Post

More from @cmclymer

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Apr 24

Alright, it’s been a long day in what’s already a long week. Time for some lighthearted, nerdy political fun. My pal @DCHomos got hold of a box of Election ‘92 trading cards and gifted me some. I kid you not. These are 32 years old. They’ve never been opened. Join me…

(thread)

It’s been three decades, so the cards are stuck together. I have to peel them away. The first card I see is for Murphy Brown, which is terribly appropriate for this election.

Here’s the story: sitcom “Murphy Brown” premiered on CBS in 1988. It starred Candace Bergen as a highly-respected journalist and news anchor. It got pretty solid ratings and quickly grew in popularity.

In the 91-92 season, Murphy Brown gets pregnant and after the baby’s father wants nothing to with the child, Brown decides to have the baby and raise him alone.

This storyline caused a HUGE stir with social conservatives, culminating with then-VP Dan Quayle giving a campaign speech in which he criticized Murphy Brown for “mocking fathers.”

You might be wondering: wait, don’t social conservatives want women to go through with their pregnancies instead of getting an abortion?

Yes, but once again, we see hypocrisy and callousness on full display within the anti-choice movement.

Anyway, the show opened their 92-93 season, six weeks before the election, with an episode called “You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato,” taking dead aim at Quayle.

You see, that previous June, Quayle had been visiting a school in New Jersey, and a young student had spelled “potato” on the chalkboard. Quayle then erroneously corrected the spelling by adding an ‘e’ at the end. On the chalkboard. On camera. During an event about education. Pretty embarrassing!

So, with the controversy over Murphy’s pregnancy already making enormous waves, the season premiere with THAT title was clearly gonna be about Quayle.

44 million viewers tuned in and watched as Bergen, as Murphy Brown, responded to Quayle by featuring diverse families in the episode, which ends with her having a truck dump a pile of potato aplenty on the Vice President’s lawn. It was nominated for an Emmy.

Bergen herself was later magnanimous and said she mostly agreed with Quayle about the importance of fathers.

But his messaging was pretty insulting toward single mothers.

Notice a theme with Republicans moralizing to American families and policing the lives of women?

We got an Ice-T card! This was early in rap’s cultural ascendancy, and it came right as police brutality against Black citizens was, yet again, a major flashpoint after the L.A. protests in response to a group of cops getting away with cruelly beating a defenseless Rodney King on tape. As you can see, @FINALLEVEL was a major activist and artist voice in the national discussion.

Read 6 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Mar 29

It's official: Beyoncé's eighth studio album "Cowboy Carter" has now dropped. It's the second album in her planned trilogy after 2022's "Renaissance."

For funsies, I'm gonna do a first listen review over the next several hours. 27 songs, 79:03 run time.

(thread)

Like many, I have been waiting for this album for so damn long. I grew up on country music. I love Beyoncé. The fact that she's making Texas such a huge theme for this album delights my little Texan heart to no end.

Okay, let's do this! I'll be checking-in on each track.

1. "Ameriican Requiem"

She opens up with the second longest track on the album. Beautiful texture. Gorgeous instrumentation. This is definitely a powerful opening salvo. It builds up to the last third with a response to people who claim she's not country:

Look it there, look it in my hand
The grandbaby of a moonshine man
Gadsden, Alabama
Got folks in Galveston, rooted in Louisiana
They used to say I spoke "too country"
And the rejection came, said I wasn't "country 'nough"
Said I wouldn't saddle up, but
If that ain't country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don't, don't know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song

Absolutely solid opening track. Gauntlet thrown down. I'm so excited for the rest of this.

Read 18 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Mar 8

Alright, friends, I shall be live-tweeting tonight's proceedings. President Biden's 2024 State of the Union, now hyped up to ludicrous levels of importance, the fate of democracy and free world hanging in the balance.

Delightful. Follow along.

Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president shall, from time to time, essentially report on the State of the Union and make recommendations, but it wasn't until Woodrow Wilson that this started to become the very public event we see today.

Wilson gave an in-person speech--rather than sending a report--for the first time in 1913, which was somewhat controversial! Warren Harding gave it by radio for the first time in 1922. Truman was first on television in 1947. Clinton in 1997 was the first accessible live online.

Read 72 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Nov 7, 2023

I mean, if y'all really wanna talk about violently antisemitic beliefs in Congress, go ask the Speaker of the House what he believes will happen to Israel and all Jewish people during Christ's Second Coming.

That's a delightful conversation. Go ahead and ask him.

Ask Mike Johnson if he's read "Left Behind" and what he thinks about those books. Ask him why he believes there are Jewish people who will be sacrificed in the End Times. Feels pretty goddamn antisemitic, I gotta say.

Oh, gosh, we're not supposed to talk about that part, are we?

Yes, let's just go to the National Prayer Breakfast and shut up and totally ignore that the House is led by an evangelical who fetishizes Israel solely as a vehicle for bringing about the destruction of the world.

Read 6 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Oct 16, 2023

I just don't give a damn that Joe Biden is 80. It doesn't bother me. This will go down as one of the most critical presidencies in American history, and it's specifically due to his decades of his experience. I hate to think where we'd be without him. I don't care about his age.

I mean, listen, folks... there's this weird obsession many Americans now have with pining for a John F. Kennedy kinda president -- youth and vitality in the White House and all that.

It's a bit silly to me. Know why? Because Kennedy was in notoriously poor health.

Kennedy was getting shot up with steroids constantly. That man had myriad health issues and three doctors constantly administering to him. The public didn't really know that. They got the glossy presentation. They didn't know he was being basically held together with scotch tape.

Read 5 tweets

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

@cmclymer

Oct 13, 2023

Hey friends, today is my birthday. I officially turned 37 very early this morning. There’s not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for how far I’ve come in life, and every year, on my birthday, I can’t help but reflect on the kid in Central Texas who dreamed big things.

(thread)

When I was 13, there was nothing I wanted more than to participate in one of those programs where young people travel to D.C., meet Members of Congress, learn about politics, and receive support to start their journey into public service.

It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten the name of the program we learned about in my school, but I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I realized I’d never be able to participate.

Read 29 tweets

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @cmclymer

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Send Email!

Become Premium to read this thread!