Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Consistently wrong since 2002

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

White supremacy is terrorism.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

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

In my day, never was longer.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Second rate reporter says what?

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

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

We still have time to mess this up!

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Friday Schadenfreude Open Thread

Friday Schadenfreude Open Thread

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***********
Apart from cheap shots, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?

Reader Interactions

166Comments

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Marc Ambinder ✔ @marcambinder
    What really drives Trump: he needs you to see him as worthy and legit.

    It drives me too, Marc. It drives a lot of us.

  6. 6.

    scav

    They failed utterly to nominate him for all the Golden Globes I hear too. (Not that he’d accept nominations for any supporting cast activities, of course.)

  7. 7.

    Punchy

    Santa Claus has invaded our work room. Kids everywhere. The spawn wants nothing to do with his lecherous ways and food-encrusted beard, but damn can she put down the cookies and drink boxes.

  8. 8.

    WereBear

    TGIF. Must wrap up a lot of loose ends next week, but for this weekend, we have but one task: replace the motor in one of our Litter Robots.

    And we just got back from grocery shopping, so while there are errands I wish we had run, whatcha gonna do.

  9. 9.

    Geeno

    Do I really need anything but delivering cheap shots?
    That’s a good weekend right there.

    @Baud: Yes, but most of us are willing to put in effort to do worthy and legit things in order to get that. Trump is not.

  12. 12.

    Germy

    ABC is showing Mary Poppins tomorrow night, hosted by 89-year-old Dick Van Dyke. I literally have not seen this film since it first opened in theaters. I was five years old.

    Not sure if I want to risk watching it again. It might not be as entertaining as I remember it.

  13. 13.

    geg6

    Tonight, laying back, ordering in Chinese (wine is already chilled) and switching back and forth between the Pens game and the Amazing Race finale. Tomorrow, a bit of shopping, stopping by my sister’s for a visit and making a nice beef and root veggie stew. Sunday will be putting up the Christmas tree, watching the Steeler game and breathlessly awaiting delivery of our new mattress (it’s a hybrid–anyone have one who cares to let me know how they like would be appreciated). I won’t be cooking that day, but I also have to somehow fit in housework and laundry in that schedule somehow.

    Thank FSM, I only have one more week at work, finals week, before the two week holiday break. I’m really ready for it.

  19. 19.

    Roger Moore

    Apart from cheap shots

    Definitely snark. There’s always room for snark.

    ETA: More seriously, I’m supposed to get in a batch of Seville oranges, which I’m planning on turning into marmalade. I might make some orange sauce, too, which will go nicely on my duck with orange sauce pizza.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    @Germy:

    It might not be as entertaining as I remember it.

    They added a few scenes for the “Director’s Cut.” (Un)fortunately, as a result, the MPAA had to change the rating to R. I’m still trying to find out if it was for “Strong graphic violence” or for “nudity, sexual content.”

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Germy:

    It holds up pretty well, despite Van Dyke’s atrocious “Cockney” accent. Everyone loves Julie Andrews.

    A fun double feature would be to watch the recent “Saving Mr. Banks” first, and then watch “Mary Poppins” since “Banks” is about the making of “Poppins.” Plus “Banks” has a really great cast featuring a cavalcade of my favorite supporting actors.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    @redshirt:

    I’m clueless – what did Merkel do this year to get person of the year? Let in Syrian refugees?

    She was also key in dealing with the Greek debt crisis- though she doesn’t deserve too much credit, having also played a major role in creating it.

  26. 26.

    Germy

    @SFAW:

    They added a few scenes for the “Director’s Cut.”

    It was my first time in a movie theater seeing a big screen. I remember being enchanted; especially with Julie Andrews.

    Oddly enough, many years later I saw her do a topless scene (S.O.B. 1981) and was deeply moved.

  27. 27.

    SFAW

    @Roger Moore:

    though she doesn’t deserve too much credit, having also played a major role in creating it.

    I had a boss like that once – would (through his own incompetence or arrogance) create an emergency, then “fix” it (which often required me doing the fixing), and he’d look like a hero.

