Hello, I’m Daisy Cousens.
Welcome to This Week in Social Justice.
INTRO
This week’s biggest and baddest social justice fails include Alyssa Milano’s Twitter freakout
over actor Jon Voight daring to express a political opinion, Marine Le Pen’s triggering
of the media by making the “OK” hand gesture, and depending on how long I feel like talking
about the first two topics, we may even get time for a bonus topic.
So!
Let’s get started.
Actress turned activist turned professional victicrat Alyssa Milano has once again done
herself no favours on Twitter.
In this week’s hysterical episode of Alyssa, she has ridiculed veteran actor and Academy
Award winner Jon Voight for making a couple of videos expressing his political opinion
and putting them on the internet
As you can, see, Jon has put forth his views in a way that is elegant, dignified, and succinct;
which is far more than can be said for Alyssa Milano and her cronies.
Of course, Alyssa did not approve of this message, and made her stance known
Now I understand why Republicans like to discredit actors and our political views.
“Stay in your lane, Jon!”
“Has been!”
“F-lister trying to stay relevant!”
“Nobody cares what an out of touch actor thinks!”
Now, of course Alyssa Milano is entitled to express her opinion about Jon Voight.
It’s just ironic and a tad hypocritical for a number of reasons.
First and most obvious, Alyssa spends what seems like all of her free time ridiculing
and smearing conservatives and Republicans when they do literally anything.
And she does so in a way that fluctuates between somewhat rude and borderline hysterical.
Yet here she is attempting to ridicule Jon Voight for literally making two short videos
about his stance on President Trump.
It’s just not good optics.
Secondly; it’s clear in her tweet that she is parodying comments that are levelled at
her whenever she opens her mouth on the internet, and applying them to Jon.
Certainly, I can understand why her critics call her a has been, F list celebrity who
is trying to stay relevant when nobody cares what she thinks since she’s out of touch
so she should stay in her lane.
But the problem here is that even implying in the context of a parody that Job Voight
is irrelevant or even close to F list is a bit of a misstep for Alyssa.
See, Jon Voight has had, arguably, one of the most successful acting careers of any
actor ever.
He has a career that spans six decades, and during that time, he has won an Academy Award
and been nominated for four.
He has also won four Golden Globes and has been nominated for eleven, so far.
He is, in fact, so famous, and has been so entrenched in popular culture over the 60
years he has been working, that they even based an episode of Seinfeld around him.
Alyssa Milano, on the other hand, has won four Kids Choice Awards, one teen choice award,
one People’s Choice Award (which isn’t bad), Four Young Artist Awards, all back in
the 80s, and one Annie Award for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Feature
Production in Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure.
She’s also only known for one TV show, which is Charmed, and literally only became famous
again when she created the #metoo movement in 2017.
Needless to say, nobody was shy in pointing all of this out
The difference is Jon is still relevant.
One Oscar, 4 nominations, 4 Golden Globes, 11 nominations...Who’s the Boss?, Well I
do think Alyssa got a teen choice award.......like 30 years ago!
Woo Hoo
She was exceptionally bad in “embrace of the vampire”, Gee, I thought that was one
of her best movies........oh wait, it was ! LOL
Look, the bottom line here is that I don’t think actors should ever become political
advocates, on any side.
While of course they should be able to express their opinions, choosing to do so only polarised
half of their fan base, and, in the case of some, but not all, makes them look a little
bit stupid.
But for Alyssa Milano to go after Jon Voight, considering all of the above, well, that probably
was not a sensible choice.
Great big social justice fail on this one.
Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally party, formerly known as Front National,
has unfortunately got herself into a spot of bother.
Prior to the European Elections, she was pictured with an Estonian MP from the country’s nationalist
EKRE party, making the “OK” hand gesture.
Now, to your normal, everyday, sensible person, this hand signal indicates that everything
is, well, okay, and was originally used by divers underwater.
However, according to the media, this seemingly innocuous hand gesture is associated with
white supremacy, as the position of the fingers can be seen to represent the letters WP, for
white power.
Marine Le Pen claims she was tricked into doing the hand signal in the photo, and that
she had no knowledge that it had any other meaning.
This did not stop the media from using it as clickbait to smear her as a white supremacist,
and relentlessly and inaccurately attributing her and her party to the far-right, even though
both Barack Obama and Alexandria Occasion Cortez have been pictured using the hand gesture.
As a side note; it never ceases to amaze me the media’s continued and willful use of
“far-right” to describe anyone they don’t like.
Nationalism is not far-right; it’s simply a smear used by the corrupt media to paint
someone as a racist.
And I am so so sick of explaining that.
Anyway, here’s the thing.
The media and the left at large are very keen on clutching their pearls when they see that
symbol, and perpetuating the idea that it is code created and used by white supremacists.
Only…it’s not.
It literally doesn’t mean anything other than okay.
The reason there is all this hand-flapping about it is because 4chan decided to create
a giant troll with it a couple of years ago.
They thought it would be funny to put it out there via the internet that white supremacists
were now using that symbol to identify themselves, in an attempt to troll and make fun of the
media, who they knew would take the bait.
Of course, the media played right into their hands and perpetuated this myth, and thus
4chan proved again that they are the kingmakers of internet culture.
Now, the media must know, by now, that this whole thing is a 4chan joke, like, they must.
That info has been out there for a while now.
As such, I’m guessing that they are doubling down on it to fool unwitting members of the
public into actually believing it is a white power symbol, and that marine Le Pen was displaying
it, in an attempt to hurt her for the upcoming elections.
Needless to say, it didn’t work
Big bad social justice fail right here.
Bonus topic!
We have a bonus topic this week.
Everyone’s least favourite social justice identarian publication, BuzzFeed, is know
for its listicles, political and otherwise.
On May 28th, it published this beauty “19 tweets for anyone who’s had enough of men,
no offense”, which contained, as you’d expect, a number of frustratingly anti-male
tweets
white men on tinder need to stop asking me to go hiking.
I am NOT gonna help you find more land to colonize sir....
she’s right and she should say it This shot is brilliant and should be shown
in any film study class men b like “all i said was women don’t
deserve rights why are u mad at me” The jellyfish is the most masculine creature
in the sea, as it is both fragile and toxic A group of white men is called a subreddit
Now, while, yes, some of these comments were no doubt intended to be jokes, the point is
that it is perfectly politically correct to publicly joke about men, specifically white
men, in this way.
Obviously, if these kinds of comments were made about women, black people, LGBT people,
etc, the exact same people who are making these comments about white men would be screaming
bigotry from the rooftops.
And while the excuse these kinds of intersectional obsessives will give you to justify this is
that because apparently white men are the inherent oppressors of everyone in society
because they possess some invisible thing called male privilege, which is stupid, it’s
okay to publicly denigrate them every chance you get.
So, well done, BuzzFeed employees, for publishing something that is so blatantly racist and
sexist.
I’m sure your mothers are very proud of you.
Enormous social justice fail on this.