I have a feeling that these mensè rights works are going to be Condemned by History come the 2010's. Thery sound cheesy at best, and awful at worst,
When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga)
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Disappointing but not surprising. And the MRA post at the very top does sound like the kind of nonsense you’d see on an Internet forum so you certainly captured the spiritHear me Roar! A Men’s Rights MAN-ifesto, by BigDirk069
Excerpt from Pg 1 of 72, posted February 14th, 2004 to Manliness.org/messageboards/inn/cell/discussion
I am MAN, hear me ROAR!!!
For too long the Unfair Sex has abused its inherent power. For too long they’ve been allowed to use their sex as a weapon against us! For too long the ball-busting bitches of Hollywood and Washington have tried to castrate and emasculate us.
NO MORE!!!!
From neutering James Bond to pushing Princesses on boys, this OVERT ATTACK ON MASCULINITY SHALL NOT BE ACCEPTED!!!!!
Men of America and the World, stand up with me against this overt attack!! Reject the poisonous lies of “political correctness”. Heed the call of the Manly Times and other responsible, Y-run news sources! Reject the chains of the Matriarchy! Toss aside the Kneutering Knife! Stand when you piss and leave the seat up without regret!!!
In other words, GROW A SET!!!
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New Millennium, Old Values: The Conservative Pushback of the 2000s
Article in J Street Review by Harlan H. Hughes, October 2012 Edition
In a healthy democracy power tends to swing between two or even more poles as majorities and minorities and independents wrangle with the issues and their visions for the nation. Cultures also tend to swing with the times as progressive pushes receive a conservative counter-push and then back again. Sometimes these swings can be huge as one side takes things too far for the middle, and other times a motivated minority can have a disproportionate impact due to tenacity and energy, particularly when tactics like gerrymandering are in place.
All of these factors were at play in the 2000s, a decade where pushback against the progressive gains, both real and imagined, spurred an equal and opposite reaction from “marginalized” conservatives. And as America prepares to decide between continuing the Republican reign in the White House by electing Vice President Jeb Bush or swinging back to the left by electing Kansas Representative Kathleen Sibelius, it’s worth remembering the swing in social politics that helped elevate President Heinz to the White House in 2004 and kept him there in 2008.
Now, it’s worth noting that politically, the 1990s were fairly moderate in the US, with both progressives and conservatives gaining small wins. The largest “progressive” bills, such as the Green Growth Act and Health Care Act, made heavy use of private companies and followed blueprints developed by Republicans in many cases. Similarly, the Crime Bill and Social Security Act were notably more conservative in their approach, and many progressive social issues like LGBTQ rights were largely sidelined or watered down. Political populism in the form of Ross Perot’s Reform Party ultimately led to the rise of “Stripeback” politicians as a middle-ground option for moderates of both major political parties, helping stem a “race to the edges” by both as litmus test politics gained ground. As such, one might imagine that cooler heads would have prevailed, that this would have been a period of relative moderation in political thought and a “coming together” moment for Americans.
Instead, the opposite happened. The 1990s saw a wave of political violence from the far right, in particular the DC Bombing and the decade saw a rise in hate crimes. Nativist candidates like Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich predominated. The fledgling internet became a haven for radical and reactionary politics that only skyrocketed as social media spread, accelerating further with the advent of the Intelephone or “Inpho”, a nickname that led naturally to the dismissive term “Miss Inpho” for the person, most stereotypically a suburban housewife, spreading political or medical misinformation on social media.
So, if the politics of the Gore and Gephardt administrations were so relatively moderate, why was there such a big conservative backlash? Well, talk radio and other conservative news outlets such as the Patriot News Network exaggerating the issues was certainly a major factor (there appears no end to what can be considered “Socialism” or “treason” if a Democrat does it), but it is my personal belief that pop culture is largely to blame, specifically the rise in progressive social politics and inclusion on the big and small screen, which gave the impression that things were swinging farther left socially than they really were.
(Image source Risk Management Magazine)
One of the largest hallmarks of the 2000s was the “Men’s Rights” movement, a rise in sexist and misogynistic rhetoric and politics that started in comedy clubs and burned across the internet. This was overtly in response to the pop culture of the 1990s. The 1990s had seen the rise of Third Wave Feminism and the Girl (or Grrl) Power movement. While some of this manifested in ways that can be seen as subtly sexist or reductive today (such as the “Action Girl” trope), at the time people like Buffy Summers of the Final Girl film and series, the Whoopass Girls, or the more action-oriented Disney Princesses, culminating in Damsel’s Rebekah, were considered revolutionary, spawning whole new areas of feminist research and discussion. The “Season of the Witch” and rise of the witch archetype as a stand-in for female empowerment built off of this. Both tropes represented tough women who could overpower the manliest of men, which undoubtedly grated on insecure young men in particular, and the implicit threat to male privilege and traditional gender roles made the trope a particular target of conservative and right-evangelical commentators and influencers, the latter of which literally saw Satan in the Season of the Witch.
Similarly, male characters, particularly side characters, were often less traditionally masculine. Much like the “sensitive man” of the 1970s, male characters were increasingly likely to adopt less-macho traits, be more willing to show emotion, even if only in small ways (the “lone manly tear”), and be more likely to be seen cooking, cleaning, or raising children. Similarly, “Gay Best Friend” archetypes and the appearance of gay and gay-coded characters further blurred the line between the masculine and feminine. The “Gayening of America”, as it was dubbed, further enraged those who insisted on maintaining the strict dichotomy of masculine/feminine, and further appalled right-evangelicals, who again saw Satan in every lisping queen.
