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Right Angle: Backstage (10-12-2021)

An explosive story starts this week’s Backstage episode of Right Angle.

Right Angle: Backstage (10-12-2021)

An explosive story starts this week’s Backstage episode of Right Angle. Viewers who are disturbed by disturbing things might want to fast-forward through this entire episode.

62 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage (10-12-2021)”

Watched “Gaslight” many times, Ingrid is the niece of the owner of the house, who is murdered. She is sent off to Italy to train as an opera singer, like her aunt. There she meets Charles Boyer, who she gets married to. He convinces her that they need to return to London as he has always wanted a modest home there. Once there he starts the gaslighting of her. Mostly at first by keeping her indoors and controlling her movements. The gaslighting happens when he starts to search the attic, for what we don’t know yet, and turns on the gas in the attic. The housekeeper is partially deaf, so she doesn’t hear the thumping from above. The maid he hires hopes to be the new mistress when Ingrid is committed to Bedlam. So she works to help Charles Boyer.

My two cents:
Cent one: The thirty or so bad Rotten Tomato reviews that I read were all well written, and didn’t seem like they were written by trolls.
Cent two: Even if the bad reviews were all written by trolls, the positive reviews were all written by paid propagandists.
So what we have is meta-spectacle.

Oh come now Scott, your playing the 1984 game: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command ~ George Orwell, ‘1984’ 

we have wonderful ice-creams, gelatos and the like in Israel… all locally made… the parent company Unilever didn’t make this decision… the do-gooding icecream duo concern has a separate antisemitic board that made the decision… and there are no plans to stop selling in Israel proper… though I have my doubts they will find another franchisee who will cross Israeli law…

W. C. Fields was a master of changing the language to slip by the censors. One of his lines was “Godfrey Daniel” to substitute for the more profane curse. Pure genius back in the 30s and 40s movies to bypass censors in the theater business at the time. “Let’s go Brandon” is doing the same allowing us Boomers to be accepted by the general public once again. Our language is limiting enough already without removing some of the more descriptive/colorful words to keep some people happy. I’m glad that we have some “code words” that are socially acceptable again!

One of the first times I’ve ever agreed with Scott. I don’t think she heard what they were saying. I think Brandon did. The look on his face when he realized was obvious. I think she realized quickly enough but I think that’s what she heard originally. I’m sure she’ll come out at some point with a story to milk

Re: the destruction of California cities. There is a bit of naivete here, gentlemen. California has decriminalized looting for less than $900 per day. Cops and store security just watch people walk out of stores with trash bags full of stuff. Walgreens has just closed several stores in San Francisco. Wal-Mart and other stores put as much inventory as they can in locked cabinets, and then close at 5pm in an attempt to protect from marauders.

(And then there are the supply chain shortages that are also causing empty shelves.)

So go ahead, set your little drone above your car, and send the footage to the local LEOs. They won’t do anything with it. And if they should do something wild and crazy like send it to the D.A., well, the D.A. won’t prosecute because the D.A. has been bought and paid for by George Soros and isn’t interested in locking up criminals, because justice. Or something.

Every policy of these communists hurts poor people. They don’t care about black lives, poor lives, homeless lives, working-class peoples’ lives, and especially not black babies’ lives.

We have got to reclaim our country from this culture of death.

Scott’s argument that whoever’s in charge of the Rotten Tomatoes stuff (and I agree with Scott and Steve that this is not something that is relevant to my life and I really, really Don’t Care about RT itself) sounds reasonable because “obviously” all those Little People reviewers didn’t actually see the movie, must be bots or member of a crazy little cabal of people in their basements trying to manipulate things (like leftists do all the time) rubbed me the wrong way.

Who gets to decide that those Little People’s reviews don’t count, or need to be weighted?

This is what we’ve been complaining of forever in opinion polling, and what was apparently built in to all those voting machines.

Who gets to decide which votes/ratings count and which don’t, or how to “weight” them? Who is doing the counting?

