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  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    7 hours ago

    Why would anyone think he was related to Harvey Weinstein? That’s not how first names work. My father has a friend called George but no one thinks he’s related to the former president.

  • Hellfire103@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    The November 2, 2024 episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL) ran a spoof campaign advertisement in which Harvey Epstein (played by host John Mulaney) repeatedly affirms that he is not convicted sex offenders Harvey WeinsteinJeffrey Epstein or some amalgamation thereof. Harvey Epstein, who is a regular SNL viewer, was surprised at the sketch and told The New York Times that he found it “ridiculously funny” and encouraged readers to support survivors of sexual abuse by donating to RAINN.

    Source: Wikipedia

    Seems like a good sport.

  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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    9 hours ago

    In February 2024, Epstein, along with four other Jewish elected officials from New York (Liz Krueger, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Brad Lander and Lincoln Restler), signed an open letter on the Gaza war. The letter condemned Hamas and other groups in the Middle East for attacking Israel and seeking to foment antisemitism and anti-Zionism around the world, while also criticizing the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu for civilian deaths in Gaza, its settlement policy in the West Bank, and leniency towards violence by Israeli settlers. The letter’s signatories called for the Israeli government to prioritize negotiations to release hostages held in Gaza and voiced support for a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[6]

    Seems like a somewhat decent guy for a politician, too.

  • cosmicpancake@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    Imagine having to spend part of your political career clarifying you are not a pair of famous criminals. Poor guy, but also kind of hilarious that SNL made it a joke and he laughed along, telling people to donate to RAINN. If you can handle a sketch like that and keep doing the work in the East Village, you deserve some credit.

    Also, can we stop the guilt by name thing? It is absurd how fast people leap to sensational associations instead of, you know, looking at the actual person and record. Harvey Epstein is a lawyer and progressive Assemblymember who worked on housing and legal services, not a tabloid punchline.

  • Arghblarg@lemmy.ca
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    9 hours ago

    Ya know what grinds my gears? This American penchant for pronouncing Germanic names incorrectly. Like ‘stein’ as ‘steeeen’. EpstEEN. WeinstEEN (even more frustrating, that last one, as the ‘ei’ is pronounced how it ‘should’ be, but not the second occurrence!).

    Even the people with these names often insist themselves on these pronunciations. I mean it’s their right ultimately, it’s their name after all – but why/where/how did this pronunciation take root in the USA?

    I was taught in German class that ‘ei’ is always a long ‘i’ – hence ‘schtIne’ not ‘stEEEn’. Hmmph.

    Same with Robert ‘Muller’. His name’s spelled Mueller, so by German language rules it would seem it should be pronounced ‘Müller’ (‘ue’ in English being a substitute for the umlauted ‘u’).

    I guess it falls out of what appears to be an American myopic view that everyone else has ‘accents’ and they must be purged from American speech since it’s ‘foreign’…

    Grumble grumble… OK, I am done my little rant now.

    • cabbage@piefed.social
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      6 hours ago

      It’s pretty fascinating considering the history of the US that Americans tend to be worse than the English at pronouncing various European languages. You’d think at least some people would cling on to the correct pronounciation of their own name, as the bare minimum.

      I don’t really care how Americans pronounce their own names—if anything I think most Europeans are happy to be easily distinguishable from Americans with shared ancestry at this point—but it is a bit striking.

      • radix@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Not necessarily relevant to the people mentioned in this post, but broadly speaking, there were lots of immigrants to the US between 1930 and 1950 that very intentionally changed the spelling or pronunciation of their names to look and sound less German and Italian.

        • cabbage@piefed.social
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          5 hours ago

          There was also the practice of giving people a new name upon arrival in Ellis Island, establishing pretty early on what kind of names were considered “American”.

          I guess it worked wonders, at least if the stereotype is true that they managed to transform the Irish into a bunch of racist cops.

          But yeah, you certainly had a lot of German Americans voluntarily backing away from their cultural heritage in the 30s and 40s.

    • FerretyFever0@fedia.io
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      9 hours ago

      I mean, I can see where you’re coming from. However, you neglected to mention an equally important problem with the English pronunciation of Weinstein. The w is pronounced as a v. So, vineschtine.

  • brownsugga@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    hey that’s my city councilman, he’s been in the NY state assembly for a while, he’s just replaced the talented but term limited Carlina Rivera

  • MourningDove@lemmy.zip
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    8 hours ago

    I cannot think of anything that could be less interesting or more irrelevant to anything that has, is, or ever will- happen. Seriously…. What idiot thinks someone can be related on a first name basis?