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Jeet Heer Profile picture
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15 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
1. some context for this: 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. More context for Carlson's homophobia: this story Carlson told (and later walked back) in 2008. Image
3. Carlson's family background definitely part of the homophobia story.
4. Some more thoughts on Tucker Carlson and homophobia: jeetheer.substack.com/p/tucker-carls…

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Jeet Heer Profile picture
15 Oct
1. This terrific in-depth @LV_Anderson profile of Dan Savage, highlighting both how he's changed the conversation about sex & has himself changed from reader pushback, offers a way out of much of the culture war gridlock. slate.com/human-interest…
2. The thing with the "culture war" as metaphor is it implies fixed and unchanging sides, like troops facing each other in the trenches of World War I in long combat. but in actual cultural strife, people are mobile & change.
3. Dan Savage is an interesting figure because in his column he's been both an educator & has himself been schooled, sometimes harshly, by readers (particularly bi, trans & Black readers).
Read 5 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
14 Oct
1. The Federalist Society has a John Eastman problem, which is very similar to Mitch McConnell's Donald Trump problem: what to do with a crucial political ally who has bad optics & damages your attempt to present yourself as a responsible pillar of mainstream.
2. Eastman is a longstanding senior member of Federalist Society & also, because of his memos, the most visible legal face of Trumpist attempt to game system to overturn 2020 election. More than a lawyer, he's Trump's consigliere.
3. The reason Eastman is a problem for Federalist Society is that the organization is essentially an ideological laundering operation. It's job is to take right-wing policy preferences & gussy them in respectable legal garb. But to do that you need mainstream buy-in.
Read 6 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
11 Oct
1. So, the Eternals are finally coming to the MCU. Which raises the inevitable question, "is that a good idea?" And, for vast majority of people, the prior question, "what the hell are The Eternals?"
2. Briefly, The Eternals is comic book Jack Kirby created in 1976 which use the then vogue of Erich von Däniken takes up many of his favorite tropes (the merging of mythology with space opera, secret history, the return of the gods, humanity under the judgement of the divine). Image
3. Kirby's The Eternals is a rip-roaring head trip which I highly recommend. It's a lesser known part of his marvel work but the MCU has had a good track record of turning obscurities into hits (Guardians of the Galaxy etc). But I have my doubts here...
Read 8 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
3 Oct
1. The two big sci-fi epics of this fall are Dune & Foundation, which spring from the same source: John W. Campbell's Astounding magazine (remained Analog in 1960). Which also gave the world Starship Troopers, the Thing, and, oh, yes, various religions, including Scientology.
2. John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding, was both a visionary and complete crackpot. He was a formative influence on many careers (Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert). Also a promoter of, variously, a perpetual motion machine, ESP, slavery, smoking & Dianetics
3. Campbell was type of contrarian crank of the type all too familiar to us today: a failed engineer, he banged off editorials on the merits of slavery (calling for its revival), deriding the idea that smoking was bad for you & promoting Dianetics as a cure for health problems
Read 7 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
2 Oct
1. @beverlygage took a courageous & honourable stance in resigning as head of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. The donor pressure on the program was an intolerable violation of academic freedom. But worth asking what donors wanted from Grand Strategy at start
2. One way to understand Yale's Grand Strategy Program (heavily funded from the start by plutocratic Republican donors) is that it followed after 9/11 the familiar right-wing strategy of serving as a counter-institution to circumvent expert opinion: the "Team B" strategy.
3. The "Team B" strategy is one you use when traditional expert opinion isn't giving you the results you want: you create counter-institutions (think tanks, new programs) to give the impression that the mainstream consensus is disputable.
Read 8 tweets
Jeet Heer Profile picture
1 Oct
1. Great thread. I return to paradox that the Claremont Institute, so heavily shaped by the late Harry Jaffa, who idealized Lincoln as the great vindicator of American democracy, is now now run by people who want to minimize the importance of the Civil War or are neo-Confederates
2. The thing is, while Jaffa's scholarship on Lincoln (primarily Crisis of the House Divided) & his attacks on neo-Calhounites (in many polemics) are great, Jaffa himself was a slippery political actor willing to make alliances with dubious characters.
3. George Kateb noted this early as 1965, pointing out contradiction between Jaffa's Lincoln celebration & his work as Goldwater speechwriter (since Goldwater opposed Civil Rights Act). Can also be seen in Jaffa's friendship with neo-confederate M.E. Bradford.
Read 7 tweets

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