This ad is apparently what got Bloomberg all wound up. Here’s a politics open thread to go with the football open thread.
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by @mistermix.bsky.social| 128 Comments
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This ad is apparently what got Bloomberg all wound up. Here’s a politics open thread to go with the football open thread.
Comments are closed.
Villago Delenda Est
Newsmax screams: McCain: Obama Faces Impeachment for Boots on Ground
Oh, puhleeze. Has Obama actually even hinted about boots on the ground? I know that McCain is more than happy to send those dumbass grunts in to their deaths while he sips cocktails on the flight deck of a carrier safely off the coast, but really…
c u n d gulag
I think Bloomberg needs to put down his 64 oz vodka slurpee.
Alexandra
Wow. I’ve been reading about this story… and that’s it?
Comrade Mary
Foreigner input: what struck me about this video when I first watched it was Dante’s accent. Here in Canada, accents are pretty regional and generally much less influenced by race. Take a group of Torontonians of about the same age, from various races and ethnic backgrounds. As long they were either born here or came here at a young enough age, they will all sound pretty much the same.
(This has been changing somewhat over the past 10+ years: younger black people who were born here, with or without Caribbean roots, are more likely to take on a Caribbean lilt or some measure of some kind of American black accent — yes, I know there’s more than one. This might be because this city is much, much less white than it used to be, and black kids are no longer isolated among a sea of white kids, so we’re developing more than one “Toronto” accent.)
So if I had though this kid was Canadian, the way he talked wouldn’t have stood out for me. But as a biracial kid who would probably have problems hailing a cab in New York — that is, he may either consider himself black or knows that other people consider him black — I really expected him to sound different. I wonder if he code switches and sounds different with his friends.
Do you Americans have the same kind of disconnect watching him and listening to him? How do you think that would affect how people of various races would react to this ad?
gene108
@Comrade Mary:
I don’t.
The only that struck me is his voice is sort of deeper/older sounding than I expected, considering that ad says he’s 15.
Lynn Dee
Oh I see what the problem is: it’s the in-your-face fro. Kinda makes you want to stop and frisk him, doesn’t it, Bloomberg?
Corner Stone
Well, since this is a politics open thread:
Afghan officials say Nato air strike killed nine civilians
“Nato says 10 militants died in strike in Kunar province but it has no reports of civilian deaths”
“Afghan officials have said an apparent Nato air strike has killed 15 people – nine of them civilians, including women and children – in an eastern province where the Taliban remain strong. Nato said 10 militants had died in the strike, and that it had no reports of any civilian deaths.”
“The Nato spokeswoman 1st Lieutenant AnnMarie Annicelli confirmed that the military alliance had carried out a “precision strike” that killed 10 “enemy forces”, but that it had received no reports of any civilians dying in the air strike. Annicelli had no immediate details on who exactly the dead were or what prompted the strike.”
Emphasis mine. No idea who we’re even killing.
Corner Stone
@Lynn Dee: That fro is kinda awesome.
Joey Maloney
I just like the way the kid rocks that hairdo. I think that’s what got Bloomberg all torqued, that his own Jewfro days are long behind him.
satby
@Comrade Mary: Nope. The days when you could assume race by the way people speak are fading. What struck me was how much he looks like his dad.
scav
@Comrade Mary: Not really. That style of hair is not what I’m seeing on equivalents locally but . . . I may not just get to the right neighborhoods.
ETA: it’s actually refreshing to see actual hair, some days on the ‘l it’s as though each and every man is bald.
brent
@Villago Delenda Est:
To be fair, what McCain is getting at here (and I certainly didn’t and won’t ever read the Newmax article, so I have no idea what point they think he made) is that Obama has no incentive to approve any sort of mission creep. He is, in other words, attempting to assuage the concerns of those who are worried that any initial approval will end up with us being more enmeshed in the conflict than we wish to be. He is supporting Obama’s agenda with this statement.
Amir Khalid
@Alexandra:
My thoughts exactly.
dww44
Since this is a politics open thread, I’ve got a question that I hope someone can help me answer, or rather, direct me to a resource that can definitely answer this.
Yesterday morning I attended a breakfast for non-profit organizations who will be participating in a Charity Day event at a well-regarded regional department store. The manager of that store, a Michigan native, but obviously now a long time resident of this Southern state, addressed us. Another piece of background info about him, he’d recently lost a bunch of weight (his suit showed that) and all his 6 kids attend or have attended a local and private religious school. It’s a fundamentalist one. While those background facts may not be relevant to many, it does explain to me how he came to espouse the views he subsequently did.
At the end of the breakfast, while standing in line to pick up the tickets we were charged with selling, I overheard him say to another non-profit attendee:
“You know, there are numbers of people on disability who can’t get work because their faces are covered with tattoos and they qualified for the disability and we the taxpayers are paying for it.”
I want to be able to substantiate or disprove that. These are the kinds of memes that continue to guarantee the elections of the people who believe this sort of stuff. And, I believe in the truth. If it’s the truth, so be it. But, most likely, imo, it’s probably not.
Goblue72
Bloomberg is the best thing that could have happened to the de Blasio campaign.
Villago Delenda Est
@brent:
Well, the utter scum of Newsmax heard the word “Impeachment” and their ears perked up.