The internet and social media, in particular the rise of “Incel” culture, allowed this increasingly overtly misogynistic line of thought to spread like a virus in the 2000s, infecting vulnerable young men with Capital-M Manly dreams of a life where he’s the King of his Castle served and serviced by a harem of docile, submissive women. Soon open talk of “putting women back in their place” spread across the forums, merging and forging alliances with far-right politics, which was experiencing a renaissance in the later 2000s and remains a growing threat today, with fears of a return of Sword of Liberty or similar Militant White Nationalist Organizations entirely well founded.
And it all began as a joke. A “Macho Men’s Support Group” skit on Saturday Night Live. A trolling comedy routine by Jimmy Kimmel. The satirical and irony-laced Dark Horse comic Alpha Man. The ironic song “Manly” by NuPunk band Black Hearted Bastards. Some naturally took the jokes a bit too seriously. Soon overtly sexist comedy acts followed and SITCOMs began slipping in more and more subtle or not-so-subtle misogyny in their humor. Movies like The Bro Code and Dicks featured endearing sexist jerks and objectifying humor, even if they maintained a tongue-in-cheek sense of irony. The Agent X movie series, in a deliberate pushback against the perceived “pussification” of the “New Old Bond”, despite the New Old Bond being more accurate to Fleming’s original novels, unironically reconstructed the 1960s film version of James Bond as epitomized by Sean Connery, with women as shallow objects to be used and discarded and villains, male and female, inevitably queer-coded if not outright queer and frequently dark skinned.
The decade saw the return of large, powerful, masculine heroes and moved away from the “everyman” heroes of the 1990s, whether they were old faces like Stallone and Schwarzenegger or new ones like Momoa, Schreiber, McCallister, and Diesel. While not all of these movies were subtly sexist or queerphobic, and other action films like the Red Sails franchise with its queer-coded pirate Jack Swallow (Hank Azaria) carved out a large box office share, enough of them were. Similarly other films and TV series directly took on the perceived emasculation of the American Man and defeminizing of the American Woman, or featured characters motivated by such beliefs, such as Hacked.
Things spiraled even further on the fringes of pop culture entertainment. Unironic comics with Manly Man superheroes followed in Alpha Man’s footsteps (much to its creator’s dismay). A hyper-masculine spinoff of NuPunk joined Hip Hop as musical havens of overt misogyny. Video games featured opportunities to rape, assault, and murder prostitutes. Entire “cults of manliness” grew up around the country, many of them influenced by a fundamental misunderstanding of the works of Chuck Palahniuk, where men could “rediscover” their inherent manliness, often in pseudo-ancient rituals that bordered at times on Native American cultural appropriation.
Similar pushback on racial and ethnic and religious grounds followed. Changing demographics in the US due to immigration and population growth, and increasing acceptance and normalization of interracial marriage and mixed-race identities, revived racist “replacement” narratives. The Bismarck bombing and other acts of Salafist terrorism spurred a rise in Islamophobia which bled over into antisemitism and further fueled Christian Nationalism, which in turn overlapped heavily with White Nationalism. Anti-immigrant bias, particularly against Hispanics and Middle Easterners and South Asians (three groups that are frequently conflated in the bigot’s mind), spread and grew, and occasionally manifested in racist words and actions. Traumatized Congo War veterans externalized their PTSD against African Americans and African immigrants and refugees in particular, much as the trauma of Vietnam fed a rise in anti-Asian bias in the 1970s and 1980s. Pushback against progressive calls for police reform has further fed this anti-Black and -Brown bias. While overt acts of violence in the decade were few compared to the MWNO terrorism of the early 1990s, attitudes and rhetoric made Archie Bunker attitudes of race and gender much more publicly visible than they had been in decades.
Much of this neo-racism has been shielded under the fig leaf of opposing “political correctness”, an unfortunate top-down attempt by collegiate progressives in the early 1990s to reframe the narrative on race, gender, ethnicity, and ability. It was ultimately an Astroturf movement that quickly devolved into self-parody, with even progressive comedians and commentators butchering its awkward euphemisms like “differently abled”. Making fun of progressive overreach on political correctness soon evolved into actual racism and sexism. “I’m just being politically incorrect” became the go-to defense for overt racist, misogynistic, and queer-phobic hate speech, and for more subtly racist and sexist portrayals of characters in fiction. The number of non-white villains killed by Agent X, for example, is in notable disproportion to the number of heroic people of color in the franchise; you could call these latter “the good ones”, I guess. Similar issues plague the Detective Kilian series, which reconstructs the Cowboy Cop tropes of the 1970s without any of the original social commentary. While neither drops “N-bombs” and both featured the occasional MWNO villains, their clear throwback to more denigrating portrayals of marginalized groups speaks to a greater public acceptance of such views.
Similarly, backlash against “Disney Diversity” and other acts of inclusion played a part, with many attacking the Mouse and Chairwoman Lisa Henson in particular over the proliferation of non-white and rebellious princesses, even though most of these films had been greenlit under her father, himself a frequent subject of right-wing attacks and occasional slander. Other studios from Universal to WB faced similar backlash, in particular Universal’s John Carter adaption, which changed the original novels’ white ex Confederate hero to a Black Union veteran. Turok’s use of a Native American hero with a Confederate villain likewise raised ire, though the low budget, modestly popular animated film flew under the radar compared to the popular Princess of Mars.
Another factor in the rightward turn, and one that has fed radicalization on the fringes, has ironically been the very thing that protected many of the small-p progressive gains of the 1990s: the Senate incumbency advantage and blatant House gerrymandering, particularly in the otherwise solid-red Texas, that have kept the Democrats largely in control of congress. This has stymied many of President Heinz’s more Red Meat agenda items, which he promised on the primary campaign trail before running to the middle against Gephardt. While Progressives could shift much of the blame for a failure to make greater progressive gains in the 1990s to the Moderate Democrats, chiefly Presidents Gore and Gephardt, Conservatives could focus all of their ire on the Democrats for such offenses as watering down President Heinz’s major tax cuts and preventing some of the more arch-conservative judicial nominees from being approved.