    Worst person I ever worked for, but not because of that. There were plenty of other reasons. Oy

  28. 28.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Roger Moore: Not to mention that “dealing with” it meant insisting on harsh austerity measures at the worst possible moment that further destroyed the Greek economy, making it even less capable of paying its debts and thus being completely counterproductive even in terms of her fixation on moral hazard, confidence fairy, and surely one must pay ones debts and all that.

  30. 30.

    scav

    @Bill E Pilgrim: It’s not as though the person of the year is about anything necessarily positive. Time plays both ends of the distribution. Making the hairball even bigger is all to the good in that race. If she’d thought ahead and made a lot of refugees and then handled them (in either direction) she might have had even more of a lock on it.

  31. 31.

    hoodie

    Trump’s narcissism doesn’t seem to bother his supporters. Is that because they’re narcissistic themselves or because they don’t follow stuff like his tweets and only get his output through a media filter that strips out the narcissistic way he presents his ramblings?

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    Sunday at 8:30 a.m., TCM is showing the 1935 Scrooge starring Seymour Hicks, who had established an entire celebrated career playing ol’ Ebenezer on stage over several decades beforehand.

    Tight budget even for way back then, but still contains more than enough to make viewing worthwhile. Truer in many small ways to the story than many efforts (and includes scenes most other film adaptations don’t).

    No attempt at all to use special effects for Marley’s ghost, it being clearly stated that it is only Scrooge who can see him. Yet it manages to work.

  38. 38.

    msdc

    @Bill E Pilgrim: …Thus weakening Greece at the very moment refugees were streaming in from Syria, forcing other European nations to step up and take refugees, for which she has duly been christened Time’s Person of the Year.

  39. 39.

    The Moar You Know

    I’m clueless – what did Merkel do this year to get person of the year? Let in Syrian refugees?

    @redshirt: Murdered Greece so that German banksters could have gold-plated shark tanks in their living rooms.

    Think the last German to make the cover was Hitler.

  41. 41.

    redshirt

    Any Fantasy footbally players out there?

    I have a very tough choice to make in this, the first week of the playoffs.

    Do I start Matt Ryan @ Carolina (my regular QB, who’s been a disappointment but not outright terrible from a fantasy perspective), OR
    Brock Osweiler v. Oakland – the Raiders are normally very generous to opposing QB’s, but Osweiler’s numbers so far have been rather low.

  42. 42.

    NotMax

    @Roger Moore

    The scene: Ms Merkel passing through the French customs desk.

    “Name?

    “Angela Merkel.”

    “Nationality?”

    “German.”

    “Mm-hm. Occupation?”

    “No, just a pleasure trip.”

  43. 43.

    frosty

    @Baud:

    …getting older sucks

    It does at that. Although I frequently find myself quoting my father-in-law: “Any day that you’re looking down at the grass instead of up is a good day.”

  46. 46.

    oldgold

    Tea-Rump is brilliant at sucking all the air out of the Republican political circus.

    For months now, no other clown has been able to breathe.

    I dislike him, but have to admit he has game.

  49. 49.

    debbie

    @NotMax:

    I like that version of Scrooge. Also, while it was far from successful, my favorite version of Alice in Wonderland is the one from 1933, with Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Cary Grant, etc. They were all very out of place, but the movie was still a lot of fun.

  50. 50.

    p.a.

    @Baud: fucked Greece up so Syrians passing through would have a more gradual transition from destruction to prosperity. Less of a shock to them.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @joel hanes:

    I thought it was an interesting study of two people who were both used to getting their way, and what happened when Walt Disney finally met someone he couldn’t charm.

    Some people see it as a story of PL Travers being exploited by Disney, but it’s not quite that simple. The movie version of “Mary Poppins” made Travers a millionaire and allowed her to write successful Poppins sequels, so she was actually a bit more ambivalent about the movie than she let on.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    For those who follow LGM: Scott Lemieux

    I don’t want to say a great deal about this while the appeals process is still pending, but since some readers will have seen the news my tenured faculty position has been eliminated without cause effective December 2016. I’m fully aware that this existential dread is something the vast majorities of workers live with every day; tenured academics have been lucky, but as the norms of the market overwhelm everything tenure can’t survive.