I don’t care about RT. I do care about the voting integrity of this republic. But if you can justify manipulating RT reviews, and opinion polls, then why not actual voting? It’s the same syllogism.

You know, I’ve really come to value the back-stage shows a lot.
Unlike the Trifecta Right Angle shows, the guys spend more time hashing out their positions on the subjects of discussion. I find that much more compelling and valuable than the 20 minutes they spend on the “Main Shows”.
Take today’s show. Bill and Scott really showed insight into how they view the issues of movie ratings and celebrity opinions versus reality for the rest of the populace.
The discussion –and history lesson– on gaslighting fascinated me! I think that this is actually the best show they produce, and I’m glad to be able to watch every week.
Just my $0.02, adjusted for inflation…

So … Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream …

Make a political statement, to wit:
Claim an area is oppressed by the Israeli Government and then refuse to sell ice cream to the oppressed people living there. While still selling ice cream to the non-oppressed people under that same government outside of the “oppressed” areas.

Which is punishing the supposedly oppressed people and rewarding the claimed oppressors. Stipulating that withholding a ridiculously expensive and not all that good ice cream is a form of punishment of course.

This is stupidity. What’s amazing is that the stupidity of it didn’t even occur to the virtue signalling idiots who came up with this policy.

Stupidity is the logic of the Left. This demonstrates that stupid logic in a nutshell. This is why the Left will fall. Our real challenge is to not let the Left take us down with it when it goes.

As I keep trying to patiently explain to my Lefty pals, the danger of building coalitions based on identity politics is that eventually your allies run out of someobdy else to hate.

… and I am willing to wager they still don’t get it no matter how many small words you speak as slowly as you can.

Identical experiences.

It doesn’t matter what we say. Unless what we say agrees with them.

Either we’re wrong or they’re not the wonderful, caring people they believe themselves to be.

So the only position they can take is that we must be wrong, anything else destroys them as people.

Ostrichitis.

This is why the Left will fall.

I claim that this is why the ideologies of Leftism recur in human history. Those who would oppose it age and die, and all who are left are the stupid/ignorant youth. I think that we (and our parents and their parents) have failed to meet the real challenge, which is to correctly educate our progeny of what ideologies promote tyranny and subjugation.

Which does nothing to address the fact that Leftism is unsustainable and therefore must fall. It always does, it always will. It doesn’t matter that it’s recurrent, when it recurs it always fails. And then falls. And what is left for us to do is to see that the fall doesn’t take us down with it.

And what is left for us to do is to see that the fall doesn’t take us down with it.

Good luck with that futile hope. Without intending to make excuses, I submit that we are now in the late stages of the existence of “weak men.”
Leftism, throughout history, has always proven itself more than adequate to the task of destroying all societies it infests. Some just linger longer than others — consider USSR and CCP. Recurrence is definitiely the root problem. If every generation was wholly dedicated to educating its offspring of the dangers of Leftism and its fundamentally-evil ideology. However, such dedication to liberty is regularly lost to posterity, and the vicious cycle continues:

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. –G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

Batten the hatches. It’s gonna get rougher before calm seas return.

Yeah, no, this is a basic difference between the way you see things and the way I see them. I agree we’re in the “weak men” stage, I just don’t think that there’s no hope.

That doesn’t mean I think things are going to be easy, or anything close to the way they should be nor as good as they can be. I just don’t see craters and smoking holes where the U.S. once stood on the horizon.

This present situation is a pity because it didn’t have to be like this, and it doesn’t have to get as bad as it’s going to get. But I’ve done everything I can do to avert that. It will be what it will be in spite of me.

It might be that the disparity between your view and mine is due to a different world experience. My scope is just different than yours. I seriously doubt you have any idea what I consider “really good”. That’s not a slam on you either, very few Americans could say they’ve experienced what I have, or would believe me if I told them so you’re in good company.

At the other end, the bottom of the “bad” range … To me what you’d consider that to be but to me doesn’t seem quite that horrible — But you don’t know exactly what I consider horrible either. Bad, undesirable as hell but not horrible. I’ve been to places where conditions are truly horrible and we have a long, long way to go before we get to that kind of thing.

