Bernice King, youngest daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, posted this on FB earlier in the week:
Full text here:
Some Wise Advice Circulating:
1. Use his name sparingly so as not to detract from the issues. I believe that everyone, regardless of their beliefs, deserves the dignity of being called by their name. However, this is a strategic tactic. While we are so focused on him we are prone to neglect the questionable policies that threaten freedom, justice and fairness advanced by the administration.
2. Remember this is a regime and he’s not acting alone;
3. Do not argue with those who support him and his policies–it doesn’t work;
4. Focus on his policies, not his appearance and mental state;
5. Keep your message positive; those who oppose peace and justice want the country to be angry and fearful because this is the soil from which their darkest policies will grow;
6. No more helpless/hopeless talk;
7. Support artists and the arts;
8. Be careful not to spread fake news. Check it;
9. Take care of yourselves; and
10. Resist!
Keep demonstrations peaceful. In the words of John Lennon, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight! Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”
When you post or talk about him, don’t assign his actions to him, assign them to “The Republican Administration,” or “The Republicans.” This will have several effects: the Republican legislators will either have to take responsibility for their association with him or stand up for what some of them don’t like; he will not get the focus of attention he craves; Republican representatives will become very concerned about their re-elections.
From one of my favorite movements at the moment – the alt-gov sites – Alt-National Park Service:
Keith G
I just got a pop up from a new service that George Bush the first passed away. Haven’t found confirmation for that
Baud
NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Baud
@Keith G: Nothing yet on my news feed.
Keith G
I have looked everywhere and that appears to have been some errant BS. I hope the old codger carries on, but the thought of a funeral with that collection of presidents ex and current and a eulogy by the sitting president…… well it would be very appealing and a multiple car pile-up kind of way.
SiubhanDuinne
@Keith G:
I actually hope that’s not true, although it would be unsurprising. Did a quick Googlearound and saw nothing, so let’s hope it’s fake news.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G: Only place I’m seeing it is at fox-channel.com, which redirects to a domain in Johannesburg. I’m thinking you won’t find confirmation.
Trentrunner
@Keith G: Trump will fuck up everything about this job, and it will drive his numbers lower.
So I grimly look forward to events like a state funeral, where Trump will embarrass us all.
SiubhanDuinne
I love the Smokey Bear “RESIST” poster.
debbie
@Keith G:
The only thing I’ve seen is from comicbook.com. Doesn’t seem like a credible source.
HeleninEire
So my nym went crazy. Trying to reset it here.
Mary G
Trump will talk about how he got more electoral votes, which is false.
Chet Murthy
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s a Black Power salute, right? If that became the official “resist” salute, it’d be pretty awesome.
Steeplejack (tablet)
Just to be clear, the “wise advice” did not originate with Bernice King. I saw it somewhere (I can’t remember) before she posted it. The Google is little help now: it has blown up with references to her post.
JPL
@Keith G: It appears to be from a fake news site.
Schlemazel
I was involved in resistance in the 60s. I was at a couple of peaceful events but this story may sound familiar as it has happened a couple of times recently that I know of. Peaceful marchers doing their thing. Suddenly a bunch of guys (always white guys and not really young guys) show up wearing masks. The rush the front of the event and start causing trouble, maybe attacking the police, maybe breaking windows and burning stuff. The police react as would be expected, pepper gas, clubs, arrests. But oddly enough the masks trouble makers never end up in the holding are for the arrested. Funny that.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chet Murthy:
Bears and cultural appropriation! SAD!
Schlemazel
@Keith G:
Hell will still be there when the fucker dies so no hurry. OTOH, given that the Bushes hate hair furor and he hates them it should be high-larious. IF they let him talk the eulogy would be about how big his inauguration was and how the fake news says he is failing.
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: The original Smokey was a black bear.
Edited
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
I still think that he and Bar deliberately skipped the inauguration. They both looked pretty spry at the Super Bowl.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
Probably also get in a dig about the Bushes being “low-energy” because you can’t get much lower-energy than being dead.
Eric S.
Now I want a t-shirt with the resistance symbol ( Ω ) and the Smokey The Bear resistance pick on my phone.
bystander
Watching the Grammys…Trumputin heartthrob Nancy O’Dell in severe leather.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
No black bear! No black bear! You’re the black bear!
sigaba
@SiubhanDuinne:
Where’s the image of Smokey mauling Betsy DeVos? (As she raises her .38 to try to take him down.)
Mike in NC
@Trentrunner: Remember the time Dick Cheney went to some funeral in Europe, representing the USA dressed like a frickin’ lumberjack in his fur hat and snowshoes? Those were the good old days, I guess.
