Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

“woke” is the new caravan.

You cannot shame the shameless.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / wine blogging / Being Kitty Genovese

Being Kitty Genovese

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Franziapundit shoves her camera in some random guy’s face, he pushes the camera away, Althouse shrieks for the police, some poor cop has his next two hours ruined, and now there will be 5,000 wingnut blog posts about how wingnuts are always victims. I wonder she’ll will be in a wheelchair this week ala Kenneth Gladney.

Reader Interactions

94Comments

  1. 1.

    MonkeyBoy

    For those readers who are not au courant with the wine industry, Franzia makes cheap wine sold in boxes that hold 5 liters worth.

  3. 3.

    JenJen

    Kitty Genovese?? OMG. Seriously? Kitty GENOVESE?!

    Have another box of Chillable Red, Ann. (Or rather, her readers, who made the comparison)

    ETA: Just out of curiosity, did Althouse author any posts about the Rand Paul Rally curbstomper?

  4. 4.

    c u n d gulag

    Maybe she’ll sue, and appear at court in a wheelchair and neck brace, pushed into court by Donald Douglas, like in “The Fortune Cookie.”

  6. 6.

    Gin & Tonic

    @JenJen: Can “author” not be a verb, please? Or, as the great Red Smith reportedly said: “you author it, and I’ll reader it.”

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    Christ on a delicious crispy cracker, the Malthaus flying monkey brigade sure descended on on that LGM post pronto, did they not?

    Would it be irresponsible of me to speculate they’ll find this one?

    Scott Eric Kaufman, you fucking prick. She’s being bullied and attacked. Something you ought to know about, dickface. Goddamn asshole. Hope I see you at the state fair for a flip cam in the face. We’ll see who is or is not the victim.

    No, the problem is you fucking progressives need to get a goddamned life. No one has a “right” not to be videoed in public. You don’t knock someone’s camera out of her hand and then allege she’s screaming like a perpetual victim. Fucking. Progressive. Assholes.

    Really, they’re good people.

  8. 8.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debbie: Now, now, I don’t think you understand what happened here. Something less than completely pleasant happened to Althouse as a result of her own actions, can’t you see how she is the victim here?

  9. 9.

    Nutella

    To her credit, she did provide film of the incident.

    NOT to her credit, the film shows that she was getting obnoxiously close to the red-shirted protester, then his hand fills the screen as he pushes the camera away. A perfectly reasonable reaction.

    Another protester steps between them and red-shirt sensibly leaves rather than continue the altercation.

    Poor Ann, victimized again.

    ETA: On the other hand, C&L is wrong to say she should have asked for permission to film people doing a public protest.

  11. 11.

    KG

    Ok, so I clicked all the way though to the videos that Althouse has on her site. Weak sauce. Any first year law student can tell you that the guy may have committed a technical battery, but there was no injury. No prosecutor is going to take this as a criminal case. He had a vuvuzela and hit her camera with it saying “get that out of my face”. He didn’t swing at her and another guy immediately stepped in before she could lamely yell for police.

  13. 13.

    Bruce S

    Oh Christ – I actually clicked through these links and found myself starting to watch video on Ann Althouse’s blog. Stopped myself after a minute, but it was still the most unpleasant experience I’m likely to have this weekend (including accidentally leaving my lights on last night and coming back to a dead battery in a BART parking lot near midnite.)

    I hate you. I mean, you’re right and all that and obviously this is gonna be a popular post, but I still hate you for taking me there. Honestly, I dislike Althouse more than I dislike Michele Bachmann. Althouse has Palin-level narcissism. And she managed to capture my eyeballs, which is the entirety of her mission in life. Balloon Juice ruined my morning!

  18. 18.

    Spaghetti Lee

    Of course they’re victims. A massive victim complex is the only engine that can keep their vile ideology running. If they actually had to admit that they’re spoiled, privileged, selfish, rude assholes, then what would they do?

  19. 19.

    Spaghetti Lee

    And I bet you anything that the jagoff being quoted in post 7 thought that the woman who got stomped on by that Rand Paul supporter totally deserved it.

  24. 24.

    MonkeyBoy

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Now a picture of Marcus in that position would be worth its weight in gold, donchathink?

