When I was in eighth grade, a school administrator punished me for some transgression by handing me a putty knife and ordering me to scrape gum off the undersides of the lunchroom tables after school. That probably wouldn’t happen today for fear of injury, disease transmission or lawsuits.
There were many tables in the lunchroom, so I asked my tormenter if she expected me to scrape the gum off every one of them or a set number. She considered that for a moment and then asked me to bring 30 separate blobs of gum to her in a bag, at which point she’d consider my sentence completed.
I approached last night’s Republican town hall in the same spirit in which I tackled the gum-scraping job so many years ago. And just as the dean of girls counted each blob of gum before setting me free, I’ve considered each nugget that fell from the lips of the three candidates last night before identifying the choicest for your consideration. Don’t thank me; it’s just something I do.
Anyhoo, the thing that seems to be getting the most play in the post-town hall media analysis is that all three candidates walked back their earlier pledges to support the eventual nominee. I found that neither surprising nor remarkable. But Trump’s flailing on a simple question from an audience member was revealing:
If you can’t watch the video, there’s a transcript of this particular exchange at the wingnut Free Bacon rag. To summarize, Trump is asked to name the top three functions of the US government, and he says “security, security, security” and then adds healthcare, education and housing to round it out, which of course flies in the face of wingnut orthodoxy about the proper role of government.
Anderson Cooper does feebly attempt to pin Trump down on how the federal government comes into play on these issues, but Trump just sprays pre-chewed talking points (“Obamacare is a disaster,” etc.) and mostly gets away with that. He bullshits his way through his ill-considered initial response mostly successfully, I guess, because his heresy hasn’t made many headlines.
Well, not so far, anyway: Maybe Trump’s opponents will yet make an issue of this if they recognize Trump’s ramblings as a metaphorical putty knife they can use to scrape a particularly stubborn and obnoxious orange gum blob off the Table of Conservatism.
But what in the actual fuck was Trump trying to say? I don’t think even he knows. He has no clue how the federal government operates, but he wants the personal validation of being elected as its head. And if Trump has set his sights on Lady Liberty as his next trophy wife,* who are you losers to deny him his prize? It’s really that simple.
*Metaphor borrowed from Colbert, I think.
bystander
I’m submitting an excerpt from this post to The New Yorker for its Block That Metaphor column endfiller.
p.a.
It’s a different kind of word salad from Snowflake Snookie’s, but it is word salad. There’s some kind of neuron devolution, driven by Fux News and Hate Radio at work, where this stuff makes sense to their listeners. Impressionistic rorschach splatters of hate/fear signifiers. Don’t want to think there has always been such a large % of pig people; SLIGHTLY more comforting to think it’s been a growth industy the last couple of generations. That way, it’s more likely the damage can be undone.
Germy
If Trump manages to win Lady Liberty as his next trophy wife, I can imagine the transcripts of the divorce proceedings four years from now. They’d be leaked to TMZ, and her testimony would include physical abuse and mental cruelty.
MattF
I can see how Der Trump got to be a deal-maker– he’s figured out how to make his psychosis profitable. Props for that, Donald. Once he knows your scent, though, the only way to deal with him is to go the Old Yeller route. I guess, alternatively, one could just wait for his brain to rot away.
Betty Cracker
@Germy: Or he’ll be caught groping Venus de Milo.
Germy
The gum-scraping anecdote resonated with me, because I sometimes find myself thinking about all the crap I witnessed in school in the ’60s and ’70s that would NEVER be tolerated today.
I remember in High School, after one of my classmates was killed in an accident, a teacher joking in front of the class that all letters to him would have to be sent to the “dead letter office”. Nowadays, he would have lost his job immediately.
I remember a girl telling me about a her gym teacher blowing cigarette smoke into some of her girlfriends’ mouths.
I remember seeing horrific scenes of bullying, right in front of teachers who looked the other way. Back then their philosophy was “it’s a normal part of growing up; let the kids work it out.”
