On the eve of the 3rd GOP Primary debate, the campaign for Florida Sen Marco Rubio released this nifty lightning-round style question session of the candidate titled “15 Questions Marco Won’t Be Asked at the Debate”. It’s a good social media spot that highlights the Senators natural demeanor and quickness that subliminally contrasts him with the Democratic frontrunner, a slowly calculating robot named Hillary.
Thank friggin goodness he got the most important question right. When asked who would win in a fight between my 2 favorite SuperHeroes since childhood – Spiderman or Batman – Marco answers perfectly.
Rubio answers every question quickly and concisely with minimal deliberation but one from the bunch causes the candidate to pause in consideration. He starts to deliver what to the layman seems like the obvious answer by starting the “SSS” of “Spiderman” but then, thoughtful analyst that he is, takes a moment to really weigh the opponents. He confirms with the off-camera questioner, his choices: “Spiderman or Batman?” and pauses with a “hm” and a look to the side as he accesses the logical areas of his brain to retrieve the relevant and necessary fact points and then delivers the correct answer: “Probably Batman”.
It’s actually not just the correct answer, but the perfect answer, for the following reasons:
THE DELIBERATION IS NECESSARY
Spiderman vs Batman is a matchup that requires a moment of thought. An immediate answer doesn’t reveal accuracy but rather reveals which character you simply like better and would root for to win. If such a question is to be taken seriously, at least a moment of analysis is required before blurting out an answer as the heroes are not so obvious in the outcome of their strengths and vulnerabilities could suggest.
Rubio showed himself to be a serious and thoughtful servant of the public in taking his time to reflect on the choice posed to him before blurting out an irresponsible answer.
THE FINAL ANSWER IS CORRECT Surveying the fighters: Spiderman has meta-human strength & agility, tactile gadgets, unparalleled acrobatic ability and a super sense that alerts him to surprise attacks while Batman has “the peak of what the human body is capable of without chemical or meta enhancement” and an array of gadgets.
After analyzing the data in detail, an objective mind puts the odds on the bet that Batman would win against most comic book foes, Spiderman included, which is initially counterintuitive until one explores the reasons this is so. Fully understanding why Batman is such a formidable foe despite constantly being out-gunned and out-powered by rivals is something I’ve explained at length before but to summarize: Batman has the stealth power of superior strategy. In combat, the only thing that matters is strategy and if your superior strategizing can blindside your opponent then you are more likely to successfully defeat them. Batman is both routinely over-prepared and massively underestimated, allowing him to pull dark-horse victories against extremely deadly meta-humans, monsters, machines, armies, aliens, and fellow heroes.
THE “PROBABLY” IS WHAT MAKES IT A PERFECT ANSWER Some hypothetical battles can be predicted with certainty and most are various degrees of likelihood. A Batman vs Spiderman battle isn’t obvious, and there are certainly a number of ways the Wall Crawler could defeat the Dark Knight (those are both nicknames for Spiderman & Batman, in case i’m losing you there), but the right answer is in fact “probably Batman”.
You cannot be President of anything important or hold any office of any consequence whatsoever without getting this question right and Sen Rubio hit it out of the park.
Ahmed Mohamed, the kid who was briefly detained by police after bringing the innards from a disassembled nightstand clock to school in a briefcase and plugged it in to be found instead of obeying his teachers instruction to keep it covered since they both acknowledged that it looked like a bomb, is moving to the middle east with his crazy whom I am deducing put him up to all this (I don’t have proof of this – I’m just concluding based on his fathers radical past, anti-american suggestions and 9/11 Conspiracy pushing vs Ahmed himself whom by all accounts seems like a regular and pleasant American kid unfortunate enough to be in such a situation where he’s used as a prop in such a way).
Known as “clock boy”, Ahmed was briefly but high-profile-ly a pop-culture darling as hippie editors across the media scrambled to lionize his bomb prank that received no punishment (just brief inconvenience as he was questioned) as an example of racist America persecuting muslims.
After it was virtually unanimously confirmed that this was a hoax and said media-hippies were duped out of confirmation-bias that desperately hopes someone somewhere will embody their narrative of racist persecution, Ahmed faded from the headlines and now his family is moving to Qatar – a country that aids and abets terrorists – instead of accept his invites to intern at Twitter or go to MIT…
Ahmed responded, “I would love to!! MIT is my dream school.”
Eyman said Qatar is “basically like America,” because American universities like Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon have Qatari-side campuses.
Also in the press release, Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed said: “After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization’s on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity.”
Earlier this month, QF gifted the teen and his family with a trip and tour of the five-mile Education City, founded by Al Jazeera creator Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and opposes what he calls the “Judaization of Jerusalem” in referencing the Jewish Holy City and Israeli capitol, founded it. In late 2012, the New York Timesreported Al Thani pledged $400 million to fund Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Mohamed Elhassen Mohamed said he was hugely impressed by the complex.
