in Mexico a restaurant called Azcatl hit the news because they forbid tipping 

The speaker states that tipping "practice is most prevalent, historically, in capitalist countries", yet doesn't note that two countries (or country-level entities) which frequently top the list of "most capitalist" frown on tipping as a practice: Singapore and Hong Kong. Similarly, New Zealand and Australia also generally do not have a rote tipping culture, nor do Taiwan, Malaysia, SKorea, Japan, Macao...

Debbie's latest review is of a tattoo she got of her shitty little dog dressed up as Yoda. Debbie appears to be a piece of shit who unironically has something that says "Live Love Laugh" in her possession. https://www.yelp.com/biz/paw-tattoo-san-mateo?hrid=pCXHOgLvwwsq1wWoECdCkA

Citaitons Needed Marathon I need to do

QAnon supporters, GOP operatives and people riled up by masks and vaccines. We explore the different factors behind the invasion of school board meetings, which have seen an increase of Americans yelling for 3-5 minutes about a variety of right wing grievances and conspiracy theories. Plus Jake brings us a very spooky story about using an inkjet printer: "Enemy of the Board".

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Episode music by Nick Sena (http://nicksenamusic.com), Doom Chakra Tapes (http://doomchakratapes.bandcamp.com)

Episode 162: The Swarming of School Board Meetings

We discuss the 'Bad' Pixar films which include THE GOOD DINOSAUR, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY and CARS 3.

Join the Patreon now for an exclusive episode every week, access to our entire Patreon Episode back catalogue, your name read out on the next episode, and the friendly Discord chat: patreon.com/theimportantcinemaclub

Subscribe, Review and Rate Us on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-…ub/id1067435576
Follow the Podcast: twitter.com/ImprtCinemaClub
Follow Will: twitter.com/WillSloanESQ
Follow Justin: twitter.com/DeclouxJ

Check out Justin's other podcasts, THE BAY STREET VIDEO PODCAST (@thebaystreetvideopodcast) and NO SUCH THING AS A BAD MOVIE (@nosuchthingasabadmovie), as well as Will's other podcast MICHAEL AND US (@michael-and-us)

#318 - The Bad Pixar

Late release! Jake and the stalker. Plus: Luisa interrupts, they talk mad shit, something about decompartmentalization ... Classic-style WYM! Enjoy!

You mad? Have questions, comments, suggestions? Just want to keep us from quitting? Sign up to our Patreon at patreon.com/whyyoumad :)

The One Where Jake Gets Attacked Again

We're joined again by political satirist Tom Walker to discuss: A chemical spill on a bullet train, a wine catastrophe at a dinner party, and one man's penis. Plus: A little bit of Headline News.
***
Find Tom at https://www.tomwalkerisgood.com/

EPISODE 317: The Opposite Of Phimosis (with Tom Walker)

Bonus Episodes

It's that special time of year where you gather around the fire with your loved ones, cozy in with some hot cocoa, and watch your favorite Christmas movie. And while a Chinese move full of propaganda about the time they beat back the US Army at Lake Changjin (The Chosin Resevoir for you America heads) isn't really a Christmas movie, the battle took place about the same time so we're gonna count it.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cheer when two tanks go head to head and one shoots the other's shell out of the air

Follow KD here - https://twitter.com/War_Takes  

Check out the Patreon for more episodes here - https://www.patreon.com/Hellofawaytodie

The Battle at Lake Changjin (Feat: KD from War_Takes)

Charles, Alex, and Branson perform a seance to speak with the spirits of dead musicians to find out where they got their ideas. Fortune Kit on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fortunekit

190 - The Seance (ft. Alex Branson)

This year we draft college frat houses. With Branson, Andrew, Charles, Tom, Joel, and Nick. Full episode on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/98349005

E2 #56 - The 3rd Annual E1 All-Star Fantasy Fantasy Draft [Patreon Preview]

In this News Brief, we breakdown the White House's latest attempt to arm and fund Israeli war crimes while looking like helpless. bumbling humanitarians.

News Brief: Axios, NYT Help White House Obscure Their Role in Rafah Invasion

This week, Jake and Liv break down the rap beef that took the world by storm this past month.  And of course, because it’s 2024 and the universe has decided to spare none of the QAA hosts, the lyrics contained within the multiple diss tracks became the source of endless amounts of conspiracy theories and baking - with one particular poster claiming to be a “secret insider” set to expose the crimes of the elite.  Sound familiar?  Of course it does!  We will never be free of this, and our souls cry out into the void. 

For those who haven’t been following, Jake will catch everyone up to speed on why the beef began in the first place, as well as the accusations contained in each rapper’s lyrics.   Then we will descend into hell where Liv will unpack the countless theories circulating in online forums, and the culmination of these theories resulting in real world violence.  


Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down, Perverts and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAA


Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe & Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)

www.qaapodcast.com

QAA was formerly known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Kendrick + Drake = Bake (E279)

“Obama lauds small business owners in his State of the Union,” announced The Washington Post. “I have always said that there is nothing more optimistic – perhaps maybe getting married – than starting a small business,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells us. “John Kerry would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses,” insisted a reelection ad for George W. Bush.

Everywhere we turn we are centering the needs of and reminded of the glowing status of the “small business.” They are the bipartisan holiest of holies in our economy – the scrappy little guy that also props up the moral pillars of capitalism – evidence that with a little elbow grease and knowhow anyone can build a business in their image. Small businesses are one of two major vehicles for COVID-19 relief – a wholly uncontroversial good that both parties, all ideologies, everyone!, can agree are worth protecting and prioritizing. 

But what do pundits and politicians mean exactly when they say “small business”? How does our romantic vision of “small business” match up with reality, and how is their plight used as a messaging vanguard to strip away environmental and labor regulations, tort protections, taxes and a host of safeguards against corporate greed?

The rhetoric forces the evocation of a wholesome image of a Mom-and-Pop candy store in Appleton, Wisconsin, in order to push for laws that will ultimately benefit hedge funds, Dupont and Koch Industries, and a murderers row of polluters and worker abusers.

Our guests are Public Citizen's Lisa Gilbert and Street Fight Radio's Bryan Quinby.

Episode 111: How “Small Business” Rhetoric Is Used to Protect Corporate America

The United States and its close allies Saudi Arabia and Israel have been bombing and occupying large sections of the so-called “Muslim world” for decades – drastically ramping up after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly with no end in sight. The U.S., like all empires, cannot operate a large, complex system premised on violence, meddling and subjugation without a moral pretext. This moral pretext, even before 9/11, was primarily about fighting a war on so-called “Terrorism” or “Islamic extremism” while allegedly promoting “stability,” “freedom” and “democracy.”

Along with American news media’s constant fear-mongering over scary Muslims lurking in the shadows, a major pillar propping up this moral pretext is pop culture – namely the cultural products coming out of Hollywood. Our decades-long "War on Terror" would no doubt be much more difficult to sustain without a constant reminder from TV and film that, despite the fact that the average American is more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a terrorist attack, the threat of Islamic terrorism remains ever-present and existential, marked by an inevitable “clash of civilizations” devoid of context or any notion that the U.S. is a primary driver of violence across the globe.

Over the course of three episodes, we'll be taking a look at how Hollywood’s television and studio film output helps prop up America’s military aggression in the Middle East, engages in both casual and explicit racism, strips conflicts of any historical or imperial context pushes the idea the only Good Muslim is a snitch or CIA agent, and generally leaves its audience angry and ill-informed. 

In this episode, we review Hollywood’s long history of anti-Muslim racism in both classic and campy action/adventure films and TV and how it both primed us for – and sustains – the never-ending and self-perpetuating "War on Terror."

Episode 113: Hollywood & Anti-Muslim Racism (Part 1) - Action and Adventure Schlock

Our cultural context for understanding what we see on the news and hear in our politics, is often informed by the films and TV shows we’ve grown up watching. Pop culture is powerful and persuasive, and — for a century now — racist, Orientalist and cartoonish portrayals of Arabs and Muslims have littered our screens, big and small. This is the second episode in our three-part Citations Needed series on anti-Muslim racism in Hollywood. On Part I, we discussed big budget action and adventure films like Delta Force, American Sniper and True Lies, where Muslims get blown away at every turn.

But not every movie and TV show is quite so overt in its vilification of the designated enemy. Since the release of these movies, the state curated narrative in film has diversified, broadening to include savvier Oscar-bait productions in which anti-Muslim racism is dressed up in elaborate plot structures and supposedly nuance "debates".

Films like Argo, Syriana, and Zero Dark Thirty are lauded for their ostensible complexity, subtlety, and nuance, such as their willingness to suggest that government agencies like the CIA are bloated and bureaucratic. Instead of scenes with a tough action hero bodyslamming or mowing down teeming hordes of Muslim terrorists, these films are part of a smarter genre of jingoistic action film — the prestige thriller — featuring flawed protagonists, some meta comedy, and women CIA agents excelling in a historically male-dominated field of coups and torture. 

But ultimately, they project the same tired nationalism and ideology reinforcement just in a sleeker, more modern form. On this episode, we’ll examine how anti-Muslim and anti-Arab propaganda is disseminated through the contemporary prestige thriller genre.

We're joined by historian, artist and author Maytha Alhassen.

Episode 114: Anti-Muslim Racism in Hollywood (Part II) - Oscar-Bait Imperialism

For over a hundred years, the American film industry has been promoting and glorifying U.S. foreign policy, initially working with the military and Department of Defense, and eventually, the CIA as well. From its origins as a producer of wartime propaganda like 1911’s The Military Air-Scout to its contemporary role as purveyor of high-tech action epics like Iron Man, Hollywood and the American war machine reinforce each other — myth and politics intertwine.

