#the McCaskills

[blackgirlnerds]

You’ve Heard of AAVE, but Do You Know about Black American Sign Language?

Growing up Black meant watching how I spoke. My parents taught me that gaining respect meant speaking with proper grammar and pronunciation. In other words, I wasn’t allowed to use slang around adults. Yet as a child, I always noticed the intricacies and the differences in how Black people spoke when we came together. When I was older and introduced to African American Vernacular English (AAVE),…

[tyyppicookie]

"I'm in control, thank you, wife." "Tell that to your tattoo."

[womanwithahotdogstand]

• Kristie Mewis (AND KATRINA GORRY) to West Ham.

• Lorne Donaldson coaching the Red Stars.

• Savannah McCaskill to San Diego.

• Casey Krueger in serious talks with the Spirit.

• Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnett and Tierna Davidson in serious talks with Gotham.

THE LAST 48 HOURS HAVE BEEN E P I C.

[alotofpockets]

San Diego Wave Appreciation

Request a player | with @totaly-obsessed

[aquila1nz]

Queer Women on Shortland Street in 2024

We started 2024 on a fairly low ebb for queer women on Shortie. But Nicole and Maeve were still together, and happy.

And then Leanne returned for a visit, having broken up with Ros, again. The storyline began with her seeing the ghost of her dead grandaughter and ended with her death from an untreatable cancer, and Jennifer Ludlam made the most of every scene. Ros did come back for to say goodbye.

Meanwhile, we discovered that Phil - the female half of a couple of two young surgeons in an open relationship who joined the show at the start of the year - was not straight when she kissed Harper.

They embarked on a will they won't they affair that proved earth shattering all around. It was glorious!

Billy has started school. Bonus best guest casting for the year - Alison Bruce as Olivia, Harper's mum.

Gia returned from Chicago to take over the community clinic. She briefly dated a guy involved in something criminal, and was also getting phone calls she tried to duck from a girl she dated before she transitioned who hadn't known.

Nicole was thrown for a loop by Leanne's death, and so were her and Maeve's finances. She got sucked into an online grief group, continued to be nasty to everyone; especially to Cassie who hasn't always managed to stay drug free. Then Louisa, whose husband kidnapped Knox last year, kidnapped Nicole and then Maeve and Nicole escaped and confronted Lousia who ended up dead. There was a court case, Nicole was found not guilty of Louisa's murder but afterwards remembered her guilt and handed herself in to the police again. It seems that she will be undergoing psychiatric inpatient treatment for the forseeable.

Harper regretted her affair with Phil and did everything she could to reconcile with her husband. Drew tried to kill himself but Boyd and Vili found him in time. Harper and Drew finally did get back together, planning to move to New York for a job Harper was offered, but were in a motorcycle accident and Harper died in the final episode of the year. Phil was devastated, not having had any closure on her relationship with Harper.

(Zara - we never saw her, but Boyd came and went a few times during the year - he had apparently cheated on her and they broke up, but were tentatively trying again by the year's end.)

Tally for the year - 1 intersex child and 7 queer women (one for only one episode), two of whom died and a third who killed someone and ended up in a mental hospital, leaving three broken relationships. The old cliches can still catch us when we least expect it.

Sally and Ria, that was so sudden, you will be missed!

Shortland Street lost some funding this year, so will be three episodes a week when it returns on the 10th February, which may be relevant to two long term cast members leaving.

There will be some new characters starting, so place your bets on who isn't straight.

2023 2022 2021 2020

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

The party was buzzing, the confidence was surging and Kenneth Stewart was riding the Trump train. “He’s masculine,” explained Stewart, an African American man from Chicago. “He brings a lot of energy. He talks about things that we can understand. He talks about building. He talks about the auto industry. He talks about a lot of stuff that people in the Rust belt care about.” Stewart was a guest at Donald Trump’s election watch event in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night and celebrated his victory over Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris. The result said much about gender, race and the new media landscape. It also represented a populist backlash against America’s perceived elites. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, millions felt a distrust of authorities that ordered them to wear masks, close schools and go into lockdown. They felt frustrated by post-pandemic inflation that pushed up the prices of groceries and petrol. They felt they would never be able to buy a house, that the American dream was slipping away. They were looking for someone to blame – and for a champion who could fix it.

