Also a source of hilarity if their influence can be kept at bay.It is a window into our collective psyche of how shallow we are as a culture.
Charlie Kirk Shot in Utah
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Pinball1970
Valued Senior Member
They are only a problem if they have any sort of money, organisation, influence, access to the media or power.
Unfortunately....
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
Unless the Greek's Logos is literally a "word." Not a compelling metaphysical conjecture for me, but people do like their various golem horses and other supernatural things. I will say "holy shit!" would be an understandable sentiment from a deity who created this cockamamie planet and looked in recently.
So when they told me my first car, a 65 Beetle, had 40 horsepower, it didn't have the spirits of 40 deceased horses in it? That explains a lot.
The Tawdry Gift That Keeps On Giving
There is an important point that is difficult to quantify, which has to do with recognizing the state of the discourse.
The fourth-wall note, for instance—
—is that J.D. Vance (a man of many names, including J.D. Mandel) repeatedly fails to defend his South Asian-American family from racist attacks by rightist commentators.¹ And so it happened that not only did Vance offer another attempt at lukewarm charm↑ in answering a Christian student at a Kirk event, the scandalization of leather pants and a hug felt like the second blow of a combo, and then Erika Kirk delivered a third hit in comparing Vance so favorably to her husband.
Toward which, the nation's preeminent storyteller cracks wise about the obvious↑, and if that was all there is to the story, then a socially awkward episode between two socially awkward people will fade into dusty, monochrome memory of once upon a somewhen.
So, here we come to both a punch line and moral of the story. A random handle describing a tea-sipping Alaskan² challenged Joyce Carol Oates↱ on the indignity of it all—
—and in both general and particular terms, ¡Don't do this!
First, that form of rebuke was dead before my time; it's the stuff of jokes among storytellers³, a depiction of typal pomposity. At no time in the period of social media has it been genuine, and the only reason to take it seriously is if one intends to dissect the behavioral phenomenon.
But there are also the markers and even lost remains of countless heroes fallen while storming futility because it is there. And, in particular, this unbelievable avatar came for Joyce Carol Oates. Over the last year or so, especially, there has not been a worse idea in social media.
On this occasion, Ms. Oates deigned to respond directly:
And that also works as her fourth-wall note.
Because nobody should be so gullible.
____________________
Notes:
There is an important point that is difficult to quantify, which has to do with recognizing the state of the discourse.
The fourth-wall note, for instance—
—is that J.D. Vance (a man of many names, including J.D. Mandel) repeatedly fails to defend his South Asian-American family from racist attacks by rightist commentators.¹ And so it happened that not only did Vance offer another attempt at lukewarm charm↑ in answering a Christian student at a Kirk event, the scandalization of leather pants and a hug felt like the second blow of a combo, and then Erika Kirk delivered a third hit in comparing Vance so favorably to her husband.
Toward which, the nation's preeminent storyteller cracks wise about the obvious↑, and if that was all there is to the story, then a socially awkward episode between two socially awkward people will fade into dusty, monochrome memory of once upon a somewhen.
So, here we come to both a punch line and moral of the story. A random handle describing a tea-sipping Alaskan² challenged Joyce Carol Oates↱ on the indignity of it all—
Her husband, the father of two very young children, was brutally murdered on camera less than two months ago. And you speculate about a grieving widow and her dead husband's dear friend. Have you truly no empathy? You should be ashamed. I thought you were better than this.
—and in both general and particular terms, ¡Don't do this!
First, that form of rebuke was dead before my time; it's the stuff of jokes among storytellers³, a depiction of typal pomposity. At no time in the period of social media has it been genuine, and the only reason to take it seriously is if one intends to dissect the behavioral phenomenon.
But there are also the markers and even lost remains of countless heroes fallen while storming futility because it is there. And, in particular, this unbelievable avatar came for Joyce Carol Oates. Over the last year or so, especially, there has not been a worse idea in social media.
On this occasion, Ms. Oates deigned to respond directly:
Mr. Just Sipping, you too should be ashamed for being so gullible.
And that also works as her fourth-wall note.
Because nobody should be so gullible.
