nbcnews.com/news/us-news/r… Look at this photo and framing here & compare it to depictions of how poor ppl, college student, migrants, Black folks, gay men, disabled ppl are accused of bug chasing or causing their illness though sloppiness and selfishness (h/t @kamilumin)
“Some with recent Covid diagnoses are finding that contracting the illness they worked so hard to dodge for so long has brought them an unexpected reprieve from anxiety — instead of compounding it further,” @NBCNews frames this story, along with a smiling white family.
It’s not bad to explore and report on how ppl feel relief after contracting a virus after avoiding it. There is a whole field of HIV literature on this phenomenon. But press has historically blamed gay men for bug chasing while conservatives have actively done it w Covid…
…and many ppl who have no control over how much they’ve been exposed to viruses structurally and economically are vilified as “dirty” and “unclean” for living in multigenerational households, working in restaurants, having gay sex, seeking gender affirming hormones…
This NBC photo of a wholesome white nuclear family—on balance, not the most likely demographic to face Covid w/o various levels of protection—is an example of what Lee Edelman called “futurity”: a societal anxiety abt the wellbeing of the innocent, white middle class child
I read this framing as saying, “This shouldn’t be happening to THEM. They’ve done everything right. Things like this shouldn’t be happening to them. But if it does after two years of relying upon the labor of human shields, ah well, they did everything they could-phew!”
As I wrote a couple weeks ago, I do think there are generous readings to be made of ppl’s invidual senses of anxiety and relief in avoiding or contracting Covid. But how govt and media frame narratives is still worthy of critique, especially…
given history of media/govt demonizing nonwhite ppl, enslaved ppl, gay/trans ppl, Jews, migrants, Palestinians, factory workers, and ppl who are incarcerated for their alleged moral failure in avoiding pathogens.
Note who is framed as innocent & validated for their emotions .
If I knew this family IRL & they expressed relief surviving what we’ve all been avoiding, I’d understand.
If this family told me “Hey we are going to be on NBC news to brag about our sense of relief that we’re fine & maybe others will want to bug chase too “ I’d say
🤔🤔🤔🤔
I’d say, “Dear white friends, are you sure you want to go on NBC bragging abt your sense of relief at contracting and avoiding the worst health ramifications of a virus which has slaughtered 800,000 Americans & 5 million humans-especially as billions still can’t get vaxxed?”
This may be an example of when I think more formal scholarship would be more helpful instead of anecdotal journalism—I am curious abt ppl’s sense of anxiety and relief, but perhaps exploring that would be better done annonymously by social scientists in the aggregate.
It is amazing, as @kamilumin noted, to see bug chasing depicted approvingly in mainstream media
Especially given how media outlets have published (and never taken down) easily debunked morality tales like “Covid parties” abcnews.go.com/amp/US/alabama…
I have been beside myself with puzzlement that Democrats, so aligned with Hollywood, have not been running PSAs non stop throughout the last year w celebrities (who’d surely do them for free) abt vaccines, masks, how to get & use home tests etc. Truly bizzare.
Dolly Parton did her own vaccine video. Why isn’t the US govt asking “unifying” figures everyone loves like Dolly or Tom Hanks or Garth Brooks to do PSAs? Why aren’t they asking George W. Bush and Bill Clinton , a member of the Yankees and of the Red Sox to do them together?
I guess it is an example, as some writer put it, of the Dems “deferring to private industry in matters of state responsibility” in their pandemic response. They’ve outsourced producing PSAs to social media crowdsourcing @familyunequal! theguardian.com/us-news/2022/j…
I don’t have a lot of patience for academic navel gazing about toxic workplaces and “publish or perish pressure” bc many have never worked elsewhere and are unfamiliar with “publish AND perish publishing” or worse—shift work, retail, office jobs, manual labor
We should all have better working conditions in al jobs. But academic jobs are that: jobs. They're not a personality, a lifestyle, a religious or secular mission. They're a job. A confusion abt this comes from ppl in them who never leave school after kindergarten.
Agreed. I’ve been a union worker in journalism and in academia, as a grad student. Unions are the way to make life better in any workplace. (Sadly I’m not unionized now.) What also gets me is the idealizing of work they’ve never dine, which is hard in its own way, too!
1. The Golden Palace coming to Hulu might be a good time to finally pitch my "Dorothy Zbornak is the Anakin Skywalker of the Golden Girls" essay.
Think about. From the pilot, Dorothy is cast like an evil, prone-to-chokeholds-villain—like Darth Vader.
2. Dorothy is repeatedly cast as the mean, loser, ugly monster. They hide her in dark, dour clothes. The make fun of her height and her brute strength.
Back home in the Guardian for the first time 3 yrs, to read Biden to filth for home tests, masks & leaving the US "worse off than we were under Trump in the most lethal metric: more deaths are taking place under the Democrat than under his predecessor." theguardian.com/us-news/2022/j…
In the essay, I explore why so many ppl are angry with the Biden administration—at times because the administration has pursued a vaccine only approach which, ironically, undermines what vaccines actually do best. I use a "rain jacket analogy"
I also do a close reading of & examine "Google it": Just why DO Biden and Harris keep telling ppl to "Google" their way to getting tests, when there weren't any to be found near millions over Christmas & nearly 1 in 5 Americans in poverty have no internet?
This is STRAIGHT UP COPAGANDA! And remember, this is being reported by @abc3340, the ABC affiliate in Tuscaloosa...and ABC news started the "Covid parties" moral panic in 2020 out of...Tuscaloosa! cc @ajbauer@RottenInDenmark
I like feeling accomplished abt something I can consistently do in 2 minutes
Wordle 210 4/6
⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
My strategy is choose a word w 2 vowels, check for a match, do another word w any matching letters plus 2 different vowels (or y), then I pretty much can guess the word in the third line. There were only 2 choices when I was at the third, I chose the wrong one, so 4 lines.
I don't try to guess in one or even two; I like sorting out the vowels, then it's a nice zen understanding how combinations are possible with the remaining consonants once the vowels are excluded or included.