Outrage Culture and Calm

With all the talk about certain social media platforms amplifying outrage, hate and unrest, what comes to mind is the Harry Sheerer character in This is Spinal Tap saying that his band mates David and Nigel are like hot and cold and his role is to be "luke warm water." The next thing that comes to mind is an old John Cleese video listing all the people hated by the left and hated by the right, with both lists ending with "moderates." Nonetheless, that is where I see myself, the person who will come off as glib to those who thrive on outrage. It's not like anyone's adrenaline can sustain for days at a time, or that they have enough salive to foam at the mouth 24/7 but there are incendiary positions held as deeply as religous zealotry that come out as compulsive hashtag tweeting and blog sharing. You know the person who wakes up each morning to Google their trigger words. "JK Rowling won't copy/paste my opinion -- she must be a witch!" I am against lies and spin that "make life easier" or harder for anyone. If I had the means to put out fires I would. I am not an influencer. I can struggle with my weight and all of its related malodies and still be against any drive to enforce the idea that fat is as good as muscle. Social media might call for a wider range of body types and faces in movies, but maybe cinematographers might not want the challenge of making them "look good." Claudette Coulbert in the early days of cinema got a camera man fired for shooting "her bad side." Rosie O'Donnell sued her namesake magazine supposedly for violating their contractual agreement to never show an unflattering photo of her. That seems to be a set-up for walking-on-eggshells. What I have usually instead of active rage about the issues of the day is bemusement instead of amusement, an eye-roll. For example, the term cis was not used in relation to gender until about 2013 when it began being foisted onto the discourse even though as the opposite of trans it only had relevance in regards to that subject. The late Norm MacDonald described cisgender as "a way to marginalize normal people." So as cheeky as that assessment may have been, it is not a term that I will use. It is at least redundant for those of us who remain the same gender our whole lives. Only a small fraction of the population claim to be transgender, and surely an even smaller portion would be considered as such by a narrow standard such as gender confirmation surgery, or what used to be called a sex change operation. To call it like it is, or to refuse to join the short-lived trend of cramming preferred gender pronouns beside your name on Twitter is not in any way causing a trans person to comit suicide or a mad gunman to target a trans event nor condoning idiots chasing after and beating up transgendered people in the streets. But one of the tactics of the activists who range from well meaning to deranged is to conflate those violent events and anyone's refusal to play along and say two plus two is five. While it should not be about personalities, the cases that got a lot of heat came from Twitter. JK Rowling commented under a caption that used the term "People who menstruate" and her quip was a joke like, ‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?" Let me be clear: This is a funny line responding to the absurdity being shoved in our faces. It will not please everybody, and nore does the re-engineering of language to artificially boost the relevance of societies margines. The term "menstruating persons" instead of women has been taken up by AOC, but at least she has not been using "Latinx" which is a term her people flatly reject. Unfortunately, it does get used by Michael Moore. The reality is that there are people you value and respect, from politicians to moviemakers and writers, who are going to have an opinion you do not like. You can cut off your nose to spite your face, giving up on any work that person is involved in or dismissing them wholesale over that one or two failures to overlap with your Venn diagram or you can take what you like and leave the rest. You will have friends and family with whom you disagree on one issue or another. Hating a celebrity or public figure because his or her social media reach is being used to prop up something you dislike or is failing to boost the ideas you want promoted is a waste of energy. Gina Carano voted the wrong way the first time she voted in her life in 2020. I also disagree with her on vaccinations for Covid 19. But I like her in movies and enjoyed her as Cara Dune on The Mandalorian. I expect I would have liked Rangers of the New Republic which had been written and developed by Jon Favreau built around her. But Kathleen Kennedy and her toxic-woke gremlins at Lucasfilm used her irrelevant Twitter posts as an excuse to not renew her contract. This impacted Jon Favreau and his shows.THAT is the kind of issue that can frustrate me. It all started with Gina politely refusing to pust her own gender pronouns, and when people did not respect her choice and kept swarming and nagging, she posted Artoo Detoo pronouns "Beep/bop/boop" and sparked further outrage among the most cretinous Twitter stans ostensibly looking to "make trans people feel welcome" on the all but anonymous platform. In practical terms, they have drawn blood from people who had benign indifference to trans issues and now see their white knights as a dangerous joke. If a Gina Carano fan flushes an obnoxious activist out an airlock, that will be the reason. Trans people "need better representatives," as Gina has said.