Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Not all heroes wear capes.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

T R E 4 5 O N

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

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38Comments

  3. 3.

    Fed Up In Brooklyn

    I watched the original Fantasia a few weeks ago and I can guarantee it could never be made the same way today, without the lunatic right wing boycotting it. It solidly embraces the Theory of Evolution, the Big Bang Theory, and has sections about ancient mythology, Paganism and witchcraft.

    Watch it again and tell me Disney would come within a country mile of producing something like that under current conditions.

  7. 7.

    cmorenc

    The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” clip from Fantasia is one of the most succinctly prophetic, effective clips ever made about the unintended dangers of lazy reliance on technology or simplistic ideological notions to solve our problems. Although the clip most directly and obviously addressed shortsighted reliance on purported technological fixes we neither understand nor have the means for controlling the implications thereof, it also can be extended to simplistic ideological notions and fixes, such as “American exceptionalism” and “free market” fundamentalism.

  8. 8.

    jibeaux

    A feel-good holiday moment: the newspaper sent out a request to give to various charities, which is does every year, with a reward if the goal is met of their most interesting columnist doing interesting things. So they wrote about a community music school which was about to have to close its doors and was months behind on the rent. This school gives lessons to needy kids for $1 a lesson and loans out instruments. They have a wait list of 80 kids. We gave our piano teacher a small donation to the school in her name, and lots of other folks chipped in too — with one woman donating a piano to the kid who was spotlighted in the story — and they’re staying open. /that’s just a speck of dust in my eye, that is

  9. 9.

    t jasper parnell

    Why it’s almost like an analogy for the Tea Party’s disastrous influence on the Republican Party and, unfortunately, the only figure who remotely resembles the Wizard is Zombie Reagan and, to be fair, the resemblance is very remote.

  10. 10.

    Punchy

    Am I the last to find out that just-turned-38 Monica Seles is dating a 70 year old man? He’s a billionare, natch, but why would she go the sugar (grand)daddy route when she’s famous and rich herself?

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    Follow-up on something from a previous open thread. I went back to that shoe store and got the black Caterpillar boots. (Alas, the last yellow pair had been sold, probably to someone wanting looks-like-Timberlands-but-cheaper.)

    So, anyway, I am now the proud owner of a pair of (US) size 10 Second Shift Steel Toe boots in black nubuck. I’m researching care for nubuck footwear on the Intertoobs, but does anyone here have any advice or useful pointers?

  14. 14.

    R-Jud

    @Fed Up In Brooklyn: When there was a theatrical re-release of Fantasia several years ago I distinctly remember reading that people complained about the Pastoral Symphony sequence.

    It wasn’t so much the nekkid lady centaurs that bothered them. It was the fact that the pegasus couple was a black male and white female, and kids would get the idea that interracial marriage was okay.

  17. 17.

    Paul in KY

    @rikyrah: Well, I just found out too. Monica was the last of my tennis crushes. That POS-Steffi-lover who stabbed her would have lasted about 4 days if I had got hold of him.

  18. 18.

    Joseph Nobles

    NDAA Alert! NDAA Alert! Look Away Now! NDAA Alert! NDAA Alert!

    OK, John Dean (yeah, that John Dean) just recommended this piece on the NDAA by Joanne Mariner. She worked at Human Rights Watch for a long while before taking her current post, director of Hunter College’s Human Rights Program. She was a clerk for Stephen Rehnquist of the Ninth Circuit, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and belongs to the board of advisors of the International Justice Resource Center and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague. So I’m thinking we’ve got someone here who knows what she’s talking about.

    She’s written the first of a two-parter at Verdict, the blog for this outfit called Justia, which seems on the up-and-up as far as my cursory glance at their About page could tell. She goes through a well-written summary of how we got here and deals with most of the issues, the good and the bad. She leaves the possible indefinite detention of American citizens for the second part, but gives a hint with her quotation of John McCain on the Senate floor:

    In applauding the bill’s passage last week, Senator McCain spoke of its “strong, unambiguous language that recognizes that the war on terror extends to us at home.”

    I recommend this highly, whatever your baggery bent.

    NDAA Alert Over! NDAA Alert Over! You may now return to your open thread safely. NDAA Alert Over!

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    @R-Jud:

    When there was a theatrical re-release of Fantasia several years ago I distinctly remember reading that people complained about the Pastoral Symphony sequence. It wasn’t so much the nekkid lady centaurs that bothered them. It was the fact that the pegasus couple was a black male and white female, and kids would get the idea that interracial marriage was okay.

    I don’t know whether it’s been cut from the later releases of the film, but what stuck in a lot of people’s craw was the standard issue racism in the original:

    Even in Fantasia’s beautiful, magical landscape, African centaurs are hoof-polishing handmaidens for prettier, Aryan centaurs.

    Disney was sadly a product of his times in some ways, and the past was not all pleasant nostalgia. On the other hand,

    Watch it again and tell me Disney would come within a country mile of producing something like that under current conditions

    Hollyweird gets blasted by the worst conservatives no matter what. “Avatar” and even the current Muppet movie have been blasted for supposedly stealth sozhul ism. And as I noted in a couple of prior threads, conservatives are getting their panties in a twist over a supposed “Occupy Gotham” attitude that they are getting from the new “Dark Knight Rises” trailer.

    Me, I just love this bit of dialog from Selina Kyle (Catwoman):

    “You think this can last,” Kyle says, an apparent reference to Wayne’s extreme wealth, and a nod to a much darker version of the real life 99% Occupy Movement. “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Because when it hits you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

    I look forward to goons like Limbaugh and Michael Medved lambasting the film when it comes out this summer. A piece of slime like Medved will probably try to spoil every bit of narrative to try to keep people away (he wretchedly did this once before with a Clint Eastwood movie).

  21. 21.

    Amir Khalid

    @Maude:
    A friend of mine gave me exactly this warning many years ago, when steel-toed boots were first becoming fashionable, and I have tried to heed it ever since. I know there are boots whose steel toes aren’t actually certified as a safety feature. (I understand this is true of some Doc Martens styles, for instance, and is probably true of my older pair of boots as well.)

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Disney was sadly a product of his times in some ways, and the past was not all pleasant nostalgia.

    Yep. There’s plenty of stuff in the vaults that will never see the light of day again. It’s not vicious, just stuff that was done out of ignorance and cultural blindness that’s become embarrassing for the company.

    But Fed Up has a point for once: Walt Disney, who was correctly regarded as a right-wing reactionary in his day, would now be totally rejected by “conservatives” because he supported crazy left-wing ideas like environmentalism and science.

    A long ETA: I was lucky enough to hear Chuck Jones speak several times, and one person asked him what he thought of companies like Disney editing racially insensitive scenes out of their films. Jones said, “Well, I never have to worry about that, because I never put racist stuff like that in my films in the first place.”

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @Maude:
    @Amir Khalid:

    They busted this on Mythbusters — basically, anything heavy enough to cause a real steel toe to fail and cut off a toe would crush your toes into jelly without that protection, so you actually are better off with the steel-toed boots.

    I think the problem is more having boots that look like they’re steel-toed but actually aren’t, so you think you’re protected when you aren’t.

  25. 25.

    Paula

    Randinho alert!

    I love that FreeRepublic and HotAir are among the top results for links to this article about how much better American Football is than soccer.

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    A long ETA: I was lucky enough to hear Chuck Jones speak several times, and one person asked him what he thought of companies like Disney editing racially insensitive scenes out of their films. Jones said, “Well, I never have to worry about that, because I never put racist stuff like that in my films in the first place.”

    Chuck Jones directed Angel Puss, one of the Censored Eleven animated shorts that are now seen as being particularly racist and insensitive, and rarely shown anywhere today.

    The entire entertainment industry, like most of society, had to grow up reject racism. There were very few who could claim to be enlightened, and even here, much of the industry caved in to racism in order to avoid troubles, or to make sure that there films would be shown in the South (e.g., editing out black performers in musical films, playing to stereotypes, etc.).

  28. 28.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Joseph Nobles: Thanks… Struck me as a good piece — factual, concentrates on language as written, and rhetorically restrained. I’m a bit skeptical about the impending second part, just because I don’t think John McCain’s intentions are particularly trustworthy barometers of how legislation would/should work, but I’ll try to remember to read it when it appears. If you see it, please flag it for me/us, wouldja?

  29. 29.

    ruemara

    @Brachiator: I used to have a collection of banned cartoons, so I’ve seen angel puss. I also adore Chuck Jones, so I will say in his defense, he did not write the story for that cartoon and this was under Looney Tunes, who did not do a lot of the racist nonsense on the banned eleven. Besides, Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves was good music. Not as good as Scrub Me Momma with a Boogie Beat, that has colour consciousness to boot.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    And all of your other examples of the multiple cartoons Jones did using those stereotypes are … where?

