Two of Trump’s kids won’t be able to cast a ballot for the old man in the upcoming New York primary:
Donald Trump on Monday confirmed that two of his children — Ivanka and Eric — won’t be able to vote for him in New York’s April 19 primary because they missed the registration deadline.
“They had a longtime register [sic] and they were, you know, unaware of the rules, and they didn’t register in time. So they feel very, very guilty. They feel very guilty,” Trump said on Fox News on Monday.
“Oops,” host Brian Kilmeade said.
Trump says in the Fox appearance that he thinks “they have to register a year in advance,” but actually, they just had to get the forms in by March 25th. Kind of a microcosm of how Team Trump has managed the intricacies of the primary operation overall, huh?
H/T: Buzzfeed
PaulWartenberg2016
There goes their spots in the will.
rikyrah
DeRay Mckesson Won’t Be Elected Mayor of Baltimore. So Why Is He Running?
By GREG HOWARD
APRIL 11, 2016
DeRay Mckesson will not be the next mayor of Baltimore. He’s a 30-year-old with no experience in city government who registered less than 1 percent support in a recent poll. He has no clear local support network and has been rejected by his most likely constituency — the city’s young black activists. At least one competing candidate has been embedded in Baltimore politics nearly as long as Mckesson has been alive.
And yet here he was on a recent Monday afternoon, in a coffee shop on the city’s north side, signing campaign fliers. He said he couldn’t sleep last night and got up to get dressed well before the sun rose over Roland Park, the tony North Baltimore neighborhood where he lives with a childhood mentor. (Navy chinos, eggshell Oxford shirt and, of course, his trademark royal blue Patagonia puffer vest, now faded and fraying around the collar.) He had been getting pulled here and there all day, doing interviews with Mashable and Mother Jones, taking calls from the Museum of Modern Art and journalists in Italy and Germany. He’s exceptionally charming; all day, he fielded questions graciously, smiling and laughing, joking and gossiping. Through it all, he had been signing fliers. “I don’t even know what I’m writing anymore,” he said, scribbling.
Baltimore’s Democratic primaries — which, in a city with as many as 10 Democrats for every Republican, might as well be the general election — take place on April 26. But for a few reasons Mckesson is willing to admit (he took time to ask scores of people for advice, he couldn’t find an available lawyer versed in Maryland election law) and a few he’s not, he didn’t officially file his papers until Feb. 3, leaving him the last of 13 Democratic candidates to throw a hat in the ring.
For an ordinary mayoral candidate in a major American city, filing minutes before the deadline — months or even years after competitors started eyeing the office — would be a waste of time bordering on farce. But Mckesson isn’t an ordinary candidate: He’s famous. He has more than 325,000 followers on Twitter. He has made appearances on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah,” and has been to the White House so many times that he says he doesn’t get nervous anymore. He was on Fortune’s “World’s Greatest Leaders” list last year. He collects celebrity “friends” (Azealia Banks, Jesse Williams, Susans Wojcicki and Sarandon, Rashida Jones, Tracee Ellis Ross), refers to them solely by their first names and often follows by asking if you’ve ever met them. All because, over the last year and a half, he has been the best-known face of the Black Lives Matter movement, traveling the country to protest police violence.
Now he’s asking voters to put him in charge of everything from Baltimore’s police force to its potholes. His campaign is by far the highest-profile example of a Black Lives Matter protester running for public office, and it was initially greeted with nationwide excitement. Mckesson has already inspired thousands around the country to protest police brutality, but the viability of any civil rights movement lies in its ability to move from the street to the places where governance happens. The question was whether Mckesson could parlay his national following into local action. “I get it,” he says now. “I get that that doesn’t translate.”
Big Ol Hound
If the Trump family’s lawyers and management team can’t figure out the voting rules then how are we supposed to do this in real life?
Germy
Uh oh. I knew this day would come: The Hamilton Pushback
I haven’t seen the play but I love the soundtrack. I don’t know enough about the actual history to know if this is correct…
Is the author right or is he just pissed because (as one commenter teased) he couldn’t get tickets?
Punchy
Just another “whoops” out of KS…..
All just a mistake, ya see. The errors both, just purely coincidentally, work to exclude and prevent Spanish-speaking voters from having their ballots count. I’m sure “21” is often mistranslated as “15” in many documents, as they look and sound so similar.
MattF
@Punchy: Yeah, I saw that. Purely coincidental and… “we’re working on fixing it. Right now. Really. Would I lie?”
dr. bloor
Four years of Calvinball would be terrifyingly fascinating to behold after two terms of eleventeen-dimension chess.
aimai
@PaulWartenberg2016: Come on–Trump doesn’t expect his kids to do anything that he can pay someone else to do.
Betty Cracker
@Germy: Yay! Whatever it takes to silence the cult! ;-)
aimai
@Germy: I saw the play. It deserves all its accolades. Especially because it blows by this static reading of history and reminds us that all of us can see ourselves in the founding, and that all of us need to imagine ourselves as revolutionary actors.
WarMunchkin
To clarify, only first-time voters had to register by March 25th. If you had already registered in NYS, but not as a Republican (in Trump’s case), you had to register by the previous election day, Nov 3, 2015, with a party affiliation in order to vote in NYS’s closed primary. What Trump is saying when he uttered longtime register is, presumably, that they were registered as Independents or Democrats.
Hal
In NY you can register online through mydmv. Takes like 5 minutes.
Also, isn’t Ivanka the one married to a jewish man? Maybe she’s registered as a Dem and didn’t want to change affiliation. not that you have to be a Dem if you are Jewish.
trollhattan
Good god I’m sick of this election cycle. NPR decided to supplement Monday Cokie with Kathleen Parker for some unfathomable reason. Equal time to counterbalance the so-liberal Cokie? Is she the new David Brooks?
gene108
Keep in mind he is winning.
Planning might be overrated.
sigaba
@Germy: All of this sounds like excellent rationale for learning more about Hamilton. And it makes the already patent ironies of Hamilton all the more fitting and deep.
CONGRATULATIONS!
For a party who always bitches about people who can’t speak English, they haven’t tried to put anyone who can in office since Reagan.
WarMunchkin
@Germy: One of the recurring themes in the play is that history has unreliable narrators (who lives who dies who tells your story). If this is true, I find it way more interesting, because it’s not Alexander Hamilton’s character who claims abolitionist roots, it’s Eliza Hamilton’s character, post Alex’s death. If Alexander was pro-slavery and Eliza wasn’t, she’s projecting her values on him after his death; this is made much more interesting by their strained and broken relationship in the play, which shows that she’s both whitewashing him in history and in her mind.
That said, the play just has the effect of telling the audience that Alexander was an abolitionist, which I doubt is true.
Betty Cracker
@WarMunchkin: Interesting! And thanks for the clarification!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
NY’s primary rules and party situation is pretty, as the young people now in their mid thirties used to say, whack.
@trollhattan: I used to call Parker a second-rate Peggy Noonan wannabe, partly because it was mean, but also because it was accurate. She once wrote a column I swear I remember but can’t find about how she knew the country was in good hands because Dumbya was “a good man”– he himself liked what he thought was that eloquent understatement of virtue; her evidence for this was a picture of him sitting in his pick-up truck down on the Lazy Potemkin Ranch (No Cattle Allowed). It was just the kind of brain dead schmaltz Noonan likes to wallow in. I’ve since come to think Parker is much more dangerous because she has a more reasonable affect. I saw her on the Tweety show a while back and she slipped in about four lies in two minutes and (hold on to your hats) got no pushback from Tweety and I forget which unprepared liberal she was sharing the table with.
Mike J
Members of the party pick the party’s leaders. The October deadline isn’t really an issue for members of a party. There are people who met the deadline by over 50 years!