SiubhanDuinne
@sigaba:
“Paging Betty Cracker. Betty Cracker, please pick up the white courtesy phone, and bring your art supplies.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Keith G: Debunked.
From a fake news site. Specifically a fake Fox news site.
Edited my comment and removed the naked link, but amazingly FYWP allowed me to post said link without throwing it into moderation.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Schlemazel: That’s EXACTLY what happened in Berkeley last week w/ Yiannopoulos’ appearance at UC…
Peaceful demonstration going on… Black Bloc infiltrates… all hell breaks loose… fires… broken windows… tear gas… peaceful demonstrators look bad and Yiannopoulos gets FAR, FAR more attention than he deserves…
Same routine w/ Oscar Grant & Black Lives Matter demos…
Read one time that the Blac Block fools are almost always white and NOT from Oakland…
I live in the BA so I get to see this BS up close & personal…
GregB
@Mike in NC:
I think it was a Holocaust remembrance and Cheney was dressed like he was hunting beaver pelts in the Yukon.
I am surprised he hasn’t been brought in by Trump as a special counsel on waterboarding and strategic sneering.
Omnes Omnibus
@GregB: Wasn’t it a ceremony at Auschwitz?
Mary G
Mike J
@Keith G: Fake,
http://www.inquisitr.com/3974592/george-h-w-bush-not-dead-fake-fox-website-says-mr-bush-has-died-debunked/
SiubhanDuinne
@GregB:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup, it was.
zhena gogolia
@bystander:
I hear he moved on her like a bitch.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mary G:
That is scary af
sacrablue
@Mary G: Watching on local tv, their helicopter is on the way there now. So far they are just showing some amateur video from this morning. They said the emergency spillway is expected to fail at any time. It has never been used before. Just yesterday emergency officials said everything was going to be just fine. Now they are ordering evacuations on all low areas near the Feather River.
Brachiator
From the San Jose Mercury News
Evacuation Alert
OROVILLE — An emergency evacuation has been ordered for Oroville residents by the state Department of Water Resources, which predicts that the auxilliary spillway at the Oroville Dam will fail within the next hour.
The department issued the evacuation advisory around 4:40 p.m. Sunday, just four hours after holding a press conference where they said they didn’t anticipate such problems.
Check back for updates to this breaking story
Baud
@Mary G:
LA times
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Schlemazel:
You can’t have a riot without the police being present.
SiubhanDuinne
@sacrablue:
@Mary G:
@Brachiator:
I know we have some BJ commenters who live in the area. I hope they are NOT seeing this comment in real time; rather, I hope they are getting the hell out of Dodge, to safety. Time enough later to post status updates. In the meantime, just be safe.
Brachiator
Rachel Maddow had an excellent segment on the Oroville Dam Friday. Great visuals and graphics. It may still be available for viewing.
I think her father may have a related background, so she wanted to get the facts right.
Schlemazel
@Thru the Looking Glass…:
I saw it twice when I was a kid & got gassed both times. I have read the events recently that sound exactly like it. SIGH
trollhattan
@sacrablue:
IIUC failure of the emergency spillway will unleash the lake’s top 30 feet. It has a concrete lip over fill, so I’m assuming that concrete is breaking up. This would mean phenomenal amounts of water. (Someone probably knows how much, not I.)
The lake level is still nearly a foot above the spillway.
Kathleen
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: From downstairs thread, your description of Stephen Miller as Reinhard Heydrich was spot on. I couldn’t figure out which Nazi he most resembled until I saw your comment. He looks quite ghoulish.
Lyrebird
Thanks for highlighting this, and for the science tyke with the science ties!!! So much awesome.
Need to keep looking for the positive and the actionable…
Is it just me, or should this revelation be listed under Not Normal?
(I read it on DKos, it’s a quote from the Observer iiuc.)
Kathleen
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes! I pray that all affected Juicers are safe.
sacrablue
@trollhattan: I’m just watching channel 3.
Iowa Old Lady
How well do we think this administration has FEMA operating?
Another Scott
Bernice is a wise woman.
Thanks for the pointer!
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@Schlemazel: Tommy the Traveller.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady: Hopefully, they haven’t had time to hurt FEMA yet.
amk
twitler’s NK alter ego : look at me playing with missiles.
twitler’s response: look at all the crowds which FAKE NEWS (sic) is not covering.
two
peasnuts in a podJCJ
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks for that link. I have tried to block memories over VP Voldemort from my memory.
oldster
Slate posted this from a letter from MLK to people integrating the buses in Montgomery:
4. Demonstrate the calm dignity of our Montgomery people in your actions.
5. In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior
6. Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!
