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You are here: Home / After twenty years, he still grieves

After twenty years, he still grieves

by DougJ|  May 20, 20143:46 pm| 137 Comments

This post is in: Green Balloons

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Why are conservatives’ articles about universities (this is about sexual assault but implicitly about college sluts and feminazi administrators) so filled with out-of-date cultural references?

Now, the term “rape” or “sexual assault” is thrown around almost effortlessly, accusations easily made and lives easily ruined.

[….]

Watch the Designing Women episode concerning the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy. The show’s theme? Only a sexist Neanderthal would question Hill!

The Borking/high-tech lynching of Clarence Thomas took place in 1991. Fair enough, it’s still viewed as important, but Designing Women? I vaguely remember some Clinton connection that made wingers hate the show, but it went off the air in 1993 and it’s not like we’re talking about Cheers or Seinfeld here.

Update. Speaking of relevant popular culture…take that libs!

The Left loves to paint a caricature — seen in countless films and shows (for example, the frat boys in American Horror Story: Coven) of a smirking college male who deliberately drugs and rapes a girl.

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Previous Post: « Moore, OK. May 20th, One Year On.
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Reader Interactions

137Comments

  1. 1.

    The Other Chuck

    May 20, 2014 at 3:50 pm

    What’d they say about it on Golden Girls and Matlock?

  2. 2.

    scav

    May 20, 2014 at 3:52 pm

    More relevant cites from the we is cool patrol!

  3. 3.

    justawriter

    May 20, 2014 at 3:53 pm

    Because nothing important happened after his dog up and died?

  4. 4.

    mai naem mobile

    May 20, 2014 at 3:53 pm

    Harry Thomason(sp) and his wife produced designing women were old ark pals of the Clinton’s and also prodused the “man from hope” film. I think they produced something forthe 2012 convention. I used to love designing women. Who would have thunk that 2 of the actresses were right wingers?

  5. 5.

    beltane

    May 20, 2014 at 3:53 pm

    It’s not just that they remember Designing Women, it’s that they’re still bent out of shape over an episode that must have been aired almost a quarter century ago and which has not been seen since.

  6. 6.

    DougJ

    May 20, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    @The Other Chuck:

    I would argue that with the snickers-driven Betty White renaissance that’s taken place, Golden Girls is more culturally relevant than Designing Women.

  7. 7.

    aimai

    May 20, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    Christ, its like reading about Roman religious rituals which were so ancient at the time of the Republic that they were already spoken in a language which was incomprehensible to the participants. These people are so frozen in time and unable to learn new things that they are reduced to throwing up words and images in some form of weird cultural bricolage, like someone trying to construct a political platform from debris found at a flea market.

  8. 8.

    dubo

    May 20, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    Watch the Designing Women episode concerning the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy. The show’s theme? Only a sexist Neanderthal would question Hill!

    The best part is the implication that we should be frothing in outrage at this instead of saying “Yes, and rightly so”

  9. 9.

    DougJ

    May 20, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    @justawriter:

    Yup! Great song, right?

  10. 10.

    aimai

    May 20, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    @mai naem mobile: On the plus side they had that gay black guy.

  11. 11.

    Roger That

    May 20, 2014 at 3:56 pm

    Golden Girls had a pro-Anita Hill bent while Matlock didn’t really take a stand. However, Manimal devoted a two-part episode to it and Newhart took a jab at the Judiciary Committee by creating the characters of Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.

  12. 12.

    SatanicPanic

    May 20, 2014 at 3:57 pm

    Conservatives are stuck in the 80s, which is further evidence that it was the worst decade ever.

    OTOH Annie Potts is awesome

  13. 13.

    FormerSwingVoter

    May 20, 2014 at 3:57 pm

    …so filled with out-of-date cultural references?

    Because recent references are much easier to check. You can talk shit about Designing Women right now and everyone will just assume you’re saying something true. Talk about a show that’s currently on the air and people will check it out and ask those involved and possibly learn the context involved.

    It’s the same reason they talk about history so much, and why it so rarely resembles what actually happened. Credibility via lack of opposition.

  14. 14.

    Hunter Gathers

    May 20, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    Designing Women must have some deep, everlasting pull for Conservatives. I wonder if it has something to do with the show being about four white women with Southern accents bossing around the one black guy.

  15. 15.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 4:00 pm

    @justawriter: Strange comment. I guess you’re trying to be funny and failing.

  16. 16.

    dubo

    May 20, 2014 at 4:00 pm

    “Women are constantly throwing around the term “sexual assault” willy-nilly, accusations easily made and lives easily ruined. As evidence, I present this man who unquestionably sexually assaulted a woman by any definition, and was awarded a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”

  17. 17.

    raven

    May 20, 2014 at 4:00 pm

    @DougJ: Written by the great Texas Troubadour from Buffalo, NY!