Iowa Old Lady
I’m in the middle of Chernow’s bio of Hamilton, and his record on slavery is mixed. By belief, he was an abolitionist and belonged to at least one society dedicated to abolishing slavery. But his wealthy in-laws did hold slaves and there’s some possibility Hamilton held two also. He appears to have sacrificed doing something about slavery to pass the Constitution. He refused to make England pay restitution to slave holders whose slaves had been freed by the British during the Revolution. Hm. What else? Someone probably has an orderly summary of this, but that’s what I remember from my reading so far.
Mike in NC
Drumpf spawn are honing their grifting skills as the old man taught them. No time to waste on voting. Not losers!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never thought of that, but it’s a great point. They’ve gone from “don’t cry for me, Argentina”, to “Bob Dole would ask you to support Bob Dole!”, to “won’t get fooled again” to whatever the hell Trump’s argle-bargle is. I’m repulsed by his stupidly arrogant demagoguery, but kind of fascinated by the way he expresses it.
@Betty Cracker: Heh, part of me is really curious to see the play, and part of me is a contrarian grinch that doesn’t want to go along with the herd. I still haven’t seen Forrest Gump
Adam L Silverman
@Germy: Loomis’s take is correct. Except for complaining about 48 superhero movies being released every month.
Matt McIrvin
“Whoops, Dad, I’d love to vote for you but I can’t because, gee whiz, I plumb forgot to register.”
Loviatar
One of the things I’m trying to teach my son is; expect the best, but plan for the worst.
In 2008, Hillary Clinton a Democratic party member for 30+ years lost the democratic nomination for president. Her and her supporters, also primarily long time democratic party members immediately pivoted and supported the Democratic nominee Barack Obama.
In 2016, Bernie Sanders a Democratic party member for less than a year (April 30, 2015) is likely to lose the democratic nomination for president. Will he and his supporters, also not long time democratic party members immediately pivot and support the Democratic nominee?
—–
So, whats the plan if they don’t?
boatboy_srq
@PaulWartenberg2016: Assumes Trump will leave anything worth inheriting.
Adam L Silverman
@WarMunchkin: And yet it was her and her family’s slaves. Not his. He married into their wealth based on their ownership and exploitation of humans as chattel.
J.
Love this. BWAHAHAHA. There’s a piece about this in the WaPo that includes a graphic of how the Donald has voted over the years. Turns out he wasn’t registered for a while either — and voted Democrat in a bunch of general elections (mainly in the 2000s). (I also read that Ivanka leans Democrat, or did. I’m not so secretly hoping she’ll vote for Hillary.)
boatboy_srq
@CONGRATULATIONS!: @Jim, Foolish Literalist: There’s a saying among my European friends: most Europeans speak at least two languages (if not three) fluently by the time they finish school: most American’s can’t speak one.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Also from TPM (referring to a WaPo story which reports):
He is an asshole beyond description.
Adam L Silverman
@Iowa Old Lady: Loomis deals with Chernow as well. He is, perhaps, not the best individual to be Hamilton’s biographer.
rikyrah
@Germy:
bitter grapes about tickets.
Love Hamilton
Germy
@Adam L Silverman:
True. The correct number is 49.
Iowa Old Lady
@Adam L Silverman: Chernow’s not the best, you mean? I have no standard against which to judge Chernow’s history, but I have to say he’s exhaustingly thorough in producing documentation. This book is hyuuuuge.
Thoughtful David
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Well, to be fair, they did foist Junior Bush off on us twice.
Uncle Cosmo
@gene108:
Might. Might not.
If Drumpf can’t close the deal on the first ballot, what’s the over/under on how many of his pledged delegates drop him like a hot baked yam on the second? Between party hacks & stealth Cruzers the Failgunner finagled onto his slates? (My unscientific guess is 150, & that’s probably low.)
Adam L Silverman
@Iowa Old Lady: My take on Loomis’s criticism is that Chernow’s ideological preferences and what he’s pushed for economically have colored his view of Hamilton and what Hamilton was trying to accomplish. As a result you get a Hamilton that is filtered through Chernow’s ideological and economic viewpoints. I’ve not read the book, I don’t like musicals, so that’s all I’ve got.
Waldo
If Trump is the nominee, I hope he gets crushed in November. But if it’s going to be close, well, I hope he loses NY by two votes — so we can watch his head explode.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
scene from a Bernie rally
I haven’t seen Jim Hightower’s name in a while. Somehow makes me miss Molly Ivins that much more.
WereBear
@Germy: Show me a Founding Father who was perfect and I will show you a children’s book :)
Shana
@Hal: IIRC, she’s married to an orthodox jew, and while orthodox isn’t ultra-orthodox, ultra-orthodox jews are the only group that skews Republican. FWIW.
rikyrah
I can’t believe how happy this just made me.
………..
“GILMORE GIRLS” FIRST LOOK
Posted on April 11, 2016
Kittens, if you’re counting down the days until you can return to Stars Hollow, then you don’t want to listen to anything we have to say. Just this once, you’re gonna want the PR department to do the talking:
“It’s a lifestyle. It’s a religion. It’s ‘Gilmore Girls’ on Netflix.
Netflix releases first look images of ‘Gilmore Girls,’ which will launch later this year, everywhere that Netflix is available.
The four, 90-minute movies, are bringing your favorite Stars Hollow residents back together – Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham), Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel), Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop), Luke Danes (Scott Patterson), Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) and many more – picking up life nine years after the original ‘Gilmore Girls’ signed off the air. Amy Sherman-Palladino is the creator and executive producer. Daniel Palladino is also an executive producer. They are both writing and directing the series. ‘Gilmore Girls’ on Netflix is produced by Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.”
jl
Anyone ever see Mark Penn and Don Trump in the same room?
OzarkHillbilly
@aimai: a
I’ve tried and just can’t imagine voting for Bernie.
(it’s a JOKE! only a JOKE!)
? Martin
If multimillionaires with personal assistants can’t navigate the voting obstacles, what hope do the rest of us have?
(That’s a rhetorical question)
scav
Camelot’s got great music (to some), might even be inspirational (again, to some), but that doesn’t argue in favor of it’s being a realistic depiction of 5th century England.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Speaking of voting, election, ballot rules… I’ve been wondering what kind of fuckery somebody might pull if Trump is the nominee (or Sanders). I guess you’d have to look at it state-by-state, but I can’t imagine anyone would bother trying to mount a national “Write In Ryan!” campaign. I don’t think Bloomaparte would ever open his wallet for another candidate. Would/Could Big Poppa Huntsman and the guy who seems to be the leader of the politically active hedge funders (Singer?) finance a No Labels run by Huntsman Jr and Lieberman, or Evan Bayh if Lieberman is too old? Mostly rhetorical, wool-gathering speculation because I think it’s too late for them to get on state ballots, unless they could do a massive push in the big EC states.
Ella in New Mexico
Please! Since when did the children of the oligarchy have reason or necessity to vote in the first place?
Librarian
Aside from slavery, I don’t understand how Hamilton became a liberal hero. He despised democracy and believed that the economic elites should govern. The Federalists were the party that represented the big business interests of the time. I don’t get for the life of me how so many on the left just love this guy.
Emma
@Germy: this is what we call historical perfectionism. Or, alternatively, the theory that nobody is perfect. Misses the point completely as far as I’m concerned.
opiejeanne
@WarMunchkin: Have you seen the Bernie fans yelling about these deadlines that so many of them missed?
The wailing and gnashing of teeth and calls to contact their NY legislators are epic (is epic?)… which is strange. Why would the NY lege have anything to do with setting primary rules? When I asked they insisted that it’s state law.
dedc79
He is running a Bart Simpson style campaign and may in the end get the same unhappy (for him) result.
schrodinger's cat
@rikyrah: I am a GG fan. Lorelai is my favorite, after a number of rewatchings Emily has grown on me too, I like the spoilt brat, Rory the least.
Shana
@WarMunchkin: As I recall from reading Chernow’s biography Hamilton helped found New York’s Manumission Society along with John Jay.