7. Be quiet, but friendly; proud, but not arrogant; joyous, but not boisterous.
8. Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.
I hope I can live up to it at the next Town Hall I attend.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Lyrebird: Totally not normal, like damned near everything else about this regime. It’s from Schindler’s piece at the Observer. He’s said to be quite well connected in the IC, and has an informative twitter feed (@20committee).
chris
Live feed from a helicopter over Oroville.
Lyrebird
@Lyrebird: PS: I see Adam Silverman & Timurid commented on this in the previous thread.
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: A guy I know was head of FEMA in Iowa under Clinton, but then was removed under W. I guess it’s a political appointment.
Lyrebird
@Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: Thank you! I wish I had the time and the video-editing chops to take clips from the Republican old guard (Ryan may be too young, for instance) promoting the “Evil Empire” view of Russia, and gee we could get everyone who denounced Obama’s executive orders, and just serve up quick YouTube slices of obvious hypocrisy.
Might even be funny were there not so much at stake.
Another Scott
@Mary G: Horse’s mouth: https://twitter.com/CA_DWR
This is very bad. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Mike in NC
@Lyrebird: Safe to assume the Kremlin has ears inside of the White House, Old Executive Office Building, Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, VP Residence, and maybe half a dozen other places.
sacrablue
@SiubhanDuinne: Most of those BJers live north of Oroville (Chico, etc). People are being evacuated to Chico.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Schlemazel: So predictable… you could set your watch by it… SAD!
Srsly… why wasn’t Berkeley & UC Berkeley law enforcement better prepared for that crap?
I’ve watched the anarchist/Black Bloc crowd act out for decades… what a waste of time…
Back when Occupy set up in front of Oakland City Hall, I went down there on a Saturday morning to see what was going on for myself… the minute I saw the anarchist A spray painted on tents, I knew how it would end and that it was a dead end…
jl
It’s a group effort. W.E.B. Du Bois is one of my favorite authors, so I noticed the problem when the Dept of Education tried honor W.E.B. DeBois.
Also, interesting and sad tweet from Paul Krugman. Apparently the Wharton MBA and world historical genius president did not understand that substantial public funding of his promised infrastructure project would increase the deficit (which actually, right now is not a problem). But apparently he didn’t know that before some man came in the room and told him, at which point the president got angry that no one had told him before. So, apparently, the infrastructure project is going to be even more of a corporate tax break scam than before. So much winning!
Disturbing on many levels, but note in particular: bye bye fiscal stimulus
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/830752139953582081
Baud
@Mike in NC: Including Balloon Juice.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: He does not have an MBA; his undergrad degree is from Wharton.
Corner Stone
Ok, we get it. He fucked someone else. Jeebus.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think he changed his name to Smokey X, but the Park Service suppressed that.
Schlemazel
@raven:
Interesting, I had not heard of this particular incident. Several of the people arrested durin the ENC in st. paul, mn were released when it was determined that the organizers were cops.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: OK, thank you..
Baud
@Corner Stone: Grammies?
Steeplejack
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Naked links are okay now. Fixed a month or two ago.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: Though he doesn’t exactly go out of his way to point that out.
NotMax
*ahem*
Martin Luther King Jr.
Mary G
OMG this CNN story about the NK missile launch news arriving at Disgraceland:
I try not to go hopeless, but this gives me a hard time. It’s amateur hour all over every hour.
Suzanne
Beyoncé is amazing.
trollhattan
@sacrablue:
Yuba County now issuing evacuation order for Marysville and Yuba City.
Lyrebird
@Baud: Good point. Though I have a faulty snark-o-meter, maybe you were just making a funny.
I’d guess that the modal BJ commenter probably doesn’t know anything more sensitive than the location of the nearest Girl Scout cookie dealer, and the exceptions… can’t think of a way to compare their discretion to the current Republican leadership’s that isn’t dmnation by faint praise.
Maybe the snoopers have noted that with our various disagreements most of us think Assange is a pill?
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Schlemazel: IMHO, it would be way easy to have one or two or three paid inflitrators go into a situation like we had on the Berkeley campus last week and make sure it gets out of control…
100 plus individuals in black masks out of control who then disappear back into the crowd?
That plays into the RW narrative way too well…
JPL
@Mary G: Steve Bannon likes it that way..
@Suzanne: Yes she is.
Mary G
@Mary G: Forgot the link on #75. It was after this that he crashed a wedding, because the couple had paid him a lot of money over the years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Water is wet.
sacrablue
@trollhattan: Those people are going to have to head toward us. I think they could put a lot of people at Thunder Valley. Waiting to see if anything is flying out of Beale.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: Specifically to this performance, in what way?
