EVERYTHING IS WOKE & Other GOP Obsessions
Top Story: Everything is a WOKE problem
Question: Can absolutely everything be WOKE?
Lately, America’s Woke Watchers have been on high alert, skulking about, detecting WOKE everywhere and anywhere they go.
It must be exhausting.
The new, very bland Cracker Barrel Logo….WOKE!
Clifford, The Big Red Dog…WOKE!
A university where 2.8 percent of classes mention “race”… WOKE!
At Reporting Right, we know the cool, inspiring history of the term WOKE. YOU SHOULD TOO!
But, we've been thinking a lot about what WOKE really means to the vigilantes who live among us, ever tuned into signs that someone, somewhere may have had a thought about justice, injustice, or worse people (but not them) getting screwed.
Truth is …we don’t really know what these people mean by any of this.
And…we suspect that every time one of these hyper alert Woke detectives on your beat uses the term WOKE; you don’t always know what they mean either.
And sometimes…efforts to define WOKE can be very UNWOKE about WOKE.
We’re looking at you NYT conservative Ross Douthat.
But we digress..
Tips for covering WOKE
When you are working on a story about a person or group of people crying WOKE:
Ask them to define WOKE.
In other words: what the hell are they so upset about?
Ask them to define what the opposite of WOKE is. If a thing they’ve defined as WOKE is bad, what is the good thing they want?
Don’t use the term anti-WOKE. If WOKE doesn't mean anything anymore, anti-WOKE means even less. Instead, be specific.
Ask: What do you want? Why do you want it?
Don’t do this:
John Doe called the school board president “woke.”
Do this:
John Doe called the school board president “woke,” which he defines as TK. The school board president called Doe TK.
Antonym for “woke”
Asleep/Unaware: If "woke" means being alert and conscious of social issues, the direct opposite is being asleep to them, ignorant or uninterested in their existence and significance.
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Executive Editor Kyle Spencer
Our Board of Advisors
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability
David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy
Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations
Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
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