WarMunchkin
@opiejeanne: It is state law, with an odd exception: that parties themselves may set alternative rules if they wish. The NY Independence party is the only party that allows an open primary.
schrodinger's cat
@Germy: Judging historical characters by the standards of our time is a mistake, I think. Founding fathers sounds so biblical, isn’t that precisely what the framers of the Constitution were trying to get away from?
Brachiator
@Germy:
I vote pissed.
And it’s not about whether the author was right, it’s a matter of context and emphasis. Of course Hamilton helped write and defend the “pro slavery Constitution.” That’s the only Constitution there was.
I’ve even seen some stuff that suggests that the play is no good because there are typically very few black people in the audience during any performance. It’s New York. If Latinos and blacks with money prefer other amusements, they’re just missing out.
rikyrah
MEDIA ALERT:
Ken Burns on How Race Is the Common Thread in His Work + Why Jackie Robinson’s Story Is Still So Relevant
By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act
April 8, 2016 at 12:34PM
Here’s a first look at Ken Burns’ upcoming 2-part/4-hour Jackie Robinson documentary that will premiere as part of PBS’ winter/spring primetime lineup this year. The network has officially set April 11 and 12 premiere dates, from 9-11 pm ET on each night.
Titled simply “Jackie Robinson,” the film – co-directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon – will memorialize the life of the legend, who was the first African American player in Major League Baseball.
“Jackie Robinson is the most important figure in our nation’s most important game,” said Ken Burns. “He gave us our first lasting progress in civil rights since the Civil War and, ever since I finished my BASEBALL series in 1994, I’ve been eager to make a stand-alone film about the life of this courageous American. There was so much more to say not only about Robinson’s barrier-breaking moment in 1947, but about how his upbringing shaped his intolerance for any form of discrimination and how after his baseball career he spoke out tirelessly against racial injustice, even after his star had begun to dim.”
dogwood
@rikyrah:
I believe Rory is a teacher.
SiubhanDuinne
@Waldo:
Of course there’s nothing to keep his kids from voting for him in November — if, as you say, he is the nominee. I’m all in for a Trump-head-splody scenario, so I hope (and assume) you meant “he loses NY by two votes in the primary.”
Chyron HR
@Librarian:
Hes’ in a toe-tapping, feel-good hit, friend! Like Ant-Man, but with more signing, and fewer ants!
Brachiator
Trump thought it would be easy. He just had to show up and accept the accolades of “da peeples” and ride into the GOP convention like a Caesar. Now he’s got to put up a fight. And Cruz knows how to fight in the trenches. It’s making for an exciting contest.
His surrogates on the Sunday Meet the Dopes shows indicate that he is trying to play catchup.
MattF
@schrodinger’s cat: In fact they were, quite deliberately, trying to emulate the founders of the Roman Republic.
Bartholomew
The pretense of being liberal is now a declining element of what turned out to actually be a leftist power site … it seems this particular case of political gluemind developed through an alternation of scapegoating groupthink with a steady diet of corporate teevee and lots of empty emotionalizing around pet pics. It is the self-making tool trade.
The fact of it being an entirely self-directed empathetic and moral collapse, with no reason other than an excess of bullying guff and blow, is interesting in a historical autopsy sort of way. Sometimes folks push their fingers into the ears too far and it freezes that way.
It may well be that Hillary will show up for her coronation before vanishing into her serial squid-ink of scandal routine, but Bernie Sanders already accomplished more than expected: with your help, the rigged game is now in full view. The Big Tent is a sham.
dogwood
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ve always thought of Parker and MoDo as second rate Noonans. The hackery is the same, but Peggy is much better stylistically. Parker and Dowd don’t have the skill to write a presidential speech.
MattF
@Bartholomew: That’s completely incomprehensible.
WarMunchkin
@Bartholomew: These are words.
Aimai
@MattF: but points for squid ink. I’m a big squid fan.
Chyron HR
@Bartholomew:
Gentlemen, we have reached peak cudlip.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Librarian: Doubt they do. Most people know him as just some dumbass who didn’t have to get himself killed but did so anyway.
schrodinger's cat
@WarMunchkin: It does matter who wins and loses. In India too, so much of what the Indian self image (whether Nehruvian or Hindutvawadi) during the freedom struggle and immediately afterwards, was a reaction to how their Victorian rulers viewed them.
*Nehruvian == liberal, left leaning
*Hindutvawadi==fascist, right leaning
Germy
I don’t think folks are as fascinated with Trump’s offspring as they’re supposed to be. I remember when his daughter did a cameo “walk on” when he hosted SNL, and you could hear a pin drop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxOR1N1I1g
It was the first time I’d ever seen a celebrity of any sort NOT receive surprised laughter and applause.
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: DougJ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Martin Longman had a piece at Washington Monthly, and his own blog, quoting a woman who was one of Turmp’s first political hires. Trump wanted to come in second, aiming for about 15% of the vote, to prove that he was a Serious Person who should be taken Seriously. Apparently, it drives him crazy that he is not taken seriously by the political/business media the way Jack “the books are cooked” Welch and Jamie Dimon are. Along the way, he became as the saying goes, the dog who caught the car.
Found it.
trollhattan
@Bartholomew:
That’s easy for you to say. Or not, them are some fancy talking words.
Uncle Cosmo
@Bartholomew:
With the bolded amendment, a perfect description of you.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is this kid talking about this blog? any blog? Good lord.
Betty Cracker
@Bartholomew: The worst thing is how Big Cole sends agents to your home to duct-tape you to a chair and force you to read this site.
Brachiator
@Librarian:
Hamilton is an American hero. Full stop. To look at it from a liberal or conservative filter is pointlessly reductive.
That Hamilton despised democracy is an overstatement perpetuated by his political enemies, including ironically enough John and Abigail Adams, who some want to see as the Bill and Hillary of the Revolution.
You have Jefferson with his bullshit vision of small yeoman farmers populating America, and trade with America’s supposed big buddy France. But Jefferson (and Madison) were incompetent as political economists. America at the time had (and still has) far more trade with Britain and had the resources to increase trade and manufacturing. Jefferson also wanted his beloved Virginia to benefit from freedom from Britain without taking any responsibility for the war debt. Without Hamilton’s efforts at Treasury the United States might have been an economic backwater dominated by a slave holding planter elite, not exactly a liberal paradise.
Oh, yeah, Jefferson’s imposition of a trade embargo to punish the British in 1807 collapsed the freaking economy.
Adam L Silverman
@Librarian: He supported a strong, centralized government and rejected the idea that the individual states were sovereign. And he established the Coast Guard! Semper Paratus!
A Ghost To Most
@Bartholomew:
And that, ladies and gentleman, concludes the two-minute Hillary Hate.
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
I’m pretty sure the same guy just commented over at Charlie Pierce’s place under the handle “Kailibigot Bonin” (took a couple of gratuitous and incomprehensible shots at Cole and ABL while he was at it).
Marc
@Bartholomew: Me speak English pretty one day.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Aah so the debate of rural vs. urban. City vs. country. Farm vs. factory is an old one. Was the oversized influence that small and sparsely populated states have in our current politics a feature or was it a bug?
scav
@SiubhanDuinne: Well, some people have busy days. Talking truth to power by anonymously boiler-plating variously blogs and threads with shopworn trivialities and then a quick run home to solve the decay of modern society by organizing their sock drawer. (gotta keep the puppets ready to hand).
Marc
I can’t get over one of the prime movers in the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts (Hamilton), and a man actively hostile to democracy, being some sort of liberal lion.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sedition-act-becomes-federal-law
for context.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
I get a whiff of long-departed BOB, but am not inclined to put further energy to the matter. Oh look, Glenn Beck is on.
opiejeanne
@WarMunchkin: Aha. Ok, so the people griping about the rule need to join the Democratic party and work to change that rule. I think the rule is a bit extreme, requiring change of affiliation that far in advance, but the deadline to register new voters seems pretty reasonable; I understand why it’s a closed primary.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: It was a feature for the anti-Federalists and a bug for the Federalists.