As such, Heinz and Bush, though nominally center-right moderates not that far removed from Gore on most non-wedge issues, mostly escaped the conservative backlash. In a sort of ironic counterpoint to the 1990s, the pop culture of the 2000s makes things look far more conservative than the political record would indicate. Heinz tended to work with the Democratic congress to pass budgets on time, and even achieved balanced budgets on more than one occasion without drastic cuts to spending programs, undoubtedly helped in this by the Gore-era compromises on entitlement spending. Economists tend to see the Heinz years as a continuation of the Gore years in many respects, with a center-right economic push and a “compassionate conservatism” social one which took a softer stance on social wedge issues. Bush’s compromises on immigration reform opened further avenues for legal immigration and seasonal work in direct contrast to his occasionally fiery speeches on border security. One suspects that Heinz and Bush’s more overtly conservative statements were intended for a right-shifting populist base, and didn’t necessarily reflect their actual politics.
And in this vein, it’s worth remembering that most US conservatives have not bought into the overtly white nationalist or openly misogynistic narratives. Most remain de jura supportive of equal rights and claim not to be racist or sexist (they may be more willing to state discomfort for Muslims or LGBTQ people). Many would call themselves accepting and rationalize away any unconscious bias. So for those hoping to win these folks over to more accepting ideas, lumping them in with the Incels and MWNOs is a counterproductive strategy. Education about privilege and unconscious and systemic bias is a better strategy than accusations or finger pointing. That said, fearmongering to these more moderate conservatives has been an effective tactic for the far right, conflating race, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality with crime and violence to scare this moderate conservative plurality into supporting politicians that they otherwise might not. And a real danger remains that a charismatic populist demagogue of the Buchanan vein might be able to scare just enough of this fearful demographic to seize power.
But pendulums tend to swing back the other way as well. Slowly but surely moderate conservatives are sliding into more accepting or at least more tolerant views on social issues and becoming more de facto supportive or equality and diversity. The rising Millennium Generation of voters has already shown a leftward shift, particularly on issues such as climate change, police reform, income inequality, and LGBTQ Rights. Backlash against the excesses of Agent X and Detective Kilian and the increasingly hateful rhetoric from comedians and politicians have led to a much more politically active youth, who increasingly support diversity and tolerance and fight back on social media. Growing grassroots activism via social media are allowing new voices to be heard, and already we are seeing many corporations and brands leaning in to this new progressivism. Even Evangelical Christianity has seen a split, most notably the exodus of many conservative white Baptist churches from the Southern Baptist Convention following the election of Fred Luter Jr. as its new President in 2009, with growing awareness of social justice issues and “good steward” environmentalism by the younger members at the heart of the split.
Polls in the upcoming presidential race are neck-and-neck, and the energy surrounding Sibelius stands out against the “he’ll do” attitude behind the relatively uninspiring Jeb Bush, making the election of America’s first female President seem fully possible. In fact, the right-wing media and social media attacks on Sibelius following her stalwart defense of murdered Kansas abortion provider and personal friend Dr. George Tiller only managed to skyrocket the little-known Kansas Representative into the national spotlight, and may be what earned her the Democratic nomination to begin with. A character obviously based on Sibelius even appeared as a villain on Detective Killian, further adding to the buzz surrounding her, another example of where pop culture and social media have driven real world events.
So, with a leftwards counter-counter push starting is this the beginning of the end for the Conservative Millennium? Will the trend shift back to the left in the 2010s? Only time will tell. But for those in the Progressive movement, there’s much to be learned and remembered in the rise and proliferation of conservatism of the 2000s for their fight ahead, and much for the conservatives to keep in mind as they inevitably push back.
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I just couldn't get past that borderline-offensive Internet message at the beginning, so I just scrolled through the rest of the chapter today.
It makes me wish for the days of Dorkimus and Nerdical, or however those brats are called. At least you can tune out their white noise as mindless blabber while doing more meaningful stuff.
But this? Just because white male Baby Boomers don't run 100% of the world anymore, that doesn't mean they should do stuff like that.
It makes me wish for the days of Dorkimus and Nerdical, or however those brats are called. At least you can tune out their white noise as mindless blabber while doing more meaningful stuff.
But this? Just because white male Baby Boomers don't run 100% of the world anymore, that doesn't mean they should do stuff like that.
Well, it was bound to happen eventually, though it's kinda funny that they're basically living through our time but 10-20 years ago. Just replace the rampant vile homophobia/misogyny with transphobia and it would be OTL. One silver lining is that it never got to the point where there would be a second Swords of Liberty or a sharp polarization in politics, which is a good thing.
I personally think it's even more baffling to analysts ITTL because this emerged during a time of relative calm in America where there are far less shootings or crime, the economy is stable (despite the early 2000s recession), and America hasn't engaged in any major conflicts post-Cold War since 9/11 and the War on Terror have been butterflied.
Yet this spread like wildfire throughout the 2000s (like an anti-woke mind virus) and arguably seems more successful than what OTL conservatives are doing in terms of pop culture given Agent X and the like. Seems like a subset of young men, just like OTL, actively wanted and craved the kind of power their Baby Boomer ancestors had in their families, even if it means denying women or queer people their hard-earned freedoms.
What's scary, IMO, is that they'd probably treat people like Bakshi, Kricfalusi, and Lasseter as victims of the alt-MeToo movement despite being rightfully punished for what they've done.
This already happened with the anti-SJW movement/Gamergate. People either treat it as cringe or are so absorbed into it that they've fallen off the pipeline as despicable bigots. They'd probably be treated as a laughing stock ITTL once the movement comes to pass.
If you compare this post to what people are doing OTL, then it's not the white baby boomers that are making the most noise or the worst comments, it's young people. Those are the ones who are most impressionable and easiest to radicalize, and when people are screaming at the top of their lungs about existential threats to masculinity or traditional values, some will listen and be absorbed into that ideology.