    This thread on FARK also contains a picture of Michele shoving a corndog in Marcus’s face (+ some photoshops).

  26. 26.

    scott

    Wonder how the UW of Law is feeling right now paying 160k a year for her antics. She is a complete embarrassment to the University, our city, and the state for that matter.

  33. 33.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Gin & Tonic: I cannot stand “task” used as a verb. And I wish people would learn that monarchs reign over their kingdoms, while one reins in something that’s out of control. From the reins of a bridle, originally. I can be pedantic, too.

    Though I was advised by an English professor in 1982 that my insistence on “presently” meaning in a short while as opposed to being a synonym for “currently” was a bit anachronistic, since languages evolve.

  36. 36.

    The Other Chuck

    Althouse is a histrionic whiny twerp with a victim complex, yes … on the other hand you don’t fuck with the cameraman. If you see someone actually reaching their hand out to block the camera, the camera wasn’t actually that close.

    And he hit it with a vuvuzela. It’s like some kind of performance art, “Confluence of Obnoxious” or something.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Other Chuck: Rather than a cameraman per se, I believe this involved Mr and Mrs FranziaPundit wandering about with their cell phone cams. If I felt that someone was shoving a camera in my face, I might want to block it as well.

  38. 38.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @Omnes Omnibus: If the person doing the camera shoving is a drunk blogger who embarrasses the legal profession on a daily basis, I’d sure as hell shove it away. But I’m grouchy like that.

  40. 40.

    Frank

    There are few things more pathetic than wingnuts behaving agressively and “getting in your face”, only to cry like babies when they get a much desereved pushback.

  47. 47.

    Menzies

    @a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):

    I’d agree with your English professor, especially since “presently” first meant “at once” or “right now” when used with an imperative. (At the very least, that use comes in at the same time as the “in a short while” use, yet it’s not regarded as legitimate either.)

    My standard tends to be what Stephen Fry articulated here.

    ETA: I posted that link specifically because of the mention of noun-verbs like “to task” or “to author.”

  49. 49.

    Gin & Tonic

    @And Another Thing…: And if you’re going to scold me, do it for something I wrote, not for what you think I wrote. “Write” is clearer and shorter than “author”, and I’m very hard-pressed to think of a context in which the former could not be used in preference to the latter. I quoted Red Smith because he was a craftsman of the language — I’m quite certain he was familiar with dictionaries as well, and he didn’t like it either.

    Yes, I’m a pedant. I don’t like “impact” as a verb, either. And I write “data are.”

  50. 50.

    futzinfarb

    Looking at the videos (which obviously and admittedly are incomplete evidence), the severity of the incident looks similar to those kerfuffles in which Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Prosser has allegedly recently been engaged.

    Wingnut response to Prosser’s serial Genovesing?

  51. 51.

    Comrade Mary

    @Gin & Tonic: So I shouldn’t ruin your day by telling you that many of the corporate clients I work with these days ask that I “wordsmith” their original copy to make it more readable. Others have asked me to add some “verbage” to a web page, which I guess misses the negative connotations of “verbiage” because of the missing “i”.

  52. 52.

    The Other Chuck

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Ah. Yeah, random twerps shoving a cell phone camera in my face do not rise to the level of the professional camera operator. I was under the impression that AA was somehow offended on behalf of an actual journalist.

    Oh I’d probably also make an exception for any camera operated by Breitbart’s gang. Smash it into bits on sight I say.

  53. 53.

    Bruce S

    31 – Liberty60 – August 13, 2011 | 1:35 pm · Link @Bruce S: Totally agree- you are like Kitty Genovese.

    Actually not so much – because when the neighbors heard my screams they came knocking on my door to make sure I was okay. But I appreciate your empathy.

  54. 54.

    The Spy Who Loved Me

    Given that Althouse voted for Obama and, as I recollect from reading her blug during the campaign, her son was an enthusiastic Obama supporter, how are they wingnuts?

    And the guy that grabbed Althouse was an asshole, one that skittered away pretty quickly when she started shouting for the police.

  55. 55.

    eemom

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I’m with you, but it’s a losing battle. Hell, it’s a LOST battle, and it’s been that way ever since “access” gained access to verbdom.