Comrade Mary
@satby: That’s interesting, because the trend seems to be different in Toronto. As I said, that accent I expect from someone who lives down the street from me is the same no matter what their skin colour is, but I had always thought there was a strong racial element in American accents, deliberate or not.
Villago Delenda Est
@dww44:
It appeals to bigotry. Those slackers with tatoos on their faces that make them unemployable, so the rest of us have to finance their Caddys and Tbone steak cookouts.
pamelabrown53
@Villago Delenda Est: More accurate headline” McCain: Obama Faces Impeachment if There are NO Boots On the Ground”.
Comrade Mary
Key and Peele on being biracial and adjusting their blackness around white people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone:
No. All it means is that a 1LT spokesperson did not have details at the time of the briefing.
ruemara
@dww44: It’s bullshit.
@Comrade Mary: No, we can actually just sound that way. It’s not signifying, it’s not completely different voice than when we are with other black people, we just sound the way we sound. I guarantee his language is different among his peers, but not because he’s black, but because he’s a teen with his peers.
Yatsuno
@Comrade Mary: I’m actually a bit surprised he doesn’t have stronger Italian-American inflections, given his father’s background. But he’s definitely not from Brooklyn you can tell that much.
Another Holocene Human
@Comrade Mary: He’s got some verbal fry, sounds like his voice is changing and he’s trying really hard to keep his tone even and not break.
He is not speaking with much of a Northeast Corridor cant, but since his parents are, er, highly educated, if I know what you mean and I think you do, that’s not terribly surprising.
Shorter: Black folks in New York (who were born & raised there, not transplants) have New York accents too. But accents have more to do with class in that region than other factors (unless we’re talking about transplants).
satby
@Comrade Mary: Well, I didn’t mean to say Dante doesn’t code switch if he wants. Hell, my lily white sons (who were raised in a mixed area) code switch. Which they occasionally will do to mess with people they perceive as bigots. For fun, because they are my kids.
Bob In Portland
I wonder when the Cleveland fans start calling for the Niners to send back Colt McCoy.
Churchlady
@Corner Stone: Please define “we”?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Gimme a fucking break.
Cacti
I can see why Bloomberg’s upset.
That kid has a “stop and frisk me” afro and doesn’t seem the least bit apologetic about it.
For all we know, he might have a pocketful of skittles too.
Another Holocene Human
@dww44: I don’t know if it helps, but to get SSD you have to go through physicians and the SSA reviews your case and it often takes multiple attempts to get approval. There are other forms of disability, but there’s no way facial tattoos would qualify under Social Security standards.
Furthermore, tattoos only bar you from certain employment, but not all employment.
The truth is that there are plenty of ex-felons with prison tattoos living under bridges RIGHT NOW because the government in Florida certainly doesn’t feel you should be paid payments just because they turned you loose with your old pants and a bus ticket and now nobody wants to hire you.
I don’t know where these notions come from, maybe “just so” story bullshit sessions that one party thought was hearsay instead of speculation, or maybe noticing all the tattooed young gents hanging around Sec 8, as if they aren’t living off their mamas by day and hustling by night.
Also, too, some people are prone to bullshit and exaggerate … wingnuts often have poor personal filters and believe stuff especially if it validates their fears.
Corner Stone
@Churchlady: It’s pretty obvious if you can read. If you can’t that’s not my problem.
gogol's wife
It’s a good, effective ad. I’m glad DeBlasio has a chance.
Churchlady
@dww44: I would argue that since most people with back injuries, crippling arthritis, and many other conditions are disapproved for disability – that is VERY hard to obtain – he’s full of crap. Being covered with tats is not now and has never been grounds for disability payments. Furthermore, there is no such thing as any other lifetime benefit for welfare. That’s been gone since 1996. So even if people were on welfare, they have to work or go to school and have a max of five years under those conditions. So he is part of the fundamentalist mindset that everyone is evil if they have not come to Jesus – you’re on your own for your salvation AND your subsistence. His is a pernicious view and totally based in lies about the secular world.
Cacti
@dww44:
I work for SSA, and I can tell you this is pure bollocks.
A facial tattoo would not be considered a medically determinable impairment at any level of the disability application process.
Another Holocene Human
@Comrade Mary: It’s racial BUT regional, and there has been a lot of internal migration during the last few generations.
Children acquire accents during the first few years of life and tend to speak in a way that fits in with their age peers (often confounding parents, who believe wrongly that they can confer their own accent to their offspring). Grow up in the ‘burbs, talk like the ‘burbs, and so on.
You will hear Northern accents in African American communities in the South today because we are in the middle of a Southward migratory wave (following the catastrophic loss of manufacturing jobs in the industrial North). (Note you will hear it in adults, not children. See above.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
You’ve obviously never been a 1LT Public Relations officer on the spot reporting only what he knows, right now, when the question is asked.
He’s not going to make something up that can later be easily used to discredit him.
(For the record, I’ve been a defacto PR officer on deployments, as I was the G1 rep. Local media came to me looking for answers to their questions about our deployment to their local not very active but might be more active soon military installation)
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone:
Why? The fact that a low level spokesperson did not have details about something neither supports not refutes your implication.