Honestly, I don’t know what you consider horrible or where you think “futile hope” leads. I’m just trying to tell you that I know horrible and we’re not headed there yet. When you don’t have enough to eat for months, you live in a cardboard hut and have an open sewer with human waste flowing by your front door while partisans roam the countryside killing anyone they feel like … that’s horrible. It can get worse too.

It’s not the same thing as seeing your stock portfolio drop 80% in value or not being able to buy a new car every other year. That’s “horrible” to weak men but I’m not a weak man.

The thing about “weak men” is that they have little concept of what really bad really is. They’re scared little hamsters running as fast as they can on their little hamster wheels. It’s not only the Left that has a monopoly on weak men either.

The way I see it, things are fixin’ to get bad. Not collapse of all social order and end of the world bad, at least not yet. But bad enough.

I think we can avert an actual full blown collapse by giving the Left what it thinks it wants, and giving it to them good and hard. Until it hurts. Before they’re ready to shrug it off and tighten up their blinders. At some point they’ll cry ‘uncle’ because they will have created a situation where all their stupid ideas (like Defund the Police for instance) are going to bite them in the ass.

We need to preserve a core of American values ready to pick up the pieces of the things these spoiled, snarky children break. When I say that we need to try to keep them from taking us down with them, I mean down to a preindustrial level, which is the real danger. Not down to runaway inflation and a crippled economy. We can come back from the latter fairly easily. Just take the brakes off and let ‘er run. The former is all the way down to bedrock and if that happens you and I will not live to see the “return of calm seas” at all.

My hatches are battened. I suggest you heed your own advice.

Fair enough.
Regarding the final outcome in our lifetime, I think that you’re more of an optimist than I am. It’s good. I’m hopeful that we don’t devolve to a “preindustrial level” as you put it; however, I don’t think that I am as optimistic. Perhaps I have less faith in the humanity than you do. Perhaps I’ve just read/watched too many dystopian fiction stories.
Regardless, I appreciate your optimism.

I don’t have a lot of faith in humanity. (Before I say anything else, I’m not preaching I’m explaining why I am like I am.) I’m a Christian and a core principle of Christianity is that man is a fallen being. It’s in the concept of “original sin” in case you’re not a Christian and don’t know what I’m talking about. If you are, then apologies, I’m not trying to talk down to you or anything like that.

That said, I’ve seen pretty much all sides of human nature and many times the serious extremes of those sides. People can be pretty rotten. Of that I have no doubt.

However, in those extremes are the good as well as the bad. I’ve seen some damn fine actions taken by some damn fine people in my time. People I’m proud to be associated with, people who inspire me to try harder and do better. So while I’m aware than humanity is in a fallen state, I’ve seen humanity at some of its best moments too.

These kinds of things leave an impression on a guy.

What you call “optimism” I call Faith. My Faith is not in people and I’m not trying to give you a sermon or convert you or anything like that. The Faith I’m talking about is simply that I know Who is in charge and I’m good with that.

Make no mistake, an example I often use is the Christians getting eaten by lions in the Roman Coliseum … Those people had faith too, and they still got et. It’s not that I think we’re going to have an easy time of things, it’s not that I think I’m going to have an easy time of things because of Faith either.

It’s that not only do I see a bigger picture, my worldview is shaped by my experience too. My experience isn’t what any decent people would call “normal” so every once in a while I have to take a deep breath, back up and try to understand what a normal person is actually talking about.

You seem pretty bellicose to me. Maybe that’s just you, maybe I’m reading you wrong and that’s very easy to get wrong in a situation like this. I’ve got a reputation myself for being the grump in my family so … I’m not throwing any stones here. It might be a “takes one to know one” kind of thing but then I don’t really know you and you don’t really know me either.

Still, maybe you’d be served better by reading/watching something a little more uplifting once in a while.

