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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3635 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 17, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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(I don't have the heart to kick my son out of my home office, all of this is written in jest)

We all know that Paw Patrol is libertarian propaganda for kids, it's even on Wikipedia: the heroes of the day are the privatized emergency services, every single time, while elected officials are not.

But what I've realized is that it's also a different kind of propaganda. Mayor Goodway is a proud woman of color, and she's so profoundly incompetent that she couldn't have won a fair election against literally anyone unless the party nominated her as a token diversity candidate and let her run practically unopposed. Yes, Mayor Humdinger of Foggy Bottom is an evil old white male, but he is at least competent enough to manage his own team of cat minions and come up with underhanded schemes. Goodway in comparison is worse than useless. Is the show teaching the kids that women of color are incompetent figureheads at best?

The media doesn’t seem to have an issue depicting women of color as incompetent leaders per se. Consider Abbott Elementary, which is probably the most successful network sitcom to come out of the US in recent years, set at an inner-city school in Philadelphia. The principal, a black woman, is depicted as fundamentally incompetent, lazy, poorly educated and self-serving, having obtained her position solely by blackmailing the district superintendent about an affair. The other teachers, white and black, constantly complain about her.

The show is written and created by a black woman. I think a lot of complaints about woke in media are fair, but the claim that PoC are never depicted negatively is not; most minority media creators do not seem to have issues portraying non-white people as venal, stupid, lazy and so on where it serves the story.

An example that immediately came to mind was Mindy Kaling's first role being writing and portraying Kelly Kapoor as a narcissist, egoist idiot mess.

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