John O
Bloomberg is an effective administrator from what I can see here in the cheap seats, but is also fairly clearly a racist megalo/egomaniac with a serious case of the Hypocritical Napoleonic Syndrome, and so can go fuck himself.
Nothing more need be said.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: Add to that basic mechanism the class distinctions that influence whose those age peers actually are.
Another Holocene Human
@Yatsuno: Accents are not acquired from the parents.
To the chagrin of many parents.
If you go to your kids’ pre-school and you hate the way everyone talks–CONGRATS! Junior will be talking that way too by the time Kindergarten begins.
It’s just a fact of childhood development. 2 year olds are really, really, really tuned into other 2 year olds.
Another Holocene Human
Creole languages were created by children also, too.
Villago Delenda Est
More Newsmax headlines hilarity: Limbaugh, Beck, Savage Lead Charge on Syria
Riiiight. Just like they were first in line to get on the boat to dive into the shit in ‘Nam.
Ruckus
@Goblue72:
This
The only thing that got me was he didn’t sound 15 to my ear. But I’ve been fooled before and learned that first of all it doesn’t matter, and second of all any biases I use in trying to position someone based on their voice is my problem, one I’ve had to fix long ago. I’ve lived in racially mixed areas my whole life(OK some more mixed than others) and I learned long ago that tone, inflection and accents used to be able to be used to tell where someone was from but not for years/decades now. We have world wide communication and that has influenced how many of us speak and what we hear.
Oh and one other thing. If I lived in NYC that ad would sure make me want to vote for his dad, far more than bloomie or any of his cronies.
Another Holocene Human
@John O: Bloomberg is an effective administrator from what I can see here in the cheap seats
So, kinda not that either. Bill Weld level fail:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/report-bares-bloomberg-2-billion-911-debacle-article-1.1072870
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election/gonzalez-bloomberg-lauds-911-audit-called-stupid-article-1.1432452
(Bill Weld hired his buddies at a California engineering firm instead of using competitive bid with local experience in the scoring to dig a tunnel in Boston … Boston, built on a mixture of bedrock and landfill with very, er, unique geology. Their rookie errors cost the state, well, a LOT of money. Oh, and they pissed off working class Somerville, the town unsurprisingly to anyone who lived there bringing the consultants to their knees, wasting several years and a lot more money, although the end result was the Zakim bridge: guess that says unflattering stuff about Cali but, hey!, California’s the first state ever to get slapped with an environmental justice (Title VI) complaint on a rail transit project so go team Cali inequality go!!!)
Comrade Mary
@ruemara: D’oh! Sorry if I sounded as if I was arguing that their was something genetic about accents — of course there isn’t! It’s obviously about social groups and peers. We seem to be finally developing a bit of a Toronto black accent (not in all or even most younger people, but more than I remember from my teens, typically in a few neighbourhoods in the city) because kids are growing up black here with lots of black peers who are collectively shifting away from the way their white peers sound.
In contrast, some centuries-old black communities, like North Preston in Nova Scotia, have accents that are a little more black American than other black communities in Nova Scotia. Most black people in Nova Scotia have the kind of Atlantic accent shared by their white neighbours.
So obviously both regionalism and peer groups (often but not always sorted around race) can influence anyone’s accent. I was under the obvious misapprehension that American accents tended to have a stronger racial component due to many neighbourhoods, schools and social groups within these areas often clustering by race in a way that has been less typical in Canada. Now I know better.
Anya
@Alexandra: Bloomberg is just upset that no one stopped and frisked that little criminal to be yet. I mean, statistics can’t lie.
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: And drinks Snapple. Or even Arizona Iced Tea. Who knows what’s in that Honey Ginseng Green Iced Tea? By the case or gallon on sale at CVS.
the Conster
Why is Bloomberg even opening his fat yap? He’s not even running. What a rich little fucking entitled napoleon he is.
Yatsuno
@Another Holocene Human:
Never said they did. But living in an Italian-American neighbourhood you’d likely pick up certain inflections. And everyone with an Italian surname in NYC has famiglia in Little Italy. Things get picked up.
John O
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m sure there are plenty of examples of Bloomberg Admin fail, just as there with most people running HUGE bureaucracies. It’s an anecdotal reality, I agree, but it does not cover el photo grande.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: The article has confirmation from authorities in two different provinces by the time this story was filed. The spox person can’t even say there was an AQ#3 in the truck?
This beggars belief and is a level of absurdity I would not have expected you to pursue. But, wevs.
They say they killed 10 militants but don’t know enough about them by press time to say a god damned thing about any of them?
Fuck me, but maybe they should not have sent the missile if they weren’t up to date enough to know who they were killing?
And the suggestion that we know exactly who we killed but they didn’t clear even a mediocre sound byte for the press spox person to utter is fucking stupid. They knew this would be instantly reported and scrutinized. If they can’t even be bothered to come up with a reasonable cover soundbyte then what they fuck?
dww44
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, I know it appeals to their preconceived notions of who exactly it is who’s receiving welfare. But, it’s my mission to rebut and refute this stuff when I can. And, this is an influential guy who should know better than get all political in a event like this, albeit it was in HIS store and HE/they were providing the food.