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G: Camera lights. On cell phones.
WTF.
schrodingers_cat
I just saw Melissa McCarthy on SNL, I couldn’t finish watching not because she was not good, but because she was. I am failing to see the humor in this, too close to reality.
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: Um, did you SEE THAT? That was an incredible spectacle.
@Omnes Omnibus: Spawn the Elder said, “My future wife.” I said, “After me.”
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: Yes, I saw all of it. And?
AnotherBruce
Hey TaMara, I just stole this for a fb post.I hope you don’t mind.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mary G:
From your link:
That reads like either the first (“It was a dark and stormy night.”) or last (“Somewhere, a dog barked.”) sentence of a badly-written short story.
AnotherBruce
By this, I mean the Smokey resist thing.
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: I thought that was an incredibly weird and cool performance. Considering that she is already ginormous and can’t dance, which is what most of her performances are centered around, I thought it was riveting and the iconography was great.
I am sure wingnut heads are also exploding and that makes me happy.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: The entire episode was like that. Cecily Strong as the judge in the people’s court was laughing when she said “Let me just say. You’re doing too much. I want one day without a CNN alert that scares the hell out of me,”
MomSense
@SiubhanDuinne:
Iceberg wedge salads??? Oh FFS. The food is as horrible as he is!
Iowa Old Lady
@MomSense: Is Iceberg wedge salad even a real thing? Who doesn’t look at that and say couldn’t you have at least chopped it up? I mean how minimal an effort can you make?
Suzanne
@MomSense: I only eat an iceberg wedge salad when I am at a restaurant of someone else’s choosing and there are no better options. It is a desperation salad, for sure.
amk
Other than the scientists’ march in April, anything else being leveraged out of the epic pu$$yhat march?
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes, it’s a thing, but I have never tried it. yuk
amk
when did pu..yhat become a mod monster’s fav?
Major Major Major Major
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s what trashy people think rich people eat at fancypants steakhouses.
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s not the world’s greatest sentence but it’s very evocative. Why’s it have to be a bad story?
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: They are awful people in every way.
MomSense
@Iowa Old Lady: @Suzanne:
Desperation salad! Ha! Of all the things to serve Abe the poor man had to suffer through make your own sandwiches with miracle whip and iceberg wedge salads?
Mary G
@MomSense: @Iowa Old Lady: @Suzanne: He probably thinks it will make America great again, to go back to the 50s, or whenever iceberg salad was last chic.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: Where is Carol Duhart 2 to tell us that’s what immigrants/muslins/jews and blacks aspire to.
? Martin
Regarding Oroville, the concern is that the emergency spillway could fail tonight. The dam itself is fine – but the main spillway is over to the side, and the emergency spillway is even farther over. The emergency spillway is a short concrete structure that allows water to flow over if the lake overtops – designed to keep the water from overtopping the dam itself. The lake is now so full that water isn’t just going over the emergency spillway but also over the land on the other side of emergency spillway.
The order is for anyone in low-lying areas downstream of the dam to around Marysville. The concern is twofold:
1) the runoff from the emergency spillway is pushing large pieces of debris into the river which can block up the river. The road which was creating a small holding pool gave way and has washed down into the river.
2) if the water is going over next to the emergency spillway, that concrete apron will start to get undercut and the area next to it where water is flowing, which is just dirt, will erode down below the level of the apron. If it were to fail, there would be potentially a sudden and uncontrolled release of water that would continue to lower the maximum potential water level and send significant volumes of debris into the river – and the river is already at or above flood stage in many locations.
The constructed part of the dam itself is fine, but instead of a maximum lake level of 901 feet, it could erode down to 890 or 880 feet. It’s unlikely just due to the sheer size of the hill (it’s about 2 miles from the edge of the lake to the river) that it can erode down all that far, but it can send a lot of mud, trees, boulders, etc. along the way.
I’d like to say it’s unlikely this would extend as far down as sacramento, but so far this whole scenario has been living pretty close to the ‘worst case scenario’ side of the good news/bad news spectrum. Ultimately it means they’re losing their ability to control what happens at the dam. Who knows what the next storm would then bring.
chris
@MomSense: The glory days of the 1960s!
Suzanne
@JPL: I have eaten them when at sports bar-type places with a group of people and I don’t want to eat fried food, because I don’t want to spend the rest of the day farting.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@MomSense: I think it’s actually slightly worse than getting puked on, because this abomination was intentional. Of course when you’ve got striving borough trash as a host, it’s about what we’d expect from such an event.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nightmare.
JPL
@Suzanne: I thought it was a southern thing.
