Chamblee54

This is a repost from 2020. … James Lindsay still thinks 2+2=4. There was another conversation. @ConceptualJames talked about a conversation with one of “my actual right-wing friends.”
“I was talking to one though, and this guy’s like you know old school, and super super right-wing … so he said the word racist doesn’t mean anything to me anymore, at all, if somebody calls me racist it doesn’t mean anything, however … I know what the word racist means for me and i’m going to continue not being racist by that definition.”
@ConceptualJames has a lively twitter feed. Yesterday brought “Critical race theory in a single image.” The picture was from another youtube show, Ashleigh Shackelford gives a presentation on Racism. Someone is standing in front of a group of white people, with a sign that says “all white people are racist.” The lady is “Hunter Ashleigh Shackelford (she/ they) … Black fat cultural producer, multidisciplinary artist, nonbinary shapeshifter, hood feminist, and data futurist”
“all white people are racist so I put this up because I really want any white person in the room to know up front that this is what we’re dealing with, that it’s not going to be this coddling of white tears … we’re not going to discuss oh maybe some of us have work it out no you’re always going to be racist actually so even when you’re on your path to trying to figure out how to be a better human being … I believe that white people are born to not be human … instead of people of color and black folks being dehumanized that actually everyone is human … within white supremacy that y’all are born into a life to not be human and … y’all are taught to do to be demons so in this particular way white people are all racist so I just want y’all to know that it’s wrong”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

PG found Classic Television Showbiz while reserarching a recent feature about the late Sherwood Schwartz. The site is a treasure, with youtubes of classic tv shows, and interviews with “entertainers”. Somewhere in the sidebar was a link to a story about Tubby Boots. This is a repost.
Charles “Tubby” Boots was born around 1926 in Baltimore MD. He was a nightclub comedian. Mr. Boots weighed 375 pounds, had bleach blond hair, and often performed without a shirt. He wore pasties on his boobs, and would twirl them simultaneously in opposite directions.
The parts in blue are borrowed from Classic television showbiz. Tubby’s parents were a vaudevillian dance team called Boots and Barton. At the age of seven this youngster was clocking in at an astounding two hundred pounds, a constant target of ridicule in his Baltimore schoolyard….During his childhood, Tubby managed to witness a performance by comedy’s greatest cult icon, Lord Buckley … Tubby Boots recalled shortly before his death, “[Lord Buckley] was like a father figure to me. I met Buckley when I was seven years old when I was working at the Hippodrome in Baltimore, Maryland, and I was in awe of him. I saw his act every time he would come back to play the theater … I would sit in the theater all day and watch the shows. I’d stay out of school for the whole week – my mother would pack me a lunch – she knew what I was doing because I wanted to learn about show business. Buckley would do his hat-switching act. Every other show he would get me to do it with him. I’d hang out with him backstage, we’d go out for lunch or dinner, he’d sneak me back into the theater and I’d watch the whole stage show again. I started working nightclubs when I was eleven. I weighed 250 pounds and passed myself off as twenty-one. I got arrested in a strip joint and the police said: ‘We’re not going to throw you in jail but you’re not going to work in this town again – you’re too notorious.’ So they actually put me on a train and said ‘Where you wanna ticket to?’ I said, ‘New York.’ I didn’t run away – I was forced to leave. So when I got to New York I called Buckley and, pretending to sob, said, ‘My mama died in a car crash…my father was with her…’ Unbeknownst to me, he called my mother and told her, ‘He’s with me.’ So he got me a job at The Three Deuces, passing me off as twenty-one.” The Three Deuces was one of Manhattan’s major jazz holes in the thirties and forties, regularly featuring Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Lord Buckley was connected to the jazz world for most of his career, performing in their clubs and utilizing a great deal of the Black hipster vernacular in his act.”
Mr. Boots got a job as the emcee for burlesque shows, frequently in traveling carnival shows. He was doing well, when Lord Buckley called him from Hollywood. Supposedly, there was a movie job waiting for Mr. Boots. When he got to California, he found out otherwise. “Tubby became affectionately known as Princess Lily. “He used to call me Princess Lily but Prince Charles of Booth was my title. Buckley used to say: ‘Lil! You had the misfortune to be born with the beautiful body of a woman in the ridiculous body of a man!””
