Epstein Files, Keeping Helen of Troy Hot, and Stolen Land

Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi discuss the outrages of the week, including Jeffrey Epstein, Billie Eilish, and DoorDash.

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Epstein Files, Keeping Helen of Troy Hot, and Stolen Land

The episode kicks off by unpacking this week's Jeffrey Epstein witch hunt and why certain moral panics catch fire so fast. The conversation then turns to the comeback of the "r" word, how DoorDash culture is reshaping everyday life, and why accusations of fascism get tossed around so casually. Robby and Christian also dive into the latest pop-culture outrage over diversity casting in the upcoming Odyssey film. Finally, the episode closes with Billie Eilish's "stolen land" speech at the Grammys and what it says about celebrity politics today.

00:00—The spirit of the Jeffrey Epstein witch hunt

28:08—The "r" word packs a certain punch.

33:45—DoorDash culture

45:14—Helen Andrews, fascism, and affirmative action

1:01:50—Helen of Troy outrage and diversity casting

1:13:05—Billie Eilish and stolen land

Comments

[Public Entelectual]

The die is cast on the Helen of Troy DEI casting, but the Odyssey screenwriters deserve a dart for forgetting the backstory- she and Theseus used to be shipmates.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Man. Even irrelevant comments on irrelevant topics.

[SCOTUS gave JeffSarc a big sad]

Hello RetardGPT.

[Public Entelectual]

Greek is Greek to Jesse.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Wow. You almost... nevermind. Irrelevant.

[Rick James]

"Modern races don't map on to antiquity"

Right, so in a 12th century game about Romania, why was everyone pissed that it wasn't filled with black people?

Why was everyone pissed that a black woman in a Nissan Altima didn't drive up to the village?

[Rick James]

Something something wokes in classical liberal clothing...

[Rick James]

I mean, *lol snort* Matt Damon isn't even like... greek!

[mad.casual]

You want a map? You want a *map*?! Here! Here's your fucking map!

[mad.casual]

SSDD - Imagine it the other way around. Imagine saying black people's races don't really map onto modern white cultural norms and that they should just accept a white woman depicting one of their oldest icons of supernaturally-ideal beauty. She just sprang forth from an egg anyway, so what difference does it make?

[Rick James]

In a way, Robby and Britches are technically right, but not in the way they think. Modern races don't map on to antiquity. Because the ancient world was way...wuhway more cloistered than it is today, black people were fucking black-- so black in fact, that they would consider most American blacks as white, just as blacks in modern Africa do when American black people move to Africa... Macedonians looked like Macedonians, Chinese looked like Chinese, Japanese like Japanese etc etc.

So no, modern races don't map onto antiquity, especially when Dad can hop on a redeye to the other side of the globe and knock up two or three women he met in a Starbucks over a weekend.

[Mickey Rat]

Modern ethnicities do not map onto antiquity, but that does not mean anything should go, especially with a character who is a personification of ancient Hellenic culture. Helen being stolen by the Trojans as the cause of the of a years long war.

[mad.casual]

In a way, Robby and Britches are technically right, but not in the way they think.

It's the same pettifogging, "as long as we induce a categorical error we approve of, it's all good" nihilist bullshit.

Yes, the difference between brown eggs and white eggs are inconsequential or the substitution between chicken eggs and duck eggs can be acceptable when it comes to baking. That doesn't mean you can substitute a goose or ostrich egg, egg-for-egg, in your favorite cookie recipe and expect to get a good result and you'd have to be a retard to think you could.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

No map there. Ran off the 404 edge.

[Rick James]

Worked for me.

[GOD OF PENGUIN ISLAND]

Yep

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Minor mistake: 400, not 404.

Looks like there’s a problem with this site

https://images.grandpalaisrmn.fr/thumb.php/00510005.jpg?eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJwaG90b3JtbiBXRyBJbWciLCJpYXQiOjE3NzA0MjU3MDAsImp0aSI6IjZjYThiN2U3MzhhOSIsIm5iZiI6MTc3MDQyNTcwMCwiZXhwIjoxNzcwNDI5NjAwLCJwYXJhbSI6eyJDQSI6ZmFsc2UsIkNIIjoiIiwiQ1giOjEsIkNZIjoxLCJMSSI6MiwiTE4iOiJlbmdfdXNhIiwiTSI6IjAwNTEwMDA1IiwiTVQiOjEsIlMiOjIsIlNDIjo0LCJTTSI6MSwiU1QiOnRydWUsIldTIjoxLCJSIjo3MDAsIk9TIjoiODBkNTJmNDRjZmE3Y2EyZGFmYzViMDI3ZjFjNDFkOTcifX0.bsydb44I3XDaSiDdwBUVnDsdi86D6-tAeIEUWLOtkwc sent back an error.

Error code: 400 Bad Request

Check to make sure you’ve typed the website address correctly.

[GOD OF PENGUIN ISLAND]

Interestingly, works on my laptop but not my cell.

[mad.casual]

There are several different examples in several different museums:
They're "janiform" vases from around the 5th century BC. They depict a very distinctly "white" woman on one side and a very distinctly "not white" woman or person on the other.
Janiform aryballos at the Louvre -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryballos#/media/File:Janiform_aryballos_Louvre_CA987.jpg

Janiform karantharos -
https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collections/objects/20038?termid=2036550

Hilariously, the one at the Princeton museum contains the description:
Vases of the type shown here are frequently described in modern racial terms as “Black” and “white,” but these concepts were absent in antiquity. Ancient Greeks referred to people who today are racialized as Black as Aithiopes (a compound of the words for “I blaze” and “face”), and Aithiopia was a generic name for the region of Africa south of Egypt. This vase, then, is best understood as a representation of a young Aithiops man and perhaps an Athenian woman.

