What Hook Do You Hang Your Hat On?

Hello! I woke up thinking about Disney. I am sorry to say, this is how my brain works. 

But first, here is a nice, relaxing video of a yarn swift and ball winder, and obviously the toddler in the background. If I wind yarn without him, it is the most basic betrayal.

Things That Spin - YouTube

I am also on Square Four of the Great American Aran Afghan, and I figure if I have to stop at 9 or 12, those are both baby-blanket-sized, so time will tell what ends this sucker. I am using Berroco Weekend, which has beautiful stitch definition, is light, and is working beautifully for all of the cables. Ooh...and it is washable! So I have that going for me.

Anyway, Disney.

So, yesterday, Gina Carano was fired from LucasFilm (owned by Disney) for posting what reads as a Nazi-sympathizing blurb about having conservative views, and being treated like poop for it. Almost immediately after that, the hashtag #fireGinaCarano started trending on Twitter. Disney did. Then, almost immediately after that, the hashtag #CancelDisneyPlus started trending on Twitter. Claims from her supporters are that she was misunderstood, and that she was actually arguing the point of loving (and therefore the idea of hating) your neighbor, and not ever saying it was okay to beat or hate Jews. It was the journey that mattered, the origin, and not the end result. Nor did both matter; the claim from her supporters is that only one or the other mattered (or so it seemed to me).

The argument was that if Disney fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn for posting inappropriate and abhorrent tweets and then rehired him a year later, then why would they fire Gina Carano for the same thing?

Well, they are not the same. And they are. And they are not.

Take the climate of the times out of it for a second. Difficult to do, I know, but seriously. Let's pretend the ideologies of politics were not a thing. 

Every company has a code of conduct, and their employees must adhere to it. It is why employees could have tattoos exposed at, say, Big Box R Us, but they could not have an "I HEART NAZIS" tattoo exposed at Big Box R Us.

(This should go without saying, but in case there is any confusion, the tattoo referenced above is probably the most offensive, abhorrent, horrible, disgusting thing I could think of to put on someone's body, let alone even think. That said, I would bet someone in the world has one, defends it, and does not understand the big deal.)

If I had that awful tattoo, I am exercising my rights to free speech, right? I should not be able to get fired for this! These are my beliefs! Wrong. Separate from not being a person consistent with inclusivity and diversity - two values Big Box R Us embraces - you are exhibiting hate-speech. Hate speech is not allowed at Big Box R Us.

But wait - I got the tattoo before I was hired. Right?

See, that is what happened with James Gunn. His offensive posts were from before he was an employee. Social media is also pretty new, in the grand scheme of the world of employee conduct; employees know now that their employers can search their history and make a determination in their hiring decisions. They did not necessarily know this a decade ago.

Carano is in a different situation. The Nazi-sympathizing post was the last in a line of questionable social media decisions, including another post last year where she put up a photo of a bunch of people engaging in a Nazi salute, except for one guy who refused and then went on to marry a Jewish woman. She also appeared to mock people on Twitter putting their preferred pronouns in their bios, instead putting "beep/bop/boop" for her own, and refusing to apologize or even show understanding as to why that could be considered transphobic.

It is not the posts, though, that are the problem. The comparison to James Gunn is not accurate or fair, for a different reason. The first thing Gunn did was issue an apology, explanation, and another apology. He showed remorse. He had a track record of not being "that guy in the tweets" for a decade and he regretted it.

Carano not only has no regrets, she keeps pushing the idea that she is somehow being unfairly persecuted for her beliefs. I could absolutely be wrong on this, but I feel she will never apologize because she does not see a reason to apologize. She thinks she is just fine as she is. I went back and looked at some of her posts. She is anti-mask, pro-conspiracy-theory (on some level), and much of what she posts is not rooted in fact, but is also not meant as satire or animated humor.

Lets be fair:  maybe she is just fine as she is. I don't know her, I don't watch Disney+, I have such a limited pop-culture parachute that I am not exactly the authority on this. My blog is my way of getting my overnight thoughts out, and do not reflect anything other than a night of thinking. I still have plenty of thinking to do.

But, history has shown me time and again that if someone is not willing to grow, not willing to be vulnerable and teachable, and not willing to entertain the idea that they may be wrong, then that is exactly who they are.

Disney sees it this way as well, I am guessing, and this is not the kind of person they want to employ, no matter how much money she makes them.

They fired her, I would think, for a breach in their code of conduct and for her continual display of a personality incompatible with their family-oriented brand.

The people who want to cancel Disney+ may be the same people who also refuse to shop at Home Depot because their CEO supported Donald Trump, or who continue to eat at Chick-Fil-A because even though they were monetarily supporting anti-LGBTQ+ groups for years, their chicken is just too good to pass up. I don't know.

What hook do you hang your hat on? Will you boycott Disney but continue to shop at Home Depot? Will you throw more of your money at Chick-Fil-A but drive that extra ten miles to Lowes?

You can do either or neither. The hook you hang your hat on is yours, and your own. You can support, advocate or protest however you want. You can even take a knee in front of your television during the National Anthem at a football game, or stand in front of your television with your hand over your heart in the same situation. But the businesses you support have a right to conduct business in their own way, too. If Disney wants to fire an actress for portraying herself as a jerk all the time (which, in my uneducated opinion, is more Charlie Sheen and less James Gunn), they can. And you can be upset about it. And you can pull your business in protest. And the full picture of the businesses you choose to support and boycott is a slice of who you are, if you follow their political leanings and donations. You also may not care, or you may just not know enough about it because you don't care "enough."

We have enough choices here in America where you can always choose to be on your own side of history. Just remember that sometimes, people will see - and judge - where you hang your hat.

