The Week in Tweets and Memes
It’s my favorite moment of my work week—the end of it, LOL, full of chuckles and SMDHs. And a very special shout out to all the folks who responded so positively to my pledge drive on Facebook. You keep The Status Kuo healthy and running!
Tucker Carlson was in the news this week for having manipulated the facts once more, this time by taking selective police footage from the January 6 insurrection to make it appear as though the protestors like the “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley were peaceful. Twitter had some comparisons.
As for his use of the word “sightseers,” there were some thoughts from the Capitol Police themselves.
Elon Musk stepped in it this week as he conducted a public firing of an employee over his platform. It’s really quite something to behold.
Fun fact: The employee, Haraldur Thorleifsson, was or should have been on a “do not fire” list because any termination meant Twitter owed him a payment of $100 million because it had bought his company. But Elon kept at it, ultimately mocking him publicly in another tweet:
Thorleifsson in fact has muscular dystrophy and is such an activist for the disability community in his home country of Iceland, having led a campaign to fund build hundreds of access ramps in the capital, that he was named Iceland’s Person of the Year. Yet here was Musk, mocking him for not working and tweeting up a storm.
Um, wait. Doesn’t that actually describe what Elon—oh, a Twitter user noticed.
Musk wound up publicly apologizing. My guess is after talking to his lawyers.
Elon Musk apparently is now vying for “Worst Person of the Year.” Speaking of mixed signals from Musk, political commentator Bryan Tyler Cohen noticed that these two tweets from Musk were just one month apart:
Followed a month later by…
We have to agree with you there in your own case, Elon. (He personally amplified Tucker Carlson’s January 6 counter-narrative, if you can believe it.)
Trans panic was in full swing in right-wing America, though most of the rest of America feels trans identity is not something that we should care so much about let alone legislate to oppress or restrict. The performative nonsense took people to really awkward places.
The response was on point:
Speaking of trans people and airplanes, Sen. Ted Cruz weighed in with his own terrible take, but was quickly shut down.
There’s a lot of talk of “groomers” and more panic around gender-bending performers near children, but I think all of us can honestly point to things other than drag queens that “sexualized” our childhoods.
For me it was definitely Olivia Newton John’s “Physical” video. May her memory be a blessing.
In Florida, the state where “woke goes to die” according to its governor, they’re also busy trying to limit education around racism and “critical race theory.” I gotta say, this was bound to happen:
Rewritten. Got it.
On a lighter note, the French apparently are convinced that they really know better what sells movies. Especially in the titles. This thread was enlightening.
Talk about sexualizing teen audiences…
On weekends, it’s nice to consider how dogs often remind us humans how life should be.
Bonus if there are corgis, of course.
I leave you with a tweet from Twitter user @ceosonson that kept making me laugh every time I thought about it.
Enjoy your weekend!
— Jay
And in other Trump-related (good) news:
Federal district judge Lewis Kaplan has ruled that E Jean Carroll can use the infamous Access Hollywood tape in her rape defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump, further compounding the former president’s legal woes.
Judge Kaplan also ruled that he will allow the testimony of two other women who have claimed that Mr Trump sexually assaulted them, Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds.
I thought we were all going to be replaced by chat bots, but no--it's the cardboard cutouts that will take our jobs. Dang!