Because here’s the thing about that. It’s very important, no matter what ideology or faith or none you ascribe to, to see things as realistically as you can manage. You can’t make good decisions from bad information. It’s a good idea to understand worst-case scenarios and it’s a good thing to relax and look at the brighter side of things now and then too.

It’s never a good idea to wallow in worst-case nor to live in some pie-in-the-sky cotton candy cloud either. Both extremes end in cliffs.

I’m not an optimist. An optimist hopes for the best and is constantly disappointed. I’m not a pessimist either. A pessimist expects the worst and misses out on the good because hey, it just might not really be good. I’m a realist. Like a hard core, hard Corps, realist.

I don’t want to fight with you, you’re not a nincompoop. I’ve seen some of the things you’ve posted and some are very thoughtful and well considered. Your heart is in the right place, you just need to consider getting your head out of that dystopian cloud and see if maybe a little more balance wouldn’t work better for you.

You’ll be a lot more useful to the rest of us if you can do that too. So I’m not saying this just for your benefit, I have less than altruistic motives too.

I’ll have to watch the Southwest Pilots episode to see if this is mentioned, but I heard or read a story earlier in the week that said the reason the pilot’s union and Southwest are denying this is a sickout or strike is because the pilots union’s contract with Southwest requires that they enter mediation before they can strike. Since mediation isn’t a thing that will solve this problem, because it was caused by the government instead of Southwest management, the pilots are striking without callling it that. I believe the hope is that the Southwest and other big businesses who are knuckling under to the mandates will instead fight back. The large corporations have the power of the purse for re-election campaigns, but they don’t seem to be using that power. Instead, many are throwing their hands up and saying “Well, the government says we have to, so I guess we have to”. Perhaps many in upper management positions of those corporations really like the mandate policy and also like having someone else to blame for the policy if it’s unpopular.

Yes, very much to do with the contract they signed. They are not allowed a coordinated strike or sick-out. So they have to be very careful or they can be fired for cause.
The interesting thing for me (very much a non supporter of Unions) is that this type of thing seems like it should be collectively bargained. I can’t believe that a company that has a contract with a union can make a new rule and it not go back to the table. This has to really piss off union types who think of the left, not just as friends, but allies.
Their true colors show, union are useful idiots only to be supported when another group is not more valued. (see, police – defunding)

Yeah, I’m not a big union fan either. The union bosses already know that nothing will change to help them. They’re just sitting back and collecting dues. The union members who vote in Democrats just seem gullible. It’s Lucy and football, over and over again.

One of the commenters at Powerline explained it perfectly:
The pilots are forbidden to strike. An official sick-out would be illegal. So everybody calls in sick, independently. It’s not a strike; it’s an amazing coincidence.
Southwest management can’t accuse the pilots of wrongdoing for using sick leave, that’s a negotiated benefit. But management also can’t admit the reason for canceling flights is lack of sufficient staffing or the company would owe passengers compensation. So they claim it’s weather-related and therefore the traveller’s bad luck.
The FAA can’t punish Southwest or its pilots because that would be admitting vaccine mandates do harm the economy, which would undermine The Garden Administration’s public relations campaign.
Lies all the way down. It’s the new normal.

“Steve, we’ve got an explosion of suppositories” has got to become part of the vernacular in the comments sections here.
We know what we need to do, Stratoloungers

Clearly the negative viewer reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes Fauci thing was definitely people going in and just reviewing…but isn’t that almost certainly what the professional reviewers were doing? Just automatically giving it a high review?

They’re good at making and selling ice cream. That doesn’t mean they’re not complete morons in every other subject. You see that w/ scientists and celebrities a lot.

I can’t be antisemetic ‘cause I’m Jewish.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the term “Oreo” or “the blackface of white supremacy”. Just cause you’re a member of the group doesn’t mean you can’t hate members of that group.

The reason Fauci was made is for the creators to earn kudos among their peers. There’s likely some money laundering going on. And it’s yet another front on the culture war. The IMDB/Rotten Tomatoes score is support for this little cultural offensive.
Actual movie goers is beside the point.
OH! AND ANOTHER THING! This film is another attempt to rewrite history. Not today not now. But in the near future, this film is going to be shown in damn near every High School and Jr High. Just like the 1619 project, it will help define what history is for future generations.

