My problem with Paul- and bear in mind I've watched one season of the show, but I did finish it last night- is that far too often he pre-identifies a "problem" with technique during the prep process, and then takes a bite and then…. lo and behold he declares himself right! You can tell that this is a problem because…

I think the problem with this argument for me is that art- especially commercial art worked on by hundreds of people- isn't a thing locked in from the moment of inspiration. What Confederate will be has shifted based on the concerns expressed by others. The likelihood of Confederate being a shitty racist show is less…

Well, you could watch the shows that do center Asian people. Fresh off the Boat, Master of None, Quantico, Into the Badlands, Dr. Ken, Mindy Project.Fresh off the Boat and Master of None are even good.Asian and Asian-American under-representation is definitely a thing, and an important thing. But now that there are…

Presumably the point is that what has made those states shitty isn't something in the water, it's the corrosive social environment created by the dominance and exploitation of an unreconstructed white supremacist elite for 150 years.

?

Right. HBO's problem is that by forefronting the GoT guys, it made everyone thing "GoT but IF THE SOUTH HAD WON!"

Well, I only watched three episodes of Transparent, but they weren't particularly concerned with being funny, so….maybe?

"Glorify" it? Probably not.

Drama could be cultivated from people living in harmony with one another?

Well, because the creators and creative leads are white people known for running a show that has really questionable depictions of race, and a generally dubious record when dealing with sensitive real world issues.

No, it was "let's do something else, which Ack_Ack will hate, but will make moderate amounts of money"

I mean…all they needed to understand was "we're playing pretend".

I mean…The Federation may be an atheistic culture, but it's an atheistic culture in contact with cultures that are theistic. The concept of the divine would still be applicable to their life (also, you know, history). I'm sure it would be used much more than a word like, say, pharaoh, and the word pharaoh is in no…

"but it's not like they can just retire the character or change his voice"

I'm really excited about this. Hari Kondabolu's a smart and funny guy, and it's a really fascinating issue (to clarify- obviously Apu is racist, but HOW he is racist is fascinating). And it cuts deep to the bone for me as a white guy who grew up adoring The Simpsons, and adoring Apu specifically.

It depends how you ask the question. I hadn't checked for a few years- this is the first poll in a while that has an anti-torture plurality, though within the margin of error. Note that even in this case 71% of the right- the group that controls the American government- is OK with torture:

And that right there is the problem.

I mean…I get not liking the name personally (I don't either), but PUBG has been an insane commercial success, exploding from a scrum of roughly similar games.

But ZDT *doesn't* present what happened. It systematically twists reality to make the questions of torture ambiguous, rather than conveying the boring anti-torture message you would get from a straight factual retelling.

My irritation over ZDT is that in order to maintain that ambiguity, it twists the facts to be more favorable to torture than they actually were. A more honest version of the story WOULD beat you over the head with the fact that torture is evil and futile.