Tuesday, May 22, 2018

So Woke They Need an Ambien or, Carson Kressley is NOT the Enemy


Keep it up, folks. A "Sophie's Choice" joke isn't about the Holocaust. It's a(n increasingly obscure) reference to having to make an impossible choice between two things you love. If my fellow "woke" citizens are seriously going to hang their hats on something like this, you had better prepare yourself for four more years of Crazy Donald -- because if *I'm* completely turned off by such nonsense, imagine how Middle America feels about it. Next you're gonna tell me that taking a "Silkwood shower" is poking fun at OSHA regulations. Stop twisting yourself into a pretzel to be outraged when there already are MORE THAN ENOUGH real reasons to be. This isn't about political correctness -- a term favored by horrible people who are upset they can't use the n-word with impunity anymore. This is about humor, context and intelligence. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

amen! preach it, kenneth!

DK said...

The first "Sophie's choice" reference that I could find not about the movie or book was a Philadelphia paper in 1985, two years after the movie. It was about a woman who was forced to choose between her two pets if she wanted to stay in her housing.
For the first one not behind a wall, there is an LA Times article from 1986 "A Living Memorial to Vietnam Vets Foundation Channels Benefits From Agent Orange Settlement" which uses the title to describe resource allotment in healthcare.
The first viral social media dragging I could find of someone over using the term "Sophie's choice" was Mindy Kaling for using it to describe movie snacks in 2015. There are numerous uses of the reference in the early 2010s enough that Slate has a page about what it is with some dead links to government usage of it. There are also enough website hits as to whether "Sophie's choice" as a phrase should even be allowed in the lexicon because of its source material. Elie Wiesel even has a NYT article from 1983 that appears to lambast the then-trend of World War II movies decentralizing Jews as victims of the Holocaust, as was done in "Sophie's Choice."

I feel like this is rambling, but I just was curious about the history and wanted to share since I looked for it after seeing the first entry you put up earlier.

jaragon said...

Well said Mr Walsh