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Guy Buys Movie Ticket, Internet Outraged
A Brooklyn movie theater recently scheduled a special screening of Wonder Woman open only to women. Cinema/dining chain Alamo Drafthouse said on their website, “Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying ‘No Guys Allowed’ for several special shows at the Alamo Downtown Brooklyn. And when we say ‘Women (and people who identify as women) only,’ we mean it.”
Movie fan (and my Conservatarians podcast partner-in-crime) Stephen Miller decided he wanted to see a new superhero flick, so he bought a ticket online. Upon sharing this rather mundane act, the Internet exploded, as is its wont.
I hope this story ends with a lifetime ban from Alamo theaters. https://t.co/JqBMJGvVLG
— BenDavid Grabinski (@bdgrabinski) May 27, 2017
*tannoy* can Stephen Miller’s mommy please come to the sandpit he has soiled himself for attention https://t.co/hv865Rfnxx
— David Lewis (@davidclewis) May 27, 2017
Yes but you are also barging into a space you’ve been asked not to enter, and doing it for lulz. This is a rapist’s mentality. https://t.co/38Ql0Lg5hE
— Jordan Hoffman (@jhoffman) May 27, 2017
Of course, there were thousands more entertaining tweets, but their ubiquitous profanity violates Ricochet’s Code of Conduct. To each attack, Miller stressed he has no interest in making a scene; he just wants to sit down and watch Wonder Woman.
Of course, his calmness created even more outrage. A.V. Club writer William Hughes wrote the first of sure to be many think-pieces on this calumny:
As Miller has delighted in telling people irritated by his decision—in that “I am speaking calmly, so you must be the [expletive]” tone so beloved by internet trolls—there’s nothing illegal about purchasing a ticket to a screening. That argument does, though, gloss over the fact that, while barging into a space you’ve been asked to stay out of just because that request made you feel briefly tiny and weak doesn’t make you a criminal, it does make you an insecure piece of [expletive].”
Alamo Drafthouse is in a bit of a pickle here. New York City law strictly prohibits them from discriminating by gender:
Hello mentions https://t.co/VxvkxVVezE pic.twitter.com/okkAZ6zjyU
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) May 27, 2017
In fact, New York City prohibits even advertising women-only events, meaning that Alamo is already in violation of the law.
@redsteeze Better to cite the statute itself https://t.co/FKi6QBiuS5 note that the ad already is a violation of the law pic.twitter.com/ahefjj5Ity
— (((Aaron Worthing))) (@AaronWorthing) May 27, 2017
After years of progressives demanding that businesses bake cakes and open bathrooms, it’s cathartic to see them reverse their position when it offends their consciences. Miller is offering them a minor, even friendly, clinic on the brave new world they have created.
And I’m sure he’ll provide a thorough review of the screening when he returns to our podcast.
Published in Entertainment
Yeah, it’s not about persuading leftists. It’s about making an appeal to reasonable people in the squishy middle. If there’s any reason not to do what Miller’s doing, it would be because the ticket sales support PP. And, maybe for reasons of personal safety.
What gets me about this is why the upset? If I understand correctly the Left is all for men in women personal space.
When they want it. You can’t have guys invading womens’ personal space willy nilly.
All sorts of bad ideas that emanated from the left — from the independent counsel statute to Title IX inquisitions to wind farms to high speed rail to forced school busing to housing integration to gerrymandering — were (are?) reconsidered only after leftists experienced their effects. Sometimes the only way to (civilly) break through the mental barriers is with a real-world demonstration. Rational argument, even when correct, is too often dismissed as so much theorizing.
People are not rational beings. Libertarians are the best example of people who don’t know this.
I love some libertarian principles–and @jamielockett is a super cool dude–but amen to that. We are creatures of passion, which I’d argue is attached to spirt, but I can stick with passion for the sake of this particular topic. :)
If it made sense, it wouldn’t appeal to the left. It’s all about emotion and virtue signalling.
And justifiably so. Linear deductive and inductive logic is so DWM. The important thing is whether a law, or a policy, or for that matter anything a member of a privileged group says or does makes a member of a less privileged group feel “safe” or “empowered,” or, heaven forbid, “oppressed.” The latter is a capital crime, since making someone feel worried, oppressed, or concerned is the moral equivalent and by rights should be the legal equivalent of first degree murder, and by rights the victim should be justified in killing to defend her/xer/whatever self.
Note the important point that an essential goal of public policy is to make certain people feel certain things.