  57. 57.

    p.a.

    @hoodie: Narcissism is about 2 more syllables than Trumpists are comfortable saying. (I say it’s 4 syllables, but I can see an argument for 3).

  58. 58.

    Wag

    @joes527:

    If his scenes as the chairman of the bank are in any way a foreshadowing of his current ability to stand then there are no worries

  59. 59.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    Don’t have the link at hand at the moment, but on YouTube there’s about 98% of a recent stage production of The Sunshine Boys starring Dick and Jerry Van Dyke.

    Not the casting choices which spring to mind first (or even twentieth). Goy vey.

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    Are followers of narcissists typically narcissists themselves? I wouldn’t have thought so.

    I’ll Echo that sentiment.

    (Any points for a Greek tie-in on that one?)

  68. 68.

    Scapegoat

    @Baud: Just wonderful…

    The cuts are expected to impact money-losing, low-enrollment programs and the faculty who teach them

    The tenure cuts have started with faculty in the Education program. (Why, of course!)

    No doubt, administrative positions are immune from this economic cleansing.

  70. 70.

    mclaren

    @geg6:

    Tonight, laying back, ordering in Chinese…

    If Won Weh Hung Geh Gai shows up instead of food, you may be in trouble.

  71. 71.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @SFAW

    I like Julie, pretty much always have (since Poppins, at least).

    If you can get your paws on it, watch a wonderful picture she did early in her film career, called The Americanization of Emily. It’s a WWII setting — she plays opposite James Garner — and is not only my favorite Julie Andrews movie (and I like her a lot) but among my favorite movies period. A far cry from Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, so if you think of her only or primarily as a singer, you’ll be surprised at her acting chops.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @Scapegoat:

    ‘No doubt, administrative positions are immune from this economic cleansing.

    Of course. Who would perform the economic cleansing if they weren’t?

  75. 75.

    g

    It’s hilarious that Trump thinks he deserves to be Person of the Year before actually accomplishing anything. As if ranking 27% in the polls is an accomplishment.

  77. 77.

    WereBear

    @Baud: Thing is, unless one is running the Manhattan Project, administration is not a highly demanding or skilled profession compared to the professors they are supervising… Yet their salaries are far higher, and part of the skyrocketing tuition that is burdening the students they are supposed to be serving.

  78. 78.

    g

    @hoodie: Trump’s followers are the same people who follow high school bullies – they’re hoping he’ll like them and maybe let them beat up on someone after he’s done.

  79. 79.

    mclaren

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    I thought it was an interesting study of two people who were both used to getting their way, and what happened when Walt Disney finally met someone he couldn’t charm.

    That film was a torrent of unbelievable bullshit from start to finish, designed to burnish the golden myth of Walt Disney while downplaying the role of everything and anyone else.

    It’s never P. L. Travers’ Mary Poppins, it’s Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. It’s never Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, it’s always Walt Fucking Disney’s Pinocchio.

    At a certain point, the grotesque lies and frantic fellation of the ruthless businessman Walt Disney makes your gut gurge with nausea, and you have to turn off the TV and walk away.

    What I really like is the way the Walt Fucking Disney corporation has extended copyrights to grab onto the money from their ripped-off fairytales with greedy claws — but if those extended copyrights had been in place back in 1938, guess what?

    Snow White would have still been under copyright (life + 80 years!) so Walt Fucking Disney would’ve been fucked, stuck ‘n outa luck.

    Greedy creepy thugs. I hope the Walt Disney corporation collapses, goes broke, and its former VPs and CEOs get run down in the wasteland by jackals and hyenas, as they deserve.

  80. 80.

    different-church-lady

    I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany

    Well, he’s right you know: they should have picked the person who’s ruining America.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @WereBear: In theory, universities need to compete with corporations for good administrators, driving up their salaries. They only have to compete with other universities for good professors (depending on the field).

