I feel like the argument of this article is kind of undercut by the fact that the key examples are Turtledove's books- widely regarded as badly written and that neglect the parts of the idea that are morally engaging in favor of "what if?" military hypotheticals and CSA- an indie movie with total box office under 1…

But would we be ready for some football?

I mean, Benioff and Weiss aren't idiots. They are reasonably likely to bungle this story, but it's not like they aren't going to read a history book or two and identify the really obvious divergence points.

It would admittedly be pretty funny in its own horrifying way if slavery was a background detail, and Confederate was all about how the scars of the cotton tariff debate are still ripping the country apart.

A couple really poorly timed defeats for the Union on multiple fronts right around late October 1864, leading to a narrow win for McClellan Presidency? He immediately starts secret negotiations for the South to peace out?

Or just buy and re-air Underground, and pretend it was on HBO all along.

Well…this could go badly.

They fought to reinstate as much of slavery as they could. Even after the surrender of reconstruction, the official reinstitution of slavery was an absolute non-starter for the Northern majority. Too many men had died in a fight which had become identified with legal abolition.

Fair. I don't mean to suggest that Mr. Barker is a monster, or that I'm unwilling to work with him on important stuff.

His resume is on Linked In. He worked for Schwarzenegger and Giuliani.

I solve this problem by only eating pigs who feed their piglets off of the kids menu.

Huh. That actually explains a lot. The core failure of this article is Mr. Barker not understanding that his circumstances aren't because of merit, but the result of luck and privilege. And because of this, he assumes other people feeding their kids off the kids menu are morally inferior.

In moderation- olives and sardines does suggest the kid really fvckin' loves salt.

Yes, but in retrospect Disney acknowledges that poisoning Jim Henson for entertaining children without always giving them a cut was a miscalculation.

Ultimately, the reasoning seems to be: "He was hard to work with, and frankly we thought he was replaceable. He may be Kermit, but he's not Jim Henson"

Wait…how many of you are Steve Whitmire?

DERMIT IS ENTIRELY COMPASSIONATE!

Though it should be noted that Kermit, the harried, put-upon boss was a key part of what made The Muppet Show work.

It's a sad situation- The Muppets are this grand theatrical tradition imbued with the spirit of his mentors to Whitmire, and an IP package to be managed to Disney.

Lovely article. It really is striking how much our popular myths about "classical high art" shape how we think about modern work.