that I understand the wanting out of an overseas beaurocracy, but that I didn't think (this is going to sound crazy) anyone in Britain really understand how much sending all those UKIP people to be MEPs was a force of sanity and actually did a lot to control the EUs worst impulses. If Brexit happened that brake would be gone.

Now everyone's going to be punished for not being Germany.

 

[QB 290]

Spoons makes gross food and their alcohol is always off. Just because it's cheap doesn't make it any less shit.

 

[HIVidaBoheme]

https://www.newsweek.com/greg-paul-dms-leaked-hacked-keemstar-tape-sex-1122975

https://perezhilton.com/2018-09-17-jake-logan-paul-dad-greg-paul-sex-tape-leak-hack/

Father of the Paul brothers hacked, allegedly they found underaged girls and sex tapes. Wonder how long will it take for them to blamd kiwi farms...

 

[Chaos Theorist]

For several years now, scholars have argued that the world is experiencing a “democratic recession.” They have noted that the movement of countries toward democracy has slowed or stopped and even, in some places, reversed. They also note a general hollowing out of democracy in the advanced, industrial world. When we think about this problem, inevitably and rightly we worry about President Trump, his attacks on judges, the free press and his own Justice Department. But there is also a worrying erosion of a core democratic norm taking place on the left.

It has become commonplace to hear cries on the left to deny controversial figures on the right a platform to express their views. Colleges have disinvited speakers such as Condoleezza Rice and Charles Murray. Other campuses were unwilling or unable to allow conservative guests to actually speak, with protests overwhelming the events.

A similar controversy now involves Stephen K. Bannon, who, in recent months, has been making the rounds on the airwaves and in print — including an interview I did with him on CNN. Some have claimed that Bannon, since leaving the administration, is simply unimportant and irrelevant and thus shouldn’t be given a microphone. But if that were the case, surely the media, which after all is a for-profit industry, would notice the lack of public interest and stop inviting him.

The reality is that the people running the Economist, the Financial Times, “60 Minutes,” the New Yorker and many other organizations that have recently sought to feature Bannon know he is an intelligent and influential ideologist, a man who built the largest media platform for the new right, ran Trump’s successful campaign before serving in the White House, and continues to articulate and energize the populism that’s been on the rise throughout the Western world. He might be getting his 15 minutes of fame that will peter out, but, for now, he remains a compelling figure.

The real fear that many on the left have is not that Bannon is dull and uninteresting, but the opposite — that his ideas, some of which can reasonably be described as evoking white nationalism, will prove seductive and persuasive to too many people. Hence his detractors’ solution: Don’t give him a platform, and hope that this will make his ideas go away. But they won’t. In fact, by trying to suppress Bannon and others on the right, liberals are likely making their ideas seem more potent. Did the efforts of communist countries to muzzle capitalist ideas work?

Liberals need to be reminded of the origins of their ideology. In 1859, when governments around the world were still deeply repressive — banning books, censoring commentary and throwing people in jail for their beliefs — John Stuart Mill explained in his seminal work, “On Liberty,” that protection against governments was not enough: “There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose . . . its own ideas and practices . . . on those who dissent from them.” This classic defense of free speech, which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes later called the “freedom for the thought that we hate,” is under pressure in the United States — and from the left.

We’ve been here before. Half a century ago, students were also shutting down speakers whose views they found deeply offensive. In 1974, William Shockley, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who in many ways was the father of the computer revolution, was invited by Yale University students to defend his abhorrent view that blacks were a genetically inferior race who should be voluntarily sterilized. He was to debate Roy Innis, the African American leader of the Congress of Racial Equality. (The debate was Innis’s idea.) A campus uproar ensued, and the event was canceled. A later, rescheduled debate with another opponent was disrupted.

The difference from today is that Yale recognized that it had failed in not ensuring that Shockley could speak. It commissioned a report on free speech that remains a landmark declaration of the duty of universities to encourage debate and dissent. The report flatly states that a college “cannot make its primary and dominant value the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility or mutual respect. . . . it will never let these values . . . override its central purpose. We value freedom of expression precisely because it provides a forum for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox.”