  86. 86.

    Feebog

    Last night in Cabo San Lucas. Trying to decide which restaurant we want to go to. Been very nice, except the restaurant attached to the Resort left, and the new wait staff is not up-to speed. Back home tomorrow and jury duty starts Monday.

  87. 87.

    Shana

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): Actually, there were four Mary Poppins books published by 1952. There were a few books published after the movie came out, but they weren’t really part of the Mary Poppins series of short stories, Mary Poppins A to Z and Mary Poppins in the Kitchen among them.

  90. 90.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Feebog:

    Been very nice, except the restaurant attached to the Resort left, and the new wait staff is not up-to speed.

    Sounds hellish, I’m sure you’ll be happy to be on Jury Duty.

  91. 91.

    mclaren

    @NotMax:

    The writing has a Borscht Belt comic tempo, but Rob and Laura fairly ooze white bread and mayonnaise.

    Thus the quip, “Write Yiddish and cast British.”

  95. 95.

    Gimlet

    Open Thread – Republicanism Georgia style

    From the AJC

    A Georgia official said Thursday the state will not process applications for food stamps and other benefits filed by newly arrived Syrian refugees, possibly setting up a legal showdown.

    “We are just going to follow that process as outlined,” Ravae Graham, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Human Services, said in referring to a Nov. 18 memo that outlines her agency’s policy refusing benefits to new refugees from the war-torn country.

    Last month, Gov. Nathan Deal joined more than two dozen of his counterparts in moving to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. They have raised security concerns in the wake of the terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13. Under pressure to do more as Syria’s four-year-old civil war rages on, President Barack Obama is pledging the U.S. will take in 10,000 refugees from that country over the next year.

    Georgia’s policy has triggered a sharp warning from the Obama administration, which told the state last month it must rescind its order to comply with federal law.

  100. 100.

    mclaren

    @Baud:

    In theory, universities need to compete with corporations for good administrators, driving up their salaries.

    That makes absolutely no fucking sense whatsoever.

    A corporation needs to make cash, and tons of it. A university is in a completely different business, education.

    A corporation faces ruthless competition with other companies that can unseat them by offering a better product with higher-tech, cheaper, and easier to use.

    A university like Harvard or Yale faces no fucking competition at all, because there’s no way a goddamn online course can possibly compete with the prestige of going to Yale or Harvard (or even the University of Chicago, come to that).

    A business needs to make its way in a brutal Darwinian marketplace and can’t rest on its laurels — so unless the CEO keeps ramming through new strategies for selling products, the money dries up and the business dies. A university typically has a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge goddamn endowment, often larger than the GDP of smaller European countries, and the money gusher from that endowmust just flows in and flows in and flows in, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what kind of students graduate, regardless of everything.

    There is no fucking comparison whatsoever between a CEO who runs a business and an administrator who runs a college.

    None.

    Zero.

    Bupkiss.

    Diddly.

    Nada.

    It’s a horseshit comparison, and anyone who makes it is either lying to us or trying to scam us, or simply deluded.

  101. 101.

    geg6

    @WereBear:

    I am an administrator and my salary is about 1/3 what the tenured faculty at my campus make. And without me (or someone like me), those faculty salaries aren’t getting paid. And we really don’t want to get into the highly specialized and ever changing knowledge I must have to do my job. Faculty wouldn’t last 5 minutes in my job, let alone the fifty to sixty hours a week I average nor would they be able to manage being expected to show up more than thirty weeks a year.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @mclaren:

    Look up who owns the music to “Snow White” and “Pinocchio.” Hint: it’s not the Walt Disney Company.

    Music rights are what’s really behind the copyright extension. No one wants to figure out what to do when the movie is out of copyright but the music owners still expect to be paid.

  103. 103.

    Scapegoat

    @WereBear: @Baud:

    While there are some good arguments to be made about both the merits and pitfalls of tenure, administrative positions—when divorced of any and all teaching duties—all too easily lose touch with the core mission of higher ed.

    The easy solution—require all administrators to teach at least one class a year, regardless of position.

