Because y’all don’t know what it means. You have no IDEA what it means, you don’t understand all of its applications. You probably don’t know that “Zionism” isn’t just one big homogeneous thing, but rather is as varied as the Jewish community itself. If I say that I am a Zionist, literally all that is telling you is that I think the Jewish people have a right to self-determination. Full stop. It says nothing about my opinions on Israel, it says nothing about my thoughts on the conflict or the Israeli government or on Palestine. Fuck, I can think of like, four different kinds of Zionism off the top of my head. 

The fact that I see a bunch of fucking goyim going around saying shit like “op is a Zionist”, as if that actually says anything about OP and what OP thinks, is making me fucking sick. Goyim have taken the word Zionist and turned it into a word that means “A Jew that I do not like/ a Jew that said something I don’t like/ a Jew that doesn’t Jew the way I think they should”. 

So goyim, until you fucking learn that being a Zionist can mean any of a hundred different things, until you learn that Zionist doesn’t mean what you antisemitic fucks love to say it does (namely that Zionism is white supremacy and other bullshit like that, because it isn’t), and until you learn to stop inserting yourselves into discussions about actual fucking Jews being murdered by Nazis in our houses of worship with pathetic, hateful posts about Zionists, as if there is ANY reason why a Jew deserves to be murdered for being a Jew, you can fuck right off. 

Because every single one of you who does this shit? Who goes around talking shit about Zionists, who accuses Jews of being your bullshit definition of a Zionism, who reduces Zionism to some twisted racial ideology, every single fucking one of you is complicit in the murder of Jewish people. You are spreading antisemitic rhetoric that directly contributes to our deaths. 

The comedy in the show came from the family’s “odd” lifestyle, rather than from infighting and petty bickering, or worse, as was common on other shows of the time, thinly veiled references to spousal abuse. They didn’t make fun of each other or act like their children were creatures from another world. Were they strange and outside of social norms? Yes. Were they united in creating a loving home and being good, supportive parents? Absolutely.

These two support and adore their children, care for an aging mother and an estranged brother, put family before everything, and they love each other, wholly, fiercely, without reserve. They are every bit as much in love after at least a decade of marriage as they were the day they met.

It’s nobody’s surprise that many of the aesthetic and thematic elements of The Addams Family in its various incarnations are influenced by Gothic tradition (not goth, that mostly came later. And not Goth, that was much much much too early), and I think Gomez’s words are a dead bullseye in terms of Gothic mentality.

“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”

The sublime is a recurring theme throughout Gothic literature. Although the word (like “awesome”) has lost a lot of it’s original luster over the intervening decades, sublime doesn’t really mean elevated and lofty (or even heavenly) as it’s often used today, but rather something possessing the power and grandeur to induce awe and veneration in the mind of the beholder. Although less than divine, something sublime possessed a wildness and power that transcended human ability to control…or even to comprehend.

Sublime is standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon leaning as far as you dare over the railing and still not being able to see the canyon floor below. Sublime is warrior-queen Galadriel being tempted by the One Ring. Sublime is waking up in the middle of the night in the heart of a wild thunderstorm.

“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”

Gomez isn’t advising Fester to treat a woman he fancies like a princess, or even elevate her to pedestal of angelic nature (who’s idea was it to equate femininity with purity anyway? What a laughable and historically damaging idea. Shame on whatever dead (probably) white dudes promoted that!)

Gomez is advising Fester that if he truly loves a woman he must do everything he can to remind her of how she’s an untameable force of nature who’s grandeur brings him to his knees in awe and terror. Just like Morticia, for Gomez.

I’ll sign off with one of my most favorite quotes of all time, because it feels suddenly very relevant:

“When I find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I feel as if I am the eye of a hurricane.”

You pass by a small crowd of hungry children, and decide you’d rather 455 apples go rotten than give them to some snotty brat who isn’t your problem.

It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked for your 500 apples, or that you aren’t the parent of any of those kids. in the moment you decide to walk away, it doesn’t matter why they’re hungry, or who owes who what.

You had the opportunity to help people, you had the ability to help people, you had the resources to help people. You had everything you needed to make a small, tiny little difference in someone’s life, and you decided not to.

Black excellence 🙏🏾

As Susan B. Anthony’s name trends on Twitter — and as people blanket her Rochester, New York, grave in “I Voted” stickers — it’s worth remembering that Anthony’s legacy is a paragon of white feminism. Anthony’s pursuit of women’s rights came with a hefty dose of racism. On its website, the National Women’s History Museum is careful to emphasize that Anthony’s problem wasn’t with black men voting, per se.