Unreasonable
Feeling overwhelmed by the relentless attack on American Democracy by the Religious Right? Welcome to Unreasonable: sane conversations for a country that's lost its friggin' mind. But Unreasonable is more than a podcast. It’s the start of a movement to reverse the inexorable rise of religious fanaticism taking over our government and our lives, on issues from public education, to women’s reproductive health, to the mainstreaming of loud-and-proud racism. Here we not only learn together what in the world's going on with our country, we develop an action plan to move America forward. It’s time for all of us who believe in the Separation of Church and State to unite — as the majority of Americans we are — in the name of democracy, common sense and kindness. Is that really so unreasonable?
Unreasonable
"The Risk of Left-Wing Political Cartooning" with Jesse Duquette
Early last week we recorded an interview with illustrator Jesse Duquette. Then we got the word over the weekend: Meta not only shut his account down, but permanently deleted its posts and eradicated his community of over 200,000+ followers. Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaminions decided Duquette’s incisive and hard-hitting cartoons were just too much for Instagram. (Meta is the company that started out simply as Facebook but now includes Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp as well as other properties.)
This is the same Mark Zuckerberg who in 2019 told students at Georgetown University that “Frederick Douglass once called free expression ‘the great moral renovator of society,’ and repeating Douglass’ words, ‘slavery cannot tolerate free speech’.”
Apparently Duquette’s style of cartooning was intolerable.
This episode is a twofer: Part One is a deep-dive into the life and times of an artist and political commentator at work. Part Two explores the aftermath, when the AI of the world’s most powerful social media company, proves incapable of discerning satire, and banishes a popular presence based on its own misunderstanding of what it thinks it knows.
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