Of course…
Through out their entire time in the media spotlight, the family played the Islamophobia card, blaming the arrest and suspension on Ahmed being a “Muslim boy.” Earlier today, San Jose, California Democrat Rep. Mike Honda organized a press conference with Ahmed and the family to announce his effort in asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Ahmed’s arrest and treatment by police, ABC News reported.
“We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn and all of them being accepted by that country,” said the patriarch earlier today to the Dallas news outlet. However, as Breitbart Texas reported, Ahmed’s clock woes happened based on the state and federal safe school and zero tolerance policies. Even the Associated Press agreed, blaming “rigid disciplinary policies” adopted by schools in the 199os.
But that wasn’t before getting shout outs from tech companies like Facebook and Google, and an invite to meet President Obama, and thousands of dollars in donations, and lots of free swag for some reason.
UPDATE: Suing from Quatar, the family also wants $15 million from the city and school due to the psychological damage Ahmed allegedly suffered by being lawfully detained after committing a crime…
But that was all then. Now, it’s time for the legal action. After no charges were filed against him and he finally got his clock back, attorneys for Ahmed and his family have written to both the city of Irving and to the Irving Independent School District and made demands.
As the Dallas Morning News reports, the letters ask for $10 million from the city and $5 million from the school district. They say he was “publicly mistreated.” They say he suffered “severe psychological trauma.”
This is an occurrence of a light story, notable not only for the humorous premise but the comedic timing of the Congressman.
Hat tip to Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair, whose post used the perfect headline that I doubled for this as well as the following additions:
The performance fulfilled the terms of a bet struck on October 1 between Schiff, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, and Rep. Steve Israel, a Long Island congressman loyal to the New York Mets. Since the Mets beat the Dodgers in the playoff series, going on to clinch the National League series and a shot at the World Series, poor Schiff had to give a one-minute speech about how he lost a bet, with a Mets logo taped to his tie. “Mr. Speaker, please tell me my time is expired,” he begged at the end, before recovering with a well-placed, always-appropriate ding against the Yankees.
Rep. Schiff’s song continues a long tradition of congressmen awkwardly singing under forced conditions.
Future first lady Ann Romney (yes this post was written in 2015 before the Romney 2016 announcement has been treated seriously by anyone or been made or hinted at) is a delightful person. Via IJ Review:
It’s not hilarious. but I like it. Partially cuz of my confirmation-bias in how much I like Ann Romney but also because of the personality that leaks through. She’s so obviously not in her element with this brand of Silly but its not stiff or phony the way it is when you see someone like Hillary Clinton try to do comedy. Ann is plenty stiff in it but that’s because she’s a grandma and not a performer – contrary to Hillary Clinton doing skit appearances that come off robotic because just letting any kind of personal looseness happen comes off as wildly uncomfortable for her. In other words: Ann comes off as a grandma doing an impression of a comedian while Hillary’s attempts at levity look like a robot doing an impression of a human being.
I also find it adorable that the Romney’s are so Ned-Flandersian that the original title of “baller grandma” was too raunchy for her and she opted for the 2nd choice of “Freakin Awesome Grandma” instead. Hot Air summarized it well:
Best goof on a famously wholesome mom’s image since Barbara “Leave It To Beaver” Billingsley spoke jive in “Airplane!”
Look at these fkkn bitches taking pictures… OF THEMSELVES! What, did they want to savor a moment in life or something?? What, did they think this was supposed to be a social event of some kind? Something fun that they might want to re-live in some capacity with visual reminders of themselves in that moment? Um. No, bishes – y’all r spose to look straight ahead and that’s it.
Guess we gotta Life-splain to these twits that when you’re in a sports arena you’re supposed to exclusively watch the event area in front of you and partake in nothing else at any time.
A group of selfie-obsessed Arizona sorority girls were shamed at a baseball game by two MLB announcers for snapping photos of themselves for at least two minutes straight.
About a dozen unsuspecting Alpha Chi Omega sorority girls were caught on camera putting on their best duck faces as they posed with hot dogs, churros, and just about anything near them.
“Oh, hold on! Take a selfie with a hot dog. Selfie with a churro. Selfie just of a selfie!” one announcer teases.
As I’ve noted many times before, Selfie-shaming is for Losers. It’s a transparent attempted bludgeon used by weak minds to drag down others they perceive as a threat to their own low self esteem.
Here are 8 or so reasons why this is entirely the wrong angle for this story:
TURNING PHOTOGRAPHY INTO PATHOLOGY The girls are described as “selfie-obsessed” for snapping pictures of themselves at the game. This is stupid. Doing something more than once does not create an obsession. That label is only being applied here to create a mocking narrative that is illegitimate – which you can easily verify by trying to apply it to any other strive for excellence. What if there was open-seating at the stadium and the group was observed to take several minutes surveying the available options of areas to sit? Would they be “perfect view obsessed” girls? or just normal people trying to achieve something. What about people who stop watching the field and leave the stands to go to the snack bar and purchase food and drinks? They can’t go an hour without munching and slurping something instead of just watching the game in front of them? Is anyone called “food obsessed” for doing this? They very well could have been when this was new territory for game-watchers in 1905 or whatever* when there was a peanut & popcorn stand behind the bleachers and not much else (*precise moment in history when concessions became a mainstay in sporting arenas was not researched for this article). Some people, who were used to not leaving the stands to go eat, could easily view that unnecessary action to be eye-roll worthy. “Just watch the friggin game. You don’t need a cup of salty snack right now. geez” is no different than the attempted shaming of these girls taking photographs and no more stupid than it either.