    “Aggravate” — after decades of misuse as a synonym for “irritated,” now ACCEPTED as having that meaning.

    “Incentivize.” Fucking “incentivize” — not even a fucking word — now accepted as a verb.

    Even the OED is complicit. Fucking sellout, word relativist whore.

  57. 57.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    Given that Althouse voted for Obama and, as I recollect from reading her blug during the campaign, her son was an enthusiastic Obama supporter, how are they wingnuts?

    1. Have you read any of her gibberings lately?

    2. Are you really, honestly attempting to attribute the political opinions of one family member to another?

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @eemom:

    Even the OED is complicit. Fucking sellout, word relativist whore.

    The OED is not the fucking Académie française. Their role has always been a descriptive dictionary, not a prescriptive one. The OED documents how words have been and are used, not to define how they’re supposed to be used. English speakers don’t let anybody tell us how we’re supposed to use words, you cheese eating surrender monkey.

  61. 61.

    The Other Chuck

    “The data is”

    That’s how I roll, baby, because I subscribe to the idea of an implicit collective term. My brain is just that big.

  63. 63.

    Menzies

    @Roger Moore:

    This. Aside from other reasons for English dominance, one of them is that it’s a language that very easily plugs words into its existing structure.

    I mean, if you really want to speak a “pure” form of English, learn Anglo-Saxon. Anything after that is grafted onto what the Angles spoke in 1066.

  64. 64.

    JenJen

    @Gin & Tonic: Just to be clear, why do you feel that it’s appropriate to give word choice tips and writing advice to anonymous adults on message boards? I never asked you for a critique, and I certainly don’t appreciate it.

    By the way, it’s a losing battle even if you’re right (which you aren’t), because unless you’re a professional editor being paid for your expertise, it only makes you look like a jackhole.

  70. 70.

    Gin & Tonic

    @JenJen: I wasn’t giving writing advice *to* any specific person. I used your post as a jumping-off point for a random scream out into the ether about what I see as a pointless mis-use of an English word when there’s a shorter and clearer one that is almost invariably a better choice in the circumstances. I didn’t even say “could you please stop using ‘author’ as a verb”, I asked in general terms “can ‘author’ not be a verb?” People babble about things here all the time.

    Apparently some other readers here agree with me. I’ll admit I am probably part of a minority, but so it goes.

    But I sure do appreciate your ad-hominem remarks.

  71. 71.

    eemom

    @Roger Moore:
    @Menzies:

    hmm. Evidently RM’s original comment suffers from some AMBIGUITY, because Menzies construes it to express agreement with the language evolutionist apologist for language bastardization folks who are cool with abominations like “incentivize” — whereas I thought RM was more agreeing with my opinion that language ought NOT to be bastardized no matter what the OED says.

  72. 72.

    kth

    If you don’t want to be filmed, you are perfectly within your rights to block the camera’s line of sight from you. That’s not an assault, even if incidental contact occurs.

  73. 73.

    Cassidy

    @Gin & Tonic: Your ability to author such a pedantic collection of comments is impressive. The data is suggesting you are being a twit and will be unable to impact anyone’s authoring preferences.

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    @eemom:
    In case I wasn’t clear, I think you’re wrong. English is as English does, not as some authority says it ought to be. Complaining about this kind of “abuse” of the language is rather like being a Firebagger purity troll: you’re only doing it to make yourself feel better than everyone else, rather than in the reasonable hope that it will change anything. English is what it is because nobody listens to misguided fools who try to fossilize it.

    The best you can do is to set a good example by avoiding new usage and using unambiguous language in your own speech and writing. Go ahead and use “write” instead of “author” and maintain the old distinction between “lie” and “lay”. Those of us who remember English as it used to be used will appreciate the effort. Just don’t expect that anyone else will follow your lead, and don’t be surprised when your old fashioned usage occasionally leads to misunderstanding when a reader assumes a new meaning for one of your old words.

  75. 75.

    JenJen

    @Gin & Tonic: OK. I mean, you’re free to do whatever you choose, but you did specifically address it to me, using the reply button and the exact word I used.