  18. 18.

    aimai

    May 20, 2014 at 4:00 pm

    @dubo: In fact she was questioned by a half dozen neanderthals, IIRC.

  19. 19.

    Rich (In Name Only) in Reno

    May 20, 2014 at 4:02 pm

    Yes, but like Jesus’ holy wounds, those of Conservatives never heal.

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    May 20, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    Psst, hey conservatives, let me tell you a secret: Murphy Brown had that baby without a husband so that she could get gay married.

  21. 21.

    Dr. Loveless

    May 20, 2014 at 4:06 pm

    He should have gone with a Murphy Brown reference. That shit never gets old.

  22. 22.

    cleek

    May 20, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    @ulee:
    not so strange.
    http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Mr-Bojangles-lyrics-Nina-Simone/A202322BD741A283482569A1002AB444

  23. 23.

    Ash Can

    May 20, 2014 at 4:07 pm

    Now, the term “rape” or “sexual assault” is thrown around almost effortlessly, accusations easily made and lives easily ruined.

    Because, don’tcha know, as soon as a female utters the word, everyone just falls over themselves in the mad rush to believe her and help her.

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    May 20, 2014 at 4:08 pm

    I remember an episode of Quincy where Jack Klugman was falsely accused of groping by a vindictive co-ed (a young Joyce DeWitt) trying to get her boyfriend’s attention. Howard from Mayberry RFD played the no-nonsense Dean who helped Quincy get to the bottom of things

    I looked at the link to see where this was from, I am a bit disappointed it wasn’t Jonah Goldberg, I was betting on Derbyshire (is he still with us?). Never heard of this guy.

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 4:08 pm

    DougJ, in fairness, the writer did manage to get in an American Horror Story: Coven reference as well. And damn you, I can’t believe you got me to click on an NRO link. You bastard.

  26. 26.

    Cluttered Mind

    May 20, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    The worst part of it to me is not that they’re stuck in the 80s and constantly use very outdated cultural references, but that they seem to assume that liberals are too. The one connecting thread in just about all the conservatives I’ve had the misfortune of talking politics with is that they all seem to assume that liberal = hippie = 1960s and 70s stoner with unkempt hair and bad hygiene. They clearly have no idea who liberals actually are and what they actually believe. It’s difficult to argue with someone when it’s clear before too long that they aren’t actually talking to you, they’re talking to their fantasy idea of a liberal planted in their brains by right wing media.

  27. 27.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    I just listened to it on youtube. It’s so good it gave me the chills. But I’ve stopped taking my Prozac so I’m bound to return to the highs and lows. Prozac is helpful but it takes away the deep emotions.

  28. 28.

    Penus

    May 20, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    Designing Women was the shit. I used to watch it all the time with my mom. Bernice was my favorite character.

  29. 29.

    scav

    May 20, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    @Rich (In Name Only) in Reno: In the truly devout, the wounds spontaneously erupt, like stigmata. They get together and compare blussures. Icons of Ronnie have been known to weep blood and his profile emerges by free-market sorting processes in bowls of mixed jelly beans.

  30. 30.

    boatboy_srq

    May 20, 2014 at 4:13 pm

    @dubo: Indeed.

    That and the

    accusations easily made and lives easily ruined

    bit. Because the only lives whose ruination matters are the men’s once the women make their accusations.

  31. 31.

    boatboy_srq

    May 20, 2014 at 4:14 pm

    @Rich (In Name Only) in Reno: D’you ever get the feeling that FundiEvangelist Teahadism is merely stigmata envy?

  32. 32.

    Suffern ACE

    May 20, 2014 at 4:14 pm

    @mai naem mobile: Designing women played a role in mainstreaming the career of Rush Limbaugh. Back in the late 80s when he was still “controversial”, they had him on to spar with Dixie Carter, but the moral of the story was that he was really charming and we could all get along because of that.

  33. 33.

    Suffern ACE

    May 20, 2014 at 4:17 pm

    @Cluttered Mind: Ah. It seems like just yesterday that some liberal was praising Jane Fonda and spitting on soldiers. That was back before we lost our innocence and the Simpsons came on the air.

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne

    May 20, 2014 at 4:19 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    And damn you, I can’t believe you got me to click on an NRO link. You bastard.

    And you mocked content warnings. Kidding!

  35. 35.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 4:20 pm

    @justawriter: Sorry. I think I missed your point. Dogs leaving us will upset me and make me reactive.

  36. 36.

    Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity)

    May 20, 2014 at 4:20 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    I would be perfectly happy to crucify any Teahadis who feel that they could be better and happier people afterwards. Hell, I’ll even donate the labor and since they’ve always got a variety of personal crosses handy that ought to keep the costs down.

  37. 37.

    ericblair

    May 20, 2014 at 4:24 pm

    @Cluttered Mind:

    The worst part of it to me is not that they’re stuck in the 80s and constantly use very outdated cultural references, but that they seem to assume that liberals are too.

    And Jane Fonda Chappaquiddick to you too, bucko. That nice shiny bubble of self-reinforcing bullshit done broke off from reality as a whole, picking up a whole lot of half-remembered mostly nonsense about the 1950s, dropped the gearshift in R and floored it. It’s a wibbly wobbly timey-wimey thing.

  38. 38.

    SatanicPanic

    May 20, 2014 at 4:25 pm

    @Cluttered Mind: They missed the lesson in delivering insults that focuses on knowing one’s target. They think “get a job project-dweller!” is a clever burn when it’s really just bemusing to someone who doesn’t live in the projects or has a job.

  39. 39.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    May 20, 2014 at 4:26 pm

    @Suffern ACE:

    Ah. It seems like just yesterday that some liberal was praising Jane Fonda and spitting on soldiers. That was back before we lost our innocence and the Simpsons came on the air.

    I’m so liberal that I spat on myself when I returned from Vietnam.

  40. 40.

    flukebucket

    May 20, 2014 at 4:30 pm

    Had never heard of A.J. Delgado. Looked her up thinking she was a he and realized that surely she is not much older than Designing Women herself is she?. I was hoping the author was an old worn out dumb ass but with this much youth Delgado will be referencing irrelevant stuff for years to come. Damn. This shit is never going to go away.

  41. 41.

    dan

    May 20, 2014 at 4:31 pm

    It reminds me of the time that Lenny and Squiggy got locked out of their apartment.

  42. 42.

    Kropadope

    May 20, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    This is why my go-to response to my R dad and my libertarian friend (it’s amazing how new generations pick up this bull) is that they’re blaming Obama for LBJ.

  43. 43.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 4:32 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    And you mocked content warnings.

    No, actually, I did not.

  44. 44.

    DougJ

    May 20, 2014 at 4:35 pm

    @dan:

    Ftw

  45. 45.

    Pogonip

    May 20, 2014 at 4:37 pm

    @ulee: It’s the song lyric. “The dog up and died, he up and died, after 20 years [Mr. Bojangles] still grieves.”

  46. 46.

    Mandalay

    May 20, 2014 at 4:37 pm

    Why are conservatives’ articles about universities…so filled with out-of-date cultural references?

    For the same reason that the Sunday morning shows have ads about incontinence and Viagra. There is a target audience for the product.

    SATSQ.

  47. 47.

    Walker

    May 20, 2014 at 4:37 pm

    It is really interesting seeing the activism to address sexual assault (mis)handling at universities. I think we are approaching a real turning point here. In many liberal arts schools, women outnumber men. Schools that handle this well will benefit from it in the future.

  48. 48.

    flukebucket

    May 20, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    My favorite comment from the article so far

    This article came with no “trigger warnings,” and it has left me absolutely devastated. No, it’s more than that, I actually feel that I’ve been assaulted by this reckless article

    That trigger warning shit is getting a hell of a lot of mileage.

  49. 49.

    Suzanne

    May 20, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    I think Boomers of every political stripe are just loath to realize that they are old and uncool and boring, and that their cultural agenda is not current or revolutionary or exciting. Deal.

  50. 50.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    The only real oppression is that suffered by conservatives, whenever they’re accused of screwing up anything through the true application of their belief system.

    Of course, any slight suffered by a conservative, whether justified or not, must be nurtured like an oyster nurtures a pearl.

  51. 51.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 4:42 pm

    @Pogonip: Yes, I know. Thank you.

  52. 52.

    boatboy_srq

    May 20, 2014 at 4:46 pm

    @Morzer (this is your final trigger warning, do not pass go if you have issues with depictions of Morzers engaging in Morzer-related activity): I hope you’re selling tickets to that…

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 4:48 pm

    @flukebucket:

    Looked her up thinking she was a he

    She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
    Said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side

  54. 54.

    Comrade Dread

    May 20, 2014 at 4:48 pm

    Fair enough, it’s still viewed as important, but Designing Women?

    Sure, you and I have moved on, but they keep a list of everyone who’s ever insulted them or made them feel bad. It’s in a scratched up Peechee notebook, and they take it out now and again while listening to their Ted Nugent records, vowing that one day they’ll all pay, when the government fails and they’ve gone Galt that they’ll look down upon the masses crying out to save them and they’ll say, “No.”