In 1959, Mr. Boots was in a bizarre accident. He was taking a bath, and the controls for the hot and cold water were in another room. Lord Buckley was handling these controls, and poured scalding hot water into the tub. Mr. Boots was stuck in the tub, and was badly burned. He spent a week in the hospital, and was not friends with Lord Buckley later.
After he recovered, Mr. Boots moved to Miami Beach. He performed in motel lounges for many years, and developed a following. Comedy albums were becoming popular, and Mr. Boots contributed “Thin my be in but fats where its at”. The albums were sold at his shows. The legend is that no copies exist that were not autographed.
The various search engines are sketchy about Tubby Boots. The Lady Bunny tells about going to see Mr. Boots in a supper club on Long Island in the eighties. Reportedly Mr. Boots did well during the comedy club explosion of the eighties.
PG saw a show by Tubby Boots. It was December 1974, at a dingy Atlanta bar called The Cove. PG was hanging out with someone we will call McClain, who liked the drag shows at The Cove. The bar was a former electronics warehouse, with a sign for Ballantines Beer by the front entrance. Ballantines had not been sold in Georgia for a long time, but the sign stayed. This was on Monroe Drive, behind Piedmont Park. Tubby Boots was a friend of somebody, and did a show at The Cove one night.
If you can stand to look at the embedded video, you get an idea about his show. Forty years later, PG can remember a few of the jokes. There was a one liner about an *African American* who took a shit, and thought he was melting. There was a routine based on the role Katherine Hepburn played in “Suddenly Last Summer”. My boy is not queeyer, he’s carnivorous. After a while, the shirt came off, and he twirled pasties from his boobs in different directions.
After the show, PG talked to a black friend, who did not want to meet the comedian. Meanwhile, Tubby Boots and McClain were making out. Before long, McClain came over to PG, and said he wanted to go somewhere else. McClain died in July, 1992. Tubby Boots died in August, 1993. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

This is a repost from 2016. By now, most internetters know about the Brock Turner case. The Victim Impact Statement has gone viral. The 7140 words of polemic were probably not written by the accuser, known as Becky Doe. The statement is intended to motivate the court to give the defendant a more severe sentence. It was not intended to tell the truth. Was the statement made under oath? Was it subject to cross examination? How did it get such wide distribution?
The statement seems to disconnect from the truth. “I called myself “big mama”, because I knew I’d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college.” In contrast, the Stanford Daily reports:”Doe confirmed that she had previously experienced four to five blackouts in college as a result of drinking. Asked by Kianerci if the Jan. 18 blackout was different from prior ones, Doe said, “In previous blackouts I have never been half-naked outside.”
There does seem to be a bit of alcohol privilege here. Miss Doe went to a party, and got blackout drunk. (“Alice King — a supervising criminalist for Santa Clara County — … estimated that the Doe and Turner’s blood alcohol content (BAC) levels at 1 a.m. would have been .242 to .249 and .171, respectively.”) While at the party, Miss Doe was seen dancing with, and kissing, Mr. Turner. She then left the party with Mr. Turner. Becky Doe trusted a drunken stranger to get her home safely.
This is not an excuse for what Mr. Turner did. He should have known that she was not capable of consent. However, for an adult to go to a party, get blackout drunk, and assume that she would be able to get home safely… this is extreme privilege. In the Victim Impact Statement Miss Doe denies any responsibility: “Campus drinking culture. That’s what we’re speaking out against? You think that’s what I’ve spent the past year fighting for? Not awareness about campus sexual assault, or rape, or learning to recognize consent. Campus drinking culture. Down with Jack Daniels. Down with Skyy Vodka. If you want talk to people about drinking go to an AA meeting. You realize, having a drinking problem is different than drinking and then forcefully trying to have sex with someone? Show men how to respect women, not how to drink less.” (Force was apparently not a factor in the January 18, 2015, incident. It is tough to say who started the fooling around.)
