Another top-notch selection of links Jenny.

Did you see that there are people complaining that Hamilton is racist because it does not want white people to audition? Seriously? I want to scream at people to stop messing with my A. Ham!

I don’t know if we should blame ourselves so much for being half-assed. I think for us, there is a genuine question of how efficacious our individual, underfunded efforts could ever be. Jefferson, by contrast, to take one example, could have been extremely efficacious – indeed, there was hardly anyone as influential in his time. And I’ve always given Washington credit for at least (a) feeling guilty and (b) not raping any young slave girls, but maybe that’s praising with faint damns (if I could coin a reverse phrase).

Yes! And it made some non-terrible points (like that Hamilton’s story is a narrative about how if immigrants work real real hard they’ll be successful), but I also just fundamentally disagree that it’s uncritical about it. ANYWAY. HAMILTON.

Yes! It just comes up all the time, and I think a better thing to say — I am going to try this and see how I feel about it! — is that it was easier to be racist back then, and harder not to be. Because I think that’s true. I’m guessing when a century-on generation looks back at MY generation, they will be appalled at our treatment of the environment; so I try to think about it in that context. When society makes it easy for me to be environmentally friendly, I do it (I reduce-reuse-recycle, and I don’t leave the faucet on while I’m brushing my teeth), but it’s not like I’m out there crusading for an end to carbon emissions, you know? So if the next generation looks back at this blog (ha ha WordPress will be long dead) and sees me saying “I care, but not enough to work really hard at it” and judges me the way I judge Hamilton’s rather half-assed abolitionism (at which he still worked far harder than I am working at fixing the environment!), then that is probably fair of them to do.

SO: All of that very long remark to say, it’s not an excuse. People in the olden days knew slavery was wrong exactly the way we know that destroying the environment was wrong. They had all the information they needed. If they kept doing it, because it was easy and profitable to keep doing it, and hard and costly to stop, then that’s a moral decision they made and I get to be pissed off about it if I want.

Good luck! I promise they’re all interesting!

Yes, Jemisin has a ton of interesting things to say — as a social media presence as well as an author! (Which reminds me I am still behind on her books and I need to catch myself up.)

Yeah, totally! And I love reading Anne Helen Peterson pretty much always — she has such smart, insightful takes on the way we build narratives about movie stars. Love it.

Hahahaha, I do too actually!