The report added: “We take a chance, as the First Amendment takes a chance, when we commit ourselves to the idea that the results of free expression are to the general benefit in the long run, however unpleasant they may appear at the time.” It is on this bet for the long run, a bet on freedom — of thought, belief, expression and action — that liberal democracy rests.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c75f08704c3b

http://archive.li/Hc40p

 

[TowinKarz]

Even the article condeming the left for intellectual tollerance has to point out that the other side makes appeals to white nationalism.....

Almost there..... but still not getting it.

 

[ES 148]

Even the article condeming the left for intellectual tollerance has to point out that the other side makes appeals to white nationalism.....

Almost there..... but still not getting it.

But it does

 

[Slap47]

The biggest threat to free speech in the USA is the coopting of institutions and governments. Even the ACLU isn't in favor of free speech for all anymore.

Even the article condeming the left for intellectual tollerance has to point out that the other side makes appeals to white nationalism.....

Almost there..... but still not getting it.

They actually do but certain factions of the left appeal to wiping out white people so its free points.

 

[Mysterious Capitalist]

A moment of silence for this soon to be unemployed journalist

 

[Sissy Galvez]

Lots of reeeing once any of the millenial leftists wakes up and mom changes their diaper.

Good article, schools need to be reminded that free speech and challenging other people’s views is healthy and how people should shape their own views on issues. They shouldn’t be handed down as talking points. Echo chambers are to blame for this like tumblr and Twitter.

 

[Hux]

Did the recent influx of mobs of people (often in black hoods and masks) wanting to punch anyone and everyone to the right of Marx not tip the author off to this conclusion?

 

[registereduser]

The comments on the article are a treat. Even with the left-leaning, unquestioned concession that Trump and co. are totally promoting white nationalism, people still find this article offensive. Lots of "technically, nobody's stopping them from talking," "letting people express their ideas without being 'properly challenged' enables the spread of hate-thought," and claims that Bannon is neo-Hitler. Implying the author is either naive or doesn't mind these horrendous societal evils.

 

[Monika H.]

The comments on the article are a treat. Even with the left-leaning, unquestioned concession that Trump and co. are totally promoting white nationalism, people still find this article offensive. Lots of "technically, nobody's stopping them from talking," "letting people express their ideas without being 'properly challenged' enables the spread of hate-thought," and claims that Bannon is neo-Hitler. Implying the author is either naive or doesn't mind these horrendous societal evils.

I've learned to not read comments on a news article or YouTube video, be they from the left or the right, because they tend to be just cancer.

 

[SigSauer]

COMMIES BTFO! Based Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian governments!

Lithuanian officials said Tuesday Walmart will no longer sell clothing featuring Soviet Union logos after Baltic countries asked the retail giant to remove USSR-emblazoned apparel.

The Associated Press reported that Lithuania's foreign ministry "received a letter from Walmart this week confirming that these items would be removed from sales.” A spokeswoman for the ministry added that the country intends to ask Amazon.com take down apparel featuring Soviet symbols as well.

Walmart did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

Lawmakers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sent a letter to Walmart executives earlier this month asking them to "demonstrate their corporate responsibility" and stop the sale of items with Soviet imagery.

The officials argued that carrying the items meant Walmart was participating in "promotion, among its customers worldwide, of totalitarianism, human rights abuse and suppression of freedom and democracy, the values that allowed such corporations as Walmart to grow and prosper.”

“Horrific crimes were done under the Soviet symbols of a sickle and hammer. The promotion of such symbols resonates with a big pain for many centuries," Lithuania's ambassador to the U.S., Rolandas Krisciunas, wrote in a separate letter.

All three countries were annexed by Moscow in 1940, and were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse. The countries were occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944.

https://thehill.com/business-a-lobb...halt-sales-of-shirts-featuring-soviet-imagery

 

[Lunete]

What kind of pathetic commie poser buys their shirts at Walmart?

 

[Ruin]

Good, Stalinism alone was responsible for around 40 million deaths. If swastikas aren't allowed than this mass murder glorifying shit shouldn't either.

 

[not william stenchever]

Lithuania and its Baltic neighbors were fucked over with the tacit acceptance of the Axis and the Allies and actively fucked over by the Comintern through the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. So this story is a nice small victory for them. Fuck the people selling the merchandise of your people's literal oppression.