I remember when we’d grade each others’ papers. The teachers would have us exchange tests and grade each other. Not sure if they’re allowed to do that anymore. Maybe they do.
I remember a high school teacher telling my class about the teacher across the hall having sex with another teacher, in the classroom. There was no social media back then, so I don’t remember the story going anywhere.
Looking back, I saw some weird shit in school. Adults behaving like insane children, children acting like insane adults.
Germy
@Betty Cracker: “De Milo’s Venus was a beautiful lass, she had the world in the palm of her hands, she lost both her arms in a wrestling match with a brown-eyed handsome man.” (Chuck Berry, “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man”)
father pussbucket
Here’s what I found. Perfect metaphor.
dr. bloor
…And as he answered, one could hear the “FUCK YEAHZ!!!1!one!” coming from the living rooms of modern ‘Murka. To modify a well-turned phrase, Trump is an unsuccessful guy’s idea of a successful guy.
Germy
@dr. bloor:
“Wears a suit, has a pretty model for a wife, has a private jet, tons of money…”
But he looks sick as hell. Puffy, unwell. Has he ever eaten a vegetable? Or is it well-done steaks three times a day for him?
dr. bloor
@Germy: Trump will counterclaim that she’s frigid, has bad skin, and won’t turn out the light at night.
Betty Cracker
@Germy: Ronald Reagan was president when I was in high school, and we had to take a class called “Americanism vs. Communism” to graduate. True story.
Lee Rudolph
Something else chewing-gum related that probably (I hope…) wouldn’t happen today: the science teacher at Wilbur Wright Junior High School, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1961, had a beaker containing pieces of chewed gum on his desk at the front of the room. The first time he caught you chewing gum in class, he confiscated the piece you were chewing and put it into the beaker. On any subsequent infraction, he made you trade the piece you were chewing for a piece from the beaker. —Although in fact I don’t think I ever saw either of those happen; so maybe it was all a mind-fuck.
On the other hand, he did impose (and I had personal experience of) other punishments that might well count as war crimes, in that they involved forcing students to maintain stress positions (e.g., he’d draw a small circle on the blackboard and force you to stand with your hands behind your back and your nose pressed to the center of the circle—which was just high enough that you had to lift your heels). At that, he wasn’t as sadistic as the Assistant Principal in charge of corporal punishment (for boys).
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Germy
@dr. bloor:
And he might hint darkly at some kinky behavior on her part, to humiliate her in court. “She wore chains and shackles! Something about freed slaves, I never understood what she was talking about. Sick, right?”
Germy
@Betty Cracker:
I was in the fifth grade in the ’60s, at the time during the “space race” and our teacher told us the Russians landed their astronauts on solid land (rather than water like us Americans) because Russians didn’t care about human life.
I remember that to this day because of the hateful way she said it. Her whole expression changed. I sensed at that young age that something was wrong with what she said, and her.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Germy:
No, that’s for the poors.
Of course, he’s rich.
Germy
@Lee Rudolph: In sixth grade, our science teacher gave us mercury to pass around. We rolled it around on our palms. It was like a little liquid ball bearing.
big ol hound
The Trump supporters hear like the dogs with the cartoon bubble “mumble, mumble NO IMMIGRANTS mumble mumble mumble mumble NO MUSLIMS mumble”. That’s what these mouth breathers want so they pant with their tongues hanging out and want their heads patted.
Denali
Your scraped gum blob story is priceless; this morning, however, I have made a vow not to click on any article about he who shall not be named – no matter how juicy, tintillating, or disgusting. This stuff leads to brain rot and is sadly contagious. I am surprised that the CDC has not issued a health warning. Please people, take precautions, avoid all contact! This man should be quarantined.
MattF
@Germy: Liquid mercury itself is, I believe, relatively harmless, but mercury vapor is not. And rolling it around in your hand raises the possibility of absorption through the skin. Not good.