    Tuition Rising is an excellent look at the costs of academia today.

    Saddled with explosive growth of administrators and their salaries in the last decade or so, administrative positions will not cull themselves. This overhead, combined with facilities investments for amenities to attract students, suggest that we will likely see a growing number of smaller colleges devoured by larger ones in mergers.

    And then there’s MOOC’s….

    Today’s solution: get rid of expensive tenure-track and tenured faculty and hire a swarm of adjuncts. Require the same credentials, but pay them a fraction of the salary, with no benefits. WIN!

  104. 104.

    Baud

    @mclaren: Every entity competes in the same labor market. And modern universities are more like corporations than we would like to admit.

  105. 105.

    WereBear

    I’m still hoping that Trump will save America, as Hoover became such a symbol of screwup that he ruined the Republican brand for generations.

    A simple organism can dream…

  106. 106.

    mdblanche

    @Gimlet: Remind me again how Donald Trump has nothing to do with what the Republican Party stands for and they have no idea why he’s shown up uninvited to be their standard bearer when they can’t think of any way they could have encouraged him.

  108. 108.

    eemom

    @The Moar You Know:

    Murdered Greece so that German banksters could have gold-plated shark tanks in their living rooms.
    Think the last German to make the cover was Hitler.

    Thank you. As a Greek, I loathe that woman. And you’re right, Hitler was Time’s person of the year in 1938.

    Hope that irrelevant piece of emmessemm shit circling the drain hits the sewer soon.

  109. 109.

    geg6

    @mclaren:

    You have no idea what you are talking about. Harvard and Yale are exceptions to the reality of higher ed in every way. You are completely clueless, as usual.

  110. 110.

    Scapegoat

    @mclaren:

    A corporation needs to make cash, and tons of it. A university is in a completely different business, education.

    Now there is your first mistaken assumption (according to the Corporatists’ Handbook for New Academic Administrators™ )!

  112. 112.

    scav

    I’m now very concerned. Needing a reason to push myself off the interwebs for the evening, I ventured into the cesspool of ChiTrib commenting (needed an extreme push). The cop rapist and Ben Carson GOP Hostage threat. The lack of serious sewage in either is convincing me that the end-times might actually be near. I mean, Carson, OK, I can see the collar co.s running slightly corporate, but not automatically supporting the be-badged? Must be some serious fallout from the local Chicago and Fox Lake PDs — or, indeed, a portent of the end-times.

  113. 113.

    Mike in NC

    Didn’t Dick Van Dyke marry a twenty something woman about a year ago? Something Trump might do when he hits 89.

  115. 115.

    Scapegoat

    @geg6: In the interest of defining terminology, I am using “administrator” as a tenured faculty member who has been promoted to being a department head or higher (meaning Dean’s office and up the reporting structure all the way up).

    My sense is that you may be a high ranking staff member (possibly fixed term, or a standing appointment—but without tenure) who is in charge of one or more areas.

    Is this the case, or is it something else?

  116. 116.

    geg6

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    I am a director, which on my campus, is sort of equivalent to an assistant dean. There are only two Vice Presidents for our entire university. But at the 23 campuses that are the smaller or more specialized campuses of my university, the Chancellor runs the show, the Director of Academic Affairs is number two and the Directors are in charge of the various services (student affairs, student aid and veterans benefits, housing and food services, etc.). Believe me, faculty and their apologists see no value whatsoever in what I and my compatriots do. They bitch all the time about how there’s too much administrative bloat. Meanwhile, the only employee I supervise (besides student workers) is shared with Admissions. Assholes have no clue.

  122. 122.

    Roger Moore

    @WereBear:

    Thing is, unless one is running the Manhattan Project, administration is not a highly demanding or skilled profession compared to the professors they are supervising

    Even worse, my experience is that administrators have a hard time judging others’ administrative effectiveness. They have a hard time telling the difference between failures caused by insufficient resources from ones caused by incompetent management, so administrators who fail to do their jobs are as likely to be rewarded with more staff (and hence an apparently more important job) as they are to be fired for incompetence.