THE ACCUSERS ARE THE DRAMA QUEENS
The commentary on social media and critical reporting of the instance frames the girls as dramatic clowns but in reality it’s the commentary that is being unduly hysterical. As noted above, in an attempt to paint the act as excessive, the description above from Melissa Chan in the NY Daily News calls the girls “selfie obsessed” for taking pictures of themselves for “two minutes straight”. I assure you all: 2 minutes is the shortest photoshoot in history. Definitely not an “obsession”. They also didn’t pose with “just about anything near them” – they took pictures of themselves and their friends and included the food they were eating… For Christ sake, they didn’t pick up debris off the floor and pose with it or go overboard in any way whatsoever. They commemorated an event in their lives with photographs. Could we stop pretending that that’s a big deal?
THEY WERE LITERALLY ASKED TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING…
Taking photos of yourself is not a shameful thing to do, but there is a wrinkle in this story that makes the attempted shaming of these girls 10 times as horrible: they were invited to do exactly what they were doing…
The commentary from the announcers making fun of the girls taking the pictures comes literally directly after those same announcers read a promo asking attendees of the game to tweet their fan photos… What in the actual fkk kind of scam is this? “Hey everyone! Please join in the fun and do this thing! [wait 1.5 seconds] – Hey everyone! Look at these friggin ridiculous monkeys doing that thing we asked them to do! LOL! What a buncha maroons!”. This is like when a magician invites an audience member up on stage to “be a part of a trick” but really just ends up making an ass out of the participant because they’re not a talented enough performer to actually make them a part of the act so instead have to rely on them being the butt of their joke. Not cool. Step up your game, fools.
HEY LOSERS: THIS ISN’T 1865. PICTURES ARE FUN AND FREE.
“Loogit the one on the right” and the other guy adds “do you have to make faces when you take selfies?”. Well no, bro – you don’t HAVE to do anything while engaging in self photography. I get that you guys are old as balls but are you really dating yourself to bygone era’s where you have to pose for a photo stonefaced because it takes several minutes for the exposure of the picture to imprint on the film? Are all your family albums recreations of American Gothic, you boring hack? Then they mock the volume of pictures being taken with a bit voicing the girls alleged internal monologues with comments like “uhp – better angle”, “check it” when one of them verifies the quality of the photo just taken, and “that’s the best one of the 300 pictures I’ve taken myself today!”. Maybe y’all haven’t heard the news but: digital photographs are free, bro. If they were $10 a shot, there might be validity to some astonishment in the opulent waste of a crowd frittering this limited commodity away, but nope – it’s just tapping a pane of glass and capturing a moment in your life. What you’re mocking is attention to detail and strives for excellence, not any kind of spoiled entitlement or abuse of excess. There is no virtue in limiting the moments you capture of yourself at no expense to anyone. You’re a friggin idiot if you don’t take a half dozen snaps of the same photo with minor nuances, not a hero.
THE [FAKE] TECHNOLOGICAL MENACE STEALING OUR YOUTHS!
In a delightfully goofy case of the old trope that dictates “technology I grew up with is okay but technology kids are growing up with is SCARY”, the commentary on the girls takes an unintentionally hypocritical turn. Referring to the girls looking at the screens of their picture taking devices, the announcer says “welcome to parenting in 2015. they’re just completely transfixed by the technology” – ignoring that he is broadcasting those comments onto a screen in which millions of viewers are “completely transfixed” themselves… We are all watching screens, bro. You’re spying on teenage girls through screens, they’re taking photos through screens, people at home are watching you watch them through screens – on screens. Shaming someone for being transfixed by technology while you are doing the exact same transfixation of technology – just with a different subject through the lens – is an insane level of lack of self awareness.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE MESSAGE HERE, AGAIN?
While using a camera to record a bunch of girls, the commentary we are supposed to accept is that girls using cameras to record themselves is a ridiculous mock-worthy event. There’s just nothing that makes sense about what they’re saying – which reveals that they’re not saying the things they’re saying for the reasons alleged, and rather are just using those alleged reasons as excuses to take down a target due to ulterior internal issues.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO WATCH THE GAME!” is a stupid comment all over a large percentage of the social media reposts of people justifying the shaming. First of all: you’re supposed to pay attention to whatever is interesting. You have no obligation to watch a sporting match that is boring – but there is zero evidence that a game was even going on. As far as I can tell, this is all taking place during a break or downtime of some kind, having just come back from a commercial break apparently. That’s the whole reason the video even exists, you dummies – the announcers had nothing on the field to announce on, so the cameras trolled the stands for commentary fodder. Anyone criticizing these girls for not being fully engrossed in the sport allegedly happening in front of them should be quintuply criticizing the announcers for ignoring the same game at the same moment in time. It’s the announcers job to talk about the game, and it is sorority girls’ job to take pictures of themselves in everything they do before they aren’t cute in pictures anymore. The girls did their jobs here – the chauvinist announcers did not.