I do plan on confronting him, politely, but I want to be armed with some facts.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: See my #51 to Omnes.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Not politics, but I’ve put a couple of housekeeping posts on my news blog: coming attractions is The Age of Consent (1932), which I’m working on now, plus I pulled all of the Pre-Code movies from this month’s TCM schedule for your convenience. If you can’t link to the blog by clicking on my nym above, let me know and I’ll post the link separately. Once I have a “real” post I’ll let folks know.
scav
While were playing with the stereotypes and Bloombergian analysis, let us pause to concider centenarian violence (107-Year-Old Arkansas Man Killed in Shootout With Police and take a quick vote. Should we be pulling over and frisking all the elderly? Look at all that space they have for drug smuggling and guns in those canes and scooters! We know they’re making the Canada run so it’s international in scope.
Anya
@the Conster: He’s lashing out because his hand picked candidate is having a major fail.
dww44
@Another Holocene Human: Thanks, you’ve give me an idea. I, too, didn’t think this alone would have qualified someone for SS Disability. And, given, how our state is, I don’t think they would have either.
I am going to call the store, ask for the manager, and tell him that I overheard his statement and ask for the sourcing behind it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Also, FYI, comments at my place are heavily moderated at the moment to avoid spammers while I get things set up.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
This is great! I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say on Ladies They Talk About. It has both Barbara Stanwyck and Lillian Roth in it!
Yatsuno
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Look good to me so far!
WereBear
I love the way this young man rocks the ‘fro; I would love to see it come back because I always thought it was a flattering hairstyle. I understand both it and dreadlocks came to be viewed as a “political statement” when both styles are simply a great way of handling hair of that type.
Not only that, it is often the only way of getting any length, since the curl and typical dryness of such hair makes it fragile and prone to breakage.
And of course, I’m guessing it is the hair that is really freaking out conservatives. They get torqued over the stupidest little things.
feebog
His handpicked successor is circling the drain in the polls and his majesty haz a sad.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
It’s not made more rational by repetition.
You’re hardly the only commenter on this blog who makes shit up to conform to preconceived notions or advance an agenda, but you’ve raised it to a high art form.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@John O: On the front lines here. I’m with Halocene Human. Bloomturd is supposed to be a great businessman, yet his admin has squandered hundreds of millions, maybe billions on outside consulting boondoggles. The city stayed afloat only because of the real estate boom of the early 00’s, (lots of transfer and mortgage taxes) followed by the infusion of federal stimulus funds after the crash of ’08.
This is a guy who appointed some nice lady he met a cocktail party to run the school system! Bloomturd also presided over the suspension of habeas corpus during the Republican convention protests of 2004. I know because I was there, trying to get people out of jail who were being held in violation of court orders. I could go on…
Mary G
Pretty horrific story about the treatment of a female Navy cadet who accused classmates of raping her.
WereBear
@dww44: Call your local disability office and ask. I really really really don’t think so; but you can’t quote me. You can quote an official body on the subject.
satby
@dww44: Well, anecdotes are not equal to data, but my sister has MS, it’s currently not responding to medication, she uses a walker, her eyesight has been severely affected for the last year, and she can’t get disability. So that guy is talking out of his ass.
raven
So if a Navy pilot gets his ass shot down we just leave him, no boots to the rescue.
Kay
I tire in general of Bloomberg’s weary “I am the honest broker surrounded by hacks” routine. His money may insulate him from having to kowtow to donors but he’s delusional on evaluating his own brilliant ideas enough to make up for any advantage of that “independence”.
One of the things he pushes nationally is a “market approach” to public schools and the fact is he’s just about average on results. He’s quick to point out a lack of leadership in others but that isn’t the only trap for politicians. Ego and self-involved certainty even in the face of inconvenient facts can be just as bad.
He hasn’t worked any miracles in schools, no matter how many times he and the NYTimes editorial page insist he has. Maybe he should reflect on that.
Poopyman
@gene108:
At first I wondered if it was dubbed. (It’s not.) That kid has a voice for radio.
PsiFighter37
So I’m doing my research on the downballot races – anyone in NYC have some advice on who they think would be good for Manhattan Borough President or Public Advocate? Currently leaning towards Gale Brewer and Daniel Squadron, respectively, but I’m open to switching. The only people I’m disinclined to vote for are Menin in the Borough President race (pretty sure she is a stealth Republican running as a Democrat) and Saujani for Public Advocate, who has done so much to paper over her pathetic 2010 race against my congresswoman (Carolyn Maloney).
For mayor, I’m going with de Blasio, and for comptroller – ugh. I don’t like Stringer at all – he doesn’t really have any good qualifications to be the city’s CFO, and he’s a career ladder-climbing politician who expected the race to be gifted to him. On the other hand, we all know what Spitzer did – but he is definitively more qualified for the role, and I think he’s done plenty of penance for his mistakes (as opposed to Diaper Dave, who never showed any shame). Leaning towards ex-Gov. Steamroller as of now.
Would be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone else.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven:
Only if his dad and granddad were admirals do we commit boots to the ground. Otherwise, he’s own his own.
Yatsuno
@Poopyman: Truth be told he’s got some acting charisma as well. Not to influence his career choices, but he definitely has presence.
Ben Franklin
@Corner Stone:
No idea who we’re even killing.