    By the way, I don’t think there’s supposed to be a hyphen in “ad hominem.” ;-)

  77. 77.

    Amir Khalid

    Ahem! Professional writer (well, retired journalist) speaking here.
    @Gin & Tonic:
    The practice of verbing nouns (see what I did there?) is not considered wrong by academic authorities. Yes, the result can be ugly and not immediately comprehensible, which is why we usually don’t do it. But certain examples of this practice are by now widely understood and accepted as standard English: to author, to reference, to bookmark, to referee, and quite a few more. Indeed, it’s precisely because English speakers (and writers) have been doing this for centuries that so many everyday words are both noun and verb: fish, dream, water, drive, cry, steel, and so on.

    It can get overdone. Pointy-haired boss talk is full of needlessly verbed nouns, among its many other insults to the English language. (Some of which are mentioned upthread.) If you don’t care for nouns used as verbs, feel free not to use them yourself. But remember that others are not wrong, as such, in using nouns that way.

  78. 78.

    shortstop

    You know how the people who wear “Welcome to America! Now speak English!” t-shirts are generally (and hilariously) strangers to standard English? Folks randomly bitching about the supposed untenability of some evolving usage always seem to be people who’ve demonstrated repeatedly that they can’t spell or punctuate worth a damn. I guess the total lack of self-awareness makes the jackassity* possible.

    Re Althouse, how long as she been using the Nixonian third person to refer to herself?

    *Non-standard.

  79. 79.

    eemom

    @Roger Moore:

    But what you and others condemn as purity-troll-esque “fossilizing” is in many instances a desire to preserve language from lapsing into utter meaninglessness. Words DO lose meaning when they are repeatedly bastardized: “awesome” being a prime example.

    Seems to me there should be a middle ground between the natural evolution of language and rampant misuse eventually bullying its way into acceptance.

  80. 80.

    Gin & Tonic

    OK, under what circumstances is “to author” a better or clearer usage than “to write?” Yes, it is often used. Why? When does “to author” convey meaning more precisely? I am at a loss.

  81. 81.

    shortstop

    @Amir Khalid:

    Indeed, it’s precisely because English speakers (and writers) have been doing this for centuries that so many everyday words are both noun and verb: fish, dream, water, drive, cry, steel, and so on.

    That’s why this sort of conversation always reminds me of Christian fundamentalists insisting that they alone accept the “literal truth” of the bible. They never seem to realize that they’re glossing over or flatly ignoring contradictions galore within that text.

    Most of us can come up with a few examples of trendy or evolving usage we don’t like. Producing a few cherry-picked examples does not make a case for the speaker being the true keeper of a pure and holy language. It does, however, demonstrate that person’s laughable lack of knowledge about how the language has already changed in ways analogous to the current complaint.

  82. 82.

    Menzies

    @eemom:

    See, here’s why I can’t consider “incentivize” (to take that specific case) to be an abomination. That suffix is Greek in origin and is pretty productive in any language that has Greek influence – which is natural as the suffix originally meant “do some shit related to the verb root.”

    If “incentivize” isn’t a word, then “realize,” “analyze,” “tenderize” and “balkanize” aren’t words, either, to name a few. “Monetize,” too, but that one’s still stigmatized as a buzzword.

    In fact, if “incentivize” isn’t a word, neither is “bastardize,” and “bastardization” even less.

    @Roger Moore:

    That, pretty much. The other reason I don’t like being a purist on language is that you will always find someone who knows a particular point better than you do. My English is as correct as I can make it, with occasional allowances for neologisms and such constructions. I’m the descriptivists’ prescriptivist and the prescriptivists’ descriptivist.

    @Amir Khalid:

    That, and also just plain linguistic evolution. If I remember correctly, Anglo-Saxon dropped the Germanic -en suffix for the infinitive right quick. Makes it a lot easier to create verbs out of nouns when you don’t even have to add anything to them.

  83. 83.

    Menzies

    @Gin & Tonic:

    This is somewhat classicalized usage, but I’d use “to author” for legislative bills, since it’s not always the legislator drafting them. (The Latin word originally meant someone who proposed a bill in the Senate.)