“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER” is the other criticism of these silly chicks who thought they were attending this event to enjoy in ways that came natural them instead of following the Code of Baseball or something. NOPE – baseball is for conversations, apparently as one of the announcers says that “the beauty of baseball is you can sit next to your neighbor and have a conversation. OR you could completely ignore them”. Because evidently taking pictures with people, laughing with them, and talking to them, is “completely ignoring” them. The brief moments any of the girls are not engaging with each other by doing something on their personal screens are frequently broken up by the group activities of laughing and chatting during photographing of themselves. And remember that this is not a 2 minute montage of time lapse video from the entire game showing these girls doing nothing but taking pictures of themselves and not saying a word to each other – this is only a 2 minute span of linear time during a nothing-of-note-happening-on-field segment of the stupid baseball game. If you can’t take 2 minutes to disengage from the non-action on the field or the lulls in conversation with your neighbor, then attending a game isn’t fun – it’s punishment. What crime are these young women accused of that they would deserve such a sentence?
CONFISCATE THE PHONES!
The last comment the announcers make is to jokingly advocate banning phones from the stadium to prevent people from taking pictures of themselves. Wtf is that about? Why should the stadium have a monopoly on recording media of fans that – don’t forget – it solicits to record media themselves? What is the joke here? There isn’t one. It feels like there’s one because of the underlying feeling but when the surface of that feeling is breached even to the slightest degree, the facade fails. The real reason for scorn is not “I don’t want people to take breaks from watching baseball” – it’s – “I don’t want people doing things that make me uncomfortable about the fact that no one wants to look at pictures of me and/or that I don’t have the confidence that would make me want to save images of myself having fun.”
~
The truth is that all this is just misdirected jealousy. Selfie shaming is a retaliation to specious feelings of inadequacy brought on by the public display of people having enough self worth to think pictures of themselves have some kind of value and thus should be taken. People who have no such value in their image feel shamed by those who do and seek to tear them down publicly so that the public learns to devalue self-image in general, thereby protecting those who don’t have it.
In reality, there’s obviously nothing wrong with photographing yourself and it doesn’t inherently speak to any poor character traits, which means that it deserves no scorn or ridicule on its own.
~~
UPDATE: In response for being unjustly mocked on tv for no good reason, the girls were offered free tickets to a game. Their response is so boss that it made this entire post worth it just for that alone. Basically they said “thank you but we would like to donate those tickets to a charity instead”. Boom. Here’s the full statement:
Alpha Chi Omega at Arizona State University would like to thank the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fox Sports for reaching out to the chapter after last night’s game and subsequent media frenzy. We appreciate their generous offer of tickets to tonight’s game. However, instead of chapter members attending the game, we have asked the Diamondbacks and Fox Sports to provide tickets to a future game for families at A New Leaf, a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.
Today, October 1, marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If everyone who viewed this statement took the time to make a donation in recognition of domestic violence awareness, which is Alpha Chi Omega’s national philanthropy, we would be so grateful! We are happy to have the opportunity to shed some positive light on such a sensitive subject. All proceeds will go directly to A New Leaf to help struggling Arizona families get back on their feet by providing housing, food, childcare and more. You can donate using the link below. We appreciate your support!
McDonalds is going through some tough times and for some reason all day breakfast is a part of the turn-around strategy, which I don’t understand at either end. I don’t get how serving breakfast menu items is both something that hasn’t been done already given how seemingly easy it is, yet also is fixated to be a profit boosting turnaround tactic. I get that the more menu items that have to be out and either prepared or ready to be prepared means the possibility of more food product waste as ready-made items go unbought in their freshness window while having them made to order (mostly heating pre-cooked items) creates its own problems but neither seem like problems all that hard for a corporation like McDonalds to tackle and solve.
But finally after much public discussion about the possibility, McDonalds has decided to serve breakfast all day. Or at least some of it.
I went to McDonalds today for some breakfast at not-breakfast-time to feel like a baller and jump on this 2015 magic so advanced that Back to the Future (a movie that thought we would have flying cars and hover boards in 2015) didn’t even predict and I ordered a McGriddle. The Spanish accented woman at the counter replied “AH?” so I repeated the word “Mic-Griddle” and she paused with confusion… Which is more than a little odd because – to give away the ending to this story: McGriddles aren’t on the all-day-breakfast menu – but certainly this woman knows what a friggin McGriddle *is*, right? You’ve heard this word before, have you not, madam? I get that it’s not available right now but why are you not immediately telling me *that* instead of acting like this Milk-Greedle thing I speak of is a foreign product? I didn’t order a Grand Slam or a Whopper – I asked for the only breakfast item that has the surname of the establishment in its actual name, and you don’t know what I’m talking about?…
Eventually she put it together and told me “no. we only do thees” and pointed to a placemat menu on the counter with breakfast items that does not include the MC-gridz.