What matters is USG prestige and credibility. Serves them right for crossing that line.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, you know how I feel about Walnuts but one of his sons is/was Marine infantry.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
This.
Taibbi’s teabagger article from a couple years ago mentioned listening to a gaggle of Kentucky teabaggers grousing about death panels and how things would work under Obamacare. They concluded that they’d be asking for your race before deciding how to treat you, “white men need not apply,” and if you were an illegal alien you’d get the best treatment because then the death panelists wouldn’t ask any questions.
If you live in their world in which people just know that the deck is being stacked against them by dark forces of Political Correctness who hate them because they’re white, it passes the smell test. So does that story about tatooed jobless people getting special treatment. This is how people used to be able to believe that the Jews controlled society, even in an age when the WASP upper class was actively working to keep them out of the higher centers of power.
shelly
This comment mystified me. Somebody get his Hizzoner a new dictionary.
dww44
@Churchlady: @Cacti: @WereBear: @satby:
Thanks to each of your for your input. Your suggestions got my brain cells in gear and I’m gonna do some local research, then contact the guy and will report back to everyone in another open thread in a few days.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I’ve had to do some spokesbotting in the past. One gets cleared to say certain things and that’s it. I did see another version of the AP story where the 1LT noted that NATO is still investigating. FWIW I think crappy PR performance is at least as likely as operational fuck-up for the differences in what is being reported. YMMV.
cckids
@dww44: Yeah, the tattoos? Not getting anyone disability. My son has severe CP; he uses a wheelchair, is non-verbal, has a feeding tube & a colostomy, & is on a respirator. He’s had this condition since birth; he’s 30 now. He does qualify for SS disability, but every 3-5 years we have to have a complete review, so they can justify that he is still disabled. You know, just in case Jesus stopped by & performed a miracle.
Tattoos. Man, conservatives are gullible.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@dww44: As usual, it seems to be twisting an isolated case into a meme, if you can believe this lawyer’s story from 2010:
It doesn’t sound to me like the tattoos were the prime factor, but YMMV.
It gives linkies to the cases, if the lawyer-types want to look at it.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
cckids
@Chris: Adlai Stevenson had it right 60 years ago:
“Not all Republicans are stupid, but most stupid people are Republicans.”
Still true.
rikyrah
@Comrade Mary:
Have you heard his sister?
They sound like two middle-class kids to me.
Patricia Kayden
Awww. I like that commercial. Very mature young man.
Botsplainer
@cckids:
In the low rent portions of the courthouse, you will see all manner of bad ink. Face and throat tats on guys, throat tats on girls, and agglomerations of poorly done images up and down arms that ARE NOT sleeves. I usually refer to those as The Unemployables, and they usually punctuate their shit ink with quarter sized gauges and face metal.
It isn’t that I dislike tats – I’ve got some myself and have some plans for more – it’s that I dislike bad tats. I also think consumers won’t mind multiple ear piercing (or bars) up and down the ear, but when they creep over to the face, they get weird.
rikyrah
what I like about this ad the most is the end with father and son walking together..just look at the faces…Dante is his father with just a more Negroid nose and an Afro (which I love). .. no way Bill could deny that’s his kid.
Suffern ACE
@brent: he’s actually trying to get support for this, but its still crazy. The strategic interest in Syria is that “Russia and Iran are all in”, he criticizes the president for not being all in, but then says if the public is worried that we’ll invade, don’t worry cause we’ll impeach him.” OK. So I’m guessing that the President should fold…
Ben Franklin
I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing this asshole before this morning. Where do they find these Rahm-types describing common-sense as if they had a fookin clue how common they are.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/denis-mcdonough-syria-skepticism-96428.html
shelly
“Why is Bloomberg even opening his fat yap? He’s not even running. ”
********
Ya think once he’s out of office he’ll still take the subway every day?
Jewish Steel
@cckids:
Actually, it was John Stuart Mill.
cckids
@Botsplainer: You’re right, having large tattoos or piercings on or around the face will most definitely hurt your employment prospects. They will not get you on disability. Ever.
Yatsuno
@Suffern ACE: More accurate headline: “Grandpa Walnuts wants to impeach Obummer because he’s still sore after losing five years later.” It’s a bit wordy, I’m still working on it.
PurpleGirl
@shelly: Bloomburg only takes the subway PART of the trip. He is driven to an express station in an SUV and he takes the express down to City Hall Park. Heaven forfend he should walk to the local stop, take the local and then transfer to the express train.
Hal
Dowd is back to talking about Barry. I can’t quite out my finger on it, but her constant use of the name Barry bugs the fuck out of me. It’s like this white entitled upper class woman bestowing a nick name on that cute little black boy she just has to set straight so that he can make something of himself.
Suffern ACE
@Ben Franklin: I known its not politically correct, and I apologize for any this might offend, but do you think the chief of staff might have vampire blood in him? Not the sparkly kind either.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Not asking for classified intel. But if someone’s going to authorize a “precision strike” that kills 15 people you’d think they’d have a blurb ready to roll.
This wasn’t a chance encounter by forces closing and engaging the enemy along a supply route.
Someone said Go and 15 people died. The fact that they can’t even be bothered to give a general toss off summary means maybe they should revisit their Go routines.