  55. 55.

    Belafon

    May 20, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    @flukebucket: The internet can lay waste to a meme just as fast as it can create them.

  56. 56.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    BTW – Bork didn’t get “Borked”, the fucker got rejected, like me trying to play one on one with LeBron James and driving in for a layup. I’d eat the ball.

    That’s what happened to that mendacious, cringing, cowardly piece of shit.

  57. 57.

    Anoniminous

    May 20, 2014 at 4:52 pm

    Why are those Bolsheviks Ronald Coleman and Jane Wyatt getting a walk for their 1937 commie propaganda film Lost Horizon?

  58. 58.

    justawriter

    May 20, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    @DougJ: Yep, love that song. No karaoke night is complete without it.

  59. 59.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 4:57 pm

    @Comrade Dread: Well, culture doesn’t just start and stop. I remember being 13 and seeing a Ted Nugent album cover with a woman on a platter with a hand grenade in her mouth. I thought–now that’s pretty fucked up.

  60. 60.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 4:58 pm

    @Comrade Dread:

    It’s in a scratched up Peechee notebook…

    I was going to say Scooby Doo trapper keeper with “Mrs Ronald Reagan” written 50 times on the cover with a Sharpie marker.

  61. 61.

    catclub

    May 20, 2014 at 4:59 pm

    @Botsplainer: Exactly. he got the famous uperdown vote, and went down by a substantial margin.

  62. 62.

    Citizen_X

    May 20, 2014 at 5:00 pm

    @Kropadope:

    they’re blaming Obama for LBJ.

    “Did Obama shoot President Kennedy? Fox News uncovers evidence for a shocking new theory, after the break.”

  63. 63.

    gogol's wife

    May 20, 2014 at 5:01 pm

    @DougJ:

    Except that it slanders the real Bojangles, who was never a drunk in a jail but a brilliant dancer.

    @aimai:

    Whatever happened to him? Meshach Taylor, I think. He was funny. They all were.

  64. 64.

    J.D. Rhoades

    May 20, 2014 at 5:01 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    “Borked” has taken on a connotation of being unfairly attacked, usually for personal foibles. That didn’t happen to Bork. His actual views were examined and found to not be what the Senate wanted in a Supreme Court justice. Funny, though…Bork was Mr. “No Right to Privacy,” yet the wingnuts now are screaming about government invading that very right.

  65. 65.

    Kropadope

    May 20, 2014 at 5:03 pm

    @Citizen_X: Obama did shoot Kennedy, and he created an alibi by placing his birth announcement in a Hawaii newspaper.

  66. 66.

    g

    May 20, 2014 at 5:04 pm

    Why are conservatives’ articles … so filled with out-of-date cultural references?

    Because they just can’t stop holding a grudge.

  67. 67.

    ? Martin

    May 20, 2014 at 5:05 pm

    @Walker:

    In many liberal arts schools, women outnumber men.

    In most schools women outnumber men. But that doesn’t mean anything. In most schools men vastly outnumber women in positions that set policy and priorities. That’s not to say that you can’t get a group of men to prioritize this, but it’s going to be more work, and their solutions may not be particularly good solutions, and there’s about a 0% chance that they’d turn over the whole task to a committee of nothing but women.

    The willingness to do so (even in the abstract) tells you pretty much all you need to know.

  68. 68.

    boatboy_srq

    May 20, 2014 at 5:07 pm

    @Citizen_X: JFK? I’m surprised they haven’t blamed him for shooting McKinley and letting that Soshulist TR into office to preside over trustbusting, the Death Tax, the original Progressivism and other horrors.

  69. 69.

    Kropadope

    May 20, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    @boatboy_srq:

    I’m surprised they haven’t blamed him for shooting McKinley and letting that Soshulist TR into office to preside over trustbusting, the Death Tax, the original Progressivism and other horrors.

    They haven’t?

  70. 70.

    ? Martin

    May 20, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    @g:

    Because they just can’t stop holding a grudge.

    No, it’s because they’re old. And if the author isn’t old, he’s at least smart enough to know that his audience is.

    The near term future of the GOP is a casket. And that’s a problem they don’t know how to deal with because the party leaders and the billionaires controlling them are every bit as old and casket-bound.

  71. 71.

    J.D. Rhoades

    May 20, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    @aimai:

    I dunno about Meshach Taylor, but the character wasn’t gay. He got married in one of the later seasons. I read somewhere that if Delta Burke hadn’t left, they were going to have a plot where she and Anthony got together.

  72. 72.