This is insane… Every fast food place that does breakfast has a breakfast sandwich with a biscuit on its menu and McDonalds does too. But the McGriddle is a breakfast sandwich that only McDonalds offers (hence the Mc) and in their big push to remind customers that they are a different and unique place to go – they’ve axed their one proprietary product from the list of options. Madness.
You can get a stack of pancakes and sausage all day, but you can’t get a breakfast sandwich with syrup flavored pancake buns all day.
Wtf are you doing, McDonalds? I don’t even know who you are anymore.
Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner currently holds no public office, is not a written or television pundit anywhere and is generally out of political life outside of merely commenting on it as a civilian. So why are some Republican outlets still hecktoring him years after he was a threat to them? Have you people no decency?
Fine. Potential poor choice of words since decency is what gave Weiner his scarlet letter in the first place but that doesn’t excuse the surrounding details of his situation: mainly the fact that he isn’t in a position in power or influence anymore, so making him the object of ridicule is punching-down in a distasteful way in my opinion.
For those of you who forgot or never knew: Congressman Weiner accidentally publicly tweeted a picture of an erection visible through his underwear when he meant to send it privately to a girl he was e-flirty with via sexy pics and messages. He denied it at first and then came clean about it when that strategy failed and blah blah blah. Okay – fine. We get it. It’s funny cuz of his name, cuz it’s definitely a skeezy thing to do while married and usually a skeezy thing to do even if not and all that jazz – okay. He resigned. A couple years afterward he ran for mayor of NYC and didn’t win the primary.
Yet for the past several years that he has been out of office I will randomly see hit pieces on the former congressman in Conservative media and they are always 100% gratuitous and bizarre.
Today it’s gotten so bad that they’re even hassling him over tweeting about traffic in NYC.
Sounds like fair and rationale criticism to me. Also sounds like a guy tweeting about traffic… So under what circumstances are you the cool guy in an exchange where someone says “well THIS sure seems to be a dumb use of public resources that is inconveniencing the citizens of the city” and you respond with “oh yea? REMEMBER WHEN YOU SEND DICKPICS TO GIRLS ON THE INTERNET? BURN!”
Wtf, people…
Worse is the adoption of this one photo of Weiner scowling that has become the go-to clipart in hit pieces on him, similar to the Bill O’Reilly cry-face.
I admit that I always liked Congressman Weiner so maybe i’m being blind to what is fair dialog and treatment of a public figure in such circumstances but I think it’s gratuitous to randomly keep recycling a sexting scandal when the dude talks about anything as non-related as unnecessary street closures.
Pick your battles, Republicans. Save your fire for the bullies, not the Weiners.
After going viral on both Youtube and Facebook Video, the following piece of media has generated outrage and accusations against its author and the sentiments she expresses. But are they merited? *In my best Tootsie-Pop Owl voice* ~ Lehtz, Fiihnd Out…
Here are some things you may have failed to see…
The first 3 seconds of the video makes fun of herself.
The video starts with a cold open in where Arbour refers to the streak of pinkish purple in her blonde locks as her “Ke$ha hair” and lifts a strand further down that appears stiff, saying “you don’t know if this is hair spray or semen”.
This entire post could end with that. Every Social Justice Warrior who thinks that in attacking this video they are crusading against an oppressive bully-culture is revealed to be a self-important fraud after just 3.5 seconds of the damn thing. You lost before you started. You are rallying your troops around a woman comedically making light about her sense of style and after-sex hygiene who also says it is unhealthy to be unhealthy. You are constructing a strawman bully to take down for your own agenda and not because this is an actually pervasive figure guilty of unfair demonization. When you claim villainy in people making jokes about themselves while also making jokes about certain unhealthy choices, you are mocking your own cause.
Within 6 seconds she called out her overly sensitive future critics
With just the words “Dear Fat People” she notes that “people are already mad about this video”. That would be a lame pre-emptive defense about taking heat for being controversial over something non-controversial if it didn’t pan out exactly that way and more, far beyond what anyone could have expected. Congratulations, whiners! Your predictable overreactions have become such a cliche trope that you are living self-fulfilling prophecies of Outrage Culture.