The Stanford Daily had another tidbit, that has gotten little publicity. “Lee discovered a mixture of at least two individuals’ DNA on the underwear’s waistband. The DNA present in larger amounts matched with Doe, while the DNA present in smaller amounts did not seem to match with Turner, assuming that it represented the DNA of only one person.”
The assault on Miss Doe was wrong, and should be punished. However, it should be noted: “Turner stated that that he took off the victim’s underwear, fingered her vagina and touched her breasts. He said that he never took his pants off, that his penis was never exposed and that he did not penetrate the alleged victim’s vagina with his penis.” While Becky Doe suffered a devastating attack, she was not at risk of pregnancy, or contracting an STI.
There is a double standard here. Many comments about the attack mention “my daughters.” People seem to be defending the damsel in distress…even when she got to the .249% percent distress on her own. Her Victim Impact Statement goes on, and on, and on about her psychological problems after the incident. If a man was attacked while passed out, and he were to issue a victim statement about his hurt fee fees, then he would be laughed out of the courtroom.
Men and Women get robbed and beaten, while intoxicated, all the time. It is commonsense that if you go to a alcohol use facility, and get drunk, then you are in danger of being a victim later. This is especially true if someone is driving while drunk. (If a person is in an accident after drinking in a bar, the bar is liable for damages. Maybe a similar law for sexual assault is in order.) If a person goes to a bar, and gets robbed on their way home, they are seen as contributing to their own victimhood. Should sexual assault, where apparently the woman was not taken by force, be different?
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

UCSB Alumna Chanel Miller Comes Forward As Emily Doe was the slow-news-day headline. The lady saw a payday coming out, and decided to publicize her book. The public reaction has been tepid. Perhaps people have been outraged out. This is a repost.
@chamblee54 “My first reaction to the impact statement was that the victim did not write it. At the very least, she had help.” There is nothing wrong with using a ghost writer. The story belongs to the person who is telling it. However, some supporters of Miss Miller were offended by the suggestion. @VioletOlivine “There are many folks who have read and interacted with her work far before her survivor statement was published. I don’t know if you’ll be able to take my word for it since you can’t take hers.” This presupposes that Chanel Miller is the she we speak of.
“Totally written by Michelle Dauber.” The discussion had gone on for a while. PG had never heard of Michelle Dauber. It seems as though she is a leader in the successful effort to recall Judge Aaron Persky. A bit of googling turns up a few tidbits about @mldauber.
“Dauber’s opponents, however, often speculate that the recall was an act of revenge because of her friendship with Emily Doe’s family. After Doe penned a … letter to Turner that quickly went viral, critics suggested Dauber had been the author. Dauber flatly rejected that accusation, and dismissed the notion that she’s out for personal revenge as “so ridiculous it doesn’t even deserve a response.”
“Stanford University law professor Michele Dauber is one of the leaders of the recall campaign. Dauber is a friend of the victim’s and was in the courtroom for Turner’s sentencing. She’s an outspoken on-campus activist who has helped push through more stringent sexual harassment and abuse reporting and investigation policies. Dauber also is an adept Democratic fundraiser who has organized a well-financed recall campaign with glossy mailers juxtaposing photos of Persky with President Trump and Turner’s booking mug shot.”
@onionringslut “chanel miller deserves to be @TIME person of the year. you can’t change my mind.” @mldauber “YES.” The twitter feed of Ms. Dauber has enthusiastically supported Chanel Miller. This would tend to confirm that Chanel Miller is, in fact, Emily Doe. Rape shield laws protect the exact identity of the victim, and a big payday awaits. This would seem to be an opportunity for a fake Emily Doe to step in. However, Michelle Dauber is acknowledged to be a friend of Emily Doe. Her support of the upcoming book would seem to confirm the authenticity of Ms. Miller’s claim.
Researching this post turned up a delightful tweet. Remember, this is a law professor at Stanford University. @mldauber “Hitler had lawyers. Loads of them. And everything that his government did had a busy beehive of lawyers working away on making sure it was all done legally. The same legal profession that blessed the Third Reich is blessing Trump now. Lawyers serve power not the people.”
Chamblee54 has written about Brock Turner before. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.