True, but we are your audience, and you are asking us to believe something without proof.
In the absence of proof, our faith in these assertions is also somewhat lacking.
Or the FCC. Or the IRS. Or the EPA. There are a number of entities charged with enforcement that lack guns. Note I do not include the USPO in this incomplete list, as Postal Inspectors carry firearms (DO use correct postage, won’t you?).
There are also rules (mandates) for this BBS; unless I have tragically under-estimated @jlwet alia, guns are not involved in their enforcement.
Except not. Generally mandate (in politics) has been used to say that you not only have a majority, but an overwhelming one, which means that the voters agree with your political agenda.
Sometimes living in a democracy means things happen which you might not be happy about.
Also a part of living in a modern democracy (or really, any kind of modern state) - the state has a (imperfect) monopoly on violence. In theory, the way to balance that is to have citizen input and a responsive democracy at all levels… This is all social contract theory, and looks quite different in reality, of course.
But I dont’ think that @CarolineSiede is asking for laws to be passed, or even for this to actually happen. she’s pointing out how white men dominate our media landscape. I don’t understand why people get so worked up over talking about this and thinking through ways we can make our media landscape reflect the world we live in.
If ethnicity is like gender, in other words if we can choose to self identify as
all one ethnicity
partly one ethnicity, partly another
or multiple ethnicities
and if our identification can change over time, then this sort of “check the box for your ethnic group” form is useless and probably insulting, unless the only box is “Other”. (edit - this is the box I always check)
To the point of the article, if Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning is entitled to self identify as female, and if she is entitled at some future date to return to identifying herself as male, why would Nic Cage not be entitled to self identify as black/Asian??
If those entities were not ultimately backed up by the threat of imprisonment (where guns are very much in evidence), their mandates, only some of which are actually debated upon and enacted as laws, could be and would be ignored with impunity. It amazes me that I actually have to explain this.
It boils down to who is the “we” in “What if we limited the number of white men in film and TV”
If the “we” is the production studios acting in unison, then there are no guns involved. No more than if the comic book publishers acted in unison to ban sects and violins. (Although it does raise the question of whether “What if we limited the number of black men in professional basketball” would be equally discussable)
If the “we” is the population of the USA or any other country acting through statute or regulation, then yep, the guns are available for backup as needed.
So, given your number of posts positing armed enforcement of this proposal, you seem to seriously think that the article is suggesting that it is likely that congress would pass such a mandate into law, and thus so probable we can skip saying that we want this to be a law, that’s it’s a de facto part of the conversation, and not, instead, referring solely to the audience of the article, or a Gedankenexperiment?
We* are not surprised.
* In this context “we” stands for the entirety of the American people, both reading this thread, being informed of it over their orange juice, or seeing it show up in the Facebook feed memed almost beyond recognition. By using “we” in this context it is also assumed that the full weight and authority of the US Office of Weights and Measures shall be enforcing the statements made in this post. Violate them – or fill a pint jar only partially full – at your peril.
To be fair, there were consequences to violating the code. Since the entire mainstream comics in the 50s and 60s abided by the code, comics that did not had a hard time getting distribution. The same thing happened in the 20s or 30s in Hollywood with the Hayes Code. Someone had a fear of corrupting young mind in both cases, and in lieu of government regulation, the industries self-regulated. There was a similar attempt with the recording industry in the 80s, but we know how well THAT turned out. The labeling only drove sales. And the case of comics, it just helped create underground comics.
But none of that involves guns, just people getting drummed out of the industry or having to compromise on their art. This has always been a more effective means of controlling cultural output, have the industry self-regulate.
Yeah, I only coined whitemansplaining to differentiate from mansplaining and whitesplaining, because at least in this conversation, it’s white men in particular that are rockin’ the privilege. In fact, we could probably even narrow it down further to whitestraightmansplaining, but that’s just starting to get cumbersome.
Actually the Hays Code wasn’t really enforced until 1934. There is a genre of Hollywood films that have come to be called pre-code, sound era films that could get fairly saucy, violent and/or (relatively) amoral, because the Production Code of the era had no teeth.