Her “Fat People running” comedy bit is legit
When I heard the outcry over this video I naturally assumed it was another fitness lifestyle person evangelizing the virtues and benefits of not remaining unhealthy. In reality, as if the previously mentioned tipoffs weren’t enough, it is shown within 20 seconds of the video that this is a comedy routine. That doesn’t mean you have to think it’s funny – it just means you have to know that it’s comedy. When you treat jokes from an entertainer like they’re serious hateful attacks from a position of authority then you’re being a douche. Jokes with a message behind them should have that message rebutted in a manner of levity equal to the offense. In the first 20 seconds of the video, Arbour goes on a tangent about how Frankenstein is slow and thus non-menacing to someone who can run “at a reasonable pace” and segways into how the zombies from The Walking Dead are allegedly also easy to avoid if not for writer and producer plot devices. You have no excuse for treating this monologue like its a Presidential Address to the nation.
“Fat shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up”
Finally at around 35 seconds, we have at least something that could potentially be disputed regarding overweight humans. Arbour says “fat shaming is not a thing”. This is essentially the thesis of the video and yet the vast majority of its critics refer to it as a “fat shaming video” when the video purports to be a video dispelling the myth of fat shaming. Arbour explains her position but the critics think they don’t need to explain theirs for some reason. So lets just examine her argument… Arbour says Fat shaming is a made-up construct invented by fat people in contradistinction to legitimate Victim Cards in a deck she says includes Race, Disability, & Gay. These “Cards” are legitimate plays according to Arbour because each of the 3 groups face hurdles in life they didn’t choose and cannot change, unlike fat people whom overwhelmingly either chose their state of health, can change their state of health, or both. Unless…
Who she’s NOT talking about is explicitly stated in the first minute
In 1 minute of the 6 minute video, Arbour states that people with a little more “cushion for the pushin” or with specific health conditions need not apply to her criticism. So why have so many applied? The fact that so many people crave victimhood status is a servicing illustration to Arbours point, not a debunking of it. There is no excuse for being chubby or suffering from a medical issue that causes fat accumulation and thinking you are being in any way derided. The woman slows her speech like she’s talking to a kindergarden Special Needs class and makes an O with her hand to illustrate that she is only pinpointing the 35% of North Americans who are O-bese – i.e. – people making life decisions regarding food intake and movement/exercise that are negatively affecting their health by adding large amounts of calories that they are not burning.
“Big boned” isn’t a thing
Arbour quips that “there are no fkking skeletons that look like the Michelin Man”. Amusing line. Problem? If so, then Science is your enemy, not this comedy delivering blonde girl.
“Fat shaming” is really just “shaming bad habits until they fkking stop”
Fitting into her earlier point about how “fat shaming” at large is not a thing, Arbour explains that what people wrongfully call fat shaming (a phrase with connotations of personal condemning) is actually the shaming of bad behaviors that result in life threatening actions (something every reasonable human is called by logical society to do).
Shop-aholics vs Over-eaters who don’t exercise
Still less than 2 minutes into the 6 minute video, Arbour delivers some jokes about Shopaholics (people with a compulsion to buy things in unhealthy quantities) are more sympathetic victims than Food&sloth-aholics (people who take poor care of their bodies via a compulsion to eat large quantities of junk food paired with sedentary activity). Recalling her setup about legitimate handicapping, she jokes that obese parking should be further, not closer to the store to encourage the calorie burning that obese people need to save their lives. So so far, Arbours alleged “shaming” and “bullying” has been to advocate better behavior with the intention of saving peoples lives (also known as “neither shaming nor bullying”).
People destroying their bodies are doing something horrible
2:20m – Arbour says if you have a pack of Smarties candies and you mash one up and make it “not good” then it’s no big D cuz you have a whole pack left, while the case with your body is that you have only 1 and if you eff it up then you’re screwed. It’s an odd analogy fitting with the light hearted comedic delivery of the rest of the video and it’s 0% inaccurate. Regardless of candy analogies, there is no disputing the fact that at the time of this writing and the time of Arbours recording, human beings have only one body as an option. In the future, depending on how this head transplant thing goes and how thoroughly we are able to download our brains to plug into new mechanical, organic, or cyborg/mixed vessels – Arbours claim is 100% true.
So more than a quarter of the way through the video and we have yet to experience anything inaccurate, nasty/mean, or “shaming”.
Being “body positive” means “being positive to your body”
Lampooning the phrase “body positive” as it’s used in regards to glorifying unhealthy bodies, Arbour suggests the alternative of labeling positive things positive. By illustrating absurdity by being absurd, Arbour takes the action to its logical extension by pointing out that #MethLove and #TeamSmoker campaigns are not positive. Putting a hashtag next to something does not change the objective reality that it is physically bad – it just makes something that is physically bad, culturally good. And this is the real heart of the body positive issue… it operates under the hippie philosophy that if anyones choices are not celebrated then they are a victim and hippies love fighting against societal majorities by using victim martyrs. So the victims get conned by feeling better about killing themselves and ruining their lives while the hippie feels like a hero for fighting against the boogie men of logical critical analysis of health by falsely labeling it with hate smears and fiction of oppression.
What about the family?