I personally think it's even more baffling to analysts ITTL because this emerged during a time of relative calm in America where there are far less shootings or crime, the economy is stable (despite the early 2000s recession), and America hasn't engaged in any major conflicts post-Cold War since 9/11 and the War on Terror have been butterflied.
Yet this spread like wildfire throughout the 2000s (like an anti-woke mind virus) and arguably seems more successful than what OTL conservatives are doing in terms of pop culture given Agent X and the like. Seems like a subset of young men, just like OTL, actively wanted and craved the kind of power their Baby Boomer ancestors had in their families, even if it means denying women or queer people their hard-earned freedoms.
What's scary, IMO, is that they'd probably treat people like Bakshi, Kricfalusi, and Lasseter as victims of the alt-MeToo movement despite being rightfully punished for what they've done.
So the pendulum swings. I know a lot of you may have been too young to be fully aware of the culture of the 2000s iOTL, but it actually had a rightwards shift in pop culture too. It was led like in this timeline by comedy, such as Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla's The Man Show, which was trolling, deliberately immature, self-deprecating, and self-aware in its slightly-ironic sexism. Kimmel and Corolla were then replaced by Doug Stanhope and Joe Rogan (yes, the current right-wing MAGA influencer), who dropped the trolling/ironic aspects and made the show overtly sexist and misogynistic, throwing in racist elements too.
9/11 pushed a lot of this to the sidelines and background as white anger got redirected against Islamic peoples, and shows like 24 and Homeland leaned in on GWOT anger, and certainly had plenty of racist elements themselves (the Arab Americans hired to spray paint random Arabic graffiti in the background for Homeland allegedly painted "Homeland is Racist" and similar things; naturally the producers never noticed).
But in general there was a definite pushback against the Political Correctness of the 1990s in the decade iOTL (MAGA did not emerge from a vacuum) that in turn helped spur the Woke movement of the 2010s. The late 2000s were the period where the Red Pill movement launched on the internet (inspiration for BigDirk069's "MAN-ifesto", BTW). Here, the stronger, less-astroturfed Girl Power movement led to its emergence a few years sooner. The "Men's Liberation Movement" existed since the 1970s in direct response to 2nd wave feminism iOTL, and predates the PoD. Rush Limbaugh was railing against Hillary Clinton and the "Feminazis" all through the 1990s and 2000s. The opinions were always there below the surface, resenting "Liberal Hollywood", and awaiting the right conditions to sprout.
And note that H.H.H.'s article here is looking at a larger phenomenon, a scholarly article about a fringe movement that bled over into pop culture during a rightwards culture swing rather than a look at what "most people" think or believe. Ironically given the reactions here, TTL's 2000s are actually less overtly racist and misogynistic than our current state of affairs. The Men's Rights folks are a fringe group on the internet, not the Mainstream Conservative line of thought, though Talk Radio and the Patriot News Network will soon be picking up on things. White Boomer men might smile while watching Detective Killian gun down a "gang banger" and hook up with the Girl of the Week, but they're not posting rape fantasy on the web. It's the same as how Incel Culture never went mainstream, but likely introduced a lot of Gen X and Millennial men to far right politics.
And to be clear, Agent X and Detective Killian aren't unending streams of racism and misogyny. Part of the "meta joke" here is that they're really not much worse than many OTL action films and TV shows in having an inevitably white male hero defeat non-white villains and "earn" the women as a prize for doing so. The Kingsmen series, though couched in comedy and irony, actually hides some pretty retrograde attitudes on occasion ("Congrats, you beat the bad guy and won The Chick! Achievement unlocked: anal sex!!!"). AX and DK are slightly more overt about this and don't try to frame the women as "faux action girls", but are still not far removed from many OTL films of the 2000s-2010s.
And technically he's a Gen X white dude here. Boomers aren't usually that Web-savvy.
Lesson: if someone appeals to your fear of losing something (wealth, privilege, identity, safety, potential) then beware. They're not automatically fringe loonies, but they may be manipulating you.
Also, simply put, globalization was bound to create tension.
Here, the Beast was woken up earlier.
9/11 pushed a lot of this to the sidelines and background as white anger got redirected against Islamic peoples, and shows like 24 and Homeland leaned in on GWOT anger, and certainly had plenty of racist elements themselves (the Arab Americans hired to spray paint random Arabic graffiti in the background for Homeland allegedly painted "Homeland is Racist" and similar things; naturally the producers never noticed).
But in general there was a definite pushback against the Political Correctness of the 1990s in the decade iOTL (MAGA did not emerge from a vacuum) that in turn helped spur the Woke movement of the 2010s. The late 2000s were the period where the Red Pill movement launched on the internet (inspiration for BigDirk069's "MAN-ifesto", BTW). Here, the stronger, less-astroturfed Girl Power movement led to its emergence a few years sooner. The "Men's Liberation Movement" existed since the 1970s in direct response to 2nd wave feminism iOTL, and predates the PoD. Rush Limbaugh was railing against Hillary Clinton and the "Feminazis" all through the 1990s and 2000s. The opinions were always there below the surface, resenting "Liberal Hollywood", and awaiting the right conditions to sprout.
And note that H.H.H.'s article here is looking at a larger phenomenon, a scholarly article about a fringe movement that bled over into pop culture during a rightwards culture swing rather than a look at what "most people" think or believe. Ironically given the reactions here, TTL's 2000s are actually less overtly racist and misogynistic than our current state of affairs. The Men's Rights folks are a fringe group on the internet, not the Mainstream Conservative line of thought, though Talk Radio and the Patriot News Network will soon be picking up on things. White Boomer men might smile while watching Detective Killian gun down a "gang banger" and hook up with the Girl of the Week, but they're not posting rape fantasy on the web. It's the same as how Incel Culture never went mainstream, but likely introduced a lot of Gen X and Millennial men to far right politics.