    Bobby Thomson

    May 20, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    @mai naem mobile:

    Who would have thunk that 2 of the actresses were right wingers?

    Citation needed. Arthur, McClanahan, and White are/were definitely not.

    ETA: I’m an idiot. Forgot you were talking about a different show I never watched.

  73. 73.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 5:10 pm

    @J.D. Rhoades:

    Funny, though…Bork was Mr. “No Right to Privacy,” yet the wingnuts now are screaming about government invading that very right.

    For four decades, the forced birthers have treated Blackmun’s “penumbra of privacy” in Roe as a joke. They’ve scoffed at it, laughed at it, sneered at it, mocked it. Their newfound concern is laughable.

  74. 74.

    srv

    May 20, 2014 at 5:13 pm

    You people just don’t understand that Conservative Culture never goes out of date like your soy latte creamer and is the One Truth.

    Besides their relative interpretation of the New Testament.

  75. 75.

    Hal

    May 20, 2014 at 5:15 pm

    The Golden Girls is very relevant to today’s world. They had episode themes ranging from gay right and marriage, to unfair immigration policy, HIV/AIDS, poverty and homelessness, elder abuse, sexism, racism and age discrimination.

    Bea Arthur reportedly didn’t like the more overt political references in the show like George H. Bush because she thought they would date the show that would otherwise have issues relevant for years after the show ended.

  76. 76.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 5:17 pm

    @Botsplainer: The penumbras and emanations originated with Douglas in Griswold.

    /pedant.

  77. 77.

    Hungry Joe

    May 20, 2014 at 5:17 pm

    1) I heard that “bojangles” was a general term for a (Negro?) song & dance/tap-dance guy, and that’s how Bill Robinson got the nickname. The song didn’t refer to him directly. Not sure about that, though.

    2) “Dog up and died/he up and died/After twenty years he still grieves” is the saddest lyric ever written. I can’t bear to listen to it/have to listen to it/tear up when I listen to it.

    3) I was once in an elevator with Bork and his wife. Wyndham Hotel, New York, mid-1990s. Just the three of us. “Terminator”-like, the following options appeared on my mental screen: (a) hit him; (b) look right through him as if he were just some ordinary, nameless old dude on the elevator. I chose (b).

  78. 78.

    sharl

    May 20, 2014 at 5:20 pm

    @Roger That: ~~~~ +1 ~~~~

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    May 20, 2014 at 5:20 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    They’ve scoffed at it, laughed at it, sneered at it, mocked it.

    But now it’s their privacy they’re worried about, so it suddenly matters.

  80. 80.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 5:22 pm

    @Hungry Joe:

    “Dog up and died/he up and died/After twenty years he still grieves”

    This lyric from Steve Goodman’s The Dutchman gives it a run for its money:

    Long ago, I used to be a young man
    And dear Margaret remembers that for me.

  81. 81.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 5:24 pm

    I never had a pet rock but whoever came up with the idea deserves every dollar he made.

  82. 82.

    Amir Khalid

    May 20, 2014 at 5:31 pm

    @ulee:
    Pet rocks are a terrible idea. No matter how nicely you ask, they just won’t play with you.

  83. 83.

    Suffern ACE

    May 20, 2014 at 5:32 pm

    I do have to agree that things are getting out of controll. Did you know there was a lady who sued McDonald’s for $320M in todays dollars and won because she spilled her own coffee? Out of control lawyers are killing industry.

  84. 84.

    justawriter

    May 20, 2014 at 5:32 pm

    @Kropadope:

    I’m surprised they haven’t blamed him for shooting McKinley and letting that Soshulist TR into office to preside over trustbusting, the Death Tax, the original Progressivism and other horrors.

    They haven’t?

    Ain’t that the truth. In a facebook thread a few days ago a winger demanded I apologize for Woodrow Wilson being a racist and admit that African Americans should all be Republicans.

  85. 85.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 5:33 pm

    @Amir Khalid: They are good for people who feel that pet turtles require too much interaction and exercise.

  86. 86.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 5:35 pm

    Conservative canards you need to remember:

    1. Rome fell because the pagan Romans were sinful, lustful, drunken people.
    2. the Crusades were righteous efforts about Jesus.
    3. The Renaissance was about the Jesus-y efforts to restore art and beauty.
    4. Indigenous Americans weren’t that numerous when Europeans came along, and didn’t deserve the continent anyway, because they were violent to each other.
    5. Puritans were hard working, honest, and not oppressive toward anyone who didn’t toe the same religious line. That little regicide in England wasn’t meaning anything.
    6. The Founding Fathers were all pure of motivation, and of one mind.
    7. Slavery would have died out and was on its way out at the time of the Civil War.
    8. The Civil War was about Yankees wanting tariffs, not about the slavery in each of the articles of secession.
    9. Confederate leadership was honest and pure in their wishes, the military leaders true patriots, and the average Copnfederate soldier didn’t have slaves.
    10. Confederate soldiers fought not because they were propagandized to and led by the planter class, but because they were fighting for their states.
    11. There was World War I and the doughboys that we don’t talk about, although it changed the face of the world and introduced modern warfare to civilian populations.
    12. Damn Roosevelt should have left things alone and let the Market sort things out.
    13. Government stimulus does nothing to make an economy work.
    14. Despite government stimulus doing nothing to make an economy work, going to the government stimulus in massive defense buildups officially ended the Depression cycle.
    15. World War II was won because We were willing to inflict massive collateral casualties, costs be damned, in order to win.
    16. Strategic indiscriminate bombing proved useful.
    17, Truman lost China by not being tough.
    18. The South would eventually grant civil rights to blacks, whose leaders were all communists who hate everything good and right about America.
    19 Seriously, why are you pushing this civil rights thing? Southern whites are good people who will do the right thing.
    20. Vietnam was lost because We didn’t indiscriminately kill enough of the bad guys – Diem wasn’t great, be wasn’t a commie.
    21. Nixon didn’t do what anybody else didn’t do.
    22. Carter gave that gay ass malaise speech and ruined America. Real Americans don’t worry about conservation.
    23. You killed our liberty by taking away our right to systematically oppress colored people. We told you we’d have gotten around to it. Maybe this Reagan guy can talk some states rights from the place where the police conspired with the Klan to kill a cowardly group of kids (including a Northern Jew, you know how they are) just 16 years ago.

  87. 87.

    jl

    May 20, 2014 at 5:38 pm

    Because they are old out-of-it farts, or worship at the feet of old out-of-it farts.

  88. 88.

    JPL

    May 20, 2014 at 5:39 pm

    Doug, Where was the trigger warning. I thought I was linking to the onion.

  89. 89.

    Howlin Wolfe

    May 20, 2014 at 5:41 pm

    @ulee: Guess you aren’t real cognizant of old songs, are you Ulee? “Mr. Bojangles” by Jerry Jeff Walker is the source and his comment is a quote from that song. Do try to keep up, dear.

  90. 90.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 5:42 pm

    Did y’all hear this great new song about being proud to be ‘Merkin where at least you know you’re free?

  91. 91.

    beltane

    May 20, 2014 at 5:44 pm

    @Botsplainer: And you knew who you were then/Girls were girls and men were men/Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

  92. 92.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 5:44 pm

    @Howlin Wolfe: Read the thread, dear.

  93. 93.

    Calouste

    May 20, 2014 at 5:46 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    Those sinful, lustful, drunken, pagan Romans manage to build quite an empire that lasted for more than a millennium. Then they adopted Christianity and the barbarians were burning down Rome three generations later.

  94. 94.

    beltane

    May 20, 2014 at 5:48 pm

    The GOS is urging me to sign a petition demanding that Pat Sajak apologize for saying that people who believe in global warming are “unpatriotic racists”.Maybe my outrage meter is broken, but I just can’t get too worked up about anything the host of Wheel of Dumbass has to say.

  95. 95.

    MattR

    May 20, 2014 at 5:48 pm

    OT – but a judge has ruled PA’s anti same-sex marriage laws unconstitutional. The first paragrah of Judge Jones’s decision certainly sets the tone (emphasis mine)

    Today, certain citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are not guaranteed the right to marry the person they love. Nor does Pennsylvania recognize the marriages of other couples who have wed elsewhere. Hoping to end this injustice, eleven courageous lesbian and gay couples, one widow, and two teenage children of one of the aforesaid couples have come together as plaintiffs and asked this Court to declare that all Pennsylvanians have the right to marry the person of their choice and consequently, that the Commonwealth’s laws to the contrary are unconstitutional. We now join the twelve federal district courts across the country which, when confronted with these inequities in their own states, have concluded that all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage.

  96. 96.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 5:48 pm

    @beltane:

    No shit, my mother (raised by central Kentucky white trash parents) used to talk about how often she agreed with Archie. Interestingly, she was a younger boomer at the time, born just before the end of the war.

    As a 24 year old, she was one of that tiny percentage of her age cohort that voted for George Wallace.

    She’s an even worse wingnut now.

  97. 97.

    Suffern ACE

    May 20, 2014 at 5:52 pm

    @beltane: Yeah. He doesn’t say they are wrong. It just isn’t patriotic to say stuff that might involve changing our way of life.

  98. 98.