Madison bounced between the two a fair amount over the course of his professional political life. Depending on how much time he was spending with Jefferson.
magurakurin
I think Bernie is going to get his photo op with Francis on the 15th at 4:15. Sanders is now scheduled to give a 10 minute talk at 4pm. There is coffee break at 4:10. Francis is now going to Lesbos on the 16th for one day not the two day 15-16 as before.
JMG
@Germy: Did Henry V really give that speech on the eve of Agincourt? Who knows? Who cares? It’s a goddamn musical, not peer-reviewed research.
Brachiator
@Chyron HR:
“cudlip???”
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: @trollhattan: I’ve got the IP for whoever it is. The email address doesn’t match the one from the stalker troll when he showed up a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think to check the IP at the time. If he gets worse or if you see something similar or similar and worse in another thread, shoot me an email (Alain should have a contact email for me on the contact list now), let me know what thread, and the name of the commenter, and I’ll take a look.
opiejeanne
@rikyrah: My sister wishes Dad had lived to see this Ken Burns project; he was a Dodger fan and loved Jackie Robinson for his courage and his playing.
MattF
@Brachiator: You’re not supposed to ask about that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Betty Cracker: I know. Halp – plz. Is there anybody nearby who can send someone to peel the duct tape off my elbows?
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: That was an inscrutable insult a deranged troll used to hurl at commenters here.
Jeff
He’d make Dubya look good.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Merci. Also, too, thanks. Because America.
jl
@Librarian:
” Aside from slavery, I don’t understand how Hamilton became a liberal hero. He despised democracy and believed that the economic elites should govern. The Federalists were the party that represented the big business interests of the time. I don’t get for the life of me how so many on the left just love this guy. ”
I don’t know how many on the left just love the guy. I can see why the people who want some counterbalance to reactionary mythology about the Founders want to emphasize some of Hamilton’s economic thinking. The reactionaries have created a myth that the Founders and Framers were in proto-libertarians who believed in unregulated free markets and injected that doctrine into the Constitution. Hamilton was a founder who absolutely in no way can be twisted into an advocate of unregulated free markets, or odd doctrines like generalized ‘takings’ doctrines. Reactionaries are reduced to asserting that anything in Hamilton’s writings that seem to contradict current libertarian thinking was injected by his sly and subversive commie statistician and economic historian assistant, Tench Coxe, and poor Hamilton was just too dull and slow and write it out. Which is nonsense. Hamilton is also good example of Founder who can be used to oppose Constitutional originalism, but that is complicated because he is often cited as a textualist, and Scalia’s mish-mash of theories about how to interpret the Constitution is often labeled as textualist, and he referred to himself as on sometimes.
But making a hero or villain of any Founder to create an archetype relevant for our time is anachronistic and silly, and threatens to setup the old battle of ‘Hamilton men’ and Jefferson men’ that infested US history for a long while.
I think the truth is that none of the Founders can be easily fit into to the political and economic controversies of today. The Founders and Framers we read today, like Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison were wise enough to anticipate this inevitable development, and each offered his own ideas on how to deal with it.
None of the Founders could be easily fit into the modern reactionary economic doctrine that espoused by people like Dick Armey, or Phil Gramm or Ryan or Rand Paul. They lived in a heavily regulated environment that would seem, in some ways to us, very intrusive. You can read Jefferson’s report of Virginia;s state and county laws for taking care of the poor to sense that. Maybe some of us would not find the county sheriff declaring a household rich enough with housing ample enough to take in a sturdy vagabond, or local widow to feed and house intrusive. I would, though. And I think I am a liberal!
Edit: Hamilton also good on voter suppression for liberals. He is on record in several places as saying that franchise for House elections should be as freely available and wide as possible. And public record for franchise for non-whites. He was an elitist who greatly feared popular unrest and wanted mass of people to have some voice in government, through the House.
Aimai
@Brachiator: omg I’ve been on this blog long enough to get the reference!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Brachiator: I college I had a beloved US history professor (I took most all of his classes based on his specialty) who told me
He went on to note that the demagogue view tended to include some quite negative traits not strictly associated with the word itself.
A Ghost To Most
@Brachiator:
Just don’t say matoko_chan three times,or it will reappear
WarMunchkin
@opiejeanne: Well, it’s a valid form of activism, as long as it isn’t CyBernBullying or harassment. It’s legitimate to organize and advocate for changes in election law, as this definitely is. You can also say they can change the rules within the Democratic Party itself; either route is valid from a pure issue advocacy standpoint – it’s just that the latter is purely to get Bernie elected, whereas the former affects other minor parties as well (as well as Republicans).
I can see the arguments for going either way regarding open vs. closed primaries; it’s just hard to make good faith arguments amidst the din of “corruption” allegations. I like skepticism and having a critical eye towards systems, it’s just that skepticism without rigor is conspiracy. Closed primaries aren’t conspiracies against Bernie, they’re simply one way of doing things that grew out of history.
I’m a registered Democrat in NY, so I suspect I’ll be getting hosed down by Bernie and Hillary callers. Sigh.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: With the things that force your eyes open. It was horrible!!!
Bobby Thomson
@Librarian: this.
Roger Moore
@A Ghost To Most:
Quite frankly, I think we could use some more interesting, higher quality
trollscranks like matoko_chan on the blog. She was a hell of a lot more interesting than the tiresome right wing trolls for hire we get today.Calouste
@magurakurin: So Sanders is conveniently out of the country on Tax Day so no one can ask him why he doesn’t release his tax returns.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: I think ye ole departed trollette was saying we were like brain-dead cows, or something like that.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Brachiator: A dangerous word that must not be uttered twice more, or even once within range of a mirror.
In case you don’t recall, or arrived afterword, the term was an insult used by an extremely bright, extremely opinionated, and somewhat unsuccessfully socialized woman who posted hear under a variety of nyms. She did not like me at all which bothered me not in the slightest, but I continue to resent her rude treatment or our Malaysian correspondent, Amir Khalid.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Agree. I actually learned a few things from her.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@opiejeanne:
Al Giordano’s TL is hilarious. My favorite complaint about missing the primary registration deadline is “how could we know we wanted to vote for Bernie last Octooooobberrrr!!!! WAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
Being a special snowflake is such a burden.
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I think the bigger issue with the Founders and Framers, especially those who were both and who were the biggest names, is that they were all too human. Washington was land poor and had courted, by several accounts, every eligible and liquidity wealthy woman in Virginia. When he started his relationship with Martha Custis she was married to someone else. And by the diaries and letters of the other founders he showed up every day in Philadelphia in his old colonial scout uniform, no matter how hot and humid it was or how rank his uniform had become from said heat and humidity, because he wanted to be named General of the Continental Army. But he wouldn’t ask them outright. Once they chose him he wrote a detailed letter home to Martha about what a spectacular surprise it was that they had done so. The others simply wanted him to change into clothes that were less ripe!
Jefferson didn’t just have an affair with a slave – Sally Hemmings was actually his sister in law. In fact she was so close in physical appearance to Mrs. Jefferson that it was often remarked that they could not be told apart.
Hamilton, as is well known, would sleep with anyone willing to lift her skirts for him.
I won’t go on with more details. The real genius of these men is that they were able to get past being all too human and flawed and create what they did. Even if the creation, itself, was also flawed. Our problem is that we’ve deified them in our civil religion and forgotten just how flawed and contradictory people they were.
jl
@Paul in KY: I never figured out what ‘cudlip’ meant. I just knew it was supposed to be a very bad thing. My best guess it meant somehow that a person was as dumb as cow chewing its cud?
scav
@Paul in KY: Great, now I’ve got trollette’s syndrome rattling around in my braincase: that’s likely to stick. Like it.
ETA: @jl: well, something had to interchange with sheeple, and given enough time and thought, we could have had a noah’s arkfull.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: At the beginning of the Revolution the whole gang bought Sam Adams a new suit, since the one and only old one he had was falling apart, looked very bad at the committee meetings. I guess that kind of gesture would have insulted a grand Virginian aristocrat.
