Note: This column is a dip in the progressive pool. No lifeguard on duty. Swim at own risk.
From the lunch counter to the bathroom counter, from Whites Only toilets to Whites Only toiletries. Yes, racism lurks everywhere and a singer named Halsey has heroically called it out in the high-end hotel sector.
A note about Halsey: The name is just Halsey. She is yet another victim of the horrible “name flu” that swept through communities of aspiring pop singers in the 2000s, leaving Rihanna, Beyoncé and so many others to face life with truncated monikers. Furthermore, she is not to be confused with WWII Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. Bull Halsey, you see, was pretty heroic himself, though he had the benefit of not just two but three names (counting “Bull”), and admittedly the Battle of Leyte Gulf pales in comparison to the Battle of Lady Dove.
That battle, according to Teen Vogue, was joined when Halsey bravely tweeted:
I’ve been traveling for years now and it’s been so frustrating that the hotel toiletry industry entirely alienates people of color,” she said. “I can’t use this perfumed watered down white people shampoo. Neither can 50% of ur customers. Annoying.
Annoying? You courageous soul, this is crushing bigotry! And Halsey taking a stand like this can shake Big Shampoo and the salon industrial complex to its core (I’m lookin’ at you, Paul Mitchell.)
Yet some people -- including some of her fans -- are blind to it. One even accused her of “finding a race issue where there is none.” But Halsey, like the admiral she’s in no way related to, wouldn’t back down.
"If white ppl can enjoy the luxury/convenience, there should be an option for everyone to. Its an 'insignificant' example of a bigger problem. That’s all!"
Teen Vogue helpfully explained that Halsey is biracial -- her father is black and her mother is white:
This isn't the first time she's addressed her biracial identity. "I’m white-passing. I’ve accepted that about myself and have never tried to control anything about black culture that’s not mine," she told Playboy in 2017, per BuzzFeed. "I’m proud to be in a biracial family, I’m proud of who I am, and I’m proud of my hair."
Truth to power! In the meantime, Halsey should look to the example of a celebrity who is proud of his hair. Chazz Michael Michaels travels with his own shampoo.
And now, more splashes from the left's intellectual cannonballs.
When everyone at the cafe has already seen you reading Howard Zinn … You’re a millennial hipster living in a Philly neighborhood that’s just ghetto enough to feel authentic but just gentrified enough that you can get ironically named microbrews. You and your gender studies degree are sitting in a cafe, nursing your IPA and stroking your enuii when you see it! No, not the old drunk trying to guess how many body piercings the waitress has. Behind that -- a vending machine stocked not with cigarettes or potato chips, but exactly the kind of lefty pamphlet that will help you catch the eye of the girl with the green armpit hair near the bar.
Really. These photos were taken in a lunch place in Philly. For just $2, you can be seen reading sensitive meditations on identity and gender, fiery condemnations of capitalism or poems about … stuff.
The vending machine carries books from The Head & The Hand, “a nonprofit, independent book publisher and writers’ workshop located in Philadelphia.” Specifically, it stocks the machine with its Shockwire Chapbook Series, which are a reaction to [wait for it!] Trump.
Like so many other members of the literary community in Philadelphia, we at The Head & The Hand took stock of our output as a creative organization after the 2016 election and asked ourselves if there was more to be done … Our new Shockwire Chapbook Series recognizes the need to raise the storytelling stakes in response to intimidation, fear, and inequality.
Wow, it’s always dark in Philadelphia. So what are these brave responses? Here are a few, according the Head & the Hand:
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Introduction to The Communist Manifesto - This excerpt of The Communist Manifesto was chosen by writer and activist Nic Esposito for its prescient parallels to the economic challenges and societal shifts we face today. But whatever your impression is of Karl Marx and socialism’s ideals, Esposito's ultimate goal for you, Dear Reader, is to engage with what Marx and his comrades wrote by uniting theory with action.
Yes, Dear Reader, whatever you think of an ideology that murdered and enslaved hundreds of millions, engage it and unite it with some vague form of action. Preferably involving puppets and drum circles.