    Anton Sirius

    May 20, 2014 at 5:53 pm

    @justawriter:

    No karaoke night is complete without it

    I’m gonna guess the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version

  99. 99.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    May 20, 2014 at 5:58 pm

    @Suzanne:
    No broad brush for you, eh?

  100. 100.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    @Calouste:

    Those sinful, lustful, drunken, pagan Romans manage to build quite an empire that lasted for more than a millennium. Then they adopted Christianity and the barbarians were burning down Rome three generations later.

    One of my kids had been talking to one of her fundie friends in school back during late elementary or middle school in the context of a history class, and came home to share about how this classmate told her about how awful those pagan Romans were.

    I really enjoyed undoing that piece of information. She enjoyed bringing my undoing back to fundie friends and her whole history class.

    Being an American fundie really is about being deliberately pig ignorant on every topic. Being Greek Orthodox in the environment of a pulsing red fundamentalist exurb outside a very blue city was eye opening to my girls. They saw how close they were to open discrimination due to that deliberate ignorance, and how to patiently explain linguistic and liturgical differences with the locally dominant branch of religious observance.

    The one thing that I think I despise the most about American fundies is that they robbed me of my own comfortable, enjoyable, tolerant embrace of faith by trying so viciously to slam their absurdities into public policy – I started thinking hard about the whole thing.

  101. 101.

    PIGL

    May 20, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    @Mandalay: The real reason is that the 80s is when they were really getting their date rape on, back when they were odious young frat boys** and aspiring MBAs. You know how it’s always projection? Well “always” include “this time”

    ** Our Host’s fine young men excepted.

  102. 102.

    PIGL

    May 20, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    @Mandalay: The real reason is that the 80s is when they were really getting their date rape on, back when they were odious young frat boys** and aspiring MBAs. You know how it’s always projection? Well “always” include “this time”

    ** Our Host’s fine young men excepted.

  103. 103.

    justawriter

    May 20, 2014 at 5:59 pm

    @Anton Sirius: Or as another master of pop culture once called them, the Nitty Gritty Big Bird Band.

  104. 104.

    chopper

    May 20, 2014 at 6:00 pm

    The Left loves to paint a caricature — seen in countless films and shows (for example, the frat boys in American Horror Story: Coven) of a smirking college male who deliberately drugs and rapes a girl.

    it’s not so much a caricature as it is ‘this thing that happens every single fucking day’.

  105. 105.

    Anton Sirius

    May 20, 2014 at 6:03 pm

    Apparently something in the John Prine lyrics I quoted as strong contenders in the “saddest lyrics ever written” competition got the post caught in the filter.

  106. 106.

    El Caganer

    May 20, 2014 at 6:03 pm

    @Kropadope: He did? I thought that after all it was you and me.

  107. 107.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 6:04 pm

    I no longer go to fraternity events from my undergrad fraternity. Shit don’t matter, not anymore.

    Frankly, they were all probably a lot more fun before official recognition, anyway.

  108. 108.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    May 20, 2014 at 6:05 pm

    @Anton Sirius:

    “Donald and Lydia,” among others, still tears me up.

  109. 109.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 6:05 pm

    @Anton Sirius: That would be Sam Stone’s fate.

  110. 110.

    wasabi gasp

    May 20, 2014 at 6:06 pm

    @Botsplainer:
    Seems she is unaware that Archie is black.

  111. 111.

    Anton Sirius

    May 20, 2014 at 6:09 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: I think I had Sam Stone, Angel From Montgomery, and Paradise quoted, but that one’s a heart-breaker too.

  112. 112.

    Anton Sirius

    May 20, 2014 at 6:09 pm

    @ulee: It would, yeah.

  113. 113.

    raven

    May 20, 2014 at 6:10 pm

    @Anton Sirius: I couldn’t listen to “Hello in There” for 5 years after my dad died.

  114. 114.

    Kropadope

    May 20, 2014 at 6:12 pm

    @El Caganer: Shhhhh…

  115. 115.

    Chyron HR

    May 20, 2014 at 6:12 pm

    You laugh, but the decadent Left in its enclaves in Jawjah is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

  116. 116.

    Anton Sirius

    May 20, 2014 at 6:12 pm

    @chopper: To be fair, the average American Horror Story episode is one ham-fisted cliche after another rammed together with all the finesse of, uhh, well, a drunken date-rapey frat boy.

  117. 117.

    Patricia Kayden

    May 20, 2014 at 6:16 pm

    @mai naem mobile: They were Southern White women. Why wouldn’t one of them be rightwingers?

  118. 118.

    Lurking Canadian

    May 20, 2014 at 6:18 pm

    @Hungry Joe: if there was ever a time to robotically intone, “Fuck you, asshole”…

  119. 119.