Adam L Silverman
@Paul in KY: I believe the feminine for troll is trollop.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Yep, he was considered to be a rabble rousing country bumpkin. Couldn’t even ride a horse.
Also: “Brewer, Patriot”.
scav
Experimentation, is the first half getting marked as spam:
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
There were Roman writers going on about the pleasures of bucolic life even though the empire was engaged in international trade.
Also, post Revolution, states like Virginia and South Carolina were not small, but dominated by elites. But there was also a tremendous expansion (from PBS American Experience):
The downside: absentee speculators owned huge tracts of land and had conflicts with the settlers.
America was also boozing it up:
This caused some of the Founders to look upon their fellow citizens as ungrateful, disobedient and spoiled children.
scav
It’s the second bit. doesn’t seem to be the cudlip, but the flock of sheeple might do it.
Adam L Silverman
@scav: I don’t think so. It was here, then I hit reload and it disappeared. It hasn’t gone into moderation. So if its been marked as spam it was one of the other FPers.
Paul in KY
@jl: That was my take on it, jl.
Shell
I still can’t decide whether Trump entered this race as a bit of a lark and big-ego boost, or if he seriously decided to run for president.
Miss Bianca
@MattF: In terms of word salad, I’d call it a Waldorf.
jl
@Brachiator:
” The downside: absentee speculators owned huge tracts of land and had conflicts with the settlers. ”
The Bundy dream of ‘regular guys like them’ getting the good land, was always a fantasy. And their beef with the fed land bureaucracy goes way way back, at least back to 1812:
General Land Office
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Land_Office
We say BLM, they said GLO.
Paul in KY
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, I’m a trendbeginner, in that I begin ‘trends’ (may be some other word for that, but who commiserates?. Hoping my new name for female trolls takes off!
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Ah, yes. I remember some of matoko’s posts and even engaging with her(?) a few times.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Given some of our more recent trolls, the cudlip-hurler resonates in memory as rather sweet and quaint. Not that I ever want to see her again, you understand.
scav
@Adam L Silverman: I assumed automatic word-tripping, didn’t think anyone important would bother to mark out my drivel personally. When I put a false italic into the S word it made it though.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Wow, that is interesting…and here I thought the secret to Washington’s success in being named Supreme Commander had to do with knowing the right people! (which would have been fox-hunters, of course). His foxhound Sweet Lips was apparently very busy winning hearts and minds in Philadelphia.
ETA: “TROLLOP?!”
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Trollop is a women of ill repute.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When you spell his name that way all I can picture is a bloated suit with a Turnip for a head.
Anyone else?
Immanentize
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Great Hightower quote — My favorite was when Clayton Williams,who really was a profoundly stupid fellow, was Governor of Texas, bragged about how he was taking Spanish classes so he could speak it with Texans. Jim H. was quoted as saying, “Great, now Clayton will be bi-ignorant.”
patroclus
@Germy: Only John Adams, of all the Framers, looks good (by modern standards) on slavery. Maybe Franklin. Hamilton himself wasn’t the worst, but he was far more interested in enhancing federal power generally than abolishing the slave trade (let alone abolishing slavery). Hence, the slavery compromises in the Constitution.
Poopyman
@rikyrah:
They can do that? I’m torn between feeling appalled and thinking that she would have approved.
Thoughtful David
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Well, why don’t they vote for him in the Independent primary? He is an independent, after all.
jl
Washington himself was a land speculator and owned large tracts of land out in what was then ‘the West’. And he hated squatters, who infested his holdings.
I’ve read that Washington’s and Hamilton’s ideas for federal taxes were an early form of social engineering: a good tool to force those lazy Western loafers and squatters into participating in the formal economy. Maybe another reason for those damn libs these days for trying to turn Hamilton into a liberal icon.
Edit: and of course, Hamilton’s ideas on utility of a federal debt and sophisticated financial system. Probably his lasting impact on US federal influence on economy. Hamilton’s ideas for direct federal encouragement of innovation and manufacturing turned into duds. They went broke, produced nothing of any interest and were infested by the swindlers that he had a weakness for, and often mistook for innovative geniuses.
MattF
@patroclus: Note that slavery was made illegal in the British Empire in 1833, so ‘modern’ standards on the ethics of slavery have a rather long history.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodinger’s cat: She must feel very crowded inside then.
Thoughtful David
@Shell: I think he wants to be President, because he wants to be In Charge, but he doesn’t want to run for President. Too much work. Laziness explains a huge part of his problems.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: @schrodinger’s cat: I know what it means.
Luthe
@Miss Bianca: So what’s a Stadler?
Immanentize
@schrodinger’s cat: re:Hamilton — His vision wasn’t so much a rural versus urban one, rather his was the vision of transportation from rural to urban and out to the world. His upbringing in the Caribbean (Nevis and St. Croix) certainly showed him the value of movement of things. And of international relations. His family were originally French Huguenots, who were living on a British Island, but then he moved to one ruled by the Danish. He was familiar with every great sea power but the Spanish in the first few years of his life. Moving goods from western New York (once a big bread basket for the country) west to the Hudson and then to NYC was one of his amazing insights. Erie Canal (and Erie Railroad) would follow that vision.
Uncle Cosmo
@Brachiator: Strangely enough, when I first ran across the BJ usage of “cudlip” I was in the middle of Richard K. Morgan’s SF/noir novel Thirteen (or Th1rte3n if you prefer the cover spelling; in the UK, Black Man) which appears to be the source of the pejorative (“cudlip” => ruminant => stupid animal).
Feathers
@J.: Maybe she didn’t register to avoid having to vote for Dad.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: @schrodinger’s cat: Interestingly, the word “harlot”, which is also used to brand women in a specifically sexual manner, began life as a unisex insult – cf. Mistress Quickly in First Henry IV speaking of Falstaff’s improv abilities – “O Jesu, he doth it (as) like one these harlotry players as ever i’ve seen.” I wonder if “trollop” has a similar etymology…
Miss Bianca
@Luthe: Oh, that would be mclaren. : ) (spoken with *great* respect, of course – I have no desire to be taken to task for being a pygmy skink or a CIA plant!)
Mike J
@MattF:
The difference in 30 years is a long time for the people living through it, but from a historical perspective there’s not much difference between 1833 and 1865.
Note also that slavery was legal in Britain during the period that these British subjects were rebelling and starting their own government.
Uncle Cosmo
(O/T: On my screen, user names on posts appear in the same font size as the body of the post, somewhat larger than that used for the time stamp. Except for my own, which appears in the same font size as the time stamp. Does this happen to the rest of yinz as well, or is it time for me to get [even more] paranoid?)
Brachiator
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
The thing that I find most interesting about the Founders is that they had so many complementary talents. I smile when I think of the genius Thomas Jefferson drafting the Declaration of Independence, and then having old Ben Franklin proofread it and suggest improvements.
As I noted I think that Jefferson and Madison were tremendous political scientists and masters of the theory of government. But they were incompetent political economists. Hamilton, on the other hand, not only understood the economics of his day, but also seemed able to synthesize Adam Smith’s recently published “Wealth of Nations” and grasp its implications for future economies.
MattF
@Uncle Cosmo: It’s happened to me. But my nym-font changes to normal size after I empty the cache and reload a couple of times
@Miss Bianca: OED suggests it went the other way… troll->trollop, where troll originally meant prostitute.
Miss Bianca
@MattF:
Im ernst? This wonderful world!
Cacti
@Mike J:
Not to mention, the Abolition Act of 1833 contained a substantial exemption for any territories administered by the East India Company, and slavery in India wasn’t abolished until 1843. The Gold Coast was also considered an informal British protectorate up until official annexation in 1874, and slavery continued there until that time.
schrodinger's cat
@Adam L Silverman: Stupid typo is stupid. You know what I meant.