____________________
Notes:
¹see "Presidential predictions …" #394 (July, 2024)↗, in re conservative accusations of goblin worship and shit-eating in the wake of Vance's decision to try to charm his way through instead of vigorously defend his wife and children.
² The user name is "Just sipping" and the address is @AKdrinkstea, so, yes, really. Also, while another user suggests↱ it is a fake account, which can have a few meanings, but is likely correct, Oates is notorious for not caring if accounts are fake, and that's also probably why rightists and bots have a thing for her.
³ e.g., Gaiman and Pratchett in Good Omens, Steel in (I think) the "Karl Marx" episode of the Lectures; the form might have experienced some sort of pseudo-ironic aping along the way, but is hasn't been something taken genuinely in its facial context for a long time, and possibly not this century.
² The user name is "Just sipping" and the address is @AKdrinkstea, so, yes, really. Also, while another user suggests↱ it is a fake account, which can have a few meanings, but is likely correct, Oates is notorious for not caring if accounts are fake, and that's also probably why rightists and bots have a thing for her.
³ e.g., Gaiman and Pratchett in Good Omens, Steel in (I think) the "Karl Marx" episode of the Lectures; the form might have experienced some sort of pseudo-ironic aping along the way, but is hasn't been something taken genuinely in its facial context for a long time, and possibly not this century.
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A group of math teachers in Tucson, Arizona, came under fire for their Halloween costumes this weekend. The teachers’ bloodied white t-shirts with the phrase “Problem solved” written across the chest set off alarm bells in conservative media circles, where the outfits looked like a mockery of the late political organizer Charlie Kirk.
A spokesperson for Kirk’s Turning Point USA shared photos of the costumes to a large audience on social media and called for the teachers to be fired.
“Concerned parents just sent us this image of what’s believed to be teachers… mocking Charlie’s murder,” he wrote. “They deserve to be famous, and fired.”
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If only...
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Vail School District Superintendent John Carruth quickly put out a statement denying that the shirts had anything to do with Kirk’s assassination.
“These shirts were worn in reference to solving math problems,” he wrote. “Any reference that these shirts were related to something other than that are simply false and untrue…These shirts were worn both this and last year and were not intended as a reference to any person, event or political issue.”
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www.salon.com
I kinda like the idea of sending a bunch of random photos of people in t shirts to Turning Point and insinuating that they're mocking Charlie Kirk's death, like maybe one of a guy wearing one of those shirts that says "he's the gay" with an arrow pointing to the guy next to him.
A group of math teachers in Tucson, Arizona, came under fire for their Halloween costumes this weekend. The teachers’ bloodied white t-shirts with the phrase “Problem solved” written across the chest set off alarm bells in conservative media circles, where the outfits looked like a mockery of the late political organizer Charlie Kirk.
A spokesperson for Kirk’s Turning Point USA shared photos of the costumes to a large audience on social media and called for the teachers to be fired.
“Concerned parents just sent us this image of what’s believed to be teachers… mocking Charlie’s murder,” he wrote. “They deserve to be famous, and fired.”
-----------
If only...
-----------
Vail School District Superintendent John Carruth quickly put out a statement denying that the shirts had anything to do with Kirk’s assassination.
“These shirts were worn in reference to solving math problems,” he wrote. “Any reference that these shirts were related to something other than that are simply false and untrue…These shirts were worn both this and last year and were not intended as a reference to any person, event or political issue.”
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"Problem solved": AZ teachers' bloody, Charlie Kirk-esque Halloween costumes raise eyebrows - Salon.com
The bloodied t-shirts of Arizona math teachers were believed to be a reference to Kirk's assassination.
www.salon.com
I kinda like the idea of sending a bunch of random photos of people in t shirts to Turning Point and insinuating that they're mocking Charlie Kirk's death, like maybe one of a guy wearing one of those shirts that says "he's the gay" with an arrow pointing to the guy next to him.
Literally? I assumed "they need to be outed" "they had it coming"
It's a "cancel culture" thing.
Like the old Christian phone trees and letter-writing campaigns, and the idea of a "banned" album: Can they make major retailers too frightened to carry your band's album? Can they make a TV network too afraid to utter your name?
Can they make you too scared for your life to go home?