Elizabelle
Gary Clark Jr.
Suzanne
@JPL: I’m sure it is a southern thing. White people in the south commit atrocities to vegetables.
Seriously. Name more than five good things from the south that came from white people. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
chris
@? Martin: I’m following this live twitter feed. You’ll be glad to know that this all Jerry Brown’s, and possibly Obama’s, fault.
Jesus, these people
Iowa Old Lady
@chris: I saw a live chat thread alongside a You Tube video of the dam. It was mean, hateful, and disturbing. People see a dangerous situation developing and their first impulse is to say more or less serves liberals right?
Aleta
Live news channel with some aerials of the dam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF3j82YEsTo&feature=youtu.be
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Jimmy Carter, Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Stewart, Estelle Axton, Donald Dunn, and Steve Cropper.
ETA: Fuck it, Bill Clinton too.
chris
@Iowa Old Lady: Seeing some pushback. Along the lines of, “What are all these MAGA voters gonna do when Trump ignores the disaster?”
jl
@chris: Food History website says the iceberge wedge first recorded (edit: maybe one of the first…) in 1916 cookbook. No one claims it.
I don’t see the problem. It’s just a hunk of lettuce, for Yeebus sake. Smothering it in a mountain of creamy dressing is a problem, but most of that can be easily scraped off, or lifted off if the cut side of the wedge is down. But at a Drumpf dinner, he might get offended by that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense: FDR served hot dogs to the King and Queen of England, both sides!
jl
Forgot the link:
Classic Iceberg Wedge
and
Hearts of Lettuce Recipes
The history of Iceberg Lettuce
http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Salads_Lettuce/ClassicIcebergWedge.htm
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: wrong thread
jl
@Iowa Old Lady: That is northeastern side of Sacramento Valley. It is very decidedly NOT a liberal part of California.
chopper
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
that came from hard-ass personal qualities but also the fact that America was at the ATM with less than $20 in checking and needed to pay for world War II.
chris
@jl: Just makes me laugh. After hearing that Trump likes his steak well done, Wendy’s and KFC I’d be willing to bet that he doesn’t eat anything that his mother didn’t serve him. He’s a child in all things.
Also, have you ever tried to eat an iceberg wedge with just a salad fork? Disaster waiting to happen, believe me.
jl
@chopper: Maybe that was part of the very quaint custom in the old days where the leaders made a point in sharing in the sacrifices of the mass of the people during a crisis? Would be interesting to get the background on that FDR hot dog dinner for the Brit royalty.
scav
The canny Trumpian business eeeee-leeeeet, plopping down $200K for a membership and sitting down to a plate of 1/4 of iceberg lettuce with a glop of dressing on top?! O! the dizzying glitz and unimaginable glamour of the high life.
Omnes Omnibus
@chopper: It was also a few aristocrats who had no need to impress one another meeting up .
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: @Suzanne: Molly Ivins, Larry McMurtry, James McMurtry, Flannery O’Connor, Vince Gilligan, Andy Griffith, Harper Lee….
Gin & Tonic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: LBJ hosted a barbecue in a high school gym in Texas for the West German Chancellor.
Major Major Major Major
@chris: blame liberals, obviously. They spent years blaming pelosi for the drought!
jl
@chris: You have to wield the fork like a very blunt sword, and hope the flying debris don’t do too much damage. Sort of like whole cherry tomatoes on a plate.
Jeffro
@Lyrebird: Was just getting ready to link to that one, holy cow.
Flynn/Russia has to be the story this week…and then let’s hope that bigger things come of it!
? Martin
Ah, this information is a bit different.
The concern here is that the hillside in front of the emergency spillway has been eroding to such an extent that it may undermine the concrete apron of the emergency spillway. If that happened, it would release water from the 880 to 870 foot level of the dam (the bottom of the spillway apron). That would be under considerable pressure and could very quickly cause the spillway apron to fail.
The plan is to lower the lake level below 901 as quickly as possible to minimize the flow over the apron. It’s that flow which is causing the erosion. If they can keep the lake below 901, everything may be okay. It looks like they’ll get it below 901 in an hour or so. They will start adding stone fill to the eroded area using helicopters (they did this before the lake overfilled) to help minimize the rate of erosion and they can continue that until the next storm. My guess is they’ll keep the main spillway open at 100K CFS from here out, lower the level of the lake as much as possible so that the next storm isn’t able to push the lake level over 901 again.
Suzanne
Geez, people. Don’t name people. Name movements, trends, touchstones.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: People are tangible objects (a.k.a. things).
ETA: Fine. To Kill a Mockingbird, All the King’s Men, etc.