Mike J
@Miss Bianca:
OED actually says that trollop comes from troll.
Troll 1. intr. To move or walk about or to and fro; to ramble, saunter, stroll, ‘roll’; spec. (slang) of a homosexual: to walk the streets, or ‘cruise’, in search of a sexual encounter; cf. sense 13.
and to define trollop: An untidy or slovenly woman; a slattern, slut; also, sometimes a morally loose woman, a trull.
The -op ending is compared to gallop and wallop.
Mike J
@MattF: Damn your faster cut and paste skills.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: Did the British have slaves in India? When and where?
jl
@Brachiator: Interesting that both Jefferson and Hamilton thought of themselves as masters of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. But each learned very different lessons from it.
Wealth of Nations was revolutionary new-fangled egghead stuff in those days, being published in 1776.
I don’t know much about relationship between Franklin and Smith, even thought they knew each other, and have read that some of Franklin’s writing influenced Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
muddy
@Adam L Silverman: I often remark that Trump paints his face like a trollop.
Mike J
@Cacti:
In short, when they lost their largest territory that used slaves, they abolished slavery, except in the other parts of their empire that used slaves.
bmoak
@SiubhanDuinne: Kallibigot has been littering Pierce’s comment section for a while now. If anything, he’s even more incomprehensible that Bartholomew, but they do hit the same topics. I’m kind of hoping that they’re not the same person because Kallibigot has insinuated on several occasions that John and Imani are pedophiles.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Slavery under the administration of the East India Company.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
But of course this means that young Hamilton, with his knack for understanding practical economics, was right smack in the middle of one of the hubs of the Triangular Trade Regime, the transportation of goods between North America, Africa, and Europe via the Caribbean. One sad example:
American independence, and even the later independence of Haiti, impacted but did not eliminate this trading system.
But you are absolutely correct that Hamilton could take the insights he learned from observing this system and apply it to other aspects of the new American economy.
Miss Bianca
@Mike J: Ah, but an awesome addition to my etymological knowledge, thanks to you both!
bmoak
@Adam L Silverman: Tananda and Big Crunch would like a word with you in the alley out back.
Brachiator
@muddy:
Dyes and teases his hair like one, too.
schrodinger's cat
AFAIK, East India Company vile though it was, didn’t have any actual slaves in India. Since it was like the Walmart of the Mercantile era I would not be surprised if they were some how involved in the shipping and transportation.
Brachiator
@jl:
The book “Benjamin Franklin in London” notes that Franklin met Smith when he visited Scotland in 1759, but also notes there is “no record of any great contact between them.”
Immanentize
@Brachiator: The triangle — I live in Medford, MA which was one of the critical ship-building up-river ports for new U.S. There is a Works Project Administration painting in our post office that depicts the triangle trade. Literally as a triangle.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2014/02/02/medford-ties-slavery/m1ZW7qzWxfa03TBLLRnAbM/story.html
Of course, the now infamous Harvard Law donor was a Medfordian….
Funny, come to think of it, I think there a similar one in the Miami courthouse as well….
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Adam L Silverman:
Just curious if there are cites for that beyond John and Abigail Adams, who continued their longstanding feud with Hamilton for years after his death.
I don’t have a dog in that fight, but my husband asked me about something in one of the songs. I was surprised when I couldn’t find any sources beyond Rev-era British propaganda later repeated by Adams.
Trollhattan
@Shell:
From the inaugural glide down the Trump(tm) escalator to announce his candidacy before his shiny, paid admirers, I’ve felt this campaign was completely aimed at advancing the brand. Everything Trump has done since the ’70s has been for that reason; why would he change now? But, at some point after he rocketed up the polls and stayed there, he’s doubtless decided that–to his surprise and delight–he had a shot at winning the nomination, especially once the presumed favorites fell like bowling pins. And now, lose against Cruz? Seemed impossible but there are not insignificant odds that very thing might happen and Trump does not want to be the guy who got sucker-punched by Ted Cruz. He Must Be The Nominee Or Else!
Else what, I cannot guess.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not so much the British.
But weren’t the Siddi (Afro Indians) brought to the country by the Muslim rulers of India (and by some later Europeans)? From the Wiki
Patricia Kayden
I’m sure Baud supporters will not be as careless as Trump’s kids. For shame!
Mnemosyne
Aww, man, I missed a whole Hamilton argument!
I have to say, the argument against is fairly weak tea. At best, they may have found some slight evidence that Elizabeth Schulyer Hamilton brought 2 slaves to their marriage and have not found evidence that they were manumitted. They have found evidence that Hamilton assisted his in-laws (John and Angelica Church) in purchasing new household slaves while they lived in New York, but he does not appear to have ever purchased slaves for his own household. His mother owned two slaves when he was a child, but they were sold along with all of her other assets after she died. So, basically, he’s about as guilty of engaging in slavery as Benjamin Franklin was (yes, Franklin engaged in the slave trade in a minor way, though he renounced it in his later years).
The reason slavery is America’s original sin is that it touched everyone. Every single person. When Wanda Sykes was on “Finding Your Roots,” she discovered that her family had been Free Black going back to the 1600s and that, yes, they had themselves had owned slaves. I have family that goes back before the American Revolution and I’m pretty much 100 percent sure that there are some slaveholders in there, because it was just that common in colonial times.
Hamilton never had a plantation full of slaves, like Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Monroe did. He helped Haiti write their constitution. He co-founded New York’s Manumission Society and seems to have pressured his in-laws into freeing a slave who requested manumission through the Society. And now we’re going to sit here and say that Hamilton wasn’t as good on slavery as Jefferson because he didn’t write self-serving essays about how evil slavery was while owning slaves of his own? (Yes, I’ve actually seen people make that argument, and it boggled me.)
Also, people who complain about Hamilton not trusting democracy need to stop and remember what happened in the very next major revolution in France. We can take King Louis’ head out of the basket and ask it, if you like.
Last thing: it’s so weird to me that people can look at the forty (40) extant volumes of Hamilton’s writings and insist that he had secret anti-democratic beliefs that he successfully concealed from almost everyone that were contrary to everything else he ever wrote. John Adams was a snob who preferred Burr to Hamilton because Burr was an Edwards from Massachusetts (on his mother’s side) and Hamilton was the “bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar” who shouldn’t be allowed to think he was the equal of men from good families.
And, finally, Hamilton’s supposedly notorious tomcatting seems to be generated from John and Abigail’s weirdly obsessive hatred of him that continued even after his death. He did have an affair with Maria Reynolds but, unlike Burr, he didn’t leave any instructions about which of his love letters to burn in case of his death in the duel. Given that it was the 18th century, you can pretty much guarantee that he was not always faithful, but since Eliza had 8 healthy children (and a couple of miscarriages), he seems to have spent at least some of his time at home.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: There was also a slave dynasty that ruled the Delhi Sultanate. There was Malik Amber, who kept Akbar from expanding south of the Vindhyas, whose military tactics were emulated by Marathas in their struggle against the Mughals, mainly Aurangzeb, Akbar’s grandson.
Bajirao Peshwa and I have one thing in common, both his ancestors and mine were scribes and accountants for the Siddhis of Janjira in southern Konkan.
ETA: There may have been slaves in India but the entire agricultural economy of India was not slave dependent like that of the Caribbean or the American south.
jl
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
“Just curious if there are cites for that beyond John and Abigail Adams, who continued their longstanding feud with Hamilton for years after his death. ”
I think Hamilton’s own public admission of the Reynold’s sex scandal gives some hints. Translated into modern vernacular, part of it was ‘And, well, hey, she said I was such a good lay, how could I turn down her pleas for repeated sessions?”
Edit: There was also evidence that Hamilton was prone to getting massive crushes. His trust in Arnold’s innocence at first because his wife was really hot, and sweet, and she vouched for her husband.
