Dealing with Elon Scrooge

It’s 10:09pm as I sit to write this. HATM just finished about 40 minutes ago. Typically after the movie ends I try to thank as many people as possible for joining in, tease next week’s film, and then start figuring out how to wind down for the week ahead. Tonight’s movie, Scrooged, clocked in at a breezy 97 minutes. You can imagine how this might get difficult on movies that last two hours or more.

I still haven’t quite figured out my writing routine on this substack. Ideally I’d wrap HATM Sunday night, sit down and decompress by thinking back on the week that was. Sometimes I find myself rising early to write before you, dear reader, wake for the week. It’s an imperfect system that I’ll continue to experiment with.

I don’t want to talk about him. I really don’t. I really would like to create an Elon-free space here. But god damn if that son of a bitch didn’t tweet something that stuck in my craw today. I know what you’re thinking—Jason you have hands, not craws—or at least that’s what I think when I hear the expression. But also, why now? Hasn’t this guy pissed you off enough already? What was it in today’s remarks that set you off?

Today Elon Musk tweeted as follows:

Elon Musk @elonmusk

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

What an asshole. Dude took at crack at people who post their gender pronouns—Heaven forbid we should simply address people as they wish to be addressed—and insinuated that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be arrested and treated as a criminal. But in doing so he took a swing at every single person who suffered as a result of the pandemic over the past three years. Me. You. All of us.

I cannot understand why a person wielding such immense power and potential does not apply themselves to doing good. I cannot fathom it. Is this the best a person can do? Twitter was never perfect, but at its best it could deliver information at umimagined speeds and be a space where friendships and communities could be formed. Now hate speech is rampant.

I’ve said before that I planned to stay on twitter, believing it to be important to be where the fight actually is. I reasoned that if I chose not to do business with people I differed with or found to be repugnant then I might not do business with many people at all. At least my prescence (and yours too) might serve to push back against people like him.

This may have been an error.

I am angry. Angrier over today’s tweet than most anything I have been in a long, long while. I wrestled with telling the man to go jump off a bridge (ok it was far more graphic but you get the idea) and how that might imperil HATM, and frankly, my career. I hate making that compromise. I doesn’t feel true to what I hold dear.

So I’m exploring options. I already had a mastodon account and I signed up for Post today. I won’t be leaving soon. But I believe that it might just happen after all. I’ll keep you posted.

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The Podcast

In happier news, we launched the Historians At The Movies Podcast this week with two episodes and I’ve just been delighted and flattered by your enthusiasm. We’ve got a new episode dropping this Wednesday—Historian Brett Rushforth is dropping in to talk about his favorite film: Up In The Air. Now, Brett doesn’t focus on air travel or the 21st century in his work. He is a scholar of New France in the 17th and 18th centuries. He wrote a kickass book about Indigenous slavery. But my jaw was on the floor when I got to sit with him for an hour and a half and listen to how his mind works. I think you’re gonna dig it. So put that on your radar.

This week we are taping three new episodes, centered around Thelma & Louise, Die Hard, and an old Humphrey Bogart film called Deadline USA. I’m excited for each.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the pod yet, give it a search on Spotify or iTunes, I have links below. Let me know what you think!

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What I’m Reading

I’m actually reading two books at once right now, which is something I hate doing. You’d think all those years of graduate school would’ve conditioned me for more, but that’s how my brain operates. In any case, I’m reading Jeremy Zallen’s American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light and I just picked up Rick McIntyre’s The Rise of Wolf 8: Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone's Underdog. Dan Flores spoke beautifully of McIntyre’s work with wolves in his recent Wild New World and I decided I needed to try it. Now. Link below (no pay or ads here, just think these things are cool).

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HATM this week

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I have a guilty confession. I LOVE Hallmark Channel-style Christmas movies. We’ve been doing them on HATM once each December and I get a kick out of them. So without further ado, join in on Amazon Prime at 8pm eastern this coming Sunday, December 18 for Christmas on the Bayou.

Alright! That makes for an evening. Thanks for reading and please do share. Take care of yourselves this week and look out for others. It’s a messy time and people are hurting. Be a do-gooder. Maybe a really good do-gooder (do-goodest?). You know what I mean. See ya soon.