Betty Cracker
@Germy: Wow, that’s harsh. The dude who taught the A vs. C class I took was the economics teacher, and although the course material was very propaganda-ish, he made the class interesting. He turned it into a discussion and brought issues of the day into it, like the Solidarity movement in Poland. Folks with other teachers weren’t so lucky and got the straight-up propaganda.
raven
I went to a “Welcome Home Vietnam Vets” event for state employees at the Capitol yesterday. I know what to expect at this kind of event, lot’s of “patriotic” stuff (capped with that asshole Lee Greenwood’s song) a speaker who tells the honorees how shitty they were treated and how it will never happen again and a ceremony that took forever. What really pissed me off were the comments by President Obama that get read at these events even though most of the people HATE everything else about him.
I guess he needed to say all that to bolster his crew with “the troops” and supporters but WHAT THE FUCK???
japa21
To sane people, Trump’s answer was a bunch of goobledygook. However, his first response was the correct one to a lot of RWNJs who see the only function of government being “security, security, security”. As to the rest, easy enough to explain, “Look I gave the tope three functions. It was obvious that the jerk Cooper wasn’t content with that and wouldn’t move on until I gave him a different answer. So I tossed out some things that some people view as functions. But I know, and you know, that was a bunch of tripe to get Cooper to move on.”
And his people will lap up. He gets to validate their basic view of government and poop on the media at the same time.
What is scary is that talk radio in Wisconsin, the conservative side of it anyway (and there is not much else), is out to get Trump and is using Cruz as their fall back position. But again, Trump gets to play the victim. And here it is even better. He can go with the argument that folks always viewed the Charlie Sykes of the world (who once used to be a sane conservative) as on their side really aren’t.
MomSense
@Germy:
I was harassed by my math teacher. When I complained about the things he said, I got chuckles in response. Just his old fashioned sense of humor dontcha know.
I was also publicly ridiculed by my English teacher because I didn’t like Ronald Raygun. He found me out when he spotted my Jane Wyman was right button. At least he knew who Jane Wyman was.
Lots of bullying, homophobia, poor and slut shaming, and meanness.
p.a.
Our punishments were standard detentions, or ‘Saturdays’. Saturday was 8am-1,2pm yardwork, snow shoveling etc. Sucked because pre-drivers license no way to hide it from ‘rents. Detention, after hours weekdays, = sitting in Latin teacher’s room memorizing dictionary definitions. He apparently had no life, if it took until 7pm you and he stayed. The words varied; a fave of his for me was ‘decorum’, often memorizing all the way to the etymology. His payback for my dropping Latin 1/2 way through Iulius Caesar. You’d think after 2 or 3 times ‘decorum’ would become easier. No. Nothing stuck.
dmsilev
@Germy: My 7h grade science teacher once passed around a small beaker of mercury and asked each of us to try and push our finger into the liquid. You can’t; the surface tension is strong enough that you just dimple the surface instead (which is pretty cool, and what he was demoing), but yeesh.
Chris
And his poll numbers won’t take a big hit because most of his supporters don’t care about Republican orthodoxy, or at least not about that aspect of it. What’s wrong with health care and education? Which would in fact make them more sane than the standard GOP candidates and voters, not less.
Patricia Kayden
@Germy: Growing up in Canada, I went to a private school which allowed corporal punishment. I know that’s not allowed anymore. So yes, I agree with you that times have changed and the kids today have it easier than many of us. (Which is a good thing).
Shantanu Saha
When my school first moved into its current building (in 2003) after its first year in existence, I actually used the gum scraping as a form of detention (I bought a half dozen putty knives from Home Depot for a total of $15). This was not only condoned but encouraged by my then principal. The kids almost universally found it a quite mild form of punishment. Other teachers followed suit, and we had relatively clean tables in our rooms. We also had relatively clean tables because 1) students were given this detention for minor infractions, so we established quite strict discipline for the school in general, and 2) students were less likely to stick gum under tables if they thought they might end up under the tables scraping off the gum.
Then after a few years we were informed that gum scraping was considered a form of corporal punishment, and thus illegal.