    SatanicPanic

    May 20, 2014 at 6:18 pm

    @Botsplainer: Exactly. The tell is when you try to explain something to them- “well really that’s a commonly held misconception, the truth is…” then you get “SHUT UP NERD!”

  120. 120.

    Kropadope

    May 20, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    @SatanicPanic:

    Exactly. The tell is when you try to explain something to them- “well really that’s a commonly held misconception, the truth is…” then you get “SHUT UP NERD!”

    Another word that automatically ends the conversation is “because.”

  121. 121.

    RareSanity

    May 20, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    The only things I can recall about Designing Women are, the ridiculously over-the-top way they pronounced the name of the company…”Shug-ah-bah-guhs”…and it was the only way I could remember who Meshach Taylor was, when comedians made obscure reference jokes about him.

  122. 122.

    scav

    May 20, 2014 at 6:24 pm

    @chopper: Remember drugging women and raping them is now for Husbands too! (with sex tapes! no prison time!) They’re apparently upset when we fail to approve their HS dream dates and their keeping that romance alive in later years with their biblically-approved ball-and-chain.

  123. 123.

    Keith G

    May 20, 2014 at 6:25 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    And damn you, I can’t believe you got me to click on an NRO link. You bastard.

    Long ago, I began checking the links provided by Doug, before I decide to care about the post. Anything from the NRO is always grounds for automatic apathy.

  124. 124.

    Botsplainer

    May 20, 2014 at 6:33 pm

    @SatanicPanic:

    Physics, history, archaeology, astronomy, biology, geology, engineering, medicine, biochemistry, economics, psychology – there’s no academic subject they can’t mangle beyond any hope of recognition.

    I blame Obama for being a really lazy, weak and disorganized tyrant (we know why) for failing to set up those FEMA reeducation camps for conservative Christians. I even offered to personally command one.

  125. 125.

    DougJ

    May 20, 2014 at 7:01 pm

    @gogol’s wife:

    It’s about a white guy he met in jail. New Orleans jails were segregated at the time. People called him Bojangles because he was a good dancer.

  126. 126.

    raven

    May 20, 2014 at 7:01 pm

    @gogol’s wife:

    Walker has said he was inspired to write the song after an encounter with a street performer in a New Orleans jail and that the song does not refer to the famous stage and movie personality Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Walker said while in jail for public intoxication in 1965, he met a homeless white man who called himself “Mr. Bojangles” to conceal his true identity from the police. He had been arrested as part of a police sweep of indigent people that was carried out following a high-profile murder. The two men and others in the cell chatted about all manner of things, but when Mr. Bojangles told a story about his dog, the mood in the room turned heavy. Someone else in the cell asked for something to lighten the mood, and Mr. Bojangles obliged with a tap dance.[1][2]

  127. 127.

    gogol's wife

    May 20, 2014 at 7:04 pm

    @raven:

    Well, fine, but nevertheless lots of people think the song is about Bill Robinson, and that he had some sort of decline and ended up dancing on the street and getting thrown in the drunk tank. Which didn’t happen.

    ETA: In fact, I myself thought that until I read more about Robinson.

  128. 128.

    raven

    May 20, 2014 at 7:13 pm

    @gogol’s wife: A lot of people think Obama was born in Kenya too.

  129. 129.

    ruviana

    May 20, 2014 at 8:08 pm

    @Dr. Loveless: Potatoe, potahtoe.

  130. 130.

    satby

    May 20, 2014 at 8:11 pm

    @raven: Yep. John’s songs would rip you up if you contemplated the lyrics. Used to go see Prine and Goodman at the Earl of Old Town.

  131. 131.

    satby

    May 20, 2014 at 8:13 pm

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: Yeah, have little ageism with your dinner?

  132. 132.

    ulee

    May 20, 2014 at 8:27 pm

    I can’t wait for all these fuckers who rag on people for getting old, get old. I’ll be there with my cane and wave it in their faces. –Who’s old now motherfucker, who’s old now?–

  133. 133.

    SiubhanDuinne

    May 20, 2014 at 9:03 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Pet turtles all the way down.

  134. 134.

    SiubhanDuinne

    May 20, 2014 at 9:06 pm

    @beltane:

    Didn’t need no welfare state, fo’ shizzle.

  135. 135.

    Omnes Omnibus

    May 20, 2014 at 9:24 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Don’t pet the snappers.

  136. 136.

    Steeplejack

    May 20, 2014 at 10:44 pm

    @Botsplainer:

    [. . .] she was a younger boomer at the time, born just before the end of the war.

    Not a younger boomer, nor even a boomer at all, the first of whom were born in 1946.

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