This is the pent-up anger of generations believing themselves entitled to supremacy such that mere equality violates their right to be equal.
Almost but not quite. Think of it this way: While you're off fighting against Big Bang heresy, the anti-science agenda has made the U.S. a measles nation.
The difference, however, between the right wing then and now is that conservatives have largely shed a certain pretense of legitimacy. Thirty years ago, they might have argued issues like creationism, birth control, abortion, and heterosupremacy according to pretenses of science; those pretenses never worked out for them because it wasn't science. Given a choice, they prefer the temptations of authority over the legitimacy of science. Science wasn't there for them, so they, too, have abandoned science.
These days, having lost on the merits, conservatives have fallen into a pattern we might call "byss". It's shorthand for the phrase, "because you say so". Once you grasp this concept, American conservatism makes a lot more sense.
What happened is that according to various rules of discourse, conservatives flat-out lost. Their historical framework fell through, their science never proved out, their economics never actually worked. To the other, though, there are things in this world they wanted, so they're still chasing.
But here's where it can feel complicated: As this happened, over time, and conservatives realized they had no strong argumentative merit, they would grudgingly concede various losses. However, they would never admit they lost on the merits. Women in the workplace? Okay, dear, because you say so. Wives have the right to consent to, or refuse, sexual intercourse? Okay, fine, whatever, dear, because you say so. Gay rights, then birth control, and we went and elected a black president.
That's part of the reason, for instance, that I razzed your rightist sympathies↗; the separator, what sorts the wheat and chaff, has been the point at which conservatives decide to hop off. For most American conservatives and their libertarian supporters, the problem isn't really how far Trump has taken things, but that they expected it would look neater, be less inconvenient to them, and be at least a little more subtle about the racism.
And that last, we even have some of that issue around here: We're not supposed to say certain things because they're somehow unfair. One of the reasons conservatives don't have to support their political arguments is because they can't. Creationism, birth control, rape, equal protection of the laws, climate change, vaccination, even basic human rights: For conservatives, the politics that disagree with them can never be seen as having merit; thus, "liberal" progress is not based on any reason, in their opinion, but because some woman, or some black person, or some Muslim or queer or liberal, says so. Conservatives are sick of losing just because we say so. It's their turn, now, and they're going to take what they want because they say so. It's their turn to just say so.
We now have six states in which no county has achieved kindergarten immunization thresholds. Consider that the same people so upset about "gender-affirming" therapy for transgender patients are also often antivax, and thus support the discredited doctor prescribing "gender-affirming" drugs to children in order to cure their nonexistent vaccine disease. Nothing about what these tinfoils do has to make sense, to them or anyone else. This is all about having their say-so.
And that's a big difference. Once upon a time, they used to rely on doubt. But as reality—i.e. consistent outcomes—became more and more inconvenient, they stopped trying. True, for instance, there is no "gay gene", but compared to reliable scientific outcomes, it would be really strange if there was. The same thing happens with the logic of less rigorous circumstance.
True, for instance, there is no specifically-enumerated constitutional right to privacy. In the U.S. Constitution, it's just not there. It used to be an important part of the anti-abortion argument, because a woman's right to privacy was part of the Roe v. Wade decision. And if liberals told you conservatives were coming for the right to privacy, that would have been something of an outlying opinion. And now that the Supreme Court majority has announced its intentions toward Griswold, a landmark privacy case, actual generations of conservative and libertarians find themselves embarrassed by the failure of their antiliberal denialism. But those conservatives who want what they want don't care; it's like Sartre said, "They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side".
Much like Alito's ninety-nine percent argument↗: If you can bring enough people to enforce an argument, it does not matter whether that argument is right or wrong.
†
It's one thing if you "have some views that are 'right wing'", but you know who else might say that? An antivaxxer. It's kind of like watching people parse bigotry and privilege: One might use the tools common to bigotry, but that doesn't mean anything because we must revive a discredited conservative political argument about the limits of the word "phobia". And it's possible, sure, to say you don't think someone is a bigot, but it's also possible to just say so in such a manner that leaves the question of bigoted behavior unaddressed.