MobiusKlein
ah, snowmelt.
global w**ming
PhoenixRising
@Suzanne: The South gave us John Lewis, the SCLC, and half of SNCC. Without the model of our own American civil rights movement displacing abusive power without violence, today would be damn hopeless.
Doug R
@Mary G: I can’t believe they either don’t have or won’t fire up house lights for an incident like that on a patio. Fire Marshal should shut that dump down.
Omnes Omnibus
@PhoenixRising: She is shitting on white people, not the South as a whole.
PhoenixRising
‘The South’ is not white people, is my point. And I stand by it.
? Martin
@Iowa Old Lady: Sure, except that Butte county went for Trump. This is the conservative part of the state.
chris
@? Martin: Yes. KCRA interviewed the sheriff who made the call. Excess of caution maybe but he didn’t want to make the call any later.
Suzanne
@PhoenixRising: Yeah, I said that pretty much everything good from the south came from black people. The food, the music, the poetry, etc etc etc.
Omnes Omnibus
@PhoenixRising:
Context matters.
Suzanne
@PhoenixRising:
The implication being that almost everything awesome created in the south was created by black people.
Corner Stone
HAHAHAHAHA
PhoenixRising
@Suzanne: Fine. In no particular order:
Buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy
‘Ring of Fire’, best song about failure to resist infidelity ever written
‘The Member of the Wedding’
‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’
and the collected works of Adrienne Rich.
Suzanne
James Hetfield is about 856,000 years old and is trying to stay relevant. So adorable.
Suzanne
@PhoenixRising: Biscuits and gravy are a crime against humanity. Seriously. I wouldn’t feed it to prisoners. Cruel and unusual punishment.
Corner Stone
It’s ridiculous to say people do not matter. And then go on to say poetry, food, music, etc. People do all that. It doesn’t just spring out of the devil’s ass.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: He is exactly one year older than me. ::side-eye::
Corner Stone
People change history.
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: You’re just beclowning yourself now.
PhoenixRising
@Suzanne: Guess none of your aunts can cook, then. Too bad for you. That changes nothing.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Sorry about being old. I hope you aren’t so desperate to cling to relevance among the yoot. I also hope that you aren’t a member of the NRA like Hetfield is.
philadelphialawyer
Totally agree.
I think number four is somewhat underrated. Frankly, I don’t like the constant references to the size of his hands, his hair, his weight, his ties, his bathrobe, his skin tone and so on. If he governed like Obama governed, or like Bill Clinton governed, or like Hillary or Gore or Kerry would have governed, and pursued their policies, I would be happy, and would not care about his appearance. Same thing as it really is. His policies suck. His governance sucks. Focus on that. Not on how he looks.
And we can still follow Lennon’s advice and be humorous, without resorting to attacks on his appearance.
Peale
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Ben’s Chili Bowl. I think Obama took Tony Blair there.
? Martin
@Lyrebird:
I disagree on the former part of this statement. A LOT of people need to deal with client confidentiality, HIPAA, FERPA, etc. Granted, none of this is national security level stuff, but you protect it with as much zeal because in either case it’s your job. Any teacher, doctor, nurse, lawyer, financial planner, many if not most government officials, etc.
Nobody I work with would discuss details of a student in a dining room, or of a medical patient, etc.
Suzanne
@PhoenixRising: Sorry. I think white people southern food is vile. As a culinary contribution to world culture, I think it is SAD! Every time I have to eat southern food, I wonder why they have such an aversion to flavor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I don’t disagree with your ultimate premise – even most of the musical folks I named at first were people who became a part of black music (or appropriated it, some might argue).
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: I have been known to drive long distances just to eat biscuits and gravy.
MomSense
Dolt 45 huddled with Abe about NoKo in the middle of the dining room in front of paying guests?? WTF
They haven’t set up a more secure situation at his beloved “winter White House”?
This is terrifying.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Bite me.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Ever had she-crab soup in Charleston? Sublime.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, when you said “Elvis Presley”, I was like, “Ummmmmm”. That’s why I said movements, not people.
@Gin & Tonic: I have been known to skip meals and experience hypoglycemia in order to avoid eating biscuits and gravy.
I remember having to go out to eat with Mr. Suzanne’s family, and his grandfather, who was the quintessential old southern farmer, ixnayed a whole slew of genres of food on the basis of having “too much flavor”. I also remembering ordering green beans and them coming out covered in lard and bacon. FFS. Why not just piss on them?
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: No, but I will give it a try if I’m ever in Charleston. I love good seafood.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne:
I believe that’s bacon grease, and with copious amounts of pepper added in, it’s quite good.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey, there’s lots of old rockers who don’t seem like try-hards like Hetfield. They manage to make interesting music deep into their careers without looking desperate.