They believed they’d found him in Trump and, despite his two impeachments and 34 criminal convictions, returned him to power. He made gains among nearly every demographic group. In part, he was riding a wave of anti-incumbency fervour that has swept through major democracies, battering the left and the right in the aftershocks of the pandemic.

That will provide little comfort to Democrats, who raised a billion dollars yet lost the national popular vote. They have come to be seen as the party of the highly educated who earn more than $100,000 a year and live in big cities such as New York and Washington. They are perceived as out of tune with people who work with their hands and shower after work instead of before. Stewart said on Tuesday night: “The other side, they’re only talking about feelings. They’re talking about Trump’s bad. But come to me with tangibles. A lot of Black men just want tangibles. We just want jobs. We want to see what our fathers had. We want to see what our grandfathers had, especially in the Rust belt.”

America is a nation of cavernous inequality with few safety nets. The last populist convulsion came 15 years ago after the Great Recession. On the left, it spawned Occupy Wall Street, a response to economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of money in politics. On the right, it gave rise to the Tea Party, fuelled by rage against elites, distrust in government and racial hostility toward President Barack Obama. The Democratic and Republican parties each absorbed these movements into their political DNA. They manifested in the 2016 presidential election when the harmful effects of globalisation, trade and de-industrialisation took centre stage. Leftwing senator Bernie Sanders drew huge crowds in the Democratic primary but lost, while non-politician Trump drew huge crowds in the Republican primary and won.

The pandemic, and subsequent inflation, provided another trigger moment. Trump, a Manhattan billionaire, tapped into anti-establishment sentiment and bad economic vibes to style himself as an unlikely hero of the working class. He promised sweeping tariffs on foreign goods and the protection of manufacturing jobs inside the US. The pitch was infused with race-baiting, scapegoating and xenophobia: Trump claimed that undocumented immigrants were draining resources, causing crime and destroying communities. His demagoguery extended to an entirely fictitious claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet cats and dogs. The former president painted Democrats as an elite out of touch with the affordability and cost-of-living crises facing those further down the economic ladder. Harris proposed a federal ban on price-gouging but it was too little too late. She did not help her cause during their debate by citing investment bank Goldman Sachs’ support for her financial plans as a reason to vote for her.

Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator for Missouri, told MSNBC that Trump “knew our country better than we did”. She recalled: “I grew up in a party where we were for the underdog. We were for the little guy. We are now the elite. We are no longer seen as the party for the little guy. “He was seen as the party for the little guy. He was seen as the ultimate disrupter and yes, the edges were very rough but in everyone’s own minds they sanded them down to the point of acceptability and, as it turns out, there’s a lot of craving in America for fear and anger – driven by lies.” America’s political class divide has been growing for years. In the 2016 election, Trump won 2,584 counties nationwide while Hillary Clinton carried only 472. But Clinton’s counties accounted for nearly two-thirds of America’s economic output, the Brookings Institution thinktank found.

The split finds expression in the way people dress, the TV shows they watch and the ways they interact (or don’t). In 2016, Trump won 76% of counties that contained a Cracker Barrel, a restaurant offering southern homestyle cooking on interstate highways, and just 22% of counties with Whole Foods, an organic national supermarket chain. The Cook Report noted the 54% gap compared with a 19% difference in the 1992 election. On the eve of the 2024 election, Trump held a campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where some supporters wore miners’ helmets. Among the speakers was rightwing media personality Megyn Kelly, who told the crowd that Trump will look out for “our forgotten boys and our forgotten men, guys like you, guys like these guys who’ve got the calluses on their hands, who work for a living, the beards and the tats, maybe have a beer after work, and don’t want to be judged by people like Oprah and Beyoncé, who will never have to face the consequences of her disastrous economic policies. These guys will. He gets it. President Trump gets it. He will not look at our boys like they are second-class citizens.”

An exit poll on Tuesday showed Trump winning voters whose household incomes are between $30,000 and $100,000. His sense of grievance struck a chord with people who feel left behind and sneered at as “deplorables” or “garbage” by Democratic leaders, journalists and Hollywood celebrities. Joe Walsh, a former Republican representative and Tea Party activist who campaigned for Harris, said by phone: “The perception is that these people are elites. That’s what these folks have told me for the last five years. Many of them acknowledge Trump’s an asshole but they say: ‘Look, the Democrats are looking down on me.’ I heard that all the time.”