For instance, think about the idea of the month of March. Now count back a handful of months to the preceding summer, about July or August. Now, it's one thing if a come-lately passionate advocate conveniently doesn't know the history of a decade or two prior, but earlier this year I met some very passionate advocates who, from the vantage of March, could not remember what happened the summer before. And the number of those who would insist that history is tangential to its topic, has sweet fuckall to do with anything, probably ought not be surprising. They don't have science or history on their side, so they're down to trying to enforce their say-so by sheer will of saying so.
Anti-vax, anti-trans, anti-CRT/DEI/woke, anti-feminist, &c. Or, affirmatively: Conspriacists, misogynists, racists, religious supremacists. Like the old conspiracism we don't hear much about anymore, like anti-fluoride ... er, I mean ... anyway, like the old-school conspiracism, the merit of the argument is a hidden authority conferred by secret knowledge; these people know better than science, and compared to the historical record available to us they know what really happened.
Right now, rightists just don't have any pretense of respectability to hide in; they lost a bunch of arguments and can't think of anything new, so they just insist.
Hemant Mehta↱ asks, "What is Ark Encounter if not a meet-up spot for the scientifically illiterate?" and this is relevant because the creationist tourist attraction is now the center of a new measles health alert. The preface to his question observes, "you can almost guarantee that the sort of people who visit that place include plenty of vaccine deniers". And That's Kentucky.
And since Ark Encounter offers free tickets for children, practically encouraging parents to indoctrinate their entire family, there's also the possibility that unvaccinated kids will pay the price because of one irresponsible person's ignorance. It's already happened in South Carolina, where one particular church is now the epicenter of a measles outbreak.
In the U.S., we've gone from "sincerely held beliefs", a manner akin to religious exemption, to "alternative facts", which are part of the justification for Trumpism and the rise of Christian nationalism, Groypers, and Turning Point, i.e., Charlie Kirk.
And you might have noticed that the "alternative facts" don't even try to pretend scientific respectability, anymore. How long did they run on mercury in the vaccines before they couldn't, so they just made up the 5G nanotracker conspiracy, and, hey, whatever works.
I'm not going to tell you to not challenge religious crackpots, but a quarter-century, at least, of experience tells me that arguing about the Big Bang or whether God exists has made no discernible difference. And a certain amount of it might have been regressive; there remains a question of disputing over the wrong question.¹
It's not just a question of subject, but also of method.
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Notes:
¹ ca. 2021↗:
「If we consider the idea of an historical period in which traditionalist and Christian supremacism wrapped itself in a pretense of literalism that was never actually genuine, perhaps it might stand out that the whole time—that is to say, since even before the Reagan Awakening—literalism had already been ceded as an anti-historical relic of faith. In its way, the period can describe people disputing over the wrong question.」
Mehta, Hemant. "People who visited Ark Encounter may have been exposed to measles". Friendly Atheist. 2 January 2026. FriendlyAtheist.com. 2 January 2026. https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/people-who-visited-ark-encounter
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
Yup. One problem I've had in these parts (geographic parts) is someone trying to drill down into someone's psyche - positing, say, that X is at core a kind person - while skipping over their actions and overt expressions. It doesn't seem that difficult to define bigotry by a person's actions. Actions are what matter in this regard.
It also seems better, based on all my experience at the level of friends and family and coworkers, to just own up. As in, "I know I've had racist reactions, and harbor vestiges handed down memetically, but I'm still working on that and I know the primitive shadowy parts of the self it comes from."
TheVat
Valued Senior Member
I would only add that they also prefer the temptations of theocracy - which comes in with a built-in automatic constriction of the domain of science. They don't have to reject science, just shrink its cage.
Namaste.
Conservative Publisher, Cheerleading Icon, and Kirk Mentor Dead in Pickleball Accident
It is not the lede anyone expected, today:
The senior editor and co-publisher of Human Events was apparently known as "Rockefeller with glitter", and is seen as the most influential person in American cheerleading. "In his political work, Webb became an important early mentor to conservative activist and Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed last year", and "stood with Kirk's family at the White House when the late activist was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom". According to Jack Posobiec, current senior editor at Human Events, Webb would go on to buy The Post Millennial at least in part on Charlie Kirk's recommendation.