Well, perhaps not in aggregate, but it varies. Some are more rational than others. And most individuals can be highly rational when it comes to maximizing their personal gain.
It isn’t about convincing anyone. It is about power.
Bring the fight into their safe spaces. Make them retreat. Make room for decent and law abiding people to live in a society that is decent and law abiding.
Sure. And many individuals are great at calculus, too. On a macro-political level though, it’s the heart. I think that’s true on the Left AND the Right.
I have friends who re-post stuff Dan Rather posts on Facebook. I can only imagine the nodding heads in front of the keyboard as they re-post it. One friend wrote “a true journalist”, in describing Dan.
Well. I’m quite positive that you could slap them in the head with truth cinderblocks and they would still ignore reality. So if you need to shake things up – not to get your way, but to point out their hypocrisy and the law – then so be it.
I’m beginning to refine my thinking on this a little due to an article over at Crisis. It’s really desire-based ethics rather than objective truth as the basis of morality. That’s why it seems so capricious and libertarians sometimes fall into the trap.
Bear in mind that the superheroes of the left are people like pajama boy and Woody Allen.
Virtually all of progressivism is based on jealousy. Politics aside, when you look at video or photographs of a leftist protest, what percentage of the people you see are people you would like to look like? Their whole movement is based on making sure that people they like be allowed to use the ladies tee. (And, ideally, that people they don’t like not even be allowed on the course.)
That isn’t totally true. There are lots of pretty people in Hollywood.
So I’m wasting my time, then, trying to have a rational discussion here? And if the heart is the driver in all cases, how do you know your position is more correct? Is it because your heart is more pure?
Let’s just say that my strength is as the strength of ten (actually, that would probably have been better coming from @bossmongo).
Good for him and if he convinces one person it will have been worth it, but I can’t bring myself to care or support someone who has made it clear they are an enemy of my values.
She had eyes? I never really noticed.
This is one of the top stories at the US Home of the Daily Mail website. The author of the article is hostile to him (bringing up the Portland murders and white supremacism), but the comments section is generally supportive.
You have to make some emotional appeals as well as rational ones. And yeah. I see that all the time on Ricochet, though I like rhetoric as much as the next person who thinks of herself as somewhat cerebral.
I guess that’s why I don’t see a guy going to the movies as so offensive. I am not a tit for tat kind of person, but I feel confident that if we asked Emily Post about which was impolite, I feel confident she’d say calling someone a white supremacist who is stoking violence of the sort that leads to murder simply because you don’t share his/her worldview is beyond the pale, even if going to an event that you have every right to attend might be construed by some as mildly obnoxious.
(I don’t read the US Home of the Daily Mail, so I’m only guessing that the writer of the article to which you are referring made such wild implications, but they seem common enough to point out in any case.)
I find it interesting that several responses to my postings have called into question my manhood, placed me in the “wine and cigar crowd”, and basically made me into a Quisling.
Thanks for the kind words.
You can’t maximize your personal gain if you are being lied to. The left is glad to befuddle the electorate because then they are biddable and compliant.
Mark Steyn says that totalitarians like to lie to people and then use their power to force people to accept it as though it was truth.
It was this technique that was used by the NeverTrumpers, too.
It was probably that damned @docjay. You can never tell what that bastard is going to say.
Like when Obama and his crew got Jack Ryan to drop out of the 2004 Senate race. How did they get those court records unsealed?
Sorry if you took my comment (about castrati) that way. I was referring specifically to the “majority” of skreechers on Twitter that Jon mentioned. I didn’t mean to call into question your manhood. In fact, I can respect that you had the guts to take a differing opinion — even if you’re wrong. ;-)
I think that people can have fair disagreements, rational points of contention.
Name calling and sweeping statements about groups of people, to whatever “tribe” they may belong, however, show the futility in disregarding the passions.
I hold fast to some firm principles. I don’t lie, break the law, or bear false witness against others.
In this case, Miller isn’t going against the principle of free association. He’s standing up for intellectual consistency.
Also, @benjaminglaser, I am sorry for any disparaging of your character when simply expressing your opinion. I can get on board with saying that is wrong.
I am glad @westernchauvinist clarifiedwhat seems an unintended slight.
Fair enough.
I am curious if any of those kind words were accurate.
What I know is inaccurate is the association of Stephen Miller with Trumpism. He was consistently calling Trump a con artist and stating that the Orange Overlord was conning his supporters. I actually lost interest in his work because he was starting to get repetitive. He’s at least as opposed to the Donald as Jonah Goldberg or John Podhoretz.