One of the central driving themes of the TL is how all things impact one another. Art affects life affects art. Politics is no different. In fact, some have alleged that fiction is more likely to influence people's opinions than facts, documentaries, or propaganda. Certainly I never noticed the LGBTQ phobia, anti-Asian racism, and Rape Culture on display in the '80s movies that I loved until much later.
Studios, like almost all corporations, always go where the money is. Do you really think Anheuser-Busch cares about Trans Rights? They care about Gen Z dollars and Gen Z cares about Trans Rights, and they're betting on Gen Z dollars as Boomers die off. And as noted above, the 2000s OTL had plenty of overtly racist and misogynistic works. Closeness to the '80s is a factor, but so is pushback/reaction to the 1990s being more socially progressive than in our timeline. The farther things swing one way, the farther they'll swing back the other.
And to be clear, Agent X and Detective Killian aren't unending streams of racism and misogyny. Part of the "meta joke" here is that they're really not much worse than many OTL action films and TV shows in having an inevitably white male hero defeat non-white villains and "earn" the women as a prize for doing so. The Kingsmen series, though couched in comedy and irony, actually hides some pretty retrograde attitudes on occasion ("Congrats, you beat the bad guy and won The Chick! Achievement unlocked: anal sex!!!"). AX and DK are slightly more overt about this and don't try to frame the women as "faux action girls", but are still not far removed from many OTL films of the 2000s-2010s.
Stay tuned.
Inspired by real things I've read, needless to say. Reality beats fiction every day and some things are impossible to Parody or Strawman without just sounding like the original.
How do you think it was writing it?
And technically he's a Gen X white dude here. Boomers aren't usually that Web-savvy.
Things were slightly more "Progressive" in the 1990s, so they become more "Conservative" in the 2000s. As noted, all of the stuff you mention happening today didn't appear out of nowhere. They were simmering under the surface for a long time.
Indoctrination in a nutshell. Convince someone that everything that they have will be lost and they'll go into fight/flight and stop thinking critically and be more susceptible to programming. It's been used by the left and right, dictators and insurgents and terrorists, and even mainstream politicians since the dawn of time. There's a reason why George Lucas made "Fear" the arc word of the PT as opposed to "Hope" as the arc word of the OT.
Lesson: if someone appeals to your fear of losing something (wealth, privilege, identity, safety, potential) then beware. They're not automatically fringe loonies, but they may be manipulating you.
Strangely, sometimes it's when things are the most stable that radicalization can spin up the fastest. It's like people need some baseline level of "shit to worry about" and when it's not there, they make things up (e.g. conspiracy theories). The 1990s were a relatively dull decade with the Cold War ended and no obvious and immediate threats on the horizon, and yet it was the decade that spawned many of the far-right and far-left movements that have sprung up around the world today. Growing up in a conservative part of the country there was a real sense of fear and angst that "Liberals" were actively destroying America and Clinton's election was seen in nigh-apocalyptic terms, despite the fact that as a fiscally conservative Blue Dog his election marked a major victory for Neoliberalism over Progressivism. The fact that African Americans loved him and partially claimed him as one of their own should not be discounted here.
Also, simply put, globalization was bound to create tension.
Here, the Beast was woken up earlier.
Yes, yes they will. Something to recall for a future guest poster.
Definitely agree with how 9/11 shifted things, but I'm not entirely of the belief of the pendulum swinging though.
Yeah, that's a pretty good point there.
Never noticed alot of these either I will say though as I did become growing up a bit more, I have noticed stuff.
Admittingly, the nostalgia boom for the 1980s really began in the 2010s, which is when all the sequels and so on reall came from. It's the 30 year rule I believe. Heck, it's why I got annoyed at some of the criticism at the book "Ready Player One" regarding how it never critiqued the saturation of the 1980s culture. Said critics forgot the book predated the nostalgia wave of the 1980s (honestly, it's kinda hilariously warped what the book predicted and how it was sorta right.)
Yeah, reality likes to laugh at fiction writers' attempts at being sensical, especally in history.
I would say it's more Reactionary than Conservative and that could be attributed over to ol' Ronny Reagan.
Yeah, that's a pretty true statement though wonder how many people will buy it to begin with.
I think a good chunk of that came from how the Republicans got really salty that they lost against Clinton and began embracing more and more reactionary elements now, all because both parties had embraced neoliberalism and were now competing in culture madness. Though I will say it could also be how babyboomers were pretty easily influenced by television and advertising and propaganda to a degree. Fox News came out in 1996 and there was the scourge of reactionary talk radio prior over to this.
Very fascinating update.
I'm not familiar with that one, but I'm very much reminded of a Usenet argument I had around 2002 about a series of ads for Yorkie chocolate bars in which teenage girls have to dress up in false beards in order to buy the things because "It's not for girls!" The person I was arguing with held that this was brilliantly ironic, subversive and queer-coded. My take was "Maybe it is, but are the sort of people who want a men-only chocolate bar going to notice that?"
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It's fortunate that it's not as bad as it seems, though I wonder what will American culture look like once the pendulum actually swings back. Interesting things to think about for the future of the TL, I guess.
U Down wit' EBG?
Chapter 21: Life After Disney (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian
With the “New Mexico Project” complete and up and running, Jim increasingly found himself with time to spare. The new Henson Center for Puppetry Arts was still a humble place, effectively a private college and creative retreat still limited to a handful of pueblo-style houses, a dorm, a small studio building, and the “Great Hall” that wasn’t very “great” by Hollywood standards (but sufficient for students to perform their Capstone Performances). It was a slow place, “beyond time”, where everything ran at its own pace and clocks were largely forbidden.