Wasn’t there a documentary or book or something that showed how the movie houses could shift costs from profitable movies to flops in order to have every movie lose money and thus not have to pay the percentages to various stars and big names? And taxes of course. Can’t pay any if you didn’t make any money.

Not sure if there’s a doc on that specifically. But the studio did exactly that to the writer of Coming to America. And he sued. I think there’s a documentary re: that case.
And, of course, Scarlett Johansson is suing Disney right now cause Black Widow tanked.

That might be what I remembered. And I think she managed to get her pound of flesh from the Mouse, or at least has settled the case.

I believe Scott is more than willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps to a fault. Perhaps just to provide a counterpoint to Bill’s cynicism.

That’s my point: “to a fault.” It’s been happening an awful lot lately and it’s gotten to a SMFH-attitude for me.
As for Bill’s cynicism, I believe he’s accurate way more than cynical.

Yeah, but Scott’s a good guy. I don’t wanna cast aspersions on him even if I do agree w/ you that he seems to be being kinda naive. Though I don’t consider myself Christian, I think Scott’s faith and insistence on seeing the good in people is a necessary counter-balance to cynical bastards like me who are ready to go full Joker and watch the country burn. Help out even.

I’m agreeing with Ron and also extending the thought a bit. Scott was trained as a journalist and still has that mindset I think. Only report what he knows, not what he suspects or what reason and logic imply.
He also seems to take the devil’s advocate position a lot, or presents the “opposing” view that someone’s leftie friends might take, to let Bill and Steve give us the argument to use back.
Maybe we should title him the Rhetorical Fall Guy or the comedy duo straight man.

Scott is far from Naive. He know what people are saying and what the on-track reporter said on air. What he doesn’t “know” for certain is what she heard through her headphones. He is much more akin to Anne in “Stranger in a Strange Land” (which he likely hasn’t read since he doesn’t read sci-fi) who was a “Fair Witness” and only says what he knows not what he supposes to be true. Since he hasn’t heard the reporter say what she heard and why she said they were shouting “Let’s Go Brandon” it is an unconfirmed point. Knowing what the crowd was saying and that is has become a euphemism is not the same as saying he doesn’t know what the reporter heard.
He is consistent on reporting facts, not supposition, and one of the things that I truly appreciate.

Bill, might want to review the movie. You got a lot not right. And it really does show what is being done by gov. As she begins to be affected I certainly can see society now. Be sure to view the 1944 version. Bergman and boyer.

Pausing Bill to type this, but since they record in the morning it is likely what I heard was said sometime after ….
Regarding Southwest (and this might have been on Instapundit) a pilot said that the staffing of pilots is down now, and SW doesn’t have as many “extra” pilots as they used to, so when some events (weather, delays, etc elsewhere) delay a flight and a pilot is over the allowed flight hours for the day, they don’t have as many standby crews now, and that is what has led to the cancelled flights.

I suspect that pilots are sicking out and since staffing is right on the edge the action is more effective than it would otherwise be. The quoted person did mention that other pilots used to be paid time and a half to fly extra flights but that “SW should not have expected them to do so” with the COVID shot mandates. On the other hand, SW was caught between a rock and a hard place with the govt requiring them to implement the mandate as a govt contractor.

— Bill and Steve may have seen what I did, or at least they mentioned something similar.
To answer Scott’s partially asked question of Why someone would try to manipulate the movie ratings? is that people in power (or think they are) want to control everyone. They want us to watch the movies they want, and form our thoughts according to their whims. That or they get kickbacks from the movie producers.
Scott “these guys are not idiots” … are you sure of that? They might have had smarts when they were running the business but it seems when people retire and have sacks of money laying around they get a might stupid.

Seriously! It’s like we’ve been gifted an early week TSL with Scott & Steve as guests!

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