And there is something about the idea of being motivated by "discipline and keeping score" that feels strangely apropos. Compared to the idea that Kirk's rightism leads to authoritarianism and justifies itself according to some cosmic scoreboard tallying according to mysterious rules¹, well, okay, that feels almost too easy. Then again, the idea that nothing is ever so straightforward has necessarily fallen into doubt in recent years; in the way Charlie Kirk became iconic of that doubt, some significant part of that heritage came to him through Jeff Webb.
____________________
Notes:
McHardy, Martha and Donovan Lynch. "Charlie Kirk's 'Mentor' Dies After Freak Pickleball Accident". The Daily Beast. 23 March 2026. TheDailyBeast.com. 23 march 2026. https://www.thedailybeast.com/charlie-kirks-mentor-jeff-webb-dies-after-freak-pickleball-accident/
It is not the lede anyone expected, today:
Charlie Kirk's longtime mentor has died following a bizarre and tragic pickleball accident.
Jeff Webb, 76, died after falling while playing pickleball and suffering a severe head injury, Cheer Daily reported. The 76-year-old was hospitalized after the accident, and his family later decided to take him off life support.
Webb was an influential figure in the world of cheerleading, founding the Universal Cheerleading Association (UCA) and Varsity Spirit, and later led Varsity Brands, which grew into a multibillion‑dollar company. Decades before that he was a "yell leader," or a spirit leader, at the University of Oklahoma.
Webb later said in an interview he was not motivated by money, but rather by "discipline and keeping score."
(McHardy and Lynch↱)
Jeff Webb, 76, died after falling while playing pickleball and suffering a severe head injury, Cheer Daily reported. The 76-year-old was hospitalized after the accident, and his family later decided to take him off life support.
Webb was an influential figure in the world of cheerleading, founding the Universal Cheerleading Association (UCA) and Varsity Spirit, and later led Varsity Brands, which grew into a multibillion‑dollar company. Decades before that he was a "yell leader," or a spirit leader, at the University of Oklahoma.
Webb later said in an interview he was not motivated by money, but rather by "discipline and keeping score."
(McHardy and Lynch↱)
The senior editor and co-publisher of Human Events was apparently known as "Rockefeller with glitter", and is seen as the most influential person in American cheerleading. "In his political work, Webb became an important early mentor to conservative activist and Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed last year", and "stood with Kirk's family at the White House when the late activist was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom". According to Jack Posobiec, current senior editor at Human Events, Webb would go on to buy The Post Millennial at least in part on Charlie Kirk's recommendation.
And there is something about the idea of being motivated by "discipline and keeping score" that feels strangely apropos. Compared to the idea that Kirk's rightism leads to authoritarianism and justifies itself according to some cosmic scoreboard tallying according to mysterious rules¹, well, okay, that feels almost too easy. Then again, the idea that nothing is ever so straightforward has necessarily fallen into doubt in recent years; in the way Charlie Kirk became iconic of that doubt, some significant part of that heritage came to him through Jeff Webb.
____________________
Notes:
¹ Christian scholar Mark Noll describes an historical transition in American christendom from reliance on precedent toward "self-evident propositions", and suggests of a larger Protestant transformation away from "establishment forms"; in the American version, "as much was happening in theology from new meanings given to old words as from the introduction of new vocabularies". Two centuries on, they're still at it. (see "On Discussing Religion" #1 (2021)↗)
McHardy, Martha and Donovan Lynch. "Charlie Kirk's 'Mentor' Dies After Freak Pickleball Accident". The Daily Beast. 23 March 2026. TheDailyBeast.com. 23 march 2026. https://www.thedailybeast.com/charlie-kirks-mentor-jeff-webb-dies-after-freak-pickleball-accident/
It did occur to me. But inasmuch as maybe an investor's journal might be the first to learn of a finance icon's death, I'm much more fascinated by the idea that Jeff Webb was the cheerleader, a singular icon in a very particular corner of our culture.
The guy who shaped Charlie Kirk and an important corner of rightist media is also a glittery cheerleading organizer who believes in discipline and keeping score.
And a freak pickleball accident? If he wasn't a rightist bastard, I'd raise a glass to the spectacle. I mean, what a way to go. What a signature exit.