Ben Franklin
@Suffern ACE:
Judging from his complexion I think he has to eat soon.
Yatsuno
@Hal: It’s so she can swallow the idea of there possibly being anything but a white man in the White House. Or she’s maybe slightly birfer curious.
ruemara
@Hal: I think you put your finger on it quite well.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
So…if Obama does a limited missile strike he’s weak, indecisive and feckless. But if he puts forward the kind of military force McCain really, truly wants to see then it’s grounds for impeachment?
Do what you want and I’ll slag you for it. Do what I want and I’ll impeach you for it.
Got it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: For quite a while, I have thought that the drone program is counterproductive. Legal, but causing more problems than they are solving. So I have no problems with reining in their use.
@Corner Stone: That’s some catch that catch 22.
PurpleGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Corner Stone: That’s some catch that catch 22.
Yep, that is some Catch 22 and President Obama has been dealing with it since 2008.
gogol's wife
@Hal:
IT MAKES ME SCREAM! Today it’s in the headline. I wrote her a message that said, “The first name of the President of the United States is not Barry. It’s Barack.”
She is such an embarrassment.
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
And she doesn’t see how it makes her sound just like Sarah Palin. Or maybe that’s her goal.
John O
@La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes):
Yeah, but that all relates to my ego/megalomaniac comment. LOL.
rikyrah
@Hal:
that’s EXACTLY why it bugs you…you nailed it
Jax6655
@Comrade Mary: @satby:
Trying not to be too offended here, and I want to think you two have good intentions. However, I’m AA female nearly 60 years old. From Michigan, sound like I’m from Michigan. So does the majority of my very large family.
Yes, I’ve shocked many [prejudiced] job interviewers, clients etc, by my voice over the phone and then seeing me in person during my entire life. That’s their stereotype, not mine.
Please, does PBO speak ebonics? or have a Kenyan accent? Are Bill Cosby, Tamron Hall, Oprah, etc. etc. talking white??
And why do you wonder or care if he code-switches??? Does he just HAVE to “talk Black” because of some belief you have??? Why do you think this shouldn’t be how he sounds??
BTW–I rock a pretty large Afro my damn self!!
mai naem
I used to like Bloomberg. Keep in mind, this is a non NY’r so I wasn’t really seeing the effect of his governing. Even when I disagreed with some of his stuff in his second term, I thought he was a decent mayor trying to do what he thought was best for the city. But, jeezus, the last couple of years – are you fucking kidding me? I can guarantee you, if DeBlasio was married to an Asian woman and had a anglo/asian biracial looking kid who did a similar ad, Bloomberg would have never come out and said it was a racist ad aimed at Asians.
@PsiFighter37: I get tweets from Reshma Saujani who’s running for Public Advocate because she founded Girls Who Code. I don’t know her positions or anything but she comes across as a standard Dem. She’s got Wall Street experience but not sure what kind but she’s new to elected office..
PsiFighter37
@mai naem: She ran to Maloney’s right in 2010 – and, at that time, emphasized the fact that she was a hedge fund lawyer who would be able to work with financial firms who were getting short shrift. She also said Maloney’s experience was a bad thing, which I have little toleration for.
Not surprisingly, she lost 81-19 (or something like that) in the primary – and clearly she didn’t win the votes of her target audience (I work in finance and voted against her without a second thought). You’ll notice how little she talks about that portion of her ‘experience’ in the race for Public Advocate.
Comrade Mary
@rikyrah: Yes, I have heard her. They both sound completely like what I would expect from any Canadian kid of any race in the same social class (well, minus the Canadian raising and handling of some diphthongs) but as I said, I really misunderstood the relative weighting of various factors on American accents.
I’ve learned a lot from this thread, but I still have some questions, because I’m still a bit confused about the breadth of American accents.
Maybe my confusion is because I often hear a slightly different cadence in black middle-class American speech that I don’t usually hear in white middle-class American speech. This was the difference I expected to hear in Dante, not something wildly different. I didn’t mean that I expected that he would have some kind of Southern accent or that he would sound northern / urban working class. I couldn’t hear that slight shift in cadence I associate with the American black middle class — which might be completely imaginary, but which I could swear I have noticed and marked.
So am I completely imagining or exaggerating my perceptions of a middle class American accent, or does it really exist, even though not all middle class black Americans have it? How clueless am I?
Comrade Mary
@Jax6655: Oh, I am SO sorry. I have really been stepping in it here, and I really was doing my best not to be stupid and insulting, but I obviously failed.
As I mentioned above, I was thinking of a slight difference in cadence I have thought I have heard in middle class black Americans, not a wholesale different accent. I may be Canadian, but I really, really am not so ignorant as to think that once your skin is THIS dark, you suddenly talk in exactly the same way as all other people of that shade.
But I obviously gave that impression. Really, really sorry.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Jax6655:
I think it’s possible that Comrade Mary is hearing our (American) accents slightly differently than we are because she is NOT an American — she’s Canadian. And though we in America like to pretend that Canadians are just like us, the accent(s) are different enough between the two countries that it’s possible that she’s hearing something too subtle for us native speakers of American to catch.
(Just to be clear, I am not AA and don’t think I’ve heard the difference she hears, but I can probably pick things out of Canadian accents that she can’t because I don’t hear them in everyday life.)