  123. 123.

    Scapegoat

    @geg6:

    Are you tenured? (Y/N)

    Honestly, I’m not trying to construct an adversarial Faculty vs Administrator argument, just trying to better understand your vantage point.

    (I suspect I’m familiar with your university and having spent a few years at that particular main campus, it’s a whole ‘nother world over there. I suspect that your daily experience is a good deal different—starting with the number of hours you put in!)

  124. 124.

    Applejinx

    @eemom: Time is now officially Dead To Me after this stunt.

    I do wonder if it’s intentional: Bernie conclusively won the reader poll (as usual). They could’ve picked Trump, or Hillary, and so on, but they literally went with the anti-Bernie. Merkel, the Austerian Queen, is truly the most opposite person they possibly could have chosen, and a damned stupid choice unless they meant it as ‘ruining the world’. And I’m sure they didn’t mean that.

    Somebody send Bush to grab her shoulders without asking again. By now she deserves all she gets.

  125. 125.

    Scapegoat

    @Roger Moore:

    administrators who fail to do their jobs are as likely to be rewarded with more staff (and hence an apparently more important job) as they are to be fired for incompetence.

    So, here’s the rub in academia.
    A) Administrative efficacy can not (usually) be measured in strict financial-return ways.
    B) Program administration is generally extremely hierarchical, and direct communication is generally very controlled (meaning: only with your superior).
    C) Administrators are (in my definition) tenured and can’t be fired for incompetence.

    As a result, when things go sideways for an administrator, it’s extremely easy to point the finger at somebody below them. When things go well, it’s extremely easy to take all the credit for another’s work.

    Often, if the Peter Principle promotes someone one level above their ability, the best way to “get rid of them” is to promote them into being someone else’s problem.

    Such a clever system!

  126. 126.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @g: “Time’s Person of the Year” is usually a recognition of how much news that person generated. By that standard, Trump certainly did more to make beancounters at the MSM happy than Andrea Merkel did in 2015.

  128. 128.

    WereBear

    @geg6: I’m not talking about you; I’ve been the person who makes a fraction and yet is vital to keeping the enterprise going.

    I read about administrators who make 200k a year, and for doing what? The things I used to do? If it is fund-raising, say so, but I’ve also worked for non-profits, and the people bringing in donations aren’t making that, either.

    I just don’t understand a university firing professors and not admin. It makes no sense.

  129. 129.

    shell

    Wow, it took Trump this long to start whining about not getting picked ?
    ***********
    Yes, Scrooge, (on TCM tonight at ten) isn’t a bad version of the Carol. Alistair Sims’ of course, is the high bar. I’m fond of the Patrick Stewart version too. And of course, theres alway Mr. Magoos Christmas Carol.
    One of the worst….the Reginald Owen version. Turner Classic, please stop airing that one, its god-awful.

  131. 131.

    mclaren

    @Baud:

    Every entity competes in the same labor market.

    Except banks and hedge funds, which can fuck up and lose all the money invested in them and then get bailed out by the government and pay their corporate officers huge bonuss.

    And except for the U.S. defense contractors, which can produce shit non-working weapons and still get paid and go on to bid on (and win) other contracts for which they again produce shit non-working weapons systems — and again get paid a hefty premium.

    And except for the U.S. health care system, where doctors can leave sponges in their patients’ brains and fuck up their medication and accidentally dose them with the wrong chemicals and accidentally amputate the wrong arm or the wrong leg, but where the hospital or doctor or drug company that fucks up never gets shut down, and always gets paid.

    Gimme a fucking break.

    Most of American society is now an insider Ponzi scheme where the more the administrators fuck up, the higher they rise and the bigger their bonuses.

    The only people who compete in the savage Darwinian labor market of kill-or-be-killed are the average schmucks like you are me. Not university administrators, not doctors, not lawyers, not the head of the House Ways and Means committee or the Vice President of the United States or a Pentagon general or colonel or a neurosurgeon or an obstetrician.