Germy
@MomSense: We had a 6th-grade music teacher who terrorized the class. She literally went around the room and criticized each student’s physical appearance and personality. I remember one classmate who had her in a different class actually snuck in a small tape recorder and recorded her. But nothing came of it.
But I think it explains why on her first day with us, almost the first thing out of her mouth was a threat that if any of us complained about her, she’d make our lives a living hell. Whew!
japa21
I was in high school in the early 60’s (boy I am getting up there). One of the social studies teachers was also an assistant football coach and not a small man. There were a group of male students who tended to be disruptive in class. One day he walked up to the biggest of them, who was actually a little taller then he was.
He yanked him out of his chair and pushed him up against the wall, grabbed his shirt and lifted the student off the ground so his feet were dangling.
True, wouldn’t happen today, but the rest of us were thrilled to see it happen and the rowdy kids did settle down.
Woodrowfan
@Germy: we did the same thing/ they called it Quicksilver.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense:
In other words, nothing’s really changed.
father pussbucket
What will the meme be when (please, God) Trump loses bigtime? “Not conservative enough”?
BruceFromOhio
Orange, good choice. This made me laugh, thank you.
Good to see folks finally catching on to what’s happening. He’s pulling the biggest con in a game rife with grifters, and we’re all just checkers on his board.
“Sanders/Clinton 2016 for a thousand, please, Alex.”
Germy
One of Trump’s former (now resigned) campaign staff admits Trump entered the race with no expectation of actually winning, but now he’s being swept along on ego. He really didn’t think he’d get this far.
Chris
@father pussbucket:
Absolutely. That’s what they’re saying now.
MattF
@father pussbucket: No doubt. That’s what the RWNJs are already saying.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: True enough, but Trump didn’t go on to say that education, housing and healthcare are legitimate focuses of the federal government. When Cooper questions him about his previous statement that education should be left to the states, he agrees and repudiates Common Core in standard wingnut fashion. What struck me was that his answer revealed that he hasn’t really thought about what the federal government does very much. He wants the job because it’s a gaudy bauble he covets.
rikyrah
Trump and his rivals back away from RNC’s loyalty pledge
03/30/16 08:00 AM—UPDATED 03/30/16 08:24 AM
By Steve Benen
There was a point last summer when Donald Trump flirted with the possibility of running an independent presidential campaign, prompting widespread consternation in Republican circles. But by early September, Trump announced that he’d signed the RNC’s “loyalty pledge,” committing him to the party’s nominating process – and its nominee.
As we’ve discussed before, however, the New York Republican left himself some wiggle room. Trump said, repeatedly, that he would honor the agreement so long as Republicans treated him “fairly.” He never specified exactly what “fairly” meant – apparently, he knows it when he sees it – but the candidate’s rhetoric suggested he always saw a way out of his promise.
All of which led up to last night, when things changed.
When pushed again by moderator Anderson Cooper about whether he’d respect the so-called “Loyalty Pledge” … Trump was more direct:
“No, I don’t anymore. No. We’ll see who it is. And he was essentially saying the same thing.”
In this case, “he” referred to Trump’s principal rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, who also suggested he no longer feels bound by the party’s pledge.
father pussbucket
@Chris: @MattF:
The thing is, Trumpers already think the GOP establishment has let them down for the same reason. But then, “not conservative enough” is a mantra, not something arrived at by (even faulty) reasoning.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Thanks Betty for watching the debate and reporting what happened, I just didn’t have the stomach to do it.
Instead, of watching Republican crap fest, I continued my self guided You Tube trip through the last 2 decades of Hindi movies, last night. I have discovered Kangana Ranaut. Here she is in Queen, (2013) an frumpy behenji* (plain Jane) from Delhi, left at the altar and embarks on a Europe trip which was actually supposed to her honeymoon.