Reintroducing Reality

 Hi! I'm Amy, and I'm a Yarnaholic.

("Hi, Amy!")

First question:  Who wants to see the finished Pete the Cat sweater? It's here.

Now, I am working on the Great American Aran Afghan, the Victorian Lace shawl I will never finish, another sock-yarn shawl, the end of the fourth scarf I am donating to a cause this week, and...you know...paying bills, too. I have completed the first square of the afghan, but I did not put the bugs on it. I think the ones in the original pattern are cute, but they are not very "me."

I did, however, include the spider because spiders are amazing creatures.

I want to talk about how far gone people have strayed from reality over the past decade and specifically the past four years. This is directed at everyone whose world view is not rooted in reality, but they don't realize it.

In other words, they probably are not reading this.

That said, look at yourself in the mirror and give yourself the grace you deserve. Is it possible you have been overreacting? Is it possible you are letting your beliefs seek out opinions and "facts" that support those beliefs? Is it possible your learning tools all slant in the same direction?

A man on the street, who was interviewed regarding the Georgia runoff elections, had this to say:

“I can’t believe what’s been said about Trump and it’s all been taken out of context anyway,” Joey Moats, 65, from Rome, Ga., told Yahoo News. “He will stay in the White House later this month. Something fishy happened on election night. I just want accountability and a peaceful transition to Trump’s second term.”

Listen...this is not me picking on Trump, per se. It is not exactly difficult to say that what Biden says is always taken out of context when it comes to his verbal flubs.

The difference is this: Trump is not an isolated verbal flub. And two things are concerning about the above statement.

First, Trump being taken out of context. Multiple analyses over the past four years (as reported by the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and Newsweek, and even The Blaze) have concluded that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level. Big deal, right? So his speech is dumbed down, despite his multiple degrees and business holdings. It is the best way to appeal to the masses, right?

Well, speaking like a fourth-grader is not just the size of the words, or the size of the sentences. It is the intent of the message, also. The anger, the leading emotion, this is what these analyses reference. "Take their oil!" is not a very presidential thing to say. It does not lay out any hint of strategy, any reasoning behind why the oil needs to be taken, and not even any sort of definitive action. All it does is convey anger, and because it is coming from a figure of authority, people think, "Oh...I guess I should be angry. Okay!"

See, what Trump says is not taken out of context. The issue is that there is no context provided. And why would he need context? He has people at his rallies, maskless and elbow-to-elbow, cheering about liberty and vaccine microchips and getting angry for no real reason.

The second part:  something fishy happened on election night. This message has been hammered into the brains of Trump supporters not just for two months, but for over four years.

The following tweets were before the 2016 election:

It is not that nobody questioned how free and fair our elections were before this. Of course they did; it is the reason there are signature verifications, voter registrations, witnesses, commissions, and mandatory recounts at an assigned minimum margin. But to say they are rigged? People, join us in reality.

This is along the same line as "what the mainstream media won't tell you." First, the mainstream media has to fact-check things to death. Lawsuits can break companies, and we live in an era where literally everyone around the news has a cell phone with a recording device and a camera on it. The undertaking of the so-called mainstream media to be defrauding the entire public out of as fair and accurate a depiction of events as possible is literally the most preposterous thing that could be conceived. We are talking matrix-level bullshit.

So, why is it so hard to break the cycle of seeking out news you feel is the truth? Well, you are not going to like my answer. It is because emotional abuse is the hardest cycle to break. For four years, you were told that the 2016 election was rigged despite Trump winning. Now, we have people being quoted in the news saying that the 2020 election was stolen, and that the democrats are too dumb to pull it off (thank you James Earnhardt, 76, of Canton). 

In other words, you have a guy spouting what he has heard for four years, because he was trained to be really angry, and he can't voice his own logical thoughts anymore.

No? Okay. Then ask yourself how 81 million people can be too dumb to steal an election, but their candidate won. Ask yourself after that how half of those 81 million people probably voted for Biden, but then some clever chaps with witnesses were rigging the voting machines to give Biden double the votes.

Logically and soundly, you know this is impossible. But when an actual fourth-grader tells you something outlandish about why he broke the dish, or why he was outside without his shoes on, or why he was provoked to hit his brother, you correct the behavior and speech.

We can't, as individuals, correct Trump's behavior and speech. But because he made half of us angry, and he was an authority figure so this is how we thought we should be led, we bought it.

And now we are left with a bunch of people who are quoting lies because they have heard these lies repeated so many times, they think they must be true now.

Break the cycle. Seek hope. Seek the truth, and I do not mean seek out "alternative" media. I mean reach out to the scientists, the economists, the strategists...people who get paid less money than they deserve for using facts to guide their behavior and beliefs. Try it. Seriously.

Pay attention to how things are worded. "Some are saying..." is not the same as "Doctor So-and-so, professor of epidemiology at the University of Whatever, concluded in his study that..."

Again, I am not saying this does not happen in the democratic party. But I am talking about right here, right now, and the fact that half of the republican senators are willing to put loyalty to their leader over their own constituents, under the guise of "public trust" (remember:  the reason there is distrust is because people were gaslighted, and not because there was widespread fraud), and it is appalling.

If your argument for your party is "the democrats are dumb" or "the republicans are crooks," then you are saying 50% of the country is dumb. Not dumber than you, but patently dumb. Do you believe that? I doubt it...I am guessing someone in your life who you respect fits into the "dumb" category, but you know them not to be dumb at all. However, if you strip people of their identity and lump them into a giant category (by using emotion, small words, and generalizations), you can stop seeing people and start seeing lemmings.

What you do not see, though, is that you yourself are the lemming.