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Kitty's Corner's avatar

Will you end up reviewing Freddie deBoer's book? I like his substack but despite all his postering that he's been a leftist his whole life, I consider him a liberal and he has too much sympathy for identity politics.

He just reminds me of this type of white progressive who sometimes cares about class, but he spends more time on his niche cultural issues versus talking about class in any ongoing meaningful way. I learned about him on This is Revolution, a Black Marxist podcast, and Freddie just kept asserting that we have to be invested in these social issues AND class. He hasnt been invited back, so I imagine he's not sufficiently left for the show. And I agree; I think he's just a disgruntled white liberal.

Aside from that, I am fascinated by this. I only learned about him because women complained about their treatment on his show. But, like Aziz, I never engaged really engaged his content. I only watched Master of None when Lena Waite wrote the last season that was about her and her ex girlfriend. I checked out some other parts of the show, and didnt find it funny. (But he does narrate an audiobook which I greatly enjoyed).

I am not a fan of Mindy Kaling, and when I finally saw Late Night, I thought it was propaganda for white progressive multiculturalism and loathed it. And she ends up dating the racist white guy in the end.

Anyway. This was really interesting. I love all your posts!

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

"Minhaj...treated some of its female staff, primarily the researchers and fact checkers, poorly. When the show had been cancelled, I remember seeing some tweets from South Asian American women who’d worked on the show saying how harrowing, even traumatic the experience had been..."

Working as a fact checker in Manhattan was "traumatic"?? I wonder how they'd describe living through a war or famine? Wherever these women may have been born, once they become baptized in the Victim religion, they instantly become deeply, inescapably American.

And Hasan was just following the first rule of show business: Give the people what they want! His audience is upscale white liberals and their deepest emotional need is to hear tales of oppression and discrimination from brown people, as this gives them an S&M frisson of guilt and shame, but also leaves them feeling holy and absolved, or at least morally superior to those OTHER white people who "just don't get it".

You cannot become an elite American until you denounce the country, its history and at least half of its people and our smarter, well-educated immigrants know this better than anyone.

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