Welcome to #SMH Fridays! Obviously, that’s Internet speak for “shaking my head” Fridays, but you already knew that.
Here at Red Alert Politics we spend entirely too much time on the internet and some of the things that we see out there are just absolutely astonishing/mind-blowing/horrifying/disgusting/trendy/weird/insert any adjective here. As such, we have decided to start #SMH Fridays as a way to share those stories with you.
In this weekly series, our staff members will share their favorite “That’s So Internet” story in this post, along with their unfiltered commentary. Here’s last week’s edition for the gist of what it’s all about. Enjoy!
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Zendaya -- the 18-year-old Disney star whose dreads Giuliana Rancic infamously said made her look like “she smells like patchouli oil, or weed” – is the latest celebrity to complain about “cultural appropriation.”
In an interview with Nylon, she declares that she is very culturally sensitive, because she just went to Africa and learned things.
“You can go about it as cultural appreciation or cultural appropriation. You have to be very careful,” she says.
Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them. In order to appreciate something, you have to know about it and understand. You don’t just wear something just to wear it—you have to understand the history behind it. I urge people to take the extra step of knowledge and learn about things. I’m someone who feels uncomfortable with things unless I know [about them]. I’m not going to try something unless I’ve taken the time and effort to learn about it. I just think with the Internet and the resources we have, you should do a little research.
Sure, knowledge is great. But it’s ludicrous to imply that you can’t wear anything without understanding its history—do we need to read hundreds of pages on the history of the pencil skirt to wear them? How many volumes of African history before I’m allowed to have an opinion on rap music?
Instilling people with the constant fear that they’ll be called “racist” because they wore a Native American-inspired necklace is not going to build a more tolerant society. It’s a call to cultural segregation.
Is there a company that is worse at public perception than Lululemon?
From see through yoga pants to hoodies that can literally take your eye out to telling women that their "bodies just don’t work" for their yoga pants, you would think that they might have already hit their bottom.
But Lululemon's strategy to gain public love and to come back from that widely-mocked fat-shaming quote is to create their own line of beer -- one that's just for men.
“I think Lululemon . . . is interested in talking to a more male beer-drinking crowd,” Doug Devlin, Stanley Park’s director of marketing, told CBC News. “It’s a nice way for each of us to take what it is we do to a new consumer.”
This new product is called "Curiosity Lager" and it features hints of lemon drop and chinook hops, according to the New York Post. It will only be sold in Canada.
Just what this world needs...an athletic wear company-produced beer. I might actually prefer to drink Natty Light.
Donald Trump is leading the Republican field for president and the media can't stand it.
Sure he's bombastic, self-aggrandizing, and his warning about illegal immigrants reminded me of Antoine Dodson, but regardless, love him or hate him, the media should at least be reporting fairly on his candidacy.
After a series of polls cemented Trump as the overwhelming leader in the Republican primary, the media jumped on the narrative that the billionaire was polling the worst against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and was sure to lose.
Despite the doom and gloom from the media, Trump does have a reason to celebrate.
He's actually gaining on Clinton. Plus, while her negatives have increased over the last few months, his have decreased.
According to the Quinnipiac poll, Trump's negatives have gone down by 10 points since May and his favorability has increased by seven points.
In that same poll, Clinton's lead dropped by six points from May over Trump.
The CNN/ORC poll released on Sunday showed Trump's favorabilities increased by eight points since late April.
So while it may seem like the only people attracted to Trump's message are conservative Republicans, he's actually winning over many American voters and gaining ground on Clinton.
This week, I feel like I need to say something about Cecil the lion, because it is a topic that has been blowing up the Internet for the past few days.
Basically, there are some very extreme reactions to this. I don’t want to take a side here, but I would just like to point something out and you can take it or leave it.
There are millions of people who are currently so outraged that Cecil was killed, that some are even calling for the murder of Walter Palmer, the dentist from Minnesota who paid $54,000 to kill Cecil. But here’s my question: would anyone know or care if it hadn’t been Cecil the lion that was killed, but some regular nameless lion?
According to BBC, some 650 lion carcass “trophies” are exported from Africa each year. Where is the outrage over the lives of all these lions?
I am sad that Cecil was killed, and I don’t at all understand the appeal of hunting for sport, but there are many people who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to do it. Does that make it right? Not necessarily, but it does make it legal in many instances.
Killing Cecil was illegal because it was poaching, or hunting without permission from whoever controls the land. But either way, an animal is still killed. If poaching one lion prompts this much outrage, we should have a broader discussion about the practice of trophy hunting that allows hundreds of lions to legally be killed each year in Africa.
That's just my two cents. RIP Cecil.
I want to piggyback off Meghan’s Cecil the Lion post, actually.
The killing of Cecil the Lion was troubling in many ways. The popularity of the animal, the shady way he was lured off the national park land for a legal kill, and the conduct of the hunting company raise iffy moral questions for the entire operation.
However, this media hype highlights two terrible tendencies: the internet mob and American apathy toward African dictators.
Max Fisher at Vox had a great post summing up the sins of the internet. For all the wrong that Walter Palmer committed in shooting the lion, I’m not so sure his livelihood should be destroyed.
If only this lion business would turn scrutiny on Zimbabwe itself and the way dictator Robert Mugabe controls the country.
If America won’t care about Mugabe's destruction of civil rights, the Zimbabwean economy, or the political repression, maybe the American internet mob will care when they find out the dinner menu from Mugabe’s birthday party. Lions are cool. Toppling dictators is cooler.