Here she is as a super model in Fashion made in 2007. She is the nonchalant one with the feather boa. Hard to believe that its the same person.
behen = sister
ji = honorific, added as a suffix, eg. Bettyji
Germy
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m not an expert on the subject of Hindi cinema, but I’m fascinated with old films. Are there any Hindi old silent films? Or movies from the ’30s-’50s?
Germy
@rikyrah: So contracts mean nothing to the party of “Lets run government like a bizness”?? Shocking.
mdblanche
So, what transgression were you being punished for in 8th grade? And what transgression were you being punished for last night?
MattF
@Germy: Well, they ‘signed’ something, so there’s a scrap of paper involved.
gogol's wife
The gum metaphor is positively Tolstoyan, if not even Gogolian.
Kay
I was out with a Trump voter last night and we had a good political discussion. He thinks Trump has so disrupted the political process that any predictions about how he will do in the general are invalid. There’s nothing you can really do with that so we ended with a kind of truce.
They think Trump is unique so might can win because who knows? Honestly it’s not that different than the best minds in the GOP, who believe Cruz will somehow save the GOP by…losing the Presidential race. That’s just made-up bullshit too, really.
gogol's wife
@dmsilev:
I have an atavistic memory of rolling mercury around in my hands. Can’t remember who made me do it. I guess it was a ’60s thang.
Matt McIrvin
@Germy:
And now our astronauts are riding their capsules down to Kazakhstan right along with them! The landings are, I understand, a bit rough, but at this point the Soviet/Russian human spaceflight program frankly has a better safety record than ours.
Matt McIrvin
@Germy:
During the recent discussion of the definition of battery, I remembered how shocked I was when somebody told me that the bullies who punched me in the gut every day in junior high school were committing a prosecutable crime. I had no idea it was illegal to beat the crap out of somebody.
MomSense
@Germy:
Yup. Math teacher threatened us, too.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Same as it ever was.
El Caganer
The reason Trump wants to be President is because he wants to be the guy in the flight suit standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a TRUMP, INC. banner over his head. It’s all marketing…..anybody remember the last Prez we had who had a business degree? How’d that work out, anyway?
Uncle Cosmo
@Betty Cracker: For some time now I’ve maintained that to fully grok Drumpf, forget Hitler & Mussolini–think Berlusconi. And since you mentioned “groping Venus de Milo”…
gene108
@Germy:
Indian cinema started in 1905, so there would be silent films. If any are in good enough shape to be digitized and uploaded to the Internet, I do not know.
Popular films from the 1950’s and 1960’s are definitely on YouTube.
I am not sure about 1930’s or 1940’s films, as I do not know anyone old enough who has in interest in that era.
Germy
@MomSense: It’s weird. Writing these memories here has triggered a physical stress response in me.
I don’t mean to demean teachers. I have family members who teach. I hate when RWNJs demonize the teaching profession.
I definitely encountered some psychos in my school days. They were monsters who chose the profession so they could be professional bullies; no better than the student bullies they ignored.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
My friend showed me some videos over the weekend of a woman he said is the best dancer ever. I think she is long retired now. The first clip started with a large, flopping goldfish. Then she was in a goldfish colored costume next to a fountain dancing like the goldfish. There were other videos of her dancing like a peacock, snake, etc. The other videos had back up dancers and there was a bit of a Busby Berkeley quality to them with lots of aerial shots.
Uncle Cosmo
@Chris:
Well heck, nothing at all–for the people who deserve them. Read up on Herrenvolk democracy & get back to us.
MomSense
@Germy:
Me too. Nothing quite like being cornered in a stairwell by a creepy and much older (he was 60 + and I was 13) authority figure and realizing you have to smile as he says inappropriate things because you have no means of escape.
cmorenc
Donald Trump is the thinking man’s Sarah Palin. Except instead of being able to see Alaska from her house, he can see your ass kicked from his house.
Soylent Green
It doesn’t matter what Trump says about anything, whether it’s outrageous, or a moderate slip. His followers have made up their steel-trap minds.
schrodinger's cat
@Germy: Of course there are. The first full length feature film was made in 1913 by Dadasaheb Phalke.