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Opposite of Prayer - … seven interconnected stories of power, entitlement, and privilege set throughout the northern subtropics. [it] examines the pinprick where control intersects gender, language, and money, where one's body becomes a weapon and devotion becomes a crutch.
A pinprick in the northern subtropics? I have to use that! “Matt, you car was stolen.” Me: “Well that’s a real pinprick in the northern subtropics.”
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to the olive tree branches - Ndeen Al-Barqawi’s poetry unearths urgent truths about legacies of suppression, pain, and redemption, and how those themes interplay with being a queer Muslim woman in 2018. Some of the poems have been transcribed from spoken word performances while others were always destined for the page, making this collection a fearless lyrical hybrid.
They didn’t mention “her truth.” Being a queer Muslim woman entitles Al-Barqawi to at least three personal truths. More if she’s disabled.
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Report from the Streets: Voices of the Homeless - MK Punky embarked on a yearlong listening project with the intent to capture the stories of individuals who live on the street in Los Angeles. This simple goal--to engage when others are more comfortable avoiding eye contact, let alone starting a conversation--led to a collection of poems MK hopes will act as “a wakeup call from the mute.”
Ah poetry to help the homeless. Like an artist painting another self-portrait to fight world hunger.
I have a relevant addition I’d like to suggest to The Head & The Hand: The first modern vending machine was invented by Londoner Percival Everitt in 1883 to sell postcards in railroad stations. Everitt went on to start multiple vending machine companies and file many patents. He got wealthy and created a lot of jobs. The descendents of his handiwork are still functioning, distributing water, soft drinks, snacks, condoms and even anti-capitalist pamphlets in exchange for cold hard cash. It’s a boffo story. One helluva response to “intimidation, fear, and inequality.”
Quick Take: “So many straight men, we have been forced to accept, are bad to and for us. Why would we take the enormous risk of loving one of them?” -- from “Why is Fish Sex So Hot Right Now?” In The Huffington Post
Knock knock. Who’s there? Not you anymore. Media liberals have an expert for everything. Afraid your plumber might be a Republican? The Washington Post has a go-to Adjunct Professor of Partisan Body Language Studies just a phone call away. Unsure how to explain your sex change to your cat? Huffington Post’s rolodex almost certainly has an inter-species relationship counselor specializing in gender conflict.
So why not an expert on abortion jokes? The Cut website knows who to call: “Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the San Francisco–based research group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research group at the University of California, San Francisco.” And why call Sisson? To try to understand why White House Correspondents Dinner host Michelle Wolf’s abortion bit fell flat last weekend. Apparently being a particularly vile part of a classless, unfunny routine isn’t explanation enough.
So, The Cut asked, “can abortions be funny?”
Yes, of course, everything can be funny with an adept enough comedian. But I think when we’ve seen effective humor around abortion, the subject of the joke is not usually the abortion itself, or the provider, or even the choice to get the abortion. What you usually see is humor about the circumstances of a woman’s life that are leading her to get the abortion.
In other words, abortion can be a real knee-slapper as long as you don’t talk about, you know, abortion. On the other hand, TV shows or movies might be able to squeeze a few yuks in by treating the killing of a baby like the removal of an ingrown toenail.
Abortion is a really common experience for a lot of women, and the idea that it can just be part of their lives — that they can talk about it with families and their friends the way we talk about a lot of deeply personal experiences with our family and friends, with some amount of levity — I think is really affirming.
That’s nice. “Affirming.” Kinda makes you feel all warm. But what’s a bad abortion joke?
If the humor is too flippant or too dismissive, then it’s not a function of destigmatizing or personalizing an experience. It just alienates a viewer or reader or audience member to the point that they’re no longer willing to hear what you’re saying on the topic.
Notice what Sisson is really concerned with? “Destigmatizing or personalizing” abortion. She’s talking agitprop, not comedy. Later, Sisson explains, “Humor takes it out of the sense that this is something we must feel guilty over, we must be uncomfortable with, we must keep secret.” So abortion humor is essentially therapeutic for women who’ve had abortions.
The key to a good abortion joke is the same as the key to abortion: self centeredness. I bet you didn’t need an expert to tell you that.
Quick Take: Ummm, knowing that you're an "Instagram Butt Star" ...