    Also, you mentioned that you write “data are.” I appreciate that, given my academic subject of choice, but that also obligates me to ask: news, singular or plural?

  84. 84.

    eemom

    @Gin & Tonic:

    It doesn’t. What it does is make the user feel smarter. Lots of people think that using fancier words makes them better writers — which, as anyone actually skilled in writing knows, is a bunch of horseshit.*

    *deliberately chosen usage of vulgarity to add emphasis, not to be confused with literal reference to excretus equinus.

  85. 85.

    Amir Khalid

    @Menzies:
    Is ancient newspaper joke. Editor writes to correspondent: “Are there any news?”

    Correspondent replies: “No, not a single new.”

  86. 86.

    Menzies

    @eemom:

    The thing is, you are looking at the middle ground. Or what would be the middle ground, ideally. I came up to the States when I was eighteen, so I don’t know what English teaching is like up here, but I assume the language taught in those classes is intended to be (not necessarily is) something closer to standard usage than (to throw out one example) African-American Vernacular or Jamaican patois.

    If language really were slipping into meaninglessness, we would not be able to communicate, period. But that function has proven remarkably resilient: as some words become less or more specific in meaning, they’re replaced by others. Our word “hound” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for “dog,” our word “hussy” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for “housewife,” our word “knave” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word for “boy” or “young man.”

    If anything, language is stickier now than it used to be, due to massive standardization of teaching standard varieties (there’s another -ize word). To throw out a couple of examples, France has tons of different dialects, but they’re slowly melding together nowadays. British accents are harmonizing to one another.

    I get that you want the language to hold out as much as possible, but if anything, I see it holding out for longer as varieties continue to fuse together.

  87. 87.

    Menzies

    @Amir Khalid:

    Horace Greeley was the editor in the version I have.

    Another one: Her Majesty Queen Victoria telling someone in her family “the news from Austria are tragic and make me very sad.”

  88. 88.

    eemom

    what is the singular of “clothes”? It’s not cloth.

    Also too, how is “hair” properly singular when it actually refers to a whole headful of distinct hairs? In Greek the word for hair is a plural.

  89. 89.

    Menzies

    @eemom:

    That’s what you call a mass noun – one you can’t count without using a measure word. So the singular and plural are the same.

    Other examples in English might be “rice” or “cattle.” If you were to say “three rices,” people would probably think you meant three kinds of rice, so you have to say “three grains of rice” or “three pounds of rice” or whatever. For “cattle,” you have to say “three heads of cattle” or what-have-you.

    ETA: And “hair” is a semi-collective noun. You can use it to refer to one hair or to a whole collective of them, the same way as “fish.” That could be a loss of inflection from the Anglo-Saxon or Old High German.

    Is Greek for “hair” still something on the “trich-” root? That’s how I learned it in Ancient/Koine Greek.

  90. 90.

    Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”

    We are all Humpty Dumpty now

  91. 91.

    JenJen

    To follow up my own question in #3, it Ann Althouse did indeed author write crap out this post about the Rand Paul curbstomper.

    ETA: Oh, dear. This subsequent post on the matter is even worse than her first take. She even insinuates that the Jon Stewart rally that was to take place a few days later might whip up some lefty furor. I wonder if she ever did a follow-up noting that the only thing whipped up were some pretty clever signs.

  92. 92.

    thalarctos

    @Gin & Tonic:

    OK, under what circumstances is “to author” a better or clearer usage than “to write?”

    If you’re writing about writing as a topic, it’s useful to have synonyms like “to author” in order not to have to use the same word “write” over and over again.

  93. 93.

    Three-nineteen

    @Gin & Tonic: The word author has one main meaning in common usage (to create a written work), and write has two (to create a written work and to convert an idea into symbols someone can read). So “write” could be considered more vague than “author”.

    I wrote this comment, but did I author it? I could just be typing it in while someone dictates it to me.

  94. 94.

    Anonymous37

    OK, under what circumstances is “to author” a better or clearer usage than “to write?”

    In addition to Three-nineteen’s example above, I can also give the case of a scientific paper or Powerpoint presentation which includes plots where the author performed data analysis. And here, write doesn’t cover the work the author performed to create the paper or presentation.

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