I know it's a tangent, but apropos of Meese being hated: I'm reading some older roleplaying magazines and found an Edwin Meese dig in one (Different Worlds 42, '86)

And also: "how can we make fantasy more racist and misogynist?"

Around 2007-8, I did a brief stint trawling through right-wing websites, trying to figure out what world these people lived in, and I ended up at Stormfront, an avowed Neo-Nazi forum, which had a subforum devoted to fantasy, which was mostly "is Drizzt Do'Urden, the heroic dark elf, too woke?"

Republicans: always reaching for a past that never existed.
Democrats: always thinking about a future they can’t actually bring about

Is that abt it?

“Here to stay” feels like the wrong framing for a few reasons as others have mentioned (eg costs born by VC rather than consumers), but also: I feel like we’ve put some genies back in bottles or at least put guardrails on them.

and you can make a dozen of those jokes for just 20 cents!

my thought: 300 got too much attention from certain people at the time for it to be reclaimed.

what we need to be vigilant for is the nostalgia boom around Sucker Punch

Lastly, do Jews and non-Jews have the same rights in Israel? Patently not, even if we’re just talking about the right of return.

(As a child, reading abt Israel I was so excited by the notion of Palestinians in the Knesset because it put the lie to the claim of apartheid. Now, not so much.)

Of course, one might say that guilt by association isnt fair, but that’s the card Rosenberg played with potential Mamdani allies.

Now I have to say, maybe I’m a little older than Rosenberg, but I remember when Israel and apartheid South Africa were in semi-private relations vis a vis technical and military and commercial alliance.

Second, I’m not impressed with him pointing to the ADL and Greenblatt after all the protection they’ve run for people expressing Nazi ideas or playing with Nazi symbols.

Is the mayor of NY setting policy re: Israel? No, and Rosenberg gets to that, but doesn’t point out that the only reason this topic has salience is because a lot of people thought that could be a wedge issue.

"inauthentic account", what is this, the 90s again? am I worried about small bands selling out?

And why could they find a better life here?

Because... (singing) there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese!