Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

T R E 4 5 O N

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

In after Baud. Damn.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

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

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Books are my comfort food!

The words do not have to be perfect.

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

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

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Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    Phylllis

    Ferris Bueller is currently on one of the Cinemax channels. I’m considering calling in sick for the rest of the day at work. Too obvious?

  3. 3.

    Napoleon

    Doug, let me guess, you were just checking out the boobelicious 1978 Jennifer Granholm Dating Game video on Youtube?

  4. 4.

    Roger Moore

    @Phylllis:
    Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t come to the door right now. I’m afraid that in my weakened condition, I could take a nasty spill down the stairs and subject myself to further school workplace absences.

  7. 7.

    Tom Levenson

    @DougJ at top:

    Maybe David Brooks is right about how much harder everyone worked before the WASPs lost control and allowed Asians and Jews to invent the internet.

    That would be that notoriously Asian Jew, Tim Berners-Lee you’re talking about?

    I’ve met the man. And I can tell you (cue the Borscht Belt): Funny. He doesn’t look Jewish.

    Despite the “Lee” — Asian not so much either.

    Just sayin.

    ;)

  11. 11.

    DougJ

    @Tom Levenson:

    Bobo has this thing he writes about all the time, that I personally find very offensive, about how everything was awesome before the WASP aristocracy broke down and the Asians and Jews took over Ivey League schools.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    @DougJ:

    Bobo has this thing he writes about all the time, that I personally find very offensive, about how everything was awesome before the WASP aristocracy broke down and the Asians and Jews took over Ivey League schools.

    All the more odd since Brooks is Jewish and went to the U of Chicago, not an Ivy League School.

    I note in passing that I graduated from one of them thar Ivies and was astounded once to see in the alumni magazine a letter from someone in the class of 1950something wailing about how there were too many Jews taking places that could be filled by the fruit of his own loins. And wimmins. Too many wimmins. This was before the fabled Asian ascendancy.

  29. 29.

    Southern Beale

    Yeah the “victory wallet” was pretty funny too. Who the hell dreamed that up?

    Oddly, I got a fundraising letter from the Romney campaign yesterday. I sent it back to them with the note “Show Me Your Tax Returns!”

    Camp Romney was too cheap to pay for the stamp on the envelope, too. I figured it was worth 41 cents though.

  33. 33.

    PurpleGirl

    @Rafer Janders: Cornell is an Ivy.

    From Wikipedia:

    The Ivy League is an athletic conference composed of sports teams from eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group.[2] The eight institutions are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University. The term Ivy League also has connotations of academic excellence, selectivity in admissions, and social elitism.

    The term became official after the formation of the NCAA Division I athletic conference in 1954.[3] The use of the phrase is no longer limited to athletics, and now represents an educational philosophy inherent to the nation’s oldest schools.[4] Seven of the eight schools were founded during the United States colonial period; the exception is Cornell, which was founded in 1865. Ivy League institutions, therefore, account for seven of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

  34. 34.

    KXB

    Yesterday, I found myself watching a video compilation of radio station jingles for WNEW AM New York. It was a grey, drizzly day, and it felt good.

  36. 36.

    KXB

    @Brachiator:

    This may seem like a defense of Brooks, but bear with me. Like Brooks, I also went to the Univ. of Chicago, but in the 1990s. We were probably 20-25% Asian, with myself falling in that demo. I don’t know how many Jews we had, but it was probably not as high as the Ivy League, simply because since so many came from outside the Northeast, where Jews are not as numerous, until you get to Florida and California. Chicago had a reputation for being a bookish sort of college, not party central.

    I’m not sure if Brooks was defending the aristocracy, or its manners. You probably cannot separate one from the other. But one common insult hurled towards Jews up until the 1970s is that they were rude and lacking in good graces. Comments about rude New Yorkers was often another way of saying rude Jews. So, Brooks goes off to college in the Midwest, where everyone seems polite and well-mannered, and maybe, just maybe in some weaker moments, he thinks there is something to the stereotype.

    I’ll admit in my weaker moments I do it too. I’ve stopped shopping along the Indian shops near Devon Ave., because it was embarrassing to see an area of the city populated by people who look like me incapable of following traffic rules or dropping their litter everywhere. By contrast, the shops in Chinatown or the Korean places along Lawrence seem to be cleaner and better maintained.

    Maybe the song is right, maybe everyone is a little bit racist.

  37. 37.

    Brachiator

    @KXB:

    Maybe the song is right, maybe everyone is a little bit racist.

    Well, let’s consider.

    Bullshit.

    The WASP aristocracy I observed could be as rude and obnoxious as anyone. Yeah, there were for some a phony gentility, but for others there was raucous entitlement, the idea that they could to anything they wanted in front of or to whomever they wanted, and their shit should be tolerated because they were the top of the heap.

    It’s like the stories of the British upper class Hellfire clubs.

    Jews and others were hated often because they would not submit to the bullshit, tolerate it, or wish to be a part of it.

    And the letter from an alumnus I alluded to earlier was whining that those dirty Jews were not playing fair. They were winning admission because of their talents, while WASPs were being pushed aside despite the supposed superiority of their shitty little beings.

    Hell, even the movie The Social Network gets an aspect of this right. The Winklevii think that they are owed obedience, and nothing irks them more than the idea that Mark Zuckerberg refused to simply defer to them.

    That Brooks has any warm feeling for any of this shit for any reason is ridiculous. But then again, I am amused but not surprised that people like him or Pat Buchanan have a deep yearning to bend over and be fucked by people who fundamentally despise them.

    Maybe the song is right, maybe everyone is a little bit racist.

    This is bullshit, too.

  39. 39.

    KXB

    @Brachiator:

    I’d share your outrage at WASP elite behavior save for a couple of things. One – I did not grown up around any. My white suburban neighborhood was mostly Italian & Irish Catholic. I did not know what a WASP was until my 11th grade history teacher explained it. Other neighborhoods around us had more Jewish families, and the snobbery of some of them was really not the best impression on young teenagers. So the idea that Jews or any group for that matter would not behave as WASPs did in their heydey is something I don’t buy. It has less to do with them being WASPs, then them simply being on top of the pecking order. Whoever comes out on top in the future is unlikely to behave that much differently, if given the chance.

    Again, I’ve seen it among Indians. The bankers and doctors of the bunch really don’t like to interact too much with the cab drivers and convenience store clerks that came after them.

  40. 40.

    Brachiator

    @KXB:

    So the idea that Jews or any group for that matter would not behave as WASPs did in their heydey is something I don’t buy.

    But as you note, you did not observe the WASP in his native habitat. It is sometimes very ugly.

    Again, I’ve seen it among Indians. The bankers and doctors of the bunch really don’t like to interact too much with the cab drivers and convenience store clerks that came after them.

    I would suggest that you might want to look more closely. Indians, like other groups bring village, class and caste issues with them. Here is a fun stat from 2007.

    Thirty-five years after the arrival in the USA of the first Indian motel keepers — almost all with roots in the western India state of Gujarat and most with the surname Patel — up-by-the-bootstraps tales like that of Dinu Patel have become common. Now, first- and second-generation Indian-Americans are running upscale-branded hotels: Marriotts, Sheratons and Hiltons, in many instances. And they’re leveraging their lodging experience to become financiers and developers.
    __
    Few other industries can claim such a large minority influence. Indian-Americans own 43% of the 47,000 hotels and motels in the country, according to Asian American Hotel Owners Association, or AAHOA, which draws its membership mainly from Indian-Americans. AAHOA’s figure is an estimate projected from a survey of its members several years ago. Joe McInerney, CEO of lodging trade group American Hotel & Lodging Association, estimates Indian-Americans operate about one-third of hotel rooms in the USA.

    Many of these people worked hard, scrubbed the shit out of toilets, cleaned vomit and semen off sheets and bedspreads and dealt with the disdain of whites and other native born Americans. I really don’t think there was a lot of time for looking down on other Indians. To the contrary, they helped others get into business.

    You saw something similar in Southern California where Cambodian immigrants found a niche in 24 hour donut and pastry shops.

    And by the way, the last time I was in India, my cab driver beamed proudly about his daughter, in the US, studying to be a doctor. Go figure.

  41. 41.

    Patricia Kayden

    “before the WASPs lost control”

    When did this happen? LOL!