  132. 132.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @mclaren:

    I can forgive Walt Disney for a lot, but I can never ever forgive him for what he did to my beloved Winnie-the-Pooh. Or The Jungle Book. Just horrors.

  133. 133.

    WereBear

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): he got divorced from his first wife in 1984

    I am always kind of baffled by long-term marriages that hit the rocks. Did they ignore problems for too long? Was one party putting up with waaaay too much for waaaay too long? Did they really grow that far apart?

  134. 134.

    mclaren

    @geg6:

    Thanks for defending your corrupt incompetent and largely worthless crony-capitalist niche, shit-for-brains. We knew you were going to tell crude lies to support your insupportable salary, but it’s really helpful to see how grossly crude your lies and how crass your self-dealing really is.

    Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen, in why America is so badly fucked up: geg6 and his ilk. Donald Trump is Exhibit B.

  136. 136.

    mclaren

    @WereBear:

    I am always kind of baffled by long-term marriages that hit the rocks.

    The woman got old and the guy left for a 20-something.

    No mystery to it.

  137. 137.

    WereBear

    @shell: Love the Patrick Stewart version. And I have a fondness for the Reginald Owen, but it wasn’t based on the book; it was from a long-running radio reading created for Lionel Barrymore, who was going to play Scrooge until his arthritis became so bad he had to work from a wheelchair.

  138. 138.

    Baud

    @mclaren: That makes no sense. Even unaccountable big shots are looking to make money by having employers compete for their services. Executives move from employer to employer all the time.

  141. 141.

    mclaren

    @geg6:

    And we really don’t want to get into the highly specialized and ever changing knowledge I must have to do my job.

    Yes, we really don’t. Because that would require you to provide detailed specifics that would justify your position and your salary, which you are incapable of doing.

    Christ, what an asshole. And what a pathetically transparent effort to evade accountability.

  142. 142.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Baud: On the other hand, the market for executive’s services isn’t “free market” being that they tend to be on the compensation committees of the other executives companies.

  143. 143.

    WereBear

    @geg6: I have a new understanding of what goes on; the terms differ from the business world I spent time in, which contributed to my confusion.

    I know how hard you work. But obviously you are not the overpaid parasites who are causing a problem :)

  145. 145.

    Baud

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I agree that there are a lot of structural problems in that market, but I’m not sure that affects my point that lots of institutions are generallt vying for the same pool of executives.

  146. 146.

    JPL

    @mclaren: I find it interesting that you can make some good points but then you go off the rails. Don’t keep digging. It is not worth it.

  147. 147.

    Bex

    @Germy: I’m one degree of separation from Dick Van Dyke because a great guy I knew (who died recently) went to high school with him in Danville, IL. It’s interesting that Bobby Short, Donald O’Connor and Dick and Jerry Van Dyke grew up in Danville around the same time.

  148. 148.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Thanks for the tip. I remember the movie being in theaters, but did not see it then, and it never got onto my list later. I’ll try to rectify that.

  149. 149.

    Scapegoat

    @WereBear:

    geg6 @ 8:02pm
    Believe me, faculty and their apologists see no value whatsoever in what I and my compatriots do. They bitch all the time about how there’s too much administrative bloat… Assholes have no clue.

    Universities are full of both magic and horror. Depends on where you focus your gaze. And the differences between institutional cultures can be very, very large.

    I’ve worked with some great folks and some not-so-great folks at just about every level of several universities. The great folks work very hard to make your day a little better. The not-so-great folks seem to do the opposite.

  150. 150.

    Ajabu

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    Agreed. Garner always mentioned Americanization of Emily as one of his favorite roles.
    And, not incidentally, they had great chemistry together.
    James Garner was one of those actors who always made it seem really easy.
    He made a (difficult to find) movie with a friend of mine in the co-starring role “Skin Game” that I think most BJers would enjoy.