    You do realize you missed the point by about 5 miles, yes?

  31. 31.

    Schlemizel

    @Maude:
    Mythbusters busted this myth a while back. If it was heavy enough to crush the steel toe you were screwed anyway. Lighter than that the cap saved your toes.

  32. 32.

    Brachiator

    @ruemara:

    I used to have a collection of banned cartoons, so I’ve seen angel puss. I also adore Chuck Jones, so I will say in his defense, he did not write the story for that cartoon and this was under Looney Tunes, who did not do a lot of the racist nonsense on the banned eleven. Besides, Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves was good music. Not as good as Scrub Me Momma with a Boogie Beat, that has colour consciousness to boot.

    I also admire Chuck Jones. I even admire Disney. However, Jones directed Angel Puss, so he was the guiding authority even if he did not write it.

    But I am not particularly slamming Jones as being especially egregious, but I cannot defend him or other artists of the era. The main point is that all the animators of the time, like most everyone else in the movie industry, accepted the racism of the time. There were no nonwhite positive images in this stuff, and they lazily accepted the stereotypes of the day.

    Good music doesn’t save it. Hell, animators are still reluctant to have nonwhite characters as the protagonists of works today. And the upcoming Brave is one of the few animated features with a female lead that it not pitched directly to girls.

    As an aside, I find it telling that there are still many admirers of the extraordinary comic strip “Krazy Kat” who cannot acknowledge that many of its panels can be seen as an oblique commentary on American racism, or acknowledge that the creator of the strip, George Herriman, was passing for white in order to be taken seriously as a creator.

    @Mnemosyne:

    And all of your other examples of the multiple cartoons Jones did using those stereotypes are … where?

    Jones claimed that he “never” used racist stereotypes. This simply is not true. Angel Puss is pretty bad, and typical in its casual racism. That Jones did not do a lot of this is irrelevant.

    That is the point, plain and simple.

  33. 33.

    Joseph Nobles

    @FlipYrWhig: I sure will. She probably didn’t go with the Graham quote because she was looking for a teaser, not the whole loaf. But no doubt Graham’s “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.” will figure prominently in part 2.

  34. 34.

    Gravenstone

    @Mnemosyne: Had a summer job in college working in a brass foundry. Part of our safety gear was steel toed boots that also had a padded steel plate covering the instep. I learned the value of that latter component when I dropped a roughly 3′ length of 3″ rod stock on my foot, and barely felt it through the padding.

    One proviso about wearing steel toes, if you’re inclined to kick something, do not do so straight on. Go for a soccer style kick. Your toes will thank you.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gravenstone:
    No, I don’t plan to kick anything. That might scuff my brand-new boots. (Plus, kicking people sounds illegal.) These boots will just be for walking around in, because I find them very comfortable.

    I first got steel-toes when I was a reporter, because I found myself having to visit the occasional industrial site as part of my job. And sure enough, I never saw the inside of a factory again.

  36. 36.

    Samara Morgan

    oh mistermix……you have driven your homie EDK back into the arms of GaJo.
    hahahahaha

    First things first, I’d like to apologize to mistermix for the rudeness of my last piece on the matter. Mainly I was feeling jaded over various Twitter exchanges that occurred prior to my reading his post, and it simply opened whatever petty wound I’d been smarting over. It was an uncharitable response, and not really meant to be directed at him.

    didnt we determine that GaJo is a racist too, that last time EDK raved about him here?
    that guy has more positions than a weathervane in a windstorm.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    Yes, because my quote from memory of something that Jones said at an event 10 years ago is clearly definitive proof that he was lying.

    Sorry, but if you’re going to place Chuck Jones alongside Fantasia, Song of the South and Dumbo (just off the top of my head, and leaving out the shorts) as an equal offender, you’re going to have to come up with more than a single short.

  38. 38.

    ruemara

    @Brachiator: Mmmm, not sure how Jones is guiding the racism, especially if you’re making the point that the racism was casual. I see you have viewpoint, fine. I just think there’s proof that this was not any sort of racism that Chuck Jones felt was right, but more of the basic bigotry that was part and parcel of the culture at the time.

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