@Mnemosyne: But, true, Burr was in a different category. And John Adams was insane on the subject of Hamilton.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: There was also a slave dynasty that ruled the Delhi Sultanate. There was Malik Amber, who kept Akbar from expanding south of the Vindhyas, whose military tactics were emulated by Marathas in their struggle against the Mughals, mainly Aurangzeb, Akbar’s grandson.
Peshwa Bajirao I and I have one thing in common, both his ancestors and mine were scribes and accountants for the Siddhis of Janjira in southern Konkan.
ETA: There may have been slaves in India but the entire agricultural economy of India was not slave dependent like that of the Caribbean or the American south.
Bex
@SiubhanDuinne: Re “Kalilbigot,” great minds think alike. That’s who I thought it was.
Amir Khalid
@Uncle Cosmo:
Yes, this happens to us all. Alain reckons it looks cool. Why? Shrug.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
Apparently both Maria Reynolds and her second husband maintained that she had never actually had an affair with Hamilton at all, and it was all a cover for his speculating activities.
I still wonder if Hamilton pinched Abigail Adam on the ass or something. The way she writes about him is more than a little weird, like she’s really trying to convince John that no, she didn’t find Hamilton attractive at all, not in the least, not one bit! A whole lot of over-the-top protesting about his wicked, wicked eyes.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
The Chernow book is really interesting on Hamilton’s crushes. He basically had a good old-fashioned virgin/whore complex and was easily misled by women who appeared to be distraught or, well, helpless. However, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of any long-term affairs other than the one with Maria Reynolds.
Again, since it was the 18th century when it was acceptable for most married men to frequent brothels, it’s another area where we may not be able to judge by current standards. Not everyone is from Boston, John.
ETA: Also, the thing with Peggy Shippen Benedict — don’t forget that she was there with her young baby. Thanks to his own fraught family background, Hamilton had a serious blind spot for young mothers in difficulty.
Immanentize
@Mnemosyne: That is an interesting take on the Adams’ view of Hamilton — thanks. I always thought there was something more political/personal like maybe his “uppity” persona as a bastard coming from outside the US in a not-approved (i.e. from England) way or perhaps his religious views (high church Presbyterian upbringing (although Calvinist roots?) upset the Puritan Adams family? I wish I was there to see it.
jl
@Mnemosyne: I think with Abigail Adams, you crossed her husband, you were on her enemies list forever. I think, even after John and Adams and Jefferson had reconciled and were exchanging their famous letters, Abigail still hated Jefferson’s guts.
@Mnemosyne: I don’t think it is just Chernow. We can read Hamilton’s own effusions over pretty ladies in distress today. Could plunk into any bodice-ripper if you need the ravings of a naive but very brave hero ready to get in over his head and make great sacrifices for the (edit: pretty, smoking hot, and very sweet) damsel in distress.
PurpleGirl
@Librarian: Hamilton was for a strong federal government. He was for government doing things like developing roads and infrastructure. From his POV, that meant that business would know exactly what road fees were and how many there were and that they’d be equal for equal distances. There was a situation where various post roads between NY and CT were owned by private citizens and they all had different charges and rules and Hailton wanted to sort the problem to make it easier for business owners to traverse to roads.
In other words you have to balance all he was in favor for and see which things were helpful in their context.
jl
@Immanentize: Well, Adams himself was a climber, Maybe Adams was resentful that a damn bastard with dubious morals from the West Indies had more influence than he did.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@schrodinger’s cat:
In India, I couldn’t speak to. To the transport question, I will note that there was a long-standing rumor that Aaron Burr sired two children on an East Indian servant of his household. She reportedly arrived in NYC via Haiti.There’s speculation that said children are why he became a bit of an abolitionist himself.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Wow. This sounds like a very interesting family history.
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes, it’s an old theme. I would say it was feature — the writers of the Constitution developed the formula for representation so as to get the smaller rural areas to agree to the strong central government they wanted. Also note that not all the signers of the Declaration of Independence were involved in developing and writing the Constitution of 1787
FEMA Camp Counselor
@Germy:
Well, it’s Loomis, so it’s likely a combination of skepticism towards adulating historical figures and him just being his usual crotchety self. Guy’s never had much of an ear for pop culture
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@jl: The thing is, I can absolutely see Hamilton’s many crushes being enough to get him teased as a tomcat at as a young man.
As for his abolitionist leanings, I can’t find the cite now, but Angelica Church supposedly had some things to say about how having no slaves complicated the Hamiltons’ efforts to hold a dinner party.
There’s also some written efforts to convince his fellow Manumission Society members to give up their own slaves.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
A lot of that was economic- not so much the economics of doing without slaves as the economics of paying off the slave owners. Slaves were expensive, and in areas where they were a big deal there was a lot of capital invested in them, and that meant that the slave owners tended to be politically powerful. That made immediate, uncompensated emancipation a non-starter under normal political circumstances.
In places where slaves were relatively uncommon, immediate abolition was possible because it was affordable to buy out all the slave owners. In places where there were too many slaves to buy out all the owners, it was possible to have a gradual uncompensated emancipation by making the children of slaves free and either waiting for living slaves to die off or having them be freed gradually. It was only after something like the revolution in Haiti or the American Civil War that it was politically possible to free all the slaves immediately and without compensation.
And in the UK, there was a big problem because a lot of people were involved in slavery in one way or another. For example, it turns out that many funds for widows and orphans had invested in overseas industries that depended on slaves, so that even the destitute in Great Britain depended on slaves. That kind of thing made emancipation contentious- or at least was used as a counter-argument by rich people who were heavily involved in slavery- and meant that abolition in the British colonies had to be compensated.
Librarian
@Mnemosyne: I would just like to point out that he wasn’t perfect. I don’t know how any liberal can defend some of his economic views and his elitism. He was for a strong central government, in part to protect the rights of property. In his Report on Manufactures of 1791, he recommended the use of child labor in industry. At the constitutional convention, he expressed admiration for the British government and called for the president and the senate to be elected for life. He wouldn’t have minded if this country had a class system like England’s. I appreciate his work on the constitution and as secretary of the treasury, and his vision of our economic future as an industrial power, but let’s not say that he didn’t have flaws.
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: But she was really mean and rude to Amir Khalid. She claimed to be a convert to Islam and used that fact to make herself morally to superior to all of us and especially to Amir.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
It’s a little sad between Hamilton and Adams because they agreed on most things politically, but Adams hated Hamilton’s guts on a personal level and that was that. If that hadn’t happened, one wonders if the slaveholding Democratic-Republicans would have dominated for as long as they did.
@PurpleGirl:
All of this. A lot of what Hamilton pushed for in terms of a strong central government is what liberals are pushing for today. Not to mention the insane hypocrisy of rich slaveholders insisting they’re the true representatives of the common man.
SiubhanDuinne
@PurpleGirl:
Yes, I remember. She was really outrageous to Amir. He invariably was a gentleman.
Roger Moore
@Librarian:
And the musical certainly doesn’t treat him as perfect. He’s a tragic hero in the classical sense: a great but flawed person whose flaws eventually doom him. The flaws pointed out in the musical are admittedly more personal than political, but even in the political realm he’s shown as far from perfect.
Betty Cracker
@PurpleGirl: Was that the same person? I thought we had a different troll who claimed to be Muslim and was a scold to everyone but especially mean to Amir. Might be getting my trolls confused, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@bmoak:
Today was the first time I ever noticed Kailibigot, and then only because Imani and John were named-checked, and not in a good way. Upon rereading, I agree the style is not the same as Bartholomew’s, but it is very similar to someone else who stalks these halls and lurks under the BJ bridges. Can’t remember the nym, or nyms, but I’m thinking of the one who delights in his own cleverness at calling John “wrong-way Cole.”
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
No one’s saying he didn’t have flaws. I don’t take the Constitutional Convention stuff seriously, though, because (a) there are no actual records of what he said, only what people claimed they remembered him saying years later and (b) he seemed perfectly happy to support the Constitution that was adopted, to the point of writing 51 essays to try and ensure its ratification by New York.