Comrade Mary
NONE of these people speak “ebonics”. NONE of these people have Kenyan accents.
Bill Cosby, Tamryn Hall, Oprah and other media personalities DO NOT talk white.
Did the late Peter Jennings sound pretty American/Californian to you and me and a lot of people? Probably. But his “neutral newsreader accent” was largely Canadian, even after years in the States.
I can listen to This American Life or Q and hear Americans and Canadians from various backgrounds being interviewed. I can usually spot the Canadians pretty well (Do you say “fur” instead of “for”? Hello, Torontonian!) and some “neutral sounding” Americans have suddenly tipped me off because they take about 30 seconds to say the word “about”. I can hear that really stretched diphthong in both white and black Americans (just as you can hear white and black Canadians squeeze it until you think we say “aboot”).
I just meant I usually hear, at some point, stretched vowels in any American, from any region, and I can hear a subtle difference in cadence in black middle class Americans.
scav
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I was wondering if it was more due to getting an idea of our accents from reputation and TV (where they play up stereotypes) rather than being down in the actual mosh pit and seeing all the exceptions. Judging the UK from a few vacations and what the BBC carries is probably a mistake. (I think there’s a lot less Yorkshire, for one thing and I’ve a sneaking suspicion that the accent I associate with untrustworthy cop is actually Manchester).
firebrandpa
This ad for Philly mayor Michael Nutter for his first run in 2007 was very effective. It starred his teenage daughter Olivia and at the time was hailed as a great introduction for the candidate to a wider audience. I wonder if DeBlasio’s campaign was influenced by it?
Jax6655
@scav:
This is a good point.
@Comrade Mary:
Thank you for the apology though that wasn’t exactly my purpose. I don’t think you meant any offense and I really wanted to point out the error of assumptions about how Black people speak and how offensive those assumptions can be.
Even this parsing about how middle-class Blacks speak is a troublesome. It’s still trying to put AAs in some sort of linguistic/cultural box that simply isn’t accurate.
And @satby: FWIW? Your so-called “lilly-white” kids are not code-switching.
Code-switching is a form of survival, that involves suppressing more than just an accent, used by AAs in companies, neighborhoods, elevators, to keep white folks from being afraid of the scary Black person. Or to keep themselves from being shot by a cop during Stop and Frisk.
What your kids are doing is appropriating a way of speaking that they think is Black culture for street cred, or their own amusement.
Lynn Dee
@Hal:
Yes. That’s exactly what it’s like. And you can just feel how pleased she is with herself.
Comrade Mary
@Jax6655: Thanks, Jax6655. No matter what my intentions have been, I can see how I’ve just been stomping heedlessly all over the place.
You’re right: what I think I hear and discussing it is a way of placing people in a box. I’m surprised this is such a blind spot for me, because I freak out on behalf of anyone, including friends and family, who get the whole “you have such a neat accent / where are you from / oh, you look so exotic / where are your parents from” bullshit.
Stopping now, scolding myself, and getting back to work. Not one of my finest moments.
Jax6655
@Comrade Mary:
You once were blind but now you see. :)
Actually I disagree. I admire your curiosity, and luckily BJ is a safe space to ask your questions. And hopefully, to gain some enlightenment.
Peace.
Ruckus
@Comrade Mary:
I somewhat disagree with something you just said about wondering where someone is from. I find it immensely interesting where people are from and how they ended up where they are. Their manner of speech and accents and language are part of them. I only once feel that someone was trying to speak to me in a manner that would try to influence my reception to them. Frequently they can give me insights about where I am, and open my eyes to things around me that I may take for granted. I think it is important to understand how to approach the subject though, to be sure you are being really interested in them as individual people, not as representative of a group. I have met people from many parts of the country and world and I find it interesting why they find where I live interesting as well.
rikyrah
Alongside His Family, Bill de Blasio Denounces Bloomberg Comments
De Blasio responds to the mayor’s interview in New York Magazine. “Twenty years ago, my dad did not know he was running for mayor and did not seek to marry a black woman to put on display,” says the frontrunner’s daughter, Chiara.
At a rally in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood, Bill de Blasio responded to a recent interview with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the man he hopes to succeed in City Hall, calling his charges of racism “very unfortunate and inappropriate.”
Just days before Tuesday’s New York City primary, Bloomberg told New York Magazine, in an interview published Saturday morning, that de Blasio has run a “class-warfare and racist” campaign because of the way in which he has used “his family to gain support,” the outgoing three-term mayor said.
De Blasio, the late-breaking frontrunner in this year’s crowded primary contest, stood alongside his wife, longtime activist Chirlane McCray, who is black, and his daughter, 18-year-old Chiara, at a packed get-out-the-vote rally Saturday afternoon, where he denounced Bloomberg’s comments.
“I think we have run a campaign about the ideas, about the issues, about how to move this city forward,” said de Blasio, who led a recent Quinnipiac poll with 43 percent of the Democratic vote. “I’m very proud of that. I’m exceedingly proud of my family, and as you’ll know meeting every member of my family, they are each and every one strong and independent and make their own decisions.”
“We all have proceeded as a family together,” he said. “It’s been an extraordinarily positive experience.”
