What A Thing To Say!

Les Miserables is a wildly popular popular musical and I adore it,vico but I have always suspected that a large portion of its fans do not hold its values when it comes to people who are in the present rather than in the distant past. (I have thoughts about ways that the musical distracts from Victor Hugo's message, but I'll save that for later.)

I would guess many of the people who currently support violently shutting down students who are protesting injustice in the world are fans of the musical about students taking far more extreme measures because of the injustice they see.

I think it would be brilliant for students to sing "Do You Hear the People Sing?" at their encampments, especially the reprise which gives me such feelings I can't express.

Do you hear the people sing? Lost in the valley of the night It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom In the garden of the Lord We will walk behind the plowshare We will put away the sword The chain will be broken And all men will have their reward!

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see? Do you hear the people sing? Say, do you hear the distant drums? It is the future that we bring When tomorrow comes! Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing Say, do you hear the distant drums? It is the future that we bring When tomorrow comes! Tomorrow comes! Tomorrow comes!

I think a lot of what's currently informing my fellow white people curdling like milk and shitting their pants when asked to interrogate their relationship with rap is the way many people (especially well-meaning white people) still can't help but think of racism as something that you get accused of rather than something that influences the entire world in pernicious ways.

like, I think a lot of people currently posting the most cringe takes about rap right now would very much agree that Racism Is Bad and probably even acknowledge that rap has been and is still widely maligned and devalues for racist reasons.

but that last step, acknowledging that your personal tastes and interests are also influenced by systemic racism, is where a LOT of people stumble. it's very easy to assume that because you consider yourself against racism, then your tastes and interests cannot possibly be at all informed by racist. if you're a white American, that's simply extremely unlikely to be true.

speaking from personal experience, I had to Work to decenter whiteness in my media tastes. when I was like 19 I listened to a podcast where a white Jewish man talked about keeping a spreadsheet of the books he read to make sure he was reading a roughly equal number of men and women, and I started doing the same thing to track how many authors of color I was reading. at the time I took pride in my belief that I was reading diversely, but when the year ended I was shocked to discover that people of color had written barely a quarter of the books I'd read. I had been giving myself way too much credit while still unintentionally prioritizing white authors, because white authors were the ones I knew best. so I started making an extremely conscious effort to seek out books by authors of color, both fiction and nonfiction, that sounded like my kind of shit.

music was extremely similar. I grew up a little white girl in a very white city in a very white state; nobody was offering me an education in rap or r&b or soul or hip hop. as an young adult there were definitely some Black artists I liked, like Janelle Monáe, but I had to take the initiative of seeking out more artists to find out who I fuck with. you're not going to like everybody, which is fine, but are you even giving anyone a chance? are you even looking?

racism has roots everywhere, bro. it's not enough to just acknowledge it, you have to actively get digging.

so ts trademarked female rage: the musical

after saying that during the ttpd part of her eras tour. I guess this is how she will try to get an emmy. Or she will release the eras tour new version under this name. Either way i find it a bit childish. I mean it is a saying on tiktok that she just trademarked. That is a bit of an overkill

She already has an Emmy.

Peoplemag

Singers and Musicians Who Have Won Emmys, Including Lizzo, Taylor Swift and More

From Lizzo and Adele to Taylor Swift and JAY-Z, here are some of the biggest music artists who have won an Emmy over the years.

'Female rage' is not 'a saying on TikTok' either. It's a saying that has been around for centuries! The trademark license has not been granted yet, and might not be because Swift didn't invent the phrase.

Artsy

A Brief History of Female Rage in Art, from Artemisia Gentileschi to Pipilotti Rist | Artsy

Over the centuries, artists from Artemisia Gentileschi to Pipilotti Rist have given form to powerful expressions of women’s anger.

https://x.com/thenorrisjay/status/1785737582178877486

About fucking time! The writer barely mentions Harry. But I agree to this wholeheartedly because Harry can compete fair and square. I'm pretty sure Taylor cannot. Fucking hell.

Medium

It’s Time for Billboard to Change Its Charting Rules.

For decades, Billboard has reigned as one of the premier institutions within the music industry. Its charts have helped to quantify the impa

👏👏👏

i think after you become a billionaire, a peak of being rich, your brain changes. you become so desperate and and scared that you're gonna lose this money that you'll do ANYTHING to keep it. even find ways to con people out of their money and ignore when they say they want none of it. she's a billionaire who's so greedy that she can't fathom NOT being a billionaire. eat the rich people, they're all the same.

BDS added this section to their boycott page and I think people really need to read it:

please remember, pushing unorganized boycotts without carefully fact-checking every company in the list can be actively HARMFUL to the boycott movement.

saving for posterity

Not defendingts putting you on a "Taylor antis blocklist" for *checks notes* falesley equivocating anti zionism with antisemitism. Not only is that a dangerous rhetoric to spread and perpetrate, it's exactly the kind of lack of nuance I'd expect from someone like that. I hope your inbox doesn't get turned into a minefield from her doing that

i did what now?!? 😭 gonna close my ask box for a couple days then…i really need to catch up on answering asks

edit: i saw the follow up ask that someone sent about me - thank you to that desi anon for defending my name and honor, i love u. HOWEVER, I MUST CLARIFY: I AM BLACK. I AM NOT DESI. I AM BLACK.

Israel: Hamas hides inside hospitals and uses them to launch attacks therefore we must decimate the entire healthcare system in Gaza!

Also Israel: *takes over the only cancer treatment hospital in Gaza and turns it into a military base*