And that’s kind of what I’m talking about — people say Hamilton had all of these secret beliefs about establishing an aristocracy, but they can’t point to any of his writings where he said that. Since the guy had a major problem with logorrhea, don’t you think maybe he would have mentioned it?
And child labor — depending on whose dates you believe, Hamilton himself was working full-time as a clerk by either age 10 or age 12. He would not have seen child labor as anything strange or unusual, and neither would his contemporaries. That was the world they lived in.
schrodinger's cat
@Librarian: I don’t know why we want our leaders to be perfect and are saddened when we find that they had human flaws. Even Gandhi was not without his flaws.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Librarian: It’s hard to read the Chernow bio without coming away with a strong impression of an erratic genius. The play doesn’t really get to dig too deeply into his post-Treasury career; Miranda had to cut a section about the near-duel with Monroe for time.
WaterGirl
I can think of nothing constructive to say. What a moron is not constructive, right?
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
After having memorized the musical and read a couple of books (including the Chernow bio), I have come to the conclusion that Hamilton was probably the greatest bureaucrat our country has ever seen. He knew how to set up a system and run it well when he had a boss like Washington who could sit on him and keep him on task. If he didn’t have that kind of boss or some other defined structure to work within, he could easily spin out and self-destruct, which is exactly what happened. “Too smart for his own good” applied in many aspects of his life. World’s greatest subordinate if he respected you, an absolute nightmare if he didn’t.
Betty Cracker
We should collaborate on a musical called Trolliton, inspired by our many colorful trolls.
Brachiator
@Librarian:
To say that Hamilton was imperfect as a human being is obvious. To suggest that he fails a liberal litmus test applied in hindsight is reductive and largely a waste of time. By this standard almost every white American of historical significance would fail, with the possible exception of John Brown.
This kind of criticism also misses the point of the play “Hamilton,” which does not push unthinking hero worship, but encourages people to try to look at dusty old and dead history with new eyes.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mnemosyne: The various sources are starting to run together, but I’ve seen speculation that Hamilton’s proposal was intended to make Madison’s Virginia Plan look reasonable by contrast.
I think it’s not unreasonable to believe that Hamilton hated throwing away everything about a very successful political system just because it was British.
Librarian
@Mnemosyne: Have you read much on the constitutional convention? There have been lots of books about it- one recent book I recommend is “Plain Honest Men” by Richard Beeman.
Doug R
@Bartholomew: Remember to breathe.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Betty Cracker: Absolutely the same person. Ironically, she was quite bright and often insightful, but behaved in a fashion that to me suggested inadequate socialization. She was not enchanted by me, which didn’t even annoy me. But I remain angry at the hateful was she treated Amir Khalid.
She understood the concept of “tribal” as how it gets expressed in US culture quite well. It cracked me up that in response to one of her rampages about my (fka) nym, I explained the origin and she replied (paraphrasing):
The “fuck me” is verbatim though, and her dismay was nearly palpable.
Librarian
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Actually, the framers modeled a lot of the constitution on the British constitution- the bicameral legislature, the powers of the presidency, Congressional powers such as impeachment. The presidential pardon power came straight from the British monarchy.
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): What’s the origin of your current name? I has a curious, don’t answer if you don’t want to.
PurpleGirl
@Betty Cracker: Yes, that was matoko_chan.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
We could sell Troll House cookies as a fundraiser! So much tastier than a boring old GoFundMe appeal….
Doug R
@Adam L Silverman: Sounds like Bill Clinton would have fit right in.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Librarian: Yah. But I interpret a lot of the “monarchist” talk as coming from the passionate hatred of all things British that was common at the time. Then add in that he spent a lot of his early legal career defending Loyalists.
IOW, his proposals were too British.
WaterGirl
Test.
Mike J
Hillary meets with NYDN editorial board, doesn’t seem like a total loon.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brachiator: If anyone in the play comes off as deserving of hero worship, it’s Eliza.
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
G just bought that at the Festival of Books yesterday. From everything I’ve read, Hamilton basically hung around as a junior delegate and didn’t have much to do with crafting the final document. His contribution was in going back to New York and pushing to get it ratified, which was the original purpose of the Federalist essays.
Probably my favorite tidbit from the Chernow book was that Hamilton used to sock puppet himself — he would write an essay under one pseudonym and then write a second one under a different pseudonym totally agreeing with himself. That cracked me up.
Mnemosyne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I think both LMM and Chernow developed crushes on Eliza. Her takedown of Monroe was absolutely epic.
WaterGirl
yo
yo again
WaterGirl
new test comment. if i edit, will i be returned to the thread with the updated comment at the bottom?
WaterGirl
new test comment, will WaterGirl be tiny for 5 minutes? I think not!
still tiny
chopper
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
zeal of the converted for the most part.
Calouste
@Mike J: Phrases Sanders used in his NYDN interview, but Clinton did not:
I don’t know
I haven’t thought about that.
I believe that…
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@schrodinger’s cat: I stole (shamelessly) “a hip hop artist from Idaho” from Sarah Proud and Tall – who told DougJ when was styling his nym as DougJarvus Green-Ellis
Brachiator
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Funny. I’m listening to a Hamilton podcast hosted by two women. They like Eliza, but like Angelica more.
I don’t know if Eliza is deserving of hero worship, but she is one of the few who is left to tell Hamilton’s story (or, that is, to direct her son’s efforts). I have not seen the play, but the cast album has led me to a deeper appreciation of Eliza, Angelica (and even Peggy) and Theodosia, Revolutionary women. And of course, Hamilton’s mother, who I knew about from other readings, but who must have had a fierce heart and soul. And Laurens and Cato and Hercules Mulligan, the latter who had the coolest freaking name ever.
Brachiator
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
She was certainly an extraordinary woman in many ways.
I didn’t know about Theodosia, Burr’s wife, and she also seems to be a hell of a woman.
Betty Cracker
@Mike J: Just got around to reading that, and holy shit! She didn’t get softballs about her signature issues — they asked her questions about damn near everything, and she had coherent, well-thought-out responses. I don’t agree with HRC 100% about everything, but she knows what she’s talking about.
schrodinger's cat
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks! Who is Bella Q?
gwangung
@Betty Cracker: I expect one of the usual suspects to come running through, quoting some web site that “proved” Sanders easily outperformed Clinton in their respective interviews by the NYDN board.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Waaah! Waaaah! The New York media hates Bernie and is in the bag for HRC. They let her go after he did his interview so she could look good! Waaaah! Waaah!
Haven’t read the whole thing, but she already wore me out with her command of detail.
Editors: What about the economic slowdown in upper New York state?
HRC: Well, I know that on the 1200 block of Chickwood Lane in Buffalo, they had some terrible problems. But the Jacksons at 1227 Washburn are doing a little better. As of Wednesday afternoon.
So far, a very impressive interview.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Fun fact: one of the reasons we know that Hamilton was totally snowed by Peggy Arnold after Benedict Arnold escaped is that Peggy told the whole story to her close personal friend, Theodosia Prevost (later Burr).
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: SHE GAVE TOO MANY DETAILS SO BORING NOT PRESIDENTIAL TONE IS WHAT MATTERS BERNIE HOORAY
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Funny. This very incident came up in the “Hamilton, The Podcast” episode that I was listening to on my morning commute, during the discussion of “The Story of Tonight (reprise).” This incident is mentioned in Hamilton’s biography, but not in the play.
Wasn’t Washington and someone else present as well, and were also fooled? In any case, this seems to indicate that Hamilton was a soft touch for damsels in distress and may help explain the Reynolds affair.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
Burr is kind of famous here in WV, as he plotted on Blennerhassett Island, a plantation island in the Ohio River near today’s Parkersburg. The plot, of course, was to steal the American SouthWest and found an Empire out there, with none of this fussy Democracy stuff allowed.
He plotted with Harman Blennerhassett who was a wealthy Irish lawyer.