    Not to fear. Y’all are still running things.

  42. 42.

    KXB

    @Brachiator:

    Hell, even the movie The Social Network gets an aspect of this right. The Winklevii think that they are owed obedience, and nothing irks them more than the idea that Mark Zuckerberg refused to simply defer to them.

    Funny you should mention that film. Like you, I also noticed the subtext of Jew vs. WASP in Sorkin’s screenplay. But there were a number of problems problems. First, the idea that Zuckerberg would feel like an outsider on the Harvard campus because he was Jewish might make sense in 1950, but not now. Sorkin assigned Zuckerberg a Jewish insecurity he has never displayed. Like many men his age – he is at ease with his Jewishness and is at ease with his Asian classmates.

    Furthermore, you have the character of Divya Narendra who also worked with the Winkelvoss twins. His part in the story is diminished in order to keep up the Jew vs. WASP setup. An Indian-American student (played by an actor who has no Indian ancestry) who like Zuckerberg probably worked very hard, and felt he was cheated.

    Staying with the film, Zuckerberg not only screwed the Winkelvoss twins, he also screwed co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Like Zuckerberg, Saverin is Jewish, but from Brazil, a point which is brought up by Zuckerberg when Saverin gets into a select club.

    The story of Facebook’s founding could have been interesting on its own. By assigning Zuckerberg as a neurotic Jewish underdog in the face of the Harvard WASP establishment (in 2012, there is no such thing), Sorkin instead reduces the story to just jockeying for position between 2 groups.

  43. 43.

    KXB

    @Brachiator:

    Yes, the Gujarati community has made its mark in motels. I don’t see how that contradicts my earlier position – that any group, once it reaches the top of the social ladder, will often behave in an obnoxious fashion, even though they received insults on their own climb up the ladder.

    BTW – Gujaratis are often at the receiving end of ugly slurs from other Indians groups. Among the crude stereotypes tossed their way – a crass obsession with money and dishonest business practices; the Gujarati diaspora sends money and support to some hardline Hindu nationalist groups, so they are viewed as less tolerant of Muslims; a belief that their vegetarianism and abstaining from alcohol makes them better Hindus than their co-religionists who enjoy scotch and like the taste of chicken, fish, & goat. And these stereotypes by people who know them well, not from outside groups who cannot tell the difference between a Gujarati, Tamil, & Bengali.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @KXB:

    Yes, the Gujarati community has made its mark in motels. I don’t see how that contradicts my earlier position – that any group, once it reaches the top of the social ladder, will often behave in an obnoxious fashion, even though they received insults on their own climb up the ladder.

    The point is that you began with Indians, now concede Gujarati and still want to treat groups of people like monoliths with stereotyped characteristics.

    But let’s return to part of the original issue. If a group of upper class WASPs and upwardly mobile Jews are equally obnoxious, in what rational universe can you or Brooks yearn for some phony standard based on WASP culture? It doesn’t wash, unless you somehow believe that WASPs are better than you and set the standard of behavior.

    Is that what you believe?

    And these stereotypes by people who know them well, not from outside groups who cannot tell the difference between a Gujarati, Tamil, & Bengali.

    Yes, when you know a group well, the stereotypes must be true. Like the stereotypes that people have for Italian Americans and Irish Americans.

    Would you like to slam the Parsi, too, while you’re at it?

    Or we could go for the obvious, that no group has a monopoly on either virtue or depravity, and that there have never been any good old days in which genteel white upper class folk could ever set a standard for behavior and decorum.

  45. 45.

    KXB

    @Brachiator:

    Maybe I have not used language that you understand, but I will keep trying. In no instance have I written that the stereotypes held of Group A by Group B must be true. Nor have I written that a widely held stereotype must de facto be true. I pointed out the more you know of a group, the more likely you are to stereotype (familiarity breeds contempt). I’ve heard conversations from black people on the South Side of Chicago about black people from the West Side that would make one cringe, but because those groups interact with each other to a greater degree than with me, they can draw distinction and yes, they will often stereotype. In reviewing what I wrote, I see no instance where I approved of holding stereotypes or approved of one ethnic group trying to keep out members of different groups – I just said it happens all the time, and is not a uniquely WASP phenomenon.

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