So they were, ***according to the Greeks***, "blazed" or "burnt faced" and specifically hailed from Sub-Saharan Africa, but that doesn't map on to modern definitions of race. Sure.

If anything, Greek Scholarship doesn't map well onto modern retardation and they have to bullshit their way to consistency.

[Incunabulum]

>The episode kicks off by unpacking this week's Jeffrey Epstein witch hunt and why certain moral panics catch fire so fast.

Its interesting that, until it became apparent that there wasn't anything damaging about Trump, it wasn't a witch hunt - now it is.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

No kidding.

[GOD OF PENGUIN ISLAND]

Predictably so.

[JFree]

The Epstein files may have been initially gathered for a legal case related to child sex crimes. But Epstein is dead. Whatever crimes he - or anyone still alive - committed are probably beyond a statute of limitations. He pled down to crimes that were irrelevant enough to ensure there would be no further investigation - and there is no interest in WHY that happened. The FBI has overtly said - Nothing to see here. Or in the remaining 3 million files. Move along now

IDK why you think this 'change' in calling it a witch hunt has something to do with Trump other than the usual DeRp nonsense where everyone only wants partisan DeRp shit.

The revealing info about these Epstein files is the apparent cabal of amoral power elites who are totally ok with a pedophile in their midst - or a blackmailer - or a lot of other things. The evidence of true oligarchy - power elites using their wealth/connections for their own personal ends. Which may not be illegal but damn well should be made transparent. Calling that a witch hunt is a way of covering up any further info now about THAT now that the FBI has said Nothing more to see. Move along now.

But hey go ahead and excuse that as just DeRp shit like all the other DeRps who plague the US now..

[Social Justice is neither]

Look, the retarded leftists of Reason are back at defending Leftist erasure of Western Civilization. You know it's a lame excuse to erase Europeans from their own history and wouldn't survive a swap so fuck off.

Back to dismissing Epstein now that your allies got caught with their pants down and cannot lie about Trump with it more, boo fucking hoo.

[Rick James]

It's worse than that. If you sidestep the (183% valid) criticism of woke culture and how Hollywood has created this bed they've shat in, it's what makes modern writing and casting so abysmally retarded.

Helen of Troy aside, when you make a medieval fantasy world (yes, with Dragons, Orcs, goblins etc) you need to give viewers a sense of place in your worldbuilding that creates believability. If your hero travels from one end of the Fantasy World to the other, when every town and backwater village looks like downtown L.A., the viewer or the reader has no sense of changing culture that they can tie to place and location.

The further out you get from central trading and port cities, the more homogenous it needs to look. Sure, as you get to your bustling, seaside trading hub, then it can look like downtown L.A., but even then, all the ethnically diverse people you see need to be from some other ethnically homogenous place.

Treat your viewers like grownups and give them a sense of an ancient world where traveling great distances takes weeks, months or even years and is fraught with life-threatening dangers. I don't want to see a Starbucks, Peet's Coffee and a Chiles in every village the hero travels through.

[mad.casual]

Fun fact: Mermaids appear in African folklore more than 300 yrs. before Hans Christian Andersen wrote "The Little Mermaid". Of course, their appearance *doesn't* predate them in European folklore and *does* coincide with European sailors landing on and exploring the African subcontinent. Long story short, I wouldn't hold my breath for a "Mammy Water" movie from Disney anytime soon.

[Social Justice is neither]

It's that downtown LA/Central London vibe that set the tone and noped me out of WoT before it even had a chance to virtue signal about the Dragon Reborn. Generationally isolated village as global ethnic melting pot just nuked any interest in their telling of the story.

[damikesc]

I loved the complaints of some that The Witcher 3 game did not contain enough diversity. A game set in Central/Western Europe around the 13th Century lacked enough black folks for some.

[SRG2]

If you had to cast Helen of Troy, which actresses would you choose to be on your short list?

Some suggestions here: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls068140658/

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Nobody trust your links shrike.

[Rick James]

Gabourey Sidibe. Remember, in modern Hollywood, it's always about Subverting Audience Expectations and besides (listens to podcast) modern races don't map on to antiquity...

[GOD OF PENGUIN ISLAND]

Ha!

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Actress number 21 really shit the bed

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Helen of troy, the face that launched a thousand cryps.

[mad.casual]

I'm all for modern, urban retelling of Helen of Troy set in downtown LA or New York. A Muslim/British Romeo and Juliet set in modern London? Sure. I can't guarantee it will be a hit and you should probably steer clear of "Wherefor art thou?" and "A rose by any other name..." in modern, English theater, but a relatively dedicated or artistic degree of reinterpretation is not unusual.

Stop making Denzel Washington a Roman Emperor or Jodie Turner-Smith play Anna Boleyin and trying to pretend like I'm the racist who doesn't understand history. You wouldn't just assume black people were being racists if if MLK Jr. or Crispus Attucks or Alexandre Dumas were portrayed by Jessie Plemons. Especially because you use some/all of these in arguments about how people who don't recognize the irony or the racial swapping are racist. Rednecks have had offense-as-art down pat for over 200 yrs. and you hate them for it.

[Fu Manchu]

What's the "r" word? "Rigger"? Don't be retarded and just say it.

[minus the clever name]

College teacher of 10 years here

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-survey-finds-just-1-in-3-americans-would-pass-citizenship-test-300723440.html