Around the 3 minute halfway mark of the video, Arbour notes that the health conditions and early deaths caused by obesity take an unfair toll on the family and loved ones of the obese. She calls out the selfish behavior of someone allowing their addiction to unhealthy food rob them from their loved ones. People who seek pleasure for themselves regardless of the pain it causes others are typically known as jerks. Most jerks are jerks because of problems, yes, no one fails to grasp that. But as an evolved society we are compassionate to peoples problems when they seek help – not when they embrace their problems and make them other peoples problem. That action should be condemned, not celebrated as a personal choice. If you are a hermit with only enemies then it is a personal choice how you destroy your life with food and inaction. If you have anyone – even one person in your life who loves you – then you are being a jerk by destroying your life whether it’s with food, alcohol, drugs, or whatever. That’s *my* point, not Arbours, but Arbours point that killing yourself with food is a dick-move to your loved ones is objectively true. I could think of a bunch of ways that and every other objective truth could be used to bully, ridicule, shame, or otherwise gratuitously attack an individual or group of people, but so far this video has done no such thing.
Fat Privilege
3:10 – Telling a story of obese people getting to cut a long security line at the airport because their knees were hurting from standing too long, Arbour again illustrates the absurdity of the situation sarcastically responding “oh, I showed up an hour early like I was supposed to, but you overeat, so let me help you”. Sorry, but Arbour isn’t the jerk in that situation. She could be if she was the TSA agent in charge of the line and refused to expedite the obese persons time they spent in pain or discomfort (assuming the suffering was legitimate) but the person in this story wasn’t given pain or discomfort by any 3rd party – they alleviated their pain and discomfort at the expense of others. This is known as “being a jerk”. Arbour sarcastically pointing out that she and others miss out on preferential treatment due to not destroying their bodies, is just logic.
Description of gross fat people
In a world where obesity exists and unpalatable things exist, there is going to be some cross-over. Arbour describes a distinct smell and type of “standing sweat” fat (presumably, people with a weight problem so strong that merely being upright without assistance has the equivalent effect of lifting and carrying around various numbers of 20lb lifting-weights)
Privilege ridicule
“So what?” to the fact that the fat family got to skip in line and be carted to their destination while Arbour sweats “like a pig” under a time crunch – she notes that while suffering that imbalance, if she were to “play an ugly chick in a movie” then she’s more likely than them to win an Oscar.
Obesity as a disability to the obese and an inconvenience to the healthy
4:15 – Arbour says that in her recent travel story she was seated on the plane next to one of the kids from the fat family whom was referred to as being disabled and his fat was spilling out of the airline seat and onto Arbour.
“Genetics plays a part, to a degree” in obesity
Accurate and necessary observation.
4:50 and I’m still waiting to hear something offensive, bullying, or false…
“I’m really fkking selfish: I want you around”
5 minutes in and this supposed shaming bully is admitting to caring about all the obese people watching her that even though she doesn’t know them, she cares enough to want them to be alive. The people calling this video shaming and bullying are taking a giant dump over those words and cheapening actual harassment, personal ridicule, and culture affecting acts of punching down.
“Actually, I will love you no matter what…”
5:33 – After expressing light hearted self deprecation concern in teasing both herself and her appearance along with those who overheat to unhealthy degrees and then saying she is only lampooning the unhealthy behavior because she cares about the unhealthy who may only be getting feedback from enablers, this “bully” then says “actually, I’ll love you no matter what [size or weight you are]” and this hippie Victim Culture drenched elitist nunnery still goes around painting this woman as an intolerant bully.
The video ends without a single slice of fat-shaming…
Dear hippie friends lauding this story on Facebook: You are being played and you should have known better…
14 years after the terrorist mass murders of 9/11 by radical Muslim extremists and the hippie American Left has been desperately searching for anti-Muslim retaliation or violence or bigotry and come up with failure and empty hands.
Despite Islamists using bombs and other weapons to murder civilian targets across the world, the tolerance and objectivism inherent in American traditionalism just kept failing to make any false deductions between a peaceful Muslim and an Islamist. Then in 2015, a kid brings a bomb-looking thing to his school and the cops are called and we are supposed to make some kind of “see?? Don’t go thinking all muslims are bomb using terrorists!” conclusion just because the kids name is Ahmed Muhammed? Since when is it okay to accuse people of oppressive race or ethnic bias without any evidence other than your own confirmation bias? Or more importantly – What about the part where the item he had, literally, objectively, unequivocally looks like a bomb you dummies?
I used to like debunking these but the joy is gone from the process. It’s just annoying at this point that people actually fall victim to such obvious logical errors just because of emotion based confirmation bias.
Nothing wrong happened in this story except what the kid did: He should have known better than to bring a suspicious looking thing like that to school. Okay, big deal, who cares? He wasn’t expelled from school for it (though creating bomb scares is usually an offense academia punishes), he wasn’t beaten or abused by any students or authority figures for it, he wasn’t even arrested as is often falsely reported (he was detained by police while they investigated) – yet this story is all over social media as some kind of example vindicating hippie victimhood mentality.
Everything about this message is wrong.