I am not an expert, either. I don’t know much about the silent film era but in the 40s and 50s movies very idealistic and ideological. Apart from gender issues, Hindi movies were progressive and liberal. In the
After the bloodshed of partition, the emphasis was on unity in diversity and the commonalities between the different religions of India, especially Islam and Hinduism. There were many industry stalwarts who themselves had borne the brunt of the partition of India. The three megastars of the 50s and 60s were born in Pakistan, Dilip Kumar (Yusuf Khan), Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: What was the time period of these clips? My personal favorite is Madhuri Dixit, a trained Kathak dancer. She is still active but was the Queen of Hindi movies from the late 80s to early 00s.
yellowdog
@Betty Cracker: We got to read and study the Communist Manifesto in high school (it was an experimental class). I thought it had a lot of good ideas but that it was idealistic–not unlike my opinion of Sanders. BTW, I am a socialist and Sanders brand of democratic socialism is basically just capitalism with a bit less inequality. It doesn’t aim at the basis of capitalism (which is not ‘Wall Street’; Wall Street is just a mechanism).
Germy
@MomSense: It’s weird how after forty-plus years just writing about that music teacher can trigger a physical stress response in me. A PTSD response just thinking about the sick fucks who made what should have been the greatest years of my life miserable!
Shana
@big ol hound: Just like that Far Side cartoon about what we say and what dogs hear.
Germy
@yellowdog: My English teacher showed us the Grapes Of Wrath film, and tested us on it. And then, later in the semester, she showed us On The Waterfront, and tested us on that film.
It wasn’t until very recently, when I was looking back on those years, that I realized she was attempting to provide a “corrective” to any left-wing, pro-union feelings we might have nurtured after the Henry Fonda film.
“Corrupt unions! The mob! Forget what Henry Fonda said!”
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy: As someone who’s taught, I can say that personality flaws can sometimes become useful. Like actors, teachers sometimes are people who like having attention focused on them and are good at making that happen, for instance. And they need to be able to wield authority. So having those qualities can draw you to teaching. They can also make you a monster in a setting where you have full control.
Germy
@Iowa Old Lady: My wife is a teacher. And she has zero tolerance for bullying. Whenever she sees any student showing disrespect for another student, she makes a big deal out of it. Quite a contrast from the 1970s, when I saw teachers ignore the bullying.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
They looked older than 80s to me but I could be wrong. She also did a dance wearing white with about a dozen white ceramic pots on her head.
PurpleGirl
In junior high I was in a special science class for 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. I had the same teacher each year. I was fine with the teacher who took a shine to me and gave me extra work. However, if I’d know how to complain about her actions, there was one student in the class who she ridiculed, made fun of, and generally abused him. That left a bad impression with me.
donnah
Trump is a big spoiled child. He can’t be President because he doesn’t really want to be. He wants to win the country’s biggest popularity contest and inflate his already bloated ego. He wants to absorb the power and prestige, but has no background or education to support it. I think he never dreamed he would get this far and now he’s up to his squinty little eyeballs and can’t get out.
George Bush junior at least some exposure to governing and he had his dad as a crutch. Trump’s got a mysterious list of “experts” he will pay to advise him. Bush was a hapless idiot; Trump is a canny one.
I keep waiting for the press conference or debate where Trump finally gets pinned to the mat and someone’s refereeing who won’t let him up.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: Aah that probably is Sandhya.
Is this the clip with woman and the pots?
AliceBlue
@Germy:
I’m having the same faction just reading everything. I remember it all–kids standing at the blackboard with noses in a circle, grading each other’s papers, the math teacher who would read out everyone’s test grades to the entire class. (Mine was inevitably one of the lowest because I was terrified of my math teachers and I simply couldn’t think or function in class, Every one of my math teachers in junior high and high school were sadistic assholes).
shortribs
So much for the campaign’s internal slogal “Let Trump be Trump”. Seems he just listed the first three things he thought of, maybe an intrepid reporter could ask him for some details on his new policy objectives?
bemused
@Kay:
Republicans have been creating their own reality long before Karl Rove boasting and have been since. I remember how shocked Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and campaign and probably most Republicans were that Mitt didn’t win and win by a large margin.