James Hetfield just looks…..SAD!
Corner Stone
@Suzanne: Aren’t you a vegetarian?
Suzanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I tried them. The sliminess of the lard, bacon grease, whatever completely destroyed what is delicious about green beans, which is their crunchiness when cooked right. Gross. Sorry. It seemed like a vegetable dish dreamed up by someone who hates vegetables.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I have never watched the Grammys, so I have no idea what he said or did.
Aleta
@Suzanne: Coca Cola, Pepsi. A Southern woman invented a windshield wiper.
Suzanne
@Corner Stone: No, I am not a vegetarian. I was a vegetarian for a while, but I haven’t been for some years now. I love vegetables, though.
Growing up, I hated Brussels sprouts with the fire of a thousand suns. But I had some Brussels sprouts last week that made me say, “Damn, those were INCREDIBLE.” That’s when I realized that I am old.
Suzanne
@Aleta: I would definitely not include Coke or Pepsi in a list of great cultural contributions. They strike me as the gustatory equivalent of “Everybody Loves Raymond”—absurdly popular, despite their mediocrity.
The windshield wiper thing is cool.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Hetfield just performed with Lady Gaga and she was so much better than he was that it was….notable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Sorry, I thought that I had indicated that really I don’t care about the Grammys.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne: I first had prepared in Austria by a chef that was french trained.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
I love Brussels sprouts roasted.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Walker Percy, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark …
Librarian
@PhoenixRising: And William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O Connor, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, Truman Capote, etc., etc., etc.,
Aleta
Trying to remember but my grandmother made a sponge cake that supposedly came from the south. It had pecans between the layers and was soaked in bourbon. The sponge cake was supposedly a big deal, according to others. Had to be very light, lots of air. My cousin is compulsive about how to make it. Also southern midwest whites fed me jello with grated carrots, and another jello thing I barely remember that was mixed with whipped cream and canned mandarin slices and coconut; I think it was called ambrosia. I had to eat both those things at every potluck and church supper we had to go to.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Suzanne: Totally tolerant of other regional cuisines and (no doubt tasteless social customs as well), I see. Well alrighty then.
Smiling Mortician
@Suzanne: The Southern Gothic tradition in literature (McCullers, Welty, O’Connor, etc.) is important and meaningful. As well as some of the best first-wave feminist literature (Kate Chopin?). The point is that it’s just silly to challenge people to come up with 5 good things from the non-black South and then keep moving your goalposts (Not people! Things! Whole movements!) and also dismissing things that you don’t personally like (bacon grease, I guess?)
Denigrating whole populations based on where they live and what color their skin is isn’t really any better when you’re aiming at a population you feel comfortable dismissing because they’re icky or whatever.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Trump’s entire oeuvre (re: any form of “communications”) could win every Bulwer-Lytton contest from now until the rivers flow backwards.
Lyrebird
@? Martin:
In case you’re still reading, and totally understood if not, YES i agree with what you’re saying.
I guess I’m still thinking in a very old-school way about what “intelligence” an outside group would want to gather, and I should remember how the worm got onto the Vermont energy workers’ (sorry for poor wording) computers.
philadelphialawyer
@Smiling Mortician:
“Denigrating whole populations based on where they live and what color their skin is isn’t really any better when you’re aiming at a population you feel comfortable dismissing because they’re icky or whatever.”
And is particularly jarring in a thread with Ms. King’s good advice as its theme.
Suzanne
@Smiling Mortician: From my study—and yes, I studied a great deal of art history—the majority of the best cultural contributions from that part of the world were created by black people and then were co-opted by white people. That is not to say that there isn’t meaningful art created by white people, but it’s also fantasy to gloss over the appropriation that occurred (especially in music). Putting up Elvis as an example of meaningful cultural contributions of white people? Oy. Erasure.
Suzanne
@Smiling Mortician:
All art matters.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Elvis made that music acceptable without being Pat Boone with it. Motown and Stax owe him a bit. Elvis did it as raw as the black musicians did.
philadelphialawyer
“From my study—and yes, I studied a great deal of art history”
Have a cookie.
“All art matters.”
Completely full of shit apples and oranges allusion.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
You’re funny. Zola said something similar about all of English food.
Biscuits and gravy, BBQ and grits are America’s gift to the world. Along with fried chicken, sweet potato pie, and Coca Cola.
