Blaming the Baby Yoda backlash on ‘liberals’ is telling on yourself

A lot of really questionable posts make their way into my Facebook feed, but because I’m aware of the sort of content I regularly put out there (e.g. this blog), I generally try to bite my tongue and avoid calling out people I know in real life for what they choose to write and share online. But sometimes really dumb things are just too really dumb and I have to respond.

The post that demanded my response — seriously, I had no choice — is titled Baby Yoda’s ‘egg eating’ causes liberal consternation, and I assure you I’m only linking to it so you don’t suspect I made it up. The article’s basic premise appears to be that a) the people who are upset that Baby Yoda ate Frog Lady’s eggs are obviously liberals, and b) this discomfort renders them hypocrites because if they truly believe eating a sentient creature’s eggs is a bad thing to do, they must believe that aborting a fetus is even worse. BUT they probably also voted for Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights! Got em.

It’s very possible this effort to own the libs is also an attempt at comedy, but as I pointed out in the post that immediately precedes this one, the premise has to make sense for the joke to work. And where Trevor Noah can usually get away with a faulty premise, this author can’t. But even if you accept that liberals, in particular, were outraged over Baby Yoda’s raw omelet, what that lopsided concern implies about conservatives is even less flattering.

I’m not exactly sure where to start, so apologies in advance if this rejoinder is more than a little disjoinded.

Trevor Noah spreading harmful coronavirus misinformation

Last week, Trevor Noah spent a few minutes discussing the recent reopening of Shanghai Disneyland — and spread some worrying misinformation about the coronavirus by identifying two “coronavirus symptoms” that actually aren’t:

Mike Pence has to come up with a better excuse

Mike Pence came under fire this week for touring the Mayo Clinic without a mask, in defiant violation of its policy that all visitors must wear one. Instead of seizing the opportunity for, well, a learning opportunity, Pence defended his choice with a series of odd excuses.

One little suffix: suffragist vs. suffragette and reclaiming ‘Pocahontas’

Since I resumed writing last month, all ten posts I’ve written have — one way or another — concerned the coronavirus. Not surprising. It happens to be the big story right now and, indirectly, the reason I started blogging again in the first place. But even in the midst of a pandemic it can’t be all corona, all the time. So as Wisconsin prepares for its inexplicable decision to move forward with the Presidential primary next week, let’s revisit a curious episode from an earlier stage of the primary instead.

Back in September, Elizabeth Warren gave a speech in Washington Square Park to discuss the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I’m not interested in rehashing its contents, but want to quickly highlight Senator Warren’s interesting choice of word (bolded below):

Mike Pence is fighting coronavirus with the help of a woman using this one weird trick

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF” thundered President Trump, apparently more afraid of naming the problem (hint: a disease) than of butchering a well-known idiom.

Trump’s not alone in his realization, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, that words matter. There’s good reason so much ink has been spilled over whether it’s acceptable (hint: it’s not) to call it the “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese virus”. How we talk about something can powerfully shape how we think about it.

The right way to fact-check President Trump

During the election, media organizations were forced to create new and inventive ways to communicate Donald Trump’s new and inventive relationship with the truth. Here’s one famous example:

Trump is inspiring CNN to be more creative with its chyrons pic.twitter.com/XAxDiNtoBZ

— Liz del Carmen (@LizMartinezG) June 2, 2016

Such efforts went over so well that some people have clamored for the networks to deploy such correctives on a more regular basis:

For Israeli Memorial Day, Bibi channeled his inner Pocahontas (pun intended)

On Israeli Memorial Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with several children whose parents were killed serving in the Israel Defense Forces. At some point in the discussion, a little girl asked Bibi how he felt when his brother was famously killed in the raid on Entebbe. Here’s the brief exchange, captioned in English:

Jon Stewart’s guest last night could use some serious perspective

Millionaire hedge fund manager Bill Browder visited Jon Stewart last night to promote his new book, Red Notice. The book describes an incident in which Browder’s Russian lawyer was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by corrupt businessmen he had testified against in Russia.

In addition to writing a book, Browder also worked to pass American legislation that would punish individuals who participated in such shameful behavior. Here’s how he described the consequences of getting on the list created by that piece of legislation:

One thing to remember about the back and forth over “Genie, You’re free!”

One of — if not the most — iconic reaction to Robin Williams’ tragic passing was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Aladdin-inspired tribute to the comic legend. Surely, you’ve seen it:

Genie, you're free. pic.twitter.com/WjA9QuuldD

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) August 12, 2014

Like any major news story, Williams’ death has spawned a veritable ecosystem of sideshows and distractions (an ecosystem to which I admittedly love to add).

One such offshoot revolves around the Academy’s tweet, which has come under some criticism for allegedly aggrandizing Williams’ decision to take his own life. According to one widely-shared piece in The Washington Post:

More than 270,000 people have shared the tweet, which means that, per the analytics site Topsy, as many as 69 million people have seen it.

The problem? It violates well-established public health standards for how we talk about suicide.

“If it doesn’t cross the line, it comes very, very close to it,” said Christine Moutier, chief medical officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “Suicide should never be presented as an option. That’s a formula for potential contagion.”

I’ll readily admit Moutier might have a point. Suicide is not something that should be encouraged.

But here’s the thing: a lot of people might have shared the same tribute before the cause of Williams’ death became clear, of simply without knowing the circumstances surrounding his passing. Take, for instance, the very first time* “Genie, You’re free” appeared on Twitter Tuesday:

A thoroughly unimportant Robin Williams story: I Dream With Genie

I really like coincidences, but I’ll keep this one short so as not to dwell on the subject.

Last week, I went on a short camping trip with my brothers. Since we were only sleeping outside for one night, I had plenty of room in my backpack and packed myself a pillow. After returning to civilization, I didn’t want to put the outdoors-encrusted pillow onto an otherwise fresh bed, so I grabbed a fresh pillowcase from my closet.

The case I pulled out gave me brief pause. I remember thinking to myself it had been a long time since I’d seen — or even thought about — it. A decade, at least. I slept with it every night starting around third grade, but it was somehow phased out of the rotation and ended up forgotten, toward the bottom of the pile. It only happened to be next in line last week because my whole family is home at the same time, which is a relatively rare occurrence — and even then, only because I happened to use an extra pillowcase for camping.

Anyway, I didn’t pay the pillowcase any unusual mind, until I went to bed on Monday: