Share this page!

Jeet Heer Profile picture
Twitter logo
23 Apr, 4 tweets, 2 min read
1. We're familiar with the narrative of how right-wing outlets were openly racist in 1950s/1960s & then as social mores changed started to recast their arguments with euphemisms & dog whistles. Less discussed is how this same arc replicated over LGBTQ issues in 1970s/1980s.
2. Homophobia is still a tremendous social force but the sheer explicitness of 1980s arguments is striking. Here's Pat Buchanan in 1984.
3. Here's American Spector in 1980s about Harvey Milk, the assassinated gay leader. The Trotsky comment is from the well-known humorist P.J. O'Rourke.
4. More thoughts here about why Tucker Carlson's homage to the assassin of Harvey Milk was no outlier but an outgrowth of a widely shared homophobia. jeetheer.substack.com/p/tucker-carls…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @HeerJeet

Jeet Heer Profile picture
23 Apr
1. In 1991, the 22-year old Tucker Carlson described himself in his college yearbook as a member of the Dan White Society. White was the homophobe who in 1978 assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
2. I'm afraid we're in for another tedious round of Cancel Culture discourse with the Creepy Contrarian Crackpot Pettifoggers giving us 10,000 word substack essays with the usual apologia (he was just a 22 year old child! Another era! "As a gay man I see nothing wrong...")
3. To start with, cancel culture is besides the point here. As @jackshafer shrewdly noted, Fox makes its money from subscribers as well as advertises & Carlson is too important to them. We've already seen them brush aside many comparably bad Carlson comments.
Read 9 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
21 Apr
1. Pelosi's words are being dismissed as a gaffe, a sign of verbally ineptness or lack of thought. But there's something more interesting and important at work about not understanding what Black Lives Matter means.
2. Atherton is persuasive here that what Pelosi was doing was echoing the language civil rights movement used when talking about those martyred for a cause.
3. It's easy to see Pelosi's logic here. The language of sacrifice & martyrdom was how the civil rights movement steeled itself in the face of violence. Floyd energized a new civil rights movement. But the horror of Floyd's murder is that he wasn't a martyr but a ordinary person
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
20 Apr
1. So. Substack.
2. I wish I had a cool origin story, like "I did my famous Chico Marx imitation at the Nation Christmas party & was reprimanded for anti-Italian bigotry! Cancel Culture is out of control! I'm moving to Substack for free speech" etc. etc. Not true, alas.
3. To the degree that substack has a reputation (unfair, I think) as a haven for cancel culture obsessives, I'm a bad fit. My position is that censoriousness is bad & should be challenged but a most of the cancel culture discourse is hyperbole & wounded amour propre.
Read 16 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
7 Apr
1. From a political angle, the culture wars are dispiriting because actual policy debates get sidetracked, but from a cultural angle they are equally dispiriting because actual culture gets reduced to crassly partisan terms. Consider again Seuss & ethnic caricature.
2. By reducing the Seuss issue to the nonsensical category of cancel culture, an opportunity was lost to bring up something important, the pervasive impact of blackface & ethnic caricature on popular culture. Only a few informed scholars like @philnel discussed this.
3. It's not widely understood that blackface & ethnic caricature weren't just popular in early 20th century, they were the very visual language through which America saw itself as a hybrid society.
Read 11 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
29 Mar
1. This is Vojcech Pers, the legendary bear who fought with the Free Lithuanian regulars in World War II and took part in the liberation of Rome.
2. During World War II, a unit of Lithuanians allied with the West were stationed in Iran (then called Persia). They met a boy had a bear and bought it from him for some canned food and chocolate.
3. The bear became part of the unit. The soldiers would wrestle with him and tried to teach him to smoke (he would hold cigarettes in his mouth but resisted smoking). He did become enjoy beer.
Read 8 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
28 Mar
I'm trying to stay out of latest TNR fracas. Honestly I am. I mean I was given a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape the magazine and have said my share about what it should be. It's time to let others have their say. But maybe I can clear up some misconceptions?
The implication here is that vocal intramural editorial disagreement about direction of TNR is an innovation of "woke" culture. That's only true if you ignore the entire history of the magazine from 1914 onwards. Look up Randolph Bourne & Walter Lippmann.
Randolph Bourne's World War I era critique of TNR (that pragmatic liberalism easily lends itself to become a junior ally of imperialism & militarism) was prophetic and is still pertinent!
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @HeerJeet has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @HeerJeet!

Read all threads by @HeerJeet