Of late, he’d delegated most of his duties as President of the Center to others, and remained at the campus in his quasi-retirement, he and Jane still living in their custom pueblo, as well as doing his more formal roles as producer, creative artist, and instructor/mentor. He found the younger “Millennium” generation delightful, creative, ambitious in a non-commercial way, and engaged, an attitude in sharp contrast to their “lazy and entitled” reputation with others of his generation (a stereotype that made no sense to him based on his experience). He was increasingly the “wise old man” whom others came to see rather than a groundbreaking creator in his own right, though he was executive producer for a new “Steam Romance” comedy-adventure movie called Progress!! and had some ideas for a new puppetry-based TV science fiction series which would move far beyond the “rubber forehead aliens” popularized by Star Trek and its imitators.
But bad news struck as well when, in 2008, Jim’s old friend and former agent-turned-manager-turned employee Bernard Jules “Bernie” Brillstein passed away after a long battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. He’d noticed that Bernie seemed to be having difficulty talking and was coughing a lot when they last met, but Bernie, as always, dismissed it as a cold or pollution even as both knew better. Jim flew back to LA to serve as a pallbearer and eulogist, helped send away his friend, and then travelled to Burbank to help produce the special In Memoriam episode of The Wonderful World of Disney: “The Fantastic Energy of Bernie Brillstein”.
He'd occasionally fly out to Burbank to intervene in some sort of issue at Disney, typically Muppets-related, though Lisa was keeping things going strong without him and he found that he was increasingly disconnected from the current trends in entertainment. Disney, MGM, and NBC had been expanding in market share and market capitalization, regaining all the ground lost in 2000 and then some, with a total market valuation of well over $80 billion[1] by that point.
And with Disney stock up, he’d been able to further expand his investments, in particular making a lot of money on a wise investment in a company that did remote project collaboration software, anticipating the promise of the internet in this regard. He had quite a bit of liquid capital after selling his shares in the company to Microsoft, Chairwoman Melinda Gates personally meeting with him to arrange the $2.5 billion cash sale. Another investment in an efficient power conversion technology that was proving increasingly critical in integrating renewable energy into the larger grid would net another big win when sold to GE.
And Disney director and “activist investor” Bill Ackman had just the idea on where to spend all of this unexpected liquid capital. With Disney doing well, Ackman’s “activist” itch needed a new scratch, and he had the “boldest idea of all” for an activist investment, one sure to make the biggest possible splash for the environment yet: Exxon Corp. The company, though far from “vulnerable”, had lost market share after a recent offshore oil derrick fire made for embarrassing headlines and led US regulators to reject their planned merger with Mobil. Exxon was notorious even by the standards of fossil fuel companies for using its wealth to push climate change denial and fund anti-environmental politicians. Ackman thought that it was time for that to change.
“It’s time for the windmill to tilt back,” said Ackman.
He already had on board Steve Jobs, Melinda Gates, George Lucas, and Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, among others. With Jim’s liquid assets and a small leveraged stake to add to the pot, the new Energy Business Group, LLC, or EBG, would ultimately acquire a small but proportionately significant stake in the nearly $300 billion Exxon corporation. EBG would grab a seat on the board, and use this privileged position to gain the full ugly insight into the full extent of Exxon’s questionable environmental actions and climate denialism. And while the rest of the board fully outvoted them, their representative continued to make a stink, not just on the board, but to the shareholders, in particular citing the increasing liability risk from their “bad faith” actions and “short term greed”.
Combined with competitor BP’s headline-making “Green Shift” and the increasingly competitive nature of renewable energy sources as Asian-made photovoltaic cells and increasingly larger wind turbines drove down cost per kilowatt, Ackman was confident that they’d eventually wear down their opponents, particularly as the threat of a stock dump or proxy fight or ugly public lawsuit made the board loathe to try and actively kick EBG from the table. Furthermore, many on the board feared that Jim in particular might serve as a conduit to leak embarrassing and potentially incriminating company secrets to his old friend and colleague Frank Wells, who along with lawyer Steven Donziger still ran the Green Tomorrow Fund, which had been launching lawsuits at Exxon and other major fossil fuel companies for years. While Jim and Bill never explicitly or implicitly made such a threat, the fear of this happening, even if only by accident, remained a concern for the board and made them reluctant to try and remove EBG.
EBG (Image source Know Your Meme)
As EBG continued over the years to acquire more stock and apply more proxy pressure, by the mid-2010s Exxon was forced to cut back on the climate denialism, which was having increasingly diminishing returns as the science became increasingly irrefutable and solidly conservative politicians in Europe and even parts of the US began to be swayed by Maggie Thatcher and her successors in “Green Toryism”. Exxon even started to make investments, however initially marginal, in the Green Energy space.
And what the main EBG Partners knew, that Exxon’s board did not, was that while the EBG acronym officially stood for the Energy Business Group, in truth, it really stood for “Easy Being Green”.
[1] About $10-15 Billion higher than Disney at this point in our timeline accounting for the larger parks and IP.
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian
With the “New Mexico Project” complete and up and running, Jim increasingly found himself with time to spare. The new Henson Center for Puppetry Arts was still a humble place, effectively a private college and creative retreat still limited to a handful of pueblo-style houses, a dorm, a small studio building, and the “Great Hall” that wasn’t very “great” by Hollywood standards (but sufficient for students to perform their Capstone Performances). It was a slow place, “beyond time”, where everything ran at its own pace and clocks were largely forbidden.