De Blasio, calling the interview “very unfortunate and inappropriate,” said he hoped Bloomberg would “reconsider what he said.”
After the rally, where de Blasio appeared with Ken Thompson, a candidate for Brooklyn District attorney, his daughter Chiara told reporters she and her mother and brother, 16-year-old Dante, participated in the campaign on their own terms. “My mom, my brother, and I are all capable of making our own decisions,” she said. “Twenty years ago, my dad did not know he was running for mayor and did not seek to marry a black woman to put on display.”
The de Blasios have appeared on the campaign trail with the candidate often, and Dante filmed an effective, much-talked-about direct-to-camera television ad earlier this year. When a reporter asked whether de Blasio has used his family as “a prop” during the campaign, McCray responded sharply. “Do I look like an inanimate object? I walk, I talk, I make my own decisions,” she said.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rubycramer/alongside-his-family-bill-de-blasio-denounces-mic
James Parente
In my humble opinion one of the most cringworthy comments ever is : “To hell with the politicians, we need to put more businessmen in office!” People of business are not out to represent anyone less than another businessman. Middle class? Poor? Not in a businessclown’s vocabulary. Bloomberg is one of the worst offenders but he has very good self-marketing skills.
gelfling545
@dww44: This is complete nonsense. Disability payments are awarded on one’s physical/mental inability to work, not on one’s ability to get hired or even the presence or absence of such work in your area. Nothing about a tattoo would in any way impede one’s physical/mental ability to do work.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gelfling545: Please see #81 above. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Older
@Comrade Mary: It’s pretty much regional in the US. What a lot of people on the West Coast mistake for a “black” accent is really an Oakland (CA) accent. I have an adopted (black) son originally from Oakland, and I used to work with a white guy from Oakland. They sounded exactly alike over the phone. My son called once after a longish time out of touch, and started out “Guess who this is.” I replied, “Well, I know (A.C.) from work wouldn’t say ‘guess who’, so it must be (son).”
He said, “You work with a black guy?” I said, “No, I work with a guy from Oakland.” Son said “I always thought I had a black accent.” I said “There’s no such thing. We talk the way people talk where we grew up.”
And that’s pretty much how it is. I sound like someone from the middle of the country who moved to the west coast early on, and that’s who I am.
I have to say, btw, that I love the fros on the de Blasio kids. They look like they wish they coulda been hippies. Let’s see, that was how long ago? Fifty years?! Are you sure?
stinger
@Patricia Kayden: I especially like his use of the subjunctive — which, along with “whom”, seems to be disappearing.
Bruce Webb
@Comrade Mary: Well I would say that almost everyone code switches all the time. Couple of examples.
I was a West Coast college dropout who joined the Navy as an enlisted man (i.e. non-officer). I quickly learned to speak a version of English which we can call “Navy” which had a largely different vocabulary. And not all innocuous like ‘deck’ for ‘floor’ and ‘ladder’ for ‘stairs’ but also ‘shitter’ for toilet and ‘shitcan’ for waste basket and the use of the F-ing word as an all purpose adverb. Also most all speakers of ‘Navy’ do so in an accent with origins south of the Mason-Dixon line but east of the Appalachians and North of Texas and Florida. Which is to say that everyone in the Navy can at will speak like Bill Clinton before he decamped for Washington D.C. or for that matter Yale before that. Yet even for speakers of ‘Navy’ who spoke using much the same language and accent with their friends back in Arkansas and western Tennessee even before they joined the Navy to ‘See the World ‘knew better than to use that language in their grandmother’s parlour or (what for most amounted to the same thing) in church. That is only the most ignorant folk in any town don’t know how to do some verbal code switiching.
Another example is a friend of mine at Berkeley in the 80’s. He was a grad student in Applied Math at one of the most high powered Math programs in the country. And you can bet that when he was with his colleagues there he spoke fluent ‘Academic Seminar’. But I knew him from a local bar where we did a lot of drinking and playing dice and we mostly spoke a version of ‘West Coast Bar’. But he was also black and had attended a historically black college as an undergrad and was a major participant in a historically black fraternity. Which put him in a fairly upper class privileged position in the black community, this guy didn’t even pretend to be poor. Yet when I attended a party at his house where the majority of guests were fellow brothers of his Frat all of these by now black professionals who by and large were perfectly comfortable speaking with fellow lawyers and doctors in ‘Business Speech’ easily swithed to what can only be described as ‘Urban Argot’. Or if you like ‘Ghetto’ in the terms we used back then. Now was that an ‘affectation’? I submit not. More like a ‘Comfort Zone’.
Now neither I when I joined the Navy or my friend when he joined his buddies at a party forgot our native command of ‘Academic Seminar’. Just as candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008 didn’t forget how to speak ‘Yale Law’ or ‘DC Insider’ when she addressed audiences in Arkansas and instead sounded like them. Because from an important perspective that was only being polite. Now this can be overdone and so drift into pandering. But as the song goes: “It Ain’t Necessarily So”. Sometimes it is perfectly appropriate for a Captain in the Navy (equiv of an Army Colonel) to tell a subordinate “Throw that crap in the shitcan” in the normal course of business. And not because Annapolis taught him to speak that same way when attending a course at the Naval War College.
dww44
@cckids: @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Thanks.