How did Don The Con win? He rode on backlash to elitism (even though Trump is an elitist himself).

[tomorrowusa]

« Today's Republican Party has embraced American weakness. »

— Former Rep. David Jolly of Florida, who has quit the GOP, commenting on Republican office holders obsequiously groveling to Donald Trump and not calling out his pro-Putin and anti-NATO diatribes. At MSNBC (see video below).

Make it stick to them like gum on a sidewalk...

"Republicans are the party of American weakness."

The hidden slogan of MAGA is AMERICA WORST.

[theanticool]

Lauren Price really boxing the crap out of Jessica McCaskill at the moment.

[hyperfixationsstation]

I think they would’ve d*ed if they couldn’t say Alex’s name at least once a minute.

haha acting like fangirls for real like “omg its alex Morgan” like damn be chill you’re at work

[lesafricainescharmantetfraises]

I always loved Jessica McCaskill style it has some brutality and softness at the same time , she always can show off well her African background, her fantastic Africa made curls

[user4737283959391918183774]

why do some acfc fans dislike mccaskill someone fill me in

[rig-a-rendal]

we watched HEAD and not only did he agree that peter is unreasonably beautiful he also said that if the movie had come out today it'd do numbers

[womanwithahotdogstand]

san diego now having two of the three most offside players in the league is sending me

The thing that makes me laugh about this whole thing is that Savannah McCaskill was scapegoated by ACFC fans all season for that team’s failures. Fans, OF THE TEAM SHE WAS PLAYING FOR, were literally flipping her off during and after games. Now she’s playing for the reigning NWSL Shield winners + LA’s biggest rival and Angel City doesn’t have a fucking midfield.

[lessirussolvr]

[aquila1nz]

Queer Women on Shortland Street in 2023

2023 started with Maeve battling it out for top dog in Ferndale Prison, as soon as she won she rang Rebekah, the leader of the evangelical cult Brightshine and asked her to get her out on bail. Meanwhile Brightshine was bankrolling the Shortland Street rebuild and Rebekah ended up in the CEO seat. She gave Maeve a no patient contact job, and as they spent more time together a romance built. Maeve was so relieved to have someone supporting her that she was prepared to overlook Rebekah's need to remain closeted, with only Nicole finding out about their relationship, but Rebekah's various lies slowly came to a head; when she had to go on the run she finally admitted to Maeve her part in Wilder's murder - Maeve tried to drown her but decided not to, and Rebekah was arrested. Goodbye Antonia Prebble.

Maeve returned chastened to Nicole's arms, and despite an STI scare they started fixing their marriage.

Gia took off to a job in Chicago and I guess is unlikely to return since her family has mostly also left the show.

Dawn also left for pastures greener, which is a pity because she was always a character who attracted gay shenanigans.

Six new surgery registrars were introduced, and one of them, Quinn, proved to have very good gaydar, admiring Harper and flirting with both Nicole and Maeve… Somehow Nicole acted liked they'd had a big romance instead of a weirdly inappropriate kiss when Quinn died in the winter cliffhanger. Pretty coulrophobic on the part of the show.

Leanne lost all her money financing son Eric's pyramid scheme, then won the lottery for the second time and announced she was off on a world tour - taking Rosalyn with her! Last we heard she and Rosalyn were living on a vineyard in the South Island - Pele went to stay with them for a while, and we saw Jennifer Ludlam on a video call briefly just before Christmas. Offscreen reunions are better than nothing!

Harper - still married to Drew. Billy - still a preschooler. Marley briefly had a storyline where he played with Drew's clippers and had to buzz cut his long hair, and then Billy had short hair just like their idol older brother a week or so later, I wonder if one or both actors wanted shorter hair in real life.

In the latter half of the year Cassie, Wilder's girlfriend, returned, no longer pregnant but with no memory of what had happened to the baby, and that mystery has been Maeve and Nicole's main storyline.

So an odd year, with decreasing numbers of queer characters, but at least Nicole and Maeve are still together, something that seemed unlikely this time last year. Somewhere in there they've become the show's longest running gay couple, passing Jay and Maia's threeish years.

Shortland Street returns on the 5th of February. Let's see what 2024 brings.

And let me know if I've missed anything, it's been a long year and I wasn't always paying attention!

2022 2021 2020