My question was answered in this article about the Ricky Gervais Netflix special.
It’s not surprising: Gervais himself understands the problem. He understood it all the way back in 2005, when he made fun of his own success in “Extras.” That show—which I’m ashamed to admit is absolutely brilliant—dissected Gervais’ relationship to fame, power, and professed a powerful truth about celebrity. Once someone becomes mega-famous, it’s only a matter of time before they stop having anything to say.
That’s what we’re seeing with this post-edgy comics, all in their 50s or approaching that age, who are trying to grasp at relevance by pretending that they still have hilarious observations to make about the world. The reality is that they can’t: they don’t live in the world anymore. Gervais refers to himself, rather self-consciously, as a “multi-millionaire” in the special and nods to Netflix’s “unprecentded” payout, and Chappelle, as we well know, is a rich dude living in Ohio. Of course they find transness to be this new, horrifying development: they haven’t lived in the real world for decades. Money has protected them from the reality of life, which includes, you guessed it, trans people. And a deeper understanding of gender outside of the binary–something else that they find threatening.
Because the truth about capitalism is that the more money you have, the less incentive you have to be a kind, understanding, or even curious person. What money does is deaden the part inside that asks questions. Why should you question the system that’s rewarded you?
The Indiana governor is Republican, but he has been relatively decent as a politician. He’s not a Trumper. His veto was to keep the bill harming trans kids from becoming law. The MAGAt extremists overruled him.
Indiana is not turning blue any time soon, so this governor is the best we can hope for in the near term.
There is a part of me that refuses to believe that shit works, much less works as well as it does. Despite all evidence. I have issues processing the entire idea
I guess the coverage is part of it, but it’s also a small fraction of American society that is all in on these ideas that the increasing freedoms and rights that the LGBQT+ community are enjoying are part of why “America is in decline”. Given that that fraction has managed to seize the GOP leadership, they’ll keep passing these horrific bills.
I think it would help if the news media focused on the fact that it is a small minority (which the WAPO article seems to do here), and on the damage being done to real people. We do need to keep our eyes on these bigots, though, we just need to stop covering them as if they are holding some normal political position rather than a fascist political position.
Indeed, which is why it needs to be couched in actual facts about what this targeting of a particularly vulnerable group means and what it does. The news media should be making the connection explicit. As @the_borderer often reminds us, some of the first victims of the nazis were trans folks.
The media needs to change its policies and start having trans people write about and discuss these topics as well. Currently they consider trans people too biased to allow them to write about topics involving trans people.