In the process, the entertainment industry has reaped handsome rewards. Producers, directors, and other top brass in the entertainment industry are lavished with military equipment for filming, personal tours of government headquarters, and inside information — or at least what government officials want filmmakers to believe is inside information — all under the guise of lending “authenticity” and “realism” to film and, to an extent, television shows as well.

But what are the costs of this so-called “authenticity?” How do the U.S. military and intelligence agencies use benign-sounding partnerships like “on-set consulting” and “equipment loaning” arrangements to shape and censor narratives so they make American Empire look, at worst bumbling and good natured, and, at best, heroic and pure hearted?

In Parts I and II of this three-part series on Hollywood and anti-Muslim racism, we analyzed over half a dozen films and TV shows, illustrating how state-driven narratives of U.S. nationalism and vilification of an official enemies animate Hollywood’s cultural products, namely those targeting Arabs and Iranians. On this episode, we’ll explore the intersection of U.S. military and intelligence agencies with Hollywood, taking a closer look at how the military state helps shape films and television showing that pro-U.S. messaging used to smear Muslims doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but is often subsidized by the very forces dropping bombs on them.

Our guest is Professor Matthew Alford, co-author of National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood.

Ep 115: Hollywood & Anti-Muslim Racism Part III - How the Pentagon & CIA Sponsor American Mythmaking

Waiting tables. Bartending. Hospitality, food delivery, beauty salons, rideshare driving. The service industry, as anyone who has worked in it knows all too well, is notorious for relying on tipping to undercut employee wages and deputize individual customers to determine how much money a worker should be able to take home. Amid increasing recognition of these injustices, a number of campaigns and new laws surfaced, pre-pandemic, to abolish or meaningfully reduce the practice of tipping.

But despite the best efforts of these campaigns, tipping remains the industry - and American society - standard. Indeed, the perverse logic of tipping has broadened into an ever-present 'snitch economy' - an ecosystem of tactics like mystery shoppers and Uber and Yelp rating systems designed to police the behavior of workers while outsourcing the costs of said supervision to customers and other workers. 

In the process, our snitch economy pits those being surveilled against those doing the watching, and the judging. Through a ubiquitous public-facing network of rating and reviewing other people’s labor - and often the behavioral disposition they exhibit while working - people with otherwise very little power are elevated to temporary positions of authority over others, fostering a culture of surveillance rather than one of solidarity. The snitch economy serves the dual purpose of not only giving working people a false sense of power when they’re the ones being served, but also reducing millions of human interactions to opportunities for not only snap judgments, but subjective rewards and retribution.

In this episode, we detail how businesses in the service industry, bolstered by friendly media, use tactics like tipping, mystery shoppers, and ubiquitous ratings systems in order to turn us all into petty, mean, busybodies carrying out the agenda of capital with nothing to show for it but a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction. 

Our guest is writer, editor and agitator Vicky Osterweil.

Ep. 118 - The Snitch Economy: How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other

By now, it's largely taken for granted that country music is a racialized signifier, interchangeable with right-wing politics. And it’s not such an unreasonable generalization: the political currents of twanged and drawled patriotic paeans like Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)," and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America" leave little to the imagination.

But how, exactly, did this come to be? After all, country music, a descendant of the blues, folk, Tejano, and other genres, with connections to labor organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World and social-justice movements, has historically attracted musicians spanning the political spectrum, and didn’t necessarily emerge from such a staunchly right-wing political tradition.

Rather, popular conceptions of country music have long been deliberately shaped by a series of broader ideological projects. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, conservative politicians and other right-wing forces have exploited the genre to promote illiberalism, racism, revanchist politics, and runaway anti-intellectualism where not giving a shit about the world beyond one’s own cold beer, pickup truck, old lady is not only acceptable, but actively encouraged and flaunted. 

On this episode, we examine how the genre of country music has been wielded as a tool of reactionary politicking in the US, from the machinations of Henry Ford in the 1920s to the Nixon administration’s Southern Strategy in the 1960s and ‘70s to the heady Shock and Y’all days of the Bush years, and how a once working-class tradition became a cultural cul de sac of worn-out tropes and middle-class, white grievance politics.  

Our guest is writer, editor and artist Alexander Billet.

Episode 119: How the Right Shaped Pop Country Music

We do a full bodyscan on the Kraken, creature of lore and set of legal ventures by pro-QAnon lawyer Sidney Powell (and her lesser known associate, Rudy Giuliani). Our guest is attorney Allie Mezei who explains how Trump's various attempts to overthrow election results will probably pan out in the courts. Just kidding, this episode is all about Travis View getting blocked by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓
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QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com

Episode music by Nick Sena (http://nicksenamusic.com) and Doom Chakra Tapes (http://doomchakratapes.bandcamp.com)

Episode 119: What's Kraken? feat Allie Mezei

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Ep. 118 - The Snitch Economy: How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other

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