Of late, he’d delegated most of his duties as President of the Center to others, and remained at the campus in his quasi-retirement, he and Jane still living in their custom pueblo, as well as doing his more formal roles as producer, creative artist, and instructor/mentor. He found the younger “Millennium” generation delightful, creative, ambitious in a non-commercial way, and engaged, an attitude in sharp contrast to their “lazy and entitled” reputation with others of his generation (a stereotype that made no sense to him based on his experience). He was increasingly the “wise old man” whom others came to see rather than a groundbreaking creator in his own right, though he was executive producer for a new “Steam Romance” comedy-adventure movie called Progress!! and had some ideas for a new puppetry-based TV science fiction series which would move far beyond the “rubber forehead aliens” popularized by Star Trek and its imitators.
But bad news struck as well when, in 2008, Jim’s old friend and former agent-turned-manager-turned employee Bernard Jules “Bernie” Brillstein passed away after a long battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. He’d noticed that Bernie seemed to be having difficulty talking and was coughing a lot when they last met, but Bernie, as always, dismissed it as a cold or pollution even as both knew better. Jim flew back to LA to serve as a pallbearer and eulogist, helped send away his friend, and then travelled to Burbank to help produce the special In Memoriam episode of The Wonderful World of Disney: “The Fantastic Energy of Bernie Brillstein”.
He'd occasionally fly out to Burbank to intervene in some sort of issue at Disney, typically Muppets-related, though Lisa was keeping things going strong without him and he found that he was increasingly disconnected from the current trends in entertainment. Disney, MGM, and NBC had been expanding in market share and market capitalization, regaining all the ground lost in 2000 and then some, with a total market valuation of well over $80 billion[1] by that point.
And with Disney stock up, he’d been able to further expand his investments, in particular making a lot of money on a wise investment in a company that did remote project collaboration software, anticipating the promise of the internet in this regard. He had quite a bit of liquid capital after selling his shares in the company to Microsoft, Chairwoman Melinda Gates personally meeting with him to arrange the $2.5 billion cash sale. Another investment in an efficient power conversion technology that was proving increasingly critical in integrating renewable energy into the larger grid would net another big win when sold to GE.
And Disney director and “activist investor” Bill Ackman had just the idea on where to spend all of this unexpected liquid capital. With Disney doing well, Ackman’s “activist” itch needed a new scratch, and he had the “boldest idea of all” for an activist investment, one sure to make the biggest possible splash for the environment yet: Exxon Corp. The company, though far from “vulnerable”, had lost market share after a recent offshore oil derrick fire made for embarrassing headlines and led US regulators to reject their planned merger with Mobil. Exxon was notorious even by the standards of fossil fuel companies for using its wealth to push climate change denial and fund anti-environmental politicians. Ackman thought that it was time for that to change.
“It’s time for the windmill to tilt back,” said Ackman.
He already had on board Steve Jobs, Melinda Gates, George Lucas, and Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, among others. With Jim’s liquid assets and a small leveraged stake to add to the pot, the new Energy Business Group, LLC, or EBG, would ultimately acquire a small but proportionately significant stake in the nearly $300 billion Exxon corporation. EBG would grab a seat on the board, and use this privileged position to gain the full ugly insight into the full extent of Exxon’s questionable environmental actions and climate denialism. And while the rest of the board fully outvoted them, their representative continued to make a stink, not just on the board, but to the shareholders, in particular citing the increasing liability risk from their “bad faith” actions and “short term greed”.
Combined with competitor BP’s headline-making “Green Shift” and the increasingly competitive nature of renewable energy sources as Asian-made photovoltaic cells and increasingly larger wind turbines drove down cost per kilowatt, Ackman was confident that they’d eventually wear down their opponents, particularly as the threat of a stock dump or proxy fight or ugly public lawsuit made the board loathe to try and actively kick EBG from the table. Furthermore, many on the board feared that Jim in particular might serve as a conduit to leak embarrassing and potentially incriminating company secrets to his old friend and colleague Frank Wells, who along with lawyer Steven Donziger still ran the Green Tomorrow Fund, which had been launching lawsuits at Exxon and other major fossil fuel companies for years. While Jim and Bill never explicitly or implicitly made such a threat, the fear of this happening, even if only by accident, remained a concern for the board and made them reluctant to try and remove EBG.
EBG (Image source Know Your Meme)
As EBG continued over the years to acquire more stock and apply more proxy pressure, by the mid-2010s Exxon was forced to cut back on the climate denialism, which was having increasingly diminishing returns as the science became increasingly irrefutable and solidly conservative politicians in Europe and even parts of the US began to be swayed by Maggie Thatcher and her successors in “Green Toryism”. Exxon even started to make investments, however initially marginal, in the Green Energy space.
And what the main EBG Partners knew, that Exxon’s board did not, was that while the EBG acronym officially stood for the Energy Business Group, in truth, it really stood for “Easy Being Green”.
[1] About $10-15 Billion higher than Disney at this point in our timeline accounting for the larger parks and IP.
If the last notable thing Jim Henson does in this timeline is buy a stake in Exxon to change its energy position, then that's certainly a way to go out.
If there was one good thing about Thatcher, she did talk of the dangers of climate change.
Sorry to see Bernie pass, but I hope we see more of Jim.
BERNIE DED!?Chapter 21: Life After Disney (Cont’d)
Excerpt from Jim Henson: Storyteller, an authorized biography by Jay O’Brian
With the “New Mexico Project” complete and up and running, Jim increasingly found himself with time to spare. The new Henson Center for Puppetry Arts was still a humble place, effectively a private college and creative retreat still limited to a handful of pueblo-style houses, a dorm, a small studio building, and the “Great Hall” that wasn’t very “great” by Hollywood standards (but sufficient for students to perform their Capstone Performances). It was a slow place, “beyond time”, where everything ran at its own pace and clocks were largely forbidden.
