October 14, 1977, Anita Bryant is pied for her antigay bigotry at a press conference in Des Moines, IA.
It was 40 years ago today…
Never gets old.
40 years on and it still is gratifying
Anita’s still alive and kicking and being anti-gay. Thom Higgins, who threw the pie when he was 27 – and was poetically from Beaver Dam – passed away 17 years later at 44. Info on his life is here. The pie throwing was a big deal. In an age before the internet let gays feel connected, and long before ACT UP, the pie showed small pockets of gays that we could fight back.
it showed that gays were human beings, who might be in the room with you, that you had been accepting as being equals and treating as people. you didnt suspect them as bieng gay, why should you treat them different after? do they become less human after finding out?
i mean, its almost like you just found out they have an oppinion on your bullshit
She was “pied” on TV. All across the country, people got to see proof that the LGBT community weren’t going to just sit there and take it. People who thought they had no choice but to stay silent saw a horrible woman get humiliated on live TV.
Everybody talks about Anastasia, which is a shame, because it’s a far less interesting example of Russian fake heir drama than that whole business with the False Dmitries.
Okay, so Ivan the Terrible’s youngest son,
Dmitry, was assassinated in 1591 at the age of 8. Fast-forward nine years, and there’s a guy going about Eastern Europe claiming that he is Dmitry, having secretly escaped the assassination attempt and lived in hiding under a false identity ever since. This sort of business isn’t too unusual, but this guy actually pulls it off, managing to gain the Russian throne and rule for nearly eleven months before being dragged from the palace and publicly executed in early 1606. He’d subsequently go down in history as False Dmitry I.
Here’s where it gets interesting. In mid 1607, a second impostor declares himself. Bizarrely, this one doesn’t dispute the first impostor’s legitimacy; instead, he claims to be the same guy, having miraculously survived his apparent execution the year before. He somehow wins the political support of False Dmitry I’s widow, and with her vouching for his identity, he gains the allegiance of the Cossacks, rallies an army over 100 000 strong, and tries to “take back” the throne. Though his march on Moscow ultimately failed, he successfully conquered most of Southeastern Russia, which he would rule until his untimely death in December of 1610, when he was beheaded in a drunken altercation with a Tartar prince. The history books know him as False Dmitry II.
Now jump ahead three months to March of 1611, when a third fucking impostor pops up. Dude apparently just magically appeared from behind a waterfall in goddamn Ivangorod and declared himself Tsar. Following the lead of False Dmitry II, he doesn’t dispute either of the two previous impostors, instead claiming some sort of spiritual reincarnation and/or magical resurrection – it’s not entirely clear which – to establish himself as the same guy. He must have talked a good game, because he managed to win the support of the same fucking Cossacks who supported False Dmitry II’s claim. Unfortunately, he was a far less able commander, being forced to flee his stronghold only a year later, whereupon he was spirited away to Moscow and secretly executed. Though he never managed to actually rule anything, historians decided to stick to the theme and dubbed him False Dmitry III.
At this point the historical record becomes confused, with some sources asserting there was a fourth False Dmitry, though others insist that the third False Dmitry was simply counted twice due to poor record-keeping. Still, whether we’re talking about three False Dmitries or four, imagine the whole mess from the Tsar’s perspective. Dude just wouldn’t stay dead!
ohh you missed one of my favorite bits.
False Dmitry I not only was executed, it was KNOWN he was fake. Powers that be used him until he was trouble, and THEN executed him.
Then quartered him.
Then cremated what was left.
Stuffed the ashes in a can.
And shot him out of a cannon back towards Poland, where he actually came from.
He pissed off a few people, yeah.
It was a very miraculous survival.
My favorite memory from Russian Studies class was when the professor got through introducing the idea of the first False Dmitri. He paused and said, “Now, the problem here is that he was the FIRST False Dmitri. Yeah. It’s all downhill from here.”
the lock jammed on the front door of my shitty prewar apartment building so i just spent twenty minutes forcing it open while my very drunk neighbor sat on the steps nodding at my efforts and going “this is fun. being locked out together. we should hang out more”
he’s like 6’2” and jacked at one point he was like “try a kick. try… kicking it” so i donkey kicked it as hard as i could and it did absolutely nothing but he was still like “wow. more torque…. than i expected. you’ve got a surprising, uh. torque to size ratio” and i think i’m putting it on my resume
are you shelley listing his occupation on a hotel’s registry as ‘philanthropos tropos, atheist, democrat’ type of person or byron saying he’s 400 years old in a hotel registry type of person
#I’m Keats listing his home as “everywhere”#fun fact#on the same registry Shelley listed destination: HELL
holy shit i just learned about the “proxy strike” tactic in france in which radicals blockade or occupy a workplace, allowing workers to strike without losing their wages. that’s brilliant, wow
How does that work, exactly?
if you and your coworkers say “we’re striking” and occupy your workplace, your boss won’t pay you, but if your friends and your coworkers’ friends occupy it for you, you say “sorry boss shit’s occupied” and you still get paid because you’re not the ones striking
the 5,528 people who have reblogged this post as of right now could probably paralyze a decent chunk of a city’s economy using this tactic lmao
I'd Much Rather Have a Dragon 