Acting as if some major oppressive weight was reigned upon this kid, Hippies are overcompensating as always by making him out to be a hero. That’s bananas. He didn’t do anything wrong except make a dumb decision so he shouldn’t be penalized but the kid does not deserve praise because he didn’t do anything special, either. People posting this story are trying to make the guy out to be a wiz kid genius unable to flourish in the field of science because of the oppressive stigma of his name and what thousands of people do in the name of his religion.
Idk what the kids grades, science fair history, or invention portfolio looks like but color me “not impressed” by this “clock” (which looks to me like just an assembly from a kit of some kind). Instead of being praised he should have been told that what he did was not smart. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t bring knowingly suspicious looking wired electronics to school unless it’s part of a project and when police question you in lawful and reasonable suspicion of a crime, you can’t be illusive with your responses and expect a good outcome.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s not even science. It’s common sense.
PS: the answer to the above image is below. This is the “clock” in question:
UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, everything I said was right and more. Much much more. In fact, this whole thing now appears to be a complete hoax, intentionally devised to illicit exactly the kind of knee-jerk hippie confirmation bias that it succeeded in stirring among the dummies I called out. Some major additions to the story:
2- Ahmed admitted that he knew the device looked suspiciously dangerous:
“I closed it with a cable, so… because, I didn’t want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I just used simple cable…. so it won’t look that much suspicious”.
This was obviously a screw-up that gave away his intent because to a 14 year old it sounds like a good defense to argue that you were trying to do exactly the opposite of what you’re being accused of, when in reality, no one actually thinks that a closed pencil case looks like a “suspicious threat”, adding a cable to the case makes it look more-not-less suspicious, and of course leaving it unlocked for people to discover unlabeled electronic wiring inside said suspicious looking cabled case is not at all the assistance to tamping down threatening appearance like he claimed. Kindov destroys the whole “racism” argument that the bomb connection was only made because of his name and religious/ethnic background when the kid himself agreed with the premise of how the device appears.
3- No one freaked out about the watch until started beeping in class, leading to the discovery of the wired contraption Ahmed admitted looked like a suspicious threat. Even though the teacher he showed the clock to instructed him to keep it under wraps for exactly the reason of it’s threatening appearance, Ahmed admitted to plugging the clock in the classroom (presumably so the timer would go off), which lead to the whole bomb investigation.
4- Turns out that his family has a history of this kind of victim-attention-grabbing stunt-doing and they used their kid. Ahmeds dadMohamed Elhassan Mohamed ran for President of Sudan (run by a dictatorship so i’m not sure what that’s all about) twice and participated in a media stunt against the Koran by serving as it’s public defender on trial for it to be burned.
So what did we learn? Repeat after me, class: “Never believe dumb-hippie talking point memes without further investigation or use of basic common sense”.
Leave it to dumb hippies and the people they’ve brainwashed to turn a conservative woman’s criticism of Republicans into something anti-Jewish.
Ann Coulter correctly pointed out that the CNN Republican primary debate at the Reagan Library exhibited way too much time wasted pandering to the 70% of Americans who support Israel, as Coulter does. I made the same observation in especially the following moment Ann articulated in this tweet:
Cruz, Huckabee Rubio all mentioned ISRAEL in their response to: "What will AMERICA look like after you are president."
I chuckled when someone told me of this tweet and agreed with the sentiment only to find out the next day that I was allegedly supporting some kind of hateful anti-semitism. Huh? Even disregarding that Coulter agrees with the candidates in their support for Israel – How could making a statement about time-allocation on debate issues be hateful? Not how *is* it, but how *could* it even? This is nuts, I thought to myself. More dumb hippies just looking for excuses to try and smear people they disagree with. But then I heard other Israel supporters I respect, like Michael Medved and Dennis Prager, both criticize the Tweet as horrible and I was further confused. I still am, as I continue to try and see the critical perspective by replacing the components with other issues or demographics. Take any issue that under 10% of the population cares passionately about while over 70% of the population supports and over 80% of Republicans support – and how can one justify such repeated and blatant pandering to that issue over and over even in contexts that have nothing to do with it?
Evidently its the phrase “f—ing Jews” that is what dense people claim makes this comment ugly – but why?
What if the candidates constantly pandered to Lutherans or stock traders in every other debate answer, whether Lutheranism or the stock market was even mentioned?
“How many f—ing Lutherans do these people think there are in the United States?”
“How many f—ing Stock Brokers do these people think there are in the United States?”
Offensive and hateful towards Lutherans and stock brokers? How could anyone possibly conclude anything near such a thing?
The only possible explanation is hypersensitivity brainwash + ignorance along the same lines as people being offended by the phrase “God damn it” because they think it damns God and thus is a disrespect to their Creator when it is clearly a call for God to do the damning upon something if you’d just take 2 seconds to think critically and use 2nd Grade English skills to deconstruct the phrase. Likewise, I assume people just hear “f—-ing Jews” and have a Pavlovian response to some kind of hate.
Ahmed with a ton of tech goodies 