I read that Paul Ryan is aghast that Trump has had such staying power. I have a hard time believing that all of the Republican establishment, legislators, pundits, media are this shocked by Trump getting this far and that Trump is just an outlier. They are just recreating reality again trying to control the narrative. CYA
chopper
@MomSense:
I was harassed by my calc teacher in high school pretty hard, but he was a hard-core mysogynist conservative and I was a long haired metal head. dude would go on and on about clinton when we were on the bus going to math competitions.
Paul in KY
@MomSense: The greatest dancer of them all died when her long scarf was caught in rear wheel of car she was riding in. Isadora Duncan was her name.
RedDirtGirl
@p.a.: I was also thinking he sounded to me like Palin. Just stringing words together in a row and hoping they make sense.
randy khan
@gogol’s wife:
No mercury for me, but I remember organic chemistry lab in college in the early 1980s, when we constantly washed our hands with benzene to get the other chemicals (toluene, for example) off, and of course did not work with gloves.
My only teacher story of any note involves my 10th grade English teacher, who was rumored to sleep with football players who wanted better grades. She made the mistake of telling my father that there was nothing I could do to improve the grade I got from her in the 1st quarter (perhaps because I did not play football – I don’t know – but the gist was that there literally was no improvement I could make in my work to do better), not realizing that my father knew the principal quite well and would go straight to his office. My grade improved significantly.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
That is the one! Wow, you are good.
@Paul in KY:
I loved watching the old films of her dancing.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: I learned Bharat Natyam for 3+ years. I love dance and dance related movies. I have even been a part of a performance based on that song.
Rafer Janders
@bemused:
At the time of the ’12 campaign I was working at a large financial institution, many of whose officers and directors were absolutely sure that Romney was going to win. It’s one of the enduring regrets of my life that I didn’t ask them to put money on it; I could have financed my retirement on their delusion.
(It was also a great teachable moment, the realization, once again, that people who were financial geniuses were absolute ignorant idiots when it came to politics).
Chris
@Germy:
It’s funny how much they obsess on union ties to the mob. For one thing, yes, of course the mob has subverted, corrupted, or partnered with various labor unions: they’ve done the same with corporations, churches, and governments (holy cow, let’s not get started on mob corruption and police departments). Getting a foothold in legitimate institutions is how organized crime survives, so the fact that unions are among these institutions means exactly jack shit.
But the other thing is, if ever there was an archetypically capitalist institution, it’s the mob. The profit, the competition, the devolution to totally unregulated dog-eat-dog society. It’s everything Grover Norquist wants an economy to be. So there’s a pretty loud “they doth protest too much” vibe to the right wing’s obsession with tying unions to the mob.
bemused
@Rafer Janders:
They have absolute belief the world works their way, revolves around them and refuse to accept anything to the contrary.
Bill
@Germy: Back in middle school – late 70’s to early 80’s – we had a gym teacher with some creative forms of punishment. His most feared was the “full court hair drag” which was exactly what it sounds like. He also liked “the helicopter” which involved grabbing a handful of hair and spinning in a circle. On his less creative days he just hit us with a ping pong paddle.
My 7th grade Social Studies teacher kept a large wooden plank on his desk – with holes drilled in it to cut down wind resistance – which he called “the board of education.”
It was a different – worse – time.
Jeffro
@p.a.:
This is exactly right – Trump is Palin in a suit, motivated by the exact same thing: each can’t believe they were bested by the black guy.
It’s great that neither Cruz nor Kaisch has the guts to come out and say this, for fear of alienating that part of the GOP base, but it’s just so true. Trump is a moron with no idea what he’s doing.