Of late, he’d delegated most of his duties as President of the Center to others, and remained at the campus in his quasi-retirement, he and Jane still living in their custom pueblo, as well as doing his more formal roles as producer, creative artist, and instructor/mentor. He found the younger “Millennium” generation delightful, creative, ambitious in a non-commercial way, and engaged, an attitude in sharp contrast to their “lazy and entitled” reputation with others of his generation (a stereotype that made no sense to him based on his experience). He was increasingly the “wise old man” whom others came to see rather than a groundbreaking creator in his own right, though he was executive producer for a new “Steam Romance” comedy-adventure movie called Progress!! and had some ideas for a new puppetry-based TV science fiction series which would move far beyond the “rubber forehead aliens” popularized by Star Trek and its imitators.
But bad news struck as well when, in 2008, Jim’s old friend and former agent-turned-manager-turned employee Bernard Jules “Bernie” Brillstein passed away after a long battle with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. He’d noticed that Bernie seemed to be having difficulty talking and was coughing a lot when they last met, but Bernie, as always, dismissed it as a cold or pollution even as both knew better. Jim flew back to LA to serve as a pallbearer and eulogist, helped send away his friend, and then travelled to Burbank to help produce the special In Memoriam episode of The Wonderful World of Disney: “The Fantastic Energy of Bernie Brillstein”.
He'd occasionally fly out to Burbank to intervene in some sort of issue at Disney, typically Muppets-related, though Lisa was keeping things going strong without him and he found that he was increasingly disconnected from the current trends in entertainment. Disney, MGM, and NBC had been expanding in market share and market capitalization, regaining all the ground lost in 2000 and then some, with a total market valuation of well over $80 billion[1] by that point.
And with Disney stock up, he’d been able to further expand his investments, in particular making a lot of money on a wise investment in a company that did remote project collaboration software, anticipating the promise of the internet in this regard. He had quite a bit of liquid capital after selling his shares in the company to Microsoft, Chairwoman Melinda Gates personally meeting with him to arrange the $2.5 billion cash sale. Another investment in an efficient power conversion technology that was proving increasingly critical in integrating renewable energy into the larger grid would net another big win when sold to GE.
And Disney director and “activist investor” Bill Ackman had just the idea on where to spend all of this unexpected liquid capital. With Disney doing well, Ackman’s “activist” itch needed a new scratch, and he had the “boldest idea of all” for an activist investment, one sure to make the biggest possible splash for the environment yet: Exxon Corp. The company, though far from “vulnerable”, had lost market share after a recent offshore oil derrick fire made for embarrassing headlines and led US regulators to reject their planned merger with Mobil. Exxon was notorious even by the standards of fossil fuel companies for using its wealth to push climate change denial and fund anti-environmental politicians. Ackman thought that it was time for that to change.
“It’s time for the windmill to tilt back,” said Ackman.
He already had on board Steve Jobs, Melinda Gates, George Lucas, and Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, among others. With Jim’s liquid assets and a small leveraged stake to add to the pot, the new Energy Business Group, LLC, or EBG, would ultimately acquire a small but proportionately significant stake in the nearly $300 billion Exxon corporation. EBG would grab a seat on the board, and use this privileged position to gain the full ugly insight into the full extent of Exxon’s questionable environmental actions and climate denialism. And while the rest of the board fully outvoted them, their representative continued to make a stink, not just on the board, but to the shareholders, in particular citing the increasing liability risk from their “bad faith” actions and “short term greed”.
Combined with competitor BP’s headline-making “Green Shift” and the increasingly competitive nature of renewable energy sources as Asian-made photovoltaic cells and increasingly larger wind turbines drove down cost per kilowatt, Ackman was confident that they’d eventually wear down their opponents, particularly as the threat of a stock dump or proxy fight or ugly public lawsuit made the board loathe to try and actively kick EBG from the table. Furthermore, many on the board feared that Jim in particular might serve as a conduit to leak embarrassing and potentially incriminating company secrets to his old friend and colleague Frank Wells, who along with lawyer Steven Donziger still ran the Green Tomorrow Fund, which had been launching lawsuits at Exxon and other major fossil fuel companies for years. While Jim and Bill never explicitly or implicitly made such a threat, the fear of this happening, even if only by accident, remained a concern for the board and made them reluctant to try and remove EBG.
EBG (Image source Know Your Meme)
As EBG continued over the years to acquire more stock and apply more proxy pressure, by the mid-2010s Exxon was forced to cut back on the climate denialism, which was having increasingly diminishing returns as the science became increasingly irrefutable and solidly conservative politicians in Europe and even parts of the US began to be swayed by Maggie Thatcher and her successors in “Green Toryism”. Exxon even started to make investments, however initially marginal, in the Green Energy space.
And what the main EBG Partners knew, that Exxon’s board did not, was that while the EBG acronym officially stood for the Energy Business Group, in truth, it really stood for “Easy Being Green”.
[1] About $10-15 Billion higher than Disney at this point in our timeline accounting for the larger parks and IP.
Well, the project is coming to an end . Not now, but soon.
This quote now seems rather harsh from his last chapter. Honestly would have expected something bigger for a semdoff.
When you Wish Upon a Frog (Book II of the Jim Henson at Disney saga)
So long as Mass Effect, Avatar (the James Cameron one), HTTYD and The Dragon Prince carry over in some form? I'm happy.
www.alternatehistory.com
Significant phrase located... calculating butterflies... results predicted positive...
Salute to Bernie, that wonderful bastard. Our bastard, our mench.
Wow, Jim Henson is putting in work after retirement, continuing to have a tangible impact on the world in both creative and business-related fields. The fact that he's using his own capital among others to brute force oil companies like Exxon to embrace Green Technology is something I wouldn't have expected from OTL Jim but makes perfect sense for Hensonverse's Jim given his experience at Disney and his exposure to environmentalist causes. A true champion to Green Futurism indeed.
Also, RIP Bernie and for OTL Jim Henson as well (his death date was 2 days ago). They'll be missed dearly.
Also, RIP Bernie and for OTL Jim Henson as well (his death date was 2 days ago). They'll be missed dearly.
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