  151. 151.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @WereBear:

    It usually seems to happen when their kids are grown and out of the house, and they suddenly realize that the kids had become the only thing they have in common. Though you can’t discount people who decided they needed to “stay together for the sake of the kids” and actually did hate each other for years before they divorced.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Germy: “Mary Poppins” has only superficial resemblances to P. L. Travers’ books, and I’m sure British people find it a baffling funhouse-mirror depiction of their society. It’s still a tremendously fun movie with the best suite of songs ever written for a Disney film. I think it should be considered part of the canon of great American movie musicals.

  153. 153.

    Randy P

    Agree with those who love Americanization of Emily.

    Also, before Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews did a hell of a job on stage as Liza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. I grew up listening to the London cast album. I’ve made enemies here before complaining about the miscasting of Audrey Hepburn in the film. I’ll back off from that a little and say maybe it was mis-directing instead of mis-casting, but whatever it was she is a timid little mouse, a very far cry from the wonderfully fiery Julie Andrews version.

    There’s at least one scene from that stage production on YouTube, “Show Me” from the second act where she gets to throw some of that fire at insipid upper-class twit Freddy Eynsford-Hill.

    Strange trivia fact I just learned: Freddy was played in the film by Jeremy Brett, later of Sherlock Holmes fame. Who was apparently a hell of a singer, but I read they didn’t use his singing voice for the film (too mature for the role is what I read).

  154. 154.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Never saw “Saving Mr. Banks” but I recall one review pointing out that the Disney company was simultaneously the only firm that could have made the movie, and the last one in the world that really should have.

  155. 155.

    Calouste

    @Applejinx: Wtf has Bernie done this year, or Trump or Hillary for that matter? Running for President isn’t really a major achievement in the grand scheme of things, and specially not a lasting achievement in itself. Now if Bernie wins the election, that would be a different thing.

  156. 156.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s worth seeing. I honestly don’t know who the people are who think Walt was totally whitewashed, but apparently not making him a total monster is whitewashing.

    Colin Farrell is probably the best thing in the movie, playing Travers’ father, though I also like Emma Thompson. Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks, except for one silhouette shot that’s a little eerie.

    And for the historians, it’s fun that they shot it on the actual studio lot rather than trying to recreate it.

  157. 157.

    Matt McIrvin

    Also, thanks to YouTube we can watch the Soviet Mary Poppins.

    Which, as I recall, features earthmoving machinery to a much greater degree than I would have expected.

    It’s kind of charming and odd. The thing I think is interesting is that when they adapted the Disney Mary Poppins into a stage musical, they brought in a bunch of extra material from the books, and the result has a strange structural similarity to this Soviet adaptation.

  159. 159.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @BillinGlendaleCA: “Free Market” is for the proles, not the 1%. They do everything they can to insulate themselves from it. It was such in Smith’s day as well, which is why the Adam Smith tie is such a very sad joke.

  161. 161.

    mclaren

    @hoodie:
    Trump’s supporters love his narcissism because they’re bully worshipers. Trump’s fans are subs, and all subs live to be abused by their do.

  162. 162.

    mclaren

    @efgoldman:
    the problem is not Disney stealing fairy tales. The problem is Disney looting public commons — fairytales — and then bribing congress to extend insane copyright laws forever. Disney loots the commons, privatizes profits therefrom, then locks up their stolen fairutales behind a 150-year copyright wall.
    It’s evil.
    Disney is the movie-business version of mountaintop removal strip mining. Disney delenda est!

  163. 163.

    Bobby Thomson

    @mclaren: actually, the dominant skill set of most CEOs is either being the biggest bully on the playground (and forcing other people to perform and stealing their credit) and/or the biggest bull shit artist (and getting others to invest in the company). There’s a considerable overlap there with college administration.

  164. 164.

    mclaren

    @Calouste:

    Wtf has Bernie done this year…?

    Bernie Sanders has single-handedly moved the national political conversation toward the left, toward the concerns of working people, single mothers, hungry children, offshored employees, and all the other victims of cannibalistic c(r)apitalism run wild. That alone qualifies him for TIME magazines Man of the Year.

  165. 165.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @mclaren: All those things disqualify him from TIME magazine’s Man of the Year. TIME is corporate to the core…an organ of one of the most rapacious corporations out there, Time-Warner.

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