The Other Chuck
You’d think one of these fetishists of The Constimitushun would maybe quote the preface… “To provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity”
ahaha who am I kidding, after 40 years of demonizing the word “welfare”…
Elie
I’m late to the thread…
He doesn’t make sense and he is either so narcissistic that he does not care or, as I have speculated before, he may need a mini-mental assessment of his cognitive status. The scrambled nature of his thoughts does not bode well for the future as the campaign season wears on and he becomes even more tired.
mr_gravity
In junior high in 1970 I was furiously trying to finish my algebra homework during homeroom when the pledge of allegiance was announced over the PA. I did not stand. The teacher called me out. I told the truth. I was doing math. I was threatened with “consequences” if it ever happened again. I was fourteen and I wasn’t backing down. Next day I did the same thing. The assistant principal was waiting for me. He was the disciplinarian. I was hauled to the office, questioned, threatened, and accused of being a communist sympathizer. My parents were summoned. There was talk of expulsion and criminal charges. I stood my ground. If it’s compulsory it is not a pledge. In the end I compromised. I would stand for the pledge out of respect for the many who gave their lives. It was a moment that has defined my politics to this day.
Imagine my surprise when I learned years later that the Supreme Court had ruled in my favor 27 years earlier.
Frank
@Germy: I recall the nun tying a little girl to her desk with jump ropes, taping her mouth shut, and making the rest of us stand in a circle around her to stare at her. Tears rolled down her cheeks and some of ours. The transgression that warranted such punishment? Being a tattle tail. Ah, the 60’s… Good times.
Chris
@mr_gravity:
I didn’t go to American schools until university. I realize they’ve changed a lot since the time most of you are talking about, but honestly, the goddamn North Koreanish Pledge of Allegiance (even if it’s not compulsory anymore – theoretically) in itself is enough of a reason to make me really squeamish about ever sending my hypothetical future kids there. Not to mention all the other debates around the education system, from the privatization-obsessed reformers to the people still demanding that creationism be taught in science classrooms.
Chris
@mr_gravity:
Can I also just say how much I fucking love the fact that they accused a fourteen year old of being “a communist sympathizer.” A goddamn fourteen year old. God, these people are such fucking tools. And it’s such a wonder that anticommunism might’ve developed a bad name in the last half century or so.
J R in WV
I’m trying to avoid exposure to Trump’s bloviation. He really seems to be just spewing words that are related to things he has heard recently, without any thought being involved.
I guess that when you always hold nearly all the power in a room, no one will call attention to womething stupid you say. So eventually you stop worrying about how what you say will sound to others.
It must have been truly horrible for him to be in a room full of movers and shakers, realizing that he wasn’t nearly the most powerful person in the room. Then realizing that the most powerful person, the BLACK President, was going to speak about his shortcomings, at length, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He has probably never been a good sport, never needed to know how to be a good sport, and when he was forced into a position where pretending to be a good sport was his only option, well, he isn’t an actor, is he?
So now he seeks the power of the Presidency, where he probably spend time thinking about how he can hit back at President Obama, after He – The Trump! enters his Oval office. But of course, there won’t be anything he can do, really. And if he tries, he will look ever worse than he does now. But he can’t realize this, at all.
Miss Bianca
@mr_gravity:
I have always hated the Pledge. I always, always try to duck away from it if I can. I hate oaths of any form or variety. I’m with the Quakers on this one.
Matt McIrvin
I went to public school in the 1970s/80s, but in Fairfax County, Virginia some of the more extreme abuses were already gone. There was complete tolerance for bullying in junior-high PE classes, though, except when we had a joint class with the girls with their teacher presiding: she wouldn’t stand for any of that, so I always looked forward to it.
Students say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning to this day in US public schools, at least in ours. But it doesn’t stop people from passing around Facebook memes saying “remember when we used to say the Pledge in school?” as if it were banned today.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Social media is making us more dumb.
mr_gravity
@Chris: Yeah I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sweating but when they pulled out the commie card I felt the momentum shifting my way. I may not have been especially bright at fourteen but I did have a working bullshit detector.