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus: Hmm, maybe I can come around to seeing your view re: Motown, bc Elvis… “was a hero to most but” etc etc. (Living Color song)
The earlier examples – Jimmy Carter and Molly Ivins and hey what about Ann Richards? stand, though, as do Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton and a whole heap of Athens GA singers.
@Suzanne: A lot of the best of Southern cooking is African & African-American-influenced, including gumbo, and also including boiling the living crpp out of vegetables. Ever had Congolese-style greens? Nigerian-style cassava?
Omnes Omnibus
@philadelphialawyer: Try linking. It helps the conversation.
philadelphialawyer
@Omnes Omnibus: Fuck it. She knows I am quoting her. And so does anyone else still on this thread.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Elvis made it acceptable for white people because he was white. No doubt he had talent. But no mistake….he picked up the ball and ran with it, and made a lot more money than others did because of his race and looks. He stood on the shoulders of a movement/art for that was created by black people.
@philadelphialawyer: No. Not at all. White people have plenty of cultural contributions of which to be proud. The freakin’ Italian peninsula alone could carry Europe for a thousand years. The British Isles has batted waaaaay above their weight in terms of literature. Germans and modern design? Unbelievable. So no one has to feel denigrated. But it is pretty undeniable that most of the cultural contributions of the Deep South didn’t originate with whites, and yet they get credit for a lot that they didn’t create. That appropriation is pretty shitty.
And in terms of Southern food, here’s the test: if you go somewhere else in the world outside the US, how many restaurants do you find serving Southern white food? Not many.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lyrebird: I think that Vernon Reid misinterpreted him. For the rest, fuck off. I was asked for more than five. I offered six. I am from WI; if you have a big defend the South thing going on, don’t put it on me.
Suzanne
@Lyrebird: I loooove pretty much everything you just listed. I agree—the best food out of the South originated with black people. The soul food restaurants here often have lines. Freakin’ amazing.
philadelphialawyer
“Cultural appropriation” yes, and, yes, shitty b/c unacknowledged and power imbalance.
But not the same thing as “white southern people never produced anything good.”
Not rocket science here. And if you really knew even jack shit about culture, art, etc, you would understand the difference.
As for food, gustibus non disputatum, or whatever the Latin phrase is.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Don’t think that I don’t know what Elvis did. I already said it. Stop it. Just stop it.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
How many are serving any kind of American food?
Not many. Unless you classify McDonald’s and KFC as food.
stinger
@SiubhanDuinne: “I like ex-presidents who aren’t dead.”
Lyrebird
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nope.
And if I were really seeking to have an argument with you, we could debate the adding of orange color to cheese or something super-important like that. But I’m not.
Grateful for some social insights and or snark before I admit the reality that it’s past bedtime on this coast and I didn’t finish my grading.
Svensker
@Iowa Old Lady: Iceberg wedge salad became a hip thing a couple years ago. With blue cheese dressing it’s so retro!
Svensker
@Brachiator: yes. And green beans cooked to death with pork. Yum.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: Actually, here’s something good that Southern white people invented that has had some serious staying power: the residential architecture of that chunk of the world is really fabulous. Admired by people all over the world. It’s an interesting mix of Georgian and Federalist styles with the climatic adaptations of the indigenous peoples. To say nothing of the place-making of New Orleans.
Having said that, I still contend that the vast majority of the best cultural contributions from that corner of the world, the ones that have lasted across time and place, started with black people.
Groucho48
Airplanes and anesthesia. I think air conditioning, too, but that’s a faint memory of reading about it years ago. Moving on to the B’s, bourbon. C’s…cotton gin. Cheating a bit…the first college in the world to grant degrees to women was in Georgia.
Porlock Junior
@Omnes Omnibus: @Iowa Old Lady: Real? The very mention of it got me almost started on a Proustian recollection of the days I spent in Pacific Beach (Ssn Diego) in 1965. However, I am sure that Marcel’s grandma’s madeleines were on a much higher level than those from (some chain that also also owned Jack In The Box, but I’ve forgotten the name).
Definitely a real thing, but it has been a long time since I’ve had one of those things.
I bring it up not just because I’m senescent, causing this memory to be triggered by synergy with a quasi-sentimental journey I made a couple of years ago to the old neighborhood, but as a striking instance of the classiness of Trump’s personal bon-vivant paradise.
Porlock Junior
@jl: By all (ok, maybe both) accounts that I’ve seen, His Majesty enjoyed the hot dogs. It may have been something of a treat, something from the rather short list of things he had not had before. I do think the First Lady was not happy with the choice. What Mrs. Majesty thought, I do not know. (The incident is noted in the Roosevelts documentary of a year or two ago, and if you missed the show the first time, it’s worth going back to.)
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Harper Lee…